Dancing with Myself featuring Jevon Wooden

Transcript

Rob Dwyer (00:02.093)
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Another episode of Next in Queue. Today I've got Jevon Wooden in Queue. Jevon, how are you?

Jevon Wooden (00:10.818)
Man, I'm feeling fantastic. Rob, how are you?

Rob Dwyer (00:13.842)
I am great. We're recording this on a Monday and it's Monday night. You can see I've got my Kansas City Chiefs action going on. So as we record this, Chiefs are 7-0 undefeated and I like to brag about that every now and then.

Jevon Wooden (00:23.735)
me.

Jevon Wooden (00:35.766)
I'm an Eagles fan, Chiefs, still have a place where I just have the slight despise for them.

Rob Dwyer (00:37.209)
Ha ha!

Rob Dwyer (00:44.153)
It's OK because you know. Eagles have a Kelce. They did up until this year. We have a Kelce like there's a little bit of symbiotic relationship going on. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, so, but we're not talking about football today as much as we probably could. We could probably spend the whole hour talking about that, but that's not.

Jevon Wooden (00:54.688)
Yeah, I got our old coach, know, that didn't win for us, but he won for y'all a few times.

Rob Dwyer (01:13.401)
this podcast. That's some other podcasts. Jevon, you're the CEO of Brightmind Consulting Group. You're a speaker, you're an author, you're a podcast host. You do all the things. You go out and talk to people about all kinds of things. And your background is in information security. And you could probably just make a career of

dealing with information security, but you went a different direction. Tell us a little bit about that before we dive into our topic.

Jevon Wooden (01:52.27)
Absolutely, man. Well, you know info sec pays well And I got my masters in cyber did all the things got all the certs. But then I realized it just didn't feed my soul man It was actually draining me to do that day in and day out right for some I'm looking around they're passionate. They're fired up They look at the latest tech and they're like, yes I can't wait to play with this to see how it breaks for me. I'm like, who cares? You know, I realized that I cared more about people than ones and zeros or protecting

the companiy's data, right? So I hopped into the people side. So now I focus on leveraging the power of emotional intelligence to improve leadership and organizational performance.

Rob Dwyer (02:33.783)
I love that. I love that. We I know that you just spoke with Triad InfoSec. We just had Joshua on the show to talk about cyber security. And so I know that the two of you know each other, but I'm curious, when did this when did this become a focus for you? Like how long ago was it that you were just like, you know what, I need to I need to switch gears.

Jevon Wooden (03:01.794)
Yeah, you know, I started this organization, Brightmind Consulting Group in 2017, but I still holding on to my job. And it really wasn't until I was laid off that I stopped playing with this, right? I was laid off in 2022. And that's when I was like, okay, I'm going at this full force, right? Napoleon Hill says, you you got to burn the bridges behind you so you can move forward. It just so happened that that happened a little sooner than I wanted it to happen.

Rob Dwyer (03:16.153)
Ha ha ha!

Jevon Wooden (03:30.572)
But you know what, when I started doing that, things started happening. So it gets a little shaky at times, but now the big mo, right? So that's when I really realized that this was what I was supposed to be doing. Because every time I have that entrepreneurial thinking of, should I just go back to the job? Something great happens just to say, stay the course.

Rob Dwyer (03:40.653)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (03:56.311)
Well, certainly someone else lit that fire, but you have marched ahead and really leaned into something that I know that you're passionate about. I'd like to explore, like obviously you were in the military, you were in the army for a long time. Tell me about what you learned about emotional intelligence going back that far.

Jevon Wooden (04:24.6)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that really sparked this whole journey for me being in the military because when I look back at it, when I seen who was effective as a leader and who wasn't, who had high morale in their units, who could get people to just go charge hard for them without any complaints, it was really those leaders who led with empathy. Those leaders who said, you know what, I'm not going to demand.

that you do so I'm going to show you that I'm willing to do it too. I'm willing to take action myself. I'm not going to put you in harm's way. I'm going to get your feedback to see how we can best do this. And it really, really gave everyone else a sense of ownership, which allowed them to perform at their best. So that was really the catalyst for where I am now. I initially thought it was mindset. thought leaders with like a growth mindset, leaders who were curious were really the catalyst for that. But it turns out

It's a lot bigger than that. And that's why I started talking more about the, emotional intelligence aspect, because it not only looks at the social side of things, but also the self side of things. How do you get to a point as a person where you can be vulnerable enough to say, I need help, be vulnerable enough to admit when you're wrong, be self-aware enough to pull something back. If you say it wrong, right? There's a lot that goes into that.

Rob Dwyer (05:41.121)
Yeah, absolutely. It strikes me as a little bit counterintuitive to what the general, especially civilian public thinks about the military and what they think about effective leadership in the military. And your experience paints a little bit different picture than I think most people would

think about and kind of that typical command and control style of leadership of which the military is right, I mean, that is the leadership structure. What I hear you saying is the actual leaders and how they work within that structure makes it an incredible difference in how the people on the team react to that leader and what they can accomplish.

