The Mirror Test: Are You Someone You Would Follow? w/ Joe Bogdan

Chapters

• 0:51 Discipline, Compassion, And Self-Leadership
• 2:43 Joe’s Path From Air Force To HR
• 5:23 A Smooth Transition And Identity
• 7:14 Why Many Veterans Teach Leadership
• 12:05 Depth, Breadth, And Leading Without Rank
• 18:36 Joy Highlights: Family And Community
• 22:43 Discipline’s Wake-Up Call In Korea
• 27:12 Burnout, Grace, And Delegation
• 30:19 Accountability Without Excuses
• 35:04 Getting Honest Feedback That Helps
• 40:31 Redefining Self-Care For Resilience
• 44:36 Micro Breaks And Modeling Balance
• 47:22 Small Slips, Big Costs
• 50:11 Humility And Curiosity As Core

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:24

Welcome back to Mind Force, a show where we explore the mindsets, habit, and the lessons that help us lead with purpose and live with resilience. I'm your host, Nate Schear, and today we're digging into the relationship between discipline and compassion, what it takes to lead yourself well, especially when no one's watching. We'll talk about the tension between pushing hard and resting well, the mindset between accountability and why leadership always starts with the person in the mirror. If you've ever struggled to stay consistent, show up for yourself or lead with integrity. This conversation is for you. This guest I'm super excited to have on the show, first guest of no show. So sorry, Joe. I was having a terrible time with my allergies, laid down for a quick nap or so. I thought and, you know, slept right through on a Saturday. I've listened to many of his episodes of the Llama Lounge and used a lot of his great material for my episode. Uh, I think it was a episode five, shoot, don't quote me on that. One of my beginning episodes with Chief Ronnie Woods. Uh, so really helped me get ready for that conversation. I had a lot of cool questions from some of his previous episodes. So let's start with your story. Who are you and what personal or professional experiences have shaped your view of self-leadership?

SPEAKER_01: 1:35

Man, Nate, thank you so much for having me on. And I'll say we both flaked on each other once. So I think we're even now. Um, yeah, I was I was a bit ill one day uh and then we had to push it down a couple months because uh Nate's podcast is so popular. He has so many people, you know, the calendar is full, so we had to push down a couple months, and then uh unfortunately he wasn't feeling too good. So here we are. Um, but I'm super grateful we finally got together and got to chat. Uh man, who who am I? Uh so a little bit about who I am. Uh, you know, I I try to go in order of precedence for me and what the most important things are. I'm a man of faith. So um first thing I would say is I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. And I really think that, you know, God put me on this planet to help others achieve their best results, you know, meet their maximum potential and um anything I could do to help that. Um I am a uh retired active duty Air Force member. Just retired actually this last year. I started off in the engineering career field and I transitioned uh later on. Um did some career broadening in uh in the now called Military Family Readiness Center, then Airman and Family Readiness Center. And for anybody who might be listening that's not in the military, that's kind of kind of like a social services center on the base. And we can go into a full story about that too. But um I really gained a lot of my purpose and meaning and quite a few attributes um I think that were vital for leadership, like uh generosity, kindness, and patience, which I really didn't have as a young manager leader in um the engineering career field at the time. And uh and then later on I I I continued um serving, um, became a chief master sergeant, and uh eventually got called to the Pentagon to be the chief of enlisted force development, which means I was um the senior advisor to all Air Force leadership on all things, how we do training, training and development, education, and also um career broadening uh across the enlisted force, which is about 400,000 plus folks um across the world. Loved it, but there really wasn't another thing that I wanted to do. Um, so I decided to challenge myself, make the transition. I wanted to see how I would do in the corporate world. So I became an HR business partner and I advise uh business leaders on how to do all things people related, you know, taking care of their people, workforce planning, workforce development, and all things there. And one of my side gigs is that I'm a chief learning officer for a company called C2H, which is a solution-based leadership consultation firm. We offer coaching, development, and also um help companies with policy uh if they need some support there, but a bunch of other things as well. And uh and yeah, and I dabble, I do a podcast. As you mentioned, I I had a podcast with my friends back in the day called The Llama Lounge. Since then, um, that was retired um a couple years ago and I got super busy working at a Pentagon. Uh when I started seeing that I was getting close to retiring, I decided to uh restart the podcast uh game again. And um now I have a podcast called the Waypoint Better Podcast, which is about all things personal and professional improvement. And yeah, that's a couple things I do. And then also uh I uh I'm active duty, uh I'm a spouse of an active duty airman. My wife is uh a dental hygienist by trade, but she's a um the senior operations manager or senior enlisted leader of the dental squadron here at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, and she oversees all the dental operations on the base. Yeah, but that's just a little bit about me. Uh super grateful that you asked me to come on and and talk about these things.

SPEAKER_00: 4:54

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for coming out. So I'd asked the chief Hope Skabitsky what she thought was the most surprising thing about transitioning. So now, since you just transitioned, what was the most shocking? You gotta narrow it down to one.

SPEAKER_01: 5:08

Man, the most shocking. You know, and this is probably is you know, everybody's transition journey is gonna be different. Honestly, I think the most shocking thing for me in my transition was that it was such a smooth transition. You know, I I think um I I I'm still, you know, I'm looking at LinkedIn, I'm looking at my Facebook, and I've seen a lot of my colleagues that are retiring right now. And I could feel like I could totally understand, you know, you've been doing something for 20, 26, 30 years, and now you're transitioning. Um, I even heard someone say, you know, I feel like I went from a hero to a zero. And I just, you know, I I didn't experience that. And I think a lot of it was because I really never saw, I I am so grateful for the Air Force. I think it did so many things for me. Um, really postured me from, you know, a life of poverty to um to being where I am today and gave me a lot of meaning and purpose throughout. But I never saw it as who I am. And I never saw being a chief as who I am or any of the roles, positions. So I think I I just had a mental strategy of knowing that one day a transition was happening. So I just mentally prepared to remember that I'm Joe. And I think that really helped. And yeah, just kind of had an idea of what I wanted to do. So yeah, I think the most shocking thing, and by the way, I'm still in the middle of transitioning, so I might be speaking too early, you know, because I think, you know, transition takes a while. But uh, employment-wise, life-wise, all the things, I think that um the most surprising thing was that I just felt like it happened very smoothly.

