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Steve Longan is a charismatic coach and communication guru who believes in the prophetic power of language. A seasoned expert in organizational communication, he has spent years applying his knowledge to help businesses and individuals thrive. Through his innovative coaching style and passion for language, he has challenged norms and inspired many to reach their full potential. He is a living testament to the transformative power of language in leadership and personal growth.

 

In this episode, Jason and Steve discuss:

  • The Power of Language in Leadership and Communication
  • Leaders as Gardeners
  • Embracing Failure- A key Ingredient in the Recipe for Growth
  • The Role of Clarity in Communication
  • Cultivating a Growth Mindset

Key Takeaways:

  • Discover the pivotal role that language plays in effective leadership and clear communication
  • Uncover how embracing failures paves the way to forming a dynamic growth mindset
  • Expose the unsung importance of a leader functioning as a caretaker, nurturing a growth-conducive environment
  • Recognize the profound impact language has on shaping behaviors and mindsets
  • Realize the power of clarity and alignment when constructing compelling communication

 

“Language is prophetic of outcomes. The way you engage and express your mindset through language sets the course for actions.”

 - Steve Longan

Connect with Steve Longan:

 

Connect with Steve and Jason:

 

Listen to the podcast here:

 

 Steve Longan- Revisited

 

Hello and welcome, everybody, to this episode of The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE. This is your host, Jason Abel, and do I have a guest for you today. Today's guest, his name is Steve Longan, and let me just, let me just give you a little bit of insight as to who Steve Longan is. Steve was employee number one here at Rewire, and he's currently our director of research and development, and in this role, he helps rewire develop programs that help our clients bridge the gap from where they are to where they want to go. And he just so happens to be very good at it. And over the last few years, Longan, which is what we affectionately call him around the office, has become a formidable coach for many of our clients, who tend to say a lot of very nice things about him and his work with them. But when I asked Longan for his bio for the show, it was all about him as a husband, a dad, a reader of books, and a person who runs a lot and about how appreciative he is to be helping people at the deep level that he does. Y'all, he's a good guy and he seems to make people around him better. After this conversation, you'll see why. Longan, welcome to the show.

Oh, dude, thank you. Thanks a lot. Yeah, whenever I hear somebody introduce me, there's half of me that's like, stop, please stop. And then the other half of me is like, can I have you just everywhere with me? Like, when I walk into a room, can you just sort of announce me? Like when I show up at the supermarket, announcing Steve Longan.

And he's not only is a good guy, but this is why he's a good guy. That's right. Good stuff. You're humble. Dude, first question for you, and you've been a part of our podcast, so you've been behind the scenes, you already know what question is coming, but who are you most grateful for?

Oh, man, gosh, that's a good question. I'd have to say just right now, where I'm at right now, my dad. My dad had a profound impact on me. And really, if I got to pick two people, I'd say both my parents, because they're generous and gracious, and I don't even know how to fully put that into words, but they're the example that I'm trying to live into and the bar that they set and the path that they've walked has really been inspirational to me. So, sitting where I am right now, you know, I'll say my folks.

Yeah, the podcast that I listen to, the interviews, and when I think about my own life, I think about the same thing. And our parents have such an impact of who we are as people. So yeah, very cool. Thanks for that.

I want to go back for just a second. You were very gracious. I was employee number one. I predate you by a few months.      


Okay, fine. I know you do. I get it. That's why I gave you your due. Come on.  
      

And you're so gracious about it. That's probably going to be something that I'm always going to bring up. I'm never not going to bring that up, just as a heads up.

So, ten years from now, when we take this big Rewire corporate picture and there's hundreds of people there, you're going to elbow your way to the front because you're like, yeah, I want my spot number one.

Everyone line up in order of tenure. Thank you.

It's going to be like that. Well, you also have the distinction of you may not say this, but I'll say this. I think you're the smartest one of all of us, not only because of your educational background, but just, dude, you use words in some of our staff meetings that I'm feverishly trying to type in Google to figure out what it is that you said. And by the way, that technique never works because I have no clue of even how to spell the words that you're saying, much less know the meaning of them. But you're just a smart dude and I know that one of the things that you're into is language. Not just these big words, I'm half kidding you about that, but just the language that we use and how important it is not only in our daily lives, but moreover, most of our listeners are leaders in some capacity or another and the language that they use is just so dag on important. And you've got a lot of thoughts on that. So, I'm going to open up this topic of language with you with a fill in the blank. So, I'd like you to fill in the blank and then you can take it wherever it needs to go. The fill in the blank is the language we use is blank.

