All right, good afternoon everybody. Stephen Hartz. With the H&H Impact Podcast 17, uh, coming live from my office in Arlington, Virginia. And I’m excited, we have a guest with us today, uh, one of our board members. And I’m not even going to take the time to introduce you because I will just not do as good a job as Patrick will.

So Patrick, please introduce yourself to everybody, uh, in our organization. Thanks, Steve. I, I really appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you on the Impact. Uh, it’s really exciting. Uh, my name is Patrick Giardullo.

Uh, I am the CEO and Chief of service for a small to medium-sized ambulance service, paramedic transport service in the state of Connecticut. And I am a board member for National EMS Management Association. With that, my background stems from quality improvement, education, you know, system operations. And I also happen to have a degree in clinical mental health counseling. And I also have a dual function in that I practice as a therapist part-time as well.

Amongst all of the other things that, that I’m doing. So it’s a passion of mine. I enjoy it. And the work I’ve been doing recently, uh, is to find a way to kind of weave together, uh, both worlds of EMS leadership and, uh, my, my therapy practice and how we can do things more effective as leaders. Awesome.

Uh, Patrick, listen, that’s a phenomenal background. You know, I will tell for our audience I’ve had the opportunity to be up in New Britain EMS and, and work with your organization. Uh, it’s not a large geographic area, but your impact is phenomenally significant. And I brag on you guys when we go to other EMS agencies all the time because of your ability, your training program, what your people are doing, and their commitment to their community. So huge kudos to you and your team up there.

Uh, I know you just got a phenomenal culture up there, but I’m excited. So what led to this conversation and wanting you to be on the podcast with us is you had recently posted on LinkedIn, um, a, a post, an article about the Alliance Effect, uh, leading with a therapeutic lens. And it caught my attention, you know, as I go in and I teach leadership all over the country, uh, for large systems, small systems, EMS agencies, to things that don’t involve healthcare. I was like, this is an impactful statement. And I’d love for you to kind of dive into this.

What’s it about? You know, what’s the objective here? Yeah, well, you might have to get me back on track as I go on multiple little tributaries because I get excited. So I’ll tell you where this began. So it was actually sitting at the inaugural NEMSMA conference.

I was listening to a lecture provided by a general, actually, that, that had been selected to speak at the lecture. And he, he presented 6 or 7 attributes of what he saw as an effective leader, or that were impactful as a leader. And I really took pause because those attributes matched that of a competent therapist. So I got very excited, you know, and I said, there’s got to be something here. And I kind of paired this with the therapeutic alliance.

So this is what came up to me, right? So the therapeutic alliance is really the relationship that exists between a client and the therapist. And it is one of trust, one of goal setting, one of objective setting, and it allows them to get from point A to point B. Uh, but it is an authentic relationship. Uh, it is rooted in, in trust and honesty.

And, um, it is shown under the common factors approach that it is one of the most, if not the most impactful way to predict the successfulness of therapy. So to have a positive and effective therapeutic alliance predicts the outcomes and effectiveness of therapy. That doesn’t put aside theoretical orientation and what you’re doing, but without a good therapeutic alliance, none of it matters. And so I was like, this is a great opportunity because when I was teaching FTOP earlier on for our organization, I used to talk about the field training officer as an ambassador to your organization. And we talk about, you know, the most impactful ways of leading someone and being a mentor is to connect to them and connect with authenticity and real relationships.

And we could talk a little bit more about what that really means, but But from there, I kind of said, okay, this makes a lot of sense. And I paired it with a few other things from the therapy world, none of it being therapy. I’m not asking people to practice therapy and diagnose and delve into people’s feelings and things like that. We’re really talking about how to actively listen, how to hear people out, how to hear what we call the music between the words and understand that there’s content in conversation. But below that content, there’s meaning.

And it’s typically bigger than what the person is alluding to.