Jevon Wooden (06:33.998)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, the military is known for no fluff, hard charging, know, get it done type of attitude. Well, that didn't bode very well, right? So the military has had to change a lot of the culture because a lot of people think war was really the highest cause of death. It was actually suicide for a lot of service members. So what they had to look at, like, what is the catalyst for this? Even people who've never deployed are, you know,

giving themselves to suicide and taking that route or getting addicted to alcohol or drugs and all these other things. So it really had to turn, do an about face to have the military terminology and look at themselves and say, you know what, what we're doing, do we need to really operate in this manner? And when they looked at, you know, holistically all the different services, service lines.

They realized that the catalyst was that like we are not taking care of our people, right? We're breaking them down. We think we were building them up, but we're not like what we're doing is we're desensitizing people. They're they're used to war. They're used to the the offhanded jokes. They're used to being dark. They're used to not being able to share their emotions. And what you're doing is you're taking the human out of the person. So they had to really change how they operate when it comes to organizationally.

Rob Dwyer (07:50.649)
you

Jevon Wooden (07:56.15)
So now you give leaders the license to lead for impact, but not lead with fear. Right. And that's what the, was before it was like, respect the rank. Listen to what I'm saying. Well, listen to what I'm telling you. If it's a lawful order, you know, not no, nevermind. If you have a better idea as a lower rank, right? Nevermind that we don't need to hear you. Where are the leaders? We're going to operate in this vacuum. and we're going to give you the silo orders, even though you know what's best. Right. So they don't do that anymore.

Now it's about, hey, let's get some feedback. Let's see what was working, see how we can improve. Everyone has a voice, right? At least in the good units. I'm sure there's still something, as in any organization, there's still some dissent in there. But that's what had to change. You had to give people the agency to be heard, seen, valued. hear it all the time, psychological safety. You had to give them space to do that. Now, of course, there's still a hierarchy in the military, but it's more about looking at the person as a person.

Rob Dwyer (08:34.766)
Yeah.

Jevon Wooden (08:54.754)
You still go through basic training. You still go all through these things, but you become more effective because you're able to tap into what makes us different from a robot, which is emotions. Emotions have been given a bad rap, but it really is the first way we think. If you look at things, the emotional brain is hit first before we hit the cognitive brain in our thinking. So now that we recognize that one, as a leader, you can say, hold on.

Rob Dwyer (09:10.713)
Hmm.

Jevon Wooden (09:22.159)
Did I give myself space to really process what's going on? Two, did I get feedback on what's going on? Because I'm not there every day. I can't see everything. And three, am I allowing people the space to take ownership of what's about to take place? Because those three are very important things if we want to succeed long term.

Rob Dwyer (09:43.225)
Yeah, I love that you hit on us being emotional - and not in a way that right sounds like, maybe I want to cry or something. We make decisions with our emotions. We think that we make decisions based off of facts and logic information that we're processing logically. And the reality is we don't. We justify the decisions that we made emotionally.

using logic after the fact go, yeah, no, that was, that was a good decision. But our initial reactions are very much controlled by emotions. It's interesting that you're seeing that change. Of course you made a transition then into the private sector. So you've worked for a number of companies that people have heard of in the private sector. I'd like to understand when you went into the private sector,

Jevon Wooden (10:15.437)
So

Rob Dwyer (10:42.595)
Did it feel like a big change in the leadership that you encountered? And if so, how was that different? And how did you think about emotional intelligence as you entered into the private sector?

Jevon Wooden (10:58.434)
Yeah, I mean, the change in culture is stark, right? Between civilian side and military side, right? We just operate on a different frequency. That's just how it is. But that also allowed me to see things from a different lens. So for instance, if someone in the civilian side is like, my God, you know, they're waving their hands and they're going through because something happens, I'm typically more calm. I'm like, hold on a minute, let's...

look at this from, you know, let's calm down and let's see this, you know, what we can actually do. Because one thing in the military that I always take with me is to stay flexible. There's so many things that we do not control. So we have to really place an interrupt, again, the emotions, right? Place an interrupt between our thoughts and our actions and our feelings so we can respond or react intelligently, right? So that's one thing that is different from the military versus the corporate side.

The second thing is the corporate side, you hear a lot about we're going to do this, but then it doesn't happen. In the military, it may take a little bit, but if the leader says, hey, this is how we're going to make this happen, they're going to plan it out, they're going to create the strategy, and then we're going to execute. We're going to come back. If it didn't work how we wanted to, we're going to do an after action report, see what happened, what went well, what didn't, what we can sustain. We're going to go at it again.

Corporate side really doesn't operate like that. They're like, that's it. We gave it a college try. And everything is siloed in the corporate side. So what that does is you prepare your whole life for this job for a lot of these larger organizations, but you're only doing one piece. And that is really where organizations are getting in trouble because they try to keep people in this one thing. And people want to be challenged. In the military, you're going to get challenged for sure.

Corporate side not so much, you know in the interview they tell you all these amazing things you're going to be doing then you get in there you like What the hell is this? So so that and then also from the perspective of promotional opportunities Military is tough right? It's tough to get promoted because you're still vying for a certain amount of spots per year But at least you know

Rob Dwyer (12:57.955)
Ha ha ha!