Prophetic. The language that we use is prophetic. And I hope that doesn't put too fine of a point on it. So just my background, very briefly, my background has a lot to do with communication and language. So, my undergrad, I did communication. My first master's program was organizational communication and my early consulting work doing organizational communication, that was how I did consulting, was looking at communication. Communication was sort of my window into an organization. And the bet that I make both as a coach now and also as an organizational consultant is that if I can get a handle on your language, I can get a pretty clear understanding of where things were and where things are going. And so, language and communication are just sort of the way that I enter into an organization. Now there are people who are brilliant with ops, there are people who are brilliant with finances and that's their window into an organization, and their hypothesis is if I can get my hands around your finances, I can tell where you've been and I can tell where you're going. And I think that is a brilliant way to do organizational consulting and also frankly, to do coaching to a certain extent, but that's not a skill I possess. Mine is language and communication. So that's how I approach the work, is via language. So yeah, language is prophetic. And that's something I've been thinking about a lot, as I do coaching. Just as an example, I'll tell a story for people that you know, but that people who are listening might not know. So, one of the things that I do at Rewire is I'll say, okay, so there's this body of research out there. There's this research around this topic, and the topic might be decision making or it might be, again, how we use language. The research might be around the issue of coaching itself, you know? So how do we take the research that's out there and then plug it into a workshop? My metaphor that I'll use a lot is how do we take the cookies and put them on the bottom shelf so they're really easy to get to? And so, one of the pieces of research that I have liked to use is what's called the alternative uses exercise. So, the Alternative Uses Exercise goes all the way back to the basic idea is that you take an item. It needs to be very basic. So, a lot of the research that's been done with alternative uses, uses a paperclip or a brick. Those are two of the common items that you'll find in this exercise. So, in the alternative uses exercise, what you'll do is you'll take a group of people, and you'll separate them in half, and one group, sometimes they'll separate them into three groups, but just in general, for doing the research, you set them into two groups. And in the classic example, the one that I was first exposed to this research with, is one group gets a leader who is facilitative, who is helpful, who is encouraging, who will provide structure, and who will set people on a path to think of as many uses as possible for this item, whatever it is. So, in this example, we'll just say it's a paperclip.

Sure.

The other group gets a leader, and that leader is dismissive, discouraging, undermining a little bit, doesn't provide structure, and then sets people off to think of as many uses as possible for this, let's say, paperclip. Now, in the research, you can do all sorts of things. You can study people who are young versus old, men versus women, you can study ethnicities. But the basic idea is you have two groups and you're comparing what happens with their creative faculties and their ability to work together to come up with as many uses as possible for a given item, given a set of variables. What the research says is that the group who gets the leader, who is facilitative, who is encouraging, who provides structure and supports their growth, will always produce more alternative uses than the other group.         Now, because it's research, and this research has been replicated thousands and thousands and thousands of times, every now and again, you might get a savant that's in the discouraging group, who's going to break the mold, every now and again, you might get like a debbie downer in your group that's coming up that has the positive leader, but in general, the group with the facilitative positive leader who's providing structure will come up with more uses. So, the thing that I love and the thing that I'll never get over is when we do this in workshops, and we've done this with a couple of other concepts, we've done this with the idea of how you invest in others, the role of memory and decision making, I'll take research and we'll do these exercises and workshops, and I love it. I love it. And I don't know if this is going to get edited out, but one of the things I love is how much it freaks Steve Scanlon out, because he doesn't know if it's going to work. So, like, all throughout this exercise, and I'll say, this is what's going to happen, and the exercise is used to demonstrate a scientific concept that plays in our work. And to me, it feels like you're walking a tightrope, and I love it. Or maybe like a trapeze, like you're swinging, and you've let go and you're reaching out and you're waiting for the other person to grab you. and the other person that's grabbing you is the people in the workshop who are in the process of replicating the study.

