From Information Age to Discernment Age: Leading with Curiosity & Emotional Intelligence with Dr. Alan Mueller

0:00that everybody welcome into the episode of vision pros live today we're going to do a quick hit and at bat with doctor Alan Mueller who's an expert on leadership he's been in the game for several decades and anybody who's been in the game for several decades has wisdom but especially a doctor who's placed his heart and soul around the ideas of emotional intelligence compassion empathy wasn't one of the words he used compassion wasn't but I got to see that firsthand as I got to know him right before the show he had a great interview as well with Ryan Westfalt of 537bd.com right now you're not currently working together but he is an operations guru that I do check recommend checking out if you're in the if you're in the need for infrastructure and growth and he brings a he brings in a unique level of knowledge from his experience helping multi billion dollar companies with with their operations so definitely say how to Ryan if you talk to him for me then there's these sponsors up here these are other resources I just love connecting visionaries with potential assets so that you guys can do the best that you can with your own

1:00visions and so journey to wellness up here we're actually rebranding during the relevant wellness right now to dr Shannon dot com dr Shannon and dr Justin Pierce help people with their wellness and I've sent several friends and family members to them who had what were considered chronic illnesses that were almost uncurable things like Crohn's disease now I'm not a doctor but I know that everybody that I've sent to Shannon has raved about what they've learned and about how much she's been able to help them and they've never been able to find help in other areas of the market so definitely check that out as you've got health issues she specifically specializes in helping women by the way then there's Jennifer Reed with practice mix permanent Jennifer Reed has worked at one of the most notorious companies in the world for a very long time and she's a leader and she helps with emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence and she specifically helps corporations through facilitating facilitating workshops for that cultural development what is that notorious company the iris she's she's worked at the iris for a very long time and helped the executives

2:03there and so it's not her words she didn't say it I said it by the way but I think a lot of you understand that wow like how much emotional intelligence what it take and how much care and leadership what it take to actually make a positive difference in that massive government environment and how much diplomacy skills would you have to have to be able to lead and guide executives there and so she's been actually a joy to work with i've worked with her now for about four months and it has been awesome to see her unlock how to help brands with practice by by leaning to practice and ultimately developing skills that will help them permanently improve their success another thing that's up here covered by the light a little bit the water project the water project is something that we support every month and that what they do is they help remote villages in Africa gain access to clean water and when I heard about that I didn't really relate I've never been thirsty my life and so when I started to look at the projects and see how they developed them and realized like dang my kids don't have to deal with this I don't have to deal with this

3:04I realized how neat it was that they show you when you when you contribute if you pay even $10 for a project you actually get told when the project gets completed and you get to see the proof of it the pictures that they take and you can learn more about the community it's a really neat opportunity so if you're inspired to help out with that please do and if you've if you've got something else in your heart and mind that you need help with if you've got a crowdfunding project for a friend or if there's some of their cause out there that you want to mention just drop it in the comments and give me a chance because I would love to see it I will personally take a look and see what the cause is and I might even bring it up on the show if it inspires me so without further ado let's bring Dr. Alan Mueller back on Dr. Alan thank you for being here and I know you said only with the robe could I call you that but it just comes out naturally so Alan it's great to have been a show it's all good and I love that you mentioned to Tim Duncan because he actually went to college about 20 minutes from me and uh wait for and I I was a band nerd in high school and I got to play in the Wake Forest pet band when Tim Duncan was playing in college and so got to see him live at Lawrence Joel Coliseum do his thing and you're right

4:06fundamentals right and it's it's I love I love and I'm going to be very non-partisan here I love Mike Shashewski and Roy Williams this is Duke and UNC's head coaches and if you're not the right if you're not from the East Coast and you don't know how serious the rivalry is just imagine uh just imagine I'm not gonna tell you who I told for but just imagine Yankee's Red Sox or Michigan Ohio State or you know big big serious rivalry that tears families apart right but both of those coaches understand that teaching the fundamentals is critical and something else they understand is that no one loss is is the end of the world losing a game is not the one it's a learning opportunity and so that's what I love about those those coaches like like Roy Williams like Mike Shashewski who they understand that you're we're all gonna mess up we're all gonna mess up so let's normalize that instead of shaming it blaming it doing a little happy dance when someone at work messes up what if we turned it into every time it's a learning opportunity and so the best organizations that I work with understand at the

5:09fundamental level that mistakes are going to happen and outside of that the life-threatening ones outside of those mistakes should be embraced as part of learning and growing and getting better huge huge I love that you mentioned it and uh that that that we'll actually lean into my tip um and so I'll lead the way on this give you a little bit of time to think through what's your advanced tip that's there um and the neat thing is this advanced tip can be used by all of you newbies as well um when it comes to the world of sports the world of sports is one of the best business organizations or industries in the world and you have so much transparent access I can see win records I can see loss records I can see contracts that were canceled I get to hear about the gossip you can't see everything I would love to see I would love to be in a film session of an MBA team that would be like the coolest thing ever to see the conflict and see how much how passionate they are but um you mentioned Coach Mike K and I remember seeing him in the uh Netflix documentary on the redeem team um and him working with the bronze james and Carmelo

