The Secret to Leadership Growth in Business and Nonprofits

[0:00]  I have a team uh that is extraordinary and you mentioned that you're like and I've heard this well it's just easier if I do it because I know how to do it I'll do it faster than trying to teach somebody else to do it it'll do it slower and less efficient I now have a team that almost across the board does things better than me so there are many times where I'm like no you got it and I I tell you what it is a high point in my career when I start looking around like I had a a speaking engagement the other day that one of my key leaders uh LED and I was listening to her and I don't do this often but as I was listening to her I became an audience member like I'm sitting there going wow that is good and I I'm literally thinking and taking notes and go oh wait a minute I'm I'm

[0:48]  also a part of this and I think that's and if I could share that with any of your listeners is that when you're fully able to transition meaning totally able to trust and look people will let you down they will make mistakes they will not do it as well as you but when you're able to gift that it's not only a gift for that individual and a leadership development professional development opportunity as you're saying it's a true gift to you because that has a multiplier effect when I am able to truly I try and protect my Fridays is kind of this dream time Matt so there is an old southern saying

[1:47]  I'm a turtle on a fence post yeah I saw that in an interview you did I think three or four years ago yeah good research man yeah you know that's true for everybody that's an old saying that a turtle doesn't get on a fence post by itself right that somebody obviously placed it there and for us especially in the world of entrepreneurs or or innovation transformation the reality is You're Building off of something else somebody else created a foundation somebody poured into you and and for me that's that's been tremendously true from my parents to so many mentors and Believers in me even when you don't believe in yourself to be elevating those roles is as a as a turtle on a fence pulse yeah I like that old

[2:35]  saying I thought that was a great place for us to start you know we never get to the place where we are without help from others and one thing that I've recognized is uh in our previous conversation correct me if I'm wrong but your wife talks about you being a longtime lifer in the nonprofit space and she almost calls you a nonprofit evangelist right yeah that's how has this how has this chase this space changed in your time in kind of navigating the nonprofit world wow you know that's a great question uh and and it the change has I think accelerated in the last five or six years as many Industries experienced during covid that there was a a desire probably not even a desire a demand a need to change to evolve with the times and so uh nonprofit work uh you know 20 years ago we were called just Charities uh and we

[3:23]  were looked at as kind of a oh that's cute helping people feeding people that's nice and I think what's happened is over the last 20 years it's become a shift towards a more business related model now not every nonprofit has successfully made that move because that is a challenge you're still in a people business the industry of serving uh but at the same time we do have a bottom line that's an issue and we have desired outcomes we want to pursue and so there has been a strategic Evolution I believe in the nonprofit sector that shifted to a more focused or or directive approach to try trying to pursue specific outcomes you know you talked about this currently being you know you being the CEO of United Way in the Knoxville area as kind of like your third

[4:10]  transformative role in leadership which I thought is amazing I want to talk about what are we seeing in the nonprofit space when it comes to impact you had some really unique opinions on this the last time we kind of conversated about what does impact mean in the nonprofit space yeah and that's it's that's that's kind of like a moving Target like depending on who you're talking to the definition of impact or an outcome will vary and I think that's problematic in our sector because where in the business world the four profit world you know the metrics are pretty consistent you may be selling widgets over here or have a concert venue over there and the reality is when you open up the books the desire to have the same outcomes you can apply Apples to Apples in the nonprofit sector we haven't found that consistency in or alignment in our work around what a true out looks like

[5:00]  an example of that is for many years nonprofits most all nonprofits measured impact by individuals kids families served so it was simply a number served game how many meals did we served how many kids showed up for our after school program that was kind of the true measurement but the reality is people start asking so what so what so you know if we feed a bunch of people that's great they're not hungry for the next 5 six 7 hours but so what does that change the circumstances that the people we serve are in and the reality is in most cases the answer was no or at the very least and and again number served is not a bad number to measure and evaluate but

[5:48]  it's part of the picture the total picture is how are we working alongside a families on their journey toward self-sufficiency right and how do we ultimately measure that meaning a month uh six months a year from now they don't need support subsidies scholarships to programs because whatever obstacles in their life were removed they overcame or they were able to beat with the support or without the support of programs like the nonprofit sector and so there has been a shift towards more an outcome oriented evaluation yet uh you know if you go back and measure some of those base statistics like poverty numbers or any of these traditional negative me

