[00:00:07.370] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots podcast. I'm Chris
[00:00:10.830] - Brandon
and I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:00:17.850] - Chris
I don't know what you think. It was kind of serious. Should we laugh?
[00:00:25.870] - Brandon
Chris, how are you doing, buddy?
[00:00:27.150] - Chris
I'm good.
[00:00:28.180] - Brandon
You've been really angry lately.
[00:00:30.860] - Brandon
That was a bad set up
[00:00:33.010] - Chris
Oh here and there, here and there. Puppy life. I got a little angry last couple of nights ago, waking up at midnight, and my wife had done the mid. I had routine the two evenings prior, and I was trying to play my part, but feeling pretty angry about it, rethinking the whole puppy thing at the moment.
[00:00:55.530] - Brandon
Yeah, I'll be the first one to tell you better you than me.
[00:00:58.650] - Chris
Oh, boy.
[00:00:59.320] - Brandon
I'm not willing to go there again right now.
[00:01:01.400] - Chris
You know, it's interesting. When we had two kids and I came home one day and my wife was on the back patio with her head in her hands. Bawling. And I was like, oh, what's going on? What's wrong? I'm pregnant. We had an oopsie. He's a wonderful kid now, ten years later. But I remember the trauma, the pain of like, oh, my gosh. Both of our kids are out of diapers. Life is going to return to some semblance of normalcy, and then we find out. Okay, we're doing another round of baby stuff, and then here we are.
[00:01:32.460] - Chris
Oh, we would just love to have a puppy, and now we're doing another round of baby stuff. Luckily, this one is a little shorter. I'm 41 doing it this time, and it feels a little different.
[00:01:42.560] - Brandon
So you're supposed to have more battle patience now as you get older. Well, it's supposed to be easy now, here and there. According to the books I'm reading.
[00:01:49.350] - Chris
Yeah. So this topic of anger, man, where do we go with this? I wanted for us to talk about it because I think it's something we don't. Our culture kind of teaches us to bottle our anger, cover it up, minimize it kind of keep it in the shadows. I think there's something harmful about that. I think we tend to put ourselves and other people in categories of that person's an angry dude. He's a screamer Yeller. He's mean to people like, we have this category for anger, and it's something that reckless people or domineering people have.
[00:02:26.700] - Chris
And then when you get into a real conversation with somebody and you bring up the top of anger, it's like all of us feel it. It comes out in different ways. There's a lot of different kinds of anger. And sometimes anger is we pull back from people. We disconnect from our spouse or our kids. We're angry or with our employees or colleagues or co workers. We kind of create distance, right? Something either hurt us or provoked us or disappointed us in our anger. We kind of shrink back.
[00:02:57.080] - Chris
We close ourselves off. We limit kind of just how much we bring to that relationship, and we all feel it. I don't know. I just think you and I with the kind of work we do, and certainly throughout our career have seen the impact of anger, both our own anger and other people's anger. And I just thought, Well, this is a good thing to talk about. And also there's a part of me, too. We're in the tail end of the year. This is probably going to come out early January, but I'm just in this mode of really processing and thinking about who I am, what kind of person I'm becoming, and anger is still a growing edge for me.
[00:03:34.530] - Chris
There was actually a point in my marriage. I was thinking about this last night. Do I want to talk about this? Do I not want to talk about this, right? I don't know if it was like, maybe three or four years ago, my wife, we had this kind of so called come to Jesus moment. My wife was like, you know, your anger is a problem. And it was difficult for me to hear in the moment because I don't think of myself as an angry person. I think a lot of people that know me wouldn't necessarily say that about me.
[00:04:01.450] - Brandon
Even as a close friend. I'm a little shocked by that, because certainly not the face value impression I get all the time.
[00:04:08.440] - Chris
Yeah. It's not my persona, and it's a part of me, right. I think that's the thing that is we don't talk enough about. I think all of us have anger inside of us. It's just a part of us. Right. And of course, it's how we react to it, how we respond to that, how we use it. But I was struggling and part of it, I think, was time of life. The kids were at a certain age. There's just a lot of chaos, a lot of strife. It's three or four years ago.
[00:04:34.300] - Chris
Gosh, I had a six, nine and twelve year old. I'm 15, whatever, 1516 years into my marriage and career at that time was in a major growth mode and just stress and pressure and ambition and all that stuff. And I think, too, being in a business development role in a leadership role. If you're not careful, you end up really spending the best parts of yourself during the day. You know what I mean?
[00:05:00.340] - Brandon
Yeah. Sure.
[00:05:01.170] - Chris
Like you're exercising your restraint and self control and you're really mindful of your interactions with your employees and colleagues. And I think we come home sometimes and we're able to just take, like, exhale. Let's face it, we're probably the most reckless with the people closest to us.
[00:05:20.330] - Brandon
Yeah. Well, I think we always fall into this place, too. They'll understand where they'll live with it. They know me. Yeah.
[00:05:27.200] - Chris
And I also think we make an easy time out of justifying or minimizing, like in our own eyes. Well, I'm not screaming. I'm not cussing out my children. I'm certainly not hitting or striking anybody or that kind of stuff. And so we minimize in our own minds. And anyway, my wife brought that up to me. I asked her for some clarification, and she kind of gave me some examples, and a lot of it was just that angsty feeling that I'd come home at the end of the day, and I was very short coming out as sarcasm in my interactions with the kids and with her and also just a disconnectedness, like, just emotionally kind of I'm done for the day.