SPEAKER_00: 6:31

Okay, good, good. Congrats. I'm glad it went pretty smooth. Uh, this next question, uh, I'm trying to figure out the best way to phrase it. I don't want it to come off, you know, disrespectful by any means, but I'm really curious. It feels like a lot of people that have left, a lot of chiefs, colonels, a lot of people in leadership seem like they're gravitating towards leadership companies, life coaching. What do you think has given you like the experience or you know, the ability to speak on it? Like you or anyone, like what gives, you know, the ability or the experience to speak on leadership? Because it seems like everyone's doing it. Yeah. Maybe that's an over, you know, dramatic uh generalization, but what are your thoughts on feeling like there's a lot of life coaches all of a sudden? Maybe it's just me and I'm getting old.

SPEAKER_01: 7:16

No, I I think you're right. There's probably a lot of and also probably the the group of people that we center ourselves or you know, have have around us is probably the people that are interested in those things. Um so leadership, coaching, I kind of see them all as different things. So um, but and sometimes there's some overlap there. I would say one of the things that probably uniquely suit some of us, and myself included, I think, is that I'm in the corporate world right now. I can tell you that right, I will say with 100% certainty that I'll broadly say the entire military, but I know the Air Force specifically is that we develop the greatest leaders. I mean, like the the fact that you're you're continuously given opportunities to grow, to move around. You know, there's a lot of different aspects. I'm I'm in the middle of writing a book, and part of it is talking about cultivating your leadership potential because we talk about, we promote for potential, we don't promote for past things. How well you performed in the past doesn't necessarily mean you're ready for a promotion. Your potential is a big part of it. And we don't often talk about why. But in the military, we put you in positions for you to gain opportunities to develop that leadership potential. And some of those I would say is uh uh a depth and a breadth of experience. You know, we have the depth that you you gain at the beginning. You're this is your job, you're learning the competencies there. But if you want to continue to elevate as a leader, you're gonna have to develop uh a broad breadth of experience as well because you're gonna be put in situations where you're required to lead people that you don't know their job specifically. As a CE chief, I had the privilege of overseeing uh EOD teammates, fire department teammates, and they put me in a bomb suit and sit in a live fire, but I still don't know their job. I would be dumb to say that I know their job at a technical level. But I have to have the breath to understand how they play in the big picture, right? And we do that in the military by moving, PCSing people from place to place, you know, different mission sets, uh, career broadening opportunities like I got, um, as well as just we even within units. So we do a lot of that. Of course, we have formal development and some other things I think are are vitally important is as you grow, you gain opportunities to uh develop your, I would say peer leadership or just leadership of people who don't have to listen to you. You know, and I think that's the greatest sign of a leader is that you can influence people that you don't have authority over, that you don't have positional power over. And we have opportunities like that regularly, and as chiefs, we really don't have any positional power over each other, but we have to work together to solve a problem. So plenty of opportunities there. So I think that um just the experience would put a lot of us in great positions to be able to coach others on leadership as well as get into consulting on leadership or step into leadership roles. Um, I think the big thing is if you don't have the humility and curiosity to to learn, because if you're if you're coming out of the military, unless you're just gonna be advising military leaders, you you have to learn the business side of things of uh of those leaders that you're uh that you're working with. So it's a different language, you know. And I used to think that the military has a lot of acronyms. Come work in my corp my corporate company that has 110,000 people across the world, you know. Like there's a lot of acronyms there too. So um, I had to learn a brand new language. But yeah, so in a roundabout way, I would say that we're uniquely suited to be able to do those things. And um, we're also very well educated. So I yeah, uh that's what I think puts us in a good position.

SPEAKER_00: 10:30

I think that gets lost. I mean, unless you have military in your family and you're familiar with how the things work, because I've talked to civilians and I remember this one quote, it'll stick with me, I think, forever. The quote was, I thought you just practiced war. And I was like, one, I don't really know what that means. Like two, like we have 128 different jobs. We have people that are handing out stuff at the gym, we have finance, we have HR, we have, you know, fill in the blank. And so not everyone's shooting or rolling around in the dirt or, you know, so I think that is a good reminder to everyone. Like we are continuously going through PME professional military education and always, you know, going through different opportunities to run events, which some people, you know, will come up with a negative term, bake sales and things like that, but it gives you the ability to manage projects and people and deadlines. And so I think you're you're absolutely right. We're always kind of working on stuff. Well, I'd like to flip the mic before we dive into your pillars. What's one question you'd like to ask me?

SPEAKER_01: 11:25

You know, I'm gonna shift it away a little bit from this uh from the pillars. I I'd like to ask you a question I think is is really important from a resiliency perspective overall. What's the best thing that happened to you this last month?