[6:36]  measurements that we have in our community homeless statistics crime data if you measure it over the last 20 30 40 50 years those numbers haven't changed much and to me that's an indication that while the nonprofit sector can probably anecdotally say hey we've stemmed the tide it could be way worse without us I happen to be one of these nonprofit leaders that I don't want on my Tombstone to say could have been worse right I mean that's not the goal you you really want to leave this work and say we accomplished we uh we solved we did the thing that really chance changed people's lives forever more and I think as the nonprofit sector both uh internally is making that adjustment to

[7:24]  more outcome driven data with with true outcomes evaluating programming I think there's also external pressure that donors are starting to ask hey if I'm giving you money year over-year what's changing or as we like to say the so what question you served a thousand people so what did my money make a difference did it move the needle yeah this is a really interesting concept I was uh fortunate enough earlier in the week of the time of recording this I had an opportunity to sit down with Suzanne Stone the CEO of Livestrong the foundation yellow wristbands right yeah very and she was saying you know it's going to take a bold leader to change the way in which we look at nonprofits because we have The Stereotype that we are friendly we like giving out hugs we're here just to be able to be compassionate for others but we have to re-evaluate what impact looks like but she said that is a very scary place for

[8:13]  a lot of people who have job security and continuing to turn the wheel what do you think about that I I agree 100% in fact I had this convers I've been having this conversation a lot lately in in the industry the industry has become an industry of itself right so I have payroll I've got to meet I got staff we got HR we're doing all the work of every other business which I think traditional nonprofits makes our work even harder that dual bottom line of both the financial bottom line as well as our mission bottom line but the reality is that organizational bottom line can be a real pull to where your goal is to serve so many meals every month and that is the indicator of success I think most people would say well actually isn't the indicator of success a reduction and meal served over time and eventually

[9:01]  there isn't a need for that program I think theoretically nonprofit leaders say that all the time but I think it does take some boldness to say I truly truly want to work myself out of a job so that five years from now I've solved this issue and I'm on to the next challenge and it and while there are a lot and I get to work with a lot of nonprofit leaders that that have that Vision it's hard in the day-to-day to keep the motivation to move towards that type of bold goal you know I I like to bring in a conversation in this it's like you know when we get our Ro our goals correct they are a Finish Line they're a checkpoint or an event right but when we get them wrong they turn into a horizon we take one step forward and they move one further step away how are we trying to land ourselves in the

[9:50]  framework of we have to show up every single day and do this good work but it continues to seem like the game that we're playing is almost a horizon that keeps moving farther away from us how do you stay grounded in this process that's that's that's the challenge right and I think and right now I I I have a lot of friends all over this country that are in CEO roles or executive director positions and there is uh some nonprofit leadership fatigue around this because it does feel like the the goal posts keep getting moved right the goals get shifted we make we have an accomplishment we take a step forward and then on another front we're taking two steps back and and I think this this is an era that is increasingly uh more difficult I will say what I'm seeing also is in the midst of that we're starting to see that true

[10:38]  Innovation bubble up meaning the more the challenges the greater the crisis right crisis is what is that saying the crisis is always the birth of new imaginative ideas and ideations I think the pressures that we're feeling also create an opportunity for nonprofits to be more Innovative because the reality is historically the nonprofit model doesn't reward Innovation it actually deinen devizes Innovation right so what I mean by that is uh a nonprofit leader that tries a new idea not sure if it's going to work or not and it doesn't work can really shed some donors can make some Partners frustrated can get key stakeholders to walk away whereas in the world of Entrepreneurship there is no such thing as failure right there's

[11:26]  success and learning and the truth is nonprofit World should also be in that space we should be trying new ideas not saying hey that's not going to work let's keep chugging along and doing the same old thing because the same old thing has gotten us the same old results and I would guess most people in our country or globally would say the same results aren't acceptable for us today you know curating this this culture of experimentation is difficult and I've been working on a personal framework in my world and talking to my team about the difference between running experiments and making decisions making decisions feels very I would say final the way in which we choose we're going this has an end route either it's going to be good or it's going to be bad but the difference is when we think about running experiments or Pilots if you will it takes the sting out of the failure how do you think we can

[12:15]  cultivate a better culture of experimentation rather than making final decisions especially in the nonprofit space I I I love this and in fact we have a a major pilot that I'm happy to say the state of Tennessee is invested in and so this pilot is around self-sufficiency working with and walking alongside of families in their Journey towards self-sufficiency uh and it's really exciting because the state has themselves called it a pilot and invested money in it now the question is do we properly evaluate it right so that's a question for all nonprofits if you're running a pilot you've got to say hey if we're going to do this let's make sure we understand that it works that we then have the data to support that because once we find find a formula that can work or be customized or scalable

