The Leadership Blind Spot: Do You Need to Be Right, Liked, or in Control?

Welcome aboard. This is the place to be right now. This is mainline executive coaching ACT. ACT Act.

Action. That's what we're about. Leaders, this is for you. We've got a hot topic today.

We've got a great guest that we're just dying to introduce you to. This is there is nothing more relevant to our culture today, to business, to every aspect of our lives than AI. And we're going to be looking at aspects of AI and leadership today, how it affects culture and how leaders are affected by it. And what in the heck is going on in this fast-changing upside down world and back and forth and wherever we're going to go.

We don't even know. At the end of this, we don't even know where we're going to land, I'll tell you the truth. So we're going to just do it. I'm Michael Bailey.

I'm here with my partner, Rich Barron. We got a great guest here today, Eric Kaufman. Eric, would you introduce yourself? It's your uh like 30, 60-second elevator speech, and then we'll hit it.

Yeah, thank you, Michael. Thank you, Rich. Glad to be on here with you. I am uh the managing partner of a firm called Sagadica, and we are in effect an executive development organization.

We work with sort of the individual, the team, and the organization and the place where the all three intersect. Teamwork is remarkable but insufficient. Organizational work is so critical for the context, but insufficient. And so we um pardon me, we blend all three as a way to sort of you know uh optimize the individual human, create the kind of processes where they can work together optimally and then hold it all within a framework that enables them to do the work.

Yeah, that makes great sense. You, Rich, had a particular interest in something that we were talking about before the the the podcast here. Why don't you introduce that idea and then let's let Eric open that up? Absolutely.

Eric, you know, we we we've talked before, but this concept, you know, there's a couple concepts I think you know it'd be fun to hit today. Uh AI, for one, AI, how that how does that impact leadership? But more importantly, this concept of ego myopia that you have uh coined. And I find that very um intriguing and how that impacts leaders today.

Can you open that up a little bit for us? Yeah, delightfully. Um so I started coaching in 2000. So it's you know a quarter century of doing this work, and uh what it does is it um it's given me remarkable access to the most sort of senior people and organizations in all different kinds of industries all across the globe, uh, different ages.

And uh as a as a, you know, I'm a practitioner and I'm a scholar. So, you know, I've written three books on leadership, uh, I've written a book on meditation. That's one of my sort of lifelong practices as well. And I kept looking at, you know, what what the heck is the pattern here?

You know, what is the pattern? And um it occurred to me after some years that uh what I began to see is the number one barrier to executive effectiveness, right? So if executive effectiveness is manifest as an executive being able to um skillfully direct people, focus them, organize them so that they can execute meaningful results, right? I think that's what a leader does.

A leader sort of organizes and influences people to achieve results, right? Meaningful to the organization. So that's what an effective executive does. And I'm taking away, I'm stripping away any kind of cultural uh orientation or any kind of moral orientation.

I'm just looking at the strip down, what does an executive do? They organize, they influence people to achieve results. Well, what gets in the way of that? There's several things, but the number one barrier is what I came to call ego myopia.

And essentially, it's not being able to recognize and regulate our own patterns and beliefs and limited notions in real time. So, you know, Bob and Jan, the CFO and the CEO, are suddenly in an argument about disagreement on on um on how to how to execute a certain portion of their budget. Bob really needs to be right because that's what Bob does. He has to be right, you know, and so he's arguing for his point.

He's really trying to show how clever he is, how competent he is, how together his team is, how organized his function is. And Jan, you know, he really just needs to be liked. What he wants more than anything is that people really respect and appreciate and include him. And now you have Bob and Jan with this sort of one has a need to be right, one has a need to be liked, and they're getting in this big argument because they're trying to fulfill their own ego needs.

And so as soon as they're not getting along, what you watch downstream is their teams start to take sides. And now you start seeing like organizational dysfunction, you start seeing arguments, you start seeing delays in in follow-through and delays in handoffs, you start seeing the kind of uh information withholding that's going on, and all of that is because these two leaders at the top have this egomyopia, they cannot see their own pattern that's getting in their way. So I'll I'll pause there, but that's that's kind of the essence of it.

That is fascinating. I can see that kind of creating this symbiotic relationship between these two people, vying for their own personal needs, their own survival kinds of needs. And um, because Jen, my guess would be, and I'm just guessing here, you you you're more familiar with the details of this kind of scenario than than we are since you brought it. Um, I I would imagine that Jen is probably more of the empathy type, more of the emotional connector kind of a person that says, okay, let's try and figure this out, let's be friends about this.

