Buy Time
The Power of Empathy in Leadership: A Discussion with Patrick Yanke
We had the absolute privilege of sitting down with Patrick Yanke for a truly empowering conversation. With his military background and financial planning expertise, he brings a unique perspective to leadership that marries leading by example with emotional awareness. As an avid writer, he shared his golden nugget for aspiring authors - the key is to write about what truly ignites your passion.
Our discussion took us through the turbulent but exciting world of business leadership, where we mulled over the indispensable role of nurturing future leaders. We chewed on the concept of servant leadership, fleshing out each element of the "A Servant Leader Cares" acronym. We also took a deep dive into the fears that leaders may experience when empowering their employees, and how this hesitation could potentially stunt the growth and success of their businesses.
In our final stretch of conversation, we embraced the lessons on how to fuel growth within teams through effective communication, precise expectation setting, and constructing a culture of trust. Here, we underscored the critical role of empathy and emotional intelligence in leadership. We touched upon the importance of creating a work environment that values mistakes as learning opportunities. If leadership fascinates you or if you're just starting on your leadership journey, this episode is brimming with insights that can bolster your understanding of leadership in all its dimensions. Come, join us on this enlightening ride. Don't let this episode pass you by!
Until next time... Follow on Instagram @buytimepodcast
Follow Jacob K. Mead on all the socials @jacobkmead
We had the absolute privilege of sitting down with Patrick Yanke for a truly empowering conversation. With his military background and financial planning expertise, he brings a unique perspective to leadership that marries leading by example with emotional awareness. As an avid writer, he shared his golden nugget for aspiring authors - the key is to write about what truly ignites your passion.
Our discussion took us through the turbulent but exciting world of business leadership, where we mulled over the indispensable role of nurturing future leaders. We chewed on the concept of servant leadership, fleshing out each element of the "A Servant Leader Cares" acronym. We also took a deep dive into the fears that leaders may experience when empowering their employees, and how this hesitation could potentially stunt the growth and success of their businesses.
In our final stretch of conversation, we embraced the lessons on how to fuel growth within teams through effective communication, precise expectation setting, and constructing a culture of trust. Here, we underscored the critical role of empathy and emotional intelligence in leadership. We touched upon the importance of creating a work environment that values mistakes as learning opportunities. If leadership fascinates you or if you're just starting on your leadership journey, this episode is brimming with insights that can bolster your understanding of leadership in all its dimensions. Come, join us on this enlightening ride. Don't let this episode pass you by!
Until next time... Follow on Instagram @buytimepodcast
Follow Jacob K. Mead on all the socials @jacobkmead
Hey everybody, this is Jacob K Mead and this is the Buy Time podcast, where we discuss everything there is to know about buying back your time. Be sure to like and follow and share with somebody who needs to buy back their time. Enjoy today's episode.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the Buy Time podcast. My name is Jacob K Mead and I'm excited today to be joined by Patrick Yankee. Patrick, why don't you start off and give us a little details about yourself and who you are and what you do?
Speaker 3:Well, these kind of questions are always difficult, nowhere to begin. But I guess my professional life at least began in the Army. I was trying to go to the Air Force Academy and I didn't make it on the first try. So I was offered an Army school as a prep school for that. So I went to basic at Fort Knox, spent a year in the Army, got my acceptance to the Air Force Academy, then went back to basic.
Speaker 3:So you know, doing basic twice, kind of a glitin for punishment, did my Air Force time as an officer had intended to fly but graduated during the drawdown from the Gulf War so they didn't need pilots anymore. I became more of a business manager and actually my father was working with AG Edwards for many of years and when I was getting out of the Air Force his boss called me up and said when you leave the military, I want to hire you too. So I've been doing financial planning for 23 years. But I'd love being a speaker and author and doing that on the side, and that's where my passion is. And so I've got Yankee Academy as my outreach for being a speaker and an author.
Speaker 2:Man, it's such an impressive resume for you too as well. I mean, I love seeing you know and talking to speakers, authors. So what are some of the books that you've written?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm on. There's a book I've always wanted to write. Since I was 10 years old I've had this book in my mind that I'm going to write, and the title of the book is why, with a period, not a question mark, and the ultimate why is because God said so. It's very simple, but there's a lot to get to that. But in the meantime I've had books that I felt compelled to write.
