Jody Holland (00:09.156)
Hey guys, Jody Holland here. We're going to be talking about something interesting. Ryan Holiday has been one of my favorite authors for a really long time. He's kind of like the modern stoic philosopher and has a lot of really good insights that he drops. But before we get started, I'm going to introduce everybody today. We'll just keep this flowing. We got one of my best friends of all time, a guy that I've been friends with for three decades now, Mike Grigsby.
Got Malia Grigsby, his daughter, who is an up and coming community leader, project manager. We've got my daughter, the amazing psychologist and writer, Megan Slaughter. And then you've got me. So good luck with the last one, but we're going to have some fun today. I'm going to read you this quote from Ryan Holiday or about Ryan Holiday. He said that he spent years studying leaders who succeeded and leaders who self-destructed and kept finding the same culprit.
Meghan Slaughter (00:51.63)
you
Jody Holland (01:04.612)
the belief that they had already figured it out. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness. The leaders who last are usually the ones who stay uncomfortable enough to keep growing. Now I think we're going to unpack this. I think it's going be really great, but I want to kind of kick off with one of the things that I was taught when I started doing ropes courses. And I was 24 years old when I became a ropes course facilitator.
They said the moment you're no longer afraid of heights is the start of your death. And the only people that seem to get injured, like any serious injuries and definitely the only deaths on any Boy Scout ropes courses, because I work for Scouts, were from facilitators. We had this one element called the Giants Ladder. Now imagine if you were 14 foot tall and you're climbing a ladder.
that's how far the rungs were spaced apart is like you were a 14 foot tall giant. So you would climb, it was four foot to the first one, four and a half, five foot, five and a half, and then six foot apart before you made it to the top rungs. So you're going, you know, almost 40 feet in the air and you are on a belay rope. So it'll catch you if you fall unless you are a facilitator who believes they have everything figured out and they no longer need safety devices.
Two guys in one year died seeing how fast they could climb up the Giants ladder with no safety ropes. Now I've been free climbing and I mean, my extent of free climbing is about 45 feet in the air, but those guys that are doing the 200, 300, 500 foot ascents without any ropes, without any safety equipment, I would imagine that their life is on a short timeline and they're not going to make it very far. And I think of leaders in that same way,
Maleah Grigsby (02:54.936)
Thank you.
Jody Holland (02:55.908)
The reason you build a great culture and the reason you build great people around you is those are your belay ropes and your safety equipment. And if you throw those off, eventually you will fall. So I just wanted to start with that little illustration that that's the way that I see that Ryan Holiday quote. And then I'm going to get Megan to jump in first. Megan, tell me your thoughts on what happens when the narcissistic scale advances too quickly.
Mike Grigsby (03:05.719)
Yeah.
Jody Holland (03:22.882)
and the leader begins to believe that they are invincible.
Meghan Slaughter (03:27.298)
Well, I think a lot of the time we're told to act the part and pretend like you know what you're doing. And while there's nothing inherently wrong with that, I do think that it can become dangerous when people start believing that they know everything and they have it all figured out because we are all going through life for the first time and we always have something to learn. Whether it's top down or somebody below you is teaching you something, life is an interactive process.
And so you have to step into this learning role no matter what position that you have. And when you believe that you have it all figured out, you get lazy and you start taking unnecessary risks. Like you were saying with your Boy Scout example. So you have to be very careful. You have to be paying attention to everyone and everything around you and be open-minded. Listen to other people, get feedback from your peers and just understand that
Even if you know a lot, there is always more to learn.
Jody Holland (04:30.348)
Absolutely. Mike, your thoughts?
Mike Grigsby (04:33.527)
think I've said it before. think I've said it in a previous episode here is that I don't like absolute truths because the minute you think you've found the absolute truth. Yeah, I'm absolutely about, I'm absolute about that. Well, the minute you think you've, you've landed on an absolute truth, you stop asking questions about it. You stop kind of poking the box around it, probing and prodding. And that's what facilitates growth is that poking in the prodding. And I think Carol Dweck in her, in her book, grit, she talks about the fixed mindset and the growth mindset.
