Unlocking Less Frustration and More Momentum with Andrew Oxley

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00:00 – Cold open & setup
03:07 – “The least frustrating interview” (ironic hook)
03:48 – Why frustration? Making complex ideas simple (Mark Twain shout-out)
05:55 – Are these literal faces? Not all frustration = anger
08:20 – The tour: Red (intense), Yellow (optimistic), Green (quiet), Blue (worried)
10:50 – How to know your face; why self-diagnosis fails
11:10 – Two quick axes: People vs. Task; Speed Up vs. Slow Down
17:40 – The question: “What’s it like to be on the other side of you?”
18:44 – Why the book is a fable (story vs. lecture)
22:27 – How long it is and how to use it
25:56 – Can we eliminate frustration? Problems vs. Tensions
27:41 – First Law of Problem-Solving: long-running issues = you’re managing, not solving
30:00 – Mission over paycheck: engaging younger teams without the doom loop
31:14 – Litmus test: “Is it effective?” and why leaders change first
33:35 – Where to get it: Amazon + free copy via live workshop (transformingresults.com)
34:16 – “Serve, serve, serve” and the real measure of influence

Andrew Oxley (00:02.762)
If you stop focusing on what you want and you focus on what everybody, helping everybody else get what they want, you won’t have to worry about getting what you want because it’ll come back to you. And they try to share their feelings, but they’re usually told that their feelings are wrong, and they shouldn’t feel that way. So, they just stop talking. What are my, what are my challenges and frustrations? How am I dealing with those? Is it effective right now?

Skot Waldron (00:30.000)
When I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the world. I’m helping leaders and I’m helping teams communicate better. I’m helping them build trust faster and actually enjoy working together. I’ve spoken for companies like the Home Depot. I’ve spoken at national architectural firms. I’ve spoken for pharmaceutical company offsites. I’ve spoken at associations, you name it.

With 99% of attendees of all those events, over 1800 people have reviewed me at this point, 99% of them saying they got some value. That’s pretty awesome. Even the caterers have thanked me. And if they are thanking me and they’ve heard a lot of talks and they’re busy doing their jobs, that’s saying something. If you’re an event planner looking for a speaker who’s really easy to work with, trust me, I wanna be the last thing you’re worried about on event day. I’m gonna take care of you, and who actually delivers value for your audience that they are going to use on Monday morning when they return to the office, then let’s talk.

Andrew Oxley is going to get make frustration, this whole idea of frustration is going to make it a little bit more simple for you. And it’s awesome because who in here doesn’t get frustrated, right? We get frustrated with a lot of different things. Personal, professional frustration is a part of life, and we are humans. get frustrated and Andrew defines, this idea of frustration for us and puts it in the context of, you know, we’re gonna talk about his new book, The Four Phrases of Frustration, and it is about those, you know, faces and the way we’re identifying. We’re gonna talk about what they are. He’s gonna help me a little bit, identify a little bit of mine and some of my tendencies, which is cool. Hopefully you’ll learn something out of that, but it’s really about how do we be the best leader possible? And he has a lot of good insights into that.

So let me first introduce you to Andrew. He is the founder of The Oxley Group, a training and consulting firm with a focus on bottom line results. Their clients include Airgas, Farmer’s Insurance, Gold Creek Foods, Progressive Insurance, Altisource, DEKRA, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Turner Broadcasting, The Weather Channel, Mohawk Industries, CNN, AIG Insurance and COX Communications. He’s an Atlanta boy, can you tell? There’s a lot of Atlanta companies in there and super to have him represent the city and the state that I live in because you know, the ATL is awesome y’all. And you know what is awesome? This interview. Here we come, Andrew.

All right, Andrew, I am going to make this the least frustrating interview you probably ever had. Like I did that.

Andrew Oxley (03:25.000)
It was a nice try and I liked it.

Skot Waldron (03:28.366)
Thank you. I always try to do something to get you in here. Thanks for jumping on, We’re going to talk about your book because that was when you came across my email, I was just like, oh, this is a topic I haven’t hit really. I hit around it, the idea of frustration, but really talking about it.

I haven’t done that yet. So, let me ask you first, why did you start talking about it? I mean, obviously there’s a lot of frustration out in the business world, but like, why did you hone in on it?

