Becoming a High-Functioning Team | with Dr. William Ramey

Building a Coaching Culture - #80: Becoming a High-Functioning Team | with Dr. William Ramey ==== Will Ramey: [00:00:00] Where do I want to be tomorrow, three months from now? Where can we come together to be better today, tomorrow, three months from now, six months from now? that's that secret sauce, and it's not secret. It's in the research of what'll take a team being, good to being high performing. J.R. Flatter: Hey, welcome back everybody. I'm JR Flatter as always here with my co-host Lukes. we are here today with Will Ramey, and we're gonna allow Will to introduce himself here in a [00:01:00] second. We'll just remind everybody, who we are and what we're talking about. so we are talking to leaders of complex organizations who are competing and succeeding in this 21st century labor market. How do you attract talent, retain talent? So Will, if you'll take a second, I'm using three screens, so I'm taking a few notes watching you here, and I've got your website and your LinkedIn over here. you can just take a few minutes and tell us about yourself and the great work that you're doing. Will Ramey: Yeah, sure. No, I appreciate that. JR and Lucas, thank you so much. So my name's Will Ramey. I am a business owner. I'm a combat veteran. I'm a doctor in, organizational behavior leadership development research. let's see. So a little bit about myself. my mission right now in life is to help organizations develop and build stronger teams through understanding and bridging research with, practical application. The desire and [00:02:00] impact that leaders have on their teams is huge. So I have spent my career in leadership positions and one thing that's unique about my career, I have never actually performed functional technical task of my team members. So I've led maintenance teams in the Army. I was never a mechanic. I've led space control operations teams. I've never been a satellite equipment operator. and what that's given me is this unique perspective to be able dive into, listen to, to have empathy, and to understand what someone needs to do their work, and to give them the tools to do that. What that brings, I think, was a natural curiosity for me to follow on and understand more about leadership. So I pursued my doctorate from Drexel University. I obtained that in, 2021 and since then I've been doing research in the fields of team dynamics and shared leadership and bringing that to organizations in a way that they can experience a better way to work, a different way to work and leave teams being stronger, more [00:03:00] successful. That has projected me and pushed me to start my own business. And I started that venture about a year and a half ago after pursuing my, coaching credential. And I wanted to bring experiential learning to teams so that we can have work places and organizations be better, be positive and happier places to work. J.R. Flatter: Yeah, you've seen a lot of things that Lucas are very familiar with. The different people that we talk to, and he and I as you know, are coaches ourselves and leadership developers ourselves. So it wouldn't be unusual that we have some of the same themes and words and processes that we're talking about. you got a stack of,experiences here. some that I'm familiar with and some that I'm not. When you come to an organization, what's the uniqueness that you bring, to that organization? Will Ramey: So for me, the uniqueness is being able to draw on a broad range of experience. I think that plays to my advantage when I'm able to first and foremost build relationships with people. [00:04:00] So I have lived in, you know, half a dozen different places throughout my career, different regions of the country. I've worked in different industries from distribution and warehousing to, highly technical operations. and what's different about my approach to leadership is taking away. That typical authoritative directive approach and blending in empowerment, collaboration, trust, within my team. And I think what I'm able to do is bring people together to have a collective purpose, a shared understanding, and draw from a multiple range of experiences to get people to see things differently and be more inclusive in the work that we do. But yet, That military background I fall back on helps me drive to that common goal, like what's our objective? What's our end state? where are we moving to, and how can we get there? Lucas Flatter: so yeah, like JR said,we recognize the language you're using and everything and we often talk about [00:05:00] these things in anecdotal stories or experiences. what is the research telling you that maybe it's not so clear to us? Will Ramey: So, you know, recently the research I've gotten into is this idea of shared leadership. And that when we look at the 21st century world of work and we look at the demographics and the world of work is changing, we've got disruption all around us. We've got ai machine learning, the pace