Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
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Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
Building Resilient Leadership with Nathan Tanner: From Job Rejection to Ironman Triumph
How do you cultivate leadership that lasts? Join us as Nathan Tanner, an executive coach with a rich career spanning Lehman Brothers, LinkedIn, and DoorDash, reveals his secrets to becoming "The Unconquerable Leader." You'll learn about the vital dynamics between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and walk away with practical strategies to keep your drive intact for the long haul. Nathan also shares his journey, from his roots in Anaheim, California, to his passion for triathlons, blending personal anecdotes with professional wisdom.
Ever faced job rejection and struggled to keep a positive mindset? Nathan's got you covered. In this episode, he unveils how to reframe your mental approach with daily goal reminders and the powerful concept of Misogi—taking on one hard challenge every year to build resilience. He recounts his experience completing an Ironman triathlon and how it reshaped his perspective on everyday challenges. Additionally, Nathan discusses the importance of feedback, leveraging frameworks like Radical Candor and SBI to provide constructive criticism effectively.
But that's not all. Nathan delves into creating a Leadership Operating Manual, a tool that can fundamentally transform how you lead and communicate within your team. From breathing exercises to the benefits of walking, discover simple yet profound methods to enhance your mental well-being. As we wrap up, you'll get actionable tips on documenting your progress and maintaining consistency, all aimed at helping you achieve long-term success. Connect with Nathan Tanner and uncover the invaluable lessons from his book, "The Unconquerable Leader," by visiting NathanTanner.net or reaching out to him on LinkedIn.
Hi everybody, this is Bob Goodwin and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live. We're so glad that you've joined us today. Before we get started, I just wanted to share with anybody who might be in job search or if you know someone who is in job search every Thursday at 1 o'clock Eastern, we are hosting what we call Career Club Corner, which is a free group coaching call corner, which is a free group coaching call. You can just go to careerclub there's a big banner right in the front as soon as you get on the homepage to register for this. This is a free call. It's always free. No selling. This is just providing a forum for you guys to come and maybe learn something new and then ask your questions about your job search. So again, if you're in job search or you know somebody who is, we'd really encourage you to go to careerclub. Click on the main banner on the homepage to register for free, and we hope to see you or a loved one sometime soon. So with that, let's get into introducing today's guest. I'm going to read this because his background is pretty cool. So we're thrilled to have special guests with us today.
Bob Goodwin:Nathan Tanner is an accomplished executive coach, author and leadership expert. Nathan is the founder of a thriving executive coaching business where he helps leaders from high growth startups and well-established companies like to unlock their full potential. Valley and Beyond. Nathan has a unique blend of experience and insight that makes him a powerful voice in the world of leadership development. Today, we're going to be talking about his new book. I just learned a minute ago his second book, called the Unconquerable Leader. It's a powerful guide that combines his personal experiences with actionable insights and frameworks designed to help leaders thrive both personally and professionally. His book explores mastering both the external skills of leadership and the internal game of resilience, which is my favorite topic these days, making it a must-read for anyone looking to excel in today's environment. So, nathan, I am so excited to have you on today. Welcome.
Nathan Tanner:Thank you for having me Very excited to be here, bob, big fan of the podcast.
Bob Goodwin:You're very kind, Thank you. So, as is our want to do. Before we dive into the book, which I'm very excited about, let's just help people get to know you a little bit more as a human being first. So easy question where were you born? And raised.
Nathan Tanner:I grew up in Anaheim, California, and lived there until I went off to college.
Bob Goodwin:Cool LA sports fan. You like the LA teams.
Nathan Tanner:Big Angels fan and Lakers fan. Those are my two big teams. Yes, that's cool. And then, where did you go to school? I went to school at Brigham Young University in Provo and had a great experience there. What was your degree? I?
Bob Goodwin:studied finance as an undergrad Me too. What I learned, though, when you study finance, if you're in it, it's finance. Somebody told me that.
Nathan Tanner:That's right. It's been too long since I've been in finance. Maybe I lost that.
Bob Goodwin:Good for you. That's probably a good thing. And then just a little bit about your family, Nathan.
Nathan Tanner:Yes, I was one of four kids. Now I'm married. I got married while I'm still in college and we have four young kids ages five through 13.
Bob Goodwin:OK, that's going to answer another question, I bet in a minute. Do you mind just painting for folks just a little bit of a picture of your career arc, kind of what you did after school that's led you to where you are today? Absolutely.
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, so yeah. Finance undergrad started my career in investment banking, picked the perfect time and the perfect bank to do that. It was 2008 at Lehman Brothers, which turned into the largest bankruptcy in US history. Lehman Brothers, which turned into the largest bankruptcy in US history and, you know, really was a challenging and defining moment early in my career. I stayed in finance for about five or so years, made a very big pivot to the human resources world. There I was at Link in HR. I worked at LinkedIn. I was at DoorDash for almost five years leading the HR team and seeing that company through hyper growth, rapid scale from a valuation of $600 million to $70 plus billion. Just a life changing experience, life-changing experience. I then joined a smaller startup based in Utah called Neighbor as the VP of people and have since launched an executive coaching business.
Bob Goodwin:Very cool. And then, like I said, I think I might know some of the answer to this next question when you're not writing books and coaching executives, what do you do in your spare time?
