123. The Leadership Labyrinth Exploring Growth and Resilience Damon Lembi w/ Favazza

I mean we could go anywhere with what you just said, but I'll try to keep it in line. Like this is like an informal kind of interview, so I know it's got you a little tense Like what the hell, when is he going with this? You know like, don't worry, it's just we're having a conversation.

I like it. No, no, I mean, hey, I listened to some of your. I know how it works, so I'm not okay. You could ask me anything.

Hell, yes, I like it. You're all tense right now. You're making me a tense right now I'm not tense.

You're listening to a podcast that encourages you to embrace your vulnerabilities and authentic self. This is your transformation station and this is your host, Greg Favazza.

Hey Damian, you're there, How's? It going there you are, it's going yourself.

Good.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too, sir. So is it Damian Lemby.

Damon Lemby.

Damon, damon. Okay, I don't know why.

How do we, how do we pronounce your last? How do you pronounce your last name?

Take a wild guess.

Favazara.

They're close enough, favazza.

Favazza Okay.

Yes, yes. I was thinking of a born identity for a second, and I don't know where I got Damian from. Maybe it's from that movie or something.

I get it all the time, so you you know I get it it kind of looked like him a little bit. Matt Damon.

Yeah, just a little bit. No, I'm not kissing your ass. So that's what you're wondering. Oh my God, though, that you get that poster in the background.

Rocky poster. You like that yes?

I love it. I mean, that hits home to me right there.

Rocky two. Well, that's Rocky one, but Rocky two was the best.

I don't know. I really like when he goes against that Russian.

Drago.

Yes, Drago, oh, and he just gets shredded and he's ready to just he takes a pounding and I love it.

Yeah.

Yeah, but anyways, what comes to mind when you think about leadership? What's the first thing?

What comes to mind when I think about leadership? I think the first thing that comes to mind is that leadership is about accountability and, I think you know, serving others.

Why is that?

Well, I also look at. I also look at leadership. As you know, to be a leader, you don't have to manage a team of 5, 10, 1000 people. I think it starts with self leadership right. So you start with yourself. You know you got to be accountable, you got to do the right thing, you know have integrity. And then you know, once you're, once you get the self leadership down, if you decide you want to go out and be a leader of a team, of sports coach or whatever, you know you got to go from there and I think great leaders you know put their team first and learn to serve them.

That's beautifully, that's beautiful. I mean, that is, that's really nice. Why do you believe that leaders should serve others? Why shouldn't they just put themselves first? I mean, wouldn't you want to do that? If you're, say, you're a parent, you know you should put yourself first versus your children, because if you're not healthy, then how can you be there for them?

Well, with the, with the parenting thing, you know, it's kind of like the airplane, right? They say put your put your mask on first before you take care of your kids. So I think the same thing kind of goes with leadership. You got to believe in yourself first, because if you don't, I think it's going to be hard to lead others. But at the end of the day, if you want to build a great team, you want to grow and evolve. You know it's only scalable, I think, if you have a great supporting cast. You know, and a great supporting cast usually means hiring people who are smarter than you, better than you, who have just diverse opinions, and give them the tools and invest in them so they can be successful, you know, and make the wins about them too.

So what can we draw from this main distinction, like if we were to look at it through with reason the airplane, the parent, and whether leaders should serve others, but then again he should be placing priority on himself first so he can serve those others. What do you think?

Well, I think that I think the best leaders in the world whether it's in sports or business or you know whatever you know they have that self-confidence, you know. But at the end of the day, they know that they don't need to show vote. You know the people know that they're strong leaders or whatever, and that they can be. You know, in some ways, you want to lead from the front. Correct, right, you know? I mean, if things aren't going well or if it's uncertain times, you know leaders need to lead from the front. You know they need to be the ones who are like hey, you know what? This is a challenge we have going on, we're going to make this work, but at the end of the day, I think it's about making it about your team, you know, giving them what they need to be successful and helping support them. And, like I said a moment ago, if you get wins, give them the wins right, let you know, celebrate their victories. And if things, if things don't go well, then the leader needs to kind of step up and say, hey, this is on me. You know, at the end of the day, it's my business, it's my team, so you know, I'll take the accountability for that.

Okay, so if we're going to, I mean we could go anywhere with what you just said, but I'll try to keep it in line. Like this is like an informal kind of interview, so I know it's got you a little tense like what the hell, where is he going with this? You know like, don't worry, it's just, we're just having a conversation.

