The Stories Behind You Don’t Know Sh*t About Leadership | Episode 363

Scott McCarthy [00:00:01]:
Today’s episode is going to be different. And let me tell you, if you have young ears around, you may want to hit pause because I do drop the S-bombs upcoming. All right, so that’s your warning. Why is today’s episode going to be different? Well, today I’m going to tell you that you don’t know shit about leadership. And guess what? Neither do I. That’s right, folks. Today’s episode’s all about my finally published first true book, You Don’t Know Shit About Leadership and Neither Do I. Are you ready for this? All right, let’s do it.

Scott McCarthy [00:00:53]:
Welcome one, welcome all to the Peak Performance Leadership Podcast, a weekly podcast series dedicated to helping you hit peak performance across the three domains of leadership, those being leading yourself, leading your team, and leading your organization. This podcast couples my 20 years of military experience as a senior Canadian Army officer with world-class guests to bring you the most complete podcast on leadership going. And for more, feel free to check out our website at movingforwardleadership.com. And with that, let’s get to the show. Yes, welcome one, welcome all, ladies and gentlemen. This is your Chief Leadership Officer, Scott McCarthy, and thanks for tuning in I know it’s been a minute since I’ve recorded a podcast, but you know, the reality is, is this full-time day job, full-time parent and husband, and now full-time, I guess, author. Yes, You Don’t Know Shit About Leadership and Neither Do I is officially launched. You can grab your copy essentially anywhere, including hopefully in the nearest future bookstores.

Scott McCarthy [00:02:16]:
We’re still working on that one, but you can grab your own copy. Go to leaddontbossbook.com/buy, and then there are a whack of different links to either getting a personal autographed copy from yours truly or Amazon or what other ebook platform you would like to use. It’s all there for your ease. For quick click and then into your hands. That’s right. leaddontbossbook.com/buy. All right, so let’s talk about today’s episode and we’re gonna go behind the book. We’re gonna go behind the scenes here.

Scott McCarthy [00:03:00]:
And first off, I wanna talk about quickly why, why I wrote the book. And it’s not because, oh, I wanted to throw author in my title, in my LinkedIn header, what have you. No, that’s not the reason why. The reason why is that I got tired. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m near 10 years into this podcast, something 300 different guests, and they’re just all phenomenal folks, amazing people, all doing great things. But over the years, as I looked at more podcast— or sorry, more books, more— and I see more and more leadership coaches out there or influences out there, there was this theme that was coming up and it started to drive me nuts. And that it is that theme that I got all the answers. Come follow me, follow my program, implement this little 4 or 5 letter acronym which I’ve made up, this step-by-step process, and you will immediately get amazing results.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:15]:
Now, don’t get me wrong, what they’re saying actually is somewhat true. There’s some truth to what they’re saying. I’m not going to discount them 100%. But the reality is, is that we don’t have it all figured out. And on top of that, what works for one group will not work for every other group because leading is messy. It is messy. We have to figure shit out as we go along. We have to test, adjust, retest, readjust, and implement.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:59]:
And no 4 or 5-letter acronym program is going to give you the perfect solution. That is why I will tell you I don’t know shit about leadership. Neither do you. And that’s actually the point. The point is, is that we have to keep evolving. We have to keep learning as we go along. And that is why the book is actually titled that way. Now, I’m going to jump into a few different stories which are in the book.

Scott McCarthy [00:05:38]:
You’re not going to get everything from the book today, but I’m going to give you a few stories from the book that you most likely haven’t even heard on this podcast yet. But before I do, I’m going to give you a quick overview on the book structure. So it’s divided up into 5 parts. Part 1 is where I go about basically doing what I just did in the intro, and that is defunking all the current thoughts out there about leadership and including going against even defining leadership in the first place. Yes, I go against defining it. That’s how anti-current movement this book actually is. Okay. And then parts 2 to 4 is going deeper into the 3 domains.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:38]:
Now you’ve been listening to podcasts for a minute. You’ve heard of the 3 domains. They are leading yourself, leading your team, and leading your organization. No doubt you just said them along with me. So, but for those who are new to the show, welcome. What do I mean by those three domains? I mean this: leading yourself is all about you, the leader. Leading your team is all about the individuals within your team, the Janes, the Sallies, the Leas, the Joes, There it goes, the so-ons. Okay, and then finally, leading your organization is all about the institution that you run, your business per se, your organization, what have you.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:25]:
Okay, that’s the structure, parts 1 through 4, and then part 5 is the closing part about why I tell you that my book can’t be the last book of leadership that you ever pick up. That’s right, it can’t be. And I explain why. All right, so those are the 5 parts of the book. And now we’re going to dive into 3 stories from the book, but stories unheard on the podcast to date. And the first story is in the opening part of the book. And it is, you don’t know shit. So let me set the scene for you.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:08]:
It is late May 2026. Sorry, 2006. Getting ahead of myself here. It is my graduation from the Royal Military College of Canada. I am in this story at this time extremely hungover. And I tell you why in the, uh, in the book. I won’t get into all those details. You don’t need to hear that right now, but it just adds a little bit of humor but reality to the story per se in the book.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:41]:
So Second Lieutenant McCarthy, who had just been commissioned a day before to the rank of Second Lieutenant from Officer Cadet, is extremely hungover. And what are we doing? We’re returning equipment that I no longer need because I’ve graduated from the Royal Military College and that kit stays there for the future cadets that go through. And I’m there and I’m, you know, handing in equipment, putting them things into different boxes where they need to go. And there behind the staff that are kind of working, you know, moving the boxes and stuff like this, was a warrant officer. Now, if you’re unaware of Canadian military ranks, for the US listeners, our warrant officers are very different than your warrant officers, so don’t compare. But a warrant officer is a fairly high senior enlisted member, okay? So less than 24 hours ago, I was well below him on the rank structure totem pole, and then at that moment when I’m turning in this equipment, I am now above him in the rank structure totem pole of the Canadian Armed Forces. So to give you an idea of how things work, so there I was, graduated from Royal Military College. I now had, you know, I had the education, I had my degree, I now have the rank.

