Finding Leadership, Passion, and Purpose

Every opinion and belief you hold them. I don't care what it is, and I'll have this argument with anyone.

Like, I don't care if it's a politics, religion, spirituality, culture, you have to admit, I believe this right now, but everything you believe is an opinion based on your data set and your experiences, and you could potentially be wrong.

Mhmm. And so it's a critical juncture for us to have the humility to admit.

Here's what I believe. Please prove me wrong. Alrighty folks. Welcome back to transacting value. We're we're encouraging dialogue from different perspectives to unite over shared values.

Our theme for season 4 is intrinsic values. So what your character is doing when you look yourself in the mirror? If you're new to the podcast, welcome. And if you're a continuing listener, welcome back.

Today, We're talking our April core values of growth, stewardship and contentment with the founder of stronger leaders, stronger profits, and author of a warrior's mindset, 6 keys to greatness, mister Sean Patton.

So without further ado, folks on Porter, I'm your host. And this is transacting value.

Sean, how are you doing? I'm doing awesome, man. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I appreciate you making some time out of your day, especially on a weekend. Being as busy as you are to come and talk on the show.

So first off, thank you. Of course. Thank you for having me. I love what I love what you're doing here in the podcast. Great messaging and share your audience and getting a ton of value from it. So I'm excited to be a part of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it seems that way to me too. So I'm glad we can work together and get your perspective to help contribute to some of this. Now, there's a few things as far as the show structure's concern for anybody listening.

Where I like to start with a segment within the first couple minutes of the show. But before we get to that, I think it's also important that you guys understand who you're listening to.

Right? You get a little bit of me in each 1 of these conversations. But Sean, Sean's got his own brand and you guys may be unfamiliar with it. So Sean, let's start with you real quick, man. Who are you? Mhmm. Where you're from?

And what things have shaped your perspective? Absolutely. So I'll give you that fast version here. Originally from Canvas, a lot of time called warrants to college to town. We're outside Kansas City, and I grew up there.

And then after high school, I was lucky enough to attend a military academy at West Point up in New York. So, you know, a few weeks after high school, graduated head up to basic training at West Point at the cadet.

Been 4 years there on the wrestling team for 2 years. And graduated in 2005 into the infantry, which is my first choice, and was station 100 first airborne division.

So I was an infantry officer. I went to training. I came and I was walking up. I was about 2 meter for an infantry rifle tune, and then a scout sniper rifle tune.

Including 14 months in Southwest Baghdad, came back with the special forces assessment selection, got selected, 2 years of training later, got on my green beret, and I'm coming back to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the fifth special forces group where, again, I was, you know, lucky enough to command 2 different special forces attachments or ODAs a regular team and an underwater infiltration or dive team, spent 8 months in Afghanistan, a Pakistan border, and then a few other deployments around the Middle East.

And then as I sort of pushed my tenure mark as an officer, I got this entrepreneur itch, and I've been lucky. I'd spent nearly 6 of my 10 years as an officer commanding, you know, frontline soldiers.

And I feel like I'd ran sort of lifetimes worth of leadership lessons in about 4 to 2 years of training. And I wanted to share that. I I looked out in the world.

I just I felt like that it was missing from what I could see in organizations. I felt like it was missing people's lives and I'd seen how powerful leadership can be and so important in transforming people's lives.

So I decided that I was gonna try to take these lessons into business and go into leadership coaching and training and try to take these lessons I've learned and share them with the world in different ways.

But I've never spent a single day in business, not a lot of business admin or marketing classes at the Military Academy, if you can imagine that.

I really come from 0. And I do enough to know that commanding 12 greenberries on the Pakistan border and having w 2 employees is probably a different thing.

I didn't know how different, but I figured it's probably slightly different experience. So I thought, what do I need to do to get in a position where I can test my theories.

I can make these mistakes. I can go on testing the real world. And what's my fastest route to get there? And so get a formal education in business. Like, I'm an MBA from UNC Chapel Hill, and then started my first company.

And first company was outside of combat the hardest they ever done and start my first company, you know, 30 months of played overseas in my life and not a single panic attack, but I had 2 of them in my first 3 years of being an entrepreneur.