[13:03]  then we really want to increase investment in that and I think sometimes we make a mistake I I'll give you an example on this uh that I've heard nationally the the entire basis of you Universal basic income which I know is a politically a hot potato but it's an interesting element of this Universal basic income has been tried in ZIP codes all over the United States uh government agencies nonprofit Ng Goos have flirted with this idea of what does that best practice look like around Universal basic income and across the board the research says it works right and yet you'll see today tomorrow somebody will announce another pilot to try Universal basic income in another community at some point that that data has to be taken seriously as a true

[13:53]  point of impact or outcome and then then the conversation is are all right if we know this works in different circumstances in different geographies with different people how do we scale up in a way that makes sense to really Elevate families a a different example of that and this is somewhat controversial Kean so I apologize I'm bringing bring it let's go I I use this example all the time the Dare program right we all know somebody or we ourselves have gone through the Dare program fifth grade yes I I was as well and it's you know that Reagan Era Nancy rean just say no uh that philosophy that bringing an police officer into the schools just makes sense and it does anecdotally that makes sense so that that which was birthed in LA in LA

[14:42]  county uh Sheriff's Office and it worked really well in LA in fact they researched it in LA and it did really well and then they scaled it across the United States without evaluation without true data analysis what happens on the other side of that is 10 years later haven't been been evaluating it a couple highered institutions say man this dare program is everywhere all these fifth graders we should do a broad based evaluation to see if this stuff is really having an impact and if so how much so it wasn't everywhere but it was most places so they got some really good study results between kids that went through dare and kids that did not go through dare and the results were plastered all over the Internet and the results were that D didn't work right and in fact in some of the studies the the results were

[15:29]  that kids were slightly more likely to use drugs if they went through now if you created dare if you invested in Dare that was not your vision you weren't hoping for that result but because there was a true lack of evaluation and what was probably at that point called a pilot let's pilot this new program all over the United States and Sheriff's departments and school districts they missed that opportunity to make adjustments to make that program work for the true outcome they wanted which was simply get fewer kids to use drugs now they have a program that's 10 years old all over the country that questionably increases the drug now I'm not judging you Keenan and I'm certainly not affected by that and all of your listeners that were in Dare program they're like I wonder what my problem was you know that's not what I'm saying

[16:17]  but I think what that is a testament to is the importance of not only piloting ideas make sure we're truly evaluated and make sure they work first of all I was my fifth grade class candidate I won the Dare competition I remember talking about my speech in front of the entire fifth grade class and saying that I was going to be a baseball player at the University of Miami and I was also going to play football there and it always like stuck with me so I'll remember that about dare more so than anything this reminds me a lot of uh in our previous conversation I told you about an experiment right of four monkeys who were climbing to the top of the ladder and grabbing bananas before you knew it all of the banana all of the monkeys who were in the cage were saying we're not going to go climb up and get those bananas because this is the way that we done it do you think that this is the way that we've always done it is a symptom of kind of the nonprofit space

[17:06]  and the lack of innovation that we've kind of been seeing through this time it is and in defense of nonprofit leaders they've been taught that right and what I mean by taught that the influences around them whether it's their board of directors which is essentially their boss their key or major donors have said they don't like that idea they've heard it they're their partners and stakeholders which might be a local uh municipality or the state government saying we don't want to invest in that so there are outside pressures so it's a really easy way to avoid the challenge of taking on new H we've tried that before we've done it before you know this is the way we've always done it uh for many people today though that phrase makes them cringe you know immediately I know I'm the type that's like when they say this is the way we've always done it I immediately want to flip the the the

[17:55]  you know the Apple basket and say all right then we're going to do it different but the reality is uh you know there are many things in history that have been done the same way for a long time with incredibly bad results so again I think the evaluation component should be on the other side as well for example a food pantry that's giving out more and more food they certainly can celebrate that and say that's the way we've always done it we're serving more people than ever I would say if their numbers are changing either up or down it again requires a true evaluation on what is impacting these numbers in a way and should we be reinforcing that work or should we be pulling back and looking at pushing in to do a different direction again I think the atmosphere or the ecosystem of the nonprofit World

[18:42]  creates a little bit of a chilling effect I know I feel pressures and as much as I love being on your podcast and being highlighted for the work we've done I have run that into that consistant in my career especially when you're in a state of transformation because what you're saying is everything we're evaluating and everything is on the table now inherently in that when you say that somebody can interpret that as well I used to do it the other way or I donated to the other way or are you saying I was wrong that's not it's not if and it's not one or the other it's usually a yes and all right yes there's some foundational pieces that are working really well and how do we evaluate or supplement that work in a meaningful way to get greater outcomes how courageous of a leader do you have

