Pat D’Amico, Founder and CEO of About-Face Development, brings over 30 years of experience in the Fortune 500 medical device and pharmaceutical industries, having worked with renowned companies like Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic, as well as startups. His diverse roles have spanned sales, commercial operations, recruiting, marketing, and training, including achievements such as being a four-time President’s Club winner. Pat’s expertise lies in designing and launching new departments within large organizations.
Beyond his corporate success, Pat’s leadership journey includes serving in the US Army as both an enlisted soldier and a commissioned officer, earning him recognition for his leadership in combat and humanitarian operations.
Pat holds an MS in Education (Instructional Design) and a BA in World Politics. He is also a member of the Entrepreneur Leadership Council. In today’s episode, he shares his unique “whole person” approach to leadership with Dr. Karen, discussing how to motivate employees, retain top talent, and navigate the challenges of ego-driven leadership.
Contact Pat D’Amico at:
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Pat D’Amico: How To See And Appreciate The Whole Person At Work (Episode # 460)
Did you know that your unique background of life and leadership experiences prepare you for our complex world of executive leadership decisions? My guest has multiple lenses through which to view leadership opportunities and dilemmas, and to provide value to his C-suite clients. Pat D’Amico is the Founder and CEO of About-Face Development, and he is a Senior Performance Consultant for Matrix Achievement Group.
With more than 30 years of experience in the Fortune 500 medical device and pharmaceutical industries, he’s worked for Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and startups. Pat’s roles have included sales, commercial operations, recruiting, marketing and training. As a sales manager, Pat was a four-time President’s Club winner. His specialty is designing and launching new departments, even within large established organizations.
Pat’s leadership experience also includes serving as both an enlisted soldier and a commissioned officer of the US Army. After his commissioning as an officer, he served overseas, leading soldiers in Panama, Cuba, and the Middle East. He received numerous recognitions for his leadership in combat and humanitarian operations. With strategic roles spanning Fortune 50 companies to startups, Pat’s cross-functional and cross-business experience provides him with a unique perspective on what makes individuals and organizations commercially successful.
Focused on leadership and management development, he now serves as an Executive Coach to C-suite leaders. Pat holds an MS in Education, specifically in Instructional Design, a BA in World Politics, and an Executive Coaching Certification from the UC Berkeley Executive Education and Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute. He is a frequent speaker and author on topics related to learning and development and leadership, and is a member of the Entrepreneur Leadership Council. Pat, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Dr. Karen. It’s wonderful to be here. Thank you for that amazing introduction. Who’s that guy?
We’re going to find out a little bit about that guy. Pat, I’m so delighted to have you here. As I said, you have multiple lenses through which you look at leadership, and I want to start with your corporate lens and ask you about your career in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Tell us a little bit about some of the significant roles you’ve had, and most importantly, the impact that you’ve had in the organizations where you served.
A Non-Traditional Career Path In The Pharmaceutical And Medical Device Industries
Thanks Dr. Karen, and you did such a wonderful job of the introduction, so I appreciate that. I’ve had a pretty non-traditional, I think, career having spent 30 years in the medical device and pharmaceutical or what we refer to as the life sciences area. The reality is that typically, you’ll see folks in the commercial space either do a sales leadership path, maybe do a little bit in marketing, maybe do something in sales training. I’ve really had a career that’s afforded me the opportunity to have many different roles. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the area of sales operations. Pretty early in my career as a director of sales operations, that was a new department, which is another really keystone of my career, which has been super fortunate.
Over half of my roles have been newly created. I’ve had an opportunity to build these new departments within organizations. Early on, I built a sales operations department at J&J for one of the medical device companies when we transitioned and expanded the organization. That was a fun role to really bring on new, younger experienced folks to build that department. That’s one role that I recall back to. Probably one of my most fortunate was when I received a call also early in my career that Johnson & Johnson at the time had centralized recruiting for all functions except for sales. Someone reached out to me and said, “We’re looking to maybe try this out and centralized recruiting for sales in the US. Would you be interested? We will give you money for six months and if it works, great, and if it doesn’t, you’re going to have to find another job in J&J.”
I was up to the challenge. That was a great experience. I formed this sales recruiting department centralized for J&J in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We supplied candidates for all three sectors, so pharmaceutical devices as well as consumers. It was a really interesting role to build a new department, with recruiters all over the country. We had initially lost a lot of money. I always like to say we lost $1 million in our first year but became profitable in year two. That was a positive. That was an interesting role.
I left J&J and my reason for leaving J&J was to take a job as a VP of commercial operations for a startup. That was one of the roles in my career that I really learned the most about the corporate environment because when you work for a startup, you wear a lot of different hats. I was responsible for meetings and conventions, for training, for corporate accounts. That was a role that really, I think, significantly expanded my experience in the sector. Eventually, that organization was purchased by Medtronic and I spent my last eight years there.
