The Leadership Project Podcast

175. From Conflict to Clarity: Navigating Leadership Challenges with Dan Tocchini

• Mick Spiers / Dan Tocchini • Season 4 • Episode 175

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💭 Ever wondered how being present can prevent future crises?

In this episode of The Leadership Project,  Dan Tocchini, a founding partner at Take New Ground and co-host of the Naked Leadership podcast, shares his unique insights on courageous leadership, creative conflict resolution, and the dangers of avoidance.

From his personal journey, beginning with his mother's mental health struggles to his extensive career in consulting, Dan uncovers the importance of addressing issues head-on. He explores strategies for dealing with underlying leadership challenges, emphasizing the need to confront problems early to prevent them from compounding.

The discussion on this podcast episode also touches on the consequences of permissive leadership and the benefits of embracing conflict to unlock potential and ensure long-term success.

Join us for an episode packed with actionable insights that can transform your leadership journey and drive positive outcomes.

🌐 Connect with Dan:
• Website: https://takenewground.com/
• LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/dantocchini/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dan_tocchini/

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Mick Spiers:

okay, here we go, sir, let's, let's have a good time all right, let's do it hey everyone and welcome back to the leadership project.

Mick Spiers:

I'm greatly honored today to be joined by dan tocchini. Dan is a founding partner at an organization called take new ground and a co-host of the naked leadership podcast. He helps leaders in a very unique and powerful way around having courageous leadership and having creative conflict resolution and avoiding the things that you keep on avoiding. So that's going to be our topic today. Why do leaders keep on avoiding the topics and the discussions that need to be had? How do they take those courageous steps into that unknown world, and what are the benefits of doing so? So there's going to be a lot of actionable insights and tips from Dan on a topic that, quite frankly, we all need to discuss. So I'm really excited for this. Without any further ado, dan, I'd love it if you would please say hello to the audience. I'd love to know a little bit more about your very rich background and what inspired you to do the work that you do today.

Dan Tochinni:

Well, thanks. Thanks, mick. It's great to be here, appreciate it, and that's great. That's a big question.

Dan Tochinni:

It really started for me when I was a really young guy. I was 12 years old. My mother was a manic, depressive, schizophrenic, and it was a really tough situation, as you can imagine, and I became the go-between between her and the psychiatrist because they wanted to. In the 60s they wanted to. They were doing lobotomies, which means they cut the brain to pacify the patient, and they were talking about doing that with my mother. I talked my dad into letting me have a try to talk to her because I was really close to her and I remember just starting to read all kinds of books around. I started reading. I read a book called the Myth of Mental Illness by a guy named Charles Shrazz. It wasn't a book, it was an article at the time that a woman gave me. I'd go to this therapist to debrief things and it was very good. He later wrote a book by the same title. He's dead now, but it's a phenomenal book and that opened my mind. I ended up reading it incessantly and was able to reach her when she was in Catatonia. It was an interesting story and was able to reach her when she was in Catatonia. It was an interesting story but that is how I really got interested in human performance and how we do things.

Dan Tochinni:

Then, as I graduated from high school pretty angry chip on my shoulder went to college on a football scholarship and just really wasn't motivated to play ball and got involved in drugs. And I was an angry kid and really recovered from a drug addiction. I just really wasn't motivated to play ball and got involved in drugs and I was an angry kid and really recovered from a drug addiction and dealing and doing just criminal things at a young age. You know, I left school and when I came out, when I started to recover, I got involved with an organization. My dad enrolled me in an organization called Lifespring, which is part of the human potential movement, and while I was there I saw the power of how, just the power of a presence, the power of when somebody takes a stand, and I really was interested in how that. You know how I could make the living doing that and I got involved with the training company and then I was invited to do some work with ESPN.

Dan Tochinni:

I was invited to submit a request for proposal. They gave me and I submitted a proposal and I couldn't believe it. I won this contract to help basically to restructure their finance department, and the gal who was the VP of HR there had done one of my trainings and she was really impressed and wanted me to come in. I told her I don't have a lot of experience with this, but I think I can do it. I submitted it in one and it turned out well. I was there for 10 years off and on doing all kinds of stuff. They introduced me to Disney. I ended up writing a negotiation class that I both taught at the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard and then I taught it at the Disney School, their university there for their executives for about five years, and so from there it was just a word of mouth.

