Transcript

Joe Mills:

What we’re here to answer this season is, how do business leaders navigate these major points of change, these inflection points in their businesses, and then what are the tools and practices they use to make sure that those big moments are successful?

Reid Morris:

I’m Reid Morris.

Joe Mills:

I’m Joe Mills, and we’re embarking on an investigation this season to answer that exact question.

Reid Morris:

Then we’re taking our learnings and we’re sharing them with you to help you navigate your own inflection points.

Joe Mills:

This is 1,000 Stories, an original show from Element Three.

Reid Morris:

Okay, Joe, so we’re coming up to a really nice wrapping point for the third season of 1,000 Stories, and so as we’re getting into this synthesis moment, this reflection, I’d love for you to first take us back to where did we start this investigation. What questions were we seeking to answer?

Joe Mills:

Yeah. 1,000 Stories had started as wanting to understand what makes a great leader, like who is behind a great business. As we transitioned across time, we got to this season where we really wanted to understand, specifically inside of very important inflection points, how do business leaders show up. What tools did they turn to? How do they navigate these inflection points of change that are potentially career-altering moments? This could be taking on private equity capital. This could be stepping into or away from a leadership role, so changing leadership. This could be entering a new market. We wanted to understand, in these explicit moments, how and where do you turn to navigate those. We started finding people to talk to about those who had been through those moments and asked them what they used, what tools were helpful, and how did you make the most of this experience.

Reid Morris:

Yeah, I think one of the patterns that we recognized even before this season is the previous, quote, “format” of the show. We had conversations that spanned a career. In all these conversations, they happened to be people who were very successful in navigating different inflection points. So it’s like, “Oh, there’s got to be some reasons that they were able to do that.” Right?

Joe Mills:

Exactly. I think with our show for this season, we went very point in time until the very end, where Kelley and Tiffany, we both went a bit broader because we actually got broader away from the center of the research topic. We’ll talk about the model that we’ve seen through this conversation, and it will make a lot of sense how we got there. But it was interesting to start with these conversations that were point-in-time versus contextual stories.

Reid Morris:

So let’s start at those points in time. If we go back to the very beginning of this season, where Mark Caswell came back on the show, it was coming out of a very recent inflection point in his leadership roles that he played. Talk to me about what first stood out in that conversation that we just so happened to see later on.

Joe Mills:

Yeah, I think to give the full context on the conversation with Mark, just go back and listen to the pre-show of that episode, but the very brief synopsis here is, Mark had come on 1,000 Stories, maybe six or eight months prior, and then he had transitioned out of the CEO role from his company, where he’d been in that seat, different titles, president at some point than CEO later, but running the organization for the last decade. So major change, a long period of life being wrapped up and put a bookend on, it was raw enough that it still would have a lot of meaning to him, but also not so fresh that he hadn’t had time to reflect on it. So the timing was just perfect.

So what we were talking about with Mark was all about how do I navigate stepping away from being a leader. How do I help my organization bring in the next leader? How do I empower that person? Is what we went in expecting to talk about. The conversation took this really interesting turn where it just became all about identity, all about identity theory. Who are you? And the reason for that, as Mark talked about really eloquently, was, if this is all you are, if the role you’re playing at work is all that you are, you’re going to not do this well. If I were to say, “Hey, Reid, tell me about yourself.” And you started with, “I’m the CEO of Element Three.” And that’s all you’ve got. You started and stopped there. This transition moment is going to break you. So it really became all about identity in that first show.

Reid Morris:

It’s really interesting because in that moment, it was how the foundation of that identity outside of your role is important for navigating the inflection point of stepping away. But one of the patterns that we came to recognize over the course of it is that it makes sense intuitively now, but that having that core identity outside of your role is also key for performing well while you’re there, let alone from the transition. I think that played into the conversations as we started to talk with people like Wes and people like Adam.

Joe Mills:

That’s a really good callout. It’s an interesting challenge, I think, that we face because, on one hand, focusing on something with a lot of intention and a lot of effort will drive good outcomes a lot of the time. I think what we have to recognize is that you can focus and be fully committed to something without letting it eat you. It’s like you are an avid runner. You can care a lot about running without making, “Everything I do is all about running.” I think what happens when you do that is, you start to align yourself and your value with the outcomes that are happening inside of that place.

