Episode 196 - Bob Dixon - Leaders On Leadership
Leadership is a multifaceted quality that requires continuous growth and a deep understanding of oneself and others. In this episode, Dr. Tracey Jones is joined by leadership coach and combat veteran Bob Dixon, who shares key lessons on how self-awareness, in-depth team connection, and outstanding well-being can drive peak performance and success. Bob offers powerful leadership advice that applies to any professional setting and dives into the importance of finding a support system. He also explores the significance of deliberate self-care, as well as how emotional, mental, and physical fitness are interconnected to leadership.
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Bob Dixon - Leaders On Leadership
Welcome to the Tremendous Leadership, Leaders on Leadership podcast, where we pull back the curtain on leadership and talk to leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I am so excited to introduce you to our guest, Bob Dixon. Bob, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me, Tracey.
You can tell Bob is someplace warm. For those that know, I'm in Pennsylvania, it is absolutely freezing. You're down in Florida, right, Bob?
It's actually quite freezing here. It's plunged into the 70s, what are we going to do? But we're getting by.
Bob, you just lost our audience. Why'd you have to turn them away so quickly? I love it. Let me tell you a little bit about Bob Dixon. Bob Dixon, he is a leadership coach, he's an entrepreneur and author, he's a combat veteran, a father, a husband, a walker of dogs, and a drinker of scotch. As a retired Army colonel, Bob strives to help leaders and organizations be their best through coaching and through mentoring. His main goal in life is to be a helpful and grateful human. Bob, I love that. Thank you so much for being here.
It is my pleasure, Tracey. Thank you so much for having me.
You're welcome. I'd like to tell the listeners where we first connected. We connected probably about six weeks ago in Dallas. It's called the PBCA, the Professional Business Coaches Alliance. I went back there to learn more about the group and speak. Bob is one of those coaches. You're going to hear more about that. We hit it off and have continued from there, obviously, the heart and love for leadership, for serving others, and also the military connection. Bob, I'm really excited to hear what you have to say about paying the price of leadership.
Hopefully, we'll have something worth listening to then.
Addressing Loneliness In Leadership
I'm sure you will. My father, Charlie Tremendous Jones, spoke prolifically on leadership. In his one speech called The Price of Leadership, he let people know that if you truly are going to be a leader, there's going to be a price that you're going to have to pay. The first price that he talked about, Bob, is loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top, and heavy is the head that wears the crown. Can you share for our listeners maybe a time where you went through a season of loneliness, how you handled it, or any words of wisdom to the listeners today?
Yeah. Your dad, obviously, a very prolific speaker, but more than just producing a lot, he produced a lot of wisdom that went with those speeches. It wasn't just words, deep meaning. My deep appreciation for you introducing me to his work. Clichés, that it's lonely at the top, come from somewhere. All clichés are based in some truth. I recall being deployed as a company commander, and I had deployed without my battalion. It was just my company attaching to some strangers over into Bosnia. We were there for about seven months. I was in command and had no peers. All of my peers were back in the States, they didn't deploy with us.
I had a lot of people around me, and there was a lot of support from the commands that I joined, but they didn't know me. They didn't know my unit. My unit was different from other kinds of units. We had a different mission. We didn't go to all the other places that the other teams did. It dawned on me that I didn't have a sounding board. I had a first sergeant, but I didn't have another commander that was a battle buddy that I could rely on. It took me a couple of months to realize, I'm lonely here. You're surrounded by hundreds of people, yet you're lonely because you haven't made a connection. I hadn't made a connection with somebody I could really talk to, somebody I could express doubts to.
I think that's inherent in some leadership positions that you don't want to express doubt. You don't want to express any lack of confidence in front of your subordinates. You always want to feel and appear to be in charge and know exactly what to do. That can be crushing. To be able to express doubts, and to be able to express, "I'm not sure I've got this right," with somebody who's not going to judge you, or somebody that is willing to look at you and not take a chink out of your armor if you do express doubts.
It is inherent in some leadership positions not to want to express doubt. You always want to feel and appear to be in charge, and it can be crushing.
I was very fortunate that I found a chaplain on my base camp that was just a great human being. We became friends. I was able to have conversations with somebody. It took me several months before I found that person. I don't think I would have labeled it loneliness at the time, but upon reflection, that's precisely what it was.