SPEAKER_00: 11:38

The best thing that happened to me this last month. Ooh, that's probably a tie between uh I picked my mom up from the airport and I picked up my oldest daughter. Um, so can't really pick one of the over. Me and my mom, you know, I grew up in, you know, Section 8 houses and hand-me-downs, and so it was me and my mom against the world for a lot of my life. So we have a really deep bond. And then my oldest daughter, her mom lives at Langley now, and uh, we've had the hardest time getting her. I'm supposed to have her for the summers, but with COVID and moving to Japan, and then she was in Germany, and then they got locked down, and then she moved, and I moved to Florida. Just general military stuff. It's been really rough the last couple of years. Like I went her really bad last year, but it was like, hey, do you want to come hang out with us? We have no furniture. She's like, No, I think I'm good. I'm like, that's totally understandable. Like, we're, you know, eating off the floor and whatnot. Like, you don't have to. So this is the first year in a couple years, and so it's been awesome to have the house full, even though six people is way too much for I think this like 300 or 1300 square foot house feels like everyone's on top of each other. It's a little crazy, but just full of love. My wife, it was her birthday when we picked up my oldest daughter, and she said, best birthday ever, have everyone back and just feeling the love throughout the dinner times and the board games and everything. So full of love right now. It's awesome. I wish it were all the time, but uh, you know, got to go through life and do a little co-parenting. But yeah, the the love that's flown through the house right now. What's the what's the biggest thing for you?

SPEAKER_01: 13:06

Man, I have I have a lot, but I would say the thing that happened most recently um was that my wife and I were actually able to host our uh our church elders, like our pastor, our lead pastor, and all of them at our house. We've been talking about this for a couple months, but you know, people need bab uh babysitters and all that stuff, and it all came to culmination this past Saturday. Um and they got to come in and we got to serve them like a gourmet meal. And uh cooking is one of my favorite things to do. So uh made them some great stuff and you know, really had to have conversations. And I think that they felt really appreciated, which was our goal because um sometimes, you know, I mean, church growing is is a difficult thing. And then, you know, it's not like they're getting paid a lot. This isn't a mega church. It's uh it's very challenging for them. So for us to wine and dine them, um, it really filled our cups and gave us even more opportunity to get to know them even better. So that was that was the most recent thing that I could say that really stuck out.

SPEAKER_00: 14:00

It's always hard being in the military too, like finding your new one. It was actually really awesome. A couple days ago, I got an email just out of the blue from my pastor, Calvary Chapel there out at Okinawa, you know, at Japan, two stations ago. And he's like, hey, just on the mind, seeing if there's anything you wanted to pray for. And I was like, Oh, it's so nice to hear something, you know, out of the blue and you know, being able to take care of stuff like that. But finding your new spot, you gotta try a couple and see the connection. You want to make sure you got that fit and whatnot. And so I think a lot of people they get the benefit of staying for 10 or 15, and we're staying for two, and then feeling sad. And you know, you get to meet new people and there's positive too, but it is a little sad when you gotta to move to the next one. Your first uh pillar is self-discipline. So I love stories on the show. Is there a story or a moment in your life when you realize discipline had to be non-negotiable?

SPEAKER_01: 14:51

Man, so I think that um if I if I thought back, there'd probably many opportunities where that that should have been more apparent. And I would honestly say that I probably thought I was pretty disciplined. In many ways I was. But I think the biggest time where that an example of um when I really realized it was non-negotiable is when I let it go. And and I let it go primarily in my physical fitness. Um, when I was stationed in Korea, it was my second tour to Osan, and um, I think uh it was about two and a half year tour. Um I was there for quite a while. And um it, you know, and and if anybody's been to Osan Airbase or Kunsa and you see all the power outages and all the other things, you know, the challenges that come with a failing infrastructure. We used to joke about it. It was like, you know, that this infrastructure, this base has been built, you know, one year at a time for the last, you know, 50-something years, you know. So it's like, um, so because you know, we rotate out so fast, not a lot of continuity. So um we, we, you know, it was a great tour, busy. We worked hard, we played hard. And uh at the end of that, I walked away with the line number for chief and an extra 20 pounds on me. And so I get to my next base, I just go for a run. I've always, I wouldn't say I was ever like a long distance runner at that point, but I never had issues. And um, I think I ran about a quarter of a mile, just about a lap, and I was already about to fall out. Like I was huffing and puffing, I was just out of shape, I was super discouraged about the whole situation, angry, and really had to work my way back. And um, I had to like really lean on discipline to go the full other way, you know, and uh and to the point where I was running. I started off with just, hey, can I just r run for five minutes without falling out? Let me do 10, you know, and I just kept on increasing that. And I felt like my mental health started getting better. I started feeling better, I started noticing things. It got to a point, Nate, where I started running a half marathon every Sunday. And I was running 10Ks every day. And um, I just got to the best shape of my life. My blood work was great. But until then, I don't think, you know, I didn't even realize how much I let myself slide. My discipline had completely slid when it comes to physical fitness, and that impacts your mental fitness. That impacts your comprehensive fitness overall. So yeah, I think that was when I really realized that like this is a non-negotiable now. I actually have a quad chart where I fill in all the things I'm gonna be doing for the week. And one of the non-negotiables is physical fitness. Um, not gonna ever let that slide again.

SPEAKER_00: 17:19

Awesome. Okay. So a little bit of, you know, shock and awe, a little rude awakening. So I think everything in life is kind of within balance. So one thing I like to talk about on the show is kind of how those come together. So you want discipline, you wanna be able to hold yourself there. How do you avoid burnout or other things? Everything's spectrum, right? So how do you kind of go through some of those discipline things, but without being so strict that, you know, you're just kind of burning out?

