Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
There's no productivity approach that can negotiate with physics. How we manage time is really how we manage ourselves. In this episode, a key question to help us shift from ordinary to exceptional. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 795. 

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:18]:
Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential. 

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:27]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren't born; they're made. And this weekly show helps leaders thrive at key inflection points. As we reach those inflection points in our careers, one of the real challenges we all have is: how do we manage our time better? And how do we surface the time that we need in order to do the important work of leadership? And how do we think about it, respond to it, handle things tactically? Handle our schedules, all of the things that come up? And of course, so much of it comes back to self-management and how we can do even more effective at it. I'm so glad today to welcome a guest who's had so much experience in helping leaders to get better at navigating time through self-management and how we can think about it in some new and practical ways, and a key question that'll help us to get there. I'm so pleased to welcome Neil Shore to the podcast. He's the founder and CEO of the 25th Hour Group, an executive coaching and leadership events firm.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:30]:
Previously, he served as founder, president, and CEO of Triton Digital, a global technology, data, and services leader in the digital audio and podcast industry. He is the author of The 25th Hour: How to Thrive and Gain Ridiculous Amounts of Time by Getting Out of Your Own Way. Neil, what a pleasure to have you here.

Neil Shore [00:01:50]:
Thank you so much. It is great to be here, Dave.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:53]:
Neil, this is like a title that's catnip for someone like me who has Achiever in my top StrengthsFinder results. 25th Hour, finding extra time in the day, I'm all for it. It's something we all aspire to, isn't it?

Neil Shore [00:02:08]:
It really is. And the title has become catchy to so many people. They love it. They get very curious about it. And what's so interesting from my vantage is it's really not about extra time. It's about the time you stop giving away. It's all those extra meetings and the extra time that we just give away and cause ourselves to get distracted by.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:31]:
Well, and in the spirit of that, I grabbed a paragraph that you write early in the book, and I think just speaks to this. And you say: Our conventional thinking about time management is messed up. Experts often equate saving time with working smarter. As they tell us, it's about cutting unnecessary meetings, sending fewer emails, collaborating more strategically. While tactical adjustments such as these help, they only skim the surface and don't get to the core of time management, which is the ability to handle your underlying behavior patterns and emotional needs. I read that, and I was just nodding and thinking like, how true that is, how often I see that in my own behaviors and other leaders. And I was wondering if you could tell me a bit more about that core, the core of what really time management is.

Neil Shore [00:03:21]:
So this came to me exactly as you just read. Because I watched smart, capable people lose hours every week to swirling and commiserations and meetings that didn't need to exist and trying to remain relevant and taking 5-minute conversations and turning them into 30-minute conversations and then complaining that they had no time to work out or they had no time to spend with their families. And it really comes down to you controlling you, you managing you versus trying to manage other people and things that you literally can't control. And I have seen now for years in my work that when you manage you, the day just gets longer. You find your 25th hour.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:14]:
You said a word a moment ago that comes up repeatedly in your work, and the word is "swirling". And I'm wondering if you could paint the picture for what that looks like and how that shows up when you're working with a leader who's swirling. What does that look like?

Neil Shore [00:04:33]:
Okay, so the swirl happens to everyone. No one is immune from it. And we get sucked into the swirl at very early ages and stages of our life. It's that narrative that we start telling ourselves. It's that reel or that loop that just overplays, and we can't shut it off. It's, I wish I hadn't have said that, or my boss really doesn't like me, or did I land that point in the meeting, or, oh, I wish I wouldn't have spoken up, or even sometimes it's, I wish I wore a different shirt, or any of those types of things,

Dave Stachowiak [00:05:13]:
Hmm.

Neil Shore [00:05:14]:
that happen, and then we just replay it and think about it, and we wake up in the middle of the night, and it's still there. And when we come home, we tell our significant other, our roommate, or our parents, or whoever it is that this happened, and we just don't give ourselves a break around, it happened. So what's the worst thing that can happen? Almost always nothing bad's gonna happen. And it's that self-criticism, that overplaying it, that's the swirl.

