Resonance Episode: Virtue as a Competitive Advantage

In this episode of Resonance, Randy and Mike delve into the concept of virtue, exploring its significance in both business and music. They discuss the cardinal virtues, the importance of character in leadership, and how perception shapes our understanding of virtue. The conversation also touches on the development of courage and wisdom, the role of education in nurturing moral character, and the distinction between genuine virtue and virtue signaling. In this conversation, the speakers delve into the nature of virtue, particularly in leadership, discussing the importance of humility and magnanimity. They share personal stories and real-life examples that illustrate how virtues can be assessed and how they impact relationships and organizational culture. The discussion emphasizes the need for leaders to develop respect and trust, and how virtuous actions can lead to creative solutions in times of crisis. They also highlight tools for assessing character strengths, reinforcing the idea that understanding and maximizing these strengths can enhance leadership effectiveness.

 Takeaways

Virtue is the exercise of goodness, contrasting with vice.

The cardinal virtues are courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance.

Character is essential for exercising virtue effectively.

Perception can often be mistaken for reality in leadership.

Hiring decisions can be influenced by a candidate's character.

Courage and wisdom are developed through experience and practice.

A moral compass must be nurtured and continuously developed.

Education plays a crucial role in character development.

Virtue signaling can undermine genuine expressions of virtue.

Pruning negative traits is necessary for personal growth. Virtue should not be claimed for recognition; it's intrinsic to one's role.

Humility is about doing good without seeking attention.

True leadership involves recognizing and fostering greatness in others.

Character can be assessed through actions, such as behavior in sports.

Commitment to virtues requires consistent effort and dedication.

Respect and trust are built over time through virtuous actions.

Real-life examples show how virtuous leadership can transform organizations.

Creative problem-solving can emerge from a commitment to virtue.

Virtue provides a competitive advantage in leadership.

Tools like the VIA assessment can help identify and maximize character strengths.

Chapters

00:00 Exploring Virtue in Business and Music

03:08 The Cardinal Virtues and Their Importance

05:58 Character and Perception in Leadership

08:59 The Impact of Virtue on Hiring Decisions

12:07 Developing Courage and Wisdom

15:02 Nurturing the Moral Compass

18:02 The Role of Education in Character Development

21:02 Virtue Signaling vs. Genuine Virtue

23:52 The Nature of Virtue and Recognition

25:05 Leadership Virtues: Humility and Magnanimity

26:28 Assessing Character Through Golf

28:28 The Journey to Law School: A Personal Story

31:28 The Commitment to Virtue in Leadership

34:30 The Importance of Developing Respect and Trust

36:18 Real-Life Examples of Virtuous Leadership

39:20 Creative Solutions in Crisis Management

41:45 The Competitive Advantage of Virtue

42:44 Tools for Assessing Character Strengths

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This is Resonance, the podcast for leaders that unpacks the power of song, silence, and strategy.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

We believe the great leadership begins with deep listening, not just to others, but to the still small voice within.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

It's not just about being a successful leader, it's about being soulfully aligned as well.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

In a world moving fast, resonance invites you to pause and reconnect with purpose, people, and possibilities.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

We'll dive into some cool stories, celebrate with friends, and dig deep into the music too. Cause song has a way of saying what words cannot alone.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

So whether you're leading a business, a team, or just trying to lead your own life with more meaning, this is Resonance. Resonance, Resonance.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Hey, thank you for joining us for another wonderful episode of Resonance, the podcast that focuses on the heart, the soul, the spirit, the magic that happens when business leaders take a second and figure out who they really are and what they're really trying to do, all for the betterment of the world. That's what we're talking about. I got Mike the Monk guy Ferrell. He's going to be all over this topic because it's like right up his alley. We're going to be talking about virtue and Steve Azar, musician, amazing human being, a charitable dude at every level, and uh just a cool guy all around. Lots to talk about there because virtue turns out to be an essence in music, and it turns out to be something that may or may not be present in the business of music. So we'll be talking about that. First of all, what is oh, and my name's Randy Harrington. And so what we're gonna be talking about is virtue. Where does that come from? It actually goes back, of course, all of this stuff goes back to the ancient Greek. It actually was associated with good manly things when it first happened. That was it was like that's just virtue was something that a that a good man did. But that was because back in the day that was Greek culture, right? Only men did everything. So it was like uh they were all the only ones on juries and blah, blah, blah. So there you go. But what we find it comes to mean is attitude. It means excellence, it means readiness to fit, to join, to be suited, to have virtue is to be a part of. So I'm gonna back off of all of that. I'm gonna throw order, Mike, because you're the legit scholar in this area. Speak to me of virtue and how I could be a better businessman.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

