Peter Bregman Teaches How to Have Hard Conversations, Create Accountability and Inspire Action

Show Notes

The consultant of choice for Goldman Sachs, Clear Channel, Pfizer, Deloitte, Victoria’s Secret, Loreal, Nasdaq, Godiva, Converse, GE Capital, Nike, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citi Peter Bregman teaches how to have hard conversations with your team, how to create accountability with your employees and how to inspire action on your organization’s most important work.

Website – BregmanPartners.com

Book – Leading With Emotional Courage: How to Have Hard Conversations, Create Accountability, And Inspire Action On Your Most Important Work

Leading With Emotional Courage: How to Have Hard Conversations, Create Accountability, And Inspire Action On Your Most Important Work

Ladies and gentlemen on today’s show we are interviewing a man who has over 30 years of experience working with CEOs and senior leaders to help them create a culture of accountability within their organizations and to inspire collective actions on their most important work and projects. Throughout his career he has coached and consulted with Goldman Sachs, Clear Channel, Pfizer, Deloitte, Victoria’s Secret, Loreal, Nasdaq, Godiva, Converse, GE Capital, Nike, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citi and now on today’s show he’ll teach you how to have hard conversations with your team, how to create accountability with your employees and how to inspire action on your organization’s most important work.

  1. Peter Bregman, I’m honored to have you on the show?! How are you!?
  2. Why do all of these huge companies choose to hire you?
    1. We help these companies get their ideas out of their heads and get them onto the ground.
  3. How do you fix Jackassery in companies
    1. In reading with emotional courage we talk about 4 elements of leadership
    2. Think about a difficult conversation that you’re not having
      1. You know everything you need to know to follow through as well as the resources
      2. You have the time
      3. You have the resources
      4. Why are you not moving forward?
        1. There is a feeling you are avoiding
        2. If you are willing to feel the failure, rejection, and shame then you can do anything. You have to be able to handle all of these emotions that come with getting things done.
    3. The four elements in leadership
      1. Confidence in yourself
        1. Not arrogant, confident
        2. Being willing to not know something
        3. The question is “Can you stay grounded in success and negative circumstances?” That is confidence
      2. Connection to others
        1. A willingness to see and understand from others perspective
      3. Commitment to purpose
        1. Something bigger than you and I
        2. It is living bigger than you and I
        3. What we are working towards and leading to in the world
      4. Emotional Courage
        1. This is what enables us to do the first three steps
        2. We have to be willing to feel the threat of the opposing viewpoint without wanting to cover your ears
  4. What would you say to someone who says “I did my best” as an excuse for not doing things?
    1. Accountability
    2. Step 1: Clarify expectations
      1. You have to make sure everyone understands your expectations
      2. Make them repeat back to me what you hear my expectations are from you
    3. Step 2: Clear Capability
      1. Are they able to do it?
      2. Do they have the know-how or the skill?
      3. If they don’t you need to give them
    4. Step 3: Clear measurement
      1. Measure the expectations
    5. Step 4: Clear Feedback
      1. Are you saying to them very clearly your expectations?
    6. Step 5: Clear Consequences
      1. It has to be clear what will happen if they don’t meet expectations
  5. Peter Bregman, throughout the years your firm has worked with huge companies, like Goldman Sachs, Clear Channel, Pfizer, Deloitte, Victoria’s Secret, Loreal, Nasdaq, Godiva, Converse, Citi, for the listeners out there that are not super familiar with the over 20 year history of Bregman Partners, I’d for you to share the story about how you started Bregman Partners?
    1. I started in politics in high school. I would go into DC for board meetings for fun.
    2. Then I got to college at Princeton and I got disillusioned quickly
    3. I found that people in the political party was not open to innovative ideas
    4. I also found that I was a great debater and loved debating
    5. I didn’t want to waste my college career debating so after wandering around I accidently went on a camping trip and fell in love
    6. I graduated and then went on to work with teaching other people how to lead.
    7. I later started a few companies helping people learn how to lead
    8. I went to multiple different companies up until now where I am working on my current company
  6. Peter, you’ve achieved so much success over the years, I think many listeners may feel that achieving success at your level is almost overwhelming and impossible, can with our listeners about the early days of your career working at Outward Bound and when you first felt like you were beginning to gain some traction in your career?
    1. We started with nothing. We grinded until we could afford our first laptop and kept grinding.
    2. We experienced many canceled meetings and almost gave up
    3. Finally we got an in person meeting with our first client
    4. The company was running into problems in the past few years
    5. We had the opportunity to run a pilot on this first company and it went very well
    6. The next thing we knew we had 2,000 clients and had to scale quickly
  7. What are your meetings like with these huge clients?
    1. Getting them as a client is a fun story
      1. I ran into someone from Victoria’s Secret and started up a conversation
      2. This conversation resulted in the company becoming a client
    2. Most of these companies have great huge ideas but they aren’t the best at taking action on these ideas
  8. What is your strategy with going into Victoria’s Secret
    1. I always tell my wife she looks great in anything
    2. 10 gold behaviors
      1. The one behavior that all retail companies were all skipping was the one that made the biggest difference
        1. Measuring someone for a right fitting bra
        2. This makes the biggest difference
        3. This is the most uncomfortable job for someone to do
  9. Peter, your newest book is titled, Leading with Emotional Courage: How to Have Hard Conversations, Create Accountability and Inspire Action on Your Most Important Work, what inspired you to write this book?
    1. It is the distillation of the last 25-30 years of my career
    2. I am committed to helping adults become great leaders and achieving their dreams
    3. I care about having great leaders in this country and this world
    4. I really saw how the great leaders all had these four elements simultaneously
  10. How would address issues with father and son dynamics?
    1. You have to align your interests and goals. If they are not aligned, it will be very difficult.
      1. Maybe that is a buyout. Maybe that is an exit plan. It needs to excite both parties equally. Both sides should benefit
      2. You need to respect the father for creating the business
  11. Peter Bregman, I’m always curious about the daily routines of super successful people. My friend, what do the first four hours of your typical day look like?
    1. Wake up at 6:00 am
    2. Meditate in bed for 20 minutes
    3. Spend time with kids
    4. Exercise
    5. First three hours of the day are spent writing
  12. Peter, where are you typically physically located when you plan out your day and what does that process look like?
  13. Peter, you come across as a very well-read person, what are 1 or 2 books that you would recommend that all of our listeners should read?

