Jan 14, 2020
CynthiaMarquez:"Sometimes to begin a new story, you have to let the old one end."Author unknown. I am Cynthia Marquez and I am a Tri-Cityinfluencer.
PaulCasey:Keep reinforcing that everyone must place the common good of theteam above their own agenda. If one area wins, the whole teamwins.
Speaker3:Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of EasternWashington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to theTCI podcast, where local leadership and self leadership expert,Paul Casey interviews local CEO's, entrepreneurs, and nonprofitexecutives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams so wecan all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host,Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equippingindividuals and teams to spark breakthrough success.
PaulCasey:Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Bob Wilkinson. He'sthe president of Mission Support Alliance and fun fact about youBob is?
BobW.:Let's see,, I'll go with I'm a big fan of candy corn. So somepeople love that, some people hate it. I got requested to have somedesserts from my family, so I brought some cupcakes that are candycorn cupcakes, much to the demise of my daughters, who were veryunhappy with that.
PaulCasey:I too am a candy corn fan. So we unite over that. Well we'll divein after checking in with our Tri-City influencer sponsors.
NealTaylor:Hello, my name is Neal Taylor. I am the managing attorney forGravis Law's Commercial Transactions team. The CT team helpsbusiness owners, investors, and entrepreneurs accelerate andprotect their business value. Today we're talking about employmentlaw and alcohol and cannabis licensing. Josh Bam and Derek Johnsonare both here with me now to describe those practice areas. Take itDerek.
DerekJohnson:Thanks Neal. I'm Derek Johnson, partner at Gravis Law. We find thatmany employers in Washington state simply don't have handbooks,employee policies, or any other written materials to protectthemselves and their employees. Without having these types ofpolicies in place, an employer can run into trouble by firingemployees, even if the employee isn't properly performing or arecausing issues at work. Even if an employer fire someone forperformance issues, for example, but fails to take the propersteps, they may run into trouble by inadvertently exposingthemselves to a wrongful termination suit. We build strong,predictable and protective employee policies to protect ourclient's business.
NealTaylor:That's true. Thanks Derek. And having employment policies in placewhen you're dealing with cannabis or alcohol licensing isespecially important. We know that clean employment policies, cleancorporate structure, and having an attorney that can work with theWashington State Liquor and Cannabis Board is critically importantto protecting your business through licensing. The attorneys atGravis Law have this experience. Visit us todaywww.gravislaw.com.
PaulCasey:Thank you for your support of leadership development in theTri-Cities. Well welcome Bob. I was privileged to meet you at aLeadership Tri-Cities conclusion. You had come in, you hadmentioned Mission Support Alliance had supported LeadershipTri-Cities and the class and you came in on the last day and youshared some leadership tidbits. I'm like, I want to interview thatguy. So I remember that day.
BobW.:I must have had some good notes given to me.
PaulCasey:Yeah so take us back a little bit. What did you aspire to be whenyou grow up? What's been your journey along the way to thepositions that you're in right now?
BobW.:It's interesting, I think my journey was a little bit byhappenstance, but as I look back on it, it kind of ultimately fitwhere I really wanted to go in life. So my original careeraspirations, like most kids my age at that time frame, was to playprofessional sports. And so-
PaulCasey:Of course.
BobW.:Started off wanting to be a professional basketball player andheight was a problem and had a significant influence in my lifeearly by a high school football coach in a local community atTroxell, who really turned me on to football. And football becamemy passion. I went on to play collegiately and while I was incollege, I was given the choice when I went from a scholarship toMontana State University, I met with the counselors about whatcareer path to go and I said, "Oh I think I want to be anengineer."
BobW.:And they proceeded to write down on a piece of paper how much itwould take, time to take to be an engineer, plus go to practice,plus do all those things. And summed me up to 26 hours in a 24 hourday and I hadn't slept yet. So ultimately I went into generalstudies and started general studies, went to business, took acouple of business classes, thought I wanted to be an educator.Started to take a couple of engineering courses and ultimatelyended up getting an electrical engineering degree. But in thatprocess, and one of the things that... The second part of that,that I really always wanted to do was coach. I wanted to be afootball coach, wanted to be a basketball coach, wanted to coach athigh school and maybe even on a college level.
