Kyle McDowell – The Beauty & Power of WE (474)

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Episode transcript below:

00:00 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Hi everyone. Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the How’d it Happen podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.

00:19
On today’s episode, I’m talking with a man who realized with his whole heart what his purpose is on this planet. Kyle McDowell thought his dreams were dashed in 2019, only to realize that his dream was only beginning. We talk about why the world does not care how he led with an iron fist until he realized that wasn’t working. How ambiguity is the enemy of progress and mostly the beauty of the word, we. You will love this conversation, I know you will.

00:54 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
It was intentional. I wanted to be portrayed in my professional life as someone who had all the answers, someone who was unflappable. My confidence is unshakable and, of course, none of those things are true. No one’s confidence is ultimately and forever unshakable. All of us have self-doubts. So for me it wasn’t linear. But liberation, it is a choice and for me it was stacking small wins upon one another, and the first win for me was choosing to no longer be sad and angry. It was a very intentional shift. At the end, the feeling and the fulfillment that comes from establishing and putting people in places to be their best is, I think it’s, priceless.

01:33 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
This episode is sponsored by the Dream Exit. The Dream Exit is a private bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between 5 million and 100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their dream exit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized dream exit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post-exit life, even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dream exits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between $5 and 100 million and you want to learn how to 10X to 100X your chances of achieving the dream exit you deserve, go to dreamexitplaybookcom today. And now here’s Kyle. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the how to Happen podcast and hello, kyle, how are you today?

02:49 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Mike man, it’s great to be here. I’m wonderful. How about yourself?

02:52 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I am great and I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. In fact, we got so engrossed in our conversation Before we hit record. We got like half a podcast done already between us. That’s been a lot of fun. So many people come to the podcast and they’re not, you know, automatically ready to like, engage, like like you are, and it just makes my. It makes me feel good and makes my job really easy here. So thank you for doing that.

03:19 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Of course. Well, it’s, it’s mutual, you know it’s. It takes two to have a conversation, especially a good one. So I appreciate your approach and I’m with you, man. We talked some good shop before we hit record, so hopefully it parlays itself into this conversation as well.

03:35 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, and who knows, some of it might make its way into this for everybody. So I told you guys a little bit about Kyle in the intro and now I’m going to tell you a little bit more. So Kyle McDowell is a former corporate executive of three Fortune 10 firms, turned bestselling author, speaker and leadership expert For nearly three decades. He doesn’t look like he’s got three decades under his belt, but for nearly three decades McDowell amassed an impressive record of delivering great business results while leading tens of thousands of employees at some of America’s largest corporations, including United Health Group, cvs, health, maximus and Bank of America. From a tiny cubicle to leading tens of thousands of employees at some of those big companies, to embarking on his life’s mission cultivating and inspiring a world of we-oriented leaders.

04:26
In his book, which is called Begin With we, which is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller, kyle shares 10 guiding principles needed to build and sustain a culture of excellence. The 10 we’s establish a common framework and cultural currency that has the same value whether used by the new intern or by the most seasoned executive. In other words, it’s for everybody. Shifting the focus from I, me, my to we, kyle calls upon lessons learned during his leadership journey from that tiny cubicle to those Fortune 10 firms. His approach has converted countless bosses into leaders, thankfully, who inspire with passion and purpose. All of Kyle’s socials, as far as I know and could find, are Kyle McDowell, m-c-d-o-w-e-l-l-i-n-c, so website and everywhere else. I think Is that right, kyle?

05:26 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
That’s right. Kyle McDowell Inc is my website and all social platforms are the same at Kyle McDowell Inc.

05:31 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So well done and very smart there, making sure that you developed a handle that could be used everywhere. I’ve had people on the show before who give that advice, but when you’re trying to do it with your own name sometimes just your own name it can be kind of difficult. So you found a way to do it and that’s just for everyone listening.

05:51 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Incredibly smart Lucky, more like it Lucky.

05:55 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, lucky, smart. All right For me, anyway, I’ll take it hey no shame in that right Luck is.

06:01 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
I’d rather be lucky than good Most days. I’m fine with that.

06:04 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Well, it’s kind of necessary sometimes. I mean you can’t just be good enough all the time. You need help from other people or other things, or Kyle McDowell Inc being available you need those kinds of things. So, kyle, I start every show. Same simple question. And that is how did it happen for you?

06:26 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Man, what a long answer that could be, but I’ll in the interest of time and for your audience is valuable time? Um, it happened for me at my lowest. I left corporate America in uh, permanently in 2019 under under circumstances that that were different than I ever expected. I just reached an impasse with the organization I was with At the time. I was leading 15,000 employees, I had a $2 billion operating expense budget, I was responsible for profit and loss statements in the multi-billion dollar range and I’m keeping the company agnostic at this point because there’s no benefit in sharing but, suffice to say, my experience at that organization, Mike, was the antithesis of what I had seen in the role. Just prior to there was toxicity. Just prior to, there was toxicity, duplicity, there was angling, there was all the things that you would associate negatively with corporate America. I’ll never forget this.

07:35
The day that I left, I was sitting in a chair in my living room. My wife came home and could tell something was wrong. She’s like what’s up? And I said I left. She said what I said. I left and I said but I’m going to make this the best thing that ever happened to me. And she, you know, like a good wife will do. She was so supportive. We went out and got some drinks that night and that was the moment for me where I realized and I mean this in a very delicate way, but I think you’ll get the intention here the world does not care that I was no longer in corporate America. The world, nobody was coming to save me.

08:15
But I knew that the role that I had played in the organization I was with prior to this final stop for me was the most impactful, fulfilling, passionate period of my professional career and it’s also where I developed these principles, the 10 wheeze that are the foundation for my book experiences.

08:40
I left an organization on such a high note, knowing that I’d made such a difference, created an environment that was longing for excellence, and I left there with my head held high, went to this other organization. It didn’t work out the way I’d hoped and I knew I had a purpose that I needed to take action on, exposing once and for all all the ales inside of the corporate world that I had experienced. In some cases, admittedly, I had even created. I led with an iron fist for many years of my 28 years in corporate America. That separation was where I knew I had a bigger calling, something I needed to do, and that was to get these principles out into the world, because the changes that they made for me, both professionally and personally, were so profound, I felt an obligation and still feel an obligation to share them as widely, as loudly, as I possibly can, and that brings us together today. It’s still part of my mission.

09:43 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And this impasse. I think the word leaves a lot of people with certain thoughts about what that might mean, but I would really like to hear what the impasse actually was. Was it a sit down? Can you describe it?

