The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Authority Podcast and the BE Podcast Network. Thanks, as always, for being here with us. I am pleased today to be joined by Dr. Michael Polanski. He is a social scientist dedicated to developing better leaders. He's a leadership development expert, speaker, and author, whose book is called The Me1st Method: Hands on Leadership Development for New Roles and Big Challenges.

Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Palanski: Hey, Ross. Thanks so much. So glad to be here.

Ross Romano: So, let's dive in, in that title, it's probably clear this for leaders, but what kind of leaders is this book for who should be checking it out?

Mike Palanski: Yeah. So it's aimed at leaders who are either currently facing about to face or recently [00:01:00] faced a big challenge. So people who are in transition from one thing to the next, that's what's really targeted at. And often that ends up being sort of your stereotypical mid career mid level manager, people that are going from subject matter expert contributor into a leadership role or who have been in a leadership role and are looking to advance.

That's usually who picks up the book.

Ross Romano: Excellent. And so from the title, the first method, I presume this is about self centered leadership.

Mike Palanski: Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. I'm I'm underground trying to create a whole army of narcissistic leaders because that's what the world needs right now. It's kind of a cheeky title. It It is designed to be self focused, but not self centered.

Ross Romano: Right. Yeah. And there, but there is. Correct. There is this starting point about leaders focusing on the self first. So what does that look like in practice when we want to be effective versus have maybe that egotistical, it's all about [00:02:00] me approach.

Mike Palanski: Yeah. You know, the way I look at it is this, so leader or leadership development is depending on which estimate you look at anywhere from a 50 to about an 80 billion a year industry. And most of that money is spent on some form of training. Usually getting leaders to, to do something new, a new skill set or a new set of knowledge or developing capabilities, things like communication skills or emotional intelligence you name it.

And those approaches are very helpful and necessary, but what all of them have in common, or at least most of them have in common, is it's essentially training the leader to become better. at getting other people to do something or act differently. And I take a somewhat different approach that before we go down that path let's spend a lot more time looking at ourselves and changing our own behavior.

And when we do so responsibly, the systems which we're apart will [00:03:00] automatically adjust. So that's what the me first is about is let's look at ourselves before we start trying to overly influence others.

Ross Romano: Right. Yeah. There's an important concept there. And it's it's one that's been a small theme, I guess, at least we've had one recent Fluence with Mike Kelly which is about learning to lead oneself first and how that leads to influence, but that important concept of leader of being about.

Being or doing versus being and the things that a leader wants to do or the characteristics that a leader wants to embody and how that sets the tone for an organization and the importance of getting that right first even in the case where the quote unquote leader, in this case, say that as somebody who's in some type of leadership title, right?

They have a mindset toward the team, the organization, et cetera, have goals and objectives that [00:04:00] they want to set for that team and have a collaborative approach, right? But if you're not operating from that strong foundation of having really reflected on and developed your own you know, your own style, your own approach, your own competencies it's not necessarily going to work.

Mike Palanski: Yeah, that, that's right. That's exactly right to have that self focus first. And along with that I kind of make a distinction here, which hopefully is helpful. You can tell me if you find it helpful. Yeah. You know, we live in a world with, in organizations businesses, which is where I tend to focus most of my time, but also in my professor.

So higher ed is the other area where I'm looking at a lot. In organizations, right. We have goals. We have things we're trying to accomplish. We have a mission. Sometimes it's the stated mission and goals, sometimes it's the real mission and goals, but we're aiming towards something. And we kind of have this world of, if I do X or [00:05:00] we do X, then it should result in Y, right?

So kind of a very cause and effect you know, we can manage this process through. And that absolutely happens. But along with that, I think what we all know or intuit, but we don't often think about is, to be very blunt, we're all concerned with surviving, literally staying alive as individuals and as organizations.

And that. That, that, that facet tends to introduce some anxiety into the system, like anxiety, like I'm under threat, either real threat or just a perceived threat, but I'm responding to that continuously. So we've got to keep kind of both things in mind. Yes, we're being very thoughtful and rational and we're pursuing goals and we're leveling up our skills. And also we're just kind of reacting and sometimes in ways that we don't even recognize, and we have to pay attention to both of those.

