Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learnings so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. You know, I don't think anybody understands healthy organizations better than my guest today. Patrick Lynchoni is the founder of the table group and his books on teams and leadership have sold more than 8 million copies around the world. One of those books is called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And I got to tell you, I loved it so much that we cascaded it through the entire organization of young brands. His ideas are just that good and today's podcast is no exception. Now, you've probably heard of us talk about the importance of vulnerability for leaders. But what does being vulnerable actually look like? How can it change the way you lead meetings, tackle conflict, or even look at your whole career? Patrick's insights will help you answer those questions. And I got to tell you, when it comes to leadership, you really can't be a great leader until you understand the power of vulnerability. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Patrick Lynchoni. You know, Pat, let me tell you something. It's been a long time since we've been together. You may remember this, but you spoke at our leadership conference in Hawaii where we came together. We brought in our top 200 leaders and their spouses around the world to celebrate the fact that we doubled our stock price in five years. And you just did a great job. But I don't know. You see the Michael McDonald concert we had or not? I certainly did. It was an intimate affair with Michael McDonald. And then I got on a plane and went home. I spent one night there. I'll tell you what, Michael McDonald was great, but you knocked it out of the park. You really had so many good things. And I can't wait to really get into this podcast. But I got to start out, you know, when you were starting your consulting firm, I understand that you wanted to do naked consulting with your clients. Now, that's right. I'm a little nervous to ask you this, Pat, but I'll give you a chance to explain. What did you mean by that? Well, it's funny because when I wrote that book called getting naked, I had a copy of it in the backseat of my car and my third son was in first grade. And he got in the car and one of his friends saw that and said, I thought your dad was Catholic. You know, this is, you can't write this. And the truth is I learned from my friends in the south that there's a difference between naked, which is biblical and good and naked. So it wasn't naked. It was naked. Getting naked is about being vulnerable and humble and real with people that you're serving so that they know that you have their best interests at heart and it's kind of countercultural and counterintuitive. And yet it leads to the most loyal, open relationships. And I think it applies to far more than customer service. You know, I couldn't agree more with you. And I want to talk to you more about that in just a second. But you've been working alongside senior executives now for 25 years. Give me a snapshot of the business that you're leading today. Wow. Yeah, that's a great question, David. When I started me and a handful of colleagues thought we were going to go build a little consulting firm and spend the rest of our lives just working with one CEO and their team at a time. And then I wrote a book and then I gave a talk and we thought, oh, that's nice to do that for marketing purposes. And then we wrote another book and people started buying it and we started giving more talks and consulting to more companies. Today, I do, we have like 50 consultants around the world, but I don't do near as much consulting except for nonprofits and faith organizations. And I spend my time writing and building products. We have a new team assessment that's the biggest thing we've ever done in the last two and a half years. And so my business today is really, we don't like to call it a think tank. That makes us sound too intellectual. But our business is about coming up with ideas and then putting them out there through books and tools and talks and programs and consulting to CEOs. So what we used to do exclusively is now just one of like five different parts of our business. Fantastic. And you know, I know you're an expert assessing the health of organizations and I understand the very first thing that you'd want to do if you were going to evaluate a culture or how healthy the organization is, is to really observe the leadership team in a meeting. Why is that? You know, I said this years ago, I used to work in a management consulting firm and we would evaluate companies and look at their annual report and their financials. And I said, you know, if I could just be a fly on the wall and watch the way that these men and women talk to each other and see how open they are, do they argue well, do they listen to one another, do they admit when they're wrong, do they hold each other accountable, and are they really interested in the greater good or their own department or their own individual needs in about an hour. I think I'd have a much more accurate view of the future success of that organization than if I looked at a bunch of documents. So that's what I mean. The meetings are the playing field of business. And when leaders say, I don't like meetings, it's like, well, that's kind of what you do for it. That would be like Tom Brady saying, I never really liked those games. But football was pretty fun. It's like, well, that's how we know if you're good at what you do. And the meeting is the game. It's the performance. It's the classroom. If you're a teacher, it's the surgery. If you're a surgeon, the way a leader runs a meeting is pretty central to their ability to be a leader. And you talk about vulnerability. And you just mentioned that when we talked about getting naked. And I found from my experience, Patrick, that people didn't ever really care about how I had any kind of success. But when they really related to me is when I talked about all the times I screwed up things I could have done better. When you think about this concept, the reality of being vulnerable, how does it impact the rest of the team when you as a leader really open up and share? I think it's humility. And people say, well, what is humility? And it's genuine humility. If the greatest problem in life is pride, that's the root of all sin. It's like people's pride gets in the way. The antidote to pride is humility. That's the opposite. And I never really understood this. And somebody explained to me years ago, humility is the most attractive quality in the world. To me to genuinely humble person is so it changes everything. And so when they see you being human and when they see you said, I made a mistake, they're like, I can relate to you. I will follow you. And I believe that you are worth listening to because you're not trying to promote yourself. And yet so many young people and older people go into the world