BobW.:And ultimately I decided that money was more important to me thancoaching at that time. Right, wrong, or indifferent. So my careerstarted off in electrical engineering as a construction engineer.And slowly but surely kind of went from construction engineering,got thrown to the wolves right out of the gate, joined a group thathad five or six project engineers that were running constructionjobs and they all left in the first three months. So I was freshout of college in charge of about $50 million in work scope that Ireally didn't know what I was doing. So I learned very quickly torely upon a lot of people around me to be able to help me throughthat process, which was a big influence for the rest of my careerto this point. And influenced a little bit from my dad.
BobW.:So long story short is, that went into operations management andsupervising and then eventually becoming more of a little bit of inthe management and general management. And at the core, the thingthat I probably enjoy most about what I do is I've come to theconclusion I really like building teams. And allowing teams ofindividuals, whether those are engineers or managers, or anythingelse for that matter, kind of centered around a common focus andexecuting to that common focus.
PaulCasey:The building teams part, was that from the sports or did you havesome other lessons that sports sort of stayed with you and youbring to now leadership?
BobW.:I think it's a little bit of both. I take a great deal of pride inwatching people succeed at whatever they're succeeding at. Noteverybody has the same trajectory or wants in their lives and noteverybody brings the same talents to the table. The nice thing iswhen you can put them together. And I'll use it in a footballanalogy, when you have linemen, defensive players, offensiveplayers, quarterbacks, receivers, but everybody's working to acommon goal, it's truly impressive to watch. And I take joy out ofthat and I take joy in watching people do things.
BobW.:It stems a little bit from me, my father told me when I was youngand it has resonated with me for the rest of my life, is always tryto get those around you that are smarter than you and more capablethan you and let them be successful at what they are. And takeevery opportunity you can to learn from them. And so I've alwaysattempted as best I can, no matter who I'm working with, for, orpeers, or they report to me, to be able to find the highest, mosttalented people I can and help encourage them. And in the secondtime and then try to learn from them. Right?
PaulCasey:Yeah that's fantastic. Along your journey, were you sort ofsummoned into positions or to did you aspire to be promoted as youmade your way up the ladder?
BobW.:I would say I had interest in attaining the next level. I'm ahighly hyper competitive person, so when I roll into a new role oropportunity, I'm always evaluating what it would take to be theperson above me's role. I think that helps me provide them theservice that they need to help manage up. But embedded in that, myopportunities in many cases stem from I've been a little bit youngin my career in many cases into roles that I've moved into. Andmost of the roles I moved into for a period of time were roles thatnobody else would take. They were troubled spots. I've had a coupleof... One of my first plant manager roles that I was offered totake, the exiting plant manager that I was replacing, that he'dhired me into, told me I would be fired within a year. Not becauseI wasn't capable, because anybody that was in that role was notgoing to be successful.
BobW.:So part of my journey has always been along the roles of we have aproblem here and this is going to be nasty. And I was more thanwilling I guess to kind of step into it to try and make adifference. And really that difference in many cases just had to dowith, back to the point of I've been very fortunate to have a lotof very capable people around me that I either reported to, thatworked for me, or that I worked with. Right?
PaulCasey:I love that principle leading up that you said that you were alwayswatching to see what does it take to do that job above you. Andthat's a great principle leading up for those that want to move upthe ladder.
BobW.:Yeah. For me, it wasn't so much necessarily to move up the ladder,but in order for me... If your boss isn't successful, you'reprobably not going to be successful.
PaulCasey:Very true.
BobW.:At the same time, in order to make sure that I could meet myexpectations, part of what I always try to analyze is how do I givemy boss whatever they need? And or, how do I help my boss in theirweak areas in some cases, right? Everybody's got weaknesses and howdo I supplement those weaknesses to where they're not weaknessesfor them? They're strengths. And so that's just something that I'vekind of always attempted to do. Sometimes better than others, butit's something I've always attempted.
PaulCasey:Bosses love that.
BobW.:Yeah. Sometimes.