Where the other one is more about, I gotta have it my way. I'm one one of the reasons I got to where it was that I am is not only that I'm right, I know how to be right, but I also know how to dominate. And so you got these two factors going into play here. And since they're playing on two different fields, it's easy to talk past each other without even noticing what's going on.

They both walk away. I don't understand why he doesn't get it. I don't understand why he doesn't get it. What is it they're missing?

What is it that they got to say to him to get through to them? Give me a little bit more of that dialogue that might be happening at that level, and then we'll talk about the fallout. So uh, you know, if I'm saying Bob is a need to, and and uh I'll back up, I'll say, you know, this is similar to personality typing, but it's it it it it precedes personality, right? This is our patterns, right?

And so essentially ego myopia has three flavors, right? There are three needs that every of us, every one of us has it. I have it, you have it, we all have it. It's just part of the human dynamic, right?

The issue is not whether or not we have these needs, the issue is whether or not we are clear and conscious and aware of these needs in real time so that they're not hijacking us and our teams by consequence, right? So the three needs are the need to be right, the need to be liked, and the need to have might. Right? So the need to be liked is all about I have a need for you to see how competent, smart, capable, and uh and um and uh in control I am, to your point, right?

This is I I you know I I have a need to be right. We see this all the time. Feel free to reflect on any Christmas uh uh dinner or any Thanksgiving gathering of your family. And you don't have to go to work to see this, right?

The second one is the need to be likely. The need to be liked is this inherent capacity that I want to belong, I want to be part of something. I want people to include me. I want to be in the in-group.

One of the great pains of an organization is being not an in-group and the out group, right? And so we all humans have this need to be liked, to be considered, to be included, to be desired, to belong. And then the third one is the need to have might. What I call to have might is to have control, autonomy, power, authority.

I want to have some capacity to have a say in what's happening to me and around me. So those are not, that's not a criticism, that's just an observation, right? This is what we do as human beings. The challenge is, and this is where it becomes the myopia part, is when I can't see it.

Right? We're not my so I was a young manager. My dominant need was the need to have might. I really wanted control and authority and autonomy.

I really wanted to tell my folks where to go, and I do did not want my peers to tell me what to do. Not an uncommon story, right? But I couldn't see that. I just couldn't see that I was so driven by this need to have control that I was literally alienating people with my micromanaging.

You know, I couldn't see it because I wasn't micromanaging. I was making sure everything was dialed in and tight. I was making sure that I was on top of everything. I was sure that we were executing, we were accountable.

I had all these excuses why it made sense that my need to have might was in in display. But in fact, I was insecure. I couldn't really quite give up control, and I was micromanaging, pissing everyone off. Yeah, and there's another word that uh very I love that the way that you coined that.

Uh, another word is scotoma, just that blind spot. I just can't see it. And and and it's it's the funny thing about it is because I can't see it, that means I can't see it. Or it doesn't exist.

Exactly. Yeah. Um and so um, you know, we we've actually developed an assessment called the conscious operating system assessment, where we measure these sort of three dimensions of the needs, the three needs, and it is so illuminated to your point exactly, Michael, because what we do is then we go in, the individuals and then the team see where their own egomyopia patterns are, and a whole new world of conversation opens up, right? Because awareness is not insignificant, yeah.

Awareness is power, and when you're not aware, you're not aware, right? That's the what do you call it? Katoma, is that what you call it? Katoma, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you can't see it, and you can't see it. So it just doesn't exist. You can't see that you can't see it, right? Right.

It's a it's a perfect sort of trap. And so this is where assessments, this is where these kind of pieces become so valuable, right? Let me show you, and now you have choice. And so we're back to this conversation about you know, how do you get out of ego myopia?

The the the first part is to be aware, right? Uh, and we and we can't, it's not about destroying the ego, killing the ego, it's not about ego trip, it's none of that. We all have an ego. The ego is this just this my sense of identity, it's the myopia that's the problem, the not seeing it.

And so we can correct that, and then you can behave differently, right? You can have different results. This is very interesting to me because so often we associate ego with that might, that dominance, that need to be in control. But the need to be right and the need to be liked can be just as damaging as a need for control or for that need for might.

