Unlocking the Emotional Blind Spots Holding Leaders Back with Rob McKinnon

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 – Cold Intro & Start

00:08:05 – Why Leaders Learn to Hide Their Feelings

00:12:31– How Shame Drives High Achieving Leaders

00:16:13– The Problem With Being a “Human Doing”

00:22:00 – The Three Major Leadership Roadblocks

00:23:54 – How Autopilot Thinking Limits Leadership Growth

00:33:27 – Recognizing Emotional Triggers in Leadership

00:36:17 – Turning Fear, Anger, and Shame Into Leadership Tools

00:38:48 – Managing Conflict and Emotional Reactions

00:41:15 – Lightning Round: Leadership Traits That Matter

00:47:13 – Final Leadership Insights and Takeaways

 

Rob McKinnon (00:02.00)

That women are the emotional thermometer in a household typically, not always, but they typically are much more tuned in to what’s going on emotionally in the room than us guys are.

 

Leaders that are driven by shame become human doings, and that’s what gets them to the top because they do a lot, they accomplish a lot. They are always looking around for more that they can accomplish because that’s where they get the love.

 

 

Skot Waldron (00:34.00)

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 want to be the last thing you’re worried about on event day. I’m going to 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.

 

Rob McKinnon and I are going to talk about some really good, I don’t know, stuff about leadership, emotion, feeling, and how those play into who we are and our identity as leaders and as people in general, and then how that plays out with our leadership style and how we are developing our own what I call leadership brand, and what our emotions have to do with that and how they play a role in that. And this is really critical for you to listen to because I think some of the things we say in here are going to hit home for you. And so, I want you to pay attention to those things.

 

Rob is the Co-Founder of McKinnon Leadership Group, a boutique coaching firm that caters to CEOs, senior executives, leadership teams and family businesses. He is the author of a new book called Lead Like You Were Meant To: Make the Switch from Autopilot to Intentional; and he trains other coaches in his “McKinnon Way of Leadership Coaching” methodology.

 

He’s worked with tons of leaders and a bunch of different organizations, including Adobe. He’s worked for Kindred Healthcare, Louisville Slugger, Oracle, Philadelphia 76ers, Regions Bank, United States government. You’ve heard of some of those, right? 

 

After graduating with a business degree from Wheaton College, he served four years as an Army Armor officer, leading combat-ready forces in Europe. He earned an MBA from the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and completed postgraduate studies in leadership coaching at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He holds the Master Certified Coach designation with the International Coaching Federation. And yeah, we’re going to get some of that brilliance right here on this show right now. Here we go.

 

Welcome to the show, Rob. It’s good to see you, man.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (03:40.00)

It’s always good to be with you, Skot.

 

 

Skot Waldron (03:42.00)

Yeah, we had a very pleasant kind of intro call before we had this call that just, you know what, warmed me up to the kind of warm person you are. And I’m just, I feel so relaxed just talking to you.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (03:58.00)

You’re already a pretty warm person to start with, Skot.

 

 

Skot Waldron (04:01.00)

Well, I try, I try. So, well, I appreciate you being on, man. And this is going to be, I think, really good for all those leaders out there that are either at that, I would say, that executive level or working up towards that. And that is their goal. And that’s where they want to be. And I think that you have so much insight.

 

I want to start off with a little bit of a story just to set the premise for what we’re going to talk about because this story that I’m interested about is about somebody that had a little bit of, I would say, an emotional intelligence, self-awareness issue going on seemed emotionally closed off. Can you elaborate on that?

 

 

Rob McKinnon (04:55.00)

Well, yeah, I mean, what I like to say on emotions is that we are hardwired for emotions. We all came out of our mothers expressing a lot of emotion within the opening minutes of our lives. So we are, and most of us were really angry when we first came out into the world. We’d been in this nice, warm, comfortable safe place, all our needs being met for the last 8 or 9 months. And then suddenly we’re coming out into this room full of bright lights and strangers and it’s cold and we’re being held upside down and we’re being moved away from our mommy, and we are ticked off. And nobody had to teach us how to be ticked off. And we wait a little longer and gradually everyone in that room is loving us and caring for us and cleaning us up and swaddling us and putting us back on our mommy’s tummy and now we are happy and nobody had to teach us how to be happy.

