Life and Leadership Stories
Hear from various leaders about their personal journey, challenges and growth areas focused on formative experiences, how their experiences shaped their approach to leadership, and rapid reflections based on lessons learned, biggest failures, and advice to their younger selves.
Life and Leadership Stories
Leadership That Outlasts You
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We talk with Dan Pete about leadership that lasts beyond your tenure, from training your replacement to building systems that help people grow. Dan blends military accountability with academic research to show how real leaders share credit, own failures, and make decisions without perfect information.
• Building a leadership philosophy through learning and self-awareness
• Training your replacement to prevent silos and enable promotion
• Taking care of people as a transferable leadership principle
• Using accountability and internal development to strengthen teams
• Making decisions under uncertainty through analysis and planning
• Avoiding micromanagement by delegating with clear purpose
• Spotting common new-leader mistakes and redefining “good enough”
• Improving communication by avoiding vague “bring me a rock” asks
• Embracing faith, purpose, family priorities, and healthy perspective
Meet Dan Pete And His Roles
NathanWelcome back to Life and Leadership Stories. Today's guest is Dan Pete, an assistant professor of management at the University of Cincinnati, an active leadership researcher, and a U.S. Army Reserve officer with more than two decades of military service. Dan brings a unique blend of academic research and real-world leadership experience as we explore what it truly means to develop people, build future leaders, and create organizations that thrive long after we're gone. If you're looking to grow as a leader, this conversation is packed with practical insights that you can apply right away. Well, thank you, Dan, for joining me. So excited to have you on the episode today. Really looking forward to this conversation and learning more from you and your background and really getting to talk about all the different areas of leadership that you've participated in because I know that that's a ton, right? Between the various aspects of your career, but excited for our listeners to hear all about that. So thank you for joining me.
DanYeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
NathanExcellent. So let's start early on. If you think I know you've you've listened to some of the episodes that we've done as well. So kind of like your background and what got you to where you are today.
DanYeah, and by some of them, all of them. I've listened to everything coming. Yeah, I've loved, I love the podcast. I think it's great. It's and it's really interesting to hear the kind of kind of connections and how people talk about this. We talked this, we call this sense making. So it's interesting to have to try and do this myself. Um, so where I got to today, always wanted to be there since uh since as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be. Oh, wait, that's a that's a different movie. The the the military aspect and kind of the the professor aspects. So those are the kind of two things that I that I do now. I can always remember back. Like I always wanted to be in the military. Like that was that was something I always wanted to do. And at some point in my my history, it was like, well, I also want to be a professor when I grow up, too, because I think that sounds cool. And they get to to teach and do all these these kind of things. I always had a a very idealized view of that. So yeah, it goes all the way back. Like I remember the movies and stuff like that as a little kid and getting all pumped up and excited. I always had a military poster in my my room. I come from a long military lineage. My my dad served in the Navy. Both of my grandfathers were World War II veterans. So yeah, and and going back, my great-grandfather was a World War I veteran, stateside. He was a he was a carpenter, stateside. So yeah, it's a long history, long answer to the to a very simple question.
NathanAwesome. So for our listeners, let's talk about what you do today, right? So you are, I'll let you explain like what it is that you do today for a couple of different roles that you currently have.
DanYeah, so full-time, I'm an assistant professor educator at University of Cincinnati in the management department and the Linder College of Business. So I teach classes and do service for the for the college. In addition to that, I'm also an active researcher at the college as well. So I do research on on uh human capital and leadership and things like that. And then on the part-time side, I'm in the Army Reserves. I've been in the military for 21 years, both between the National Guard and the Reserves. And six years of those were active duty time, including a combat deployment to Afghanistan.
NathanThat's awesome. And I know some of the I was looking through the courses that you've taught from the University of Cincinnati. I was like, who better to have on board and talking about leadership and getting your experience? But there were things like strategic management, business strategy, leadership and personal development as well. That was the one where that one piqued me. I was like, oh, that's so such an awesome kind of aspect for our listeners to understand for this episode of the background that you truly have when it comes to leadership and developing others.
DanYeah, I love, I love the breadth of classes I've gotten to teach. And that's my favorite class to teach. I love all the other ones too. Don't get me wrong. But that was my favorite one to teach because I really get to get students through that aha moment. And it's kind of the because it's leadership and personal development, we talk about a lot of the things that are covered on the podcast. We talk about building their leadership philosophy. How do they want to approach leadership roles? What leadership experience do they have? And a lot of them like, well, I've never been in a leadership role. And then when we start picking it apart, they realize just how much they have had. And it's a truly Socratic class where we get in-depth into hey, this is the attitudes and the behaviors and the and the leadership skills. This is kind of what's more innate. This is kind of what's more developable. If that's a word, I think it is. But getting to that point of what do you want to be as a leader? 5, 10, 15, I make them think 20 years into their career. Stuff I wish I had done too. And yeah, that class is great. The other note on that, too, as as a leadership scholar and teacher, it's the Dunning Kruger effect. So the more you know about a topic, the more you realize you don't know. And it's just such a massive area of space that there's no shortage of questions to ask and and things to learn. So heck, even with a PhD, I'm still learning so much and always trying to figure out more about different experiences and different skills.
