Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from Asheville, North Carolina is Bill Treasurer. And Bill has a brand new book out called Leadership Two Words at a Time: Simple Truths for Leading Complicated People. So, yes, it is we do have a, I'm not gonna say a lack of leadership, but we do have to develop a lot of new leaders. And Bill, I always let our listeners know a little bit about our authors before we actually proceed into the podcast itself. Let me do that. And then we'll get into talking about the book and all the juicy stuff you've written about and how people who are first time leaders can become better leaders. As I said, Bill is the chief encouragement Officer of giant leap consulting, Inc. If you want to get to Bill's website, it's his personal website is bill treasure. And that's t-r-e-a-s-u-r-e-r.com. You can go to the book website, which is giant leap consulting.com forward slash two words. And at that location, you can answer a few questions and you can download a free sample chapter. Right, Bill? Yeah, yeah, I'd rather have you kick the tires of the book a little bit. Exactly. So that's a good way. So let me tell you a little bit more about Bill. I said he's the author of this book. But he's also the author of courage goes to work, which introduced a new management practice of courage building, and leaders open doors, which becomes the number one leadership training book on Amazon. And all the royalties from leaders open doors are donated to programs that support kids with special needs. Bill has designed leadership and succession programs for emerging and experienced leaders from NASA Saks Fifth Avenue US Bank, Walsh, construction, spandex and Pittsburgh Pirates. And the US Department of Veterans Affairs and many others, holds a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor's degree from West Virginia University, where he attended school on a full athletic scholarship. In addition to being an author and business owner, as a former US high diving captain, and a cancer survivor, and the father of three, well, Bill, you've got a great bio, and I love your philanthropy with what you're doing kids with special needs. Actually, I used to raise money for an organization called Terry with kids with autism and Down syndrome. And so I know that's a big cause of yours. So that is really good. It's good to see that people are using their time, talents and treasures to do things like that. So just want to acknowledge you. And thank you for the contribution to compassion and communications foundation. You know, in this book, in the preface, you tell your backstory, and you mentioned that you personally have been transformed by great leaders. Can you tell the listeners your backstory, and what the leaders you have that if you have encountered really taught you about leadership life, and how it affected you?

Bill Treasurer
Hmm. Well, first of all, Greg, thanks so much for having me on inside personal growth. And I look forward to our conversation together. And you've been very gracious leading up to this event. And as we both prepared to come to the listeners together, so I very much appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. You're welcome. A little bit about the backstory. You know, I got into people often ask me, how did I get involved and interested in the idea of leadership? And, and it's because I did a bad job of leading when I first got into a leadership role, and I was a member of the US high diving team, I was leading a troupe of athletes around the country at a young age. And one day I just lit into the team for a subpar performance. And after I had lit them up, and the divers slowly walked away, one of them stayed behind and said, Listen, Treasurer if you haven't talked to us like that, again, I'll walk. I don't need the job that bad to be treated as poorly as you just treated us by anybody. And I got defensive and I told him I was his boss, and I'll talk to him the way I want to and blah, blah, blah, blah. But that night I started thinking about and I was right, he's right. I have no idea how to lead and have no idea who I am as a leader. I was just defaulting to the imprint of my father, who is a hot hand. And now I love my dad. He's deceased now, but he was a short fuse. And he came down hard on stuff. And that's what I knew. And that's what I did. And until that person gave me feedback, I had no real, honest self-evaluation of what kind of leader I was showing up beds. So I started reading books on leadership,

Greg Voisen
let me ask you, let me throw something in here. Sorry, pardon to interrupt. You know, just because you get a label as a leader, doesn't mean you're a leader. And, and what you had happened to you is not uncommon, which is kind of controlling the ego, it has to be right. So you know, you're shoving it back in this guy's face, and he got upset with you. And this took you down the path of becoming a better leader. And I think, you know, those failures that we have. And the reason I answered this is, we don't all start off born leaders. We don't all start off with these talents. It takes time to develop this. And that's what the books about you've actually written this book for young kind of startup leaders, right?