09:58 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Yeah. So I joined the organization reporting to the president of the division for which I was brought on, and there was under no ambiguity. My job was to drive massive cultural change. So that was a theme throughout all of my career. An organization as small as a handful of people in a team all the way up to 10, 15,000, and inject some enthusiasm and try to inspire folks to remember that they’re part of something bigger, that we all have an aligned mission, of sorts. So I took the role. And, by the way, so I took the role. And by the way, let’s not be naive. Anytime someone is given that charter, some will not agree with the approach.

10:54
I remember one time that president once told me if you’re going to make an omelet, you got to break some eggs, which can be a little crass. But I had such a successful run in these turnaround and cultural transformation areas that I knew, and still know, what it takes to transform an organization from toxic to really high, functioning and excellent. And the impasse came when it was time to make some tough decisions. And I would say there’s two sides to this coin. So I want to be completely fair about this. There was an impasse on some of the decisions that I needed to make and I had a hard time gathering consensus with those that sat in the ivory tower of this multi-billion dollar company.

11:34 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
That was part of it, consensus meaning that they would agree with you that you could make these changes, or was that what you mean?

11:41 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, the best analogy or kind of comparison I can give you is the NFL. So in the NFL, a lot of teams have a general manager and a head coach. The general manager puts the people on the roster, the head coach manages the roster, puts the best players on the field, and so on. I took the role with the understanding I was playing general manager and coach, but when it came time to make personnel changes, there was some pushback and there’s a whole, probably other podcast that we could record on why that was a challenging moment for me. At the end of the day, I’ll boil it down to this I’m going to be me and if I was hired to do a job and I know the path to get to that ultimate destination, I know where it is, I know how to lead the team to get there, and if my hands are tied not getting there, I’m not going to sit there and draw a paycheck and just be average. I can’t do it. I had too much time invested in my career and it’s soul-sucking to me to show up every day. Keep your head down, be opinionless and just be a yes man. I couldn’t do it.

12:55
Now, the other side of that coin, that turned out to be, I think, a little more prominent in my exit than I understood at first was the gentleman that hired me, the president of that division that I mentioned earlier. He left. He left the organization Company brought in somebody new, and sometimes that works out in ways that are not as welcoming for the incumbent. And so what happened was the day that I announced my departure for the incumbent. And so what happened was the day that I announced my departure, the company announced my replacement, and my replacement was a 19-year colleague of the new boss that had just joined the organization a few months earlier. So in some ways you could argue that it was a bit calculated that the writing was on the wall. New president brings in his own crew. I get it, that’s fine.

13:46
So I think it was just those two things. I felt a little hamstrung on what I needed to get done, but also I think there were other agendas at play. Now I I not for one second do I want any of your audience to hear that and and and either find sympathy for me or cheer on the move that was made for me to leave, because challenge is a requirement for progress If I never went through that experience. If I never had that it’s time to go experience, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, I never would have written my book, I never would be on stage today evangelizing these principles that I know can change lives. Mike, I was at Audi a few months ago. It’s been several months now actually giving a talk.

14:40 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
The supermarket chain.

14:41 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
No, audi oh.

14:43 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Audi the car A-U-D-I. Okay, sorry, Yep.

14:45 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Yep, um. At the end of my talk I was delivering a keynote at the end of my talk, um, this fellow raised his hand big, muscular, burly, dude, shaved head, really intimidating figure. He leans forward in his chair and to a group of executives he says if you will allow it, this book can change your life. It changed my life and, more importantly, it changed how I’m raising my children. Dude, I have chills saying that it absolutely happened that way, and the reason I share that story is I never would have been given that opportunity to have that much of an impact on a stranger had I not gone through some unfortunate things in my journey. So I just think progress is always the result of overcoming one or more challenges, and that was a challenge that I took head on and I think it’s working out.

15:42 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, okay, and I and yeah, it’s interesting. So I didn’t ask the impasse question because I wanted people to feel sorry for you. I asked it because I think there are a lot of people who are at an impasse or a similar type impasse to what you were at, and they feel stuck in that impasse. They feel powerless in that impasse. They feel powerless in that impasse. There aren’t a lot of people, I think, who would walk away from that impasse. They would instead fight through that impasse or feel unempowered to do anything except. So I’m glad that I asked because I think you did share something with people that can give them confidence, not to not to, not to leave like you did or whatever, but the confidence that if this were to be something that led to you leaving, it’s a start, it’s not an end, and if you feel like you’re stuck in this impasse because you don’t have anything to fall back on, you’re probably wrong. You just need to think about it outside of your current paradigm.

17:00 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
So true, so true. And, by the way, you’re touching on something that I’ve wrestled with and I talk about quite a bit is and, by the way, you could not be more accurate in that I think corporate America is littered with people who feel stuck. They feel as if this machine is controlling essentially most of their day, part of their night, and maybe occasionally on weekends. You know, mike, we work, on average, 90 to 100,000 hours in our lifetime. The only thing we will do more during our lifetime, during our time on this planet, is sleep. So the part I wrestle with, though, is I was very fortunate in that when I exited and I had a contract and had a non-compete, so I was able to make sure that my commitments, my bills specifically, were going to be taken care of for an extended period of time. I was very fortunate.

17:58
Now, I worked very hard to put myself in that position, and I’m not naive, and this is the part I wrestle with. Not everybody is as fortunate as that. So so for you and I to sit here, or for me to say you know, make that, take that leap of faith, go do something that you’re passionate about, don’t just clock in, clock out I will never say those things because I recognize all of our commitments are different. We all have obligations to which we must attend, and for me to naively say, just leave your company and write a book, that’s not reality.

18:30
But the other side of that coin that, when I’m wrestling with this, that I share is you do have a voice in your own future, even inside of an organization that you feel may not bring the best out of you. We have a choice every single day, and that choice is do I want to have an impact on those around me? Be damned the higher ups or the toxicity that I see around me, I still have a choice to be better and I have a choice to have an impact on those around me and make them better. So it’s not. It’s not. You do have a say in this. It’s just not lather rinse repeat. It can be, and I don’t fault those that follow the lather rinse repeat process because there’s safety in that and I understand that. But you said it, we do, we absolutely. It doesn’t have to be that way.

19:15 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So let’s talk about this leading with an iron fist that you said. So you led with an iron fist for a good part of your career, I believe you admitted, and maybe it was necessary, maybe that was just who you are. I mean, there are lots of people out there that you’ve been sort of taught that’s the way you do it right Stick not carriage. It’s like stick not carriage. How did you develop that? How did you develop that?

19:47 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
And when was it that you said hey, this may not be the best way or the right way for me. I didn’t know any other way and in hindsight it’s clear to me it was ego. It was absolutely ego and a lack of self-confidence that compelled me to behave in ways that I didn’t. I always equated my title with authority, which is a really silly way to look at leadership. I was a boss.

20:27 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
That’s a boss. I was never a leader.

