According to the website business line on campus there, there's a new and emerging insight around building future leaders.

Perhaps the most revealing and empowering insight is that it requires the leader to change their behavior for effective leadership.

There are so many resources to help leaders succeed.

Tonight, we'll hear from two experts whose mission is to make us great leaders.

I'm so happy you're joining us.

From Los Angeles.

This is KLCC, Kelsey's PBS.

Welcome to everybody.

With Angela Williamson and Innovation Arts, Education and Public Affairs program.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

What sets the best leaders apart from the rest is their ability to balance people and performance.

The ability to stay focused on the mission and achieving results while at the same time building quality relationships.

Research supports this idea, but there are also plenty of stories of real people doing real work that provide even more compelling evidence for this balanced approach.

I experienced one of those stories right here in this space not too long ago.

This area was a big pile of dirt and rocks.

Billy, the contractor I hired to transform this barren wasteland, called it a blank canvas.

He was being kind.

But when Billy brought in his crew, things started to change.

It took some time, though.

Several months, in fact, from start to finish.

So I had the chance to observe and get to know the guys who did the work and observe how they interacted with each other.

Hector, the team leader, was here almost every day, but he wasn't the kind of leader that told people what to do and then disappeared off into some cozy office someplace.

Hector was hands on.

One minute he'd be waist deep in a muddy trench, and the next minute he'd be climbing a ladder with a stack of heavy tiles on his shoulder.

No doubt he worked hard, but he always wore a smile, and he always seemed to be encouraging the other guys.

There was a lot of playful banter and everyone seemed to enjoy the work and enjoy each other.

Hector clearly led by example, but he also took the time to connect with each member of his team.

That's why I was fascinated to hear Hector story.

Billy, the owner of the company, met Hector when Hector was a skinny 18 year old kid standing with a group of day laborers near a Home Depot.

Nothing distinguished Hector from the group other than he was younger than most of the other guys.

And he looked as though he recently missed a few meals.

Nevertheless, Billy thought he was qualified for the job that was on the agenda for that day and invited him to jump into the truck.

That was 22 years ago.

Along the way, Billy took the time to teach Hector everything he knew about the business, and Hector soaked it all in.

Now Hector owns a home, has a family, and is showing the newer guys how to succeed.

Gilbert is another success story.

Gilbert now works closely with Billy to manage the business.

But also, just a few years ago, Gilbert was a homeless addict.

When Gilbert hit Rock bottom, he found his way to church and experienced a dramatic conversion.

But he needed a job and a path back, and Billy gave him that chance.

Initially, Gilbert did backbreaking labor in the California sun, digging, moving rocks and planting as he sweated through his work.

The poisons he had previously put into his body came pouring out.

Soon, Gilbert worked his way up to become a foreman and then office manager and the kind of leader that knows the power of grace.

When I asked Billy, the owner of the company, what his leadership philosophy was and how he thought it influenced the success of his business, he offered a simple, yet profound response by saying, Sometimes you just have to give guys a chance.

Get to know them and build relationships.

You know, I wasn't surprised, but I was pleased.

I was pleased to know that what I wrote about and taught were actually being modeled right here in my own backyard.

Better results do often come down to one thing, and that one thing is building better relationships.

Dr. Mike, what an empowering story.

That story has a lot to do with the book we want to discuss today.

So tell me about your book.

Sure.

I've had the opportunity to study leadership my really my entire life.

And I've always been fascinated with the difference between good leaders and bad leaders.

That's always the question I come back to in my scholarship and my my practitioner oriented work.

And so I wanted to explore what makes a good leader and what makes a bad leader, because we've all had really bad bosses that we could have done without and we've had some great leaders.

And so what makes them different, and that's what I explored in the book.

And so my question to you is, when you were trying to examine this, because you are a scholar, so you're trying to examine the good leaders versus what makes a bad leader.

Tell me a little bit about what did you discover and then when you discovered it, how can we actually help those leaders who I'm just going to say not so good, become good leaders, right?

Yeah, we all want to be a good leader or be around good leaders in this.

And these lessons I unpack here really apply to teams and being a good teammate as well.

