Reflections, Objectives and Goals for the New Year

Building a Coaching Culture - #96: Reflections, Objectives and Goals for the New Year === J.R. Flatter [00:00:00]: Family is important to me. I'm important to myself, but then what am I doing to demonstrate that? Some of the biggest changes I've made in the past 12 months were about self, taking better care of self so I could be better at work, better with family. Voice Over [00:00:15]: You're listening to the building a coaching culture podcast. If you need to compete and win in the 21st century labor market as an employer of choice, this podcast is for you. Each week, we share leadership development, coaching, and culture development insights from leading experts who are developing world class Cultures in their own organizations. And now here's your host, JR Flutter. J.R. Flatter [00:00:47]: Hey. Welcome back, everybody. JR Flatter here with my cohost, Lukas. How you doing, Lukas? Lucas Flatter [00:00:52]: Pretty good. J.R. Flatter [00:00:53]: End of year, beginning of a new year, always a time for reflection. And hopefully, everybody's spending time with family and catching up on some sleep, doing some thinking about the future. So that's what this, episode's gonna be all about is Not necessarily talking about new year's resolutions, but it is a time to sit and think about the year that we just finished and the year that's ahead, and hopefully decades that are ahead. Because, you know, I like to think and take action decades into the future, but also interested in today, tomorrow, the year ahead. So we talk about, you know, the house of leadership a lot, you know, coach training, you know, coaching Relevant every day of the year, but I think this time of year, it's a good time to take a look at the 4 pillars of that house just to set our baseline again and the foundation that it's standing on. I know every cohort we teach, we teach this house, So it would be a nice review of the 4 pillars and the foundation of courage, but also time to Ask ourselves, you and I, as coaches and leaders and husbands and parents, what are our 4 pillars, and are we living them? But also for our coaching year ahead and our teaching year ahead. You know, what are the 4 pillars of our coaching and teaching? Lucas Flatter [00:02:25]: It's hard to even imagine, like, multiple decades out, I mean, personally. But at the same time, You know, even though it's hard to imagine, I know that, you know, investing money is like a long term prospect. Or people that get mortgages into something in the future. So even if it's Snowball into something in the future. So even if it's kind of nebulous and, you know, not fully formed, I know that it's still a payoff that I believe that's going to happen. You know? J.R. Flatter [00:03:04]: Well, let me just ask you a couple questions that'll bring this screaming home for you. How old was I when you were born? Lucas Flatter [00:03:13]: 29 point a. J.R. Flatter [00:03:16]: How old are you in 2 weeks yeah. You're older than I was when you were born. Let me ask you another question that'll scream home. Do you remember at the top of, Diamondhead I know. When you were when you were mocking me about being 30 years younger than I was? Lucas Flatter [00:03:39]: No comment. J.R. Flatter [00:03:41]: Well, you're almost the same age I was when you and I were at the top of Diamond Head. So it's common. When you sit in your 32 year old self and think Decades into the future, and it's hard to imagine, start asking yourself questions like that. You know, like, your son's celebrating how many years? Lucas Flatter [00:04:06]: He is gonna be 5 next year. J.R. Flatter [00:04:10]: I mean, that's Half a decade right there, and it seems like yesterday, probably. Your good friend, Wilson, just had a baby. In, you know, 5 years is usually gonna be like, what the heck happened? And your deductible will be 10. Yeah. It flies by fast. So part of the reason we have the coaching relationships, and one of those main themes of coaching is being more purposeful about thinking decades into the future because it it does happen fast. I I have an annual visit with my cardiologist just because of my age and my health history, and part of that annual visit is a treadmill test. And every year and I've been going for probably 10 years. J.R. Flatter [00:05:02]: Every year, the technician doing the treadmill test says, you're in good shape for a man of your age, so so you're gonna start hearing things like that. I remember sitting on the floor. I was In one of my last courses of my PhD journey at the George Washington University, this beautiful young girl walks up to me, and I'm like, yeah. She's still interest because she's leaning down to talk to me, and she says, sir, could you tell me what time it is. Yeah. She had no interest in me as a human being. She just didn't wanted to know what time it was. And I think that was the first time I really thought, and I was 30 something. J.R. Flatter [00:05:45]: Right? I really thought, man, the clock is ticking. But just like you and I talked about in our previous session, There's no perfect time to start thinking about the future. It's never too late to start thinking about the future, and it's never too early. I make the joke every time that I teach a young cohort that I'm gonna make them angry because they're gonna think about 50 something year old to self for the first time ever, because I'm gonna ask 20 something people, close your eyes and tell me where you are in 30 years, It's just a good exercise right now as we begin the next