Discipline of Leadership - Ep 209

Embark on a journey to the heart of leadership with hosts John Ballinger and Douglas Ford, where the power of discipline awaits to transform your approach to steering the ship. From personal tales to sage advice, we pull back the curtain on what it really takes to foster the consistency, intensity, and essential traits of an effective leader. 

Tackling the obstacles of fatigue, fear, failure, and feelings, we share strategies for personal improvement and the undeniable value of mentorship in the quest for leadership excellence. Our episode peels back the layers of the psychological stress responses—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—and offers insights into managing them with finesse. We bring to light how understanding our inherent reactions can lead to an elevated sense of command in any high-pressure scenario.

Finally, we bridge the gap between theory and action.  We provide you with a blueprint for application and challenge you to a bit of homework, nudging you to confront your leadership hurdles head-on. Harness the art of maintaining your cool when chaos unfolds, and gear up for next week's episode, where another burning topic awaits to fan the flames of your leadership potential. Join John and Douglas in this crusade to forge disciplined leaders, ready to navigate tomorrow's challenges with today's lessons.

Transcript

John Ballinger: 0:00

How much time are we spending in trying to personally develop ourselves and it's not working because we won't. We won't take that last step of application at this.

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: 0:56

Welcome. To first lead you, my name is John Ballinger and I'm here with my trusted sidekick, mr Douglas Ford.

Douglas Ford: 1:04

John, how are you this week?

John Ballinger: 1:06

I am good. It's been a week again. So I was listening this morning, I listened to last weeks this morning, so I put in context some of the things, because we're trying to do these blocks of instruction or podcast and I was listening, I was thinking last week I said it's been a week or two solid weeks or something like that, and I'm like man. So here's three weeks running where there's just been intensity at every turn.

Douglas Ford: 1:38

We're getting to practice what we preach.

John Ballinger: 1:40

You are definitely. You know. I think we're creating some disciplines.

Douglas Ford: 1:46

Are we? You think we're creating those.

John Ballinger: 1:50

We're making every attempt to create disciplines and, as a matter of fact, you know what our word for the week is. What's the word of the week? It's actually discipline.

Douglas Ford: 2:08

Oh, I'm sure we're going to have a definition for that.

John Ballinger: 2:10

We are the podcast topic this week is disciplines to leadership, and the definition of discipline is control gained by enforcing obedience or order, orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior.

Douglas Ford: 2:36

You want to share those with us again.

John Ballinger: 2:38

One more time controlled gain by enforcing obedience or order, orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior.

Douglas Ford: 2:56

I think that's probably more what we're talking about this week.

John Ballinger: 2:59

It could be. So I think. I think there's two different. So you got definition A and B. If you're looking in Webster, it always says that you have A, b, sometimes C.

John Ballinger: 3:11

But I think there is a piece of leaders. There's a piece of leaders that need to understand how to gain control, orderly control, having self-discipline but also think there's prescribed and conduct and pattern that can be attained. But we're going to talk through this today. But there's the need for that coach or mentor to help you, because they identify and they hold you accountable. A lot of times we're not good at holding ourselves accountable to things that are painful. You got to have someone push us to success and pass those walls and things like that. So it's not easy to be disciplined. If you think about last week's topic mastering the calm difficult to do Before that patience, difficult to do and I'm going to go off script a little bit on this and I was just thinking through like, so who is the master at humility, vulnerability, calmness, disciplines? Who comes to mind when you think of that? All those things?

Douglas Ford: 4:22

Well, I mean, in my case, jesus would be the number one example of that, but Bruce Lee also comes to mind. I've seen a couple of his documentaries. So what are you looking for?

