Six Pillars of Leadership: Integrity, Compassion, and Performance | Jim Carlough | Episode 347

Scott McCarthy [00:04:44]:
Jim. Sir, welcome to the show. So good to have you here today.

Jim Carlough [00:04:47]:
Well, I am glad to be here, Scott. It’s been a great day so far, and I think we’re going to finish it on a high note.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:53]:
All right, let’s finish strong. I’ve had a bit of a day, so I definitely want to finish strong here. You know, just the other day I just. We were chatting before Hit Record where a lot of similar ideas and ideologies and thoughts and stuff like this. But I’d love to pick your brain on how do you see the leadership landscape today? I have my thoughts. I’d love to hear about your thoughts. How do you see leadership leaders, all those different aspects, how things are going today from your perspective?

Jim Carlough [00:05:25]:
When I talk about today, I always think back to the way it was or when I entered the workforce, because to see that dichotomy is very interesting. So when I entered the workforce right out of college as a manager, managers and leaders were very authoritarian, military, stylistic. This is what I want you to do today, Scott. Tomorrow, here are your activities that you’re going to do. And Scott didn’t have to think about what he had to do tomorrow. Right. Somebody already mapped it out for him. Today it’s very different.

Jim Carlough [00:06:01]:
In fact, I look back at how I lead people and teams today and I feel like I have to reach back out to that first team I ever was manager of and apologize for the way I treated them. And it’s not that I beat them with a stick. I didn’t. It’s just that I am not that person anymore. And so not only has the world evolved, leadership has evolved. Today. It’s very collaborative. People have their own autonomy to do their professional work in their way and be creative at it.

Jim Carlough [00:06:39]:
They don’t necessarily need to be or I have found, and I’m in the technology space, they don’t need to be micromanaged. You know, you don’t have to be a task as a manager or leader. You don’t need to be a taskmaster and just, you know, hey, did you get item number 7 checked off your list today? And my style is very, very loose. I have a leader meeting once a week with my direct reports, and then every direct report has a one on one meeting. And that one on one meeting is their meeting to bring ideas, issues, opportunities or whatever to me. And I’m a listener and I may answer questions kind of like I’d answer your questions in this discussion, but it’s very much led by the person who reports to me as Opposed to me coming to it with an agenda. Does that help?

Scott McCarthy [00:07:37]:
No, it absolutely does help. And I’m curious why you think the driving force behind this changes, because I 100% agree with you. I often talk about leadership. Today is about not having all the answers, but rather asking the right questions. And I think we’re similar, aligned in, in that regard and what you’re saying. I’d love to hear, you know, what your thoughts are and what’s been driving this change from that, as you put it, to the actual military guy, that militaristic approach to now, you know, that collaborative approach.

Jim Carlough [00:08:11]:
You know, I think it’s just the evolution of, I want to say, human nature and, and, and as we’ve evolved and I, I can’t pinpoint a time where things just flipped. I think it really has been an evolution of a lot of different things. I think people’s educational level for one has gone up. We have more people graduating college today than we did 40 years ago. I think the opportunity for learning is there. I think in the global space we’ve had to be more competitive, so we’ve needed to be educated in that way to be able to respond on the world stage. And I think just as the world has become more complex, I think people have realized that you can get more juice out of the lemon by behaving differently. That by allowing people to use their creativity, you actually are able to grow and develop and probably hit higher levels.

Jim Carlough [00:09:15]:
Or at least that’s what I have found. I’ve created some very, very high performing teams and I’ve used the same model over the last 20, 25 years.

Scott McCarthy [00:09:27]:
No, I hear you. I think one of the big drivers for me is just that people are becoming more and more specialized and as you said, educated. They’re getting to know things at such a deeper level or have the ability to get to know something at such a deeper level. And the world to me is becoming so much more complex than when I first started. Right. And it’s impossible for me to know everything, so I can’t know everything. So I have to trust my team who are in charge of their various areas of my organization to be the specialists and know that stuff. And I’ll ask the questions, but they’re the ones that are going to have the answers because they run those teams.

