The IMPACT Show
The IMPACT Show is where leadership meets legacy. Each episode unpacks the stories, strategies, and insights of visionaries who are shaping industries, communities, and futures. Whether you're a business leader, entrepreneur, or changemaker, this podcast offers real conversations with real impact—designed to inspire, challenge, and equip you to leave a lasting mark. Tune in and start building your legacy today.
The IMPACT Show
Leadership Mandate: Clarity – How Clear Communication Transforms Leadership
In Episode 8 of IMPACT, hosts Jeremy Melton, Daniel Brown, and Maddie Atkinson dive deep into clear communication in leadership. Through candid discussions and real-life examples, they explore how being clear, confident, complete, consistent, and courteous in your messaging can build trust, empower teams, and transform leadership dynamics.
Join the conversation as the team unpacks practical strategies for delivering purpose-driven messages, avoiding miscommunication pitfalls, and embracing active listening. Whether you’re leading a team, mentoring others, or striving to improve your own communication skills, this episode offers actionable insights to help you lead with authenticity and impact.
Welcome back to Impact Podcast. It's Jeremy Melton, Daniel Brown, and Maddie Atkinson. We are here to talk about leadership for the next hour or so, maybe half hour. But a highlight question, what kind of impact are you making on the world that we live in? And our goal on this show is to hope to create or generate a desire to understand it sooner than later. This week is episode number eight. I believe, and we are talking about the mandate of clarity. The initial mandate was, we talked about the mandate of clarity, but essentially it's clarity in communication, right? So we're going to talk about how important that is. Last week, let's talk about last week real quick. We talked about, I think we interviewed my brother last week, right? That's right. So y'all, we got to meet Brandon Holtsinger. Let's do some takeaways. Whoever wants to go first.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I was a spectator on this episode and probably not as engaged as I should have been as, you know, on the other side of the camera. But man, he had a lot of good stuff to share about his journey with his faith. And that part of it was really inspiring to me. And maybe some of that was said off camera afterwards, if I'm not mistaken, Jeremy, but just the relationship that he's got. And very, very, very new is what it seemed like and sounded like to me. But he definitely, as a leader, he's, you know, Learning a lot and embracing that learning and his journey. And it was just really great to talk to him. I hadn't seen him in years. It was a good time.
SPEAKER_01:It was somewhat of, I'll call it a revelation to me. I had not, I mean, really, he's my brother, but he kind of got intimate, especially after the podcast, which was really cool, about his faith. And so I enjoyed that for sure. Maddie, what did you think?
SPEAKER_00:I thought it was... clear to me when you... One of the first episodes, I think you said that he was the most humble person that you knew. One of. One of. And it was just clear. He was just so humble. You know, like, I mean, there's just people that exert that and...
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, several times during the podcast, he would just say... I mean, I think he even said, I'm a dummy. If you were to quote him... 100%. I'm a dummy. Yep. And how many people do you hear say that, especially in... in the form of leadership that he's in, you just don't hear that often. And look, it's not fake. It's genuine. And he's not a dummy by any stretch. But the fact that he embraces that, look, I don't know it all. Everybody knows more than me. It's humility defined. And so, yeah, that was good. So I hope one day when people are asked about a takeaway from me that they say that about me, right? That's what we aspire to. Very good. So my takeaway was that. I was going to say that as well. And also that his leadership had changed through the years. That was a pretty big deal. And he talked about how he evolved in his leadership. He talked about... He was real quick to talk about the people that got him there, too, which... The coolest part of what you do as a leader is later on down the road, you give credit back where credit's due. And that's, in my opinion, that's one of the coolest things. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:One thing I said last time, and it was off camera, off we weren't recording, was leadership is living.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yes, you did. I just remembered that. And we said, hey, that's another Maddie quote. Some of that good stuff that comes out of Maddie. You know, exactly. It is living. And I think I even put that on– I posted that on Facebook the next week.
SPEAKER_03:And to clarify, you meant like you feel it like it's a living, breathing thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like when I think of living, I think it's ever-changing. You know, it's like you– I like how your brother talked about he– his leadership over the year has changed. It's a great way to put it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. It's a great way to put it. And it's kind of the same thing that Jeremy has kind of said is like– You never stop. You never get to the finish line. It's never done. The work is never done. To be a leader, you have to continue trying to be intentional about being a leader.
SPEAKER_01:There you go, intentional.
