TLDR;
Is your leadership style secretly costing your company millions?
Many leaders today fall prey to the dangerous pressure of hiding their true selves.
And this is draining more than just energy.
It’s slowly piling up invisible walls within your team—stifling innovation, and quietly sabotaging your bottom line.
The old playbook for leaders is failing in today’s unpredictable world. It’s creating environments of fear, distrust, and burnout, leaving organizations vulnerable to the chaos of rapid change.
So today, on the newest episode of the Uncommon Leadership podcast, I sit down with the Managing Director at SoftEd, David Mantica, to pull back the curtain.
David has seen how businesses operate from every angle, and with that insight, we explore how true leadership isn’t about control, but about authentic connection.
It’s about bringing your whole self to work, understanding your brain’s biases, and cultivating curiosity to truly empower your people.
If you want to create a workplace where people are truly engaged and excited about “why” they do what they do, then grab a seat and join in the conversation.
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Is this podcast right for you?:
- Yes, if you want to build trust and create a long-lasting impact at your organization by showing up as your whole self.
- Yes, if you are ready to let go of micromanaging or controlling behaviors and lead your team by empowering them.
- Yes, if you’re open to understanding your own biases, recognize when you’re not at your best, & actively seek feedback from your team members or colleagues.
- Yes, if you’re determined to create a culture where people feel safe to be themselves, express ideas, and even make mistakes.
- Yes, if you’re just a leader, CEO, or CXO—trying to lead your organization through burnout or stifled growth.
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About the Speakers:
David Mantica
As Managing Director at SoftEd, David Mantica is dedicated to empowering knowledge workers by providing comprehensive training, coaching, and advisory services.
Leveraging his deep expertise, he equips professionals with critical skills in areas like AI, Agile, and leadership, enabling them to thrive and innovate effectively in today’s complex, VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) business world, all while advocating for sustainable, trust-driven profitability.
With over 30 years of experience and more than 700 speaking engagements, David actively equips professionals with the knowledge, credentials, and confidence needed to lead, deliver, and innovate effectively.
Get in touch with David Mantica↓
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mantica/
Or Email: dmantica@gmail.com
Michael Hunter↓
Michael Hunter is the founder of Uncommon Teams and the compelling voice behind the Uncommon Leadership podcast.
For over 35 years, he’s guided leaders across six continents, helping them navigate the demanding realities of burnout, overwhelm, and the multifaceted challenges of today’s global business landscape.
He champions the creation of truly authentic and resilient teams, guiding leaders to align their personal fulfillment with profound business success. His unique approach enables individuals and teams to move beyond merely surviving daily pressures, into a state where they can truly thrive and innovate with ease.
Michael’s mission is to help leaders, CEOs, and founding teams create and inhabit their legacy, elevating themselves in a way that is safe and sustainable.
Want to build an uncommon, unstoppable team? Get in touch with Michael Hunter:
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/humbugreality/
Website:
https://uncommonteams.com/
Newsletter:
https://uncommonteams.com/newsletter-archive/
Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/@UncommonLeadershipPodcast
Presented By: Uncommon Change
Transcript:
Michael Hunter
Whether you want more innovation, more easily, you’re feeling burnt out or overwhelmed, or you simply know that something isn’t quite the way you know it can be. You are not alone. I hear the same from leaders every day. On Uncommon Leadership, we explore aligning personal fulfillment with business success, creating authentic teams and cultivating the resilience, adaptability, and ease necessary to move beyond simply surviving today’s challenges into thriving. I’m Michael Hunter, and today we’ll uncover fresh insights into what it means to lead to today. Joining me is David Mantica. David serves as vice president and general manager for Skills Development Group US.
Fueled by his passion for developing empowered knowledge workers, he helps companies through training and coaching, equipping them with today’s critical skills needed to work effectively in a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) world. With over 30 years of experience in more than 700 speaking engagements, he inspires better work practices in marketing, product management, project management, software development, executive management, and all the other key areas of technology and business operations there are. What is pretty out David?
David Mantica
No. Yeah, I’ve been lucky. You’ve been lucky. When you own a company, you basically wear every hat. So owning that company for 10 years, then three years of the earnout, you, you do everything from cleaning the bathrooms to moving furniture, to cabling, to setting up a computer, to approving payroll, to setting up benefits, to marketing the product.