Bill Treasurer
Yeah, it takes seasoning and it takes those experiences. And oftentimes, it's the feedback that we didn't want that, that we try to keep out that once we take it in, and the moment that we allow it to come in, and we start to question what how I have contributed to this feedback that I've gotten, then we can start to consider things in a different way. And in that case, I read a book on leadership, and it was the One Minute Manager and, and I'm like, Okay, so there's some tips in here. And they're practical, and maybe I can try them. And I did and I'd get a better response with the people that I had the privilege to lead. And I got better as a leader. But I became very interested in the topic of leadership and put myself through graduate school. And that set me on my path. So if you think about it, one guy's courage in confronting my leader, ship for the gap that it had between the leader, I was showing up as a leader who I thought I was, and he pointed out that gap, he held the mirror up to me, and it hurt. But he did that in a courageous way and to make me better, and it set me on my path and ended up going to graduate school, wrote my thesis on leadership, got my first job in leadership, and then was impacted by leaders along the way that that you'd mentioned. And so he's one person, his name is Steve Willard. That sort of gave me good feedback that I needed to that that pushed me in the direction of leadership, then I had a few leaders that I worked with it, we're very instrumental in, you know, I've worked with good and bad leaders, and I've taken something from all of them, right. But I think of a few that I had early on what is Dr. Henry L. Thompson, he goes by Dick Thompson. He has a company called high performing systems. It's still around. It's in the Athens area of Georgia. And he wrote a book called the stress effect. And he was a Vietnam veteran who had done two tours in enemy behind enemy lines in covert operations. So he was a guy that I could look up to from his military experience. And I cut my teeth working with Dick and he still remains a friend and a mentor today, but he also focused on the idea of leadership extremis, leading in extreme situations, and the stress impact of that. So I've carried that idea of stress and managing your own stress so that you can be composed and your leadership carried that forward. But he showed me the idea of character and how important it is to leadership. Another person, Bob Carr, and he was a pioneer in experiential outdoor experiential training. I know you and I have talked about Larry Wilson before for Pecos Yeah, Pecos River and Bob was a contemporary and he had a company called executive adventure. And I did 300 outdoor experiential team building programs with him. So I learned to facilitate through Bob and the 300 sessions I did, but I also learned about entrepreneurship. Bob, Bob was also an entrepreneur. He had sold a business and then started that business ultimately sold that business executive adventure and he still today has something called common courtesy. That's a nonprofit that gathers money so that they can help transport elderly people to like their doctor's appointments and such and it's called common courtesy. And then, but I was always a little bit disappointed in leaders that I worked with Intel. I worked with Heinz Brannon at Accenture. And I had been holding leaders up to the standards that I had read up in the idealistic textbooks of graduate school. And then I nobody ever lived up to that expectation of this sort of perfect leader that we were looking for. But Heinz, so authentic, such a great leader for me, and he was at Accenture and he really means a mentor to me today. And in those years, what made Heinz so good as a leader for me is that he, first of all, he was authentic. He, he didn't have to be pretentious, he didn't have to know all the answers. And he didn't have to make pretend he was smart. So I would feel belittled. He gave me honest feedback that I needed. And sometimes that feedback was a reinforcement of something good. And sometimes it was like, here's something you need to close, because if you don't close this, it's going to be create a plateau for you. Because he cared enough about me, Greg, one of the greatest honors of my career was last year, in December, he got honored by his alma mater, which was Mississippi State University, in front of 20,000 other people during their commencement ceremony, and he got an honorary doctorate degree from the school and his family was there, and I was with his family. And it was one of the greatest moments of my career to see my mentor get honored that way, because of leadership. So that's, that's probably more backstory than you want it. But that's, well, no,

Greg Voisen
it's good for people to hear, you know, as we go along, you know, if you ask the average listener out there today, who impacted in your, in your life, other than your father and your mother, you know, in jobs you've been in? I would say that, you know, you just name three, many people might not be able to name three, right? Or they don't look at him that way. And I think it's important to see the mentorship quality, right? The inspiration, quality, the authenticity, being authentic. And what I was going to ask you is, what do you believe, after being all these years in consulting and working with leaders? are the characteristics that really make up a good leader you were just talking with, about that gentleman? And obviously, you know, he was he was very authentic, right? He didn't have to know it all. He was very supportive, encouraging. So what would be some of those key words you might use?

Bill Treasurer
You know, I had a new CEO of a company, and he was he still is young, 40s, right. And he was getting all sorts of input from the board of directors from his dad, who was the previous owner of the company, it's a $550 million business. So it's not inconsequential, right? So sizable business. And in coaching, he came to me he's like, well, I'm getting so much advice. And I know everybody's trying to be helpful, but with all of the things that I could do, where do I start? And my answer was a little instinctive, and spontaneous. And it surprised me even. And I said, start by being a good person. start first by that, start by being say that in the book, yes, by being able to look yourself in the mirror each morning, and feel satisfied that you haven't done somebody harm, that you are trying to do the right thing, that you are diligent about improving, and that you're a good human being start there. So I think character is something that's very important. I think the ability to have self-reflection and self-evaluation is important to leadership. I think having another focus, you've got to make what I call the holy shift, at some point, the shift away from your own ambition and your own climb and ambitions, good achievements, good. But you've got to, you've got to shift the equation to not what am I getting from leadership, but what am I giving in leadership? And how can I serve the people that are working with me, so having another focus, and that takes listening? I know that I'm sure you and I will talk to the idea of humility a little bit later. But the idea that I cannot always have to have all the answers don't have to be the smartest one in the room, can put the car, get disarmed with people, create trust with people, create psychological safety with people, and then listen to their input is very important to leadership. I think optimism is important to leadership, and I'm going towards a hopeful place. Hey, this is a place that you probably want to come to as well. How about joining in the fun as we go to this better future together. Creativity is important to leadership, a strategic mind, we all get sort of operational into the practice of whatever our discipline is. And that's good to be tacticians and be operational, but you got to be able to lift it up every now and then and look out farther to where you're going. And who might help you get to that place that you're trying to go to having goals is important. So there's a whole complement of things that are necessary for leadership. But if you take all of that in at once it can subsume you and feel heavy as a burden of leadership. And I think it's trying to manage in this moment, what is the next right thing and