So whether it’s running or it’s business, if I’m the CEO and I’ve identified myself as that and then the business is not performing, but I’ve decided I am the business, how do I hold myself together in that moment? Just shatters me. I’ve become fragile, basically, is the best way to put it. So I think that is a really good call out that your performance will also increase if you aren’t just thinking about, “What am I beyond this work so that when I’m not in the work, I’m still good?” But rather, “What am I beyond my career so that I can bring those elements into my career and my career into those elements and be a whole resilient, strong individual throughout my life?”

Reid Morris:

It’s really peak identity rule theory. There are a couple of moments in different episodes where we referenced some of scared-confident episodes with Brian Kavicky because he’s gone into IR theory quite a bit. But it’s that idea that when you have a failure, it’s, “I performed poorly in this role, but I am still a high performer.” And it allows you to move past it. I think one thing that’s also really interesting, just as I’m reflecting, is Mark being a return guest on the show. That the first time we talked to him, it was about work-life congruence.

So there’s a little bit of a thread there of someone who has had to spend a lot of time on identity and transitioning roles, but then you also think about the aspect of having this fluidity in terms of not seeing life and role separately. I think we’ve seen that thread come up a couple of times over really all of 1,000 Stories so far, is that a lot of these people who are very successful have identity, if not nailed, that’s something that they think about, but also that they don’t separate work and the rest of their life. I think there might be some interplay there that allows people to navigate inflection, be successful in the role, so on and so forth.

Joe Mills:

Yeah. The thing that keeps coming to my mind about the conversation with Mark that has stayed with me for the last however many months we’ve been doing this since then is his comment about holding the future less tightly. It’s just such an interesting comment, and I think it goes into this idea of expectations as well. A lot of times people set expectations on outcomes and all businesses have goals, and most people, everybody who listens to us probably does, sets goals, has objectives, and I think where things get lost is we make that goal or we make that target the future that we now expect to come real and then we hold onto it, like, “I must make that a reality. I must make that outcome happen.”

If Mark had said, “I’m going to be the CEO for 15 years and that’s my expectation.” How open would he be to having this moment where he is like, “Maybe I’m not the right person to lead this company into the future, and I’m okay with that.” If he’s already said, like, “This is my expectation.” Now he has to go through the whole process of his expectations being let down. Everybody hates that. It’s only disappointment that comes. Does he navigate that as well? Probably not. So there’s this idea that he put forward of, “Just don’t be so beholden to this envisioned future that only you have. Be open to what the options might be. Be open to what is coming.” And then it’s just the really hard, challenging thing about still being committed to a future goal without having this expectation on it.

Reid Morris:

Yeah. It’s interesting because I would say we are two people who probably aren’t as far along on our IR journey. So one thing that’s interesting is, we walked away from that conversation and almost this feeling of, “Yeah, it’d be nice to not hold future outcomes so tightly.” But there’s this really strong connective tissue that starts to show itself of people who have the luxury of not holding the future so tightly, are people who have a healthier IR relationship because the future is not tied to their role. The future is tied to them.

Joe Mills:

It’s a little chicken or egg. Which one actually comes first? Mark brought this up as well, where he said, “Look, I’m a farm boy who’s been blessed beyond my belief and dreams, so maybe I can do this easier.” But I would be like, “Maybe you wouldn’t get there if you didn’t have some of this.”

Reid Morris:

So which one is it? Do we have to start with thinking that way, or do we only get there through abundance?

Joe Mills:

Through abundance.

Reid Morris:

But obviously, that can’t be the answer.

Joe Mills:

That can’t be the answer. You don’t have it beforehand. So it’s very, very challenging. You’ve heard me talk about this guy before, Naval.

Reid Morris:

Yep.

Joe Mills:

He talks about driving your want ratio down really far. If you don’t want a lot, you probably feel abundant already, so maybe that’s the thing that unlocks you. So we went hard into the identity pain, and that really is what guided our next conversation where we said, “Oh, we need to go talk to somebody who works in identity.” Mark had brought up working with an executive coach during his time, at multiple points in his career. So that’s where we went next. We went into the conversation with Wes and talked all about identity some more. Because it was clear that at that point the conversation was about built like, “Oh, how do you build an identity?” And the left turn that Wes took us on was like, “How do you uncover yours?”

Reid Morris:

I think one of the interesting things with our conversation with Wes is again, going back to before season three of the show, all the time in these conversations when we were saying, “What resources did you have?” Or, “How’d you navigate that?” People would say, “Oh, I did this, this, and this and talked to my executive coach.” And, “Oh, I did this and my executive coach said blank.” Right?

Joe Mills:

Yeah, or, “We work with an EOS implementer who’s an executive coach for my team.”