I mean, you definitely, and as you scale, you know, you get rid of some of those hats, which is kind of nice. But yeah, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to see a business from many different sides.
Michael
And when did you first recognize that integrating your whole selves, bringing that into everything that you do, might be a valuable approach?
David
Yeah, it’s a good question, Michael. I appreciate that question. So. You know, early in your career and being a, I’m a Gen X guy, right? So, Gen X, were a small generation, we’re between the boomers and of course the millennials and we really were told just do your job and be quiet. Do your job, do what you’re told. Be quiet. Do your job, do what you’re told, be quiet. So, you know, I was really focused and early in my career and doing my job, doing it well, working very hard, and just focusing on work. Not focusing on the people around me or more about me and sharing my personality, I would just take in on any task that was given to me, do it to the best of my ability, take risks, you know, just drive, right? And that’s all well and good but as I started having more and more responsibility over how things got done, not just doing it, it became more and more apparent that people aren’t necessarily like me. It’s like they’re not necessarily doing it just to do it right, ’cause I wanna do it, right? They need some inspiration. They need to feel connected to something.
They need to feel like there’s more to it than just the daily grind, right? So when you start putting yourself, your authentic self into your working environment, it allows for people to connect with you. It allows people to see, you know, more truth and you know, get more excited about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, and maybe even learn from you better because of that.
And that, that became very important to me as I was leading the organization, the company I owned as I was growing younger workers, helping them get into the work world, helping them excel in the work world. Man, it just became, I could just see it was just so important that they knew who I was and got a sense of my thought process and wanted to hear more authentically, I use that word four times, but more authentically how I thought about them.
You know, how I thought of the areas they could improve upon, where I gave them kudos and they felt it was more real. So it was in that transition to running a business, counting on people to get things done for the business to be successful. And I started seeing that, it’s probably more than just a one dimensional role.
Michael
How do you know for yourself that you’re coming in with authenticity?
David
Huh? Do you know you’re authentic? Right? Well, you know, there certainly are sociopaths out there that they just do whatever the environment around them tells them to do. Right. You know, and they, the reality is that, you know, 2% of the population are sociopaths, but you find 4% of leaders in big companies being sociopaths.
Big companies are a place that people without feelings can reside and they can cause havoc, right? They can make things just unbearable for folks. I think we’ve all felt that. You know, when you’re authentic, I think you, number one, you are gonna be able to show when you’re upset, and do so properly.
You’re gonna be able to show when you’re excited and happy and do so properly. It’s gonna match up with who you are. You’re not just David at work, or David at home, you’re David, right? And that carries through. So you’re not having to wear a mask and you’re not having to adjust some of your behaviors associated to feeling like you’re gonna fit into the workplace more.
But I would tell someone is number one, are they, do they look different at work than they do at home? Why is that? Whether they hiding of themselves that they think will not be valued at work. There’s a lot of risk in that. I mean, the workplace is a jungle, right? It’s crazy.
It’s an environment with a ton of personalities, a lot of competition, a lot of fear, right? So a lot of people wear masks in that environment and because they’re protecting themselves. And the downside of that is you don’t, you can’t really like truly actualize yourself if you’re wearing that mask. So the first question to ask is, am I the same person at home as I am at work?
Am I the same person at work as I am with my friends? Am I able to honestly express an emotion that I’m feeling? Yeah. And, or is it feeling like I have to hold that emotion in to protect myself? And then how are you feeling? Is that making you feel drained? Is that making you feel tired?
And that compounds, if you’re hiding that, it compounds and it really drives to burnout. It drives to depression, it drives to agitation. You know, you’re really driven by anger and fear more than anything else. And in the workplace, that’s a recipe for disaster.
Michael
Does that mean that if I’m choosing not to bring a part of myself to work, or friends or church, or some in the environment, and that doesn’t cost me energy, it doesn’t cost me anxiety or frustration or other feelings that don’t help me, that’s not okay to do?
David
It’s an interesting question right? You know, I truly, I don’t think when I was driving as a young person that people really knew who I was. Right. I was just driving. Right. And I don’t think I had any interest in showing people who I was because I had work to do. I had issues and challenges and things I had to settle. And I think I could get away with that when I am in production, when I’m just doing work.
