Caring Is Leading: Eight Lessons from the Hardest Job You’ll Ever Have

Then I finally said, screw that.

I'm being me.

I'm being the leader that I believe is needed.

He doesn't replace the great human with something else.

Oh, I'm a great technologist.

Oh, I'm the smartest person in the room.

No, he's a great human who cares.

He has great caring for those around him.

That's where a lot of the work is,

is in those moments where you're like,

what are you saying?

Is hitting that pause button and saying,

what am I missing?

Not what are you saying, but what am I missing?

And then working with that person to understand

and that's really, really hard when emotions are high.

What if we took that and we moved into

organizational leadership for communication

and for advocacy?

What the hell would that do to our companies?

And I think the answer would be something positive out of that.

Entry music, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da.

It's the Bob and Josh show.

We're doing a bit of a crossover today

for those of you that have fallen along for the past.

I don't know, year or so,

Bob has been documenting his caregiver journey

and he stumbled upon an article on LinkedIn

as he does that talks about the crossover of

caregiving and great leadership tend to overlap.

So we're gonna hit that today.

Bob is gonna give us the real intro.

I'm just the guy saying the words.

So Bob, take it away.

Thank you for that segue, Joshua, my friend.

No, hey, Medicare's, so this is Samantha B.

I don't know her last name other than B,

but I think it does have letters after it on LinkedIn.

Posted this thing and I'm just gonna read a little bit of it

and we're gonna cover, she put eight items in there.

So she said, finally caregivers don't just step up.

They build leadership muscles,

most professionals never develop.

And I saw that and I was like, wow, that's pretty bold

and that might have implications to the Medicare's.

And then she said caring for a loved one with dementia

is one of the most demanding long-term roles

a person can take on.

And yet many caregivers don't realize

they're developing elite level leadership skills

every single day.

And then she gave us a list of eight

and I couldn't agree more with her setup

that if you think your leadership job,

so if you're an actual coach and you think your job is tough

or you're a leader of any strife

and you think your job is tough,

particularly that slimy CEO that laid off 4,000 people.

Oh, am I still scarred?

Yeah, I'm still scarred by the last step.

So, but particularly, but if you think your job is hard,

try caregiving and it's, I'm serious,

but I'm doing it in a lighthearted way.

It's freaking hard every day.

And you really have to manage things.

So I really admired her twist.

And I'll start.

We're just going to walk the list.

We'll give you a link to the post in the episode,

not we, Josh will, because he does all of that.

And he does it nicely.

But I'm going to start, I'm going to start.

The first one is rapid decision making under pressure.

And real quickly, she had dementia care requires

constant problem solving within complete information.

And you have to assess quickly, you have to act decisively,

you have to adapt fast, just like high performance leaders.

I, now I'm going to, I'm going to say, yes, that's a requirement.

The other thing I'm going to add,

I'm going to surprise Josh a little bit,

is how much of this do we see in today's leaders?

Yeah.

So, so, so I agree with that.

Now, how much of that do I see?

I see rapid decision making, but what I'm going to call

is most of the time I see knee jerk decision making,

or reactive decision making, and it lacks the thoughtfulness

that you have, that she's alluding to.

Not all leaders, but I think a lot of leaders are just like,

they're sort of in an emergency situation.

It's like the boat, the decision to make when the boat

is sinking or something like that.

Even when the boat isn't sinking,

they're not thinking, the other thing that they don't do,

and caregivers can't do this,

is engage the crowd, the wisdom of the crowd.

And I see a lot of leaders, you know,

like engaging other people in making those,

those crisp decisions.

For example, making product level decisions,

and, you know, making them themselves, they can make it.

So, so maybe the quality of the decision making today's leaders

could be better and could be more thoughtful

and using the, using the caregivers a goal,

or as a guide, Josh?

Yeah.

So, this is something, I'm gonna go for a little bit

before I dig into this first item.

This is something that I've wrestled with a lot as a leader is,

it doesn't equate to caregiving as Bob is talking about

and Bob is dealing with right now.

But I've always felt that trying to be a good parent

teaches you how to be a better leader.

