Vision Battlesword [00:00:00]:
Good afternoon, Jonathan.

Jonathan Thompson [00:00:01]:
Hey, good afternoon. Thank you for having me out here.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:03]:
Yeah, yeah. It's really nice to sit with you today and have a Sacred Conversation. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, since we had lunch that day, and I've always enjoyed our conversations. We always just seem to get on a roll and riff on interesting stuff. And there's a particular topic that you and I are both very interested in that we've kind of, like, been setting an intention to explore for a while, which is leadership. But before we start that, I just want to ask you if you wouldn't mind making a brief introduction of yourself. Who are you, Jonathan Thompson?

Jonathan Thompson [00:00:40]:
Oh, what a deep question all by itself. Right? Who is Jonathan Thompson? Yeah. My name is Jonathan Thompson. I am 44 years old and have lived in Austin most of my life. Actually moved to Austin in 1998. It's been quite a journey watching Austin grow. It's been fun. My wife and I have a business together and business partners, and I also am starting a new business as well.

Jonathan Thompson [00:01:09]:
And after finishing grad school, I discovered that leadership was a hot topic. And spending some time with you kind of came to the revelation that, you know, positive leadership is really my ultimate goal in life and something that is that goal you always continue striving for and you never stop working towards. So that's been something I thought we would. We kind of connected, as you mentioned just a moment ago, that it keeps me. Keeps me going every day, actually.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:38]:
So amazing. Thank you for that intro. And I'm Vision Battlesword. I'm the founder of Sacred Light and the creator of Intentional Autonomous Relating. And now I'm also the host of Sacred Conversations. And this came about as you kind of alluded to. We shared a special experience together last year. And in that experience, as you said, you kind of had a revelation for yourself about how important this idea of setting an example and embodying positive leadership is for you, not just in your business, but in your own life.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:19]:
And I seem to recall we even were kind of exploring the importance of leadership in society and just wanting to have a positive influence in the world. And I felt the same way for a long time. You and I have both found ourselves in positions of leadership throughout our lives, and so I'm really excited to just kind of dive into that and explore that with you and just follow the conversation wherever it goes. Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:02:46]:
Awesome.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:47]:
So what were you saying a moment ago before we started the recording about leadership? Do you want to pick up there? Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:02:53]:
So, you know, leadership is interesting. It's a word that is tossed around all the time. We hear books are written about it every day. You know, articles, podcasts. You can YouTube just the word leadership and find, you know, an infinite number of discussions. Right. But I feel like it gets tossed around too much because it's just such a deep conversation. It can mean so much.

Jonathan Thompson [00:03:22]:
You could be a poor leader, but be effective in a bad way. You can be a positive leader and effective in a good way.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:31]:
So you're saying, like, you can successfully lead people in a bad direction?

Jonathan Thompson [00:03:35]:
Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:36]:
Or you can unsuccessfully lead people in a good direction.

Jonathan Thompson [00:03:38]:
Exactly.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:39]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:03:40]:
And some people, I believe, have a natural tendency to be leaders. Some people have to work towards becoming a leader. I don't think there's a right or wrong path. It's just about what path works for.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:55]:
That individual just at the very beginning. One of the things I really like to do with these conversations is to get clear on our terms as we set out on this journey to explore leadership. Where are we even going? Just to calibrate our compass. My first question for you is, what is leadership? What if we just examine the word and break it down? Or what? What does it mean to you?

Jonathan Thompson [00:04:25]:
Yeah. So I think, to me, I always look at leadership as a way to direct group or an organization towards a common goal or finding a common goal. That, to me, is leadership. Leadership isn't necessarily telling someone what to do typically. I think it is more about finding those common goals, organizing a group of people together to achieve that goal overall. And to sum it up, and probably the simplest thing is really just finding the right questions to ask people to get to an answer. Right. And in our organization, we strive really hard at not providing answers, but providing questions to lead to an answer, but doing our best not to necessarily influence the answer.

Jonathan Thompson [00:05:20]:
So if we have a team meeting, for example, we ask the team, what are some challenges we're experiencing today? And we have different departments or individuals bring those challenges up, and then we like, okay, what are the causes of these? And we start dissecting those problems, and then we start asking, okay, what would we need to do to be more effective at overcoming these obstacles? And then we start asking these questions, and all of a sudden, you start formulating a plan without realizing, just asking these simple questions. And so to me, leadership isn't, again, about knowing the answer. It's just about providing a safe space to have a conversation to find the answers.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:06]:
Do you think that's inherent to leadership fundamentally, or do you think that's one particular style of leadership that's a good question.

Jonathan Thompson [00:06:17]:
I think it's a style, and I feel like it's my style for sure, because I don't. I feel a lot of pressure to have the answer. Right. Because my experience maybe is going to be different than somebody else's experience. Right. Whatever that may be. You're talking in more generalities. So I like to just kind of create that opportunity for everybody to come together.

Jonathan Thompson [00:06:45]:
But more importantly, I think with that style comes the ability to bring people from different perspectives and creating a safe space. So maybe they have individuals in that space have opposing views about life or politics or something like that, but it gives them an opportunity to be heard and express opinions and have dialogue, but they're not arguing if that makes sense.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:12]:
Yeah. Constructive conversation, collaborative problem solving, as opposed to a kind of a win lose dynamic where people are going to try to make their case and then someone's going to end up being right and someone's going to end up being wrong.

Jonathan Thompson [00:07:30]:
Exactly. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:31]:
What is a leader?

Jonathan Thompson [00:07:33]:
I think a leader is someone who inspires. If we look at characteristics, someone that people turn to, I think are two big roles of that leader. So I think that would be my definition.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:48]:
People turn to a leader for what?

Jonathan Thompson [00:07:50]:
For guidance, direction.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:53]:
Got it. Okay. So a leader is someone who inspires, guides, and directs others toward the achievement of a common goal.

Jonathan Thompson [00:08:05]:
Sure. I think that would be a very accurate description of what I view a leader as.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:10]:
Yes, sure, sure. Yeah. And this is, you know, this is how we have fun in these sacred conversations. Right. We're exploring rather than just going to a dictionary or going to Wikipedia or some other authoritative source to just kind of start from the ground up and figure it out based on our own intuition and lived experience and the way that we reason things out. So let's see here. So we said a leader is a person that guides, directs, and inspires others to accomplish a common goal. Is there anything else that a leader does or is or a purpose that it serves?

Jonathan Thompson [00:08:54]:
So adding in the purpose, I think, is where that changes our dialogue a little bit. I mean, people need purpose. Without purpose, what are we.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:06]:
I'm remembering this coming up in our conversation that we had over a year ago. Yeah, you remember that, too.

Jonathan Thompson [00:09:12]:
I do. Very vividly.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:13]:
It's so cool that we're coming back around to that.

Jonathan Thompson [00:09:15]:
Yeah. You know, we could even add a leadership characteristic is finding purpose in others, right. Where some people may not have that, they may struggle with it, and they need someone to help them find that overall purpose, whatever that is. So I might even add the whole purpose. Thanks for bringing that up, because I think that might even be another characteristic to add to leadership.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:43]:
So leaders also help people find purpose or they create. Help create purpose?

Jonathan Thompson [00:09:49]:
Not necessarily. Well, possibly create, I suppose, could be a good word for it. I don't know if there's a better word for it, because in my opinion, a good leader would be someone who doesn't have necessarily the answer of purpose for that individual, but maybe helps them find their purpose because they're their own person. They need to find their overall purpose. But a good leader, and what I consider a good leader is someone who is asking that person the questions for them to find their answer. You know, I've always been the type of person that has been weary of someone who says, I have the answers right. You know, that's where we end up with bad leaders and, you know, but if someone. If you're asking someone deep questions like we're talking about now, if you ask the right question, someone will.

Jonathan Thompson [00:10:46]:
They'll figure it out. People are. They will figure those things out on their own.

Vision Battlesword [00:10:51]:
But a moment ago, you said that a leader is someone that people can turn to when they're looking for guidance and direction. So does that imply that sometimes people are looking for an answer or absolutely needing an answer from a leader?