So what I discovered is really the key is being able to balance a focus on the mission as well as taking care of the needs of the people involved.

So it's that balance and I use that metaphor of the scales a lot in the book.

And when I talk about the book, because those who can keep those two really critical aspects of leadership in balance are the ones that tend to accomplish great things and bring out the best in the people around them.

Can you tell me, Dr. Mike, how does behavior play in the role of a good leader versus an I?

I'm always going to say not so good leader.

Sure, sure.

Well, our behavior impacts people, and I think that's something critical, important for for everyone to recognize.

Even if you're not a leader, you're powerful in that you're impacting the people around you.

You're either bringing out the best in the people around you or bringing out something less than the best in the people around you.

So in the book, I talk about some some specific leadership practices and specific team practices that help people bring out the best in the folks around them.

You know, let's take an example of this focus on the mission.

Does everyone have is everyone clear about what we're here to do?

You know, when President Kennedy said we're going to send men to the moon and bring them back safely by the end of this decade, there was no doubt what the mission was and everyone focused on it, and we accomplish that mission.

Unfortunately, sometimes people come into the workplace and they're not so clear on what we need to get done.

This week, this month, this year, today.

And so the mission should influence how we use our time, how we prioritize our activities.

And so that clarity is really important.

Imagine this.

I'm a golfer.

Are you a golfer?

No.

Well, you should give it a try.

It's a lot of fun.

I've taken lessons.

All right.

Keep at it.

Okay.

I'm not very good.

But think of it this way.

If you walked up to that first tee on this beautiful golf course, you've taken lessons, You bought a new set of clubs, you've got these pristine golf balls, and you get to the first tee and you look around and you have no idea which direction to hit the ball.

Where is the green?

Where you you, you hitting the ball?

That's like like we do to a lot of people in the workplace.

They show up well-prepared, ready to go enthusiastic, and then they don't quite know what we want them to do.

And that's a problem.

That's really the first thing.

Something else related to mission and then we can talk about people.

We got to help people connect the mission to why it matters to them.

We need to make the mission meaningful to them because when the mission has personal meaning to a person, it just taps into that intrinsic motivation that makes them positive and engaged and enthusiastic in all in their committed.

They're accountable there.

They're making good choices in the workplace.

We don't have to use carrots and sticks if they're accountable and committed.

Wow.

And you mentioned you wanted to talk about people.

Is does that include when you're when you have a strong mission that brings value?

Does that actually include the people that you are serving as a leader or does it include something else?

Well, we we've started talking about the practices of a mission.

First, people always leader and clarity of the mission and making the mission matter.

That's important.

But when we're dealing with people, we need to do things like learn how to collaborate well, learn how to communicate effectively, have healthy opposition.

This is one of my favorites.

Healthy opposition.

Have you ever been on a team where where everyone always goes along to get along?

Everyone agrees.

There's never that healthy debate.

In my research, I found that those teams are usually pretty average.

In fact, I ask people who are on teams like that to give themselves a grade, and I've never heard a grade higher than C minus in terms of the output, the production, the productivity of that team.

Healthy teams have healthy oppositions and if you're not able to have that good, vigorous, vibrant debate, you'll never innovate.

You'll never be as creative as you could be.

You won't come up with new practices.

You will always be average.

And who wants to be average?

No one does.

So my question to you is, if I'm a leader, Dr. Mike and I have a team like that and my business depends on them being innovative, what would you advise me to do?

Shut up.

And I don't.

Sorry about that.

And this is a talk show.

Let your people have a voice.

So in my observations of leadership in teams where teams get in trouble is when a few people dominate every conversation.

In fact, Google did a very famous study about what made what what their most effective teams did.

And one of the interesting findings from the study was that the most effective teams on those teams, everyone tended to talk about the same amount of time.

When you have a few people that dominate the conversation like the boss, you're missing opportunities from people that that may have a great idea, but because of their personality or they feel intimidated or whatever they're not sharing, you've got to really ask people to share and get involved in the conversation.

And then you be quiet as the leader and let and listen because you'll be pleasantly surprised at what your people say.

Wow.

Well, you just gave us the tip of the iceberg.

