Get ready to be energized and inspired as we welcome Anton Gunn, a powerhouse of leadership and service, to the show. Anton, renowned speaker, bestselling author, and former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, generously shares his insights on leadership, personal influence, and empowering others. He sheds light on how to show genuine care for others and guide them towards their own success. Anton's proud moments as a father shine through as he talks about his daughter's journey into adulthood.
Anton's life has been a remarkable confluence of experiences and influences. From a family legacy steeped in military service to his own journey filled with loss, purpose, and resilience, Anton is a testament of strength. He chose to immerse himself in the realms of education and sports, over military service. However, the tragic loss of his brother in the USS Cole bombing brewed in him a strong desire to serve his country. Anton also introduces us to his Just Lead Toolkit, a collection of his experiences and teachings that have influenced leaders all over the world.
Connect With Anton!
Website
Just Lead Toolkit
Anton's Books
LinkedIn
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it.
Keep in touch below!
Get ready to be energized and inspired as we welcome Anton Gunn, a powerhouse of leadership and service, to the show. Anton, renowned speaker, bestselling author, and former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, generously shares his insights on leadership, personal influence, and empowering others. He sheds light on how to show genuine care for others and guide them towards their own success. Anton's proud moments as a father shine through as he talks about his daughter's journey into adulthood.
Anton's life has been a remarkable confluence of experiences and influences. From a family legacy steeped in military service to his own journey filled with loss, purpose, and resilience, Anton is a testament of strength. He chose to immerse himself in the realms of education and sports, over military service. However, the tragic loss of his brother in the USS Cole bombing brewed in him a strong desire to serve his country. Anton also introduces us to his Just Lead Toolkit, a collection of his experiences and teachings that have influenced leaders all over the world.
Connect With Anton!
Website
Just Lead Toolkit
Anton's Books
LinkedIn
Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it.
Keep in touch below!
Three simple questions that if you want to be an influential leader who has an impact, then understand that every person you meet has on a t-shirt that has those three questions on the front of it, and they want to know your answer to those three questions. But here's the catch they don't want to hear the words yes to those three questions. They don't want to hear yes, I care about you. Yes, I'm here to help you. Yes, you can trust me. Nobody wants to hear yes. They want to see yes in your actions. How do you treat them? How do you show up every day? How do you show people that you care about them? How do you show people that you're helping them to be successful at their lives? Again, as I started off, I said, empowerment is the essence of leadership. So to empower people means to help them, to give them the tools, the information and the resources to determine their own destiny Not your destiny, but their own destiny.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Win Today podcast, a weekly tool intentionally crafted to help people enhance performance, feel inspired and conquer life. Our commitment is that you will learn from some of the most disciplined, heartwarming and inspiring people on the globe, in addition to receiving a piece of a winning playbook from myself or a renowned expert in their field. My name is Ryan Cass and I am your host, and it is my purpose in this world to inspire people to establish a foundation for sustained success by developing systems that will enable you to accomplish your goals, break systemic trends of adversity and chart a desirable course for life. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please help us achieve our vision of becoming one of the top podcasts in the world by subscribing to the show, sharing it with somebody who you believe will benefit from it and leaving a review. Let's connect with our guest.
Speaker 2:Today we have someone who is a champion of service, inspirational speaker, bestselling author, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, former South Carolina Game Cock and the CEO of 937 Group. This is also somebody that has had an influence on my life for far longer than he knows. It's somebody that I saw give a speech at the South Carolina Aquarium a few years ago, and I remember thinking to myself that this gentleman is somebody that I just want to keep a close eye on because he's really making change in the world and inspiring lives and showing people how to live their best lives. It's my pleasure and honor to welcome Anton Gunn to the show. Anton, welcome brother.
Speaker 1:Thank you, ryan. It's great to be with you. So excited for the opportunity. Wow, you remember that event at the Aquarium. You just brought it back to my mind. It was a great day, was happy to be with you all, so glad it had an impact on you.
Speaker 2:I'll never forget. You came out, had some pretty awesome theme music and it's just this to paint the picture for everybody else. You're in an aquarium, which is already impressive enough, and you see all these really cool fish and displays, and then you've got this larger than life figure that then literally and figuratively comes out and Anton's, a big dude, comes out and just lights you up. And you came out and then you went back and you're like no, no, no, no, no, I need some more energy. We replayed the theme music and you're like, let's go. And you come back out and, man, I was just juiced up and again, you've had an influence on my life for several years now and I want you to know that. So thanks for what you do.
