The Modalities Of Thinking For Next Level Leadership With Alan Lazaros
Ever wonder why some leaders just seem to get it? This episode dives deep with Alan Lazaros, CEO of Next Level University. Alan shares his powerful story of overcoming a near-death experience and the shift it sparked towards personal growth. He unveils the four modalities of thinking (numbers, words, pictures, and energy) and how understanding these can revolutionize your communication and leadership. Learn how to adapt to different thinking styles, build cohesive teams, and harness the power of empathy to become a leader who truly inspires. Tune in for practical insights and a leadership exercise that will take your influence to the next level!
Connect with Alan:
https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/
https://www.facebook.com/alan.lazaros
https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanlazarosllc/
https://www.youtube.com/@NextLevelUniversity
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The Modalities Of Thinking For Next Level Leadership With Alan Lazaros
This is a show where you read the real stories of people like you who have become extraordinary leaders. You'll learn some valuable lessons from their lives, lessons you can apply to become the leader that you were created to be. When you become an intentional leader, lives are changed. I'm an executive coach, business owner, author, and speaker. Thank you for joining us. I am excited to have you meet Alan Lazaros. Alan is a podcaster, a trainer, business coach, and as his big-time day job, he is the CEO of Next Level University, coming to us from their headquarters up in the Great Northeast Boston area. Alan, it’s great to have you on the show.
What an awesome intro. I have visited several episodes of this show in preparation for this. I appreciate the opening of intentional leadership that changes lives. Leadership, as we mentioned in the pre-interview, is without a question what I believe to be the hardest thing in the entire world, but also the most meaningful. I've done a lot of different jobs, roles and corporate entrepreneur, but leadership has been a throughline my entire life looking back. Leadership, in my opinion, is the hardest, but most meaningful work and most important work. I think more people are leaders than give themselves credit. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
That's what I like about what we're trying to do on this show to help everyday people realize they can be great leaders. People always ask that nature-nurture question on leadership. I think anybody can develop the skills to do it, but it's not soft skills. It's a critical skill to become a leader. You're aware of this from having to visit some, and for the audience, we always start with the same question for our guests, and that is to give us a quick walkthrough of your professional history, but even more than that, leadership lessons learned along the way. I know, Alan, your journey is not incredibly long in duration, but I know it's been impactful. Take us on that walk.
Leadership Journey And Lessons
I'm 35. I look 15, and I'm hoping to hit puberty at 36.
It's the Doogie Howser effect.
It's an important question because before you're going to learn from someone, you need to understand where they've been and the context of what they've experienced. It's important to know who you're talking to. It's not just the message, it's the messenger. How do I condense 35 years into one podcast? The truth is, you can't do that. That said, I have since re-watched the movie of my own life many times over the last several years, especially podcasting, training, coaching, speaking and leading the company. Every single year I look back at my entire life and try to reassess it from this new awareness. When I tell this story about my life, not only is it going to be a condensed version, but it's also going to be my new understanding of it. At the time, I had no idea of half of the stuff I'm going to say. It’s like when you watch a movie as a kid and then you rewatch it as an adult, and now all of a sudden you understand all the nuances that you didn't get back then.
Before you're going to learn from someone, you need to understand where they've been.
I'm 2 years old, and unfortunately, my father passed away in a car accident when he was 28 years old. My sister was six at the time. I'm two. My mom is 31. She was a stay-at-home mom, and she didn't know what to do. She got together with my stepfather at that time. My real last name is McCorkle. My stepfather's last name is Lazaros. I had a stepfather from age 3 to 14. At fourteen years old, my stepfather left my family. I didn't understand any of this at the time, but I've since reflected a lot on it and I now understand that I lost 3 families by the time I was 14 years old. I became this proverbial man of the house at 14.