John Ballinger: 4:38

Well, I actually was reading that through that and I thought let me identify someone that has all these traits and did it effortlessly Didn't say it was hard, I mean I didn't say it wasn't hard for them as a person, but once they were out in it, because of the time that they spent what time? Or training themselves with disciplines and reflecting, and the development all the things we talk about I kept coming back to Jesus myself. I was like so let me get this straight as leaders, the people are asking us to have all these traits because we've done the research and done the studies and they want somebody calm under pressure and they want somebody that's humble, they want somebody that communicates well, and that's what they're asking for. But on this side of the leader, it's the toughest things that they learn to do.

Douglas Ford: 5:36

And we even looked and found a list of 25 traits that CEOs or leaders need today to be effective leaders in the work environment and society today, and just thinking about trying to tackle 25 different personality traits or professional traits that you have to come up with, I mean just that in itself could feel like a full time job.

John Ballinger: 6:01

Yeah, it is, it can't. It can't feel like that and I could tell you as someone that has practiced these disciplines for decades, it takes decades to really become disciplined at all. 25 of those, and like, I'm not there by any stretch of the imagination. But if you don't start somewhere as a leader, you're never going to get anywhere when it comes to being able to practice self disciplines, to learn how to incorporate those 25 character traits, because at any given day, you may pull eight or 10 of those out of the proverbial box and use them, and you have to do them with fluency Talked about that last week.

John Ballinger: 6:43

I mean, it's got to be. It comes at you pull out of the box, you use it, you put it back in the box and go to the next one, because this may be a point where you're dealing with an employee and there needs to be a lot of grace involved in it, and your next appointment may be something that's need some discipline involved and changing gears from you know grace to discipline, and being able to do that and be effective at it is no small feat.

Douglas Ford: 7:12

Yeah, well, it reminds me of the saying about the tree right? When's the best time to plant a tree? Was 30 years ago. When's the next best time today to plant a tree, right? So when's the best time to start developing these traits? Well, it would have been 10 or 15 years ago, but the next best time is start working on those today.

John Ballinger: 7:29

Well, we're going to talk later in the podcast about some industry statistics that I researched over putting this podcast together and but I thought so that's unique. So we're asking, so the people are asking for someone to be like that. I really think there's a lot of people in leadership position want to know how to be like that. They just don't know how to, and because they don't know how to, or they don't order to turn or what to do to from a discipline standpoint, it's failing these people over here. These people are the workers, the staff, the team look at like, and somebody just said something and they blew up and went in and slammed their door. I'm not talking to them. So here's a here's. Another question is being calm during a stressful, disruption or situation of discipline.

Douglas Ford: 8:23

Well, I think it certainly requires some discipline to demonstrate a calm during a stressful situation.

John Ballinger: 8:28

Yeah, so actually you know writing things down in your business that you're in, you know like worst case scenarios, what if this happened, and then how would you react to it is a good journaling process. You know what's. What are the five things in my company, or the five things that I'm responsible for as a leader? Those things happen. How do I react to them? Making yourself a checklist and then self assessing. It's like all right, how would I deal with it? Because I mean, in athletics I think they have plays they run right.

Douglas Ford: 9:04

From what I remember, we did occasionally Right.

John Ballinger: 9:08

And the quarterback usually calls the play in the huddle. If it's football, right, correct, and the line knows, the center knows when to snap, the line knows when to move, the wide receivers know when to do the, you know the running back, whatever, everybody knows based on that play. Here's what I've got to do. It's healthy for the business owner to have a book with if these things happen. Here's how we should react to me personally and then my team as well.

Douglas Ford: 9:34

Yeah, that brings to mind one of the seven habits begin with the end in mind. I mean thinking about those worst case scenarios and maybe they're not worse case scenarios, they're just. Here's things that happen in the business. It doesn't have to be a catastrophe, but here's things that happen in the business. Here's things that happen on a regular basis in the business. How am I dealing with them? How should I deal with them?