year. Close your eyes and ask yourself, where are you 30 years from today? And what does that picture look like? Who's with you? Where is Declan, and what is he doing? Are you retired? If you're still working, is it because you wanna work or because you have to work? Have you done the things in your life that you had hoped you were going to do? And, you know, 30 years from now, it's gonna be too late to change anything to make those things real. And so now is the time to start taking action. That when you do close your eyes and have this vision of what perfection looks like 30 years from now, Given all of the control you do have, we can't control a lot of things, but and a lot of things we can't control. You know, what Declan grows up to be, where your life is, who's there with you. J.R. Flatter [00:07:18]: You can do things today, tomorrow, this year coming, the next 5 years coming, the next decade coming to very strongly influence that outcome, not to be too macabre, but we're finding out in medical sciences that Living a long life In many ways it's just a matter of luck The genes you were given at your birth The lifestyle you choose certainly has a lot to do with that, but when you look at statistical significance of who gets catastrophic illnesses, Oftentimes, they've done nothing. They just were struck in with so being there 30 years in the future, You have a lot of control, but a lot is out of your control. But the people you love are gonna be there. And what have you done to ensure that there is close to that vision? You know, I'm at a point in my life where I do the math and thirty something gets me into the 90 somethings. And you and I work out together every morning, and part of the reason is I wanna be 90 something. I wanna be there to see Declan get married and to, you know, continue sharing this journey with you and others. But I also know a lot of that's out of my control, but a lot of it's in my control. A lot of it's in our mutual control. Lucas Flatter [00:08:41]: Yeah. I think and this is just like a segue, but, like, the best way to see, you know, what is actually, you know, what can I change? What is in my control? What's in, you know, the palm of my hand that I can really have a grasp over? Like, Let's look at the last year, you know, look back at some, you know, look back at the last year, the last week, the last month, And what we do in software development, what went well, what didn't go well, what do we have to keep doing, what do we have to quit doing? J.R. Flatter [00:09:16]: Yeah, I can look at the last 12 months, and even at 61 years of age this year, I had monumental discoveries all year long, personally and professionally, and I expect that that will continue as long as I Continue having the courage to learn something new every day and be willing to say I could have done that better. Tomorrow, I can do that better. Yeah, it's never too late, never too early. So courage, courage is the foundation of our 4 pillars, and not battlefield courage, similar but different, more of an internal courage. I mean, I don't know if if you're the same as me, but I don't know what time you get out of bed to to meet me at the gym in the morning. But every morning, the alarm clock goes off, and my my mind looks for an excuse to call you and tell you I can't make it. And and I say to myself, and this is why it's so great to have a significant other in your life on this journey, is The reason I roll out is because I promised you I'm gonna be there, and I promised myself I'm gonna be there. And so I that split second where my Monday the warm blanket, the alarm goes off, and I kinda chuckle, like, maybe today is the day I'm gonna say no. J.R. Flatter [00:10:37]: I don't think that ever goes away. You always have to go back to that place of courage and say, do I have the courage to do the things that I said I'm gonna do? And when we talk about the 4 pillars of our house of leadership, they all come back to that same thing. Do I have the courage to live the principled life that I say I'm going to live. Do I have the courage to live the career that I say I'm gonna make and be the leader that I say I'm gonna be? Do I have the courage to have work family self balance? Do I have the courage to live the vision that I've told myself and you and thousands of others. All of those come back to courage. Do you find yourself asking those same questions or revisiting your courage. I know you've done a lot of learning this year. Lucas Flatter [00:11:27]: Yeah. I think, You know, the the courage is also, like, against, like, the status quo. Like, the The way that you perceive things to be, like, this is set in stone, like, this is the way things are, you know, it Seems like it has so much inertia that, like, what could I possibly do to you know, almost like everything's predetermined, and what am I gonna do to change any of that? I definitely feel like that sometimes. And and I think, like, the only thing that makes me feel better about that is now I have more examples of success that I can point to and say, oh, that it worked that time, or it worked last time, or you know? Or, you know, you you have that feeling of, like, this is never gonna work out. You know? But then you remember that that's how you felt right before, you know, right before something? J.R. Flatter [00:12:24]: We make the joke that in the gym, the 2 and a half pound weights are our best friends. But putting 2 and a half pounds on and being able to do the reps that you couldn't do a month ago, There's evidence right there. I'm stronger