And got highs and all sorts of issues, and that doesn't end up failing. So kinda hit rock bottom, lost I went to a bankruptcy, lost everything, repivoted, started a new company, and a few years later, it was doing very well.

So, you know, 2, 3 years ago, I decided, well, I've sort of mission accomplished in terms of the prep work, and I started stronger leader, stronger profits, and it's been a a real close to ever since.

What is stronger leader, stronger profits? So stronger leader, stronger profits. We are a leadership education and training and coaching company.

Mhmm. And so We do executive coaching 01:01. We do workshops. And I'm really excited we're getting ready to launch a brand new stronger leaders academy here in the next quarter.

So that's gonna be our first version of this done for you leadership development program for companies where I think we can really create some enduring and enduring change.

But in terms of what it is sort of philosophically, we believe that leadership is the strongest power in the universe to create really positive or negative change.

Leadership if you look at human history, it is really the most influential and powerful force when you get a group of people under 1 vision and 1 set of values and driving forward in 1 way and it can go here and synchronized away.

Now leadership itself is sort of a moral. Right? So you can more to play the examples where it took us down the wrong path and play the examples where it took us to a great path.

But I really believe and we really believe that, you know, 1 of your guys is is contentment this month and fulfillment contentment and joy happiness passion in life.

That's how everyone should feel going to work. And I don't feel like very many people do, but they should. Right? It's useful.

All your time at this and with the right leadership and the right organization, people can feel fulfilled at work and they get to, like, what they're doing with their work, where however, that is inside a big organization, small organization as an entrepreneur.

That should be part of contentment. That should be part of fulfillment. And leadership is the way to get that. And I feel like some businesses and leaders and people think that, like, fulfillment and profitability are at odds.

Yeah. Right? Like that when you make a profit and then, yeah, you know, It'll be nice to do some coaching with our folks.

It'll be nice to do some, you know, culture. All these stunts people talk about. But what we're seeing more and more in the marketplace is that in actuality, those things are intrinsically connected.

Right? If you have people that have great leaders and great culture and, you know, imagine the time of you who look forward to their 1 on 1 every month with their manager.

Right? Like, they're looking forward to that call because they'll add the call they're gonna learn something about themselves.

They're gonna get development. They're gonna get feedback. They're gonna learn something new and and they're gonna talk about the future and how they impact their business. When you have that, those people stay longer.

Right? Turnover goes down. Those people are more engaged. Right? Because at the end of the day, money is a satisfied or not a driver. If you wanna drive people do a hundred 50 percent yeah. Exactly.

Right? It's about something more than that. If I say, hey, if you sell a thousand widgets, and you'll make this commission. You're gonna sell thousand widgets. But are you gonna go out of your way to sell 2000 if the money's out there?

No. Right? It's gonna money gets you to do just enough to get the money. But leadership and passion and purpose gets people to go above and beyond and improve themselves as a human.

And then you get better, more engaged employees that don't wanna leave And that creates great interest inside a company which actually directly improves profitability, which means you can put more money into your people.

So in my in our estimation, fulfillment and profitability when you have the proper leadership or a positive feedback loop.

And I think over the next 10 years, the companies that embrace that mindset are gonna thrive, and the ones that don't are gonna fail. Already folks sit tight, and we'll be right back on transacting value. Alrighty folks.

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You want more value for your values. Busbrough can do that too. In my in our estimation, fulfillment and profitability, when you have the proper leadership, our positive feedback loop.

And I think over the next 10 years, the companies that embrace that mindset are gonna thrive and the ones that don't are gonna fail. Yeah. Definitely. Well, I mean, that's the goal anyways.

Right? Like, money shouldn't be the destination. But it can be, especially in the short term, if your goals are, I gotta pay medical bills, I gotta pay for gas, I gotta pay for groceries, I gotta decide.

Do I pay for gas or groceries or anything in between? Right? So not to trivialize that. It totally can be a goal. However -- Okay.

-- I think it's also important for us in this conversation to establish a baseline and then also for our listeners to follow along a little bit with some clarity that the perspective we're talking about is not a hundred percent applicable to everybody.

Right? Because, like I said, some people may have different priorities where I don't really care, for example, how I feel going to work that day. I just need to go to work that day because I need an income.