SPEAKER_03:There we
SPEAKER_01:go. And then we talked about relentless. All these cool words. So look, that was a great, great time last week. Next week we're going to have, today we're going to teach, right? And then next week we're going to have Nick Austin. So actually going to have the guy that taught Brandon and the guy we were talking about. He's going to come next week. Yeah, so we're excited about that. Good. Cool. All right, so kicking off here, we're going to talk about clarity and in communication. So somebody tell me a definition for clarity.
SPEAKER_03:Well, clarity was the second mandate of the list of mandates that we went through. And you expressed it with the, you tell them how to do it, and then you show them how to do it. And then what, did you do it twice? You
SPEAKER_00:let them do it.
SPEAKER_03:Go do it again.
SPEAKER_01:You tell them, you show them, then you have them show you, right? That's right. And so we'll get to that in this today, you know, the fundamentals, what we call the blocking and tackling. We're going to get to that. And we'll actually teach it again. So I think I had alluded to it then, but we'll go over it today for sure. Go ahead, Maddie. Do you have something? Okay, so clarity is the ability to convey a message without confusion. Right. It's kind of simple. Yeah. It sounds simple, but oftentimes people are not clear. And one of the biggest things about leadership is that if you're not clear, then you're not going to be leading because people get confused. And where there's chaos, there's no leadership. Right. So it's funny. Just you can pick out clarity in everything that you do. And with your kids or with work or if you ever have a task that needs to be done and you've got multiple people doing it, you can figure out real quick how important it is to be clear if you want to execute it good. And
SPEAKER_03:I think I said this before, but I feel like this is one of my weak points as far as leadership goes when it comes to clarity. And I think it's just part of me, you know, like... making expectations and, but, but just trust. Like when I lead, I just want to say like, Hey, do this and it's okay to do it your way. But some people would do better and even like it more if I was more clear and like exactly laying out what needs to be done and what's
SPEAKER_01:expected. Look, dude, people love to be told clearly what to do and look at, I'm not a doctor, but when you do, when you're told, Hey, do this or you're asked to do something and then you do it and you succeed and I mean, there's a chemical release, right? So it's just– but being clear is always a helpful part of that. And so it's a super– but the fact that you acknowledge that it's something that you should work on is good, right? That's humility. It's something I've been thinking about, like something I want to be better at. So look, a lot of people say repeat, right? And we'll talk about that. But repeating what you've said or asked someone to do is part of it. But it's not all of it. But being repetitive about it. But you can get too repetitive as well. All right, so let's talk about the communication piece first. So the first thing we have to do is establish that there's four major categories of communication. And that's what we're going to... There's four categories. Verbal, nonverbal, visual, and written. Okay, so the ways that you communicate things... change based on the circumstances that you find yourself in. And so if we're going to communicate verbally or non-verbally, which I don't know all the statistics, whether it's 90% of what you communicate is communicated non-verbally, but a lot of what you communicate is your demeanor, eye contact and looking and talking in your hands and stuff and so forth. But visual communication and written communication, but there's four types, and we participate in them every single day, especially leader. So in communication, in those things, in those four things, you're going to have the things that I've written down here that I would say needs to live inside the leader, okay? And this is number one, clarity. Number two is confidence. Number three, you need to be complete, right? And clarity and being complete is two different things because you can be really clear on half of the request and leave some stuff off and make a mistake. You need to be consistent in your communication, and you need to be courteous in your communication. Any of those things, if one of those is not there, then the leader has not done their job at presenting it properly. So, again, it sounds trivial, but as a leader, when you, and if you're listening right now, if you're going to communicate properly, a task or a request to people that are reporting to you, you need to be clear, confident, complete, consistent, and courteous every single time. And so, you know, how do you remember that? I don't know, but I can tell you that when I read the, and somewhere I got this out of a book. I told you I don't ever take credit for anything. This is duplicated, but somewhere, wherever I got this from, I actually, in my leadership journey, sat down and began to figure out how to say things in this order, okay? Fundamentally, how do I present this problem to these group of folks and cover being clear, being confident, being complete, being consistent, and being courteous? And then once I realized that, man, that's working, right? And then you just duplicate it. So it's almost like building that muscle. And reps is how you build muscle, right? So taking your time and doing those things. Can you guys think of a time where you've had someone communicate something to you, a leader, that did not do those things and it resulted in chaos? Anybody? Anything?
SPEAKER_00:All the time.
