How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

Welcome to the How Leaders Think podcast, a show that transforms

how you think by renewing your mind and bringing you conversations from leaders

who are doing it differently. Today I have with me

Jonathan D. Reynolds. And the D

is for extra daring, although he can correct me on that later.

But he is the CEO of Titus Talent Strategies.

As the CEO, he is a visionary entrepreneur and a game changer.

He's energized by inspiring company leaders and equipping them with

unique approaches to better understand their people,

foster organizational alignment and create optimum performance

among their team members. His fun stories and British accent

will draw you in as you're about to hear, while his cutting edge ideas

and practical strategies will leave you empowered to implement change.

He is the best selling author of Right Seats, Right People a Leader's Guide to

Hiring and Developing Top Talent. I highly recommend it.

And currently leads a unique team of talent consultants

that has been on the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing companies for four years

in a row. That's no small feat. Jonathan,

welcome to the show.

You Kenny. It's good to be here and thanks for

everyone who's listening. It's a privilege to

be here with you today. Absolutely. So Jonathan, tell me

what has been on your mind lately?

Oh, that's a dangerous question. It is. It's funny,

you just said we are renewing our minds. You were saying? I was thinking

as you said that word renew, like kind of remeaning

to do it again, to make it new again. We get so much

edge, trash flutter that comes our way every single day.

Whether it be frustration because your dreams

aren't reality where you thought they would be, or it's comparison

to other people or the criticism of the other people.

This week I found myself waking up a couple of times,

weird fears that I'd never had before. I'm like, jeez, someone going to

help to stab me in the back. Where the heck is that coming

from? Seriously. There was no valid

reason for me to wake up thinking that and zero

facts for it. There was no story behind it even.

It was just like, where did that come from? And it just

kind of completely messed up my head for a split second. And I'm like,

I got to renew my mind. I got to make it new again because

that is trash. That is not going to carry through the day. I'm not

taking it otherwise. We see through

that lens and the filter comes. We don't know why we're communicating to people a

certain way. Well, I'm communicating because I'm paranoid. Well, why are you paranoid?

I don't know. Wow.

Or somebody's criticizing you, something. And then suddenly we start.

I found myself on eggshells in a particular situation.

I'm like, why am I being all tiptoeing around this thing?

I don't need to. I need to be confident and secure in where I'm at

in my position on this thing and not

tiptoe around it, speak with clarity and lead.

Well anyway, you asked me a simple

question. I can throw up and throw up on you but there's a lot going

on. I think probably it's probably as we wrap up the

end of the year when we're recording this a couple of days before Christmas.

So loads going in to the end of the new year. You always

have these fantasies of like oh, it's going to be great, we're going to have

the holidays and take a nice time off. But reality is for many

of us, business owners and leaders, we're like scrambling to

get everything aligned, getting the next year annual planning

done and obviously there's lots of changes because changes to

everything. And so we're planning

all of that stuff and I go, who the frick is going to be making

all of these changes? Who's going to be working on these PowerPoint decks communicating,

oh slip, I'm not going to get any time off.

And then I'm irritated and I'm communicating irritation.

I think probably the biggest thing for me is just becoming more self aware

what's going on in here. Like kind of the head and the

heart. What's going on between these sort of 18 inch different journey here,

the back and forth cork and conversation, internal conversation

with myself, becoming more and more aware so that I can actually

be a better filter of what's going on in me, so it doesn't come out

and I end up leading people calling. So that's a lot,

that's really intriguing. So as you're

processing that and you're spot on end of the year,

a lot of people are trying to do their annual planning.

Everybody who sells productivity tools is selling something

about journaling and reflection and things like that and I think those are good.

I don't mean to say that necessarily mockingly, but at the same

time it's almost like you're getting your to do list loaded up with

all these reflective things and they're sort of counterbalancing each other

as you sort of it sounds like you've been gaining

an awareness of those contrasting ideas

here towards the end of the year.

