Shayne Daughenbaugh  00:30

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Lean Solutions podcast. My name is Shane Doffenbaugh. I’ll be your host today. I’m going solo, but we’re gonna have you thinking about a question here. So, ladies and gentlemen, what is your oh no face? Now everyone’s got one. Okay, think about this. You made the call. It was yours. No one talked you into it. Everyone followed your lead. Three weeks later, somebody sends you a number, maybe forwards you an email, or maybe just asks you a call, a question in the hallway, you know, totally innocent, no agenda, and you know, you realize it. Not this might not be working, but you know, you know the second you saw it, and honestly, some part of you knew back in the room, and now you have to walk into the stand-up tomorrow and be the person who decided this. But right now you’re in your car, haven’t started it yet. What’s that face? Today’s guest is Michael E. Crumpeck. He’s an award-winning speaker, executive coach, leadership advisor, and a number one Amazon best-selling author of Why Smart Leaders Do Stupid Things: Lessons Learned from lousy leaders, drawing on more than 30 years of leadership experience with organizations including Samsung, Gartner, American Airlines, Deloitte, and the U.S. House of Representatives, he helps smart, technically accomplished professionals become legendary leaders who inspire trust, accountability, and results. Michael is the founder and CEO of the L4 Learning Solutions and creator of the Legendary Leader Flight Plan and Legendary Leader Radar. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Krumpak  02:12

Thank you, Shane. Glad to be here.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  02:15

I am. I am happy to have you here too. So you’ve been doing this for a long time. Like, give us a quick yeah yeah synopsis.

Michael Krumpak  02:23

So it’s funny. So I was a music major in undergrad, and I makes

Shayne Daughenbaugh  02:27

sense.

Michael Krumpak  02:29

And I was working at this telemarketing company, and I was like kicking butt on the phones. We were selling. This is like in 1990, I think. We were selling products like the Easy Glider, the Ronco Pasta Maker, like all these things when the infomercials were like all over the place, especially when you couldn’t sleep at night. And the trainer was sick one day, and they said, “Crumback, go teach these people everything that you know about selling because this is 1990. I was making like 30 bucks an hour, which was insane. That

Shayne Daughenbaugh  03:05

is, I just kind

Michael Krumpak  03:06

of like figured it out. So that’s how I started going into this whole training and development, and then it kind of morphed to leadership and development. But changed my major, went into business and industrial organizational psychology, and basically, I’ve been gathering these stories for 30 some years, and finally, I put out my book, “Why Smart Leaders Do Stupid Things, which is not to like crucify anyone, but just from 18 to 4050, whatever. I’ve seen so many people with big hearts, well intentioned, just fall on their face. Not because they wanted to, but because they they made some bad decisions, bad choices. So, yeah, that’s kind of how I got into this whole thing. It started in telemarketing, and then I just collected all these stories over the years. And there is so much that we can learn to be better people and better leaders just from like observing the mistakes that those people around us see.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  04:19

That that is so lean. That that is such a lean mentality. Is

Michael Krumpak  04:23

yeah.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  04:24

Let let’s learn from and and that’s really what a lean organization is. Is a learning organization.

Michael Krumpak  04:29

Right. It is

Shayne Daughenbaugh  04:29

one that is willing to examine where things went wrong, where the wheels fell off. It’s one that when you’re sitting in your car and you have that sudden like oh no face

Michael Krumpak  04:41

like

Shayne Daughenbaugh  04:42

let me learn from this. I I can’t I can’t you know go back in time and change that. But what can I learn from this moving forward? Yeah, you know. So I I love this idea, and and I also love that you’re not throwing leaders under the bus because I I have this philosophy that everyone is trying to do the best that they can. And stupid decisions are stupid decisions simply because you know they weren’t tapped into the intelligence that they had. Right. They they they weren’t the things that they knew they could do or the things they had potential for. They were not making. They weren’t using those those skills, those gifts. You know that intuition. They were they were doing something else, and that brought them to a really stupid decision.

