.png)
The Heart & Science of Leadership
The Heart & Science of Leadership" podcast, co-hosted by Dr. Paulie and A.J. Rinaldi, combines their diverse backgrounds in leadership to offer a comprehensive view on what it takes to lead effectively, no matter your position—be it executive, teacher, manager, principal, supervisor, or coach. Together, they explore the balance between the human side of leadership and evidence-based practices, providing listeners with practical tools, real-life stories, and actionable strategies. Whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey, this podcast delivers valuable insights that blend heart and science for impactful leadership in any setting.
The Heart & Science of Leadership
The Leadership Language: How to Communicate for Influence, Trust, and Success
Ever wonder why some leaders instantly command respect while others struggle to get their message across? The secret lies not in what they say, but how they communicate it.
Communication represents the fundamental difference between leadership that merely directs and leadership that transforms. In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Paul Gavoni and AJ Rinaldi unpack the five critical dimensions of leadership communication that drive organizational success: reinforcing for production, resolving for partnership, reciting for inspiration, reflecting for authenticity, and receiving for understanding.
The conversation reveals surprising insights about the science of human behavior, including the optimal 4:1 ratio of positive to corrective feedback and why our natural tendency to focus on problems actually undermines our leadership effectiveness. Both hosts candidly share their personal struggles with public speaking—once their greatest fear—and how they transformed this weakness into a strength through deliberate practice and mindset shifts.
Perhaps most powerfully, they challenge the common assumption that communication flows primarily downward in organizations. "When was the last time you directed positive feedback up the chain?" Dr. Gavoni asks, highlighting how true communication creates a culture of mutual respect that flows in all directions. Through practical examples, compelling research, and memorable stories, this episode provides a comprehensive framework for communication that builds trust, resolves conflict, and inspires exceptional performance.
Whether you're leading a small team or an entire organization, these evidence-based communication strategies will help you move beyond good intentions to create lasting impact. After all, as the hosts remind us, leadership isn't about title or intent—it's about impact.
Link to Respect is a 2-Way Street Article
Pick up a copy of the #1 bestseller: Adaptive Intelligence: The Evolution of Emotional Intelligence Through the Proven Power of Behavior Science
The Behavioral Toolbox equips those charged with supporting behavior change in schools with practical applications of the science of human behavior for making a positive difference in the workplace. In this case, the classroom and school!
Be sure to subscribe to Dr. Paulie's Heart & Science YouTube channel for a variety of content related to behavior science and bringing out the best in yourself and others.
Welcome to the Heart and Science of Leadership, where evidence meets empathy. Co-hosted by Dr Paul Gavone, a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author, and AJ Rinaldi, a John Maxwell Team certified leadership coach, this podcast blends the human side of leadership with evidence-based practices, demonstrating that leadership isn't about title or intent. It's about impact. And now here are your hosts, pauly and AJ.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome back, man. Good to see you again, AJ, how you been.
Speaker 3:I'm good brother. How are you?
Speaker 2:Man, I'm always grinding man. Got lots of stuff on the schedule, got some upcoming talks, which I really love. I'm constantly in my passion with disseminating the science of human behavior, man, especially as it as it involves leadership. You know it's something that you know.
Speaker 3:I know you and I are both extremely passionate about absolutely, absolutely, and I think we got a great uh, a great show on the books today for our listeners. So so today is all about communication.
Speaker 2:I see that man. You know, what our listeners don't know is that AJ will come up with the topic. I like to shoot from the hip, man, but AJ puts together these topics and he's got these naming titles right. We're going to be talking about, like, reinforcing, resolving, reciting, reflecting, receiving. I love it so much and you know, pax, you do a really good job with that and I've got to think about this stuff. You know, again, I'm shooting from the hip. I love that you just come out here and you put these questions out there and I'd love just to pull from my brain, man, to see. You know, hey, how are we going to approach this stuff? So well done on this.
Speaker 3:Oh, I appreciate that, brother. And today is about communication, and we know that communication is absolutely a critical component to leadership. As a matter of fact, if you show me a leader that can't communicate effectively, I'm going to show you an ineffective leader of leader, and so, according to the Harvard Business Review, paulie, the number one criteria remains for advancement and promotion of professionals is an ability to communicate effectively, and so it's no secret that communication is perhaps the most important skill a leader can own. So today we're going to unpack that. Today we're going to talk about why do so many people get it wrong? And also, paulie, what can we do to improve our communication?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, man, Wow, this is a bundle. I mean, there's so much to say about communication, simple word, but this is some deep stuff because just about almost all the problems that I've seen in organizations have revolved around the single concept. So I love this man that we're going to unpack this stuff. So I know we're going to talk about, I guess. Just we're going to look at it from some different angles here, so this is exciting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so let's talk about, kind of, our first prompt of using our communication in a reinforcing manner. And so that means how do we use our communication to bring the best out of our team, which ultimately leads to more production for our team, right, paul?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I got a lot to say about this brother, but I'm going to ask you what's your philosophy in this area? What do you think I got a lot to say about this brother, but I'm going to ask you what's your philosophy in this area?
Speaker 3:What do you think? Yeah, so one phenomenal book that has come out in the last couple of years by John C Maxwell is Maxwell 16 laws of communication, and in that book he says something that I really liked, paulie. He says that what you appreciate, appreciates and what you depreciate, depreciate. So, in terms of positive feedback, giving positive feedback to the people that we lead, we know that positive feedback nourishes people, it grows people, and we never want to be really free flowing and giving of our positive feedback to reinforce those values and those performances that we find effect of. Paulie, don't you think?
