Stop Blaming Your Team. This Is On You (ft. Barry Moline) | EP 111

Barry Moline (00:00)
One is taking responsibility. It's important that if you wanna be a leader, if you wanna grow in leadership, you have to take responsibility for what you do. The second is to persist because it's never...

smooth sail. It's always a little bit of bumpy seas the winds shift here and there.

we got to somewhere close to the last item, which was the holiday party. the HR director got up to give an update there and she said, we're planning a holiday party. The date is December 15th.

I'd like to get volunteers to help me plan the holiday party. again, 80 people in the room, nobody raised their hand.

Paul Leon (00:38)
⁓

Paul Leon (00:42)
Paul Leon here. I want to take my hat off for a moment and speak directly to you, the listener or watcher of our show here at the managers Mic and say thank you so much for being consumer of the show and I want to take our relationship a step further. When you join our newsletter at the managers Mic.com website again, that's the managers Mic.com I'm going to give you a free resource called a selling script to sky rocket sales.

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30 minute consultation, no commitment at all. Just to have a relationship further, we can speak in real time. Thank you so much for being a listener and watcher of the show. And now back to the episode.

Paul Leon (01:48)
What Barry does well is he broadens people's knowledge of leadership, teamwork and influence to accelerate leadership Currently as the CEO of BGM solution, he focuses on helping organizations and people reach their potential.

Barry's career highlights include 29 years as a CEO of Electric Utility and Water Agency and 34 years with the Trade Associations. And he has a strong podcast on leadership called Leadership Career Accelerator.

today, Barry is a founding member and licensed trainer in influence and persuasion with the Caldini Institute, where he delivers keynote speeches, workshops, leadership, teamwork, influence, persuasion, negotiation and strategy. He's been appeared on Forbes, Fox Business and the New York Times,

His book, Connect, How to Quickly Collaborate for Success in Business and Life is available. if you really wanna learn how to make more collaboration efforts productive, I would encourage everyone to visit his website, BarryMollin.com,

to buy his book or leverage other free resources he has that make it easier to connect with teammates. So if you ever struggle to connect, build rapport with teammates, he could put you on the fast track to that with a lot of his content. I'm pretty excited to welcome you to Manager's Mic today, Barry, because part of our core topic is how to go from uncertain and anxious to clear and confident leadership.

Barry Moline (03:20)
And I'll tell you in a nutshell what they are and we can broaden the conversation as we move on. I boiled it down to three parts. One is taking responsibility. It's important that if you wanna be a leader, if you wanna grow in leadership, you have to take responsibility for what you do. The second is to persist because it's never...

smooth sail. It's always a little bit of bumpy seas and the winds shift here and there. You've got to persist. You've got to have grit. And the third is to develop over time and this never stops growing or learning is a leader's mindset, which I would boil down to one word, which is maturity, I think.

It's something that develops over time and you're constantly paying attention and learning from others, learning from books and so on. So those are the three elements that I focused on in terms of growing as a leader.

Paul Leon (04:23)
Why is it important to you and your 30 plus years of career experience, that taking responsibility is the first one, if that's fair. Why is that? Why does it matter? And some of these questions might seem nuanced, but I feel like we don't do enough. We don't do a good enough job sometime really defining what those words mean.

but why does it matter more to you? Is it a talent thing? Do you see it in the frame of intelligence? Let's peel the onion around that first frame, if that's fair.

Barry Moline (04:54)
Well, a lot of people define leadership differently. And I'm gonna ask you a quick question. On Amazon, how many books on leadership do you think there currently are today? Just pick a number.

Paul Leon (05:10)
I'm gonna just I'm gonna say 9000 just for some reason that's the number that came to my head

Barry Moline (05:15)
All right,

9,000, it's higher, keep going.

Paul Leon (05:20)
Okay, uh, 45,000. Now I'm 4X in here.

Barry Moline (05:25)
That's good. That's

good. That was a smart 53,000. Okay. That's how many books there are that have some element of leadership. And so there's a lot people think about leadership differently. There's obviously 53,000 different authors or maybe some that have published a couple of times that have different perspectives on leadership. However, there is one thread

Paul Leon (05:30)
wow, okay.

Barry Moline (05:51)
that goes between all those books. And that is the one characteristic is responsibility. Leaders take responsibility. number one element of responsibility is just taking the responsibility to say, I want to be a leader. So it's possible to be in the world of work and let others take the reins.

No problem. There are plenty of jobs where you don't have to be a manager. You don't have to lead other people. But if you want to move up the ranks, if you want to be a leader, if you want to engage with others, then you have to take that responsibility on to say, yes, I want to do that. I want to be a leader. And that is, you know, that's responsibility. Now,

That's the most basic element. You have to have the desire to do it. And then, and then once you do that, when there are opportunities to lead, you have to jump in and say, I'll do that. And the language of leaders is pretty simple. It's we'll do, I'll do that. It's volunteering for stuff to do and raising your hand. That's what leaders do. So responsibility,

is a simple word, but it has that two-part meaning. Number one is you have to want to do it. And number two is that you have to then act. You have to say, I'll volunteer to do something, even if it's not something exciting, I'll get that done. You can count on me to get it done. So that's the number one element of leadership and it's consistent across all.

53,000 books that are on Amazon today.