Scott McCarthy [00:10:07]:
I now— with the rank comes authority. But the warrant officer said something which made absolute sense, and he said this: Remember, troops, you don’t know shit. And what he was getting at was that, you know, despite those things that I had, I lacked experience and I lacked more, you know, I needed more training moving forward. But the reality is it was more than that that it came to me. What came to me was an ideology that moved forward is that I need to look at every single job I do, every single situation I find myself in, in thinking I don’t know shit. And I’m not saying I’m dumb. I’m not saying I’m, you know, no experience. Not saying any of that, despite what it may seem like.

Scott McCarthy [00:11:07]:
But rather what I’m saying is I have to approach each situation with an appreciative inquiry type mentality, i.e., seek to understand before being understood, before giving, you know, direction, guidance. You know, try to understand the situation as best as possible. And the lesson here, as I learned, you know, when I thought this, is that leaders who think they know everything stop growing. And as I’ve said on the show before, the moment you stop learning is the moment you stop being useful to your organization. And coupled with that is that humility is the true starting point of leadership. And my interview with John Havlik, who is mentioned in the book, goes over that. He talks about how leaders are the best students forever. And ultimately, this, this event, this moment has stuck with me now for 20 years and even become the title of the book.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:17]:
So leadership starts with you, and that’s why we start with leading yourself always. But it’s not about just you, and I’m going to talk about my next story about how it’s from leading your team and building leaders. Um, so the second story I wanted to talk about is while I was working in the military still, obviously, um, and I was working at 1st Canadian Division Headquarters in Kingston, Ontario. This unit is a high readiness operations unit, meaning that we all were on 48 hours notice to move. We could get a phone call and boom, we’re gone on a plane anywhere in the world for an indeterminate amount of time. And at this time, I had a young major who was working for me. He was super smart, but he second-guessed himself pretty consistently. I remember one day he came in my office and said, hey sir, like, can I run something by you? And I said, sure.

Scott McCarthy [00:13:22]:
And he started going over and he’s like, well, what do you think I should do? I’m like, stop, man, stop, stop. He’s like, what, what, what’s wrong? I’m like, you know the answer, you know what to do, just go do what you think is right. Off he went, and you know, he solved his problem at that time. It wasn’t by doing what I thought he should do. He did what he believed was right and trusted his own judgment. And he achieved the aim. Now we fast forward a handful of months, and suddenly he finds himself deployed into Ukraine slash Poland, and he was part of the advisory team to assist with the planning before the Russian invasion into Ukraine to help get people out. Long story short, that mission turned from an advisory mission to an execution where they ended up evacuating Canadians out of Ukraine before the Russian invasion.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:30]:
And, you know, I remember sitting there in intelligence briefings and getting the sitreps back from the team on the ground over there, and ultimately I felt helpless, like I couldn’t do anything as his boss, his day-to-day boss. You know, obviously he reported to someone else while he was over there, But still, like, I felt helpless, and I was sitting there watching the intelligence and, you know, listening in on the briefings and the plans and all this stuff and just feeling helpless. But he ended up— not only did he run with that operation, he ended up becoming the deputy task force commander. He ended up being awarded an accommodation. And I remember when he got back, he was debriefing me about the mission, and I just sat back and I knew my job was done. I knew at that moment I had nothing left really to give to him. He had evolved past the point of where he needed me.. And now, you know what? Go, go with it.

