Episode 10

#010 - The Seven Deadly Leadership Sins: Pride

Published on: 10th February, 2021

Today, we finish up our series on The Seven Deadly Leadership Sins with, Pride. Organizational Pride is especially tricky to deal with as leaders, at scale, because it encompasses other Deadly Leadership Sins. However, the good news is that if you can successfully mitigate Organizational Pride, you may have an easier time avoiding other leadership sins as well.

but at the meta level, if one leader changes. Their perspective on the way they see themselves and the way they see their interactions with others, it will make all of the other deadly sins easier to address and some just go away.

Simply put, Organizational Pride is the inability or unwillingness to listen. It's the outright rejection of the correct path because we collectively feel like we know better. Most of the time, we can mitigate this at the moment-in-time we realize we made a bad decision as leaders - but we are often too afraid to act or change course because of the potential negative implications.

Organizational Pride also rears its ugly head with a myopic focus on "the plan". Sometimes, as leaders, we get too focused on delivering against a rigid plan, that we fail to notice when the ground underneath us shifts and we must adapt.

The remedy to Organizational Pride is to first start being honest with yourself about your mistakes, and then to other people. Next, re-examine your incentive structure and the gravitational pulls towards self-centered behaviors. Finally, work to redefine your organizational's success criteria to be success focused, where the only way to win is if your peer/neighbor wins.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@theindustryoftrust.com.

Transcript

Robert Greiner 0:06

Episode Seven went live today, and we're recording Episode 10.

Tiffany Lenz 0:10

Perfect.

Robert Greiner 0:11

So eight will be the 27th. Nine will be the third 10 will be the 10th. Yeah, February so we're up through Feb.

Tiffany Lenz 0:19

Yes. Love it.

Robert Greiner 0:20

Today's a big deal. We're recording Episode 10. So that's a milestone. And then we're rapidly congratulations to you. We've passed the eight episode barrier, which is where you are at greatest risk of pod drifting, which is a term of you get started and realize it's a lot of hassle. And then by around episode eight, you just stop. So our probability of doing this long term has gone way up, which is nice. And then here, we're on our last deadly sin, organizational deadly sin, which is what pride

Tiffany Lenz 0:56

pride can about sums it up, not even sure we need to have a session. We wrote down right there.

Robert Greiner 1:02

And we saved the best for last really, wrath and envy got a little bit dicey. But I think pride it might take the cake We'll see.

Tiffany Lenz 1:09

Yeah, this one's pretty real.

Robert Greiner 1:11

We should have came on with a much more serious tone.

Tiffany Lenz 1:14

No, no, we need to really keep it light or this could be

very heavy or

Robert Greiner 1:18

very dark.

Tiffany Lenz 1:19

our listeners will end up in therapy when we're done,

Robert Greiner 1:21

right. Okay, all right. We'll try to keep it light then. What does pride look like? From a seven deadly leadership sins perspective,

Tiffany Lenz 1:32

Pride encapsulates all of the sins to me. I also think from a positive standpoint, it actually unlocks everything else. There's a lot of different pieces you can fix. Envy, wrath, sloth, gluttony, lustful thinking, just like being jealous of the success of others, or what others have inside your organizations, etc. But if you can fix pride, if you can actually view other people's success, your peers, your competitors, inside your firm, outside your firm, as people that you want to help for the betterment of your industry, for the betterment of society have flipped the whole idea of being of being prideful to being one of service on its head, then these other pieces go away. So saving the best for last is a legit statement because it can unlock everything else

Robert Greiner 2:31

When we're talking about, like you said, lust, gluttony, greed, whatever. A lot of times, those are more focused point in time, solutions that there was some overlap, which we explored. But it wasn't really like the cornerstone issue. So you're saying the consequences of pride, maybe they might be a little bit more heavy. And then what you can do to remediate organizational pride can actually have a positive effect across the seven deadly leadership sins. Yeah,

Tiffany Lenz 3:01

That is my both my belief and my experience. So we will talk specifically about how it manifests itself, how you might be observing it or how you might be acting it out. But at the meta level, if one leader changes their perspective, on the way they see themselves, and the way they see their interactions with others, it will make all of the other Deadly Sins easier to address, and some just go away. Because if I'm, if I choose to think of supporting you, I am not successful. Unless Robert is successful, whether it's working on a project together or on this podcast together, then all of a sudden, even the idea of envy as it would apply to an interaction between you and me, like you have something I don't have. It just disappears. Because I'm actually rooting for you. I'm building structure and space in which you can be successful because I define my own success by you, as opposed to independently that more or less, more or less competitive, if you will.