of business is changing. The industrial age, the idea of command and control and leadership being purely about a person who holds a position, I think is starting to move away. You can still have that and you can still have a vertical hierarchy, but occurs within that? What research is showing? Is that when formal leaders share leadership responsibilities throughout their team, when leadership and followership ebb and flow trust is built, collaboration is built. Engagement goes up. You start to see higher levels of team [00:06:00] effectiveness, more levels of job satisfaction from your team members, more engagement from your team members, and that research has showed as relates to higher levels of performance. But what's counterintuitive is this idea of I have to give up control, I have to give up power in order to get better results. But I, my image myself as a leader, I'm supposed to be the subject matter expert, quote unquote. I'm supposed to be, you know, the person with all the answers. That's not necessarily true. the ability to be vulnerable and to open up and say, I don't know, but you do. Right? I first experienced that when I was a maintenance recovery officer in charge in the Army. And I learned that lesson and then getting into research, I'm starting to see that unfold. So as you, you shift that directive approach to leadership into a more of a coaching approach, bringing the best out in people, giving them opportunity, raising their self-awareness, helping them, helping people come together. This different approach to leadership shifts [00:07:00] and you get better results over the long term. Lucas Flatter: Awesome. J.R. Flatter: So I'm looking at your, site here and you talked a couple different places about Legos, and as a father of four and a grandfather of 10, I've been admiring their business model, but I didn't know they had a leadership play. Tell me a little bit more about that, if you would. Will Ramey: Yeah, I'd love to. Right. So, yeah, I'm a father myself and I have stepped on my fair share of Legos,across the, living room, floor and bedroom floor. There's always a stray one hanging around. and my kids absolutely. Especially my youngest, she plays, and when I was looking at different methodologies for team development workshops, I came across Lego Serious Play and what Lego serious play is, it was founded by the Lego Company in the late nineties, early two thousands. And it was actually, you know, researched and proven as a methodology for, design thinking and strategic planning is where it started. But what it has evolved into, Is the process of being [00:08:00] able to unlock and engage people at a deeper level. So the process of Lego serious play, I have used in coaching, I have used in team development workshops. What you see is you have a, a problem set you want to get across, right? Where do we want to be? Do we wanna raise collaboration? do I do. I want to improve my executive presence? So you start asking questions. And the fourth step model of Lego serious play takes you through a question, and then you build that question in a model, and then you share your story. And if it's in a team dynamic, the fourth step after you share your story is that reflection. The power of Lego serious play is that one, it engages everybody, and two, it starts to get you thinking in. Metaphors. You know, how do I show, and how do I express collaboration in a group? How do I express how we can be more collaborative? And you start building a model of what you're thinking. And now not only do you have a thought you can express verbally, but you can express it in a physical form. And then you start building off, depending on [00:09:00] what the goals are for the workshop or the person. some of these shared models. So now you have a very visceral, kinetic connection to my thought, my story, the model that it represents. And so think about your typical training, evolution of engagement. You have the person that may dominate a conversation. You have a person that's first to answer. You have a person that's hiding in the corner. With Lego series play, there's no place to hide. It gives you a safe space to be able to express, to share, to contribute to a conversation. And in the coaching, world, whether it be children or adults, it gives you a different way to think about how you can express and share your story with Legos. and when you start to play and you start the bright colors, the clicking of the blocks, the putting things together. it adds that depth of creativity and playfulness and it takes that shield away and allows you to open up and express yourself more. And it was interesting. I'd led a workshop with a group of, colonels and [00:10:00] senior level executives for the Department of Army, and I have my Legos out and pre-game in the workshop, getting ready to start, and I've got a person sitting there and they're putting these bricks together. He is like, I don't understand. He goes, this is a kid's toy. I don't understand