Douglas Ford: 9:55

If you can take the time to walk through those when it's not happening, it gives you a much better perspective and then gives you something to call on and refer back to mentally, or maybe even go into the physical writings that you've done and looking at those and saying, okay, here's scenario A, I wrote about scenario A, here's what I said need to happen. You know, you can compare yourself to that if you've already acted through it. Or what are the things I said I needed to do? Here's, as you said, here's the checklist of things that need to. We need to go through to make sure that we come out to the best, best result of this.

John Ballinger: 10:31

So I've gone into companies and doing risk assessments and I see SOP manual. That means standard operating procedure.

Douglas Ford: 10:37

Thank you.

John Ballinger: 10:42

I see these manuals and I pull them out and a lot of them have to do with the field operation side of the organization and so I'll ask so where's the administrative side of your SOPs? We don't have that. So you do have, if you're doing these, making these widgets, or building this building or whatever it is, you've got an SOP. But I mean, look how much of your business rises and falls on the administrative side and you don't have an SOP for that side of Well, and even just the transfer of knowledge.

Douglas Ford: 11:17

I mean, we're working with an organization right now where there's some executives that are moving and some different changes are taking place and they've started talking about that transfer of knowledge, like where do you access information? Because you don't always access the same information on a regular basis. It could be a special occasion when you need a specific type of information and that might not be on a monthly or by monthly opportunity. It could be once a year or once every other year, depending on the cycle of your business. So just having those things written down, having a process in place, is great. One of the books I enjoy and reading and listening to and have listened to multiple times, is traction, and they talk about having a process, writing down a process for everything that happens in your business so that, should it ever be needed, at least there's a starting point of like this is how this gets done.

John Ballinger: 12:15

Right? Here's another question for our listeners Is spending an hour a day on yourself for personal growth and discipline?

Douglas Ford: 12:26

Oh, most definitely.

John Ballinger: 12:28

Yeah, you know that's when you agree. That's one of the hardest things for someone to do in the leadership position. Carve out an hour a day for personal growth.

Douglas Ford: 12:37

Well, and we would say build up to an hour a day. Don't you know? Don't start tomorrow if you've never done this and go. I'm going to spend an hour, but start with five minutes, 10 minutes, start with 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon. I mean, work it into your day in different ways, but don't you know which? Starting with 10 minutes is much better than not starting at all. Right so? But having an hour a day, setting that aside and really being self-evaluating and critical of yourself and trying to find the positives in your day, is definitely a discipline that needs work to get to.

John Ballinger: 13:14

Can I admit something? Yes, I've had to create a discipline. Preparing for a podcast I mean as busy as you know I am, I know I am and then throwing a podcast to be able to talk about this, communicate. It takes discipline for me because there are weeks where I just want to punt, punt, punt, but it, you know, it's like we started this, we've got to do this. It's a discipline. It takes time and effort, research.

John Ballinger: 13:44

If you've never created a podcast, you don't understand it until you start it. But you know you can't just get on these, these episodes and wing it and feel like that, All right, We'll just, we're just going to publish this information and hope it sticks to someone. It takes a discipline to do the research and the putting the timelines together, and then you've got to edit it, you've got to upload it, you've got to publish it and all the things that you've got to do from this standpoint. So when people wake up, normally on Tuesday the podcast is dropped and they can listen to it, and that takes discipline for us to do this.

Douglas Ford: 14:26

Anything worth doing right, it takes, takes time and effort.

John Ballinger: 14:30

So what keeps us from being disciplined?

Douglas Ford: 14:35

A lot, a lot of things get in the way of being disciplined, and I would think some of it is just comfort, right? So we want to. Being disciplined causes discomfort a lot of times and we just want to move toward comfort. Or, you know, could just be you're too exhausted, like if you don't, if you don't do certain things by a certain point of the day, then they're just not going to get done because you're too tired to do them. So I think life I would say life is one of the big things that gets in the way. But I know that there are some, some very specific things that we're going to talk about that cause us to be have a lack of discipline at times.