Reid Morris:

Right. So that was the signal of, “Okay, as we’re thinking about what’s the toolbox to navigate inflection, a coach, a mentor is someone who fills that seat in some capacity for us. It’s like a sales trainer for a lot of the organization.”

Joe Mills:

Yeah, let’s say Brian Kavicky does a lot of that for us.

Reid Morris:

But again, he’s more than a sales trainer, and so he’s almost somewhat of an executive coach, a mentor, all these kinds of things. If we think about what Wes is helping people with and even what Brian Kavicky helps people on our team with, yes, there’s some tactical business stuff, but it’s a lot of the soft stuff. Sometimes it’s more explicitly identity. I feel like West does work that is more close to identity, but all of it is helping people navigate their internal blockers that ends up in some way or another being tied to that concept.

Joe Mills:

Yeah. Not to get too meta on it.

Reid Morris:

Yeah, go for it.

Joe Mills:

Not like the company, but your outcomes are just you projecting yourself onto the world. So if you are all jacked up on the inside, there’s just not a lot you can do to make it all work. Tiffany talked about this a little bit, I believe, on our show in the past and also on this episode this year, talking about what happened to Element Three in 2018. It was just like, she was like, “I was stretched to my absolute limits, and it was like I was breaking.” I don’t think it’s really coincidental that Element Three was breaking at the same time, probably less dramatically because there’s more people involved than just her. But what you do and what you are dealing with is going to come out onto the rest of the world. So your ability to manage yourself is the foundational starting point by which your organization will take shape.

Reid Morris:

I think that starts to bring us to our conversation with Adam because he starts to bridge this gap from the perspective of somebody who invests in companies and plays a little bit different of a role than the other guests we’ve had on. He starts to have some discussion around people that are successful and what they look for in companies that are going to be successful. A lot of it is around that leader, but then it’s also leaders who have the health, the stance, the identity that allows the rest of the organization to be successful too.

Joe Mills:

Yeah. If you remember, we wanted to talk to Adam because we wanted the outside perspective on the leader, “Hey, what do you look for as you’re going to invest in companies?” And it was hilarious because the conversation went right back to, “We look for what their identity looks like. Are they coachable? Do they have capacity, aka, are they smart enough? Do they have the skillset to do this job? Will they take our advice and our feedback?” Which is a sign of security, like a secure, resilient individual takes coaching really well. An insecure, fragile individual takes coaching very poorly. So he’s starting to look at, “I’ve got an individual here that I need to build an organization and an executive team around, and we have to come in as an extension of them and be the bridge into the organization. What is this individual like?” And so we ended up talking a ton about identity again. We talked about how that individual’s identity starts to impact their leadership team, impact their organization, was really where that conversation took shape.

Reid Morris:

Yeah. It’s also a thing that talked about compatibility. I think that’s where we start to see it’s not only the identity of a leader, but as you have all these other variables come into play, whether that’s your leadership team, asset and investment, there’s some compatibility aspects of identity and the things that are tied to it that become more key too.

Joe Mills:

Yeah, that’s a really good callout. I hadn’t actually realized that that was happening until we talked to Tim and then reflected on the conversations, but as we moved into… We had like, “Okay.” We very clearly did the toolkit thing. We were like, “Okay, this section of our research feels very clear, the identity piece, knowing who you are.” And that can mean a lot of different things to different people. That could be what are your values. What are the standards that you expect from yourself and those around you? What’s your purpose, like, quote, unquote, “purpose statement?” What’s your mission statement? Whatever you use to articulate who you are, but it has to be at the identity level, not at the role level. So you can’t use monikers of, “I am a dad, I am a mom, I am a CEO, I am a leader.” Nothing role-oriented. This has to be who you are.

Reid Morris:

Strip that away.

Joe Mills:

Strip that away. Who are you?

Reid Morris:

Who are you?

Joe Mills:

So we got that really clear, and then we were like, “Okay, let’s go to a different inflection point.” And so we went and we talked to Tim Leman about entering new markets because, just like with Mark, this is really fresh in Gibson’s mind. They’ve entered a new market really recently. Let’s talk about how he did that. The thing that’s interesting to me is that that conversation was pretty tactical about how does Gibson navigate entering new markets. But Tim made some interesting points about, as you’re growing your team, because for them, growing people, getting more people is the lever to enter a new market.

Reid Morris:

People-centric organizations is kind of like a buzz term, but they are a truly people-focused, people-centric organization.

