Are Leaders Born or Made? The Role of Curiosity in Leadership

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[00:00:48] Hey, this is William Tincup and Ryan Leary and you are listening and hopefully watching the You Should Know podcast. The topic today is understanding neuroleadership, what companies should know about their people. One of our most popular podcasts was about neurodivergent people.

[00:01:07] It was.

[00:01:08] So I can't wait to jump into this topic, but let's do some introductions first. First of all, Ryan, how are you doing?

[00:01:14] I'm good. My name is Ryan Leary. No, I'm kidding. Go ahead. I'm good. I'm feeling slightly judged by the three of you, though.

[00:01:21] Staring at me from Texas and wherever you're at in Dallas and all that stuff.

[00:01:27] No, they're in Fort Worth. They're about not even nine miles from me.

[00:01:30] We're not even secretly judging. We're just outwardly judging.

[00:01:33] You're just outwardly judging me?

[00:01:35] Yeah, outwardly.

[00:01:35] That was a line in Magnolia, Tom Cruise in Magnolia, and he gets quiet and she says, what do you think of it? I'm just quietly judging you.

[00:01:44] We were just talking about that movie the other day. Is that a repeat movie or one time is good enough?

[00:01:49] All you got to do to that deal is one time.

[00:01:51] Okay, that's what I thought.

[00:01:52] But he was perfect in that movie. Perfectly cast, perfectly acted in that movie. So well done.

[00:01:59] But let's do some introductions. So Andrew, why don't you go first? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

[00:02:03] Sure. My name is Andrew Jesbray, founder of Prax Leadership, along with my brother here, Alex.

[00:02:10] I've got a wife, seven years of marriage, no itch, and two kids, a two-year-old and a five-year-old.

[00:02:18] Five-year-old boy, two-year-old girl. And we've scaled and sold a couple of businesses.

[00:02:24] And our last five years, we've been focused on Prax, which is really focused on developing who people are,

[00:02:33] not necessarily what they do inside of organizations. So excited to talk about neuroleadership and really about developing ourselves as human beings,

[00:02:43] which is really described and talked about a lot.

[00:02:46] But I think the deep understanding of what that means is often glossed over. So, Alex?

[00:02:53] Yeah, Alex Jesbray, first of all, thanks for having us. It's fun to be here and chat with you.

[00:02:59] I've been married to my wife, Carrie, for 23 years. We have three kids all now, either almost out of college or in college.

[00:03:08] An empty nester.

[00:03:09] What's that?

[00:03:10] An empty nester. Oh, my gosh.

[00:03:13] Yeah.

[00:03:13] What's it like?

[00:03:14] One came back and said, we're not quite there, but we're threatening to be.

[00:03:21] But we do have five dogs, pretty busy, pretty busy place.

[00:03:25] I'm a recovering attorney, started my career doing medical malpractice defense, prosecuted, then was general counsel for an ED group.

[00:03:34] Andrew and I started a business back in 2005 in the medical space, sold it in 2014, sold another in 18, opened up our family office and then founded Prax.

[00:03:46] And Prax is really the culmination of not just who we are and our sort of personal and professional ethos,

[00:03:54] but our experiences inside of organizations, large ones, medium-sized ones, and specifically our interaction with our people,

[00:04:06] which cannot really be sort of understated because it was just really, really shaped who we are.

[00:04:12] And Prax is the culmination of being able to put that back into practice, into the world for other organizations.

[00:04:19] So why don't we start with neurodivergent leadership?

[00:04:23] So neuroleadership is like neuroscience and traditional leadership had a baby.

[00:04:32] It takes the insights from cutting-edge neuroscience, which have really been uncovered over the last like 10 to 15 years with functional MRIs.

[00:04:41] They can see what's going on imaging in the brain when people are making decisions or hyper-aroused,

[00:04:47] and combining that with what leadership literature has compiled over the last century.

[00:04:55] So I think it's important to point out, though, that a lot of times like art and science or even like faith and science feel like they are contradicting each other.

[00:05:08] I would say neuroscience and leadership are complementary.

[00:05:11] They're not oppositional.

[00:05:14] And they basically have the same goal.

[00:05:17] The goal really is to create a better framework for decision-making.

[00:05:24] Psychology enters in here as kind of like the red-headed stepchild, but a really important role.

[00:05:29] It kind of bridges the gap between neuroscience and leadership.

[00:05:32] And psychology really has four main aims, and it's to understand, describe, predict, and ultimately change behavior.

[00:05:41] And I would say that's really what I feel like our main role is in practice is to change behavior.

[00:05:48] There's so much lip service to I want to grow.

[00:05:51] I want to grow.