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Ross Romano: [00:06:00] How does that, I guess, there's ways of course that these are integrated, but also I'm sure individual ways in which those stresses, anxieties you know, maybe those temptations around going for the quick fix versus the long term planning, etc., do a disservice to both the individual and the organization.

And as you referenced earlier, and we'll talk kind of more about this the book really being a lot about mid career professionals and leadership being things that we were doing, right, versus a title. So a lot of the people who are listening and we want them to make sure they hear this. You should be thinking of yourself as a leader, even if you weren't before you started listening, right?

Or even if you're thinking, well, I'm mid career, I'm not at the leadership level yet, but this is about not only being able to grow in your career and grow within your organization, but but being able to. You know, become a, an effective leader in [00:07:00] whatever role that is, and that could be in personal endeavors because a lot of this applies to things that we're might be working on by ourselves around leadership, right?

And you mentioned the goals around the results leadership being about. being accountable for the results, but also understanding what's in our control, what's out of our control, what can we learn from that. I ultimately, yes, I'm accountable for what happens, but that means I'm accountable for if it doesn't work, trying something different.

I'm not shifting blame around, but I'm also understanding that there's a lot of there's things that, that just process versus outcomes. They don't always line up. But I guess getting back to Sort of the question at hand what are the ways in which I those anxieties and the, those pressures to maybe just do what we think is going to fix something today, even if it takes us out of step with what we really want to work toward in the future.

How could that harm the [00:08:00] individual and the organization and where do those things overlap and where do they maybe diverge?

Mike Palanski: Yeah. Wow. There's a lot to to unpack there. So a couple of thoughts come to mind. First of all, I think it's helpful to make a distinction between leader and leaders and leadership. So, The leader is the individual person and of course that's who we work with, that's who does the leading.

But leadership is broader than that. Leadership is the overall system capacity for fulfilling that function of essentially coordinating action, getting people to do what you need them to do. Or to to paraphrase Dwight Eisenhower, getting people to do what you need them to do because they want to do it.

Ideally there's that overlap. So I tend to focus on leader development. I'm working with individual leaders, but they're always part of the leadership capacity. And when that leadership capacity, rank [00:09:00] and title are much less important. You know, sometimes we like to say, everybody's a leader and you know, that's true, Eric, at least it could be true, but along with what we think of as leadership activities, it has to be counterbalanced by followership activities.

So, if I'm working for you, you may be trying to influence me and do so kindly and responsibly and for good ends. At the same time, I have a responsibility to respond to that responsibly. Meaning, sometimes I might just need to say, yes, I will go do that. Because you have legitimate authority. Other times I might question it.

Other times I might ask for clarification. Other times I might say, hey, Ross. In this particular instance, I think I should actually slide over into the driver's seat. So it's that, that give and take. So with those things in mind, one of the, one of the things that my coaching clients, I often run small cohort based [00:10:00] leader development experiences.

So we're usually five or six together and we spend about six weeks together for the kind of the bulk of what we do. And they get sick of me hearing, they get sick of hearing me say this. These two things, I come back to them all the time. What am I responsible for and who am I responsible to?

Like really, what am I responsible for and who am I responsible to? And that leads into some interesting discussions. Sometimes it gets around to, am I really responsible for motivating my team? Look at leaders. Like leaders are the people who motivate, but is that, Accurate, or at least is that accurate in all situations?

And then once you've gone down that path of like, Oh, maybe my job isn't to actually motivate everyone. Maybe it's just to define what I'm responsible for and what you're responsible for and see what happens. That's a little scary.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. And and so, with so many [00:11:00] things, I think it also traces back to our ability to communicate a vision, to communicate the shared values, the the purpose of what we're doing and How one, when we go back to the leader, starting with self and knowing self, the found the cause many times when we're unable to communicate clarity around vision is because we don't know what the vision is.

