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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
Observable, Measurable, Impactful: Redefining Leadership with Behavior Science
Leadership isn’t a title—it’s a behavior. And while there’s no shortage of leadership theories floating around, this episode goes beneath the surface. Dr. Paul “Paulie” Gavoni and A.J. Rinaldi take a sharp, scientific look at what truly drives leadership that works.
Instead of parroting popular slogans, they dig into the behaviors, decisions, and contingencies that make—or break—leaders. It’s not about charisma or command. It’s about the observable, measurable behaviors that produce real results.
“We’re not just talking about what leadership looks like—we’re talking about what it produces. That’s where the science comes in.” – Dr. Paulie Gavoni
Whether you’re running a school, leading a team, or just trying to lead yourself more effectively, this episode lays the behavioral groundwork.
📘 Ready to level up? Grab your copy of Positional Authority Ain’t Leadership—a no-fluff blueprint for influencing performance through the science of human behavior.
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, AJ. Good to see you, brother.
Speaker 3:Good to see you too brother, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good man. I want to let you know you sound great man. Would you do something differently on that side?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just upgraded some of my equipment here to try to give some better quality for our listeners. We've been receiving such positive feedback on the podcast so I thought it was all in right to try to continue to improve for our listeners here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what's exciting you and I have been talking about this a little bit that we're eventually going to start pulling some people into interview and we actually have a lineup of a couple of folks that are coming out that are very well-known, successful leaders in their own right. So, anyways, stay tuned for that. We'll be eager to hear your feedback on it, Because in the end, we want to give the listeners what they want. I think people are really enjoying this format, but they also might enjoy us talking to leaders, and maybe they're going to enjoy that more, or maybe they want to just hear us talk, or maybe they want to have it go back and forth. So we'll let the dad do the talking for on that, that, that how we're going to approach it, moving forward, Anyways. So you know, AJ, you're kind of like the guide. You're kind of like I'm like the color commentator brother. You know what I mean. Like the guide, You're kind of like I'm like the color commentator brother. You know what I mean. You're the play-by-play guy. So what are we?
Speaker 3:going to talk about today. Oh, my goodness, we have a great episode planned for our listeners this morning. This morning, we're going to be talking about the four hats of leadership, and so we know effective leaders. They have a versatile skill set. They need to wear different hats in different situations. And, of course, we're not talking about a literal hat like a ringmaster or a meter maid. As a matter of fact, I think if you have to wear a funny looking hat to tell people you're in charge, you're probably not a very effective leader. But we're talking about those figurative hats that we all have to wear as leaders. And the four hats of leadership. It's a concept covered in the book positional authority Ain't Leadership, and so we just so happen to have the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author for that book right here, my friend, my mentor, my co-host, paul Govani. Paulie, we're going to get into each hat. But how did you, how did you come up with this concept for our listeners?
Speaker 2:Well, let me start off. Thanks, man. I'm glad that you want to talk about this I'm just so passionate about as we both are speaking about leadership Anytime. I always like to just put this caveat on here because of people here. But we're going to talk about my bestselling book. You know they're like this guy's just trying to push the book sales guys. I have hundreds of articles on LinkedIn. They're all free. I welcome you to go read those articles. You can bypass reading the book if you want.
Speaker 2:None of the stuff I put out in the world is to make profit on it. You know I really love. If you're an author, you understand that unless you're a New York times and I'm a wall street journal in USA today bestselling author unless you're a New York times bestselling author and you've had millions, that's where you actually start making some money. I'm just living my values with this stuff, man. I constantly do it, if you know. You know you see all the stuff I put out. I'm prolific with it because I just love doing it Anyway.
Speaker 2:So where did the concept come up with? Well, the concept came up with years of shitty leadership, man. I honestly, god man, came into the. I really stalled coming out of college. I was being a career student for a while, man, I was taking one or two classes. I did not want to be in the real world because it looked just too scary for me. And when I got in the real world, it wasn't what I thought. It was worse, brother, and what made it worse was leadership. Almost always it was the problem that I had with people with positional authority and part of it.
Speaker 2:Now, this is not a science-based thing, right, but there's. There's these like, uh, hierarchies I forget what they call this stuff like alpha, male, beta, male, whatever, all that stuff you know. I mean, uh, it doesn't have to be male, it could be female, whatever. Um, but I just I identify with this, this sigma archetype, and the sigma archetype doesn't like hierarchies. I just never see hierarchy, which means I don't see people above me and I don't see people below me, and I think that just resonated.
Speaker 2:My folks are really good about treating everybody with respect and equal and I don't ever see position. And so and you and I agree on this, we've talked about this in an earlier episode I'm gonna treat the maintenance guy as well as I treat the CEO, maybe better, because I know how challenging it is and how they're probably just getting by, I don't know. Just a lot of respect for the frontline employees all the time. It doesn't mean I don't respect the CEO, but in the end I don't care about your title. What I care about is how you treat others and I'm going to treat you accordingly, especially how you treat the people with the least amount of influence or power.