Speaker 1:Well, I thank you for those words, man, and this is just an honor and a privilege to have an impact and be influential in people's lives, and that's my goal is to help people to be better at whatever they want to be in life. That's the importance of leadership. The essence of leadership is empowering people to be able to determine their own destiny, and that's what I believe and that's how I operate.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful and, anton, we can read a lot about you via various outlets you've been featured in, whether it's Wall Street Journal, time, your books, your resources that you offer to people. But what's something that maybe isn't easily accessible or that's off the paper, that makes you human and makes you proud, and why?
Speaker 1:Oh man, the great, great question to start with, so I would say that I'm the father of a only child, a daughter, my daughter Ashley, who's now 18 years old and is in college, and my greatest challenge and my greatest reward in leadership is being her dad, and it's been the light of my life to be able to watch her grow and flourish and rebel against me because, you know, anybody who has teenage kids know that whatever you tell them to do, they want to do the opposite. But for her to now be 18 and in her first semester of college, and to hear the number of people saying you have an amazing daughter, you and Tiffany raised Ashley well. What you all did with Ashley was wonderful, and many times I feel like I was struggling every day as a parent, that I was failing as a parent, and to see that gives me an immense surprise and I'm so excited about her journey. Her interest and focus is that she wants to be a foreign service officer and serve our country, live abroad and represent our nation in respects to other nations, and so to have that clarity and vision as an 18 year old and be directed by is something that's really powerful and impactful and I'm very proud of that.
Speaker 1:So I don't get a chance to talk about Ashley a lot on podcasts or any of my books. I did talk about a little bit in one book but she was in pre-bubity at that stage and so it was like really World War III but I didn't see a lot. But God, I'm just so grateful that she is starting independent adult life on her own in such a strong way, one that I'm completely comfortable with and come about and just proud of how she just settled in. She's like she's been ready for college forever and it's just a grateful experience for my wife and I.
Speaker 2:Man, let's go. Ashley, that's beautiful and I love that you mentioned family with that question. There's so many things you could have picked out and I believe that I love asking that question right off the bat, especially to highly accomplished people, people that are really making waves in this world, because 99% of the time it always comes back to something at the heart and deep in the heart. I can't think of anything deeper than your own, your family and your child, your daughter. I'm not surprised to hear that she wants to go and support the United States and work as a foreign ambassador to the United States. I love to understand the genesis of why people do what they do and where it started. You come from a long line of public servants. The majority of your family, from what I understand and have researched, serve the United States in some capacity, whether it be the military or yourself and politics. Talk through the influence that your family has had on you and really the genesis of the work that you do now, anton.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I'll start with Ashley and then I'm going to go backwards. My wife and I we never encouraged Ashley at all to do anything in public service. We never talked about it. We asked her what she wanted to be. She said a doctor. We were leaning into that. She got internships and service opportunities there. Then she said I wanted to be a lawyer. I said, okay, I got plenty of friends who are lawyers. We want to talk to you about that. All of a sudden, out of the blue, she says I want to be a foreign ambassador, I want to work at the UN, I want to work in an embassy. So I didn't feel like I influenced her that way, but it's ultimately what she wanted to be. I say that to say my family was the same way on me.
Speaker 1:My great grandfather served in both world wars. At the age of 20, he was drafted into World War I. The war was over nine months later and he went to work in a coal mine in West Virginia for the next 25 years. Then, at the age of 45, he was drafted into World War II. Some people wonder man, how could you be drafted at 45? Wasn't there a draft cutoff? Yes, there was a draft cutoff. But his birthday was a day before the draft cutoff About one day he was draft eligible and his number got called. He's a veteran of both world wars. At the same time that he was serving in World War II, his oldest son, my grandfather Lewis Gunn, volunteered to join the Army during World War II. My grandfather was in the Army Special Services, which is a cool name for what it really was, which was the Army's baseball team. My grandfather played baseball during World War II for the Army.
Speaker 1:My grandmother, his wife, my granddad's wife, my grandmother was a welder in the shipyards in northern Virginia, so she didn't put on a uniform, didn't go abroad and fight with guns and weapons, but she had a blow torch in her hand. And she was a welder who helped to build three Essex-class aircraft carriers the Shangri-La, the Terrawah and the Lake Champagne. And so she did her part. But between her and my grandfather they had four boys. All four of them put on a uniform and served our country. Uncle Clarence was a career war veteran as a Marine. Uncle LG was in Vietnam in the Army. My dad was in the Navy for 22 years. He joined Vietnam era but was also a Desert Storm veteran, so he retired as a Desert Storm veteran. And then my dad's baby brother, my uncle Lucky, who joined the Army in 1973, but he didn't see combat and the Vietnam War was over before he finished boot camp and so he served for six years in the Army.