I like it. No, no, I mean, hey, I listened to some of your. I know how it works, so I'm not. You could ask me anything.

Hell, yes, I like it, but to give a little snap, I'm going to preface this with a snapshot about you and then we'll continue on. So you're a CEO of LearnIt, helping and developing organizations. You know organizations and professionals over 30 years, is that right?

Close 28 years 28.

Okay, I like to round up, and you're the author of the LearnIt All Leader mindset traits and tools by LineCrest Publishing. Yes, correct, okay, and that was released just last spring, right?

Yeah, april of 2023.

Okay, cool, we'll definitely go into that later. So don't try to sneak in the book drop Like, yeah, if you check out my book, you'll get the answer. No, no, no, no, we don't want that.

I'm not like that.

Yes, there's got to be more substance than that.

I hope so.

So, like this, being a leader, developing a leadership mentality, like, do you think it's developed by choice?

Why do you think it's developed by choice? I think it's sometimes developed through either osmosis or just through lived experiences.

What do you think Lived experiences is what I think, right as you're asking me that usually they go on a rant so I take a sip of water, so that's like I wasn't expecting that. I like it. They'll give me some of what I give out, so I appreciate it. I believe it's through learned experiences I mean, we all go through experiences in life, some are more traumatic than others Then we develop capabilities to protect ourselves and as time progresses, these capabilities start to serve us in the process of our downer career path that we decide, oh, this is what I want to do with my life, and all of a sudden you have the ability to inductively reason and forecast possibilities on how things could or couldn't happen. Now you know a lot about risk assessment. Or you can sense tension in other people and now you can look at conflict resolution. Like can all be based in contextuals that you've developed in traits over time can turn into a specific niche, position or character trait that you just happen to develop that serves you in your position. What do you think about that? I agree.

I think there's all different types of leadership styles. Obviously right, and I'm a big reader and I've read tons of books on leadership and biographies of great leaders. At the end of the day, I said by learned experiences, because over my 20 plus years of being a leader at LearnIt it's evolved over time and you try things out and sometimes it works, sometimes it sucks, and you got to kind of learn from that and really coming into it. I never had a job. I was a college baseball player and I was lucky I got to play for three Hall of Fame baseball coaches and I kind of learned. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was kind of learning through osmosis of some of the things. A lot of the things that they did is what's helped me mold into being the leader I am today. So I learned from being in the moment, on the flip side of having these fantastic coaches as well as a dad who I thought was a great leader, and you kind of go through trial and error over the years and you do the best you can do and you learn and hopefully you're open to feedback and if you're open to feedback you can get better and then, like you said, you develop these traits, and for me, I think the traits for a great leader are humility, integrity, curiosity I think curiosity is super important and also courage courage to make bold decisions or get out of your comfort zone, and because that's kind of like where the real growth takes place, right, if you're not afraid to challenge the status quo and kind of push things forward and stick your neck out there. I think that those are, you know, that's important.

No, I like that. So let's look into that with athletes' perspective. On leadership and training what kind of knowledge that you apply in assisting professionals in their growth in leadership?

particularly so as an athlete, you know, I think you pick up these kind of key skills. You know you learn about discipline and you learn about communication and how to collaborate with others and deal with resilience Be resilient, you know. And baseball you get out seven out of 10 times. You dust yourself off, you get up, you hit 300, you could be a millionaire. So a lot of those translate over to the business world and that's what's kind of cool with our job is, you know we've got our team and I get to lead our team. You know we've got about 40, 50 individuals but we have all these, you know, clients throughout the country and you get to kind of see behind the scenes, behind the curtain, as far as how their leadership works. You know some is fantastic, some isn't, and you know you just kind of get to learn from there and how we help our customers are. We have these different models around some of the leadership training that we do, whether it's listening models, feedback models and we try to work with customers who believe in the value of investing in their team. You know, not everybody, greg, believes that they should invest in their team, or they may say they do, but then they don't want to, you know, set aside the time or the you know financial requirements to be able to do that. So we want to work with these companies, help align training programs and coaching programs that can better suit them to help overcome whatever kind of challenges they have or outcomes that they're sending themselves up for. They want to set themselves up for.