Jody Holland (04:41.412)
Are you absolutely upset?
Maleah Grigsby (04:43.597)
Thank
Mike Grigsby (05:02.583)
Right. And once a leader gets into a fixed mindset, it's the beginning of the end and you have to stay pliable. like how he talks about it. He's, Ryan, you know, Ryan Holliday talks about those that were comfortable in the discomfort. And I think a lot of times, especially nowadays, somewhere, somewhere in the last 10, 15 plus years, discomfort has been translated to unsafe. And that is, think.
Maybe there are cases like that, but for the most part, I'd even say, know, just anecdotally, 90 % of the times that you are disc, you know, you're experiencing discomfort, you're still safe. It just doesn't feel good. And if you can explore and lean into that discomfort to find out why it's happening, where it's coming from, how you can get out of it, then you begin to solve your own problems. You begin to find solutions to your own problems.
Jody Holland (05:57.762)
Yeah, and not to not to say that you set this up perfectly so that I had the opportunity to correct you but Angela Duckworth wrote grit and Carol Duett wrote mindset and the mindset is the one you were referencing. the wrong book title in there.
Mike Grigsby (06:07.435)
Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I was committing to two. Well, now you know, I've read both books. Yes. It's a, it's a gritty mindset. That's, that's what the book should have been called.
Jody Holland (06:16.856)
Yeah, Gritty mindset or something like that.
Meghan Slaughter (06:17.581)
You
Maleah Grigsby (06:21.027)
Thank
Jody Holland (06:24.898)
Yeah, I want to get your take Malia as well because you and Megan are kind of that same age, that generation of up and coming and you have typically a lower tolerance for the egomaniacal leaders.
Maleah Grigsby (06:25.069)
Yes.
Maleah Grigsby (06:38.881)
Yeah, totally. So I think it's kind of, it's two part in that one, when I think our generation is really good about recognizing those types of leaders, that if they get too egotistical or they just get too self-involved that we just don't want any part of that, whether that's personal or professionally. But the other piece of that that I find kind of interesting with,
Like our generation is like as the followers a lot of time that there's like just this lack of I guess kind of what you were saying about like this embracing the discomfort. My favorite quote that I ever heard was it was a Vonneism who's from Vonne Hariri where he talked about he basically said that success is on the other side of I don't feel like it. And so when you can push through the I don't feel like it the discomfort
then that's where the success comes from. Waking up at 6 a.m. isn't fun, but you're able to be successful on the other side of it. And then going back to the leaders, I think it's really interesting that I have found, even myself, when I start to kind of fall short as a leader, where I get too wrapped up in thinking that I know the answers, and then the moments when I start to fail, those failures become overly personal, where it's like I...
I screwed up, there's no way I can come back from this and everything, rather than if I kind of remove, like, I don't know everything, then it just becomes a learning process, than an identification piece of me.
Jody Holland (08:16.068)
Yeah. And I know we, a lot of times look at profitability of organizations. And I know from my perspective as a leadership strategist, that's one of the key metrics that my work is measured on. Capable.club, capable with a K has some really interesting stats showing that it costs in the United States poor leadership, which is defined primarily as uncoachable and narcissistic, $1.2 trillion per year.
That's the current US cost and seven trillion on a global scale for that. it kind of, if you remember Icarus, the mythological story about Icarus, character with the wings that just wanted to see how far he could go and he flew too close to the sun and burned himself up. The Icarus concept a lot of times is correlated to taking unnecessary risk. But I think the reality is Icarus was arrogant.
Mike Grigsby (09:07.021)
to this wing show.
Jody Holland (09:15.68)
Icarus believed that he was indestructible and just thought I can go more, I can go more, can do whatever I want to do. And so you start following this character and you realize that is the modern day arrogant leader. Another study on capable.club showed that there's a 97 % correlation between humility and effective leadership resulting in an average of 20 % increase in performance output or discretionary effort.
from employees. Academic research shows that this is the part that gets people messed up. We hire them because they were so good at their job. We fire them because we can't stand being around them. So we hire them because over there they didn't annoy us while they were performing, but over here, they're really annoying. And we just don't want to work with somebody that's really annoying and I know it all.
Meghan Slaughter (10:10.2)
Yeah, and I think a shift that we're starting to see in the workplace too is that you can't demand respect anymore and it's not inherent with titles. So especially for our generation, we are seeing that respect has to be earned and there are different types of authority and I'll let you go into that a little bit more if you want Jodi, but I think expertise authority is one of the strongest forms of authority that you can have and that is
proven by what you practice. You can't just say that you know everything. You have to demonstrate that you know what you're talking about and you have to lead by example.
Maleah Grigsby (10:44.259)
Mm-hmm.
Jody Holland (10:51.054)
And a lot of times that one correlates to relational authority. And that's where I think most of the younger generation, they start with expertise or something along those lines. And then they convert that to, okay, they really do know what they're doing and I can trust them and I like this person and I'll follow them. Do you think about why you quit a job? Is it because the person you work for isn't smart? Never. It is always because the person you work for is a jerk.
Like that is 81 % statistically, according to Gallup organization, 81 % of why people quit is they don't like their boss. 10 % they don't like their coworkers. So we know 91 % of why people are quitting is because we don't like them. So it's a personality issue, not really a competence issue. But we start following them because of their competence, their expertise that they have.
Mike Grigsby (11:44.771)
Mm-hmm.
Meghan Slaughter (11:46.102)
I think it's the catalyst for building that trusting relationship.
Mike Grigsby (11:51.628)
I think there's an element to, and Megan, you were starting to talk about this. I think this is kind of where you were going, but once you develop that expertise, it's not the expertise itself that makes you a good leader. It's what you do after a failure. What goes through my mind when you were talking about that was the old saying is like, you can't sing the blues until you've had your heart broken. There are people that are musically inclined that can absolutely sing that song very, very well.
Maleah Grigsby (12:02.839)
you
Mike Grigsby (12:20.973)
but they don't have the soul that goes behind singing that song because they've never had their heart broken. And I think the same is true in leadership. You can read all the books and you can execute mechanically all of the things that you're supposed to do as a leader. But until you've had a failure, until you've had a plan not go the right way, until you've had some kind of fallout and you've recovered from it, that's when the...
Maleah Grigsby (12:44.61)
Thank
Mike Grigsby (12:48.567)
the soul of leadership really starts to get cemented inside of you. And Jody, know you you've experienced that both personally, but you've also seen that profession. Like those professionals that you have led over years, you and I have had these interactions and it's almost magical when that tragedy hits them, when that failure hits them, they are completely different person on the other side when they're able to recover.
Jody Holland (13:17.58)
yeah. And I think the recovery part, though, is the recognition part. And let's go back to the Ryan Holiday quote, the ones who believe they have it all figured out are the ones that are uncoachable. But the ones that finally realize, I don't have this figured out. Those are the ones that become coachable. So Malia, you want to add anything there?
Maleah Grigsby (13:38.733)
Yeah, I was gonna say I would also argue not only the post-failure, whatever you decide to do with that and the lessons that you take out of it, but I also think a really big differentiator is leaders who find leaders. So those who are in the leadership space and finding good leaders to give good counsel. And I use the word counsel very intentionally instead of the word advice because advice is like opinions, everyone has them, everyone wants to share them.
But good counsel is others speaking from similar or same experiences and being able to teach out of those same experiences. So finding good counsel as a leader is a really big differentiator as well.
Jody Holland (14:22.212)
So I want to talk about when leadership failure really kicks your butt. I go back to 1990, Mike, you and I were fresh out of high school. It's Friday night. We don't want to go out, but girlfriends coming over and we're going to watch a movie. Where do you go to get a movie?
Mike Grigsby (14:43.671)
You go to the theater. yeah, you have to go to, it wasn't Blockbuster back then. was, it was, was Bob's, it was Bob's video rental. But, or if you lived in a bigger city, it was Blockbuster. Yeah.