And yeah, it all focuses rooted in Carl Rogers’ client-centered approach to therapy, which really states that the client is the expert on their own life and your employee, those you’re leading, are an expert on what they want and what they’re looking for and how to get there. You as a leader can draw that out and get them to that point. Oh man, Pat. That’s, uh, Patrick, that’s awesome because there’s so much to dive into there because, you know, we teach leadership all the time and sometimes it’s like back, back to the basics, right? Sure.

Um, and, and a lot of it comes from, and, and I see this in the EMS world, I see this in healthcare specifically, is like, hey, you are a great paramedic. We’re going to promote you to now be a captain or a lieutenant. Right. And there is oftentimes not clear defined training plan to get you to that next level of leadership. Yep.

And, and this to me is like the basics, right? You’re building that foundation of leadership to what you’re speaking about is taking care of your people. It’s the character and the integrity, that piece of it, to establish that relationship. So, uh, when there is a problem, you feel confident coming to me as a leader to talk to me about the problem, not hiding it or shoving it under the, uh, carpet, so to speak. But also all the different aspects that go into that leadership which requires that relationship.

Uh, I see a little bit of like, uh, the DISC side in here, right, where you’re talking about behavioral-based communication. You know, how are they communicating to me? What am I observing through that communication? Uh, there’s the, the piece of communication, you know, a large portion of it is the nonverbal. Yeah, that’s why in-person is the best way to communicate as opposed to text message.

You can never really get the true feeling through a text message. And, and I, I love the approach that you’re bringing to it because it’s bringing the humanity to leadership, right? Yeah. It’s no longer just a theory of like, hey, leaders have to have ideas, leaders have to have, uh, you know, the, the baseball bat, so to speak. Um, leaders have to understand their people.

And I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek, uh, for instance, and his leadership philosophy. It’s not about being in charge, it’s about taking care of those in your charge, right? So Talk to me more about what it is to be a good leader and then how you do that generous listening. I think that’s something that people often overlook. Yeah.

So, I want to comment to 2 things that you hit exactly, exactly what I was thinking about. One, you talked about it being a humanistic approach to leadership, right? And that is 100% true. The second piece that you hit on is, you know, you hire that leader because they’re a great paramedic or they’re a great EMT or a great nurse or a great doctor, but they may not have the skills. And for so long, we’ve been so great at measuring hard skills, right?

We can do that and we can coach hard skills. But we look at soft skills and we’re like, man, that’s- it’s so much more difficult to really bring that up and train that up or educate people. And, you know, I was talking to someone who was like, you know, you either have it or you don’t. And I don’t know that that’s true. I think some of this can be coached.

And I believe some of this can be coached. So, to speak to the humanistic side, yes, it is about being a real human being. It is having authentic relationships. I believe as an effective leader, You have to like people. You have to want to do well by them.

You have to want to lead, and you have to want to do well by the human being next to you, because that’s why we’re here, right? Like, that’s what we do. And I believe if you do what’s well by your employees, by those you lead, by the humans that you work with, it will do well for the community you serve, and it comes back tenfold, right? So that being said, While it’s a humanistic approach, looking at leadership characteristics, I mean, there’s what? There’s like anywhere, depending on where you look, 9 to 12 different styles of leadership, right?

Like, this isn’t so much of a style as it is a skill that you can employ under anything. I think one of the most attractive types of leadership is to say, I want to be a situational leader, right? Because it sounds so dynamic, because I can change based off situation to situation. But I think you’d understand that most of the data and research out there shows that situational situational leadership can oftentimes be a bit ambiguous because the individual doesn’t have a known belief or a known philosophy. So this fits into humanistic, and it can be applied at any level.

I’d say probably not the command and control level. I might not be on a mass casualty scene employing my humanistic approach to leadership, but under coaching circumstances, under performance circumstances, whatever it may be day to day within the organization, that’s where it falls. So for everyone that thinks this is you know, hey, we’re all going to feel good, talk about feelings, and everyone gets a trophy. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re talking about authentic approach.

