Ep 75 Face To Face 12 Wild Leadership Lessons...Cheryl Mobley

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello and welcome to another adventure and podcast of the Culture Hour. My name is Shelly Smith, your host, and I'm very excited today, uh, to bring back one of my favorite people and definitely one of my favorite guests, Cheryl Mobley. And in a moment, I will introduce you to her and her latest and greatest book. But the Culture Hour, it's meant to make you open your mind in different ways, obviously around workplace culture, but today's leadership, and that is the very topic that we are going to pull at the strings from today's expert, Cheryl Mobley. So let me introduce you to Cheryl. Cheryl, ah, I already said, is one of my favorite people. I had the pleasure of meeting her and working with her a few years ago with some of her clients, and I just adore her approach. Um, she has a strategic mindset and a calming soul in every way, shape and form. Her expertise comes from healthcare as well as many other, uh, different industries. Um, she's known for her B99, which is where she was the 99th percentile inside of the hospital. Healthcare and success. So she definitely knows what she's doing. Again, her mindset from a strategic standpoint, how she's able to tug and to help you focus deliberately in the. In a seemingly simple way, but yet a brilliant way. And her latest and greatest adventure. Um, she's a photographer as well, among many other things. But she went on a safari, a horseback safari, and, uh, came out of that an even more, uh, incredible human being with what she saw, what she experienced and, and what she has brought to life in her book. It's called Face to Face, a guide to leading more skillfully in the times of great disruption and uncertainty. And she has brought not only beautiful pictures to us in her book, not only the adventures of an African safari on a horseback, of all things talk, um, about getting comfortable, being uncomfortable, but the leadership. Aha, ah, moments that she has brought inside of this beautiful, uh, tabletop book. You can also get on audio, um, as well on Amazon. But I encourage you to buy the book, uh, the hardback. But so today. Welcome, Cheryl. Welcome back. Thank you so much for being a guest today.

Speaker B: Uh, well, thank you so much. It is always pure joy to spend time with you, Shelly. And thank you for the introduction. That was just very flattering and probably belies my lack of intelligence on going on a safari on horseback with no barriers between me and things that think I looked like dinner. Right.

Speaker A: But I love it. I have to tell you again, because your book is set up so differently than certainly any other, uh, leadership Book the elements of, uh, uh, every single thing that happened along the way and then again those aha, uh, moments. And I love the lessons that you sprinkle throughout deliberately of each chapter and how we can go deeper on your website and get more and then the tidbits at the end of going, uh, deeper and what you offer up. So thank you for all of the resources and the thought and the application. Uh, you make it seem so simple. And leadership is in no way, shape or form simple. And you've had great success and you've helped so many, uh, CEOs and executives have great success too. So my first question is, let's talk about today's leadership landscape and the mindset. It's so different things that we talk about today from authenticity and empathy and vulnerability, uh, wellness, um, our connectivity from spirituality is. I mean, I will admit, when I was first in a leadership role many, many moons ago, decades ago, we didn't talk about any of this stuff. If anything, it was. You don't talk about it. Never let him see you sweat. Certainly don't let him see you break down and cry and, you know, our adult tantrums. So, uh, how do you frame everything that's happened to your book? The disruption and the certainty, uncertainty. Um, tell us your thoughts.