What have you noticed in terms of current thinking?

What's the prevailing wisdom about being productive, being reflective,

being self aware, especially in these natural

transition points like the end of a quarter, end of a year, end of a

month, like everything collides sort of in December.

What as you've been in business, have you seen be the

general wisdom most people are going with?

Well, I always start this

I don't know if I'm answering your question, how you would expect or

if I'm even answering the question, but I spend a lot

of my time in kind of a few years out my mind.

Where is the business going to be in a few years time? Where do I

want it to be? What would make me really happy and try

to write that down and bring clarity to it. But because I spend a

lot of my time there, I can live in the place of frustration

or maybe even a lack of just pausing, reflecting and gratitude

for all of the great things that are going on so that I can come

in and give you prime examples. I sat with a group of

our senior leaders yesterday for

part of our annual planning, and here I

am in this kind of well, we're not there. We're not in the future yet.

So it's not good.

It's a future vision. It's where we're going. Yeah,

but we're not there yet. And so I'm in this kind of mode of like,

we got to do a lot to get there, haven't we? And I've got this

kind of like, grit face on of we're on this journey and we need to

load up with all of our supplies so that we can get there, but we

just got to beyond where we thought we were going to be three years ago.

So when are we pausing just to celebrate? When are we pausing to say,

well done? When are we pausing to say, you did this, you did

this, you did this, and it's all amazing things, you helped us

get here and here's the contribution that you made. And I think to

pause it probably is visionary leaders

who spend their time, or futuristic people, I should say,

that have big dreams and vision of what the future, desired future looks like.

I think that tension of celebrating the present, of the good

that is going on and then painting the desirable

future, which is inspirational to people and aspirational I guess

as well, but without communicating

the disparity between the two as frustration,

because I can live in that place of we're

not there yet. It's almost like parenting. Can you just grow up?

Grow up from what? Can you stop having like, a ten year old?

Well, my goal is to raise you to be a great human being in society.

I'm only ten. I'm like, well, you need to start thinking about what job

you're going to. Have, what's your legacy going to be. Horrible feeling. I just

want to do my timestable as well. Dad,

where do you think that comes from?

Because so many people who fall into the category

of leaders, that tends to be slapped as a visionary, and I think

there's probably good reason for that. And visionary or futuristic minded,

where does that come from? Because I know personally,

I'm given to that as well, to where I just see this

big, beautiful future always, but I'm not celebrating the

gain. I'm more concerned about the gap. Where does that come from, in your

opinion and your experience?

I was listening to somebody speak the other day,

and they were talking about disc the personality profile,

and they were saying they said just

the high D, which is kind of that high drive, high autonomy,

typically more visionary, futuristic type people. The population

of the United States is only 10% are in that population. And I'm

like, wow, okay. It was an interesting

stat. I assumed that they said, what percent do you think

each of the four kind of areas are? And I just assumed it was 25%

in each. They're like, absolutely not. It's like,

only 10% are in that ID. And I was like, that's pretty wild.

So I think recognizing that there is something kind of like

God given to each one of us, the personality, how we've been

created and wired and motivated. So I

think I come from a creation

worldview. I believe that each one of us are created uniquely and gifted

uniquely. And so I think that's where I would first and foremost come from.

How that outworks in day to day life?

I think there's probably a nurture side to it as well.

My parents are big, change the world, visionary,

futurists.

It's wild. The kind of notes I get from my parents, who are close to

80 years old, of how they're still frustrated

today because of things that are

outside of their control, have thwarted their world changing plans,

but they're still committed to going and changing the world. I'm like,

literally, they're like, nation changes. I'm like,

they're wild. And so that was part of my kind of upbringing,

and it's probably part of my internal struggles as

well. It's always got to be more. It's always got to be more. How big

are you going to make this thing?