[19:31]  to be to have a mindset that says new data equals new decisions this is something that I think about often because if we continue to make the same decisions based on old data but we have new opportunities to look at and re-evaluate these things it creates a ripe environment for pivoting in a Justice way yeah this this is this is this is a key part of the conversation Keenan in fact I would say I'm going to stay in my Lane in nonprofit world but I think in the world of politics in the world of business we could apply this same conversation right is that we should always be in a state of evaluation in fact uh my wife and I really Embrace this idea that certainty is a dangerous place to be and a lot of people would say wait a minute that doesn't sound right shouldn't you purs pursue certainty and my answer to that

[20:18]  would be if we're in a constant growth mode if we're in a in a state where we want to expand our mind and learn all the time a lifelong learner then we should be really open to new information and in fact we should pursue new information that conflicts with whatever we think or believe or know from the past right because that's only going to make either our position sharper and better or we're going to re-evaluate that position or that program in the nonprofit world and say how do we make adjustments and I think the key in that and and I'm afraid a lot of people are afraid that that foundationally will Rattle My beliefs or or my core essential essence of who I am and the reality is most of these changes are subtle right it's a small shift it's a

[21:07]  it's a different way of looking at things it's a different way of communicating or marketing it's just how do we better serve and so those incremental shifts are a lot of times where the gains are happening but sometimes our own resistance prevents us from taking that information in complacency is not a good place to be I have personal experience in this when I uh stopped playing baseball um in college I went through a place of hunkering down because I was going through a big identity crisis and transformation and what that complacency turned into was me gaining like 85 pounds now I know that you as an avid Runner have lost about a 100 pounds in the consistency of running and I'm guessing that that came from an inflection moment that you can share the

[21:54]  story if you'd like to where you had to look yourself in the mirror and say have about been being complacent I think it's time to take bold action and make changes in my life yeah man you as a fellow baseball player back in the day you know it's funny we we played a sport that if you hit the ball far enough your reward was you didn't have to run right you could literally walk around the bases so I didn't grow up a runner but yeah my wife we have four children uh every time uh she got pregnant I gained what I described a sympathy weight she would lose it I would maintain it and after four kids uh I'll never forget she we were uh she was pregnant with our fourth and that inflection point you're talking about and our daughter was sitting on her lap and and my wife at that point was probably seven eight months pregnant very uncomfortable and

[22:41]  she said please go sit on your Daddy's lap and she goes well why do I have to sit on Daddy's lap she said well mommy's pregnant and she doesn't have much room on her lap go sit on Daddy's lap she comes over and sits on my lap she's trying to get comfortable and she can't get settled in she Pats my belly which at that point is is healthy we'll say she Pats my belly and she said is Daddy pregnant too and I thought uh I think that's a signal right there that's a signal and so uh I ended up joining a YMCA Biggest Loser contest which is very similar to the TV show some coaching some training I was able to Lo lose 30 or 40 pounds through that program but I had to lose that weight before I started running and so once I started running which I didn't love

[23:29]  again that baseball player of me was like this is not this is what you do for punishment I needed some consistency in my life and so there was a Runners World CH challenge a magazine that said hey from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day if you run every day you'll keep the pounds off during the holidays and I said that's that seems like a good idea so I ran every day and one of my friends ran with me uh this guy Cameron A buddy of mine and on the last day on New Year's Day He said we made it I'm done well I happened to be a competitive guy and I was like you know I think I'm going to run one more so that my streaks a little bit longer uh and I did and I think he called me the next day and said let's go running again so it just became this daily discipline for me and here I am I'm just weeks away from my 10year streak adversary yeah man thanks I'm

[24:18]  very proud uh we're about to run across the Grand Canyon with some running buddies here in just a couple weeks and so it's been transformative for my life not just in my health which it certainly has in fact right now I'm a little over 100 pounds down from where I started my weight loss journey and now it's 15 years ago from my way to over 300 lbs but to to be in that position uh is great from a health perspective but there's something about and this doesn't have to be running for your listeners for you for anybody any exercise in Daily discipline is contagious so when I get up early and I go for a run I immediately do things like I water the flowers on the way in I wash the dishes in the I make a pot of

[25:06]  coffee I take a cup to my wife and all of a sudden I'm winning today I haven't gotten in the shower I haven't gone off to work but I've got some momentum going into the day so for me that exercise and daily discipline while I happen to love running now and that's kind of my sweet spot I tell people all the time find your thing and execute it on a daily and if it makes you better commit to it daily and as you grow what you'll see is things start latching on to that all of a sudden you start doing all the things that you really know is going to make you better off in life I had an amazing guy on the podcast one time his name was Jason harusi and his entire philosophy was live 100 he said you know often we walk around life living in a place of complacency where we'll live at our best physical shape which is like 72 but you

