Mastering the Calm - Ep 208

Discover the transformative power of maintaining your cool as a leader with John Ballinger and Douglas Ford, your seasoned guides through the intricacies of leadership.

In this episode we are diving into the essence of calmness and its monumental effect on steering the ship effectively, especially when the seas get rough. You are invited to traverse the corridors of leadership with us, room by room, as we impart wisdom on fluid communication, disciplined decision-making, and why self-awareness paired with emotional intelligence is the foundation of selfless leadership.

As we dissect the layers of leadership challenges, from the personal to the executive level, we reveal strategies for staying present and poised amidst chaos. We unravel the significance of giving each problem, person, or project – like 'Joe' with his concerns – the attention it deserves without letting the larger fires consume you. This episode is a blueprint for leaders in various fields, from small business owners to professional coaches, providing a tailored approach to successfully navigate their unique leadership landscapes while upholding team trust and morale.

Wrap up your days this week with a reflection on the importance of mastering self-leadership under pressure. The post-COVID era demands an evolution in leadership styles, and we discuss how self-command, self-control, and self-possession play a pivotal role in adapting to these changing tides. Tune in for an engaging conversation that not only challenges you to reassess your composure in today's volatile environment but also offers the tools for growth, insight, and the ability to handle situations with a finesse that sets true leaders apart. Join us as we explore the tranquil aftermath where the real test of leadership begins, and share your journey toward mastering the calm.

Transcript

John Ballinger: 0:00

Once a leader understands how to master the calm and have fluid communication and be able to have disciplines, it actually makes their personal and professional life better.

Announcer: 0:19

Welcome to First Lead you, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.

John Ballinger: 0:34

Hello American, welcome to First Lead you where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders.

Announcer: 0:51

Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.

John Ballinger: 0:55

Welcome to First Lead you. My name is John Ballinger and I'm here with my co-host, mr Douglas Ford.

Douglas Ford: 1:04

John, how are you this week?

John Ballinger: 1:07

Mr Ford, it's been a week it has been a couple of weeks actually. It has been a couple of weeks. Yes, it has been. I think we used a lot the past couple of weeks of what we've been coaching about on the podcast.

Douglas Ford: 1:21

I would say it certainly tested or resolved in some of those areas.

John Ballinger: 1:26

Yes, I think we've actually talked about specific episodes that we had to utilize, like oh yeah, that was that episode and that was that episode, but it's been. You know it's we talk about after COVID, but I'll tell you it's not slowed down.

John Ballinger: 1:46

It's kind of like after Thursday just like it keeps going and the emotions of society and business and people and just keeps getting in. So I think that's a good kind of launching point to this topic and our topic today, or our title of the topic today, is are you a calm leader? And we're going to say our word. Remember, we're going through the 25 character traits that a leader needs in order to effectively lead in today's society, and that's the word calm. You know what that means. It's time for the word of the day.

Douglas Ford: 2:30

I got some feedback last time. It was a little loud, so I've really pushed it back.

John Ballinger: 2:34

Yeah, the word of the day is calm, calm and that means this is difficult, mr Ford not showing or feeling nervousness, anger or strong emotion.

Douglas Ford: 2:51

So not showing any of those things.

John Ballinger: 2:53

Not showing or feeling nervousness, anger or strong emotion.

Douglas Ford: 3:00

Well, I think you could probably get away with the not showing but the not feeling. That would certainly be a little more difficult.

John Ballinger: 3:08

Well, we've talked about that. So people that are have a difficult time not showing nervousness because they start getting red splotches on their neck or their face gets red and start twitching or things like that. That's difficult and I tell people there's a way to start controlling your bodily emotions so that it doesn't look like you're nervous by the splotches and the redness and things like that. But it takes effort and time, you know, to be able to do that and it's. There's a term in the, I guess in the world of psychological strength training, mental strength training, things like that. I'm mastering the calm and a lot of people don't want to take a deep dive into what it takes to master the calm and controlling their bodily emotions. So but yeah, that's the the word of the day and it is tough mastering the calm in today's society as a leader. It's one of the items that business owners or employees of business owners told us that was a top three of what they were looking for in leadership calm under pressure. Remember that survey that was absolutely yeah.