Jevon Wooden (13:13.014)
what you're going to supposed to be doing, right? To get that promotion. Corporate side, you have no idea what you need to do to get promoted. You know, you're like, okay, how do I move to that next level? And everyone's like, just keep doing what you're Keep working at it. You know, like that doesn't tell me anything. So what I do with a lot of organizations now is like, hey, we need to give people an IDP, an individual development plan, not because they did something wrong.

Rob Dwyer (13:17.817)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (13:22.361)
Hmm.

Jevon Wooden (13:38.85)
but so they know how they can move forward in their careers. And then another piece that is really different from corporate and military is how we go about doing things. In the military, there's doctrine on everything. Corporate side, no matter how young or old the company is, typically people are flying by the seat of their pants.

They're like, let's just see if this works, right? We're not documenting anything. There's no SOPs for the most part, right? So that's where also a lot of times you see people like two different departments doing the same thing because there's no clear lines of delineation, right? We don't know who does what, who's in charge of what in a lot of these companies. So that's why when I hear the comparisons between military and corporate, I'm like,

Rob Dwyer (14:13.817)
Mmm.

Jevon Wooden (14:23.04)
I don't really like when they use the term like, we're on a battlefield. We're doing this. I'm like, you're really not. It's completely different. But if that's what gets you motivated, we'll go with it.

Rob Dwyer (14:34.379)
It reminds me a little bit of those commercials where

Now I got to think of the rock star who's doing it. Billy Idol is going in and saying, corporations quit calling your people rock stars. Like they're not rock stars. I'm a rock star, right? I get up on stage, right? And we make some of these comparisons, but I think this one is really important in that there's a whole different way of operating in the military. And there's a reason for that.

Jevon Wooden (14:53.388)
Yeah, I have seen it, yeah I have seen it.

Rob Dwyer (15:11.949)
Right. It's got in many ways a longer history than any corporation in the United States. There have been lots of lessons learned and it's a large organization, multiple organizations, but they have had to pivot. They've had to learn, they've had to grow. And because you have a constant influx of new people,

coming in, you need to have things documented. There are lots of organizations that could learn a lot from those processes and procedures. like, hey, let's just do some basic SOPs, right? As a writer of SOPs, it makes it really easy to transition certain things, too, when you get new people in. can say, look, this is how we do this thing. I don't have to worry about.

Did we talk about this? Did we not talk about it? Because you can look it up and it makes it really straightforward, like step by step. This is how we do this one thing.

And most organizations, you're right, they're not there. They are. They are flying by the seats of their pants for sure.

Jevon Wooden (16:28.844)
Yes.

It's pretty funny though, because we see these mythological companies and we're like, they are amazing. They have it all together. But on the back end, it's no, it's not that at all. So that's a point that I really, it was good for me to go into these orgs and see that. Because it's just like, I mean, we glorify so much of what we see, but we don't really know what's happening on the back end.

Rob Dwyer (16:50.937)
Mm.

Jevon Wooden (16:59.626)
So especially as an entrepreneur, it was good for me to see that even these companies who have been around for some hundreds of years are still trying to figure things out. And I feel like as people, entrepreneur, not professional, whatever you're doing, you can learn a lot from that to say, you know, does it matter? There's always something to work on and you have to be okay with that. Right. You have to come from a place of curiosity.

if we are to elevate to any level of success. So that's really what that taught me was like, no matter what, from military to the corporate side, there's always things to work on and you're always gonna have to reinvent in some way, or form.

Rob Dwyer (17:39.193)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I think one of the biggest challenges for leaders in organizations, even if they have been taught some leadership tactics, strategies, skills, which doesn't happen often enough, but let's assume they have. think one of the biggest challenges is

connecting with people that you don't just have a natural connection with, right? Sometimes that can be age based, right? Maybe I'm a young leader. I might be in my early twenties and somebody on my team is maybe as old as my mom or my dad, or maybe they just have a wildly different background. Can you talk about some strategies and some tips about making connections with people that you don't just

kind of naturally have that right off the bat connection with.

Jevon Wooden (18:42.83)
Yeah, absolutely. think this is something, you know, I'm glad we're talking about this, Rob, because there's a lot of room for improvement here. One of the things, especially in the corporate space, one of the reasons why a lot of people struggle, leaders and employees alike, is they don't look for the personal common bond.

They're like, I'm a leader, right? It's lonely at the top. I need to speak to another leader. I need to do this. Doesn't really work that way, right? If you look for connection from a personal standpoint, like that's one of the things I work with a lot of organizations on, especially in a remote environment, is find something that you can talk to that person about. We're all humans, right? So we all have personal things going on, right? Does that person have family, right? What is that? Some of the hobbies that that person likes? What even...

got them to this organization. Why do they stay? What motivates them? All those things open us up. That's a conversation starter. So once you find that conversation starter, it typically becomes a lot easier because one, people like to talk about themselves. So if I say, you know, I just realized Rob, we haven't, we haven't really had the chance to connect. You know, I'd love to just talk 15 minutes to learn more about you, not dealing with work, not any of that, but just about you. Is that cool? And then we get on that call like, yeah, thanks for meeting with me.

