Becoming an “Intentional Leader”

Pam Harper (00:01): Our guest today shares insights from his new book about transforming into an intentional leader. Join us for episode 203 of Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper®.

Chris Curran (00:22): This episode is brought to you by Business Advancement Incorporated, enabling successful leaders and companies to accelerate to their next level of success. On the web at businessadvance.com. And now here's Pam and Scott.

Pam Harper (00:39): Thanks, Chris. I'm Pam Harper, founding partner and CEO of Business Advancement Incorporated, and sitting right across from me, as always, is my business partner and husband, Scott Harper. Hi, Scott.

Scott Harper (00:53): Hey there, Pam. It's always great to join you for another episode of Growth Igniters® Radio, and as always, our purpose is to spark new insights, inspiration, and immediately useful ideas to help visionary leaders accelerate themselves, and their companies, of course, to their next level of game changing innovation, transformation, and growth.

Scott Harper (01:14): Now, Pam, over this past seven years, we've featured the leadership journeys of a wide range of visionary CEOs, along with our own lessons learned about game changing leadership for growth. Now, while each person's path is unique, there is one thing we all have in common. We have an enduring quest for self-knowledge and a commitment to lead others to rise to their full potential.

Pam Harper (01:38): Yes, and today we'll be exploring some of these foundational values and beliefs with our friend and returning guest, Tim Hebert. He's a perennial entrepreneur, innovator, and adventurer, and the current CEO of Trilix, a business and technology consulting firm. Tim sees the opportunity to affect change everywhere, and is passionate about helping others do the same. A prolific author and seasoned speaker, Tim enjoys exploring concepts related to intentional leadership, business transformation, and professional and personal introspection. He is a persistent champion of the belief that leaders can and need to do better, and he believes effective leaders need to embrace the climb.

Pam Harper (02:28): On a personal note, we first met Tim in 2015 when he was CEO of the information technology company Atrion. We followed up with him after his transformational experience climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Tim now shares his experiences, growth journey, and insights about leadership in his new book, The Intentional Leader: How Inner Authority Can Unleash Strong Leadership, which was just published in November 2021. You can read much more about Tim's background by going to growthignitersradio.com, episode 203, and scroll down to his bio. Tim, welcome back to Growth Igniters Radio.

Tim Hebert (03:11): Well, thanks Pam and Scott. It's great to be back today.

Pam Harper (03:14): Yes, and congratulations on your book. It's hard to believe that so much time has gone by, but it's a journey, isn't it?

Tim Hebert (03:24): It is. You know, writing this book was probably the biggest challenge of my life. It took, from when I first started looking at leadership, about 40 years from the time I started thinking about it to when I actually wrote the book. So it's been quite a journey.

Pam Harper (03:35): Absolutely. It is. So let's talk about your book, and let's start with just the basic kind of question. What does it mean to you to be an intentional leader?

Tim Hebert (03:48): I think early in my career, I really didn't understand the concept of leadership. And I think a lot of people in my boat, as you're going through the ranks from an individual contributor to a manager, to eventually a leader and an executive of an organization, you think that leadership is something that you're born with, that you have natural ability. It's tied to your title in the organization. And for a long time, I was struggling with being a leader in that strange kind of world I was thinking about.

Tim Hebert (04:15): And what I realized as I got more mature in my leadership and what I was doing in the business world, I realized that leadership is really a choice. Anybody can be a leader, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter your station in life, that you have this ability to be a leader, and it's a choice that we make. I've seen five year old kids do things that executives with millions of dollars would never have done. And those moments shows you that leadership is not something that you're trained in school, you don't have to go to the best schools and [inaudible 00:04:42] to do that.

Tim Hebert (04:43): And what I think the difference is between a leader and intentional leader is that really an intentional leader focuses on leading from the inside out. They take the time to understand who they are, what they stand for, where they want to go in life. They're very good at establishing kind of what I call inner authority. They understand what their compass is and where it's going and how to make better decisions. They're fantastic at being able to put their self-interest behind those interests of others. And last but not least, they know that leadership's really about the connections we make with each other. And that's really the big difference between what I see an intentional leader does versus just the everyday leader that's out there.

Scott Harper (05:20): Now Tim, you said that you didn't start out this way, as most of us don't. What inspired you to come to this new level of awareness and start being more intentional about your leadership?