Dan Tochinni:

We opened up a consulting firm. I sold that firm in 2011, waited for a couple of years for the non-competes to pass, and then I opened up this company with a friend of mine who had hired me to do some work with kids coming out of gangs because I had done a lot of work with kids coming out of gangs with my background and created a curriculum on the East Coast that a company used and it's the most studied curriculum right now in the US and I trained them. I kind of wrote the curriculum, trained the people how to deliver it and this guy had heard about it and asked me to come to work for him. And I did. And we did some work for lifers guys coming out of prison who have life sentences and were coming out wanted to. They would get some parole after 20 or 30 years how to reintegrate. That went really well. The guys who did that did really well. They were so good at the.

Dan Tochinni:

We trained 20 guys in the prison to be change agents and they were.

Dan Tochinni:

They were trustees that the warden selected, we interviewed and they did.

Dan Tochinni:

We trained them on how to do this training. It took eight months and then they started doing a training a week and it turned. There are three prisons, three yards, turn the yards around. These guys were so good at this leadership training that the local colleges were bringing their MBA students in into the prison to do their leadership training. And when these guys started getting out, they formed a group outside of prison and raised $37 million to have a reentry program, a very unique reentry program and they got written into the California state budget and they're killing it right now. So the guy who I did that with left and started a coaching company and was doing real well with his coaching and then started getting some consulting opportunities. He called me and he said, hey, can you help me land these? And this was about seven years ago, so the first year we worked together and landed a number of clients. And then I just merged my company with him and we've been working together. His name is Adrian Kaler and our company now is Take New Ground All right.

Mick Spiers:

Well, congratulations on your success. A few things I want to share with you that I took away from that. First of all, in terms of being there for your mother and seeing that and that opening your eyes to the human condition and human potential and human performance is really interesting, and the changes that we've seen in mental health and the way that we approach that has been really interesting over that time. You said something really powerful there along the way around the human potential and you said about the power of presence and I've also read in some of the stuff that you've been doing, Dan. You talk about if you don't address the now, forget about the future. I'm paraphrasing a little there Tell us about this power of presence and the need to address the now before we can consider a brighter future.

Dan Tochinni:

Oh, great question, Big question. So I'll do my best here. When I talk about the power of presence, it's that we all know what that is. When you see somebody who's there, connected, available, unconditionally, like they're willing to do what it takes, they're willing to face the losses for the gains, and we call it taking a stand right. That kind of presence is I'll do whatever it takes and you can tell somebody's there because they're willing to have the hard conversations.

Dan Tochinni:

First, you know, one of the things we talk about you mentioned it, you kind of alluded to it is one of the things or principles we work with is what you don't face now will probably defeat you later because you're not prepared, you haven't been willing to look into it. It becomes a blind spot and then you're surprised, you know, because things fail slowly and then all at once. So you know when the things start to fail, just a little bit here and a little bit there, well, it's okay, I'm still getting by, but by the time it gets out, you know, over a period of time, well then you've got what we call a shit buffet. Right, we have a little principle. It's called the shit hors d'oeuvre principle. First, the problem, a breakdown comes to me as an hors d'oeuvre, and if I don't eat it, if I push it away my grandfather used to give me this all the time If you push it away, junior, it's going to come back as a sandwich, and then, if you push the sandwich away, it comes back as a two-course meal, and you push that away and you've got a buffet that you've got to eat, and so to me that really has been true.

Dan Tochinni:

I've noticed that where I've had the most difficult time in my life is where I push things off until they demanded my attention. I had to pay attention to them, and so it's one of the things I'm vigilant about, both in my personal life and with my clients. Better we face what's difficult as soon as we can, and there's all kinds of research clinical research on what happens if you let something that's difficult go. The longer you let it go, the more people have time to make things up about it. Then you have to wade through everything they made up about it just to get to the problem. If you get that far, yeah, loving it, Dan.

Mick Spiers:

I want to reflect some of that back to you. So this is a big part of what we're going to talk about today is in a lot of leadership teams. They are future driven. They talk about their vision, they talk about utopia, other end of a change journey, but they're not spending enough time addressing what's holding them back. So they are looking progressive, which is nothing wrong with that, but if you don't address the things that are holding you back, they will come back to bite you. But now what I'm hearing from you is not just that they'll come back to bite you, but they'll compound over time and when it comes back to bite you, it's going to be this magnification. It's going to be multiplied multiple times over, including people who have started to tell us make their own assumptions about the problem. They started to tell stories in their own head about how big it is. It might have even catastrophized over time and before you know it, you've got a mountain of a problem where it could have been a molehill.

