STAT Leadership Episode 9: Leadership vs. Management

Leadership Versus Management: Understanding the Difference, Mastering Both

In episode 9, hosts Phil Moy, JR Pickett, and Chetan Kharod explore the nuanced distinctions and intersections between leadership and management. They discuss how effective communication, network building, mindful and authentic leadership, and influence play critical roles in both arenas. The episode dives deep into why leaders sometimes micromanage and how setting clear strategic directions and understanding organizational culture are essential. Definitions from Harvard Business School highlight the contrast between creating visionary change as a leader versus managing consistent, procedural tasks. Emphasis is placed on the importance of emotional intelligence, initiative, and the ability to wear both leadership and management hats, depending on the situation. The episode concludes with personal anecdotes and book recommendations, emphasizing continuous learning and adaptability in leadership roles.

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
01:01 Defining Leadership vs. Management
01:23 The Role of a Leader
02:47 The Role of a Manager
05:21 Balancing Leadership and Management
09:29 Practical Examples and Personal Experiences
13:26 Challenges and Solutions in Leadership
17:02 Leadership and Management in Practice
26:56 Air Force Feedback Sessions
27:23 Setting Expectations as a Leader
28:40 The Three Ts of Leadership
32:06 Mission Statements and Organizational Goals
35:25 Leadership vs. Management
43:44 Book Recommendations and Personal Insights

Referenced in this episode:
Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication
by Vanessa Van Edwards https://a.co/d/9Z5bmj0

Shift: Managing Your Emotions--So They Don't Manage You, by Ethan Kross  https://a.co/d/3VaHakH

Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, by Jim Mattis and Bing West  https://a.co/d/9SQfaTJ

Bosch series by Michael Connelly Harry  https://a.co/d/8maLTRV

KPop Demon Hunters  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14205554/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2_tt_6_nm_0_in_0_q_kpop%2520demon

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, by Anthony Bourdain https://a.co/d/4WgMjxT

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When the call comes in, leadership is everything.

SPEAKER_02 0:02

We analyze the data in real time, making the tough decisions under pressure.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to Stat Leadership. Hello, listeners. Welcome to episode nine titled Leadership versus Management: Understanding the Difference and Mastering Both. I'm Phil Moy from St. Louis.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

And J.R. Pickett from Salt Lake City. Hey, I'm Chet Carud from New Bronfels, Texas.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Got it. And Chet, why don't you bring us in on this topic and this episode?