[00:05:52] People are saying it on LinkedIn or saying it on YouTube.

[00:05:55] But there's really no growth without change.

[00:05:57] And if you're not interested in changing, then you're not interested in growing.

[00:06:00] So, Andrew, quick question.

[00:06:02] And Alex, for you as well, I guess.

[00:06:04] I'm going to come at this from a very uneducated perspective here.

[00:06:09] That's the best perspective.

[00:06:11] It's what I say.

[00:06:12] It's what I say all the time.

[00:06:13] This question is probably for me then.

[00:06:15] Wow, you go so long.

[00:06:17] Go birds.

[00:06:20] So, leaders, and we speak with a lot of them on various shows.

[00:06:27] I feel as if some come at it from a very technical perspective on leadership, very similar to what you're talking.

[00:06:36] Very high intent, very specific things.

[00:06:39] I need to change.

[00:06:40] I need to change these five things.

[00:06:42] Others just come at it, or at least they talk about it as, it's just natural.

[00:06:47] Like, I'm just going to work, and I'm a leader, and I'm just going to do me.

[00:06:52] And they seem to do well.

[00:06:54] I don't know what's going on behind the scenes and really what they're doing.

[00:06:57] But that's how they kind of publicly talk about it.

[00:07:01] Curious to get your take there.

[00:07:03] Those are the two types – obviously more than two types of leaders.

[00:07:05] But those are kind of the two conversations that I kind of feel like we have, William, when we're talking to leaders.

[00:07:13] It's like, okay, this guy is a natural born or this woman is a natural born leader.

[00:07:17] They just have it.

[00:07:19] Behind the scenes, are those leaders going through a process like this and working on themselves each and every day?

[00:07:27] Al, you want to take the –

[00:07:29] I'll take a shot at it.

[00:07:30] I will tell you I'm part of this organization.

[00:07:32] We just had a big conversation about this in our forum.

[00:07:35] It's part of an organization called YPO, and we have our own forum that's met – our forum's met for like 13 years.

[00:07:41] And last year, we actually talked about whether leaders are born or made.

[00:07:45] And I had said that five years ago, I would have said that they're born.

[00:07:50] That's my orientation to the world, and you use the phrase natural leaders.

[00:07:54] After being involved in practice, I would say that they are definitely made.

[00:08:00] Even the ones that have natural tendencies are still made.

[00:08:03] Yes, they are.

[00:08:04] The best ones are working at it and working on it.

[00:08:07] I will tell you that on this show, you have two people that are extremely different, Andrew and I, in terms of our leadership style.

[00:08:16] Now, I don't say this with false humility.

[00:08:18] I say this because it's true.

[00:08:19] Andrew can do what I do better than I can do what Andrew does.

[00:08:24] But what I do, I think I do fairly well.

[00:08:26] And it is much more of the – I'm not making – it's not a commentary on how good I am at it,

[00:08:31] but it's much more natural, observational, experiential sort of catalog people in my head and sort of lead by that.

[00:08:38] Whereas Andrew clearly has the ability to do that.

[00:08:41] But the technical aspect that I lack, which does not mean I can't – it just means I have to work harder at it,

[00:08:49] is something that Andrew is extremely natural and gifted at investigating those skills-based, science-based aspects of leadership that he does work on.

[00:08:59] It probably comes a little bit more naturally to him to work on those things.

[00:09:04] But all in all, I think any leader, whether they have the more technical side or the more sort of natural side,

[00:09:10] if you're not working on whatever lane you can drive the fastest in, in figuring that out first is a prerequisite.

[00:09:17] You're doing yourself and those and you're charged a disservice.

[00:09:20] So, Ryan, I will make a couple comments.

[00:09:24] One, it's, I think, important to define leadership first.

[00:09:29] First, leadership is about influencing others.

[00:09:32] Self-leadership, which is very Praxian-focused, is about leading oneself.

[00:09:37] And there's lots of debate on which one is more important.

[00:09:40] Our philosophy is that if you can't lead yourself, how can you lead others?

[00:09:44] And I would say second, in terms of the born or made, research has absolutely concluded that leadership,

[00:09:53] and I do mean leadership, not self-leadership, is not personality dependent.

[00:09:57] For a long time, this is where I think neuroscience and neuroleadership have been helpful,

[00:10:02] that we think, oh, okay, if I'm just an introvert, it's a light switch.

[00:10:05] I'm either on or I'm off.

[00:10:06] I'm an extrovert, I'm an introvert.

[00:10:08] And yes, there is some research that says that extroverts do better.

[00:10:12] And by better, I mean that they climb higher in social status because of their extroversion,

[00:10:18] but it doesn't necessarily make them better leaders.