Andrew Oxley (04:06.000)
Yeah, well, so “The 4 Faces of Frustration”, the book is a model we use in our leadership development processes. People say, what do I do? My job is to try to make complex things simple. And I think there’s a lot of people in the leadership development space, they’re trying to make complex things complex so they can sell bigger books. You know, I love the quote from Mark Twain, you know, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter”, you know.

So, we’re always trying to figure out how to make things simpler. And “The 4 Faces of Frustration” was based off the fact that the very first question that we asked leaders before we even asked them what they want, we asked them what frustrates you? What challenges are you experiencing? And you know what? There’s never an end to that list. And it’s typically the same list. It’s the same list of frustrations that leaders experience leading individuals.

Then we will often ask them, how do you frustrate your people? And they give us this quizzical look like, what do you mean? I don’t frustrate my people. I’m pretty sure you do. You just don’t know it. So, we frustrate people that we’re trying to improve our relationships with. We frustrate our spouses, our children, our customers, our employees, our boss. And if we don’t know how to recognize frustration if we just make the assumption like I did early in my career that when people are frustrated that they look like I look when I’m frustrated, which is inaccurate. A very small percentage of the population looks like I do when they’re frustrated. It’s very easy to know when I’m frustrated by the way, because once you understand the four faces, you’re like, my gosh, that’s the way Skot reacts when he’s frustrated.

And it gives you a doorway to understand not just yourself and how other people might be perceiving you, but a doorway to understand other people as well.

Skot Waldron (06:04.000)
Okay, so you’re talking, I mean, are you talking physical faces? Like I literally make a face when I’m frustrated?

Andrew Oxley (10:09.000)
Well, we use physical faces. We actually have these cartoon faces that we use for “The 4 Faces of Frustration”, but they represent the response that people actually move through. Not when they’re angry, because everybody gets angry from time to time, but three of the four behavioral styles, the communication styles, move through anger into a different representation. One of them sort of stays looking angry all the time. And you probably know people like this. It’s never fast enough. It’s never good enough. It’s never… And it’s not that they’re not happy. But when they’re frustrated, they just come across just a little intense.

Skot Waldron (06:43.662)
So, not all frustration equals anger? Are you saying that, no, it doesn’t. You’re saying.

Andrew Oxley (06:46.662)
Correct.

Skot Waldron (06:48.000)
Are you saying that, no, it doesn’t.

Andrew Oxley (06:51.298)
So, one of the behavioral styles, we call them reds, right? Their face is the angry face. And I always try to defend them because I have a fair amount of red in my behavioral style too. And so, I’m defending myself. We’re not angry all the time, but we look angry sometimes. So, if you’ve ever thought, man, why are they so, they’re just intense and they’re angry and it’s never good enough, never fast enough.

That’s one specific representation of frustration. But the other three styles actually move through that represent they might get angry initially, but then they move to a different representation and see if you think people are going to act the way you do when you’re frustrated, then you miss the fact that they’re frustrated. You miss the fact that you’re upsetting them, that you’re frustrating them and you think everything’s fine. Not you personally, Skot.

Skot Waldron (07:46.526)
Of course not. I don’t frustrate anybody, Andrew, as you said earlier.

Andrew Oxley (07:51.298)
We will not bring your life into this conversation.

Skot Waldron (07:52.526)
No, we will not. But she’s only frustrated because she just won’t use my system. That’s the thing. That’s the thing. So, tell me about the four phases really quick. I mean, you talk about them as faces. I want to know what they are. We’re going to get into some other stuff here, but just right out of the gate, I know I know what they are because you introduced the reds already. So, I now want to hear about the other ones.

Andrew Oxley (08:20.298)
Yeah, so everybody on the call probably listen to the podcast probably knows somebody who’s a red. They get angry and they just, you know, they’re pretty intense when they’re frustrated, right? There’s other, the second one that shares a desire for things to move fast with the reds, and we call them yellows. They’re the eternal optimists. They’re the people who they might get angry initially, but then they start trying to tell you everything’s gonna be fine and it’s gonna be good and don’t worry about it. We’re gonna work through this. And so, they might get angry with you, but then they start saying, it’s all, I’m sorry, I’m not mad at you. I’m just, I just, you know, I just mad at the situation. And they start backing away from the conflict. We call them yellows.