 

So, I always just go back to basics on emotions that we are emotional beings. However, somewhere along the way, 8, 9, 10 years later from that moment, we got rewired and it was on the playground. It was in the presence of other people. We started hearing some messages of don’t be scared, don’t be angry, don’t get so excited, or you should be ashamed of yourself. And we began to realize that emotions were dangerous things. And that then resulted in a lot of us saying, “I need to kind of keep these in a back closet locked up.” So, we try to do that.

 

 

Skot Waldron (06:52.00)

Yeah, I mean, I can agree. I’m going to ask you the gender question. Do you feel that women you have worked with versus men you’ve worked with, feel that more or less?

 

 

Rob McKinnon (07:07.00)

I think that it’s a pretty common story for both. My wife reminds me that women are the emotional thermometer in a household typically, not always, but they typically are much more tuned in to what’s going on emotionally in the room than us guys are. And we could have a whole different podcast on why that divergence might be there. But I would say the women leaders that I have worked with, they have the same challenges with emotions that the guys do.

 

 

Skot Waldron (07:51.00)

Yeah, I mean, I believe that challenge is real. I think that there, I guess I would, I’m going to open, I’m just riffing. I haven’t really even thought about it. You made me think about this in the sense that, you know, I think men have certain expectations put on them about how to handle emotions and women have certain expectations about them about how to handle emotions and what’s expected out of each of them and when we’re told to put those away versus when we’re told to embrace them? You know, like, do we expect little girls to cry? And do we expect little boys to “man up” and not cry. And what is the effect on that?

 

Like you said, when we were programmed to kind of put those emotions away or to try to be something else? What’s the effect of that, you know, on us later in life, I think that’s a big deal.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (08:50.00)

Well, I would say what the effect is, is that when we try to lock them in a back closet and pretend they’re not there, there’s two big things that come to mind.

 

Number one, they’re not in that back closet. They are coursing through your body and your mind all the time.

 

Number two, is they are useful to leaders. I don’t talk about feelings just so we can all be more touchy feeling and stand around and sing Kumbaya together. I talk about feelings with leaders because the emotions are signals. They’re like flashing lights on a dashboard saying, pay attention, something’s going on here. And if we’re trying to pretend that they’re locked up in a back room, guess what? Our emotions are managing us, which means we’re out of control. And we have that manifest in small ways throughout the day where we lose patience with someone or we’re a little frustrated or we’re a little worried about what’s happening tomorrow. And we can have that manifest in big ways where we lose it with a person, or we get frozen in our tracks and can’t make a decision because we’re so scared.

 

 

Skot Waldron (10:16.00)

And that, I’m sorry to interrupt, that’s the danger. That’s the danger, because the way we react or behave as a result of that is where the damage is done, right?

 

 

Rob McKinnon (10:31.00)

It’s a danger and we are not fully using all of the tools at our disposal. I think I’ve talked to you in our last conversation about one of the roadblocks for leaders growing is not recognizing all of themselves. And I break that down into four dimensions, our physical body, our intellectual mind, our emotional heart, and our spiritual core. That spiritual core being where my sense of identity and purpose and beliefs and values reside.

 

Leaders generally, they’ve been brought up to be tuned into themselves physically, you know the, stay fit, to look good, to project themselves, have a physical presence that holds, you know, holds their space in the room. They’ve been trained intellectually to be smart, to have certain skills, to learn what it is in their trade that they need to know to be an expert. So, those first two dimensions get a lot of attention, although I will also tell you I have a lot to say there.

 

The two that get minimized that are equally potent, equally impactful for leaders is their emotional dimension and their spiritual dimension. And I would just tell you, again, I think you know I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. When we get to those spaces with leaders, we hit pay dirt and they begin to realize how little feelings of fear, little feelings of frustration or anger, little feelings of shame have a negative influence on how they’re thinking and performing as a leader in that moment.