Speaker 2:So after years of like just experiencing what I consider bad leadership, I ended up going back and getting a couple of degrees in leadership and I found that I was really like almost angry at not only what I've experienced from leadership, but also what I saw other people experience, because it wasn't always certainly aimed at me. I felt a certain shame and I write about it in the book about seeing people talked down to, seeing them forced to do things and just like treated as if they were less than for things as simple as like they didn't have their degree or their degree wasn't high enough right, and that drove me nuts, aj, um, and so that built up this well of like. You know what it started off with. The book was going to be how to tell if you're a shitty leader, um, but it ended up evolving into this.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to help people understand, from a scientific perspective, what real leadership is, and I think in the end, as you know, the book is really about behavior. It's not about people, it's about behavior. That's where the measure of leadership could be found. So I wanted to help people because most people are good people engaging in bad behavior right To understand what it meant to be a good leader, and so that's why I put the book out, man, and I talk about my own behavior in it, like I wasn't and I still do engage in what I call ask, ask clownery, you know so that that was what the impetus behind writing the book was, man.
Speaker 3:I think, paulie, this is important and I definitely want to dive into the bulk of our content. But I think this is important because we often say we talk about positional leadership versus actual leadership and leadership as is a behavior, not a title, but it's. I think it's important and relevant for our listeners. Like, in no way are we saying certain positions and authority, like we definitely want to respect the authority, we want to obviously follow those directives and those different parts about their job that is within their title to follow. But if a leader has that authority and they also just so happen to be exhibiting really positive leadership behaviors and values-based leadership, servant-based leadership, I mean, pauly, for a person who has the authority and they're emulating those things, I mean I think you become what Craig Grishel calls a leader that people love to follow in those situations. Do you agree with that, pauly?
Speaker 2:I mean I just wanted to clear that up for our listeners before we I'm glad that you did, man, because I don't want to disrespect the position right.
Speaker 2:And if you're a person who is a real leader and has positional authority, you can make a ton of positive difference in your organization and the lives of others, you know. But if you don't have that position or authority, you can still be a leader, you can still have influence, but as you rise up the hierarchy, you're now giving resources and the title comes with your ability to make changes and it makes it easier because you're in control of more contingencies. You're in control of the environment of other people and we know it's in the environment influences behavior. So a good leader adapts the environment to ensure that they get the right behavior in the right way from the followers so they can produce the right results. Because in the end, it's not just about producing results but how we produce those results right. So I'm really glad that you clarified that point, because people work very hard to get their positions, you know. So it's not about knocking that position.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you, you talked about those. You know those kinds of negative experiences. You had that kind of set you on this path. But, um, we've all had a leader who's had that authority, even if, if they were just a middle, middle manager, um, at our entry level positions, and they happen to have that little bit of authority and they happen to be a person that just exhibited a high amount of character and just service towards their followers and, man, we'd run through a brick wall for those folks.
Speaker 2:That is so true, man, that is so true. But there's just not enough of those people, I find.
Speaker 3:We need more. We need more, and that's what we're here to do help produce more Right, paul. That's right. That's right, that's right. I want to dive in now to one of the first hats of leadership that you talk about, paulie, and this is the leading hat, which is kind of centered around motivating people, inspiring people. We know leadership is influencing and motivating people in an ethical manner to reach a goal for the team, the group, the organization. And so, paulie, I want to ask you a question, but I also want to go ahead and give you the follow-up. I want to know what are some good first steps for our listeners in wearing the leading hat, and also, do we sometimes wear hats that we don't feel like putting on as a leader?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. I want to start with this one. Now. I want to make it clear that I actually deliberately chose the term leading because I wanted to make the contrast as we will do later on between leading and managing and some people think leading is better than managing, and they're both necessary. And a manager can be a leader and a leader can be a manager, and they both need to be right, because it's going to come back to behavior.
Speaker 2:What I would say about the leading hat is that in the science of human behavior, we call it a motivating operation. Right, that means engaging a behavior that has a value in behavior, altering effect. In short, it's about inspiring people. If people aren't inspired towards a goal right, towards something in the future, there's not a want to move towards that goal. You end up doing, they're going to end up doing, just enough to get by, and only when you're looking right, they need to know that this is aligned with some sort of value of theirs.
Speaker 2:Right? If I, if I behave this way, is it going to produce some sort of valued outcome? You know cause? I think? In the end, people want to feel valued and they want to produce valued outcomes. Right, this is the most important thing in the organizations and that's what's going to get them to go above and beyond, or what Dr Aubrey Daniels, who was my guy father of organizational behavior management, calls discretionary effort, right, which I think could be the true measure of the best leaders, right, when people are going above and beyond even when you're not looking. So it's really about that, and there's different ways that people can engage in that, but in where the leading hat, but fundamental to it, fundamental to it is finding out what's important to people and helping them to see that by how engaging this behavior it's going to move you towards these important outcomes. Does that make sense? Aj, yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And I think, whether you're in different fields, whether you obviously I mean I work in a field where if we do social work or we work in human services, I mean there's just a lot of intrinsic value for people and hopefully your mission or your organization has recruited really purpose-driven people to that, which could make it a little bit easier to tap into some of that motivation. But I mean, paul, even if you're the CEO of ExxonMobil, every human being has something that motivates them and, as a leader, I think it's our job to tap into those motivations to help inspire people, because motivation it's not, it doesn't just stay at a high level at all time, it ebbs and flows, right, paul?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right and that's why the definition of motivated operation has it. It's a temporary value and behavior altering effect. Right and sure, we need to get behavior moving in the right direction and we want to have it moving because people want to right. They're like oh, I desire. And some of the greatest leaders in the world, like JFK, got people to leave their job, uproot their house and go in and serve in the Peace Corps. Right, you see, martin Luther King get people to put their lives on the line to rally for civil rights. You know, I mean, these people are amazing. They tapped into people's values and created the wants of people. Now we're charged up, ready to move in the right direction. Right, it's incredibly important, man. These guys are visionaries, you know, and they help other people see the vision. But the vision's got to be tapped into what's important to people and they help other people see the vision, but the vision's got to be tapped into.
