Speaker 1: Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo,
Speaker 1: and Lorenzo on this episode, I want to go over
Speaker 1: something pretty important and special and different and I can't
Speaker 1: even think of the right words because there there are
Speaker 1: no words. But this is, for at least the foreseeable future,
Speaker 1: the last episode of Hacking Your Leadership.
Speaker 2: Bump bump, Yes, yes it is. I think it's. You know,
Speaker 2: we've had a lot of years in this game and
Speaker 2: doing this show, and we know we've talked about it
Speaker 2: multiple times. When do you decide and when do you
Speaker 2: figure it out? And when do you kind of evolve
Speaker 2: or change or move on or stop? And there's never
Speaker 2: a shortage of leadership topics to talk about. But I
Speaker 2: also know that, like, as we've grown and developed, and
Speaker 2: as we've found things to get into and things to
Speaker 2: work on, there's always a good time to take a pause.
Speaker 2: And after this many years of consistent episodes, it felt
Speaker 2: right to uh get to this point of a you know,
Speaker 2: yearly anniversary of the show and then say, hey, let's
Speaker 2: uh let's take a break and let's uh let's figure
Speaker 2: out what happens from here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's I think it's important to sometimes
Speaker 1: figure out what things, what the things in our lives,
Speaker 1: what value they add, and and sometimes it's hard to
Speaker 1: figure that out when you're in that rhythm right. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to change things up to figure out if
Speaker 1: you've done the right thing or not. And that might
Speaker 1: be the case, like were, there might be you know,
Speaker 1: massive public backlash from all of our fans saying, you know,
Speaker 1: get your butts back in the studio and keep going
Speaker 1: because we depend on this, and you know, and it
Speaker 1: might look a little different. It might it might be
Speaker 1: a few months, it might be longer, it might not
Speaker 1: might be ever. But there's you know, my favorite band
Speaker 1: of all time is You Two, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: kind of cheesy, but a long time ago, the lead
Speaker 1: singer of You Two, Bono, said that the band was
Speaker 1: going to break up. This is like back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. He says, it's time to go to go
Speaker 1: away and dream it all back up again. And and
Speaker 1: you know, with the with the idea fully in his
Speaker 1: mind that it might not be ever like that. It
Speaker 1: might dreaming it all up again might not mean that
Speaker 1: it comes back at all. And I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of where I am right now or where we are
Speaker 1: right now, which is just that we don't know what
Speaker 1: the next iteration will look like or if there will
Speaker 1: be one. But but we're trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: value this show adds to our own lives from the investment.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about just
Speaker 1: the emotional capital and the fact that as as working
Speaker 1: parents of young children and limited time, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out where that where it fits in and the value
Speaker 1: that it brings in the trade offs in time that
Speaker 1: that it comes with, and you.
Speaker 3: Know, it's got to be worth it.
Speaker 1: It's got to be worth it, and it has to
Speaker 1: be something that we that we want to continue doing
Speaker 1: because of the value that it brings. And we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what that looks like and if it does
Speaker 1: still does still fit within our lives in some way,
Speaker 1: and that'll take some time to figure out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I think over the
Speaker 2: over the years, one of the questions that I get
Speaker 2: constantly from people it's around podcasting is like, how do
Speaker 2: you guys do it? How how are you so consistent?
Speaker 2: And how you done it for so long? How do
Speaker 2: you make sure that you've always got content? In this
Speaker 2: type of thing, and I think we've done a really
Speaker 2: nice job of just refining it. And you know, from
Speaker 2: the first episode, we were like, we just want to
Speaker 2: talk about it. We don't want any script, We don't
Speaker 2: want to you know, overproduce this, we don't want to
Speaker 2: over edit this. We just want to talk about leadership
Speaker 2: and answer questions and provide our perspective. And I think
Speaker 2: over the years we've done a really good job of
Speaker 2: like getting that down to just like hit the record button,
Speaker 2: here's the topic, let's go. But also to your point,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that there there's other vehicles. We've
Speaker 2: tried some different ways of also continuing to talk about
Speaker 2: leadership and whether that's in you know, we started interviewing guests,
Speaker 2: we started doing you know, writing and newsletters and clubhouse
Speaker 2: you know talk club clubhouse exactly, yep, clubhouse audio, right, Like,
Speaker 2: just a lot of stuff that we did to just share,
Speaker 2: to share our perspective and provide, you know, what we
Speaker 2: thought would be helpful for people. And there are a
Speaker 2: ton of other leadership people that are in the space
Speaker 2: that we are fans of that we like that we
Speaker 2: often reference or or share, and that's another part of
Speaker 2: this platform that you know, we've talked a lot about us,
Speaker 2: how can we use this to help others that have
Speaker 2: great messages get their messages out there? That's always been
Speaker 2: really important and I think that's something that you know,
Speaker 2: we're not going to delete the channel, We're not going
Speaker 2: to delete the library. You know, these episodes and there's
Speaker 2: a lot of them, will continue to exist in a
Speaker 2: space where people can listen to them and check them out.
