The Art of Manliness - The Leadership Qualities That Will Set You Apart From the Pack

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.420 For the last 15 years, William Vanderbloomen has run an executive search firm that helps

00:00:15.960 nonprofit organizations find leaders. Over the course of conducting tens of thousands

00:00:20.440 of interviews with top tier candidates, he's tracked and recorded what qualities the best

00:00:24.800 leaders, the people he calls unicorns, possess that set them apart from everyone else in

00:00:29.480 the field. William shares what he's learned in his new book, Be the Unicorn, 12 data-driven

00:00:35.020 habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. Today, we talk about what some of

00:00:38.780 those 12 distinguishing habits are and how people can use them to move ahead at work as

00:00:42.760 well as improve the relationships outside of it. We discussed the nearly 100% difference

00:00:47.140 it can make in your business to respond to people right away, the least common trait among

00:00:51.380 unicorns that the general population mistakenly believes they have in spades, how mastering

00:00:55.900 the art of anticipation will make you stand out, a way to use eye contact to build strong

00:01:00.120 connection, and much more. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash

00:01:05.020 unicorn.

00:01:05.460 All right. William Vanderbloemen, welcome to the show.

00:01:21.360 Thanks for having me.

00:01:22.440 So you founded and run an executive search company, but you focus on helping churches find

00:01:28.880 pastors. So I've heard, I think a lot of people probably have heard of executive search companies

00:01:32.840 for corporations, but not for churches. How'd you end up doing what you do?

00:01:37.900 Well, that's probably a multi-podcast question. I am a recovering preacher, so I'll try not to

00:01:46.900 ramble on and on. But a lifetime ago, I was leading a very large church. And that church,

00:01:56.460 First Presbyterian Houston, which is an amazing church, wonderful people. It's where Sam Houston

00:02:00.300 went to church. So they took about three years to find me, and that's like par for the course. Nobody

00:02:06.940 saw that as abnormal. I was there about six years. It took them about three years to find my successor,

00:02:12.320 which was par for the course. But my departure from there, I left there partially as a result of

00:02:19.320 a divorce, which by the way, I would not recommend to listeners. But it wasn't anything the tabloids

00:02:24.080 would have picked up. It was just, you know, kind of a tragic thing. And I found myself as a single

00:02:30.000 dad with four kids. And like, wow, what do I do now? I went and got a job in the oil and gas industry

00:02:37.400 for a very large company, a Fortune 200 company upstream in the gas industry. The CEO had been

00:02:43.660 there nine and a half years, which I didn't know at the time. For a company that size, usually you look

00:02:49.860 at three, three and a half years for a CEO, nine and a half years. And he said, it's time to find my

00:02:53.840 successor. And I was going through like a management rotation, like do a year here, do a year there and

00:02:59.780 learn the business. My first year, this particular year was in the HR department. So yeah, I could be

00:03:07.280 ambitious and say I was on the team that helped with that succession. The reality is I was more like

00:03:13.000 the third string water boy for that team, you know, fairly inconsequential role, but I got to watch what

00:03:19.040 they did. And they did this thing I'd never seen before. They hired what they called a search firm.

00:03:25.280 And 90 days later, they had their new CEO and it went great. So drop back to First Presbyterian

00:03:30.520 Houston, been around for a long time, kind of a great job to land. They spent 12 years and six of

00:03:38.240 those years, they were looking for a pastor and six, they had one. And that just made me go,

00:03:43.400 that's, and nobody saw that as abnormal. That's kind of crazy. So I came home. Now I'm leaving out

00:03:50.660 a big gap in this narrative, but I'd just gotten married to Adrian. We'd just blended our family with

00:03:55.640 six kids, just bought a house that we could barely afford. And I came home and said, you know what,

00:04:02.040 babe, I think I'm supposed to quit my job and start something new for churches.

00:04:07.960 And she just looked at me and said, total deadpan. Oh, oh, that's because churches love new ideas,

00:04:18.660 right? Which no one has ever said in the history of ever. So she should have said, I love you,

00:04:25.820 go back to work. I love your vision and your dream, but we got six kids to feed. And instead she said,

00:04:31.520 let's give it a shot. And, and the kicker is it was the fall of 2008, which Brett, I don't know

00:04:39.440 if your listeners are too young to remember, you might Google 2008 economy, not the best time to

00:04:47.060 quit your job and start something new. But, you know, we, we just kind of fell into right place,

00:04:52.460 right time. And now 15 years later, we still help churches find their pasture, but we help nonprofits,

00:04:57.280 we help schools, we help for-profits that are sort of values driven where people are like,

00:05:02.780 we want somebody who matches how we do things, our culture, our vibe, our why. And, and it all

00:05:08.500 started with that simple little question of, could we build something better for churches that need

00:05:13.180 a pastor? So that's, that's a very condensed version of a very long story.

00:05:18.140 And in your experience as, you know, as yourself as a pastor and also dealing with not only putting

00:05:23.260 pastors and churches, but also putting leaders and nonprofits, how is leadership different in the

00:05:28.780 nonprofit sector compared to leadership in a business? And do you think there are lessons people

00:05:33.780 can take from the volunteer nonprofit world into the corporate world?

00:05:38.680 A hundred percent. First of all, I think leadership is leadership. So, you know, to inspire people to go

00:05:44.440 where you see they ought to go, that's leadership, whether you're in a for-profit or a nonprofit or,

00:05:49.320 or what have you. Years ago, when I was a younger pastor, I was in Montgomery, Alabama. So the

00:05:55.040 Maxwell Air Force Base is there. It's all officers. The Air War College is there. And I got asked to come

00:06:00.220 teach a class. And I'm like, what can I teach about leadership? You guys are defending the country.