6:14and the rest of the athletes who were part of that process and the the team that did not win gold um and all the things you go in there and then um jg reddick I absolutely love him as a coach um and what he's up to and he went to duke um i'm a twarhill i'm an earth care line of fan through and through um so that's that was a pill to swallow but then he came out with the mind the game podcast with the bronze james they started to reveal all sorts of cool secrets and stuff but all of you leaders out there just as just as Alan talked about we can we can gleam so much by watching those organizations seeing how they interact with their teams seeing other team members interact with them again looking at contracts are so many elements you can learn from and um you know i think i think the best leadership comes from just continuing to do our best to learn what else can i do top my game and to be of better service to those that i love and those that i serve so Alan how about you how about on your side to me the number one thing uh for advanced leaders is curiosity and this this can fair you well even if you're a newer leader but uh we're in the information age and we're also in the misinformation age all at the same time

7:19and that's tricky right i think that that year several years from now and i hope it's i hope it's soon we will be in what i'm calling the discernment age and the discernment age isn't necessarily what's factual or not but what's the most important fact and curiosity as someone who grew up gen X i'm going to tell you that there were times i'd be sitting at a restaurant with people and we'd be arguing about who an actress was in a movie or an actor was in a movie and there was no way for us to check it in other words yeah all of us know the internet now and i can pull up the internet and i can tell you if Kevin Bacon was or was not in that movie right but in the in the 70s 80s 90s as i was coming up we had i think curiosity was more alive because you didn't have the answers in your pocket in the form of a smart phone and so i think that as more quote unquote information is more available to us i think it's hurt our ability to be curious i want to say curious i mean curious about your own culture curious about others cultures curious about processes and how things

8:21work there's a company called Gore-Tex that i think made refined plastics and in their business model they cross-trained as many people as they could they had people who were in in HR getting on the factory floor and people who were in research and development getting into other aspects they called it the Gore-Tex model and so it was this idea that we should foster curiosity between departments because that helps us at so many organizations i work with their departmental rivalries one department doesn't like this department or that one's more well-funded or whatever and trust me when i say if you can do the experiment of sort of moonlighting in a second department and learning some of what they go through and get curious about that part of the operation just does so much for your leadership culture it really does yeah it's huge i love that you mentioned it i'll give a shout out to coach fletcher elinson as well who's been a co-host of the show and is also my personal coach he is huge on curiosity and creativity um and so his the formula that he taught me about that was when you know before getting upset um and before reacting to things um

9:26all this thing called pock um and that's to pause be present um get open uh get curious and be confident that all things will work out um right me for all that process curiosity is so critical to that growing and i'm like well if i if i get open and i still feel angry or upset or frustrated about something why i'm not allowing myself to get curious um about a propagate curious they can find out like oh what what was their real intention um and what were they really trying to accomplish well what is the what is the positive that comes out of this challenge there's so many great opportunities there so alin i absolutely love what you just put down vision pros those you listening in there were so many golden nuggets spread up in this um and we've got we're going to keep it a to a shorter episode today but i want to double down one more time on what dr alin's theory is i hadn't i hadn't coined this or put this on i'm glad you coined it because you deserve it and you've now unlocked my mind to it yes there is a there's a filtration that's taking place kind of there's a there's a transition that i think we're on the prophet on the on the on the cusp of

10:30and that is that transition from information age to discernment age and what a positive way to look at what's taking place right now i i think that a i at least in my experience has restored a ton of my curiosity um and part of it is the the development of the answers that it gives um it's so easy to think outside the box now um and and the thinking new ways and so i'd see what you're getting at there i'm going to leave some intrigue on that if those of you are interested and find out more about what alin has to say about this like me then to reach out to him like i'm going to all who know find out we can't and we can't dissect all of the value that comes from any author any leader in one session and so the key for all of us is how do we build profound and transformation relationships with great leaders like dr. Mueller so thank you for being here i'd love to ask you one last fortune cookie i'm ready opportunity to speak to our audience dr. Mueller what what message would you have for the visionaries out there that are working on pulling their visions together i would say

11:32number one be patient with yourself and gave yourself grace if you're listening to this right now we've all survived 2020 and so if nothing else that reminded me that everybody that you work with everybody that's potential client a current client everybody that works in your organization they're traversing things and give grace friends give grace and be patient be patient with others and yourself i love it we hope you subscribe we hope you give us grace as we continue to learn vision pros have an awesome time building a vision make it a great year and we'll see in the next episode take care everybody thank you valen thank you for being here today i'm really happy that you tuned in to vision pros live i'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward this is going to get more and more fun will have more more engagement as well one by people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself