Leading with Excellence: A Conversation with Kyle McDowell

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In a crude laboratory in guy. Love his attitude.
Love his energy. I mean, comes from the big business arena, enterprise level business arena.
And his book, Begin With We, to me just dials in exactly, it's a moment in time book. And I know it came out a year ago, but I think this moment is an extended period of time, not like this exact moment, but meaning this period of time where we're in where poor

leadership is being exposed. Antiquated, hierarchical, patriarchy style, nepotistic style

leadership is falling apart. It's just getting destroyed.
And if you're struggling with bringing

people into your organization, if you're struggling with getting the most out of your team, if you're struggling with building culture and camaraderie and excitement around your organization, it's most likely because you're running on an old model. And what Kyle brings to us is his book, Begin With We, 10 Principles for Building and Sustaining a Culture of Excellence.
And guys, this is right in line with what we talk about all the time here at Finding Peak. I highly recommend you go out and get this book.
I did have a chance to read through this book before I talked to Kyle. We go into three of the 10 wheeze, three of his 10 principles.
But you got gotta read the book. If culture, if leadership, if peak performance is something that you're looking for both for yourself, for how you engage with your team at work, for how you engage with your family, for your spouse, your kids, your community, this book is tremendous.
And these principles are timeless and I absolutely love this conversation. Go to Amazon or wherever you buy books.
Get this book. I highly recommend it.
Connect with Kyle. Amazing dude.
You're going to love this conversation. Before we get there, guys, as you know, this podcast has been rebranded to Finding Peak because while we still address topics that relate to the insurance industry as about 60% of our audience is insurance professionals, and I love you guys.
It's the core of who I am. It's what I do day to day, every day, right? We've expanded out the context of the show to talk about the larger ideas, the larger concepts that get us to peak performance, right? And it's called finding peak because it's a journey where there's no destination.
We're no hit peak performance. It's the little incremental changes, the little incremental improvements that we do every day that we make part of our life, part of our journey that allow us to always be just a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better for ourselves, for the people that we love, for the people we care about, for the people that we're responsible for.
That's what this show is about. If you enjoy this show, all I ask is that you tell somebody, right? If you enjoy this show, just tell somebody, just share the show, share it with your network, text message you to a friend, tell somebody about it.
That's how we continue to grow this show. And if you're feeling super froggy, love for you to leave a rating and review on iTunes or Spotify, whatever.
Those things are not for me. It's for great guests, guests like Kyle and others.
When they come, you know, when I ask them to come on the show, they go and check out those ratings and reviews just to see like, are we legit? And hopefully someday, you know, kind of the show will sell itself. But, you know, we still need to pitch guests and I want to bring more dynamic, diverse guests on to bring you all the perspectives that can help you in your life and to do that.
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It is all about the content. It is all about you.
Let's get to Kyle McDowell and this absolutely tremendous episode. Here we go.
All right, man. Well, welcome to the show.
I appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule. And I think what we're going to talk about today is, you know, one of the more important topics impacting organizations.
Because there's so much crazy shit going on in the world right now. And I think being a leader and, and the trials that come with leadership and our thought process around how we engage with our teams and, and, and think through how we operate more than, I mean, not that leadership has ever been easy, but I think when times are good and everything's moving and all arrows are pointed up and to the right, you can get away with a lot of stuff.
When times are more turbulent and tumultuous, it feels like we really have to

focus on how we engage our people, how we bring people into the process and what you've done,

your experience and the book that you've written and that we're going to talk about today.

To me, it feels like perfect timing. So excited to have you here.

Hey, Ryan, thanks for having me. Anytime I get a chance to wax poetic on leadership, all things leadership, man, I'm there.
So I appreciate the opportunity to join you. And hopefully a little bit of value comes out of this conversation for your audience.
Yeah, yeah. And I appreciate it, man.
I'm looking forward to it. So maybe give people the 10 cent tour.
I want them to go to your site and we'll have links to the show notes and everything. It's Kyle McDowell Inc.
I-N-C, KyleMcDowellInc.com. We'll have links to all the show notes and stuff.

But I want them to go there, check you out, dig in, but just the 10 cent tour. And then I want

to really get into kind of the meat and potatoes of the topic. Yeah, yeah, you bet.
So I spent

nearly 30 years in big, big corporate America running the topic. Yeah, yeah, you bet.
So I spent nearly 30 years