I'm in therapy for it now,

which. Is healthy because

I forgot who I was talking to, but said,

if you call yourself a leadership but you turn around and no one's following you,

you're just on for a walk.

But I do think that for those of us who, whether through

position or influence or other means, have followers and we're

put in a position or a category of leader and we are looking at

the future, and it's always bigger, more.

I've actually had people tell me

it feels like it's never good enough. It feels like it's

never going to be enough and that I'm not enough.

Right? So that's sort of the dark side

of seeing this big, beautiful future. And it's always out there.

It's always just a little bit further. It's always around the corner with

that. How does that I mean, inherently, that sounds

unproductive and negative, but how

can people start to recognize that or gain the self awareness that you

are starting to walk into to where you say, oh,

yeah, I wasn't I was talking to my senior leaders, and I kept saying,

like, yeah, there's a lot to do. There's more. We need to go further.

I see now things that have opened up that I didn't see three years ago

versus celebrating, holy cow, we came this

far in three years. We thought that this was like a pipe

dream. So how do they gain self awareness so they

mitigate that destructive side of seeing the future?

It's interesting, I think, of even in my own personal life,

my family, I'm not really that great on traditions.

What are your family traditions and rhythms,

rituals that you have in your family? I think I

don't know. Do I have any? But I think a lot more about that in

the business. What are our rhythms and rituals that people

know and come to expect? One of them is

celebration.

When we put a quantifiable goal in place,

we've got to bake in time to celebrate it. Okay.

In the same way, I'd say, hey, Kenny, I'm going to hire you

to do this job. And you go, great,

what are you going to pay me? How am I going to get real compensated

for this job? We go, oh, okay. This job is worth this much.

I'm going to pay you this much. And if you do, in this amount of

time, I might give you a bonus. Okay, cool. So we've really clearly said what

that thing is. Well, however long the time

takes to complete that thing, I need to budget, right?

So I'm going to allocate I'm going to pay you over time or I'm going

to pay at the end. I better have the money to pay for it at

the end, if that's what I've said I'm going to do. In the same way

we think about the reward piece, I think there is this other piece

called Celebration that we need to start budgeting for

because how am I going to celebrate this thing together? Because if

we don't pause to celebrate, it can always feel like,

well, just false summit. When you go for a

hike and you kind of climb a mountain and you got that false summit piece

where you're like, oh, my gosh, we're here. And you get to the top and

you see the peak. You've been seeing the peak for half a mile. And we

get there, we realize it's not even freaking top. There's another

summit. No, and I recognize this

recently. And we needed a bunch of business

to keep our people busy. Now we had to slow down a few months back,

and it was kind of like, caught us off guard a little bit. Like,

we need a race to this and to put the number out there. And we're

all racing. We were communicating via email. It was great.

Rosar, I got another one. I got another one. And everyone was

just cheering it on. And then we hit the number, and then somebody

writes in, so then they increase the number. Let's keep going.

And I wasn't me. So they're like, what if we went to this number and

everyone's it happened like, two or three times.

And then I'm like, I think we got to stop.

Not stop growing, but stop this whole

let's just keep increasing the number because we'll never so we go,

yeah, we did it. Let's go for another one. Yeah, we did it. How do

you end? And I was genuinely concerned that if we

allowed that communication to keep going, it was just email, big chain of

chain of people on an email that people would just feel like there

is never an end, is there? And so I said, all right,

we're going to end this thing on this date. I totally

believe that we'll blow past it. Everyone's going to keep working through the end of

the year. I just want everyone to know that there will be a time where

we get to celebrate and there will be a time where part of our celebration

is rest for the holidays. And so it

was really funny. So I sent this in an email to everybody, all of these

leaders in the company, and we got to that number, all right,

today we're celebration. And then this email chain kept going, and people go,

oh, we push a little bit more. And I'm like, there are some people who

just want to keep one of the push. I was like, I just said no

more. Had to really put the brakes.