Speaker B: Yeah, so. Great question, Shelley. You know, I think it's actually ironic because when I was talking to. I had obviously some people helping me with the book. And as I was pulling out the leadership lessons, and you know, this from our work together, my bent is always, what can you do? What's the positive thing you can do? It's not a Pollyanna. There is nothing wrong going on because there is right. You're having to manage whether it's something you're doing, the environment you can't control. People are going, you're going. That's just not what we do here. Right. There's always stuff, uh. But I had a lot of people, you know, come up with kind of negative twists on what they thought the principle should be. And I'm like, you know, that's just not my style. Right. I mean, there's. There's a lot of things that are not right, but if we focus on that, we kind of augur in on that. You know, it doesn't mean you ignore it, but it's where you putting your attention.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: We live in. In our business lives, work lives, not for profit lives. You know, pick it right. Whatever it is that you do inside a larger microcosm, we're not separate from the world. You know, uh, everything kind of leads through, bleeds through. What you were talking about earlier was, you know, as a leader, it was like you were supposed to keep personal stuff out. Part of that was legal protection. Right. You know, for. You didn't ask about stuff going on for your people. You didn't share it. You know, there was this idea that professional meant distance. And I think it's a wonderful thing that we've lost that, because I used to talk to people and go, you're still a human. And just think of the energy you are suppressing or the. The. The work it's taking you to suppress who you are at work and trying to be this. What you think is professional, which is a sterile version of you. So I've never supported that, ever. Um, because who you are, Shelley, is different than who I am. Right. And if you don't bring that. And that was one of our joys, working together, is we saw things differently, and we both respected each other enough to bring up what we saw to make a better solution for my client. Right. So I'm always in support of that. I do. However, I'm kind of breaking my own rule now because I think we have a lot of things wrong. And I think in some ways, leadership can be simple. We make it complicated because we allow ourselves to believe a lot of stories that we're being pushed at by media, by our own thoughts, you know, all of these things. So at the end of the day, uh, you know, we have a choice. We can focus on the few things that will really make a difference, or we can allow ourselves to be pinballs in a slot machine and be run all over by everybody else's pressure. And then we can't figure out why we're like, right. Well, when you're like that, if you're like me, there were some days where I'm like, you know, I can't even spell. And today, so probably not a good day to be making important decisions. But we put ourselves in that state, and then we can't figure out how to get out of it. And it's like. But we're the ones that have to push the, you know, not going to do this button. And I don't see people seeing that because they're so like this that there's not the ability to pull back.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Where I see that happening is it feels like we have gotten to the point where I think we've taken what you raised of, uh, kind of empathy, the personal side, you know, caring about people, recognizing that people have a Life outside of work, which we absolutely should. I am a firm believer in that. We spend so much of our waking hours at work. It is your job as a leader to help people excel. Right. But that also means saying, here's what we do and here's what we don't do. It doesn't mean your mama, it doesn't mean your therapist or daddy. I can't be daddy. Right. You know, I mean, but whatever it is, you still care about people. But at the end of the day, you have come together to produce an outcome for someone else.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. And so when you work in healthcare, it's incredibly obvious the only reason any of us are there is to take care of the people that trust us enough to care for them in a time when they're vulnerable, they're sick, they cannot do it. Absent those people trusting us, we have no work. But in a lot of other roles and things, I think it's been way too easy for what you do to be divorced from the fact that you're doing this in service of someone else. And we are now getting to the point where, well, my work is all about me. And we're forgetting the fact that. No, no, really, y' all are coming together to do something bigger than you. It's not about you having a temper tantrum as a two year old and saying, you know, me, me, me, me, me, me, me all the time. Well, the problem is there's thousands of you all saying me, me, me, me, me, thinking that the role of work is to make your life awesome and get everything done that you personally want. I don't agree with that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think we've gone really wrong now in saying that the loudest screaming voice wins. Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, and so many good. I, I want to pull it a couple of the strings that I, I say ironically, but it's not you and I for the listeners. Uh, we were having a conversation before we started recording and uh, Cheryl and I are aligned on so many things. Uh, one of which is the higher needing guidance and, and the listening and the pull and the tug. And so I say ironically, but now that we've been talking, it's not ironic. Last night and this morning I read three separate articles, uh, from higher ed. One of which was a, ah, Harvard Business Review. And it was about, um, asking direct reports what the characteristic, um, strengths need to be of CEOs.

Speaker B: Mm.

Speaker A: Number one in all three articles. Humanity. Mhm. Humanity. It wasn't inclusion, it wasn't self aware, it was humanity. So to when you Started talking. I was like, oh my gosh, I just read these three articles that said that literally, you know, so again that

Speaker B: I haven't read them. So cool.

