Everyday Wiser w/ Paul Barrett | 231

In this episode of Biz/Dev, we sit down with Paul Barrett, Founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Everyday Wiser, to talk about leadership, curiosity, and building organizations that are prepared for change.

Paul shares lessons on leading people, developing stronger managers, and why curiosity is one of the most valuable skills leaders can cultivate as AI continues to influence the workplace.

Along the way, we discuss organizational roles, decision-making, and how effective leaders help teams adapt with confidence.

LINKS:

Paul on LinkedIn

Everyday Wiser on LinkedIn

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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[00:00:00] David: And, and we have people on our team that absolutely have no interest in doing anything but coding. That's it, period. Don't give them anything else. No management, don't- no leadership, no nothing. Code. And they're amazing at it, and you're like, "Fine. I will let you code forever. That's fine. You just stay right there.

We'll take good care of you. Just go back in your dark room. Have a good one."

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the BizDev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, joined per usual by Mr. Gary Voight. Hello, sir. 

[00:00:31] Gary: Hello again. Good to see you. 

[00:00:33] David: More importantly, we are joined by Mr. Paul Barrett. Hello, sir. He is the founder of Every Day Wiser. Welcome, sir.

[00:00:41] Gary: Welcome. Thank you for having me. David, I'm not sick of seeing Paul. Paul's a nice face. 

[00:00:45] David: No, Paul's wonderful. It's just Gary that I don't wanna look at anymore. David, I- In fact, I usually hide his face so I don't have to actually look at his video while he's on the podcast. It's just so- 

[00:00:52] Gary: I slipped the editor 10 bucks to keep me in this one, though.

[00:00:56] David: Oh, good. Nice. Okay. So we like to start out with some icebreakers. Yep. Get to know you a little bit more. So here we go. You ready? You have no idea- I'm ready ... these have not been shown to you, and I'm- Nope ... gonna make 'em up as I go. That's not true. All right. Here we go. Are you a get up immediately or slap this snooze button kinda guy?

[00:01:15] Paul: Neither. I get up and I do my word puzzles. I like to do Wordle. I play Boggle on my app. And so I do some word puzzles to get my brain going, and then I get up. 

[00:01:27] David: Oh, okay. All right. 

[00:01:28] Paul: So once I'm awake, my brain will not let me go back to sleep. 

[00:01:32] David: My wife is the same way. All right. Sentimental hoarder or ruthless 

[00:01:38] Paul: declutterer?

Since I've been married, I've gotten to a middle ground, but normally I'm a sentimental hoarder. Okay. Not a hoarder per se, but I still have- Sure ... notebooks from high school of poetry I wrote. Oh, boy. I just recent- That probably shouldn't have gone up, but it did. Hey, people know 

[00:01:54] David: I had to recently clear out my parents' house, and I found my old bulletin board that I had in high school.

Man, that was a gut punch, just seeing, like, old notes that we found. Was it 

[00:02:09] Gary: the, the tan corkboard- 

[00:02:11] David: Yeah ... with the frame? Exactly. Yeah. It was 100% a tan corkboard. I found boxes of notes from girlfriends and friends from, like, ninth grade to 11th grade. 

[00:02:22] Paul: Use the urge to find them on LinkedIn. 

[00:02:25] David: Yeah. I gave those to my daughter to read.

I, she got a big kick out of those. And I have nothing to hide. And what else did I find that was really interesting? Some really bad photos. Sure. It's just, it's wild to see that. And so now what's funny is, yes, my, my son is, he's off at college, and he, but he's cleaning out his room ru- pretty ruthlessly right now, and he's handing us all this stuff.

And I'm like, "Okay, here's the mindset. What do you wanna find in 30 years? 'Cause I just did this. What do you wanna find?" And so he kept some of his trophies and some of his T-shirts and stuff like that. But it's a kind of a good mindset. If- Great ... you're gonna look at it in 30 years- It's a good exercise

we're gonna have one box. Here you go. Yeah. 

[00:02:59] Paul: All 

[00:02:59] David: right, sorry. 

[00:03:00] Paul: I, I do have just that one box, and inside of that, now that you mention stuff from teachers, I have some things that I got back from fourth and fifth grade teachers that make it remarkable that I got through college when I read that. Mine- I went, I went to a, I went to a parochial school, and I had nuns saying things like, "This makes me sad to read."

