Strong Leaders Say No So Others Can Grow

Boundaries are not about being harsh, they’re about being clear. I’m back with part two of our conversation on setting effective boundaries that protect your time, your sanity, and your relationships, while still helping the people around you grow. If you’ve ever felt stretched thin by constant requests, constant problems, or constant emotional pressure to say yes, this one gives you language and structure to say no with purpose.

We dig into “strategic non-intervention” and why safe failure is a gift, not neglect. I share how grit is built through imperfect reps, why I value perseverance more than the buzzword resilience, and how independence is earned when people learn to operate without micromanagement. We also talk leadership time management through the 80/20 rule, why too many priorities crush quality, and how delegation often fails because trust or training is missing.

Then we widen the lens: authenticity versus compliance, the damage of false harmony, and why consistency is the foundation of trust. I also hit the loneliness epidemic and human connection with a simple gut-check question: if your house burned down tonight, who would show up? Finally, we get into conflict competence, accountability, and what it looks like to lead when your team isn’t winning yet.

If this helps you lead at work or parent with more calm and clarity, subscribe, share it with someone who needs stronger boundaries, and leave a quick review. What boundary are you setting this week?

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Transcript

Part Two On Healthy Boundaries

Gary Wise 0:07

Hey everybody, how you doing? It's Gary Wise here once again, Words for the Wise. Uh, hopefully, we're gonna be very soon for your mentors' favorite podcast. Uh, today we're coming back to part two of our of our podcast on boundaries and how to best put down some of some effective boundaries in your life, your team's life, uh, your kids' life, and just ways you can better say no, because sometimes that's what you got to say uh to protect your space and protect your mind, right? All right, so this is part two. This next part, we're gonna be discussing uh the final few areas of consideration that I want you to think about as you're living your life and hopefully finding ways to protect your time, protect your sanity, and protect your space. Uh, this next one is important because for me, it's about giving yourself and your people the ability to fail safely, right? I think that not everything needs to be perfect all the time. Right? It's important to be able to allow for things to not always be perfect. And whether that's for your kids, whether that's for yourself, I feel like people that are always trying to live to a perfective state struggle. And so you have to figure out what are the right and left parameters and how can you best allow for things to maybe be bumpy, right? Strategic non-intervention, right? Strategic non-intervention. What that means is essentially stepping back and letting things play out, letting people fail a little bit, teaching them to ask for help, but not for every step, right? Nothing is, you know, kid would come up to me and say, Hey, Master Chief, um, where is so-and-so located? So a kid this happened last weekend. Actually, a student came up and said, Hey, Master Chief, where is this high school located? So I said, Well, get out your cell phone. You got your cell phone, cool, bring it out, open up Google, okay, type in, where is put the high school in there located, hit enter, and there you go. There's the answer, right? Uh sometimes they need to learn to go find the information for themselves instead of just always expecting somebody else to give them the quick answer. Uh, because old you need to know how to go find out information. You need to know how to go find information for yourself and how to not always rely upon someone else to find you the answers. And I think that as a leader, we have to let people fail. I just think it matters. They have got to learn that it's not always catastrophic and that the consequences are going to hurt, but it's not going to change their life. Uh, especially me, now look, if this failure is going to affect a grade or whatever it is, then I think more conversation needs to be had. But here's my question: how did we get in that space? How did we get to the space where by failing to make this decision, you're going to fail a class? Like, I'm sure there were data points up till this moment. I remember there were times on the ship where we would people would bring the captain a decision that would essentially cause us to miss mission. And we would just be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. How did we get to such extremis that now, if we do not say yes or no, we're not going to meet the mission? Like there seems like there was a lot of data happening, a lot of events were taking place that we did not get advanced notice about. And now it's almost unfair to put him in this position to have to be the person that makes this choice and have to call up his boss and say, we're not going to meet the mission. That's not going to work. Right. And so one of my jobs was to make sure I heard about these things before it got to that point so I could preemptively get us involved and help us to unpack what the heck is going on so that we don't get ourselves in that pickle. Right. And so I think that learning how to recognize when things are copasthetic, they're not going to cause anybody physical harm. And maybe we should just let this play out a little bit. Step back. Failure is where the scar tissue of grit is formed. Right. I'll say that for you again. Failure is where the scar tissue of grit is formed. People don't just get gritty, right? By always winning. No, no, no. You gotta fail. You gotta fail. It sucks. Sorry, it sucks. I'm so proud of my kids when they