The Productive Leader ft. Michael Diettrich-Chastain

Any leadership role presents unique challenges. Join me as I chat with leadership & management guru, Michael Diettrich-Chastain, of Arc Integrated.

Click to listen now!

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

  • How to identify & ritualize core values among your team
  • The benefits of identifying your ideal client
  • How to make your mission, vision & values clear
  • How poor leadership affects team productivity
  • How you can identify poor leadership in your team (or yourself!)

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

Arc Integrated
FREE Guides
Changes by Michael Diettrich-Chastain
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Drive by Daniel H. Pink

⬇️ Click for full episode transcript ⬇️

Uriah
Michael Dietrich-Chastain is the CEO of Arc Integrated, a leadership development and executive coaching practice. Michael is a bestselling author, leadership expert, facilitator and professional speaker. He is passionate about helping leaders and teams become experts. It's on change management, communication and emotional intelligence. Michael's writing has been featured on Time, Money, Entrepreneur, and The Washington Post. His first book, Changes, released in 2019, became our number one bestseller in multiple categories during the last two years alone. In the midst of the COVID crisis, Michael and his team have facilitated events for thousands of leaders and teams across the globe. Michael, welcome to the podcast.

Michael
Uriah, it's good to be here with you, man!

Uriah
Yes. I always enjoy talking with you wherever we find ourselves in the world. Same first, it was Anaheim. That's where we met originally at Ernesto's conference.

Michael
Yup.

Uriah
Right.

Michael
That was a great time. That was a great time.

Uriah
I was trying to remember if that was 2017 or 2018. Do you remember?

Michael
I think it was 2018, but I'm not. Yeah, I believe so.

Uriah
That was a good time. And then we met up in Asheville last year.

Michael
Yes. Gosh, that was already a number of months ago. It feels like it was 50 weeks ago.

Uriah
Time flies. Yeah. 2018 feels like a decade ago!

Michael
Yeah, right.

Uriah
I'm so thrilled to have you on here and talk about leadership. And you are just so smart in the areas of leadership and management and change and helping people with their organizations. And a lot of our listeners and a lot of our members with productive therapist are in a leadership and a management position as they are growing a group practice. So that's kind of what I'm thinking about today. But for you, I'm actually curious what originally got you interested in learning about leadership and business. Where did that start for you?

Michael
Well, it started a long time ago in undergraduate school. I've never told you this story before. So when I was in undergrad, I was interested in what's called industrial organizational psychology, which for those that don't know, it's essentially applying principles of psychology into organizations to understand team behavior, leadership behavior, productivity behavior. Right. That was my interest in undergrad. And I thought, well, do all the coursework for that and do the internship and then get a job, incorporate after school, all of which I did. And then after that first job, which looking back, was a lot about leadership, about employee engagement, about navigating conflict between employees and leaders. And it was a great experience, but ultimately struck my interest to go back into counseling and get a master's in that instead and kind of take a deeper dive into human development. So I did that and then lived in the mental health world after getting licensed for a number of years in really all sorts of capacities, from community mental health to private practice to hospital system, jail system, and then still had this interest in teams and leaders. And I o psyche. Actually, the way that I got back into business was working through an employee assistance program company, which was awesome because at that point, I was doing both clinical work remotely as well as account management for some of our organizational clients. And so it was doing trainings with them, traveling the country, doing trainings and speaking events on things like mental health in the workplace or stress management or communication or team performance.

Uriah
That makes sense.

Michael
Yeah. So that kind of got again, continued to spark my interest in doing my own thing. And so, yeah, after that, launched our practice and have been in this world of leadership and executive performance and training for almost about ten years now on my own.

Uriah
Not quite. That's fantastic. I get the sense that you're still excited about it today. We're certainly when I met you first four years ago and then even before that. Is that true?

Michael
Oh, man. Yes. I love it. I really am passionate about it. And I feel like I'm always learning, which is part of what drives my interest. And when I think about what I understand now versus what I understood just a few years ago, it's amazing. It's exponential.