[25:54]  never understand the Delta between 72 and whatever your 100 is and when you can tap into living 100 being the best partner the best friend being the best person to yourself being kind to others you have amazing things that will happen I wonder how the element of you being the best version of yourself from a fitness perspective translated into how you showed up as a leader as well yeah you know it's it's funny I I in my head a lot of times that was disconnected right you're like okay this is my personal fitness story and and this is my work in fact I've been having this conversation recently about how are those interconnected and and the reality is and there's this guy in town this great leader in town uh CEO uh and I was in a on a panel with him and he shared this

[26:41]  somebody asked him you know how do you do uh work life balance right common question and this CEO is a hard driven dedicated Fitness fanatic incredible success in his professional career and he said no no no no you got it all wrong there's not work life balance it's work work life Harmony and his take was you're the same person no matter where you are you've just got to find Harmony in those pieces of your life and so he said whether it's your faith your family your Fitness your employment whatever it is you're the same person and the mistake we often make I think and I've done this is I try and flip a switch I'm the Family Guy and now I flip a switch and I go to work and I'm that's that's not possible right I'm the same guy and so what happened is that daily discipline really started bleeding over

[27:30]  into my work and my exercise at work and I don't mean exercise from Fitness but the exercise of working how I come into my office how I set up at my desk how I respond to emails you know I write handwritten notes every day how that those go out the impact those have now these are all just exercises and discipline how do I do those little things because once those disciplines become positive habits it kind of frees my mind up to think about what's around the corner what's on the horizon what's the big opportunity that our organization or our community even more so has in front of it that we can tackle and for me sounds hokey but that running every day absolutely has bled into that where I see uh opportunities in my

[28:18]  dedication I also say that it's in that running and I used to call running a truth serum which means when I go for a run whether it's a mile half marathon or or a 50 mile the reality is I can tell myself everything in the world the run will tell it for you right I mean the the pain the suffering if I quit I it's me that quit like there's nobody else to point to there's not other conditions it's truth serum and there's something about pushing the boundaries of yourself out physically teaching you to do hard things boy I want to quit but I'm G to run to the next uh light pull boy I want to stop this but I want to get to the Finish Line whatever it is you are teaching yourself that when things get hard at

[29:07]  home out on a race course or at work the reality is somewhere inside I've got what it takes to get through this difficult time because you know what I've done it before and I think that exercise and discipline builds a certain amount of confidence in you that even walking into a meeting or applying for a job that you're like I'm not sure I got it I'm not sure but I know I can Wade through these Waters I've done it before if it's going to be hard I am good at doing hard things and so for me that that absolutely Blends over into every part of my life not even just my work life but conversations with you when I'm sitting down with my kids at dinner every part and I'm not saying I do it all right I don't but the one thing I have confidence in is that I'm not going

[29:54]  to quit right I'm going to mess a conversation up with my daughter and I'm going to have the ability to say the hard thing is going to be to apologize to her right now but I've done hard things and I can do this and it's a good outcome for our family so for me that exercise and running and I know this sounds like you're like you dude you're just going for run and that's true too but the reality is for me there so much time out there thinking and strategizing and seeing how this affects my life it really has transformed everything I do it's interesting where we find the biggest opportunities for growth and the magic if you will is in the stretch of holding ourselves accountable and pushing ourselves a little bit further than what we think we can it's almost like we become the CEO of our own lives where we have to hold ourselves

[30:41]  accountable to kind of live up to the reputation that we give for ourselves yeah I I love in in running there's just always the say you never know how much you can do until you push yourself to the Limit right and so the reality is every time you have a success if you run a half marathon you're like well I did that what that wasn't my limit clearly I made it to the Finish Line what's a marathon look like I think the same is true like you're saying in work where you're like I have never done a Grant application I've never written a grant application well the easy answer is let's find somebody to write it that's done it before but the challenge of the stretch as you said would be I'm going to give this a go I'm going to learn as much as my I can I'm going to study I'm going to apply those skills and let's see how this turns out and in that stretch you're you're like that's where

