Episode 130 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

The only way that someone’s going to grow is to go through challenge and make mistakes and learn from it. And we’ve got to keep creating that environment where we do guide and not just keep stepping in and rescuing. G’day everyone. Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade DEn. Good to have you back, Dan. How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:25):

Good to be back. Hello everyone. Yeah, today’s a really big episode. I’m excited for today. It’s a concept that we talk about a lot in coaching and get some really great results. So excited to share that with you listening today. The best way to describe what we’re talking about today through a simple sentence is the idea of be the lighthouse, not the tugboat. And this is two simple images, right? A tugboat, which is you think about a tugboat, it’s powerful, it’s relentless, it’s always there. Its job is to keep pulling. And then we’ve got the lighthouse, a lighthouse which is fixed. It’s visible, it stands tall, it shines bright. Ships navigate by it. It doesn’t chase things down. It’s not down in the water. It’s separate to that. So as we start this conversation, I want you to think that as the tugboat, which probably most people start out being, it serves really well.

(01:14):

When you’ve got, like you said at the top, Rob, inexperienced crew, young kids, you need to be down there. You’ve got to be active, you’ve got to be amongst it. But people around you grow and they’re not waiting to be saved. It feels like you’re going from helping to saving or rescuing all the time. And I think that’s the shift that when you start to feel that frustration in yourself and you sense it in other people, it’s probably time to start looking at that, right? Someone who stops pulling and starts to light the way. That’s really the metaphor in a nutshell.

Speaker 1 (01:43):

Yeah, that’s why I really love this conversation, which we’re going to be really talking about today, which is all really about leadership. And I think there’s this misconception in business that you can either have a great business or a great family life. But as I’ve gone through this journey called business and life, one big thing I’ve realised is the better you show up at home, the more it teaches you about business. The better you show up as a leader, the more it teaches you about how to show up better as a husband, as a father, as a dad. And I think this is the two angles that we’re going to talk about this today, isn’t it, Dan, where we’re really going to talk around how this concept around be the lighthouse, not the tugboat, really hits both of those angles around at home and in business and around how we can really show up, not just be a better businessman, but how do we show up as a better man and lead by example and lead in business and at home and really using these two concepts around business and life.

Speaker 2 (02:41):

Yeah. It comes out as well I think of that idea that everything we’re talking about, your business, your family, your kids, you care so deeply about that. And I think when people are inexperienced and you care and you want to step in and help, it’s genuinely required. It’s genuinely needed, but things change over time. And if you don’t change, you start to breed in some real problems in both areas. It becomes frustrating for everyone. And I think that’s probably the starting point is why does it stop working? And I think we’ve started there, but senior people develop their own judgement . They don’t need that hovering of you all the time. In fact, it stifles things and we’ve seen that go bad with clients before as well.

Speaker 1 (03:22):

Yeah, we have. We talk about it a lot when a trades business starts to hit between that one to $2 million mark, there’s a shift that’s got to happen. It’s no longer about being a great tradesman. It’s around turning a corner and becoming a great manager of a trades business and then to go on to eventually be a leader of great people who manage with inside of that business. And when it stops working is that when you fail to make that shift where you’re one of the boys down in the tools, in the crew, really pushing and pulling from within side of the crew, do this, do that, get this done, get that done. And as you said, you’ve got to do that when you’re trying to get a business up and out of the ground. But as you phase yourself off the tools and start building an operational structure around you, that management style does not work anymore.

(04:08):

It’s somewhat called micromanagement, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (04:11):

It is. And it becomes a sense of, I think everyone understands that term micromanaging and don’t do it. But for the crew, the other side of that, it’s compliance. It’s just comply with everything. It’s obey whatever says, whatever you say goes. All thinking, all decision making. We’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, but that sort of disappears. You lose that and it feels like nothing changes then. It’s always you. It’s back to me again. At what point are you guys going to step in? They’re not because you’re operating the wheel, you’re the tugboat pulling them along. So that’s sort of how it shows up in a work sense.