 

 

Skot Waldron (12:28.00)

That’s a big one. I’m hitting on this topic of shame quite a bit lately, just I’m talking about it in the aspect of how we work and how we interact with each other and the idea of what procrastination, the word procrastination, how much shame that carries with it and how we mislabel and all the language with that idea of shame and why we tend to carry that weight around with us and what that does to us as leaders and how it’s projected and how we act as a result of it sometimes either. Especially when we’re at a high level, if we’re at executive level and we’re feeling a little bit of that, we don’t want to let everybody else know that. So, then self-preservation kicks in and we start suppressing it or we start hiding it or you know, going into some back room closet and hiding, you know, who we really are and what we want to do. And that could be a real problem.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (13:31.00)

Skot, as you know, I work with predominantly CEOs, presidents, leaders at the top. I would say that over all my time of coaching, easily 60% plus of the leaders I work with, shame has gotten them in there.

 

 

Skot Waldron (13:54.00)

Wow.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (13:56.00)

Shame has gotten them in there. Okay, why is that? Let’s break shame down a little bit. By the way, a lot of leaders aren’t going to identify with that. They’re going to be listening to this podcast. They’re going to say, that’s not my deal. Listen a little bit longer because one of my experiences of leaders where shame is their main thing is they don’t even recognize it because they’ve been running from it for decades. And they are some of the ones that are most susceptible to not feeling their feelings. Because when they feel their feelings, the predominant feeling they may feel is some element of embarrassment or sensitivity of what others are thinking of them or shame. And that doesn’t feel good. And so, they are trying to outrun any of those feelings.

 

But breaking down shame, I distinguish between shame and guilt. Guilt is I’ve done something wrong. Shame is there is something wrong with me. I am missing something. I am inadequate in some way. This is where the notion of imposter syndrome comes in. I don’t belong here. I don’t have the same abilities as the others around me. And so, shame goes to my very core. It’s a statement about my identity. I am inadequate. I am unworthy. I am not lovable as much as I would want to be. So that goes to my very core.

 

So, what happens to leaders that are driven by shame? Okay, they get to high places, but there’s other problems awaiting when they get there. But they learned early on that just standing there still was not enough. They wouldn’t be loved for that. And this is where we get back to origins. And I think the goal of every parent would be to love their child unconditionally. We all fail at that at times. But these kids, these leaders in particular learned that they didn’t get loved.

 

I’ve got a classic story from my leaders is, I knew my dad loved me, but he never said it. He never expressed it and maybe he was harsh maybe he was very, very hard on me. But oh, when I got out on the football field and scored touchdowns then my dad was happy. So, what does that teach a child. That’s when they get loved, they get loved for doing. So, leaders that are driven by shame become human doings, and that’s what gets them to the top because they do a lot, they accomplish a lot. They are always looking around for more that they can accomplish because that’s where they get the love. And that’s great, but guess what?

 

It’s never enough. It is never enough. I have worked with, I’ve started working with leaders in their 50s and been with them on the track through retiring at 65. And one of the biggest things we’re dealing with as they move into retirement is how are they going to feel the love when they’re no longer in the grind?

 

 

Skot Waldron (17:17.00)

My brain just exploded, Rob. I mean, are we? I’m going to use the title of my podcast in this next question. Are we in fact unlocking the tension there and the, I mean, I talk about generational leadership a lot and working in the, you know, AEC industry with some of the more trade type companies and entrepreneurs that, you know, some of the boomers that built these companies and expanded them and they become family owned businesses, or maybe they inherited it from their dad. And they’ve just blown this thing up. And they’re 84 years old and they don’t retire.

 

And I’ve always talked about it as a sense of, you know, that boomer generation were grinders, right? They scaled things, they built things and they invested a lot and their identity was around the work. But it never really applied it to the human doings. And then once they retire, where is that sense of doing, you know, where are they going to get that love? I don’t know. Do you, do you see a connection there?

 

 

Rob McKinnon (18:35.00)

Well, we try to have a [unintelligible]. Yes, yes. But it becomes dysfunctional long before retirement. And it becomes dysfunctional. Again, I’ll give you a quick example. A leader I had a coaching session with yesterday and we dropped into our session. I said, “what’s it? Here we are midway through the week. It was Wednesday yesterday. You know. Where are you in your week? What’s in front of you?” And he goes, “oh, I got this to do list in front of me. And I’m trying to get to my son’s baseball practice this afternoon as well, but this to-do list is so long.”