Right. I’m working like, I don’t need to help somebody else do their work, or maybe I’m working in a team, but I’m not intimately involved in that. The problem really becomes if you have to lead others and once you have to lead others, in leadership, not in telling somebody what to do, because that’s not leadership, that’s basically coerciveness.
Once you have to be there and help direct and drive something changes and if you aren’t truly who you are, people don’t trust you. You know, they don’t trust, and if they don’t trust, they can’t really, truly understand what to expect. Then they aren’t gonna work at full productivity. They’re not gonna be, they’re not gonna have full psychological safety.
Right. Can’t really have full psychological safety, but they’re not gonna have a high level of psychological safety. So I would tell you that Yeah, if you’re a production person, absolutely you can be, it could be whatever mask you wanna be and do your job, right. I don’t think you’re gonna be happy.
You know, at some point in time you’re going to burn out, you’re gonna be frustrated. But once, once you have to lead, that’s part of leadership is you lose things. Like when I became a leader, you don’t have the same freedoms that you have as somebody who works, you can’t hang out with a team all the time, you can’t have a special friend all the time. You give up things as part of the leadership role. And if you don’t, then that’s not true leadership. You’re not doing, you’re not doing it right. And so once you lead, you have to be able to show yourself more if you wanna garner trust.
If you wanna garner trust and so that people have a higher level of psychological safety and they know what to expect, you really have to do it, but don’t have to. But if you want higher levels of productivity, you want better outcomes, it’s the smarter thing to do.
Michael
How do we as leaders determine how much of ourselves is necessary to expose right for, to make an analogy, I can show up with a flaming Hawaiian shirt under my business suit and tie. I could come without a tie in the top button undone cc a peak of that flaming Hawaiian shirt. I might have a couple buttons undone, or I might have the whole dress shirt just wide open so that you see everything underneath there that flaming Hawaiian shirt and maybe some belly button when I stretch out tall or something?
David
No, you gotta show some belly button. That’s always a good thing, you know? So first off, people are gonna judge you by trust and competency. That’s the very first thing that happens, right? So when you’re talking about that story, Michael, then it becomes a competency issue.
When you’re not dressed appropriately, somebody doesn’t, don’t feel you’re competent, right? And you’ve gotta understand that as a leader, that it takes time to be able to go show your true, authentic self. First off, you can’t just go out there and do that. You work into it. Then number two, it’s at the right place at the right time.
You know, I can be my authentic self who likes Hawaiian shirts, but I’m in a business, meeting I’m wearing my suit and tie. Because it’s business, I gotta get things done. And that’s what’s expected. Especially if it’s outside people, especially if it’s a client, you know, a customer, a vendor. There’s gonna be certain expectations.
And as a leader, you kind of show what the company is, right? So if you come out with that Hawaiian shirt and you’re goofy, there’s gonna be an expectation that the company is goofy. And goofy doesn’t necessarily drive trust. So, I would tell somebody that there is a time to wear that Hawaiian shirt, fully.
There is a time to show your belly button. Now, you know, you have to be smart about when to do that. If you’re going to a company party and you’re still wearing your suit and you’re talking business the entire time, that’s not smart. That’s a place where you can show your authentic self. If you’re in a Friday meeting internally and you wanna chit chat about your weekend, and you can share some of the things that are going on with your kids and challenges with your family, that’s a good time to show your authentic self.
So you have to be smart. You have to show trust, you have to show competency. That is a lot happens with regard to how you dress, how you present yourself, your executive presence. But you can’t let that override the connections you have with people within the company. And so you, you know, when to be more authentic than when not to be.
But even if I’m in a business meeting, my authenticity is gonna be, this is who I am, I mean, i’m not gonna sit there and act like a scholar if I’m not scholarly, I’m not gonna sit there and act like a comic, if I’m not a comic. I’m gonna, you know, here’s my business style. I’m more laid back, I’m more handshake oriented.
I’m not gonna be as focused on the details. I’m gonna be focused on the relationship. And you know, what I see is the outcomes that we can both achieve. If you’re a contract person, I’m gonna warn you that’s not necessarily my strength. And let say it might take a little longer as we go through that process.
So I’m gonna be honest with that business partner, but I’m not gonna impact my trust and competency. But with internally, as you build the relationship up, wearing a Hawaiian shirt’s gonna make them all laugh. It’s not gonna say that you’re not competent.