And I'm living paycheck to paycheck. So maybe some sacrifices necessary. Right? But, Sean, I'm curious. You talked about all these businesses and you talked about leadership qualities and you talked about how values are important.

What about yours? So this is the first segment of the show I called developing character. Developing character. And it's 3 questions. Okay? This is essentially 3 different time frames.

So the first question, what were some of your values growing up, let's say, as a teenager? So when I was sort of a teenager, and I guess it kind of led me up to kind of getting into West Point.

You know, 1 of the observations that was sort of critical in my development, I think, was I grew up with I grew up with a single mom until my mom married my stepdad when I was in junior high.

And he was in the wheel, I'm great. It was an amazing experience, and he taught me so much in terms of you know, what being ahead of household is and what work ethic was. And he had taught me how to set goals and all these things.

When I was great as a child, even my mother is, like, the most caring, loving, you know, She raised me, worked full time and put herself through undergrad and grad school without any financial health from my biological father and became a school psychologist to work with special needs children and did that so that she could spend more time with me in the summer.

And before that, we were in poverty trying to run a day care center inside our apartment and it wasn't working today.

So that's like the example I saw in terms of, you know, empathy and just being a good person and and and having sort of a a strong moral compass on how you impact others.

And what I started seeing is I I think as we start to come out of that childlike bubble that that you're put into as a child, you start seeing the world. So I started I've always been a new z so politics, policy, the news, reading.

What what I started seeing was all these adults, and and this was I started having some conflict inside, I think, all these good people, adults, and around when you start realizing how messed up the world is, like, how many people are suffering and how mess up our systems are and how fundamentally flawed things are.

I mean, it's crazy out in America, but even overseas, I would ride I always rode the bus in school some time I was little remember watching reading a news article and it was a bomb that went off at a school bus station in Israel.

Right? So go take care of this. It's a dope violence there, you know, obviously for almost ever, but still today.

So and I remember thinking like, man, I've never worried about a bomb going off of my school bus stop. Yeah. Never. I never even crossed my mind out of the possibility.

Well, why? Why didn't I not even have to why is not even part of my reality? And this was actually happening to these kids if I say, hey, just because they were in a different place in the world.

And it started really pulling out a few things. 1, I started really thinking why why don't I have those conditions here in in America and other countries don't. And that's what led me to really decide I felt an obligation to serve.

So I think service to others is a value really gotten draining me there because I realized other people had bought and died and not just soldiers, although that was where my mind was, but the suffragettes, the civil rights activists, like all the people who have pushed our society forward have been persecuted for trying to change the status quo, I felt an obligation to be part of that change.

And I also I would say I was angry when I looked around because all these adults that seem to have all this power and influence and knowledge seem to be doing nothing about it.

Yeah. Well And and you know how it works. So you're like, you can't you can't damn a river. Without getting wet. You know? You can't move a current without expecting to be wet.

And I think a lot of that pushback is just gonna happen. You mentioned the status quo. And for the record, I'm assuming you were in grade school then through the nineties, maybe early nineties at that point.

Right? Yeah. So that was in, yeah, grade school basically throughout the nineties, I guess. You know, like, it graduated high school in 2001 and oh, yeah.

The 9 was the nineties kid 8 eighties baby nineties kid, I guess. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So me too. So just to put this timeline in perspective, these events you're describing aren't just stuck to them.

These things still happen now, whether we hear about them or not. It just means we don't hear about them. It doesn't mean they stopped happening.

So you can find obviously articles or videos or whatever. But all throughout the Middle East for the past 22 years for a lot of people is the first time they heard about conflict in the Middle East.

But for the majority of the world, and more importantly, the majority of the people living in the Middle East, it has not started 22 years ago.

So, yeah, understanding that perspective counts for quite a bit. And I'm curious then moving a little bit more closer to now, present tense So the second question, what are some of your values now then based on those things? Yeah.

So, you know, service is still 1 of mine I would say another value that matters to me is impacting others and contributing and making your life making your life matter and how to define that is how we impact others because we're communal creatures.

Right? So, you know, this is a concept.