SPEAKER_01:Give me an example without incriminating anybody.
SPEAKER_03:I know. I mean, I'm struggling to find a specific example, but I'm really, like, enjoying this list and I, like, can totally, like... Like, I feel it. And just like you said, like, be clear, be confident, be complete. And I love that, like you said, like, I'm going to go through each one of these steps and you notice the difference. Oh, yeah. Like, I'm sitting here, I'm writing this stuff down. Like, I want to do this stuff.
SPEAKER_00:One of the things that's hard for me, like, even at work, and hopefully I don't get in trouble for this, but... consistency is hard i think it's like we go on these trips and you go to like a conference or something and then when you come back you're just rejuvenated you know and you're like ready to be a leader and you're ready to do all that and then you have so many aspirations and then like three months and you just start going down and it's just not consistent so then you know you have the first few months you're just on it you're you're game on you're ready and then it just kind of starts trickling away and the consistency of you know communicating well and you know getting the team together for you know uplifting team building activity it just goes away
SPEAKER_03:yeah and so that gave me a little thing in my head the consistent part and i've got some experience with like like having to report to different steps of management in the same company like like multiple people telling me things like this is how we want to do it but they're not on the same page right and they're telling me different things and then it gets to a point where okay like not consistent i i can't who do i i gotta choose someone to actually follow and i mean That's a good one. Who's writing the check? Okay. Yeah, that one. No,
SPEAKER_01:let's do that. That's good. So look, we're going to unpack these a little more, and this is where it gets fun. So when you're talking about clarity, so I said there was four types of communication, and inside of those there's five ways that the leader is responsible for communicating. And so each of those ways can be done in each– type of communication or form of communication, but we're going to start with clarity. So at the end of the day, it's important to be clear, right? Period. We know that. But be clear about what? What should we be clear about, right? Because you think, well, what are we being clear about? Well, you know, I ask y'all or someone to do something. And, you know, what are we doing? What is the purpose, right? So there's a reason that I want you to do that. So the first thing you want to be clear about is the purpose. And a lot of leaders don't think that. They think, well, it's because I said so. And it kills me when people... Look, my mama used to tell me that when I was a kid. And look, at the end of the day, she's probably right. But that's not the real reason. Like, you don't want me to do that because I said so. Well, that's not... Think of something else, okay? Because what's the reason? Is it because I don't want to break my leg? You don't want me to break my leg? Yeah. Okay, well, just tell me that, right? And I'm picking on my mom. But look, I heard this teacher one time, and he said, don't tell your kids that. You want them to understand why they're not doing it, not because you said so.
SPEAKER_00:That's so hard.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, man. Not to say that. It is hard, but it's so important. Look, if you don't hear anything else this whole podcast, don't tell your kids that. No. Really.
SPEAKER_03:And I was just having this conversation with somebody else, and it's like, yeah, don't tell your kids because I said so. And there was something that I took away, and it was something about let these kids understand or live, understand why they are living the life that they're living. Yeah. And give them the perspective
SPEAKER_01:that they deserve. That's right. Look, you don't want them to, because I said so, you want them to ask the questions. And if you always say because I said so, they're never going to ask the question. That's right. So... Just like you want your kids to understand why they're doing what they're doing, you also want your people to understand why you're doing what you're doing. No, we're not doing that at work anymore. We're doing it this way. Well, why is that? Never tell them because I said so. Always give the purpose. Again, the first part of being clear is being clear about your purpose and communicating that. Another way to be clear is to be short and concise. Simple, right? So, you know, and I'm trying to think of an example. If you guys think of one, you know, stop me. But think about short, simple communication. Anytime you have a big, big task, you don't want to go around mumbling and bumbling a bunch of words and just unnecessary words. Just get to the point.