We, we haven't figured it out, right? And then it has to lead into having a disposition toward communication, toward wanting the organization, the members of the team, to all understand that, to have transparency into our thinking, like, that's what creates buy in, that's what creates people doing it because they want to do it, right, is when I see what the potential is here, when I see why it's valuable and leading into you, you paraphrase that quote from Eisenhower earlier and to bring the word Eisenhower into it again something like the Eisenhower [00:12:00] decision matrix, right?

And we talk about the quick fix and the pressures where it would be clear if we have clarity around our vision and our goals and our mission, what we're working toward when we have those things that fall into that urgent, but not important. quadrant, right? That so often can pull us away from where we really need to be focusing, or at least as, as the person who is the leader responsible for this vision.

Oh no this thing's urgent, it's popping up and I'm over here, versus if we do have that clarity and we know that our organization has clarity, it doesn't mean we don't address that thing, but we find an alternative way of saying, okay, we're going to. Delegate that, or we're going to set up a way to solve that, but we're not going to be taken away from what we're really going toward here, what's most important, and I'm not going to feel the pressure to have to I don't want to have that superficiality around showing that I'm taking this other thing seriously because I don't want to [00:13:00] seem negligent because I have set the foundation via communication via leadership, right?

But that's that starts at the beginning with figuring that out and then going out and talking about it and being consistent and making sure that's just part of the daily approach.

Mike Palanski: Yeah. That's that's so true. Communication obviously plays a big role. It does. Yeah. I also get a little bit nervous sometimes. I've heard this from my friends who were in training and development and talent development too. I was talking to a friend of mine several months ago. It was in this position like, Hey what's going on?

And she's like, ah, I just had one of the managers in the area that I'm responsible for walk into my office and say, Hey, could you do some communication training from my team? And I, and she's just like shaking her head. I'm like what's going on? She said, every time somebody comes into my office. Or emails me or asking for communication training, it's absolutely means that there's something else [00:14:00] going on, but everybody thinks that like, oh, we just have better communication, problem solved.

You know? So sometimes it's a matter of taking what's presenting and kind of getting down below, below the surface there. I always find it fascinating, like, like around having a vision, whether it's a vision for the group or even. a personal vision, which is what we spent a lot of time in the me first method.

Like what exactly am I hoping to accomplish here? What am I going to do? What am I not going to do? What are the values that are going to guide it? What surprises me is how much, if we're honest about it, how much of that is unknown or intuited, hinted at, provisional. And there's, More than like a fixed point in space that we're aiming towards.

It's much more of a, yeah, there's kind of a fixed point, but I'm just kind of bobbing back and forth and two steps forward, one step back, four steps laterally. Right. It's much more [00:15:00] of a shaky process that doubles back on itself constantly than it is like this linear thing that we all want to make it out to be.

Ross Romano: Yeah. And it is a it's multi directional I think too. You know, cause so many times if I've for example, if I find myself there's certain questions I'm asked and I feel like the answers I'm giving here aren't, they're not really getting to the point of this.

It's cause to go back and say, okay, well, what really is What actually is the answer? Not that I'm poorly communicating it, but that I haven't really figured out the answer, and that's why I'm having a hard time saying it, or I spoke to somebody recently who's building a new business and asked, I asked what's the business going to be about and they said I know exactly what it is.

I just haven't figured out how to say it yet. And that kind of led to sort of a word salad. And then it came back to, I know, I really know what it is, but I just, I haven't figured out how to say it. And I don't think you know what it is because it wouldn't be that [00:16:00] hard to explain it if you really knew, I mean, it's, but those are the things where that it's not.

Right. It's not this unidirectional thing of just, we're going out, we're talking, but we're using those inputs. What are the things that make sense to our team, to our organization? Are we open to when we're trying to do something that really is, we've lost the plot, right, in all of those. But let's go back to.

these leaders and as you call them, next big challenge leaders. And one of the parts when you write about it, it's about finding, facing, and embracing the next big challenge. So about that finding part, because I think that's really interesting that it's not simply that it's just challenges that come to you, right?

A big part of this is going out and figuring out what challenge we want to tackle.