Nathan Tanner:and coaching executives what do you do in your spare time? I have turned into a big fan of triathlon and so I am often running, swimming, biking went on a 20 mile ride before we're having this conversation. I play a little bit of pickleball and then just spend as much time with the kids as possible Dance, sports, you know, following all the things that they're into.
Bob Goodwin:I was going to say when you have four kids age five to 13, you're pretty busy with their activities. I bet you get a lot of your marathon training and just chasing them around.
Nathan Tanner:Exactly, exactly.
Bob Goodwin:Yes. So you know, kind of the obvious question to kind of kick things off would be why this book, why now, and the title especially?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, so I should probably share the the jump that I had into executive coaching, which is really where this book started into executive coaching, which is really where this book started.
Nathan Tanner:So I was an HR executive, had planned on moving into coaching full-time at some point, and I went through a coaching training program where I learned a lot of tactics around developing the internal game, which I'll get into in a moment. But I remember when I jumped into the coaching world and had my first few clients and this is while I'm still in the corporate world. I'm doing this on the side In my mind I'm thinking okay, now I'm an executive coach, I am here to teach these leaders and help these leaders develop fundamental skills to make them more effective at their job. This is delegation, accountability, communication. You know all of these leaders, goal setting, all of these leadership skills that we often think about, skills that we often think about.
Nathan Tanner:And I found, as I started working with people, that, yes, that is important, that they wanted to grow in this area, but a lot of the work we ended up doing was on the internal side, what I call the internal game, and that's all of the stuff going on inside of us that impacts how we lead.
Nathan Tanner:But other people don't see, and so that's the self-doubt, or self-confidence, it's the stories that we tell ourselves around who we are or who we can be. It's the emotional resilience that we find ourselves having, resilience that we find ourselves having, and so I'm having a lot of conversations with people about their marriage, about their children, about sleep habits, all of these things that are impacting how they show up. And so that was ultimately the genesis of the book of okay, how do we help people master the external game how we show up as leaders and also the internal game what's going on inside of us that impacts how we lead. And so about two-thirds of the book is on the internal game, because that's what I found is really the opportunity for most of us.
Bob Goodwin:Yep, and why? Unconquerable? That's an interesting word.
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, so it's a really powerful word, and I intentionally didn't use the word unbreakable, and that's a contrast that I call out explicitly of like we are all going to break or we're all going to have experiences where we fall down, where we fail, where we really struggle deeply. And I like unconquerable because it's you know, we are not going to get conquered, we'll continue to get back up, we'll continue to keep fighting and moving forward. And you touched on the word, bob, resilience, and that's really it. I'm like, okay, well, how do we show up consistently and how do we get back up when we've been kicked in the stomach or when we face the setback that we weren't expecting?
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, so again. First of all, one thing that you said in your coaching business I think is really important and I hope listeners take away you ended up talking a lot about marriage, sleep, kids, what we might call our real life Right, and you know that these are all highly related. That I think it's a myth. I'd love to talk about this. I think it's a myth to talk about work-life balance, because it sounds like they're just, they live in silos and they don't really interact with each other. And you know, I've heard people alternately talk about work-life integration, work-life harmony. How do you think about that?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, I explicitly in the book separate chapters into okay, this is the internal game or this is the external game, but I found that they're very much integrated, and how we show up at work is going to be impacted by what's going on in our personal life, by sleep, by marriage, you know relationship with a significant other, whatever it may be, and then you know vice versa, if we're struggling at work or we're not succeeding there, that's going to impact it, and so I don't love the phrase work-life balance.
Nathan Tanner:I like work-life integration much more, and I've also found that there are times and seasons of the early days of DoorDash. I worked a lot, I spent less time with my family than I wanted to, and my wife carried a pretty big load in the process. Over the last few years, I have optimized much more for time with family, as I don't want to miss out on this period and I think that's some of the challenges that we face is, there's all these balls in the air and we don't want to drop any of them. How do we manage that? And it becomes a very personal thing. Yeah, okay.
Bob Goodwin:So let's just kind of start on the internal game 1.0. And you alluded to it, but maybe you can just double click for a second On sort of these stories that we tell ourselves, these narratives that you find people are telling themselves, and then what's the impact that that has.
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, so I've learned this myself. Very neutral events have happened to me in my life and then I have told myself a story based on that. An example of this is after Doordash, or sorry, after Lehman Brothers implodes. A couple of months later, lehman gets acquired by a bank called Barclays Capital and a few months after that, I get let go. This is January 2009. A few months after that, I get let go. This is January 2009.
Nathan Tanner:This is one of the worst times to be looking for a job, particularly in finance. No-transcript, I'm not that smart, I'm not that good. There's other people who are better than me. I start looking for a job, I'm not having a lot of success and these negative stories start continuing and they start defining how I view myself. And you know, it impacted the job search and I learned in the process of this that I needed to tell a new story, and this is something that I see all the time with my clients.
Nathan Tanner:I have one client, keanu, who culturally and these are his words it was very difficult for him to push back on his team, to set high expectations and hold them accountable, and when we unpacked this, we found out he'd been telling himself a story that a lot of this was cultural, and culturally, you don't want to stand out, you want to be the nice guy and get along well with everybody. But for him, in order to make his company successful and to reach the goals he wanted to, he needed to tell himself a new story around who he could be, who he could become and how he wanted to show up. And so I found with people there's a lot of self-limiting stories. All of us have these, and that's the first place to start, because if we're telling ourselves a bad story, our growth is limited.