SPEAKER_03:What it takes me to is, and I know it's not management that we're talking about, but management is leading. We've established that. But the difference between managing and micromanaging, that's kind of where it takes me. Keep things simple. Keep things concise. Have trust. And don't try to nitpick every little detail. Keep it simple. This is what we're doing. Other than that, do it your way. But like I said, that's kind of my weakness and where I struggle. How much direction is needed? Where's the balance? There's a balance.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and the way to do that, and this will come out later, but you always be curious as a leader. And when you say, well, how much? I don't want to micromanage. Lord, I do not want to micromanage. And so... Look, along with the seasons in a leader's life and a leader's journey, he changes. At the same time, he has to be able to lead in different ways based on the call at that time. And so I'll tell you, it's kind of like we get a new sheriff in town. He's got to come in. I don't want to say he's iron fist, but he's got to come in and not micromanage, but he's got to come in and like confident. This is how we're doing this. And at the same time, he's got to ask questions. So three years into his election cycle, he'll be different. You take a leader and put them in charge of a tribe of people, and that leader will have to do these things exceptionally well up front, and then he'll get some grace later. But if he goes in with grace at first, he'll get ran over. Okay, so anyway. That's right. We're getting off track, but I'm just saying. All right, so the training that we talked about that you just alluded to earlier, Daniel, was tell them, have them tell you, show them, have them show you. So, Maddie, if you go to work Monday or Tuesday or whatever day and you need somebody to do something, then you tell them and then you just say, so what are you doing? What did I just ask you to do? And then they'll tell you. And you do that so that you hear them and they heard you correctly. So one time I was at a job site and I told a crew to do something. And I didn't ask them to tell me what I asked them to do. And so I left. And when I came back, it wasn't that way. And I said, what did y'all do? Oh, well, we thought. And then it turned out that after I had left, there was an argument. between the guys about how I had said to do it, okay, in what order. And they didn't do it in the right order, and so we had to redo it. And I was really upset, and I was like, dude, what are y'all doing? And they're like, well, we were confused. And I said, well, why didn't you just call me? Anyway, the point is, is I realized that day, okay, next time I go to that same crew, hey, guys, please blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, do this and that, right? What did I say? How did I say to do that? Well, you said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then at that point, okay, you're good. Yep, that's right. See you. All right. Then you go back and try it. Have them repeat it to you. And that goes the same with your kids. Because sometimes people don't hear you say what you think you said, or sometimes you might not say what you think you meant to say. So it's so important as a leader, which we are, to communicate clearly. And part of communicating with clarity is... repeating it so you can repeat it or most what i would prefer to have you do is have them repeat it to you right so those are fundamentally those are things that you can do actionable items that you can do to change your communication so all right so we don't leave any room for misunderstanding all right so that that that is that clear What did I say?
SPEAKER_00:I like the short. Well, I want to get back to the short, but like simple. Yeah. Because we do a lot of letters to members and things like that. And it's like sometimes when the leaders put it all together, it's like they're trying to over, not exaggerate, but just like there's way too much detail in it that really doesn't need to be in it. And so it's like it's better to do. bullet points. So we've found out just through, I mean, through trial and error, but that's a written, you know, communication that you're sending out that you've got to make sure that it's, you're going to have the one person that reads the entire thing and absorb every single thing. And you're going to have people that just go for the bullet points or the whatever, and then they'll pick up what they pick up. And so it's like, we've, we've, we got to, we've learned a lot just through written communication. communications to members that what to do and what not to do. But we've learned being short, sweet, to the point. We get a lot more positive feedback.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Well, you know, look, I have a business partner friend of mine and, you know, I send the emails and look, I probably over communicate. I've been told that before and I'll send an email and it'll be seven paragraphs long and really It didn't need to be but three sentences. And so he gives me a hard time. You sent one of your novels to me, and I'm like, bro, that's important. Everything in there is super important, and I want it to be clear. But if you don't send that clear, if you're not clear, it's a tremendous defeat coming in leadership every time.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and it takes me back to ownership. If you're not communicating clearly and giving them the directions that's needed and then they don't do what needs to be done, that's on
SPEAKER_01:you. It's on you. That's right. You own it. And so when you're really clear, you can say, dude, I spelled it out. So then you can manage expectations.