Dave Stachowiak [00:05:50]:
You highlight a CEO early in the book. You've called her Kara. And I was thinking about her story because I think her challenges mirror a lot of what I hear regularly from our members and listeners. Could you share what she was running into and how that swirling was just showing up at the senior leadership level for her?

Neil Shore [00:06:10]:
So Kara is a perfect— was a professional swirler. She would go into a meeting with her team. She would be overprepared, meaning she spent a significant amount of time preparing for the meeting on material that she already knew and did not need to prepare for. She would then make comments and overcompensate in the meeting based upon whatever the topics were. To showcase her intelligence or her product knowledge, whatever it may be in that particular moment. She would get through the meeting, oftentimes run very inefficiently, and then after the meeting, she would replay the meeting and pick it apart point by point. And if one of her team members would ask a question, she'd be hypercritical about what they intended. Were they trying to pick on me? Was it negative? Was it a backhanded slap? What— she created all of this noise and was in a constant state of swirl.

Neil Shore [00:07:22]:
It's fascinating now to think about how she operates today, which is really learning how to manage that. We don't ever stop the swirls. It happens to me, and I teach this, but we learn how to control it, and we have fun with it. And it's a very different thing. So today, Kara runs a meeting that's very different. She— what used to be a 1-hour meeting is now somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes. So the 10 people in the room plus her 11 people times 30 minutes is hours of productivity back to the company. When she feels like she might have made a mistake, she uses levity.

Neil Shore [00:08:02]:
Or her personality to be like, yeah, I'm not sure I actually meant it that way. And she'll correct herself very swiftly and then have fun and acknowledge herself. I call those cookies. She'll give herself a cookie about, yeah, I just fixed that. And then we calculate the amount of time she saved and how she's modeling behavior for her team and how the team is now really attached to her leadership style. And then her managers, the people that work for her, are now modeling similar behavior for the people that work for them, and the productivity in the company is soaring.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:39]:
There's a key question that you worked with her and you work with so many leaders on, behind making a shift to getting out of the swirling. And the key question's 3 words: what's the intent? Tell me about the power of that question.

Neil Shore [00:08:55]:
So, I tell my clients often, it is one of the most powerful tools you have. So, my favorite story to tell around this, my own experience, is when I was a very young manager, I was 25 years old, I got promoted into a role where I was leading a group of 12 people, all of whom were significantly older and more experienced than me. Their resumes and their pedigree was just more robust than mine. But I was chosen and promoted into this role. And at the end of one of my very first team meetings, one of my direct reports came up to me, and she said, "Neil, you are really powerful". And I looked at her with a blank stare, and then she walked away. And this is a little embarrassing to admit, Dave, but I spent 3 months, and I am not exaggerating, doing everything I could humanly think of to not be powerful.

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:02]:
Huh.

Neil Shore [00:10:03]:
And the idea here was to be one of the team and to rally the troops. And yes, I was a young manager, but there's an instinctive element to some of these things. And what I realized, as it was eating me alive and I was swirling for 3 months, is that I really needed to get clarification here. And so I approached her, and I said, hey, I'd love for you to understand. Remember 3 months ago you said to me, I'm really powerful? What was the intent of what you were saying? And she said, oh, it's, it's easy. Um, you sit tall in your chair, you're very patient with the team, and you explain things very thoroughly. That's super powerful to me.

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:44]:
Hmm.

Neil Shore [00:10:44]:
So here, this woman was paying me a beautiful compliment as a young manager, and I did not understand the intent of it. And I spent, again, an embarrassing amount of time swirling and spinning out and modifying my behavior as opposed to just pausing, going, huh, I wonder what her intent was. If I wasn't clear about it, I could have asked her in the moment, and it would have saved me an enormous amount of time. Now, of course, as a young manager, I didn't know that, and these tools hadn't been developed yet. But what's the intent? was born at that moment, but has been developed to really pause and think about it. So someone comes up to you after a meeting and says something. If you just pause and think about it for a second, what's their intent? In this case, Rachel- her name was Rachel. Rachel was trying to butter me up a little bit, give me some feedback, get to know me.