thinking to be a leader means I have to be perfect. I have to be on. I have to avoid making mistakes. And it is the very thing that makes people not want to follow them because we don't trust people that aren't humble. And so I think humility and vulnerability are the key to being a great leader, the first key. Can you share a story where you've seen a leader in action where they were really vulnerable and how it paid off for them? Oh, gosh. I mean, there's so many. And they're usually micro examples. You know what I mean? It's not. One of the most important things that I've seen is that I've seen a lot of people who are not able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And I think that's the key to being able to do that. And even now, when I see that, I go, I like that guy. I follow him into a storm. But maybe by the end of our talk today, I'll come up with a great example. No, that's all right. No problem. My crystal Pepsi example is pretty good. But you also, if you're a leader, have to be willing to talk about the ranch flavored Doritos. Well, I'll let other people talk about that one. But here's the thing about humility, which I think people don't realize. You do need to talk about when you make a mistake, but humility is not denying that you have genius and skills and success. Because when you do that, people are like, oh, are you not comfortable with that? We all have to know when God gives us a gift and people recognize that you have to say, yeah, I'm pretty good at that, aren't I? You don't celebrate it all the time. You don't make it make you feel like you're better than everybody else. But when you're good at something or do something well, it is just as much an element of humility to say, yes, that's true. And I'm glad that I could do that. That's true, because you really can't fake this kind of stuff. You can't fake humility. You can't say, oh, I never came up with an idea in my life because nobody's going to buy into that. In fact, when I said to you, I'll let other people talk about the cool ranch Doritos. I was BSing you. I really was. I love telling that story. And you know what? Right now I'm being vulnerable. You know, that was me not being David Novak. Right. And you know, we love to celebrate people's successes and talents. And we also love it when they acknowledge their shortcomings. And if Michael Jordan came off the court and they said, Michael, you played a great game. And he goes, no, not really. I did. It's like, Michael, you scored 40 points. You had this many rebounds. You did all this. If he can say, yeah, and it was really fun and I'm glad I can do that. Now I'll talk about my teammates and what they did too. But when a person is unwilling to acknowledge the true gifts they have, it actually hurts their ability to be credible. You know, it's just humility is about acknowledging truth. You got to be the real deal. There's no question about that. You know, I remember coming up when people would say, you know, don't let them see you sweat. You know, is there any merit to that kind of thinking today? No, I think the best leaders are the ones, especially with your team. I mean, it's one thing what you do at a podium and a press conference. That's a little different. But the best leaders are the ones that go check this out and they point at their armpits. Look how sweaty I am. Because everybody else is like, yeah, we saw that too. The fact that you're willing to point it out means we're okay. But when somebody's standing there like the emperor with no clothes saying, how do I look? And everybody's like, uh, you look fine, boss. They lose credibility. They people just will not follow them and trust them. So I think if you're sweating, be the first one. If you rip a fart in a meeting, go, whoa, I just, I just did that. And I mean, I don't, I don't encourage people to do that, but you know, we're human. And when we acknowledge our humanity, people will follow us. Yeah. You know, when I was teaching my leadership program, I would talk a little bit about conflict, the importance of having productive conflict. And I would ask everybody, how many of you enjoy conflict? Raise your hand. Nobody would raise their hand. And, you know, what advice can you give leaders who are really challenged by the people? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? And what are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? What are the best challenges that you've ever been in? I said, "Okay, we're going to come get you." Steve Jobs came out into the hallway where I was waiting and said, "Hey, Pat, I only have 10 minutes to interview you, so come back with me right now. I'm sorry I don't have more time. My schedule got changed." I said, "That's okay." So I went into his office and we talked for an hour. I learned later that he did that all the time because if he was bored after 10 minutes with somebody, he wanted to be able to say, "Sorry, that's all the time I have." Not only did he spend an hour with me, and it was a fabulous talk about, and I'll tell you what he said. He said, "Pat Pixar is not about technology. It 's about story. And stories are key. These stories will be here forever and they change people 's lives." I'm a screenwriter in my spare time for fun. I did that. I loved that. So we had this great talk. Then I went to my next interview and he came with me. So he sat with me for the next interview. They offered me the job and I turned them down because I really didn't want to be an HR. There's so much of HR that I don't love like all the benefits and comp and all that stuff. It's not my thing. I called the headhunter and I said, "Yeah, I'm not going to do that." But he said, "Okay, Steve Jobs is coming by to take you to lunch tomorrow because you don't turn Steve Jobs down for a job. He's going to come by and pick you up." I thought, "Oh, Lord, help me. What am I going to do?" The next day, Apple fired their CEO and hired Steve Jobs back to go to Apple. And so I fell off their radar screen. I think that was a blessing. But it was an amazing experience and he was so passionate about stories. And so what an experience that was. Because you're listening to this, I can tell. You're the kind of person who wants to learn how to lead well. But there's a lot of companies out there who want to take that desire and charge you $500 or $1,000 or heck, even $20,000 to try and show you how to lead. That's just not right. If you want to be a better leader, I believe you deserve to have access to something that will truly help you. And it shouldn't cost a fortune. So I want you to go to howleaderslead.com and start my leadership class. It's really and truly free. And after you take this class, you're going to feel more confident in your role and you'll be on your way to getting big things done with your team. Go check it out at howleaderslead.com. You wrote a book that had a huge impact on my life and I think it was your first book, the Five Temptations of a CEO. I shared that with