[00:06:08.230] - Chris
So that was a valuable I don't want to call it a turning point. It was more just kind of like a light post on the path where it's like, okay, this is something I need to really deal with. And so that's been part of my journey. I'm trying to think actually, when I first came up with this topic, there was a situation with I don't know if it was a client or observation we had of another operator or somebody in the industry. An example of how anger is sort of I don't know if you can help me rethink that.
[00:06:38.760] - Chris
That would be great.
[00:06:39.580] - Brandon
Yeah. Where you're going with this? Is there's multiple examples? And unfortunately, when I think about this, a lot of the examples are me. But I think that we've had lots of scenarios where we see leaders using this more aggressive posturing or allowing. I think it's more allowing and in most cases, probably a lack of awareness. Is there's this default behavior which is mine? It's easy to explode all over this situation, which normally is carrying weight from other things. Right. But they get channeled into this situation with a downline person, downline leader and employee.
[00:07:17.250] - Brandon
And for the individual that's kind of working through this anger piece, like they can kind of barf it out, get it out of their system and move on. Yet the damage was done like that sticky residue was already applied with robust fervor all over the situation. And now it's just kind of stuck there. So we've seen situations where leaders as part of probably in a lot of cases, we see scenarios where we've allowed a lack of accountability to go on too long so that we get forced in this situation or we're in this situation where when it comes out, this is like for us mentally, it's a year's worth of BS that we're frustrated by or allowing to control our feelings or emotions.
[00:07:58.750] - Brandon
And for the individual, they're in the moment. And they're kind of like blindsided by all this fervor and anger that's coming at them when you've been holding score for twelve months.
[00:08:09.990] - Chris
Right.
[00:08:10.540] - Brandon
So it's that and we see this situation where an angry person or an individual that's acting out of it just kind of lets the fire go and it completely deteriorates the trust, the confidence, the faith that their team member has in them in that relationship, which then is going to go on to deteriorate the performance. It's going to do all these negative things. Now we can kind of see lots of examples, too, of companies being led by this hard charging, kind of angry driven leader, and they win like they're making progress.
[00:08:42.490] - Brandon
But you and I have made a commitment not only professionally in what we do, what we teach, what we train on, but to show with the way that we want to carry ourselves, that we're really looking much more at a legacy and a legacy centered around right relationship. And I think what you and I identify often is that this anger component, it's hard to deploy that well. And it not, erode this legacy component, right. And I say that from a lot of personal experience, this is me in a lot of ways.
[00:09:17.470] - Brandon
It's funny when you make that comment that your family, that your wife brought up to you that the anger thing is an issue because I wouldn't have seen honestly, I wouldn't have seen that in a million years, whereas in my household, that light post has had to be turned on multiple times. It's not a once every so many months. There's a version of this that comes on. And I want to be clear that coming on now looks more like mutually respectful accountability because there's been an open dialogue.
[00:09:49.530] - Brandon
You even probably witnessed me doing some versions of this with our own teams, like even some of our leadership teams, like saying, hey, I don't want to lead this way. It's a detriment to our team. It's hurt me. It's hurt you. But anyway, I guess echoing kind of what you're talking about.
[00:10:03.510] - Chris
I would call a keyboard story at some point in history. Okay.
[00:10:08.510] - Brandon
So we got to tell it. All right. So you called me out. Okay. So here's my funny anger story. There's lots of not funny anger stories, but this one is kind of humorous. So I was GM at the time, and I think it must have been fairly late in the evening. And of course, it's not that late. We're not startup late, but it's late in the evening, and I'm working on something, and I'll just let the cat out of the bag here. I was most likely working on something that I felt that someone downlined for me should have already accomplished.
[00:10:40.040] - Brandon
Okay.
[00:10:40.710] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:10:41.320] - Brandon
And so we're really our top.
[00:10:42.470] - Chris
You're doing somebody else's job instead of holding them accountable to it.
[00:10:45.530] - Brandon
At minimum, in my mind, that's where I was right. And you probably had the right perspective. I was just doing someone else's job for them. And so I'm in the middle of doing this. And I'm working with an Xactimate, and I think any of you that have ever spent any time in exempt have had at least one frustrating experience. And I was on the back of, I don't know, two or three that were coming at me in a consolidated time period, and I was effing angry.
[00:11:10.670] - Chris
Oh, boy.
[00:11:11.140] - Brandon
Yeah, not just frustrated.
[00:11:13.600] - Chris
Freaking.
[00:11:14.360] - Brandon
At this point, I am freaking the fracking all the different furs, right? Angry, and I pick up. No. Mind you, the building is empty. As far as I can recall, I don't believe anybody is in the building at this point.
[00:11:26.940] - Chris
I think you're alone.
[00:11:27.860] - Brandon
Dude, I yard this freaking keyboard off the desk, and I Hawk it as hard as I can down. What at the time was, I don't know. It's probably a 20 plus foot hallway upstairs. I Chuck this thing, man. It hits the floor, it breaks into a ton of pieces. The buttons come off like I have come unhinged. I've completely lost all respectful control of myself. And then all of sudden, a I hear this voice at the bottom of the stairs.
