Transcript for CNLP 641 | Daniel Harkavy On Imagining Your Funeral When You're a Young Leader, Self-Leadership, Team Effectiveness, and What Separates The Best Leaders from the Rest

If you're to pass away today, I want you to tell me who's sitting in the reserved rows at your memorial. I want to know who's in row one and who's in row two. There's a rope, a banister that says reserved. And those are for the people that your loss will be significant because you're the only you. You're the only subperson. You're the only older brother. You're the only husband or the only wife. You're the only dad. You know, you are the only to those people usually in the first one or two rows. And what I want you to do is I want you to now tell me what would they say about you if they're attending your memorial today at 330 p.m.

Mary, it's a privilege and yeah, it is long overdue. I've been circling around your name for at least a decade, maybe two, so it's great to have the privilege to connect with you today.

It's a story of a bit of shame as well as impact. So I was a young man, and I'll just call it maybe even a before teenage boy. There was probably 10, 11, 12, somewhere in that zone. And Carrie, I was just naughty, man. I was an awful young man. And that's a whole story in itself. And if we go down that road, your listeners will think differently of you. So we'll stay away. But I was with my extended family. And I had my mom's first cousin who was like an ant to me. And I've been doing things. I was the oldest of all the cousins. And I was always causing trouble. And I remember being in her kitchen. And I remember what she was preparing, Carrie. I come from a Jewish family. And she was making a Jewish meal called Matsabri. which is Mazza in eggs and it was a breakfast. Then I can just remember it. I'm standing there in the kitchen and I just got in trouble and she looked at me and she said, Daniel, she said, you have so much influence. And she said, my concern is that you're not going to learn to use it for good. And if you don't, and you use it for bad, I'm really worried about who you're going to turn out to be. She said, if you do, figure out how to use it for good, she said, I'm really excited to see who you're going to turn out to be. Wow. And that was the first moment where I I just remember somebody saying I had influence. And it wasn't for a good reason, but I vividly remember that. So that's always my answer. And in my anti-line move to heaven during COVID in 2020, and we got to celebrate her life just last year, but she spoke into in the me and away that profoundly impacted me.

I would say there were three things and I'm prepared for this even though we're going down in the direction because I just did a life history exercise with about 30 liters last month where I shared with them my lows and highs decade by decade and led them through the process of identifying themes so they could understand how to best leverage their platform in the decade ahead. What has their life equipped them to do through the beautiful moments and through the painful moments which altogether make you who you are today and it can all be so good. So for me, I just went through this and I shared it with them as an example, but for me, what caused the rebellious troublemaker was number one, growing up Jewish in a time and in a community where there was not a lot of us. So I was born in the 60s, now we're in the 70s and where I grew up, There was still some form of anti-Semitism, even as a 10, 11, and 12-year-old. There were five Jewish kids in the school. I was early on given a nickname, B.N.J. Big Nose Jew. And I was little. I was not athletic. I wasn't all that academic. And we moved from one neighborhood to another at about the age 10 or 11. So I had to start over again. Bottom line, you get bullied. And for being a Jewish kid, you have B&J and you're small, you get bullied. So you can only run so many times and then you figure out, alright, I'm in a corner, so now I'm gonna fight and then you see fighting works. And you've got a lot of fear in you. So that fear, that bullying brings out a nasty side of Danny. That's number one. Number two, my parents today, 84 years old, next Wednesday celebrating their 85th wedding anniversary, both of them dealing with some cognitive decline and living very close to me. But they're together. And I share that because if you were to look at their life when I was at that stage of life, 10 or 11, mom was a functioning alcoholic. and was an only child, now a father of three, I was the oldest, and he was a bit on the passive side. So, you know, I had mom coming home and not being in the best of shape, and that was embarrassing with my friends, et cetera, and not seeing dad jump in, and me being the oldest of three, I had to jump into, I think, an adult role, way before I was ready. Wow, I'm almost danger. So, I think that would be the second thing. And the third thing is that every human needs to belong. And if you don't belong to the athletic crew and you don't belong to the academic crew and you're only one of say five who are Jewish and now you're fighting and you're pushing the edge to to fit in and belong somewhere, who you will belong to are those that will accept you. And if you're a troublemaker, well, then the troublemakers will accept you, and they'll protect you. So my possey became really rough kids. And if you were to look at my early possey nut, this is a story in itself. I'll tell you about it. If you have any interest, because it's a cool story. But my cool friends before that crew, some of them turned out to be heroin addicts, some of them are still in jail. And I don't even know if they're all still alive, but they were trouble. I mean, trouble. Yeah.