Greg Voisen
I agree with that. 100% Because it is it does feel overwhelming when you look at all the characteristics except we're supposed to have right to be a good leader. And I think probably one of the most important ones one I learned a long time ago. And I think you certainly have learned this. You know, I remember the old Greenleaf model of leadership, which is really kind of an upside down pyramid, right. We're here to serve the people underneath us. And I think if you just keep that in mind and understand that, really, it's not all these other people serving you, it's us serving them. And I would assume you concur with that. So

Bill Treasurer
when we do and that helps with your energy and engagement. I wrote a book with Captain John coach have like and coach applicant, I've been friends for 35 years, but he was also a naval officer. He was a seal, a Navy SEAL officer, a captain, he spent a lot of time out in Coronado. And he tells the story when he was going through hell week that he almost rang the bell. Now you ring the bell, you're out of the program instantly, you could have been there for a few weeks. But as soon as you ring that bell, you're out. And during Hell Week, you hear that bell going off a lot. And one night, during Hell Week. He was just exhausted, they only get four hours asleep the whole week. And he's getting ready to quit, get ready to ring the bell. But a another, you know, drill sergeant there gets wind of it and says Captain haven't come here. He's like, I hear you want to quit the program, ring the bell? And he goes, well, you know, I'm thinking about it. And the guy just looked him right in the face and said, why don't you stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about your men. Now I'm gonna go and walk and go and get some coffee. And when I come back, I want your answer. But don't make a decision in 30 seconds that will affect the rest of your life. And he walked away. And he came back and got his cup of coffee. And he says, What's your decision? And he said, I'm in, I'm in and he stayed, he went through hell week. And the point of that is that when he switched his focus, instead of the pain that he was in and how he was suffering, and all this is the hardest thing I've ever done, when he got him focused on think about the people you're going to be leading someday, that gives you energy, purpose, hope, meaningfulness, but behind the idea of being a leader, so but it's hard, because we are all sort of self-focused creatures. And to switch that equation is not an easy thing.

Greg Voisen
Well, you have to be selfless, to a large degree, and you have to look at others and others needs and encourage them knowing that they're supporting the greater cause the greater mission, the greater strategy, whatever it is that you're attempting to achieve whatever the goal is, you know, in your book, you're focused on what the new leader and I love that because, you know, I'll tell a quick story here. My son works in Adobe, and he just got a job as a new leader, over 40 people. And it was a big deal. Because you know, there's contraction occurring in Silicon Valley right now, not expansion. And, you know, it had to go through all these approval processes and the whole nine yards, because of how tightly they're watching everything, right? And I said, well, I hope you enjoy this new position as a leader. I, you know, because you've spent all these years not that you weren't doing some leadership. But now this is a bigger position with a pay raise and more responsibilities. And you really love coding, right? Because you're a great engineer. Right? And so what do you want new leaders to know, if you were speaking to my son and whispering in his ears? What do you want him to know? And what does he need to know about the role as leader in these turbulent times? Because, you know, he's, he's just been set up to work in a company, that's stock has just come down tremendously. You got maybe morale issues with employees. You got a lot of things going on. And he's now thrusted into this position, and they're looking at him to become an encouraging, inspiring, supportive leader. What would you tell if you were talking to my son, what would you tell him?

