From Manager to Leader

Everyone has experienced bad management at some point in their career, but what happens when you rise in the ranks to the manager and you are the difficult one?  Tom Byrne sits down with Kyle and they discuss the positives and negatives of management styles and how you can parlay them into good leadership.

Tom and Kyle discuss:

• What does it take to be an exceptional leader
• How to use adversity to improve leadership
• Telling someone vs showing someone how to lead
• Why do so many get it wrong
• How to make small changes with monumental impact inside your team

If you want to learn more about how to become a leader – check out Tom’s website – Lead, Grow, and Innovate

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: 0:00

Welcome to The Summit. A podcast focused on bringing you the knowledge and insights for industry leaders. I’m your host Kyle Hamer, and I’m on a mission to help you exceed your potential. As a sales guy, turned marketer, I am passionate about building sustainable businesses . And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 20 years , it’s like you won’t find it over-night growth scheme, a shortcut to success or a way to hack yourself. Nope . Success is the byproduct of hard work rate relationships and deep understanding done over and over. We’re here to help you unlock that success with some secrets from other people, one conversation At a time. Welcome to The Summit. My name is Kyle Hamer. I’m your host. I’m here today with Tom Byrne. Tom, Welcome to the show.

Tom Byrne: 0:41

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Oh man.

Intro: 0:43

We’re super excited to have you for those of you who don’t know, Tom, Tom is a podcast host himself. He owns and hosts Lead, Grow, Innovate.

Tom Byrne: 0:55

Sure is. Yeah.

Intro: 0:56

Lead grow innovate. And it’s a podcast about becoming a better leader. So from going from where you are to where you want to be and how to get there, which is, which is kind of exciting today, we’re going to talk about managing through adversity, how to go from being a manager to leader and what you need to do. Tom, before we get too much into that though, tell us a little bit more about yourself, a little bit of your backstory and we’ll, we’ll jump into the topic .

Tom Byrne: 1:22

My backstory ties in that I’ve got about 22 years of management experience. I’ve been through the hotel industry, dealing with a lot of different Avenue aspects and really different areas of hotel industry. But then I moved into retail industry as well. So a lot of customer service and , and face-to-face dealings with my customers, but also with my teams and getting my team stat exceptional customer service kind of aspect, an idea. So it was a growth and perspective at that point for me, for, you know , those 22 years in management. But then I got a little bit of a life-changing situation two years ago and what happened was actually I was injured and I hurt my back and I’ve been disabled for the last two years and haven’t actually been doing what I did as a manager and a leader. So it forced me to make some changes in my life. And a big thing that changed in me was I actually went through a small stint of depression. It was very difficult for me to be removed from my management roles. Something that I loved my career was just about everything for me at the time. And it was rather devastating to not be able to teach anymore . And I had to find a way to get out of that funk. I had to find a way to really get myself back and as silly as trivial as this sounds, I went and I got a haircut and it brought me back to that managerial idea of get myself back together. I went and I got that haircut and I had that presentation of a manager back in my mind and that kind of spurred me. Okay, well, what else can I do to become better and give back and continue to teach and grow. And I started blogging and it was just something I’d never done before. It was just a spur of the moment idea. Let’s start a blog. And it started a blog about management and leadership and that transition, that mindset goal and moving yourself forward to become better. And the aspect of being a better leader for yourself to then be able to lead people better. And it was that transition of going and getting a haircut and bringing myself out of that depression, funk that spurred what I do now. And it , it , it’s kind of a silly thing when you really think about it , how minimal a tiny, that little thing of doing is going and getting a haircut. But that was something I used to do on a regular basis as a manager to bring myself back. So it kind of brought me there. And then I started to realize, you know, what, I’m of the mindset that inside every follower, there’s a leader and there’s gotta be a way to get people there and get them back to that point of where we need more leaders in the world and the world will be a better place with better leaders. So how can I continue to grow and enhance leaders while still not being in my workplace where I was able to do it daily. So I had to then create an Avenue and that’s where the blog and eventually the podcast grew into a little bit of a background story for me.

Kyle Hamer: 4:37

Yeah. Well, and you know, when we were, we were talking before we have the call today, or before we had this actual episode recording, you know , one of the things you mentioned was there’s kind of this, this evolution of this progression through your career, where you’ve got to this, this moment of depression, as you just touched on, but it was through finding new meaning in your managerial career, but your managerial career started out as kind of authoritative or authoritarian. Right. So why was a nightmare? What does that mean? I mean, you , you say you’re a nightmare, but like help us understand before we talk about, you know, managing through adversity and getting into the, even more, the core of the topic , give a little bit of backstory about, you know, your, your career progression and , and what others were saying about you before you started to find the light.