Douglas Ford: 4:30

So yeah, I would say that being calm is not a strong suit of the American populace right now.

John Ballinger: 4:37

Yeah, I would agree with that. Even when you look at the four pillars we talk about, you know the faith, family, you know government, business. I don't think it's, it's not like you look that thing. Oh yeah, they got that under control. They're really calm and reserved and they're they're articulating, they're communicating and they're they're really moving forward with a strategic plan that's going to fix some of the things that are broken in those pillars. I don't see that and I think this is important. So to be able to master the calm requires processing speed, with fluency, in which the brain receives, understands and responds to information.

Douglas Ford: 5:28

So that makes me think of somebody or maybe it's just a joke, or. But you go up and ask somebody a question, then you see their eyes start to roll around in their head. The answer over here, nope. They look over on this side. It's over there, nope. So I think that's all part of the processing, but they're not processing it very fast. They're kind of looking for an answer or a response or yeah, they're actually.

John Ballinger: 5:59

I've talked to leaders that they just can't get in that blue circle of death. Stare as their eyes are rolling around and the person's looking at them and thinking what in the world's going on, because they're really not saying anything. But I think this is important the processing speed of just trying to understand the fluency. That's a big word, but that's the. You know how fluid your brain receives, so the person's talking to you, understands what they're talking to you about and then responds to information while remaining calm.

Douglas Ford: 6:41

So information's coming in, processing, and then you're sending information back out, and so do that in a calm manner. Where do you think people get most hung up? And that we'll just say that's a three step process, as we've just described it? Where do you think people get most?

John Ballinger: 7:00

The first step because you're hitting that leader in a position where you really don't know what they've got going on at that time or what their day's been like.

John Ballinger: 7:10

And so when the person comes up to them with this potential crisis or need for information or a decision to be made, they don't know what's gone on at that point. And a lot of times if the leader at that point thinks, oh well, here comes Joe, and Joe's always dramatic about everything and so that's what Joe's got to say today is probably not that big a deal, and so he's not half listening to what Joe said, and as Joe gets out of the portion where he's saying things so that the brain receives it, he can't understand it because he's not listened to half what Joe said, so therefore he can't respond, and I think that's a difficult thing for the business owner to learn. I talk about this shifting gears. So the business owner has had a day already, and there's a crisis going on right now that he just left and he's trying to, or she's left and just trying to figure things out, and now someone else comes up with them and their mind, which is a crisis or a decision to speak, and the business owners either not listening or they're thinking.

John Ballinger: 8:20

You think that's a big deal. You have no idea what I'm trying to deal with right now, but guess what? Joe doesn't care about.

Douglas Ford: 8:27

Whatever it is you're dealing with.

John Ballinger: 8:29

Joe don't care, and so the business owner that that remaining calm, so not showing Joe that you're not caring and not listening, or your eyes are moving around or you're already thinking about the next thing, or looking past Joe gives Joe the thought print like he doesn't even care, or she doesn't care what I'm talking about because they're already on to something else. You know so and I think that's so important for the leaders to learn how to shift gears, make in information and and and receive it, understand it and respond, and you know the response may be. You know what, joe, I've got something that really is a bigger firefight for me right now. Let me get back to you and get back to him.

John Ballinger: 9:14

But there's nothing wrong with telling Joe hold tight, what you've got, I'll be back to you in a specific amount of time. Or call back up with him and say you know what? I can't get to that tomorrow. But that's that processing, because you're you're actually assembling information, and if there were two things prior to Joe that are more critical, you got to be able to effectively tell Joe about that and make Joe comfortable that you're going to follow up with them. And then do that. Don't make Joe fall back up with you or think well, he's here. She's not followed back up with me, so they really don't care about what I've got to say.