Speaker A: I know this is m. This is like. I'm like, what, what? Humanity. Humanity. So that, that was one thing that you said that I wanted to bring in. The other thing that you said was, um, uh, there's a couple of books and I'm, I'm again when you and I talk, I'm like looking at my bookshelf. There's called the Meaning of Life and it's uh, uh, it's about somebody who was in one of the concentration camps and his entire, you know, uh, the book, he's got a few versions of it out there. But uh, the Meaning in Life is what you just said. It is. We are here to give, to teach, to share, to. To help others level. To give and to share our story, our journey. To help others build their stories so they can share, so they can teach. And so again, I just heard you really eloquently talk about the meaning of life. We over complicate everything that you know as humans.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: The next thing I heard you say was today's world. And again, ironically or not, I did one of my short podcasts, echo Chamber. I'm hearing echo chambers all around us and it's consuming us because we live inside of and we create our own echo chambers. And so we are running in the paths of ah, people who talk like us, think like us, and therefore we think that's the only. And then the eye, the eye, the eye, the eye that you were just, you know, talking, uh, about. So I just wanted to pull at that. And so now my next question. You just talked about your own personal shifts and I know, I've seen you shift leaders, I've seen you in action. What are some of the, the tips, the tricks, the aha. Moments that you could give our listeners on of uh, your journey and our journeys. How do we make those shifts? Like what are the triggers? What do we need to listen to that we're not listening to? How do we make that happen?

