Episode 04: Leadership AND…Chris Ferree

Grace and Accountability, Connection before Correction

The world loves either/or thinking.

You're right or you're wrong.
Strong or vulnerable.
Optimistic or realistic.

Leadership asks something different.

In Episode 4 of the Leadership, And… Podcast, Josh Donovan and Patrick Ibarra sit down with leadership coach, educator, and Lighthouse managing partner Chris Ferree for a conversation about paradox, mentorship, parenting, personal growth, and the power of seeing people as people.

The episode begins with a simple idea that ultimately inspired the name of this podcast: the difference between "or" and "and". Drawing from Jim Collins, Brené Brown, Adam Grant, and the Stockdale Paradox, the conversation explores why great leaders learn to hold competing truths at the same time rather than forcing false choices.

From there, the discussion moves through Chris's journey from Atascadero High School wrestler and teacher to leadership coach and business owner, while weaving together stories about mentorship, coaching, parenting, education, accountability, and the relationships that shape who we become.

This episode is full of practical wisdom and deeply human moments, including a powerful story about a teenage mistake that became the foundation for a decades-long mentoring relationship.

At its heart, this conversation asks an important question:
Can we hold both truth and grace at the same time?

Because leadership often lives in the tension between them.

In This Episode:
* Why "and" is more powerful than "but"
* The Stockdale Paradox and navigating uncertainty
* Chris's journey from teacher and coach to Lighthouse partner
* A powerful story about accountability, integrity, and second chances
* The role coaches and mentors play in shaping identity
* Parenting, education, and who is responsible for teaching values
* Why organizations often inherit problems society didn't solve
* The importance of surrounding yourself with people who share your values
* How leaders can stop fixing problems and start building connection
* Why curiosity is more effective than judgment
* The difference between seeing people as humans versus problems
Timestamps:

03:00 — The Stockdale Paradox and paradoxical thinking
06:00 — Chris's journey from educator to leadership coach
14:00 — Wrestling, mentorship, and finding purpose
22:00 — The mentors who shaped Chris's life
26:00 — Josh's high school story and a lesson in integrity
34:00 — Parenting, schools, and teaching values
44:00 — The responsibility of leaders and organizations
58:00 — Building community around shared values
1:12:00 — Doing the best we can and giving ourselves grace
1:25:00 — Conflict, connection, and The Anatomy of Peace
1:40:00 — Seeing people as people instead of problems
1:55:00 — Curiosity, listening, and relational leadership
2:10:00 — Butterflies, growth, and embracing discomfort
2:22:00 — Final reflections on paradox and leadership

About Lighthouse Institute

Lighthouse Institute exists to shine light that ignites connection, inspires hope, and transforms generations.

Through leadership development, coaching, facilitation, and organizational training, Lighthouse helps individuals and teams grow in self-awareness, communication, trust, ownership, and leadership effectiveness.

The Leadership, And… podcast explores leadership through the lens of real life: work, parenting, marriage, conflict, purpose, growth, and everything in between.

Follow along for more conversations about leadership, parenting, relationships, conflict, growth, and the human side of leadership.

Let's Go Shine Bright ✨

Notes:

- The Curiosity Shop, Brene Brown & Adam Grant 5/28 episode: Exploring the Paradoxes of Human Nature. 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tVqjcbs3io)

- Jim Collins Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, The Genius of And:
(https://www.jimcollins.com/books/BE2.html)
(https://www.amazon.com/BE-2-0-Beyond-Entrepreneurship-Business/dp/0399564233)

- Can’t Poem by Edgar Albert Guest 
( https://allpoetry.com/poem/8471321-Can-t-by-Edgar-Albert-Guest )

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Most importantly, leadership is relational and it's human. And then we'll hear yeah, but, right? Because we're kind of obsessed with that word but. Right. I hear you, but. I love you, but. I'm sorry, but. Thank you, but. You're doing good, but.

SPEAKER_04 0:24

But just deletes everything that was previously said. So we really need the word and. I hear you and. I love you and I'm sorry and.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Thank you, and you're doing good, and I'm Josh Donovan with Lighthouse Institute. And I am Patrick Ibn with Lighthouse Media. And we're excited to dive into leadership through real conversations. It's all on the table.

SPEAKER_04 0:52

Work, parenting, marriage, conflict, friendship, personal growth. Because wherever you go, there you are. Leading yourself and leading others. So really, this is leadership and everything else. All right, episode four of Leadership and Chris Fore. Uh, you're gonna learn in this episode. Chris Fore is my longtime mentor, coach, friend, um, just an awesome dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Yeah, it was so cool for me to watch just um how far and how deep your guys' relationship goes.

SPEAKER_04 1:39

I'll bet. So cool. And so one thing that I don't think is explicitly said is that Chris and I are now officially business partners. So in the the transition of Lighthouse and the succession planning, uh, January 1st, 2025, we did officially partner. We purchased Lighthouse. Uh, from a role standpoint, I have the opportunity to serve as CEO of Lighthouse, and Chris is a managing partner. Um, but we we work together on on the the aspects of the business when it comes to to Lighthouse Institute. Um fun fact this is the last episode that we recorded without knowing the the name of the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah, it was so cool because uh we had just finished recording this episode and um uh literally had hit stop, and then there was a little bit of a conversation that you were having with Chris, and um and you were just so uh convicted about using and so often, and that that was like the moment where you were like, okay, leadership and um because I think at the end it it it just caught heat.

SPEAKER_04 2:43

There was a we were saying and quite a bit, yeah. Um which makes sense because Chris and I are both really big advocates of paradoxical thinking, or really the need as leaders for us to be able to hold a paradoxical tension. I think about like the Stockdale paradox,

— The Stockdale Paradox and paradoxical thinking

SPEAKER_04 3:00

which is a big part of our curriculum within the Lighthouse Institute. And really, it's funny, like uh it was the one of the first videos Chris and I ever did together. Oh, I remember way back then. During COVID. Yeah. Uh-huh. Um and and when COVID hit and we were, I remember we were social distancing in the video. Yes. Uh we might even be able to link it in the in the show. I can do it, yeah. And so we were just talking about the importance of living into the Stockdale paradox during COVID, that we need to confront the brutal facts of our reality and maintain unwavering faith that it that we have what it takes to get through, um, which I just I find it super interesting because just a few weeks ago, uh, May 28th, Brene Brown and and Adam Grant have a new podcast called The Curiosity Shop. And they had an episode come out on the t on May 28th that was called Exploring the Paradoxes of Human Nature. And in that, they were talking, um, Brene was talking about Jim Collins' other book, which is Beyond Entrepreneurship. And there's actually, she was reading from Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, and one of the chapters is called The Genius of the And. And she reads a quote, um, and and we're gonna we're gonna integrate that into this intro as part of getting us into the conversation with Chris Free. So we'll hear from Brene Brown and Adam Grant, and then you'll hear a fun conversation with Patrick, Chris, and myself, and we'll see you on the backside.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Have you read this by Jim Collins? Um, it's beyond entrepreneurship, and then it's 2.0, his second version of the book. It this is under uh a chapter subheading called Embrace the Genius of the And. False dichotomies are undisciplined thought. In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. Builders of greatness are comfortable with paradox. They don't oppress themselves with what we call the tyranny of the or, which pushes people to believe that things must be either A or B, but not both. Instead, they liberate themselves with the genius of the and. Undisciplined thinkers force debates into stark tyranny of the or choices, which is exactly what you just said, Adam. Disciplined thinkers expand the conversations to create the genius of the and solutions.

SPEAKER_04 5:29

Well, we actually have done this before. The three of us have sat down to record a podcast. It was Patrick when you and I were doing all things atascadero, and we were like, okay, if we're gonna be talking all things atascadero, we've got to talk to Chris Ferry. And now we come to this podcast project through the Lighthouse Institute world, uh, you know, Lighthouse Media, and and moving this direction. And we absolutely have to have Chris Ferry in that conversation. But I just figured a cool place to start would be what does that look like for you, Chris? That whole,

— Chris's journey from educator to leadership coach

SPEAKER_04 6:00

you know, local presence audience, who you've been in the community of Atascadero, and then who you are right in the lighthouse world and and watching those two things slowly collide and integrate over the last, I mean, it's been almost a decade for you. Yeah. So first of all, welcome. Glad you're here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. Uh I really appreciate doing something in town, appreciate doing something with you because you know, I'm gone a lot. Probably the biggest transition has been shifting from a local community to individualized communities or organizations and shifting to find uh meaning or purpose in that.

SPEAKER_04 6:35

Right. But so you're you're speaking a lot to the fact that, hey, as an educator, you were Monday to Friday in a classroom here with local kids, you're coaching, you're out in the grocery store, and now you you spend a lot of your Mondays to Friday out on the road facilitating work, doing that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Yeah, being local and investing in my local community was is invaluable. Like I've done weddings, just for the record, I only have one wife, but I do conduct weddings. Uh, and that's been a super great gift uh to be able to coach so many kids and teach so many kids and then see them at the you know at the barrel house or at the store, or that's been a great gift. And now a shift in investing in people who I don't always see.

SPEAKER_04 7:17

Right. Right. So in in our lighthouse world, there's gonna be a ton of people who have been in a room with you and they're gonna know who you are as the lighthouse facilitator, as their coach, and bringing them, you know, that content. There's also gonna be a ton of people who have been in rooms with with me or with other people, and they'll have quite a bit of less familiarity with who you are. Uh give us a little bit of background on kind of your your atascadero. You know, how'd you get here? Who who are you here? You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

I uh moved here in 1983 with my parents. My dad worked in uh nuclear power with Becktel, and so that got us to the Central Coast. Uh sophomore hair part down the middle, because from New Jersey, you know, everything's four years behind everything else. Uh didn't understand the OP shorts. And anyway, uh fell into a great group of athletes at Atascadero. Uh started in the summer weightlifting program, uh, got involved in football and then fell into wrestling. And in wrestling, I met Dan Pry, who's who's a legend in my life.

SPEAKER_04 8:15

Legend, Coach Pry.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yeah, and then that led into the opportunity to want to go wrestling college. And I wrestled a little bit in community college, still didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to be an architect. I love building things. I love I love being in an opportunity to build things. I had no idea that architecture had anything to do with math. So once I got to Quest of College, I realized that there was some math involved. I'm like, I gotta change gears. And Coach Pry said you should be a teacher, and that put me on the rails to go into education. Wow. And spent 24 years teaching and coaching football and wrestling and water polo and aquatics, and even a semester of cheerleading.

SPEAKER_04 8:49

So we'll talk more about that. Yeah. So, okay, so when you moved in and got into a Tascadero, Dan Pry was your wrestling coach.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Yeah, my wrestling coach. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 9:00

Okay. And then fast forward, Dan Pry was my freshman health science teacher uh and and my receiver's coach for uh freshman football. You get the gift of hindsight later, you're like, why was that guy coaching me at wide receiver? But super funny. And then he ends up being the person that says, Hey, maybe consider education as a path.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Yep. And said you should go, you should be a teacher. And I'm like, I don't know that I ever had anybody say, Hey, you're good at this, you should pursue that. I had enough internal dialogue that I wasn't good at anything. And then once the wrestling dream had died and I realized I wasn't as good as I'd hoped I was gonna be, the opportunity to be good at something else was intriguing. So then I poured myself into education and took another six years to get out of uh the education route and fell right back into atascadero, which is great. I did my student teaching in elementary school in Atascadero.

SPEAKER_04 9:48

Really? Yep. You never had to go somewhere else. Nope. That's not a common story.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

I went to went to uh Cuesta College and then I went to Cal Poly and then spent a year and a half at the master's college down in LA where I graduated with a degree in Little Studies, and then came back to Cal Poly, got my teaching credential.

SPEAKER_04 10:04

And what was your first year teaching at Tascadero High?

SPEAKER_01 10:08

1994. 1994.

SPEAKER_04 10:11

94. And and did you start in health? Where did you start teaching?

SPEAKER_01 10:16

I started doing PE and health. I was like six periods of PE and one period of health.

SPEAKER_04 10:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

And then I said I started coaching varsity football. We wanted to see I have the first two years I was coaching. My second year teaching, Dan decided to make me the head coach, was not ready for it, but uh he had did an amazing job, not letting me fail. Like you talk about being a good assistant coach, I would way rather be a good assistant coach than a good head coach, and that's what he is to me. Like he just set me up for success in so many areas of my life. Uh, even and then once I became a head coach, I looked for somebody else to fill that role, and then Jeff Spiller came along, and he and I co-head coached, and to have that opportunity to work alongside somebody is I love it. And I'm trying to figure out how to work alongside with Josh with this new lighthouse opportunity and do what we do well together.

SPEAKER_04 11:02

So you're talking about you and Jeff spearheading the wrestling program. So Coach Pride puts you in ends up being head, and you're like, I need I want a partner in this.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

And I coached Jeff when Jeff was in high school, and then Jeff went to Cal Poly and got out, and he's like, I think I want to coach. I'm like, oh, you'd be great at it. And so having somebody in the room with like-minded spirit and mentality was great. You know, we could good cop, bad cop, and I'll I'll let you guess which one was good cop and bad cop.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

How much time were you with Coach Pry? Like how much time did he spend under his tutorials, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Well he was on my staff for 11 years. So with me as a head coach, he was on my staff. Oh 11 years of him being a phenomenal assistant coach. And then even in the transition when Jeff came along, he was still an assistant. And here's like probably one of the winningest coaches in the state of California being our JV coach.

SPEAKER_04 11:54

You know, it's like so he he's from a title perspective, he's there as an assistant coach, but it sounds like from a heart set mindset from for you, he's actually still functioning as a mentor for you.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yeah, and a deeper puddle, that whole idea of mentors for me, having so much insecurity around male roles in my life and my internal language of of failure and wanting to please other people, then putting that on Coach Pry and with the opportunity to be good or not not good, you know, and it's measurable. So that was a great life lesson, which then led me into my relationship with Tim. Tim Rhodes, kind of the same idea. I a mentor, somebody I love, somebody I know loves me very deeply, but I really didn't want to let him down, and that led to a lot of difficulty in our transition. You know, I first came on.

SPEAKER_04 12:40

When did you meet Tim?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

I met Tim in 1992. Okay. Him and he him and his wife, Jolene, were involved in uh Anna and I's relationship. Involved in Anna's life before I even came along. Before I was even had was like-minded, like they were investing in Anna's life, and then um you know I came to know Jesus and my life flipped upside down. I didn't fit in a traditional church because I was like had all kinds of baggage and stuff I was still working through, and Tim was always a hug person and not a you know judgment person, and so immediately I clung to him. So and then he left and he went then he moved to Washington.