00:06:05.840 And they said, yeah, but your volunteers don't have to say yes, sir. And we want you to talk about

00:06:12.760 that. So I developed a course called leading when no one has to say yes, sir. And that's a whole

00:06:18.540 different art of collaborating, of bringing people along, being far enough ahead of the crowd that

00:06:25.940 you've got a vision for where to go, but close enough to the crowd that you're not just taking

00:06:29.320 a walk by yourself. And I think that the skills that I learned over that career, like how do I

00:06:35.420 talk people into volunteering their time? How do I train them to be on the team? How do I keep them

00:06:40.040 on the team? That's all amazingly germane to right now when you've got millennials starting to 0.96

00:06:47.320 really take over the workforce, which is a beautiful thing to see happen. But they're much more

00:06:52.160 interested in collaborative spirit. Don't tell me what to do. Convince me this is the right thing to

00:06:57.480 do. So that there is a whole dimension to leadership in the business world right now that really is

00:07:04.300 leading when people don't have to say yes. And I think there's just a treasure trove of parallels there.

00:07:10.640 Yeah. I think I've gotten my best leadership lessons leading in volunteer organizations because

00:07:16.820 people don't have to say yes, sir, to you. And also you can't use like payment or a paycheck as a

00:07:21.700 bludgeon. That's right. You can always be like, if you're in a corporate world of like, well, if you

00:07:24.900 don't do what I say, you're fired. Yep. You can't do that in a volunteer organization. So you have to

00:07:28.880 really learn these people skills to motivate people who are just volunteering and they can step back

00:07:34.120 anytime they want. There's not going to be any repercussions. And that's really useful. That's like,

00:07:38.860 that's a really a baptism by fire. Well, and, and, you know, the flip side of that is the people who

00:07:43.680 are really good at leading volunteer organizations know how to hire their volunteers because, you know,

00:07:50.640 it's one thing to inspire people to follow you, but it's another thing when you've got a volunteer

00:07:54.920 who's a real problem to the volunteer team and you got to fire them and you're not paying them.

00:07:58.840 Like how do you fire a volunteer? So that the emphasis on soft skills that you learn in any kind

00:08:05.940 of nonprofit or volunteer role is going to help a whole lot in leadership, particularly in the here

00:08:11.760 and now in the corporate world where people aren't staying at companies 25 years and they can take it

00:08:17.140 or leave it with a job and they're jumping around. Career spans are shorter, stays at jobs are shorter.

00:08:22.760 And I think leaders that learn how to motivate and inspire people to get on board and then to stay

00:08:28.780 are going to be kind of the new gold standard in leadership.

00:08:31.780 So I've been studying like, what are those soft skills? What are the things that make that kind

00:08:37.320 of leader just stand out in the crowd and you want to follow them?

00:08:41.660 And so that's what you've done in your latest book. You've taken your 15 plus years of experience

00:08:45.760 at your executive search company where you all have interviewed tens of thousands of people.

00:08:51.300 And then in the process, you all have been tracking the traits of these different people you've been

00:08:56.200 interviewing and you've been trying to be very systematic and scientific and data-driven

00:09:01.680 as possible to figure out what qualities do those people you were just talking about? They have

00:09:05.840 those soft skills that make them almost like irreplaceable as a leader. You call them the

00:09:12.380 unicorns. That's the name of the book, Be the Unicorn. And so you have honed in on 12 data-driven

00:09:17.360 habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. This is kind of a big picture. What do unicorns

00:09:23.800 have, like unicorn leaders? What do they have that non-unicorns don't?

00:09:28.420 Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. I think most of them have, I don't know, Brett, you ever sit

00:09:34.100 down with somebody, it doesn't happen very often, but within five minutes of meeting them, it might

00:09:39.020 be at a dinner party or at a social function or work or maybe even a job interview, but within five

00:09:44.000 minutes, you're just sitting there going, this one, this one's a winner. This one's different.

00:09:49.240 But like, that's what unicorns do. You're immediately ready to sign up for their fan club or whatever.

00:09:55.060 The flip side, though, is really interesting because I've wondered for 15 years, like,

00:10:00.300 you know, I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I'm not the most gullible. So why in five minutes

00:10:05.120 does this person have my attention? What are they doing? Could you figure out what it is they're

00:10:09.500 doing and then be able to spot it faster? And by the same token, I've had some very quiet,

00:10:15.800 humble people that I've met. And in the first five minutes, they didn't impress me very much.

00:10:19.220 They turned out to be amazing leaders. So the flip side is, what is it that these amazing leaders

00:10:25.120 all do? And could we look for that and try and spot it? And in the pandemic, nearly every one of

00:10:31.980 our clients was shut down indefinitely, which frees up your calendar a lot. And that's when we realized

00:10:38.100 we've now done 30,000 long format interviews with the best talent we've ever seen. I mean,

00:10:43.460 we've done hundreds of thousands of interviews on some level, but 30,000 top, top, top people,

00:10:49.080 what do they have in common? That was the question that we attacked from a research standpoint

00:10:55.380 during the pandemic and the shutdown that led to us figuring out, you know, they do have things in

00:11:02.960 common. It's very different from what I expected. I expected the list of things that unicorns have in

00:11:09.880 common to be like, they all have an IQ of 160 or better. Nope. They all have a full head of hair

00:11:17.460 and amazing teeth. Nope. They all went to a really great school. No, no, no, no. Wasn't anything like

00:11:22.420 that. Wasn't pedigree. It wasn't even as simple as he was the quarterback and she was the head

00:11:27.540 cheerleader. No. What about personality? Like, you know, big personality, small, like, would that...