Paul Leon (07:42)
Do you have an example in your professional experience of where you saw taking responsibility? this is a good example of taking responsibility looks like. Even if you don't have formal authority.

Let's just take it from that frame. If there are any example that comes to mind, you've had a lot of workshops that you can kind of recall that helps us to find this word better in the real world for the common man or woman.

Barry Moline (07:58)
Yeah.

well, let me give you an example from my career where that I think is pretty appropriate. It also has a thread into how I developed as a leader. So I was working in a company, there were about 80 employees and we had an all hands meeting. It was around September timeframe and

the leaders of the organization, the CEO and the vice presidents gave a series of updates about what was going on with the company. we got to somewhere close to the last item, which was the holiday party. the HR director got up to give an update there and she said, we're planning a holiday party. The date is December 15th.

and I'd like to get volunteers to help me plan the holiday party. again, 80 people in the room, nobody raised their hand. And I looked around the room and it was pretty quiet. Now, the HR director, her name was Arsenia, her office was two doors down from me and I felt kind of bad for her. And all this is happening in a matter of seconds.

Paul Leon (09:04)
⁓

Barry Moline (09:21)
you know, 10 seconds maybe, maybe 15 seconds, which is a long time for nobody to be raising their hands. So I raised my hand, because I liked Arsenia, number one, and I didn't want her to be alone in planning the holiday party. And two is, you know, I thought it'd be, I wasn't really into it, but I thought it'd be okay to support my friend. and then after I raised my hand, two other people raised their hand.

Paul Leon (09:24)
Yeah.

Barry Moline (09:46)
So we had our committee of four people. Well, that's all fine and good. We have our first meeting a week later and the CEO of the company, his name was Larry, Larry showed up for the meeting and it turned out he loved the holiday party. It was just something that he was into. He came to all the planning meetings and we had this group of now five people because it included

Arsenia the HR director a few people on staff and the CEO and we we planned, you know a very nice holiday party we had some games and we did some fun stuff and and Larry was into it the whole time and and even though I was so so on the holiday party I participated as a an equal member of this little ad hoc committee well, it turned out that

Let's see, in January, after the holiday party, one day, Larry, the CEO, walks into my office. Barry, you got a minute? And he was like, uh-oh, what did I do? Because that's your first thought, right? When, I mean, I was four layers down from the CEO. Like, yeah, I got a minute. And he sat down in office and he said, you know, I noticed on the holiday party planning committee that

Paul Leon (10:48)
Yeah.

Barry Moline (11:07)
You participated well, you asked a lot of questions. You really moved the whole committee forward toward solutions. When we were stuck on something, you had ideas that got us unstuck. And you said, we have a big conference every year. It's in June. at the conference, we hire big time speakers. We pay them 25, $35,000 to make a presentation.

They were people like Colin Powell, big name people. And he said, even though there's 2000 people in the audience, no one asks the first question. They're always timid. And it seems to me like you'd be a good person to ask that first question. Would you do that? You mean go to the conference every year and ask the first question? He said, yeah. And of course you'd do other things at the conference, but that would be an important responsibility.

Paul Leon (11:39)
Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Barry Moline (12:02)
And I said, absolutely, I can do that. So one, that got me traveling around the country at that conference just to ask that first question. And of course I did other things at the conference. So great, so I did that. But I got that role because I raised my hand to volunteer for that committee. Well, a couple of years later, well, actually it was four years later, some people, that job was in Washington, DC. Some people in Florida,

Paul Leon (12:31)
All

Barry Moline (12:33)
called me up and said, we have a job opening. They were members of our association. And we need somebody who takes initiative, somebody who stands up isn't afraid to talk to important people. We need somebody to run our statewide trade association. Would you consider doing that? And I said, yeah, absolutely. And they brought me down for an interview and I

Paul Leon (12:35)
Hmm.

Barry Moline (12:59)
competed against other people for the interview, but they hired me because they saw me standing up to important people and asking interesting questions, of course, to get the ball rolling at the conference. And what turned out to be just me raising my hand to volunteer for the holiday party, got me to go to the conference, got me recognized, and here I was.

leading a statewide trade association when I didn't see a path to do that, but others did and they noticed me because I raised my hand and took responsibility.

Paul Leon (13:30)
Hmm.

I love that. It's a good frame. I see a lot of data and I'll throw you a curveball question about how younger people are actually stepping away from even desiring middle management roles. there was one day report and I'm going to botch it. My wife and I will talk a lot at the dinner table about this. And sometimes as low as 40 % and then sometimes as high as 70 % of the next generation.

saying I don't want those types of responsibilities. I'm just not interested or I'm just not desiring them. In your professional experience and raising your hand, having those opportunities and capitalizing them, why do you think so many people in the next generation, as far as the data goes, might be stepping away from even raising their hand? What is your professional perspective on that?

Barry Moline (14:28)
That's a really good question.