Speaker 2:A hundred percent, brother. A hundred percent, you know. You know, here's what we know from the science. All behavior occurs because it's reinforced, period, end of story, unless it's a reflex. That's why our behavior occurs.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't understand what reinforcement actually is. Reinforcement is something that occurs in the environment as a result of our behavior, and if it maintains our behavior, it's reinforcement. If it doesn't maintain our behavior, strengthen it or increase it, it's not a reinforcement. It might be a well-intended you know hey, great job, or you tried to reward some behavior but if it doesn't strengthen or increase the likelihood of behaviors going to occur, it's not actually a reinforcer. So it's important for everybody to understand that Everything we do is to get something or get away from something, and in organizations, uh, or in our personal life, we have like values, and values are like our preferred ways of being and doing. Essentially, they're saying like what are our potential reinforcers? You know we value good leadership, right? Uh, aj, that's something that's important to us. And, um, when we engage in behaviors and we see people are performing better, that they're happier, that they, it's a want to do culture. You know, just seeing that change in the environment can become a reinforcer to our behavior, so we continue to do that thing.
Speaker 2:What we know about positive reinforcement is that's the only way to get people to go above and beyond, even when you're not looking. Positive just means something's added as a result of your behavior. Uh, in contrast, when people use in terms of performance improvement, when people use negative reinforcement which, again, when it comes performance, it's fear of consequences when you pull out the whip on people, so you need to do this, people will do just enough to get by, and only when you're looking. And I think I use this analogy maybe in episode one or maybe not, but it's why we do the speed limit, for example. We do the speed limit so we can avoid a ticket. We do just enough to get by, and only when the cop is looking.
Speaker 2:So it's important to understand that, because when we do use leaders, managers, whoever will use this approach because they see it works, their behavior is reinforced for doing it. You know you guys got to do this stuff now and people hop to you and they do it. The problem is with the overuse and misuse of it that it can drop morale and it can drop performance in other areas and et cetera, et cetera. So I know that's what we're going to move into next with this for resolving, but we really want to focus on positive reinforcement, that is, planning for the consequences that occur following a behavior, and a lot of people miss this piece, man.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, absolutely. And Paulie, in terms of kind of like, is there like a ratio that we want to try to establish as far as being intentional and deliberate with that positive feedback, to reinforce those behaviors, just from more of a human behavioral science approach?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the rule of thumb man. Good question is a four to one ratio, that is, recognizing appropriate behavior, appropriate performance four times more than you have to correct it, and a lot of people will want to come in and it's easy to see the things in the environment that are going wrong and that pulls our attention to it, right, uh, it's in our dna where we look for signs of damn or signs of danger, so it increases this fight, flight, freeze or fawn response in us. Um, but good leaders intentionally search for growth so that they can reinforce it. And if you're not reinforcing at a four to one ratio, it might mean you've set your goals too high. People, right, so we got to might need to bring them down a little bit and break them down in the accomplishments so we can recognize incremental growth, which we call shaping. It's like shaping a piece of clay into the perfect statue, right? So this is, this is really the mindset that good leaders have, and when you do that, when you walk out and you're around people, you become a positive stimulus to them. People want to see you because you've recognized what they're doing growth and you haven't done it in a way that says you did a great job but right, the big but is like a great eraser for anything positive that you've seen. Or a lot of times people, just in the interest of time, they, they, they use like a sandwich method you know you did a great job, but blah, blah, blah. But you're doing good over here, right, and kind of pairing those negatives with the positives can completely erase the positive. Now I think it's best to recognize appropriate performance and leave it at that and then use a correction as as a reminder before they're going to perform the next time, you know.
Speaker 2:So I come out and say AJ, you're doing a great job with this. And I'm very behaviorally specific. I said because you're doing this, here's the outcome you are producing, right, cause when we're giving communication, we need to be aligned behavior with results, right, and we're giving some sort of feedback for it. But if you're getting ready to do a speech, like right and I know you're a great public speaker, if you guys have never heard AJ speak, he's amazing. And I said and I thought you know, I have some feedback to give you. I'm I. After you did one speech, I said you did amazing with A, b and C.
Speaker 2:As you're planning for the next one I might say hey, aj, you're going to come out to the speech next time, try doing this. This might help you do engage your audience right off the bat, so it's a reminder just before you're getting go out. So now that gets you in touch with the naturally occurring positive reinforcement of actually doing it. So separating Now some people don't have time to do that, so I do like a glows and grows. Then here's what you're doing well, and then I do the grows as questions to get them to reflect on their own behavior. You know what might happen if you do this right. I think it's a real strong way to like involve your stakeholders, because we need them to better assess problems, solve, make decisions and take actions despite us, right? So, yeah, that's that's. That's my take on the reinforcing piece of it.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's. That's good for our listeners. That communication, it's more than just something that you just do randomly. There's a human, scientific component to it, and that moves us to our next prompt, pauline. So we just talked about using our communication to reinforce our people and get more of the behavior, the production, the values that we want to see, and get more of the behavior, the production, the values that we want to see. Let's move from reinforcing to resolving, and what we're talking about is wherever there's human beings, there's going to be conflict. Right as long as resources, power and perspectives exist, we'll have to work to find common ground with people. We'll have to work to find common ground with people. And so we want to ask ourselves what is the best practice when it comes to resolving conflict with our communication. And so, paulie, what have you found that has worked really?
