How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

Welcome to the How Leaders Think podcast,

a show that transforms you by renewing your mind. I am

your host Kenny Lang, and with me today is Benj

Miller. Authenticity, breaking the rules and creating

clarity are at the core of Benj Miller's life and

work. In his 18 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has founded ten

businesses and is driven by the desire to assist small businesses in

making the greatest possible impact on the communities

they serve. He now dedicates his time to helping other business

owners, catalyze growth through the system and soul framework, and find

game changing breakthroughs in the process. Welcome to

the show, Binge. Thanks. I'm excited. I'm energized

even by the title of the show.

Sweet. Yeah, I want it to feel like everybody's drinking

a Bang Energy drink just upon hearing

it. So hopefully Creatine is entering everyone's system

right now. Coq Ten, I don't know what that is, but it's on the can,

so hopefully some chemist can email

me and let me know what's going on there.

So tell me and our listener

listeners, is the hope plural? But what has been

on your mind lately? Well,

the last few minutes I was thinking about this podcast and the

title of is it What Leaders Think or How Leaders Think?

How leaders how leaders think So that really

got me thinking about what do I think about how leaders think?

And it was a fun little exercise in my mind because I

do think there are some things that if I think about the leaders

who I admire and who have had the greatest impact in my life,

how do they think differently than average Joe out

there? And that was a fun exercise for me to process

through. Interesting. So whether

it's you or other growth minded individuals,

when they're thinking about how all of these leaders think that

they're following on social media podcasts,

reading the books, obviously there's the people who have tons of media

exposure, like a Gary Vee, and then there's other people have regional

exposure, but you usually have several leaders that you're following. If you're

trying to grow as you were thinking through that exercise,

what do you think is the prevailing wisdom

or the common way people are thinking about

leaders as they're looking up to them or trying to model their

own success after what they're seeing others do?

Well, I think the danger is that the spotlight goes

to the charismatic and the charismatic

have a lot to say, but it's not necessarily the

most profound. And so what we do is we hear these sound

bites and we take them and they become

the foremost thought in our mind and all we're doing is conforming

to the thoughts of other leaders

that are out there instead of thinking about how we

think and becoming a leader ourselves. So even if we're

leading an organization, if we're too busy listening to

cultural, societal influences, then we miss the opportunity

to actually change the game.

That's really interesting. So you think people have

mimicked too much what maybe

the loudest voices of our current time are,

as opposed to listening and trying to find their own? Yeah,

and I'm guilty of this as well. I'll give you an

example. You threw out Gary Vee, and I have referenced

Gary Vee a lot of times when he said probably a

decade ago that every company needs to learn how to become a

media company. And he

was not wrong, but he also wasn't right.

A lot of my clients are very large,

very successful, and they wouldn't know the first thing about

putting out a piece of media. Well, they're in an industry that doesn't need

that. So not every company needs to become a media company.

Something more true that I'm experiencing and wondering

if there is a shift coming like media was

ten years ago. I think right now every company needs to become a

talent management company. How do we recruit

and retain top talent?

Because that is going to be the differentiator

in the next decade. I can definitely see

that. And obviously as someone who's a system and sole coach

and connected with you professionally,

a lot of our conversations have brought in talent management

acquisition, training, development. But how

does that thought about what the next decade is going to

look like? How does that connect with leaders

finding their own voice and figuring out how

they think, or at least not just trying to be copycats

of other people they perceive as more successful than themselves?

Well, I think in what I was

pondering before we got on here about the title

of your podcast, what are

the attributes, not necessarily what are they thinking, but what are the attributes

that were consistent across those leaders that

I admire? And I think it's two things. I think

that leaders live with a sense of possibility.

The first one is possibility. And some of that you add some

elements of curiosity in that. But the possibility is

what can we have tomorrow that we don't have today?

And some of that is how we would typically talk about or think about

a vision for our company or the vision of the impact

that our organization can have in the future.