Primarily, at that point in my career, I had really begun to focus solely on learning and development. I originally transitioned the startup into the organization and then, during a restructuring of Medtronic, where they took all of the operating companies within the cardiovascular group, put them into one. I assumed, again, a new role there that had not existed, where we were responsible for providing skills training to North, South and Central America. It was a pretty big job, really interesting, and very satisfying because, again, it was new. I was able to set things up, do some trial and error, see what worked and expand the group. Those are just a few examples over the last 30 years.
Navigating Organizational Politics And Understanding Stakeholder Needs
Thank you for describing that journey over the last 30 years. I want to unpack a few of the items that you talked about. We said earlier that one of your secret powers, if you will, or superpowers, is starting new operations within, let’s say a bigger rubric or operation. You described one where if it didn’t work, you’d have to find a new job. Tell us a little bit, Pat, what’s important in doing a startup? Particularly in an already existing corporate business, what are some of the skills you have to have? What do you have to do, what do you have to learn to be successful?
That’s a great question I hadn’t thought about. The first thing that comes to mind, Dr. Karen, is a term that J&J used to use, which I’ve continued to use, which is organizational savvy. Political astuteness also means the same thing that is often used and it’s really understanding how to maneuver within a large corporate organization like Johnson & Johnson. A lot of processes were established. There were a lot of things that were being done. You’re trying to start a department, which more or less is moving work that was being done somehow else and moving it within. One of the challenges with this particular role was recruiting and finding candidates was being done externally. Sales managers were going to external sources to identify candidates.
The first thing is you really have to convince these folks that you can provide the types of candidates, the quality of candidates that they’re looking for. Understanding the market, doing enough research to really ascertain where do we find these great candidates and how are our competition, which was external recruiters doing that. It also resulted in a lot of partnerships with external recruiters as well. Can we negotiate contracts that are more favorable than what we’re currently getting so that we can support the department financially, but also meet the needs of the hiring managers? Those were some of the things in that particular role that was interesting.
One of the funny parts of that is I was living in the South at the time where I had lived for a long time. I was originally from the North. I had been living in the South for years and I was looking to get back to a little closer to home. Part of this decision was they came to me and said, “We’ll move you and at least if this doesn’t work, you could try to find another job up here because you’ll already be located back in the North.” That was part of the reason that I took the role as well, or that it seemed interesting. Back to your original question, I think that understanding how to maneuver within the organization, who are the folks with influence and how do you get early wins with folks that have influence, which I think applies in so many different areas.
I think this is a really huge conversation, by the way, and an important one, the whole idea about organizational politics and the whole notion of influence. Part of influence, and you mentioned it, is really understanding what that partner or stakeholder is really looking for and what they want, and then being able to show them how you can deliver on that. Say a little bit more about what does it take to really influence people and to be a good partner.
That’s a great question because in my role now as a consultant, I often will say, folks come to me and they’ll tell me what they think the gap is. About 50% of the time, they’re right. That’s probably pretty accurate. The first thing is you want to understand from those stakeholders what do you think your concerns are and what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Really, the expertise that you bring, at least for me as a consultant, the expertise that I bring is my ability to dig in, to ask the right questions, talk to the right people, talk to the influencers, and find out what are the actual gaps.
Usually, there’s some connection to what you’re initially hearing, but inevitably, you need to be able to come back and you need to be able to communicate in a way that makes them feel comfortable that yes, what you shared with me as some of your concerns and your goals are valid, and here’s how we’re going to try to meet that. While at the same time, also understanding the other things that you uncovered and ensuring that those are included as well. You do address the larger problem, which what they shared with you initially may only be a piece of.
What you’re talking about right now is really important. The importance of questions, the importance of going deeper to get to the discovery and so that they can see, “That’s the value add of bringing Pat into the picture because we’re going to see what we didn’t see before. We already know what we know and there’s more we need to know,” if you will. That’s what I hear you talking about, Pat.
You raise a really good point here, which is that in my role as a consultant, and I think for all of us when we’re looking at this, what’s the expertise we bring? We need to be very aware of what that expertise is. You also said asking questions. When I’m facilitating groups, they get really tired of that. I always say, “What’s that three-letter word? Ask is that three three-letter word.” Great leaders, and great consultants speak half as much as they allow other people to do. They ask a lot of questions, they try to determine and try to understand whether it’s their customer’s needs, whether that’s internal or external. Really understanding what it is that they’re trying to get at and making sure you understand what they’re hoping to accomplish. You just can’t be successful without understanding their need. Really making sure you’re satisfying that need.
Let me ask this. When you think about the whole of your corporate experience, and we’re still talking about that, what are some additional key lessons that you learned from your corporate life that you now apply to your consulting world? Of course, one of them is how to ask these questions, how to develop the relationships and communicate with people, listen and so on. What else would you say you learned in Corporate America that you use now?
All organizations have their demons, and they all think that they’re the ones that have them. I think that one of the most valuable things, when you’re working with corporations, is to help them understand they’re not the only ones facing the challenges they’re facing. Very often, they think that’s the case when the reality is that’s very seldom, if ever the case. The challenges are common and they’re common at different points in time. The challenges that I was facing in the corporate environment 15 or 20 years ago are slightly different than some of the challenges we’re facing, but the challenges being faced are also being faced by everyone.
