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How To Lead People Without Causing Burnout · Mork Unfiltered

• speaker-0: much as I hated it, I did it. I was an engineer in the Arctic at ninety five degrees below zero windshield. The world of the of commercialism is driving into the KPIs so that we do leadership speaker-1: Last. I think so many people have this like climber hijacker where they're like always climbing and it's never enough. speaker-0: And I said, Dad, maybe it's not how far you get, maybe it's how far you've come. speaker-1: What are most CEOs not seeing about leadership? Welcome back to Mork Unfiltered, folks. Now let me ask you a question before we get started. What if the thing that saved your family's entire future wasn't a degree or a business plan, but a musical instrument bought by a kid from a sharecropper's farm with dollar bills he earned delivering milk? Today's guest is Rod Branch. Rod started as a petroleum engineer in the Arctic, a job I'm not quite sure he was in love with. And he subsequently went on to make not one, not two, but three radical career pivots. Before landing in a role that really finally fit. He went to graduate school, went back to graduate school at the tender age of 59. And that's when he figured out what he actually was put on this earth to do. Along the way, he got fired at one of his biggest jobs in his career, survived some serious family tragedies that would have broken a lot of people, and watched his son walk away from a brilliant academic future to chase something nobody around him quite understood. He's the author of a new book called Weak Minded, which I've personally read and love. And his entire philosophy comes down to a single word when it comes to leadership. And this word is something that so many executives are just afraid to say out loud. This is Morgan Filtered, and this is the story of Rod Branch. Rod, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. speaker-0: Thank you, Patrick. I am so excited to have this opportunity to talk to you today. Me speaker-1: Me too, me too. I mean, like you from our first connection, ⁓ you and I had so many similarities and there were so many coincidences between your life and my life and our kids and and so many aspects of our backgrounds that I had to remind myself that I'm gonna have to be very careful of like not, you know, replaying a lot of the similarities in in in in my world on today's show because we have so much to cover ⁓ with you on the show here today. But you know, I I wanted to start a little bit with the origins of your story. Right. And and you know, the story of, you know, your father, the sharecropper's farm, the milk truck, and and this musical instrument that really changed your family's trajectory. Take us back a little bit to that story and tell us a little bit about the man who raised you. speaker-0: Yeah. Wow. He was bigger than life. ⁓ and and I think a lot of us who have, you know, intact families and and fathers who are around have a lot of similar sort of feelings about them. But this guy started on a sharecropper's farm. His dad was a sharecropper. His his grandfather was a sharecropper. ⁓ they were sort of indentured. They were not allowed to leave. ⁓ my grandfather stole away in the middle of the night with his wife and two kids to go start a new life in Doritter, Louisiana. And ⁓ didn't have much knowledge of the world beyond the cattle guard and and took odd jobs. And then when my dad was fourteen, a few years later, he took a job on a milk truck and hired my dad during the summer to run the bottles to and from the front porch. And he paid my dad a dollar a day for that. And my dad decided he was going to save every one of those dollars, every one of them, and spend it on a cornet, which is like a trumpet horn. He wanted to play in the band. So he got pretty good at it playing in the band, but he was also a really good running back for the football team. And about the same time he did a paper on engineering and decided that's what he wanted to do for a living. There was no way this guy had a track to go to college. Just there was nothing about it. There was there was no money. ⁓ I mean these were just a little notch above dirt pour because they started dirt pour and they felt like they were really winning at that point 'cause they had a wooden floor. But he he So when he graduated high school and and by the way, when he would when he would play as a running back, he would he would play in the band ⁓ play in the on the team and then he would quickly change and run over to the to the gymnasium and play in the in the ⁓ stage band ⁓ for the sock ops. And for those that you don't know who what a sock hop is, it's back in the day when they had wooden floors for their gymnasiums, you couldn't wear your hard shoes on them. Right. So they would have school dances in the gymnasium and you couldn't wear your shoes. So they were normally in socks and it got called a sock hop somewhere in the nineteen fifties. So we'd play music for the sock hops and then ⁓ end of high school happened and he decided he was gonna borrow a car and go to Macneese College and see if he could trial for the football team, which he did. And at the end of the day, the coach put his arm around his neck and said, Billy, you you you've made the team. You're gonna be a backup running back. For Magnese College in the fall, but I don't have a scholarship for you. And then my dad sadly had to say, Well, then I can't play. And then ⁓ he dejected, took a shower, went out to his car and and his cornet was laying in the back seat. He picked up the cornet, went down to the band department and asked the band director if he could try out for the band. And he said, Well, sure. So he tries out and he makes the band and they have a scholarship for him. Wow. So that horn that he bought when he was fourteen years old. allowed him to go to college and become the not only bachelor's degree engineer, but master's degree engineer plus professional engineering status. ⁓ and and that horn changed the entire trajectory of our family's lives. I mean, there's nothing to say that we wouldn't still be somewhere in central Louisiana. Yeah. Yeah, living ⁓ meagerly. ⁓ but he ended up traveling traveling the world, a great mentor for me, very much a taskmaster because coming for where he came from, he didn't have any, you know, He didn't have any patience for nonsense around schooling. So he a little bit of an iron fist around that. But anyway, the point is, you know, the thing that he was really good at and he loved appeared in his life as a transformational incident. And I think a lot of us have those things. For me, it was buried a bit, but it reappeared later. But but you know, that's a remarkable story for somebody figuring out what they were good at and they loved, and it came back to really benefit them. speaker-1: Yeah, it's it's it's amazing, right? And I think it's like I what I loved about your dad's story and and and you know, I think your story as well to a degree when I when I read the book was you know, that to some extent it really is like that quintessential story where it's like from rags to riches, right? If you it's was your was your dad, I think, also the first person to go to college in your family? speaker-0: Yeah, he was I think my aunt, his sister, did graduate high school and I think barely finished college later, but ⁓ he was certainly the first one to get a master's degree and a college degree and all that. But he was quite the sensation in that family and he and he absolutely did it by himself, you know. That's remarkable. Sweat equity. speaker-1: That's remarkable. And and you know, one of the most powerful moments of the book, I mean, I I remember this chapter as