The second part of that though, is the possibility that they see in

the people that they work with. And so when you see

somebody and you see what

their potential is above, where they see it, your ability

to elevate them, speak into them,

to create the vision for them that they might not even

be able to see themselves. I think when we think about leaders,

leaders, we do change the way we

think, which happens in vocabulary.

This is an interesting thing we think in vocabulary. So if we

can change our vocabulary, we can change our thinking. If we change our thinking,

we can change our outcomes. So the possibility

if we're thinking about possibility, then we're not thinking about

the status quo. We're also not thinking about regret. Right?

So there's a bunch of unwanted baggage that we can get rid of just

by being focused on possibility. And so

what can we create? What can we do? What could be different? What could

be better, more impactful tomorrow than it is today? And by tomorrow,

tomorrow might be ten years from now. It's hard to make significant

impact in a minute. But their

tomorrow isn't necessarily a timeline.

It is in the future. In the tomorrow, we can do

something different, and you can be something different, and I can be something different.

So it's a world full of possibility that

they see and they bring out the best in other people. The second thing

that I landed on was gratitude.

There are very few leaders that walk around bitter.

Those tend to be not people that we want to follow.

And I don't know if there's correlation or causation

there, but when we think about leaders,

we think about this interesting mix of both possibility for

what could be and gratitude for what is.

So Dan Sullivan, Dr. Benjamin Hardy wrote the book

The Gap in the Gain. Right. We can talk about the gap between

where I am and where I wish I was, or we can talk about the

gain between where I am and where I was yesterday

or a year ago. And I think that if we live in the gain,

then we're living in the gratitude. So it's not about the

gap of possibility. The gap is

just an opportunity for the future to fill that possibility.

Right. But we want to internally, emotionally live

with the gratitude. So when I think about how leaders think, I think I

landed on those two things, possibility and gratitude and the interesting combination

of the two of those, because it's really easy to live with a world of

possibility and be frustrated that it's not here today.

Got you. Would you say it's also possible to have so

much gratitude for how far you've come or where you

are today or the present moment that you've

sort of ceased dreaming, to progress beyond where you're at?

Absolutely. So it's a very interesting combination of

those two elements.

And I would agree about the if you got a grumpy,

ungrateful person, most often

they're probably not in a high leadership position,

you know, maybe through sheer force of, like, skill or

something like that. They've they've risen to some rank, but maybe not as

high as they could be. What is

the thinking of the people who aren't experiencing

that gratitude, experiencing possibility,

specifically if they're already in some sort of leadership

position? Right, because there are a lot

of people middle, lower management or something like that, or maybe very

small business, because the average small business has

less than four or five employees.

So you can still get away with being a grumpy gus,

but how are they thinking and how does

that thinking change how they are leading those

people? Because if I look on somebody and I

see possibility in them, I'm going to lead them very differently

than if I don't I guess what is the absence of possibility?

Because it could be nothing but it could be

something else, maybe more self centered or where's

that person's mind? Interesting. So I think

first of all, to clarify, when I talk about leaders,

my definition tends to be somebody that I would follow.

So it's not necessarily a rank or a position within the

organization. It's just like if we're talking about good leaders, let's talk about people

that we'd be okay following, right? And that's a different bar. So that's a

good question. If you're living without possibility.

I don't know if this is where your mind is. But what I see in

our society right now is that the enemy is

fear. And we are constantly at battle with

fear and anxiety because

the other side of possibility is what if this, what if

that. You can say what if and raise your voice or you can say what

if and lower your voice, right. And they're two different what if.

And we can either be scared to death and play out of fear or

we can be super curious and play out of wonder.

Got you. What do you say to the person who maybe

they've been experiencing that fear. There's been a lot of

I'm not even going to say necessarily cause, but there's been a lot of opportunity

over our last two to three years to lead and live out

of fear. That person acknowledges that.

What do you tell that person that says, no,

I am just mitigating risk. That's what I'm doing.

I am the careful leader. And certainly we don't want careless thoughtless,

reckless leaders because that's another ditch to fall

into. But what do you say to the person that they're living

out of fear? Maybe they're not entrenched but they don't know how to step

out of that because it feels like, well, it's gotten me this far.