Speaker 3:What's important to people? Yeah, and there's, I mean. And then I think, as a leader, I mean one thing I've found successful is just flat out asking people like what do you want? Where do you see yourself? I mean, some people may be trying to move into other roles, some people may have shorter term goals that they're trying to accomplish with projects but flat out asking the question like what do you want? What do you? What's what's what? What gets you up in the morning right now? What are you trying to get to and aspire to? And then, as a leader, I think you can kind of ask guided questions along the way to help prompt them and help move them in that direction. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, go ahead, Paul, you in that direction. Yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah, go ahead, paul, you had something there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say that that is fundamental. It could be as simple as that. There are other things that you can dig in deeper. You know, like, first of all, it always starts with asking questions, right, great leaders ask lots of questions, right? Less telling more about asking. And what you're really asking is finding out what's important to people, uh, finding out what potential obstacles are blocking what's important to them. You know, uh, maybe asking some other questions about the, uh, you know, maybe, implications of, for example, let's say, somebody's not performing to a standard, right, helping them see the ripple effect on how it's impacting them. Because let's say it's about, you know, the Exxon, right, people are like, well, you're just making money from oil, but maybe somebody who really values, like, you say like, listen, this fuel is fueling our world. You know it's helping moms and dads make it into work. You know what I mean. And put food on the table. You know what I mean Tapping into what's important to those people and making about that work.
Speaker 2:You know, but sometimes, like, the value, depending on the position that somebody's in in the moment, right, think about Maslow's hierarchy need, right, I hear say principals saying, well, you got to do it for the students, well, that may very well be, and I really believe that teachers want the students to be successful. But if that teacher is struggling to keep their head above the water because, let's say, they don't have classroom management in place, but they don't even know, that's the reason, right, they're just seeing the behavior. They're not recognizing that. Yeah, this behavior is occurring because you need to do something, more or less or differently, tapping into that value and making about that person, so they can see that if you engage in some behavior change, the class is going to behave better. Oh, and, by the way, they're also going to be in learning. Right, we have to make sure we're tying it into what's important to the person and, of course, we want that value to be tied in to what's important to the organization.
Speaker 3:You said so much value right there. I want to unpack a little bit of it. So, in your ExxonMobil example of like, yeah, we're not just pumping oil, we're providing fuel for the world, we're allowing parents to drive home and drive the work and make a living for the kids Some of the best leaders I've ever been around they're translators of vision, right, they're able to cast that vision, or they're able to take an initiative or a goal or a task and they're able to help their followers see the bigger purpose within it. And then I double back to what you said about MLK and JFK. That's what they were for our country, right, they were translators of vision. They were able to motivate a mass amount of people with some of those words. That was so valuable, paul. I just had to circle back to that for a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, I like how you frame stuff like that. Brother. You're good with that stuff, man. That was well done. You said the translators of vision, right? Is that what you said?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, I love that, yeah, that's a good statement, that's great, that's great stuff. So that's the leading hat which we have to wear. We have to inspire people, motivate people. That's like a really critical point and a critical hat to wear when we're talking about being an effective leader. Let's talk about the second hat, which is the training hat, which in the book it talks a lot about skill acquisition and good leaders. No doubt they know how to lead people. Great leaders know how to develop them. And so, paulie you know we talked a little bit about it in episode two Not every leader is going to become the CEO of the organization. You know, through our work life cycle and this is for a lot of our corporate listeners Most will be middle managers and not always have complete control over who you work with or who's on your team. And for that reason, paulie, I think the training hat is absolutely critical for leaders. But how do you see that, paulie?
Speaker 2:Well, before we dive into that hat, I want to make this connection. I should have done it earlier. When we talk about the four hats, we can also apply these to self-leadership. Right, as an individual, we also need to have our own vision, right, what do we want to do when we get older, grow up to right, and we got to unpack that stuff. If you don't have that, if you don't have purpose man, people without purpose and I love this pit to purpose right, that's your business. You know, without purpose, there's nothing pulling your behavior towards where you're going to be one day. So it's huge. So this also applies to self-leadership.