00:11:32.220 Neither one mattered. Any kind of personality type, any socioeconomic, any racial ethnic,

00:11:36.960 all those lines went away. What emerged as the patterns that these unicorns seem to repeat and

00:11:44.080 share in common were 12 habits, not even traits. Traits are something you're born with. These are

00:11:50.160 things that they practice that were almost solely focused on how do I treat the person across the

00:11:57.000 desk from me? How am I treating that? 12 habits that we found that were stunningly common among

00:12:05.500 unicorns and amazingly uncommon among the rest of us. And it's not like a rocket science list.

00:12:13.180 It took rocket science to get to the list, but you read the table of contents. I almost, it's like,

00:12:18.880 duh, who wouldn't have thought? I almost titled the book, So I Guess Mom Might Have Been Right.

00:12:24.160 Because a lot of the 12 habits are things mothers try and tell their young boys to do when they're,

00:12:30.240 you know, approaching others or treating someone in a relationship or at work. But it's not just 12

00:12:37.140 simple ruminations. This is 12 habits that we've seen through a careful study of how these unicorns

00:12:44.140 behave. And I thought we were doing this so that I would learn how to spot unicorns faster and I'd be

00:12:51.080 better at search and our firm would be better and all that. What we discovered was actually,

00:12:56.920 these are 12 habits that can be taught, that can be learned and adapted that anyone, if they take

00:13:04.560 the effort to apply these 12 habits, can become one of those people that stand out in the crowd,

00:13:09.860 that within five minutes you're ready to be on their fan club, you know, those kinds of things. So

00:13:14.260 we thought we were doing something for ourselves. We realized this is a roadmap that could help a whole

00:13:19.240 lot of people. And that led us to say, okay, fine, we'll do it as a book.

00:13:22.860 So these 12 habits, do you have to develop all these habits? Do these unicorns have all these

00:13:28.260 habits or do they have one or two and they just specialize in those one or two?

00:13:32.200 That's such a good question. That's so good, Brett. I think that what we found was the unicorns have

00:13:37.480 usually about two or three that they're better at than the rest. And then they have 12, of the 12,

00:13:44.820 maybe they're one or two that they should probably work on some. But across the board,

00:13:48.280 the unicorns were higher than average at each of these habits. So they're better at all of them,

00:13:55.560 but they're really good at a few. And some of that may be personality driven. And then there are a

00:14:00.960 few they really need to work on, but they're just stunningly consistent in being well above average

00:14:06.340 in each of these 12 areas. Gotcha. Well, let's talk about some of these habits. The first one is

00:14:11.180 the habit of being fast. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I, you know, this is one where I may have,

00:14:18.100 if I'm okay, true confessions, that chapter title might be a little bit of clickbait. Cause like,

00:14:24.600 Brett, I'm not fast. Like I'm Dutch. We are built for wind resistance and solidness.

00:14:32.800 So speed is not my thing. If I were probably being more precise, I probably would have said

00:14:38.820 responsiveness, not just fast. So, so the bottom line of our research showed humans are really

00:14:46.520 terrible at getting back to people. I mean, we're horrible at it. We put it off for tomorrow. We

00:14:51.580 wait too long. Unicorns are almost obsessed with getting back to people and clearing their inbox and

00:14:58.020 getting a response to someone that's meaningful and not just a chat bot kind of thing. And it

00:15:03.640 really sets them apart. And frankly, it sets businesses apart when they show crazy intentional

00:15:09.800 responsiveness. So what do these unicorns do? Like what kind of practical brass tacks practices

00:15:16.620 they incorporate in their lives to maintain this responsiveness? Yeah. Yeah. I remember, I'll call

00:15:21.900 him a unicorn. He's a board member of the very first church I was a senior pastor of in Montgomery.

00:15:26.280 And we were relocating. And so our new property, we were looking for a place to meet on Sundays

00:15:33.780 while our building was getting built. And there was a YMCA kind of across the street from our

00:15:38.260 property. It was a pretty good location. And I was riding around with Todd and he said, I know the

00:15:43.120 chair of the board of that YMCA. I said, really? He said, yeah. And so we got back to the office,

00:15:48.500 walked to my office. He said, here's the number of that chair of the board of the YMCA. I bet he'd let

00:15:53.280 us use the facility if you call him. They don't use it on Sundays. I'm like, okay, thanks. And we

00:15:59.680 stood there for like, I don't know, felt like forever, probably a few seconds. And Todd said,

00:16:05.920 why haven't you called him yet? I said, Todd, what are you talking about? We're standing here right

00:16:10.040 now. He said, I just gave you the number. I told you to call him. Why wait till tomorrow? Why wait

00:16:15.380 till this afternoon? That's how unicorns behave. And I did call him and we got the facility, but I've

00:16:20.180 never forgotten that. It's kind of like, I don't know if you're ever at a intersection where you

00:16:24.440 have to turn left out of a parking lot and you got to go all the way across the road. It seems like

00:16:29.160 right when I pull up to pulling out into the road, there's an opportunity to go and I wait

00:16:34.400 and then end up waiting forever. And the reality is your first chance to respond is usually your best

00:16:39.920 one. So brass tacks is simply just get back to people. And what's scary is how bad the rest of us

00:16:48.060 are at this. So on the one hand, scary on the other hand makes for an easy win. Do you have time

00:16:53.520 for a story about this? Sure. Yeah. So we use, we call it inbound marketing and probably everybody