NathanYeah, absolutely. And I think that's that one of the things that I've said, you know, a few different times, and probably on the podcast as well. I think a very effective leader or somebody who is a very good leader is constantly learning. You never know it all. You're never in that space where you can't learn something new from either the team that you have or the situations that you're experiencing and going through in that moment.
DanRight. And and in my case, it's also with students. So I learned just as much from them as they learn from me. And I hope they realize that because it's it's always fun to listen to their experiences and to bring those into the classroom. And it's kind of like fishing, trying to get them and pull them into the class.
Train Your Replacement And Share Knowledge
NathanWas leadership something that you were naturally drawn toward or something that developed for you over time?
DanYeah, I've always loved being in leadership roles. And it's it's interesting because I can contrast this with Katie, my wife. She generally likes to be more in that subject matter expert role, whereas I'm more drawn to the leading people. And I talk about that in my in my classes too of this is two different forms of leadership. There's leading process and there's leading people. And they're both leadership, they both have overlaps in those skill sets. And I definitely gravitate more towards the leading people role. I like to be able to develop future leaders. One of my biggest philosophy points is I will on day one of a leadership role be training my replacement. Who's going to be replacing me? And it may not be a specific person, but what are the systems and processes that I need to put in place that will help my replacement fill that role? Because too often you see these people that that leave and there's a big gap and they've never got anybody up to speed to be able to fill those roles. And I've always said that part of my philosophy is I'm going to always train my replacement on day one.
NathanI love that because I think what you find, especially in the corporate world, you probably see it in your side as well, is that so many people are afraid to do that because they think they're going to lose their job to someone else. But what they don't realize, I think what they often fail to take into account, is that if you don't have a replacement, you're less likely to be promoted into other things that you may want to do. You've got to have your backfill up and ready, or all of a sudden you become too valuable in place to be allowed to do some of these other things.
DanYeah, my my biggest piece of advice to anybody, and whether in the leadership role or and anybody that's working in any organization is if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, people would be sad, but then they would replace you in a matter of time, whether it's two weeks, six months, whatever, or they might not and give your duties to somebody else and you know tack on. We see a lot of that. But everybody's replaceable. There's nobody in an organization that's completely irreplaceable, and you should be training people. And I think when you don't, it leads to that being stuck in place and it leads to organizational silos as people hoard information or hoard whatever they know how to do. And that's not good for organizations. Organizations thrive when people are collaborating with each other and building. I generally don't like buzzwords in business, but synergy is one that I've come to appreciate. I always hated that before I became an academic, and now I see what it actually means, where one plus one does equal three. That's a I know it's kind of a buzzwordy way of putting it, but it's true. And the only way that happens is when you share your knowledge and skills with other people and find compliments with other people.
Transferable Principles Across Every Sector
NathanAbsolutely. Now you've led, and I want to dive into some things because thank you for sending me, you know, we we talked through some of your background and some of these other things previously, and I absolutely love it. Just all the different views that you've had from a leadership perspective, but you've led in military, you've led in government organizations and places, and academic studies. What leadership principles would you think seem to work everywhere?
DanYeah, that's that's a great question. This is one of my biggest critiques about the leadership industry in general. And you can go online and find thousands, if not tens of thousands, of books on leadership. And a lot of them are very specific to their their specific context. I always make the joke every CEO, every Navy SEAL or special forces person, and every athlete is gonna, or and every politician is gonna come out and write their their book about leadership. And it's trying to figure out what's context specific and what's actually transferable. I think, and a lot of these things have been covered on the podcast before of taking care of your people is never going to be a bad thing for any type of leadership. And that looks a little bit different when you're talking about a high-intensity environment like military or firefight or some things like that, versus in a more corporate setting. It's but taking care of people, whatever that looks like, making sure there's opportunities for people to develop and to train and to promote. And on the other side of that, making sure I'm a firm believer that not everybody is good at everything, that some people are in a role that they're not necessarily good at. And it's the more compassionate thing to make sure they understand you don't really fit this role. Not that there isn't a role out there for you, but this is not a good one for you. And sometimes that means making the hard right choice of getting rid of somebody. I think having some passion about whatever it is you're doing usually translates. There's some jobs that you know people aren't just gonna be passionate about. I I worked in a job one time where I was uh getting documents ready for digital scanning. There was no way to make that a very passionate role. It was it was purely transactional. And we can kind of talk about transformational versus transactional leadership, but finding how that passion transfers. If I care about the work and I care about my people, people are going to want to follow me and do more of that. Another principle I always subscribe to is praise is always pushed down to my people and critique stops at me. So I will take all critique for any failures in my organization. That doesn't mean I won't address them with my team, but in public, critique stops with me as the leader. Praise is always down to my team. Like I will never take the praise for the team that's that's always on them or the organization if it's a if it's a larger organization. I think those are three that transfer. I think I have a whole list of 10 of them I share with my students, but some of them are a little more not risque. What's the word I'm looking for? Yeah, things I wouldn't necessarily say in in in politic conversation, but things that are the realities of organizations.