Michael Krumpak  05:23

Yeah, and it’s it’s not like those people were trying to be bad or evil leaders, but something blocked them. They got stuck, and typically it’s pressure or stress that blinds us. And I really think our brains are so primitive. It’s all about fight or flight, and like when times are really normal or comfortable, we can make really good decisions. But that’s not the normal anymore. So it’s like, how do you catch yourself when there’s times of pressure or stress, and what are some of the tools and the processes and the systems that we can do to kind of take care of ourselves, so that we can then take care of the teams and the people that we work with, or or ultimately lead.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  06:16

So, in in all of your research and in in the years that you mentioned of collecting these stories of of then analyzing and trying to understand what happened. What are some of the the main reasons why smart, technically accomplished leaders make these poor decisions? Especially as you mentioned, you know it’s under duress or under pressure. There’s like whether it be time or money constraints or whatever it might be. Like, what are some of the reasons why why do we as smart people fall into this trap?

Michael Krumpak  06:45

I I think the number one reason is that our intentions do not always translate to our actions. Like for example, if I’m working with you, Shane, and I’m like you know he’s doing so great. He’s a rock star. I want to give him. I want to recognize him. I want to appreciate him. So I give you a stretch assignment, and I think that’s going to motivate you, inspire you, elevate you. But actually, you’re like, oh my god, I’m drowning. I’m stressed. I can’t take anymore. Why are you picking on me? Why are you doing that? So we just have these blind spots that if we don’t catch ourselves and seek to understand and be curious and ask questions, then we can make we can make make mistakes. And I remember there was another story. I’m dating myself to like telemarketing days, like long time ago, when like there wasn’t even like an automated system. We were literally like dialing with our fingers and writing on cards and everything. But there was an employee that did really well, so we gave her an employee of the month, and we gave her a great speech. She walked up. She was ready to like accept the award, but she got so nervous she quit and walked out the door. So it’s like we think we’re doing something nice by celebrating or recognizing people, but unless we see what their personality is, see what their preferences are, ask those really important questions, and drill down. That’s why I love the five whys. I’ve been using that methodology in my training programs, my coaching. It just really gets down to a level of specificity that you can do. You can really do something with it. So yeah, just another example of where our intent is a disconnect to our actions, and sometimes it can backfire, and I see this especially when people like first transition from the rock star individual contributor to like a supervisor or manager, and then a director. So as you go through all these transitions, you have to let go of things that made you successful. So you can’t keep doing the work. You need to delegate. You need to develop. You need to do all of that. So there’s all these passages throughout our career. It’s like a zigzag that we have to pay attention to. So it’s like we need to focus on quality and systems and process, but we also have to focus on the people side and the communication and the understanding. So, as leaders, there’s so much that we we have to think about and do simultaneously. But really, I think the big thing is like we think we’re more in touch with ourselves than we actually are. Like I think it was Sigmund Freud that’s like the you that you know is like hardly worth knowing, and the question is how can you round out those blind spots by getting feedback from others, and we can you know talk about models, and I know you did the the radar assessment, but how do you open up and be inquisitive to get? Feedback, so you can actually make choices of like, hey, do I really want to show up to my team this way? Everyone’s giving me feedback. I think I’m a rock star, but no one likes this particular thing that I’m doing. So it’s an opportunity to be humble. It’s an opportunity to be curious and to like seek feedback because we just we just have so many blind spots, myself like included. I talk about all of them in the book.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  10:25

I am one of those lousy leaders. Yeah,

Michael Krumpak  10:28

yeah. It’s like I like I talk about the story how I had to terminate an employee and I did such a bad job. She showed up the next day, and my colleague, I thought you fired her. I’m like, I did. I thought I did

Shayne Daughenbaugh  10:44

too.

Michael Krumpak  10:45

But it’s like what was coming out of my mouth was not connected to what I was thinking through, and like I totally messed it up. I said something like, “I don’t think this is working out. I think you need to go home. And she’s like, “Great, and she came back. So okay,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  11:00

is it better today?

