The Leadership Qualities That Will Set You Apart From the Pack
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Summary
William Vanderbloemen shares what he s learned in his new book, Be the Unicorn: 12 Data- Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest, about the qualities that set the best leaders apart from everyone else in the field.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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For the last 15 years, William Vanderbloomen has run an executive search firm that helps
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nonprofit organizations find leaders. Over the course of conducting tens of thousands
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of interviews with top tier candidates, he's tracked and recorded what qualities the best
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leaders, the people he calls unicorns, possess that set them apart from everyone else in
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the field. William shares what he's learned in his new book, Be the Unicorn, 12 data-driven
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habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. Today, we talk about what some of
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those 12 distinguishing habits are and how people can use them to move ahead at work as
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well as improve the relationships outside of it. We discussed the nearly 100% difference
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it can make in your business to respond to people right away, the least common trait among
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unicorns that the general population mistakenly believes they have in spades, how mastering
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the art of anticipation will make you stand out, a way to use eye contact to build strong
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connection, and much more. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash
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All right. William Vanderbloemen, welcome to the show.
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So you founded and run an executive search company, but you focus on helping churches find
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pastors. So I've heard, I think a lot of people probably have heard of executive search companies
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for corporations, but not for churches. How'd you end up doing what you do?
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Well, that's probably a multi-podcast question. I am a recovering preacher, so I'll try not to
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ramble on and on. But a lifetime ago, I was leading a very large church. And that church,
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First Presbyterian Houston, which is an amazing church, wonderful people. It's where Sam Houston
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went to church. So they took about three years to find me, and that's like par for the course. Nobody
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saw that as abnormal. I was there about six years. It took them about three years to find my successor,
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which was par for the course. But my departure from there, I left there partially as a result of
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a divorce, which by the way, I would not recommend to listeners. But it wasn't anything the tabloids
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would have picked up. It was just, you know, kind of a tragic thing. And I found myself as a single
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dad with four kids. And like, wow, what do I do now? I went and got a job in the oil and gas industry
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for a very large company, a Fortune 200 company upstream in the gas industry. The CEO had been
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there nine and a half years, which I didn't know at the time. For a company that size, usually you look
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at three, three and a half years for a CEO, nine and a half years. And he said, it's time to find my
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successor. And I was going through like a management rotation, like do a year here, do a year there and
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learn the business. My first year, this particular year was in the HR department. So yeah, I could be
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ambitious and say I was on the team that helped with that succession. The reality is I was more like
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the third string water boy for that team, you know, fairly inconsequential role, but I got to watch what
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they did. And they did this thing I'd never seen before. They hired what they called a search firm.
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And 90 days later, they had their new CEO and it went great. So drop back to First Presbyterian
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Houston, been around for a long time, kind of a great job to land. They spent 12 years and six of
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those years, they were looking for a pastor and six, they had one. And that just made me go,
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that's, and nobody saw that as abnormal. That's kind of crazy. So I came home. Now I'm leaving out
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a big gap in this narrative, but I'd just gotten married to Adrian. We'd just blended our family with
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six kids, just bought a house that we could barely afford. And I came home and said, you know what,
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babe, I think I'm supposed to quit my job and start something new for churches.
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And she just looked at me and said, total deadpan. Oh, oh, that's because churches love new ideas,
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right? Which no one has ever said in the history of ever. So she should have said, I love you,
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go back to work. I love your vision and your dream, but we got six kids to feed. And instead she said,
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let's give it a shot. And, and the kicker is it was the fall of 2008, which Brett, I don't know
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if your listeners are too young to remember, you might Google 2008 economy, not the best time to
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quit your job and start something new. But, you know, we, we just kind of fell into right place,
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right time. And now 15 years later, we still help churches find their pasture, but we help nonprofits,
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we help schools, we help for-profits that are sort of values driven where people are like,
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we want somebody who matches how we do things, our culture, our vibe, our why. And, and it all
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started with that simple little question of, could we build something better for churches that need
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a pastor? So that's, that's a very condensed version of a very long story.
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And in your experience as, you know, as yourself as a pastor and also dealing with not only putting
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pastors and churches, but also putting leaders and nonprofits, how is leadership different in the
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nonprofit sector compared to leadership in a business? And do you think there are lessons people
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can take from the volunteer nonprofit world into the corporate world?
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A hundred percent. First of all, I think leadership is leadership. So, you know, to inspire people to go
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where you see they ought to go, that's leadership, whether you're in a for-profit or a nonprofit or,
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or what have you. Years ago, when I was a younger pastor, I was in Montgomery, Alabama. So the
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Maxwell Air Force Base is there. It's all officers. The Air War College is there. And I got asked to come
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teach a class. And I'm like, what can I teach about leadership? You guys are defending the country.