We're just spit balling here. Ultimately, I will say that when you take that responsibility, when you lead, when you're in charge of something, then you are accountable. Whatever happens is it happens on your watch. If things go good, great. And of course, when things go good, we give everyone the credit.

when things don't go well, you know, we have to lay the credit at the feet of the leader because something, the leader didn't do something, you know, and, and therefore it didn't turn out well. Nevertheless, you, you are that accountable person and some people don't want that accountability. They don't want to be called in the evening and you know, in the middle of the night when there is a problem. ultimately I would say this, that's okay.

the expression is there's no traffic on the extra mile. I think leaders have to go the extra mile in what they do. I think the opportunity for leaders is a pretty good one. If it's true that people are stepping away from those responsibilities, if you want to be a leader, then the doors are open for you. You have to say to

Paul Leon (15:32)
Hmm.

Barry Moline (15:44)
yourself to the people around you. I want to go for that job. so there's less competition maybe. this is, you know, putting that kind of a person on the couch and say that it's less stressful. If you're not a leader, there's definitely an element of stress. And that stress was a part of my entire life. It wasn't just

shut it off after eight hours. When I led organizations, I was responsible 24 seven. I was the leader 24 seven. So when I'm on social media, I couldn't necessarily say what I really wanted to say. I had to watch my behavior. I had to watch what photographs were taken of me, how I partied. And that doesn't mean I couldn't have a good time or if I wanted to have an extra

Paul Leon (16:20)
Hmm.

Right.

Barry Moline (16:31)
Adult beverage somewhere I couldn't do that. No, that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is that there was an upper limit into um, you know How I held myself because I was a leader and I was always going to be a leader And if I wanted to maintain that position then I had to live, within this You know wide bubble And some people may not want that responsibility and I see that and and that's okay. You can still

rise up in an organization to a certain point if that's the career that you want, that's okay.

Paul Leon (17:05)
I like what you said earlier when you said the extra mile has no traffic. that resonated with me. Is that a leadership phrase that you would put in the bucket of responsibility that resonates with you? That something that you have in your mind always saying like there's no extra traffic on the extra mile as like a quote or like a belief system that's driven you? Or is there any other phrases around responsibility in your framework also that you kind of have on

in your brain as you do work and accelerate yourself to the next level of success.

Barry Moline (17:38)
Well, that is clearly number one. in fact, there were a few people in my organizations that liked to talk about leadership and we would get together and just chat about it. And that was one of the phrases we talk about, particularly when there was a difficult job or a job that not a lot of people wanted to do, we would...

say, okay, let's step up and get it done. it would matter because we would get the project done and it would matter because it would have a positive impact on the people we were serving. And it would matter because at performance evaluation time, those folks got better raises. you know, when people are stepping forward and

doing the things that others don't wanna do, then they get recognized.

Paul Leon (18:38)
It's a good jump and off point. I feel into your second part of your framework, which is persistence or in studying your stuff, was persistence and practicing grit. And if I recall and correct me if I'm wrong, Barry, you define grit as prepare, act, persist to get the job done. Like it was that simple. And I also like things that are easy because, you know, simple guy. Which of those three?

prepare, act, persist. Do typically newer leaders, emerging leaders usually neglect in your professional experience?

Barry Moline (19:16)
Yeah, good question. I actually think it's preparing is the thing that folks do the least. A lot of folks are ready to act, they'll just jump in sort of off the cuff, provide their feedback, their input, but they haven't done the homework. maybe they'll follow up once in a while and that's good too.

Paul Leon (19:19)
Hmm.

Barry Moline (19:41)
but a lot of folks don't take the time to prepare as well as they could. And what I mean by preparing, take for example, a presentation I'm, I'm pretty good at talking. Okay, great. I've put together a PowerPoint and yeah, I know this thing. I wrote it. I ought to know it really well, but maybe there's some data in there that

Paul Leon (20:02)
Yeah.

Barry Moline (20:04)
I ought to know where it came from and what the message is from that data or what we can learn from that data that I haven't thought about. And I find that I've been caught a few times in the work that I've done and not being fully prepared where I'll tell you about it in a second, a particular moment.

Paul Leon (20:07)
Ha

Right.

Barry Moline (20:28)
Once you have that experience where you feel like you're not prepared, after that moment, I decided I'm always going to prepare. sometimes I may get caught and not know something, but that's okay. I can say, I don't know. And I'll find out. So what happened was I was in that job in Florida. I was the, director of the Florida municipal electric association and

Paul Leon (20:43)
Right.

Barry Moline (20:52)
Part of my job was standing up before the legislature and telling legislature all about our utilities, what we did, and why we needed what we needed. And sometimes if somebody was attacking us to defend our utilities. And we had a hearing and we had several witnesses that were presenting to a legislative committee and it wasn't going well.

The legislators knew more than our witnesses and we were not looking good. And I remember sitting there and one of my members leaned over to me and said, you know, Barry, somebody needs to stand up for us. And I thought to myself, yeah, somebody does need to stand up for us. And then within two seconds it hit me, it's like crap, that's me.

Paul Leon (21:19)
Hmm.

Bye bye.

Yeah.

Barry Moline (21:46)
I'm the one who's supposed to stand up, which I then did.

And, know, just as good as I could in that moment, but reflecting on it, I said to myself, I am never gonna let that happen again. I'm going to prepare, I'm gonna over prepare. And if it's not needed, great. But in the process of preparing, you build your confidence. And...

Paul Leon (22:01)
Hmm.

Right.