my entire team and we talked about the principles in it. But what was it that got you into this book writing field? Another great question because it takes me way back. So I was a screenwriter for fun. I took a screenwriting class, my senior year of college and started writing screenplays. And I had some people interested in them, but I decided that wasn't going to be my full-time job. So I was working at a company at that company, Cybase. And I was also doing some pro bono work, just some volunteer work for these companies helping their executive teams. And I started to notice some trends in these leaders. And I thought, "Oh my gosh, there's a CEO I'm working with." And he's not interested in results. He's actually just kind of interested. It's his ego. And oh, so that's the big problem. He's not results focused. And I said, "Well, what about this other CEO? He's a results focus, but he's struggling." Oh, yeah, he's not willing to hold people accountable. Right? And then, but this guy over here, this gal over here, she's willing to hold people accountable and she wants results. Oh, she's just afraid to make a decision if it's not perfect. And so there were these five things. And I wasn't going to write a book. I just started sharing them with my clients and with other people in the organization. And a guy came back to me a year later and he repeated this theory to me. And I said, "Where did you hear that?" And he goes, "Well, you told me about it a year ago." And then one of those pro bono clients said to me during a meeting once, "Hey, Pat, you should write a book about that." And I was like, "Well, I don't know if I have time to write a book." And they said, "Well, if you don't, somebody else is going to write that book." And that's when I said, "That would really be hard for me if somebody else wrote a book about this theory." So I sat down and I said, "Okay, I'm going to write a book." And then I got kind of depressed because so many of the business books I had read or I had purchased, I didn't finish. Because some were really, really long. And I would read the first few chapters. And if I wasn't compelled to, I said, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go back and write a screenplay, essentially." My books are really screenplays more than even novels. They're very action, like, what's going on and who people are. So I said, "I'm going to write a book that reads like a screenplay that's short enough to where people who don't really like to read will get through it." And then at the end, I'll explain what it's really about. Well, David, I didn't have a publisher. And so we started our own consulting firm. And we were talking at a meeting where like, "Let's go to Kinkos and make copies of this book," I wrote, and give it to our clients that'll help them understand if they want to work with us. And somebody's sisters, boyfriends, girlfriend's friend worked at a publishing company. They read it. They saw it. They published it. And that was the five temptations of a CEO. And we thought, "Hey, somebody printed this and put it on nice paper. That's going to be the end of it." We didn't know that 12 books later, we'd still be going. So it was largely just a blessing and an accident. Wow. I'll tell you what, that is a great book. You have the five dysfunctions of a team, which I shared with my people. We cascaded that across the organization at Young Brands. That was powerful. Where'd that idea come from? Well, you know, something, it originated with the five temptations of a CEO. There's some related models there. And I was working with clients and we were realizing, "Oh, wow, this doesn't just apply to the CEO. It applies to the collective group of people, but in a different way." So we wrote it. And I will tell you that my publisher at one point said, "I don't think the book needs another book on Teams, Pat. Maybe you should write about something else." And of course, that's my bestseller by far. And we thought, "Well, it seems like they need it. Let's just try it and see what happens." And darn it, if we had no idea that soldiers in Afghanistan and sports teams from around the world and churches and schools and corporations, corporations large and small, it went far beyond our market and we had no idea. So thank God for that. It really helped a lot of different organizations. You know, every leader needs to know how to disseminate key ideas throughout their organization. What are some of the best ways you found to spread the most important messages in both small and large firms? You know, it's interesting because it's the same in small and large firms and with all the technology which is fascinating. There's still nothing like face- to-face communication or person to person. And what we would call cascading messaging throughout an organization is key. So we would work with companies, whether they had 100 employees or 100,000. And what we realized is if the CEO and his or her team at the end of a meeting or a decision-making process, they got really clear and they were totally aligned. What we would say is this, okay, the seven or eight of you need to go out and every one of you needs to communicate to your direct reports, largely the same thing. I don't mean reading from a script, but you got to be on the same page. And if you can get those people, that, now let's say they all have five direct reports, those 40 people, to go communicate to their direct reports, the same thing. If you can get two levels into an organization, it is almost impossible for it to not spread to the rest of the company. And we saw this happen in worldwide organizations because two levels seemed to be the critical mass people needed to where it was almost impossible to keep it from getting out. Almost every time CEOs would complain and they'd say, yeah, well, how come this stuff isn't getting out to people? We put it in an email, or we did a video, or we have a website. We were like, you know, if they don't hear it from a leader in their words, and they can't see that the leader is really bought in and understands it, they're going to interpret all the electronic and produced communication in a completely different way. So I really believe, David, that no matter how big and far from the organization is, two levels of consistent, honest, bought in communication is better than any kind of technological tools. Good point, you know, and we talked a little bit earlier about the importance of being vulnerable and sharing failure. You know, looking back on your career, Pat, you know, what's one you've experienced that you learned the most from? What, what failure would you say is , you know, it was painful, but I sure learned a lot from it. Well, there's, there's many. I mean, I mean, I don't mean that like, I've done some good things I've done, I've made a lot of mistakes. So probably the most painful ones. And this comes from my wounds, and I hope this doesn't sound disingenuous because it's painful. I have hurt