Dr. Edwin Adams is known as The Leadership Alchemist & founder of DisruptComfort.com. His mission is to support individuals and organizations in getting unstuck and achieving more. As a Maxwell Leadership Executive Team member, Dr. Adams has established himself as a key opinion leader and development expert whose passion resides in helping people disrupt their comfort zones to become high-performance, non-dependent people. He hosts the Aesthetics of Leadership Podcast and published author, having penned a personal development book, Misguided in the Magnolia, A Journey to Self-Awareness.
Connect with Edwin Adams:
- Website: DisruptComfort.com & AestheticsOfLeadership.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwinhadams/
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✅ GIVE A 5-STAR REVIEW
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-Leadership Resources: https://linktr.ee/McMillionLeadership
-Resilence-Based Leadership Program: https://resiliencebuildingleader.com/
- Discount Code: JMCMILLION
My Mission: I will end toxic leadership practices by equipping leaders with transformational leadership skills.
Together, we will impact 1 MILLION lives!!!
Every day is a gift; don't waste yours!
Joshua K. McMillion | Founder MLC
Dr. Edwin Adams is known as The Leadership Alchemist & founder of DisruptComfort.com. His mission is to support individuals and organizations in getting unstuck and achieving more. As a Maxwell Leadership Executive Team member, Dr. Adams has established himself as a key opinion leader and development expert whose passion resides in helping people disrupt their comfort zones to become high-performance, non-dependent people. He hosts the Aesthetics of Leadership Podcast and published author, having penned a personal development book, Misguided in the Magnolia, A Journey to Self-Awareness.
Connect with Edwin Adams:
- Website: DisruptComfort.com & AestheticsOfLeadership.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwinhadams/
✅ SHARE THIS PODCAST
✅ GIVE A 5-STAR REVIEW
✅ SUPPORT
-Leadership Resources: https://linktr.ee/McMillionLeadership
-Resilence-Based Leadership Program: https://resiliencebuildingleader.com/
- Discount Code: JMCMILLION
My Mission: I will end toxic leadership practices by equipping leaders with transformational leadership skills.
Together, we will impact 1 MILLION lives!!!
Every day is a gift; don't waste yours!
Joshua K. McMillion | Founder MLC
You're listening to the Tells the Leadership podcast. This podcast is for leaders at any phase on their leadership journey to become a more purposeful and accountable leader what I like to call a pal. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Tells the Leadership. I'm your host, josh McMillian, an active duty Army officer and the founder of McMillian Leadership Coaching, and I am on a mission to create better leaders what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader or a pal. My vision is to positively affect one million lives in the next 10 years both the military and the civilian workforce by sharing transformational stories and skills. On today's episode, I'm going to be interviewing a transformational leader, edwin Adams. Edwin Adams is on a mission to produce maximum positive change in the people he serves.
Speaker 2:Edwin is a coach, a healthcare professional, a global key opinion leader and a speaker. His passion in life is to travel the world, helping people and teams get unstuck and achieve more. He's the author of Misguided in the Magnolia and the podcast of Aesthetics of Leadership. He is a purposeful, accountable leader and, before we start, I messed up the beginning of this, so you're not going to hear the introduction of me bringing Edwin on, so it's going to be about midstream of where he is identifying and going through who he is. So let's bring on Edwin.
Speaker 3:Our small town and you farm, which is what my dad did part time. I'm going to whip your tail. You've got to go be something greater. And medicine, he thought was going to be that pathway, and I remember, two years into college, that was not the path I wanted. I wanted to go to pharmacy school. So that's really where my story starts, at that pivotal time of making a significant decision. So I'm a healthcare professional, I guess as part of my story. I'm a man of faith, a Christian. Those are the values that hold me up when I'm struggling. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a recent grandfather. So, joshua, I think I'm a bunch of stuff that I'm still trying to figure out how to put together into an influence and a force out there in the world.
Speaker 2:I think that's one of the beautiful things about life is that we continuously grow. As long as we have that kind of mindset is that it is a continuous adventure, and I think you and I have the same passion about leadership. But that is what leadership is in essence it is an adventure and you never know where you're going to land, but you have to be able to stay. I think committed, coachable and curious those are like the three.
Speaker 1:C's.
Speaker 3:If you do that.
Speaker 2:The venture will just take you wherever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm not sure I was aware of that early on. To be honest, I again. It was that break point that threw me off to the side and starting a new journey. I had to figure a lot of stuff out and I'll tell you, joshua, my introduction to leadership that really captivated me was that entrance into pharmacy school, where I either was going to be a well, I assumed I was going to be a follower. First day of class I remember walking to the back of the auditorium and sitting in the back row just so I could be hidden and unseen, and it was an introduction to a pharmacy fraternity called Phi Delta Chi, whose sole focus was leadership and personal development of the next generation of pharmacists. My involvement in that showed me wow, there are other people who have imposter syndrome.
Speaker 3:There are other people who are afraid of failure. There were other people who thought like I was or like I did, and it was involvement in that organization and several others that showed me wow, there is a new way to live, there's a different way of being, if you will. There's a different way of showing up, there's a different way of influencing out in the world, and that was through leadership. And if it weren't for that organization, I think I would still be following. But who knows?
Speaker 2:So I wanted to back up because I think it's critical is that you had to make a tough decision to go into the healthcare profession. What drove you down that path and then what helped kind of submit that decision in your mind, because that is a tricky issue with a lot of people and, like how you just said, I think you can kind of run into like analysis, paralysis when you run into those critical decisions, just allow the environment just to continue to go as is and kind of just drift. What made you go into the healthcare profession? What drove you there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of the two critical pieces of that number one was I distinctly remember every time I came home from college, my first stop when I was driving into town was the corner drug store where Mr Jack Millican and Bill Colligan were, and they would buy me a Coca-Cola and sit. They would come out from behind the counter and sit there and just talk to me like a real person and then while sitting there I watched people come in and ask them for help and they gave them this recipe, this tincture, this syrup, this, something that they compounded behind the counter in order to solve their problems. So I think that was one was a connection with early mentors. That peaked my curiosity and that's the second part. So it was people and then curiosity that, wow, they create the recipes that help people overcome an illness. That just resonated with me.
