STAT Leadership Episode 1: The Nature of Leadership

In the first episode of The STAT Leadership Podcast, hosts Phil Moy, Chetan Kharod, and JR Pickett delve into the foundational concepts of leadership. They discuss the qualities integral to effective leadership, such as compassion, integrity, courage, and perseverance. The hosts agree that leadership is more about character traits than formal titles and highlight the importance of adaptability and self-awareness. Real-life examples, including a powerful story from Chet's Air Force experience during a mass casualty event, illustrate practical leadership challenges. They also discuss the impact of humility, the necessity of trust, and providing constructive feedback. The episode concludes with each host sharing their fictional and nonfictional leadership role models, including Aragorn, Captain Aubrey, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi, showcasing the diverse aspects of leading effectively.

Referenced in this eposode:

The Leader’s Code Podcast, by Dr Rawaa El Ayoubi—Aspire Leadership Network  https://youtu.be/LcafGR8bJlw?si=sIqkmkX4LnOuC8zu

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't, by Simon Sinek   https://a.co/d/2pB4Yj2

Kung Fu Panda  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441773/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_kung%2520fu%2520panda

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_lord%2520of%2520the%2520rings

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167261/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_7_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_lord%2520of%2520the%2520rings

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311113/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_master%2520and%2520commander

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin   https://a.co/d/48S8DAj

Start Trek: The Next Generation   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092455/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_6_nm_1_in_0_q_star%2520trek%2520the%2520next

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hi everyone, it's Phil Moy from St. Louis, Missouri, and welcome to our leadership. What's the name of our podcast again? The leader's code.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

What are we doing here? Yeah. So I have to explain what happened here. So when we started this process, we bandied about names for the podcast and we found one that we really liked. It was good. We looked online, made sure that there were no other podcasts or books with the same name, that we wouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes, we wouldn't be confusing us with their intellectual property, and it was fantastic. And so over the course of a year, we recorded episode after episode with this podcast name. And I go to then upload it to YouTube. And in the meantime, someone has created a podcast with that name. And you know what? It's great. I can't even be mad. Dr. Aliyubi has done a fantastic job of put making a podcast for women in leadership who lead with courage and wisdom and purpose. And so I the material's fantastic. I can't even be mad about this, but we did have to change the name. So if you hear a leader's code in here, we don't mean that. We mean something else. So without any further ado, welcome to When the call comes in, leadership is everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

We analyze the data in real time, making the tough decisions under pressure. Welcome to Stat Leadership.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Hello, everybody. Welcome to our episode of our podcast. I'm Phil Moy from St. Louis, Missouri. I'm Chuck Carud from New Braunfels, Texas. Hey, I'm J.R. Pickett from Salt Lake City, Utah. Got it. And JR just moved to Salt Lake City. He was a Texan for a bit, but he's also through and through Midwesterner. So we'll accept you moving all over the United States here. I'm just I'm one step ahead of the law.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

As soon as they start like kind of zooming in on me, like, oh, time to go somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

This is our first episode of the Leader's Code. And so let's start with our basically intro to leadership, if you will, leadership 101. And that's kind of defining leadership and its importance. What is leadership? I don't know. Do you want to help our listeners understand what it is? I'll hand the mic over to you, Chad, or you, JR, to get us started here.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, I have some thoughts. I think this is one of those questions, the leadership and the discussion of leadership gets tossed around. If you walk through elementary schools and middle schools, there's posters everywhere that say you are a leader and everyone is a leader. And while the sentiment is definitely valuable, I think what they might mean to say is we all have the potential to lead. If we look at what is leadership or what we call leadership one-on-one, there's probably some baseline or foundational things we can talk about. Like what exactly is this magical thing? And then is it developable or are you just born a leader? And if you're not born a leader, then you know, are you just out of luck? Does it come from being in a certain position in your organization? Do you just have to like keep working away until you get that title? And then all of a sudden you've got it? Or is there something we can do along the way and maybe you don't even need the position or title? So these are the kind of things I think uh we can take a look at.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

I think the key goal of leadership is to get a group of people moving in the same direction. And whatever that direction is, whatever that it is that you want to accomplish, whether you're a leader of a population, leader of the country or the county or the city or a leader of an organization or uh leader of a small group, small team, it's getting other people to buy into a vision of where you need to be and what needs to happen, and then getting them all together moving in that direction. And I think that there are some people that are that are raised that come into adulthood with natural leadership traits. And I think that they I think that compassion is such a an important trait of that, that of a good leader. But there's there this is definitely a learned skill. And I think that's what we're gonna explore through this podcast is how do we develop that skill within us, whether we are new to a leadership position or we are working to improve our leadership in an organization where we already are.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's getting that group of people to move forward, but I agree with the one keyword that you said there is compassion where everybody moves co-together, passion with passion enthusiasm. Obviously, there are examples of bad leaders out there who could get a group of people moving, but it's not with the same passion enthusiasm. We can think of dictators and whatnot. But yeah, I think leadership is that person which will say, let's go this way, let's all move together, and we'll work through the issues and the bumps in the road together. Now, what we're talking about is nebulous, and if we have our new EMS medical directors out there, it's a very nebulous idea, this leadership. So I think what'll help solidify for our listeners is if we give some examples of good or great leaders, or some examples of inept bad leaders, because we can learn from both. Do you guys want to give us some examples of somebody that you think of is either a good or great leader, or somebody who's like an inept or bad leader?