Speaker 2:Now, back to the training hat. It's fundamentally important to desire to produce some outcome in the future. Right, this is really important, having that want, having that inspiration. But it's not enough, right, we need to have the knowledge and skills that are going to actually move us or move others towards that vision, towards that goal, towards that valued outcome. And this is where you bring the shift to the training hat. Now, if you're a leader and this is why we talk about putting different hats on it, as we'll move to the other two hats in a little bit you need to know what your folks need. Do they have the skills? Right? And if they have the skills, well, we might have to put on the leading hat or maybe some other stuff which we'll get into a little bit. Right, but let's just assume they don't have the skills. Let's start from the beginning and would say, okay, we want to inspire them now. We have to equip them with the knowledge and skills to be successful, because you know how are they going to even move in the right direction, right and um, a lot of people end up throwing training at folks and they're like sitting gets aj and uh, they don't walk away with the knowledge and skills to be successful.
Speaker 2:I'm finding this in higher education as well. Um, you and I are both combat sports athletes. You did wrestling, I did boxing and mixed martial arts, and certainly I know that neither one of us would have had any success. Uh, if somebody would just told us how to wrestle, told us how to box, told us how to do MMA, dropped us into the combat realm to combat with people and then expected us to perform right, that is not the way you build skills. Skills need to be instructed, right. People need to be told how to do something modeled. And then the biggest piece and this is the piece that folks miss a lot, but not in sports In sports, we get this a lot is the rehearsal and feedback right, practice and feedback.
Speaker 2:And it's also not enough just to practice. You need feedback. You need to know if you're doing the right thing, whether it's feedback from a coach or you're recruiting, feedback from the environment itself. You can see that when I do this, it produces this outcome right, and this is a successful outcome. I need to keep doing it. It's not successful.
Speaker 2:I got to figure out what I need to do more or less or differently, and this is where coaching can help or, you know, looking at video modeling, things like that but you have to have the skills to build fluency. Fluency meaning you can do things automatically right. Fluency meaning you can do things automatically right, precisely, and you retain that knowledge and skill over time. If you don't build fluency with something, people might be able to demonstrate competency at the end of a training, but then they walk away the next day, the next week, and they forget everything that they learned right. So it's key to train people in pivotal behaviors, meaning behaviors that are going to help them to continue to learn independently, right? We can't throw everything. If everything's important, nothing's important. There's not enough time to train people in everything, but we can train them well enough so they can learn to adapt on their own.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like that and I mean, obviously, I'm a member of the John Maxwell team. We have a process for equipping people. And say so, pauly, if I'm trying to train you, mentor you, guide you in how to, like, facilitate meetings, the first step is, like, I do it and you're with me. So, hey, pauly, we're going to have a meeting, I'm going to facilitate it, I want you to be with me, I want you to see what I'm doing, see my agenda, see the questions, see how I engage people who aren't participating. And then the next step is we do it together. So, pauly, hey, I know you saw me do conduct our meeting last week. This week, we're going to do it together.
Speaker 3:I'm going to cover these points, you cover these points, and we kind of split the tasks up and at each step we're debriefing, we're providing that feedback loop that you talk about all the time, paulie, of what went well, what didn't go so well, and then the last step to equipping and empowering that individual is now you do it and I'm with you, meaning I'm with you, I'm observing, and afterwards I'm going to provide that coaching and feedback on what went well, what we could have done better, and just having that very systematic sequence of engagement in any task you might imagine man does. It create a great way to model for folks and actually put on that training hat and make sure that people are getting skilled up and building capacity in all these different areas. Yeah, and what I will say, these different areas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and what I will say to that is that was well said. In behavior science we call that shaping and fading. In the educational world we call it gradual release. Right, I do, we do, you do, it's great. And what you just set up is a great segue to the next hat, because that moves from the training to the coaching hat. Right, what you just said there, it's great and it's necessary.
Speaker 2:It's the piece that people forget. They think sending people to training is what's needed and it is part of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Right, it's part of the formula for success. But training in and of itself uh, even really good training, right, the best training, people end up acquiring 60 of knowledge, 60 of the skills. Uh, this is from some joys and showers. Uh, research, that they did, and it was, it was research and education.
Speaker 2:But I've seen this generalized very well, right, theory did not generalize, but like zero percent of skills generalized into the natural environment, right, the work environment modeling, maybe five percent%, even rehearsal with practice, 10%, right, and a lot of people, organizations, are throwing training but they're missing the next part and that is the coaching hat. Right, so we have the leading hat, inspiring people the training hat, making sure they have the knowledge and skills to be successful. But now we need those knowledge and skills to generalize into people actually performing in the natural environment, and that shifts from instructing or telling and you said this when we talked about your gradual release to asking and helping people be better observers of their behavior and the impact of their behavior on the environment. They need to see that, hey, if I do this, this is going to produce that valued outcome, because we've already tapped into that value earlier. Or, if I do this, it's not right and this is critical for people to shift to the coaching hat right To ask questions, because if they don't, they'll become what we call prompt dependent.
Speaker 2:What does that mean, aj? It's, if you've ever gone somewhere to the same spot over and over again, you've used the GPS. You are prompt dependent. The GPS is telling you what to do all the time because you haven't had to assess, you know, make decisions, take action by yourself, because this thing is always telling you what to do. Right, and this happens with well-meaning leaders, where people are always coming to them to solve the problem. And we really need people to be able to be independent, right, we need them to become resilient. We need I call this adaptive intelligence in my new book but we need them to be able to adapt in the environment in our absence.