20:29 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
I was a boss, and here’s the tragedy in the whole thing, because I know your audience. I’m certain there are members of your audience who can relate in that we’ve all had that boss. We’ve all had someone who is looking to play gotcha rather than inspire and motivate and actually help me be better. Now I felt as if when I was in those years, I always delivered great results and I always felt as if my teams had a tremendous amount of respect for me. I later learned they feared me. How did you learn that? Which is, um, I opened my eyes and I and I started to be a little more self-reflective and introspective than I had ever been before. Um, and, and, and part of that is circumstance. So I enrolled, I went, I went back to business school at the age of 34 and I, you know, and I and I was exposed, and that’s when I kind of became a student of leadership. I became exposed to other approaches and, uh, wow, you really can do big things without berating people, without banging on the desk, without demanding people work 70 hours a week. You actually can deliver great results not doing it that way. You know so. So, and I think, by the way, there’s this thing that happens inside corporate America that I’m working so hard to squash, and that is there’s this cycle of bad leadership or bad bosses that goes on and on and on until somebody steps in, and the cycle is pretty simple Most people, when they raise their hand inside of an organization, to say I want to take on another role, I want to be promoted to a person that is a boss or a manager or a person with authority, however you want to define it a person that is a boss or a manager, or a person with authority, however we want to define it and naturally they feel as if they have to endear themselves to the people that are making those hiring decisions Usually, by the way, the same people they loathed interacting with on a daily basis before because they were treated poorly, so but so. So human nature kicks in and for me to be considered, uh, in this, in this, in this position of of promotion, I need to endear myself to these people who, to whom I’ve reported, probably in some way or another, and, uh, their approach has not been warm and it’s not been inspiring. But I know, if I need, if I want to get this job, I need to kind of mimic that behavior. And so it goes on and on and on. And especially when the when you get put into that new position of leadership, you’re reporting to someone that, that, that you see how they’re behaving and, by the way, they’re behaving the way that they’ve seen others behave. So until someone steps in the middle of that and says, enough, I’m going to lead in a way that they’ve seen others behave. So until someone steps in the middle of that and says, enough, I’m going to lead in a way that I’ve never been led and be the leader I’ve never had. This will continue in perpetuity.

23:16
Now you asked when did it change for me? And it changed for me. I remember the night it changed for me. You and I were chatting about Pressfield and the war of art earlier and I had one of those moments. It wasn’t as sexy as maybe he describes it, with the muse on the shoulder and those things, but I had just taken a role in an organization leading about 14,000 people. It was a multi-billion dollar portfolio. That was really purpose-driven work. It was to lead the Affordable Care Act enrollment centers as well as 1-800 Medicare. I was hired by a government contractor to lead these organizations.

23:54
I had been told in no uncertain terms that the team I was inheriting had some silos. There was a bit of dysfunction here and there. I wouldn’t go as far to say it was toxic, but there were certainly opportunities for us to behave a little differently and live a different paradigm. The night before this is when it all went down. The night before I was to meet with the top 40 or 50 leaders of my newly inherited organization. I’d been on the ground maybe 60 days. At the time, I was in my hotel room in Lawrence Kansas. I still had the suit on that I had worn that day to the office and I knew I had to come with something compelling, and it was a real gut check moment for me. It’s like be careful what you wish for. You wanted to lead a big organization and drive change. Now’s your chance. What are you going to do?

24:39
So, with my laptop in my lap, um had a power blank PowerPoint template open and I just started typing and within a couple of hours, tops, I had 10 sentences that were in front of me. Each of them then and now still begin with the word we. I’m not super creative. So now I have the 10 we’s and I went the we route, unintentionally, again, with no muse, because it occurred to me that the handful of direct reports that I was taking on, in addition to the folks underneath them, they had seen it all. They had the fellow before me who he was let go under really, really unfortunate circumstances. I believe the woman before him was also dismissed, I’m not certain. So they had heard well, I’ll say it this way me walking in saying what I was going to do, what my past and how I was able to turn this thing around and be the savior that everybody was looking for. It would just have alienated them and it would have put me on a pedestal that I did not want to be associated with.

25:40
So I walked out the next morning and I said you guys, these 10 principles I don’t even know if I called them principles at the time these 10 we’s will be the sentence. These will be the rules, essentially, that govern first how we treat each other, how I’m, how I will hold you accountable to every one of these principles, and I’m going to be very militant about this because I expect you to do the same with me. I want you to hold me accountable If you see me behaving in any way contrary to any one of these positions or any one of these principles, I want you to grab me by the ear, call me out. That was a, that was a really uh. The reactions in the room were, were, were bizarre. And number two these will be the rules that dictate how we treat those we serve externally.

26:23
And what followed man is is was the most profound series of years of my career. Our business results transformed and turned around dramatically. The leadership acumen and the caring of the folks on the team became so exponentially greater than anything I had ever witnessed before. Side note, so much so when I ultimately left that organization, I called an all hands meeting probably a thousand people on the phone. I wept, I cried, because leaving this team was like leaving my family. I’ve been gone from that organization for about five years now. I still have one-on-ones with a handful of folks from that team Every four to six weeks. We just check in on each other to make sure we’re all doing well, and I think that’s a commentary of the impact that that we had on each other. Um, but it all began back at that hotel room in Lawrence, kansas. That’s when it all. That’s when that turnaround started for me.

27:19 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And you thank you for sharing all that. And, as you were talking through that, the part about, you know, copying the behavior of other people, because you think that’s what has to be in order for you to get the job, the promotion, to be successful in the particular organization I kept thinking of okay, that’s the difference between looking through a window and looking into a mirror, right, so you’re looking in a window to this person who is maybe a lead with iron fist kind of person, but they’re the top person. So you’re thinking that’s what I need to be in order to have a chance to be the top person instead of saying, looking at it and being like is that really me?

28:08
Can I do? I want to pull that off. Can I pull that off? Should I pull that off? Should I? Great question.

28:14 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Yeah.

28:15 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Should I pull that off? So, anyway, I. I thank you for putting that through me. Now back to this Lawrence Kansas thing. Okay, so you deliver, and these people are probably sitting there. These 40 or 50 people are saying, oh, here’s the new, here’s, here’s Kyle, he’s the new. Whatever the guy’s name was, whatever the woman’s name was, he’s the new one. I’ve been here longer than he’s probably going to be here. So I’m just thinking of all this skepticism that could be going on. You lay out these 10 things. What happens after that, and how long does it take before they believe the 10 things, or believe five of them, or seven?

