MEL #026 | From Power Lines to People Leadership through Emotional Intelligence with Bob Colwick

COLWICK (00:00)

Pi is always Pi. You know, whether you’re on the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere or Jupiter, 3.14159265358979 Pi is always Pi. In leadership,successfully giving leadership to a person one day may look the same the next day or it may be completely different.

ADAMS (00:45)

In this episode, I speak with Bob Colwick an electrical engineer with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Bob’s fascination with puzzles and unseen forces led him to study electrical engineering. Inspired by a mentor during undergrad, he added an MBA to his technical toolkit, enabling him to lead effectively across utility operations, first in power distribution, and now in generation at TVA. Bob discusses how, when faced with a delayed project, his emotional self-regulation and trust-based relationship with his team member

helped him uncover a personal issue affecting performance. Rather than solve the problem technically, he created space for empathy, which led the team member to resolve the situation independently. Bob advises engineers to recognize that leadership is not simply engineering for people. It’s a different skill set that requires emotional intelligence, humility, and constant adaptation. He encourages engineers to cultivate trust, read widely, and develop the ability to ask the question behind the question. Without further delay,

Here is my conversation with Bob Colwick.

ADAMS (01:43)

Hi, Bob, welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

COLWICK (01:46)

Hey Angelique, thank you for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity.

ADAMS (01:50)

Well, I’m thrilled to have you here. Can you start by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

COLWICK (01:55)

Sure, it’s always been part of my, I guess, DNA. Every project that I had typically involved my mom asking, why did you take the toaster apart? Or, hey, why is this device not working? Can you take a look at it? So I always had a natural affinity for that. Any kind of puzzle, riddle, question, it all kind of formed together on something that scratched that cerebral itch.

And so engineering just seemed like the natural progression of that.

ADAMS (02:22)

And you chose to go into electrical engineering. Can you talk a little bit about how you selected that of all the engineering majors out there?

COLWICK (02:30)

Sure, sure. And I’ll tell you this, they say true confession is good for the soul. So I’ll go ahead and get it out there. Whenever I was deciding on which type of engineering to go into, I thought, what is this field of engineering that I think I know the least about? And it was electrical because I can hold a gear or a cog in my hand. I could see a lever.

I could see the effects of heat on something, but electricity, my eyesight’s good, but not good enough to see electron movement. So that just seemed like, think I’ll tackle that one. And then sure enough, as I got into it and learned the basics of it and oh, here’s how it’s alike, instead of pressure, it’s voltage. It really took hold of me. So I wandered into it serendipitously.

But thankfully, it ended up being exactly where I think I needed to go.

ADAMS (03:21)

Yeah, that’s amazing. And I will say that of the engineering disciplines, electrical is the one that I too know the least about still after 30 years of being a practicing engineer. And there’s still like an element of, for me, an element of magic associated with it. Just sort of like there’s something magical happening over there. I don’t understand how it works. I’m just glad that people like you do understand how it works. So that all these things that we need in society just work.

COLWICK (03:48)

yeah. It’s like some of my colleagues say we call it electric-ery. Yeah. Okay. It just seems to happen and we say, okay, that works for me too. Yeah.

ADAMS (03:58)

Oh, that’s amazing. And you also decided to get an MBA. Can you talk a little bit about your decision to add to your engineering background with a business degree?

COLWICK (04:09)

Sure thing. When I was getting my undergrad in electrical engineering, had a really, really great professor there at UT Knoxville, Dr. Jack Lawler. He was amazing, taught me a lot of stuff about electrical engineering. And then for when we turned in our senior project, he said, hey, let’s kind of go off the engineering perspective for a minute and talk about the rest of your life. He said, if you want my advice, I recommend that

hey, now that you’re wrapping up the foundation for your engineering part of your career, I highly recommend you move in and get an MBA because they are separate sides of the brain. They work together very, very well. And by taking a formalized series of classes on finance and marketing and logistics, et cetera, that really could help round out the experience.

and make your future a little more palatable if you want to go into the arena of leading others. And I really respected Dr. Lawler, still do. And that’s what got me kicked off. And just like with electrical engineering, when I started taking the classes, it was a lot different credits and debits and all these things, but it was eminently fascinating seeing how that could interact with engineering. that’s kind of how that went.