today than I was a month ago. Maybe only 2 a half pounds, but I'm stronger, and you've reminded me about journaling. One of the greatest strengths of a journal, even if you just write a sentence today it says on this day in December, in 2023, and what you were thinking about whatever topic came to mind, your coaching, your parenting, your computer science world. And then you look at it a year from now and say how different you are. Even in our coach training, our coaching education, The decks today versus the decks on January 1st are significantly stronger than they were A year ago, I keep historical decks, and I just put them side by side sometimes and see right in front of me how Our education power continues to grow, the strength of our education tools, lessons, case studies. Yeah. J.R. Flatter [00:13:47]: And you wouldn't know that unless you had, like you said, that evidence right there in front of you. And you said something that's really, really important, and that is The ability you have to influence change and how much of that resides just within yourself, it's there if you have the courage to go do it. Lucas Flatter [00:14:06]: Yeah. It's like even, something silly. Like, if, I'll just give my example as, when I'm trying to learn to play a song on the guitar, would I wanna, like, sing also And how difficult that is sometimes. But then I think, like, if I put down the guitar, I can sing it. And if I, you know, stop singing, I can play it. And so I know, you know, there's no there's no ability gap. I can do both of the things. It's just, you know, a coordination thing. Lucas Flatter [00:14:37]: So, Yeah. Like almost sometimes you're trying to do something that you already have evidence that you can do, and it still seems impossible. J.R. Flatter [00:14:45]: Yeah. So the 1st pillar is principles, and are you living a principled life? And what evidence do you have from the year that we're leaving to support that? It's probably no Surprised to anyone who listens to us that I was a marine or am a marine was, and I could do for 22 years. And there was a poster. I forget what part of my career I first saw this poster, but it's a marine drill instructor pointing a finger at you and saying, If you were accused of being a Marine, what evidence would we have to convict you? For me, that speaks to principles And if I were to tell you on January 1st, here's who I am and what I stand for, and now here we are well into December. What evidence do I have to support that? And so not only the communication of our principles, but the demonstration of our principles. All these pillars, the communication and then the demonstration, is imperative, and we don't lay down principles to judge or compare. One of the most liberating things you can do as an adult Human being is to live your own life, hold your own principles and communicate them unapologetically demonstrate them unapologetically. It takes a lot of courage, and it takes a lot of courage not to judge others. J.R. Flatter [00:16:15]: And one of the things you and I teach every day is coach to the house of leadership of the leader you're coaching, not to your own house of leadership. And you're gonna coach and lead a lot of people that you disagree with on a lot of things. Britney and I were just talking about that, our CEO, your sister, that this person that we work with is brilliant at their job, but very eccentric. And do you have the courage to accept the eccentricities to receive the brilliance. And almost every human being has eccentricities that come along with their excellence? And do we have the courage as coaches and leaders within our principled life to accept them. When you're talking about existential principles, it should be a relatively short list of things that you have absolute in your life, family, education, work. Those are certainly on my shortlist for better or worse. And the people that we educate all year long, the people we coach all year long have very different sets principles, very different ideas of work, family, and self. J.R. Flatter [00:17:37]: And do we have the courage to lead them and let them live their own life. What do you think about when you think about your own principles and and how you coach and lead? Lucas Flatter [00:17:49]: Yeah. I mean, I guess just that idea of everybody, you know, coming from a different place, like, Yeah. You're you're gonna have to communicate with all sorts of different people. And, you know, especially when you're talking about coaching somebody, You're almost, like, teaching them through communication. So you have to come with that understanding that Even if they have the same exact principles as you and, you know, you have the same beliefs, maybe they're just having an off day or, you know, they're starting to doubt Themselves on a particular day or they just don't feel right? So just thinking about like, oh, this person Might be similar to me or they might be different, but, you know, we need to get through it either way. You know? J.R. Flatter [00:18:40]: Yeah, and I think it's important to point out, if we're gonna work together or even live together, there are some things we have to agree on. The list should be short. It should be existential to our relationship. And beyond that, you get yours, and I get mine. I think part of the challenges we're having working through this period of history is we're unwilling To say there are boundaries, and there are rights and wrongs, and maybe confusing Existential with annoyance, right, I think the list of existential principles should be very