All right. Well, yeah, uh virtue does go all the way back to the ancient Greeks, probably attributed to Plato and to a certain extent Aristotle. But really, that virtue is that that exercise of goodness. I like that. It really is, if you think of virtue, goodness on one side, vice on the other side is that exercise of the bad stuff, you know. And so the Greeks talked about that conflict between virtue and vice and and that kind of thing. But virtue, one of the things that that's important to understand, there are a whole bunch of different virtues, but there are four virtues that are called the cardinal virtues. Okay. Not because of the color or the football team they play for or anything like that, but the cardinal virtues mean in in in the Greek tradition, the hinge virtues. So, in other words, they can't work without each other. There are four of them: there's courage, there's justice, there's wisdom, and there's temperance. Those are the four cardinal virtues, and they all work together. And then there's two more that I love to talk about, which I call the leadership virtues, really coined by Alexander Havard, who wrote a book called The Virtuous Leader. He's a uh social scientist and academic from originally from Moscow. And Havard talks about the two leadership virtues of humility and magnanimity. And we've certainly had those two on the show before. But I think the important aspect of virtue is, and especially the cardinal virtues, these are things that we acquire. They're things that we have to practice, they're things that we have to do in order to do them well. From the Catholic perspective, Steve, of course, will know this as well. We've got the theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, or faith, hope, and charity. Those, those cardinal or those theological virtues are instilled in us by God. We've got, we've all we've all got them. We just we don't have to, I mean, certainly we want to exercise them, but the cardinal virtues are a different story. Those virtues we have to actually put to work. They're they're habits of good. And so we work at those. And the way that we work at virtue is through character. Character is kind of putting the wheels on the bike and taking it for a spin. And so it's those character traits driven by virtue. So Dr. Martin Seligman, who is the you know, the godfather of positive psychology, did extensive work on character and virtue and created a classification. He had six virtues and then he had 24 character strengths, and each of the and and those character strengths would match up with one or another virtue. And so understanding those character strengths and how we use them. And I think what's important to understand is that just because, you know, you've got, for instance, my top character strength is humor. And uh, but I also know that I can use humor and have it not in balance, you know. I can either make fun of everything, right, uh, or I can take everything too serious, and so it's too little or too much. So exercising that character is really important. And so how we utilize that, how we do it in our daily lives, in our work, in our leadership journey, uh, being able to exercise those that character and those virtues, it's extremely important uh because that's how people perceive us. They look at us from a perception standpoint. And I love to use the exercise, and and I'm gonna spring this one on Steve. I love to use the exercise in my workshop called What Happens When the Leader Kicks a Dog. Okay. And so, Steve, you're you're in the process of hiring somebody to help you run your business, and you've uh you've had the third interview. The interviews have gone great. You think this person is really good, and so you decide you're pretty sure you're gonna hire them, but you're gonna send them home. It's about lunchtime, you're gonna send them home, and you're gonna say, you know what, I'm gonna call you back this afternoon. Uh but we feel pretty positive about the direction that we're going. They take off and leave the building. You decide to go get some lunch, and so you walk out of the building and you're walking down the street, and you see this person that you just had the interview with about a block down, and all of a sudden he just reaches out and kicks this dog that's standing there. What do you do? I've been that dog. Let me start there.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Let me start there. Back in my day when I was that dog, my my uh initial feeling as the dog was to bite back. Yeah. But let's back up for a second. Yeah, they got no shot at coming to work for me. If you're gonna treat a dog or anybody like that, uh, you know, then um obviously there's something going on inside internally uh that that would translate, I would imagine, down the road, maybe sooner than later. And uh that is a big no-no, that's out. Not because I'm a big dog advoc advocac advocac, you know, advocate. I love dogs. I love dogs. Yeah, I don't have one right now. I've had them most of my life, 80% of my life I've had dogs, but we're gone so much now we feel like it'd be the wrong thing to do to keep putting it putting a dog up in in a kennel all the time right now. So we're we're thinking on that end. But no, no, no, no. Where do you go? Mike, the monk guy barrel. Well, he can set that's it, uh seven minutes. He can save all that. He can paste them together.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

That was that stuff was great. His his material there was absolutely fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

It's okay. Let's just continue. Yeah, let's just keep going. I'm just gonna edit that out. I don't know what's going on with this thing. It keeps wanting to kick me out. So all right, go ahead, Steve.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

So continuing on here, I I just feel like um that's that's a bad sign right there. There's a lot more going on internally in that person that meets the eye, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:20

And it's a bottom line, right? It's a it's a bottom line. It's like you see that, and that's like yeah, yeah. Well it's like when people are starting to go in date, you know, and this somebody says, Well, do you mind if I have a cigarette? Yeah, you know, that's all that's over. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Well, but it's interesting because you can you can flip the coin and you can say, Okay, this person just reached out and kicked that dog, but what if you were to find out later that that person had actually been attacked by a dog at some point and was terrified of dogs and was just trying to defend themselves? What does that change?

