Hi, welcome to another episode of Unlocked. I am Skot, and today we're going to talk about unlocking the potential of people. Really, that's what we talk about every time on this show, right? Because that's what it's all about. It starts with the people. How do we unlock them? Then how do we unlock the other things that we're involved with, organizations and humanity as a whole?
So I'm really grateful today for our conversation with Mike Howard, new author, first book, The Art of Ronin Leadership. Ronin Leadership, if you don't know what that term means, which you probably don't because Mike probably made it up, I think he did, it's this principle that goes back to Martial Arts and the Samurai.
Mike is half-Japanese and takes these principles and his culture, and understanding of the Samurai and pulls us into leadership. It's really, really smart, and I love the principle of Ronin leadership.
Mike was at Microsoft for 16 years as the Chief Security Officer. He's been a Police Officer with the Oakland Police Department, and he's a 22-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency. So he's been around the block. He has seen leaders, he has worked under leaders. He has been a leader himself and we can learn a few things from Mike in this interview. So listen up, here we go.
Okay, Mike, here we go. You ready?
Mike Howard:
I'm ready, Skot. Thanks for inviting me, and I'm really honored to be part of your podcast.
Skot Waldron:
Yeah. This is going to be fun. I am interested in talking about the title of your book, because this is something unique, this idea of Ronin leadership. Not everybody probably knows about what that is. I want you to kind of start there for us.
Mike Howard:
Okay.
SKOT WALDRON:
And then just right out the gate, new book, just came out in May, talk about that title. It's your first book and why you kind of were so focused on that?
MIKE HOWARD:
Great question. Well, number one, I'm half-Japanese. I've always been interested in Martial Arts, ancient Samurai, used to watch those movies as a kid. And one of the things you learn is that in the age of the Samurai, there was a period of time when the Samurai were working for different lords, feudal lords, but once Japan was centralized as a country, there was no need for that because the country had an army.
So therefore, all these Samurai were now without Masters. They were on the countryside, basically guns for hire or swords for hire. And they were called Ronin, master-less samurai, that's what the name refers to. And I was thinking, you know, my leadership journey, as I'm thinking about the title for the book, I've been on a lot of different enter enterprises for a lot [inaudible 00:04:09] , but some people will have to learn to forge their own path to leadership taking lessons, learned mistakes, made experiences, kind of mix that all up together and come out with, okay, a, what is your style of leadership? How are you going to forge your own path leadership and what, what are the new things and new leadership achievements are you going to make on your own path?
And I thought that would be kind of a cool way to present a book about growing and leadership. It's, it's a journey it's pathway. And at some point, if this is what you want to do in leadership, you want to achieve the leadership heights, you're going to have to find your forge, your own path towards leadership. So that's the reason I chose it. And it just, I thought it was an interesting take on, on leadership.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. So let's talk, let's stick on that idea of a path. Okay. So you, I'm not sure the order of your, your career, right. But you've been Oakland Police Department. You've been CIA, you've been at Microsoft Security, Head of Security, Chief Security Officer at Microsoft. What was your path like? Like how did that impact how you wrote the book?
MIKE HOWARD:
Okay. Yeah, it was interesting because it, it wasn't as if like, I know my dad was military, right. At one point I had entertained the idea of going to like west point or one of the Academies. And then you, you get out of school right there and you're already commissioned as a second Lieutenant or, or an Ensign if you're in the Navy, and then you are in leadership right off the bat at a very young age.
At the Oakland Police Department. I was a Police Officer, but I wasn't in charge of anybody but myself. Right. And so I was learning and growing.
And so I was more of an individual contributor, but as I was writing a book, I could see that even at that point, I didn't necessarily really think about me being a leader someday, but I was observing different people who I thought were, wow, those are people I'd like to emulate someday. Right. And then when I got to CIA, after a period of time there, and I was given my first leadership positions and got a taste of it, and then I realized, you know, I kind of like, I like the idea of being able make decisions for the greater good of an organization to, and then I realize I like, I actually like leading people, you know, and I liked the interaction and the ability to guide people and eventually mentor people. And as I progressed around my CIA career, I had bigger opportunities and bigger assignments to lead global teams.