It doesn't make you a good leader,

but there are lessons that are similar to this.

But that's a thing I never wanted to talk about.

I never wanted to say it,

because the last thing I wanted to say to my team was,

I think about you guys,

just like I think about my kids,

like that feels insulting and not right.

So, I've always shyed away from that,

but I've thought that these caregiving things

in all directions certainly drive this.

Now, Bob is in now,

is certainly a much more challenging space

than I've been with raising kids.

But I think the key difference is,

is that in these moments,

the decision must be made.

Whereas in business, people can opt out

and they can put it off,

or blame somebody else or do something.

But in these moments,

in the world, Bob is in right now,

and many caregivers is,

you have to make a choice now.

There is a decision that must be made.

You can't delay it.

There's no one else to look to.

It's on you, and I got it.

Let's hope I get it right.

And that's a whole different set of pressure

than, oh gosh, you know,

which should be bluer, should be red.

I don't know.

Let me sit on that for another week

and maybe we'll decide.

Then you never decide, right?

But this is a whole different type of pressure cooker

that people are in,

where it is decisions about humans,

they care very deeply about.

That choice must be made now.

And if not, then nothing good's gonna happen.

And you make them with the doctors

so you do get some advice

as I was thinking about it as Josh was talking.

So it's not like you make all decisions alone.

You have a Diane and I have a care team.

But I have little information sometimes, you know, right?

The other weird thing is I have to trust.

It's not weird, but it's hard for me at times.

I have to trust the doctor,

after reminding myself,

like not blindly trust, I won't.

Right?

I need to sort of validate what they're saying.

I don't wanna blindly trust anyone,

but I have to trust their experience.

In making decisions that are really crucial

for my wife's health or her, you know, her well-being.

And so learning to do that,

that decision-making and trusting others

is a part of it, that is something.

And I think, again, leaders, this is a crossover.

This is not, we're not trying to turn anyone into a caregiver.

We're actually trying to say,

can we learn from this really tough job?

And what can we carry over?

And two things, what can we assess

where the state of the leadership world is?

And what can we do to improve that a little bit?

So the second one is emotional intelligence and regulation.

Managing unpredictable behaviors,

calming stressful situations

and supporting a loved one's emotional world strength

and empathy, patience and self-management.

This is probably one of the areas that, for me personally,

I struggle with the most.

Because I'm meeting, my wife has Louis body dementia.

I don't mean to give anyone too much information.

So she has a dementia type, a pretty serious dementia type.

It's an accelerating dementia type.

It's a very variable dementia type.

So one minute she's sort of my old wife

and then next minute she's not anymore at all

and somewhere in between.

So I can react poorly.

Like I can bring my old Bob and I want a debater.

She just said something silly.

And I want to let, I want to lecture her, right?

And I want to react emotionally

or I want to overreact her whatever.

And I'm not understanding and meeting her where she is.

So it's not per behavior, it's my behavior.

It's how I'm managing my emotional intelligence,

my ability to show up.

And I think leaders very often,

that's an area where we can improve.

Again, I'm not gauging state of the art.

I do think there is a genre of leader that they filter.

They're really good by masking.

But inside, then they're going to act out

and things like that, right?

They're going to pay back.

So that's not true emotional intelligence.

That's sort of facade emotional intelligence.

And then coming back at someone.

But true emotional intelligence is you're really working on

how you process, how you regulate, how you meet folks.

What is your behavior?

And sort of moderating any triggering that would occur.

And you really don't trigger very much on others' behavior.

Maybe assuming positive intent would be a part of that as well.

Assuming positive intent on the part

of the folks that you're leading.

But it's something, to me, it's a constant thing

I need to be working on.

I need to be aware of.

Otherwise, if I'm not aware of it,

if I'm not working on it, then I'll revert to old behavior.

So I have to be intentional about it.

And it's a work in progress for me.

Josh, any leadership reactions to that?

Yeah, I think that's a journey that I know I've been on

throughout my career.

And I will continue to work on, because I'm sure

I'll never get it perfect, is when you get triggered emotionally,

it is going to happen.