Speaker 3:Curiosity I've always taken things apart, always put them together to try to make them better. So the mixture of those two just aligned me with pharmacy really well, because we spent, you know what, seven years of education understanding chemistry and how to put things together in order to have them interact with body chemistry in order to overcome illness or cure disease. That was fascinating to me, I love the integral components and I love the people aspect of it taking care of someone serving someone. That all mattered and resonated, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's very similar to why I think I joined the military is you know the upfront, when you joined the military, the pay is not exceptional. So you have to have a deeper reason or a deeper why. My why was I wanted to be a part of something larger than myself, and then it continued to evolve when I stayed in and I'm still in is that I want to be kind of the beacon of light for other individuals, especially soldiers, and help them and be a part of something bigger, but be able to add value to those who sacrifice, and I think in the healthcare industry. What you just said to is that people and that you're curious, and I think that that's one of the key variables that I set up front is, leaders have to be curious, and I think that's going to be okay with kind of the unknown and being able to go into that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, this world we live in is not necessarily an ordered one. Right there's, the universe is chaotic, yet organized. So I feel you there. If you're not able to pivot, if you're not able to be, I think this is where it starts for me, joshua is if you're not self aware enough, you're unable to pivot, you're going to go with the tide, you're going to go with that flow, rather than standing firm on either your values or your decisions. Your evaluated experiences in order to adapt to an ever changing environment and healthcare is certainly a chaotic one. It's a broken one. It is a large one. It is complicated, a lot of variables, but you know what? I can only show up to that chaos, courageous and confident in what I bring to the possible solutions.
Speaker 3:So self awareness is, I think, is where it all starts and I think that was that pivotal day and when I got into pharmacy school that and joining that leadership fraternity, there was a tremendous increase in self awareness.
Speaker 2:How did you work through that, building that self awareness and that confidence just starting in college, edwin, who wanted to go to the back of the class, to someone who wants to be in the front and have their voice heard? Now, being a public speaker and a coach and author all these things that you are now, all the labels that you are how did that start to resonate early on in your college experience?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have to go back to curiosity. I think there was. If I was curious, if I was amazed that there were other people like me in that they had the same insecurities, and then hearing their stories I think that's the critical thing was I became very aware of patterns within people's stories and I started connecting the dots, and those dots aligned with what I was learning about leadership. So there was a knowledge increase, there was pattern recognition and there was, I guess, the insatiable curiosity question what, if right, what's possible? I started asking better questions, I think of myself that drove me to want to learn more and then connect more with people, because I'm an introvert by nature so it's difficult for me to make those connections.
Speaker 3:Sometimes I feel more powerful and confident, sometimes in small spaces, and that was a redirect that I had to go through in leadership and personal development was realizing the answer to problems is not to become small but it's to become large. You can't influence from small spaces, you need to influence from larger spaces. So just paradigm shifts in the stories that I was telling myself. I was learning from other people's stories and I think that helped me transcend and move through a growth phase, a trajectory of learning and growing that I had never experienced before, because I had a certain paradigm of what it all meant, and it wasn't necessarily the right one. It was just framed by what I experienced to date, not realizing I actually had a choice, and maybe that's it. From other people's stories I realized I get to choose. I don't have to be a victim any longer. I can be a champion, I can be the orchestra leader, the band director, if you will. So that was a lot of words to answer your question, joshua. I hope there was something in there.
Speaker 2:No, I think the key thing is and I see this one military members transition out of the military and they go pursue a civilian career is that they don't necessarily have the academic education, that fundamental bedrock and academia, but they have a tremendous amount of experience and versus when you have an individual come out of academia and that's all they know when they go start a job or profession, while those two worlds collide, one runs off their experience and then the other runs off what the book has told them of, what leadership is. I think, at the end of the day, what you just said is that you add to the body of knowledge, like the individual body, knowledge of yourself. It's just like science by asking powerful questions, the right questions to yourself and to others, you can shorten that learning curve and I don't know you'll you'll understand this is that in manufacturing, engineering, learning curve efficiency is whenever a new product line starts, there's a lot of inefficiencies, but over time it will exponentially decrease to where it hits a true efficient rate of where it can produce an X number amount of systems. But in your case, be the best possible confident leader that you can be because you're asking powerful questions and that you're learning from others and I think that's the true nugget that you just shared is that when you find other people that you know, like and respect and you can ask the right questions, you can learn from their wisdom and then that helps you gain their experience.
Speaker 2:That that is something I wish I would have known early on, because I was a headstrong. You know rain. We call them strong Rangers in the Army. It's like just trying to bowl in the China shop. It's like I'll just figure it out, just break all the chat glass. Well, that is a strategy, right? Yeah, it's not preferred sometimes. Sometimes works.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, and and you know it's funny, you say that. I guess there are two things that come to mind about that. Number number one was what my mentor and now coach, john Maxwell, taught me was and it's not, it's not necessarily your experiences that help shape who you are, it's your evaluated experiences. So unless you pause after either a win, a challenge, a loss or whatever, and figure out what is the message within you, know what I just experienced and how can I use that information to move me forward, you know I think you're missing the opportunity.