Jody Holland (14:44.876)
No, no, to get a movie and take to your, to watch.
Jody Holland (14:51.268)
It was.
Jody Holland (14:55.623)
No blockbuster was growing like crazy. Yeah, it was growing like crazy in 1990. By 1995, they were printing cash. They made so much money, but where do you think most of their money came from? This is my little pop quiz. So Mike, you don't answer this. There's rentals. And then if you don't bring the rental back on time, you pay a little extra. If you don't rewind the VHS tape, for those of you can remember what a VHS tape is.
You paid a little extra be kind and rewind was all over the place. So Megan and Malia, do you think that you paid more for rental or more for late fees from their revenue? Late fees accounted for more than 50 % of their revenue. had, there was even comedians that would joke about your, your haul and buy you're going 86 miles an hour and you throw the side door open, you tuck and roll to put that into the.
Mike Grigsby (15:27.565)
That's right.
Meghan Slaughter (15:35.242)
I would say Lazy.
Maleah Grigsby (15:36.252)
A late phase. Yeah.
Mike Grigsby (15:43.244)
you
Jody Holland (15:53.316)
returns just so you don't have to pay the late fee. The late fee cost more than the rental. One minute late, you just paid for the rental plus about 10%. So they were literally making more money by punishing people than they were renting to people. And so through the 90s, though, they were the biggest game in America for video rentals. I loved going to Blockbuster.
Mike Grigsby (15:59.16)
Yes, it did.
Jody Holland (16:19.82)
and walking around and looking for the right movie and you'd spend 45 minutes looking for the movie you wanted to watch and nine times. Yeah, that's true. That's Nine times out of 10, I was getting a movie I'd already seen. Just renting it again. It was hard to buy movies back then. Late 1990s Reed Hastings starts company. Some of you may have heard of it. It's called Netflix. You guys ever heard of Netflix? So Netflix, they're a
Mike Grigsby (16:26.307)
It's the same amount of time we spend scrolling nowadays, but anyway, go ahead.
Maleah Grigsby (16:28.674)
great.
Meghan Slaughter (16:47.32)
Maybe once or twice.
Jody Holland (16:49.464)
Their model was a little bit different. They would, you would say, go online to this website and you say, I want to watch that movie. And they would mail you the DVD, keep it as long as you want. You're paying one monthly fee every month. like 20 bucks a month or 10. I don't remember how much it was exactly. Let's say it's 20 bucks a month. pay 20 bucks a month and you get it. You watch it, you mail it back and request a new one. When they got the DVD back, then you got the new one mailed to you back and forth, but they were not doing well.
So fast forward to the late 1990s, Reed Hastings approaches a guy named John Antiaco, who is the CEO of Blockbuster. And he says, we would like for you to buy Netflix for $50 million. Let us build and run your online division. You keep your stores just like they are. It'll be the perfect marriage. And John says, nobody will ever give up the joy.
of going to the video store to pick out their movie. Now, prior to John, their CEO, can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he left angry at the board because he wanted to build an online division and wanted to compete and the revenues are better than they had ever been. And they hosed him out of a bonus. So he leaves, goes somewhere else, makes somebody else a ton of money. John comes in, John can't imagine that humans don't want to go
stand in a store and pay ridiculous amounts of money for late fees. And the no late fee concept in Netflix is what I believe pushed them over the edge to just kill Blockbuster. It was only a couple years after that conversation, the Blockbuster went bankrupt. They went from controlling 83 plus percent of the video rental market all across the United States to zero. And they did it in 24 months.
Mike Grigsby (18:29.399)
Yes. Yes, I agree.
Meghan Slaughter (18:44.866)
Wow.
Jody Holland (18:47.064)
because of arrogance. Now, there's a concept called productive paranoia. And productive paranoia from a leadership perspective is we have to be paranoid and freaked out enough to know that the world will not be the same in a year. What's changing? What do we need to be ready for? And I have spoken on generational change in leadership since the year 2000. And I thought, well, I'm going to run the course pretty quick on this one, a couple of years and then generation things over.
Maleah Grigsby (19:07.937)
.