There are high state decisions, you're representing a team.

There's often lots of lenses.

And there are situations within an organization

where tension is intentional and almost required.

As you think about different parts of the organization

have different things they're trying to deliver on.

Sales is trying to sell.

Engineering wants to build the perfect product.

People want to ship a fast product.

All of these different things are working against each other

but towards the greater good.

And that means there's hard decisions and there's

there are times when someone's going to have a take.

Someone's going to have a lens.

Someone's going to say something that just

feels as if it's completely contradictory

to what you're trying to do.

And in those moments where I failed, where I failed,

was I wasn't able to put myself in their seat

and see the world through their lens and understand.

And one of the things that Bob has talked about

through his work with Orsk is being

able to put the problem not between you

but be shoulder to shoulder with the people

that you're working with and the problem is out there.

So we are working against each other.

We are working with each other.

And so that's a mental reframe that when something happens

in a meeting or a discussion or something

and I just want to rip my hair out, what little I have,

I say stop, okay, what am I not understanding?

What do I need to reframe in my mind

so that I understand why they're saying the thing

that they're saying?

Because the intent is positive.

Because I know they want to do a good thing.

I know they want to help us achieve this thing.

I'm just not understanding why yet.

And so I put that work on me.

And so that's where a lot of the work is

is in those moments where you're like,

what are you saying is hitting that pause button

and saying what am I missing?

Not what are you saying, but what am I missing?

And then working with that person to understand

and that's really, really hard when emotions are high

just in the business world.

But then you put in the situation with a loved one

and that's a whole nother level.

That just cranks everything up a million notches.

So I certainly understand where this is at.

The third one is change management.

And she said dementia changes daily, sometimes hourly.

Caregivers become expert at pivoting,

repleneting and guiding others through ongoing change.

I couldn't agree more from a caregiving point of view

that I can't, I mean, I plan.

And Josh, if you know me, I'm sort of a planner kind of guy.

And I mean, I'm a historical planner kind of guy

then I'm an actual planner kind of guy,

but I'm a planner kind of guy.

I do lightweight planning.

I have to do some like medications.

I have to plan medications and things.

But at the end of the day, I'm just along for the ride.

I put up when I describe,

lately I haven't describing Diane's Louis bodies

as a roller coaster.

So two doctors and stuff.

And I'm like, it's just up,

just on a given day, you know, it's like all over the place

with that.

And I have to meet, I have to meet that.

So there's a nimbleness to that.

There's a, you know, there's just embracing it.

I think what it's, what it's helped me

is to just embrace the chaos.

I think as a leader, one of the things I probably have not done

as good a job of is embracing chaos.

You know, I try to, I try to sort of, you know,

my mental view for myself is I'm kept

in teams through the chaos.

But maybe that's my planning background coming in.

But I think I have work to do.

If I was leading today,

Medicare's I'm not, right, I'm slightly retired

and Josh is the leader for today.

But if I was leading today, I think I would be working

on my ability to lead through chaos

and really make micro, micro shifts

and really handle change effectively that way.

Yeah, I think things that Bob and I and our relationship

over the past couple of decades was anchored on Agile.

And Agile was really meant to accept that change was coming

and not try to fight it, but try to deal with it.

And just know it's coming and be able to respond

and have a mindset that the world isn't ending.

Now, that's easy to say with a project

or something like that.

But then, then you again, you start wrestling

with these higher stakes things.

And that's when I think back to all of the times,

everything's ever gone wrong with every project

I've ever led or everything is that the way we thought

it was going to go was never the way it went.

And our capability to win was defined by how we responded

to the things that we didn't know were going to happen.

And what was the mindset that we had in those moments

when we learned a piece of information

that would have been really helpful to have known six months ago

when we started building a thing or doing something like that.

And unfortunately, you can't know all of the things

if you wait to start building

until you know all the things you'll never start building.

So you have to forge ahead and those moments

and those times where we've been able to read and react,

those have developed muscles.

And I think that's what puts Bob in a good place

is he spent decades coaching companies to go through this.