Dan Tochinni:

Yeah, exactly, and you're right. Most consultants, most consultancies, will come in and develop a beautiful vision of the future. That's fantastic, but in order to get to that future, you have to locate where you and your team are right now is there's no way to get the current situation, the current reality, up to the level of your vision if you don't accurately embrace, face, engage the current reality and particularly the things you don't want to face that you know are out, because there's only really three problems we ever face. You know, I think, as a leader, most leaders know that when you implement something new, you're going to have a series of new breakdowns, and so that is part of the reluctancy to start to make moves, because whatever I embark upon, I'm going to have a new set of breakdowns. So the key is to know which breakdowns should I deal with, which ones are the most important ones, and the only way to do that is to understand that there's three fundamental breakdowns there's a normal breakdown, there's an abnormal breakdown and then there's a pathological breakdown, and a normal breakdown is something like.

Dan Tochinni:

In order to tell whether they're normal, abnormal or pathological, you've got to really take them in context.

Dan Tochinni:

So if you and I are talking and you've got a new business and you're having some cash flow issues and you're having some trouble landing your personnel. Well, that's a normal problem, that's something that's in the course of business, something that's in the course of business. But now, if you've been in business for three, four or five years and you're having cash flow issues and you're still having big turnover issues, that's an abnormal problem and maybe even pathological, but that would be something I'd want to look at right away, given the context of the business you're in, and most, most, it's hard for a lot of leaders to just stop and assess and connect with the context of their business and then to analyze what are the issues that we've got before us and which ones are most important to deal with, and and because those you're always going to have problems to deal with which ones, though, are most important? And that's the way we usually go about discerning it, you know, and getting after it.

Mick Spiers:

If you will. Yeah, let me play back what I'm taking from that. So in business, we do have challenges, and there's difference between a normal and an abnormal problem. A normal one what I'm taking away, dan, is a business challenge that the existing team with the right resources, empowerment and enablement are going to be able to solve given enough time, whereas an abnormal problem might be something structural that, if we don't relook at the way that we're addressing the business and addressing the market, we will never solve it. So how does that sit with you?

Dan Tochinni:

Yeah, you nailed it. Yeah, You're never going to get to it. You're not going to discover, because you may not know how to deal with it to resolve it at first. But if you don't engage it, you'll never learn what it's going to take to resolve it. And then that becomes an Achilles heel as you move along, because at some point that could cave in on you.

Mick Spiers:

Yeah, okay. So this is a good strategic level version of what we're talking about. I want to throw a different one to you and see how this sits with you. I'm thinking back to some of this stuff about if we avoid the problem, it just gets worse.

Mick Spiers:

One of the key ones for leaders listening to the show will be the avoidance of performance discussions, where someone's behavior in the team is not in line with the values of the group. Right, so their behavior has to be brought into line in some way, and there's multiple ways you can do that. But leaders do have a tendency to have this avoidance. Now what happens instead of it might be something that starts as a little minor behavior, that the person has got no self awareness that it's an issue, and then two years later, it's compounded and they've continued that behavior and they've got no idea that they're doing the wrong thing, and now, all of a sudden, it's ingrained. Not only is it ingrained, it's impacting those around them, so it's starting to impact the culture. So a conversation that we could have had two years ago to do a slight correction and say, dan, we don't do things like that around here, let's have a chat about that In a really easy conversation.

Mick Spiers:

All of a sudden is a cultural issue in the business. How does that sit with?

Dan Tochinni:

you yeah, no, that's, that's like the, that's the territory of. You know, when you're working in a culture, you'll see that and there's there's a tension there. There's a natural tension whenever you're working with people, and we've worked. One of the things we identify, we've identified are 12 tensions that that arise are just natural whenever you're trying to accomplish something with a group of people. So, when you're managing a group of people, when you're you're leading them, there's a tension there.

Dan Tochinni:

The tension is between warmth and empathy, or creating a connection and a relationship with the team, the person that you're working with, and enforcing necessary rules and regulations, and that tension is they sound like they're paradox. It's a paradox. They sound like they're opposites, but they're actually interdependent. In order to be good at enforcing, I've got to have a relationship where the person I'm working with is able to receive what I'm talking to them about. And so, and what tends to happen is people tend to be high, either high on warmth and empathy and low on enforcing, which in which case they become permissive, enforcing which, in which case they become permissive, and that permissiveness sends messages to the client, to the work, to the employee, or you know, whoever you're working with, that it's okay what they're doing, because you haven't said anything. So they're going to take that as tacit consent, naturally. And you might just be thinking well, you know, I'm trying, I don't want to be a micromanager, I don't want to seem like I'm going to fit. You know, I'm trying, I don't want to be a micromanager, I don't want to seem like I'm going to fit. You know metal in everything they do, so I'm just going to let it go until I see if they can straighten it out. And then when I go to talk to them about it, they're surprised, maybe even upset, because they feel like they were doing well. And now you're talking about it. And then that starts some friction.

