732: How Aspiring Leaders Can Succeed Today with Clay Scroggins

Pete Mockaitis
Clay, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Clay Scroggins
Oh, Pete, thank you. I feel so grateful to be back because last time I was here, you changed my keynote talk that I do on the book that you were interviewing me about, so thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks.

Clay Scroggins
I hope today is just as impactful.

Pete Mockaitis
No pressure. Cool. Well, to kick it off, it’s been a little while and we’re going to be talking about your book here The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future: 9 Surprising Ways Leadership is Changing. And I’d love to hear a surprising lesson you’ve learned in the couple years since we’ve last spoken.

Clay Scroggins
Well, I resigned from my job three months ago, so I don’t know what exactly the lesson is for the future of leadership but I’ll tell you, for the now, it has been remarkably great to be self-employed.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Yeah, certainly. Well, I’ve enjoyed the journey myself, pros and cons, and every set of tradeoffs. Cool. Well, hey, good luck. I hope that you continue rocking and rolling.

Clay Scroggins
Well, you know, I feel a bit like a walking cliché about it because we’re in the middle of The Great Resignation. United States is resignation nation. We went through a pandemic, or going through a pandemic. Anyone who is in a helping industry – nurses, teachers, nonprofits – and then I was in the clergy business, I was a pastor, still am doing a lot of preaching at churches on the weekends, but anybody who’s in one of those lines of work, the emotional toll of the pandemic just seems to be a little bit more stressful, and I just felt like, “Oh, of course.” Like, I went through a pandemic and quit my job.

But honestly, it wasn’t the challenge of the last year and a half. I actually enjoyed the challenge over the last year and a half, but it was that feeling that I think everyone has from time to time, which is, “Can I do it? Like, do I have it in me to make a go of it on my own?” I guess it was like a little bit of a, “I’m going to take a bet on myself.” And, obviously, you did that. Was it ten years ago?

Pete Mockaitis
Just about, yeah.

Clay Scroggins
Crazy. So, that’s pretty much what I decided to do was, “Let me go out and see if I can do it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, congratulations. It’s good to have you.

Clay Scroggins
My kid bought me this Van Gogh poster, and she’s been meaning to write “Let’s Van Gogh” on this poster. Well, she gave it to me as a gift for working for myself now, which I thought was really brilliant. She hasn’t “Let’s Van Gogh” on it quite yet. I need her to. So, let’s Van Gogh, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Let us. Let us, indeed, Van Gogh. Well, so tell us, what’s fundamentally sort of the main thesis or big idea behind the book The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I, like everyone else, noticed that leadership is…I like leadership. Let me back up and say I enjoy the concept of leadership. I think everybody was made to have an impact on this world. I think it is baked in your DNA that you want to make a difference, that you want to build something, grow something, create something, move something forward. And I believe at every level of any organization, every single person is a leader.

Leadership is not about authority. It’s not about a title. It’s not about power. It’s about the ability to influence someone, to move someone to do it, they maybe don’t even want to do to accomplish what they want to accomplish. And so, from that standpoint, I’ve written a couple of books on leadership. So, I spend a lot of my time speaking about leadership, talking about leadership, helping organizations that have a girth of emerging leaders, of swaths of emerging leadership, helping them figure out how they can become better people. When you become a better person, you usually become a better leader.

And I started realizing, obviously, in the last couple of years, “Oh, my goodness, leadership is changing at a rapid rate.” And I don’t think anybody would disagree with that. Every time I’ve started out to research the topic of how leadership is changing, every blogpost, every book, every research study, started with that same concept – leadership is changing. Leadership is changing.

But the more I tried to understand it, the more I realized, none of us really know how it’s changing. And if you don’t know how it’s changing, it’s really not very helpful. That Wayne Gretzky quote that to be really great at hockey you have to skate to where the puck is going, not to where the puck has been. If we’re going to grow and develop into the kind of leader that the future is demanding, then we have to know how leadership is changing.

So, that was really what was behind it all, was, “All right. Well, then how is it changing? What are the ways that leadership in the future is going to be different than it has been in the past? And let’s talk about it.” So, I threw a bunch of research, and reading, and studying, and thinking, and conversing, came up with nine, I call them, surprising ways. Some of them are less surprising than the others but nine ways that leadership is, in fact, changing, and how we can become the kind of leader that the future is demanding.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, I would like to get a view of that. And maybe to kick us off, could you provide an example or illustration of what’s some leadership going on – and you don’t have to name names, but you can if you want – that is old and broken and not what’s with it anymore?