SPEAKER_04 13:20

Wow. So you guys move here, 83. Uh, but that's still like teenage years for you. Sophomore year in high school. Yeah, you're figuring it out. Um, mid-90s, you're figuring the adult life out, right? Like doing school, deciding to be teacher. You said Tim and Joe have a relationship in Anna's life. Uh that's kind of correct me if I'm wrong, that's through the kind of like the youth group kind of lens, supporting young people. Yep. Okay, then you are pitching your wagon to Anna, so you get to meet Tim and Joe. Tell us a little bit about kind of that, yeah, how that relationship started to galvanize.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

The Tim and Joe Lane referred to.

unknown 13:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Well, like I said, like Tim and Joe always loved me well and gave me

— Wrestling, mentorship, and finding purpose

SPEAKER_01 14:00

a place to go to get away from some of my other habits and hangups that were keeping me from being fully alive. And then uh gave me an opportunity to lead, you know, I was doing stuff in the church and whatnot. And then, like I said, they left. At the same time, Ann and I, you know, got married, they were in our wedding, played a huge part in our and they've always loved my Ann and I and our kids well, but they were in Washington, so allowed me to kind of do my own thing, and we would talk about the lighthouse thing. Hey, you should you should check this out.

SPEAKER_04 14:28

But so they're running a company, they're running a company and you do you have a ton of sight into what it is or a little bit, in the sense he would be like, Hey, uh, can you develop some curriculum around this or develop some curriculum around this?

SPEAKER_01 14:39

And he would say that they always wanted me to join on board, and I would say, still wrestling with my negative self-talk of not about not being able to. That's the last thing I'm gonna do is own a own a business. If you'd have told me 10 years ago I would own a business and work in the Bay Area or LA or Texas a couple days a week, it'd be like, You're crazy. Who in the right mind would do that? Like, you are you are you insane?

SPEAKER_04 15:01

Sounds awful, and definitely not like me.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Yet here I am. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:06

Um super cool. So uh the timeline will be mushy here, but it doesn't really matter. Um, you're saying kind of like mid-90s, meet Tim and Joe. Late 90s, I know something else happened around like 1998-ish, uh, which is you got this rowdy freshman class, which is mine. Um, and so that's gotta, I mean, I just know because I know how old I was when I was a freshman in high school. Um yeah, and and we didn't at all prep for this one, but like talk about meeting me and my group and you know, that year of playing for you, JV football, and some of those things.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Like first of all, like that team had the greatest staff on the planet.

SPEAKER_04 15:47

We had Mitch Jensen and Bill Neely and Don Burnett, and it was like Aaron Miller phenomenal staff, unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

And we needed every freaking last one of us because that group of individuals was just uh one train rack after another. It was like, can we get can we somehow show up on the bus and play the game?

SPEAKER_04 16:09

You'd be surprised how challenging that was. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

And then we ended up like, I don't know, I mean, halfway through the season probably ended up losing probably half the team to some disciplinary issues the school was was dealing with. And and so, yeah, it was that was a lot. That was that team was a lot. And that was that was the team Josh was on.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

What do you recall about Josh in that time?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Josh was uh, you know, high and tight, clean-cut kid that uh really wanted to please. Like hard worker integrity.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

Come on, say it.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Like uh the situation that arose allowed the opportunity for people to be honest. And Josh was honest, and it wasn't he wasn't rewarded for his honesty. The consequences still he still had to face the consequences, whereas other people were lying or in denial, and some got to keep playing as a result of that. So that tells you a lot about his integrity and and his dad was great in the midst of all that. Like you think about like the role that a dad can play, who's also a coach who sees his son doing the right thing, and then yeah, it's a lot.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

So, in the absence of knowledge, the mind tends toward chaos. And as much as I may not want to share information about this story, I certainly don't want others writing their own story about what could have potentially happened here, right? So, some context. Yeah, I'm I'm a sophomore in high school, so we're talking 14, 15 years old, right? And you're doing the things that teenagers do. And but athletics was super important to me, and belonging was super important to me. And sometimes those things, you know, bumped up against each other of like wanting to hang out with friends or party, and like, but you're playing sports, and so yeah, that there was a rowdy bunch of of boys that were on this particular football team, and there was a game we used to San Inez used to be in in our division, and that's a long bus ride out to San Inez, you know, an hour and a half there and back. And uh coming back from one of the games, there was alcohol on the bus. And I was in the very back of the bus, and there was a group that was, you know, passing around water bottles full of alcohol and started turning into getting pretty rowdy and laser pointers and throwing glow-in-the-dark stuff, and this to that. And the coaches, you know, we're a rowdy bunch, so I don't think that they knew.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Anyways, you gotta pick your battles, you know.

SPEAKER_04 18:29

Right. You you you fast forward and like Monday, uh, you know, get pulled into the office, and the the school is communicating, hey, uh, we know some things went down Friday night on the bus. Uh, we actually have video footage of the things that happened on the bus. Um, but we're pulling you in now. And if you if you come clean, if you're honest with us about what happened and who was involved, then you will not you will not have as severe of consequences, right? And so I I did that. I said, okay, well, I'll face the music. Here's what happened, here's how it went down. I was pretty tight-lipped and not sharing who else was involved. I just wanted to like own my own stuff, right? And so here I there were there were five of us who were honest and who communicated the truth, and we were the five that had consequences. Wow. So we got uh three-day suspension from school that came with a nine-day activity or nine-week activity suspension, which meant no more football. That nine weeks actually extended into basketball season for me, which at the time was more devastating than the football. Uh, so it came with a lot. I think you can correct me if I'm wrong. I think I was the only one of those who said, What do I do now? And that was kind of disorienting for the school because the everyone else was just like, fine, they left. They were, you know, quit the team, went away. And I'm like, Well, I don't want to not play basketball, I don't want to not play football next year. Like, what do I do? And I remember going to Chris, and based on the story you all just heard, you can see like my trust is pretty shaken when it comes to adults and come to like them telling me, do this and you'll be fine, right? And it's like, I don't know, my my guard's way up. And a lot of people just came at us with this, with the stick, with the judgment, with the the consequences, and in the whole thing, like Chris was the first person to see me as a human in that to be like, hey man, you made a mistake, and it's not the end of the world, and and here you are owning it. And how you respond to that's really gonna define who you are, not not the mistake. And that was a breath of fresh air, didn't know it at the time, but that was what was you know coming out of me. And so he let me continue to practice with the team, which was really not standard procedure, right? If you're on an activity suspension, you're supposed to be completely set separated from school activities. Conversation between him, my dad, and some other people. And I was allowed to, I said, I still want to help the team. So I was practicing, he just made me like the if they were practicing offense, I was the defensive specialist guy to like help make the offense better. If they were practicing defense, I'd be the offensive specialist to like help make them better. And then it was just ripping my insides apart to not be able to compete or or play in the games. And you know, my dad really held that line, and I see it now. I didn't see it then, you know, like having to listen on the radio and like that hurt. Um and an incredible learning experience, you know, going into life. But more than anything, I just saw I saw an adult handle it completely different than the way everyone else had handled it, and there was a a pretty, pretty meaningful connection established that has stayed for really long time.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Almost there is so much there, man. So much like wisdom, just at such a young age, and just having those mentors.

— The mentors who shaped Chris's life

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Around you. I mean, your dad is an amazing human being. And then Chris there, like, I cannot imagine what that would do to, you know, another kid now, you know, like getting removed from all that. And then that trust issue that you were talking about. Like, I was I wanted to like tap a little more on that, like that juxtaposition of like these people telling you, hey, come in and you're fine and you're not. And now you're like, what the heck? Like, I'm not.

SPEAKER_04 22:24

Yeah, the unfortunate lesson from that was that moving forward from that point on, I was coached to if I'm pulled into the office, I don't have anything to say without a pre parent or lawyer present. And that's unfortunate. That that that piece of it is unfortunate. But that ended up being kind of my lesson learned. And I mean, my stepmom's also an attorney, right? And so there was that piece of it of like, hey, if you get called in again, just remember they're not necessarily on your team. And so that position of, hey, I will speak when my parent or lawyer is present, not awesome. Um, but that ends up kind of being the the takeaway there.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Yeah. What a missed opportunity from that leadership there to put you in that situation and teach you that sure wrong lesson, right? Sure. Also, how beautiful that then there was somebody that had nothing to really gain from, right? Like bringing you in. So, Chris, what was that like for you? What what what inspired you to be like Josh? Coming in, man, you get another chance with me. Where'd that come from?

SPEAKER_01 23:23

I I think you have an opportunity to live your values. You know, I I can't remember the specific conversation, but I want to believe I was the kind of person to live with integrity with with the values I thought were important. And there was a it people ask me all the time, what has changed in education? And one of the biggest changes in education is we went from allowing teachers and coaches to teach values and morals and discipline to we've given that up, and now we're trusting that parents are gonna do that. And maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But that was in a transitional period of the way I grew up and the way my coaches handled things, and the way my parents handled my parents' coach coaches handling things, is different than the way things are handled today.

SPEAKER_04 24:07

That's super true. Yeah, there was, I mean, super grateful, obviously, for the way Chris showed up. And and there were a handful, like I'm thinking right now of I had to go have a super awkward conversation with the basketball coach who was not there for what happened with football, but I was a team captain for the freshman team and had already kind of worked in the summer with the JV team. So like I I knew I was planning on having a spot on this JV team. I had to go have a very awkward conversation. Because you're saving a spot for some other kid who didn't go out and exactly, exactly. And so again, some of those things didn't really, really click until later, right? Like I it was Kevin Robinson, and I ended up coming back full circle and being his assistant coach on the Atascano coaching staff for for several years. And at that point, we got to have a lot of deep conversations about you know me as the high schooler and all the things that that happened there. But yeah, that's that's exactly right. That means someone else is not gonna get a spot for the guy who messed up and is you know still suspended for the first three weeks of the season. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Holy moly, man, so much history between you two.

SPEAKER_04 25:21

Wow, this is beautiful. It's funny. I posted um, I posted on Facebook uh a few weeks ago. Like I'm coming back from a five-year hiatus, first of all, right? So there's like I'm updating, I was kind of telling people like the number one question I get nowadays is well, what do you do now? Right. Yeah. And it's both of our favorite question to answer. It's not. Um, but you know, I was kind of giving a little runway as to what I do now and talking about our partnership and someone I went to high school with who I have not talked to much at all. Um, but her comment was, it's so beautiful to see the connection that you and Coach have had for decades. And it was like, wow, that's someone in a bleacher

— Josh's high school story and a lesson in integrity

SPEAKER_04 26:00

seat, like noticing the fact that we have just kept that connection and relationship all through. And it's wild to write down that that's like 1998 coming up on yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Well, then even when I was first pursuing the lighthouse opportunity with Tim, I would take my sick days and I would go work. And I would ask Josh to be my sub because I knew we were like-minded, I knew he was great in front of kids, I knew he, you know, commanded attention and respect. But the like-minded piece was so important. And he was, I mean, he's teaching everything, everything, like sex and everything, everything, all of it. So I knew he was a per the person, a person that could stand in front of people and deliver this kind of material. And then I remember as as I was moving toward the lighthouse opportunity, in my mind, I was always I just don't want to own a business. I just I'm not a business owner, like I'm I'm just a coach, like this is the last thing I want to do. And we had opportunity, we just Josh was a give still, and we got to work out, started working out together, and then COVID happened, and so lots of time to just sit on a bike and have conversations. And Josh was working through a lot of different things in his life, figuring out what he wanted to do, and I got to just to listen, and then I had watched somebody else within Lighthouse that had Josh's kind of background not work out with Tim and Jolene. And I didn't want that for Josh. So the be the ability to trust him and then set him up for success, set some guardrails in the sense that he was able to be patient enough to allow the opportunity to present itself and earn trust. So that was great.

SPEAKER_04 27:40

Uh I love the nod over to the substitute teaching, right? So again, there's there's things that are just happening, and I don't have full sight into what's happening while it's happening. Like this guy takes off work a lot. Like, I don't why does he need a sub so much? Right. Um, but again, and we've talked about this a little bit on some previous episodes. This is that window where I'm I have seen some things coming at the gym. I've I've fired myself first so that we can buy some some time out of the gym as a business, and I'm in figure it out mode. I I don't think I could have told a lot of people that in the window, but now, right, I'm in like scramble mode. Here's all the things I'm doing throughout the community. And sometimes people come back and be like, what were you doing? Don't worry about it, it all worked out.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Somewhere somewhere there's a piece of paper that has all those things on it you were doing like a percent on the circle.

SPEAKER_04 28:28

Yeah, because I had to make a resume for Tim and Joe. And I'm like, I haven't I haven't fired up a resume in God knows how long, and this looks crazy. Like build this wheel of things I was doing in the Atascar community, right? And so you know, he Chris kind of like brushed over real quick, like he was teaching everything, right? Because there were some weeks where it was extended, you were gone the whole week, you know, or doing lighthouse stuff. And um, so the way the cookie crumbled between uh subbing for Chris and then after he moved fully into the house, I was doing a little subbing for Anna as well. They're both health science teachers. I taught the sex ed chapter three times in a row, like as a substitute teacher in front of freshman kids um walking through sex ed. And the reason I pull it back up is because you were pointing back to like the the battle of does school teach, you know, values and you know, morality and those kinds of things, or or do parents do it? And it just made me think of there's a hilarious South Park episode where they fight back and forth about that. Like the kids are asking questions at school, and all the people at school are like, aren't your parents talking to you about that? So then they like go home and all the kids they're asking their parents, and their parents are like, I don't know, talk to your teacher. Like, aren't they talking to you about that? And and I I mean, as as ridiculous as South Park can be, they also really pull on the the social threads that are are are pretty real. And I I see that happening. I see that both, you know, when I'm up there at the high school doing that, but I see it now with with my kids and and they're in school, and you ask about what's being talked about here, and you can easily see how if both parties are just thinking the other one's gonna do it, a lot of those things can start falling through the cracks.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

What do you think is the appropriate um, I guess, order of who's responsible for that?

SPEAKER_04 30:18

Is that a deep, deep conversation? It has the potential to be. I mean, it's an easy answer for me. For me, I think the the vast majority of the responsibility is at home, personally.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

I agree with that.