SPEAKER_01: 17:45

Yeah. You know, I we were talking about how to how to cultivate leadership potential. One of the things I didn't say then, and I'll slide in now, is the ability to adapt to different situations and have some mental agility as well. And um being able to understand that, yeah, you want to maintain the discipline, but discerning where it is burning you out and you're not leveraging your support as much. Because if you're trying to do everything, there's no way you're gonna do everything effectively. I mean, you could do it maybe for a while in surge operations, but um, but eventually, you know, it's just not sustainable. And I think that, you know, having that wisdom to know that it's time to shift, have some grace with yourself, be like, all right, I can't do everything right now. Being able to have that proverbial gear shifter and kind of shifting down for a moment and seeing the world the way it is and what's going on and how you're impacting your family and your and your coworkers, and um, and also checking your ego to realize that, hey, I'm not the only one that can do all of this stuff. There's probably some other people that should be doing all this stuff. So I I think it's a healthy harmonization of what are your values that you are not that you know are non-negotiable, and then what are what are you trying to achieve? And then really being able to harmonize that and realize that, you know, if it's something that's non-negotiable that you have to do, and that should be a very small list, to be honest with you, then you do those things. The other stuff, you you look at it like how do I become more efficient in these things? How do I leverage technology? How do I leverage my team? What should I be delegating or empowering others to do? Uh, you know, and asking for help. You know, and I think that there's a there's a balance there. And I I really, I really think that's a um that that that's a good way to develop your mental agility and not think that it's just one way.

SPEAKER_00: 19:23

That makes sense. Yeah, some deeper reflection. I think it's something we we really miss. We want to go faster all the time, um, and slowing down and and self-reflection is really important. I've noticed that throughout the episodes. Journaling comes up a lot, meditation comes up a lot. There's a lot of things where going slower, which is funny because I feel like that doesn't come up that often. It's like faster, do more, look overwhelmed, like kind of those things, which leads into your next uh pillar, which is personal accountability. So another time, if you could share a story, can you share a time where accountability changed the course of your career?

SPEAKER_01: 19:57

Yeah, man, it's been personal accountability is probably something. That's been in my career quite a bit where I realized that I needed to be more accountable to things, uh, whether that was in my relationships, whether it was at work. I'm trying to come up with a specific example. Man, yeah, because it's something that I feel like that I try to embed in my life, right? Being open to feedback and taking it and doing something with it. But yeah, I would say probably a personal accountability story. I I remember there was a time where I was going too fast. We just talked about slowing down, right? And I was trying to impress maybe a young tech sergeant at the time. But I happened to be an NCIC of a shop. And in my type of units, typically you're you're going to be a master sergeant to be N C I C because the size of the shops are pretty big. So um, so I was typically the younger person. I might have even been a staff sergeant at the time. I was running a work center and there was some situations that came up where um a bunch of our folks were deploying, and one of my guys was at a party and um did something inappropriate. And my colleague, my peer that ran the work center that had the other person that was involved, called me to give me a heads up. You know, it was a peer-to-peer conversation. Uh so in my mind, I'm just like, I don't think I'm appreciating the fact that someone's telling me something that they're not really authorized to tell me. They're just kind of giving me a heads up, right? As a trusted confidant, like, hey, I'm not thinking through that. I'm thinking, man, if this guy's not gonna be able to deploy, that's gonna look back at our shop. And I need to figure out how I need to rapidly find out if he's gonna be unable to deploy. So let me call the first sergeant and ask him if this is going down so I can try to solve this problem. Well, immediately the first sergeant, like, who told you that? And then uh, and I'm still like dumb. You know, this is young, very immature Joe Bogdan. And you know, I just tell who told me, not even realizing that this was between two confidants. And of course, he gets in trouble for sharing that information with me. So I break trust unintentionally, and and he's very upset with me. And he's a person I look up to, you know, as a peer, but he's somebody I look up to. And uh, I just felt like trash, I remember. And and you know, I think that there's a lot of opportunities for us to make re-excuses for stuff like that. Um, you know, maybe he shouldn't have told me then, or I was trying to just do this or that, you know, and I I I saw it as an opportunity to just contact him. He avoided my phone calls for a while. He was angry. But eventually I got in contact with him and I shared that, you know, I was completely just apologetic. I wasn't making excuses, I didn't make anything that it wasn't. It was just I made the error. Um, you know, I think that that was a a good experience for me early on to be brave enough and have the courage to do that because after that, I think it was just kind of natural. He he he forgave me and it took a while for us to gain trust again. And um, you know, we still converse to this day here and there. Yeah, it it's um I think going through it and and being courageous enough to say you're wrong, apologize, and also there's a third part of that fix it, fix the problem, fix what you did. I think those are things that unfortunately become a lost art nowadays.

SPEAKER_00: 23:05

Yeah, and I like the no excuses. Unfortunately, you just gotta own it. There's cause and effect, it's not fun, but you just gotta own it. I'm curious from your standpoint, and you've now moved into HR. And so you mentioned feedback, and I find this something that's very difficult. Like I'll ask for, hey, you know, is there anything I can work on? And then everyone's like, oh yeah, everything's good. How have you seen, have you seen like a 360, or what's kind of been something you've seen where you can, you know, I'm sure the book answer is build rapport and they'll tell you, which I'm sure that is probably pretty accurate. But is there a format or any tips or tricks you've seen on actually getting meaningful feedback?