Joe Mills:

They’re a consulting firm. If we were going to expand to a new city and we needed a geographic footprint, who we put on the ground there would matter more than anything else because we’re a consulting firm. So that’s what you do, or rather, we sell consulting services. So he talked a lot about the people, and in the moment, I didn’t see this bridge, but on reflection, I see it now. Tim talked about the skillset mattering, but not being the key trigger for if this person is right for the role. It was more about what do they want from their future.

Who do they see themselves being? Do they… You’ve used the word compatibility. I’ll use it again here. Are they compatible with, not just me? He interviews all of them, but also the organization, the culture. We use culture at an organization. It might just be identity culture. Might be what we call organizational identity. Because you have the leader who has an individual identity, their individual values and beliefs are going to influence the leadership group that they attract and who buys into them. Then that group is going to set the culture for an organization.

The people we talk with on this show are ambitious, driven individuals who feel called to create positive outcomes in all aspects of their lives.

Reid Morris:

As we all know, with that drive comes pressure and stress. In order to show up and be your best self, it’s extremely important to have a professional at your side who can help you navigate that journey. So that’s the reason that we’re really excited to be sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is the world’s largest therapy service. They have over 25,000 therapists, and it’s all online. What’s really great about that is that if you don’t connect with the first therapist that you interact with, it’s super easy to try another. That allows you to connect with the person that’s best for you. I think it’s awesome that, in this day and age, you can just do it from the comfort of your home. Element Three ourselves is in a hybrid environment, and we’ve all become accustomed to this world of doing things that fit your lifestyle. So we love that BetterHelp can help do that too.

Joe Mills:

For listeners of this podcast, you can get 10% off your first month on Better Help by going to betterhelp.com/1000stories. Again, that’s betterhelp.com/1000stories.

Reid Morris:

When we work with organizations on things like brand and culture, part of that process is really a crucial conversations with the leadership because that is going to be what drives the rest of it.

Joe Mills:

With the CEO. Our point of view and belief is that the CEO owns brand strategy. That tells you everything you need to know about how crucial it is for a leader to know who they are.

Reid Morris:

If we want to actually take this idea of identity even further beyond the idea of just the leader, in the conversation with Tim, you think about these people who are going to help create a new office and a new geography. They are, in theory, leaving something that is comfortable, safe, not necessarily, but they’re taking a leap in another similar situation to, think about, Caswell, where you’re going into the unknown a little bit. So those people have to also be very secure in that identity to one, make the decision to jump into this new environment, and two, be compatible with people who have that same mindset.

Joe Mills:

Yeah, and everybody knows this, all the best people are already taken. They’re almost certainly leaving something good for something they believe to be better. Tim talked about caring more about… Of course, you care about skillset, but they’re hiring producers, people who understand the insurance world, have relationships with major employers, they have the skills. It’s not a question. You’re not hiring somebody out of school to open a market for you. So then it becomes like that being clear, the skills exist. I think they’ve done a really smart thing at Gibson by understanding that the organizational, the culture fit, the identity matching, or at least congruence, became the trigger for, “Is this person going to fit here or not?” And Tim talked about times where what they see for their future doesn’t match what we need in this role, but we might use them somewhere else.

They might not be the person who starts the office here and has to deal with all that that means, the HR challenges, the hiring challenges, essentially being our business unit leader, but they might want to be part of the team. Then we’re also filtering for that. So it was just interesting to hear him talk about, now, he’s gone past just immediate leadership group, we’re into full organizational influence, but that’s still coming back to who are you, who do you see yourself being, and what’s your identity.

Reid Morris:

Which, I think, then takes us to next conversation with Kelley, where it’s speaking of organizational identity. We’re talking about that, but at a whole different scale. As someone who is making decisions for a mass number of people. So I’d be curious about your perspective on how did you see that thread continuing as we talked to Kelley.

Joe Mills:

Yeah. So the gap we felt before we went and talked to Kelley was, we’ve talked to a lot of SMB. Now, the comment we made about CEOs owning brand strategy, Element Three doesn’t work with a lot of SMB. This is a small enterprise. Think of multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, thousands of employees types of organizations. We say to them, “Your CEO has to own it.” And so we were looking at our own experience and conversations, and we’re like, “You know what? We could use a large, big co-thought process here.” And so Kelley’s the CEO at SMC. They’re a very large multinational manufacturing company. Oh, this is going to be a different conversation.

Reid Morris:

The general ideas about culture from the outside, there’s a lot of stigmatism around that industry as well.