Speaker 3:So I think early on I wanted to get as many experiences as I could, but they were more check boxes, right? What makes the resume look good? Because everybody talked about the resume shapes you. You know that's how people judge or evaluate you is by all these experiences you need to have on your resume and how do you stand out? Well, I think I spent too much time building those checkbox bullet points for paper development, when really I needed to be spending time more in people development, but personal development, if you will learning from those experiences a little bit more, because those were gifts that I was offered, and I think the second point I wanted to make was that it becomes necessary at some point for you to find the confidence in what you're gifted with.
Speaker 3:And I don't think I appreciated that. For the longest time, I think I was waiting for my gift to arrive, as if it were a destination on a map at which some point in life I'm going to arrive, almost like purpose. When I, when I realize my purpose, I'll know what my giftedness is. I think through evaluated experiences you start seeing that pattern recognition throughout them. All that meant I show up this way. Every time, it seems, I wonder if there's something there and then use that as your superpower if you will.
Speaker 2:So John Maxwell is someone I deeply respect. I think everyone does. He's wrote what now? You just wrote a new book. I think he's up to like 90, something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's over 100. I think 116 in total, I think best sellers are, you know, number one best seller. For what? 40 years. But the new one is the 16 laws of communication. I think is the name 16 laws of communication. He likes those small books, the one laws, the 15 laws, the 16. I'm waiting to see what the 17 laws of teamwork, the five levels of leadership there?
Speaker 2:you go? That is. That is another great point that you just said. Is that so in the military we have two different types of after action review a or a hot wash.
Speaker 2:So every time that we go do an operation, a training exercise and it's funny because I had David Petraeus on yesterday and he did, he was discussing the exact same thing is that an organization that does not learn is basically doomed to repeat the same mistakes and failures. And it's just like setting, I think, a strategy. And what he said was hey, you come up with the ideas, you know the vision of where you want to be, you communicate those ideas clearly and it's like you just thinking about it Okay, what was I supposed to do? Okay, what did I do, and how did that differ? And then how can I improve the next time that happens? It's really, really simple to do, and I broke it down in the military. Now you got me fired up, so there's a sales hall.
Speaker 2:Whenever you go do a short patrol, we always take a sales hall to kind of acclimate to the environment, because we never know what we're going to be going into. So stop, look, listen and smell. I know the last one's kind of funky, but when you're doing a combat operation, you really want all your senses working. I see it as the same thing is that when you, when you encounter a challenge that stretches you because I don't like the word failure, I like stretching you you stop, take a tactical pause, observe and then pursue with purpose. And I think that's key is that, especially in this world, people want to continue to move forward because they think that that's progress. Well, it's not progress, especially as a leader, if you have not identified why you failed and come up with a pivot point, exactly what you just said before, because then it's insanity. It's the definition of insanity. You're going to do the same thing and you're going to get the exact same results.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's great that you say that in healthcare. I would say most of my experience in passion has been in the hospital pharmacy arena and one of the most common admissions to the hospital was because of a medication related error that happened outside of the hospital. So one in three experiences that patients had out in the community was either being negatively impacted by a medicine, taking it wrong, taking someone else's medicine by accident so one in three ER admissions was because of a medication related problem. Well, even within the institution, you know we're only human there are errors that occur and whenever one happened we tried to deconstruct that into those component parts to see where the system failed. And I think that that helped me see that I wasn't doing that enough as an individual. When I did fail or stretch, using your terminology I think my motive was to avoid failure because of my upbringing that if you didn't get an A on a test, my value was tied to my productivity. That's how.
Speaker 3:I interpreted growing up, the love that I received from my parents was directly related to my performance. So if I didn't perform at the very highest level, my value and my love was, I guess, on a different level, and that bothered me. So I think I overachieved out of fear of failure and being introduced to John Maxwell's book in college, I think around that second year time period, failing forward. That was a paradigm shift for me, Joshua, of wait, you mean failure is actually how I grow. What? Okay, now I'm curious.
Speaker 3:I fail a lot, so I was curious how do I use that then? That seems like failure is my superpower. Or a second year in college, right, as a growing young man, we think we know everything and then quickly realize we don't. But that was just a paradigm shift that's the only way I can explain it. That helped me realize that in order to grow I had to stretch. And then I had to evaluate those experiences to look for the pattern, align it with my belief, align it with my values, align it with the way forward. Yeah, it's a great conversation for sure.
Speaker 2:All right, team.
Speaker 1:let's take a quick break from this podcast and I want to personally invite you to our private Facebook community that I call Purposeful Accountable Leaders, or PALS, and PALS is a community dedicated to inspiring and developing servant leaders by sharing transformational stories and skills exactly what tells the leadership is all about. My goal is to build a community of like-minded leaders that can share lessons, learn, ask questions and celebrate wins when it happens and my mission in life is clear.
Speaker 2:I will end toxic leadership by sharing transformational stories and skills, and you will find countless transformational leaders in this group, many of them I have had the honor to serve with in the military. If you want to find a community that can help you grow both personally and professionally, we would love to have you. You can simply search Purposeful Accountable Leaders on Facebook or click the Leadership Resources tab in the show notes to join.
Speaker 1:I am looking forward to seeing you guys and continuing to grow together on our leadership journey. Back to the podcast.
Speaker 2:I love that book, um, failing forward, and I'm telling you it's over by my thinking chair, but I'm literally kind of when I read it. It inspired me to to walk through a blog series called leaders fail, and I love how he starts that entire chat, or the entire book, by defining what failure is. Not because that is so important, because mentally we see failure as a moment in time. When we fail it's over, you know, it's it's. We can never progress. But how he kind of broke that down and thinking about failure and one of the key points that always resonates with me is failure is avoidable. Defining that it's not. Failure is not avoidable. I don't care who you are, you are going to fail.