Speaker 2:well, resolving conflict using communication. Yeah well, I think I got to tie back into something you've already kind of outlined in this when you were setting it up, and that is to to reduce the likelihood, first of all, that we're going to have conflict with people. We need to engage people through shared values. And, coming back to the reinforcement stuff, people need to know what's in it for them. You know how it's going to help them perform better, how it's going to make their job easier, how it's going to help them to produce valued outcomes. And so when we do that, when we do give feedback, when we're helping to say, maybe correct performance, they're going to understand the why behind it. Right, and you've agreed on this stuff up front and ideally you're agreeing on this stuff by giving people voice and choice and things. This is how we engage our stakeholders and, of course, you're positively reinforcing, right. So your very presence is good. And so when you do have to correct performance in some way or have an issue, it's going to be much more fruitful because it's not an adverse culture here, right, people understand that. You're in it together. It makes it so much better. But if all you're doing is correcting performance, you're going to have a lot of issues to resolve and people are not going to think that you're in it with them, especially if they don't understand what's in it for them, like how it's tapping into their shared values. And for me that's that leading hand. I talk about, right, engaging your stakeholders. You know creating a want. They understand how they're doing uh ties into a bigger picture, even from the most menial task, which is hard for people like you know doing the paperwork that sucks, but they understand how this accomplishment ties into the, the greater good of the organization, like in schools, they're understanding that's how our students are going to perform better and it's how you know they're going to live a better life, etc. Et cetera, et cetera. There's so much to tie into, but I think that when it comes to conflict, if you've set good, if you, first of all, people have a vision right, they understand the why it's tied in their values. If you've involved them in goal setting right, and they've agreed on the goals, you've unpacked those goals into measurable accomplishments that let you know that they're moving towards, that. If they have and this is, I think, to your point if they have the knowledge and skills and resources to be successful, then, when it comes time, it's so much easier because you've set this up right.
Speaker 2:You bring people in. You say, hey, what goal are we working on? You know, tell me. You know what are you doing, what happened as a result of your doing? You know, what do you think you can do more or less or differently?
Speaker 2:And what I like to do is bring the data and have the person speak to the data, because maybe there's some things that I'm missing, rather than come in and say you're not doing your stuff. And so I like to use good questionings here and I like to again get people to reflect on their own performance and how that is aligned with the current goals, and you get a lot done there. I'd like to ask permission. You know, hey, guys, is it okay if we talk about this? I have some feedback that I want to give, and feedback should not be a bad word, because you should be giving lots of feedback for good things. You know like, hey, can I give you some feedback? And you make it a positive thing.
Speaker 2:So now you're pairing feedback with a positive, but a lot of people here can I give you some feedback? Like, oh, I'm in trouble. You don't want feedback to be that way. But if you do it with this problem solving approach and you get them to reflect on their own performance and the goals because you've done what's happened as a result of what they've done, and then we just say, okay, what do you think you can do more or lesser, differently to produce that? If they don't know, this is where we can. Okay, can I help you with this? You know, can we establish this stuff? So that's the way I would go about it Very systematic, very practical and it's putting the power back into their hands.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and that's so well said. And I love what you said about feedback and some people seeing that as having a negative connotation to it. I think that's a good sign that you're doing it wrong or you haven't established the right culture of feedback is seen as something that people are going to be fearful of. I see it very similar. I think that the first step is understanding that conflict is a natural, reoccurring thing in human beings, so I think we should embrace a healthy conflict out on the other side, in a better place in a relationship, and so it's not about getting what you want or me getting what I want. When you win the argument, you lose connection, and so really, conflict needs to be seen as how can we resolve this problem and maintain connection? It's not you versus me, it's me and you versus this problem, and so you know my wife and I obviously we tried to maintain a healthy relationship, just like you would a working relationship, and we have a rule that we never go to bed angry, and that's helped, because now I'm recording a podcast after having not slept for four days, right, so joke in there. But effective communication, it is more than being friendly. It involves enjoyable and difficult conversations, and I'll tell you a quick story.
Speaker 3:One weekend I'm running to the store for my wife. My wife was doing some baking and she she was missing an ingredient, and so I jumped in the truck to head down the street to the grocery store and my son's in the car and I like to sometimes play some, you know, some kind of old school music and kind of let him hear some of the things I grew up with my grandfather playing for me. So I said I'm going to put on some Marvin Gaye and as I start to peel out of the driveway, Marvin's not coming through the speaker. Instead it's Shania Twain. I don't have any Shania Twain on my phone. I'm wondering what's going on and what actually happened. Paulie is my wife's phone. That was still inside in the kitchen. My truck was still Bluetooth synced to her phone, not my phone, and so I had to stop the truck, turn off the truck, turn it back on and make sure my phone was synced up to get the kind of music that I wanted to be listening to.
Speaker 3:And I think that's a pretty good analogy of how conflict can work sometimes If we're not synced up and having the right connection and the right communication, we're going to struggle to resolve conflict. People's brains are going to be closed like Chick-fil-A on a Sunday, if we're not in tune with each other. So one of the tips that I like to try to use is ask myself what type of conversation am I having right now with this person? Is it an emotional conversation? Does my wife want me to solve the problem? Not if it's an emotional conversation.
Speaker 3:Does my direct report want me to solve the problem? Not if it's an emotional conversation. They want me to listen and be empathetic. Are we having a practical conversation, Meaning, are we trying to fix something or are we being strategic about something? Or is this a social conversation? Is this just us connecting with each other, trying to relate and see each other from different perspectives? So being synced up, having the right conversation with the right person, is critically important, I think, when resolving conflict. Paulie and John Maxwell in his very popular book he says everyone communicates but few connect. So for our listeners, I'd ask you are you connecting with those you lead and not just communicating through conflict?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have. I had two things to say, and I already forgot one of them, Right, and that was very well said, AJ. Oh, here's the first one. Number one is that I've seen leaders that really try to avoid having to give corrective feedback because they want to avoid conflict. As I mentioned earlier, if you do those things, you're going to really make this a positive outcome, or increase the likelihood that you will, because you're helping somebody. But if you avoid conflict right if you're behaving in a way that just is to avoid conflict, things are going to go wrong.