SPEAKER_02:That's
SPEAKER_01:right. Right? And so we'll get into all that. But look, the next one is confidence. This one's huge. People don't follow people that aren't confident. They just not. They'll sit back. And if you want someone to race in behind you, be confident. Okay? And you have to be certain because certainty breeds confidence. And being 100% certain, whether you're right or wrong, about what you're doing. And I tell people, you have to believe in what you're saying and believe in what you're teaching. And if you don't believe it, then don't do it. And another thing, don't ever... Don't ever ask someone to buy into what you're trying to sell. I don't know if you've ever done that, but I've done it. I've had it done to me. And it's not good to do that. Explain. Well, so if, let's say
SPEAKER_00:we... Did you say explain? Yeah. Okay, that's what I
SPEAKER_01:was... So you and I have a plan. So we're in business together. And you want to paint the... I don't know, I'm trying to think. You want to paint the car blue, okay? I want to paint the car red. And you say, well, Jeremy, the car being blue would be better for our business in the long run. And I say, no, I think it'd be red would be better. Well, a lot of people would say, at some point, one of y'all just has to submit, okay? And that's true, probably true. Or you just change the color altogether. The problem is, is if I concede... and let you paint it the color that you... Let's just say you sit me down and you talk to me and you're trying to convince me to paint it blue. And I say, Daniel, it needs to be red. And we have misalignment. If I ever concede and let you paint it blue, then I would just say this. You're now in a state of discord. And you don't want to be there. Because... later down the road, whether it be in our negotiations or whatever, I'm going to resent you for that. Okay. And it's never going away. Okay. And it's, it's relationship management. Okay. Cause leadership, look, leadership is relationship management. Okay. And again, I've had people, good, great leaders that I've worked for that have asked me to do that. And I say, if I don't agree with Look, we're just not, I'm not, no, I can't agree. Because this is the thing. When I do agree, if I believe in what you're selling, then I'm in, and we are going to march forward. But any time we have that misalignment, it creates resentment later, and it doesn't work. So if you're a leader out there, do not do that. I'm just telling you, and look, I don't have a degree or an MBA or anything to back that up. I'm just letting you know. Yeah. And you can probably ground it with some teaching somewhere. But based on what I know, don't do that. If you can't get buy-in, then you just wait until you don't have to ask for the buy-in. In other words, you don't force someone to do it. Go ahead and try that with your spouse. Try it. You can try it with your spouse or your friend or anyone else you have a relationship with. Ask them to do something that they don't want to do, that they don't believe in. And watch what happens. They'll do it, but they'll resent you for it. And it never goes away. And so what you want to do, the different approach, you might say, well, what's the approach? Well, if you really want the car blue and I really want it red, then we haven't agreed on it. We don't paint it at all. That's right. Until at which point we're both under the agreement that it needs to be blue. And maybe that time will come and maybe it won't. But if it don't come, then don't paint it. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. For sure. And
SPEAKER_01:we got kind of chasing rabbits there. But it's important. That's what we're doing. But confidence, clarity. And what led us to that was believe in what you're saying. Because, again, you have to believe in what you're saying. Okay?
SPEAKER_00:One thing we do, like, if we make a bad decision at work, so like shutting down one of the amenities or something like that, and then the weather isn't as bad as what we thought it was going to be or something, and we get... ridiculed for it yeah but the one thing that i my the leaders at my work are great at doing is staying confident in their decision which i think shows you know they're obviously leading us the employees but they're also leaders in where members are looking up to them as leaders in their club sure to where it's like okay well they're We're confident in the decision to close because of X, Y, and Z. And yes, sorry that it didn't freeze over last night or whatever, but we have to close. So I think it's before, during, and after with confidence. Even if you may have done the wrong decision, if you know that at the time you thought it was the right one and it could have gone either way, you still have to be confident even if you weren't successful.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. 100%. Absolutely. If you want to remain... If you want to remain leader, because if not, you start losing your credibility. And not by position, right? But by influence. That's
SPEAKER_00:a terrible example on my end.
SPEAKER_01:That's good. So look, they don't have to believe what you believe. They don't have to believe what you believe, but they have to believe that you believe what you believe. Does that make sense? Yeah. So you can stand... Look, people go to church all the time. And on this show, we don't talk about it, but preacher goes up and preaches. The congregation, someone that doesn't know God, has to believe that that man knows what, he believes what he believes. And he believes what he's saying. And so I had a preacher, one of my pastors in the past, it was Randy Reese. Shout out to Randy. He's a good man, good pastor. He said that one time he had a guy come into church. And after church, the guy walked up and said, man, you really do believe what you're preaching up there. And he said, yes, sir. And so, look, that's what you want. That is what we want. All right, so we're going to have a clear picture of, you know, and a thorough plan on what we're communicating. It's very important to be clear and have a clear picture of what you're communicating and have a committed message. So all of that's part of being confident. Moving on to number three is complete communication. We talked about the difference between complete and clarity just briefly, but you want to have a full understanding of what you're communicating, and then you've got to be able to give them a full understanding of what, basically deliver it that way. So you have to understand it before you can deliver it. And look, it's your job as a leader to understand what you're asking people to do. You heard Tyler and Brandon and the leaders before, they say, we're not going to ask anybody to do anything that we wouldn't do ourself. Well, it's kind of like a new task at work. If you have someone that you have to get to do something, guess what? You should go do it first because you need to understand it before you have them do it. And so that's super important. You can't have anything incomplete. You need to have a logical conclusion and information followed by action is required, right? So a little bit of follow-up. But being complete, would entail all of that. All right, so the number four, yeah, consistent. We talked about consistency, but how important is it to be consistent? Listen, this consistency is one of the things that builds trust. Why is that? That's
SPEAKER_00:true.