All right, well, I just realized, I didn't realize, do you have family members? Like, what made you come to ACME organization? Like, what keeps you wanting to be here? you've been here for three years. You know, what interests you? You know, what keeps you motivated? Those questions are not just, a lot of people call it small talk. It's really huge, right? Especially if I'm your leader asking you these things, right? Because now I'm gonna say, my leader actually cares. And they're not just a manager, they're a leader.

Rob Dwyer (20:09.945)
Mm-hmm.

Jevon Wooden (20:30.348)
because manager is a position that's assigned, right? Position of authority. And you're worried about the processes, the day-to-day outcomes. Whereas a leader is about influence, right? I'm looking to get the best version of you that I can have out of every day so I can get the best results, right? And I'm being genuine about that. So if you look and have that conversation 15 minutes, you have just established rapport with that person, right? So it's that easy to just...

have these conversations and I know a lot of people are going to say, I'm not really comfortable doing that. Well, there's Slack, there's Teams, there's all these different things that if you're more comfortable behind the keyboard, you can do the same thing. Hey, I just wanted to, you know, don't want to take too much of your time, but I just wanted to say this, this, then this, right? And then they're going to respond back. So there's different ways to do it. And then from a team development standpoint, if you really want everyone to be on that same sheet of music, there's exercises to do it.

There's a bunch of tools you can use to gamify the whole process. One of the things that I recommend with some of the organizations I have coached or consulted with is to have everyone put in a bucket. They like to do this hobby. They have five kids or whatever, and have everyone select who that person is. See if they can guess it because it's fun, and then you get to see how much you really know about your coworkers.

And then they can say, eh, eh, that's Rob, eh, eh, that's Jevon. And you just find out so much about your people and it's so fun. And then you remember those things. And next thing you know, you find some common things. you like hiking? So do I. Right. where do you live? I don't even know where you're at. So you get all this different conversation that really sparks the cohesiveness that is going to improve the results. And it's going to make people want to stay with your org because they realize that they're not just a number or filling the billet.

Rob Dwyer (21:58.296)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (22:21.601)
Yeah, I love that you delineated the difference between management and leadership there. That is really important for leaders and managers to understand. Like what am I doing right now? Am I managing or am I leading? Because those are two vastly different things. And they work together often, right? I, as a...

Jevon Wooden (22:45.678)
Absolutely.

Rob Dwyer (22:47.551)
As a manager, I need to lead and as a leader, sometimes I need to manage.

I also love that you're talking about or just taking time to get to know people. One of the things that I've found effective in that process that you just illustrated is starting with yourself. And that can be hard for some leaders to kind of share about yourself first, because if you just start bombarding someone with personal questions, they...

Jevon Wooden (23:16.046)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (23:22.733)
They might back off really quickly of that, but when you start to share a little bit about yourself, none of the things that you liked it to do or hobbies or about your family, about what's important to you, what motivates you. Those things can then transition very easily into having that conversation with the other person who all of a sudden goes, okay. I kind of understand what we're doing here. This is not like a, I'm not in trouble. It's not a coaching conversation or anything.

Jevon Wooden (23:41.368)
move.

Jevon Wooden (23:46.808)
Yes.

Jevon Wooden (23:52.172)
Right. And I will recommend you tell them why you're meeting with them. Right. You don't just want to put a meeting and there's no agenda. Right. And you can have fun. It be like, hey, you're not in trouble. I just want to get to know you a little bit. Right. We are on my team. We should know each other. You know, so make it fun. And like we've we've lost the idea of fun and play and curiosity. All things that we have when we're children that we just don't tap into.

Rob Dwyer (24:00.589)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (24:07.351)
Yeah.

Jevon Wooden (24:20.152)
We're too uptight. We just really need to, you know, lean into that again, man. It's, it's, and I love that you mentioned like starting with self when you're vulnerable, it gives people the agency to be vulnerable with you. so I wholeheartedly agree.

Rob Dwyer (24:36.121)
So, Jevon, let's just play this out a little bit. I'd like to know something about you that maybe we wouldn't guess from just your background and the conversation that we've had, like in your spare time when you're not talking about your passions around empathy and leadership and those kinds of things, like...

Jevon Wooden (24:42.328)
Let's do it.

Rob Dwyer (25:05.197)
What would I find Jevon doing on a Saturday or a Sunday when he's just making decisions for himself about how he wants to spend his time? What would you be doing?

Jevon Wooden (25:16.952)
Yeah, I love to spend time with my family. I have a beautiful wife. We hit a year, September 30th, and I have a lovely daughter who's about to turn one at the time of this recording, November 11th. So I love spending time with them. At the time of this recording, Halloween just passed, so we dressed up as the Flintstones, right? We had the baby as Pebbles, wife as Wilma, and I was Fred, which was so fun.

Rob Dwyer (25:36.921)
Peace.

Jevon Wooden (25:41.12)
And then we like to spend time working out, walking, going outside, spending time outdoors. And I have a dog, his name is Hachi. He's seven. And that just fills me up, spending time with all of them, playing, running around, being silly. I mentioned play. We just like to have a good time, laugh, crack jokes, and just take things lightly. Life can be heavy. So that's my time to just lighten up.