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Yeah, so we've been talking about a variety of kind of fundamental leadership concepts over the course of the season. The idea of effective communication and leadership, the importance of followers, the power of having a network. We talked about mindful leadership, authentic leadership. We talked about influence, like what happens when you're not in a leadership position. But today we're going to talk about something that all of us are going to encounter, the idea of leadership versus management. Sometimes people don't realize there's a difference between these. And today we're going to get into it a little bit and figure out is there a difference? And if so, what is it? Is there a specific time where you're supposed to lead versus where you're supposed to manage? And can you do both? So let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah, that's a thing that that comes up a lot. Folks will talk about, they'll complain about their leader of an organization that they're micromanaging. And I think that's true when a leader is dipping into management. And what this is showing is really that the leader has not made clear what that strategic direction should be for the organization, or even strategic direction for their subordinates, for their middle management middle managers. And obviously the leader sets the culture of the organization. And if the leader feels the need to step in, then there's probably a couple reasons for that. And you we could probably sit here and roundtable this, like why a leader would need to feel the need to step in and manage, to st to manage, to micromanage, to why they why would they get their hands on when they maybe shouldn't?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yeah, yeah, I think that's an important point. And just to back up a little bit, I think we need to define what the difference is between leadership and management, and then get back to your point, JR, is why would leadership need to dip their toe into management? I don't know if any of you want to bring up the definitions of either or talk about what it means to you.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Yeah, I think it's worth at least grappling with it. It's not necessarily just one way, but for example, when I think about management, I'm thinking about organizational process, organizing tasks, managing the resources associated with it, making the goals happen, making sure that people have the room to swing to make their stuff happen, and then ultimately developing the people along the way, which kind of overlaps into leadership where it's more like being principled and transparent so that you're inspiring the vision for the organization. You're motivating not just by giving orders, but by being a certain way, by interacting with people a certain way. And then you're probably also setting a future direction so that we all want to go there. So these are some of the ways in which I define it. I'd be interested in hearing what you guys think.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, with me on that, I think the leader sets the direction, the direction and the culture of the organization, what the values are of what it is that we as an organization value in our people and our work and what we do. And the manager is the one that makes it happen. And so the leader, like the manager is the one who's getting everybody organized to hack through the jungle, and the leader is the one that crawls to the top of the tree and looks around and says, Hey, wrong jungle, or we can go that direction with it. And a lot of folks will uh downplay management or speak down about management. Oh, we need leaders, not managers. We need both. And you're not gonna get anything done without both. And the uh the leader is also monitors progress and to uh in achieving those goals in that journey and where they're going, and then can provide that direction of management of eh, we're getting off course here and of course correct with them. Or the leader also is when things become dysfunctional, that the management is not receptive to that, or is not able to intervene or correct certain things, then it is on the leader to to step in and figure out how to give the the manager the tools that they need. My general take as a leader is much like as an officer in the military, but a leader in any organization. My job is to set strategic direction and get you resources and give you top cover so that you can do your jobs and and stay out of your way. The with we'll talk in the that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yeah, yeah, JR, you stole my metaphor, which is perfectly fine regarding leadership and in the jungle. I usually, in my head, I think of management as the person would be like, we're chopping this tree in front of us down because we need to get out of the forest, and it's that way. And the leader is the one who looks above the trees and says, No, we have to turn that way. So, manager, we need to go that way. And so the manager's on the ground saying, No, we got to go that way. Officially, the definitions per this wonderful resource that Chet provided us from the Harvard Business School, leadership is defined as the creation of positive, non-incremental change, including the creation of a vision to guide that change, a strategy, the empowerment of people to make the vision happen despite obstacles and the creation of a coalition of energy and momentum that can move that change forward. As opposed to management, is defined as getting the confused, misguided, unmotivated, and misdirected to accomplish a common purpose on a regular recurring basis. And I think back to your comment, JR, where you said, Oh my god, we need more leaders and less managers, that kind of thing. I think a leader and a manager can do both and be both. They just have to know when they're gonna put that hat on. A leader has to know, maybe I gotta be a little bit manager here and manage the team. Whereas the manager says, I've told the team, I've been managing the team, but now I gotta be a little bit of a leader and say, this is where we need to go and take a step back. So I think it's a nice hybrid between the two and having the wisdom and experience to know which hat you're gonna use to put forward to your team.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think it's easy to have the full discussion of the principles of each or the characteristics of each, but I think you're both right. In practice, you are usually not either or, you're both, even though you may have more, say, management duties in some cases or leadership duties in others. Another way I've heard it described is that leaders are uh leadership is about vision, inspiration, values, culture kind of things, and management is about systems, processes, resources, policies kind of things. But I think the practical part for us and for our EMS teams that we're talking to is uh very likely there's probably a whole lot of leadership that will be in play. And one of my teammates used to say, man, leadership is something that involves who I'm being. And management tends to involve more things that I'm doing. So it's who I'm being, what I'm doing. But I thought that was interesting too. That was a good breakdown.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

I like that. I think that uh the management is a vital source of information for the leader to understand how things are going and what they need. And a good manager is connected with their workforce and can to and can say the leader can speak truth to the power and to the leader, hey, in order to make this happen, we need this resource and uh we need to change this constraint or something like that. So uh if you can uh if you got a good manager that is that feels free to to walk in and talk to the leader that way, every leader wants to say, I've got this open door policy, but the problem like hardly anybody uses that. And if a the lowest or the that bottom tier of your employee has to walk into the CEO's office to tell you what's going on, then that's a failure of management to appreciate what the conditions in the organization or things that are needed, or a failure for of them to recognize the strength within that workforce that you may be a the lowest ranked person in this organization, but have really good ideas and about how to do some stuff. And okay, as a leader, am I not fostering the culture that that encourages that?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah, yeah. And getting back to more of the ground game, but also a little philosophical as well. As a medical director of emergency department, I find myself wearing both hats. Because I do have a boss, and he's the chief medical officer. He's very nice, very progressive, and very pro-ER, so it's very easy to talk to him. But I'm oftentimes giving him insight into the ER and saying, here's what's going on, here are the issues, and this is what we're dealing with right now. So at one hand, I'm the manager because I'm managing the emergency department, the clinicians, the processes for my chief medical officer. But at the same time, I find myself being the leader or what I'm being as the example of what it means to be a good emergency physician and showing the emergency department this is where we need to go by leading my emergency physicians, nurses, and department through what we're going through right now, which is rebuilding an ER, which is oh so fun, especially going into the COVID flu season.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah. That's yeah, definitely not fun. Let's talk about those that, as you say, you have to wear both hats sometimes. When are the times that the leader needs to needs to step in and to down step into the management role? And likewise, when does the manager need to step into the leadership role?