Yellow is the color of the sun. And these people have never met a problem they can’t put lipstick on and tell you what’s good about it. It just frustrates the heck out of the other three behavioral styles. Cause they’re like, what the heck? What’s good about this? There’s nothing good about this. So that’s the yellow. Very people oriented. You know, love people, love to build relationships, but don’t like to be in conflict with people.

And then we have the greens. Greens have a very interesting face when they’re frustrated. They actually have no emotion. All emotion goes out of the green when they’re in conflict and when they’re frustrated with someone. And they try to share their feelings, but they’re usually told that their feelings are wrong, and they shouldn’t feel that way. So, they just stop talking.

And you know, someone’s agreeing when they say, does everything have to be a fight or, you know, you know, when stuff goes wrong, they say, well, I knew that wasn’t going to work. And you’re like, why didn’t you say something earlier? And they say, well, because I tried, but you didn’t listen to me. So, I just gave up. And they’re often accused of being passive aggressive. I actually believe most passive aggressive behavior is caused by someone like me who doesn’t listen. So, that’s the green.

And then the final one is the blue and the blue face is the worried face because they’re the people who can see the potholes in the road. They can see the axle about to break on the car. They know all the problems. They see all the problems. They start asking tons of questions when they’re frustrated. They try to slow it down by asking questions, trying to point out, hey, there’s a big pothole we’re about to hit over here. And the yellow is like, don’t worry about the potholes. Everything will be fine. And the red is like, who cares about potholes? You know, and the green is just quiet.

So, the four faces are, the red has sort like the angry face, the yellow has the happy face, the green has the no emotion face, and the blue has the worried face.

Skot Waldron (10:51.526)
I see. OK, I got you here. So, you’re talking about these. I’m thinking as everybody else is probably, what am I? Like, what do I? What’s my what’s my face? You know, and I’m thinking about it. How do you help people understand what that is?

Andrew Oxley (11:11.000)
Yeah, well, it’s hard to self-diagnose yourself, right? How you respond to frustration because we’re usually we’re so wrapped up in the narrative about why we were justified and being frustrated in the first place, right? So, sometimes it’s easier for people to either ask other people, how do I act when I’m frustrated? Do I tend to become more direct, more forceful, more, you know, do I have a tendency just to be quiet?

But the other thing you can do is you can go at this from a slightly different angle. You can look at this from a couple of different like sort of axes. You can say, am I more interested in people or tasks? You know, am I more about building relationships or getting things done? And you can be both, but under stress, we don’t tend to be both. We tend to move one direction or the other, right?

So let me ask you that question, Skot. you, in general, okay, in general. When you’re super stressed, are you more like, let’s just get this knocked out, let’s do this? Are you more like, let’s just chill and let’s have fun and this will all work out.

Skot Waldron (12:14.526)
My wife says that she started to adopt my phrase of nobody’s gonna die. So, I have often said I say if somebody is going to die then we really need to start freaking out about this. You know like this is something we nearly need to worry about, and I so I say that most of the time about things external I guess I should say, I would think though you know, we talk about the people and the process thing. I am very conflicted with, you know, feeler, thinker, et cetera. I’m very close to that line. I think I’m, my natural tendency is more feeler, but I’ve learned through my nurturing and through running a business for the past, you know, 14 years and doing all these other things that I’ve adopted a lot of thinking type personalities or traits in there too.

So, there’s a lot of that too. I kind of straddle the fence on a lot of things, but I will say that when my wife and I were traveling internationally and we were going up to, we have our passports and we’re going through like different layover spots, we have to go through customs multiple times and give our visas. And I have all the things in a little thing, a little pack and I carry it all. Well, my wife would like when she gets really stressed, she gets like she wants to control more things. I gives her more peace of mind, right? That she, when she’s anxious about, so she’s like running through the airport and she’s like taking stuff and she’s walking up to the TSA person. Well, they don’t have TSA internationally, but the same thing, the, and checking all the stuff. I look at her and I go, I mean, do you, do you just want to do this? You know, like you, because you look like you’re just, we don’t have to both be here. And she’s like, no, no, no, we can both be here. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, we don’t have to both be here.