ACTION ITEM: Ask yourself what difficult conversation are you avoiding from having?

  1. Sales calls, family member drama, etc.
  2. Think about it
  3. Write down what you need to say
  4. Make the conversation happen.
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Audio Transcription

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On today’s show, we interview the consultant of choice for Goldman Sachs clear channel, Pfizer, Deloitte, Victoria’s secret boreal, Nasdaq Godiva Punters, GE capital, Nike, j p Morgan, chase, Morgan, Stanley, Citi, and other top organizations about how to have hard conversations, how to create a culture of accountability, and how to inspire action on your most important work with the iconic leadership expert and bestselling author, Mr Peter Bregman.

Sam shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. This show back to man, eight kids Koch created by two different women, 13 mode time million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive. on your radio and podcast. Download your daily Dojo of Mojo or you go to make mo money. Andrew, I’m excited about today’s guest because this man has been the consultant of choice for Goldman Sachs. I hear they’re doing okay. They could probably afford a a class consultant. Yeah, clear channel. They they’re doing okay. They could probably afford a top level consultant. Pfizer, Deloitte, Victoria’s secret, Morielle Nasdaq, good diver. Converse. Ge Capital, Nike, I hear they’re doing well. They could afford to hire anybody and they have decided to hire today’s guest. Mr Peter Bregman, welcome onto the show. How are you sir?

I am great. Thank you so much. I love your energy.

Hey, I really was, I mean, I was thinking about it. I mean, these companies could hire anybody in the world. Why are they choosing to hire you?