00:16:59.720 knows what this is. It's where you go to a website, maybe it's, you're looking at a car, a Jeep or the

00:17:05.280 new Bronco, right? And they say, would you like more information? Fill out this form, give them the

00:17:10.260 email address. And then it goes into the internet and you wait to hear back from whoever you just filled

00:17:16.860 out the form with, right? So when we started our company, when people wrote in, I had six kids to

00:17:24.920 feed. I had a house to pay for. And we were trying something new with a group that doesn't like new

00:17:29.760 things. If somebody wrote me and said, would you get back to me about, I got back to them like

00:17:34.240 immediately. And I remember people saying, wow, you actually got back to me. So fast forward many years

00:17:43.860 later, the platform that we use for our inbound marketing ran a very large study of all companies

00:17:50.040 they could find that use any kind of this sort of fill out a form and we'll get back to you

00:17:54.680 marketing. And they asked the question, how much does it matter when you get back to somebody after

00:18:00.580 they fill out a form? In other words, if you get back to them faster, do you have a better chance of

00:18:04.100 talking to them on the phone and making a sale? They found that if you get back to people within 60

00:18:09.880 seconds of them filling out that form, you have over a 98% chance of talking to that individual.

00:18:16.540 You wait 20 minutes, it drops to a 60% chance. Still good, but nowhere near 98. You wait 24 hours,

00:18:24.960 you have a less than 1% chance of ever talking to the person that filled out a form.

00:18:30.680 Now, the punchline to the study was they went on to find out what is the average response time for

00:18:35.320 all these companies taking this survey. Average response time, 42 hours. So the companies that

00:18:44.660 are paying for amazing marketing software, paying sales teams, they get leads in their hand and they

00:18:51.740 wait too long to get back to people and the leads die. People who get back right away have a 98% chance.

00:18:58.880 That's good news for everybody listening today. It's just, if you will immediately and intentionally

00:19:05.660 get back to people, you will find yourself rising up above the crowd. You'll separate yourself from

00:19:12.020 the field. And of course, you got to have some discernment about, you know, are you going to

00:19:15.740 respond to every little thing that comes your way? Well, no, then you wouldn't have a life. But can you

00:19:20.780 figure out what are the things that are really going to move the ball forward and how do I respond

00:19:24.360 really quickly and intentionally to those opportunities when they come along?

00:19:29.200 Yeah, I like the idea of calling it responsiveness, not fast. Because I think one problem that leaders

00:19:32.340 have is they might be juggling a lot of different balls and they just forget which balls they even

00:19:37.200 have in the air. And so they don't, they're not able to respond. And one thing I admire about my wife 1.00

00:19:42.100 is she hates what she calls them open loops. So any task that's undone, she's constantly thinking

00:19:49.180 about it. For me, it's out of sight, out of mind. But my, because my wife is constantly 1.00

00:19:53.360 thinking about all these open loops, she has this incentive to get things done as fast as possible.

00:19:58.920 And I've learned to get better about that from her. So I appreciate that. She's super responsive.

00:20:05.340 Yeah. My wife is the queen of the, what's the rule called? Only touch it once. 1.00

00:20:09.500 Yeah.

00:20:10.060 That's her. If it's male, I'm going to deal with it and then it's going to be gone. And if I can't

00:20:14.000 deal with it, I'm going to put it in a stack and then I'm going to sit down and deal with everything

00:20:16.620 in the stack and it's going to be done in one fell swoop. For me, I've had to learn like,

00:20:21.880 like I have about five different email accounts of people that will email me, my wife, a few

00:20:30.580 others, and the software that sends in any lead that comes to the company. And they come across

00:20:35.820 through my lock screen. So there's the only five that come through on my lock screen. So I see one

00:20:41.280 of those fives. Like those are the ones I have to get back to right away. And so I've had to build a

00:20:45.680 system for discerning, like what is super important that I get back to right away, wife being first

00:20:51.380 priority and then new leads for our business a little farther down the list. But, but I think

00:20:57.060 probably everybody here listening is smart enough to figure out how to filter what needs an immediate

00:21:02.960 response, what doesn't, and the things that need it. If you will give an immediate and intentional,

00:21:08.380 not an auto respond, but an immediate intentional response, you will act differently than nearly

00:21:15.760 everybody around you. Yeah. I hate the auto responder. I'd rather not get a response than

00:21:19.620 an auto responder. Absolutely. Yeah. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:21:26.140 And now back to the show. Okay. So related to speed or responsiveness, I like responsiveness,

00:21:32.040 related to responsiveness is the habit of agility. What do unicorns who are particularly agile,

00:21:37.640 what do they do differently from the non-agile? Everything, everything differently. Agility

00:21:43.420 atrophies. And, and, you know, I, I think I kind of always knew that, but some years back I'd gotten

00:21:50.820 to the age where I like to run. It's probably more like a jog than a run, but I got to the age where

00:21:57.640 if I'm going to keep doing this, I've got to start doing some stretching. And I, you know, the stretching,

00:22:02.880 honestly, Brett, it was harder than the run itself. I'm just stiff, you know,

00:22:07.640 and I was done running one day. My youngest of our seven kids came in the room and she was probably, 0.96

00:22:15.700 I don't know, two or three years old. And I'm sitting there stretching and sweating like crazy

00:22:19.620 and, you know, kind of struggling just to touch my toes. She looks at me, sits down next to me.

00:22:26.420 She ties herself in this kind of human pretzel that only little one, two and three year olds can do. 1.00

00:22:31.560 looked up at me, untied herself, stood up, laughed out loud and left the room. I'm like, oh my gosh.

