Meikles & Dimes

148: Four-Star General of the U.S. Army George W. Casey Jr. | You’re No Better Than Anyone and No One’s Better Than You

General George W. Casey Jr. is a four-star general who served as the 36^th Chief of Staff of the United States Army. Nominated by President George W. Bush, General Casey led what is possibly the world’s largest, and most complex organization--more than one million service members with a $200 billion annual budget. As Chief Executive Officer of the Army, General Casey was a strong advocate for military families, wounded soldiers, and survivors of the fallen, and he also took on the tough issues of suicide and the stigma attached to combat stress.

General Casey served 41-years as an American soldier, following graduation from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• General Casey’s grandpa taught him: You’re no better than anyone. And no one’s better than you. So, treat everyone with respect. But don’t take any guff from anybody.
• General Casey’s father taught him: Never be afraid to try to be the very best.
• Vince Lombardi taught General Casey: Insist on disciplined execution of the highest standards.
• The higher General Casey rose in the hierarchy, the more he realized he needed to influence the people outside his organization rather than just look down inside his own organization.
• The more experienced General Casey got, the more comfortable he got saying, “I don’t know.”
• “Be a man or woman of your word. If you tell someone you're going to do something, you either do it or you tell them why you're not going to do it.”
• There are only two kinds of plans: those that might work and those that won’t work.
• Family is everything.

 

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147: Former BYU President Kevin Worthen | Say “Yes” as Often as Possible

Kevin Worthen was the 13th president of Brigham Young University and is a “BYU guy through and through” as he says. Kevin earned both his bachelor’s and law degree from BYU, graduating summa cum laude. After graduating from law school, Kevin clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White, and later spent a year at the University of Chile as a Fullbright Scholar. Kevin also served as Dean of the BYU Law school and as Advancement Vice President of BYU before serving as President. Most recently, Kevin spent a year at Yale Law School as a distinguished visiting professor.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• As Ken Burns said, “Leadership is humility and generosity squared.”
• Leadership is admitting we don’t know everything and then giving credit to others for their success.
• When Kevin played basketball in college, his coaches would use every second of the timeouts to coach the players. But as the years passed, he noticed that coaches started using the timeouts to counsel with the other coaches. There’s power in admitting you don’t see everything and in getting advice from others.
• As the President of BYU, Kevin learned to say “yes” as often as he could, because there are so many times as a leader that you have to say “no.”
• It’s important to be generous and kind when saying “no,” especially because saying “no” typically doesn’t persuade anyone.
• I love two of the quotes Kevin shared: “Anger never persuaded anyone” and “The law of love is undefeated.”

 

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146: IRS Special Agent Richard Littrell | Watch Out For Yourselves & Others

Richard Littrell is a special agent for the IRS. His primary duty is to conduct criminal investigations of individuals who have violated the federal tax code as well as related financial crimes such as fraud, money laundering, elderly financial abuse, illegal drug trafficking, and identity theft.

Shortly after joining the IRS, Richard was a lead investigator on the University of Kansas ticket scandal, in which several KU employees stole an estimated $2-3 million from the athletic department.

Prior to joining the IRS, Richard worked as an auditor at Deloitte. He earned his accounting, business administration and Masters of Accounting degrees all from the University of Kansas.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• As a special agent, Richard has dedicated himself to continuous learning. Criminals launder money through the Internet in countless ways, whether through cryptocurrency or the banking system, and Richard has to stay on top of all of it.
• As an IRS special agent, Richard helps keep the playing field level for all of us by holding criminals accountable for not paying their taxes.
• Richard's advice: "Look out for yourselves. Fraud is rampant. And look out for your friends, neighbors and family as well, to make sure they’re not being victimized."

 

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145: UNC Professor Alison Fragale | Helping Women Navigate Power & Status Dynamics

Alison Fragale is an award-winning professor at the University of North Carolina, where she teaches courses on leadership and negotiation.

Alison has consulted with numerous organizations, including ExxonMobil, Bayer CropScience, and the U.S. Air Force and Navy among others. And her research has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, and The Financial Times. Before entering academia, Alison worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company.