Mike Palanski: Yeah. Hey, sometimes the challenge does come to [00:17:00] us sometimes it's just handed it to us in the form of a project or something happens. Maybe even something tragic. And there it is, like, there's the challenge that does happen. I think often it's more of like a whole bunch of different clues.

The just start popping up things that we look at and say that's interesting, or no, this doesn't feel quite right, or there's nothing wrong. There's absolutely nothing wrong here, but something's just not right. And we start piecing these things together. It's an itch for, we want something more, we want something different, we want something new.

And, I think that's the process of finding something's calling out. We're not really sure what it is, but we eventually know it when we see it.

Ross Romano: And then let me talk about facing and then embracing.

Mike Palanski: Yeah.

Ross Romano: What makes up how do we kind of traverse that spectrum, right? And it's sort of get to the point of embracing these challenges.

Mike Palanski: Yeah. So once, once you [00:18:00] have found that big challenge or at least substantially found it, find it, then it's the facing it that's sometimes the finding part is. It can be frustrating, but it's also exciting and it's new and we're kind of feeling our way through it. You know, you're talking about your friend who's starting a business.

I mean, starting a business is, it's frustrating and it's fun. You know, it's like, it could be this, or I have this idea in my head and I'm going to pull this thing together and I'm going to create the website and I'm going to put this app and I'm going to set my store.

And we do all this stuff and then we get out there and then it's like, Oh, wow. The reality of. Reality of what it takes to do all of those things begins to set in. So it's that, that facing of, Oh, now I see what this really entails, or at least I'm starting to see what this really entails. And it's a lot, it's a lot more than I had anticipated.

And it's going to be a lot harder and take a lot longer and might even be a lot uglier. That's the facing part. And then [00:19:00] getting comfortable within that, right? Almost like, getting comfortable with with the suck. you will. I just reminded him I'm glancing over here at my bookshelf and of course I won't be able to lay eyes on it, but it's a great book called The War of Art. The author is escaping me, but it's a great little book and in it, he makes the point of, he used to be a U. S. Marine and he's like, you know what's the distinguishing feature of the Marines versus other branches of the service who are all brave and have things to do? And he said, I think what it is this, that Marines are just more comfortable with the suck if we're sleeping out on the ground.

We want it to be colder and rainier. If our food is cold, we want it colder. Like that's just fine. And I think that's where the embracing part comes in. Like this is going to hurt. This isn't going to be comfortable and I'm okay with that. And here we go. And it's going to be good. It's going to, we're going to get there.

Ross Romano: Yeah and what part of the ability to embrace and consistently [00:20:00] embrace relies on clarity around what's on the other side of solving that challenge and the purpose of that work I, cause I, I do think that's one thing that Comes up a lot in big and small kind of tasks where somebody will ask, well, I'm really having a hard time focusing on this.

thing that I'm working on, or I'm having a hard time getting motivated to work on this thing that's kind of challenging. And if and these might be people who understand these concepts, right? And then the conversation goes to, well, why are you doing it? What's it for? Is it the thing you should be doing?

If you're consistently finding that you're having a hard time getting to that point, it might be that it's because It's not really the right thing to be doing versus, okay, we know this is the challenge we have to solve and [00:21:00] it's hard and it's, there's many days where we go home just completely defeated, but we know definitely that once this thing is solved, we're where we need to be.

But again that comes back to how much does that rely on Having it within the context of, okay, we have identified the correct challenge toward the correct purpose.

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Mike Palanski: Yeah. I think we like to do that. I think we like to put out this end goal that is so clear and almost immovable. And just keep working towards that. And you think about like, classic sales training Hey, I want to motivate you to sell. So picture that dream house that you've always wanted or that car and put a picture of it up on your wall.

So you see it every day and it creates this dissonance between that's what I want and here's where I am now and keep motivated, motivating us towards that. I think sometimes that's the case. Right now I'm [00:22:00] in the middle of a mini series on Apple TV, the masters of the air. talking about the bomber pilots in World War II.