The other thing I love to do when I'm not just spending time with them is I love to learn. I love to read. I love to see things from different perspectives that I may not have readily been open to, right, or introduced to. So reading just takes me to those places and I get to see, you know, how these thought leaders come up with their ideas or, you know, how someone who may have a different perspective from us, why they see it from that viewpoint. So those are the things I enjoy doing.

Rob Dwyer (26:37.911)
Yeah, quick question. How much of the baby's trick or treat candy is actually dad's trick or treat candy?

Jevon Wooden (26:47.18)
Well, she's only one, so you know, she can't eat any candy right now.

Jevon Wooden (26:55.022)
You know?

Rob Dwyer (26:55.043)
OK, noted your non answer is absolutely an answer. And those of us who know, we know. And your favorite trick or treat candy to receive in your daughter's bucket or bag or whatever. What's dad going to be eating?

Jevon Wooden (27:01.262)
Ha ha ha!

Absolutely.

Jevon Wooden (27:17.142)
Man, I love gummy candy, so like gummy bears and that type of stuff, like gummy bears, Skittles, all that, I love it. So that's why I gotta not have too much in the house, right? That can go poorly very quickly, because I've been on all the...

Rob Dwyer (27:22.093)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (27:27.831)
Right? I know that feeling. Mm hmm. Well, I've never found Reese's anything pumpkin tree or just peanut butter cup that isn't going to end up down my gullet at one point or another. So you can have all the gummy candy. Maybe we need to arrange an exchange. My kids are old enough. They're not doing trick or treating, though, so we're actually the ones giving out.

Jevon Wooden (27:46.222)
I love it.

Jevon Wooden (27:50.54)
Hey, let's do it.

Rob Dwyer (27:57.145)
candy these days as opposed to collecting. So I don't have much for you if I'm being honest about it. Yeah.

Jevon Wooden (28:02.059)
Well, least it makes it out the door, right? Cause you could do one of few parents that just open it up and take a couple next thing you know, there's nothing to give to the kids.

Rob Dwyer (28:09.465)
I had this giant bucket of candy now. I just have a giant bucket of wrappers Can we talk about trust

Jevon Wooden (28:16.367)
Right.

Jevon Wooden (28:22.296)
Mmm. Yes, let's do it. Let's do it.

Rob Dwyer (28:25.655)
Let's do it. So obviously we've been talking about kind of that getting to know you and building a personal connection. But what does that have to do with trust and why is trust important? Or maybe you're just going to tell me it's not important. Jevon, you just might say Rob, trust overrated.

Jevon Wooden (28:52.27)
I'd be lying if I said that, because trust is really, and we don't have trust, one, know, no one's gonna wanna stay there for long. You know, the performance is going to go down. They're gonna always think that you have an agenda, right, that's out for them. So we really have to build that rapport. So it doesn't matter if I'm in a leadership role or if I'm just in a day-to-day, right? So if we think about the relationships in our personal lives, we work a lot to build trust.

with people we care about, right? Or if we wanted someone to be our friend, right? We got to build that trust. So that in itself shows the importance of that. Because if we never get to that level where someone entrusts us with whatever they're thinking or entrust us to have their best interests at heart, what's going to happen is everything's going to be surface level. We're never going to get to their motivations, their fears, and their drivers. So in order to do that, we got to have these conversations. right? One.

The second thing we have to, like you said, give some of ourselves. We have to show that we trust them, right? Because everything is law of reciprocity. If we give, typically someone's going to give something back. They may not give to the level that we hope they do, but if we continue to show that we are someone who is trustworthy and we don't erode that trust by saying something behind their back or doing something that's counter to what we said we do, then what happens over time is that person

starts to show in whatever way they show that we are a person that they're looking to establish that relationship with. And building rapport takes time, right? It takes a lot of time typically to build trust to that level where someone says, hey, you know what? I actually trust you with this thing, or I trust you with this secret that I'm going to tell you. It takes some time, but it doesn't take a lot of time to erode that. So we also have to be careful to maintain the trust once we get it.

Again, trust is everything, right? If someone does not trust, then you're not going to get the best version of them in the professional perspective. And then from a personal standpoint, they're just going to say surface. They're going to say, how are you? And it's going to be the same answer, right? But if they do trust you and they don't feel well, they may say, you know, actually, can I speak to you about something? And that's really the difference in a nutshell.

Rob Dwyer (31:13.539)
I love that you just talked about the difference between the words, which are the beginning of establishing trust, but the actions that follow along and support or don't support and can erode that trust. And it really is about the actions that we take. After we've started that process that are really going to tell that person, yes,

Jevon Wooden (31:32.194)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (31:42.243)
Jevon is trustworthy or nah, I don't trust this guy any farther than I can throw him. And it does erode much faster than you build it up. Like there is no question it can happen like that.

Jevon Wooden (31:54.243)
Absolutely.