in big, big corporate America running huge organizations. For some context, my last two roles, I had teams that totaled more than 30,000 employees collectively.
I had P&Ls in the billions, operating budgets in the billions. So big, big organizations I was fortunate enough to lead.
I was a very, very career oriented, career minded, kind of results at all costs kind of leader. But I found myself with each passing year of that journey, which by most accounts was, you know, fairly successful.
I'm very proud of the results and the things I've been able to do as a result of my chapter one of my career, which I'm now calling chapter one. I'm on chapter two now.
I found myself becoming more apathetic, losing my fulfillment, losing passion. You know, the Sunday scaries were something I experienced almost every day.
And it occurred to me that it doesn't have to be this way. I had an epiphany where I had a chance to join an organization where I was given essentially carte blanche and leading a huge cultural transformation from day one.
I was 15,000 employees. It was a $7 billion program that I was asked to lead.
And right out of the gate, man, I knew I had to do something different or else I would have those same feelings of apathy and kind of disenfranchised. And so right out of the gate, I led with a very different approach.
The night before I was to meet with the top 40 or 50 leaders of that organization, of my team, I just sat down and with my full open heart and vulnerable fingers, I typed out what turned out to be called the 10 Wees and their 10 principles, each beginning with the word we.

And they were this they were the manifesto. Actually, they still are of that firm.
I left about five years ago and it's still the cultural manifesto for that organization. They have the 10 We Awards.
They're part of the performance appraisal process. They are ingrained deeply into the DNA of that organization.
And, you know, fast forward to today, I had an opportunity to leave corporate America with a pretty, pretty good runway to kind of sit and think about what I wanted to do next. And I weighed the options and the options were going back into the big corporate world and leading a big organization or really investing everything I have in terms of my energy, my passion into these principles.
And that's what I do now. I wrote the book, which became a USA Today on Wall Street Journal bestseller.
And now I travel the globe speaking on the value that comes from principle-based leadership and the impact one can have. So this is chapter two.
And now that I've been in this kind of game, if you will, for a little over a year, the book came out last September. I've come to realize it's my, it is my passion.
It's my calling. It's, it's why I'm here.
So it's what I'm doing every day now. Why the word we, like, where did that come from? What, you know, that to me, how you framed it, like a lot of people could have started, you should do this, or, or maybe they take the first person, I'm going to do this.
Like, where was this? Where did the framing come from? Was it something you had been thinking about? Did it just pop into your head? How did you come up with that word? Yeah, man, I wish there were a better or a sexier backstory, but it came that evening. I was in Lawrence, Kansas in my hotel room that night before.
And with my laptop in my lap, still wearing that day's suit, I just started to type. I had no pre-planning of what was going to come out.
I knew I needed a PowerPoint to walk this team through the next morning. But it occurred to me as I was typing, like they had heard it all before.
The average tenure of my direct reports was north of 10 years. They had the guy that had the role before me was terminated.
The woman before him, I believe, was fired as well. So I knew that they had heard all of the me, rah, rah, my door is open, cliche type stuff that we've all heard throughout our careers.
And I wanted to be very, very clear about one thing. We were going to establish what I called at the time, our rules of the road.
And those rules would be 100% applicable to me just as much as they were to the team. So I walked through these principles and I said, guys, these are our rules of the road and they are the rules by which I will hold you accountable.
And I'm comfortable saying that out loud because I want you to hold me accountable to these same principles. Because what I saw and what kind of led me to my state of apathy inside of my previous, the previous 20 plus years was this double standard, what I've come to call the leadership gap, where the leader or more appropriately, the boss is entitled to behave in a way without any repercussions that the team cannot behave.
So I really believe strongly that if you want to have strong relationships,

including big, big levels of trust inside your team,

you've got to be on a level playing field. Clearly, someone's got to call the rules and call the plays.
And at the end of the day, they make the final decisions on our path. But I believe it should be done in concert with everyone on the team, kind of a meritocracy of sorts.
And that's what resonates. It seems to be resonating with those that I work with now because they're tired of the old leadership playbook.
So we came about very innocently, but now it is like tattooed on my brain. Yeah.
Where do you think, why do you think, not where, why do you think so many individuals when they ascend to a position of leadership, even a seemingly menial position of, you know, like a very entry level position of leadership, does it immediately become, they start, I feel so many new to leadership individuals in particular, but this perpetuates throughout. It's like they start trying to find the juice.
Like what, what is it about this position that makes me better, different, some sort of schmookie that I get that puts me in this place?

Like why do you think it is our nature to immediately go to almost like that self-absorbed

leadership that we see so often that becomes, you know, today we consider it like toxic

leadership or whatever.