Tell us about Hooligan. Okay. So I started skateboarding and surfing at around 13, 14, 15 that changed my community. So now, I started hanging out with a neighborhood gig, Gregg Gateres Gregg, I love you and you save my life. Gregg's about five years old, didn't he? And he lived across the street and he drove a VW van and he would take me to the beach and he was trouble as well. And you know, trouble. Oh, big posse of surfers that were all four, five years older took me in and two other guys in that were all young. And they let us belong. So I started to belong to this crew of surfers. And they were good guys, but party years surfers. And I was a drummer. So I'm a surfer and a drummer. And that became my next tribe. We got into trouble, but it wasn't mean trouble. It was adventure trouble. Mean trouble was probably you know, age 9-10 through 13 or so. And then I started to get into just adventure trouble, which is still trouble. But the story of the Hooligans is that today, The majority of us have all had our lives transformed. We all had big crisis as a faith when we got into our teen and 20s. And we're a tight crew. I mean this morning there have been text messages going around. There's 11 of us that we surf together all the time. A big group of them moved over to Maui, which is where I live part time. And now they're all in San Diego, Orange County area. But there's some of my tightest brothers and they're all grandpa's. We're all in our late 50s and 60s and we've been we grew up together. So it's really cool.

So mine was, you know, being both parents Jewish, all grandparents, bar mitzvud, please, grandparents, but really not a practicing Jewish kid. I had all sorts of evangelists, just crazy Jesus freaks that would always approach me, growing up. I had a girlfriend that was as sweet as could be. And I fell for this gal at the age of 11, first day of six grade. She wanted nothing to do with me until we turned to 16 and then she said yes, she would date me. And during our dating years between 16 and probably 18 or 19, her faith became really legit and strong. And she wrestled between adventurous, no god Danny and her Messiah. And it was a wrestling match because she loved us both. But my lifestyle was pretty. It was in opposition to what a good Christian's lifestyle was, ended up breaking up with me. We broke up probably, I don't know, seven or eight times during an eight year dating period, but she broke up with me. We're separated for a year. I had a flourishing career going as a young 20 year old and making a lot of money had my own house, drove the fancy cars, had a wonderful career track. was parting a lot, adventuring a lot with women, et cetera. And then I was in a skiing accident. And the skiing accident caused me to have three knee surgeries, caused me to be laid up. And there were a few of my friends that had been wild men that came to faith before me. Sherry would always share the gospel with me. She would introduce me to Holocaust surviving mayceanic, amazing older folks, there was a pastor in California, Raul Reese, who was also a surfer, and I would surf with him and talk to him. And there was just so many different people put into my life, and then we're praying for me and her parents should have probably destroyed me. That has a result, who I was to their daughter, but when I was in the skiing accident and recuperating, living in my own home, not able to do anything because I was strapped to a machine on my bed to keep my leg moving. Sharia and I were broken up and her parents would come over and they would care for me. And I just saw so much love and goodness and Christian people. So the challenge to me was always, hey, you know, do you know Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior? And I would always say, hey, don't worry about me. I'm chosen. I'm Jewish. But I didn't know what that meant. So over the years enough people had shared with me their journeys when I was in the skiing accident in 1987. with my career going, I decided being laid up with nothing to do, you know, not the fun party guy anymore, not able to go to work, et cetera. I decided to get into the Hebrew Scriptures and I knew where to read. I had spent enough time with Masonic Jews, so Genesis to the Psalms, and then to the most profound book in the scriptures for me as Isaiah and I say I spoke to me and it just caused me to have a real crisis of faith where I either believe in God or I don't and then if I believe in God who is he if I don't believe in God then I'm a random accident and what's the meaning? Well, I do believe in God and all right, so he's the God of the Jews. Well, what does that mean? What does he chip? What do we chose in foreign? I just followed that through and then realized the Jews were chosen in every relationship with with God first and through the Jews came the Messiah. And boy, he fit the bill when you read Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 96. It was like, why? Why don't more of us Jewish people believe? And what are we waiting for? Like, what Messiah are we waiting for? If it's not this guy, what the heck? King David on a horse. And I don't see it. So April 1987 surrendered completely changed my life and Tell you, buddy, that was the most single, profound, amazing life-changing decision ever, ever, ever, ever. Carry you know that.