Douglas Ford: 9:52

Yeah, and we talk about this. Sometimes you use the reference of maybe opening and shutting doors, going in and out of different rooms, and always think about that part of the matrix where it's the long hallway and they keep going in and out of different doors and in different rooms and things are happening and going on. I mean, that's really what's going on in a leader's mind, especially if you have a big team or you have a big responsibility, like you're constantly needing to shift gears, kind of walk into one room, shut the door, go into another room, mentally kind of compartmentalizing those things because, as we just said, the person whose problem you're dealing with now or the situation you're dealing with now, they don't really care too much about what you had to deal with three minutes ago or five minutes ago or whatever, blew your day up at the beginning of the day and now you're Nothing's going according to plan. But yeah, you have to move between those with calmness so that you don't go in upsetting the apple cart, for whatever the new situation is.

John Ballinger: 10:57

Well, I think that's the fluency part of it. You got to go in and out and so, if you think about this, if you start out in a leadership position and just kind of a small position, that's, in a managerial or assistant managerial you may have two doors that you're dealing with. But as you rise up in leadership positions, if you can just imagine a hotel with a bunch of doors in it you're literally moving in and out of those doors with fluency between the different departments and leadership teams and going in and out of them. So just imagine the hotel and you're walking in the door and now your day is all of those rooms in that hotel that you're having to walk in and out of.

Douglas Ford: 11:39

Well, that example, I think, works on different levels as well, in terms of just imagine going between floors, in terms of the different levels of management or team or responsibilities that you may be dealing with. You could be dealing with the nature of the department. You could be dealing with somebody retail, you could be manufacturing, could be just playing office work, could be the bookkeeper, all these different people that you have to just kind of like not only shifting rooms but shifting floors, because some of those things are going to require much higher level of thinking and thought processing than other things are going to require. So you're constantly moving mentally throughout this hotel. So that's a good visual in the future.

John Ballinger: 12:27

Yeah, and just think about.

Douglas Ford: 12:28

So you get to the 13th floor and I just because there's not a lot of 13 floors- yeah, most places don't, even if they have 13 floors, there's no button to get to the 13th floor.

John Ballinger: 12:37

Right. So we're going to say, in this equation, the 13th floor is the accounting department, because that's always in the financial side of it. And you get there and you're going up and you're eventually wanting to get to your office, which may be on the 15th floor, and you see that you're being audited by the IRS. And you get to that floor and you see that, well, when you get up to the 14th floor, which is another level inside the organization, probably the C suite side of it, you know you're dragging that with you and suddenly someone's, you know, coming at you with decisions that need to be made and has no idea. You just opened a letter from the IRS that says you're being audited, you know.

John Ballinger: 13:13

And so this, this need, and this goes down to the small business owner too, because it's really more impactful on the small business owner because they're doing everything and they've got some relationships with vendors that help them navigate through, you know, bookkeeping and accounting and legal and things like that, but they don't have the staff, so they're they're juggling a lot of hats. So remaining calm as a small to mid market business leader is really much more difficult. And if you just illustrate that, from going from high school coaching to college coaching, to professional coaching. All those levels require a different discipline and how you handle your team. And it's the same thing for a leader that increases, you know, the, the headcount and the volume revenue in an organization.

Douglas Ford: 14:07

And you also think about just how much time do you lose throughout the day. If you're not, you're not able to remain calm and you have to take time to recover. And obviously everybody may need a minute or two to kind of refocus. But I mean, if you spend 30 minutes just completely destroyed about something that just happened and that happens two or three times a day, then you're losing an hour or two hours a day just being frustrated, upset, mad, angry about things that are going on, when you know that's valuable time that you need to advance your efforts.

John Ballinger: 14:42

Yeah, and you know what's going to happen too. By the end of the day you're going to take it home with you. You know we, we talk about that. That's going home with you and you walk in the door and the refrigerator is broken, all the foods been spoiled and your spouse has been there and they've had to clean up all the mess and you know all that stuff's going on and you come in the door and you just get vomited on by all that and you're just, you're already you know from from work and all that's going on. And that's the part and we continue talking about it.