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And they said, yeah, but your volunteers don't have to say yes, sir. And we want you to talk about
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that. So I developed a course called leading when no one has to say yes, sir. And that's a whole
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different art of collaborating, of bringing people along, being far enough ahead of the crowd that
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you've got a vision for where to go, but close enough to the crowd that you're not just taking
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a walk by yourself. And I think that the skills that I learned over that career, like how do I
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talk people into volunteering their time? How do I train them to be on the team? How do I keep them
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on the team? That's all amazingly germane to right now when you've got millennials starting to
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really take over the workforce, which is a beautiful thing to see happen. But they're much more
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interested in collaborative spirit. Don't tell me what to do. Convince me this is the right thing to
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do. So that there is a whole dimension to leadership in the business world right now that really is
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leading when people don't have to say yes. And I think there's just a treasure trove of parallels there.
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Yeah. I think I've gotten my best leadership lessons leading in volunteer organizations because
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people don't have to say yes, sir, to you. And also you can't use like payment or a paycheck as a
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bludgeon. That's right. You can always be like, if you're in a corporate world of like, well, if you
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don't do what I say, you're fired. Yep. You can't do that in a volunteer organization. So you have to
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really learn these people skills to motivate people who are just volunteering and they can step back
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anytime they want. There's not going to be any repercussions. And that's really useful. That's like,
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that's a really a baptism by fire. Well, and, and, you know, the flip side of that is the people who
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are really good at leading volunteer organizations know how to hire their volunteers because, you know,
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it's one thing to inspire people to follow you, but it's another thing when you've got a volunteer
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who's a real problem to the volunteer team and you got to fire them and you're not paying them.
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Like how do you fire a volunteer? So that the emphasis on soft skills that you learn in any kind
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of nonprofit or volunteer role is going to help a whole lot in leadership, particularly in the here
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and now in the corporate world where people aren't staying at companies 25 years and they can take it
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or leave it with a job and they're jumping around. Career spans are shorter, stays at jobs are shorter.
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And I think leaders that learn how to motivate and inspire people to get on board and then to stay
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are going to be kind of the new gold standard in leadership.
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So I've been studying like, what are those soft skills? What are the things that make that kind
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of leader just stand out in the crowd and you want to follow them?
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And so that's what you've done in your latest book. You've taken your 15 plus years of experience
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at your executive search company where you all have interviewed tens of thousands of people.
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And then in the process, you all have been tracking the traits of these different people you've been
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interviewing and you've been trying to be very systematic and scientific and data-driven
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as possible to figure out what qualities do those people you were just talking about? They have
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those soft skills that make them almost like irreplaceable as a leader. You call them the
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unicorns. That's the name of the book, Be the Unicorn. And so you have honed in on 12 data-driven
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habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. This is kind of a big picture. What do unicorns
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have, like unicorn leaders? What do they have that non-unicorns don't?
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Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. I think most of them have, I don't know, Brett, you ever sit
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down with somebody, it doesn't happen very often, but within five minutes of meeting them, it might
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be at a dinner party or at a social function or work or maybe even a job interview, but within five
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minutes, you're just sitting there going, this one, this one's a winner. This one's different.
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But like, that's what unicorns do. You're immediately ready to sign up for their fan club or whatever.
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The flip side, though, is really interesting because I've wondered for 15 years, like,
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you know, I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I'm not the most gullible. So why in five minutes
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does this person have my attention? What are they doing? Could you figure out what it is they're
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doing and then be able to spot it faster? And by the same token, I've had some very quiet,
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humble people that I've met. And in the first five minutes, they didn't impress me very much.
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They turned out to be amazing leaders. So the flip side is, what is it that these amazing leaders
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all do? And could we look for that and try and spot it? And in the pandemic, nearly every one of
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our clients was shut down indefinitely, which frees up your calendar a lot. And that's when we realized
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we've now done 30,000 long format interviews with the best talent we've ever seen. I mean,
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we've done hundreds of thousands of interviews on some level, but 30,000 top, top, top people,
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what do they have in common? That was the question that we attacked from a research standpoint
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during the pandemic and the shutdown that led to us figuring out, you know, they do have things in
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common. It's very different from what I expected. I expected the list of things that unicorns have in
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common to be like, they all have an IQ of 160 or better. Nope. They all have a full head of hair
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and amazing teeth. Nope. They all went to a really great school. No, no, no, no. Wasn't anything like
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that. Wasn't pedigree. It wasn't even as simple as he was the quarterback and she was the head
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cheerleader. No. What about personality? Like, you know, big personality, small, like, would that...