Speaker B: So great questions as always. So I think the first thing is to realize you have to make the choice first. And one of the things I've seen our culture go really astray is there are a lot of us and understand, I mean no insult to anyone who is truly a victim because we there, every one of us has had something where we had no control over it. Okay, but. And a lot of times we play victim and we give away our ability to change things because we're looking out there, we're pointing the finger out there. We're waiting for someone else to fix it. And because of that, we don't change anything because we think we can't. And then we whine, right? And moan and whimper, and then we get mad m and da da da, da. And we're mad out there at them. Uh, it's your issue to fix, generally. Again, I'm separating very clearly. When you truly are a victim. But too many of us too often pull on the victim hat when it doesn't fit. And we spool ourselves up, and we spool up everyone around us. It's the misery loves company thing, you know, so the first thing really is recognize that you as a leader have to make a decision that you're not going to keep being the pinball. You know, that you're going to do what you need to do to pull back and go, what do I really know? Really? No, not what stories have I built around things? Because we all do it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, we all do it. And so whether it's, well, they didn't look at me, maybe they're mad at me. Maybe I'm going to get a bad review, or maybe my boss doesn't like me, or maybe, you know, your boss or whoever probably didn't even see you because they were lost in their own head. But now you built the story, and now you're going to respond to them as if they're mad at you. I mean, just all the things we do, and we don't take the time to go, what am I creating? What reality am I creating? And what am I allowing to influence me at this point as a leader, as any human that shows up to do work that you're paid for or even volunteer work, in my opinion, you have an obligation to do your best in service of the people you're supposed to serve. Now, that's the end, customer and client, but it's also everybody you work with. You know, unfortunately, too often many of us are toxic in the workplace, and that spreads so quickly. I think it's a horrible thing. That toxicity spreads way faster than happiness, cheerfulness, joy. It just does. So each of us has that responsibility every day. And I'm not saying work is perfect. Everything's wonderful. Well, if you're waiting for that, you might as well just crawl in a hole, because that will never be so. Either accept that things are never going to be perfect. But how can you take responsibility and show up and do your thing and try and be a light for people in a time when it's really dark right now. So that's the individual person that chooses to get paid for something or again chooses to volunteer as a leader. You have that and more as the leader. That's your role. And I'm not to say you don't ever have bad days. You know, you don't ever have things that aren't right for you either. And I'm not saying hide it and act like, oh, hi, because everybody's like, I wonder what's going on behind that look. Right? Yeah. But you have the responsibility to protect your people and not allow others to hold them hostage. And you, as the organization to be held hostage by bad behavior, by temper tantrums, by being disrespectful, by not doing what they're supposed to do. And I had somebody ask me a great question. She goes, well, you know, it's hard now, right? You can, in some cases, people, you can't find the people you need. Right, right. I, we, we've talked about this before in terms of there are just less people that want to work and there is a population, we're decreasing, so there's less people that are available to work. Right. So you put all that together. And I said, you know, for a lot of organizations, they're going to need to redefine what success looks like. If success has always been, we have more people working for us, we have more customers, when we have a bigger bottom line, well, then you're probably always going to beat your head flat against a wall because not every organization can have that outcome now. You just can't. So what does success look like? Does it mean changing that? Right. Does it mean that you don't feel like you have to keep those 30 people who were so toxic that they're destroying the entire organization, but somewhere you decided that you had to have those roles to be able to do the thing. It's like, yes, but now you're making anything you want to do impossible because you're holding on to this old vision. So I think those are some things that are huge that I don't see people doing because they're just like, well, successes always look like this. It looks like this. It's look like, right? And this is what it must be. And this is what it must be. And I don't care if it's not possible, I gotta make it do it. You know, and you get this little bobblehead thing going on and then you as a leader are exhausted too. And you disrespect the people that are willing to show up and do the work. Because I've been there, and I'm sure you've been there when you see a lot of people who aren't performing but nothing changes and you're like, and why am I busting my jobs? Because it doesn't really seem to matter. So you, as the leader, degrade the entire performance of everyone and you degrade the experience for everyone, which I do absolutely think is a leader's responsibility. At the same time, I do not believe, uh, it's the leader's responsibility to pander to everyone and to treat them as if their experience is the most important thing for the whole organization. At the sacrifice of, if I can take care of everyone and get done what we need to do, awesome. But if everyone's competing interests take away from what we've come together to do, I'm going to have to say that's not the way it's going to be here. And either you can choose to stay and move this way, or you can choose to self select out, because this is what we. How we are here. And so it's just, it's those hard decisions that require a leader to be able to enough to be able to think. Because when you're like this, if you're like me, I can't think. I mean, I find, you know, things are rattling around in my head like it's crazy. And I'm like, I have to find my own pause button. I have to stop and I have to go, okay, what do I really know? And is this the way I want this to be? And what's my role as the leader in changing it? And again, that sounds simple, not easy in execution because you have a boss, right? They have a boss. It's not just your thing to control, but that to me is the role of a leader. And so those are the things that I see missing, is that we have just accepted the old standard of success without reviewing it. We've accepted the pressure to try and make everybody happy because the same media that you mentioned is all over. Well, it's your responsibility to do this. It's your responsibility to do that. I'm like, get over yourself. It is not. You are setting people up to fail all the way around by putting these unrealistic expectations on a poor leader and on a poor organization for every single person to be made ecstatic and happy and have all of their needs met. Yeah, it's like, that's not what this is about. And it's not. When I was working in the hospital, we cared deeply about our people. When things were tough, we would come around them, we'd hug them, we'd love on them, we'd acknowledge it was hard, but we couldn't take the heart away because that's what we do. Uh, you know, so it's that it's taking care of people, but it's understanding that you have a collective accomplishment to achieve. And it's not individual. And we have allowed it to become. It's all about each person getting exactly what they want. And nobody's had the courage to say, you can't all have what you want here. Yeah, that's not going to happen. And. But we're trying. And so that's the.

Speaker A: It's not life.

Speaker B: No. But we've somehow decided if you take back and you look at a lot of the business media, which, quite candidly, I've stopped looking at because I just make. I'm just like, are you kidding me? Really? Because every single article really reinforces that you, as the leader, have to make everyone happy all the time. And if you don't, you're failing. And I'm like, excuse me. And so then it becomes true.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's why leaders are leaving, because they're like, I can't do this. It wasn't enough before to try and meet deadlines and profits and quality outcomes, and now you want me to do this, too? Really?

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: No problem. So we're being very unrealistic, and then we can't figure out why it's not working. And then we're like, oh, we just got to try harder. So we auger in deeper on the crazy. That's my take on it. Right?