Bob Goodwin:Do you ever find that even ostensibly very successful people are actually motivated by a negative story?
Nathan Tanner:Oh, this is such a good topic. Yeah, I didn't know you were going to go here, bob, I'm glad you did.
Bob Goodwin:This isn't your dad's podcast.
Nathan Tanner:I mean, come on, nathan, this is what you do, there you go, well played. So I work with a lot of startup CEOs, and these are people who are extremely driven. They are building companies that have not existed before, creating new industries. This requires a level of drive that very few have, and I found that many of these people are heavily motivated by the need to.
Nathan Tanner:People are heavily motivated by the need to prove themselves A chip on their shoulder that they have from an event from their childhood or their upbringing not feeling welcomed, whatever it may be. And I have found that, while this can be very, very motivating and can lead to success, once you reach that level of success, then it's like okay, now what? This is becoming less fulfilling and what do I do here? So a question that I often ask is what desires drive you and what desires might derail you? And it turns out it's two questions, but it's really the same question, because often the things that drive us to the pinnacle of professional success often become the things that are going to derail us or going to hurt us, because we put all of these important things on the back burner in order to achieve this success, and then we get there and it's that's it.
Nathan Tanner:Or we get there and it's you know my personal relationships are struggling or my health isn't the way I want it to be. You know that becomes a challenge, so it's a lot of fuel on the way up, but it can be a stumbling block once we get there.
Bob Goodwin:So do you find that I want to make sure I ask this question in a cogent way. Let me just sort of blurt out something and then you can help me Is say, for example, that you know my dad was either super successful as an example, let's say you know he was an executive at IBM and he did really really well or my dad told me, or somebody told me I don't think you're going to amount to much Like, like, you know, you just don't have it. Whatever it is, you don't have it. Son or daughter, you know it's coming from the outside, or how much of it is.
Bob Goodwin:So I would call that extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic motivation about some self-concept that I've got positively or negatively as a driver, because I can see that like, if it was extrinsic, like I want to prove my dad wrong. Okay, now I'm the ceo of doordash and it's worth whatever you just said, um, but either my dad died, like that's not fixing that, or it's still not fixing it. You know, like, like, how do you find? Does it tend to be external or internal?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, it varies quite a bit.
Nathan Tanner:A very personal example I had this high school swimming coach and I remember him telling me there was a comment made about you know I was, I was a little bit on the chubbier side about you know I was I was a little bit on the chubbier side, I wasn't always the hardest working kid and there were comments made about you know, my body and weight gain and things like that.
Nathan Tanner:And like I still find myself 20 plus years later, as I'm training for a triathlon, thinking about this seemingly innocuous comment that was made and like, okay, I'm going to prove him wrong. And so I think for many people, these extrinsic motivators or the desire to prove to someone else or you know wrong, I think those can be very motivating, but I think it's ultimately unsatisfying. I don't think you ever get there and you're like, oh, okay, now I've made it, now I've proved this person wrong and now I'm at peace, and this is what I do a lot with clients. It's like, okay, now how do we take these extrinsic motivators and make them internal? Because the internal motivators are much more sustainable over time.
Bob Goodwin:Which and we'll get into resilience, but as long as it's extrinsic, it's got a really good chance of flaming out. If it, when it's intrinsic, it's just organic, it's it's my identity, Maybe. Maybe we can use that, if this is an appropriate bridge to, you know, setting a vision, kind of imagining a new story, imagining a new destination and visualization. Can you talk about that for a minute?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, as we start telling ourselves new stories, it's essential to set a clear vision for ourselves. We've likely heard this many, many times before of the need to set very clear goals around what we want to accomplish and who we want to be, and one approach I found to be very effective as a part of that is creating daily reminders around who we are and who we want to become, and when I launched my coaching business, I did the same thing. I created a list of truths that I knew about myself but needed to remind myself of. This included opportunities are everywhere. I'm playing the long game.
Nathan Tanner:My people can't afford not to buy this, and I found there's so much negativity that's in the world that we need to combat that with positive messages that we believe in. It's one of the things I've seen elite athletes, top business leaders do is create these daily reminders around who we can ultimately become, and I'd say that. And then the second piece, as we set a vision for ourselves, I found to be really, really effective is writing our goals down every day, and there's the study done by Gail Matthews that studied the impact of writing down goals, and she found that those who wrote their goals down every day were 42 percent more likely to achieve these goals. Because it's constantly on our mind, we're constantly thinking about them, how we might go about achieving them, and so those are the two things you know writing goals and creating these daily reminders that are really, really valuable in helping us achieve the vision we set for ourselves.
Bob Goodwin:Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to explore both of those a little bit. So, as you know, I work a lot with people in job search and you alluded even in your own journey. Like, job search is hard because the way I say it is the road to yes is littered with no. I mean, there's so much rejection and you know you need to hear a different story because people start to internalize. You know, well, I lost my last job, so that must be some indictment on me. Now the marketplace seems to be voting against me, which is why I'm not landing and I'm like both of those are probably not true, right? You know the companies are making very draconian decisions these days.