NathanYeah, absolutely.
Military Accountability And Growing Leaders Inside
NathanNow, are there any lessons that the military taught you that most civilians never get exposure to?
DanYes. That's actually a very big part of my research, too, is what's the difference between the two? And we get we get this question a lot like, isn't it just another organization? Like, yes and no. The military is really based on accountability. You're accountable to everybody around you in ways that other civilian organizations generally can't mimic. Some high-intensity ones, nuclear power, you know, firefighting, uh, aviation, things like that will be close. But you really are reliant on everybody else to, as we say in the military, have your six, which is your backside, and being able to watch your back and and generally trust other people in ways that I've never seen in any civilian organization that that has a similar aspect. The military is also an entirely internal job market. So you generally only develop future leaders from within. You don't pull people in from outside, you get promoted from within, and that's the only way to advance, with some very specific exceptions for doctors, dentists, things like that. So you have to make sure that people are developing and hitting those gates. And that's a big part of that. And it leads to another form of accountability of being accountable to your subordinates and your subordinate leaders.
NathanAbsolutely. I love that because I think there is a power in that, making sure that you're developing each and every single person on that team. Because I do think, and from my experience from the corporate side, especially, is a lot of leaders will rely on, oh, I've got that gap. I'm gonna go see if I can fill it from outside the organization, versus saying, all right, who on the team would be very good at that and let me see if I can develop them into that space.
DanAnd there's a there's an interesting argument here too of what the military is a high reliability organization where they plan for all these contingencies. And that's what they like to say. Personally, I think it's more of they love to live in the chaos. Well, let's figure out how we can plug that hole with the skill sets that we have for now, and maybe at some point we'll get that person. But yeah, I very much you can't go on the on the open market and and go hire somebody from outside to fill that.
NathanAbsolutely. Now, one it kind of fits within this military realm as well, because I think you would be very well positioned to think about
Decisions With Imperfect Information
Nathanthis question. But how do leaders make effective decisions when they don't have complete information? Because I'm sure you found yourself in that situation a lot of times. I don't have everything that I need to know in order to make a decision, but I have to move. How do they make those effective decisions in those circumstances?
DanYeah, this is one of those ones that really translates well. I think the first step is to recognize that that's always the case. Nobody has perfect information, nobody is perfectly rational. Herbert Simon is a Nobel laureate who got the Nobel Peace Prize, or Nobel, not Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize in Economics for coming up with this concept of bounded rationality. We are stuck with our own field of vision, we only know what we know, and we can only be rational within those bounds. And I think recognizing that that is everybody is step one. Step two is understanding the problems. So both in strategic management and in military decision making, the first thing we ever do is external analysis. Let's understand the current environment, what's going on, and then the next is what's the current task at hand? Let's understand what the current task at hand is. So we know that's honestly, and I see this with with SWAT a lot, with SWOT analysis. A lot of people do it wrong. They just go right into the SWAT, they don't actually analyze the external and internal stuff and then build their SWAT based on that. So that's that's one that carries across. And if you have to start with with a time thing, it's it's interesting. The the axe metaphor, if I had to, I can't remember who to attribute this to. If I have to cut down a forest, I'm gonna spend the majority of my time sharpening my axe. It's the same thing. If you're going to make a decision, spend the majority of your time analyzing the environment and the decision to be made, and then the rest on execution, and you will be much more successful. And I've seen this firsthand. If you plan well, the plan goes out the door as soon as things start happening. And you know, it's the military phrases no plan survives first contact. It's the same thing in business. If you are planning, that plan's going to get thrown out, but the planning itself was the important aspect of it and understanding the problem and understanding the environment. So hope that I hope that made sense. But know that you don't know everything and spend the majority of your time understanding the problem and the decision at hand, and then the the rest of the time actually executing it.
NathanI love that. And one of the things I I wanted to take an opportunity here as well, because I think it's a really good follow to that, is I'm sure you have seen and worked with quite a few brand new leaders, right? Within their roles. I actually have somebody who I'm super excited about somebody I've worked with in the past, just recently got her first leadership role. She's getting ready to move into that. She is a podcast listener of our these episodes. And so I wanted for her, if you think about someone who's leading their first team today, what military leadership lesson would you want them to understand? Or
First-Time Leader Advice And Listening First
Nathanmaybe even not just military, but what would they need to understand as, all right, I'm brand new in my team. How do what do I need to do?