Speaker 1 (04:45):

Yeah. If you’ve got that feeling where it’s like, well, I’m building this team, but I’ve still got no time, that’s probably a pretty clear symptom of you still operating as a tugboat. You are the one that they keep coming back to. You’ve almost somewhat chopped them off at the knees to help them empower them to make their decisions. And this is where there’s two ends of the spectrum. There’s the micromanagement side of things and then there’s the hands off management side of things. And if you are finding that your crew keep phoning you with questions and looking for answers and decisions to be made and problems to solve, then that’s a clear symptom that you’re still being the tugboat all the time rather than leading to empower them to be able to make the right decisions at the right time.

Speaker 2 (05:32):

Yeah. And as you said, it’s not just a work thing. This is how you show up within yourself almost at all times in both your personal life and your business life. So at home and this is really stuck when you have kids, right? They start to move out a big little and they start to have opinions. They start to say things and they start to push back. And they’re no different in a sense to those people that are starting to feel like, I’ve got this. Let me have a go at it. Otherwise, why am I here? I’m just getting pulled along everywhere we go and no one likes that. But it happens a lot with kids as they start to move in that direction too.

Speaker 1 (06:11):

I’m probably starting to notice this a little bit with the age of my kids and I’m really keen to hear from what your perspective is. And that’s because within our kids, we’ve got seven, five and three. Ben’s almost three. And we’re really starting to see this with Grace right now. She’s our oldest and she’s seven. And we’re really starting to see this now where she’s starting to form her own opinion. She’s finding her voice. She’s really starting to push back and challenge. And so that’s probably where we’re starting to notice it at home for us when Grace is becoming of that age where she’s becoming that little bit more independent. She’s in school now. It’s like, hang on a second. She’s really becoming a young lady finding her own feet. But you’ve got older kids, so you’ll probably experience this a hell of a lot more around when the tugboat stops working on the family front as your kids get a little bit older.

(07:07):

So talk to us a little bit from your perspective of where you’ve seen this in your journey.

Speaker 2 (07:11):

Yeah, absolutely. We had the same thing. And my daughter was first, so she was the oldest and she was, I remember her being seven going on 15 at the same time. It starts early. But the way it shows up and I think you start to get them wanting to try things, you have them doing things not necessarily the way you do them. You can see the little stumbles and the trips and the cracks that are coming and the idea that you care so much, you want to jump in, you don’t want to see them suffer, you don’t want to see them hurt, but that’s just not a good way of letting them grow and develop, as you said, into young ladies, into young men. The problem that comes up though is what do you replace that with? Because you end up going too far hands off.

(07:54):

It’s really easy with kids. It’s like, all right, well, let’s let them make mistakes and just let them have at it and give them free reign and just see where they go with it. But that doesn’t help either because they will crash. So you’ve got to find that happy medium. And I think that’s where it becomes, well, if I’m not going to step into everything, I can’t just be completely hands off. But then you’ve got to look to yourself and how you show up because otherwise then you’ve got nothing else. The frustration just grows and grows and grows if you stay involved all the time and you get resentment and you get defiance, you get rebellion, you get all that sort of stuff because it’s like, I need to break these change. And your resistance to letting go is going to be meant with more resistance from the kids.

(08:34):

So you’ve got to find that role that you can play that still has the right outcome without cutting too much. It’s not like you can just say, off you go and do whatever you want, Grace, because there are real dangers, there are real things. There’s still things that she has to learn, but she also has to experience at the same time.

Speaker 1 (08:52):

And that’s why this is important that we’re trying to set up this conversation around in the earlier stages of having young kids is like we’ve got that. We’ve got young kids, we have to be directive. It’s like, do this, do that, get this done, get that done. Move here, move there, eat this and go brush your teeth. We’ve got to be directive. And on the business front, that’s what it’s like when you’ve got a smaller business and you’re directing tradesmen and apprentices. But as you’ve been talking about there as your kids have grown up and they’re young adults now, they’ve been through school, they’ve finished school and they’re starting to live their own lives. You can’t do that. And same thing within the operational structure of your business. The moment you start hiring CAs and admins and operations managers or project managers or site foremans and estimators, you can’t manage that person the same way that you manage a tradesman or apprentice because otherwise what happens is you stifle them, you create a ceiling above them and then you don’t give them the opportunity to use their own brain and think for themselves and make their own decisions.