Speaker 2:Maybe General Petraeus, because interviewing him yesterday he struck me as a person who, who did not fail, but I'm sure that there was learning experiences that he had. But that was illuminating to me as well because it it it did a mindset shift. You know a 180 degree perspective of where how you were saying you had a fear of failure. You tied your value to the productivity that you were doing and other people you, you assumed, tied their value of how they thought about you, but in reality that that was not the case. You were just putting a lot of burden on your shoulders and probably causing your performance to suffer because of it, cause that's a lot of pressure, and I and I understand that, because I I did the exact same thing very early on in my career is that everything had to be perfect and if it wasn't perfect, then people would think bad of me, that I wasn't putting in the best effort that I possibly could. That's, that's amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and and I think what's critical for for the listeners to appreciate is that when those experiences occur in our past, we tie the emotion to the experience. So that's, that's just brain chemistry, right, that that's how our brain works. So we have those traumatic failure experiences that shape the, the paradigm or the narrative that we tell ourselves, and then later on in life we experience something similar, we have those feelings of failure again. Well, that's simply the story coming back up to life. We've we've we've had the experience before. This one's very similar to that it is. It is no question that the emotion rises to the surface because of the stimulation of that story.
Speaker 3:I think, from a from a self-awareness standpoint, if we we recognize that that neuron's been tapped by a recent experience, it is from our past that the feelings are arising. That doesn't define the way forward, and I think for me that was, that was the difference. Whenever I felt the feelings, it was stop, slow down, get smaller. You're a victim. Rather than I remember that happening in my past, I know the origin story of that feeling. Thank you for coming to my awareness, but I'm going to choose to step forward out of a heightened knowledge now an evaluated experience opportunity, and this is a stretch, a growth opportunity for me. I'm I'm going to look for the very next step forward. So that's, that's a different way of thinking about or using failure. I should say.
Speaker 2:I love that you use failure as a fuel source, that that emotion and that feeling that you have. Cause you, could you walk me through a time that you encountered a challenge and how did you overcome it after you've had that mindset shift?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so my first full time job as a pharmacist. I was working a night shift and I remember very distinctly a patient. It was at a small rural, rural hospital in Mississippi and I remember the doctor coming in. I remember the patient coming in the emergency room, small hospital, right, you know everything that's happening all over the institution. I think it was only 25 or 30 bed hospital, really really small.
Speaker 3:Patient comes in, I'm expecting orders from the doctor, you know, within an hour, you know they evaluate the patient, they get all these labs, data's coming and then the treatment plan comes in, the prescription. Well, the paperwork never came and I was like, well, I know they admitted this patient, I know what room number they're in, there's there's, there's no orders. And I luckily had the vantage point from the pharmacy to the emergency room and I saw the doctor walk outside to his vehicle, ran to go catch him and go and, hey, I didn't get the orders for for patients so and so. And he was so furious with me for for stopping him on his way out that he came back in the hospital and he wrote orders across one. I think there were 17 medicines they were ordering for the patient and he wrote one drug across the order form, would hand it to the ward clerk to stamp it with the patient ID card, and then he threw them at me. So 17 pieces of paper. I had to sit there and take what infuriated me so that he belittled me so much. Then I went back to the pharmacy and I was just angry. There was this other little order sitting there and it was on a newborn baby and I wasn't paying attention and I moved the decimal point. I was just so mad, my hand was shaking. I know I just hit the number without paying attention. And when the label printed and I made the product the IV to send to the to the newborn nursery, the nurse caught my error. I had made a severe 10 times error in moving the decimal to the wrong point and not paying attention and being emotionally overruled. I would say I made a severe error and the nurse called and she called and she said is this right? And that's when I realized that error.
Speaker 3:And I think from that point forward I realized that our emotions from the past you know this took some growth, right, joshua, but that, but my emotions from the past could no longer have that kind of influence in my present I I could not afford or I realized in that moment that my emotions could cause harm to someone and they potentially could have. So I have, I think, what I affectionately call I'm changing the word a little bit but a response ability to words. I have the ability to change the way forward. I don't have to respond from my emotions. I need to respond to my emotions with a heightened awareness so that I don't make a wrong move moving forward. So emotions I realized could could negatively impact my output if I'm not careful. So I have a response ability to take control of that situation. I hope that made sense. Did that answer your your question about how to, how to maybe take failure and do something with it?
Speaker 2:No, it did, and that is a powerful, powerful story, and I see, kind of, in the military, we have responsibilities. It's based on our title, our duty, our job description. But then we have accountability, similar to, like, your response ability, and I love that, by the way. But when? When that happens, we have to be able to be accountable to ourselves and to others, and your definition of that doctor that you just walked through gave me flashbacks to all of these I wouldn't say all a handful of very poor leaders that I've had in the military, and it's funny because you chose the high ground and I commend you for that.
Speaker 2:I have seen countless soldiers get out of the military because of one poor leader and, at the end of the day, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing is that I want to show the world and hopefully other soldiers out there, there's a better way to lead and that you can carry this torch and you can impact lives for the better versus the worse. You can be that one person that makes them stay versus wanting them to go Bingo. Thank you for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, I've been. I have similar experiences, joshua, of really toxic leadership. I think that's the the the word you've used in your blogs. Toxic leadership is certainly out there and yet I have been blessed with great models of leadership that create, that create and hold the space in which I thrive, and I appreciate that so much and it just lights me on fire to know what. It just proves to me what is possible with great leadership and that that you can seek that out, that I have a choice in who I follow versus you know taking taking one for the team for years and years and just getting beaten, that that will drive you to some really dark places.
Speaker 2:And I had no idea early on. When you encounter a bad leader, or if you have a great leader, I never truly embrace that like just sit there and learn from them as much as I possibly could I get. The way I see it is is like great leaders are shooting stars, when, when you're in their presence it's a true pleasure, but when they're not, you don't realize how good you had it, cause it's just a short period of time and you have to mentally prepare yourself when you're going into whatever career fields. You are as a leader, you're going to have good and bad leaders, but don't let the bad ones define who you will become. Don't take those negative traits and carry them forward as those wisdom points. Focus on the good, not the bad. And you said something to the Cartman triangle and you just kind of tie them both together is that you can choose to survive or you can choose to thrive.