[31:28]  the gold is right that's where that that magic is at is in that stretch where you're like you're seeing in yourself skills that you may not have known were there but it's not our natural tendency our tendency is to shy away from that because there is a risk of failure again going back to that conversation nobody truly wants to fail but the reality is it's in those failures as as a lot of people call them where their learnings happen so get out there and do it uh in fact I had a friend that once said I'd never do a race if I didn't know I could finish and I'm now kind of on the opposite end of that and I'm not saying that's bad that's great but I'm kind of on the opposite end of that that that conversation where I I I'm not truly interested in doing it unless it's

[32:16]  something that I'm like wow that scares me that that really scares me that's a stretch and it's kind of like I'm it caner it my brain even having done all that stuff over the years that when I start going man I don't know if I can do it I can hear the noise in my brain going go for it go for it go for it and I I love living in that space man because like you said that's where the stretch happens that's where the Magic's at would you be surprised if there was actually a part of your prefrontal cortex that actually gets stronger in making tough decisions there's a part of our brain that literally is designed to keep us from doing things but the more we do tough things and we overcome that little voice in our head the stronger that piece of our brain actually becomes which is really kind of profound to think about how it's momentum like you

[33:04]  said that kind of rallies into you being able to make these tough decisions and have those tough conversations even saying you know uh you're sorry to your daughter is a great example of that you interesting and I love that I I have no doubt you know it's just like any muscle in your body right if you're training it it gets stronger and and for me that's that's I I I love that I love that part of of challenging ourselves I want to get really selfish with uh you know the rest of the podcast here and kind of dive into your leadership philosophy so we're in our third I would say season of transformational leadership if you could go back to the first transformational leadership opportunity or even before that and sit down with Matt and give him some advice about how to be the best leader possible what would you say to

[33:51]  him the Temptation is to say don't do it um but that wouldn't be it that wouldn't be it I I'd say go for it I I would say uh work really hard to bring more people with you I I I think mistakes that leaders uh that I've made I I I can't speak for all leaders the mistake that I've made is that I have a vision an idea and I believe in it and I go hard charging after and sometimes you forget to bring people along with you and those people are the key to really making it happen the reality is turtle on a fence post you're not going to do it alone right you you really need the support of the people so being able to cast Vision might be as as important as leading people towards that Vision so I

[34:38]  think one uh I I would I would tell myself make sure you're bringing people along for the ride uh two I I would try and communicate how hard it's going to be right and that there's going to be moments of real self-doubt of question in the vision uh but to continue to trust that and to understand another saying I love in the Running World it doesn't always get worse right there's those times where it's bad and then you get another piece of bad news and it's third p and you're like it's just all going downhill it doesn't right it turns and so I think the ability to share hey it's going to be hard and that's okay right that's a part of this process uh and the last part is I I think where I

[35:28]  I've I've disappointed myself uh historically is to make sure that you have the courage to have that consistent conversation and what I mean by that is uh you know I was a indag 3 personality profile woo whatever you want to call in strength finders all these personality profiles it's a great fundraising skill to be able to Parrot or mimic or just make people feel good in conversation and I was gifted with some of that the unhealth healthy side of that however is that by pleasing others consistently making them feel comfortable you can you are essentially giving pieces of yourself up and it doesn't take long before you start looking in the mirror and you're like I I'm not even sure where I stand anymore and I look I've

[36:16]  been on that road I've said that I I I've had to challenge myself I've had to take you know my own type of sabatical to step back and say holy cow if I really gotten off the rail here so I think that self-care that selfcheck self-awareness whatever you want to call it is the last thing I would say something that I'm still uh still working on still challenging myself with is how do I get better at that work life Harmony as I heard I want to reverse a little bit we talk about the first example you gave was to bring more people along with you I'm wondering if there's an element of when we're a high achiever and we want to do great things we often feel like we are the only person who can execute on this Vision that's going to help us get there I'm reading a book right now um actually

[37:02]  right here so everybody who's tuning in can watch this it's called buy your time back by a guy named Dan Martell and he talks about paro's principle in here he says you know one of the best things about being a really impactful leader is being able to divulge trust into others for them to execute on your vision now nobody from your perspective is going to be able to do 100% as good of a job as Matt is but if you can find somebody to do 80% of that work that is 100% awesome because you can focus on the higher leverage tasks so early in your career do you think maybe you had a little bit of a trust issue in putting time I would say investing into other people which is completely natural Keenan is there an invoice come I feel like we're doing a therapy session here I think you you you're nailing me yeah yeah absolutely you know and and two things one uh you know I would have a particular vision