try things and they don't always work out, but they keep on going back after it again, right? Because you're not always gonna be good at things the first time out of the gate. You have got to apply yourself, you have got to learn the lessons, you have got to really internalize why you're even doing this thing. And is it worth the humiliation, the embarrassment, the frustration, the muscle ache, the whatever it is to get back out there and go again. And then almost never will I ever uh support somebody quitting something until after success. Right? Once you succeed, now if you want to strategically make a change, we can have that conversation. But don't just quit because it got hard. That for me, it's not gonna be it, right? And I want you to understand that independence is a reward of learning how to operate on your own, right? One of my favorite things coming up through the ranks was having more independence to make decisions, right? How how we proved in the military that we can operate independently was typically we got rank, right? Our evaluations and the word potential was huge because if you had the potential to operate independently and lead other people to find success, and you did not require somebody to always micromanage you, you would probably get evaluated higher than somebody else, and then you'd probably make rank. Just was it was what it was. You know, I was a chief petty officer nine years, senior chief petty officer in 12 years, master chief in 16 years, and matter of fact, yeah, yeah, 16 years, master chief and CMC at 18 years, right? And so you had to there were people in my in my world that didn't need they didn't pick up chief petty officer until 20 years, 18 years. By that point in time, I'd already been in that leadership position 10 years, right? I spent more of my time in the Navy in the Chief's mess than outside of the Chiefs mess. You know, I made Chief and die, I'm retired in 25 years, right? So just different levels of experience are rewarded to people that learn how to operate independently while also being a consistent contributor to the team, right? And for me, that independence is a very big carrot, right? And I want to be able to leverage healthy boundaries as a way to help give people my my children, my students, my followers, people on my team, give them healthy boundaries and parameters so they can fail all in between these bumpers, right? They can fail all in between these bumpers. But if you hit the left or the right, come get me. I'm the guy, and then we'll figure it out. But anything between those two bumpers, it's all you you got, right? You got all you, and as they get better, the better at bowling down the center of the lane, the less they're gonna need your bumpers, right? And that's an amazing thing, and I think it's part of delegation, it's part of showing trust, right? When you give people space to maneuver and space to operate, it shows that you trust them. It shows that you don't have to always, you know, helicopter parent. You know, again, taking a three-year-old to the playground is not the same as taking an 11-year-old to the playground, which is not the same as taking a 17-year-old to the mall, or letting a 17-year-old go by themselves to the mall, right? So different, different approaches for different abilities, and you have to understand your people and what they require of you. That said, sometimes you gotta let them fall on the butt. Sometimes you gotta let them learn uh the hard way a little bit, and then you know, just reassure, debrief it. If they want to talk, let's talk about it. You could one of my favorite things to do is ask them will they like your feedback or advice? Sometimes they don't want to hear, it's not the right time. That matters, you know. Nothing is more frustrating when someone's going through a tough moment, and then people want to give them immediate feedback or immediate advice. It's not always helpful, bro. Chill up, let them work it out, and then when it's appropriate, maybe y'all can have that conversation in the future, right? Yeah, it matters, but for me, I'm a big fan of perseverance over resilience. I really am. I just I feel like resilience has become such a cliche word, right? Everybody needs to be resilient. How about you quit getting knocked on your butt? How about you learn to duck? How about you learn to step to the side and maneuver? How about you start to pay attention and learn the lesson instead of having to always get back off of your butt because you got knocked down, right? I would much rather see you become a perseverant leader than a resilient leader, right? I would much rather see you be solid and constant and consistently moving forward by having to always figure out how to recover. Just being honest. I would much rather have proactive people on my team than reactive people. And for me, I feel like reactive, a reactionary has become an inning window for just lazy. Right? Lazy. Don't be a lazy leader, don't be a lazy team member, be proactive, be productive, persevere, and do your best to learn while continuing to gain ground, right? Uh next one we're gonna talk about is going to be uh understanding you can do this. Is this an 80, 20, 20 boundary set setting or the 80-20 boundary, but you could do anything, you just can't do everything. Talked about that earlier when it came to having sports or having too many activities, right? You not look, I believe I can do almost anything I put on my too, but there's only so many hours in the day, there's only so much time in front of us and available to us. And while yes, I can maximize the most of my time, yes, you can maximize the most of your time. Is it healthy to have to do that daily? I don't think so, right? So understanding that again, leadership, the one of the most important leadership habits or traits will be your ability to lead yourself, will be how can you best manage your time so as