[00:11:54.470] - Brandon
Is everything okay up there?
[00:11:59.390] - Brandon
And so I have to, of course, apologize for my behavior anyways. Luckily, that didn't happen a lot. But, guys, it does happen. And so when I say that I can get hot, it's probably an under. But here's the reality of that is that we have these moments, and the goal is to probably reduce that to zero, right? Or as close to zero as possible. But it is going to happen. And when it does happen, like, just kind of letting the cat out of the bag and be like, hey, that's not me.
[00:12:34.000] - Brandon
Mirroring what we want to be doing as a team.
[00:12:37.490] - Chris
I think what you and I've learned to is. And some people bristle at some of this politically correct, like, softy kind of language, but I find it real and valuable. Is it anger, like, unproportly deployed? I don't know if that's the best way to say it, but when we poorly manage our anger, it creates an unsafe like, we become unsafe. Yeah, like, whoever that person was in the hallway, that was like, oh, my gosh. There was a lack of safety that was created in that moment where it's like, oh, my gosh.
[00:13:10.190] - Chris
What if I had been the person that made Brandon that mad, right? Like, what if I was in the line of fire for that anger? It creates that. And my wife has shared the same thing with me. I've never, ever been violent with our kids or really anybody, but it does. It creates this question Mark of what if dad turns his anger towards me? Or what if I say the wrong thing that's the space that anger creates when we don't manage it? Even if, like, that lack of safety isn't necessarily physical harm, right?
[00:13:39.400] - Chris
It's just no one, I think, likes the feeling of somebody turning their anger on them. However, that comes out. And so it creates this. I don't want that. And therefore, it forces the people around us to kind of feel us out and constantly be taking our temperature, which creates this lack of safety. And I think all of us have worked for bosses, and you've admitted at times that you've been the hothead boss, and it does. It prevents a feedback rich environment we talked about because people don't feel like they are always guessing, is this an okay thing to bring to them, or are they going to maybe flip out in whatever form flip out takes for that individual?
[00:14:18.580] - Chris
Right. One of the things that's been helpful for me is I've had a few of these moments over the last ten years where I've had some insight into where my anger comes from. And, of course, you get talking with a counselor type or somebody like that, and they'll tell you that nearly all anger is a product of hurt, right? It's a product of some kind of wounding in some ways. I don't know. I certainly know people that kind of wear their anger proudly, and they rename it other things.
[00:14:52.250] - Chris
I just run hot. I'm just really driven. Sometimes it gets a little out of control. We minimize it, right?
[00:14:58.080] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:14:58.500] - Chris
We see it sometimes as a strength or an attribute that contributes to our success. So it's really hard for us to see the source of that anger. I had a really great, really helpful interaction with a counselor that my wife and I met with and really helped me get underneath it to figure out what's that source. And I think one of the things this was back when I was a state farm agent when I was a state farm agent. I was in my late twentys, early 30s, and that state farm business became a huge source of affirmation for me as a professional, I had my face on billboards.
[00:15:34.630] - Chris
I threw, like, community events where I'd have dozens, in some cases, hundreds of people showing up to events that I put on, and they'd say, oh, this is so great, Chris. Thanks for putting us on, man. You're just such a blah, blah, blah. It's a huge source of Affirmation Daily Weekly. I could create these points of affirmation based on how spending my money as a business, the type of marketing I was doing, the way I treated my customers. And it's not to say that all of that was sort of manipulative, but all these things were inside me.
[00:16:04.960] - Chris
It fed me like being a small business owner. I had all these people saying things that they liked on a pretty regular basis. And the interesting thing was, all they knew about me was what I decided to share with them.
[00:16:18.420] - Brandon
Yeah, sure.
[00:16:19.470] - Chris
Those people didn't know me, but the affirmation still felt real. But then I would come home to my wife and my kids. Reality sets in. And now, of course, this is all subconscious, right? But I'm coming home to my wife and kids, and there's a piece inside that I still want to know. Am I everything that I've been cracked up to be?
[00:16:42.810] - Chris
All right, let's take a minute. To recognize and thank our MIT Resto Mastery sponsor, Accelerate Restoration software. And I'm fully aware, by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there, right.
[00:17:00.000] - Chris
Because we probably all fall into one of two camps. When it comes to software, we've either cobbled together kind of a version of free website tools and spreadsheets just to make our business work, or we're in the camp where we've adopted one of these existing restoration platforms, one that has all the bells and whistles and supposedly does it all. But we can't get our team to consistently adopt it and input information to it. Yeah.
[00:17:27.970] - Brandon
And that's really where Accelerate has honed their focus. They've created a system that's simple, right? It's intuitive, and it focuses on the most mission critical information. Ie guys, your team will actually use it.
[00:17:42.620] - Chris
Let's talk about sales right. After years of leading sales and marketing teams, the biggest trick is getting them to consistently update notes about their interactions with referral partners and clients. And the essential piece there is. There's got to be a mobile app experience. And in our experience, the solutions that were previously out there were just too cumbersome and tricky to use.
