Jay Papasan:
I’m Jay Papasan. And this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
Let me ask you a question. Do some days feel like no matter how much you plan for your day, it still ends up being one giant fire drill? Maybe all of your strategic planning gets thrown out the window because you just can’t get your head above water. We know that we need to be working on the business instead of in it, but we just can’t seem to escape.
Maybe you’ve got a team even, but no matter how much you try to delegate, you try to share the load, things keep falling back onto your plate. If that sounds like you, you’re going to love this episode. Today, we’re talking to Captain Daryle Cardone. He led the USS Ronald Reagan.
Now, imagine this. You’re on an aircraft carrier at sea, constantly having to be battle ready, and you’re the one in charge. You’ve got 5,000 sailors that have been entrusted to you, many of them leading in their 20s, without much experience in life, much less in battle. You’ve got two nuclear power plants that you have to manage and a floating runway with multimillion dollar aircraft taking off 24 hours a day. That’s the environment that Captain Cardone had to lead in, and he led in a very unexpected way.
Now you’re thinking, a captain, this is going to be someone who shouts orders and uses his chopping hand. It’s exactly just the opposite with Captain Cardone. He’s got a very surprising background. He didn’t set out to join the military. He wanted to be a music major. He wanted to be a rock star. He focused on listening and that became a part of his leadership style. You’re going to love this episode. I learned a lot. Let’s dive in with Captain Cardone.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the persons expressing them and do not represent the views of the United States Department of Defense or Department of the Navy.
Daryle, welcome to the one thing podcast. I’m super excited after getting to know you through satellite phones and emails and a few other connections to finally actually be in the same room with you. It’s really exciting.
Daryle Cardone:
Yeah. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Jay Papasan:
I think what’s really fun is we talk about your decorated career. But you almost didn’t actually get to have that career. Take us back to how you ended up getting into the Navy and into this leadership track.
Daryle Cardone:
Yeah, I did not follow the stereotypical path into the Navy. While I was a teenager, I was very into baseball and music.
Jay Papasan:
You were a music major in college, were you?
Daryle Cardone:
I was.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. That’s not what I think about when I think about a commanding officer on an aircraft carrier.
Daryle Cardone:
I studied the guitar. So as far away from the hard math and science background that you would typically find. And the only two things I was ever excited about doing in life was either becoming the lead guitar player in a rock band or being in the FBI or the Secret Service, because I was really into problem solving. So if I couldn’t be Eddie Van Halen, then I wanted to be a special agent in the Secret Service or the FBI.
As I went along, I did reach the point where I decided I wasn’t going to continue down this music path. But when I went and talked to the secret service and FBI recruiters, they said, hey, we would love to have you but there was a government hiring freeze at the beginning of the Clinton administration. They said, not hiring anyone right now. And I said, like, bummer. What’s the next best thing I can do? They said, get a commission in the military. I said, which branch? They said, don’t care.
Jay Papasan:
Okay.
Daryle Cardone:
But when I first called the Navy recruiter, I said, good morning, my name is Daryle Cardone. I’m interested in applying for officer candidate school. They said, “Hey, that’s great, Daryle. What did you study in school?” I said, music. And he said, like, we don’t need any more band majors. And that conversation ended pretty quickly. And I thought, huh, like, that’s not what the brochure said.
And at the same time, I thought Philadelphia’s got to be a big office. I’m going to wait five minutes and call back. And sure enough, I did. And I got a little farther the second time, but I could tell that we’re going to veer in that same direction. And finally, I just said, hey, if I come down and crush your exam, are we still going to be talking about what my major was? I think that kind of stopped him in his path a little bit and said, okay, come on down. Let me take the test. And then did well enough that they offered me the opportunity to fly. And I said, what do you mean? He said, like off an aircraft carrier. I was like, heck yeah. And 29 years later, here I am.
Jay Papasan:
I love that story is like, you also talk about the persistence, like right there, like you didn’t take no for an answer, to get the phone, you called again. And then when that didn’t work out, it’s like, what if I just come in and prove to you? And so you become an aviator. You end up at Top Gun. You’re looking at your career. Why did you not stay in aviation? Like, what was the career path there?
Daryle Cardone:
Yeah. So I got to my first squadron and I became enthralled or passionate about communicating, right? The job of the aircraft, I flew the E2 Hawkeye, and our job was to detect, identify, and communicate. We would see things as far away from the carrier strike group as we could and then our job was to tell everybody else who was there, what they were doing, what we saw. It was find out there’s something there, figure out who it is and then tell everybody else.