And, you know, then I knew that I was always going to, to be a leader. There was one time at CIA where sort of mid-career, I kind of took a different path from the typical spy stuff. And, and I worked in Personnel and Recruiting, and then I actually worked in the Inspector General's Office, doing fraud, waste, and abuse cases as an Investigator. But that was an individual contributor assignment. And I realized that I didn't like the fact that I had no ability other than to voice my opinion to affect what I thought would be a, maybe a better way to run an office or a better way to treat people, et-cetera. So I realized at that point, I would never go back to that again, I'd always be in a leadership position. And of course, Microsoft, I was hired to run different groups. So, but that was kind of the path, I can't say it's natural, but it was natural for me. And I'm glad I did it that way.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And I think that a lot of us start our journey that way. Right?
MIKE HOWARD:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
SKOT WALDRON:
Young, coming out of school, we have bosses, right? And we observe, and a lot of us, you know, are going to lunches or going out on excursions with our workmates and colleagues going "Ah, if I ever start or whatever, I'm never going to run it like them", you know?
MIKE HOWARD:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
Like we're always looking back at like what not to do with some of our bosses. And I think it's, it's that mindset of are we, now that we are leading people, are they looking at us like in their journey of 'Hey, I don't, I definitely don't want to lead like that, like Scott'.
MIKE HOWARD:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
Or are they saying, I love that quality about Scott's leadership. If I ever run a firm, I'm going to treat my people like Scott does, you know?
MIKE HOWARD:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
And I, I don't know if leaders think about that, you know, at the end of the day.
MIKE HOWARD:
I mean, I think to a certain extent, I mean, we're, we're all human beings and we all have egos and we all want to, you know, feel as if that, that the people that we're, we're leading want to emulate us to a certain extent, but our leadership styles are different. Right. And some people may say, "Hey, you know, I like my Howard style because you know, he's inclusive and blah, blah, blah, you know, years ago.
I remember when I've got some emotional intelligence training with my team, my leadership team at Microsoft, one of the things I learned about myself was I wasn't direct-able. Right. So I was good about being, you know, I could dance around the edges, but actually being direct about, you know, what I actually felt about situation as opposed to someone kind of, when you don't understand what I'm trying to get across. Right?
And so subtleties. And so that was a great lesson. And so we all have, we all have different leadership styles. I would hope that if we're demonstrating the traits that, that encourage people and are inclusive and yes, people have to get the job done. That's that's number one. Right. We still have business goals, but as long as you don't leave debt bodies in the wake, and you're encouraging and mentoring, then I would say that, you know, 9 times out of 10, the people following you will want to emulate at least parts of you. Right?
But again, that's goes back to that Ronin thing. Right? I don't want my, my former direct reports to be a clone of my power. I want them to take whatever traits they believe had that made them better leaders and then tack on whatever traits that they possess themselves so that they can be the full package for themselves. Right?
SKOT WALDRON:
I love that thought. I think that's really good because it's yeah. I want to be a good leader to the people I'm leading, but what are my expectations if I'm nurturing that leader to one day become a manager in our, in our company or an executive level, whatever in our company and, and what are my expect expectations are. Do I expect them to lead just like me?
Well, I hope not.
MIKE HOWARD:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
You know?
MIKE HOWARD:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
Like I hope they'll lead how they lead. Right?
MIKE HOWARD:
Exactly.
SKOT WALDRON:
Using the good, healthy qualities of the leadership that I hope I'm teaching principles.
MIKE HOWARD:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
But bringing what they have to the table to make sure that they are leading and bringing their gifts. You're right. I don't necessarily want to clone to myself because then we're just doing the same stuff. I'm doing the good and the bad, right?
MIKE HOWARD:
Yeah, exactly. You know, a hundred percent, you know, and I think there are some leaders because they're driven by ego. As opposed to, as in the book, I talk about being selfless as opposed to selfish, you know, if they're driven too much by ego, then they do want clones of themselves. And that that's when you get those conversations, that little lunch counter, or as you said, you know, saying, 'Gee, I don't want to be like Mike', you know, because he thinks his way is the only way.
And you know, he's the greatest gift to the leadership world and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's not how you want. That's not how you want to be perceived. And it's amazing. I had a conversation with a person not too long ago who just retired 30 years from a major company doing sales, I believe and read the book.
And he said, I wish that the people that I had worked for in those 30 years had even a smidgen of the things you talked about in the book, which is actually very sad. I hope it's not the norm, but I suspect there's a lot of that going on.