Jim Carlough [00:10:15]:
You know, you’re right. And I often tell people I don’t have all the answers, but together we can help find the answers. And I’m the same way. I don’t need to be. And I’m often not the smartest person in the discussion or in the room. It’s somebody else who has that expertise. But I know how to ask questions. And more importantly for a leader, I know how to listen and actively listen.

Jim Carlough [00:10:43]:
I once worked for a CEO. My weekly one on one with him was one hour during lunch, one day a week. And this is a true story. That entire time of that one on one meeting, he read the Wall Street Journal with it up in front of him. I am not kidding. And it was the oddest experience I ever had because I didn’t feel like he was listening. And he would often say, I’m hearing every word you say, but I’m able to do these two tasks at the same time. I really wanted to just rip the paper away and say, but you’re not even looking at me.

Jim Carlough [00:11:29]:
How can you be actively engaged in the conversation when you, you have a distraction? It’s sort of like the people today who have six computer screens and you sit there and you watch them and you’re sitting in the zoom meeting and they’re going like this, you know, and they’re reading all of these six screens and you can count every time their head stops, right? There’s screen one, screen two. I don’t have six screens. I wouldn’t be able to focus and function if I had that, that amount of, I want to call it interference, you know, coming in from the outside. Anyway, I digress. Sorry about that.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:06]:
No, I, I hear you. That CEO story is amazing.

Jim Carlough [00:12:13]:
I, I would love to tell you the person’s name, but I, I am not going to do that.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:17]:
No, that’s fair. Yeah, yeah. We have a saying, so I’m actually in the Canadian Army. Do that by day. And we have a saying, no names, no pack drill, so. Meaning that, you know, you don’t say any names and you don’t basically slander anyone and so, you know, keep that to yourself. But it is a great story in a way of how not to be. I love those stories.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:41]:
I have those myself. I often talk about one where I. We had a former officer, a officer show up to one of our units as the commanding officer and basically destroy it. Destroy morale, destroy the teamwork, destroy everything. Because they thought they knew everything, right? And just absolutely destroyed the organization to the point where I was like, okay, I got days left here. It’s time for me looking forward to getting out and doing something new. Right? So we all have those. Unfortunately, we all have those stories, which is great for people like you and I, because they keep us Employed.

Scott McCarthy [00:13:18]:
Thank you very much. You know, I love the how we framed so far. Now you’ve gone ahead. You’ve written this book about six pillars of leadership from your perspective. I’d just love to know what caused that inspiration. You know, how did you come up with like, hey, these are the six. What was this trigger for you? Where did that come from you to then turn around and write the book on it?

Jim Carlough [00:13:49]:
So that’s a great question. It really happened over 25 years. For the last 25 years, ever since I got into the technology side of healthcare. When I entered it, I happened to be working for a company that had a great focus on developing people. And one of the things we had was a mentorship program. And every manager or leader like myself had to mentor somebody else in the organization that was labeled as a potential up and comer. And I had so much fun actually doing that. I started doing it on the outside.

Jim Carlough [00:14:28]:
For people who would ask me, hey, can you give me advice on this? And I’d say, hey, would you like some coaching? And what I did is as I followed through and did this over the years and I have one individual, I’ve actually done it for, for 25 years. I don’t know why he still puts up with me, but he does. But every time he runs into a business situation he’s not used to, he’ll pick up the phone and give me a call. But what I found in those 25 years was there are a set of characteristics that a lot of people were missing. And what I pointed to is a lot of people were great individual contributors and somebody came and tapped them on the shoulder and said, hey, we’re going to put you in management. And then put them in management. But there was nothing to give them, to guide them on how to influence people or how to manage people or how to interact with people. And I noticed these traits.

Jim Carlough [00:15:20]:
So about two years ago I started thinking about retirement and I said, I really don’t. I’m not the guy that can go fishing every day. As much as I like to fish, I just have to be more active than that. So I said, maybe I’ll write a book and maybe I’ll take this, my message and my leadership style and see if there’s a market for it. So I started writing down all the characteristics that I could remember that all of the people were missing. It was like 15 or 18. And I said, wow, I can’t write a book and ask people to implement 18 items. That’s not possible.

