Episode 35 | Tackling Some of the Unique Challenges of Entrepreneur Leaders with Tom Sharp

Tom Sharp  00:00

They were kind of kicking and screaming in the beginning because, as you say, you change the parameters, you change the context, and then you have to adapt. But I am a firm believer in changing the boundaries, changing the context, instead of applying willpower all the time and discipline. That’s tiring.

Voiceover  00:23

Welcome to the “Lead at the Top of Your Game” podcast, where we equip you to more effectively lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. Each week, we help you sharpen your leadership acumen by cracking open the playbooks of dynamic leaders who are doing big things in their professional endeavors. And now, your host, leadership tactics, and organizational development expert, Karan Ferrell-Rhodes.

Karan Rhodes  00:59

Hey there superstars This is Karan and welcome to today’s episode. Now, for my founders and entrepreneurial CEOs out there, you intimately know how challenging it is to lead your business. There’s never enough hours in the day. And you’re dealing with everything from high stakes clients to managing people issues, you know to fix in the office printer, everything is on your shoulders to tackle. But to help give us some insights. Today, we have Tom Sharp, who is a renowned leadership expert for entrepreneurs, and is the founder and CEO of BuildCoolThings. Tom coaches entrepreneurs on how to better lead themselves, as well as showing up as a better leader in their business. Now, be sure to stay tuned for just two minutes after this episode, to listen to my closing segment called “Karan’s take,” where I share a tip on how to use insights from today’s episode to further sharpen your leadership acumen. And now, enjoy the show. Hey there, superstars, this is Karen. And thanks again for joining another episode of the Lead at the Top of Your Game podcast. So for my entrepreneur leaders out there, boy, do we have a treat for you. I am so happy to have with us, an expert on Leadership for entrepreneurs. And he talks about all aspects of being a great leader of your business. And pleased to bring to the mic Mr. Tom Sharpe, who is the founder and CEO of a company called BuildCoolThings. And he’s gonna share a lot of insights with us today on how to be a stronger leader, especially if you’re entrepreneur. So welcome to the podcast Tom.

Tom Sharp  03:02

Thanks, Karen. Thanks for having me. And I’m so looking forward to your cooperation already.

Karan Rhodes  03:08

Oh, we’re so looking forward to hearing some of the great insights that you have. But to get us started, Tom for you know, as much as you feel comfortable. Would you mind sharing a bit about your personal background so we can get some insights of the superstar behind this person? This guest on our episode today.

Tom Sharp  03:26

Sure. I’m a pretty crazy guy. I’m pretty tall as well. I was six, six. And everybody always asked me if I play basketball and then I have to answer that I play chess. But I’m, I don’t know. For people who know the Colby system by Kathy Colby, I’m a 10 Quickstart which means that I’m like always pioneering always interested in new things don’t have any stamina to finish, like the boring, drudgery work. I just want to run to a new project in another window no matter what. And I have all these great ideas, at least my own brain tells me that they are great. And so I struggled to through school. I really struggled through school and through university and I founded my first company where we try to sold and sell computers. That’s like the we’re talking Euro we’re talking the first IBM clones type of computers like a long time ago, I was into software building, I really enjoy developing software. And this business went nowhere like absolutely nowhere. I did it together with a friend. And I learned it and made no money though. And we didn’t lose a lot of money. Let’s that’s the upside probably.

Karan Rhodes  04:44

Well, that’s good.

Tom Sharp  04:46

That’s good, right?

Karan Rhodes  04:46

It’s rare for entrepreneurs. A little bit that’s true.

Tom Sharp  04:50

That’s true. But I learned a lot about from that whole experience and then later I started another company in that area in the latter one and So that’s where we end up now.

Karan Rhodes  05:02

Wow. And if our listeners listen closely, they might catch a slight accent. Can you share with us? Where you were originally grew up or or settled and and where you are now?

Tom Sharp  05:16

Yeah, I’m in Costa Rica now living in Costa Rica, traveling through the Americas, I love America. I’ve been to the state so many times, and but I grew up in a very tiny village somewhere to the east of New York, like the other side of the ocean. And so English, English is not my native language. But I find that most people around the world can understand my English better than they can understand my Dutch. So

Karan Rhodes  05:45

Well, I understand you well. So I think our listeners will as well. You speak english very well.