When my father passed away at two and my stepfather came into the picture. We didn't see my birth father's extended family much. My mom and pop on that side of the family, we didn't see them almost at all. I got close with my stepfather's side of the family, Grandma Joan, Grandpa George, their kids, Uncle Kevin, and that whole thing, then I had my mom's side of the family. When my stepfather left at fourteen, he took his family with him. I haven't seen any of them since, as a matter of fact. We still hadn't spent much time with my birth father's side either because we were trying to be a family unit, changed my last name, and that whole thing again. I didn't know any of this back then.
My mom and her older sister got into a bad tiff argument fight where she ostracized us from that side of the family. That was right after my mom's parents passed away. At fourteen, I didn't know this, but now reflecting back, it's one of those wow moments for me because I essentially lost three families by the time I'm fourteen years old. It was hard. I remember back in high school, people would say, “These are the best years of your life.” I remember thinking, “I hope not. Exactly.” I now realize why they were saying that, and it's definitely not the case.
I'm fourteen, and we go from stepfather leaving with all the income, taking the income with him. He gets the apartment building and the yacht. We get the home and the dog. He took the income with him in the early 2000s and 1990s. I go from basically ski trips, boats, snowmobiles, Xbox and Dreamcast, fairly well off financially to basically, I get free lunch at school now because our income is low. I didn't know how I was going to go to college. I decided to bootstrap my way through high school. I got straight A's, I got 189 in English, which I have to say because I want to be honest, but I got what's called the President's Award and I got into my dream college.
My dream college was Wilshire Polytechnic Institute. It's like a mini MIT for those who don't know. It's a hard school to get into. It was my dream. My uncle had gone there. I did it. I got as much scholarships and financial aid as possible because at the time, I don't know if it still is, it was one of the most expensive undergraduate colleges in the world. It was $50,000 a year way back then.
That's a lot of cash.
I got my Computer Engineering degree there. I graduated with distinction. I stayed for my MBA. I went into corporate and I did what I thought I had to do to make as much money as possible. I went from 65 to 85, 85 to 105, 105 to 125, then I capped nearly around 200 before my own car accident that I'm going to briefly share here. I did a lot of job hopping. I didn't just jump the pay scale that quickly. I eventually ended up at a company called Cognex. I started an inside sales engineering team there.
They sold industrial automation equipment and machine vision equipment into manufacturing facilities. Essentially, I went from inside sales to promoted to outside sales. I managed a territory. I had Vermont, Western Massachusetts, and Connecticut as my territory. I was on the road. I was in manufacturing facilities, selling industrial automation equipment. I'm up in New Hampshire. We're not partying. We're not doing anything crazy. We're going to TGI Fridays. It's a Saturday night, Friday night, or something like that.
This was back in 2016 when the winter was bad and the snow banks were covering the signs. That's how bad the winter was in New Hampshire. It was a lot. There was a yield sign that was covered. I was supposed to yield, and I didn't, I was at a fork. I end up on the wrong side of the road looking down at the GPS. I look up. I saw what I thought was a Mack truck right in front of my car. I thought, for certain, 100%, no chance, “We are done. This is it. It's the end.” Fortunately, it was not a Mack truck. If it was a Mack truck, there's no question I'd be dead. It was a lift-kitted pickup truck.
I had a car that to this day, I know, saved my life. I drove a 2004 Volkswagen Passat that I used to call the tank. It's a German-engineered steel trap of a car. Both airbags were deployed. I was trying to save money. I bought a 2004 in cash while I was paying off all my school debt. This car ended up saving my life. Both airbags were deployed. My cousin and I are okay. He's seventeen at the time, not rattled that much, tweeting about it. For me, I'm completely disassociated. My father passed away when he was 28 in a car accident.
I'm 26 at the time. That could have been it for me is a whole other level because while I didn't see my dad's side of the family a ton, whenever I did see them, they would all look at me because I looked like my father. My whole life, I'd heard stories about John, my dad. I saw the effect of what a car accident and an early death can do on a family. For me, that was my quarter-life crisis. Physically, I was okay, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I definitely wasn't. The best way I can articulate it now, even though at the time I had no clue what was happening to me, was that I was drowning in regret. I wasn't proud of who I became. I wasn't taking my health seriously. I was drinking too much too often.