And authentic means healthy boundaries. Authentic means being able to hold someone else’s point of view without losing your own and getting lost in it. And it means holding people accountable. And that’s one of the most important things as a therapist. Therapists develop goals and hold their clients- we allow our clients to hold themselves accountable, but it’s about accountability as well.

So it is still a very healthy relationship. We’re not, you know, going native, as you will, but it’s authentic. Authentic. Um, from, you know, from that standpoint, uh, it is a way to engage people in teaching soft skills. Uh, I think, you know, will this work for everybody?

Maybe not everybody has it. I don’t know. But I, I think it will definitely be impactful for the, the great numbers. Yes, the majority of people, you can work with them to develop some soft skills. Well, I- and to your point, I think there are different leaders at different times, right?

Yeah. I think of- I, I just came through a catastrophic event with the earthquake down in Colombia. You have a 7.4 earthquake that ran effectively 120 miles along a fault line affecting 5 major cities and several million people. At that point, everything goes out the window when you have a plan, and it comes down to who’s the leader on the ground that can make emergency steps. This is similar to 9/11 or one of those type of issues or a combat situation where in the moment you have to be decisive, You don’t have time to really ask people what they think or feel.

It’s got to be a quick decision. There’s no difference in EMS or in healthcare when I’ll bring in a CEO and, for instance, this CEO was hired for a turnaround, right? It’s a very clear, specific goal and objective, but it’s someone completely different where you’re working on developing culture and climate for the long haul because you want to be there 20 years from now, not just 20 days from now. Yeah, totally different styles in leadership. And I, I truly appreciate that point of view and making sure that people understand that.

I think the other side, when you look at that, that soft skill, you know, to me, I see that as, you know, developing that emotional intelligence, that tactical empathy, right? Which is a skill. People- it’s not a habit or don’t have it. It’s something that has to be trained and developed over time. It’s the communication side of it that, again, you think you’re delivering a message that is crystal clear, But yet how somebody else hears it or interprets it completely different.

I’ll throw one else out at you that I think is a soft skill to that same T. And I think therapists do this really very, very well is being curious, right? Assuming positive intent and asking the questions instead of just assuming the worst or that the negative is occurring. Yeah, yeah. So, it’s funny you say that because I believe General Kneller put up curious, curiosity, as well as empathy, Right, as, as those core traits of a good leader. And I think it, it speaks to multitude of levels.

It allows you to understand perspectives, right? When we talk about the therapeutic lens, the therapeutic lens is the ability as a, as a therapist to view the world through your client’s eyes and have an understanding of how they, how they see things. And, and underneath that, there’s a whole host of things- core beliefs, maladaptive thinking, things like that. But, and we don’t get into that But I think perspective is huge, and perspective helps you as a leader if you struggle with taking things personally sometimes. And we talk about, well, don’t take things personally.

Well, how do you do that? Well, let me, let me put myself in the other person’s shoes and view and understand how they view things. And, uh, if I can do that, maybe it takes the sting out of, out of how they feel a little bit and depersonalizes, you know, their opinion or their feeling or what it may be. Uh, so yeah, I mean, and curiosity helps to all of that, right? Curiosity, um, really is, is a strength, uh, in, in getting the feedback that you need and, and understanding a situation completely.

I think great points. I mean, the challenge oftentimes for leaders is that difference between being empathetic and accountable. Yes. Um, here’s a great question I’m going to pose to you. So I recently- I just did training, uh, at a conference last week, and I was doing it on leadership It’s how to develop leaders in a critical access environment.

And one of the questions that came from the audience is, one of my biggest challenges that we see in our organization is the difference between accountability and empathy. Like, how do you hold people accountable while still being empathetic? Right. And so I’ll throw that out to you, you know, because to me, this exactly falls in line with what you’re talking about, is accountability is an essential piece of being a leader, right? We need to have standardization, accountability, but you want to be empathetic.

And I don’t think too many people necessarily understand there’s a dichotomy. You can go too far in any one direction, right? Yeah. I’d love you to, to answer that question is, how do you hold people accountable while also being empathetic as a leader? Yeah, I, I think that’s super important.