Dan Tochinni:

What usually happens is when the leader goes to enforce, they usually come to enforce in a harsh way because to them it feels like this person has taken advantage of the leeway that they've given them without recognizing that they've given tacit consent to the behavior because they haven't said anything. And then I get back from leaders well, I'm not here to babys, said anything. And then you know. And then you know I get back from leaders Well, I'm not here to babysit. Well, no, you're right, but it's interesting. That's how you would frame it Right. It's like the minute I'm not here to babysit is saying that, oh, I see I had no part in this. It's really just them. Like I'll ask them well, did you tell them about it? Well, yeah, I mentioned it, did you? And how long did it go on? Well, it went on for three or four more weeks. Did you write them up, did they? Were they clear about how to recover it? Well, no, I just kept mentioning it, right, but you, but I did nothing.

Dan Tochinni:

So what I'm doing is I'm contributing to a situation that other people are watching and if they see me dealing with that person that way, they're going to begin to think they can do the same thing.

Dan Tochinni:

Now, it doesn't mean all of them will, but it does set a precedent. Where people don't get, they get that it's okay to not do what they came to do or at least seek out correction in order and learn what it's going to take to accomplish what they're there to accomplish. So the leader has a huge role in that and usually if somebody's permissive, they're trying to manage with their personality. They've given up the standard and how important it is both to the person's individual development and the organization's success in the mission to hold the standards and that's a conversation that has got to be elevated and respected on the team. But we often don't do that because we're afraid it's going to upset people, or they're going to, you know, which is OK if they're upset, it's great to explore. But I know a lot of leaders don't want that upset because they feel like it's a distraction and they don't want to be bothered with it because they have quote unquote more important things to do.

Mick Spiers:

Yeah, but coming back to our thing, they're avoiding the upset for now, but it's just going to compound. So, listening to your idea, I can think of examples in my own career, in my own leadership, where I've done this. I'll stick up my hand and say that I've made this mistake countless times.

Dan Tochinni:

I have a lot of those T-shirts in my closet.

Mick Spiers:

So if you think about the sandwich model of giving feedback, it's used a lot. You start with something soft and then you get to the meat of the issue and then you finish with something soft, and a lot of people use that model. But what is the person taking away? Did they genuinely have an understanding of both the content and the significance of the feedback that was just giving them or not? Or do they walk away with oh, the boss thinks I'm doing a great job and hang on a second, there was some meat in there that you missed. You heard the fluffy bit at the start and the fluffy bit at the end. You didn't understand the gravity of the meat in the middle. And then it compounds for two years. And then they're really surprised when it comes to a head and say, like when it really blows up, they go. But you've told me I've been doing a good job for two years yeah, and well, you hit it on the head.

Dan Tochinni:

You know you got to care about the people you work with. You got to care about their development. If you don't, if you're just using a like, we have a very powerful way of enforcing. I'll talk about it. But the framework is only as good as the person who cares about the other person, because any framework, like the sandwich framework, if you're doing that because you know why are you doing it, are you really doing it for their development or are you doing it just to reduce your own discomfort or the potentiality for conflict? Because most people don't see the potentiality in conflict and we found that that's the great adventure If conflict comes up and I'm able to contain it, inevitably that's going to be a strong.

Dan Tochinni:

It's going to make the team stronger and the individual stronger that are involved if we can resolve it and in working through it. And most people don't have an idea of how to do that, so they get panicky when it comes up. You know it's like you know if you've ever skied, when you start going fast, if you get panicky, you're probably going to wreck. Right, you've got to get a lean into the speed. Well, when somebody gets upset, have you? Can you even name the breakdown? And the breakdown that you name, does the other person recognize it or do they think the breakdown something different? That's usually the first step. Like this is a breakdown for me. Here's why and I give an example, and then and then I can tell them this is why it's a breakdown for me. Here's where I saw it. This is what I think it is, this is what's got my attention, and then I'm going to talk to them about how I feel when it happens.

Dan Tochinni:

When you do this, I don't know what to do. I feel like I want to come over and support you, but I don't want to micromanage you, but I also also don't want you to lose. I want you to win. So I want to talk to you about this issue and I can see. The next thing is, I can see how I've contributed to some of this by not addressing it earlier. So I'm owning my part. And then I can tell them, if we don't get this cleared up, here's what's inevitably going to happen. At least, this is what I see is at stake.