SPEAKER_01: 23:41

I think that 360s are great, especially if you are mature enough to select the right people. Because sometimes you don't have that opportunity. It really depends, right? How how the feedback the feedback mechanism is is launched. But if you have the opportunity and you have the maturity to pick the right people, then I think you can get some truly meaningful feedback, especially if they're able to be anonymous as well. You can kind of just pick the people, but you're not sure who's giving the feedback. You might be able to figure it out, but you just put it out there, right? And you do a broad enough, you know, you cast a net broadly so that you can get enough people where it's gonna be maybe even more difficult, you know. And maybe even put the messaging in there. It's like there's a lot of people on this, so please don't feel like it's anonymous. You can tell me who you are, but if you don't feel comfortable, there's a lot of people that are taking a survey, so it's gonna be very difficult difficult for me to probably get to, you know, determine who it is anyway. So just kind of being honest with it. Um, but if you could do that, because I I have this, I have this personal saying that sometimes people get upset about. Not everybody deserves feedback and not everybody deserves to give feedback. And I and what I mean by that is some people, you know, I don't mean that if you don't, if you're not showing the attributes that you deserve feedback, that you shouldn't get feedback. I think leaders are responsible for giving feedback regardless. But but if you're always making excuses or you get hostile when you get any type of corrective feedback or any type of feedback that might not be exactly what you want to hear, you don't deserve to get feedback. You know, I mean it doesn't mean that, you know, people shouldn't give it to you still, or there's there's this ta this idea of deserving, but it's like you're actually not showing the accountability to be able to receive feedback. And I promise you in life, if you continue to show that, even the bravest people that want to give you that feedback, they'll just stop. You're not gonna grow. But sometimes the reason why people can't receive feedback, well, is because the delivery is so terrible. Some people really need to gain some interpersonal skills to be able to deliver feedback in a timely manner where it makes sense and also hopefully build a bridge, you know, before you need to use it. Like I already have a relationship and rapport with you. Um so uh tying all that together to the 360 is pick people who you respect or what they what they think of you. Right? Pick people that you value their feedback. If you're a leader, I mean maybe not put the person you just put gave discipline to a little while ago. You know what I mean? Like you're probably gonna get some skewed feedback. But also don't give it to don't don't ask only the people you know are gonna give you good feedback. You know what I mean? Like that that are just gonna they're that give everybody great feedback. Like look for the people who you feel like can give you the most meaningful feedback. Beyond that, like if you don't, if you can figure out who those people are, you probably don't even need a 360 feedback mechanism anymore. You can just go ask them. You know, so I I think that um there's a couple of things at play. One is I would ask myself, you know, what's it like to be on the other side of me when I ask somebody for feedback? Because if I'm the person that's always making excuses or, you know, I agree, but if I'm using terms like that or when I'm not fixing it, or I'm not fixing it at all, like say I accept the feedback, but I'm not fixing anything. Well, maybe maybe there's a reason why I'm not getting honest feedback, right? Because how I respond to feedback is probably gonna be uh, you know, it's gonna be attributed to how much feedback I continue to get. But yeah, also like some discernment to when you get feedback to determine what which parts of it are valuable. Sometimes it might not be valuable.

SPEAKER_00: 26:56

Yeah, some of it's rough sometimes. Like you said, like not everyone gives good feedback. Sometimes it's like, you know, this flight's the worst. And it's like, okay, I can't make the flight better with the flight is the worst. Like, thank you. I don't I don't know what to do with that. Yeah. But yeah, that's that's interesting. I've heard some negative stuff a little bit with the anonymous because it does open you up for people to say whatever. But I think, like you said, if it's wide enough and ranging enough, then you can kind of go through the different ones. So if you have the one-off or it seems a little odd, then you know someone's just full of hate and dropping that all in there. Um but yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_01: 27:29

Uh and hopefully you can discern that, right? You can see it and be like, like this person clearly, for one, they'll probably give you feedback that's not even constructive feedback. It's and it's not something that you can do, it's just a complete character assassination. And in that point, you know, you discern that you roll that one up and throw it into the ocean. That's not something that you let impact you, right? So I think that's that's pretty important when it comes to feedback. Um, and you know, hey, Nate, I'm gonna throw this out there. I I think that we too often attribute good feed from people that we like, and and it's bad feedback if we don't like the person. And I don't think that's necessarily true. Just because you don't like somebody doesn't mean that they they can't provide you some feedback that might be beneficial.

SPEAKER_00: 28:09

Yeah, that's that's a good point. Kind of associating with the person. Interesting. Your next pillar is self-care for resilience. I think sometimes people hear self-care and they're thinking massages and it's soft and things like that. Like, what does self-care mean for all the listeners?

SPEAKER_01: 28:24

I think self-care is gonna look different for different people. Some people, it might be the massage, right? Um, some people it might be being proactive about doing something that they don't really want to do, like put on the running shoes and go do that thing, like we talked about earlier. That might be the greatest form of self-care for you. But when I think of self-care, I think of it like preventive maintenance. Now, what are the things that you can do to take care of yourself for the long haul? Whether that's a proverbial oil change, like you might need to go, you know, get a manny and a petty and do all the stuff to make you feel better. And you might be looking at your feet and it's like, man, I really need something done. You might be some stuff there. It might be a day of rest because you're grinding so hard and you're out there and you're even working out a lot and you're doing all this stuff, and your body is telling you, hey, like, can we chill today? I think listening, being attuned to your body uh and having to discern between just feeling, I just want to be comfortable all the time versus like, hey, I just need to pull back a little bit right now. But for me, I think it's really important for when I think of self-care is how can you live in what brings you joy for at least that period of time, whether that's one, two, three hours. That might be breaking, um, just you know, cutting out some time for you to review scripture if you're a person of faith. It could be cutting out time for you to be able to go get a job or go lift some weights or do something just for you. It could be reading a book, going for a hike, but whatever that is, I don't think that there's a recipe that says this is your menu and you have to go do that for self-care. I think it once again, it requires some deep deep work on the person's behalf. And I a question that I would ask for people if they're not sure what that is, is like, where do you get your inspiration from? Inspired by your kids being with them, maybe that's how you get that's your self-care. If it's uh in a room by yourself with a book, maybe that's your self-care, you know. So I think where do you get your uh inspiration from? Because I think it's it's so important that we deliberately seek the inspiration versus just hope that it falls into our lap.

SPEAKER_00: 30:25

Yeah, that makes sense. Can you think of a moment where prioritizing your self-care made you a better leader?

