The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff

"Navigating Emotions in Leadership" Leadership Lessons from My conversation with Quentin Hodge, Part 2

• Mark Cundiff

Share episode

This episode is sponsored by The Fear Trap, a book designed to help leaders navigate fear and lead with confidence.

"Navigating Emotions in Leadership" Leadership Lessons from my conversation with Quentin Hodge, Part 2

In this episode of the Learning to Lead Show, host Mark Cundiff introduces longtime friend and guest Quentin Hodge, a Senior Health and Safety Professional with over 20 years of experience. Mark and Quentin discuss the importance of knowing and understanding your team, navigating confrontational situations with emotional intelligence, and maintaining integrity and empathy in leadership. Quentin shares his personal journey and strategies for continuous growth as a leader, highlighting the impact of small, consistent efforts and mentorship. The conversation also explores how younger generations' unique skills, like gaming, can be leveraged in industrial settings. Listeners are encouraged to never give up, keep learning, and build strong relationships with their team for effective leadership.

00:00 Introduction: Knowing Your People

00:15 Welcome to the Learning to Lead Show

00:35 Guest Introduction: Quentin Hodge

01:10 Turning Around Safety in a Challenging Environment

03:33 Insights on Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

04:16 The Importance of Integrity and Empathy

08:07 Continuous Growth as a Leader

12:01 Adapting to New Generations in the Workforce

16:29 Encouragement for Overwhelmed Leaders

19:51 Conclusion and Call to Action


Free Learning To Lead Resources

🔎 About LeaderNotes

LeaderNotes is a quick-hit companion to each episode of The Learning to Lead Show. In just 5–10 minutes, Mark Cundiff recaps the top leadership insights, frameworks, and action steps from each interview, designed for busy, growth-minded leaders who want to review and apply the episode’s biggest takeaways on the go.

It’s like the highlight reel + playbook—all in one.