Dan Tochinni:

Now. It could be, you know, you might lose your bonus, or you're not going to get that raise, or you might lose your job. It just depends on what the future you see could come if that doesn't get addressed with. And then I can ask them. You know, what do you say? What do you think? I can hear them there and I usually prepare before I go into a meeting like that. So I'm I can be hard on the problem and soft on the person. I want to. I want to be connected to the person. I want to get side by side with them, because if I get head to head with them, inevitably I'm just going to move them out. Now I want them to no-transcript.

Mick Spiers:

There's three really powerful things I'm taking away, dan. I want to play it to you and get your feedback on this. The first one and this is something we've spoken about on the show before is 100% true that when someone has gone out of their way to give you feedback, it is a sign that their love and care for you is greater than their fear of the uncomfortable conversation. So that's a very powerful message there.

Mick Spiers:

I love your metaphor of skiing and I want to think about this Are you going to lean in or are you going to back off? Are you going to lean in or are you going to back off? And too often what I do think happens is you start the uncomfortable conversation. It starts to unravel a little bit, it gets uncomfortable. Now the words that start coming out of your mouth start diminishing the message because you're back up, whereas what we should do is lean in. And I'm going to say something that popped into my head while I was listening to that Dan, leaning in may also be saying nothing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Hold some space and let it sink in for the person and let it play out.

Dan Tochinni:

Yeah, yeah because I want to contain it, I want to understand it.

Dan Tochinni:

You know I because a lot of times the one of the things I do when I one of the things we train our consultants with and our clients on, is to listen to their own listening, because they have a tendency we all do as human beings we don't hear each other.

Dan Tochinni:

We actually hear what we're making up about what the other person is saying, and then we give the other person credit for what we made up and then we usually get, most of the time, what I've found is the situation doesn't isn't what's causing my upset, it's what I've decided. That situation means that causes me to get upset and so if I can catch that, I can test it or explore it and see what, what's really going on with the other person and what might be valid or what might I might not be seeing. You know like there's an array of possibility there that emerges If I can speak. You know it's like argue like you're right but listen like you could be wrong, right, so that the person can get the message they also of what you see, but they also get you're willing to see what they see and that you might be missing something and, and that's where we do need to hold space.

Mick Spiers:

All right, so so the more we talk, the more we run the risk that we actually derail the conversation and the focus from the original message. So so let's hold space, let's let the message sink in, let's not diminish by adding words that aren't even needed in that conversation. Then the third thing I picked up there, dan, was that you're still doing it with empathic concern. So you're staying true to the topic, but you are still doing it with an empathic concern element to it. Around it is a human being that's in front of you, but without watering down the message.

Dan Tochinni:

Yeah, exactly, you don't. I think you hit it on the head there. As far as what? The tendency to want to water down the message is really um, tempting, because you're, you know, I know that feeling in your body right and the feeling in your body right and the feeling in the body is oh shit, this could go sideways and this person I need them because if I don't have them, I'm gonna have to do their work or I'm gonna have to find somebody who's not as good as them on the team or not as familiar or whatever. There's all kinds a list of potential prices. I'm going to have to pay and I don't. I'm doing my best to prevent that from happening instead of doing my best to have what I'm committed to with them turn out.

Dan Tochinni:

That's a big difference. It's like that's what I mean by presence. If I'm presencing myself to play, not to lose, because I'm afraid of losing something, so what I'm saying is to prevent what I'm losing, then I'm going to probably come out dissatisfied, and so are they, because I'm not going to get to the bottom line of what I have to say and they're not going to know exactly what's required of them, and there's that tension is going to live because they're going to see, it's going to recur and recur and recur until the, until the honesty, the honest situation comes to the surface. So that's a big.

Mick Spiers:

It's really good, dan. I'm going to connect two things that you've said in the in the last five, ten minutes or so and explore that with you. So you've now used the word playing not to lose and about five minutes ago you used the word the potentiality in the conflict. So in that present moment, if we start ordering down the message, we start backing off instead of leaning in. We're planning not to lose. We missed the opportunity of the potentiality in the conflict. Tell us more about potentiality in the conflict.