SKOT WALDRON:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
MIKE HOWARD:
And I think, I think that's why that's one of the reasons I wrote the book too. You spend most of your working, you spend most of your waking day at work when you're working, you want it to be a challenging, rewarding experience. And, and as you know, Scott, the, the main reason HR says one of the biggest reason why people leave companies is because of they're immediate Supervisors, they're manager. Right. And that's a shame that shouldn't be like that.
SKOT WALDRON:
You're right. It's not because of the product I sell or of the customers or even because of the CEO, you know?
MIKE HOWARD:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
It's my direct manager, is a jerk doesn't care about me, only cares about themselves. Doesn't I don't feel valued, heard, understood. What am I doing here? You know.
MIKE HOWARD:
Exactly.
SKOT WALDRON:
They're for me. Right?
MIKE HOWARD:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
And so we get that. So let's talk about this principle of a Master-less Leader.
MIKE HOWARD:
Mm-hmm.
SKOT WALDRON:
What does that mean? Cause I would sit there and go 'a masterless Leader? What is, I think you want to be a masterfull leader.'.
MIKE HOWARD:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
SKOT WALDRON:
You're talking about masterless leadership. What is that?
MIKE HOWARD:
Yeah. I mean, so when I talk about this journey of leadership, the, the, the journey never ends, right? There's always continuous learning continuous improvement, no matter how, how high you get, but there are so many, you know, you can look it up in Google there and I've got a lot of leadership books here. I'm just like you do, right?
There's so many books on leadership and so many theories about leadership, right? 'I want to lead like Jack Welch or I want to lead like Colin Powell, or I want to lead like Condi Rice,' right? Or whatever name, whatever leader you love.
And then I've seen too many, especially young leaders want to become those folks, which is nothing wrong with it, but then you're not you. Right? You're following a dogma. You're following a certain set of leadership principles that you read in a Patrick Lindsey only book who I love. He's one of, I love that guy. Right? And he use his book a lot when I was developing my team at Microsoft.
But masterless means at some point you got to figure out what's working for you. What are the bits and pieces that work for you? And which are the parts that really don't work with you in terms of your style, your temperament, your emotional intelligence. And so when I say masterless, it doesn't mean that you're wandering aimlessly, you know just Willy nilly. It means that you're very mindful about who you are as a leader.
And there are no boundaries on you as with specific dogma specific leadership styles or disciplines, but there will be barriers at some point masterless means there are, there are no barriers. It was like was I went back to my martial arts days. I remember as a young martial artist back, I was a teenager. And as Bruce Lee was still alive, right?
And Bruce Lee was start off in a certain style of Kung Fu Wing Chun and then got in a fight one time and realized maybe it wasn't the end all and be all. And then he did his, his own journey, right? It was martial arts, but incorporating so many different styles until he became, he said, be like water, right?
Water has no form has no shape, et-cetera. And so that's kind of how I approach when I talk about masterless. That's what I mean, whatever boundaries are, the boundaries that you create for yourselves, but those boundaries expand and contract, depending on where you are in your leadership journey and, and kind of what your mindset about you, about you, what you are as a leader, as well as what you want to pretend to be for the people that you're leading,
SKOT WALDRON:
Be like water? That's awesome. I love that.
MIKE HOWARD:
<laughs>.
SKOT WALDRON:
I feel like I want to put a giant poster on my wall now that just says "be like water".
MIKE HOWARD:
"Be like water". Yeah. [inaudible 00:16:49]
SKOT WALDRON:
That's really smart when you think about it as, as what we are trying to accomplish in our leadership journey. And I love how you said, like be adaptable, right? Flow. Be pure, right? Like it's contract, it's adapt. It's it's all those things you could think about the idea of water being nourishing, but being like the essence life.
It's those principles, those ideas that really are going to going to help us thrive as leaders in what we do providing that, that essence of life to our organizations, to the people that we lead. So that that's cool. I love it, man. I love it. I'm going to steal it.
MIKE HOWARD:
Thank you.
SKOT WALDRON:
Thank you, Bruce Lee.
MIKE HOWARD:
Thank you, Mr. Lee.