Jonathan Thompson [00:11:08]:
Some people prefer, they don't want that leadership role. They don't want that responsibility. Other people want that responsibility and may not, aren't ready for it, or other people are. As I said, some people may naturally already have those gifts. So I think if a good leader, if someone is brought to the. The situation, a gathering or a conversation, a good leader is asking questions like, what is it that you're looking for? They're not saying, I have the answer for. They're asking them what they're looking for and maybe punching holes in theories to get them to think critically to find their answer.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:52]:
So what's the relationship, though, between each individual's purpose that a leader may be helping that person to figure out and get aligned to versus the overall purpose or the shared purpose of a group or an organization that the leader is essentially leading?

Jonathan Thompson [00:12:13]:
To me, that is inspired. That is what a good leader does. So I might be going through this process of developing this individual, but only to find out their best interest and their purpose doesn't align with the purpose of our organization, which is totally fine, because that person needs to be focused on their person because their. Or their purpose, excuse me, that is their journey, not mine. So that may mean that they have to leave the organization to serve that purpose. And that's, that's welcomed in our organization. And to me, that is what, that's how everything kind of ties together with leadership.

Vision Battlesword [00:12:51]:
Hmm. Okay. Well, I'm hearing a lot about the aspects of leadership that help an individual to grow and develop themselves personally and maybe professionally. But I'm still curious about the aspects of leadership that you just alluded to when you're talking about, like, the purpose of the organization itself or the goals, the objectives of the organization itself. And isn't it true that leadership is inherently about helping people come together to work toward a shared goal or a shared purpose? So understanding that everyone has their own individual goals and their own individual purpose, but nonetheless, what's the role of leadership or the relationship of leadership with helping people to align to a common purpose?

Jonathan Thompson [00:13:48]:
Right. So we have goals that we set as an organization, and we ask them, when we're working on this, with how you're developing, do you see yourself aligning with the way the organization is going? We're very direct and very open about our organization, and I like that style personally. So that's why we do it. Essentially.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:11]:
Some people say open. Sorry to interrupt, but when you say open, you mean kind of like transparent about.

Jonathan Thompson [00:14:17]:
Very true.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:17]:
Everything that's going on?

Jonathan Thompson [00:14:18]:
Yeah, we're transparent about, you know, the way the organization is run. We're transparent about the financial health of the company. We're transparent about how we find business. So that's where I think, going back to your question about their purpose and aligning the organization's purpose because they may not line up. And so that's where things get a little tricky as a leader, because you're trying to find ways creating that commonality. A lot of times we find that purpose generally lines up pretty well. So I think finding those alignments, once you're having those conversations with finding purpose, you generally make things work. You, you're finding that commonality.

Jonathan Thompson [00:15:06]:
So let's say, for example, telling someone you have to do this, it's like showing them like, look, this is why we're doing it. Now. If you think that there's something that should be done differently, by all means bring it up. Let's talk about it together as a team. And oftentimes somebody will bring something up and we adopt that new policy. Even when we're training new hires, oftentimes they'll say, well, they have a lot of questions like, why do we do it this way? It's like, well, instead of me telling them, well, I have 30 years experience doing this, and you should listen to what I have to say. We say, well, this is the way we've created this process, but what I want you to do is document this now as you're going through this process. And when you finish this process, you have the opportunity to bring this up again.

Jonathan Thompson [00:15:52]:
And if you still feel that that process is better than what we showed you, you have a chance to influence that the change. Not once on the installer side of things have we had someone not make a change because they have felt, you know what, that system did work. I just didn't see it at the beginning, but now they had the opportunity to see it at the end and they're like, no, it actually worked out just fine. And then we ask, well, what, what made you lead to think the other situation would work better? And then why did you think it wasn't the better option? And we give them that opportunity to create of that dialogue. And next thing you know, they're like, they really get excited because they feel like they're actually working towards change in an organization, even at the most basic level. And so that, again, is where that commonality comes to play. Cause now each person has a chance to make a change in a big organization.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:51]:
Interesting. That's a very, it seems to me that's a very sophisticated type of leadership. And I also noticed in what you said, I caught a piece of language that was interesting to me when you said, what would lead you to think that this alternative process might be superior? Which just triggers me in my mind to think of how, how we use that word to lead or leadership. We lead ourselves all the time, I guess, is the point. We are our own self leader in whatever role, at any level or position in an organization. Which reminds me of a model that I learned at some point in my corporate career, which I found to be really, really useful to me, not just in organizations, but in life, which is, it's called the self leadership model. And tell me if you would agree with this. There's three basic levels of leadership within an organization.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:56]:
There's the visionary level. So there's a particular type of leadership which is the creation, the actual creation of that shared purpose. Whatever the goal is, whatever the objective is that the organization's going to pursue, someone has to cast that vision or it has to come from somewhere. Maybe it doesn't have to be someone. Maybe it could be a collective process of creating that vision, but there's going to be a facilitator of that.

Jonathan Thompson [00:18:27]:
Let's just say we call them visionaries in our office.

Vision Battlesword [00:18:30]:
Perfect. Exactly. You've got your visionaries. A lot of times in a larger organization, the visionary might be the CEO, it might be directors, an executive director somewhere, a strategist somewhere. There's going to be a visionary, which is a component of leadership of the organization. And then there's a level of leadership, which is management. And management is a different kind of leadership. It's not necessarily creating the vision.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:02]:
Like, let's say the vision is going to go climb that mountain. That's the vision. Like, of all the mountains we could climb or of all the different things we could do. Cross a river, go through a forest. Nope. We're going to climb that mountain. That's the vision. The manager is sort of the.

Jonathan Thompson [00:19:19]:
This is Coo, essentially.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:21]:
Yes, exactly. It's the difference between a CEO and a coo, or it's the difference between the lieutenant and the sergeant, or however you want to think of that. But it's the person that decides, how are we going to climb that mountain? Yeah, how am I going to take this grand vision and break it down into discrete, accomplishable tasks or projects that can then be executed on delegated? So how are we going to climb the mountain? Well, you know, first we're going to cross the field, then we're going to have to build the bridge across the river, and then we're going to make a base camp, and then we're going to, you know, you get the idea to manage the vision into an actionable.

Jonathan Thompson [00:20:05]:
Plan, and we call it the facilitator.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:08]:
Okay. Yeah, perfect. And then there is another level of leadership, which is the actual execution, the execution of the discrete tasks or manageable activities, whatever those are, which in and of themselves may seem like there could be a certain sense in which you say, oh, well, that's an individual contributor role. You're not leading anything. You're just merely executing on tasks that you've been assigned. But I would suggest to you, and what was suggested to me is that there is actually a leadership role which is choosing, making very specific choices about how these actionable plans will be implemented, but also generating the motivation, generating the energy to lead yourself to accomplish those tasks, as well as perhaps demonstrating leadership among your peer group in team dynamics, for example. So three levels of leadership, you've got the visionary, the manager, and the producer. Do you agree with that?

Jonathan Thompson [00:21:18]:
Absolutely. The visionary. And, you know, the last one would be like the executor. Right? They're executing these things done. So there's a. I was reading a book from grad school, and one of my professors had written, called the Ajax dilemma. And he was talking about this. Had you read.

Jonathan Thompson [00:21:39]:
I know we talked about this before.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:41]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:21:43]:
But it was a professor, I believe, if I recall, you debated.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:48]:
That's right.

Jonathan Thompson [00:21:48]:
Him. I did, yes.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:49]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:21:51]:
Which I really wish I was there to see that wonderful debate. But he actually wrote about this topic, actually. Which is, which leader is better? Can you determine one leader being better? If there was a hierarchy. Right. Because if we look at. And I often refer to business because that's my life is around my organization. It's almost like when you're writing out the diagram of a business, it usually has the CEO, and then you've got a CEO and then CFO. Right.

Jonathan Thompson [00:22:27]:
Each part is very important. And what I loved about this book was he was just making the comment or bringing up the discussion of. Is there a hierarchy of which one? Because you can. Each one, in my opinion, they're equals, but they don't necessarily look as equals on paper. Financially, they not be the same, but they're both equal in what they do. As far as helping the strategy of the organization, what are the two different types?