Jay Papasan:
Is that those planes that like they have a big disc on top of them?
Daryle Cardone:
They do.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. It’s like I imagine there’s somebody out there listening, like they’re walking the dog and they’re like what is a Hawkeye, but I think we’ve all seen one, but I didn’t know that it’s a communications hub in the air.
Daryle Cardone:
Right. And it has the most exciting scenes in the first Top Gun movie where the air intercepts, where the F14 was coming after the mix and my responsibility was to describe this everchanging situation that was moving at twice the speed of sound. And I just became enthralled with that. And Top Gun to me became about the study of excellence.
And I had made the decision at that point that that was the level I wanted to perform at. And as time went on, I continued promoting. And then you reach the point in your career in naval aviation where you need to kind of choose a path as to the path to major command that you want to follow. And one of them was to be a strike warfare commander where you became the admiral’s eyes, ears, voice as to how you should employ all the various strike capabilities and power projection capabilities that come out of the carrier air wing, or you move into the aviation nuclear officer program.
And I didn’t think that path was an option for me being a liberal arts or fine arts major growing up when you look at my academic profile code, it was all zeros because I didn’t have calculus and physics in my transcript for anyone to assess how well I did at them. So I had to work at that point to make myself eligible. I had taken classes at night. As a matter of fact, I was doing calculus and physics problems flying over Pakistan and route to our missions in Afghanistan and had just put in the extra time after work to become eligible.
Jay Papasan:
So you put in the time to kind of fill in the blanks that we’re missing. Like it struck me if you’re wanting to command a ship, they still want you to know, like all the skills.
Daryle Cardone:
Sure.
Jay Papasan:
Like, even though if you’re commanding the ship, you’re going to have engineers. I don’t know the titles on a Navy boat, but like you would have people that would be in charge of engineering and all of those things. I don’t always think of leadership as having to be able to do a lot of those tasks. Is that kind of the requirement?
Daryle Cardone:
Very true. But in the Navy, they at least want you to be conversant.
Jay Papasan:
Okay.
Daryle Cardone:
Part of that was defense in depth, such that in the unlikely event, the number of folks working in engineering spaces hadn’t come to the right conclusion, as the commanding officer, you’re always ultimately responsible for what happens on your vessel.
Jay Papasan:
You could make an informed decision.
Daryle Cardone:
Absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
I love that. So like, I want to get now, when did you first take command of your own ship?
Daryle Cardone:
The first ship that I commanded was the USS Lewis B. Puller. And that was an expeditionary sea base that stayed in the Middle East all the time that had a rotational crew, much, much smaller scale than the aircraft carrier. We had about 150 sailors total, roughly 105-ish active-duty Navy sailors. And then the rest were civilian mariners attached to the military sea lift command.
Jay Papasan:
There’s a big jump between you say about 150 sailors on that. And the aircraft carrier, 5,000 sailors, 2 nuclear power plants. You’ve also got a mission to serve and protect. I can’t imagine the moving parts in an aircraft carrier more so than just about anything else. You’ve got multimillion dollar planes taking off and landing a moving runway. How in the world did you level up from 150 to 5000?
Daryle Cardone:
Number one was learning to ask better questions. Number two was really investing in models and systems.
Jay Papasan:
First, questions. Why are questions so important as a leader?
Daryle Cardone:
What questions did for me as a leader was to create clarity from me as the commanding officer of the ship, all the way down to the deck plates, and then to be able to build the structure in place to lead the team, let them choose the milestones along the way and create a cadence of accountability around that. And then to just be able to come in when it’s not quite the path that I would have chosen to just get curious about that.
Jay Papasan:
Ask more questions.
Daryle Cardone:
Because often, what I found was that their path was better than what I had in mind. Right? And I would have never, had I been the stereotypical military leader, just knife handing and telling everyone what to do, not only would we not have ended up in a good place, but there would have been a ton of disengagement that came along.
Jay Papasan:
Knife handling, is that like just —
Daryle Cardone:
Yes, you do this, you do that.
Jay Papasan:
Chopping. Yeah, I got it. I got it.
Daryle Cardone:
Which is what I think a lot of people think of when it comes to military leadership. And again, my background was a little different, coming from the music in fine arts community, I was more interested in the cultural piece. I was interested in the building of community. I was interested in acknowledging when someone was bringing forth their best art.