Yeah, so I don't know if I would have said gangs, you know, I look at age 13 and under. Okay, there I could have wound up in real trouble, but 13 to 22. I would have just wound up as an addict and I would have wound up with a Maybe some illegitimate kids running around a whole bunch of little BNJs. But I think what happened was I had a pretty wealthy extended family. And I always had a very, very real work ethic. So I had window washing jobs, poop scooping jobs when I was 14, 15. I was helping out entrepreneurs with their home businesses 15, 16. I always worked in construction and restaurants. I lived for a summer with an uncle who owned a big construction company and I learned how to really work. And then I got, I bought my first rental home when I was like 18 years old And when I was working at a restaurant while working construction, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, the CEO of a mortgage firm who was a father to a friend of my younger brothers. He saw me and he saw something good in me and he saw that I was a hard worker and that I had the ability to connect with other humans. kind of paved the way for me to get into that. So I was an off-supplies printing office furniture while going to a community college when he he swooped me and said you don't need to continue with the college route. He said I own six companies and I went to the same community college you do and I guarantee you I can set you on a path from a career perspective that you won't regret. He sure did.

Yeah, so it's Yeah, I have been saying for almost three decades now, self-leadership always precedes team leadership and team leadership always precedes organizational leadership. And if you really want to clarify it, it's self-leadership of 14 effectiveness, team effectiveness before organizational impact. When I'm working with executives or with our, when our team of coaches of building champions are working with executives and leaders, we start with the inside of who you are because who you are impacts how you show up and what you do. So it's an internal gear job. This is where transformation takes place right in the center of who you are. It's your identity. It's what you think about. It's what you believe and how you feel. that internal gear, thinking, feeling and believing all circling around identity, who you are, why you're here, what's your purpose? All of that impacts an outer gear, which is relationships, actions, and competencies. Those relationships, those habits or actions in those competencies, all circle around the center of that outer gear, and that is results. So that inner gear, identity, feeling, thinking, believing and feeling, is directly linking to the results that you get because that inner gear fuels the energy and the attention that you focus on your competencies, your skill sets, the relationships and how you interact with fellow humans, and then your habits or repeatable actions over and over the things that you do that make you who you are, that outer gear is just completely impacted by that inner gear. Self-smanship. What do I believe about myself? What do I believe about you? What do I believe about the future? What do I believe about the business? How am I elevating my thinking? How am I challenging my beliefs? Feelings always true, but the narrative causing them not necessarily true. Nor beneficial. So we have to understand that as humans who are given the gift of emotion all the full array of emotion the fears and the happiness and the joy and the anger and the passion and the love and the selfishness and and the insecurity and all the fears right all the I'm sorry all of the emotions they're all real but that narrative needs some work so when we work with leaders we we really want to get to know who's on the inside And then we want to help them to elevate their thinking, their believing, their feeling so that when they show up their present and the best they can be. And we want to understand that those leaders are multidimensional, most leaders now having done this for 30 years, most leaders without having some sort of an external input such as what we do, they'll put so much energy. So put decades of energy into just their career account that one area of their life and maybe some other is air energy into a hobby or maybe into their finances, right? They have all of these different accounts in their life that if neglected will rob them of the goodness of life, which that impacts how they show up at work, which impacts who they are, it impacts the conscious and subconscious levels of engagement that their team has with them. which impacts how they lead the organization. So we're always working in all dimensions. But how you lead yourself matters because people are watching in their feeling. They feel how you show up. They catch you. Are you worth catching?

I think that it's a pretty common story. And it's an unfortunate story, but gosh, is it helpful? I was just with a young man today. I went for a run with a young man from the East Coast. He's dating a daughter of one of our executive level clients. And he wanted to spend an hour with me this morning. So we went for a little trail run. And we were talking about this. And what we were talking about is so much gets learned through bad instruction. It's bad modeling. So I learned who I didn't want to be as a result of having some just crappy leaders. And, you know, you look at how some of these leaders led themselves in their lives. And I just like, oh, I don't want to turn out to be that. Well, never want to be that. And I could see how alluring it is. You know, they would pull in in Ferrari's or they would pull in in the Porsche's or the Mazaradis. And they had the beautiful homes. And they were very respected in the in the professional realm, but when you when you really looked and you understood, you you understood that, you know, maybe some of their kids couldn't stand them and you understood that a lot of their net worth was going to spouse number one or number two and you saw, you know, you saw the white powder marks and the nose and the late mornings and the foggy and you just learned so much about that. And then you see it come out in ways that push really talented hungry people down. Or whatever the the inner gear problems are, the identity challenges and the feelings and you just got. I'm going to do better than that. So I started doing better that when I was given my first opportunity to lead at the age 23. And I became a coaching leader before there was such a thing and later wrote a book about that. I think 2005 or 2007 or something like that. But that's what led me into an industry that wasn't there. There was no such thing as a coaching industry. But my version of leading myself and when I saw how I could lead myself in ways that would benefit other people. And it would cause them to be better versions of themselves. I thought, man, this is really important. It's the foundation. for real transformation and impact for leader.