Alison earned her PhD in organizational behavior from Stanford and her BA in mathematics and economics from Dartmouth, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Though Alison didn’t explicitly set out to conduct research to help women, she realized that it was often the women who were sticking around after class asking for help from someone who looked like them.
• Status and power are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct. Status is respect. Power is resource control. So, it's possible to have one and not have the other.
• Women, more so than men, end up in positions of power without the commensurate status. The alternative, status without power, is much easier to navigate. People think of you as warm, giving, and capable. But people who have power without status are often treated poorly, which can lead to instability and exit.
• Alison’s most common recommendation for women who ask for help navigating power and status dynamics is to start sooner advocating for themselves. Otherwise, they may find themselves in situations where people have already concluded that they’re not the valuable person in the room.

 

Follow Alison:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonfragale/

Website: https://alisonfragale.com/about/

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144: Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson on Psychological Safety | Noticing When the Dog Doesn’t Bark but Should Have

Amy Edmondson is a Leadership and Management professor at Harvard Business School and is world-renowned for her pioneering work on psychological safety.

Amy has been recognized by the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and in 2021 and 2023 Amy was ranked #1 in the world.

Amy is also the author of several books which have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Her most recent book, The right kind of Wrong was named the business book of the year by the Financial Times and Schroders.

Amy earned a BA in engineering and design, an MA in psychology, and a PhD in organizational behavior, all from Harvard University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Amy studied hospital teams, she found, to her dismay, that better teamwork was correlated with higher error rates. But then she had a key insight: better teams were more willing to report errors than worse teams.
• Most people, most of the time, hold back dissenting views. And because we don’t know what we don’t hear, we have to go on a treasure hunt for people’s dissenting views if we want to hear them.
• Psychological safety doesn’t mean being comfortable. Rather, it’s about a willingness to endure discomfort, giving people permission for candor, when we go on treasure hunts for dissenting views.
• We believe we see reality, but we rarely stop to think whether what we think we see is actually true. 

 

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143: Chicago Professor Ayelet Fishbach | Four Science-Backed Ways to Increase Motivation

Ayelet Fishbach is a Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, and the author of GET IT DONE: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. She is the past president of the Society for the Science of Motivation and the International Social Cognition Network. Her groundbreaking research on human motivation has won numerous awards and is regularly featured in the media, including the New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and NPR.

Ayelet earned a bachelor's degree with distinction in psychology, a master's degree summa cum laude in psychology, and a PhD magna cum laude in psychology, all from Tel Aviv University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• To increase motivation, find pleasure along the way. And setting a goal to do something is generally more motivating than setting a goal to stop doing something.
• To increase motivation, we can monitor progress by looking back and looking ahead. When we start out, we can look back and take encouragement from the small progress we’ve made. When we’ve almost completed our goal, we can look forward, and take encouragement from how little we have left.
• When our goals are in harmony with each other we’re more motivated than when we have conflicting goals. For example, rather than thinking about work-life goals as conflicting, we can think more abstractly about how the goals complement each other.
• Including other people in our goals can be more motivating, whether that’s explicitly involving them in our goals, or just acknowledging that others have an interest in us achieving our goals whether they realize it or not. 

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142: White Shoe Firm Corporate Attorney Todd Mortensen | Advising CEOs and Boards of Directors

Todd Mortensen is a corporate attorney in New York City who advises boards of directors, investment banks, and special committees on sell-side, buy-side, public, and private transactions in a wide range of industries. Todd has represented Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays Capital, Wells Fargo Securities, UBS, and Rothschild & Co. among others.

Todd has also worked in a number of investment management roles at Blackstone, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Wells Fargo. He’s a former professional athlete and speaks fluent Spanish  and earned a JD/MBA from Penn Law School and Wharton.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• As a corporate attorney Todd helps CEOs and Boards of Directors 1) act in good faith and 2) be fully informed when buying and selling billion-dollar businesses. If the execs fulfill those two requirements, the court will defer to the “business judgement rule.” Otherwise, the courts will use the more stringent “entire fairness” standard.
• If you want to be successful at anything, you typically have to work really, really hard at it. This includes embracing the process of improving a little bit each day, week, and year. And if you’re consistent and diligent with your work ethic, overtime you’ll rise to the top.
• If you’re good to people, doors will open for you. Todd’s managing director at Morgan Stanley taught him that the decisions that would most affect Todd’s career would likely be made when Todd wasn’t in the room. So, Todd needed to make sure that his reputation helped rather than hurt him during those meetings.
• As Todd learned in Venezuela, “Create fama y echete a la came.” Create fame for yourself, and then go lie down. Our reputation is either helping or hurting us.

