The Backbone of Leadership Development, Ep 59

Summary
In this episode, Sean discusses the critical importance of character development in leadership. Drawing from his extensive military and business experience, he emphasizes that effective leadership is rooted in trust and character rather than just technical skills. He argues that organizations often prioritize short-term results over long-term character development, which can lead to toxic work environments and high turnover. Patton outlines practical steps for integrating character development into leadership training and highlights the positive impact of strong character on company culture and business outcomes.

Takeaways

• Leadership is about inspiring trust and character development.
• Technical skills are important, but they do not equate to effective leadership.
• Character development should be prioritized over short-term results.
• Trust is the foundation of all leadership.
• Leaders must be held accountable for their actions and decisions.
• Character can be cultivated and trained as a skill.
• A toxic work environment stems from neglecting character development.
• Leaders should demonstrate ethical choices and accountability.
• Selfless leadership fosters loyalty and respect among teams.
• Continuous self-improvement is essential for effective leadership.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Character Development
01:35 The Importance of Character in Leadership
04:31 Technical Skills vs. Leadership Development
08:07 Short-Term Goals vs. Long-Term Character Development
12:08 The Impact of Character on Company Culture
15:31 Character Development and Business Performance
16:27 Trust as the Foundation of Leadership
18:45 Toleration and Leadership Standards
20:00 The Essence of Character in Leadership
21:37 Demonstrating Ethical Choices and Accountability
25:04 The Importance of Humility and Gratitude
27:44 Integrating Character Development in Leadership Programs
32:02 Service Before Self in Leadership
33:27 Respecting Individuals and Embracing Diversity
36:26 Commitment to Continuous Self-Improvement

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:14)
Welcome to the no limits leadership podcast. am your host Sean Patton, and I was motivated to deliver another solo podcast this week. I'm recording this on veterans day, November 11th, 2024. And as a veteran myself of 14 years. As a reflect back on my time, especially my development as a leader, four years at the United States military Academy at West Point, the nation's premier leadership institution.

along with 10 years as an active officer. I time in the infantry. was an infantry rifle platoon leader and a scout and sniper platoon leader, including 14 months in combat in Southwest Baghdad. Then I went to special forces assessment selection, went through two years of training, including almost a year of officer specific training before I could earn my green beret. And then after that, I was lucky enough to command two different special forces detachments or

special forces A teams, including eight months in combat in Eastern Afghanistan, along with other deployments to the Middle East to train with our partnered special operations forces and some other places. So after all of that, and then also nine years as a business owner and leader in the private sector, what I've found is that most

business leadership development programs that I've interacted with, I've worked with, I've talked to business leaders. If they have one at all,

It's either missing or just glossing over really the backbone of leader development and it's character development. Character development is leader development, leadership and becoming a leader is becoming a person that others want to follow. So being a leader of character, someone that others see as having integrity is

what causes them to actually trust you to want to follow you. there's so many faults in a lot of business leadership development programs. So let's look at a few and you let me know, you know, in the comments or reflect back on if you think these apply to maybe the leadership development programs you've been a part of, or maybe you're in charge of in your business.

What I've noticed is one, there's a lot more focus on technical and measurable skills, Businesses prioritize leadership skills that are quantifiable strategic planning, financial operations, operational efficiency, and they're just easier to measure and directly link to business outcomes, which...

is why they tend to get the spotlight in these corporate settings. they think that character is, you know, it's less tangible, right? It's often, it's harder to measure. It's harder to directly tie. We did character development or integrity training. talked about values, whatever that is. We're going to talk about some ways to actually incorporate this successfully, but to tie that directly to a number on your financial statement.

But while these technical skills are very important.

I would argue they're not really leader development, There's a difference between management development, management being how to optimize the efficiency of a system and leader development, which is how do we lead whole people, How do we get people to think about themselves, their organization and the world differently to increase their capacity?