SKOT WALDRON:
Thank you, Mike Howard. I appreciate it. Very smart. So is there a story that sticks out to you inside of your career path inside of your journey through leadership of either being impacted in a positively negative, positive, negative way with, with a leader and or is there a personal leadership story where you were on the leadership side, kind of mentoring somebody else through that journey? I'll let you pick.
MIKE HOWARD:
Sure. Well, I've told several stories in different interviews, but this one I haven't told you, so I'll do this one. This is when I was say within my last I was there at Microsoft, the chief security officer for 16 years. So let's say the last 10 years, and I was mentoring a fair amount of people, not just within our global security organizations, but people found out about me and just kind of said, Hey, I work in this group or I work in that group and what you meant to me. And I always do it because I enjoyed the process. And if I remember there were a couple of female young executives that I've been working with and mentoring, I think unfortunately they're running under a bit of a glass ceiling.
That's my opinion, you know, and they're very sharp, very capable. And I will work with them and you know, they get their performance reviews and performance would be fine, but they never get promoted. They never really got the leadership positions that they wanted. I could tell they were getting frustrated. And a lot of folks, if you're in an enterprise long enough, you may not be satisfied where you are, but you're kind of afraid of the unknown, right?
You know, CIA, Microsoft, Oakland Police Department are big entities and you may have great experiences there, or you may not, or you may be a mixture, but it's there, it provides the paycheck. It provides the health benefits. It's there. So the conversations I had with these two folks separately were, have you ever thought about leaving Microsoft now?
I love Microsoft and I enjoyed career there, but doesn't mean that everyone needs to, or forever if they're not getting what they want out of their careers. So, you know, it took a while to it wasn't me trying to convince them. I want them to think it through. And one of the things I remember, one of the books I read in my journey was by Ben Carson.
And when Ben Carson, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins, you know, and what he did was he worked on conjoined twins and he had this principle about, you know, if I wanted to go or no-go in terms of operate, you know, what's the worst thing that could happen if I do, if I operate, what's the best thing that could happen if I operate and conversely what's the worst and you know, blah, blah, blah. If I do nothing, if I do something.
So I asked them to just think about that in that paradigm. I just said, just think about it. You know, if I state at Microsoft, what's the, the customer worst thing that happened to me and I left Microsoft, what's the best things, worst things that can happen to me. And as I thought this too, they both came to the conclusion that we could probably leave.
And they, and people had, had been pinging them actually, you know, from other companies. And I, and I said, they would ask me, I said, go for it. Right. As much as you love it here, the company itself, if you're not getting what you want out of your career, you own your career. Right. And so they both eventually made the jump. And I know it was very hard for them. Right. Very, very hard it's it was like me leaving CIA and going to the private sector.
That was a huge leap for me because I was so wedded to CIA for 22 years, I knew how everything worked to this new thing called Microsoft. Well, to this day, they're, they're both doing very well. You know, one's a VP of that particular particular company, and they're both thriving, smaller environments, but they're being challenged.
And it was gratifying to see that that growth and that transformation and their ability to kind of think through a really big thing in their career. Right. I mean, this was huge for them. It's not like they had just been here one or two years. They probably invested at least eight years roughly in the company and that's well along the path. So that was a story that from a mentoring leadership position always was always gratifying for me that they would, at least they would heed council my council, but they, and ultimately they made up their own minds based on some lesson, I was able to give them about how to make decisions.
SKOT WALDRON:
And I think that that's part of what makes, makes a good leader, right? In this, in this sense, whether you considered yourself a leader in this role or not, but it was, it was you coaching, empowering, guiding, leading, and then leaving it up to them to make the decision, right?
Empowerment, calling them up to be better, whoever they thought that they could be.
MIKE HOWARD:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
And, and that's really kind of what this is about out. And, and then you, when you talk about this idea of Ronin Leadership, of being a masterless leader of never being complete, your journey's never done of continuously. Like that's, I love that small twist on, on this whole idea of leadership that people don't talk about very often.
And so I really appreciate that insight that you've, that you've brought to the table. So in, in conclusion here, let's, let's paint the big picture of how, how do we use this to unlock people? How do we use this principle of masterless leadership of Ronin Leadership to unlock the potential of people?
MIKE HOWARD:
Yeah. Great question. I think you use it not as a textbook, like a how to do book. This is a book about my journey, right? And I think the best way to unlock that potential of people is to, they read the book, they see the, the lens of leadership through Mike Howard. But what I want people to get when they read a book is like, what about my own journey, my own lens?