SPEAKER_02 10:46

So I would argue that for most of our careers, almost regardless of which your what your profession is, almost all of them, you're gonna be dual-headed. It's gonna be rare to be ever just at the top of the food chain surveying strategic views only. We're almost always gonna have some process that we're in charge of or some people that we're in charge of. Just a quick example: when I was a squadron commander, I was part of the leadership team and management staff for the first special operations wing because we had a boss on top. He had four group commanders underneath him, and underneath them were 25 squadron commanders that ran the 25 different squadrons on base. So in that case, we were definitely part of the management. And by management, whether we stayed within budget or not, whether the mission got done or not, whether people were allowed to take vacation when they were supposed to, and whether their government credit cards were paid off on time, it couldn't have been more management, task, and process. And on the other hand, for my own squadron, the 200 plus airmen that I was in charge of, they did not only need me as the pay your government credit card guy. They needed me to be able to help them connect the dots. Like, why am I in here doing this job and how does it affect the special operations mission? Providing some inspiration, making sure we rooted out the kind of culture and cult of personality that existed there before I came in. If you knew certain sergeants, you were golden no matter what you did. And if they didn't like you, you were a chump and were going to get in trouble regardless. And it took me six months to clean that up and have a transparent culture where everybody got a fair shake. My open door policy, this was a lesson I learned. As a leader in that organization, I had an open door policy. And the two things I learned were one, almost nobody really wanted to engage that. And two, I accidentally jumped the entire management chain that uh JR was talking about, and I disempowered everybody in between me and the junior most airmen, right? Because they would come and complain to me, and they never got a chance to give their supervisor, their boss, their manager a chance to take a crack at solving the problem, right? So that was an eye-opener for me that being accessible did not necessarily make me a good leader. I also needed to empower the people that I was leading to have a chance, right? So these are all kind of operational lessons you learn, but that was an eye-opener because I was definitely a leader to my squadron and honestly a de facto leader to my peers. And honestly, you can lead up sometimes, but I didn't have the rank above them. So it's throughout our career, I'm convinced that we find ourselves in both. And as long as we are, you don't even have to be clear on it. I think as long as we're thinking about which lane am I in and make sure that we drive accordingly, then you're probably gonna be okay. And the other thing is most of this is recoverable. If you're a principled, transparent leader and manager following the rules that you enforce, usually it's gonna work out well. Usually, you're still gonna make some mistakes, I think. Probably outside your comfort zone a little bit, but it is a little either or, but it's natural for there to be overlap in my experience. Oh, and one more thing. Sorry, before we go on. Jared, you're talking about micromanagement. And I couldn't stand micromanaging bosses until I was in a boss enough position that I wanted more info. So then I realized I was thinking about it because one of my medics was like, never pegged you for a micromanager, doc. I was like, is that what I'm doing? And he goes, Yeah, it feels like a little bit, because you ask a lot of questions and you're like, why'd you do that? Why'd you do that? I'm like, okay, so you know, it might be a matter of perspective because I am looking for detailed information. I want granularity. I'm thinking micro information. He's perceiving it as I'm in his business. So once everybody realized I wasn't going to get in their stuff, I just wanted to learn what worked. Now we had an understanding that Doc is always going to look for micro information. He just likes to know things. That does not mean I'm up in your stuff and I'm trying to tell you how to do things. So microinformation and micromanagement. Sometimes we have to teach people that while we do it.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Microinformation for you to try to understand better what their job is about, and especially when you're coming at it with respect for their expertise and how they do the job. And hey, I want to understand better how you do this and what you know what you do so that I can better set conditions that support you. That's to me, that's not micromanagement. That's engaged management that is wanting to do the right thing, which is clear the road for those. But if you're like, hey, you're doing why you're doing this, why don't you do it this way? You should do it that way. Then that's when you're stepping into the micromanaging aspect versus the microinformation.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

No, I think, and that's good for leaders to know though, because we may think we're just asking, but we're being instructive or getting into the how-tos. And a lot of times that they don't need the how-to. But uh I learned that despite my intent to be microinformation oriented, I was coming across based on their past experience of with other people as a micromanager. So sometimes it's just a bit of as long as we know that's coming, you can head it off at the past, I think.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

JR, you just gave me PTSD when I was growing up with my mom. I've been told I'm a carrier of growing up, my mom was a micromanager. No, do it this way, do it this way, do it this way. I'm just like, I'm going to get and I'm like, mom, I'm 40 years old. I could do this. Right? But it I don't I don't know if it's a mom thing or an Asian mom thing, but man, it's just it's a beautiful example of micromanaging there.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