Add advice, you know, carry I, uh, and I've definitely heard leaders say then in order for you to be in an effective leader. this becomes your primary and your number one. And if you don't give this 110% meaning your career, your church, your business, whatever it is, if you don't give it 110%, you won't make it. And I actually don't believe you can give anything 110%. And if you understand math, you can only give 100%. And that's it. And 100% of full, it's complete. And I think that many leaders Well, they will believe that they can self-sacrifice or sacrifice the areas of their life until they get to a certain point. But then once they get to that point, then it will be different. Then they'll start really caring for her. Then they'll start really caring for themselves. Then they'll start to focus on them. As soon as the business or the church or whatever it is, get to the certain point, But the truth of the matter is success begins success. So there's always a new opportunity and always a new challenge. So you have to develop your rhythm in your way. that will enable you to be who you want to be in all areas of your life. And then out of that, out of really doing that work of figuring out who you want to be, then you can start to architect what you need to do to be that person. So the advice is just self-sacrifice until you get to this stage. Hey, Psalm 19, 12, teach us the number of days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. There's no guarantee of tomorrow. Architect who you need to be in hope. and who you need to be in the areas where you need to steward in very unique roles. You and only you can steward your relationships or how you care for these areas of your life. Nobody else can do it for you. Architect that with intentionality today. Because today is it? I mean, yeah.

Yeah, so here's a little shameless plug because I'm going to try to help your listeners should they even be younger than 30 or should they have kids younger than 30. You want to check out set path dot org. I am just launching a not for profit to help America's young adults transfer purpose belief and direction through free life planning and mentorship. because I've had way too many people ask me that exact same question. In 2016, I wrote a book with a friend and longtime client, Michael Hyatt, we wrote Living Forward. And that's a life-planning process. And in the beginning of that process and being in that book, what I have every individual do is I have them right out their eulogy as if they were to die today. And if I'm talking to a 30 year old, what I'm going to do is I'm going to say, okay, tell me, if you're to pass away today, I want you to tell me who's sitting in the reserved rows at your memorial. I want to know who's in row one and who's in row two. There's a rope, a banister that says reserved and those are for the people that you're lost. will be significant because you're the only you. You're the only subperson. You're the only older brother. You're the only husband or the only wife. You're the only dad. You know, you are the only to those people usually in the first one or two rows. And what I want you to do is I want you to now tell me what would they say about you if they're attending your memorial the day at 3 30 p.m. Now I want you to go right and out. And the reason I would have people do that is because I want them to come to grips with the fact that there is no guarantee of tomorrow and I would take them back to that song 1912 because I think that so often we can buy the lie that we can just get to that other stuff late and carry one of the greatest blessings which I would have never seen as a blessing is that I have been with friends as they've passed away at young ages and in 1998, I had two friends die in front of me at different times, one from cancer and one from a heart attack and both of them were 38 years old. And one of them, their wife, Brian, his wife and his kids were all staying at my house with other wives and kids as me and a group of guys were at a men's retreat. And, you know, oh, he passed right there and in another time, One of my very dear friends that I used to work construction with, and then I worked in mortgage banking with. I was with him, journeying as he was making his way from here to heaven and what you see is, oh, there is no guarantee of tomorrow. So I do my best to help people deal with the fact that You need to be keenly aware, you know, Moses, the one was the one saying, teach me to number my days so that I may gain a heart of wisdom, not a head of wisdom, they had so easily deceived, right? But a conviction, a heart of wisdom, I want to know my days are numbered. So what I would do to help a young leader to avoid the burnout is I would say, hey, listen, you're going to blink. And there's no guarantee you get 82 years, like there's just no guarantee. So, um, Let's come to grips with the end. Let's put that destination spot in there and let's marinate your heart. Now let's start to do some thinking and head work to help you to make decisions day after day that will enable you to avoid burnout, to avoid regret, to avoid a train wreck. Because the drift when it comes in, it's just kind of this You know, subtle. I'm not going to be mean or abusive. I'm not going to be intentionally neglectful, but as you said, it's harder at home. You know, you're not the rock star pastor. You're not the rock star business leader. You're not, you know, slaughtering the big deal or building the big, beautiful structure. You're your dad and, you know, it's like, Go scoop the poop and clean the dish. Do homework with little Dylan and do this and do that and do this and then there's nothing left over for you. And hey, that's life. I mean, it's in this life you will suffer. We suffer and we experience the joys and the richness.