You know, needing that approval because we need to be right or we need to be liked, you know, that can cause leaders to avoid accountability from my viewpoint. It can cause them to tolerate poor performance, delay difficult decisions. And and when you talk about ego, it's it's not that ego makes an immature leader. The maturity part is recognizing when ego has entered the room and and prevent that from making those decisions.

You know, uh I I'm so delighted that you brought the word maturity in. Yeah. That is the crux of the work here, right? Because this really is about the process of maturation.

And the distinction between mature and immature, uh, both legally and psychologically, is really about responsibility. Yeah. Right? We we consider somebody immature and we don't think they can bear responsibility, right?

They they can't go to war, they can't drive a car, they can't vote because they're not mature enough. At 18, we think somebody's mature enough. And what comes with maturity is this recognition of responsibility, right? And so this notion of maturity is profoundly critical.

Um, I'm I'm not gonna name names because that's just not cool, but you know, to go around as many sort of uh teams and executives that I go with, and to see the various levels of maturity and to see how age does not guarantee maturity. No, but maturity does go a long way towards guaranteeing efficiency and effectiveness, right? Because one of the features of maturity is that's the other one. One is responsibility, the other one is I'm gonna use a big word, right?

Generativity. You you generate what a mature, what a mature plant does is it creates seeds and flowers. What a mature animal does is it produces offspring, right? And so maturity one is bearing responsibility, and maturity two is being able to regenerate, right?

And so the the leader who's mature can bear responsibility in a beautiful way, can also give out responsibility, right? That's how you empower other people by giving them responsibility. One, two, the leader who's mature is actually cultivating the growth in other people. You are generating, you are being generative, right?

You are perpetuating and helping other people grow without the fear that will diminish you. And that becomes now think about bosses you've worked for who are both willing to take responsibility, willing to give you empowered responsibility, and take the time to develop you as a human, you're gonna go to the end of the earth for these folks. Yeah. That's something really good about that.

There's this notion, and uh, they've shown it with dogs. Dogs are easy to see with, and that is take an unhealthy dog, put him in a pack with other dogs that are healthy, they'll teach that dog how to be healthy. They'll just do little pokes through the nose, little snips and stuff. Don't do that, don't do that.

Then that finally dog figures it out, right? Same thing with people. Put uh person that's not so healthy in uh a group of people that are healthy and know how to not only are healthy, but more importantly know how to stay healthy. Because sometimes the rotten apple can just do the bring down the whole team, but they know how to stay healthy, then they can help that person become healthy as well.

So it's I like this idea of helping others grow, other people mature and become their own. Yeah, and and when we're caught in this ego myopia, this kind of smaller version of ourselves, we are too busy trying to be, you know, defensive and protective and vigilant of ourselves, right? That's the nature of the ego myopia, tends to be more centered on my own well-being, survival, and getting my needs met. And the beautiful thing about maturation, and we can talk about sort of, you know, if there's the need to be right, is there an opposite?

If there's a need to be liked, is there an opposite? You know, is there a mature version? And I'm gonna propose to you that there is. Um, but uh it is, I I I like you're using the word healthy, and I think in a similar way that I might be using the word effective, right?

And that you're you're sort of um uh the net net is additive rather than destructive or diminishing or or or exhausting. Somebody listening to this podcast today, and I hope you're taking notes on this, hope you download it as well, because this is this is a loaded podcast we're presenting to you today. It reminds me a little bit of Denning Krueger's, you know, I don't know, you know, I don't know that I don't know. But my hunch is it goes much deeper than that.

So those people are thinking Denning Kruger, I don't know, then you get to now I know I don't know, now I know that I know, now I know that I it's an interesting cycle. You can see that behaviorally early on and before we started this thing, it's something that's much deeper than just you know behavior. It's something much deeper. Help us to understand that deeper aspect of you know, just this ego myopia.

Um you're you're yeah, I like where you're going with that because the behavior is the outside manifestation of it, right? And it can manifest in different ways. Um the question is why is it perpetuating? You know, and so we're back to sort of Rich's point around maturity, right?

How do we mature? Um, and so the um the reality is um, I'll use myself as an example, right? I have three brothers, so blessings to my mother for surviving that. Four boys plus an age.

I don't envy her, but I I'm very grateful. Um but you know, we each have different inherent capacities. How's that, right? So, like when I was young, I figured that um, you know, I could figure things out a little faster than other people around me.