Uriah
Yeah.

Michael
And I think part of that is due to the pandemic because it really forced a change in how we work with clients that forced me to learn different ways of working. And so in that sense.

Uriah
I'm very grateful we've all added some new skills, I think totally, for sure. It's interesting when I think about my leadership journey, this is never something that I wanted to do. Funny enough, I always had. I don't know, I'd probably say like a deep insecurity and never wanted to consider myself a leader or really have anybody depend on me, rely on me, follow me, et cetera. And I was terrified of the thought of becoming a boss and having to deal with all the things that come along with that. And then over time, as I started my group practice, I can tell you that story if you want at some point. But that was reluctant. So I guess my autobiography could be The Reluctant Leader.

Michael
But that's a good book name.

Uriah
It's not bad, right? Yeah. Copyrighted. There you go. I developed a desire, not a desire, but I realized that I love doing this work of being a leader and even management and obviously business development. So I've kind of stumbled into it. It's been a lot of fun. So I'm curious to hear from you, though, what you think about what I can do as a leader in my group practice to help my clinicians be more productive. So we're kind of looking at leadership through the lens of productivity. And for me, at least, I've worked in agencies before and various nonprofits. And I do not want my organization. I don't even call it an organization. My group practice to become super rigid in any way or focused on just output or just profit or strict productivity, like some agencies kind of need to. Maybe they've got funding sources that require them to do so, whatever the reasons are. But at the same time, I want my clinicians to see a good amount of clients and manage all the things and be productive. So what do you think? How can I help my team?

Michael
Yeah. So it's interesting because there's a lot of science that we have from the world of industrial, organizational psychology and organizational development, and just all the various research that's been done on the top performing teams, leaders and call them like systems of people. So we know the conditions that create really highly productive or high performing systems of people. It's very clear this is an interesting misconception or I think maybe just something that people aren't aware of, that there's a mystery of what it takes to create a high performing group. It's actually not a mystery. It's very clear what to do and what not to do. It's just difficult. Right. It's difficult because we're dealing with people and people are very complicated. But what to do is simple. I could give you some best practices and things, but maybe to make it a little more interesting for you and for those that are listening, maybe is if you wouldn't mind, tell me a little bit about what are some either strengths that you feel like you have that you could build off of or pain points that you see exist that you're unsure how to resolve.

Uriah
Yeah. As far as strengths go, I think I have an excellent team that wants to do the work and wants to fill their caseloads. Right now, challenges are more along the lines of scheduling and availability. For example, people coming in want to we work with a lot of teens and young adults and families, and so they want like 04:00 or later appointment times. So we've got some challenges there with just logistics and availability. And I guess when I think about my team of therapists and I think about productivity, my mind probably goes more to client retention than other things. How can I help them do a better and better, like an increasingly good job of maintaining their connections with their clients so that their clients stay long enough to get what they need? I don't know if that's productivity that you would categorize that as.

Michael
Yeah, that's interesting. Where my mind goes with that is really understanding, like two things. One is when you say clients, sometimes I'll think about clients and customers simultaneously. Right. And essentially they are we work with a lot of different companies, so I get exposure to a lot of different kinds of industries and kinds of products or services. So one thing that often comes up is clearly understanding what's called the customer journey. Right. Like, what are the things that the customer, in this case client are really looking for in their search for the best therapists out there. Right. And I realized there's some nuances with that. Right. Because therapy is often about the goodness of fit and not just like finding the right one. The right one is dependent upon that individual. But the second part of that, though, which might be interesting to think about, is what is it that is the unique value proposition or the unique cultural identity or the unique aspect of your practice that might help customers or in this case, clients opt in or out. The other thing that does qualifying that uniqueness around culture, around values, around identity as a practice is that it is that it's then much easier for our clinicians in this case to be torchbearers for a cause, to be torch bearers for a culture of a company. And that is one of those conditions. When I talk about one of the ingredients for a successful system, one of those ingredients is that people feel passion behind, like the mission or the vision or the values. Hopefully all those things hopefully they know and can articulate and they can operationalize all those things in their daily work. But there has to be the language and there has to be the common language for everybody so that they're all speaking the same thing. You don't have to go into details about that, but it's kind of where my mind goes as far as that's actually really helpful. Is it?