And it's terrific, but the theme from that is, like, they were there with an immovable purpose. It was defeat the Nazis. Like, full stop, end of story, everything is subservient to that goal. And I'm so glad that was the case. But how often in life is that really that much of a necessity?

A true life or death situation? Not usually. So I think that A healthier way to go about this is to have a provisional goal or vision in mind and kind of work iteratively back and forth towards that. And as I'm saying that, maybe this is an appropriate time to kind of break down what the me first method is.

So that would be helpful. All right. All right. So we're kind of there now. So me first is. It's an actual, actually an acronym for the process that we [00:23:00] follow. So M E numeral one S T when I take folks through this, I actually start even before the M. First week, when I'm coaching new folks in my cohort, like I have a little script to this, but basically it's, why are you here?

Like, let's get it down on paper. What is everything that you hope to accomplish or think you might hope to accomplish or what's missing? Or something prompted you to do this. What is it? And so we kind of get that down just to kind of capture it. And then we begin to refine that. So we start with the M, the motivation.

And this is where we work on creating a personal leadership purpose statement. my vision for the future? Personal and professional. Like what's in my mind's eye? What am I trying to bring about? What's my mission? So what are the things that I will do and I will not do? to bring about that vision so we could put some guardrails on it.

And then what are my two and only two foundational values? What will act as those day in and day out guidelines for how to make [00:24:00] decisions? So we create this document and people put a lot of work into it. Requires a lot of thought and it requires a lot of frustration and we have it, it's not finished.

So we've got it there. We're going to start using it. We're going to need to come back to it. So that's the M. The E is a two parter. It's. Educate and Evaluate. I'll tackle those in reverse order. Evaluate is looking at how am I doing right now, kind of what's my starting line. And there's some things that we can do introspectively to do that.

But this is also where it's helpful to get some input from others that we respect and that know us well. And so there's that self and other. aspect to it. You can do that in a variety of ways, but it's all about comparing how we see ourselves and how others see us, and then thoughtfully parsing that out.

What's helpful here and what isn't? So we evaluate and then educate. What are some of those [00:25:00] things? Maybe more tangible knowledge or skills that we might need to acquire along this way to bring about this vision, fulfill this mission, live according to our values. So it's a whole lot of thinking and planning and thing, and then we come to the one, which is just a reminder one thing at a time, right?

It's easy to go like, really big and broad. And I've been thinking about this and I'm in my head and I got this vision and all this stuff. Okay, just. Just start with one string, pulling on one string, and see where that takes us. The S then is creating a strategy around this. A strategy to begin to just move forward.

It doesn't have to be the end all and be all, but just move forward. And then the T is testing, putting that strategy into action. And one of the things I do with this, so as an iterative process, is lay out things that people can do quickly, the next six minutes, the next six hours, six days, six weeks and six months.

So we have different time horizons, [00:26:00] keeping in mind a balance between goal setting, setting goals and working towards them, and growth letting, putting some experiments in place just to see what will happen. We don't really know which way it's going to go. So it is both and of trying to have some concrete things we're working towards, but also letting things unfold and seeing what goes on.

And then you just keep looping back in. Sometimes it's time to look at that. That Personal Leadership Purpose Statement again, revise it, or check how we're doing according to that. See if we need other things we need to educate ourselves on. See how the strategy's going. So, I like it because it's a balance between the doing and the being.

It's a balance between planning and thinking, and also just taking action and seeing what happens. Because ultimately we Think our way to a better future.

Ross Romano: Right,

Mike Palanski: something at some point, right?

Ross Romano: right, yeah, there certainly is a point of [00:27:00] decision paralysis, right, where it's okay, I thought about this as much as I can and I don't 100 percent know, now I just need to do it and then evaluate what I did, see how it worked. If it didn't work, try something new or iterate or you know, and I think also as you've articulated that process, there's, readers, listeners.

who are in different roles currently with different objectives. Personally there, there is an opportunity to evaluate these challenges and these opportunities, both with respect to what, are the goals here for the organization, but also what are my personal goals, right? You know, I, because there are a lot of people who maybe their default is skip to the end almost, and they're really good at embracing the suck.