Yeah.

See, I love that. To me, that just feels so exciting. And to other people, maybe people who are also at the event, they're wondering, is this really going to work?        

You've taught me how to facilitate that exercise, and I've been on that trapeze where I'm like, well, the science says the way the exercise is going to work out is like this, but you never really know for sure. And sure enough, it does play out the way that you say that it plays out. But I've been there and it's exciting and it's good, but it is a little bit of a relief after it's over when it actually works out the way that it's supposed to work out.

Yeah. So, I remember the first time we did this, we were in San Diego at Mission Bay, and we did this workshop, and we divided the room in half, and we had, like, eight tables in one half of the room and eight tables on the other half of the room. And so, we ran this exercise, and then table by table, we said, okay, raise your hand if you got more than 20 alternative uses for the paperclip, and all the hands went up. And then we said, okay, raise your hand if you got more than 30, and all the hands went up, and then 35, and then a few of the hands on the discouraging side went down. And then we kept going, and then we're like, okay, so what about 40? More hands on the discouraging side went down. Okay, what about 50? More hands on the discouraging side went down. And then what about 60? There were no hands left on the discouraging side, and a few hands went down on the facilitative encouraging side, what I might call the growth mindset side versus the fixed mindset side, so by the time we got to 60, there were no hands left on the fixed mindset side, and there were only hands left on the growth mindset side. And we went I think it was like a 90, I think one group had more than 90, and in that moment, I felt like lifting both hands over my head and going, TADA!

Untitled design (62) 

Right.

So, then we asked the question in the workshop, okay, so why is one half of the room so much smarter than the other half of the room? And the group that was from the fixed mindset with the fixed mindset leader said, what? No, they're not smarter than us. Okay, well, what do they have that you don't have? And then they started comparing notes. Okay, what happened with you? And then they realized that they got me, the debbie downer, because in that particular exercise, I was the debbie downer, and the other group got you, and so by having that, their result. So, when I say that language is prophetic of outcomes, that's what I mean. Your language, the way that you engage and the way that you express your mindset via language to your people ends up setting the course for their actions. When we are in coaching or when we're in leadership, I don't want to say that this concept applies everywhere, but it feels like it applies in a lot of different places.

Well, sure, I can think of parenting.        
            
Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Friendship relationships, peer to peer relationships, and we're talking in the business realm right now, but certainly, in that relationship, you see it in teacher student relationship.

Yes.

And so, I remember that particular workshop was the first time at least I had facilitated that exercise, and it really was amazing. You've got one group of people that are we just randomly split them up. It wasn't an age thing, an experience thing, a gender thing, it was strictly just, okay, this half of the room versus that half of the room, and to see that different outcome just based on you're exactly right, the language of the leader leading the exercise, it's pretty phenomenal. My question to you, Steve, is what is the listener who's listening to this right now and going, okay, I get that, I understand that. What do they do with that? What's a tangible rubber meets the road? What is it a leader can do with that “your language is prophetic”, and then you gave stories to back it up. What do you suggest they do with it?

So, you know this about me. The people listening to this don't know this. I'm not a salesman. I'm just not I don't know that I have that gene. But I would say the first thing you should do is hire a coach or a consultant. But a coach, I'm not trying to sell that, but what I am saying is it's hard to notice your own language because your language, it's sort of like the air you're breathing and the water you're swimming in. So, it's hard to notice your own language. This might get cut, Jason, but one of my favorite shows is Arrested Development and there's a character named Tobias, and he has a lot of things that he say that are off putting for everyone else, but he's not aware of how off putting they are. He says all these things that are suggestive, but he doesn't hear it, and so, one of the other main characters says, you know what? Here's what you're going to do. I want you to buy a tape recorder and just push record and walk around for a day and just play it back and see if anything comes up for you. I say that to say it's hard to hear your own language. So, I don't want to go into a hard sell and say you should hire a coach, but I would say that one of the things that I do with my clients is I pay very close attention to their language, because I think my personal opinion and what the research says is that their language- prophetic might be too strong of a word- but it's pretty important. And so, to have somebody who's objective, they're not in your day-to-day life and they can sort of say, okay, you've been using that word success. Let's just use that example. You've been using that word success a lot in our past three sessions. What does success mean to you? Like, how are you defining success? What would success be to you? And once we can unearth how somebody is thinking about that word, it ends up explaining a lot of behavior for better or worse. And that's just one example. I think the other one that might be helpful is to talk to people in your life and say, hey, if you were to make a word cloud of words that I use a lot, what would that word cloud be? And if you're a leader, you can do this with your people. It can be a fun exercise; I've actually done this. So, what you do is you go to the people that are your direct reports and say, hey, I want to make a word cloud about you, and I want you to make a word cloud about me. That way it's on equal footing and we're both giving each other word clouds, and we make that word cloud.