SPEAKER_04 30:29

That's how I feel. I can say that as someone who puts in the time, energy, effort, and intentionality at home. And I know that that that posture is one of privilege, right? That like there is a large demographic of kids who don't have that, and that's not within their sphere of control. So then you go, whose responsibility is it? I mean, one of the conversations we end up having a lot is that it ultimately ends up becoming the corporation's responsibility because you end up getting this employee who hasn't had a lot of that, school, home, anywhere in between. And so there's a Simon Sinek video we watch where he's talking explicitly about that, and he says, Well, it's the it's the corporation's response. Sucks to be us. I I wish their parents had done a better job. I wish society had done a better job. They didn't. And so these are the the people we've got. What are we gonna do? What what comes up for you on that? I mean, you hear that in the room, and you probably get people that push back on it.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

And for sure. Uh I think it's important to be people of value, people that know who they want, what you want, know your core values, and then surround yourself and your family with people of values so that somebody else can speak truth in your kids' lives, give them opportunities to be around coaches that put people over product, and those are great learning opportunities. But it falls at home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:53

You agree that's where the the most of the weight of that responsibility should be. Should be, yeah. Which is hard because we don't really like shooting, but it's like it feels like it should be right there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

But like you said, you know, it's gotta be hard in some homes where both parents are working and you know, they're just getting barely enough time with their kids to even just like show face and be like, hey, it's time for bed, and it's time to get you ready for the next day. And I don't have time to talk to you about anything other than just what what are your grades like, and that's it, which is it's a pretty hard reality, but man, there's there's something in that system that maybe needs to change.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

But well, one I mean, even just super low level with what you're saying right now, one of Chris Fela's lines and stories come to my mind, right? He he uses this in a keynote and he's got like an image that he puts up on the screen. And I think it was at the time it was his kid Zach, his middle son, and he had written him a note and and drawn a picture, and it says, uh, you're the dest bad ever, right? You're the dest bad ever. And uh Chris has it up on the screen. He goes, obviously, when I got this note from my kid, I just went and was like, Zachary, you can't spell, like you, you, you, you, you can't even get these words right, you know? And he lets that awkward silence sit for a minute, and it's like, no, that's obviously not not what I did, right? Uh, because he's booing the desk that he can. And then you can feel it in the room. People like and and he's and he's like, and you all are are booing the desk that you can. You're booing the desk you can at home, you're booing the desk you can at work, and it's it's really cool because you can hear them leave and they say it. They're like, that's on their lip. I've seen him post it online, like we're all just booing the dust we can, you know, and and that really I think is a piece of what you're talking about, Patrick, is so often we are burning it at every end, and we get can get to the end of the day with a story that we just have failed everywhere. Instead of you know, giving ourselves a little bit of grace and saying, Look, I'm a human, I'm doing, I'm booing the desk I can, right?

— Parenting, schools, and teaching values

SPEAKER_04 34:00

And and what's my op I'm sure there's some things I've done really well, and what's my opportunity to keep growing?

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Absolutely. I always start with gratitude every time I feel that I'm missing the mark on something like that. I just start with gratitude. And even, you know, when we're praying at night with our kids, I'm like, okay, I missed the mark on a lot of things today with my kids, but what do I have that I can still show for them? And it's like, hey, we have a roof over our head, they have a warm bed to sleep in, they were fed, they're being prayed over, we're hugging, we're like all these things. I'm like, okay, like that in itself has got to count for something. Um, and so yeah, start with gratitude.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

The anatomy piece, which is a phenomenal book, talks about so often we uh do the thing that's probably the least effective. We correct the issue and then we teach. But uh the things that are most effective is if I begin with me and I start with an open heart and I begin to see people as human beings, not as objects, not as difficulties, not a better than or worse than box. So if I start with me and I and I can see you as a human being, that's the first step. The next step is community. Put people around them that you value and they value so they see that kind of community, and then ask questions. Listen, be a world-class listener. And as I ask questions, I'd be more curious. I'm gonna get the opportunity maybe to address an issue. But the last thing I want to do is fix the problem first without addressing the relationship and the connection that's required, which all stems from whether or not I'm willing to be seen or not. And how about how I see other people?

SPEAKER_04 35:27

That's so good. I I just took my first stab at the the new track Inside Mindset, where we we talk about that collusion diagram. And you know, someone asked, like, why would you start in this bottom right quadrant? So you've got you know, this these four boxes, and and the anatomy of peace is is a essentially a conflict resolution book. It says it's been the number one best-selling book in conflict resolution for the last 10 years, which is pretty impressive. And and so the four quadrants are like they do this person does something, right? And that and it it chaps me, it irritates me, it grinds my gears. Uh, and then this is what I see as a result of that person doing that thing. And then this is what I do when I see that person doing this thing is what I do, and then this is what they see as a result of my behavior, right? And we put that quadrant on, and someone's like, why would you start over here, right? Like, wouldn't it be, you know, and well, because it's typically the behaviors we're seeing in the other people that are the thing that's that's irritating to us, or right? It's so well, there they go again, right? Like, I get lots of reps at this um because I tend I tend to be in this collusion cycle often. It comes up a lot with my oldest, right? And so it's like she does something, and then I'm quick to reinforce that story of what I see. See, she's disrespectful, she doesn't care, she did it. And I see her that certain way because this is the thing she keeps doing. And and I'm sure someone's listening right now, like, yes, that happens to me with my and the brain has confirmation bias, it's it sees exactly what you want to see.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

So you are involved.

SPEAKER_04 37:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

I'm I'm complicit.

SPEAKER_04 37:08

Yeah, I'm complicit and I'm in collusion. So then I that's what I see. So what do I do? I come harder, I bring my consequence like you can't talk to me like that. And then what does she see? She sees angry dad, she can't do anything right, blah, blah, blah. Right? She's got all those things. And then what does she do? The same stuff. So we stay in this cycle. And I it's super easy for me to sit over here and go, like, yo, I just I will wait for her to start behaving differently because like I keep telling her, behave differently. And really, what the invitation is, is for me to see her differently. Not for her to change her behavior, not even for me to try to just change my behavior. It's I need to see her differently.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

Say that again.

SPEAKER_04 37:55

Yeah. Right. My invitation is to shift the way I see her, not shift my behavior, not even attempt to shift her behavior. It's how am I seeing her that is keeping me complicit in this cycle, right? And and I'm just using one example, but this can this comes up everywhere, right? Multiple people or even entity to entity, business to department to department. And you know, the the operational group continues to just see this support function this way, and you can end up in this cycle. So, what's my invitation? See her differently. So instead of, oh, she's so I have to remember she's 15 years old, she does not have a fully developed brain, her nervous system is deceiving her a lot throughout the period of a day, let alone a month. Um, all those things. And I'm the grown adult and I need to meet her with compassion. So, how do I now shift my behavior? But if I attempt to shift that behavior without changing the way I see her, it's that's just gonna, it's gonna come out, right? It's it is is gonna be a total mashup.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

It's not gonna go right. So yeah, it's almost like just gambling at that point because you're just gonna change the behavior without that information of how do I how am I seeing my daughter? You're just like, well, I'm gonna try this other thing now, and you're not actually addressing the main issue there.

SPEAKER_04 39:14

So yeah, beautiful. No, it's it's a it's a really I mean, Kristen, I stole this from Chris, it's a really deep puddle, but it's a super worthy one. Uh, and I and again, I just I just used it for the first time in the room. We just integrated this into our mindset curriculum of the leadership series, and it landed in a significant way. Where I mean, I just said like I suspect most people in here are in a collusion cycle with somebody, and the the silence in the room like that was loud.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Well, it comes right off of a conversation about how does my mindset affect my behavior in a relationship with somebody in my family. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 39:53

You know, like yeah, yeah. So it's usually right there. Yeah, you so they go, yeah, go back to that challenging family member.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

And how do you what do you see?

SPEAKER_04 40:03

Right. One of the things it calls out in Anatomy of Peace is um we're basically we'll stay in conflict forever if we just wait for the other person to change. And so we like we have to be willing to go first. We have to be willing to to see that person different. And that's a lot of I would say core teaching within Lighthouse is like, look, if we're gonna be service-minded leaders, then let's just embrace the idea that we're probably gonna have to be going first in in a lot of a lot of these instances, right? I'm gonna have to first listen, even though what I really want is for that person to listen to me. I'm gonna have to see this person different if I want them to see me differently. Uh and so just kind of get in comfortability with that idea of going first, which is hard.

SPEAKER_01 40:47

What's the root of you know serving minded leadership? It's it's easy to be me-minded leadership. Like, what do I want? How do I fix it? What's the best way to do things? But to be able to see the other person and put myself in a position where I see them as a human being. Like Mel Brooks Mel Mel uh Robins says, let them.

SPEAKER_04 41:07

Have you read that one? No, I just heard of it. It's in my queue. Yeah. Yeah. For a while, it I feel like everyone was reading it poolside because it was just like that green cover was everywhere.

SPEAKER_05 41:16

Uh which book is it?

SPEAKER_04 41:17

It's called The Let Them Theory, the Mel Robbins. My sister read it, she said it's really good. Um, but I spoiler, from what my understanding is you just get to the point of like, let them do them. Like, let people do that thing. If it doesn't impact you, affect you, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Like and then it comes back to let me. Like, I can't let them until I let me live in a place where I'm willing to be at peace with this.

SPEAKER_04 41:38

Mm-hmm. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

There's no shortage of work to be done. Tons of work.

SPEAKER_04 41:44

Uh, this will feel super random, but I want to go back and pull on something. You were talking about the transition from Coach Pry, kind of being your assistant uh in the wrestling program, and then you said you tapped on Jeff Spiller and you guys teamed up, partnered up, and you were running that program for how long together? Ten years. Ten years, you and Jeff running the Atascado wrestling program. I I know that this will be uncomfortable for you, but I want it and our listeners want it. Like we need to hear about some of the things you all accomplished in that decade because it was pretty significant. So lean into the uh I know, lean into that portion of uh of humility where we can still acknowledge the things that that we've done really well.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Yeah. Well, once we figured out that it's really about every kid, let's get 100 kids out for wrestling, and our wrestling staff's job is to love every kid because you just never know when you're gonna need a fill away class. Sometimes the mentality is focus on one kid, focus on that one kid. But the idea that focus on every kid made a huge difference. We started getting more numbers out, and then at one run, we hung seven plaques in uh eight years, you know.

SPEAKER_04 42:50

So what's a plaque?

SPEAKER_01 42:51

Plaques, CF champions.

SPEAKER_04 42:52

CIF champions.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

And for us, it was more important to be CIF champions than to have individual state place winners. Because that's a team award, it's a it's a team thing. We you need you need other people, and some people focus on the individual, and that's great. But I would rather focus on the average person. I was the average person. I was three and nineteen my sophomore year, my first year wrestling. Three wins. And I beat one Kevin CNS twice. So I really only beat two people. But the difference was I was on a team of people that supported me and had a coach every time I walked off the mat that helped me get better. It kept my eyes on the goal. And that that philosophy has carried over to everything that I try to do. Like focus on the other people, focus on the everyday, you know, good, better, best, so the good are better, and the better are the best.

SPEAKER_04 43:40

So this is super interesting. I'm gonna probably over talk as I reestablish this because I know Chris really benefits from having some processing time and thinking about how this might land. But what I'm gonna ask for is the bridge between that and corporate organizations because I think you're onto something. So, what I'm hearing you describe is that when

— The responsibility of leaders and organizations

SPEAKER_04 44:00

A program is focusing on, let's just say, high performers, right? Because okay, so there's a there's a couple kids that look like they're stink champion material, let's say. I don't know, because I I didn't, you know, spend a lot of time deep in the wrestling world, but you get a certain kind of program or team atmosphere as a result of focusing on those high performers. And what you're saying is, I mean, you didn't say this, but you're almost saying like you're focusing on the lowest level of of all performers. And again, you didn't say this, but it's almost like you're more creating an environment where the entire program can be high performing instead of drilling down on that one potential. And I think this happens in corporations where you start seeing some people who are great individual contributors, and you're like, let's put all our eggs on them. And then you you see around them, I think you actually see performance downgrade uh within organizations. So yeah, there's gotta be a connection here. Let's make it or take your stab at it.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Yeah, like my biggest role as a corporate trainer is to encourage the people in the room to take their C players and make up a B minus. That's a win. If I got if I work with Josh and Josh is right now, it's 70% effective. I can complain about the 30% he's not doing, but I keep him in the seat because I need him there. And if I get rid of him, I'm doing that 70%. So I keep him and he's inefficient, and I complain about it. My role is to get Josh from 70% to 71% and give him the deliberate practice to get better at and then recognize it, affirm it. There's so many people that are scared to death to affirm people, like scared to death to encourage people, like that's their job, they get paid, they should do this. Like, yeah, they get paid. How about a little bit of encouragement? Like, hey, well done. See, you're working on this and working people up and down the decision tree. Like, that's that's the key. They talk about in good degree, getting the right people on the bus. There's we need to take the people on the bus and train the people on the bus to get better. And if they if they're not in the right seat, let's let them decide that.

SPEAKER_04 46:09

Yeah, so many people want to push back on that immediately and be like, Well, I think I have the wrong person in the seat. And I think one of the first questions should be, well, how much have you invested into actually seeing if that seat can work for them? Do you have a role in are they in the right seat or not? That you said affirm. And I think like just to put more scaffolding around that, you're talking about affirming, encouraging, celebrating, attaboying, at a girlin', thank yous, all those things that um it it's wild that it becomes such a big thing for us to advocate for because it does, it starts to feel I don't know if it's counterintuitive for people or if they just kind of take it for granted. I it's probably both.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

In a production-oriented opportunity, people producing is the most important piece. It's hard to get the mind shift that people is the most important piece. If we can get our people better, more confident, more affirmation, more work ethic, more grit, they'll be more successful.

SPEAKER_04 47:14

And so you saw that, you saw the fruits of what you and Jeff were doing in the wrestling program coming out in the competition that the whole program is engaging in, and then you saw it reap the benefits of you gotta say, hanging banners or putting flex on the bottom.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

I can have a freshman kid who never won a match, got pinned every time he wrestled. Uh, if we win CIF, he gets a CIF ring like everybody else gets a ring. Like that's that's what the team's about, you know, in my mind.

SPEAKER_04 47:43

Yeah. That's awesome. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

And then that feeds on it. You just feed on, and granted, we had some good individuals that help carry matches as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:51

But yeah. All right. So then I'll take this one. When was it? When did we get to go over to Santa Maria Brewing Company and celebrate you?

SPEAKER_01 47:58

Oh, I don't remember.

SPEAKER_04 47:59

You do too. Sometime within the last few years. Um, the Atascadero High School, they do the Greyhound Athletic Foundation, I think is part of this, but they identify individuals, athletes, coaches, um, and they induct people into Atascadero High School's Hall of Fame. And so Chris was semi-recently, he's not telling me, but somewhere in the last couple years, he was he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, and we got to go over there and celebrate all the things that he did as an athlete, as a coach, as the head of a program. And it's super cool. I mean, he he you made a lot of your mark in in wrestling as far as you know, hanging banners and those kinds of things, but I know you made a mark every single day in the way that you showed up to kids. Like kids on that campus know that if somebody's last name is Free, they're getting loved on. Right. Like Coach Free loves kids, Anna Free loves kids. There's no I don't there's like no one walking around those campuses who's gonna argue with that.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

I had the opportunity to coach football with winningest coaches of California in the 80s. And he was great at the X's and the O's and terrible at the Billy's and the Joes, from my impression. But he was smart enough to hire coaches whose job it was to come back and take care of the kids that he tore down, you know.

SPEAKER_04 49:18

So things were different back then.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

Yeah, it's a valuable role. Yeah, you know, and you tolerate a lot when you're winning, like which is which says a lot also, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:29

I've got a two-part question for you. So if I'm listening correctly here, it sounds like to me that somewhere in your past you did not have that type of mentorship, maybe at a young age. And at some point you had a lot of really great mentors on and on and on throughout the years. Can you maybe tell me a little more about that? Is that am I am I right about that? Yeah, you're right on.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Like I would say one of the underlying stories of my life has been my desire to please the people around me, especially male figures. Had some phenomenal coaches growing up, phenomenal human beings in my life, but to to get to the place where I was enough, where I felt like it was enough, was always earned. I felt it had to be earned. And so and I'm still working through that to be honest with you. Yeah. Like I I like my relationship with Josh, like I still I don't want it to be an earned, but I st I still ras I still have to wrestle with it.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Yeah. Could you speak to the importance of that in the corporate world? Like surrounding yourself by those mentors, by those people. And it doesn't have to be necessarily like somebody that is above you in the you know corporate ladder, but maybe somebody is some of your peers, but they are encouragers, they are coaches in their own way. How important is that?