Vision Battlesword [00:22:59]:
Refresh my memory about the Ajax dilemma.

Jonathan Thompson [00:23:02]:
Well, he was talking about. And this is gonna make me look bad. Cause I'm talking about how good this book is. But he was talking about, you know, Achilles because he was the facilitator, right. He was out there in the field and he was out in battle and he was doing the grunt work. And then you have Ajax, which is the one who had the idea of the battle plan. And Agnomendon was like, who? I think that's who it was. I can't remember his name.

Jonathan Thompson [00:23:32]:
But he was the king. Right. And he was passing off the armor.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:36]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:23:36]:
And the armor was the reward. Right. And who's. Who was getting this armor? And he didn't give it to the lower level guy. He gave it to the higher level guy because the idea was there. And then it created this controversy because who deserved it?

Vision Battlesword [00:23:54]:
Well, let me. Yes.

Jonathan Thompson [00:23:55]:
Okay.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:56]:
Yeah. Thank you for refreshing my memory on that. But I just want to offer.

Jonathan Thompson [00:23:59]:
And I may have the characters wrong. A little bit of.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:01]:
No, I think you got the characters right. But the only thing I want to add to it is I don't interpret it as a hierarchy. I don't interpret Ajax as being in a superior position to Achilles. I interpreted that. First of all, I think that was at least in the. Now we're going way back into the source material.

Jonathan Thompson [00:24:24]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:25]:
The Iliad itself, which I am actually very familiar with that was the controversy, or that was the source of the conflict between Ajax and Achilles, was that they were equals. They were each kings of their army, and Agamemnon was the king of kings, who had brought all of these different greek tribes or city states together to. To do this trojan war. But they were peers. They were peers. And so it was a different leadership style. One is more of the visionary. I can see how we can do this battle plan and be successful.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:11]:
The other is now, you called it the facilitator. And that's interesting because I kind of want to inspect that a little bit. I'm really glad you brought this up. This is very rich. Achilles is the lead from the front. He's the example of. Well, lead by example, which is one of the things I wanted to bring up in terms of we've got these different levels of leadership. The visionary, the manager or facilitator, if you will, then the producer or executor.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:41]:
But then also, are there different leadership styles, which is, again, more of the lead from the front. Lead from the rear. But in any case, both Ajax and Achilles could make a claim that they were the one that won the battle.

Jonathan Thompson [00:25:55]:
Exactly. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:56]:
And they could both be considered. They both have a strong case there, in my opinion.

Jonathan Thompson [00:26:01]:
They're both right.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:01]:
Yes.

Jonathan Thompson [00:26:03]:
Where I think they failed is to acknowledge the importance that each person has.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:08]:
Right.

Jonathan Thompson [00:26:09]:
Right. And that is the responsibility of Agamemnon. Right. His responsibility was to recognize that they.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:16]:
Were both equals and to reward one over the other was what really created the conflict.

Jonathan Thompson [00:26:20]:
That was the problem. Right. And that, to me, showed poor leadership by not recognizing that importance.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:26]:
Well, poor leadership, yeah. Someone could write a book about Agamemnon as what not to do as a leader.

Jonathan Thompson [00:26:34]:
That's true. That is very true. Yeah. But this is just one of several things. Right. But it's a great example.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:40]:
Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's great. I like that. That's a really good kind of case study in myth for exactly what it is that we're talking about. But one of the things about the self leadership model, as it was taught to me, was to take this map that we're talking about, visionary manager and producer, and apply it to yourself. If you take that model and apply it to yourself, you actually have all three of those roles within you.

Jonathan Thompson [00:27:11]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, because if we use the example of, like, one of my goals is to be more physically fit. My vision is to be physically fit. Okay. Now, how am I going to do that? That's my next question. Now, you hit into the next form of leadership. Like, okay, now I have to figure out, all right, I got to create a regimente.

Jonathan Thompson [00:27:33]:
What does this regimen entail? Well, I gotta eat better. I have to work out, you know, I have to work on my stress levels. I have to have mental time.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:43]:
And I just want to point out what you're doing right now in this moment is you're creating projects.

Jonathan Thompson [00:27:47]:
Exactly. Yes. Which is exactly what the next, each level does. Right. We started with the big picture, and that's what I think when we're talking about leadership is, all right, we have the big picture. What is the big picture? Now you have it, okay? You're your own leader right now. Now we're creating the projects. As you said.

Jonathan Thompson [00:28:06]:
It's like, okay, now I need to execute those things, so how am I going to execute those? And then there's the last thing which we always forget, and that is, how do we create accountability? We always forget this one role, and I think that's something I'm working on right now. I think it's the reason why diets fail is we don't have accountability. You know, they. They work for a short period of time and then, okay, what's keeping you accountable from there on out? You know, maybe you've heard of the term accountability buddies.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:37]:
Sure.

Jonathan Thompson [00:28:37]:
Or something, you know, going into this process with another partner or, you know, joining groups, you know, finding organizations that get you there. And that's where you have all these, like, sub sectors of organizations all around us. Right. Is because we're finding those little things that we. We experience life in a common way or we're working towards a common goal together.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:59]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:29:01]:
So this, what did you call it was self leadership? Is that what.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:05]:
Yeah, I believe it's called the inner self leadership model.

Jonathan Thompson [00:29:10]:
Yeah. So that's very interesting because there was a book I read several years ago called Rocket Fuel, and they talk about in organizations there's two leaders, is what they described. The first one is a visionary, and I forgot the definition of the second one, but it was the visionary helps create the idea. Then you have that facilitator that helps create the process and works towards the. Creates the minutia, the detail work. Right. I am not a detail oriented individual. I'm a very big picture oriented person.

Jonathan Thompson [00:29:47]:
I get it. Drives me nuts to get into too much detail. Although sometimes I like doing that. That's why I like doing woodworking or working with my plants outside, because it. It clears my mind. I'm not thinking about other things. I'm only thinking about these very specific tasks that require, you know, when you're woodworking, you got precise cuts and precise measurements, and you can't be distracted or you'll make mistakes. Those are my ways of creating Zen for myself, if you will.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:16]:
So in the self leadership model, it would say that the woodworking or the gardening is making your producer super happy, because that's actually what the producer likes to do. The producer loves to just do tasks and accomplish them and check them off the list and, you know, do work and be done with it. The producer, like that. The producer thrives on that because it doesn't have to think. He or she, whatever, doesn't have to think about the process, the system, the delegation, strategy, like all of that stuff. I don't even have to worry about that. That's totally off my mind. And as far as the big picture vision's concerned, hey, somebody else took care of that for me.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:00]:
I don't have to sit here and try and dream up, what are we going to do next? I know exactly what we're going to do next because it was handed to me on my task list, and now all I have to do is just get in a flow state and execute.

Jonathan Thompson [00:31:11]:
And the producer loves that, and that's their reward. Right. The reward is looking at the end of the day and seeing all of these things that were accomplished and you feel a sense of accomplishment, essentially. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:22]:
Right. And like, and, like, relief from all that responsibility, and it's just like, okay, I can just do work, and I think everybody kind of, well, I don't know if everybody, but I know I can identify with that, you know, like, like, there's something really nice sometimes about sitting down at my desk where it's like, okay, I know what I'm doing for the next 4 hours, I'm just banging this out, and I know how to do it, and I know I can do it well, and I don't have to worry or think about anything else while I'm doing it. I can just focus on this, and it feels really good. Meanwhile, the manager or facilitator loves creating projects. Just loves it. And the best thing about creating projects is, is you're creating work that somebody else gets to do, right?

Jonathan Thompson [00:32:06]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [00:32:07]:
And I don't need to worry about the vision. I don't need to worry about, okay. Like, why did we pick this mountain? I don't know. I don't care. All I know is that what I'm really, really good at and what I really like to do and what's going to be really fun for me to do is to figure out how we're going to get from here to the top of that mountain. And I don't even have to think about actually doing that. I just have to figure out how would be the best way for someone to do that and what would be the most efficient and, you know, what would be the most cost effective or, you know, the quickest way to do it or whatever. And all I get to do all day long is just sit and solve problems, which is what I love to do.