short, and it should be a matter of life and death, life and death of the organization, life and death literally. Beyond that, it's probably just annoying you, and do you have the courage to accept the eccentricity to receive the brilliance? So if you find yourself annoyed all the time, you should probably take a hard look at your principles and say, Is it me or is it the world? And it's Probably you, as a human being, treating something as as existential when it's just an annoyance. Lucas Flatter [00:19:56]: Yeah. And I I think Sometimes, yeah, well, you might think it's a principle, but it doesn't stand the test of time because, you know, maybe You change your perspective like, oh, that, you know, I used to be annoyed all the time, but then I realized that wasn't that big of a deal. You know? J.R. Flatter [00:20:14]: Next pillar, and this is one that we've made up, but I think it's just so relevant to life and and the human experience work, and it's the technical, cognitive, and emotional alignment. This is one that I personally visit a lot about as a scholar, as an educator, as a coach. Is it as relevant as I keep telling myself? And I continue to answer that in the affirmative. It is relevant. It is a pillar of the house of leadership. It's a pillar of my own, and it's a pillar of those we teach, because deciding who you want to be and how you want to demonstrate that in your performance at work, at your church, on your soccer team. Are you a technician focused on the technical aspects of that role. You're a cognitive thinker, analyst, and or are you emotionally intelligent leader? And at any given time, in any given task, the t, the c, or the e is the most relevant. J.R. Flatter [00:21:25]: Certain phases of your life, the t, the c, the e, become more relevant. When you're trying to get a master's degree as you've done And it's an MBA, and you're very technically focused on the finance class and the accounting class, and you're cognitive. You're in the middle of the new discoveries and new ways of thinking. But in your role as a leader, the technical and the cognitive probably aren't as relevant. The emotional intelligence is really where leadership comes from. And no right or wrongs, again, nonjudgmental. You might wanna be the best programmer in the world. You might wanna be the best street cop in the world, and we need you. J.R. Flatter [00:22:08]: We want you. We're gonna love you and affect you just like anyone else in the organization. But if you've decided there's something else in life that I'd like to Do. We're gonna give you that same respect, love, and admiration. I know you've recently made a huge change in your career. You're aligning your new role and responsibility with this pillar, so you're right in the middle of all this. What where is your mind on your TC and E now versus a year ago versus a year from now? Lucas Flatter [00:22:41]: Yeah. I mean, I think what you were saying, you know, your example of, you know, maybe you're a programmer, and and that that is very technical. And in in in some ways, even the technical tasks, that's not to say that you're not using, you know, your brain or your emotions. But I don't think that the people that are coming up with, like, the theories that, you know, guide computer science are Necessarily at their computers writing code. They're they're outside. They're researching. They're, you know, talking to people. And and Then that moves the field forward. Lucas Flatter [00:23:21]: So even if you are very obsessed with, like, the technical, You have to either work with the cognitive or, you know, become that cognitive person to kinda move the field forward if you wanna do that. I was just thinking the other day that we were talking about a technical proposal for the government, and it was all about these web applications and and problems that people are having with them. And I was just noticing that, okay, we're not talking about The functioning of the website. We're not talking about how fast it is or, you know, does this button work when I click it? It's all You know, I don't feel like it's having a value, or I don't feel like it's making a connection with the person I need it to, or what have you, they were all very human problems that were being associated with these technical tools. And and I was thinking to myself, like, okay, like, you know, that's not necessarily the approach I would have taken in the past. So just having that, you know, that human element in mind, It it's really important, like, even if you're in the technical domain. So that's kind of how I've shifted recently. J.R. Flatter [00:24:35]: Yeah. And when I think about this pillar, I ask myself, and this a lot of what you and I teach and talk about goes back to opportunity cost. And when I think about this pillar, it's all about what am I doing versus what I could or should be doing. And As the chairman of our growing organization, as the chief learning officer, as a coach educator, as a coach, as a father and a husband and a grandfather. You know? And what am I doing versus what I could or should be doing? And aligning that with my principles and aligning that with my work family and self and with my vision. And if there's misalignment, something has to change. You know, we talked about principles in different phases of life. You might have very different principles. J.R. Flatter [00:25:30]: It doesn't mean your old ones, you abandoned them. This means that you've discovered new things or you're in a different place than you were 5 or 10 years ago. And the same is