[00:10:21] And then I think the last thing that I'll say is Harvard republished a landmark study on the predictors of leadership skill,

[00:10:29] the predictors of leadership skill.

[00:10:31] So they extracted four hallmark traits that are necessary to see how far you'll go,

[00:10:36] and they weighted their influence.

[00:10:38] And they found that determination was 37% influential.

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[00:11:13] Insight and engagement was 62%, but there was only one that was 100% influential, and that was curiosity.

[00:11:20] So curiosity is the hallmark trait that will predict leadership skill.

[00:11:26] So I would say born or made, we are absolutely made, not born.

[00:11:30] But if you want to become all that you can be, it's not the Army slogan here,

[00:11:35] but if you want to become the best version of yourself, curiosity is the fastest and most efficient way to increase your capacities.

[00:11:43] But curiosity, not just saying, I'm really curious, I like the research, but like a really intense curiosity.

[00:11:52] There's a difference there.

[00:11:53] Maybe talk about that.

[00:11:55] Yeah.

[00:11:56] I'll pass it to Alex.

[00:11:58] Are you thinking curiosity?

[00:11:59] Sorry, Andrew.

[00:12:00] Go ahead.

[00:12:00] Go ahead.

[00:12:01] Are you thinking about curiosity as a spectrum, Ryan?

[00:12:04] Well, I, yeah.

[00:12:06] I'll just say this.

[00:12:07] I'll pass it to Alex.

[00:12:08] It's a great question, Ryan.

[00:12:09] I would say the first question is, what should we be curious about?

[00:12:15] So let's just say that curiosity is no more than asking questions.

[00:12:18] Well, let's start with a deep self-awareness.

[00:12:21] I think Aristotle or some moron in that realm said, to know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom.

[00:12:28] And we believe that too.

[00:12:29] But Al, go ahead.

[00:12:30] Yeah, Ryan, I love that question because there's curiosity.

[00:12:34] You know, when your wife asks you, do I look good in this dress?

[00:12:38] That's the asking of a question, but they're not, they don't really want an answer.

[00:12:42] And so I think you're delineating between the asking of a question versus true desire to learn and with an end in mind, which is improvement.

[00:12:54] And we always sort of tend to think that while curiosity, things start with curiosity, there are some conditions precedent to making that curiosity lead to something productive.

[00:13:04] And that is you have to be okay with the answer.

[00:13:08] There's a certain amount of security that is involved there, a certain amount of introspection, a certain amount of vulnerability.

[00:13:16] Because if you ask a question and the answer isn't exactly what, you know, the world's been telling you how great you are all the time, it can be tough for people.

[00:13:25] So curiosity gets summed up, but there are a whole lot of conditions precedent to that to make it productive and meaningful.

[00:13:35] So one of the things, Andrew, I want to go back to is you said you've got to change in order to grow.

[00:13:43] Okay.

[00:13:44] So is there linkage that you can see in your clients and in your research, et cetera, where curiosity leads to that change or can lead to that change and that change can lead to growth?

[00:13:59] Am I making that linkage there?

[00:14:01] That's perfect.

[00:14:03] We've distilled – psychology loves to make everything really complicated.

[00:14:08] They have the stages of change and they talk about pre-contemplation to contemplation.

[00:14:12] We made it much more simple, I think, for practice.

[00:14:15] It's see it, want it, do it.

[00:14:17] You can't change anything that you don't foresee as an issue or an opportunity to grow.

[00:14:23] But after you see it, that doesn't necessarily mean you're motivated to do anything about it.

[00:14:27] So now you've got to actually be motivated to change the thing and then you've got to do something about it.

[00:14:35] And so habit change is really complicated.

[00:14:38] We are wired for automatic behavior.

[00:14:41] Our brains want us to keep doing – it's a shortcut for our lives.

[00:14:45] And so this is the spectrum between automatic and controlled behavior.

[00:14:49] So when we decide that we want to intervene on a habit that we find suboptimal, now there's a goal, there's a new desired result.

[00:14:57] And that's very, very effortful.

[00:14:59] That takes effort for us to do something new.

[00:15:02] And then the kind of dirty little secret about habit change is that our old habits are rewarding.

[00:15:09] Even if we don't like them, they're rewarding something at a neurological level.

[00:15:15] So in order for us to do something new, we actually have to change the reward system and that feels hard.

[00:15:21] So rewarding – now you've got me in deep thought here.

[00:15:25] Oh, yeah.

[00:15:26] I'm thinking from an eating, not leadership, eating perspective, right?

[00:15:30] Oh, this is leadership too.

[00:15:31] Yeah, so you're on this journey.

[00:15:35] You achieve a goal, 10 pounds.