[37:50]  and I wasn't always great at communica I have it in my mind it was kind of like a a puzzle that wasn't quite put together but I had had the picture in my head and and so I was the other thing is you know I have a pretty high pace so I'd be like let's go go go go and that also wasn't always the right pace but yes uh you know immaturity ego ambition all that was probably wrapped into some of that uh probably also just a lack of professional development and the importance of Delegation and Trust in your team uh I'm at a stage right now and I I couldn't be happy right now I have a team uh that is extraordinary and you mentioned that you're like and I've heard this well it's just easier if I do it because I know how to do it I'll do it faster than trying to teach somebody

[38:37]  else to do it it'll do it slower and less efficient I now have a team that almost across the board does things better than me so there are many times where I'm like no you got it and I I tell you what it is a high point in my career when I start looking around like I had a a speaking engagement the other day that one of my key leaders uh LED and I was listening to her and I don't do this often but as I was listening to her I became an audience member like I'm sitting there going wow that is good and I I'm literally thinking and taking notes and go oh wait a minute I'm I'm also a part of this and I think that's and if I could share that with any of your listeners is that when you're fully able to transition meaning totally able to trust and look people

[39:25]  will let you down they will make mistakes they will not do it as well as you but when you're able to gift that it's not only a gift for that individual and a leadership development professional development opportunity as you're saying it's a true gift to you because that has a multiplier effect when I am able to truly I try and protect my Fridays is kind of this dream time I call it my email catch-up time and it is that but the reality is there's a bit of just dreaming and envisioning what's this look like three years from now five years ago this opportunity has presented itself how do we think through this when I am able to break away from some of the other stuff and give it to quite honestly on my team somebody is better

[40:12]  at it anyways and free myself up it has this multiplier effect it's good for them it's good for me and it's ultimately good for the organization everybody starts churning out and so I I'm a big believer that when you give people the opportunity to elevate more often than not they'll rise to the occasion I think a lot of times it's us as leaders that kind of hold people back and I probably still do that where I step on toes and I I take a meeting and I should have invited somebody because they had a lot to contribute but I was hard charging ahead I'm trying to get better at that but yeah the reality is in my development and evolution as a leader I've gotten much better I think um I I've become much more hands off than I was 10 15 years years ago uh where I was much more Hands-On uh now

[41:02]  you know probably a critique is sometimes I can be really hands off because I I think people learning through their own mistakes is many times a great learning opportunity to coach them through so to give those full opportunities for me is is a great gift and it sounds like I'm gifting you this opportunity it truly has been a gift for me as well so yeah growth is often in delegation I agree you know part of what you also said was you know being able to communicate how hard this is going to be one of my favorite examples of this is um the CEO of Nvidia the microchip company just crashed cost a trillion dollars in market cap and all that kind of stuff he said one of the things that I've done Justice by in talking and building culture in my team is we have a

[41:49]  saying that there will be pain and suffering along this journey because one thing that we've all recognized is the harder we work and the more we apply our ourselves to tough problems the reward is that much sweeter what do you think about there will be pain and suffering kind of in the culture in a positive way yeah I have a buddy here in town that we actually use the phrase pursuit of pain like we should truly Pursuit discomfort and and that's easy to apply in Fitness right that that most Fitness exercising uh most people say it's not comfortable right that and there's a point to that I believe that's equally true in our work and our business and our planning and our discussion and challenging ourselves doing the hard thing almost always makes us better now somebody listening you go I I did a

[42:38]  thing the other day it was hard and it was terrible it it was that is true too but the reality is again that growth can happen in those stretch times but we often have to pursue that those opportunities and that's that's the hard part because not many people go out to their front door and slam their hands in the door and say all right we're trying to grow here that's that's not what we're talking about but many times when you're talking about that that opportunity on the horizon uh something that's out there that that nobody else is talking about that you as a leader intuitively know there's something to this the easy answer is the road well traveled right the opportunity lies in that Road Less Traveled and and we know that means I might be bushwacked it

[43:25]  might be I'm explaining myself myself I'm putting myself at risk whatever it is but to your point that's where the gold is that's where the magic happens on the other side the last point that you talked about there was appeasing others I had a conversation just today actually with an amazing CEO a young dude 37 years old named Kevin Irvin now one thing that he talked about was because he's been so young and he's been so successful in his business he works in a community- based organization education advocacy where he's helping you know students apply to schools and do all this other amazing work he said OU know Keenan very earlier in my career I found myself being incredibly good at code switching code switching was decid or was described to me as the idea where I have to show up as a different person in different environments because I'm in charge of fundraising as a CEO I'm doing all this stuff he's like one day I came