This has kept me and my people safe.

And so I've capped the downside. But at the same time

they've significantly capped their upside. What do

you say to that leader? Well, I think that if

they're being that strategic with it, that we're in a

mode right now where it's more about limiting the

risk than it is about raising the ceiling.

There are appropriate seasons for that. If we're

talking about as a demeanor, as a human,

they live in that kind of fear reactive.

There's always going to be COVID. There's always going to be

a recession. There's always going to be something that can

drive us. And so how do we become, you and

I, we use the language inwardly sound from our model. How can

we be so inwardly sound that even when all these

things are happening, we can move

forward on solid ground so that we know

not necessarily what the future brings, but we're

not acting out of fear. How do

we go on the offensive? I was in a

session with a client last week, and the CEO

called out the room because they were entering

a little bit of this fear space about the upcoming

recession, the markets, blah, blah, blah. And he said,

look, guys, I heard this analogy from racing. They said it's

really hard to pass a car in the sun,

but it's really easy to pass ten in the rain.

And so when the world gets scared,

it also provides a great opportunity for those that

get smart and get offensive.

Yeah, that's where you see a lot of that in real estate. When things

turn down and people who are being strategic and

flush with cash, they go in and they buy up a lot of real estate.

Every market levels out, and suddenly they're at a new level of

wealth. Well, yes, absolutely.

Also,

there's two types of people that go into real estate,

and half of them are people who have been successful in business

and don't know what to do with their money. So it's where good

entrepreneurs go out to pasture, right.

And so they're savvy enough to recognize the downturn as

an opportunity. And a lot of that comes out from their entrepreneurial

spirit. The other half of the market

in real estate is the people that are there

because it's a fixed asset with less risk.

Right. And so there are more risk,

fear based, prone thinking, type,

savvy investors, maybe visionaries rarely

got you. So in getting back

to I like this intersection of gratitude and

possibility, as you've

seen, that in the leaders that you feel are

worth following, and maybe just even in some reflection of

yourself. Being that we're coming to the end of the year, a lot of people

get reflective.

How are those things cultivated? Because I am inclined to

believe that those possibility maybe,

but I don't know necessarily that gratitude is a natural state for most

people, that those things feel like disciplines to

be cultivated in yourself to where they are second

nature, like tying your shoe, or at least you have some safeguards for yourself.

I think you answered your own question. It's a muscle. Right.

And so I don't accept the people that say,

well, I'm not naturally curious. I'm not naturally grateful.

Okay, who is? Right?

It absolutely takes work to grow the muscle.

And gratitude. There's a

million things written out there about gratitude. Take a minute

before your head hits the pillow and write down three things you're grateful for.

Right? You can do that.

That's the micro on the macro. We just did this as

an organization this morning altogether,

we talked about what we've created this

year as we're coming to the end of 2022.

It's like to pause and go, oh, my gosh,

these 20 things didn't exist at the

beginning of the year, and now they do. And here's the impact from those.

That was super encouraging,

energizing conversation, but it was a practice.

It took time. It took somebody saying, hey, let's stop and make the list.

Let's stop and be grateful. Let's stop and say thank

you to each other and the people that made that happen.

It's just intentionality. And the same thing is true

with this world of possibility. It is the discipline

of how we think and when are we going to take time,

turn off all the noise and sit and say,

what if, what could we do? What are we trying to do?

That's a question that most people don't stop. What are we actually

trying to do here? As individuals or

maybe in the business setting, like as a company?

Yes.

In your years of coaching and leading different organizations,

how do you bake that into say, what are we trying

to do? Because I imagine that's very orienting for

gratitude and impossibility,

because then there's some finite whether assets like

you and your team were looking at this morning and saying, these things didn't exist

at the beginning of the year. We created something from nothing. And that's awesome.

We celebrate that. It could also just be internal progress that

maybe you've made this year some discipline or practice you wanted to

produce for yourself. So how

do people get that orientation around

where they are and what they're trying to do?