That really gets gets out. Yeah. I've been doing that. I will actually, you know, when I'm speaking to a large room on the topic, if I'm walking a group through life planning. I mean, I will, I'll show them. I'm like up here is a six foot five box and it's mahogany in your in it and then I'll get off the stage and I'll walk them through it and I will, I'll just rose here. Here's my mom and there's my dad. They didn't expect to lose their son. There's my brother and my sister and expected, I'll just, and then I haven't go right it out. And you'll just see people, they're broken, they're in tears. Because what's being said in rows one and two today is not what they would want. For men, you know, I say, hey, what we do is we spend all of our energy giving our best. to those in Rose 20, 25, row 30. We're so wrapped around the axle around what they think about us and how we're treating them. And then when we get home exhausted, what do we give to those in Rose 1 and 2? And everybody always answers the same way. You spend it all day long, giving it to Rose 25 through 35. You get home, you're exhausted. What do you give to your Rose 1 and 2? I guess at what everybody assumes. Fumes. Fumes. Leftovers. Yep. Like, oh, cool. The one that you said till death that we parts, that's what she signed up for. Hey, give me a life of leftovers. You know, you make these little ones with your last name. Hey, I'll tell you what. I brought you into the world. What you're going to get a leftovers. Ah, fumes.

Yeah. Yeah. So if you hang out with me, you'll hear, I'm not all that creative and there's not a lot of original. You'll hear me repeat things over and over and over again. And one of the Danielisms, I'm always saying it is, you have to say no to the good so you can say yes to the great. You know, you're not going to be wrestling with, oh, it's a really bad opportunity. Should I do it?

It's pretty cool. You know, saying, no to this, this is good. Yeah. So you can say yes to the great. You invested time with in this moment, those that you believed You would make the greatest difference with. You would enjoy most. You would remember most. But it took courage. You said no, because you knew what mattered most. All right. That's number one. I'm thinking back to young leaders that I've mentored. And there's one in particular whom I loved dearly. His name's Pete Fisher and he owns a company called Human Investing. And they're just phenomenal. He's a neighbor of mine. He's a good brother. Good brother. He's actually officiating my daughter's wedding in two weeks. Not wonderful. Pete, when he was young, he would always meet with me for coffee and he'd open his journal and he would just like, this guy's a driver, man. He would open his journal. Okay. I've got question question question question question and he would just unload on me while we'd have coffee and sometimes the questions are about marriage and other times about owning a company and other times about leadership and other times about parenting and faith and whatever and everything. It was always a great ride. I love spending time with him because he's so hungry. I remember being young and he was starting to really get to levels of success where he just had more requests than he had space. And it's so hard. And I've walked through this with many leaders, many thought leaders. Some of the guests that you've had on your podcast have been my clients. And I'm sure you look at it.

And I said, no, I go, yeah, we talked about like, how do you deal with just the sheer volume of requests? And what I remember telling Pete was, hey, Pete. get really comfortable disappointing people. I disappoint people every day. Every day I go to sleep knowing I have disappointed people. I do it every day. I do it seven days a week. I disappoint people. The magic is that I do everything I can not to disappoint the wrong people. Right. And you have to think about that.