Bob Goodwin:It's kind of like you described in 2009. I mean, it's hard, and how you lost your job probably doesn't have a lot to do with you. It has to do with the business, right? And then the environment that we find ourselves in is again pretty challenging, and so it's interesting. On LinkedIn, just using this as an example, positive messages do extremely well. Or even, as I was introducing this podcast, I said you know, we're doing these free Thursday calls and the feedback that I get on this is dude. This is like therapy, like I need some positive inputs in my life right now because it feels like there's so much negativity. So you know I appreciate what you're talking about with that. Then you talked about writing stuff down and again I think that is part of just reprogramming the mind right.
Bob Goodwin:You know it's one thing to think things. It's even like when we talk to clients about, you know, interviewing and telling a story. It's not enough to go, and I call that humming, like you know, I kind of hum the story. It's like no, you need to hear yourself say the words and I think it's very similar to what you're talking about. No, I need to write this down. It makes it real when I write it down and it's not just a concept and there's a commitment to writing something down versus well, that would be nice. You know, that would be nice. It's not the same as this is my goal, this is what I'm committed to.
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, yeah, I've been there in a challenging job search before and one of the things that I found for me is the negative. I didn't process a lot of the challenges that I had gone through. This is post Lehman getting laid off. I hadn't processed a lot of that and so when questions would get asked about my job, I'm confident it showed up, that negativity I felt, or resentment from people who let me go. I'm confident that showed up in interviews. And this is one of the things why when I do work with people occasionally I work with people who are going through a career transition.
Nathan Tanner:It's not my core business, but it's like take time, you know, with yourself, with a loved one, to process that emotion because that's going to show up one, to process that emotion because that's going to show up. And then a second piece I found that's really important is having goals outside of the job search. It is very, very challenging to just get told no, no, no, all of the time. And having goals outside of it whether they be physical or spiritual or something else entirely that allows you to feel success and feel momentum outside of the job search, I think also can be.
Bob Goodwin:Volunteering is one of the best antidotes to that. You're just not thinking about yourself anymore Now, but let's talk about the reality of challenges and embracing discomfort. And I'm going to mispronounce it. Why don't you come rescue me, misogi? Am I saying that correctly? Yes, yes, that's right. So can you explain that concept? And then we'll move on to the external game.
Nathan Tanner:Okay, let's do it. So I had this moment several years ago. I had to catch a flight from Salt Lake City to Orange County and I was running a couple of minutes late. So I'm running through the terminal, I get there, I'm a little bit sweaty and I find out my flight has been delayed for 45 minutes and in this moment at the end of a long work week, I'm tired and sweaty.
Nathan Tanner:I remember genuinely telling myself this is the absolute worst thing in the world and thankfully I quickly caught myself and I was like okay, if this is the worst thing in your life right now, you need a reset and interestingly enough, you know I had some times. I pulled out my laptop, I stumbled on this article that talked about this book called the Comfort Crisis and a lot of really good takeaways of. You know, fewer problems in our life don't lead to more satisfaction.
Nathan Tanner:They lead us to lower our threshold for what is considered a problem, and this need to regularly introduce discomfort into our lives and then I started going down this rabbit hole a little bit more and I learned about this ancient Japanese practice called Misogi, and it's this idea that we do one hard thing every year and that reframes the other 364 days in our lives. And the first rule around Misogi is we have to have a 50% chance of completing it. It needs to be really hard, you know. It can't be something that we know we can do. And then the second rule is don't die Like we don't want to put our lives at risk here doing this.
Nathan Tanner:And I had this gut check for me and I was like, okay, I need to find a Masogi, like what should it be? And I'd done a couple sprint triathlons. Running was younger, you know, you know was harder for me when I was younger and I had this idea of do an iron man triathlon and I've done some shorter distance ones, but this is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and, uh, a marathon at the end, 26.2 mile run. And so ultimately I, I, I decided to do this. I have a very, very challenging experience which I won't go into to now, but I do talk about in the in the book, and this became my Masoki.
Nathan Tanner:It was, it was, it was brutally difficult. I finished dead last of all of the people who did it. But I remember at several points along the way just wanting to give up and wanting to throw in the towel, but like, no, I can't do it. I committed to this and it really worked. You know, it reframed all of these minor discomforts and difficulties that I was experiencing and put that into perspective. And I look back at the guy who was complaining about the 45 minute delay at the airport and it was like okay, you know that that that really puts things into perspective.
Bob Goodwin:That's awesome, that that is really really good. So we talked about the internal game 1.0, which is what we've been talking about so far. Will you take us into now thinking about the external game?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, absolutely so, yeah, so the external game is focused on practical leadership skills, as we talked about. How do we set expectations, give difficult feedback, learn to delegate, hold people accountable. These are fundamental leadership skills that we all need to develop in order to be successful, and so I provide a lot of takeaways, a lot of tactical advice on how to improve here. I'd say one of my favorite ones, and one of the practices that my clients find most valuable, is this idea of creating a leadership operating manual, and the first value add is it's clarifying to you the beliefs that you have, the values that you espouse, and so it's answering questions such as what are my core values, what are the expectations I have of my team, what are my pet peeves, or what are the things that I'm trying to work on or grow as a leader Expectations around communication, the types of things that energize me and maybe drain me and creating a document, a manual of sort, that identifies all of this, and so you know.