Bill Treasurer
I tell your son, first of all, take a deep breath, you're gonna be fine. You're gonna figure your way out of this, that, you know, join the club. You're not the first person to have gone through this big moment where you get a big gulp. And in fact, when you do transition from individual contributor to leading a team, the first response is always sort of the I'm really, you know, I'm psyched, and I'm scared, right like this big gulp moment. Plenty of people have walked down this path as well. The next thing I would tell them we think about what contribution you'd like to make through your leadership. What are some gaps that you can help close? What are some things that could be improved? What are some goals that you'd like to pursue in this in this new role? And think of it as an opportunity, if you could switch it from the anxiety that it's giving me because the pressures on and what if I fail in this role, and be thinking instead about what's the opportunity that I might be able to add value in some way I might be able to help people meet their goals and their careers and such. And I think that that's part of the key, Greg, is focus on value focus on where can I add value? How can I help these people by helping them get exposure to things that they haven't yet seen, maybe getting them some training that they haven't yet had, maybe giving them some tools and resources to help them make their job more efficient, so they can be more valuable in their careers, because if they're, if we are all adding value, we add up to more value for the organization, which is why they have hired us in the first place. So those would be some things that I would say, and that you know, what, hey, leadership is hard. And that's okay. That's why they put you in a leadership role, you should feel gratified that somebody saw enough promise in you to want to put your influence in a leadership role, and that there's opportunity in this. So those would be some of the messages. You know,

Greg Voisen
a lot of times in leadership. It's a bit amorphous, and it's hard to put hard edges around it. You know, I know, maybe that sounds strange to you. But it really is, it's like, okay, you know, what, what I reflect on, frequently, even in the smaller businesses, that the Robert Irvine restaurant and possible, every time you go into a restaurant, you'll find that there's no leadership when the ones are falling apart. Right, there's absolutely no hierarchy, no leadership, it's just kind of like where it is. What really gets me excited when I watch that show is how in a short period of time, he can actually structure it and structure a leader and define who the leader is, and tell him look, if you really want this to be successful, there's got to be a leader, there's got to be somebody there. And these people aren't your friends, they're your employees, right? Because a lot of times restaurants, it's a lot of friends, you know, it's like, okay, my hair, my friend, whatever. But I love the fact that he can immediately identify, you know, who the leader is who has to step up and take that role. And you state that leadership, two words at a time is organized around three core and supremely important leadership responsibilities. Can you speak about the three core leadership responsibilities of leading yourself, which is leading people, and leading work leading yourself leading people in leading work?

Bill Treasurer
Yeah, and I think collectively, they make up the idea of leadership fitness, right, we have to think of ourselves as being fit to lead in the same way that a human being can do physical fitness, that to be a leader who's got who's, you know, a whole person as a leader, that it takes three things. First is you have to have self-leadership, you have to lead yourself, that's sort of the first piece and that takes self-evaluation, self-discipline, frankly, self-care, as well. You're the machinery that you're going to bring to work every day. So are you personally and professionally discipline? If you're one place, it'll show up as your own work environment? Is your desk filled with stacks that look like a mini city, so that you look like a confused and disorganized mess? When people come to see you? Are you personally organized? How well do you use your time? For example? Are you judicious about the use of your time? Or do you constantly run behind and run late not even know what time it is? Are you time oblivious. So leading yourself? The leading yourself is different than getting the most out of the people that you're leading, which is leading others, leading yourself as you know, knocking items on your own to do list being really productive yourself being organized discipline, but for leading others, you have to have that focus on them, equipping them, making sure they've got the tools that they need. Are you spending time developing them? Are you spending time mentoring them? Do you give them constructive feedback to help them grow? And that's sort of a totally different discipline than leading yourself. So you lead yourself you lead others make sure that you've specified the r&r is their roles and responsibilities are clear. The expectations are clear. The goals that they have in front of them are clear, the measures of their success are clear. You're meeting with them frequently to check in how they're doing on things, because it's not enough to set expectations. You've got to inspect expectations and make sure that they're meeting those milestones. And then the third thing as you do those other things, is lead people lead yourself, because you got to lead the work, you got to get, let me just say stuff done and not have a buddy uses the word stuff when they say you got to get stuff done, okay, you got to get results. And that's leading work. That's structuring the work plan, that's making sure that you have the resources and appealing for the resources, that's making sure that you're not no, not just your own team's goals, but how they fit into the other divisions, goals, and the other business unit goals and the goals of your own boss and on up the line to the strategy and the initiatives that are pushing the organization forward. So you've got to make sure that you're leading the work because you've got to deliver for clients and customers to keep them satisfied and keep them coming back to you with revenue. And you got to make money, you got to know the levers that make money or lose money in a busy business, you have to master that stuff. And you know, this piece will come quicker than this piece. And this piece takes a long time. The leading work thing takes some seasoning, it's a journeyman and journey woman right? It's gonna take a journey before you amass a lot of business mindedness. Business mindedness doesn't come quickly. But lead yourself lead others so that you can lead work, those are the three areas that make up leadership fitness.

