The Pattern Everyone Feels But Nobody Names

00:00 – 00:07 [Chris]

Mr. Shaun Dyke, it has been too long coming. Welcome to my podcast. [laughs]

00:07 – 00:11 [Shaun]

Well, I’m, uh, happy to be here and graced to be on your very popular podcast.

00:11 – 00:18 [Chris]

Thank you. Thank you. So I’m gonna try and keep this professional as we, we try to oscillate between professional and hilarious often. [laughs]

00:18 – 00:21 [Shaun]

So low success rate of probability in this already you know that.

00:21 – 00:24 [Chris]

That’s true, but there’s editing capabilities that-

00:24 – 01:02 [Chris]

… those listening won’t know about. But I do want people to know what they’re getting themselves into because all jokes aside and fun and games aside, the work we do at Door 2, uh, the conversations you and I have had over the past four or five years I, I do think are some of the most influential, thought-provoking conversations I’ve had in a long time. And I wanna make sure that I bring that to the listeners of this podcast. So I wanna start here. You coach senior executives, founders, CEOs of legitimately billion-dollar companies, and these are people who already have access to everything, the best of everything.

01:03 – 01:11 [Chris]

What are they getting from you when they hire you to coach them that they can’t get elsewhere, and what does it even mean?

01:11 – 01:22 [Shaun]

Yeah, let’s hope a lot. Um, there’s a few pieces that I would say. I think oftentimes people think when you do coaching work … Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it? They think you’re giving advice.

01:22 – 01:43 [Shaun]

Now, in the purest form of coaching though, you’re, you’re not giving advice. You’re, you’re, you’re listening, um, and giving counsel or allowing them to explore. So we aren’t giving advice. I’d say there’s three main things we give. One is perspective, the other is accountability, and the third is a mirror. So if I can expand for a second on it.

01:43 – 03:22 [Shaun]

I think you’re incredibly right that the vast majority of executives have relatively unlimited resources. They’ve got titles and capabilities around them. But what they don’t tend to have is a space where they get to be honest, vulnerable, and still pushed a bit. So we create that space. Most executives, most high-performing folks tend to be in a posture where they need to have the answers. They need to be setting direction. They need to be the tiebreaker. They need to be creating clarity on it. But most don’t live in that state perpetually, right? There’s some spot where they need to be able to drop the armor for a minute, acknowledge uncertainty and vulnerability, have a sparring partner to work with on what are we trying to accomplish and what are we trying to do? And, uh, uniquely bring some doubt into the dialogue, bring uncertainty into that conversation and know that it’s gonna be not just protected, but leveraged and curated and amplified in a way that’s really powerful. So you know this. We tend to say that at Door 2, leadership takes place in the arena, not in the stands. Our goal is how do we help individuals work through the complexity of the lives and the leadership that they have and move toward a better outcome? And we do that with something that sounds really simplistic, a very under-practiced, very underutilized skill in the world, which is knowing how to be direct and honest in a non-emotional, non-self-serving way.

03:22 – 03:45 [Shaun]

So how do we hold up a mirror, give them direct clarity and awareness around how they’re doing and the things that they’re doing that are serving them or not serving them, but they will always experience that we are in their corner and not feel the need to be combative, adversarial, justifying, bring false security to the table.

03:45 – 03:49 [Shaun]

So I guess at its highest level, I’d say that’s what we are doing for folks.

03:49 – 04:20 [Chris]

Now, there’s another element that I think you undersold a bit that I wanna go into, which is, I won’t use names for obviously confidentiality reasons, but I know ’cause we talked about it, uh, last week, two weeks ago, you went to work with an executive team that they are currently in charge of a billion-dollar, uh, well-known brand. That CEO found you because another executive of a billion-dollar brand recommended them.

04:21 – 04:58 [Chris]

So when you’re in these circles, you and the, the other consultants at Door 2, it’s resonating. It is having impact at the highest levels of business, so much so that they’re willing to stake their reputation on recommending you. What is it, and, and I’m gonna ask you to be, you know, honest and vulnerable, about, let’s say, you specifically and the work that the consultants at Door 2 do, that you think makes us stick out? Because I have my vantage point b- being both outside and now inside the company, but you’re the one these people are calling up. What do you think it is?

04:58 – 05:05 [Shaun]

Yeah. I, I would love to say that it’s a singular thing. Um, I think it’s multiple things. So if you’ll, if you’ll give me the grace to talk through multiple things.

05:05 – 05:10 [Shaun]

Uh, if we know anything about me, and we know that I’m not short in my-

05:10 – 05:11 [Chris]

I was gonna say, we know you don’t-

05:12 – 05:16 [Chris]

Between you and me, we could talk for three days. [laughs]

05:16 – 05:30 [Shaun]

We know you can talk. We know … Uh, ’cause I think there’s multiple pieces in it. So let’s, let’s, uh, start a couple different places. One is we really care. There’s an authentic, genuine give a shit, if I can say that.