Michael
How do we navigate that balance between, this is a business meeting, so the world says I should show up in a suit and tie, even though I’m very not a suit and tie guy. I am a casual person in everything.
And, this is a business meeting, so business meetings, the world says they’re supposed to be formal and completely logical. So that means I can’t show up with emotion. I can’t show up and say, “Hey, my kid’s really sick today. I’m pretty distracted. Just so you know.” How do we bring all of this together and rationalize all these seemingly conflicting requirements on how to be authentic enough in this particular context?
David
Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. So the first thing is as somebody looking to work somewhere, I wanna understand the culture. And I do wanna match the culture to my authentic self. There are cultures that are all casual. There’s cultures that are all shorts, there’s cultures that are all T-shirts.
There’s cultures that do very few meetings. So as I am looking for opportunities, I’m listening in the interviews to hear. Cultural fit. Like I knew the culture of the company I owned, I knew the type of people who would fit in that culture, and I interviewed for those type of people ’cause I know other folks would not fit in the culture.
It was a unique culture. It was a strange culture. It was an eclectic culture. It was a chaotic culture. And so I had to be smart about hiring. So I go back to each individual, I’d say, you know, the business meeting is conducted based on the culture of the organization. If you have a more casual approach, can you interview and look for a company that has more of a casual flair?
Now, here’s the other thing. There’s people that love laced up business. That’s what they dream of. They wanna wear their suit every day. They wanna wear their black shoes instead of their brown shoes. They wanna see everybody buttoned up. Well, you’re that type of person you’re gonna interview and look for companies like that.
You’re gonna look for industries like that. So I would say you have to be smart as an individual because you do have to fit into the social structure. I can’t be completely authentic. I can’t run around naked and you know, in the earthly environment or in a worldly environment, right? So there are some limitations to completely being what you wanna be.
And not to say that I don’t wanna be a naked crazy, but I’m saying if someone did, there are always gonna be boxes. So I would say first off, you’re smart and you look at who you are. And if you know who you are, then you’re interviewing and trying to work for companies that fit who you are, or you build your own company to fit who you are.
Now as it relates to the emotional intelligence of knowing you’re having a bad day, that’s a different topic, I think. So to me, nobody can be truly productive if that they have that type of situation going on. So when I do an emotional intelligence class, I really talk about being so self-aware that you can self-manage and you can say, I can’t participate today.
I’m in no condition to give any value. I need to step aside. I think managers need to do a better job of that on both sides on their side, conducting meetings that when they’re not emotionally ready to conduct them and causing havoc, and then allowing employees to be able to articulate when they are not at their best and not holding them accountable for that, letting them work through those challenges.
Ultimately, you have to deliver your work product, right? So ultimately you can’t hide from, I’m having bad day. I’m having bad day. There’s gonna be a trend and you’re gonna have to deal with that. But I don’t think most people do that. So I would tell you as it relates to the bad day side, as it relates to a difficult situation side, that comes back to emotional intelligence.
I’m hopeful that business organizations start realizing how powerful it’s to have those conversations and change schedules accordingly to make sure you’re having difficult conversations when you’re in the right frame of mind. You’re having creative conversations when you’re in the right frame of mind.
I’ll give you one more example of that. Used to drive me crazy. It’s like, I had a really good marketing manager, very detailed, very analytical. Oh, she was off the charts great, right? Had a very good creative guy. He was chaos, unstructured. One, he liked to work all hours a night and day. She used to get upset.
I say, you know, one of the things you gotta realize, I would tell her is that, you can’t put yourself in the creative process all the time. That, you know, we’re expecting this person to come up with new, interesting things, we gotta accept that his creative process might be at night and I can’t stop that.
I need the output. I need the outcome. I need the outcome from that output. If that’s what it takes, then we have to accept and work through that. Like I struggle sometimes before chatGPT to write and I would always need to be in a proper mindset, but it wasn’t magical. I had to get into that mindset.
So, you know, I think we need to do a better understanding of sometimes some type of those creative endeavors isn’t just magic. You have to, it takes time and you have to be, we have to be emotionally intelligent enough to give people time to do that or let them do it in the times that work best for them.
Michael
Which is maybe part of the business value of creating these cultures where people feel safe and empowered to bring unique talents to everything that they do. That when we let people work the way that they work best, they’re likely going to be more productive, effective, efficient, all the adverbs that you as a business care about.
