#16 Communication and Leadership: Insights from a Navy Veteran. My Conversation with Jim Little

"Communication and Leadership: Insights from a Navy Veteran" My Conversation with Jim Little

In this episode of the Learning to Lead Show, host Mark Cundiff sits down with Jim Little, a Navy veteran and senior reliability engineer with PIP company. 

Jim shares invaluable leadership insights drawn from his extensive career across various roles in maintenance, reliability, and safety management in industrial manufacturing. 

From his early days in the Navy to leading teams and driving change in resistant environments, Jim emphasizes the importance of communication, leading by example, and building trust. 

He discusses transitioning from military to civilian roles, the challenges of driving change in the current work climate, and provides practical advice for aspiring leaders, stressing the significance of listening, patience, and making work enjoyable. 

Listeners are encouraged to download the LeaderNotes for a summary of key takeaways and to subscribe to more episodes.

00:00 Introduction and Employee Feedback

00:28 Welcome to the Learning to Lead Show

00:40 Meet Jim Little: Navy Veteran and Leadership Expert

02:33 Jim's Leadership Journey from Navy to Industry

03:38 Transitioning to Civilian Life and Maintenance Role

07:26 Leadership Lessons from the Paper Mill Turnaround

10:26 Challenges and Strategies in Leadership

14:56 Building Trust and Effective Communication

16:50 Driving Change in Industrial Manufacturing

18:39 Key Traits of a Great Leader

20:07 Leading Up and Managing Peers

25:43 Personal Growth and Overcoming Challenges

31:29 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

34:06 Conclusion and Call to Action

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🔎 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.