05:31 – 09:10 [Shaun]

We don’t get off a call or get off an interaction with an individual and just view that as a transactional dialogue. Like, I leave those meetings deep in thought about those humans and their realities and the people that they are affecting. We always say this, right? That leaders are dinner table conversations of the people that they lead, right? That that matters. Like, it really authentically matters. And if we’re not bringing that complementary level of matter to it, we’re just not even coming close to meeting ’em halfway or where they need us. I’d add to it and say that we tend to treat all of the people that are w-we’re fortunate to work with as red phones, right? Meaning executives don’t run into problems Monday through Friday, nine to five. Hmm. It’s 24/7 issues. And so when I get a text at two o’clock at the soccer field where I’m watching my kids play on a Saturday, now I’m gonna do my best to create balance and I’m gonna, I’m gonna push people that I work with to make sure they have balance. But I’m also gonna be mindful that as soon as I get a moment, I’m gonna ping them and see what’s going on. So I think wide availability in it. So now let’s bring care present into it, high degrees of availability. And then something that I kind of touched on, but it sounds simplistic. Truth is complicated. The vast majority of us grow up learning the idea that if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. So what happens whenever someone sees a behavior in someone that is suboptimal or something that they could do differently? Most people do one of two things. They either avoid truth to preserve comfort, or they weaponize truth to assert their own ego. I’ll pause or I’ll state again. I’m gonna avoid truth to preserve comfort. So in one scenario, I’m just not gonna be direct. I’m especially not gonna be direct with somebody two levels above me. Right. So if they’re doing something, emperor has no clothes. Mm-hmm. So if they’re behaving in a way that is not optimal… I literally had two calls today where I’m doing 360s for an executive, and even though I create that safe space for them to let me know, “Hey, what’s this person doing that’s just crushing it? And what is this individual doing that’s getting in their way?” There’s just a timidness. You can see it in the shuffling of the papers, the uncertainty of their body movements as they’re giving direct feedback about the individual. Now, this is circuitous. This is through me. So the ability to know how to give authentic and honest direct feedback to somebody, we just don’t. They, people preserve comfort and they avoid truth. The flip side is they bring righteousness or anger or irritation to the dialogue, and then they weaponize that truth or their perceived truth in an assertive way. So we tend to be very focused on, we’ve really curated our ability to be gracefully supportive and direct. You know how we always say this, the language we always use in this is we do two things really well. We comfort the afflicted, meaning the vast majority of people that we get to work with are afflicted by a lot of noise, a lot of pressures, a lot of challenges, a lot of uncertainty. And so we create a space that allows them to work through those. The flip side we do really well as well, which is we afflict the comforted, which means if you are authoring your own drama, we are gonna gracefully help you see that. And those combination of skill sets, they just don’t tend to materialize, uh, frequently in the world. So we try to speak truth without ego. We will challenge without judgment as much as we can, and we try to care without enabling them.

09:12 – 11:14 [Shaun]

I’ll never forget early on when we were talking about working together, you said that you look to hire people based on attitude and aptitude. Attitude is how you approach the world. Aptitude is what you’re capable of learning and applying. I wanna focus on that second one, the aptitude, the tools and frameworks that you have to be able to understand, comprehend, and wield if you’re gonna do this work. Because honestly, you can listen to 100 leadership podcasts and they’ll all talk about attitude and mindset and how much we care and talk and listen and all of that. Now, I know it’s true. I know you all do that incredibly well, but listeners just have to take our word for it. Something more concrete is the actual skills, the models behind it, the secret sauce, if you will, that is based in legitimately decades of behavioral science. And I wanna tell you a quick story that I haven’t told you yet. I just thought about it in preparing for this. I was at- Oh, fantastic … I was at one of our clients, uh, a couple weeks ago doing a workshop, and a, a, a VP there came up to me and we were talking and your name came up and he said, “Man, that, that dude, it, it almost scares me because there’s been a bunch of times I’ve been in meetings with him and he’s just observing. He’s just watching, and he’ll stand up in the middle of it, stop the conversation and highlight three or four things that are happening that everybody can feel, but nobody can name.” That sounds like witchcraft, right? [laughs] What is that? Because again, keep in mind, the vast majority of people listening, like they’ll be lucky if they’ve ever worked with any type of coach. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about what that is and what those tools are that allow you to see things differently and bring that value to, you know, executives and families and all the people we work with. You bet. And I wanna first, if I can, I wanna speak to that first thing that you said. This space can be perceived as really commoditized,

11:15 – 13:34 [Shaun]

right? So the idea of having a coach, a consultant, an advisor, um, man, there are, you, you can, you know, can’t swing a stick without hitting one, right? Yeah. There’s, there’s a lot. They usually have a puffy vest on. [laughs] There’s a lot of us that live in this space. So it can be easy to perceive that the, well, what do you do? You listen, uh, you consider their problem set, and then you give advice to them. I mean, on some level, sure. That’s, that’s not totally inaccurate. However, to your point, I know that we’ve curated a set of models and competencies inside of this org that’s uncommon, and I think my biggest bump into that reality was when I joined this firm. Like I came, this is a, gee, it’s a decade ago now. Mm-hmm. How is that possible? Um, when I came into this firm, I came in with, um, a bit of arrogance. Like I thought I was pretty good at what I did. I felt like IUh, I had established relationships. I knew how to coach. I could facilitate. I knew what leadership was. Like I, I knew what an MBTI, a Fibro B was. [laughs] Right? And then I came into this firm and I just kinda got, uh, a bit of whiplash in realizing, uh, the amount of things that I did not know about human behavior and connectivity into it. And a lot of that goes back into really the founding of this firm, and we’ve talked about this a bit. Well, Dr. Brad Spencer, uh, founded this firm almost five decades ago, and he did a phenomenal job of saying, “Hey, let’s look at the fact that we have to have an acute understanding of business dynamics and an acute understanding of human dynamics.” So how do we make sure that we know human behavior when it’s at its best, human behavior when it’s at its worst, insecurities, egos, issues, lack of trust, all those pieces? Now let’s combine those in group-based settings like straight incentive structures, competitiveness, peer-based environments, where all of a sudden you just get this Petri dish of pathology around people behaving in ways that can be really suboptimal to these desired outcomes of any business. If we’re trying to figure out in a business, how do we, how do we leverage our human capital in the most effective way to get to a desired outcome, but we create conditions where my wife tends to, whenever people ask me, ask her what I do, she says, um, “He helps leaders play well in the sandbox.”