SPEAKER_01: 30:32

Yeah, I mean, I can go, you know, the example I already shared before, because I'll tell you what, once I started being in shape and making sure that I was taking care of myself, it definitely, it definitely um made me more effective. And I was able to see things more broadly and was like, hey, I can see when somebody's being burnt out because I know I've seen it, I've done it, you know, I've been in search operations for a long piece, long time. So there's that there was definitely that example. And I would say now, um, as an HR business partner, I can see because what I do now is I think there's a lot of strategizing with um leaders to take care of their people. But people are gonna people. So when you have a lot of people, they're gonna, they're really people in this week, you know. Uh you're gonna have a lot of what we call employee relations issues, which are gonna be like your disciplinary stuff, you know. And um, sometimes that that can really, that can really burn you out if you don't take care of yourself. Have micro breaks throughout the day. Because if I'm going from one meeting where I'm having a uh sitting in on a termination of an employee to the next meeting, we're talking about a RIF, and then the next meeting after that, we're talking we're issuing discipline. I mean, you you just do that times that by five days a week, multiple weeks in a row, and you're probably gonna be a bit stressed out. So I think that like understanding that has made me a better advisor of leaders, also gave allowed me to be a better example for others by literally just taking care of myself, showing my calendar that I'm actually taking time off, that I'm taking a lunch break, you know, all those things I think are examples of that.

SPEAKER_00: 32:01

Did anyone ever call you out or anything as you were going through the tour in Korea? Like, hey, do you guys do group runs or something? And they're like, Oh, you're not really pulling your weight, or was it how did you kind of come to that realization? Was it just stepping on the scale after the tour or what was the aha?

SPEAKER_01: 32:17

I think it was, yeah, I think it was stepping on it was actually that run is probably the biggest aha. Um, because throughout the tour, I think it was just slowly degrading, and I didn't necessarily notice it when we were doing our runs. And then also off, you know, there's times where you have a power outage and a water break at the same time, and your base is flooding and out of power, and you know, PT is not a priority today. I'm over there, you know. So um, I think there was times where like there wasn't uh there was probably long periods of time where there wasn't somebody to even see me or me to really even test my own fitness to see, you know. So I think it was just it was just a long two and a half years that kind of resulted in that thing. And there was a lot of other issues there too that came from that that assignment with that lack of discipline, um, impacting my family life and and all things in between.

SPEAKER_00: 33:00

Yeah, I think people always want things to be big things. And I've noticed throughout the shows, like I think the small things, like James Clear, the 1% better, you know, either getting 1% better or 1% worse, he argues like you're just not gonna maintain, you're gonna go one direction or another. So you make the good choice or you make the bad choice, which for uh for some odd reason reminds me of the quote from Dante's Peak, which is a super old movie, right? Where he talks about putting the frog in the water. If you put the frog in the boiling water, it jumps out immediately because it's super hot. But if you slowly turn up the heat, you can cook the frog. So I think you know, over time you can kind of deteriorate and things like that. That seems like the easier way where you just kind of because it was dramatic, you have been like, oh, I need to get back in there. But yeah, that's that's a good thing to remember. Like you're making those small choices, small actions all the time in one direction or the other. I kind of agree with him. I don't think you maintain there's not very many things. You're gonna eat the piece of cheesecake and you know, get a little bigger, maybe, or you know, there's not a lot of just neutral your final power of a bunch of uh by a thousand paper cuts, you know, you don't really realize it.

SPEAKER_01: 34:04

You're putting on extra weight and you're dealing. You know that frog thing? So it was funny because I actually um had that in one of my classes for my master's, and we talked about that quite a bit. And then someone, and I don't know if it's true, I never Googled it after it, said it was complete horse crap. Like it's not even true. Like a frog's gonna be sitting there once it gets hot, it's jumping out. I think it was actually Yeah, it was it was somebody, um, a thought leader that said that. It was Adam Grant, I think, actually, in one of his books he had brought up. He said, it's just a weird thing that we share, and we all understand what it means, but it's not necessarily true.

SPEAKER_00: 34:35

Yeah, use it as a reference, but you know, not biologically correct. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Well, your final pillar is general leadership. So I'd like to see if you could narrow it down to one. It's kind of tough. One principle to teach future leaders starting out today. What would it be? One principle.

SPEAKER_01: 34:53

My goodness. If I was gonna narrow it down to one principle, and it's pretty tough, um, because I got like seven things floating in my head right now, but I would say uh curiosity and humility. Because I think they're interlinked. And I think that it's important for us to cultivate that. You know, we we it's not something it's something that we can easily just not think about, not consider. But I found that the most curious and humble leaders are the ones that can not only make their teams feel valued, but also they're continuously growing. If you're if you're curious, then when I ask you, you know, what is it that drives you or what are your aspirations? I'm not just gonna walk in and be like, hey, Nate, clearly you want to be a chief master sergeant. So I'm just gonna be here telling you how to do that, right? Like, I'm actually gonna ask you those questions with genuine curiosity. Also, when you have an issue, maybe you have a performance issue right now. I'm gonna ask you with genuine curiosity if something's going on, right? That's impacting you because I've seen a change. I think it's I think it's something that to me, it's honestly to me one of my the most important, if not the most important leadership trait in my in my things. Because I think that the more curious a leader is, the more effective they'll be. And that that overlaps really well with humility. Yeah. Knowing that you're not, you don't know all the answers. Not just fake humble either. I mean, like truly knowing. And I have a saying, the, you know, the the wiser I become, the broader the plane of my own ignorance I discover. Like, which is just a nice uh a fancy way of saying the more I learn, the more I know I don't know, right? So I I think it's it's really important to have that curiosity and humility. And you and oddly enough, people may not think might think that's opposite of credibility, but it'll gain credibility.