Jim Carlough [00:16:01]:
So I took the time to try to narrow it down as best I could to a smaller number. And it just happened to land on six. And I then zeroed in on those six and said, okay, if I want to know about those six, what’s the best way to teach people about them? So I describe the pillar, what it does, what it means, tell a personal story of something in my life that happened that emphasizes that pillar. But then I also came up with a list of leaders that are in the world today that use that characteristic in their leadership style so that the person reading the book not only had actionable steps, but they could also go read about somebody else who in America or some other country uses that characteristic in their management style and encourage them to read about them. And I’d include a paragraph or two about how they lead or manage and leave it at that with a reference for where I got that information from. And people can go and look up that CEO per se, but that’s how it evolved. And so the book came out in December, and I’ve been promoting it like this since then, and it has been quite a ride in a short period of time.

Scott McCarthy [00:17:28]:
That’s awesome. And I really liked that reflection that you did. Like, whoa, 18. Because it can seem daunting, right when you get this big list or a long, big thing. And it’s really daunting, like, oh, well, I think my natural reaction back in the day would have immediately been like, obviously it’s not for me.

Jim Carlough [00:17:53]:
That’s exactly what I thought I said. The first person that looks at that table of contents and sees 25 chapters or whatever with some introductory stuff and some ending stuff would say, is this a college class? I’m not taking an exam, so I wanted something that would be useful, helpful, and implementable.

Scott McCarthy [00:18:14]:
Yeah, so. So what do you run down the. The six pillars for us? And just like super high level one, you know, little quick plug for each one. And then what I’d like to do is maybe dive deep into like maybe two, max, three of them, depending on how the conversation goes. How’s that sound?

Jim Carlough [00:18:32]:
That sounds perfect. That’s perfect. So pillar number one, which I. Which I call the non negotiable pillar. There is no other pillar to me, that’s absolutely required in leadership today. And that’s integrity. And I think more so than ever, we need it in our leaders. Those leaders can be local civic leaders or corporate leaders, But I think we’ve gotten away from that integrity line.

Jim Carlough [00:19:04]:
Integrity, to me, is so important that it drives every decision that somebody has to make. And if you can’t operate with absolute integrity, you can’t build a trusting team, you can’t show compassion or empathy. People won’t believe you. And you certainly aren’t going to create followers of your vision. You’re going to be creating a team that is a short term team and eventually will leave the organization because they’re disenchanted with the vision, because they don’t believe in the leader, they can’t follow the leader or they can’t interact with the leader. So that’s number one. I follow that with compassion and empathy. And those are very, very different pillars.

Jim Carlough [00:19:53]:
A lot of people confuse them and a lot of them consider them the same thing, but they’re not. In the case of empathy, you really are putting yourself in that person’s shoes and really feeling what they feel to try to respond to it in compassion. You’re not necessarily putting yourself in their shoes, but you’re actually trying to guide them, to help them. You can’t give them the answer, but you may be able to point them in the right direction. And so to me, they’re very, very different. But equally important, if you’re going to lead a team of any size, of any size, then there’s focus and stability. And again, they sound similar, but they’re very, very different. Focus is having a laser object kind of view of what the goal line is and where the goal line is.

Jim Carlough [00:20:48]:
And then you can plan to how you can get across that goal line. But if your focus is on five different things, it’s going to be very, very difficult for you to get across five different goal lines. Now you could take that goal and break it down into some sub components. But what is that singular focus that you, that you want to do? I’ll give you an example. Jeff Bezos started out selling books online, realized I can do this with virtually any product I can distribute. I can bring the store to people’s computer screen and deliver it to their home. I can’t tell you the last time I was in a mall. I’m very serious.

Jim Carlough [00:21:32]:
I cannot tell you the last time I was in a mall. That singular focus. He almost got sidetracked a couple of times because he had some very lean years in the early going. And I even tell a story about in the book one time they had had a bad, I don’t know if it was a rating or a number of complaints about their customer service. So what he did is he took a desk and he put it in the middle of the floor of their customer service department. Now Today they’re worldwide. He couldn’t do that today, but he put it in the middle there. And he sat there and he listened and he observed until he could figure out what he needed to fix.