Speaker 2: And who knows, from time to time, we might we
Speaker 2: might feel the need to you know, put some content out,
Speaker 2: whether it's our somebody else's, just to be able to
Speaker 2: continue to share in the initial idea of the show,
Speaker 2: which is like, how do we do our best to
Speaker 2: share thoughts, perspectives and advice you know, to other leaders
Speaker 2: in the work that you do in leading people. And
Speaker 2: I think, you know, in our eight years of doing
Speaker 2: the show, a lot of our own leadership has matured
Speaker 2: and solidified, and our perspectives have sharpened as a result
Speaker 2: of the conversations that we've had with each other and
Speaker 2: with guests that we've had on.
Speaker 3: I agree completely with that.
Speaker 1: I think they're you know, the the most to me,
Speaker 1: the most valuable content for the show comes from our
Speaker 1: own personal experiences, and so you know, it can start
Speaker 1: out with a listener question or an article we saw
Speaker 1: online or a video that we saw that that resonated
Speaker 1: with us. But the reason that resonated with us, or
Speaker 1: the reason why the question was something that we thought
Speaker 1: it was nice to be a nice thing to answer,
Speaker 1: is because some one of us experienced something in our
Speaker 1: own lives and our own leadership journey that we can say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I have some perspective on this, like
Speaker 1: I went through something similar or sometimes the exact same thing,
Speaker 1: and I can I can share how either I made
Speaker 1: the wrong move and learned from it, or made the
Speaker 1: right move by luck, or made the right move by
Speaker 1: skill because I had been in this situation before, and
Speaker 1: like it all, it all stems from just the experiences
Speaker 1: that we have, and that's where the content becomes most valuable.
Speaker 1: And you know that content or that those experiences continue
Speaker 1: to happen over the last eight years as we were
Speaker 1: talking about them, which is why there was really never
Speaker 1: a shortage of topics because it wasn't just about like
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like a sitcom where you have
Speaker 1: to just find a new trope.
Speaker 3: Or a new a new joke to write every week.
Speaker 1: This is just thinking about real life and the interactions
Speaker 1: that we have with the people who report to us,
Speaker 1: the people we interact with in our own leadership lives,
Speaker 1: and then talking about those experiences in a way that
Speaker 1: is meaningful and that shows the learnings that we have
Speaker 1: had from them. And I think that that's that's why
Speaker 1: the show has resonated with with so many people, is
Speaker 1: because it's not it's not made up, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's based on the real things that happen in our
Speaker 1: lives and and the vulnerability that comes with, you know,
Speaker 1: sharing those learnings and those missteps especially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I think, you know, sharing places where we've
Speaker 2: made mistakes or things that we've learned, sharing you know,
Speaker 2: passionately about you know, processes and strategies and approaches to leadership.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think over the years we've we've
Speaker 2: we've had all kinds of conversations from like funny times
Speaker 2: of things that have happened to silly stuff that happens
Speaker 2: in different industries, to serious topics that you know, have
Speaker 2: a real impact on people, to topics that you know,
Speaker 2: over the years have evolved in how we see them
Speaker 2: in society, how we see them in the workforce, you know,
Speaker 2: to leaders and maybe strategies and discussions that we had
Speaker 2: eight years ago to then getting through you know, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty and COVID and all that type of thing, to
Speaker 2: then kind of the new iteration of that, and we
Speaker 2: talked a lot about what things have really solidified and
Speaker 2: then what things are new, and what things are wide open,
Speaker 2: and how is you know, the you know, how are
Speaker 2: our people, the workforce, the culture now in a place
Speaker 2: where we're holding leaders accountable in a very different way
Speaker 2: and in a good way, which is just raising the
Speaker 2: bar of what should be expected from having a leader
Speaker 2: that's supposed to be there to inspire and motivate, you know,
Speaker 2: help support people do the work that they're doing. And
Speaker 2: I think that that's been a really fun part of
Speaker 2: the journey, is just being a part of conversations that
Speaker 2: I think we're relevant really closely in the moment. Like
Speaker 2: I immediately get brought back to the We did an
Speaker 2: episode about a hurricane that happened in Florida, and oh yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a you know, come to work anyway. It
Speaker 2: was like a pizza place that was just like we
Speaker 2: don't care go to work, right. We just talked about
Speaker 2: that and it was like, how ridiculous is that? And
Speaker 2: you know, that was something that we read in the news.