Contact Mark at: mark@markjcundiff.com

Transcript

0:00

Many people tell me, I come to you because I know at least you'll listen to me and you'll act upon it, or you'll tell me whether or not you can act on it. If it doesn't make sense, you'll tell me that. At least I get that response. Thing I hear from employees right now, especially in today's environment, is they bring something up and there's no feedback whatsoever. It just drops into a black hole and the frustration level is very high for those employees. Hello, welcome to the Learning to Lead Show. I am your host, mark Cundiff. Today we are recording this episode on Veterans Day, and we have a great guest who served as a veteran in the Navy. Jim Little. Jim Little is the senior reliability engineer with PIP company. Jim's going to give us some great pro tips about leadership experience going all the way back to his days in the Navy and being on the front lines today. Jim is a master electrician, he's electrical engineer. He spent most of his years working in the trades, either on the front lines, diagnosing issues and solving problems, or helping plants run more effectively and improving those plants that are unperforming. He is very familiar with change management, leading in difficult situations, driving change in environments that are resistance to change. He's also been a safety leader who's done the job of being a safety manager in several different companies. He served as a maintenance manager, a reliability engineer, a safety supervisor, an electrical supervisor. He's done a lot of key roles in key manufacturing companies to help them improve. He's run his own business and he knows how to lead people, lead organizations in an effective manner. We're going to learn from Jim what he has learned in the Navy and how he transitioned into being an effective leader and how he transitions to being an effective leader on the front lines in industrial manufacturing today. Today I want to encourage you to download our leader notes that will give you a summary of today's episode with key takeaways, books mentioned, and key insights that we glean from our visit today. Now, pull up a chair, pull out a notebook, and let's dive into some great leadership content and insights from Jim. Hello Jim. Hello, mark. How are you today? I'm doing awesome. Happy Veterans Day, I want to start off by taking a moment and thanking you for your service on this Veterans Day that we're celebrating today. Thank you. I appreciate that. It was my pleasure. Let's just use that as a transition. Two, your leadership journey.'cause I know there's a lot of things that you learned in your times in the service that translated into what you did in the workforce when we worked together and throughout your career. Talk about your leadership journey and how the Navy taught you some things that you still use today. That's very good because the Navy did teach me a lot about leadership. One thing very important for leadership was treat people how you wanna be treated. Which is very important because I came out of the military with a mentality that I will do whatever I ask you to do. If I'm asking you to do it, I've either done it or I'm gonna be right there beside you to do it. Leadership by example. Biggest thing I took out of that is. Leadership by example, is very important. It makes a huge difference when your people know that you are willing to get down into the trenches with them, get dirty, so to speak. They'll follow you. They'll follow you into that place. So how did you transition outta the. Military into the civilian world and end up in the, where you spend a majority of your career, I guess you would say, in the maintenance and reliability field, is electrician and doing other different roles in the maintenance and reliability area. I got outta the military. I was in aviation electronics technician. the funny thing about that is I went to school to become an electronic aviation electronics technician, better known as a at and. I got sent to Philadelphia and worked on an aircraft carrier for two and a half years doing a service life extension program, which is effectively rebuilding the ship. So you sent me to school for a year to learn a job, and then you sent me to the ship and I learned a completely different job, which was painting, needle, gun, grinding, welding the course for that transition. When I got outta the military, I went to work at a company and I didn't wanna work in electronics because I was dis disenfranchised with it a little bit. Working at this company, they, one day they come up to me, the plant manager, the lead electrician and the maintenance manager. And they come up and they said, Jim, we understand that you have an electronics background. I said, yeah, I learned electronics in the Navy. And they said we would like you to come work in maintenance with us as an electrician. The funny part of this story is I told them no, literally told them, no, I don't wanna do that. And they said, then you can pack up your stuff and leave. You're fired. And I was like, what do you mean I'm fired? And they said we're not gonna let you waste your talent that you have here. You can take it somewhere else if you're not gonna use it. And that's how I got into maintenance. That's exactly how very interesting. But, I took to that job like a duck in water. It just made sense. So it's been a great journey ever since that, and I really appreciate the people that gave me no choice to get to that point. So what do you think was a pivotal moment for you from a leadership journey standpoint? You've moved into this role, into the maintenance reluctantly, but over that time you, you transitioned over time into working in some leadership roles from a maintenance and reliability, and we will talk about it in a minute, even safety. So how did you move into the leadership roles that you ascended to I always had a desire to do a little more. I went out, I got my electrical license. I got my contracted license. I did contracting while I was working at a regular job. And it was just something there that I needed. I thought that I could provide a little more leadership, a little guidance like I did in the military. I thought that I could provide that to, the people that work for me and also be a asset to the companies that I worked for. And actually the person who got me started in the leadership role was Deb Goldbe from a BB. I remember to this day, the conversation she had when she told me that I got the job was, I don't know anything about electrical work or maintenance for that matter. That's what you're here for, to make sure that I don't get in trouble. That was my start in the leadership making me realize that, as a leader, I don't have