what we're doing expressing to me his dismay potentially, or his lack of understanding. He's sitting there putting bricks together. And so I politely pointed out, I said, you realized as you're saying, I don't understand this, you're playing with the bricks already, so you've already started to engage with the medium. And as soon as I pointed out to him, he laughed. He goes, okay, I'll buy. And then, I found is by the end of these workshops and sessions, people said, I have no idea that. Engaging with Lego bricks was gonna unlock so much for me. But what it does as a facilitator, I draw that out and as a participant, they get the opportunity to express there. So it's a very interesting, methodology that has been proven and has a wide range of application. Lucas Flatter: I love that. I mean, it reminds me of, some sort of game design conversations about this is a metaphor, and [00:11:00] you know, this is a metaphor for your motivation. Maybe in another aspect of your life. Do you incorporate any sort of, game theory or game design and your leadership kind of practice? Will Ramey: Oh, absolutely. So I have, Whether it be at work when we're doing some small team exercises, or whether it be what, I'm tasked to facilitate a workshop. I believe that, that gamification comes out, right? So at work, when we can turn something into a challenge and you know, somewhat competitive with, you know, get better than last time, beat the clock, things of that nature, that gamification piece comes out. When I do workshops with people, what really bonds 'em together is that experiential learning concepts, and that comes out. Through play. So I've led workshops where we're talking about leadership, different leadership styles. Now you can give a, you can give a lecture on different leadership styles, but one of the, activities I've led is called the Mars Rover activity. So you literally have three different, sets of C connects, kind of, you know, similar to Legos. And the team task [00:12:00] is to build a, a rover and you're gonna be measured on cost and, speed and quality. Then I give each team leader that's elected has a role to play. One's laissez-faire, one's empowering, one's toxic, but the team doesn't know that. So you're getting people engaging in acting in a certain way of a set of leadership behaviors, and you're getting a team that's experiencing that person and now you're getting a measured result. And nine times outta 10, the empowering leader team builds the rover the best. The laissez fair leader gets kind of put off to the side and the abusive, type supervisor, their team doesn't typically get much done or, doesn't beat the clock. So introducing these games is part of it, but the power of that comes in that debrief, asking those people, what did you think? What did you feel? What did you learn? How do you apply that back at work? So it's that nice transition of. Having a specific game designed with a purpose and function, and pulling out the lessons [00:13:00] identified and turning those into lessons learned and actionable steps to take back into your workplace. Lucas Flatter: Awesome. J.R. Flatter: So I see. Have a. Lecture here on building high performing teams. I'd love to hear you define that and then tell us how you do it for our listeners. Will Ramey: Yeah, so, so high performance. You know, you can have a team that is functional and they come in, they show up, they do what's asked of them, and they are, they're meeting the mark and it doesn't feel great. Something's missing. They're plateauing at performance, and it turns in to be very transactional. The difference with a high performing team is this level of engagement, this ability to be not just cooperative,collaborative, cohesive. Right? this operating in the context of co. So with high performance as a leader, what I want to, get after, and I've done research on this, in, different organizations. There are certain behaviors and team dynamics that will [00:14:00] support team performance to take you to the next level. One is the leader's communication. How am I showing up as a leader? How am I passing information? Formal, informal, verbal, non-verbal. I don't want to use information as a weapon, as a source of power. I want to disperse that power, so I'm gonna give access to my team to every bit of information they need access to. The second is trust. As I start to share and I open up and I'm transparent as a leader, I extend trust to get trust. And then as that ebbs and flows and dances back and forth, my team begins to trust me. I trust my team. We start to pick up speed, and I'm sure most people out there have read,you know, Covey, speed of trust. There's a equation there. As trust goes up, speed of business goes up and costs go down. There's less redundancy. I don't have to repeat myself. I don't have to check up, you know, two or three times on a person. The person doesn't have to second guess and interpret what I'm saying. So communication and trust. And then as you start