Yeah, so we'll use that life planning process. If you made my life plan, well, you're the right people. I mean, if you're on my life plan, it means that I play a unique stewardship role. I said yes forever, regardless of circumstances, I said yes till death do we part, I'm yours. That's pretty big commitment. That commitment comes to every other commitment. That commitment from Saudi other commitment. Hey Daniel, do you want to come do this event and take this contract on? And yeah, you'll be away from your family all of these times and you'll be away from her and it's going to exhaust you, but you're going to make a few extra blankity blank dollars. Well, no, no, if it's going to hurt her, my number one, then no. So we have to figure that out together. And then when I decided to have fun with my life, And we made babies. They came with that a responsibility. And they all are now my responsibility to train up. That's my job. That's not the school's job. That's not the youth leaders job. That's not the community, you know, leaders job. That's not their friends job. My job is train them out. They should go. That's mine. Really clear. That takes time. That takes energy. That takes intentionality. Now to do all of that. I need to take really good care of me because I need energy every day. Like my super power strength is energy. If I energy, then I can listen. If I have energy, then I can deploy curiosity and I can ask questions and I can engage. If I have energy, I can play with grand babies. If I have energy, I can I can bring what I need to bring to the areas of my life that are most important. So how do we figure out who to disappoint and who not to disappoint? Well, if you're on my life plan, you're a not disappoint. My band of brothers, my hooligan boys, and don't disappoint them. Now, I can disappoint them. If they come in and say, hey, can you do this? But I've got a commitment with with Sherry or the kids or with my job, which is an important part of what I do. I don't sit there and and I signed up as a leader and I have to serve as a CEO, the mission of the job. But that's a whole different topic because a CEO really doesn't do a lot. CEO helps align and has amazingly smart gifted people that do a lot. And so that's a whole different topic. But you just know, you know, we're the first few rows. And in every situation's different, you don't become dogmatic with, oh, I always say no to these events or I always say no to these people. No, I pray. Sometimes I talk to my bride and sometimes I talk to my team and sometimes I count the cost and I ask for permission to be absent so that I can go do this. But I'm crystal clear. It's a one and done. And sometimes I make mistakes and sometimes I say yes to the wrong things and sometimes I have to say I'm sorry and sometimes I let the pride of the opportunity and it's big and I make it bigger than it is and I screw up.

I cannot believe who I get to hang out with, so I'm gonna share some of these names because of who they are and what they've taught me. My job, I can't believe I get to sit front row in a classroom learning from these folks. So, you know, I think of a guy like Frank Blake, who's the chairman of Delta, and we had breakfast last Friday, and he's part of my CEO round table. He's amazing. Frank was the CEO of Home Depot for years, and he's truly one of the most remarkable leaders, but I just think humility. Like, he's just so humble. You would never know. So humble. You know, Tim Tassaupless, who is now leaving his post at Chick-fil-A, we end. I just went to his retirement. Gala last Friday, we had dinner two weeks before that. He's been a client and friend for probably 15 plus years and humble and wicked smart and what I admire about him is He knows everybody. People matter. He understands and he actually teaches results and relationships are these two axes in which leadership effectiveness is dependent upon. My last book, I say it's decision-making and influence. You gotta be wicked smart and you have to be keenly aware of the influence game and how you connect with other humans. It's differently, but it's the same thing. I think that in today's times where things are changing so quickly. Yes, you need to be humble and yes, you need to be caring. You need to be focused on a better tomorrow. Do you need to believe and see a better tomorrow? There has to be a compelling vision and a clear vision. And then you need so much curiosity. And I call it intentional curiosity because everything's so complicated today. You know, there's There's nuances to supply chain if you're in manufacturing that are present today that weren't here in 2019 2020 in COVID and everything just so radically impacted dependencies on little teeny parts that if you don't have them you don't ship billions of dollars worth of product and And there's just these complexities. And then you have technology. And now everyone is tripping out on AI. And how do you tune the information in AI in such a way that it really gives you a competitive advantage? How do you tune in tests? So curiosity, lifelong learning, learning, learning, learning appetite to learn the best of the best do that.

So each of those perspectives require intentional curiosity, real good fly-by for those who've not read the book or aren't familiar with it. The whole premise is that a leader's effectiveness is determined by just two things. The decisions they make in the influence they have in the story. I set down with 25 leaders from Frank Blake to Tim Tassapo as two horse-sholtsy to Martin Dom. I mean, I could go on and on and on. incredibly successful leaders who are, they're down the road in their game. I mean, these are women who, they're not going anywhere. And I asked them, I said, just challenge me. I mean, this leadership more complicated, the decisions and influence have not to be a good leader, but to be an effective leader. Like a good leader comes before. You have to have Horsholti who is one of the founders of, you know, for Horsh. I mean,