Barry Moline (22:12)
We can get into hairy situations or situations that might be what we feel is above our head, above our station, whatever that might be. You're dealing with, you you're mid-level and you're dealing with the CEO. But if you know your stuff, know your stuff, talk about what you know and preparing gets you there. So it's not difficult to act, but it's much more difficult to prepare. Even in something like when you say a presentation,

Paul Leon (22:28)
Hmm.

Right.

Barry Moline (22:39)
running through the presentation, speaking it out loud, doing that a couple of times. I do that regularly when I make presentations. I'm always thinking about how do I say this properly? Or what's the most effective way to tell that story? And I probably would say that persisting is the second element of those three. Prepare, act, and persist. A lot of people give up easily.

You'd be amazed at how many opportunities aren't ready at the moment that they're talked about, but in three months or six months, hey, it's the right time. So it's good when you're thinking about an idea, hey, this is something I ought to do now. And people say, no, no, no, that'll never work. But if you persist over time and bring up an idea again and again,

Paul Leon (23:28)
Right.

Barry Moline (23:34)
then it becomes the right moment. So it's really important to continue to persist and to get a job done.

Paul Leon (23:42)
When you see people not live up to their potential, when you see people fail or give up too quickly, do you now have, since you've served a lot of people, helped a lot of teams?

Does it kind of go off your back? Is there a part of you that still feels like I'll give you an example. I did a Gallup test once and one of my top five is Includer. Like I like to include people and I still struggle to this day that when somebody doesn't live up to their potential, like people will tell me like, you know,

then go jump off a hike or take a hike. Is there a part of you that just kind of accepts that reality? Do you still feel for that person? Walk me through like you as an empathetic leader, maybe around if we can kind of go on that tangent, then bring it back.

Barry Moline (24:34)
So question for you, are you talking about somebody that is on my staff or are you talking about a colleague from a different place in the workforce?

Paul Leon (24:43)
Let's do it with the frame on your staff because I think there's two types of leaders in business. You've got project leaders and people leaders and they're usually not always the same. So let's do it from a staff frame if that's fair.

Barry Moline (24:57)
Well, as a boss, it's always my responsibility to bring everybody up, no matter where they are. Some people will naturally take the reins and do their jobs and do it well, and some people are less so. And I want everybody to be operating at least meeting the standards of their job.

and

You also have to be a coach as a leader to bring those people up. If we were a professional football team or baseball team or whatever, a professional team where people are getting paid to do that and then they don't perform up to the standard, you just put in the sub that's behind them and then that person gets kicked out and then they lose their job, That's how the pros work, Or least professional sports work. But in the world of work,

Paul Leon (25:25)
Right.

Right.

Barry Moline (25:49)
we try to bring people up to the standard if they're not meeting the standard. So I'll go to that person in a private meeting and say, this is where we need you to be in your job. we need you to take responsibility. We need you to get this task done. Can you do it? And then get an answer from that person, achieve an understanding and then let them say, yes, I can do it. Or,

No, I can't do it either way I mean if they say no then you're moving in the direction of separating them from their employment, Assuming they say yes and generally they'll say yes, they're doing two things one is they are by speaking it out loud They are confirming internally that they're going to get it done

That itself is an important motivator. And the second they're being accountable to you, the boss. They're saying, yes, boss, I'm going to do this, in the context of our jobs, our work, whatever. Still, it's important to ask the question, will you do this? And then wait for an answer. The answer being, yes, I'll do that. Because it's important to get that internal motivation going.

Paul Leon (26:52)
Right.

Hmm.

Barry Moline (27:05)
in the in the world of of persuasion and influence. It's called consistency. When we say we're going to do something, we tend to do it because we've just spoken it out loud. that's why it's important for for managers to ask their employees, will you do this and then wait for their answer?

Paul Leon (27:11)
you

Is that frame that you said, and correct me if I'm wrong, about being consistent and really having influence, did you really start defining that when you were going through the process of being a licensed trainer with the Caldini Institute, if I may ask?

Barry Moline (27:42)
Yes, absolutely. That is 100 % true. It's not only just a general management technique, but it was really, the finer point was placed on it through my training in influence and persuasion. There's a particular, this is very interesting, a particular study that was done with the Boy Scouts. Now Girl Scouts sell cookies. I think it's cookie time right now. It's time for Thin Mints.

Paul Leon (27:48)
Yeah.

Right.

Barry Moline (28:06)
Boy Scouts sell popcorn. Okay. Did you know that? They, yeah.

Paul Leon (28:09)
Huh. No,

actually I've only thought of the girl scouts. I was never in boy scouts or, or girl scouts. Okay.

Barry Moline (28:13)
Yeah, yeah. Well, they sell popcorn. So like the

Girl Scouts, they'll sell to door to door, but they'll also go to a grocery store, sit outside of the table and ask people as they're coming by if they want to buy popcorn. Now, so the Boy Scouts had this script and the script would be as people were walking up, they would say, would you like to buy some popcorn?

for the Boy Scouts and people would focus on, do I wanna buy popcorn? They didn't focus on the second part for the Boy Scouts. Do I wanna buy popcorn? I'm going in the shop, don't wanna buy popcorn. one in seven bought the popcorn as folks were walking in. But then they flipped the script to this. They said, as people were walking up,

Paul Leon (28:40)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Barry Moline (29:02)
do you support the Boy Scouts? As people were walking up and they would see Boy Scouts there in their uniforms. And people would say, yeah, sure, I support the Boy Scouts. And then they'd say, would you help us by buying some popcorn? So they got the consistency element first, Do you support the Boy Scouts? And ⁓ most everybody would say yes. And sales,

Paul Leon (29:08)
Yeah.