if I read it yesterday was, you know, there's this moment that you talk about in the book, and and I'd love for you to kind of share it with us if you're if you're willing, you know, towards the end of his life where he shared with you some of the feelings that he had around his career. Yeah. Walk us back to that moment. speaker-0: I I can I can do it. We were sitting there after my mom passed away, and and he died unfortunately 43 days later of completely unrelated, ⁓ completely unrelated situation. So we were sitting there and he said something about, you know, I didn't quite get as far with ⁓ the company that as I thought I should. And I'm looking at him like he's got three heads because it's like, okay, so yeah, it wasn't that he didn't succeed, he did. It wasn't that he wasn't good at his job. He was. He he ran joint ventures all around the world in Canada and Cairo and Moscow in the oil and gas business and ⁓ made a really great living, saved a lot of money, retired early at sixty one years old and lived a very, very satisfying ⁓ retirement. And I'm like, so what part of that, you know, isn't success? And he said, Well, I didn't quite get to the boardroom where all those people in the glass tower who were not traveling around the world and working in the field all those times. Yeah. They were in front of all the people who make those decisions and they they got promoted into those really high level jobs. And I said, well, true, Dad, maybe, maybe that's true. But, you know, you were a sharecropper's kid with no reasonable path to any kind of success in life. And and, you know, I took him back through the story of the horn and And going to MacNeice and trying out for the football team and getting getting a scholarship through the band. And then then this fantastic career started to unfold for him and ended up okay, maybe he wasn't at the boardroom level, but he was one level below that when he retired. And he retired at sixty one, a very healthy retirement, by the way, until he was, you know, eighty eighty eight years old. Wow. And I said, Dad, you know, maybe it's not how far you get, maybe it's how far you've come. Yeah. You know, and and I wasn't born on third base, but I was probably born on first base. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And and and successfully screwed that up for a while and and recovered. But you know, so you know, it it it was I always had that feeling ab about him that he didn't quite appreciate how much he had done in his life. And and I think in the very last days we had a conversation that that he kinda came back around and said, Yeah, I've been thinking about what you said. May maybe it is how far I came. All those years. And that was a very satisfying moment for me 'cause I think he got a little bit of a window into my coaching world that I do, you know, to to say, Okay, this is what I do for a living, help people see themselves in a better light. So speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. We're gonna practice reframing on you, Dad. speaker-0: Exactly. speaker-1: No, but that's it's it's powerful, you know. And I think it's ⁓ it says a lot, first of all, that you guys had that kind of a relationship where you could have, you know, a a conversation like that, which, you know, when you're talking about your father, it's never easy. You know, it it's it's never easy. There's some things with fathers, you know, particularly, you know, guys like us that kind of are, you know, we're we're from a like an older generation. Our parents were were very old school. speaker-0: No. speaker-1: You know, it it's it's hard to have those conversations and oftentimes like you find that you're it it's difficult for our our parents to open up because there it requires a certain degree of vulnerability which doesn't come naturally, right? speaker-0: Yeah. And I wanted to make this point too, because I've got your book right here. And and the in in reading your book, and I read it on the way out to San Diego when we met the first time in person. And I couldn't get over how much of the same ground we plowed. So true. And how much caring shows up and how much self-awareness shows up. ⁓ and even this conversation we've already had so far about my dad and and and his self-awareness. And it's just sometimes people miss that. Yeah. And don't give themselves enough credit for how much they've done and and and ⁓ and you know, my job now is just to help them see that. Yeah. speaker-1: You know, I think we live in a society, ⁓ Rod, where, you know, I d I describe it as, you know, we all have these hijackers, right? These these mental thought patterns that trip us up. And I think so many people have this like climber hijacker where they're like always climbing and it's never enough. And they're always looking at climbing higher and higher. And a lot of a lot of their validation, you know, comes from what they achieve externally and and the feedback that that generates for them. And so I think that's It's something to be aware of and I think definitely, you know, in your role as CHRO at Arxis, you and the and the coaching work that you do, you know, is is incredibly helpful to to help people see the other side of whatever issue they're facing. speaker-0: And and I didn't really get in touch with that, with my even my own self. Yeah. You know, until after three three different careers, engineer, lobbyist, you know, in and HR professional. But then when I went to grad school and I really had to stop what I was doing to take a deep dive into a different kind of subject and study, yeah. But I really began to s discover those things about myself. And it was so gratifying for me to discover my own red threads, the things that I'm good at and I love doing. And then be able to be in a job where I can lean into it for the rest of my career or the rest of my days. I don't know if I I am a I think I'm gonna be in a career the rest of my life by choice, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but it's and I don't know that everybody gets to experience that epiphany in in themselves. speaker-1: Yeah. I mean, you know, that that's it's it's interesting that you talk about that. And that's kind of like where I wanted to switch gears here for a second, because you know, your father was a petroleum engineer. You followed in his footsteps, which is, you know, it's a path that's so common when you talk to young people. So many people that I talk to, I'm like, Why did you end up doing this? Or why'd you end up doing that? Like in my case, I was a marketer. And as you know from the book, my dad was a marketer, right? So I kind of we drift into things that our parents do or are relative. Then you end up spending eleven years, you know, doing all this crazy travel, your time in the Arctic, you have this meeting that all of a sudden changes everything. Tell us a little bit about not just that meeting, but like how did you go from like drilling wells in the Arctic, you know, to to becoming a lobbyist for Enron in Washington? Because that's such a huge change. speaker-0: Patrick is my favorite story, man. I don't mind retelling it. And and I often say that it's a three beer conversation and I'm happy for you to buy. But so th I'm in the oil and gas business. It was a it was a sidestep from the attorney that I wanted to be, but I was good enough at it, but just absolutely hated it. I just hated the work. I didn't like being in the in the elements. I didn't like being you know, away from my family all the time. And when the oil and gas business dried up in the lower forty eight states, my job was in Alaska. And this with this is at a time when they didn't say, Hey, Rod, would you like to take this job? Your job's in Alaska or you can pack your