And I wanted to build a relationship-based culture where we were celebrating that uniqueness. And my job became much less about telling you precisely what to do than it was to recognize when you were bringing forth your uniqueness that was in alignment with where we were going.
Jay Papasan:
When you think about a leader, how do you define a leader? What does that look like?
Daryle Cardone:
Leadership to me is it’s a mixture of art and science. And to me, it’s about engineering success with and through others.
Jay Papasan:
Succeeding through others.
Daryle Cardone:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
So Gary would align with that almost perfectly. He’s taught me to think of leadership is teaching people how to think. Right? So they get what they want when they want it. Right? And it’s a longer version than that if you go look it up. But the idea is in those moments where he’s like, you teach people how to approach a problem, but when they come up with a different one, you can say, well, why did you approach it that way?
And in some ways, you both grow together. Sometimes the people that you’re leading will end up leading you back by showing you a better way to get there versus being completely rigid. But the goal was, is how do they behave when I’m not in the room? If they’ve been taught how to think about situations, which I can imagine the discipline training for military service, like you’ve got to instill the right behaviors so that they’re instinctive if they’re happening in a combat situation.
Daryle Cardone:
Absolutely. And certainly, on a ship that big, it became about, there was a lot of discussion about standards and expectations. There was a lot of trust that has to be the result of character and competence and care. The number one thing I think that contributed to our culture and performance was the idea that they don’t care what you know until they know that you care.
Jay Papasan: Yeah.
Daryle Cardone:
And one of the things that I think worked really well for us was just the combination of high standards with a very high level of care about the person themselves. And with different parts of the crew, you would find that people gravitated more towards one or the other, but at the end of the day, it was the meshing of both that I think really made the difference for us.
Jay Papasan:
When you first thought, okay, as a leader, I need to be asking more powerful questions. That’s what great coaches do, right? That’s how they get people to discover the right answers themselves. We’ll follow the answers that we agree on. You’ll also imagine follow orders, but when people also arrive at the same answer, they’re much more committed to it.
Daryle Cardone:
One hundred percent.
Jay Papasan:
How did you teach yourself as a leader to ask better questions?
Daryle Cardone:
I set the goal of when I discovered I was about to tell someone the answer, I would stop and ask a question.
Jay Papasan:
Okay. How did —
Daryle Cardone:
It probably sounds familiar to you.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, but I usually thought about asking the question after I told the answer. I was like, oh, should have done that. And it took me a long time to remember to just pause, hear what they said, and then ask a question, because I would imagine, and maybe your approach to leadership, maybe it’s because it’s been seasoned. Like, a lot of the leaders I meet are very impatient. So I think a lot of the need to tell versus ask is just slowing down just a little bit.
Daryle Cardone:
Yeah, I think a lot of it for me was going from the size of a unit that was the squadron I commanded was probably 165. The first ship I commanded, like I said, was 130 to 5,000. I mean, there’s a difference in scale there that necessitated —
Jay Papasan:
A different approach.
Daryle Cardone:
A different approach.
Jay Papasan:
So I had a similar experience where my team quadrupled in size. And what I discovered is everything that got me there broke all at the same time. And so if anybody’s listening to this and experiencing that, stepping back and looking for the right approach is always the right answer. If you don’t start with a big enough model, you will have to reinvent yourself or your business, which I think naturally gives us to a transition because you gave me two answers, going from the smaller command to this basically being the mayor of a Midsouth town that’s floating in all of the complexity. You also had to look to models and systems. And with that, let’s just take a quick pause. And then we’ll come back and explore models and systems and leadership.
All right, Daryle. So you learn to ask bigger questions and better questions so that you could level up your leadership. And then you said, I’ve got to adopt models and systems. What does that mean to you?
Daryle Cardone:
As I sat back and thought there were a couple of things that I think I needed to uniquely bring, one was clarity. And I learned some hard lessons on that through music school. And the other was structure. Right. And that was to help the team or guide the team, not necessarily tell them where the milestone was going to be or how long it was going to take for us to get there, but for us to be purposeful about how we got from point A to point B and then create the kind of cadence of accountability around that.
So where we could check in at a certain point and hopefully find the inevitable deviation that comes along and catch it quickly so we can kind of course correcting and say, this isn’t where we thought we wanted to be by this time is what we’re doing better or do we need to course correct?