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Yeah, I think not only history, but our current and contemporary environment is full of options and examples, more local or more distant. One one thing I try to do with the either young adults or people I'm mentoring or coaching, we'll often talk about before we get into specifics, because what I found with the young people, sometimes like my my scouts that I work with or high schoolers, once you give an example, then you're kind of down the rabbit hole with that individual and their history and their personality. So sometimes I'll start more general and go, look, a leader's character matters. And then they'll say, Hey, what's character anyway? And I'll say, look, it's kind of the intersection or the place where your courage, your integrity, and your perseverance all kind of overlap. And in that middle area is your character, right? So kind of like, what do you stand for? That kind of thing. So that usually kind of personalizes it or makes it a little more accessible. And then the second thing I sometimes talk about is that it really doesn't have anything to do with your position or your title up front. You don't have to have those to begin this journey. Even though a lot of times people that are charismatic and effective at something, they do find themselves in those positions with the right title and with the position. Even though if you had the position, I had a group commander in the Air Force, a full colonel who really he had the position, but he really wasn't in any position to lead. He was extremely selfish. He had his personal agenda that trumped everybody else's agenda. He routinely walked on his subordinates, and it was difficult to get anybody to do anything because everybody always wondered what's in it for him and what's he going to do to us at the end. And flipped that around with a young sergeant that we had that really didn't have significant position or title, but he was so engaging and present for everybody. You knew you were getting the real guy, and it was so easy for people to follow where he led them because of some of those attributes. So sometimes it's not about the position, sometimes it's more about how we arrive and how we prepare ourselves. So that's a it's not as concrete and still leaves us nebulous there, but it is a way to frame the discussion without losing, I guess, without going down one personality route.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Yeah, I think you touched on it there that you don't have to have the position. There is informal authority. There are those folks within our organizations that are trusted, and that even though they don't hold a formal position of authority, they're the ones that others in the organization look to and ask their opinion on. And frequently it is easier for them to be considered trusted agents within the organization because precisely because they aren't careerists, because they are not trying to elevate their own career, not trying to do what they think that position should be, but they are they are just themselves. And I think that's important to remember one for the leaders that we can be within our organization, even if we have not yet achieved those positions where we have perhaps more formal, more formal power to to implement change, to get resources, et cetera. But remember that we do have that power, but also as a leader, recognizing that there are those folks in your organization and that you need to engage with them, that you need to talk with them and see what their thoughts are. Because when the folks within your organization are questioning what leadership is doing, maybe they don't fully understand what those that are of that higher rank are doing, then they're going to turn to those trusted agents and say, hey, what do you think of this? And that's going to influence greatly what they feel is what they feel about whatever it is that you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Yeah, yeah. So what I'm hearing, and I totally agree with you, is that leadership is not a title. It's something that you can build and it's something that's earned, and it's based off of character, which you further subdefined as courage, integrity, and perseverance. And let's pull that string out a little bit further because as we've all agreed here, it's a nebulous topic, leadership. But we could talk about these character traits, courage, integrity, perseverance. Would you guys care to expand upon that as something concrete and a nebulous topic that our listeners can really latch on to and understand what that means to build a good character, which will in turn make you a good leader?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, I think this is worth noting that also there's down the line we can talk a little bit about leadership and self-awareness and really get into the details of this, but I think probably every good and great and successful project that we've been a part of began with some sort of dynamic and charismatic personality that we were all drawn to, right? Somebody was awesome and they made us feel welcome and empowered, and then we followed them. And a lot of times they were not magical, they simply were projecting who they are in a way we could relate to. So a lot of times I feel like integrity might be the foundational thing. I am this way whether anybody's watching or not. I am this way whether I'm getting any credit for it or not. When people are authentic like that, I think it sets a tone. And honestly, I feel like they're really good leaders. They may be aware that they're in an organizational position and leading, but in private, when you just catch them one-on-one, they still have that same vibe and they're still real, and you can kind of connect with them. So I think integrity is probably the main one, in my opinion. And then the other two, I think if you are gonna do what you think is right, you're probably gonna meet resistance, right? And you have to be have enough courage to go, all right, I'm not winning any popularity contests here, but this is the right thing to do. Or hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna lose something here. I might risk my own advancement to advance my people, that's worth it to me. That kind of thing. So some courage there. And then there's nobody that's advancing without setback. So in our family, one of our favorite points is there's setbacks, but if you look closely or if you get a little downstream from them and look back, you might realize it looked like a setback, but it was a setup for something else, right? So perseverance is simply this inevitable forward progress. You're gonna get knocked back and you're gonna get back up and keep moving. And when a leader does that, I think it it really invites other people to do that as well. So that's some thoughts for me on integrity, courage, and then perseverance.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah, for me, I think courage is the foundational trait of a leader. And I gotta look up this quote. Of course, I don't have my notes with me, damn it. But that the courage is is not just a virtue, but it's the form of every other virtue at the testing point. And that you cannot be generous without being courageous. You cannot stand up for your people without being create courageous, you can't uh push forward and depart from the status quo and innovate without being courageous. You can't be the uh that leader that people look to in crisis unless they sense that courage from you. And what people are looking to from their leader is safety. That's why we have leaders, that's why we want them in those positions, is to help to give us safety in what we are doing. And I don't mean safety like here, I'll give you you, I'll take care of you. What I mean is safety in the form of that you can be the best that you are and do the best that you can do. And those risks that you are taking as a member of the organization are diminished by that leader because they've got your back, because they are creating that safety for you.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Yeah, yeah, I'll agree. And I think it all stems from these three integrity. Obviously, Chet talked about it, it's doing the right thing when no one's watching her. And that kind of leads to authenticity or being brave enough to be yourself in front of this group of people. And courage is doing that thing in which you're terrified of. I remember this great scene, and I think it was Three Kings, George Clooney's talking to a private, and he looks at the private, he's like, You're scared. And the private says, Yeah, I'm scared. He goes, And the way this works is you do the thing that you're scared of, then you get the courage afterwards. And the private's that's pretty stupid. He goes, Yeah, but that's the way it works.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Yeah. And to the it's terrifying to be yourself and to let that out into the real world and to be authentic like that. But I'll tell you, what that does is I think a fourth component or growth out of these foundational characters, character traits, are it develops trust. And part of trust, developing trust with your team is to be vulnerable like that. And it all delves back to that entirety, integrity, and courage. And perseverance, I would do a perseverance slash grit, right? Inevitably, everybody's gonna face that setback. There's always those bumps in the road. I do endurance races. Inevitably, I know there's gonna be a point in that endurance race where I'm gonna be like, this is stupid. Why am I to run X amount of miles and everything? This is so stupid. But having the grit to say, you know what, this is just me being emotional. I just got to keep on moving forward one foot over the next, and we'll cross that finish line. And it sounds basic, it sounds very simple, but as we all know, simple things are the hardest things to do.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah, and I think a lot of times by doing, by being present, because that's the other thing, right? A remote leader that you can't see doesn't really do much for you where you are on the ground getting things done. So the leader that's present, and I think for EMS medical directors, this is a big one, right? Being present and then also having a presence, and those are two different things, but just first of all, being there where your people need you and can see you creates that connection and like you said, that trust, right? And then from there, you can do a lot, not only for your organization, but for your people as well. One of my mentors used to say, What is a leader's job, right? And we would all try to come up with these fancy answers. And he's like, No, man, the number one job of a great leader and a good leader is to create future leaders. And we were all so busy doing our work, that kind of was just we didn't get it at all. But I look at things now and I go, yeah, that there's definitely a an element of inspiring, elevating, and empowering people. Sometimes you're blocking for them, sometimes you're throwing them the touchdown, sometimes you're just standing back while they throw the touchdown. And all of that is good.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