Tim Hebert (05:34): Yeah. The simple answer is September 11th, 2001. It was, I think for a lot of your listeners and yourselves, we probably can remember exactly where we were when we heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. For me, that day was really surreal. I didn't get a lot of work done. The phone stopped ringing. The world, everything just stopped. I went home that night and as I was going home, I realized that I was scared. I was very nervous. I wasn't sure what was going to happen to my business. I had 53 employees that worked for me at the time. I realized I just didn't own a business, but I really had the lives of 53 people in my hands, and not just their lives, but their families and everything.

Tim Hebert (06:10): And that night I was so wound up, distraught, focused on it. I couldn't stop thinking about that issue. I didn't sleep all night. And I realized that what was required for me on September 12th was going to be something different than I've ever done in my life. And that's when I really started putting together the pieces of who I wanted to become as a leader. And the first thing I realized is that up until that point in time, I was like Super Tim. I was the guy that had all the answers in the room. I was a technical leader. I was a very effective leader. And I realized, for once in my life, I didn't have all the answers.

Tim Hebert (06:44): And when I met with my team, I was able to share my vulnerability with them. I was able to talk about how I felt, which wasn't as confident as I was before. And then I also turned the message from just kind of talking about the situation we were facing, but how we were going to get out of it. And I really set forth this high level vision of where we were going to go and how we were going to get through this together as an organization. And for me, it was a life changing moment. I mean, I can still feel in my bones when I actually think about that story, the presentation, the transformation that happened within me.

Tim Hebert (07:14): So it was a very exciting time. It was scary, as you can imagine. And it kind of worked out because my company, unlike a lot of other companies in IT at the time, we actually doubled in size in the next 15 months. And we had lost 65% of our industry in the months following September 11th. So I put a lot of it on changing the way we thought about our roles in the world and organization itself.

Pam Harper (07:38): So this ability to come to grips with what's happening in the world around you, we don't have to have a 9/11 to have this happen. It is an impactful event, but certainly, there's a lot going on right now. So let's talk about why does intentional leadership especially matter in what you call today's leadership crisis? I was particularly interested in your emphasis on today's leadership crisis.

Tim Hebert (08:10): It's an interesting time period that we're in. I think that, of course, in any world, there's always bad actors. You're going to have a politician that does bad things and CEOs that do bad things that are not what leaders should do. They put their self-interest ahead of everyone else, those kind of things, do things morally and ethically and legally suspect. But what I think happens today is that most leaders are so caught up in the daily grind. We go from one task to another, we run home, we take care of the family, we run back to work and we do the next task on the list.

Tim Hebert (08:42): And now most of us, with COVID, are sitting from going to our offices in between meals, in between putting the kids to bed, that we don't have time for ourselves. And I think an intentional leader, really what they're able to do is they're able to carve out that space for themselves to really get to know themselves for that introspection, to understand what they stand for, where they're going, how they're performing on a day-to-day basis.

Scott Harper (09:06): Yeah. It's the distinction between what we call transactional, you do stuff and you make other people do stuff, and relationship, the relationship with yourself and the relationship with others.

Tim Hebert (09:20): Yeah. Scott, you hit that nail on the head. I think that one of the things I talk about in this leadership book a little bit is I can't trust myself, I can't trust others. If I can't build a relationship with myself, I can't build relationships with others.

Pam Harper (09:33): We have to be extremely aware of what we stand for in order to be able to make decisions in a world that is driving us harder than ever. We're seeing it in so many ways. So we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll dig deeper with Tim Hebert, CEO of Trilix and author of The Intentional Leader, about the transformation into an intentional leader. Stay with us...

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Pam Harper (11:16): Welcome back to Growth Igniters Radio, with Pam Harper, that's me, and Scott Harper. Today, Scott and I are speaking with Tim Hebert, CEO of Trilix and author of the book, The Intentional Leader, about the philosophy and practice of what he calls intentional leadership. Tim, tell us how people can find out more about you and your book.

Tim Hebert (11:38): Yeah. Thanks, Pam. So I have a website. It's timhebert.com. My book is out there on there. You can click a link to go buy it on any reseller that sells books, but probably Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And I have all my workshops and blogging and information I have about myself on that site, as well.

Pam Harper (11:58): And you can find more information and links for this episode, including links to Tim's previous conversations with us at earlier points in his growth journey, by going to growthignitersradio.com, episode 203, and scroll down to resources.