Download This Episode's Leadernotes Here: LeaderNotes




you need to know your people, like your kids, the people you're leading. What makes'em tick? Who's got a ballgame today? Who's dealing with the sickness in their family? Who doesn't? You need to know all those key characteristics about your people, and it takes spending time with them. Hello, welcome to the Learning to Lead Show. My name is Mark Cundiff, and I'm your host and we're glad that you have joined today. This is where we help leaders grow on the go. It is our hope to encourage, equip, and energize you to go out and lead your organization in a more powerful way. We have a great guest ahead, part two of my conversation with Quentin Hodge if you missed part one, please go back and listen to gain some great leadership insights from Quentin. Quentin has been a long time friend of mine for about 16 years. We started out working in a very difficult industrial site where safety was a critical aspect of everything we were doing. I was the manager for this group of about 200 people working inside of a facility, about a hundred acres under roof with a lot of dangerous, heavy equipment that we were working on. Quentin was my safety manager. We went into this situation needing to provide some leadership to turn the safety around. I am very proud to share that during the time that we worked together, we were able to see some great success at this site. We set numerous safety records. We went one whole year without a recordable and went two years without a lost time incident. For those of you working in an industrial manufacturing, you could understand the significance of that accomplishment in a difficult safety situation where the safety had been very poor prior to us coming. In this particular facility, 10 people had suffered fatalities over the course of its history, so it was a very. Challenging place to work and the culture was very difficult. I have to say that Quentin has been the best safety professional that I've ever worked with, and I've worked with him in a number of different companies and seen his career grow and his leadership grow. So I'm excited for what you're going to learn today from him.'cause he's really going to share with you about leadership on the front lines in an industrial. Manufacturing situation, and he will give you some insights to how to lead change, how to lead an organization, and how to lead when you have no actual positional authority. Quentin is currently the senior health and safety professional for EnSafe a very large safety consulting firm with offices across the United States. Quentin has been in the safety business for more than 20 years now, working in different roles from consulting to actually running safety organizations, and he's even run his own business a few times as well. Before we get started today, I want to introduce you to my new ebook, the Fear Trap. It's all about how fear can hinder us as a leader, it is available for a free download. Just check out the show notes and you can get a link to go there and download that. Also make sure you download our leader notes. That gives you a summary of everything discussed today. That will also be in our show notes. Now we're gonna dive in and learn from our conversation. With Quentin Hodge. I know when you're in that safety arena, and I've been in a few of the battles with you, you end up in some situations where there's confrontations, whether it's with the client, whether it's with somebody on your team, maybe even leadership of your own company. How have you learned to navigate those things with good emotional intelligence? Because we've both worked in volatile environments where Yes the emotions get in the way. How do you. Regulate yourself and lead in a good way when there's a lot of emotion going on and you've been in those fires before, tell how you walk through that and how you navigate that and maybe how, maybe you've done it well at times and maybe other times it didn't work out like you had hoped. It goes, to me, it goes back to integrity. So that's when you gotta lean on that integrity and that's not something that you're gonna. It's gonna come overnight. You're gonna have to build that skillset.'cause those every day when you wake up, something's gonna happen. There's gonna be issues in your work life, home life, whatever. So that integrity's got to be your core. So when I was in those hostile environments or situations, I wanted to be the peacemaker. We can argue all day long, but we've gotta, we've still, at the end of the day, if it's a production environment, we've gotta hit production and we've gotta get our process done. We gotta do it safely. So I always try to be the peacemaker, how is this? How can we get to a resolution? You have your opinion. This person has their, I've got mine. How, what are we gonna do to make this work and get to the end of the goal by today or this week or next month?'Cause today's just a stumbling block, or this meeting is just a stumbling block. So we've gotta get past this to get to the end goal. So I always try to be the diffuser. And look at why that person, there was something that triggered that person. It could something that's not even related to work. And I didn't know this, learn this until my, in my own life, until I went through a divorce in 2005 and then that opened my eyes to like. The world is just not a happy go lucky place all the time. There people go through things and it affects them. They try to shield it or brush it off while they're at work, but it's still gonna sur, emotions can still surface. So when I went through that pivotal point in my life, it taught me a lot about, okay. Things are always gonna be sunshine and roses. So you gotta figure out the best path forward and keep moving forward and making progress and don't get bogged down in the weeds and then you can't hold that against that person. So just being the peacemaker to me that was. Was always successful to me like,'cause I've always had people come back nine times outta 10. They will come back and apologize to you. Like at some point it may be six months, it may be a week, it may be a year later. I should not have lost it in a meeting. But you as a leader, you gotta shrug all that emotion off. But keep, this is the goal, this is the end point. This is where we're headed and get. Shield your team from all that emotion. So if we take it to where I messed this up, so I have been in meetings where I did let my emotions overcome and it went nowhere. And then I felt bad about it. I actually had to go back and apologize even though I was right and trying to tell them the right thing. I could have handled it 10 different ways. So in leaving your emotions out of things, you gotta, as a leader. You gotta practice. It's a daily practice, a daily discipline that you gotta get in your mindset and