You know, I, I’m, you know, I, I was wanting to ask them that question, but I would say that what we do probably better than anybody else is, is help people lead in a way that goes from an idea in their heads to what they’re actually doing in the ground. And it’s a, it’s kind of a strategy execution piece. It’s like we all have great ideas of what it is that we want to accomplish. And then the question is how do you follow through on those ideas in a way that gets your most important stuff done and that Andrew, which you show up as the kind of leader you want to show up as.

And I would just tell the thrivers and example of this. I know, I know so many people, great people, none of our listeners, Andrew, but people who know our listeners know no one that you know Peter Bregman, but people that start a blog and they delegate the blog to Carl. Let’s say Carl, you know Carl, he’s good. Carl does a blog, he does like one blog in a row, you know Peter Bregman. And then he’s like, ah, I just couldn’t get her done. I just couldn’t get the momentum going. So in situations like that, when you go in, let’s say ground zero in a company and you got a guy like Carl and he’s supposed to write the blog, but he doesn’t do it, and you got a guy named Doug and Doug supposed to make the sales calls, but he doesn’t do it in Eddie. He on Eddie’s supposed to quality control. But that’s the one thing he doesn’t have time to do cause he’s on Facebook. How do you go in and fix that? What do you do?

I think we’ll probably get into this a little later in the conversation, but there’s a key to it. The most recent book that I wrote leading with emotional courage really catches this key. And there’s four elements I talked about. The last of the four elements is emotional cards, which is the willingness to feel things. So, so let’s just do a thought experiment and all the listeners, the thrivers can do this thought experiment with us. Here we go is think about a difficult conversation. You’re not happy, right when you know that you should have, but you’re not having an, actually you can think of all of the examples that you just gave. You know the blog, you’re not writing the sales call, you’re not making, right? Think about that now I’m Ben. I’m willing to bet that you know everything you need to know to follow through that you’ve had time and opportunity to follow through and you have the skills that you need to follow through. So given all of that, which is usually what people try to provide, you know, when they’re consulting or, or training or coaching. Given that you probably already have all of that, then why aren’t you moving forward?

Yeah,

here is because there’s something you don’t want to feel right. If you have that hard conversation or the hard sales call or you know, write that blog, you might have to feel rejection. You might have to feel failure. You might have to feel embarrassment. You might have to feel defensive this or you know, in a hard conversation you might have to feel the person is the anger or just connections. You might have to feel all these things and they’re unpleasant things to feel. And so in order not to feel those things you don’t follow through on the action, which is a guaranteed and not having to feel those things. And if you have emotional courage, the willingness to feel everything, if you are willing to feel all of that, the failure of the rejection, the, the anger, that defensiveness, shame, embarrassment. If you’re willing to feel everything, then you can do anything. And so most, most, you know, people are not willing to feel and most coaching focuses on, okay, so you didn’t do the, the blogs and now let’s put it in your calendar and when you’re going to do it and how are you going to know what successful? And, and that doesn’t actually address the main issue, which is I don’t really want to feel rejection. And if I never write this thing, I’ll never have to be an ugly comment. And the bottom of it, when someone saying they’re not like what I wrote,

do you have these four principles? And I want to get into all four of your principles. We get into your history a little bit here, but I have eight tips for not being successful. Tip Number one is to make sure you avoid difficult situations. Tip Two, three, four, five, six, seven. Those are all tips we don’t have time to get into. But here’s tip number eight here. Probably my best tip is tip number eight. Uh, always keep bags of your own poop collected throughout your stay and just have it ready. That’s, that’s a tip from the anchorman right there. That is a tip. That’s a tip. That’s a tip or not doing well. I want to ask you about these four principles. Do you have the listeners there? They’re taking notes now. People are getting excited about these. So principle number one, we got that. What, what are the, what are the next principles from your, from your new book

for principals or confidence in yourself. These are the four elements and leaders have confidence in yourself, connection to others, commitment to purpose. And then we add emotional cards. And when I say confidence in yourself, I don’t mean to arrogance, arrogance. Hubris is actually insecurity. It’s like when you’re arrogant about something, you think you’re better than everybody is because you know, an arrogant people never not know something, right? They always know everything. They always have an answer for everything that’s actually just covering the insecurity or the uncertainty that they have about themselves. So confidence is being willing to not know something. Uh, you know, I liken it to a subway surfing where, which I, I did a lot of the kid and I kind of still do, which is you stand on the subway and you don’t, and this is a very New York centric, uh, example and you don’t hold on to the, the head rail and the subway starts and stops and turns left and turns right.