And the clarity, you can’t wing it with a team of 5000. So, you need not only the clarity between yourself and the rest of the team, but what I also found was I needed the internal clarity of what right looked like before I even started talking. Right. And this was an example for me of where my music school background really helped in a way that I wouldn’t have expected. There was a day in music school where I had been out with my band the night before —
Jay Papasan:
Playing Van Halen covers.
Daryle Cardone:
You name it, Van Halen, Mr. Big, Extreme, all of them, and came in the next day, wildly unprepared for class. Out of the blue, I get chosen to come up to the front of the room in conducting class and start to lead the team through this piece of music. And I open the score and the minute I start waving my arms, it’s apparent. I don’t have a picture in my head of what this ought to sound like.
You need to know when they are performing superbly, you need to be able to recognize that immediately and celebrate that or the next time it comes around, you’re going to get a little bit less and a little bit less. And before you know it, that starts to look like disengagement and that says, if I’m bringing forth my best art and Jay and Daryle don’t recognize that, then what am I doing that for? But when you do, right, and like the number of times I would look down from the bridge and see our sailors, we have very standard procedures. They’re standardized fleet wide and for good reason, right? Any pilot from any other ship could come land on the Ronald Reagan, see the hand signals from our flight deck crew and know exactly what we expected of each other. And that’s what you would want.
But the number of times I would look down from the bridge and see somebody do a hand signal with just a little bit of flair and style, and I always made a point when they came off the flight deck to go, hey, I noticed what you did today and like fist bump them. And like to that 18 or 19 year old sailor, it was like the reinforcement of not only am I doing this really well, but I’m doing it with just a little bit of uniqueness. That little moment between us were the ways that I really strove to build that relationship-based culture that celebrated that uniqueness.
Jay Papasan:
When I think about the fact that you had hundreds and hundreds, maybe even over a thousand leaders, a lot of them are young leaders too, right?
Daryle Cardone:
Very young.
Jay Paopsan:
Did you have a model for developing them or was it just what you were saying earlier, like catch them being good.
Daryle Cardone:
That was the big thing was the culture. I always tried to be mindful that when you think of whatever interaction I may have with that junior sailor could be the only one we have in the entire two years that I’m there, depending on which role they filled. And I wanted that to be a positive, inspiring experience.
So one of the things I worked on a lot was just mindfulness and presence that when I was there and interacting with them, I’m not concerned about what happened five minutes ago. I’m not anxious or worried about whatever’s going to happen 5 or 10 minutes from now. It was that when they saw that I was engaged, concerned with what was on their mind, whatever the problem was, we were talking about that that was what was the one thing to me at the moment
Jay Papasan:
To catch them being good, I learned that from, I think it was one of the early US women’s national team coaches. That was his whole motto. Like, if you want to improve behavior, it’s not correcting the bad behavior like you have to have standards but reinforcing the good again and again and again and having the presence of mind to see it versus taking it for granted. And I think a lot of leaders’ mistake, like that’s my standard. And so they don’t reward or acknowledge that people are actually hitting it. It’s great to see that person who did above and beyond, but they spend a lot of time focusing on their energy on those that are hitting it below.
Daryle Cardone:
A really important part of my role was to provide feedback, not criticism. And to me, that meant it was usually a small alteration of the focal point, right, that would say, Jay, let’s try this again. This time, what I’d like you to focus on is this moment of handoff right here between what I’m doing, and I’m going to hand that off as smoothly as I can to you. And this is the nuance I want you to focus on while we try this this time. And there was none of this, there was no, you screwed that up, right, like try and do this correct next time.
And what I found again, right, was not whoever that sailor was, they were trying to do, they were doing their best work, trying to most faithfully execute what they thought I said. Often, I would find that they just need a little bit better guidance from me. And that when I provided that slightly different focal point, that that really made the difference,
Jay Papasan:
But just role modeling that language, like what I’m hearing is instead of using the language of problem, you’re using the language of opportunity. Right? So you’re kind of acknowledging, like, got all these things right but let’s focus on this piece and do it this way. And you’re helping them just take sometimes that — I think someone said when you’re 95 percent done, it’s like, great, you’re 40 percent of the way there because those last pieces require the most effort to get over the finish line because those last percentage points require just to be really, really, really good at something. Those last percentage points count a lot.
Daryle Cardone:
And that to me, it’s an opportunity, but it is a cultural opportunity because think about the next moment where we reach the same point in the evolution, and I turn and look over at you and you look at me to see if I’m noticing —
Jay Papasan:
You got it.