Jody Holland (19:17.444)
And then new generation starts entering. You're like, Oh, you know, give it a couple of years. And then everybody's like, what is wrong with these young people? We got to fix this. And then you go through and you do a ton of training. You update all your stuff. You do a ton of training for five, six, seven years. Like, all right, well, we're done. And then the new cohort within that generation comes in and they need training. So I have been training on updated versions of generational change for the last 26 years.
And we just finished updating portions of that, generational portion of our leadership training yesterday. And I'm like, oh my gosh, we really needed to update this. It's so crazy, all the changes that are going on in the world. So the productive paranoia is number one, I need to get in front of any potential problems. But number two, I need to be involved in the solution. And this is where I see, just from like a leadership training perspective,
The number of people that go, I'm already in charge. I don't need training. You got promoted. That's not the same thing as being a great leader.
Meghan Slaughter (20:27.438)
All right.
Jody Holland (20:27.748)
Anyway, that's just my two cents is that we keep putting people in positions where we promote them and then they start believing this ridiculous lie that because they're in charge, they know how to do everything that in charge people do and there's nothing else for them to learn.
Meghan Slaughter (20:43.924)
Exactly. And I think there's an important distinction between confidence and arrogance because arrogance says that I'm infallible. I can do no wrong. I don't make mistakes. Confidence says, I think this is what we should do, but you can also step back and recognize when things are going wrong that sometimes you have it have to pivot and change directions. And you're also willing to listen to your team and get their input on that. Whereas somebody who is arrogant says,
it's my way or the highway, we're doing it no matter what. And then they fail very loudly. And failure itself is not a bad thing because it helps you grow and it strengthens you if you are willing to accept the lesson from it. But if you're arrogant about it, you're not going to accept that lesson and you're going to start blaming people outside of yourself. Well, it's because you didn't do it exactly the way that I said you needed to do it.
So you have to be very careful. You should be confident, but you should never be arrogant in what you're doing as a leader or as a follower.
Jody Holland (21:51.556)
think that's important.
Mike Grigsby (21:53.856)
Malia, I know you have had some experience with leaders who were, who I guess kind of played in that arrogant stratosphere. What were your thoughts as someone coming into the workforce looking at an arrogant leader? What was your thoughts?
Maleah Grigsby (22:13.537)
So it was actually kind of interesting. After I left that role, I had a conversation that I had never heard before. At least I never heard it put in this context, but it was the pet to threat. And I think it was really interesting talking about how I was this literally like a little pet when I first started in the position. Like, my gosh, look at this pet that she's a special unicorn, one of a kind.
all of these things, I want to show her around, show her like, she's working for my organization, whatever, right? So then eventually people start coming to talking to you or whatever, like, my gosh, I would love to talk to your pet, all of these things. Well, eventually they start to realize that they can just talk straight to the pet. And then at that point they become a threat. So saying literally, it's like people start coming to me saying like, I want you to do this, this and this with my organization. And then all of a sudden the owner gets pushed out.
and that's when it becomes a threat. So I thought it was a really interesting perspective and I never heard that analogy before, but it like totally made sense and I see that so often. But also I think as a leader you have to be, constantly be fluid. If you are genuinely striving to be a good leader, you have to be fluid and understand that you can find the shiniest, bestest, whatever, coworkers, but understanding that
you have to remain fluid and that everyone has their season, that they absolutely have things that they can contribute, but they're not meant, like this whole idea of staying with any one company for 60 years is completely gone and irrelevant in our world now. As much as our world is changing, as much as work is changing, like I think leaders really need to kind of let go of that idea, especially for, I think about Megan and I's generation, we get curious. I think,
especially like our early 20s are supposed to be for just figuring out what do even like doing? What are we good at doing? What kind of people do we want to work for? Who do we want to work with? Who do we want to lead? All of these different things. So understanding it's okay to be as a follower, it's okay to just try things out and as a leader allowing your employees and your coworkers to be fluid in that.
Mike Grigsby (24:14.465)
specifically, right.