to know everything. I just have to be able to rely on the people that I have working for me and make sure that they feel appreciated. They're held accountable, and they will make sure that I have what I need to be a successful leader Also. And that was at a paper mill that we're both familiar with up in Muskegon. And tell us a little bit about,'cause what that was quite a journey for that mill and how it went from last to first in their group of plants. Tell me what you learned about leadership in that situation. Because it was a mill that was not performing well and you gotta be a part of the team that turned that whole place around. That's right. And that was a lot of work, a lot of long days, long nights. A lot of conversation with the people that worked for me that my direct reports a lot of conversation with mill management maintenance management path forward, how we're gonna get there, how we're gonna keep our equipment functioning, get uptime up, reliability, putting all that together really was a great challenge. I didn't do it. I was a part of that team. And it was a great team because literally as you mentioned, we went from last in the division to first. And it was a great journey. I don't really know how to go any further into it other than I really enjoyed the challenge. We had a couple of big in. That happened, that kind of derailed a few things, but we were able to overcome those and be successful. You saw Deb and the plant manager, who Deb was your boss. We'll explain to the audience who was the maintenance manager for that site, and then also their, she worked closely with the plant manager and they had, they pulled off some extraordinary leadership to get that team to believe that they could do better is working in a union environment, which can be challenging sometimes. And they did all of those things, all the obstacles being last, working in a, a bargaining agreement. How did you see them pull that off? What do you think are some key elements of their leadership that helped you guys turn that around? I think the first thing was communication. There was literally no secrets. Deb and I cannot remember the gentleman's name, and the plant manager when they would have meetings and I was invited to one and they're bringing in the leadership team from the mill and from maintenance because we were contract maintenance at that time explaining the situation that we're in and. Asking for ideas on how we're gonna get out of that, how we're gonna get better, what we need to do even costs At that time, we were trying to keep our costs down. So it was a challenge, but we were able to pull it off. And I think the key to that was really communication. Communication up and down. We didn't keep secrets. Everyone knew what was going on. They knew the situation that we were in, which was a dire situation at the time. I think, communicating that to everyone made it a little more real so that everyone understood that, we have to make some sacrifices, everyone does, if we're gonna be successful or even become successful and stay in business. If you go back early in your career and look at some of the things that you did well, but maybe some things that. You weren't doing as well early in your career that you say, man, if I was going to go back and talk to young Jim, I would have done this differently. What are some one or two lessons that you learned from earlier career that you would do differently if you had those opportunities over? One of the key things, and this is the biggest mistake I've made in leadership, trying to be friends with the people that work for you. You can have a friendly relationship, but you can't have a relationship where it affects your ability to lead. That was one place where I had to learn that lesson the hard way, and I did. Actually I was working for you at that time when I learned that lesson. What I. I completely learned that lesson. So yeah, it was a that was a difficult time. You got someone and at some point they're trying to take advantage of you because you have a friendship relationship. And you have to draw that line and say, look at work. We could be this or away from work. I'm sorry, we could be this, but at work you work for me. And if that's gonna be a problem, then. I'm gonna transfer you to a different division. And that's basically what happened. Be very careful about how you interact with your direct reports, especially at work. Don't let it affect your ability to lead.'cause it's very simple. And there was a lot of there was a lot of what do you wanna call it? Fallout from that for a little while. I had to regain a lot of people's trust because of that. And it worked. I was able to, but it made for a very hard time for me for a while. That's good story there. Being aware of how your relationships, you can't be showing favoritism. You have to be treating everyone in a good, straightforward way. Think of back through your careers like you've worked, leading direct reports, and then you've also worked as a safety leader where you're as a part of the organization, but you really didn't have the. Positional authority to maybe implement what you wanted to and what you've learned from working in those two different types of position, how much you have to rely on relationships and influence versus a positional leadership how do you carry that into the roles that you have today? That's a great question and it's, going. Maintenance supervisor to maintenance manager to site leader. That was a great journey. And I had control, to your point over my group of people at, as a supervisor, I had a con control over the maintenance as a maintenance manager. And then I had control over the site, my part of the site,'cause I was a contractor at the time in that role. But going into safety management. You have to work with the plant manager and the leadership team to implement that. You're right. I have no direct reports. I can only tell you what is required and what is recommended. And then I push for implementation of that. You have to have, you have to be able to give that argument. Here's the argument, here's the reason. You can't just throw out it's required because of blah, blah, blah. This code, this section, whatever it is. You have to put a compelling argument forward for the leadership team, and then you have to, I at least did, I took that message out to the floor and I tried to spread that message to every employee on the floor. If I see the problem, pull'em aside, have that conversation. Why are we're doing this because of these reasons? And I. One thing that I like to do is I like to interact with people. So that was very good for me to get, be able to get out on the floor and give that message to them face to face. And