people by keeping them around and rooting for them and trying to think that it was my job to change them. And, and I've hurt them because of that, because I felt like I have to save them. And, and, and even when things weren't going well, I thought, well, this is my fault. And so it's my job to make it to make it right. And even though I was giving other people the advice not to do that. There were times when I hesitated because I didn't feel like I could make a call. And then I would get frustrated with them. And because I was like, I'm trying to help you and it's not working. Whereas I should have said, Hey, let's, let's help you find another place. And so my inability to do that led to other people suffering in ways they shouldn't have had to suffer. So that's not a, that's not a small mistake. That was a huge mistake. You say that, that teamwork is your greatest competitive advantage. Was there a similar moment where this truth was really cemented for you? Really early on in my career, we would go consult to an organization and a lot of them in high tech David because I'm in the Bay Area. And a group of really smart people with a lot of money in the bank and all the VC interest in the world would fail. And some other company with far less talent, like on in terms of justifiable talent by their GPA or their, their, their, you know, their IQ or their, the money they had in their bank accounts would win. And then you'd see it in sports and you'd go, you know, I remember when I learned that the Seattle Mariners, the baseball team, there was a point in which they won more games than any team in the history of Major League Baseball in a season. And it was the year after they got rid of Ken Griffey, Jr, Randy Johnson, and Rodriguez. You know, what's, what's his first Alex Rodriguez Alex Rodriguez. So three Hall of Fame players still all very good. They got rid of them. They had to trade them. And they lost their three Hall of Fame players and they broke the record for the most wins. And I remember when the Argentinian basketball team with Mano Genobly and four other guys I've never heard of beat the United States and the Olympics. And I thought, wow, talent is overrated. Teamwork is underrated. And I'd see it in business every day. You know, I worked with Southwest Airlines for, for years, their friends and partners of ours. And they did not have people with better degrees and more experience and higher IQs than their competitors. And I know they've had problems over the last year, you know, this last six months, but they're going to come out of it very strong because it's a great culture. But it wasn't about the individuals. It was about they really, really embraced teamwork. And that was the thing that made them great. So I guess I just saw enough examples of it that I was just like, this is, it's got to be the most important thing. Is this where you came up with your humble hungry and smart approach to people? You know, David, you know where that came from. That was an accident. We didn't even know we had that. So years ago when I was working at another firm, I had a department. This is when I interviewed with Steve Jobs and I started thinking about these theories. I had a department and we had Jerry Porres, the author with Jim Collins, built a last come speak and he talked about core values. He said, these are critical. So I took my team off to an office, you know, to a conference room with the flip chart to get some core values. And we came up with three words that we said, these are the words that we will run our department with humble hungry smart. Then I started my own consulting firm and it brought some of these people with me. And we said, we're going to use those. If you're going to work here, everything we do humble hungry and smart. So I write the book, the five dysfunctions of a team. Companies are asking us like, so what are your core values. And I said, I don't know, but it's just all about teamwork and we don't have to share. And they go, no, we want to know. So I would tell them the values. And one day it dawned on me finally that those values were how we went about hiring people that were team players. And so I shared it with a few people and they said, you need to write a book about this. And I said, I don't think that's a book. And I remember a friend Matthew Kelly and authors said, no Pat, this is a book, it's important. I don't, that book probably more than any others just took off. And we know, we talked to so many people now. Teams that put it printed on the back of their helmets. Companies that have conference rooms named humble hungry and smart. People are interviewing for that and they're using it as they're onboarding. And we had no idea this accidental thing that we did would become kind of the way to find people who play well on team. So it was an accident so much of my career has been a blessing in an accident. That's interesting because I know somebody say hires PhDs. They're poor, hungry and desperate. Probably read your book. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Patrick Lynchoni in just a moment. No doubt about it. Vulnerability and humility are vital traits for anyone who wants to lead well. And you know, I don't think I've ever talked to a more genuinely humble leader than the great Peyton Manning. As a quarterback, he was quick to admit that he didn't have all the answers. I always felt like if I made a mistake, I was the first to go, hey, this is a horrible decision. It's greedy. It's undisciplined. Hey, why receiver? You're wide open. I should have gotten you the ball. I felt like my teammates at least respected that, that I was hard on myself. I was trying to do better. And I think if you admit that you don't know everything and that you are going to make mistakes, I do think people will play harder for you. I felt like my receivers played hard for me because they knew I was doing everything I could to get ready. And so I've tried to take that same approach in the second chapter. That same humble attitude is helping him lead Omaha Productions in all kinds of other new ventures, which you can hear all about when you go back and listen to episode 104 here on How Leaders Lead. You and I share in the belief that the best organizations are the ones that value every person's contribution. And your latest book, The Six Types of Working Genius, really shines the spotlight on that idea. Tell us about it. I'm more excited about this than anything I've ever done. And I remember two days after this model came about accidentally in the pursuit of solving a personal problem for me. I showed it what I came up with. I wasn't planning to write a book to one of my colleagues and he said this is bigger than the five dysfunctions of a team. And I remember thinking, oh, wow, this could be huge. So here's how it came about, David. For 20 odd years, running my own firm, I would come to work excited and halfway through the day I'd be kind of grumpy, often on. And I never knew