John Ballinger: 15:13

Yeah, I'm going to start with four Fs, four words that start with F that keep us from being disciplined. The first one is fatigue. We're just tired, we're mentally, mentally drained in a leadership position. Most of the time it's mental fatigue, not physical fatigue. Fear Are we making the right decision? We're going to talk about some of the things that cause you not to make a decision or the right decision Failure, the fear of failure. So you're afraid, the decision I'm making. And then this last F is it happens a lot, but it's feelings Like we will. We will not make a decision because of feelings, and it could be our feelings to that, or the person, or it could be the person that you're going to have to do it to, and their feelings so. But fatigue, fear, failure and feeling.

John Ballinger: 16:15

And then the second thing, and we're going to talk about why this is so important, but not having a coach or a mentor to be able to help you with those discipline.

Douglas Ford: 16:26

Yeah, so we will address that when we come back. Where are some steps you can take to find a coach and help you through some of these four F's of the lack of discipline when we come back from good? Welcome back to Firstly View. Today we are talking about the discipline of leadership and what it takes to be disciplined. We just talked about four F's that prevent us from having disciplines in our life, which are fatigue, fear, failure and feelings, and one of the things that John mentioned just before we went to break was this idea of having a coach or a mentor or someone that can help hold you accountable to some disciplines in your life. And in season one, we had a guest and a speaker that talked about something they did that was kind of unique and interesting, and so, john, you want to share what TW did to find his mentor and coach.

John Ballinger: 17:45

Yeah, when he said it at the actual leadership summit that we had, I was writing notes down and then I listened to it again on the I'm like and that is that was a good way to choose his mentor. But he did an internal self assessment of himself and where he was lacking as a leader and wrote it down on a piece of paper. Then he took his network of people that he knew of that were in leadership positions and he interviewed for a mentor and I made mention before we started this. Knowing him now and what he went through and then knowing the person he chose, it made perfect sense to choose that person as his mentor because that mentor was strong where he needed helping his weaknesses and has made him a better leader.

Douglas Ford: 18:37

Yeah, and one of the things we talked about is like I mean, that was certainly a very proactive move on his part and we can't just wait on these things. You know the perfect coach. We can't just wait on them to appear at our lives. So if we would do something like that, take those assessments and understand where we need that help, it gives us a nice checklist of things to go through as we talk to people and ask them about possibly mentoring, because I'm sure if you just kind of touch base with somebody out of the blue and say, hey, I'd love for you to be my mentor, one of the things that they're going to respond with is like well, I don't know how to be a mentor or what does that mean.

Douglas Ford: 19:19

And if you have a list of things like, well, here's what I've seen from you and here's the areas where I need to grow, I'd like to understand from you how you've grown in those areas or what you did to discipline yourself in those areas or to become successful in those areas or accomplish those attributes in your life. So I think that's a great plan in terms of trying to find a coach, because we've had people ask us like how do I find a coach? Or what if I don't know anybody to be a coach? Well, going through this exercise will help narrow down the prospects of people that may potentially be your coach.

John Ballinger: 19:56

And interview them, get commitments from them. If it's once every other, whatever that is, that they can afford and they're going to pour into your life, set that, make that a discipline. Don't miss it. You know. Say, say once a year, I can miss it for whatever reason, but have that person hold you accountable and stick to it because it will help you tremendously. So I've got another set of words that can help understand, like why do I do what I do? And from a discipline standpoint and it's fight, flight, freeze or fun.

John Ballinger: 20:38

Now, we're pretty used to someone's a fighter flight person, but those other two F's which have been out there for years, most people don't put the freeze or the fun in there, and so I want to read this and research I did. This is more of the psychological part of being a leader. But fight, flight, freeze or fun, or all responses to either fear, trauma or stress. As a leader, you're going to be dealing with all three of those short and long term stressors. Both set off sympathetic nervous systems, parts of your body that activates the trauma and stress responses, and you're so. That's what. So it's happening. Your body's actually reacting to it, trying to figure out what do I do? The fighter, the flight freeze or the fun.

