this is the art of network engineering podcast will explore tools Technologies we enjoy new information that'll expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow Network engineers welcome to Arnold's networking Institute today we're going to start off with cabling yes layer one I said if you came here to jump right into the application layer get out you must learn to crawl Indian walk before you could run all the way to the chapel okay here we have a Kappa cable there's eight little wires inside some twists around each other to combat noise yes you can run the ethernet protocol over the Kappa cable but don't call this an ethernet cable track and Pacer would be very angry with you which means I'm angry with you to get an appreciation of the Kappa cabling I'm going to have you learn to terminate them and you don't even need to travel back in time to find John Connor to do it you see what I did there I made the funny I would show you myself but I would just Crush those puny wires okay while you get started on the cables I'm going to step away in the meantime listen to the art of network engineering I'll be back you see I did it again welcome to the art of network engineering podcast oh my God my name is Andy laptop you can find me on the internet at permit ipandyandy.com and with us tonight we have Arnold timbertino how you doing Tim I I continue to agree to embarrass myself on a on a public forum so I got that going for me it's one of your good buddy how are you it's one of your strengths you got to play to your strikes I'm sure we'll get into that in this episode we might be talking to somebody that taught us both about uh leading with your strengths uh I'm I'm good man I'm I'm uh a lot of great stuff going on and I I don't know where to start but um yeah life life is good um I are you still uh swimming in 62 degree water no I was doing deliberate cold water therapy to um I was listening to this podcast and this super apparently anything that a neuroscientist or like noro anything in their title says I'm like wow these people are really smart I'm gonna do whatever they say and this guy's Andrew Lieberman Lieberman I forget his name but anyway he's got his great podcast and he talked for two hours about deliberate cold exposure and all the health benefits so yeah I swam in my freezing cold pool until I had to close the pool and now I am not so um maybe now I buy the big bucket full of ice and and do that but my wife thinks I'm nuts my kids don't understand me so I don't know but you never I mean not only were you doing that but you were outside when you were doing that you never never caught a cold nothing like that no no I think that's you know I think that's a wives tale that like you know cold weather gets us sick you know but I don't think viruses care like remember 2020 I mean now we're we're coughing crazy Lane but in 2020 like I think all the viruses that people got in the winter came that summer because everybody was locked down and not spreading it so sure you know life found a way right but um yeah man uh I missed my cold pool uh I will it is proof that I will do anything for like a a noro hack right how can I how can I get my thoughts going my brain go and I you know I want to do big things and I need this brain firing on all cylinders but uh yeah um all right so we have a super awesome guest tonight uh this guy's name is Mike bouchong if you're on Twitter you probably have seen or heard him um how you doing Mike I I don't know that I can keep up with the Arnold thing so I'll just I've been racking my brain for like three minutes like how am I gonna am I gonna beat that and I just can't well I really appreciated your you broke into song right before the show started and we were recording so if we can get your that'll have to get released in its own right that will be seen if you allow it and it's probably the best thing I've seen in a really long time don't threaten me with a good time so um Mike what do you do where do you work kind of start there and uh go from there sure so I work at Juniper Networks I am the group vice president of our cloud ready Data Center business which is Fancy Pants talk for saying that I'm responsible for kind of running the business and and you know identifying what we're going to build and kind of all the cross-functional things that have to happen to get a product out to Market man so that's that's I guess Tim and I were talking about why it would be so interesting to have you on we've you know you're not our typical guest right but we're trying to Branch out and tell more and more of the story you know in Tech and you know you you run the business right like that just amazes me so just this podcast you know we've been doing it two years and sponsors started showing up and it became so difficult and stressful just to run our little thing that we're doing here and you know I know for a fact that you have a whole lot on your plate and you're running quite a big business which has been growing by Leaps and Bounds so I mean how you know we don't want to tell your you know whole life story here but how do you become SVP of a gigantic Tech vendor and like run the business because from where I'm standing that is you know like we're talking about leadership here right and and I initially thought a leader was just somebody who started to manage people and just climbed their way up through charm and intelligence and then became this you know big big deal leader guy but I've