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Well, if that's what it looked like, there's a difference. You just said, just kick the dog. I have to it if I saw enough of the whole scenario, I get yes. So if you saw it and it just looked like it was flat out just, you know, bad intention, then whatever. But yeah, I guess do you take a second to ask the person why did you kick the dog? Then if you I think it depends on how much you saw. What part of the movie did you tune into? Like, you know what I mean? But so I guess, but I have a pretty good feeling they're out in my mind.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah. Second of all, yeah, and I would and I would agree. I think the I think the thing about it is that's so important is that we have to understand that the exercise of good character and virtue, there's a perception there. And and sure, in many cases, perception is reality. And so if we're doing things that contradict good character and and virtue, and yet we claim that we've got, and and certainly we can talk about all kinds of different different people in all kinds of different roles, both today and in in places where we've all been, where they talk about great character, but in reality, there isn't great character. I think one of the classic examples is Ken Layan Enron. Uh, you know, he was this he was this guy that gave away all kinds of stuff. He was very charitable, all those kinds of things, was known as a great corporate leader, but in the in it, but basically was was really, you know, not very not very virtuous at all, you know, or Bernie Madoff, you know. I mean, Madoff has, you know, he was he was the pillar of the community and all that kind of stuff, and he's ripping everybody off. So I, you know, I think that character is so important from a consistency, consistency standpoint, you really have to make sure that you're consistent in your exercise of virtue and character because perception can be reality.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Look, they're just cons. I mean, they're they and they they and they they just want to win at all costs, and they're and they're doing things that are absolutely so your compass, your virtual, your virtue, virtual, your virtual, what do you call it? Virtue compass. So imagine, right? You want that sucker point in north, not south. Yeah. So so the bottom line is the guy that I used to make records for uh for a little while, he loved to kick the dog. He lived to kick, he lived right. Like and I wasn't just the only dog, there were a bunch of us, but it's well documented. Bad guy, period. Just that you can go, you can talk about all you want, just not a good guy. And man, the minute I got free of that, man, I I could breathe again. Because I wanted somebody to be that like my dad or my father-in-law or some mentors of mine, great coaches I've had in my life. That's who I wanted in that spot because I know we would have done so many more greater things, and so many other artists would have done so many more greater things because he lived for kicking the dog. Lived for it. Woke up. Who what dog am I gonna kick today? It was the craziest thing you've ever seen. It was nuts, made no sense. He and he was unhappy, unhappy person. So, I mean, I there you go, you know. I hey guys, I pray for the guy every day that I can forgive him, and I have. It's not about that anymore. I just pray for him, hope he's gonna be okay because because I've been way okay. It's all good. Yeah, but uh but yeah, he lacked virtue.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

I think anything to do with this is I I like the idea very much that this stuff, the distinction between the the virtue characteristics that are inherent in us, yep, not given, as you described, yes, that was interesting, versus the ones that we have to go out get and develop and exercise. And so I like this now. What were the the the the four that have that hang together?

SPEAKER_01 12:49

The cardinal virtues are wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Right. So I want to add ing to all of those. In other words, couraging. I need to be couraging all the time. In other words, it's something I should be engaged in. Yes, courage isn't this thing that just sort of sits. Yep. Courage is something that is expressed, that shows up, that is developed. And I like the idea that it's an exercise. So courage is something I, you know, I've been watching uh my two-year-old granddaughter get comfortable at a pool. Right. And so she didn't like the idea at all. Right, you know, first time. And now, two, three weeks later, she's in the water and she's splashing around. But it was, it was, she had to develop courage, you know, incrementally, and and now she's, you know, off to the races. But I really want to underline this idea for for our listeners and for me that this isn't stuff that you either have or you don't. It is stuff that you develop. The other thing I would say is I like to steal this stuff. In other words, when I see somebody who's demonstrating strong courage in a situation, it absolutely empowers me or emboldens me to like, well, I ought to be the one to be able to do that too. Right. I'm in the same room with these people, and it took that woman to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes. Why didn't I say that?