Pam Harper (12:15): So in our first segment, we discussed what you mean by becoming an intentional leader. Let's build on that to discuss what it takes to go through the transformation to become an intentional leader. You helped us illustrate that intentional leadership is very different from what a lot of people go through by contrasting it with something you call ghost mode. Let's start out with what this is.

Tim Hebert (12:45): Yeah. So when I was doing a lot of leadership workshops, I would talk about leadership as a choice, and we make a choice to step up and be a leader and take action and do what needs to be done, whether it's saying a kind word to a person behind the counter of a convenience store, or helping a person advance their career, no matter where it is, that we make that choice a lead. And what I used as an analogy to this is that the opposite of doing that is choosing to sit down. In that sit down, you're slipping into what I refer to as ghost mode.

Tim Hebert (13:14): The ghost mode model was that it really focused on four things that leaders don't do. And the first one that we really, really, really focused on is the lack of presence. Leaders need to be present in the moment. And you can't see your moments to lead if you're not really paying attention to where you are at any point in time and those around you. The second one that we really focused on is that a lot of people that are leaders have a hard time building trust. So trust is the second one. Would I ... Unable to establish trust and to be able to do that. And we believe that the reason why trust is so difficult is because I have to have a strong relationship with myself, and I have to trust myself first and foremost.

Tim Hebert (13:53): The second area is that when we let our ego get ahead of our job of empowering others, it's all about us versus about the people that we're leading and serving at that point in time. And then last but not least, we're leading people, we're not leading technology and process and procedure. We're leading people. And your ability to connect with them is the most important thing a leader can do.

Tim Hebert (14:11): And so when you're not doing those things, you're slipping more and more into the ghost mode and it kind of references ghosting someone on the internet, where they just disappear in your life. They just kind of ghost you. And I think leaders can do that when they get stuck in one of these four phases. And sometimes we're stuck in multiple areas of that, of the ghost mode.

Pam Harper (14:31): I can believe that. In fact, it's interesting that you make the point, you're leading people, not leading technology. It would be very easy. I've heard people talk about leading technology and not leading people, especially as the CEO of a technology company. How can someone tell if they've fallen into that mode?

Tim Hebert (14:53): I think it's a very heavy and loaded question there. It's something we could probably talk about all day, but it really requires I think two things from leaders, to be able to detect when I'm not being a leader, or an intentional leader. The first thing is I do have to have a high degree of awareness, self-awareness. Some of this comes from deep inspections. So you get to know yourself, you understand how you behave. And then as you see those behaviors, you can start to take action. I've spent a lot of time in my life trying to figure myself out, and we constantly change and evolve, so what was true maybe 10 years ago about how I thought about myself is different today. So this constant understanding who you are, becoming very, very self-aware, and then watching for those signs.

Tim Hebert (15:37): So I know that in my natural styles, I can become very, very abstract in the way I speak. I can be very future oriented. And sometimes when I'm talking to people that are more, tell me about the facts, what's happening right now in the street, I can see that I'm losing them. So for me, I have to adjust and say, okay, I need to become more factual about what I'm doing. I need to get more grounded and down to earth. So being able to recognize that is key.

Tim Hebert (16:02): The second thing is I have to be emotionally intelligent. I can slip into ghost mode very easily when I get hijacked. We've all been there, when a spouse has said something to us that puts us in just a wrong space for a moment. And the whole conversation goes in a way that we never intended it to, and we're no longer leading those engagements. We're actually reacting to things that aren't necessarily always true or something that's not that important in the scheme of life. So being able to be emotionally intelligent and to be able to recognize when you're getting hijacked is probably the second most important thing you can do.

Scott Harper (16:34): It seems like ghost mode has a lot in common with burnout, and you're just emotionally rung out and you're not really thinking about anything other than going through the paces.

Tim Hebert (16:47): Yeah, I would agree with that. I think when you get into ghost mode, I don't think people wake up in the morning and say, well, I'm going to be in ghost mode today and be a bad leader. What they do is they're stressed out. And what we do on a day-to-day basis is really hard, and it's not easy and it gets harder each day. You throw things like COVID in it, you throw in economic challenges. We're just trying to hang on. So we get stuck in these modes where we get burned out. We get lost.