Jim Carlough [00:22:22]:
That’s focus. And the last one is stability or not the second to last one is stability. And stability is not just the laser focus, but also being able to behave the same way every time you do something and have a methodical approach to it. And then the very last pillar is humor. And people always say humor and I have to caution them. It’s not being a stand up comedian. You’re not going to be telling jokes at the water cooler that you heard on the TV show last night. It’s really using humor in certain situations.

Jim Carlough [00:22:59]:
And I use it to refocus conversations. I use it to diffuse tense situations where people may be argumentative as opposed to trying to come to agreement. And I also use it to kick off meetings or discussions to try to get everybody kind of humanized and typically relaxed to have that conversation. So those are the six. It’s not rocket science, but implementing them is difficult. It’s hard to teach somebody compassion. It’s hard to teach somebody empathy. It’s hard for people to.

Jim Carlough [00:23:37]:
It’s a lot harder to get laser focused than, you know, in what you’re doing. So that’s at a high level, but let’s dig deeper.

Scott McCarthy [00:23:48]:
Yeah, no, for sure, absolutely. First off, love the six. Can see how you came up with them as in why they’re important. And I definitely want to go deeper on the first one. Like, like you said, it’s absolutely crucial. Right. And integrate is. It’s one of the cornerstones of leadership alongside trust.

Scott McCarthy [00:24:11]:
So we have to dive deeper. And I’m going to tell a quick little story, local story. So my, my local mayor recently was found, you know, been found guilty. I don’t know if guilty is right word. But anyway, we’ll go with guilty by the by town council to have, you know, I think eight cases breach of trust or rate. Like, you know, that’s that, you know, it’s pretty significant. And it’s like, and the first thing in my mind is like, you know, where’s his resignation? You know, we’re like, sorry, you got to step down. Like, and actually my effect was like they suspended him for two months without three months without pay.

Scott McCarthy [00:24:53]:
Okay, but like, why didn’t they move the fire? So went ahead and talked about that. But it’s definitely linked. But my question, you know, out of the gate is like, how do these, these Issues occur when, when leaders know that this is super important. Like this is, you know, this is important, you know, when you’re in these roles that you have to act at that higher standard. But yet we find so many cases out there where lack of judgment is terrible.

Jim Carlough [00:25:21]:
You know, part of me wants to say selfishness, but it’s funny you say a mayor. I’ll tell you how I got introduced to integrity. And it happened the year I graduated college. That year I ran for the local city council in the town I grew up in. And I won. Youngest person ever to be elected to city office in this small town in New Jersey. And I was reelected three years later. So it wasn’t like I was a fluke, right? I did good enough to get reelected right after the election.

Jim Carlough [00:25:56]:
A few days after the election, the city administrator called me and asked me if I could come sit down and talk to him. So I went in to sit down and talk to him and I didn’t know what the topic was. This was before email and all of this stuff where you could send an agenda to somebody. And I sat down with him and we were chit chatting for a bit and he said, well, I bet you want to know why I called you here. I said, that would be helpful. He said, well, I want to ask you a favor. Right away I thought, oh, I’m now in politics. I’m getting asked for my first favor.

Jim Carlough [00:26:27]:
And I was like, okay, Don, what can I do for you? He said, I want you to make me a promise. And here’s what I want you to do. Every night when you go to bed and when you put your head on the pillow right before you close your eyes to go to sleep, I want you to ask yourself this one question. That question is, did I do anything today for my own self benefit that was at the expense of another individual, group of individuals or organization? He said, if you can say no to that question, you can sleep peacefully. If you say yes to that question, you need to immediately evaluate what you did, whether you can unwind it, and how to never repeat that again. I have asked myself that question every night since November 1983, and I’ve never answered it with a yes.

Scott McCarthy [00:27:34]:
That’s 42 years and counting of that question.

Jim Carlough [00:27:38]:
That’s almost 42 years and counting. Or whatever. The math works. Yeah, 41 and change, but 41, yeah, 41 and change. But I’ve asked myself that question every night and I’ve instilled that in my kids as well and everyone that has ever worked for me. If they were to say you, if you were to ask them, what’s the one driving thing that you’ll always get out of gym? And it’ll be integrity.