Neil Shore [00:11:49]:
I'm now her boss. And had I just paused and went like, okay, Rachel is saying something positive to me, and she is engaging and endearing, that's lovely. I would've just said, oh, thank you, Rachel. That's really kind to hear. And I would've moved on. But I didn't solve for the intent. And this happens all the time in so many different places. So I could give you many more examples.

Neil Shore [00:12:12]:
Let's use a recent one with one of my clients. They run a larger company. It's hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, and they are only about 5 years old. So they're crushing it. And the CEO, she is a very dynamic and very interesting individual. She gets caught up in a swirl a lot. And we use what's the intent often with a board member of hers that really gets under her skin. So this particular board member, who has not ever operated a business, is trying to become very active in the business.

Neil Shore [00:12:58]:
And her swirl, I like to refer to that as the devil. Her devil becomes her governor. And the devil narrative is about, "oh, I'm going to get fired, or this person doesn't like me". Very normal. We all do it. And instead, what we do to help this is we just figure out the intent. The intent is this particular board member is so excited. The company is growing so fast; the investment mark that the firm is able to take against this investment is the fastest and best investment for this particular investor. And so therefore, the enthusiasm, which comes across as criticism and/or overthinking or micromanaging, winds up being an inhibitor to this particular CEO.

Neil Shore [00:13:47]:
And so as soon as she realized, oh, huh, you know, this person's just excited about their own career, and that's their intent is just stay connected to it and make sure nothing bad happens. It's been a game changer.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:00]:
I think what's so powerful about this question of "what's the intent" is just thinking about it through the lens of how we're receiving what's coming at us. And I, I hadn't really thought about that consciously, Neil, until really getting into your work. I guess 15, 20 years ago, I read Difficult Conversations, the book, that a lot of people are familiar with. And there's the beautiful line that intent does not equal impact in that book. And it's really aimed at us as message senders and thinking about how we send messages and making sure even though we intend well, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to land that way. What I hadn't thought as much about, though, is on the receiving end. Of course, we're all recipients of messages, situations, contexts.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:45]:
You just mentioned 2 of them that are really powerful. In asking this question in the context of what's being received, I think that's where this gets really powerful.

Neil Shore [00:14:54]:
So, the key to this is mastering it so that you're not actually asking the other person, but that you're solving it yourself. So, and it would look something like this. I have a client who prides himself on having an open-door policy, very ordinary, very typical. Good leaders say this. And then he winds up complaining about how many people are lined up outside of his door.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:25]:
Yeah.

Neil Shore [00:15:25]:
And there's one person in particular that has just become an abuser or an annoyance to this. And his interpretation of this young professional coming into his office was about, oh, this, this, this guy, he, he's clearly not that good at his job and he's not that competent. And he made all of these assumptions based upon this young professional taking him up on his open-door policy. And so what became really interesting to me is it had nothing to do with this guy's competence. It had everything to do with the fact that he wanted time with his boss, and he thought that "if I get more face time with my boss, the more interactivity I have with my boss, the more valuable I'll become, the deeper the relationship, and I'll get promoted".

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:21]:
Hmm.

Neil Shore [00:16:21]:
And so what we solve for very quickly is this guy keeps coming back to the office, not because of the open door policy, but his intent is actually not that he needs help. He's a wildly smart guy. It's that he wanted face time with his boss. So the second that my client realized this through what's the intent and we developed it, the conversations went from 20 minutes, which was just a hijack of time, into 1 minute where he could then say, you know, you're doing a great job on this project. What do you think you should do? And then this— he calls him a kid. He's actually not a kid. He's a young professional. But he said the kid would just solve the problem right in front of me. And it was impressive.