(10:01):

And so this is where it correlates nicely between business and family because if you use the same approach with a 16 year old as you do with a… Sorry if you use the same aproach with a six year old as you do with a 16 year old or a 26 year old, then you’re going to stifle the growth of the 16 or 26 year old if you keep treating them like a six year old. Same thing in business. If you treat your operational team as you’re growing your business like you treat your junior staff, then you’re going to tie their hands behind their back and you’re going to wonder why do I have all these people in my business, but we’re actually not getting anywhere and why do I have no more time? So hopefully, Dan, we’ve been able to distinguish that, that there’s got to be a point in time in business and in life where your style has to change.

(10:56):

You had to be the tugboat for a certain period of time, but there’s got to be a point in time where you’ve got to become the lighthouse.

Speaker 2 (11:03):

Yeah, it does. And that idea of people leave in business. You know because they don’t put up with it. Good people, they get sick of that. They want to cut their own way. They’re more valuable than they’re being given credit for. They see more potential in themselves. There’s a break point where you have, if you’ve got high staff turnover, especially amongst the sort of senior people, guaranteed it’s almost that they’re feeling like they’re being stifled or restricted or they’re being led everywhere and they didn’t sign up for that. And chances are you don’t hire people for that either. It always amazes me when people hire people who’ve got the best person. They’re the best person for the job. And within three, four weeks it’s like, oh my God, there’s so much I’ve got to tell them. I’ve got to do everything with them. They’re not what I wanted.

(11:45):

They don’t do it the way I want. And all those sounds and stories and things that we hear are all symptoms that the leadership’s not in the right spot. You probably have got the right person. You just haven’t made that shift or you haven’t been able to start that journey of saying, well, I’ve got to step back a bit and let them grow into this role and guide them rather than try and pull them along every step of the way. As we’re talking, a good example of this pops up and it’s a recent example actually. I was having a conversation with March, one of our clients on a call and he’s had this experience. It shows up different for everyone, but March had, he’s got kids that are now, they’re older or growing up ones in his late teens. The other part of this is in his own business.

(12:33):

He’s gone from being the guy on the floor in his workshop and being the go – to person at all times. And he’s struggled with letting go, but more so just finding someone that he can start to put time into and create a space for them to step into leadership. And as he was talking, we started getting into this idea of being the lighthouse, not the tugboat. And you could see March almost going, “That’s a whole different gear from what I’ve experienced before.” And he actually brought it up and he said, “You know where this is really big with the kids at home. I could actually see how I’ve been the tugboat for too long and all the symptoms and all the things that have frustrated me, frustrated them, the things that tyre me out being the tugboat all the time.” He started to have that realisation and he switched and he’s like, “I could change gears completely here and this would change the trajectory at work and at home.” And so he’s starting that journey now to really shift it, but it doesn’t take long when you get that other perspective to go, “My frame of reference here can change and I can see how I need to show up.” It’s not just I’m either there or I’m not. So a really good example with him going through it at the moment.

Speaker 1 (13:41):

What was the cost of him showing up that way in the business front, do you think?

Speaker 2 (13:45):

In the business front, it’s been the inability to have the leadership on the floor that he wanted. He always wanted someone to be the service manager, someone that could take that on so that he didn’t have to be there all the time. So he wanted that, but he could never get it. And he couldn’t realise the fact is the fact that he was stepping in all the time and not creating that space was just repeating the pattern. He’d always have to step back in because that’s all he knew to do when anything ever happened that was slightly out of whack. And it felt weird just not being there at all. So he didn’t have that other option of being the lighthouse.

Speaker 1 (14:20):

What about at the home front? What were the frustrations which were the telltale signs for him where he knew that something had to change?