Speaker 2:There's no way everybody can be performing at the highest level all the time. Things change, the environment change, just stuff happens, right, and so you need to address that stuff. Otherwise, you might have a happy, crappy organization. In other words, people feel comfortable, but they're going to lose respect for you if you're not correcting their performance. In a, before I go into correct performance, I put on my lens, and that is my performance diagnostic lens. I talk about this with my four hats, right, and that is if somebody is not performing your standard.
Speaker 2:It really comes down to two simple things it's a can't do versus don't do. It's a skill deficit versus a motivation deficit, right, and so if I'm trying to resolve something and they have a skill deficit, I'm going about the wrong way. I got to make sure they have the knowledge and the skills to be successful. And AJ, that's easy to determine that. Ask them do you know what you're supposed to be doing? Can you tell me? Can you show me what you're supposed to be doing? Can you do it quickly? If any of those are no, well then I really need to work harder, smarter, do all this stuff you know? Dah dah, dah. Man, if telling people what to do like that worked, we wouldn't be here right now having this discussion.
Speaker 2:A lot of the this really becomes a self-reflective piece of it, and that is how often, if they're not motivated and so, by the way, sometimes it can just be a habit, right? I'm going to say don't do it right. It's not always about motivation, it's about maybe there's not in the habit. Everybody takes time to develop habits Like they don't have something on their calendar. There's not a reminder coming through, right, Simple prompts.
Speaker 2:But there's also has to do with the leadership, the management that's going on there, and that is how often is that person being observed? How often are they getting feedback. What kind of feedback is it? Are we? How are they seeing the impact of their behavior on the environment? Right the outcomes? Do they value those outcomes? Are we asking them to do too many things at once? Because if everything is important, nothing's important. So I do a lot of self-reflection as a leader first before I want to go correct their performance. Right, If I've checked all the boxes, then it's time to have this tough talk. So, yeah, I think that's an important piece of it. It's called the Performance Diagnostic Checklist. I have it in all my books. They're free online. You can check them out or check out one of my articles. But powerful stuff, man.
Speaker 3:I love it. I love it. And so we talked about reinforcing, which is for more production. We just talked about resolving, which is to restore partners and work through conflict. Let's move on to our third prompt, which is reciting. And when we talk about reciting, we're talking about the speech, we're talking about the presentation, we're talking about the big meeting, the big proposal, right, and so this is all about your people casting vision, inspiring people, getting good information to the people who need it, and so we want to talk about that for a little bit. Why is public speaking so important as a leader to our communication?
Speaker 2:Oh, brother, this is huge. I'll tell you what. I don't know if you know this, but public speaking was my greatest accomplishment in life, my biggest fear to overcome. If you would have told me that this happened, that I have to speak in front of 10 people three months out, every morning, I'd wake up feeling sick to my stomach. 10 people three months out, every morning. I'd wake up feeling sick to my stomach. Man, I'd rather fight and I have in front of 20,000 people live than speak in front of 10.
Speaker 2:I don't know what happened to me when I was a kid. I must've done something and people laughed at me and just put this fear in me and I know it's a common fear of people, but it was unusual. I actually even took one time early on. I took NyQuil before I went in there. What a fool. I was thinking I was going to dull my senses. All it did was make me tired and more anxious. Man, it was silly. But I know you get in front of people a lot out here and so you're always trying to. You know it's a field where you've got to keep people focused on the importance of the work, because you're working with youth right, developing them. What's more important than that, because you're working with youth right, developing them. What's more important than that? So?
Speaker 3:how critical is being able to recite, present and articulate your message. Yeah, I think it's absolutely essential for just about any formal leadership role, but I think it's also critical regardless of where you're on the org chart is being able to communicate effectively, speak in front of many people, Because obviously I think if you can cast vision and get your message out to many people at one time, I mean that's just going to be a lot more efficient right as far as getting things done and moving the needle on the mission. And so not just you know reciting in front of large audiences, but also in front of meetings. Do you speak up at the right time during the meeting? Do your followers view you as a person that will stand up and speak up for what's right? You know, as leaders, our whisper is a roar but our silence can be deafening. And so, as a leader, your position, your title, that will get them to kind of open the book, open the novel and read the first chapter, but then what you say and do, that's going to determine if they turn the page or close the book.
Speaker 3:And so I think that obviously, public speaking, a lot of people have a trepidation about that. I grew up with a speech impediment. It's also one of my biggest accomplishments, Paulie, to have developed into a competent speaker, and they say that 75% of the population has a fear of public speaking, which means more than 200 million people feel nervous about talking to others. So for any of our listeners, you're not alone and it is something that you could get better at. It's something a lot of people fear, I think the comedian Seinfeld said and I heard it again here recently is most people would rather be in the casket than given the eulogy uh right, people fear speaking. Uh, more than deaf, uh, in some cases. And so it's something that we can all get better at and something that we can improve that. Uh, what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:oh man, I listen, I have a lot of thoughts on that. I believe this is my leading hat and that is you want to engage your stakeholders and that requires inspiration. And then that kind of transitioned into authenticity and I and I always just tried to be me Right. So I tried to let my own values and my, my passion come through, but of course I had to know I had to be knowledgeable about my stuff, which was really important. But here's one of the big mistakes I made back in the day. That was, I used to come out and talk about all the great things the science of human behavior can do, you know, to make improvements, right, but what I should have been doing is understanding what the people's values and pain points are first, and make sure that my talk goes directly to them, because I need each person out in the audience to hear me, to hear how what I'm saying is going to be meaningful for the things that are important to those people. So when I got into organizations regardless because, as you and I agree, leadership is not about title and I feel very passionate about leadership I believe that we can all be leaders and talk about like, if you engage in these behaviors. Here's how you can produce valued outcomes for yourself and for the people that you care about the most, and it makes them perk up right. So we got to start with that end in mind, and it's the end for our listeners, and there's been books written on this stuff. You know, like even this, what people in sales do and I don't think it's manipulative. They'll say what's important to you Because they need to know what they're presenting to you, how it's going to tie into the thing that is, that your value, your need. So it's really important.