And so all the metrics that you, as the business care about are probably gonna go up as well.
David
Yeah. The challenge in what you just said is the mindset of the leader. I mean, it goes back to: are you leading because you want control or are you leading to hit valuable outcomes? And too often we’re trained that leadership is control and I’m responsible for the output, so I’m gonna control the activities that make the output happen.
And that’s where things fall apart. And it’s partly an educational situation with regard to this. It’s partly a cultural situation and we showcase this all the time, right? And it’s also an individual problem because there’s a lot of fear in being completely autonomous at work, by the way. Autonomy means responsibility. Responsibility is risk.
You know, if you’re autonomous at work and you’re allowed to be authentic, there’s a lot of risk in that. That means you are making decisions, you’re making choices. Those choices could be wrong. You can make mistakes. Are you used to making mistakes and dealing with them? You know, this concept of learned helplessness is that, you know, our work structures have really instinctually tied us to just doing what we’re told.
So there’s a lot of problems in our work environment tied to this word, ‘Authenticity’ and being authentic at work. There’s a lot of underlying things that can wreak havoc with it. We talked about the trust and competency thing, right? We’re judgmental creatures by her, not by heredity, but by just evolution.
It’s a protection mechanism, so you have an expectation of what you expect something to be. So initially, so you just can’t be authentic if yourself doesn’t match that expectation. We talked about that. Now let’s look at the protection mechanism of autonomy and the fact that autonomy is risky. Risky is scary.
And let’s talk about the issue of management. Management is control. Control means I at least, can understand what I’m responsible for and someone to control it. It’s a messy recipe. When you talked about the word VUCA, that’s where the fear comes in. We can live with all this if there wasn’t change.
If there wasn’t change, okay, managers control, people use learned helplessness. We’re not exactly being our true, authentic self for doing our job, everything’s fine. Throw change in there, and that’s where it all blows up. Because none of it works. The only way you can deal with change is by cognitive diversity, by open ideas, by time, by flexibility, by testing, by failing, and that’s where the whole thing blows apart. And this is very well shown in the S&P 500. I mean, companies used to last on the S&P 500 for 30 years, now they barely last on the S&P 500 for fifteen, twelve. Unicorns pop up and sprout up and kill, you know, steady-eddie companies because they can myopically focus on their thing, while the steady-eddie companies gotta deal with change and the culture’s not dealt can deal with change and it implodes. It’s a lot of messiness in that conversation.
Michael
Where that’s coming to me as we talk here is that, business. When we are business, everyone that we’re working with, in the business, that is a form of community.
And we have a obligation to bring our unique self into that community because it’s what they hired us for, presumably, is that we had something they didn’t have already. And also, if we really care about that community, then we want to bring our unique selves there in a way that is safe for us so that we can show up and bring our unique selves there and also safe for everyone else.
David
Yeah, I mean, that is what we’re trying to do, right? That’s kind of a utopian concept of community. But look at, just think about Lord of the Flies, I mean, the boys go crash land this island and look what happens. Think about animal farm and look what happens when the animals take over, the pigs become men, the men become pigs, I mean, you can’t tell the difference. What we find is that empower comes corruption. In human nature, right? So in our communities, we ultimately find power in different places. And when we find that power in different places, then that’s where some of the breakdown of some of the things that you’re talking about occur, right?
What most people are trying to figure out is where can we drive self-leadership? Where can we flatten the power process to give people empowerment within their locus, to focus on their work? And then connect those people together. So there’s not necessarily a power structure, if you will. There’s a structure of just getting work done.
That may help break down some of the corruptive nature of power because as much as that’s what we’d like to have as each person coming in, bringing their unique self in, sharing that cognitive diversity, lots of different ideas throwing out there. People figuring out which idea to go after testing it, trying again.
It’s just our human nature makes that difficult and there’s not really an easy solution to that. But there are techniques you can try to utilize to get as close to that as possible. That make sense?
Michael
It does make sense. What are some of those techniques that work well, that tend to work well when someone just starting out experimenting with-
David
Oh man, some of the interesting things, right? You know, one of the first things I saw was that the leader has to be, leader has to have a thin skin, so you have to welcome bad stuff. You have to welcome people complaining and pissing and moaning. You have to welcome not everybody being happy. You gotta welcome critiques on your work.