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Yeah, and and take the virtues, you know, those cardinal virtues, this idea of hinging off another one. So going to your your two-year-old granddaughter, Randy, she has courage now, she's in the water, but she wouldn't be there if she didn't also develop wisdom to realize that over the over these few weeks or whatever it's been, she realized, okay, this isn't so bad. This isn't so bad. This isn't now I've got courage to do it. Well, she's developed wisdom and courage, they hinge off of each other.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

And trust and faith and believe and believing in herself. Yeah. All of these things that you talk about, to me, that's the most important thing I've heard so far. And I would argue to say we're gonna say anything more important than the fact that there you are, you got your moral compass, and and that moral compass has to be continuously farmed. You have to continuously plant every year seed. You've got to nurture it, water it. You need sunshine, you need rain, and you've got to harvest it, and you gotta go do good things with it once it's been, once you got your crop. And this is constantly over and over in your life because there's plenty of temptations out there. And we're look, we're talking about the word virtue right now. And I think it's all about vacation.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yeah, I think the other piece of that, Steve, the other piece of that, Steve, is you gotta you gotta prune it as well. You know, I just did a I just did a workshop for some clients here about a week ago. You know, they wanted to talk about hunting and farming, and I said, well, let's talk about pruning. You know, yeah, we all you know, we all love wine. You know, you know that that wine gets better when they prune the vines. You know, you get more fruit, you get better fruit. And so this idea of pruning the stuff that you don't need, pruning the stuff that is holding you back is really important. And that's how you also build virtue and character. It becomes more fruitful when you cut out some of the things that you don't need.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

You get pretty leggy as a person, I guess, and then you don't bear fruit fruit or good flowers, or you don't, you know, all that right. Pruning is very important, and that's just what do you call that? Maybe tweaking a little bit as you go and making sure that you are on the right track.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

How many times in the studio did a producer take something out to make it better?

SPEAKER_02 16:22

There were a lot of times in in the studio that they ate ice cream.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

I saw them do, but you know what? Sometimes, you know, sometimes when you see all those knobs and you have all the capability and you have all the digital whatever, and you could do all the things, and sometimes I hear stuff that is so overproduced, and it's like, God, just clean that stuff out. I just want to hear that guitar and I want to hear that voice. And you're always one of the things I love about your music, Azar, is that you walked that line really, really well.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Well, well, the first album.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

There's this there's a lustusness to yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Well, I had to survive, I had to survive the first album in the mid-90s, which was awful. And we didn't walk that line. The producer was shoting it and coding it and hiding it and coding. It was awful. It was awful. And uh, and it's uh it was the one thing I always told my you know, kids when they're things, I've told you guys, when things aren't going good in their lives, I play them a little bit of that record and they go, My life's great. That record's awful. But I but I had to survive that. I had to survive that and I had to work constantly work to get to the other side. And I I would like to think that my moral compass and my my virtues and stuff were aligned at that point in my life where people noticed and they wanted to give me another shot.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

You know, I'm I'm reflecting now, I've been reflecting a lot on why the world is so different, particularly when I talk to young people, it just feels my heart hurts for them a lot in terms of what they're having to go through with social media and just just everything, the sense of hopelessness that they're experiencing. And I'm thinking a lot about back boy back in my day, I remember I was never a good scout. We moved all the time, and I was just it just was never a thing. But I remember really, even by the time I was in high school, if if I was talking to a another guy and he was in the scouts or or or he said, you know, I'm on my way to being an Eagle Scout. Yeah. I would hang out with that. Yeah. Wow, okay. That is some stuff. Yeah, you know, you you you don't just wander into that. That means that you have done years of work on your character.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yeah, you know, and you're able to demonstrate capability as well as compassion and and sort of civility. So if I found a guy, or even to even as a person hiring people, and they would drop on their resume, oh, it was an eagle scallop. You know, I'm gonna ask them 10 questions about that, make sure they didn't kick the dog. Right, right. That really says something to me. And so I'm wondering, where do young people these days, how do they how are they able to learn? Where do they where do they learn uh the the hinge characteristics and right? Yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

I mean, church. I think it's I think it's a challenge. I mean, obviously the religion in our country of all forms and fashions have has decreased. Although I will say that we've seen an uptick here in the last couple of years, which is which is very encouraging. But certainly that that virtue, that character, that hope, that moral compass, you learn it at home, you learn it in church, in you know, whatever religion it is that you do. I think the other the other piece of it is is Yeah, I mean, in higher education, I I don't know how many universities across the country have cut out their humanities programs. You know, I mean Yeah. We don't need that stuff. There's a school that's not too far from here that completely cut out philosophy and theology and social sciences and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Well, that's the because they had already they had already cut out the art, so that was the next victim. That's right. And it's it's remarkable. It's remarkable how important right on it, is art. You're you're you're not nurturing the most important thing that everyone needs. Everyone needs this to reach good moral compass and to reach, I mean, these things that are, and how could these be the things that you'd eliminate from teaching? It makes no sense. Makes no sense. You cannot develop as a human being without it unless you've got a great home life and you've got a great teacher, a coach, or somebody else that's doing something and helping you get, you know, helping you overcome the lack of that in school. I think we should just quit now. Y'all got me one.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