PaulCasey:Well when you got in this position at MSA, what was your originalvision and how has that morphed along your journey at thecompany?
BobW.:Well my current position as the president at MSA has beeninteresting. I've been there almost now two years and so a coupleof years before that I was offered to become the COO and at thesame time was with my predecessor, the president of the company,Bill Johnson at that time and came into Mission Support Alliance.The reason, frankly why I was selected for the COO role was I wasthere to supplement his weakness area in that he hadn't been along-term Hanford person, so he didn't know the Hanford landscape.But he was considered to be a very good leader and he is and wasand one of the best individuals I ever worked for. So together,really what we came in to do was Mission Support Alliance is thereto really to enable the other Hanford contractors. We're thesupporting role to do all the things behind the scenes to really toallow the other contractors that are doing that critical high riskwork to do that.
BobW.:Being on the other side and being one of those other contractors atthat time, one of the things that I think Mission Support Alliancewas always struggling with was an understanding of truly what wasneeded on the other side to really truly enable them and be a trueservice provider. And what I mean by true service provider is notonly give a service, but give a service in a way that they actuallyhelp them enable to do that. And so that was really what I aspiredto initially as the COO and together as the president. And we madesome adjustments, we brought some balance I think to people thatactually spent time in the field and other venues with what I'llsay, a kind of a commercialized approach to how to do that businessand tried to meld those two together.
BobW.:And I think we had some success with that. So when I became thepresident, it was really to kind of continue the journey of reallyenabling and streamline in that part of the process and continuewith some of that momentum that we built. I was able to bring in alady by the name of Amy Basche that I've worked with before, that'sfrom the business side of the house, where I'm really heavilystrong in ops, back to pick the right person for the role aroundyou. And she's been an incredible talent that we brought on that'shelped us really start to shift into the next phases of this largerHanford landscape as the mission continues to now kind of shiftfocus into eventually doing vitrification.
PaulCasey:Yeah, I met Bill. Before I started doing this podcast, I did an oldJohn Maxwell thing, which was take a leader to lunch and so I woulddo the same thing I'm doing now, asking questions to learn and growmyself. And Bill was the last one I think I had done that before Istarted the podcast and then the next month, he announced that hewas leaving. And you were in that position of COO at that time. Andhe showed me in his office the... Was it an assessment that youguys took to what everybody's personality and strengths andweaknesses? Do you remember that?
BobW.:Yep. Oh yeah. We use an individual by the name of Luther Johnsonthat kind of came in and really kind of did an assessment thatreally told you, basically from about two years, two on, what youreally are as an individual at your root base. So when you're onyour high, high stress, you go back to that root base. It really isthe phase you're acting in now, but also the base. And so it wasinteresting. So there's the thinker, the harmonizer, a rebel, and acouple of other ones. And it was interesting. So the harmonizer isone that's really highly tied to emotions. And the video they showis basically a couple of people up on screen crying. And sureenough, I'm a harmonizer. So I'm sitting there watching thisthinking, wow, that doesn't look like me. I don't remember cryinglike that.
BobW.:But then we got into a little bit more depth about it's reallyabout your emotions being kind of how you feel and what you do. Andso anyways, Bill... Coupled with Bill, who's a strong thinker,who's a very logically based individual. And they start talkingabout the dynamics of how people interact when they have thosedifferent perspectives and they go on under stress. And so Bill andI were able to compliment each other very well there and it helpedus give us insight on how to do that. Because Bill is very logical,very, very thinking, very smart. And of course I'm passionate aboutcertain things, so we balance each other sometimes. And thensometimes we rotate it. So he'd always commonly joke that says, Ijust want everybody in the room to know that I'm the harmonizertoday, not Bob. Right? So when he was being the nice guy in theroom.
PaulCasey:That's funny. Yeah. I'll still never forget the answer when I askedhim, "How do you achieve work life balance?" And he said, "It's theteam I put around me." Which it sounds like that's your philosophytoo, from what you've already said a couple of times today, is Iknow that when I leave work I can shut off. Obviously I can get anemergency call or whatever, but for the most part I know all mypeople are carrying out the mission. And that is my best secret towork life balance.