Once you understand that and once you have experience with helping address those, you become extremely valuable to organizations. I think you just mentioned it. One of the things I look at is I look at it and think to myself if an organization is facing a challenge and with the work I do, the chances are I’ve helped other organizations address the same challenges, there are answers out there. They’re not esoteric, they’re not, “We’re never going to find it.” The answers are out there. I think the key is you have to be working with, either internally or externally, the folks that have those answers.
The Impact Of Poor Leadership And Lack Of Development Opportunities
I love that because, again, going back to the whole notion of multiple lenses, because you’re out there in multiple places, you’re bringing expertise and lenses from multiple places that can help your clients as well. While we’re talking about the source of challenges that organizations are facing, let me ask this. What do you think are some of the primary issues that organizations face nowadays? Particularly some of the reasons may for some competencies and leadership that are lacking right now. How would you talk about that?
I really believe one of the biggest leadership challenges nowadays is turnover because I think undesirable turnover, losing people you don’t want to lose, is absolutely the result of poor leadership and management competency. We know this to be true. There’s plenty of research. There’s no doubts on that topic. I think organizations need to be honest with themselves and ask themselves what does their leadership competency look like and how is it negatively impacting the organization?
There is a war for talent that is real. Keeping folks is becoming one of the biggest challenges they face. I think, Dr. Karen, we’ve lived through that time period where we thought giving our employees more perks would keep them. I think we’ve learned that that’s not the case. I think we’re past that now. We’re back to, in my opinion, the original question, which is why do we lose good people? I think it’s because of poor leadership. There’s tons of research to show us that that’s the case.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I know that you have some particular insights about what the literature actually shows on this very topic of why people leave and how that literature and information can inform the leadership development processes that people use in their company. What are some examples of what does poor leadership look like and how can people fix it?
First, on the data, because I think there’s an interesting thing changed that’s happened. Let’s be honest, during the Industrial Revolution, people left jobs for their own personal safety. My grandparents worked at the steel plant and, they worried about their physical safety. After that, the number one reason people have left jobs is their immediate manager. That’s always been the case. In fact, it’s been so much the case that it’s never even been worth talking about, the number two reason. However, a few years ago, we started to see the number two reason moving up, not going to overtake number one, but the number two reason people leave jobs is a lack of development. I think those two go hand in hand. If you are not developing your leaders, then you’re going to lose good people.
Ironically, not developing people is the second most common reason that folks are leaving organizations. I think you have to look at that and understand from a data perspective. Let’s admit, if we have good people leave, we’re losing them. Not because we’re not paying them enough and not because we’re not giving them enough perks.
We’re losing them because they’re immediate manager that they work for does not understand them, does not understand their motivations, does not understand what gets them out of bed every morning and what makes them want to go do that job. That’s really the biggest thing, in my opinion, that just we have to address because there’s such an incredible lack of leadership and management development across all sectors. I work primarily in life sciences, but really it’s impacting everyone. It’s pretty incredible how much it lacks in organizations.
That’s really a very good point. One of the things that I’ve observed is that with the younger generations that are in the workplace, not the Baby Boomers, this expectation for development is particularly high and particularly strong. When it’s there, it’s an almost an inoculation, if you will, against those people jumping ship prematurely.
It is. Here’s a question for you. Do you sometimes get the impression in organizations that the leadership thinks when they hear lack of development, that they think that people want to get promoted too fast? Have you heard that?
I have heard that. I think they are missing a whole segment of possibilities in between. It’s not the promotion per se. It’s the building blocks that lead up to the promotion.
I wholeheartedly agree because a lot of times, when I share that answer of a lack of development, right away, someone or people in the room will say, “They want to get promoted too quickly.” No, I’m not going to say that may not be a separate challenge, but it is not one and the same with wanting to be developed. You need to have these processes in place. I was wondering if you’d heard the same thing because it always blows my mind and I’m like, “No, those are two very different things.”
When organizations confuse that, the promotion, if it comes too early, can also be a barrier because a person may not feel ready for it. They may feel like they don’t have support. They don’t have the development that they need to be to show up well in the promotion. The development piece is crucial even to success in the promotion is what I find.
I will tell you that there’s an epidemic, not that this is new because I’ve been seeing it for many years. Organizations just have such a habit of promoting people. To say they’re not ready is a complete understatement. The reality is, “You’ve been a good individual contributor, so here you go. We’re going to promote you, figure it out, ask some peers.” To your point, it really sets people up for failure. You want them to be prepared enough to be marginally competent and marginally confident in their skills to actually lead others, but I just see so little of it.
A Holistic Approach To Leadership And Understanding Employee Motivation
That’s definitely an opportunity in the workplace so that companies can find themselves in the position where they are a preferred employer because they’re providing what others don’t provide. I do think you’re onto something when you talk about developing people in the workplace. Let me change gears a little bit, and I want to dial back to your military experience and the time that you were in the Army. Tell us a little bit about what you did there, the impact you had in the Army, and what you learned from that.