to gel, this team dynamic of mutual supporting [00:15:00] behaviors, if I see somebody who's down, I'm checking on 'em. If I see somebody who's struggling, I go help 'em. If I know something or I see a better way to do something, I'm sharing that with my team members. I'm asking questions, right? So we start to pick each other up. And then as that comes together as a team leader, the next thing I'm looking for to really take that performance to the next level is team level empowerment. I have a collective purpose. We're all bought into it. I didn't dictate the collective purpose. We came up with it together. I have meaningful work. I can tie my team members and they are clear on how what they are supporting impacts the overall organization. You can look at NASA as the example. Right. If, during the, the, moon launch, stories go, if you asked, somebody at NASA what they're doing, they're helping to put people on the moon. Whether it's emptying the trash, whether it's the, you know, engineering a, component for, our launch system within my teams, no matter what it is we do, we always go back to the vision of the organization and the higher level purpose. So we're, stuck to that. [00:16:00] Delegating and getting out of the way, which is probably one of the hardest things to do as a leader. But to get that next level of performance, to have a team come together to be high performing, you've got to vary your power sources, which means you have to, empower people, allow them decision making, ask them, their opinion, participative decision making, bring them together and give them the boundaries of ownership, right? We all own the results. And then as we go through, My job as a leader to control resources is to remove roadblocks. So when I have access to information and we're sharing communication, when we have mutually supportive behaviors, when we trust each other, both cognitively and effectively, I can trust you and I feel I can trust you. And then we start to empower our team members, our teams. Now we have a shared belief. Now it becomes more than just what, I'm here to do. It becomes why I'm here to do it, and how can we get better? And that's where as leaders, you can start to coach people along the way [00:17:00] to bring about this level of awareness, to bring about, this eye on, here's where I stand today. Where do I want to be tomorrow, three months from now? Where can we come together to be better today, tomorrow, three months from now, six months from now? that's that secret sauce, and it's not secret. It's in the research of what'll take a team being, good to being high performing. Lucas Flatter: and thinking about, you know, motivation with individual team members. I know that, you know, some people are motivated by money, others by prestige and different things. So how much of. It is trying to get somebody to have that awareness of, oh, this is what makes you tick versus, you know, just motivation across the board. That might work generally for most people. Will Ramey: Yeah. And as a leader, as a team leader, you're gonna pivot on that point as many times a day as you have team members because motivation somewhat extrinsic. But once those levels money and, [00:18:00] satisfaction and. Purpose. Like once you understand that, why are you here? And when I'm coaching people, I always tell them, I'm here to help you holistically at work, at home, whatever it may be, whatever, however boundaries we set, you're a person. So money and title and, climbing the corporate ladder is your motivator. Let's figure out how to do that, which is what's best for you and the organization. If purpose is your motivator, let's find work for you that is as meaningful and purposeful. So as a leader, you're pivoting to that each and every day, but it doesn't mean that you can sacrifice the greater needs of the team and the greater needs of the organization. So it's this dichotomy that comes back is how much understand and help my team and satisfy inner, their external motivations. How can I give them the framework, the environment, to be intrinsically motivated? 'cause you can't do it for 'em, but you can set some conditions for success. And how can I make sure that we're not sacrificing one for the other [00:19:00] and we're going through these trade-offs? So gotta start with knowing your people. So you have to open up about who you are as your, as a team leader, and then getting people in and comfortable with sharing who they are, why they're here. Beyond just the, you know, I'm an electrician or I'm a mechanic. that meaningful and that purposeful, driven life while you're at work. J.R. Flatter: I'm gonna switch gears a little bit, if you don't mind. all three of us are coaches, so we listen for whispers and I've heard you mention several times your service and, sounds like you're pretty happy and a good path. a lot of our audience are still either serving or previously served. Talk to us about that transition. I know this is a flooded marketplace, but, and