They live in the suck, but They just end up spending a lot of time in the [00:28:00] mud, right, because they're not, they're basically making themselves indispensable right where they are and if their goal is to advance in the organization, they're not necessarily taking on the types of challenges that are demonstrating that they are there.

ready for that or, and it takes a lot of reliance on somebody else to maybe observe that in you versus There are multiple ways maybe to contribute to the organization's objectives and which of them also puts me in a position where I can get to where I want to be, right? And to see those as aligned goals, not in conflict, but to understand that there's certain challenges I might take on that all I'm really proving is that they want to keep me exactly where I am.

Mike Palanski: Yeah. Yeah it's so true. It's funny because I will do these small group cohorts, five or six people. And we meet together and it's terrific because we're helping one another out. [00:29:00] And like, no matter how much you and I might talk, we're going to miss something that somebody else might be able to see.

And then you multiply that by five or six, you get a wonderful dynamic. But I also. Always couple this with some one on one sessions. And inevitably in a group of six, there's at least one person, when we get to that one on one session, they're like, Mike, this is great. Learning all this stuff. I just want to say I'm actually thinking about leaving the company.

Yeah. Okay. That's normal. Let's talk about it. And right to your point. I can't tell you whether to stay or leave. You know, how could I possibly speak into that? Only you know, best while you're here, what are some things that we could do? What are some things that could do to help you experiment? See what you wanna find.

Maybe help the company in the process, because if you're really serious and you think you're gonna be leaving, what a wonderful opportunity you're playing with house. Money. You know, you can try some things that you wouldn't have tried otherwise to [00:30:00] benefit yourself, certainly, but also maybe to benefit the company.

Like maybe there's some things that need to be said that haven't been said that now you have the freedom to to be able to say. So that's when it gets really good. When there's some tension there

Ross Romano: yeah it's At least, I mean, this is why it's all complex, right, that there's not a lot of objective right and wrong. There's a variety of different opportunities and interpretations and different ways to tackle these things and that. Things where we have a whole team involved, right?

It can come down to, okay, what's the best way to design and compose this team to address these different things we're working toward to make it work the best to align to what everybody is going to be most motivated by and to know. ourselves, to know each other, right? To see things in each other that we may not see in ourselves, but also to really know ourselves and understand, okay, my impediment to [00:31:00] pushing through on this thing is this, right?

And it's and to the point of these not most immovable objectives such as defeating the Nazis, right? So many of them are just, it's. It's subjective. It's, this is okay. This is a fine and important thing that just, I'm just personally not interested in it. No matter how much I try, I'm never going to care about it as much as that person cares and vice versa.

They're working on something right now that I would and it's Not there's a lot of time I guess we could spend either beating ourselves up as individuals or as organizations, right? And throwing resources into things and saying, wait, maybe there's a different way that it doesn't mean giving up on it, but it means we're just approaching it wrong, or,

Mike Palanski: yeah, exactly. We I mean, it's natural tendency. We get stuck in the way that we've done things and especially in ways that we've had success happens [00:32:00] all the time.

Ross Romano: Are there there's a variety of vignettes in the book, examples. Are there one or two that you maybe could summarize that with just sort of illustrate in a different way this process that you're describing kind of maybe how it was tackled in a real situation.

Mike Palanski: so, I don't think this one's in the book. This is a little bit more recent, but I want to tell you about Dan. Dan was one of my coaching clients who worked for a professional services firm, had been there a long time, was doing a great job, was pretty senior in the organization.

A nice guy, like the nicest person you'll ever meet. Very technically com competent. But was having a bit of a challenge because when he came of age in this particular industry, it was of the mindset that when the client called, you answered the phone and you said yes. Period. That's fine when [00:33:00] you have it's just you deciding to say yes, but when you have the rest of the team, then depending on you, it became a problem.