[00:18:06.070] - Brandon
Yes. Imagine, guys, how your business would change if your entire team was actually consistently using the system. Do yourself a favor. Go check these guys out at xcelerationsoftwarecommrm. Com MRM and check out the special offers they're providing to MRM. Listeners.
[00:18:25.890] - Chris
All right, let's talk about actionable Insights owners, GMs. You can't be your business expert on all things estimated. You might have been three years ago when you're writing sheet in the field, but the industry is always changing, and so are the tools. If you're the smartest person in the room when it comes to Xact, how does that scale you're the bottleneck? I know I'm preaching to the choir, but this is where actual Insights comes in. They're a technical partner that can equip your team with the latest bleeding edge information and best practices and then update them with Webinars and training resources when the game inevitably changes.
[00:19:01.730] - Chris
Again. For this reason, we recommend actual insights to all of our clients. Yeah.
[00:19:06.480] - Brandon
Three of the kind of big things that stuck out to me when being introduced to AI and their team. First off is this consistently updated training. I mean, at the end of the day, these guys are the experts. They're out front all the time. They're constantly learning new trade secrets and ensuring that your team's got access to those things. A 3700 plus page database of exact amount templates. I don't know what else to say here other than don't reinvent the wheel. It's already available. Download it, copy it, use it.
[00:19:35.540] - Brandon
Bam database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple of points and those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world. So go check them out at Value, getinsights. Org.
[00:19:59.050] - Chris
And so then have an interaction with my wife. And maybe she's not all that impressed. Yeah. She's not all that impressed with the kind of partner I am that day or the past week, or she's not all that impressed with how intentional I am and how participative I am in the household and partnering with her with the children and all that kind of she's not impressed. And now all of a sudden, I'm faced with reality, the people that know me more than anybody else. They're not impressed.
[00:20:29.110] - Chris
And some combination of hurt embarrassment, shame sets in. And my reaction is some form of anger. And like I said, it wasn't always this hot anger of throwing my computer keyboard down there. We all have different forms. Right? And for me, it became more of this irritation, sarcasm just kind of getting quiet, you know, and withholding it's withholding relationship. And it's sad. But even as I say this out loud, I'm like, you know, I can think of a lot of years in my marriage where I was withholding myself, from my wife, out of that anger, out of that place of just finding my affirmation outside of myself, right.
[00:21:16.280] - Chris
And then not getting that same affirmation all the time for my wife and kids and just that whole cycle. And I think it can show up in a lot of different ways. I think our businesses, many of us who are entrepreneurs, like our businesses, are a source of massive validation. And you and I have seen this in clients and colleagues and coworkers in our own lives, right. Where we go home from our work, and there are seasons of life where it's like, we'd almost rather be at work because it feeds us more sure than the situation we have at home.
[00:21:45.040] - Chris
And I think what I discovered is the more I looked at it. The reason why home wasn't feeding me was because I had this unhealthy. I was seeking out affirmation in unhealthy ways. And as I've started to kind of move through that, and I become more aware of that, the home life, my relationship with my wife. It's changed a lot because I'm not as anchored in what our clients say about me. And you know what I mean? Like, it shifted a lot. But that was a really transformational moment.
[00:22:17.620] - Chris
This counselor that we were meeting with. They're like, have you ever thought about why you do that?
[00:22:22.370] - Brandon
And I really hadn't.
[00:22:24.090] - Chris
I really hadn't. And if I'm honest with myself, I thought it was my wife.
[00:22:27.630] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:22:28.190] - Chris
I probably would have told you, like I probably would have said if I was pressed back then that yeah, I felt like I was probably giving more relationally and whatnot to my wife and she was giving to me.
[00:22:37.120] - Brandon
Dude, you know what? I really appreciate that transparency, because here's the reality is that the whole time that you've kind of been talking through that story or just thinking about this topic in general, the reality of it is the reason anger feels from the recipient, right or the audience. Whatever the nonsense, I think the reason it comes across. So Yuck. Because really, even if you couldn't put it to words, the reality of it is everybody just kind of in general, feel shitty when those kinds of things happen.
[00:23:04.540] - Brandon
Like when I Act that way, I don't walk away proud of the situation. The audience certainly wasn't excited about it, and it's funny because I feel like the majority of the time behind my anger. So hang with me. There's a couple of thoughts I want to get out here. One is that the anger is a surface by product of something else that I'm actually feeling or experiencing. And the struggle comes from when I never try to take the time to identify that cause. Right. So that's one idea.
[00:23:33.440] - Brandon
And so for me, where it shows up is normally it's because my ego has been attacked, right? Either. In the moment with that audience, I'm feeling a number of different things. I'm feeling under prepared. I'm feeling as if they don't trust or they don't value, right. All these different things are happening and out of that, I'm getting angry. Like what it's turning itself into is this ego's default protective response where I start to minimize the value of the other person. I begin to place blame on the other person if they would only if they would just listen if they would just do all these things.
[00:24:12.570] - Brandon
So it's like for me, it seems like my angers cause kind of fall in a couple of different buckets. Ego protection, fear get me fearful that whole fight or flight mechanism. If I get cornered, I'm going to bite your face like that's default. Right. Or the other thing is this lack of control. Like when I start to feel myself not being in control and it can show up as things like my schedule. Like if I feel like we take a handful of client calls, let's say, back to back, and I haven't built enough time to get a grip on some of the follow up mechanisms that I need to do.