Speaker 2:So, uh, I I believe in the power of storytelling and organic storytelling. I just look back on my own life and think about where's the lesson in there and I got a lot of lessons because I've screwed a lot of stuff up. You know and uh, but for me, I've looked back on it through my newfound lens, or now it's old found lens. You know behavior, science and think about okay, what, what was going well, where did I make a mistake? Right, using using this lens, and how can I be better the next time? I'm constantly reflecting on my own behavior and the impact of it on others, and I think that's what all leaders should be doing right Is taking a look at what they're doing, how it's impacting others, because it's not about intent in the end, as you and I know and that's the tagline for the show it's about impact. So I'd love that one Public speaking folks do some investment on it.
Speaker 3:Become better at that. And Paulie let me jump in there because some of our listeners might be saying well, aj, you're a certified speaker with the John Maxwell team. Paulie, you've been speaking all over the world. You guys do keynotes and consulting for organizations. It's easy for you guys to make public speaking sound easy. What would we say to our listeners who may be feeling that way, paula?
Speaker 2:Well, I can tell you right now that I have this. So I have this thing called the behavior alignment compass, and what it says is that sometimes we might value something, but sometimes we have these thoughts and feelings show up for us. We get angry, we get afraid, anxious, right, and that that creates this fight, fight, uh, freeze or fawn response to us, and so we'll engage in behaviors that provide us some sort of immediate relief. You know, like when it came to public speaking, somebody says, hey, we're doing a talk out here. I'm wondering if you know you can join us and give me the talk. When I was working with the school board, I'm like, no, I'll tell you what. I'll do the PowerPoint, I'll set up the room, I'll do all the research, anything but do a talk. And they say, okay, that sounds great, no problem, and I would feel immediate relief and that felt so good.
Speaker 2:But over time I recognize I'm not really behaving in line with my values. I really, I'm really passionate about disseminating the sciences of human behavior, right, powering people to better help themselves and others. And so I started to feel guilty over time, and so I had to become aware that when I felt this way, that I behaved that way, I had to be aware that that wasn't misaligned with my core values and instead I had to engage in some replacement behaviors. And what were those? Well, I really had to research public speaking. I had to watch public speakers. I'd watch videos on them. I had to learn how to slow my speech down. I started saying, okay, let me take a very small chunk of this, cause I'm like I can't do an hour, you know, but maybe I can do five minutes on this topic that I feel very passionate about, and so I'd know it very well. And I now I had my little story to tell. I learned about you know some, some storytelling techniques, and I would know about the skill or whatever. I'd have a nice visual to walk me through it and I do it, and I'd see people nodding, they'd smile and I'd see them thinking they might come up to me and say that was a really good point. That's getting me in touch with lots of positive reinforcement for doing it. Then, over time, I started to extend that. Now and that whole time I had that monkey in my back, brother.
Speaker 2:I was feeling anxious as heck, right. But I accepted that. I felt that way.
Speaker 2:I didn't focus on it. It's like fighting Right you can't focus on. I feel anxious. I got to focus on what I need to do in the fight in order to produce the value outcome that I want Right Winning, being safe. You know, getting the crowd involved, you know getting more fights as a result of it. So I think that's a trick being aware, accepting it, don't try to fight it. We are all humans. We have thoughts and feelings and these broad decisions show up. Man, you just got to accept it. I initially might take a deep breath to refocus and just focus on the things that I'm supposed to do and if I'm very prepared, it makes it so much better and it gets me in touch with positive reinforcement. Now, last year, aj, I spoke in front of 4,000 people and when they said, would you going to do it, I did have a little bit of anxiety, but I said yes, and I'm going to frigging crush it. And I did crush it because I love it so much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that mastery is the offspring of repetition, I think, the practicing, the honing of your craft. I mean, if you wanted to be good at basketball, you'd study the goats, right. You study MJ, you study Kobe, you study LeBron. I mean, have you watched Martin Luther King Jr give a speech? Have you, you know, googled Winston Churchill, jfk? You know we can get so much better from practicing, working towards our craft, but also seeing who's done it really well and trying to emulate some of the things they've done. So I would encourage anybody who's listening to go work on that, work on that, try to get better at that. Don't just settle for where you are. Even though Paulie said it, even though he was a speaker for many, many years, he got a little apprehensive when it came time for a bigger speech. You know I continue to have to work to get better. I just attended a workshop on Tuesday to try to enhance my public speaking. So it's a journey, never a final destination.
Speaker 3:With that, let's move on to our next prompt. So we just talked about reciting, which is public speaking for our people. Let's talk about reflecting for core principles, and what I mean by reflecting is our communication. Of course, it must cast vision, but it also needs to reflect our values and beliefs. But how do we do that? And so, when we talk about reflecting our character, we want who we are on the inside to be evident on the outside, and, paulie, I know the first two episodes. You talked a lot about say-do correlation. Is that something that fits well in terms of reflecting our values and communication?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's two things here Absolutely right. So, in other words, we do what we say we're going to do. One of the worst things a leader can do is say they're going to do something and not do it. That really hurts trust, it really hurts integrity. You know, people want to believe that their leader has integrity. They want to believe that if you say you're going to do something, that you're going to do something, so that means it's, you know, very important that you're very careful with the things that you're going to say.