to not book yourself 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How can you recognize that guarding 20% of your time is sacred, is special, and is yours, right? Let 80% of your time be productive, let 80% of your time go to other people, keep 20% for yourself, right? And recognize that the reality is you know, 20% of the things you do in this world will drive 80% of what happens outside of that 20, right? It's like when I was on the ship and I would have most of my time taken up by problems, right? We would spend the majority of our time on problematic, challenging people instead of on the other 80% that were giving us no issues. And it was learning like, okay, if I could take that 20% off of my chief's hands and I can do my best to manage these problematic people to free them up to focus on everybody else, then that's what I can do for the team. But then it's also teaching them to not let themselves get bogged down by that 20% of the challenge and lose the sight picture over the other rest of the 80% that are doing awesome. It's the same thing with the classroom. I got in a classroom of 30 people. There might only be two or three that are problems. 25, 26 of them are focused. They're locked in, they're doing good. And so, you as a teacher, you cannot allow yourself to get distracted and lose focus because one or two people want to be disruptive. You have to learn how to neutralize that and to move on, right? And how to do your best to delegate to people to help you navigate the rest. Just that's life, right? And I think if you can use uh production, productive time wisely, you'll find success, especially when you're when you're leveraging the larger amounts of time that are available to you throughout the day. Um here's a skill gap that I found when I was doing my research, right? Only 90% of candidates for manager demonstrate strong delegation skills. Only 19% of manager candidates demonstrate strong delegation skills. Wonder why that is. In my experience, when people struggle with delegation, it's either because number one, they don't trust. That's huge. Whether it's they don't trust themselves, whether it's they don't trust their people, whether they don't trust the leadership that they're working for. There's trust is a problem somewhere in there. Number two, they don't feel like the people are trained. So training is another problem in there somewhere. Trypally, training and trust are the top two reasons why I think people struggle with delegation. How do I resolve that? Get them to start delegating now. Chop chop. So every year, our cadets uh get leadership positions, and one of the biggest challenges they always have is learning how to delegate for other cadets to play a role, right? Even though they have leadership positions that they get to do the work too, but it's got to be delegated to them. The only way you're gonna build trust is to start delegating and letting them succeed. The only way you're gonna find out if they're trained is start delegating and seeing the results, right? Theoretically, we've done all the training ahead of time. Theoretically, we built trust along the road. Guess what? We'll find out. Start delegating, right? I just I think it's important. And then if you are not comfortable being delegated to, I think you have a responsibility to communicate back. If you don't feel comfortable taking around the opportunity or the assignment, say something. Now, what why are you uncomfortable? Is it because you don't know what to do? Is because you don't know how to do it, is it because you don't have the time to do it, the resources to do it, the enthusiasm to do it? Well, you owe all those answers, but you took the job. Right? You took the job. Don't take the job if you're not enthusiastically willing to try to do the thing you've been delegated, the opportunity or the challenge to do, period. Right? But everybody gets a chance to play. Everybody needs to have a responsibility to play their role in the team, and even when we fail, there should be plenty of blame, plenty of responsibility to go around, right? And that's the only way to develop the next generation, right? You've got to shed the load, you've got to let go of tasks, especially when they don't require just your decision making. Delegate those down, let people understand where their decision making authority lies. I would rather have somebody make a decision and then find out later that they weren't qualified to make it, but it's not the end of the world, right? Than somebody who's never who who never wants to make a decision because they're afraid of their own shadow. Like that's crazy. Right? Will you find both in this world? Yes, you will. You'll find people that selfishly want to make every decision because they want to be bull in a China shop, which it could be a complication. Or you'll find people that don't want to make any decisions because they're afraid, right? Uh, next topic is going to be authenticity versus compliance. And for me, uh I don't appreciate when people hide behind compliance because they're afraid to act. Right? Don't act like you cannot make something better because it doesn't tell you how to do it in the book, right? Everything in the book, in my opinion, is always up for revision. Right? We can always improve the process, we can always gain experiential learning and wisdom. We can always figure out ways to improve what we're doing as an organization. Don't hide behind compliance to be freaking complacent. Right? On the reverse, don't freaking pretend that because you're so authentic, you can't follow the rules. That doesn't work either, right? You got to be a legitimate team player. And false harmony is a silent killer. Don't act like, yeah, you're aligned with the leadership team when really, as soon as you get out of the door, you're just throwing them under the bus and you're just you're you're being a negative