Okay, there's a lot of things to unpack there that I want to comment on with, like the athletic perspective. I want to go back to that. I was in the military I've. I feel like that's. And you are an athlete, you have to be. You have to be physically, but also mentally. But how do you train the mental capacity to work under pressure, to handle yourself under pressure? And this was something I was going to do in a solo show, but now I'm kind of just throwing it out there. Now Do it. I think it comes down to. There's an exercise or an application that I do when I go hiking. I'll go out into the woods of babbler out in Missouri and I mean my dog will be out there. We'll go at night, we'll go when it's just pitch black and I'll let my eyes adjust. Hopefully there's a loom out. If not, then I'll usually have a red lens and we'll just walk for hours and then, right as we're going back, I got my truck idling. I do the remote start and it's right there and I'm tired. I just walk right past my truck and I keep walking. I do it for about 10 minutes, then I come back. It's like I'm ready to get my truck. I'm exhausted, I'm going to keep walking, just walk right past it again, because there's a part of me that wants to quit when I can. It's right there, but I rather continue to walk so I can control the ability to force myself to go further. I feel like that ripples out into my daily behaviors Because I know when I'm at the computer and I'm grinding, I'm working, I can get lost with the amount of focus that I have. I look at it the next day. It's like holy crap and I feel like that's a way of conditioning myself. Is that something that you might apply when we're looking at athletic perspective?

So I think what you're saying is that you basically fully committed and you go all in, you just go for it and you do it. And I think that that for me that was kind of my personality. I was sports, I just was fully committed, I put all my eggs in that basket and I always said I was just going to outwork the next guy. And a lot of times I did. And then when my sports career ended it was tough because I only saw myself as an athlete. But I was able to make that transition and I've just kind of fully committed into what I do here with Learnit in helping our customers. I did it and well, I mean, that's a great question. So when I was out of high school take a step back I got drafted by the Atlanta Braves out of high school, dating myself here 95. And I had a tough decision. It's like do I want to go to minor league route or am I going to go? And I had a full scholarship to Pepperdine. I went the Pepperdine route because I really believed in the vision of what our coach had. Right, he said we're going to win the college world series. And a lot of us are like, okay, we're a small D1 school, but we bought into it. Unfortunately, I got hurt and I ended up leaving. I was a little imposter syndrome too. I was away from home and I was a little unsure of myself. Rotator cuff no, I mean, it's a random incident. I literally lacerated my spleen in a collision.

Who leaves?

Whoever sees that in a baseball game, right yeah.

Wait, wait, it happened in the game. Or were you guys like getting hammered celebrating a game and you just like car accident or something?

Well, one of the guys on my team was getting hammered and fell off the roof at a frat party and broke his ankles. But that wasn't me. No, it was a game against I think it was actually preseason against Santa Barbara City College. I was playing third base. We picked the guy off second base. You're supposed to step in front of the base to shorten the distance. The guy through the ball second base went through the ball to me and the guy dove. The runner dove and I think he dove more at me maybe than the base and just kind of hit me. I actually played the rest of the game but then I felt real sick afterwards, went to the hospital and I didn't have a rupture spleen but I had a lacerated spleen which put me out for the year. I just felt really disconnected to the team. After that I was just it wasn't part of it anymore. So I just kind of packed up and left and went to, healed up and went and played out. You couldn't go from a D1 school to a D1 school. So I went to a junior college, played for a great coach there and then I was able to, got drafted again, but really low, by the Yankees and then I got a full ride to Arizona State, played there, hit a home run in the college road series which great. My wife's so tired of hearing that Glory Day story from 20 plus years ago, excuse me, and I'm ready to take the next step. And I didn't get drafted again. And it was really hard to answer your question why. I would think it's just because maybe they thought that I hit my maximum potential you know, this is kind of before money, money balls and they thought maybe this guy's a good hitter but maybe not good enough to play at the next level, which was really hard, hard for me. I thought you always got to play until you just couldn't compete anymore and I didn't want to go the independence route. My dad wanted me to. I didn't want to do it, but I decided that at 22, 23, I just had to make a pivot and I was really fortunate to come from a family who had a couple of several businesses and one was this new training company and I wanted to. I didn't know if I had any skills, so I just started off as a receptionist.

You know let's go back. Let's go back because we can get there's. There's a lot there. So one just for my curiosity why couldn't you go from one D one to another D one? I believe it's like a level that you're at that. What's the deal with that?

today you can right Division one, you know division one. So today they have. They have all this stuff out there like I don't know if you follow it, like the transfer portal where kids can just get up and leave at any time they want. You don't like your coach. You go on a transfer portal. The next thing you know you go from Alabama to Georgia or whatever.