Speaker 2:Now this goes back to what I was just mentioning about the behavior alignment, compass, and that is because you mentioned, you know we got to. We want to make sure that our character, who are we on the inside, is evident, evident on the outside. So this is why we have to be constantly reflecting on our behavior and is it in alignment with our values? That's that behavior, alignment, compass, constantly doing that. But we can't just think about it from our perspective right, about our intent. We have to measure our impact. And when we really value something, we our perspective right About our intent. We have to measure our impact and when we really value something, we measure it right. We have people talk about valuing things. You know there's values in the organization, there's values on the walls and man. Those values should manifest themselves in behaviors In the organization. Should we identify the key behaviors that people need to engage in and then we need to measure whether we're producing the outcomes right, these values we say you know, hey, we value responsibility. What does responsibility mean? Showing up on time? You know turning your paper, doing your work, whatever it is. We value good communication. What does that mean? It means asking questions. It means you know giving feedback. It means accepting feedback. You know being sincere. When you compliment something like that, you know, bring it down to behaviors. But we have to remember that's not about intent, it's about impact. So we need to check in with our people, our stakeholders, to see, as a leader, how am I actually impacting them, how so we call this social validity in our field? So we might be producing good results in organization. You know we're hitting those, those. Those KPIs are looking really good. We're hitting our goals and it's wonderful.
Speaker 2:But there are many ways to achieve goals. Some of them are like through using coercion. Some of them are unethical. You know we've seen people cheat to achieve certain results. But we might be really well intended, but maybe we're doing things that are pushing performance and we think things are going well, but people are not receiving it well. They're like they're doing it and they're performing well and the problem with that there's so many different problems with that because it's not sustainable. Uh, to me it's not aligned my values. I feel like that forcing people or being nasty to them, it just really is outside of what I believe good leadership is. Um, but sometimes being nasty to them, it just really is outside of what I believe good leadership is. But sometimes you don't know how people feel and sometimes they might mistake what you say and that's on you if you're saying in a way that doesn't have the desired impact. But we have to measure that, we have to check in with our people and we should do it frequently. We have things like climate surveys, culture surveys, and they give them at the end of the year and, aj, you've heard me say this, that's an autopsy. That's going back to at the beginning. We were talking about good communication.
Speaker 2:We need to have regular feedback loops going on and feedback loops one of the big issues I've seen in organizations is delayed feedback loops Feedback loops for when somebody's doing something right right so they know that it's going right and also correcting behavior, because if you let the wrong thing go for too long, it can produce all sorts of bad outcomes and it starts to become a cultural norm and this is the way that we do things around here, right? So we need people to have regular feedback loops going on there. Ideally, they're recruiting feedback from their own environment, in other words, they're looking at their behavior and the impact of it on the environment. That's the ultimate goal, right, having people better observe their behavior and how it's impacting their goals. Right, the things that they're working towards, so they can self-adjust. But we need to be out there taking a look at what's going on and mostly reinforcing it, but correcting in a way that's helping and not hurting, as we talked about earlier. So this is incredibly important to have these tight feedback loops and including making sure that we are doing things that are aligned with our values, which means soliciting feedback from our people.
Speaker 2:Hey, how am I doing for you? I know we're hitting results right. Is this working for you? Is there something that I can do more or less or differently for you? And they might say well, you know he said this the other day in this. Oh, I had no idea. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Or hey, I know I said that. Let me give you a deeper why. Maybe I wasn't clear about this. Here's why we have to do this. The state just puts this demand on, and I don't love it, you know, but it's like something that we have to do because it's a state mandate or whatever, you know. So if you have ideas to make it better, more efficient, right where we can you know it's not so disruptive let me know. I'm willing to hear, I'm open to it.
Speaker 3:So now we're involving people, we're giving them voice and choice and we're coming back to the why that we talked about a little bit earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what about you, brother? You know what have you found effective towards reflecting your values in your own communication?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I go back to what you said about saying do correlation. I think the fastest way to lose your credibility is if your people view you as somebody who has lost your integrity and you've lost your people, and so I think it's very important to do what you say. Lost your people, and so I think it's very important to do what you say. I think starting relationships off and showing that integrity with what you say is absolutely paramount. There's a joke I heard one time that says what do you call a conversation between two liars A job interview? And so I mean, start starting the relationship off right with good intentions, doing what this, what you say you will do. Somebody said when you open your mouth, you tell the world who you are. I'm kind of the mindset and my personality is kind of wired where I'm very seldom lukewarm on any subject. I'm either all in or all out on different ideas. And the people who work closely with me I don't want them to be ever second guessing like what would AJ think on a particular subject the people who know me best. I want them to say oh, aj would say this about that or this. I want my values to be just so reflective of who I am and what I believe in be just so reflective of who I am and what I believe in Dale Carnegie. He wrote in his 1935 book how to Win Friends and Influence People and this book was written in 1935. But if you haven't read it, I encourage you to pick it up. It still holds up surprisingly well to this day. We talk about positive feedback and giving people positive feedback, and for some leaders they may feel like, oh, I'm being fake or phony. Well, carnegie tells us it's like praise is different from flattery One is sincere and the other is insincere, it's counterfeit. And so I would say, if you're having trouble seeing value in people, that's not a sign of their lack of production, necessarily, it's probably a sign of your internal values.