[00:03:20] David: Wow. 

[00:03:23] Paul: Wow. I didn't realize- That is- ... that the nuns were bullies back then, but apparently they were 

[00:03:28] David: That's rough, man. I have gotten to the point where I am such a vigilant declutterer that my family thinks I'm dead inside, 'cause I will throw almost anything away. I found an old assignment that I wrote about my life as a child, and I was just like, "It was a school assignment, just pitch it."

And my family was like, "What is wrong with you?" I just, I'm just not attached. Okay. Here we 

[00:03:49] Paul: go. I married an architect and interior designer, and so decluttering has become part of it as we've gone through- Oh, I bet ... three house renovations since we've been together. 

[00:03:59] David: Oh, I bet. Yeah. All right. This'll probably be a pretty good one considering what you do.

Are you a strong finisher or a strong starter? 

[00:04:06] Paul: Starter. 

[00:04:07] David: Starter, all right. 

[00:04:08] Paul: Yeah. I'm an ideas guy. I'm, I, one of the best, I actually write about this in my book, one of the best compliments/interesting observations that I ever had was a, a senior manager told me that I was like having a border collie Really smart, really eager, happy to chip in, quick with the answers, but if you're bored, I don't want you on my team.

[00:04:28] David: My, one of our fir- actually, our first dog we got when we were married was a lab border collie mix, which means he was highly intelligent and absolutely insane. It was- Mm-hmm ... rough. He would chew walls. Like, he was... And we kept him in an apartment. Like, it was a bad... He was a sweet dog, but wow. 

[00:04:45] Paul: I understand.

Wow. I did search and rescue, and that's really where I learned that dogs are so much more intelligent than we ever give them a fraction of the credit they deserve for. That when you have a dog that's as smart as a border collie, you really have to keep it constantly intellectually challenged, or it will find- Yep

something to do- It will just destroy ... and you won't... There'll be no voting on that. This is just what I did. I'm putting a wall, I'm putting a, a door right here. Oh, that's a wall. Not anymore. 

[00:05:08] David: Not anymore. All right, now the most important question. Are you a corner or center brownie kind of guy? 

[00:05:15] Paul: Oh, boy. That's a tough question for me.

I'm not really a brownie kind of guy. If I'm going with- Oh, 

[00:05:20] David: no ... 

[00:05:20] Paul: I, I can analog- That was 

[00:05:22] David: the end of this podcast. That was good for everybody. 

[00:05:23] Paul: I can analog that to cake, and I think I'm gonna go with a corner. Get more frosting that way. Interesting. 

[00:05:29] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:05:29] Paul: Thank you. Okay. Gary gets it. All right. 

[00:05:31] Gary: As long as there's no nuts on, around, or inside the brownies, then I'm good.

[00:05:36] David: Okay. That's fair. Yeah. That's fair. All righty. So tell me about Everyday Wiser. Tell me what you're up to there. 

[00:05:43] Paul: Everyday Wiser is basically human-centered leadership. And so one of the things I learned, I... back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and I was a BA, one of the things that I saw as a problem was there were a lot of people telling other people what to do, but there wasn't really a focus on the people.

It was much more out... It was much more output than outcome. And so you had a lot of people saying, "I'm a really good leader because I've told all these people what to do," and what they didn't realize was that they had huge problems with attrition, because nobody likes to be micromanaged. Nobody likes to be constantly questioned as to what they're doing and why they're doing it, and people just end up leaving.

And I've worked for a number of your Fortune 50 companies doing coaching and consulting work, and the one thing I kept seeing was we're not focusing on people anymore. When you look at companies like Google or Facebook when they were first starting up, everybody wanted to work for them. Why? Mm. The focus was on human beings.

But then once they started to make real, serious, scary money, when you're not measuring it in the millions anymore, we focus on the stakeholders. We focus on the profit. When you focus on the profit, you lose people. When you focus on people, you keep gaining profit. Nobody thinks, "Oh, boy, I... What I really remember about my last great leader was how well we did in the third quarter."

What they remember is how well they were treated, how that person actually cared about what I did, listened to what I had to say, helped guide me through this difficult moment. And so the whole purpose of what Everyday Wiser does is to get leaders to go back and look at how they are treating people, and that's really the, the title of the weekly webinar I do.