The military really changed my life, Dr. Karen. I was not a great academic high school student, although I had had some leadership opportunities. When I was getting ready to go to college and my parents didn’t have any money to send me and I didn’t have grades to pay for it, the Army looked like it was a great avenue for me to fund college. I enlisted in the Army and then was given a two-year scholarship. I went to Valley Forge Military Academy and it was there that my whole life really changed. I matured, but most importantly, I was given an opportunity to lead in my second year there a company of around 140 young men. At the time, it wasn’t co-ed. Fortunately, it is now. I had an opportunity to lead 140 young men and really learn a lot and make a lot of mistakes.
Having that opportunity at that young in age really gave me exposure to myself and what I really enjoyed, helping other people succeed, helping other people develop their leadership. At the same time, I was developing my own. I was young, I was eighteen years old at the time. That really had an impact on me, and it was really that experience that led to my active duty in the Army. I served in Panama after the invasion there and did law enforcement support for Panama City, which was really interesting work. I went to Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I also did some humanitarian missions for the Haitian migrants. I was stationed in Cuba for a while. That entire experience from a leadership perspective, what it really showed me was, and I think we may get into this because I think we’re missing this now, is that you were responsible.
I was responsible for the whole person. It wasn’t just their life at work, which we never referred to it as work. How they were performing their duties was my responsibility to coach them on. If they bounced a check at the post exchange, I got a phone call to go sit down with them and maybe their spouse. If they were having personal issues, it wasn’t unusual for me to go over and talk and see. It was this holistic approach to your employees and understanding that work was only a part of it but understanding that whole human was really critical.
I think it’s something we’ve lost now, and I’m a big proponent of it. Understanding what really motivates this person in their life because don’t tell me it’s money because I can almost guarantee you, it’s not. Every individual’s motivated by different things. Understanding that at the outset helps you get not everything out of them for work, but helps you as a leader so you’re giving them and finding ways to give them what it is that satisfies their needs.
The Importance Of Empathy And Flexibility In A Post-Pandemic Workplace
You’re talking about a couple of things I think are really important. You’re talking about what motivates people, which we were also talking about from your corporate experience and what you learned there. In addition, you’re also talking about what other factors influence a person and their success at work and their choices. When I think about the military, it took a while for the military to realize that understanding what was of interest to the spouse affected the soldier, as an example.
When you unpack this part about what are those other influences, think about coming out of this post-pandemic time period that we’re in and where people are facing all kinds of challenges and issues they may have close relatives who are ill, people may be dying, all kinds of things may be going on. What does that workplace need to think about in ‘s time that’s beyond just the day-to-day work that is more holistic about people?
I think it starts with empathy. I think that understanding, having your leaders in your organization, those that lead the organization, understanding the importance of empathy, appreciating what that person is going through or been through, and the pandemic’s a great example. We could all probably give numerous examples, both work, and frankly, in our own personal lives. We all grappled with and maybe reacted to the pandemic differently and we’re impacted by it differently. Understanding what folks are dealing with, what their concerns are, how it changed their lives. I think the easy one is to look and go, “Everybody wants to work at home now.”
The reality is that’s a challenge everybody’s facing. I work with a lot of commercial organizations who have salespeople. Think about that a second. We’ve gone from a place where the pandemic now results in most people preferring to work remotely all the time and I’m working with organizations who essentially need to find people willing to work outside the home all the time. Maybe not in an office. We tend to think, “Office or home?” There’s a whole other area of people working out there who actually have to go places and meet with people every day. At the same time, because of the pandemic, that’s gotten a little bit tougher to see folks. Understanding what motivates individuals and how you can satisfy their needs because somebody may believe, “I want to be at home and I want to work remotely. I don’t want to be in an office.” What is it about being at home that you really enjoy?
Is it simply the flexibility? We can offer you that same flexibility. It’s not an all-or-nothing. I think right now, we’re struggling a little bit with this notion of, “People just don’t want to go to the office.” No, let’s understand what it is they enjoy about it. Maybe it’s the flexibility. Maybe it’s the fear. Maybe some people are actually still a little apprehensive. Some folks just got very used to being alone. They need a little bit of encouragement to go back. There are so many different things that play in here and I always hate the discussions of like, “It’s this or this,” or all or nothing. It’s never all or nothing. Life is all about compromise. As leaders in this organization, to be successful, we compromise with our customers. We need to compromise with our employees.
Maybe one word I sometimes use is really about finding the solution that’s not obvious where really there’s a win-win that’s possible both for the organization and also for the employee. I’m thinking back to your experience with J&J when it’s like, “You’re in the South and you’re working on this new project and it’s with the possibility that you could move back up North where you want to be.” That was paying attention to something that was important to you. What you’re saying is the organizations need to listen a little more deeply to find out what their employees really want. What is it about working from home that’s the real draw? Maybe in these other solutions, they can add that element in.
It ebbs and flows. In the early ‘90s when I first entered the industry, it was a tough job market for the job seeker. Corporations were doing really well. They had the pick of the litter. I remember when I joined J&J and I went through the leadership development program, I remember them saying to me, “Here’s the deal. Your first offer for promotion you can say no to, but you can’t say no to your second.” The message was, “That first location, you better really not want to go there because wherever the second location is, you’re going.” I remember that sticking with me thinking, “You don’t have any idea where that second location’s going to be if you say no. We used to say you had to be blindly relocatable. That was the term we used.