Nathan Tanner:First, it's helpful for us to find clarity here, but then I recommend people go out and share this with their team and help them understand. Okay, if you're going to work with me, here are some things that you might want to know about me. It's really, really valuable when hiring for your team or when onboarding a new person or being new to a company, and I saw this at DoorDash. One of the executives joined the company in a really challenging period and he came in with an operating manual and it allowed the team just to get to know him better, understand him better, build trust quickly and start executing. So that's one of my favorite practices.
Bob Goodwin:Clarity is good, expectation setting is good. I really resonate with what you're talking about, though with you're kind of doing the reflective work of what my core values are, which highly relates to part one of this conversation of like. Who am I Like? What intrinsically motivates me? Well, it's my values, and therefore, how do my values come to life, whether personally or in a work context. So I think that's really really cool. You talked about you kind of were rattling some things off, but can we talk about feedback? Because I'm a people pleaser? Okay, a gift of mine is encouragement, genuine encouragement, not just you know, hey, you're awesome and that sucked, but like, people need to be encouraged. It's one reason that I think I've gravitated to the emergency room of job search is because people need encouragement, right, but the flip side of my personality is I don't like giving bad news because that is quote discouraging potentially. Can you talk about feedback and giving feedback, receiving feedback and why it's so important?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. Without feedback, it's very challenging to improve full stop, and so I have a full chapter dedicated to the power of feedback and the impact that it can have on us, and so I think that's the place to start of realizing OK, I do need feedback for me to grow and for me to reach my potential, but it is very, very challenging, is very, very challenging. The most effective framework I have found when it comes to thinking about feedback is the radical candor framework. This comes from a book by Kim Scott, and radical candor, as she describes, is this combination of caring personally and being willing to challenge directly, and we need both of those two components, and I found you know, both in myself and the leaders I work with is we tend to fall on one of those sides more so than the other.
Nathan Tanner:Like, okay, I am very good at caring personally, but I may struggle at actually having those difficult conversations. Or, for some people, I have no problem, you know, giving them harsh feedback. I may hurt a lot of feelings, but they may walk away thinking, oh, does Nathan actually care about me? And so the combination of those two things of caring personally and challenging directly is a very important place to start, because the more we care personally, the more we can have those difficult conversations. And then one of the things that we may tell ourselves is I'm not giving this feedback because I care about them, and that I found to be a false assumption, because if we really do care about someone, we really want them to succeed, then we'll be willing to have that conversation, but it's probably we care more about our feelings and the impact it may have for us than them.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, that's convicting. Have you found a model for delivering tough feedback that seems to be pretty effective.
Nathan Tanner:Yeah yeah. My favorite model is the SBI framework, which is an acronym for situation behavior impact. I like it because it's three letters, so it's easier to remember. And you know, situation this is getting into the conversation. We want to put this feedback in context. We're letting them know when and where we observe this situation. That's the situation kind of set in the context.
Nathan Tanner:Here's where this happened, and I'll provide an example in a second. The second is the behavior, and this is describing only the behavior you noticed. This should be 100% objective. If there was a camera or a recording device of some sort in the room, it would be able to pick up on that. So, calling out the behavior, here's what I saw.
Nathan Tanner:And then the third piece is the impact, and this is describing how that person's behavior impacted you. That's the piece that is subjective, and so what I really like about this framework is it separates the objective from subjective, and so an example of this is the situation during yesterday's stand up meeting and the behavior I noticed. You were looking at your computer and did not participate in the discussion. That's objective. A camera could have picked up on that. And then the impact is. I mentioned it because it gave me the impression that our contributions weren't important to you, and I really, really like this framework because it creates a conversation and it allows you you know the person may be able to argue over the impact that that had. Oh, I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention. What I meant was this what I meant was that but the behavior is objective and that's something that both parties should be able to, to agree on, and so anyway, that's, that's a really powerful tool that I SBI so anyway, that's a really powerful tool that I've learned SBI, sbi.
Bob Goodwin:Even I can remember that one, that one's good.
Bob Goodwin:And then you alluded to this earlier but talking about delegation, accountability and basically managing team dynamics and you know some people again will have very different styles in this Like I can't delegate, like if you want something done right, do it yourself, kind of a mentality versus well, like you're delegating too much or not holding people accountable, not holding yourself accountable. Managing team dynamics where you've got different personalities strong, not as strong, passive, not passive Can you sort of unpack that concept of team dynamics and delegation accountability?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, I like to think of leaders sitting on a spectrum ranging from a micromanager to an absentee manager, and we always hear about the micromanagers.
Nathan Tanner:These are the people who are in all of the details, telling us exactly how, when to do all the work, and we know about how that can go sideways, go sideways. I think we often don't think about the absentee manager, who, you know, may not delegate, may not set expectations, isn't there to answer questions. That can be just as challenging. I have found for myself and a lot of leaders that we tend to under-delegate rather than over-delegate. We want things to get done right, so we do it ourselves, or we may be the CEO of a small company and we may actually be better at doing some of these things than the people that we're going to delegate them to, but I've found when we do that we not only rob other people of the opportunity to do their job and do great work, but we can end up in burnout. Trying to do everything ourselves just doesn't work, and so I have created six rules around delegation that I found really helpful for people. The first is finding the right person for the job.