And you try to keep your balance no matter what. Yeah. And that’s true for life. I mean, that’s how we live our lives is there’s a million things knocking us down and bring us up. Can you stay grounded, you know, without falling in the face of failure or success, right. Or uncertainty. That’s confidence. And then connection to others is a willingness to really see and understand things from other people’s perspective. And here’s the thing. A lot of people are, we have an assessment on our website that kind of helps you see where you stack up. And a lot of people tend to be either confident in themselves and disconnected from others or connected to others and disconnected from the south. So we all know people who will give themselves up to make everybody around them happen, right? And those are people who tend to be connected to others, but lack the confidence and the self.

And the real skill is can I stay super grounded in my own myself and my own perspective and connected to the people around me at the same time, even in disagreement, you and I can have a raging political disagreements and will you end up feeling heard at the end and feeling respected even in the context of our disagreement. That’s hard. And that’s really powerful. And then commitment to is about something bigger than both you and me, right? So confidence in myself, it’s about me and connection to others is about us. Then this commitment to purpose in something bigger than you and I, it’s, it’s, you know what we’re working towards, what we’re trying to create in the world, why, why I’m leaving and, and you know, if that’s happening then there’s, you know, when you’ve got the all three of those things, then you’re leading in a really strong and powerful way.

And of course the thing that enables us to, to do all of those things, to be confident in yourself and connected to other, the purposes as emotional courage. If I were to have a conversation with you in which we disagree and yet you still leave feeling heard, I need to be willing to feel a lot of things in order to do that. I can’t, you know, I have to be willing to feel the threat of your opposing viewpoint and not make that lead me to cover my ears, right? So I need to be able to feel things. So you both need emotional courage. And when you do these things, you end up developing emotional courage as well.

Great content. And we have like, you know, 30 minutes. So I would encourage you to at least one time, go visit Bregman partners. Breg man, man, partners.com Bregman partners. Dot. Come visit the website. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s a, there’s so much great content. You have assessments up there and I think there’s some listener out there who’s going, okay, okay, I’m buying into these principles but I’ve got someone in my office or I have some in my office. I’m not using the button. I’m saying, okay, I have, I agree with these principles and I have someone in my office who always says I did my past. You know what I mean though? It’s a person who sincerely says Peter Bregman. They look at you with the, with the puppy dog eyes and they say, I did my best and it doesn’t matter if they did, they just, they always seem to miss the deadline. They missed the thing. How would you fix the, I did my best syndrome or maybe someone listening out there, I was always sick. I just, I did my best. What would you do to, how would you fix that?

You’re really asking a question and it’s a question about accountability. How do you create accountability? And I do talk about this in the book and I have this five step process that works really well and it’s, it’s a, it’s almost like a checklist. Think of it as a checklist. And the first piece is to clarify expectations. So are you clear about your expectations? Right? Are you clear when you say this is what you need to do? That the true view on the same page, that’s really important. And there’s a number of ways of doing that. But you know, the the most, um, uh, it’s a little infantilizing but it works really well is to say, tell me what you understand me to be saying. Right? Like, tell me, repeat back to me what you hear. My expectations are around this, right? And you don’t have to do it in baby talk.

Like if, you know, it’s like, here’s, we’ve just been talking for the last half hour of this project. Um, describe to me your view of the deliverables. Right? So, so it’s making sure that expectations are clear. The second thing is clear capability, right? Which has do, does the person have the capability to follow through? Are they able to do it? Did they have the know? How do they have the skill to be able to fulfill the expectations? It’s super important. If they don’t, you’ve got to give them resources to help them. If they do, you move on to the next one, which is clear measurement. How are you going to measure their success, their ability to reach those objectives? Right? Then the fourth is clear feedback, right? Are you saying to them really clearly these are the expectations. We agreed on them, these, this is how we were measuring and the measurement itself of the you fallen short.