Speaker 3:And so that's the importance of the coaching hat. I got to pause you there. I got to pause you there and ask a follow-up question so prompt, dependent. You used a great analogy about the GPS, like, if you continue to rely on the GPS to take you somewhere, you've been a few times already, right. But, paulie, have you ever seen where it seems some leaders want that, where they almost want I mean micromanaging, whatever you might want to call it, but they actually may seem to prefer that, instead of building capacity of their folks, they almost set it up where people have to keep coming to them and checking with them. And have you seen that, paul?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, see, I would argue that, yes, I have, but I would argue that those aren't leaders. I would argue those are people with positional authority.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, touché. So the coaching hat in your book and you use this term a lot and for I know many of our listeners are in the behavior of science you talk about skill generalization. I want you to, I'm going to want you to dive in a little bit deeper for our listeners who may not be in that that field and break that down a little bit. I think the coaching hat or coaching in general, but in general can be miss, a misunderstood concept for people. Some people think it's. I've heard coaching use, a kind of like feedback has been used, like when, when people are like I gave them, I gave them some coaching like as as something like to correct behavior or whatever.
Speaker 3:Albert Camus has this quote. I love when I, whenever I think about coaching, it says don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend. And when I think about coaching, that's really what I go to, pauly is it's walk, coming alongside folks. And you use an analogy in the book of like. When we all learned how to ride a bike, how somebody kind of started behind us probably was an adult. They, they continued to be alongside us eventually, start to push us out there, push us out there and next thing you know we're flying down the street on our own. Um, can you go a little bit deeper into that skill generalization? And then you mentioned fading, which I think is a great plug for that analogy I just used of riding a bike. Can you go in depth there a little bit for our listeners, paul?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So here's where I learned this and I'm very proud of this concept my co-author, Dr Nick Wedley. He and I both wrote a couple books now on the concept of deliberate coaching and that was an extension of deliberate practice. Right, Deliberate practice is about you know, you're practicing, You're not just doing something randomly, You're focusing on a skill, You're looking at your behavior right, and you're doing that in repetition. Right, You're not focusing on everything, because if everything's important, nothing's important. You're focusing on this thing, right, and you're trying to get this thing right. So it's very, it's precise, purposeful and systematic. And functionally. Because if you look at the definition of coaching, you'll find a bunch of overlaps of training. There's, of course, feedback, there's goals associated with it, et cetera, et cetera. But the difference is in function, right, Shifting from okay, the person now knows what to do. Now we need to get them to do it well enough in the natural environment that it produces valued outcomes, Because when those outcomes are valued, the environment's going to take over for the behavior and this is how we end up fading out.
Speaker 2:So I learned about this from thousands of hours training fighters right, and I noticed that some of the fighters were really good hitting the bag, hitting the mitts Right. They don't like man, that guy can fight. Then you drop them into like the the. The fight came. You're like what happened to? What happened to all these skills? Man, I'm not seeing anything that we worked on. And then I started to reflect on wait, wait a second. Some of the fighters are doing really well. What's the difference? And the difference was sparring. The difference was simulations, right, when they had the opportunity to practice safely these skills in dynamic situations, because it's not enough to know the skills. You need to do the right thing in the right way at the right time in these environments. So then I started to control those environments more, right.
Speaker 2:So let's say, you know again, it's combat sports, so I'm going to focus on teaching somebody to slip a right hand. Let's say it's a new skill I want them to learn right. And now they're performing it really well outside the ringer cage. They're doing it perfectly. Okay, great.
Speaker 2:Now it's time to generalize that skill. I'm not going to put them in there with this high level fighter performing, that's doing everything that they have at the fighter, because they're going to fall back on old habits, those habits that are going to keep them safe, and this happens all the time in the workplace, right? This is where I see again a teacher, as an easy example, that uses punishment to get students to do the right thing. Why? Because it works. The fighter in the cage that is taken beating, they're going to fall back on the things that are keeping them safe for the moment. That doesn't help them to win the fight. In fact, it's going to help them to lose the fight. They should be using their defense to set up their offense. It should be an opportunity for them. But if you've never done it before, you're going to do that thing. That keeps you safe.
Speaker 2:So I control the environment by only letting, let's say, the opponent just throw the jab, right. And now they're getting high and doing it at 50%. So now they're getting high repetition and slipping a live jab at a little bit of a slower pace, right? So now we can shape this up and I'm getting them in touch with positive reinforcement, right. Negative reinforcement too, right. We don't got to talk about what that is, but essentially they're getting success. They're not getting hit and they're also getting in a position where they can hit, right.
Speaker 2:So maybe I allow them to slip and counter with the hook or something like that. And now we start to increase the speed of it. And now I let them to add in okay, now we're going to just do it with the right cross. Okay, now we're going to do it with the jab and the right cross. And now they're getting so much repetition and now we start to layer back in the other skills and before you know it, they are successfully performing the slip under live conditions and like oh, I want to slip, I can do it well, I am doing it well. And this is how we build fluency in these conditions, and this drastically increases the likelihood that they're going to perform in the real world, the real workplace for them. And that's the actual fight Does that make?