So I feel as if if there's someone

that's going to be capable of dealing with that

as best as possible, I feel like Bob's going to be a guy

because of those things.

And I think that's what great leaders do.

Great, great leaders, make sure we're moving forward

and know that change is coming,

knowing that it's a rollercoaster,

but knowing we have to keep moving

because there are times where all that change hits you

and you freeze and you stop.

And that doesn't help anybody.

Absolutely.

Or you overreact or you overpivot or you over,

there's this, I think there's a, not about me,

but there's this finding the sweet spot metacasters

in the balancing act.

You're almost like when they head of a pin

and you're balancing through change and chaos,

it's getting harder, decade over, decade over,

you know, to today.

And how do you balance in the most effective way?

Maybe surfing would be another metaphor.

You're honest, not that I've ever done that,

but you're on a surfboard and you're riding the wave.

And for me, I'd be riding the wave

from the bottom of the sea, but if you're a good surfer,

you're riding the wave and you're anticipating.

Let me get to her fourth one is something

that I think we've talked about in the medic.

I know we've talked about it in the medicast,

is it's communication and advocacy.

And it's from navigating healthcare systems

to coordinating with family and employers,

caregivers become powerful communicators

who can influence, negotiate and advocate

for what's needed.

I couldn't agree more.

And in the healthcare industry, you can't be quiet.

You can't be a quiet advocate.

You can't be a meek advocate.

You have to, I hate, how do I say this?

They're not listening to you.

So I'm just going to come and just shock

to everyone in the United States,

but the healthcare system doesn't necessarily listen

very well to patients and they don't necessarily

communicate across doctors very well.

And oh, I know, it's shocking.

So, or pharmacist to doctors.

So someone has to be there to communicate

and to advocate for, in my case, from my wife.

In the leader's case, for your product,

for your product's connection to your customer.

In the leader's case, for your people,

and advocate for them and their growth

and their excellence and hiring the right folks

and headcount, just like we were talking about

in the last medicast about that CEO,

not being an effective, you know, just cutting people out.

I know I keep coming back to him, Josh.

Someday I will, someday I will recover.

So, but that's, again, it's not that it's that view

of advocacy, I'm there for and I'm communicating for

for the good of the delivery, for the good of the team,

for the good of clarity and excellent leaders do that.

Now, again, the stakes, Josh has said the stakes a few times.

I wish the stakes were higher on our leadership side.

The stakes for caregiving are freaking high.

If I don't do that, I'm almost gonna get teary here.

If I don't do a good job, I'm not perfect,

but if I don't do it, my wife's terrible suffer.

My wife, my wife will suffer, someone I love will suffer.

What if we took that, if, you notice my medications,

I'm getting emotional here, what if we took that

and we moved into organizational leadership

for communication and for advocacy?

What the hell would that do to our companies?

And I think the answer would be something positive

out of that.

Josh, reactions?

Yeah, I think stakes are different,

but I certainly feel a similar responsibility for my team.

I feel a responsibility for those hundreds,

hundreds, thousands of people that are counting on me

to represent them and the product they're building well

that is counting on me to have their back

and to fight for them when it needs to happen.

And there have been many times where I'm walking

into a room or meeting or a discussion

and there's a discussion I don't want to have.

I don't want to do it, but I have to

for the similar reason though, if I don't fight this fight,

then what am I doing here?

What kind of leader am I?

If I'm going to shy away from this

in this very important discussion or event or something

where I need to advocate for my team

and I need to make sure that whatever they need

is getting done, whatever the situation is,

there's a situation that you as a leader

are going to have to go and make the thing happen.

You can't wait for it to happen.

You have to go find a way, find that lever,

find that discussion, find a way to go get that thing done.

Often times when you have no idea,

I don't know what you're going to do it,

but you know you've got to go figure it out

because if you don't, no one else will.

And so that's the situation that Bob is talking about

where if he doesn't do this, no one else will.

There's a responsibility of it is on Bob.

And as a leader, it is on you to ensure

the success for your team.

No one else is going to do it.