Jevon Wooden (31:59.372)
Yeah, yeah, I've seen it, man. You know, I remember I was assigned to lead a few soldiers and I think it was my second deployment and you always get a debrief. Like when you come into another unit, if you're a new leader, the old leadership would debrief you and, you know, talk about the soldiers, strengths, weaknesses, whatever, right? Room for improvement. And I was told by their prior leadership that they just weren't.

good soldiers, that they didn't know their jobs, that they performed poorly, whatever. Whatever it could be that could be told that was bad, right, I was told about these soldiers. But I found when I actually talked to those soldiers, right, I had one-on-ones with them, just to see what their standpoint was that they just didn't trust their leadership.

They didn't feel supported. They didn't trust that they could say hey, I don't know what the hell I'm doing right Can I get some training on this right? So without that what happened was their performance plummeted because they couldn't come to the leaders and say hey I need help They couldn't they didn't know what to do like as far as the physical fitness tests. They didn't know how to train with themselves There was no no help in place right they didn't do PT together. So what are they gonna? Go? They're just gonna fail

because all that trust is eroded. So I made it a mission of mine to really establish that trust and keep it. And the way I did it, it wasn't like I just was some amazing leader. It was just listening to them. I listened to them. When they gave me feedback or when they said they needed support on something, I said, OK, what resources do you need? And I gave them that resource. It's really about taking ownership of their success.

And it's really about being a person with integrity, which is one of the core tenets of the military. So don't know why the prior leadership didn't have integrity, but that's really a key component of what we're talking about with trust is having integrity, doing the right thing when no one's looking and then also looking to find what the right thing is to best support in the case of a leader.

Rob Dwyer (34:03.865)
know, you just really illustrated something that you touched on a little bit earlier, and that was having someone else's best interests at heart. Can you talk more about that and the relationship that that has with trust and performance and all of that?

Jevon Wooden (34:04.526)
you

Jevon Wooden (34:27.938)
Yeah, from my standpoint, it's like having someone's best interest at heart is really the definition of a leader. You know, we mentioned earlier that leadership is influence. It's about that. What a difference between influence and manipulation is influence is leading toward a common goal, wanting that person to be the best version of themselves. Manipulation is just you trying to get what you can out of that person. So that's one. The second thing is when you have the person's best interest at heart, everything you do,

is genuine. People feel what's happening within you. So if you're just saying one thing and doing another thing, they're going to recognize that. And that's going to cause them to kind of back off. That's going to cause them, in the case of an organization, to start looking elsewhere. That's going to cause them to start talking about you behind your back because they can't say it to you. So it really doesn't benefit anyone for you to be someone who's selfish, for you to be someone who says one thing and does another.

Rob Dwyer (35:16.539)
Ha ha ha.

Jevon Wooden (35:26.326)
or for you to try to lead with fear. So it just pays for you to find like what that person's motivators, drivers, and fears, as we said before, and don't play on the fears, right? Try to support them so that they don't recognize that fear, right? And then see if you can motivate and drive them based on the positive identifiers. And then that's what's going to really cause the cohesive unit to come together and perform at their best level.

Rob Dwyer (35:53.845)
Yeah, we've been talking a lot about the leader. But I wonder if you have advice for someone who reports to a leader that leads through fear.

Jevon Wooden (36:05.976)
Yes.

Mmm.

Rob Dwyer (36:10.669)
What do I do in that situation?

Jevon Wooden (36:14.338)
Yeah, I mean, there's a number of things, right? And there's of course, escalation of force as we call it. So the first thing is, have you, are you comfortable enough to feel like you can talk to this person? Cause you know what I figured, I realized is a lot of people don't know what they're doing, right? And not from the case of their, their, they don't know what actions they need to take, but from the standpoint of they don't know that they're doing that thing.

Rob Dwyer (36:19.545)
you

Jevon Wooden (36:37.686)
Right. Because that's their personality type naturally. Maybe they feel insecure. So they need to, you know, feel like they got to be more assertive and things. conversations is should be the lowest level. Handle it at the lowest level if you can. If you can go to that person and say, hey, you know what? I just want to talk to you because the thing you said in that meeting, you know, didn't make me feel the best. Right. Is it possible? And I like to use that term because it is possible. Typically, is it possible?

Rob Dwyer (36:38.839)
Yeah.

Jevon Wooden (37:05.07)
for you to say things differently or address me first before you say it to the group. If you can have that conversation, start there. If you don't feel like you can have that conversation, I typically don't like to blindside people with something, but if you don't feel like you can have that conversation, maybe you can find support in another colleague. See if they're going through the same thing. See if they have that similar experience with that person. If they do, then

Maybe if it's a common theme, maybe it might be time to go one level up, right? You might have to do that. But I always recommend you start at that person. Give them a heads up that you're uncomfortable about something or they're not coming at you the right way, or that's not the way to motivate you. It actually causes you to retreat a little bit. And then if you find some support in that, if there's a feedback system outside of surveys, because we know surveys don't really work.

If there's a way to give feedback anonymously, that could be another way. Right. If that leader has a 360 assessment going on or something like that, put it in there. Like, Hey, you know what would be best if you stop leading with fear and you started leading with a little more care, right? Thinking about the fact that we are people and we're adults. Right. So those are different ways that you can do it. And then the other way is just to, if you've tried all those things, then

you have to see what you can do. Can you move to a different apartment? Can you move organizations? Because clearly it's not going to work and that's okay. It's not retreating or running. also, it's actually making sure that you have your own best interests, which is key.