00:22:39.480 And, and then it dawned on me, William, every day you're alive, you get less flexible.

00:22:46.840 Like that's a biological fact. You're most flexible the day you're born. You're least flexible the day

00:22:52.540 you die. It's a natural calcification that just happens unless you fight it like crazy. 0.52

00:22:58.940 And so the unicorns are constantly challenging themselves to stretch. That might be as simple

00:23:06.160 as literally stretching after they run. It might be as complex as I need to learn a new skill set this

00:23:13.220 year. I'm going to learn a new language. I'm taking on how AI is going to affect our job in the next

00:23:19.300 five years. But the unicorns are the ones who are constantly looking for ways to stretch.

00:23:25.440 And somewhere in them, they know that if they don't do that, they're going to atrophy,

00:23:30.240 they're going to calcify, they're going to become rigid. And that's not cool. And, and, you know,

00:23:36.040 if you think back to the pandemic, whatever job you had for people listening today, I bet that in your

00:23:43.320 workplace, the people who really stood out during all that mess were the people who were able to pivot,

00:23:48.400 who were able to move, who were able to make a change on the fly. And, and if they did that,

00:23:53.820 it marked them as different and valuable. And I think this trait, as we move into a new age of

00:24:00.700 disruption, particularly with AI, this trait of being agile, of adapting to a new reality,

00:24:06.820 man, that's going to be just gold. If you want to elevate your career, start stretching,

00:24:13.720 trying different things, and you'll see yourself move up. I was talking yesterday with a managing

00:24:19.940 partner of a very large law firm here in Houston, one of the biggest ones. I said, what's your big

00:24:24.340 challenge? He said, oh, AI. And I said, how? And he said, well, it can write closing arguments. You

00:24:29.100 can enter. I mean, it's amazing what can happen. I said, well, then why is that a challenge? He said,

00:24:33.360 well, I'm in charge of starting the first year associates after they graduate law school.

00:24:37.740 And I sat him down last week and looked at him and said, you were trained for a world that doesn't

00:24:46.000 exist anymore. So he said, and I'm watching to see who sees that as a challenge to rise to and who

00:24:52.480 gets deflated. The challenge to rise to, those are the agile. Those are the ones that want to stretch,

00:24:57.400 want to find a new way. It's absolute gold. It's very common among the unicorns we spotted,

00:25:03.740 very uncommon among the rest of us. Most of us just give up on stretching.

00:25:07.740 You have these three questions you ask candidates to find out how agile they might be. I like this.

00:25:12.240 And the people who are listening can use this as a, maybe some self-reflection. What new skill are

00:25:16.960 you learning right now? What new hobby have you developed? And this is interesting. What part

00:25:22.320 of history do you like to study the most? What's with that third question? I can see the other two,

00:25:27.520 why they show agility. What about that third one?

00:25:31.100 Well, I, I, Brett, I just don't think it's that hard to see the future. I think if you study the past,

00:25:35.780 you'll see the future. And you ask people what they like as the most meaningful part of history.

00:25:41.900 And they say, Oh man, I love watching Band of Brothers. Okay. Well, that's super fun. And I'm

00:25:47.820 guessing it's pretty popular among your listeners, but that doesn't tell me anything. You get somebody

00:25:52.500 this is, Oh my gosh, the Renaissance. There were so many new things happening or bright when the

00:25:58.100 printing press happened, or when we landed on the moon or some ex explorative, like when Columbus took

00:26:05.860 off with, you know, Lewis and Clark go over into the Rockies, not having any idea what's coming next.

00:26:11.680 You hear people start to give those answers. You get a window into what motivates them and how they

00:26:16.020 think. And then you can start to see whether agility is something they're naturally practicing,

00:26:22.660 or maybe, maybe they're artificially working on it and it shines through. And then, you know,

00:26:28.040 others, maybe they got a fun movie they like to watch, but there's no reason behind the affinity

00:26:35.360 for that era in history. Another habit you talk about is the solver mentality. What does the solver

00:26:42.420 habit look like? Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know, you know, I'm old enough that Winnie the Pooh was part

00:26:48.980 of my childhood. And I don't know why, but I always loved Tigger and hated Eeyore. I mean,

00:26:54.180 I know you're supposed to feel sorry for Eeyore and all that, but like, there's something about

00:26:59.680 solvers that they come to a challenge saying, I think we can fix this. Not, oh no, look what happened.

00:27:08.420 You hear the difference? Like Tigger was like, okay, let's figure it out. Eeyore, so sad. And,

00:27:14.540 and, you know, you don't need just all optimists in your company, but people who solve are people

00:27:20.900 who are like, okay, what do we do about that? Not what is the problem? And human nature is just

00:27:26.120 to name the problem and shift the blame. That's just our human nature. Like you go back to the

00:27:31.460 very beginning of the Hebrew scriptures or the Bible, you got Adam and Eve in the garden. Probably

00:27:37.420 most people have heard this story somewhere and humans screw up for the first time. And God comes

00:27:43.260 and says, what did you guys do? And Adam being the manly man that he was said, well, that woman,

00:27:49.520 the one you gave me, she made me do this. Pass the buck. Exactly. The solvers are ones who are like,

00:27:57.500 okay, we've got a problem. How do we fix it? And I had an old mentor who used to say,

00:28:02.560 life is an equation. And most people live on the problem side of the equation, pointing out what's

00:28:09.140 wrong. Very few live on the solution side of the equation. How do we fix it? When you see people who

00:28:15.400 are constantly saying, how do we fix it? How do we make lemonade out of lemons? Then you found

00:28:20.280 someone who's uncommon and, and has one of these 12 habits that unicorns have. So I, you know, it's