entity. Because unfortunately, that kind of stuff kills the team. And the reality is it's typically pretty easy to smell through, right? I got students that do that, they'll smile on my face. Yes, Master Chief, but as soon as they get out of the classroom, they got their own opinions. It's like it's like on Friday with Smoky and Debo, right? And you know, Debo leaves, I'll be I'll be talking again, right? And the reality is I'd much rather have uh an open feedback loop where people can say what their concerns are and what their stresses are. But the but if it's just nickel and diamond stuff, you someday become the leader and you can be the one that makes the decisions. Some people just want to have the power, they want they're on this power trip and they want to feel like they're the one that calls all the shots. Good luck with that, right? Good luck with that. Ultimately, what I've learned throughout my life is very rarely is there anybody that gets to be in charge of everything. And typically you all have it to work with one another to figure things out. You know, I'm always a servant leader, I'm almost always thinking about my people before I do anything. So whether they understand that or not, but almost always the actions that I'm going to take are a direct result of the conditions they put out for me. Right? Just how it is. Right? It's just how it is. And so you don't have to understand that if you want to be able to affect change in your organization, typically you've got to get your people to operate differently so they can allow for you to change. That's it, you know, and so but people that are being fake and are are either hiding behind complaints to be complacent or that are pretending to be so authentic they can't get in line, they're just trying to be problematic. They're not always giving me the best for the team. And for me, they're not the ones you want to put in strategic leadership positions. People that you want to have in strategic leadership positions are the ones that can uh want to make it better, can want to make it improved, but authentically want it to be better for the good of the organization and for the team, right? And not for their own personal, you know, recognition. That's another thing for me. I get frustrated when people want, the ribbons. Everybody wants the medals or they want the rank or they want the parking spot, but they're not really worried about everybody else on the team. We all win if we don't care against the credit, man. Trust me, have trust in the process, have trust in the team, have faith in the organization, have faith in the people that are around you and let them uh stand by you. Real peace comes from the courage to stand in the position of what matters and hold on to it, right? And and don't always worry about uh getting all of their accolades, right? That for me is a challenge. Um another thing I will tell you is people hate being told no, they hate rejection, they always want to hear yes. I've seen that a lot. Groupthink is a thing, right? I'll see, especially my students, they'll also they want to be buddies, they want to be friends, they'll have you have more popular entities andor uh people at different seasons of life. And so everybody wants to be on the good side of that person. And you'll watch it just go too far or overboard, and you'll have to reel them back in and say, hey, look, that's not the best thing for the good of the organization because while you're thinking about your little pot of four or five people, this is a team of 165 people. Remember, you know, multiple sides to every every uh challenge. And not only, not always do people that are so close to the problem have the good view. You know, typically you want to kind of step back. You want to you want to get as many perspectives as possible. You want to get overview. Uh you want to get the ability to see the bigger picture before you get pulled into something that's uh possibly going to be a bad thing for the team. I always uh recommend that when energy levels start to get too high or emotions start to get too high, decision making needs to come down. I'm always leery of making decisions in a high energy moment or a high emotional moment because sometimes people get carried away, right? And understanding that having healthy boundaries, especially in those moments that people don't want to be told no, or they only want to hear what their own selfish desires want to hear, uh that's not always healthy to feed into those moments, especially when their egos are involved, right? Uh, people working on too many priorities report that a 30% lower in quality output. So, what does that mean? That means if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. So, leaders, our job, parents, leaders, managers, whoever you are, our job is to filter through the priorities. I remember on the George Washington one time, I asked the chief engineer, we were we were doing something, you're ready for NSERF, and I said, sir, if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. What are your priorities? And he just looked at me like I was crazy. Because I mean, I had a list on my desk of priorities, but he kept changing the channel. He kept changing the priority list. And I appreciated that there was a lot of moving parts. I appreciated that there was a lot going on, but at some point, leaders need to be the ones to help protect their followers from having too many priorities. Right? And you, at a minimum, need to protect your peace and say, all right, here's the priorities that I'm focusing my time on right now. And I will let other things fall away. Again, like I said in the in the previous episode, not everything deserves an immediate response. Right? Uh I love it when people focus on alignment of their priorities with their personal goals or their personal uh life choices. Chris Cahill, buddy of mine, he was somebody who used to host a