Uriah
Okay, cool. It is helpful because we do have a client journey that I've created that goes from pre counseling starting to what happens when counseling is ending. But I think what I need to do a better job of is bringing that out and sort of teaching it and reteaching it and mentoring people through kind of sticking with the client journey or not sticking with it, but kind of following the guidelines and the steps and understanding it and implementing it a bit better. Also, what you said helped me, too, because I realized this is kind of the next thing on our business to do list, if you will, is to actually refine our core values, because I've gone through that process in a very detailed way with productive therapist, and it's been like game changer, I would say for sure. I actually used Donald Miller's framework from mission statement made simple.

Michael
Yeah, he's great. I love him.

Uriah
It's so good. And it's just so dialed in and all the way down from core values to key characteristics for hiring and then to critical actions for like, okay, these are the things we do on a Monday because we have these core values. So it's really operationalized, which is nice, but I haven't done that with my group practice. We all understand that we're here to help families heal and thrive and all those types of things. But exactly who are we? Because I found with productive therapist with those core values, I come back to them every week. I'm like, you know, this is an example of this core value and good job so and so. Right.

Michael
Yeah.

Uriah
Or we really want to, we're aspiring to this core value that we hold. I love that. Both those things.

Michael
Yeah. A couple of additional thoughts come to mind. I really believe in the idea of ritualizing values, which you may do this already, but it's some version of finding ways in which the group can meet. And this can happen in one on one conversations or in group conversations and talk about how those values are being lived throughout their interactions with customers or clients, with vendors, with partners, with the community. So we're constantly being reminded of how we're living and breathing those values. The other thing that I really think can be valuable is being super clear about who we are for and why and who we are who we aren't for. Right. So we're kind of drawing a line in the sand about who is an ideal client and how might a client know if your practice is not for them or is definitely for them. Right. And I think, again, the benefits of that is not only makes the client's job easier, deciding if they want to work with that therapist or that practice, but it also, again, empowers the therapists because what they're learning through that process is the clear identity of that practice's culture. So anyway, I think that's a real opportunity.

Uriah
Who's the best client for the practice as well as that individual clinician? Like two layers of that almost. Yeah. I love that because it could be a teenager and their family, let's say, and they're a good fit for our practice. But maybe the level of severity of their presenting problems are too high for a pre licensed therapist or something like that. So that would be totally outside of the zone where they should be.

Michael
Yeah, absolutely. It could be all sorts of things. Right. It could be the kind of client it could be insurance panels, it could be we only take private pay. It could be here are types of clients we don't work with that are we better suited? I know some practice have specific specializations, like maybe we're a substance abuse practice and that's it. Or like you said, like family therapy practice exclusively. Yeah. It's cool.

Uriah
That is important. So if we turn that coin over and look at the other side, how does poor leadership affect the team's productivity, and how do I know if I'm doing it?

Michael
Yeah. Right.

Uriah
In one way or another. Right.

Michael
Yeah. Well, I think it can show up in all sorts of ways.

Uriah
Sure.