And by the way, this is the conversation that we’ve had for time. And then the last one is really important too, which is clear consequences because if they, you know, uh, a great effort is great. If it leads to progress and forward momentum, a great effort, which leads consistently to failure, it means you’ve got the person in the wrong job, they can’t do that work and it’s going to be unsatisfying for them and for you to have them stay in that role. So I think at that point, you know there’s got to be consequence and the consequence doesn’t mean punishment, but it, the consequences might be, you know, you don’t have the capability or, and we’re going to either develop that capability in you or you’re simply in the wrong role.

If you’re out there and you go to Bregman partners.com there’s a consequence you’re going to have. If you’re a female out there, let me tell you what you’re going to, you’re going to see a beautiful man up there. You’re going to see Peter. Peter, you are a handsome guy. Have you seen yourself lately? But what are you doing up there?

Oh,

you are a handsome, you are a handsome man. Where is home for you? You didn’t bring, you’re in Brooklyn, correct?

No, New York City. Manhattan,

New York City. Manhattan. Okay. So I want to ask you this, this question here. So now let’s say that I, uh, and listening to this and I’m buying it. I mean, this is good. This right here. This is hot stuff. This is the key. This is bridging the gap between the ideas and getting the ideas done. And you actually said, you said good leaders set the vision, great leaders make it happen. Now I know your history because I’ve done a way too much cyberstalking about you for today’s interview. But for the listeners out there who say, where did this guy come from? Did he come from? He is, does he work with Yoda? Is he from day Copa because somebody out there’s going, this is hot stuff. Can you share a little bit about your career path and kind of start us from the bottom? We’re where did your career start?

I actually started in politics. I was very engaged and interested in politics really and very active in high school. I was, I was the youngest board member of Americans for Democratic Action. I was going to DC, uh, every couple of months for board meetings with senators and congressmen that it was Super Fun. And then I got to college and I was specifically went to college, which had a great public policy school. And, and then I got to solution very quickly and I got the solution both with myself and with everybody else. Meaning I found that, um, people in the political conversation, we’re not open to innovative ideas in my experience. And I was also not open to listening to the opposing viewpoint. Meaning I had my viewpoint. It was, I was a pretty good debate or it was pretty easy for me to make other people look dumb. And so I did that and I won debates and I, you know, was successful, but I realized I’m not going to learn anything. I mean, that’s not how you go to college. You don’t go to college and trying to be smarter than everybody else. You go through college admitting when you don’t know in order to be able to learn. And I didn’t know how to do that and stay in politics at the time.

Oh, I, I went to Princeton. Yeah, the Woodrow Wilson School at their public policy.

Okay.

Anybody?

Yeah, that’s what I hear. I hear you just show up and they say, hey, welcome to Princeton.

Oh, you’re welcome to Princeton. Okay. No, but that’s a tough place to get into. So after Princeton, did you start a Ponzi scheme? Did you work at a dairy queen? What’d you do next?

No, I, I, I wandered around that note. It’s separate from politics and I went on a camping trip. I’m gonna take and loved it another and another and another. And soon they started leading them and teaching people to lead them to actually where I met my wife and I left college, graduated and then went to outward bound and Knowles and led trips in the outdoors to teach people how to lead. It really sort of changed my life direction and they really begin to focus on leadership and outdoor leadership. And from there I started a couple of little companies just doing kind of consulting and teaching leadership and actually started an art print company. But that’s a whole other story. And then I, um, and then I joined a consulting firm and I had partnered with to start a practice there with a few other people on transformational change in organizations. And I went to Accenture for a year. Uh, and after that I started my current company, Bregman partners.

I only got through like a third of the really, really big clients you’ve worked with. There’s a lot of clients in the list and are probably smaller in size too. But when did you begin to gain traction with Bregman partners? I mean, how long did it take you to, to get that traction and how did you go about getting your first hundred clients?