Speaker 2 (14:27):

I think he’s had the realisation that as the kids are a bit older, like I said, late teens and things like that and above, but he’s had that realisation that he can see the idea of really holding tightly onto them. I don’t want them to get hurt. I don’t want them to take too big a risk. And then he can see it play out as they’ve gotten older from that point in time of being the tugboat, you start to see that they don’t take opportunities. I was going to say risks or chances, but they don’t take the opportunities that are in front of them and they don’t see them because they’re too, “What should I do? ” They’ve never experienced making their own decisions. They’ve never been able to get comfortable with the responsibility of risk, if you like, in their own world. So for him, it was seeing that in reflection and then being able to tie that together.

(15:12):

So it wasn’t happening in the moment, but he got the foresight of like, “Well, that’s the history. What’s happened? I’ve been the tugboat for too long.” So I think then the bigger thing that comes out of this becomes, what does the lighthouse actually do? It’s easy to say and it’s like, well, the lighthouse just stands there and shines. And it sounds passive, but being the lighthouse isn’t passive at all. It’s a completely different active. And I think the idea you’ve got to focus on is that for the lighthouse to work, it has to do something. It has to shine a light. So I think if we explore this next piece of what the lighthouse does, let’s talk through the benefit of the lighthouse in a real sense. And for me, that starts, Rob, with things like clarity or consistency. There’s always a presence. It requires action on your behalf.

(15:58):

It’s just a different type of energy that you’re using.

Speaker 1 (16:02):

Yeah. On the business front, I think it really shows up in your leadership style. And one saying that’s really stuck with me for my journey in leadership is never underestimate the power of your presence. And not in an egotistical way, but it’s all around how you show up matters and the presence that you have, the way that you conduct yourself, the words that you use, the language that you use, the tonality that you have. You can say something in one way or say something in a completely different way. It’s the same way of saying it, but the tonality is completely different. And so in a business sense, it’s really the way that you show up, the vibe you have, the aura you’ve got. I don’t want to get too woo-woo, but it’s really your presence. And it’s the way that you speak, the way that you conduct yourself, the way that you dress, the way your shoulders back, chest out, tune up, strong, firm handshake.

(17:04):

It’s the conversations you’re having, the way you conduct yourself. It’s really your presence within the people around you to be able to go, “Hey, I’m here. I’m confident. I’m here to lead.” And it’s a completely different way of conducting and carrying yourself, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (17:20):

It’s for me, that presence, that idea, I love that too, that sort of thing. It’s so good to hold onto that and remember that every time you sort of step into rooms or meetings or whatever it is. But for me, over time, that becomes the standard and how consistent you are. That presence has to be, you can’t show up in one minute and then be gone the next and then show up again. That’d be like the lighthouse flickering on and off or somehow almost strobing through things. That’s a recipe for disaster. So especially when you’re under pressure, you can’t buckle. You still have to show up. You still have to remember your presence. Your presence is the light that people are going to navigate their way through. And if there’s no light there, they’re just going to make it up as they go. And that’s where the frustrations really build.

(18:01):

So I think when that starts to work, you’re looking at things like decisions are getting made. They’re good decisions. They’re consistent with the way that you’ve set that example. You’ve done it in the past, the way you are showing up. So you get better decisions, you get people stepping into that without you having to be in the room. And I think it’d be interesting to hear from you how you felt that as Pravar has grown even. It’s a big step and you’ve had to make that.

Speaker 1 (18:27):

Yeah, I have. I think when the business was smaller, it was still delegation, but it was more delegation at the task level. So it was like, can you get this done? Can you get that done? Here’s what needs to get done and by when. So it was still good delegation, but it was more at the task level. But as the business has grown and we’ve built management capability, it’s shifting that, especially at the operational level. It’s getting away from delegation and accountability at the task level to more empowering someone to do the job that they’re actually getting employed to do. Empowering them, giving them rope, giving them decision-making ability to be able to make good decisions within that role. And the delegation then moves from delegation at the task level to delegation at the decision-making level where it’s like, “Hey, here’s the outcome we’re chasing. Here’s the boundaries in terms of work we can operate in. This is what you can and can’t make decisions around.” And that’s the biggest shift that I’ve had to make in my leadership style because otherwise if I didn’t and Pravar would’ve been stifled many, many years ago because I would’ve been putting a glass ceiling over the heads of our operational team and I wouldn’t have been able to give them the autonomy to be able to do what they’ve been employed to do in the first place.