been doing a little bit of research this past week in leadership and I'm just amazed at how much I don't know about leadership and what it takes and what good leadership looks like I got to tell you that until recently I think that I've been surrounded you know by not so great leaders and the cultures were indicative right it was you know he doesn't mean right now no no I thought I qualified it until recently so full disclosure on the show if you don't know I work for Mike and he was kind enough to come on but um you know I'm definitely this isn't the Juniper show right this isn't oh you know the Mike and Andy Show I just but the culture I'm in and the business Mike is running is the healthiest culture I've ever been in which is huge for me I've been talking about that for years here how important culture is because I have suffered under some not so great culture so I guess I'll Circle back to my question Mike I mean how do you did you have aspirations as a young guy you're like I'm going to be SVP and and run a business someday not even a little bit right um I went to school for mechanical engineering so I did um fluid mechanics and heat transfer and we did research for Boeing and it was obvious like I don't know six and a half minutes in like that job sucked um and so I needed to get any job and it was not mechanical engineering and so you got through school and you got it through school and got a job in engineering no I I went through no I so I got through school sort of I didn't even get a degree I bailed out one class short for reasons that are interesting but probably not important for yeah so I didn't I actually have no degree I've never said I had a degree I've I had to put it on if you look at my LinkedIn it I'm very careful in interviews I've been I've clarified when people ask the question because I don't want to be one of those people where it comes back and bites you later um but knowing I didn't want to be a mechanical engineering I actually talked to my boss in my on-campus job her daughter was a tech pubs director at a database company called cybase so I actually started my career as a tech writer in a database company and I kid you not I knew nothing about databases so I went and bought like a bunch of books on SQL I read for like you know a week got the interview and got to the end of the interview and I kind of lamented I said you didn't ask me any questions about SQL and she's like oh uh that's not really what tech writers do um but that's how that's how I started in in in Tech writing and then kind of you know worked my way around um and the reason I start with that is that I don't think there's like some preset path the the path to leadership you know doesn't start with an MBA in my case it didn't even start with a an undergrad degree I don't think there's like a particular pedigree that's that's required I I don't think that it's you've got to be particularly um you know focused I don't think that there's a grand master plan in fact when I lead teams I talk about the myth of the grand master plan I think your career is not a ladder I think it's a rock climbing wall and you kind of go up and sometimes you go left and sometimes you go right sometimes you go down um all you got to do is kind of keep your footing and and my path was as circuitous as they come I'm not sure which direction I moved in go into product management I don't know yet right it's awesome but I don't know if I'm going up down sideways uh your uh your your humility it betrays your your talents you're moving up yeah yeah so did you like I mean so all right mechanical engineering I I had trouble I loved science not math so much but if if you made it that far in mechanical engineering you're a smart guy you have an aptitude you you know how to do the math I guess right um quite literally yeah so you know I guess we won't get into why you didn't finish school and it's probably not even relevant but did you like working in in databases like was that Tech writing yeah no it was fine I mean so I think the idea Tech writers are it's actually a really really hard job you have to take something that you're not necessarily a domain expert in and then communicate it to other people who are domain experts in a way that they can learn and actually use it um and details matter because people are following what you do as recipes um I don't know that I liked it that much it turns out I'm pretty good at details and I'm a beast on the keyboard so I was good at the tech writing thing but I I didn't I didn't like my early career it to me it was a job and I I did it and and then I went to the next job and I did that and I was pretty good at it but I didn't love it then I went to the the next job and the next job and the next job um I kind of bounced around because I didn't find something that was like really a fit for my talents it was a set of things that I was capable of doing but it wasn't like it didn't didn't connect with me in any kind of visceral way and it wasn't until I actually moved into the networking gig tooled around inside Juniper kind of post dot bomb you know era you know for like three four years and then eventually a product management job opened up in in Juniper and when that opened up I kind of stepped into the role and then from there my career kind of took off so it was sort of a finding the right fit for me and finding the right the right mix of things I'm like uniquely good at and and opportunities that gave me the freedom