Michael
I'll give you some examples of what we've seen before. I think it can show up in people just being disengaged. And I was recently talking to a group about engagement, and I think it's a good way to frame engagement in three buckets. And if you look at Gallup's Research, they typically frame it in three buckets. It's highly engaged disengaged and actively disengaged. The difference being, the highly engaged people are the ones that they're excited to be there. They're showing up. They're doing their very best, again, like torch bearers for the company or the process or whatever. The disengaged folks are the ones that are kind of just there. Right. They're kind of the average performer. And then the actively disengaged are the ones that are resentful. They're actively looking for something else. They're undermining other people trying to convince them to leave or telling them that the organization or company is horrible. Right. And so that actively disengaged is often a consequence of poor leadership. So when you say how it shows up that was actively disengaged folks, that sentiment can be just a toxic condition for any team or group. Yeah. So your question about how do you know if that's you or not? Well, I'm guessing that that absolutely is not you, because I know you and I cannot I can't imagine that would be you. But I think good practices for those that are curious, constantly collecting feedback is a good way to ensure what's going on. I think this conversation we're having about mission and vision and values and clarity around that allows for people to opt in or out. And so when that stuff is not clear and when there's a general sense of uncertainty and a culture, oftentimes that leads to disengagement, and that could be something that the leader can influence, of course. What else can you do? I think looking for opportunities for the leaders own development is crucial, and that could be through coursework. That could be through studying books or methodologies getting leadership coaching. I think that leadership, like you said, is hard work, and I like to make this joke sometime. It's like, when is the leadership journey done? And that's not the nature of leadership. Yeah. There's no finish line. If you're going to be a really good leader, then the perception, hopefully, is that it is a lifelong journey because we can always get better at it.

Michael
To me, it's one of the coolest personal development journeys we can go on.

Uriah
Absolutely. One of the best things that I've developed is like a strong desire for feedback, and I even demand it.

Michael
Yeah, that's great.

Uriah
I've come a long way. I know this because this is true. I really want critical feedback. I really want people to tell me what sucks, what is disappointing, fill in the blank. Right. Because I love to hear the positive stuff, and we definitely get a lot of that in both of my businesses for the leadership in general, not just myself, but I really want to know what's not working.

Michael
Yeah.

Uriah
And so one of my favorite questions that I picked up at some point was especially my one on one is, is there anything that I'm doing or that I could stop doing that would make your job easier. I love that. Sometimes not always, but sometimes opens the door for them to be like, well, yeah, you know, there's this one thing that's great.

Michael
That's a great question. One question we'll get sometimes it'll be interesting that maybe some people resonate with this is you might be thinking, well, I ask for feedback all the time and I'm always asking these questions, but I never get anything back. What do I do? One of the things that we'll often coach clients on is that, yes, what you do is really important, but the how in which you do it is often the bigger driver of the outcome. Right. So it's kind of like what you just said. Uriah, like coming up with really interesting questions is one strategy. So it might be that you need to change your questions if you're not getting feedback, it might be you need to understand how you're communicating because this is a thing that we'll often focus on. Like there's various communication styles out there. Some of them are more interpersonal, some are more detail oriented, some are more results oriented. Some are more group focused oriented. So if you're communicating in a style that doesn't resonate with the group, it doesn't matter what kind of question you ask or how often you're asking it, you're going to get the same answer. And so it absolutely benefits leaders, in my opinion, to study various communication styles and to study their own and be able to be agile with it, depending on who's in front of them. And that I can promise will lead to better feedback in the long run.

Uriah
I like that. Yeah. In order for anybody on a team to give direct feedback, whether constructive, critical or otherwise, they have to feel safe enough to do so 100%, that's it. They have to feel like because with the productive therapist team specifically, we asked them so many times and we would get some feedback, but we would want more. And then situations would come up with the clients that we serve, which are the therapists. And we would go like when we're talking to our team, why didn't you tell us this was happening or why didn't you bring it up earlier? And that's been a challenge. One thing we did recently, though, is we actually created I don't know what you think about this, but we created an anonymous survey that exists on our website and people can submit it anytime that they want to just to tell us something. And then they can put their name on it if they want, but they don't have to. And there's no way we can see their name or their email address. We did that and we got actually a lot of really good feedback. Maybe people wouldn't have shared otherwise. So I don't know pros and cons of that.