I love that. I love that you put a name to it, because a lot of people, I'm sure, are like, that is when I was lonely. It's neither good nor bad. Loneliness is amoral. There's good loneliness and there's bad loneliness, but you will go through a season of it. I love that you talked about different units, so that affiliation we all need. That's why we love the military, because of the camaraderie, but it was a different unit.
For our listeners out there, I love that you talked, Bob, about your battle buddy. If you're feeling lonely or alone, it's just essential to find that peer-to-peer battle buddy. When I was a second lieutenant, we had something called the LPA, the Lieutenants Protection Alliance. That just came back to me from many years ago. It's funny because we were always getting in trouble or pranked or whatever, because we were just lieutenants. We didn't know anything. We were to be seen and not heard. We had this little band where we’d just get together and have each other's backs, because otherwise, it's lonely. You're a minion, and you're trying to find your way. I had to laugh, you brought really good memories.
Too many war stories. A protectionist racket of battalion commanders later on, because we had a toxic leader in our brigade commander. One of the wives, when we were commiserating about it at some social event, said, "What's the odds that the four worst commanders could end up in the same brigade?" We formed a club called the Four Worst Commanders. We conspired to make the entire brigade successful in spite of its commander. We looked out for each other and cared for each other. That was a moment where it could have been very lonely. I thank God for my three battle buddies there.
I love that. For people out there, you're like, "My leader stinks." That doesn't matter. You have other people. What you're really talking about is lateral peers. If you can express concerns, or fear, or doubt, and we sure do as lieutenants a lot, or how to manage upwards together and be stronger. I love the fact that you said, in spite of that all, we are going to do the right thing and make the organization successful.
That's part of our culture, I think, is that we're going to try to make the unit successful because there are people down below us that have lives, and they have to function, and they have families. If the entire culture is going to be toxic, they're going to bring that home. The entire community is going to suffer. We have an opportunity as peers, and as friends, and as professionals to step in and say, the pain stops here. Let's fix that for the people that work for us.
Overcoming Weariness In Leadership
I love it. Sounds like a name of a book you should write, The Pain Stops Here. I like that. We talked about loneliness, Bob. The next thing he talked about, and I'm sure you know a thing about this because you are a combat veteran, is weariness. The military, we really realized that we were all in this together. But my dad always said to me, "Tracy, there are going to be times where not everybody is pulling as they should. There will be weak links. There will be disengaged people."
You're in the leadership space. You look at what's going on. It's tiring. We have to be on point. We have to be confident. We have to be competent because it stops with us. How do you, Bob, stay in top fighting form, spiritually, mentally, professionally, physically, all that good stuff, so you can be the leader your troops need?
It's got to be on purpose. It's got to be deliberate. A lot of us have physical fitness programs, particularly in the military. They're going to make you show up at 6:00 in the morning. You have a forced function to it. As a leader outside of the military, and as a retired military officer, I didn't have that structure anymore. Being very deliberate about, hold on, I have to have a program of some kind for my physical fitness, but let's not stop there. Let's be deliberate about all the kinds of fitness, emotional fitness, mental fitness, spiritual fitness, relationship fitness, because one of the first things that busy people do is they start cutting off help for themselves, that self-care.
We get busy. We're like, “I could run that extra mile tomorrow, and I could buy myself half an hour today to do more work.” Really need me to be prepared for this briefing. “I'm just not going to get as much sleep tonight, or I'm going to neglect my family because they'll forgive me, and the boss won't.” All of those forms of wellness that help us function at our very best are some of the first things that busy people, particularly busy leaders, sacrifice.
I was very fortunate as a young officer to have a non-commissioned officer, a sergeant, grab me and pull me aside and say, "Boss, if you don't take care of you, who's going to take care of us?" You talk about weariness, I had been up for probably three days, despite the fact I know you're not supposed to do that, and I forced everybody else to have a sleep plan. I just got too busy to go sleep.
Sergeant First Class Baker was a wonderful human being, and he grabbed me and pulled me aside and said, "You can't continue to function like this. We can't afford to have you go down. We need you to take care of you." That has stuck with me ever since. That was a long time ago, but I have to be deliberate about taking care of myself.