box. Right. So I show up up there, I'm working seven days on and seven days off living in Anchorage, but in the Arctic it's a I don't know. speaker-1: So like Rod, you're going. speaker-0: two hour plane ride or so up to the Arctic. And, you know, after a certain amount of time up there, we were in this conference room and the president came in and he said, Hey, ⁓ any of you guys have any like public speaking experience? Nobody raised their hand. So I thought, well, I mean I when I recruited on college campuses, which by the way, I would do everything I could that wasn't engineering because I hated it so much. I would I would do I would do college recruiting and while I was there they would say, Hey, you're an engineer working. Why don't you come tell our student group kind of what it's like once you get out of school? So I would do that a few times. Then I ended up on this little speaker's bureau for these colleges and so I so I did a little bit of okay, branch, you're it. So he pulls me out of the room, we go down the hall to this tiny little office and and he says, Okay, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna get on a microphone on our Bluebird school bus, which was our transportation system in the Arctic. As odd as as odd as that is, it's a school bus un it was not air conditioned or heated. And and I said, You're gonna get a microphone, you're gonna tell these people how we can develop all these Arctic reserves very safely for the world. Well I I know how to do that. I mean, you know, it's part of our training to to do this work up here. I can do that. Do you mind me asking who's gonna be on this bus? And he said, yeah. So it's the Senate Energy Committee and the Secretary of Interior. And I'm pretty sure I don't remember what was said after that, but speaker-1: No pressure. speaker-0: I'm twenty-eight years old, by the way. Twenty-eight years old. And so I loved government. I love politics. I I love having the argument or the or the constructive conversation about developing oil and gas reserves very pristinely. And so I did it. And they invited me to go on a helicopter ride over to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We wanted to get open for exploration, which we know there's oil there. And ⁓ started thinking, wow. Maybe I can do something besides engineering someday. This is this is I mean, this is coming kind of easy to me and this is fun. And then back into engineering I went. And so here I am a few weeks later, I'm standing on a on a well pad out there about a few feet, built up a few feet above the tundra. And this pickup truck pulls up and it's the president again. He says, Get in the back. So this is never good. So I get in the back of the pickup truck and he says, Well, I guess you did an okay job with the lobbyists. They want you to come to Washington and do it with them in Washington is tell that same story over and over in their efforts to get the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge open. And he says, I'll never forget this part. He said, But if you do that, you're never gonna be an engineer in the Arctic again. That's gonna be your job. You're you're not gonna be an engineer anymore. speaker-1: You were and you were you were of course devastated. speaker-0: I was distraught and torn. I said, I think I can live with that. So Yeah, boxes and boxes. Yeah. Made it look really bad. But yeah, yeah. So so and that's when it started. And I did it for a year doing it from Alaska, which back then it was a long way to Washington, DC, from Alaska. And they finally moved me to Houston to get me halfway there. They they wanted to move me all the way to Washington, DC, but at twenty-eight years old with two kids. speaker-1: Boxes and boxes of Kleenex. speaker-0: You couldn't afford to put ⁓ in private school. You know, it was very expensive to live there. So I so I did it from ⁓ from Houston. That's how I got to Houston. So I've been here for thirty years. speaker-1: So, you know, there there's two things about your story, which I think are interesting, particularly for young people that are either, you know, in college, maybe thinking about their first job, or a lot of people, especially in our generation, you know, 50s, 60s, late 40s, people who are maybe stuck in a career that they don't like or a career that's changing and and maybe where they feel that they're not growing, they they feel that they need to move on. And so what one of the questions I was curious about, Rod, is how do you know when it's time to make that jump? Because obviously you spent eleven years as an engineer. And as much as you hated it, it was what you knew, right? And then all of a sudden you got this like weird lobbying thing going on, right? Which you seem to be good at, which people are telling you you seem to be good at. But man, it's it's like it's it's a bridge that's far, right? So you know, because I'm sure that so many people have this inclination that they're like, Man, I know that I would be like I could be a good marketer, or I could be a good writer, or I could be a good actor, or maybe I need to have my own speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: coffee shop. I don't know. But so many people get paralyzed by fear, right? And they often feel safer to stay, you know, with the devil that they that they know rather than the devil that they don't. Right. And so how did you kind of get over your fear and how did you make that transition? speaker-0: You know, I think some people are just wired for taking more risk than others. And I think I was in a very conservative family raised to to sort of honor the company you're working for and they're taking good care of you, do what they say, that sort of thing. Yeah. And and also being an engineer, unlike a business degree or a marketing degree or something like that, you don't have as clear a sight into anything outside of that. It's like being an accountant or an IT professional. Right. You don't you don't Often have a good view of what it looks like outside of that role. So I think those two things are working against me, just predisposed to risk. So so I I I think when I so it we have the benefit of looking back, right? We understand things more looking backwards. And and certainly once I discovered this idea of of red threads, of resilience, of who you're hanging out with, I think had I had those tools earlier in my career, it would have been clearer for me. that I was not happy doing what I was doing. And with some people around me that would have said, hey, you need to go do this, or or or people who made me want to be better than what I was than than what I was, maybe would have caused the light to go off earlier for me. But but now now I understand when I'm up against coaching clients, for instance, or even people inside my company who are struggling with not being in a job that that they're good at or that they like. Is we do that little assessment. We we s we sit down and and through some creative questioning, we find out what they're good at and what they love doing and how well does that match up. And that's Marcus Buckingham's work and love and work. And then ⁓ and then I move on to, hey, what have you overcome in your life that gives you courage? Where is that courage inside you? Something you've done differently or something you've overcome or the phoenix that's risen from the ashes in your life. And that should give you energy and and a propellant to to make that decision and make that leap as as some great authors use. And and and then and then choose the network, choose the people you're hanging out with that give you energy, that give you the courage to make these harder decisions. And look what they did. You know, and most people these days, most people