Speaker 3:Mark Cole for the John Maxwell team. He often says do you want to be loved or do you want to lead? Do you want to lead? And so you also got to be able to have those difficult conversations with people and be able to be transparent and a caring way with people, not being a politician, but being a leader. I think leadership is about more than shaking hands and kissing babies. As leaders, our actions have to match our workers and so, um, you have to be willing to do that. You have to communicate value in your people. You also got to be willing to have difficult conversations. Um, leadership is not about necessarily making everybody happy. You know you want to make everybody happy. Go go drive an ice cream truck. It requires a balance of both, but you definitely want to serve people well. They need to know your heart and your intent needs to reflect that in your behavior.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you mentioned something about like our internal guide I forget the words that you use exactly and I think it's fair to mention here about reflecting. One of the things that we need to be aware of is our own bias, right, because there's this phenomena that occurs, called confirmation bias, and that is, we tend to look for things that support our existing beliefs and we miss the other things, and it's like a kid. The easiest example I give is a student that's misbehaving in the classroom, right, I've seen this all the time and the teachers were frustrated, and I get it because that behavior is very challenging. But let's say they were like calling out, you know, six times an hour, right, and now they've called out four times an hour. All the teacher sees is that the student's still calling out, right, they're not seeing the gradual improvement that's happened, actually a significant improvement, because that's a, you know, 33% improvement in calling out behavior. So it's very easy to get and this happens in politics all the time where people are just saying, oh, there they go again, there they go again. Nobody's recognizing some of the good things that are happening.
Speaker 2:So it's it's it's everybody's got bias in some ways, right, and this is why it's important to involve stakeholders. This is why it's important to check yourself by asking for feedback and to lift up the hood on things. Don't just make assumptions. Correlation is not causation, right, at least not simple correlation. So we need to make sure that we're looking deeper into things and if we find ourselves in a pattern of oh, here they go again, here they go again, let that be a red flag to you, right? And if here they go again, there's always a reason for it. Remember it's a can't do versus don't do. If they're doing something, what do they need from you as a leader to be better tomorrow than they are today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think for any listener because I know we have various, you know leaders in different roles and whatnot, and talk about reflecting your values and being a person of integrity that also it doesn't necessarily mean if you're a high ranking leader. Obviously you have to have discretion about the timing and the way you communicate different things to your organization. I'm not saying you have to be a blabbermouth. I'm not saying you have to be a blabbermouth, you know either, and be a communicator that doesn't operate with good discretion at different times. Craig Rochelle, great leadership guru, and he's got a great podcast as well. He says everything true doesn't need to be said, but everything you say needs to be true, and that kind of speaks to discretion. Like sometimes the best communication is actually knowing what not to say in certain situations.
Speaker 3:A quick story I tell in one of my presentations. I say there's this rattlesnake and he's trying to get across the Grand Canyon and he says, man, this will take entirely too long for me to slither my way down this ravine and all the way across. So he sees two eagles and he says, hey, I got an idea. I'm going to put this stick in my mouth. Can you two grab both ends and carry me to the other side. Eagles say well, what's in it for us? We're not trying to get bit by you, we're not trying to be poisoned by you.
Speaker 3:And he says hey, right across that Grand Canyon, I got to tell you there is just a load of rodents and things that you would love to feast on. It's a win-win situation if you could just grab a hold of the stick and carry me across. So the snake bites a hold of the stick, pauly. Eagles are carrying them across the Grand Canyon, and down below there's this desert fox that looks up and sees what's going on and he says the fox says wow, what a brilliant idea. Whose idea was that? And the snake says it was me. And so sometimes we just need to know when to keep our mouth closed in certain situations, because when you do decide to open your mouth, it needs to be truthful and it needs to be helpful for your team and helpful for your organization.
Speaker 2:I like the stories, man. What's next? This is the last on the list.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, let's move to our last prompt. So that is reflecting. We want to represent our values and our belief systems when we lead and when we communicate. Let's talk about. Receiving is actually a two-way street. People forget that communication is a two-way street. It involves listening and understanding, and so we kind of want to walk down the road of why is it so critical to leadership and why do so many people get it wrong? They miss the opportunity to explore the perspective of those around them.
Speaker 2:I think this is huge, man. I definitely see respect as a two-way street. I wrote an article on this. I actually pulled it up while we were sitting here, so I'll give some of my thoughts about this. What are your thoughts on this one man?
Speaker 3:Well receiving. As I said, it's about listening, and I think that poor leaders often think communication is a one-way process, and I think effective leaders know that listening and accepting feedback as you said earlier, paulie that's just as equally important. So it's not always about me, as a leader, having all the right answers or trying to impose my thoughts on everybody not just a monologue, but creating a dialogue between me and the people I lead, and so I try to get better at that. I can tell you that it's very challenging for most human beings and it's really challenging for a lot of leaders. It's so challenging, I think, that potentially, you could be in the top 2% of listeners within your organization and still have a long way to go. So it is a skill that requires us being really intentional. So it is a skill that requires us being really intentional.
Speaker 3:For me, I want to try to listen aggressively to my people that I try to lead. When they're trying to communicate their issues or their concerns. I want to speak confidently. I want to speak as if I'm right, but when I listen, I want to do it as if I'm wrong and really try to understand the viewpoints of the people who I'm trying to lead, and one of the things I've heard before that I think is a good piece of advice is in conversations, try to be more interested in people than you are trying to be interesting to people. So we want to look at people as a gift. There's something to open up, there's something to be interested in, and many leaders they get that wrong routinely. What do you think, paul?