Greg Voisen
You know, if it's great, you speak about that, because that puts everything into context. You now look at the kind of complexity of leadership, there is a degree of complexity of it. But there are certain types of leader and I'm going to, I just did a profile from Ray Dalio on leadership. And they have this 100 100 questionnaire. And my question for you is, he says that you are most like the Inspire. And he gives archetypes, the adventurer, the entertainer the Inspire, right. My question for you would be as there are a lot of different types of personalities that are leaders, you know, they said, you know, Steve Jobs, they said he was radically curious, but one of the toughest people in the world to work for, but he was a leader. Right. And he could be, and frequently was, as a lot of people say, if you read the books, a bastard, just a tough nut, right? What, I'm not going to ask you about characteristics, but I'm going to ask you about types of leaders, you know, this might be a little bit off from the book. But I think it's important, because there are different types of leaders, if you don't have to be one particular mole to be a good leader. Right? You do have to know what kind of leader you are, though. Right? Are you the encouraged? Are you that inspire you that? Are you the guy like, you know, like Steve Jobs? You know, Bill Gates, what would you say about that?

Bill Treasurer
Well, you know, I will comment, you're right, that you know, you've got the achiever, you've got the visionary, you've got the creative, you've got the, you know, the good soldier, you've got the general you've got the there's a lot of archetypes that would fit into the idea of leadership, and like you, they can all be appropriate at certain moments, and they can all be inappropriate at certain moments. What I can tell you, this is my belief and experience, there are two leaders who you don't want to be that we often see in the workplace, and those two are the pig head. So the pig head is the one who always has to be right there. It's always their idea that they're going to go down with their ego walks into the room 30 minutes before they do. They take any questioning of their idea as an assault on their authority. They are pigheaded and they are the bulldozer that make you the pavement.

Greg Voisen
Like that.

Bill Treasurer
The ego is so strong in that leader, that, that they're dangerous to themselves and to the people that they're leading. And we've all worked for people with shades of pigheadedness and we get honest about sometimes we have our own pigheadedness

Greg Voisen
Yeah, of course our ego when our ego gets stimulated that way. You can be pretty pigheaded.

Bill Treasurer
We can be pigheaded. So that's a leader that we don't want to be the other leader we don't want to be it's like on the other end by the way. So we want confidence right? We want confidence but we don't want overconfidence we don't want conceit. And we don't want arrogance. So that's one polarity. The other pole though is a weakling. We don't want to work for weekly we don't want to work with somebody who says okay, yeah, that's a good idea team and then he gets a little pushback from a leader at another you know, level and there's no you're right. It's not such a good idea and then backs off and comes as a wishy washy fickle. No backbone doesn't go to support us, doesn't give us the resources that we need to doesn't provide air cover is this sort of, we can't trust that that leader is strong enough to lead for folds too quickly. So that's like the opposite of it's like with this one's overconfident that this one doesn't have enough confidence. And so we don't want pig heads. And we don't want weaklings, those Well,

Greg Voisen
I kind of I kind of like what the Dalai Lama says whether you look at him and leader or not it and it's written about in Buddhism, it's the middle way, you know, we just looked at two extremes is pigheadedness. And then this person who didn't have a backbone or spine, and there is a middle way, right, there's a middle way you can follow and you can be reasonable, and you can be balanced. And you can approach this in a right way. And that is a good leader that really is a good leader. And you stayed in the chapter on knowing yourself that the single greatest courageous action any human being can take is the journey, the center of oneself. Exploring the center of oneself. I think a lot of people run from it bill, as it can be scary. Okay. What advice would you give our listeners to take that journey? And if you were, how would you ask them to take it? Is it through journaling? Is it through peer feedback? Do I want to ask, you know, a bunch of my peers around me, what do you what do you think of me? I know, in many of these companies today, they've adopted peer reviews, to basically say, okay, is this person doing a good job? So what advice would you give somebody to take that journey to the center of themselves?

Bill Treasurer
Yeah. And I think it's such an essential life journey, right? Not just a work journey. But it's a human journey. And it's one that a lot of us avoid, I'm sure that I avoided it. And you'll see it sometimes. Right. It's almost, it's almost I wouldn't say cliche, but it is, it is a common story. For the person who, you know, goes into dentistry because his father was a dentist, and his father always told him, you should be a dentist, but the guy you don't want it to, you know, have a surf shop, right. But here he is, and as a dentist, or on the weekends, now he's got a Harley, because that's where he can have his outlet. But he still goes back to the dentistry that he never wanted to have in the first place, where we see with lawyers, right, that kind of thing. And so it's this decision that the recognition of how much imprinting Am I living, that really, I'm being a puppet to the past of the wants and desires that other people put on me that I am now carrying forward in life, and I'm finding that there's a schism, and in fact, I tell the story about Dante's Inferno, right, the great epic poem of Dante's Inferno is that a guy literally the book starts in in midlife. And he says, I was in the middle of my life going through the woods, and I realized I had gotten off into a dark path. And, and the dark path is, I'm becoming this person, I never set it out to be, it's not the person I want it to be. But okay, I'm going down this path, and then something happens in life. Maybe it's a bad 360 degree feedback, maybe it's a your wife leaves you or spouse leaves you or maybe you get fired. And it's like, I can't believe it, or maybe three people quit in two weeks under your leadership, some schism, some moment happens, where you're like, wait a minute, I'm not even trying to I don't even want to be this person. That's not who I am. I want to go remember, I always wanted to be that over there. And Dante had to go through hell to get there with the with the aid of a mentor, Virgil. And I think that we start to recognize something's not right.