[06:02]

Clay Scroggins
Well, I think some of the cliches, some of the tropes of leadership that I remember, when I was probably 20, 21, I co-oped for Accenture business strategy consulting firm when I was an engineering student in Atlanta, and the phrase is like “Dress for success,” “Fake it till you make it,” “Don’t let them see you sweat.” They used to watch how people would salt their food to determine whether or not they made good decisions. If you salted your food before you tasted it, you were rash and impulsive.

They would look at how clean your car was to determine how organized you were. I would say, at a very basic level, it’s those kinds of things that I feel like are maybe good examples of the old way of leadership that is no more. That’s kind of that GE – and I love GE, I love Jack Welch. Straight from the Gut was one of my favorite books, but I would say that concept, that style of leadership is probably one that is of the past.

Clay Scroggins
Does that resonate with you at all? Do you remember any of it?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I agree with you that. Well, I guess I thought those were never good. And they weren’t good then, they aren’t good now, in terms of because there’s all kinds of reasons why, “Oh, maybe they salted their food because they’ve been to this restaurant before, and they know darn well it’s insufficiently salty.” So, if you’re going to draw an inference on someone’s career and future and potential based on that datapoint, that’s really foolish and you should have a more robust process to assess the things you’re looking to assess. There’s my hot take on that.

Okay, so that’s old school. Well, then you’ve got nine particular surprising ways. Can you give us a quick rundown of what those nine are?

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, the first one is the idea that you don’t have to know everything to be a leader. Most people think that, “I’m not ready to lead because I don’t know enough.” I think because the way knowledge is rapidly changing and growing, we have to be more comfortable with those three words “I don’t know” if we’re going to be willing and ready to lead.

The idea that you need a coach, whether you’re going to pay for that coach or not, I think is something that my parents’ generation were a little less accustomed to. The idea that all the greatest athletes have coaches. I think the great business executives have coaches. That concept is new. The idea that if you fail you’re not a leader, is outdated. I think all of us are going to have failings, that you’re not going to have just success after success after success.

The idea of not just being aware of your weaknesses, but being intimate with your strengths, I think it’s surprising to me. There’s been research that’s been done that says the majority of people think their weaknesses can grow while their strengths remain stagnant, remain fixed. But the truth is you can grow your weaknesses and you can grow your strengths as well. But when you ask that interview question, “What are your greatest weaknesses?” most people have their canned answer, but most people are not aware of their superpower, their strengths.

That Jim Collins line, “Get the right people on the bus,” I take that concept and really challenge whether or not we know who the right people are. I think who the right people are is changing. Some people that might have been deemed as the wrong people have helped me become, helped me make right decisions, helped me become more of a right leader, helped me to see more rightly even though they may have been the wrong people. So, challenging that concept was really exciting for me.

The idea of trust, I think, is pretty crucial as we look toward the future. In the past, particularly with our work environments where you could walk down the hallway and look over someone’s shoulder to see how they’re doing, within a matter of days, the concept of trust on teams was challenged in a way that it had never been challenged before because everyone is working from home. So, learning how to give trust without demanding trust, learning how to give trust to be trusted, I think is a way that leadership is changing.

The concept of conflict. The conversations that we’re having at work, I’m sure, Pete, even though you work for yourself, you’re well aware of this, there was a day where you left religion at home, you left what you thought about a lot of the social issue at home, but we’re having those discussions at work on a regular basis, “What do you think about race? What do you think about gender? What do you think about sexuality?” Those are conversations that are very common in the workplace. Not only that, but people are growing less accustomed to having conflict. So, the idea of learning how to have healthy conflict, I think, is going to be more important for the future than it even was in the past.

Learning to lead with vulnerability. Most leaders are, we’ve been taught, “Hey, I’ve got to ‘show the best and hide the rest.’” Social media enforces that. And learning how to lead with that thing that makes me feel most insecure, learning how to lead with my weakness is something that I don’t think we’re naturally accustomed to.