BobW.:Yeah. And I think he's 100% right. I think in society we have atendency to want to overload and within America, it's work till youdrop. I think at some point you lose productivity if you don't havea fine balance of literally working and then having a balance ofwhatever your life is, to a degree, right? Whether it's yourfamily, whether it's a hobby or whether there's having a balance.And I think a leader's responsibility is to ensure that theyinstill that culture by having the right amount of people and theright people in the right situations. And then making sure that youstay true to that.
PaulCasey:Yeah. Well let's go there. You mentioned culture, you mentionedteams. So when you build a team, you create a culture. I know thatstarts with getting the right people on the bus. So what are youlooking for when you're hiring? How do you assess everyone's on theright seat on the bus? What are the values you try to instill? Allthat stuff.
BobW.:Yeah so for me, I think it starts with when you go to hiresomebody, you obviously need to make sure that somebody checks theblocks and has the skills that you're looking for. If it's anengineer, that they're an engineer. But that's really just I thinka check in the blocks. For me, it's finding the right personality,the right type of individual that can interact and establishrelationships and work in different cultures and climates anddifferent people. And so to me, it's more the person, is who theperson is, is more of a factor on whether they're going to succeedor not. From there I think it's when you get them on the bus,whatever the bus is that you're on. We all bring, even if we are agood relationship builders or good at working with other people andhave a good skill set, we all have our natural tendencies,right?
BobW.:Some people are really hard pushers, some people really need todigest information for a period of time before they can do that.And then it's really identifying that and taking advantage of thatfrom a team perspective that allows that person to be the mostsuccessful that they can in that environment. I once had anindividual work for me that was a strong thinker, super, superintelligent guy, and I got frustrated when I first started workingwith him because when I was younger in my career because I'd askhim for something and I'm a quick decision maker. I make decisionspretty rapidly, but he's not. He's one of those ones that reallyhad to digest information and it took me a little while to figurethat out.
BobW.:But after I figured out that, okay, I can't give him something andask him to give me an answer back in three seconds. It's not fair.He's not cut from that cloth. But if I give him something inadvance and let him digest it and bring it back, usually what healways brought back to me was far better than anything I could haveever thought of. And so back to having the right people and thenuse them in the right situations. And that was a way to identifyhow to do that.
PaulCasey:Yeah, studying your people so you know how to custom communicatewith them. That's good. That's good. How do you keep your peopleaffirmed, inspired over the long haul?
BobW.:That's a great question. I think that never ends. I think that'salways ongoing. And I think that to a degree, it has to do withinstilling value and purpose for everybody. Constantly evaluatingthat value and purpose, giving people a voice and allowing them toactually execute on that voice. So if you don't ask people for hisopinions and don't allow people to act upon those opinions when youask them and allow them to be successful, even though it might notbe exactly what you wanted to do, you're probably not going toinspire them in a longer period of time to go off and achieve. AndI think that is kind of an ever ongoing evolution that your kind ofconstantly evolving and constantly giving people opportunities andallow them to succeed in those opportunities.
PaulCasey:Yeah. So Tri-City Influencer, it sounds like giving people a voicereally is critical for their full engagement. No one wants to getstale in their leadership. So Bob, how do you stay relevant and onthe cutting edge in your industry and how do you foster innovationin your organization?
BobW.:A couple of ways. That's a pretty round question or pretty largequestion. So I'll try to hit it in a couple of different areas.I'll start with the innovations. So we are in an ever evolvingworld right now that technology almost can't keep up with. We workin an industry that I work in with the department of energyindustry that's highly regulated for a lot of reasons, right?There's a lot of hazards and you want to make sure to protectpeople. And those high regulations sometimes comes with a lot ofhoops that you've got to jump through.
BobW.:So part of ours for innovations is to make sure that we haveidentified the right innovation that we need to bring to the tablethat has the right purpose because the effort to go put thatinnovation in place is quite a large lift. But if you've got hightalented people, which we have some very, very innovative people,we just need to let them, once again, tell them what's the rightone... Or ask them what the right one was and let them tell us andthen give them the backing to actually go do it. And so that helpsthem with the inspiration part.