SPEAKER_01 50:56

In a lot of the rooms that we work in, there's a separation of my personal life and my professional life. And the two shouldn't come together. Which is great if you're super competent and you're getting everything done and you're producing. It's not great when I'm struggling because that's a human being that's struggling. What we advocate for is a balance of the two where the full human can show up in the in the professional corporate world. And as leaders, we should see the full human, see that other person as a human being. So I'm always encouraging us to see one another. What's it look like if I were to see? Let's ask one more question. What do you what do you really want out of this? Like I don't think you can, I don't think you can live the lighthouse anchors or you can even be great. Like our definition of greatness is living in integrity with your values and making other people great. I don't think you can do that without an others-oriented, service-minded mindset. Or even go as far as saying without like without the divine within, and the divine needs difficulty to work. We all want blessings and we all want things to go great, but the divine needs difficult doesn't need the divine works best within difficulty. Those difficult times help us become better human beings. So rather than avoiding the conflict, rather than avoiding the difficult conversation, rather than avoiding the disappointment, lean into the disappointment because of the phenomenal opportunity to grow on the backside of it. If we can change the mindset around conflict, if we can change the mindset around failure or whatever those kind of things are as human beings, and and I'm working through this as I speak, but that's where the gold is. The obstacle is the way.

SPEAKER_04 52:33

So true. I mean, I already told you guys this story this morning on our staff meeting with the team, but you know, just been talking a ton with Blakely, my youngest, about challenge, about pressure, about, you know, the difficulty, the failures, all those things. And it's like we were talking a little bit about diamonds and how like you have to have that pressure in order for the that diamond to, you know, get made or come out. And so just it's so counterintuitive to our human nature where we want to avoid that hard thing, or we want to shrink, or a little bit of pain and discomfort comes in. It's like, well, give me back, right? Um, so I'm in a weird window of my life where I'm like seeking as much of that discomfort and challenge and pain out and to the points where some people around me are like, what are you doing? Why do you want to do that? Um, yeah, just embracing embracing that discomfort of the of the journey.

SPEAKER_01 53:28

Pain, uncertainty, the unknown.

SPEAKER_04 53:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Yeah. You can fight it or you can embrace it.

SPEAKER_02 53:34

And props to you, man, because I keep hearing and and in some of the um some of the reviews that I've hurt from you, from you know, people in rooms with you, one of the common denominators has been that you keep asking deeper and deeper and deeper questions. So you keep digging and digging. And so I think that speaks to you wanting to know more about that because you actually care. And I think that's such an important component because when you are showing those people, hey, I actually care about you, that's such a huge gift to them, knowing that somebody cares for them, somebody cares about their struggle, their failures, what they're talking about, what matters to them. And so um, man, what a what a blessing that well, thank you for saying that.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

I appreciate it. And it's really probably, truth be told, driven by my insecurity to keep the pressure on the other person, keep the conversation on the other person, keep the spotlight on the other person. And if I keep asking really good questions, then you're not talking about me.

SPEAKER_02 54:29

Sounds very familiar.

SPEAKER_04 54:32

With that, uh I you're describing an amazing, you know, really a full career in education. Like, um, I don't know the exact timeline, but curious kind of what that that decision was like for you to make that transition out of education, you know, into you really made the transition into the consulting world because you took a job as an as an independent contractor doing this leadership development consultation work. And I'd imagine, and I I got a little bit of insight into like that's a that's a huge decision, huge disruption. Tell us a little bit about that, that shift.

SPEAKER_01 55:13

Thank you. I would say uh one of the best things about education is retirement. You just gotta do the time and get to the end so you can get to your retirement, which is a shame that it's that way. But I taught for 24 years and then had this opportunity to jump into Lighthouse. And my wife, I was like, nah, why would I do that? Like, I gotta I got a good gig going right here. And my wife's like, you always tell people to do the difficult thing, and teaching and coaching is not difficult for you anymore. So I love those wives. Just thinking the same. So I said, All right, well, yeah, I'll do it. And I'll do it for two years. I'll ask for a two-year leave of absence from the school, and I took my sabbatical, and my intent was always to do two years and then come back in and do my finish the 30 and get my retirement. That was always the intent. Well, not knowing that Tim, who loved me very much and gave me this great opportunity, one of his biggest core values is loyalty. And in that whole season, like I was communicating that I wasn't loyal. So why invest time, effort, and energy in somebody that's not inadvertently.

SPEAKER_04 56:16

You were inadvertently knowing that you okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 56:19

So why invest time, effort, and energy in somebody that's not loyal? Not that he didn't invest in me, but in his mind, I was I was leaving. And then at the end of those two years, again, my wife, no, I think you need to keep doing this. And I'm like, and it's a this is a huge shift for me. Like I love, love coaching. At the time I was coaching water polo, and it's like that's the greatest sport ever. You're outside, everybody's eating, it's the 40-minute game. Like in coaching wrestling, I'd get there on a Thursday, we'd have to up all night making wait, all day long in the gym, up all night making weight again, Snicker bars in Mountain Dew. I wouldn't see the light of day for three days under huge stress. I go to waterpole, it's like I'm sitting in a deck chair, the sun's shining. If you win, you win. If you lose, you lose. It's like it was and I got to work with like Mitch. I I I I love the water pole program to death. And so transferring, trans translating into Lighthouse and and burning the boats, as Tim would say, and saying, This is what I want to do. It came as in those two years of me playing, Josh came on board and began to turn some of the tide of my fears around owning a business and the self-story I had about owning a business to uh being able to work with somebody that can bring his gifts and skills and tools to this opportunity. Without without that piece, that wouldn't have worked. For me, it wouldn't have. I would have probably still laid in in fear and made a decision based on fear. And so having somebody alongside

— Building community around shared values

SPEAKER_01 58:00

to help partner was was was huge.

SPEAKER_04 58:06

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 58:07

Yeah, I'm just I'm just wondering what those pieces are that you were scared of that he fulfilled or took care of.

SPEAKER_01 58:14

Well, like I'm a perfectionist, I'm a recovering professionist, and I'm and I'm a recovering pessimist. Like for me, the story is always permanent, perm pervasive, and personal failure. Like, I'm gonna look at the downside. So anything that goes wrong becomes a negative. So I compound the story of the fear of running a business. Like, what would it look like to run a business? I don't I don't I have there's so many things I don't know still. I yeah, we're we we kind of partner together, but it's a real loose partnership. God Josh runs a business, and I get in the car and go train in rooms, but uh it was just a process of trust, and then not wanting to have the same relationship with Josh that I had with Tim because Tim loves me and I know he loves me, but working for him was hard mainly because of my internal things, working through my insecurities and then projecting them on him and not having the language or the ability to work through that and not wanting that same thing for Josh in Josh and I's relationship. So, and I'm we're st I'm still working through it.

SPEAKER_02 59:21

Yeah, I I want to know where you're at right now. I want to keep digging deeper on the double clicking, double clicking.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

Yeah, let me give you an example. Uh the other day, uh I was in my truck and be bopping around doing home stuff, left my wallet in my truck, and I'm doing yard stuff. Well, uh I go I go somewhere and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't find my lighthouse credit card. I can't find my I can't find my ID. I'm like a I got I need I I need both to travel. And I'm like, my biggest fear was I'm gonna disappoint Josh. Like, oh my gosh, I gotta call Josh and tell him I lost my credit card, and he's gonna be like, dude. And he's gonna give me some system to perfect it. How I don't, well, this is my wallet. Like, okay, I get yeah, I get that. So I was like, I didn't sleep. That night I didn't sleep. I was worried the next day I got up and went to the three places I went. I asked my daughter if it fell out of my. I'm like, oh my gosh. And so then my other daughter comes over and she's like, what's going on? She goes, I said, last night I didn't get any sleep. I was worried about my wallet. She goes, What do you mean? I said, I can't find my license and my ID. She goes, Oh, my son was in the car playing. I bet you they're in there, I bet you you took your license and wallet out. I'm like, ugh, sure enough, there it was on the you know, bottom of my truck, license and an ID. And I'm like, whoo! So found it. But the store, the the the the learning piece is my fear of saying I I failed, I lost this, and confident that he's gonna receive me in that and not tell me not fix me or something. But that's a point, that's a working problem. Yeah, I don't want to disappoint people. So I'd rather hide it or fix it myself than than disappoint people. And if the obstacle is the way, I need to lean into the disappointment. So the same message that I'm teaching, I'm working on living across the board with Josh, with my daughters, with my grandkids, with my wife, with my foster daughter. Like I'm I'm I'm actively working on being a better human being.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:13

And as somebody that can relate 100% with those feelings, and it's interesting because now I'm seeing it from the outside. What if that disappointment is not even real? What if they're not disappointed at you? What if you're just putting that on yourself and they're like, Yeah, don't worry, we have another credit card that you can have, and we have this and we have that, and you're just adding all that onto you. Man, I'm I'm talking to myself 100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

What if the queen had balls? She'd be the king. Uh-huh. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:45

Yes. Well, I think I think an interesting question, I agree with you. I think the an interesting question would be for maybe for both of you is how often are you surprised by the person's reaction? So if you are if you reverse engineer, right, like you're you're writing a story about someone's call it big negative reaction. And how often would you say it's a you're surprised in a positive way by it being even even if it's 5% less than what you thought, right? Or, you know, so I would say if you're finding yourself often pleasantly surprised by the way a person reacts, that could be empirical data for you to come back to and start rewriting the story on the front end of things. Right. If you're very often like, oh, I thought it was like this, and I'm getting this kind of a reaction, you might have to, you might have to do some work on the other side of things to like have more acknowledgement around the impact you're creating for people. I suspect it's the the first one for for you two.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:43

For me at least, I I if I put it in numbers, it's probably like 90% of the time people give me so much more grace and they're like, Oh, I that was not even on my radar. Or that it does not matter that much.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:54

Or you're putting more weight on it than they are.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:56

I'm putting way more weight than they are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:59

Which for you could be then data for you to go back to in those moments and say, hey, you know what? The last five times I've created this or I've communicated this impact, I was here. Let me just assume it's gonna be here. Or start assuming it's gonna be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:12

Yeah, and and and this is scary dance in my head because on one end, I don't want to be like, oh, well then nothing matters.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

You know?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:18

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:19

And on the other side, it's like, no, but I care so much about you know who I am, about my character, about my word, about all these things that I don't want to just be so loosey-goosey and be like, yeah, whatever. Like it nobody's gonna care if I do this or don't do this or don't follow up. Um so it it is a dance for me of like, okay, like how much am I putting on myself that does not matter? And I think that's the perfectionist in me, right? Like, I want things to be so perfect to a point of just fault. Like it just makes me then fall on my face and not getting things done. So um, but yeah, I don't know how how is it for you, Chris?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:54

Same, probably. I mean, like, I'm I'm I'm actively working on changing my internal narrative, actively, actively working on holding on to things that go well and building my confidence and affirming myself. We like to say feed the sage. Like I'm and that whole that that whole I mean it's embarrassing to have a lifelong pursuit of self-help-ish type things, and to just now be recognizing the role that confidence plays in my mind and my self-talk and affirming I have no problem, no problem giving power to my saboteurs or my son of a bitch my shoulder. No problem listening to that person. My growth area is the opportunity to speak truth to my sage.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:41

Yeah. Um Chris and Brianna, my wife, share a lot of similarities. They're the same down the Myers Briggs. You know, like there's just there's a there's a ton of similarities. And one of I don't know if you do this or not, Chris, but one of the things Brianna's notorious for in our family is she's constantly asking about worst case scenario. So, like, like to the point of like we're you know, sitting around at a picnic, she's like, what would you guys do if that plane crashed on us right now? Right? Like it's constant, like worst case scenario, what if this? And Jim Quick had a post on Instagram last week, and it said, Hey, just remember you can also run out the best case scenario. Like that was it. It was that was his post, and it was it was fascinating. And Brianna and I talked about it for quite a bit of like, you know, remember, you can you can run that scenario out just as much, right? And so I just I don't know if that's at play here. I don't for either of you, but I just you know, it's like you you can easily tell a story about the the negative reaction someone's going to have. Can you also run out that positive reaction and then you know work to leave space for it could be anywhere in between? And and I think the real place you want to get to is that's not on you. Like, you know, your role in in the Relationship of if there's something to communicate is simply communicating it and giving me the opportunity to do my work on how I respond to that. Right. And then we get to massage that together over time of hey, I see you leaning in. Here's where here's my invitation and responding that differently, or hey, I don't see you leaning in. And I'm I want to create the space where I can respond differently. That's tough. Yeah. And I I yeah, I get lots of reps at it. With you, with you, with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:29

You get a rep, you get a rep.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:31

You get a rep.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:32

I heard something. Sorry, speaking of that, the you get a rep, you get a rep. Um, I want to say this in Simon Sinek's uh um your wife book where he was talking about that impact that uh when Oprah was giving away that car, and how everybody remembers that phrase of like You get a car, you get a car. You get a car, but nobody remembers what type of car that was. What company even was it that was giving away those cars? And so um anyway, sorry, just reminding me of that, but like bringing it back to what we're talking about right here, like I want to talk about the pessimist and optimists. Like, if I was to when you were saying about like what if you looked at the best case scenario, um, I think for me the fear there is that if I just look at the best case scenario, then that sets the bar here, which is really high. And if you're afraid of heights, you don't want to go that high because you know that the opportunity now to fall is way higher than if you set the bar here and then you fall from way lower.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:33

But I think there is so much, you know, in what we're saying and what we're talking about, like you know, like I think the real invitation is just detachment. Like, because what I'm hearing is that there's an attachment to the the negative response, the negative outcome. And if you can detach from that and acknowledge that it could also be all the way up here, and then just use that as the invitation to say, I don't know. I don't know how they're going to respond. And there's a huge range here, and so let me just detach from it being this. I can also detach from it being that. You don't have to be either place, just my invitation is to lean in and and you know, participate in the conversation, and which I know is wildly difficult, right? So I'm like, don't hear it wrong. Like, this is hit the easy button kind of a thing. But I I think that's that's the invitation in it because there's a whole nother conversation, I want to get your opinion on this, Chris, is like, you know, the self-fulfilling prophecy idea. So then it's like if I tell myself it's going to go bad, and this is again going back to kind of some of the collusion, right? So I'll use my my oldest daughter. If I tell myself that this conversation is going to go poorly with her because I have something to say, and then my brain will actually start to seek that out and create that that negative. And so how do I again detach from saying it's it's going to go like this again because it's gone like this the last six times, right? Leave range for that possibility and show up in ways that leave room for different responses instead of continuing to participate in that in that same cycle.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:12