It’s just, that’s just the nature, these people like to complain, right? So I found that if I was more open to that and just listen and process and let them kind of vent, I even had somebody come up to me one time and say, why do you let them talk to you like that? I go. I’m glad they’re talking to me like that.
That means they’re actually being honest with me. I mean, I love it. The other thing you have to do is you have to show people the other side. Like I used to have people say to me, why are you letting that person get away with that? And I would say, okay, here’s the situation. Wouldn’t you want me to give you the same leeway I’m giving that person, if you had that problem?
So making sure they see it beyond just themselves. Like, look, you have that problem. You’re gonna be treated, aren’t, shouldn’t you be excited? I mean, why companies treating Bob like that? If that happens to me, they’re gonna treat me like they treated Bob. That’s great. I mean, that’s so comforting.
But that’s not necessarily the case. So you have to kind of point that out. That’s another technique a leader can use is to just kind of rationalize, Hey, this is why I’m doing this. Explaining things more, being more communicative. Like, this is why I made the decision here. This is why I made the decision there.
This is what my logic was, this is what my thought process was. I find that, you know, showing your thought process can help people at least feel more comfortable that something was thought through. Okay, they might have not made the same decision I would make, but I like what, at least they could explain to me why they made the decision.
I tried to do that with my wife all the time. I’m like, you know, here’s why I made the decision. You might not have liked my decision, but at least, you know, I was thinking about it. I just wasn’t acting instinctually. I put the bar of soap here because I thought maybe you’d want it there because of this, this, this, and this.
It does have a tendency to help. At least she knows I was thinking and might not have liked the outcome, but at least there was thought and it wasn’t just me doing it, right. So that, helps out. That helps out a lot. The biggest number one thing that someone can carry in the work to make things work better for them at the worker side, not the leader side, is self-esteem.
I mean, self-esteem is so hard. There’s so much fear. There’s so much sc, I mean, workplace is a scary place. It’s a fearful place, right? But self-esteem rides over that and the confidence that I’m gonna be okay. Too many folks are worried about being laid off, about being fired, about being taken advantage of, and I get it rightly so, but in the vast, majority of the cases.
Someone got laid off, they found another job. You know, someone quit, they found another job. They didn’t become destitute on the side of the road. And I think having some that self-esteem, and it’s tough because I’m a millennial. I learned to drive work by fear. I mean, I’m a, excuse me, I’m a generation X person.
Generation X person, we learned to work by fear. I mean that fear, I mean, I talk to so many people that are highly productive and it’s a very fear oriented productivity. So, you know, what’s fear? Fear is a lack of, you know, faith in oneself. You know, you’re scared, right? And then that anger comes out too when that happens.
So I would say cultivating a sense of self-esteem, not irrational self-esteem, but the self-esteem and know that you’re valuable, that you can work elsewhere, that you have an innate value that may not be valued at the place you’re at, but can be valued somewhere else.
Michael
If we do these as tiny experiments, then we can do them in little itty bitty increments so that if it doesn’t create the outcome we’re hoping for, it’s not a big deal if you think about it as a mix.
David
Yeah. This is the thing about this, which is really hard because you, companies get really big. When they get really big, it’s a challenge. The more you can test and iterate as a leader and how you’re going to approach the group you within, the better, the more open you are, that it’s not about me, it’s about them. And then seeing how your actions or reactions affect them. Ultimately knowing that you can’t change their opinion of you, you can influence it, but it’s.
Especially a younger new manager coming in. There’s a lot of challenges with that. You know, one of the things that I see a lot of leaders do if they’re coming in and trying to do a transformation is they’ll just let everybody go and hire their own people. Because it’s easy, right? Because they hire people that are like them and they can start moving forward without a lot of this whole, you know, friction.
It goes back to the whole concept of storming, the warming, forming and performing, right? You know, any team structure initially is gonna have some storming fit as you formed, and you’re gonna storm and figure things out. If you just let everybody go and you bring in your own cronies, it’s a much faster way to some levels of, normal production.
So some folks, you know, tested that way. So, you know, there, the testing of incremental tries is very important. The problem is that you have these just gigantic organizations that then it becomes more difficult.