Greg Voisen
I'm kind of like Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. Not it's not. I mean, when you really look at most of the stories that we who we look from Scrooge to all the others, right? I mean, the Christmas store, all of them. What is it, the guy that was going to commit stuff, Jimmy Stewart in the movie was gonna do it. It's a Wonderful Life. Right? If you look at all those scripts, I always tell people, we're actors on a stage or playing a role. And the reality is that role is like that. Right? And what you just said about Dante is true, but then comes along, right? Somebody to help you. Right? That's correct.

Bill Treasurer
You and I've talked about Larry Wilson before and you know, his great quote, you've heard it before. And I'm sure it's not just him who said it. But when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And there has to be a readiness and then this moment will happen, where now I'm going to move down this journey into self-exploration. And it's going to be painful, because it's Luke Skywalker walking into the cave,

Greg Voisen
and then another example. Yeah.

Bill Treasurer
And so this is moment where now I'm looking in the mirror. And I have some words on my face that I didn't want to look at. And there they are. And now I have to come to terms with myself. And it starts out as painful. But where it gets to through this self-exploration, I did it myself, I went on 11 Silent retreats when I was 31, because I had done some things that I've regretted in my life, and that and now some decimation started to happen around me. And, and I knew that I was the equation, I was the common denominator, I looked at all the stories of wreckage, and I could point to other people's fault, but I had too many of them. I had to recognize, wait a minute, it's me, I'm involved in this, and went on 11 Silent retreats. And I did some other things, too.

Greg Voisen
I did the same. I went on read silent retreats. You know, I don't want to say Karma is a bitch. But it's like, well, kind of, you know, you create your own reality, right? So

Bill Treasurer
it may start out as painful that exploration, it takes courage because it takes courage to get honest, yes. But when you do it, you get to the other side of it, and you become a friend to yourself, the recognition that you know what, from the moment of my first breath into the moment of my last, I know, I'm going to have family, friend, spouse, but I'm the only person I'm going to spend my entire life with. And I better figure out how to live in this skin comfortably and not have to avert my eyes when I do the mirror check.

Greg Voisen
But isn't it a relief when you let go? Oh, yes, seriously, because you're holding on to all that stuff. I have a quote that hangs on my wall over here, you're going to be known. And it's Dalai Lama, you're going to be known by how many people you loved, who loved you, and how much you let go. And in essence, you know, you look at the distillation of life. And you say, well, is, is that true? Is it true? Because you know, people talk about bringing a more into work love into work, right? You know, I remember watching the old videos of the guy at Southwest Airlines, because I'm sure you watch those leadership videos. Sure. What was his name? I'm trying to herb Keller, right. And walk around with m&ms and go to the desks and say hi to everybody and give him a hug. And you know, but, you know, there needs to be more of that. You know, when you really look at that in leadership, that's like an authentic guy that just hung out smoked a cigar, yea drank a little bit, but, you know, he hung out in the hallways and talk to people. That is a good leader.

Bill Treasurer
Yeah, you definitely you have to be present with people and you have to look them in the eye and not and not have dismissiveness of them. Right? And that's everybody at every level. Because people need to know that you know that you came from the non-leader ranks that you're them to that you've been where they are, all right. Yeah. I use a quote in the book, you probably remember it. But at the end of the game, the king and the pond go back in the same box.

Greg Voisen
That's true. At the end of the game. You're absolutely right. We, you know, you talked about Dante's Inferno and Dante get the other side, and I think that's important to know is that, you know, if you have headed down this path, there is life on the other side, there is an opportunity to correct the challenges in your life, everybody has it, because leadership is really as much about personal growth, as it is about leading, the more you spend time on yourself this inner journey, the better you're gonna get, you know, and in your chapter on model principles, you mentioned that as leader, you must be conscientious a conscious of the intentional with power, the power of your role modeling has in influencing the behavior of others. In other words, you're saying my role has a tremendous influence on others. You speak about being intentional and modeling vulnerability. Why are these two characteristics so important, as a reader as a leader? I see. You know, vulnerability is something Brene Brown talks about to wit's end here, right, we've heard it yet on the other hand, as much as she speaks about it, it's very challenging for people to be vulnerable. What advice would you have for a new leader who's taken a role to know that he or she needs to have this high level of vulnerability to be a good leader?