Speaker 2 (19:44):

Yeah. Great. I love it. And as a coaching business, it parallels nicely into parents and being at home because it’s a similar sort of feeling. There’s a lot of guidance that we give as coaches. There’s a lot of that. If you were holding onto that at all times, not only would it have stifled, I think the coaching would’ve been ineffective to a point because people would be more coaching and looking at you as they were talking to clients as opposed to dealing with the clients that they had. They couldn’t be present. They couldn’t be a reference point for the client. And I think this is where if we turn this into the home front, same thing with kids. You need to be able to go from being that really directive, here’s the answer before you even start, to the kids are going to start asking questions.

(20:28):

And I’m interested, Grace is probably asking a lot of questions and you start to hear this all the time like, “Here’s the question, here’s the question, here’s the question.” You’ve got to then step into that space and go, “Will I give the answer or do I let them figure it out for themselves?” And I think that’s a really big, that’s the jump in the home front. When you don’t answer every question, it starts to see parents that speak for their kids all the time and then it goes into they answer the kids’ questions all the time to they answer the question with another question to direct or guide the child instead of giving them the absolute answer every time.

Speaker 1 (21:03):

Yeah, it’s so true. I’m really mindful of this at the moment. And this is why this conversation is really topical for the journey that I’m going on at the moment. I know that it is for you as well. But for me, it’s really topical for us at the moment with Jacqui, my wife and I, with Grace in particular. As I said before, she’s becoming a real young lady and with Maddie and Ben, it’s directive. As you said, it’s got to be directive. They’re not old enough to be able to make sound decisions yet. But with Grace, I’m having to turn that corner instead of saying, “Here’s what we need to get done and say, well, what do you think we should do here? And why do you think we should do that? Or what’s your thoughts here?” And when she feels a certain way, it’s acknowledging how she feels and thanks for using your voice and thanks for speaking up around that.

(21:54):

So it’s shifting and I’m really going on this journey at the moment as a dad to be able to… Because I really want to see my kids grow and become leaders in their own right. They don’t have to become part of Pravar. I want them to go and chase their own dreams and do what they want and it doesn’t have to be Pravar. Pravar is my dream, not theirs. But I want them to be leaders in their own right. And for me to be able to do that as a dad is to really unlock their own potential and get them using their little brains for themselves rather than telling them what to think, telling them what to say, telling them what to do. And that’s the difference. Hopefully I’m painting a picture here. This is the difference between the lighthouse and the tugboat is the lighthouse is, it’s about shining bright and being the example and setting the standards and being wary of what I say and how I say things and the tonality I use and getting them to think for themselves rather than telling them what to think about.

(22:52):

So it’s a real contrast. And Dan, there’s a real contrast even between my kids at their own age at the moment, isn’t there?

Speaker 2 (22:58):

Oh, there is. There’s so is. You’re giving me flashbacks now. I remember the frustration of the same question getting asked over and over and over, knowing what the answer was and getting to that point where I was like, I remember being so conscious when my kids were about the age you’re talking about with Grace. And I had to remind myself, don’t ever knock them for asking the question. That was the starting point because they’re learning and they’re going through this and it’s so hard when you know the answer. It’s not a big deal. You could jump in and give it, but you have to… I remember having that so vivid, that thought of just, yes, it’s frustrating, but let them keep asking because that’s them finding their own way. And then being the lighthouse then goes into, I’m not going to give you the answer.

(23:41):

I’m going to shine this brightly and ask a better question than what you are asking for you to go and think about that. And it’s like the answer’s out there somewhere. I’m shining it out there. You’ve got to go and find the answer, but the torch is very much that’s the light in which you’re going to find it. That’s the pathway you need to sort of go on without being directive as in go over there, take three steps left, end up as you said with grace, end up being in Pravar as a Pravar. That would never work. It just doesn’t happen. I think as it played out with my kids, it’s really interesting now that both of them are in occupations where they serve others. They love to coach in their own right, but it’s weird. I’ve never told them to be coaches. My son is adamant that he’d never want to do what I do, but yet he’s a strength and conditioning coach.