[00:24:48.860] - Brandon
I can get angry because I'm feeling the control slipping. Right. So you might be the fourth person to say, hey, this plate needs to be spun, and I'm going to start losing my shit has nothing to do with you.
[00:25:03.620] - Chris
Sure.
[00:25:03.940] - Brandon
Right. So again, for me, my anger tends to be fueled by these three buckets.
[00:25:08.490] - Chris
Really? Sure.
[00:25:09.460] - Brandon
And then what's interesting about that where we see, I think the easiest landscape for us to present this concept on is anger with our downline personnel.
[00:25:17.870] - Chris
Oh, yeah.
[00:25:18.630] - Brandon
So common. Right. I don't think there's a single business owner entrepreneur with employees that's never complained about their employees. Right. And it's so interesting. Again, this is so much easier said than done. But if we're truly honest with ourselves when we see consistent lack of performance from our teams, it's because we're honestly not fixing the problem with a root cause solution. Right. So what ends up inevitably happening is that we out of ego, fear, wanting control. We have all these surface level behaviors the withholding right? Like you talked about at one point, they were the eight star player on the bench, and now you just don't talk to them as much.
[00:26:06.700] - Brandon
You skip getting face time, right? If you were supposed to meet up with them, it didn't kind of work out in the schedule. You don't try that hard to fix the situation.
[00:26:14.380] - Chris
You only share 80% of the story in your head.
[00:26:16.500] - Brandon
You share 80%, right. Or there's these explosive blowouts or there are these major responses. And I think what we're really seeing in that is if we're honest, I'm the one causing that, right? Like I'm the one that didn't put the work in prioritize the correct way, say no to something else so that I could say yes to this thing so that I could do the work of creating better clarity and role and expectation, maybe going through some two way communication to hear better what it is that my employees experiencing.
[00:26:54.820] - Brandon
And again, instead of letting ego or fear or want of control to take over in that situation, I just legitimately hear. And I don't identify my value in the situation based on what this person is saying because I don't do those hard things. I perpetuate this position where I'm disgruntled and frustrated by a lack of performance. Right? Or as simple as let's say, you've checked all the boxes and you don't pull the trigger of letting someone go like you're scared to fire someone because you feel a bit of a hostage to the team.
[00:27:31.900] - Brandon
There's a lack of readily people to readily hire whatever, right? We all have the same current and past, so it's easier to blow up. It's easier to talk shit. It's easier to get angry and explode on this person in front of the rest of the team. But you still haven't done anything to fix the situation, right? Yeah.
[00:27:51.330] - Chris
And for me, and I don't know if this is a universal thing or if it's just kind of the way my ego shows up. I think when I'm feeling frustrated or angry towards an employee nine times out of ten, it was actually self loathing that I am inadequate to figure out how I'm inadequate to lead them and manage them. Well, my frustration with the team or an employee that's not doing what I need them to do, or they're not living up to the expectations I've said or whatever.
[00:28:23.400] - Chris
I think underneath it all is that it's this frustration with myself. I don't have what it takes to like, I'm not a good manager, you know what I mean? It's really a self loathing like my irritation, my angst with a team that's not responding the way I need them to do. I think there's this internal part that what in the world is wrong with me that I don't like. I think it's a subconscious. I don't have what it takes to lead them.
[00:28:51.810] - Brandon
Yeah. And the interesting thing about that is that you're not wrong.
[00:28:56.310] - Chris
No, it's totally true.
[00:28:57.290] - Brandon
Thought right?
[00:28:57.930] - Chris
It's totally true. And right now, even as we're having this conversation, I have, like, Tim Denmark in my ear with his just, like, really calm kind of soft voice. By the way, if you're listening to this, you really need to go the knowledge project, Tim Deathmer leading above the line, go search for it. It's such an incredible thing. And he talks about this, creating a feedback rich environment. I think what Tim Deathmer would say to us in this moment is when you don't know as a leader, one of the most powerful things you can do is just say, hey, you know what, guys, I'm not sure how to get us where we need to go, but I think as a team, we can figure it out.
[00:29:29.100] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:29:29.580] - Chris
Right?
[00:29:30.020] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:29:30.390] - Chris
What needs to happen for us to get to this result? What do you guys think?
[00:29:33.520] - Brandon
No, I think that's huge. And I think there's also even a counter to that that sometimes it's even this internal accountability that you got to wrestle with. So, yes, I agree with you. Sometimes it is just being honest and transparent to the team and saying, yeah, I don't know. I don't have the answers. Which gosh, dude, if more leaders just openly admitted they don't have all the answers, they'd probably get more following. But I think there's also just this internal recognition of recognizing what you're saying and not being a negative thing, which is hard.
[00:30:03.500] - Brandon
But what you're saying basically, is this idea of hold boundaries for leaders. I've either allowed something or I've intentionally put this thing in place, and it's not good. It's not working, right. And so I am frustrated with my inability. Like, I'm frustrated with myself. The most powerful thing to say in that is to do it to recognize it like I am the root cause here. I'm the business owner. I'm the leader of this Mitigation Department. I'm the whatever. But can you do that in a way that it doesn't diffuse your energy?