13:35 – 13:46 [Shaun]

And when, uh, they pry, she says like, “You know, sometimes they steal each other’s shovel or they throw sand in their face,” and like we don’t do that. And to a degree, there’s some truth inside of that, right?

13:47 – 14:38 [Shaun]

So where’s all that come from? Um, many of these you know. Like we tend to look at, um, a couple different behavioral models that we use. One of them is, uh, Dr. Taibi Kahler’s model on process communication. And when I first got exposure to this one, again, like so many of these, I was like, “Oh, it’s a communication model,” and I gave it some reductive approach with it. And then I started digging into it and realizing the complexity behind this, uh, model and really understanding the dynamics at play in each of us through childhood formation and environmental stimuli that have been embedded in how we tend to show up. Well, all of those things start materializing in these constellations of traits. Those traits become visible in the way we interact with the world around us.

14:39 – 15:19 [Shaun]

This could be the simple things, words, tones, gesture, posture, facial expression. They’re all behavioral indicators around drive, insecurity, distress response about who those people are in different spaces. So how do we bring wizard math to the table? Well, we, we put pen to paper and we learn. We become students of humans to recognize what’s coming at me, how do I read that appropriately, and what’s the probable linkage showing up inside of it? It’s honestly not as complex as we would think it is. It just takes some time to learn.

15:19 – 15:23 [Shaun]

You gotta be willing to be a student of people. So that’s one of them.

15:23 – 15:36 [Chris]

Well, and I wanna, I wanna hear the other ones, but to your point real quick there, when you say it’s not that complex, what I’ve learned is the, the first layer is not that complex, right? So being able to say maybe, “If I listen to you, what’s coming at me?”

15:37 – 15:45 [Chris]

You can learn that in a, in a workshop, right? In a couple days. But then what to do with it, what does it mean, what led to that, how do I respond? That does get-

15:45 – 15:46 [Shaun]

It’s gonna take time

15:46 – 15:56 [Chris]

… it’s not complex. It just takes practice. And we’re gonna actually, for those listening, we’re gonna talk about some of this here in a minute. So great. All right. So we got Kahler’s model.

15:56 – 17:18 [Shaun]

The other one that we tend to lean on, and there are a few as you know, but I will say the two sort of prominent ones that we’ll focus on inside of it. One is, um, or the other one is tied into David McClelland’s work on motive theory. We’ll couch it in the idea that there’s always a goal present and there’s always a why behind human behavior. So any time we watch someone do something, any, any time somebody’s doing something, whether they’re being watched or not is irrelevant, there’s a reason for that. When you pick up a glass of water, it’s ’cause you’re thirsty, or if you’ve got a, if you’re scratching, you’ve got an itch. And then we start extrapolating that into different places, like why does a person call their significant other when they’re on their car ride home? Or why does an individual stay awake late at night and research a competitor? Or any set of behavior. Why is it that when somebody is in a meeting, they may raise their voice, attempt to posture, bring more emotional content into it? So there’s an understanding in David McClelland’s work on motive theory that looks at the vast majority of all behavior can be tied back to sort of three underlying motives. The highlight reel on those, you can go do the dig in work if you want, or you can tell me to chase it as much as you want to.

17:18 – 18:05 [Shaun]

That people tend to be driven by one of three things. They’re driven by affiliation, so the desire to connect and relate to people. Um, they want to establish, maintain, restore friendly relationships with folks. They’re fearful of disrupting relationships. So if they’ve got a good relationship in play, they don’t wanna break that up. So if I have a high degree of affiliation in me, affiliation motive, then my tendency is gonna show it, to show up and materialize behavior in a way that’s gonna be oriented around maintaining that. The second one is called achievement. So this is an individual that wants to do things bigger, better, faster, more efficiently. How do I optimize in all areas of life? How do I get through the TSA line quicker? God, please help me figure out how to do that one.

18:05 – 18:09 [Chris]

[laughs] You gotta have TSA and Clear. There, I just solved your problem.

18:09 – 18:11 [Shaun]

That is true. Nice. Which is getting worse now. I need Clear-

18:11 – 18:12 [Shaun]

… there’s like a Clear, extra Clear.

18:12 – 18:13 [Chris]

I know.

18:13 – 18:14 [Shaun]

Super Clear.

18:14 – 18:14 [Chris]

Super Clear.

18:14 – 19:06 [Shaun]

Something in it. Um-You know, if you, uh, tend to go to the grocery store and you’re being super mindful of how you organize your shopping list and how you walk through the aisles or if, uh, you tend to be very goal-oriented in creating the checklist and the plans, it’s, you know, there’s a probability that you’ve got this underlying motive driver of achievement. And the last one, um, always gets reactances to it because of the word, but it’s called power in his model. It’s, uh, basically influence. I’m operating from a vantage point where I’m desirous of influencing others or the world around me. So achievement, affiliation, and power. So we know that people have a why behind when they do something. The example we always use, which sounds super simplistic inside of this, is, um, we ask a gentleman in the room if they have a beard, why they’re wearing a beard. And just allow them to give you that answer.

19:06 – 19:24 [Shaun]

What is driving that behavior? You get a myriad of responses from that behavior. Sometimes it’s modeling somebody that they saw as a hero figure in their life that they thought was someone they admired. Oftentimes, it’s a significant other has told them that they look better with that one.

19:24 – 19:26 [Chris]

It was just a … Dude, we’ve never had this conversation.

19:26 – 19:31 [Chris]

I was just about to say, which one is when your wife is just like, “I like you better with that”?

19:31 – 19:32 [Chris]

All right, fine. That’s it.

19:32 – 19:33 [Shaun]

Yeah. Affiliation, right?

19:33 – 19:34 [Shaun]

It’s all affiliation.

19:34 – 19:35 [Chris]

Okay, got it.