You can do this. Okay. You just, you just do it. And so, then I stepped way back. I didn’t even step back a foot. I stepped back behind my kids and I just said, you know what you’re going to do it the rest of the time. You know, this is, this is a control thing. You can have control. So that’s what I did. Now, is that a green face? Like, did I step back and just like shut up? Like what, would you say about that?

Andrew Oxley (14:35.000)
I think it’s a, well, so first of all, you brought up a really interesting point, by the way, because sometimes like what we’re talking about is our natural tendency, what are not necessarily how, like when we introduce how skilled we are or how self-aware we are and stuff like that, that’s it. That’s when we can self-regulate and be more aware, we were aware of our natural reaction, we self-regulate, right?

So, this didn’t sound like necessarily a self-regulation thing for you. It sounded like more like a visceral thing, like I’m just gonna let you do it because, so probably more of a yellow-red, sorry, yellow-green sort of response-ish. But let me ask you a different question now. Do you prefer when things are sort of, you’re super stressed, you prefer to speed up or slow down?

Skot Waldron (15:20.000)
I think I try to… I get really stuck, I think when I am starting to get stressed about things to control my immediate environment. So, I will go in and start like cleaning up things or organizing things to gain some kind of control over my immediate world. So, I will tend to do that. I will go through the whole house, and it will be, I don’t know, my wife’s the cleaner. I am the tidier, right? Like I will go through and the whole household will be like completely tidy. Everything will be put away. Everything’s situated. So that’s what I’ll tend to do. I’ll tend to go in and like try to organize a bunch of things and try to gain some kind of control over my minimum. That’s not naturally what I do. I mean, my desk is not look like that. You know, my room does not necessarily look like that, but that’s what I’ll do when those things happen.

Andrew Oxley (16:14.000)
See, as we’re having this conversation, like I’m listening to your answers, it’s hard to self-diagnose yourself with these things, but it’s so easy for other people to diagnose us, right? So that’s why we use the four faces because sometimes people are like, I don’t know, but if you went and asked your wife, hey, look, when I get super stressed, do I speed up or slow down? When I get super stressed, do I have a tendency to become more task oriented or like sort of very focused people? And she didn’t know. She’s like, let me tell you.

Like I was having this conversation with my wife early on and she said to me, uh, were having a conversation. I remember where we were, but I don’t remember the content, but I remember her saying to me, why are you so angry? And I remember looking at her and saying, “I’m not angry”. And she’s like, wow, now you’re angry at me that I said you were angry. So, and I saw the humor in it I was like, oh my gosh, you know.

But we can’t see ourselves. Like it’s hard for us to read the outside of the box from inside the box. That’s why we formulated “The 4 Faces of Frustration” because when you read it and you explain the model to your wife, like after this podcast, you explain this model to your wife, she’s gonna go, you are so blah, blah, blah, you know what I mean? And you’re like, what, really? That’s the way I appear to you.

So, the question I want your listeners to think about is, what’s it like to be on the other side of you? Because that’s what you don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like to be on the other side of you. With that first question was asked of me, I said, well, it’s wonderful, of course. And they said, “I know you think so”. And I was like, you mean it’s not? Not always, know, not always. And that’s true for all of us, right? We’d like to think that when things are their worst, we’re at our best, but that is not true.

Sometimes, we are at our best, but a lot of times when things are at their worst, we’re at our worst. That’s why we walk away from conversations, and we go, oh, you know, I’ll do that differently next time. And we don’t, we do it exactly the same way. Because if we’re not aware of how we’re, you know, what triggers us and how we naturally respond, we don’t know how to respond differently. We don’t know when the early warning system should be going off in our head, that, hey, I’m stressed and I’m going to react probably badly in this situation and what is a more appropriate response?

Skot Waldron (18:42.000)
You wrote this book as; it’s not like an instruction manual. So you’ll read, there’s a lot of leadership and self-help books out there and talk about communication and whatnot that are more instruction, more like identifying the face, talking about how to recognize the face, how to cope with the face, how do you deal with this area of frustration and how do you operationalize this thing in a sense?