No one else is going to make it happen.

If you sit around and wait for somebody else to do it

or from a, from a board to grant you that wish

that maybe you mentioned in one slide six months ago,

no, you're going to have to fight for it.

You are going to have to go and you're going to have to be

a little noisy.

You're going to have to be say, say things.

Maybe you don't want to, but it's in the end.

You have to find a way to drag that across the finish line.

And it's never easy.

It's never simple.

And that's just from leading a team.

Forget the world that Bob is in right now.

That's a, again, we talk about stakes.

That's, that's, that's a, that's 100x.

But again, it's, it's equally important.

And I'm glad Josh brought that up.

Leaders, look at it.

Look at yourself as caregiver.

Maybe I haven't said that.

We said crossover episode.

You are put on the mindset of a caregiver

from the point of view of this list

of what this young lady is saying.

That maybe that can fundamentally

shift your leadership mindset.

The fifth one is, is one that it's late for me.

It's operational excellence.

It's managing appointments and meds and safety

and behavior patterns and routines and home management.

Careers essentially run a complex op

with no manual building systems thinking process optimization

that goes along the way is what she said.

I think of this as like the blocking and tackling,

with a nod to Josh's football background.

This is that tactical stuff in the execution.

This is giving you as a leader.

So often we talk about leadership as being ethereal

or sort of supernatural or strategic

or looking ahead and I'm smacking myself a little bit here.

I don't know if we acknowledge that it's also a tactical

exercise of getting shit done, of putting things in place.

This morning, everyone, I was sitting there

with a week's medication box with four boxes per day

and I'm taking a ton of meds

and I'm filling up the boxes.

And there was something, it was very tactical.

There was nothing strategic about it,

but I accomplished something.

It has to be done.

It's an operational tactical thing.

And I wish more leaders, I think a lot of leaders go here

and I don't know if they give themselves leadership credit

for doing it in the right way,

not letting it overwhelm you,

but making sure that you're on the operational side as well.

Josh, well.

You know one of the mental models I think of

and I keep in the back of my head is doing the routine work

routinely and it has to be a thing that you do.

And there's so many folks that will start off doing that new thing

and they'll do good for a week or a month or whatever.

But then that routine goes away.

So you have to do the routine routinely,

not to make Tom on Steelers.

We're going back to football,

but I certainly barrel that from him.

But that's a thing where as a leader,

whether you're leading people or leading yourself

or leading whatever,

they're the value of the consistency

of the things that have to get done, always get done.

Things will start to fall apart

when the things that have to get done

slowly stop getting done.

And as a leader, that's modeling behavior.

If your team sees you doing the routine,

things routinely every time, every day, every week,

every one-on-one, every quarterly meeting,

every whatever it is,

you start to set a tone for this is what we do.

We win because we do the fundamentals well,

we do them right, we do them every time.

You think about building a product

and the patterns and standards that your product starts with.

And then your product gets old and a year later,

those pattern of standards are now gone.

And you're like, well, what happened?

The only thing that happened is people

stop doing those fundamentals.

It wasn't that the world changed,

you changed your ideas.

It was just that foundation started to crumble.

And so great leadership, great teams, great product,

great families, great, all of these things,

start with doing the somewhat boring,

the somewhat simple, the somewhat whatever you want

to label them, those things every day

and doing them well consistently.

That's what winning looks like.

To Bob's point, not a lot of people talk about that,

but that's the thing.

Absolutely.

I can't believe you gave Tomlin credit.

You should have just taken that.

If you wouldn't have mentioned him,

you could have taken credit for that brilliant quote yourself, John.

I would have done that.

Metacases, the sixth one is and we're getting into some

that are, they're all striking me,

but this is resilience and strategic endurance.

And I just love the phrasing there, strategic endurance.

And dementia caregiving isn't a sprint.

It's an endurance leadership.

Caregivers learn to sustain,

focus, recover quickly and lead through challenges

that would overwhelm those people.

It's the long game.

It's both.

I actually have an article I'm working on

from my caregiving sub-stack.

Someone said it, I forget who it was.