Tom Sharp  05:51

Thank you. And so for me, it’s an interesting time because at home, I have this reputation of being a leadership author, I wrote a best seller on delegating. Being a coach, a high end coach for entrepreneurs. And I’ve learned so much from all my worldwide with especially from my northern your American friends, like Barry, guys like Barry Marshall, Dan Sullivan, I cannot even name all of them. There’s like a whole list of people that I learned a ton from. And but now I’m trying to figure out how can I share my ideas, my insights, my tips, tricks, and tools and suggestions with a global audience. And so that’s what I’m doing right now.

Karan Rhodes  06:37

Oh, that is amazing. Well, we thank you so much for you know, the gift of your time on our podcast, because you’re right in our target market. So let’s pull that the layer of the onion a little bit. Because having read a lot about you, I know you have a lot of information to offer to individuals, and you say you’re a leadership expert for entrepreneurs, but almost all leaders can leverage some of the tips that you give. And that’s what this show is all about is giving actionable tools and insights to about leadership to our audience. So the first thing I’ve got to ask you, is to share all your concept about binary messages, because I need to learn from that personally. Can you start there for us?

Tom Sharp  07:22

For me, the story is that I was sitting in my office looking at my computer screen at my Outlook. And I was so frustrated. I don’t know if I was angry, but I was frustrated and maybe even a little in despair because I spent so much time on handling my email, which is weird, because I was the resident GTD expert, getting things done expert, a great methodology by David Allen that I still use. I wrote the book on how to process your email in half the time I implemented my own advice or how you can say that, like I drink my own champagne, and still, I was frustrated with how many emails I had to process. So I figured out that every day, I received, like around 150 emails, one five oh, from my own team members. And I love helping people. And I feel that if they send me this email, like, “Hey, Tom, we have this problem, what? How should I fix it?” I have all this advice. And I have all this experience. And I love sharing it. And I love helping people. So I was typing paragraph and another paragraph and another paragraph to explain my thinking and help my team members, while of course, in hindsight, I was just frustrating their growth. But I realized like, I cannot do this typing anymore. So I send them an email my whole team like you cannot email me again, ever. No emails, except for when it is a binary email, and you send me a message like, Hey, Tom, we’ve got this problem. I did some research. I think these are three possible solutions. My advice is to go for solution, B, because XYZ and then the interesting question comes at the end, is that okay, question mark. And now I could hit all our for reply, typing y-e-s Ctrl, enter to send it off. Instead of typing all this text. I was so dumb at the time, I didn’t realize that instead of just optimizing my typing flow. I was actually training my team to become much more probing problem solving oriented, much more proactive, grow in their own responsibility, their own authority, their own professionalism. I changed my entire team by this simple introduction of binary emails and of course at the time we were using email a lot. Now you have If slack and WhatsApp and what have you like so, but the principle is the same, we just call them binary messages now, or I also use the same principle in binary meetings that when I have a meeting with one of my team members, they are not allowed to bring up any problem. I always want the proposal so I can say yes or no. So just to be clear for our audience, binary messages are a forcing function for the person who’s communicating with you to phrase things where you can answer yes or no, yes, versus a full book that you’d have to type to explain. And if they needed more context or needed conversation, what would they do?  So they reached out to me two years later, I was I was tired of answering years, no emails, and I told them, I don’t want any more emails from you, not even binary emails. If you have anything that’s practical, logistical, project management kind of stuff, you can come to my office on Monday morning, you ask Eve, my operation manager, what’s your time slot, we didn’t have Calendly at the time, and those who meetings either, and you get 20 minutes, I take a kitchen timer, a literal device, kitchen timer, I set it to 20 minutes, put it on the table between us…”tick tick tick tick tick tick…” So and you have 20 minutes to ask me any question to give me any binary proposal that you have. Maybe if I was away for a couple of weeks, you could get a small extension. Maybe after your 20 minutes, I had some stuff to discuss with you as well, like, like we could be a little flexible with not too much. Every once in a while one of these people walked into my office with a single espresso. So that meant that they really needed something from me. And for me, that meant that on Monday, at lunchtime, I had all the logistical, practical administrative stuff was taken care of. So it was a forcing function for me to figure out ways to make my team responsible, instead of taking all the responsibility on me all the time.

Karan Rhodes  12:24

you know, that is so insightful, Tom, because what I’ve learned in research, because I’m a psychologist by education, and the research on leadership, that humans adapt pretty quickly. And if you give them the parameters in which to adapt, they will find a way to make it work for them as well. And while some may think, “Oh, Tom’s being a little harsh, you know, what he’s mandating.” If he if you, I’m sure you explain to your team, you know why you’re doing this and how this is gonna help us and let’s try it first. You know, I’m sure they found a way to work within that right.