This is what I coach my clients about. It's like, “I know you're busy, but how much more productive are you going to be if you've got a good night's sleep? How much more productive are you going to be if you eat well?” Because I got to tell you, most things that you're going to get out of a drive-thru are not going to fuel you for your best thinking during the next 24 hours.
You’ve got to be deliberate. That means having a plan. That means researching what's best for you. That means having an understanding about what is going to bring you the most energy and that desire to hit the ground running as soon as your feet hit the floor in the morning. Because life will wear you down, and you're dead absolutely right. There'll be days when you're just like, the pillow is much nicer than what's going on next. If you've done the right things, and you know that supports you, and people are relying on you, you're going to have that motivation, that fire to get up and say, “I am tired. I'm going to do it anyway. I'm busy, and I don't want to go for a run this morning, but I'm going to do it anyway.”
You talked about the spiritual thing. I think sometimes, and you can chime in on this with coaching, we sometimes think, the spirit, and we have the spirit, we have this eternal side, we have this, when we get out of this mortal coil. Until then, and you said it, when you understand what food, water, and sleep do to the functions of the cognitive brain, I think we think, it's my brain, but everything on the physical aspect, if you, like I said, distilled us down to parts, it'd be worth like 23¢. But that 23¢ is what makes the eternal, the Imago Dei within us run.
I think sometimes we think we can push through it, but it all works in conjunction with one another. I can remember watching my father go through a bout of chronic fatigue when I was in my teens. He was, I don't know, maybe 50, just really peaking at the height of his career. It just hit him hard, the exhaustion, and you have to watch out for this. You want to finish the race strong. I'm saying we want to be coaching people in our 80s and 90s, maybe even the first 100-year-old coach out there. I really appreciate you saying it's a program, it's your habits.
It is. We are what we consistently do, says some wise man sometimes. We are our habits. Excellence is a habit. Taking care of ourselves is a habit. There's a reason I brought up Sergeant First Class Baker, because having that social network around you is something that you do deliberately. You find people who are going to feed you, and give you energy, and reinforce you, and encourage you, particularly when you're weary. By the way, they call you out when you are not taking care of yourself.
We are our habits. Excellence and taking care of ourselves are habits.
You even said with the battle buddy, you were intentional. You could have said, and I've seen other people do this, that's not my unit, that's not my nationality, that's not my whatever, their guard, IMAC, whatever. They're blue collar. You say, we're different, but it is all about intentionality. I'm thankful that Sergeant Baker was able to get, obviously, if you're still recalling it, but what a sound lesson, just the people coming into us and telling us that. I know some people do it because there's an element of pride. A lot of us just really do it because we just want to keep giving to people. As we're pouring out into other people, we have to pour into ourselves, but through self-care or having other people around us.
The saying that if you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, go with a pack. It resounds so often with me that I'm like, whenever I'm starting to get worn out, I'm like, I forgot to bring a team with me. I'm trying to do it myself. Let's look around.
I don't have to do it all.
Where are we going?
You will talk about it at the end. Before we got started, Bob was talking about scaling his business. He was like, he got some people coming on the team. He's like, and now that I don't have to do that heavy lifting anymore, that burden is off him. Now he's free to serve. Isn't that amazing? If you are feeling like you're burdened, I think it's Lena Horne who has one of my favorite quotes. She says, "It's not the load that wears you down. It's the way you carry it." I would say, if you're not letting other people share in carrying the load.
That's a wonderful sentiment. I love that. It's how you carry it. There's a lot of people who carry a lot of things, a lot of baggage that they don't need to carry. I watch leaders all the time, like, I'm the best person in the company to do this. You are for today, because you didn't train someone. I see people who are worth hundreds of dollars an hour doing $50 an hour work. We have some of those people. Let them do that. You've got to be able to let go.
I was doing a women's conference last year. One of the memes that came up was, you have the same 24 hours a day as Beyonce. Meaning we all have 24 hours a day. I remember people in the audience were like, “Nah,” and I'm like, “Yeah, huh? You do.” She has people helping her, and I go, “So can you.” She has the resources, but you don't have as much to carry as her. At one time, she was where you are.