Speaker 3:sense. That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. And I go back to questions, right, and so I think even I misunderstood coaching just as recent as maybe four years ago, three years ago. The questions are so important you mentioned earlier. You know, when we're talking about training people, like is there a barrier to their success? I think a lot of leaders or managers that I've seen they often they don't ask those questions to see is there a barrier to the person's success? Oftentimes, and some managers or leaders they just kind of judge that person based off the performance or evaluate that person based off their lack of performance, their lack of meeting the goal, when the truth of the matter is the person has some really big barriers that are kind of getting in the way of them achieving the goal.
Speaker 3:One thing I love about this concept that we're talking about the four hats and I think I talked about it in episode three when we talked about communication is I talked about syncing up the Bluetooth and making sure you're having the right conversation with the right brain. Like, do they need me to be empathetic right now? Are they seeking advice right now? That kind of fits in well with knowing to wear the right hat for the right situation and I think, paulie, there's some times where we have the coaching hat on when it's not needed or they're not ready for that coaching hat in that particular moment. I just think that's a really critical point when we talk about making sure we have the right hat for the right situation. Is this person in a position right now to receive that coaching? If not, maybe I need to kind of punt this conversation, circle back to it tomorrow or later that afternoon.
Speaker 2:Well, absolutely, and that gets into like the end of the book, but I'll talk about it now because you put it on the table. It's great, 100% right, we're going to get into the last hat, which is the managing hat, in just a second. But in order to know which hat to wear, right, you need to have a good assessment and everything I do with the signs of behavior, because it can get very complex, it's very deep, it's grounded in evolutionary theory, right, we need to learn to adapt our behavior. We need to learn to adapt the environment, because our behavior is a product of the environment. We do the things that produce valued outcomes for us in the end. But knowing which hat to wear requires performance diagnostics and that's simple, right. It really boils it down to is it a can't do or a don't do? If it's a can't do, that's very simple, right, it comes down to the training hat. They can be as motivated as they want, they can have all the skills, or they can have a good system in place and all this stuff, but if they can't do it, they need the skills. When you get into the don't do and I purposely say don't because others say won't do and won't sounds like you're refusing to do it right.
Speaker 2:A lot of people, just you know they're not doing it for different reasons. For example, maybe they don't know the expectation, maybe they have the skills but they're not in the habit yet. Maybe they're not getting feedback. Maybe they're being asked to do too many things at one time. Maybe they don't have a process for doing it. Maybe they're not seeing the impact of their behavior on the environment right, or maybe that they don't value the impact, which would mean you need to go back to the leading hat or again coming down. Maybe they can't tell you what they're supposed to do or how to do it right, which makes it a training hat. So this requires performance diagnostics in all of my books. When I came across this, dr John Austin, who's a friend of mine, actually developed it, and I love it because it's so simple. I've put it in all my books. I've adapted it for the books, you know. But people need to be able, and that goes for ourself.
Speaker 2:If I'm not performing to standard, why Do I not know the expectation? Do I not have a process? I'm not getting feedback? I'm not seeing the outcome? Is it too many things at once? You can actually apply it to yourself. Or you can apply it to yourself as a coach, as a manager, when we're looking at somebody else's performance. Check those boxes before you start to go in and say, hey, you need to do this stuff. Have I made sure they know the expectations? Have I made sure I'm giving them feedback? Have I made sure I'm giving them more positive feedback when they're doing the right thing right and giving corrective feedback that's helpful to them? Have I made sure I'm not asking them to do too many things at once? Am I helping them see the outcome of their behavior on the environment right, et cetera, et cetera. It's making sure that I've created this environment that's going to increase the likelihood that they're going to perform at the standard. And this requires the performance diagnostic to let you know which hat you should wear.
Speaker 3:And Pauly, I've seen leaders where I love the distinction you made between the don't versus the won't, because I've seen a lot of leaders who just assume it's a won't, it's a won't issue and a won't issue and they don't consider that don't factor.
Speaker 3:And you went into a lot of a lot of different avenues there, but one of them being a lack of feedback. Right, too many, too many times, I think, as leaders across all industries, they sit there and they may, they not? They don't consider the barriers, but they also don't deliver that feedback. I think that's one of the worst things you could do to, whether you're talking about an employee at work or even a student in a classroom or athlete. One of the worst things you could do is judge somebody for a lack of performance, yet you haven't had the compassion or the courage to have that difficult conversation and give that constructive feedback to an individual, and then the behavior continues and we have a problem here. But you haven't asked yourself those key questions as a leader that you just you just mentioned, paul, and I think that's really valuable for our listeners there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the courage to look in the mirror. The first place I look and I bet the first place you look, aj, is in the mirror right Before we start correcting behavior. Am I doing all those things? And that's where you turn that performance diagnostic lens on yourself. Have I done this to make sure that this employee can be successful?
Speaker 3:That's a really powerful point. Leaders, listeners, please walk away with that. Every morning, it's very difficult to shave without looking in the mirror. You want to like what you see. You want to like what you see each morning. So if there's a problem going on on your team and your organization, first thing you want to ask yourself is am I part of the problem or what am I doing to help reduce the problem?
Speaker 2:Right on brother.