I was achieving at the expense of fulfillment. I had the “American Dream,” a beautiful girlfriend, a 6-figure plus salary, 1% earner globally. I say earner, not net worth. That's an important distinction. Everything I thought that I wanted, took care of my family and all that stuff. Now, I realize in hindsight that I was achieving at the expense of fulfillment, and I was successful from the outside in rather than from the inside out.
After that quarter-life crisis, I flipped the script completely. I got obsessed with personal growth, personal development, and self-improvement. I focus more now on fulfillment, and alignment and then letting success be a byproduct of that. I learned a hard lesson early, a lot earlier than a lot of people learn it. I'm very grateful for that. Now I'm here many years later, and I built a company called Next Level University instead of automation equipment taking jobs. Now I have a company that is designed around how to help people create bigger, better, brighter futures for themselves and for others. It's something I can be proud of now.
Thank you for being open and vulnerable. Readers, honestly, it's one of the greatest keys to leadership. It's being real, vulnerable and not being afraid to share your story, even when there are difficulties in our stories and failures in our stories, whatever the case may be. I appreciate the story. I appreciate the wake-up call through that accident. Here's a question that I thought of as you were describing. I love the fact that you were talking about externally you were successful internally, not so much things were out of control in different ways. Did you feel that prior to the accident and the accident made you deal with it or was it like the accident was both the revelation and the drive to push forward with it?
It's a phenomenal question, and I think that's something we should all be contemplating. In hindsight, it's very clear that those whispers were there. I often talk about with my clients and on the podcast, that with my business partner, Kev, that whisper, if you don't listen, eventually it's going to become a scream. For me, the car accident exacerbated something that was already inside crying for help. It became more obvious, more abrupt, more sudden when I faced my near-death experience. The truth, in hindsight, it's very clear that my intuition, my highest self, was trying to tell me, “You're not aligned. You're not fulfilled. There's got to be more. This work isn't what you thought it was going to be,” but I didn't listen and inevitably that all comes to a head eventually.
Modalities Of Thinking: If you don’t listen to the whisper, eventually it's going to become a scream.
Four Modalities Of Thinking
I love that phrase that went from a whisper to a scream with the accident. I'm always looking at, “What can I learn from people's stories?” I even think about my journey, my path and where I had a career change because of holes in my life. Similar to you, I didn't take a car wreck from me. It took getting fired, but it was still a traumatic thing in its own way. Readers, that's my big thing to you, as a challenge to hear from Alan's story, is to pay attention to the whispers and turn up the volume and make a change. That's what inspired Next Level University then, and what you're doing. You want to pass that same skill set onto people. I know one of the things that you are huge on, and I appreciate this side of it, and this is your computer engineering side of you. You talk about the four modalities of thinking. Can you quickly tell us what those four are and then break them down one by one?
I stumbled upon these for context, I surpassed now my 5000th coaching session. You mentioned the computer engineer thing. Metrics are everything to me. I love numbers. Ever since I was a gamer, I used to exactly study the numbers. I'm 20th in the world at Halo 2. What's your kill-to-death ratio in video games and all that? I'm a nerd so bear with me the modalities of thinking. I stumbled across one-on-one coaching. That's 5,000 hours with one-on-one individuals. My youngest client is 18 and my oldest is 63 from all different countries, industries and backgrounds. I often say I've learned more from my clients than they've learned from me, not necessarily any one of them, but the collective is unbelievable.
I came across these four modalities of thinking because I was starting to understand that Kevin, my business partner, my co-host of the podcast was resonating with people more than me. I intellectually love to understand everything. I'm always asking, “Why is that?” We would host events. We host an event called Next Level Live every year. It used to be rebranded as a bunch of different things, but I thought that I added more value, genuinely, authentically, as arrogant as that might sound. I would realize that the audience always liked his speech better. It made no sense to me. I didn't understand why.