Rob Dwyer (38:43.139)
Yeah. I love that intro of is it possible? I think one of the biggest challenges that people have with starting a potentially challenging conversation, and this certainly would fall under that umbrella is how do I start? What's the first thing I say to get us on this subject so we can really dig in?

Jevon Wooden (39:03.224)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (39:11.827)
And having an opener like that is a great way to help people kind of practice in their minds how they're going to start this. So I love that. Is it possible?

What other kind of high level things do you have suggestions for for organizations today? Because I know you are like you have been on the circuit like the last month or so giving talks and talking to organizations and I'm sure you're getting all kinds of questions about sometimes very specific things. So what kind of themes

Jevon Wooden (39:40.654)
Yeah

Rob Dwyer (39:55.523)
Have you been running into that you'd like to address here?

Jevon Wooden (40:01.646)
Yeah, you know what's interesting? This talk about high performance being toxic to the culture. I've been asked about that a ton. They're like, okay, this person is really executing very well for me. They get the job done, but they just, no one wants to work with them. And I see that theme over and over and over again. The leaders, the organization is afraid to lose them because they're a high contributor, but then they're losing everyone else.

So what do they do? And we can talk about this from an employee standpoint and then from the leader standpoint. So from the leader standpoint, what I've recommended is sometimes people are when they're not challenged enough, they start to cause havoc a little bit. I had one of them in my soldiers. It wasn't that he was had behavioral issues. It was that he just was not challenged. So he started finding ways to entertain himself by being an ass, quite frankly.

Rob Dwyer (40:59.383)
Hahaha!

Jevon Wooden (41:00.142)
So what I did was I challenged him to lead. I gave him more responsibility and everyone's like, why would you do that when he's clearly not ready? But no, he was ready. That's what he actually wanted. So it was something that really allowed him to step into a different thought process. It really forced him to tap into places he hadn't had, connect some synapses that weren't connected. Right. So sometimes that's a great place to start on there is to say, you know what?

Clearly you have time to cause havoc within our culture. What if we assigned you, what would you like to have? Have that conversation. What would you like to be doing? You know, it seems like you're not challenged enough and we know you have all this. You have all this possibility within you. We believe in you, but we also need you to start treating everyone else better. So have that conversation because it lets them know one, we're not going to put up with this anymore.

Two, we believe that you have some skillsets that you haven't tapped into. So here's where we would like to see you be better. Here's what we want to see out of you. And then that sparks the ownership again. That starts to make them say, all right, let me take this seriously. These people want me to step up a little more. Do I feel comfortable? We don't have them commit wholeheartedly, just say, hey, we'll try it for a little bit and then see what happens. All right. So that gives them an opportunity to step in and do something.

The second thing is from an employee standpoint, if you have to work with this person, again, the conversation and if they continue to do it, clearly the leader is in tune with that. the leader like, Hey, you know, is there a way that, you know, we can kind of support this person? We know you just had this conversation with them. clearly they know their job, but they're just not allowing us to perform at our level. Is there something that we can do about this? Is it possible?

to maybe put this person somewhere else or is it possible to have this person go to a training role so we know how to perform our job better, whatever. But you always want to take that person and see if you can allow them to pour in some of the skill sets that make them a high performer into the other people. And that really gives them a sense of value, gives them a sense of pride, and it gives everyone else a sense of, I can learn something from them so I'm starting to feel better.

Jevon Wooden (43:23.704)
because oftentimes organizations typically pour more into those people who are causing problems more than they do the people who really should be getting poured into. So that's one. The second thing that I would love to say, this from a personal standpoint is don't wait for adversity to come to start thinking about what you're gonna do when adversity is there. You should really start thinking about processes, having contingency plans in place.

within your mind. You know, we call them tabletop exercises, but you can really role play things and visualize things in your mind. You can write it down, but think about, for instance, what would happen? How do I go about a disagreement with my spouse? Right? That's a key. If you think about those things from that level, when it comes to that emotional situation, the circumstance, you're not coming from emotion anymore because your mind has already gone through it.

So you're coming from a cognitive, intelligent standpoint. So I recommend that everyone do that in adverse circumstances. Just think about what could happen and create that contingency plan to have in a place so you're not baffled or you're not shocked or you're not scrambling when a situation takes place. And you can take that to any circumstance in your life. That's the second thing that I would say.

Rob Dwyer (44:24.025)
you

Rob Dwyer (44:47.681)
Yeah, I love that. So, you know, that really hits home for me at Happy to we are going through SOC 2 certification right now, which I know you'll be very familiar with. And part of that is going through risk assessment, risk assessment exercises. Right. This isn't necessarily emotional, but it is the same kind of thing where it's like, OK, let's let's put out a situation that we haven't experienced yet.

Jevon Wooden (44:57.589)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (45:16.057)
problematic situation. Like how big is this problem and what are we going to do about it if it rears its ugly head and what kind of plans can we put in place to make sure that we can continue to operate at the level that we expect to operate. And this is almost like risk analysis with interpersonal relationships, right? And that can be with all of your people.

the different kinds of things that could potentially pop up. What kind of impact is that going to have and how am I going to react if that happens? And if I think it's really likely to happen, like what can I do now to mitigate the possibility of that happening in the future? Maybe I see that I've got someone who their performance is starting to dip going back to what you were talking about with a high performer.