She's either said it's a sprint or a marathon or something.

And I sort of said it's both.

Caregiving to me is, and which makes it difficult,

it's a sprint and a marathon.

And so you need resilience in the short term to sprint

and you need resilience for the long term.

You need to build that as leaders.

We need to build that.

We need that strategic endurance that see it through.

That's stick to itiveness.

When people that are looking to us for leadership,

like, you know, it's different.

So your teams on the organizational leadership side

are looking to you for this.

My wife has lost her ability.

She's not looking for, she needs it,

but she's not asking me.

My wife's really not there most of the time right now.

So she's just, I'm just Bob.

Sometimes, you know, she still knows I'm her husband,

but there's a lot of our relationship that's gone.

And so there's not that, you know, historically,

she's had that expectation.

I was the strategic person.

I was the planner.

Now there's expectations have gone away.

So I have to self-generate them.

When you look around in your teams,

all eyes are looking leadership.

Eyes are looking at you.

You need to provide that.

And this is where that resilience and that endurance,

you need to provide that.

We've talked about that, I think, in a past meta-cast one,

one way we've phrased it is bringing yourself every day,

bringing it every day.

And whether, whether, not, you know, if you're sick,

that's fine.

You can skip a day, you can have a day off,

you can have a bad day.

But in general, on average, you have to bring it every day.

And that's that view.

And I'm not bringing it, I mean,

I'm bringing it lightly for me.

It's part of my role as a caregiver.

That's what I, that's the job.

Whether I like it or not.

And you know what?

I didn't say this earlier.

I don't like, caregiving is not for the faint of heart.

It's not something I really like doing.

It's something.

You didn't sign up for it.

I didn't sign up for it.

I have that.

Can I have that?

But damn, I'm going to do it to the best of my ability.

And I think I'm thankful my leadership stuff

comes crosses over.

My leadership mindset helps me with that.

It's like damn, it's, it's the job.

And I'm going to do it to the best of my ability

for as long as I possibly can.

So Josh, any reactions?

Yeah, there's a couple of thoughts I have there

is that yes, I think a team is looking to you

to do those things, but I also think there's times

when they don't really know what leadership looks like.

So there's things that you're doing

and they're like, what the hell is this guy doing?

Because they don't recognize leadership

because they've not had the opportunity

to see it in action.

And so there'd be times where you're doing these things

and people start to question you,

but you know, this is the right thing.

So you have to really invest in over explaining

and making sure the clarity on why this is the thing.

Also, anybody could be a great teammate

when things are good.

Bob is showing what a great husband looks like.

What a great teammate looks like

when something goes different than expected.

And many people who would just be like, hands up,

sorry, I'm out.

This is not what I signed up for.

But no, great leaders, great teammates lean in

when things don't go as planned and say, all right,

we're going to figure this out.

We're going to, we're going to, we're going to make this happen.

I don't know how I don't know what it's going to look like,

but we're going to figure it out and figuring it out

is never going to be simple.

It's never going to be overnight.

It's never going to be a quick answer.

It's going to be the things we've talked about.

It's about doing the fundamentals right day in, day out

for months, years, decades, all those things.

And that is tiring.

It is tiring to do all those things.

It is tiring to try and do the right thing every time.

It is much less tiring to take a day off to say,

oh, we're not going to do that.

But then, oh, we're not going to do that.

Turns into, oh, we're never going to do that again.

And so it starts to tear your rate over time.

So being a great leader is tiring.

Being someone that does things as right as they can every time

is tiring.

And when you are in it for the long haul,

when you are building a product,

when you are leading a family,

when you are helping a loved one,

there is no end date to that.

That doesn't end, right?

You don't turn that off.

Those are not things that go away.

They just are.

And so it is without a doubt going to be a challenge.

That's one is collaboration and delegation.

Again, this is one of those,

I'll be vulnerable.

I'm still working on this.

Effective caregivers build care teams, family, neighbors,

health care providers, community resources.

They learn when to take the lead.

It went to ask for help and how to coordinate

a multi-person effort.