So you mentioned integrity too, and again, courage comes in the form of being able to stand up to yourself, to your own baser instincts as a human being. And we as leaders are still humans, and we have some instincts that may be counter to our leadership persona, these aspects of self-preservation that that we may that we may gravitate to in the absence of other influences, and having the courage to stand up to oneself and say, no, I'm gonna do the right thing, then again, that comes from that courage.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Yeah, there's a uh there's a great John Adams quote from back in the day where he says, if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and be more, then you are a leader. And obviously there's a lot in there to unpack, and we don't necessarily have to unpack now, but I love the idea that sometimes it's simply a matter of somebody thinks of you and they're like, okay, possible because JR's got my back, so I can give this a go. Or, you know, Phil takes risks to to help us when we're out in the field and he's around. So if I get stuck by trying something, it's probably gonna be okay. I can at least talk to him, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Let's be honest, JR doesn't have your back, chat.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, not my back, his medic's back. I would have your back, but I am not currently in the position where I can influence anybody that could argue. But your fellows feel like you have to be, so that's good. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that there to sacrifice those that work for you is uh is to violate a deeply held social contract. And like you say, having their back, but the opposite of that is throwing somebody under the bus, and that really that is a unrecoverable event when it comes to a leader. If a leader is seen to throw one of their employees under the bus or something, then that is a catastrophic loss of rapport, not only with that person, but for with everybody that witnessed it.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and part of it is I think what sometimes happens, like people don't realize that a leader's values become institutional values, right? And a lot of people that get into those positions may never have been taught or never have any reason to think that beyond technical expertise, they needed to have something. And if you look at a lot of organizations, and I'll just use medicine as an example, we don't really do a tremendous job of selecting and assessing people. You know, we kind of use a surrogate process, like your grades are good enough to get into med school, and you scored high enough on the licensing exam to get into the residency, and you didn't muff it in your clinical rotations. So that's a different selection process, and we expect that process to kind of serve as a surrogate for picking out certain character traits and hopefully refining out others. But I don't think that residencies and fellowships really do that as much as we think they do. I think they used to. If you were Sir William Osler's medical resident, some people graduated that thing in three years because he was like, Yeah, I think you're ready to carry the mantle of medicine and be a cup of strength to suffering humanity. And then others were like his residents for 10 years and they weren't going anywhere because they just weren't ready, but they were good followers. So that was Osler. Now we have a need to have these doctors in the field. And a lot of times we get people into those positions before they're quite ready. And honestly, I've had when I was a fellowship program director, had a little bit of a difficulty with a particular fellow, they were really smart, but really unable to engage with the medics in an acceptable way. And when I went back and talked to the residency director, I was shocked that the first answer was a little knowing smirk and kind of chat, let the buyer beware. I was like, whoa, what are we talking about? Some of it has to do with we assume the technical expertise or being really great at your job means you're going to be really great at the next level of leadership, and it doesn't necessarily trend.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Yeah, I remember watching this video where Simon Sinek, he wrote the book Leaders Eat Last. He's talking about how he's interviewing a bunch of Navy SEALs because he was a consultant for them. And he's like a very high list, high, a very high accomplished business. If you think about what Navy SEALs do, they create the best warriors in the United States in the world, et cetera, et cetera. And he asked them, he's like, what was your criteria, Mr. Navy SEAL, for a good leader, someone you could lean on who can lead your team into battle? And he created this wonderful graph where the y-axis was, I think, accomplishments, and the x-axis was trust. And this may be a little crude, but he'd be like, listen, they would pick the person they trusted most to be their leader, not the most high accomplished, right? Because you could be highly accomplished and not very trustworthy. And then define trust as I could trust this guy with my wife overnight. And the way we work in business and medicine, especially. We look at people, hey, this guy's got a lot of research. He's funded by the NIH and he's got a lot of PubMed and whatever you use to grade someone who's highly accomplished in research. So this guy would be a fantastic chair of emergency medicine, where he may not be very trustworthy and be like a terrible leader, which I think that kind of graph puts it into context for me is high trustworthy. Doesn't matter if you're not the most decorated physician, business person, military personnel out there. It's that trust part and that again, essentially that integrity, courage, perseverance that comes from that.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

And I don't think we do that because we are disingenuous or because we're idiots. I think we do that because some things are easier to measure than others. So yeah, lots of publications equals academic success, equals can probably chair a department, not realizing the human factor, the emotional intelligence, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

For example, JR. No, I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

I'm fine with you. I'm still at the assistant professor level. So if you want to look at accomplishments, like they're not there. You touched on it. Is why are we selecting for these traits rather than training for these traits? Why is leadership and emotional intelligence and having difficult conversations and small team crisis leadership? None of that is part of the medical school or residency curriculum. And you're absolutely right. We value technical skill. And okay, this person passed all their exams and so forth, but whenever rate them, like, could they have a conversation? Like, are they going to straight piss off all of the nurses that they work with because of how they take this approach? Now, I have found that there are more departments that are creating faculty development workshops and that do work on this, these skills, a lot of these what we would call soft skills, I suppose. And it's a tough thing. Like when we're selecting for fellows of residency, we just went through all the interviews for our fellowship candidates for next year. And in a very short period of time, and basically an hour, we're trying to figure out okay, is this person really going to achieve a lot here? Are they going to carry the mantle of this program elsewhere? Are they going to help to build the bridges between this program and stakeholder organizations? Or are they just going to kind of be there? And it's so hard to tell. I've seen a lot of residents that came in with these great resumes that showed leadership and then they just kind of ride with the current and don't really do much throughout their residency. I mean, they're not bad. They do. We need people to fill those seats as well.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

I was just going to say sometimes leaders have to break glass and get things done. Unfortunately, sometimes we pick people because they're good at breaking glass, and we don't realize that if you break glass all the time, somebody's going to have to clean that up. That's not leadership. It has to be kind of this effective use of breaking glass and sometimes not. And it's there's a lot to be said about this. And I and if you just to frame it in the academic medicine thing, it we shouldn't be surprised that we get to EMS medical direction level and we're not seeing it because it's not even in the core competencies of the American Graduate Medical Education paradigm. We don't talk about leadership as a thing. We do talk about professionalism. And under there, in a bullet, is something about leadership, but it's not really a prioritized element. And I think part of it is just like you said, JR, it's a soft skill. And by naming it that, whatever, 20 years ago, we actually put it in the second tier of things we need to work on. Would you rather have a good leader or would you rather be able to intubate? And it's actually that's not an either-or thing. You need to be proficient in both.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Zero sum game. Yeah. Don't get us wrong. We're not poo-pooing all objective measurements out there. I think what I usually tell med students or people who are trying to get a med school or residents, I'm like, listen, what's important to me is the numbers will get your foot in the door. But who you are and your qualities as a person, I believe will make you succeed as X, as a physician, as a business person. So I would always to take JR's example of trying to pick a right fellow for your fellowship, trying to pick a future leader is it's hard. I agree. There's no way you can try to pin that down in one hour of looking at a resume, talking to the person, but I would always try to ask them, like, so get tell me something that's not in your resume that you've worked your butt off, that you failed at, but what was the important thing that you learned from it, right? I want somebody who, at the end of the day, I can teach knowledge gaps. Easy. That's easy for me. I could do that, but I can't teach laziness, a poor attitude, or anything like that. And I think those are the opposites of what a good leader is, is someone who has a good attitude, who has works hard and everything. But yeah, those are the soft skills that we can't measure. I'm not sure how you can measure that, other than talk to the person, but also talking to the references, which is an often neglected part of looking at the C.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