Hmm.

like that.

Yeah.

Barry Moline (29:24)
rose to four in seven, okay? Instead of one in seven, they rose to four in seven, bought the popcorn. Because just immediately before asking to buy it, they said, yes, I support you. So it's been studied. The point is, if we say we wanna do something, we'll more likely go ahead and do it.

Paul Leon (29:28)
wow.

Hmm.

it's a good frame. I didn't know that story about the Boy Scouts. And I didn't. If you were to pay me a million dollars and said, do you know what the Boy Scouts sell? would be I would have lost a million dollars too, because I was like, well, I would have thought they both sell cookies. That's what my assumption would have been. You know, I find you very impressive.

Barry Moline (29:59)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Yeah.

Paul Leon (30:10)
because it takes a lot of work, especially to work with the Florida Muta, meaning to Palo Alto. I don't know if I'm saying that word like association like, and I grew up in Florida, Florida. I know Florida people can be kind of tough to influence. So my hat's off to you there. In doing the Caldini Institute, you've been a CEO, which is incredibly challenging. And this, think this would be a good jumping off point to the third frame. If I recall and correct me if I'm wrong, it's developing a leader's mindset, correct?

which I think is gonna speak to you. So we've peeled the onion on responsibility. We've peeled the onion on being persistent as part of that frame. But when I say leader's mindset, it's a Y net. It's a very Y net for you.

Barry Moline (30:39)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

And yeah, and I would put it in the category of pretty much one word, is maturity. It's a level of maturity or wisdom. There are specific elements which we'll talk about, but if I had to boil it down to one word, it's trying to do the right thing in the moment, whatever that might be. And we don't know what that is. I'm just talking about a very general blanket definition.

Paul Leon (31:03)
maturity okay

Hmm.

Yes, please.

Right.

Yeah.

Barry Moline (31:23)
If we

look at leaders mindset, more specifically, there are a few items that I think are a part of it. you get the idea of what maturity is from some of these examples. the first one is you recognize that leaders have a lot of balls in the air. They just, do a lot of things. as a leader of an organization,

They're looking at every single department and trying to make sure that all the pistons are firing in that engine and spending a half hour here and half hour there and a half hour there. And it's, you know, there's a lot of things that are going on that other people don't have to know. They're just working on one piston and trying to keep that piston operating really well. So if you have a lot of things going on, then recognize you may be a leader. may have that that's cause that's what leaders do.

Paul Leon (32:06)
Right.

Barry Moline (32:15)
If you're kind of bored and if you're only doing one thing, then you may not be. But recognize that leaders have a lot of balls in there. They do a lot of tasks and that's a vital leadership skill. There's one element of a leader's mindset that I think brings home the definition of maturity. And that is that leaders can keep a secret.

Paul Leon (32:16)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Barry Moline (32:40)
And that's confidentiality and that's confidentiality in every kind of situation. So if someone tells you something, you don't repeat it to anyone. And that's that. Maybe in two weeks, they want to talk about it again, you'll talk about it with them again alone. But you talk about whatever it is that they told you with no one else. So leaders need to be a trusted

Paul Leon (32:51)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Barry Moline (33:08)
Confidant and and that builds up The way people see you in the organization. They see you as someone they can trust ⁓ and related to that is gossip and Gossip is is something that happens everywhere and let's define gossip. If the the board of directors meets and says they're gonna freeze salaries for the next year

Paul Leon (33:18)
Hmm.

Barry Moline (33:33)
then and people are grumbling about that. That's not gossip because that's the board took action and people are responding and you can be part of that. If you say, know, you know, Bill Simmons is on the board and you know, his kids are all drug addicts. That's gossip. Okay. So that's the difference. A board action is okay to wine and whatever.

Paul Leon (33:38)
Right.

Right.

Barry Moline (34:02)
but talking about someone specifically, that's gossip. Now it's difficult to go to people who are talking about someone ⁓ in a gossipy kind of way and say, hey, that's gossip. I don't gossip. You shouldn't be doing that. We don't want to do that because then that excludes you from future conversations. Gossip is a tough issue, but there's two things that you can do. One, as an individual,

Paul Leon (34:12)
All right.

Right.

Barry Moline (34:28)
you can walk away, you can just not be part of it. it's not even, hey, I don't gossip, I'm out of here. It's just, you try to change the subject, or if you can't change the subject, you just slink away and don't participate in that conversation. And the second way to address gossip is if you have a leadership role, or if you're not a leader, then go to your leader, go to your manager and say, hey,

Paul Leon (34:37)
Right.

Okay.

Barry Moline (34:53)
Can we talk at our next meeting about this issue of gossip and talk about what kind of group we want to have? Because there's a lot of gossip going on. And I think it would be good for us to just have a conversation about it and ask, do we want to be the kind of group that talks behind people's backs? Or do we want to be the kind of folks that talk directly to each other and just have that conversation? And I was working in an organization where there was a lot of gossip going on. And that's what we did. We convened a meeting.