Daryle Cardone:
That you’re doing what you said. And I look at you and go, yes, that. And from then on, that moment could have gone a multitude of different ways. And at the end of the day, not only did our team get better, but we got closer through the moment. And you see that I noticed that you were doing what I said.
Jay Papasan:
Love it. I think all of us do, we want to be seen for when we’re doing our best work and acknowledged for it. It goes a long way as an employee, as anybody on the team.
Daryle Cardone:
Yes, the leadership philosophy that I brought was listen, learn and lead. And really it was listen intently, learn continuously and lead courageously. Listening starts from a place of humility that says whether you’ve been in this organization for 40 years or 40 minutes, there’s something I can learn from you. It tells you what’s actually happening at the deck plate level of your organization. It allows you to hear what’s being said or sometimes more importantly, what’s not being said. And then being able to process all of that is where the learning piece comes in, being intentional about having a reading and thinking reflection time in your calendar and just make sure I had those, the big rocks in place because once I had first contact with the day, it was game on.
Jay Papasan:
Listen, learn, lead. Of those three, which was the most challenging for you and why?
Daryle Cardone:
The one I’ve tried to be most intentional about is the listening because it is the foundation of what you learn and how you lead that follows that. And I do think that’s one place that my background gave me a lot of formal training. At the same time, being mindful of the fact that as you scale up in the size of the organization and the number of responsibilities that you have on your plate that did require the most intentionality. Because if you miss that and you don’t have the foundation in there, what you learn may not be what was intended to be communicated to you. And therefore, the way you step off and lead may be in, in totally the wrong direction. So it was the one that I put the most intentional effort into.
Jay Papasan:
And it’s not just listening. Like I think when you were talking about when you’re looking from the bridge and you’re saying that whatever that guy’s job is doing the hand signals, and you see them doing it the right way.
Daryle Cardone:
It’s all senses.
Jay Papasan:
Yes.
Daryle Cardone:
It is all — it was really about building a high level of sensory awareness that what I was seeing, does that match what I’m being told? Is the vibe I feel when I come into the room, does that feel right? The tone that we take when we’re doing our lessons learned or debriefing after the mission, right, is it —
Jay Papasan:
People’s body language, all of it adds up.
Daryle Cardone:
Is the team focused on the learning that happened or is the team focused on what happened and whose fault it was? So all of that was a multisensory awareness thing that I think when you get that piece right, the others fall into place. When you get that piece wrong, you’re making a tough job all the more hard.
Jay Papasan:
So I think having a correct perspective on the situation. Have you listened? Have you seen, right? Are you really knowing that where you are allows you to make a plan? And that’s just huge, right? I can’t get from point A to point B. If I really don’t know where point A is, I’m lying to myself.
I absolutely love Daryle’s framework, listen, learn and lead. Listen, learn and lead. Listen to this. Listen, learn and lead. It’s so simple. You can keep it in your head at all times. And what it really is, is a stop sign. I think as leaders, when people present a challenge for us, a problem, our instinct is to go in and tell, we want to tell them what to do. We want to assume that we see everything instead of taking an extra step, being a little bit more patient and learning, listening and learning about the real situation on the ground.
Now, obviously on an aircraft carrier, having an honest perspective on what’s happening is really important. Like, lives are at stake. Many lives are at stake, so I know that he came from this, not just from a leadership style, but because from a deep sense of importance. We know this in our coaching. If you don’t have an accurate perspective on where you are, you can’t make good decisions. I say it all the time. My coaches have often told me, Jay, you can’t read the label from inside the box.
So here’s the thing. If you don’t have someone to turn to and say, what’s your thought, ask the person in front of you. Listen to their answer, consider it. Like listening means you’re actually internalizing what they’re telling you. Does this new information change your opinion? Now, you can lead forward. You’ve got the information on the ground from the person who’s living it.
And one of the great things about this is that everything may be right. The thing that you were going to tell them to do might be right, but you might also get an opportunity to lead, not just in saying what to do, but in telling them how to think about it. Maybe everything is right, but their perspective is wrong, and you can give them that perspective. So I just love everything about this.
The number one thing here, the challenge that you’re going to face is, are you willing to stop and ask that question so that you can listen and learn before you lead? It’s a simple habit that you can introduce into your leadership style to ask one more question, to just wait one minute longer before you act.
And I know how it is. As leaders, we’re really impatient. We want to move forward. Yeah, I get it. But that extra second, it’s not going to cost you anything. Just one little beat for you to get a little bit clearer. Anyway, listen, learn and lead. It’s worth writing down. It’s worth remembering as a leader. It’s worth remembering if you’re just leading yourself.