And so I really started leaning on my ability to kind of outthink people. And in short order, for me to get my needs met, to be noticed, to be loved, to be seen, I I started really pushing on having the right answers and, you know, being the guy who's not only right, but is in charge because he's right. That was that was mine, right? I have a brother who, in very short order, realized that he was entertaining, he was funny, he's he's witty, right?

So he goes around and starts to develop this personality, this character, this persona that uses wit and cleverness um as a way to sort of get what he needs to get done. I have another brother who's sweet and kind, right? And so he got to develop this inherent capacity by you know being the kind of guy who's attentive and caring and giving, and people responded to that in that way. So I hope you see where I'm going.

Like we have these inherent capacities, and then we have these needs as little as little babies. So is is it okay if I sort of dive deep for a second here? Or is okay. Please, please.

Um, you have kids or you've seen kids on TV, or okay. So I have kids. So do you ever play peekaboo with your with your kids when they were little babies? Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, right? Who doesn't? Peekaboo. Oh, hilarious to the kid.

The kids basically, but that's the little kids. There's a certain point where it's not funny anymore to them. You know when it's not funny anymore? Around 18 months, right before a year and a half to two years, suddenly it's not funny.

Why not? Because at 18 months, they discover they they they develop what's called object permanence. Is that a familiar term? Object permanence, meaning they can begin to abstract that even though something is not visible, it still exists, right?

When you're playing Peekaboo, you cover your face, you're gone, you reveal your face, you're there. They're like, holy shit, where did it come from? You know, it's hilarious to them. After a while, they go, Oh, are you covering his face?

I still know it's you, Dad. You know, it's not that funny. Um, with that object permanence comes a sense of I can abstract, I can begin to think symbolically, I can begin to think about the past and the future. And the thing that emerges with object permanence is a sense of identity.

I am now self-aware. Up until that point, we're not self-aware. We're just being in the environment, but we don't have a referential sense of self. And so as soon as we're self-aware, three things start to happen.

The first thing that's that happens when we're self-aware is we begin to be aware that, you know, there's a big person and there's me, and we have conflicting desires. They want stuff and I want stuff, and I can't always get what I want. We didn't know that when we're not self-aware. The other is that I'm not competent to do what I want to do.

You know, if I want to get this diaper off me, if I want food, I need to reach out to somebody else. So I am not as competent as I thought I was. So, one, there's a potential for conflict, two is the potential for incompetence. And three is I can't control the environment around me.

I cannot control it. And so what you see is is the emergence of, you know, the need to be right is my desire for competence. The need to be liked is my desire for connection and not to be in conflict. And the need to have might is my desire for autonomy and control.

And so this is where it begins. I think I'm going pretty deep here on your question, but that's great. It's great. Oh, it begins way before behavior.

It's that's why it's so human. None of us can not have this. All of us have this, because as soon as we became self-aware, we began to realize that you know, we have these needs. I want to be competent, I want to be connected, I want to be in control.

And then we find ways that our our inherent strengths and our environmental conditions and our family of origin. Now we begin to develop patterns of how do we get these needs met. And then the act of maturation is to say, hey, the patterns you formed when you were two, three, four, six, eight, twelve years old. Dude, young lady, you're 40 years old now.

You know, there's other ways of getting it done, but it's not obvious because of that blind spot, right? It's just normal to us. You know, it's it's that was kind of a deep dive, yeah. You say blind spot, and uh that just hits me.

Uh the way you're explaining this, you know, success can create reinforce those blind spots. If I've been successful in making decisions or having answers by being right or by being in control or being liked by my team over time, and I've done this for 20 years over time, that becomes a pretty you know, big blind spot. That yeah, and the problem is is there are organizations who are inadvertently training their leaders to continue doing exactly what it is that creates those blind spots.

So the more, the more success we get, and and also the more success we get, the higher up the ladder we go, the fewer there are people there are who are gonna be willing to tell us you've got a blind spot. I'm laughing for the following reason. One, 100%. I want to come back to this.

It's it's self reinforcing, right? What we do is self reinforcing. And if we see the evidence to be working, then we will add that evidence to reinforce it again and we go deeper into that pattern, right? Right.

Do about the not saying I was just I spent two days with an executive team last week, Thursday, Friday. We did some really deep work. Um, you know, there was some. There was some real breakage in their trust, and some of their systems were just way woefully, you know, under uh just outdated.