John Ballinger: 15:15

But once a leader understands how to master the calm and have fluid communication and be able to have disciplines, it actually makes their personal and professional life better and their family life better and their team's life better. You know I feel like I want to get on the Empire State, but I'm just screaming. Learn to be calm. Learn how to have fluency throughout your organization every day and what your people start reacting differently. What's your family start? Cause they're, they're waiting on that trigger that set you off and they know they can tell like, oh, there's a bullying point coming and you better better back off because this pressure cooker is going to blow.

Douglas Ford: 16:01

Well, that certainly brings us to something else that we talk about frequently and maybe we haven't talked about as much this season, but emotional intelligence. I mean we recommend people start, if you're on a self development journey, that you should start. One of the places you should start is with emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence 2.0, the book by Dr Bradbury is a great place to start reading through that, just understanding what that means and how you can start to apply that Cause. The great thing about that book is it gives you a quiz that you can take and it will then direct you to places, other places in the book that will give you some strategies and some options that you can start trying to employ to increase your emotional intelligence and become moving toward that mastering the calm.

John Ballinger: 16:52

You're, you might have to read the definition of emotional intelligence. Yeah, this is critical. Put this down in your critical If you're in the leadership position or aspire the capacity don't don't short sight that word the capacity to be aware of, control and express one's emotions and to handle, handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. Now I know we've read that before because it's starting just become part of my vocabulary. When somebody says what is emotional intelligence? It's a capacity issue. If you don't have a capacity to learn how to control your emotions, you're not going to get control of them. So you have to learn like what are my trigger points? What causes me to not be able to think calmly, react calmly? But when it says the capacity to be aware of and control and express and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically, that is so critical. And once you can do that, it's easier to master the calm. But you can't master the calm without emotional intelligence Not going to happen. So time for a break. Time for a break and we'll be back.

Douglas Ford: 18:46

Welcome back to Firstly View. Today, we are talking about mastering the calm, and we were talking in the break. We think we'll just call this mastering the calm episode instead of are you a calm leader, although that's a great question to ask yourself. That's one of those self reflection questions that you can ask yourself is are you a calm leader? But as we get ready to go into this next section, here we've been talking about emotional intelligence. That's something that is essential for remaining calm and being calm in tough situations. But, john, you've got some other things you want to share with us as we think about this mastering the calm.

John Ballinger: 19:22

Yes, I'm going to take a situation.

John Ballinger: 19:24

So someone comes in the door and they have a situation, and so I want to kind of talk through what the process looks like.

John Ballinger: 19:35

So, obviously, because you are in a leadership position and you know how critical is to remain calm, you're trying to remain calm While you process the issue that's going on in your organization or what it's facing. As you process this information, while trying to remain calm, you're having to assemble your thoughts in order communicate effectively what needs to take place in order to overcome the challenge or give direction that needs to take place to continue to move the company forward. I want you to think about that. So the person's coming in, you're trying to remain calm. You've had your other things going on and what your mind has to mentally do, the aerobatics that it has to go through, I'm remaining calm. I'm processing information. At the same time, I'm thinking about how I'm going to effectively communicate what needs to take place or what direction needs to be given in order to continue moving the day forward, the company forward or the thing forward, and all that's taking place simultaneously.

Douglas Ford: 20:48

And the other thing that you'll have to deal with is what emotional state is the person that's bringing you the information in? So you've got to process. Can you trust that their emotion in this situation as well?

John Ballinger: 21:03

Yeah, so the challenge with the above illustration is trying to remain calm, process information and think how to communicate, all at the same time. That's the difficult challenge and that's what emotional intelligence allows. When you read the book and the sections in it where it talks about certain circumstances, this person at this level has this happen, and how the team reacts and the score they're given, you know it it'll actually make you step up and look at yourself and say, all right, if I were coming to me with a situation, would I react this way that where the other and you start? This is a self reflection issue that you've got to look at. How would I handle this If it were me coming to me?