ADAMS (05:21)

Okay, that’s great. I love that you had a mentor that sort of saw something in you that like, you know, kind of keep learning and you, yeah, just gave you some direction. It sounded like it worked out great for you. So it’s always great when I hear that people have had those experiences. Mentors are so important. And then you’ve worked in the utilities industry for most of your career. Can you just talk a little bit about that?

I think you’re the first one so far that I’ve interviewed. Actually, you’re the first EE I’ve talked to. So I’m actually really glad to have you, because I’m like 20 interviews in. I don’t have electrical engineers in my own personal network. So I’m really thrilled to have you on. can you just talk a little bit about your work in the utilities industry?

COLWICK (05:56)

Sure thing. As I said earlier, Dr. Jack Lawler focused while he was a professor at UT Knoxville on the power industry. Most of my cohorts at the time were going into other areas of electrical engineering, such as microelectronics and signals and processing. And I was one of, we kind of good naturedly were referred to as the dinosaurs because, you know, power is…

basically unchanging. know, everything from a lightning bolt to the modern day powers the movement of electrons. There’s nothing quote, quote cool or sexy that’s folks seeing it. But for me, it formed the foundation, as you mentioned earlier of everything. It’s the invisible servant as a, as, as utility companies have called it. And that really had an appeal for me. Hey, whenever I flip the switch,

Why do the lights come on and how does this motor turn, et cetera, et cetera. So sure enough, right out of school, got on with EPB in Chattanooga and started learning the basics of power line design and substations. And hey, how do we receive this power that is generated by TDA and make it so that everybody can enjoy it because it’s generating such an intense voltage.

We needed to be a little bit less so that when we plug in the vacuum cleaner, it doesn’t blow up. And found an immense amount of satisfaction. I went from there to the Knox utilities board for 18 years. And it was, it was more of that, just a lot of good, hardworking, dedicated folks who, who take service seriously. Hey, you know, electricity can be a little bit mysterious, but let us handle that side of it so that whenever it gets really cold, you’ve got, you have heat.

or when it gets really hot, you have coolness or we can help power hospitals, et cetera. And past that point, I thought, well, you know, that that handles the movement of electricity. How about the generation of it? And sure enough, I got on with Tennessee Valley Authority about two years ago. I’m an engineer in the regional engineering group for a group of mechanicals and civils and

electricals and chemicals work together to make sure the plants run converting basically mechanical force powered by steam whether it’s coal or natural gas or nuclear or water and making it into electricity goes out to the same distributors that I used to work for so I really really enjoy it.

ADAMS (08:17)

Wow, I really love this idea of the invisible servant. I love that term because, and I can hear it in the way you describe it too, that at least the part of the industry that you have worked in really truly is a service to people and really truly is a service that we all just take for granted. And so there’s people like you that are like, dedicating your entire career to making sure that this thing, everybody’s taking advantage, everybody’s just taking for granted.

is working. And so I just think there’s something really noble about that. really, I think you probably don’t get appreciated enough for doing that kind of work. But I just really appreciate that. And I was actually thinking, when you said substation, it reminded me. I spent most of my career in the aluminum industry working for a company called Alcoa in the primary production. So this is the conversion of aluminum oxide to aluminum metal.

and it is extremely energy intensive electricity. And I was thinking, know, our power systems engineer, they would go from completely unnoticed until something happened to that substation and then they might as well have had a cape.

Because we like, we like, where’s the power system engineer, wherever they are, fly them to where they need to be. And then everybody, because nobody else understands what’s actually everybody up from like the, you know, the, technicians, the operators all the way up to like the CEO of the companies is sitting there with bated breath, be like, please tell me you can fix it and we don’t have to replace it. And then of course they fix it. And then the hero for, you know, two weeks. And then they go back to, you know,

back into the shadows, doing their thing, making sure things run until, you know, lightning strikes something. And anyway, so I I forgot about that, but that was just, I just remember that being, you know, our life for 20 years was just like whenever there, we never even noticed it until something happened. And then all of a sudden, yeah, this silent, this invisible thing became very, very visible. And the most important thing in the entire company until it got fixed.

But I can see that happening just in communities too, right? know, something happens and it’s like all of a sudden, wow, like this thing is super important.