 

And so, a to-do list, all right? And I know I’ve been working with this leader for a while. I go, let’s break that list down a little bit. What were his to-dos in there? Well, he’s CEO of this company. You know, he had some, he needed to talk to certain of his executives. He had to review some financial statements. The bank was asking him for certain documents. His dad was asking him to review his prescriptions. His sister had asked for something. All of these to-dos are coming at him. And he is still learning to differentiate between accomplishing these to-dos so that he will please all these people and make them happy, versus slowing down and saying, wait, where’s my voice in the middle of all this?

 

I’m CEO. This company depends on me to do things that only I can do. Where am I defining the to-do list as opposed to everybody else defining my to-do list? But up to this point, for the last four plus decades of his life, he has let his to-do list as dictated as made the requests made of others dictate what his priorities are. And so, his challenge is separating things out and prioritizing the right things in his role as a leader. Does that make sense of how that’s funny for him.

 

 

Skot Waldron (20:46.00)

Yeah, it does. And it kind of goes a lot into, I mean, what you talk about is like, I’m just going to call it nonintentional leadership, right? It becomes more reactionary leadership.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (21:03.00)

Reactionary. Yes.

 

 

Skot Waldron (21:05.00)

And just everybody dropping their problems and their things and their needs on the lap of them. And I often tell my leaders, and I actually told a CEO this yesterday that your job is not to solve everybody’s problem, but to help them solve their problem and right coach them through that effort. And, and so many times we take upon as leaders, we take on the weight of everybody else’s problem. And, you know, I mean, in business, that’s what we do, we solve problems all day, right? We’re solving problems all day long. But how often do we bring that on ourselves unnecessarily? You know, so I think about that a lot too.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (21:52.00)

And that’s where Skot, one of the, you know, there’s three roadblocks I’ve seen over my years. My book, you know, I started writing my book two or three years into coaching and it was like a lot of other people. It was meant to be a, you know, basically a marketing tool, right? I ended up getting busy and was too busy to finish the book. So, the book took me 10 years to write. I did a lot of rewriting over those 10 years because over those 10 years I began really learning through the wonderful intimate conversations that you have in a coaching context of where someone else invites you into their life and doesn’t invite you in just to see all the good happy stuff but invites you in to see some of the not so good stuff.

 

And I learned so much. I mean, I just, all my sharing that I do here and in my book and other places comes out of my learning from the lives of these leaders. And, but I gradually saw that there were three significant roadblocks. This is not stuff that I just sat in an ivory tower and made up because it sounded good, but there are legitimately three. And all my leaders would tell you, they would all testify how true this is once they saw it.

 

The first roadblock is too much autopilot. You and I have been on autopilot already today. You probably came onto this podcast somewhat on autopilot because you’ve done it a lot and that is just fine. That’s really good actually. You know what you’re doing. You don’t have to figure out how to set up your microphone and which software to use and how you do your preparation. I obviously, this is my first time so I’m a little more focused and attentive.

 

But we’ve been on autopilot since we woke up this morning and got up and dressed ourselves and brushed our teeth. We did all that on autopilot. We didn’t have to think about it. So, autopilot’s okay, but autopilot, we cannot grow on autopilot. Autopilot, we’re doing the same things over and over out of habit. And that’s fine for a lot of parts of our life, but not if we’re wanting to grow. Einstein said it, the height of insanity is to keep doing things the way we’ve always done them and expect a different outcome. You’re just not going to get it.

 

So, you and I, as coaches, are in the business of helping people get out of autopilot and choose to take a different approach. But you’ll be amazed. I’m constantly amazed at how quickly I’m on autopilot. And that’s where we really get into trouble. Think about being on autopilot relationally with another person. Oh, there’s that grumpy negative executive I have to work with. He’s always thinking the worst of things. You know, and we have an autopilot response to that. So, autopilot’s number one.