No, it went up and down. So we, you know, for the first six to nine months I had no clients. And you know, I have started the company in a fifth-floor walkup in a townhouse in, you know, like a little in a brownstone and in New York. And like I took the money that I had bought a laptop with it and like for six months I really had nothing. And then we kinda hit it big with a first client and did really great work in that grew and grew and grew. And then

how’d you get the deal?

Um, I, it’s, I mean, it’s an interesting and maybe longer story, but, but I, um, I, it was a somewhat, I knew at business school who said, let me introduce you to someone and that person didn’t take my call. Uh, I kind of kept calling. Then we experienced, experienced probably five or seven, uh, canceled meetings. Like we would have a meeting canceled that meeting canceled, then it goes on and I almost kind of gave up, but I just sort of kept plugging away and big company. And then I finally have them, the prison finally called me and said, could you come meet me this afternoon? And I was, I was so pissed off about that, but I was like, no, I’m nosy, but I wasn’t busy. And I knew that was baby or so it was just sort of a baby as emotional reaction. So I showed up and I met with them and they were running into a problem that something had been plaguing them for two years.

And we come to a head and I basically convinced him to let me run a pilot. Uh, and I ran the pilot and I basically had to pull together, you know, it was just me and in my, you know, walk up. But I a quickly hired five people and, and we did a really good job in the pilot and then they got the full roll out, which was working with 2000 people globally. Uh, and coaching them all until I had to very, very quickly build a team of close to a hundred coaches. And we had officers and a bunch of different places. And third, once it took off, it took off.

He’s, he’s working with your Goldman Sachs. I mean clear channel Pfizer, you’ve worked with Victoria secret. I’m not asking you to share the intimate client details of what you did. I know some of that’s confidential, but when you do go in there and you’re like, hey, you know Victoria, you have a secret, share it with the team and I’m not going to, I mean, what kind of stuff do you do with a big company like that? I mean is it a weekly meeting? Is it a monthly meeting? Do you go there? Do you have your fly there, you over the phone? How do you, how do you help a client?

Well, first of all, getting them as a client is sort of a fun story, which is that I had given a speech at a conference and people come up to me after speeches, the talk and this woman came up to me and started talking to him and asking questions. I said, what company are you from? And she said, Victoria’s secrets and with no strategic intent at all. I looked at it, I’m like, I want you as a client, like Victoria’s secret. That’s so awesome. I love Victoria’s secret. And you know, Goldman Sachs as the client can dive and talk to the client, you’re the TRIFECTA. Right? Right.

Yeah. What else

is there? I want you as a, as a client. And she said, all right, well let’s talk and we’ll try to figure it out. And so we figured it out. Um, but it’s, you know, just, uh, I, I love that story. There’s so many different ways to try to like work your way into a client and the sort of authenticity and the child like believe that I had and like, wow, that would be so fun to have this kind of, and, and uh, you know, where we helped them is they had hired a big name consulting firm to help them figure out a challenge that they had. And, and like a lot of big name consulting firm, they were very good strategically at identifying things but not very good at driving them to execution. And so, you know, we’re very good at driving to execution. So we came in and we kind of took the handoff and then executed, you know, kind of help them drive a change through the organization that impacted results. There was a very good idea developed by a very smart consulting firm but wasn’t impacting results because it wasn’t being driven to execution.

I have been married for 18 years. I have five kids and I’m going to answer this question after I ask you the question. How long, how long have you guys been married?

Uh, we’ve known each other about 30 years. Uh, and we’ve been married about 19 minutes.

How often do you go into Victoria secret and what is your strategy? Do you make eye contact or do you do the hit and run? Do you, do you wait out in the hallway, outside the mall? Do you send her in? What do you do? Do you go in there once a year? What’s your strategy?

So, you know, my strategy is to say, because my wife is gorgeous to say, you look great in what you’re wearing because she does call it a day. But I’ll tell you there’s an interesting story too, right? If you think about there’s 10 gold behaviors that make a difference between whether people spend a lot of money or a little money at Victoria secret 10 goals. And, and in general people were doing nine out of the 10, turns out the one behavior they were all skipping and people meaning retail. Um, we tell people, but it turns out that the behavior that they were, they were skipping with the behavior that made the biggest difference to whether people go in and leave really super satisfied customers. I’m expense a bunch of money. What do you think that is?