Now I'm matured and I realize, “If it was a room of computer engineers, they would probably resonate more with me, but he thinks in a different modality than I do. He thinks in words He used to rap. He's emotionally driven and he thinks in words. People who are emotionally driven tend to resonate more with Kevin. People who think in numbers, that's my modality of thinking, which is statistically rarer. Even me saying statistically rarer is my modality of thinking.”
When there are 1,000 people in a room, we'll use 100. If there are 100 people in a room, I always say 97 of them will like Kevin more, but 3 of them will resonate so much more with me. It's a joke, but essentially the four modalities are this. 1) Numbers. It's not number one, it's the rarest, and it's mine so I say it first. 2) Words. Most people think in words, they think in conversation. 3) Pictures, images, imagination. For example, all of us can imagine our car right now and what color it is. Is it 2 or 4 doors?
The last one is energy. That's an uncommon one. That was my least effective. We all have all four. I like to think of it, we all have 2 arms and 2 legs. Hopefully not everyone, but in this analogy. If you want to play a sport that requires a lot of skill, you're going to have to learn to use both arms and both legs. That's the leadership frame that I go from because I want to be a strong communicator. I want to be a strong leader. I want to grow and scale an effective business.
I realized I couldn't do that unless I learned how to communicate with different types of people. I realized that a lot of what I shared with people wasn't landing. I tend to be much more theory than much more clouds than dirt. I had to practice storytelling. I had to practice these other things. Those are the four modalities. There are words, pictures, numbers, and energy. Everyone has a strong one, how we're already, or lefty. Everyone's got one dominant modality of thinking. It's ironic because we all think everyone else is wrong, and all of us are wrong. We're just looking from a different lens. There is no right or wrong, but there is more optimal by more optimal, I mean, if you're a words thinker, you're going to resonate a little less than someone who is a numbers thinker, most likely with me.
I like those. They're all pretty self-explanatory. The one that maybe we need a little bit of definition around is the energy piece. How does that come across? How do we know if that's our way of thinking?
A lot of people will share a word called empath. I can't begin to pretend that I know a ton of research about what an empath is, or if I am one or anything like that. What I have come to understand is that a lot of people who had challenging childhoods, alcoholic parents or were in dangerous environments, tend to sense energy and vibe better. I had mentioned that energy is my not-so-good one Unconsciously, it was a good one. In other words, I can sense the emotional state of other people easily, because growing up my mom and stepdad didn't get along well. I could always tell when it was going to be a tough night.
The energy is more of a feeling. For example, if I said, “My name's Alan, and I believe I can achieve my dreams,” that's not an arrogant energy, even though it might be an arrogant-sounding statement. Whereas someone who doesn't believe in themselves would be like, “I can totally achieve all my dreams.” You can tell it's an arrogant energy. The energy one is more intuitive. What I've started to do is take my unconscious ability to feel energy and try to bring it to my conscious awareness. I was unconsciously letting energy drive social dynamics. I'm tapping into it a lot thanks to my beautiful girlfriend, because she has energy as her strongest one.
Developing A Cohesive Team
I like that. When I'm thinking through there, yours is the numbers, or the math one. Kevin, your partner in the business is words, I can identify people who are pictures. Mine probably is either words or energy or a combination thereof. How do you take this? I know you coach a lot on the individual level as a leader, I'm a firm believer in the difference between a manager and a leader. Managers say, “You adapt to me.” Leaders say, “I'm going to adapt to you.” That's where it's important to understand the modality of thinking of the people that we're leading and where they're coming from and who they are so we can adapt to them to take them as far as we can. On a team level, how can you use these modalities to enhance and build a team? You built a team at Next Level University. You and Kevin are different. I'm going to assume some of the other people on your team are also different. How can we use this productively to develop a cohesive team?