Michael
Yeah, for sure. Now you're saying this is from the clinicians...?

Uriah
I'm talking about both my businesses on the productive therapist side.

Michael
Got it.

Uriah
Okay.

Michael
Got it. That can be cool. I always have mixed feelings about anonymous feedback, but depending on the scenario is certainly valuable in between, which is kind of interesting. That will help groups do is doing, like a mixed method where let's say there's a meeting amongst folks and let's say it's a team of 15. Right. And so we'd either coach the leaders on how to facilitate this or facilitate themselves, where you would pose some questions that are feedback oriented, separate people into groups of what, three, four, five? Allow them to not only share their individual answers to the questions, but collectively vote up the most important answers.

Uriah
Right.

Michael
And then we'll call it a sub team gets to share what strikes them the most about the answers that feel most important. And then, of course, in this example, let's say we got three teams. You then get to see what emerges thematically across those three sub teams of the entire group. And usually what we find is that people are more comfortable in that scenario because they're not highlighting their own feedback and they find common ground with one another. Right.

Uriah
That's fantastic. Yeah.

Michael
So that's kind of like an in between.

Uriah
I love that we just recently broke up all the virtual assistants into three smaller teams with direct managers. Okay. And that alone is helping a lot because we would gather and have our staff meetings with all 20 of us, basically. And that's just a harder place to speak up and share anything for some people, more so for some people than others. But I think it's helping to have smaller teams so that they can feel a little bit closer and more comfortable to kind of share. But that's super good. Okay. I got a question for you.

Michael
Okay.

Uriah
Back to what you were talking about, about the disengaged employee. Right. So I heard this. I don't know where I heard this. I don't even know what the source is, but I've heard that people don't quit jobs, they quit managers. Something to that effect. Do you know where that came from? And is it true?

Michael
Gosh, there are a lot of people that are in the.ORG development space as the grandparents of that work. So like, Peter Drucker is one that you may have heard of that may have come from him. That's an old, really solid quote.

Uriah
He's quippy.

Michael
Yeah. He's one that comes to mind. And there's a bunch of quotes from him in the.ORG development world that are really solid. So I believe it to be true. I can think of 1000 examples where that comes up, I guess with the caveat that sometimes people quit conditions, but those conditions are often created or influenced by the leader. Reminds me of have you ever read the book Drive by Daniel Pink?

Uriah
I have not read that one yet.

Michael
It's a good one. He talks about engagement and he's researched a lot of various different engagement models and kind of pared it down to these three aspects of engagement that are really important for flourishing conditions for any given person. And then it's that they have these three things. So one is mastery, which is the opportunity to continue to refine a skill set or an expertise autonomy, which is all about not that you'd work independently necessarily, but that you have choice sure is a big deal. And the last one is purpose, that you have meaning behind whatever you're doing, no matter what it is that you're doing.

Uriah
Right.

Michael
So we think that's a risk that all teams and organizations are subject to, which is there is less meaning or purpose behind some positions and more behind others. And in a perfect world, we're able to see the meaning and purpose behind all positions as it relates to the flourishing of that system.

Uriah
That's really helpful. I'm writing that down because I'm going to read that book, number one. And those sound like some pretty important keys to employee retention is what I'm thinking about.

Michael
The only reason I brought that up is because when we think about why people quit jobs, they might quit leaders, they might quit conditions. And those three are conditions that come to mind that people may walk away from if those conditions aren't matched.

Uriah
Sure. That makes sense.

Michael
I'll give you one more thing.

Uriah
Yeah.