Bill Treasurer
The first thing I would suggest is to keep your eyes open for it and to be like a tune your radar to look for people who do it in your own environment and see the response how people respond to that person. Because what you often get in return is trust that people do trust that person, they don't feel threatened by that person, they don't think that person going to take advantage of them. They speak well about that person, most often the vulnerable person. And that vulnerability, it's, it's also sometimes having the courage to say something and other people are too afraid to say, and your voice might be shaking, your skin might get blotchy. But you're saying it, and you might be the voice of other people that you're carrying the thing that everybody else is too afraid to say. That's vulnerability, too. So I saw it. This past week, we and this was talking about intentionality. And he talked about role modeling, I worked with a company out in Arizona, they're, they're a good client of mine. And they're trying to create this ethos of having people being willing, more often to be vulnerable in this way. And so what we did is we did an activity that we call, do over and do again, and we did do over is we had somebody in the company who had in the last four months had had a major mistake, that was very costly to the company, and very loyal person. And there was no way that this company would ever get rid of this person. Because they know their commitment, their passion, and they made an honest, but costly mistake. And they flew this person in for this strategy session. And we have just so she could witness and tell the story that she was invited to do this. And her boss told her the reason it wasn't putting her on the spot. And we knew it was going to take vulnerability, but we were doing it not to make her embarrassed. But to show other people in the room. We need more of this, this witnessing in this way. And so she shared her do over story and she share what she learned about it. I kid you not Greg, this is the honest to goodness truth. They stood up and clap a standing ovation in a small room of like 25 people in a strategy session, because they were so proud of her doing what needs to be role model in the company. Now, we also had somebody do a do against story. And it was a story where hey, these things went right on this project. And, and it gave us you know, more margin than we had expected. And we'd love to replicate this. And we don't have the secret sauce. We're not saying that we're rockstars because it happened, but it happened. And we'd like to know how do we extract the lessons out of this too. So vulnerability intentionality role modeling, the behavior you want to see more of in an organization is important to leadership and for the new leader to be attuned to that be watching to see when they see it, because

Greg Voisen
well, that's an inspiring story, because the company took something that was quite costly to them and financial impact, and turn it into something to teach others how, and I'm sure you played a role on that. So kudos to you to you know, do they do over story and have her fly her in and everything because that was a tremendous learning lesson. You know, you don't have to take all those as negative and then put the person down. You basically used it in the right way to say this is what happened, and we hope it doesn't happen again. And here's what you can learn from this lab. This lesson. You speak, you speak about what makes leadership so hard. Can you tell our listeners about why leadership is hard work, and some of the things that you should expect as a new leader? I we've talked about many of the things that are hard. They may not sound hard to our listeners right now. But the reality is, once you're in the role as a leader, whether it's leading your own company or leading somebody else's company, it's challenging.

Bill Treasurer
Yeah, leadership is hard from a numbers standpoint. For one, there will be a relentless and incessant expectation on you for results. And that won't go away, then from the moment you are a leader until you get your watch at the end of your career on your retirement day, the pressure for results will you'll always carry that. So that's one thing that is inherently hard. Typically you put a leader into a position or you set a leader or you mobilize a leader because you are trying to solve some problem. So a lot of times leaders have to deal with some problem that is in front of them, or an opportunity. But it's usually that a leader is trying to come into a situation as an agent of change to bring about something positive or capitalize on an opportunity. You have to cause discomfort. That's part of your job as a leader because you're bringing about change and because the common human response to change is resistance. That you have to withstand the turbulence and help people navigate through the change when you yourself are still going through that process as a human being to Yeah, so Leading Change is hard. I have to tell you, you know, I don't know about you, but I speak for myself, sometimes I can be irritable, sometimes I can be fickle. Sometimes I can be a little prone to anger. Well, guess what every other person on the team can be prone to that too. And you're leading those people. And sometimes you have to do that you're sometimes you're prone to that stuff. So you're having to manage your two wolves sort of thing.