You know, you mentioned the book at this North Star theory, I have a north star theory that I think really defines my values is every living creature is its most happy content to fill when its activities and environment are aligned with its genetic purpose.

Mhmm. I believe this is a universal law. You know, if you look at my wife and I have been married for 3 years now and we we don't have kids yet, but we've got plenty of plants.

Right? I think my wife is sort of, like, making up for no kids with a turn our house into a greenhouse a bit.

Right? So I've got tons of plants everywhere. And and if you even take it down this north star theory, down to the plant level you have a plan that's supposed to be in the desert and you water it every day, not gonna do well.

Right? You have a plan that's supposed to be in the sun and you put in a shade as do well or, you know, whatever partially in the sun, whatever that means the direction the company's plants.

I'm like, I don't know what partial sun is, but yeah. So it it applies that and the same thing happens in the animal kingdom. Right? Zoos have to do enrichment activities with their animals.

They have to bake a hunt for a lion where it will mentally and physically deteriorate. Like, why is that? Right? It's got free health care. Get a food at once. You put it by in a cage by itself, it will deteriorate.

You know? And so human beings are no different. So, I mean, uniquely human characteristics, our ability to communicate and work in tribes and put things together, which is hence leadership.

Right? So too often in our society, there's some benefits to be an individualistic society like we have in sort of the western world.

Right? Things like work ethic, things like, you know, freedom to make your decisions rewarded for your work and value.

Like, all these things that are so important and and it drives us forward. But it also, our society just pushes us to this idea that individual goals and accomplishments will make us fulfilled.

And it typically won't. It's not who we are as human beings or communal creatures. What we actually get fulfillment from is positively impacting other people.

And so a huge value of mine is that's a driving focus that leads to fulfillment and contentment is how are you gonna figure out who you are as a person and maximize your value, and how are you gonna impact the world around you?

And if you live a life that way, you can lead a life of fulfillment and contentment and joy. Yeah.

Hundred percent. You talked about the North Star theory, obviously, in your book, but specific to right now, you said, in an alignment, environment, circumstances, events, in an alignment with your, would you say, genetic purpose? Mhmm.

That may be sort of natural identity. Right? But like we talked about earlier, sometimes you gotta sacrifice a little bit and do things maybe to go against the grain and circumstantially, it's just necessary at that point in your life.

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Like we talked about earlier, sometimes you gotta sacrifice a little bit and do things maybe to go against the grain and circumstantially it's just necessary at that point in your life.

Right? So I'm curious then how do you differentiate or how do you identify a difference between that identity you talked about, those genetic purposes and pretenses, to maybe the roles that we fill in our lives.

Is there a correlation to those things? Yeah. Sort of nature versus nurture. Right? Okay. I think to clarify, so genetic purpose to me was more like as a human being. Okay. Like, as a human behavior, we are.

So that's that kind of communal impact. And then I think that at the individual work, That's just the conditions. Right? Like, that's just sort of the box, like, the rules of the game, the rules of the experiment.

And then you have to figure out based on, you know, like I said, who you are sort of naturally right versus your experiences and, you know, the culture you're in.

All those things start to shape you and your perspective so you can determine okay, within the confines of fulfillment will come from maximizing my impact on others, how do I wanna do that?

So you know, the values work is so important to figure out sort of who you are as an individual. And what I usually do then is have clients and people I work with then we we do a a SWAT assessment.

Some of the classic, you know, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, threat that we do in business. Or they haven't do them with the world around them, their worldview.

Where are the strengths based on the way the world should be and the way it actually is? Strength, weakness is opportunity stress. I know what you can do is once you know yourself and, like, are your strengths?

What do you like to do? What are your values? All these things? And you overlay with here's the way the world should be in my eyes and here's the way it actually is.

You can find a role in there to make it become your North Star that'll drive you. So it could be there's a threat to the way you think the world to be.

So countering that threat is important to you. Maybe it's that there's an opportunity to improve in this 1 area of the world. So you're gonna focus on this opportunity and bringing it to fruition.

And with the 1 thing too on this world view or, you know, what psychologists call model of the world, is that we never tell people what the scale or scope of that is.

Right? And it's so interesting to do this with people because we'll just put that out there as the guidelines.