Scott Harper (17:11): Now building on that, Tim, in your book, you talk about three moments that can help shape us as intentional leaders. Can you tell us a little bit about that? We don't have time to really delve into them deeply, but a top level.

Tim Hebert (17:26): Early on in my leadership journey, I was in high school, actually, I had a moment where I had met and got into judo to learn to fight better. And I got into a lot of fights as a young man. And about six months into the program, I came to class and my instructor had uninvited everyone else to the class. And basically as the class started, he had me spar with his wife for two hours. And this little middle aged woman, maybe five foot two, weighed 105 pounds soaking wet threw me from one end of the dojo to the other for two hours. Needless to say, my ego was bruised.

Tim Hebert (17:58): And I'm packing up, getting ready to go, and he comes up to me. He puts his hand on my shoulder, and he says, "Tim, just remember, someday in life, you're going to meet someone bigger, better, faster, better than you." And he walks away. And I get in my car and I start to go home. And as I do, it's like son of a gun, this was all a setup. And I realized that every moment that we interact, there's a learning moment for us to react to. And I refer to these moments as legacy moments. We can either be in this unguarded moment where we have the epiphanies that help shape where we're going to go. We can make moments to make choices, to change, which I did on that drive home. I decided I didn't want to be that angry, young fighting kid anymore. I wanted to be something different and more. And then when you make those choices and you actually execute them, you create a new new version of yourself, and that I refer as a defining moment.

Pam Harper (18:43): So staying open to self-knowledge, as opposed to continuing to just drive yourself going forward, really can reveal a lot to yourself.

Scott Harper (18:58): It makes a huge difference.

Pam Harper (18:58): Exactly.

Tim Hebert (19:01): You guys are so right on that. I think it's one of those things when you have that openness, the world teaches you lessons you wouldn't learn on your own.

Pam Harper (19:08): Isn't it interesting? So can you tell us a very short story about someone who went through the transformation from ghost mode to intentional leadership?

Tim Hebert (19:19): Yeah. Let me, I'll share a story about a woman by the name of Grace. So this happened within my company. My company was going through a fairly aggressive growth curve, and we had a team that did a lot of the back office work for us. And the leader of that department kept coming to me and saying, "We need to add more people. We need to add more people." And I didn't believe we needed to add more people. We just needed to get the people we had to be more effective.

Tim Hebert (19:40): And so we went to one of the team members there and we actually asked her if she'd be interested in being promoted to a team lead. This person was horrified, never looked at herself as a leader, never thought of herself as a leader, didn't think she could do it. And so myself and this other leader worked with her over about a six month period. And what we saw is that this woman grew from just being this scared woman that had no idea how to lead to a very confident woman that took charge of the situation. The first thing she did is she built a deep connection with the staff that she was working with, and they got to learn to trust each other and depend on each other. They basically put egos aside. Instead of talking about what was broken, they started focusing on what was right. So she went through all the things that we've talked about in her journey to kind of where she was.

Tim Hebert (20:27): About nine months after she had been kind of lifted into this role, that organization, we had almost doubled in size. And we still had the same original team that we had. We never had to add people. We took on more work. They became more effective. They became more connected to the company. And it was a phenomenal example. People that sometimes sell themselves short, and sometimes as leaders, we need to see the best in them and help elevate that.

Scott Harper (20:50): And it requires a lot of support. She didn't do that just on her own.

Tim Hebert (20:54): She did not. No, no. We spent time with her and coached her. And that's part of being an intentional leader. I need to invest in the future of my team and the people that want to become leaders in the organization.

Pam Harper (21:04): So not only does the person need to have support, but the person needs to want to be a leader in the first place. And that's going to take us to our next break. And when we come back, Scott and I will speak more with Tim Hebert, author of The Intentional Leader, about immediately useful ideas for becoming a transformational leader. Stay with us...

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Scott Harper (21:33): You're listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. We're brought to you by Business Advancement Incorporated. We're on the web at businessadvance.com. We focus on enabling visionary leaders to dramatically increase momentum for game changing results. Now, Pam, our regular listeners know how many leaders are used to moving in new directions to adapt and successfully respond to a world that is always changing in so many ways faster than ever before. But as one CEO recently shared with us, it's one thing to be at the top. It's quite another thing to stay there.