Follow Todd:

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141: How To Have a Crucial Conversation | Joseph Grenny

Joseph Grenny is the coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, including Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Change Anything, and Crucial Influence. His work has been translated into 28 languages, is available in 36 countries, and has generated results for more than half of the Forbes Global 2000.

Joseph is also a globally sought after keynote speaker, and has shared the stage with Jack Welch, Brené Brown, Jim Collins, and General Colin Powell among others. 

In addition to his writing and speaking, Joseph serves as chairman of the board for the Other Side Academy, a peer-run residential school for people with long histories of crime, homelessness, and addiction.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• At the heart of most disappointment in organizations are conversations that people are either not holding or not holding well, in part because many of us think that there are just some conversations that we can’t have.
• But Joseph’s work shows that you can talk with almost anyone about almost anything as long as you create enough safety. If people feel safe, and that you’re motives are appropriate, then they’ll let you say almost anything you need.
• Joseph witnessed this firsthand when he intervened during a fight at the airport. By showing the aggressor that he understood and cared for him, Joseph was then able to deliver the truth that the man’s behavior was unacceptable. In seconds the man moved from aggression to apology.

 

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140: Nathan Tanner | Telling Ourselves the Right Stories

Nathan Tanner is an executive coach who helps CEOs, founders, and leaders scale themselves and their companies. He has coached leaders at Silicon Valley startups and bellwether companies including DoorDash, Google, Autodesk, Electronic Arts, LinkedIn, Procter & Gamble, and Lyft.

Prior to becoming a full-time coach, Nathan was the VP of People at Neighbor, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup disrupting the storage industry. Prior to Neighbor, Nathan spent half a decade at DoorDash where he was hired as the head of HR and scaled the company from 250 to 5,000+ employees. There he built the company’s first leadership development program and coached more than half of the executive team. Prior to DoorDash, Nathan held several roles on the HR team at LinkedIn. He started his career on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers where he had a front-row seat to the largest bankruptcy in history.

Nathan is also the author of two books, Not Your Parents' Workplace, and his new book, The Unconquerable Leader. Nathan has been an advisor at Y Combinator and writes for Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, and other publications. He's an IRONMAN triathlete, holds an MBA from BYU, and was trained as an executive coach at the Co-Active Training Institute.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Lehman went bankrupt and Nathan struggled to get back into investment banking, he told himself the story that he wasn’t smart enough or talented enough. But then he realized that this story wasn’t serving him. He changed the story from, “I can’t do this” to “I haven’t done it yet, but I can figure it out.”
• Rather than tell ourselves the limiting story of, “That’s just who I am” we can aim to become the best version of ourselves.
• Identify the self-limiting stories we tell ourselves and reframe them into stories that serve us.

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139: Professor Taya Cohen on Guilt Versus Shame

Taya Cohen is a Professor Organizational Behavior and Business Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on honesty, moral character, negotiation, and conflict management. Taya is frequently featured in prominent media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, BBC, NPR, and TIME magazine.

In 2020, Taya was recognized as one of the Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors by Poets & Quants, and she is a Past-President of the International Association for Conflict Management.

Taya earned a B.A. in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, Taya spent two years as a postdoc at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

In this episode, we discuss the following:

• When we do something wrong, we can feel guilt for the bad behavior, or we can feel shame for being a bad person. If we feel guilt, we can apologize and try to be better in the future, which can give us hope. But feeling shame, feeling like we’re fundamentally flawed, can make us feel less optimistic about the future and can be much harder to deal with.
• When we provide feedback to others, it’s generally more effective to focus on people’s behaviors as opposed to more generalized statements about who they are as a person.
• Guilt tends to be a much more healthy, positive emotion than shame.

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