Speaker 3:So the first book that I published was Defeating the Culture of Death and that's, you know, from a Catholic perspective, on looking at the world today and where we're headed and how we get into this handbasket and where's our paddle and that sort of thing. Then I also have my recent book is the Personal Rosary, and that's looking at the misuse of the rosary. You know the reflections on the life of Christ. But this takes it from a different perspective and says, okay, we're reflecting on his life, but we're supposed to imitate him. So it's how we can imitate him in the modern world. And I've also a co-author on a book with Kevin Harrington and Jim Britt, cracking the rich code, and I wrote a chapter for that. And those are what I've authored so far, although I've got a bunch of things on my laptop that are in the works.
Speaker 2:That is awesome and I just I love hearing all of that because it's so inspiring, especially to some people out there, and they're thinking about possibly writing their first book or just getting started. So someone's thinking about just getting started and writing their own book. What would you say? The biggest thing is that they do.
Speaker 3:Passion, I mean, that's the biggest thing. What are you passionate about? And just start writing. Essentially, I've always said I'm a better editor than I am writer. So what I do is I just kind of write stream of consciousness. But having done that, now I've got something I can go back and edit. So I would prefer to actually take something that's available to me and just go through and touch it up. So starting from scratch is a little difficult, but I think when you're passionate about something, it flows. So my real challenge is time. I've got a book I want to write right now on servant leadership, and I've seen leadership from an Army perspective, from an Air Force perspective, from a Fortune 500 company perspective, and that's what I speak about when I talk about servant leadership is those perspectives on leadership, and one of these days I'm actually going to publish a book on that. It's just finding the time to actually do so, but I've got a passion for speaking about it at least.
Speaker 2:You know, I love that, especially leadership, because I actually was just in an event called Ryzen Recording in Asheville a couple of weeks ago and one of the things there is there's a speaker named Mark Jay Silverman. He was up on stage and he was talking about leadership and I was like, yeah, you know, I've led teams and I know how to lead teams. And then he said the biggest thing is that you have to learn how to lead yourself. And I stopped. I was like wait a minute. I don't know if I know what that means. Like how do I lead myself? So, for people listening, what's some of the like tips that you can give to for people that want to learn more about leadership? What's something that they can do?
Speaker 3:Well, I'll tell you, I think about the quote by William Penn no man is fit to command another who cannot command himself. When you see leaders that are not setting the example, tells his employees or his people that he works with, that they expect him to be in five minutes early for work and to stay five minutes late. Meanwhile he's taking long lunches and spending days at the beach. It doesn't work out very well. You have to walk the walk, walk the walk the talk that you're telling other people to do. But it really starts with with an awareness of who you are. And in my own studies what I've come to the conclusion is that at our root we're emotional beings. You could be lying in a hospital bed or you could be a marathon runner, but we are emotional beings at a root and we react to the world emotionally. And when you break down those emotions I did a number of studies in psychology today used to classify emotions in six ways there's joy, anger, sadness, fear, surprise and disgust. And then a couple of years later they came back and adjusted that and said you know, really, surprise is a subset of fear, disgust is a subset of anger. So really there's four there's joy, anger, sadness and fear. And when you understand that that's our basic reaction to the world, that starts to open up understanding how we interact. So if you're in a mode of anger, you know we don't want to stay in anger. We kind of look at this in terms of there's one positive emotion, that's joy, but the anger, sadness and fear on the negative side of things. And to go back from anger to joy is forgiveness. You know somebody has hurt you and you have to have forgiveness. You have to let go of that. You know it's been said that anger is that punishment we give ourselves for the sins of others. You got to let go of that if you want to walk back to joy. Gratitude is the way to walk back from sadness. How can you be sad and grateful at the same time? You got to live an attitude of gratitude in this life. Gratitude and forgiveness are very important. But then there's that fear. How do we get back from fear to joy? And it begins with trust and you got to take that first step. You've got to walk forward and you walk in trust towards joy.
Speaker 3:But what's interesting when you take that from a Christian perspective and you look at it and say, okay, how do these emotions go back to how we are created? Well, you look at the, our Father itself. You know Jesus taught us how to pray and in the words that our Lord Himself gave us, what you find is the joy in recognizing who God is and saying that I will be done, essentially, at the gratitude in give us this day our daily bread, the forgiveness and forgive me as I forgive others, and the trust in you know lead us not in temptation and such. You know, essentially what Jesus said is we're emotional beings and we need to orient ourselves towards God in that emotion. But how you turned that into leadership is that self-awareness, recognizing we are emotional beings. So are the people you work with. They're interacting in the world in the same way.