Neil Shore [00:17:04]:
So the most notable, and I love these examples because they happen every day, they're happening everywhere, is the assumption was that this young professional wasn't doing a good job, was really uncomfortable making decisions, was not going to advance. It was the opposite. They thought, wrongfully so, but they still thought that the way that they were going to get ahead was face time. So 20-minute conversations turning into 1-minute conversations where the boss, in this case my client, sees the true competence and the young professional walks out giddy with, like literally this whole joyful, like 1-minute experience. 19 minutes saved times 2 people is, you know, nearly 40 minutes of productivity, and everyone feels good. What's the intent is a game changer for leaders.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:57]:
I'm thinking about what you said a moment ago that I think is so key in this, of, this isn't necessarily something you ask out loud to someone else, but it's what you're asking yourself as a leader. And I'm thinking back to all those years ago, that conversation with Rachel where, like 3 months you were stewing on something until you finally did end up having a conversation with her, like, " Hey, what did you mean by that? What did you intend by that statement?" How do you get to a point as a leader where you are able to have that conversation with yourself and get there faster than you would've spending the time ruminating?

Neil Shore [00:18:33]:
So it's a great distinguishing question, Dave. In my practice, in my experience, it's about having the desire and the self-awareness to actually want to grow and to stop complaining. So there are those people that will just complain about not having enough time and not being able to spend time with their family, and everyone's an idiot, and all of those things. Those people exist. And when they wake up and they realize that when you manage you, there are things you can do that become powerful and life-changing, and when you implement it, it just literally changes the type of leader you are. So, it starts with the self-awareness. You know, I really understand that things could be done differently here. Let's see how we do it.

Neil Shore [00:19:24]:
And then, we have to teach them how you manage you, instead of trying to manage everyone else. We have to deal with all of those insecurities and swirling patterns that we all have, totally normal. I haven't met anyone yet, from the biggest brand name CEOs that haven't gone through things like imposter syndrome or the swirling features that we've been talking about. We all have it. It's totally normal. And the idea is how to manage it. How do you manage you? And so, the distinguishing difference is starting from a—, and it typically starts from a place of exhaustion. It comes from, I'm so fatigued.

Neil Shore [00:20:05]:
Here's one of my favorite cases. There's a senior partner of a very notable law firm who was about to quit. So, he literally couldn't take it anymore. He was so burnt out- nearly 30 years of practicing law, really exceptional attorney, very large staff, gets referred and introduced to me. And what I immediately start teaching him is that the fact that he's fatigued is his fault. And he starts to go into, but you don't understand, Neil. We've got all these attorneys, and they're constantly needing my help. And after we got through some of the initial work and he realized what's the intent, and learned how to ask questions and then learned how to be definitive. And then realized that he was the micromanager and he wasn't trusting his team, even very senior, experienced attorneys; that was the cause of the fatigue.

Neil Shore [00:21:07]:
So, once we recalibrated him, you manage you, recalibrating yourself- it was an absolute change in everything. So, what wound up happening is he did take a month off. So, we gave him a little bit of a break. We went into some really deep teaching. It was a lot of fun actually. And his awareness was quick. He's a really smart man, very dedicated to his trade. But first time in his life that he focused on his own professional development.

Neil Shore [00:21:38]:
He was very assumptive, and because the firm was successful, he thought he was a successful leader. His awareness grew in a very dramatic way, and then he started to model this behavior and to use the tools. And it's, it's, it's incredible. I spoke to him the other day, and he was telling me how the behavior, it's almost like follow the leader, monkey see, monkey do, as they, as they say at times. And just how he's modeled it has now become the norm in the firm. And it took only about 11 months to do that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:13]:
You write on this: Most people don't think to ask about others' intent. They give their devil free rein, and they fall into the same pattern responses. They let themselves get bogged down in their own internal swirling, reinforcing their insecurities and preconceived notions in their own minds. It's the ordinary thing to do, and it costs them. I highlighted that paragraph because there's a word there that comes up again and again in your work is, ordinary. What do most people do? Where do most people default? And you make a distinction between ordinary thinking and exceptional thinking in the context of considering intent. Tell me about that distinction.