If you wanted to get promoted, you had to be blindly relocatable. I think we abused that to a significant extent. I think we learned that years later when the market became a job seeker’s market and people were like, “Now I don’t think I’m going to go there,” or, “No, I don’t want to go there. I need a better location.” I think you have to be fair. It’s a give and a take. It’s a compromise. I was in the South, I was ready to get promoted and I assumed I would have the ability to go anywhere that was open. My boss came to me and said, “Here are your four potential places you’re going to end up.” I’m like, “That’s it? Those are my choices?” It worked out. I often say I think we abused employees then, and what goes around comes around
I think what the option is now, and this is what you’re talking about, is to really be in more partnership even with the employees, to talk about a greater panoply of possibilities and options that are out there so that they’re part of the decision-making equation at a greater level. Therefore they feel like, “Okay, I’m going to New Jersey and that’s where I want to be,” as opposed to, “No, I did not want to be in South Africa,” or wherever.
You want both parties to feel good. Now you mentioned that you’ve seen a lot of this. You said something interesting. You didn’t use the word unique, but other options. What have you seen that have been unique in the standpoint of how to meet an employee’s need?
I think it’s exactly the optics you’ve been talking about. To have in your mind that you want to meet the employee’s need so that the corporation benefits and the employee benefits. Where in the Venn diagram do the circles overlap in terms of what motivates them, what’s meaningful to them in terms of the work that they do, and how they are showing up and finding the sweet spot that works for the whole system?
I have seen companies really create powerful examples of the future that they didn’t come to the table with originally and that the employee didn’t come to the table with originally, but it’s because they engaged each other, they talked about it and they understood what the other needed. They created what I call the third solution, which was something that was a win-win. Yeah, absolutely. For sure, I think your notion of thinking of the employee in a holistic way is very relevant in today’s times.
Going back when you asked me the question of the military, that’s one of the greatest things I picked up when I moved to the corporate sector. It’s an understanding that yes, this person is an employee, but they’re a human being and there’s a lot of other things playing into what’s motivating them. When an employee is not performing, to me, it’s never a question of bringing them in and hammering them and reminding them of what they already know.
If they’ve been a good performer, the question is, “What’s going on? What’s happening with you? What can I help with? What are the barriers?” I often tell leaders, “If you want your people to succeed, even your top performers, ask them the question, ‘What barriers can I remove for you? What is getting in your way?’” The reality is I can’t do their job, but I need them to do their job for me to be successful as a leader. Sometimes the best thing I can do is help them remove things that are preventing them from being successful.
I love two things you just said right now. One is be curious about what the person’s experience is and what’s going on. Number two, figure out how you can facilitate their success. That might mean removing something that’s an impediment. That’s really powerful in terms of how to be more holistic in thinking about the employee as a whole person and not just what I would call an interchangeable cog in the wheel. I think that thinking is what has really adversely affected some employers in today’s world.
I would agree. On that first topic, because I see this so often. If you take two employees, one here and one here, and they look the same on paper. Let’s say they’re same years of experience in the industry, they’ve generally had the same roles. Many leaders tend to look at them and assume, “When I give a task to the team, those two are going to have the same experience and know how to do that.” Nothing can be further from the truth. You go into concepts like situational leadership, which I do like. It’s a little complicated, I think, as the rubber hits the road. What I do like to tell people is, when you assign a task, you need to ask each individual, “What’s your experience with this task?”
It’s not going to line up like you think it will. Those that have X amount of experience are both going to those two people are going to have the same. Very unlikely it doesn’t happen. As an example, I was working with two vice presidents of sales. On paper, they looked somewhat identical. In the industry in the same time, but in the same type of roles. It was coming to around that time of the year where the realignment of this sales force were happening.
I spoke to the first one and it was a very brief discussion. She said, “I’ve got to go through realignment. We’re doing this. We’re doing that.” It was very clear to me that she knew exactly what was going on. I get on the phone to coach the other one, and I wrongly was just under the assumption, based on the conversation I’d had with the other leader a couple of days before, and they were similar, that he would have the same experience.
We reached a point during the discussion where I sensed something and I said to him, I said, “I’m sensing you’re a little apprehensive about this realignment.” At that point, he opened up. He goes the reality is, “I’ve never been responsible for a realignment.” In my mind, Dr. Karen, I’m like, “How is that possible? How did they get to this point?” I mean at much lower levels. I said, “That’s very interesting.” He went through an explanation and said, “I’ve had this role and I missed it here and I missed it here,” and it let me know that the way I coach those two people was very different. In one case, the first one, I’m just supporting her. “Is there anything that you’re challenged with?”