Leadership is a uniquely human construct to inspire and influence people to do more than they ever thought possible, to develop people to become more, do more, dream more than they ever thought possible and technical and measurable skills like financial planning and strategic planning and

you know, how to do the technical operations or the technical skills required for the specific industry are important, but it's not really leader development, And the problem with this is that leaders that maybe lack overall character, they may achieve some short-term results, but they're going to struggle to maintain employee loyalty, engagement, and retention because they're not...

becoming a person that others want to follow other, that others look up to that others respect. And so we're sacrificing short term gains for long term risk and downside We all know expensive high turnover and lower morale and reputational damage, all which happens when we have leaders that don't demonstrate character, It's we're negatively impacting longterm success when we

only prioritize these short time technical skills and think that's more important for our leader development program than character development. the number two reason that I see is that they see this development of character as like soft, It's where it's personal. There's some leaders who get uncomfortable talking about this, Or they assume that if you're in a leadership position,

That you've

already learned and

and internalized some sort of value structure that we can all emulate and look up to. But there's problems with that too, We can't assume that just because someone is senior or has technical skills or abilities, which is how we usually get promoted, especially early, Why do we usually promote someone to manager? And I don't agree with this. This isn't how we should do it, but how does it usually happen? They're good at their individual job, right?

a great engineer, they're responsive, they show up on time, they give 100%, they're trainable, they get results, they're a good salesperson. So now they're gonna move up to be a manager of other people who do that individual skill. Now, we'll have a whole nother conversation, a podcast episode on.

what I call the leadership truths. And one of them is that you should train and evaluate people for the role before you put them in it. So we should actually be evaluating people for first line supervisor management skills before we put them in place. And one thing we're looking for before we put people in a leadership role is their character.

We can't focus solely on, their tactical or functional capacities when we're talking about leadership, because the foundation of leadership, as I will probably say 20 times in this episode, is the foundation of leadership is trust.

And so we can't assume that they already have these skills without testing or training them, We would never do that in any area of development. So why are we doing it here?

But character is the backbone of effective leadership and traits like humility and empathy and accountability are directly tied to a leader's ability to guide, motivate and connect with others. It's important to know that character development is not only essential, but it's a skill. It's a trait that can be cultivated, that can be trained and needs to be trained.

if we sideline a character, If we see that as too soft or too personal, and so we're not going to touch it, then we're going to promote leaders that lack empathy and the resilience to manage diverse teams, to navigate challenges, to support mental health, be disconnected with the people that they're actually in charge of. And this leads to a toxic work environment. This leads to their subordinates.

believing right or wrong, that they don't care about them. And when you don't have psychological safety to speak up, you can lead to catastrophic accidents. It can also lead to just a slow undermining of morale, which undermines productivity, which ultimately impacts the bottom line.

Because people are the greatest variance that you have in your business.

Every business is a human business.

And we're limiting our upside if we don't focus on developing these soft personal skills, especially when it comes to character with leaders.

third reason that I see given for the lack of character development in leadership development programs pressure to achieve short-term goals. Especially in high pressure corporate environments. If you're a publicly traded company, you're living quarter to quarter. If you have private equity that just bought into you, which is if you get big enough,

That's a lot of companies you're being pushed to get results and get results quickly. And that can lead to deprioritizing character development. And they may think of character development as kind of a nice to have rather than an essential to achieving their quarterly or their annual objectives.

And so their leadership development programs often cater to these intermediate performance needs And we sideline values that create long-term sustainable results inside companies. So look, I get it. If, if you are a P firm or you're a company that just got bought out or you're publicly traded and your stock price is down and you need results now, I get it. Just know.

that you're stealing from the future, you're borrowing from your future to pay the bill in the current state. And if you're getting ready to sell this company in a year or two, you may not care what state the people in the company are at, what the culture is at, what the morale is at. You may not care. That's fine. You're not really the audience for this though.