Scott McCarthy [00:28:04]:
No, I think, I honestly don’t know how to follow that up now. And I think that shows how well you just, how well you just wrap that up, that, that pillar up, you know, for most is so crucial. And like, that’s a fantastic question. You know, look at it from your perspective of your team and your organization. So here at the podcast, I talk about three domains of leadership. Three being leading yourself, ie, youth leader. Second, being leading your team, the individuals, the Jims, the Scotts, the Janes, the Sally’s, and then the final one is leading your organization, which is the institutional aspect of it. They all tie together, of course.

Scott McCarthy [00:28:48]:
So if you can go ahead and sleep at night and ask yourself that, reflect on those three domains and no doubt you will lead with integrity moving forward. So let’s, let’s jump ahead. I’d love to jump ahead with compassion because this one, I find, is often a contentious. Let’s go with contentious, contentious point. Because a lot of people out there feel like, oh, there’s no place for compassion in leadership per se. Like, it’s about results, which, okay, yep, you do have to achieve results, for sure, but at the same time, you don’t need to destroy people to achieve them. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on compassion.

Jim Carlough [00:29:29]:
So compassion, to me, I think a leader has to be very aware of their team and the behaviors that they routinely exhibit solely for when you can figure out when that individual’s having an off day. I’m not going to say bad day, but an off day. And if you can figure out when they’re having an off day, it gives you an opportunity to intercede, to try to help resolve whatever is going on in that person’s life that’s causing them to be off. Maybe it’s a sick child. Could be a sick spouse or somebody in a relative had just passed away. And then you can offer, you know, you can console them or give them some of your own knowledge or how you’ve dealt with situations that were similar. You can’t solve it for them, but you can help them get over it. If it’s a sick dog, hey, I got a good vet’s name.

Jim Carlough [00:30:28]:
If you don’t have a good vet’s name, if it’s a sick child, have you gotten the child to the doctor? If not, why don’t you go home and take care of that now? A simple act of kindness to extend to them, to help them resolve the problem that they’re facing and give them the opportunity to go do that. And I’ve often seen people at work who have been working their tail off. And you see them one day and they just look exhausted. And I’ve gone up to them and I’d say, are you having a good day? And they were just like, I’m exhausted. And I’ve said, look, you’ve really been burning the candle at two ends here, and that’s my fault. And so what you’re going to do is you’re going to turn your computer off and you’re going to go take the rest of the day off and go do something fun or. A couple years ago, I had someone who worked for me who was a single mom, and it was three weeks before school was to go back in, and we were having a weekly one on one, and I just happened to ask, how’s the summer going? And she said, well, to be honest with you, I haven’t spent a single day with my son and he goes back to school in three weeks. This was on a Wednesday.

Jim Carlough [00:31:45]:
I said, okay, you’re not taking paid time off, but you’re not to come to work tomorrow or Friday and you go do something with your son for the next four days. That’s all I did. And she then said, well, I can’t do that. And I was like, why not? She said, I’ve got a couple of deliverables. Can I do it next week? I said, only if you promise me that you’re not going to negotiate to change it to another two days somewhere else down the road, because all you’re doing is kicking the can. You’re not solving the problem. But that simple gesture gave her the opportunity to spend four wonderful days with her son before he went back to school. It’s that easy.

Scott McCarthy [00:32:28]:
It is that easy. It really isn’t rocket science yet. So many people just get hung up and they’re like, well, what if others hear about it?

Jim Carlough [00:32:39]:
And I don’t worry about what others. To me, that’s not my problem. My problem I’m solving, my problem is I’ve got somebody who’s very unhappy and very stressed out because they’ve not been able to spend quality time with their child because of me and the amount of work I’ve given them potentially, or we as an organization have given them. So I have the ability to solve that. If another leader in another department hears about it and wants to complain to hr, HR can Come and talk to me. But I’m going to give them the same response. I’m killing this person with work. I owe them this because otherwise they’re going to burn out and, or their kid is going to revolt and, you know, hate their, hate their mother.

Jim Carlough [00:33:26]:
You know, it’s a simple act of, a simple act of kindness.