Pam Harper (22:11): That's right. That's why I developed my new keynote, How Growth Igniters Lead for Tomorrow, Starting Today. Find out the secret of the successful visionary leaders who are able to keep igniting game changing growth over and over again.

Scott Harper (22:26): Go today to PamHarperSpeaks.com, Pam Harper's speaker site, to find out more about Pam's keynote and her availability to speak at your next leadership conference.

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Pam Harper (22:52): Welcome back to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. Over the last two segments, Scott and I have been speaking with Tim Hebert, CEO of Trilix and author of The Intentional Leader, about the philosophy and practice of what he calls intentional leadership. Tim, remind us how people can find out more about you, your book, and your speaking.

Tim Hebert (23:14): Thanks, Pam. So if they want to find out more about my book, my writing, as well as my speaking engagements and workshops, they can go to timhebert.com and they can get all the information there.

Pam Harper (23:24): Great. And you can find out more information and links for this episode by going to growthignitersradio.com, episode 203, and scroll down to resources. So Tim, we're at the part of our episode where we talk about some immediately useful ideas, practical ideas in this case for becoming an intentional leader. What would be a practical idea for increasing awareness of becoming an intentional leader? I guess, would it be starting with ghost mode?

Tim Hebert (24:01): I think that what I would look at, if you just start fresh and try to take the principles of the book that happen, I think it comes with the focusing on self-awareness. If I'm not really self-aware and I can't move myself into that space easily, I'll never really recognize the fact that I'm slipping into ghost mode. We try in the book to identify the symptoms of ghost mode so that we can see them and identify them and make them more tangible, but it really comes down to self-awareness.

Tim Hebert (24:28): And I look at self-awareness as two forms. There's the self-awareness where I'm by myself, I'm doing meditation or I'm running or I'm in nature, where I'm in my thoughts and I'm kind of changing the way I think about things. And the second is what do I do when I'm in the moment? Can I actually in the moment be self-aware of what I'm doing, that same kind of in the moment presence that you need to have?

Tim Hebert (24:49): So one of the things I usually start with people is how to start to build a practice that allows you to become more self-aware, lets you look at yourself in a way that's non-judgmental. a way that you're not blaming yourself or criticizing yourself for what you've done, but just accept that I am what I am, and this time I tried something, and it didn't work. So what am I going to do next time? Take that kind of role.

Tim Hebert (25:09): I personally, I meditate every day, five to 15 minutes a day, and then I do a lot of running, yoga, and hiking that really kind of, I call moving meditation. One of the things I found really useful is that there's a biotechnical device out there called Muse. It's M-U-S-E. And it's a headband that you can put on and it actually runs you through guided meditation, but it can tell you how to still your mind and coach you on how to become more self-aware in the moment. So recommend that for people that are getting started.

Pam Harper (25:37): It's interesting that you have so many ways that you tap into to become self-aware. I guess it really depends on how a person relates to themselves. No magic one way to do it, but whatever's right for you.

Tim Hebert (25:52): You're absolutely right, Pam. I think the challenge is that a lot of times in life we look for the magic pill, right? We take one pill, we lose 60 pounds overnight. We take another pill and we become a great leader. But it's a lot of hard work, and everyone's journey is slightly different. And what resonates with me may not resonate with you and Scott the same way. But I think the fundamental elements of being self-aware and deep introspection and really knowing yourself is part of it. How I get to that journey may be different for me versus you guys. But it's really a unique journey as we go through.

Scott Harper (26:24): One of the things I do is I try to ask myself, especially if I'm going off on a tangent, am I really acting in the way I want to act and represent myself to the world as, and what are the thoughts behind this? Are they accurate, or am I making up a story that's taking me into the weeds?

Tim Hebert (26:45): Yeah, I think that narrative is really important. When I was in the military, I hadn't shaved at all yet. I was still young. I didn't grow facial hair very much. But one day when I did shave, the first time, I was sitting in the mirror starting to shave. And of course it's kind of a meditative moment when you're doing that. And I asked myself the simple question, did I like myself? And I'm sitting there, looking in the mirror, and I came back with the answer I didn't. I was a very negative, very pessimistic, very sarcastic individual when I was 17, 18, 19 years old. And I realized that that's not who I wanted to be. And I made that change. So it's the same thing you're talking about. You've got to be open to it and you've got to take action once you realize that it's not where you want to be.