Um, that’s a great question. And, and you can definitely go far in, in either cat- too far in either category. So, um, it is understanding what empathy is, right? And understanding healthy boundaries in the relationship and understanding and telling your employee, your staff member, your manager, your director, whatever it may be, that I will listen to you and I will hear you out, and that’s important to me. But I think you need to understand that I won’t always agree, uh, I won’t always do what, you know, you’re suggesting or what may happen because it may may not meet the needs for those circumstances, and I’ll explain to you why then.

Validating somebody is not saying they’re right, and validating someone is not saying you agree with them. It’s saying that you hear them and you appreciate what they’re saying and you appreciate their experience, okay? And you’re not putting that to the side, but there’s other factors in this moment in time that, you know, would allude to the fact that we need to do X, Y, and Z. Accountability is, is, you know, paramount because it is the way by which we make sure change is taking place and things are getting done. And I think an open, honest relationship can have that real conversation.

I think one of the things that you need to talk to staff about and be upfront with them is, is what accountability is. And that’s the first thing I said in the last town hall meeting. I said, I always listen to what everyone has to say. I want to hear what you have to say now. Okay, listening is important, and it’s one of the most-you know-you gotta listen to hear, not listen to respond.

Right? You gotta-you gotta hear everything. But you know, there are six. There are so many people, so many employees in your organization. You obviously can’t do what everyone would like-you’d like to see you do.

So that is the first obvious thing to point out. I will listen and hear everybody out, but understand, I will not always agree with you, and that’s okay. And I will not always. Do the action you think, or take the action you think we should. I think those are great points.

Um, you know, I’ll take it even one step further. I think when it comes to accountability and empathy, uh, things that are often missed are being persistent and consistent in it. In whatever you’re doing, if you’re not consistently and persistent holding your team accountable or empathy or empathetic, then it’s very easy for people to take those side roads, right? And say, oh well, there’s this time, or you always do this, or you never do this. I love those when we’re teaching leadership the always and nevers, right?

Yeah. I feel like I’m talking to teenagers sometimes. You never do this, Dad. So, but I think that’s a big part of it too when you’re talking being empathetic and accountable is being persistent and consistent. I think the other side of it is we find a lot of times leaders don’t follow through, right?

And what I mean by that is it’s not necessarily executing, like you said, on what this person’s asking for, but it’s some sort of follow-up. Up, you know, whether it’s explaining the why we can’t do this or what, you know, you may not have all the information. Let me explain what the challenge is with doing X, Y, or Z. You know, most team members aren’t deep diving into a budget process, sure, you know, and so may not fully understand like, hey, I want to do that, not a priority this year based on X, Y, or Z. But I think those are some of the things that leaders, they have these tools in their toolbox, but they don’t necessarily know how to utilize them.

And I think to your point that, that this approach- the listening, you know, communicating, being curious, persistent, and consistent- are all things that leaders have to learn, those skills. And they’re not easy to learn. It takes time. It does. You, you mentioned something.

You said accountability, right? And it goes both ways though. And that’s the piece you mentioned, right? Leadership accountability. And I, I, I failed miserably, uh, a couple months ago, you know.

Uh, I, I have this you know, notion that transparency is important, what you can be transparent with. There are certain things that strategic planning, things that you can’t release to your staff yet. Right. But, you know, you and I have talked about this before, that when you’re not as transparent as you can be, people make up stories and they make up their own stories and the commiserating starts. And so I thought I was doing very well by, you know, being transparent on any process that we were doing.

But it was a time-dependent process. It was taking a lot of time to do because we believe in like slow, meaningful changes. And the staff member saw this as me not following through on what I said was going to happen. And really, when you sit down and you start to utilize this alliance approach and listening to people talk, there’s a deeper meaning to that. When people see that you are not doing what you said was going to happen, trust starts to erode and your political capital, whatever you want to call it, starts to erode.