What is it about our nature or what pitfalls do people fall into where that becomes

Thank you. so often that becomes, you know, today we consider it like toxic leadership or whatever.
What is it about our nature? What pitfalls do people fall into where that becomes what they are? Because I found people that I knew that early on in their career, you would have never thought that this is the way they would lead. And then they get into that position.
You're like, oh my gosh, look how much they've, you know, they've changed or whatever. So what are some of those pitfalls? Why do we find ourselves in that position? Well, it's a wonderful question.
And I think the root of that question, Ryan, is what plagues most companies today. And it's too, and I think the answer is twofold.
Number one, when we promote someone into a position of leadership, in most cases, especially when it's within the same company, they didn't leave and go somewhere else. In most cases, they get promoted not because they've shown great signs of being a great leader.
It's because they've gotten pretty good at processing a widget or they've gotten really good at their individual contributor role. So there's a management position that opens.
They raise their hand and the people, the powers that be that are responsible for selecting that person. They say, oh, Ryan was pretty good at processing X, Y and Z.
There's an opening in his department now to lead that function. Let's put them there.
But they don't spend another moment after that investing in training in developing leadership skills and acumen of that person. They just simply put them in that position and say, go be a leader.
So I think that's the fundamental problem. But then it's exacerbated because if I'm just now thrust into a leadership position and I'm not provided any formal or even informal kind of onboarding, you know, management 101, how to lead, how to have difficult conversations, those types of things.
What am I going to do? I'm going to emulate the same behavior that I've seen throughout my entire career. And so the cycle persists.
And you use the word perpetuate. That's what happens.
Because think about it this way, man. If I'm up for promotion, a lot of times, or let's say the bulk of times, the boss to whom I report is not someone that I hold dearly.
I don't hold them to a high standard because they haven't earned that, right? But that person is the person who selected me in the role. So it behooves me, for lack of a better expression, to imitate and emulate that behavior.
And so the cycle continues. And that's a lot of what I talk about today when I'm on stage or when I'm working with clients is somebody has to break that cycle.
Somebody has to be promoted into a role or take on a leadership role and say enough. I'm going to lead differently.
I'm going to be the leader I've never had. And that's what I endeavored to do when I made that change back in 2017.
Yeah, I love it. So I run a national commercial insurance agency.
And between having amazing conversations like the one we're having now. And, you know, one of the things that we talk about all the time during our leadership meetings is this idea of being of service.
Right. So you take an of service mentality.
When you become a leader, you actually lose your day to day function activities. And you now, your job is now to support those people and be of service to all the individuals

at which you're, you know, are underneath your charge.

And, you know, this, it's a very difficult concept.

And the first time you explain it to people,

this, you know, you're positioning as we,

you know, I'm using this idea of working with this team. Like your job as a leader is not to make decisions.
You know what I mean? Like, yes, the buck stops with you, but day to day, minute to minute, your job is actually to make, to provide an environment. At least this is my perspective and where I teach it is, is to provide an environment in which your people get to be the best version of themselves.
And in there, you have to be of service to them. They're going to bring problems to you and you're going to help them solve those problems.
You can't then be a problem to them. And that is a very, you know, it's funny.
To me, you know, I'm framing a little different. Actually, when I was going through all your material and looking through the book and stuff, I was like, yeah, I really love the way that you frame this idea.
And I want to get into the book a little more and some of the specific wheeze that I had questions about. But like, I've been shocked how certain people will come into our organization in the leadership team and we'll start talking through these concepts and kind of my methodology for what it means to be a leader.
And I'm like, look, your job, yes, the buck stops with you for this department, but that your job, you're just one job in a broader, in a whole department. You're not, you know what I mean? Like people take this on as like, I get to walk around and just point fingers and point direction.
And it's like, no, no, you just have a certain set of things that you do that are different from everybody else. It doesn't mean that you're better or somehow no more, or somehow are a better decision maker.
That's often not even the case. And so few people have even heard that message up until that time.
They've probably heard nothing about what it means to be a leader, or it's about making decisions. Everyone thinks it's about making decisions.
I want to make decisions. And like, for me, when I hear someone talk about wanting to make decisions or wanting to manage people, that is like two of the biggest red flags that I can say.
Because if you actually want to be the person making decisions and the person managing people, I don't know, I feel like there's something wrong with you. You know, you said something there that really got my attention.
You described a boss, someone that walks around playing gotcha, trying to find a member of the team not doing what they've asked them to do or not performing in a way. But Ryan, I'll boil it down to something even more kind of elementary.
Here's what the job of a leader is really twofold. That's it.
Two obligations. The

first is to remove all of the barriers that stand in the way of your team being excellent. You know,

that could be a lack of reporting. It could be any number of things.
It doesn't have to be some

huge strategic initiative. It could be, you know, somebody needs to leave at four o'clock every