So my question to you, before we end our conversation, someone's out there watching and they love what you had to say and they want to get in touch with you and possibly have you bring this book to their people.

So how do we get in touch with.

Sure, I do training.

I speak, and it's the best way is Dr. Mike Patterson dot com D.R Mike Patterson dot com and the book has its own website.

It's that good It has its own website.

Right.

Mission first people always Booking.com.

Wow.

Well, Dr. Mike, thank you so much for just giving us a little bit of an inside of how we can be a successful leader, but also to how people within an organization, what they should look for in leadership as well.

So you've pretty much covered everything with this book, and I know someone will be reaching out to you.

So thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

And you stay right there and come back as I continue my conversation on leadership with Colonel Garth Macy.

Thanks so much.

Hi.

My name is Colonel Garth, and my company Command Ready is partnering with Ultimate to bring leadership development to the L.A. Unified School District.

We for years now have been working in afterschool programs to develop.

Students.

With real world skills.

Our programs meet once a week with your students when they get out of school.

We talk about things like setting a budget, public communication, public speaking, social media, how to apply for colleges, how to apply for jobs.

And we network and coach the students through the entire school year.

We start in the last week of September, and the program runs until the first week of May.

And then once a month we get these kids together and we bring them out to new places for new challenges, whether it's jumping off high ropes courses or coming out to meet the Wolf tribe, we're an actual pack of wolves is brought in to talk about teambuilding and how groups and people can work together to get the best outcomes in their life.

Joining the Youth Champion programs gives your students an opportunity to take themselves to the next level, to build their leadership, to build their confidence and take them on to the next chapter in their life.

I look forward to seeing in the class.

Welcome back to our conversation about creating leaders who matter.

Colonel Garth Masi, thank you so much for being here.

We started talking about leaders and business leaders, but you did something a little bit different with leadership.

We do.

We stretch the program out, right?

So my company commander, Eddie, teaches leadership to corporations here in L.A., but also all over the country.

But we started a youth program about four or five years ago, and the idea was if we could get leadership and activities baked into people's lives earlier than when they were going out into the job market, they're coming out with another set of skills, or at least an understanding of what like teams or organizations need when they're looking to promote or to hire.

So we created the Youth Champion program.

So we do an after school program for that.

And there are a number of afterschool programs, but not any that I've heard of that trains like leadership skills to young people.

That's really ambitious.

Well, it's it's been a lot of fun, actually.

The kids are the students are looking for opportunities to grow.

But we also are bringing things that they just don't get a chance to see all the time.

You know, I jokingly tell them I'm going to be the coolest and or uncle they never had.

We bring veterans in as our instructors, so military service is part of Commander Eddie's brand.

Everyone who teaches or instructs is a veteran of some armed service, and then they're coming back with real life skills and education and real world experience.

So when they're telling the kids a story, they're telling them stories about things that have actually happened in their life before they came back and started working with them in the after school so they can share ideas about setting a budget for the household or how to interview for a job.

Having gone through several layers of that, it's just a slightly different twist and what the kids get to normally see so well.

And I love that you said that it's a slightly different twist because it seems that you really your your organization is strong on getting those stories out.

So why do you think that makes a difference for the students to hear the stories?

I think it's about how we learn.

So we don't really teach teamwork in our school system, you know, and when we shouldn't write, we're teaching individualism.

You have to get good grades.

You have to do well on a test.

You have to get a good resume, then you get a good job.

Then you do a good job on a project.

And at some point someone finally says, Hey, here's an opportunity to lead and you can be in charge of three people, and that's all great.

But when you get that opportunity and you're suddenly in charge, the things you need to do to transition from a great doer to someone who's actually leading others are very nuanced.

There's a lot of finesse to it, and we haven't taught it.

The closest we come is to say, Well, I was on a sports team, but sports teams are still about individual effort.

I mean, there aren't a lot of running backs.

You know, at the end of their four years of high school that are talking about the team's win loss record, they talk about their yards or their touchdowns or, you know, the things that they've accomplished.

So if we can work with students younger to teach the aspects of how to live a life well, how to study well, how to set goals in a way, you know, that put them on a path that they may not have known existed.