And able to hear that, it’s like, oh, I learned a lesson from this. If I’m going to be transparent, I got to know there’s all sorts of things that come with that. I better provide updates, and I better, you know, I better hold myself accountable and let them know where we’re at in the process. Uh, so yeah, it’s 100% true. Accountability goes both ways.

You know, I’m gonna- I’ll dive on that for a second because one of the things I noticed, and you know, I’ve been, uh, instructor, uh, behavioral analyst instructor for some time on the DISC and Driving Forces and emotional intelligence Intelligence, yep, uh, sciences for quite some time. What I have also found true is everybody’s style is slightly different. So if you’re an S, you’re what I like to call Steady Eddies, right? Their sense of urgency is lower, but they still need the how and the why, and they expect that quickly. Sure.

You know, whereas I’m a driver, I’m a D, I’m a dominance guy, fast and funny. Uh, you know, I live by the be bright, be brief, be gone mentality because I feel like I’m making a million decisions. But not everybody responds in that way because I find that when I, I tend to talk that way, I think I know everything in my head, so I’ve given you enough to make a decision. But when you’re the different side, like a C or an I that needs- or C or S that needs more information, I kind of overlook that. And so I think that’s another aspect when it comes to that communication style, like you’re, you’re talking about, is having to understand how your people communicate, how they listen, you know.

And that is another skill set that it has taken me a long time. When I started out in the military, I was to, you know, get the mission complete. I didn’t care what it was. I didn’t care about anything else. I didn’t care about the people.

It was all about the mission. And it wasn’t until later when you have some of those missteps and fall on your face a few times that you’re like, oh, like there’s a whole trail of people this affects. And like, I need to look at the first, second, third, fourth order effects on how it’s going to address everything and just can’t be so singularly focused on executing something. And that That style of understanding and getting to that communication piece is so big. But I’ll go back to the thing that I- that generous listening is so- for me, it’s hard.

I got to admit it’s hard because I like to talk. I think of like, God gave you 2 ears and 1 mouth, so you should listen twice as much as you talk. I look at it, but God gave me a really big mouth. So, you know, and I’m not really the best at always listening and hearing everything. And so I appreciate that point on generous listening.

Can you talk a little bit about that piece? Well, first off, Steve, I’m going to say I disagree with you. I think you’re a great listener. And I think you have a lot to say. That’s because you’re passionate.

You have a lot of good things to say. It always talks to the point. I think you’ve always heard me and everything I’ve said. But I get it. I have a lot to say too.

So, I don’t always follow the 2 ears, one mouth thing. So, the approach really comes from teaching active listening. That’s it. When you go to- when you look at client-centered therapy, which came apart- which came about as part of the humanistic wave of psychology, you know, all these psychologists were trained classic psychoanalysts, trained under Freud, things like that. And Carl Rogers came along and he really believed in the tenet that the power of change exists within the client themselves and they have everything they need to elicit that change.

And he literally I mean, if you’ve ever watched any of his videos, provide, you know, he, it was active listening through reflecting feeling, reflecting meaning, providing summaries, all of that, right. And so we learned some of these skills. And it’s, you know, while not everybody as a therapist identifies with, like, my theoretical orientation is Carl Rogers client-centered approach, it is the foundation for every therapist and developing a therapeutic alliance and understanding how to interview and actively I will tell you, active listening is exhausting. It’s tiring listening to that music between the words, finding the meaning between- behind what they’re really saying. Sometimes what they’re saying is just it.

That’s what they’re saying. Often, more than not, when you start to talk to people, you will find that there’s- it goes a little deeper. But one of the side theoretical orientations that spawned off a client-centered approach is called motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewing is used used everywhere. This is not just a counselor’s or a therapist’s approach to making change or driving change with their patient, their client, whatever it may be.

And there’s no reason I can’t speak intelligently to it, but I believe motivational interviewing is used in job coaching as well. So yeah, you know, motivational interviewing is key, and it talks on the fundamentals. You know, Carl Rogers talked about empathy congruency, and unconditional positive regard to the person sitting in front of you. And so, yes, those are some tenets that you want as an employer. I can have unconditional positive regard towards you.