What we are learning. And I'm gonna make it worse because I think what we are doing a lot is we do a lot of virtue signaling, right? So we don't have the, or, or maybe I have the virtue, but I want you all to know that I have the virtue. Right. So I'm going to I'm going to reveal something about myself that says, you know, well, yes, and so I saw this man kick a dog, and so I went and I picked up that dog, and I took that dog to the vet, and I made sure that dog was okay. Because I that's how much I care about dogs. I'm a dog, dog, dog person. It's like whatever. Okay, yeah, that's but do you have to whenever somebody tells me that stuff, it loses points. You know, it's like if if if if uh and I do it too, you know, I'm the is uh I get upset because sometimes I'll go and really clean out the garage or I'll do something really big, and my wife will come in and she'll just walk right past it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

And you're going with wait, what we got? Late stage.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Come on now. And so I'll I'll work it into the conversation later. I'll be like, Well, I had a busy day after my uh calls. I went out and I went out there and took care of that stuff in the garage, and then she'll go, Oh, I didn't notice. I know, I just wanted to bring that up.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Hey Randy, but you know, somebody had to do it, right? That has anything to do with moral compass and virtues, and I'm out because I gotta tell you something. Yeah, when I go out and clean me too, the pool because the sniping streets, I gotta Two big huge cypress trees that uh that apparently we can't cut down that spit all in the pool all year long, whatever it is, and I'll go and I'll go look at the pool and she won't look. Or I'll clean I'm the one that cleans the car. You know what she says? That's your job. And I said, Oh, it's my job.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Okay, yeah, you can't be claiming any virtue for that.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

No, no, I get no point. But I gotta tell you something. I just I keep saying it. I keep saying I'm gonna keep saying it forever because any anyway, but yeah, that's a very good point because we do have a tendency to want to be patted on the shoulder for something that you did good. Now, these right, these things are things to mess with our brides, and we mess, we're messing around, and and we can do that because we're together a lot and we gotta have conversation, and that's just gonna be entertainment. But yeah, but the truth is, I do love that point. At what point does the good deed not become a good deed because you wanted to George Costanza? Well, I bought the I bought the big salad. Yeah, that's it. There it is, right there. I didn't get to interview, I actually paid for the big salad, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

And then how impressed are you when you see that person doing the lonely work? And they don't expect the credit for they're not, they don't even know they're being seen doing it. So they're just doing the right thing. Yeah, because it's the right thing to do. And you know, that's that's amazing. And that story on my knees.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

That really leads us into the two leadership virtues humility. Yes, you're right. We've talked about this before. I mean, this this idea of humility, and and unfortunately, in my opinion, there is a lack of it in the world today. And we really need to understand that humility isn't about shirking in the corner and and not wanting any attention or anything like that. It's about doing great things without needing any attention.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

And doing great things for others, not just for yourself. And then, of course, that leads to the idea of magnanimity. And magnanimity is seeing the greatness in others and bringing out the greatness in others. As leaders, if we don't exercise those four hinge virtues, we're and we're not exercising humility, and we're not seeing the greatness in others, but only in ourselves, that's a recipe for disaster. And that's a recipe that makes organizations create mistrust, lack of communication, a lack of cooperation. All of those things happen when the leader begins to go the other way, and then virtue becomes a competitive disadvantage, not advantage.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Well, I hear you guys talk about the assessment of virtue when you play golf with people.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

So you see somebody play golf, and as I understand it, you can tell a lot about a person's virtue or lack thereof just by watching them play golf for a round. This is a true story.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

It's the one sport that definitely uh tells on you. Either way, you're gonna either Yeah, you can't hide. You can't hide from who you are on the golf course. It will show itself in a four and a half hour.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