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Neither one mattered. Any kind of personality type, any socioeconomic, any racial ethnic,
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all those lines went away. What emerged as the patterns that these unicorns seem to repeat and
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share in common were 12 habits, not even traits. Traits are something you're born with. These are
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things that they practice that were almost solely focused on how do I treat the person across the
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desk from me? How am I treating that? 12 habits that we found that were stunningly common among
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unicorns and amazingly uncommon among the rest of us. And it's not like a rocket science list.
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It took rocket science to get to the list, but you read the table of contents. I almost, it's like,
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duh, who wouldn't have thought? I almost titled the book, So I Guess Mom Might Have Been Right.
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Because a lot of the 12 habits are things mothers try and tell their young boys to do when they're,
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you know, approaching others or treating someone in a relationship or at work. But it's not just 12
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simple ruminations. This is 12 habits that we've seen through a careful study of how these unicorns
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behave. And I thought we were doing this so that I would learn how to spot unicorns faster and I'd be
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better at search and our firm would be better and all that. What we discovered was actually,
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these are 12 habits that can be taught, that can be learned and adapted that anyone, if they take
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the effort to apply these 12 habits, can become one of those people that stand out in the crowd,
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that within five minutes you're ready to be on their fan club, you know, those kinds of things. So
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we thought we were doing something for ourselves. We realized this is a roadmap that could help a whole
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lot of people. And that led us to say, okay, fine, we'll do it as a book.
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So these 12 habits, do you have to develop all these habits? Do these unicorns have all these
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habits or do they have one or two and they just specialize in those one or two?
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That's such a good question. That's so good, Brett. I think that what we found was the unicorns have
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usually about two or three that they're better at than the rest. And then they have 12, of the 12,
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maybe they're one or two that they should probably work on some. But across the board,
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the unicorns were higher than average at each of these habits. So they're better at all of them,
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but they're really good at a few. And some of that may be personality driven. And then there are a
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few they really need to work on, but they're just stunningly consistent in being well above average
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in each of these 12 areas. Gotcha. Well, let's talk about some of these habits. The first one is
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the habit of being fast. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I, you know, this is one where I may have,
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if I'm okay, true confessions, that chapter title might be a little bit of clickbait. Cause like,
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Brett, I'm not fast. Like I'm Dutch. We are built for wind resistance and solidness.
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So speed is not my thing. If I were probably being more precise, I probably would have said
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responsiveness, not just fast. So, so the bottom line of our research showed humans are really
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terrible at getting back to people. I mean, we're horrible at it. We put it off for tomorrow. We
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wait too long. Unicorns are almost obsessed with getting back to people and clearing their inbox and
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getting a response to someone that's meaningful and not just a chat bot kind of thing. And it
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really sets them apart. And frankly, it sets businesses apart when they show crazy intentional
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responsiveness. So what do these unicorns do? Like what kind of practical brass tacks practices
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they incorporate in their lives to maintain this responsiveness? Yeah. Yeah. I remember, I'll call
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him a unicorn. He's a board member of the very first church I was a senior pastor of in Montgomery.
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And we were relocating. And so our new property, we were looking for a place to meet on Sundays
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while our building was getting built. And there was a YMCA kind of across the street from our
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property. It was a pretty good location. And I was riding around with Todd and he said, I know the
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chair of the board of that YMCA. I said, really? He said, yeah. And so we got back to the office,
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walked to my office. He said, here's the number of that chair of the board of the YMCA. I bet he'd let
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us use the facility if you call him. They don't use it on Sundays. I'm like, okay, thanks. And we
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stood there for like, I don't know, felt like forever, probably a few seconds. And Todd said,
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why haven't you called him yet? I said, Todd, what are you talking about? We're standing here right
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now. He said, I just gave you the number. I told you to call him. Why wait till tomorrow? Why wait
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till this afternoon? That's how unicorns behave. And I did call him and we got the facility, but I've
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never forgotten that. It's kind of like, I don't know if you're ever at a intersection where you
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have to turn left out of a parking lot and you got to go all the way across the road. It seems like
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right when I pull up to pulling out into the road, there's an opportunity to go and I wait
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and then end up waiting forever. And the reality is your first chance to respond is usually your best
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one. So brass tacks is simply just get back to people. And what's scary is how bad the rest of us
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are at this. So on the one hand, scary on the other hand makes for an easy win. Do you have time
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for a story about this? Sure. Yeah. So we use, we call it inbound marketing and probably everybody
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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
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new Bronco, right? And they say, would you like more information? Fill out this form, give them the
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email address. And then it goes into the internet and you wait to hear back from whoever you just filled
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out the form with, right? So when we started our company, when people wrote in, I had six kids to
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feed. I had a house to pay for. And we were trying something new with a group that doesn't like new
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things. If somebody wrote me and said, would you get back to me about, I got back to them like
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immediately. And I remember people saying, wow, you actually got back to me. So fast forward many years
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later, the platform that we use for our inbound marketing ran a very large study of all companies
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they could find that use any kind of this sort of fill out a form and we'll get back to you
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marketing. And they asked the question, how much does it matter when you get back to somebody after
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they fill out a form? In other words, if you get back to them faster, do you have a better chance of
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talking to them on the phone and making a sale? They found that if you get back to people within 60
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seconds of them filling out that form, you have over a 98% chance of talking to that individual.