Michael Krumpak  11:01

And then someone else had to come in. I felt so bad and and stupid, but it’s like now I know that okay, I need to plan. I need to prepare. I need to like phone a friend and ask for feedback. Like, how do I do this? I’ve never terminated someone before, so right, like those little moments, like they they stick with me, and I think they stick with all of us. We all have our little moments where we can learn really interesting lessons that can make ourselves better, and then in terms we can work with our teams and make our organizations better.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  11:35

Yeah, and and I like how how you said it earlier because it kind of it’s it’s stuck in my head about how we’re very, our brains are very primitive, you know, and and we we find this we find this very efficient way of survival, and it works really well, brings us to rock star status, but then we just keep those same modes without reflecting, without getting more information in. So I’m still trying to do the same things that worked when I was an individual contributor, don’t necessarily work where I’m at now, or or with the people that I’m now working with. Like that’s that’s an assumption that I am I am still trying hard to to break in my head. Is that people think and communicate the way I do, and without without the the the feedback, without the the pause to to actually ask, hey, so that didn’t work out very well the first time. What is a better way to go about this? You know, it’s it’s I’m I’m doomed to continue to make the same stupid things, not as a dumb person.

Michael Krumpak  12:35

And so the book has this whole airline theme. I’m just I’ve always been kind of an aviation fan, so we have these like black black box reflections. And actually, I just ordered a black box from an actual airplane on eBay. I haven’t opened the box yet, but I want to like use it because there’s so many times, and especially when we’re doing lean work or really trying to like enhance processes and things like that. We have to like pause and say, okay, what worked? What didn’t work? What did we learn from it? What did we think we knew? What were the assumptions? Like all of that, and that’s exactly what happens when there’s an aviation incident. It’s like, where’s the black box? Let’s get the black box. Then you can analyze the voice recorder from the cockpit, all the controls, and you can figure out okay, what can we learn from it so that we can become better leaders. Going the point is like just as we make changes through our career, it’s just important that we pay attention to ourselves and say okay, what are the things that made us successful? If we continue, they’re going to derail us. And what are some new skills that we need to kind of refine or reshape that can actually accelerate our trajectory and our success as like a more senior leader? So there’s a lot to it. There’s a lot to it. Yeah, yeah.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  13:57

In fact, according to your book and the things you know, if if those of you that are interested, the 4l, I’m sorry, your website again,

Michael Krumpak  14:06

l4 Learning Solutions. Thank you. I knew it

Shayne Daughenbaugh  14:09

wasn’t. I had them wrong. The l4 Learning Solutions. Yeah. You talk about the nine leadership vectors, and you have a legendary leader radar. And so the I’d love to to have you explain the the nine leadership vectors for your legendary leader flight plan, and which one of those typically have the greatest impact on let’s say execution and team performance.

Michael Krumpak  14:34

I’m going to go through this super quick. I’ll show you a picture of it that’s in the book, so this is called the Legendary Leader Flight Plan. So it’s nine vectors. It’s based on tons and tons of research, and I won’t get into that. But basically, all success can be boiled down to these nine vectors. This is my belief. And if you really want to go from someone that’s like good to someone that’s great, or as I say, someone that is maybe smart to someone who’s really legendary, there’s nine vectors that come into play, and they actually spell the word legendary. So the first is liberation, and these are not mutually exclusive; they’re not really in an order, but these are just like nine vectors. So the the first one is liberation. So it’s creating a condition for innovation, for openness, for risk taking. Expectations pretty clear. Do you have goals? Do you have alignment? Are you getting the results that you want? Growth is a huge one. It’s about roles, growth mindset, capability, empathy is a really, really big one. And we’re actually we’ve actually done this assessment with some big organizations like New York Life, Fiji Water, a couple law firms, and it’s interesting how empathy is bubbling up as like one of the biggest opportunities that people have. And I don’t know if it’s because of technology or AI, but like you can’t go to ChatGPT and say, “Tell me how to be more empathetic. There’s a human side to it, so it’s understanding the perspective, the emotions, and others really to build trust. So there’s a lot underneath all of these. I think decision making is huge. So it’s gathering data. It’s knowing when to stop gathering data and like take action. It’s finding ways to lead with confidence. Then there’s adaptability, which is responding to uncertainty. It’s flexing. It’s dealing with change. Then resilience is recovering quickly. So how quickly can Shane? You have a great idea. You go to your superior. You’re 100 confident it’s the best thing, and they’re like, “Nope, we’re not going to do it. Like, can you like be resilient and do what’s best for the organization? Maybe tuck it away and revisit it later. And then finally, the last one is yielding, which I think is one of the hardest things to do. So in my mind, I know I said these are not mutually exclusive, but I think you have to have a good foundation of all these vectors before yielding can apply, and that’s basically saying I’ve done my work as a leader. You guys go do it, figure it out, fall down, make mistakes, and I resist the temptation to kind of jump in and actually rescue you.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  17:48

Yeah, which one of these tend to have the greatest impact on execution and team performance?