Speaker 2:But it all comes back down to how you handle adversity, how you handle failure, how you handle toxic leaders, and I say I thank you for bringing that up. As I call it TNT. There's a path of two roads you could take. Like Mark Twain. You could go down the realm of being a toxic leader. I think that's easy to do. It's avoiding hard decisions, is avoiding your responsibilities. Or you could be a transformational leader, choosing to not have an agenda. The team is your agenda pouring yourself, truly pouring yourself into others so they become better, and in doing so you will win, the team will win, the organization will win. But that's harder to do because you have to have the discipline to do things when your body is like nah, we don't want to do this today. Well, body, we're doing this today because it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. There's so many books on I think Stephen Cutler's written them. I'm blanking on the other authors. But the great resistance, right, the resistance that holds us back or anchors us into those old stories, those older paradigms. But that's not the way. I'm a huge fan of the new Star Wars series, the Mandalorian.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love it and I love how he says this is the way and for me, that responsibility, that obligation to be a good leader, to be an influence, to be a light out in the world, this is the way I never taught that to the Mandalorian, so now I'm not going to get that out of my head.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 3:Well, I appreciate the values, some of the values of the Mandalorian. I mean, what a warrior right, what an example of strength and courage and curiosity and so many values that I admire in that character, and just to have the mantra, this is the way I remind myself of that. When there is resistance at work, when there is challenge, when there is adversity, when there is the stretch, I just have to remind myself this is the way and it's this direction, not that way.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I appreciate that mantra so much.
Speaker 2:So walk me through. You know, going into your healthcare profession learning some very valuable lessons. When did you get that spark that, hey, you know, I believe I have some gifts that I can share with the world and I'm going to go take that bold action and do it when you realize, hey, I'm a leader and I want to share this with individuals.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So when I finished my pharmacy training I Went to get my doctorate degree. I did some residency training After that and came back in. My first Big job as a as a full pharmacist was at a poison control center for Louisiana and it just so happened that the poison control center was housed within the school of pharmacy in the town in which I lived with a small university town and Probably a year and a half, two years in I Was made an offer to teach an elective course in hospital pharmacy and up to that point, you know I had worked a lot in a hospital, part-time, most of my training was in a hospital setting, etc.
Speaker 3:So to teach a hospital elective to pharmacy students, that sounds like a lot of fun To to take them through my journey through a hospital pharmacy, to teach them what I wish I had been taught, blah, blah, blah. And I think it was in that classroom that I realized Not only do does my, do my experiences have value to the next generation of pharmacists, but I Think I became better through honing those stories, through telling those stories, through being Authentic, being a little vulnerable, tell them about the mistakes I made and the experience of the dialogue With the curious young minds of the next generation of health care professionals. I realized I Could be valuable to their growth and development. So I think the service Neuron fired and I loved answering their questions after class. I think that was it. I would always then class even earlier than I was supposed to, just to get to the questions and interact with them one-on-one and realize, wow, okay, okay, I think I'm seeing the way forward. I really like this Well, that that one opportunity to teach an elective course led to my university career.
Speaker 3:I taught at the, the College of Pharmacy level, for 14 years. My last five was as the Dean of Students running the Office of Student and Professional Affairs, where, you know, my door was a revolving door of students coming in with problems with issues, family matters, drug addiction, substance abuse, dis, all kinds of disfunt financial issues, etc. And I loved working with them to overcome those challenges. So if it weren't for that, that one experience teaching in a classroom environment being exposed to, you know, 50, a hundred hungry minds of the next generation, I don't know where I'd be, joshua, but that was. That was a pivotal Change in my professional career was having that opportunity to add value to young people.
Speaker 2:So I define leadership in one word, a little bit different than John Maxwell, but I see it the same way in essence. But it's to inspire. Because I think when, when you can see that spark in people and that you have been able to to build that in them, that's that. That is the most powerful Motivator that I've ever had in my life, and I love it when I have soldiers reach out to me that I have I haven't even talked to you in three years or something and they just tell me hey, sir, like you know, I see what you're doing. Or hey, sir, I just wanted to reach out and tell you that you had a major impact on my career. Wow, like that, that, that fuel source will keep me going for years to come, because I know what I'm doing is Adding value to people and they had what. What is that? If you ever read the book by Simon Sinek, leaders eat last, I think it's um, is it serotonin, that chemical release that you get when, when you're adding value to people?
Speaker 2:It's like that feel good, I mean yeah yeah, he calls it the leadership chemical, and it's true is that we can use our bodies as a weapon to wage war on failure, because we have the tools and and the chemistry which, by the way, I'm not even going to try to talk about To do so. Yeah, so walk me through, kind of making that transition into your, your coaching. What was the most impactful lesson that you learned during those early years?
Speaker 3:One, one lesson, geez I. I would say that the biggest lesson was that there's not one right answer. Hmm, and again, if you go back to my upbringing that is something I've had to fight over and over and over again is the story that comes up from that, that early narrative of Well, you're evaluated on one right answer all the way through through your educational experiences? There's an answer that you're trying to get right and and I've been Objectively assessed through examinations all of my professional career and understand the value of that you have it in the military as well. There's certain levels of performance and expectations that that are Required of you, but what I, what I have found in life, is that there are there are a lot of right answers, and that the Answers must be synthesized within me in order to be most valuable. So I can borrow from other people's answers, but they might not be my answer.
Speaker 3:I Love that there. I think it's my job, my responsibility one word, my responsibility is is to synthesize the answer and express it in the world, using my knowledge, skills, attitude, giftedness, influence, if you will, to inspire or transform or or solve for for something. So again, a lot of words, joshua. I hope the answer was in there Somewhere All right team.
