When Innovation Isn't the Expectation: A 4-2-9-3 Kolbe A Index Result Unpacked | Private Sessions

You envision rather than build. You come up with an idea. You're one who is not just willing, but will really push toward experimenting, trying new things. Does that sound like you?

Reminds me when I asked my mom, "Does this describe me?" And she said, "Only since you were born.

Meet Rod. He's an Idea-Generating Powerhouse. After 25 years in the world of higher education, he now helps business leaders thrive. Today, we're talking about leading the way you're wired and honoring the strengths of the people around you.

So I've had to learn how to be very strategic about when ideas are helpful. I can be really helpful to a team with the ideas in the first 20% of a project, and I need to keep my mouth shut more so in the last 20% of a project.

What I just heard you say was essentially you frankly didn't have the freedom to be yourself.

I've found that my energy for what I'm talking about can shut people down.

If you focus on the ways people operate, but you're not realizing this is really a trust issue, not a system issue, you're not fixing the actual problem. Focus on what you do well and maximize the time you spend doing that. I guess, let me just jump in with you're an Idea-Generating Powerhouse. Does that sound right to you, and you don't need to be humble about it with the whole Powerhouse thing, but…

No, I think it reminds me when I did an assessment like this a while ago, and I asked my mom, "Does this describe me?" And she said, "Only since you were born." And so, ideas come sometimes far too easily to me, and there's just an energy and excitement about the question What could we do?

So I hear two things there that are interesting to me and I wanna dive into. So you mentioned both they come far too easily, and it's exciting and energizing. So what's the deal with both of those? Why did you… And you actually started with sometimes they come far too easily. I mean, does that get you in trouble sometimes, annoy coworkers? What's the scoop?

Yeah, so I've had to learn how to be very strategic about when ideas are helpful, especially in a group project or a team project. And I've had to learn to moderate when I kinda let the idea-Generating animal out of the cage. And so what I've discovered is I can be really helpful to a team with the ideas in the first 20% of a project, and I need to keep my mouth shut more so in the last 20% of a project when I'm tempted to say, "Oh, you know what we could've done?" And that gets really frustrating to people.

So, did you learn that the hard way or did that come easily?

Oh, I wish it came easily, but I learned it through frustrating people who were gracious enough to say, "Thanks, but not now."

And I want to just get your whole Kolbe result out there. We've talked about it in parts, but you are a 4-2-9-3. So that 4 in Fact Finder is about explaining that mid-range. The 2 in Follow Thru is your strength to really be open-ended and adaptable in terms of systems and structure. The 9 in Quick Start is what we spent most of our time talking about with the idea generation, experimenting, taking chances and risks. And then the Implementor, that 3 of being conceptual and envisioning rather than physically constructing and building. So yeah, that's the whole picture. We don't want to just isolate one. They're all important. None of those strengths are better than the corresponding strength in the other areas of one of those Action Modes®. So one thing I noticed in looking at your bio is you spent a lot of years in higher education. I'm just going to say, from working with a bunch of different universities and colleges, accepting that Idea-Generating Powerhouse is not the norm. It tends to be. And there are lots of exceptions. Well, I shouldn't say lots. There are some exceptions. But what I've seen is most of those institutions become more cautious, more, "No, we don't need new ideas. We need to be great at what we've been doing for the last 50 to 500 years," sometimes, literally 500-plus years. Was that your experience?

Yes. So universities in general move slowly, and just the process of change takes a lot of time. And so I had to figure out when and where I could be helpful, but also when and where I wouldn't be frustrating or frustrated in the change process. And it's one of the reasons why I ended up leading a university, because I wanted to be able to set the agenda for change, not just be constrained by a monolithic culture.

What I'm loving in hearing this is a process of you figuring things out along the way, and where you fit best. One of the things that we see with our clients, and I don't know exactly your reaction to getting your result and thinking back on your career, but a lot of times people get their Kolbe results and they think, "Oh my gosh, I wish I knew this earlier because it could have helped me learn it." Just jump past some of that learning it through hard knocks or difficult situations. And also sometimes it would have made some people feel like, "I would have been more successful if I'd known this earlier." But what I'm hearing with you, and that I hope listeners take, is you do need to figure it out. So part of what we preach all the time is you need to have the freedom to be yourself. But what I just heard you say was essentially, in some of the roles I was in in universities, you frankly didn't have the freedom to be yourself, to come up with ideas, run and gun, new things, kind of move the culture and the institution, which is how you're wired. You weren't able to do that as much when you were in some of those more supporting roles. And is that true or no? I'm seeing you hesitate on that. Yes, to somewhat. Sorry to interrupt.