Michael Krumpak  17:54

Yeah, so I I think it’s the expectations and the decision making, and for expectations, I always say inspect what you expect. And I actually used to work for Chewy, and there was a leader that worked in one of the warehouses, and this was his motto. So I like I stole it from him, and I use it. And he would say, “You gotta walk around. You can’t just tell people what the goals are, pull up the metrics, pull up the dashboards. You have to have conversations and inspect what you expect, because even if we have a conversation and we say, “Hey, we agree to these three things, they may look a little bit different in in your head because you’re pulling from different perspectives, different jobs that you’ve maybe worked with, different companies, all of that. So expectations, making sure that you’re 100% clear on what those expectations are, and then you follow up to make sure that it’s really reinforced. And here’s the thing, too: what we say are expect expectations for today can actually like morph to something else in six months from now. So how do you revisit, recalibrate, reward those people that are meeting expectations or exceeding expectations, and how do you you know make sure that everyone’s focused on on the right game plan, and then decision making is like right related to that. So I think those are are are super important. But you could probably make an argument that there’s a lot of other pieces that that come into play. So

Shayne Daughenbaugh  19:31

I I took the radar and and want to know if do do you want to like talk a little bit about how how we can build that? So, so I may through the radar, which, ladies and gentlemen, it is a free survey you just take. It’s got sound. This sounds daunting. It has 45 questions, but they’re super simple questions. But you do need to think about them. It didn’t take me more than about seven to 10 minutes, maybe. So it’s a pretty it’s pretty low risk to take, and then you have I have this this radar that shows me where some of my weaknesses, where some of my top strengths, my or I should I like how you say the key growth opportunities. Yeah. So my key growth opportunities, expectations, which we just talked about, and and resilience. Let’s take those. And what some practical actions that I can take to immediately like improve those or strengthen those.

Michael Krumpak  20:27

It’s a quick assessment. It’s free. It’s in the book. It’s at lforlearningsolutions.com, and it’s a self assessment. So, like, let me just throw that out. No one else is giving feedback at yourself, and we all think we’re a lot better than we are. But basically, you’re going to be able to get your top two strengths that we want to encourage you to continue to dial up. But then also, it’s going to give you your top two or bottom two, I should say, opportunities for improvement. And the reason we call it a legendary leader radar map is because it gives you this visual that Shane has up. Like we can see right now, he’s really good at being adaptable. I mean, like look at you’re you’re running podcasts and dealing with interacting and things can go different. Like I can totally see that in you. So adaptability is really strong, but if you look at an opportunity for improvement, resiliency 68. So if you scroll through the report, if you’re like we’re sharing everything, I don’t see these reports unless you like share with me. So it’s not like I’m gonna like track you down and say why are you doing this. So resiliency. So you lead with optimism during challenges, demonstrating grit, self awareness, and the ability to rally your team after setbacks. So that’s an opportunity. So if you scroll down, it gives you some activities and things that you can do to keep keep scrolling. So for each of the nine vectors, it’s going to give you an actual score and a present, and then it gives you one of these four levels. So the summary of everything that Shane had was in the momentum level, and I know you said you’re not a people leader, so like that kind of comes into that. But even if we don’t have direct reports, I always challenge people to say you’re leading yourself. You’re leading groups of people. You may be leading organizations outside of work. Like there’s things that you can do to be a role model and a leader. But like I get it. So first of all, I would ask someone if you feel comfortable share this with like three or four people and say, “Look, I got some feedback saying that my resiliency was a little low, and basically that’s like bouncing back and dealing with that. Can you give me some examples of where you’ve seen me not really being more resilient? Like it could be that you have an idea and you want to push forward on that, and you’re you know almost like relentless. So rather than saying oh this is what you need to do to fix it, I would invite you to be more curious to kind of like ask people for feedback to round out like what the definition is, and you may find someone that says, “You know what? I think you’re incredibly resilient, and then that becomes like a data point. So this is a this is a free exercise. We also have the legendary leader Radar 360. So it’s the same thing, but a lot more questions, and we ask you to do your self-assessment, your manager, your direct reports, peers, other leaders, and that’s really where the rubber meets the road. And you can find out, wow, why is it that everyone thinks I’m really good at empathy, but I said that I’m pretty low at that. So that’s like a hidden strength that it can identify. So if you’re trying to uncover your blind spots, which I think is one of the things, like how do we grow? It can be a quick self-assessment. It can be a formal 360, or it can just be asking people for feedback, even in one-on-one conversations or team meetings, how are you doing? How is our team doing? What can I do to support you? It’s inviting people to open up and create that space where we can have a dialog and a conversation, and that’s what I think is so important. So it’s it’s being curious. And letting people know if you give me bad feedback, I’m not going to retaliate against you, and that’s really development in a nutshell.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  25:08