Dan Tochinni:

So I'm going to tell you a story. I had a client that they had hired me to come in and raise money and restructure their company. In fact, she was from New Zealand and the CEO graduated top of her class at Wharton graduated top of her class at Wharton. She's just an amazing woman and I built this team, built this company and then got hammered, first when the tech bubble failed. Then she started pulling it back and then 9-11 hit and it was in the consumer space. So it got hammered and she lost all her options and the VCs who had loaned them $17 million wanted to dismantle the company, close the tranche. She was going to have to send her number one guy back to England because his visa would be up and he wouldn't be able to stay on and work up and he wouldn't be able to stay on work. And I remember talking to her about. I actually talked to her on the phone going to the airport because my partner wanted me to talk to her because she was really depressed and she was meeting with the VCs on Tuesday and was pretty much surrendered to just dismantling the company. And he asked me do you think it can help? And I said I don't know I need to talk with her, but I'm going to Europe. So I talked to her on the phone briefly and I said have these things ready balance sheet, profit and loss, cash flow statement and your plans for what you want to do and then let's sit down. And we did two eight-hour meetings two weeks later and I told her she goes, well, they're. They're going to be a little upset. I mean, they want to talk to me. I said that's okay. Let put them off, let them be upset, that's okay. And so she put them off and we put together, we came up with a plan.

Dan Tochinni:

Now the situation was we were going to raise a million dollars. We the offer we were going to make look, here's what we're going to do. We've got to let they've got to feel the desperation They've got to feel. And I knew I'd done some research on the VC firm. They had a young partner doing it. He was. I knew if he could salvage something out of this, he'd make some mark for him with them. So I told her I said how much do you think they're going to lose if they just close it down? She said about two and a half, 3 million more. And I said well, how much do you think they would save if we could you know, if they, instead of closing it down, they were willing to sell us? You know, restructure the debt and we'll bring a million dollars and we'll take over a half a million dollars in debt that you have, and that way they don't have the dismantling cost. It'll probably save three or four million bucks.

Dan Tochinni:

She goes well, they might do it, but I don't think they're thinking that way. I said OK, well, our job is to get them to think that way. And she goes what do you mean? I said I want you to come up, I want you to put the books together in a way that they really get how bad this is, and I want you to send it to them. And then I want you to go dark for a week. And she says oh, they're going to be upset. I said that's right, but what are they going to be thinking? Well, the young guy who's dealing with you is going to be thinking, oh man, and they're going to be pressuring this kid about getting something done. And then, in a week later, I went we'll call them back and you can tell them the offer that we have, which is what I just described.

Dan Tochinni:

So she, she goes, you sure I go. Yeah, do not talk to them, turn your phone off. So she did, and it was driving her nuts. The conflict is brewing right. So she, she does what I asked her to do and sooner or later she calls them and they're ready to deal and she tells them this is what I can do. These guys are willing to put this million up and take over this half million and restructure your debt down to that from 17 million. And she showed them how they could say it would just be much better for them and they'll get some of this money back, et cetera. And they were willing to do it. They said OK, well, let's talk to those guys. So she put me in touch with them.

Dan Tochinni:

Now I told my partners. They said well, what are you going to do? I said I'm going to tell them. When they ask what we're going to give, I'm going to say nothing. And they said I'm going to say nothing, we're just going to take over the of upset. I said that's okay, the upset is not a problem. What we're doing is we're we're actually helping them understand how vital this is. They're now sold on the deal and I don't, I don't want them to back, I don't want any back. You know back trading or any of that when they go. Well, linda doesn't know. I said that's good that Linda doesn't know, because her reaction will be authentic. So they call me, I give them the offer.

Dan Tochinni:

He immediately gets off the phone and calls Linda. She calls me crazy upset. I said calm down, calm down. She goes. You made me look bad. I said no, I made me look bad, I'm going to make you look like the good guy. You go back and say, because it's true, you didn't know I was going to do that and you let them know that we're just some country bumpkins from Northern California, we don't understand finance and VCs and all that. And you talked us back in to bring in the million and that would set her up to be kind of on their side.

Dan Tochinni:

And the thing went well and they ended up having a board member, you know, a board observer, and whenever we got any problem, linda was always the one that the board observer went to and I was always the bad guy, which enabled me to understand what they were thinking, because he would tell Linda what she was thinking. But if I couldn't hold that conflict. If I couldn't stand in that with the vision in mind, then I would have buckled and I wouldn't have risked their wrath. And her thing was well, what if we don't get the deal? I said, no matter what happens, we're better off. You know, even if they don't do the deal, you haven't lost any ground. So it actually grounded her. We were able to close the deal. She ended up turning the company around, I think. The revenues went from 4 million to almost 17 million the next two years and she ended up selling the company for 45 million, I think, four years later.