Scott McCarthy [00:15:47]:
And really the lesson here is, you know, delegation isn’t about workload. It’s about building others. It’s about building leaders. It’s about building teams. It’s about building the future. You never know who on your team is just that one moment away trust, and they’re just away from being extraordinary. And that was my moment of realization that, so maybe you should think about who’s on your team and who potentially could be that one moment away. Because ultimately, you know, as we talk about this, it’s not about just developing people though.

Scott McCarthy [00:16:36]:
Sometimes you gotta control yourself under pressure. And this is the final story, and this story comes from, uh, 2009 as I was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, uh, during our what we called pre-deployment training, i.e., training, uh, that got us ready to go over there into the war zone. We, we often would bring people in to help develop us who had just either gotten back or who had recently been over there. And I was sitting in on a briefing, and the briefing, I still remember it vividly, it was about incident management. It’s a fancy term for basically when something goes bad, how do you control and how do you execute under pressure? And the briefer told us a story when His convoy had struck an improvised explosive device, an IED, and it was pretty bad. They got ambushed. Luckily, they were able to fend off the attackers, able to secure the area, but you’re talking like multiple, multiple troops injured. Medevac, helo, was required.

Scott McCarthy [00:17:53]:
And he was telling us about how he you know, did the incident management, how he secured the scene, how he radioed in for help, how he reassured, how he prioritized, all these different things that you need to do. And he was telling us that, you know, he was there and he’d gotten all the wounded out and the last medevac was there, and his right-hand man, his sergeant major, walks up to him and he said, hey sir, check yourself. And the officer telling the story, you know, he obviously breathed for a second because it was pretty emotional. And he looks down and he realizes his uniform, his equipment is covered in blood. And what he really failed to realize up until this point was that wasn’t anybody else’s, it was his own. He had actually been operating at this high level severely wounded and still bleeding, actually. It was at that moment when he realized that he was no longer a help to his team or an asset. Rather, he was going to become a liability, and he needed to check himself.

Scott McCarthy [00:19:07]:
He needed to make that decision, and he made the decision to get onto helo and take himself out of the fight. And let me tell you, as a as a soldier, officer, an officer to you, like, that’s a really hard decision to make. There’s nothing worse for us than to come out of the fight with nothing worse. But he did it because he realized that he would be a liability. And sometimes, you know, we need that realization. We need that realization that we need to get onto that helo and that we need to take a— basically take a moment for ourselves. Because as leaders, we think we need to stay in the fight all the time, but sometimes the right move is just stepping aside. And what does that require? It requires a lot of self-awareness.

Scott McCarthy [00:20:02]:
So those are the 3 stories amongst many others, and I will tell you The stories in the book are not just my stories. They’re stories from the 300-ish interviews which I’ve done. And in here, within the 3 domains that we go through, through the various parts of the book, you’re going to learn things such as humility, discipline, emotional control. You’re going to learn about trust, delegation, and building leaders within your team. And then you’re also going to learn about culture alignment and strategy within your organization. So just keep that in mind. Remember, you know, leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about learning constantly.

Scott McCarthy [00:20:50]:
It’s about developing others. It’s about knowing when you’re helping and when you’re hurting. And if you finish the book, you’re going to know the final line that I wrote is, I still don’t know shit about leadership. And if you have the same conclusion, then that’s good because it means you’re still learning. So if you want to grab a copy, ladies and gentlemen, again, it’s leaddontbossbook.com/buy. Hit the links there and you can grab your copy. The autographed ones, I leave a personal message in all of them. Sent from me to you, to your door.

Scott McCarthy [00:21:35]:
Or of course, there’s always Amazon ebook, uh, providers galore. There we go. Go grab your copy now. leaddontbossbook.com/buy. Thank you as always. Remember, always lead, don’t boss. Take care now. And that’s a wrap for this episode, ladies and gentlemen.

Scott McCarthy [00:22:03]:
Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the Peak Performance Leadership Podcast. But you know what you could do to truly support the podcast? And no, that’s not leaving a rating and review. It’s simply helping a friend. And that is helping a friend by sharing this episode with them. If you think this would resonate with them and help them elevate their performance level, whether that’s within themselves, their teams, or their organization. So do that. Help me, help a friend, win-win all around.

Scott McCarthy [00:22:35]:
And hey, you look like a great friend at the same time. So just hit that little share button on your app and then feel free to fire this episode to anyone that you feel would benefit from it. Finally, there’s always more. There’s always more lessons around being the highest performing leader that you can possibly be, whether that’s for yourself, your team, or your organization. So why don’t you subscribe? Subscribe to the show via movingforwardleadership.com/subscribe. And until next time, lead. Don’t boss. And thanks for coming out.

Scott McCarthy [00:23:16]:
Take care now.