have made some sort of significant career move. And yes, some of ⁓ it was handed to, some of them they discovered on their own. But but now I sort of have an exercise for how to take people through that decision. And and for me, it just kinda had to bump me in the head and say, Hey, here's an opportunity. And even though I was a little hesitant and had a little bit of, you know, of imposter syndrome about it, yeah. I thought, you know what? I I'm just gonna push the button. And I'm sure my dad thought I was never gonna eat again after I became a lobbyist. Yeah. And then when I got into HR, I'm pretty sure he thought, ⁓ this guy's on the rocks. This this guy's never gonna make it. So and I think when I reached the C suite, he he finally one day said something on the order like we've said to our our sons, Well, son, it looks like ⁓ looks like you're gonna you're gonna ⁓ make it. It's like Yeah It's gonna be okay. speaker-1: It's it's it's crazy, right? It's it's like because so you you end up as a lobbyist. You were you worked with with Enron for a number of years as as a lobbyist in DC. And then of course you make another pretty radical career pivot. So how did you figure out that next chapter? What what were the signs and what steps did you need to take to make that next chapter happen? speaker-0: You know, I I don't think I mentioned this in the book anywhere, but I think it's true. And you you test me on this, but once you make that sort of radical move the first time, the fear of making another move like that is not as great. Yeah, you you you you have some resilience that you've built up and some self-confidence that you can do other things. And and the lobbying job caused me to draw on public speaking and research and relationship building and speaker-1: I love that. speaker-0: and strategy and all these different pieces that are easily transportable to another situation. Right. So so f so for me, it was it was preparing me for something different. I remarried. I got two more kids in the deal. We we raised them all a hundred percent in our in our own home. ⁓ they didn't go to their other parents very often. It was a lot of people in the house. And I was now late thirties and at a time where I needed to be home more. And the lobbying career just didn't lend itself to that. I had an amazing boss. She's still a an amazing friend of mine. She came to my my big book signing and I was point able to point her out in the room and say, You're the one. And she came to me one day and she said, You know what? ⁓ I think you'd make a really great HR person. And I run HR too. So I want you to consider jumping over and becoming an HR director instead of a a government affairs director. Wow. And and it was the perfect fit at the perfect time. She said, You already have the legal background. So I think the transition will be easy. You you you're a relationship guy. So it's and she was right on all counts. She said, I'll teach you everything you need to know. That's interesting. And I mean, it was a little bit drinking from a fire hose, but it was a pleasant fire hose from an amazing boss that I still respect today. So she made it easier for me to make that transition. And then going to grad school late in life, 'cause I was still I still had a bachelor's degree in engineering running HR for some companies. I elected to to do it on a kind of a dare from my kids. But that's where I really discovered that I could go out and do some of these things on the side, keynote speaking, workshops, coaching that really leans into the stuff that I love. speaker-1: So I mean, you know, and that's one of the things that I found was one of the most remarkable parts of your story that I I really enjoyed is there are so many people out there, especially when you think of outside the United States, right? And I mean, for us who live in this in the US, you know, we often have blinders on, right? We don't really think about what's happening in other countries or in other cultures, right? We we we kind of take things for granted. And the US is kind of a crazy country and and we are a crazy people. And so we do crazy things, right? And and definitely I think the world you know, probably views us crazier than ever now. But but yeah, I couldn't resist. But but when you think of other when you think of other cultures, right? Like I lived, as you know, in in South America, I lived in Asia, I lived in Europe, a lot of cultures are much more conservative, right? It's like you go down this path of becoming a lawyer or a doctor or a business person. That's kind of like the path that you're on for the next thirty or forty years. That's like the the career trajectory is much more linear, right? And so you make multiple pivots speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. speaker-1: And then you do something that's very unusual, which I found very interesting, right? Is you decide to go back to grad school, right? And you're like your late fifties by then. So walk us through the the the reasoning on that. And and also I'd love to know what would you tell people that are maybe like considering that, but just think it's like preposterous to even think of going back to school once they're in their fifties. speaker-0: Yeah. And I did. I thought that. I was sitting in my daughter's graduation from Kansas State and ⁓ she was getting her master's in industrial and organizational psychology. ⁓ very HR ish sort of thing. And she and her mother lean over and they say, Hey, you can do this. And I'm thinking, I am negotiating union contracts all over the country. I'm in a different city every other week. And and when would I fit that in? And she said, No, no, they make it where you can fit it around your life. You know, th if you do it on online or distance learning, ⁓ and it it's it's just as rigorous, it's it's you know, it's just as informative as anything you can you can do in person. And I said, I I d I don't know. I don't know about that. So I came back home and I started thinking about it more, and of course my wife is saying, Look, you know and so w if you get to the reasoning as to why so I was around suddenly a lot of people who had degrees in HR who seemed to have some different tools than I had. They thought more deeply about some things around leadership and and so I was wanting some of that. And I was getting it with some, you know, some online education, but it's not the same. This is an immersive experience. And for me, that immersion that I finally said, Yeah, I want to I wanna go do it. And by the way, I said I want to go do it and I wanna do it internationally because I was working internationally and and the University of Liverpool popped up at the same cost as all the domestic colleges. And I thought, well, If I want to get an international experience, why would I get it from Kansas State? So not that Kansas State in a b is a bad program. It's not, but but Liverpool, I get a more worldly perspective. So I decide ⁓ to to do the Liverpool thing and four hundred and something papers. There were no tests, by the way, but you wrote a paper, you know, several papers a day, it seemed like. And it was a deep literature search. It's from the Red Brick Colleges. It's a it's a research college. There was no option to take classes instead of writing a a thesis. So the thesis process by itself enlightened me in the most amazing way. And from that I I got in touch with how much I love leadership. But but it's from it's from the the deep people aspect of it. Like people understanding themselves more than teaching them how to listen better. You know. Right. It's it's what's in what's between your ears that will prepare you to lead this other person to make them want to follow you. And that's where I really