Speaker A: I mean, no, those are great tips. I. I heard you. Um, I think of Brene Brown's quote, uh, of, um, clear is kind and unclear is unkind. So that clarity of expectations. I heard you definitely, um, echo that in a good way. I heard you talk about, uh, that life isn't linear. Um, life is not linear. There's. There's nothing about life that's linear. But yet we do try to. To do this. You know, we're born, we're raised. You do this. You, you know, this is your path. This is what you do. This is how you do it in every aspect of life. And, um, life is about the zigzags. I mean, if not, how do we innovate? You know, going back to Pre March of 2020, all the companies that couldn't work remotely that have now figured out how to do it remotely. I mean all the things that when you have to make choices and you have to change, you know, you can your shift. So I love all of those nuggets. Um, and the noise. I heard you talk a lot about the noise. We listen to the noise and that goes back to the echo chamber, but we do. And there's a lot of noise. There's a lot of noise. So, you know, as a leader, our job is to cut out the noise. It's unnecessary. Starting with ourselves, I was going to say.

Speaker B: And they can't take it in. Yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's that, um, the, the lifeline, when you're on a plane, you've got to give oxygen to yourself first. First or better natural instinct is to give it to the child or the older person universe. It's ourselves. So you know that reprogramming, those are great nuggets. Uh, thank you for that. Um, a couple of more things and, and we start to lean into a wrap up. One of the things that in the back of your book, I'm just, I'm going to read it. Um, I'll give you all the visual from some comments from Cheryl at the end. Uh, she says, I've personally experienced both sides of the coin. Work experiences that set the life out of me and work experiences that really set me up to stretch and grow and to make contributions. Didn't like the former and really, really enjoyed the latter. Very hovering. Perfectionist, you said, who learned the hard way that I don't get better if I don't start. I love that so much. And then what the audience, our listeners today don't know is our conversation that we had, that you've had a lot of messaging around.

Speaker B: Go, go, go.

Speaker A: And so obviously I reread that before I got on, uh, the zoom call with you today. And then our conversation when you were talking, I was like, there it is, the go. And then the tidbits that you've given the viewers and the listeners today of, um, start something, figure it out, stop, pause, then go.

Speaker B: Just go.

Speaker A: And if we don't go, we never figure things out and we stay on that hamster wheel and that. So just all of those pieces as are what you have in the book, our conversation before this conversation and then in the conversation, it's really resonating. And so with that, as we go into wrap, I would love for you to share what makes you go and how do you go and maybe some additional tips there, um, that you want to share. Are there, um, some books you're reading now that you want to share? I always like, you know, to do that. Are there any, um, you know, podcast or articles or are there anything that you want to share with us? Um, that's helping you go perfect.