It's the standard to go where they are first. The interesting thing is, you can't go to where they are first unless you also practice that. For example, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calc 1, Calc 2, differential equations and all that stuff. As a leader, I can't bring people to where I am in an instant because it's taken 35 years to accumulate where I've gotten to. They can't take me to where they are in an instant. You have to identify the differences immediately and the similarities, and then connect on the similarities, and then benefit from the differences. For example, I always say this, “If what you wanted was what you needed, you'd already have it.” It's fascinating. I always say, “If you want to coach with me, you probably need Kevin. If you want to coach with Kevin, you probably need me.”
What I mean by that is, if you're not a natural numbers thinker, I'm going to benefit you tremendously because what a huge blind spot. What I try to do is help heart-driven individuals that are emotionally driven, build and scale their businesses because they need a numbers thinker in their corner who gets them. You have to practice all four if you want to be a leader, and you have to practice identifying who's who and what's what. I have an easier way to frame this that might help people. I created something called the PMES system. It stands for Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual.
We all have a code. We all have all four. We all have a physical being, a mental being, an emotional being, and a spiritual being, but we have a big one. Mine is M first. I'm very head-heavy. You wouldn't expect me to be a yoga teacher. I'm an engineer. I'm probably not a yoga teacher. It doesn't mean I can't be, it means, it's not my natural. If I'm communicating with a yoga teacher, she or he is probably S first, mostly energy first. I'm going to benefit tremendously from a yoga teacher because they're going to help me center up and learn energy. I'm going to benefit them tremendously because I'm going to help them track their numbers, make more money and flourish in the economy.
What I find hard is that you don't see a lot of yoga teachers hanging out with computer engineers. We like people that are like us, but that's the problem. We end up not well-rounded because we're not learning from each other the way that we could or should because we're constantly triggering each other. Someone who's financially successful and good at numbers triggers someone who's insecure about finance. Someone who's in great shape like a yoga instructor triggers someone who's a nerdy engineer. We avoid the very thing that we need most as a leader, it's your job to bridge that gap.
It's funny you talk about the coaching work that you and Kevin do, and that they may want a numbers person, you give them Kevin instead because it's what they need, not what they want necessarily. In our company with all of our coaching, my Kevin, his name is Andy, I'll draw the comparison to you two, but it's reversed, Where Andy's our math, mental and numbers guy, creating processes. I'm more of the big-picture visionary side. It's flipped in those roles.
Anytime we have a coaching client, Andy interviews them first. It's a coach match interview where he's talking to them about, “What do you want to grow in? Do you have preferences on a male or female coach?” Different things like that. They think we're going to give them a coach that matches their preferences. We're not necessarily. A lot of times we're going to tell them, “You want this, this, and this, but our job as a coach is to make you uncomfortable, not comfortable. The worst thing we can do for you and your growth is to give you somebody who's like you and is going to keep you in your comfort zone.”
Initially, they're like, “I'm not sure if I like that.” We're like, “Trust the process.” Before it's even halfway through the process, they're like, “This is awesome. It's stretching me. It's making me uncomfortable. I'm sensing the ability to grow.” That means that we have to be open to growing. Right. Leaders are learners, and we have to get uncomfortable in the physical world of working out, it's, “No pain, no gain.” In the world of leadership and understanding people, there is no growth and comfort.
It's the hardest thing in the entire world, in my opinion. People often ask, “How did you create a 21-person team?” I'm playful with this, but I feel massive pain and failure. Massive pain and failing forward. I don't believe you can learn everything from a book. I think you should read books. I think you should read every leadership book there is. I think you should listen to leadership podcast that's credible, but at the end of the day, you're going to have to go and screw it on up. After 5,000 sessions, you start to notice these patterns of people and individuals from all different cultures and all different modalities. You learn how to speak each language, but it's painful. I'm with you. I think that's a great idea. They think you're going to match with a person that they want. When in reality what you're doing is creating a complementary skill set situation that can illuminate blind spots.
That's the thing about strengths and weaknesses, and this is a leadership lesson too. If you believe in yourself at level ten, you've got a huge blind spot. They don't believe in themselves like you do so you seem arrogant. That's the thing. Level ten self-belief, huge strength. What's the weakness? Arrogance, overconfidence and over optimism. Every single strength I've ever had comes with this massive blind spot that is hard to overcome. You have to stay open to others' opinions, but not open that you're taking everyone's word as gospel.