Speaker 1:Those are basically three generations great-grandfather, grandfather, father and brothers. And then I'm in that fourth generation and my dad told me not to join the military. He says, antoine, you have a chance to go to college and play football. You should go and do that, and that's why I decided to go out to college and play football. But my brother, sharon, joined the Navy, like my dad. So he's a fourth generation. And that's just on one side. Everybody on the other side.
Speaker 1:My mom was a school teacher, 30-year educator, so she worked in the public education system, so she was in her life helping to develop other people's children. Her brothers were social workers or nurses, sisters were nurses. My aunt was a social worker, so you got social workers and nurses, people who worked local government jobs, who did stuff to help people live better lives and be public servants. And I wanted to be a teacher, like my mom when I graduated from high school. What I wanted to do was be a high school US history teacher. I wanted to teach 11th grade US history and then wanted to coach. Excuse me, I wanted to coach girls basketball. Got a frog in my throat so I wanted. You might have to edit this part.
Speaker 2:That's all good.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I wanted to be a high school teacher, 11th grade coach girls basketball. And the reason why I wanted to coach girls basketball is because of not anything else other than I think they played fundamental basketball better basketball than the boards. And why did I like girls basketball? Because I was a basketball player who didn't have a lot of vertical leap, so I couldn't get off the floor. And because I couldn't get off the floor, I had to use the backboard all the time. I had to use my pivot feet, and so when I would watch women play basketball, they were much more fundamentally sound, and so my life was.
Speaker 1:I wanted to teach US history in high school and I wanted to coach high school basketball, girls basketball, help people to win games and go to college that's all I ever wanted to do. I didn't think about serving a president. I didn't think about any of these higher things that I ended up doing. I just wanted to be a teacher, and life has this way of putting things in your way, creating processes, putting you in painful situations that helps you to end up seeking out your greater purpose. If it doesn't beat you down and we know so many people life ends up beating them down and they end up washing out. But for some of us, those of us who have the right group around us, find the right mentors, find the right spaces, we end up fulfilling our purpose, and I'm a manifestation of having the right people around me, helping me to be able to fulfill my purpose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I love that, and I also love that it wasn't a requirement for you to go in the military. Your family didn't say, anton, you must carry on this line, and even with your daughter it was hey, you know. Basically what I heard you say is we want you to do what you feel is right, what you feel called to do and where your heart is taking you. And I believe that we can influence people just by our way of being. Sometimes you don't even have to say anything to influence somebody to go a certain direction or to want to go a certain direction. And what I one thing I love that you just mentioned is that there are moments in life that have provided you challenges that have also shaped you. You mentioned your brother, who served and ultimately gave the greatest sacrifice for our country. How did that influence your life and impact and fortify your mission and how you serve people today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, great question, and thanks for bringing it back to that. So I'm the oldest of four boys. I was the first born of my parents and my brother, sharon, was the second born. He came five years after me. And then I have baby brothers who are twins Jason and Jamal. They were born two years after Cheryl, so there's seven years between me and the twins, and my mom, who was one of 10 kids, seven of which were younger than her, always knew it was important for the older sibling to take care of the younger sibling, to get them ready for school, get them dressed. Don't let them get in trouble, don't let nothing happen to them, you know, if somebody tried to beat them up on the playground to stand up for them. And my mom pretty much raised me the same way Take care of your brothers. And so I took my responsibility of taking care of my brothers very seriously, like picking out which clothes that they wore, telling them what they didn't need to wear, what girls they couldn't date, what girls they should date, what major they should major in in college, I mean like every decision. And so when Sharon was thinking about potentially joining the military, I told him you need to join the Navy, just like dad did, and my brother listened to me and he joined the Navy, and we were so excited to have him be in the fourth generation serving our country. He joined the United States Navy in January of 2000. And 10 months later, on October 12, 2000, my brother, sharon, and 16 of his shipmates were killed by two Al Cater suicide bombers Abort the USS Cole when it was attacked in the port of Aden, outside the country of Yemen, and losing my brother in that way Was one of the most devastating things that could ever happen to me or anyone else. And now I want to ground it in this context that three generations of men in my family all served in wars, but they all came home.
Speaker 1:But in 2000, there was peacetime. There were no real enemies of the United States of America. I mean we weren't in conflict anywhere. You know the Russian Empire was gone at that point and so there's no Cold War. You know we had squashed Saddam Hussein in 1991 and everything was calm and quiet. But two Al Cater suicide bombers put a thousand pounds of C4 explosive in a boat and pulled it alongside my brother's ship and detonated themselves, putting a 40 by 60 foot hole in the side of the ship, killing 17 and injuring 39 during peacetime, and this was before 9-11, so most Americans had no idea who Osama bin Laden was. But, most importantly, this was my younger brother, who I told to join in 8. And my mom raised me to take care of my brothers. And here I am, putting my brother in harm's way. At least that was my mindset when it happened.