[00:15:38] Your reward is to go back to your old.

[00:15:40] Yeah, I'll use a personal example.

[00:15:43] I had about five years of plus 10 pounds, minus 10 pounds, plus 10 pounds, gain it, lose it back, gain it, lose it back.

[00:15:50] And I was very frustrated with that pattern.

[00:15:53] So first, curious about why.

[00:15:57] Why does this not translate into sustained change?

[00:16:00] And what I really concluded was I was pursuing the wrong values.

[00:16:06] So I was trying to engage in this stop behavior.

[00:16:09] So it was like, okay, so I need to deprive myself of this old-fashioned whiskey or these sweets rather than harnessing something much more powerful, which is purpose.

[00:16:19] So once I started documenting what's really, really important to me long term.

[00:16:24] Like I'm a little bit of an older dad.

[00:16:25] I'm 44.

[00:16:26] I had our kids, my late 30s and early 40s.

[00:16:31] And when I started looking at being an 80-year-old dad, that really changed the reward system.

[00:16:38] On a neurological level, that changed me deciding to eat something or not eat something because it made it bigger than the impulse that was in front of me.

[00:16:48] And that's when the – I'm telling my story.

[00:16:51] That's when the weight came off and stayed off because the reward system had fundamentally changed.

[00:16:58] I love that.

[00:17:00] So how do we – Alex, go ahead.

[00:17:02] Well, I just want – I wanted to respond to Ryan because it resonates with me because for me, there's actually that 10 pounds.

[00:17:13] I mean you could say it's 30 with me, but I have gotten for the last five or six years down to this number.

[00:17:19] I won't say what it is.

[00:17:21] And I don't go below it.

[00:17:23] I get to that number and I cannot get – and that gets into self-sabotage probably, which is a whole other conversation.

[00:17:30] But I wanted to just link what Andrew was talking about, see it, want it, do it, to what is a distinction about practice beyond self-leadership versus leadership, and that is practice.

[00:17:42] For so long, one of the things I would do to satiate the – or convince myself I was doing it is I would think, oh, I want to get in shape.

[00:17:51] So I go buy equipment and I set it up and it looks beautiful and it looks great and I feel good, almost as if I've worked out.

[00:17:59] But I am like Andrew.

[00:18:01] Almost.

[00:18:02] Almost.

[00:18:03] Andrew does it work out.

[00:18:04] I take pictures of it.

[00:18:05] I send it to people.

[00:18:06] I say this.

[00:18:07] I make a schedule and then I don't do it.

[00:18:09] But something about that satiates the feeling like, yeah, it kind of won't work out.

[00:18:16] Done.

[00:18:16] But nothing has changed.

[00:18:18] Right.

[00:18:18] In fact, I probably take an emotional step backwards because I haven't done it.

[00:18:22] And so Andrew has taught me, frankly – and he's my younger brother by seven years, but I've learned so much from him.

[00:18:30] He has taught me the thing you have to do is you actually just have to go do it.

[00:18:34] Don't worry about whether you want to do it.

[00:18:36] You know, right?

[00:18:37] Yeah.

[00:18:38] Sometimes practice isn't just because you want to do it.

[00:18:41] It helps to sustain it to keep that motivation.

[00:18:45] But that practice is the thing that actually makes the difference.

[00:18:49] And that's something –

[00:18:50] Prax is short for praxis, which is the Latin word for practice or to practice.

[00:18:55] And that is at the very core of what praxis is all about.

[00:18:58] Well, and I'll make one other mention that Alex is saying is the research is very clear about what he just said is true.

[00:19:07] There's a reciprocal influence between our values and our actions.

[00:19:10] And you can actually get to desired behavior either way.

[00:19:13] You can just do it and then your values will change.

[00:19:16] And you guys might be familiar with cognitive dissonance.

[00:19:18] Right.

[00:19:18] So we have this choice or you document and activate your values and then your actions will change.

[00:19:25] A great example of this is my wife a little over a year ago.

[00:19:29] I got home from work and just read her nonverbals within the first two seconds.

[00:19:35] Just really hard day.

[00:19:36] You just saw it.

[00:19:38] It was just a really, really hard day.

[00:19:39] She's a fantastic wife and mother.

[00:19:42] And she doesn't have many hard days or at least she doesn't show those hard days to me.

[00:19:48] And it just looked like exasperated.

[00:19:52] But she was soaking wet.

[00:19:54] She was soaking wet head to toe with all of her clothes on.

[00:19:57] And I said, okay, what just happened?

[00:20:01] And she said, well, Weston was bugging me and wanted me to swim.

[00:20:07] And I kept saying no because I wasn't in the mood.