Neil Shore [00:22:55]:
Okay, so I love talking about this, because we all start as ordinary, and ordinary is not a judgmental word or intended whatsoever to be anything but a thought-provoking word. Our default settings are built from very early ages. If you think about grade school, we eat lunch at the same time. If anyone was like me, my parents packed me a lunch that had 3 different varieties; that was it. Same juice box every day. We get very robotic in our programming. And as we go into our careers, we enter the workforce the same way. If I put in the hours and if I'm visible and if I do things the way other people are doing things, then I will get recognized, and I will get promoted, and then I will make more money.

Neil Shore [00:23:50]:
And if we think about our own behavior and those of the people that work with and for us, it is incredibly robotic. Ordinary to me is normal. It is as normal as the day is long. It's all that programming. It's why 30-minute meetings happen instead of 5-minute discussions, etcetera. And there's just tons and tons of cases around this. What I teach people to do and what I call it- you mentioned it's the word ordinary is used a lot in the book, and it is. Is we don't want to be ordinary.

Neil Shore [00:24:24]:
We don't want to be in the same robotic sequence where everyone else is doing it. We want to break those sequences, which allows us to be exceptional. So, we can turn a 30-minute meeting into a 5-minute meeting, or we can solve for what someone's intent is. Oh, this person just wants some of my attention, or whatever it may be along those lines. That's where we start to become exceptional. And a few things happen and are exceptional. One, it saves a lot of time. So that is an incredible dividend and certainly in theme with the topic here and the book, etc. But we're also happier.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:06]:
Mm-hmm.

Neil Shore [00:25:06]:
So when people are thriving around us, and our companies are succeeding, and we're meeting goals and the environment, the culture has a different tone to it, because we have a different tone and we're leaders, and that's our responsibility. And when we can give feedback, and we can use words like exceptional and ordinary where everyone understands it, and we don't explain ourselves away from it, it would look something like this: Well, you know, Dave, I kind of think that the ordinary is a little bit— I'm not trying to be judgmental, but— And we give all this preamble and so many words, it's confusing. And then no one— actually knows what we're saying.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:46]:
Yeah.

Neil Shore [00:25:46]:
Versus sitting with someone that works for you and you go, that idea was ordinary. Come back to me with exceptional. And because they know what you mean, because you've defined it, it's a very quick statement, and people want to be exceptional. And therefore, we create the awareness around working towards exceptional. The last point around it is ordinary is fine. It's safe. You're going to get a 3% raise or have a promotion from time to time. You're going to likely have a decent career.

Neil Shore [00:26:22]:
There's nothing bad about living in the ordinary. I haven't met too many people that wind up very fulfilled or having a lot of fun and joy living in their professional ordinary. When you're in your exceptional, things move faster, promotions move faster, managing your board or your team or your CEO or being a CEO is easier. And just the amount of fun and joy that it brings, that levity, that lighter tone makes things just so much better. So that's where the exceptional comes in.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:58]:
And like so many things in leadership and learning and our behavior, it comes down to just how we approach things in the moment each day and how we approach our thinking and how we respond. And you have a couple of invitations for us to do this, and one of them is to pause. And when I was thinking about pausing, I think a big part of it is just coming back to really asking this question of ourselves. When someone comes into the open door or says something in a meeting or says something on the way out, as you mentioned earlier. And really actually pause and ask this question: what's the intent? And stop and consider it. And just by doing that, that changes the dynamic, doesn't it?