Because that feels very central to those two

axes of gratitude and possibility.

Yeah, well, I thought about bringing up a third attribute and I decided

not to. But you're leading me into it. You're welcome.

And that's the attribute of reality.

Great leaders have the ability to call out

reality and let the room deal with it.

So often we get in rooms and we talk about

problems or ideas or what could be better, but nobody's

willing to call out the reality. Kenny, you said you were going to do

this and you didn't do it. That's why we're here right now.

That's the reality of why we're in this situation. And so if

we call out reality as is, there's no judgment on

it. I didn't say that with judgment.

I'm making something up, obviously, that you did or didn't do,

but that's not said with judgment or condemnation.

It's just reality. This is our collective

reality or this is my reality. If we're

just talking about as an individual, if you look at your

life right now, what is the reality? I have this much debt,

these are my assets, these are my ambitions. How clear can

we get about the reality?

And once we have reality, then we

can lean into both possibility and gratitude.

That's excellent. So what for the

leader that's listening,

maybe they want to say, hey, next year I'm really going to work on cultivating

these two things within myself.

But I could also imagine and maybe this is

me just selfishly getting some advice because I think that's what a

lot of people start podcasts for, so that they can get free advice and counseling

session. Me too. But if

that leader is thinking about their team, because I've also witnessed

and have felt guilty of this is I've cultivated things

to myself. I've gone out and I've listened to podcasts, I've read books,

I'm listening to thinkers that are smarter than me

further along the path. And I'm great

at building those things in myself, but not

necessarily helping those that I'm planted around and

charged with leading. And maybe in a family

sense loving cultivating it within them.

If, say, a leader is growing in that, what advice do you give them to

cultivate that in their team? Because obviously it has to start

with the leader, right? Most things, good and bad start there,

but they're not always great at turning around and helping

that next group of people direct reports cultivate.

Yeah. So I think what's really interesting about both

possibility and gratitude is that because

it's a muscle, we can work, we can actually help other people work the muscle

without even knowing that they're working out. So the family

around the dinner table saying, hey, what's one thing you're grateful

for today? What's one thing you're thankful for today?

And asking a question that opens the mind to

wonder and possibility. If you had 24

hours and had to spend $50,000,

what would you do? Okay, well,

now you kind of know what their ambition might

be or their bucket list or their dreams. Right?

So helping people get into both of those states

of mind almost self subconsciously,

I don't know if it will ever lead to their own transformation on their

own. But there are ways that we as leaders can

impact people. And I think if we

think about leading,

kind of like farming, we can plant some stuff, we can water

some stuff, and we can take good care of the soil, but you can't really

control what grows.

But if you do that enough as

a leader, then at some point in your life,

you look back and you see all this fruit that's grown off these trees and

you're like, man, that's pretty cool. And I'm not actually sure which

time I watered it that grew that or which

time I toiled the soil,

but man, that orchard is

starting to look really nice. So I

don't think we can all those inputs

that you mentioned, like the inputs that you take that's information,

I think transformation comes when we start to act it out.

And so if we can almost bypass and hijack

their brain to help them start acting out these questions and

that's the fun thing, is they're both question based to unlock

them. Right. Possibility. What if grateful, what for?

What are you thankful for? That's the most simple way to unlock gratitude.

And so both of these we can start to help people transform their thinking,

maybe even their vocabulary, and therefore their futures.

Well, it's almost as if I sent you questions ahead of time,

because I feel like you just transitioned right into my last question,

which is, what is that first step? Because I'm

in a complete agreement with you that information

without application doesn't equal transformation. You need

both. Yeah. If someone wanted

to start the ball rolling, let's just say next 24 hours,

what's one first step, one easy step they could

take to start building that in and cultivating

gratitude and possibility for themselves and others?

Yeah, the first thing is,

I'll say what people need to stop doing.