COLWICK (10:24)

It is and some of the more heart touching moments in the past whenever I would do damage assessment duties, you mentioned lightning, know, if a big storm had blown through and we would go in front of the line crews to where, Hey, this person called in and said there, no, no, nobody on the street has power. Well, we would go in front of it and say, okay. Well, it’s one pole that’s broken. Just send one crew or.

hey, there’s a lot of devastation. You’re probably gonna need to, we’re gonna need to bring in everybody on this and it helped us right size each thing. And several days into the event and we’re getting tired or whatever. And then you would see just the note somebody had taped to their mailbox, just saying, thank you. Or, hey, my mom’s on oxygen and you got us back in power. And to your point at that moment, I felt like a…

like a little geek with a cape on, know, that I was flying around and restoring electricity. And a funny side of that is sometimes the opposite can happen. You know, for my friends and family that know I’m in the utility industry, everything’s fine, as you say, until the power’s lost. And then still, instead of the hero, I become like the soundboard operator at a concert when there’s a squeal and everybody looks.

back. sorry, sorry. So we enjoy playing both sides of that role.

ADAMS (11:49)

I can imagine. And I can also imagine that it could be stressful when those situations happen, when you recognize that, you know.

There are people out there who are relying on this and are looking, expecting things to work all the time and when they don’t, now you’ve got to. And as you said, it could be a small thing, one poll, one person, or it could be this huge devastating thing. So can you just talk a little bit about how you have learned to manage those situations, your own internal stress level, your own mindset? How do you kind of get yourself through those situations?

COLWICK (12:25)

Excellent question. Excellent question. If you’re okay with it, we’ll use some of your former experience, say at Alcoa. You’re melting aluminum and you have molten aluminum there in the pot and all of a sudden the electricity dies and that aluminum starts hardening and you’re thinking from Alcoa’s perspective, X, Y, and Z are about to happen. What do we do? Well, then you get on the phone with us and as far as stressors go, usually when we would receive those phone calls, understandably the person on the other end was pretty tense, pretty nervous. And so one of the first things that I had to learn how to do, and I’m still perfecting, is okay, let that first wave of adrenaline or the things brought on by the adrenal gland, let those flow through, you don’t grab hold of them, ask the question behind the question, like the author Mr. Miller says.

And so after that got through, I would make sure and listen to their concern. Cause I might know a few things about electricity, but I know practically nothing about making aluminum and the smelting process, et cetera. So I would learn to listen to them and my stress as it’s bubbling up, learning how to separate what I can control and what I can’t control. And then also finally, the last step in that is realizing this person is coming to me with a desperate need. In their eyes, I am the subject matter expert. And so what I’d learned to do was control the message as well as the tone, bring calmness into it, bring us to a point of commonality. You hey, you’re missing electricity and we’re having problems here, here and here. Here’s kind of our plan of attack. What will that mean for you guys? Then all of a sudden it becomes a collaboration.

instead of that five alarm fire that it started with. And I would say in about 11 times out of 10, that tended to get us where we needed to be.

ADAMS (14:19)

Yeah, that’s an amazing strategy. I mean, I just even the way you’re describing it, I can tell that you’re probably soothing them, even though you had your own anxiety, your own adrenaline, as you said, you were managing that and just through your tone and you had a plan, they felt heard and you are the subject matter expert. So you had some ideas about how to approach things. I could imagine that you could really deescalate quickly a situation, is an amazing skill to have. How did you learn how to do that? Was it just practice? Did you have a mentor or are you just like naturally chill? I don’t know. How does it work?

COLWICK (14:56)

Well, unfortunately, instead of chill, I’m more naturally the incredible Hulk.

So the engineering side of, of my training helped me develop skills and tactics for the, the concrete things, you know, gravity, 32.2 feet per second squared at sea level things that it didn’t matter if it was a Monday or if it was partly cloudy or if I’m wearing a green shirt, it’s all subjective what really helped me personally was the combination of several things. The MBA was a big thing because it introduced me to concepts that I like to call things I didn’t know that I didn’t know because I thought everything could be solved up until that time with an equation, a formula, a set of laws. so having to learn that, hey, someone when they call you in a moment of panic,is not an engineering concept, but it’s no less real and you ignore it at your own peril. And so then I was like, okay, from that perspective, what are some tools that I could use? The second element I would throw into that would be what we’ve talked about earlier. I’ve been very, very, very blessed with so many good mentors, whether they were great bosses or great colleagues or learning neat things going on seminars and folks just, you know, at supper sharing their war stories and we train them back and forth and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and say, hey, you know, this happened at this time and, know, I kind of learned what not to do. And then that gave me the freedom to show that same vulnerability and we could mutually learn through that. it’s kind of an amalgam of all of those things combined. I think that I really, owe the most gratitude for to help in that instance.