Michael
And even though it’s gigantic organizations, even if I’m high up in that organization, I can always start small with my assistant, with that one person who reports to me that I always have an easier time talking to than anyone else, my spouse, as you were saying.
David
You know what the first step is? They have to know that. They have to know, they have to change. I mean, this is the big, the more authority and power you get, it’s very insidious because the natural reaction is to start seeing things through your eyes, your filter, and then you start filtering it as if you’re more valuable than everything else. It’s not even an idea that you don’t like somebody, it’s just that you, Hey, I’m important. I’m important, and the only way someone at higher levels can fight that is being aware of that every day.
You wake up and you say to yourself, I might suffer from President-ites today, and my wife called it President-ites. It’s like, okay, you just, you know, think everybody’s gonna laugh at you. You think everybody’s gonna do exactly what you say ’cause that’s President-ites. And I have to say from my small scenario, we got the $13 million with a large number of employees.
But in that small scenario, it was crazy. How many times I could see myself succumbing to that and I had to just be self-aware. So when you look at this, the very first step in all of this conversation is how much do you practice self-awareness? How much are you checking in with yourself and your emotions and how you’re feeling and how you’re perceiving things?
And then how do you self-manage? Like how do you go about like adjusting? And then how do you do check-ins? Who do you check in with? How do you vet? Like, early on with my work with the company out in New Zealand that I worked for, I had a couple of the folks in New Zealand I would check in with, okay, how was my, how did I act in that meeting?
How did I sound? Was I coming off like too much like an ugly American? Was I coming off too aggressive? So I had a third party check to help me as I was trying to figure out how to work that culture because I was self-aware enough to know that, I mean, you had to point to an American, I’m like one of your most typical Americans, independently oriented, loud, you know, aggressive, wanna go, wanna make things happen, you know, so I had, I knew I needed that buffer.
I knew I needed help to make sure I wasn’t being that way or else I would lose all my credibility. So the self-awareness thing, going back to your example, that leader, Marshall Goldberg talks about this a lot. The first step is you, and here’s the saddest part, Michael, if you wanna change, you know, it takes about a year for somebody who’s changing for others around them to accept that they really did change.
And that’s scary. It’s sad, but that’s the nature of this is that if you’re coming in with one type of reputation and you start kind of, people start seeing that reputation, you, then you try to change it, woof! It’s not easy. You gotta be consistent. And it takes time for people to believe that change occurred.
Michael
And that’s another place that the self-esteem and self-assuredness comes in to know that the way I am changing is best for me, will make it better for the people I’m leading even if they don’t recognize this for another year.
David
Yes. There, it’s, so think about it, we struggle with change, I mean, the biggest problem with the human existence now is that change is so rapid.
So rapid, and we struggle with change. It’s just not easy for us. And you know that, because our brain wants stability, our brain wants, you know, our brain wants protection. It wants to know what tomorrow is, it makes it feel safer. So we have to break down that hard wiring. There’s a thing called neuroplasticity.
So over time we can change, we can adjust our brains to deal with the fact that we have to be constantly evaluating and not just for the betterment of ourselves, but the betterment of the system. How am I fitting into the system? How am I supporting the system? Am I valuable to the system? Am I causing havoc to the system?
Because as you said, it’s community based scenario and there’s no such thing as self-sufficiency anymore. It’s like we are all interdependent. So if you’re in that system, you’re independent and you’ve gotta be giving the best you can to that system, which means you have to be self-aware to judge maybe you’re not. That was well said.
Michael
Thank you. We’ve talked about many different tools and techniques today for easing our way and our people’s way through change. Is there anything else that you’d like to bring up today that feels like it really wants to be said right now?
David
Yeah, I think, you know, the first thing is, I’d love to see more people spend more time really looking at how your brain operates, understanding the brain. So understanding of the emotional biases our brain has.
Then from there, our cognitive biases our brain has. And what you’re gonna learn is that your brain is your worst enemy in white collar work. In that knowledge work, it’s your worst enemy. It was not built for that. It hasn’t evolved yet for it, and it causes all types of havoc, right? But if you know this, you can better work through it and you can do a, you can do a better job of self-management, and I wish more training was done on that side of things.