Speaker 3:So, going back to that psychology thing, what they found is that when you put electrodes on people and you measure their simulance, what you find is that even anger and sadness are subsets of fear. So really that triangle kind of collapses down to where you've got fear on one side, you've got joy on the other and you don't do joy. What we do is love. So our choice is really in this life between love and fear and when we approach that as a leader, the right thing to do is to reach out from ourselves to serve others. That's love.
Speaker 3:When we're looking inward to ourselves, that fear is a selfless emotion. What do I have to lose? How is this going to cost me? What do I have to do? Those are fearful thoughts and that's a selfish side of things. And when you're reacting selfishly to the world, you're fearful. When you're fearful, you react selfishly. It works both ways. Same thing on the love side. If you're a loving person, you're generous and in your generosity you give love. But if you can find a way to serve others, find out what they need and give them what they need in every situation, or find a way to apply love in every decision you make, nine times out of ten you're going to make the right decision. But if you look at it from the fearful standpoint and the selfish standpoint of what you have to lose, that's when you start making the negative emotions and start making the negative decisions.
Speaker 3:You can see this in a lot of big businesses. Typically, someone started a business because of a passion. They had something they wanted to give. You start a business because the world needs something and that's why you make money is because they need it. They buy it, they get it from you. That's how it all works. But when the next generation comes along, who doesn't share that passion, they start counting the beans and the bean counters come in and say, okay, well, we need to cut costs here into here. Here they lose the vision, they lose the giving and now turn toward the selfish of how much can we keep for ourselves and how much money can we make. That's how businesses die and that's how organizations and passions die.
Speaker 2:I see it all the time, especially in business coaching, is I'll have someone come to me and they just took over a business and they're just trying to turn our profit and I ask them why are you in it? And they just look at me what do you mean? We just bought it because we thought it'd be a good turnkey business. It's like you know you're in it for the wrong reason. I've always had this saying that if you go into something just for the money, just to make money, if that's the only reason why you're going into something, you might do all right, you may actually end up doing okay for the first couple of years, but it will not be sustainable because you have no passion, you have no drive there. When I actually started my business a while back, it was the thing like what. It's been nine years now and I started my business and now I'm transitioning more into business coaching and consulting.
Speaker 2:And when I started it, that's what it was. It was a drive. I had no care about how much money I made off the bat. It was just I want to help people. That's what I want to do. And so I went into it with the mindset of I'm going to help people.
Speaker 2:I found out when you give like you constantly give, give, give eventually it'll come back to you. And so that's what I did is I was like, how are you going to pay for this? How are you going to do this? And it was question after question.
Speaker 2:So many people doubted me and I was like you know, I don't know, I don't have all the answers, but I'm going to help people the best I can. And I even got the question like well, you're losing so much by just helping. It's like no, no, I wasn't. I gained so much.
Speaker 2:So I love that you're talking about that and especially, you know, even talking about fear. And I mean it's so true, how you just it was a fear to joy, you know, it's just so true because I can remember how fearful I was while I was running my business and it took I don't want to say it took away joy, but because of the fear that I had constantly what's next, what's next, what's next and almost the fear of unknown that it was hard for me to even be joyful in the little moments. And so I just really love that you brought that up because it really it's just resonated with me, especially with starting my business at such a young age. You know starting a business at 20, 21 and building it to something successful at 25. While people are doubting you, there's a lot of fear there.
Speaker 3:I used to teach junior achievement One thing. I would always tell the kids that businesses come into being to fill a need you know. You look around you and you say, okay, what need can I fill? There's a business model for you. The real visionaries, though, create the need that they're going to fill, and that's people like you know, Steve Jobs and whatever else. No one knew we needed a phone in our pocket 24 seven until he came along and said you know what? We need a phone in our pocket 24 seven. It's going to be the one device you're going to turn to all day, and he was right. He said that many years before the iPhone ever came out.
Speaker 2:Oh man, it's so true. You can either look for a problem and now there's, now there's companies out there that create a problem to resolve a problem, like man, it's, it's, there's opportunity everywhere you look. You just got to walk through that right door and and you'll find it. But that's so cool. So you were in the military, correct?