So I think what I found is I was able to carve out spaces where I could be fully myself and live into strengths, the orientation of how I'm wired to think, act, decide. But eventually, I had to get to a spot where if I wanted to affect the whole culture of a university, which I did, I realized it wasn't going to happen from the roles that I was occupying at that time.

Okay. No, I get it. I hear that distinction. Were there parts of the roles that were particularly frustrating for you in either a specific role or kind of in general?

I think because I typically have a pretty intuitive sense of what needs to happen and an activator mindset, just being in cultures that take a long time for decision-making and that involve a lot of people in decision-making. It got frustrating at points. Early on, I didn't know enough and I was young in my career, so I kind of, was okay staying in my place. As I gained more experience and had a very clear sense of what needed to happen, I would get impatient with lack of progress or resistance to progress.

Millions of people have discovered their natural way of taking action. What's yours? Go to kolbe.com and take the Kolbe A™ Index to find out. So what are things you learned along the way to either minimize your frustration or be able to take on that dual, okay, the institution or this committee I'm on is more slow and deliberative. They don't move as quickly as you would instinctively. How did you prevent yourself from being too frustrated, constrained, and yet also be able to use your skills and your strengths to push things a little bit and take some risk.

So the way I discovered ways around institutional inertia was developing relationships with people who had the positional authority for the things that I thought needed to change, and tried to avoid committees as much as possible. And so it became a relational way of connecting to where action and momentum could happen. And so then I build credibility, build relationships, build friendships, and then have a relational opportunity to affect a strategic area or programmatic area, and then could make things happen kind of apart from committee structures.

So we've been talking for the most part about your Kolbe Strength in what we call the Quick Start, which is how you deal with risk, unknowns, kind of taking chances, experimenting, and that's that idea-Generating Powerhouse where you just come up with an idea. You're one who is not just willing, but will really push toward experimenting, trying new things, learning as you go from that. I mean, some of them are wonderful successes, that's great. Some of them not so much, and then you have to learn from it, build on it, move forward. But that's only one of four. Another of your strengths, in what we call the Fact Finder, which is how you deal with gathering and sharing information, you're in the mid-range on that. Like in the Quick Start, you initiate action with that Idea-Generating Powerhouse nature of yourself. In Fact Finder, it's a little more reactive. You aren't the person who is necessarily pushing for, "Oh, let's get more data. Let's do another study," which fits with what you were talking about. You're not the person who seeks out a committee to get information and ask questions of 17 different people. But you also don't push back against all of that, which, my guess is probably an important reason or an important way that you dealt with academia."Okay, I can accommodate their question-asking, information-gathering nature." And I'll give them what they need, but you still push a little bit towards, "Okay, and now let's stop that phase of the work, the project, and let's move forward with other stuff." So you kind of blend that. We call it you explain, rather than research or simplify. It's kind of, that's that mid-range in between there. Can you think of times when that's kind of the role you were fulfilling in your jobs or on a committee that you got on even though you didn't want to be on it?

Sure. Yeah, very much so. I really value research. I really value the detailed work for those who are wired that way. I just try to avoid it for myself. And I am able to synthesize a lot of data pretty quickly and explain it, explain the gist of it to people who are not experts in the data. And so I actually would actively seek kind of partnership with the researcher types to say, "You go do the thing that you're good at. When you get it back to me," especially when I was leading the university, "give me the report. I'll read the report. I can explain it to the other 500 faculty and staff who haven't done the research as a way of gaining consensus and movement." And so the explaining part is very clearly a way that I operate in that, especially when trying to get people who haven't been involved in the process on board, to buy in to change that needs to happen.

So you were able to help them hear and understand all the data and information behind the report without having them slow it down by having to redo all the work or ask 20,000 questions. They get to ask maybe 20 instead of 20,000.

Right. Exactly. And it's really a way of honoring the researchers to say, "If we have people who are wired this way and we trust both their competence and their character, we're gonna let them do their things that provide the foundation for the action that needs to happen, and then we can take that. We don't have to go back and reinvent the wheel on it. Let's take what they've done and make something happen.