Okay, he's a beast. Yeah. And he is so good. He's part of our round table as well. And that guy just lights the room up every time he speaks, but, you know, he was the only one that challenged me. He was like, no, Daniel, you need to have integrity. And I'm like, no, no, no horse. You need to have integrity be a good leader. Right? You need to have integrity. And you need to have character. And you need to have work ethic. And you need to have brilliance. You need to have all of that to be a good leader. But I want to talk about effective, right? Because there's all sorts of good leaders. They were really good. But they don't move the needle in ways that are required of them by shareholders, by constituents, like you need to be effective. You need to get stuff done. All right. So you bring this intentional curiosity because no leader knows at all. You bring intentional curiosity, which then grows your influence and elevates your decision-making authority. In order to do that, you need to see the business from at least seven different perspectives. current reality, perspective one, if you don't fully understand the historical that got the business to where it's at today, as well as the business today. And even in the year ahead, well, then what happens is your ivory tower. And you may be making decisions and saying things, but your team's doing work around's because you don't get it. You're too disconnected, right? So you're starting pointing your GPS as faulty. Therefore, all directions that go from that perspective to the next perspective are off. You're starting off prospective to vision if you don't have a clearing compelling vision that promises for a better tomorrow that causes you to want to take risk that causes others to want to take risk. And if it's not clear enough to build strategy to, then you're missing one of the core elements of leadership. A great leader, an effective leader says there is true North. This is what it will look like. Tastes like and feel like when we get there. This is who we will become. This is what the people who work with us will belong to. And that's what we're going to build. And you address those in vision. Once you have those two perspectives, you have an opportunity gap. Current realities here where we are in 2024. Long term vision is where we'll be in 2034. Well, now we need strategy to move us there. So we make strategic bets grounded in current reality anchored in long term vision so that we pull the organization forward. Those strategic bets are informed by those two waypoints, but we don't stop there. We moved to perspective four and that is team. Not telling the team, but asking the team, what do you think, what do you see, what do you need? What do I need to hear? A fourth perspective, the team's giving you the input because they're closest to the work. They understand the technology. They understand the customer. They understand the supply chain. They understand the legislative compliance issues. They get it. So you're asking and asking. And you're asking the questions and really listening. And then you're thinking about those responses. Now that fourth perspective without the fifth perspective is a miss and a lot of leaders don't really nail the fifth perspective, which is the customer. What is the customer really think about your business? Not just today, but what are they thinking about your business for three, four, five years down the road? What are they thinking about for their business? If you're in a B to B business, how can your business be working today to help them solve problems that are five years down the road? You don't trust surveys. Survey is give you one bit of input. You talk to the people. If you're in a B to C business, you're actually spending time with the client, with the consumer, and you're studying them and understanding them and figuring out what it is that would better serve them today and what will better serve them tomorrow. And I have so many stories on great leaders that do this. The sixth perspective is your role. How do you need to be changing and growing? And then the seventh perspective, changing and growing to be not only the best leader today, but the leader that the vision will require you to be in the years ahead. And then the seventh perspective is the outsider. And what outsiders do you have that are helping to think about all of this so that you can become that leader and get it all done? Those perspectives will help you to be more effective by improving decision-making and elevating influx.

I think that humility to know that actually you know so little. You just know so little. Carrie, I was 46 years old when I was doing my end of year reflection time. I do a Sabbath at the end of the year. It's kind of this little getaway where I look at my life plan. I look for the themes of last year. I pray, I look to learn. And you know, your listeners may not like my lesson at age 46. I've shared it with many, but the lesson at 46 was, hey, Daniel, you're a dumb And I don't say that for shock value. That is really what I felt like I understood. And the reason that I share that is because it was probably one of the best year-end messages that I've ever come to grips with. Because if I ever believe that I'm supposed to have all the answers, I'll move into a poser and a performer mindset. To where I'll actually believe that I need to have all the answers and that my value to you has to do with I knowledge my comprehensive knowledge of all things and all topics. I can speak about it a few things with some level of confidence and expertise, but not a lot of them. I don't have a ton of knowledge in many areas. I don't put me into an operating room and don't get me into politics and don't put me into the front row of a sports event and don't get me to comment on opera and, you know, that's not me. I mean, I am fine tuning my my competence, my knowledge, my interests where I believe I can move the needle most. And I say, no, to a lot of other things. And it's okay. And there's so much for me to learn. Things are changing so fast. Now, the beauty of that is if I don't need to know everything, well, then what I get to do is I get to surround myself with people who are smarter than me in different areas. And I just need to ask them a lot of questions. And if I can align them all together, well, then together, we can accomplish great things. and that's leader's job. Leader's job isn't to know at all to be at all and to do it all. Leader's job is to surround themselves with the best people, to cast a vision that's clear and compelling, and then to resource and coach the heck out of them, so that together they can accomplish something together that none of them could ever do on their own.