[00:30:37.080] - Brandon
Like it doesn't take the drive to want to fix that situation out of you, right? The wind out of your sales, so to speak. Like, there's got to be this place that we get where we recognize. Look, who am I really angry with right now? It probably should be me. Okay, identify it. Let's let that go. And now let's say to ourselves, let's work through a bit of an exercise to identify. Okay, what are the next steps? Maybe I need to hire someone to counter this or create strengths or create skill set in this.
[00:31:07.050] - Brandon
Maybe I need to work with a mentor, a coach or whatever. Or maybe I just need to find a really close friend that has my best interest in mind outside of the walls of my company to say, I need to think through this differently. Like I'm growing frustrated with my inability to solve this puzzle on my own. But the point is, instead of chucking the keyboard, recognizing who needs to do the work in order for progress to be made, and then try to identify some tools and resources that you can pull in to help you make that progress that in and of itself can be really powerful, right?
[00:31:45.100] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:31:45.360] - Brandon
Do you feel me on that?
[00:31:46.360] - Chris
I do. Yeah. I think for me, the game changer has been just developing more awareness. We talk about this with clients as well. It's the art of noticing.
[00:31:58.280] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:31:58.950] - Chris
I think it's a leader really depends on the art of noticing what's going on in the room. What's going on in the relationships across our team, what's happening inside me when I'm in this situation, we're having this kind of conversation when I'm in this moment with a certain employee where we encounter a certain situation, what's going on inside me? I hired an executive coach this last year or the year before. His name was Seth. Seth, you're listening? And he changed my life in certain ways. It's such a huge deal.
[00:32:28.830] - Chris
I hired him actually, as a man coach. He was helping me in my marriage. This was a couple of years ago. Yeah, I was just trying to level up the game a little bit, and I remember calling him. I said, Man, I'm really frustrated and angry about this thing. And he said, Well, hold on a second. Let's talk about that. You are really angry about this thing. He said, Why don't you try this on? Precise. Part of me is feeling angry right now. And my first reaction to that was, okay.
[00:32:55.780] - Chris
Part of me is feeling really angry right now, like it just seemed there was a Mickey Mouse to it where it's like, okay, hair splitting here. You're doing this little coaching thing with me. I see what you're trying to do. And you know what? It has kind of changed my life. It really has. Because what he was trying to explain to me is that we all have these competing voices in our head. We have these emotions that come just from out of the blue. Our mind fabricates these thoughts and interpretations of all the situations we encounter.
[00:33:30.810] - Chris
It is not necessarily logical at all. It is not necessarily the thoughts and reactions we have. The things are not necessarily rooted in a fact about something that happened or wrong that was done, a trespass that occurred, an offense that was taken like, it's a story that our brain forms, not an identity. Yeah, right. And so that has been a really powerful kind of mental model for me. And I've had many times since I worked with Seth. I've texted him, I'm like, man, I appreciate you teaching me that it's been so helpful in professional context and everything else.
[00:34:05.400] - Chris
And here's a really quick example, and I just find a lot of my examples are personal around this stuff, because I think again, a lot of us exert an enormous amount of energy to sort of control how our colleagues, our partners, our clients, perceive us.
[00:34:18.030] - Brandon
Sure.
[00:34:18.530] - Chris
And so a lot of times, these bad behaviors or this toxic residue ends up spilling out first on our families because we let our guard down. We take a deep breath, we decompress, and we're just raw with our family, right?
[00:34:32.620] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:34:33.400] - Chris
I remember I came home from work one day. The kids, my mom had the kids, she'd taken them after school and taking them on some errands. And whatnot? My mom drops off the boys and my son, Jack. He's walking in the door with his backpack, and I could just tell he's ticked off, and I actually had to run to the grocery store. So I was going to load him back in the car. We're going to get some groceries for dinner or whatever. And when he realized that we were headed right back out, he said, oh, he got really mad.
[00:34:59.500] - Chris
It's like, oh, gosh, dad, grandma has just been running us around for the last 4 hours. It's been like, 2 hours, right? This is where he was at. She took us to her hair appointment. We're just sitting doing nothing. And now you want us to get back to the car and just run around somewhere? I feel myself. This is after Seth had been training me for a little while, I started to feel myself just my gut kind of cinching up. I don't know if my fists were starting to kind of ball, and I'm like, and I noticed it.
[00:35:31.640] - Chris
And I have this just momentary thought in my head. While part of me is really starting to get pissed off at Jack right now, literally, like, this was the inner narrative. And it was just noticing that was a powerful tool, because then I could kind of like, look at that in my mind's eye just saying that, wow, part of me is really getting pissed off a check right now. What is going on? And it gave me just enough emotional margin to kind of hit pause on that anger spooling up, and I was able to calm myself down in that moment and actually just bring a calm voice to Jack.
[00:36:03.470] - Chris
Like, hey, dude, listen. Okay. All right, listen, it's going to be a quick trip, so I kind of negotiated with him a little bit. It's going to be a quick trip. Listen, we just got to get some food and we'll come back and whatever you'll have some time to decompress. He calms down a little bit. Typically, the kids will match my response.