John Ballinger: 21:54

The natural reaction for someone in leadership position to start the process by thinking about how to respond to that, thinking about how they would do it, not how their team might be able to handle it, think to it or solve it. So that's really critical because that business owner is thinking all right, this is how I would handle it. Well, that's wrong. What you're thinking is how should I communicate to my team so that they handle? And how am I communicating, because normally we would start as leaders? Well, I can take care of that. That's not a big deal. And then we would think about how we would handle it, and even sometimes we would think about how we would communicate to ourselves mentally and the person sitting there that we're communicating to doesn't have a clue what you just said as a leader, in order to effectively deal with the situation.

Douglas Ford: 22:51

Yeah, I think if it's not involving death blood, or in other words, you always say fire. Maybe If it's not involving one of those things, I think one of the best questions you can ask is well, what do you think we should do? Just because that helps you to learn what their thinking process is as well, and then then you're you at least know where they're starting from, instead of just kind of spouting out orders like, oh, we'll go do this or do that. Because that, I think that gives you a chance to take that information and calm down, like if it even maybe you didn't express it but it ramps you up, you can ask that question and that gives you a moment to kind of get your emotions back under control and and then hear their thoughts, see what they've done.

John Ballinger: 23:42

Yeah, so I'm going to take that situation and think it through another way. Okay, so the situation arises. Your team comes to you with an issue. Did you ask them and you touched on this have you exhausted all of your ability to rectify the situation? What did you do? What would you do? They respond to your inquiry usually with a yes or no.

John Ballinger: 24:08

Normally, if they've, you would hope that you've trained your team well enough that they're coming to you after they've exhausted, but you don't know, right. Right, you asked them what measures did they try to solve the problem in an effort to reduce duplication, like, if there are steps that they've tried and it was a department issue, let's say it's a manufacturing company and it was a. It was an issue inside the, the, from the assembly all the way down to shipping. And you don't want to duplicate thought processes. You want to say, oh, so it was, it's a shipping issue, it's not anything to do with manufacturing, but manufacturing is backed up because of a shipping issue. So you're assembling that information in your mind and then you also want to know what's been done to this point. You may, you may even have a solution already in mind.

John Ballinger: 25:03

You could have seen this situation in the past? Maybe they haven't, and you've seen the situation in the past and, as a leader, you've put back solutions in a closet door. Oh well, this is what needs to happen and you need to go to this person to make that happen. But you're also wondering if there's additional information or someone else that needs to be pulled in from your team or into the conversation to help solve the problem, because your team or that person may have not thought oh man, I forgot about asking Sam. Sam could have really helped me out on this, because that person had a kind of paralyzed thought that kind of stymied them when it came up and they didn't think about Sam at all and you, as the business leader, automatically thought about Sam.

Douglas Ford: 25:52

Well, and I think that could be another good opportunity for yourself for reflection. If somebody's coming directly to you and maybe they're skipping over or maybe linking the chain of command, or it's obvious that somebody else could help solve this problem, but they're still coming to you, maybe that's a self reflection moment for yourself to think about. Why are they coming to me? Am I giving them the empowering them in a way that they can go to other people? Am I giving other team members the empowerment and authority to solve their own problems? Do they always need to come to me? So that's an opportunity for thinking through how you're, how you're leading the team as well.

John Ballinger: 26:33

Yeah, we were with a business owner last week, or we were last whenever it was, and phone wouldn't stop ringing and he just kind of exclaimed they can't make a decision without calling me and I told you after the meeting was over. I was like, well, that's a problem and the size of company he's got was many people's he's got. If they're calling him on every move that needs to be made, who's created that culture and environment?

Douglas Ford: 27:05

The leader.

John Ballinger: 27:06

The leader has, yeah, and so you're doing all those things, figuring out how to communicate the task in order to resolve the situation. All the while your team sees you under control, they see you remaining calm, and and so I was thinking through that it really came to mind what I've been trying to discipline myself with for years and years and years, and that's the words measured and composed. And I want to read the definition of measured and keep in mind that you're being both the entire time that this is taking place. Measured is a plan or course of action to achieve a particular purpose. That's the, that's the measured part of decision-making. Say that again A plan or course of action to achieve a particular purpose.