28:56 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Yeah, well, I’ll tell you a story. At the end of that presentation I learned I don’t know if it was at dinner that night or the next night it was a group of us that were out and one of the gentlemen was vulnerable enough to share with me that during the talk he Googled the 10 wheeze because he had thought I had stolen them from somewhere. I was plagiarizing them. But it gets worse. He also asked for the PowerPoint. He wanted my presentation and I said sure, nick, you can have it, no problem. He said I want to show it to my team. I said, of course I want this to be cascaded all the way through the organization. Well, he later admitted we became friends sometime later. He later admitted he wanted the PowerPoint because he needed to check the properties of the document to see if I was the one who indeed created the document or if I had stolen it borrowed it from somewhere else.

29:48 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Skepticism is on fire with this guy.

29:51 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
On fire. But as I wrapped, but going back to the speech, part of it, when I shared those principles as I looked across the room, you know, I would guess half of the audience was optimistic and energized. I would guess a quarter was kind of on the fence like wait and see. You know, maybe trust but validate, and the last quarter was just absolutely obstinate. This guy’s full of it and I just well, yeah, I’ll be here long after he will.

30:20
Exactly what you said and, as a matter of fact, one of the loudest and most vocal detractors was a direct report of mine, she, um, she was a jerk. A direct report of mine, she, um, she was a jerk. And I say that because just bear with me, cause at the end of this, this little um story, you’ll see why I say that Um at every turn. Julia challenged me. It was um. You know, my favorite example is I asked for a PowerPoint, not a PowerPoint, an Excel document, cause I wanted to do some analysis on some numbers. I was trying to get up to speed and learn the business, and she sent me a screenshot of an Excel document which is useless, as you know. So I said come on, man, let me, let me just have the. Send me the workbook please. She sent me a tab, so then I said all right, she’s being difficult for the sake of being difficult. And we’d had a meeting, I think, with a handful of people on and she was very vocal about disagreeing with something that I was. She was just snarky almost.

31:18
I haven’t worked there in five years and she is still one of those people that I mentioned that I have one-on-ones with on every four to six week basis. She is one of my closest business colleagues, one of my, a great friend now, and she was business colleagues, a great friend now and I think her behavior is natural in some ways, in that if you’ve been burned or if you’ve been exposed to bad bosses throughout your career and someone else comes in with a different talk track, the skepticism is natural. Now you don’t have to be a jerk to the new person. You could be a little more welcoming. And she knows I tell the story. I tell it all the time because I think it’s a beautiful commentary of how, if we’re open-minded and recognize that there’s something to be learned from every single person and every scenario of our lives, we will do that, we will learn. But if you shut down and are not open and vulnerable to a different way of thinking, you won’t see that change.

32:14
And I’ll also add man. She is now one of the better people leaders I have ever been associated with and I will say confidently she was not when we first met and I don’t take credit for that. I think she deserves the credit, but the skepticism was so strong One of my direct reports was the loudest with it who is now one of the biggest kind of proponents. They had me back. She had me back to her organization to give a speech late last year. So we’ve stayed in touch and she’s a great friend of mine.

32:41 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I’ve seen in my experience a couple of times where you have this kind of person. You’re a new person, you walk into an organization as the leader or the owner or whatever, and you have this person who, right off the bat, you’re like what is wrong with this person? Why are they such a jerk? Why it’s a cry of sorts for help, meaning they, this skepticism, was something implanted in them through experience with other people that didn’t work out well for them, and they’re usually the smartest people who have, who are like this right, the most informed, most talented, smartest people, committed people actually. But they develop this fear that something about how they define themselves is going to be taken away by someone like you, like the new leader, because that’s what always happens to them.

33:47
And I feel like the smart thing for leaders to do is, when you see that kind of behavior, do your best to embrace that person, because that person is, like you just mentioned, is probably going to be your biggest supporter if you embrace them. If you instead let it go and then think this person’s just a jerk, jerk, this person just, and they continue to be that way, you, you, you lose, you, you lose and and I know that’s not universal. Some people are just jerks. But that type of behavior, when I’ve seen it you, that’s what, what? Because I’ve made the, I’ve made the mistake of not embracing it, like being like I, I don’t want anything to do with you, yep Right To instead saying what do I have to lose if I embrace it and what do I have to gain? I mean, like I said, these people are usually really smart, really good, and they’ve just been behaved into that. They’ve been whatever the right word is.

34:57 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
But yeah, you, man, such an astute observation. And you just described this person, julia, to a T she’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant. So I would add one other thought, man, because it sounds like you’ve been in this situation as well. Right, when someone is just a jerk yeah, jerk, and you said it. It’s true, some people are just jerks. I think that’s the exception. I think you’d agree with me.

35:21
For the most part, I believe people come to work. Let’s just move past the fact that most of us have to, so let’s just okay, that’s a given. But I do believe most people come to work because they want to have an impact, they want to be fulfilled, they want to have an experience that is worthwhile. And instead of turning a cheek and walking away from someone who behaves that way and just chalking it up to that person being a jerk, it actually is harder for us to use your word, because I love it embrace who they are, to get underneath, why that’s happening, why they’re behaving the way that they are. For me, in this specific scenario, it was a real test of who I wanted to be portrayed as and who I was selling to them. Here’s what I mean by that. So these principles, right? The 10 wheeze. Principle number eight is we challenge each other. It’s my favorite of all because it drives real progress in an organization. When the boss is vulnerable enough to receive challenges from the team, when the team is obligated to challenge the leader when they see something, the team is obligated to challenge one another. Challenges go in every direction in the organizations I like to lead. But that principle we challenge each other is meaningless without the following principle, which is we embrace challenge.

36:53
Now remember, I stood in front of this group and said if you see me behaving any way contrary to any one of these principles, grab me by the ear. Lucky for me and I do think it was luck, because I don’t think I was, I don’t think I had the wherewithal she just got under my skin so quickly that I don’t think I had the wherewithal to do this intentionally. I think it was luck in that I recognized the challenges she was presenting had to be embraced, because I just stood on stage talking about we challenge each other and we embrace challenge. And if I didn’t and they saw me bang my fist on a desk and they saw me say like send me the damn spreadsheet instead of hey man, come on, just send me that workbook please. I’m now a hypocrite and the whole thing’s a house of cards yeah, one and done, one and done.

37:37
So I feel, as you know, in hindsight, the way and I think there’s a lesson in here for so many of us, and it was for me is to go deeper, man. Go deeper into the challenge that’s challenge that the person and their demeanor and their attitude is presenting to you. Go deeper. Why are they behaving that way? Work with that person to understand not just what they’re saying but why they’re saying what they’re saying. And if you can get through that, the other side of that is a relationship that is really hard to fracture. I mean, she and I are tight now, but it never would have happened if I had played the role that I played the previous 20-ish years.

38:23 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I think that’s amazing that you still, every four to six weeks, touch base with a handful at least of people, because that’s I think that’s kind of rare too.