Thursday to pick up their son or daughter, whatever it is, removing the barriers that stand in the way of that team being excellent. That's that's job one.
And job two is related. And that is to inspire and motivate the team in spite of the barriers you were unable to remove.
Because think of it this way. If you're able to remove the things that stand in the way of their excellence, maybe it's it's a silly policy or a redundant procedure, you name it, something that just stops them from being great or even excellent.
If you get that out of the way, you're now left with the fundamental difficulties that come with running a business or being a part of a team, external headwinds, competitive threats, whatever industry dynamic is going on in your space. Those are the things that you'd rather have your team focused on than some silly reporting issue or some report that they're supposed to generate for you because it's something that makes you feel important.
Get those things out of the way and then focus on the things that are a little bit tougher to deal with. And you can approach them together, by the way, not just the leader at that point.
when you were putting these weas together, is the order that you have them in, is this the order they came to your head? Or how did you think about arranging them? Was there a narrative to the weas? And we can get into some of the particulars that I have questions about. But like when you were, is this the way it came to to you and it felt very organic and serendipitous, the muse is sitting on your shoulder and just flowing through you? Or did you just come up with a list and then try to reorganize and actually come up with a, with a, with a sequence for how thinking through them? Yeah, man, as much as I would love to tell you, this was pre-planned and the muse was there and she and I had a great conversation that evening.
It wasn't like that. The direct answer is they were not in the order in which they are in the book in the way that I evangelize them now.
Because the truth is the night before I was to meet with this group of leaders, I had no idea what I was going to say. I just knew it had to be something different.
And these 10 sentences came out of me. I'm not super creative.
So the result what was the 10 weeks. They were reordered as I started to write the book because it occurred to me in a particular order, they actually build upon one another and they build upon the previous week.
So when we walk into end, they essentially build kind of a kind of a fortress that insulates the team. And that did not exist right out of the gate when I first created them.
Yeah. So the first, I want to walk through just two or three of these, obviously everybody,

so the book is begin with, we, you know, go get the book. We're going to have it linked up.

Obviously it's on Amazon and all the places that you can buy books. So, you know, you don't have

to actually go to, don't actually go to the show notes, just go to Amazon and get it directly or wherever. But the one I wanted, the first one I wanted to just kind of dive into a little bit was number four, we take action.
Taking action and making mistakes is okay. Being idle is not.
This is to me, one of the most difficult things for even the most experienced leaders to wrap their head around. Oftentimes I get asked, in the successes I've had in my own career, how did you get here? How did you do this? And it's always, I just had an idea and tried it.
I didn sometimes when I'm doing my own keynote speaking, I will, you know, people will ask me questions about different things. And I'm like, guys, this is a hundred percent off my own beats.
Like you guys don't understand. Like, I'm not up here like preaching theory to you from some book that I read, like, like what you see.
And this goes, I think for every business, every leader, every organization, we don't know what the hell works and what doesn't like this, you know, you'll, you'll have conversations with leaders and they will like sit back, you know, and they do, there's like a move that these guys do, especially the egotistical ones. They like get in this position in their chair or, you know, whatever.
And it's like, they just know what to do. And I'm like, you have no freaking clue.
Like, have you done it? Have you tried it? Have you put that in practice? Then you don't know. And it's so hard for them.
They'll nitpick. They'll procrastinate.
They'll try to be perfect before they launch. So how when you're working through this, maybe with someone that you're coaching or someone in the audience or you're in a small group and they're asking you questions and they get to this one about failure, about trying things that you're not sure if they're going to work.
How do you culturally make that change if up until that point you've been more of the whoever makes a mistake gets yelled at or called out or ostracized, right? How do you start to transition away from that very toxic negative failure culture to one that embraces taking action, making mistakes and learning lessons?

Yeah, I think there's a lot to impact there. And there are two elements that I think we really need to drill down into.
So what I found to be most pervasive in big, big companies is this faction of people that keep their head down. They don't say a lot.
They don't offer much in the way of innovation or ingenuity. They just are the lather, rinse, repeat of the organization.
They try to stay off the radar. So it's easy for a lot of us to be frustrated about that.
We don't like that we see somebody kind of phoning it in and we're critical of them. And that's when the boss place got you.
But I think the deeper question. What's up guys.
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Let's get

back to the episode. And the next layer to unpack is why.
Why do people behave that way when they're at work? Because if you're at home and you recognize something is not optimal, you've got a leaky faucet, you fix it, or you hire a plumber, you take action. But in the corporate world, in a lot of team environments, even outside the corporate world and other team environments, there's safety and silence.
Because we've been taught throughout most of our careers that when I raise my hand to point out an opportunity to be better or do something differently, one of two things, if not both, happens. One, I get more work.
I'm asked to take on the thing that I've identified and nobody just wants to take on new work without some type of reward system in place. But then second, if I stumble or I don't deliver perfection on the thing that I pointed out, it's going to be thrown back into my face.
I'm going to be beaten over the head with that mistake. So all of this to say we've got to create spaces inside the corporate world, inside of the world in general, where it's okay to err.
It's okay to make mistakes.