What we found with a lot of the students is they have a very narrow view of what's possible.

Right.

I mean, they have one type of job that their family may know.

They have one type of industry that they've been exposed to.

We do a civic government day and we go meet a local mayor or city council member, chief of police and chief of fire.

And routinely it's the first politician or law enforcement person that these students have ever met in person.

I mean, unfortunately, too many movies, you know, the Marines get, you know, the big muscles, the tight haircut, they shoot a lot of bullets.

They're all yelling and screaming.

Nothing about leadership taught by the military is yelling and screaming.

It's not how we function.

It's an all volunteer force.

We have We work to have critical thinkers.

We work to have people who are working their way through problems.

It's it's an idea called maneuver warfare.

It's been around since the Prussians and Napoleon.

And the whole idea is that you create opportunities to see other options.

So if you ever get to a world where it's a binary answer, right, there's either a yes or a no or a one or a zero yes, you've been forced into a place where you don't actually have a choice, where you don't actually have the ability to think and work and create your own reality.

So in maneuver warfare, the premise is not that it's one and zero, it's that it's one in an infinite number of possibilities.

Now, there are some bad choices, but there are also a lot of really good choices that aren't presented.

And so any time you're dealing with or working with other people and they come up and they say, you either do this or you do that, what you've gotten yourself into is you've been pigeonholed a little bit and you're stuck.

And leadership is about saying, Well, wait a minute, what about this third, third opportunity or this fifth opportunity and work our way around the cycle that way.

So we try and impart that so the kids don't just have a silly junior college, great school, but they don't just have that.

Last year we had two kids get accepted to Dartmouth.

We had six or seven go on to UCLA, we had UCI.

So our graduating group of seniors, every single kid in our graduating group of seniors got accepted into a four year university, and some of them are world class and they involve packing up and moving, and that's terrifying too.

So when you have somebody who's traveled or who has moved or had to do things they didn't want to do, it helps create better questions and better questions, create other options.

And that gets you away from the one or zero.

And that's what we're looking for.

That is there's so much in that and it's all fantastic.

Do you find that it's a challenge to start to in part, in part this new type of thinking to these young people?

Because I mean, you are really thinking outside the box there.

So is it a challenge?

You have to work, work everybody to this point and how do you do that?

So we meet once a week, gives us about 26 hour long sessions over the course of the year.

Plus once a month we go to our go and see tours.

It's free for any kid that wants to come sign up as long as they're in the high school program.

In Los Angeles, it's Zoom meetings during the week and then to go and see her in person.

And yes, it takes time.

I mean, when we first start these, we're on a Zoom call.

Everyone turns the screen off.

Nobody wants to be seen.

Nobody talks when they you know, by the end of the year, we've got people in the chat, we've got side conversations going.

We're breakout rooms, and it's about building comfort and confidence.

I mean, we all know what it's like to go to a dance or, you know, out to a group or to a networking event and you have to stand there and you look at this crowd of people who have it all figured out, and they're all talking and they're all engaged and they're all doing something and you're standing on the sidelines.

And how do you start, you know, what's that first step that helps you walk up to somebody or something that you don't know and embrace it?

It's a virtue of courage, right?

It's the ability to to try other things, even though you feel nervous about it.

Well, we're trying to teach that to the students, and that takes the whole year.

It takes a lot of encouragement.

And in you know, to some of them, I mean, I'm scary.

I'm, you know, this old military guy who gets on these Zoom calls and and I'm taller than I look on Zoom, I guess, because when I meet him in person, I you know, that's one of the first things I always say.

And I'm not even that tall.

So it's getting them to open the aperture up and see more of the world.

And when they can see the world, they can see the possibilities.

And then is the exciting part because then they can shape themselves into whatever they want to be.

And, you know, if you've ever worked with youth programs, that's where all the energy is.

Like when, when the when the light bulb goes off and the student suddenly realizes, I just have to try and there's a grind and there's work and there's adversity.

But if you just try, you can put yourself in a place to do something you never thought was possible.

And there's value in that, You know.

There definitely is value in that.