John Ballinger: 21:31

What are common everyday things that cause the four butterfly freezer font could be running late-time employment, getting feedback from work that you didn't want to hear, conflict with loved one, a stranger or an employee colleague facing unexpected stressors and that could be something that just came up at work. It could be hitting traffic. I was somewhere this past week and everybody was in a hurry at this one particular restaurant and there was a man that was hitting his knuckles on the counter so hard waiting on his order that I was just tender looking at him like that guy would be someone that could go into a local sit-down restaurant and they'd say it's going to be a 30 minute wait and they would just be like, okay, 30 minute wait around, tell the spouse or something. Another 30 minute wait Order in another venue. And at the three minute mark they're beating the counter with their knuckles and I'm like, hmm, and I know, I think I think the industry did it a disservice when they said fast food because they brainwashed us and that everything that happens in there has got to be fast, and so we think about sit-down restaurant, hot fast. We think about fast food better be fast, fresh right now. I'm like and so I'm gonna beat my knuckles, but I'm gonna say yes, I'm gonna say yes to 30, 45 minutes, sometimes an hour. Douglas, we'll take your cell phone number and call you. You all go shopping or do whatever you want to do. We'll call you and let you know You've got five to seven minutes to get back. We'll hold your table. He's beating his knuckles into the counter and I'm like so that was a stressor, because evidently he was late, he needed his food and so he was just you know. So I want you to think about that as a leader and I'm gonna read the definitions of the fight flight, freezer, fawn and I'm not gonna read the entire definition, but it's gonna give you some understanding of so the fight is.

John Ballinger: 23:52

Fight becomes an instinct to cope with a perceived threat aggressively. So just think about that. I'm gonna. This is an aggressive, sometimes physical response. That's the fight. But you don't have to.

John Ballinger: 24:05

Flight is a runaway get away from the stress that could be. The stress comes up. You see it happening, you're in the middle of it, you run. That's the, that's the leader that goes in there door and shuts it, slams the door and like I hope everybody just stays away. The freeze is really. Something happens and you just stand there you don't know what to do, you're just frozen and somebody could be asking you a question what do you need me to do, especially in a stressful situation? And you just stand there and you do nothing.

John Ballinger: 24:40

Free the fawn which I, before the start I said Douglas, this is one of the the most used traits that happen with a leader in the days is they become submissive and obedient more than the fight or the flee, and what they do is they agree or just try to take that situation and give almost a childlike response to it, so that the person goes away and you think, wow, they've handled that. And they immediately leave that situation and go somewhere else and blow up on somebody or talk about it. You're not gonna believe what so-and-so just came to me and said this person says what you doing. I just told him to go on and go and do it. This person's thinking why'd you tell him that? For that was the wrong thing to do. Now you're gonna have to deal with what you just told him, not that they shouldn't do, but you told him to go ahead and do it, and it was not a good decision because you didn't want to confront it.

John Ballinger: 25:47

You're a fawn. That is passive, aggressive behavior as a leader. That's a no-go at this station. Mr Ford, you cannot be that way. You know what you just do to your entire workforce. By being a passive, aggressive leader, you're telling everyone what they want to hear, going around behind their backs griping about everything that you just told them to do, when they did what you said to do.

Douglas Ford: 26:13

And we've been in organizations where that's happened.

John Ballinger: 26:16

It is 100% chaos.

Douglas Ford: 26:19

Because then you think there's special rules for certain people or certain rules don't apply to somebody else. I mean, it can be. You can just create a whole list of things that go wrong because you have chosen to react that way.

John Ballinger: 26:36

So we've said all these things. And going back to patient, calm now, disciplines, tough stuff. You know, we talked last week about this past season. People were asking us to like go deeper, teach us how to do the things you're saying we need to do. Here are the teaching moments. So I did some research on self-help. Okay, so if you're having to do these things, you want to help yourself. So here's self-help. I've got some statistics. The self-improvement industry was valued $11 billion in 2018. It's projected to reach 13.2 billion by 2022. Women make up the majority of self-help book readers.