Paul Leon (35:01)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Barry Moline (35:23)
where we said, hey, I'm gonna put this on the table. There's a lot of gossip going on. People are talking behind each other's back. Is this what we wanna do? Is this the kind of organization we wanna have? And I let people talk. of course they said, no, we don't wanna do that. And then there were some other ideas that they had about the kind of organization they wanted. So we put up sort of a list of 10 commandments, and weren't 10, ways that we wanted.

Paul Leon (35:30)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Barry Moline (35:51)
to be in our organization. We put that list in everybody's office. So it was a constant reminder about who we are. And I remember because one person felt really strongly about saying please and thank you. They just wanted those special words to be used when we were asking for something to be done. And they were kind of a preeminent proper kind of person and that just meant a lot to them.

And there were others in our group that were like, no, we just need to get right to the heart of it. I don't want to bother with that please and thank you stuff. And we, it was kind of weird. We kind of like almost duped it out on the pleases and thank you. And in the end, I just stepped in and I said, we're going to do it. We're going to do our best job to say please and thank you when we can. Everybody let's try to do that. Cause it makes sense. But the point is that was part of the thing that was on the wall.

Paul Leon (36:32)
Right.

Hmm. Of course.

Barry Moline (36:47)
Ultimately, those are, that's a good idea. And so what we've talked about so far, know, keeping a secret, not gossiping, you can see how those are elements of maturity. And that maturity leads to what we call that leader's mindset.

Paul Leon (37:03)
Well, I'll tell you what comes through my mind when I hear, and this is all very valuable content, thank you again for sharing this with me, Barry. I feel like the importance of not gossiping and doing what you did to have those 10 commandments, like even though it wasn't 10, is it's important to eliminate that because adversity is going to happen, period. And you got to stay calm.

in adversity. What is the kind of composure? And we'll frame it from this way. I think this will make sense. once we avoid gossip, my assumption is we'll get rid of the adversity or at least we'll reduce it.

What type of cultures that create once we and in your experience, did you feel you got rid of the gossip to create a culture where people could stay calm when their adversity would happen again because you set those guardrails. You said this is the boundary. And my assumption is some people had to go because they weren't on board,

Barry Moline (38:03)
there's a couple things there. One is the second one was something about letting people go and those kind of situations, which we'll get to because I think that's an important topic. The first one about being calm and adversity. And I think it boils down to we can't control what happens to us because stuff has happened in

Paul Leon (38:11)
Right.

Barry Moline (38:26)
all around us every day, but we can control our response to it. So if something happens, well, if something's on fire, you just got to go for the bucket of water or the fire extinguisher to try to put it out. know, meaning of things are crazy. Let's just deal with that one issue. Nevertheless, if if there's an emergency and you've got a minute, it's important to be able to take a breath and say, OK, hmm.

Paul Leon (38:39)
Yeah. Right.

Barry Moline (38:55)
What's going on? We gotta think fast, we gotta focus. Let's try to figure this out. So that's what I mean about being calm and adversity. work and working in Florida and working in the electric utility industry, I was in charge of the state's response after hurricanes. So talk about an adverse situation when a hurricane would come through Florida and Florida gets hurricanes fairly regularly.

Paul Leon (39:05)
That's fair.

wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Barry Moline (39:21)
When

you put on the Weather Channel or you saw the national news and you saw those trucks driving into Florida, lines and lines of trucks, I was the one who put those trucks on the road to bring them into Florida to help restore power after the hurricane. yeah, and the, I don't know, was 2007 actually, we had four hurricanes go through the state, one right after the other.

Paul Leon (39:38)
Not really.

Barry Moline (39:49)
And I remember when the first hurricane hit, we had not had a hurricane in the state since 1999. So that was eight years. And we just were complacent. We just didn't remember really well how to respond in a hurricane. And I think it was Hurricane Charlie that went from sort of like Tampa, Orlando, and then out through Daytona.

Paul Leon (39:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think I remember this.

Yeah, that was a crazy one.

Barry Moline (40:16)
It was a very strong hurricane that passed through the state and demolished everything in its place. And the utilities and trying to help each other, we were like Keystone cops. We were just not good at trying to figure things out. And it literally took two weeks for us to restore power. Jeb Bush was governor at the time. after it happened, he got us utility leaders together, just a handful of us, and said,

Look, I'm not going to whine at you and tell you you're terrible. Things didn't go well. We have to figure this out so that it doesn't happen again, that we can restore power faster. So let's figure it out. Let's start talking about it right now. And a group of five people sitting around a table with the governor brainstormed to say, huh, we need to work better together. We need to share each other's phone numbers.

Paul Leon (41:08)
Yeah.

Barry Moline (41:10)
We need to you know, need to come up with systems to do this and that's what we did so Hurricanes after that got better and better in terms of you know, got faster and faster restoring power until today We tell people expect to be out of power for three days But within three days we'll have 95 % of the power back on and that's because we've set up the systems and we train for people to do that so

Paul Leon (41:16)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Barry Moline (41:39)
What happened originally was like, no, we don't know what to do. Now we know exactly what to do. So hurricane's coming, we say, hmm, okay, let me get out the manual. Let me figure out what the first step is. Let me figure out who to call. Okay, I've got all those lists. Let's assign responsibilities to different people. You take these five folks and you take these five folks and you take these five folks. And then we're just going to work on this like a conveyor belt.