Mick Spiers:

There's a few things I'm taking away from that, Dan, and around this potentiality and conflict. But there is, and for me, the potentiality of conflict is what are we going to unlock when we can finally address this elephant in the room, this hairy beast? Whatever, what is the potential that we're unlocking? But the important thing in the story you just shared is there needs to be some level of awareness along there of the significance of the problem. Otherwise, people's fear of loss is going to be greater than their appreciation of the gain. And unfortunately, the human brain is wired in that way. We're wired to avoid loss more than appreciate gain. In this case, we almost needed to create a burning platform where inaction was worse than action Than action. So we create the platform.

Dan Tochinni:

I call it the parade of horribles. We actually sat down. I sat down and said, look, we've got to create a parade of horribles and as we created them, I wanted to enact some of it. So they felt the deal was more tentative than it was, so that they would want to come forward. It's like fishing they're going to come towards it.

Dan Tochinni:

My point is I didn't do this on a whim. I had done a lot of research. I researched who this guy was. That was the partner, the junior partner, that was dealing with it. I researched the company. They're in the medical space. They wanted to get out of the tech space. They took a flyer. I wanted to understand everything I could about the people at the table and the people that aren't at the table that they're representing, so that I could understand the tensions that will be playing into the deal. So that's what really helped me formulate what I was doing and plotting it out.

Dan Tochinni:

I probably spent 90% of my time researching and 10% of my time executing, and I think a lot of times people, because we get up against the problem, we don't want to look at the problem. We try to get away from the problem because it's uncomfortable, rather than connecting with the problem from the problem because it's uncomfortable. Rather than connecting with the problem, be like really looking into it and understanding not its symptoms. You start at the symptoms but getting back to the causes, and I think that's a. That's another skill that that people can. They're completely capable of doing. It's just that. Do they have the patience and the fortitude to persevere, to understand what's actually producing the problem? Oversimplifying the problem is a problem.

Mick Spiers:

All right, really powerful. So coming back to this now and future type element. So what we've got here is the realization that if we don't address the problem, it is going to haunt us forever. Let's say it's always going to hold us back. But to get people to that level of realization, we need to get them to realize, to get over their fear, because the fear is driving the inaction. The fear of loss has led them to freeze and they're not acting on the problem that's right in front of them. So now we make them realize that actually, in action, the problem is going to happen anyway, the loss is going to be realized. So the sooner you address the problem, the sooner we can talk about the future and, by the way, the future is a lot brighter.

Dan Tochinni:

Yeah, exactly, and there's a lot of research on this. But how you get people over a phobia, for instance, what they're afraid of that they won't look at or that it controls their life, is that they voluntarily be willing to look into it. The more they start to handle it instead of it handling them. So one of the things I like to do with people when I'm working with a team is I want them to be clear about their vision first, so there's a grounding about what future they're standing for. Then I want to address the things they're most afraid of. I want to look into them because the more they look into them, the more they're most afraid of. I want to look into them because the more they look into them, the more they're going to feel confident about dealing with it. And that's really the key component is how willing is the team individually to look at the issues, both collectively and individually, that are preventing them from having what they say matters to them, and you know we call it hugging the cactus.

Mick Spiers:

I like that one as well. Another great metaphor. Very sorry for this, Dan. I'm going to have to quickly take another comfort break. I'll be right back and we'll pick it up from there.

Dan Tochinni:

You bet. Thank you Should be back in a moment.

Mick Spiers:

Yep, yep, yep, thank you, thank you. All right, dan, thanks for that. All right, so I'm going to. What I'm going to do is a restart. I'm going to recap some of the things that we're bringing us to a kind of crescendo and towards our final, final four questions. So I'm going to do a little summary of things for people to think and act on and then bring you to maybe share a final reflection on that, and then we'll go to our final four questions. Very good, all right, dan.

Mick Spiers:

So we've covered a lot of ground here and you've given us a lot to stop and reflect and rethink on around this avoidance of conflict. I'm going to say that's the key message today. This avoidance of conflict. I'm going to say that's the key message today.

Mick Spiers:

The first one is that when we avoid the conflict, all it does is compound over time and it just gets worse, and what could have been a very quick and easy fix has all of a sudden become something that's quite pervasive in our business, is impacting more than what it originally was. So let's get over our fears. Let's address it early. You know, your hors d'oeuvre versus the two-course meal, versus the three-course meal, the buffet, the buffet. Yeah, it was really spot on. The second part I want to take away is also are we going to lean into the problem or are we going to back off when it gets uncomfortable? And if we don't lean in, we won't actually solve it. In fact, people will walk away with some kind of tacit or implicit acceptance that what was happening was okay Acceptance. Acceptance turns into pervasiveness. So we need to lean into the problem, not back off when it gets uncomfortable. And then the third one is then to consider the potentiality of the conflict. So once that conflict is resolved, what is it going to unlock?