And I would argue that one of the first things you should look at when buying a company air or, or, you know, in acquisitions or evaluating, even in a division of your company is the morale and culture of the company. Because again, that's going to have a huge impact on the performance of the company. That's going to have a huge impact on your retention. And it's also an indicator of the leaders that you have in place. Because if the co, if you haven't developed those leaders over time,

and the culture is bad and you have a toxic work environment, even if you're driving those results or you're getting ready to buy this company, if you're going to purchase that, what state are you in now? What are you actually buying? Because now what you haven't seen is you're going to have to replace a bunch of people, a bunch of knowledge is going out the door or you're to have to change things around. I work with clients who have come in as a CEO in a poor toxic environment and it is taking them years.

years to undo all the bad that was done to get the company back on track and painful turnover, firing of senior executives, severance packages, hiring recruiters to come in. It's estimated that for a salaried manager or middle executive, it's going to cost you six to nine months of their salary to replace them. So see how this stuff actually does impact the bottom line. So sure.

If you only care about numbers for the next year, maybe this doesn't matter to you. But if you're looking at your company or especially if you're looking at yourself as wanting to be a business leader and continue to move up inside companies and make it impact and have it be more than about money, which if you're listening to this podcast, hopefully you are There's, there's more to this that that leadership should inspire people. People should look forward to work. They should look forward to one-on-ones because they're getting developed. The expectation of the young workforce is that

Their job is not just a transaction. It's not just time for money. If we treat people like cogs in a machine, they're going to act like cogs in a machine. If you treat them like human beings and invest in them, the return you get is going to be immense. It's going to be multiples higher than if you just treat them like they're another gear inside of your machine. So I guess it depends, but if you actually care about the long-term success and sustainability of your business outcomes,

then you should be prioritizing character development.

Okay. The fourth is we overlook the impact of character on culture. A lot of companies, a lot of companies I work with talk about culture. What kind of culture they want to develop, their values, what's the culture they espouse, who do they want to be? even you create a business plan or you're a small business leader, an entrepreneur. We think about these things as a strategic leader, as a business owner all the time. What is our culture? Who are we? Without that,

You don't know who to hire.

You're going to be all over the place. And I'll have, I'll get in these arguments with HR professionals and other leadership development coaches all the time when they overemphasize like individual assessments.

and personality tests and how you like to be communicated. Disc, Meyer Briggs, the big five, insights, enneagrams, like all these things are very important and they do increase self-awareness. I think they're very good for individuals. But ultimately none of that matters if you haven't established expectations, standards and your own company culture.

Cause everyone actually needs to come together and be part of one culture, one set of values. one way to communicate. If you have an organization with 50 people, which is a small organization, you can't cater to all 50 people's wants and needs and desires about how they want to be communicated and what their personal values are. No, no, no, it's not. It doesn't work like that. An organization has one set of values. Then you create one culture.

and everyone needs to be pulled in and indoctrinated and have buy-in to that one culture. And how do you do that? Leadership.

And so we need to tie directly business outcomes to character development. It influences everything from employee engagement to customer loyalty, It's not just internal, this is external. Because if you don't have leaders of character and a culture of integrity and trust internally, you will not have that with your clients and customers.

This will come out. will be that seedy, greedy, untrusting organization that no one's going to work with. and you can't hide that stuff anymore. The information is out there, Reviews and, customer surveys and word of mouth spreads like wildfire. We all know that one awful review can have an immediate impact on the bottom.

And so if you want to be seen as a company that has integrity, that is trustworthy, that will do the right thing, that has to be drilled into your company culture.

If you ignore character development inside your leader development, it can create a culture where unethical behavior is tolerated and even rewarded. This leads to low employee morale, lack of accountability, and poor collaboration. It stifles innovation, degrades team cohesion, and it will impact your organization's competitive edge.

Hopefully you're starting to see that character development among leaders. Again, I'm gonna say this over again, character development is leader development, but character development among leaders and creating a culture, filled with leaders of character.

Creating an organization filled with leaders of character directly ties to business outcomes, to business impacts.

if you fail to prioritize character, it may lead to leaders who lack this empathy, accountability, and it will absolutely interfere with their ability to inspire, manage conflict and respond effectively in times of crisis. And this will create a brittle organization vulnerable to setbacks, crises, a A poor reputation, which will lead to loss in a highly competitive.

business landscape. We see this all the time with, glass door and, and Google reviews your reputation as a company, your culture, how you treat people will be reflected and shown to the outside world.