Scott Harper (27:25): Good. Now, we've talked about increasing self-awareness. As you've said, leadership is so dependent upon trust. Can you give us a practical, actionable idea for how to start increasing trust between yourself and other people that depend on you?

Tim Hebert (27:43): In the book, in the opening introduction, I share a story about when I was in high school. I was asked to read aloud from Emerson's Self-Reliance. And the line that I started with was, "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to its own iron string." And as I read that aloud, I kind of got lost in my head, and I read it over and over and over again, and as the room was erupting in laughter, the teacher was preparing to throw me out of the classroom, I realized I didn't trust myself. And that started my journey of trying to understand who I was and what I stood for.

Tim Hebert (28:16): And so for me, it led me to kind of examining my core values, where I wanted to be in life, my purpose, my mission, those kind of things. And by the age of 18 or so, I had a good blueprint of who Tim was and where he was going. Now, it's evolved over the years, but I had that kind of compass, that GPS, for me. So before I had that, I couldn't be trusted to be consistent. I couldn't be trusted to act with emotional intelligence or be dependable. So I changed a lot when that happened.

Tim Hebert (28:44): And the second thing that happened is that we all have a circle around us that is our trust circle. Some of us have very wide trust circles. They'll trust anybody. And then you'll have other people that have very narrow trust circles, and they don't want anyone in. What I learned in my probably early thirties is that I wasn't a very trusting soul. Even though I was very positive and optimistic, I didn't trust a lot of people. And I had to make the decision, if I want people to trust me, I had to be willing to extend trust first. And as a leader, you're always doing that action, whatever it happens to be, in this case, trusting. I had to trust before I expected trust back from others.

Pam Harper (29:18): So what is a way to increase that level of trust in others?

Tim Hebert (29:24): I think if I'm helping other people become more trustworthy and be trusted, I spend a lot of time with them on helping them define their core values, their purpose, their vision, their mission, kind of those things, so they have that compass that will help them and guide their decision. The second thing I really focus on with them is that I believe that to trust people, you have to be very confident and good at what you do, and I also believe that you have to be able to have the right kind of character. So you have to be able to talk about your intentions, to be vulnerable, to be authentic as a leader.

Tim Hebert (30:02): If I come out, and that's what happened, that September 11th speech that I gave, I was very vulnerable, but it was very real. And what I was feeling was exactly what the audience was feeling as I was talking to them. We connected at a level that we would never, ever connect at again, because we shared that moment and experience. But it never would've happened if I went up there as Tim, the superhero that was going to solve every problem. The only reason why it happened is because I was able to connect at that level, to build a deep level of trust that may or may not have existed beforehand. So I focus on those two areas, establishing that inner authority and then helping them be authentic and vulnerable.

Pam Harper (30:35): It's a journey. We keep talking about the journey. It's a journey. I think one of the things for me that helps me trust people is if their deeds match their words. And how do you feel about that?

Tim Hebert (30:50): Yeah, no, I feel exactly the same way. I mean, what I've gotten to in my life is, you know, I think it comes down to, for me, a basic fundamental thought is I believe in the goodness of everybody. I believe everybody wants to do good, and they have goodness inside them. And that's where my starting point is. And then what I do is I allow them to prove that the trust I'm extending to them is worthwhile. And that's why I watch what they say, how they act, and what they think, how do those three things align? Because if they're not aligned, there never will be a trusted relationship there.

Pam Harper (31:18): So building on that is we still have to create a healthy balance between our self-interests and the interests of others. So you don't want to put too much emphasis on others' wellbeing at the expense of your own, and vice versa. So what do you suggest there? What's a practical idea for creating that healthy balance?

Tim Hebert (31:42): Yeah, no, that's a great idea. And I use an analogy when I talk about this. So really when we put our self-interest ahead of others it's because our ego is active. And what I look at is we have to learn to adjust our ego. And I look at it as kind of a knob on a stereo. If I was listening to classical music and I put the volume level on one, I'm probably not going to get a great experience. The same way, if I put it on 11, I'm probably not going to get a great experience, right. So I've got to find the right adjustments for that. And if I want to listen to a little AC/DC, you can only put it on 11, right?