So I really wanna highlight something that I love and fits really well with our philosophy. So we help people understand their conative strengths, and Kolbe A results aren't about a philosophy. That's just about, hey, this is part of you. It drives the way you act and therefore the way you will be successful. But part of our philosophy is all of those things are important. There's no better or worse when it comes to your Kolbe results. So let's take again your Fact Finder strength in that mid-range explain strength. That's just as important as somebody who really does delve into the details and takes years becoming an expert in their subject and asking questions and doing all the research. Unfortunately, I see a lot of times, and this isn't just academia, this works in business and people's personal lives. Too often I think people, even when they don't intend to, start thinking, "Well, sure, those other things are important, but mine's really the best. Clearly doing the research and becoming an expert puts me really above those people who don't do it the same way." But you started out that section talking about valuing those other strengths. And then I also heard what I think is a notch above that. You used the word honor those different things. I'm not sure that the use of that comes directly from your faith tradition, but my guess is it does because there's a Bible verse that talks about not only being individual parts of a greater body, but it's actually honoring those other parts and saying, what one of us does is important, but what the other does is important. And when we honor, not just acknowledge, but honor what the other person's doing, we actually honor ourselves. And in that faith context, the greater faith in church too. What I've found is the people and companies that we at Kolbe don't work well with are the more old-fashioned, command and control, where it's one person at a leadership level saying, "I know what's best. It's my way. People either do it that way or get out of the way." That person isn't really honoring the differences that we need to have a really well-functioning organization. It's fine when it's just you to say, "This is me. I need to do it my way." But we're all gonna be kind of limited if we operate as an island unto ourselves. It's really when we work in concert with other people, and I guess maybe I'm using that word 'cause I do think in musical terms sometimes. Solo's awesome, but when you put a symphony together, sure, we want to hear maybe a little solo in there, but the power of that entire symphony is so much stronger than that one note. And sometimes even when we do hear that one note, when it's the greatest, it's when it's in the middle of that whole symphony, and it gives it greater meaning and context. So I don't want to wax too poetic here about this 'cause we're also pretty down to Earth about it. But anyway, I loved hearing that from you because it really does fit well with who we are. So I don't know if you have thoughts on that.

I'm glad that resonates because I think that's one of the most important things that I've learned, both from good and bad leaders over me, but as I grew into leadership positions, or even I do some coaching with executives on the side apart from my main work, and I was talking with a CEO and a COO of a company who's growing rapidly, and they're trying to standardize job descriptions for vice presidents and senior vice presidents. And I said, "I want you to be careful about that because your goal is to help everyone thrive uniquely, not thrive in the same way. And if you build your job descriptions too tightly, you will actually constrain their excellence, not release their excellence." And that concept of helping them thrive uniquely and honor the differences, I just think it's super important in every form of leadership.

Yeah. We're singing from the same page, clearly. All right. Well, I wanna get to the two other parts of your Kolbe result 'cause as I said, there are four of them. So Follow Thru is how we deal with systems, structure, organization. Your strength is being open-ended, adaptable. You prevent bureaucracy from forming. Again, I think one of the knocks on academia for the most part, and again, there's a breadth in the higher ed world, but one of the stereotypical knocks on it anyway is, oh, it becomes so bureaucratic with all these committees and everything has a procedure. It's also in the corporate world a lot of times too. It's, oh, we've gotta check with 16 different people before we make a decision. Your strength is really pushing, fighting against that. All right, the last of the four is the Implementor. It's the one that's sometimes hardest to understand 'cause it's very different than the other three. It's also one where we didn't pick the best name for it because people hear Implementor, and frankly, they think more Follow Thru. They think Implementor like, "Oh, this is how we carry things through." How we implement them. And it's not. It's how we deal with the tangible, tactile, three-dimensional world. So your strength is in really being conceptual rather than concrete. You envision rather than build. And this isn't a can or can't issue, again. You can physically construct and build things, but when free to be yourself, it's more about the… And it fits, in this case, with your idea-Generating Powerhouse and the Quick Start. It's the ideas, but they don't necessarily have to come to physical life. They can be conceptual. You can talk about them, write about them. Whereas people who initiate in the Implementor have the strength where they might still have ideas. They could also be an idea-Generating Powerhouse like you, but they would then need to physically construct that. So for instance, if it's an engineer, it's likely to be more a civil engineer who is really part of the construction process, not just the designing and thinking about it and doing the calculations part. So does that sound like you?