You wrote it like a story. You wrote it like a fable. I just got done with one called The Energy Bus. And I was I was reading it, you know, and there’s some really good points in it. It was quick and punchy, and it was really good. But I was sitting there and I’m like going, OK, like how effective is this? I was like trying to analyze it myself, you know. So, tell me why you took the position to write it as a fable. I mean, that’s a big, big move. You got it right at the beginning. You’re thinking, how am I going to write this book? And you wrote it that way. Why?

Andrew Oxley (19:43.97)
Yeah, well, I’m probably would have been heavily medicated had there been medication available for ADD during school. Because I mean, I just I’m like constantly being pulled in other directions and my attention. And so, I’d be reading business books. I’m like, this is the most boring thing I’ve ever read. This is just boring.

Skot Waldron (20:03.000)
You read my book, did you, Andrew?

Andrew Oxley (20:06.97)
No, no. Not yours.

But I got all these books behind me, right? And it’s my job to study leadership. I’ve been studying now for well over 30 years. And I was a leader for eight years before I started studying leadership because I didn’t know what I supposed to. And I realized that most business books are about this thick, but there’s about that much content. But you can charge more for a book that’s thicker. And people complicate things. And I was like, how do I? How do I explain this model in a way that sort of is entertaining but instructs at the same time? And I decided I’ll do it by the way of a story because people love stories. If you think about all the great teachers throughout history, they all taught by way of story. Plato, Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi, they all taught by way of story. They didn’t sit down with a blackboard and, okay, I just dated myself by talking about a blackboard.

You know, didn’t sit down with a whiteboard and start, you know, drawing stuff out. They told a story and in the story there’s a lesson. And so that’s, that’s why I decided to do it that way because I was trying to make this thing really simple. Now what, you know, when you read the energy bus, there’s, there’s a, there’s a basic concept behind that story. Right. And the concept is incredibly memorable. You know, are, people feet dragging or are they up or are they on the seat in front of them or they move in their feet, right? So the same thing is true with our story is like basically at the end of the story, we want you to go, oh my gosh, it doesn’t explain everything, but I have a much clearer understanding of my team now and how I need to interact with them more proactively to gain the results that I truly desire.

Skot Waldron (21:55.000)
Okay, that’s good. And you’re right. I mean, stories are memorable. They’re very, you know, we lived in story forever and ever and ever. It’s how we make sense of things, and our brain is to tell the story. We lwe don’t like missing the middle of the story. Our brains fill in that, which is really dangerous. So, I think, you know, making sure that people understand the context of how you wrote it is really interesting. So, you’re saying this isn’t like a 500-page story though.

Andrew Oxley (22:26.97)
It’s about 178 pages. You can read it in about 2 to 3 hours.

Skot Waldron (22:32.000)
Awesome. Yeah, my book, I tell people, was like, people were like, I can’t wait to pound through the book. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. My book’s more like a 52-week guide. So, I said, it’s going to take you a year. It better take you a year to get through my book. This is not a sit by the fire and with a cup of coffee and snuggle up and read the book, right.

Now, yours seems more to be that of like, hey, I could take this on a flight and read it. That’s kind of how I read The Energy Bus, right. So, it’s more like that, like learn these principles in short bite sized moments.

Andrew Oxley (23:04.000)
Yeah. So, you sounds like your book has a lot of content, know, different things people can apply. Ours is more like, this one’s more around like trying to explain one concept that has a lot of applications, and you see how it’s written about a guy who takes over a company and he’s got a dysfunctional leadership team and he’s got to figure out how to manage them effectively and how the mistakes he makes and how he has misconceptions at the beginning, which we all do, and how he starts to recognize that this four faces model not only applies with his leadership team, it applies with all the teams within the organization and that we inevitably mismanage people, not because we want to, but because we don’t understand how to create a motivational environment, how to a culture of accountability. Because this is presumption that everyone’s just like me. Well, I know they’re not because they’re not doing what I’m doing, but they should be like me.

And if I want feedback this way, then surely everyone does. And if I communicate this way, then that’s probably okay with everybody. And we’re all taught that golden rule growing up, right? know, treat others the way we’d want to be treated. And that’s wonderful in morality and ethics, and it’s horrible in leadership. We have to treat people the way they want to be treated. We got to figure out what will work for them. And the problem is when you ask most people this question, they don’t know. They ask, you know, they give you superficial answers like, “How do you want feedback?” They say, “well, just tell me.” Well, that is a bold faced lie for about 75% of the population, they do not just want to be told. They want to be told the way they want to be told. But you don’t know what that is. And it’s so natural to them that they can’t wrap their minds around, know, specifically what does feedback look like to me when it’s effective?