Back in the day, I didn't know about that.

That's cool, yeah. And the other thing that's pretty cool, I think, is is the NIL name, image recognition or whatever it is. That doesn't spell NIL, but that's where the players get paid. Now you know which I think? I think college athletes deserve to be paid, you know they generate so much revenue. You know, but back in my day, you know, in order to go from a division one school to another division one school, you had to finish up your AA degree or whatever kind of degree. So you had to, you had a stepping stone, you know. So the rules have changed since, but yeah, so I couldn't go from one division one school to the next. I had to do a stop off at a junior college.

Okay, and now, like with looking back with how the coach saw you as a lost cause and kind of just set you off to the side, I mean, what kind of? I mean I know there's no such thing as bad leadership, but what was the issue there and what could he have done to alleviate some of this struggle that you had to deal with from you sustaining that injury?

Well, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm a victim in this, because I'm not.

No.

I got out of high school. You know, I was a high school all-American coming into this school and it was more on me. I was with or without an injury. I just didn't believe in myself enough. And a great story is, you know, because you get there, you go for being the stud, the best player in the county. To, you know, everybody is really good, and so my coach, andy Lopez. I remember our first sit down, you know. You know, part of the way through the fall season, greg, he sat me down and he said, hey look, we brought you in. We brought you in because we believe that you would be a starting third baseman your freshman year, great hitter and a key player on this team. And he's like Damon, you know what? I think we made a mistake. I don't think you're a good fit for a Pepperdine and I don't think you have the talent to play Division One baseball. And so great. I was just like, oh my God, how do I back up and get out of here?

you know, it's like your identity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he just sat there and he said well, what do you think? And then, before I had any time to say anything, you know what he said. He's like that's not what I think about you. I think that you have the tremendous ability and tremendous talent and can be a superstar on this team. But it doesn't matter what I think. You know. This goes back into the mental thing. It's like it depends on what you think of yourself. Do you think you're good enough to be out here to do this? Because you know you're the one who needs to believe in yourself, kind of like we talked about earlier, about you know, putting yourself forward. It's like we can get you all the coaching, everything you need. But you need to understand you deserve to be here. Get rid of your inner critic. Who's worried about you? Know, whatever it is you're worried about as a you know, 17, 18 year old kid, and just get your ass on the field and play, you know, and I remember that conversation, like it was yesterday, you know, I mean I ended up getting hurt and moving on, but by the time I got to Arizona State I just kind of said screw it, I'm gonna give it a hundred percent and believe I belong here and I was able to turn it around and, you know, even though it didn't work out for baseball, it's been a huge help for me, the rest of my life, if just kind of like, you know, taking on, you know, trying to tackle challenges.

And so there's a point why I'm highlighting this. So in the military I've had leadership like that, where they would focus on the golden child, the one that is all pure muscle that can just handle it all. I mean, I wish I could say I was up there with everyone doing a 300 out of 300 PT score at the very front all the time. No, there's times when I was struggling my ass off and they were all like, yes, there's favoritism, there's also professional favoritism. There's whatever way you wanna look at it, they're going to. There's leadership out there. That's going to be that surface kind of mentality and say, yeah, you're the best of the best, I'm gonna give you all my attention, but when everybody else is behind them trying to keep up, they don't get the special attention. Now, is that something that is internal, that I should be understanding within myself that I'm not doing? Eventually, I just started working my ass off, doing PT three times a day, got shredded and it still was able to outperform those motherfuckers with a cigarette. Good, good, and that's how I set the standard and gotten past everybody. You're gonna outrun them with a cigarette. That makes you look like a badass, like.

Yeah, yeah For us. Back then I was chewing tobacco and maybe not cigarettes, you know, but both awful habits. Yeah, you know, it's so interesting. You know, we just finished up a two day team event here and I had this gentleman who you should have on your show, robert Owens, ex-military guy. He's 72. He does a para rescue and trains Navy SEALs and you know, he said something kind of similar to what you said, where he was never the strongest guy, the tallest guy, but you know what? He kicked all their asses because he worked harder, you know, and he always believed, and I thought this was great. What he said to our team is that you know, you can, every one of us can do more than we give ourselves credit for. Right, you know, and it's just. But in order to do that, you gotta get out of your comfort zone and you gotta really put in the work, you know. So that sounds like what you did in the military.