Speaker 1:And so, in addition to just the pain and the trauma of a terrorist attack and my brother dying in that attack, I'm blaming myself that this is another one of Anton's mistakes, because I made a lot of mistakes. I'm not perfect. A lot of people love to put on the airs that they're perfect, but I'm a flawed individual. I'm a flawed individual. So when I say another one of Anton's mistakes, I rewind the clock. You know, for all intents and purposes, when I was at the University of South Carolina playing football, I thought I made a mistake and I went to the wrong school. When I majored in history and couldn't find a job 18 months until the 18 months after I finished college, I thought I made a mistake in my major. I thought I made a mistake of moving my comb and sleeping in my parents' house because I didn't have any way to stay, because I didn't have a job Again. I had had a lot of successes, but I've had many more mistakes, and so I felt like it was my fault that another one of Anton's mistakes and I was pretty down on myself.
Speaker 1:I was really in a very, very dark place, and what turned it all around is, you know, I was listening to a lot of Les Brown at the time. If you don't know who Les Brown is, all of your listeners need to. You know, get a dose of Les Brown For Les Brown's sake. In a video cassette tape that I had I don't know where I got that VHS from he says life will knock you down. Life will always knock you down, but when it does try to fall on your back, because if you can look up, that means you can get up. If, for whatever reason, that quote resonated with me and I said well, what can I do to get up?
Speaker 1:And to me, getting up was focused on others more than myself that I knew that with the pain that I'm feeling right now, the person who's feeling more pain than me is a mom who lost their child. You've always heard that the most devastating pain is for a parent to outlive their children. You're not supposed to outlive your children, and so that made me focus on my mother who lost her son. It made me focus on 16 other mothers who lost their sons and daughters aboard the USS Cole. It made me focus on those families, and so it became my role and my mission to serve and support the families of the USS Cole.
Speaker 1:On top of that, I began to support and serve other people.
Speaker 1:I got involved in community work, nonprofit work, serving on boards, doing things in communities, and recognizing that, although I'm in pain, I got a job, I got health insurance, I got a house, I got a roof over my head, I got food on the table and in my fridge.
Speaker 1:But there are people who live right around me who have none of those things. What they do is scarce and in between. So what can I do? How can I serve? How can I help and that pretty much is my career in the nonprofit sector literally serving and helping people in communities, people who didn't have health insurance coverage, people who were being exposed by predatory lenders and being charged exorbitant interest rates for car title loans and check cashing places All of these places that were exploiting the poor is what I poured my effort into trying to make things right that I felt like were wrong. That is wrong for you to live in America, the greatest country on the planet Earth with all the wealth in the world, but we have 50 million people who don't have health insurance coverage, who can't go to the doctor when they get sick, they can't go see a dentist, they can't get mentally behavioral health support, don't have insurance coverage. I just thought that was wrong, so it became my mission to do something about it and that's what led me into a career politics.
Speaker 2:I appreciate how you sought light in the midst of darkness and beyond losing your brother. Then you started mentioning other mistakes and in those moments and even now I'm sure, as you make mistakes, it really is. I look at it, the way I flip the script on a mistake is just creating opportunities. Is what's the positive that I can extract right now? What is going well? Or is it worse than this person's situation?
Speaker 2:And when we think about qualities of a great leader and all the resources you put out there, one that I've found is that they can flip the script on a negative situation and extract some sort of positive or take some sort of action step. And I want to dig into just lead and some of the resources that you've put out there for people. And before we do that, I want to demystify real quick the concept of a leader, in that some people view leaders or leadership in general as this exclusive thing. It's exclusive to. I have a title of XYZ. I don't believe that leadership has a title. Anyone listening right now is a leader. How do you demystify this notion of leadership and get people to look at themselves as leaders, regardless of what the paper says?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 1:So great question, and I'm wholeheartedly 100% in agreement with you that leadership is not about a title, it's not about a corner office, it's not about what's on the front of your business card or your email signature. Nobody cares what you do. Leadership is about who you are, and everybody is a leader, and when I mean everybody is a leader. Sometimes you may just need to lead yourself. That's a leadership framework. Other times you may have the lead in your family. If you're raising children, you're a leader to your kids. If you are a spouse, you might be a leader to your spouse at times, and vice versa. If you're a child who has aging parents, you may have the lead your parents. In the workplace. You may not be the head of the team, but you may be what I call a situational leader. Maybe you're not the supervisor or the director, but maybe you're the longest-tongued employee, so you know more about the company than everybody else. Even though you're not in a leadership role, everybody can lead someone, and leadership is not this esoteric elite concept that is only available to a privileged view. It is for all of us, and so let me break down to you very quickly that if you want to be a great leader and when I mean great leader, I'll put it to you this way Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. That's what John Maxwell teaches, and I believe it that leadership is about influence, and you can become influential to anyone if you know the three fundamental questions that every person is asking every day when they meet people. And when I say the three fundamental questions, I want you to know that your children are asking these questions. I want you to know your coworkers are asking these questions. I want you to know your customers are asking these questions. Every person you encounter wants to know the answer to these three questions. So question number one is do you care about me? Question number two is will you help me? And question number three is can I trust you? Three simple questions that if you want to be an influential leader who has an impact, then understand that every person you meet has on a t-shirt that has those three questions on the front of it, and they want to know your answer to those three questions.
Speaker 1:But here's the catch they don't want to hear the words yes to those three questions. They don't want to hear it. Yes, I care about you. Yes, I'm here to help you. Yes, you can trust me. Nobody wants to hear yes. They want to see yes in your actions. How do you treat them? How do you show up every day? How do you show people that you care about them? How do you show people that you're helping them to be successful at their lives?
Speaker 1:Again, as I started off, I said, empowerment is the essence of leadership. So to empower people means to help them, to give them the tools, the information and the resources to determine their own destiny Not your destiny, but their own destiny. And the last one is the question is can I trust you? Well, I'm here to tell you, ryan, this that people will never trust you if you don't repeatedly answer the first two questions over and over and over and over and over again. If you don't show people you care about them and you don't show people that you're consistently trying to help them to get better, to improve, to be stronger, faster, more efficient, if you're not helping them to win the day, then they're never going to trust you.
Speaker 1:And so, for the better part of 20 years as a keynote speaker and as an author, I've been teaching leaders at every level in organizations how to answer those three questions, and my book Just Lead. My latest book, just Lead, is how I break down the answers to those three questions in what I call an action based model for you to break down barriers, boost your retention and build a world class workplace culture by becoming a leader who knows how to answer those three questions, a leader who knows how to serve first, before you try to lead people, serve them before you lead them. Secondly, learn how to empower people, how to give them the tools, the information and the resources that they need. And if you repeatedly do that over and over again, here's some ways you demonstrate trust, that you trust the people that you lead. That's the framework of my book, just Lead, and why I put it together because I believe that leadership should be accessible and available to everyone, and we all have it inside of us. There's no born leaders. Leaders are developed daily. It's not developed in a day, it's developed daily, and so my concept is you got to find a way to grow and develop yourself every day, and that's what my content does. It helps you to be a better leader for every circumstance that you may have to deal with, and I'm excited about it, and I will tell you for your listeners and viewers.
Speaker 1:I'm going to give them a giveaway. This is what I call a free resource that I think can add value to anyone who wants to be a better leader. First, you got to understand the qualities of a leader, the traits and the qualities of a great leader. You also have to understand what I teach and I don't want you to, you know, get sideways with it. I want you to understand that I'm a teacher. I teach leaders how to build diverse, high performing teams in a world-class workplace culture.
Speaker 1:So in this giveaway it's called the Just Lead Toolkit. You go to antonguncom slash toolkit. You can get the Just Lead Toolkit. That's going to give you the nine pivotal points that I share in all of my presentations. What am I teaching leaders across the world? I've done more than you know 600 events over the last eight years, teaching leaders all across the country and audiences as small as 25 and as large as 18,000. I teach.
Speaker 1:So I want to give you all of those pivotal points that I share in my presentations, but I'm also going to give you an ebook called 10 qualities of a world-class leader.
Speaker 1:These are the 10 distilled down traits that I've identified in some of the most worldly recognized leaders like Nelson Mandela, mother Teresa, dr Martin Luther King Jr, malcolm X, barack Obama, oprah Winfrey, like anybody who you see as an admired leader. They all have something in common, and I put that in the ebook and there's plenty of other resources that are available to you. But the main point is is I want people to understand that leadership is for you. As a matter of fact, let me just put a finer point on it. We need you to lead. I even say this in the book Just Lead, that we cannot get a better world with just me and Ryan, the only one that's talking about leadership and teaching leadership. We can't possibly do it. I can't serve every leader in every community or every planet. I mean every continent. We need leaders everywhere, and so it's incumbent upon you to invest in yourself, to develop yourself as a leader, and why not start with the Just Lead Toolkit, and that's at antonguncom.
Speaker 2:I love it and, folks, this will be linked in the show notes. I have the toolkit myself. It's very easy to go through. The attachments are quick, short, simple, but things that you can easily digest and ultimately incorporate into your arsenal. And on the three questions, I love them. Do you care about me? Will you help me to be successful and can I trust you? And for folks that may be thinking well, how do I take action on that In my corporate role, one thing I often I used to say I'm a broken record but that's got a negative connotation.