I remember a good friend of mine in residency, he was uh emergency medicine intern, but he had done a complete family practice residency and practiced some and then came back to do emergency medicine and uh Air Force officer and super smart dude, but in the ICU, where you we were a minority in the ICU, there's usually like one EM resident and then a couple of a few internal medicine, and so skill sets are a bit different, right? So he's in the middle of a central line on a patient, and it's not a crash central line, it's elective, and the attending is standing there with him asking him questions, okay, what are you doing right now? Are you entering the vein with this? Okay, what are you doing right now? What are you doing right now? And finally, he put the four by fours over the site and looked the attending dead in the eye and said, Every time you ask me a question, it adds 10 seconds to this procedure. And so the attending's eyes got huge, and he said, I realized at that moment there was a line, and I had just crossed it. It was I'm really full of regret. Well, part of that too was that the attending, he gets you know new residents every month, and he particularly when he's dealing with junior residents, he doesn't know their knowledge and expertise and capability. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think you touched on something else there that we see this dynamic in EMS quite a bit when a doctor or nurse asks a question of EMS when they bring a patient in, not realizing that there is an emotional subtext there, that there is some background to it, and that a well-meaning question may seem like a criticism when it is not intended that way. And I think a lot of times the physicians and nurses that don't work in EMS and don't hear that, oh yeah, they know this is helping me, they're bitching me about this and they're complaining about this, and so forth, you're not realizing that it wasn't a complaint. We're just trying to understand the thought process with respect of you knew what you were doing and saw the conditions, why'd you do that? And so I think what you found, Chet, with with your medic was that yeah, that sort of background had primed him to see your questions as a criticism and an attempt to alter and manage him, not an attempt to understand.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Yeah, and the a lot of this, and then the leadership kicks in, right? Developing the relationship, creating a space for understanding there. And then ultimately there's man, it takes time, right? It took me six months to reset the culture of our squadron to one where there was acceptance, there was high effort, people were getting acknowledged for their high effort, but all that stuff takes time. And a lot of times we feel tremendous pressure as leaders to deliver the result on day one. That's incredibly hard to do. And sometimes our higher-ups expect that. Moi, I called you in here to fix this ED. What the hell are you doing? And it's like, I just got here. I literally haven't even had a chance. Give me 20 years. Effect change. Or at least 20 days. Yeah. But you're right. Hey, JR, the other thing you said a little while ago that was super cool is I think sometimes we in discussion sometimes elevate leadership to this pedestal and then we downplay management. But you know, there are there are skills involved. People don't necessarily have a management personality type, or but people may have a leadership personality, right? So in both cases, skills are involved. But man, to run an organization successfully, to develop people and empower them, you really need both. Uh so I agree with you when you said that. It's not that one is better than the other. Now, I had one boss who retired as a four-star, and he was an incredibly effective leader, at least at all the levels I saw him. And he had a great insight, though. He said, look, management problems can be addressed by effective leadership or effective management, but leadership problems can only be fixed by effective leadership. What do you think about that? I thought that was uh really interesting comment.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

I'm thinking touch on something here. When we have when a leader is faced with a manager that is not performing to the leaders' expectations. So like the organization is not performing to the leaders' expectations and the that pinch point is management. I think we certainly are seeing this in like the federal government level right now, where the answer is, oh get rid of that manager and put somebody else in there that knows it, rather than like understanding like, okay, maybe it's a personality thing, maybe this person is toxic, but maybe it is that they have conflicting priorities, they have conflicting instructions, they have multiple bosses, they've got they don't have the resources to do stuff, they don't have the bandwidth uh to do certain things. There are other uh influential factors that maybe the leader is not as uh in tune with. Maybe there's uh an organized workforce that is is pushing back on certain things, or maybe the manager is simply overtasked and uh and needs the space to do that. And I think that Before we boot the manager and say, Here, let me lead you. You were doing your job wrong. It's uh all right, let me understand. Because this is where I envisioned you to be, this is what I envisioned you to be doing, and you're not doing it. Help me under help me understand. Oh, okay, cool. I know what I can do to clear your plate of this thing, or I know I can run interference for you on this other problem that is that is impeding you.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Yeah, yeah. I think back to both JR and you, Chad, what you said is management can be managed, be errors in management can be taken care of by leadership and or management. And it was a very just culture comment you made, JR Pickett, where understanding where the manager is coming from. And then further back in our conversation, JR, you said, as a leader, it's my job to go to the manager and be like, this is where we want to go. What do you need? What can I give you to help us succeed to that goal? And the leadership solution to the managerial issue is adjust that. Am I giving you enough stuff? Do you what else do you need? Am I hindering you by having you giving you five different leaders, giving you five different goals? Or is it a managerial thing where just like this process or the way we're gonna cut this tree down, it doesn't seem to be working well. Have we thought about this way or this other managerial process that the managers, oh, I did not see that. That was something that just totally was a blind spot to me. And the leadership issues that you brought up, chat. I would say, yeah, part of leadership is as you said, in inspiring people and leading people. The leadership is all about is more about the people, and managerial is more about, as you said, processes and whatnot. Is that takes a certain amount of emotional intelligence and charisma, as you said, Chet, in our past podcast. That not everyone has or has the insight or the experience of wisdom at that point in their training or their career that can give that to the leader.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