00:28:28.640 the old, don't come to a meeting, just naming problems, come with a suggested solution. And it is

00:28:34.060 incredibly uncommon among people and incredibly common among those who stand out in the crowd and

00:28:40.280 really become irreplaceable. Yeah. Solvers have high agency. They, they, they, they look at the

00:28:46.320 world. They say, I can get things done in the world, even though it might be hard, I can do

00:28:49.400 something about it. That's right. Yeah. And that's right. And that's some of that's probably

00:28:53.460 personality, but I think it is a skill you can learn. The more you start trying to solve problems,

00:28:58.240 the more you start trying to take action, you're going to develop a bias towards solving problems

00:29:04.200 instead of just being like a New York. I think you're, I think I agree with everything you said in the

00:29:07.760 second half, a hundred percent. The more you do it, the more you'll start doing it builds momentum.

00:29:11.740 I don't think it's a personality trait. I think humans in general are on the problem side of the

00:29:16.360 equation. What stops traffic more than anything, people stopping to look at a wreck. What clickbait

00:29:22.560 works if you're trying to gen up web traffic, negative, disastrous headlines. Like we are so wired

00:29:28.780 to look at the problem that if you can rewire yourself to start looking for solutions, you're

00:29:35.240 immediately going to separate yourself from the field. Another habit is the habit of self-awareness.

00:29:40.440 So how does self-awareness help someone stand out in a group and be more effective in an organization?

00:29:47.380 Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. We, uh, found our unicorns and then we surveyed them

00:29:54.960 about these 12 habits. One of the things we did was ask people to force rank, you know,

00:29:59.460 what's your best of these 12, what's your worst, that sort of thing. So when we did that with the

00:30:05.760 unicorns, self-awareness was the least common habit among the unicorns. It was common, but least

00:30:13.560 common as a number one trait, right? Had fewer people say that's my number one than anything else.

00:30:19.740 All right. So hold that thought. After we found the unicorns and surveyed them, we also surveyed a

00:30:25.660 quarter million people and got answers from them about what they think about these 12 habits. And

00:30:31.300 one of the things we asked about each of the 12 was, would you rank yourself as average at this

00:30:36.900 above average, well, above average, below average, well below, you know, kind of a one to five thing.

00:30:41.480 So the general population, 93% of the people we surveyed said that they were above average in

00:30:49.700 self-awareness. I'm not like a mathematician, but 93% of a group is not above average. 50% is. So

00:31:00.760 it's the least common trait among unicorns and the biggest blind spot that people have about

00:31:08.800 themselves. Oh, I'm more aware than I think. I mean, I think back, Brett, when I went to that job

00:31:14.440 at First Press Houston, I was so far in over my head. I had no idea. And really the church probably

00:31:22.700 should have used a search firm and found a better candidate. But, you know, the only thing I had

00:31:27.220 going for me, I was 31. So I knew everything. Right. You know, now I'm 53 and I'm realizing how much I

00:31:36.780 don't know and how much I need to learn myself. Where am I good? Where am I not? What job am I going

00:31:41.680 to be good in? What job am I not going to be good in? I have been a fairly talented guy in a job that

00:31:48.920 didn't match my wiring and was miserable. It was that HR stint in the oil and gas company,

00:31:55.680 a great company, paid me well, is not how I was wired. Man, I was miserable. And that's not their

00:32:01.460 fault at all. But those who develop enough self-awareness and what an amazing age we live in

00:32:07.600 to develop self-awareness. You can go online and take a disk inventory or the Enneagram or any number

00:32:13.480 of things. In fact, we built a software tool as a companion to these 12 habits to let you see how

00:32:19.640 you measure up against the unicorns and everyone else who rates themselves. And that's a hope that

00:32:27.120 that's like a first step for people. Okay, let me figure out what I need to work on. What are my top

00:32:32.560 three habits? What are the bottom three? Now, I've noticed in the people I've experienced who

00:32:37.920 are in leadership roles, the leaders I'm drawn to the most. I'm like, this guy is great,

00:32:43.300 are the ones who are self-aware about their personality or their strengths or their weaknesses.

00:32:48.460 And then they lean into that. Even if the person's quiet, they have like a quiet type of demure,

00:32:54.600 quiet leadership. That's fine. If that's your personality and that's how that's what you feel

00:32:58.100 comfortable with, that's your strength. It's frustrating when there's a leader who doesn't

00:33:02.640 really know themselves and they're trying to act like how they think a leader should act. And then

00:33:06.480 there's a disconnect. And you can tell he's having a hard time and then because he's having a hard

00:33:11.220 time makes everyone else have a hard time. Yes, 100%. And I think it's that insecurity of not

00:33:19.160 knowing who you are that causes you to act with more bravado than you should and be a little louder

00:33:23.300 than you should. I, you know, the question, what would you tell a younger version of you?

00:33:28.280 You know, that's a pretty fun interview question. I think what I would tell a younger version of me

00:33:33.740 is I don't know if I like you very much because how is that guy that you just described and it's

00:33:39.680 no fun to be around him. Um, but hopefully I'm starting to learn myself well enough to know the good

00:33:44.440 parts, the parts that need work and use that knowledge to do my job better and to help others.

00:33:50.940 It's super, super interesting. As a recovering preacher, I'm always saying, oh, wow, that's a

00:33:57.300 new way of looking at that. And there's this verse that Jesus taught when he was talking about

00:34:01.980 criticizing others. And he said, look, before you worry about the splinter in your brother's eye,

00:34:08.920 get the log out of your own. And I used to think he was just saying, judge not lest ye be judged.