Speaker 2:So I say I'm a song on repeat about, because everyone's got a song they can listen to 100 times in a row and you just keep jamming to it. So something that I'm a song on repeat about is I run an organization of we call them workplace coaches. They're folks that can go out to our mechanics, our inspectors, and provide basically on-the-job coaching versus having to wait for a training class and so on and so forth. And with my coaches, how I teach leadership to them is you know, I say, hey, tell me five things about this person for this position you support. And if all you can tell me is like if all I could say about Anton is well, anton, he works in this position, he drills this part and he works on first shift. That's not good leadership. I want to know, hey, if you can tell me about Anton's favorite football team. He's got a daughter named Ashley. He played for the Gamecocks. You know he loves hip hop Boom. Now I know, okay, you're spending enough time with Anton. Now I know that I can ask hey, anton, do you feel like this person cares about you? Like that's simple and that's something that anybody can do. Like ask yourself with the people that you see the most. Like could you answer? Could you tell me five things about them?
Speaker 2:And another thing when I love Simon Sinek, he had a three star Marine general on his podcast once and he asked this general. He said, sir, what's the sign of a good leader? And this general responded the sign of a good leader is somebody that will ask you how's your day going? And then they say and I actually want to know the answer, think about how many times people say, or someone's walking by hey, how's it going? Good, okay, like checkbox. I asked Anton how he's doing today. What I like to do is, if you say good, I'll be like oh well, what defines good, anton? Like, tell me, like, why. And sometimes you think, well, you know, ashley just got a dean's list in her first semester. Or sometimes you're like, actually, ryan, I'm not too good and I got to talk to you about something, or can you just listen to me for a few minutes. But those are two actions that I see that kind of encompass being able to answer those questions. And that's why I also believe that leadership is not limited to XYZ, it's everybody. Everybody's a leader.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, man. Those points around helping people in the workplace who are supervisor roles to know their people, like it's hard to care about someone that you don't know it really is. I mean, you may want to care about someone, but how do I really show someone that I care about them if I don't even know what's important to them, like their favorite sports team or their favorite color, their favorite candy bar, their favorite beverage, what they're allergic to, what they're not allergic to? And I can tell you I got this great story from a client that really here speaks to the failure of not knowing your people. There was a senior leader director who leads a team of managers seven managers and he would host a manager's lunch, like once a quarter for all of the managers. But he had one manager who never showed up to the lunches and when I asked more about it he says well, she came to the first one and then came to the second one, but then she stopped coming. She's not a team player, you know. I wish I could get rid of her, but her team is doing a good job and so I can't really fire. But she's not really a team player and so can you help help get her along?
Speaker 1:And so I interviewed this woman and I learned that she is Jewish, her diet is restricted, she doesn't eat a lot of foods and her boss every time he does a luncheon, he caters pork barbecue. So she got tired of coming to a luncheon and everybody enjoying the food and she's not eating. And I said, would you say anything to them? Well, I thought about it, but he kept saying how much he loves barbecue and I thought that he wouldn't like me anymore if I said can we get something other than barbecue? And so you start thinking about. The problem there is that he never took time enough to meet with any one of his managers to find out what would you like on the menu. The luncheon is for you, but I'm deciding what we're going to eat at the luncheon. I've seen so many executives that say hey, team, we've done a great job. We thank you for helping us to get that project over the goal line of winning the award. I'm taking everybody out to eat. And then we're going to my favorite Mexican restaurant, and I don't even like Mexican, because all the tomato gives you heartburn and I don't want heartburn. So I don't really want Mexican.
Speaker 1:So you know, if you learn to talk to your people and learn what's important in them, who they are as individuals, what pisses them off, what makes them angry, what inspires them, what motivates them, and then demonstrate that you were listening to those things, that you heard those things, by affirming those things and showing them that you care about them. And the greatest success that I had I'll never forget I'm actually developing a product. It's not ready yet. I would show it to you. Actually, I'm going to show it to you just so you can see. It's a deck of cards and it's called Just Know your Team. Okay, this is a leadership development tool that I have as a prototype right now how leaders can ask the right questions to get to know their team in a fun, interactive way in your staff meetings. If you have a staff meeting once a month or once a quarter or even once a week, there are ways that you can learn about the people in your team, and I've been using these questions for years before I made it into a game. I would like literally have a staff meeting and have everybody who reports to me. I'll come in with a question every week.