It's at the core of it is people. There's not an AI system out there that wasn't created by a person. Even if it was created by another AI system, which they're working on, that initial system, if you take it back to its very beginning, it's people. 

[00:07:45] David: So let me push back on that, and not because I disagree with you.

[00:07:48] Paul: Okay. 

[00:07:49] David: But the, the conventional wisdom is that success and money are the same things, and that's especially true in business, right? Everyone... I'm amazed, and I don't mean to go off on a tangent, but I'm amazed at once you have money, everything you said, say publicly is now considered wise. And it is fascinating.

That is the world we're currently living in with the super trillionaire peoples and all of the crazy richness. And I'm not really trying to harp on that. I'm focusing on the company 'cause you bring up a good point. It's The people in the company want you to treat them well, but the people outside of the company, the investors or whoever, only care about the output.

Sure. Like Amazon has al- traditionally been considered, oh, what a great company. They're worth- Was ... a gazillion dollars, but their burn and churn rate is notoriously brutal. Yep. And so it's, are they a good company or is that, are we defining that right to say that, hey, they're a good company because they make a ton of money?

Okay. They make a great product. Well, I think it's all kinda- We all love Amazon, but- 

[00:08:50] Gary: It's coming out to the open now where more people are seeing behind the veil of just what the investors are saying versus what's actually happening in the, the quote-unquote walls of the company. 

[00:09:01] David: Does that matter? 'Cause it's not like people are buying less from Amazon because they treat their people poorly.

It's not as though Elon Musk has proven time and time again you could be an absolute troll and still make gazillions of dollars. And it's just, it's interesting, in his companies. I just, I find it interesting. I would love that we could reward companies that truly treat their people well, but that just doesn't seem to be the world that we're living in right now.

[00:09:25] Paul: I understand the sentiment- Mm-hmm ... disagree with the practice. I th- when you're asking- Yeah ... is Amazon a good company to work for, the answer is it depends on what you define as good. And so if you define good, I quite frankly know someone who joined Amazon to work part-time just so that they could get their healthcare benefits so that they could get IVR, I- IVFs paid for, and then they quit two weeks later because they still get the benefits.

So- ... that, I don't, I still don't consider them a good company because their- Sure ... focus is on profit. 

[00:09:59] David: Oh, 100%. 

[00:09:59] Paul: When you look at an Elon Musk, the problem with an Elon Musk isn't an inventor, he's not an innovator, he's not an ideas guy. He's like Edison. He takes somebody else's idea, claims it as his own, and says he's a genius.

And that, if you start with a big pile of money, it's easier to make a bigger pile of money. There, there are people who, for example, run countries who have done a lot with other people's money and rather sketchy focuses on where people are. But when you're, if you're a leader, you can manage the announcement, but the people you work for don't m- don't believe a thing you said after 18 seconds because they've already seen how you behave So the ideas that you have for strategy die in the meeting because the way that you act and what you say are very different things.

When you look at an Amazon, you work at Amazon because it's a transactional arrangement now. Mm-hmm. They give you great benefits. They don't give you a great feeling about the work you do. When you look at people in smaller companies that are successful but they aren't publicly traded, why do I still work for that person?

Yeah, they pay me, but I work for them because my stress level's lower, my respect level is higher- Sure ... my sense of belonging and contribution are higher. So when you're looking at, how do we judge a successful company, I wouldn't judge it based on your stock portfolio. I would judge it based on how many people have worked for you for 15, 20 years.

[00:11:28] David: So pushing on that, okay, so you answered the question that floated in my mind. When I come and say, "I'm the senior vice president of X company and I delivered on time, our stock price has gone up," whatever, right? It's most things when they introduce somebody, it's they've raised a bazillion dollars, they've done something.

It's usually monetarily. That's how we describe them, and that's implying that makes them great. How would we introduce someone who's a great leader? What's the rubric there? What do you say? That he's got 12 people who've worked for him for 10 plus years. Is that the rubric? Or what... How do you... If we were to invent a new paradigm shift, like it's away from the ugly stuff that we were just talking about, what's the right way?

[00:12:10] Paul: That is a very good question. I really am enjoying chewing on that. I think one of the things you're looking for is it depends on where they are in the organization. Different. To me, a great leader is Gary has led a team. Three people have been promoted past him to other areas of the company, and Gary still...