The second thing I wish more training was done in the work environment is really around understanding those emotional biases around negative self-talk and understanding where true behaviors come from. Right. So there’s been a lot of work in cognitive behavioral therapy now, and a lot of work around how our beliefs generate our thoughts, which generate our feelings, which generate our actions. So if we do decide to change, we can. Somebody’s pointed out that our actions and behaviors are having a negative impact. We finally see that. You know, you just can’t go find a new framework. You just can’t go find a new behavior.
You are gonna have to go deeper and look into what are the values? What are your beliefs that have caused these things to happen? And so in companies, there’s a lot of times that go through these massive transformation projects. You shall do this now you shall do agile, now you shall do digital transformation.
Now you, shall do e-commerce now this, you know, some, I’m throwing out there. Without telling people why. What beliefs do we need to change within the organization? How do we pronounce, how do we showcase the values that this, why we’re doing this? So that then maybe the thoughts about it will adjust and the feelings about it will adjust.
And then ultimately we’ll see real behavior and action change. And so those are really the two things I think could have a big difference. Better training around emotional and cognitive biases. Cognitive dissidents, how your brain operates, why you, your brain isn’t your best friend in knowledge work.
And then a real deeper understanding of negative self-talk, the stress that causes and how you can use your understanding of how your beliefs and values produce your thoughts and feelings, which produce your actions, and then be able to make meaningful change because of that.
Michael
For people who would like to get in touch with you to learn more about doing either of those and all the other things we’ve talked about today, what David is the best way for them to connect with you?
David
Well, I’m a very unique name, so David Mantica, and it’s up there on the top of the podcast here, and so you can just search me out on LinkedIn.
I’m the only one up there, so very easy to find me on LinkedIn. Also emailing me at d mantica@gmail.com, so the letter D. Then my last name @gmail.com is two great places to connect with me. We put a lot of content up on my LinkedIn page. And I certainly watch my Gmail consistently and engage a lot of really cool people there.
Michael
And then you have a learning hub with a ton of content as well, correct?
David
Yeah, so on the skills website, my company skills, not company I own, but the company I work for, Skills Development Group. On the website, www skills D as in david g.com(skillsdg.com). We have a ton of content up in our learning hub. White papers, videos, web seminars, blog posts, all of it free.
A great deal of really good information. What we learned in the training business is we don’t make money on knowledge and skills anymore. I mean knowledge and not skills, excuse me, knowledge and understanding. You go, you have knowledge, you have understanding you, you do skills development, right? And knowledge and understanding really can be gotten for free.
So really where you start making money is when you start building skills, tools, techniques, and helping people get outcomes. So we do a lot of training for free and training that I would’ve got hundreds of dollars for back in the nineties before the internet. And then, you know, before all the E and before all the streaming stuff and everything else.
It’s amazing how the education space has changed. But anyways, we give a lot away for free.
Michael
I appreciate that, David. Thank you.
And I’ll have all those links in the show notes. Excellent. What would you like, what would you like to leave our audience with today, David?
David
Oh, what would I like to lead the, leave the audience with, you know, actualization is probably the best way to happiness, right? How you actualize yourself. But the problem is that, you know, we get caught up in actualization being money oriented or being power oriented, or being positionally oriented. It’s exciting to me that the newer generations aren’t necessarily as indoctrinated into that as maybe my generation was. But, you know, taking a step back and, you know, looking at how do, when do you feel actualized?
What is it that really gets you fired up? If you can dig into that, that’s where you’ll start creating value. Maybe the world doesn’t value it that much, so you might not get as much return as you’d hope, but you’re gonna get real value for yourself outta it. And that’s, I guess really that’s the win point.
You know, being able to actualize yourself and looking for ways to do that. For me, it boiled down to helping people. I mean, that act where I actualize my best self is when I’m helping people, whether that’s paid or unpaid, there’s a real value in that for me. So think about that. Think about how you actualize yourself.
You know, do more self-management, self-awareness type of work, and you’ll get a lot more happiness, long term associated with things that you’re doing. And happiness, not being, but being more satisfied, getting stuff done.
I feel good about it.
Michael
Yeah. Thank you so much for fabulous conversation today, David.
David
No problem. Like you there, Michael, you’re actualizing yourself with the podcast. Now it’s a very awesome form of self-actualization.
Michael
Thank you and thank you audience for being with us here today. David and I are so curious to hear, how are you actualizing yourselves?
Please let us know. Thanks and have a great day.