I know you're not in it purposefully, but you're probably influencing others who are. So tell us about your journey, if you don't mind. Will Ramey: Yeah, I had an eye-opening experience this past year. I actually started to volunteer to coach for the Honor Foundation, and if you're not familiar, the Honor [00:20:00] Foundation is a nonprofit that helps special operation forces transition from military to I. Civilian life. And once I understood what they were about, I said, sign me up, I'll help. Because my transition, I was given the, you know, army green to corporate gray book and a smack on the keister and said, good luck. Good luck, captain. have a great day. And what I found along the way, I spent a better part of a decade, and I kid you not a decade finding out and trying to figure out if I wasn't a, a captain in the Army, who am I? What's my identity now? I went and I went through those trials and tribulations. I left the army, the first time in 2006 and I went to Target Corporation. I was a distribution center group leader there. I was there for about 15 months and I, you know, signed back up into the Army reserves and I spent three out of those, next four years orders because I didn't know what I wanted to do. but I thought I knew who I was. Those came to an end. I got out as a captain and my wife and I [00:21:00] had a conversation about, Hey, we gotta find something and get these kids of ours settled because we, you know, we both agreed and our values was to owe that to them. So, you know, I found a job working for the Department of Army and it's good job, good living, checked all the blocks, you know, good money, good place to raise a family. good school system for our kids to grow in, but there was always something gnawing at the back of me of this. There's got to be more out there, and what I've discovered through coaching in the Honor Foundation is, you know, having a serious conversation about what your priorities and preferences are post-military life, and having a guide to help you to show you those options and to know that it's okay to. Say, I want this, I don't want that. it's absolutely okay to say, I don't want my work life to look like having to get up at oh, dark 30 and go to the gym in the morning. Or I don't want to be on call 24 7, or I don't want a job where I have to work in an operation center and not see the light of day [00:22:00] for 24 hours, because that's what you're familiar with. Right? So, so familiarity and comfort breed, stagnation. So that transition for me was tough. And it was tough on my family because it started to open up this idea of, well, if we keep moving you continue to not be satisfied. My wife asked me, is it me? Oh man, woo. Eye-opening, right? Like, I need to have this conversation. I need to figure this out because my decisions are sending the wrong messages. Because that was the common, from her perspective, they were the common denominator. I changed jobs, I changed locations. I lived in California, Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and I'm still trying to find happiness and joy. And what I found coaching with the Honor Foundation, becoming a coach and going through an ontological program of self-awareness and building that, what I found was who I am and what I do can be together if, but don't have to. The [00:23:00] ability to pursue something on my own has really allowed me to find that satisfaction and helping other veterans transition from uniform to civilian world is something that, I wish there was, there's more opportunity to do that all the way around. J.R. Flatter: I'm curious about what an ontological process is. Will Ramey: Yeah. So the ons logical coaching process was,it was interesting. So it wasn't a typical, It had everything. A normal coaching program would be it, you know, it was an I C F approved program, right? Gold Standard I c f. but mentor coach, the instructor who put it together, the ontological program had you look deep into self as well. So understanding, you know, who you were connecting yourself to, to, to what's out there in the universe to understand. You know, to be the best coach you can be and to hold space for your clients and coachees, you have to have a good understanding of yourself. So as you're learning to coach, you're experience experiencing being a coachee and you're opening yourself up to the possibilities of, what's out there and being, and it was a lot of, you know, making sure that you [00:24:00] understood presence and mindfulness and those practices. as well as the, you know, ethics involved and what coaching is, and what coaching is and listening em, empathetically and, unbiased and detaching yourself from it. So I had the same, you know, technical, expertise,the science of coaching. But it had a lot of, a little bit more of the philosophical. Understandings life and being and who you are. And that's what helped me kind of understand more about myself, so that I could be a better coach for my clients, those who