So, we just unpack all that in the book and talk about in very practical ways, how do you use this to manage a team? How do you use this to improve the relationships that you have in your life? Because, you know, the quality of your life really is the sum of the quality of the relationships you have and the quality of your relationships you have is going to be based on the quality of your communication with the people that matter most to you. So, it is a critical skill for leaders.

And most leaders think they communicate really well. That’s why they keep doing the crap they do. And I’ve found that that’s rarely true. I myself included. I mean, I’ve got to really work on this. And the more you work at it, of course, the better you get at it. And the more you figure out, you have to learn.

Skot Waldron (25:46.000)
Is the point is the point to eliminate frustration in our organization?

Andrew Oxley (25:53.000)
No. Because there will always be frustration. So, there’s two ways to look at frustration. There are problems to solve and tensions to be managed, right? And there are a lot of things in your company that will never be solved because it’s a tension. It’s like the tension between production and sales. That’s a tension to be managed, not a problem to be solved. One of those things is likely always out of balance in most companies, right? You’re either selling too much or you’re selling too little productions. You know, producing too much or you have too much production capacity, it’s really perfectly imbalance, right? So that’s a tension.

Problems are different. Problems are things that have solutions. And I think what frustrates leaders is not having problems. It’s having the same problem over and over and over again. I was talking to an entrepreneur just yesterday, a very successful entrepreneur, and I said this to her, and she said, my gosh, yeah. It’s like “I’m ready for new problems. You know, I don’t want these problems anymore.” “I want to have different problems.” But there’s no such thing as a problem-free state. You’re always going to have problems, no matter where you are in your life. The only way to not have any problems, of course, is to retreat from life. But usually life chases you then, and you have different kinds of problems.

Skot Waldron (27:13.000)
Do you have some, so we’re gonna have problems, we’re gonna be frustrated, things are gonna happen, we’re gonna be disappointed, et cetera, et cetera. So, what are some coping mechanisms you give for leaders that are going through this? I don’t know if they’re different for each face or how it works, but what do you generally recommend as kind of something to help each?

Andrew Oxley (27:39.000)
Yeah, I’m gonna stay at a high level first and then we can dive into the faces if we have time, but at a very high level. So, the very first thing we do is we want to know what frustrates leaders like what are your frustrations? What are the challenges you’re currently facing? What are the problems you’re currently experiencing? And then we share with them what we call the first law of problem solving. And the first law of problem solving is that the longer you experience a challenge or frustration, the more likely it is you’ve actually stopped trying to solve it, and you’re now trying to manage it. Now we still talk about it, right? We still talk about the challenge or frustration, you know, my favorite one right now is, you know, leaders will say, you know, young people today, fill in the blank, you’ve probably filled in the blank, Skot, you’re, you know, with what follows that, right? They don’t want to work, they’re not motivated, they, and what we’re really saying is they don’t act the way we did when we were their age. Well, no, they don’t.

It’s a very different generation and you can either yell at the wind or you can deal with the wind, but the wind is indifferent to how you react to it, right? It doesn’t change the wind, and young people today are like the wind. It’s going to be what it’s going to be. The question is, well, how do we need to be different as leaders? So, you know, the first thing you got to recognize is am I, am I just complaining about the problem? Am I talking about the problem or am actually dealing with some part of it that I have control or influence over. And I think for a lot of leaders, they allow the problems that they experience to sap all the passion out of their life. You know, and they just, they’re just trying to survive the day after a little while. And the problem with that as a leader is as soon as you give up your being passionate about an end result, you’ll never instill passion in the people you’re seeking to lead.