So we had to do work both at the interpersonal level, like how are they working together and at the systemic level, like what are you actually doing? Because sometimes what we call trust between people is really the manifestation of a bad system, right? Like if you have a system where the information handoff is broken, then pretty soon I'm thinking, you're just not keeping me in the loop. You must be, you know, I start assigning you all kinds of motivations that you're trying to backstab me, right?

But the system's there. But I debriefed with with the CEO uh yesterday on Monday, and he said, because you know, we're in the meeting, and my job, you know, I'm there to serve the team. So I'm coming in and I'm working with the CEO, and suddenly I'm like, he's doing something, whoa, time out. What you just did is reinforcing the very thing you're trying to not do.

Do that in a different way, right? And then he's looking like, what? And he told me on Monday, he says, I'm at the point in my life where nobody tells me directly what's going on because everybody has an agenda of something they want from me. He says, So I'm not used to sitting in the room and have someone tell me to stop doing this or start doing that.

So I thought, okay, that's literally my job, right? I'm not here to perpetuate the pattern, I'm here to help you find alternatives. But you're so spot on about these reinforcing patterns, right? We do it and we do it.

And then it becomes, you know, there's a word that we use freely, we use the word culture in an organization, right? And I think you're getting at culture, Rich, by saying this, because culture, in a way, is the organization's ego, right? We have an individual ego, and then you have this collective set of beliefs and patterns and behaviors and acceptable norms and expectations. That's that's a collective ego.

And we were working with uh with this, you know, third-generation remarkable um uh engineering firm. And we found out in short order that one of their cultural themes, they didn't know that, we didn't know that going in. This is part of our Ego Myopia framework, is people pleasing. And people pleasing runs rampant.

In fact, it was revelatory to me in my 40s how much people pleasing I was still caught up in, right? But be it as it may. The CEO is people pleasing, the head of HR was people pleasing, the head of engineering is people pleasing. The culture became one where everybody wanted to make sure everybody else was happy, and so their decision rate was slow, their ability to have frank conversation was limited, and the amount of frustration was really high, but they couldn't even show the frustration because that would piss people off, so they had to hold it in.

And then a person who's been nice all along suddenly snaps and it's an asshole. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what happened? Because they didn't know how to titrate their requests or make and make boundaries, so you'd have to be Jekyll and Hyde, right? People pleasing, people pleasing, people pleasing, asshole, you know.

And so we uh we did some really some really, you know, clarifying work with them to see the patterns and how they're people pleasing and and sort of teach them that the opposite of people pleasing isn't being an asshole. The opposite of people pleasing is being authentic. How do you express your request and how do you expect your express your boundaries in real time? And and the amount of change that started streaming in that organization within months, when they can have better conversations, tighter meetings, faster decisions, most importantly, start disagreeing with one another constructively.

Uh, their their outside valuation firm gave them a 21% increase in the company value a year after we started doing the work. Wow. That's absolutely for an established large company. That that's a good good uh good uh explanation or example of the ROI on executive coaching.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, and this is an outside firm that doesn't know what they're doing inside. They're just looking at the they look at the strategy, they look into the culture and looking at results, and they're going, Whatever you're doing, we believe in you that much more. Yeah.

You know, the the people-pleasing culture that can rapidly disintegrate, and I'm sure you saw this into really narcissistic behaviors where I'm doing this for you because I like you and I want to please you, but then you owe me. You owe me down the road and I'm I'm gonna come back for that favor someday. Or I expect the thanks or the acknowledgement back to being liked or being right in in that loop. It is um it is uh it's interesting because on the surface it looks like hey, everybody here is uh in harmony, right?

If you just scratch it with like a penny, you know, just just a little veneer off underneath, you see, it's expensive to the organization. This is the sort of the net net on this ego myopia. Is it it's expensive, it's expensive. And quite frankly, and you know, this is sort of among friends, right?

But the the cost of the work, the intervention that we do is a fraction of the savings, let alone the gain that they can make when they stop skin being stuck in these patterns. Yeah. And and this is this is preaching to the choir, right? We're all doing the same thing, but but but but it is legit, it is real.

And and you know, we don't do this with with with every engagement, but we've gone so far, and this is a little bit of a different business model, right? But we've gone so far as to um with our renewing clients, from in like in the first year, um, you know, there's a lot of, you know, there's it's here's the fee, right? What we do in year two is we say, here's the fee. We'll take 25% and we push it off as a, you know, we'll reduce our fee by 25% and make it an earned fee, right?