DanYeah, so know that you don't know everything. Know that the people that are following you don't expect you to know everything, and understand that imposter syndrome is a real thing. You're never going to feel like you belong in that role. I think that's important. So when I when I took over my very first military unit, so in the in the army and the marines, we do platoon leadership, platoon commander is your first role. I was in charge of not just the tasks and the and the and the people, but every aspect of their career. People can actually get fired in the military for not taking care of people's careers, things that happen off duty because there is no real off-duty in the military. And I did air quotes, like people are going to see that. And you get there, and especially as a platoon leader coming out of college studies, new commissioned second lieutenant. A lot of these people were older than me, had way more experience than me, and now I'm in charge of their careers, of their if if somebody's having problems financially, I'm in charge of that. All of these things. I can be really scary. And it was know that I didn't know everything, but understand that I was still the one who was responsible for that and take it seriously. Find the senior folks, listen to them, get mentored by them. I think the first thing I ever did was we were doing an inventory. So my background in the army, I'm an engineer. And we build stuff, we blow stuff up. That's the way I always explain it to other folks. And I was in a construction unit. So I did the inventory with my first group and touched every piece of equipment that I was responsible for. And they're like, nope, none of our leaders have ever done this with us before. It's like, but I need to know what you do. I don't know every aspect of what you do, and I'll kind of talk about that a little bit later. But I need to know what you do in order to be able to be in charge. And the other thing is ask a lot of questions. I did this not as a new leader, but as taking over the I took over division in the government. And the first thing I did, no changes for 60 days. I made no changes for 60 days except one. I canceled all recurring meetings. I hate meetings, despise them. So I said, if we're gonna have meetings, you need to justify why this needs to be on my calendar and why it needs to be a recurring meeting. That's the only change I made. Yeah, I hate I hate being meetings that could be just as easily done with an email. But what I did was I talked to every single person in my division and asked them a few simple questions. What's working well here? What is not working well here? What could I change and effectively make this a better organization tomorrow? I did that and I had one woman who had worked in the organization for 20 years, started crying in my office. I had no idea what I did or said with just those questions. She said, Nobody has ever asked me that before. Oh wow. And it blew my mind. It's like this person has been in the same role for 20 years, and nobody has ever sought out their expertise. And yeah, I'm the division chief. I'm in charge. Yada, yada. Got it. This person has more institutional knowledge of this organization than anybody else. Why wouldn't I listen to their perspective and take that into account when making the decisions? I think listen to your people. Know that you don't know everything, but also don't be afraid to make decisions. We talked about earlier with one of the things in the military that does transfer. I've noticed a lot of civilian leadership are afraid to make decisions because of how they're going to be viewed or they're going to get slapped down. You have to make decisions. You're in the leadership role. You have to make decisions. So yeah, those would be my advice. Listen to your experienced people, ask a lot of questions, but know that you're the one who has to ultimately be responsible for the decisions.
NathanAbsolutely. And that's such good advice. And two of those really stuck out for me. One of those being imposter center. Look the number of times I've been in a role that I'm like, I have no business being in this role. But you you do it and you you end up, you can do it really well. You just have to understand that you've got to learn along the way, too, right? You you've got to kind of dive in and just do it. And you have the experience to be there or you wouldn't be there. Just understanding that, I think, is a big aspect. But then also this perspective of really learning from your team and understanding what they do. That was, you've probably heard that from me before on the podcast, because I think I don't have to know the ins and outs of everything that they do, but I have to be able to at least, if I can't answer their question, understand enough to guide them to where we can find the right answer. And also the one thing that I always take away from that is I should be able to understand what they do, what they do, or how they do what they do, so that when they go on a vacation or they're not there, they're not worried about it when they get back. I can cover it, I can take care of things for them so they're not stressed about that. Those are some of the aspects that I've always looked at. Now, I think towards the end, you you kind of hit into my next question a little bit, but I'll go ahead and ask because I think just to see if you can't. I want to add one thing onto that and go for it.
DanThis is absolutely any new leader out there. So 21 years in the military. I've been in leadership roles for over 21 years because I also was a supervisor of retail back in college and in you know, line leadership level. I still get nervous the first day in any leadership role. First day of class, I've taught, I've taught over 2,000 students at this point. I still get nervous on that first day of class. And I think if you lose that, you've lost your your, I don't know, humanity, whatever it is. You should still be nervous from the perspective of I need to take care of these people. I need these students are in my care. I have to take care of them. I still feel that on day one. So that's perfectly normal for a new leader to feel that. The other thing, too, of the helping your employees to get to the problem is this is a leadership level question. At some point in everybody's career, if they keep going up the ladder, you can no longer know exactly what everybody on your team is doing day in and day out. And the people that can't do that generally don't progress to a level of leadership or they get promoted to their level of incompetence. It's known as the Peter principle. Of if you are still trying to do the exact tasks that everybody on your team does, you'll never get to that next level of leadership. And it's that's a big problem, at least a lot of micromanagement. Sorry, I know you wanted to ask the next question, but I do want to get those.
NathanNo, I think those are great context and great builds. And it's really good for these newer leaders to understand that. Along with that, I think this next
Common Mistakes And Delegation Reality
Nathanquestion was it kind of goes with that though. And like I said, I think you've hit on a little bit of this. But what mistakes do you see emerging leaders make most often?