So, at a very high level, got to get people to realize like, what are my challenges and frustrations? How am I reacting to them? And have I accepted them as reality? If I’m brutally honest, have I accepted them as reality or am I really actively trying to change them? And if I am actively trying to change them, are my strategies working? Right. Now, if I’m frustrated with my team, how’s that landing with them? And is it working? Because young people today, if you want to talk about young people today, they will work harder for a mission than they will a paycheck, which just freaks older leaders out. They’re like, what the heck? You know, what’s wrong with these people? They could get promoted and you’re like, so they’re looking at you and they’re thinking, I don’t want that job. You know that he looks like he’s miserable. So, the conundrum we get into as leaders is that you have to look, you have to enjoy your job and your job has to look manageable for people to want your job. But if you can’t get your people engaged and motivated, they aren’t gonna want, they aren’t gonna put forth the marginal effort where your job becomes manageable. So, you’re in a bit of a doom loop if you’re not careful.

So as leaders, a couple of questions you need to ask is, what are my challenges and frustrations? How am I dealing with those? Is it effective right now? Because my guess is, if your challenges and frustrations have stuck around for any period of time, you need to do something differently. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the way you’re doing it, but it’s not effective. So, what do you need to change?

Skot Waldron (31:11.736)
The is it effective question is a simple one, but something that I don’t think we’re willing to ask ourselves because we’re afraid of the answer, which means that I might have to change my approach, which means, I don’t know, that’s how I’ve always handled these types of issues. And now I have to figure out something else, or maybe it’s something that I don’t want to do, right? Maybe it just is uncomfortable for me to do something different. And yeah, that’s a tricky one right there.

Andrew Oxley (31:41.000)
Yeah, leaders often say, well, I shouldn’t have to change, I’m the boss. I’m like, well, the definition of leadership actually involves changing. You want your people to change, so if you want them to change, if you want them to go on a journey from somewhere to to somewhere, you can figure out what’s the journey you need to go on to make that happen. So usually the person we need to talk to first is always available. Like when we look in the mirror, they’re staring back at us.

Um, that’s the first person that needs to change. Now I’m not saying your team doesn’t need to change and do things differently, but it starts with us. Like what do I need to be doing differently? And that’s, that’s, it’s hard to recognize that. That’s why, you know, coaches exist because coaches can identify those blind spots for people and say, listen, you, you may not realize, but this thing you’re doing is counterproductive with your team.

Skot Waldron (32:34.736)
Yeah. I mean, and for leaders to be able to hear that and be more responsive to that as opposed to resistant to that will make a big difference. And their behavior also it’s, all about how do I be the example of what I want this culture to be, right? How do I be an example of what I want in return from the people that I’m leading? cause I’m teaching them something. Through my actions, through my behavior, through how I say things, I am teaching them something and then I can’t and then I’m to be frustrated and annoyed when they do the thing that I’ve taught them to do, which is don’t change, be resistant, you know, things like that, right. And that can be a really humbling experience.

Andrew Oxley (33:21.652)
It can, for sure.

Skot Waldron (33:23.736)
So, tell me about, okay, so people can get this book anywhere they buy books, I’m assuming, yeah,

Andrew Oxley (33:31.652)
They can go on Amazon and get the book. We have a way they can get a free copy of it. We can talk about it later if you feel free.

Skot Waldron (33:37.736)
Free?

Andrew Oxley (33:38.652)
Yes.

Skot Waldron (33:40.736)
I like free. Tell me how I get a free one.

Andrew Oxley (33:42.652)
So, one of two ways, if you go to our website, transformingresults.com and you enroll for the live workshop, which we have, is free to anybody who wants to learn more about the kind of concepts we’re talking about, we will mail you a copy of the book for free. So, imagine the show notes, you’ll have sort of like, just go to transformingresults.com. We have a live workshop. We figured out a long time ago that if you just serve people and you give them like stuff that’s super helpful, some percentage of that group will want to know more.

So, you won’t find us reaching out and pestering you, but if you want to know more after you sort of read the book and you go to the live workshop and you’re like, man, that was so helpful. If they’re that helpful when we’re not even paying them, what could they do for our organization when we work? That’s where we want to be because that’s the value of the information that we actually are offering.

Skot Waldron (34:49.736)
I love it. Serve, serve, serve. And I think you said something before at the beginning of show, was something like, you know, what would you say? The business will take care of itself.