Robert Greiner 4:12

Okay, cool. So why don't you outline what is pride look like within an organization? What are some examples?

Tiffany Lenz 4:17

Okay. So when I think of pride, I do want to talk specifically about the way we execute things. We as large teams, we as organizations, and I sum it up like this, pride is listening without intent, or rejecting input. So imagine if, as an organization, you've invested $5 million into a software suite or a platform, and it's simply turns out to be the wrong business decision. Is it better to keep working down that path, making it work? Bubble gumming and shoe stringing together a solution Bringing on more and more contractors, consultants etc, to make the solution work because you chose the wrong path? Or is it better to stop where you are. So what that sounds like is when we bought this thing we need to make it work versus stopping where you are acknowledging the mistake. And using the rest of the money, you have to implement the right solution for your business or your customers see, even a scenario like that, I would always have to ask how did you get to a point where you made a decision such as this large investment, inevitably, there is somewhere in that past trajectory, there is an experience of listening but not actually listening, or rejecting critical input. Because this I the buyer thought I knew better. This happens with build versus buy decisions all the time. It has it also sound can sound like we built this thing and it works. But and then there's all these caveats around it. So there's a there's an element of are you really listening to critical advice? Are you listening to the, to the constraints around you? Are you listening to what your customer or your buyer really needs?

Robert Greiner 6:17

This really maps closely to like personal pride. So at the personal level, pride is a rejection of others over importance on yourself over focus. There's a balance, being confident there's a balance, being competent, knowing that you can make a positive difference or knowing that you can get something done with pride, which is just the unhealthy extension overcorrection in that area. So I think there's this one's a little bit easier, at least for me personally to understand. And this idea of discarding, not listening, blindly moving forward, because you can't see that the cracks forming around you. That makes sense. But sometimes what you talked about to around you go down the wrong path. A lot of times it just sunk cost fallacy, right? You saw we've already sunk a million dollars into this, we just need to keep going. Because we're in for a pound already. Is does that play into this is? Or is that sort of a naive symptom that leads to pride later? Or is that a softer vert? Like, what does that how does the sunk cost fallacy? Like apply in this situation? If at all?

Tiffany Lenz 7:23

I think it applies completely, I think they are one in the same. It's a step down that same path of pride of saying in for a penny in for a pound. Basically, not everyone is familiar with that expression. But why does one have to be in for a penny in for a pound? Why does one have to take one step and find out that it's the wrong step and not revert? Because you risk what brand damage, reputational damage, you risk you risk breaking trust with someone you committed to or made a handshake with, I would argue that there is a lot more to be gained from the insight and realization at the moment in time, that one realizes they made a wrong decision regardless of the amount of money to just own it, and make it right from that point forward. Because continuing down that path is proven in many different instances to be a worse decision to be either let's go backwards to some of the other sins we've talked about to either drive away your best people to cause internal work for others, like blame shifting, pushing responsibilities to places they don't belong, or cause additional cost. Because now you have to customize something you shouldn't have needed to customize in the first place. I don't know how it ends, you can always spin right and rewrite history. But in reality, most of us who've lived through scenarios like that, or studied through them, or helped clients through them, can see that point in time where a decision should have been made to like, stop, hold, wait, back up, make this right versus let's just keep going a little further. It just it doesn't work out that way. It doesn't work out well.