Speaker 3:All right, paulie, let's touch on the last hat, which is the managing hat, and in the book we talk about skill maintenance and we've we've worn those other hats well, pauly, and now we're looking at maintaining a high performing individual or a high performing team. I've heard someone say in terms of like professional football games in the NFL, that more games are lost than actually won, meaning that sometimes a coach or leader, they just mismanaged the clock, they mismanaged the playbook, the situation. I think that can be true in other leadership situations as well. Paulie, can you maybe provide our listeners with just some really practical advice on how to maintain not only a high-performing individual or team, but a high-performing culture?
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. So a few things. Let me just go back and reflect that leadership comes back to behavior. The measure of the leader can be found in the behavior of the follower, right? So when that leader is not getting the performance from their team, from the folks around them or even themselves again, right, I'm not performing their standard they need to think about what do I, as a leader, need to do more, less or differently? That's going to increase that right? That's the ultimate measure of it.
Speaker 2:Leading was about creating want, right To behave. Training is about making sure they have the right behavior to engage in. Coaching is about making sure that that behavior generalizes into the natural environment, that people behave well enough and long enough that they produce naturally occurring outcomes. Now we need to have and we're the first to do this again and I was the first to do it in positional authority and deliberate coaching. That is defining, managing functionally. That is for maintenance of behavior. Right, we now need to maintain that behavior. How do we do this? Well, if we do it in the absence of the other hats, we're going to be using coercion. I find that if the person's not inspired, if they don't have the knowledge and skills, if they haven't behaved well enough and long enough that they saw that they can produce these outcomes, you're forcing people to do things and then it becomes miserable. But managing does not have to be miserable because if you've put on those other hats, if you're sure people understand the valued outcomes that are in it for them right, that they have the knowledge and skills to be successful, that they've done it well enough and long enough, that they saw that they can produce these outcomes right, then managing gets easy when there's a system to support it. Meaning systems should be designed to deliberately deliver positive reinforcement for value-added behavior, right.
Speaker 2:So I gave the example of driving. That's a system we all drive right, we all follow the system and there's lots of positive reinforcement, a stream of positive reinforcement that's acting on your behavior as you drive, all the status coming in, this feedback loop constantly coming in that guides your behavior towards getting to your ultimate cause of your behavior, which is the destination, and that's all positive reinforcement. Now there are things that if you do the wrong thing, there are corrections that will occur. If you're on the highway and you get off the path a little bit, you get the rumble bumps right. It reminds you to get back in line. If you speed, you can get pulled over, you can get a ticket, you can have your license suspended, you could even go to jail, and these are all risks that we accept because there's so much positive reinforcement built into driving and we're okay with that stuff. We don't want to get a ticket and have that stuff, but we accept these right In organizations that design their systems so people are producing valued outcomes.
Speaker 2:They can see the valued outcomes they're doing. They're made to feel that they're valued. That's the biggest positive reinforcement. Anything in between that stuff is just a token of our appreciation, letting people know they're doing a good job. I think that helps them feeling valued right, but helping them see that they're impacting the organization and these outcomes. If it's the maintenance worker, they need to know that, hey, you've kept this place running so well. Our employees can successfully produce these outcomes If it's in the classrooms. You know the teachers, you know you have running water and you know everything's clean in there and this helps you to do A, b and C. You know the cafeteria workers all employees need to understand how what they do contributes to the end goal, and so we want to recognize that stuff.
Speaker 2:We want to have goals that people can achieve right. They feel good to achieve them right, so it doesn't mean they're easy goals. We want to make sure that people feel good about achieving the goal. But in the leading hat, when we first put that leading hat on we helped to create plans that outline accomplishments right, and accomplishments are like measures of progress towards success. And when you have those measures and people understand what they need to do hourly, daily, weekly and they can see because they're getting feedback loops that they're moving that direction.
Speaker 2:The same way, when you're driving, that you can see you're getting closer to your destination, that takes over for the behavior and managing becomes just automatic. It becomes easy to maintain behavior because you've set up a system so well. Nobody's coming out and telling you AJ, go this way, that way or the other way right, unless you've got the GPS on right and that's having the coaching hat on because you've never gone somewhere before, right. But we want to fade that out because we want people to do it independently, but without those other three hats on. Then it becomes coercive and this is where managing becomes very difficult. But, as you see, a good leader needs to engage in managing and good managers need to put on the leading hat sometimes, because if their folks don't have the skills, then they need to engage in those behaviors or the want you know. They need to create a want If they don't have the skills, the training hat, coaching, et cetera, et cetera. Right, because it all comes down to getting behavior going and keeping it going.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad you circled back to that. I was going to ask you could you repeat that for our listeners, but you actually just did it. If you're not wearing those other three hats first, that's coercive in that situation and so all of those hats are needed. Situation and so all of those hats are needed. And sometimes we may not want to wear certain hats or we may be more confident at putting on other hats than the others, right, pauly? But we need to be able to wear those different hats for different situations. Another thing you kind of alluded to that I like is with the managing hat. We are talking about maintaining that performance with systems. If you've done those other three hats well, now this hat becomes a lot easier.
Speaker 3:And for our listeners just to really drill down and make it practical, think about setting up habits and systems that lead to good management of performance. And so for some people they might have a one-on-one schedule with their direct reports. Or a football coach might have one-on-ones scheduled with his quarterback in certain situations to prepare for the upcoming game. That's designing a practical system to make sure that you're wearing your managing hat and maintaining the positive performance Performance evaluations. That could be another thing that's systematically woven in to continue to manage performance.