They'll do the work. And 1 person is talking about how to alleviate generational poverty in their family and how people are making emotional rash decisions instead of looking at logic and looking long term.

Right? This this sort of traditional generational poverty cycle of short term thinking and short term gratification because they haven't had a lot of resources.

And then the person next to them is talking about original sin in human, you know, the human condition and how to change that mindset. And the other person is talking about politics. The other person is talking about their church.

Right? So you really start to see that the diversity in, like, when I say, change the world or impact the people around you, people's perspective of their world and how they think and what they think about is so varied.

And I think that that's really cool, you know. Definitely. Well, like you said, a lot of that's just due to background or, you know, who you surround yourself with.

Right? I think in that sort of I'll call it a group, and I'm using that word loosely just because we referenced a bunch of different backgrounds.

So in that group, that sort of collective reference, you just brought up People are people by nature. You know what I mean? And humans can be prideful. Humans can be greedy, which not to say there's things wrong with that necessarily.

But it is a natural sort of tendency. And so if you're working with people in that capacity or just talking with somebody like this 1 on 1, about people in that collective capacity.

How do you factor in selfishness? How do you factor in pride? How do you factor in, yeah, your worldview applies to you and my worldview applies to me, but and not to get into politics, but even a more poignant example now.

Well, you can't have subjective facts truly based defenses to what you hear about in politics or the news or the positions you get behind.

Right? So I guess what I'm asking is How do you gauge your level of pride and the level of reality on some sort of x y graph and say, here's a world view that's applicable to generically a lot of people.

Yeah. That's a really good question. So I think the key here is a term I'd love to use.

And if I could take 1 magic wand and wave it over and everyone in the world would have this quality. I think it would basically solve all the most world problems, which is a term called epistemic humility.

So epistemic humility is just the realization that as human beings, we have limited data to work with, like you said. Right? Like, it's a realization that, like, I don't know everything about anything.

So it's impossible too. Right? Yeah. Because if you did, that would mean that you could never learn and grow. If I study something, I work on a skill hopefully, I'm getting better at it.

I'm getting closer to real truth. Right? But that journey's never done. And also, I could be missing a key piece of data that means that my perception of reality is is flawed in some way.

Right? We see this in every whether it's social science or hard scientist. Right? Like, we're constantly making discovery, like, oh, crap. We were wrong thing about that. Oh, okay. Right?

But just internalizing that concept of realizing that every opinion and belief you hold. And I don't care what it is, and I'll have this argument with anyone. Like, I don't care if it's a politics, religion, spirituality, culture.

You have to admit, I believe this right now, but everything you believe is an opinion based on your dataset and your experiences, and you could potentially be wrong.

Mhmm. And so it's a critical juncture for us to have the humility to admit here's what I believe. Please prove me wrong. How many times the Internet I've seen still wanna actually put down?

That's good information. I changed my mind. So, like, how refreshing would that be to hear that once of, like, I never thought of it that way. I haven't opened enough minds to actually change my perspective on things.

We see people I'm not saying people don't change their perspective, but I'm saying it's a sort of selfish, sort of a protective mechanism that people have to want to lock in a hard absolutism because they're scared of the unknown.

And so we have to do the self work Yeah. We have to do the self work on ourselves to be okay with the unknown, just fit in the unknown and be like, you know what?

Nothing is for certain. And I have a certain set of beliefs, and I'm gonna think about them, and I'm open to change them. And that's how we grow with individuals.

So to answer your question, that's the key distinction. We have to do the work ourselves and start to work against our own ego that wants us to be right all the time. And just make our best guess and be informed.

And I think that that will that work, that self work that each individual needs to do, opens up and makes life so much more enjoyable and exciting. Right? If everything is just a learning opportunity, like, how fun is that?

It makes life a lot more entertaining and a lot more enjoyable, I think. But in terms of just what we're experiencing, but when you apply to other people, just even in conversations, oh, here here's a point.

Talked to a guy the other day. He said, hey, don't worry about calling me. Just send me a text. If everything's, you know, if everything was good, whatever we're talking about.

And I think, yeah, I I get that. But if I have any follow on questions or if you've got any questions, call you and let you know and that we can just sort it out in the moment.