Andrew Oxley (35:05.652)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, the, old adages, you know, you do what you love, and the money will come. I actually think that’s erroneous. I’m not sure that that’s actually true because you do a lot of things and not make any money that you’re factored about, right? But, I think if you, if you, the, there’s a, and I forget who said this, but if you stop focusing on what you want and you focus on what everybody, helping everybody else get what they want, you won’t have to worry about getting what you want because it’ll come back to you. And this is, mean, all the great philosophers through time, I’ve talked about this, right?

One of my first mentors said to me, I was starting my coaching business, and I was so wound up getting clients and stuff like that. In fairness, I did have to pay my rent and my phone bill and stuff like that. And I was talking to him, and he said, quit worrying about the damn customers you don’t have and serve the ones you do. He was not the kinder, gentler mentor. And I said, what do you, and he’s like, stop worrying about the customers you don’t have, overserve the ones you have. And I took that to heart 30 years ago. And we, you know, I actually had a call from a client just before this podcast. And he said, “Do you have any time this morning?” And I’m like, absolutely. And I was on a call with him right up to like two minutes before the podcast, because he had a question about some problem that he was dealing with. And he will not get a bill from me for that time. That to me, that’s the greatest compliment a client can give you when they call you up and they say, Hey, do you have time to talk about something? Because you can always gauge the amount of influence you have by the number of people that ask you for help that don’t have to.

Like if my employees come to me and ask for help, well, they have to. That doesn’t gauge influence. But if somebody who doesn’t have to call me calls and ask for insight, that’s influence. That means they value you beyond the I have to conversations.

Skot Waldron (37:16.736)
And those are the people that you want to help. Those are the people that you want to get on the phone with because they aren’t mandated to be in some training with you or whatever is going on. Those are the individuals that are hungry, and they need something and they trust you to give it to them. And with anything in life, whether it’s our kids or our spouse or friends or whoever, when people come to you, it’s because they’re trusting you. And it’s because they believe in you that you have something that they need or want. And that’s an honor. And so, I think we should take that to heart.

So, thanks for all this, Andrew. This has been really enlightening. I’ve loved learning a little bit about this. So, free workshop. So, you’re going to serve service there. We’ll get a free book. So, we’re going to get served there. Thank you for doing that. And you’re out there. How could people get in touch with you if they want to?

Andrew Oxley (38:18.652)
Yeah, so we’re on LinkedIn @AndrewOxley, Twitter, same handle. And go to transformingresults.com because that’s what we’re about. We’re about transforming results. We’re not about teaching people how to collaborate. We’re about, if you become more effective as leader, your results should improve. You should do it the right way, of course, but your results should get better.

So, we actually named the web, we picked the domain of the website, transformingresults.com. So, if you want to transform your results, if you want to get different results than where you are right now, these are some great resources for you. And there’s free articles on the blog and everything. So, you can sign up to get notices when we get new articles put up there. We put them up almost every week.

Skot Waldron (39:02.736)
Transformation is what we all want. We want to go from one thing to another, caterpillar, butterfly, whatever it is, we want to transform and become better versions of ourselves. Every company in the world that understands that delivers products and services that deliver on that promise. So, thanks for being on, man. It’s been good talking to you.

Andrew Oxley (39:23.652)
Thank you, Skot. It’s been a pleasure.

Skot Waldron (39:30.304)
Red, Yellow, Green, Blue. Red, Yellow, Green, Blue. These faces and really understanding how we’re coming across to other people. So important. That is your brand, my friends. Your brand is that reputation you’re building with every interaction. And the way we communicate our brand is through the senses. All the senses, all five of them, the senses.

And the way we look, the way we sound all the things play a big part of that. So, if you, if you as a leader are looking sounding in a way that is, you know, creating a brand impression that is not favorable. Well, that’s something you should pay attention to and something you should be concerned with. And again, it’s tough to self-diagnose how open, how humble are you to being taught to being, to being, I would say, critiqued, informed, advised about how you are coming across so that you too can be better. What frustrates leaders? What are we doing to tackle that? And how impactful is it, the thing I’m doing? How impactful is the thing I’m doing? I want you to consistently ask yourself that question. It will indeed help you in your leadership journey.

Thank you, Andrew, for being on the show. Everybody go get, sign up for that free workshop. It’s free and you’re going to get a free book out of it as well. So, enjoy that and thanks again for listening.

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay on Unlocked.