With the second one, I had to go back to, “Let’s talk about how this process works and what your responsibilities are.” Normally as a coach, I’m trying to get them to come up with the ideas, but the reality is, I go, “I have to take my coach hat off. Is that okay? I become an advisor here. Here are the things you need to be thinking about, here are the things to expect.” It’s a long-winded way of getting back to two people with the same background, had very different experiences with the task being assigned, so you can’t assume that those two people are going to know exactly what to do in that circumstance.
I love those examples. Thank you for giving the specific examples. It really demonstrates why the curiosity and the question asking and the real appreciation for each individual journey and looking at them as whole people helps to figure out what to do next and how to facilitate their continued success. I love the fact that you said sometimes, you may be the coach that’s bringing it out of them, and other times you have to be the advisor. You’re the consultant that says, “Here’s how this goes. Here’s what’s next.” I think we have to do both if we really are going to serve our clients in the best way. I really appreciate you mentioning those two examples as an illustration of what you’re talking about.
As an Executive Coach at Berkeley and my certification there, I’m a big proponent of their model, which is the types of roles you play as a leader. One role is a director. That’s where you’re dealing with an employee who’s never done this before. You’re going to have to tell them exactly what they need to do. The next one is an advisor, what I just described. Maybe they have some experience, maybe they have an idea or two, but you’re probably going to be trying to feed them. You probably have to feed them the right answer. The third role is the coach, where they’ve hopefully got the experience. Now you’re asking them to call on their experience and come up with the best course of action on their own.
The last is supporter, which is my example. Somebody who’s done it, they know what was expected of them. You could say, in a perfect world, that for each task, people will move through those four. At first, you tell them how to do it. The second time, maybe they have some ideas, but they don’t know exactly the third time, maybe they can figure it out. The fourth time you’re just there for them. The point being, you never know until you ask, “What’s your experience with this task? What’s your confidence with this task?” Those are the two questions I always like to ask.
Yes, and I love this because it’s really does harken back to the Hershey Blanchard Situational Leadership Model because somebody may come into a situation where they have the experience at a high level, or they may not. They may start with you further down the path on the subject because of their past experience, or they may need to start at the beginning.
A Leader’s Greatest Mistake: The Dangers Of Ego and Unrealistic Promises
Our whole task is to figure out how to be with them where they really are, not where we want to be or where we might want to start. It’s the flexibility of the consultant, it’s the flexibility of the advisor to really understand those dynamics and provide the right services. Yeah, great example. Thanks, Pat, for sharing that. We’ve been talking a lot about what has made you successful over the years, and we know that we learn a lot also from mistakes. Tell us a little bit about in your own journey. What’s been your biggest mistake?
I am a huge proponent of human nature and human research into human beings. We know that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. We learn more from our failures. We take them more to heart, they’re more impactful. I make no bones about the greatest mistake I ever made. I was 22 years old and we were leaving after the invasion, after Iraq invaded Kuwait. We were leaving to go over to deploy to the Middle East.
I had already taken this platoon to Panama, so I was feeling pretty confident in their readiness. They had performed really well in Panama, so I was pretty confident. That morning, Dr. Karen, we we’re standing out there, it was in October. It was a cool morning in Virginia. I had my entire platoon in front of me. Behind them were all of their families, their wives, their mothers, their children, and their fathers were back there.
As I would’ve normally done, I walked to the back of the platoon. We were just about to leave, and I walked to the back of my platoon and I just said to all of them, “Please write. That means a lot to them. I’ll try to make sure they can write back as often as possible.” Dr. Karen, as I’m talking, and in that moment, I said the following, “I promise to bring your sons and fathers home alive.” I couldn’t believe those words had left my mouth. I couldn’t believe I just made a promise that I had no way to guarantee I could keep. I lived with that promise for six months, every day knowing that I had made this promise.
The real moment for me was the day the ceasefire was called, we’re sitting in a tent and we had the little radio hanging from the pole in the tent with Armed Forces Radio. They made an announcement saying a ceasefire had been called. At that moment, I was like, “This promise I shouldn’t have made, I’m going to be able to keep.” Within seconds, the ground shook. There was an explosion inside our camp.
I grabbed my helmet and my rifle, and as I was running out the door, I was like, “I can’t believe this is happening right now.” Fortunately, there were a few casualties in our battalion, but not in my particular platoon. Here’s the truth, Dr. Karen. I made that promise partially because I thought it would give some solace to these civilians, to the parents, to the kids, to the wives, because I had taken them and brought them back safely from our last deployment.
If I’m being honest with you, I did it largely out of ego. I had so much success as a leader at such a young age in my life that I had this level of confidence that really wasn’t warranted. There was a lot of what went into that. I’ll admit that now that I was overconfident as a leader. It taught me a lot. I learned from that. Never make a promise to an employee or to anyone, but I always think about this related to never make a promise that you’re not 100% sure you can keep. You can say, “I’m going to do my best to do this. I’m going to do my best to deliver this. I have your best interest in mind and I’m going to try to meet that.” Don’t ever say, “I’ll do it,” or, “I guarantee it’ll happen.” That’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. No doubt.
Thankfully, you ended up being able to honor that in spite of the error or the mistake.