Tom Byrne: 5:28

I think we can all probably look back on our careers and think of that one person we didn’t like working with. They would take credit for what you did, or they wouldn’t give recognition for a team’s effort, or they were just not, they were very direct and abrupt in how they dealt with people. And that was me at the start of my career and over the course of that , and this was a lesson took 12 years for me to learn out of my 22 years of management, 12 years of it. I wasn’t not, I was not what you would call a good leader. I’m today’s day my goodness. To this day, I look back and I think to myself, how could I be that person at what possessed me to be that way? How could I let that power trip take over? And, and to make me the person that I was, and it was a mental state and it actually took me get knocked down about 15 rungs on my ladder, personally, mentally, and a lot of different aspects. I was actually slated to go into a project, but nobody wanted to work with me. I had a reputation that I was not a good leader. I was not nice to work for. And I was a bit of a nightmare for lack of a better description. I actually had to go back and reassess who I was, and this is 12 years into my career. I had to relearn how to , to be a manager, to be a leader. I had to learn how to lead people. There was no more dictating what I was doing. I could not just point people in the direction and say, Hey, go do this. That’s not how society works these days. That’s not how things pan out. And in many cases, that’s actually going to drive people away from you. So in the process of actually having my bell rung and being told, Hey, you’re not very good at this in a very indirect way, but in a way that actually diminished me to a point where I was crushed, it took me then finding a way to climb back up. And through that evolution of the next 10 years of leading versus managing, I became better at what I did. I took all those 12 years and all the mistakes I had made, and I stuck them away in a little notebook in the back of my head. And every time I’d find myself making those same mistakes, I take myself aside and I give myself that little kick in the bum, Hey, this is what caused you to be in trouble in the first place. And what set you back in your career? 12 years be better. So I had to teach myself to lead myself so that I can lead others effectively. And that was,

Kyle Hamer: 8:12

You just mentioned something I think is interesting. You talked about you know, being knocked down on the wrong. So I have two questions about that. One is , is why did it matter to you? What other people thought? I mean, I think oftentimes a lot of, a lot of leaders and our managers don’t care what anybody else thinks. The other thing that you mentioned there is that there was a progression you made from leader to manage or from manager to leader. Talk, talk a little bit about both of those things for us.

Tom Byrne: 8:41

It meant something to me because I felt that I was doing a good job. I had people that were telling me I was doing a good job, but I think those people were honestly seeing as a manager and I want it to be something more. I want it to be someone who people respected. I wanted to be someone that people would follow, but I also want it to be someone who is true to me. And when I , I realized what I’d become, it, wasn’t what I wanted to be. And I wasn’t proud of who I was. And that was a definite moment of clarity. And sometimes we need that moment of shock. Or you say to get knocked down a few rungs to really wake up to the fact that we have become someone we don’t want to be. Sometimes in our careers, we will travel down paths where we’re taught, or we watch the other managers in front of us. And as we’re coming up as a young manager, we emulate those people . People who are well for all black and purpose, they’re mentors to us, we watch them, we emulate, we learn and we grow. But many times what we’re watching Ching and emulating may not actually be who we are, but we continue to grow within that company or that corporation and people that have been with companies for longterm , they become that company status. And sometimes we need to think outside that box and break that mold and become innovative in our own style. And as I say, I looked at myself at that point. And when I had that money moment of, wow, I thought I was really good at this, but it turns out no, I wasn’t, I wasn’t leading. I was actually dictating, I wasn’t even managing at that point in my mind, I was dictating what needed to be done. And I was leading through a course of purpose where I was actually leading with fear. Well, if you don’t do what needs to be done, there’s going to be repercussions and situations like that. And that wasn’t me. That’s not who I am when I came across. And I really realized and sat back and said, you know, what, why are you doing this to yourself, Tom? Why in the world? Are you being someone who you’re not? And why are you miserable when you come home from work each day? And it was because I was being someone I wasn’t, and it wasn’t being true to me. So when I had that moment, I really realized, okay, I don’t want to manage, I want to lead. I want to grow teams. I want to grow community and want to grow people around me that are not going to respect me for my position, but for actually who I am and what I can do. And in my mind, that’s a bit of the difference between a manager and a leader is that community aspect and the growth of teams and growing of individuals and enhancing those around you versus helping a manager will do a lot of things to help people and will get them where they need to be. And they’ll do a lot of things, whereas a leader lead them and be there with them. And that’s kind of a mindset switch that I had to make as I was going through was okay. There’s no more just telling people what to do. I actually need to help them get there. And I need people to respect me for who I am, not what I am.

Kyle Hamer: 12:06

So, so I mean, I talk to me a little bit about the, the adversity. I mean, you, you, you touched on it briefly and you’re saying, Hey, it’s, it was important to me to be to be my true self, to, to, to truly identify, being able to look at what the body of work that I was doing and see myself reflected in it. Can you talk to, or , or help us understand where either you got lost or, or how you found yourself going, gee, this isn’t really who I am. How did you begin to even have the self-awareness to identify that?