 

The second is leaders, I’ve kind of mentioned this already, leaders leading with less than 100% of themselves. And that 100% is made up of those four dimensions, physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual. All four of those matter in terms of how we show up.

 

The third roadblock is leaders failing to see that their greatest strengths and their greatest weaknesses are wrapped around the same thing. The same thing is the source of their greatest strengths and their greatest weaknesses.

 

Now, yesterday I was talking with a leader, actually he was interviewing me to see about working with him. I was interviewing him too. He’s CEO of a public company, a smaller public company. And one of my things that I like to do in an open interview like that is ask, I like to ask the leader, what do you see as your greatest strengths? What do you see as your greatest weaknesses? Well, one of his greatest strengths, this company is about 3 or 4 years old. They are just now coming to market with something. One of his great strengths is he says, “I’m a glass is always half full guy.” So, he has a positive outlook. And that’s taken a lot of cheerleading and having a positive message to give to investors and his employees and all that stuff to keep them going, right? For this long time that’s taken them to get to market.

 

When I asked about greatest weakness, he didn’t skip a beat. He said, “Rob, I’m conflict avoidant.”

 

You see how those two go together? These leaders, and he’s not the first one like this you know, that I’ve seen. They want to focus on the positive. To focus on the negative feels kind of ugly and dirty and uncomfortable. But a leader has got to be able to do both of those things because we need to have difficult conversations around difficult things with people. But we’re on autopilot and we don’t realize that, then we’re just going to keep, this guy’s going to keep avoiding conflict.

 

 

Skot Waldron (27:15.00)

What is autopilot? What else does that look like in high performing executives? People that are up there, when you see it, tell me, what is another common behavior you help them interrupt when this is happening? I mean, when we’ve talked about shame, but we’ve talked about identity, and we’ve shot those ideas. I just think that there’s a lot of, you know, you talk about self-awareness a lot too, and I want to hit on that. But what is the behavior?

 

 

Rob McKinnon (27:47.00)

It’s all in the swirl. Self-awareness is the antidote to autopilot. When I’m on autopilot, I’m mindlessly going through doing whatever I’m doing. You know, if I’m driving from point A to point B and when I go to my, you know, club to work out in the morning, I’m mindlessly driving there and I’m thinking about other things. But when I’m not on autopilot, I’m very focused.

 

So, what a big thing, and this is the movement from the outer to the inner, the inner game for leaders, is let’s just say that Skot, you and I are having a meeting about a topic that’s been very difficult. It’s been a very difficult problem for us to solve. And it’s just hard. I can come to that meeting, and I can be automatically thinking certain things about you and the solutions you try to bring to it. I can be thinking certain things about the problem at hand. I can be thinking certain things about myself. If I’m on autopilot, those thoughts are having control of me.

 

But when I turn off autopilot and notice my thoughts and create some separation between myself, I like to say we have thoughts, our thoughts don’t have to have us. But when I’m on autopilot, my thoughts are my reality. When I’m not on autopilot and when I’m self-aware, I can go, I’m having this thought that Skot is not going to have any answers for this problem we’re trying to solve. And he’s just going to sit there quietly.

 

I can grab that thought and I can say, a minute. What do I want to do with that? How do I want to invite Skot in to share his thoughts on how we might do this? How do I want to stay curious with Skot and try to help him be creative coming from the perspective that he comes from? Is that registering how I’m describing that? I can notice that thought, take it captive. By the way, the really negative thoughts of Skot’s never helpful, Skot’s not going to have any new ideas. Those are not helpful. I’m going to discard those thoughts. Skot’s at the table. Apparently, Skot belongs at the table. I’m going to engage with Skot. I’m going to think the best. That’s a phrase that’s batted around a lot these days of thinking the best of others. That’s one of the ways to build trust. That’s just another form of avoiding negative autopilot kind of thinking.

 

 

Skot Waldron (30:35.00)

I talk about this often too, about the aspect of ANTs, Automatic Negative Thoughts is what they’re called. And our brains are programmed for this idea that thinking negatively about somebody at the table is automatic. We don’t have to put that much effort into it because our brains are wired to identify danger. And that person is a danger. It’s a signal to my brain that this project will not go through and that jeopardizes my reputation and my leadership and all these other things. I don’t have to put much effort into thinking this person’s not going to accomplish this thing.