And then the last way leadership is changing is around the idea of success. Learning that success is not a scarce commodity, but learning that it’s really having an abundance mentality when it comes to success, making sure the people that you work around know that, “Hey, I’m in this for you. I’m not in this for me. And when you’re successful, I’m successful. If you’re not successful, I can’t be successful.” I think that concept is a way that the future is going to demand that of us whether we’re ready for it or not.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I like that. So, those are juicy in terms of we have nine ideas, which you can think, you can bat around, you can chew on and dig into. And so, to recap, number one, saying it’s okay to not know. That’s cool. Two, we all need a coach to be our best. Three, you’re going to fail and that’s normal. Let’s see, four, you want to be intimate and knowledgeable of your strengths, your superpower. Five, the wrong people can, in fact, be helpful. Six, give trust to be trusted. Seven, learning how to have healthy conflict. Eight, leading with vulnerability, a place where we’re insecure. And, nine, success is abundant and not a scarce resource we need to squabble over and politic and scheme to hoard.

Clay Scroggins
Pete, can I have an engaged interruption?

Pete Mockaitis
You may.

Clay Scroggins
As you look at those, which one do you think, “Oh, yeah, that definitely is new”? And maybe another way to think about it, Pete, when you think about your parents, which one would your parents go, “Wait a second. Why is that one on the list?”

Pete Mockaitis
I think that the one that struck me is new is when you talk about learning how to have healthy conflict, like in some ways that’s not super new. Like, I guess, what do we have? Abraham Lincoln, “Team of Rivals,” like, okay, yeah, old school, and that sure was helpful in terms of having that healthy conflict. But in terms of, yeah, what folks are bringing into the workplace, and I’m thinking right now about Basecamp. They had quite the kerfuffle associated with the leadership.

And I don’t know the ins and outs of the story, but it seemed like they were somewhat good-intentioned when the leadership said, “Hey, guys, you know what, these kinds of issues, I feel like they’re getting a little bit divisive, a little bit distracting. Let’s not do that anymore.” And then there’s like a riot, like, whoa, like it really blew up.

Clay Scroggins
Coinbase did the same thing. Sounds like they’re very similar situation, where the CEO of Coinbase basically said, “Hey, look, we’re not dealing with that. We’re here to continue to help in the decentralization of the economic system of the world. We’re not trying to solve the race issue, so let’s leave all that outside.”

Pete Mockaitis
And that didn’t go well for them.

Clay Scroggins
Well, I think he feels great about it, but I think there was a walkout, there was a protest. And there’s a part of it I can understand why he would say that because he’s going, “I’m not an expert in this. I don’t want to talk about this. Let’s get back to talking about the economy and how we pay for things.” But, no, I think, in general, it was not received really well.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. So, it does really feel like a new thing in terms of that’s happening now. And I guess that’s a whole other conversation if that’s good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate, inappropriate.

Clay Scroggins
Exactly. Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
But it’s there in terms there are a healthy proportion of folks who want to engage and think it’s necessary, proper, and appropriate to engage on those matters at work. So, lay it on us, Clay, how do we do that well?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I think the way you put that is really great, Pete. Pete, just so you know, this is what’s great about your podcast, is you do a great job of playing this, like, Switzerland, neutral, “I’m just a facilitator,” but you’ve got really great thoughts, and you have great interjections and opinions as you’re trying to pull things out of people, so thank you for doing that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Clay Scroggins
But I give a plan, I give a, “Hey, if you’re trying to become better at conflict, here’s a way to approach it.” I give four A’s that you can work on, that you can go think about, you can prepare for. Number one, would you affirm the person however you can? You might not be able to say much, but would you affirm them? “Here’s what I believe is true about you. Here’s what I’m afraid you’re going to think about this conversation, and I just want to let you know that’s not what it’s about.”

So, it’s really affirming your intentions, it’s affirming what’s true about the other person, and it creates safety. What you’re trying to do in any high stakes difficult conversation is you’re trying to build a bridge of safety that’s strong enough to bear the weight of whatever is about to come across that bridge. And so, if you can start by affirming whatever is true about that person, I think you’re off to a great start, but you have to prepare for that. You don’t want to think of that on the fly.

Secondly, would you ask a couple of really curious questions? Arrogant people don’t ask questions. They don’t have to. They know it all. But people that recognize, “Hey, there’s something I don’t know. There’s something that you see that I don’t see. And whether you’re right or I’m right, or you’re wrong or I’m wrong, I’ll be better if I can get behind your lens and see the way you see it.” And so, would you ask a couple of curious questions that will allow you to see from the other person’s perspective?