Tom Byrne: 12:44

I think it took a whole lot of self-reflection when I sat back and started to assess after I’d been knocked down. And I keep coming back to that moment where I was knocked down rungs and I had my bell rung because that really was a changing point in my life. And in my career, I realized that I needed to give back to who I was at that point. It was a lot and I mean, a lot of self-reflection I started really looking back, why am I miserable? Why am I not happy? I love my job, but why am I not happy here? What do I need to do to become happy again? What can I do to find that passion in my job and in my life, again, that I found I was losing. And it was a progression over time, it did kind of grow over that period of time leading up to, but I think it really took that moment of that , that moment of clarity when it really came down to, wow, I thought I was doing really good, but now to find out that no one wants to work with me, that was earth shattering. And I really needed to do that. Self-Assessment at that point to figure out what was going on to cause me to not be liked. And why did I not like myself in that circumstance? Why could I not just let it run off my back? Like I had done many times in the past, what caused this situation to be different? And it was that insight and that true clarity to the fact that, you know what, this isn’t who I am. I’m not being true to me. I’m not being true to the people around me. And why am I doing that? Not just to myself, but to those I’m leading and how can I be better?

Kyle Hamer: 14:40

So you go through this process, you start, you start making progress towards being a better you, you’re working on being a better manager, ultimately being a better leader and then adversity strikes. And you’re knocked back down to where you’re in a depression. And the thing that snaps you out as a haircut as you kind of, as you talked about earlier.

Tom Byrne: 14:59

Yeah. So what, what were some ,

Kyle Hamer: 15:05

Well , the changes that you saw happen that made you very, very excited or happy with the progression that you had made as a , as a manager into what you felt like was either a leader or B becoming a leader, what was, what was going on? What were the things that you were seeing that was changing?

Tom Byrne: 15:24

One of the big things that happened and was noticeable in what was happening around me was that people wanted to work with me. All of a sudden I was getting slated for more projects and people were volunteering for the projects. So in that capacity and that mindset suddenly I realized, well, I had done something correct. I brought myself back from the brink of no one wanting to work with me. And now people are volunteering to work with me. And I was getting people return on projects, but we were also seeing success and what you’re seeing success as a team. So in that regard, then people were being promoted out of my teams as well, because they were being recognized for the work that they were doing. It wasn’t just me seeing the recognition. My teams were seeing recognition. And again, as I say, I was seeing people promoted out of my teams and moving up into roles of management leadership themselves. So that really den started to make me think, okay, well, I’m doing something right here. So let’s continue down this track and let’s continue this trend in what we’re doing now. How can I do more with that? How can I make it so that if somebody gets on my team, someone’s coming out of it promoted. That was my goal. At that point, it was no longer, okay, how can I move up? But how is somebody out of my team on every project that we work going to be moved up and in the process, by moving people up, suddenly I started to get recognized. So it no longer took me putting myself at the forefront. It actually took me putting others at the forefront and making them recognized and really emphasizing the really quality and good work and strengths that they had and moving them up in the world that suddenly caused me to be recognized, wow, this guy is giving us nothing but talent. He must be doing something right. So I started to get recognized and it was on no effort of mine that suddenly I was getting promoted and I was getting bumped up. And it was amazing how just that cycle of leadership started to grow organically in what we did. It was that , that faith in myself that I could grow somebody. And then that person then having faith in me and then the confidence between both of us to produce that quality work, which then cycled back to quality work, being completed and projects being done really well, which then boosted my confidence again, which then allowed me to have faith in myself again. So it’s cycled and it’s circled organically and became amazing. And it was just, it’s hard to say when it came or how it progressed beyond over time and experience and through various interactions with many people. But also it took some looking back at the people that really inspired me as I was coming up through. I started looking back at my mom and dad. Mom was very entrepreneurial in what she did. She was very systematic and she was very 100% hard worker. And my dad was an extremely hard worker. He was a welder in a mine, and I had learned a solid work ethic and a solid entrepreneurial and innovative mindset from my parents. And then I started to look back at teachers that it inspired me and then other managers that inspired me and not necessarily those managers coming up through that, I emulated and became someone I didn’t, but actually those managers and leaders that inspired me and made me feel that I could be better. And I started to think back to what caused me to feel that way when I was dealing and working with those managers, what was it about them? That was amazing. And it started to boil down to, they were confident with themselves and they were also so confident with themselves that they didn’t need the recognition. They were able to share it with others. And through that strength of confidence and purpose in them, they were enhancing others. And I don’t know what it is about confidence, but confidence is sexy. People love confident people. And when you’ve got that confidence and that strength and that just true ability to believe in yourself, it becomes contagious and that contagious aspect then feeds others and makes them want to be better. It’s just truly, it’s a beautiful thing when it starts to become organic and flow and really it becomes natural, but it takes repetition. And sometimes it takes that moment of really getting knocked on your butt to realize, okay, you know what? I need to do something more and be better that I can be this person that I truly want to be.