Robert Greiner 9:11

So you've hit on a few of we've been talking about what got you here won't get you there, Marshall Goldsmith, there are some individual leadership behaviors that really fall into this, right? So that sort of telling the world how smart we are that we need to be the smartest person in the room, we need to have all the answers. No one else can have a good idea that we didn't come up with First, the need to over add value. You've seen this right? It's like people have a conversation, they have to add that one last thing, which is really the leadership equivalent of pointing out a font error or a typing error, which is not, it's not super helpful, but you had to add one thing, refusing to express regret, not listening, which we talked about before, right, the most passive aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues, which I think was is really well put. So there are a lot of individual leadership traps that you fall into, as it relates to pride, which I want to explore a little bit. But it also strikes me that as an executive as a leader, this is actually probably the most under our control, to mitigate. Because our whole job is about volunteering, we really get to decide what we work on, we have a tremendous amount of autonomy and freedom to do that. And so this is under our control, because we can be more selfless and more helpful in and more open about where we go and spend our time and actually avoid a lot of these behaviors altogether. Whereas a lot of the things we talked about before, there's like frozen middle, which we don't like and how you have to lead other people and provide feedback into the system, and things like that, so that it takes a little bit more of an organizational scale problem that you have to solve for some of these other deadly sins. But it seems in this one, it's almost exclusively under the control of the leader. And out of the 20 bad habits that Marshall Goldsmith outlines for what got you here won't get you there, there's five or six that falls under the pride format. So it is it's a little sneaky. In that regard, it seems.

Tiffany Lenz:

Yeah, I love the way you've described that because it is sneaky, and is also manageable. And they're almost every time I think through the previous six, you've asked me some form of a question around, how do I live in this kind of environment, or what what if these things are happening to me, pride is one that we we can't change the way other people act ever. But we can make great strides by simply being a better example, by especially the higher up one gets as a leader, more people are observing you, if you create a culture in which it is okay to make a mistake, and own that and reflect on it and revert or change direction, you're actually creating a vulnerable culture in a good way, a culture that's honest, and that is less inclined to pride. I it struck me as you were talking about even like the smartest person in the room, how come there's a How come there's actually an adage about the smartest person in the room. But there's not an adage about the most effective person in the room, the person in the room who acts as a force multiplier, the person in the room who is who's who is of service, maybe because the smartest person in the room has both positive connotation in our culture. And frankly, from this angle negative.

Robert Greiner:

And you spend so much of your career, especially in the early days when all your bad habits are formed, being rewarded for being the smartest person in the room, that gets you a huge chunk into your career. And then you all of a sudden have to switch but no one really tells you that and then to piggyback on to that we have a lot of people volunteering for things that aren't helpful, that are just a waste of time, but they're doing it maybe to mask not being effective in their sort of day to day job. So that one example that I've seen in the past is like the perennial party planner, nothing wrong with that. It's something that needs to happen, you have the same person doing that every single time, at the distraction of at the cost of their day job. They're measured on the results, they get in the job description, and all of these extra curricular things that have been done, you don't get the benefit of those because you haven't built a foundation of success. If you're crushing it at work, and you're the social glue that brings everyone together and creates really good experiences. That can be a hugely additive thing, that if all you're doing is over off to the side planning parties, when you have revenue goals to meet, or deliverables to get done by the deadline and those aren't happening, then it works against you the opposite way.

Tiffany Lenz:

Yeah, that's right. We certainly, as a very, an individualistic society, which is has a lot of strengths to it, I'm not knocking that at all, need to have an additional awareness of where by healthy, when does healthy confidence cross the line into pride. Some other ways we can look for this would be in say, like, when I think of planning, I think there are some anti patterns around planning at whatever level at the senior stakeholder the executive level, at the project team level, I look at it as when I hear people looking at plans are important. They are critical sets of data, but they're not definitive in and of themselves. And when I look at someone who kind of avoids planning one way or another, whether it's like the kind of waterfall style of getting married to a plan and staying there and being inflexible, or the complete other side of the spectrum, where say they use agile or lean methodology and they don't believe in a plan, quote, that sort of avoidance is always a red flag to me because I think it's it is fraught with The risks of prideful outcomes of just not listening to warning signs. A second piece of second planning anti pattern is one I call obsession, where it's like this kind of myopic look at a plan that ignores everything else around it. That can be comments like, this only cost x. So it can't be that hard to do. And you can hear that and extrapolated at a very junior level, and at a very an executive level. The third one I look at is I call plan blindness. Which is this idea of, sadly, we've both heard these kinds of quotes of I know we can make these dates if people just work harder. That's one, or Where's your positive attitude? We just need people with positive attitudes here to make us happy

Robert Greiner:

We need people to be solution oriented here.