DanI think that's the biggest one is trying to do the task of all of the people that report to them. And we see this a lot. I know a couple of people have mentioned this, that the people that tend to get promoted are the best at the task. But being best at the task doesn't mean you're gonna be the best at leading the task later on. Those are two different, two different tracks, subject matter expertise versus leading. I had a good example of this. I had a a soldier that that worked for me at one point. And years ago, back in World War II, we had these specialized ranks that went all the way up through the ranks where you were a specialist your whole career, just a subject matter expert. And I wish the military would bring these back because I think they're important. The whole everybody's the leader of people, not always the best. But this person wasn't a good people leader, but he was great at the tasks. So the the advice that I would give, and a lot of mistakes that a lot of new leaders make, is they try to still be the expert in the task when it's not the same, the same skill set. I had a general officer once tell me, I trust you to be my subject matter expert. If I have to do your job in addition to my leading tasks, I don't need you. And that has always stuck with me to to the to this date. Another one I've seen is because a lot of leaders are experts at at what they did before, they have a hard time accepting that the people that are that are subordinate to them or reporting to them may not be able to do the task as well as they can. But you have to accept what's good enough. What is, and they may not do it the same way, too, is another big mistake. Well, that's wrong, but it was just done in a different way. So if I give somebody something to do, I have to accept it, may not look the same as if I did it, and they may not do it the same way, but I have to make a judgment call. Is this actually wrong, or is this just done in a different way from me? And that is a tough, tough thing for a new leader. You have to be able to accept that people are going to do it differently and may not do it quite as well, but what's good enough for the task? So yeah.
NathanAnd I think I've seen and I've worked with people who I didn't report to, but I watched them manage others who still hadn't mastered that. And I watched their team be miserable and you just sit there and go, What do you do? Like, let them do it. It's okay that that font is a different font than what you like. It's okay that that is not the color background that you would have used like in your deck. Like there are just certain things that you need to understand that because somebody may do it differently than you would doesn't make it wrong. Now you could have a conversation around what you feel like is preferred and what would look best in these scenarios, but don't take it from this approach of they've done it wrong, I need to redo it, or they need to fix it.
DanYeah, there's there's an adage in the in the government more often. It's called the bring me a rock exercise. And it's a leader says, bring me a rock. And the subordinate says, Okay, do you have any more specifics? What kind of rock do you want? And you're like, well, I don't know. I'll know it when I see it. So then the subordinates spend all this time trying to bring a rock. Oh, that wasn't the rock I wanted. That's not the right size, that's not shiny enough, that's too small, whatever. And that is such a frustrating thing as a subordinate. So leaders really need to, if they're giving a task, this is another principle I always say, never give a task without a purpose. This is a, I mean, that's defined, that's the way the military defines leadership is task with purpose and direction. If you give them a purpose, they'll understand the task better so that if they can't accomplish it, they can at least accomplish something within your perspective. So yeah, avoid the bring me a rock and always give a purpose with any task you give.
NathanAnd I laugh because you said word for word things I've been told and I've heard before from others. No, it when I see it. Yeah, that does not help me at all to pull things together. So, last question within this space, and then I want to pivot a little bit, but what separates, from your perspective, leaders who grow versus those who stagnate?
DanOh, goodness. Oh, that's tough. And I don't think there's anything wrong with hitting a level and being comfortable at that level and not progressing. So I want to be careful that if I'm saying stagnating, that's not what I'm meaning. Yeah. And and even in that perspective, you can still continue to develop as a leader, even if you're you're at a level. It's interesting. I'll I'll invoke a historical example here with Otto von Bismarck, so very famous in the 1800s for building out the German-Prussian military and being a very successful at it. Uh he was a horrible student at university. He was, you know, he he had all these bad behaviors and and and not wasn't a good student and all these things, but he read voraciously. And I think that is one thing that good leaders that continuously develop will read. And it doesn't have to just be books and things like that, it can also be podcasts and things like this, and be discerning on what you intake too. I think I've talked to you about this, that not everybody on the podcast has really resonated with me. And that's fine. And it's interesting for me to think in my mind of okay, why did I like the what this one person said versus this another person said? And what is it that I want to take from that as a development? And I think you can read books that you don't like and don't appreciate. You can see my bookshelf is full of different books, half of them are leadership focused. Some I just hated as I read, and it was a slog to get through. And a lot of it can be, you know, it's buzzword heavy or whatever. But it was still
Leaders Who Keep Growing
Danvaluable for me to see that because they wrote that, and somebody thinks that that's a great book. And why would I have a different approach versus them? So constantly reading and and in and that, and then just getting better at your craft, learn something new. I have a lot of different hobbies. If I if I took a personality trait assessment, I score fairly high on openness to new experiences. I always want to get better at something, and I think that's a that's a a good indication of a leader that's developing some of the stagnation things, they're not taking care of their subordinates anymore. They've gotten to a point where they're just comfortable. It's like I'm just here to to check a block or or do a task. I think that's a big indicator. It doesn't mean I love every day I go to work or that you're going to love every day of being in the leadership role. That's kind of how that goes. But you have to figure out how to how to take care of your folks. Like those, I think those are the two big things. Read what's out there, listen to what's out there, and and understand that you're going to have off days and days you don't enjoy it.