got the great enlightenment that has just carried me on, as you can tell, three years beyond normal retirement age and I and no ⁓ no quitting in sight. I I'm loving it too much. I I s I read and study every day, you know, just for my own enjoyment. speaker-1: I mean it it's it's I i it was remarkable because I think like I said, so many people they don't they don't contemplate that, they don't take it seriously. Maybe they think they won't have the time, maybe they think they're not gonna get enough out of it at that stage in their career. What was it that you think you got out of the masters? Like w what what what was it that was so powerful you from going through that journey and and studying at that stage in your life? speaker-0: Besides the the pure knowledge gain that I had, it it for the first time, and I think it's a a design of the master's program, but it was for the first time I could take unrelated ideas, seemingly unrelated ideas, and find the commonality between the two. And in doing so, I developed this leadership model based on the literature search where you had all of these leaders, and I think we talked about it briefly when we met, but all these leaders who talk in silos. You know, and this isn't fair to Brene Brown, but vulnerability for Brene Brown, trust for Stephen Mr. Covey, love and relationships to your work is is Marcus Buckingham. You have all the teamwork that's done by McChrystal and all the every every Navy SEAL ever that's written a book is about teamwork, which is great. Simon Sinek and the why. Well, what I discovered was not only are they interdependent, they are sequential. So if you if you start with caring, then it then logically it's respect and then trust and then empathy and then vulnerability and self-awareness. And then that prepares somebody for psychological safety. And then once you have that, you give people a sense of belonging. And then it's a bit of the why. And then building a team and all the aspects of of diversity and inclusion and then goals and then doing the work and then coaching with Michael Bungay Staniard's book, The Coaching Habit. You know, how do you coach people to get to the right answer? And then You start getting the right answers out of the work, and that produces the results. So I've taken you from caring to results, which is really the HR person's shepherding of all of the workforce to get to that point. And I discovered the sequential nature of those authors from studying them and being immersed in them deeply. And that relationship, now, when I read your book, I think of all the things about my book that are the same, about Marcus Buckingham that are the same. We quote the same people. Yeah. And and and and here's I want to say this at the at the risk of talking too much. But if you and I are talking about this, if Arcus Buckingham and Brene Brown are talking about this, and other CEOs that I've known, I've watched keynote speeches and they've come out and they said, you know what? It's really all about relationships, making people feel valued. They will do anything for you if you set them up to follow you because they believe in what you're doing and that you make them better. speaker-1: Impossible, right. speaker-0: And why aren't we why do we have to preach that? Why aren't people just naturally coming to that conclusion? It's because the world of the of commercialism is driving into the KPIs so that we do leadership last. So Patrick, how many jobs did you get done today? And and how much how much did you leave on the table that we had to do tomorrow? By the way, we get to the end of the conversation. It's like, ⁓ yeah, ⁓ how are you doing on your development plan? Yeah, okay, fine. So speaker-1: Exactly. speaker-0: That was the all the leadership they got, right? Yeah. So that's I think it I'm fascinated by that. speaker-1: Yeah, it's it's it's it's ⁓ it's amazing. You know, I was on the phone with a friend of mine who runs a leadership development company out in California. Great guy. You know, he and I were at Google together, and he was telling me how the industry had just gotten crushed the last couple of years, you know, leadership development and and coaching as an industry. And I've seen it as well. And and the interesting thing was we need it now more than ever. Like I've never seen people so stressed out, so anxious, so confused. AI, the geopolitical situation has just made this infinitely worse. And yet, you know, the prevailing theory in business is, well, investing in people's a luxury. It's a variable expense. Right? This is what you see across most boards and a and across the C suite in every industry, in every country. It doesn't it doesn't matter. And it's like we we somehow see the guys who or, you know, men and women who lead differently, who figure out the stuff that you were talking about as, you know, geniuses or savants, right? Because they seem to get something that really is is is should be pretty obvious. And and so I think one of the questions I had for you there is, you know, what are what are most CEOs not seeing about leadership? You know, what do they what do they not understand about what it takes to effectively lead an organization in today's speaker-0: And and I think they're all over the board there depending on the individual. Sure. The ones that I know well, some of them don't understand the lever they pull on culture every day. Yeah. You know, whatever you do gives your entire team the permission or the right to do whatever whatever you're doing. If you talk over people in meetings, it gives them permission to talk over people in meetings. You know, it's it's that kind of thing. And I don't think they see themselves That way. I think they're so driven to do what the board wants them to do. I I had a CEO one time that said, what the board is interested in, I am passionate about. Which means, you know, if they say they're interested in something, I'm gonna drive it home for the next board meeting. And I think a lot of them are just missing the opportunity to be human. And and sometimes it takes getting them to a point where they're in touch with their own feelings to say, Hey, how did that feel when you thought about that? People that are following you wanna feel that too. They want to feel that sense of importance and significance and belonging. And and belonging and fitting in is different. Belonging is I'm in here with you guys and we're gonna see this to the end. That's the resolve that you have. So ⁓ so so I think they're they just are so driven to perform. And I'm not talking about all of them. I'm talking about some of them. A lot of them get it. A lot of them get it and just don't have the tools, like right now in the construction business, we don't we don't have the discretionary income to give bonuses like we used to or company parties like we used to and things like that which which help certainly the the people at the the lower end of the income ⁓ brackets in your in your company. The the people at the higher levels kind of understand, you know, they've been around the block before, but it's harder for the younger folks. I did want to mention one thing too. I do I get asked a lot to counsel young people who are either graduating high school or just got to college and unlike you and I who had a role model and you were kind of in a groove to, okay, I can go get this degree and and do this work, they've not, some of them not had a job by the time they graduate college, have never had a job before. Yep. And they're taking they're taking 12 hours a semester and working through the taking classes through the summer. They don't have summer jobs like, you know, I took 18 to 24 hours because I couldn't afford to be in school. So so they're coming out with