19:35 – 19:38 [Shaun]

You’re, you’re trying to please the individual. In the vast majority of the time, that’s the case.

19:38 – 19:47 [Shaun]

My degree of scruff in there is my wife always told me when I was younger that, like, uh, you know, I looked like a … Especially if I put a ball cap on, she said I looked like a child, so she always wanted me to, like, wear a beard.

19:48 – 19:55 [Shaun]

Now it’s all gray. So she’s like, “You maybe you should shave it now. Maybe we could get rid of that ’cause, uh, [laughs] now maybe we need to get some youthful space in there.”

19:55 – 19:56 [Chris]

There you go.

19:56 – 20:26 [Shaun]

But so one of the models inside that we use is underlying driver behavior. Why that’s super important is that it is at play even when your brain is not engaged, meaning when you’re unconscious, when you’re just bumping around the world, when you’re at your 12th meeting of the day, it becomes a dominant driver of the way you show up. So if we can help create awareness into who’s at the helm when you aren’t-

20:26 – 20:45 [Shaun]

… consciously steering your behavior, and then also this deepened understanding of those constellations of traits that have really materialized in you throughout your collective development as a child and in, uh, into adulthood, all of a sudden, that mirror that we were talking about holding up becomes really clear.

20:45 – 20:54 [Shaun]

I become really aware of how I am tending to show up in the world, and how the world is likely experiencing me, and whether or not that’s serving me or not.

20:54 – 21:08 [Chris]

Love that. I’m gonna walk through what you said from my perspective briefly to try to translate some things to the listeners, and you tell me, you highlight the areas that you think, “Yes, no, maybe so.” Okay?

21:09 – 21:25 [Chris]

So we started this most recent conversation here with the fact that I, I had a leader come up to me and say, like, “You can spot things, behaviors in people that they don’t see that have a big impact on a room or a team or an organization.” And I said, “How do you do that?” And, and you started listing the tools.

21:27 – 21:30 [Chris]

So the vast majority of people you’re working with are high-level leaders.

21:30 – 22:00 [Chris]

Now, we’re gonna talk about the podcast that you and I are doing separately and the book that we’re gonna write and all the things that are, that are for the, the world to experience, but our clients’ leaders. What they’re trying to do is show up themselves in a better way and influence others to show up in a certain way. So ultimately, is it fair to say that the primary concern of the leaders you’re working with is behavior, their behavior and others’ behavior?

22:01 – 22:04 [Shaun]

Um, yes. I would say-

22:04 – 22:06 [Chris]

I know it’s reductive, but like-

22:06 – 22:12 [Shaun]

Well, it, it is … Yes. I, I guess my amplifier to that would be that is that to what end?

22:12 – 22:16 [Shaun]

So I would say at some level it’s ultimately to, oh, to achieve a result.

22:16 – 22:16 [Chris]

Results. Great. I love that.

22:16 – 22:27 [Shaun]

However, to understand that your best way to achieve a result is to be conscious of yours and others’ behavior ’cause that’s the currency that’s gonna get you to the result.

22:27 – 22:40 [Chris]

Very important caveat there. I love that. So yes, they’re, they’re … I mean, looking at it in dollars and cents. I’m gonna pay some dollars to get some return. Now, that return can be financial, but oftentimes it is, you know, through life and all this.

22:40 – 23:02 [Chris]

Okay. So results, we know that behavior drive those results. We have an equation that I think drives so much of what we do is B equals P times E. The behavior you observe is driven by the person times the environment they’re in. And what you just spoke to, these models, is it’s the P, it’s the person. It is understanding

23:03 – 23:17 [Chris]

what is happening in a person, what’s driving that, how can I see it, how can I know it, and what does that mean? So it is one half of that behavior equation is the person itself.

23:18 – 23:21 [Chris]

The other half is the environment they’re in-

23:21 – 23:32 [Chris]

… which we also talk about. So tell me a little bit about that environment component, and then we’ll put it all together to understand how do you break down behavior?

23:32 – 23:42 [Shaun]

Yeah. To get full attribution, I wish we could take ownership of that, right? That’s Kurt Lewin’s, that behavior is a function of the person times the environment. Skinnerian theory is gonna live heavier on the person.

23:42 – 23:44 [Chris]

Who do what? Did you just make up a word?

23:44 – 23:46 [Shaun]

Skinnerian theory, B.F. Skinner, you know?

23:46 – 23:46 [Chris]

Oh, Skinner.

23:47 – 23:47 [Shaun]

Like Lewin.

23:47 – 23:53 [Chris]

I didn’t know he had a, he had … What is it called when they, like, name something after you? Like Stimp- Stimpian.

23:53 – 23:54 [Shaun]

Stimpian?

23:57 – 23:57 [Chris]

[laughs] Stimpian. [laughs]

23:57 – 23:59 [Shaun]

[laughs] That’s awesome.

23:59 – 24:01 [Shaun]

I don’t know that that exists. We should make it exist.

24:01 – 24:02 [Chris]

It will.

24:02 – 24:02 [Shaun]

It will. It’s a good name.

24:02 – 24:07 [Chris]

You know, everything that you listen to on this podcast, that’s what it is, Stimpian thought process.

24:07 – 24:08 [Shaun]

It’s Stimpirian is what we’re gonna call it.

24:08 – 24:09 [Chris]

Ooh, I like that.

24:09 – 24:10 [Shaun]

It’s gonna be on somehow. Uh,

24:11 – 24:28 [Shaun]

yeah, so no, Skinnerian theory tends to focus primarily on the person inside of it. So, and I think this is actually… an interesting space. In our coaching work, we tend to lean a lot on working with the P in that equation, the person in that equation.