Tom Sharp  13:08

Yeah, they I mean,

Karan Rhodes  13:10

Without being mad at you, anyway.

Tom Sharp  13:12

Yeah. I mean, those are great suggestions, Karen, then that shows that you study psychology where I have not because I realized in hindsight, and I’m now telling my clients, you might want to introduce it as an experiment. We’d like to said that, why not? And we will evaluate it. I mean, that makes total sense. So I’ve been trained in diplomacy for six months, and that will always be a learned skill for me. I love working with my team. I really respect these people. I am just not so diplomatic in my approach. And that’s one of my pitfalls. So no, I did not explain all of this to them. I just told them, we’re, this is how we’re going to do it.

Karan Rhodes  13:51

This is how we’re going to do it.

Tom Sharp  13:53

Yea. I’m sorry to say that. But it worked. But they were kind of kicking and screaming in the beginning because, as you say, you change the parameters, you change the context. And then you have to adapt. But I am a firm believer in changing the boundaries, changing the context instead of applying willpower old time and discipline. That’s tiring.

Karan Rhodes  14:19

Yeah, it is. You’re definitely right. So because you’ve worked with so many leaders, Tom, what are some of the top things that you see entrepreneurial leaders struggle with?

Tom Sharp  14:33

How they’re so many, and part of that is because leadership is so complicated. So maybe it starts there, where I’ve worked with a ton of leaders from Europe, but also from the US and every time I ask people like, when you started to lead a professional team, did you get, how did you prepare yourself? What kind of training did you get? What kind of coaching did you get? And, like I did the research and 94%, or 94% of the professional leaders in my home country, they had never had any serious leadership training when they started to lead. I’m not just talking entrepreneurs, I’m also talking managers and directors and like a huge corporations, we just start like people throws into the deep, or we do it ourselves, we throw ourselves in the deep end, which works great if you’re a 10 Quickstart, like me, but you make all the mistakes really learn from like, the huge experience that the world has in leading people. So the problem then becomes you read a book about one aspect of leadership and you start to think like, “Ah, this is true, this feels so good. We need to do this,” while ignoring the rest of it.

Karan Rhodes  15:48

Everything else, right? Yes, you’re so right.

Tom Sharp  15:52

So I feel that we are struggling with so many things that should be relatively easy. Like we’re struggling with motivating our employees, it’s so easy we struggling with hiring the right people for their job, that’s pretty easy. We start we struggle with finding people that enjoy doing the work that we ourselves hate doing. It’s relatively easy. And we struggle with communication with struggle with boundaries, we struggle with the level of quality that our team provides. And all these issues can be fixed. But we have to take the work of a leader seriously.

Karan Rhodes  16:30

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And look at all multiple aspects at the same time. I don’t think you can concentrate on one sliver of leadership, and hope to have the type of impact on you and your team that you you know, really want, you know, but that’s just me anyway.

Tom Sharp  16:50

No, no, no, I think you’re totally right, because it is about the entire existence of being humans together. And like, if you have no strategy, you can be a great leader right? On the level where your responsibility is. But if you have no diplomacy, it’s going to be hard to see, well, that’s why I had to learn it. But if you have no idea on how to evaluate team members, as well, if you are working all the time, like all the thing, it’s like a holistic puzzle, 1000 piece puzzle. And if one piece is not there, that’s not the may not be a huge problem. But if you’re starting to miss ten, or 50 or 100, now we’re in trouble.

Karan Rhodes  17:33

We’re in big trouble. And really quick. Where are you? You know, I find that a lot of leaders struggle with finding great talent, right, and building their teams and what have you and I know you have a interesting perspective on that. So can you share a little bit about how you advise your clients to find and retain great talent and also have the courage to delegate to them as well?

Tom Sharp  18:02

There are 15 questions in once. I feel that it’s a marketing challenge, basically. So the first thing that the entrepreneurs that we work with, there’s a couple of things we do with them, like figure out who are you. Because every individual is unique, right? Every entrepreneur is unique, I cannot give you any advice until I get to know you, then we need to figure out what’s the current root cause of most of the problems in your business. So we create a list of all the problems then we map them out in a scheme. And we try to figure out to pinpoint the bottlenecks or the root causes, and then we focus our attention on solving those issues instead of trying to solve 1000 problems at the same time. Oftentimes, it turns out that your team is one of the underlying problems

Karan Rhodes  18:50

It always is! It always is on the list, I’ve found.