I think that was the key for me being successful as a safety leader. So what I'm hearing you say is that you're out there building relationships and building trust. Yes. You are never gonna get anything accomplished without relationships, without trust if people don't trust you. As I said before, in that situation where I let friendship in interfere with my ability to leave, I lost trust with my group and I had to build that trust back. What do you see as the key building blocks for trust? What are the things that you do to build trust in the organization? The biggest thing for me is I do what I say and I say what I do and I know that's a catchphrase, right? But I will go out to someone and I want to, interact with them. I want them to tell me where their problems are. I want them to tell me what their challenge is and then I want to help them. And I will go back to them and I will say, here's what we are putting forward to help you with that challenge.'cause you're not the only one who has that. I'm talking to a number of people who have that, so I bring that message back to them and Bear fruit here is what I'm bringing to you to show you that we are changing that, and that's how I build that relationship and that trust I have. Many people tell me, I come to you because I know at least you'll listen to me and you'll act upon it, or you'll tell me whether or not you can act on it. If it doesn't make sense, you'll tell me that. At least I get that response. Thing I hear from employees right now, especially in today's environment, is they bring something up and there's no feedback whatsoever. It just drops into a black hole and the frustration level is very high for those employees. There's two key elements that you're mentioning there, listening. And then once you listen is to provide some type of feedback, whether it's what they want to hear or not. You're still getting them the feedback, closing the loop. Is that correct? That's correct. Yes sir. That's the key. Communication is the key. Everybody wants to be heard. What they also just wanna know that you've heard them, whether or not you can help'em. Maybe they just need to vent for a minute. I can be that person. You can vent to me. I love you for it. Absolutely, because it gives me insight into where the problem, where the issue is. Maybe it's something that I can bring up in my role to the next level and get it resolved. For the past couple decades you've been in roles where you're trying to drive change, whether it's on the maintenance side, where you're in an organization that's underperforming from a maintenance standpoint, you're trying to implement, critical factors to drive change and improve the productivity and the uptime of a plant. Then also on safety. You're trying to make the plant safer, keep people from getting hurt. What do you see are the main challenges in industrial manufacturing right now to driving change? What are two or three things that you run into in those situations? The first glaring thing is capital investment, right? Capital investment. Most companies have a capital investment plan, but the question is, are you investing it correctly where it needs to be? There's always a drive for profits. I can put forth my ideas on that. I have, and we've implemented a number of them as I've gone forward in my career. That drives change to a degree, but only a small amount. The next thing that drives change for me is, again, I'm gonna go back to that again, communication. This is the path that I want to go. This is how I wanna get there. Now that I've told you where I wanna go and how I think we should get there, I want your input on where you see us and how you see us getting to that point. Also, because I don't work in a vacuum, I have a team and we have to work together. And if we're not all bought in on it again then we're not gonna be successful. So that drives change for me. The next thing is, and I sound like a broken record a little bit mark, but is do what I say and say what I do right? I'm gonna do this and then do it. I'm gonna be right there with you while we drive this. We'll all feel the pain if there's pain, and we're all gonna celebrate the successes when there's successes. As you've developed your leadership skills over the years, you've got a good understanding of what are the key behaviors, the key habits, the key characteristics. If you were to do an avatar of a great leader, what are the things that you're looking for? If you were to going out to try to hire that leader to come in and work in your organization? What are the key things our audience should be focusing on to become a great leader? Ooh, that is a really good question. A really great leader, first off they're a great listener, right? A great listener. They listen to understand, they don't listen to respond. That's very important. I struggle with that still to this day sometimes, because, we all have our faults. Secondly, a great leader has a vision of where the plant's going or whatever that situation is. They've got a vision, whether that vision is handed down from corporate or from whoever. They've morphed that into their vision and they've got a plan on how to go there. I need someone who can develop a plan and show a path forward on how we're gonna get there, a roadmap, so to speak. To get us where we need to be. Someone who is not afraid to work, not afraid to come out, not afraid to get out on the floor, be seen, be heard listen to people again. Just be out there. I think that's the key thing for me is that interaction with people. As a great leader, not that I'm necessarily a great leader, but as a great leader, I think that's a key. When you talk about being a great leader, one of the things that you have to do, and you've had to do this in a multitude of your roles, is you have to be able to lead up. What that means is just being able to influence your boss or his, your boss's boss in order, like you said, to get capital perhaps, or to get, the type of support you need to move the change initiative forward. What are some of the key things that you do to manage up, to lead up, to help you be successful? When I am going to my manager in that situation, I wanna bring a a plan together, right? I want to have a plan together. So I'm gonna get all the information I can and I'll, and I wanna present it, not necessarily in a PowerPoint. It can be very informal and I've found that informal is much better than a very formal meeting. Just pop in and say, Hey, can I have a couple minutes of your time and detail the plan, detail your ideas, and then present your thoughts and. What it is that you wanna do. That's been my best effort or my best result. To make change and to get that that project going or whatever