Nathan Tanner:Often, we're overwhelmed and we're like, please someone take this, but pausing to think through, okay, who might be the best person to handle this work is the first step. The second is explaining the why helping people understand why we want them to do this. The third is setting clear expectations, which is usually a big miss in delegation we hand something off but we didn't set expectations, or when something may be due. The fourth is creating space for the how Having people find have a little bit of autonomy in how they go about doing the work.
Nathan Tanner:The fifth step is then committing them to a deadline Okay, when are you going to come back and complete this? And then setting the expectation that it is on them to let you know if they're not going to be able to hit the deadline. And then the sixth is being patient. I found that most companies' training falls short and we give people work.
Nathan Tanner:We don't set clear expectations, we don't teach them how to do it, and then they fall short and then we get mad and frustrated and like there's a level of patience that we need to have when delegating things to other people.
Bob Goodwin:No, that's awesome, and I can even see that being back in the personal operating manual of like hey, here's how I like to delegate, here's my exit, like everything you just said. Here's kind of my expectations. If you're struggling, tell me soon, right? So if you need more help or if we need to change the deadline or something needs to happen, sooner is better to start kind of remediating something. Sooner is better to start kind of remediating something, absolutely yeah, and so I think that those kinds of concepts are just so helpful for people. I'm actually thinking about a situation where I probably haven't provided enough clarity to somebody that I need to come here when we hang up, so this is always a good reminder. So, is there anything? Because I want to move on to what I think is really kind of the meatiest part of all this, but before we leave the external piece of this, is there anything that we haven't covered? I know you have a lot of chapters on this, but just something that's like foundational that we haven't covered on this piece.
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, the one thing I will touch on very briefly as I talk about, or push leaders to stop giving advice and start asking questions instead. And this is one of the things many people go through when they're put in a manager role. Then they get promoted and they're building a larger team. Then they get promoted and they're they're building a larger team. It's like I have to know everything or I have to be able to answer everyone's questions. I have to be the the answer person, yeah, and while that may work early on, it doesn't work with scale. And so I push people like, okay, you don't have to do that, like, let let's ask questions instead. You know, ask your team.
Nathan Tanner:You know, I have some thoughts around how we could do that. But first, how are you thinking about that? What additional information do you need to make that decision? And so leading with a question, I think, can be a really, really powerful way to get other people to be more curious, and also it avoids burnout a little bit, because you're leveraging all of the strengths from the team and in the book I provide a lot of questions that people can use, because that is a big shift for us.
Nathan Tanner:But pulling back on the advice piece and leaning in more with questions is the one final thing I'll touch on.
Bob Goodwin:No, I love that, and it reminds me a little bit, too, of accountability in the sense of when people show up in your office with a problem, it's like, hmm, that's interesting, nathan. What do you think some of our options are? Well, I don't know, I just want to dump this in your lap and leave.
Nathan Tanner:Yes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Bob Goodwin:You know problem identification is not a compensatable skill. You know solutions. Now you have my full attention. But if all you want to do is unload a problem, so what do you think we should do about this? What do you think three, one, two, three viable options might be to solve this?
Nathan Tanner:Oh yeah, yeah, viable options might be to solve this. Yeah, and if the leader's always jumping in to save the day and answer all the questions, people's brains just shut off and they and they default to. Okay, my manager is going to, is going to provide me the answer or solve it for me, and questions turn. Turn the brain back on and get people to be creative and come up with solutions.
Bob Goodwin:There you go, so catch us up, nathan. So we've been through the internal game 1.0. We've looked at the external game. Where are we so far and how does that take us into the internal game 2.0? What's the setup?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, so I come back to the internal game a second time because I want to call out how closely these are interwoven. You can't just, like you know, focus on the internal game and then focus on the external game and think of them as very separate things. Becoming an unconquerable leader is a cyclical process, it's not a linear one, and so that's a big part of it of like, mastering the internal game is probably actually more challenging than the external game, and it's a never ending process that requires continual attention.
Bob Goodwin:So what is the internal game 2.0? What's the headline on that?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, so for that we're getting into things that are more around resilience and self-regulation and kind of how do we thrive from a long-term standpoint? So in this we get into managing emotions and anger, we get into tools that can help with that of breathing, going on a walk, overcoming our upper limit, which is a concept we get into, and so, yeah, those are the things that we start diving into in the internal game 2.0.
Bob Goodwin:Okay, so let's just touch on the physical and or the physiological just for a minute, right? Because sometimes breathing sounds like you know, going to the spa or get some crystals out, or like it's just like really. I mean, come on, I have an MBA and blah, blah, blah. Now you're telling me I need to breathe like really more. You know what the secret is, bob, go take a walk. Can you explain to people? Like that's not crap, like you know, this stuff really works and here's why.