And it's also part of leadership is hard for this reason too. When I had the initial expectation setting meeting in the military, you know, I was you guys know, I was in the Air Force 26 years, and I think I got formal feedback for the first time as a lieutenant colonel. I mean, we're talking like 15 years into my career where somebody actually said, Here's what we expect of you. I'm going to check back with you in six months and talk about whether you're there. Come back sooner if you want to talk before that. And I'd never had that before. So there was an element of please don't tell me something bad, you know, that you're feeling. But I couldn't believe that this senior leader was taking time to say, hey, these three things are awesome. But listen, man, if you do this thing, it'll make you even more awesome, right? It can make you more effective. Why don't you give that a try? And initially I was a little offended. I'm like, dude, I didn't get here by being a chunk. But then I thought about it. I'm like, he took some trouble to give me something workable and actionable. And then I started doing that with everybody that I was in charge of and with my fellows, we would play a little game. The initial session, I would say, here's a list of stuff, things that I think you need to work on, or that every physician or leader should work on. Why don't you rate yourself on here and see where you think you are? And then six months later, I would sit down with them and they would get a blank one and rate themselves again. And then I would pull out the old one and we would look at it together and go, here's where you rated yourself last time, here's where you are now. Honestly, here's where I see you. Some people really took to it, and others, you could see just the kind of blinder come down and they were like, You're telling me things that don't make me happy. I'm out. So their eyes were open, but there was nobody home anymore. And that was a leadership challenge. I had to figure out a way because sometimes the people that were most impervious to feedback were actually the ones with the most potential. They just didn't know how to take feedback. So it's not easy doing this, but I think it's so important. And honestly, I used to say somebody asked me, they're like, Why do you keep doing fellowships? Because I've done two. And I was like, Yeah, fellowship is like this chance to revolutionize yourself personally and professionally. There's nothing quite like it. So it's not for everybody, but it's a it's this immersion where I got to be a training medical director 24 hours a day for two straight years. Great opportunity, especially because the people that were my bosses were willing to get down there with me and go, this is good, this could be better.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

I think the impervious feedback part that that is a trait that you need to select out of your organization when it you when it comes to leaders. And I think it comes back to safety. If you're my leader and you're giving me feedback that is hard to hear, that's negative, do I feel like I'm on the chopping block when that happens, or do I feel that this is developmental for growth and how that is couched is not necessarily it doesn't have to be dumbed down or watered down, or yeah, you're really special. We we all think that you're uh handsome. It's just that you can't put together a coherent sentence. You can't water stuff down in a lot of high-performing organizations. You mentioned the SEALs, but special forces, PJs, all of this, doing that hot wash, that candid feedback to people, it's it's not a kick in the face. Oh man, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm gonna get kicked off the team. No, you're not. Like, hey, here's where you screwed up and need to do better. And okay, cool. There, but there's that safety that it's okay. I can take that feedback because I know it's intended to make me better, but it's not the opening salvo of my letter of, hey, thanks very much, but bye-bye now.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Yeah, yeah. And what I'm hearing is another character that I think is so crucial for being a good leader that I'm hearing here is humility. And not only for the person getting the feedback, but also for the leader, too, as well. Reminded of this phenomenal study of, I forget the name of this researcher, but she looked at all the medal of honor recipients and tried to find the character traits that would make somebody uh highly probable of getting a medal of honor. And the number one character trait was humility, right? The whole Bander Brothers, Colonel, was it who's the head of the Banner Brothers? Major Dick Winners. Major Major Dick Winners. Fabulous saying is I don't consider myself a hero, but I've served in the company of heroes. The humility to say that, I mean, is, and that's why he was Colonel Dick Winners, right? Because he was so humble. But also, for anybody out there, listen, feedback is hard, but you have to be humble and say, yeah, there's always things I can improve on, and take that word to heart. And the other thing I'd like to comment on is just what Chet and JR were saying, where some of those people who have those blinders on and the har the ones who have the most potential for leadership, but the hardest to give feedback on is that whole uh scene in Kung Fu Panda. I know I keep on referencing movies and all this stuff. It's a classic. Yeah, that scene where you're a leader. I think you guys know what I'm going to mention here is when Dustin Hoffman's Red Panda sensei is talking to Kung Fu Panda, who is this obese panda trying to learn Kung Fu. He's listen, I've realized when I try to teach you like I've taught my other five warriors, you stink, you suck. But that fault is mine. It's my responsibility because I have to change the way I teach. The way to get through you is with food. And there's a whole hilarious training episode with how he uses food to motivate him to become this dragon warrior, kung fu master, and everything.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