And Gary supported that because Gary liked where he was. A lot of people feel like, "I have to keep climbing the ladder or I'm not a success," as opposed to, "I followed my passion and I ended up working i- in this server room for 20 years because it was what I loved to do every day. I got up excited about my work."

We redefine what makes a good employment arrangement by saying, "Is this something you're passionate about? Or is your acknowledgement your paycheck? Is your motivation that I get good benefits?" And so I, I... That's, that is not something that's gonna be given to a fixed answer, but it's something that definitely would look at how an organization focuses and rewards and nurtures its employees.

Because inside of that, then you see how what Gary did wasn't selfless, it wasn't kind, it was good leadership. Because he wants the people that work with him to stay in the company. And if that means they're going somewhere else in the company, great. But it doesn't mean that he has failed as a leader because he didn't get that same promotion.

So when you're talking about how do I define a good leader, definitely the amount of people that are sticking around, but you're looking at things like global engagement surveys. You're looking at things like how many people do you have that have been promoted up through the ranks as to how many people did we bring in from JPMorgan Chase to head the company up.

I 

[00:13:57] David: find, there's a quote, I think it's Dave Ramsey- He- ... but I'm not sure. But he says that, or someone says, that our current culture means we keep getting promoted until we fail, and then they're stuck. Yeah. Right? We, I, he has a better way of saying that, but it's basically you keep getting promoted until you get, reach the level that you're no longer qualified.

And you can't go back down, right? That's against our culture. Mm-hmm. Like, going, a demotion is, like, the worst, right? So it is interesting. And it, based on what you were saying, brought to mind the difference between an officer in an, in the military and, like, a lifelong sergeant. Okay. Right? You're the master sergeant.

That's a, the highest rank you can as an enlisted person. Yep. That guy's been there 20-plus years. He is the beating heart of that regiment or whatever. They all, that's just the nature of that position, and he still has to answer to the 21-year-old lieutenant, right? Yep. But now that 21-year lieutenant needs to be very careful as to how he orders that person around because he is so respected.

And that, I think, that kind of comes to mind when you said what you were saying earlier about Gary and this theoretical thing, sitting at his position 'cause this is what he's good at. 

[00:15:04] Paul: And that's also where the difference between leadership and management come in. The leaders, w- when you're talking about that, like you're talking about a gunny on a, in a battalion.

The, the gunny is the leader. They don't have the rank- Mm-hmm ... but they have the respect. 

[00:15:20] David: Yeah. 

[00:15:20] Paul: And that is the big deal. That gunny's gonna answer to a 21-year-old who's straight out of boot camp, but when the team says, "We've got a question," where do they go? And you can also look inside of a, if we're keeping the military analogy, you can look inside of a squad.

And there are people that everybody knows if something goes wrong, we're looking to see what he or she thinks first because they're the ones who normally keep the calmest head. They're the ones who have the most unbiased view. They're the ones who are putting the unit first a- and really embodying that kind of leadership that the military tries to im- imbue in you.

And so it isn't... Managers are people who are dealing with budgets. Leaders- Mm-hmm ... are dealing with people. 

[00:16:03] David: So how do you as a good leader, let's put that hat on for a second. Sure. And you recognize someone in your company who's very good at their job, but you don't suspect that they would be good at- a promotion, right?

Sure. They're good at whatever it is that they do. You're afraid if you m- move them up, which is of course what they want, they- everyone wants the promotion, they want the more money, et cetera, et cetera. But you're like, "I don't wanna upset them, but I don't think that they're gonna be good at this." How do you keep that person engaged and excited and respected of himself, right?

'Cause he can't, he or she can't get that promotion. That's not in the cards for them, but they're amazing at what they do where they are. How do you... That's a tough one. 

[00:16:44] Paul: The, the... Actually, that's a syndrome that I have, have actually seen a name given to it. It's called promoting someone out of a company. Mm.

Because you might be, for example, the best developer we've ever had. You are a wizard, but you've hit the financial glass ceiling, and we can't technically pay you any more inside of your bandwidth. The only way to pay you more money, which is what motivates you, is to promote you out of that into a manager role.

Once we do that, it turns out you don't have the social skills for management. It doesn't get you up in the morning, and so you quit, and you go work somewhere else. So do you... If you're a manager, that's when you go up above and say, "Hey, we have to find another way to motivate this person." The other thing in those situations that you need to be aware of is when you're a manager and you're wearing your management hat, you're really not wearing your people-focused hat.