John Ballinger: 28:12

So you're measured, they compose part of it. Now, just thinking about this, this is I'm going to tell you, this is this is green onion stuff right here. Now I'm telling you the state of feeling, of being calm and in control of oneself. So think about putting those two, measured and composed. And if you're dealing with situations and your team comes to you and they see you coming up with a plan, that's creating a course of action to achieve a particular purpose, and all the while you're doing with a state of calm and self-control in yourself.

Douglas Ford: 28:58

Let's go, make your day go a lot better.

John Ballinger: 29:00

Well, guess what? It's going to make your team's day go a lot better, right, and it goes back to why 43 million people left companies. Part of it was, you know, they didn't. They felt like a number, or their leader didn't really care about them. But there was a lot of people that said, I just don't feel like my leader was an effective leader, and they were angry and they seemed like they would go in their office and slam the door shut and they didn't want anybody to come in there and they didn't want another thing brought to them because they were overwhelmed already.

Douglas Ford: 29:39

Yeah, I've never understood how they think that actually solves a problem.

John Ballinger: 29:44

There's a whole society of business owners and I'm dealing with someone right now that has it's fairly young, I'd say mid-20s, mid-to-late-20s. This person's in a leadership position and they feel like the hammer and nails is the way to keep people away from them, so that they don't have to be bothered with the challenges that are going on in today's workplace with employees. So let's just bark at them, smack them down when they come to them and now, maybe at some point they'll just get tired of coming to them and I'm going to go to them. That's a strategy.

Douglas Ford: 30:23

Yeah, it is a strategy, but it doesn't help the business owner or the leader accomplish what the next goal is, because at some point, just as we just spoke about, people are going to stop making decisions. They're going to stop doing anything and then it's all going to come to you and you're going to have to make all the decisions, because people don't want to suffer the consequences of doing something wrong or not doing it the way you would do it. And now you're stuck. You're in a much worse position than you were beforehand.

John Ballinger: 30:52

I want to talk through this composed piece just a little bit, because there's three particular items. That allows you to learn how to compose yourself. And guess what? All three start with the word self, which means you have to learn self-control, self-possession, self-command.

Douglas Ford: 31:26

All right, well, self-control I probably have a pretty good handle on one, so why don't you explain self-possession? Because that sounds interesting.

John Ballinger: 31:33

Yeah, self-possession is really the understanding of yourself and what you possess from a reaction standpoint. When this comes up, because of who I am and the skills that are already in me, just whether it's through being coached in the past or somebody that taught you in a leadership position. They got you, but you possess skills already. But do those skills need adjusted and amended for today's society? Because how you were post-COVID or pre-COVID and how you are post-COVID are two different, you know. And so you can't take pre-COVID leadership and think it works today, because we've still got leaders that are attempting to do that, thinking it'll go away. Douglas, it's not going away. They think it's going away. So you already possess. So you've got to recognize. In order for me to be composed, I have to understand what I already possess from that standpoint and then when you do the self-command, part of that is now I'm taking that self-control and that self-possession and now commanding myself from a leadership standpoint.

John Ballinger: 32:49

In other words, how do you carry yourself in a crisis and people say what do you mean? How do you carry yourself? You can walk in a room and start getting barraged with request and information needed and crisis how you carry yourself in that. So do you have that going on and it looks like the entire time your blood pressure is going up, your shoulders are being weighed down. You're not even listening at that point because it's also overwhelming. That's how someone carries themselves, versus it's coming at me. Let's remain calm, I've got this. There's no blood and death going on. So let's take it small bites at a time and let's come up with a solution. But the people again are looking at that person that's in that leadership position for decisions and information, and you have to use those three selfs in order to learn how to be composed.

Douglas Ford: 33:56

So could we sum that up by saying you need to first learn to lead you.