Vision Battlesword [00:32:47]:
I just get to solve problems. I get to create systems, create frameworks and processes, and the managers just happy as a clam. And then the visionary just loves dreaming, just loves going into the realm of imagination and strategy and just figuring out, like, okay, well, I don't even have to worry about how we're going to do this. This is great, let alone actually doing it. I just get to think about, like, what would be really cool to do, what would be really great to do, what would be an awesome goal or objective or big picture accomplishment that I could make or that we all could make together. And for the next couple of hours, I don't even have to worry about how we're going to get this done. I'm going to assume that there is some way to do it, and I get to also assume that somebody will do it. But for right now, it's just like, man, you know what would be neat? I bet we could climb that mountain.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:42]:
I bet we could get to the top of that. And what if we did? And what would that look like?

Jonathan Thompson [00:33:45]:
Yeah. I mean, think of it as an architect, right? An architect for a building comes up with outlandish designs that may or may not. We don't know how to make that happen.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:56]:
Right.

Jonathan Thompson [00:33:56]:
Like, how can we make this building giant or, you know, without pillars everywhere, you know? And then it's the engineer's job to find a way to make that happen. Right? The architect is the visionary. The engineer is trying to figure out how it's going to work, and then your construction company is your facilitator, like making it all happen. Right, right. And it's kind of interesting because you can layer in anything that we do, right? I mean, car design.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:24]:
Exactly.

Jonathan Thompson [00:34:25]:
The car designers love coming up with concept cars.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:30]:
They love it.

Jonathan Thompson [00:34:31]:
They hate creating a car that goes through an assembly line faster. You know, that's not what they want to do. They want to create something that's a different, unique. That's why we have things like the Cybertruck, for example. Right. So it's outlandish. It's supposed to be. That's the point.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:47]:
What? And perfect example of, like, the quintessential visionary.

Jonathan Thompson [00:34:52]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:52]:
Elon. Elon's like, you know, we got to have rockets that land on their tail. It's just we. I don't know how we're going to do it. It's. You're the engineers, you figure it out. But I know that these rockets are going to come down and they're going to land on their tail because that's what rockets are supposed to do. That's right.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:05]:
And we're going to have a Cybertruck, and it's just going to be the most wicked, futuristic, you know, bizarre looking thing. But we gotta have it. The world needs a Cybertruck. All right, get to work.

Jonathan Thompson [00:35:17]:
Exactly. Yeah. It's kind of like the whole formation of the pin. The ballpoint pin. Right. Have you heard this story? No, and I think it's been debunked a little bit. But the idea is funny is that NASA was trying to find a pin that worked in zero gravity.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:32]:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:35:33]:
Right. That's how we have this pinnae. And meanwhile, in Russia, they were using pencils. Right, right. But the real reason was, is that they were worried about having. They were so worried about things catching fire, they didn't want pencil shavings around, which could, you know, if there was a spark or something. You have a dry product, you could create a fire. Right.

Jonathan Thompson [00:35:55]:
That was likely horizon. But the idea, I think they just wanted to figure out how to make it work. But in. I mean, ultimately, now we have a.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:03]:
Pen that works in zero because they pressurize the ink. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, there's two points to this. One point is a lot of times when we get ourselves. It seems to me this is what I think is true. It's true for me, and I kind of see it reflected in other people as well. We get ourselves into this kind of paralysis state where we bump up against heavy resistance or we get stuck, feel overwhelmed, like, oh, there's all this work to do. Or, like, how am I going to get all this done? Or, like, how am I going to accomplish all my goals? You know, just generally, like, don't know where to start.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:40]:
It's because. Or one of the reasons can be that these three different forms of leadership are colliding. We're stuck or we're getting stretched.

Jonathan Thompson [00:36:50]:
They're all fighting for the same amount of energy. Yeah, right.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:53]:
Thank you. That's a much better way of saying it. They're all fighting for the same energy. But if we can figure out how to shift gears or shift into those different roles fully, we can actually relieve ourselves of all of this tension and this conflict. Because in this moment, I don't have to worry about how it's going to get done and I don't even worry about who's going to do it. Yeah, who's going to do it is going to be future me. But that's that dude's problem. That's not my problem.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:26]:
And in this moment, I can actually just be free to do this particular thing, which is the visionary part, and the visionary is going to enjoy that. If I can allow myself to switch into that role and actually let go of the management and the execution temporarily, I can be productive here in this visionary state. Then later on I get to pass to myself, the manager. I get to pass that vision along. The manager loves getting a vision that they don't have to work on, and they also love breaking that vision down into manageable tasks that they don't have to do. And so, in other words, you get the idea without going through the entire process again, you can allow yourself to express your different forms of your own self leadership in ways that actually always feel good. They always feel good and they always feel enjoyable. And you can be much more highly productive that way.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:24]:
The other point is that different people will resonate more strongly. Just like what you were just saying about yourself and others. Different people will resonate more strongly with one of these three roles. Some people are really, really comfortable, happy, and actually extremely competent in the visionary space and probably should pass off those tasks to someone else to actually do that implementation. Likewise, there's some people that are actually much happier when they don't feel fully masterful or competent creating the grand strategy for what should we all do? Or they don't want that level of responsibility. It doesn't feel good to them. They would love to just receive a task, listen, go after it, bang out the work, feel like we're moving the ball forward, and that's very rewarding to them. So there's a natural alignment.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:22]:
We can all implement these three things for ourself, but then there's also a natural alignment to the roles that we tend to find ourselves in or gravitate toward in organizations. And it seems to me that there's a kind of leadership that is really that has a lot to do with helping people and helping organizations come into that optimal alignment. And I don't know exactly what we call that. Maybe that's organizational leadership or something along those lines.

Jonathan Thompson [00:39:55]:
But I think it's also important to kind of back up just a little bit, because I think some people may get discouraged in thinking that they belong in one of these three categories. Right. But there might be maybe you. Maybe you don't belong in any of those categories. Maybe there are just certain things that you like to be a visionary role at and certain things you don't totally, you know, and I. And I think it's important that people know that if you're that person, that's okay. Like, there's. You don't have to be just stuck in that one space.

Jonathan Thompson [00:40:25]:
You could be like, for example, when it comes to my home and my home life and how that the backyard don't. I'm not great at being a visionary on where to place plants and where to make things flow better, but my wife is really good at that. She really likes it. But where I'm really good at is I'm actually good at. Okay, well, you want this, but this plant does better in this light. So I'm going to move it over here. But then, now we need some. And then Lori says, well, I want that color over here because it belongs there.

Jonathan Thompson [00:40:58]:
So my job that I created for myself, because I liked it, was finding the right plant to put in that spot. But then in the end, when it comes to the. Our company, I love being the visionary. I love it. But I don't like the other stuff. Right. And so it's. And we don't have to be that one person for everything.

Vision Battlesword [00:41:16]:
Totally, you know? Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's. Thank you for amplifying that, because that's definitely a part of what I was trying to say, is that we. We each have the capability for each of these roles, and we may have a natural preference. You know, we may feel very comfortable in one or more of them. And also, that could be situational. Totally. It could be situational.

Jonathan Thompson [00:41:42]:
That was a much more elegant way of saying it.

Vision Battlesword [00:41:45]:
I felt like the way you said it was super elegant. I was just trying to ride your coattails.

Jonathan Thompson [00:41:48]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:41:49]:
Yeah. That's great. That's great. Yeah. So.

Jonathan Thompson [00:41:52]:
All right, well, going back, though, he's just gonna mention, you know, a lot of this. You talked about. We were talking about energy, right. And I've always been a belief that each person has a finite amount of energy that they produce, create in their life.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:08]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:42:09]:
And I don't believe that any one person creates more or less than the other person. I think we all create what we create, but it's how that energy is dispersed and in the way the world works today, we have so many distractions that is designed to be a distraction to get your attention. It is harder for all of us today to be mentally tough enough. We all recognize that it's there, but it's impossible not to be influenced by it. It's absolutely impossible because the systems are designed that way. But we have to constantly check in with ourselves and be like, is what I'm doing right now aligned with my goals and what I want out of life? And we need those. And I have to do that as a leader in my organization because I have a few things that I create as a priority in my life. And one of those top priorities is being outdoors.