So neglecting character and leadership development not only limits a leader's growth, but also risk creating an organization with weak cultural foundations. And this can create a lasting negative impact on business performance, reputation, and resilience. So let's talk about the positive here.

Character is the foundation of trust.

It's the backbone of leader expectations. It's the backbone and it's reinforced constantly even inside the organizations. Let's imagine you have a manager, an executive, whoever's in, you your boss and they seem to be good at their job. They work well. They take, you know, they, give you good advice. They're there when you, then you need to answer questions.

and you really start leaning on them as a mentor. And then you find out they're cheating on their spouse.

has nothing to do with work. This is that soft skill, it's personal, it's none of our business, right?

Do trust them now? Do you look up to them?

Are they the influential and inspiring leader that wants you to go above and beyond?

Not so sure. I saw this firsthand. There was a senior sergeant in one of my units. Everyone loved. He is, he's a combat veteran multiple times over. He's great at his job. Technically and tactically proficient. He's funny, great personality.

And then, we're out at the bars and it's a Saturday night, some of the other soldiers are there and he's married with kids. And they see him hitting on a younger soldier, not in the unit, but younger soldier, end up leaving the bar with her.

How do you think that impacted the morale of that unit?

of that organization.

It was pretty significant. Now in the military, we have more control over how we deal with those situations. He ended up getting moved, lost his job over it. It's actually against UCMJ, you know, from Code of Military Justice, to cheat on your spouse or partner. Like, it has to be a spouse, it's illegal in terms of for the military to do that.

because it degrades the unit morale and the trust in that leader so much. It matters.

How do we know that someone who lies to the person that they're, you know, is their spouse or even, you know, cheats at some competitive game or, or, you know, you see them, changing the reports numbers to look a little better because, know, it's going to come up, it's, it's going to come around next month anyway.

Right? That's now when the people below them see that that type of behavior, it now was condoned.

What we tolerate is the standard, both in ourselves and others.

At West Point, one of the first things you learn is the cadet honor code. And the cadet honor code says a cadet would not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. Now the first three, can all get behind, right? They're pretty easy. We hold ourselves to the standard. don't want to lie, cheat, or steal. And we don't want people in our company that lie, cheat or steal. We still need to train those things, but it's the toleration clause that makes it so difficult.

And it's difficult for cadets and the service Academy loses almost as many cadets to violating the honor code as it does to academics and it's rigorous academics. And a lot of what gets people is the toleration clause, but that's the true test. the two true test of a leader.

is what will you allow to happen? What will you tolerate?

What will you turn a blind eye to?

And we could sit here and name company after company after company that has done unethical behavior, The Enron's of the world.

and how everything came crashing down and people lost millions and billions of dollars and years of hard work and sacrifice gone away in the blink of an eye. We can think of celebrities gone in blink of an eye because they were not who they.

shared with the world.

What are you tolerating? And more importantly, how do we demonstrate this trait of character? Because we know from research that when members of an organization describe their leaders as being high in character, their morale is higher, they're more proud of the unit, they're more engaged.

They get better outcomes, turnover is lower. So how do we actually demonstrate? What does that look like? Well, I would argue that character is who you are when no one's watching. What choices do you make in difficult situations? Are you able to stay true to your values when you face pressure, when you face setbacks, when it's going be negative personal consequences?

That's someone of character.

And when you demonstrate that people will trust you. if, if on the other side, if people don't trust you, they won't follow you. a leader of character, inspires trust, motivates others to do their best and builds a culture where integrity and respect thrive. So I think there's really three parts of this.

Making ethical choices. Are you able to choose the harder right over the easier wrong? Leaders of character make decisions based on what is right, not what is easiest. They balance what's best in the long run with staying true

to their and their organization's values. When you as a leader make ethical choices under difficult circumstances, that's when you demonstrate and show your team that honesty and integrity come first.

In one of my other businesses, my co-founder and I were having a discussion when we started the whole thing, before we signed the operating agreement.