Speaker B: So for me, the, the what drives me is I strive constantly, with not 100% success, right. To move forward based on what I feel like God's telling me to do. And so that's kind of my direction. That's my listen. And a lot of times it's like, if something comes out of left field, like writing this particular book, I'm like, well, I didn't come up with that. That was not even anywhere at all for me to grab. So, okay, so that's what pushes me. And it pushes me in ways that may or may not seem to fit the kind of the cultural direction. So it's that willingness to listen and say, what is it that I hold as m? What directs me or who? Right. And so for me, that's it. Because otherwise, without something that is way bigger than me that I can trust to know a whole lot more than I do, you can spend all your time spinning your wheels feeling like, what do I do, what do I do, what do I do? And if you were absent that anchor, that's what happens a lot. And then you do what feels right to you at the time, which is part of the reason we're in the situation we're in, I think culturally is everybody's doing what feels right to them.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And individually and you know, they scream louder and louder when they can't get what they want because the focus is all on me, me, me, me, me.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And again, m not saying I'm perfect. I am certainly not. Like I used to tell my team, we try something, we learn. As long as we are breathing, we will make mistakes. We just don't want to keep making the same ones over. And we want to figure out what we can do differently next time. Right. If we're never trying anything, then yeah, we may look good, but we're not going backwards at the speed of sound. Right. You know, I mean, that's kind of the way it goes. And for me it is, it is about the perfectionism. Because it was like I was one of these people that what I internalized growing up was, you know, you've got to be perfect. And I'm not pointing fingers at anybody. That was just my response.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's like, okay, I've got to be perfect. Well, news Flash I'm not. Will not be. Right. But if you put that weight on yourself, you don't start because you feel like you're going to fail. And so it's that shift that says, it's everything that I know how to do today that you know how to do today, that everybody listening knows how to do today. At one point they didn't know how to do.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Everything, you know, from starting to crawl, to walking, to talking, to learning new skills. And we forget that because it becomes easy for us. But if you use that understanding, then you take that into the next thing you need to play with. And I, I tell people and I, I work on this myself, is think of things as an experiment. Because when you frame something as an experiment, you know, it's not always going to be perfect. Right. It's a learning process, you know, because an experiment means, okay, I have this thing, I think it might work. Let's see if there's truth to it. And you either learn that, yes, it does. No it doesn't. But now you've eliminated something. So okay, why didn't that work? H m. Okay, and then now what can I try next time? And that was the approach that we used certainly in the hospital. That's the approach we use with our clients. Because if you have that attitude of experimentation and you permeate that throughout the organization now with limits. Right. There have to be things you can't ever experiment with. I can't decide safety. You don't have to care about that. Taking care of people. No. There have to be non negotiables that. Back to your quote about the clarity. That's the leader's job to set. We don't go outside these bounds, period. But within that, how can we play? How can we experiment, how can we learn? And so I think that shift is huge in helping me go. And I've seen it with m my clients as well. And I'm sure you have too. Right. If you have that idea, you're like, okay, uh, all right, this is right. To maybe not have everything work perfect, but if you have that delusion that it's going to be perfect all the time, anybody with two operating brain cells won't start.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: I mean, why would you? Yeah. You know, and so that was one of the things that I really enjoyed with the book was interviewing 25 leaders from around the world, roles all over the place. I did not want to have an echo chamber of the same voices who. People who do the same thing with the same experience, because I Wanted everyone to be able to go, ooh, I want to learn about what it means to stretch or ooh, I want to learn about how do I keep myself at the top of my game. Right. And how do other people do it and what can I lift right now, today from them? Because I asked everybody that I interviewed, I said, be very concrete. I will absolutely pop a quirk if you go. Teamwork is important. It's like really. Right, yeah. Thank you so much for that. And nobody that I talked to did that. But I really pushed for specific things that people could lift and play with.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And um, to me that's one of the benefits in the book.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: You know, is to have all of those different perspectives from people at the highest levels to people operating, you know, their own restaurant. And I'm not, you know, saying levels are just completely different experiences. Right. In terms of what's required. So being able to learn from all of these people, I think I'm so grateful for their willingness to spend time and share their specifics. Right. That we can pick up and lift. So I think for me that's really the biggest thing about Go. It's like, what is it that drives you? I think too often now we go, well, it's my truth and I'm sorry, that doesn't work. I can't say my truth is. Well, Shelly, I don't like those glasses on you, so my truth is I'm going to take them off your face. Mhm.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Really? I mean, we're not being logical here, you know, we can't say it's all my truth. Well, if we're driving down the road, you better follow the same laws I do. You don't get to decide you don't like me and bump me off the road. I mean, so this. We've lost the logic, you know, in the rhetoric, we've lost the logic and I don't see people pushing back and we've. That has permeated our organizations. Well, this is my truth. Yeah, no, that may be what you believe and I'm not finding fault with that. But again, it's a shared thing, guys,

Speaker A: you know, and we have choices to stay in those boundaries, inside or not. To your point, if anything, we've proven that, uh, we as a human race are extremely resilient individually and collectively. Um, that we, we do have choices. When people say, I don't, I can't, I can't leave.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: I always, you know, challenge that. I understand that there are some extenuating circumstances, but we do have choices.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think for me, those are kind of the big things. It's really. It all starts with you always. And unfortunately, I see us too much making it about, well, I can't do that because Shelly did this, or I can't do that because HBR said I should do that or whatever. And I'm like, get over yourself. Take responsibility for your choice. You're not to.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And so it's that dynamic I see us allowing in the larger culture that has in a horrible way infiltrated a lot of our organizations. And I feel horrible for the leaders who are having this pressure put on them. And I feel horrible for the people working in the organizations because that kind of chaos and tension and angst is exhausting.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And I'm lazy, Shelly. I don't like exhausting. I really don't. You know, I don't.