podcast with me. He would always talk about the word alignment. I love the word alignment. And if you can align your priorities uh with your personal goals, your personal choices, you're gonna find a lot of peace. Right? I would choose alignment over approval every day. And I would work to reinforce your voice and your integrity uh over everybody else just being happy with who you who you who they think you are. Because again, a buddy of mine gave me a coin one time. I was at the senior chief board in Millington, Tennessee, and he gave me this coin that would stand on its own on the on the desk. And I remember saying, hey man, you know what the heck? This coin doesn't even fit the coin holder. And he said, because I wanted my coin to be unique, I wanted my coin to be different, and essentially I wanted my coin to stand up on its own, and for you to understand that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Now, that coin does not get displayed with all the other coins because it doesn't fit with any coin holders, but I still have it, but I remember that lesson. And I think it's important that you need to know what you're gonna stand tall for, right? Oh, and and I think people need to understand what are your red lines, what are the areas that you're not going to fold? What are the areas that you're going to be the one they come to look for as that leader, as that father, as that mother, as that person in their life that they can depend upon. Okay. Uh, next up, the loneliness, loneliness, epidemic, and human connection. Oh my God, this is so true. You know, we talked earlier in the last podcast about how people are, you know, hyper-connected. They just feel like they have all these relationships. But the reality is, how many people are they dealing with that with conversations, with engagement, with things that are not just surface or not just manipulating the vision of what they want them to see? Right? How many people are they actually getting with on their off-time? Now, I don't believe you need a lot of people. I really don't. I mean, I my wife, my sons, I have a a low need for extra people to always be in my circle or in my space. But for some people, they're so socially active that they feel like they need a lot of people to be around them. Uh, but unfortunately, uh, this isn't one of the numbers I got. Eight out of ten people are saying they have a loneliness vector or is a top threat to their mental health because they don't feel like they have people that they actually can depend upon in real life. Think about that. If your house burns down tomorrow, who's gonna come help you tonight? Who can you depend upon tonight? If your house burned down today or tomorrow, who would come help you? Whose house would you stay at? Who would you call? Right? That's a tough one. Think about that. And it's true, a lot of us. I don't like to be dependent on a lot of people. I like to live a life where my family is independent. We take care of ourselves. I have my church group, I have my school group, but I don't have a lot of people that are always over to the house or in my world. Who do you have? And if you don't like that answer, the only way you can fix that is by communication. You know, my son is getting ready to graduate high school, and I'm super worried for him and his friends because well, they're in high school, they got to see each other every day, right? Got to do all these activities four years, these awesome, unique friendships. But then when high school ends, they're all going to these different directions. Are they gonna lose these awesome friendships that they developed over this time? I've seen that throughout my entire career. I'd have friends in the military during certain portions of my career that were so amazing. And to this day, we get together, it's like no time has ever passed. But the reality is most of us never talk. Because we're all busy doing our own things. We might like posts on Facebook or Instagram, but we're not really talking and getting caught up or making plans to do things. And you know, I just it can be lonely, I guess. And it's important that if that's a concern for you, you do something about it, right? Uh God, I I I feel horrible for somebody who's in a marriage and they're lonely. That's that's tough, right? Or uh, you know, one of my favorite things is I talked about my son and my concern for him after he graduates high school. On the reverse, he's also one of my favorite friends, right? He's 18 years old, he's a young man, he's coming into a lot of his own things. But there are times when I am more than happy to share with him my concerns, my stress, the load, and let him see like where I need him to step up and help me because dad can't do it all the time. And while I'm 48 and he's 18, our age difference is exactly what my dad's was to me. And I never got the chance to have some of these conversations with my dad because I chose to get up and leave the house right away. So I'm hoping that I can kind of help help that a little bit with my own son by communication and offering opportunities for us both to find success while working together mutually, right? I think that matters, especially when I know that at some point the world is, you know, this this life ends. We move on with the journey. Um, but I sure would have liked to have had more time with my dad when he was alive. And so if I can hopefully counter that with my sons, that's a win, right? And if I can help them by being somebody in their life that helps them not to feel lonely, brother, I'm here for it, right? I'm here for it because I would like to be a parent where my children, as they become adults, they choose to want to continue to be friends with. Just because we're family, doesn't mean we're always friends, right? And that's a big deal. I think not getting isolated, not depending upon social media for the majority of your communication, not