PaulCasey:Yes.
BobW.:Right? So that was the first part of the question. I don't rememberwhat the second part of the question was.
PaulCasey:Staying relevant.
BobW.:Staying relevant for me, from a leadership perspective and to me isI have always... I do a lot of reflecting on myself, probably tothe detriment of myself. So I do a lot of reflecting and look atmyself and then try to adapt or modify myself to continue toenhance my capabilities. But I don't look for radical changes. Ithink at the core is you got to know who you are as an individualand stay true to that, who you are as an individual. And then Itake obviously leadership opportunities. I take some leadershipclasses and from those you get something, right? There's a littlebit of something. So I always just try to find that littlesomething, then maybe I can go make a change.
BobW.:And then been back to the people around me, I learn a lot fromthose that I work around, watching how they do what they do well.Because frankly, I have leaders that work for me that are betterleaders than me and in certain aspects and maybe all aspects. Ihave a great boss that I work with and I learn a lot from. So Itake a lot of opportunity to try to learn from others and watchwhat they do well, as well as what they don't do well.
PaulCasey:That was fantastic. Every person and every opportunity is alearning experience. I used to be a school principal in anotherlife and I visited 52 other schools for that exact reason becausethere was something to learn in each one of those schools that I...What is it? The R and D, rip off and duplicate? I think that's whatit's called. A little R and D on those visits to make my school thebest it could be. So yeah, learning is awesome.
BobW.:The one thing I'd just like to add to that is I once went to aleadership seminar, it was women talking about leadership,inspiring leadership. And it was Carol Johnson from the localcommunity that used to be a president of WCH back in the... Seven,eight years ago. And she said something that really resonated withme, is she said that she struggled to be a leader for a part of hercareer because she was trying to emulate her bosses. And her bosseswere strong minded, strong willed-
PaulCasey:Totally different style. Yeah.
BobW.:Yeah totally different style. And she just wasn't doing very wellas a leader in that. And she finally realized that in order for herto be successful as a leader, she needed to be who she was. Whichshe's a very empathetic person, makes you feel very comfortable,very good with relationships. And she finally shifted to that. Andshe said that then she finally realized who she was and what herstrengths were and stayed true to her strengths and tried not beingsomebody that she wasn't. And it worked well for her. She had avery good career and she was a really good leader and so thatresonated with me a lot.
PaulCasey:Yeah, authenticity and staying true to your strengths. Well hey,before we head into our next question, asking Bob what a good dayis for him, a shout out to our sponsors.
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PaulCasey:So Bob, what makes it a good day for you personally? When you lookback at the end of the day and you go, it was a good day. Whatkinds of things went on in that day to make it a good day foryou?
BobW.:To me it was a good day is feeling like progress was made. I'm avery progress oriented person that I got to see something moveforward. Sometimes that's a little nebulous on moving forward soand obviously finishing a project, making a progress on it. But tome, even more so is watching the excitement and folks being proudabout what they do to deliver whatever that is. Watching theindividual complete their task and in many cases watching a leaderbe successful with their group to show growth, to showaccomplishment, back to that almost that coaching and that kind ofthat coaching, that teamwork part of it. Those are really importantto me.
BobW.:And then probably one of my best days is finding out well aftersomething's gone a long time ago to talk about legacy and leavinglegacy, about seeing somebody be successful that you had somepositive influence on that may have been years and years past thatnow you're watching them in their career and in their role do well.Or acknowledge, hey, I just did something that you told me I couldhave done a while ago and look, I just did it right there. Thatis... It's almost-
PaulCasey:Like a proud papa.
BobW.:It's almost like a proud papa kind of to a degree, But it happens alot. Right? And so you just never know the legacy that you leavebehind with you. And I think to me, that's an important part is tomake sure you left things better than when you came in.
PaulCasey:Yeah. Because leadership is hard. So those moments where you get torelish in seeing someone in their sweet spot rock something withtheir team, is a very fulfilling leadership.
BobW.:Leadership is a very up and down heartbeat type of a role, right?There are highs and there are lows and there are everything inbetween. And so you got to focus on the highs when you have themand try to minimize those lows, whatever they happen.