I. Lucas Flatter: Just gonna act like I knew what the ontological approach meant. Will Ramey: I had to look it up before I, I said, what do you mean it's logical? I had to do a lot of go, you know, a lot of Googling on that. I'm like, this sounds different. And that's what attracted me to it, was, you know, I've been through leadership courses and academic programs. I'm like, okay, yep, got it. I can learn a craft and I can study for a test, but if I really wanna challenge myself, I gotta open myself up and be vulnerable if I wanna be able to experience what those breakthroughs are like, and that's what attracted me to that program specifically. Lucas Flatter: and kind of a follow up [00:25:00] to Jr's question about your background. I know that there's not a ton of extrinsic motivation behind getting your doctorate necessarily. People aren't saying like, go get your doctorate so you can earn more money. it's usually, oh, I wanna earn that knowledge. So what about the organizational theory? Doctorate made you wanna pursue that? Will Ramey: Yeah, it was not monetary in nature at all, and I, it really was that pursuit of knowledge. So, for me, I love learning and leaders are readers. They're also experiencers, they're listeners. You soak up that knowledge. Across a wide range of sources. And I wanted to get another degree. My wife said, you're crazy. and I said, yeah, I know. So I didn't want to get a PhD at the time. I didn't wanna learn, you know, get the PhD and become an academic. But I wanted to understand how I could use research to solve complex problems. and then the other thing that I got into, once I got into the program, And understanding how we can do [00:26:00] research to apply it. I really got hooked into this phenomenon of leadership and I ended up taking a different approach. I researched the dark side of leadership, so my dissertation was on countering abusive supervision within an organization. Which, what I found when you're doing a doctorate is a difficult data set to work with. 'cause nobody's gonna sign up and say, yep, we've got abuse of supervision in my organization to come in and work with that. But what I found was, if you think about it, you know, again, I drew from some experience we've all worked for that boss. We've all had a difficult boss above us, right? but then how do we turn around in the same day and pivot and lead our team? And that's what social learning theory, will tell you is that, hey, you learned to lead by modeling the behaviors of those above you. If you're really lucky, you've got a great mentor. if you're extremely good, you've got a good coach to help bring about your self-awareness. But we experience our day with all these different interactions. So if I come out of a, recommendation or a decision brief where I just pitched something up to my boss [00:27:00] and they just. Tore it to shreds and ridiculed and belittled me and my team and said, you know, it, you know, made you feel worthless and, or shredded your idea and then took it and pitched it to their boss and got credit for it, right? 'cause that's happened out there, I'm sure. Well, 30 minutes later I might have a one-on-one conversation with one of my subordinates. How am I supposed to pivot and turn and do that? So, how can I counter? The effects and impacts of an abusive supervisor above me when I know that's not the right way to lead and turn around and lead my team with these positive behaviors. And that's what I found was, you know, being able to proactively cope with stressors to get ahead of that stress appraisal cycle, to be able to have a resource, network around you, whether that be peers, a coach, a trusted people within your friends and family circle. And then, you know, setting aside time for those positive practices where you can take time to reset in between so you don't keep the negative cycle, trickling down [00:28:00] throughout your organization. To me it was fascinating because leadership, everyone has the ideal leader,a vision of what a good leader is, and we know what good leadership behaviors are. But time and again, you see reports of corruption, of unethical behavior of. experiencing a toxic leader in your organization and somehow they're still in a leadership position. So how is that possible? And that's what I wanted to dive into and explore. Lucas Flatter: Yeah, that, that's probably helpful. It's like the fascination with villains and fiction. It's like you need to have that. Oh, what's a bad leader? Will Ramey: Yeah. Yeah. because it's not always intentional either. Some people may not know, some people just may not have the awareness that. How they're showing up, how they're behaving, how they're communicating is having that impact on their team. J.R. Flatter: So last question for me, Lucas always gets the last question. I don't know how that worked out, but just did. you talked a lot about being a lifelong learner and leaders are readers and got your doctorate. What's on your short list of books and