38:34 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Yeah well, here’s how I would. I would jump on. What you said is um of my 28 year career, um any any one-on-ones or, you know, regular or recurring conversations that I have with with former colleagues, um, they’re all from that organization, maybe one or two from the previous 20 years.

38:54 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Interesting Okay.

38:55 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
So there’s a connection in that the way I behaved in the long-term relationships that lasted the first 20-ish years there’s one or two folks versus the way I behaved and led the last six or eight years of my career and the relationships that have persisted since then, it’s tenfold. So there’s something to be said for those relationships and the impact you can have on them, but they have on you as well, and I think that’s where a lot of us just we punch in, we punch out, we check boxes, we catch people doing the wrong thing, we provide discipline or coaching, we do an annual review. But the moment you realize, when you invest care into those that you lead, the outcome is more than just business results. The outcome is it can be, if you’re open to it, lifelong connections, and that is very powerful in my book.

39:51 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, yeah. Belief in someone is and nurtured belief in someone is something that’s-.

39:58 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Priceless.

39:59 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, it never loses value.

40:02 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
There’s no better feeling, never loses value In my mind. There’s literally no better feeling in the work, not just the workplace, but in life. We all love to be loved, we all like to be acknowledged, we, we, and, and when you are in a position, I just feel this way, man, at this point of my life, if I can improve someone else’s standing, their position, even give them a better day, just acknowledging that they’re having a bad, if I, that’s my obligation at this point and I think it’s an obligation of all humans. But we’ve lost that throughout the course of of time and I’m trying to bring it back, especially in the I’m starting in the workplace.

40:41 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, oh, I’m glad you’re there, I’m glad you are there doing this. So 2019, you have this separation and you and your wife go out for drinks, kind of you know. Just settle in with what happened and what happens the next day what? What do you do? We’re talking in March of 2024. So, five years later, give or take, you’re a whole new person. You got a whole new thing, a whole new person. You got a whole new thing, a whole new purpose. But what was that?

41:22 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
the day after the day, man, um, so remember, um, I mentioned that the fellow that hired me also left. Yeah, I reached out to him first, um, because, said I just wanted to. It was almost like therapy. I was like I didn’t see this coming. Obviously you’re not here, so you didn’t see it coming. But he said, he said, kyle, you’re going to go through three phases. I’ll never forget this. He said you’re gonna go through three phases.

41:48
The first is sadness, and I was. I was very sad, I felt like my identity had been stripped from me. The I was very sad, I felt like my identity had been stripped from me. The second is anger. He said when you’re, when you move beyond sadness, you’re going to be like, you’re going to feel as if you were wronged and you’re going to go through all these scenarios of of, of how you know life’s not fair and woe is me. And the third phase will be liberation. And he was right.

42:11
I went through all three of those phases and the sadness part lasted in high. You know, in hindsight it wasn’t terribly long, um, just a long, you know, maybe a week or so, maybe two anchor lasted a lot longer. And I and I was conscious to manifest that anger into activity and outcomes, and by that I mean I’m going to make good something, something good will come of this. Because I’m going to make something good come of this and I felt so strongly that I have something the world um that needed to be heard, and that’s these principles and I so. So before I reached um, before I reached liberation, I had this crossroad. I approached a crossroads like, okay, do I want to go back to the corporate world and try to get this fancy title back and lead you know tens of thousands of people again, or do I have a bigger calling?

43:06 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Mm-hmm.

43:08 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
And I landed on the ladder. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to approach that calling. I didn’t know. I never thought about writing a book.

43:16
Um and um, I went through a period of what I now call detox where, you know, this thing was forever clinched in my hand nonstop and I was always checking for emails that weren’t there, uh, because I didn’t have a job. Um, and I’ll never forget man one one evening. Um, I was getting really close to in my brain he hadn’t talked to anybody else about it uh, kicking around the idea of writing a book. By the way, I should mention many people from the organization, uh, that Julia was that um reached out to say it’s time to write a book. I had cheerleaders from two jobs ago saying come on, man, are you who you say you are? Nevermind what just happened, get back on the horse and spread the word. And that compelled me and encouraged me, inspired me to do it. But the never forget part was this I’m the kind of person, mike, when I say something out loud, you can take it to the bank. It’s going to happen.

44:14
And I was ruminating about this book idea and I finally approached my wife. I said I think I’m going to write a book and from that moment on, I was committed. I started the writing process, connected with the publisher, and I’ve spent every, literally every single day maybe with the exception of a week that I took off for our wedding just maniacally focused on spreading this word, and it’s working. Um, when, when I decided to write the book, I told my wife that if this book sold a thousand copies, I’d be over the moon, we just passed 10,000 copies sold. I’ve never been busier with speaking and coaching clients, so I feel as if all of everything we’ve talked about for the last several minutes um minutes was part of my journey, and it was. It was supposed to happen this way.

45:02 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So let me ask you about the, the, the three phases, because those I don’t know. That I’ve heard. I’ve heard the first two and I’ve heard different words for the third, for liberation, and I just want to dig in a little bit because and I’ve been through this myself, so I experienced these three things myself when I was 26.

45:27 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Do you recall how long you were in each of those phases?

45:29 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Well, that’s what I want to ask you about so sadness I was in for. So sadness I was in for. No doubt I was in that for a month, maybe longer, and that was just complete. Like you feel shame, I did. You know, I feel shame. I feel like why me? You know, it’s very just like I’m going to give up for a little while and I’m just going to blame. It’s really a blame game. I’m going to blame. So a little while and I’m just going to blame. It’s really a blame game. I’m going to blame. So that’s the sadness part for me, the anger. This is unfair. They made a mistake, I’m going to get back at them or whatever. So I was in that for a few months Longer than sadness Longer than sadness, yes, same.

46:16
But the liberation part, that’s what’s really interesting to me, because those first two are very present. Things Like when you are sad. You know today, right at this moment, I am sad, same with anger, but liberated. You really don’t know that you’re liberated, even if you’re on the path to liberation, you’re following this new purpose you have, or whatever, until it’s validated. And I’m not saying I’m right, I’m just putting. I want to hear what your perspective is on that, because sometimes, like for me, I ended up starting a company and I thought it was great and all but.

46:58
I don’t know when. I actually it took a long time before I felt like you know what, like people always say, that’s the best thing that ever happened to me, that I, I’m liberated now. That took a while because there’s a lot of work and validation that has to occur in order for that. It’s not a present, it’s not a like today I feel liberated because, whatever it’s like, oh, I’ve been doing this for two years and, man, do I feel liberated. I, how, how do you process?