Yeah, I love that because if many of the things I have to land on one of them, but the the asking for for feedback, you know, I I really appreciate that. I’m gonna stop sharing here. The asking for feedback in in saying, you know, hey, what is it, Michael? What is it that that I could be better at or in helping you? And and I don’t I don’t know all the perfect words for this, but however you can, like we can take these the the free assessments or other assessments, other 360s. But just the idea is just get feedback onto what it what it is that I am nose blind to, and then being aware of that because this is what I’m hearing. Once I’m aware of that, especially under pressure, then I start doing a sniff test, you know, and I go okay. So I just gave Michael some expectations, but I am like we got a lot of stuff going on. Like I am really stressed about this. I should probably follow up and just make sure that I was clear about those expect. Or I should ask Michael back. Can you tell me what you heard that I had for that expectation? So so these are these are simple actions to become better leaders. It’s it’s awareness, right? It’s it’s getting feedback, collecting data. As as lean, we should love data, rather than just our gut feeling. Because I may think I’m a rock star, but the rest of my team’s like, so so yes, getting feedback, bringing that awareness, and bringing that with me to into the situations where I know I may start lagging in some of these that I that I could be better at, you know, some of these opportunities. Is there any anything else here in in the you know the 30 seconds we have left?

Michael Krumpak  26:48

I would just say like the radar assessment is really good, and it can be good for you as an individual, but it could also be really good for your teams, because if you have your teams do it and then you know get permission to share the results. You might find that there’s one person on your team that has a superpower where everyone on your team is struggling, and you can plug her into a little bit more of those areas to help some of the others. So it helps you round out the team, and it just makes our jobs easier and more effective, so it gives you data and it gives you a vehicle to actually action with it. So yeah, I mean, I think that’s the important thing. Ask for feedback, whether it’s an assessment or just asking people to comment on. Hey, I don’t know if I’m as resilient. How? What do you think? What do you think my brand is? Have people provide that? So yeah, there’s ways that just give people permission to share, and sometimes it takes a little bit of time, and you have to have that trust to get people to be open. But that’s what we’re trying to get to-that environment where I call it just very open and liberating environment.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  28:01

I love that. So, Michael, where could people? I did mention that the book is on Amazon. So, is that the best place to? Yeah, the book

Michael Krumpak  28:09

is on Amazon. That’s the best way. If you get the book, you can find me on LinkedIn or on the website. I’ll give you a 50-page companion guide, which is sort of part coach, part accountability partner that sort of takes things in a little bit more detail, but yeah, it’s like I feel really proud of the book. It’s really helped a lot of people. We have a lot of case studies, but yeah, I’d love for you to test drive it. It’s probably Amazon’s your best place for now. Okay, thanks for the opportunity.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  28:40

Yeah, yeah. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve ever found yourself as a smart person who realized you’ve done stupid things, there could be a reason for that. Let’s figure out what that is, and make it better for the next time. So, Michael, it has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Great to get to know you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for listening, for watching. Please continue to do so. We would also love to hear any feedback you have on this conversation or on the book. You know, go read it, go to Amazon, give your reviews. We need reviews to know what it, you know, how this is landing and what we could do to be better at this. So whether it be here on, you know, on on YouTube, on LinkedIn, or on Amazon. Let us know your thoughts. Thanks so much. Have yourself a great day.

Michael Krumpak  29:27

Bye, everyone. Thank you.