Mike Grigsby (24:35.297)
You know, I'll go ahead and make it.
Jody Holland (24:35.428)
Thank
Meghan Slaughter (24:35.842)
like that. You've got it. Go ahead.
Mike Grigsby (24:41.527)
Well, I was just going to follow it up and say that I think and maybe we should forward this to another podcast topic. But I think there's a challenge there sometimes because when people realize that they're working for an arrogant leader, a leader who's not going to take them somewhere, a leader who's not growth minded, they don't know what to do. They don't know how to orient around that. And should I quit my job? Should I?
Point it out to them, is it my job to say this? Should I bring it up to the company? I think there's definitely an orientation around there and I hate to sound prescriptive about it, but it depends. What you should do, it depends on what the scenario and what the dynamics are. But maybe we can tee that up for another, for a future podcast topic, Jody.
Jody Holland (25:30.532)
I think that is a great idea. So I, I to go ahead and sorry.
Mike Grigsby (25:33.687)
Megan, you were saying?
Meghan Slaughter (25:36.206)
was just going to say that I think what you were saying with the concept of the pet threat, a mark of a true leader is that they want to produce more leaders. And so they're planting seeds in a garden that they may never see grow, but they started that and they want to contribute it. If they are a true leader and they want the best for you, it doesn't matter if you are going anywhere else or if you're surpassing them. They just want to see you become what you're capable of being.
Mike Grigsby (25:56.995)
It's true.
Maleah Grigsby (25:57.332)
Thank you.
Jody Holland (26:07.62)
I think that is an amazing description of a leader. But that means that that leader also realizes there's always things I do not know. And when you stay humble and stay hungry, you stay successful. But when you are full and arrogant, you're about to get your butt kicked. As the old saying goes, pride cometh before the fall. I think that was what they were talking about is
Meghan Slaughter (26:16.014)
Right.
Jody Holland (26:31.522)
When you start believing that you know more than everyone around you, then you can't stay on the top. You're going to lose because you're going to get yourself caught up. And I was thinking, Mike, you're saying, you know, Malia has worked for some of those bad ones. I've worked for some of those bad ones. I'm sure you have too. And I was thinking back to one at a consulting firm where you and I actually met and I just looked her up and I'm like,
She still believes that everything she does is amazing. Like the way that she writes about herself and stuff, just like, come on, seriously? And it was a horrible experience working for her. And because of her decisions, that entire consulting division of that firm went out of business and they got sued and they were unethical. And she's now doing research on organizational outcomes and efficiencies.
Maleah Grigsby (27:07.488)
You
Jody Holland (27:27.65)
Like how about don't cheat your clients? That would be a good one.
But she believes she knew better. And I remember pushing back on her and just saying, like, I'm sure I don't know everything, but if we're making up billing codes and not getting permission to bill for those codes, that sounds like cheating. And I don't want do that.
Mike Grigsby (27:46.339)
Well, the point is β and this goes back to the fixed mindset versus growth mindset. For those leaders who get caught in that β we keep using the term arrogant, but for the leader that you're referring to, Jody, when you get caught in and when a leader gets caught in that I think I know everything and I have all the answers, when you get caught in that trap, what happens is you have to keep bending reality to match your reality.
you start living in a virtual reality and because the alternative is to admit that you don't have the answer and you can't do that, right? So you don't build that flexibility, you don't build that bendability to kind of evolve with things because, and this is why they break, they're inflexible, right? Everything breaks around them because they're inflexible.
Jody Holland (28:24.612)
because they're insecure.
Maleah Grigsby (28:26.986)
Thank you.
Jody Holland (28:40.004)
Yep. Kind of scary. Well, this has been a great conversation. I'm going to wrap this up here because we're about to hit that 30 minute mark and that's about the ideal mark. So thank you guys for tuning in and listening to this. Hope you got a lot out of it. We're going to have some other great episodes coming up, but don't forget every single day you wake up, you got to remember in order to become the kind of leader that you would follow, it requires staying humble, staying hungry and listening to others.
Maleah Grigsby (28:48.96)
Thank you.