why. And it kind of bothered me, you know, because I love the people I worked with. I love what I do. And one day, two and a half years ago, one of my longtime colleagues said to me , why are you like that? She saw me and go from one meeting where I was really excited and other meeting when I was kind of grumpy and another meeting where I was excited. She said, what's going on with what? Why are you like that? She was very curious about it. Very nice. And I said, I don't know, but I want to figure it out. So we started with a blank whiteboard and a pen. And over the course of four hours, I came up with these six circles of there's different kinds of things that we have to do to get anything done. And, oh, my gosh, I only love two of them. And every day I come into work, and I really want to work on those two, and I get dragged into that one. And I don't like doing that. I do it every day. I'm not that good at it, but I feel like I have to do it. And I think that's my problem. So somebody saw that on the whiteboard. We showed it to somebody. And the next day, a CEO he was working with was struggling, and he wrote those six circles on the board and the guy got tears in his eyes. And he said, that explains it. Now I know what's wrong. Over time, every person that came into my house, my wife and I had a whiteboard in my living room, every visitor, we took them through it. And people were like, wow, this is universal. And so two and a half months later, we developed an assessment with my colleagues in the office and I have to say my son who came to work with me. We did this assessment. We put it out there and it has grown faster than anything I've ever done by far. Like a half million people have taken this and the stories they tell us, a woman came up to me the other day and said, this has changed my life. I never knew that I had geniuses. I never really got recognized for them. And now I know their gifts. And I can use them. People are changing their careers, their lives. Even their marriages are changing. My own did. Because now I know what I'm good at. I know what I suck at. And I can celebrate it better. And I have a way to build teams where people are leaning into each other's strengths and filling in each other's gaps. And it is the most fun I've ever had in my career. So like, what would be the six geniuses real quick? I'll go through them very quick and then we can talk about yours. I took the test. I know I have them right here in front of me. So the six geniuses go in order. I'll go fast. And think about them going from 50,000 feet in the air to five feet. Or on the ground. Okay. So this is kind of the order in which work gets done. But it's not always linear. We jump around. But generally speaking, work starts with the genius of wonder. Wonder. That's the W. And that's at 50,000 feet. And there's people that have a genius of sitting and observing their environment and thinking and asking great questions like, why is that like that? Do you think our customers are happy? Is this really the right answer? Why are our chip sales down? I wonder if there's a better way to do this. You know, it's, it's, they just ask the question and they realize there's something missing. Amy, my colleague, she was one who turned to me and said, why are you like that ? Why do you get grumpy? She didn't have the answer. But she asked the question, my wife has W as a genius. Very few people that have wonder as a genius have ever been celebrated for having it. They're like, why are you still asking questions? Why aren't you on board yet? But they're the ones, every great idea came up with somebody asking the question. The next one is the genius of invention, which is the person who hears that question and says, I'll solve that problem. I can come up with an idea. I know I'm going to, I'm going to brainstorm around this. I love to come up with this. I have this. This is one of my God given talents. I love coming up with ideas from scratch. It makes me happy. I do it every day. I wake up in the morning excited to do it. I even do it when people don't want me to. So, you know, it's a genius. So the genius of invention comes next. So it goes wonder and invention. But, you know, not every idea is a good one. Then comes the genius of discernment. There are people in the world that have incredible discernment. What that is is intuition, gut feel, instinct, pattern recognition. They see things that other people don't see because they kind of look at the whole picture and they just always seem to have a great idea about what's going on. And we all know people like this. Some of us might be like this. And yet it's really hard to quantify. So I have this. And when I was at Bain, I would say, what about this? And they go, where's your data? I don't have data. Well, you don't have data. You don't have an idea. There's a woman in my office named Tracy. She is the editor of my books. I write for Tracy. When I send her a chapter and she says to me, I don't, this character doesn't ring true for me, Pat. I don't like it. I just trust her. I know she's right. Since she's been a kid, people are always asking, ask Tracy. Should we ref inance her house? My wife says, ask Tracy. Does this suit go with this thing? Ask Tracy. She has discernment. And we all, we laugh about it because like she might not have any knowledge or expertise around something, but we bring her a problem. She just has really good instincts. So discernment is the third. Wonder asking the questions. Inventing, coming up with the idea. Discernment evaluating the idea. Next comes galvanizing. This is the one I don't have and I was doing it every day. There are people in the world. You're one of them, David, who gets up in the morning and loves to rally the troops. They love to excite people and sell people and encourage people and keep pushing them forward. Now, I like to do it once or twice, but the idea of doing it every day exhausts me and there are other people, it feeds them. Galvanizing is necessary to any team in any organization, but not all of us have it. And I thought, well, I'm the CEO of my company. I should be the chief galvanizing officer. And I realized, no, I can't be the chief everything officer. I need to find people in my organization who love to galvanize and I can galvanize them and they can take it from there. The next genius is called enablement, which is a good word. We didn't want to use it because people think of enabling people with like alcohol addiction or drug addiction, but enablement around good things is really good. And this is the one. I don't have this and I feel really guilty for this. People with enablement are the ones that when when somebody asks them for help, they're like, this gives me joy to help you on your terms, the way you need it. I just want to be that person who answers the call. Every team needs one of these. Most of the people who are genius at this think that they're just nice. In fact, often they don't think they're