I see you're talking about digital age versus industrial age. What's on your short list for readers that are making this [00:29:00] transition? Will Ramey: Yeah, so I have two books that,I've reread recently. one is, from a colleague of mine, good friend, Mark Stevens. It's called the Square in the triangle. It's a really easy read. It's available on Audible. And what that talks about is the balance between results and relationships. And, just to summarize it, you can't be too focused on one or the other. So you can't build, you can't fire a cannon on a bamboo platform. That's mark's, that's Mark's, phrase, right? That's his, it's his vision for that book. If you're too focused on results, you're not gonna have relationships with people to get there. If you're too focused on relationships, you're gonna sacrifice difficult decisions to get results. The second book is from a colleague Travis Hearn. And it's on leading teams in the virtual age. And how do you, how can you work in a hybrid environment? And, you know, just being able to adapt quickly if you ever find yourself in that situation. And the book was written right around the experiences that, they had with Covid, and you went from an in-person environment to this hybrid environment. How do you overcome and what different approaches [00:30:00] to leadership do you need? To embrace and what we, what he found was same thing as research, empowerment, inclusion, trust. You've gotta be able to disperse those so that you can get the performance you want and still have the impact and cohesion that you need within that team. Lucas Flatter: So, I wanted to talk a little bit about, fathership and leadership. my dad Jr. Here he is always kind of had those two hand in hand. He used to have a license plate that said Di Daddy, which was always funny. so how do you see your, you know, professional and academic leadership knowledge and experience kind of applying to the household? Will Ramey: Oh, it, blends it, it comes together. And I, you know, I've caught myself saying it at work, that every leader at work should coach a youth sports team at some point in their life. so you deal with all of that, what I found is that I. We have a saying in my house that, you know, mommy's fun, mommy and dad is Ted talk dad. Because that's the approach I take you know, directing and finding [00:31:00] myself, wanting to allow my children the space to solve problems. And it came back to me the other day with my son. one of the lessons that you try to instill as a leader, and teach the lesson and then coach the lesson and then allow that person to learn it and experience it, whatever it may be. You know, fatherhood has helped me be a better leader, and being a leader has helped me be a better father. One of the things, my son came back, I heard him say the other day, precision of language dad, precision of language. Because we talk about that at work. Like say what you mean what you say, but choose your words wisely because words have meaning. and I say that at home. I find myself saying those things at home. But when I hear it back, I'm, oh, my kids are listening. Oh, that's interesting. Right? They're actually listening and picking that up. And what it was his friend was trying to explain something to me, and Anthony was having a tough time, and you know, Aiden, he didn't step on his friend there in the car, but afterwards he goes, dad, he goes, Anthony was speculating here. He meant this, what he didn't say was this fact. He goes, precision of language, dad, you gotta speak in facts and speak. I said, yep, that's it, buddy. So those two worlds, Lucas, they ebb and flow and I find [00:32:00] myself, you know, my biggest roadblock is listening. And I've been told I have an intense look on my face, right? So whether I'm listening or wait, I get this intense look on my face. And I got that at work. The one time, someone thought I was upset and I was like, no, I'm just listening intently. And I throw my brow and I curse my lips. I come home, I ask my kids, you ever want honest feedback? Give your kids an opportunity to give it to you. I said, Hey, dw, I. I come off as intimidating. They said, dad, you have a very intense look about you when you're deep in thought or whether or when you're engaging in a conversation. I said, okay, noted. Got it. Feedback accepted. Let me try to work on that right? So that ebb and flow and that, you know, cyclical pieces of input and data, whether I get it from my kids, whether I get it from my team, whether I get it from my peers or my wife, it makes you a better person. And at the end of the day, leadership is a people business and we are here to make people better and make work a better place for people. Lucas Flatter: Yeah. I love that Ted talk. Ted, I had this joke where, you're trying to convince your four year old to eat a carrot, and you're saying, [00:33:00] what kind of person do you wanna be? You know, and it's just, Will Ramey: Right, Yeah. Yeah. J.R. Flatter: know he doesn't