Douglas Ford: 27:28

Why do you think that is Because men will not admit they need help.

John Ballinger: 27:33

They're the guys that are driving around trying to look for the place. Won't use Siri or stop in a gas station. No, we can figure it out, we'll keep driving. Men are just. They have roadblocks for being vulnerable and asking for help, and the women don't. They're like I need help.

Douglas Ford: 27:53

So that number could be even bigger if men were to participate in in like kind to the purchasing of self-help books and trying to improve themselves.

John Ballinger: 28:02

Which is? This is crazy. Over 45,300 new self-help books were published in 2020.

Douglas Ford: 28:11

43,000?

John Ballinger: 28:13

45,000. 45,000. 300.

Douglas Ford: 28:16

That's a lot. It's a lot of reading.

John Ballinger: 28:18

I mean, we're we're publishing these books because people are saying I need help, and one of the things that we've said is missing is the application of what you read in your everyday life. You're like I read it, this is what said to do, but when I start doing it, I don't want to do it because that's tough, so I don't want to apply it.

Douglas Ford: 28:40

And we've pulled it down to just three.

John Ballinger: 28:43

Just three.

Douglas Ford: 28:45

Seven habits of highly effective people Speed of trust, emotional intelligence 2.0. Those three books are a great place to start if you're going to pick up one of those other 45,000 books.

John Ballinger: 28:58

Mindful based apps and price of $4.2 billion market. So this is the whole mindfulness movement 11% of smartphone users in the US have downloaded a self improvement app. There are over 200,000 podcasts and self help and personal development.

Douglas Ford: 29:26

So we're one of 200,000. We're one of 200,000 that are. We're in good company apparently.

John Ballinger: 29:32

Well, are we? Because if there are that many books, that much content, that many apps, that many podcasts and the people resigned from their position during the great resignation at 43 million because they said their leaders didn't care about them, what are we doing? I mean, we're talking about billions of dollars and that's just the industry. How much time if, if the person, if the leaders actually applying it, you do the $250 an hour average for a leader from a rate standpoint, how much time are we spending and trying to personally develop ourselves and it's not working Because we want, we won't take that last step of application at this.

Douglas Ford: 30:21

Yeah, we've. We've certainly identified over the course of, firstly, due that application is the key to success. We've talked about even the books I just mentioned. I mean you can read those, but until you start applying those and start thinking through those and really getting them to be part of your, your really your subconscious daily routine of like begin with the end in mind, seek first to understand before being understood, sharpening the saw, which is some degree of self help, but the seven habits that he talks about are all key. And then, when you move over into speed of trust, it's like there's some very concrete steps that need to be taken and some very concrete things that need to be understood. There's a lot of good theory, a lot of good conversation. I got a lot of good discussion about what it looks like, what it feels like, how it should be, but there's also some very good application in there, and without that it's just all conversation.

John Ballinger: 31:21

Have we personally seen some leaders that have leaned into this and actually completed the are completing the application process To exceed at a greater level versus the ones that have it.

Douglas Ford: 31:34

Oh, absolutely.

John Ballinger: 31:36

You've seen it firsthand, like if you do these things and apply these in your life and we keep coaching you to it and you come back and you push, and then we push back and coach you through it, you get on the other side of that and some of the things that I've personally seen, that we've seen and we've heard people say back to us, is like man, it is, it's championship, it's Super Bowl championship stuff when they reach it and how they feel as a person and then how their team reacts to them.

John Ballinger: 32:04

And I'm thinking about one blue collar guy that was in one of our leadership groups and he said I just realized one day, as a leader, I should start listening to my people. He said my job got a whole lot easier. I mean, that's that one thing that we just can't listen. Listen to the people. Make sure that when you're listening to them, you're looking at them. You're already not three miles past them thinking about something else where that person says I ain't listening to what I said. So that's just one aspect of leadership. Development is learning how to listen well, especially in the middle of a firefight. So I want to wrap up with the homework.