I did. I was grateful and told myself I’ll never do that again. One of those things of like, “If you just get me out of this, God, I promise I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
It’s so powerful. I think it’s really interesting what you said about how you can promise that you will do your best. You can promise things that you have control over. In a war situation, there are factors over which no individual, company, platoon battalion or anybody has control over. There are always those other factors. You can’t speak about the unexpected that you don’t know is going to happen. That’s a very powerful example. If you were standing there with your platoon now, given what you’ve learned and you were addressing those families, what would you say?
I love those men. I really still do. Knowing what I know now, I would probably tell their families, “These men are as close as brothers to me and know that I will do everything I possibly can for them. Know that we will do everything possible for each other to keep ourselves safe.” That’s what I would say.
That’s beautiful because just knowing as a leader that you have that commitment is reassuring to a family member. In other words, you’re not going in the war saying, “These guys are expendable. I’m probably going to lose 10%, 20% and I don’t care.” That would be a different speech than to say, “They’re like brothers to me.” That has real significant meaning to someone who’s a family member and who’s listening.
Pat, you mentioned ego and that the reason you said this was because of ego. We know that in the corporate environment, there are a lot of leaders who show up with this ego, as well. What would you say to that leader, and especially having gone through this and having to live in fear, that in hopes that you didn’t lose any guys, what would you say to them about how they might need to walk in order to avoid that? I’ll say the temptation to be ego-driven.
I don’t pull any punches, Dr. Karen, as a consultant. Maybe it’s I’ve gotten older, maybe it’s just being raised in the military environment. I’m never shy about sharing with folks. I’m very upfront. I believe in telling individuals what they do well, but I will not hold back if there is an area that needs to be addressed. What I generally share with folks is an ego-driven leader can have success for a short time, but over the long-term, it’s the employee’s belief that you really care about them genuinely that’s going to make them perform and make you successful. This ties back for me, if I may, other than my father, who is my lifelong role model, my first role model work-wise was a gentleman by the name of Sergeant Major George Didi.
He actually passed away a couple years ago. He was at Valley Forge Military Academy. He taught me what I have held as the most important leadership lessons. Now, maybe it was because they were the early ones, but his number three that I learned from him really has driven my entire career. The first two are pretty simple. First one was, don’t mess with people’s pay.
Of course, he didn’t use the word mess because it was the old army, but we’ll paraphrase. He used to say, “Fix people’s pay. If there’s a pay problem, fix it yesterday.” Meaning, people work for money and you got to get that taken care of. His second was when people are off, let them be off. Make sure they know that they don’t have to be doing work. People need time off. They need time to decompress.
The third one, Dr. Karen, for me, is the most important one, which is if you employees truly believe you care about them and are looking out for their best interest, they will perform for you. I believe many of many who are ego-driven leaders, their whole careers, they start that way. There’s not that concern. The thought is, “If I make myself look good, if I drive people to the last inch of energy that they have, that’s going to give me the results I need to get promoted.” I tell young leaders, especially prospective leaders, one of the first things I say to them is, “If you get the greatest satisfaction out of being the one on stage, the one being recognized, the one hearing your name called, leadership may not be right for you right now and maybe never.”
You’ve got to evaluate that. You have to get more jazzed. You have to be more jazzed out of watching others succeed, what you’ve helped them grow. Almost like a parent does, some people are not cut out to be parents. Not everyone is cut out to be a leader. When I see leaders with an ego, I usually let them know that in my experience, ego-driven leaders can only be successful for a short time. The truth is, people know if you really care or you don’t. If you don’t really care, you’re not going to have success for a very long time.
That is so powerful. Yes. It’s so true. I think that for leaders to think about their real job, which is facilitating the development and the leadership of other people, that’s really the key. As you do that, you will be successful along the way. It’s all a matter of emphasis and what you focus on. It’s good that you say short-term, because short-term can be a long time, but it’s not for the long-term. People won’t like working for you and there’s more they could do, which they won’t do when you’re such an ego-driven leader. Thank you for saying that and talking about a tough topic that people don’t always bring up.
If I may, one other way I get it this sometimes, if I’m looking for roundabout way, is I will ask a leader some specific questions about some of their employees. “Tell me about what do you know about their motivations. What motivates them? What do you know about what they like to do in their free time?” My experiences with ego-driven leaders, they don’t have a lot of experience. I can back into the conversation and say, “If you don’t understand that about that employee, how do you expect to motivate them to perform for you? Yes, they have a job to do and yes, you’re paying them to do the job, the organization is, but without knowing what motivates them, how are you ever going to motivate them?” Yeah, it’s an eye-opener for some people
The Value Of Community And Creating A Culture Of Care In The Workplace
Perhaps even another way of thinking about it is if what motivates them is how can you create the conditions in the corporation where they can be self-motivated and then do what they really want to do, which is also what benefits the company. I think that also puts the ball in the employee’s court to some extent, and the corporation’s facilitating the success and the development of that along the way. Pat, in the time we have remaining, and one other subject that I really want to get to, we might have to do a CliffsNotes version, but I’d really like to know more about your backstory and your family of origin and your upbringing and what you learned there that informed how you lead as well.