Speaker 3:And Polly talked about making people feel valued. I know a manager who, every time one of her direct reports has a birthday, she does something really special for them, provides a meal, makes sure they feel valued, takes the time to look inward and recognize those folks. That's a system, that's a habit, that's set up. And I'll repeat James Clear, the author that said we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. If you're just hoping to do all of this stuff organically, you might lose the game sometime. More games are lost than one. You got to actually make sure you're setting up habits to win the game and, by setting up these systems, to be able to do these things for your people, don't you think, paul?
Speaker 2:I love that quote, man. The system wins out every time, and people don't understand how to design systems. When I go into organizations or schools, I help them design systems by starting with the end in mind what's the result that you want to produce? And then we begin aligning behavior up the chain. And then now we figure out. You know how are we going to apply these hats. You know why aren't they doing this stuff right now. That helps us to analyze the performance gap. And so what interventions do we need to put in place? Do they need knowledge and skills? Do they need inspiration? Do they need coaching? And now, how are we going to manage this stuff to maintain it? So, fundamentally, that system is going to win out, but it's systems and leadership, because a good system won't work without good leadership and good leadership won't work without a good system.
Speaker 3:Good system won't work without good leadership and good leadership won't work without a good system. Yeah, and people always go to where the systems take them, so we need to design good systems. Paul, I want to set you up First of all. This episode has been just jam packed with value for a leader who's going to self reflect on some of these, these principles and concepts, and then figure out how you can make it practical and actionable with your followers, with your students, with your athletes, if you're a coach. But, pauly, I want to set you up with kind of a part and shot and a question for our listeners. Certainly, as leaders, we may be more comfortable or stronger with certain hats, or not enjoy, maybe, wearing that coaching hat or that manager hat as much. They're all important at some point. But, paulie, out of the four hats, is there one hat that is more important than the others? You think?
Speaker 2:You know it's hard because it's going to be based on the needs of the followers, but I find that the hat that's conspicuously absent a lot is the coaching hat. Wow, people might rally the troops at the beginning of the followers, but I find that the hat that's conspicuously absent a lot is the coaching hat. People might rally the troops at the beginning of the year, you know, at the beginning of the quarter or whatever. They might send them to training and then they skip right to managing right, and if people haven't behaved well enough and long enough to produce those outcomes now, you've got a problem right. So that's why we've actually written a whole book on deliberate coaching, because it's really a systematic approach to it. So that's the hat I find is missing the most. But you really need them all, based on the needs of your followers.
Speaker 3:You know, Paulie, is that because I agree with you on that? But is that because coaching requires that asking of the questions requires a listener, which can be hard? For most of us, I'd say listening can be a hard skill, especially for assertive leaders who want to interject and impart their wisdom on people or their advice or directive on people. Do you think that's why, Paulie?
Speaker 2:I think it's simpler and that is because it requires more effort. I think it's easier to train a whole bunch of people right at the beginning right and then send them out in the workplace and assume they're going to do their job. It requires showing up to see what they're doing right and help them see the impact of it. So you've got to get on site Now. It doesn't mean you always have to be on site.
Speaker 2:Part of my coaching process is has people to self-monitor and report out, because we can't be everywhere seeing everybody's behavior. But they can certainly look at their behavior and the outcomes that they're producing, report out to you. And now you show up intermittently to do like inner observer agreement right, See what they're doing, see if they're producing it right. But I think it's really important that immediately following training that we need boots on the ground, we to see what people are doing. Like I can't train a fighter right. Then send them in the spa and a couple weeks later you know, go coach them in it. I need to do it fresh off the skill right and help them to see that by doing this, otherwise they're going to fall back into old habits. It's going to happen all the time, and it does happen all the time that's's great.
Speaker 3:That's great. Well, man, this has been an absolute blast. Great episode, great dialogue we've had. Paulie, I know you're not going to do it because you're just operating in your passion and trying to change the world in your corner of it, but I will say this is a phenomenal book Positional Leadership and Authority. It has many, many other great concepts, just like the four hats of leadership. So I'm going to give a shameless plug for my guy. Take a look at it. If you're an aspiring leader, if you're a leader that has fallen into a rut, so to speak, or if you're a high performing leader and you just want to continue to double down on being the best leader you can possibly be, go ahead and check that out and, paulie, I'll alley-oop it up to you, man, for any final thoughts for our listeners.
Speaker 2:No, this was. I love talking about this stuff, man. I love talking shop. I want to say that if you're not producing the outcomes, don't beat yourself up. The first thing is awareness. You know, you got to be aware, you got up. The first thing is awareness. You know, you got to be aware. You got to see yourself. You know, understand that the measure of your leadership is found in the behavior that follows, or found in your own behavior. It's all going to come back to behavior, but I think self-awareness is important and then you can start to seek out some of the solutions, because you and I have had both had successes and we both had failures. I've learned a lot from my failures, um, you know, but I always, always reflecting on my behavior because, in the end, it's not about intent, right? It's about impact. All right, brother, we'll see you next time.
Speaker 3:All right, take care.