Joe Mills:

Totally. The way people describe it is, “You’re behind. You’re a laggard. You’re not up with the times. It’s hard to do it. Oh, and that makes it hard. Who wants to work there?” And all this stuff.

Reid Morris:

We were almost pressure testing the idea of, “Is this still going to be true in this environment?”

Joe Mills:

Yeah, it was like, “Who is somebody who’s probably going to come from a very different background? She’s been there for 30 years, very different upbringing, very different influence. What’s her perspective on this going to be?” And it was really interesting to hear her talk about, “I am responsible for the way the organization functions.” And she’s a super hands-on CEO.

Reid Morris:

Very.

Joe Mills:

Very hands-on CEO. I think that there are likely many people who I respect a ton who would say she’s too hands-on as a CEO. Fair. I’m not here to judge one way or the other. Just a call-out. But she talked a lot about influences from the outside not being good for them. The one that we talked about, I think, over and over, was the idea of remote work. Obviously, it’s very timely. People are still… That is such a conversation. Companies are forcing people back into the office. People are quitting because of it. It’s a charged issue. She was like, “Look, we tried. We cannot do it. We make things, physical things. You need to be here for this.” And they never shut down. They were an essential service or essential business. They never got closed in the pandemic.

Reid Morris:

So I think that brings us to the idea of using identity, her identity, the organizational identity, as the filtering mechanism for outside information, outside recommendations. I feel like that’s where it’s through that. We’ll talk about more as we go into our last conversation with Tiffany. But it started to show itself there of, “All of these recommendations, all this noise, all these you should be doing X, Y, Z. This is where the industry’s going. This is where work is going.” But they and she had to stand firm in the identity of that organization, the needs of that specific business, and filter out the rest of that noise.

Joe Mills:

I think she said something interesting. This is not verbatim, but she talked about people who work there and find success there being next to each other. They like catching each other in the hallways. That’s because the culture is an in-office culture. It’s just what it is. If you hate being in office, if you’re somebody who doesn’t want to be in office, you probably shouldn’t work there because everybody else is going to like it, and you’re going to feel like the odd one out who doesn’t want to be in the office all the time. So it’s actually an incredible service both to themselves and to the outside world to be very clear about, “Here’s who initially I am as the leader, who my executive team also is, has chosen to align themselves with, who my organization, we have set the culture for that organization, and now people are self-selecting into and out of that identity. Do you match with us or not?”

But the moment I had with Kelley was, “Are we just adding to the should noise?” I got really hyper-conscious of that. I was like, “Are we just adding to, ‘Here’s some more stuff that you should go do.'” And so that’s why I wanted to go talk to Tiffany again and say, “I’ve experienced you saying no to outside influence and you and I have a really good relationship, Tiffany, so I feel like I can push on how and when and unpack with you how you do that.” And so what we wanted to do was essentially understand, how as a leader do I… All these people are experts in everything. They’re experts all over the place, organizational psychology. Just inside of that context right there, you’ve got Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Daniel Pink, all really well respected, respect each other, that exists for every single piece of the puzzle.

How do I decide that these really smart people are right or wrong for me? And that’s what the Tiffany one was all about, and it’s standing firmly in who… And what she talked about was like, I made the point on the episode that I would feel most secure when I’m accomplished enough to make decisions. We were talking about the Howard Schultz thing and his saying, “We’re not smoking at our South American locations.” Which was super counter-research culture, everything. My perspective was, when you’ve had enough success, you’ve earned the right to say no. Her perspective, which was again, it was almost like the holding the future less tightly thing, was when clearly who you are, you can make those decisions. I was like, “Oh, that’s a totally different framework to think about.”

Reid Morris:

I think she also talked about the filter mechanism. I think it’s actually through that of, “You can take advice from people who are ahead of you.” Many people will say, “These peers or these leaders are further along in their entrepreneurial journey, their business leadership journey, and therefore their advice is good advice.” But then she brings up the idea of, “Is their future the one that you want?” There’s the idea of, “Some people are peer level and they’re not as far along, so what do they know?” But there’s also the idea of, “Let’s say you got a company from 50 million to 2 billion, but you’re somebody who’s sitting in a company who maybe have a different vision. Maybe you want to stay at a certain scale, and what success and smart decision-making looks like is actually different.” So while that might be successful for a company who’s trying to get to that end goal, but it’s not applicable to you because of what you’re trying to do.