I was really fortunate, Dr. Karen. My parents were wonderful. My father has passed, devastating to me, a number of a handful of years ago. Mother’s still alive and very healthy, so God bless her. I grew up in a very tight-knit Italian community, which wasn’t unusual. Everybody I knew in the neighborhood was Italian and our community really centered around the Catholic church. I was raised Catholic.
That combination of the family heritage of my parents were first generation Americans, as well as the combination of the social circle that the church provided, really gave me a basis for an incredible community. I grew up in an incredible community, I guess, is what I would say. When you did something wrong, everybody knew because it didn’t matter whose parent it was, they were going to reprimand you and your parents were going to find out.
I feel really fortunate because that sense of community that I gained there, I think, carried forward for me as a leader in understanding the importance of community. I don’t think I really fully appreciated it until I was in maybe the Army or a little bit later where I realized that I started looking at leaders who had the ability. I was grateful to have that baseline of the need to create a caring community of people, really had a great downstream impact on the group as a whole because what does it do? It creates an expectation for everyone of everybody’s got to take care of everyone. It can’t always be me. I feel really fortunate that I was raised that way.
I love that because when we think about success in business, you get an organization that’s really too big for one person to do everything. The community has got to be a part of the equation and the step up, or you reach a point fairly soon when you top out on what you really can accomplish and what you can do unless the community is involved. Thank you for saying that and bringing in the lively Italian aspect to make that happen. I’m thinking about all around the table, the food, we’re eating together, we’re nurturing each other. It’s a whole culture, if you will, of how to experience one another.
It is, and that community of closeness also creates when the leader’s not there, other folks being comfortable correcting other people. They’re close enough to be able to say, “You’ve got to straighten this out. This isn’t working for everybody else.” Somebody’s not relying on just the leader to share that. I think that’s really important. It’s, again, the way I was raised.
Let me ask you, who are ideal clients for you? First of all, who are you looking for and how can they reach you to engage you for your consulting work?
Thanks for asking. An ideal client for me are, are folks who realize that they have a lack of leadership and management competency, are looking to better understand what the gaps are. I do not do consulting work that’s off the shelf. I look at every client, I do a full diagnostic, understand what are the challenges and what are the priorities? Also, get that feedback. The ideal client is somebody looking for that. Also, I do a fair amount of executive coaching. I tend to really focus, or I guess particularly from executive coaching standpoint, I work with a lot of folks who are moving from a tactical role to a strategic role.
Very often, that’s like a VP to a C-suite in some large organization, it’s a senior director to a VP where they’re used to doing tactical work and they really need to learn to focus on the strategic thinking aspect of it. That’s my area of specialty in any industry, really. The best way to reach me, thank you for asking, is by email at Pat@AboutFaceDev.com or my business number at (484) 080-500.
What are your final words of wisdom that you would like to leave for my community of corporate executives?
I think it is to be honest and ask yourself, truly ask yourself, are you losing folks because you have a lack of leadership and management competency? To be really honest and look around and say, “Have we given our leaders the tools? Have we trained them and given them the tools to be successful or do they need competency development and leadership and management? Most often, the answer is yes, and they do. Organizations really to be successful, need to make a commitment to addressing the lack of leadership and management competency if they have any hopes of truly being successful and meeting their objectives.
Thank you so much, Pat, for being with me. I appreciate you joining me on the show.
Dr. Karen, thank you. It’s been such a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Likewise. We’ll end the show with a particular Bible verse, which is from 1 Timothy 1:18. This is the Apostle Paul talking to his protégé, Timothy, and Paul often used military references. He says, “This charge, I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you. That by them, you may wage the good warfare.” What is the good warfare? It’s the warfare that God is leading you to, and that he’s ordained is the place of operation that he’s chosen for you in your workplace. As you head into that journey with God, take his strategies with you. Use the gifts that he’s given you so that you show up and cause your team and your company and individuals to win.
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I want to tell you a little bit about Spirit Wings Kids Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. It’s an organization that provides profound services for orphans and for widows and families across the globe in many ways, and especially in the country of Uganda. I’m speaking with Donna Johnson, who is the founder of Spirit Wings Kids and also a board member. Donna, tell us about some examples of the profound work that you’re doing in Uganda.
Thank you, Dr. Karen. We were just there a few weeks ago and it’s incredible. It’s more than an orphanage. We have a soccer academy that keeps the boys off the street. We have a widow’s program that matches them with children, and it’s just a thriving network of really entrepreneurs and it’s just been such a meaningful blessing to see the work that we’re doing there.
You know what, Donna, what I love about what you said just now is you’re really talking about their whole lives. You’re creating families between the widows and the children, and you’re also making sure they have recreation and something to do with the soccer academy. You’re looking at the job situation and the entrepreneurial aspect. As a businesswoman yourself who’s very successful, you’re right in line with being able to make that difference.
Thank you so much for the difference that you’re making, and I’m inviting everyone reading to go to SWKids.Foundation and donate now. A hundred percent of everything you donate goes to those people who are in need and who are receiving those services. Thank you so much for donating. Donna, thank you for this ministry.
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