And one of the reasons I knew that this was going to work was because he brought up to me, he said, look, I one of the non-negotiable principles for me is that we always do the right thing, even if it costs us money, we will do what is right by our members, by our clients, by our customers, even if it costs us money. I agreed to it obviously, but that's how I knew that was a person I wanted to be in business with.

That should be a principle inside your business as well. Number two, demanding accountability. Right, we can talk about these like, it's a character that is super soft and personal. No, this is about accountability.

Leaders of character make sure everyone, including themselves, takes responsibility for their actions. Do as I say, not as I do isn't leadership. It's an abdication of responsibility. This means owning up for mistakes and learning from them.

Leaders who demand accountability, create a team where everyone feels safe to do their best work and to solve problems together. leaders of character demand accountability for everyone. And that becomes part of the culture, Jocko Willink has got the book extreme ownership. This is, this is the value he's talking about.

You own it, you own results for yourself. You own your team's results. You don't blame someone else on your team. This is important as leaders. When things go right, the team gets credit. When things fail, you step up. You're the umbrella protecting your team. It's my team, my responsibility. I'll get it fixed. And you turn around and you make the correction. You hold people accountable internal, but this isn't blaming people on your team. If it's your team,

you're responsible for outcome. If it is an individual task and you fail, step up to that. I remember early in my career as a executive coach and a speaker, I had a high level client that I had scheduled a meeting with the leadership team. And I was trying to do too many things. I lost track of time and I just missed the meeting. I just missed it.

I'm in a remote environment. So it would've been so easy for me to make up an excuse. And believe me, I'm human. I thought about it. My dog ate my homework, right? That whole thing. I could have said, I'm sorry, my wife was sick. Our power went out. I had another meeting run over. mean, could have, there's so many easy excuses. No questions asked. I'm sure. Can we reschedule?

but I just let them know. I'm like, I'm so sorry. No excuse. I just missed the meeting. I got busy doing other things and I just dropped the ball. I understand if this means that you don't want to work with me and you don't want to reschedule. I would totally understand, but I apologize. And I would love the chance to have the conversation.

And when they emailed me back, do know what they said?

That's what leaders do. They take responsibility.

So this tells me you're definitely someone I wanna work with. Let's reschedule the meeting.

Now is it always gonna be, know, Rosie, is it always gonna have a great outcome when you step in to integrity and take responsibility and admit fault? No, sometimes you can take the hammer.

but you get to hold your head up high and walk around as a person with high integrity. You get to look yourself in the mirror.

And that's what matters because that's going to carry you forward for the rest of your life. Okay. Three, the third and final pillar of this. How do we demonstrate character as a leader? We show humility and gratitude. Selfless leaders put the needs of their team above their own. I was just talking about this. We need to recognize and appreciate the contributions of others. don't seek personal recognition.

how many times have you been in an organization and if you've been in any organization or any business longer than a few years, you have seen this happen. You've seen someone, a leader, a manager take credit for an idea or outcome of someone else on their team. You've seen it. I know you've seen it.

How did that impact the way that you felt about that leader? Is that someone you wanted to follow? Is that someone you wanted to work underneath, put in the extra hours, be engaged for, look out for?

Of course not, right? That is a person of low character. And that immediately impacts their influence inside the organization. They might look good for the minute, but they have lost their team.

They have lost their team. They have lost their credibility.

So great leaders, they remain humble and grateful even when they succeed. Like I said, They credit the team, they celebrate achievements together, they stay grounded.

Humility is a sign of confidence. I'll say it again. Humility is a sign of confidence. Got nothing to prove.

I'm a martial artist. I wrestled growing up. I wrestled in college, fought MMA for a while. I still do jujitsu, right? I own jujitsu gyms. And I will tell you over and over again that true confident martial artists, they're not bullies. They're not picking fights at the bar. People that bully other people, kids that bully other people do it out of insecurity.

true confident leaders, don't, you know, are martial artists. They don't have any, I've got nothing to prove. I know who I am.