He said, no, it's fine. Just send me a text. We'll take care of it. Well, that I think is becoming more of a trend. And mind you, I'm talking about generally speaking, first world problems and relative self illiteracy here.

Okay. So if that's the mode of communication at this point in time, I think it's also important to point out that humans almost need to relearn how to communicate because technology has changed that.

Not that it's changed for the worse, but it's changed that.

There's been an impact. Already folks sit tight and we'll be right back on transacting value. Did you know that children who do chores to earn their allowance have more respect for finance and more of a drive for financial independence?

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A foolish man large for his own. I think it's also important to point out that humans almost need to relearn how to communicate. Because technology has changed that. Not that it's changed for the worse, but it's changed that.

There's been an impact. And I don't know about you. I miss interpret text messages all the time. I read with an intonation that makes sense in my head, maybe not what you intended to convey. So it's difficult. Right?

But to sit down and have a conversation, station about the weather is great for about 30 seconds and that's assuming you care about the weather or to sit down and talk about the food at a restaurant or you know, how to, I don't know, get into a club or publish a book or sort of smaller talk things.

But when you start talking about, like you mentioned earlier, Social sciences or culture or perspective or language or leadership for that matter.

Well, now how do you know which questions to ask? Or which would be more effective, or how do you know which points to listen to?

More importantly, in my opinion, how do you actively listen during a conversation to actually contribute some value which obviously is the premise of the show here.

So if we're tying those 2 pieces together, the self leadership aspect that you just brought up and understanding how you come across to other people the sort of self literacy that I'm describing, there's an important level skill set.

Of being able to have a civilized conversation with an open mind.

Right? But I think it's equally as important to bring up. You don't have to sacrifice your position to do that. It's not a moral flexibility where you don't stand for anything.

It's just a position where you're willing to listen. And I think that level of mutual respect and ability goes a long way and we don't that it doesn't happen, but we don't hear about it that often anymore.

In your experience, I guess it's probably fair to say over the last 20 years almost now.

Working in consulting, writing your book, working in the army, even maybe going through school and getting your MBA, but working with other people and building a team Have you found the ability to communicate effectively is degrading as a trend over the last maybe 2 decades?

And then if you have -- Right. -- what do we do about it? It's a really good point. So first of all, I think, yeah, everything you said there was fantastic and well stated.

I don't know if the overall I think it's hard to be, like, overall like, at what scale are we talking to say communications between people have degraded.

I think you can look at you can almost take, like, 1 sliver and be, like, online or, you know, text versus phone calls or remote work versus in person. Right?

Like, the scale of that ad versus just, like, overarching, are we better or worse at communicating? I think it depends. I do think that communication, like, when I go into work with companies and and relationships is sort of is the key.

And it often is almost every company I work with, and and maybe you can probably relate to when there's a failure, communication is at least a contributing factor and usually the primary cause.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Some sort of failure. Right?

So I do think it is a very important skill to learn, and I do think that the modalities of how to do that have changed I think to your point, I think the key is there's so much information now from different people that it's a matter of, like, what's your filter?

Like, who are you gonna listen to? And we have to be very educated in detecting the bias that is inherent and sometimes unintentionally and sometimes intentionally in almost all the communication and information we're getting.

And I think that to have good communication, the key there to me is to create sort of the same to come to a shared understanding of maybe the importance of that communication or to come to a shared understanding of this is how we like to communicate with each other.

So, for example, right, it's interesting to work with some companies where especially, like, new digital companies.

Right? That trendy cool hip, and we do everything about I think there's an over emphasis on things like personality testing, communication styles on it. I mean, I think it's important, but it's not scalable.

Right? So if you can bring it to a common modality, like, hey, this is how we communicate here. This is our culture. This is the expectation. The expectation is If you're checking on facts and details, a text is fine.

If we're gonna talk about ideas, a call is how we do that. If we communicate internally, it's on Slack And externally, it's just via email. You know, our marketing is gonna be 80 percent video shortly.

Like, you start saying, like, what based on what I'm trying to get out of this, I don't think there's, like, 1 best way to communicate, but I do think that setting the conditions for that, whether that's in your business, whether that's with your friends, that's in your relationships.