Neil Shore [00:27:41]:
It completely changes. So the trifecta here is how 3 of the tools work together. It starts with pause. And even sometimes it can be awkward, right? If you have a 5- or 7-second pause, there's an awkwardness to this. If you think about when we're in our ordinary, we start answering questions or addressing topics before the other person has even stopped talking. So we're anticipating where they're going. We're cutting them off. Totally ordinary.

Neil Shore [00:28:15]:
In the exceptional, we wind up pausing. Huh. Okay. I have a couple options here. I can give my ordinary answer. Or I can solve for the intent. As we get good at this, it usually takes, I don't know, 3 to 5, 5 to 7 seconds. It's our, our instincts start to really build around this, and then we just ask a question.

Neil Shore [00:28:36]:
So it's something like, uh, you know, hey, I'd love to understand your thought on this. So you asked me what I would do, but what would you do? And then all of a sudden you become a big listener. People love to have that engagement. Their intent in the examples we've been using have been FaceTime with their boss anyway, and they walk away thrilled. The byproduct of this, or what really winds up happening, is then they go home, and they're at the dinner table with their significant other. And it's what I love to refer to as, you know, hi, honey, how was your day? Most people come home into their ordinary. My day was fine. Another day at the office.

Neil Shore [00:29:13]:
I did this, I did that, and that's the ordinary. Where we help other people as leaders towards their exceptional is by pausing, solving for the intent, asking questions, building that engagement. And then they get to go home, and when they're asked, hi, honey, how was your day? My day was incredible. Why? Well, because my boss engaged with me. I got to speak, and I felt really good about it. And 2 things happen. One, that person feels really good, but then the spouse or the significant other winds up, you know, hallelujah, I don't have to hear about another ordinary day. And that helps in the home life as well.

Dave Stachowiak [00:29:51]:
And, you know, and I also hear your invitation on this too, to— this isn't like a binary switch where, like, you switch from ordinary and exciting. I mean, you've said so many times in this conversation, like, we all fall into the ordinary. We all struggle with this. You do. I do. What we're doing just by stopping and pausing and just asking the question, even if we don't change our behavior, is we're giving ourselves the opportunity to think about a different way to open the door to the exceptional, right? And it doesn't mean we're going to walk through it all the time. It doesn't mean the other person is going to walk through it all the time. But boy, if you got 20% better, 30% better at changing the dynamic of everyday interactions, wow, like that would open up a lot of bandwidth and time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:34]:
And it all comes back to the time management piece of all of a sudden we're utilizing our time more effectively, and it is through self-management?

Neil Shore [00:30:42]:
It's exactly what you just described. If we could improve in just small steps by implementing the tools and just creating the awareness, it's just fascinating to see how it evolves into the positive. And, you know, one of the other things that I love to teach clients, this is really important and applicable to all of us, is: Don't ever get mad at yourself. Don't ever. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of energy. It's a massive amount of swirls. Things just happen.

Neil Shore [00:31:16]:
I had a case, a client issue that was happening. Really, really difficult client, very complicated situation. And my son, who had just graduated from college, he had just moved home for a short period. Comes home one night from dinner with a friend and walks into my office. Hey, Dad, how's it going? And I— oh man, what a day. And I start to explain it to him, 100% in my ordinary. And picture the 21-year-old son who just is standing there with his arms crossed, with no patience on his face whatsoever, zero amounts of empathy. And just looks at me and goes, "Dad, like, don't you teach this stuff all day long? Snap out of it".

Neil Shore [00:32:06]:
Like, why are you buying into this guy's shenanigans? Now, a couple things happened for me. One, I was fascinated that my 21-year-old knew the word shenanigans. And the second thing that happened to me is it was a prompt. It was a kick. It was just a moment where I got to go, oh my God, I just spent the last 6 hours swirling. Totally ordinary. And so, my choice was I could be really upset with myself and go, oh my God, I've failed, and I teach this to clients, and what kind of teacher am I if I can't do it myself? Or I could go, wow, I just had a totally human moment. What a cool situation that my 21-year-old was the one that gave me the kick in the butt.