Why would I ever raise my hand to point out something that needs to be addressed if I'm going to fear the retribution that would come if I don't do well? So it's incumbent to leaders around the world in any environment to instill a culture and establish an energy that folks know that I am empowered to drive change. Now, this is not a recipe for being a cowboy and taking over in functional areas that you don't have any responsibility for.
It's about surfacing the things in your area that are less than optimal. Here's a perfect example of that, man.
When I ran big, big call centers around the world, I made it a habit of visiting every one of the facilities as often as possible, at least one a month. Invariably, I would sit with a customer service rep or any frontline person, and they would walk me through the screens that they toggle through to help someone on the other end of the phone.
And almost every time I would ask, why did you do that? Or why did you not do this? Or why did you go there? And they lean over very quietly and almost whisper and say, you know, Mr. McDowell, they train us to do X, Y, and Z.
But I have found if I do A, B, and C, the customer's much happier, it goes much quicker. And the result is obviously much better right out of the gate.
You know, I'm genericizing that scenario. But the point of that story is, that is right for right for someone to say hey we got a chance to be better here we can do something different but not in an environment where i'm going to just be tasked with more work and i'm going to be judged if it fails by the way failure inside the workplace is really not failure unless there's malice or something really nefarious going on it is an option that we should no longer pursue we've got better things or or a better path or approach to take, but we wouldn't know that if we didn't try.
So I love that you asked about number four, because that's a big one for me as well. But also a lot of people don't take the time to read the second sentence of that, or the second and third sentence.
And that is, you know, taking action and making a mistake is okay. But being idle is not.
It's not. We talk internally, we talk about wins and lessons.

It's wins and lessons. That's it.
That's all it is, you know, and people will get upset. Something didn't work or they messed something up or they didn't hit a deadline.
I'm like, guys, wins and lessons, right? Like, and I say, actually, this is a big thing I talk to my kids about. I'm like, look, for some reason, you know, your father has been destined to make every single mistake that's going to happen in life and all aspects of it.
However, I try very hard not to make those mistakes twice. And I said, that should be your goal.
Like, how do you know you can't jump out of a tree from 12 feet? Well, you find out. Maybe you can do it.
Maybe you can't do it. How do you find out you can, you know, if you can throw the ball harder in baseball, you try it, right? Maybe you, maybe you can't throw strikes when you throw as hard as you possibly can, but maybe you can, you know, wins and lessons and it goes for everything.
Um, but I think people get so caught up in, and I actually, I just did the podcast flow of this of my podcast is on Mondays, I release like something about 15 minutes is usually just me and it's around one singular idea. And then on Thursdays, I release an interview like what we're doing right here.
And I just recently did one that I think speaks to this particular idea, which is around the idea of the spotlight effect and how we oftentimes find ourselves debilitated to take action because we think everyone is actually looking at us and judging us and thinking about us. So the whole episode was basically the reverse information around the idea that no one gives a shit about what you're doing.
If anything, they give you a breezing of attention. even your boss when when they're mad at you, is going to like point at you for a second and then walk away and have to deal with 17 other problems.
So, you know, it, I think, I think the two things you pointed out are actually the things that hold them back, right? It's, it's, I don't want more work and not be compensated for it. And I don't want more work to not be compensated for it and then have the opportunity to get yelled at.
And that's why I love incentives. I love helping people get buy-in.
I love these ideas of wins and lessons. I mean, to me, this is one of the biggest ones because how many people that you know in your life, and I know a ton who like, I talk to them And I'm like, if only you would do the thing that you tell me you daydream about, you'd be so much happier.
And they just won't do it because they're so worried about failure or they're so worried about something not working or their boss being, getting mad at them because they have a side hustle or something. I'm like, why would your boss care if you're making candles on Saturdays? Like, what are you talking about? And, but we don take action because of these things.
Yeah. You know, you asked a question earlier about the order of the we's.
And I'm inclined to share the next one because it's it touches on a topic that you just went the path you just went down. The very next week is we own our mistakes.
Yeah. Because we don't judge people.
I think I think by and large, we don't judge people by their mistakes. We judge them by how quickly they remedy the mistake and if they make it again.
I don't know about you, man. When I have a bad experience as a consumer, if the firm or the company, the person goes out of their way to make it right and it doesn't happen again, I am more loyal to that company now because they've shown they care.
They've shown that they care about my experience and they fix the problem, Right. So, but none of that happens if we don't own the mistake, right? We don't hide behind it.
We don't, we don't blame others. We say, look, man, but again, that only comes when that environment of safety has been created.
Yeah. And I'll give you guys at home, a perfect example of this.
I have a tool that I use for my business and they did not send me any kind of notification that they were going to bill my card. And when they did, they mistakenly billed it annual instead of monthly.
So, I mean, not a big deal. It wasn't like the most money ever, but all of a sudden you see this like fairly large number on your credit card.
You're like, what the hell is going on? So no big deal. So I emailed them and I said, Hey, I never got notified that you were going to bill me.
And two, when you did, you billed me annual and I wanted monthly for this particular product. And one email, hey, just send us the last four digits of your credit card to confirm that we have the right card on file and we'll reimburse you and change it to monthly.
And it was done in 45 seconds. And like, I was like, I now have more positive feelings despite the mistake than I did before, even though I've been using the tool for a while.
Cause now I'm like, oh, they made a good product and they care about me. Right.
Cause you get to see how much they care about you when you make the mistake. In my opinion, you know, not when everything's going great.
You know how much they care when something bad happens.