What is it? You know, what is it that I can do to make myself if I want to go to path to be a better leader. And even if you don't want to be a leader, like, even if that's you just, you, I want to be an individual contributor because you love, you love what you're doing. Right. We have investigators at global security, they want to be investigators for the rest of their lives.
They don't want to be in management leadership. That's fine. But no matter where you are, you could still look at it and say, how could I make myself better? What are the things I could do to extend myself? How can I put myself out there emotionally? Right. Because one of the things I, I think hopefully you've gleaned from the book is that I'm pretty transparent about mistakes I've made and where I have stepped in it.
Right? With all good intentions, maybe sometimes not good intentions on one, one thing I talked about, but at the end of the day, I want people to read this book and say, wow, you know, leaders have fears. Leaders have insecurities leaders, question themselves leaders sometimes don't know if they belong in that position, the Imposter Syndrome.
I want them to get all that and then understand that's normal. But it's also the ability to overcome those things and achieve what you want to achieve. That's doable, highly doable. Right? I don't want this as much as I like the movie 'Patton'. I don't want to be George Patton.
I don't want anybody to think that your whole life is us about telling people what to do in your stoic and you, you never make a mistake and you, you don't sweat. That's bull. Right? And so if they can just if to your, to your question, yes, I unlock the potential. Read the book, put yourself in your own scenarios. Don't be afraid of confronting who you are as a person, because once you do that and you're comfortable with yourself emotionally and intellectually, then you can certainly then start forging that path to that masterless Ronin Leadership.
SKOT WALDRON:
Brilliant, well said. Awesome. Where can people get ahold of it? How do, how do people get ahold of this book?
MIKE HOWARD:
You can go to Amazon.com obviously, and get it. Also go to MikeHowardAuthor.com, can order the book there. And then in a probably in a couple months, we'll be on audio as well, but we're release that on our website.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Awesome. You're going to do an audio version? Nice job.
MIKE HOWARD:
I am. I tried to get, I was thinking about Denzel or James Earl Jones, but I guess they weren't available. So I'll do it myself.
SKOT WALDRON:
You sound like Denzel, so you're good.
MIKE HOWARD:
<laughs>.
SKOT WALDRON:
Hey Mike, thanks for being on this show, man. It's been really good. Thanks for the insights. Good luck with the continued promotion of the book and helping, you know, change lives out there. I think that it's all about, I love this principle of masterless leadership and what that really brings to the table. So well done. Thanks for being on the show.
MIKE HOWARD:
Thanks brother. I appreciate the opportunity.
SKOT WALDRON:
So how do you feel now about this term Ronin Leadership? It's really interesting, right? When you think about the idea of Ronin Leadership and not, you know, making your own path, your own journey, we need to bring what we have our gifts, our talents, our strengths, our personalities to table. Okay. We need to remember what makes us, us, okay. Our nurture, our nature.
The thing, the choices that we make had that have created who we are, bring that with us on our leadership journey, take the things that we learn from others, the good and the bad, and incorporate that into our own style. Be your own person blaze your own path, right? "Be like water" as Bruce Lee says. And as we talked about in the interview, that's really, really cool. I love that phrase. Be like water. It's continuous learning. It's continuous improvement. It's the removal of ego.
Because as soon I love what Mike said about that, about ego, meaning that I feel that I do this the best. Therefore, you should also do this like me because I have done this the best way possible. And you should just do it like me.
Now. There's a difference between mentoring someone and apprenticing someone and saying, Hey, just do it the, this way, because I'm the best at it, right? Be a clone of me. And then the whole world will be happy. And that we know that that doesn't work. We know that that's not really possible or feasible in our lines of work.
So take that with you as well. I'm really grateful for Mike. I'm grateful for the things he shared. I'm grateful for his experiences. And I encourage you to go check out his book, check out those stories, check out the principle of Ronin Leadership and what that means. If you want to find out more about me, you can go to SkotWaldron.com and see those videos. See teaching, see a little bit more of what I do. Find me on YouTube. Like subscribe, share all those things here on YouTube. I really value the viewers that are on YouTube and the feedback that they give me. So please bring it. I need to get better. All right. So I really appreciate you being here again today. And I'll in another episode of Unlocked.
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