I yeah, I think you nailed it. And I think part of what happens is we expect that your technical expertise is going to automatically endow you for managerial and leadership expertise. And it's silly that we keep doing this system-wide, but there's a reason why we do it too, right? We early in people's career, all we have is your performance. So if you suck at starting IVs, we're gonna assume that you're probably gonna suck at other things too. Or if you're the greatest IV sticker in the world, we're gonna assume, with by Halo effect, that you're gonna be good at other things. And that's not a great example. There's better ones. Say you're really good at the bedside and you interact with patients really well, that medic is already gonna be thought of as a capable medic, whether they've shown any good medical capabilities or not yet. But if they're completely unengaged or are unable to interface with the patient, we're gonna spot that immediately and go, this medic's not as good. It's not as good a medic. The future jobs they get may be related to their performance at that level. But when you're a chief or a battalion chief level person, now you're being looked at not just for your bedside ability or IVA capabilities. You're being looked at for your previous performance and future potential both. So we can build it in there. We throw people in leadership positions based on technical expertise, expecting them to do this other skill set well, even though we may never have defined it, showed it to them, let them practice it, and then get a couple of reps in before they do it.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

You know, I think that's so important, Chet. Yeah. And that just reminds me. I was thinking about I have an emergency physician, super competent. He's like a warrior in the ER. He sees tons of patients. He just he's he's a relentless work machine, but he's blunt as a nail. He's blunt as a whatever you gotta do. It's the blunt of an of a nail, right? And he lacks that kind of warmth. And so his halo effect is not really a halo effect, but a devil horn effect because awesome in the ER, but his warmth is just terrible. And it reminds me of that, as we're all movie kind of buffs and nerds, the the movie The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. Ken Watanabe is the leader of the samurais, and he's got this one like subgeneral, the guy, the main the actor is in Shogun. I forget his name in that show, but that character, he's a badass warrior, man. Like he's probably a better fighter than the general Ken Watanabe's character, but he was not warm at all. He's just blunt and he's just very stickler and everything. And to get to become a leader, you need a combination of competence and warmth, if you will, to get there.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Yeah, totally agree with that too. Even the leadership thing, right? One of the other things I learned, the Air Force had this weird system where the first time you meet with your boss, they're like, hey, Captain Carod, we scheduled you for feedback. And I was like, I literally just signed into this assignment two days ago. What possible feedback could I get? And what they meant was it was actually a setting of expectations, right? That's what they were supposed to do. And that's what they did in the meeting, but it was called a feedback session. So sometimes the terminology goofs things up. But when you take over as a leader, it's a great idea to grab the managers and like the military has a lot of good examples out there. So either one of the first things you do the day you take command of a unit, you get to stand in front of everybody in your unit and have your first look at them and they get their first look at you. And usually commanders will do some trite kind of things, like they'll say, All standing policies and orders remain in effect until further notice. It's like blah, blah, blah. But that's your chance to capture people and they know the rules still apply. You didn't just take over the thing and say, as of now, the constitution is no longer in effect. Obviously not. So you don't need to say that obvious stuff. You can instead say, hey, I'm looking forward to working with each of you and getting to know you as we do the best we can to serve our country. Boom, whatever. But something. And then later, when you meet with people, you get a chance to talk to them and at an individual level set your expectations. Not everybody knows to do that. So then when you call somebody in and say, you didn't do your job, they're like, nobody ever told me. So these are simple things to fix by knowing some leadership tools, setting expectations, knowing what you stand for. We had a great general named AJ Stewart, and he used to tell us, he said, Hey man, do you think of yourself as a leader? And all of us are Lieutenant Colonel Squadron Commanders in the room. So we're like, not only do I, the Air Force thinks so too, sir. He's like, Really? That's great. What are three things you believe in? And then everybody's, so he kind of was going around the room, and this was one of those moments where I was switched on big time. So he came around the room and he goes, Hey, Lieutenant Colonel Carod, we haven't met before. I'm AJ Stewart. I'm like, Yes, sir. We all heard you speak this morning. Appreciate your comments. He's yeah, I want to hear your comments. Stand up. And there's a hundred squadron commanders in the room, right? He goes, just stand up and tell me. You got three minutes to tell us what's important to you. Go. So thankfully, for whatever reason, instead of making a mess in my uniform, I instead I was like, there are three things that I think it's important to walk through life with, and they're the three T's. I think one of the most important things is thankfulness. If we walk around with a spirit of gratitude and are thankful, the world looks different and the world looks at us differently. The next is understanding tenacity for the truth. As a leader, you're supposed to hang tough on the truth and do whatever it takes to make that happen. And the third is time. It is our most precious resource. We will not waste it. And none of us knows how much of it we have in life. Thankfulness, truth, time. Thank you very much. I sit down and he looks at me and he goes, All right, have you been here before? That kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

But I do not want to be the person to answer after you.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