[00:20:09] It's been a really, really long, hard day.

[00:20:11] And so she couldn't figure out a way to get in the mood.

[00:20:14] So she just jumped in the pool with all of her clothes on.

[00:20:17] And she said the next 10 minutes, her and Weston giggled and giggled and giggled.

[00:20:22] And she said her mood immediately changed.

[00:20:26] She was forced to.

[00:20:27] She wasn't feeling it.

[00:20:29] And then she jumped in.

[00:20:30] Well, she was actually demonstrating from a neuroscience perspective

[00:20:34] how you can change your mood, your mental state.

[00:20:38] The tail wagging the dog, essentially.

[00:20:41] Yeah, that's exactly right.

[00:20:42] And one other mention about values that I think is not talked about nearly enough

[00:20:48] because we all know this.

[00:20:49] You guys have probably done this.

[00:20:50] I've done it.

[00:20:51] Is, hey, let's explore our values.

[00:20:53] And we just look at like a sheet of paper of these beautiful words.

[00:20:56] Well, why doesn't that work?

[00:20:58] Because it's aspirational at best.

[00:21:00] It's not actually what we value.

[00:21:03] Values are ranked, dynamic and they compete with each other.

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[00:21:11] Ob ich mein Depot jemals angelegt kriege?

[00:21:14] Aber du hast doch schon ein Depot.

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[00:21:16] Doch, du hast das Vodafone Gigadepot.

[00:21:19] Ach, stimmt.

[00:21:20] Und da habe ich ja selbst in der Hand, wie groß mein Depot ist.

[00:21:22] Jetzt mit dem Vodafone Gigadepot und verbrauchtes Datenvolumen

[00:21:25] in den nächsten Monaten mitnehmen.

[00:21:27] Go on im zuverlässigen 5G-Netz von Vodafone.

[00:21:30] Vodafone.

[00:21:31] Together we can.

[00:21:34] So if I were to say, William or Ryan, write down your top three values,

[00:21:37] you could probably do it really easily.

[00:21:39] And then if I said, write down your next three, you could probably do it.

[00:21:43] You'd say, take a few minutes.

[00:21:44] But I said, all right, now let's do your next three after that.

[00:21:47] You'd be staring at me because there's not many things that are that important.

[00:21:52] After that, you're like, I don't know.

[00:21:53] Ice cream?

[00:21:53] Is that number nine?

[00:21:54] I don't know.

[00:21:55] So that demonstrates organizationally that we shouldn't have nine goals.

[00:22:00] We should have three to five.

[00:22:02] But we have just a couple of values that are really, really sacred.

[00:22:05] Dynamic, they change over time.

[00:22:07] If I ask you guys, are you the same person you were 10 years ago?

[00:22:10] You would probably say no.

[00:22:12] And that's easy to answer because you've changed.

[00:22:15] Your values have changed.

[00:22:16] And then the last one I think is the most important is that our values actively compete with each other.

[00:22:20] In any decision that we make in the moment, one value has won over the rest.

[00:22:25] A simple one would be my impulse or pleasure value wins if I had that fourth drink on Saturday night

[00:22:33] and then don't go to church with my family like I said I was going to.

[00:22:36] My faith value took a backseat to something that was more impulsively important to me.

[00:22:41] These are – this is what I was talking about.

[00:22:44] Are leaders born or made, right?

[00:22:46] This is – are they actively making that decision to be a better leader?

[00:22:50] Are they just relying on their natural-born skills?

[00:22:56] And I feel as if – and I could have this wrong, but I feel as if we're all going through this process regardless if we're acknowledging it.

[00:23:08] Andrew, in your example where if you have that drink, maybe you don't go on Sunday.

[00:23:14] I don't think about that.

[00:23:16] It's not a maybe.

[00:23:17] But it happens.

[00:23:19] Yeah.

[00:23:20] Well, I guess I would submit to you that that's a personal example from experience that I've had the one extra one

[00:23:27] and then that choice led to me not picking something that is aspirationally important to me but didn't actually play out in practice.

[00:23:35] But you probably do the same thing in your own life.

[00:23:38] You probably have areas of discipline that you become aware of and you want to intentionally carve out choices in your own life.

[00:23:45] I don't know what those are, but I know for sure you have blind spots.

[00:23:49] I know for sure that there are – because I have them too – where you haven't become curious enough about why you do what you do.

[00:23:56] So outside of your wife getting a new iPhone with the jumping into the pool –

[00:24:01] Listen.

[00:24:02] Because that's why I would have jumped into the pool.

[00:24:05] I kind of want to do that now.

[00:24:06] Yeah, exactly.

[00:24:07] I don't know why it's wet.

[00:24:09] Anyhow.