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You wait 20 minutes, it drops to a 60% chance. Still good, but nowhere near 98. You wait 24 hours,
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you have a less than 1% chance of ever talking to the person that filled out a form.
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Now, the punchline to the study was they went on to find out what is the average response time for
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all these companies taking this survey. Average response time, 42 hours. So the companies that
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are paying for amazing marketing software, paying sales teams, they get leads in their hand and they
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wait too long to get back to people and the leads die. People who get back right away have a 98% chance.
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That's good news for everybody listening today. It's just, if you will immediately and intentionally
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get back to people, you will find yourself rising up above the crowd. You'll separate yourself from
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the field. And of course, you got to have some discernment about, you know, are you going to
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respond to every little thing that comes your way? Well, no, then you wouldn't have a life. But can you
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figure out what are the things that are really going to move the ball forward and how do I respond
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really quickly and intentionally to those opportunities when they come along?
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Yeah, I like the idea of calling it responsiveness, not fast. Because I think one problem that leaders
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have is they might be juggling a lot of different balls and they just forget which balls they even
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have in the air. And so they don't, they're not able to respond. And one thing I admire about my wife
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is she hates what she calls them open loops. So any task that's undone, she's constantly thinking
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about it. For me, it's out of sight, out of mind. But my, because my wife is constantly
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thinking about all these open loops, she has this incentive to get things done as fast as possible.
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And I've learned to get better about that from her. So I appreciate that. She's super responsive.
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Yeah. My wife is the queen of the, what's the rule called? Only touch it once.
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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
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deal with it, I'm going to put it in a stack and then I'm going to sit down and deal with everything
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in the stack and it's going to be done in one fell swoop. For me, I've had to learn like,
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like I have about five different email accounts of people that will email me, my wife, a few
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others, and the software that sends in any lead that comes to the company. And they come across
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through my lock screen. So there's the only five that come through on my lock screen. So I see one
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of those fives. Like those are the ones I have to get back to right away. And so I've had to build a
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system for discerning, like what is super important that I get back to right away, wife being first
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priority and then new leads for our business a little farther down the list. But, but I think
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probably everybody here listening is smart enough to figure out how to filter what needs an immediate
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response, what doesn't, and the things that need it. If you will give an immediate and intentional,
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not an auto respond, but an immediate intentional response, you will act differently than nearly
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everybody around you. Yeah. I hate the auto responder. I'd rather not get a response than
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an auto responder. Absolutely. Yeah. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. Okay. So related to speed or responsiveness, I like responsiveness,
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related to responsiveness is the habit of agility. What do unicorns who are particularly agile,
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what do they do differently from the non-agile? Everything, everything differently. Agility
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atrophies. And, and, you know, I, I think I kind of always knew that, but some years back I'd gotten
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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
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if I'm going to keep doing this, I've got to start doing some stretching. And I, you know, the stretching,
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honestly, Brett, it was harder than the run itself. I'm just stiff, you know,
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and I was done running one day. My youngest of our seven kids came in the room and she was probably,
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I don't know, two or three years old. And I'm sitting there stretching and sweating like crazy
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and, you know, kind of struggling just to touch my toes. She looks at me, sits down next to me.
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She ties herself in this kind of human pretzel that only little one, two and three year olds can do.
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looked up at me, untied herself, stood up, laughed out loud and left the room. I'm like, oh my gosh.
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And, and then it dawned on me, William, every day you're alive, you get less flexible.
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Like that's a biological fact. You're most flexible the day you're born. You're least flexible the day
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you die. It's a natural calcification that just happens unless you fight it like crazy.
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And so the unicorns are constantly challenging themselves to stretch. That might be as simple
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as literally stretching after they run. It might be as complex as I need to learn a new skill set this
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year. I'm going to learn a new language. I'm taking on how AI is going to affect our job in the next
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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.
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,
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
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
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.
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.
00:44:00.420
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,
00:44:23.940
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
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00:45:08.120
continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to listen to the AOM podcast,