Jonathan Thompson [00:43:05]:
I love being outdoors, but when I get myself out into that wilderness, that's my ability to check out, be in the moment, take a time, check in with myself, make sure that what I'm doing in my life is aligned with what I want. And then when I come back into the society, I realize, like, okay, these things need to change. I'm watching too much tv. I'm watching an extra show that I don't really care about. Why am I watching it? And so I think that's important to always, like, check in. But as going back to leadership, I think it's the leadership's leaders job to make sure that those that you are leading by example, for example, as an example that you remember that other people need this, too. And whatever you're going through, they are going through just differently. And so we always have to create these check in moments because going back to, I wanted to climb that mountain and I needed to do all these steps.

Jonathan Thompson [00:44:13]:
But next thing I know, I got distracted because I have kids that needed to go to school or, you know, are doing sports or need extra education, work or something like that. Just taking me away from that. Like, okay, well, you still got to remember about you. And how can you make everything line up well, because you could find yourself doing too much over here and not enough on yourself.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:36]:
Hmm. Well, I sense that we've got a pretty good grasp, at least at this moment, about what leadership is. And so I kind of want to pivot now to, really the meat and potatoes of the conversation, which is this idea that you brought up about positive leadership. So what does that look like? I know you've touched a little bit upon what your preference is in terms of leadership style, especially how you orchestrate leadership within your company, within your organization. But I guess taking a step back from just that little microcosm. Can you tell me a little bit about, you know, what that phrase positive leadership means to you and how you'd like to express it in your life? Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [00:45:30]:
So it's easy for, you know, people to, you could be a leader, and then you'll crack a whip. Right. That's still a leader, and you're still directing people. And to me, that's a negative way. Right. It's negative energy. It's. I look at positive leadership is.

Jonathan Thompson [00:45:48]:
It's just that it's. That it's not. It's not recognizing this. It's recognizing what you did wrong or right, and creating a space that people can say, hey, I did this wrong. And they don't feel like they're being ridiculed or punished because they made a bad choice or because they made a mistake or things like that. But we have to be careful because a leader's responsibility is to make sure that, yes, they're allowed to make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. Oftentimes, I believe we make.

Jonathan Thompson [00:46:23]:
We learn more from the one mistake than we would 30 things we did. Right. So we need to let people make mistakes, but at the same time, the leader is responsible to make sure that that person isn't making the same mistake repeatedly. Right. And doing it in a. Not necessarily a disciplinary way, but in a way that is going to. For that individual to embrace change to be better or to not make those same mistakes, that's where that positive leadership comes from. And that, to me, is probably the hardest part about leadership, because I'm a passionate person, and I get very animated whenever I get into discussions about different things.

Jonathan Thompson [00:47:08]:
I have to walk away from a conversation because I feel I'm getting louder in conversation, and because sometimes when I do that, it may come across that I'm angry at someone, but it's really. I'm just passionate about at that moment. So I have to check out for a second and then check back in, and we have to make sure we create that space so everybody can do it.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:28]:
Mm hmm. I want to drill into that. Ooh, okay, that's juicy. That's juicy to me.

Jonathan Thompson [00:47:35]:
Yeah. Cause this is one I'm really working on so well.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:39]:
I was having a conversation. I had a conversation with someone else who also is a business owner leader in their organization, and he and I explored that. Did you and I also explore that a little bit about anger versus passion and stuff?

Jonathan Thompson [00:47:57]:
I think we did a little bit. I don't think it was very long yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:01]:
Maybe it was just a little toe dip or something like that, but that one is really juicy for me because I've done that dance a lot in my own, you know, my own life and leadership roles and stuff like that. The dance that I'm referring to is riding the line between passion and anger or the perception of being angry. And then also you brought up the word discipline and riding the line between what type of corrective action is supportive encouragement of growth, versus we have to stop certain behavior for the benefit of the organization or for the safety of the organization or the people in it or our clients or whatever. There's a constellation of really interesting pieces there that is difficult for leaders to navigate, you know, because we as leaders, have emotions just like anyone else. And there's an environment, I think, in our society generally, certainly within, I'd say, corporate culture, generally speaking, that suggests intense emotions are not safe or intense emotions are not professionally acceptable. Would you kind of know where I'm going with this? Yeah, I'm sensing two different things. I'm sensing, on the one hand, sometimes a leader can become very inspirational by expressing genuine, sincere passion for the vision, for the mission, for the company, for the people, for everything. And it can also be interpreted in different ways based on, you know, any particular person's experience, the lens that they're receiving that through.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:56]:
And at the same time, a leader can be angry, can be sincerely angry or scared, sad, hurt, whatever. Whatever those real, genuine human emotions are. And what I would like to see, like, for me, an element of positive leadership. And I've had even experimented a little bit with this in practicing this since I started to kind of explore it. I've spent a lot of time in my leadership roles containing my emotions and trying to be very careful and trying to be very guarded of my presentation, especially in my corporate roles. But I would like to see a world where it's not just acceptable, but it's safe, and it even enhances the team culture, the intimacy of the team, the camaraderie of the team. For a leader to be able to share their feelings authentically and for that not to be taken as a threat. Yeah, to be able to actually be able to.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:08]:
Now, I'm not talking, to be clear, I'm not saying that I think it would be positive for a leader to yell and scream, to be profane or derogatory or anything like that. Not tough, but I think it would be positive for a leader to be able to say in a particular situation. Like, you know, I got to tell you, I feel really angry right now about this. You and I both know that we've had this conversation a couple of times before. Feel like I was pretty clear with the boundaries that I set around this or the agreements that we made around this. And I'm really seeing some, you know, I'm seeing some evidence that you haven't really been taking those things to heart. And I'm actually very upset about that. In the light of that, though, you know, I want to know what you think about it, what you're feeling about it.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:57]:
And I'd like for us to, like, have a. Have a pretty candid conversation about how we move forward. You know, something along those lines.

Jonathan Thompson [00:52:04]:
Yeah, but it's like you're. But just that example right there, you're conveying your frustration. I can feel, you know, hey, this person's pretty frustrated, obviously, in a corporate setting, a lot more frustrated than if I was driving, if we were two passerbys right. On the, on the road. Right, but you're right, there's this. We have to. It's a. But internally, you're, like, enraged, but you can't necessarily.

Jonathan Thompson [00:52:36]:
It's unprofessional to let that out at that time.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:39]:
Yeah. If internally you're enraged, then I think we have a different situation. I mean, but in the same way that, like, it's not professional. I mean, I think I would still agree that it's not professionally acceptable to go into a full rage display in front of employees or team members or coworkers or direct reports. But you could also say the same thing about, in a personal relationship with your wife, your good friend, you probably want to have some kind of conversation more similar to the tone of the one that I role played, where you also might say, I actually do need to step away from this for a little bit. Yeah, exactly. I actually am feeling enraged right now, and so I'm going to take about a half an hour before we continue this conversation.

Jonathan Thompson [00:53:36]:
But even I think that shows leadership right there. If you are of a mindset that you recognize why you're upset, you know, you're upset. I. And you know that any conversation that takes place right now is not going to be positive. It's best to walk away and come back and reset. Right. But it's so difficult because sometimes we don't know how frustrated we are, and it's coming out of our mouth faster than our brain is processing that emotion. Right.

Jonathan Thompson [00:54:09]:
All you're thinking about is, I've told you to pick up your socks 50 times. You know, whatever you know, and so that's where the last two years, I started picking up stoicism a little bit, and I started reading Ryan Holiday. He has a book, I don't know if you're familiar with Ryan Holiday, but I think he was a philosophy major from UT or something. But he lives in Smithville, not far from here in Austin, and he wrote a book called the Daily Stoic. And every day you read a passage about stoicism. And I thought it was a great opportunity. My buddy and I share, we talk regularly. He lives in Mississippi.