 

On the other hand, you know, thinking the best opportunity this person deserves to sit at the table, this person is at the table for a reason. I need to engage them and give them the best opportunity to succeed. Now I talk about that, but I also don’t want to ignore the fact that that person may be a problem because I know that there’s a lot of leaders out there going, oh, I know, Rob and Skot, I get it. But this person, if you knew what I was going through, because I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to gaslight anybody. I don’t want to like put on rose-colored glasses, whatever phrase you want to use. I don’t want to like say, no, no, no, just be positive. You know, just be positive. It’ll work out.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (32:01.00)

Right, we are not talking about just putting on rose-tinted glasses and ignoring. We’re definitely not talking about ignoring bad behavior by others. That’s another approach we need to take in addressing that if people are just chronically negative and a negative impact on the team, that has to be addressed.

 

Skot, there’s two thoughts that come up as I listen to you there. And yes, we get this all the time. And it’s the same with me. We are all really good at being other aware. “Oh, she’s talking this way. Oh, he always thinks that.” And guess what? So, we’re very focused on the other person, their bad behavior. But how much control do we have over that person? We have somewhere way south of 100%. And if we’re their boss, yes, we have a degree of control. What if they’re a peer? Whoa. Now we have very little control over them. But guess who we have 100% control over? Ourselves and that’s where I redirect leaders’ attention. Okay, how are you showing up? Are you showing up as a reaction to their bad behavior or are you turning off autopilot and choosing that you’re going to take a different approach?

 

The other thing I like to say here, and this is for those people in our lives that and all of us have at least one that just get under our skin. We always just get ticked off. We always, you know, get some really negative feeling with them because they are pushing our button. And what I like to say is just remember it’s your button. It belongs to you. They just happen to be the one person in your life that’s pushing it. And again, that is meant to say, let’s look at your button. Let’s look at what’s getting triggered in you that makes this person such an antagonist for you.

 

 

Skot Waldron (34:10.00)

That’s a great way of thinking about it because that builds more self-awareness. I often say as well that the person that triggers you the most is your greatest teacher as well. I mean, just the fact that what can I learn from this person, this triggering event, this stress-inducing thing that’s causing right now?  What is that saying about me? I’m triggered by this or this bothers me or I value this thing to the extent of why this is bothering me so much. Cause some people I always say, you know what? Some people that’s not going to bother. They’re going to be totally okay with that person not showing up on time.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (34:55.00)

Right.

 

 

Skot Waldron (34:56.00)

But you know what bothers? So, let’s look at that. Why is that bothering you so much? And when we talk about emotion and putting emotion into it and taking emotion out of it and, how we do that? I think that, you know, all of these things are really, really important, but what finally, because I think what I’m trying to say here, Rob, is that when we take emotion out of situations, it doesn’t serve us very well. Right? When we hide them, when we suppress them or when they show up in the wrong way, accidentally, the accidental emotions. But what changes when we finally address the emotional topic? What changes in us?

 

 

Rob McKinnon (35:44.0)

Well, hopefully we can notice, again, back to that word autopilot, we can notice our autopilot response and we can say, uh-uh, I’m not going there this time. I’m not going to be fearful. I’m going to control myself and relax a little bit on my frustration or agitation.

 

I think also it’s helpful and this is what our process does with leaders is we help them see the origins. There’s so much I want to say on this, but we help them see the origins of why that emotion. And again, I talk about this in my book where we tend to have default emotions. All of us have all the emotions. We are capable of all the emotions. But I know like in my life, I’m a head person and my predominant emotion that’s there more than all the others is some volume of fear.

 

A lot of times it’s just a little bit of worry, a little bit of anxiety. For others, it’s anger and for others, it’s shame. When we can begin to see that and we can begin to see, I don’t want to dismiss the emotion like you said, that’s not helpful because really, it’s not possible. But how can I channel the emotion in a constructive way that’s going to help me?

 

Fear drives preparation. It drives strategy. Anger drives winning and competition and doing things the right way. Shame drives accomplishing things and serving others and taking care of others and coming up with creative original ways of doing things. So, all those emotions can be turned around in a positive direction.