And I've been in plenty of yeah, and I've been and I've been in plenty of situations where I've met people and been in meetings with people and that kind of stuff, thinking, oh, this is a great person, you know. Uh and then you get them on the golf course, and the first thing they're doing is throwing clubs and cussing and swearing and all that kind of stuff, and it's like, or cheating, you know, that's that's the other one you catch all the time, you know. And it's like that's a bit a bit like the leader kicking the dog, you know. You know, it's those actions where they're doing it in a public setting, and you can see that that is just the opposite of what you thought of that person from a character and virtue standpoint, because they're not exercising that.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Yeah, so I'll tell a quick story about my niece. She's a fireball of a person she finished at UCLA and then she lived in our house for a summer, and she decided she wanted to go to law school. I thought that was a fine idea. But she not only wanted to go to law school, she wanted to go to a particular law school, an expensive law school, which was uh uh University of California, Berkeley Law School. And so she had to take the LSAT, the exam you have to take to get into law school, right? And she grew up in France, so she speaks English as a second language, but she's a fine speaker, but uh it is a little bit of a thing. So she's gotta take the LSAT. Well, not only did she have to take the LSAT to get into law school, but she needed to get she needed to crush the LSAT so that she could get a scholarship. That was the only way she was gonna be able to go. So I said something flippant, like, well, you know, you should try a pass practice exam or maybe take a course on how to take the LSAT or blah blah blah. She says, she looked at me like, thanks for the advice. Uh I know what I'm doing. And so I come down one morning at 7 a.m. She's sitting at the at our main table, and I start to talk to her, and she just holds up her finger like don't even talk to me right now. She was taking a practice LSAT test. She would then score the test, she would then walk away. Then in the afternoon, she would look at all the things she got wrong and she would go back and study those things. Then the next morning at 7 a.m., she sat down and took another test. She did that 30 days in a row. Wow. Wow. And that test takes two, three hours each. So she takes 30 practice tests and then ended up taking the LSAT itself and for real twice. She got a very high score the first time, but she thought she could do better. So she took it again and she did. And she got a better score. She got the scholarship. She got into Berkeley. Then she went and clerked for a federal judge in Detroit. And now she's going to be a public defender for children in Detroit. I mean, this is her dream. This is what she wants to do. She wants to be in there fighting for the little guy. And holy smokes. I watched so I I I always thought she was a tiger. I always thought she was a wonder. But why I have never seen anybody that putting that much juice into this, really, shoulder of the ground. And she never she never told anybody that. Yeah. So so I mean, this is the thing. These these virtues are like a a forge, you know. I mean, you you don't just play at this, you have to lean into it. You have to commit parts of who you are to it. I was thinking I don't have any tattoos. I don't want any tattoos. But when you were talking about the virtues, I was like, that'd be a good tattoo. You know, those four, those four words kind of hanging together, uh you know, showing uh that that would be a reasonable thing to remind yourself of.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Uh you know, every day.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Yeah. I've actually got a great big one like that on my back, Randy. The problem is I can't see it. So yeah, I, you know, and I think the other the other piece that as as I work with leaders, and I know as you work with leaders as well, Randy, I think, I think leaders have a tendency to kind of poo-poo this too much.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

They, you know, they're the same reason they cut it out at the university. Yeah, I mean, they really look at this, you know, all of the other management, you know, I've got an MBA and I've got this and I've got that, and I'm strong at this, and I'm strong at that. They want to tout those characteristics or those talents, really is what they are, but you rarely hear them talk about virtue as something that they can utilize as an advantage. And I think that, you know, there are many, many examples out there of leaders who have used that as a competitive advantage. Leaders that understand that the way that I function, the way that I take care of my people, you know, I I talk a lot about Bob Chapman. Bob is is the CEO of Barry Waymiller. And, you know, his whole story is coming to the idea that the way that the way that we measure how well our people are doing is the divorce rate in our organization. And, you know, when the divorce rate is going down, it means that people are going home and having conversations with their spouses and that they're doing good things. And so really understanding what that looks like in making people matter. But the thing about it is, what most leaders don't understand is that if you're not exercising those virtues and those characteristics or character traits, then you're doing something opposite. And that something opposite is virtually impossible to make those around you better. You know, I've I've had a conversation just recently with a client, and I said, and and they're talking about hiring somebody new for a fairly significant position, and I and and they're talking about interviewing somebody from a different division to do that. And I said, okay, I said, let's ask them three questions. Number one, what worked well in the division that you were doing? What were the challenges and how'd you overcome them? And the third one, and the most important one, is how did you make your people better? Without that question, they just tout off all of the metrics, you know, all of well, this is this happened, and this happened, and this is what we achieved. And, you know, we got great sales numbers and we had great market share, and we had great cost, you know, cost accounting and all those kinds of things. But when you ask them how they made their people better, now they have to really start thinking about okay, how did I make my people better? And that starts with virtue and character. You can't make others better. What's that, Steve?

SPEAKER_02 31:28

Well, uh, you just you said something you keep talking about something that I'm I think I'm hearing. It takes time to to develop and to absolutely and to have the respect, to have the respect of others. Right. It's almost like it has to be a body of work before you get right to right, right.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

I mean, I you you talk about your father-in-law all the time, Steve. That's a that's a classic example of leading with virtue and character, and he did that over years.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Over a lifetime of work. Exactly. Exactly. You know, it's funny you talk about that. Every award that we've been to, he's received everything. Every one you go to in Arkansas, you're going like, man, there is a common denominator that runs through everybody that introduces him. Everybody that says it gets up and speaks about him, and it all goes right back to this we're talking about today. He exudes it and he's earned it, and he's earned it. Because how could everybody be wrong? They're not, they're all right about that. And we all know that too with our family. But to see the world say it, the business folks, the people he's had to probably go up against and make tough decisions, the people he make you know his decisions hadn't always been like, oh, it's cake and ice cream all the time, everything's hunky and dory. He's had to make a lot of difficult decisions to make that company grow and flo and flourish. And so you know that there were some unfavorable decisions made. He could have made some people not be so comfortable with him. But when it comes to I mean, that body of work, at the end of the day, man, he gets to be, he gets to be the one that points the moral compass north. Right. And that's what they all they all shout about.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