Speaker 2:Let's take a quick break from this episode and I want to share a leadership resource with you, and that is the resiliency based leadership program.
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Speaker 2:Back to the episode yeah, so I tie that to two things is I asked you know General Petraeus, a question is how do you? What's your leadership philosophy? And he said it depends. It depends on the job that I'm going into, because I have all these tools at my disposal and you know, I know who I am, but I'm not going to leverage those tools unless I know it's going to be successful and that specific job or with those specific people. So my leadership philosophy kind of depends, and what you just said there and kind of what I wrote down, is that there's more than one way to solve a problem.
Speaker 2:And I love it because, at the end of the day, as a leader and make no mistake about it you're there for one reason is to get results.
Speaker 2:But a key variable to do that is being proficient. And I tie it into maneuver from an infantry perspective is that I have the tools at my disposal, and there's countless different tools at my disposal. I'm not an expert on them all, but understand what they do and then how I maneuver those tools on the battlefield to get the desired results. And as a leader, maybe you have a toolkit in your rucksack, you have a lot of tools in your rucksack, but you need to get the right ones at the right time and maneuver them correctly to get the right results. And I think that's where the art and the science of leadership truly merges together, because it takes time to have that awareness of not just the operating environment but also yourself, and it goes back to spending time to think, being quiet, reflecting on your God given strengths that you possess, and then even the strengths of others around you that you can leverage to help get the results. So that's an amazing point.
Speaker 3:You remind me, are you familiar with the go ruck organization?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I just dropped $300.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. So my friend, who he is now commander of? Why can I get the verbiage ever right with him? But not special for security forces at the core space. So he, he, he's what, 20 years, my junior, great friends. I respect his leadership so much what he challenged me to join him on a go ruck challenge a few years ago and that was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I still had the battle scars from that.
Speaker 3:But one of the exercises that I think talks to to to your point was it was probably 130. In the morning we had a rucksack on our back with, I think we had to carry at least 25 pounds in there. We had to carry our water, our food for the night, everything in that rucksack, so it was probably 50 pounds. We had all this other stuff we were we were carrying and had acquired over the night thus far, and we end up on a soccer field in the middle of a park in New Orleans, louisiana. So we're what, four hours into the challenge, a 17 hour long day is what it turned out to be. But four hours in, we're in a soccer field. It had just rained, we were all soaking wet, we were cold. And he said All right, everybody in under the goalpost this was a green beret officer was was there with us leading this challenge. So we all huddled into the goalpost and he said Look at the end of the field. He said your job is to get to the end of the field, to the other goalpost, because you're only safe inside these goalposts. He said I'm going to count. You can run as long as I'm counting, but I'm only going to count to three and then you have to drop to the ground flat. If you're still in the air After I say three, you're dead and your teammates have to carry you the rest of the way. He said Are you ready? And he said Go. So we hauled tail out of the goalpost and he says three, we all hit the ground, we're safe on round one.
Speaker 3:But we didn't make it very far and we kept getting up, running. People were dying, we were having to drag people, we were exhausted by the time we got to the other goalpost and the green beret just looked at us. I mean I think we struggled for 45 minutes trying to get across that field up down, up, down, up down, absolute exhaustion. And he said this is going to be a very long night for you, ladies and gentlemen, unless you stop, you think and you evaluate your surroundings and what's being said. He said what did I tell you about being safe? Where were you safe? And we said the goalpost.
Speaker 3:He said why didn't you just pick the up the goalpost and walk across the field? What? That's all we had to do. There's, there was another answer. So I think that was the magic of the exercises. From that point forward, we all huddled together, evaluated what he said and came up with an and agreed upon answer that everybody could buy into and contribute to and then move forward, because, man, it would have been much easier to just walk across that field in two minutes under a goalpost. But I love that story. We brutalized ourselves and set ourselves up for for more failures the rest of the night, but we got better and better and survived, but nonetheless. What a great experience to show you the values that you talked about.
Speaker 2:So kind of where you are right now. I would love maybe you could take some time to talk through the coaching that you offer.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think, joshua, what I have seen through throughout my professional career that bothers me and I think this is what drives me is is where suffering takes young men. So I think, from a generational perspective, I'm I'm what I'm a Gen Xer. So so the my son's generation, I have seen this, this new generation entering the workforce. I have seen that men, men, don't know the way forward, and I'm saying this generally and categorically, so I don't mean to judge all men, but I think there is, there are a lot of men who are suffering, and I know part of that story because I suffered in similar ways as they did with self image, the victim mentality, that I'm not good enough to them, posture syndrome, all of those syndromes, and I receive so much value from having someone change or raise my level of awareness.
Speaker 3:So I think, from a coaching perspective, I'm I'm trying to help men who are stuck or stagnant enter into courageous prosperity. So, so that's, that's the bridge that I'm, or the ladder, whatever you want to call it to offer to young men to go. You know what there's, there's another way of of living, there's an opportunity for you. You're already gifted, you already have purpose. So let's, let's coach that out of you. So that that's that. That's the foundation. Let's end suffering. Let's optimize men to to get out there and solve problems. This is the way.
Speaker 2:I love how you keep bringing it back to the Mandalorian. This is the way that I'm gonna. I'm totally taking it.
Speaker 3:It is yours, it is yours. Spread the, spread the message.
Speaker 2:One thing that you said that I love and I've heard it before with I think it was David Braun and Troy Moldall. They're the creators of Oula and it talks about is that you were designed for greatness and the purpose. You were designed for greatness and purpose, but today we're flooded with, I think, the advertisements that someone has, especially if you're active on social media, is in the thousands, thousands a day of all this negative advertisement, a lot of like negative things that you need this to be happy, you need this to be happy, you need this to be happy, and that we're never in our own minds. Which John Maxwell says who's your best mentor? That you should spend most time with it's you, and you mentor yourself through through thinking, and you're never going to get ahead in life if you can't stop. You know, silence your mind, take a tactical pause, observe and then pursue with purpose, because you don't know who you are.