SPEAKER_01:Why is that?
SPEAKER_00:I think it makes the person who you're building trust with more confident in building your capabilities. So as a leader, you know, if you're, if you're consistent in your communication or, you know, you know, every single Monday we're having this meeting at this time and you, you know, you start out, I don't know what the example is, but it builds a confidence with your employees or friendships or whatever it might be that you're who, you're who they want to be with or look up to or, um, You know, work under, you know.
SPEAKER_03:So to me, consistency is comfortable. Inconsistency is uncomfortable. And it's like as simple as that. Like anything that's inconsistent just is awkward and anxious and uncomfortable. Stressful. But stressful and consistency is peace and comfort.
SPEAKER_01:And trust is built in that arena. Yes, sir. Not in a chaos environment. Right? So you want to build trust? Be consistent because you want to be predictable. So humans, either you're in a trustworthy environment where you can live freely or you're not. There's really no in-between. You're in that good, safe, trusting environment or you're not. Period. Now, there can be different degrees of trust. But either you have trust or you don't. And so when you're operating in a place where you do not have trust... I guarantee you, you'll find inconsistency every time. And so, but, you know, so inconsistency, I labeled it here as dancing because inconsistency, you're just kind of going with the flow and leaders don't do that. In fact, sometimes leaders go against the flow. And you know what? That's because they're leaders and they're necessary. And it's necessary for a leader to do that from time to time. It's also necessary for leaders to go with the flow and follow. Good leaders are good followers. We talked about that. But nonetheless, the leader's job is to figure out what water he's in and navigate it and for his people. So, you know, I wrote that down. If you ever get to dancing, you're going to slip. I don't know about y'all, but I don't have any dance moves. But look, leaders that dance around will fall. And so being consistent is super critical. The choice of words does matter. Consistent tone and content. Across the board, be consistent. Number five is courteous. Now, a lot of people might say, well, what do you call courteous communication? Well, it's exactly that. Number one, it's positive. Leaders should never be negative. Ever. Not for any reason. Ever. A good leader is not negative. Now, Again, you take a leader and you put him in an environment where there's no trust. He's going to be negative. He could be negative. Well, so I'll take it back. He could be. He shouldn't be. Or she. He or she should not be negative ever. But in an environment where there's distrust, it's difficult to be positive. So I would just say that Keep it positive. Optimism, not pessimism. If the leaders ever go negative, so will the people that follow them. And that's when you have problems. So we always look on the other side of the leaf. Some people say look for the pony. Look for the wet side. Whatever people say. Courteous communication would be honest, respectful, open, and candid. So And then we're going to talk about this. When I think about honest, respectful, open, and candid, that kind of leads me to think about listening. Listening is a huge part of communication. And so we're going to talk about that right now. But how often do you hear or see good, strong leaders listening?
SPEAKER_00:All the time.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Tell me about it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think that... good strong leaders take a step a step back and kind of listen to what's going on around them a lot of times when a new leader comes into like a new a new leader in a new organization they take a few weeks to kind of chew everything up and then you know maybe make changes or whatever it might be so like new sheriff in town I don't know this. I'm just saying. I'm assuming that when he gets in, he's not going to just go in and, like you said, like an iron fist. He's going to go in. He's going to listen to his new employees. He's going to interview people, see what's great, what's not great, or whatever, and then start acting on it.