[00:36:19.830] - Brandon
I was just going to say that.
[00:36:20.870] - Chris
And I've also found that professionally, right?
[00:36:22.940] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:36:23.690] - Chris
Typically, people are going to mirror your response. We have the ability to diffuse situations and calm down. The emotion of an interaction. Game changer. So we get out to the car, Jack, sit riding a shotgun next to me, brother Simon's in the back. And before I started the car, I just said, hey, dude, you seem like you're really stressed out and, like, frustrated. What's going on, man? Did you have a rough day? He's like, yeah, actually, I had this thing happen at school, and I ended up really embarrassed.
[00:36:52.010] - Chris
Like, my teacher said this thing, and I just really bothering me, and I was like, you know what, man? I know exactly how you feel.
[00:37:01.160] - Brandon
Totally.
[00:37:02.080] - Chris
I have those days. I totally know what that feels like, man.
[00:37:07.010] - Brandon
What a different outcome.
[00:37:08.780] - Chris
Oh, my gosh.
[00:37:10.520] - Brandon
Right. He's softened up.
[00:37:12.870] - Chris
He softened, and I softened, and I felt connected to my boy, and it just changed everything. Yeah, it changed everything now. Three years before that, two weeks before that, I don't know. I would have totally, like, Dude, get a grip on yourself, right? Chill out. We're just going to the grocery store.
[00:37:31.920] - Brandon
How dare you talk to me that way.
[00:37:33.460] - Chris
Yeah, right.
[00:37:34.190] - Brandon
Give me all of that stuff.
[00:37:37.270] - Chris
I just reacted. No video games for you tonight or whatever. I just would have reacted spun out, and he would have amped up, and I would have amped up, and it just would have turned into this idiotic power struggle about a remark coming in the door. How often do we do that?
[00:37:57.140] - Brandon
It's probably the default mechanism, right? When we're not actively pursuing a difference.
[00:38:02.870] - Chris
Yeah, but anyway, I'm so grateful for those tools. It's just a tool. If we can just become sensitive to those kinds of things, we start to notice it more. And the more you notice, the more you notice and the more margin you have between the thing that happened, the thing that was said, the situation that just occurred, and your response to it totally agree.
[00:38:26.280] - Brandon
What a powerful resource here's. Kind of my thought on this, too, is that if I'm honest with kind of looking out on the horizon, people in my sphere of influence, people that I really respect and kind of admire, the vast majority, all of them are people that practice self restraint, not hypocrisy, not passive aggressiveness, not false humility or false. No, no. I'm talking about those folks that they are no different than you and I. They have that emotional response trigger inside.
[00:39:00.870] - Chris
But they do what you're talking about.
[00:39:02.560] - Brandon
They take that 5 seconds. They do the breathing, they do the whatever and they re wrap and not allow the knee jerk, uncontrolled emotion to spill out of them. And I think over time, the more you exercise that self restraint, the more that you exercise this shifting of that energy to make sure that you deploy it with a positive impact. I think it does get more and more common for that to be a default response versus you having to do this.
[00:39:28.970] - Chris
Really.
[00:39:29.260] - Brandon
Hefty lifting and working through of Toning the Beast. But when I look out on the horizon on people that I really admire, they tend to be people that are backed with an absolute drip ton of action and very little emotional explosiveness, not being the same as passive, not caring, not passionate because that's boring as hell to me. I hate vanilla, because I'm wired passionately. I'm on or off. Right. So I admire that, though. I like the passion. I like the excitement. If I'm going to get wrapped up and follow someone on something, if I'm going to get engaged into a team experience or build something, I want to be excited and passionate, but that is very different than being unhinged uncontrolled.
[00:40:12.550] - Brandon
When you watch someone emotionally lose control, it is not something I admire.
[00:40:20.620] - Chris
No, right.
[00:40:21.700] - Brandon
It's so easy when you see that person lose control of themselves, say things that are completely over the line, act in such a way that completely crosses the line blows up. This is me. I am talking to myself right now. When you see those things, you just know you don't respect it.
[00:40:40.650] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:40:41.010] - Brandon
Right. And we've seen examples of people that run very hard, charging, quickly growing organizations in our industry, outside of our industry. And they are passionate, and they are often boisterous and loud and lots of character. But it doesn't mean they're angry. It doesn't mean they lack self control. It doesn't mean that they lead with an iron fist. In fact, in most cases, it's actually the complete opposite. Tons of passion, tons of care, tons of vision for what they want to build and do, but they use their energy to drive results, not losing their shit.
[00:41:15.140] - Brandon
Right. And so that's been kind of the thing on the horizon for me to want to continue to make progress is that I always walked away from those situations, feeling like I let an opportunity slip that could have been so much better. I often felt just depleted. I didn't feel like we moved the needle. When I lost my cool that way, I never really walked away and felt like, well, the team knows now ever. It never really got me the result that I wanted. It just kind of made me fall prey to the idea that I thought I was getting what I wanted because people stopped talking.