Speaker 2:Well, listen, people. We said this earlier that feedback is a bad word to a lot of people, and the reason why it's a bad word is because a lot of times it's been delivered just to tell people what they've been doing wrong, and leaders are not an exception here. They've also come in with their own history of receiving feedback, so it can be aversive to people. It can especially be aversive to leaders who maybe shouldn't be leaders, be aversive to leaders who maybe shouldn't be leaders. There's a small percentage of leaders that fall into maybe like a narcissistic category and they don't want your feedback, and that's a terrible thing. I hate to see people elevated to those positions where they're not accepting a feedback. Right, that's terrible. I think that the best leaders are regularly seeking out feedback, as I had mentioned earlier. Right, they're constantly checking in with people to see how things are going. Can they do something more or less differently? This aligns with my own thought about servant leadership. If you're going to serve people, you need to know what they value and not just what they value, right, we need to measure. If we truly value our people, then we have some measures to let us know how our people feel about the way things are going with them, and so I think it's incredibly important to check in with those folks on a regular basis, and I do want to say this that I think also we need to like respect is a two-way street, right. I want to make sure that the leaders are respecting their people. You know they're celebrating, they're recognizing their efforts we talked earlier. They're celebrating milestones. They're giving you know we talked earlier celebrating milestones they're giving positive, personalized, positive reinforcement, because people not everybody wants to shout out publicly, for example, right, they might want a private thing. So we need to understand what's important to those folks, because that can actually inadvertently hurt them performing if they feel like, oh, I don't want to do this because I'm going to get recognized in front of everybody and I don't like that. It's embarrassing or whatever. They need to be consistent. And they also want to reinforce peers for reinforcing each other, right, because they're not out in the environment. So that's a really important thing, but a lot of times we think about it going one direction.
Speaker 2:This kind of feedback, right and respect needs to go up as well. There's the old saying that leadership is lonely at the top, and a lot of times, leaders are only getting people that are incoming, when they're disgruntled for things, when there's problems with it, right, and folks, if that's all you're bringing to your leader, then your presence starts to become aversive to them. They got to be doing something, right, right, so make sure you're showing them respect and focusing. Feedback is omnidirectional. Positive reinforcement is omnidirectional. It should not just go one way. So acknowledge their wins. If you like that they're doing something, let them know that you like it and why you like it, what positive outcomes is occurring, because it'll increase the likelihood that they're going to continue to do it.
Speaker 2:Make sure you're giving props to your peers, right, you know. Be very specific with them your leader and your peers right, when you're giving some sort of praise. So this stuff is really important. We can't forget about what these folks are doing up there, and that's going to help you in the future, because if you do need to give some sort of corrective feedback, you're not going to be that person. They're going to understand that you're there to help and you're not just the disgruntled person complaining. I want you to stop. Pause for a second. Think about when was the last time you directed positive feedback up the chain. Oh, wow, something to reflect on. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a I love that point. I love that point because, regardless, remember, leadership is not a title or position, it's a verb, it's an action. Right, no-transcript? I mean I want to see more of that behavior from the people that lead me. Certainly, that's a really valuable point when we talk about receiving and listening. You got to be open to it, you got to have an open mindset and open up your ears and listen to people, and people are watching to see what you do with that feedback too. That's another thing that goes back to that say-do correlation. I mean, because sooner or later, if you're not doing anything with the feedback, people are going to stop giving you feedback and wasting their time.
Speaker 3:A year ago, paulie, I was on a flight coming back from a speech engagement, speaking engagement excuse me, I can't speak now. Speaking engagement Excuse me, I can't speak now and I was flying back, actually from Fort Lauderdale and I forgot to check in. I'm late for my flight and so I'm boarding in the last section and the flight's running late because the airline crew was late coming in from another city and so I'm at the back of the line and the line, you know, on the board the plane is just exceptionally long. But the benefit of me being last in line, pauly, is I can see the flight crew coming up behind me and the pilot is in front of everybody and all of these people are frustrated. They're trying to get to their destination and they don't hear the pilot trying to say excuse me. He says excuse me like six times, paul. He's trying to get by these people and I tap the guy in front of me on a shoulder and I say, hey, if you let this guy pass, I promise he won't take your seat. And he looks back and he sees the pilot and he starts to move him and his family over. And then, you know, it's like a domino effect Everybody starts to move over to let the pilot on.
Speaker 3:But I think that's kind of how it is in life. When we don't listen and pay attention to our people, we could actually be missing a person who can take our mission where it needs to go, who can take us to the next level in a lot of situations. So, as leaders, that's critically, critically important that we actually are listening to our people and taking action on things that they're saying. Woodrow Wilson said the ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people. I think that's really good advice for us as leaders.
Speaker 2:Agree brother Agreed wholeheartedly on that.
Speaker 3:All right, so that is our last prompt. I want to quickly rehash for our listeners, if I can here. We talked about reinforcing, which is for more production, that's, communicating positive feedback to our people to get more production and more performance out of them. We talked about resolving, which is communicating in a way to restore partners to resolve conflict. We also talked about reciting, which is for our people, which is public speaking, getting in front of the crowd, the audiences, casting vision, inspiring people or just giving good information to people. We talked about reflecting, which is for core principles it's letting who we are on the inside come through our communication on the outside. And, lastly, we also talked about receiving, which is about exploring perspective, listening and not just talking all the time, but actually hearing the things that the people we lead are trying to tell us. All right, Paulie, any parting shots, Paulie.
Speaker 2:No, man, I think I love these chats. Man, I love digging in. I love hearing your perspective on things. I'm always learning, I always want to learn. So thanks everybody love digging in, I love hearing your perspective on things. I'm always learning, I always want to learn. So thanks everybody for joining us and remember that in the end, it's not about intent Leadership's about your impact. Take care, guys, and we'll see you next time.