SPEAKER_01:And he's been doing that. He started January 1st, Tyler Hooks, and he's been doing a good job with that. I was told that he's really been an active listener to the community. And that he's taking it all in and making things right. That's great. That's what we want to hear. Yeah, but look, active listening and passive listening, let's say active listening is really an active thing. And let me tell you, it's not easy to do. For some people it is. It comes natural, maybe, but not to some. And look, most leaders that I know, strong leaders, have trouble with this area. And I'll tell you that I have trouble in this area. Because... As much as I like to listen, I also like to tell people what to do because I like to see things happen. I mean, really. So I like to be the guy that's like, I'm ready to go. Let's go. Let's do this thing. Well, along the way, I have to slow myself down. Like, hey, hey, hey, slow down. Let's listen to what's going on because I don't know everything, right? And neither does anybody else. But we've got to maintain that position. And listening is super critical to the leader's journey. The level of influence that the leader has is directly impacted by his ability to listen because, again, that's how you influence others. And so the biggest part of communication, we can be clear, complete, confident, consistent, courteous. We can be all those things and not listen and lead less, right? So you've got to do all these ways that you're communicating to these five C's, I guess we'll call them the five C's, those five C's, and then you have to, after doing all that, and even before, you gotta listen, and take it in, and then go from there. So the first thing, I tell my kids this all the time, the first thing that comes to your mind is probably not the right thing to say. Most of the time. True. You know, it's just the way it is. And so what you want to do is be curious. And we talked about that a little bit, and I said I was going to come back to that. But being curious all the time, asking questions. That's what the leader does.
SPEAKER_03:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:And the best leaders that I know ask questions and never tell people what to do. Think about this. You can go through and read the Gospels. Jesus always asked questions. It will blow your mind when you go look at it through that lens. Jesus was the greatest leader that ever walked the face of the earth. I'll just tell you. And when you go and read the Gospels and read about his life, it was always questions. And, yeah, I mean, he told people questions. how to live. You look at the Sermon on the Mount where he said, blessed are those that do all these things. He did give instruction, but more times than not, they would come to him and say, well, Jesus, what about this? And he would ask a question. And he would always speak in third person. And so why would you not take those two things? Ask questions, be curious, and what you're doing is you're illuminating the, hey, look, you can figure this out for yourself. Typically, if someone comes to you and says, Daniel, how do I do this right here? Your kids, for example. How do I do this, Dad? Well, instead of telling them, if you'll ask the right questions and then they figure it out on their own, you're at the same time building confidence. And you're establishing your place as leader. And then when they say, Dad, I cannot figure this out, then help them. And then I would even challenge you to say, well, hey, just give them confidence. an idea of what they should do. Still, don't give them the answer. And so I've found that in my trade, in my industry, if someone comes to me and says, how do I do this? If I can just ask them the right questions to lead them to the answer, they walk away profoundly motivated to do it later. But if I tell them, just do this, they didn't learn anything. So you want people to learn from you, and you want people to—you want to build influence with people. That's how you do it. And, you know, third person, man. Look, Jesus spoke in third person all the time. And, you know, look, go back and read it. It's very interesting. But listening is key. And I left it here at the last part because really and truly— In a leader's communication, this is the most important, in my opinion. The leader's ability to listen to everyone, both subordinates or people that they report to, being able to listen, process, and then communicate. So you communicate these five ways, man, you're going to be clear. And you know what? You're going to lead, period. So if you don't do these things, you're going to lead halfway, and you're not going to lead with greatness. So if you have an email or a letter to someone, here's another thing. So have you ever? I've done this before. I'm just telling them myself. So as a leader, okay, here we go. This is good. As a leader, I've ran into some issues before, and, man, I'm fired up. about something and I need to communicate something and I just start replying on an email and I'm typing it up and I type like four sentences and I'm ready to hit send and I wait I go back and wait and I'll go back and read it the next day and I will change every word in it because it did not need to be communicated like that and so Now, a lot of times you don't have that time. You've got to communicate now, okay? If that's the case, then you have someone else read it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But you don't want to, if you're a leader, and especially when you're talking to your people, you don't want to communicate the wrong thing, the wrong way. And look, you might mean well, but you're saying it in a way that is not helpful. And so send it the next day, and you'll change the words, and it's better. But don't act out of emotion. So y'all heard me talk about I struggle. Look, a lot of this stuff is born from my struggles. I struggle with emotion. I'm very passionate. And, man, I'll get fired up about something, and I don't need to. I need to slow down, relax, make it so that it's going to land well. And
SPEAKER_03:go ahead. It takes me to all these things are very slow to build. And it takes time. And what you're saying right now, it can all just be damaged. Yes. It crumbles so fast,
SPEAKER_01:so fast, so fast. It's called the flesh, by the way. The flesh, I don't know what everybody believes, but the flesh and the devil can really rock you. I mean, he can just demobilize you. As a leader now. You're still going to survive, but you're losing influence. If you're not doing these things right here, you're losing influence. And you want to get it back? Go back to work on these things. That's why this is important.