This work, putting in the work now it's for some people it might be physical, but for other people the work could be internal and that's what could be holding us back.

But don't you think it all kind of starts off with the mental, the internal, you know, I mean. I mean this guy was talking about yesterday. He ran seven marathons and seven days and seven continents. Sure, it's physical, but you know you gotta challenge yourself mentally to be able to be able to do that. In sports we'd always refer to guys who had the million dollar body and the 10 cent head. You know what I mean, greg. You go and so in batting practice you get these guys and they're hitting balls 500 feet. They're feeling ground balls clean, throwing rockets at first base. Then the game starts. The crowd's ragging them, they get a slider in the dirt, they strike out and they're done the rest of the day. It's all in their head. They can't compete. Some of the most successful baseball players who played long careers in the big leagues that I've been friends with or have known they weren't the most talented, they were the most mentally tough and resilient and I'm sure it was like that for you in the military.

It was no, and that's interesting. So with those types of individuals that, like, after one mistake, then they have that emotional reaction that just causes them to just go. They're screwed afterwards. Now can we relate that in a business like view as far as how maybe companies in a certain way with, like, how do they refine? Like with organizational development? I had it and then I lost it because there's so many things right through my head. But looking at it from a organizational leadership point of view, when we have those types of individuals within the workforce or in your charge, I should say, and they have those emotional responses when things don't go the right way, what do leaders should do? Like how do they approach that?

Well, I think you gotta kind of be proactive and deal with that before it happens. I think you wanna set up. What I've always tried to do is set up an environment and a culture. And, greg, when people come in for interviews, when they get to me with me, I'm like, if you come here and you're just on your railroad tracks and you're afraid to make mistakes, I don't want you here. You know what I mean. I want you to try things. There's nothing you're gonna do is gonna break. Learn it. I mean, obviously I want you to do things with integrity, don't cut corners or do anything that will get anybody in trouble. But I want you to try things. I want you to make mistakes, and it's one thing to say that, but when the mistakes happen good leadership, they don't get pissed. I mean, they have empathy and patience, right, and they're like okay, hey, let's take a step back. What could we have done differently? What could we do next time? What could we learn from this? And I'm a big believer it's fine to make mistakes, but you gotta learn from those mistakes and don't make the same mistake all the time. That's when it's a problem, like if you're not learning from what you did wrong. But I think that if you have individuals who everything needs to be perfect or they're afraid to make mistakes, it's because you haven't created an environment for them where they feel comfortable or psychologically what do they call it Psychologically safe space to do it. But I'll give you a quick example. I got this kid on my not a kid anymore, probably 28. Michael on my media team. Michael's fantastic, super talented, but when he first started we wouldn't produce anything until it was absolutely perfect, if there's anything, and it would take things way too long to get things done. We finally, after a couple of years, were able to get them out of his shell. I actually highlighted him yesterday where it's like let's get like the MVP, the minimal viable product, out there and iterate on it and just learn to get better as time goes. And that's one of the things I'm it's more of Michael did it himself than I did, but I'm kind of I've kind of felt proud that I was been part of his growth, that he's been able to get over that somewhat of a phobia that like things have to be perfect Cause if they're not, people are going to laugh at me and it's going to be bad.

It's kind of like that's the way to make things better. That is me. That is me. That was me for the longest time and I used to edit like my shows in the beginning because I was I had this like catastrophic view of the world will end if it has his mistakes. Now I'm purposely making mistakes to embrace this uncomfortability. Fuck shit, you know, like just whatever it's gonna, I'm going to leave that for the show.

Yeah, that's nice. You know I had. I had, I swear, a lot, but I promised my six year old daughter that I would. You know I would say the F were less. But so I had dinner last night with a couple of our instructors one of our new instructors and I thought she brought up a good thing. You know she's kind of a perfectionist herself, but she said she's like I've learned that for growth and to get out of your comfort zone, you got to be okay with things being messy sometimes. You know being messy and and just learning to you know whether it's improv or just deal with it. And that she said that's one of her biggest learning lessons. You know she's a theater actress and you know you don't have much room to improvise. You just have to do what you're supposed to be doing. But when she's teaching classes now she used to get herself all worked up at the beginning. Like you know, I have to get this perfect. But now she kind of goes into it knowing things could get a little messy, but that that could be growth for herself and actually be good for her students too.