Speaker 3:Yes, army and then Air Force.
Speaker 2:And how long did you serve?
Speaker 3:Seven years active duty after the Air Force Academy. If you count all the time together, it's in the range of 12 years.
Speaker 2:So you have a lot of leadership experience while you're in the military. What's something that stands out? What leadership standpoint actually stands out to you the most?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, you got to kind of walk into this a little bit because when I was in the army you know, one thing that really stood out to me is, you know, I was a basic training.
Speaker 3:I didn't get very far in the army because I was there really as a stepping stone to go to the Air Force Academy. I never tended to stay in the army, but what really stood out to me was, if there's a chow line, if it's, if it's if they're feeding us or whatever else, the leadership always went last. They made sure that the troops were fed first. If we're, if we're going on a bivouac somewhere, if we're going to be bedding down somewhere, setting up tents, whatever else, they make sure their troops are taking care of. The tents are set up and everybody's taking care of before the officer is worried about themselves and get their stuff taken care of.
Speaker 3:And when you get to the Air Force you find a little different mentality. You find like if you've got an air crew, like a C5 air crew, and you've got two officers flying the plane, you've got enlisted on there, they're managing the loads and whatever else. You got officers enlisted on the same plane. When that plane lands, the officers go their way to Bibwek and the the enlisted go their way and They'll come back to the plane tomorrow and they'll take care of stuff. And you find that there's a lot of taking care of the officers, because the officers are the ones you know flying the planes and that sort of thing. And it takes a little bit of just a slight turn of perspective to realize that they're actually the same business model, it's just taken from a different perspective.
Speaker 3:Because what do you do? You take care of your warfighters and, in the army, their basic function. When you ask anybody in the army what is your basic job, your basic job is infantry. Everybody is trained in the infantry, doesn't matter if you're going into armor, doesn't matter if you're going into artillery. Everybody's trained first to be infantry because you know when you're out there in the, in the, the field, sooner or later you might have to pick up a weapon and defend your base. So your first train as infantry. So Everything is geared toward the warfighter. And the warfighter in the army is the private in the trench that's out there defending the base or trying to take enemy positions.
Speaker 3:In the Air Force, the warfighter is typically the officer in the cockpit. He's the one that's out there. That's good, or she? So there's out there. That's that's flying the plane and going out to the enemies, creating the air supremacy that we, that we that we need over the the battlefield. So it's the exact same business model that you take care of your warfighter, it's just your warfighter has a slightly different identity. And then, of course, you come into business and you find, like I said, fortune 500 training in in business and we do the same thing and you've got to take care of your warfighters.
Speaker 3:The people that interact with your customers Are the people that need to have your support and that's where the leadership really comes in. So many leaders in industry See that people are there to serve them, that that that that it's about. It's about my position, my authority, my Territory. It's not.
Speaker 3:If you're put in a position of leadership, then you're being, you're giving a given, a responsibility to accomplish the mission. Now, everything you do should be focused on that mission. You tell me that safety is job one. I say you missed it. No, if safety is job one, tell you people to go home, get in bed. That's the safest place for them to be. No, we do the job as safely as we can, but the mission always comes first, and if a leader is devoted to the mission, they're gonna try to put the people in the right positions that they can take, accomplish the mission, then they have to support those people in accomplishing the mission. Everything focuses on the mission and that's that's a military mentality, but it should also be a business mentality. It's why you're there. That mission is purpose, and if you're not focused on that, you're lacking in purpose.
Speaker 2:I you know. It's so true too, because, honestly, you talk a lot about, you know, taking care of your people first, the in those and people on the front lines. And I think about being a business owner. What's the number one thing that I did? I made sure that the people my employees that were helping my customers we're taking care of. I made sure they had everything that they needed. In fact, I would put aside my own needs a lot often, oftentimes and not, and I would be there for them. If they needed me to Be there on a certain day because they couldn't make it, I would be there for them. I would show them how it's done. I wouldn't sit back and say it's not my job to talk to customers. It's not my job, you know, I just run a business. No, I would be there. I'd be on the front lines, I'd be there showing them how it's done.