And not that you want bad things to happen,

but that's really when you have your chance as a company to say,

look, we do care about you.

This thing isn't right.

We'll make it right.

And you can tell the companies that don't

because they lean on their policies or you signed a contract.

That's when you know you're just a number. they don't actually care.
Yep. Well said.
Yeah. That's a tough one.
So, okay. I want the next one that I wanted, I'm going to skip.
I know this one is, um, I know this one is last and there's probably a bunch of buildup to get to it. Um, but I want to talk about we obsess over details.
Details matter a lot. And I want to talk about it from two frames.
You can pick whichever one you want to start with, but I'd like to address them both. I, if we were doing a personality test, every single time fall in kind of that driven but visionary area.
I struggle with details. Maybe some of it is I just am not disciplined enough to go down to details.
But the other side is I have like severe ADHD that I actually went and got diagnosed like two years ago because I was like, what the is wrong with me? And now I know what it is. Right? You're in good company.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I'm in good company. How about that? Yeah.
I think it's probably the reverse, but I appreciate that. So, so I know and have learned about myself as a leader that I'm really good at getting a 10,000 feet.
Maybe I can come down to 5,000 feet once in a while, but I ain't coming all the way down to the ground. Like it's just not going to happen.
If I'm boots on the ground details, day-to-day details, I become irritable. I can just watch my energy meter go to zero.
So there are a lot of leaders that I think find themselves in that situation because I think leaders. Yep, they over-index in one of the two areas.
They either over-index on the COO integrator, if this were traction or EOS, that COO integrator side leader, or they over-index on visionary. And that's how they ascend into that position is they really over-index on one of those two things.
I mean, some people are balanced, but a lot of that is just years of training, not natural. So if you're on the visionary side and you're not just, and I apologize for the long question, but I think some people classify themselves as visionary and really they're just lazy.
So let's say that's not the case, right? Let's say you are actually just, you're more of that visionary side said how do you come down into the details or how do you manage this part of the we and be fair to your team because that's sometimes what i even worry about myself is because i'm not detail oriented and it really sucks the life out of me i feel like i'm not sometimes being fair to my team because i'm so terrible at the details, if that makes sense. It makes complete sense.
And boy, where to go with that one? So let me back up because We Obsessed Over Details was purposely moved to be the last principle because if you start off with an obsession over details, I think you're setting the team up and yourself for failure. Like to me, that's the icing on the cake.
It is how the level of obsession over details to me is indicative up to the level of care that we put into the product or service that we offer to those we serve. So that's the macro view of that principle the the the the scenario that you just teed up, you know, the visionary versus kind of the doer is a beautiful illustration for that's why we have teams.
That's why we have teams. No one person is good enough to do it all.
It doesn't exist. Right.
But the way you frame that, and I'm not blowing smoke here, Ryan, the way you frame that was so powerful to me because you talked about it in a way that was so vulnerable. And that's where a lot of leaders fail is they don't acknowledge what they're not good at.
And by the way, the team's well aware of what you're not good at. I'm certain your team will echo everything you just said.
No, Ryan's not good at the details. That's not his thing.
My former colleagues and the folks that reported to me throughout my entire career would tell you, Kyle sucks at the details. There are a few things I'll go really deep on that used to drive people crazy.
This is who I am. But nobody goes it alone, man.
So the more open we are about our shortcomings, the more vulnerable we are about our flaws and our gaps and the things that we'd like to develop in ourselves, because leadership is a never ending journey. We should always be learning, always.
But when you acknowledge an area of opportunity for yourself to your team, especially those that report to you, you've now established a sense of trust that you didn't have before. Why? Because nobody trusts the boss that knows it all.
Nobody trusts the boss that seems to have all the answers, is never rattled, is never concerned. That's not human.
So when we're vulnerable and share these things, like, I'm not good at this, guys. I need to hire someone that can help me keep my eye on the details.
I need to hire. So that's what a team is all about.
But hiding behind or not acknowledging your shortcomings as a leader creates a false facade that will not kind of, you won't bond with your team if they sense that you're being a fraud. I always say authenticity and relatability equals trust.
If my team sees that I'm authentic with them and I can relate, look, I'm nervous about this thing we've got going on.

We've got some competitive threats that we weren't aware of. Right.

We've got some competitive threats that we weren't aware of, right? We've got whatever the scenario is, whatever headwinds we're facing. For the leader to not acknowledge that those are real just creates this barrier.
Like, what the hell is this guy paying attention to? Like, he should be terrified, right? So, you know, just to kind of round that out and back to the original question, what I what I encourage people to do is focus on the details to the point where it's not dragging you down or slowing you down.