So good.

It can be an exercise that you do as a team building exercise where we're taking turns making word clouds. It can be a moment where you're appreciating people and your staff. I've had some leaders who do this on a week-by-week basis. So, at this week's staff meeting, we're going to make a word cloud for Susie and we're all going to take turns talking about words that we hear Susie use, and the words that get the most votes are going to be biggest on her word cloud. And so, they'll do it every week. And so, it can be a really supportive thing, but it also provides that reflective nature that a person needs to see their own work. So, I did this gosh, this was six, seven years ago, it was a while ago I asked somebody to make a word cloud about me and like in big, big letters, like, the biggest one that there was was the word stoked. Because apparently, I use the word stoked all the time.

Yeah.        
            
And so, despite multiple degrees and trying to use words from old English that people don't know, apparently the one that I lean on the most is stoked.

You just go into the old hipsters. Stoked yeah, that's what it boils down to.

Yeah. So probably a close second would probably be something about coffee and something about guitars, I don't know. That's another way that people could do it, is to connect with meaningful people in your life, people who are around you all the time, and just ask them to make a word cloud. And then step two of that exercise is for you to look at the words they pick and ask how they're functioning, what sort of weight is that word carrying for you? What does it allow you to do or not do?

Yeah, I can see that exercise taking different twists and turns. Obviously, it's helpful because of all the reasons that you said it is. I can see that because when that's reflected back to you, oh, I use those words, or I say that phrase a lot, or whatever, that does start to reflect how the world sees you, not necessarily how you see yourself. Like in your example from Arrested Development. I can also see it taking some pretty funny turns. Like, either I'm thinking about that scene in Liar, Liar where Jim Carrey's like, and you this and you bad. It's not exactly what you're talking about, but for some reason it got my brain going there where it could be kind of funny.

Yeah, sure.

And then out of context, that has to be an exercise done with care and with love, because out of context, that kind of like a 360, right? It can be, I don't want to say hurtful, but it has to be done in a caring type of atmosphere. But so good. Yeah, language is prophetic. And then there's some real tangible things for people to think about in order to do that. I almost want to ask you right now, what's my word cloud? And I've already thought of a couple of phrases for you, but maybe that'll be for another round.        
            
Sure.

Well, as we said, a lot of our listeners are leaders, and you just have so many good observations on leaders, but one specific question that I want to ask you is what do you see from your chair as a coach helping us develop these exercise in which leaders and groups come up with their own insights? I mean, what's your observation of a leader's primary role?        

So here, if somebody wants a book to read, a book that's been really helpful for me is Leadership is an Art by Max Dupree. That's an excellent book.

Okay, we'll make sure that hits the show notes.

So, a leader's job is to hold the space, and again, I'm going to go back to an exercise, okay? So, one thing that I'll do with my coaching clients who are local and I'll do with groups of people is I'll take them to a labyrinth. And here I really have to reference Jack Bevalaka, who's had a profound impact on me as pretty much everyone who meets Jack. So, my first labyrinth walk was with Jack, and that became such a powerful exercise, and you can use a labyrinth walk. It's such an open way, it's so open to various interpretations and various uses, but the way that I will use it is to help a leader think about their role. When you are facilitating a labyrinth walk, your job is to hold the space and make sure that everyone who's on the labyrinth has space and room to navigate their own path. And as a facilitator, as a person who's holding the space, you help the people who are entering into the labyrinth to know how to navigate the space and what will help them to navigate the space and what you are able to offer them as the facilitator, the person who's holding the space, sometimes what you're not able to offer them, the role of the leader or the facilitator when we talk about walking on a labyrinth, is to simply hold the space so that everyone can navigate and find their path in a productive way. For people who haven't done labyrinths or that's not close to you, or it feels too spiritual, if it feels there is a certain spiritual component to it. The other thing I would offer is your number one job is to garden. You are a gardener.