[00:41:53.160] - Brandon
People stopped trying. People stopped presenting ideas, right. All those things. Anyway, I think if we're honest with ourselves, even if you're one of those folks who just runs hot, who are the people that you look at and go, man. Wow. Right. I would be shocked if you identified someone that just freaking ran hot, lost control all the time. I just don't see that. But I could be wrong. Maybe there's somebody out there but my gut says probably not likely.
[00:42:16.520] - Chris
Yeah. When we explode out of anger, it can create results. But it's usually because people are afraid, and you can only take that so far, right?
[00:42:28.980] - Brandon
Oh, yeah. Those people only carry you so far, man. Like when the right opportunity shows itself, would someone prefer to lead or follow under that?
[00:42:38.310] - Chris
No, no way.
[00:42:39.770] - Brandon
Right. Are you getting 100% from someone out of fear? I don't think so. Normally, you're getting the minimum viable product. They're going to give you just enough so that you're not angry, right. Because that whole loyalty and that excitement to be engaged in that vision alongside that leader goes away.
[00:42:56.600] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:42:57.410] - Brandon
There's just a ton of negatives. Anyway, I think we can kind of beat this up a little bit, but I really like what you said about that re packaging of just the way that you're thinking about the moment. Can I hit a summary? Yeah.
[00:43:10.320] - Chris
Let's do it.
[00:43:10.800] - Brandon
Okay. It's been a little while because we don't do that with guests normally.
[00:43:13.720] - Chris
Yeah. All right.
[00:43:14.640] - Brandon
So we're talking about anger today, talking about just kind of this concept of this thing that Wells up in us, right. That we commonly see is actually attached to fear or wanting to control or most likely kind of this ego trigger a feeling of inadequacy, feeling small, feeling like you don't have all the answers you should have. Like, all these internal mechanisms that are driving this anger, we tend to focus it or channel it on someone else and stay in this mindset, if only they would. If only I had better.
[00:43:50.710] - Brandon
If only this person cared more. Right. Like all these things where we become the victim in execution, meaning we've stripped our ability to do anything about it or to take action. Right? That's what I mean by that victim. And so you said, basically one of the tools that we can deploy is this idea of just grabbing that 5 seconds in the moment and saying, okay, I'm not angry.
[00:44:14.090] - Chris
Yeah. Part of me, part of me is angry, right?
[00:44:18.790] - Brandon
I'm feeling a lot of frustration in this moment. Almost like, right. And it sounds so dumb. But what you were highlighting is the separation between an emotion and an identity. Yeah. Because I can treat an emotion a lot easier than I can treat who I am. Right. And so you're saying in this moment.
[00:44:36.220] - Chris
That'S a great way of saying it, man.
[00:44:37.660] - Brandon
Right. And it's like you've got this ability to take a break for just a second say, okay, I'm feeling this way. Part of me is angry or frustrated and then deploying a response that looks different. It shows self control. And really what I. Equate. Self control to in a lot of ways. Man is wisdom.
[00:44:54.980] - Chris
Oh, man.
[00:44:55.850] - Brandon
Yes, it's wisdom. And I think that's one of the things I've been trying to put in front of myself consistently is this idea of who are the kind of people that reflect in my mind what wisdom looks like. And I just cannot vision someone with a lot of wisdom emotionally unbolted. I just don't see it.
[00:45:13.660] - Chris
No.
[00:45:14.010] - Brandon
Right. So again, as part of this, then we're identifying. Okay. Can I look out on the horizon and look at the people that I respect and admire? And what am I seeing? What am I noticing? Am I seeing self restraint? Am I seeing positive actions versus losing control or becoming unhinged? If you are identify that, try to dig into what that person does. What are some of the characteristics that they reflect? What are some of the types of ways that they manage themselves and lead their people that we can take as tools then to change what resources we can deploy right?
[00:45:46.010] - Brandon
In our own businesses, our own sphere of influence. Yeah. I think that's I don't know. That's pretty good, right?
[00:45:51.260] - Chris
That's a good take.
[00:45:52.870] - Brandon
And you're not alone, like dude.
[00:45:54.820] - Chris
Yeah. We all get angry. I think that's what we should title this episode. We all get angry.
[00:45:58.880] - Brandon
I wonder if Mother Teresa got angry, because if you could say, even Mother Teresa got angry, I don't know if you can.
[00:46:06.760] - Chris
Yeah. No, I think it's true. And by the way, in closing and maybe we should link to it on our show notes. You really got to hear Tim deathmer the way he talks about this, because anger is something that motivates a lot of high achievers. And yet it's a motivation that can, while it can help you achieve and grow, it leaves behind this toxic residue. That's where we got that concept from with Mer.
[00:46:28.810] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:46:29.420] - Chris
And it's just such an incredible. In fact, we just shared it with another client. They're like, oh, my gosh. This is so good. It really is. And it really is. So you've got to check out that episode, the Knowledge Project, Tim Deathmer leading above the line. Okay. I really hope we can get him on the podcast. Actually, somehow.
[00:46:43.710] - Brandon
Matt, don't get me started. All right.
[00:46:45.780] - Chris
See you later on.
[00:46:47.290] - Brandon
All right, everybody, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Boot.
[00:46:51.790] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow only known to subscribe. Write us a review or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn. Share it via text. Whatever it all helps. Thanks for listening.