What do you think someone

you can do and Victoria’s secret that would make the biggest difference

immediately greet you and ask if they can help.

They definitely do that. That’s one of the gold behaviors, but that’s not the one that makes the biggest difference.

Where copious amounts of perfume and be funny.

Didn’t even see that on the list.

Oh I don’t, I don’t know. You baffled me.

All right, so it’s measuring someone for a right fitting bra because most women, statistically, most women are walking around with the wrong size bra and if they get the right size bra on they can, that makes the biggest difference. There’s suddenly comfortable after years of being uncomfortable. So what’s the most uncomfortable behavior for a sales representative in a Victoria’s secret store to do?

Mm.

Well, yes. Yeah, right. It’s like to measure someone, right?

Applying for jobs right now, Victoria secret

much rather. So by the way, the solution to that, the execution solution to that is the simplest of all things. You don’t have to train people. You don’t have to teach a new behavior. Just take a tape measure and put it around their neck. That’s it. Once you do that, you’ve solved the biggest execution problem in retail.

This kind of underwear knowledge in college at Princeton. You’re going to get it only from the mind of Peter Bregman. Now you wrote this new book that your, your, your newest book and this book is leading was emotional courage. How to have hard conversations, create accountability and inspire action on your most important work. What inspired you to write this book? You’re a busy guy. You’ve got an incredible wife. You’re just a beautiful man. I mean, I don’t know how many times a day you have to tell people, look, ladies, I’m married. You know, you got a lot going on. Uh, what inspired you to write this book?

To me, it’s the distillation of the last 25, 30 years of my career that, you know, I am so deeply committed to helping people become real adults in the room. Really powerful leaders, people who can stand in hard decisions and make them, who can inspire people to follow them. You can lead from idea to fruition of that idea to result and outcome. Like I care about that. I really care about who people are as leaders. I also care about having great leaders in this country and in the world. Like I just really care about that. It feels very, very important to me. It feels support the quality of life perspective for everybody and for the leaders as well. And so, you know, when I thought about the last 25, 30 years of, of the worst that I’ve done, I really saw how the great leaders, um, all have these four elements that, and simultaneously this is not a personalities. That’s what we said. Wow. Some people are high and some, some or others. And that’s just fine. I’m saying it’s not fine. You gotta be high in all four of them if you want to really be a strong and powerful leader. And so that just felt really important to me.

Lightning round here. I would love to have you on the show passively aggressively for hours and hours, but I know you have stuff going on. So we’ve got two final questions here for you. The first question comes at us. So it comes to us via a email from a thriver out there who asks this question. They write, I’m a partner and a medical practice with my father. I’m early in my career and he’s a late in his career. The practice has plateaued before I joined with a lot of in attention to and happiness with the status quo. I would like to grow it aggressively and he says he agrees who doesn’t love growth, but he’s less excited when the bill comes for the increased overhead. For example, our building is older and we need to move in in the coming years. Uh, he has no interest in planning or selecting the building we need to move to because an investment does it fit into his investment horizon? How would you address issues like this with him? Uh, the father, son dynamic can be tricky.

Tricky. I would say the, um, you know, the first of all, your interests have to be alive, right? So if, if your dad’s interest is to get out with, you know, a bunch of income and capital appreciation and your interest is to invest a lot and grow the business and it with no cap, you know, with, with capital appreciation outside of the time horizon of your father, then your interests are not aligned and you have to, you know, the first step is to align your interest or figure out what you need to do to align your interests. And it might be taking a loan out that pays off your father. I don’t know what it is, but if your interests are not aligned, it’s going to be very hard to get on the same page. And I’ll say you got to respect your father for having built the business. Right? I mean, and this is your father’s business, so you’ve got great aspirations for growing it, which is awesome. And he’s, you know, he, he needs to be respected for that. So I think it’s like really sitting down and having an adult conversation about what our interests are and putting them on the table and then figuring out in negotiating, how do we achieve, you know, both our interest. And that’s almost always possible. And the second, yeah, go ahead.