Yeah. It's interesting as I read that one, and this one did take me a little bit more to figure out what it was actually about. And even going back to the university, I was much more interested in building programs than buildings. And a lot of times, presidents or chancellors of universities, their legacies are in what buildings they built. And I was just never interested in that. I was much more interested in the programmatic impact, the spiritual impact, the kind of intangibilities of life as opposed to the tangibilities of life, which sometimes created conflict with board members or donors who want to build buildings. And I'm going, "That's just not really what I was interested in or what I thought we needed." Now, the flip side of that is I've actually added on 1,000 square feet to a house that I owned 20 years ago. And because I'm going, "I could see what this house could be, and I'm actually gonna build it too." And it was probably one of the worst decisions of my adult life. But not because I couldn't do it, but because it just took too long and all the things, but… David: Yeah, so let me jump in on a couple of things there. So the last point about you doing it, to me, that fits perfectly with your initiating Quick Start. You took it on as a challenge. It's like, "Let's see if I can do this. It's not gonna be easy, but that's okay. I take on things that aren't easy." You kind of conceptually knew you almost did because it was outside your wheelhouse. Is that true? Well, I had done… David: Even if you thought it would be good to do. Yeah. And I've worked in all the different trades since I was an early teenager, so I had the skills in all those areas. And it was a challenge to prove who adds 1,000 square feet onto their house and does it mostly by themselves? And so there was a challenge aspect to it. It wasn't the smartest decision though.

So, I'm not gonna challenge you on that because I don't know at all whether it was the smartest decision. I think it's fine, and this is a nuance that when we talk about using your conative strengths, it's definitely a nuance. It's kinda like the master's level discussion with somebody, not the undergraduate level discussion. By and large, focus on what you do well and maximize the time you spend doing that. But I think we all need to leave space for doing things that maybe are outside of our wheelhouse. Just be smart to know, don't do it on a really kind of a mission-critical project. So I hope with you it wasn't a bad decision because it was, "Oh my gosh, if this doesn't go well, we could be homeless." You shouldn't take that kind of… Rod: Yeah, and I didn't think it would be. But that's just as an example. If you had the leeway and the space in your life to take this on because it's something you wanted to do as almost a value in addition to your conative strengths, then great, but also go into it knowing this might not work out. It's not a failure if you get partway into it and realize, "You know what? I did enough of this 1,000 square feet. I got 500 done by myself. I'm gonna hire somebody for the rest of it." That's okay. That doesn't mean you failed at it. It means it was an experiment, and you experimented. Great. On the value side, and this is probably easier for you and me, we're both 2s in Follow Thru. That's the open-ended adaptable side. It's natural for us to start things that we don't finish, even though we were also probably both taught you should finish everything you start. That's a common, what we would call good advice gone bad for people who are 2s in Follow Thru that really does become a value thing. People look at it and think there's something wrong with you value-wise if you don't finish everything you start. Whereas you and I would look at it and think, "No, no, I didn't need to finish this. It was something that I was interested in starting, but it's okay if it either doesn't get done or it starts with just me, but I hire somebody else to do the last part." So I just encourage people to understand the decisions they're making and how they fit into everything. So I kinda love that. All right. Shifting a little bit to your role leading leaders and teaching leaders. Have you used the Kolbe with them? And not necessarily having them take an Index, but just the kind of philosophy and context of it. Have you used it in the last six months?

I've used the principles. I don't know the concept well enough to use the actual terms. But I think the difference, like you talked about, the core piece, as I understand it, is the conative approach as opposed to cognitive or affective, of the way we actually operate. That's been really fascinating for me. Like I talked about, I talk a lot about helping people thrive uniquely, and figuring out, kind of in every dimension of life, spiritually, relationally, vocationally, how are you wired to thrive and encouraging people to spend a lot of time figuring out how they're wired to thrive. I was just at our annual conference this last weekend. One of the speakers I had met earlier this year, and she was really struggling with trying to lead in a way that all the leadership material says you should lead. And she goes, "That's just not how I'm wired to lead." And I said, "Well, don't try to lead that way then." We were having coffee together a few months ago, and I said, lead in the way God created you to lead. Don't lead in the way that 4,000 leadership books talk about. And because I read like crazy, I said, "Here's a book that you should read that talks about leading the way you're wired, not the way other people are wired." And I hadn't seen her since June. We sat next to each other at dinner on Saturday night, and she said, "I devoured that book, and it's like I saw myself on the pages. Now I'm just trying to figure out how do I put it into practice." David: Just curious, what's the name of the book? The book is called Opportunity Leadership. It's written by a university president and basically goes against the whole strategic planning, five-year plans, 10-year plans, and talks about, not surprisingly, that I would be interested in it, being adaptable to strategic opportunities that arrive, not trying to predict what the future looks like. So part of it is it fits my leadership style, so I like it.