You're wearing your I want things to run smoothly hat. And so I'm not focused on whether or not Carol doesn't want to be promoted or what Carol wa- actually loves what she does, but she'd really like to be in the innovation side of things, but there's never an opening in innovation. So you as a leader, be a champion.

Go to the innovation team and say, "Hey, we don't wanna lose this person. She's hitting a dead end here. In the next six months, if we could try to make a space for her, that would go a long ways toward keeping this legacy IP that she has with our company with us. Because if she gets bored, she's gonna leave, and everybody's gonna want her."

[00:18:13] David: Mm-hmm. 

[00:18:13] Paul: That is where leadership comes in. Leadership is the willingness to say, "It's better for the overall if this person leaves my group but stays in the company than if she stays in the company." And if you're doing that, then that, those are the things, like I said, nobody says, "Boy, Gary really got us through the third quarter."

They say, "Wow, Gary helped get me a lateral move inside of a company and really went to bat for me even though I had to leave his team." That's leadership.

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[00:19:46] David: What you were saying earlier, I think a lot of the technical companies have run into that wall where they've got devs who aren't gonna be managers. Sure. Microsoft, I think, has seven or eight levels of development. Most people never go past three or four. But to reward those people who are just obnoxiously good but they're not gonna get promoted, they have up to seven.

And that guy gets paid, I think they said something like a million dollars a year. Now, there's like 10 of them in the entire company who are that level. They're- But it's worth, it's worth every penny to Microsoft. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they're happy to pay them. But it is like they were saying, "Hey, we can't promote you because you're never gonna be a manager.

But we are gonna- we have a path for you so that you're okay staying where you are and doing what you're doing," as it were. Well, 

[00:20:28] Paul: and it, it isn't always you're never going to be a manager. You may never want to be a manager. Being neurodivergent myself, one of the things I have found is a lot of what I used to call evil geniuses back in the early programming days were just people who are just wizards with code, don't have the social skills, don't have the emotional, the emotional intelligence to be good, effective managers.

And so that- well, one of the things you don't want is somebody who isn't good at empathy giving a performance review. Yeah, 

[00:21:00] David: that's fair. 

[00:21:01] Paul: Yeah, I mean- "Wow, David sure goes through a lot of people." "Yeah, but he's so smart." "Not as a manager he's not." 

[00:21:07] David: I've managed many a dev in my day, and absolutely they're, th- they're- the dark room, bright monitor is not uncommon.

And, and we have people on our team that absolutely have no interest in doing anything but coding. That's it, period. Don't give them anything else. No management, don't- no leadership, no nothing. Code. And they're amazing at it, and you're like, "Fine. I will let you code forever. That's fine. You just stay right there.

We'll take good care of you. Just go back in your dark room. Have a good one." Yeah. And that is how they work, and that's fine. I think it's interesting when you don't recognize that and you push them out of that. Maybe th- some people do need a little push here and there. That's good leadership. But a lot of times they just don't.

They don't want 

[00:21:44] Paul: it. Well, but, but again, that's good leadership is fir- first of all, like I talked about the performance reviews. Yeah. Good leadership means no one ever goes into a performance review worried. Hmm. You go into a performance review knowing, because if I work for you and I'm concerned about how my performance review is going, it tells me you're a bad leader without you having to say a word.

Because if you're a good leader, then you know how your team is doing because you're in communication with them. Managing your team and leading your team are two entirely different skill sets. Leading your team is building that relationship so that you know that while David is so happy in that dark room, you don't even, y- you don't even wanna have a conversation with him about management because it makes him anxious.

Mm-hmm. Why do you know that? Because you've had that conversation with him and you remembered. Why do you know that Carol wants to work with the innovations team? Because she's brought it up to you, or you've seen how great she is with innovation that you brought it up to her. Those aren't management skills.

Management skills are, am I coming in under budget? Are we getting things delivered on time? Leadership skills are, do I understand how the people in my group think and work? Because we, when we talk about tho- those pieces, staying just a little bit more curious with your team when you're having these conversations instead of just jumping in as a manager and answering questions.

Stay a little bit more curious, ask them a question, get to learn how they think, is how you find out the pieces that they don't fill out on a survey. 

[00:23:23] David: Are there people, and this sounds like a dumb question, and it maybe it is, but not to me . Are there people that are good at both? Sure. Can you be a leader and a good manager?