Because I know that there are a group of people that could find that really

exhausting and demotivating, even though they love growing,

but we're not. I think that's with

gross minded people, because there's always more. We're there, but we're not there

yet. And so I think just being really conscious of different personality

profiles, different motivational wirings,

and you're trying to speak to all of them like, you got 10% high D.

What does that look like? 20% high? I've actually got to communicate

to all of these people, and I can't neglect

the fact that they're all different and I can't neglect the

fact that we all have the same need for celebration. They might

want to celebrate in different ways. Let me celebrate on my own, in my own

little corner in the dark versus somebody who works in big old party.

So I think we have to celebrate by leaving me alone, please.

But I've been conscious of that just coming near the

end of another great year of growth for us at Titus to

actually pause and celebrate otherwise,

because it's just going to keep grow. Part of our DNA is uncomfortable

commitment to right. I love that uncomfortable commitment.

I like making people uncomfortable. Mostly just awkward,

but I love that uncomfortable commitment. You said a phrase

that's sticking with me, which is budget for celebration.

And I don't think you mean like, well, we've got to give

a budget to the party planning committee. I was just watching the office with

my wife this week, and they had the party planning committee and

the committee to plan parties, and they were contrasted and they needed a budget.

But what has that started to mean for

you and Titus? As you keep

growing. Because obviously the Inc 5000 has

some pretty strict requirements in terms of not just total

growth, but like how fast you're doing it,

right. So you are moving at probably an uncomfortable pace

for a lot of people. How are you going about budgeting

celebration from the outset? Or how are you starting to

think about that, recognizing you've got some people who will just keep driving,

but they may drive other team members to exhaustion?

Well, okay, so full transparency. Sometimes my ideas come out

in a composition like this. When I said

budgeting for celebration, it was a note to my own self

like, yes, we need to do that more. So I thought of since sitting

here while you were just looking, when we're done here, I'm going to how

am I going to communicate this to my chief

second in command, President CFO? You're hearing it here first,

people. This is where the idea was birthed. Yeah,

it was. And it's really important.

I thought, how am I going to communicate this? I'm going to put in an

email because if I say budget for celebration, he's going to think finances. And that's

not what I mean. It's actually what are those things that

we're going to do when we hit certain mile

markers and celebratory goals? How will we celebrate in

time, in communication, in reward?

And how are we going to do that? That really touches

the intrinsic motivator of each of our unique profiles

of people. So anyway, that's what I'm

going to do. Hang up from here. I got a short few minute window and

I'm going to stick it on a video so I can communicate it in voice

like I'm doing right now. And it will be just that, like, hey, we need

to think about this. And what I would propose is

that we look at the entire calendar year and say, okay, what's going on

next year? Obviously, we break things down into months, weeks, months, quarters and annuals.

Sure, totally. Are there things if we hit those numbers, how are we going to

celebrate each point,

each summit? Because they're all false summits, right?

They're all false summits. We're all going towards that thing. And then we realize there's

another the peak,

there's a recognition that we live in false summitville if

we're growing companies. But then to

put those things down and just, okay, how are we going to do that?

We have an anniversary coming up as a company, so how are we going to

celebrate that anniversary? And I think sometimes

we just race really fast and we're like and it's the

pause to get clarity and around

celebration. I think that's what I'll be really interested to hear,

what you come up with as somebody who has struggled

my entire life to really pause and celebrate. I'm the same as

you on family traditions, things like that.

I tried to start one where we would like, watch all of the Harry Potter

films, going up to Christmas or

something. We had nothing that fell apart after the

first year, so I'll try something else but

having that baked in something. I was talking about productivity

tools. One of the ones I'm looking at is the Michael Hyatt's Full

Focus Planner. And I think I remember on one of the

sheets, I think it was for goals is how will you

celebrate? What is your reward

at the end of this? Which was,

when I read that, I go, Well, I don't know.

So now I'm starting to think of my goals for the coming year.