Speaker 1:So this one week I had a new employee on the team. My name was Kim. She had been there like three months and the question was what's your favorite candy bar? Growing up, if you had 50 cents? All you had was 50 cents and you could afford one candy bar what candy bar would you choose? And everybody on my team went around and said which candy bar they would choose and I took notes on everybody's favorite candy bar.
Speaker 1:So, fast forward, six months later it's Kim's birthday. I didn't have a big budget. Her birthday was on like a Tuesday. It was a busy day. So I asked my sister and I said hey, sarah, on your way in, can you stop by a convenience store or maybe CVS and see if you can find a bag of mini Twix, because her favorite candy bar was Twix. And I said put them in a little gift bag and get a card. And all of us assigned a card and we gave Kim the Twix candy bars and the card and she literally said the most profound words that a leader could ever hear.
Speaker 1:This is the best team that I've ever been a part of, because you guys actually remembered what was important to me and she was the most high performing and dedicated member of the team.
Speaker 1:She always volunteered to do more and go above and beyond Every time she was asked to, because she really loved being on the team, because it was a team who cared about her, and so for every member of our team I learned those things. I would never bring you an almond joint because you told me that you're allergic to coconut. I would never bring you a peanut butter cup because you have a peanut allergy. And I know your favorite candy bar is an almond Snickers and, yeah, it doesn't take a lot of money to buy some of that. A candy bar is a really small time investment but the return pays 10 fold and I'm not saying that you're going to get a lot of money. That pays 10 fold and that's how you show people that you care about them, and I've developed a tool is the first. You got to get to know them, to show them that you care about.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. My top two rules for leadership are number one, people first, business second. And number two seek to understand. Before we start any meeting, before we talk anything about business, we're going to talk about your dog or your brother, your sister, something recent, and if you've got kids, how'd their game go? And then the other thing is I want to know why do you believe in what you believe in, what makes you believe in a certain thing? Because there's always a story behind a stance and once you get to know those things about folks, they will go the extra mile for you. And this is also. It applies to family, it applies to friends, relationships. I believe that's what creates the strongest bonds all across the board. So what we're saying here equates far greater to far beyond the business world.
Speaker 1:So here's another one. This is a very simple question that I encourage every leader to ask people that work for them why do you choose to work here? Because everybody has a choice. You don't have to work where you work now and, if we look honestly, since April of 2021, 80 million people have left the job right. So the question is why are you choosing to work here? Why do you choose to work here? What is it about this job, this place, that keeps you here? Because it may be you as a leader, but nine times at a time, it don't have nothing to do with you at all. Maybe they love to work, maybe they have to stay close to family, maybe they got a kid in college and they can't afford to quit right now. Or maybe they just love the brand of the company and they want to be a part of the brand. You don't even know, but most people never ask the question why do you choose to work here? What do you love about your job? And if you really want to get in depth and be a great, phenomenal leader, ask them this question If you were in charge, what's one thing you would change about what we do?
Speaker 1:Ask every person that you lead that question. If you were in charge, what's one thing that you would change about this place or what we do? And make a list of everything that everybody says, because here's what's going to happen. That list is going to be repeated to you. Some items on that list are going to be repeated to you by multiple people, which is going to show you this is really a problem and it might not be something really big Like.
Speaker 1:I remember one client that I told the CEO to do this with all 300 people in his accounting firm. You know what the answer was Was one thing they would change Is they all hated the coffee that they had in the break room, the brand of coffee that they would prefer Dunkin' Donuts coffee. And so the CEO was like well, how hard is it for us to change who our coffee vendor is in our firm? Not hard at all. There one change was a tremendous satisfier for everybody who loves to show up early anyway, but was showing up later because he was stopping to get their own coffee rather than coming right to the office. But we changed the coffee around. They were getting there early to get a fresh cup and they were starting their work day. So now the company is more productive. All because he listened and asked the question what's one thing you would change and it was the top of mind is coffee.
Speaker 2:Would you look at that? Would you look at that? It's not rocket science. Hey, anton, I'll edit this part out just to respect your time. Are you good for another 10 minutes? Yeah, we go 10 minutes, that'd be great. Okay, got it. Yeah, I got just one more and then we'll wrap it up.