Kyle Hamer: 20:12

So you start finding that either through your growth mindset or through the repetition, you’re , you know you’re, you’re building teams, you’re seeing success and then wham it’s gone. And during that time, you find, you find a way to continue doing what was feeding your soul or what was feeding your, you know your internal mechanism, that the stuff that was making you feel like it was working and you start lead, grow innovate. Talk about that, that transition for you. Going from, I have a team, I have people they’re , depending on me, I’m growing them. All of a sudden that’s gone. You don’t get to do that anymore. And how you build the bridge to what is your podcast today?

Tom Byrne: 21:00

As I say, you know, I was pretty depressed for awhile . There I was, I was rather bummed out living in pain. Those of you that have had chronic pain or have dealt with something that prevents you from doing the things you love I’m an avid golfer. I love disc golfing, but it hurts me. It hurts me a lot to get out and play. So that really brought me down. It brought me down a lot. I wasn’t able to be with my team. I wasn’t enhancing, I wasn’t growing others. And I’d learned over that 10 years of leading a growing and becoming better myself, that I was a good teacher. And I really missed that aspect of teaching and enhancing others. I’d become slated as one of the people where I would get new managers and I would help to groom them to move further. And I was very lucky in that capacity to do that. And I had developed a sort of teaching style that really emphasized gratuity and being thankful for those around you and finding ways to eliminate the negativity and things so that when you spoke to your teams, it took a lot of the negativity away from it. And you focused on the positives of what you were doing. You made sure that the team knew what the outcome would be. It wasn’t okay. We need to tackle this today, or we need to get over this hump tomorrow. It’s when we get there at the end guys, this is going to feel so good. It’s , it’s not what we’re dealing with today. It’s the final result, further down the line that really gets people pumped and moving, but I’d lost that. All of a sudden, I’m sitting in my basement, staring at my computer screen and I’m alone. Wow . Oh , am I going to pump myself up today? I didn’t. I actually got really bummed out. I sat here and I kind of just got really low in a funk. And one day my daughter came down and asked me what was wrong with me. And I explained to her, I explained that dad was depressed and I was really low in what I was doing. I wasn’t happy. And I said, you know, I miss teaching people. And I missed a lot of the aspect of what I used to do. And she said, well, why don’t you find a way to do it? And the clarity of children, just like that instantaneously was at that moment. Wow. Why am I not finding something else? Why am I not doing something else to get my button motion and find a way to teach again? And so I started blogging and I’d never blogged before. So I had to learn how to create a, I had to learn how to create a web page . I had to learn now from scratch. I knew what a keyboard was and I knew how to set up emails . That was about it when it came to that kind of stuff. So suddenly I’m blogging and I’m starting to write about this. Okay. How can I re remove the negativity from my life? How can I bring myself back to that positive point? How can I dig myself out of this? And how can I find a way to tell and get back to that grooming of young managers, or even for that matter experience managers that like myself have a 12 year crisis, and suddenly they need to find themselves themselves away to dig back and find their teams again and develop their style again. And, you know, sometimes we need to go back to square, zero snakes and ladders knocks us back constantly. And every now and again, life will do the same thing, but then to the exact opposite, sometimes there’s snakes in that game. But other times there’s a whole lot of ladder. You can go from one point to 99 with the roll of a dice and just a little change. Doesn’t take much, but it gets you there. And it can be amazing when it happens. And that was what happened. My daughter was that moment of clarity. So suddenly now I’m blogging and I’m starting to write, and I’m starting to develop this mindset of positivity around me again and becoming more. And I’m teaching again, but I’m not a good writer. I just not a good writer, but I do have the gift of gab. And I’ve been a public speaker since high school. I’ve been very good at speaking in front of crowds. And I’ve been a consistently decent speaker. I’ve been able to get points across and I’ve been able to eliminate a lot of clipboards, ums, AHS. It was natural for me. I didn’t necessarily do that at the time as well, because I was bored. I was listening to a lot of podcasts and I was listening to people like at Flynn about entrepreneurship and a lot of different other things. A lot of stuff through YouTube, with motivational speakers, Tony Robbins, Jim Rowan , and all those guys. I was listening to those guys, the great speakers. And I started thinking to myself, well, why am I writing when I’ve already got a God given talent and the gift of gab, why am I not talking? So suddenly it progressed then, okay, I’m going to keep my blog going because it’s a great way to develop my, my information. I want to speak about and create what I want to talk about, but it keeps me on track because I do tangent. And if I don’t watch myself, I’ll go off and somewhere Narnia and we’ll be there for a couple of days and we’ll come back through the wardrobe and we’ll get back on it topic. So I need that blog to keep me intact , but I developed that way of giving to others. So now on your drive to work, I’m teaching you and when you get to work, you’ve got that mindset of positivity or something you’re going to implement that day. And so I started to feel like I was giving back again, and I started to feel like I was growing others again. And whether my show ever gets big or it remains small, at least for me mentally, I feel like I’m still giving back and I’m still growing a grooming. And that’s very important to me. And again, hopefully it is my true absolute 100% dream that in the process of doing this podcast, I at least help one person. And in that regard, then I at least feel I succeeded