Modalities Of Thinking: Every single strength I've ever had comes with this massive blind spot that is just so hard to overcome.
You have to stay super disciplined and regimented, but also adapt and flex. I love the idea of the and instead of the or. It's emotionally driven and numbers-driven. It's righty and lefty. Every business, company and organization needs to find a way to create a culture where the core values, goals, aspirations and purpose is aligned, but everyone has different core competencies and unique strengths and weaknesses. I think that if you can do that, it creates this cool yin and yang situation. I always say, “You have to make sure your yins are yanging.”
Leadership Is Unconscious
I had somebody else describe that similar scenario, and they said, it's like we have this incredible world to have this color television. All these different people that intersect in our life and our teams and our friendships there's the color and the color is the differences that we have. Unconsciously, we ultimately, by the time we're this guy was saying, by the time we're 40 years old, we put ourselves back in front of the black and white TV. It's all the same and there's no color in it because partially it's a societal thing that we can't overcome, where society's trying to draw out differences as a problem. Just because we're different, it doesn't mean it's a problem. It means it's different. Let's learn from one another and get something out of it. I want to transition for a second. One of the things you told me in our pre-interview is you made a simple phrase, but I want you to dive into it. You said that most leadership is unconscious. What did you mean by that? And what do we do about that?
I've never been asked this question before so I appreciate it. I've been saying this quite a bit in 2023 and 2024. This is new to me, but when I say leadership is unconscious, what I mean by that is everyone's watching. For example, we have this Dreamliner journal, and it's new and it's got this mountain on the front of it. It was cool. A listener reached out and said they wanted to get this tattooed. It's got this mountain with this star at the top and nice, “We're all climbing our own mountain. Make sure you're climbing your own mountain, not someone else's,” type of thing. It's a journal and that's great. We sell it. Achieve Your Dreams 90 Days At A Time.
I'm not ever going to use this. If I don't use this every single day, why should someone else buy it? My whole team is using them, not because I told them they have to, but because I'm using it, benefiting from it, and then talking authentically about how much I'm benefiting from it. It naturally catches on. I'll give you one more example that has been powerful. I never thought that this would happen so this is cool. On March 1, 2022, Emelia and I had a conversation. She had someone reach out to her that I think is full of it. He said, “I'm going to do an 80-day fitness challenge.” She was feeding into it.
She's a cheerleader for everybody. She wants to see everyone win. People like that tend to be naïve, myself included. I said, “He's not going to do that.” She's like, “What do you mean?” I said, “He talks all the time. He never does it.” I'm not trying to be unkind because I like this person a lot, but they are a little full of it. She got upset and she's like, “Let's do it, me and you.” I said, “My old best is three and a half months. I exercised in the past for three and a half months. I never missed a day.” She said, “Let's do it.” I said, “My goal is to beat my old best.” We did 30 minutes a day. Soccer counts, basketball counts, jogging counts, walking counts, weight training counts, pretty much moving your body for 30 minutes a day consistently counts. We did it and we hit the four-month mark and 120 days. It was like, “I'm not going to stop now. Let's keep going.” Eventually, we hit the year mark.
Now we're coming up on the second year. I would have to ask Siri in order to figure out how many days it's been, but I know it's almost 700 days. My point of all this is leadership is unconscious. My whole team has streaks going. One of my team members, Brandon, has run 1 mile a day for more than an entire year. Everyone has these streaks going, and I had never intended on that. It was just with this, we call it the NLU Fit Pick Challenge. We started it, Emelia and I.
She calls it Team Evolve Move. She has her own company called Evolve Ventures. Now there are other people doing it. Here's the lesson for all of us, myself included, if I were to suddenly stop doing it, I bet other people would unconsciously stop doing it. They would have no idea why they started or stopped. It's nothing against them, it's not because I'm great, it's always rubbing off on each other. To me, leading by example is by far the most important thing in the entire world.