I might not agree with your actions, but you as a person, I can have that unconditional positive regard. I can show empathy and still hold you accountable. And, you know, congruence is, you know, actions matching what you’re saying, what you’re doing, things like that right now, or intent. Now, motivational interviewers Giving the depth for the client to explore, pulling meaning out of things, pulling content rather than just yes and no questions. Active listening, which is just engaging and hearing.

And we practice active listening as therapists through reflection. And I’m not just talking parroting back to you what you’re saying. You know, it’s, it’s that classic, you know, there’s more subtle ways of doing it, but it’s that classic, you know, I’m paraphrasing. Basic, so I hear what you’re saying, Steve, is, you know, but there’s different ways of doing that. And, um, you know, reflecting that feeling, reflecting that meaning, content, things that it may be, and then, you know, summarizing what you’re hearing.

But active listening is exhausting, but it is an active process. Yeah, I mean, the, the word active being in it, but I will tell you, it is a challenge at times. Um, but that, that’s great. I appreciate that, Patrick. You So, as we’re going to be wrapping up in the next 5, 10 minutes with the podcast, I would like to come up with one, a couple takeaways that people can take away from this podcast.

Like, if I wanted to start doing this stuff today, what are some things that I should look at? The other thing I want to talk about real quick before we dive into that is organizations that are looking to invest in leadership coaching, training, whatever it may be. They often look at it as a sunk cost, right? We’ve got to spend money and it’s going to cost us money. But there is a true return on investment here because I think as you invest in your people and you invest in the coaching for your leadership team, what we have seen, and science has shown this, is there’s an increase in employee retention.

There’s an increase in employee satisfaction. When you have those things, your organization as a whole is paying less to bring in more people. And a recent study study, uh, from Duffield, uh, showed that, you know, for instance, in a hospital, to replace a nurse, it’s somewhere between $21,000 and $49,000 if you have a nurse that leaves. Yeah, right. In a rural environment, to replace a paramedic can cost anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000 for every employee that leaves.

And so when you think of the investments that you take for your time to invest in your leadership training and learn these skill sets, there is a dollar bill that can be associated with it. It’s not like, hey, a dollar in the bank today, but it’s downstream revenue that can help. And that’s what people who are very- I think of those that are like, well, how’s this going to affect our business, or what’s it going to give us back in return? I want them to understand that there’s a piece of that that is so important for your team. Yes, the leadership will make your team better, it’ll make it function more efficient and effective, but it can also affect your bottom line from just keeping people there.

Yeah, uh, one of the things you hear a lot, we talk about in the business world, right, is psychological safety and, and really having that amongst your employees. And I firmly believe- and yeah, this might be subjective or anecdotal coming from me- but the truth is in my mind that if you treat your staff well, you hear your staff out, you provide a psychologically safe environment for them to have a voice and to be heard, okay, uh, they will be happier. And what is good for your staff in the long run is good for the community they serve- you serve. And if the community you serve happens to generate revenue in what you’re doing, then that will follow, I believe. You know, we sat down with hospital executives last week and the questions like, what can we do?

What can we do? What can we do? And the answer is always tell everyone to be kind. You know, paramedics and EMTs and everyone, we talk a lot. And when we show up at a hospital and we’re not heard and we’re not not listened to and we’re not respected, uh, it makes us not want to go there, right?

It doesn’t, it doesn’t feel good. And, you know, so like, treat people well. I think that’s a, a pretty easy way, and kindly, of summarizing it. Now, I, I will go on and say, uh, kind is different than nice, right? Nice has an acronym that goes with it.

It’s neurotic, insecure, crazy, and, um, emotional. And we say that nice is built for people pleasing, which is a whole other side subject. But kind is the way to be, right? Kind has good boundaries. Kind is done from a place of caring, curiosity, things like that.