NathanAbsolutely. I think that goes back to earlier, right at the beginning of the episode where we talked about continue to learn. Yeah. Continue to bring in those aspects of learning different things and learning different ways of doing things. Because as a as a leader to be effective, you're on this constant learning journey. There's never a moment where you get that pinnacle and I've made it. I know all the answers. If you feel like you know all the answers, you probably have a blind spot that you need to take a look at. Now you have done quite a bit of research within leadership and organizational effectiveness. And I wanted to dive into a couple things there. So your research focuses on human capital and strategic leadership. What organizations or what do organizations often get wrong about talent?
DanYeah, so this is an interesting one. And I probably should define human capital and what I mean by that when I when I use it, it's the it's the investment and the skills, knowledge, and abilities that people bring that creates value for themselves and value for their organizations. And one thing to always keep in mind, and this is um, I don't know if this is controversial to say or not, but the organization always has to extract even just a little bit more value out than the person does, or they'll go out of business. So when you create value for an organization, you always have to have at least a little bit above and beyond what you get in terms of salary and benefits that the organization can take to stay in business. Anytime you're more than just a single person. I think that's a that's an important thing to say. What I think a lot of organizations get wrong, and I'll kind of talk about this from the leadership role, is either a one size fits all approach of this is how you're successful, or the up or out approach, where a lot of organizations are like you have to continuously get promoted. Well, no, some people want to find a level in the organization that they're comfortable at and stay there. And I think recognizing that, especially it's interesting, Katie just sent an article the other day that that talked about people in their 40s are under a tremendous amount of pressure. They're at the middle of their career, there's a lot of pressure to advance. They have a lot of family challenges, whether they're taking care of parents, aging parents, or young kids, or even older kids. There's a lot of pressure on them. Sometimes it's okay to pause the advancement. You're not as hungry as you were early in your career, but that doesn't mean you won't want to be there again once some of those pressures have passed. And organizations don't often recognize that. And I don't think that's a that's a a great approach. And recognizing not everybody's cut out to be in a leadership role. Like I just I don't think everybody can can be a leader of people. And I think when you start teasing out all the negative aspects, that's that's a big sign of it. One of the things that's really fascinating to me is a question is who's able to internalize leadership training and leadership development and who's not. Because almost every bad manager has had some kind of leadership training or has listened to a podcast or has read a book on leadership, and they still are terrible at it. And you know, I had a great example of this. I had a person who was a leadership professor who was a tremendous micromanager in their non-professor role. It's like this person studies this, knows these are bad behaviors, and still does this. So they can't internalize the stuff that they're even talking about. And what's that? I think that's a fascinating thing about understanding who can and can't internalize the stuff they're getting. Just because somebody's read a book or gone through the training, they may say all the right things. That doesn't mean they know how to actually lead.
NathanAnd I think that's a that's an important thing that people get wrong. And I think that's really important. Why one of the reasons why I just did the bonus episode that I released, I don't know if you got a chance to listen to that one yet.
DanListen to it yesterday while I was pulling stuff.
NathanThat's awesome. I think the one aspect of the reason why I wanted to do that episode with Valerie, I used her as an executive career coach from myself personally, was there are blind spots that you have. And I will say, in my experience, organizations aren't always really good at helping you understand what those are internally. And sometimes you need an external partner to help you really open those things and really understand what they are. But what you were just talking about with that professor, that's a blind spot that he has. And I had my own blind spots. How do you work through those? And it's making sure that you've got that ability to understand how you're viewed by counterparts, people who report to you, and people you report to, all various levels, but getting that external source to really pull that information out of those people can be a very valuable process.
DanAbsolutely. And I think people need to understand that no matter how much internal development an organization does, their fundamental purpose and being is their mission and their values and their vision and things like that. Their purpose is not to help people get to their perspective. So there's always going to be that competing interest internally. I know you talked about not wanting to go through HR for internal development because I think that's exactly it. HR's role is to be representative of the company and to build what the company needs. Then that may be misaligned for what an individual needs. I think, yeah, figuring
Blind Spots Introverts Extroverts And Silence
Danthat out, yeah. Sometimes you do need that external perspective on it. I really appreciated the episode and how you talk through what is it that your blind spots are. And I've I've this is one of my favorite stories from your book, too, of the quiet in the meeting. Oh, yeah. And I've had a ton of conversations on this, my my my spouse, because she's a naturally introverted person, and I'm a naturally more extroverted person. You're never gonna have to wonder what my perspective is in a meeting. I know we're we're in a church group together, so I'm sure that comes as no surprise. But I do think that that was great advice of silence is very much interpreted by the other person. Yes. And people will interpret silence as not having opinion or not understanding, or there's a lot of challenges that come with that. And for somebody who's a naturally introverted person, they may not see those connections. At the same time, and this is something that I'll throw out there, and it's a challenge I have. I know that I will tend to dominate a conversation. So I consciously, and this has taken years to practice and to train, it's knowing myself. I will constantly say, I need to be quiet, I need to ask questions, I need to not give my opinion here, or I need to call out one of my subordinates and say, I want to know what you think first before I say anything. And don't try and impress me. I want to hear your perspective, understanding that there are those different personalities out there. But sometimes you won't realize that until you get that external perspective.