That’s powerful. That’s powerful that you’ve got to align your values and what your goals we’ve got. We’re headed to the same destination. And if not, you’re saying let’s figure out a mutually agreeable exit plan may be maybe a buyout plan, maybe a right, I mean that’s what you’re saying. If we can’t agree on the end

or ways in which our interests can be aligned. So like maybe, maybe it’s not an exit plan, but maybe you dad likes the idea of growth but doesn’t actually want to lose the capital flow that he’s going to need because he wants to retire in five years. So how do you protect your dad? How do you ensure, what’s your business plan for ensuring that the investment money comes back to him in some way and it may not come back to them from the returns on the business, but it’s got to come back to them in some way. And that’s why I sort of thought about a loan or something that allows your dad to be just as excited as you are and doesn’t require, it doesn’t end up with you benefiting and your Dad, your dad, uh, deficits and uh, for, you know, in, in the decision. It’s got to be a benefit to both.

No, Andrew does a great job call screening, but I think this guy’s dad called in, which is almost impossible because this is not live, this a podcast, but I think he called in and Andrea was able to just get, get, get him off the phone cookie. But this is what he had to say.

La La, la La. Ooh. Ooh, I am yours. Sounds like his, his dad’s busy right now.

That was amazing. The audio there. Andrew, thank you for capturing that. That’s very nice of you. Now, my final question I have for you is you are a very proactive guy this year alone. I mean, you’ve, you’re keeping your website, Bregman partners update, it looks awesome. You’ve got hundreds of coaches working with you, you’ve got a book, the new book leading with emotional courage. You’ve got a lot going on. You have a great family. How do you organize the first four hours of your typical day?

Well, sometimes not very well, but if I’m doing it well, I wake up, I’m able to spend some time with the kids before they go to school. I, uh, you know, but the first thing I do is I wake up and I meditate usually in bed for 20 minutes. Uh, then I kind hanging out with the kids and then I’ll go exercise. And then I really try to spend those first few hours of the day writing and, uh, and then, you know, and kind of avoid taking a whole bunch of calls and doing things like that. I’ve tried to save that stuff for the afternoon, but, uh, but, you know, a lot of times it’s hard to, you know, like everybody I struggle with, with procrastinating and there’s, you know, all these little things to get done and it’s hard to focus on the big important thing. So that’s why I kinda like to do those in the morning.

What time are you waking up in a typical day?

Uh, six. Somewhere between six and seven, six, six 30, something like that.

Yeah. And I mean this sincerely, you are a handsome man. What do you, what does your diet look like? Are you eating Kale? Kale?

I do eat a lot of bags of Kale actually. You know, I’m sort of whole foods plant based, I says, but I don’t need a lot of meat at all. And uh, and I just cut out actually processed sugar completely. So, I mean, I tried a lot of fruits and vegetables and grains and some healthy proteins.

Right?

I’m a little boring.

You’re kind of meat free though.

I’m pretty meat-free free. I mean, I, I’m not fish free, uh, but I, but I’m pretty much me free. I mean, I might have chicken three to five times a year and red meat two to three times a year.

Bregman partners.com you could go to Victoria’s secret right now to see models, Bregman partners. We see a model slash consultant who’s worked with huge brands. I can’t thank you enough for being on today’s show. I really think that your book is powerful and if you’re out there listening today and you have a big goal and your team knows how to achieve it, but they’re not taking the daily action steps if they’re not being diligent, if not being consistently diligent, if they’re not able to implement. Thomas Edison said that vision without execution is hallucination. So if you have a drug free workplace, but your team is still hallucinating, check out Peter’s website. Peter, thank you so much for being on today’s show.

Thank you so much for having me. I love your energy. Like I said at the beginning,

Peter, we like to end each and every show with a boom. And so now that he further ado, here we go. Three, two, one, thrive nation. I would encourage you to ask yourself today, what are the difficult conversations that you are avoiding having? Maybe it’s sales calls and people on your team who don’t want to make sales calls. Maybe there’s a member of your team who’s also a member of your family and they won’t do their job. Think about it. Write down what you need to say and then make that conversation.

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