Almost- 

[00:23:34] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:23:35] David: It almost- Sure. I- ... seems like they're counterintuitive, though. If I'm leading people first, then I might miss a deadline and I'm okay with that. If I'm a good manager, that's like, "Oh, don't do that." 

[00:23:45] Paul: I'm not trying to get political, but Barack Obama is a perfect example of someone who's an excellent manager and an excellent leader.

Okay. And he talked about it on Brene Brown's podcast, that the key to being a good leader and a good manager is being comfortable with ambiguity. 

[00:24:01] Gary: Hmm. 

[00:24:01] Paul: Because the most expensive thing that a leader can do is answer a question three seconds too soon Meaning if your people are coming to you with questions and you always are the answer person, what you're doing is creating a group of vice presidents of being told what to do.

[00:24:20] David: Yeah. 

[00:24:21] Paul: Because they're not thinking on their own. That's not helping. That's teaching people to stop thinking and start waiting. But it's also teaching you to be a bad leader, but a better manager. But if every time you jump in with the answer, even if it's a good one, you narrow that room, you narrow that relationship.

It looks like alignment, but it's just everybody agreeing with you faster. So if you can, like I said before, stay curious with things just a little bit longer, just a few more qu- a few more moments of, "I don't know how this is gonna go. What do you think?" Instead of wh- when someone comes to you and says, "Hey, how do I deal with this Jira problem?"

"That's a great question. What do you think we should do?" Then you get to hear their thinking process. But if you always give them the answer, "Go here, do this, do that, pull this in," they don't think for themselves, and you teach them not to think for themselves, and then you wonder why your team's always coming to you.

But you're winning the game you're playing, which is, "Don't think for yourself. I'll do it for you." And so when you wanna be a good master of both, you have to be comfortable as a manager with not knowing all the answers right now. And most people when they think of a manager always has the answers, and I think that's the wrong approach.

[00:25:37] David: A friend of mine, he did not invent this, but he's the one who told it to me, explained that as the monkey problem Someone comes into the office and they've got a monkey on their back, and they're, they feel it's their job to give you the monkey. You're the leader, you're the manager- Yeah ... here's the monkey.

And the key to good leadership is they're not allowed to leave your office unless they take your mon- their monkey back. Yeah. It's not my monkey. Take that back. Yeah. And I love that analogy. It, it's a very good visual. But it's... The first time I heard that, it was like, oh wow, 'cause I am the type. Naturally I, I'm a fixer.

I want to solve the problem. And l- leadership to me I don't think has ever come naturally to me. It's something I am bull in the China shop get through. But I am a natural fixer. Mm-hmm. And so to me it's like I always remember, "No, give the monkey back. You, that, that's not your monkey. You don't need to fix it.

You don't need to pet the monkey. You need to... How are you solving this little guy sitting right in front of me?" And that's a really powerful thing, just to turn it around, just flip it. 

[00:26:33] Paul: Well, that's what I refer to as well-intentioned bottlenecks. Mm-hmm. So if your team is always waiting for you to have the answer, you didn't build a team, you just built a queue.

And the well-intentioned bottlenecks are really the worst kind of bottlenecks, because they're all done with great intention. Nobody's trying to slow things down. This is a high-performing team. You know what would be great? If we brought engineering in just to give you guys a heads-up. Now that engineering's here, it'd be great if we brought legal in, because they can also give you a quick heads-up.

As long as we're bringing legal in and now you've got four meetings scheduled on this team, and their productivity's going down. Mm-hmm. But with good intention, you've slowed down a process that was already working because you were trying to help. And so there's something I refer to as that, as what I, I refer to it as the pause, which is that just that quick breath between when you notice what you're about to do and then responding.

And normally you have this with your spouse or significant other or your child when they hit that trigger. And you're like, "Oh, I wanna do..." "Oh, don't do that." 

[00:27:37] David: Mm. 

[00:27:38] Paul: We need to learn to do that as a leader. And instead of answering all these questions and creating a bunch of people who are standing around, stay in that ambiguity, stay in that uncomfortableness so that you don't accidentally become the bottleneck by trying to answer questions for them so you can get them out of your office.

It's not about handing them the monkey back. It's don't take the monkey in the first place. Mm-hmm. If you can teach them to take their own monkey off their own back, as opposed to you talking them through it and giving them their monkey back, then they won't come back in with the monkey because they'll b- have taken the monkey off their back the next time on their own.