PaulCasey:All right, let's go behind the scenes in your life. Here are yourbest habits and your worst habits. Mr introspection.
BobW.:I don't know that I have a good habit. I'm not so sure. So I thinkmy good habit is probably that I recognize to a degree that I amaverage. So I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm not the sharpesttool in the shed. I didn't get the best grades in school. I'd callmyself a mediocre leader when it comes top to bottom. And I think Ishare the fact that I recognize that and use that to my leverage toallow other people to be better in those areas is something that Itry to resonate and be proud of. Be humble about, to recognize thatI'm not better than somebody else.
PaulCasey:Yeah, I was going to say humility is what you're trying todefine.
BobW.:Yeah. Yeah. And so my bad habits, some of my bad habits are...Geez, I've got a lot of them, right? I like to eat too much. Istill eat like I'm a football player in college. I struggle with myweight. So my wife reminds me that I'm... She would define it aspassionate about certain subjects that sometimes I really dig intoand am hard to get off that subject. And I have a great wife andgreat daughters and great friends that remind me when I'm offcenter on something. With a baseball bat sometimes across the headto remind me that I should not be that way. So that's probably myworst habit I would say, minus my eating.
PaulCasey:So since you're introspective, do you have your own personal growthplan that every year you either re-up or modify or anything likethat?
BobW.:I don't know that I do. I don't have a written personal growthplan. I clearly have items that I am always striving to decidewhere I need to improve upon and evaluate. Being the reflectiveperson that you called introspective, I think I drive my wife crazyin that I have a tendency when I know I have a big conversationcoming up the next day with somebody that's going to be apotentially a controversial one, a hard conversation, I will playthat conversation out in my mind before the conversation 55,000different ways.
PaulCasey:That's called rehearsing.
BobW.:It is to a degree. If this happens, this individual might reactthis way. I mean do they do that? And then on the backend of itis... And I drive some of my team nuts sometimes too is... And I'lldo it off today too, is when I walk out of here after this podcastand this conversation with you, I will process this podcast and Iwill dissect it six ways to Sunday about where I did good, where Ididn't do good, where I could've done something, said somethingdifferent. I should've done that right. Oh I did this pretty well.And so my reflection is almost real time and never ending, which isI guess maybe a bad thing. Sometimes it's hard to get out of my ownhead when it becomes that. But that's just how I've alwaysbeen.
PaulCasey:Yeah. The good thing is everything's worth evaluating. Anythingworth doing is worth evaluating. So that's the good part. The badpart is that rehearsing in your head-
BobW.:Stop the evaluation.
PaulCasey:Yeah. At what point do you just go, all right, it's over? How abouta favorite quote? Do you have a favorite quote?
BobW.:No, I don't know that I have quite a favorite quote. But I have upon my wall, one of the presidents, and I can't remember off the topof my head which one it is now, that really talked about the man inthe arena. It's called the man in the arena if you look it up,right?
PaulCasey:Roosevelt I think.
BobW.:Yeah I think it was Roosevelt. And in summary, it kind of goesalong the lines of there is always those that are on the peripheryof things, but not willing to step in the fight. But the man or inthis case woman or person that's willing to step in the fight andhave that move forward is really the true winner. And so to me isand it stems back to these roles that I've taken is, there arealways those that are willing to sit on the periphery and throwrocks and stones at everything you do. But the people that I reallyadmire are the ones that are willing to step in the middle of thatarena and attempt to make it a difference. Right? To go off and tryto do something to make things better. And so for me that'simportant and that quote resonates with me a lot. So I can't...It's about three paragraphs.
PaulCasey:I think it's whose face is marred with dust and blood or somethingin that one. I'll have to put that in the show notes. I'll dig itup. How about a book that every leader should read?
BobW.:I like Maxwell books just because they're simple to read.
PaulCasey:Me too.
BobW.:I like the 21 laws.
PaulCasey:Classic.