Now, next up, we’re going to talk about why Daryle uses a monthly planner. Here he is running this bajillion dollar aircraft carrier with all kinds of technology we probably don’t even have access to, but it uses a month at a glance planner. Why is that? We’re about to find out.
You also shared with me before, like very unusual in this world, you use like a monthly planner.
Daryle Cardone:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
What does that do for you? Like why that model of time? I know we have our biases. Why that model of time.
Daryle Cardone:
Perspective.
Jay Papasan:
Perspective
Daryle Cardone:
With a team that large, and I had probably 20 direct reports, I could sit and at a glance see how much time I was investing in each of those 20 different areas. And they’re not all the same size. Some of our departments were 600 people. Some of them were six. So when I looked, it wasn’t, am I spending equal time with all 20? All that time is not created equal, but I could add a glance, get the perspective from an elevated vantage point to say, do I have this right?
Our one thing was battle-readiness. Right. Like by Navy regulations, the commanding officer shall maintain the command in a state of maximum effectiveness for war. Section 0826 —
Jay papasan:
Wow. That’s the non- negotiable portion of leadership for you.
Daryle Cardone:
Yes. Title 10 of the United States Code lays out the exemplary conduct of the commanding officer that focuses us very squarely on the safety, wellbeing and the efficiency of our command. With that paper planner, I could look and see at a moment’s glance what’s working and what needs work.
Jay Papasan:
I was so resistant. Gary’s always kind of preached that. It’s like, if you want to do big things, you need a big view of time. And it took me years to finally kind of see the difference. Like, if you look at your phone calendar, I don’t even see a full day, right? Like I see a block of my day and most people are focused on the nine to five. But like, how does your five o’clock impact the fact that you have date night with your wife that night? Maybe you want to rearrange things so that you’re in a better mindset when you go spend it. Like, it gives you a bigger perspective on how different time commitments impact each other.
Daryle Cardone:
That also gave me the perspective of how am I integrating my personal life. For me, it was to give every hour a job. Whether that job was moving the needle on our battle readiness or having a date night with Kate. Sometimes it’s watching my favorite TV show or hanging out with my dog or playing the guitar. But again, zooming out, looking at that calendar from an elevated perspective, it was to make sure that I was architecting what was happening and not just reacting to the day.
So what I hit on all the time with our team was just think purposely about the life that you want to create, and then you’ve got to be able to open your calendar and put your finger down on the point in the day or the week where you’re making that happen.
Jay Papasan:
Just to kind of recap, kind of like you talked about the importance of clarity of ultimately where you’re going and then clarity around the job for this hour that’s in service of that, lots of lessons.
Daryle, thank you for pouring into us and to our listeners. Thank you for your service. And I love the way you’re leading yourself and your leading your team.
Daryle Cardone:
It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Jay Papasan:
Thank you.
Well, that’s a wrap for this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Daryle Cardone and can step forward into your life with a little bit more clarity about leading yourself and others. I want to leave you with a challenge this week. The next time someone ask you a question, instead of giving them the answer, take an extra second and ask a clarifying question. Take that extra step to get even clearer about what they’re looking for and give them a chance to find the answer themselves.
Over the years, what we’ve seen with The ONE Thing is a lot of people ask the right question, and they even get the right answer, but they don’t trust it. And as leaders, we’re taking that opportunity for them to lead themselves away. If you’re a parent, you don’t want to do this for your children. You want to ask them, well, what else have you tried? How did that go? What else could you do? Why did you do it that way? Ask extra questions to lead them without leading them by the nose to find their own answers. It gives them agency. It gives them power. And more importantly, for you, it grows them as leaders. That means that you have to do less leading.
So that’s your challenge for the week. I talked about it. I gushed over Daryle’s listen, learn and lead framework. And this first step to implementing it, the first domino to implementing it is instead of giving the answer, ask another question and see if they can’t find their own. So that’s your challenge for the week.
I’d love to hear how it goes on Instagram and in our post on social, comment and tell us, did it make a difference for you? We’d love to find out.
All right. You don’t want to miss next week when we talk with Kim Zuroff. It’s a topic we see a lot in the realm of high achievers. How do we break the serial cycle of achievement where no goal is good enough? As soon as you cross the finish line, you have to race to another goal. How do we get past that? We’ll explore it next week. It’s an important episode. Please don’t miss it.