Kyle Hamer: 27:24

The things I think that’s , that’s interesting in your story is as a o f right now, there’s a lot of people across the globe that are struggling with feeling trapped at home, right there, whether it’s their particular areas on lockdown or slow to reopen or they’re they’re sheltering in place and trying to be good citizens, whatever, the, whatever, the, t here, places on that spectrum. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that are f eel trapped at home and m issed t he, the human relationship and the human interaction. Talk a little bit about your journey and how you replace some of those things, the human t o human element, when you’re doing it on a blog o r y ou doing it on a podcast, what, what are the things that you have to look for that are different versus the human interaction that you had to lean into before?

Tom Byrne: 28:15

I think it’s all in your head, in all honesty, it’s in your head, it’s your mindset. And it takes realizing that even though you’re not with those people and podcasting is a medium where generally you’re never going to meet face to face, unless it’s a situation like this, where I’m lucky enough to speak with you today, a lot of your interactions are going to be through comments, or they’re going to be just your voice carrying through someone’s vehicle on a drive to work or your interaction with a guest on your show. But there’s not a lot of social aspect to it, but in your mind, if you can continue to grow that mindset, that I am still giving back. And even though I’m not talking to that person today, maybe tomorrow, I’ll have a comment in my, in my feed that tells me, thank you. This was what I was looking for today, or your, your insights to this was something I was looking for in my management course today. And you help clarify it for me. And that happens. That happens where you get it in those comments. And those moments are the bright points. They’re the high points in your day. They become that positive that you can build off to . Wow. I made that difference today. I’m really gonna , I want to do this again. I want another one of those comments and it’s that reward factor for, for your effort and keeping. And I mean , a lot of times in leadership, some of the power that we generate is through reward. When we’re , we’re, when we’re in the leadership role, we’re rewarding people for quality work. Sometimes it’s a monetary rate , or, you know, at the end of the week, you bring in pizza for a really good workweek and quality job that people did suddenly. You’re, you know, I’m going to supply lunch today, guys, don’t worry about lunch tomorrow. I got lunch. You guys did an amazing job this week. It’s that reward factor. And it works the same way in, in a social, in a socially. What’s the word I’m looking for when we’re alone, I guess it’s simplest way to put it when we’re alone and we’re by ourselves. And we have to find that way to bypass that social aspect. We’re trapped in our homes, as he said this day and age right now, it’s a weird year. This is a life so that people are not used to, and I kind of had a leg up on it because I was stuck there for two years prior to it all starting to happen. I was already there. So I kind of had a leg up on a lot of people. And , and I hope in the regard of some of what I’m talking about, even today may help someone get through their day tomorrow. Just, you know, it’s in your head gang , there’s still ways jump on a zoom meeting, find a way to talk to your friends, get on the phone phones , just for texting. They actually work. If you put them to your ear and talk to each other as well, there’s a lot of different ways. You can do it to really connect with the people around you. And in other aspects of that too, I think we need to remember a lot of us have families and we really , in a day and age where a lot of times we wake up, we make coffee, we get our cell phone and we start scrolling her Facebook feed or Instagram feed. And we’re sitting right next to our wife or our husband or significant other, and we’re not talking to each other. So this is a time. And this is an era where we can be with people, but still alone. It’s also an amazing time and arrow . We can find a way to reconnect with those ones. We love around us, reach out to our neighbors. We don’t actually have to stay and next to them, maybe they smell it doesn’t matter, but on the phone, you can’t smell them, but you really enjoy talking to those people. They’re amazing people. So it’s finding those ways to switch your mindset from, Oh, I’m alone in this. This is really, this is no fun to , okay, what am I going to do today to reach out to somebody, how am I going to do something more today to incorporate some social aspect into what I do? And for me, it’s checking my comments and answering Twitter or Instagram or my Facebook. There’s a social aspect. Yeah. It’s not face-to-face , but at least it’s something. And it also sometimes rewards me because there’s something more coming out of it. That really makes me excited to keep going and want to keep doing what I’m doing. But when you talk about that, I mean, you can hear the kids squealing in the background here, but when you talk about the, you know, the controlling your own destiny or, or controlling your own conversations, not everybody’s going to have that immediate feedback loop that you’re talking about. Right? I mean, there are a lot of people that , that will podcast or blog, and nobody will ever read it unless it’s a friend of family or, or they got really, really, really lost in the interwebs. How do you mean that? How do you maintain that level of positivity in your own quest for personal growth? If it’s silent on the other side, I mean, there’s a lot of people out there that are leaders or managers that really thrive on closing that feedback loop and getting other people to , and you could call it Oh, I can’t even think of the word. I was gonna say the , the validation, that’s the word I was looking for to validate me. How do you, as a, as a person who has a desire to move from a manager, or even just a frontline person to a leadership position and controlling that feedback loop and in the, in the, the additional information needed to make it feel like, Hey, I can have the right mindset. I can have the right positivity. I can have a positive impact. Even if I don’t get it repeated back,

Speaker 4: 34:29

It’s going to be tough.