your core. Okay? If you're leading people, somebody came in today and their car broke down, or their kid's sick at home, and it's gonna happen. So you gotta lead with the empathy and keep your integrity and then. Be the peacemaker. What can we do to get through this? So for me it's empathy and integrity. It's back to those two things again. So that's really good. And I love how you talked about the range of emotions that, that people go through in those situations. And it's technically, I'm sure in those situations you were right From a technical standpoint. Yeah. But the question is, do you want to be right or do you wanna be effective? In order to be effective, you gotta work through those emotions. Even though you might win in a quarter law, so to speak, on your argument, it's a matter of being effective and how you're effective a lot of times is how you manage your emotions. A lot of times we can be a hundred percent right, but ineffective because we lost our emotions. You're talking to us here and we're seeing through your answers a progression of growth, and so I know that didn't come by accident. I know you well enough to know that you've been very intentional and you continue to be intentional about how you grow as a leader. Can you just share some ways that you, and you're a very busy leader. You're running all the time with a lot of kids, grandkids, a lot of activities going on in your life. Carve out some time. Where you actually continue to grow as a leader. It took me a while to get to that point'cause I would try to sit down and read a book and read it in two days. And that's not gonna work with my schedule. I don't have time to do that. So it's like anything else you do, if you're working out or you're trying to diet or whatever it is, you just gotta set a sign. And somebody told me this one time, 15 minutes a day makes a big difference. So I try to carve out 10 to 15 minutes a day and I dedicated that. It could be while I'm waiting to my kids to get ready to go to school, if I'm taking them to school today, or if I'm right before I'm closing down, or it could be right before I get on all my, open my laptop or get on my cell phone. I carve out 10 to 15 minutes a day and I try to focus on that some days that I miss and it, I may spend an hour or flying. I don't watch. Videos or movies while I'm flying. I usually have a book with me. And anytime I got downtime like that I'm trying to read and then I follow a lot of things. I do follow people on social media. So there's a lot of great leaders out there that. Tried and true. They've been there and done that. I respect them, so I'm constantly getting flooded on my inbox. Once your algorithms get set up on their social media. So you don't even have to go search. So it's just a, it's a discipline. If you wanna be better at something, then you've gotta dedicate time and energy toward it. But you can do it in small increments. That 15 minutes a day makes a big difference. Big difference. I think you can, if you do that consistently through the whole year, it's, it is estimated that you'll read 10 to 12 books a year just by doing that. Few minutes a day. It's, that's huge. So who are some of your favorite people that you listen to on podcasts or books you read? What are some people that's had big influence on you? Everybody's probably gonna know this guy, but John Maxwell, he's one. So Aubrey Daniels, he was the, another guy I liked to follow and read about Warren Buffet. I've started following him in the last probably year and a half. If he can just give you a little nugget. It could be two sentences and you walk away. It's man that's all. I wish somebody would told me that 20 years ago. So those are probably my three big ones. I follow the most. There's there, there's several other, they're not coming to my brain right now, but there's several other companies and look at somebody that's been successful for a long term. I don't wanna follow somebody that was just. Overnight success even if it's just been five or six years, that doesn't. Tell me what I want to know. That's not the person I'm following right now. I'm looking at the 40, 50 year senior guys that have been there, done it. They've raised their families through all of this. They've had successful family home lives, so that tells me a lot about their leadership skills and their integrity. So those are the people I try to reach out to. And all three of those they've been doing it for decades and yeah, the one thing, a lot of times people just think about Warren Buffet from a financial standpoint, one of the things that he really communicates from a leadership standpoint is the most important skill that you can improve to increase your value is in your career and as a leader, is communication. And he believes that, and he's ran a lot of different companies, so he understands what great leadership's all about. And you talked about that earlier. About making sure that your messaging is getting across. And that's one of the biggest takeaways I've ever taken from Warren Buffett. So he is great. So what have you seen in recent years? We hear a lot about this the younger generations, and you can get the, all the different alphabet names of all of them, what are you seeing?'cause you're out there like today, you were doing training and you're out there on the front lines in plants and you're seeing this new generation that's in our plants making products that we y'all use. What are you seeing with the new generation? I just, I have, I've been guilty of this myself saying these kids, these younger generations, but as the more time I spend with them, and this is one of the reasons I still like to stay in the field and train and stay on the boots, on the ground because I get to interact with the different generational groups. So today I had. 60-year-old people in my audience, and I had 21-year-old, 18-year-old guy in my audience today. So as they were through the class, what I see there's a little bit of skill gap in the generational which you could fix that with through training and programs and job safety procedures and standard operating procedures. But that core value of somebody, there's a hunger there to learn more.'cause you can only get so much from digital or social media there, there is still a hunger of why things work. So I would, I just had this thought. I just got finished. Teaching the Overhead Crane Operator course, and this realization came to me as. Three of the last people I just finished training was like, they're better operators than some people that have been here 10 and 12 years. Because of their gaming background. And I'm not saying gaming is good or bad either way, but. They understand controls and they can focus on the screen and still run their controls so they're not back and forth looking at the control to the screen so there's less