Yes, there we go. This, this is. This is actionable advice People can take away and apply when they are trying to do a PowerPoint for a large meeting or doing a public appearance or a talk. This is great. Tell us about the trust tax.

Oh, the trust tax.

What's that about?

Yeah, what is that? The trust tax is something I talk about in in. It's one of my things that are I'm kind of. One of my favorite things from my book is you know, we all go into relationships, right. You know professional, personal and you can really you could go one or two route. I think you can. You could come into a relationship and you can be really skeptical of people, right, like, oh, this person's going to screw me over, this person's going to take advantage of me, or, you know, let me micromanage this employee. See what goes on. Or you can go into relationships believing, greg, that people have the best intentions, you know, believing in people, right, and and I learned that from my my dad, who was my idol he passed away in 2010, but he had a huge heart, you know, and he and he would give people opportunities like that. You know ex convicts that he would give jobs to, or people who are Starbucks baristas who give him opportunities. You know a lot of opportunities that people wouldn't give these people, you know, and he just believed in them. And, yeah, every once, while he got screwed over, he got taken advantage of and so, but he never stopped giving new people opportunities. You know people would be like, hey, walt, this person FG over. How? How is it that you still, you know, maintain a good attitude? And and to me, that's really that's what the trust tax is right, you go into these relationships, you know. Say, out of 10 relationships, let's just say one person you know does you wrong, right, Either on purpose, or sometimes they don't even know that they're doing any wrong. Well, that's just the tax you have to pay for believing in individuals, right, you know. Or going into, you know, like hiring employees and just micromanaging them, right, I mean, that's you're never gonna get, you're never gonna get the full potential out of somebody If you're just looking over their shoulder all the time. I mean, I think great leaders in that sense, hey, you set clear outcomes, clear goals. You're there to support them, but then you gotta trust and believe in your people to get things done.

Healthy autonomy. That's beautiful. Let's backwards track back me. Say something real quick. You said something what about with I don't know if you heard of, like people who've healed? Was it healed people heal people and abusive people abuse people. What about people that haven't experienced that type of abuse? Does I mean, are they just naive to the possibility of that? Like, do you know where I'm going with that? I think so. Maybe, maybe.

I think so. I think, look, I mean I've you know, thank God I've been fortunate I haven't had to deal with some of the pain and the abuse that's out there. You know what I mean. I can never put myself in, you know, in those people's shoes. I've had loss. I lost my dad and there's you know other stuff. But I think we've all had our fair share of ups and downs and it's just if I'm answering this correctly to me, I think it's just you know what you make of it and how you wanna. You know how you wanna go about your perspective on other people. I mean, I guess let me just turn this one on you too, just so I'm clear. What do you think?

I mean, let's look at it. I mean I've I grew up from a very Catholic family and I've endured a lot of different kinds of traumas in my social upbringing and I don't think it needs to be brought up. I brought it up plenty. If anybody wants to hear it, they can go back into episodes 70, 80, and 90, but for my understanding, what I've gone through it brought awareness that I need to establish firm or boundaries, and understand that there's permanent boundaries that are being mended, not to my will but to will of others. And until I can address that, then I believe that was one factor that was causing me to have doubt in myself and I feel like it's all connects to a healthy individual. Whether we attack just the boundary issue or the mentality of how a leader would. What makes a leader, whether they're born into it or it's a learned position because of trauma, it all connects to make this individual who is out in front rather than behind.

Yeah well, first of all, I'm sorry for what you had to go through. It's obviously you're a strong person and you're very strong person. It's terrible. I'm sorry about that and I think that the best you can do from any of this stuff is hopefully learn. Learn from it. So to do your best. When I say go into relationships and believe in people and trust people, but don't be friggin naive, I mean you got to be smart enough to try to read signs. I've had employees who I felt like I took a really good care of. I would send them for a week long. I had some one guy to a week long conference for $2,500. Three days later he collects his commission check and then quits to go work for the people at that conference. But I'm still going to send my employees to a similar type of conference. I should have just looked at the red flags and seen what kind of character that person had in the beginning, because I had questions about it beforehand. So I think you just got to learn to try to avoid those types of situations. As for leaders, I don't think leaders are born, to be honest. I think you can choose to evolve into it. I always say it's a little cheesy, but I like it. Leaders aren't born. They're not made either. They're in the making. I think that to become a great leader, it's an ever-evolving growth process. I don't believe that you've ever hit your ceiling and you know everything. I think you have to have that drive or that passion to want to continue to keep growing.