00:34:15.140 Don't go waving a finger at people. And maybe that's part of it. But, but what this study of

00:34:21.100 self-awareness and the unicorn traits has made me ask is, I wonder if he wasn't also teaching,

00:34:26.940 you know, until you figure out your own weaknesses, you're really not going to be able to help

00:34:31.180 anybody. Yeah. And it just, it's inspired me to do more self-work, more understanding what makes me

00:34:38.980 who I am so that I can be a better help to the people around me and my family and friend circles

00:34:45.440 and at work. Another habit is the habit of anticipation. What do you mean by that?

00:34:51.020 Well, I didn't see that coming. I'm kidding. Anticipation, you know, this is a simple habit,

00:34:58.400 but nobody practices it. I don't know. Brett, do you play golf at all?

00:35:02.680 No, I don't play golf. I played golf a few times. I don't like it. So don't play.

00:35:05.760 Okay. Well, I grew up playing a little bit and, uh, you know, the really great golfers,

00:35:10.580 if you ask Tiger Woods where he's going to hit his tee shot, he's going to say, well,

00:35:14.960 it depends on where the pin is. And he said, well, as a par five there, you got to hit three

00:35:18.820 shots before you ever get to the green and the pin. He said, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I want to

00:35:21.980 know where the pin is. And then I'm playing backwards from there. It's like the, the Stephen

00:35:26.760 Covey, you know, begin with the end in mind, or if you've ever played a pool player in billiards,

00:35:32.640 that's really good. They're not thinking about the shot they're making. They're thinking about

00:35:36.600 the fourth shot after that. And very few people do that. Most of us look down, not up. Most of us

00:35:44.600 think about what's right in front of us. And then we look up and say, oh man, the day just went away.

00:35:49.380 But those who are unicorns anticipate the things that are about to happen and take a step just a

00:35:55.620 little quicker than everybody else. You don't have to see the future. You just have to see a little bit

00:36:00.400 ahead and take a proactive step toward that future. And that will set you apart in amazing

00:36:05.980 ways. I, I mean, my favorite anticipator story actually comes from someone that I used to work

00:36:13.080 with here. She was just the most amazing executive, exec assistant. And she, she wasn't my exec assistant

00:36:21.200 at first. I had one and she left. She had like three babies in three years and decided I need to be a

00:36:26.960 mom. And so she left and she was good. I'm like, oh, what am I going to do? And we just hired this

00:36:31.980 young woman who we hired because her friend worked with us and, you know, this will be great. She was

00:36:38.580 a little different, very artistic. Her previous employer was a Gothic wig shop, but Hey, we interviewed

00:36:45.560 her, we gave her the job. And I'm like, look, could you sit in the desk of my EA until I figure out who

00:36:51.780 I'm hiring? Cause she was just going to help in the office however she could. Okay, fine. So this

00:36:56.620 was the days of, this was pre iPad. So you had, I don't know if you remember the little plugins that

00:37:02.980 you'd plug into your laptop to get a 3g signal. So you could, you know, yeah. So I had those and

00:37:08.680 we're ridiculous responsiveness. People are writing in and we're getting back to them within 60 seconds.

00:37:14.040 So I'm sitting on a plane and one of these forms comes in and I'm going to get back to him in 60

00:37:18.380 seconds, but we're about to take off and it's in Spanish and I don't speak Spanish, but I knew

00:37:24.760 enough to know it was Spanish. So I sent Bethany a quick message. I said, a lead just came in in

00:37:30.240 Spanish. See if you understand what they need. I'll call you when I land. So plane takes off. 0.99

00:37:35.920 I've got no signal. There's no wifi on the planes then, but I go back and reread this form that had

00:37:41.320 come in and realized that's really not Spanish. That's Portuguese. And so then my mind goes to, okay,

00:37:47.460 this is an organization in Brazil. And if you know the Brazilian culture, they really appreciate

00:37:52.360 people knowing the difference between Spanish and Portuguese. So we land and I called Bethany

00:37:56.440 frantically. I'm like, how it was, I don't do anything. She said, oh no, no, no. Are you going

00:38:01.240 to tell me it's not Spanish? I said, yeah. She said, yeah, it's Portuguese. I said, how'd you know that?

00:38:06.060 So I don't, but I know Spanish and I knew it well enough to know that's not Spanish. Now remember, 1.00

00:38:11.500 this is pre-iPad, pre a lot of software. I said, okay, well don't do anything. She said, well,

00:38:16.800 actually I figured out it's Portuguese. I found this thing online. It's a translator thing. It's

00:38:23.240 kind of new. So I translated what he wrote in into English. He wanted some guidance on how pastors

00:38:30.480 should plan to find their successor. I went through our archive of our website and I found a pretty good

00:38:38.280 white paper you wrote on this very thing. So I ran it through the translator and it's in Portuguese.