 

 

Skot Waldron (37:50.00)

If we recognize them and want to do something better with them, I think that that, and sometimes if we have somebody to help us along with those things, help us recognize those things in us and try to help bring us out of what we call the pit of despair, when we’re in those things and climbing out of it, that’s really important. I think that’s the bit of hope that we need, and that bit of optimism and hope that we can, we feel like this, which is a stress response or whatever it is in us, which is human.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (38:31.00)

We’ve had it all our lives. It’s been well complicated.

 

 

Skot Waldron (38:34.00)

How can we turn that around to be something that’s going to benefit us and our team in the long run? So, I think that that’s good. That’s really, really good. Can I, I’m going to ask you, go ahead. I want to hear what you’re going to say, go ahead.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (38:48.00)

I was just going tell a quick story. I have a leader who found out that someone else in the company was doing some very self-serving things, maybe possibly even criminal. And the leader needed to confront this colleague. But my leader, my guy, let’s just call him Tom. Tom, anger tends to be his default emotion. And he can remember from his days in sports where his mom would just urge him to get up in the grill of the other guy, let them know you’re there, you know, and just a very angry. And so, Tom was ready to get up in the grill of this colleague who he suspected was doing some things he shouldn’t do. And I go, how much information, how much do think you’re going to really learn about what he’s doing by taking that approach?

 

And we strategized around dialing back that anger. Yes, that anger drove him to still get answers, but he went in as almost a, I gave him a hostage negotiator kind of approach. Hostage negotiators cannot be jacked up, because the guy on the other end of the line is all jacked up. Hostage negotiators need to bring a settling presence. And when they do that, they then have a possibility of establishing a line of connection. He pulled in his anger, channeled that into more of a peacemaker hostage negotiator approach and got so much more information about what this colleague was actually doing. He still doesn’t like all of it and there’s going to have to be some things done, but it was so much more successful of an approach than if he had just gone in there on autopilot and gotten up in the guy’s grill.

 

 

Skot Waldron (40:44.00)

So true. And that goes back to the psychological effect of mirror neurons and how we mirror things in our world and the people that are at us. I mean, you want to get the person in front of you riled up, go at them riled up. They’re going to fight you back probably. Probably not. Probably not.

 

Okay. Couple of lightning round questions. You ready?

 

All right. One leadership habit that limits growth in others.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (41:19.00)

Telling them exactly how to do things instead of asking them questions. Leaders are so tempted to be the hero when someone comes to them with a question. I’ve got the answer. Yeah, there’s exactly how you do it. If you want them to learn and grow, you ask them questions. Well, what would your first step be?

 

 

Skot Waldron (41:39.00)

How about a behavior that CEOs rarely get called out on?

 

 

Rob McKinnon (41:45.00)

I don’t think there’s just one. I think there’s a lot of ways that CEOs behave, but because they’ve got the title CEO, their board doesn’t see it on a day-to-day basis and they’re king or queen of the roost, you know? So, who’s going to call them out?

 

 

Skot Waldron (42:05.00)

So, what’s one that you feel like is the injustice where you see like, this is doing some harm to your people. And I wish that somebody would say it.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (42:16.00)

You know, I would say there’s two. One is the, I mean, two that rise to the top. One is I can’t fully trust my leader. And sometimes that’s in the form of they say they agree with me on one thing when I’m in their office, but that decision is only as final as the last person in their office. So, we agree on something today and then I learned from a colleague tomorrow that they’ve changed their mind. So, it makes it hard to trust them. And we could break that down as to what’s going on in that CEO.

 

The other one are CEOs that are just, you know, we talk about strength and CEOs that will stop at nothing. Well, they tend to have a lot of sharp elbows and tend to alienate a lot along the way. I’m tempted to go further, but I think I’ll stop right there.

 

 

Skot Waldron (43:26.00)

Yeah, I’m sure you could talk about that for we do a whole show about that one. Okay. All right.

 

An overrated leadership trait.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (43:38.00)

Overrated leadership trait. Needing to have all the answers.