SPEAKER_00: 36:34

Yeah, I think when you're real, that really comes across. And I don't think that's widely, you know, known or it's known, but it doesn't seem like it's internalized very well. Like if you are real to yourself, I think you do gain a lot of points. Even if that's you know, opening up about things that are difficult. You know, we now have Brene Brown and things like that. So I think we're getting closer to you know being able to open up and being a little bit more real. But I in my experience, I wanted to be tough and perfect and all those things. And when I've been able to connect with people the most, it's over co-parenting or divorce or losing my dad or my grandparents or you know, these things that are difficult, and being able to be like, hey, you know, I don't know exactly what you're going through, but I've seen something that is difficult. You know, let's sit in the space together. And you know, that connection has been stronger than any other, you know, me trying to be like, I had a perfect day today.

unknown: 37:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:22

Which is bizarre to me because I remember at OTS we went through and they were like, You'll have no bad days. Like, I'll remember that for my whole life. I forget who said it, but we were in a big thing, and they said, You can't, you know, bring down your flight, you can't do that, so you'll have no bad days. I was like, that makes no sense. We are not robots. Terrible advice.

SPEAKER_01: 37:38

But you know, um what something I land on with that is that you you should be inspiring and not impressing people. If you want to be a leader, you should you should inspire and not impress. And a lot of people are like, well, how do I inspire? I'm not exactly an inspirational person. I was like, inspiring is simple. Just show them a future that's better than what they have right now that they can actually attain. And if you are looking superhuman like Superman, people can't do that. They know that they can't. Internally, they know that. And you're just putting on off a facade, too. So you're not inspiring them. You may impress them, like I'm impressed by Superman because I know I can't do all those things, but I'm not inspired by it. So I think it's really important for us to consider like, hey, are we just trying to impress people or are we trying to inspire people? Because inspiration requires us to show our human side of things.

SPEAKER_00: 38:24

I've always wondered that too. And I guess you did the enlisted force development and stuff like that, because I think it's a little odd. Like I understand where it comes from, but I still think it's odd where shirts and you know, different duties, we're picking people that are, for lack of a better term, firewall five or an older term that we don't use anymore. But they're like perfect on paper. And I know you want like good people, but at the same time, like I want to go to someone when I'm having troubles that actually has been through some stuff. And like I don't want to go to the guy that's like perfectly squared. I'm not opening up. Like they say the open door policy, but at the same time, like the door is physically open, but I'm not I don't know if I'm opening up to someone that is perfect, but I realize, you know, where that comes from. But do you have any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01: 39:06

Yeah, I think that um it's funny because it almost didn't matter anyway, because everything was inflated. You know, and then really you were just doing attrition by pulling the few out for whatever reason, and they must have really angered somebody. But yeah, I think that, you know, when you think of nominative positions, I think we look at it too much from the performance base of how they were versus looking at the potential of what they can be. And um, and I think, and I don't want to get too deep into this because I'm probably getting in trouble. But so when we talk about this, this is essentially talent management. Right. This is what what what you're bringing up is talent management. And in the military, at least in the Air Force, I think that we try to conflate too much stuff at one time. It gets conflated because we look at your EPB, OPB, and we already are just we're recording how you performed that previous year. But we're also putting on that same document where we think you should go, like what you should do next, right? And um, and I think that if we were able to separate that and like, okay, we're just talking about what you've done so far. This is how you performed in the role in which you are in right now, how well you did it. And then we had a pause break, a couple months go by, and then we start talking about talent management. Like, okay, we have your performance of past, which is maybe, I'll just draw out a number, 33% of what we're looking at for your promotion or your opportunity to go do something else, your special duty, you know, whatever it might be, the nomination. We look at your potential, which should be like a uh how your records show your adaptability is, your mental agility, and also some subjective view of you as a performance. What does your potential look like? And then we put that in the gonculator. And then you come out with, okay, where do I put you on the on the grid of where I'm gonna? And this is how we do it in the qu in the civilian side. We don't do it all at the same time. So in the Air Force, we kind of do it together when we're talking about enterprise level leadership. And then we do it separate when it comes to just your functional succession planning. But in reality, it should be like both of them should be very separate things. Because I think that's where you get conflated and you do that promote someone to incompetence because they were really good at what they did, and you assume they're gonna do really well at the next thing, right? And or you assume that they're not gonna be a good first sergeant because they had a ding on one evaluation three years ago. You know what I mean? Like now you just you because you have this one process to look at. So I think if we blew it up a little bit, and of course they would cause an administrative load because who wants to do that too? But we do it in my company. So we're right now in the middle of talent review where we're taking how they performed and now looking at their potential and evaluating what developmental opportunities they should get next.

SPEAKER_00: 41:47

I like that. I like that. Pulling in more than you know, one thing. That's pretty awesome. I've always wondered like I hate to complain about this system because I don't, you know, completely love it, but I hate to complain about something when I don't have the solution. But pulling in multiple things sounds like a pretty good one. I wanted to ask you, we just closed out tech release and master release. If there's anyone listening or coming up on it at a later time, they feel like they've done what they needed to and don't make it. What are your words of wisdom for that?