[00:24:10] So let's talk a little bit about people.

[00:24:12] First of all, everything that you're talking about, you and Alex, I love.

[00:24:17] I love what you all do.

[00:24:18] I love the way that you go about it and unpacking and getting people to kind of – again, if they're doing it and they don't know that they're doing it, to Ryan's point, getting them to see that.

[00:24:29] Having intentionality, reflection.

[00:24:32] And again, the way that you see it, want to do it.

[00:24:36] I think that's easy for people to then understand the framework.

[00:24:40] How do we bring that down if we've got that with our leaders?

[00:24:44] How do we bring that down into mid-managers and all of our people?

[00:24:48] How do we then push that through the organization?

[00:24:51] Yeah.

[00:24:52] I would say one of the things that Prax really aims to do is to create a common language.

[00:25:00] So you have a lot of folks – I have learned this being the employee.

[00:25:04] We call him sort of Gary from accounting and I've been the CEO.

[00:25:08] I think, first of all, as an aside, I think that middle manager has the toughest job in the entire world.

[00:25:13] They have to learn how to manage up and distill down.

[00:25:17] And sometimes it can be very thankless.

[00:25:19] So I've been all of those things over the course of my career.

[00:25:23] And I will tell you that when you are the CEO, you believe oftentimes to your core that things are a certain way.

[00:25:32] When you're Gary from accounting, you know that ain't true.

[00:25:36] Right.

[00:25:37] And it's the thing that is important to us in Prax.

[00:25:41] And it's why when we deal with large corporations, we have a product that speaks to – not because somebody up here is smarter, not at all.

[00:25:49] In many cases, that's not at all true.

[00:25:52] But the way that this person interacts with learning is different than maybe the way somebody else – and the way that they apply their learning on a daily basis in their lives, at their stage of life, whether they're home or at work.

[00:26:03] And so one of the things that's important is that Prax takes general –

[00:26:10] I want to take a break real quick just to let you know about a new show we've just added to the network, Up Next at Work, hosted by Gene and Kate Akil of The Devin Group.

[00:26:23] Fantastic show.

[00:26:24] If you're looking for something that pushes the norm, pushes the boundaries, has some really spirited conversations, Google Up Next at Work, Gene and Kate Akil from The Devin Group.

[00:26:39] It's common concepts within Prax and gives them to different people at different stages of life in different areas within an organization.

[00:26:49] But it's all the same language.

[00:26:51] It's all the same language.

[00:26:53] So making sure that everybody has an understanding of what those skills are, what it takes to get there, and what that growth actually looks like for themselves, not for their business, which is also a little bit different.

[00:27:04] I know we've talked about it briefly, but just to put a fine point on it, we're very clear with our clients that you're the client, the company.

[00:27:14] You're interested in your people as employees, as you should be.

[00:27:18] You're not a charity.

[00:27:19] You're an organization.

[00:27:20] You should make money.

[00:27:21] That's right.

[00:27:22] We're not.

[00:27:23] Your business is your business.

[00:27:26] However you measure that is your business.

[00:27:28] We focus on all of you all as individual human beings and the point of which is to improve them.

[00:27:37] And that brings people together.

[00:27:39] Is that optimization?

[00:27:41] Is it calibration, recalibration to optimize and for them to have the tools to optimize themselves and optimize others?

[00:27:50] Am I reading this correctly?

[00:27:54] Yeah, Andrew, I think one of the things that I love that you say based on a study is that how it's almost this pick six when you – this thing that happens when you improve yourself.

[00:28:06] Yeah, yes.

[00:28:08] I think, William, what we're really talking about is alignment.

[00:28:12] The study that Alex is referring to, a recent study, is our effect on others within organizations.

[00:28:17] And if William is a top performer, however we define that, you're – let's just say you are.

[00:28:23] You're a top performer.

[00:28:24] You can raise the level of performance by up to 15% with just your sheer presence, not doing anything different other than who you are.

[00:28:33] But the shocking part of it is if Andrew is a – if I'm a low performer, I can bring down productivity almost 30%.

[00:28:43] So this –

[00:28:44] Just by being in the room.

[00:28:45] Just by being around people on a daily basis up to 15 down to 30.

[00:28:51] And so I think the revelatory stat there is 45% delta.

[00:28:56] This illustrates the power of self-leadership is if we are working on ourselves, then we can be part of the add, not subtract.

[00:29:04] Yeah.

[00:29:05] So if you're affecting the room that much, we'll just go with the positive on the plus 15.

[00:29:14] Is that because the people in the room want to aspire to be you or they want to impress you?

[00:29:22] What's the cause there?

[00:29:23] Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up.

[00:29:26] That's a really good question.