Joe Mills:

It’s interesting. That brings me back to something Mark said. He was like, “I just love that 150 to 250 employee range. We get beyond that, and I don’t know people as well, it’s not as invigorating to me.” It’s like he knows that about himself. Again, select in, select out, to your point around do I want the same outcomes as what those people have? I’m somebody who… I’m very money motivated. I know this about myself. I was driving past a Porsche dealership on my way home from the gym one night, and I just looked and I was like, “Ah, those are cool.” But I have no actual desire to have a Porsche. But you know what I have a lot of desire to do? Have the ability to buy a Porsche. I was like, “This is weird and needs exploring to understand what that is all about.”

But for whatever reason, I’m fairly money motivated. But you know what? I don’t want, I don’t want to be Elon Musk. I don’t want to be Jeff Bezos. I don’t want those kinds of outcomes actually. I don’t want that life. So to your point around looking at the outcome and then working your way back to, “Does that person have advice that matters for me? Am I in a similar ecosystem?” That’s the next step. Like, “Oh, I do want that outcome. Am I in a similar environment where this advice would make sense?” Building your building blocks downward.

Reid Morris:

In some contexts? No, I don’t think in that conversation, but perhaps. But just in general, Tiffany has talked about, when she was early on, she just surrounded herself by people who were further ahead. You’re surrounding yourself by those types of people, but there’s that extra layer and intentionality you can have around that process, surrounding yourself by people who are further ahead in the way that you want to be further ahead. Now, it’s important to get outside perspective and things like people who can play devil’s advocate, but again, a filtering mechanism.

Joe Mills:

Yeah, it’s like outside perspective is good if outside perspective gets you where you want to go, if it helps you move toward the path that you’re on. Otherwise, keep it outside. Maybe hold it at arm’s length. I just noticed it as somebody who consumes… Everybody our age consumes an incredible amount of information. Too much actually, in my opinion. How do we filter it? That was where that came from. It’s like, “Ah, everybody’s smart? How do we do that?” And I think it’s that point of, “Outside perspective is good if it is in line with my outcome.” Otherwise, I need to hear it. But sit for a second, but keep it at arm’s length.

Reid Morris:

So I think that brings us to the overarching theme of this season is, now given, there’s a technical business advice for what a leader should do in specific scenarios, but as we talk about how leaders personally navigate inflection points, that the core foundation of that is all hinging around this idea of identity.

Joe Mills:

Yeah. You and I sketched a quick little model about how we see this. So I’ll try to describe it, and we’ll put it in our post-show report that we’ll put out, post-season report that we’ll put out. But it really is like a bunch of circles on top of each other, and they must be built in an order in order to stand up. At the very center of that circle is, who are you? And again, we talked earlier about stripped away the roles, strip away the titles. Who are you? That little circle is going to build into the next layer, which is you attracting your core leadership group and making sure that the leaders you bring on are in line with that. They’re not so far away from who your identity is that you all are going to clash. There’s no compatibility, like you brought up. So that’s your leadership team. Then the next layer is organizationally, because our leadership team is going to, like we talked about earlier, set the identity and the culture, aka identity, for the organization.

Every time that happens, you make that jump. You better be really secure at the layer below it in order to do it well. Last but not least, you’re going to have the outside world, all the different influences that can touch all the elements of the outside of your organization. You’re going to have to think about what belongs in here and what doesn’t. The more you can help people self-select and decide to want to be in your circle or not be in your circle based on who you are, the better buy-in you’ll get, and I think, likely, the easier you will navigate these different inflection points and all the ones that we didn’t cover. Because your decision-making framework is faster, it’s clear, it’s more consistent, and you’re not bouncing around second-guessing, your team’s not bouncing around second-guessing because it stays the same all the time. Now, identity can evolve and grow, of course, but at these moments in time, if you don’t have a really strong foundation to last on, you’re going to have a very hard time navigating any of them.

Reid Morris:

Yeah. So hopefully, over the course of this season, at least in this episode, if you’re joining now, you’ll have some good episodes to go dive into if you want to dig deeper on one of these specific conversations. But we hope you’ve uncovered some tools, some frameworks that are actually helpful for both understanding what it means to be secure in your identity, to have that healthier identity role theory, but also some of the tools to help you get there if you aren’t quite as far along on that journey.

Joe Mills:

1,000 Stories is brought to you by Element Three, with production by Share Your Genius. This show is part of our company mission to foster growth in people and business so they can change the world. If you’re finding the show helpful or inspiring, please help us by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify. If you’d like to stay in the loop for more updates from our show and to hear other stories of growth, please head to elementthree.com/podcast.