Right?

Like, with your partner or, you know, with my wife, that's part of that relationship is figuring out how do you communicate and how do we like to extending the conditions so we can communicate better, not necessarily what is said.

And so, like, my wife my wife is an example. She's much more direct. She's from the West Coast in Oregon. I'm from Kansas. And, you know, it's kinda like, don't rock about Midwest. Like, everyone's happy and nice all time. Yep.

And so and and we luckily, we're getting so much better this over the years, but you know, she would say get I would do something to irritate her or expectations aren't met because I think that almost every issue with a relationship or between people comes down from just unmet expectations.

There's to be, like, different set of expectations. It's very rarely that 1 person has a clear set of expectations.

That person's like, ask her, I don't care about you. It's usually 10 to different expectations. So, like, if those expectations weren't met, you know, she would in my viewpoint, right, kind of like, you should be flipping out of me.

Right? Super dark. Why is this going on? What's that? And in my head, I'm thinking, why is she so upset?

Because for me to communicate to her that way means that I'm at, like, an 8 to 10. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so I think if she's at an 8 to 10, and I'm, like, why are you an 8 to 10 over the long period?

Like, that'd be a deal. And we have these issues. And then as we talked, you know, outside of those instances when emotions went so high, we realized, actually, she's at a 3 in her opinion.

She's like, it's better to be directing it on the open. She's not freaking out. She's not that upset.

She's just kind of nipping about earlier than me. And so we kinda found a way to level set. And I have that understanding. And she understands where I'm coming from. And so she communicates different to me and I hear it differently.

So studying the conditions of the communication, I think, is the most important part to have that quality communication between individuals, whether that's in the organization or as individuals?

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So setting the conditions of the communication, I think, is the most important part to have that quality communication between individuals, whether that's in the organization or as individuals. I mean, it's like any other mission set.

Right? Once you're able to more effectively or actually assess a baseline, you can better plan and count for anomalies. And More often than not, you don't wanna get caught off guard by them. So every other relationship's the same way.

Right? Like you talked about with you and your wife, but, you know, working with people, it could be I don't know, could be coworkers, could be between classmates, could be the kids to parents, parents to grandparents, kids to whoever.

The relationship is is almost irrelevant, but Yeah. Understanding how and why people interpret and communicate the way they do is a skill set.

And I think counter to your point, which were phenomenal points, managing expectations, but counter your point, I think that is at least not as heavily publicized or taught.

Even though it's continually, consistently and equally experienced.

So, you know, talking about those considerations and managing expectations and how to work and talk with people's super important. And actually, to that point, I just have 1 other question I wanna ask you before we wrap this up.

You talked about these natural gifts or at least people identifying their own. Strengths and weaknesses in certain parameters and environments.

And I agree. I I think that's important. But again, There are a lot of people, some listening to the show, some just existing that haven't heard of me yet, that hopefully will eventually, or your readers or your clients.

Where they don't necessarily have the luxury of being able to effectively steward their skills. In an alignment with their values or with who they are as people.

Because, like I said, maybe they just for example, I've got 3 kids and I'm renting a motel 6 apartment room because my house got flooded and now I can't focus on what I can contribute because I need to focus on what needs to get done.

You know what I mean?

Do you see that kind of stewardship as a luxury? In that capacity. So I think, you know, it's interesting. I've got a tells you maybe how weird I am, but I've got up on my whiteboard, like, early over here in my office.

I keep it running list and it changed over time of what do I think, in my mind, are proven universal concepts that help explain the world around me.

I wish you're talking about. I've got a whiteboard. And what I have over there and what I teach is the importance of understanding Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Right? So -- Sure. I think that kind of what you're talking about is important because we have to understand that for ourselves and we have to understand that for other people.

Right? Because everyone else is being affected by this. So if, you know, we're trying to have a conversation about contentment and enlightenment and fulfillment, like all these, like, existential self actualization values, Right?

But if someone doesn't know where they're gonna eat in an hour or, like, they haven't eaten in 2 days and they're gonna eat tomorrow, like, they don't care.

Right? They're not gonna relate. It's not gonna be there. Thing. So if we don't have safety. Right? So if we don't have things like, we have quality housing, we have a safe place to go, we've got financial stability.