Tom Sharp  18:53

So the next step would probably be to create an or a dream org chart, which is my term for an organizational chart, two years into the future. So we disconnected into our minds from the current situation. We don’t take into account anybody who’s working for us right now. If we can dream up the ideal organizational chart in two years into the future, or five years, if you’re slow. Then we can map out what kind of roles do we have? Which departments do we have? Which roles do we have in each department? And then you can figure out what kind of people do I need there? So let’s say you have one of your departments is marketing, sales and PR. Makes sense right for most businesses. And then you probably need somebody in your team there who is a superstar sales person. And now that we know the role and we need, you may also make a different decision to say instead of one superstar, I’d rather have three like good sales persons. Fine with me might be more intelligent, depending on your situation. But now you have defined the role. And you create a scorecard for the role. I’m looking for this kind of person. What we now know is we know about us, we know about the company, we know about the mission of the company, we know about the role, we know about the kind of person that we’re looking for. So that’s we write it up, we say, “Hey, we are Acme Company, we are great at this and that of that, and we are looking for a superstar salesperson. And we need this and this, and this from you, and these many hours a week, and you need to have these qualifications. And in return, we will pay you a base salary and these bonuses apply here.” Nobody cares, you’re right. You’re looking for a superstar salesperson. Or we are looking for somebody who’s really great at running an office or somebody who is fantastic at tech support. Who cares? These people, if they are really good at what they’re doing, they already have a job, they have a great salary, they have respect in their profession, and in their business, where they are working, or the organization where they’re working, they are not looking for a job because they are really great. And two or 3% of them may be looking for a job for what kind of reason but like there’s 97% of them, that are you’re not going to get their attention. So my suggestion would be to now turn it inside out upside down, and start thinking about them. Who is your ideal candidate? What kind of a person is that? And how could you kind of grab their attention? How could you motivate their desire to change jobs, which is a pretty big deal, right for most people.

Karan Rhodes  21:59

It’s huge.

Tom Sharp  22:00

So you need to have a pretty huge desire to change jobs, or even considered that, how can you earn their trust? How can you help them be motivated to even check out the job the offering that you have. And so now we’re in the realm of marketing, where instead of trying to help your new clients that you can really help and make really happy how you can convince them to check out what you’re offering them. Now you’re looking doing marketing for new hires. So I have a client from Belgium, she was running a software company, she she grew 5,000% in three years. That’s like times 50. She was looking for specific kinds of software developers, compiler, programmers, these people all want all of them want to work for Apple and for Google, because they are like, hugely, insanely intelligent nerds that are very, very specialized. And she needed them for her company. She told me told him, I don’t know where to find these people. So we helped her to turn this inside, out upside down, starts thinking through the eyes, or the experience of the compiler, programmer. And three months later, she sold her program, she had her compiler programmer. And a year later, she told me “Tom, I have so many job applicants, I don’t know what to do with them.” And nothing changed about the company, nothing changed about the job. It was just putting yourself into the shoes of your new new hire. How can you improve her?

Karan Rhodes  23:44

But how did she reach out to them? Where does she go? Did she go to like meet up? So, I mean, how did she even reach them? If they weren’t in the job market?

Tom Sharp  23:53

I think for a lot of compiler programmers, or you start looking where is their attention already?

Karan Rhodes  23:59

Right.

Tom Sharp  24:00

So there is another company and they build hardware for building hardware and basically, like so they have the hugely complex machines. The factories used to create like your Intel chips, for instance. And this company was looking for a specific type of person. And there’s only two universities in the world where they train these people. So one of them was close by. No problem. Everybody knew this company ASML. The other one was, I guess, in Korea. Nobody there who studied this on this faculty had heard about this company, but they wanted to hire these people. So the first question is, where is the attention of these people? So they started to put up ads in the subway that went, that went back and forth at the university campus.

Karan Rhodes  25:00

So you go where they are

Tom Sharp  25:01

Exactly, because that’s where their attention is, gotcha, you come up with entirely different solutions, because these people are not looking for a job. So you need to get their attention.

Karan Rhodes  25:12

You know, that brings up a great point about what we had discussed earlier in our pre interview you had shared with, I guess my listeners know, I always ask the guests, you know, which of the, you know, seven behaviors or tactics that I wrote in my book, really resonated with you. And you mentioned strategic decision making. And based on our conversation thus far, I can see why because it seems like making the good and right decisions will make or break you as a leader and can make or break your business. But I don’t want to put words in your mouth because you know, I’m chatting. But tell me why it resonated with you, strategic decision making?