ADAMS (16:46)

Okay, Bob, can you give us an example of when you had to use leadership skills?

COLWICK (16:49)

Sure, I’ll be glad to. I remember once, my team, were working on a design for a big project, an electrical design to handle the new development. There were a lot of moving pieces from a lot of different departments and we reached out and touched all of them. And some of them, we were the critical path. They couldn’t do X, Y, or Z until we had handled A, B, and C.

So we’re tracking along and about halfway through, I was called up to my boss’s office and they said, hey, on this project, this design was due and we’ve got a lot of people counting on it. Developers, our construction crews, money has been paid for materials. So what’s going on? We need to get the design in place. And so, going back to the earlier discussion with the hypothetical conversation with an alcohol employee, had that initial rush of, no, I’ve let someone down. So it kind of had my emotions come up. So I thought, okay, it is up to me to control that part of it. Kind of manage my own emotions was the first management I did. You know, kind of got it down, said, okay, well, let’s talk about it and made sure.

I wasn’t assuming what their problems were. was hearing it straight from their mouths and I didn’t try and defend or correct or make excuses. I just said, you know, let me check on this. I will get back to you within the hour and we can plan from there. And so I went downstairs to talk to the designer and just ask a typical question that happens about every hour in every engineering scenario, hey, you know, this, this project had a due date for this part of this date and it looks like we’re a little bit late. what can you tell me about it? Well, at that point, the employee just absolutely collapsed. They just lost it. And it told me right off the bat, okay, there is, there’s something going on here. That’s a lot deeper than, man, I missed that deadline. So immediately I switched off the engineering side of my brain pulled in the management side, pulled them into a room separately to talk. and what I started with was not, hey, here’s what’s going on. I started off just saying, hey, how are you doing?

And we had a relationship to where they trusted me and I trusted them. They knew that the four walls were sacrosanct where we were talking and no details would ever leak out. And so they just really opened up about what caused them to really have that response. Had nothing to do with the project, had everything to do with an unfortunate circumstance that was happening in their personal life.

And so I’ve learned some of the best leadership skills involve being the best listener on the planet, being an exceptionally good listener. And so I put on my listening skill hat and listen to them as they explain the problem. They ended up as typically happens. They also explained here the options that we can use to make it better. And then they told me what they were going to do to fix it offer any advice. You know, my leadership slash management of the situation was more of just being what they needed instead of doing unto others as they would do unto me. I was trying to do unto them what they wanted done unto them. And when that happened, they said, I know I’m late on that. You know, I didn’t say a word. They said, I know this design is late. Here’s where I’m stuck.

I will have it resolved within the hour. And I said, thank you, deliver the results and everything was fine. So it was more of a passive, more of a passive type of leadership, but still that’s what the situation needed. So I was, I was pretty pleased by that. I felt like I really helped out.

ADAMS (20:29)

Yeah, that’s a great example. There’s a couple of things that I want to unpack there. Maybe so at the very beginning, you talked about how you had to manage your own emotions, right? Because the boss is sort of saying like, what’s going on? And you could tell that you know, that you were feeling stressed and you had to sort of regulate yourself before you could do, you know, figure out the next action that you needed to take. So you weren’t getting defensive and you weren’t like making that boss, you know, escalating things with the boss. So can you just talk a little bit about

One, how can you tell when you’re with yourself? Like how can you tell when, okay, the emotions are happening and I need to self-regulate? And then two, maybe what are some strategies that you use to help you? Is it deep breathing or visualization or I don’t know what you, but how do you, how are you able to manage your own emotions when you can sense that things are coming up?

COLWICK (21:19)

Great questions. And I love especially the phrasing of it when you said when not if, and for me that’s the important first step is not to fool myself. Just brutal self honesty, self awareness that, I didn’t ask to be born with this. It was given to me. Therefore, how can I best use it? And part of that involves, okay, realizing this rush of emotion. And so to your point, deep breathing,

I believe it was, it may have been in the book, blink by Malcolm Gladwell, I think I might be wrong on that, but I talked about, the part of, counting to 10 has a lot of scientific merit because the path to the, the, reptilian part of our brain, that, that, handles raw emotion, fight or flight is physically shorter than the path to our brain.

that is the frontal cortex, the part that says, okay, now wait a minute, what’s going on here? So by forcing ourselves to stop and count to 10, to take a few deep breaths, we are literally giving that stimuli enough time to reach that frontal cortex and determine what is the best way to proceed forward. So those are some of the things that I use. And another strategy that I’ve implemented is I will, I have a couple of my own heroes, folks that I admire for different aspects, whether they do a task well or they’re a good athlete or they’re just a good kind of person, et cetera. That also holds true for folks that are really good at that, for my own heroes that I would like to model their own things about. So… before the situation occurs, when everything is calm, I have that list in my mind of who they are. What is it I admire about them? I keep doing it over and over that neuroplasticity kicks in. becomes muscle memory. So when that rush of emotion hits, I’m thinking of those folks without even thinking of those folks. It was easier to mimic some of their better traits.