Interesting. So, yeah, there's leaders, and then there's perceived authority. We can say that rather than being born into it. But let's transition, because I know you probably even wanted to go into it a little bit the learn-it-all leader mindset, traits and tools. Why'd you write it?

Well, I wrote it for three reasons. One is that I wanted to be able to share the unique experience that I've had becoming a leader through learning from these three Hall of Fame baseball coaches and my father, greg. That one reason is because it's like if I can do it, I think anybody can do it. You know what I mean? There's nothing special about me. I didn't go to an Ivy League school and get an MBA, so I want to give hope out there for individuals. Number two I think I had a really unique perspective, like I mentioned earlier, being able to see behind the curtains of all these companies and be able to share back those experience, because not only do I want to help them, but my goals, I really like to have impact, a positive impact for future leaders. And number three, which may even be most important, is my kids my six-year-old Lucy and my two-year-old Walter, little Wally named after my dad. They never got to meet my father and, fortunately, my mom, linda, who had a big contribution to learn it. But if anything, I want my book to be something where Wally and Lucy can learn a little bit more about my father's legacy. So those are the three reasons I want to help others who maybe don't believe they can be great leaders. I want to share some of the stories of how we've impacted and helped with some practical tips and tools, and then for my kids.

That's beautiful. I really do like that. I'm a father of a two-year-old so I can definitely resonate with them Boy or girl Boy? I like Eremond Gregory Favazza. Yeah, yes, he's got huge quads, just like his dad.

What's he into these days? Is he into Paw Patrol?

Yeah, that. And cars. He used to give him anything with wheels. He'll be on the floor just moving it around making noises. Yeah, we should get Wally.

I mean, every night Wally is like tell me Paw Patrol's story, dad. And then he wants his ca-coss. He wants his ca-s. You know he's the best Exhausting, but the best.

So I want to transition to one last thing to address With equipping leaders with the knowledge to overcome communication barriers. What are some strategies that we can take away For this interview, for instance? It can be very uncomfortable for people to have these kinds of conversations. I mean it can be we can develop anxiety. How do we address anxiety when it's happening in the moment and how do we alleviate from that to carry on and complete the mission?

So, whether it's anxiety or imposter syndrome one of the things I learned along the way in dealing with imposter syndrome let's take imposter syndrome right. It is like I've got like a three-step approach, one before you even get started. It's like you got to identify what you're afraid of, what's getting you anxious, right. But then, once you do, let's say from a work perspective, let's say that I'm in a role where I have to give a lot of sales presentations and I'm just uncomfortable doing that. I'm not sure if I'm any good. So my first thing is work hard, and I don't mean you have to work 10 or 14 hours a day, but put in consistent work towards that goal. Number two is focus. You got to focus your attention on what you're trying to do. It's easy to procrastinate, right. It's easy to do busy work, but if you put in deliberate practice and you work hard, then step number three really is when it's game time, when it's time to go in and do that presentation or do that speech or be on a podcast or whatever it is that concerns you, then step number three is like really learn and let go. And what I mean by that is look, you've put in the work, you've focused. So you've prepared, you go in, you do your presentation, your speech, your podcast, whatever it is, and if it goes well, fantastic. If it doesn't, don't beat yourself up too much over it. Learn from it and then keep moving forward. And I think that part of the problem and this has been with me it's like you put so much emphasis sometimes on what other people happen to think of you, right, like, what are these people going to say if I mess up? Well, people have their own lives right. So a lot of times, don't worry too much about what people have to say. Put in the effort, work hard and then don't be so hard on yourself. Just give it your best shot. You're only human and see what happens.

Now, I like that. I mean it covers the grounds of what we've addressed initially at the beginning of the show, but it also highlights the ability that you have to accept the outcome, I mean, if I fuck up. Fantastic, because this is an opportunity of what to do better next time and it's a learning experience. And I'm sure the people in the audience probably would do the exact same thing that I could be doing, maybe even worse, and they envy me for trying to do it in the first place.