47:28 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
that. Yeah, I just love this part of our conversation, man, I have to say I do. I do a handful literally probably a handful of podcasts a week, and rarely do we am I given an opportunity to really go deep in the psychology of who I am, who we are, how we became what we are, the journey we’re on, where we might ultimately land. I just I really embrace this opportunity. So thank you. For me it was not. I would say the shift from sadness to anger was almost a light switch. The switch from anger to liberation was not linear. I’m replaying kind of things that went through my mind and I was experiencing back in those days and there were certainly days and I wouldn’t even go as far to say there were. The whole process wasn’t linear either. So while I would, I would flirt with liberation from from anger. Um, of course, sadness would raise its ugly head every now and then.

48:32 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So there was a spring, because it’s easier to invite the sadness back in than it is Easier yeah.

48:38 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Yes, that’s so true man. So you know I’d be lying if I said there was a sentinel moment that liberation came. Even deciding to write the book, I had no idea I’d be doing podcasts and speaking on this all around the country, you know, a couple of years, a few years later, but for me it was important to. I’d always been portrayed and it was intentional. I wanted to be portrayed in my professional life as someone who had all the answers, someone who was unflappable.

49:10
My confidence is unshakable and, of course, none of those things are true. No one’s confidence is ultimately and forever unshakable. All of us have self-doubts. I suffer from imposter syndrome to this day and, by most accounts, with maybe a touch of arrogance, most corporate-minded, career-minded people would have traded places with me in a minute. But yet here I am questioning my value. Am I good enough to be doing this? So for me it wasn’t linear. But liberation comes, it is a choice, and for me it was stacking small wins upon one another, and the first win for me was choosing to no longer be sad and angry. Of course, that wasn’t a light switch I would backslide but it was a very intentional shift at the end. And now all three of those phases are essentially fuel for everything that I do, because I know there’s a place in the world for this message and and I feel as if I’m I am not doing I’m doing a disservice not only to myself, but for those that have a chance to impact if I don’t follow it.

50:28 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I’m so glad you brought that confidence thing up, because so so for me, confidence is something that’s shown, not said. It’s shown, not said, right, as soon as someone is telling me how confident they are, I can be almost 100% sure that the reason they’re telling me that is because they’re looking for some type of validation. Yeah, so big mistake, I think, for people. Because they’re looking for some type of validation. It’s yeah so big mistake, I think, for people. Any leader If you want to demonstrate how confident you are, show it, Don’t tell it, don’t tell it, show me.

51:10
Don’t tell it to me. As soon as you tell it to me, I’m like I’m worried about you. I don’t know.

51:14 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Yeah, there’s a quote that I’ll probably butcher and maybe you’ll edit this out, I don’t know, but it’s. It goes something like confidence comes from a stack of undeniable proof that you can do what you say you do Right. Again, I probably butchered that. There’s a much, much more eloquent way to say that, but I think it’s true. Real confidence comes from not being excellent at the thing that you’re aspiring to be excellent at, but progress towards that thing right. It’s like everything else, man.

51:43
If I want to take on, if I want to learn a second language like I’m going to be terrible at it for a while, I have to embrace that terribleness, for lack of a better word to get better. If I want to lose weight and go to the gym today, nothing’s going to change. Go tomorrow nothing’s going to change. But I know that I’m putting in the work and the confidence comes from knowing my consistency will outlast my insecurity on that front. So it’s just a matter of just stacking those reps one upon the other, and for me that’s where confidence comes. But even still, dude, I’ve sold 10,000 books, I’ve stood on stage in front of thousands of people, I led tens of thousands of people. I struggle with confidence and imposter syndrome, more than I’m proud to admit, but I think owning it and speaking openly about it is my path to overcoming it.

52:35 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Speaking openly about it is my path to overcoming it, and I think it also may very well speak to your.

52:46
Speak to you, knowing that every time you have an opportunity to talk to someone or be on some stage or be on TV with someone and be on a podcast, you’re challenging yourself to be a little better than you were the last time, because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be nervous about it, you wouldn’t feel like it’s imposter syndrome, right? Or you know, when somebody who isn’t just going to put your book up and say, here are the 10 wheeze tile, can you walk us through the 10 wheeze? And you’re like, okay, I’m going to walk you through the 10 wheeze, but instead says, you know, tell me about, you know, the Lawrence Kansas thing. Okay, that’s great, now tell me about how you actually turn those people around, because it’s fantastic that you so speaking of the 10 weeks and the book Begin With we did you when you told your wife you wanted to write a book, you put it out there. When you say something, it’s like putting it in the bank.

53:39 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Did you?

53:39 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
know it was going to begin with weed. Did you know it? Was going to be the 10 weeds. Had you forgotten about the 10 weeds, and I don’t mean forgotten like forever, but just sort of put them aside.

53:53 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
What a great question. No, I didn’t. Yes, I knew the book would be. The foundation of the book would be the 10 wheeze. I did not know it would be that name. Here’s a really cool story. I thought the book was going to be called the 10 wheeze and I wrestled with a number of different titles and when Begin With we surfaced, guess who? I called Julia? You called Julia, yeah, called Julia. And I said hey, man, I’m kicking this around. I have chills telling the story. I said I’m kicking this around, what do you think about? Begin With we? And she goes that’s it, that’s it. I go, what do you mean? She goes that’s what you did with us when you joined our team. That’s what you did with us. You began with we. You didn’t tell us who you were, what you were going to do, how important you were. You began with us done that’s the name of the book Um and and um the. And I love the question and I love the question.

54:58
Did I put the 10 wheeze in a corner somewhere? I did the opposite, and here’s why I found myself becoming such a staunch proponent of these principles in the workplace that I started to notice that I was not living those same principles in my personal life. You know, here’s a guy that’s. The number one principle of the 10 ways is we do the right thing always. And I had this you talk about. When did it happen, or how did it happen? I was in a grocery store parking lot unloading my groceries into my truck and I, like so many of us do, I took my cart and put it right next in the parking spot next to me, where my truck was, and I had this epiphany that was hang on, dude, if you’re the guy that says we do the right thing always, is it the right thing to leave this grocery cart in the middle of the parking lot when you know it just needs to be taken 30 yards that direction? And from that moment forward, I try to be, I try I’m not perfect at this I try to behave in a way as if there’s like a documentary film crew following me to test me if I’m living, what I’m saying, if I’m walking the walk. So I never put them aside.

56:14
As a matter of fact, they are now more front and center and present in my life than ever before, because I just believe now that establishing your personal principles in the workplace for me it was what do I want? My, my team goes home and they’re at the dinner table talking to their significant others, and the kids are at the table. What are they saying about the boss? Are they saying he’s somebody who is empathetic and understands the challenges that they’re facing every single day? Is it someone that is encouraging them to be excellent and be their best? Or is it someone that just belittles them and talks down to them and is looking for them to make a mistake?