Explain that a little bit.    
    

I find that metaphors are really helpful both in leadership and in coaching. Metaphors just help to quickly frame a reality that suggests paths forward.

This is your language coming through again, right?

Yeah.

You're going to drop a metaphor bomb on us?

You know what's funny is I didn't know that I do that. I did not know that. And then we were in Taos, so I'm telling lots of stories of events that we've done together, and I hope this comes through. Like, Rewire as a company has been profound in the impact that it's had on me and the things, I've been able to experience, and I've been able to design some cool things. Like I contributed to that Taos, I did a labyrinth walk in Taos.

I was going to say, as you were describing the labyrinth, I remember you facilitating us rewire all the staff, all the coaches through that exercise. And I was thinking about it as you were explaining it, and I'm like, you were one hell of a leader through that thing. And at the time, I was only concentrating on my piece of it as a participant in that, but now looking at it in the context that you just explained it, I'm like, man, he did a heck of a job there as a leader, because you're right.


But even that. Your job isn't to think about what I'm doing, and if I'm leading well, you're not thinking about what I'm doing, because my job is to facilitate your experience on the labyrinth. If I'm leading and facilitating in such a way that your thought and your takeaway from that labyrinth walk is, well, holy smokes, wasn't Longan amazing? And you didn't get anything out of it. I have failed.

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Yeah. Big lesson there for our listeners, right? If leadership is all about the leader, that's a challenge. If the leader almost and again, I'm going to tell you what I heard, so correct me if I'm wrong, but if the leader is invisible with the people that they lead getting amazing things done, then the leader's done an amazing job. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's profound, brother.        

So, we were in Taos and we were with a group of gifted coaches. That's the other thing. I'll tell you about a gardening metaphor. I promise I'll bring this back around.

Yeah.

But we were in Taos. Rewire has gardened, some pretty amazing specimens in its gardens, and when I say specimens, I mean coaches, because we have some phenomenal humans. I mean, even if they weren't amazing coaches, they're just phenomenal humans.

Right on.

So they're in our group and we're having a breakout, and it's four coaches to a group, and we are providing quick coaching. Like, we have five minutes to coach someone and they bring us a problem, and then the other coaches who are watching the coaching happening are talking about what they see. Val Tremblay, I will call her out specifically, she said, where did you learn to do metaphors? And I said, what do you mean? And she said, you’ve done two metaphors in your last two coaching rounds. You seem to have a metaphor for everything, and the metaphors seem to quickly allow the person you're coaching to understand the concept that is currently challenging them and find a path forward.

Yeah.

And in the moment, I didn't know what to say because it felt like a compliment, but it was something that I didn't know at all.

I will agree with her and shout out to Val, an amazing Rewire coach from Canada. We love Val. You are unconsciously competent in your metaphor game because you're so good at it, you don't even know that you're doing it, but it took her to point that out, and I would agree. You even did it- I wrote this down. We try to put the cookies on the bottom shelf. I mean, dude, that was amazing that you said that. And that was a metaphor.

That's not a Longan original, but yeah, I do like it.

Yeah, I don't know that I've heard that out of your mouth over the last almost eight years now. You'd think I've heard all your metaphors, but no, you just broke another one out today. You're saving that for the Inside interviews. I appreciate that.

So, the role of a leader back to get us all back on.

Yeah, bring it around.