Tom Sharp  25:51

Yeah, that’s exactly yeah. So I feel that. As a leader, I think the definition of leader is you help people do work together. And one of the things you need to do is to be able to make decisions on different levels of impact, right? So if we are setting up a booth somewhere, because we go to a conference, and we want to help people find our offering, then we need to figure out that the booth looks great, right? That’s, are we going to go for a wide and a white tablecloth? Or are we going to bring a blue or pink or red one, that’s a decision. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the strategic decisions. And I feel that many entrepreneurs abdicate their responsibility for making these strategic decisions. They just don’t consciously make them, they happen. Because they don’t have the time, which is one of my favorite subjects, how to free up time for thinking, they don’t have the time to properly do the thinking. And also, they may not have the skills or the training to really think through the strategic issues?

Karan Rhodes  27:07

No, I think you’re spot on you’re spot on time. And so in your practice, will you share with the audience a little bit about because I want folks to know exactly kind of what you do to kind of to help your client so that they know, you know, to reach out to you if they’re facing similar challenges. So what is your practice focus on? What do you do for your clients,

Tom Sharp  27:29

Yea, we currently have a program, it’s called a re-factor. In the world of software, there is the concept of re-factoring where you don’t throw away the old software and you start building everything new. But instead of doing that you take the old software, you try to pinpoint where are the biggest problems located? Where are the real serious bugs? Let’s optimize that part, we will re-factor this part of the software. And my thinking is, why don’t we do that with businesses as well?

Karan Rhodes  28:01

Great point!

Tom Sharp  28:02

Because for you, and for me, anytime anybody runs a business, you can see 1000 problems, right? Everything can always be improved or optimized. But let’s figure out like, where is the where are the bugs, and let’s re-factor that part of your business and do that with small experiments. So what we do is we we help entrepreneurs with like maybe five to 50 people working for them, because that’s where they are very involved in the business themselves. Instead of being the CEO of like a much bigger corporation, I enjoy working with people that are still in the thick of things. And we help them figure out who they are, we help them figure out where the underlying root causes are. We have a whole system for doing that. It’s that’s pretty hard thinking work if you have to do it by yourself, it becomes really easy if we help you to do that. And then we create the solutions together for fixing the underlying problems. And because we have a whole toolbox of interventions and scenarios and mini experiments, we can speed up the process. So basically, we help entrepreneurs free up four to eight hours a week, in within three months, or maybe six months, depending on their situation.

Karan Rhodes  29:21

Wow, amazing. Well, listeners, if you need that kind of support, which I think I might have time on speed dial after this. His here’s he and his team can really help. But before I let you go, Tom, you got to tell me why I need two cell phones. Why do you entrepreneurs, why do you suggest and they should have at least two or three mobile devices.

Tom Sharp  29:46

So let me show this to you. This is my cell phone. I’ve used this for many, many years, and I love cell phones and I love texting and WhatsApp and what have you like, I enjoy social media as well. But then I’m pretty creative. So when I want to unplug from my business, I want to spend time with my wife, my children, my family, my friends, I want to go skiing or whatever I basically, I really want to relax and recharge. And it’s Monday, or it’s Saturday morning, and you look at your phone, because you want to check the weather. And you see a preview of a WhatsApp message from one of your clients about a problem. And suddenly your weekend is ruined, right? Because

Karan Rhodes  30:35

Yeah, can you dive in deep into that? Yeah,

Tom Sharp  30:38

My brain is not letting go of the problem, because it’s constantly problem solving. So this is what I did was a tip from Elko DeBiewer. He said, You need to buy another phone. That’s what I did. This is my family phone. Everybody had the number of the old phone, I shared the number of the new phone just with family and friends. And with one person in my on my team. So I come home, this one goes into the save some of my clients that I tell them to to buy a business phone, they hand it into their spouse or their partner to lock it away for them for the weekend. I don’t need that. I just switch it off, put it away. And then in the weekend or at night, I only use my family phone.

Karan Rhodes  31:24

Ah, super smart. Talk about creating boundaries. That is…

Tom Sharp  31:28

Exactly that’s like changing the boundaries for yourself. Yeah, there was one problem with this phone though, Karen, it has tick tock Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. So it kept grabbing my attention. Which is why I bought another one an old iPhone SE. And slow. This can do pretty much nothing but I can take notes. I can read a book, if I’m patient enough, I can use Google Maps, I can use Spotify, this one is in my pocket all the time.