Douglas Ford: 32:46

Yes, what's our homework for this week?

John Ballinger: 32:49

I would like the listener to create a list of items that you struggle with as a leader, the things that every day here are the things, and it could be having difficult conversation. It could be making decisions in a stressful situation in a timely manner. It could be that passive aggressive where I just say whatever and go over here and grab somebody else about it, get it off my chest so I don't blow up, but make your list of deficiencies that you have and then kind of a sub to that. Then think about your center of influence or your network and think who do I know could help me with these challenges that I have that I've identified myself. That's self reflection, self assessment. Who could identify and then go interview them and see if they'd be willing to help me.

Douglas Ford: 33:42

So take a proactive approach to finding your mentor coach, because we've talked to some people and we've heard some feedbacks like well, I don't know who to go to or how to approach them, and so here's some concrete action steps to start identifying who that might be.

John Ballinger: 33:59

If the listener makes their list and they sit down and make so two lists. Here's the list of deficiencies or challenges. Here's the list of people I've interviewed two or three or whatever it is and I can't get someone that can help me with this. They've not agreed to it or whatever you know, shoot us an email or a message on LinkedIn or Facebook or something like that, because it may come to point where if we had to do some maybe 30 minute coaching sessions with a group of people that had these challenges because I think what we're going to see is there's a lot of leaders have these specific challenges creating those 25 traits that we talked about.

John Ballinger: 34:42

How do you create calmness? You know well, journaling is one of it, but I'm going to tell you one of the best ways to create calmness is put yourself in that situation that's chaotic and discipline yourself to walk through that to a to an outcome. That's a positive outcome, even if you've got to adjust a little bit as you're learning it. But running from it, freezing, falling, that doesn't do it. Actually. Work through it methodically to get to a response and a solution that moves the organization forward. The faster you can do that, the faster you become at it. You got to start and you're not going to be extremely quick initially doing some of those challenges, but you got to start somewhere.

Douglas Ford: 35:29

Yeah, and I was recently listening to one of your favorite people, jaco Wilnick, about how he deals with that, and he went through his whole story about how he came up with some of these things. But he said one of the things that he does when he finds himself in a stressful situation and he feels like he's going down the wrong path with that, whatever that means, wherever that is, whatever that decision is, he will step back. He physically will take a step back and give himself the opportunity to assess the situation as if he had pulled back from it, and he has a great story about why does that and what experience in life led him to understand that that was a good technique that he could personally use. And so it's almost like if you get into some situations that are stressful and you feel yourself starting to fight, freeze, flight or fall on, it's just take a physical step back and kind of reassess the situation and pull yourself out of the fight, so to speak, so that you can get a better perspective on what's going on.

John Ballinger: 36:32

Yeah, and that's really I don't think it's rocket scientists for Jaco, because that's something that we're taught in the and B knock and they knock in the military is take a physical step back from the situation and my team will see me. I'll just. I'll just take a step back. If something's hard coming at me or multiple things are hard coming back, I just instinctually step back from it, start thinking about it, and you literally in my mind, probably his too, because of our training we start thinking about pieces of the puzzle and what to deal with first and who to deal with. So, but that's a discipline, right, we do it and we don't even know we're doing it, because it's just a natural discipline that we've put into our every day.

Douglas Ford: 37:16

Well, thanks for talking about the discipline of leadership.

John Ballinger: 37:20

Thank you very much, and we look forward to next week's topic, which we're not going to say anything, but I'm telling you it's a, it's one that's come up in the last couple of weeks, and it was. I reacted differently to the topic, and so I think it'll be a good subject for our leaders and leaders.

Douglas Ford: 37:42

Looking forward to it, thanks. Thanks a lot you.