They all were uh doing research on uh the book Evolutionaries some some years back. We met a guy who runs a um very high-end machine shop in Portland, and these are people that do stuff like make components for nuclear reactors for the Navy. So these are crazy complex machine shop steel, whatever. Well, they had uh I want to say I'm gonna make the number up. They had a hundred really talented people working for them. Something happened, there was some big contract that they had had, and that thing went away. And for the first time in like 50 years, they were gonna have to lay people off. And so we interview the CEO. We're talking to the CEO, and the CEO says the following He says, I had to make a business decision where we were gonna lose 11 of our team members that are family. You know, these are that's the way we think of these people. They are our brothers and sisters. And to do this was the hardest thing I've ever done. And so I brought my HR person in and I said, We're gonna do this because we have to, but we are gonna do it better than anybody has ever done it ever. We're gonna make this the most transparent, elegant, amazing story where people might say, I wish I'd gotten laid off because of how cool and respectful and powerful it was. And they did so when when the people found out they got laid off, everything was already taken care of for them. Here's all here's the checks, here's the thing, here's the thing and the thing, here's what you can do because we know you're gonna need child care. We've already got that set up, and here's this other thing we're gonna do. They had just they had done all of the the work that they could for these people. And I think when we went back and talked to them, maybe uh two years later, at least 50% of them had come back in, had been able to come back in. But it was just such a beautiful thing that this that this guy was like, I have to do this, but I'm gonna do it in a way where that's the story people are gonna tell about our company. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

And I think that's a great example of how when you lead with virtues like that, you can take something that's crappy and actually turn it into something that's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Yeah, yeah. There's another, yeah, there's another great story similar to that. There's a utility company in Detroit, and back during the financial crisis, their board had decided they were hemorrhaging big time, and their board told their CEO, you've got to lay off a big chunk of folks here, you know. And it just, you know, just really the CEO did not want to do it, didn't want to lay anybody off. And so what he did is he went to the went to his people and said, Okay, the board wants me to lay everybody off. I don't want to do that, so I'm gonna let you guys figure out how we might get past this so that we don't have to lay anybody off. And he started getting groups of of employees together to talk about this, to brainstorm, to come up with ideas. And what they found out, as they looked at the numbers, they found out that what they really needed to do was reduce hours. And by reducing hours, they were able to maintain their budget. And so what they did is they created this sort of interesting approach using vacations, and they allowed employees. So if one person had a week's worth of vacation and somebody needed to get time off, they were swapping out vacation hours so that they didn't have to, and I probably don't have the story exactly correct, but anyhow, what they were doing is they were they were swapping out hours and and time off and all that kind of stuff to get the cumulative number of hours down, and not one single person got laid off. And the I remember the the story about six months later, the CFO came to the CEO with the the you know quarterly results or whatever it was, and he laid the numbers down on the desk, and the CEO looked at it and said, Well, this something's goofy here. This is screwed up. There's no way that that number is correct. And the CFO said it is very much correct. We have completely turned this thing around because people have embraced this idea of being here, of being productive, and of doing it and doing it as efficiently as they possibly can. And our numbers now are looking fantastic. So, again, when leaders exercise virtue, when leaders exercise this idea of doing the right thing for the right reason to make their people better, it allows them a comp a distinct competitive advantage. I would argue in 40 years of working with leaders, I don't know of any that I have ever worked with that didn't exercise great character and virtue and were a failure. It doesn't happen very often, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

It's a very powerful point. And I can I would corroborate that on my side of the fence, too.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