Yeah. Well, and we need those, and that's what, again, one of our pet peeves here at Kolbe Corp, but also mine in particular, is the notion of the one-size-fits-all advice when we aren't all one size. And I understand why people write a book and then sell it as, "This is the answer that you need," because it helps sell the book if everybody can benefit from it. But everybody isn't always gonna benefit from it. That's what we, as I mentioned, call good advice gone bad. It's great advice for you, but it isn't necessarily great advice for the person who approaches leadership or problem-solving a different way. So yeah, it sounds like you kind of knew who she was and you knew this was the right book for her, which I like that approach to helping others figure out what are your unique strengths and how should you capitalize on them, rather than just, "Oh yeah, 4,000 other people, it worked for them this way, but you're the 4,001st and it's not gonna work." But so as you're thinking about all this stuff, do you have any immediate thoughts on what you're gonna do with it kind of in the next week to six months?

Yeah. So I'm always just interested in learning more individually. I also have just hired a new director of a program who's going to report to me, so I thought it could be an interesting tool as he's coming on board for him to see how I operate. And in the interview process, we've talked a lot about not just the qualifications for the job, but the relationship, the working relationship between the two of us, and having some common language to use in that relationship I think can be helpful.

Yeah. And we have stuff that can help like that with the Takes 2 that I mentioned, that's the personal relationship analysis. We have one called Comparisons A to A. Same thing in a business context that'll just help the two of you quickly understand, hey, here's who we each are, here's what the other person looks like, and what are some of the issues that might pop up and how to solve them. And communication is always one of the first things that pops up, and we help with. Great. Well, I'm glad you've got kind of a couple things, because what we see is most helpful is it's great to learn these things about yourself, but putting them into practice. And because we're a mission-driven organization, to me, part of the mission, the first step in our mission, is to help more people just understand their own conative strengths. But to fulfill the broader mission that we have, it's so that everybody is empowered not just to know what those strengths are, but to actually use them. And that means you have to involve other people. It's not just yourself on an island. But I love that your next thing is, okay, it's the two of us, and then I hope from there it expands to teams and leading others and all of that good stuff. Any questions for me before we go?

Yeah, I'm curious. Probably the one thing that I questioned in the report. I really liked the "get more done in less time" one, which, the procrastination, artificial deadlines, self-provoke, all of that, I mean, that's just looking in a mirror. The one thing that I thought was interesting that I wanted maybe a little more explanation about, it said, and I can't remember what page it was, but it says that I have limited mental energy, which has never been my self-perception. And it talked about not taking on every challenge. And part of it is my competitive nature. I'll take on challenges that I know that I can win. But the limited mental energy one, that one struck me because I've just always had what I've felt is unlimited mental energy. So I'd be interested if you have some explanation or exploration of that.

Sure. We mean it in a kind of literal way. It's helping to provide context. So in a literal way, I think I could get you to probably agree, look, I could run you so ragged that at some point you'd be like, "That's it, I'm out." Now, your capacity for that might feel a lot greater than the average, or you feel like, no, I can go and go and go and go, but think about other parts of actual energy. If I just said, "Okay, I want you to run until you can't run," even if you are the best ultra-marathoner in the world, I'm gonna hit the breaking point. So we really mean it in that literal kind of way, and the reason we bring it in is we want people to understand it's not unlimited. We all, I think frankly, by and large, people way underestimate their capacity for using mental energy. Sounds like you don't have that issue, which I love.… but forget about the underestimate. We want people to understand it is precious. We want you to use the mental energy that you have in the most effective and efficient way. So let me give you an example. Because it's limited, I could put you in a situation, and it sounds like you've been in them sometimes, where, okay, you've got huge reserves of mental energy. If I put you in committee meetings for 40 hours a week, and your job to do a lot of homework ahead of time, develop a list of questions for all of us. Oh, and by the way, you're gonna report out to the committee many times, and we're going to ask you many questions about what you're telling us, and then you're gonna have to go back in the data, find the very specific answers, and re-report to us, I think your mental energy is gonna get drained more quickly. So what we're trying to do is frame that understanding for people to know, okay, it's not unlimited, so you can't do that all week in a way that's really unnatural for you and then magically have reserves left when it's time to make really important decisions, for example. So the next step of that is to say, in a very literal way, your brain will operate more effectively, meaning you will get more done with less actual energy being used. And our brain does use the physical energy in our body. One of the reasons blood goes there is it delivers energy so that our neurons can fire. When you are doing the things that fit with your conative strengths, you will get more done using less energy, and that's one of the reasons you feel like you've got a huge capacity or well of mental energy, because you get to do that most of the time. You've figured that out. But if you're in situations where you operate against your strengths, sometimes it'll feel like you have less energy, but that's not really true either. The reality is you have just as much energy as always. It's just getting used up without the same results, and that's frustrating. So that's what we mean. Kind of a long answer.