[00:29:27] Often the weightiest things are the simplest things.

[00:29:30] So the most powerful way to influence others is behavior.

[00:29:35] It's the most – modeling behavior is the most powerful influencer in the whole world.

[00:29:38] It doesn't matter if we agree with that or not.

[00:29:40] That is true.

[00:29:41] Parents know that.

[00:29:42] Yeah.

[00:29:43] Parents know that instinctively because they don't listen to what we say nearly as much as they watch what we do.

[00:29:50] And it turns out that adults are the exact same.

[00:29:52] Yeah.

[00:29:53] And if without behavior, reputation runs out.

[00:29:57] Right.

[00:29:57] Like let's say you get the benefit of having a reputation and it walks in a room before you.

[00:30:03] When you behave, it quickly – water seeks its own level and it's based on who you are.

[00:30:09] And another, I think, interesting perspective on that is if you look at – it's called the pyramid of learning and you can Google it.

[00:30:18] But the lowest form of learning is lecture.

[00:30:22] It's the lowest form and it's really what our entire –

[00:30:26] Go college.

[00:30:27] Yeah, that's right.

[00:30:27] Go college.

[00:30:28] Exactly.

[00:30:30] And right above lecture is reading, which is why I'm – when we sit down with CEOs and COOs that are deciding to work with us and they say, well, we've read books.

[00:30:40] And I say, great.

[00:30:42] How'd that work?

[00:30:44] And it's tongue in cheek.

[00:30:45] It didn't work that well because knowledge isn't insight and insight isn't skill.

[00:30:50] And skill isn't even wisdom.

[00:30:52] So we have to move up the learning pyramid and we've got to get into practice.

[00:30:58] And actually, the only thing above practice is teaching.

[00:31:01] If you can teach it, then you really truly understand it from a skill perspective.

[00:31:07] And so if we're – if we are able to improve ourselves and we're able to convert knowledge into insight and insight into skill, that's how we improve ourselves.

[00:31:16] And that is how we model optimal behavior for others.

[00:31:19] So this might seem a bit esoteric, but can you ever get to a full optimization?

[00:31:27] And the background of why I'm asking this question is I don't believe that you can have a team of all A players.

[00:31:35] We talked about that in sports at the very beginning.

[00:31:37] In fact, it doesn't really work if you have all A players.

[00:31:40] So now we can translate this into corporations, right?

[00:31:46] So we've got Tandy and a bunch of corporations here in Fort Worth and Arlington that we know and love.

[00:31:52] Tandy the computer company?

[00:31:53] Yeah.

[00:31:54] Tandy the leather company.

[00:31:56] Okay.

[00:31:57] Not the Tandy 1000, Ryan, that you're thinking about with the dot matrix.

[00:32:00] You aged yourself right there, by the way.

[00:32:03] That's where my mind went.

[00:32:05] We don't do leather and chaps and buckles and all that up here.

[00:32:10] We just scored touchdowns and win.

[00:32:12] Oh, no.

[00:32:13] What do you say?

[00:32:13] Say, no.

[00:32:15] Why, Jeff?

[00:32:15] There's no need for that.

[00:32:17] There's no need for that.

[00:32:17] But the thing is the idea of, okay, if I'm a self-leader and I'm trying to optimize myself,

[00:32:24] I see it, want it, do it.

[00:32:27] Do I ever reach that goal or do I get to a new goal and then I see it, I want it, I do it, et cetera.

[00:32:33] So like one question, one part of the question is, is optimization ever done?

[00:32:37] Do you ever reach a point of completion?

[00:32:41] A, B, or subpart two is, can you have all of your people optimized at the same time?

[00:32:52] Or can you have everybody as an A player on a team?

[00:32:56] And I've struggled with this for years, by the way.

[00:32:58] So my personal struggle is I think that like there used to be the concept of an HR that 20%, 80-20 rule, right?

[00:33:08] 20% of your workforce is 80% of the value of your company.

[00:33:13] Now, in Silicon Valley, they would make that more than 90-10.

[00:33:17] 10% of your employees make up 90% of the value of your company.

[00:33:21] I'm not sure I believe any of those, but I've struggled with can you form a team of all A players?

[00:33:30] So take those in any order you like.

[00:33:32] So I thought it was a little cynical when you first asked the question to be honest with you.

[00:33:37] No, I did.

[00:33:38] And then I thought about it.

[00:33:40] And I thought, well, maybe we just all sort of exist as any group of humans, a family, a company on a bell curve.

[00:33:49] I mean, just by just numbers.

[00:33:53] And so I think literally optimization doesn't ever happen.

[00:33:59] Literally.

[00:34:00] Right.