depending upon video games for the most most of your interaction. I think you got to get out there and you gotta work with people and you've got to live a life where people actually depend upon you, right? Uh, two in five teens say they lack emotional support. That's probably true, man. 93% of parents believe their children are getting adequate support. There you go. So two out of five teens are saying they don't get enough emotional support, whereas over 90% of parents say they're getting enough support. What's the disconnect? I don't know. I think figuring out the communication, the conversation, and recognizing that that leadership gap is the same, whether you are in the business space or you're at home. I do believe that this is why one of my passions is working with parents, especially teenagers. I do believe that the skills that will make you an effective leader in the workspace will also translate over to parenting uh adolescents because it's so much more about mentorship than it is about just about being about being a parent. It's so much more about learning how to strategically develop your follower or your young person as they're preparing to launch into adulthood than it is about just, you know, parenting a 10 or 11-year-old, right? They're just different, it's a different, it's a different process. And so if you're a person who struggles with leadership in the workspace, you're probably gonna struggle at home dealing with your team. But if you can deal with your team really well, you'll probably be good in the workspace as well, if that makes sense. And so I think that working on leadership will help you in both arenas. Uh here's another one of the data points I pulled out. 80% of parents spend almost every waking hour focused on someone else. And 67% feel guilty for taking any time for themselves. You know, I don't know if that's true or not. I I you know, I think that as my kids get older, I find that I have more time for myself, which is appreciated, right? Um, but yeah, like I talked earlier about taking time off in April to not do a bunch of field trips. I think there's always gonna be some guilt involved with taking time for yourself. And you've got to figure out a way to be at peace with it. And I think part of how that works for me is I look at all the times that I give up of me to help people to offset the guilt by saying, hey, and this is why it's okay for me to do this podcast or do this adventure with my wife, who I'll be honest, my wife is my favorite person to do things with, right? As my kids get older and I can see them eventually leaving the house, I can see a space where it's gonna be my wife and I. And I hope we for a long time enjoy going out and doing things together because that's awesome. Right. And I hope you have the opportunity to have something like that in your life. How do you get there? Communication, right? And and taking the risk. You know, a young people, I see them struggle with managing intimate personal relationships because they really struggle with conversation. Step one, start talking. It's not rocking science. Stop texting, start talking, get in real life, have a conversation, right? And figure out how to listen and find things that you're both interested in, pick targets, and make a plan as to how y'all both can get there. Maybe it'll work out. All right, next topic, right? Conflict competence and accountability. Oh my god, how many people struggle with conflict? I mean, I mean, ultimately, I actually enjoy conflict, but the amount of people that I deal with every day that struggle with it because it makes them shut down and makes them uncomfortable and makes them not even want to try to communicate because they just I think it's because they they're afraid they're not gonna get their way, right? I think that's number one. They don't they're afraid of the conflict because some people try to bulldoze, right? There's I'm going to win so fast, so hard, and you're not gonna be able to stop me. And that's their way of handling conflict. I can see the strategy in that. Some people are just born to be stubborn, right? And refuse to even communicate and just take all the toys and go home. And I'm just gonna leave, and you're gonna be out of luck because I'm not even gonna give you the opportunity to be successful here, because I'm not even going to open up the conversation because of the energy or whatever it is. I think that when it comes to conflict and accountability, which is a part of this data point, because people are afraid to be held accountable, or they're always taking responsibility for things, even when it's not their fault. And some people that's a that's a negative thing, right? Remember, we're talking about boundaries here. And how can you have healthy boundaries around conflict and accountability? So, number one is trust. Trust in yourself, trust in your team, trust in your leadership, trust. I mean, trust, the word trust, it's going to be in almost anything that we do. Uh, trust in the media managers today, unfortunately. This is a data point that I discovered, has dropped from 46% to 29% theoretically, in just two years. Part of the trust factor, in my opinion, is the amount of touch points we have with people. Whether people have too many touch points with your social media, with your messaging, with your emails, with hearing you talk to people, or hearing from other people about you. Like there's just so much information out there about somebody. And the minute somebody does something that they feel like is not aligned with what they should be doing, the trust is gonna slide. You know, if you tell me, if you tell me that you never use the color green, and then I hear you later talking about how much the color green is something you're interested in using. Well, now I don't trust that you don't use the color green, because that what you're talking about doesn't match