Actually, I may even bring up Ben. She's the co

founder of a System and Soul. One of the things we have are bets

and we have objectives and we have all these questions that we answer for every

90 days. What are we going to do? Maybe I could submit

for a modification that we add in addition to 30,

60 day milestones, how might we celebrate? Because I think that

that'll be important and probably plagues,

like you said, highly driven. That 10%, those highly driven individuals,

they're always on to the next summit.

So I think that's very intriguing and maybe even

outside of maybe you could come back on a subsequent episode and share with it.

But either way, I'd love to hear that because I struggle with it.

I think there may be as well. When you've got a kind

of a high drive leader, when you hit that

false summit, and I think the word false,

it can have obviously very negative in this kind of thing, but false,

there is going to always be these false summits. You hit the peak and then

you read there's another one to hit. Because that's what we want to do.

To say to this high drive leader

once you hit that false summit, can we sit down and have a rest and

have a drink and just pause and enjoy the view and

celebrate? To say that to that high

drive leader could be intimidating to some people because

it sounds like you don't want to grow anymore. It sounds like you're not a

committed person to the growth of the company. In our manifesto,

it's an uncomfortable commitment sorry,

a wholehearted commitment to uncomfortable growth. It's in our kind of manifesto,

a wholehearted commitment to uncomfortable growth now, because that's in writing

and I wrote it, it could be intimidating for somebody to say,

excuse me, can we rest and pause and celebrate and look around and enjoy the

view? Because Jonathan clearly wants to

keep going, so you're going to

cut across me. We're a big bulldozer.

And so I think being a self aware enough to be like, hey,

if I say that handy, let's just pause and celebrate. Everyone wants to support

and celebrate. So for the

big high drive visionary leader to actually say it and put it in your calendar

and actually plan it out. If you don't plan it, it's not going to happen.

There's going to be such a relief from people, and people want to be they

need to be appreciated for their contribution to the journey.

So we actually just did this last week. We call it Cheers to the

team. We've done it for three, four years now.

And at the end of the year, right before the holidays, we're 100% remote

company in 25 plus states. And so we live on

Zoom sucks, but that's how we've grown our company.

So we grab a glass favorite bevy and we

spend a couple of hours together and literally it's

a slideshow where every single person in the company gets

acknowledged for accomplishments that they've done in the past year.

And it's long like

the Oscars, but you don't go,

well, can you just hurry up, please? Because it is important

that everyone gets acknowledged and here's their name and here's what they contributed.

It's kind of like they used to do all of the credits to the

movie at the beginning because yeah, remember that when

we were growing up, the credits were all at the front. And you're like,

I'm not everyone to celebrate them before they I haven't

even seen the movie. I haven't seen the movie yet. It was the point.

And then obviously they got moved to the end of the movie. But do we

pause to actually stay all the way to the end of the credits? You got

those people who watch the marble movies. Stay to the end. Stay to the end.

There's going to be more. But actually

pausing to actually acknowledge and recognize the great work that people

did, I think it's really important. I think it's really important. And I forget it

when I'm in my high drive. Got you. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I love that. That sounds like a blast, even if it's a long slide

show, but definitely see where everybody would be anxiously

waiting to hear their name and how they contributed.

If that high drive leader is listening

right now. And you started off the

call by talking about self awareness. That sort of

led to this discovery, this recognition.

There's a bit of a pattern interrupt that has to happen

right when you're in high drive, especially like you're a high drive person,

but then you're in your high drive business mode.

What advice would you give to somebody that they could take action on in

the next 24 hours to interrupt that pattern and start

thinking about celebration, even if it's maybe just for their own

accomplishments, let alone somebody else's?

I would just jolt

yourself into go mode on it and use your superpower of always moving and actually

pause and like, who if I could if I could celebrate one person and acknowledge

them privately or publicly right now,

who comes to mind in your own company or outside your company,

in your realm of responsibility? Who. Can you

just pause and just say, hey, this is the impact

that you've made on me personally in our role this year.