true of t c and e. You might, for a decade, be a 100% under the technical and cranking away and discover that you're out of alignment with your vision. As a coach, I ask this question all the time. You tell me you just described for me this 30 year vision. We've talked in some detail about where you need to be 5 years from now, And we've talked in even greater detail about what you need to accomplish in the next 12 months, but then every time we get together, You're buried in the comfort of your technical abilities, and I see the misalignment. Do you see that misalignment? So as a coach and a coach educator, this pillar is very important and something we wanna be quite purposeful about. J.R. Flatter [00:26:31]: Are we doing the things we need to do to get where we say we wanna go. Lucas Flatter [00:26:37]: Yeah. I think, like, kinda technical question that we have a lot of the times is like, what does this have to do with this? Like, what could this possibly have to do with? And then the cognitive is like, no. There's connections here. You know, you're just buried your head in this too deep and J.R. Flatter [00:26:55]: yeah. I mean, that's one of the things as a coach that we do. We connect those desperate thoughts. You said one thing in this sentence, and you said something else in another sentence. When I put those 2 things together, it paints a very clear picture. Did you see that? And that oftentimes happens in this pillar. Next pillar, work, family, self, One that's the most talked about, but probably the one that people are struggling with most consciously and purposefully. What most of us are not born into wealth. J.R. Flatter [00:27:35]: We have to work very hard for most of our lives. When we think about comfort zones, it can be very comforting Just bear our head in our work and ignore this ugly, confusing family and self stuff. But the 3 are so intertwined, especially as you get deeper and deeper into the 21st century, has to be inseparable. They have to be talked about together, and they have to be balanced appropriately. And I don't mean a third, a third, and a third, or any specific ratio for any specific purpose, but they we have to be purposeful about them. What does work mean to us, and how is it woven into our principles? What does work mean to us, and how is it woven into our t, c, and e. And family and self, the same questions. What does family mean to us, and how do we weave it into the other 3 pillars? What is self? How important is self to us? And and how are we communicating and demonstrating all 3 of those? I'm in business, and I just told a very important customer, I can't be there on the 24th January because I have a commitment with my family. J.R. Flatter [00:28:55]: I wish I could be there. I planned my calendar out a year, a year and a half in advance, sometimes even 2 years in advance, and I simply can't do that. And as hard as I was to say out loud to this important customer, again, go back to courage. Did I have the courage to say that? Did I have the courage to demonstrate that? So it's one thing to communicate family is important to me, I'm important to myself, but then what am I doing to demonstrate that? Some of the biggest changes I've made in the past 12 months were about self, taking better care of self so I could be better at work, better with family. I'll pass over to you. I know you're a father of a young child and married, got a vision for your life. Lucas Flatter [00:29:46]: I think, I I like what you said about, like, that that comfort of of work, and I think a lot of that comes from, You know, having a structure, you know, whether you have a awesome culture or just a ho culture, like, you know What's gonna get you a good reputation at work? You know? What's gonna get you, you know, recognition? You know you know what? Oh, if I don't show up on time, People are going to be upset with me, you know, but lots of the times, I guess, because it's less existential in a way, like, It doesn't put food on the table, but lots of times your people are more willing to say, like, you know, I can skip this thing for myself, or I can skip this thing that's for the family. And I would say that for me, it's been really helpful to try to put some structure Sure. Around those things. So if I need to say, oh, this needs to happen once a day for it to you know, that's my requirement. And if it's not, you know, if it's not happening, then then it's in the back of my head. I used to have it For running, that's where I kinda developed that, where if I went a day or 2, I would just be stressed and anxious and be thinking about how I, like, let myself down. And and but just trying to apply that to my other pursuits, whether it's like family time or other skills. And I was telling my artist friend that I didn't realize how much I was, like, half effort Putting in half effort towards my art until I hit my head against the wall with a guitar. Lucas Flatter [00:31:26]: And now, I'm like, okay, like, you know, I don't need to spend hours on this, but just like 10 minutes a day, and and I'll see those that progress. So And I guess another question would be, like, what is your reputation at work or with your own personal projects? Like, Do you does your family always say, oh, you're late to everything, or, you know, you always skip everything? And would you get Fired if you had a boss at home. J.R. Flatter [00:31:53]: Yeah, and this is the one that I struggle with the most, and I suspect a lot of us do, And I have to give myself grace, and hope that others give me grace on both sides of