[00:28:19] Gary: I have a question, but it's a little bit of a different direction. We were talking earlier about- The value of people in a business. Yeah. And now currently with a lot of businesses getting rid of people and replacing them with AI, where do you see the threshold there for being able to both value people and use AI?

Uh, 

[00:28:41] Paul: AI is a great tool, and so is a nine iron. It all depends on how you use it, how well you know how to use it, and if you know when to use it. A- AI can give you every option and every trade-off faster, but it still cannot be the one who decides. It can't be the one who lives with the weight of that decision.

Judgment cannot be automated. It just gets more expensive. And so w- when we talk about AI, what we're starting to see already is companies who let a bunch of people go because AI was gonna automate things, who now have to bring people back. Yeah. And so the tools are always gonna make thinking clearer. I remember when this thing came out in the '80s called the inter something.

[00:29:27] Gary: Inter 

[00:29:27] Paul: tubes. Mm-hmm. And they said... Inter tubes. Yeah. And they said, "Oh my gosh, this is just gonna make... No one in college is going to learn, 'cause they're just gonna go up on these inter- inter tubes and they're gonna learn all this crazy stuff." No, it just made communication easier to disseminate. It actually made us learn faster, but that doesn't make leadership easier.

It does make it simpler, because it gets down to one thing that was always the actual job. The biggest part about AI is you need to focus on being human in those moments that actually move things. You can't outsource the weight of a layoff. You just can't. I can get any- You can get Claude or whoever to come up with this great seven-month plan on how we're gonna roll out the announcements and who's gonna get targeted and how we're gonna do the severance packages, but that still doesn't take the weight of that decision.

Somebody has to stand in front of a room and say, "This is the direction, and I mean it." And so yeah, I've got a whole section. I, I actually just did a talk with the Scrum Masters of the Universe last month on what stays uniquely human in the age of AI, and it really boils down to meaning, judgment, trust, and care.

So if you're talking about what stays human, a dashboard can give you all the cycle time issues, it can tell you what's happening, where these problems are, but it can't tell you why people stopped raising risks. It can't tell you that the reason that people stopped raising risks is because the manager really had a problem with it and went off on them, and so people are scared of telling the truth.

AI can give you the signal, but a human still has to sit in that room and figure out what it means. AI can write you- We've all read stuff, and you read it, and immediately you're like, "Oh, that's AI." Why? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because they can write a sentence that sounds caring, but it can't care. People can feel the difference.

We still haven't mastered the Turing test, and even if y- you get stuff that sounds really close and we can make it sound, "Oh, that sounds exactly like Stephen Colbert," but it doesn't quite land. And so when it comes to things like judgment's not just picking the best option off the list. 

[00:31:41] David: When it comes to leadership, the thing that's been the hardest for me is understanding that my words have weight.

I've said this in previous episodes. Unusual amounts of weight. I... Early on, when we started growing a bit, I think we had, like, five or six people, and I mentioned to one of the devs, "Hey, man, this is crappy." Whatever this, this output was crappy. Yeah. And I was coming to him 'cause I was another dev on that project even though it was my company.

Oh, it's like I cut that dude off at the knees, and he was like, "Are you gonna fire me?" I'm like, "Whoa, no." Didn't even occur to me that was a thing. So I've had- We've implemented a thing here, just even in our small company, that if there's bad news that needs to be delivered, we go down to the manager right above you, whatever that is- Mm-hmm

rather than me, who I'm a couple of levels. 

[00:32:29] Paul: Yep. 

[00:32:30] David: Because, boy... And I had to learn that the hard way 'cause it scared the bejeebers out of people when I would just make a snide comment 'cause I'm a snide dude, and it did not work well. 

[00:32:39] Paul: That I, again, you haven't read my book, but this ties really nicely into the, the whole architecture of my book.

My book is built across what I call four developmental leadership shifts. The first one is awareness, which is where you begin to see the leadership skills that you weren't even aware was there, those small interactions that shape people and performance. The next is responsibility. So you didn't realize that your comment was causing that reaction, so the responsibility is you recognize your presence in those moments is never neutral You as a leader are never perceived as neutral.