This is an area of, and this shouldn't shock Josh,

asking for help is not one of my strengths.

Giving help is one of my strengths.

Loving people is one of my strengths,

or caring about people, wanting to develop people,

doing it for myself is not.

I'm getting a lot better.

But this is an area where as a leader,

you need to lean into the things you've built

and give yourself permission.

This is that self-care aspect of give yourself,

care for yourself as a leader.

So yes, you have to bring it every day.

And a part of that is making sure you do that is self-care.

It was funny, Josh, real quick.

I was talking to Diane's sister in Alaska last night.

And she hasn't seen Diane in a long, long time.

And she's traveling to Florida.

And we were talking about, I'm like,

I would really love it if you came by to visit.

And she was talking about maybe July

or the summer of visiting.

And then I went into Bob Slee Bob mode.

And I'm like, and when you get here, Carolyn,

I will say hello and goodbye,

because I will have my bags packed.

Because she gave the door, and I'll help you take care

of Diane.

And I said, damn, Skippy, you will.

I'll be at the door with my bags.

And I'm going to be going to Hawaii.

So we will pass in the night,

as you and you can take care of your sister for a while

and give me a break.

And we were laughing about that.

But there was a grain of,

I will have my bags packed, I'll do that.

And I'll take that help, right?

I'll take that help and I'll triple that help.

And I'll make use of it.

And I'm actually, and the caregiving is really helping me.

And I was on that path anyway.

I was on that path,

but it's really helping me to get on that path.

And even I have friends who call me on it.

Josh calls me on it.

Talks to me about that.

Do you need help?

What are you doing about that?

Extending.

So it's making sure that you're leveraging,

if you're a great leader organizationally,

you're building a great organization,

you're being into that.

Are you delegating?

Are you trusting?

Are you growing?

Are you walking away and going to the beach

and going fishing?

And if you are, invite me along.

Yeah, there's another layer I want to put on top of that

that I'm doing a whole lot more now of.

But I know in my career, I wasn't great at.

And Bob was on my case about this early and repeatedly.

And I didn't listen.

Young punk Josh didn't listen to Bob enough

when he should have was I didn't build a network

that was strong enough.

I did okay.

I worked on building my brand,

but I see a ton of leaders that are out there

that haven't really invested in collaborating

across the industry and really getting to know people

like Bob, like me, like others that just want to help.

You will be amazed at the number of people that want to

and are willing to help you if you just ask,

if you show up, if you go to an event.

When was the last time you went to an industry event?

A free one.

I bet there's free ones in your city sometime in the next month.

When's the last time you've been to one?

Leverage that to get better.

They're not all gonna be perfect.

They're not gonna be wonderful.

They're not gonna be home runs.

And you're gonna say, man, I'm really glad I did that.

But if you keep going, good things are gonna happen.

And that was something that again,

Bob was in my ear for a long, long time.

And I ignored that advice when I should not have.

And over time, I've gotten better at that.

But it's still work that I see many, many, many leaders

need out there, especially in trying times like today

when for all you know, you could be part of a 40% cut

within your organization.

And you might be a top performer.

You might be crushing it.

But maybe there's a decision that's been made

that you have no control over that now you're in a situation

where if that network was real,

if that network was pre-established,

you'd be in a better spot.

So that's all I wanted to add to that.

Okay, the final one, Bob.

I know one is compassionate leadership.

Caregivers lead from the heart, not the ego.

They make decisions rooted in dignity,

humanity and love, leadership at its highest level.

I see this as a direct, or I would hope.

Actually, I don't see it as much as I'd like.

I see it, but I hope for it

in professional organizational leadership.

But as a caregiver, it's all about love.

And you have to reconnect to love.

You have to reconnect to relationship

because it gets so hard sometimes.

I try to be present.

I try to have flashbacks to earlier in my marriage

with my wife and little moments

that remind me how much I care for her.

And they help buoy me up for the heart,

for the hard stuff in the journey.

And I'm intentional about that

because it's not always evident with her evolution.

It's not always there.

I've lost my wife to some degree.