the coin, because And I learned this from Warren Buffett, not personally, but through his writings and speeches. He delegates to the point of abdication. And so my idea of an ideal team member is someone that I can delegate to, give a vision. So here's what the outcome that I'd like to achieve and then let them go do it. And that can be very frustrating to people and very, unexpected. But it's the way they grow, and it's the way that I keep my work family self balanced. On the other side of the coin, I'm an admitted workaholic. And there's a case study in our training in our education programs of me getting up at 1 o'clock in the morning to work because I couldn't sleep. J.R. Flatter [00:33:01]: And that was 15 years ago, but it just happened last week. I was laying in bed. I have this magnificent life, a magnificent family and career, but I can't go to sleep for some unknown reason. And the only thing that alleviates the restlessness is to get up and go work. And suddenly, I'm calm, I'm doing something, and in a couple of hours, I'm tired, and I go to bed. So Communicate and demonstrate probably one of the least favorite things that I hear are stories about myself and This ceaseless work ethic that I have, I'm like, dang. I keep hoping I'm gonna change that perception, but it's still there, something I'm still and probably will struggle with for my entire life. I could say without apology that When I'm lying on my deathbed, I'm gonna be that guy that says I wish I could have done a little bit more unapologetically because I think We have built a strong family in spite of all of that, and 4 children that are relatively balanced in their work family self is comforting, that it wasn't genetic, and I didn't pass on those extremist habits. J.R. Flatter [00:34:24]: So the final pillar is vision. And of all the written work on leadership, There are tens of thousands of written pieces on leadership. Almost every one of them talks about vision in some sense or another. And in many ways, it's that line, the differentiator between a manager and a leader. Can you envision a future and then take action to make that vision reality. Managers, not to judge good, better, or worse, Managers think quarterly, monthly, daily, about things, where leaders think years decades about people and ideas. So I manage boxes, but I lead people. And if I'm going to be a leader of people, I need to tell them where we're going, and that's what vision's all about, in decades into the future. J.R. Flatter [00:35:26]: So we're quite purposeful as challenging as it is to ask people to think 30 years into the future. I'm giving a a talk at a university in a few weeks, and I wanna talk about this exact thing to a room full of college students. But my 90 year old father is gonna be in the room and talking about 30 years into the future. And for him, The math is the math. Right? A 90 year old plus thirties, 120, no humans ever lived to be that alone. I don't think maybe gotten close. Even for me, 90 something 30 years from now is more legacy than it is reality. Even my 90 year old father, Thinking 30 years into the future, what his family is going to look like, there are, including himself, 78 human beings on the face of the Earth with his genes that are gonna be here long after he's gone and long after I'm gone. J.R. Flatter [00:36:29]: So it's very real to think, where are you in 30 years? And then to take action Today, in the coming year, in the coming 5 years is where you really can get your arms around, what does it mean that 30 years from today, I'm gonna be surrounded by people who love me. I wanna be financially secure, and I wanna be as reasonably healthy as Someone can expect to be at 90 something years old. What am I doing today? You and I went to the gym this morning. What am I doing this year? We'll continue to do that. I'll continue to run and ride my bicycle and eat well and drink less and not take recreational drugs. I mean, you know, not to be too flippant, but those are all decisions that we each get to make, and the consequences of our decisions accumulate in aggregate over those 30 years. And so you could be quite purposeful about, No. I'm not gonna eat that donut, or, yes, I am gonna roll out when the alarm goes off and go to the gym. J.R. Flatter [00:37:32]: I am gonna go to sleep and get a reasonable amount of sleep. When I look at my calendar every day at 6:15, it says go home, because I promised myself and my family I'm gonna be there for dinner. My weekends are largely sacrosanct. I can say after 21 years in business to this very day, I've never canceled or changed the vacation ever. Did that cause a lot of heartache? Yeah. It did, but it's one of my most proud achievements to be able to say that, and to hopefully demonstrate that, and celebrate that at work, celebrate that with family. What are your thoughts on vision outfits into your life? Lucas Flatter [00:38:21]: I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot a lot lately just in terms of, Like, what is real and what is, like, you know, kind of in our imaginations or, you know, in this kind of Domain of vision. Even like things like, you know, science has proven that your memory and perception can be, you know, heavily influenced. And your vision of the future, no matter how many details you're taking into account, is going to be, you know, pretty far off in in some ways in the, you know, in the details, maybe not the direction you're moving in, but in the particular details. And so I've been thinking about how, you know, your vision of the future