And then, third, would you acknowledge what you’ve heard? Miscommunication has started wars in this world. It can certainly start a fight or a conflict in your workplace. And so, learning how to simply acknowledge what you’ve heard. We do this a lot with engaged couples. We do a lot of premarital counselling, my wife and I do, with engaged couples. We’ll have them sit on our couch six or eight times before their wedding, and the session on conflict, we’ll say, “Hey, bring the latest, greatest conflict you’ve had.” It’s always about the in-laws, by the way. Spoiler alert. It’s always about the in-laws.

And so, what we’ll do is we’ll say, “All right. You, sir, would you explain what you wish would be different with your spouse?” And he’ll say, “Well, I wish you would check with me before you call your mom about,” said situation. And then she’ll go, this is her acknowledgement, we’ll have her repeat back. He’s assertively communicating, she’s actively listening, and she’ll say, “So, what I hear you saying is you don’t want me to talk to my mom anymore?” “Okay, that’s not exactly what I said. That’s not what I’m hoping for.” So, there’s a chance for them to sync up what they’re actually saying. That’s really important.

And that’s what that step of acknowledgement is doing. It’s trying to let the other person know, “I hear you.” When you say something, that’s important. But when you feel heard by someone, it is such a crucial part of communication. So, if you’ll start by affirming and ask a few curious questions, and then acknowledge what you’ve heard, and then advise, and then give the advice, or whatever it is that you want to bring, you’re just off to a way better start. And the problem is if you don’t go through it in that order, if you go through it in the reverse order, which is what most people do, most people want to fire off the text to the boss or the peer, to the coworker, “Hey, I just want to let you know this is your problem. And how dare you? And you better not,” and whatever.

And if you do that, you end up having to walk backwards through the process. You end up having to acknowledge that you were wrong, ask for forgiveness, and then affirm that you really love working there. So, if you don’t go through it in that order, I think you’ll end up paying for it in the end, but that’s just a simple process. As we think about the future, why conflict is even going to be more important in the future than it was in the past, specifically healthy conflict, my hope is to give a pathway for people that they can prepare for so that they can have healthier conversations at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. That’s cool. So, affirm, ask, acknowledge. Nifty. Let’s hear about wrong people being helpful.

Clay Scroggins
Well, I love what Jim Collins has said. Jim Collins is like the GOAT. That book Good to Great, I’m sure it sold more copies. He has not sold more copies than you have had podcast downloads, I can promise you that.

Pete Mockaitis
What 50-million-ish? Maybe.

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, you might have, I don’t know. He has sold a lot of Good to Great copies. And that line “Get the right people on the bus” I’ve had it rattle around in my head for as long as I’ve been leading teams. But what I found is that what I thought was right might not be right. I always thought right was, “I get along with them. I like them. They’re like me. They look like me.” And the more I have stepped into leadership opportunities, the more teams I’ve led, the more I’ve realized that the right people aren’t always the right people.
And sometimes the people that I think are the wrong people are the ones that actually helped me the most. Just because you’re ambitious, it doesn’t mean you’re the wrong person. Just because you are prickly doesn’t mean you’re the wrong person. Just because you’re hard to get along with doesn’t mean you’re the wrong person. Now, certainly, you want to be a great team player, you want to be willing to get along with the people around you, but sometimes the wrong people really do help you see the right way or make the right decision. And I think that’s new. I think that’s different. I think that’s a different way of seeing the future than the way we’ve seen it in the past.

Pete Mockaitis
So, they’re the wrong…I guess what this means is sort of like the halo effect or if there’s a devil horn effect in reverse.

Clay Scroggins
The opposite, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, someone is prickly or abrasive and, thusly, they’re all bad. And then they’re not the right person to be on the bus, and so they don’t belong on the bus and so don’t associate with them. They’re unclean.

Clay Scroggins
Unclean, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And yet, it seems that in this instance, like the very same candor, shall we say, associated with that prickliness or abrasiveness is just what the doctor ordered in terms of helping you see blind spots or learn, grow, improve.

Clay Scroggins
I certainly think so. I’m sure you’ve had people that have…it’s been the people that have challenged even the way you’ve ran your business or thought about your podcast that maybe, initially, you were like, “Ugh, I don’t like the way that feels.” But in the end, they’re the people that actually helped me grow and helped me change, helped me see something that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen.