Thank you. I wouldn't be where I'm at today without you.

I think it's better to give than receive. And when you give that way,

you actually gain back. There's something that happens in you psychologically,

emotionally, mentally, that's going to that

felt really good to acknowledge that person and it

meant so much to it. It now becomes more meaningful to me

and it reminds me of just the psychology of gratitude. So I think

that's one way of doing you can actually come up because we can come up

with these celebrate plans. All right, I got a budget for a celebration

and come up with a big old plan. And to your point in Kenny,

you said, listen, we tried to start these kind of traditions and it lasted one

year. So it was like you come up with a big plan and you only

do 10% of the plan, but then we get caught

up on something else. So I would say don't make it too much of

a big plan, just start doing it.

If I went from no working out whatsoever to writing out my twelve month

plan of how I'm going to work out, you probably should just

get down to the gym and go for a walk. Don't even become a

member of a gym. Why don't you just get off your butt and go for

a walk? And if you can do that, then they can go do it tomorrow.

How about that? We should start there. I'm such an extreme person.

I come up with all these big old plans and it's probably better I

just start with the small. So that's what I would recommend.

Just do it today, right now. Think of somebody who you can do it to

before you're done listening to this podcast, just go and execute that

step. I did this yesterday. I came 8

hours of meetings and I'm just like just pause

to say acknowledge the person who led the whole thing. And administrative,

that was amazing. Great job. You made my life really

what could have been hell. You made it just heavenly. Thank you. Yeah. So pause

to pause because we'll be right here, because that's

how digital media works in the 21st century. But go

find one person so that I think that that is an excellent

place because it can all snowball from there. Like you said,

start with one person, start with a walk, whatever it is.

And if you would like to share any of that,

I mean, obviously you can leave a review and share how that went.

Email me. Kenny@kennylang.com, I don't think I have an official

email for this podcast yet. I should probably work on that.

But Jonathan, if people like the words

coming out of your face and would like more of it or

to connect with. You. Where would you direct them?

LinkedIn is a great place just from professional networking. So it's Jonathan

D. Reynolds.

Apparently, my name is really common. So after

reading a book, the publisher was really adamant on me announcing the

D in there every single time. So there you go. That's where that came from.

I'm like, they even asked me to change my name. I'm like changing

my name anyway so they

can find me on LinkedIn that way or any of your social media platforms is

fine. Or you can hit me up at Jonathan Reynolds@titustalent.com

and we'll begin some dialogue there.

And if somebody wants to check out your book, right seats, write people.

Which again, I give a wholehearted recommendation. It's blowing

my mind so far and I'm marking it up like crazy. And I'm not just

saying that because he's on the call. Where can people go and get your book?

The antagonist in me. I want to start testing it.

What are you actually, I really like page seven,

paragraph three, line six,

where you said and it was just that the way that you paused

there.

Oh, my gosh. The one

I had a run in with the publishers. I talked about a terrible hire I'd

made and how I went I went totally

against all my own advice. I went against my leadership team's advice.

I said, trust me, I'm a visionary. You don't understand. We're going to make this

hire within 30 days. I had to fire this guy and

he didn't report to me. They said, you hired him. You're going to fire him.

And I'm like, fine. So I fired the guy. And in the book I said,

we'll call him Jeremy because that was his name and

the publisher was not happy. And they said, no, you can't write that. I said,

yeah, I can. And I said,

he stole the laptop. I said,

you should just be thankful I don't know his last name in there.

MacBook Pro.

Yeah. Amazon. Hop on Amazon. Great seats. Right people?

Great. It's very easy. Read to Leaders guide to

Hiring and Developing Top Performers So there you go.

Thanks a lot. Well, Jonathan D. Reynolds, thank you so much for joining

me and I hope to have you back again in the future. Sure.

Thanks,