Karan Rhodes  32:05

Interesting

Tom Sharp  32:06

This one that is trying to suck me into the deep hole of tick tock, which I enjoyed doing every once in a while I feel that it gives me value. This one is in my backpack, I need to actually reach for it. And it’s not there when I’m standing in line in the supermarket. And I feel bored because I need to wait 20 seconds. Right then I don’t grab this all the time, 50 times per day. And the business phone is off right now because we’re in this conversation. And I find that this really helps me to avoid staying alive by willpower and energy alone.

Karan Rhodes  32:47

Okay, Tom, you are my hero. So I am going to try I won’t say I’m gonna get three phones. But I’m gonna try that second phone idea because I am locked into my phone 24/7. So that is a great suggestion.

Tom Sharp  33:03

I feel so frustrated. I’ve had this discussion with clients of mine. I’ve been telling them for half a year, like many, in different conversations, like explaining to them you cannot live with just one phone, you need another one. And they keep postponing they’re struggling against it and giving me arguments why they won’t. And then half a year later they try it out and it takes them a month or so to get used to it. Yes. This is the greatest thing ever Tom. Yes, of course. That’s why I told you.

Karan Rhodes  33:37

That is fantastic advice. Well, thank you so much, Tom, for coming to the podcast. We have quite a few notes have been taking notes. While we’ve been talking. Some great, interesting ideas for our audience members to start with. But there is a ton more information, especially on your blog on your site. So we’re gonna have direct our listeners to our show notes so that they can go and take a look at all the services and all the bits of advice that you had shared. But thank you so much for the gift of your time.

Tom Sharp  34:13

Thanks for having me, Karen. I really enjoyed our conversation, and then my accent and your thought and draw together. Make good,

Karan Rhodes  34:22

Perfectly together right?

Tom Sharp  34:23

I hope it works for the listeners to listen to both of us. And I hope that they really get some value out of this. Yeah.

Karan Rhodes  34:28

Oh, I’m sure they did. Thanks again. Take care.

Tom Sharp  34:33

Thank you. You too.

Karan Rhodes  34:36

Well, I hope you enjoyed our conversation today with Tom sharp, founder and CEO of BuildCoolThings. Links to his bio, his entry into our leadership playbook, and additional resources can be found in the shownotes both on your favorite podcast platform of choice and on the web at lead your game podcast.com And now for Karan’s take on today. His topic of entrepreneurial leadership. Now, admittedly, I spent most of my career teaching leadership in the corporate world. But when I founded my own firm in 2013, I learned quickly how nuanced and different the world of entrepreneurial leadership truly is. There is an art to launching a new venture, inspiring others to come along with you on the journey, and be at the helm of running all aspects of business operations. So today, I just want to share a few characteristics that are common amongst top performing entrepreneurial leaders, so get out your pencil. The first one is being able to adapt quickly to dynamic circumstances. This can be a valuable asset in industries that change often or during times of general organizations social work, cultural change. The second characteristic is generating positive change. Those leaders and individuals who have the ability to motivate and inspire positive sweeping changes can help your company accelerate its progress in growth. The third characteristic is being constantly innovative. The ability to think creatively and develop innovative solutions to challenges can help your company stay extremely competitive. The fourth characteristic is succeeding in uncertain environments. Those leaders who have the strength to deal with ambiguity, and are really good at handling risk management can provide a strong foundation for resilience in your organization. And the fifth and final characteristic is setting ambitious goals by maintaining high standards for yourself, your employees and your company. That will definitely help you to overachieve on your goals and objectives. So thanks again, for listening to our podcasts. You know, I only ask one thing of all of you. That’s to subscribe to the podcast, review it, and just share it with just one friend. Thanks so much for listening, and see you next week. And that’s our show for today. Thank you for listening to the lead at the top of your game podcast, where we help you lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. You can check out the show notes, additional episodes, and bonus resources, and also submit guest recommendations on our website at leadyourgamepodcast.com. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn by searching for the name Karan Rhodes with Karan being spelled K a r a n. And if you like the show, the greatest gift you can give would be to subscribe and leave a rating on your podcast platform of choice. This podcast has been a production of Shockingly Different Leadership, a global consultancy which helps organizations execute their people, talent development, and organizational effectiveness initiatives on an on-demand, project, or contract basis. Huge thanks to our production and editing team for a job well done. Goodbye for now.