And so, I think early on in my leadership, I thought, “Get the right people on the bus. I got to get the people that I like on the bus. I got to get the people that are like me on the bus.” But the longer I’ve led, the more I’ve realized I don’t know that I’ve got the right concept of who the right people are and how sometimes the wrong people are the right ones to help me see differently. Honestly, Pete, it’s why I think people underestimate diversity.

If your team looks just like you, there’s a problem. Somehow deep within you there’s probably something within you that wants to justify why you look the way you look or why you are the way you are. But valuing other opinions, valuing other backgrounds and the way other people see it is only going to help you see more clearly. It’s only going to help you reach the people that you’re trying to reach, or sell whatever it is you’re trying to sell.

And I think sometimes we miss that about diversity, that we feel diversity is…there’s an altruistic motive behind diversity that I think is great. But I think we miss out on the idea that you will come up with better…you will make better decisions if you get people around you that don’t look like you, that don’t see like you. It will only help you in the future. And I think sometimes we miss out on that. That’s a complicated thing for two white guys to talk about, but I think it’s a really important part as we look toward the future, as we start thinking about who should be on the bus and who shouldn’t be on the bus.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, certainly. As you have a broader array of perspectives, you get a fuller picture of reality and, thus, yeah, especially over the course of many decisions, you’re going to have better ones and sometimes epically better ones. So, that’s handy. Let’s get your hot take on being intimate with your strengths and knowing your superpower. First, Clay, what’s your superpower?

Clay Scroggins
I think my superpower is the people around me. They feel believed in. They feel like someone sees them. I’ll tell you, you’ll find out more clearly what your superpower is when you resign from a job, which is kind of unfortunate. But they did a little exercise on my last day of work where everybody had a whiteboard, and they said, “All right. Everybody, write on the whiteboard, what do you want Clay to know?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.

Clay Scroggins
And that was a great exercise. And there was a gal on our team who grew up very differently than me, looks very differently than me, has a very different background than me, but was an incredible teammate for me. And she wrote on her board, she said, “What I want him to know is I’m grateful that he always saw me.” And I thought that’s pretty stellar. I think that I probably gained more awareness of what I was good at by leaving than I had while I was there, which I think is one reason why every now and then you ought to just quit a job and resign from a job.

I had the same job for about 18 years, and so I don’t know how much you’ve done on resignation, Pete, but the morning I had to go meet with my boss to resign, I opened up my podcast app and typed “How to resign from a job?” because I had never done it before.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we had an episode on that. I’m wondering if we turned up.

Clay Scroggins
I wanted to make sure I got it right. It’s kind of a hidden…it’s one of those hidden parts of having a job that you just don’t think about until you have to do it for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, it sounds like you did it fairly classy if that’s the sort of exit they gave you as opposed to a swift kick in the butt, and a, “Here’s your pass. Get out of here.”

Clay Scroggins
Lit everything on fire and the doozies, right.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, Clay, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about a couple of your favorite things?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I do think we would all agree that the future is going to be different. I think we would all agree that we’re moving toward a different future than the past that we came from, and I hope people feel encouraged by that. I certainly do. I think, as I started thinking through this concept, I felt so encouraged that I think a lot of these changes in leadership are healthy changes.

There was a story that Angela Ahrendts…I had a chance to interview her for this project. Angela was the CEO at Burberry, and then after that, left to be the senior VP of Retail for Apple. And Angela told this story about sending out these videos to her 75,000 retail employees at Apple, and she was trying to unify them, she’s trying to bring them together. And so, every Monday morning, she would send out a video called Three Points in Three Minutes, which I thought was a great little concept.

She said one of the first times that she shot it, she had a video crew in her office, and she had a phone call in the middle of while she’s shooting it, and it was her daughter, Angelina, who was in school in London, in college. And she said, “Hey, just keep it rolling,” and she picked up the phone, and she said, “Hey, Angelina, I’m shooting this video right now. As soon as I get done, I’ll call you right back.” Her daughter said, “No problem. Call me back.” She hung up the phone. She finishes the video. She gets done with it, she tells the camera crew, she says, “Hey, keep that in there, send it out just like that.” They said, “Are you sure?” They’re like, “We’re Apple. We make beautiful things.” She’s like, “Yes, send it out just like that.”