Like I said, when we go to the organization,

why are you doing leadership?

Are you doing it out of you?

Then that's great.

Don't listen to the medicast anymore.

We're not for you, okay?

We're not.

We're for people who care about humans.

We're for people who are growing into growing humans.

We're here for people who actually want to make money.

Shit tons of money and gross great organizations

and build great products.

So we're not hippies, right?

We get the economic dynamics,

but we also offset it with the human dynamics.

We're not AI-ers for its own sake.

Oh, we'll just hire AI like the person that lay thought.

I can't let go of it.

This laid off those people.

So we're balanced, but it's about relationships.

It's about that compassionate leadership

that we're not leading machines.

We're not leading spreadsheets.

We're leading people.

And the best leads, that's what makes Josh a great leader.

Josh is not a great leader because of his intelligence.

This could go badly here.

No, Josh is smart.

Josh, Josh is not a great leader for his programming ability,

his technical ability, his role intelligence,

his football ability.

He's got a lot of strengths.

Josh is a great leader because of frickin' Josh, right?

He is a great person.

He is a great human, right?

His core is great human.

Around that are strengths, right?

He doesn't replace the great human

with something else.

Oh, I'm a great technologist.

Oh, I'm the smartest person in the room.

No, he's a great human who cares.

He has great caring for those around him.

And that's the message there.

You want to be a great leader.

And it's vulnerable.

Will you get hurt?

Yes.

Will you put yourself at risk?

Yes, right?

May you pay a penalty for that?

Yeah, yeah, you may, I mean, I probably lost jobs myself

because I put my teams first.

Yeah, there's dynamics there.

But I'm not going to swap out that internal kernel

of the essence of leadership because of that.

And when you're a caregiver, that is.

You can't, there's no swapage.

That's, that's it.

That's, that's your anchor.

And I would argue that's the anchor on the other side.

Josh.

So the thing that popped into my mind is it's called caregiving.

Oh, my God.

And it starts with care and great leaders bring that same mindset.

Bring that same mindset.

Now, that is different than how Bob and I were raised as leaders.

Bob and I were raised as leaders coming out of the Jack Welsh

or whatever was called where like, you know,

you basically don't speak with those subhumans

that report to you, you know, it was non-emotional.

You didn't care.

They were resources.

They were not people.

They were things in a spreadsheet.

And folks like Bob and I knew that wasn't the right way.

And there were times, and we've talked about this in the podcast,

I used to apologize when I was interviewing for a company.

I apologize for being how team centric I was.

I would say I'm team centric and sometimes too a fault

because I didn't want to be perceived as not

the kind of leader they thought I should be.

Then I finally said screw that.

I'm being me.

I'm being the leader that I believe is needed

in today's day, forget today's day, the leader that is needed

for any group of people.

Forget whether it was 1950, 1960, 18, whatever.

People respond to the kind of leadership

that we are talking about.

And it is hard and it is messy and it is scary.

And all those reasons are why many people choose not

to go down that path because it's difficult.

Now the difference is in caregiving, again,

we talked about there is no choice.

The choice is made for you.

So you have to step in to becoming a caregiver, keyword care.

And so what we're saying is for all those leaders

that that are out there, they're listening to this

is that these are skills that complement each other.

And there is very likely in your life

that you will be a caregiver.

So all of these lessons that you are doing now,

you are practicing so that you have a chance

to be more effective as that caregiving leader

in your future.

My gosh, medicasters, he dropped.

Be the caregiver, everyone.

You are, whether you, right, that's how people,

they need you to be the caregiver.

You have to step into the role.

So I'll leave it at that.

Josh, thank you for a beautiful drop of the mic.

Medicasters, a little bit longer episode.

I hope you've hung out with us

because I think this is probably one of the most,

the best medicine guests or the most important ones

we've ever done.

So for beautiful downtown Kerry, North Carolina,

and beautiful downtown Fuqua, Verena, North Carolina.

I'm Bob, the caregiver, Gailin,

and I'm Josh, also a caregiver, Anderson.

Hey, shake, and bake.

Take care, y'all.