BobW.:To me, I'm a simple digestive information and if you get things tootechnical, it just goes right on top of my head. And that one youcan pick up, you can easy to resonate with, you can get your mindwrapped around it. For me, that one resonates well with me. I thinkevery one of them you can learn from. It just really depends onwhat you like. Right now I got the General Mattis books, right? TheCall to Chaos and I'm just getting into that. But I find him to bean incredible individual and somebody that I've always seen to bevery forthright in how he talks to the point of being blunt, but ina way that doesn't offend. And so I think that establishing trustwith people is willing to have a hard conversation and a harddialogue to tell them the honest truth, which in society right now,today, in some cases people don't like, don't want to have honesttruth conversations.
PaulCasey:True.
BobW.:Or they can't have it in a way that doesn't completely offend theother person. Right? And so I'm kind of finding that one prettyintriguing and pretty interesting right now.
PaulCasey:So if you left a letter on your desk for the leader who came afteryou, there's going to be a day. All of these contract renewalthings, right? There's going to be a leader that comes after you.What would you put in that letter to that person?
BobW.:I think it would start with just trust yourself and trust thepeople around you. We in society sometimes have a tendency to notwant to trust people around you or think that people are doingsomething with ill intentions. And I've said this and I say this toour company a lot and to our folks in leadership, that nobody comesto work or nobody does anything on a day with intentions of causingill harm.
PaulCasey:Right.
BobW.:They come to be successful and do something successful. So trustthose around you, that they have a noble intention.
PaulCasey:Some positive intent. Yeah I love that.
BobW.:Yeah they have a noble intention and then encourage them to attainthat and give them the backing to allow them to do it and standback and watch them do it.
PaulCasey:Mm-hmm (affirmative) any other advice you'd give to new leaders oranyone that wants to keep growing and gaining more influence?
BobW.:I don't know that there's ever a new leader. I think you always inyour life are always leading in some way or another. Whether you'retrying to lead your sibling into a game or lead your parents intomaking a decision to give you McDonald's or whatever the case is.So my thing to new leaders is don't be afraid to be a leader. Don'tbe afraid to step up and take the assignments and don't be afraidto take the hard assignments. And then take every opportunity youcan to learn.
PaulCasey:Good stuff. How can our listeners best connect with you?
BobW.:Oh boy. Well I obviously am a Tri-Citian and I've been here most ofmy life. I work out at Mission Support Alliance. We're in both theHanford system as well as in the Tri-Cities. You can hook up withme on Facebook or on LinkedIn. I'm a lot more active on LinkedInthan I am on Facebook. My wife, I let them do the Facebook stufffor me. I should probably do it more often, but I'm in both thoseLinkedIn and Facebook space.
PaulCasey:Yes. Love LinkedIn. Well thanks Bob for all you do to make theTri-Cities a great place and keep leading well. Let me wrap up ourpodcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. Started anew aspect of my business called leader launcher. Leader launcheris for emerging leaders and young professionals who want to go on aleadership development journey. And so it's a monthly, two hourworkshop on one leadership proficiency and then in between themonths seminars is a mastermind group where you get to apply whatyou have learned with other leaders here in the community. So youcan go to leader-launcher.com to sign up and hope you'll be a partof that community.
PaulCasey:Again, this is Paul Casey. You want to thank my guest, BobWilkinson from Mission Support Alliance for being here today on theTri-City Influencer Podcast. We want to thank our TCI sponsors andinvite you to support them. We appreciate you both making thispossible so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in ourcommunity. Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to helpyou make a difference in your circle of influence. It's an AlbertEinstein quote. "Try not to become a man or woman of success, butrather try to become a man or woman of value." KGF, keep growingforward.
Speaker3:Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. PaulCasey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providingpractical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their livesand on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership andexperience their key desired results. If you'd like more help fromPaul in your leadership development, connect with him atgrowingforward@paulcasey.org. for a consultation that can help youmove past your current challenges and create a strategy for growingyour life or your team forward.
Speaker3:Paul would also like to help you restore sanity to your crazyschedule and get your priorities done every day by offering you hisfree control mind calendar checklist. Go towww.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool. Or open atext message to 72000 and type the word growing.
PaulCasey:Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by BillWagner of Safe Strategies.