So we're reducing from 100% to 75%. The 25% is to be earned. We agree together on what the KPIs are, what the markers are of success. And oh, by the way, if we exceed them, right, then we can exceed beyond a 100% fee that we were gonna charge.

And if we don't, then you you just owe us that that reduced amount. But we're so confident we can actually move the needle at a business level that we've begun to say, you know, we'll enter more as like a uh somewhat of an investment of an investor, right? We're coming in and we're gonna invest part of money back to you for a return that's ideally good for all of us. Um, so that's that's beyond the notion that I think it's gonna work.

It's like saying I'm putting my money on the line. It's well received. It's well received by CEOs, by the way. That's no, I like that.

Yeah, that's good. I always remember as working with uh an individual in an organization, and as we were working things through, uh, I wasn't working with the whole group, it was working with this one. The kind of the unwritten principle that they had was passive aggression, aggression. And uh he would tell me about these meetings and how they were going on, and I said, What do you think that looks like?

And he finally said, Well, it looks like passive aggression. What was interesting from that aha moment was how quickly he moved into defending it. That's what was interesting. And did did you did you press on him like why he was defending it?

Or did was it clear in his mind was yeah? I think he started crying. No, I know he didn't actually start crying, but he was very nervous as we started to go down that road and start to investigate that. So that stuff, and that's why what I'm saying here, when you take a look at it, is beyond behavior.

It's almost like in in that primitive brain, but this is operating. It's very, very deep, it's reactionary and it's quick to respond. It doesn't it bypasses thought. And so so here's how this ties to me.

It bypasses thought, it bypasses noticing, and so there you have the lack of awareness. It happens so quickly, they don't even notice that they have done what they just did. And that's the that's the sort of um unintended permission for it to perpetuate because it's it's not aware, right? And and I think I'm gonna add to that not aware.

It's not it's not even intentional, right? It's just reactive. And so, you know, one of the powers of having an assessment that can actually make this come to light is that now somebody becomes aware. And so not only did you become aware, but now we say, okay, so what is the what's the mature version of that, right?

Because I'm literally saying the need to be right, the need to be like, the need to have might evolve when I was a little tiny person. It's not a mature expression, it's a it's a it's um it's an early childhood, early life sort of conclusion that I made about the world and how do I deal with the world. And then to your point, Rich, the more I did that, the more effective it was, the more I became you know convinced that this is the way to go. And so, you know, in in my in my by the way, this I have a book called Leadership Breakdown, where I sort of write this all out in great detail.

The whole model is in that book. And you know, the the journey in this realm is how do we move from being in the need to be right, and rather than having need to be right, we can move to the more sure version, which is what I call wisdom. Right? And the need to be liked then moves along this mature arc to love, and the need to be right moves in an arc to power, innate power.

And and and those words can be a little tricky. Wisdom is, you know, it's an obvious one, right? But wisdom is, I I describe wisdom as seeing below the surface and beyond the obvious, right? Wisdom is perspective, wisdom is insight, and I can see things objectively.

I'm not caught up in my prejudice or my bias, right? I have some wisdom. Love really is the willingness to give to others without an expectation of return. To your point, Rich, rather than a quid pro quo, you owe me this.

It's this mature generative capacity. I will give, you know, my attention, my resources, my time, my intelligence to you so that you can prosper and grow and evolve. That's love, right? Whether that's for my child or for my wife or for my my employees, right?

There's a form of love that's not romantic, it's not HR violation, but it's really the expression of how do I tend to and nurture another being. And then power, yeah, I have to make a distinction between authority, force, and power. Right? Authority is the ability to make decisions by virtue of some kind of title, right?

Force is the capacity to actually move things into action. Power is my ability to respond to life by choice. Power is my innate capacity to make choices and have an agency in my own life. Yes.

And when we can do that, when we can, especially we can so you know, wisdom without love is cold and calculating, and it can be quite uh harmful, right? Love without wisdom and love, you know, is is often enabling. And power without love and power without wisdom can be uh narcissistic and frightening, right? So it's like, how do we mature from these needs to this capacity for wisdom, for love, and for power?

Now picture yourself working as yourself or working with a with a manager, a leader who's actually bringing this capacity for wisdom, bringing this capacity for love, and has their own innate power and tact. And the most beautiful thing about having our own power switched on is that we cannot help but empower others. I I love how you say that, Eric. I mean, it really is a three-legged stool.