Tim Hebert (32:12): So what I believe, as leaders, what we do is we have to kind of check our ego at the door, make sure we're bringing the right level of ego into every occasion. Ego is important. A lot of people give ego a bad name. We need it. It creates our self-identity, protects our self-identity. It's essential to the human psyche. But we can also control how that manifests itself. We can be overconfident. We can be narcissistic. We can do all kinds of things because our ego's out of balance. It's not aligned. So for me, it's about understanding the balance of between the ego and how we tune that in.

Tim Hebert (32:45): And then I think what I try to do is I try to focus on what I'm putting out into the world versus what I'm getting back into the world. A lot of people focus on what's in it for me. And I try not to do that. As an intentional leader, I believe that I have a lot more to give. And if I give unconditionally, then what happens is the things I need get returned back to me through loyalty, through dedication, through commitment of others. And in 40 years of being a business owner, starting 22 businesses, I've never failed to have someone reciprocate that balance that I need in my life.

Pam Harper (33:17): It's a wonderful track record. What's interesting, too, is that with all the different types of stakeholders we have in our lives, sometimes we have more influence and impact than at other times, but it strikes me that having that intentionality serves you well, has served you well.

Tim Hebert (33:37): It has. It has, Pam. And I think one of the things I learned through this journey is that if you want to be a leader and a great leader and strive for that, you have to play the long game. This is about transformation. It's transformation of yourself. It's transformation of the people around you, the world we live in. And that doesn't happen overnight. That only happens by putting the hard work in every day, doing the little things that no one makes you have to do, to become that leader.

Pam Harper (34:01): That's true. So here we are. It's the end of the episode. Can you leave us with some final thoughts on becoming an intentional leader?

Tim Hebert (34:11): Yeah. You know, I think what I would want people to take away from this episode and the book, if they get it and read it, is that I think intentional leadership is a choice. We make a personal choice to lead or not to lead. And leading is not around my job. It's about every moment of every day. When I come home and greet my wife or my family, I'm leading in that moment. When I walk in the convenience store and I buy a bottle of diet Coke, I'm leading in that moment. And we need to understand every moment we're leading, we're making choices on how we want to show up and we want to present ourselves to the world. And so I think that's the number one thing I would like to have people think about.

Tim Hebert (34:46): The other thing I would have them look at is I do believe three things exist as a leader that we have to get in our mind. I do believe in the goodness of everyone. I don't believe people show up today to do a bad job. I believe they may get lost, they may get confused, they may get frustrated with life, but they want to do the right things. And whatever happened in your life before this moment has shaped how they're responding in that time.

Tim Hebert (35:07): The second thing is, I do believe, like with the story I told you about Grace, there is greatness in each of us. And it's a matter of either trying to find it ourselves or having leaders see it in others and help bring that to the forefront. Intentional leaders become very acute at identifying that spark that exists and helping to kind of shine that out and bring it forward, even when people don't see it in themselves.

Tim Hebert (35:28): Then the third thing that I would say that to me is really, really important is that in life you've got to learn to give to get things, right? You have to be one, I call it karma. In my version of karma, it's if I want goodness in my life, I've got to put goodness into the world. And as leaders, if we take that fundamental path, we become more effective. Things become a little bit easier. You find that people want to join your cause versus trying to compel them to be part of a cause. And they want to be part of that. And so I've been served very well by that over my career and my life.

Pam Harper (35:59): Well, you are putting a lot of goodness out there today with this episode. Thank you so much for being our guest on Growth Igniters Radio, and happy 2022.

Tim Hebert (36:08): Absolutely. Thank you.

Scott Harper (36:10): Oh, thanks, Tim. Thanks so much. And thanks to you out there for listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. To contact us, get show notes and resource links for this week's episode, go to growthignitersradio.com, select episode 203.

Pam Harper (36:26): Until next time. This is Pam Harper...

Scott Harper (36:29): And Scott Harper...

Pam Harper (36:29): Wishing you continued success and leaving you with this question to consider:

Scott Harper (36:34): What can I start doing differently today to increase my connection with myself and with others so that I can lead all of us with purpose, intention, and better outcomes?

Chris Curran (36:53): Growth Igniters and Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper are registered service marks of Business Advancement Incorporated. All Growth Igniters Radio episodes are copyrighted productions of Business Advancement Incorporated, intended for the private use of our audience. Except as otherwise provided by copyright law, all other uses, including copying, editing, redistribution, and publication without prior written consent of Business Advancement Incorporated are prohibited. All rights reserved.