So it would happen at particular times of the year, especially busy times. Client would call, would want something. It's 4 PM, get off the phone at 4 30, turn around and give it to the team at 4 45 and people were staying late and it just wasn't a good dynamic. So, we started working together and we worked we worked through the Me First process and that was helpful, but what was really helpful for Dan was coming up with an experiment of I want to support the team and I want to support the client and sometimes I'm So what he came up with, his own accord was to try a few things like as simple as I'm not going to check my email after 3pm. Or if I do check it, I'm not going to respond. At the end of the day, it can wait until the morning, unless it was truly an emergency. And he tried a few [00:34:00] different things, Couldn't quite bring himself to not check it after a certain time of day, but did have a blackout period. I think that's what he ended up with like from 2 to 4 PM.

I'm just not going to check it after four. I'll check just so I know what I'm going to be facing tomorrow. And it was that simple of just. Defining my job isn't to say yes immediately to everyone. It is to to make everybody, not everybody happy, but I need to help this system become more functional.

Right. And so it's a simple thing, but for him, it was quite profound because it was a kind of a visible, tangible way of managing clients expectations and anxiety. The team's expectations and anxiety and his own expectations and anxiety.

And I love that. I love when there's something just simple at the same time, very profound.

And really a lot of ways that's kind of our journey is let's find those little things that we can leverage that make a big difference.[00:35:00]

Ross Romano: yeah. I've been on Dan's team before, the first version of Dan. My Dan never got coaching or learned his lesson so it was a lot of yeah.

Mike Palanski: I was.

Ross Romano: that. Okay, you guys do it.

Mike Palanski: I was on my version of Dan his name was Paul and I worked at a department store when my first job's out of college and the unofficial quitting time was like 5. 30 and one day my boss, Paul, gets pulled into a meeting at like 4. 30, 5. 30 rolls around, he's not back, so I leave, and the next day I got an earful of don't ever leave when I'm in a meeting because I might come back and need something, and I'm like, yeah I like this job, I like you, I'm not being paid enough to sit around here and just wait.

I'm just not, and I'm not going to do it. So I probably was I probably was a bit cheekier and maybe nastier than I needed to be, but looking back, I'm like, I'm really kind of proud of myself for for saying that. Yeah. So I think we've, maybe we've all had that Dan experience at some point.

Ross Romano: What, so Well, that brings up a good point, though, about, [00:36:00] about the team, right, and engaging one's team in this appropriately it what are what's maybe a better strategy for I for clarity around, around purpose here and around once the leader really knows or what they're trying to do and seeing I mean, to kind of borrow from negotiation, right?

But find the self interest, right? I mean, to say that okay, the best way for me to get the best out of the team, the organization is for what they're doing to benefit them, right? And to not just put these things on a wall and to the point of the things that an effective leader shouldn't say well, I'm the boss.

This is just what we need, but to understand, okay, maybe every once in a while, depending on what kind of business you're in, right? Maybe you are in a client services business every now and then there's just a day where you know what the client needs is. We just have to do it and we'll [00:37:00] tomorrow.

We'll talk about. How much it's, how much we hated it, but today we just need to get this done and I can't answer a lot of questions but for the most part, right, we have to actually understand that we're rowing in the same direction but that each person holding those oars is has an opportunity to be recognized for the effectiveness of their strokes.

Mike Palanski: Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Right. We all have those days and that's, it's not inappropriate, but. When those exceptional days become the norm, yeah, isn't that where we're really getting into some serious trouble there. It's not sustainable, not for the long term. One of the first areas that I researched in leadership, back to my day job as a professor, where I also research all of this stuff, I looked at behavioral integrity.

Behavioral integrity is simply the consistency between words and actions of a leader. The values you talk about, do you actually act like they're important? surprisingly leaders that espouse kind of pro social values and [00:38:00] then live up to them are well liked, trust results, lots of good things happen.

But the next best alternative is maintaining that consistency, even if it's things that are not so pleasant. Elon Musk comes to mind here saying like, Hey, if you want to work for me, you better expect to sleep underneath your desk. Because that's what I did. Like, I, I wouldn't advocate for that particular working style, but I would certainly rather have a boss who is very clear about that from the beginning, like, look, here is the deal.