Jonathan Thompson [00:54:50]:
And, you know, we talk about this book regularly, like, hey, did you read this passage? Or, you know, we vent to each other professionally, like, hey, I need to vent for a second about something, and we'll each quote, you know, philosopher's perspective in this situation or ask each other questions to get somewhere, what have you. But my point being is that that's a goal of mine, is to be at a point of what I call enlightenment, right? Where essentially is what we're looking for is to be able just imagine yourself always being in a position of recognizing when you're frustrated, recognizing it's okay that you're frustrated, then having the mindset to say, okay, this is why I'm frustrated. Now, how am I going to fix this situation, or how am I going to communicate to the person I'm frustrated or the situation I'm frustrated about so that we can come to a resolution together and then remember that if I'm frustrated about this, the other person might be equally frustrated for the exact same thing. And that's where the leadership mindset has to step in of, like, okay, how can we come out of this conversation in a positive outcome, that we both come away better and maybe we become closer together for having this conversation. And there may be a resolution, and that resolution may not be we agree on, but we accept that we both don't agree with it. And that's okay, too. But recognizing the other person has a different perspective.

Vision Battlesword [00:56:29]:
Yeah, it's really, the more you talk about this, it's almost like we struggled a little bit at the beginning to get to kind of a dictionary sounding definition of leadership. But the more we just explore it from different perspectives and different examples, there's something that's kind of emerging little by little, which is it's all like leadership in the way that you just used the word. It's kind of like an encapsulation of those three things that we talked about, but kind of all at the same time, in a way, right when you're talking about, like, we're in this particular situation. And then leadership is the ability of one person to see a vision of how we move through this or get to the other side of this to break it down into a real quick process, and then actually, by example, execute that in that real time moment. That's fascinating. I never thought of it that way before.

Jonathan Thompson [00:57:31]:
Yeah. And that's the part I think I struggle with a lot, is it's recognizing, okay, I, too, like, I used to be the type of person that would never, I would just get enraged randomly and people didn't realize, but I was very mean in certain circumstances when I raced bicycles, you know, it made me a better bicyclist because I took that rage and I used it for sort of positive. You know, I just burn out the energy riding a bike to the point where I wouldn't allow anyone to beat me up a hill or a mountainside, you know, even if it meant that I was completely exhausted and lose the race, I was not gonna lose that one battle. But I'm definitely to be able to process things now. I'm much easier for me to be in a difficult situation and be like, okay, how did we get here? Why am I upset? Why is that person upset? And remember, it's not just about you. It's about the other, every, all the stakeholders here, right. Who's all invested in this conversation or the problem. And like you said, you know, break things down individually, but you have to be in that mindset to separate the emotion side to get to the logical side.

Jonathan Thompson [00:58:48]:
They don't. You can't be, I don't think you can be emotional and logical at the same time, in my opinion. Interesting to that, when you're, when one part of your, let me rephrase. I don't think you could be that emotional and that logical at the same time.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:04]:
Okay.

Jonathan Thompson [00:59:05]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:05]:
Right.

Jonathan Thompson [00:59:06]:
You can be, when you're in your space, you can be emotional and logical together, but when one part dominates the other one, it becomes a little bit.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:17]:
Of a zero sum.

Jonathan Thompson [00:59:18]:
Exactly.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:19]:
One inherently nullifies the other.

Jonathan Thompson [00:59:21]:
Exactly. And it goes back to energy. Right. In my opinion, like, your body is producing energy and thought processing about how to solve this problem. And maybe it's just like super computer level, and then the emotional side may come back down, which is why you gotta come back down on this side and, like, counterbalance that. And I think that finding that, I think is really important. And that's where I think exiting from a situation is always wise because it allows that reset things to kind of balance itself back out so you can problem solve.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:55]:
Mm hmm. How do you display passion without coming across as angry? Or how do you embody, maybe rather than display, like, how do you embody passion? Get into, you get into that passionate place without scaring people? And I'm asking, could you please tell me. Yeah, sorry for that.

Jonathan Thompson [01:00:20]:
That's a great question because, you know, I kind of think of this. I just, this one scene when we talk about passion, I always think of, and I'm going to digress just a little bit.

Vision Battlesword [01:00:31]:
Sure.

Jonathan Thompson [01:00:32]:
Howard Dean. Do you remember Howard Dean running for president?

Vision Battlesword [01:00:36]:
The classic dean scream.

Jonathan Thompson [01:00:38]:
Yes. Right. And what was this, like, 2000? 2002.

Vision Battlesword [01:00:44]:
I think it was 2000.

Jonathan Thompson [01:00:45]:
2000, yeah. And he has this for those who are listening that don't remember. He got really passionate in a rally, and he's like, we're gonna come and take the White House. And he got really excited, and people were just like, whoa, this is coming from a presidential candidate that's running for office, showing this emotion, and instantly loses this opportunity because he showed passion.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:14]:
But then, to be fair, the media kind of blew it out of proportion.

Jonathan Thompson [01:01:19]:
Absolutely. Yeah. Right. But fast forward 20 plus years, and here we have people running for the same office that are showing the same level of passion but being embraced by a group. Right.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:35]:
That's a really good point.

Jonathan Thompson [01:01:36]:
And to me, it's absolutely fascinating that you bring this question up because every time we talk about passion in the workplace, I think about this example and how, how can someone show that passion that that's acceptable? You know, and it's. And we become, we have to be careful because we don't want to be in this vanilla world, right, where everybody's robots and you're not allowed to show the passion. And I think there's a lot of arguments that come about from different groups with opposing views right now, where we get super passionate people from one side and the other side and then looking at each other like, you're the supervillain here, but not recognizing they're just passionate. They're not. And they. And we mi. Sometimes we misunderstand anger and passion sometimes.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:28]:
Yes.

Jonathan Thompson [01:02:28]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:28]:
That's what I'm talking about.

Jonathan Thompson [01:02:29]:
Yeah. And. Yeah. I really don't know if I have an answer for this.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:34]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [01:02:35]:
Right. It's just, I think I, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. I kind of wonder if it's just really the person, you know, are you, if you're a passionate person, be passionate. You know, if you're not as passionate vocally passionate person, that's okay. But understand that I wish we lived in this world where it was okay to be passionate from both sides and everybody still gets along. I mean, I think it would be a wonderful place and imagine what world this would be if everybody was. We all understood that, hey, that person's super passionate and you were able to still connect to that person. And to that, I will say I can't change the world's perspective of that, but I can change my bubble.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:25]:
I think this comes full circle to what we're talking about with positive leadership. That's the whole point, isn't it? Where we, you and me, right now, we're imagining a world. We've said that more, you know, both, each of us have said it several times now. Boy, I'd love to see a world where, you know, leaders can look like this or we can treat each other like this, or whatever those things are, and then, oh, whoops, we're the leaders. So I guess it's up to us and everyone as we, as, as, you know, I've also kind of, like, suggested that we are each our own self leader. Each and every one of us. We're, we're leading, at a minimum, we're leading ourself and we're almost certainly leading others. I mean, almost everyone is leading a family or is leading some sort of, you know, peer group or, you know, is in a leadership role in some point as we kind of take turns trading that responsibility with each other.

Vision Battlesword [01:04:29]:
Like, hey, you lead me today, you know, where are we going to go for dinner? Oh, you're the leader now, right?

Jonathan Thompson [01:04:35]:
What?

Vision Battlesword [01:04:35]:
You know, what would you like to do next Saturday? You're the leader now. Or, hey, can I bounce, can I bounce some ideas off you? Like, I'm really just stuck and I'm just not sure what to do. Could you be my leader now? Right. And then I. On and on, right to positions of leadership all the way up to leaders of organizations, leaders of governments.