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, yeah. So this goes back to where I was when I was planning on becoming a coach. I learned a lot of these things in my training program and I experimented them with myself. But then I'm like, ok, no, I'm coaching executives, I need to focus on all this external game stuff. I implemented the practice of starting every coaching session with three deep breaths, and I still do this the beginning of every session. My clients come in from somewhere else, focused on something else. I'm probably coming from something else and like let's come together and let's identify what, or let's let's do three deep breaths together. And the reason is this breathing has been found to calm nerves, reduce stress and anxiety, it can lower depression, reduce headaches, and it's actually been found to lower blood pressure by 30 points or more, and so there's just a lot of data on the power of breathing and the value that it can provide for us. And so I like this 5-5-5 method of breathing in for five seconds, holding for five seconds and then breathing out and then breathing out. It's just an incredible tool to help us pause and help us get centered. It's amazing.
Nathan Tanner:And what's the benefit of taking a walk? Yeah, so, and going on a walk, this is an interesting one for me. So research has found that walking increases problem solving for more than 80% of people. There's just something about the process of putting one foot in front of the other. It can be found, it's found to be very meditative, the, you know, stanford did a study around walking and looking at people's creativity levels and they found that people who go on walks that will increase their creative output by 60% or more, and so it's something I have tried to do more of. Walking meetings I found to also be very effective of like, if you can get outside, you know, walking next to someone, the, the, the, the feeling of being by their side and maybe not looking at them directly in the eyes, or having increase, or, you know, reduce depression, increase academic performance. Yeah, there's a lot of benefits from that.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah. So you know, that whole creativity thing we can move on is really true. I do not on is really true? I do not.
Bob Goodwin:I'm a podcaster. I don't listen to a ton of podcasts. And when I walk, I don't want to listen to music, I don't want to listen to a podcast. I'm trying to dial out all the stimulation so that I can just let my mind go a little bit right and reflect and just like what comes to mind and you know when you're upright, so you're moving right and reflect and just like what comes to mind and you know when you're upright, so you're moving right and blood is flowing, you've got a good level of oxygen going through your system, you know you're outside, which is good, and sunlight is good and just is good, and but just like keep being away from from a screen, being away from calls, being away from just give it's white space. Basically, you're giving your mind some white space so they can actually do what it's good at doing and uniquely qualified to do, compared to being on your phone or whatever all the time.
Bob Goodwin:So I I really believe in that.
Nathan Tanner:I'm not the most Zen coach out there and I know some people hear stuff like this and there may be an allergic reaction to it. I am very, very practical and so I found walking, breathing like we need a place to disconnect. Breathing like we need a place to disconnect. We need to find stillness and separation from all the things going in our lives. And if walking or breathing may not be it, find something that works for you. Just sitting in nature could be another. Find something that works for you.
Bob Goodwin:Now I'm going to guess I'm moving on that one of the things that some of your highest performing clients struggle with is this concept that I really enjoyed in your book. It's basically the difference between perfection and progress. Can you talk about that?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, yeah. And so there's one of the challenges that we have I should say that we have that many of my clients have I'll speak for them is this desire to get everything done and to be perfect and to do all of the things effectively. And I found that the challenge we have when we focus too much on the gap in front of us, we focus too much on the person we want to be and there's such a big gap there that can actually derail us a little bit and we start to get down on ourselves. We may start to get depressed a little bit and there's this feeling of you know like why even bother? And so one of the exercises that I do will push my clients to focus on the gain.
Nathan Tanner:Actually, let's look back at the person you were a year ago or five years ago. What might that person say about the progress that you've made? And when we look at things that way and we see those results, we see that gain, it can be really, really motivating. You know, this isn't Pollyanna-ish thinking, this isn't, you know, kind of toxic positivity.
Nathan Tanner:No, it's looking at real things that we've done, real progress that we've made, and one of the things that I also like to do is celebrate those wins, and I do this by creating what I call a greatest hits folder.
Bob Goodwin:I'm sorry, tell me more about that.
Nathan Tanner:Okay, yeah, so greatest hits folder. This can be a an actual physical folder or it can be a folder you keep on your computer and these are the big wins that you've had. You know I have one of the things I talk about in the book is I had Dave Ulrich who was like kind of the leader of modern HR and he wrote a very kind words for a blurb for my first book and he read the book in one day and it came at a time when I was struggling with self-confidence around this creative project I worked on and I found myself going back to that regularly of like, okay, this was a really big win. Let's recognize those wins, put them in the greatest hits folder and when we find ourselves lacking confidence or struggling which we all do we can go back to those wins and, you know, kind of pull from that energy and use that to propel us forward.
Bob Goodwin:Two thoughts. One is this is super practical. Is doing this on your computer, on a personal drive, not on your work computer per se? Is cataloging those just for performance reviews right? Because, particularly if you're a gap oriented person well, that was yesterday, I'm still I got to go fix the next gap and I forget what I did. And then when it's like, well, you know, bob, looking at your review, it's like, well, wait a minute, I've actually cataloged all the progress we've made as a team, right, and where you know I wanted to grow in this area over the last year, and here's the progress that I've made. If you don't document that, you kind of do it to your own peril.
Bob Goodwin:The other thing I was going to say, nathan, it's kind of taking your goal, writing every day and this is to be at the end of the day is what are one or two things that I did well today? And celebrate the good things that happened today and giving myself that dopamine hit that you know I did do something well today, I did accomplish some things. And then this is again because I think sometimes we deal with a similar ilk of client is not everything went great today? What's something that? Because we tend to play negative tapes in our head. It's just, I think the way people are wired is okay.