And if something pops up, we'll talk about it and then we'll address it. But we're going to do it together. now it works really well. And that's what I mean about being calm and adversity is stepping back, evaluating the situation and saying, okay, nothing's on fire. No one's going to get hurt. Let's try to figure this out together. Let's ask the right questions and let's develop a solution together, but let's develop it quick.

Paul Leon (42:07)
All right.

Right.

Right.

Hmm.

Barry Moline (42:33)
Now you asked another question, which was also about what if somebody is not on the team, What if they're not performing? Is that more or less what you were saying? When you have to, yeah, yeah. And ultimately it comes down to patterns over time. So if somebody is not performing, you have to have a private conversation with them. This is the standard and you're not meeting the standard. You're down here and the standards up here.

Paul Leon (42:41)
Pretty much. You got it.

Hmm.

Fair enough.

Barry Moline (42:57)
Can you do this? And they say, yes, I can do this. Okay, we have to get that confirmation from them. Cause if they say no, you can say, well, then you can't work here if you can't do that. So, but if they say they can do that, then you work on it with them and you, check in with them for, you know, you do this every, every week, but you do it for a period of a month. And you say, we're going to evaluate this in a month, but every week we're going to check in. And then you work with them.

Paul Leon (43:07)
Hmm.

Barry Moline (43:24)
them to try to get them up to the standard to make sure that they're performing. And if they perform, if they get on track, then that's great. And if they don't, at the end of that four week period, say things aren't working out, you know, why don't we move you toward not working here because you've got to meet the standard in order to continue to work here. it's different in every situation, but bottom line is, is that's the general process. And

Paul Leon (43:37)
Hmm.

Barry Moline (43:49)
You want it to be above board, everybody on the table where the issue is front and center. They know what they have to do and if they can do it great and if they can't do it, that's okay too. They just need to find another place or maybe another type of a job where they'd be happier.

Paul Leon (44:09)
I like what you said that

One word to define leadership was maturity and in talking about storms and talking about everything up to this point Do you if we peel the onion around the word maturity more Barry? Do you feel maturity comes from somebody who has been through a lot of storms or just somebody who's? Of age if you wanted to define maturity more and everything you have would be someone who's seen a lot of storms See what I did there being clever Or somebody who's more

just seasoned with age. So they've been through a lot or seen a lot. Maybe we could peel the onion around that term a little more. Like maybe they, there's other habits you want to discuss, like don't be sarcastic could be one as an example.

Barry Moline (44:52)
Yeah. Well, the answer is it's not age. It's definitely not age. It's all about

Paul Leon (44:56)
Okay.

Barry Moline (44:58)
looking around you, seeing what other mature leaders do, and then mimicking them. Leaders have to keep learning their entire lives. If, just at the most basic level, if you say, if somebody asks you a question and you don't know the answer, don't BS them, just say, I don't know, but I'll find out. And that's the way to handle those kinds of situations.

Paul Leon (45:02)
Hmm.

Barry Moline (45:22)
Even if you're making a presentation and they ask you a difficult question, hmm There's two ways to answer it. I don't know and I'll find out or Hey, let's work on that right now. Let's try to figure that out together Let's use you know, all of our collective brains to try to answer that question who has some input for answering that so you can actually workshop, you know an answer but still the point is Leaders keep learning when you say I don't know and I'll find out

Paul Leon (45:22)
Right.

Barry Moline (45:49)
you're going to do some research and find out. And leaders continuously educate themselves. So when I became, I became a CEO at age 39, which was a little young for a leader, but not terribly young. But still I was on the young side and I knew that it was the young side. And I committed myself to continuous education on leadership, on the topics that were in front of me and

Paul Leon (46:01)
Yeah, sorry.

Mm.

Hmm.

Barry Moline (46:19)
Basically, when we're doing our jobs, we think we know the general skills that have to be done. We think we know our general background. I'm an engineer, so I think about things in equations. ultimately, the topic keeps changing. We didn't think about artificial intelligence 10 years ago. It wasn't an issue, but it is today.

Paul Leon (46:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Barry Moline (46:43)
It's so much of an issue today that everyone has to deal with it. Use it in some way, figure out how it's going to weave into their organizations, whatever that might be. And you have to educate yourself on it. And if you say, you know, hear no evil, know, speak no evil, see no evil, I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna ignore that. Well, you're gonna fall behind and that's gonna impact your job. I maybe your organization as well.

Paul Leon (47:01)
Right. Yeah.

Hmm.

Barry Moline (47:08)
You have to stay on it. You have to get educated on. have to figure out how you're going to use it in the organization. So the topics keep changing. The opportunities to educate yourself, whether it's on the topics of the day or leadership skills in general by picking up a book, ⁓ those are opportunities that you can take every single day.

Paul Leon (47:08)
Right.

Right.

Yeah.

If someone wants to start today, they're listening to this podcast.