Tom Byrne: 34:31

And, and I’m not going to lie. It’s not an easy thing to develop. It’s not something that just happens overnight. Mindset doesn’t happen. It’s not a switch. You don’t have a switch on the back of your head that says, I’m going to, you know, I don’t know if some of you guys may remember the Simpsons episode, the evil crusty clown, where he was switched to evil and he had the good switch on the back. And we can’t do that. We can’t say negative, positive, negative, positive. We don’t, we don’t have that ability to do that. But when we start to realize that, okay, you know what, I’m in a hole and depression is not an easy thing. It’s sometimes it’s a lot more than what I was. I was just bummed. I wasn’t depressed. And I use the word depression, and I used the word depressed a little too loosely. I was bummed out is a better way of putting it. And I needed to find a way to get out of that funk.

Speaker 4: 35:23

So

Tom Byrne: 35:25

I think what I started with was I realized, you know, what? My inner critic was my worst enemy holding me back. I had talents, I had skills and I had avenues to share them. And, and that personal reward of, okay, I’m going to set a goal for myself today to create my webpage. I’m going to work on my webpage today and create that goal of that self reward aspect. So I created that goal for me, which is, you know, I’m going to get my webpage . I’m going to get three pages. My, my front page, my comment section. And I’m going to get my blog page built today. And that was my goal for the day. And if I struck that reward, well, then I’d let myself go. Maybe have a can of beer or I, or I treat myself to something nice for dinner that night or whatever, but I wasn’t allowed to have that reward until I’d met my goals for the day. And it’s sort of like people that want to lose weight. See my idea . You set that goal for the day. Well, I’m going to work out this morning. I’m going to do 10 sit-ups . I’m going to do 10 pushups . And if I can get through those this morning, well, that’s pretty good tomorrow. Maybe I’ll do 11. But if I do those today, then I’m going to reward myself with a half hour television tonight. But if I don’t do those this morning, then I need to do those before I’m allowed to sit and watch TV. And it’s that process of meeting your goal to degenerate personal rewards. And by generating those personal rewards, you start to remove some of the social need for validation. You remove that need to have an external validation because you’re validating yourself and you become proud of who you are. You become proud of what you’re accomplishing, and it becomes so much easier to then not need that validation because it becomes your standard norm. After a while that I don’t care what others think I’m proud of me. And because I’m proud of me, I’m now confident with me. And again, it cycles back to that confidence factor where people see that confidence, it develops trust and that strong, confident you then has the ability to then think on your feet and be strong with who you are to then continue forward.

Kyle Hamer: 37:45

Have you ever read the book, the power of habit by Charles Derg ? No, I’ve never read that one. So

Tom Byrne: 37:52

At the beginning, Charles talks about

Kyle Hamer: 37:57

Two mice that are, are put into these tubes where these, these, these test environments, where everything is a hundred percent dark, they can’t see where they’re going. There are walls and the walls are electric electrocuted or electrically charged. But at the end of the hall, or at the end of the wall, there is a piece of chocolate that’s put out. And so the rat can smell. The chocolate starts going after it, but as it runs into the walls, it gets shocked. And eventually it figures out its path to get to the chocolate dying , right? And then after it figures out how to get there, cause they do some sort of click or some sort of experiment where they’re there . They’re indicating, Hey, the chocolate’s here. Eventually they stop Sort of looking forward . They stopped with the electrically charged walls and they replaced the chocolate with poison. And, but because the, the rat has gotten in the habit of hearing the click or hearing the bell, getting chocolate as the reward, even though it’s slowly getting poisoned, it doesn’t change its habits because it’s so used to getting what they is perceived or has been trained to them as the reward at the end of the tunnel. And even when you turn on the lights , the rat’s behavior doesn’t change. And anyways , so the book, the book goes on to talk about how is as creatures is as humans, that there are some times habits that we pick up that unless we consciously train ourselves to do different things, we’ll be stuck in this process that it doesn’t matter. Initially it was rewarding. Initially it was okay to be authoritarian and coercive and, and mean to people to get what you needed from managerial, you know, from managing purpose, right? Cause you thought that , Hey, that’s how I, how I grow. And then eventually what happens is it’s like, well, you’re not, you’re not really not that successful because nobody wants to work with you eventually. So you had to, you had to relearn some new things where you’re like, Oh gosh, I’ve got to figure out how to survive without that external stimuli people don’t change. If they don’t change. Then the habits that got us to where we are are actually the habits that will poison us and potentially kill us for where we’re headed.