Because it's really easy to say, well, take a minute and journal the thing,

your dreams and your things you're grateful for. So that's like the obvious

stuff, which really just takes some intentionality. And if you have

half a brain, you can figure out how to do that. You just have to

decide that it's important. But what you

need to stop doing is equally important. So we

have become unaware of the thousands and thousands

of messages that get into our brain every day from our

social feeds, our news feeds. I know people that constantly have

a television on in their house.

There's always input, but the input is

based on the attention economy, and to do that, they use

fear. So we're constantly

feeding fear and FOMO into our own brains.

And that's the space that we need to empty in

order to open it up to the realm of possibility.

So even more so than what

we do intentionally to get to possibility and gratitude,

we need to make sure that we're creating the space in our own being to

allow those to start to grow. So turning off the noise,

turning off the FOMO, the fear, the news,

the articles, all of those things so that you can get some space

to start to grow the realm of possibility

and gratitude. Because that will never naturally happen if you're

inundating yourself with what the world has to say.

I completely agree. And at

the risk of answering my own question, I'm about to ask,

but we started the conversation talking about

how leaders sometimes, especially maybe younger leaders,

newer leaders, I think what was it our

friend Jonathan Reynolds at Titus Talent said? The first time most people

become managers or have a position of authority

is probably in their early mid thirty s. And the first time

that they receive training for it is in their early mid 40s.

Yeah. In order to

find their own voice as a leader

and not just copy what somebody's doing, but maybe copy

more how they're thinking, sort of the thesis

of the podcast is that maybe one

of the most impactful things that that person can do

is just shut that off because they can't hear

their own voice. Well,

that's a very practical element to the

idea that we talked about just briefly of becoming inwardly sound,

right? So we all have lots of voices

in our own head and then we get these voices from

the world speaking into us and it's a lot to process.

And so if we can start to eliminate as many of those voices as

possible, then we get to amplify

the few that are left and those are the ones that are

going to lead us to the places we want to go.

Excellent. Well, Bench, thank you so much for coming on.

My hope is that we'll have new topics in the new year and

you can come back and grace us with your presence and your beard.

Since I've trimmed mine down. We need the bearded presence. Are we on

video? Thank you so much. Are we on video? We are on video. Well then

it could be the Blue Hoodie podcast. That just another name

possibility for you. It'll be like

David Crowder band for the longest time had dual titles

for all of their albums. Oh really? Like a

collision or three plus four equals seven. So they had a bunch of

dual titles. So maybe that could be the secret underground

title of this podcast and only insiders will know that.

That's great. Blue hoodies and beards.

Maybe that's just our podcast. Maybe we have our own podcast.

There we go. I'm working on a network, man.

I've already got another one out there. Maybe I'm

just going to be the podcast guy. Maybe I should just ask questions and coach

sort of through the majesty of podcasts,

man. Asking great questions and coaching are pretty much the same

thing, right? Awesome. Well, thank you

so much for coming and for everybody listening.

Actually, my last question is bench, if people

want to know more about how you are thinking

about things, where should they reach out to

you? Where can they find more about you? Where would you point

them? Well, Kenny, actually if

you really want to know what I'm thinking about, I started a daily.

Yes, daily. That sounds insane, but daily email newsletter.

You can sign up for it, the two six one.

But here's the idea. They're super short and

all these things are bouncing around in the heads of leaders anyway,

or should be. So it's the things that we know

we should do or know we should remember. I just organized them

one per work day through the calendar year.

261 work days. So you don't

have to have them bouncing around in your head and I will

send them to you in your inbox.

Or at least the automation will send them because I doubt

you're sitting there clicking. Although they see the tips. No,

every single one. You're just every subscriber gets a personal email

from me every day. You heard it here first,

folks. It is excellent. I like

it. I've sent it out to a bunch of friends and

clients and everybody has had some

positive things to say, so I encourage you go sign up at the two six

one and that's the numbers two six

one. Not like spelled out wordstyle.com and

go check it out. Binge is also on LinkedIn and posts.

A lot of great thoughts there that are not just recycled from

the two six one, like a lot of people would be tempted to do.

So good on you for creativity. Be until

next time. I hope that your thinking has been transformed

and we will see you on the next episode.