 

 

Skot Waldron (43:44.00)

What about an underrated leadership trait?

 

 

Rob McKinnon (43:48.00)

Humility.

 

 

Skot Waldron (43:50.00)

Amen, Amen. I think that goes back to the having all the answers mentality and thinking that because you’re here, that you have so many leaders like that, right? That when somebody comes to me, what if I don’t have an answer? And I’m like, what if? What if you don’t have an answer? Do you think that that person all of a sudden is going to be like, Oh, you’re a horrible leader.

 

You know, and I flipped the term tables and go, so if you went to that person asked them for question, they said, “hold on, I’m to get back to you on that.” Would you be like, it’s your horrible leader. I’m done with you. You know? Yeah, we’re not all Google or ChatGPT. Sometimes we have to go back and, you know, ask some questions and get back to that person.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (44:47.00)

Skot, I would close with this. This is a common, and when my leaders hear this, they go, wow, that is so true and so helpful. Skot, we’re all walking with a limp.

 

We’re all walking with a limp. In this day of social media and the way, you know, Facebook and all this stuff of where we show our great life and all this stuff, it’s easy to project, wow, that man, that woman, they’ve got it all together. They’re rocking it. They got a great marriage. They’ve got great kids. They’re great parents. And oh my gosh, they’re killing it in their career. And by the way, their body, they work out all the time, you know, and I’m just telling you, again, you’ve had the same thing, we get behind closed doors with leaders.

 

Everybody’s walking with a limp, everybody’s got something that they’re not so good at, or that they’re not being so successful at. And the sooner we can just relax a little bit, that’s not to let anybody off the hook of not, you know, work hard and try to balance these things. But nobody has all the right answers. Nobody has the best solution. That’s why the best leaders pull together great teams that have a variety of perspectives and a variety of knowledge that the team gets it done.

 

 

Skot Waldron (46:18.00)

Well said. Rob, thank you for your insights. You’ve definitely made me think about some things and connect some dots. I love that. I love it when my guests do that. So where can people get a copy of your book, Lead Like You Were Meant To? Where do they get a copy of that?

 

 

Rob McKinnon (46:41.00)

It’s where you get all your other books, probably Amazon.

 

 

Skot Waldron (46:45.00)

Okay. Everywhere else in the world.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (46:47.00)

Everywhere else in the world. I think last I checked we got 5-stars.

 

 

Skot Waldron (46:51.00)

Yeah, good times, man. Good job. Well, it’s definitely a labor of love doing that. You’ve shared some of the insights in the book here. And I am truly grateful for that. So, keep doing the good work, Rob.

 

 

Rob McKinnon (47:06.00)

Well, thanks for your questions. Thanks, Skot. Great to be with you.

 

 

Skot Waldron (47:13.00)

Okay, those different areas that we’re going to talk about, right? That we talk about physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, those different dimensions, they all play in to how we lead. And I love one of those roadblocks that he talked about that not being 100%. And we didn’t talk about it too much, we didn’t go too deep into it, but how many of us are showing up at, you know, maybe 60%, 70%, maybe some of us are even depleted into like the 30% range and we expect to give our best. Well, how much is your, what is the best of 60%?

 

Well, it’s 100% of 60%. You know what I’m saying? Like, that’s what people are getting. And that’s not really good enough if that’s consistently what they’re getting. And think about this. If we’re given 100% at work, but by the time we get home, we’re only at like 40%. And that’s what our family gets, our loved ones. They get our 40%. Everybody else gets our 100%. That is also a problem. And so, I really love that idea of how we need to show up and making sure that we are very intentional about the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual realms of our lives.

 

The strengths and weaknesses conversation, that was cool. That was a little bit, I think you need to be analyzing your strengths and how they can also appear as weaknesses or those weaknesses and how they appear as strengths sometimes and play off that idea as well.

 

So, let’s start figuring out when anger, shame, confusion, frustration, those types of emotions, let’s feel them. Let’s not shove them down in some deep dark hole. Let’s feel them, understand them and figure out how we can move on past them to things that help us make progress and build the leadership brand that we want out in the world.

 

 

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 Unlocked.