Dan Tochinni:

Then you can think about the future right and be willing to face the worst case scenario. So you're prepared case that occurs. You're going to feel much more grounded and confident when you're at the table and it's a big deal To me. This is at the heart of if you really I know when I do a turnaround if we get this in, we're going to make, we're going to make miles very quickly.

Mick Spiers:

Yeah, all right. So we're managing, we're looking at what is the worst thing that can happen, but we're also going imagine the possibility of the world once this problem is finally done and dusted right.

Dan Tochinni:

Yeah, yeah. What are we going to?

Mick Spiers:

have. So stop avoiding lean in address address the now. Address it now so you can unlock your future.

Dan Tochinni:

Really love it one more be willing as much as it says, and it's as important to know what I'm going to say now as it is to know the future is to know what is the parade of horribles that you are going to encounter. If you don't make a shift, if you don't have the conversation, if you don't take the risk, if you keep settling for short-term gain, you're going to have long-term pain. And what specifically kind, what kinds of long-term pain are you going to have? You're going to have second and tertiary things that you don't even recognize until they come, like other people wondering what happened, other people thinking they can do what this other person was doing. There's a million things we can list, like that that was another really powerful takeaway.

Mick Spiers:

So it's often the fear that stops us from acting, but what we need to create is that there's more fear in not acting so exactly get going, yeah there's more, there's more trouble. Yeah, there's more trouble. Yeah, that's brilliant. Okay, all right. Love for dan. This has been really really cool. Thank you so much for your wisdom today. I want to take us now to our rapid round. These are the same four questions we ask all. I guess the first one is what's the one thing you know now, dan Ticini?

Dan Tochinni:

that you wish you knew when you were 20? How important listening is Like. Listen like I could be wrong and authentically. Listen like I could be wrong, very and authentically. Listen like I could be wrong, seek out the ways I am wrong or missing the mark when I'm talking with somebody doesn't mean I have to get off of what I really what matters to me. It means I may find a new way to contextualize it like that and so yeah, as you can tell'm pretty confident in myself and that's gotten me into trouble. That's been, I've been. You know hubris and arrogance and you can see they're, they're there and um, so listening like that's really made a difference for me.

Mick Spiers:

Yeah, love it, dan. Thank you for sharing that. What's your favorite book?

Dan Tochinni:

Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I've probably read it six times.

Mick Spiers:

Oh wow, okay, good, very good. What's your favorite quote?

Dan Tochinni:

There's two of them I love. William Glasser said human beings' sense of themselves ranges from flattery to pure fantasy. It's fully true. I love it. Okay, ourselves ranges from flattery to pure fantasy.

Mick Spiers:

It's fully true. Yeah, I love it. Okay, all right, very good. And finally, dan, there's going to be people listening to this and going yeah, I do struggle with all of those things that Dan and Mick just spoke about, either organizationally or individually. As a leader, how do people find you if they'd like to know more?

Dan Tochinni:

or individually as a leader? How do people find you if they'd like to know more? There's the leadership, our website first, which is take new groundcom, and then our podcast is the naked leadership podcast, which is on both Apple and Spotify, and there's we've been doing it for five years. We've got a lot of I think almost 200, almost 200, over 200 episodes, so you can find it there. And, uh, that's probably the best way. I'm instagram, dan underscore zucchini, and uh, I'm on linkedin as well all right, brilliant.

Mick Spiers:

Thank you so much, dan. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation today. I feel richer for it. It is conversations that we need to have. You've really opened up some paths here for people to take action around what we've been discussing today, to step into the discomfort, to lean in and address those problems once and for all so that you can unlock your future. Thank you so much.

Dan Tochinni:

Thanks, mick, really enjoyed it.

Mick Spiers:

All right, sir. How was that for you?

Dan Tochinni:

I loved it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed talking with you. I love your brain. I can tell you've been around. You've been around a bit and you know it'd be great to hear. It sounds like you've had an interesting trek too, huh.

Mick Spiers:

Yeah, great to hear. It sounds like you've had an interesting track too. Huh yeah, yeah, that's it. That's uh, it's a life of lots of lessons there, but paying attention to the lessons instead of just going about existence, so you talk about yeah, listen, as if you could be wrong, and then you learn right.

Mick Spiers:

So yeah, you learn where you are wrong right, very good, all right, so that was really good. Um, we'll be back in contact when we're getting close to airing the episode. Thank you for your time today. Really enjoyed it and enjoyed getting to know you as well.

Dan Tochinni:

Thanks, mick, god bless you, okay All right, thank you, see you.