It doesn't none that stool doesn't stand without all three legs. That it requires all. And here's one of the interesting things uh that I hear, and just kind of throwing this in there, get your thoughts. Empathy is an action word.

When we talk about empathetic leaders, empathy is an action word. It's not simply filling uh, you know, or or recognizing that someone or or we're in a certain situation. It requires that action to help others out of there. And that doesn't mean bringing that uh doing it for them.

It means helping them out, uh, teaching them, coaching them, supplying that wisdom, uh, if you will. Let me let me segue here a little bit, Eric, on something. The things that we're talking about, one of the things that really is emerging and has for a while is AI in our our world, right? Our the co the world of coaching.

And as we talk about ego myopia and getting to that point where maybe there are fewer and fewer people that are willing to give us that information or point out those blind spots. Do you see some of these people that you've been working with turning to AI for answers? Um, yes, the short answer is yes. I think that um, you know, people are turning to AI for everything.

They are, yes. Right? I mean, um everything. And and AI coaching bots are out there by the dozens, right?

There are there are plenty of them, but um and um we actually went so far as and and it's launched and we're using with clients. We built a platform called Sagata Coach, right? Our company is called Sagatica, this is Sagata Coach. And Sagata Coach um is you know, this is whatever, it's just two years of engineering and build with a firm that that does this, but it's completely embedded with all our principles around this way of living, sort of more of a conscious leadership.

So it has the Ego Myopia component, it has wisdom, love, and power, and it has the assessment tools, and it has it's completely trained in this thing inside and out, and it has a back-end, what we call the intelligence platform that that actually measures progress and output and ROI for the organization for the coaching. Um but to your point, I was never comfortable with just saying, oh, go to ChatGPT, create your own bot and have it coach you because, you know, where's the where's the guardrails of of what this coaching bot is actually using to give feedback and input and questions to the person who's asking questions?

So we built this whole AI tool where all our clients are in, you know, so we coach, so it's it doesn't replace us. I think this is the mistake. I think that it's not a mistake. I think at some level of organization, right, at the frontline level, to have an AI coach that you can just interact with directly is fabulous because there's a thousand questions that are considered coaching, which are really not coaching depth.

They're really more like mentoring and training, but they fall under the rubric of coaching, right? So I'm a frontline supervisor and I want an, you know, I want an idea on how to organize a really good agenda for my meeting coming up. That's a great question, but it's not really a coaching question, right? That's a mentoring training question, and these bots are brilliant for that.

Yeah, great amounts of information there. Great amount. Infinite amount, all human information available, you know, by the press of a button. We're starting to get into the more senior level of organization, and it's not enough to just be able to organize an agenda.

You're talking about uh you're talking about discernment, you're talking about judgment, you're talking about empathy, you're talking about nuance, you're talking about integrated thinking, you're talking about enterprise level thinking, you're talking about you know strategic implications. There's a great use for humans in that. And so our AI platform is a place where the where I'm still engaging with my clients, and our AI, we call them Sage, is in there to augment the experience, to gather up patterns, to help me see what's coming on, all trained in our methodology.

So it isn't replacing me, it's enabling me to be able to be more in the moment because so many of the other peripheral things of coaching are already being handled. And oh, by the way, when Bob wants to go back in and just interact directly with Sage, he's now interacting with a platform that has his assessments in it, that has his goals in it, that has his intentions in it, that has his his the conversations we've had in it. So now it's a deeply personal, deeply bespoke experience that they're having with the AI.

One of the things that you said earlier, I'd like to kind of tie together here as we wind it up. Is this you didn't say it this way, but this is kind of how I interpret it. There is an on-ramp to this, and there's also an off-ramp to it. The on-ramp is about 18 months old.

That brain just kicks in at a certain point and says, Oh, I have a sense of me. I got a sense of awareness. I see that what I want is not what you want. And you like green beans, but I hate them.

That's why I spit them at you. Those kinds of things start happening, right? And there's no choice about the on-ramp. The on-ramp is going to happen.

Then you mentioned around 40. You know, there's something I've noticed with my clients, around 40, 45, right in there, there's this zone where, again, I think it's a biological thing that happens just as it did at 18 months. There's a biological switch that takes place where people have an opportunity. And what I've noticed is people make this one of three decisions.