And so that’s what I would say- be kind. Oh, it sounds overplayed, but, but I will tell you, you know, I look at, uh, in healthcare, Quint Studard, you know, he’s well known throughout healthcare. Uh, he’s made an entire business off of the concept of just be kind. Be kind to your employees. Be kind to your supervisors and your staff, be kind to the patient.

You know, if you do those 3 things, your organization can be successful, you know. And it’s easy to do it when everybody’s celebrating a holiday or, you know, Nurses Week or EMS Week. It’s a lot harder when the, you know, proverbial shit’s hitting the fan and it’s like you still have to be kind. You know, everybody needs that peace. So that’s, that’s a great point.

All right, so in our last couple minutes, I want to come up with 3 or 4 things that people can take away away. You know, when you listen to this podcast, hey, here are a couple things that I would take away and things you can do today. And it doesn’t require a dollar investment, it doesn’t require anything, but hey, these are the things you should think about. So I’ll let you, you do the first one, then I’ll do the next one. Okay, well, the first one is that relationships in leading mean everything.

And so, um, you need to like the people that- and, and you want to need to do well by them. So I would shift your mindset if that’s not where you’re at. The primary driver between it would be, uh, being leader is, um, I need to do well by the people I lead. I think that’s the important shift. And they can take it.

Awesome. I think that’s great. Uh, mine will be talk to your people, right? So many leaders don’t get out and round on their people, but talk to your people and, and take the time, even if it’s once a year, to have a one-on-one with your people. You know, I call it PPF, you know, personal, professional, and financial.

Where is my team at? What do they want to do personally, professionally, and financially? Granted, I’m a sales organization, so that F side makes sense. But you have to understand where your people at and where they want to go. Um, that’ll show them that you do care and that you will engage.

And you have to listen when they talk to them. So, all right, back to you, Patrick. I was going to say listen more than you talk. Talking to your employees is important, but the listening piece is super important. And by listening, it means often more, uh, than, than not going deeper than what they’re saying at surface level and understanding if there’s something deeper below that.

I, you know, one of my favorite quotes that I’ve heard is, people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. And I think that’s right in line with what you’re saying. Uh, my next one will be, uh, be curious. I’ll go a little Ted Lasso here. I love the concept of being curious, and it, it took me a while to understand that, is to ask the right questions, to engage.

You know, an example would be, what information did you have before you made that decision, right? Because they’re not all going to have the same information. I think being curious as a leader is a huge aspect of being successful. Yeah, um, yeah, I agree 100%. All right, back to you.

Huh, I’m gonna say leave the ego at the door. Uh, that’s important, right? Um, we had- I had a professor back in grad school, and before we started group therapy, he would, he would have write down our name on a piece of paper and say, that’s your ego, put it in a glass. I’ll hold this till the end of class. And, uh, you’re gonna listen with the kindness, listen with non-judgmental approach, hear them out, and don’t take things personally.

I think that’s a great aspect of it. Um, you know, in the military, I found some of the best leaders I had just- they had that humbleness, right? Yeah. It wasn’t about them, it was about the team, it was about the organization, it was about the mission. Um, and everybody understood good that we as leaders oftentimes get there because those below us are holding us up.

Yeah, they’re the ones supporting our position. So that, that’s a great one. I think that’s a great place to end it, Patrick. Yeah, absolutely. Um, hey, phenomenal conversation.

I, uh, I think, you know, we could talk for hours on leadership, and, you know, honestly, we’ll probably have to come back and do a part 2 to this series. Absolutely. Because there’s, there’s so many good things that go into leaders, and, uh, I think the biggest challenge that many, uh, people face when it comes to leadership is understanding it’s not a one-and-done, right? Uh, leadership changes. You know, I often say the biggest variable in leadership are the people you’re leading because they’re changing all the time.

But, uh, I love, love your closing remarks, Patrick, and we’ll end it there. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate the opportunity. Always enjoy talking to you. Awesome.

Well, listen, everybody, thank you so much. Uh, this is the H&H Impact Podcast 17. You can catch us anywhere you listen to your podcasts, and we look forward to the next one. One. Thank you.