valuable because they think, well, I'm just a pushover and it's like, no, God gave them the ability to respond to the needs of others. They get energized. They get joy out of doing that. And they are gold to so many teams. And the final genius is called tenacity. And that's the genius. The people that wake up in the morning and say, give me an objective and an obstacle. And I will plow through it. I will get it done. No matter what. I will do it on time. And I love crossing things off my list. I love finishing things. In fact, I will not be happy if I don't get to finish hard things. Now, I have none of that, David. If it weren't for people around me and my team with tenacity, I would have written zero books. They would go get back in there and finish. And I like, I don't want to. So these six things are required in any work. And you know something? We each have two that we call our genius. It's where we get joy and energy, which means there's four that we don't love. And if we don't have people around us who can do those for us that we can celebrate, you know, you talk about recognizing people. This is great language for recognizing people. Now I look at people and I go, I love that you're like that, Karen. I love that you're like that, Matt, because I'm not, I need you. I would be worthless without you. And they could say, well, Pat, we love that you're like you are. So we're celebrating one another. We're acknowledging our own shortcomings. We 're not feeling guilty. We're not feeling judgmental of others. And it is transforming individuals and teams more than the five dysfunctions of team. I love the way how you talk about the gifts. These are gifts that you have that are unique to you and not everybody has them. So celebrate them. You know, I took your working genius assessment. And by the way, everybody, it only takes you 10 minutes to do it. And I found out that my top two are inventor and galvanizer. What should I be aware of? I mean, you know, you talk about filling gaps. Who do I need to get around me? Oh, well, this is great. Because so there's 15 types of do a little bit of math . Since there's six different geniuses. There's there's 15 combinations. So your combination is that you're an inventor and a galvanizer. Okay, that we named all 15. And when people do the report, you can see there's a name from you know what you're called David. You're the evangelizing innov ator. You're the evangelizing and which means is you come up with new ideas and you love to get people excited about them. Now, when you look at the way you led Y um Foods, look at what you did before that. When you look at what you've been doing since that, this is who you are. You people like that love being on a podcast where it can share things with people. They can share ideas. You give away all your leadership stuff. You know why? Because you want to change the world. So you're an evangelizing innovator, which means you are a fountain of ideas. I'm sure people that know you the most in life would say that you're constantly like, Hey, what about this? Right. Maybe too often. Well, and that's the thing. All of us in our genius are yeah, a little too often, but we won't throw the baby out with a bathwater. So what you need around you is you need people that in your working frustrations are wonder and enablement. Enablement's mine too. And you and I both talked before about how we feel guilty about this. Because you said, but I want, I love people and I want to appreciate them. And I said, I know, but the way you go about appreciating them is by inventing things and getting people excited about them. People with enablement are the ones that say, whatever you need, I want to be there for you. When my wife says to me, Pat, I need your help this weekend. I start to think, Oh, I'm like, what do you need? I want you to help me clean the garage. And I'm like, Oh, no. So what, you know what I say? Hey, can I come up with a new way to clean the garage like a whole system? She 's like, no, it's my garage. I know how I want to do it. I don't need your invention. And then I say, well, tell me why you think the garage needs to be clean. She goes, Nope, I don't want your discernment. I want you to come out there, stand there. And when I hand you something, put it where I ask you to know there are people in the world. They're like, Oh, I would love to do that. We'll just have so much. I'll just give her what and I'm thinking, Oh, no, I have to enable her. And you know, some I have to still do it sometimes. But I'm not going to lie and say, I love that. I want to invent and discern. You want to invent and galvanize. And you should not feel guilty about that. Well, I certainly love being creative and there's nothing I rather do than be around a group of people and get them pumped up to go make something happen. So I think your your survey is very, very good. And it certainly captured me. You know, David. And I want to say this, there's so many people out there who look at their who they are. And they think, well, why am I not good at these other things? So like for me, tenacity is one is my weakest area. David, when I went to work at Bain, I did not do very well there because it was data driven. They were looking for somebody with enablement and tenacity. We're going to give you work to do. You're going to say, yes, you're going to go do it. It's going to be perfect. It's going to be quantitative. It was an absolute nightmare for me. Now I survived by the grace of God for two years, but I was not successful. I carried around that failure with me for years. And I thought I was lazy and not smart enough. And now I realize literally 30 years later, I'm like, oh, that wasn't that was the wrong job for me. Had I known what my geniuses were, I would have said, thank you. This is a great job and all, but I am not going to do well at it. I 'm not going to enjoy it. And no matter how much money you pay me, it's going to be come at a cost. I need to go find a job that really speaks to who I am. 30 years later, I'm glad to know that, but it was painful. And there's so many people in the world that don't need to go through that. Find out what your gen iuses are, what your gifts are. Try to find a job where you're going to use those a lot. I was given no permission to use those at Bain. It was a bad tip for me. Yeah, that's interesting because this question I was going to ask you, I think you just answered it. If you could go back and have a conversation with you when you were just coming up in your career, knowing all that you know today, what would you tell yourself? I would say, do not judge yourself or others, but especially yourself. You got to start with yourself and do not feel guilty about the things you don't have. God doesn't give everything to anyone and be more grateful for what you have. And know what that is. You talked about it being a gift. Imagine if someone gave you a gift and you never opened it. What a tragedy that is. And I don't think