Way too. So the reason for this, though, is we as leaders want to spend some time thinking about what do I stand for? What do I believe in? And it doesn't have to be deep thoughts. It can be just a little bit of scotch and a little bit of thinking. But the idea of that of sending our mind there, figuring out maybe what we stand for a little bit, is just going to position us. It's there's no productivity metric for this. Nobody's going to look at a press gainey for an ER doc. No medic is going to get overtime for thinking about this stuff. But in the grand scheme of things, these are the things that kind of separate uh us as we evolve as leaders. So just some thoughts. It's good to have a stump speech or something you believe in, something motivating, something that gives people a window into what JR is about, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

What are you about, JR? No, I'm kidding. I'm not going after chat.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Excellent. I find that on an individual level when I'm teaching residents, because of course we had our brand new intern class start pretty recently. And so working with the each of these interns for the first time, they're moving from the medical student to the resident role, and most of the time are a bit gun shy. So they like are looking for what I want or what I think they should order or anything like that. And so it's an early quick setting of expectations. Like, hey, look, you are a physician licensed to practice medicine and surgery, like it's training license, but it's still a license from competent authority to do that which would otherwise be illegal. And so you see the patient, examine them fully, have a differential, and have an idea of what you want to order and how you want to work it up. And then we'll we'll work through that. We'll talk about pluses and minuses, things we can rule out or should be thinking of, or and that sort of thing. But that early kind of setting of that expectation does help. I but I also take issue with these companies that make these ridiculous mission statements or what's our value statement or all that. It's okay, it looks great on a wall, but I there's nothing I can do with that. And we talked about that on a previous uh episode. We believe in setting conditions for success. And it's like, Jesus, what do I do with that? So uh at the same time, I thought we had a mission statement or goal statement with one of the units that I deployed with, and it had some really some good stuff of hey, credibility equals freedom of maneuver. And you we expect you to take initiative, and if it is legal, moral, and ethical, then you have our full self go forward and row hard, row well, row together. And a lot of stuff about, oh, okay, this is stuff that I can action that I feel. And so many mission statements and goal statements from organizations don't have that.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Yeah, it makes them inaccessible, and people don't really want to roll in on that. They can't because it's too far away. And a lot of leaders, a lot of people in leadership positions. There, I remember having to go to these offsites. We're gonna use this day in this off-site location to come up with a vision and mission statement for our unit. And I'm like, okay, there's one professional people that know how to do this. We should all have an idea of the fact that we were gonna do this before we got here. So that's another one of my like super obvious but super secret tips for leaders is you know, if you're gonna have a meeting, set the agenda in advance so people can think and do the things they need to do before they show up. Otherwise, you've got 10 people in the room for an hour. 1.2 workdays went into that one meeting in terms of person hours, and now you still accomplish nothing because you're all gonna nod at each other and go, yeah, I read that just now. I need to do that. It's like, bro, you could have sent that yesterday or a week ahead. We could have had the meeting before the meeting and shown up here and really used our time well. So some of these are just like operational skills that we fail to teach people. And then the other is we come up watching well-intentioned but inept leaders or well-intentioned and inept managers, or managers who feel that part of their job is putting you in your place, not lifting up the organization and getting the job done. And we either replicate that or we have a reaction against it and we are caught in the amoeba-like behavior of moving away from a noxious stimuli. And the problem with that is moving away from things is never a good motivation. You're just escaping. You're far better off finding an actual goal and moving toward it. So yeah, uh now when we train people, a lot of times I put them in a position where I'm like, let's I sent you an agenda. Why did I send you an agenda? And they're like, ugh, I don't know. I'm like, because I wanted you to think about it before, because you're much more powerful when you had a chance to think about it than if I catch you cold on it. Well, that's the but sometimes we have to show our trainees and then, or the people we're leading, and then tell them what we wanted them to get out of it, because otherwise they may not get it out of that.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