Speaker 2:Now I've gotten to the point now where I've put even more leadership in place that actually can do that for me, so I don't have to constantly, always be there, and that was part of my buying time process is getting my leadership to the way that I Would lead, and that's a hard thing to do because a lot of leaders you know we see this a lot, I'm a leader and they're just out there telling people what to do and they think that they're a leader and I think a lot of it goes to you have emotion invested, like you were talking about. So you're fully invested with your emotions on this and so you also want your team to do the best they can and you understand that the job at hand Is it based on how well the job gets done by yourself, but if it gets completed with the team. I've actually I've had Times in the past where I've been a leader and I've been guilty of this right like I got a task done and I patted myself on the chest like this, like yeah, I got this done, I did such a great job at it and I had that like take a step back of my ego because I realized that I did it all on my own and I'm in a leadership position. I didn't ask for a single bit of help while I did this and I didn't lead my team to the success, but I did it all on my own.
Speaker 2:It turned out well, but I'm beating myself on the chest. I'm like that is not a leader, I should have been able to Help my team get to the same results than that would have made me a leader. So I love that you talk about that, because it I mean it is so true and I think that's why it's important that we are leading ourselves first, so that way we know how to actually lead our team. And yeah, I mean just just talking about it on that, when you Go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sorry about that. So what you just just on that, you know. One thing that we have to remember is leaders is one of our basic functions as a Leader is raising people up, and what are we raising them up to is to be future leaders. You know, if, if we've got some organizations, go back to what I said a minute ago about how organizations lose their way, you lose the visionary, and now you got the bean counters. Well, if you raise up the leaders of tomorrow, then your organization has continuity. If you're doing everything yourself and all you have is little function areas under you that that are never raised into leadership positions, when you're gone, the organization is gone. You know your basic job as a leader is succession planning, is planning for the future. You, as a leader, have the vision for where this organization is going, but it's not going to go there without you, unless you raise people up to replace you someday.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's 100% and it's actually so. I have this buy time process and I talk about how to get your business to run on its own without you always having to be there, and one of the things I find the most is that business owners have a hard time. The biggest thing they have a hard time doing is relinquishing control, and the reason why I believe they have such a hard time relinquishing control is because they're looking at it as their business is their baby. They don't want it to make any mistakes. They don't want any customers to get mad. They don't want anything to go wrong.
Speaker 2:So one of the hardest things that I did as a business owner was I told myself I'm going to let things go wrong, because things were going to go wrong. It wasn't going to be the decisions that I was going to make. Someone was going to do something that I wouldn't necessarily agree on, but as a leader, I knew that that could happen. But I would be able to coach them. I'd be able to have the conversations, I'd be able to figure out a solution if something did go horribly wrong, and I would be the leader to come out of it and make them stronger in the process and it was amazing. What happened is I relinquished my control to my employees, thinking, oh man, I don't know if they have this, and they had it. They did a phenomenal job. They killed it. They did a great job. Now, did they make all the same decisions that I would have made? No, did my manager team do the exact same things that I would have done? No, could there have been things avoided and fires avoided? Absolutely. But the thing is is they did it all without me being there, and then to come back and see how empowered they were, it was awesome.
Speaker 2:So I think that's one of the big things is that business owners out there, they have a hard time of saying no one else can do this better than me. My wife's sometimes guilty of that If she wants. It's just like I got to do this and I just I know how to do it. I'm just going to do it and get it done, and I had that mindset for the longest time.
Speaker 2:But it's not sustainable, because when you're running a business, it's different when you're running it versus you're working in the business, because, especially if I'm looking for a business to purchase, the first thing that I'm looking at is okay, how many hours a week does that business owner work in that business? Because if that business owner is working 60, 70 hours a week in the business, then that means first of all, they're an employee that I don't have to pay overtime to, but then, secondly, that means that that business would not be sustainable without that owner. And once that owner leaves and I take control of that business, who knows where it's going to go? I like to say look for those people that do have strong leaderships, and you can find it in the businesses that are sustainable without having to have constant micromanaging from the business owner.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned about employees making mistakes. We have a tendency to shoot people when they make mistakes. We fire people when they make big mistakes, but as a true leader, you have to recognize that that person is now your most valuable employee because they've made a big mistake and if they're truly committed to the mission, in their remorse they're going to learn not to make that mistake again. Now you get rid of that person, you're going to have someone who come along to make that mistake again because they haven't learned. This person has.
Speaker 3:So some of your most valuable employees are the ones that they're committed to the mission and they've made a mistake. You should pat them on the back and say good job making that mistake. Now don't make it again. You just learned a valuable lesson and go make a different mistake, and the more mistakes they make, the better trained they're going to be. They become your most valuable employees. Now, again, that somebody who's committed to the mission.