Michael
One more thing that comes to mind. We offer this assessment. It's called the values assessment. It looks at these seven ways in which people get motivated by their work. And so it's things like independence. We talked a little bit about that. Things like aesthetic, which is the desire for work, life balance, or harmony in your environment, economic, which is the desire for return on investment. So things like time, money or energy. Another one is theoretical, which is the desire to learn or teach and a few others. But the point being is that we want to always have a match between what the tasks or role of a position is and the motivations of that particular individual. So I'll give you a concrete example. Sales positions are often very autonomous. Right. It requires a lot of self motivation, a lot of just discipline. So it's often that model within this values assessment, the independent is often really high. Right. So if you were to put someone in a sales position that also scored high on that independent marker in this values assessment, they might be really engaged. Right. If you put that person that scored really high on the independence into a position where they were just crunching numbers and had a lot of micromanagement, they'd have a really tough time. They would likely turn over as an employee with whatever time period. So it's a great predictor for longevity. When we think about how do we hire someone correctly that's going to be with us for long term, it's often about that match between role and task and what motivates that person?

Uriah
Definitely. I like that. Have you heard of something called Cloverleaf for me?

Michael
Is that a four part matrix with different colors? That it's like a profile and an assessment? Is that what it is?

Uriah
I don't think so. This is something that another VA business owner turned me on to. Their tagline is automated coaching for teams, revealing insights about your teammates and yourself to your email, calendar and messaging apps. I'll send you a link to this. Well, Cloverleaf me, I'm considering using this because you can have the leaders and the team members, whoever that is, take any number of assessments. So the disk is in there and the gram is in there and the Myers Briggs. So you can gather sort of all kinds of information about your team. And then it does some cool automated sort of things. You can get an email every day that tells you a tip and about your own style, your own leadership style.

Michael
Oh, yeah.

Uriah
And then also if I had a meeting with let's say I had a meeting set up with Jamie, one of my leaders, I guess it looks at your calendar and sees that. And then it will tell you, it will send you an email and say you're meeting with Jamie today. If you need to give her some constructive feedback, do it in this way because of her personality.

Michael
Yeah. There you go. That's cool.

Uriah
It's kind of neat.

Michael
I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Uriah
I'm looking into using that some more, potentially.

Michael
Yeah. It's wild, man. All of the innovations with technology combined with AI, I think that it's really going to change a lot of the ways in which we learn and connect with one another. I will say one of the things that brings to mind is have you ever heard of the book Flow?

Uriah
Another one I've heard of and not read. Yeah.

Michael
It's all about, like, flow state. Right. For those listening, flow state is all about that peak condition in which we get into where nothing else matters. Right. We lose track of time because we're so immersed in what we're doing. There's some interesting research about that that I think is not known as much. Which is there's one condition in which flow state is always the highest. Do you want to take a guess? Do you know what it is?

Uriah
One condition.

Michael
Yeah. So one circumstance condition in which flow state is always the highest. So you could think like, well, is it in sports? Is it in writing? Is it in something else?

Uriah
I'm going to guess, like manual labor.

Michael
Yeah. That's interesting.

Uriah
Washing windows. That's a good guy.

Michael
Yeah. I've definitely been in flow. I get in that state when I'm chopping wood.

Uriah
Yes.

Michael
I love it.

Uriah
That's your meditation!

Michael
That's right.

Uriah
What is it?

Michael
So it's conversations. Conversations. Right. So when we're connecting with someone else, that's the condition in which flow state is always the highest compared to all these other potential scenarios. Scenario is probably a better word for it. The reason I bring that up is because I think that when you look at the research on flow state that it often produces the most creativity, the most innovation, the most productive therapist. And if we know that conversation and connection is the thing that elicits flow state the most, I think that it makes a good case that even with all the tools and the innovations and the technologies that are emerging and will continue to emerge, I think that we'll always still be left with conversation and connection being one of our biggest tools that we have for creating the human element. Yeah, that's right.

Uriah
Hopefully your manager is never just a bot.

Michael
Yeah.

Uriah
That would be terrible. The bot would like, be programmed to be compassionate and direct, but then it would come in. I can see that going wrong.

Michael
Yeah, I think it's something like that will emerge.

Uriah
Probably it's going to happen. I think humans are still very important, obviously, in the mental health industry and world just as much as other ones, if not more totally, man. So I've got a wrap up question for you. If you're game.