And with there being value, I want to just change it a little bit and change a direction and talk about the volunteers that you have working with you, other veterans.

What do they say when you pull them in?

And because you said this project's a few years old.

Yeah.

So you had to recruit and you recruit people.

So what do you tell.

Them in every year?

And we actually partner with a bunch of great people.

So there are donors business people throughout L.A. who've said, we want a better pool of young people to bring into our businesses so they donate money to a nonprofit called Ultimate.

Ultimate is a health care service provider.

They work in underserved communities, they have clinics, they have dental, they have hospitals, and they have these great health care hospital programs.

So Ultima had started the youth champion programs with the donors, and they hired my company command ready to come in and put a different flavor on the instruction, because what happens is if every bit of instruction comes from one place, you lose sort of that.

The newness.

Yes.

You know, the diversity, the ideas that come from different places.

And so students that were going through the original program, they would come in and then they would come back and work as interns or they would get hired at Ultimate, which was good, but it didn't open up a world of possibilities.

So by bringing in some of our military vets and to put the command ready leadership program in with them, now, it's created any industry or any school.

And it's and it's helped show a lot of different thought.

So when we start a class, we have an ultimate representative, we have myself, we have one of our veteran instructors, and then maybe we bring in a personal finance, you know, individual from outside who volunteers this time to teach finance, which really for the kids means how to balance a checkbook.

Or we brought in a film producer and kind of year where a gentleman had made a documentary and he came in and talked about making a film to the kids.

And so we get volunteers that come to speak to the kids.

So at least every month they're meeting someone new.

We've had people from NASA, we've had people from hospitals, we've had finance folks, business folks, we've anything that shows them other opportunities and just gives them a taste of something that might be possible.

We try and bring it in and we schedule it throughout the year and then 26 sessions and then, you know, at the end when you graduate youth champions, you've graduated, you know, from a breadth of knowledge.

And a lot of our students are in their second or third year because you can come back every year we start and we take 10th graders and then up through senior year.

That was my question When can a student join and can they come back and you answer those questions?

So this is you earlier answer those questions.

I won't ask that.

We love when they come back.

But but I want to get your I want you to look into the future and tell me, where do you see this program in the next five years?

What would you like to do with this?

So I think this program becomes one of the many good additions to a solid resume.

Right?

So as the program gained steam, it starts to have structure that it didn't have originally.

It starts to have a curriculum with known or better known outcomes.

So when a student says, I was in the youth champion program, we can create opportunities for them not only to do the class, but to have leadership, like a test of leadership, daring it to lead an event or to set up a go and see.

And we need that.

Our our youth programs have kind of flagged a little bit.

They're not as as big as they used to be.

It's it's hard to coordinate bringing people together.

And so this gives something that students can put on a resume, but more importantly, it gives them something where they can, when they interview with a potential employer, talk about skill sets that will make them better employees.

Right.

So our, you know, acceptance into colleges has been really great.

But we've also had a lot of job offers come through to several of the donors or people who get involved in the program that make it free for the kids.

Also, when they see a highlighted student, you know, create opportunities for them, too.

So there are several students who have gotten jobs and give it a couple more years.

We'll start having students come back and help us with the instruction too.

So it's only a matter of time.

Well, and I think that's important for those students to come back and be mentors as well, because now their peers can see this program works.

We've got hundreds of kids in and again, it's it's free.

So it's an hour you have to commit to the whole year.

But we have a lot of little prizes.

You know, we have books to read.

So if you read one of the books, you pay a little money.

If you submit the book report, you get paid a little money.

And we we it's not a guarantee every time.

It's not like a you know, it's something you plan on making X amount of dollars.

But we we encourage and reward participation.

And so the whole program is designed so people who put into the program benefit from it.

And we're just shaping an environment where kids can.

Grow, which is a quality of leadership, a great quality of leadership.

And I appreciate what you're doing with our youth, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about what happens with what you're doing in our community, with our youth around here in the leadership skills.

So thank you so much for being here and thank you for joining us on, everybody.

With Angela Williamson, viewers like you make this show possible, join us on social media to continue this conversation.

Good night and stay well.