So as the Kung Fu panda says, there is no extra charge for awesomeness. Or trackness. Yeah, I think playing to your strengths there is a big part of leadership. And this was some advice that I gave to a friend who had been given some advice by a couple of very accomplished folks in the field. She's like, I'm not really sure what to do with this because the advice that they had for her, which had worked very well for them, would not work well for her. Because their advice is, well, you have to be distant and standoffish, and you're in this sort of tower. The thing is that this friend, her true strength, is that she's extremely affable. She's very well liked by people who meet her and work with her. And my advice to her was play to your strengths. So you have that strength. I'm not saying that these other folks who gave you that advice don't have that as a strength, but because I also know them and I love them and I find them that they're wonderful. But so that as a leader, find that strength that you have and bring that to your leadership personas. So if you're very if you're very affable, you interact very well on a one-on-one or small group basis, cool. Make that part of what you do as a leader, uh, versus maybe you are a very polished, great spokesperson for the organization, and you have this this like, wow, they're super smart, and they that comes off. Maybe that's what your strength is, but whatever it is, play to that advice that I got, speaking of the martial arts reference from my sensei when I was in competition in judo, which was when I get out there on the mat, I'm getting my grip and I'm sort of waiting for my opponent to do something that I can then react to and and do what I want to do. And he said, Look, man, don't do their judo, do your judo, and get out there and just don't try to be reacting to other folks. But you know what your strengths are, you know the things that you do well. So get out there and do that a lot.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Yeah, yeah. And then of course the extension of that, right? Once you first you have to identify your strengths and then play to them, and then realize that without putting yourself down, you can always be developing new strengths, right? And then next thing you know, you've got many tools in your toolbox instead of being that leader that has a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. Now all of a sudden you have many tools to choose from because by leveraging your strengths, you gained credibility, you gained confidence, and now you're in play in many more situations than you may have been early in your career.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

Note to self do not judo fight J.R. Pickett.

unknown 35:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

I I don't know. I'm getting old and slow, so I don't know if I'm quite the fighter that I was once.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

More than I do, I'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

That's right. I think that that self-awareness is so important to of what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. Of course, we always want to figure out what those weaknesses are, see where we can develop them. I think it's impossible for us to be a jack of all trades as leaders. And there may be situations in which you are born for and do really well at. I mean, there's some people that are just fantastic at crisis leadership and bringing folks together in a crisis where there's a lot at stake. And there are others who are maybe not that person that you want in a crisis, but their ability to forward think and plan and bring together stakeholders and to think strategically, if you will. That's their strength. And so whom do you want in different situations? It doesn't have to be the same person. And especially when you recognize this within your organization. There are multiple leaders within your organization, and using them for their strengths in various roles will help to move that organization forward.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Yeah. And I think the more observant you are as a leader, the more you realize that there's certain repeating behaviors that novice leaders tend to put out there, and you can track where somebody might be on their leadership evolution based on the types of approaches they're taking to recognizable situations. And I see this with a lot of the youth programs around work, and you'll see the person who gets put in charge, but they're not really necessarily comfortable, or maybe haven't had the chance to develop that. So they tend to be louder, they tend to be more directive, they tend to be really quick to jump on people, and there's a little bit of a trend toward blame shifting. That wasn't me, man, my team is no good, you know, that kind of thing. As opposed to, as they get a little more seasoned, they get a little more mileage, they get a little more experience, and then they're like able to say, hey, team, we didn't do this great, but here's things we did do well, and here's how we're going to fix the other thing. You'll find that they don't need to be up in front of everybody commanding and doing the military knife hand at people. They can be side by side with them instead of necessarily in their face. That you as you get more experience, you realize that different situations require something different. And hidden from all of that is how you got there. There's a great mass casualty experience that that I had. I was a captain. So early in my career, this was before I even had residency training. In May 1999, I was at on at Tinker Air Force Base when the Category 5 tornadoes ripped through Midwest City and just devastated that whole community. I was living on base, and even that is a hilarious little story because all the other senior doctors had nice homes off base and they had property that they could afford. I did not have a nice home or any property. So they kind of volunteer me that I would live on base, which at the time I thought it was an awesome convenience. I didn't realize that they were doing it because they didn't want to live on base, right? So tornadoes go through. I show up at the hospital. Well, they put the base loudspeaker up. Dr. Carod, if you're on base, please report to the med crew. So I go there thinking, oh my God, they're taking accountability. All the other doctors are going to be there, and I'm going to be the slacker that's late. I'll have to tell them I was sheltering in place. Like get there, and it's two paramedics, about 40 medic trainees, three nurses, and none of the doctors or even senior nursing officers had made it back. They were all off base and sheltering in place. So I roll up on the scene and get handed a radio and a vest. And the medic goes, What do you want us to do, doc? And just to be sure, I looked at the back of the vest and it said medical on-scene commander. And I was like, Oh my God, I got somebody else's vest. Right. But it took about a second, and then I clicked back to a time at the military med school where I went, and we had done his huge mass casualty drill. I was a second lieutenant. The radio call back then said, one patient, we need an ambulance pickup. I roll out there and it was a field full of fallen people with smoke everywhere from training smoke grenades. So the scenario was meant to show that when bad things happen, sometimes communication is not clear. So I got told one patient when I got there, it was 25, and it was a chow hall explosion. Somebody was in the wood line 20 yards away recording my face and my interactions with my people. And later they showed this video in front of my whole class, and they're like, look at the sheer panic on Lieutenant Carod's face. Here, he has no idea what he wants to do. And then the colonel paused it and he goes, in the next five seconds, Karod is going to make a decision and watch the change in his demeanor. And then he plays it, and sure enough, five, four, three, two, one, I had a plan and he could see the change on my face. And I went, boom, here's what we're doing here. And it wasn't all right, but it was movement, right? Forward movement. Fast forward five years, and now I'm at this tornado scene. I get handed a radio and a vest. Thank God the amount of time it took me to go from the oh shit moment to purposeful movement was much shorter because I'd been through that other thing and gotten feedback on how to get better. So somebody led me so well that on that day I was able to lead much better, right? So leaders may not realize that sometimes putting your followers in that tough position and training them is the best thing you can do for them as long as you're right there with them and you're not just stepping on them. That what we ended up doing uh at that mass casualty became notable and I had other opportunities to lead, right? My two paramedics, I was able to put them in for citations and awards because they literally were all hands on deck as two dudes with a bunch of trainees that weren't even fully trained, and they did great work. And then that was my chance to be a leader and kind of go, look how awesome these two are, right? And then the asterisk there is I didn't do that for any other reason than they deserved it. But the lesson I learned was I was looked at as an exceptional leader because I led those two. So that was the kind of additional lesson learned.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