All those base needs have to be met as a human being so that we can sort of send you that. So in that sense, is it a privilege yes I think it's at least an indicator.

Right? If if we're even sitting here and, like, you know what? I write on universal concepts on my whiteboard as I contemplate life on a Wednesday. Right? Like, that is and that's that's appropriate. I don't feel lucky to have that.

And I think it's important to, 1, if you understand Maslow's hard to give needs and that that this sort of underlying human psychological condition, then you can relate to people differently, and you can kinda meet them at your level.

And this is actually a conversation I bring up Maslow when I teach leadership workshops because to your point, that's why whole person leadership is so needed because you and I both know if you have an employee and they're having financial difficulties and they are struggling with debt or bills or something like that.

They don't know if they're gonna be able to pay the rent or the mortgage next month. And you try talking about, let's go a hundred 50 percent on our, you know, our effort inside the warehouse today.

You're not talking at their level. Right? Or the relationships. Right? Like, I I was previously married and and I was an army and I went through divorce and was awful.

And I remember, I apologized and tears to my my team started on Tom. I do you're not getting the best commander I could be right now. I'm so sorry. You're not getting the best of me. And he's like, no. You're flying. You're killing it.

But in the in the moment, I knew that I wasn't bringing him a hundred percent to that team and to work because this my my relationship, this my safety and my family was falling apart, and I didn't know how to deal with it.

So It's it's looking at it from 2 perspectives. Right? Like 1 being the short term, here's what I need to accomplish to, like you said, satisfy this sort of base level within this hierarchy of needs.

However, maybe considering the fact not to lose sight of the overall direction and value system of what you're trying to accomplish.

Because 1 can definitely be within the other, but And given time, effort, energy finances, whatever circumstances, you may need to subjugate 1 need for another in that moment.

And I think that's a fair point. Like, when you said, when you got divorced, I got divorced, and it was a miserable experience for a whole bunch of different reasons. And it's difficult to focus on anything else.

Right? So you have to sort of play the hand you're dealt and then go play another table. That's fun. Right? But -- Yeah. -- Sean, for the sake of time, man, I really appreciate this opportunity.

And for anybody listening, if they want more information about you, find out about your book, look into stronger, leader, stronger profits, maybe even get into the academy once you guys get it going and flowing. How do people do this?

What do they do? The best place to go is the website. So it's stronger leaders, stronger profits dot com. You can also find me on Instagram as Sean Patton presents from a Facebook at LinkedIn. And definitely shoot me a note.

We like I said, we work with individuals at all levels, business owners, mid level managers, executives, workshops, keynote speaking, And then so we're really excited for this stronger leaders academy rollout in the second quarter where we can help companies create and enduring leadership culture inside their company and, you know, unlock sort of that next level of performance.

I think I mean, I don't think all the data shows that a strong leadership, culture, you know, communications, all these things that we just talked about today.

Right? Helping people establish 20 or you have any things we talked about today or basically all in the account because they're all part of self leadership and then leadership of others.

And so we're really excited to, like, have all that go up. Well, then I'm happy and honored and humbled to help you test your curriculum. But Beautiful.

Yeah. Such a cool opportunity for everybody listening the website and Sean's social media presence and all that information. That'll be linked in the show notes. So click see more. Click show more depending on which a player is.

And you'll be able to see all those links also. Again, Sean, thank you very much. But for everybody listening, that was a great talk. So thank you for listening. To our core values for April of growth, stewardship, and contentment.

I'd also like to thank, frankly, everybody that you came across at West Point all the guys you worked with, all the experiences you've had, and obviously your team now, I think you guys have a pretty solid operational team at SLSP.

And without them and your experiences, there's no way this conversation would have been as cool as it was.

So thank you to them also. But to our show partners, Keystone Farmers Market, Hope and Clubaker Farms, and Buzzbrough obviously for your distribution. Thank you also.

Now, folks, if you're interested in joining our conversation or you wanted to cover our other interviews, check out transacting value podcast dot com, follow along on social media where we continue to stream our new interviews every Monday at 9AM Eastern Standard Time on all your favorite podcasting platforms.

So until next time. That was transacting volume.