Yeah. It's been super healthy for me and so helpful, just you know, being in those rooms with you guys and just being surrounded by you and the way that you've been showing that those those reps, how have you managed those reps and how you deal with the those stories that we're writing in our head, and when then when it lands on you and you're like, oh no, that's not that big of a deal. I'm like, ooh, okay, that adds another like you know, incremental positivity to like next time I know that I don't have to have this weight over my shoulders. Like, I need to what you're saying, right? Like just let you do your side of things and let me just communicate my side of things and without worrying about or even playing it in my head because I'm so we're so good, I think, at like playing that movie in our head of like when I say this, they're gonna say this, and then I'm gonna have to say this, and then it right and we just like build it up in our head, whereas it just needs to start with like, okay, what do I need to own and just say it?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:04

Okay, this is gonna sound a little crazy, but one of the things that has really been informing this for me is a pretty crazy resource. Um, it's it's called Unbound, and and actually the title is A Woman's Guide to Power, Unbound. Okay. And um the author, Kasha Urbaniek, I I don't know if I said that right. Forgive me if I if I didn't. Um she spent like I a very good amount of time studying to become a nun, and simultaneously was working as um a very successful dominatrix in as a sex worker. And when those two worlds collide and the things that she's learned and explored around power and power dynamics, um, a coach that I follow on LinkedIn, Rich Lifton, recommended it. And when he put it out, I was like, whoo, uh, you know, downloaded it, put it in my queue. And I couldn't, it took me forever to click play. Like I used this analogy with a couple of people. I said it it honestly felt like I was getting ready to walk through the women's locker room. And like, I don't know if I if I'm allowed to know these things, hear these things. Um, so it was Sarah Fela I reached out to and was like, Do you have any familiarity with this? And oddly enough, she had started it two days prior. She goes, Wow, how did you find this? And and I don't want to tell you. Um so she kind of gave me not that I needed it, but she made me feel good about starting to engage with it. And it's it's it's not for sensitive ears. It's it is a grown-up book. Um, but really what it's all centered around is attention. And so what I have been learning is um she calls it there's a dominant state and there's a submissive state, but it's all centered around your attention. And when your attention is inward, you are in a submissive, a submissive state. When you're thinking about what you want, what you

— Doing the best we can and giving ourselves grace

SPEAKER_04 1:12:00

need, right? And and your focus is inward. When your attention is outward, you are in a dominant state. So my attention is solely focused on this other person, the impact on them, what they need, their wants, their desires, all those things. And this is a long setup to get to this idea, but I think it's it's I think it's at play here. Brianna and I have been talking about it a lot. She calls it the smush. And the smush happens when you are you're trying to split your attention. So your part of your attention is on you and what you want and what you need and the impact on you, but another part of your attention is how that's how that's impacting someone else. And you're you're not you're doing both simultaneously, or you're, I should say, I should say you're attempting to do both simultaneously. And what happens is you don't do either very well. So it comes out as this smush of communication. Let me give you very practical, silly example. We were at Chipotle and it was late. They were getting, they were getting ready to close, and we had we're we're coming family of five. So it's, you know, Brianna and I just walked over to order for the girls and we're ordering Chipotle, and the girls don't like their salsa in the bowls or the burritos, they prefer them on the side. And so he kind of wraps up, but Brianna forgot to ask. And so I heard I hear her go, Oh, um, could I actually get a thing of pico de gallo on the side? And he didn't really give a response. I mean, like, so you know, started doing it. And then she goes, actually, could I get one more? And he like there was something on his face that wasn't like he wasn't, he wasn't super loving it, right? He doesn't love his job. And I heard her go, like, they are included, right? So she's shrinking already from her want. Now we walk out and she goes, I just I should have asked him for the third, and I didn't. And I'm like, why? She goes, because he just, I could tell he was getting irritated and like, you know, he didn't want to. I'm like, it's his job to get you the salsa on the side. And and so walking through that, it was literally the smush. She knew she wanted three sides of salsa, but she was not willing to ask for the third one because part of her attention was on him and what she was seeing in some of the nonverbals. And so, even that whole like, what's included, right? Like, she started to shrink her ask and qualify like why she wanted it, instead of just being like, Hey, I would love to get three sides of pico de gallo on the side to go with the five bowls I just ordered and the $80 worth of chipotle that we're walking home with right now, right? So very trivial, like low-level example, but it's an example of her splitting that attention between self and and someone else. And and I she calls it in the book, she calls it the smush. And I've just been having pretty heightened awareness around where the smoosh is happening because the attention split self and others. What do you guys hear? What comes up? So, yeah, unbound. What what comes up for for the two of you as I as I process through that?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:12

It's a very interesting concept of of trying to think of just one or the other. It's really hard for me. At least for me, it seems tricky to navigate the like not being aware of other people's feelings. However, I think if you just like in focusing and like multitasking, right? Like your brain can't actually think of two things at once. They say that it just switches back and forth really quickly, which you know, that's why you don't, you know, text and drive. That's why you don't do a lot of things at once. And so I think that's that's a great lesson there of like, okay, first I need to put myself in order, think about what I want, what my desires are here. And then maybe I can take a pause and think of, okay, what about the other person? Like, are they having a bad day? Is it like, you know, like that that example that you gave with the Chipotle guy? Like, is he like he already cleaned everything up and he put everything away now? He's like, man, I have to go back to it. However, it's still his job. And so if I already prep myself in my head with like, I'm asking for something that is not out of the norm. I'm not asking him to, hey, can you come out here and like help me do this with my car or anything like that? You know, like I'm asking him something within the balance of his job, then that I think that would give me a little more permission to ask without feeling this like awkwardness or this guilt or all these other feelings that can just come up.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:37

So yeah, I mean, you think back to our conversation last week with Chris Fela and the idea of desire came up, right? And I I said this is a deep puddle. I don't know how much we want to play here, but you know, what are people's general comfort level in knowing or expressing their desires? And his first question was they grow up in a religious container, right? And so, like you think about what what's really being said in taking my attention internal and and going into that kind of submissive state is is is connection to your desire. What do I really want right here? And and again, it's such a silly example, but like she wanted three sides of salsa. And in that moment, she behaved in complete violation to that. She moved completely away from that simply by having that attention split right there. Whereas if she were able to stay in that mode of like, hey, this is this is my desire right now, there's plenty of ways to navigate that in a, you know, in a respectful, courteous, honoring way that you know can still meet him where he's at in that window. But you first have to be able to fully run that out, which again, I think the reason it's called a woman's guide to power is because women specifically, there's a ton of social, cultural, gender programming that has happened over the course of lives and decades that have told them to not be in in touch with those things. So it's a it's a it's a big can to be opening. But I think it's a a really important point is you know, it feels selfish, uh, feels like you're you know not you know not honoring people around you, and and I think really what you discover when you unpack it is it's it's the direct opposite.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:22

Yeah, yeah, I could totally see that. Yeah, just being aware of what you want than being clear about communicating that with the other person.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:31

Right. So what about for you? What comes up?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:34

I'm just unclear how it's the exact opposite because I think I land in the it's selfish camp. But then where do I what do I think about verbalizing what I want? What are my desires? Are my desires good? Start it with someone else. Are my desires healthy?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:52

It's probably easier if you were to start it with someone else. Like, so you think about, you know, like Anna or one of your daughters or your grandkids, and like being able to want to verbalize like what they want or what they need inside of them, or do you want them to continue to do that through the lens of I wonder what what Happy wants me to say, or I wonder what Chris wants me to say here. So it's like kind of that thread between like people pleasing versus being able to kind of tap into their own power and advocate for for that desire and want that they have. And that I think for me at least, when as I was processing it, thinking about it, thinking about it through the lens of other people, started to make me get to that. That's that's incredibly life-giving to me. Like, I would I want more than anything to know what are your deepest desires, wife. But if she has part of her attention split on her herself and how that may or may not land with me, I'm probably not gonna get the truth. And and that creates a hurdle in in a relationship, whether it's a romantic one or not. Right what comes up? It's a lot, it's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:05

Yeah, my desires are not the same as somebody else's desires. What my wife wants, what her desires are, and what I want, they're may not be the same thing. I love the idea or the framing of I want my wife and my daughters to be strong, powerful, independent people and speak for what they want. And I want them to be humble, kind, gentle. It's a lot.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:33

The the book itself talks about how um Kasha has coached an extraordinary amount of women and how every woman that she has worked with has at some point in their life experienced the freeze. Meaning they were presented with something and they didn't speak when they should have spoke. They didn't, they didn't hold a boundary, they didn't, you know, somebody said something inappropriate, they didn't say it back, they didn't, you know, address it, or they that every woman has experienced the freeze of some sort. And and part of the reason it was so loud and prevalent for me is because I know Brianna has several points throughout her story where that that freeze has occurred. And so what she says is you were powerless in those moments. That's why you froze. And this and this is a vast resource, again, uh, and not not a lighthearted one, but it just unpacks all the things that are the contributing factors to to those that freeze. And so it's a matter of being able to tap back into your desires and your ability to to vocalize, to speak them, that kind of thing. It is a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:41

Dude, that is a lot to unpack, but so good though. It's a I mean, sounds like it's such a great resource. Um yeah, I mean, I can think of countless examples of like just me and my wife trying to come up with like, hey, what should we have for lunch? And then we both play that game of like, you know, you start immediately thinking, well, what would that, right? Like really on purpose. Yeah, yeah. Like, what would they want? You know, I want this, but I don't want to just get what I want. So then you send it back to the other person, you're like, oh no, let's get what you want. And then that person does the same, and now you're both in this, like, and I get hangry. So I'm we're just both getting hangry. None of us are making a decision because we're trying to just be too nice to each other. And that just ends up being like, we're just both upset because I'm upset because she's not saying what she wants, and she's upset because I'm not saying what I want. And then at the end, we just end up getting something that probably neither of us wanted, but we're like, oh, maybe that's the compromise.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:33

In a typical travel week, I'm on I'm by myself a lot in a typical travel, right? I am facilitating on my own. I'm I get a lot of alone time in hotel rooms and I'm making a ton of decisions, I'm doing a lot of work stuff when I'm on that road. And so I'm, you know, call it for me. That's a it's a lot of um dominant type position. I'm the my attention's out, I'm doing all these things. And we've learned that when I come home most often on Fridays, I want to be kind of the opposite. I want to be more uh in that submissive state where I'm just kind of thinking about what I what I actually need now, right? And I want to kind of be just be told. Like, tell me where we're going, tell me what we're doing. I want to be a passenger on this plane for you know this this weekend, that'd be great. And on my drive home this last Friday, I could feel that there was different energy for me. And so we started, Brianna and I started talking through it on the last portion of my drive before I got home. And I was like, oh, this week's different because I had somebody with me all three days. I had Jim when I was in Oregon, and and I didn't get all that alone time, and I didn't get all that. I was I was having to keep keep keep being in it, right? And same thing. Then Friday, I had Jared with me, and it was different. And so I found myself coming home Friday, and I wasn't even willing to like sit there and hear all. I'm like, no, actually, I've got some preferences. And this is this is what I'm and she was grateful, but I wouldn't have been able to have that same conversation without kind of the increased awareness around some of these things to where, yeah, it's it's funny that it just keeps coming back to where that attention is. Is it internal or is it external? And that that rubric is really easy to get that clarity. And then I'm I'm just naming the smush and I'm I'm able to see it in myself. I'm able to see it in her. I saw it in one of the girls come up over the weekend, and so you know it's it's a lot of reprogramming that has to happen, you know, once you once you you get the awareness, but it's been super fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:35

Love that. How's it feeling for you, Chris? Still feels selfish because I can I can feel it kind of like I could feel, I mean, I could see where it could be, if not done properly, it could feel selfish to the person just always voicing like this is what I want, this is what I want, right? Um, but I think if it's coming from that knowledge of, you know, there's this inward

— Conflict, connection, and The Anatomy of Peace

SPEAKER_02 1:25:00

and then the the there's this outward, and and if it's something that somebody else is feeling really strong about, then I think that's where the opportunity for communication and debating and trying to get to a mutual place comes in. Um because what I'm hearing Josh say is that it's not just that like this is what I want and this is what we're doing. I just think it's like he he's always talking about like clearest kind. And so if I'm clear with my intentions with what my desires are, now the other person has a place of okay, now I know what world they want, what their desires are. Now that gives them the opportunity of looking inward at themselves and saying, Oh, okay, well, I want this. Can we meet somewhere in the middle? Or actually, I have no preference here, so that's awesome. Let's do what you want. How does it feel for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:49

I don't think I'd ever coach somebody to not communicate what they want. What's the outcome that I want? What's maybe uh maybe I struggle with the desire word, the want word, but to be able to communicate what do I see as the way we're gonna end this? What's what's the intent for the how do I begin with the end of mind? I would always advocate for somebody to be able to communicate what it is they want, what is their desire. And I would imagine, and we even, you know, we we have we we affirm people to begin by declaring your intent. Like, hey, at the end of this conversation, I'd love to have a better understanding about the way we see each other, love us both to be able to communicate what we want. Like that's what I want. Yeah, super powerful, and to be able to say, hey, um, I'm wrestling a little bit with communicating what my desires are because I feel a little bit selfish, but at the same time, like I want to have the freedom to communicate that.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:38

So yes, yes. And like what I was jotting down as you were talking, Patrick, was that like so the whole inward, external, internal, it's that clarity on identity, on values, on goals, on those things we want. Like, we when I hear you say, like, I would I would for sure not coach someone to not express what they want. Like, that's that internal clarity so that externally, you go back to that definition of greatness, it's like it's for the greater good. It's so that we can show up in service to other people, right? It's like me becoming more in tune with my desires, what I want, and what I need is is going to make me a better husband and a better dad and a better leader inside Lighthouse, right? Like I, but I think it's that aversion to to really looking in the mirror and coming to terms with all the things that I I want. A want that's not necessarily just like I want to publish a book, you know, like I want I want 20 minutes of snuggle time before we go to bed, you know, and and communicating that to my teenagers that want to take the screen time right all the way up to the that's hard, but it's like it doesn't mean that every want and desire is going to be met, but my invitation is more um more comfortability and first knowing them, excavating. Them and then what does that look like to potentially communicate them to the people around me that have some weight, role, and participation in whether or not I get them?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:08

Yeah, it is amazing. Like we do a lot of work with core values and core purpose and core identity and within leadership series. And so many folks don't bring it over the finish line. They just can't. But when you tie together this idea of your best self, you being living your best full self is really an embodiment of your core values and core purpose. If you don't have clarity on who it is and what you want, then you how how can you possibly ever be your best self? And I've never had anybody in a room ever have had a core value that was selfish. They've always been other-oriented, they've always been wanting the greater good. So getting clarity on our core values and then be able to point back on that, that's that's that's who my best self is. My best self has the ability to communicate what I want, and it doesn't do it in a selfish way. It doesn't in an others-oriented way. And being able to wrap my mind as I as I process my not best self, my flesh self, my part X will definitely communicate my desires, but it does so at the expense of you. And so for me, that's a difference. Like what language is it coming from? What am I doing to get myself in a place where I'm in line with my core values, who I really want to be, flipping that switch to my best version of myself. I wrestled for so long, but like what is the best version of yourself? I hate even hated that statement, but being able to close that gap between who I currently am I capable being, the person I'm capable of being is living in integrity with my core values. And I am always wrestling with not. So to be able to keep myself in that mode, that's that's where the power is.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:49

Totally. I mean, I think super low level, like one that comes up a lot, right? Is like uh any any kind of self-care habit. So whether it's a workout or whether it's you know getting a massage or you know, going on a walk, reading a book, like people have these habits that are recharging habits for them that they're easy to file under selfish, right? And so, like, say like, hey, I really want to get a workout today. That's super important to me. Every time I communicate that, it doesn't necessarily come with the language of like, and that's gonna be better for you today, too, right? And like, if if I go move my body, everyone's gonna be grateful. Um, and so, right, that's just a super easy example that can get categorized as selfish, but we know enough about that being this upstream habit that has all these other return on that investment and benefits for people around me that I can go, okay, you know what? No, I don't see that as selfish. It's a non-negotiable for me because I know that it helps me show up in in service to others. And I just think there's a lot more opportunity for us and the people around us to start thinking about what other things are are in there that are true desires of of your heart, of your body, of your mind, of your system that like will help you show up better for the people around you. And then if we can start communicating those things to some of the people around us and get their participation and and accountability, it's I feel it moving in in a in a pretty positive direction. It's it's a hard sell, it's a hard um river to cross, definitely, because there's a a a ton of reasons to be out of touch with with our desire. It doesn't matter what I want or my desires, right? Like it can be counterintuitive.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:34

Yeah, how to find my core values within the work world. Pretty easy. I can find them at home, yeah. Right. But how to find them within the work world so that I'm living my best self at work corporately and dismissing myself from the outcomes, right? Letting go of the outcomes, trusting the systems or the processes, like that's a lot of weight. Do I believe if I show up this way, this way, this way, the outcomes gonna take care of themselves? Or do I have to micromanage the outcomes? Right. And that means micromanage other people's outcomes.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:05

How's that working for you?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:06

Mm-hmm. Yeah, no well.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:11

Oh, it's so good. So good. Any other thoughts there?

SPEAKER_05 1:32:14

Mm-mm.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:15

Love that. Good. Um, okay, let's bounce back over, Chris. You were talking a little bit about kind of the window where uh you mentioned give fitness, and you and I just got tons of bike time. Uh, and that was again gift of hindsight. You had, I didn't know it hadn't been that long since you you had made the the transition into lighthouse. I was substitute teaching for you at the high school. You had done, was that your second hip? Uh you had done your second hip replacement, and we were using, I mean, team, we had a 15,000 square foot gym facility that no one was allowed to use.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:50

It was great. Such a gift.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:53

Chris has a very clear preference for introversion. So handing him a key and saying, hey, dude, this can be our private gym for such a gift. I don't know how long. Right. It's a crazy time to be alive, right? Covering up the windows so I didn't have to fight the health department every morning. Just anyways, that's a whole nother tangent. Um, so in that window, we're just talking a ton about everything, life, like your work life, the teaching life, the you know, recovering from from the surgery. Uh I think at this point I had made the shift into Lighthouse, right? Because it was October 2019. Yeah, bad timing. October 2019.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:34

Because we did the lighthouse anchors during COVID.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:36

So that's actually what I'm trying to get to right now is okay, October 2019, I come on board, March 2020, COVID hits. We end up with all this gym time, uh, hangout time. And it's in this window, Chris and I are doing um two leadership series virtually. We called it the Josh and Chris radio show. Sat down behind a desk and like 65 hours on Zoom delivering leadership series. And and Patrick and I talked about this a little bit in a previous episode where some of our clients were unclear on what are the key takeaways from this 65-hour training course. It ended up, it was like a perfect storm of an opportunity for some clients to reevaluate the investment they were making, right? I mean, the worldwide pandemic, things shut down, people's businesses start looking internal. And so we just had a couple clients say, you know, like we're just not 100% sure about uh the longevity of this program and and the the ongoing implementation. We don't know that people are are applying it. And one of my first questions was, well, what do we ask to see if that's the case? Like I wonder what what our I wonder what the representatives of that client went around and asked their people, do we know what questions we would ask? And and well, we didn't we didn't have a good answer. Like uh internally as a team. It was like, oh, you know, are they applying this? They apply that. I'm like, this this feels like a like a gap.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:02

Would you yeah, what measurable behaviors does somebody get as a result of this 65 hours? Right. And we couldn't answer that. They're better person, you know, like they're better at home.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:11

We just not quantifiable.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:13

We kept landing on like, well, talk to a client, you know, just like, oh, just get on the phone, like have a conversation, they'll tell you what the outcomes were, which that does work, and that's true. They will, but it felt like a gap. It felt like, well, we should we should be able to communicate some of this. Um, so we did two things kind of simultaneously. It was first, can we can we extract the language here? Is there something here that we could use to be really clear about what we want the takeaways to be? And it didn't take us long to uh to figure out Lighthouse was going to be an easy way to to hang some of those things up. And like I said, it was already there. We we didn't have to create it. There was a couple of things we had to force. What would you say were the ones we had to kind of like push in there?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:57

Emotional intelligence, servant-minded is is an umbrella, but it's never really, we don't really talk, we don't have a there's not like a service-minded like section, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:06

Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:36:07

Yeah, it's like an overarching umbrella.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:10

Mm-hmm. Greatness, greatness and humility ended up kind of being like the level five leadership spot for us. So, like that extreme professional will, but also then the pursuit of greatness, getting that clarity, core values and purpose, identity, core values.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:24

Um the habits and the ownership fell in nice with the systems and the processes. Yeah. I really wanted one of the H's to be a heroic or hero. And it didn't work out that way.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:35

So uh that was also the window. Previously, Tim had Ferros leadership in the in the leadership series as part of that core value conversation. He um he he communicated that lighthouse's core values was pharos leadership. And so he was pretty attached to to Pharaohs as an idea, which was originally a lighthouse, right? Um, I think he said one of the original like eight wonders of the something like that. It was a big lighthouse. And it was an acronym. I don't remember what it was at this point, um, P-H-A-R-O-S. And so when it got down to like Tim was struggling and he was like, I just I'm I'm mourning the this loss of Pharaohs here. Like, I think Pharaohs needs to stay. And I remember saying, I'm like, well, if that's if that's true, then we need to rebrand as the Pharos Institute. And Jolene got it. She was like, ah, that makes total sense. Like, you got to run with Lighthouse. I'm like, we can we can shift to Ferros Institute if that's what you want. And he saw it too at that point. He's like, nah, this makes sense. So he said service-minded was the most important component to him from that Pharaoh. That was the S in Ferros. So actually, I'm remembering that was part of the reason we were non-negotiably moving service-minded over into that S. And while it doesn't have its necessarily like specific area in the curriculum, it kind of sits as I don't know, the whiteboard we put it all on, or the, you know, the ecosystem around everything. We're constantly talking about showing up in service to others, being others focused, others-oriented, all those things. I think it becomes a core piece of who we are.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:17

You can't be great without considering others.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:20

Yeah, or like, you know, a lot of if no one's following you, you're not leading anybody. So, you know, you want now shifting from people following you to that you're actually serving those people around you, and that's your role as a leader. Yeah, some people need a little more digestion time on that than others. Um so yeah, the tell us anything that was like sticks out to you as far as you know developing that lighthouse model and what that shift looked like. Because I I didn't spend a lot of time inside Lighthouse without it. Uh it's it's you know, I was just coming on in those few months we developed it, and that's kind of been what I've known moving forward. So, what did you notice once we established that?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:58

It is pretty amazing when you look back at like you figured Jared went through the series 10 years ago. And when I came on nine years ago, ten years ago now, I was like, it's it's amazing the continuity that the leadership series had. The frame and the shell were there, so it's not a whole lot that's been different, and the the change, the processes we've made over time are are for the better. Like getting away from the Ferros model just because when we taught that particular style, we just I never had time. I I wasn't bought into it, and it kind of begs the idea of like we ask our participants to figure out what their core purpose is or their core values, because it makes their organization's core values and core purpose more important. So you've done the work yourself. Because I didn't do the work for myself or resonate with the Farous model, it's like meh.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:50

So you didn't have as deep a connection to it. No, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that was the other piece of what we were doing. So the other piece was if so we identified

— Seeing people as people instead of problems

SPEAKER_04 1:40:00

the 10 items: listening, intent, greatness, humility, trust, habits, ownership, understanding, service-minded, emotional intelligence. We defined them. So we and we we probably had some back and forth on like 17 different word documents of the specific language around how we wanted to define each of these 10 anchors. And then the like the actual work was operationalizing those 10 things into what we thought the observable behaviors should be on the back side. If someone had completed 65 hours of training, gone through the lighthouse. What is what does a lighthouse leader say and do? So we took each one of those, I think for the most part, it was like two to three. There's three for each one, three behaviors for each one. Oh, yeah. So it lands at 30. And we make we made a self-assessment where people could go through and and and and we literally said, okay, listening, these are the three behaviors we'd expect a lighthouse leader to be demonstrating. Intent, boom, greatness, boom. Now they can go through and actually see if they know these things, can they define them? And most importantly, are they displaying them through behavior? And that's been that's been a really cool ad.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:15

Tying everything back to a behavior for me. That's I I repeat that again and again again. What do I see you do and hear you say? It's a behavior. Starts with a mindset, turns into a behavior again and again and again and again. Getting people to figure out, like, hey, I have a well-worn neural pathway of doing things the way that I've always done things. And now I have this awareness around maybe there's a different way to do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:38

So when when we set up the lighthouse model of leadership for people in the leadership series, it's session three. So in the first session, we show it to them. We're saying, hey, these are the things we're gonna be, you know, looking at, going through, equipping you to demonstrate with behavior. Uh the second session, Patrick, you and I talked through. That's where we disentangle leadership and management. We get really clear about this is leadership. We lead people and we manage processes and systems. We introduce that third idea of followership, speaking truth to power, giving honest feedback. We talked a lot about submitting what submission looks like in that followership ring. When we come back around for the third session, we make the distinction between, hey, last time we talked about roles, and you have roles. All you play all three of those roles. You're a leader, you're a manager, and you're a follower. You need to know the difference between all three of those roles. Today we're going to talk about styles, like how you play those roles, like how you show up as a leader. And and we do the styles are specific to we say leadership style. Uh, and and we cover quite a bit of them, but we start with the lighthouse model because the others we introduce essentially live inside that lighthouse model of leadership. Talk us through kind of how you go through that in the room, Chris, how you unpack the model and and what other things hang on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:04

Yeah, we love the idea of just, hey, to read over it. What's what sticks out in your mind? What what has impact? What very loosely, like read over these 10 and then put them in conversation. What resonates? What do you think is most important? Like, what's it look like if you do it?

SPEAKER_04 1:43:20

What do you hear there? What do you hear there most? Like and that's that that's like they're scratching the surface. Yeah, yeah. But what comes what comes out to you?

SPEAKER_01 1:43:26

They're easy it's easier for them to say the emotional intelligence piece is not as important. That's near the bottom. Yeah, it's a pretty question. Yeah, yeah. But then how important listening is speaks up. And then by even by that point, in three sessions in, they recognize the the power of intent. So and they haven't even had the the Marquet video yet, eating with intent. But they begin to realize that that's important. Um, they don't understand greatness yet. Greatness is the piece one of them gets poked at. Yeah, they're like, I don't really like greatness. Okay, give me a chance to reframe it. Like, I haven't if you if greatness is me being better than you, yeah, I have a problem with that as well. So give me a chance to reframe it before we jump into that. We're not getting into it yet.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:05

So do you find when people are pulling like one anchor out like that or picking on it or poking at it, it is isolated? Like I said, I I find what happens is like when I point them to the other one, right? It's like so if it's if it's greatness with humility, right? If it's greatness with some of these other things, then they they start to loosen up a little bit. Like and so I I usually am getting to like this is an interdependent model, right? Like we're not advocating for these standalone, it's it's in its entirety together. Do you have that same combo? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:35

They all kind of meld with each other, and they don't have all the pieces yet. It'd be super powerful, come back in at the end.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:44

Yeah, so going back to that assessment idea, we traditionally have only used, we call it the lighthouse model behavior assessment. And we've we've typically only used it at the very end. So session 13, follow-up session, and we both had a good an enough enough participants say this would be kind of cool to see at the beginning. Um, so there's a baseline to see if we've you know improved or grown at all. And we've both kind of resisted it a little bit with the story that I don't know if you could take this on session three because you wouldn't have the language. We we haven't we haven't unpacked listening, we haven't departments of trust, ownership, trust, like we haven't done much at all. And um all that to say we're trying it. So we just we moved it, we moved that assessment into section three now. So these next few rounds of leadership series groups that we'll do, we will give it to them early. They won't know some of the language and we'll say, do the best you can. Like with what do you think it is and what you know about it, just just self-assess, and this will be something you see later down the finish line.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:51

So they'll give themselves a three.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:53

They probably will. I'm curious to see how that goes. I like walk around and if I see someone circle a three, I like flick their pen. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding, I don't I tell them to avoid three if they can. Yeah, that'll be it'll be I'm curious to see how that goes with the integration of that. Talk about some of the other leadership styles we advocate for in session three.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:13

Probably the one that gets the most weight or easily remembered is the leading with intent with Dave Dave Marque video, that idea to uh build leaders instead of followers by asking questions. Uh I love that. He says, like, you're the you're the answer man, you can't go home. It's like, and so often they feel like they are the answer person. Well, ask another question, can empower the people around you. And then when we couple that with the decision tree and we work people up the tree, that's super powerful. And you see eyes go, oh, and so often we don't start people out at the root level to get a real understanding of how I would do go about doing something. He says, if you're picturing 135 people doing their own thing, it's like, no, it's like doing it as if the CEO is watching, like, but so they have to know the mind and the heart of the person that you work with. So that takes time. I have to invest in people to for them to understand what my intent is before I give them intent. I give it to you, you give it to me. Super powerful. That comes up again and again and again. It says, You are programmed to create leads, create followers, give orders and create followers.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:13

Yeah, yeah. So good. Um, I had been saying David Marquet's name wrong for like six years. I was saying Marquette, and then I uh I was listening to one of his audio books, and he said, like, this is David Marquet. I'm like, oh my god, my bad. Um so yeah, David Marquet graduated top of his class Naval Academy. He wanted to question traditional models of leadership. He was in the Navy, so that didn't go super well. He spent, I think it was like two years studying a very specific type of submarine. And then he gets asked to deploy on a different kind of submarine uh that he knows nothing about. And so when he got there, he had to completely shift his approach. He didn't know, he actually kind of didn't know what to do. Um, asked for some hearts and minds, some opinions. And there's the great part of the video where he's like, okay, we figured it out. You shut up. He's like, they were talking to me, right? And so it's really counterintuitive for people. Um, it it does require some digestion, but he says if you have two pillars in place, he talks about two pillars that you need to lead with intent: organizational clarity and the technical competence. So if you have organizational clarity, which you have some responsibility in for sure, and the technical competence, and I'm gonna pause here because people in our rooms love thinking they don't have responsibility for this piece. And I'm gonna break that down in just a second, because you have ownership of that as well. When you have those pillars in place, you can give control and create leaders. And like Chris was saying, you've been genetically and socially programmed to take charge and create followers. And I'm saying, give control to create leaders. He says, move the authority closer to where the information is, which in our world, we had just talked about followership in the session prior, where we said, this is where you need to empower critiquing for better results. This is where you need to be creating an environment where people can speak up and tell you what's going on. And now in session three, we're saying not just create an environment where they can speak up, create an environment where they can make decisions and they have authority. And we need to, and so yeah, I love it. We marry it to the decision tree. The decision tree comes from fierce conversations. That's Susan Scott. Uh, and she she calls it a delegation empowerment tool. But what where we've married it to David Marquet's idea is going back to that other pillar of technical competence, oftentimes leaders will say, I just I don't have a competent person. And really, what you find is it's kind of their excuse to keep micromanaging. So they're not giving control because they're keeping that person in a box or on a leash of you're Competent, you don't know what you're doing, and what we're showing them is it's actually your job to increase your people's level of competence. So the decision tree becomes a framework where it's there's nowhere if you're not moving people up the tree, if there's not more things that they can make decisions on, you're the chuck, you're the choke point, you're the problem. And goes points back to Morgan Wall. I'm the problem, right? So, sure, there might be a couple things that need to be root decisions, or at the very beginning, maybe everything's a root decision. And then the next time we talk, some of these should be making their way up to trunk, up to branch, up to leaf, right? And so if you want some, uh if you want the shorthand really quickly, a root decision is we make this decision together. Trunk decision is you make the decision, tell me before action is taken. So make the decision, but come and let me know before you execute any action. A branch decision is you make it and let me know when it's convenient. I don't want to hold up action, I don't want to hold up execution. So you're empowered to make the decision, just let me know when it's convenient. And a leaf is you make this decision and I do not need to know. Like this is this is a leaf, it's not important, it's not, or I shouldn't say it's not important, it's not impactful if you make a wrong decision. You're you're fully empowered here. And in a perfect world, if we're wanting to lead with intent and we want to be increasing people's technical competence, I'm moving as much as I can up that tree, which means every time Chris comes in to my office and says, Hey Josh, like I just want to pick him out. I want to ask you about this thing. I'm saying, great, where is this on the tree? Today, we can it can be a trunk decision. The next time, it's a branch, right? And and and we we keep that in our language so that we're we're continually checking in and making sure we're reinforcing that pillar of that technical competence. What came up for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:51:53

Oh, you don't know people have a hard time realizing that they have the job to train the people around them. Yes, yes. It's gotta be somebody else's job. I'm super busy, I don't have time to train you, train you. So what happens is we just throw people in there and say, figure it out. And then we're frustrated when they figure it out, and there's they have no systems and processes, and there's 400 different ways of doing things because 400 people have been thrown in there and say, figure it out. Like, okay, well we gotta own some of that, take some ownership, and then create some systems and processes that people can be successful in and ask some questions so they can figure it out. That sounds like with power.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:30

Yeah, that sounds like we were talking about earlier about the parenting and the teaching, you know, with teachers. Like, if we're not empowering our kids to be responsible and to make those decisions on their own, then now we're putting the ball on the teacher. And then if the teacher's not doing that, then it's just that back and forth.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:46

The phone's doing it, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:47

The internet's doing it, somebody's going to, yes. And you are right, the phone is doing it. And so, yeah, that's well, it's it's funny, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:52:54

Because um uh what David Marquet says is create an environment for thinking. And that's why you, Chris, said ask great questions, don't be the answer person, right? If you're the he says answer man in the video, but I've changed it because I have women in the room when I'm showing this, right? It's like if you're the answer person, he says, you can never go home and eat dinner because you constantly have to be the person providing those answers. And there's always like like this is the one where there's the closest parallel for me to parenting. So you lead with intent and it's like parent with intent. The number one thing I want is for my girls to be able to think. And so what made me think of it is you said the phone's doing it, right? Because a lot of a lot of teenagers now are getting full access to AI tools and things like ChatGPT and Grok and Claude, they can do thinking for you. And that that's interesting because you're gonna start short circuiting the the wires that actually do the critical thinking. And so, you know, I was I was telling Chris Free a couple weeks ago, like there's some you can set rules inside your projects for chat GPT. So we have one of them where if the girls are curious about things, we'll use it. But my rule in that project is put the burden of thinking back on us. You can literally tell your AI tool, I don't want you to do all the thinking for me. I want you to put the burden of thinking back here and coach me through that, which it totally shifts the conversation. There's other projects I have within chat where I don't want that to be the case. I come and I'm like, give me the answer right now. But there's certain projects where you can have that. I remember you said something super powerful to me in the parenting world that I want to try to pull out of you right now. But it was about if I'm if I'm not parenting with intent, if I'm parenting with authority and it's follow my voice and it's obey me, listen to me. You said something to the effect of like, well, then they'll just find someone to replace your voice with. Speak to that for a minute. Like, say what you're saying what's underneath that.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:54

Well, there's that transition period when the parent is the authority and makes every decision and I'm I'm Superman.

— Curiosity, listening, and relational leadership

SPEAKER_01 1:55:00

And then as they get through their teenage years, I lose my cape, I lose, I get less power, and more people get that authority. And so I want to empower my girls to be able to think through that so they recognize who and what is their authority and what they want. And I, you know, I've got two daughters and a foster daughter, and so I've got lots of stories of different ways that it was done.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:22

Well and not so well, but and I've always been grateful, like your daughters are 20s, 30. 30, yeah, 29, 30. He's he's ahead of me, right? And so I've always been super grateful for this runway, this preview of of what's coming. And it's been it's been a few years, I think, since you you verbalized that to me and said that. And it really, really shifted my approach, or at least my thought process in my approach and and how I want to show up. I don't want, I don't want them to just know how to follow my rules. I want them to be able to think. And and so one of my favorite questions is well, what would you do if I weren't here? What do you what do you think is the right answer to this? Right. That's at home. And it's the same thing at work. It's the same thing. Like, as leaders wanting to help people grow in their competency, you don't just want them to know how to do it the way that you tell them to do it. You right, like that that's not that's not gonna create more layers of leadership through actual organization. And many of the clients we're working with are on rapid growth patterns. They want to do more business. And the only way that that's gonna be possible is with more leaders. And so it's the same thing is we have to be, we have to be asking them, well, how would you solve this if I weren't here? What do you think is the right answer? We really need to be creating environments where people can fail safely, where we can give them some of those things that are leaves and branches and mess it up, right? Like, hey, like this is totally fine. Like you can you you I mean, I was just telling Jared, I I gave him an opportunity to take a stab at a task. I'm like, you cannot mess this up. So just just do whatever you think is the right thing to do here, just send it. You cannot mess it up, right? And I think those are the kinds of things that really start to create the psychological safety where people can move up that that competency tree. Let's call it.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:12

Yeah, if I can get somebody to just ask more questions. A great leader asks great questions, but then ask a question and shut up. The problem is we ask a question, then you say, I don't know, and then I tell you.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:24

So the key is they ask the question, uh, what would it be if you didn't know? And then be quiet. Let them think and process. I don't know. Let me get back to okay. Well, I'll wait. But if they're waiting for you to give them the answer, they don't have to make any decisions. Or don't ask them what they think is best and then tell them how you want them to do it. Am I going to allow them to fail? I know ahead of time when I ask a question whether I'm going to do it or not. Should I just tell you the way to do it? Or am I trying to make you a leader right now? So understanding that, be able to ask a great question, stop and pause, and then empower that person to make a decision, even if it's not the decision you would make. That's the thing that people just they cannot arrogantly get their mind away from. I'm gonna ask you a question, I want your opinion, I trust the process you're gonna do, it's not the way I would do it, and I'm gonna allow you, I'm gonna let them. And people just do not well, whatever they fail. What if?

SPEAKER_02 1:58:19

Great. What if? Actually, great. I just heard a uh part of an interview with Matthew McConaughey, um, where he's talking about there were three things that his dad instilled really, really hard on him. And the the two that come to mind to this conversation would be the his dad would get really upset if he would ever say something like, Oh, I can't do this. And his dad would be like, like he talked about like the jaw muscles would come up in his dad. And uh, and I think that applies here. And like, you know, when when my kids come up to me and they're like, I just can't do this, and I'm like, mmm, like I feel it now. Because I think we can change that language, and it's it should be more of like I can't do it yet. Yeah, and I need help. That's I think that's the other component that our kids are missing nowadays. And I mean, I can speak for some of my kids, they have a hard time saying, and I need help. And so we've been working a lot at home with with our little ones, like we'd let them like if I backtrack like maybe two or three years ago, uh, one of my kids would be so scared of failing. Like he would spill water at the table and he would like immediately just freeze. He'd start crying because while I knew he knew what to do in that moment, he was so scared of messing up of that that fear of failing that would just make him freeze. Um and man, we've been doing so much work on him now that now he will spill, you know, whatever happens, like the same exact scenario. Now he spills and he immediately knows what to do. He doesn't even look at us for like that. Like, are you upset at me or nothing? He just gets up, he knows where to grab the towel, he cleans it up, he and moves on like nothing ever happened. And it's such a beautiful thing, like just to see that empowerment in them that, like, it's okay for me to fail, and it's okay for me to move forward on my own without me needing to be like, Can I do this?

SPEAKER_04 2:00:07

That's so good. And I totally just had that's amazing. Thank you. Well, great job done. That's great parenting. Totally just reminds me of Big Daddy and when the kid spills the cereal for the first time and he just starts crying and Adam Sandler's like, What's up? He just like lays the newspaper down, and then you know, he fast forward and he's like dropping it, just laying the newspaper down right away. So exactly that.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:31

Exactly that good work, yeah. Thank you. And yeah, I think the same applies, you know, in in work environment. Like, if we don't allow employees or you know, co-workers to mess up, if there's not that environment, that safety environment of like it's okay if you mess up, this is how we can make it better. If if we don't create that culture, then everybody's just walking on next shelves all the time or hiding the mistakes, right? And then not owning on up to them.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:55

So yeah, you you said something that is very similar in my house. So, you know, we just say if you're gonna say can't, just throw yet on the back side of it. Um, but I I'm excited to pass this ball because um Chris has a long relationship with the word can't, and I know that there's gonna be some people listening to this that will go, did did they just talk about can't? And did coach not take that ball? Yeah. So this is gonna this is gonna be a good one. You're gonna want to look there for this one.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:26

But so hey, uh can't is the words for written or spoken, doing more harm than slander and lies. On as many a strong spirit broken, and with it many good purpose dies. It springs through the lips of thought each morning and robs of the courage you need through the day. It rings in our ears like a timey sent warning, and laughs when we falter and fall, by the way. Can't is a word not to speak without blushing, to utterance to be a symbol of shame, ambition and courage daily is crushing. It blights man's purpose and shortens his aim, despise it with all of your hatred of error, refuse it the logic and seeks in your brain, armor against it like a creature of terror, and all that you dream of you someday shall gain. I get k I get thirty thirty young year old kids running me down in the store telling me the like Why? Because I stunk it so deep in their subconscious when they were freshmen in high school.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:09

Like how many years did you use that poem?

SPEAKER_01 2:02:11

I probably used it for 15 years.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:13

So probably so 15 years, every freshman that had Chris Free for health science.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:18

Maybe 20 years, because I was even doing it in PE.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:21

Yeah. So he would I mean it was an assignment to memorize that poem.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:25

Now on day one And they'd always say that can't, I can't do it. Two things freshmen say, Go jump dirt, go jump dirt, and go can't, I can't. And then, you know, and it's true. But then I would every day, little bits and pieces, 1% of the time, partner up with somebody, help each other be successful, and then I got one stanza, then I got two stanzas, I got four stanzas, I got a half a poem, you know, and they haven't memorized anything in their life, and they see the power of small incremental compound growth. I've had kids recite to me the poem, weeping about it.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:56

Come on.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:59

Don't even understand the language, but get through it. Like, coach, I never thought I could have done it.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:07

He gets he gets people coming back, talking to him about that. He also, because people in the lighthouse world will know this one, the whole like dot B idea, he was using that in in freshman classes before it was ever in like lighthouse curriculum. But it was that whole like take a take a beat stuff, right? Like get perspective. He's telling kids at the high school campus, like, know that you're loved, know that you're enough, like know all those things. And he gets kids coming back around showing him dot B tattoos like on their hand, right? Or he'll get grown-ups in public coming back and go, Coach, I'm gonna recite that poem for you, right? And he's like, Chris is at the grocery store, like, oh my school, it's super cool. But it's like that's that's the kind of like dividends you get over here based on the level of investment that you've made in people's lives in in our community. And and you know, I I'm a little bit more of a social connector than than Chris tends to be. I'm I'm out there quite a bit more and a lot, and and I just I hear it all the time, right? Like, were you working with Christopher Ree? You know, and then I just and then I hear it come. So I knew I'm really glad that we got an opportunity to to hit that. Anything else come up for you on the the no where did the poem come from?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:26

Edgar Guest.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:29

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:30

Yeah, it's a winner. Patrick's getting a good idea. But you but you couple can't with yet and I need help. That's the power. Like yes, it yes, it is a word that is it is harmful, and yes, it is a presupposed failure. And the obstacle is the way.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:47

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:48

So coupling, coupling it is powerful.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:50

That's gonna bring us back to the the decision tree idea and the idea of increasing someone's competency, but also just like moving people in that. I'm I'm doing it right now. It's super, super low level, it's a super basic, but like, you know, we have a blog site or we have a blog page on our website, and it's been something that we've started to put some in intentionality and effort behind. It's like, let's get some blogs up there. And you know, I wrote the first couple, and I I realized that set a bar for some people where people are intimidated by the idea of even of even writing one on our team of like, well, I don't know, John Sun, you wrote these, you set the bar. I don't want to do that. Um, and I've I've been kind of positioning Laura to help to help drive the blog schedule and getting content from the team and putting it up. And you know, like the first the first draft came through, uh Laura and I, and she's like, What do I do with this? Like, I I feel like I don't even feel like I have a role here, you know? And I said, Hey, let's just let's use this as an opportunity to model the decision tree. So this first one, let's sit down and it's a root. Let's look at the entire document together. Here's here's what I notice. Here's what what do you see? What do you notice? Right. And so we're sitting side by side looking at it. A week later, the next draft comes in from a team member and I say, Hey, what do you think about you taking the first pass? Like we're moving it to a trunk, right? So you take the first pass, tell me how you would go about doing it if I didn't look at it, and then you're gonna show it to me before you take action, and I'll have a chance to say, Oh, I might have tweaked that or I might have tweaked, did you think about this? Did you think about that? And then the next one will it will move up to a branch. It'll be like, hey, just let me know and it's convenient. And and I trust you, we've gotten some reps. And so it's it's just really cool to use that as a practical example of something where she had no knowledge or context of what I'm looking for when someone else submits something. And it doesn't take long for us to sit side by side and go, hey, now if she wants to stay at the root for another pass, great. But my what's my intention? My intention and my posture is to move her up that tree. And I need to lead her in that, right? Because she might, she might start telling a story and where is she going to be comfortable? She'll be comfortable at root level. And so I have to remind her, no, remember, the intention is to move up the tree. So let's go ahead and you do this one and then we'll take a look. And I just think a lot of our leaders spend time in reactionary mode. And if they're not repeatedly clear about that intent of increasing someone's competency and moving them up the tree, they could potentially fall back into just reacting, answering questions, and and making someone complacent in their competency. You have to continue to remind yourself and them that that's the goal. Right. That's why we're here. We gotta, I gotta give you more control and create leaders.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:46