Don't come at me with problems. Yeah,

Tiffany Lenz:

that's almost a direct quote from when I honestly when I think about planning and pride. The fire festival documentary on Netflix is the first thing that pops to mind. I would recommend anyone who is looking to understand this a little bit, just watch that documentary and see what you hear about every level of pride from the CEO Billy McFarlane, who presented this fraudulent this hoax using the dictionary

Robert Greiner:

Using the dictionary by prideful leader. Yeah.

Tiffany Lenz:

And the one documentary I watched has an interview from his project manager, who is talking about his name is Mark Weinstein. And he's talking about the things that he saw, like the guy was an expert in his field, and he says, Wait a second, this won't work. And this won't work. And he was told over and over again, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions, have a positive attitude, have a can do attitude. No, this is delusion that you're creating here. And we can look at it there and laugh about it. But we do that in at macro levels and micro levels, in our projects, with our teams, with other executives all the time, just by simply not listening to what people are saying because we're mentally committed to a path.

Robert Greiner:

Yeah, and and maybe that would be a good exercise for our listeners to watch that documentary. It is some edutainment in that sense. But it reminds me of the second time I watched the office, I was in a leadership position. The first time I watched it, it was I was naively thought it was funny. And Michael Scott would do some things. And it really made me cringe because I was thinking, Oh my gosh, that that's me, I've done that. And of course, he does it much more grandly and more exaggerated. But that little nugget of truth was in there where you look at that person, you're like, I don't want to, I don't want to be like that. And here it is. He's doing something that you look at and say, Oh my gosh, I've done that. And so, you know, that really is the name right? McFarland, Billy, that is the caricature, the archetype of the prideful leader, he's, he's a criminal, too. So some of the stuff you'll have to translate. But at the end of the day, it's like you can really see in action behind the scenes, what that looks like, carried out to the extreme, and then maybe that would be informative.

Tiffany Lenz:

And we've talked again, we can't talk about pride in a vacuum because it touches everything else, as you so rightly said. And we talked before about, about targeting our superstars, identifying superstars and targeting them as opposed to being grateful for them and spending much more time focused on the underperformer or whatever trying to make them better. And that kind of that kind of 2x ratio. There's some additional research by Duke University. This was so disturbing to me. When I read it that talked about their research showing that arrogance, which is almost synonymous with pride is contagious in a team. Oh, it isn't just the leader that exemplifies this that lives in a certain way and exists and like just radiates, a set of Act, a set of activities and behaviors that people pick up. It's every single person. You can almost sense it like a wave of every single person who exhibits arrogance. Without that being confronted. That behavior is contagious to everyone. They're around. And that that for me made this feel like something that if I saw it in myself needed to be nipped in the bud if I saw it and other people needed to be nipped in the bud like it can take down an entire team in

Robert Greiner:

Absolutely has so Dwight Eisenhower, I'm pretty sure it was him has this quote going back to your planning plans are useless, but planning is indispensable, right or plans are worthless, but planning is essential. I think Mike Tyson said, Everyone has a plan in the ring until I hit him in the mouth. Like that kind of idea of the act of planning is it's still super important. We are not advocating for some kind of elimination of plans, but we also have to recognize that one things are will never shake out the way that we think they will. We can't tell the future but thinking through What might go wrong? What kind of what rough shape and size this thing is going to be? So we know to adequately assign resources to it, all those things so important. But we can't get myopically focused on sticking with the plan, because we built that when we were dumber, like, we're smarter today than we were three months ago. Why wouldn't we change our mind about that? I used to think chocolate milk came from Brown cows. And then I was presented with some pretty convincing information data that it wasn't and then I switched my course there. Our people think we're that dumb, when we don't change course. And it's so obvious and, and in business, this is like things drag on months and quarters, and then you're in it for a year, and something six months late. And it's Yeah, we've been living through this slow train wreck day after day, and nothing's happening. And so that that can really be terrible for the team.