00:38:43.780 And then I went ahead and branded it and then I converted it to a PDF so nobody could mess with

00:38:48.080 it. And I went ahead and sent it to him. And I hope I'm not in trouble for doing all that without

00:38:53.480 asking. And I was like, okay, you remember how I said, can you sit here till I find my new EA? Can

00:38:59.680 you just be that? Because she thought like five steps ahead of me before I ever landed and had it 1.00

00:39:06.260 done. When you find people like that, you go, that's a, how did they do that? Well, they just

00:39:10.540 anticipated. They thought a couple steps ahead of what everybody else thinks. And when you find

00:39:15.980 those people, they are worth gold. Another habit is the habit of likability. What do you mean by

00:39:21.900 likability? You know, that's such a term that gets tossed around. It's not popularity, right? It's not

00:39:29.240 who wins the most votes. It's the, you ever hear in hiring the beer question, who would you want to go

00:39:36.920 have a beer with? Yeah. That's it. And way too often we hire people that can produce, but aren't

00:39:43.940 likable. Like I've got a friend that wrote an article. You can probably still find it on the

00:39:47.880 New York Times. Wrote it years ago. It was one of their best ones ever. And the title of the article

00:39:51.780 was, what do you do with the brilliant jerk? And you don't even have to read the article after you 1.00

00:39:57.360 hear the title. Cause everyone has had to work with that guy that can produce, but as a total rear end,

00:40:02.400 right? The unicorns are people who find a way to create likability. The interesting thing I found

00:40:11.180 was likability hinges on people's ability to shift the focus of the conversation away from themselves

00:40:19.120 and toward the other person. Like the most successful people I've ever dealt with. I can't

00:40:24.900 get them to talk about themselves. They want to know what I'm doing. They're showing genuine interest

00:40:29.320 in me. They're making a real eye contact. And all of a sudden I'm like, wow, they're making me feel

00:40:35.220 like I'm the only person in the room. And I like them. I might even want to go have a beer with them.

00:40:42.880 That's highly uncommon. What do the unicorns that have that habit, what do they do

00:40:47.580 like on a daily basis for practices to develop? One of the things I mentioned it already is find a way

00:40:53.500 to shift the conversation with an individual toward them and away from you. Like how many times do you

00:40:59.400 talk about me and I versus you and what's your situation? It's pretty amazing. You know, some of

00:41:07.480 these are intertwined. Likeability and curiosity, oddly enough, go together. People who are likable

00:41:13.820 are always asking others questions about themselves or asking questions like, what do you think about

00:41:20.000 this? What would you suggest we do? When people feel like they're heard and valued and recognized,

00:41:25.740 they like you. Make real eye contact with people. No one does this now. Like nobody. Like my kids

00:41:35.020 that are in college right now FaceTime their mother almost every day. And they say hi to me too. But like

00:41:40.940 they're just the nicest. They FaceTime all the time. And yet when they FaceTime, I'm looking at their

00:41:47.860 nostrils most of the time. They're looking around the room. They're not looking at me. Did you know

00:41:52.100 90% of all humans are right eye dominant? So if you want to increase your likability, here's a simple

00:41:59.580 hack. Now you can't look at people in a mean, domineering way, but an interested, curious,

00:42:04.600 you're important to me kind of look. Look them dead in their right eye. Not both eyes, not in between,

00:42:10.340 just dead in their right eye. I bet you've got a 90% chance of them walking away saying,

00:42:15.140 they were really listening to me. And that generates likability.

00:42:20.840 So what's great about these habits, they don't, they not only apply to work or you're

00:42:24.460 working a nonprofit or volunteer group. Like this, this just helps you have like good people skills

00:42:29.880 that'll make you attractive to anybody, make you attractive to in the dating world, to your spouse.

00:42:36.220 Like you develop these qualities, you're going to be a person who other people want to be near.

00:42:39.720 Well, and I'll, I'll say, Brett, it's interesting. A lot of these habits are ones that if you master

00:42:47.840 them, you can still be a guy and be, you know, manly as all get out. And yet people are going to

00:42:54.860 say, man, but they're really good with people. And they broke all these stereotypes of how that I had

00:43:00.360 of what a manly man is who doesn't pay attention to anybody but himself and is arrogant and conceited. 0.68

00:43:06.400 No, this was a dude. And yet he treated me so much better than nearly everyone does.

00:43:13.480 So it raises your stock in the company softball league. It raises your stock on the dating scene.

00:43:19.220 It certainly raises your stock as a dad. If you'll apply these 12 habits to how you're interacting

00:43:24.780 with your kids, particularly if you have teenage kids, it's just, like I said, I almost titled the

00:43:31.680 book. So I guess mom was right. Well, this has been a great conversation. If people are interested

00:43:36.500 in learning more about that strength assessment you mentioned, they can go to theunicornbook.com.

00:43:41.740 But besides that, where else can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:43:45.760 Yeah, Brett, my last name is so messed up that really all people have to do is try and type

00:43:51.200 Vanderbloemen into Google or Amazon. And it really doesn't matter how you spell it.

00:43:55.640 It will circle back to me.

00:43:58.420 Okay. Just look up Vanderbloemen.

00:44:00.420 Yeah. And by the way, if it's helpful to your listeners, if you go to Vanderbloemen.com,

00:44:05.180 there are about 4,000 free resources there on how to build and run and keep a great team,

00:44:10.760 particularly when they don't have to say yes, sir or yes, ma'am.

00:44:13.980 I love it. Well, William Vanderbloemen, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:44:17.260 Hey, thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed this. And you're good at what you do,

00:44:21.020 man.

00:44:21.700 Well, thank you. I really appreciate that.

00:44:23.940 My guest here was William Vanderbloemen. He's the author of the book, Be the Unicorn. It's

00:44:27.360 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at

00:44:30.800 his website, vanderbloemen.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash unicorn,

00:44:35.840 where you find links to resources, where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:44:45.660 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:44:49.900 artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that

00:44:53.920 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of. And if you haven't done

00:44:57.220 so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on the podcast or Spotify. It

00:45:00.580 helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with

00:45:04.320 a friend or family member who would think we get something out of it. As always, thank you for the

00:45:08.120 continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to listen to the AOM podcast,

00:45:11.980 but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - November 15, 2023

The Leadership Qualities That Will Set You Apart From the Pack

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