Speaker 2:Sure, anton, this has been a phenomenal discussion and expanding more on leadership, and we learned that leadership isn't rocket science. It applies to all of us and even by simply engaging with people, regardless of if it's in the workforce or with a family member, a friend, that's leading. And one of your resources in the Justly Toolkit are the 10 qualities of leaders that you've admired and worked for and studied. I've never had the opportunity to speak with somebody that has supported a United States president, and you were a senior advisor to Barack Obama. Quality number three is get comfortable being uncomfortable. When we look back to 2008 to 2016, even starting with 2008 in the financial crisis, we're talking about unprecedented times, and you were there to witness the most powerful person in the world. How did that quality number three stand out for President Obama? And, just ultimately, what are some things that you really learned from him that you've incorporated into your playbook?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that concept of getting comfortable, being uncomfortable, is something that comes directly from watching the eight years of a Barack Obama's presidency. So you can go from the financial crisis to the H1N1 virus, like our early pandemic, that we had, the Ebola crisis, health care reform, reelection, getting Osama bin Laden and we, like you know, you can go on and on and on. There was always a challenge, a major challenge, and you know some people want it to be easy, like we all. I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who are waiting for the day when entrepreneurship is no longer hard, and I told them I say, even if you build a multi-billion dollar business, you're still going to have problems. There's still going to be a crisis, there's still going to be something that makes you uncomfortable. I don't know any business who's impervious to a crisis of some kind of challenge. So take comfort in knowing that you're going to go through those adversities, and I watched Barack Obama do that and the lessons that I take away from him in the, uncomfortableness is number one. Don't be angry about the uncomfortableness. It's going to happen anyway. It's like the rising of the sun or the changing of the tide. It is going to happen. There's nothing you can do to stop it, so don't be angry about when it happens. The second thing is is to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, who know more than you, and listen to them. Never be the smartest person in the room. Be the person. You might be the person who have to make the decision, but make their decision on wise counsel. Make their decision by listening to other people, and so that's how you remain comfortable in. The uncomfortableness is because you know you have other people with the best thinking around it with you in a crisis. You're not in it by yourself, and so those are some very simple takeaways that I apply.
Speaker 1:Every day is now, particularly with my business. I'm surrounding myself with people who know more about certain things than I do, who know more about marketing than I do, who know more about building email funnels and everything else that I do. I'm gonna be uncomfortable. I don't like that stuff. I'm not a techie, not a gearhead in any kind of way, so let me just have somebody on my team who knows more than me, and it's gonna be really uncomfortable to trust that person sometimes, particularly with my brand, but that's the only way I'm gonna get better is to trust it.
Speaker 1:And so that's what I take away is that you really gotta understand that in the uncomfortableness is where the growth is. That's the most important point is that adversity is not what you go through. Adversity is what you grow through. And so when you're uncomfortable, when it's tenuous, you're strengthening yourself, you're building your resiliency, you're building your ability to recover any uncomfortableness. And so, if you look at the Obama presidency because he started with the economic crisis I mean he came into the presidency losing 700,000 jobs a month. That made everything else so much easier later that he could weather a storm on this. He could weather a storm on that, not have to get flustered about anything because, bro, we gotta do the first year of the presidency losing 700,000 jobs a month and turn the economy around. So everybody should be comfortable being uncomfortable and understand that adversity is what you grow through, not go through.
Speaker 2:I love that, and a lot of what you're talking about there goes back to our discussion off air who, not how, surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you and have the capability that you don't have, so you can go and leverage your capability where it's best served. Anton, it's customary on the podcast to end with a rapid fire session. Let's do it, and in this session I'm gonna ask you three questions. We're going up an elevator and three floors. A person gets on at each floor. They recognize who you are, whether they've read one year, three books, they've heard this podcast episode, they've read one of your features, and they get on and you only have one elevator floor to answer the question before they get off. And this is one gem one step, one book. So the first person gets on the elevator and, like Anton, heard your episode on wind today. And what's one gem? That, whether it be a mantra or a quote that you live your life by, that I can put in my back pocket to live my life by as well.
Speaker 1:There's never a wrong time to do the right thing.
Speaker 2:I love that Next person gets on and they see it. Anton, what's one step that I can take today to become a powerful leader?
Speaker 1:Go to bed earlier.
Speaker 2:Love that. And last one, anton what's one book besides yours that I can read to enhance my mindset?
Speaker 1:Purpose driven life.
Speaker 2:Love it. Now, Anton, how do we keep up with you and all the amazing things that you're doing in this world?
Speaker 1:You can always find me at antonguncom. That's the home of everything, where you can find out about my courses, my toolkits and everything at antonguncom. But if you're on social, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm even on Twitter, but I don't tweet a whole lot because it's not Twitter anymore, it's X. But you can find me on all those social platforms at Anton J Gunn, that's at A-N-T-O-N-J gun, G-U-N-N.
Speaker 2:So that's where you can. All of that will be linked, anton, thanks again for just who you are to this world, how you serve people, and for the tools and resources that you are consistently putting out there for us to become better leaders, and I love that we broke down that leadership isn't rocket science and we all have the ability and responsibility to care for people in the workforce, care for people around us. That's how we make this world a better place and that's how we win today. Thanks so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I'll see you guys next time.