No, that's really helpful. So as you were saying that, I was going through a job transition a few years ago and I made a chart with three different columns, things that I could do that I would love to do, things that I could do that I would hate to do, and things I've never tried, which I might like to do. And I remember I had two friends just call me and say, "I've got a vice president of this or a vice president of that job. Would you be interested?" And to one of them, I said, "No," or, "You could just stab me in the eye with a screwdriver before I would take that" because I was very capable of doing the job, but I said that would suck my soul to do that job. And so that makes sense. That would have taken enormous amounts of mental energy that I had no desire to allocate to that job.

Yeah, and so another example that fits with what we're talking about here is people who do things that they love, so that's the affective side. Like, they just have a passion for it. That's an important part of it. And they get to do it in a way that fits with their conative strengths. They can work and work, and they don't stop because… And we've all heard this, the best job is one that doesn't feel like work. So they're doing and they're really actually using energy, but it fits so well and it flows, and they get the results that then provide the positive affective emotional feedback because they're getting that, they see the results. They just have a capacity to work longer because it's not burning the energy. So think of it like when you are an efficient athlete, we're talking about ultra-marathoners. When your body is just the kind of body that… and you've been trained so that you can do that output in a sustained way, that's very different than doing something physically that's unnatural for you that burns that energy. Like, you take that ultra-marathoner and say, "Okay, we're gonna make you do resistance training, and it's all about lifting your max weight." Great. Now, why don't you do that for 24 hours nonstop? That's a silly example in the physical world that doesn't map perfectly to the conative, but I think you get the point. So.

That's great. That's very helpful. I appreciate it.

So Rod, you mentioned in stuff that we looked at before we got on that, you've often been called, or at least sometimes been called intense, I think in particular at work. What do you mean? What does that look like?

Yeah. So, partially because, as you said, I'm an idea-Generating machine or something like that. And I have a very clear sense of what needs to happen. The mission of the organization is really important to me. And so sometimes as I'm delivering what I believe with passion, it just comes across really intensely and can bowl people over or shut them down just because I'm delivering it with a fair amount of passion, is what I see. I have to be careful to think about both the tone of voice, how much I speak, when I speak, because I want to speak in a way that brings out the best in people, but I've found that sometimes my energy for what I'm talking about can shut people down as opposed to draw them out. And so it's been something that I've been working on for a long time, and continue to work on basically every week, I would say.

Yeah, and from what I've seen with people who have a similar initiation in Quick Start, it can be that, for sure, with your level of coming up with ideas and driving toward new things and experimenting. That comes off as intense sometimes, but it's almost always also in combination with the affective side of you, that personality-driven side. So it sounds like you've already identified that and you're working on, probably more the affective side is my guess, but also the understanding that you already have, hey, not everybody's like me in terms of that Quick Start. They're not all gonna be fired up to hear, "Hey, this is new and experimental, and we might fail." Like, some people love that. They hear, "We're gonna take on this big challenge, and I don't know if it's gonna work. We might go out of business or fail or whatever," the way you describe it. Some people actually thrive on that. It tends to be the other initiating Quick Starts. Other people will just draw back and think, "What the heck?" That doesn't make any sense to me. You already know that, so you're making sure that you communicate in ways that don't turn those people off. So I hear what you're saying, and it sounds like you've already got it dealt with, but that's interesting.

Well, I'd say I'm in the process of dealing with it. I'm not at the finished product stage, but hopefully I'm… David: Right. Hopefully I'm further along the road than I was five, 10 years ago.

Fantastic. Well, I really appreciate you being on here, and hope you'll use this in the future for yourself, and importantly for you because you really are a leader of others too. I hope you will continue, 'cause it sounds like you already have, to help them figure out how to develop their own strengths and use them to their highest capacity. So thanks for doing what you've been doing.

Thanks, David. It's been my pleasure to be on this, and I just really appreciate mission-driven organizations like yours that are helping people thrive. So thanks for what you're doing as well.