And so when you take credit for other people's work, when you don't give recognition where it deserves, when you don't stay humble as a leader, not only do you lose your team, but it's a true sign that you're insecure.

And that probably means you're insecure because you're not competent. Competent, confident leaders are leaders of character.

There's five ways, five core principles that you can implement inside your business leadership development program to have a positive outcome.

one integrity as the foundation of trust. Leaders must be committed to unwavering honesty and transparency.

Program should emphasize the importance of aligning actions and values with promises. Should have activities that focus on ethical dilemmas and making hard choices to reinforce integrity as the basis of trust and leadership.

It's interesting, you know, we're gonna have a quick side quest here. In special forces officer training, we're primarily learning planning, how we plan and execute missions.

But close second to that is dealing with ethical dilemmas, While the weapons sergeants are learning how to fire Soviet mortars and drive tanks and our medics are in ER trauma centers in inner city, learning how to deal with trauma and bullet wounds. And our engineers are learning how to blow up and build bridges, all that, and how to deal with C4, like all those individual tasks. That's what all of the other MOSs or.

Enlisted specialties inside of a special forces team are learning and while they're learning that the leaders are dealing with ethical dilemmas We're learning to deal with a world that is gray because in special forces Unlike some of the situations in the regular military that are kind of like black and white We deal in the gray. We're in the intelligence world Where intelligence and military operations meet and it's a gray? fuzzy world That is that that's how important it is

Outside of military planning, most important thing we learned was how are we going to, you have to think about ethical dilemmas and think about things that might happen inside your business and have real conversations. And here's the mistake I see is it's check the box. When companies do this, it's an HR yes or no. And it's, it's like your annual sexual harassment training, right? It's like, it's so obvious. You just click through the slides and it's like, you walk through and realize that, you know, Tommy's got tight shorts on. Do you comment on how

how Tommy's butt looks in the shorts or do you not say anything? And like, that's the question. Like that's your, that's the training you get into ethical dilemmas. No, no, no. needs to be difficult. There should be no right answer. If you want to have a real ethical dilemma conversation as a leader, give them a problem with no right answer. Cause that's the world. it's easy when there's, you know, legal or regulations involved,

Instead give them real problems that they have to discuss. there's, know, you give them a good ethical dilemma when the room split, When there's some people in the room that disagree or there's multiple outcomes. So challenge yourself to do that. Okay, let's get through this. Okay. Number two, commitment to accountability, How are we going to do that leadership programs that focus on self reflection exercises, peer feedback, open forums and

and having people acknowledge mistakes to build a culture where accountability is valued and expected. And here's, to take a break because I want to give you an individual action you can do. I want to challenge you as an individual leader here. What is something you can do in the next 24 hours to really practice character development as becoming a better leader?

I want you to commit to having one difficult conversation in the next 24 hours. I want you to have a conversation that you've been avoiding. Maybe that's giving difficult or negative feedback to someone that works for you. Maybe it's addressing a sensitive issue. Maybe it's apologizing for a mistake. Maybe it's a difficult conversation with your partner or your child or a friend.

or a family member that you've been avoiding having that conversation. So you haven't talked to them for six months, have the conversation. That is what character is. choosing the harder, right over the easier, wrong, having that difficult conversation. It builds a muscle, a muscle of character. And you get that fear of like, don't want to do this. This is going to be hard. It's going to be uncomfortable. And you do it anyway. That's, that is the definition of character. It's not just not doing anything illegal. A high character person.

has the hard conversation. So have that hard conversation. That is my task to you in the next 24 hours. If you want to work, if you want to really commit and take this information and have real transformation, you will do this and you will have that difficult conversation that you've been avoiding. That's a commitment to accountability. Okay. Number three, this is one that is on my heart today being again, the day I'm recording this is veterans day more than any

any even more than most days. Service before self.

Leadership is selfless. Leadership is love. Leadership is actually caring about your people.

This is about serving a mission and supporting others above your personal gain.

It's not a high character thing to push for performance that makes you look good. So you get promoted and make more money. That's your job. Nothing wrong with that. I do it all the time. I hope you do too. That's not, it's not where you find out where you stand when it comes to character.