it is. In order to have that, those plans be effective, there has to, you had to do some background work of building trust with that leader, and I know you're really good at that. What are some things that you do to make sure that the leaders that you're working for, the managers you're working for, have a high level of trust in what Jim's saying is real? That it, this should be considered seriously? I research and I, make sure that I do the legwork on anything that I'm doing. I want my manager to understand that when I come into this plant, I take control. I'm gonna be exactly what you need me to be in that role.'cause I'm gonna sit down with you before I start that role if I get the job and we're gonna have that conversation. What is it? What is your vision? What does it look like? How do you wanna get there? If you tell me one thing and I say, can I do it this way instead? I think that makes a manager or my manager understand that yes, he understands my vision, but he also understands a different way to get it. And I've had some very good managers who have allowed me to work through it my way as long as the end result is the same. I think that builds the trust with that manager because they know that I am. Ensuring that what they, what their vision is gonna happen, but it can happen either way. Let's shift a little bit with a different hat and leading your peers, because one thing I see a lot of leaders get frustrated with when they're trying to drive change or getting something done in the organization, they have trouble with some of their peers and being able to influence them, lead them in a positive way. So what's your. Best practices, tips to help leaders be better at dealing with those situations, with their peers? I think one of the keys on that is being available. I try to be available for them I just had a situation not that long ago where one of my peers was having a problem, is and you listen. You can hear, that things are going on and just pull'em off to the side and say, Hey, I see you're having, you're struggling with this or that, and let me give you a little advice or some pointers or whatever you wanna call it, to redirect you so that you understand maybe what they wanted in the first place instead of what you're pushing.'Cause a lot of times, even myself you get stuck in that tunnel. You get tunnel vision and you're just driving, driving, and you forget that, there's three or four other tunnels that'll get me all to the same place. So you just gotta slow down for a second and redirect. And the other thing that I do is I try to be available. I want you to come to me, I wanna come to you. And that's the key right there. I'll always go to my peers and say, Hey, I got this issue. What do you think? Maybe the mechanical engineer understands it better than I do, so let's go have a chat with them or and I think that availability and that openness not really vulnerability so much, but understanding where your strengths and weaknesses are the keys. As long as you aren't exposing the weakness. You can do it face to face, but if you're exposing the weakness in front of everyone, then you've just lost the whole battle. Trust is gone. Respect is gone, everything. So it's just a matter of working with my peers, having that conversation face to face or one on one, whatever I wanna call it. And then working together to make it. It sounds like to me that you're talking about how you add value, you serve first, and then that helps you build trust in a relationship. So when you do need their help or their buy-in and support you've got a groundwork of a relationship built on trust and that you've added value in service. I agree. I think we're all here to help each other in the long run. If I can help you, maybe you can help me. If you can't help me, that's perfectly fine. I'm not gonna hold it against you because maybe my knowledge base is a little wider than yours in that area. And that's fine. But regardless of the situation, I wanna make sure that we're all successful in the long run because if we don't succeed as a group we're not gonna succeed. Period. What's one leadership mind shift that has made the biggest impact on your leadership growth? Personal leadership mindset. That's made the biggest impact on my personal growth. I would say that, just, that's a really good question. I'm struggling with that.'cause there's a few, but I think it's just the almost the servant heart, right? Is that what you call it? The being able to serve others and help others because people see that, and it doesn't matter who I see it I have people come to me all the time and I'm not trying to blow my own horn or anything like that, but,'cause they know that if you come to me, I'm gonna help you. I think that's the leadership that I like the most right there is being the go-to person, not necessarily the best per best job in the world. Sometimes it gets you in a lot of trouble. But I like doing that and it's always been help. I've always got joy in that. Lemme ask you this. We've worked in some crazy situations together, and I know you've been in others and other organizations. How do you keep yourself from getting overwhelmed when it seems like things are just falling apart all around you and there's a lot of pressure from your boss and maybe their boss's boss and maybe a customer? And how do you focus to make sure that you're getting the right things done in the right way, in the right. Sequence. The key to that really is understanding the work that has to be done and the process to get it done. Then working the process, plan the job and work the plan is the only thing I can say for that.'cause I have been in, to your point, some crazy situations and had people who effectively standing on my desk screaming at me. Why isn't this done? But all, as long as you have a a understanding of the project, the plan, whatever it is, then you can explain, here's where we're at, here's the next steps. Then you can explain it. And you gotta have thick skin. You gotta have thick skin.'cause remember, at the end of the day, it's a job. It's not your life. And at some point you gotta go home you gotta drop all that stuff at the gate when you walk out the gate of work. And and when you walk in the, into the house, if you've got a family, you gotta be able to not let that bother you at home. That's difficult. Sorry. That's difficult to do though. Yes. One of the things I've seen, I've known you for over 15 years now. It's hard to believe that, but we've known each other that long and I've seen you grow a lot over that time, but that doesn't happen by accident. What are some intentional things that you do, whether it's books, podcasts, or just some other methodologies that you use? How