Speaker 3:Don't get me wrong. You don't keep around the flunkies that can't do anything right. I get that, but you do try to raise people up. We have a tendency, unfortunately, to just to form the firing squad when somebody makes a mistake and we have to evaluate that person and if this person is a quality person, you don't just fire them. As an example to others, we would like to say okay, well, you know, if I fire this person, everyone else will learn not to make that mistake. Yeah, but you could also give an example that shows that they're allowed to make mistakes, which means they're allowed to stretch and grow and try to do things in new ways, which is what you want your employees to do.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's so true. I think about mistakes and I think that I've made tons of them in my business career that I know my employees are going to make them. It's the only way to growth is to make a mistake, learn from it, see what you could have done better and move on. And obviously I will find ways that I can coach my employees to actually get them to know how to handle a situation better. But when they make a mistake, they come to me and they're like hey, so I think I made a mistake and the first thing that I say is let's see how we can figure it out together, because I don't want to punish them for making a mistake because, like you just said, what are you going to do? Fire them, get harsh with them, get someone else on board that's going to make the same mistake.
Speaker 2:It's not invested in the company that doesn't want to see the company grow and succeed. When you invest in people, this is what I found I invest in my employees and I do it more so, not just with training, but like doing one-on-one and personal one-on-ones, and we get personal about work and personal life, because, whether people believe it or not, work and personal mix. I don't care what people say out there, if you have a horrible, if you're having a horrible personal time, you're going to have a horrible time at work. It's just, it is what it is. And so I like to be a mentor to them and say like, hey, where can I help? What's your struggles, what's going on? And we're very open, our whole team's open, and I love that culture.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really good culture and a healthy work environment is that everyone knows they can be open and not everything has to be all rainbows and sun shines. We get down and we talk about some of the things that are dark or that people don't want to talk about, because I guess I always I have this firm belief that work and personal life they do mix and I think too many people separate that. But it really does. I've seen it time after time. What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3:Well, it just takes us back to the initial premise that we are emotional beings. And if you truly understand that your decisions are based on what you love and what you fear, and the selfish versus the giving, and you recognize then that your employees have the same exact emotions. They have the same exact motivations. That's how you can get in there and say okay, what is it that you really want? What is it that you're trying to do here? And I can help you do that. You take the carrot and the stick approach. We understand stick. Everyone understands the stick approach. I'm going to beat you with a stick If you don't do what I tell you. That's easy leadership.
Speaker 3:The carrot approach is a hard sort of thing because everyone's carrot is different. You have to actually get to know your people and find out what motivates them. Then you can sit down with them and say okay, you know, it starts with your own self-awareness. What motivates me? Okay, great, I understand what motivates me. Now let's go find out what motivates you, and this one motivates you. I'm going to help you accomplish your goal and what you want, and together that's going to grow the business and the mission. But you have to have that outreach Again, it's that love and fear. In fear, we want to beat people over the head and say don't you dare do anything wrong. In love, we say I want to help you grow, and you can only help someone grow if you understand where it is they're trying to go.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's so true and everyone is motivated differently. I think that was my biggest mistake, and when I first got into leadership, I thought everyone was motivated by the same thing money. I was like, oh, of course it. And the more money you can throw someone away, the more they're motivated. And then I realized real fast that that's not the case. There's a lot of people out there that they're not motivated by money. They might be motivated by rewards, or they might be motivated by affection. There's so many different ways people are motivated and everyone is different. So finding out how a person is motivated it's so important. I mean, it makes a huge difference because if you're going about it the wrong way, you're going to get the wrong results.
Speaker 3:And always Exactly. There is no one size fits all. If you're going to be a servant leader, there's one size fits all if you want to be a poor leader, because there's plenty of examples out there. But if you want to be a servant leader, if you truly want to focus on the mission, get your people focused on the mission and help them grow and make this organization something that can grow and prosper and be sustainable for the future, then you're going to have to learn to adapt and learn what your people need.
Speaker 2:I love that, and so I want to talk a little bit on a deeper level. As far as leadership, I talked about how a lot of business owners out there they have a difficulty relinquishing control, like letting go, and I know it stems a little bit from fear, you know, fear that their employees are going to make a mistake or fear of what customers might think if something were to go wrong. But what some ways that is. Do you have any tips or tricks for our audience that they can help with that process? Because I know it's one of the hardest things is relinquishing control and letting your employees manage or letting your managers actually do their job. But what are some good tips and tricks that you might have?