Tiffany Lenz:

Yeah, the for me, the positive on a plan would be what I call plan diligence. This week, what you mentioned, like just a reality mindset, just realizing that you're learning. If you're listening, remember, the first statement that I made in talking about this was listening without intent. So if you're listening with intent, you would have a reality mindset to know that what you know, today is only what today, and you might learn something critical in the next five minutes, if you're really listening, you value conversations. And that a plan is just a set of data. It's contributing factors to decision making. It's not an end all. But I think that this idea of really listening to understand and listening to hear, it doesn't absolve a leader of any in any way from making very hard decisions and being wrong. But the inclusivity versus the closed mindedness is more likely to get you to a better place. And actually, Duke's research this the encouraging piece of what I told you about arrogance being contagious is they also found that humility was contagious. And so this was encouraging to me to read that there is hope. And there was a quote there that I wanted to share with you It said their research said, the more willing you are to entertain the possibilities that you might be wrong, the better choices you tend to make. So there's something about this, even this idea of open mindedness, that that leads someone down a a better path based on their research.

Robert Greiner:

This also, we talked, we've talked before about decision making bias, and different biases that we just bring into every single interaction that we have, that can really magnify or force you into inadvertently, subconsciously, into an area of pride, like anchoring was we've been talking a lot about that tendency to rely too heavily on past reference on one trait or piece of information. That's classic pride. That's what we've been talking about availability heuristic, estimating what is more likely by what is more available, and memory that can be based on recency, that your other things are a little bit more vivid for you but you remember this, you can barely remember anything fully right? And I'm reading this from Andy buck on Twitter, something he posted endowment effect. So the fact that people demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it. So valuing the things that you have more, we also buy at least two acts. I think Kahneman right, won a Nobel Prize on proving that humans fear loss two times as more as potential gain. And I'm pretty sure and I think this was a never split the difference. They could have. That really they were saying it's seven x, we just said two x because it would have been easier to get through peer review. But it might actually be much worse than that framing effect, drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented, especially if you suffer from the wrath sin, or like sloths, where you're only you really care about your high performers, and you're taking the path of least resistance. People might present things to you differently because of how they think you'll react. gamblers fallacy, a tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events. This may be this work before we won before we have a bad outcome grip thing. That's a terrible, that's a terrible one in and of itself. That seems like a symptom of pride here. And then optimism tended to tendency to be over optimistic, overestimating, favorable and pleasing outcomes. I probably suffer from that a little bit. Those sort of decision making biases and leaders in organizations seem to fit in almost perfectly with this idea of pride.

Tiffany Lenz:

Yeah, they do boy, those are good, really thought provoking. This whole idea of just being unable to take input effectively. to exemplify a different way of leading is detrimental in so many ways. I almost almost don't have like other words for it. I love those examples you just shared.

Robert Greiner:

We have that we are being incentivized attacked. on all sides. We're being I'm trying to find the right words here, constantly. There's a gravitational pull towards pride, personally and within an organization. That's, I think history has proven out. That's absolutely true. It's a slippery slope. And maybe Breaking Bad. We're talking about TV might be an example of little tiny decisions that over the course of four or five years, you're a supervillain at the end. And that's a worry about that, as a leader you got, I would hate towards the end of my life for someone to come up to me and say, Hey, remember that time we work together I really hated working with you made me feel like crap all the time. And I was miserable under your care, and people are in that situation every day. And I think the leaders above them with very, it would be very rare that it's intentional. I think this stuff just happens one little decision after another over decades. Yeah, man, I think you're right, this was pretty heavy.