NathanAbsolutely. And I had a coworker, and at one point in time, she did report to me, but this goes back many years ago. And she was very much the outgoing extroverted person in the meetings. I was not. And it was there was a balance between the two of us, but she was receiving a lot of feedback of she didn't listen. She did like, because, and I'm sure you've probably dealt with a little bit of that in your past too, right? Being that person who wants to make your opinion known. There's nothing wrong with that. But to your point, it's choosing those moments of when to stop and listen. And then, okay, let me ask a question about this. I because we had such different approaches, her and I came up with a plan. And it was, I look back on it, and I think it for me, it's it became a very powerful lesson as a leader now to look back and go, okay, how do I help that person? And she actually would sit next to me in meetings, and we came up with a signal to where if I felt like, okay, just hold for just a minute, let them finish this thought, or hold and let them, you know, sit in the silence for a moment, I would make that signal and she would cut catch it and she would just pause. And we went through this like for weeks, and then all of a sudden, all the feedback just started getting shifted. And it was, oh, she's being so thoughtful, like all these kind of things. And it was very interesting to me. It was just, how do you help that person who can be a little bit more boisterous in meetings? Because there is a balance. I was too quiet in meetings, and I know that now, but I viewed it in a very different way, just like she viewed it in a very different way. But she needed that kind of different take on, okay, how do I take those moments? How do I pause? How do I make sure I'm getting them to get uncomfortable in the silence so that it makes them think about it a different way, right? There's a lot of different approaches that you could take, but they were just these two, the two of us on this team together had to almost balance each other.
DanI love that. And I think there's a a really important nugget in there too, as we get more and more virtual and hybrid work. What does that look like in those situations where silence is even more complicated? So in-person silence is a very powerful tool. Online, it can just be, oh well, maybe they got disconnected. I don't know. I'm not going to say anything. Yes. I think that that's a really important. What do those kind of signals to each other look like in a in a virtual or a hybrid environment? But I love that. And it's the equivalent
Rapid Reflections Hard Lessons And Pride
Danof Katie kicks me under the table when I'm talking too much and basically tells me to be quiet.
NathanI love it. That's you know the benefits of having a space. Else there with you in those some of those moments. I think just hit you.
DanOh, and she's she's absolutely my compliment. And yeah, I I was I I found my perfect match. I that's awesome.
NathanSadly, I cannot believe we're almost out of time already. Oh my goodness. I want to get to some of the rapid reflections. Like I've got a few for you just to think about as we wrap up this episode. But what is the biggest leadership lesson that you learn the hard way?
DanOh goodness. You would think having time to think about this one, I probably would have would have come up with this. Goodness, know when to control your mouth and when not to say things that you don't need to say or shouldn't say. One of my biggest regrets is uh I and there's a little bit of a a story here, and I got I know rapid reflections. No, when I came when I was in Afghanistan, my mom passed away from cancer. So I I thank thank God I was home on leave when it happened. So I was there for her at the end, but she passed away. But then I jumped back on a plane 10 days later and went back to Afghanistan. And I learned very quickly that I was taking way way too many risks. I was still grieving and I was taking risks with my team that I shouldn't have. Again, thank God that I brought them all home in one piece. But when we were back and demobilizing, there was a senior officer, and I say senior, he's the same rank, I'm the same rank he was at the time, who wanted to give me advice, and I blew him off. And he said, Fine, I'm done with you. Just listen to the people that are trying to help you, and just take that tactical pause. And I know why, I'm not excusing it, but I wish I had listened to him because I burned that relationship and I really wish I hadn't.
NathanSuch a great learning for people to really understand that there's a time to sit and listen and take feedback, right? Because and and a lot of times you have to sit and think about how that's being provided to you. And I would say most of the time, 90%, that it is out of genuine desire for you to be better, not because they want to tear you down. And I think that that's you've got to think about how am I receiving that information and what am I learning from it, and not dismiss it. So I think that's such a valuable way to look at that.
DanRight.
NathanMost proud leadership moment.
DanOh goodness. Can I have two of them? Absolutely. So the the two of them. The first one, and this is gonna be seen as a negative, but it was basically ending somebody's career. Somebody that was a terrible leader, subordinate leader that was not taking care of people. And I I documented everything they did wrong and I counseled them. They had bounced from nine different departments before they came to me, and I was told they weren't going anywhere else. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna do the right thing. And I I documented everything. And at the end of our time together, I wrote them a career-ending evaluation that they retired after that because of that. But it was the right hard decision that nobody else had had the courage to do. And I'm very, very proud of that, even though it's kind of a negative thing, but I think it's important. The other, and I this is a recurring one. It's when I have students that go on and become leader roles and come back to me five, 10 years, 10 years, yeah, but five years later and say, hey, those lessons you taught me in class, those have really stuck with me. And I'm now seeing them in play. I love that moment. And those make me very, very proud to have helped them on that journey.