24:28 – 24:54 [Shaun]

In our organizational sort of consulting work side that we do, we work on the complementary side of that, which is the E component in this. Because good old attribution to a Simon Sinek, uh, example that I love is, you know, he says a snowmobile is designed to, to go like hell in the snow. So you put that thing on a dirt track, and I don’t care how well that thing’s tuned to function in the snow, it’s not gonna function as well.

24:54 – 25:13 [Shaun]

So if we take a really capable, aware, intelligent individual, P, person, and we drop them into an environment that is sub-optimized to invite the best out of them, then we’re really sedating potential from them.

25:13 – 26:11 [Shaun]

We’re reducing the impact that that person could have. So what is the E inside of this? The world in which we work in, we tie it directly to something called climate. If you think about it on a more macro scale, the vast majority of the world’s gonna consider it culture. They’re gonna look at this space that says, “What is the company culture like that I work in? What does it, what does it collectively feel like to here? What’s it feel like to work here? What’s important to us? What are the values that we write on the wall? So do they support me? Do they invest in my growth? Is engagement important?” We tighten that up to something called climate. It’s a subset of culture. It’s an immediately impactable set of variables that we can look at. Culture takes time to shape, a significant amount of time to shape, and there’s a whole lot of intangible components tied into it. Climate is something that we can adjust, like, immediately. We can lean in really heavily to it. So what’s climate? Climate hits a few things. A highlight reel of them.

26:11 – 26:29 [Shaun]

It hits clarity. Is clarity present for folks? The vast majority of the time with the folks that we work with, no is the answer. It’s not. We think it is, and we always get that great answer when we say, “Do people have role and goal clarity?” And the response is, “Well, they should.”

26:29 – 26:29 [Chris]

They should.

26:29 – 26:33 [Shaun]

“Like, we said it. Like, we talked about it.” That’s great. That’s not who we ask, right?

26:33 – 27:14 [Shaun]

So then we just end up, like, diverting off onto all kinds of other non-value added activities. We always say that when people don’t have clarity, they will play their own game. They do the things that are motivating to them. So in the absence of providing good role and goal clarity, you’re super sub-optimizing your talent base to, to, to get toward outcomes you want. So clarity’s one. Things like responsibility, understanding their role. Things like reward. Do people feel recognized and appreciated and supported for the work that they’re doing there? So does the environment invite the best out of you? Think about a time, like you’ve, you and I have had this happen, right? Walk into a room, and you can feel-

27:14 – 27:14 [Chris]

Feel

27:14 – 27:15 [Shaun]

… the room.

27:15 – 27:16 [Shaun]

And it’s not a good feeling.

27:17 – 27:34 [Shaun]

Right? Your, your intention is to button up, to constrain your voice, to… Now, you gotta take in some data to know if you can even speak up right now, and you inhibit what you need to say based on authority figures in the room, tonality in the room, um,

27:36 – 27:51 [Shaun]

just that collective feeling state. And the inverse is true as well. You’ve walked into spaces where there’s an openness about it. You can feel the willingness and the warmth. It doesn’t mean that we’re like, you know, have balloons and cupcakes everywhere.

27:51 – 28:04 [Shaun]

But it means that your voice matters, and you can tell that there’s actual genuine desire to hear from you, and, uh, you’re invited to show up in a way. That space is the E.

28:05 – 28:14 [Shaun]

So culturally and climate wise, we lean heavily into do leaders, through their individual behavior,

28:15 – 28:24 [Shaun]

create environments that invite the people they lead to do and be their very best? By the way, works at your house as well.

28:25 – 28:28 [Shaun]

So you get to take stock of, “Do I do this at home?”

28:28 – 28:36 [Chris]

And I wanna go back to Kayler’s model, and I wanna give an example of how you specifically, because I had you in my house on the spot,

28:38 – 29:14 [Chris]

changed a result I was getting in a big way but with the smallest insight. So Kayler’s model, the one we use, it helps you understand people, and I’m gonna ask you to elaborate on that. But as a teaser, uh, my wife is a very, very strong harmonizer. That’s her personality type. And the harmonizers are warm, relational, uh, sensory. They’re feeling people, okay? The way they experience the world is through their emotions. Uh, they wanna connect with others. There’s a lot more that goes into this. And you knew that that’s my wife’s primary personality type.

29:15 – 29:25 [Chris]

And she made us dinner, I think it was. I walked by her and I said, “Hey, by the way, thanks. That was great.” And you went, “Um, absolutely not.”

29:26 – 30:26 [Chris]

And I was like, “What?” And you said, “Harmonizer, right?” And now we have a shorthand, but I knew in that moment I gave a compliment, what I deemed a compliment to somebody, who as a harmonizer, as that personality type, will never experience that as a compliment. Because a person who wants to connect and be relatable doesn’t want you to say, “Oh, by the way, thanks for that.” They want to be connected with. They want you to engage with them, drop tonality. And so I tell this story because then right there I said, “Oh my gosh, Shaun, you’re right. Hey, babe. Sorry about that. I just wanted to say I really appreciate you and the amount of work you put into, not just our dinner, but what you do in this house. And so, you know, thank you.” Different tonality, different approach. I realized for probably a decade I’ve been complimenting or thanking my wife in a way that doesn’t land for her based off who she is.

30:27 – 30:37 [Shaun]

And all of this comes from this incredible model that I gotta tell you, I had never heard of in 15 years in, in this space. Yeah.

30:39 – 30:42 [Shaun]

Yeah, no, d- um, a, yes, I 100% remember that.

30:43 – 30:50 [Shaun]

I also, uh, we- I’ve joked with you about this one too, ’cause I loved this one. First time I had dinner with you, I’m sitting at your table.