Speaker 2:It's like we're we're walking through a dark room without having the light switch turned on yeah when you find your purpose, though what you're doing as a coach, you flip that light switch and life changes. I'm telling you now is that once I discovered what my passion and my purpose was, and then I have a perspective that's called I call it the rule of three Ps connecting your passion, purpose and perspective together. That is when you get fulfillment in life like true fulfillment. It's not tied to material objects, it's not tied to what other people have that you want. It's tied to your actions and your deeds that you live every single day, and I love that. So there needs to be more people like you that are helping.
Speaker 2:You know, especially young men nowadays, and I would just be honest is that that one of the most marginalized, I think, groups, especially right now, is young men. Every, every time I look around, I see them always being as as the aggressor, I guess, or portrayed is that. But in reality, I go to what Jordan Peterson said and this is probably going to be a little bit off topic but you should be a monster. It's like one of his most, yeah, most famous things. But you have to learn to control that control your emotions and then use them for good, and I can't remember that old quote is it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. You have to have those skill sets absolutely.
Speaker 3:You have to be able to control it yeah, my, my logo is is is essentially that the. The rx symbol most people are familiar with they've they've seen it when they've left the doctor's office is that with the prescription there's a rx legend on that. That is a Latin abbreviation for recipe. So my, my belief is that in serving people through coaching is to uncover that recipe that makes them, makes them unique and and powerful in this world. And I think it's just been covered up with onion layers, if you will, that we have to peel back because of the stories and experiences and and narrative at play in our minds. There is a recipe at play and that's why it's a personific, personified rx symbol that each of us is unique and our, our goal in life is to uncover that. So that's my drive is I still have some onion layers to figure out, josh would have you know keep digging into what that purpose is and then be inspired through that discovery to express it in the world.
Speaker 3:So when I'm in communication with a coaching client or in dialogue with a coaching client, um, my curiosity is around getting them to ask those right questions to remove those those layers and uncover the potential that's already within them. So it's a discovery process and I. I think it is just like back in the day watching my two pharmacy mentors do what they do. They asked a lot of questions of the patients when they came up. They asked them what they were allergic to. They asked them what they've tried before. They asked them how long the symptoms have been there. They asked them all kinds of questions to uncover how an outside source could provide an internal answer. Well, I think that's what I do in a coaching process I just keep asking questions in order, um, maybe for that flip of the switch to occur and people go aha, maybe this is the way.
Speaker 3:So I don't need to know every next step in that process, I just need to know the very next one, and I think that's what, what, what is stopping most men that that I'm serving right now is they're looking for the connection of all the dots of the one right answer, because everything hinges on it all their suffering, all their joy, all their prosperity, all their hope for the future. It's there's so much gravitas around having to know everything on the way forward. All you really need to know is the next step, and I think the next step reveals itself with subsequent steps. So it's through action, through a journey that every your answers are found not before. You can't line them up before because I couldn't tell you I'd be sitting here on a show with Joshua. You know, 10 years ago when I started podcasting, I had no idea that I would be a guest on a podcast show, but it was. Each step I took revealed the opportunity to me. So that's a simple metaphor to explain what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:I love that and I know you have a lot of resources out there too. That's just not tied to your coaching, so you run your own podcast.
Speaker 3:It's the aesthetics of leadership yeah, the look of leadership that is unmistakable.
Speaker 2:I love that. And then you also written a book too. What, what is it miss guided, misguided in the magnolia yeah, that was that.
Speaker 3:That's an interesting story, I know. I know we're long on time so I'll make it, but wait. But I remember every summer we would spend time at my parents house on a lake not too far from here, and it was particularly around Memorial Day when all the cousins, all the family is around the camps nearby and we'd all be floating in the water. And I had this idea of writing a book and I was just excited to say those words floating in the water hey, ed, what are you up to? I'm writing a book, hmm, oh, wow. So anyway, people would ask questions about that and I'd try to shape the narrative. Well, I think I had one chapter written and I rewrote that chapter at least 37 times. You know, I never got to chapter two, it was just chapter one. So the next year, floating in the water hey, ed, how's the book coming? Oh, it's going great. I'm so excited about the book and the.
Speaker 3:The notion of writing a book was becoming a lot harder than I thought. It sounded good, but but I was having trouble with the follow through of that. Five years into floating, the same person asking me about the book said you know what, ed, I don't think you're ever going to write that book and that's a shame because people would probably get value from it. I was still in chapter one, joshua, five years in. Wow, I was so moved by what my dear friend and relative told me. It bothered me. I was finally bothered by my lack of action, so I went home and locked myself in my office and in 48 hours I finished the book and I hit publish on Amazon.
Speaker 3:And that was the scariest button press of of my life, because all those old stories, all those old narratives were coming at play of. You're about to put yourself out there. I mean a lot of personal stories and judgment is coming. Just get ready, they're going to attack you. You know I was already preparing for battle and I tell you what it was.
Speaker 3:Probably three days after hitting that button you get an email saying thank you so much for for your book. It was a game changer for me and I was what it actually. It actually mattered to somebody what, and then more and more positive affirmations were coming about, the value that the book was having for people, and I was so ashamed and so sorry that I waited five years. How many more people could I have helped if I'd just been bold and courageous. So that was one of those other life lessons of an experience taught me that bold and courageous is the way, that why live in fear because you're really hurting the people that you intend to help but by not stepping forward boldly and courageously? And and it also taught me that you know the, you know the, the words that I put on paper have value, that I, I have a superpower and it's in the written word. So it it.