I love the idea that leadership is unconscious. The irony is that it's the opposite of this show. It is called The Intentional Leader Podcast. Everything is intentional, but it's not. You're giving a different perspective on the same things. What you're saying is the two of you had to be intentional at doing this. You had to be intentional with your journal. When you're intentional on those things, it not only benefits you, but your team is watching. Your team begins to emulate it to do those different things.
Modalities Of Thinking: Leadership is unconscious.
It's important for leaders to realize, good or bad, you're under a microscope. Your people are watching. What you do impacts what they do. How you do it impacts how they do it. How you say it impacts how they say it. That's why it's important to be intentional about it because unconsciously they're doing those things. They're not always sitting back and going, “I want to be like Alan so I'm going to do these things.” That's not what they're doing, but you're the CEO and they're watching.
Unconsciously, they're following, but for you as the leader, we've got to be intentional because they're paying attention. It's a joke I have with people all the time when we're coaching them and they're complaining about their team, which happens I'm sure you run into that too. I ask them a question. I'm like, “How long have you been leading that team?” If they've been leaving that team less than 24 months, I will give them some grace and we'll coach them through how they can develop their team in a better way. If they've been leaving their team for more than 24 months, I look at them and say, “It's your fault, 24 months after the fact. If your team isn't where you want it to be, that's on you because you're the leader. You should have them up to speed and ready to go by being intentional then unconsciously, they're going to follow those same patterns.”
That's a hell of a grace period. That's the duality. We haven't gotten into this yet, but I would love to, if your game. Duality is everything, which is the ability to hold two seemingly opposing ideas in your consciousness simultaneously, which goes back to the and thing. It's yin and yang. It's not one or the other. It's right and left. It's to be a servant leader and be assertive when you have to. When it comes to the intentional versus the unconscious thing, you have to be intentional and know that other people are unconsciously watching.
This is the big leadership question right here, “What is the right amount of responsibility to take?” If they're on your team, and if they're your choice, you can complain about them all you want, but you're still choosing to have them on your team. We had to let someone go. There was a grace period. I sat down with the team leader. I was on Zoom and I pulled up the whiteboard and put the core values. I said, “The core values for NLU are 1) Growth mindset. 2) Impact, which means service oriented then 3) Humility by far the most important, seriously. This sub-team, this department, and its Next Level podcast production company have three of their own core values. I'll go through them quickly.
Responsiveness is number one because our clients need stuff quickly and we're all in different time zones. Reliability is huge. You can't mess someone's episode up and have it go public. The last one is work ethic. I said, “0 to 10, this person, where are they at?” They're like, “Alan.” I'm like, “That's it. Let's be kind. It's time to go, this is not the fit for this person. We're going to be a pain in your butt because we're always on. You're going to be a pain in our butt because you're always not. It's not aligned on a core value. I don't want to work with people who don't want to work hard. I'm going to be a pain in your butt. Don't be a country singer at a rap concert. You have to understand that you have a responsibility with your team. If they're on your team, it is on you. If you take too much responsibility, you're going to burn to the ground and be a martyr.”
You made a big piece out of this. You've got to make the tough decisions. When we let people go, we have to set them up for success elsewhere, helping them understand why they're being let go. In this sense, there was the issue of misalignment on some of the values, but what that looks like for them, and we want to set them up, we're like, “This is the type of organization you will thrive in, not Next Level University, but you could thrive in this type of a deal. Leaders shy away from tough decisions at times.” That's where it is with your team if you have done everything that you can do to be building up your team and everybody's excelling, except for that one, that one probably doesn't want to excel. You have to make those tough decisions. The duality of intentionality, the unconscious, but leadership is hard. We have to make tough decisions.