distraction. So they're focused on moving that load with the crane in front of them and their muscle memory's a lot stronger so they can memorize the buttons. Wow. That they're heating on the remote better than the veteran people. Wow. So I, we're still people. We're still human at the end of the day. We have that. A desire to want to know more and learn. So it's just your approach. I do, I have had to change my training approach in the last five or six years because I have to stay up with the times. I can't use phrases from the eighties because some of that was born in the nineties. They don't understand. They don't even know who, some people don't know who Lynyrd Skynyrd is. So I like rock music. I was in a class and they were like, who is that? And I couldn't believe they didn't know who they were. But, so I have to, that's why I'm continually, I. Reassessing everything I do. If I'm gonna be training or talking or speaking or developing or delivering a PowerPoint presentation or a training module, that it speaks to everybody in the audience and I make sure that there's no generalizations in there. You mentioned this earlier. So clarity creates calmness. So I try to make sure everything in my message as a leader and everything, anything written that gets memos issued or emails, text messages, that it's clear and concise and it delivers the message that you want. Because if you can't get that right, it will create more work for you on the back end. Being clear and concise upfront, and then just. Going back to making sure you're not interjecting that cursive knowledge. What I'm hearing you say is that it's really consistent with what you said early on in, in our conversation is that you need to take time to get to know the people. Yes. When we sit here and we make these. Prejudgments and we characterize these generations and we don't take enough time to get to know them. Then we make a mistake of not realizing that they have some strengths that we don't like the video games and stuff, and so we can capture those and use those to the advantage of. The organizations that we're part of, if we'll just take time enough to learn the strengths that they have, all of us have strengths and weaknesses. It's in a matter of putting people in the right seat on the bus so that they can, effectively move forward. What's one parting shot that you would offer out to the leader out there that maybe is frustrated, they're really busy like you are, and they're just a little bit overwhelmed with the way things are going? How would you encourage them? To move forward in their leadership journey. I would just say don't give up, stay after it. Don't give up. There's gonna be those days when you want to give up. I don't wanna do this anymore. I deal with that. Anytime you're leading people, that's gonna happen. You can just check out and there's been moments in my. Recent life here as I get older is like I wanna just check out, but it's, somebody's gotta lead. So you're either gonna be led or you're gonna be leading. And then if you're led, you may be led somebody by somebody that has a different opinion or they don't have that integrity, or they wouldn't do it the way you think it needs to be done, or they don't have those relationship skills, so hang in there. Study up, read everything you can read, look out to your mentors. Get a core group of mentors that you can bounce things off of. That's, to me, that's crucial. You and I have had several conversations through the years, so you're one of, it's in my group, so you need that encouragement. You just, you need it from other people. Look outside looking in because you could be biased. I've been biased in my. Opinions, decisions like some, my wife is in one of my, she's one of my mentors. She looks and gives me her honest opinion on things and it's I think you need to go down this road. I know where you're trying to get, but they're not gonna follow you at going down this road. You need to pivot here, so don't give up state. And then. You gotta have some time out time. I'm preaching to the choir on this. You gotta give yourself time to, to deescalate, get away from it all. But leadership is it's a huge deficiency I see every day. It's just like the key point you just said about knowing. You need to know your people, like your kids, the people you're leading. What makes'em tick? Who's got a ballgame today? Who's dealing with the sickness in their family? Who's who? Who likes to be praised out in the open and who doesn't? You need to know all those key characteristics about your people, and it takes spending time with them. I used to be a wallflower. I didn't want to go to social gatherings and we would have a cookout at work and I didn't want to go, I was hiding in the office. But you gotta do all those things to, to learn your people and know'em. So yeah, you walk by somebody and say how is your kid's ballgame the other day? Or How's their mother or your father doing? Or your kid? That means a lot. A lot will go unsaid, but that will carry a lot of weight with your team following you. And they really care. It shows that you really care about them. You can give out trinkets and pens and cups, but those aren't, that's a last. A minimal emotion that's gonna wear out in two days from now, but going by and saying how is so and so or how is your school life going if they're pursuing an after work career or something. So to me it's learning your people, but don't give up. So keep building your skillset. Reach out to people that and just talking through things. A lot of times just calling your mentors and talking through, they'll have the answer that you're trying to figure out on your own. That's some leadership gold. If people will take hold of what you said here today it will take and elevate their leadership. And one of the things we're trying to do is help leaders go from being good leaders to being great leaders. And if they'll take some of this advice that we've discussed here today, it'll help'em. Thank you, Quentin. Appreciate your time today. All right, thanks Mark. See you later. That was some great content and information on leadership from my friend Quentin Hodge. Would you do me a favor? If you've got value out of today's content, would you go to your favorite podcast player, write us a review, give us a rating of five, and help us spread the word about the learning the lead show so that we can help more leaders learn, grow, and impact their organizations, communities, in a more effective way. We appreciate you being here. Make sure to subscribe, make sure that you share with a friend. Let others know about what we're doing here on the Learning to Lead Show. Then also make sure you download the leader notes. This gives you a summary of everything that we've discussed today and gives you an opportunity to review what you've learned.