Speaker A: I don't think any. I don't think any of us do.

Speaker B: It's like, oh, no, no. You know, so those would be. I mean, as far as as what I'm reading, they're always. What I love to do is skim things that don't seem to have anything to do with business because those things we. Again, I think in business, that was one of the benefits of health care. And there's other things, not just healthcare, but it's so right in your face what you're there to do. But in a lot of our organizations, we've lost touch with the fact that there are logical steps m and in the physical world like we have here. I wrote a blog post about this a few years ago. I live on a little bit of property and we have, you know, we have hay. And so somebody cut I first I have to have rain. I have to have the right temperatures. My hay, you know, my grass grows. Then I have somebody who cuts it well, then they leave it and then they come rake it. And then after they rake it, it has to dry. And then after they do that, then they bail it. I mean, it's like you can't bail it before it's grown, you know, but we try that in a lot of organizations because we don't have that kind of logical flow of what must come first. And so I think looking at things that are physical in nature often kind of helps reground you to the fact that there is logic. Even if we want to say there isn't any, you can try and blow past it, but it doesn't work for long and it's exhausting again. So for me, looking at things well outside of the typical business, brings some logic, brings a different way of thinking and gets your creative going because you're like, ooh, it was kind of like me on the safari thinking of all the different experiences and going, well, what's the leadership principle from that? Ah, you know, what is it that that pulls? So I think that training for us, that's one of the beauties of being a photographer as well. And I learned this was actually a fabulous teaching moment. I was at a, with about 10 other people at a photography workshop and it happened to be a pet photography workshop. And we would go, we would be dumped in the same situation just to take photographs and we would all look at everybody else's. You would never know that we had been in the same place at the same time because every one of us had such a different viewpoint. What we looked at, what we focused on, how we chose to shoot it, frame it, completely different.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And it was so obvious and so cool that each of us brought us to that experience of what do we see and then how do we share it with everybody else? And that's life, that's what it should be. And we often think that, no, there's only run one right way and that's my way, you know, uh, but it's like there's so many wonderful things to look at and how you choose to

Speaker A: see to see them. Which makes me think about when people are. 10 people are in a meeting and you walk out with the person who is presenting thinking everybody's on the same page. It was a great meeting. And the nine other people leaving with a different perspective. What they heard to take away. I mean, spot on.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, those are, those are again great nuggets and tidbits. Um, it's all around us and we, we choose not to see it, we choose not to listen, uh, to it from our answers and in our perspective. So it's been a pleasure having you on today. I'm gonna let you tell everybody how to best find you. Um, uh, how can they best find the different options of getting this incredible book, uh, first of all, and finding out more about you.