ADAMS (23:16)

Okay, I love that. That’s great. I love the idea of having some heroes who have some behaviors that you admire and thinking of them often. This is first time I’ve actually heard it, of actually having people in mind and kind of thinking about them frequently as well as a way to help.

embed those principles and those behaviors into your own mind and your own consciousness. So that’s really a great tip. The second thing about the example that you gave me that I wanted to talk more about is this idea that when you went and talked to the person about the delay or being late, first of all, you recognized that, okay, there’s something more going on here.

But then the other piece I want to touch on is this trust that you had built up with them, that they knew when you took them into the other room and really had this private conversation, they knew that they could really tell you what was really going on. And I want to talk about how you cultivate trust, because that doesn’t just happen overnight.

COLWICK (24:11)

Yeah, no, no, thank you. I love that. Once again, not because I’m anything special, but I’ve just been very blessed to have folks that really had that concept down to a pat. And I heard it once put by my granddaddy that he said, hey, you don’t build an airplane while you’re in mid flight. You you build it before flying it. And he related that to trust because I trusted him literally with my life. And he was he was a good man.

But what he did was he built that trust through the years. He knew me from the moment I came into this world up until he passed on. And it wasn’t during periods where I needed his trust. He sacrificed his time, his patience whenever I would do goofy things that grandkids do. But every step of that, he was building trust. And so when something happened and he had

to activate that trust, you hey, I need you to do this or not do that. Trust me. That neuroplasticity, that path had already been formed and I automatically trusted him. I didn’t have to stop and weigh the pros and cons. Flash forward to the business world. And I think there’s a lot of similarities there. Whether it’s,

learning more about a person the way they are, whether that’s through disk analysis or Meijer Briggs, and showing them the respect of speaking their language and their learning styles, finding their goals and helping them without being asked to achieve them, whether that’s leadership in a company or becoming stronger, following up with them and doing reckless deeds of selflessness. I think all of that helps foster

this natural trust that can’t be bought, can’t be conjoined or wheedled or put on over someone. It has to organically grow so that whenever times do happen such as, hey, this project is running a little late. By the way, before we get into it, let’s talk about how I can build trust in you. By that point, it’s already too late, but if that foundation’s already been laid,

It’s amazing how much of that work becomes automated because of the trust element.

ADAMS (26:16)

Yeah, I think everything you said was so important.

The important thing is to recognize that if you really want to build relationships with people, it does take time to do that. And you have to

Plan to invest in relationships

I could imagine that you’re just coming from this conversation with your boss. They’re putting pressure on you You know, there’s a problem and yet you you and you talk to this person you’re like, hey, there’s a problem But in that moment you could say okay I as you think said I’ve got to turn my engineer problem solving technical problem solving hat off for a second and I need to activate

my empathy and people side. So can you just talk a little bit about how you knew to do that? maybe there were some signs that maybe you said facial expressions and just body language of the person, but then kind of how you just how you navigated that piece. Because I think so many people would have just like, why is it late? And then, OK, tell me what you need to do. Would it really just stayed in? I think would have stayed in problem solving mode and

then probably tried to dictate when that person already had the answer, right? They already knew how they could solve the problem and get things back on track. And you allowed them to come to you with their own solution through the path that you chose to take with them by being empathetic.

COLWICK (27:34)

yes, thank you. I appreciate that big time. Just recognizing that, especially in an engineering format, is not always intuitive. It does seem to be more intuitive in other, say, in the marketing arena or others that are more people-based. For me personally, a certain amount of that is just how I was born, know, mentioning earlier the disk analysis or Myers-Briggs.

of doing those and finding out what my natural strengths are. It did kind of tell me that, these are some areas that you can kind of draw upon some deeper waters. So utilize those fine skills. And so to your point, whether it’s a look or a vibe or a feel or just to acknowledge, hey,

Person X is not acting like they normally do. Why is that? And not to dismiss that because no, I’m here to learn about that project deadline. That helped form the foundation. Once again, I just have to think a lot of great teachers and books. By the way, I’m a big time reader. You can’t spell geek without double E. used a lot of their insight and wisdom and experiences to learn.

just how critical it is for the other person. so combining that, hearing other stories of how they’ve connected with others has really helped build a foundation that I feel confident moving forward, at least to help acknowledge their role in the process and also to meet them where they are, not where I want them to be.