SPEAKER_01: 42:14

I think um really they should look at themselves, find a mentor that they can um maybe even show their records to. Make sure the mentor is somebody who knows how to review records, make sure that they know what they're looking for. And I share that because sometimes, okay, when I when I was coming up and as an airman, we had enlisted force structure. I know we have it now, but what we had before, right, called the little brown book, and it would kind of tell you the blueprint of what you should be doing. Nope, a lot of people didn't look at it that way. They kind of looked at it as like, if I don't hold to these standards, I'll use this as disciplinary action against my subordinate. But in but in reality, it was a guide for us to know, okay, how should I be performing right now? Okay, what should I be doing if I'm in this grade? Okay. Also, I can see what I should be doing if I want to show that I'm I can be in the next grade. Because it tells you what the next grade should be doing too. So if you're looking, if you're talking about potential, you should already be doing the stuff in the next grade, right? Per the book and per all the suggestions in the book. So if you find a mentor, they should be able to explain to you why that stuff matters in there. For instance, if you go to a mentor and says, Well, why does it say that as an NCO, I should go join the NCO club, I should um become part of the NCO 5-6 club on base. Or why should I become a part of the top three? It says I should, but why? You know, if the mentor isn't able to tell you that, hey, it's gonna give you broadened perspectives, you're gonna be able to network and see people's views from different places around the wing. And it's also gonna give you the opportunity to develop some of your peer leadership because it's gonna open up opportunities for you to run some of those projects you talked about earlier, Nate. You know, not the big sales, but the projects, right?

SPEAKER_00: 43:50

Yeah, projects.

SPEAKER_01: 43:51

And then you're gonna learn those things, then you're gonna be showing the adaptability and leadership potential to move up and to, you know, higher roles. But if that mentor isn't able to tell you that and they kind of just project this thing as a check to block for you to go do, then you probably need to go look for a different person. Because I think that a lot of times, you know, uh we assume that that we're doing the best thing ever and our records show it and we're capturing what we did and we're showing that we have potential. But in reality, a lot of those records, if they're not getting promoted, probably aren't showing that there's gaps. There's probably gaps. I've actually seen records where I saw this person that used to be a development advisor. And then every year after that, I saw professional development committee stuff on their eval every year for like four years straight. And I was like, so you love professional development? Like, yeah, I do. I was like, that's cool. I do too. Need to be on your eval anymore because you're you're screaming one trick pony to me. Right. So uh I'm not saying don't do it because you're passionate about it, but you need to show some stretch. You know, get some stretch rules in there, do something a little bit different so that you can show your adaptability and ability to do things outside of your comfort zone because that's what leadership's gonna be, you know, and show that you can um that you can take on more, some capacity and all those things. I think that um my advice to them would be really reflect on their stuff, really under look at it through the lens of leadership potential. Are you really showing it, displaying it? Are you doing it? Get a mentor to help you show show you the path there. And then the last thing I would say is have some grace with yourself because even if you're hitting birdies all year, someone's still hitting eagles out there. Sometimes it's just timing. You know what I mean? So it's that. But if you posture yourself the best way to be prepared for the next rank, it doesn't mean you'll necessarily get it on your timing, but but it means you'll be prepared when it does hit.

SPEAKER_00: 45:32

Yeah, unfortunately. Sometimes there's some luck in there. I, you know, put someone in that I thought was an absolute superstar for I think BTZ or something, and they didn't get it, and I was super confused, and then later found out the person that had got picked up for it like pulled two people out of a burning car wreck or something. I'm like, you you can't even you can't even make this stuff up sometimes. So yeah, there's always people out there killing it. We're all doing great stuff. I'd like to try to bring it all together, Joe. What's your final word of encouragement for someone trying to lead better, starting with themselves?

SPEAKER_01: 46:01

My final word of encouragement is I share this often when I'm doing professional development um courses, is that when it comes to leadership, we we have a job. We have a lot of job. And there's a providence of a leader. There's a lot of it, right? But uh one thing I would say is the more outward focused you're gonna be, the more likely people will actually see you as a leader. I don't care what rank you have or what position you have or what your salary is or whatever. The more outward focused you are, the better. Because some of us are inward focused and we just think about how we're gonna be the best at whatever we're doing. And I likened this to something um Pastor Joe B. Martin said one time. Uh he said, Well, you could be world class athlete in the relay race, but you're still only running one leg of it and you're sprinting it. Maybe you break the record for one leg of that race and you pass that baton and you fumble it, you're you guys lost a race. It doesn't matter if you won a world record for that one. Nobody records the one one leg, right? I mean, nobody cares about that. So what I what I mean by this is, you know, one of the most important things I think that leaders should do is continue to develop those around her and be outward. And if you can't be handoff correctly, you know, if you get that wrong, you mess up the handoff. What are we doing this for? So just make sure, you know, part of that's gonna be you have to take care of yourself. You're gonna have to be outward focused to make sure you see what's going on, be curious, be humble, but but pay attention to the handoff. It matters.

SPEAKER_00: 47:24

Absolutely. Well, thanks, Joe, for coming out. This is a real grounded and energizing conversation. Thank you for walking us through the hard work behind strong leadership. You touched on at the beginning, but uh, where can listeners connect with you and learn a little bit more about the work you're doing?

SPEAKER_01: 47:38

Um, if they want to message me on any like development type stuff, they can reach out to waypointbetter.com. If you can go on there, you're gonna see all the stuff. My resources, I sign up for my mailing list, you'll get some free resources there, including your leadership philosophy navigator. We'll help you navigate through how to develop your own leadership philosophy, as well as my podcast, which is the Waypoint Better Podcast. You can find that on all your platforms. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. It's gonna be the LinkedIn traditional, and the tag is gonna be JY Bogden, but you can just put in Joseph Bogdan, I'm sure you'll find me. And if you want to know more about like business-related things from how we can help your organization, reach out to c2htransform.com and uh you'll see that our entire team on there.

SPEAKER_00: 48:19

Um, thank you much. I think I'm gonna have to jump on and check out the leadership navigator because I've always wondered how people come up with their acronym or you know, all those different things. That'd be really interesting to see how to narrow it down to what the things that are truly important to you. Well, to everyone listening, thank you for showing up today. If something in this episode struck a chord, share it with someone, please leave a review and remember leading yourself is the first act of leadership. This is Mind Force. I love you all. See ya.