Speaker 3:I think the simplest thing is again getting to know your people. You need to know what level of responsibility that they're willing and able to take. Every speaker has to have their acronym. So my acronym for servant leadership is a servant leader cares, and the C is for communication. You know you start with. If they're going to understand your devotion to the mission, you have to speak the mission to them. This is what we're here to accomplish. And then, on, communication is a two-way street. You also have to listen back from them how they understand the mission and what they can offer to it. So communication is the first step. Then there's accompaniment. You have to be there in the trenches with them. You can't just say, okay, you go do your thing, I want to do my thing. You have to set the example. You have to set the standards and you have to live up to them yourself.
Speaker 3:If you're not living up to the standards, your organization is going to fall apart eventually. They're going to look at you and say, why am I bothering? They're going to put out resumes for an organization that does live up to their own standards. So responsibility is recognizing in your people how much responsibility they're able to take on. Not willing, able. Let's get into, know your people and what they're able to do. And what you do is you slowly increase the level of responsibility and you're going to find that they're going to make mistakes and they're going to. Things are going to go wrong and that's where you sit them down and say okay, so what went wrong? In this situation, we learn, we teach, we grow and we expand their ability to take on responsibility. And as you find leaders within your organization, you can raise them up in responsibility Evolution.
Speaker 3:It's your job to plan for the future, for yourself, for your organization and for your people. Send them to training schools, raise them up. How many leaders, leaders, how many so-called leaders do we know out there who keep their people at a barely employable level? Because if I train this guy, he's going to go to a better organization. If I train this guy, he might take my future advancement. You know that's that fear of your own people, that we don't allow them to grow. But your job as a leader is to help your organization and your people evolve. You're focused on the mission. You're looking five years down the road where do we want to be? You got to map out the plan to be there. That's that evolution. And you got to help your people grow at the same time so they can become the future leaders that they need to be, but also help it grow their ability to accomplish the mission.
Speaker 3:And then finally, it ends with service. Once you've done all of those things, the communication, the accompaniment, the responsibility and the evolution serve. This is where you sit down and say what do you need and how do I support you? That's that service aspect. To say the servant leadership is, it's in company, all of those things. But if you don't take this final step and say I'm here to support you, you're not a servant leader. So you can communicate with the people, get to know them all those sorts of things, and try to set the example. But if you never sit down and say I'm here to serve you, how do I help you accomplish the mission? You miss the boat. So that's that's the words I live by.
Speaker 3:And what's what's really cool? You know I'd like to bring things back to kind of religious realm a little bit, but when you look at, like our lord's march to the cross, you got the. You got the agony in the garden where it says to his father I will be done. You got the, the scourging at the pillar. That's the justice and doing all that that is required. You got the crowning with thorns, temperance about. He was offered a kind of gold but you only accepted a crown thorns. You got the carrying the cross Is the fortitude to continue on the. You got the cross itself, which is the image of love itself. Well, that servant leader cares.
Speaker 3:I came up with that acronym before I realized that works perfectly with that. You got the communication in the agony, the garden. You got the accompaniment there at the, the scourging at the pillar. You got the responsibility there with the, with the counting the thorns. You got the evolution of the marching forward with the carrying the cross and then you got Just doing it. Being there on the cross is the image of love, is the serving the people and doing with the mission was. When I get to talk certain leadership, to set the secular organization, the secular examples, when I get to actually talking religious environment, it really comes alive and I love.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I love that. I love that you talked about. A lot of leaders are afraid that if they Leave their employees too much, or they encourage their, empower, their employees, to which they're going to lose out on the opportunity, they're gonna leave the company or they're gonna completely be, you know, go somewhere else, because they're gonna have it in there where this fire, this passion and I have to always take a step back, because I was young when I first started my, my business and I did have that mindset at first and I will be open and honest with my audience about this night and when I, when I speak, I'm always Up front about it is I made the mistake, right?