Jevon Wooden (45:55.822)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (46:14.327)
Maybe I start to see the buds of that happening. What can I do now and what plans can I put in place to make sure that this doesn't become a bigger problem? So I absolutely love that and it really hits home with me right now. Fun times, risk analysis. Love it, love it.

Jevon Wooden (46:37.71)
Yeah, yeah, I feel you on that one. I know I've had to go through a few of those in my day.

Rob Dwyer (46:45.419)
I bet I You know, one of the other things that you talked about that I want to just. Dig into a little bit for the listeners. Is. Again, you talked about that high performer potentially creating a toxic environment, and I think too often. We. Let high performers just do their thing because as a as a manager.

They are impacting my numbers, right? They might be driving team success. And so you talked about a manager managing outcomes, right? And so I'm seeing team success. Like maybe they're a salesperson, and they knock out the sales. And so my sales team looks good because they're performing at a high level. But when you understand what

They need to be happy in their role to drive them to show up for work every day. Sometimes you get to a point where you're like, OK, I've mastered this. I can do this in my sleep, and it doesn't excite me anymore. And so you're right, understanding, what do you want to do? How can I challenge you? That can not only fix an environment within a team,

would help build trust with that individual who goes, Jevon, Jevon sees me. Jevon sees me. He sees that I'm a little bit bored. This isn't challenging anymore. And now we're talking about what I can do that's going to challenge me. And so I think it's critical that people recognize that when you see bad behavior, it may not.

be that someone just wants to be a pain in your rear. Maybe they're calling out and saying, hey, I'm bored. I'm just bored. What can I do here? I want to do something that's exciting. What is it?

Jevon Wooden (48:51.992)
Yep. Yeah.

Jevon Wooden (48:56.75)
And that's it. And that's why it pays to really tap into the personal, right? To really get to know that person. Because then you can have that conversation like, you know, I'm seeing you slip a little bit. What's going on? And it's not from a place of where I'm about to write you up from a place of you're typically a high performer. I'm seeing that performers go down as everything all right. And you can comfortably have that conversation instead of waiting for it to be that time. And now they're looking like, shoot.

Rob Dwyer (49:10.243)
Mm-hmm.

Jevon Wooden (49:27.106)
get rid of the upper fire because that feeling is not comfortable. And that's why it also pays for you to put in the description what we're talking about. So don't wait for, again, don't wait for something bad to happen. Just check in. It doesn't take long, but it's really key to long-term success. And when you think about someone's job satisfaction has been shown as the main driver for organizational performance overall.

So there's something called the theory of planned behavior by Icek Ajzen. It's one of his premier frameworks that he created. And what it says when it's applied to the employee circumstance or to an organization is that attitudes, attitudes being that individual, their beliefs, their behavioral patterns, their knowledge, all that stuff, that's only one component of what's happening.

The second thing is the organizational culture. So what are they seeing the social norms within that organization? What are you allowing in your organization? What are you, you know, giving recognition to? What are you applauding? And then the third thing is meaningful work. So if their work is not meaningful, what happens is those other two are impacted and you have to have all three. So you have to have the right person in place. You have to have a solid workplace culture and you have to give people meaningful work.

And when you have all three, organizational performance skyrockets. So look at that from when you're talking to these, people within your org, see if they're the right person first, because a lot of times we try to square peg into a round hole. A lot of times we're like, this person is a rock star. Right. That's the time. But they're really not because if you look at the costs that they're really ensuing on your organization from being toxic.

They're causing everyone else to perform at a lower level. They're impacting, you know, the morale of everyone. So they can't be worth that. No matter how well they.

Rob Dwyer (51:29.325)
Yeah, you should probably not be hiring Billy Idol into your HR department. don't, he is a rock star, but I don't know if he's going to be a good fit in your HR department. So you should, you should definitely be careful about that. Jevon, if people want to get in touch with you, whether that's for a speaking engagement or maybe they could use some help in their organization, or just want to chat with you.

Jevon Wooden (51:35.502)
I hope not. I hope.

Rob Dwyer (51:59.267)
doing right now is LinkedIn the best place to do that?

Jevon Wooden (52:04.536)
Yeah, know, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't follow, don't just follow, connect, right? And then shoot me a message that says, hey, heard you on Next In Queue. And then that way I know Rob, my friend, has sent you my way. And then we can get the conversation going. Always looking to talk with great people.

Rob Dwyer (52:23.705)
I love that I love that yes absolutely tell him. That you heard him on next in queue do that and then tell me like just reach out to me and say hey I heard your conversation with Jevon it was awesome I reached out to him I would love to hear about that and love to hear what happens after that you guys know the drill go down to the show notes you're going to see a link in there so you can connect. With Jevon don't just follow.

Jevon, thank you so much for being on Next in Queue. appreciate it.

Jevon Wooden (52:59.692)
Rob, thanks for having me. Fun conversation. Love what you have going on, man. So thanks for having