The role of a leader is to be a gardener. You asked me what is the role of a leader? So, the role of a leader is to cultivate a space in which people's inherent attributes can carry the day and to protect the space and to nourish it in such a way that everyone has space to grow, everyone is getting what they need to grow so that they can produce the things that they're naturally able and want to produce. Embodied in there is this sort of belief about humans, and I would even say that this framework is fundamental to the way that you will navigate your leadership. And here I'm thinking of someone that I haven't talked to in 15 years. His name is Stephen Patty, and he was actually the person who introduced me to the Appreciative Inquiry model. And just to make the connections, Appreciative Inquiry Model is very aware of the idea that the language that we use is descriptive of the reality we are trying to create. And so, this model I would call the good bad people model, that's what Dr. Patty called it, is the good bad people model. If you believe that people are fundamentally bad and that there's something wrong with them, you are going to manage and lead them accordingly. If you believe that people are fundamentally good and are looking for good things to do, you are going to lead them accordingly. Now, that's a very black, white, dichotomous viewpoint. And so, as a leader, you might have to find some space in the middle, but the way you find that middle space between good, bad and your view of basic humanity, is going to determine the way that you lead people.   
     

Yeah, so good. And that also goes along, I think that ties in well with what you first said about language. The language that you use is prophetic of the outcomes that you're going to get your mindset around. The people that you're leading is going to be prophetic in the outcomes that they produce. So, it's all interconnected.

Yeah.

I want to ask you a couple of questions on one last topic, and then we'll start to wrap it up. You've seen with clients, with your own life, with Rewire, just your different observations, successes versus failures, and I know that you've got some pretty specific thoughts on this idea of failure and the role that it plays in people's outcomes and successes. And so, I guess an open-ended question would be what are Steve Longan's thoughts on failure?

Believe it or not, my sense is, and I was actually about to talk about this when we were talking about leaders and language being prophetic. One of the responses I get from leaders, once they understand the role that their language plays in determining the outcomes of the people that they lead, is this feeling of swear word.

By the way, everybody, Longan doesn't cuss a whole lot.

One of my favorite movies is the fantastic Mr. Fox. And I love the way they said, like, what the cuss are you doing? Are you cussing with me? So, leaders, once they understand the role that their language has played and is playing in the outcomes for their people, is a sense of, oh, poop, because then they're starting to play it back and then they feel the weight of what they have done and what they are doing. And I find that immediately thereafter, I have to talk with them about failure and I have to talk with them about growth mindset. See, we've actually been talking about failure this whole time. Failure has been operating in the background of every concept that we've been talking about today. You and I could have failed with the exercise we did down in Mission Bay.

                                                                                                         
"A leader can fail with their language. I can fail in my coaching because baked into this idea is fixed mindset and growth mindset, and what a fixed mindset says is that failure is not an option, and that failure says something unredeemable and unfixable about me, versus a growth mindset, which says I might fail, and that will be part of my process. So, whether we're talking about leadership or whether we're talking about exercise, and frankly, again, like, we were talking about parenting, we were talking about friendships, we were talking about being we're talking about teachers and students’, failure, and I would say this about coaching, failure is important."

And what we do with failure and back to language, how we talk about failure is really important. When I work with clients, and I say this as a recovering perfectionist, I struggled in my first master's program with procrastination. I struggled a lot, because I believe, and I'm telling a little bit of my story here, but I believed that I could write term papers and master thesis that were so good that I would just skip my doctoral work, and someone would have a doctorate conferred on me.

Just ready to go?

I remember procrastinating so much with my term papers, and my papers would be it needs to be 20 pages long and you need to have twelve sources, and I would write something that was 50 or 60 pages long and had 60 or 70 sources, and I would do that for every class, and my professors would say, why did you do this? This is profound work. This is almost a master's thesis on its own, but it's not what I asked you for. Why did you do this? So, I got an A and also a lot of anger from my professors for giving them a 60 page paper.

Tripled their work bother.  
                  

Yeah. And so, I ended up going to see a counselor for this. It was so bad. I was procrastinating so much, and then my fingers were flying and I was writing so much, and I had giant piles of books. That was the montage that I was living inside of.

Yeah.        

So, I went to see a counselor, and the counselor asked me, so you write these papers, and what did you think was going to happen? And I said, and I'm not kidding you, I said, well, I thought maybe it was going to be like some sort of Goodwill Hunting scenario where people would see, they saw the math problem that he did, and they said, you're a genius.

Right.

Come and teach. And I thought that was going to happen with my papers. And after the words left my mouth, I just started laughing uncontrollably because I realized just how ridiculous it was.

Yeah.