Then we go into the next five chapters is capability, which is where you build those skills to build what I would call a steadiness in a way that you respond to people with more safety and clarity and trust. And then legacy, which is what you build as you see those choices travel beyond you. And the w- the reason that this is important is there's an old African proverb that I love, "The tree remembers what the ax forgets."

You thought it was just a snide throwaway comment, but Gary's been afraid for his job ever since. And especially as a leader, if you don't understand the weight of what you say, then you're... It, it's, it goes away again from being leadership, and it just gets into management and a lack of self-awareness.

[00:34:01] Gary: Very awesome. 

[00:34:02] Paul: And that's a common issue with leaders is that they don't realize how what they communicate really makes a huge impact. 

[00:34:11] Gary: Paul, we usually wrap these up with a question that's pertaining to three pieces of advice you would give a new business owner, a small business owner, or an entrepreneur.

In this case, maybe if you would wanna give us three pieces of advice that you would give to someone who has become a new leader in a business. Or three pieces of advice to be a good leader. 

[00:34:34] Paul: The, the first thing I would say is be kind to yourself. Because when you go into a new position of leadership, the first thing that most of us get filled with is some semblance of imposter syndrome and self-doubt.

The, the second thing is remember the, the most powerful thing any leader can say is, "I don't know." Because if you can say it, then your team can say it. And if you can be vulnerable, then your team will trust you more. That to me, I think, is a really important piece. And then I think the third thing that you can do if you're a new leader is ask questions.

Ask questions before you give answers Always want to know what the person who came to you is thinking before you give your thoughts on what you are thinking 

[00:35:22] Gary: That was a really good piece of advice. The second one with the being vulnerable too, I could see that as also being helpful for, like you said, your team trusting you, but also your team wanting to step up to help figure it out with you.

[00:35:34] Paul: Oh, yeah. But it, it's a really important piece. I tell people I have what I call three-word phrases: I don't know, I don't understand, I need help, I don't agree. Those should all be very neutrally things that anybody can say without fear of repercussions. But it only works if, going back to the military, if my senior member of my team says it, then we can all say it.

But you don't expect a, a private to be leading that charge. And so- Yeah ... you have to lead by example, and I have coached managers many times to say, "Hey, look at your team. Find the two people you've got the best relationship with. Have them ask a difficult question so that you can respond to it the way that you want to emulate in the room, and watch the difference it makes."

And it is astounding. Because if I- Yeah ... as a leader say, "Anybody can ask me anything," nobody's gonna say a word. Yeah, true. But if I say that, and then David immediately asks a tough question, and I respond to it in a way that everybody goes, "Oh, wow, David didn't get his head shot at. Great. I can ask a question," that's about empowering the team.

David Marquet is great on this if you read Leadership Is Language, or he's also got another good book, Turn The Ship Around. He talks about empowering your team Don't manage them, empower them. Give them your intent, don't give them instruction. And people show up differently. 

[00:36:59] Gary: Cool. Now, Paul, if anybody wants to learn more about you or learn more about Everyday Wiser, where's the best place to find you?

[00:37:06] Paul: Uh, www.everydaywiser.com. I do weekly webinars on human-centered leadership on Wednesdays from 12 to 12:30 Eastern Time, and they are free. It's something I always give away for free, especially in these times when there are so many people losing their jobs. I wanna give everybody an opportunity to keep at their leadership craft.

[00:37:29] Gary: Very cool. And we'll put those links in the show notes as well for anybody who wants to check those out. 

[00:37:33] David: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, man. I... It went way better than even I expected. We met before, just as a, a little inside baseball. We met before, which is, I think, the first time that's ever happened that we purposefully met before to talk about the podcast.

And we had a great conversation, but the podcast was even better than I thought it would be. Thank you so much for joining us. 

[00:37:52] Paul: Absolutely. My pleasure. It was great to be here. 

[00:37:55] David: And on that note, we are out. Thank you guys very much. We will be back next week. Have a good one. 

[00:38:00] Outro: That wraps up this episode of The BizDev Podcast, and this time you get me, Jen Baxter, co-owner of Big Pixel and David's wife.

Yep, I finally took the mic, or wrestled it away from David. BizDev is a production of Big Pixel, a US-based provider of UX design, strategy, and custom software. This podcast is edited by audio whiz Matt McCracken and Kristi Pronto, marketing guru for Big Pixel. Want to connect? Shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net or find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X, and LinkedIn