SPEAKER_00:It's almost like a routine. Yeah. You just said something a minute ago about how you had to step back. When you start needing to respond to something, it's like... Am I being clear? It's like you've got to get into that groove, and it goes in that sequential order of the five Cs that you've got to learn. You've got to learn that. It's reps. It's reps.
SPEAKER_01:It's constant learning and reps. These aren't natural. That's why everybody says leadership can be taught, and it 100% can. We're taking people to school on this podcast. If they'll do these things, they'll notice a dramatic difference in their leadership. Because these aren't natural. These are taught, learned principles. You're not coming out of the womb with this stuff. In fact, you're the opposite. And you learn this in the trenches of leadership. And, of course, leading, implementing. And then when you see these things work, the needle begins to move.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Go back and review the email, right, or the text. Change it. Don't react emotionally. That's so critical for
SPEAKER_00:the leader. I think that's the hardest part for me.
SPEAKER_01:It is. Me too. Hey, look, nobody's immune to this, but you start acting in the flesh and these things will not be there and you will lose influence. Good. That's it. Good stuff. All right, so should we decide to focus on these things? We will build trust. And it provides opportunity to grow in our businesses and provide more opportunity for those coming behind us, 100%. And so I thought about doing a meaningful question today, but what was the question you asked a while ago? We're going to do this next week with Nick, but the question you asked a while ago, I want to...
SPEAKER_00:Well, it was funny because I just... It was an email. I don't think you were in here before we started recording, but there's... an email that went out about one of my daughter's things, and one of the potential questions that she could be asked is, in your opinion, what is the most important quality a leader should possess?
SPEAKER_01:Bro, mic drop.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm like, okay, so I get this email, and it's just, you know, I don't know, kind of cool.
SPEAKER_01:We're asking Nick that question next week. Ask it again.
SPEAKER_00:In your opinion, what is the most important quality that a leader should possess?
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_00:there's 20 of them. We've got 20 of
SPEAKER_01:them. Which one is most important? That's a good question. I don't know the answer.
SPEAKER_00:I'm really excited to hear what all the students
SPEAKER_01:say. Before Nick comes, I'll tell you what I think. And this has been in the balance for me for some time. And I haven't ever been asked quite that direct. But I would say there's two for me. I've got to figure
SPEAKER_00:out which one. You've got to
SPEAKER_01:pick one. I'll let you pick one. So let me give my
SPEAKER_00:story. I've got mine.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I think that trust... So being present and being trustworthy are probably foundational, in my opinion. I've got to figure out which one's more important. But... If you don't have trust, you don't have anything. So I would say that trustworthy and present is a good tie there. I don't know. And we'll have to unpack that. Well, let's see what Nick says next week. Okay? But that's a meaningful question. Yeah. And I want to camp out on that for a minute. So that would be something that we
SPEAKER_00:could do. Can I tell you mine?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Communication and clarity. Because, like, think about it. You just said trust, but...
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Clarity, consistency, like those build trust. So if you don't have that, it's like the chicken before the egg or egg before the chicken or whatever. Well, that's
SPEAKER_03:the thing about these mandates is there's a... They can all be the most important at the right time when the time comes. And there's an argument for every
SPEAKER_02:single one of them. I was going to say. There's an argument for all of them. Dude, I would like to hear those kids answer that question. I know. When is this happening? February 8th. I
SPEAKER_03:haven't told you guys this, but Sarah Jane told me she wants to be on the podcast. Oh, cool. And I was already thinking we're going to shoot. some mini episodes oh yeah with each like we're each going to bring one of our kids
SPEAKER_01:oh yeah that's great and ask them some of these questions so we're doing it I love it that's great so February 8th I want to know I really like I want to go to that
SPEAKER_00:yeah
SPEAKER_01:because I can only imagine what kids would say the answer to that is how old are these kids
SPEAKER_00:so there's high schoolers and then there's middle school which the middle schoolers don't have to answer the question Morgan
SPEAKER_01:County's asking kids that bro that is on point
SPEAKER_00:It was pretty good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love it. Cool. All right, well, we're signing off.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Everybody good? All hearts and minds are clear?
SPEAKER_00:Clear.
SPEAKER_01:See you next week. Thanks, guys. Yep, thank y'all.
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