what you said earlier. And so being consistent as a leader, uh, and that's my little simple analogy, but I will tell you your consistency will be the most important thing to ensuring your trust is lined up for your people, whether it's your kids, whether it's your teammates, whether it's your the people you're following, right? The people you're working for, or whether it's the people that you're leading. You must be consistent in order for them to trust you. If you cannot be consistent, you're going to struggle. And if you're going to do something that's out of the norm, you better be prepared to speak about it. Because they're gonna want to, they're gonna have to know. They're gonna need to understand, right? Now, sometimes you don't need to give that answer right away. Remember, I talked about that earlier last podcast. Sometimes that immediate answer is not required, but you're gonna have to tell them, explain to them why you did something different uh in that moment or in that opportunity, right? And what what was the reason behind it so they can understand? Otherwise, they're going to not trust. It's a it is a almost as much as complacency is a default human setting, so is lack of trust. Because people uh are selfish, right? And so just remember that you have got to maintain trust with people in order for them to follow you consistently, and you get that trust by being the same day in and day out. And if you're going to give it a no, give it honestly, give it authentically. When that boundary comes down and we're saying no, they need to consistently understand that you're saying no for a good reason. And if you've got the time, you're gonna provide them the information, right? That matters. That communication is gonna be one of the most important parts of your career in parenting, in leadership. And and if you say yes, explain why you're saying yes. I think that matters too. Let people know why you're going to why did you say no this time? Why did you say yes this time? Help me better prepare before I bring you uh an opportunity to make a decision. Because if I want to get you to yes, I want to come prepared. Right? If if your no is going to be because I did not give you all the information, that's a good lesson for me to learn. Huge, right? Huge. And I think that you will find uh that if people learn how to better manage conflict because they understand the rules that you're putting out there for them, they will hopefully uh not be so afraid of it. The other thing I will tell you is that uh teaching people to not avoid conflict, in my opinion, is the definition of leadership, mentorship, right? Because this life is full of conflict, and part of guiding them to be able to lead or leading somebody into uh the challenge of this thing we call life is going to be handling conflict. There it's just not going to be walking down the yellow brick road and everything always works the way you want it to work. The enemy always gets a freaking vote, man. There's always going to be some sort of a challenge. And it would not be called leadership if everything just always went the way you wanted to go and nobody ever had to deal with challenge, right? The hardest leadership positions are when people have to go to and they're not winning. They're not winning, and they're still suiting up every day and coming to work because they see that they could win in the future by continuing to trust you and trust their team, and that's it. Right? And that's it. This is where I when I see people. Uh my son played uh flag football, right? And you had these travel ball teams that just had so many amazing young athletes. These kids were smoking every other team, 40, 50 points, right? And my son was not on one of those teams. He was on the team that was struggling and they were trying their best, and they were athletically okay. They just weren't as good as those other kids. They didn't have the reps, they didn't have the sets. And I told my son, I said, Look, uh, it's harder to be on the team that's not consistently winning by blowouts, and you guys still get suited up and come to play. And you come to depend on each other, you go to practice and you practice hard. And when you get your victories, it's just so sweet. And it's a different experience. And for the coaches, it's almost easier to coach a team that's full of all-stars than it is to coach a team of people that are not constantly winning. Right now, not taking anything away from those kids that are on the travel team because I'm sure they've had to work their butts off throughout their lives to get to be that level of good. Right? Not everyone sees the level of work you put in to your long term development to be of that good. But the reality is the leaders that I tend to focus on. Or the ones that have teams that are not always finding success and that are struggling to get people inspired to come in and make the thing work. And that's that's my uh reality, right? Now, I'm very blessed that the teams that I'm a part of typically by the third, fourth year, we're typically doing pretty dang good, right? But it takes time to get there. It takes time, and you're never gonna you're not gonna get there in a in a flag football season. You know what's cool about these travel teams is the same teams every season. They're the same teams every season. So for them, they don't have to always start again. Whereas for my son, he gets put on a different flag football team every season. For a lot of my professional teams, at least in my retirement, working with the high school, I get four years with these kids. By the end of that third year, they're freaking dialed in, right? And and we're really finding a lot of healthy success. And that happens, but it takes time, right? Takes time. Most leaders get frustrated and they don't know how to get their people out of the mud. Well, I've given a lot of good ideas throughout this.