I think it's just really important for the greats. You can't scale, and I love that you said, where you're running around. I forgot to bring a team with me. I thought that I'm always going to, because followership is my thing. We are meant to do nothing on our own in life. Nothing. If you don't have people coming with you, you need to stop, back up, and figure out who's going with you.
I think that's one of the most important leadership lessons is it isn’t about you. It's about what you and a team of people can do. Even if you're a solopreneur, you still need help.
Leadership is not about you. It is about what you and a team of people can do.
We're all leaders, singular, but leadership is about the collective, the ship of other leaders, not just one, because that's not a ship. That's just you doing. I was like, in my mid-50s. I'm like, “I'm a leader, but I'm not really doing leadership.” I was like, “Oh my goodness.” I say that, but it's kind of a thing when you really embrace it, then you're like, because we have our stuff squared away. We went in the military, we run a tight ship, high and tight haircuts and all that stuff. Our boots are shiny, we have our creases and stuff like that. That's being a leader, self-discipline. But leadership is where you are growing other people like you and bringing whatever somebody brought out new in other people. That gets rid of the loneliness and the weariness, Bob, since you brought it up.
Getting the best out of people, that's really fueling. When you, as a leader, see somebody thriving because you coached and mentored them to think about the world differently, to think about their role in it differently. You believed in them and got them to believe in themselves. When you watch that person succeed, if that doesn't warm you, I have to tell you there's something wrong with you. Because that is one of the most fulfilling things in the world, to watch somebody else that you helped go on to succeed.
Even in organizations, even if you're not a coach, any leader in an organization is unofficially a coach. Every employee, you're not there to help make sure that they get the job done. You are there to develop them into the next best version of themselves. Everybody says, people are our greatest asset. I'm like, but I know people are saying that, but it means you have to develop them, and everything else takes care of itself. If all you do is focus on the task, we're just really training monkeys. We've all been there in places like that, where we felt like we were a cog in a wheel. Again, as I say these things to you and to our listeners, I say them most of all for me, because I know that's the space I was in for so many decades before I finally realized, I'm finally starting to understand really what leadership entails.
It's truly about connection. I know you talk a lot about that, particularly the connection between a leader and a follower. If you're just a taskmaster, if you're just assigning tasks and directing things, there's a time and place for that. Don't get me wrong. We're in the middle of an emergency, I want the fire chief being very directive.
No hugging. No asking.
Happen to be a consultation over here, you get the hose and you go that way. Most of the time, to get to that moment where you can direct, you have to have connected, have to have trained, you have to have invested in the abilities and the confidence that those troops have, or it doesn't matter what those troops are doing. If you are just going to give them tasks to do and not develop them, they're going to probably just do exactly what you told them and no more.
You're not going to get discretionary effort. They will have a choice of bringing their personal agency to your organization's benefit, their hopes, their dreams, their abilities, their innovation, their initiative. They can bring that to you if you will let them, if you will inspire them, if you connect with them and give them a reason, a purpose to bring their best for you and your organization. That, to me, is really the essence of the leadership piece of it.
Leadership: The essence of leadership is in connecting with people and giving them a purpose to bring their best.
Staying Focused Amidst Abandonment And Distractions
Well said, Bob. The next thing my father talked about was abandonment. We hear a lot of this fear of abandonment, or you love dogs, so do I, abandoning a pet, but that's not what he's talking about. He says abandonment is doing what you need and ought to do rather than what you like and want to do. It's like you were talking about first sergeant or sergeant major, Baker?
Sergeant class. He was my operations sergeant.
He told you what you needed to hear, not what you wanted to hear. Charles always said that abandonment is being very focused and being very singular because he's like, “Tracey, if you did billable hours in a day, you probably would have more hours in the failure column than you would in the success.” We have to be very intentional about it. How do you stay really focused, Bob? Because I'm sure you get a lot of people coming to you for help. You're at this level, you have other people to do this, or other people that it's really not even your burden that you should be going towards. How do you stay focused?
I keep getting reminded of what Warren Buffett said, the difference between the most successful people and the less successful people is the ability to say no. Sometimes no is a complete sentence. For those of us that are givers and carers, that's very difficult. I can tell you how much coaching I gave away my first year, and I still do. I also have an accountability team now that says, “Excuse me, we're sending a bill for that.” But staying focused and not abandoning the core is a constant reminder. You need to have some mechanism, whether it's a person or a token, it doesn't matter what it is.