Tiffany Lenz:

It is. And yet always, because we both are a little bit on the optimistic side, there's always a way to revert, you actually can change this behavior tomorrow morning, and make a difference. You can start being honest about your mistakes, like first with yourself. And then with other people, you can admit them to other people, you can look at your own kind of agility as a person or your own EQ, your emotional quotient, and start to just do some reflection, get 360 degree feedback from one perspective, just stop almost at some point, I guess, when I've tried bringing in different principles to leadership teams, whether my own or clients, it always comes down to someone has to take the first step, they have to be the first person to say, Okay, I'm going to change my behavior starting now. And then that's difficult, you've hit the you hit that kind of trough before you get some productivity. But it does work. It does change dynamics, and it does change output as well. I sometimes struggle internally with that, because I just thought that this point, I've never seen this. I don't you mentioned about like, in every possible way we're incentivized to be self focused and prideful. 100% Look at the way people are measured that you met. You mentioned this before, but even like the way we're rewarded at our jobs, by and large, are you and I our firm is a little different, because we're employee owned, and the mission is different. But we're talking about one in a million there right? In by and large, people are rewarded for individualistic behaviors. And that tends toward pride. What if there was an entire revolution that went the whole way into human resources, rethinking and redesigning people's success criteria, to be group focused, to be collective output focused, as opposed to individual, if the group succeeds, I succeed, I only succeed as part of this group, not as my own entity. And it's not as simple as I'm laying it out in two or three sentences. Because then that could have its own negative downstream effects of have a few very strong people pulling along behind them, people who are not working as hard. But there has to be a better way. And I don't have it fully engineered. But I know that at least as an individual, I can change my behavior today. And that has positive impacts. No, just throw that out for some thoughts of all over the place.

Robert Greiner:

A lot of people are, rightfully so trying to feed their families and generally do the right thing. I don't know that I've really ever come across somebody who is like intentionally trying to sink the organization sabotage. And I, my mind just went to this. Have you heard of Song exploder? So it's, I think it's a podcast. And now they have a Netflix series, where they take artists song, and they like, go really deep on what it means. And they talk about everything from like, the different musical configurations to what the lyrics meant to like what this pause was supposed to do here and they had one with Lin Manuel for Hamilton, which was Have you seen Hamilton? Yeah, so does everybody. So Aaron Burr sings a song called wait for it. You remember that one?

Tiffany Lenz:

Yes.

Robert Greiner:

Yeah. And so they go really deep on it. And and at the end, Lin Manuel talks about the difference that Aaron Burn and Alexander Hamilton were two sides of a coin. The thing is, Aaron Burr came from money, he had a reputation to uphold, and so he could not lose, whereas Hamilton had nothing to lose. So he was full speed ahead. And so that's that whole thing is Aaron Burn'ss willing to wait for it, that's the whole point. And the decisions he made that ultimately led him to be the villain was about him purposely holding back and, and not moving forward. And that's a prideful thing, right. He was ultra prideful, at least how he's depicted in the play. And it really comes down to this, like self orientation. And I think when you talk about leaders and how they should behave, obviously, as you see these things, giving feedback and showing everyone around you that this is not acceptable. But And to your point, we could start that tomorrow. So I think one is helpful to know, a lot of the people around you, they're willing to wait right there, a lot of times, they're not going to go and stick their neck out in fear of negative outcomes. So I think part of it is creating an environment where failure is celebrated, empowered, accepted, whatever, whatever works for you. But we also talked about what got you here won't get you there, five or six of those detracting habits and behaviors that will think your career as an individual, you can look out for that and yourself, you can look out for that in others. We talked about the three planning, sort of fallacies that you mentioned, those things are obvious, because they're so drawn out, they're so long in thread that you can, it's hard to tell when you're in it, but it's obvious everyone else around you. We talked about decision making bias, there's what seven of those to look out for. And then one last idea I had was like around an accountability partner, there's times where I'll go into meetings, like I'm trying to avoid this. So I want you to call me out if this is happening. And only good things will happen. If you call me out, like my expectation of you is to say like you You messed up here. And so that those are some key areas. But this idea of pride is we're gonna unpack it, it just keeps getting broader and broader. But there are really specific, straightforward things maybe not easy, but straightforward things that you can do, like you said tomorrow, to get everything moving back in the right track. And because prideful behaviors are detracting and damaging, the absence of them will make a big difference.