She said the next morning, she wakes up, and looks in her email, and she had hundreds of emails of people telling her, “Thank you. Thank you for reminding us that you’re a person too, that you’re trying to do your greatest work, but you’re also trying to be an amazing mom, and you’re trying to have a great marriage, and you’re trying to be a great person. We’re trying to do the same thing.”

And so, I think some of those changes like that, that’s an example of vulnerability, it’s an example of being open and honest about what’s really going on in life, and I think there’s something for all of us to learn in that, that people want a different kind of leader. People do not want a leader that has it all together, that knows everything, that has the right answer for every single issue. People want a leader that’s willing to say, “Hey, I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know but I’m working on it as well, and I don’t have it together either. I’m inviting you to help me become a better leader. I’m doing something that’s such a big deal, I can’t do it alone, and I’m inviting you to be a part of this.”

And I think that’s who we all want to work for. I think that’s the kind of leader we all want to work for. So, why not become that kind of leader? Why not become the kind of leader that is growing into that kind of vulnerable, aware of conflict, better at conflict, giving trust even though you might not feel trusted kind of leader? I think it’s the kind of leader we want to work for and I think it’s the kind of leader that we all really want to become.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Okay, so resigning is one way that you can get some insights in your superpower. What are some of your other practices you recommend to get those insights?

Clay Scroggins
Well, the easiest way is to ask people. Probably the best simplest thing that I did was anytime you’re changing jobs, whether you’re resigning or not, it’s a great time to ask people around you, but you don’t have to wait until you changed jobs to ask the people around you. I just sent a simple Google survey with three questions, “What do I do that inspires you? What do I do that bothers you? And what do I do that I don’t even know that I do? What are my blind spots?”

And, of course, Pete, like anybody, the parts that I harped out on, that I really camped out on, were questions two and three. But reading the answers to question one, “What do I do that inspires you? What do I do that motivates you?” it gave me such crystal-clear clarity on what it is that I do that people appreciate. And so, the easiest way to find out what you are good at is to ask the people around you. Most people just don’t know.

I’m amazed at how many interviews where you ask people what their weaknesses are, and they give you the Michael Scott answer, “I work too hard. I care too much. I spend too much time at work. Those are my weaknesses.” But most people, they don’t know what they’re good at, and the people around you know. They know what you’re good at. And if you can become more intimate with your strengths, you’ll find that your strengths are what the people around you love you for, and you can grow in those and become an even more valuable player today and tomorrow as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Clay Scroggins
I love that Abraham Lincoln quote, “I prepare and I study because one day my time will come.” I love that little simple concept that I think what he’s trying to say is “I recognize that destiny has something for me in the future.” And I think that’s true for every person, that the future has something for you. The future has something where you’re going to be called a moment, a mission, an opportunity where you’re going to be called upon to lead, and so what you’re doing now is not wasted effort. What you’re doing now is not worthless. No, it’s so important because you are getting ready for that moment.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Clay Scroggins
I love Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute. Do people ever comment on that one? Does that ever come up?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s come up a couple of times. I listened to the audio version but I hear it in my mind’s ear right now, “You’re in the box.”

Clay Scroggins
“You’re in the box,” that’s exactly right. That’s probably my favorite leadership book and it’s in the fable, it’s done as a fable, which some people like the fables and some people don’t. But, yeah, I love the concept that you are constantly affirming the narratives that you’ve already written about people, and so you have to challenge those narratives or else you’re going to just continue to put them, in the words of The Arbinger Institute, “In the box.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Clay Scroggins
Well, ClayScroggins.com would be the easiest place to go but I’m on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, a bit on TikTok, not a lot, but some. So, @ClayScroggins, that would be great.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Clay Scroggins
Well, I would just say continue to study, continue to grow, continue to learn because you just never know when your moment is going to come. And if your moment hasn’t come and you feel passed over, or you feel like people have forgotten you, there’s still more to come. Your story is still being written. And if you can continue to grow and develop and challenge yourself, I think you will be better prepared for whatever the future holds.

So, I’m grateful for podcasts like this that help people grow personally because without this, we just wouldn’t have opportunities to challenge ourselves, to hear new ideas new and concepts. So, Pete, you’re modeling, I think, which is a great thing for every one of us, which is to consistently try to learn something from someone so that you can grow and prepare and challenge yourself to be ready for whatever the future holds.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Clay, thank you. This has been a treat. Keep up the great work.

Clay Scroggins
Back at you, Pete. Thank you. Thanks for having me.