Speaker 2:It showed me another superpower I had, that that I didn't appreciate one other question that I've seen a theme throughout this and I think that you could probably provide a practical way that our listeners could could help build confidence. But what is one way? One way right now someone listening to this podcast could build, and begin to build, confidence in their lives yeah, I think we have.
Speaker 3:We have to acknowledge what we are fearful of. We have to raise it to our conscious awareness and identify what it is we're afraid of. So for for me, it was criticism, and probably one of my greatest, greatest fears is disruption of comfort and criticism. So when, when I evaluated all those experiences, I now know that when I get that feeling in my gut that is uncomfortable, that actually I need to be paying a lot of attention to what is creating that emotion, because this is probably my way forward. This is probably my. My next step is through resistance, not around it. So, to answer your question, I would say pay attention and name what your fears are and then, when you feel them, step through them, not try to find the way around them. Your answers are going to be found through that resistance. And what does that look like?
Speaker 3:Well, if you're afraid of heights, you need to put yourself in environments where you are high and have to work through that emotion to find yourself on the other side of it, because the emotion isn't the truth. It's your outcome in response to it. That is truth. So there's a difference there. So being as uncomfortable as many times as possible is probably going to move you more into building revolutions than the not. So I love Dave Ramsey's formula for momentum focused intention over time. So focused intention divided by time, multiplied times, the power of belief is equal to momentum. So if you can focus your intention on what, what, what you're afraid of, I think that's where you you find courage, where you find boldness, in, in going your way.
Speaker 2:Being uncomfortable stretches you, and you talk about heights. I petrified heights. So why not go to airport school and jump out of airplanes? So why not? There you go.
Speaker 1:That's how you do it it's time for our final show segment that I like to call the killer bees. These are the same four questions that ask every guest on the tales of leadership podcast be brief, be brilliant, be present and be gone question one what do you believe separates a good leader from, how john maxwell likes to say, an extra ordinary leader?
Speaker 2:yeah, your ability to communicate and connect with people so question two what is one resource that you would recommend to our listeners?
Speaker 3:it could be anything yeah, I think one of the foundational books I love is the four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. They're just four truths that that can make your life a lot simpler and a lot better oh wow.
Speaker 2:So question three is if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be and why?
Speaker 3:yeah, best advice I would, I would give them, is find a mentor now yeah that's Thomas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, short and learning curve. Yep, then the final one how can our listeners find you and how can they add value to your mission?
Speaker 3:yeah, great question. Thank you for that. I am most active on Instagram, which is at well, the at symbol right, but my my name on Instagram is disrupt comfort, all one word. And then you can always find me on the aesthetics of leadership podcast on all major podcast outlets and online at aesthetics of leadership calm yeah, and all that'll be in the show notes too, so they'll be able to easily reach out to Edwin.
Speaker 2:This has been an amazing hour discussing leadership with you. Thank you so much my privilege.
Speaker 3:My brother, thank you for the invite. This was incredible.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you all right, team, it's time for our after action review. That was our episode with Edwin Adams. So what are the top three takeaways you should have that you can take on your leadership journey? The first one that I have is that you do not need to respond when you are in a negative mindset, because when you do that, it's going to drive your actions in a negative way.
Speaker 2:And how he shared his story of a doctor a toxic leader, not a transformational leader making him emotionally mad. He made an error coming up with a newborn infants medical diagnosis through the IV that was getting ready to inject, and I think he said that it was just one decimal to the right. That could have been catastrophic. A nurse was able to catch that and he had a realization that, wow, I acted based off emotion. You cannot lead based off negative emotion. I think one of the key differences between me that at least I've seen the military and other people is that I'm able to harness my emotion. But I harness my emotion for good. I harness those times, those times that have defined who I am, and embrace that and allow that to keep me on true north. But as a leader, you have to make sure that you understand that your response matters and your ability to follow through how he talked about response ability two different words. How are we responding, especially in a negative environment, and do we have the ability to see it through? And you have to do that.
Speaker 2:The second key takeaway that I have is that there is more ways to solve a problem than what you believe. Do not pigeonhole yourself and to just continuously doing the same thing over and over, and over and over and over again, as a leader of yourself. And again, everyone is a leader. Everyone is a leader because you have to learn to lead yourself before you can lead others or leading a team or an organization. You have to be coachable, curious and committed the rule of three C's, but the key thing there is curious. You have to continue to learn. Every time you learn something, you're adding it to your rucksack. It's another tool. People on your team have other tools that you don't have. They have those tools that can help cover your blind spots and you have to be able to understand that. Where you're put at in life, you have different tools to solve those problems, and the tool leads basically to proficiency, one of the key variables that I believe that takes. That defines a purposeful, accountable leader of being able to inspire is the tool and how to maneuver it. So you know the different resources you have at your disposal and then you know how to leverage that tool, given a certain situation, to achieve the desired in state.
Speaker 2:The final key takeaway that I have is step through fear. A lot of times when we encounter fear, we feel that it is just going to stop us. We come into analysis, paralysis, when we try to find ways around that event. But what Edwin is saying is go through that a bit, step through that event. I was scared of heights, but I've always had the dream to go to airborne school. I chose to go through that. I chose to step through that fear. So when you're encountering something in your life that scares, you understand it, reflect on it, you go through what we talked about here. Silence your mind, take a tactical pause, observe your surroundings, then pursue with purpose, but do not allow fear to prevent you from moving forward. Step through it.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, if you've gotten any value from today's episode, do me a favor, share this podcast, subscribe and, most importantly, give me feedback. Let me know how I'm doing. Reach out on social media. Follow me on social media. I would love to hear how I can continue to build powerful content for you guys, to become what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader. Be a transformational leader in a world that needs light, especially now. I'm your host, josh McMillian, saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.