I'm gonna ask for two examples one fictional, one non-fictional of great leaders. Got it. Now you start with whatever one you want.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

All right, I'll go first because then you guys can't steal what I'm thinking. A quick comment on what uh Chet's wonderful story. I love that story. Is for all you young guns out there, oh my god, it's Dr. Carot, Dr. Pickett. These guys are never phased, they're never caught off guard. Just to let everybody know there that all leaders and all experienced leaders out there, they feel the imposter syndrome. We're just better at hiding it.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

They're just completely developed tools along the way, but you still feel it.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

Yeah, I do it all the time in the ear. I'm like, I don't know what to do. Anyways, back to JR's question. Two leaders, one fictional, one non-fiction. So for me, I'm going first because I don't want you guys to steal mine. And Chet's probably gonna be mad about mad at me about this one. So my fictional character leader is Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Not only was he the classic leader, I am the king of Gondor, I'm going to lead you guys in the battle, but he also showed that he was vulnerable. He cried in the very first movie when Boromir died, he was comforting Boromir in his last breath before he died. He cried for him. He got up and moved on and said, Let's keep moving forward, forward movement. His decisions weren't always right, but they were moving forward. That other pertinent scene that pops in my head about Aragorn, which I know Chet's thinking about the same thing, is after Gandalf dies, the whole fellowship is outside, they're mourning, and he goes, Everybody, let's keep moving into the forests. And like, for pity's sake, let them mourn a bit. He's no, by nightfall, this place will be crawling with orcs. We need to keep on moving. Time to we can mourn later. And Aragorn does show that he's a human, he cries, he's vulnerable, and that earns the trust of everybody, and especially a kingdom, to support him as a fictional character. My other non-fiction character that I always think of as a good leader is Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, a historic character, and the gentle giant, they always say he never gets mad at anybody. But if you read Doris Kern's Goodwin's Team Arrivals, he was just as passionate as anybody else, essentially. But I think his whole idea of leadership is spot on where he tells a story to a radical Republican who wants to just abolish slavery right off. Listen, when I was younger, I was a surveyor and I had this wonderful compass that would point true north, right? It would point true north. But what good of a what good is a compass if it doesn't show me the chasms, the swamps, the pitfalls that are on the way? Then I'll never get true north. So we have to navigate this. And that's what he did as a leader. He navigated a country through one of our worst periods in history. And so that's my two examples of good leaders. Sorry guys, I still got two good ones here.