[44:13]  home after inviting my wife to an event and she said you talked about golf like you knew what you were doing you've never played golf in a day in your life and he said I have to show up how I want to and his wife said if you're truly showing up as who you truly are you shouldn't be switching up who you are and he said in that moment I recognized that I was code switching because it was a necessity for me but it was a way for me to fit into these different rooms and what I thought people wanted to see out of me and my wife had the luxury of showing up as herself consistently through life so do you think that people appeasing element is almost not in a negative way but maybe because we're not showing up as our full confident version of ourselves to be able to speak Our Truth in those moments absolutely and I think it it it also goes to you know not something I'm necessarily proud of as

[45:01]  character but what what do other people think about me right and so how do I position myself in a position that's likable and as I said as a fundraiser that can be a really good trait but it can be as you described code switching could be very unhealthy over time right and a buddy of mine used to use this phrase proximity changes perspective and when I really adopted that meaning if there's a population uh a leader if there's any a colleague and and I don't understand what they're going through I don't understand their position on the world they make a weird political stance whatever it is that is my Approach shouldn't be to step back but it actually should be to lean in I should

[45:50]  close get closer to change that proximity break bread sit down with the individual because in my experience that is where real growth happens and what's exciting about that is when you have those authentic conversations you really get to know their true self right they will share what they think and why they're thinking it and in that exercise in that process often times you'll find connection points even though you might say I don't know how we could be more different you start off with small talk and you realize they have two kids and they're struggling with their second grade because they have anxiety about going to school and you realize your fifth grader has the same anxiety all of a sudden that whole conversation switches right because now you have some similarity in

[46:37]  your background proximity changes perspective and I think that perspective for me Isn't me creating a person I think they want to like or a person that they will be entertained by or somebody that they can trust to give money to but rather it becomes an authentic relationship where they know my heart my spirit I know where they're coming from and there is some semblance of understanding and I know I work for an organization called the United Way and this is also hokey but I happen to be a big believer that it's in that Unity where we can really find true impact because in any case and I'm not even talking politics but as we stand divided we are always going to be slower to grow and in fact that usually

[47:25]  has the impact of us tearing one another down which we all know is not healthy so to me for when when uh this friend of mine his name is Dustin said hey man you know the key to life is proximity changes perspective I have found that in co-workers that have disagreements I have found that in neighborhoods that have struggle in fact early in my career when I was working gang prevention proximity changes perspective you get people that are vowed to hate each other in the same room having a conversation about something they care about and all of a sudden that empathy starts bleeding out and it becomes a lot harder to take the hard line against somebody when you know a little bit of their heart you know there's a famous saying um that if you truly knew and understood your enemy they wouldn't be your enemy I love that

[48:15]  man I love that right yeah so you know um Matt I just want to say this has been an amazing conversation the last thing that we do here on the podcast is we have our previous guest ask you a question now their question was do you trust yourself enough to let go you know I so this is a timing of this question is so fantastic um because we have gone transformation as we've talked about is hard and there's risk involved any leader that leads in fact there statistically organizational transform transformation fails most of the time right and if you're a leader and you're leading an organization through a transformation that fails you understand what that could mean for your own employment right so there's there risk involved in that and so I would say for

[49:04]  a bunch of my career as much as I might have called myself a change agent probably not I didn't fully trust like there was always some hedging on how do I manage what's the exit route how do I manage a disappointment or failure it's just in these last few years and and there's something about this transformation I've been a part of the team that's that's that's around the board of directors we have which is extraordinary and all amongst the backdrop of Co which really as much as it had a dividing effect it also there was a unifying effect and we saw I know some of the worst in our in our world but we also saw some of the best in our world and so for me it's just been the last few years where I have become very willing to say yeah I I I'm trust I'm all in it's okay wherever this leads me

[49:54]  it's going to be the right result because we're going down the right road for the right reasons even when we're facing resistance in fact I I love there's a myth of Copus I'm a big fan of this this mythology and it's the myth is as I've have adopted it is that you know this man sinned he made a mistake and the gods punished him and the punishment was forever to push a rock uphill and when he got to the top of the mountain The Rock would fall back down the mountain and he'd be doomed to push that back up the myth for me is that the man found purpose in that right it wasn't a punishment but now he was driven to accomplish that no matter how impossible it felt or looked he was going to get back up push that rock uphill and for me I've kind of adopted that entire Greek mythology as a part of the work that it

[50:43]  gets hard it gets difficult but if you're on the right track you got to trust it and keep pushing that rock uphill because the reality is that rock going uphill like we all know the easy stuff is not where the the big wins happen it's it's in those difficult things so yes I I I I today I can probably proudly say most of the time yes uh historically probably not probably not I mean that's an amazing place for us to put a wrap on it man thanks again for joining the show I really appreciate it