with no really career Direction, no having reported to someone before, not having had a site of expectations they had to deliver on. And so you've got these CEOs with successive supervisors down the chain trying to manage this personality come to work for us. And I think it's infinitely more complex than it once was. speaker-1: I agree. I agree. I ⁓ you know, I think it's infinitely more complex. People seem to have an overwhelming amount of choice on the one hand that many of us didn't have. I remember when I had the conversation with my dad, he would just say, Well, you know, I just really didn't have a choice. I just, you had a job and I just followed it. And if the company said go, you know, here, I would go there and if they said go right, I would go right. And if they said change country, I would change country. Right. So probably part of it for young people is the overwhelming amount of choice. And I think maybe to some extent the illusion, because I think it is to some extent an illusion, that, you know, you can just be a freelancer or be a YouTuber or or or have a an Instagram channel and make millions. Right. But yeah. But but one of the things I was curious about, like I think that for me, I remember when I was reading your book, I had this like it's and it's so rare that I have these moments when I read a book. I get this like OMG, ⁓ my God, like aha moment. And it was the moment where you talk about caring as like the foundational skill that leaders have to have to have high performance teams. And so for the sake of the audience, walk us through a little bit your argument on that. Cause I found it fascinating. I remember writing it down like right then and there. I was like, ⁓ my God, I never thought about this. Why is caring so important in in organizations today? Why is caring so important for leaders today? speaker-0: Yeah. It's also the reason I I became a storyteller, 'cause I I gave this very complex leadership model, but I told one story and this is the story that I told. And then weeks later, that same group, the consultant that I was working with, came back to me and they said, You know what? Of all the stuff that you said that day, they remembered the story about caring more than anything else. Yep. So it resonated with me and it gave me a sense that maybe storytelling is where I should start with leadership development. So I finished graduate school and the CFO came knocking on the door and he said, Hey, let me take you to lunch and celebrate. He said, Great. So we go to lunch. And he says, Rod, if you could write in the back of a matchbook, you know, what you learned in graduate school, what would you write? Like, whoa, man, I wasn't prepared for that question. So I thought for a minute and thought, you know what? It's gonna sound a little strange, but I would write the word caring. Or s he's a CFO, you know, not particularly wired for emotional conversation. He rears back in his chair and laughs a little bit. I said, No, Joe, let me tell you. Hey man, I understand what you're thinking right now, but let me tell you how this resonates with me and I think it'll resonate with you. So your your daughter's graduating from college. She's got a theater arts major and she doesn't have a job. And she's coming back. She's she was studying abroad. She's coming back to the U.S. I said, what if we put her outside your office and let her be your assistant? We're gonna just allow that this one time, this nepotism thing. We're gonna put her right outside your office in a cubicle. How will you make her successful? And you know, he came up with a pretty brilliant set of things. You know, I'm gonna have her desk ready to go. ⁓ I'm gonna have all of her IT stuff already wired, I'm gonna introduce her to all the people that that she'll need to network with, you know, ⁓ I'll check in with her, I have a thirty, sixty, ninety day plan for her. And I said, Yeah, exactly. But what about that accounting assistant that's two cubicles down? She's worked for you for three years. Do you do you even know her last name or where she lives or what's important to her? And I could see the expression on his face, you know, sort of draining away. And and I said, you know, I think if you were to come in tomorrow and put your backpack down next to her desk and and say, Hey, Darlene, I I've been remiss. I've ⁓ it's I I own this, but I haven't taken the time to get to know you and and figure out what's important to you, what you want to do in your career and and and sort of make those amends. And I said, you know, what's the only difference in the way you would treat those two people? your daughter and this accounting assistant. What's the only difference? What's the only reason why you would treat them differently? It's how much you care. Yeah. And I said, Yeah, I'm not asking you to care as much for this person as you would your own flesh and blood. That's ridiculous. But somewhere between doing everything you possibly can for them and doing nothing for them is a huge gap that the slightest nudge will will make a huge impact. It's a huge lever. And having that conversation at her desk that next morning the her her performance the rest of that day is gonna be through the roof. And I think that's missing for a lot of people. And it's actually there's a study on how we we underestimate the impact we have on other people and the amount of amount of goodness that gratitude creates with people. And it's it's proven. It's been studied. So that became sort of the center and the beginning conversation of all of my leadership model studies. And it's a very impactful story, happens to be true. And and and I d I don't even know that I knew how leveraging that conversation was gonna be when I when I was having that with them, but I do now. speaker-1: It it's it's amazing because I I've had the same experience as you. You know, I ⁓ I have a guy on my team who works at the Philippines, young guy, early twenties, you know, has parents RH, you know. And I remember one day, you know, he's like he sends me a WhatsApp message and he's like, I can't join the call today because I don't have access to internet. There was like a typhoon that went through the Philippines. The house got the the roof got torn off my house. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, Jesus, I mean the roof got torn off this guy's house, you know. And he's like still sending me messages and is worried about showing up for work, you know? Yeah. And I sent the guy a transfer like the same day. I'm like, look, I don't know how much it costs to replace the roof of your house, you know. It's like, ⁓ it's gonna cost a couple hundred dollars. You know, I sent him a couple hundred dollars. I'm like, don't worry about it. Just this is just ⁓ it's not even a loan, just fix the roof on your house. And he was so taken aback by that because he had worked for other US companies. You know, for s in some of these roles where you're like, they're literally measuring how much time you take for lunch, you know, and and and analyzing if you went to the bathroom too many times, like those kind of companies. And the next thing I knew, he went on social media and he talked about how his employer, in this case me, had done this. And all the comments were like full of people saying, like, ⁓ my God, you know, I wish my boss would do my company would never do that for me. Nobody cares. speaker-0: Yeah. Well. speaker-1: And I have seen that over and over and over, Rod, in my career as well. It's like when you show the slightest hint about caring about people, you ask about their day, you ask what they want to do with their careers, you ask them how their parents are doing, you remember and sweat the details, the the the impact is is is massive. And and it's translatable. You know, you see people working extra hours and putting in extra time and going outside going out of their way to do things that they wouldn't normally do. I mean This guy I know is working on my business even when he's not supposed to. I know it for a fact, you know. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's ⁓ it's it's incredibly powerful and it it sets you up as a person people want to follow. Yeah. You know. And you and you did it just out of the out of the goodness of your heart and your feeling for that person, but the impact on that person was far greater magnified than what you ever thought or intended. Yeah. It's it's it's absolutely true. speaker-1: Absolutely. Absolutely. We we can't have a a a conversation about leadership and about people and about companies without talking about the elephant in the room. So I wanna spend a couple of minutes before we wind down talking about artificial intelligence. And I want to get your opinion on this because it's it's like one of these things where I keep thinking about this over and over and I and I talk to a lot of HR leaders about this. I'm keen on your perspective. I mean, in an era where speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: Part of the leadership mystique used to be that the leader oftentimes either had or was perceived to have all the answers and had certainly a lot more knowledge than the average person. In an era where that's now to some degree disappeared because of AI, how, in your opinion, is leadership changing? How does it need to adapt? How does it need to change? We'll have to have you back. speaker-0: ⁓ how long is this podcast? Yeah. So it's well, there's so many different ways we could take this, but we're in this incredible state of flux right now. Because it's it's still new, even though it's been around a while. It's still new for boardroom conversations, for leadership group conversations. And then you have the fear of people who don't understand it and and think they might lose their job. And so there's there's a whole lot of whirl around it. It's as far as the the leader. Who had all the answers and maybe no longer has all the answers. It should free them up to do more leadership stuff, more inclusion, making sure the right people are around the table for the diversity they need and leading this thing to even greater heights, embracing it to say, hey, I'm not, I shouldn't be threatened by this, you know. We should embrace this. And I'm gonna let go and let these answers be the answers, and then, you know, make our best people judgments about the answers and then and then use it as a propellant. But I wanna I wanna give you this real quick thing. I don't remember if I told you this or not, but I use it a lot in AI conversations. And I I did it on a I was on a panel just the other night ⁓ with a bunch of CFOs and we were talking about AI and I said, Look, hey, I was the last graduating class in high school to use a slide rule. When I got to college, I was in engineering, I got a four-function calculator and we thought the heavens had opened. And and then it was a programmable calculator. And then it was, ⁓ there's a mainframe, but you can only use that on odd number Tuesdays at two o'clock. And so nobody got to use it. They taught us all how to program, but we just couldn't use it. I get out of college, we still are using the handheld programmable calculators. And then one day we had a desktop a a Mac Tower, Apple Tower, and it was wired to other Macs and we could actually send a note to each other that way. Then it was wireless. I mean, then it was the Cray and we could get time on the Cray and IBM and And then it was the internet. Yeah. The internet opened the heavens, you know, and and now we've got AI. You know, in all of those iterations that I was an engineer all the way through that career, no one ever lost their job. It just made them better, faster, simpler than what they'd been doing. And and I have hopes, yeah, there probably gonna be some rote jobs that get replaced, but that just takes that person who now understands the company and how that works. We can redeploy them into something else. And and for the few that might end up standing on a rock that that got pulled out from under them, there are gonna be other jobs out there that get created by this that we don't even know about yet. So I don't have any fear of that. And we we've got a huge effort going on in our company right now where we're sanding the river. We're asking every department to dream, just dream at what you think AI could do for you and give it to us and let us put that in a queue. And we'll work on getting solutions. And we've we've generated, I don't know, six or eight now onboarded solutions in the company just in the last few months. So speaker-1: How do you how do you go about encouraging people to step out of their comfort zone and embrace technology like this? Particularly when in some cases, some of these people are looking at this and being like, man, if I embrace this thing, this thing could take my job. Right. How how do you how do you go about doing that? speaker-0: It's again, it's a very individual thing. Some people just blindly go into it saying this is gonna be fun and and and do help I will help create the next version of our company. That's the way some people feel about it. And then those that are less than less enlightened and maybe came in with one tool and and never thought about doing anything else, and it could be some of those people who never had a job and they finally have a job. Now they have a car. They have a car payment. They still live with their parents, but they got a car payment, an insurance payment. And suddenly that's at risk if they lose their job. And they're just so myopic about it. And I just think we just need some more soap time to have people understand what the positive outcomes can be of this. Yeah. You know, there's just there's just so many naysayers. And I'm a novice myself. I mean, I've I I burn up chat B GPT on lots of different analyses and comparisons and financial things that I work on, benefits programs, things like that. Acquisitions is a great one for acquisitions, but I'm still a novice myself. speaker-1: It's incredible. I mean, I I have been blown away by what this technology allows us to do. I mean, I ⁓ I can see myself Yeah, I built I built an app. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I I I built it in a weekend. ⁓ I I got on, you know, Claude Code and I was like, okay, you know, I want to help people be more self aware. I have a feeling people don't know enough about themselves. They don't understand their values at work. I'd like to build an app. And I had seen something online that I'd used in my coaching. When I work with leaders and I wasn't happy with that solution because it just felt old fashioned, it didn't feel friendly, it you know, was just old and dated. And I was blown away. I mean, I built the first version at 48 hours. And then over weeks I just iterated and iterated and iterated. But you know, I I had never written a line of code in my life. I mean, when somebody told me about Python, I thought it was a snake. I had no idea. Yeah, I was pretty clueless. But but when I see how far I've come and how I use those tools now, I use it for everything. You know, I I I use it for research, you know, I I prepare our podcast episodes, write the scripts, you know, I I build automations, I build agents to do all sorts of things for me. And I do really believe that to some extent it's it's something that you said earlier in our conversation, which appears over and over again in your book, which is ⁓ you know, our willingness and ability to step out of our comfort zone, do