John Ballinger: 34:01

Man, that sounds like a great podcast name but it is, and you know I was. I was talking to someone last night, as a matter of fact, and it was probably about I don't know, 1030, 11 o'clock, whatever time it was, and this is at night and PM 2300 for you military types out there and this person had been in the in a leadership or a round leadership for a better part of 30 years and when I described our podcast, first lead you and said this is what the platform is. It's telling, it's teaching a leader to first learn to lead themselves so they can lead others she exclaimed well, that's unique perspective to look at it, I thought is it unique or should it be the standard?

Douglas Ford: 34:54

Well, maybe it should be standard, but I do think that she was being truthful in that, because one of our other resources that we talked a good bit about is seven habits of highly effective people. Stephen Covey spent a lot of time investigating leadership material and there was kind of a divide. That happened around World War II, where you went from what he calls the character ethic to the personality ethic and we, I think, based on the way he describes things, and we talk more and want to deal more with the character ethic, meaning that you're going to do the hard work to understand who you are so that you can be a better leader and you can be more effective as a person. Where the personality ethic is, you can get by with fooling people. You can get by with and putting in different types of techniques and strategies, which are good and are also needed on the other side of the character ethic in certain situations.

Douglas Ford: 36:00

But that's not going to be. If you're dealing in the personality ethic as Stephen Covey describes it, you're not going to be able to maintain that consistently over a long period of time. So the character ethic is much deeper rooted and so if you have not studied that part of it and not thought about it in that way and just like, well, you want to nod your head and you want to act like you're listening. Employ some active listening techniques and agree with people and use some of those things that are just, are just more surface. The person that you're dealing with may, at the moment, feel like you're being heard, but if you're not really integrating those into who you are and how you lead, then they're short lived.

John Ballinger: 36:49

Oh yeah, I agree with that. You know, and all this stuff we've talked about this is tough stuff and the reason there's that gap that's been there and the reason this is unique is because we're tackling the toughest of the toughest part of being a leader. That is, a leader that understands selfless service, understands that their responsibility is to the people they serve. We're we're feeling a gap that everybody's been just like. They know it's there, but they don't want to deal with that. It's there and what they need to do as a leader to actually fill that gap. They don't want to do that.

John Ballinger: 37:30

So our our homework for this episode and I want the leader or the person that's aspiring to be a leader to really this is a question.

John Ballinger: 37:41

So it's not like the last couple of episodes where we ask a lot of questions to be answered.

John Ballinger: 37:44

This is a question how well do you, as a leader or someone that aspires to be in a leadership position, how well do you remain calm, understanding and understanding calm under pressure in today's chaos in society and the workplace? How well do you, the leader or someone in a leadership position, how well do you remain calm under pressure in today's chaotic society and workplace? And I want you to write that down and say, oh, I do it this way and I hope that you can write some things down that you actually do. You know mental disciplines that you say, all right, this is how I deal with it and this is how I don't let it impact my day and I don't let it derail oh what even my day is, because you can also let all these things completely derail your already planned day, and one of the other things that we need to teach as leaders and actually aspire to as leaders is don't let the chaos of the day just derail your plans. You still have to accomplish and move things forward inside the organization, absolutely.

Douglas Ford: 39:10

You have to adjust and move forward Absolutely Well. Thank you for leading us through that today. Mastering the calm there's a lot more we can talk about on that subject and different avenues we could take, but today we talked about how emotional intelligence plays into learning to master the calm. And, as your homework, think about how you deal with what does that look like when you are faced with the pressure and the chaos of the workplace or just society in general. How do you respond to that?

John Ballinger: 39:48

Yeah, so yeah, I look forward and again, linkedin, facebook, our email addresses on there send us a message Happy to work through so those things or answer questions that people may have. I have people call me with specific situations and say how should this be handled? And they'll critique themselves and want to understand because a lot of times they're calling because it wasn't handled Correctly and it maybe blew up on a little bit and maybe caused a bigger issue than what was actually there. So feel free to do that and let us know how we could be a felt.

Douglas Ford: 40:24

Yes, firstly do you. That's the number one ST lead letter. You calm, that's our website, and then that's the same for Facebook, and so look forward to hearing from you, mr Ford. Thank you, have a great week, yeah.