But you've got to obsess over them, not not just because your customers and your clients deserve that as the leader, your team is following.

So when they see your level of obsession with details or if you're haphazard with the details, you've now given them permission to also be haphazard with the details. So it's about leaving an example.
Yeah, I love that. I think, you know, one of the things that – and this is something that I've had to – I've realized post 10 years of executive leadership positions, right? So this isn't something I knew coming in, but I have been blessed with almost no ego in the sense of like, I have to be right, right? So like another thing we say, I have all these little ditties that I say, because I'm neurotic about that, probably like you, right? When you're in these positions right so i say it's not about getting it right it's about b it's not about being right it's about getting it right guys i don't care who has the answer if you know our head of accounting sees something in our sales process that seems broken and she can make an appropriate uh you know, without being accusatory or whatever, an appropriate

suggestion, you as the head of sales need to, and I actually had to let somebody go for this very reason, right? Instead of listening to her, he came back at her like, you don't know what you're talking about. Not understanding that she has 10 years of sales experience before she became an accounting finance person, right? So like now I'm seeing this interaction.
I have to address it with him. He obviously then dug his own grave by doing a whole bunch of things and saying a whole bunch of things that were inappropriate to this culture, right? To this idea that this woman just gave you an idea that could help you.
Even if it helped you get 1% better, why would you care that it came from her and came from accounting and didn't come from some other spot? Like that to me, the ego involved there is such a debilitating force in people. And when I smell that on somebody, it's like toxic to me.
Like even when you're at a conference, you might be walking around and you, you know, and you're, you know, just talking to people, shaking hands, learning people, asking questions,

I mean, doing all the things that you do.

You get that sense of like that hardcore ego and it just like permeates off of people.

And where that may have been cool 40 years ago today, to me, I see it as absolute weakness

in, in the, in the, in the worst sense. And, and it's, it's like, it's like you just want to stay as far away from it as you can.
Ego is the enemy. It's the enemy.
Because the boss who has to be right can't be told that there's another option. It's my way or the highway.
Insert any cliche you like here. That is the enemy of progress.
But the story you just told is so profound. One of the other we's, my favorite actually, is we number eight, we challenge each other.
Because, and I'm sure you've seen it in your business, right? And kudos and right on to the woman you just mentioned who identified, she took action. She identified an opportunity to be things better, do things better.
She took number four and she ran with it to number eight. We challenge each other.
If you want to be mediocre, you want to be average, don't have challenges in your business. You always want to innovate, try to be ahead of the curve, beat your competition.
And you've got to have an environment rich in challenges. But you said something that without even realizing it just it struck a chord with me.
And it's it's's something I preach on this we this principle the challenge must be grounded in either data or experience and she brought experience to that challenge it's not her opinion she didn't just walk in and say hey here because you said it yourself she had 10 years of sales experience she brought real fundamental challenge and he failed at number nine which is we embrace challenge you can't have one without the other because then you've got anarchy. Yeah.
Yeah. Challenge to me is kind of like the mother of invention inside of a team, inside of a team in business, especially.
Yeah. To continue on the Ryan Holiday theme of ego is the enemy, you know, we live by kind of the obstacle is the way mentality here.
And, you know, another, again, I love the little ditties, but, you know, I always say easy is for the ordinary. Easy is for the ordinary.
If you want easy, easy is for the ordinary. Like, that is the ordinary person that you see walking down the street who is unhappy, who is overweight, who isn't in the position that they thought that they would be in when they were a kid, when they were daydreaming, when they were a kid, that person chooses easy.
That's why they're in the position that they're in. So if you don't want that life, got to choose hard.
Hard literally becomes, you know, man, I had a guest a couple of weeks ago that said, oh, no, this is going to drive me nuts. He said, obstacles are an invitation.
He said, look at obstacles as an invitation. And I was like, I love that idea because you can accept an invitation and you can decline an invitation, right? So I love the kind of like second level thinking that comes with that idea of you're presented with an obstacle and, you know, you now have the choice.
Am I the kind of person who takes on obstacles, who takes on challenges, who chooses hard and becomes extraordinary? Or am I the person who declines that invitation and chooses ordinary? And, you know, these kind of thought experiments, I think, well, the people who listen to this show certainly understand them and enjoy them, or they wouldn't continue to listen because I love this shit. But to me, these like little ditties and these little like wedges that you can stick in your mind are so vitally important to our day-to-day success.
But brother, the thing that I think is so beautiful about the invitation is it's perpetual. You can always choose.
The guy you mentioned walking down the street, overweight, unhealthy, not in the place he viewed himself being at this stage of his life. It ain't over.
Yep. Make the choice, man.
And that's, and that's how I approach a lot of my talks on stage is, is because I'm not naive, right? I get it. There are people, maybe even in your audience that do not subscribe to the paradigm that we're discussing now.