and the past is almost like It can be influenced by your ability to imagine and create these images. And so how does that relate to creativity and and ideas and belief? And and so it's it's all very Philosophical, but that's to say that, you know, I think whether you're, you know, planning your future or Trying to invent something or come up with an idea, you need to be able to kind of, from whole cloth, you know, create something that's not directly in front of you in reality. So it's something Really, really, really powerful and and something that I think it kinda gets it's flippantly like, oh, you know, that's just that's make believe, but make believe is what we're talking about here. You know, to plan for the future is somewhat make believe. J.R. Flatter [00:40:09]: Yeah, and you reminded me of one of my favorite topics as we get ready to close, and that's the difference between a goal, an objective, and a key result. And I know it sounds very academic, but goals are those things in your life that are not going to change no matter what happens. So, again, not to be too macabre, but let's say you're not here 30 years from today, or you're not able to work, or something absolutely unplanned occurred in your life your goals would remain in place and so are you talking about and this goes back to principles. Are you talking about existential things? And I really learned this from Brian Elwood, Nail Your Niche. And actually, his new book was on my desk when I got back, and he must have sent it to me. When people are describing the future, they're describing 1 of 3 things: love, health, and finances. And so goals are love, health, and finances. I wanna be surrounded by people who love me, and if I'm not here, I want them to be together loving each other. J.R. Flatter [00:41:19]: Health, What am I doing to increase the likelihood that I'll be healthy at 90 something years old, that I'll still be alive and finances. Absolutely don't wanna live paycheck to paycheck at 90 something years old, and I don't want anybody I know and love to live paycheck to paycheck. And so those are existential. They you couldn't possibly change my mind about those 3 things, and those are big g goals often confused with objectives. Of the intermediate milestones that get me to my goals. So the goal of Working out 3 days a week with you for the next 12 months is a goal or is an objective for the next year. The objective of rebranding QRL into the Flatter Leadership Academy, which you and I are just beginning. That's an objective. J.R. Flatter [00:42:20]: Working for the next 8 years is an objective. That might change. Might be 5 years. Might be 12 years. I might unsuccessfully retire a 3rd time. Who knows? Those are all objectives. Getting an MBA was an objective. It wasn't a goal. J.R. Flatter [00:42:41]: Your life goal was to live a fulfilled life, probably similar very similar to to everyone else, love, health, and finances. The key results are the metrics that you know you're getting closer. So we talked about being in the gym and putting a 2 a half pound on. That's a key result. You're now 5 pounds stronger than you were a month ago in that particular size and probably most exercises. You're some degree stronger than you were. And we talk about not being stronger for strength's sake, but practically stronger to do some of the things you wanna do with your life, practicing your guitar, practicing your art. You have milestones. J.R. Flatter [00:43:25]: Right? You just did these beautiful books for your nieces and nephews. That's a key result of your artistry. Your objective was to write them, and the key result is they're there in front of you, and you're delivering them as Christmas gifts. So we have to be very thoughtful and purposeful about what is existential, and we can label as a goal and what are objectives, and then what are the metrics, the key results to ensure that we're getting there? So those are the 4 pillars. And as we as we practically look forward into the new year, What are the finite deliverables that we owe ourself? We are so a very close look at those pillars and to revisit our principles, to revisit our t c and e, to revisit our work family self, Revisit our vision, look back at the year most recent, and, hopefully, you have a journal that you can Have some clarity on what happened in that year. If you don't, start right now and and write about today listening to this podcast. And what does next year in front of you look like? And write that in your journal. What are your principles? What is your TCNE? What is your work time of self? What is your vision for the coming year and the coming decade and the coming 30 years. J.R. Flatter [00:44:46]: And then I go have the courage to communicate and demonstrate that. Lucas Flatter [00:44:50]: Yeah. I mean, just, you know, reflect on the last year, like we said at the top, and and Use that to kind of inform any changes that you might need to make, and, hopefully, those principles are remaining pretty constant, but who knows? You know, things Yeah. Things could change those too. So I think, yeah, it's a it's a perfect time to jump into these topics. J.R. Flatter [00:45:15]: Alright, my friend. Have a great day. Well, that concludes this episode of building a coaching culture. I truly hope that this episode was helpful to you. If it was, be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Maybe stop and give us to rating or review and share this podcast with someone who might find it helpful as well. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.