Jonathan Thompson [01:04:59]:
You know, it's funny, sorry to interrupt you, but something that you just said that I'd be a really fun experiment, and that is if you went to someone that you have a working relationship with, not necessarily super close or anything like that, but you knew each other, you say hi to every day, and you're in a situation where you're trying to figure out, bounce some ideas off or something, but if you approached them and said, hey, I need somebody to bounce some ideas off, would you be my leader right now? What effect would that have on the individual? You're talking to. How would that inspire that one individual? A spark that made them think, holy crap, I'm a leader right now, shift their consciousness. Yeah. Right. Because I think. I don't think. I think everyone is a leader.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:47]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [01:05:48]:
As we're talking about today, not just to themselves, but they're a leader with every action that they have. We just don't realize it. And I think if that statement was brought up to someone with a little bit low self esteem that day, because you never know.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:03]:
Right.

Jonathan Thompson [01:06:03]:
Maybe they're having a bad day and you say something like that to someone, that's probably gonna change their perspective throughout the day, maybe for the week or month. Who knows?

Vision Battlesword [01:06:13]:
Well, I think what you're bringing up right now, this is really powerful. I think what we're talking about in this moment is that the vast majority of the time, people are not even aware that they are in a leadership role when they are, in fact, actually in their leadership role. The vast majority of people don't think of themselves as leaders. Right. They're supposed to be this special category of people. Oh. Like, well, there's the leaders and then there's the rest of us, and there's, like, some minority of people who, like, get to direct and guide and inspire everyone else. Right.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:50]:
But that's not true.

Jonathan Thompson [01:06:52]:
That's not true. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:54]:
We're switching into a leadership role all the time.

Jonathan Thompson [01:06:57]:
As soon as you get in a car, if you're driving somewhere, you're now leading. You're leading a car. If you're the first one stuck at a stoplight and the light turns green and you're the first one to go, you're leading the people in front of you. I know that simple perspective, but that's just, like, where leadership starts, just these very simple actions.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:18]:
I think the question is not, am I a leader? The question is, who am I leading and where?

Jonathan Thompson [01:07:24]:
Oh, that's a good one. What a great title for a book. Yeah. I mean, at least imagine that, you know? But, like, if you were to let someone in, in traffic that day, you're leading by an example. Right. There's a form of leadership.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:41]:
You know, if you're literally leading that.

Jonathan Thompson [01:07:43]:
Person into your spot, you're giving them the. You're usually giving the hand signal to go forward. Right. Or. Yeah, I mean, there's. Yeah. We don't realize just how often every action we do is a form of leadership, but.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:58]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [01:07:59]:
And that's actually kind of a fun little realization I'm making right now. Like, you just every. Every action we do and sometimes it can be a little stressful to think, like, every action I'm doing is a form of leadership. Yeah, but we don't have to think about it. You know, you don't have to dissect everything and over it.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:18]:
But I think you could be it. But I think it could be very empowering to realize that.

Jonathan Thompson [01:08:22]:
Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:23]:
To have that knowledge, that awareness about your own leadership potential and power, you know, the power and the influence that you have, not just in your own life and in the lives of everyone that you touch in whatever form of leadership you choose to employ. I also.

Jonathan Thompson [01:08:45]:
I was just going to say, there was a story I was going to say about this where we were floating the Kamal river down in new Braunfels area or San Marcos area, and I don't like litter, you know, just human waste, trash cans, whatever. And on the river, I mean, it's full of cans. Everybody's drinking, and, you know, stuff spills over from your tube, inner tubes and stuff like that. And for those who are listening that don't know about this, it's a river. It's this aquifer. It's cool water in the middle of summer. It's great. And you just hop in an inner tube and you're just drinking and floating down a river.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:20]:
Nice.

Jonathan Thompson [01:09:21]:
But it's very fun. It's very relaxing. It's quiet, somewhat quiet, depending on how many people are there. But, you know, people are drinking and, you know, things fall out of tubes. Your coolers get dumped. You know, people lose their phones or whatever. And so we're towards the end of the day, and they give you these little baggies to throw your trash in. And I said, well, can I have a few of those? And they're like, why? I was like, well, when I go down the river, I always spot trash.

Jonathan Thompson [01:09:47]:
It'd be nice to just go ahead and pick it up while I'm there. And they said that would be great because we actually now are regulated. We are told by the city that we have to come through at the end and pick up as much trash because the trash was getting out of hand. And so we go about the day and, you know, it didn't take long. I filled up one bag of trash and it didn't take long. And the second bag of trash, and, you know, we're catching up to people because we're moving a little faster. And we come up with a group of college guys that were intoxicated, and they saw me picking up trash, and all of a sudden it became a game. For these intoxicated individuals to see how much trash we could collect.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:24]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [01:10:25]:
And next thing I know, we have, like, guys on a tube with just cans, just hundreds of cans on top of them and creating. And they were creating, like, you know, twisting the cans together to create, you know, shapes and things and seeing how many cans they could do that. And next thing you know, we come in there, we have a whole truckload of trash. Wow. That we've collected. They still had a good time.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:49]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [01:10:49]:
Right. But that one action of me picking up trash inspired six other guys.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:56]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [01:10:56]:
To pick up trash along the way. And that just shows just how impactful a simple action of. I didn't ask them to do anything, you know, I just picked up trash.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:07]:
That's pure leadership by example right there. Yeah. That's so beautiful. That's a really, really powerful story. I know that we're, like. We've somehow segued into. Now the topic of the conversation is trash. But I do want to share a story about that because it's still relevant to leadership.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:25]:
Just to parallel what you said, there is a large music festival, Michigan, called electric forest. It's massive. It's extremely psychedelic, and it's also very burning man influenced. It's almost like very burning man culture. It's like Burning man in the forest. Not fully to that level. It's a commercial festival, but there's a lot of the same ethos that gets expressed there. And I saw something at this festival a few years ago that really, really made a big impact on me in terms of just an example of how to lead.

Vision Battlesword [01:12:10]:
How to lead people in a way that just, like what you said, it doesn't even feel like being led. And it certainly doesn't feel like, you know, being led in an authoritarian way. Way or a draconian way or anything like that. But the story of electric forest is about the prize cart. The prize cart. So at the end of the last show of the night, in any of the given, like, there's several large stages there, large venues, you know, huge field stage, massive concert, thousands of people. But at the end of the last show of each night of the festival, when the lights would go down and the concert was over and the crowd is getting ready to turn around and stumble back to their campsites or whatever, out would come the prize cart with a. With much fanfare.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:06]:
And the prize cart was, you know, like this. It was a large utility vehicle. Like, not. Not just like a little go kart. Not just like a little golf cart, but like a large utility vehicle that's trailing several large trailers. And the prize cart would come out, and there's fanfare and there's music, and there's someone on a loudspeaker saying, it's the prize card. It's the prize card. Come and get your prize.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:31]:
Come and get your prize. And so everyone was, oh, the prize. Prize card. Prize card. Everyone would rush to the prize card to get their prize. And their prize was a trash bag.

Jonathan Thompson [01:13:41]:
I love that.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:42]:
And it was a game. It was a game because there actually were prizes on the prize cart. There was an entire trailer full of them, posters and different kind of souvenirs for the festival. But to get the prize, you had to bring them a full bag of trash. And so I will tell you what, I'm sure you've been to a festival, music festival before, so you know what those festival fields look like at the end of the night there? Just trashed. Right. They're just. Just an absolute wasteland.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:16]:
And I'm sure I can't even imagine what it costs, you know, to bring services in there to clean those up, you know, every day of the festival or whatever it is they do. But I will tell you, I have never seen, let's just say, yes, let's use your word. Intoxicated. Intoxicated ravers or festival kids bust into action so fast, and, like, within the.

Jonathan Thompson [01:14:39]:
15 minutes the whole place is, that.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:41]:
Entire field is spick and span. All the trailers are piled high with bags of trash, and now everyone's stumbling back to their campsite with a trinket or with a poster. And everybody's happy.

Jonathan Thompson [01:14:51]:
And everyone's happy.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:52]:
And everyone's happy. It could not have been a more efficient process.

Jonathan Thompson [01:14:55]:
What an amazing story.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:56]:
Isn't that neat?

Jonathan Thompson [01:14:56]:
Yeah, that is fantastic. I mean, so many places could use that same. That's what I thought.