Neil Shore [00:32:52]:
And my response to him was, I paused. I realized his intent because I actually, the way I said it, he used a bit more colorful words. And let's just say they could sound judgmental. So when my 21-year-old was snapping me out of it, that was not a direct quote. He was way more colorful than that. I won't repeat the words he said. And so I could have gone, wow, my 21-year-old just insulted me. And I could have gotten really upset with him.

Neil Shore [00:33:17]:
Or I solve for— I paused. I went, what's his intent? His intent is to snap me out of it. He's right. And then I wound up thanking him. It was amazing. And I saved myself, I don't know how many more hours of the swirl and the shenanigans. And I spent zero time thinking about the 6 hours I wasted, just like now I laugh about the 3 months I wasted in Rachel's calling me powerful. So, we don't look backwards.

Neil Shore [00:33:44]:
We don't ever get upset with ourselves, and we have to introduce this lighter tone, this like, okay, yeah, that just happened. Let's fix it. And we do that by pause. What's the intent? Ask questions. That is your— if no one has any other benefit from the book or from listening to this discussion, if you just do that, you're gonna find your 25th hour.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:07]:
Neil Shore is the author of The 25th Hour: How to Thrive and Gain Ridiculous Amounts of Time by Getting Out of Your Own Way. Neil, so appreciate you sharing your work with us.

Neil Shore [00:34:18]:
Thank you, Dave. Great to be here. Thank you as well.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:26]:
If this conversation was helpful to you, 3 other episodes I'd recommend. One of them is episode 590: How to Genuinely Show Up for Others. Marshall Goldsmith joined me for that conversation. And we talked about the reality that is true for pretty much every leader: that we do need to show up and be present for all kinds of different conversations every single day and every single hour in many cases. And often those conversations are very different. A conversation at 9:00 AM might be a conversation of giving someone great news. And then the 10:00 AM conversation may be the exact opposite. And then the noon conversation is with a key customer.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:04]:
There are all kinds of different interactions many of us have throughout the day. And how do we do a better job at actually staying in the moment even though we are jumping around between so many different things? Marshall shows us exactly how to do that in episode 590; I think a great complement to this conversation. Also recommended, episode 655: How to Help Difficult Conversations Go Better. Sheila Heen was my guest on that episode, one of the co-authors of Difficult Conversations. And the message from that book, that intent does not equal impact. Oftentimes, we feel something from someone's question or interaction, and it isn't necessarily what they intended, but that lands very differently. And we talk in that conversation on how to frame that, make those conversations go more effectively. And of course, the question we talked about today comes right to the heart of that, episode 655.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:54]:
And then finally, I'd recommend episode 783: How to Take Back Your Evenings. Guy Winch was my guest on that recent episode. And we explored the reality that a lot of the stress of work, sadly, doesn't happen in the workplace. It happens in the evening time when we have a chance to stop and think for a bit. And as Guy pointed out in that conversation, a lot of us tend to ruminate. And get into this thinking that isn't helping us. It's actually harming us and causing us to crowd out the time that we should be using for rest and relaxation. In episode 783, Guy has some wonderful invitations to help us to step away from that to get just a bit better.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:33]:
All of those conversations, of course, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. And if you set up your free membership, one of the areas you're going to find inside of our episode library is productivity. Many of the episodes I mentioned recently are under that. Also, an area on conversations. Conversations are such a key competency for leaders. We're also filing this conversation today under that topic, because so much of what we do as leaders is about interactions every single day. All that's part of the free membership. If you set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com, you'll have access to all those episodes and everything else, all the benefits inside of the free membership.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:09]:
Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Next Monday, I'm glad to welcome Simone Stolzoff to the show. We're going to be talking about how to build your tolerance for uncertainty. Speaking of something we all run into in leadership is a lot of uncertainty. How do we get better at actually getting used to it? And more importantly, being able to thrive through it? Join me for that conversation with Simone. Have a great week, and see you back on Monday.