I ever fully opened my gift until we came up with this. And that's what we say to people. Open your gift. Know what it is. Don't go through life without understanding that you have a gift. And the great thing about a gift is you can't brag about it. Who goes, look at somebody gave me. I'm so cool. It's like, no, I'm so grateful . And so I would have said, you're an inventor and a discerner, Pat. Not only are you entitled to use those things, but you, you owe it to yourself and to God to use the gifts he gave you. So go out there and find an opportunity to do that. And that's how you're going to help others in the world is by using the gifts, stewarding the gifts God gave you. And you certainly are doing that and you're reaching so many people and you're making the world a better place and I appreciate you very much for that. And Pat, this has been so much fun and I want to have some more fun with what I call my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Yeah. What's one word others would use to describe you? Enthusiastic and passionate and intense. So, so enthusiastic is kind of the neutral one. Passion ate is the one I love. And then sometimes that might worst in a little intense about what I'm passionate about. So passion would be the one. If I were being fair, I'd say passion. What would you say is the one word that best describes you? What would you say? I think it's sensitive. I think I'm pretty sensitive and I'm healing. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be and why? I'd love to be able to play the guitar. So who's the best guitar player? You know, John Mayer or somebody like that. That would be pretty fun. What's your biggest pet peeve? You know what it is? It's so funny. It's like, I love movies. And when I'm watching a movie with somebody that I'm really excited about and they're on their phone. So, so basically when I'm watching a movie with anyone younger than 30. What's the leadership book that you've bought and given away the most copies of that you didn't write? Yeah, probably. I don't know if it's a leadership book, but I really liked built to last and good to great. That was really early in my career. Yeah, I love those books too. Yeah, that was those were those. I was like, whoa , there's so much going on here. And I thought Jim Collins did a great job. And I know there's a zillion of others and I wish I can remember. But those are the early ones. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Right now country music. My kids are really into country music and they've, and I like it too. And so Tyler Childers is a is a is a guy Morgan Wallen Tyler Childers, a few Luke Bryan, people like that. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss? I start my day talking to Jesus. I wake up in the morning and within 10 seconds , I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you're here. Jesus, be with me. Help me do what you want me to do. And I try to, I try to lay there in bed and be with him for a few minutes. Outstanding. And what's something about you that few people would know? Maybe that I have obsessive compulsive disorder I had since I was five years old. We didn't, I didn't get diagnosed until I was 25. But like I did all these weird rituals and things that my parents just thought were like, wow, that's cookie. And then when I was 25, they were like, Oh, this is actually a thing. So maybe that I have OCD that I had like really severe OCD as a kid. That well, we're out of the light, eating around and I appreciate you sharing that. And I just got a few more questions for you, Patrick. I talked to a lot of leaders on this show, but I can't remember ever asking anybody this question before. You and I both know people who've been at the top of their game and they crash. They just come just hit rock bottom. What can leaders do to avoid this kind of thing? Well, I'm writing my next book about this. Really? Literally, I was just, I've been working on this, but we have to understand our wounds. Nobody gets through life unscathed. And wounds is one of those words be like, what does that mean? Everybody gets hurt. And what a problem is in life. When we get to become an adult, we're meant to heal. That's the purpose of life is to heal. And you know, when we talk about vulnerable, the root of the word vulnerable is wound in Latin. It's to be an open to sharing our wounds with others. That's what vulnerability means. But we need to know what they are. And there's too many leaders in the world that are going through life and they see their wounds. What I say is instead of seeing it as a limp, they think it's a strut because often we use our wounds to make ourselves successful. Like I had to please everybody and prove myself. So that made me work really hard in sports and school and then in my career. And then at some point in your life, you go, oh, wait a second. There's some bad things here that I'm living a little bit in fear. I need to go back and heal that wound. So I would say what's going to avoid you hitting the hitting the rock bottom place is to know that there's things you're carrying around with you that are undiagnosed. Everybody needs to diagnose their wounds so that you can heal from them before they you get forced to do that by circumstances. And it's okay if circumstances force you to deal with it. Most of us have to kind of bottom out sometimes, but hopefully we can, when we do bottom out, we can look and see our wounds and recover quickly. So you're really going to give people some great ideas on how to build a higher self awareness of who they are and why. Yeah, and to recognize it's okay to say, man, some of the things I thought were strengths in me actually come from a place that I really don't want to keep holding on to. And that you can let the bathwater out and keep the baby. You know, you've worked with so many great companies. Who do you think does, you know, just a fantastic job of creating a healthy organization and creating a healthy culture. And what do they do better than most? Wow, there's there's many. I mean, you guys did an amazing job at Yum. And you know, I can say that from actually going into those places. You know, and like, and seeing how people act there. I would say Southwest Airlines for years, and I got to go behind the scenes. They were so humble. You know, the thing about Southwest, they made more money. They never had a lay off. They always made a profit. And yet they never bragged. They didn't denigrate their competitors. There was this genuine humility and it started with Gary, the CEO at the time and the leaders at the top. So I always thought they were great. Chick-fil-A does a lot of wonderful things. Gosh, and then you know what, you know, some of the David, here's what I should say. Most of the companies are small to medium sized companies that we've not heard of. You know, I like to say the best CEOs are probably the ones that are not famous . And they're building a company that does something