Tiffany Lenz:

This one for me is both at first, it can seem very overwhelming. And then when I listened to the awesome way, you just summarized even all those actions, it becomes very freeing. Like I don't have to do all of those things, I can change one thing tomorrow, I can change a little bit of awareness, I can put someone else's agenda appear a certainly a customer, but what about a competitor, I can put there them in front of my own needs tomorrow. I can turn up the volume in my head and actually listen to someone when I didn't listen to them yesterday, just one decision at a time will change my perspective, change my pridefulness, my natural bent to pridefulness and arrogance to something that is much more designed for humility, and service leadership structure and point me on a different path. You can do a revolution or an evolution on this one and still be in a better place. And then, since we've come this whole way around a clock face, if you will, of deadly sins, the others just become they just start to dissolve. There will always be hot buttons in each one of those areas. There will always be ways that we can move from like meeting expectations to exceeding or from a basic relationship to a real partnership by shifting each one of these sins. But to me, we save we did save the best for last because pride unlocks them all.

Robert Greiner:

Yeah, no, I think that's the nice silver lining here, the optimistic view here, which is reality. We talked about the supervillain getting created one bad decision out of time, the superhero has also created one good decision at a time. So you're right. This is not really, I can't think of any examples off the top of my head where someone made a step function increase in the right direction. It's just little 100 things a day, right? 10 things today 100 things over the next year, whatever. And over time, that's what really grows, people, leaders organizations into the exceptional examples that we all aspire to.

Tiffany Lenz:

And I've talked before on some other podcasts about givers and takers, the types of people that we want on a team. When I think back to that Duke study about arrogance and humility mean my goodness, would I rather have an entire team of people who are arrogant, who are takers, or would I rather have an entire people a group of people on a team that I'm like, in the trenches with fighting side by side with every day, striving for good outcomes, excellent outcomes for my customers, I would rather have a group of people who are working toward humility than I would working toward arrogance or just unchecked arrogance.

Robert Greiner:

Yep. And the same way, when our leaders make mistakes, it's so conspicuous. And the ones that admit their mistakes we would walk over hot coals for. So I think it's the same for the people that report to you. It's just as obvious. We're no more clever than our leaders and probably much less clever. Okay, cool. Pride this was a good one that what a great series episode 10 reason to celebrate any closing thoughts on this one?

Tiffany Lenz:

I love this whole series. I this. It's just it's fun and challenging and reflective every time. And it's so relevant just going over these again, and again, in different formats. So you just see and hear examples everywhere. On the international stage, local politics, workspaces, just anywhere sports teams, everywhere. I like this a lot.

Robert Greiner:

It is it's human nature. And all of the things that you mentioned, are constructed of primarily humans and their interactions together. And so it really doesn't matter. If you're entertaining people throwing a ball down the field, trying to govern one of the best countries ever in existence, like whatever those things are. They're still made up of people. And these these dysfunctions are human. And so they're gonna they're going to be everywhere.

Tiffany Lenz:

Yep. So I, yeah, I like this series. I learned from it every time we talk about it. So hope other people enjoy it as much.

Robert Greiner:

Yeah. Great. So yeah, thanks for your time. today. We are running up on time. So perfect timing. And we will talk next week, and I'm actually not sure what we're going to talk about next week.

Tiffany Lenz:

I know. It'll be a surprise.

Robert Greiner:

Yeah, it'll be a surprise. So have a good week, and it was great talking to you.

Tiffany Lenz:

Thanks, you too.

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About the Podcast

The Industry of Trust
Leadership stories focused on maximizing human-centric organizational potential
Have you ever found yourself on a losing team? In our experience, teams that fail at achieving their objective rarely lack the expertise or drive to win. Rather, they are dysfunctional and can't operate effectively together. In The Industry of Trust Podcast, Tiffany and Robert explore leading through a foundation of trust as a method to build exceptional teams that change the world.