Scott McCarthy [00:33:30]:
And you know, to me it’s like, okay, let’s look at the second and third order effects here. And right away it’s like, well, you know, she now feels valued, she now feels heard, she now feels like she matters. And you care, which is, which is awesome, right? So, you know how many companies out there are still struggling with retention issues and still struggling with recruitment issues? Like, it’s still, it’s still a struggle, yet you demand, day in, day out, burn the oil, go, go, go. And don’t, don’t complain to me. Be happy you got a job. Well, you know, you know what, Like, I can find another job pretty quick.

Jim Carlough [00:34:13]:
Well, and that’s the thing. It’s going to be harder to replace somebody and train somebody new. When you treat somebody like that and they walk out the door and then you think it’s just their own attitude or fault when you are the cause of it. I mean, I’ve worked for some people in my lifetime. I’m sure everybody’s had a bad leader now or then. And you know, you learn from that. You don’t want to be that person. And you know, and you know, I’m a pretty demanding person as well.

Jim Carlough [00:34:48]:
And I do expect to exceed our goals and expectations that we set collectively. And we’ll always strive for them and we’ll always know where that goal line is. But every now and then you’ve got to recognize when somebody’s in a not good spot. And it doesn’t take long if you really know your people, it doesn’t take long to figure that out when those days happen.

Scott McCarthy [00:35:13]:
No, this is fantastic, Jim. I’d love to dive into, you know, each pillar deeper and deeper with you, but I definitely want to leave a t, you know, leave a taste in the audience’s mouth so that they can go and get the book, have a read of it, and go deeper themselves. Before we wrap up, though, you know, there’s obviously four more pillars we haven’t touched, but with the stuff we have talked about today so far, is there anything that we haven’t touched that you feel like should be mentioned or emphasized on before we wrap up?

Jim Carlough [00:35:47]:
The only thing I would tell people is that if you decide that you want to be a leader, manager, leader, director, whatever the title is, know that it’s a 247 job. I once had somebody ask me, so leadership, when does that begin? Does that begin when you sit down at your desk? No, it begins when your feet hit the floor when you get out of bed in the morning and it doesn’t stop till you put your feet up in the bed at night. And it also is ever evolving. It’s a learning process that doesn’t end. And you have to understand that I am always reading something, whether it’s a leadership book or blog posts or listening to podcasts and just picking up little pieces of things that, hey, that’s interesting, I need to try that. But it’s a forever learning process.

Scott McCarthy [00:36:44]:
I talk about leadership as an ideology. It’s not something we do, but something rather we are who we are and what we are.

Jim Carlough [00:36:52]:
Correct? Correct. And I view our role now, Scott, is our job is to bring up the next set of leaders. That’s what I. And so that’s what my focus is. How do I help the next generation of leaders?

Scott McCarthy [00:37:11]:
Awesome. Jim, this has been fantastic for the audience out there. Where can they find you, follow you? It’s all but you shameless plug. Have at it now.

Jim Carlough [00:37:21]:
So yeah, you can find me Facebook, you can find me Instagram, you can find me YouTube. I have a website. It’s very simple, jimcarlo.com so it’s Jim, my first name, no spaces, no dot. And then my last name, C-A-R-L-O-U G H dot com. You can buy my book from my website. You can also buy it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and some other outlets as well. But if you get it off my site, I can ship it right from my house. You don’t have to wait for it to be printed because it is print on demand or self publishing, but.

Jim Carlough [00:37:57]:
And the price doesn’t vary. But if I send it to you, I’ll sign it first, but it’s available there. You can subscribe to a newsletter on my website as well and be watching because I plan and I haven’t said this to anyone first. So Scott, your audience will be the first to hear it. I’m going to start producing a one on one coaching program that’s based on these principles because I think I found a way to be able to do it in a broader way and start to build that as another part of what I’m bringing to the market.

Scott McCarthy [00:38:29]:
Awesome. And for listeners, always, it’s easy. Just go to lead dumpboss.com the episode number in digits and the links are there in the show notes along with everything else that you can find regarding this episode. So, Jim, again, sir, thanks for taking time on your busy schedule. It’s been great to have you on. No doubt the audience got some out of it and and I’m sure they’ll be checking out the book because it is a great read. Go ahead and check it out again. Thank you.

Jim Carlough [00:38:56]:
Thank you.