You gotta do your homework before you come to class. And same thing before you come to that meeting to make it useful. I want to talk too about when it's time for the manager to be a leader. When I think all of us are leaders and managers because we all answer to somebody. I don't care who you are. You could be the president of the United States, you still have people to answer to. You answer to the you answer to the voters. Eventually, it's just on a different timeline than a lot of us that answer directly to a boss, but but you still answer to someone. And the but I think as managers, the times that we have to be leaders, I think when you have a large distributed organization that it is difficult for the individual leader of that organization at the top of that to reach down through every level of the organization to the thousands of people perhaps that work there to get their full idea across. And that's where the manager comes in to the manager understands what the goal is, understands we're like we're doing this thing, this is the direction that we're heading, and the manager understands their own role in it and their own section's role in it, and how they do that, then they can convey that to the folks that they are managing and leading. This is what the boss says she wants for the organization, and this is where our part is and why we're doing it this way to to help support that. But they are you can't touch everybody in the organization, so those managers in the in that are interposed between the leader and that that bottom tier of worker still can manage to carry the message of the leader of the organization and not just regurgitate it, but to explain it, to understand it. So when questions come up from those employees, they're like, this seems like this might be counterproductive to what you're talking about. And then that manager who's closer to what that employee is doing, but understands the leader's intent, can say, No, here's why it here's why it will work, or here's why we think that this is going to contribute to that mission if we do it. It also makes the manager's job a lot easier when they do that. You can only force people to do so much, but you really and we've talked about this before, influence versus authority, and really authority doesn't get you very far. Influence gets you a long way. If they understand what you're doing, they understand what you want to do and their role in it, then they'll be incredibly productive and great for your organization to do do what you want them to execute. If they're just being pointed in a direction and shut up, don't ask questions, just do the thing the one thing that's in front of you, then they're gonna meet the minimum standard, which is barely above inadequate.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Yeah, no, I agree that that what you said, JR, is completely true. And I think that's the key point for for leadership is inspire and influence your people to say, oh, I I want to do this because this is good for the team and everything, as opposed to being authoritarian and be like, oh, I'm just gonna do it just because he says it. Which the in our jobs we have a combination of both, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

And the manager also stepping into the leadership role, understanding the leader's intent, knows when to deviate from process. That we have this process, it's set up, but under this condition, this process is not gonna be correct, and that they can take the initiative and lead to to change this thing, and the outcome ends up being where the leader wanted it to be. But it requires leadership of self and section and the others and initiative. And an initiative is a leadership quality, it is not a management quality. Fight me on that.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

No, it's not wrong. I think, and that's where the overlap is, right? When you find managers, because the managers are applying or affecting processes in line with policy to achieve their objectives, there's not a lot of room there for creativity necessarily or initiative, though there can be. But the leader by definition is in that follow-me this way kind of mode, and there may or may not be anybody out in front of them or policy pulling them along to create their process. So initiative does land more squarely, at least in most cases, I think, in that Venn that side of the Venn diagram.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Indeed. What do you think? It's funny, I got this NCO that I work with, and Dave Dave and I were friends well before he was working in my unit. And there are this is a really good example of leadership and management and where to step in with various aspects of this, because Dave is uh he's a ranger, and uh Dave he shows incredible amounts of initiative and uh can and can lead others in that. Uh there are four Dave's two of them are allowed, two of them are not. So you have attentive Dave. Attentive Dave is the Dave that appears most often when dealing with his family, his wife and his children. He's a wonderful husband and father, and but also attentive Dave that when like mentoring a younger soldier or something like that. Attentive Dave, right? There is good idea, Dave. That good idea that he is extremely creative with stuff, and uh and sometimes that creativity flows unhindered from his brain to his hands and feet. And but he does come up with some really creative solutions to stuff. There is uh ADHD Dave, who often influenced by good idea, Dave, starts things and then this way and then this way, and then whatever project it was is now expanded to well beyond the initial intent. And then there's Ranger Dave is unstoppable. Now, Ranger Dave is the one that, like, if you need something done, hell or high water, Ranger Dave is the one that gets done. However, when Rangerdave shows up with good idea, Dave, and a touch of ADHD Dave, then the uh the results may end up being ultimately counterproductive. And so you have to, as as the leader, set left and right limits. They're distant limits, because I'm gonna tell you like what visualized end state is, or what we've been told visualized end state should be, and this is where we need to be. And I'm gonna be out of your way and hopefully giving you the things that you need to do it. However, I need you to solve this problem non-destructively. And I need you to, if you're gonna do that, these are the things you really can't do in solving this problem. Because it's not gonna be the your staff sergeant Dave that goes to Leavenworth. It's gonna be Lieutenant Colonel Pickett that goes to Leavenworth for whatever happens with this. That that's leadership and management. I know him well enough to to lead said and state, I but to also manage a little bit to say, uh we need need to stay within these boundaries. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

That kind of gets us back to how we opened it, which was in in many ways, leadership is talking about the what and emphasizing the why, and then the managers are talking about the who's and the hows to try and to get us there. Uh and i if you can marshal those four daves by doing that, then that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

You you you gotta know there's certain certain Daves you must immediately re reject. You must eject them from where wherever the project is. And others, you can harness their powers for good.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

Uh force for good.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Use that to your use that to uh further your ends.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

Got it. Do you think we should sum up this one and then head to our I don't even know what we're gonna do, our is our little shtick at the end.

SPEAKER_02 43:44

Anyone read any good books lately?

SPEAKER_00 43:47

Uh I am listening to the Qs one. I think one of you recommended that book, Cue's.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Oh, Qs, yes. Oh Vanessa Van something, I can't remember her name now.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

And then I'm reading a book called Switch. I think it's called. Oh yeah. Shift. Shift. Managing your emotions. Yeah. Was that recommended by one of you guys too?