There's got to be a reminder so that you say, “For me, I have three key words that I think about that represent the best of who I am and keep me focused on what I need to be to be successful.” I have those words printed on my wall in my office. I have a bracelet that I wear that has those three words on it. I get a random text from my own marketing system that texts me a couple of times a week with those three words to remind me that I have to stay focused. I have to play big, and I have to follow through. That's how I stay focused on who I am, the best of who I am.
In some cases, those are aspirational because I'm not always focused, and I don't always play big, and I don't always follow through. If I remind myself often enough, then I will. Part of that is, “Let's remind ourselves what the core mission of this business is. Let's remind ourselves what the core mission of Bob is.” If you don't remind yourself, you will let it go to the back burner, and eventually it'll slide off and it will be like, “I've got a mission statement somewhere around here. Let me go. It's probably in a folder somewhere.” Remind yourself consistently and constantly.
Leadership: Remind yourself of the core mission of your business. Otherwise, it will go to the back burner and eventually slide off.
I think people think because, it's us, how can we forget it? It's part of us. But you're right. It's like love. It has to be tended to. Freedom. These things, like your aspirations, must constantly be fed. You have to keep the invasives away and the time sucks and the negativity and the doubt. You have to stay fed because otherwise it does. We start to creep. We start to fall out of love. We start to get a little confused. My dad would always say this. He's like, “Tracey, there's the pendulum. Some people will have the best year of their lives and the next year have the worst.” That's life. Sometimes motivation or personal agency is off the charts. Other times we're just wondering whoever would hire us. It's just, is that your three, the stay focused, play big, and follow through? Is that the three things?
Those are my three things. I think everyone has their own three things. That's one of the first sessions that I have with clients is talking about being absolutely clear about what's the best of you. How do we tap into that every single day?
I love that you put a verb and a noun. Kevin McCarthy, he's one of our authors, and he does the The On-Purpose Person: Making Your Life Make Sense. He says that you should be able to distill everything in your life down to like a verb and a subject, like spark would be igniting greatness. As a researcher, discerning truth. You have this verb and this noun. When you put that, and then everything emanates out from that, now you got to stay, because I can pretty much put anything into play big and follow through, but like you said, that's why I love the hedgehog principle, Jim Collins. It also has to drive your economic engine, otherwise, it's a hobby.
We want to do well. We can share our wealth, the righteous use of wealth and all that stuff. I digress, but I love that you really distill that down. I think that's very helpful for the audience. I often go back to that. People were like, “How do you know what books to publish and what happens in your podcast?” I'm like, they fall under this umbrella, if they help somebody else live a tremendous life and are in core with our value congruence and a synergy, I throw a pretty wide net. But then I found it, then the gate is narrow because you have to, like Jesus in the gospel, “Everybody come, but here's the parameters of what's going to happen” kind of thing.
That's excellent. You'll appreciate this. I struggle with focus like most busy people do. I'm an aspiring writer. I published one book, but I've got so many others in draft that we've talked about. I bought myself a one-hour sand timer. It's an old-school, old-tech thing. As I start to write, I turn that over. Every time I go to check my phone or check an email or two, I turn off all alarms and everything, but still my brain wants to go someplace, and I look over at that sand, and it says “Stay focused.”
That's brilliant.
A low-tech solution.
I think, I'm near Amish country, I think of little horses that have their blinders on just go. Stay on point. My husband's really good about that. He's like, “Tracey, you're just,” and I go, “I know. That's how God made me. That's why he put me in your life, so you can help me stay focused.” He's really good at it, but I love that timer idea. It's one hour. Is that your writing time?
Writing time. In an hour, that means I'll probably get 45 good, solid minutes of writing once my brain quiets down.
That is a learned skill as well.
It is.
People think, I just can't quiet myself. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. It just takes practice. We can retrain our brains, just like we can train our muscles and our financial habits. It's a habit, just like everything else.