Speaker 2:I first started that way and I was like, if I do this and make him to great, they're gonna be better than me, and if they're better than me and they're gonna go out and start their own business and and they're gonna lose it all, right, I have that mindset will lose all the fear mindset like you just got done talking about. And I had to turn that off because I realize, first of all, I wasn't true I was in the right place, if that's all I cared about. But then, once I turned it off and I really did start like empowering my employees and just trying to get them to where they wanted to be in life. And I told myself, like listen, they're not always gonna be with you, and that's okay. Where do they want to be in life and how can you help them get there? And I started to do that. I help them to get to where they want to be. I asked him how their personal goals are going, ask what they needed from me. When I started to do that, the change was awesome. In fact, it was so awesome where I got to a point where they were doing a great they're doing great at work.
Speaker 2:I could walk into the store and I can ask what do you guys need from me? And they would say, nothing, you already do enough week, we can handle it. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. Like this is what true leadership feels like, where you know you can walk in and your team, if they needed me, they would say, hey, I need you for this. And I'll even ask what do you need to start on? Like nothing, you go, do what you need to do, we can handle it. Like that's a good feeling right now. But it didn't happen overnight. I'm not. It took years to learn this, and so if anybody in the audience can learn this at an earlier age and what it took me, I'll do a lot better. Time to take me to twenty five to learn it. I guess there's still people out there learning it, but you can work for twenty five, do so.
Speaker 1:Why I really, I love, I love the decision.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I had no good what I just got. To go back to the love and fear, but it's every decision that we make. So, yeah, you've learned it now twenty five, but there's gonna be something that's gonna cause you concern in the future and you can have to make those choices and Every one of those choices build the future that you go to. So love and fear is a great way to approach each decision, but it is each decision. It's not. It's not a final resting point. It's gonna be. There gonna be more challenges in the future and you have to decide on your goals.
Speaker 2:Man, I feel like the challenges never stop, but that's what's part of life is. You get these challenges and it's just overcoming them and Figuring out the direction you want to take, and relying on faith helps me a lot. I mean, I can't tell you how much that helps. If I don't have my faith, I don't know. I think I'd spiral pretty quickly. So, patrick, we always thank you so much for coming on today's podcast. I mean just sharing your knowledge and everything that there is about leadership. I love hearing that, because it's something that I'm extremely passionate about, especially in the buying time process. It's the number one thing you have to learn. Before you can even let your team go. You have to learn how to lead correctly. So if our audience want to find out a little bit more information about you, where can they go? How can they do this?
Speaker 3:Well, my main website for for speaking in the an authoring is the w w w dot yankee academy. Yankee is one, by the way, yankee academy dot com. You have to buy. Vows were cheap, so the w w dot yankee academy dot com twenty. But I also have a website set up specifically for my read my latest book, the personal rosary. So it's a w w dot the personal rosary dot com. But if you go to the main one on the academy, there you can find information, you can see videos on on me speaking. It could hold me if you'd like me to come speak. I'd love to do those sorts of things. I am on facebook, I'm also on the linkedin, twitter, and you can just look for patrick yankee, you can look for yankee academy, you can look for the personal rosary and you'll find me out there.
Speaker 2:I'll definitely have to get on that website because it sounds like there's so much cool information on there and if I can find out more about your speaking me, it sounds like you'd be a great speaker, so I I I love to be able to see when your Speech is someday. I think it'd be a great opportunity for me. So what can, what can the audience do to support you right now? What and we are journey what can they do to help you out?
Speaker 3:I say look at the organizations that you know or a part of, and if you would like someone to come speak about the servant leadership, I'd love to do it. This is my passion, this is something I do as a passion project. So serve leadership again begins with self management. So the self management, servant leadership. On the flip side, from religious standpoint, you know the personal rosary is actually it's a catholic devotional. But if you, if you have friends that are in the catholic church, if you are in the catholic church, you know people that are in the parish or the local diocese and they'd like some to come and do a rosary mission and go deeper into the mysteries of the rosary and how we can live the mysteries, the rosary and and the events of christ life on our own life. I'd love to come do that.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thank you so much, and so if anybody out there does have any ideas, I feel free to reach out and will blow the bill, connect you guys and see what opportunities like. So I'm patrick. Thank you so much for coming on today's podcast. I really do appreciate it and just sharing your message with our audience and I hope a lot of you were able to get some good knowledge from today's podcast. And remember, as always, feel free to give us a follow and share this with somebody that needs to learn about leadership and really want to inspire them how to lead their team to massive growth. Thanks and until next time.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to today's episode. My name is jacob k mead, and until next time.