It's and me too, guys. And me too. Great songwriters, great artists, humility, you talk about that being a key to good virtues and stuff. I would say the same thing in my business. The ones have lasted the longest and have built these incredible relationships over time is because they do have higher ground morals. Yeah. Their virtues are all intact. And you notice it when you're in the writing room immediately, you notice it when you're recording, you notice it when you're on the road with them, you notice it when you're on stage with them, and you notice when the how they are with the people before, after shows, how they hold themselves. At some point, you judge it this body of work, and you gotta hope that your your compass is pointing north when it's all said and done. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Mike, do you remember off the top of your head, there is a website that allows you to do a free assessment of your own.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Oh, I and the tool that I use all the time. It's called the values in uh values in action inventory or values in inventory via the VIA. And what it does is it understands it it assesses your top, your your there it breaks these 24 character strengths and then assesses what your top character strengths are. And I use this tool with every single client I've ever worked with over the last 10 years because it's a tool that really allows them to understand. And I use the the idea that most of the time when we manage people, we manage to minimize weaknesses. Whereas if we manage to maximize strengths, we'd be a whole, we'd have people that would be a whole lot better and we'd help our people be better. But the thing about it is it's it's it's hard to manage to maximize strengths if you don't know the strengths. And that's right. This is a great tool to understand what your character strengths are. It's free. Yeah, it's free. Yeah, it go to I think it's VIA.org. Uh it's out of the it, it's actually the tool that Seligman developed with Chris Peterson. It's out of the University of Pennsylvania, and it's also put out by the I think the Positive Psychology Institute or something like that. But uh just look up values in action inventory. That's the that's the key. I think it's VIA.org, and you can take that assessment and really look at what is it that are my character strengths and how do you how do I use those in balance to become a better leader?

SPEAKER_00 40:10

I found it to be accurate but also surprising. Yeah. I was like, oh, wow, that was interesting. I learned a lot about myself. It's like holding up the mirror.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

One of the important distinctions that I'll make with it too, a lot of people are familiar with disc or Myers Briggs or Enneogram or you know, those types, those are those are personality tools. Uh those those assess how we're hardwired. We can't really change them. And we might tweak them a little bit, but we can't really change them. The VIA, who you want. Yeah, the VIA is uh is our character strengths, those will change based on our experience, based on how much we work on them, based on the situations that we're in. Now, they may not change a lot, but they will go up and down. I, you know, a lot of times they'll talk about the top five. Well, when I work with my clients, I talk about the top eight because I know that four through eight could be interchangeable depending on what's going on. And so understanding what those are. So it's it's something that you can use and that you can work on, and I think it's a great tool. I think it's one of those under underrated management and leadership tools. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 41:15

Yeah, yeah. Oh John, send that to me. I'm ready to probably write a whole album. All right, I'll send it to you. I'd love to have that. I would I would love to do that. What was the other test? One of Gwen's friends, Sandy, sent it to me. I took the test and what was the one that you know so many people are the clip. Clip and strength finder? No, the other one. Keep coming. It's a big one. It's what everybody seems to be taking business. No, come on. We've talked about it before. All right, forget it. There's so many of them. Yeah. Well, you know what? We've talked about it.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

We'll find it out and we'll bring it back next time.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

Yeah. Well, I think we it's time for us to uh hit the road.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Was this one of those are you hot or not kind of things? Is that what that was? I think that's probably what it was.

SPEAKER_02 42:00

Yeah. Uh I've enjoyed today listening. I I re I gotta tell you guys something. I I really wanted to sit this one out a little bit because I feel like this is y'all's wheelhouse right here. I'm all about virtues. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, Mike, you know, I've done enough interviews with Mike to know that we could do this for a couple months, talk about uh but it but it reminds me of the people that I I can see them right now, right, in my life that have mattered who all of them all of them worked at that and carried that all the way through their lives. And so unbelievable and and how impactful it was for everybody around them. Amazing. That's the key. Amazing. That's the key. All right. Well, Rand, who's who's oh, look at that impact. And this is me today.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

With my word. I'm gonna have to have one that's about day long. Yeah. Well, hey friends, it's been wonderful to have you on Resonance. Thank you for joining us. We hope that your virtues are getting aligned and you're thinking of virtues as a verb, right? Get out there and do it. Make the world a better place. Mike Farrell, why don't you tell us how uh people can listen to this podcast?

SPEAKER_01 43:10

All right. Well, you can find us at resonanceleader.com. You click on that and you'll see all the different links to all the major platforms if you're already on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Just do a quick search and get your friends to listen to this too. They need it. Absolutely. Those unvirtuous friends. Since hey, here's a hint. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

All right.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

And Steve, what else are we cooking up besides the podcast? Uh what else are we cooking up? I don't know. Trick question.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Resonance live. We're gonna resonance live. You can bring us in uh to uh to do a very unique conference. You know, I've done enough of these things with the music portion making a big difference. You guys have been doing this for a living. Uh, and and when I the times that I've gotten to do it over probably the last few 15 years of my life, I've really walked out of there really feeling good about the opportunity to do music on that level, in that platform. Very, very different from the dark stage, the lights hitting you in the spotlight and all that. It's a lit up room. It's a different kind of thing. So it's been really interesting. I've learned a lot about myself and I've learned a lot about others. And so you can bring us in live. Obviously, Resonance has a live version, and we would love to come to your uh company or your city, or you know, we're ready to roll. So uh just go to res resonanceleader.com and you can find out how to how to do that.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

All right, guys. Once again, we got another one in the books, and we will see you next time on Resonance, the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

All right.com.