(24:26):

He’s coaching athletes and doing his own thing. It’s weird how that beam of light has sort of still had an impact in a direction where they are in what they love doing. It’s so good to see.

Speaker 1 (24:39):

Yeah. And this is the hard part about making this shift. I struggle with this in my own leadership because sometimes in business it’s just easier to give the answer. It just is easier because you want a job done and it’s just like, bang, get this done. There’s the answer, off you go. But the downside of that is you create dependent team members who don’t think for themselves. And same thing on the home front. It’s hard being a dad. And it’s hard being a dad when you’re running a business and you’re tired and worn out and you can see what needs to get done. And it’s just like, boom, here’s the answer, off you go kind of thing. It’s easier to be the tugboat than it is to be the lighthouse. And that’s the hard part about this. But it’s about recognising that the longer you stay the tugboat, the more the problems just keep manifesting themselves and you never unlock the potential in your team.

(25:42):

You never unlock the potential in your business and you never unlock the potential in your kids if you don’t make that shift.

Speaker 2 (25:49):

Yeah. I think what you said there about it’s easier to be the tugboat. It can be. I’d sort of push back a little bit, but what I do know is that no one ever signs up to be a tugboat forever and eventually it wears really thin. And I think that’s the problem with it. I mean, it works to a point, it gets you to a certain point, but no one wants to do that forever because it just grinds you down. Tugboats don’t last forever. Lighthouses have been around for those. You know what I mean? There’s that. You can see it straight away. And I think it’s probably how do we go from, how do we start to make this shift? How do we really go, “All right, I get it. This amazing. How do I even do that? What do I do? ” And I think it comes down to two principles and they’re really easy to say, but they’re hard to do consistently, but they will straighten you up and they will put you in that frame of being the lighthouse versus the tugboat.

(26:40):

And the first one, we talk about this all the time, Rob, is ask, don’t tell. And just explain sort of quickly what we mean by ask, don’t tell as the guiding principle for this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:50):

As you said, it’s easier said than done, but I think it’s the ability to be able to ask what they think rather than tell them what to do. And especially in a leadership front end business, if your team are constantly coming to you, it’s your ability to be able to have an open door policy where you encourage them to be able to share wins or share flags or roadblocks in terms of issues that are coming up on jobs or problems or whatever it is. But you want to be able to somewhat retrain your team to not just come to you with problems. It’s going, “Well, what do you think we should do here? How do you think we should tackle this situation? Or where have we seen this in the past with another job and how do we approach it then?” So really your role shifts into that leadership role or the coach role, I suppose, in your own business to not just sit there and go, “Well, what do you think we should do today?” Kind of thing.

(27:46):

It’s not being like that. It’s your ability to go, “Well, how do you reckon, Dan, we should tackle this? And what do you think we should do? Or what ideas do you have? Or how do you reckon we could do this? ” And then you can open the dialogue for a conversation. And really in the end of the day, what you’re doing is training your team to think and use their own brain and come up with their own ideas and become a little bit more strategic. So to me, that’s what ask, don’t tell means to me is you’re not just giving them the answer because that’s what keeps fueling the dependency relationship. It’s really taking a step back, asking them the question and opening the dialogue for a good conversation around it.

Speaker 2 (28:23):

Yeah. It’s a game changer when you start to remember that. The hard part is remembering it in the moment when they’re coming to you. And especially if you’ve got a dependent crew or a young kid who’s just learning and asking all those questions like we spoke about, you really have to have your wits about you to go, remember to ask, don’t tell in the first instance. So really important. The second one that we like to talk to is guide and don’t rescue. And I think the emphasis here isn’t on… It’s on the second part, don’t rescue. And I think that’s the big thing you’ve got to let go of because it feels so good and you get your sense of significance and it strokes our ego when we step in and we solve problems for people. And we’re the man, we got that done. We get to put our superhero cape on, but you’ve sort of got to get used to leaving the superhero cape in the cupboard and just guiding people because they’ll get there eventually, but you have to allow them to struggle with their own thing.