I think it is. One is, you know, my life has been so screwed up, so awful. I'm gonna just give up. I'm throwing in the towel.

That's why oftentimes when somebody retires, they die very shortly after that. So what? Who cares? The other one is like, you know, I did pretty good, life's been pretty good to me.

I think I can coast. I can just kind of stay where I'm at and I'll be okay. That's what Rich is talking about. The patterns become so ingrained and they've been reinforced enough, I can just stay where I'm at.

The problem is this there's only one way coast works, the coasts go down. Then there's this other one, which is I've had a pretty good life, I want to take it to the next level. It's a conscious decision, and that's what I hear you talking about. The on-ramp, no choice.

The off-ramp from that place is completely choice. You have a choice to take it to a new direction, better yourself, better everybody around you, better your company. That's a choice, and it that choice takes a lot of courage. And so I think what you're doing here is very exciting because I think what it does, it creates uh a culture or a let's say an entry point, or you know, get off, get off the ramp, you know, exit ramp, you might say, to a new world.

And with this new world, we're gonna start giving you new perspectives, new possibilities, new opportunities, perhaps in ways because you couldn't see it, because you couldn't see it, that now you can see things in a whole new way. And the fact that you change one thing about from I can't see it to now, oh I do see it. That's the moment where everything starts to change. That's what that culturally, that's what they experienced.

Now that one thing happened, everything started changing. If you can get happening with that guy at the top or the gal at the top, that is a fabulous entry point to a brand new world. I I'm not sure I'm gonna say anything else after that. I mean, that's it's it's beautiful and it's profound, Michael.

Um, and from my perspective, you are using the single most powerful word in our human experience, choice. Choice. And you're right. Our early conditioning is not by choice.

Um, what we do after that is our choice. And oh, by the way, choice comes right back to responsibility. And those are sort of so now we're we're back to the conversation about maturity, right? Because if I'm gonna make choices, I'm gonna be responsive, I'm gonna be responsible, I'm gonna mature.

And there is something happening in the 40s that is a is a is a is a sort of a uh uh a step change opportunity. It's an opportunity, it's not a guarantee. But yes, uh that becomes to me profoundly compelling to work with folks who are leaning into choice as their guiding principle. There's no guarantee agreed because we don't know.

However, the effort is always worth it. Amen. There's your guarantee. Amen.

You can guarantee that something is going to be evolved. We just don't always know what it's gonna be. But I think and and and I I know we can keep going, we're running out of time, but the other word you brought up, Michael, what I think is so key is courage. Courage is the threshold point between you cannot live a life of greater choice or responsibility without courage.

Well said. Absolutely. Eric, if they want to get a hold of you, how do they do that? Well, my website is sagadica.

com, s-a-g-a-t-i c A, sagadica.com. Um Eric Hoffman 7, I think, is my handle on LinkedIn. And if somebody wants to reach out to me, then it's Eric, E-R-I-C at sagadica.

com. Eric, this has been a fascinating conversation, and there are so many questions and things I got going through my mind right now that I this this is begging for another podcast, I think, uh a follow-up. I don't know if you agree or not, but there's there's so much to this, I think, that is not even uncovered yet. I mean, yes, you know, uh amen to that.

I mean, I'd be happy. You guys are um you know, super dialed in and obviously doing work that's meaningful work and happy to play. Happy to play with you. All right.

Excellent. Let's do that. Well, thank you, Eric. Um, to get a hold of Michael, michaelbailey.

com, that's M-A-I-K-E-L Bailey.com. You can get a hold of me at Rich Barron Executive Coaching.com.

You can find us on the John Matone Global website. You can find us on LinkedIn. Uh and just as Eric said, you know, there are no shortages of way to get a hold of any any one of us. So um love to have a conversation and love to hear what it is that you have to say.

So um, I don't have any shout-outs today, Michael. How about you? Uh, just Eric. Some shouting out Eric.

Eric, shout out to Eric in San Diego, California. There, there, there you go. So San Diego, that's a that's another shout-out. That's another shout-out altogether.

Absolutely. So, and in closing, uh, I I the one thing that we always want to make sure that people understand is to take care of each other. That's why we're here. That servant leadership.

We're all in this together, and and and the more we recognize that and the more we we bolster each other up, the better we're all gonna be. So, until next time, thank you for joining us on mainline executive coaching ACT. Leaders lead well.