I have a two part for you. I'm going to challenge you on one thing as I asked you this question, Barry. So again, I'll repeat the question. If someone listening wants to start leveling up their leadership skills or powering up those people management skills, using your framework, using everything you do, what would you say to that person? And then the second part of this question is, what is it 2026 goal you're doing, Barry, to improve your education skills as well? Because even though I feel

You hit the box in maturity Very strong

Barry Moline (48:06)
you

Paul Leon (48:07)
skills and success. I feel like you're constantly working on yourself So again, someone listening what should I do today and what's Barry doing in 2026 to continue and educate himself? So it's not you talking at someone. It's you talking with someone if that's

Barry Moline (48:25)
Good questions. since we were just talking about educating yourself, I think that's the number one action that everyone should be doing. If you're listening to this podcast, obviously, your listeners are listening right now and they need to commit to continuing to listen to your podcast or find other podcasts that might help with their education.

Paul Leon (48:27)
Yeah.

Barry Moline (48:51)
We talked about my podcast, Leadership Career Accelerator. There are other management leadership type podcasts. A lot of times podcasts will interview people who have written books or interview famous people to follow their path, whatever it might be. Pick up nuggets along the way and educate yourself. Obviously we talked about books. Look at places like LinkedIn Learning that you can

Paul Leon (49:17)
Hmm.

Barry Moline (49:17)
subscribed to and there's a zillion courses on LinkedIn learning. I was just on a LinkedIn learning class yesterday looking at some things about strategic plans. I was curious about the elements of strategic planning and I wanted to see what some folks had to say about it. Looking at Ted Talks, which are both entertaining and educational.

Paul Leon (49:25)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Barry Moline (49:39)
And the point is that puts you in the mindset where you never know one, what you're going to learn and two, how you're going to apply it. Cause you're going to apply it after you hear it. It's going to become part of your fabric. So that's the number one thing that I would do is get on that continuous learning treadmill and look everywhere for opportunities, as well as for people. Look at people around you, live people who are leaders and watch them watch how they.

Paul Leon (49:39)
Right.

Hmm.

Barry Moline (50:08)
present, watch how they hold themselves, watch how they interact with people. So that's important. your second question is, what is one thing that Barry is going to do in 2026, my action word for 2026 is, is promo, okay? And promo. And there's a reason why, and that is

Paul Leon (50:10)
Right.

promo.

Barry Moline (50:28)
I've been teaching leadership. I've written about teamwork and leadership. I've got a podcast, the book. I've got a sub stack, but I haven't been really aggressive. Aggressive isn't the right word, assertive, I guess I'd say, in promoting those things, getting them out so people see them. a few months ago,

Paul Leon (50:38)
Right.

Barry Moline (50:55)
a colleague of mine and I were talking about this and I was saying that I hadn't done a lot of that, but it's something that I probably should do. And they said to me this, why are you depriving the world of your thoughts and your skills? And I was like, whoa. I mean, they were complaining to me. Yeah, you've got...

Paul Leon (51:14)
Hmm. Yeah.

Who cares about you?

Barry Moline (51:21)
these skills, you got these ideas, you can help other people, but you're not doing it. Well, I said, I am doing it. Yeah, but you're not promoting it. Whoa. So I decided that I'm going to do a better job of promoting those things that I'm working on with the intention, not for Barry to be better known, but for the ideas to reach more people.

Paul Leon (51:30)
You

I like that. That's very very powerful.

So I was studying a lot of your content, Barry. And what I like about you, and studying your LinkedIn and your content, your book Connect was, it's about, I feel like empowering a lot of people. Let's peel the onion around what that means to you when we say empowering a lot of people.

Barry Moline (52:09)
the most encouraging thing that a manager can say to somebody that they work with or for a parent to say to a child or for a colleague to say to another colleague that they're working with is I believe in you. It's it's so motivational when somebody says you have skills and you're good at those skills and I believe

that you can apply those skills here. We don't hear that enough. Just knowing that, that I believe in you is the most motivational phrase you could possibly say. Use it, use it with everyone you possibly can. When they need to produce something, talk about it, they agree they're gonna do it, and then say, I know you can do this. I believe that you can do this. You have the skills to do this.

Let's go do this. Just saying those four words, I believe in you, is just incredibly motivational. And it's really valuable to say it. Sometimes it might feel like it's, I don't know, cheesy or something, or like a football coach, Vince Lombardi might say it, know, let's go kill the other team, whatever. No, it's not. People don't say it that much.

Paul Leon (53:24)
Yeah.

Barry Moline (53:30)
So when you say that, really valuable. And that leads into what I think is an important value of leaders in general, which is just general positivity. I think it's possible for a leader to be a jerk and succeed as a leader. But generally, people who are jerks do not riot.

They may rise up, but they don't last long. It's really important to bring others along with you on your journey. And the way to do that is to bring others up, on a tough day. Don't be cynical. Talk about what you do, which is part of your culture, and how it connects to the broader world, how you help the world be a better world.

Paul Leon (54:02)
All

Hmm.

Barry Moline (54:24)
We are all working to make a better world. it's important for the leader, whether you're leading a group, whether you're a spoke in the wheel of the organization and you support the rest of the organization. If you're working in IT, you are keeping that organization afloat because everybody is connected through IT. And people need to know that just fixing one computer is not just fixing one computer, it's keeping everyone connected.

We all have important elements of what we do and a leader reminds people of what they do. Our leader reminds people, hey, when they completed a job, you did a good job on that, way to go. be the person that tells others, yeah, you did a nice job. I appreciate that.