56:57
And then, on the personal side, do I want to be the friend that leads by example? It’s we, number two. Do I want to be the friend that picks someone else up, picks my wife up when she’s struggling, or propels someone to new heights? That’s we, number six. We pick each other up. And I just found that consistency was so important. And, man, if you want to insult me, the worst word you can ever use to insult me is hypocrite. I just can’t tolerate being known for something on one side of the coin and behaving in another way. That’s hypocrisy, and I just can’t. I can’t be seen in that light. So it was always. It’s never been more front and center, and I’m glad you asked about the title because that’s I’m.

57:37 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
That’s one of my favorite julia stories also I’m I I’m smiling as you’re telling this story, kyle, that the, the documentary film crew sort of mentality to you, know what you’re doing in your life? Like I’m saying these 10 things, what am I doing in my own life? And if someone were to see me on film right now or put it up on a billboard, would they be like that guy’s a hypocrite right.

58:01
That’s a great way to put guard rails on yourself, right, because a lot of times, people, it’s easy to say things, it’s easy to write a book about things. It’s easy to get up on a stage and say things to people Yep.

58:17
It’s a little bit harder to do all of those things consistently and purposefully and maybe even habitually. Yes, it’s a bit harder, and there are a lot of people who think it’s okay, I think, to do eight out of 10, maybe, or seven. Well, two, two other things, the we thing. So at some point in my career I, when we started doing all of our goal setting and stuff, I replaced the goal, or I didn’t replace the goal, but I started every goal with we will, instead of like revenue of x, you know the, we will generate revenue of x. We will be, you know, because I felt like that was a way to make it, to make the goals not only feel personalized, but they’re not, they’re ours.

59:07
Then they’re not the companies, you know, they’re not the organizations, they’re not Kyle’s goals, cause I don’t, I don’t care about Kyle’s goals, you know, and and and. You can’t just do that either, because people will be like I never agreed to that, so you have to be. It requires a collaborative process that we’re all going to put a stamp on, a stamp of we on it. And then the third thing you said and I remember this going back many, many years I said to my wife I do not want to be the person that someone has worked with me all of their life and they’re retired and they’re sitting around the kitchen table with their wife and they’re bitching about me.

59:53
I don’t want to be that person and, to the extent that I can control or have some influence on it either by being exactly who I say I’m going to be- and by being a good leader to the best of my ability, but also to make sure that when I have people in my life that I think are going to be like that, no matter what I do, I probably have to move on from those people, because they’ll find someone else to be that person that they’ll be talking about.

01:00:25 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
I don’t want it to be me Brilliant, mike. So there’s these two words that I think very few people use together and that’s leadership legacy. We all have one, and I don’t mean those that lead teams. We all have a leadership legacy. Am I viewed as someone that lifted others up and helped others achieve their goals? It doesn’t have anything to do with authority. It doesn’t have anything to do with authority. It doesn’t have anything to do with your title, and I found that again two decades after I started my journey.

01:01:02
I found that and, by the way, for your audience, this does not mean that you have to lead in a way that allows others to run you over. It doesn’t mean you’re not in command of the situation. It doesn’t mean you’re not in command of your team. It’s not those things. It is recognizing the importance and the impact that you can have if you choose to take that route and, once more, making the decision to have that impact on someone is so fulfilling on really three fronts. When you care and take time to invest in the growth of others, they benefit. If you really care and are effective at it, the team benefits because now you have a group of people who know their leader is invested in their journey and wants better for them. But most profoundly and but indirectly, you benefit because the feeling and the fulfillment that comes from establishing and putting people in places to be their best is, I think it’s priceless. So so that leadership legacy, I think, is something that that we should, we should think about more often.

01:02:24
And, and I’ll add this, this last thing on the leadership legacy thing and not being I don’t want people to think it just means being being soft. I don’t think anyone who’s ever worked with me, uh, reported to me, um, or had been associated with me in a business context, will tell you that Kyle’s a pushover. As a matter of fact, I go, I go very far the other direction to say you may not like what I have to say, you could disagree, and if you disagree, you are not allowed, you are obligated to tell me you disagree, let’s have a conversation about that. But you will never know or question Sorry, you’ll never question where I go to another meeting and say something completely different and leaving the teams kind of like saying you know who’s on first. So I think ambiguity is the enemy of progress in that, in that, in that regard, Ambiguity is the enemy of progress.

01:03:24 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
That’s a great sentence, yeah.

01:03:28 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
I think so much of our work lives and disappointments in work come from a lack of aligning on on. Where’s the finish line aligning on expectations? Another quote that I’ll botch, and I don’t recall where I heard this, was failure to establish expectations is a recipe for premeditated disappointment.

01:03:47 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Have you heard that one? I’ve heard it, yes.

01:03:50 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Yeah, it’s so true, right, and it’s not just I shared with my wife. Actually, she shared it with me in a different, in a different light, because I was being obstinate about something and she was like, well, you didn’t check, you didn’t tell me that’s what you expected. Like you didn’t, I didn’t know that’s what you wanted.

01:04:05 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Like of course you didn’t know, cause I never told you that’s on me and it yeah I call that, uh, leading by osmosis, like you think, oh, something’s in my head so it’s got to be in everyone else’s head, right?

01:04:18
you should know, yeah, you should know clearly, or she should know, because I’m the boss, you should know I made for a long time like, can’t you feel that I this is yeah, um right. So, uh, we talked about before we went on, and you mentioned steven pressfield. Uh, today, a great writer who I’ll put a link to my podcast with him in the show notes, and David Goggins we were talking about before, because all three of us David, you and me have had our books published by Scribe Scribe Well, it’s called Scribebe media.

01:04:54
I don’t know if it’s still called scribe, but anyway, we’re in, we’re in, we’re in great company, kyle we’re alums like yeah, we’re alums and, uh, you know, if it wasn’t for us, david goggins may not be who he is today backs, backs yeah, but um another book that I tired of carrying him. Yeah right for sure, Like my back’s a little sore. Another book that came to mind only because of the 10 wheeze, but begin with me is a book called Relentless by Tim Grover. Have you ever heard of?

01:05:26 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Tim Grover’s oh yeah, oh yeah, I’ve not read the book, but he’s a savage Kobe Bryant Michael Jordan guy. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:05:35 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, and he’s got 13 things in his book Relentless. Oh okay, it’s really good. I listened to it so I didn’t read it, but really good. He breaks people down into three categories Shoot, I forget the first one, but it’s closers and cleaners are the second two, but cleaners are the top in his thing. But anyway, that’s not really the story. His story was he’s got 13 things. He numbers them all. One, kyle, because he goes if you give somebody a list and there’s 10 things on that list, they are going to think that number 10 is less important than number one, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So he’s like whenever I do lists I just thought it was a very interesting way to approach it because he’s like these 13 things, they’re all important and you with details matters as one of yours right, that was his detail he’s like I cannot. If you don’t do all 13 things, all of these things, you will not be successful. So they’re all one. So each one is like number one. And then he says it does take a thing.