NathanAbsolutely. I love seeing that here because I I get a little bit of that with folks that I mentor. I've mentored some folks throughout the years who were analysts, and now I look at them, they're directors. They've gone between like just manager to leading teams to now being directors and and above. And it's so much fun to watch them progress in those spaces and really help. Know that I've played maybe a little part, definitely not gotten them to where they are, but just even a little part of helping them to course correct or do things that maybe a little bit differently than they would have done that have helped them kind of along that way. It's so much fun to see that and to know that you've imparted something to them. I do want to go back to the other one really quick, because I understand why you say that that's a proud moment, right? And while some people could see that as a negative, I actually don't. And the reason why I don't is because if they were not functioning as a leader in an effective way for their team, your act of removing that is actually a caring aspect for that team and protecting them and making sure that they've got the right leadership in place. Because there are moments, and in something I had to learn many, many, many years ago, right? That I still remember the first person that I had to let go from a role. And I'm sure this is probably the same for everyone. But you you get to that point where you you do, I don't know if grieve is the right space for that, but you do challenge yourself. And was that really the right decision? And I know what I'm doing to them and the the scenario that they're in and what I'm putting them in. But at the same point in time, you have to understand that at some point you have done everything that you can do. And as if you've documented, if you've had the conversations, you've gone through all of these pieces, then what they have done has been done to themselves, not you doing something to them. Now, if you didn't document, you didn't have those conversations, then that is on you. But being an effective leader is making sure that you're providing that feedback and getting them to the point where they know that that final conversation is one where they they anticipate what's coming.
DanYeah, and that's the difference between a kind, compassionate leader and a nice leader. A leader should always be kind and compassionate, not nice. I don't think that those, I don't think that that's I think that's absolutely the truth. You need to be compassionate and understand that some people need to not be there. Yep.
NathanI'll I had some other ones, but I think we've kind of answered them already. So I'm gonna go to my last question for you and within this rapid reflection. All the things you've done, and and like I said, I I loved like really diving into your background and and understanding all the things that you've done and seeing all these things kind of play out in my head, which has been so fascinating for me of the the military versus the academia and and all of these various aspects.
Faith Purpose Family And Closing Thoughts
NathanBut what does leadership mean to you today?
DanYeah. I think that's such a complicated thing. I I love the military definition of it, of giving the task and purpose and direction to accomplish the task. I think understanding that it looks different in different spaces. I think one thing that I've I've seen from my career and especially recently is embracing my faith and understanding I let the external world kind of dictate. I was I always said that very stupid comment of I'm spiritual, not religious for a long time, had some bad experiences with that, and I've realized that was a really dumb perspective. That's such an important aspect of my leadership now is knowing that's part of who I am and recognizing my gestalt, my personality, my total person. Understanding that I never would have listened to my own advice as a younger person. But now that I'm a little bit older, a little bit grayer, a little bit wiser, that I can learn from my mistakes. I think those are all the important aspects of my leadership and what that means to me.
NathanExcellent. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Such valuable lessons within the conversation that I hope our listeners can take away and enact some of those things right away, especially some of the newer leaders out there that I know are listening. But any final thoughts?
DanYeah, embrace who you are, know what your strengths and what your weaknesses are. I think that's an important aspect of that. Like I said, returning to my faith has has really strengthened my resolve as a leader. I've gotten much more involved in my in my church now, and that has really kind of made me feel my purpose a lot better. And I know that that that's a big part of the podcast, and I wanted to make sure I got that in. If you have kids, make time for kids. The work will always be there. The kids won't. I think that's another one. I just disconnected for two days to go camping at the beginning of this week. It was liberating. Not always fun, but it was awesome to spend time with my kids and be able to do that. Yeah, and have some fun. Make some jokes once in a while, get a good pun book, whatever, but have a little bit of fun in what you do. Don't always take everything seriously. Just because you take something seriously doesn't mean you have to be boring.
NathanWhat a great conversation with Dan Pete. His perspective reminds us that leadership isn't about becoming indispensable. It's about making others successful, whether it's training your replacement, investing in the growth of your team, remaining a lifelong learner, or having the humility to listen and accept feedback. The leaders who make the biggest impact are the ones who leave people and organizations stronger than they found them. Dan, thank you for sharing your experiences and leadership philosophy with us. And to everyone listening, thank you for spending part of your day with us. If Dan's story resonated with you, I hope you'll come back for future episodes and hear from even more leaders. If this episode inspired you, share it with someone who needs encouragement today. And remember, trust your gut, be kind, lead with purpose, and never underestimate your impact. Until next time, I'm Nathaniel Norker, and this is Life and Leadership Story.