Speaker 2: And there's just those moments that happened that I think
Speaker 2: really skyrocketed what what is the expectation of leadership and
Speaker 2: what is the what are the right things to do
Speaker 2: or the right way to handle things? And I think
Speaker 2: that's probably been the most fun for me is just
Speaker 2: the amount of listeners that have reached out in so
Speaker 2: many different ways continue to share our content. It just
Speaker 2: happened last week somebody shared one of our short clips
Speaker 2: on LinkedIn and talked about how important this subject was
Speaker 2: and how it was something they struggled with and they
Speaker 2: work through. So, you know, I just it's been a
Speaker 2: fun journey. But I think I've just enjoyed watching the
Speaker 2: conversations that we've had continue to go through other listeners
Speaker 2: and leaders that feel the same way or want to
Speaker 2: share their perspective on some of the topics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the example you gave just now of that hurricane thing,
Speaker 1: it kind of made me think of something that I
Speaker 1: think is important to kind of discuss, and that's that
Speaker 1: that it's it's hard not to think that our own,
Speaker 1: like our experience in leadership, both as a leader of
Speaker 1: people and as as someone who has reported to leaders
Speaker 1: throughout our journeys, we've all had, we've all always had,
Speaker 1: we both always had a boss at any given time.
Speaker 1: There's always been one, sometimes more than one. And the
Speaker 1: examples of like that that hurricane in Florida is it's
Speaker 1: really difficult sometimes not to think that our own perspective
Speaker 1: or our own experience as employees reporting to leaders, it's
Speaker 1: hard not to think that that's the norm, because I
Speaker 1: think both of have been very fortunate in our leadership
Speaker 1: journeys that we've had goodly bosses and bad bosses. I
Speaker 1: can definitely, you know, place them in a hierarchical order, right.
Speaker 1: I've learned from the good ones that I've learned sometimes
Speaker 1: even more from the bad ones, but none of them
Speaker 1: have ever risen to that level of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't care about your safety.
Speaker 3: Come to work at a pizza place.
Speaker 1: You know, And and because of that, it's it's sometimes
Speaker 1: it's hard not to not to chuckle at that a
Speaker 1: little bit and think like that's it's almost satire, but
Speaker 1: it's not. And I think over the years, the instances
Speaker 1: of that happening are far less than it would have been,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty forty fifty years ago. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of it has to do with, you know, the
Speaker 1: visibility to things like that happening. If if that happened,
Speaker 1: if that interaction happened between the pizza place owner and
Speaker 1: the employee in nineteen eighty two, no one would ever
Speaker 1: know about it because there'd be no place to show it,
Speaker 1: to share it with everybody, right, and that would just happen.
Speaker 1: And nowadays it gets shared and there's a there's a
Speaker 1: level of social accountability that at least has helped keep
Speaker 1: some leaders, you know, on the straight and narrow a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, for even if not for the
Speaker 1: right reasons, sometimes doing the right thing for the wrong
Speaker 1: reasons is still the right thing, right.
Speaker 3: You know, you're still doing it.
Speaker 1: And I think that has kind of moved the needle
Speaker 1: on the experience employees have. But there are still areas
Speaker 1: where it is not good. There are still areas, there
Speaker 1: are still places across the workforce where the employee experience
Speaker 1: is not great.
Speaker 3: And I think anytime that is the case, all roads
Speaker 3: lead back to leadership.
Speaker 1: All roads of the of a negative employee experience lead
Speaker 1: back to the effectiveness of the leadership team in that
Speaker 1: organization and what they're doing or how they're prioritizing the
Speaker 1: employee experience and.
Speaker 3: Whether or not they do it.
Speaker 2: All to begin with Yeah, No, it's it's a great call,
Speaker 2: and I think it's a you know, yeah, I'm just
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm just stuck in the space of just
Speaker 2: thinking about, like, how do you possibly provide thank you
Speaker 2: user gratitude to all of the people that have like
Speaker 2: pushed our show forward, from whether it be guests that
Speaker 2: said yes right away, you know, like I think of
Speaker 2: you know, we for a long time we didn't do guests,
Speaker 2: and then we really wanted to build some space to say, like, well,
Speaker 2: we want to talk to the people that we want
Speaker 2: to talk to. And then it was kind of like
Speaker 2: nerve wrecking, Well let's reach let's reach out to the
Speaker 2: people that we want to talk to. And the fact
Speaker 2: that so many of them said yes and they're like yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, absolutely, Like that was tremendous. I think of
Speaker 2: all of the listener questions and the text messages dms,
Speaker 2: the screenshots that were sent to me about people listening
Speaker 2: to the show, just like the continual push forward from
Speaker 2: people to say like, hey love this, love that I'm
Speaker 2: using it this way.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We've had leaders from from organizations reach out and say, hey,
Speaker 2: we've put together a collection of what we think are
Speaker 2: the ten shows that resonate most with our workforce, and
Speaker 2: we've turned this into like a training document.
Speaker 3: Is that cool?
Speaker 2: And we're like yeah, of course, like you know, like
Speaker 2: whatever whatever you want to do, Like the whole point
Speaker 2: of this is like, yeah, use it for whatever you can.
Speaker 2: But like, I just think about all of those listeners, uh,
Speaker 2: and people that helped to push us to continue to
Speaker 2: like evolve what we talked about evolve, you know, the
Speaker 2: way that we were doing our episodes, the you know,
Speaker 2: the the guests interviews that pay it Forward Fridays, the
Speaker 2: employee engagement Thursdays, the Thoughtful Thursdays. Like we did so
Speaker 2: many things that I think we were driven by people
Speaker 2: that listen to the show. And I think that's something
Speaker 2: that's cool about the podcasting space when you have that
Speaker 2: connection with an audience, is that you know you can
Speaker 2: adjust and move and pivot to the places that they
Speaker 2: want you to go to. And and I think that
Speaker 2: that's been a fun part of the journey. It's just
Speaker 2: continuing to like, you know, have people that have an
Speaker 2: influence on how I'm thinking about leadership that I don't
Speaker 2: even know, you know what I'm saying, not alone, like
Speaker 2: don't work with every day, but like complete strangers and
Speaker 2: thousands of them saying, hey, you should talk about this,
Speaker 2: or we need to talk about that, and things that
Speaker 2: maybe I hadn't even considered in my own leadership or
Speaker 2: things that I hadn't come across yet that I now
Speaker 2: had to have an opinion on and had to think through.
Speaker 2: And I think that was super fun and helpful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it has made me better at leadership.
Speaker 1: Right, there's just the interactions with our audience and the
Speaker 1: the things that we've had to contemplate and think about
Speaker 1: and and you know, it's we talked, we talk off
Speaker 1: on the show about the importance of at of leading
Speaker 1: with values, right about figuring out what is important to
Speaker 1: you and then leading with that and allowing that to
Speaker 1: guide your decision making process as a leader. And then
Speaker 1: and then if you allow it to go your decision
Speaker 1: making process as a leader, and the outcome isn't what
Speaker 1: you what what it needed to be. Then Okay, then
Speaker 1: does that mean that you didn't really use that as
Speaker 1: a guide or does it mean that your your values
Speaker 1: need to tweak or change a little.
Speaker 3: Bit based on the the.
Speaker 2: Time are you are?
Speaker 3: You?
Speaker 1: Are they not well defined yet because of the experience
Speaker 1: or lack thereof that you that you have in the workforce,
Speaker 1: Like all these things happen over time, and and as you.
Speaker 3: The more you do it, the better a process it becomes.
Speaker 1: And the the process of doing that through the lens
Speaker 1: of the of the things that our listeners have asked
Speaker 1: of us and kind of thinking, Okay, this hasn't happened
Speaker 1: to me, but it's happening to one of our listeners
Speaker 1: who's who's asking for advice on this? How how would
Speaker 1: I deal with this? And And it's a lot harder
Speaker 1: to do that hypothetically than it is if it's if
Speaker 1: it's really happening, because you actually have to make the decision.
Speaker 1: But it really has helped me test my values as
Speaker 1: a leader by putting those situations through through the kind
Speaker 1: of the mill of my personal values to see if
Speaker 1: the outcome aligns with what is a appropriate for the
Speaker 1: situation and b doesn't. But heads with my values right.
Speaker 1: It kind of checks my values in the process to
Speaker 1: see if they are still right, if they're still appropriate,
Speaker 1: or if I need to tweak them. Because you if
Speaker 1: you're never tweaking your values, it doesn't mean that you're steadfast.
Speaker 1: It means that you are you know, unwilling to change
Speaker 1: to changing times. Because your values should change over time.
Speaker 1: They should just change thoughtfully and methodically and based on
Speaker 1: like real true evidence, not you know, not whimsically, but
Speaker 1: they but they should not remain the same, you know,
Speaker 1: for forever. And these examples that we've gotten from our
Speaker 1: our listeners has they've They've definitely caused me to to
Speaker 1: to think through my values and what's important to me
Speaker 1: and and make make tweaks or changes when appropriate. And
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it's been very valuable to me too,
Speaker 1: not just to our.
Speaker 2: Listeners, absolutely, And with that it brings us to the
Speaker 2: end of this chapter for hacking your leadership.
Speaker 1: Before we go, I just you know, I know that
Speaker 1: when we talked about doing this, Lorenzo, you said that
Speaker 1: you really wanted to put some time and effort into
Speaker 1: thinking through kind of like if you had one piece
Speaker 1: of advice, like one nugget of advice for our listeners that,
Speaker 1: you know, for somebody who is going into leadership or
Speaker 1: new to leadership, or.
Speaker 3: If they're just struggling with leadership in general.
Speaker 1: You know, the thing that you'd want to have on
Speaker 1: the wall in front of you every day that you
Speaker 1: could look up at and and and read to yourself
Speaker 1: and kind of like a rock or an anchor of
Speaker 1: leadership advice to our listeners. You said you felt it
Speaker 1: was really important to kind of have that kind of
Speaker 1: like get to let our audience kind of take away
Speaker 1: at the at the end of the last episode. And
Speaker 1: I really like that idea, and you know, I know
Speaker 1: you've already shared it with me, and I think it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I think you did a really great job of kind
Speaker 1: of narrowing it down and thinking about something where the
Speaker 1: rubber really meets the road that our our listeners can
Speaker 1: take with them as they as they depart from the
Speaker 1: show for a while. And so I'll let you take
Speaker 1: it away and end the episode with this with this kernel.
Speaker 1: But this is a really fantastic stuff here.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, we've had these one minute hacks
Speaker 2: for the entire period, and I kind of felt that like,
Speaker 2: this is really important to kind of like eight years,
Speaker 2: you know, like over thousand episodes, how you slice it,
Speaker 2: decades of leadership experience between the two of us, really
Speaker 2: trying to boil this down to say, like what what
Speaker 2: do you say and how do you help to guide
Speaker 2: someone into their future? How do you help to take
Speaker 2: someone who has been a leader for a long time
Speaker 2: and give them something that may reshape the way they
Speaker 2: think about leadership and can leave an impressed and very
Speaker 2: like it kind of an impression of people that they
Speaker 2: will take with them forever. People we always have those
Speaker 2: quotes that we heard some people say that they just
Speaker 2: stick with us and they help us, and those those
Speaker 2: really tough times. And so you know what I would
Speaker 2: say is like, you know, boiling it all down, all
Speaker 2: that time, all that tenure, all that experience, all the
Speaker 2: conversations that we've had, the tens of thousands of minutes
Speaker 2: and hours of dialogue. For me, you know, leadership really
Speaker 2: just comes down to this one very simple statement, and
Speaker 2: that is