30:50 – 31:00 [Shaun]

And in classic harmonizer fashion, Heather’s making sure that like kids are taken care of, we’ve got food, all the things, and she sits down, you know, halfway through dinner probably, right? Uh, eats dinner,

31:01 – 31:11 [Shaun]

and then she’s clearing up, and I think we offered, “Hey, uh, do you need some help?” And she’s like, “No, no, I got it,” right? And we’re sitting there, and all of a sudden the lights dimmed.

31:11 – 31:12 [Chris]

Mm-hmm. I remember that.

31:12 – 31:14 [Shaun]

And I said, “Did Heather just set the mood?”

31:14 – 31:15 [Chris]

Mood lit.

31:15 – 31:19 [Shaun]

She mood lit us. She just mood lit the room, right?

31:19 – 31:46 [Shaun]

And because of, in this model and understanding how these constellations of traits materialize in people, Heather’s incredibly other-oriented in her thoughts, so she’s consistently thinking about those around her. Like that is a, that is a natural wiring. So wanting to be kind to you, create those spaces, do the pleasing elements inside of it, she naturally gravitates creating that space. Look, you and I share this. I did not know this model until I joined this firm-

31:46 – 32:08 [Shaun]

… 10 years ago. It, it, it started its world in a really, in a, in a, in a clinical psychiatric space, um, something called the process therapy model, that then got expanded upon into this world. And, I mean, it’s connected with, uh, understanding nuances in people. The one that probably a lot of people will think as you said that, they’re gonna say like, “Oh, is this tied to love languages?”

32:08 – 32:37 [Shaun]

Like Gary Chapman’s body of work. It’s not connected to it, but it’s not inaccurate, right? It’s understanding that individuals have different ways that they, uh, like to interact with the world and express those pieces and feel. And yeah, I mean, the simple one that you’re giving right now in the most tangible way is the way you say things to somebody and the words you use with them have complete and total different realities. Heather, in that moment, did not wanna hear, “Great work.”

32:37 – 32:40 [Shaun]

She wasn’t looking to be complimented on her competency-

32:40 – 32:47 [Shaun]

… in that. She was looking to be complimented on who she is as a person to you, as a spouse, and a compliment to you.

32:49 – 33:42 [Shaun]

Those interactions with individuals, when you understand the nuances about that, those really start to amplify people feeling seen and heard by you. So is that important in the business context? Of course, it helps to amplify impact and influence across the board. But spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, children, feeling that relational connection, knowing that you know how to connect and be present for them. Let’s use a fun different one. You know this one. One of the personality types called rebel. Uh, and they tend to be the spontaneous, creative, outgoing, playful, exciting, don’t like to be bored, looking for fun, uh, aspects of the world. They’re gonna dress loud, they’re gonna be loud, they’re gonna be a lot more energetic and playful. It’s possible you’ve got a little bit of this in you-

33:42 – 33:43 [Shaun]

… from being on this team for so long.

33:43 – 33:44 [Chris]

Might be my predominant type.

33:44 – 33:57 [Shaun]

Right. So when you have a child that is already trying to figure out who they are that you are not, so chase that one one more time, right?

33:58 – 34:04 [Shaun]

Think about your kids do this now. My kids do this now, my younger ones anyway. They wanna emulate and model you.

34:05 – 34:11 [Shaun]

They wanna look like Dad and do things like Dad, and I’m gonna wear the same boots Dad does when he’s gardening or whatever those pieces are, right?

34:11 – 34:20 [Shaun]

They want that, and they all of a sudden hit this point where they actually start trying to figure out who they are that you’re not. Like who am I in my own unique identity in those spaces?

34:20 – 34:29 [Shaun]

So you start getting a little more pushback and a little more challenge, and people will start to look at that as rebellious behavior. That’s different than being a rebel in this model-

34:29 – 34:46 [Shaun]

… but will create a connection into that space. So in this particular scenario, there was a dad that I was working with, and his son had these incredible rebel attributes. Playful, spontaneous, don’t like to be bored, and

34:47 – 35:23 [Shaun]

every personality has that underlying sort of splinter in the back of their mind that’s called an existential question, where they’re curious about it. For the rebel, they’re curious on, am I accepted as I am? Can I show up in a way that’s maybe a little playful, maybe a little wacky, maybe a little… Can I wear a shirt that might be provocative, and you’re still gonna respect and appreciate and love me for who I am? Rebels are always poking and pushing buttons with folks. This dad was having an incredibly difficult time building a relationship with his son because he just interpreted it as irresponsible,

35:24 – 35:33 [Shaun]

and he felt like if he fed into it all, like if he played back, it would be condoning this incredibly inappropriate behavior to be showing up.

35:33 – 35:56 [Shaun]

So they were always vinegar and oil in it. When we spent time with him and he learned that his son is trying to find a way to connect with his dad in a way that he knows how, 14-year-old kid, limited capability sets. He’s using the skills that he’s got available to him at this point, that were likely a formation of the way you parented them, by the way.

35:56 – 35:56 [Chris]

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

35:56 – 36:24 [Shaun]

Right? There’s huge part inside of that. So he spent time with us at this workshop, and he came back and he tells the story. He, he called us like a week afterwards. And he said, “My wife picked me up at the airport. We drove back. It was, it was late in the evening, 7 or 8 o’clock at night. It was dark out, and the trash cans were on the street, and my son was supposed to pull those in.” So he said, “The old me would’ve went inside and said, ‘Again, you know that’s your responsibility. What are you doing with it?’” So instead, he told his wife, he said, “Hey, let me out here.

36:25 – 36:59 [Shaun]

Give me a couple minutes,” and then go and tell his son to come out. And he said, “And I climbed in one of the trash cans and I waited.”And when my son grabbed a hold of it, I jumped out, scared him, he fell on the ground, we started cackling and laughing, and we pulled the trash cans in together, and that started the relationship with my son. I started learning how to connect with him in the way he needed to be connected with, not just default to the pattern of behavior that serves me, that I like, and that I’m used to doing. We call that in the leadership world, we call it lazy leadership.