Vision Battlesword [01:15:03]:
Yeah, that's what I thought. I don't know why. Like, it's just. Yeah, it seems like that's an example of a positive hack, a positive life hack, or using human psychology in the most beneficial way possible.

Jonathan Thompson [01:15:21]:
It's interesting because we haven't even talked about leadership and values or. Good point. There's so many other parts of leadership we haven't even explored yet, but Japan has a similar. We're still on the subject of trash, but Japan is also pretty interesting because their value of trash is of very clean and very process driven in Japan. Right. And when there's a stadium, a sports event or something like that, the people who are in the stadium watching the games pick up trash at the end. That is a value to them. The value is clean space.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:00]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [01:16:01]:
Right. And so, you know, maybe that we table that. That conversation for another day. But it's interesting on, you know, if you create value in a leadership sense, what could you get as a response?

Vision Battlesword [01:16:15]:
Yeah, no, that's. That's. That's a really good point, and I would love to. I think that's a really great starting point for, like, being leadership, part two.

Jonathan Thompson [01:16:26]:
Yeah. I'd be crazy person to talk to, like, hey, talk to me about values. Yeah. You know, what comes from there.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:31]:
It's a great. It's a great idea. And I just wanted to kind of just bring it, like, full circle just a little bit here before we close about passion and inspiration and positivity and just kind of, like, tie a bow on this around. There was a piece that we were kind of opening up there, and we went down a little bit of sidetrack. But just around this idea of passion and your intuition that, wouldn't it be great if that felt safe, if we could see someone in a passionate state and just know that what they're expressing is that they really, truly believe in something and really, truly receive that from them. And not necessarily to mean that I have to believe what you believe, but just to see that and respect that people do have deeply held beliefs and want to lead, lead their group, their tribe, their community, themselves, whatever that may be, in the direction that feels really important and meaningful to them. And so I guess just to kind of tie a bow on this conversation, I'm just curious to know, like, how would you like to lead, or where would you like to lead us generally, or your community in terms of seeing a more positive world or a more beautiful world or a better world for everyone.

Jonathan Thompson [01:18:12]:
Oh, what a great ending question. That is a good one. Well, I get inspired when other people get inspired. So, like, I instantly got inspired by this whole trash discussion, honestly. I mean, you know, just this idea of, hey, the prize truck is coming. You know what I mean? Just. That's so inspirational to hear. And I think, for me, if one person becomes inspired, leadership is success, but also recognizing that that inspiration for them may not be the path that you thought it would be, but it inspired that person to do something or to take action, I guess, would be the correct word to use here.

Jonathan Thompson [01:19:06]:
That is where I get my sense of fulfillment with leadership and where I like, if we could each inspire each other. Just imagine what would happen if we inspired each other to get up a little earlier to go for a walk in the morning, get up and appreciate what we have. Because in one of our previous conversations, I talked about life and, like, the harmony that we have with nature that we lack, that we. There's this. Building a city is not exactly good for the environment, but there are ways to build a city that could bring things together. And so is there a way that you could help bridge a gap? And if you can make that impact, and if everybody made just that one extra connection that day, I think it would be huge. And the potential for what humans can do. I mean, I think, you know, I don't think any visionary could quite see the capacity that could come from that.

Jonathan Thompson [01:20:17]:
And recognizing that our role as a leader starts with the most simplest thing, and it's nothing. And it could be just letting someone through in traffic and not being the person that's, like, stubborn and not letting them in that spot. Because you could have inspired somebody to do something else, and it could have trickled into the butterfly effect, essentially. Right. And just recognizing that if you could just take a couple extra those things that you didn't do the day before that in ten years time, imagine what you could look back and see that, what was accomplished from it. I think it would be pretty remarkable.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:01]:
Nice. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah. What I'm getting from that is that you would like to lead by example, especially in your own life, but also to communicate to, and inspire others to find those small ways that they can embody their own leadership in any small way. Starting by leading yourself, but also by just helping others find their way. Even if it's just a step. Just a step.

Jonathan Thompson [01:21:35]:
Yep. Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:36]:
That's beautiful.

Jonathan Thompson [01:21:37]:
The simplest, even. It doesn't have to be this grand thing.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:42]:
Yeah. You know, because if we each. Many hands make light work, or journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. But if we each took a spoonful, there's so many of us that we could move a mountain. Right?

Jonathan Thompson [01:21:58]:
Yeah. The age old. How do you eat an elephant?

Vision Battlesword [01:22:02]:
That joke.

Jonathan Thompson [01:22:03]:
One bite at a time, like everything else. Exactly.

Vision Battlesword [01:22:06]:
Exactly. Beautiful. Well, this is great. I had so many epiphanies in this conversation.

Jonathan Thompson [01:22:13]:
So did I, actually.

Vision Battlesword [01:22:14]:
This is wonderful.

Jonathan Thompson [01:22:15]:
Yeah. I mean, I've got so many ideas to bring to my mental table of things. I want to experiment, you know, like, just. I think that whole. I really would like to try this. Would you be my leader right now? Yeah. Or today? Or, you know, what if I was conducting a meeting in the office, and instead of me conducting the meeting every week, what if I designated somebody and said, hey, can I have you lead today? And how that would boost that person's confidence. They may despise it at first, and it may be tough, but after a couple sessions, they may be like, hey, this isn't all that bad.

Jonathan Thompson [01:22:54]:
Not a big deal.

Vision Battlesword [01:22:56]:
And what you might learn about yourself from actually sitting in a different role.

Jonathan Thompson [01:23:01]:
Right. Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [01:23:02]:
And watching how the group dynamic changes or watching how you have the ability to express yourself in a different way because you're not carrying that responsibility. This is really fascinating.

Jonathan Thompson [01:23:13]:
Yeah, I'm actually gonna. I'm gonna try this tomorrow.

Vision Battlesword [01:23:15]:
Oh, nice.

Jonathan Thompson [01:23:16]:
I am. I'm so gonna do this tomorrow.

Vision Battlesword [01:23:18]:
I can't wait to hear how it goes.

Jonathan Thompson [01:23:19]:
Yeah. Cause we have, every Thursday, we have a team meeting in the morning, but if I'm trying to inspire leaders in the organization, they're not. They're gonna get a lot more out of leading that meeting than they would have me leading the meeting. And so what would happen if I just pull them aside before the meeting starts? Like, hey, how would you feel about running the show today just to see who's. Who steps up and who's going? Who's the one person that's like, hey, you know what? I want to actually like doing this. You never know.

Vision Battlesword [01:23:49]:
Yeah.

Jonathan Thompson [01:23:49]:
And then me sitting back and just taking notes and saying, like, hey, you know what? We're not talking about this. Well, we're not talking about that. Or I'm not doing something that we should be doing. Or maybe I'm overdoing something that wasn't supposed to be done. You never know.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:05]:
That sounds like a totally new kind of leadership.

Jonathan Thompson [01:24:08]:
Yeah. Right.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:08]:
To explore.

Jonathan Thompson [01:24:09]:
Who knows? Even the feedback that they give about projects might be different because they look at me as the boss, and if they're looking at a peer talking about the project, they may respond differently, which then means I might be learning something about the project. We didn't know what's going on.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:25]:
Totally.

Jonathan Thompson [01:24:26]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:27]:
This is really exciting.

Jonathan Thompson [01:24:28]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:28]:
Thank you. Can't wait to hear about it. Well, thank you for this, actually. And I consider this to be chapter one. Obviously, there's so much more that we can do, and there might even be others that will come in and contribute to this conversation as well. That's just kind of how I do it. It's like we can revisit the same topic over and over again, and even other people can maybe listen to this and then want to build off of what you and I talked about, and then you could come back again later after they do.

Jonathan Thompson [01:24:58]:
So, yeah, this will be also fun in a group setting.

Vision Battlesword [01:25:01]:
Yeah, this was really fun. Jonathan, thank you so, so much for spending the time with me, and I look forward to doing it again sometime soon.

Jonathan Thompson [01:25:08]:
Yeah, thank you for having me. Looking forward to it.

Vision Battlesword [01:25:11]:
All right.