something that's really hard with the knowledge that even if it fails, we're still gonna learn a lot in the process. And if it succeeds, well, then great. Right. But either way, you're you're all of a sudden you've gone from A to B. You're in this new land now. And and like you said earlier, ⁓ when you were talking about your career pivot, the science now tells us that when we do something that's hard neurologically, our brain is more ready to it is is is in a better place to do the next hard thing. Yeah. And so this is why when you see incredibly successful people. Part of their success just comes from doing insanely hard things and they have understood that even when they fail, they still succeed because they're still learning. They're still better than they were the day before. It it it's really it's really amazing. It's really amazing. speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. You know, I I I know this is true for you. ⁓ it's all over your book. It's all over the conversations that we've had. You know, we haven't done it all correctly all the way along. We've made mistakes, both been fired, and you know, we we we either win or we learn. And I was supposed to be an attorney in Oklahoma City. That's the way my life was laid out to be. And when I think about that today, and it's it's very poignant right now because I just got the invitation to my fiftieth high school reunion back in Oklahoma City. Wow. And yeah, wow. Where did that time go? But but you know, when I think about that, I would probably have lived a very comfortable life, you know, and not particularly challenging, but I would be in Oklahoma City that entire fifty years. And and when I think back of the places I've lived and the things that I've seen and the things that I've experienced that I would have never experienced, Washington DC and having a meeting in the executive office building next to the White House and meeting with the Under Secretary of Commerce and you know, call-ups on the Hill and working in the Arctic, as much as I hated it, I did it. I was an engineer in the Arctic at ninety five degrees below zero wind chill factor. I did it. Yeah. And and those are some experiences that that very, very few people are gonna be able to say they did. So true. And and so that's the old, you know, Garth Brooks unanswered prayers, man. I I am ⁓ grateful But I got to do some of those things. Some of the individual days I wasn't grateful for, but but overall I wouldn't have it any other way. And I know I know that from reading your book, I know that from talking to you that you would say some of the same things. speaker-1: Absolutely. Hundred percent. Hundred percent Rod. Rod, we're we're before we close down, we've got our we're our signature lightning round of questions. Lightning round. So I always ask three quick questions, three quick answers. So ⁓ let's let's dive into the lightning round before we wrap up. Question number one for you if you could have any superpower, what would it be? speaker-0: It would be able to it would be be able to to to be able to read as as lightning fast. You know, my what's holding me back right now is that I love reading and I do the best with Audible but but I have to I have to page through the book. And I'm a I'm not a very fast reader because I was an engineer. We don't read fast. In fact I think I write faster than I read, but yeah, that's that. speaker-1: So lightning fast reading. Okay. Question number two. If you could have dinner with anybody in history, alive or dead, who would you choose? Benjamin Franklin. Okay. All right. Benjamin. I can understand. Yeah, he's very interesting character. And last but not least, and this one kind of goes really to the heart of what you do. If you could give a piece of advice to a young person who is looking for a career of meaning and purpose, what would you tell them? speaker-0: Benjamin Franklin. Fascinated by that guy. Yeah. Yeah. Figure out what you love doing and that you're good at and never stop learning about it. And that man, the younger me, if somebody would have said that to me and I would have had the courage to do it, that would have been amazing advice back in the day. Yeah. speaker-1: I love that. I'm I think it's to me it always goes back to Ikigai, you know. It ⁓ the the Japanese concept of of doing doing leading a life of meaning and purpose, right? And it's ⁓ doing what you love, doing what you're good at, doing what the world needs. And and obviously you gotta you gotta you gotta bring home the bread, you know, pay the rent at some point. But ⁓ Rod, thank you so much for this time for this conversation. ⁓ it's been an honor, it's been a real treat. You know, I enjoyed ⁓ reading your book tremendously. ⁓ folks, if you haven't, you know, check out Week Weak Minded. You know, you can find it on Amazon, obviously, or any other place where you get your books. You know, fifty-two weeks worth of wisdom, some very practical wisdom as well as some very powerful and very raw and emotional stories from ⁓ from Rod. ⁓ thank you for everything you do. Thank you for the work that you do, you know, caring about others, ⁓ for setting a great example about, you know, what leadership is all about, for your frameworks. You know, and and ⁓ for your music, you know, we didn't go into that today. ⁓ we didn't have a chance. You know, you got your guitar there. I know you got the cornet upstairs. You know, I think ⁓ a lot a lot of people have appreciated ⁓ the the tunes that you've that you've played, whether it was on your porch or somewhere else. So ⁓ really appreciated this. speaker-0: Yeah. The journal that's coming out this fall has a QR code for every song that's in the book. So it'll take you directly to the song. And I also want to say, Patrick, I I really it's amazing how fast a friendship we developed. I know it's one that's gonna last for a very long time and I'm so looking forward to collaborating with you in the in the future. speaker-1: Likewise, likewise. I I gotta go visit you in Texas, man. I wanna I wanna check out the bourbon room in person at some point. So here you go. I will make a point to get out there and see you. But ⁓ where can ⁓ where can people learn more about you, about your work? ⁓ what's the best place to follow you? speaker-0: Come pick you up, my friend. Yeah, best place is probably LinkedIn. Second best place is my website. And I only reason the only reason I say it's second is 'cause it's still under development, but beweakminded dot com. W dot beweakminded dot com, that week with two E's. But I'm constantly producing comment ⁓ content on ⁓ on LinkedIn and it's my latest thinking and ⁓ already thinking about the next book as we all do, right? speaker-1: Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. No, my editor's been waiting for that for a while. So I gotta I at some point I gotta figure out the next I have the idea already, but there you have it, folks. ⁓ this has been another ed edition of Morg Unfiltered with today's guest, Rod Cousin, ⁓ Rod Branch saying thank you so much for for being here today. It's been a real treat. And ⁓ and folks, you know, if you took away anything interesting in this conversation, ⁓ leave us a comment. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: give it a give the episode a like, share it with somebody who who needs to hear some of the things that ⁓ that we talked about today, you know, because there's a lot of insight, there's a lot of wisdom. And and like I said, you know, the the book Weak Minded has has a lot to learn from and I think can be a lot of help to to many different people. So until then, this is Patrick Bork signing off from Lork Unfiltered. We will catch you in the next episode. Stay safe. Keep learning. Keep growing.