You know, the process of figuring out who the right customers are could could actually come out of a bias, which could be dangerous.

You know, the right customers are the ones that tell me that our company is amazing. I like those meetings a lot more than those that say, you know, you're not quite as good as you used to be, you know, 25 years ago, you were that you were at, well, you got a lot of competition today. You need up your game. That's not a fun meeting, right? So I think there's value in hearing from everybody. Now I will say social media as a channel to hear from the customer needs to consume at just a few, a 10% or less of your customer interface. It's pretty easy to be a bold and disay things, find an iPhone with your thumbs, but sitting down and having a real conversation with somebody breaking bread with them, going for a walk with them, going to their place, taking them fishing, doing something with them. You will hear things by the investment of time that you would never hear from a survey or social media post. So I look at some of the best leaders. Those are clients that are in manufacturing. We have a large global trucking firm it's it's dimler Mercedes Benz they're in every country and you know market share leaders they're amazing we work with their chairman as well as their CEOs around the world and and they have a regular practice of riding drive where they will drive the products and then they will go out and they will do dealer visits and they'll just sit there and they'll talk to the customers and it's a high pay off activity you know we we mentioned Chick-fil-A those executives are in the restaurants all the time and they're talking to customer and they're asking about the quality of food. And that goes from the Kathy family through Tim to all of them. It's a regular discipline of theirs. Frank Blake with him being in the stores, you know, horse salty being in the hotels back when he was in the business, sitting down with customers and really talked in them whether it's the B to C or the B to B. It's time. It's relationships. So much of business is relationships. Yeah, this technology is changing things. But I don't know if in our lifetime's carry the relationships ever get so devalued, you know, maybe things do in many listeners, maybe they're running commoditized businesses, but even commoditized businesses, I say, there's a way for you to elevate through relationship.

No.

Yeah, so, I mean, I'm just sitting here looking at Apple and gosh, they're genius, right? So what they spend at they spend a few hundred dollars. And here you are doing a plug-in commercial for Apple and their customer service, about a million people. What they pay for that, a few hundred bucks. I'll pay for that advertising all day long. Exactly building. It's a good point. Building champions at past. We'll return it.

That really is. It's their way. And they get it. The customer is keenly get it. Boy, boy, I always feel bad for the companies that are led by leaders that are, you know, they're tripping over quarters to pick up pennies with how they treat customers.

The most significant question you've asked me, and probably the one that I'm most ill-equipped to answer. But what comes to me? Yeah, it is. Be who God's called you to be and follow that calling because anyone who's in church leadership in my hope is that they answered a call. And the mission is so big. And, you know, there's a military saying mission first people always. If you get that backwards and you put people first mission always, you will burn out. You will learn out, you will flame out, you will fail. Why do I say that? If you put people first, and you have meetings with a hundred different congregants, and you ask them, what is it that you want from me? Well, some will say, I want you to marry the best of the best. Your marriage ceremonies need to be amazing. And somebody else will say, well, no, it's your funerals, your burials, man. You thought they need to be the best they can be. And somebody else will say, no, no, no, you need to have like rock star image with incredible tennis shoes and you need to be witty and you need to preach messages that make us laugh and entertain. And somebody else will go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Rears out, take on debt, figure out how to blow this thing through the, through the roof. People always, people always, but mission first. Mission straightforward. Straight forward. Faster, disciples. Where you're sheep, you get to disciple us. Train us up, disciple us equip us. Mobilize a send us out, get us out there doing the work. Get us out there experiencing the adventure of the gospel journey. Get us going. However, he's called you to do it. And your church is going to be different in his church. It's going to be different. The communities are different. The demographics are different. Who is called you to be? That's all I got. That's great.

Wow, you're very kind. I appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. Yeah.

Yeah. So the two organizations that I have the privilege of serving or building champions, which is our executive coaching firm. And then set path, which is our young mentoring life planning firm. And you can get to both of those by going to Daniel Harvey dot com. Excellent.

Yeah, H. A R is a V is in Victor. Why H. A R K A V Y and and yeah, you'll be able to. to get it me that way. And if my teams and I can serve you, no matter how you're leading and doing your stuff would be more than happy to.

Perry, thank you. Privileged to be spending more time with you. Hi. I look forward to another random meeting again. It's been it's been nice running into you as of late fantastic field the same way.