Greg Voisen
You're human, you're human. So human condition. Yeah,

Bill Treasurer
that makes leadership, that's probably one of the hardest things, like sometimes a new leader will be like, you know, I knew leadership was going to be hard, because I thought all of the operational stuff I've got to get done, but I didn't realize that I was going to be a paid psychiatrist, that's taking up so much of my time that I'm having to counsel people and deal with their, they're upset with this team member, and they're coming to me about it. And so they didn't sign up for that. But we have to learn the emotional intelligence piece, right. So that makes leadership hard. And then the other thing that makes leadership hard is that suddenly, people are gonna start to treat you as special. And that that's, they'll start deferring to you know, when you interrupt them, they won't challenge you, you, you'll start coming in late to the meeting, and nobody calls you on it, but everybody else has to have an excuse when they're late. And you start if you're treated special, and, and the temptation is to start thinking you're special, or more special than they are. And, and that's, that becomes dangerous to you. And it's managed, and it's recognizing that, okay, people are treating me different when I'm in this leadership role. And that's something that by the way that new leaders will see like in that first year, people that used to be your peers, some of them will resent the movement. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and, but some of them will start laughing at your jokes a little harder than they are funny. brown nosing to you. And you have to have consciousness about all of the subtleties, so that you don't start taking advantage of your leadership role that makes it hard to

Greg Voisen
well, you know, when you go into your book, and I just want to say to my listeners, I'm gonna hold the book back up again, you know, leadership, two words at a time. So let's get to it. The two words, and this will be kind of our wrap up question for our interview, is being courageous kind of bookend, right. It's filled with advice, great stories, questions for reflection. The book that is now I'm going to put a link to Amazon, everybody goes out and get the book. It is a wonderful book, because I told Bill when we started, you know, as a leader, whether you're a new leader, or you're somebody been there, you, you kind of have you forget how to say that you forget, frequently. And sometimes it comes natural for some people, and sometimes it's not so natural. But if you were to leave the listeners with three important elements to remember from the book, what would they be? What advice do you have, and probably in particular, addressing some of those new leader leaders who are listening?

Bill Treasurer
The first I would say is particularly for new leaders, but this probably applies to most leaders like this is an important moment for you right now. This moment right now, while you have the baton of leadership is important. Honor this moment, do some good with this baton that you've got in your hand, you're going to be passing that baton to some other people at some point. And it's been passed to you honor the fact that you have it and reconcile yourself and commit yourself to doing good while you're holding the baton of leadership. That's one. The second is that, yes, leadership is hard. That's why not everybody gets the opportunity to be a leader. There are people that believe in you, that you can withstand the toughness that leadership sometimes takes. Yes, it's hard. And it always has been. That's the second thing to know is that it's normal for you to feel a certain weight of responsibility that comes with leadership. The third thing is keep it simple. Keep it simple, you've got this you don't have to take it all in at once and be fully fit in all three areas of leadership all at once. It is not a sprint, it is a marathon. It is a journey. And the days when it gets hard to clean up your side of the street. Do the next right thing in front of you be courageous enough to ask for help. Take things two words at a time simple concepts with what you're dealing with in the moment, and you'll see your way through this. I started the book as you know I dedicated with the words and I dedicate the book to the future leaders who the baton is being passed to, and the words I tell them are courageous in the dedication, because you've got the baton, now you're going to need your courage to forge a better future for the rest of us. And at the end of the book, the last chapter is to be also courageous. It's a very small, it's only a two page chapter. But it's the reinforcement of that message that I know it's hard, I know, it's tough, you got this, get some backbone, be courageous, this is going to be a good moment for you. So that that's, those are the three things I would tell them. And the two words of advice I'd give them.

Greg Voisen
Well, again, for our listeners out there today, you couldn't have, in my estimation, a better book with advice on leadership, and being courageous is one of them. Also, being a hero, you know, you know, when the Greeks define heroic racism, it's really around what you're doing for other people. Being courageous is what you're doing for other people. And in the process, you build up this courageous gene, right? That you would be willing to go take courageous action. And it's important so much people don't like the example that you gave in Arizona. I mean, it took courage for that woman to fly in, tell her story. And then in the end, the accolades were fantastic. So, you know, the book is filled with stories, it's filled with advice, but it's also filled with learning, we can always learn. And I think the important thing for a leader is that personal growth journey that they're on, right, from going from who they are now to being a better person, you started this with, just be a good person. And there is a lot to be said, for just being a good person. And I want to thank you, Bill for being on inside personal growth, spending time with us. Namaste to you. It's been a pleasure having you on again, for my listeners, I want to tell you how to actually access Bill, you have two ways, Bill treasurer.com, we'll put a link to that. And the second one is giant leap, consulting, and then forward slash two words, there. You can download a sample chapter, you can actually ask you a few questions about your to word examples. You fill it in. And it's a great opportunity for you to get a little taste of what this book is about. You can download a chapter and then encourage everybody to go out and get the book. Bill. Thanks so much for being on inside personal growth and spending a little bit of time talking about leadership. Two words at a time.

Bill Treasurer
Hey, Greg, from the vow in me to the bow in you and our listeners. Thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Greg Voisen
Thank you.