Speaker B: Perfect. Well, thank you. Well, I, there are two ways for the book. The book that Shelley has is the hardcover coffee table book done with very high quality paper, high quality photographic paper. Shelley mentioned the image on the COVID was one that I shot. So every photograph in the book is I took and everyone asked me, so I'll answer it now. How close were you to the lion?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And I said, well, telephoto lenses are a nice thing, but realistically only about 30ft away. Well, 30ft from me and a lion is nothing, right? I mean, absolutely nothing. Yeah. And we were in an open vehicle. On this particular shot, I was, I took no images on horseback, but it was just amazing to be in this completely open vehicle. And the instructions were things like, don't put any parts of your body outside the vehicle, don't stand up, don't put a jacket on or off, because then you will look different than the animals are used to seeing. And then they will come after you if you look normal like they're used to, is not a threat. You're fine. So trying to remember all that while you're trying to take images, don't move, don't stand up, don't flop this, don't do that. Right. Um, but just being in that environment where you are clearly not the master. Right. I mean, no way, no how. And so that was just an amazing experience. But all that aside, the, the book was designed to really be able to showcase the images. I had someone do a fabulous custom illustration. She's incredibly talented. And so that particular book is only available through my website. And so that's recalibrate today. And so the hardcover is there. And then there is an ebook available on Amazon and you can search it for the, for the title. Um, my name on the book is Cheryl Lynn Mobley. Um, so if you find it, that's it. And of course you'll see the, see the COVID So that's available as well, um, for people who want both and, or just one or the other. And then my website, recalibrate Today, obviously has some other information about what we do, um, the kinds of, you know, kind of what's our attitude, what's our approach, why do we exist, why do we take up space and breathe here. Right. You know, from a work standpoint, um, the B99 which you mentioned is a kind of a guiding questions framework. Because I'm a really stellar, annoying two year old. Right. Just really good at asking questions. Right. So this whole framework is really around if you want to be 99th percentile, uh, meaning you are the very top in your industry, which our hospital was year over year. When you compared us, the hospitals in the country, what did we do that other great organizations weren't doing? And so I basically reverse engineered and go, okay, because I had a lot of interaction with a lot of other leaders. What did we do? And so the framework is really all about what were the things that we did differently and what are the questions you need to be asking as the leader, the organization, an individual contributor, the team? And kind of what's the approach that is there on my website for anybody to look at and pull up? There's some other resources they can request that give them a little more information on that. But that underpinning is what drives kind of how I think about what we should be. Um, and then as you and I've talked about, things change, but what remains the same. I think we're trying to throw the baby out with a bathwater right now. And then we can't figure out why there's a problem.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: What do we keep, what do we jettison? And so, so those would be the best ways, of course. Somebody can just email me directly at cherylcalibrate today. I'd love to have conversation with anyone because that's fun for me. You know, it's just fun to see how other people think and how you think and where's the synergy and how can we both get better with the exchange of ideas.

Speaker A: So thank you so much. Thank you again for being here today. One of the things that comes with the book, I'm going to show this because you can. The QR code is there for leadership sightings. So for those of you who are listening to this audio, you cannot see what I'm doing, But to the YouTube, depending on how you're consuming this podcast and you'll see the, the QR code there that you can grab. Um, some additional resources that are just fantastic. All of the, all of the photos I love in here. I'm just going to show another photo, uh, because of things you said today. And this is towards the back and um, it's a hippopotamus. And what I was thinking when I was seeing this, actually had this open that I wanted, was going to show to those of you who are watching, um, on YouTube today. But the hippopotamus, when you look at it, your, to your point, it's either yawning, uh, to me it was roaring. And so when I, I, I hear you, the go, the start, the do something, the shift, life isn't linear. I mean, all of these things, there's so much inside of us as human beings and, and how much are you tapping in to understand, uh, your own humanity and how are you bringing that alive? And so when I look at that picture and now hearing what you said today and what you said before we started recording today, that roar got louder for me in a really good way. Even though hippopotamuses are clearly incredibly dangerous, um, beautiful, in my opinion, um, pieces of creation that are on this earth. So all of those things kind of, to me, culminated what you've said today to the listeners in this conversation. So thank you so much. So again, everybody, thanks for tuning in. Whether you're watching this as the, the recording video side and you saw the pictures that I was referring to, or you're listening to the audio and hopefully now you're motivated to go look at the, the video and to grab the book or go to Cheryl's website. Thank you for tuning in today. Um, as always, you know, it's all about, um, how are we showing up as leaders? What are we doing in life to make an impact in a greater way? Because it does start with us and, uh, putting up those guardrails of what right looks like and helping people choose in, to opt in or to opt out, um, based on the. That, that clarity, um, inside of that. So if you've got other people that, you know, I need to interview to be on here as well, by all means, hit me up. But until then, until the next time, be well, stay safe out there. And, uh, remember, culture is not built in a day. It's built every single day. And how are you showing up for the impact? Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Cheryl and everybody, thank you. Super fantastic day.