Speaker 1: 40:14

You nailed it

Kyle Hamer: 40:16

100% . That is, that’s an incredible, and now I’m going to go back and read that book. It’s a great book. There’s a, there’s an organization. I was a part of several years ago and I was watching, I was watching the organization in a call it a a participatory participatory bystander, meaning I was involved in the organization. I was part of the organization. I was part of the organization’s leadership, but I couldn’t figure out why the organization was behaving in ways that were counterproductive to what it wanted to do. As an example, there would be leaders in the organization that say , we need to grow. But then everything that came related to, to grow through to growth mindset or trying new things, we’re always stifled because no, no , no, no, no. We can’t do that. That might cause us to fail. And I had a really hard time synthesizing with this particular organization. Why is it you’re so afraid to fail? Like if you don’t fail, you can’t figure out how to grow. If you don’t grow, you’re not going to achieve your goals. If you’re not going to achieve your goals, then why are we here? Like, that was my mentality. And so I read this book and when I read that book, it became very evident to me that what , what ends up happening. And by the way, can, you can look at this and you can apply it to government systems, civic systems religious systems, you know , relationship systems, even with your, your your disc golfing, right? Like at a certain point, without additional external stimulation or stimulus, you keep playing disc golf. Even if it meant you might end up being lame . If you hadn’t had some reason to like, change your behavior by sure. What? Yeah . You know what I mean? Like, and so there comes a point, whether it’s a child or a significant other or an investor, there comes a point in an organization’s or organisms journey where they have to begin physically choosing not to go get the chocolate physically choosing not to go do what you did before. Not because it didn’t work. Not because there’s not a reward there, but because that particular reward may no longer be what it takes to take you to the next level. And there’s a, this term is thrown around it’s cliche. As the day is long. What got me here will not get me there. And just listening to you talk, it seems to me, it’s like, well, what got you to the peak of your career? Isn’t like, is not what got you to the point where you’re hosting a podcast and writing blogs and supporting people, right? You had to change your thinking in order to recreate an environment for you to grow again. Is it any different for other managers or other people, or is it literally the same formula everywhere?