How ridiculous it was. And so, my procrastination was actually tied to the feeling that I couldn't fail, because if I couldn't fail, but I knew in my head I knew in my head that it wasn't going to be a perfect paper, I just knew it wasn't going to be perfect. Well, if it's not going to be perfect, then why am I doing it? Like, why even start? And so, you keep putting it off because you know it can't be perfect. And so, you put it off and you put it off and you put it off until your self-loathing of not doing it eclipses your procrastination, and then your fingers just start flying and you start doing the work. And I guarantee you, I'm describing a dynamic that people listening to this right now are living inside of.       

 

I can think about three examples in my own life, especially from my corporate America days, where I did exactly what you just described. And I will tell you, the visceral feeling of even thinking about it right now, it doesn't feel good inside of me. Like, not good. And what you just described of that procrastination being high and the self-loathing piece getting as soon as it eclipses it, that's when you start the work, and it's not a good feeling. It can't be healthy either. So, yeah, I'm sure people listening have had that exact same feeling.

So, failure, what it does, and an embracing of failure, or at least an allowance for failure, what it does is it gives us permission to be in process. This paper doesn't have to create a Goodwill Hunting situation. For me, it just needs to surpass the expectations of my professor or to bring it into the business world, my client. And so, once we give ourselves permission to be in process and failure becomes part of the experiment of our growth, it frees us up to take action.        

I hope everybody caught that. I'm writing that down.

                                                                                                           
"So, in leadership and in coaching, we don't talk about perfection, we talk about experiments. And then failure just becomes an outcome of the experiment that tells us about how we did it. It becomes one piece of information that then tells us what we want to do in our next experiment, which might end up differently than the last one."

That's so good. The next time that we interview you for the podcast, I want to tease that topic out for 30 minutes alone because that's a biggie right there, because we can't do it now, but it also is not a judgment. That failure piece that you just described, it doesn't say that I, as a leader, am a failure because the outcome of that experiment didn't work the way that we thought it would. It's just like you said, a data point to then move forward differently with the next experiment. So good. Longan, any final thoughts as we wrap today?

No, I think that this conversation that we're having is part of a conversation you and I are always having, and it's part of a conversation that we're having as a company. I think that for the people listening today and for whatever role you're in, it's just to keep the conversation going. So, people who are listening to this, they have just been dropped into the middle of one of our conversations.

Yeah, it's exactly right.

And then we'll just keep having this conversation.

Yeah, we sure will. I have a feeling after this episode drops, we're going to have people calling in, not just requesting coaching, but requesting you as their coach, based on what you just said for the last 30, 40 minutes or so. And on that note, how can people find you? What are the best ways for people to get in touch with you?

Yeah, I'm on Rewireinc.com, so you can just email Rewireinc.com and that'll get to me. It's just my last name@rewireinc.com. (Longan) I'm on the social media. I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me there. I'll tell you, I'm not good at LinkedIn. My LinkedIn game for as strong as my metaphor game is, my LinkedIn game is weak, but I am on there.        
            

Okay, perfect. Well, from the bottom of my heart, man, I appreciate what you just did. I continue to learn from you daily. And even if no one listens to this, which, by the way, our listenership is going up every week, which is really fun, so I do think a lot of people are going to listen to this, but whether they do or don't, you help me a bunch here. So, thank you. I've taken a bunch of notes and can't wait to do round two with you at some point in time, but thanks so much for your insight, Steve. Really appreciate you, my friend.

It's a privilege, man.        

Wow, those were some insight bombs that Steve Longan dropped on us. Some of the things that I wrote down from my conversation with him is, first of all, the book Leadership is an Art. That is a good book. I remember reading that and I would highly recommend it. But gosh, some of the quotes that I wrote down. Steve Longan said I might fail and that may be part of the process. Gosh, that's so good. As opposed to me failing, going, oh, why did that happen again? It's just part of the process. It's just another experiment. And when I think about what he said about language being prophetic and then he gave some stories and some examples and analogies to really hammer that home. Boy, you leaders out there. I know for me, I'm going to be journaling about that tomorrow morning. Language is prophetic when it comes to leadership. So, all the insights on from language to leadership to failure, it was so good. But as we end all of these episodes of the inside interviews, yeah, those were my insights, but what really matters is what were your insights?    


            

 

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