For me, the hardest part of leadership is courage. I feel courageous in my ability to execute against tasks. I don't feel super courageous when it comes to difficult conversations that are uncomfortable. I think I'm afraid to hurt people's feelings. Even in this episode, there are certain ways I phrase things. It's like, “Is that going to come off bad? Is that toxic?” This stuff. I think that every leader is going to have kryptonite.
The hardest part of leadership is courage.
The value I can add is find yours soon. because for me, it's courage. I'm certain of it. I'm not as courageous as I need to be in my communication. You need care and candor. All of us are on one end or the other. Too much care. Not enough candor or too much candor. Not enough care. I have trouble with the candor part because I'm afraid to hurt people and even that person, you should have seen the message we sent. It was the kindest message you'll ever get, even though we lost money and it was not optimal for this person. It's on them, but it's on us too because we decided to make the decision. You have to be caring and people need to know that you care, but you also have to be candid.
We're not here to have fun. We can have fun, but that's not the purpose of the organization. We can have fun anywhere. We go to the beach. That's not the goal. I want to do deeply meaningful work in the world. I would rather do that than go to the beach. If you're here to have fun, it's not going to work because I'm not that fun. I want to change the world. That one person at a time. One leader at a time. I want to empower people. Life is a serious game. I believe we need to take it seriously. It doesn't mean we can't have fun. It doesn't mean we don't laugh and joke.
I think life is serious and we have to take it seriously. I had one person in my past and this will be indicative. It was an ex-girlfriend of mine. She said, “Dating you is like dating a StairMaster. You are always going.” The point for your readers, that is who I am. It's who I've always been. It's who I'm always going to be. I'm exhausted. Even you, reading this, are like, “This dude is dialed up.” This is the mode that I have. I very rarely am not engaged at this level. I don't want to hang out. I don't want to constantly rest and relax. I want to be as productive and effective as possible. If that's something that ignites you, we're going to do great work together.
If it's something that drains you, you're going to want to run for the hills then I'm going to feel bad about myself because you didn't like me. As a leader, you have to have self-awareness. Self-awareness is the most important thing. What I've found is people who think they have high self-awareness don't. I'm only getting to the point now where I feel like I'm semi-self-aware. I was emotionally immature. I did not have high self-awareness at all until after my car accident when I started looking in the mirrors.
Modalities Of Thinking: As a leader, you have to have self-awareness.
We're about out of time here. I like everything you're sharing there. That last bit, what it reminded me of, I can't remember who I heard this from, but I applied it to my life. I've had my company for many years, but it was me and my wife for the first five, then many years ago we started adding more people to it. I've had the title CEO the entire time. I've realized that when I was by myself, I was simply a doer. When we started adding people, I was becoming a manager, then I was becoming a leader. I can honestly say it's now in the last few years that we've gotten to where we're over twenty heads and things like that, where I'm a CEO and fulfilling that type of responsibility because I've delegated and let everybody else take all those vital pieces.
It's constant. The journey isn't over. There are new layers to it. They're going to keep on coming. Whether you have to be intentional as we go with it. Alan, I think you and I can talk all day. We'll definitely bring you back again in another episode. As you are aware, we finish every episode with the same question because we want practical things for our readers. The question we finish every episode with is this, what is something our reader can do intentionally today to be a better leader?
How To Be A Better Leader
Go to a whiteboard or a notebook and write down the top three most important character traits. I did this with a client earlier. His name's Bradley. Write down the top three most important character traits that you value, and then rate yourself from 0 to 10 on those 3 things. If your answer is not 10 out of 10 on those 3 things, then you cannot expect your team to be embodying those things.
I like it. Practically challenge readers, go after it and do that. Alan, it's been great to have you on the show. I appreciate your insights. I look forward to having you back again at some point.
This was super aligned for me. I love the idea of leadership and especially being an intentional leader. That is something I'm practicing every single day. Every year, I thought I was good at it and then I realized I wasn't. That is the way of it. Keep climbing. We're all a project and a work in progress. The only wrong answer is to stop trying to get better. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
We're all works in progress, and the only wrong answer is to stop trying to get better.
Thank you.