I think mindfulness training too, starting off like, can you do it for two minutes? Can you do it for twenty minutes? A lot of people, particularly those who have been in a very macho environment in the military, a lot of leaders are like, “I don't know about all of this mindfulness stuff and meditation.” It's actually a very powerful tool. Fortunately, within the special operations community, that has become very common, breathing techniques and mindfulness techniques, because they operate at such a high level. I figured if it's good enough for the special operator, it probably should work for the rest of us as mortal leaders here.
We have a book called Inner Rival: Silencing the Negativity Within. Jeff Butorac is one of our authors, too. He's a collegiate coach, tennis coach, and basketball coach. He references the great sports figures that do a lot of the breathing, the visualization, the mindfulness, and the meditation, because I too was like, “This just isn't my thing.” It's too, and then I'm like, I understand how powerful it is. I was just running through a speech or running through a conversation. I wasn't even being present. I really like that mindfulness can help with the abandonment if you really understand what it is. I'm not surprised special ops would use it too.
When you deploy, they bring in a lot of extra people who were augmenting your unit. I was at a division that was a very large organization, maybe 10,000 people. On the staff was a civil affairs reserve officer who happened to be, in her civilian life, a yoga instructor. In our headquarters, there was a tiny little gym. She said, “I've got nothing to do a couple times a week in the evenings.” Our entire plans shop, who did all the battle plans, would go and do yoga. Usually, some of the senior officers, including some of the generals, would come down and do yoga with us. It was incredibly cathartic. It was really helpful to help us think better.
That's the whole power of thought.
What do people do in your strategy plans, thinking better, don't you?
How To Cast And Execute A Clear Vision
Yes. We did loneliness, weariness, abandonment. The last thing he talked about was vision. I, like you, grew up watching all these phenomenal people and thinking, I think their brains have an extra piece or something, like the vision chip. I remember telling my dad, “I just don't think I have it.” He goes, “Tracey, you have it.” He goes, “Vision is just simply seeing what needs to be done,” which I always could do that. He goes, “And then doing it.”
It's because otherwise, it's like the law of attraction, you attract, but there's an action aspect of it. I'm like, “Okay.” There is this focus on the future, but if you don't tie it to something to execute, it didn’t happen. Tell me how you cast the vision. You're in the coaching space now. Tell me about how you use that with the transition from the military, because we have a lot of our listeners that are transitioning, they're once, twice, thrice retired in their space where they're free to serve. Any words of wisdom on how to vision cast for the next chapter of their lives?
I think there's a lot of schools of thought about what a vision really is, and like your dad's definition of it, obviously, that figure out what to do, and then go do it. I heard General Schoomaker say, what I was like, “If you have a vision without resources and without action, it's really just a hallucination.”
I never heard it called that, but I heard like pipe dream or imagination, but hallucination, that fits really well.
When you have this idea about what a future state ought to look like, and that's how I like to teach leaders how to think about creating a better future for your organization, or for yourself, or for society, is that you have your existing state, and you should be able to describe some of the characteristics of the existing state. You have a future state and describe those characteristics in the future in a way that's more advantageous to your organization. What are the characteristics that need to change? What are the gaps in each of those characteristics?
Let's start going from that objective state and thinking backwards to now, what must be true right before you get that objective state? That's one of your intermediate goals. What happened ten minutes before that, or an hour before that, or a year before that, that must have happened? That's a new intermediate goal. You can step that all the way back from the objective state to the current state, from standing on the mountain on the back end and looking back at the trail that took you here, and saying, what did you overcome to get here?
Helping Others Navigate The Next Chapter
Excellent. Speaking of that, so we covered loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Talk to us a little bit about your coaching clients. Share with our listeners your website, how you came up with the name, and what you're doing now.
I'm at 5EaglesLeadership.com. Five Eagles started, the eagle is the symbol for Colonel. There was a bunch of us colonels sitting around, drinking bourbon and talking about leadership. We were just retired, and we were in the private sector. We were just discussing what are the leadership things that we learned over a career in the military that are translatable to the private sector. It turns out most of it, almost all of it, translates. You lead because people are people, you lead the same way. You do have to clean up your language a little bit when you go to the private sector. It turns out the military functions primarily on sarcasm.
Sometimes that doesn't translate to the civilian sector, but that's what the conversation said. Wouldn't it be great to put together a workshop where we had five eagles in a corporate setting? We'll do a corporate offsite, and we'll talk to them about five different leadership principles. We've done that a couple of times. What it came down to was people wanted to follow up, and like, we could actually do coaching and not just do a presentation. We can actually help organizations over time instead of episodically. It's great to go to conferences.