Michael
Yeah, let's do it.

Uriah
And this is one I haven't given you ahead of time. Just share whatever comes to mind. There's no right or wrong answer, obviously.

Michael
Yeah.

Uriah
So what do you think wildly successful therapists/leaders share in common?

Michael
That's cool. Wildly successful. So, I mean, what is the wildly successful leader and the wildly successful therapist? What do they have in common? Is that right?

Uriah
I just threw leader in there. But what do wildly successful therapists share in common based on your knowledge and experience?

Michael
It's interesting because I actually believe there's kind of your question. I believe there to be a common thread amongst leaders, actually, and highly successful therapists. And I think I think it's the ability to be compassionate and hold really good boundaries at the same time, to be empathetic of other conditions. Well, maybe be equally as challenging to those that were around. And I think for any of us, therapist or non therapist, leader or whatever, but that's a really hard balance to strike. And it's something that certainly comes up all the time in the work that I do. Like, how do we meet someone exactly where they are and have total empathy for what they're doing and their decisions and their approach, while at the same time being very clear with what we will and will not, you know, where we draw the line and maybe, like, what are the consequences for that? That's where it gets, I think, a little bit more into leadership versus the therapist, of course. But certainly that's a solid answer. Yeah. There you go.

Uriah
I'm working on that.

Michael
It's hard, man.

Uriah
I had a win in that category, because when you talk about that, it makes me think about giving necessary feedback on performance, which has always been a challenge for me. And recently I had to give some feedback, and the conversation started and ended wonderfully. And I think we both myself and the team member did a really good job. But I had to say to her, I'm noticing a gap between what you've said you're going to do and what your intentions are and what you're actually doing.

Michael
Yeah.

Uriah
I was very specific, very clear about it. But I also came to that conversation with the intention of like, hey, I want you and I both to be successful in this. So there was compassion, but very direct guidelines. It works really wonderfully.

Michael
Yeah. Can I share one other thing?

Uriah
Of course.

Michael
It was just this thing I was thinking about. I was just thinking about the other day, and for some reason, it feels important. We talk to clients a lot about the importance of healthy conflict and that we know again from there's, one of these clear conditions for success is that the best teams, the best groups in the world, they don't have less conflict or no conflict. They have plenty of conflict, but they're really good at it. Right. Certainly you could make that same argument for a couple, for a family, for a friendship, right. And so I was asking myself this question of like, well, in my life, Where's the healthy conflict and of the relationships that I have with friends and my girlfriend and family and all that? What's the level of healthy conflict and how can I improve it even more? Right. And maybe even look for more relationships where there's not no conflict, but there's the ability to have it and to have it in a healthy way. And I don't know, I think part of that strikes me right now, just in the current global conditions that we're in, I think we could all benefit from more healthy conflict. And it being okay anyway.

Uriah
Being able to tolerate that and hang in there.

Michael
Yeah, exactly.

Uriah
Hopefully in a way that brings people together, that's the opposite.

Michael
And that's just it. That's just it. Right. It's like when we're able to do that, all it does is strengthen the relationship. And that's where the paradox is. Right. That's where the misconception might be. It's a big opportunity.

Uriah
I can't help but think about my two teenage daughters when you talk about healthy conflict.

Michael
Right on.

Uriah
That's given me lots of experience, I bet. Daily. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on and having this conversation. I just feel like I could ask you questions all day and you would bring wisdom to the table and books that I need to read and all the good, all the good stuff. So where can listeners go to find more about you and your services?

Michael
Sure. Yeah. They can go to ArcIntegrated.com. And if they want, they can go to ArcIntegrated.com/free, where we give away a bunch of goodies related to leadership and team performance and so if that's that's interesting check it out and yeah, man. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Uriah
Definitely. I'm looking forward to it as well. Take care.

Michael
You too. Bye.

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