(29:15):

That’s how they get stronger. You get stronger by picking up weights, not by just staring at them or having someone else lift them for you.

Speaker 1 (29:22):

Yeah. And this is hard as a parent because no one wants to see their kids get hurt and you can almost see that there’s going to be a train wreck before it actually happens. And same with in business. No one wants to lose money on a job or no one wants your team to make a mistake and it costs money or costs reputation or whatever it is. But sometimes you’ve got to allow that. Sometimes you’ve got to give the space for people to make mistakes because really the only way that someone’s going to grow is to go through challenge and make mistakes and learn from it. And I think this is the biggest learning as leaders and parents that we all need to learn, me included, is we’ve got to keep creating that environment where we do guide and not just keep stepping in and rescuing.

(30:03):

It’s again, easier said than done, but the more you practise it, probably the better you get at it.

Speaker 2 (30:08):

Yeah. And we haven’t talked about it a lot, but I think the other thing you get out of this, if you can really guide and not rescue, is that you get people to tap into courage. They’ve got to summon the courage from somewhere. And if there’s not an answer that reduces or eliminates the need for them to have courage in that moment and you can step back, then you can stay present. You can shine, you can do what you do without stepping in. But it’s going to take them to have a little bit of courage and we need that. Kids need to develop courage. Even people on your staff have to develop the courage. Yo develop courage when you do this, it takes courage because you don’t know what’s going to happen. So you can still have the guide rails, the beams shining in the direction you want like we’ve talked about today, but you can’t chase it down all the time.

(30:52):

You can shine from a distance, that’s fine. And I think for kids and for staff that are learning and doing this for the first time, their ability to get back to home base knowing I’ve got what I need to have a crack at this and I know I can come back if I need to, but you’ve just got to stay lit, you’ve got to stay present, you’ve got to really watch that, but you don’t get to just turn off and do nothing. There’s still an active role you can play.

Speaker 1 (31:18):

What a great episode today. I know in Pravar, we’ve got a lot of sayings that we have like leave your boots at the door, which is one of them. And this is another one around be the lighthouse, not the tugboat. We’ve got plenty of catchphrases and plenty of sayings because that’s just part of our language. It’s part of our culture. It’s part of who we are and what we do and what we stand for. And we’ve got heaps of them. We’ve got so many of them that we just… Don’t fuck the goose is another one, which is another one of my favourites.

Speaker 2 (31:48):

That’s an episode we’ve got to do.

Speaker 1 (31:49):

That’ll be fun. It is. We’ve got all these little sayings that we use at Pravar and be the lighthouse, not the tugboat is one of our favourite sayings. It stands true not only in business, but in life as well. And so hopefully you’ve really enjoyed today’s episode. And if you’re recognising that you’re in that position where it’s like, you know what? I’m getting frustrated. I’m frustrated in terms of the way that I’m showing up as a dad. I’m frustrated the way that I’m showing up at home. I’m frustrated with how I’m showing up and the results that I’m getting in business, then maybe there’s a shift that you’ve got to make. Maybe it’s not them, maybe it’s you. And the sooner you realise that, probably the better. And if you’re in that position where you’re ready to make change and you’re committing to turning a corner and wanting to do something different, then jump across to strategysession.com.au. Book in a time that suits you and let’s have a conversation. Let’s talk a bit about where you’re at, where you’re trying to go and how we can help you become more of a lighthouse in your world. What a great episode, Dan. It’s been a cracker, hasn’t it?

Speaker 2 (32:51):

Yeah, it has. Really enjoyed it. And those catchphrases, like you say, they’re easy to say, they’re easy to remember, and that’s for a reason, but there’s a real depth and a power to them. So hopefully understanding Lighthouse and Tugboat today has given you a bit more depth and a bit more appreciation and hopefully put a bit more urgency in you for you to reach out and get in touch.

Speaker 1 (33:09):

Thanks for tuning in today. Looking forward to coming back to you soon with another episode here on The Trade Den. Until then, take care.

Speaker 2 (33:15):

See you soon.