Tom Byrne: 43:11

I don’t think it’s going to be the same formula everywhere, but I think it’s going to be very similar everywhere. We’re all individuals and we’re all going to need a different form of stimulus or it’s different a different moment. Maybe not necessarily. We don’t need that moment of my daughter coming down and giving me clarity. We don’t need that moment of Vietnam down rungs for me personally, that was what it took to really make those changes and to really come to the realization that I needed to make some changes for others, it’s going to be more organic. They’re just going to morph over time. They’re going to see something that’s going to cause them to think differently. Maybe they’re going to listen to someone speak. Maybe it’s a podcast that they listen to. They hear someone say something that makes them just kind of reflect. And many times a lot of people listen to podcasts and the vehicles they’re alone. So having that person speak to them, it causes their mind to move and turn and grow. And you know, the gears are spinning all of a sudden and they start to think on that and it just kind of goes away. It just gets locked away in that little knowledge base. And two weeks down the line, a circumstance comes along that causes them to think back. I said that and they put it into practice and they really liked the way that feels. And sometimes all it is is that emotional reward. It made me feel good to do it this way today. And in the process of me feeling good, I want to do it again, but it might not take recognition or validation from an external. It may be that moment of, I feel really good about myself today. And I found something positive in what I did too . I think a lot of people they’re in positions that they, they hate a lot of people. Five out of 10 people probably hate their jobs. Let’s throw in a statistic. You and I both know that 80% of all statistics are wrong. Doesn’t matter. According to Abraham Lincoln, you’re right. It , it , it doesn’t matter. We’re spitballing here, but let’s say five out of 10 people hate their job. So 10 people love, there are five people love their job. Five people hate their job. What is it about the job that those five people love? And can they write it down? What is it about it that they hate? And can they write that down? And then the other people that hate their job, do they love their job for different aspects, but then finding a way to then chip away at that list of negatives and , and finding a way to turn them into a positive for me and I spoke about my history and hotels and retail and customer service, I used to hate customers. I was in the wrong business. I didn’t like interaction. I’m not the sort of person that would go looking to talk to people. I was 100% in the wrong business. So I had to find a way to start to love it. How could I find that way to enjoy interacting with my customers or my guests or the people around me? How could I find that way to come out of my shell and grow to be something more learned to communicate effectively and positively. And that’s suddenly then after doing a little bit of work on myself and I mean, this self-growth aspect, an idea in me started really early in my career, just different avenues, different ways, and it was smaller scale, but how did I learn to enjoy that interaction? And it was finding that positive, making someone smile, which then made me feel good . Good , so that I could move forward. I just wish I had corresponded that interaction with my guests and my customers with my team. And looking back on it now, how much or effective and how much further along could I have had. I made that connection early in my career and not needed to be knocked down, but finding that positive in what I did sadly right now in our lives with, and I hate drawing on the news and the newspapers and things like that. But a lot of the news that we come across in these avenues and the stuff that catches the attention and draws into those broadcasts or those publications is negative. And, and we swim in negativity daily, if we’re not careful. So one of the things that I kinda would say to people is find a way to rise above that don’t swim in negativity, but find a way to rise above it and float so that you can sort of elevate yourself and gain that altitude, to look down on how you want to filter your life that day and how you want to set your mindset for the day to become that more positive person. And again, as I say, you know, it’s not that Krusty the clown, good evil switch. It’s, it’s that personal mindset. When you get out of bed in the morning, are you standing up vertically? Well, that’s a good start because some people aren’t do you have running water today? Onus, there you go. You’re doing better than some others. Find those positives that surround you constantly. And then find a way to share those with others. Then creates that self reward system in you. You feel good daily and by feeling good daily, you grow and you become more. And by becoming more, you then have people that want to interact with you. So going back to that social aspect of being alone and podcasting and not having people around me by becoming a better me, I’ve actually now got people coming to me. I don’t have to reach out so much anymore looking for people because I’ve giving and I’m, I’m giving more and more back to the world without asking for anything in return. It’s starting to come back to me. People are starting to reach back with positive comments and people are starting to reach out to want to speak to me like you did, which is one of the most rewarding aspects of my podcast career. Up to this point is now having the opportunity to speak with wonderful people like you on your show, and to share my message with, with people that may not have come across my show, but they do enjoy your show. So now I get to share my message with them. And again, there’s that reward cycle that then strives back to make me feel good. And I hope by making myself feel good, I’m making someone else feel good too. It’s a fun. I love the aspect that I love. The concept of positivity, breeds, positivity and gratuity breeds, gratuity, and growth breeds, more growth. It’s that constant concept of that innovation and thinking outside the box to make people better, will you become better yourself? And it’s, it’s something that’s kind of over the course of the blog and the podcast has become more and more prominent my life. So it took a change moving out of the management leadership role and using my strength as a manager and a leader as my medium to, to create my content and create something that I was comfortable with. I didn’t have to go and do a ton of research. It was natural for me because I’ve got the experience and I’ve got the time put in and learning put in that I have the knowledge base to share without, you know, I , I read a lot of books and I study still to make myself better so that when I go on the microphone, I don’t say something that’s dumb. I at least I’ve educated myself to the point where I’m sharing quality information, but I feel good in the process of doing it. And it makes me happy, but it took time. And coming back to that mindset idea that you had, or mention , sorry, where, how can people find that mindset? It’s going to be the individual’s going to find their path, but it all comes to if we really want to get down to it, yes, there is a formula. And that formula is to decide that you want to do it. And when you have that faith in that confidence that you can do it and you know, you can do it. And you’re proud of yourself every day. There’s no way you can fail. There’s absolutely no way you can fail and feeling better if you’re proud of yourself at the end of the day. And when you make someone else smile and that makes you happy and you feel proud of yourself for doing that, it becomes so dynamic and it becomes so natural that your life just becomes more positive and you can’t help it. It’s amazing. So, no, there’s not a formula and yes, there is a formula

Kyle Hamer: 52:44

That’s clear as mud. Isn’t it though. It really is. You tell them this has been, this has been a fascinating and very fun conversation. We really appreciate you being on the show today and your candor. You know, it’s, it’s not everyday that people will admit that, Hey, there was, there was a point in time in my life when I had it wrong. I struggled. I thought I got it right. I got knocked down a little bit further. And now I’m just trying to bring a little hope to other people. That’s a great, it’s a great story. So thank you for being here.

Tom Byrne: 53:14

Oh my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Kyle Hamer: 53:17

If people want to, they want to find you, how do they find you?

Tom Byrne: 53:21

Well, all my blogs and all my podcasts are all hosted on my website, which is lead, grow, innovate.com as well. I try and be as active as possible on Twitter and I can be found at grow innovate on there for my podcast as well. You can find it on just about every provider I’ve been working really hard over the last two years to get my host, my self hosted on every possible provider. I believe I’m I’m in Canada right now. So I can’t actually one of the things that amazon.ca we can’t see our podcasts for Canadian podcasters, but I’m pretty darn sure I’m on Amazon podcasts as well at the moment. So you can find me there, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, all the big jobs on there.

Kyle Hamer: 54:08

Great. Well, thanks again for being, thanks for being a guest. We’ll have your, your links to your show in the, in the comments. You’ve been listening to summit podcast with Tom Byrne and Kyle Hamer, as we’ve discussed manager to leader, you know creating change through adversity. And yeah. So if you liked this episode, you enjoyed the show tune in again next week. Make sure you like subscribe, share comment, hated it even better. Let us know where to listen for your feedback. Thanks for being a good listener until next week. This has been your host Kyle Hamer.