straightforward and the people that work there feel valued. And they don't need to be in the news. You know, so, so those are some big companies, but other than that, there's these smaller organizations that are just extraordinary in their own simple humble way. You have a wife and four grown boys as I understand it. And how have you taken your ideas about organizational help and applied them to your own home over the years, your own family? Well, I tried my best and it's hard to be the cobblers children without shoes, you know. I wrote a book for families years ago called the Three Big Questions for a Fr antic Family, which was essentially applying my organizational health stuff in a realistic way to family. And we've done that, but so many of other people have done it better than me. But I love my family. They're the priority over my business. I love my wife and my sons, but I've made so many mistakes. And that's the kind of thing what we've learned is that the mistakes we make shape us and our children. And nobody gets through life without making mistakes. But here's what I would say, working genius. I've become, I've learned to understand and appreciate my wife in the last two and a half years after 29 years of marriage, 30 now, but when we came up with that, I never understood her geniuses. I've come to understand my sons and how they differ because of their working genius and I never understood those geniuses. And now I understand how they act and what they like to do and how that plays out in family life. So I guess I would say that I'm learning to appreciate them at a whole different level as a result of this. Fantastic. And I know this is a big question, but from your perspective, what's the importance of leading in the first place? I love it. So I wrote a book before this one called the motive. It came out right before COVID, like literally two weeks before. So it kind of got missed. And the point of the book was just this. So you don't people don't have to buy it and read it if they don't want. It's a good story though. People really like it. But it's like this. There's only two motives for being a leader. One is to get things out of it for yourself. The other is to serve others. It's very simple. And to get things means what money, power, fun, freedom, you know, like I get to do what I want to do. It's not all evil. It's just like very self oriented like what's my ROI, my personal economics for being a leader. The right motive is I am signing up for sacrifice. Now that's there's good things that come with it too. But the good things have to come after I serve everybody else. And this is responsibility centered leadership. And if we become a leader it's so that we can do something sacrificial. The benefits others more than ourselves. And at the end of their days we can say I made other more important than me. And I think that is what virtue is. And so anybody that becomes a leader for the personal economics shouldn't be a leader. You know, people talk about servant leadership. I don't really like that term David because it implies that there's another kind like well there's servant leadership and then there's now all leadership ought to be servant leadership. So you should go into it because you care more about loving others and building them up and then in doing that you feel like that's your purpose. Yeah, I couldn't agree. I never have liked the phrase servant leadership for the same reason I think you summed it up better than I did. Last question, what's one bit of advice you'd give to an aspiring leader? You could just pick one. I would say know yourself and know that God loves you and receiving that is what allows you to love on other people. Fantastic. You know, Patrick, I was looking forward to having this conversation because I admire you so much because you've made such a huge difference in the lives of so many people, including myself. You know, I love to read great books on leadership and I think your parables, your stories, your screenplays are fabulous because you draw your own conclusions about what you need to do to get better. And I really love the fact that you've got this new book coming out, which is fantastic and the survey, which is great. And, you know, everybody needs to read it and take that survey because it'll really make a big difference in your life and you're sold on it. Yeah. Oh, I'm so excited about it. David, I have to tell you this, you're more prepared for this interview and more honoring of me than almost any. I mean, and I've been on some wonderful podcasts, but I am so grateful to you after all that you've done and all the people you have led, much bigger and really important organizations. The fact that you took such an interest in this and sharing my thoughts with your listeners is really, it moves me and you are a fan who knew that a CEO would be such an amazing interviewer person. You're an amazing interviewer, podcaster, writer, program leader, good on you. And that makes me want to be more humble and more servant oriented. Thank you so much. You know, I appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun. I absolutely love talking to Patrick Lynchoni. But what I really love is how Patrick pairs those big ideas with a big heart because ultimately he knows something incredibly powerful. Good ideas alone. Don't make an organization successful. Good people do. And that means you've got to get vulnerable and lead from a really human place. Acknowledge your mistakes and be willing to admit when you don't have all the answers. Put a priority on face-to-face communication, especially when you roll out your big ideas. And hey, don't be afraid to really own those areas of genius you have, instead of brushing them off with false humility or taking them offline. Remember, it's okay to show your human side at work. Leaders are human too, and if we don't acknowledge and embrace that, we're only going to come off as stiff and inauthentic. Now, to help you apply this concept, I've got an idea for you. One of the best ways I've found to be vulnerable is to express my gratitude. This week, take a moment each day to tell your team or someone on your team what you're grateful for about them. When it comes from the heart, boy, it's so powerful, it allows you to really open up. Plus, it's a chance to show everybody just how much you value their contributions and need them on your team. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders understand the power of vulnerability. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Jim Fish, the CEO of Waste Management. If you take care of your people and they're happy with what they do, then they in turn will take care of your customers and your customers will be happy. And then your customers, having happy customers will make for happy shareholders, and it has to be in that order. You can't change the order around and have a successful long-term model. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [ Silence ]