do you grow as a leader? First thing I watch by leaders. I watch my managers and I watch the leaders that I look up to see how they do things. And the people that I don't look up to, I watch them too, to see what not to do. There was a funny story. There was a a gentleman who ran a company and he would get so frustrated. He'd run out onto the floor and he'd scream at all the managers and supervisors, and he'd drop on the floor. He act like he is banging his head on the floor, just screaming at everyone how frustrated he is. And then he walked back in his office and nobody had respect for him. So one of the things that I've tried very diligently to do is not show that kind of emotion regardless of how high stress it's you gotta keep that under control.'cause it's, again, it's a job and you can only affect so much. Then the, your effectiveness ends because there's situations that you can't control. The other thing that helped me grow I read books one of them, it's your ship, a great book given to me by a plant manager in, when I was working for quant service, and basically what that tells you is if you see something, say it or fix it, you don't necessarily need to have the, your bosses or the captain's permission just get it done. That's a great message, right? You don't necessarily need to have kudos for everything that you do, because at some point in time someone's gonna realize that, Hey, this thing is running along pretty good. What's happening, we're getting it handled. And when your people see you doing that, they're gonna do the same thing. What book was that? That's called, it's Your Ship. Okay. It's a great book. I have it here somewhere right now. We'll make sure to put that in the show notes. What are you seeing that leaders, the challenges that lead leaders are facing today when you're out there in the workplace, in a plant? One of the things that I've seen right now is leaders are, we're all struggling right now with the the work climate really how things are going. Not trying to get political or anything, but just how things are in the workforce right now that it's so different than, 15, 20 years ago, even five years ago, was a completely different workforce. And it's a struggle because people are job gypsies. I like to call'em, if you get tired, I just move on to the next one. There's no there's no loyalty to the work necessarily. You've got the some who are, but people will get tired and they'll just move on to the next job, move on to the next. So trying to build that rapport. With your workforce to be successful is very difficult right now. I see it all the time. So taking those things into consideration what kind of word of encouragement would you give to that leader out there that's dealing with these type of issues? Specifically maybe what would you say to the maintenance and reliability leader that maybe is out there that is thinking about this career that they're in and the frustrations that they have? What would be some advice you would give them? I think the first thing is understand your people. If you understand your people, you can help reduce the attrition, and secondly have patience. I know it's frustrating. I've been there. It is very difficult. Yes, you're getting yelled at by one person or another, right? Because this isn't running or that's not fixed yet. But communicate the problems that you're having, communicate to your people and understand that it will get better. It's gonna get better, but you have to do your due diligence to make it. So you have a you play a key role in that. That's good. I appreciate your time here today. Is there one last parting shot you would like to leave with our aspiring leaders? People that are out there trying to grow and become a better leader? Leadership is a lot of fun. When you make it fun, it can be very challenging. It can be very demanding. But one key that I always like to say to, especially when I'm new on a job, is, let's have a little fun at work today. It doesn't all have to be business. People can understand that we can have fun and we can still get the job done and I always say, if you can't have fun at work, why are we here? That's a key for me. Have a little fun joke around a little bit. Tease one another, just have a little bit of fun. And then the job goes a lot better. And the morale is a lot better. Jim, I love that because. I think back to our time working together, and we've worked in some pretty big fires, and right in the middle of that you would crack a joke or we would have some kind of situation where we'd laugh while we were almost going insane with the situation that we were dealing with. Yep. And you'd always bring some levity to it. And it did help. It released some of the tension. It helped us make sure that we were enjoying the process of getting through what we were getting through. And I do appreciate that and again, happy veteran today. Thank you for your service. Thank you. Thank you for your time today. I appreciate you, mark. You have a great day and appreciate you a lot. Thank you for all you've done for me in my career. Thanks, Jim. I hope you got as much out of that conversation as I did. Jim provides some very compelling, interesting leadership practices that he's learned on the front lines as a leader in tough situations, jim gave us some really good insights on how to listen to our people well, how to provide feedback and how to give them clear direction as you lead them. Make sure you download the leader notes so that you can get a good, concise summary of everything that was discussed today. The leader notes provide you a good summary of what was discussed today with key topics, the books that were discussed, the key insights that were gained today, and we encourage you to download those to share with your team and to review for yourself as you grow as a leader. Please subscribe to the Learning the Lead Show so that you get this in your favorite podcast directory as each episode comes out. If you got value out of today's episode, please go give us a rating. This helps us spread the word about what we're doing here on the Learning the Lead Show, so more people can be encouraged and equipped to go out and lead more effectively. Also, I'm offering free copy of my book, the Trust Gap. This is a short ebook that helps you understand a little bit better how to build trust in your organization so you can lead more effectively. Hundreds of you have already downloaded it, and if you have not done so, there'll be a link in the show notes for you to download that and learn how to build trust with your organization so that you can be more effective as you grow and learn as a leader. It now go out and learn, grow, and lead to take your team to the next level.