Take it or leave it. And then you're given solid, reliable information and you can make your own choice. That's a better alternative than paying lip service to, Oh no, work life balance. And our employees are our most valuable asset. And then even if it's not of bad intentions, acting as though that's not important.

Ross Romano: Yeah,

Mike Palanski: worst case.

Ross Romano: inconsistency and the cognitive dissonance it creates is certainly [00:39:00] the cause of a lot of challenges, right? And You know, and then sometimes trying to be the nice guy or whatever it is. I mean, it's a lack of accountability in leadership. It's I'm going to shy away and avoid saying the hard thing that, even if, And you know, and ultimately I'm going to find a way to sort of point blame on some other factor when things don't go that way.

And that's not likely to work too great

Run.

Mike Palanski: no, it's not.

Ross Romano: So as we're kind of wrapping up here you referenced this and I, I did want to make sure we had a chance to touch on it because this there's a lot of that went into the development of this framework. Was there anything that didn't necessarily expect or anything that just stood out in the research that when you began the process and as you worked on it, sort of, stood out or took on more importance than you initially might have thought or maybe the opposite, something that you might have thought would have been [00:40:00] important that, research didn't back.

Mike Palanski: Yeah good question. I think, I think that I originally thought which, what is now the me first method, that process was more was more linear than I, at first I thought it was more linear than it actually is. Much more of a loose framework than it is a, an iron cred process throughput. You start at the beginning, you do this thing in the middle and then you pop out The other end as a better leader.

So in a way it's kind of cool because it it's putting the theory into practice for myself that I spent a lot of time thinking about it, a lot of time doing the research and had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do, and then you get into it and you realize, Oh, Yeah, that was pretty good.

This doesn't really stick. This needs to change. This one I'm not sure about. I'm just going to kind of keep working with it until something better comes along. And it's at some point [00:41:00] you wake up and you're like, ah, gee maybe I should have read my my own book. They always say you write the book that you need to read.

Well, I don't know. I think that's true.

Ross Romano: And if listeners remember one thing from this conversation, what would you like that to be?

Mike Palanski: It's simply this to think self first. One of the things that I do sometimes to kind of help illustrate this point is I'll ask people to write out the word myself and Y-S-E-L-F or you can type it into your phone on a, your texting app, and then do two things. One, go in and put a space between the my and the self.

Now you have two words, my self, and then capitalize the S So you have my self with a capital s. almost differentiating, almost taking a step back to be able to see myself in a particular situation. I'm a human. I'm one of the actors in this situation. I can kind of separate out a little bit, take a bird's eye view.

Realizing that I have needs and wants and [00:42:00] expectations along with everyone else's. It doesn't create a more self centered person. What it does is create a more thoughtful person to realize this stuff's going on anyway, right? I still have needs and wants and aspirations, but if I'm just in there reacting and not really thinking about it, they're controlling me instead of me controlling them.

So, so that's it. Just think self first.

Ross Romano: Excellent. So listeners, the book is called The Me First Method. You can find it wherever you get your books and you learn more at MikePolanski. com, which we'll link to below. Mike, you have a lot of other resources, other things you're working on. What else should our listeners check out?

Mike Palanski: Yeah. So I have a of stuff on my website there, and then I usually put out the the latest musings from between my ears, which is scary stuff sometimes, but on LinkedIn is where I I usually have my latest and greatest and even more helpful. I'll link into other people's stuff. The people that really know what they're doing.

I just kind of pretend sometimes.

Ross Romano: Excellent. We'll put those links below to [00:43:00] the website and to Mike's LinkedIn if you want to follow him there and check out some of the other resources associated with the book or the book itself. You can find on the website, Amazon, anywhere

Mike Palanski: Anywhere you want it that's where we got it.

Ross Romano: excellent. So yeah, please do check that out. Please. Also, if you're not already, subscribe to the authority for more in depth author interviews like this one coming your way every week. Or view more of our shows on B podcast.network, or b podcast network.com. We have about 40 shows now, and whatever your needs are, whatever you're interested in, you can find something there for you.

Mike Polanski, thanks again for being on the show.

Mike Palanski: Ross, thank you so much. It was my pleasure.