It's great to go to a great speech and listen to something that's inspiring, but if you don't have follow-through, you're going to go back to the next one and go, I heard a lot of good stuff, but none of it stuck. With coaching, I'm going to come back next week, and we're going to talk about it again. I'm going to come back the week after that. I'm going to ask how we're doing on it. I'm going to be nagging at you until we get it done. We formed a coaching circle that was five eagles and different eagles from different services that are doing lots of different things, executive coaching, business coaching, life coaching, lots of opportunities for people to learn and grow and be their best selves and to learn from somebody who's been there and led at probably the most intense level.
We've got some very interesting folks, special operations folks, some engineers, maybe a pilot. Lots of interesting people that have walked a lot of different paths but come to some of the same conclusions, namely that the first and most important thing as a leader is to be very clear about who you are and what your values are. Everything after that is going to be gravy.
Leadership: The first and most important thing as a leader is to be very clear about who you are and what your values are.
You got that right. I know you said you go into organizations. Do you do individual personal coaching too?
I do. In fact, I've started shying away from doing the business and group coaching and only do one-on-one coaching now.
Good.
I still have my existing clients, and I won't leave them. If they happen to be listening to this, don't worry about it. I'll be there. I have found that the personal connection with a single leader, one-on-one, is most effective for me, for my style. There are some that want leadership coaching for their entire team. We have team members that specialize in exactly that. They're better at doing that than I am. I'm happy to have them serve our clients in that way.
I love that you're building this team, and it is, everybody has their zone of genius, what they're good at, and like you said, the leader has to know themselves. But just like you just said, now you started in that space, but now you've got the clarity. This is where you're free to best and your highest calling. That's what vision is too. Sometimes, if you don't know, and my dad would always tell that to me, he's like, Tracey, if you're not sure, just start doing stuff. You'll either catch the passion, or somebody will look at you and go, you're really good at that, or you'll go to bed and be like, the time flew, or else you'll go, I'm good at this, but there are other people that are way better at this than me.
I love that you've got that clarity and that you're doing this. We'll have out there for our listeners how they can get in touch with you. Also, Bob, you talked a little bit about growing your organization for additional coaches. What if there's some people transitioning out of the military and looking to get in this space? Because I know a lot of people want to take what they have learned. That's the whole Tremendous Leadership family is all about that and pouring that into others. Can they reach out to you as well?
Absolutely. One of our goals is to be a talent pipeline for those people who served in uniform and probably enjoyed, if they're like me and my coaches, the best part of serving was coaching, teaching, and mentoring leaders and helping people be their best. If you want to still do that and you want to do it part-time, you want to do it full-time, there is a place for you. We would love to connect with you, find out if this is something that you really want to pursue, and then we can put you on a path to being able to do it.
Paying The Price Of Leadership And Leading With Integrity
That's exciting. I'll put all the details in there for our listeners. Just check it out. Bob, anything else that you would like to share regarding the leadership space and paying the price of leadership before we wrap this up that we haven't already touched on?
I think there's a component of leadership that everybody in goes through. One of our programs has a customized program because there are leadership skills that you need to work on. There are some that you've already got in space. I don't want to waste your time. Something that every leader has to spend time with is the self-awareness, truly who you are. Also, the external portion of that is how you're perceived by others.
As a leader, if you don't hear people, "I don't care what people think," then you're probably not connecting with them in a way that's going to make you an effective leader. Understanding yourself and how you're perceived by others is probably one of the most critical components of becoming a great leader. That's something that we spend a lot of time on. If you struggle with knowing exactly who you are, being really crystal clear about it, we should have a conversation about that because we've got ways to help you with that.
Leadership: Every leader must spend time with self-awareness. Understanding who you are and how others see you is critical to becoming a great leader.
That's so true. For talented people, and even coming out of the military, then you're like, who am I now? If I'm not Major or Colonel Dixon or Major Jones or whatever, what am I now? Am I Charlie's daughter or am I Tracey in leadership? I think we all go through this, and it's not an imposter syndrome by anything, or I'm not trying to be something that I'm not, but it's getting clarity on who your most authentic leadership style, what your gifting is, what's most natural to you. I like the strength finders, but there also is, you as a leader will be drawn to your most effective leadership style. There's a whole, all kinds of research on, and what kind of follower do you look for?