ADAMS (29:17)

Okay, Bob, as we wrap up, what advice would you give engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

COLWICK (29:23)

Great question, Angelique. How about I frame this in the thing of learning from the Bob School of hard knocks, maybe things not to do. Okay. Like one of the early misnomers I had that was, all things are engineering type problems and therefore can have engineering solutions. Therefore, when I’m moved into a leadership role, let’s take this engineering mindset with us.

Not realizing that it is two different skill sets some Scientists say it’s actually two different hemispheres of the brain that generally fire up for those kind of things so number one recognize the differences between Engineering and leadership there are a lot of commonalities Number one heard someone tell me once that hey a good leader is just an engineer of people

was like, okay, well, I think I could make a hallmark poster out of that, know, spell a few. When looked at through the correct frame, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s see, something else I would say is the ability to decipher trends. Engineers, we love data. Without data, all a person has is an opinion. But once we see data, we know if a motor is not working properly.

or if the corner of a building is sloughing off, or if it’s just an optical illusion. We rely on data. The same thing I think can be said of leadership. The more leadership data that we can obtain, the things that work, the things to avoid, the knowledge of self-awareness, I think can really help stock our proverbial toolbox and help us to move forward. And I think just like in engineering, confidence can be an asset.

but pride is definitely a killer. Realizing we are really all just on a journey. We will never really reach there. And once we make peace with that, unlike engineering, after four hours, the answer is 7.96. Well, that’s great for engineering, but leadership is really more of a journey.

Our greatest strength can also be our greatest weakness. Pi is always Pi. know, whether you’re on the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere or Jupiter, 3.14159265358979 and that’s all the decimal points I learned for it. Pi is always Pi. In leadership,

successfully giving leadership to a person one day may look the same the next day or it may be completely different. We, i.e. me, I cannot rest on my laurels of saying, this worked with this person on this one day, I’m going to keep it up for the rest of the life and any problems must be because of them. Being aware that we have to constantly revisit that equation, that pie is not necessarily

really always pie. as I mentioned earlier, the ultimate goal isn’t necessarily a completed product. It’s something I like to call growing growth. instead of presenting a bushel basket of vegetables, which would be the engineering side, it’s how much are we working on fertilizing and weeding and making that our focus totally different in a lot of aspects from engineering.

but the effective leaders in my life are the ones I feel really focused on the feeding or fertilizing, weeding, et cetera. And then finally, I mentioned earlier, John Miller’s book, The Question Behind the Question. In engineering, it’s just the question, you know, how far did this ball go when it moved down an inclined plane for this far? There is no question behind the question. You say so many feet.

But the question behind the question, like for the missed deadline, the engineering response may be, who calls this problem? Whereas a leadership aspect may be, what can I do to improve the process moving forward? That’s not something we engineers sometimes do too well. So I would give that advice as well.

immerse ourselves in books that don’t necessarily repeat the things we already know, the things that, you know, John Maxwell books, books that give solid life affirming challenges that hit at the uncomfortable parts, but ultimately the parts that could use some growing and we’re always better off when we go for it. And finally, I would say realize there is a difference between management and leadership.

The old phrase you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Well, I would say leading a horse is not leadership. That’s management. You’re tugging on the bridle. You’re moving in a direction. It’s necessary, but all that does is get you to the water. Leadership is that ability to make, to have the horse want to drink, whether you’re showing them the water is safe, the water’s fine. Maybe you splash it on yourself.

Maybe you help determine, is this horse even thirsty? But instead of forcing their head to the water, which we can’t do, we get them to want to drink the water. So as effective leaders, if we could figure out ways to be engineers of people and get them to naturally do what’s required in a situation, think that is, those are the keys to the kingdom right there.

ADAMS (34:36)

Bob, thank you so much for your insights.

COLWICK (34:38)

I can’t thank you enough for giving me the opportunity. This is literally gas in the proverbial tanks.