Bob Goodwin:That didn't go as well as I would have. I tried to deliver feedback in the SBI model. It didn't go as well as I would have hoped. What did I learn? And then basically move on and let it go right and so celebrate the good thing you know, acknowledge because, again, not trying to be Pollyannish or you know two rose-colored glasses about the whole thing but it's like, okay, that was not great, this is what I learned. And now I'm going to put it in the past and I'm not going to dwell on it and I'm not going to forget the good things that happened and just beat myself up for that one thing that you know didn't go as well as possible. And we have just seen, like remarkable breakthroughs with people, that it's like, okay, I did get a little bit better today. Like today I did something good which motivates me for tomorrow. Right, to do something and not be chained by the one thing that didn't go well. And then to your earlier point what's the use of trying? See, I told you I'd fail at this.
Nathan Tanner:Absolutely yeah. The act of writing something down, what you learned, what you struggled with, takes it out of your head and puts it on paper, and so you're not replaying this. Oh, I messed up, or I should have done this differently. You can absorb the learnings and you can move forward. I love that.
Bob Goodwin:Okay, so I want to be mindful of the time, because I could talk to you for three hours. What have we not covered in this last section that you think would be one more really good key takeaway?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, the one thing that I would add and this is the simplest but hardest is the power of consistency, and you know I share this story. Bill Walsh he was the 49ers coach. He came in in 1979, right before he joined they had a two and 14 record. 49ers did worse than the NFL. He comes in and he implements what he calls the standard of performance. These were rules around how everyone in the organization was going to operate and due to time, I won't go into that, but he implements this standard of performance.
Nathan Tanner:He's all excited. And the next year they win two games and lose 14 games Same exact record as before. And I'm sure he's pretty frustrated at this point, but he keeps going. He keeps focusing on the fundamentals, the standard of performance. The next year they win six games and lose 10. So there's a little bit of improvement, but there's a lot of pressure on him at this point, um, but he continues to, you know, hold true to a standard of performance. He's consistent. And the next year they go 13 and three and they win the Superbowl.
Nathan Tanner:And I really like this story here because I think it's true in all this A lot of times, like we take these principles we've discussed and we try it out. We try to get feedback and it doesn't work. We try to ask more questions and it doesn't work and then we give up. But often it takes time and there's real power in consistency and doing the little things every day and this idea of getting 1% every day, 1% better every day. If we do that we don't get 365% better in a year, we get 3,778% better because these gains start to compound. It takes time to see that progress.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, that reminds me of good to great in the flywheel You're pushing and you're pushing and you're pushing. It's not working. But what Coach Walsh probably saw that was probably harder to see externally is this thing is starting to budge and when it takes off it really takes off, Right.
Nathan Tanner:Absolutely.
Bob Goodwin:Super Bowl Right. So, I love consistency and I really appreciate what you just said about kind of like dabbling is different than commitment. Right, and when I kind of tried that, it didn't really work. Well, how long did it? How long have you been doing it? The other way that we've determined doesn't work. It takes a while to undo and build new habits and build new strengths and, to your point, that's consistency. Did you go out and run 26.2 miles the first time you decided to go run?
Bob Goodwin:No, Build to that and that took a long time, but it was commitment and consistency and training eventually get you there. But you got to start and you got to stay right.
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, yeah, if we focus on the inputs consistently. That's where we put our attention is the inputs. The outputs will take care of themselves.
Bob Goodwin:Yes, exactly so, Nathan. Is there anything else that we haven't covered before I let you go.
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, I guess I'll wrap with this. I stumbled on this quote a couple years back and it's one I think about all of the time. It's from Kwame Anthony Appiah. He says in life, the challenge is not so much figuring out how best to play the game. The challenge is to figure out what game you're playing. And this really resonates for me because I push people like let's identify your strengths, let's identify your goals, the vision you have for yourself, what you want to accomplish, who you want to become, and when we have clarity around that we're truly playing our own game. We're not focused on all these other status games or these other goals that people may have that we get stuck in. We're truly focused on our game. Goals that people may have, that we get stuck in. We're truly focused on our game. And so I will lead with that. I'm like what's the game you're going to play? And put your attention there.
Bob Goodwin:Okay, so Nathan, amazing. If people want to get a copy of the Unconquerable Leader, how do they do that? Yeah it's on.
Nathan Tanner:Amazon. It's available for Kindle paperback. Audible you can check it out there. Cool, are you the reader on Audible? I am, yes, I did. I did go through the painful process of recording the audio book, but I like, when I listen to audio books, which I do a lot of I like hearing it from the author. So yes, it's me.
Bob Goodwin:That's super cool. And if people want to reach out to you and learn more about your executive coaching business, how do they do that? Yeah, you can come to NathanTannernet. That's super cool. And if people want to reach out to you and learn more about your executive coaching business, how do they do that?
Nathan Tanner:Yeah, you can come to NathanTannernet that's my landing page or reach out on LinkedIn. Very, very active on LinkedIn. Please say hello. I would love to connect with you.
Bob Goodwin:Cool, we'll put the URL on the final version of this. Nathan, thank you so much, and to our listeners, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your day. Cannot encourage you enough getting the unconquerable leader. Nathan, thank you.
Nathan Tanner:Thank you so much this was fun Bob.