36:59 – 37:01 [Shaun]

I would also call it lazy parenting.

37:01 – 37:12 [Shaun]

You’re just defaulting to your style that you’re comfortable with and you like, not recognizing that people around you need to adj- you to be willing to adjust to who they are a bit, to be able to connect with them in a different way.

37:12 – 37:36 [Chris]

Yes. You know, hopefully this piqued the interest. So in this one model, which I wanted to focus on because I’ve seen not just its impact, but the curiosity that so many people have in it, and so for those listening, it’s kind of a window in to, to what we do. But also I think it’s the most approachable from real world kind of-

37:36 – 37:36 [Shaun]

Yeah, human

37:36 – 37:50 [Chris]

… understand. Yeah, the human dynamics. So bringing this full circle to where we started and leaders and, and all of this to, you know, a lot of what I’m trying to do is pull back the curtain on what we do. When people hear the word coach, executive coach, what’s it mean?

37:51 – 38:05 [Chris]

How do you leverage this specific model in your coaching to make you more effective, not just at your job, but at influencing people? And how can the rest of the world listening use it as well?

38:07 – 38:28 [Shaun]

Yeah, so let’s take it from the concept of if I’m a leader and I recognize that I wanna get results, and one of the ways that I get results is I focus on behavior. So, and then we bifurcated behavior. We said we wanna focus on self and others. In this model, the first thing we lean into is giving people we coach an

38:30 – 39:13 [Shaun]

personal instruction guide, understanding owner’s manual, understanding who you are and what makes you tick, when you show up at your best, when you show up at your worst, and what maintenance you need to perform. Like how you need to keep yourself in a state that is able to have the level of influence and impact that you wanna have. ‘Cause the vast majority don’t do that well. They compromise it for themselves and for others. So if we think about this idea of an owner’s manual, and we understand that in this model, I first become aware of the character strengths I possess and how to wield those. That’s validating. People like that.

39:14 – 39:39 [Shaun]

They also become really aware of their probable distress response. So when they are not at their best self, how does the world experience them? The vast majority of us know this. We don’t love to acknowledge it. This is one of the things that we often say, worst form of deception is self-deception. So we create awareness for you that no longer allows you to not take responsibility of your yucky behavior when you’re not in a good space.

39:39 – 40:12 [Shaun]

So you become aware that you do that. So, uh, start with self. When am I winning? When am I creating conditions that are not optimal? And that’s, man, there’s a lot of work right there, right? People really have to be willing to dig into that, recognize it, start identifying patterns, be honest with themselves on, shoot, you know what? I do have a tendency to wanna feel competent. So when I’m in a room and I feel like I don’t have the answer, like I got a self-defense mechanism that’ll start firing that gets a little aggressive and starts being a little bit posturing in the room.

40:12 – 40:37 [Shaun]

All right, let’s replace that behavior with something that works. We’ve got awareness, we know, now we can move forward in it. So, so much of that model we leverage to create, it’s the mirror, man. We hold up the mirror that allows them to create deep exploration of self and a strong understanding of who they are and how they’re being experienced by the world. The second part is then starting to recognize the gentleman that was saying we, you know, leverage some version of, of, uh, witchcraft.

40:38 – 41:10 [Shaun]

Y- you start to become aware of all of those behavior patterns in others. And again, as you said, it sounds like it’s like huge. It’s not. It doesn’t have to be that large. You can sit in a room and you can watch when somebody out of irritation or anger drops a comment, and then they’re uncomfortable, and then so is the whole rest of the room, and then you’re confronted with a moment. Are you going to lean into your personal character strengths and your perspective of who you are and say something about it?

41:10 – 41:28 [Shaun]

Are you gonna lean in with truth gracefully, or are you just gonna be quiet and allow that to move forward and really suboptimize this, the environment for it? So that model allows us to really understand self really well and then understand others really well in life, in work,

41:29 – 41:49 [Shaun]

as a teacher, as a student, as a professional, whatever those spaces are. We always say all the time, like the most common thing that connects all of us between the rental car counter clerk and the truck driver and the software coder and your boss and your direct reports is we’re all people.

41:50 – 41:58 [Shaun]

So it allows and encourage us to become students of people. That will serve you in all circumstances.

41:58 – 42:08 [Chris]

I love that. And I, I have to give this quick example to highlight to you how much understanding this can benefit your life, even when it’s small things.

42:09 – 42:24 [Chris]

One of the moments I knew that this model, the process communication model, was gonna be helpful, as you mentioned, rebel is a really strong personality type for me, and it says rebels in distress, so when they’re not at their best, there’s a couple things they will do, and one of them,

42:25 – 42:30 [Chris]

right on the screen when I was sitting in your workshop said, “They will growl.”

42:31 – 42:46 [Chris]

And I was like, “You gotta be, you gotta be kidding me right now.” Because I know every so often when I’m really frustratedAll you will hear come out of my mouth is a growl. I’ll just go, “Ugh.” Right? Just like that.

42:47 – 43:06 [Chris]

And what that model has now taught me, and I, I, I don’t prevent myself from growling. I hear it and I go, “Huh, I must be in some kind of distress,” ’cause now I have that awareness piece. Then I get to pause and go, “What is it? Oh, you know what? I don’t think I’ve slept really good, or the kids are bothering me, or I have a lot of responsibility, or there’s a lot going on.” Okay.

43:07 – 43:14 [Chris]

Now the model allows you to go, what can you do to help bring about the, the best character strengths in you?