[00:34:01] But to the extent that we're probably not going for true empirical optimization and we're going to say there are folks that are receptionists and there are folks that are mid-level managers and there are people that are C-suites.

[00:34:21] You know, the C-suite gets a lot of credit.

[00:34:24] That's probably that 20, 10, 90, 80%.

[00:34:28] But that doesn't make them more valuable because if you take the receptionist out, the phone doesn't actually get answered.

[00:34:35] And so that's not less important.

[00:34:38] It's just less visible.

[00:34:40] And so I think it is possible within an organization to have the best receptionist and the best mid-level managers.

[00:34:48] And the higher that bar gets within an organization, this is something that we've experienced quite a bit, that the low performers self-select right out of that company.

[00:35:00] Right.

[00:35:00] And it is either, you know, a downward spiral or an ascending spiral, sort of back to Andrew's original point.

[00:35:08] So, you know, does true optimization work?

[00:35:11] Probably not ever, literally.

[00:35:15] But it's, but it can be good enough.

[00:35:17] Well, it could be that you just change the definition of optimization by the time you get there.

[00:35:22] That's right.

[00:35:23] Like, like you get to that place and you're like, okay, now that, now I can see what do.

[00:35:28] I see something else.

[00:35:29] And so the definition, your own internal mechanism to define what is optimized or optimization.

[00:35:35] Maybe that just changes as you hit different plateaus or different places.

[00:35:39] William, do I have time for one more comment on that?

[00:35:42] Oh, hell yeah.

[00:35:43] Okay, perfect.

[00:35:44] I think an important question is, well, what can we influence and then what should we be concerned with?

[00:35:51] And the Stoics 300 BC popularized this idea in a small community of philosophy that we can only control ourselves.

[00:36:00] But it wasn't until 1989, Seven Habits from Covey, that he made the idea widely popular.

[00:36:08] And he has this graph that I still find really beautiful, even several decades later.

[00:36:14] These three big circles, he has the circle of concern.

[00:36:17] And inside that circle of concern is the stock market and the weather.

[00:36:21] We don't control those things, but we should be concerned with those things.

[00:36:25] And then inside of that circle is the circle of influence.

[00:36:27] These are our relationships.

[00:36:28] These are job outcomes that we can influence, but we don't directly control the outcome.

[00:36:33] The smallest circle is literally called the circle of control.

[00:36:37] And so those are the things that we can control.

[00:36:40] And what are those things?

[00:36:41] And one of the top 10 books of all time, if you haven't read it, you should absolutely read it.

[00:36:47] Viktor Frankl's A Man's Search for Meaning.

[00:36:48] He talks about this concept in between stimulus and response is our choice.

[00:36:54] So inside of that circle of control really are three things.

[00:36:58] And this is very Praxian in nature is we have our values, our thoughts, and our actions.

[00:37:03] So when we talk about optimization, we're talking about not the stock market and the weather, not even our relationships.

[00:37:09] I don't control my wife.

[00:37:10] I don't control my kids.

[00:37:11] I certainly don't control our employees.

[00:37:14] And if you come in with that mindset, you are setting yourself up for frustration.

[00:37:18] But I can optimize myself and I can have influence on those things.

[00:37:23] So at Prax, we're really focused on paying attention to our priorities, how we perceive events in our lives.

[00:37:30] That's emotional regulation, reducing cognitive errors, and then observing and managing our actions.

[00:37:37] And this is how we optimize.

[00:37:39] Well, I'm good, man.

[00:37:41] I think this has been really – this is opposite of what I thought.

[00:37:45] I don't know what I thought, but this was good.

[00:37:47] I enjoy it.

[00:37:48] We need to have a part two and go into some of the other – because we glossed over some of the stuff that I think we could go into of much deeper.

[00:37:57] Yeah.

[00:37:57] Y'all are wonderful.

[00:37:58] And, of course, being Cowboy fans helps.

[00:38:01] But no, seriously, it's wonderful.

[00:38:05] When can we come back?

[00:38:06] We can schedule for next week.

[00:38:08] Seriously, y'all have been wonderful.

[00:38:09] And I know the audience will learn a lot from y'all.

[00:38:12] Yes, it's a good one.

[00:38:13] Thank you so much.

[00:38:14] For what you guys do, you create a really nice environment for a conversation, both of y'all.

[00:38:18] Thank you.

[00:38:19] Yeah.

[00:38:19] Appreciate it.

[00:38:20] I really, really enjoyed this.

[00:38:21] You guys have created a wonderful vibe to be vulnerable and open up and have fun.

[00:38:27] And so credit to you guys.

[00:38:29] I know that doesn't happen on accident.

[00:38:30] Thank you.