01:06:34 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Number one. Moving on to number one yes, let’s wrap up with number one.

01:06:37 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
It’s really good, it’s really good to listen to. At least I didn’t read it. So you’ve mentioned a lot of your, a lot of the 10 begin with we, but there’s one that you haven’t mentioned that I’m actually most interested in yeah, and it is number four. We take action.

01:06:56 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
And.

01:06:56 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I wrote that down and then I wrote a question mark after it because I was like, okay, I needed you to clarify that, because you at another point mentioned that you can’t really confuse movement with productivity, for example so people read we take action, they’re thinking I hear that they’re listening to the pirate. Okay, what does that actually mean? I mean, I take action all the time. What? Who doesn’t take action? What is it? What is what is it? What is it about taking action that makes it a week Um one of your 10 weeks?

01:07:41 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
man, um, I, I’m going to, I’m going to guess, throughout your journey, especially in in your, in your business life, um, you have seen, seen or are aware of areas of opportunity for us to be better, the team to be better, and that could be improving our product, improving our service, improving the customer experience, improving the employee experience. And just look the other way. We’ve all done it, we’ve all, we’ve all done it. And um, when, when we are aspiring to build what I call a culture of excellence, we don’t look the other way. We, we recognize that thing over there. It’s not working and it’s been broken for a while.

01:08:26
I’m not saying I have the answers, but I am certainly going to point it out to the person who is responsible for that thing. It doesn’t mean we’re cowboys and we go, you know, just start trying to fix something that is not in our domain, but it does mean we’re going to acknowledge that it’s there. We may not even get to it in the next month, year or whatever, but we are not going to look away from it. You know the corollary or the kind of the way I would compare, that is, you know, the TSA, transportation Safety Administration has, if you see something, say something and Culture of Excellence if you see something, do something. That’s we take action.

01:09:05 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
All right.

01:09:06 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
And, mike, I’ll leave you with this on that one is there’s a company out there, very well-known company, that every one of your audience has heard of and may even own one or more of their products, who has spent billions of marketing and advertising dollars on their version of this slogan, and it’s just do it, just do it. Nike slogan isn’t be the best, it’s not. You’re number one, it’s not let’s go be excellent. Do it, just do it, man, just do it. Start something. Yeah, and that’s how I want my teams to view challenges and view areas of opportunity for us to get better is it ain’t going to change and it ain’t going to fix itself. So we have to recognize this for ourselves and take action on it.

01:09:53 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Just do it. Don’t do it, great.

01:09:55 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Don’t do it, excellent, don’t just do it, man Just do it.

01:10:00
And it’s. I have to add this, though, man, Um, the very next week is we own our mistakes, right? Because if you want to create an environment that that encourages people to raise their hand to say that thing in the corner needs to be addressed or hey, we’ve been really underperforming in this area of the business, we got to take action to go fix that. If you want your team members to raise their hand and point these things out, you’ve got to be comfortable that they’re going to make mistakes trying to fix it.

01:10:29
By definition, the thing that we’re taking action on has not had any activity or action taken on it, so we’re not familiar with it in many cases, which means there are going to be mistakes. We’re going to fumble, we’re going to stumble, so we have to own our mistakes, which is followed by the next we, as we, pick each other up. So when someone does say that thing needs to be addressed and they slip while they’re addressing it, the first thing we have to do not just the boss, but the team we all have to say here’s my hand, I got you, let’s go, I’ll pick you up, we’re going to keep going. So I think those three are very important when mentioned together and, by the way, that’s why there are 10 and not 10 number ones, because each of them builds upon the preceding way.

01:11:15 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And I was not challenging your 10.

01:11:17 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
I was just saying I would embrace it, though I would embrace it.

01:11:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Oftentimes, the reason that something hasn’t improved is because no one knows how to improve it, meaning they don’t know how to take it from A to Z, which is the improvement. And so, because they don’t know how to take it from A to Z, they don’t take anything, instead of looking at it and saying, well, I’m not sure how to get to Z, but I’m pretty sure that we can try B without the company folding. So let’s try B and we’ll learn from trying b, and then that’ll help us try c and, you know, eventually get to z. That’s how I like to think about that uh, mike, and your answer.

01:12:01 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
In that last two or three sentences use the word we three times and let’s one time you nailed it like together we can do anything. Yeah, like, if you know, if somebody dropped a problem right here in front of us right now and something that you and I have so little familiarity with, we can get to the bottom of this problem. We may not be able to fix it today, tomorrow, between the two of us, we know somebody we could call. We have the internet Collectively. That’s the beauty of we we is there are so many diverse perspectives and experiences in a group of people that tackling the gnarliest of problems the only way to youtube. Go to kyle’s youtube channel.

01:12:44 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
He’s got a trailer for the book, which is amazing, like I wish I had my. My assistant said to me we have to do this with your next book, at which he sent me a link to it. He explains the 10, the, the 10, wheeze, super well done. And then, once you hear that, you will know for sure why you want to need to buy this book and why you want to and need to reach out to Kyle to learn more and see what he can do to help yourself or your organization or whatever it is that you are trying to maximize and improve and make great. And, kyle, before we go, is there anything that I haven’t asked you or I should have asked you that you want to leave us with?

01:13:43 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Gratitude, gratitude, and I’m thankful for the platform. I’m thankful for the really really genuine conversation. As I mentioned, I do a lot of podcasts and some of them are more rapid fire question and answer than they are conversations, and this filled my cup today, brother. So I’m grateful for the opportunity, grateful for you and the great work that you’re doing, and I hope to have added a little bit of value to the show today.

01:14:14 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Wow, you added more than a little bit of value. Thank you for engaging me and going in whatever direction I I wanted to go, I did. I did look it up. It’s getting back to Tim Grover. It’s cooler, closer, cleaner. Another great book, relentless, by Tim Grover.

01:14:31 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
I got to grab that one. Huh, yeah, yeah, he does.

01:14:34 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
It’s really cool to listen to him go through those three types of people and, of course, kobe and Michael are cleaners, amongst others. But you used the word great a number of times when you were just sort of signing us off there, and one of the things I do every week is I encourage everyone that’s listening to one realize that you have greatness inside of you and to do your best to maximize it every single day. Kyle, thank you so much for being on the show.

01:15:05 – Kyle McDowell (Guest)
Mike, it’s my pleasure, thank you.

01:15:07 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Hey everybody, thanks for listening to the show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Ownership how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes, noble, amazon you can get it everywhere If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential. Order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy, and if you get it, please let me know what you think. Number three my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday and I talk about things that are interesting to me and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them.

01:16:05
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