43:14 – 44:02 [Chris]

We call them psychological needs, that’s in there, et cetera. So, you know, we’re really scratching the surface, but there’s this cascade of awareness, understanding, and then how to leverage this knowledge to, to be a better version of yourself. It is the decoder ring. And so I just bring that forth to say, you know, for those interested in being a better version of themselves or understanding self better, influencing family, w- children, spouses, those you lead better, this is one example of information that exists that we have that can help. And what has always impressed me about you and the way you lead this company is you say, “Look, we do this with businesses and it has impact, but we do it to help impact everybody, not just company’s bottom lines.”

44:02 – 44:21 [Chris]

And so we have the podcast, In the Arena with Door2, where we’re just giving this stuff away for free. We have a newsletter where we are going to be sending these things out, right, to help you understand who you are in each of these various models, the environment you create, et cetera. You wanna sign up for that, door2.com/signup.

44:22 – 44:35 [Chris]

So I just wanna let people know, what do you want people to walk away with? That’s what I want them to know, right? There’s things that exist to help you be more influential and a better version of yourself. For those listening, what do you want ’em to walk away with?

44:37 – 44:41 [Shaun]

Man, I think there’s two, uh, well, 22, but-

44:41 – 44:51 [Shaun]

… we’ll go with two. One is, and as you were talking, it was funny, I was thinking about this, that, and, and I, and this should be normalized and okay. Like, people are inherently sort of self-curious.

44:52 – 44:56 [Shaun]

Think about how many tests people take, like, to figure out-

44:57 – 44:59 [Shaun]

… which Harry Potter house they fit into.

44:59 – 45:00 [Chris]

Right. [laughs] Yeah. Good one.

45:00 – 45:02 [Shaun]

Am I a Hufflepuff or a Gryffindor, right?

45:02 – 45:03 [Chris]

I mean, definitely a Gryffindor.

45:03 – 45:04 [Shaun]

Why do they do that?

45:04 – 45:06 [Chris]

Nobody’s a Hufflepuff, Shaun. Nobody listening is.

45:06 – 45:07 [Shaun]

So I’m a Hufflepuff.

45:08 – 45:10 [Shaun]

Now I… Why are you laughing, man?

45:10 – 45:18 [Shaun]

So I have to admit, when I, the, when I first heard I was a Hufflepuff, I was like, “Wait, I’m not a Hufflepuff.” And then somebody who’s, like, super into this was like, “No, dude, you 100% are.” And then I looked at the-

45:18 – 45:18 [Chris]

You probably want to be

45:18 – 45:20 [Shaun]

… traits of a Hufflepuff, and I was like, “I am. You are.”

45:20 – 45:22 [Chris]

I probably want to be. [laughs]

45:22 – 45:54 [Shaun]

So, okay, but why? Why do people do that? They do that because oftentimes we’re trying to figure out, like, in a weird kind of way, are we okay? Am I all right with who I am and my head space? And w- w- and people want to be encouraged and validated as they work through a lot of stuff. We got a lot of ego, insecurity, and self-doubt and all kinds of things. I’ve said this to you multiple times, that I’ve been, like, taking inventory of, informally taking inventory of how many people do I know in the world that can say three words: I am enough.

45:55 – 46:04 [Shaun]

The vast majority can’t, right? They, they struggle with feelings of self-doubt and insecurity and difficulty that they’re working through in their own space. So

46:05 – 46:10 [Shaun]

if I had a big takeaway, it would be for people in the world

46:11 – 46:31 [Shaun]

to feel like they could answer that and say that confidently, that I’m enough. And they know that through self-assurance, they know that through who they are, they knew that through their own sense of capabilities. Now, important to say, you and I have had this conversation where we were talking about people leaning into being authentically themselves, and, like-

46:31 – 46:33 [Shaun]

… is it okay for people to be authentic? And-

46:33 – 46:37 [Shaun]

… and my head space around it was, well, sort of. If you’re authentically an asshole-

46:38 – 46:39 [Shaun]

… I would work on that, right?

46:40 – 46:59 [Shaun]

So it doesn’t give permission to just accept self as you are. I’m not an advocate of that. I’m an advocate, though, of you figuring out the parts of you that are moving you in the direction of your life that you wanna be moved into and that you want to accomplish for yourself, and then confronting the ones that aren’t serving you in the way that you wanna be served with them.

47:00 – 47:16 [Shaun]

So for me, if you’re not getting professionally coached, well, are you getting these opportunities at the same level? And at some point in life, you may, and at some point in life, you may not. So how do we create a space that allows that? Which is to your point, where In the Arena podcast came from-

47:16 – 47:55 [Shaun]

… on how do we create this space to have these open dialogues and these conversations around it. Now, that requires individuals to be curious enough about themself and curious enough about where they wanna go in life to do the work, but hopefully it piques enough interest and enough curiosity to realize that you’re, I promise you, you’re in a spot that if you are listening and you went home tonight, whatever home is for you, and there was another human in that space, your ability to have a different relationship with that human would be profoundly affected by knowing this one thing. I mean, it is– I had a 20-year career with a Fortune 100 company-

47:55 – 47:58 [Shaun]

… that I left because of this model.

47:58 – 48:51 [Shaun]

It unlocks knowing how to connect and relate with people, and so it’s just one of the things in it. So in this work, the PCM model that we’ve talked a lot about, it’s, it’s one of the tools, uh, that we leverage in the leadership work that we do. So one of our leadership programs where we help teach people how to consciously lead and live leverages this aspect, and there are other tools and elements. We… MBTI, Spiral Dynamics. There’s a myriad of personality instruments that we leverage as tool sets and diagnostic tools that we leverage in this space to help leaders be better leaders and help humans be better humans. So it is one of the tools that we will explore and talk to, um, on In the Arena podcast, and so we’ll deepen understanding as we dig into it more.

48:52 – 48:54 [Chris]

Shaun, thank you so much for being on the podcast.