Declare the intent, affirm it when it's happening.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:49

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. I always, when people are leaving on session three, I'm like, if you're gonna go lead with intent, make sure that first you declare your intent about your intent to lead with intent, because it's gonna feel disorienting for people, especially if you've been a hardcore answer person. If you've been a hardcore, like I give directions, you listen to me, right, and you're gonna try to shift this. You really want to go declare intent about that.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:14

Yeah, there's so many opportunities within life or lighthouse curriculum where I begin to get some awarenesses and some acceptance. Now I'm ready to move it into an action. But all the people around you are gonna hold you to the expectations of what you've always done and what the way you've always responded. So you have to be able to say things like, Hey, I'm in this leadership development class, I'm learning some new ideas, I'd love to try something different, so that one, I can let myself out of the box, but then all the also other people might let me try something new. Otherwise, I'm gonna expect that Josh is always gonna show up the way he always is, and he's not gonna grow, and Patrick's gonna show up the way he always is. And the idea is that we're all working through growing. And if if our infinite potential lies on the other side of difficulty, if our greatness lies on the other side of the struggle, then we need to allow each other to struggle to reach it. So we're holding we're we're holding each other back by not allowing the struggle.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:10

Everything you want's on the other side of hard.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:12

Yeah, your infinite potential lies on the other side of difficulty.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:15

I do like that component that you added of and that it it's uh it's obvious it's there, but it's just not said that you have to actually embrace that hardness because I feel like when we say it that way, it's just it feels very much like a if I just skip over to the you know, this is the hard stuff, I just need to get over there. But you have to recognize that path that it's going to be hard. You have to embrace it and be prepared to go through the hard and actually learn from the hard because that's actually where most of that gain is going to be in the hard path. Not so much once you get there, it's not like there's like a magic pot of gold that you're like, okay, there it is. You know, like I just need to get through the hard as quickly and as fast as I can. But it's like embrace that hardship

— Butterflies, growth, and embracing discomfort

SPEAKER_02 2:10:01

so that you can now get the reward from it.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:04

So I mean, there's a ton of truth to that, right? Because we want to there's there's a natural reaction to wanting to avoid that hard thing. It it usually comes up for me early, like day two, and it's usually because somebody has said something to the effect of sounds easier said than done. Like that, that you something in that vein is usually said in the room on day two, right? Like easier said than done. Whether that's around leading people, manage systems, hard on process, soft on people, speak truth to power and the followership ring. There's a lot in there where and and so I just try as soon as I hear it, and sometimes it's a whisper from you know, one person to another, and I call it out and I call it out loud because I want them to know that's gonna be familiar. Like most of the things that we are gonna tee up for you in here are going to sound a lot easier to do or to say than they are to do. And then I and I just say, and I'd imagine most of the things that you have in your life that are worth anything to you have been on the other side of really hard, or it's been on the other side of your fears. And that still remains the case today. Anything, whatever you want, it's gonna be on the other side of hard. Whatever what got you here isn't gonna get you there. That's that's probably part of the reason someone is making an investment to put you into this room, right? And so what's our openness and our posture to being able to say, yeah, let me continue to, and these are all the terms, embrace the journey, lean in, get outside of my comfort zone. Remember, the day prior, we've just talked about comfort zone, learning zone, danger zone, and saying, hey, it requires risk. It requires risk to step out of the comfort zone and say, I want to step into learning, I want to step into growth. It's literally uncomfortable. It's like by definition. So What's it gonna, and you know, one of the questions we ask on day one is what's gonna be required of you to spend most of your time during this training in the learning zone? Because we've spent so much time talking about the danger zone, a lot of people think what's gonna be required of me to stay out of danger. I'm pretty intentional about saying some of you need to think about what's gonna be required of you to step out of comfort, because it's it's there's two sides of that. We don't want you to go all the way to danger. We don't want curiosity to shut off and learning to be gone, but we also don't want you sitting in your comfort zone. And and the way that we facilitate rooms by creating a safe environment, allowing challenge by choice, some people can stay in their comfort zone throughout the, you know, some people can choose to do that for the majority of the training. We've asked them on day one what's going to be required of you to stay in the learning zone. And we're gonna keep giving you opportunities to lean in, you know. But guys like David Goggins and and Jocko would say, say this, they'd say embrace the suck. You know, that's that's a military term of like, yeah, this sucks. And, you know, there's the stakes are way higher. So you can say things like, let's, you know, let's sweat in training so we don't bleed in war. Um, and that that lands. And so you're like, yeah, like I'm gonna embrace this suck. But, you know, however, we need to frame it for ourselves as growing human beings, most of us probably have enough empirical data in our life to look back and say, you know what, the hard things I paid some really good dividends. So then how do I keep that mindset when the next hard thing comes? That I can go, I'm made for this. I love this, I'm ready.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:37

I cannot help but to think of the butterfly analogy. Would you share that with us?

SPEAKER_04 2:13:43

Yeah, yeah, I can do that. Uh wow. Uh yeah, a lot of people will know that I'm a pretty big fan of butterflies as a creature. Uh, Chris and I spent some time having this conversation and exploring it in a different container, and and we got to the point that, like, hey, moths experience the same thing, which is super interesting because uh butterflies get a lot of credit for being like the super beautiful creature, but moths go through the the same exact thing. And what it is, uh, this is this is a cool connection point between my two worlds, also, because for any uh Tascadero local listeners, when I was a senior in high school, it was the first year, it was the first year a Tascadero identified that maybe valedictorians aren't the best public speakers. And so for the commencement speech, they opened up a competition, which like had never happened before. It was like, does anybody want to compete to give the commencement speech? And you know, you already heard one story. I had a colorful high school career. I there were some ups and downs and some things that had happened. And I, you know, it was an interesting point in my life, things happening in my family world. I was getting ready to, I had already signed to go to the Marine Corps. Uh, for the people who don't know, I signed when I was a junior in high school, like with my parents' you know, approval pre-9-11. So 9-11 happened. I knew this was gonna be pretty significant, and so I I just wanted to kind of leave my mark. And I said, I'm gonna put my name in the hat for the commencement speech. And I spoke a little bit about my mom. My mom was in the um public speaking leadership development world. Her world was actually helping people get better at public speaking. And so I figured I gotta my sleeve. Let me go, you know, talk to pre-chat GPT. It was way pre-chat GPT. Thank you. Um and as we started looking, you know, great commencement speeches have great illustrations. So, what's a what's an illustration that you can use for you know your journey, your class's journey that can also be inspiring, motivating, yada yada. And we got to the the butterfly, and as we were learning about the butterfly, um, when a caterpillar is in the cocoon and it's ready to come out, if you cut the end of that cocoon and and let it out just you know freely, to you know, you'd think maybe you're helping it.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:06

Because it's struggling.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:08

Yeah, so you go, hey, like let's let it out. That that butterfly will be crippled for life. It it would never fly. And um, I always have to do this. Like with what you learn is that like it's actually the fight and struggle out of the cocoon, that tight little opening that pushes the fluid into the butterfly's wings and allows it to take flight. So, as part of the commencement speech, I mean, my class, we'd been through it. Um, we, you know, there was a really tragic car accident uh where one of the guys on our football team had passed away. Uh, there was a person in our class who had committed suicide. Uh, there was 9-11. There was just there was a lot of super challenging events. And so the illustration was we're like the butterfly. We've been in this cocoon of this struggle, these struggles, these challenges, these things that feel really hard. And now we're coming out of the cocoon with fluid in our wings and and ready to take flight into the next chapter of life. And then I released a box of like, I think it was like 500 butterflies or something like that at the graduation, which was super cool. They they actually didn't take off and go away. So they started landing on people, they were all around it. It was pretty fun. Um and that's that becomes part of the conversation I'm was just talking about in the rooms for me. Like butterflies are super symbolic and important to me. I have a couple of them incorporated into tattoos. I, you know, have gotten there's like a very significant butt butterfly necklace that I've gotten for Brianna is because it's a it's uh emblematic of our relationship. Like we've been through some really hard stuff together. And there's there's parts of us that'd be like, you know what? It would have been so much easier to cut that cocoon and and not go through that that trial, that tribulation, that challenge. But if you do that, then you have to second guess your ability to fly, right? Like what level of beauty do we achieve together as a relationship? What are what fluid doesn't get pushed into our wings as a result of navigating that? And then I don't think it's a one-time event. So as humans, and this is where like the moth idea comes into play, right? Because some people like don't even really identify with like the beauty or the you know, flying soaring to new heights as this butterfly. And so it's like, okay, hey, maybe I don't know, maybe you're more like the moth, but you've still encountered this this growth, this journey, and you still have an ability that you wouldn't have had otherwise. And then we re-enter the cocoon, right? So it's not like a one-time event for us. And and so going through seasons of, hey, this is a cocoon season. What does it look like to push through this, to, to walk this difficulty, this challenge, knowing that I'll I'll have more capability and fluid in my wings for flight afterward, versus oftentimes I think we just want to cut the cocoon or we don't want to get in it at all, right? Like we don't even want to acknowledge the the opportunity that's in front of us. So I think that's what you were after.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:09

Absolutely. Yeah, I feel like even I mean, so many things could be labeled cocoon, you know, a fear could be a cocoon, and it's safe to stay in there for a cocoon and protect it in some ways from you know, predators are not gonna be wanting to come into that cocoon because it's just not it just looks like nothing, right? And so yeah, there's so much I think that we can relate to that cocoon.

SPEAKER_03 2:19:31

Um comes up for you over there.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:35

Well, I think the like the idea of embrace the suck is more than just embrace the suck, it's yes and it's it's embrace the suck and continue working through it true to who you are, true to your core values. Because I think sometimes people use embrace the suck or it is what it is as a default to mediocrity. And we're not we're not encouraging anybody to default to mediocrity. We we want people to lean into the opportunity to grow and pursue the opportunity to stuff to be their best versions of who they are. And embracing the suck means the the yes and yeah, this is this is sucky, and you can get through this like with unwavering faith, you know.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:16

That's a super important point because I think so much of I'll just say my ability to embrace the suck comes on the heels of the clarity I have around my identity, my values, and my goals. Right. So it's always that that tension between both of those. Like I know you and I both use the language when you're talking four A's, you know, assess if that action is moving you closer. It's it's one way it could be moving you closer to who you want to be, right? Like you've or it could be moving you closer to what you want. It might be an action that's more in alignment with a goal or a trajectory you want to be on, but or it might just be a behavior that's like, that's just a vote to reinforce my identity. And the the ability to say, embrace the suck, or this is just part of the journey, or let's lean in, I'm okay being uncomfortable, comes from I believe having done a lot of that work and and having clarity in those pieces. I could imagine without that, saying embrace the suck, I was like, no, that's just this is awful. This is terrible. I want out of this kind of a thing. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_01 2:21:22

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it goes back to like, you know, Jocko's good, it's all good. Married with Brene Brown's idea of vulnerability.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:31

Right. We always say if someone's hardcore on Jocko, we always say, like, you need some more Brene in your life. Right. And then if like if you're hardcore on Brene, like maybe check out Jocko. Like I joke, they'd make the best leadership love child, right? Jocko and Brene. I don't know how they would feel like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:48

Yeah, it's ownership and understanding. It's the opportunity for those two things to come together. It's extreme ownership and it's understanding ourselves and others.

SPEAKER_03 2:21:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:55

And that's we should make those lighthouse anchors. They we that's weird.

— Final reflections on paradox and leadership

SPEAKER_04 2:22:02

They actually sit right next to each other. Love it.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:07

What uh anything coming up for you, man?

SPEAKER_02 2:22:10

So much surprises. So many good things here.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:12

Good. Yeah. Chris, any uh anything left on your radar? Anything you want to do?

SPEAKER_01 2:22:17

Not to cover everything in my notebook here. Yeah? I love the conversation around desire. Thank you for prompting that.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:24

Love that.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:25

This was good. We should do this again. Yeah. This will be the this will be the first of many as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:30

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:31

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:32

Thank you. All right. As always, thank you so much for joining us, for listening to episode four. Uh, we hope you enjoyed that conversation. Uh, getting to to share about butterflies. Thank you for setting that up for me. That was a fun convo. Uh, and I just think about where we started in the intro talking about paradoxical thinking, holding tension, that Brene Brown, Adam, Adam Grant clip. And and I think the idea of the cocoon and the butterfly is paradoxical, right? It's like we I said we have seasons where we're in cocoons and we have seasons where we're taking flight. And uh a big theme, which I I is not surprising to me, right? Of just doing hard things, of of leaning into that adversity, that challenge, that difficulty, that is a part of shining bright. Um, and so when when we talk about being lighthouse leaders, when we talk about leaning into these ideas, 100% easier said than done, uh, but the work's worthy. And so yeah, I just I'm thinking about that on the way out of you know, encouraging people to go shine bright, that that leaning in and doing hard things is is part of that. What comes up for you?

SPEAKER_02 2:23:39

Yeah, and and going back a little bit to the butterflying cocoon, like I think a lot of people think or they might think that that's just something that you do once in your life. But as human beings, we get to do that often. And the more you do that, the more you get used to that, you know, leaning into doing hard things. It gets easier and easier and easier. And then there might be things that you're not prepared for, but if you learn that resilience of going back into the cocoon knowing that you're gonna come back out again, spreading your wings out, then you have have the bot always one right there. So I love that.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:12

Awesome. Uh, some things for us. We are gonna continue to want your feedback, to want your input. So if there's um anything that you would like to hear us cover or any ways that we can continue to improve the delivery of the podcast, please reach out, please let us know. Um, we did recently update the Lighthouse website. You can go take a look there, lighthouseinstitute.com. And we also sent out our first newsletter uh within the last few weeks. So uh if you got that, awesome. If you're interested in receiving that, you can sign up on the website. Just plug your email into that and you can get on that mailing list. So, regardless of where you are, of what you're doing, if you're in a cocoon season or in a flight season, uh, either way, we hope that you go shine bright.