unknown 45:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

He definitely took Aragorn away. So now I have to let JR go while I think about something.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Well, I love Aragorn. I think that from that series, I think Thaedon is a is a more well-rounded example of a leader, somebody who understands the impact of what he's doing and who is somewhat tortured by the choices that he has to make and realizes he may be seeing the death of his kingdom and still has to push forward and do that. And when when Aragorn is talking to him, he said, What would you have me do? Uh, because he really he felt all those pressures from from those different directions. I'm not going to use that as my leadership example. However, I would like to use Captain Jack Aubrey from Master and Commander, played by Russell Crowe. And first of all, Master and Commander to me, Paul Bettany in that movie is the best depiction of an operational unit surgeon, I think, to best depict this kind of weird place that we inhabit in our units. The relationship that we have with the commander as an advisor and how we're viewed by the troops, like we're part of the crew, but we're not really one of them. And and but then it's kind of a curiosity, right? He's smart, they respect his knowledge and so forth, but he's not one of the guys. And then when battle happens and he's doing stuff, or when he's doing the brain surgery on the guy, like that's when he shows his skill set and is highly respected. But I think that Russell Crowe's depiction of Captain Aubrey in that movie is so good because he recognizes that tenuous position of a leader, and that he's very bold and and has credibility, and for that reason, his men are they follow him and think very highly of him. At the same time, he realizes that things are not as simple as they seem there. And at one point, when the doctor recommends that he tips the grog over the side, you know, tips the rum over the side, and risk a mutiny, you don't understand how fragile this ecosystem is that we inhabit here, Doctor. And that that shows that he has respect for the people that work for him and are in that setting with him, and that he realizes there are some things that he can accomplish and some things that he cannot, and that he has to make the hard choice, realizing that certain decisions that he makes are going to be unpopular. And uh they are decisions that have to be made, but he knows it's not gonna sit well, he knows it's gonna be hard for them to get it, and he knows that he's going to have to do something to improve the morale amongst the troops that he's leading, and so that's why I like him. And for non-fictional, I gotta go with Martin Luther King, and I think that's a great example of informal authority and leadership, how he was able to move so many, and it's not just him, he's not the only one in this movement. There were thousands and thousands of people within this movement that that saw where we could be as far as our treatment of people in our communities, but he articulated it so well, he articulated that vision that so many had and bravely went forward to to bring that about, to be an example for others to follow, and ultimately gave his life for it as well. But I am in awe of not just him being bold and doing that, but how he went about it, how he brought forth factions that were much more radical than him. The arsonists, if you would, to use a phrase I got from Bob Mabry, who's another leader for whom I have just enormous amounts of respect. But the folks that really would start a war and burn everything down, bringing them into the fold of this movement and trying to temper that desire to destroy everything and at the same time gain allies where they're needed.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

Wow, guys, it's excellent. I feel like you've raised the bar to a level where the pressure is significant, but so are these examples of leadership that we're talking about. So I think fictional, I'm a big fiction guy. I have friends who say, yeah, fiction's a waste of time. I only read nonfiction, life's too short to read fiction, and I completely disagree with that. So I would say we need both. I think fiction often is the source of inspiration. I think there's uh you can weave truth and reality into fiction so well. And one pop culture reference, it's they've made new versions of this series, but to me, Jean-Luc Picard is like this legendary example of a doer and a strategist. A he's an operational leader, he can be hands-on, he's one of the best pilots in Starfleet, he's the fastest to promote to the rank of current captain, which is the equivalent of Kerbal in our armed forces today. And yet he is able to delegate, he's able to see the big picture, he's deep into the arts, he has hobbies, he has a very human side, and he's able to step back when he could easily do the things, but he doesn't necessarily solve all the problems. And if you look at him in crisis, there are many times where he probably has a solution in mind already, but almost always in that ready room, he'll look around at his other senior leaders that work for him and say, options, and he'll go around the table and get those. That's often misunderstood as somebody who diters or does not want to be decisive, but he's almost always decisive. But I think what that demonstrates is his ability to know I may have a blind spot, I have subject matter experts, I have exceptional followers who are exceptional in their own right, and I've invested in them to develop them. Having done this, I can rely on them, and then we can probably make the best decision. And there are times where he goes against what they all say, and he goes, We're doing it this way. End of story, right? And then he accepts those consequences. So Picard to me is a masterclass in uh being an action guy and a thinker at the same time, and I love that. So there's there's more to be said, but I'll pause there on Captain Jeannuk Picard of the USS Enterprise. I'll also say, in terms of non-fictional leaders, there are great examples around, and not necessarily all of them are well known. So they it's difficult to have somebody with universal appeal, but to me, growing up, I very much admired Mahatma Gandhi. And then as I got older and read more about him, I had even more respect for him when I realized the errors that he made and the humanity and the frailty that he had, and the fact that he was wrong and sometimes didn't see it. And yet he was able to be so authentic and stick to his values to such an incredible level that it moved an empire out of India in a way that no, you know, force on force violence would have been able to do. And that was a kind of a lifetime of moral courage. And he was doing this long before, like many people don't know. He wasn't always a bald, frail, homespun, cotton wearing, fasting freedom fighter. He was a successful attorney in South Africa. And he over and over faced racial tension and even physical abuse for being the wrong kind of person. And at some point, finally, he just kind of set his teeth and said, All right, look, I do have a law career I want to have, but this has to be addressed before I can go down that path. And then he used his personal example and was often at the front, but not always at the front. He also was able to leverage inspiration and motivation of his followers, but it was very much all centered on the character and relentless, even his autobiography is called the story of my experiments with truth, meaning he he had something he believed in and lived his life by testing and then learning changing approaches until he was able to effect some change for a lot of people. When he visited the House of Lords and the House of Commons in London, he did not put on his lawyer suit because what he was insisting all Indians do is that they be self-reliant and they wear Indian-made clothes that they make themselves. And he chose to wear that and looked like a complete outcast or beggar in a dressed-up world, but it was just one example. So anyway, these are two leaders that I think are inspiring to me.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Awesome. By the way, I love that we can weave in and out of our nerdnum and understand just characters. And with that, I think that was a great first episode. It just was your audio, J.R. Pickett, for the first one. I think that was a first great, fantastic first episode. We'll do this again next one.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

Yeah, you guys are awesome. Thanks for uh for doing this.

SPEAKER_02 54:28

All right, guys.

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Have a good one.