It's when you prioritize the wellbeing and success of your teams.

before personal gain.

When you do that, it fosters loyalty and respect.

encourage things like community service, encourage things like mentoring, encourage team-based accomplishments.

Leadership is a service. It's selfless. It's honorable.

Don't degrade it.

So talk about service to others.

as a key component of your business leadership development program.

Number four, respect for all individuals. We want to respect and foster inclusivity and create an environment of mutual trust. Now I know, you know, depending on who you are and where you are in the country, what your political beliefs are, things like, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion, maybe your life, it may be a dirty word. I get it. Okay.

I like to think of instead of DEI training or diversity training, I think about unity training. think we need to reframe this concept because the reality is, this is something else I was thinking about today being a veteran's days. One of my biggest lessons I learned from the military is that as human beings were 99.999 % exactly the same.

Believe me when I tell you that I have sat down in dirt floors, ate with my hands with Afghan warlords and just local people in the middle East, central Asia, people whose worldview experiences beliefs are as opposite of the classic American Christian.

Anglo-Saxon viewpoint, Western liberal democracy viewpoint as you can get. And I'll tell you they're just like us. It's just the same people. We're all the same.

We all want safety for our family and kids. We want to feel love. We want to have community. We want to have a relationship. We want to have joy. We want to be rewarded for our work. We want to feel valued. mean, it's just the same.

And I think we start there. think we start respecting all individuals of realizing that we're 99.99 % the same, no matter what our color of our skin or sexual orientation or gender or, you know, where socioeconomic background or whatever else it might be. Position in the company, respect all individuals as human beings first.

and then celebrate the power of diversity, of different experiences, of different beliefs, and do it from a place of open-mindedness.

I think that one of the key principles of successful leadership and just being a good human being is epistemic humility, which epistemic humility just means recognizing the fact that as a human being.

You are operating with a limited data set, You're not God. You're not omnipotent. You're a human being, which means even your beliefs, even your beliefs about God, you have to admit.

could or could not be right. We're all making our best guess here. We're all, we're all just flawed humans with, with a limited data set. Let's have open conversations. If someone has a different belief than me, that's a much more interesting conversation for me to have. And in business, a different perspective and a different viewpoint, different background is powerful to avoid group think. So, man, this is a bit of a side quest again, respecting all individuals

It's really focused on a commonality of we're all human beings and then excitement around diversity around how we are different and how we see things differently and the power in different perspectives to attack a problem and respecting and celebrating those differences. And five, number five, the final one is commitment to continuous self-improvement. A leader of character, a humble leader.

is committed to always becoming a better version of themselves. That's that is part of character that we know we're flawed human beings, but we want to do better. We want to learn by doing all the things I just mentioned, Open, honest conversations, accepting accountability, learning from mistakes, choosing the harder, right over the easier wrong. Like all of these things that we talked about,

In this episode, a commitment to those things is a commitment to admitting that you are flawed and that you want to get better. And that is part of leadership. We should expect higher character from our CEO than our first line manager. And oftentimes we don't oftentimes, right? We've seen people in power acting in ways that we would never want our friends or our immediate supervisors, what we expect them to act.

How sad is that? How sad is that? That the people that at the top of power hierarchies, we hold them to a lower standard than we would hold for our general manager?

character development is leader development. I challenge you.

to look at yourself first and your organization second and see how can we bring character development into our regular operations or regular training, our regular development, because it will pay off in spades. And it is part of becoming the best possible version of you. The path to becoming a leader is the path to becoming the best possible version of you.

Becoming a leader as someone that others want to follow that are inspired by, requires trust character, becoming a leader of character, being a leader of character creates and builds trust and trust is the backbone of all leadership.

That's it for our episode today. I hope you enjoyed this solo episode. I know I enjoyed doing it. All I ask is that if you find any value in this, share it with one person, one person share with a friend, share with someone at work, just share no limits leadership with somebody else that you think is striving to be the best possible version of themselves. All right.