They don't just, certainly not inside the workplace.

They kind of feel like work is to go to,

clock in, clock out, leave it there.

And that's okay.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But if you want to find fulfillment,

have a greater impact than you maybe have ever had,

be anything other than ordinary,

it starts with making a choice.

Everything you just said,

the word choose and choice resonated so loudly with me over and over because that choice is always there. It's always there.
And I think the key, and I want to be cognizant of your time and of the audiences, and I also want to leave them wanting more because I think it's a very important book for people to get, particularly leaders. And the vast majority, about 60% of our audience is insurance professionals from all different walks of the industry.
And in particular, I think the insurance folks who are listening to this, this is the kind of cultural change that will separate you from a recruiting standpoint, because so many of our peers in this industry, in the insurance industry in particular, and this goes for everybody listening, but I just knowing the insurance industry as well as I do, there is such a hierarchical, almost like fiefdom type scenario in the insurance industry and the way these organizations are set up and led, that if you can embrace some of these principles and this idea of we and come down, I don't want to say come down to the level, but create a level conversational atmosphere in your organization. It doesn't mean you're not still the one that the buck stops with.
You're not still the one with equity in the organization. That is a big misnomer, but this is a way to recruit people, these ideas.

If you're being challenged on how to recruit people operating with these type of cultural norms, this attracts the kind of person, these high-performance individuals.

They don't work well for long in these top-down dictatorial organizations.

They don't last very long in those high-performance people.

They're looking for this. Dude, dude, I think it's wonderful.
I think the work that you're doing is tremendous. And I'm so happy that we had a chance to connect here on the podcast.
Yeah. Thank you for having me, brother.
It's been a great experience. I will leave you with this if we're looking to wrap here.
And I'm going to hearken back to a comment that both of us were just kind of waxing poetic on, and that is the choice.

Right.

I spent more than 20 years of my career, you know, fairly successful career.

But but but I cannot point to you one accomplishment business wise that that I am so proud of to share that your audience would find value within. I cannot find one.
But if you were to ask me, point to the number of people that you felt like you have had a lasting impact on, your leadership legacy, the thing that they will talk about years from now about you, Kyle, this show would last two hours. You couldn't shut me up.
And I'm just traveling down that path for

one very simple reason. I think so many of us shuffle through our professional lives, promotion to promotion, company to company, as if we're sleepwalking.
I know I did. I know I did until I made the choice to be the leader I never had, to try to find the fulfillment and the optimism with which I entered the workforce, because I think slowly over time we lose that.
You know, there's expression, Ryan, they pay to forget your dreams. Yeah.
And I think that is so pervasive inside the corporate world. We come in with so much energy and optimism, maybe a degree of naivete as well, and they pay us to forget our dreams.
And out the window goes our level of fulfillment, satisfaction, and most of all, the impact that we can have. I simply want to introduce folks to a different way of approaching their professional lives.
And I'll certainly, finally, we'll close with this. If you're kind enough to go out and check out the book or look into the principles, I would encourage you to read them and digest them, not just from a corporate or businessy perspective.
That's been the most, it's been the most welcomed, unanticipated byproduct of my whole journey is complete strangers reaching out to me to say these principles have changed how they raise their children. I have chills saying that.
It's changed how they approach their relationships. So don't just, you know, don't just folks out there.
Don't just hear our conversation. This is some business wonk trying to get people to lead differently or sell a bunch of books.
I promise you, and I'd love to hear from those that disagree. If you give a real, genuine, legitimate shot at living your life and especially leading with these principles, the reward that will come will be something like you've never experienced.
That's the Kyle McDowell promise. Take that for what it's worth.
Yeah, I do. I love it.
I agree. I mean, I was reading through it and I was going, this could apply to marriage.
This could apply to coaching. This could apply to how you handle your kids, how you deal with people in your community.
I mean, this, it's, don't be an asshole is basically what I mean. That's so true.
I gave a talk the other day. I had this great kind of buildup and I said, I got the answer to this study, you guys.
if you want to be a great leader, here's the formula, be a good human. Yeah.
Be a good human. Some, for some reason, and surprisingly, when you're good to other people, other people tend to be good to you.
That's just shocking that the world would work that way. But you know, it's so, it's so, it's so simple, but so profound.
So if people want to connect with you, like on the socials or whatever,

like just give them the rundown on the places that they can go.

Yes, sir.

So all platforms are at Kyle McDowell Inc.

My website is kylemcdowellinc.com.

And I say this with 100% authenticity.

I love to hear from those that might be struggling in their leadership journey.

For people that have ideas, they want to bounce off of me.

I'm here for you.

Please reach out.

I'd love to hear from you.

Yeah, I appreciate you so much, man.

Thanks for coming on.

My pleasure.

Thanks, Ryan.

I'm going to jump boom. Thank you.
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