That's the truth. You know the people. I always look at the people. I've got age sales reps. They're out making cold calls. They're getting hung up on. But I'll tell you what the rest of the people who are in non-sales they envy the people to have the courage that they can to be able to go out and make those calls. So don't beat yourself up too much. One thing I want to say you talked about clear communication, everything. I think one of the ways to improve communication starts with being curious and being a better listener. I think it's hard. People sometimes think they're better listeners than they are. But if you actually listen and you get curious to what people have to say, then it helps you as a leader especially create clearer direction because you could better understand. You can be more empathetic to the team members you're working with, if that makes sense.

Yes, go deeper. I mean, we can look, we can. We all have different definitions of what better is whether it's to take supplements to be better at my athletic performance, to out-compete the other students or whatever, but better, what do you mean by that?

Yeah, I mean to be a better listener. What I mean is to be engaged in the conversations. A lot of times somebody will be talking to you and you can tell that they are already formulating an opinion before you've had the chance to finish. So it's like being present and just listening, and then, when somebody has something to say, don't be so firm on your stance all the time. There's that old saying strong opinions held lightly, so be curious. I think great leaders aren't afraid to be humble or vulnerable, to be able to say maybe I'm not right, Maybe there is a better way to do this. Maybe 20 years ago that wasn't the cool thing to do. You had to have all the answers. But I think being vulnerable it's a paradox. One, you got to have some self-confidence in yourself, but two, you got to be able to say hey, you know what, Maybe you're right. Like you said, let's dig a little deeper. How do we get better at this? How do we do this differently? Stop being afraid to say, hey, I need help. Can you come in here and jump in here and give me some feedback and what we do to get better?

No, I definitely agree with you. I struggle with, I would say, having the social grace to illustrate the humility and my vulnerabilities. Sometimes I'm just blatantly just out there with it. I mean, like with the conversations that I host, I'm just like, yeah, this is what's happening here right now and they're like what you don't want my regurgitated, rehearsed answer that I've done on 20 other shows. Do you want me to actually think logically right now while we're recording? Yes, yeah, that's good. And then the silence.

It makes it fun, it makes it different, you know.

Exactly, and then why they tune into your transformation station. What's going to happen next? So if I leave you with the floor, it's open. I think I said it backwards, but it's okay. You're all tense right now. You're making me a tense, right?

now, I'm not tense.

You weren't tense earlier and I was like picking it up. I'm like because I have ADD or ADHD one of the two and I'm very empathic and I can just feel the energy through this screen. And it's like whoa, because I meditated, I stretched, did my yoga, my morning routine, and I was centered. And then I'm like whoa, shit, I'm all over the place. I'm like locking in my left shoulder to just like hold this energy that's coming out of nowhere. And then you're over there, moving around all crazy and shit, like you got to take a piss. It's like holy cow, all right. Yeah.

And as I move, as I move around my chair, yeah.

I like it. I like it. If you have any words of wisdom, anything you want to share, the floor is yours.

So what I would say is what I said earlier don't be too hard on yourself. Stay open. Always get out of your comfort zone. Learn to grow, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, enjoy what you're doing. And also, you could learn from anybody you come in contact with. Everybody is more of an expert than you are at something, so go out of your way, have conversations and learn from everyone.

That's beautiful, well, excellent. I appreciate you coming on the show today.

I appreciate you having me. Sorry, I'm really nervous with my intensity or whatever. You're moving around.

Yeah, oh. And one last thing how can our audience get in touch with you and find your book if they'd like to learn more?

Sure, the best way is to connect with me on LinkedIn, at Damon Lembe, and my book, the Learn it All Leader, is on Amazon Barnes Noble wherever you find books. Finally, if you're interested in a free class at Learn it, my website is learnitcom. Tell me that you listen to this episode and send me a note on LinkedIn and I'll send you a code to a free $250 class. Anything from emotional intelligence to time management, to how to make pivot tables in Excel.

Thanks for joining us on this adventure of growth and discovery. If you're ready to achieve a sustainable transformation, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And hey, if you've enjoyed the show and want to support it, take a moment to leave a podcast review on Apple or your favorite podcast platform. Stay connected with us on social media for behind the scenes, sneak peeks, inspiring quotes and the latest updates. You can find us on Facebook, instagram, tiktok and YouTube. Search for YTS the Podcast. Until next time, remember change is constant and transformation is inevitable. Embrace the journey and keep rocking your way towards a better you. Stay bold, stay curious and stay true to yourself. See you next time on your transformation station.