SPEAKER_02 44:08

I may have seen that either on my list or one of JR's uh JR has a public list that I pulled off of Facebook one time. I don't know if he actually read them all, but man, it was a good list. I have read them all.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

Read them all. You're like, oh, very clever. Eat any good books lately?

SPEAKER_02 44:32

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Okay, I may have listened to them.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Hey, I don't care how you consumed them. I like that list. There's a lot of good stuff on there. And one of you has previously mentioned Call Sign Chaos by General Jim Mattis. I've read that once before. I recently read it again. I'll foot stomp that. It is not only is the general such a good storyteller, it is an incredible leadership manual. I highly recommend.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

What's it called?

SPEAKER_02 44:59

It's called Call Sign Chaos.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Call Sign Chaos.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

And in telling his story, he works through his career as individual, tactical, and then higher levels of operational and strategic leadership. It's really interesting. The first time I read it, I just read it as hey, this is a leader I admire. The second time I looked through it, it was more like, I think I get what he was doing, the framework behind the story. And that was just really cool.

unknown 45:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:30

Sorry, another quick one I'll recommend is I've been on a fiction kick lately, and we've talked about this before. There's some people that are non-fiction types only, but I'm highly involved in, I usually have one fiction and one nonfiction going at a time. And the reason I do that is not because I don't have enough to think about, but I feel like fiction often interjects, like it disengages our mind from task and allows for a creative space or a space where you're just you're resting or withdrawn from the things that tax you and tire you out, and you have a space to be where maybe you can just take a little bit of a break. If you've never if you've never read, for example, the Michael Connolly Bosch series, highly recommend those. The TV show is great too. They did a great job adapting, and the author was involved as the executive producer, so it stays mostly true to the story. But the books themselves are really quite remarkable. The beauty of reading them now is he's been writing them. There's several dozen of them. So if you just start at the beginning and follow Bosch's career, he actually evolves as a person, as an officer, like a police officer, and progresses in his life, and he doesn't always win. Sometimes Bosch has he gets experienced ups and downs, and it's really hard to watch or read sometimes as he goes through it because you're like, dang it, that didn't need to happen. But he was his personality took him there and he let himself go there. But so Michael Connolly's Bosch series, I highly recommend.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Got it. Yeah, yeah. So that book, Shift, How to Manage Your Emotions, what I was reading. It's interesting, it's because it's like using your emotions as signposts to guide you through life's challenges or life in general and not have it control you, which as a human being, we all know emotions very well. And so it's a it's an insightful book because I try to just the way I grew up and what I've experienced in my life as it and as a typical guy, I try to push my emotions way down and forget they ever happen and release them in an inopportune time. No, but no, it's very insightful in that regard and how it's how you can use it as signposts. And the example they start off in the book with is this Navy SEAL going through one of the not Hell Week, but just a terrible he's locked in a box for training for I don't know, three days. I don't know, something like that. But it talks about how he used his emotions innately to help him guide through and get through the adversity of that specific training for Navy SEALs and everything. And then I kind of piggyback that off of the Q's book that was recommended by I think you Chet, where they define charisma as warmth and competence, and it's just the using your emotions for warmth and competence and everything, and how do you portray that? Is it's a very insightful read, and I really enjoy it, and so thank you for that recommendation. And just what's going on in my life right now is my kids are and you got I don't know about you, Chet, but maybe you, JR, know about this. But there's this little show movie out there on Netflix called K-pop Demon Hunters.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

I've seen it come up in my recommendations because my teammate Brother has ruined my search history on Netflix.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

So I would recommend watching it. It's entertaining. And once you watch it, you'll want to download the soundtrack and you'll listen to it nonstop. There's a reason why it's number one on the pop boards right now.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Cool. I'd say my book is Kitchen Confidential from Anthony Bourdain. And I think that it's fascinating for one thing, and I love his narration style and the how he describes the start of his career in cooking and the just the characters that you come into. But from a leadership perspective, it's a really it's a really good book because these uh the these restaurants are the cast of characters that you have there are barely under any kind of control. And so he talks about a lot of the leadership principles and dealing with a very tough bunch of people that do their job and do it well, and some of the the interpersonal stuff that that comes up in it. It's and also his great love of food comes through as well. But I really enjoyed that book, and uh not only from personal perspective, but but also the leadership perspective.

unknown 50:01

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

All right, cool. That that sums up, I think, this episode here. Anyone have any last words or anything else before I end this episode?

SPEAKER_01 50:11

Yep, this is great. Oh I do. The actor we were talking about. Of course you do, JR. The actor we were talking about from the last samurai is Hiro Yuki Sanada. Ah, better you said that than I.