You're looking for your ideal follower, and then your followers are looking to imprint on their ideal leader. It's like Match.com kind of thing. Like, are you my leader? I don't know. Are you my follower? When you really get into that, but you have to know who you are, it takes a lot of work and a lot of soul searching, but like you said, when that is done, you're fearless, you're tenacious, you sleep well at night, and people are crystal clear about, do they want to march into battle with you? I tell people, I'm not going to be everybody's cup of tea, but if this resonates with you, let's go on a tremendous journey together. I love that you're really sharing that because that's when leadership hits a whole new level.
You're spot on. I would say to those people in your audience that are transitioning out of the military or recently transitioned, you're probably going to go through that identity crisis. Here's a couple of tips. One, don't do it alone. Find your battle buddy, find your support structure. There are people out there who are willing to, and if you can't find anybody in your neighborhood, call me, because people go through a dark time when their identity is questioned.
When they don't have good answers for it, find me at 5EaglesLeadership.com. I'm happy to talk to you about that. There's going to be some soul searching, and sometimes it's not going to be let's just go off for a weekend retreat and I'm going to be okay about my vision of my identity. It may take some time, and that's okay. Don't let that be turned into a dark episode in your life.
I think people coming out of the military, they can plug into any enterprise, any job anywhere. You know that. I think my advice to myself 25 years ago would have been, take the time to know you, and you can work anywhere and do anything. That's what we do. We live in any culture, in any climate, do any orders, and come back victorious or end up in heaven. It's good to know, now that I have the opportunity to write my own orders for life, what is it? Where do I fit best? What are my best skills? What kind of a culture? What kind of a leader do I resonate with? You said it, Bob.
There are some people, everybody's like, you must have all these great leaders in the military. I'm like, yeah, there's a lot good and there's a lot, just people are people. I love the fact that you really talked about that, that you're going to see all kinds of things, but that taught you the kind of leader that you don't want to work for. That's not just in the military. They're in the civilian world too. Know yourself and don't repeat that mistake again.
I think recognizing when you are in an environment that you can't change, and you've got some choices about that. You've got to change it. You can learn to live with it, or you can leave.
Well said. That's the very mature thing, and that's what I tell people. The more you know yourself, you may look at things and go, or you pivot because you've outgrown this season, or like you said, you've got this clarity on the coaching now that you don't want to do as much this way, or it started, but you had to go through that because you wouldn't have known that you're one-on-one individual leadership. You wouldn't have known that until you did the other stuff. Nothing's ever wasted in our lives.
It's from your dad's advice, isn't it? Just do something. You'll find that there's things that bring you joy, and usually those that you're good at. I do always caution against the, just follow your passion advice. Most people are passionate about things that are hobbies, but things that you're good at, you will find that bring you joy.
Things that you are good at will bring you joy.
That's beautiful. Bob, thank you so much. It's been a wonderful time. Thanks for going down memory lane, sharing some war stories, and you brought back some good times. I know our listeners will really be encouraged by you. Again, we'll put the stuff out there, but Bob, thank you so much.
Truly my pleasure. Thank you for letting me come just chat with you. I've always enjoyed every conversation we've had, and I look forward to many more.
I know we're going to have many more. To our listeners out there, I want to thank you for paying the price of leadership. Remember, you're going to be the same person five years from now that you are today, except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read. You just met tremendous Bob. You heard us talk about a lot of tremendous books. You're well on your way to that transformation. If you like what you heard, please give us the honor of a subscribe, hit the like, share it with somebody else that might be interested in learning what it costs to pay the price of leadership. I want to thank you all for being a part of our tremendous tribe. Have a tremendous rest of the day. Bye-bye.
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About Bob Dixon
Bob is a leadership coach, an entrepreneur, an author, a combat veteran, a father, a husband, a walker of dogs, and a drinker of Scotch. As a retired Army Colone,l Bob strives to help leaders and organizations be their best through coaching and mentoring. His main goal in life is to be a helpful and grateful human.