to roam so I only recently and and this is you know sometimes I say things and they're embarrassing to say but a large part of our audience are people just coming up people trying to break and brand new people that just heard about you know this type of role so I only recently and I'm not a young guy learned about the the whole Talent thing right I so so that's probably one of the I think that's the first thing you and I the first time we spoke you blew my mind with with the talent you know you said you were looking for a talent fit in your career right and I don't know how I got as far in life and and career in school as I did without you know I I love the framing of you know what we focus and again I'm going to bastardize the book and what it says so eloquently but we we see him as a culture or whatever to be focused on weakness and how can we do better with our weaknesses and I I've done that for so long and it's only recently that you turned me on to that book and and you you told me in that first conversation you know about leading with your strengths and first I had to identify them I mean it's really changed I don't want to give too much weight on this but identifying my strengths and now seeing that they're valuable has completely changed how I even view myself and what I can contribute it's really opened my eyes to like whoa because before I thought you know I have to be this certain thing and I'm not you know I'm not good at math so I have to work on that weakness and programming's hard for me so I really need to work on programming and like well I probably have to be an architect someday because you know they're really smart and I'm not that smart just constantly comparing myself to people with different strengths thinking that if I can hustle enough and kill myself and just work like a madman nights days weekends holidays that I can beat my weaknesses into submission so how did you did you always know that you should you know looking for that Talent fit right something that fits your strengths I mean how did that happen for you because you blew my mind with it I don't I don't think I really knew um you know I do the same thing that everyone else does you know I I had some really great mentors people who kind of coached me on things people who saw talent in me that that I didn't necessarily see in myself um you know the you know all the Imposter syndrome that people struggle with you know I had the same struggles um I did I read the book and the book that you're kind of referring to is a book by Marcus Buckingham called now discover your strengths uh he's the guy that wrote first break all the rules um It's actually an old book but I went and I read that at the recommendation of of one of my mentors and that book like when I read it it just made sense um I had tried different things like even just in my my personal life right I I was always an athlete I've played a bunch of sports um I poured hours and hours into you know some sports and other sports I just I I didn't like and and the premise of this book is that you know when you when you pour effort into something that you're naturally good at something that's a strength for you that you'll see much higher return on investment and what that does is that creates a bit of a virtuous cycle when you see Improvement it actually encouraged you to put encourages you to put more effort into it which then you know improves your performance in that particular area and so if you do this over and over again what happens is you get quite good at something that you're already naturally good at and the the story that the book uses a bit dated now but you know Tiger Woods when he was at the top of his game um the the story in the book is that you know if you were to look at Tiger's game his you know uh tee shots his Fairway play his putts you know whatever it's like the thing that he was best at was driving and putting the thing he was worst at was you know playing out of the sand traps and so it kind of poses the question how how much effort do you think he put into his sand trap play and somewhat not intuitively you find out that he put in just enough effort to become you know merely bad at it you know not even like not even good and then what he was um what he was doing then is is you know putting all of his effort back into the things he was naturally good at and so the kind of the result of that though is is that he became or he took his weakness he sort of neutralized it but he didn't try to convert it into a strength when you realize that and then you look at kind of the way HR systems are designed and the way that large companies work it's actually pretty crazy right we spent all of our time in performance reviews identifying you know what are your greatest weaknesses now we're clever as a as a you know Corporate America we mask them we call them opportunities for improvement but make no mistake right we're trying to identify what people are bad at and then we're telling them that they should spend their time you know working on those weaknesses ignoring the things that they naturally do well and when you go and and you build out like you know individual performances based on these weaknesses you know you get you get kind of one uh Dynamic when you build out entire workforces based on that like you get entire teams of people who are you know designed to underperform and and they never reach their their kind of their Peak and when that happens then you wonder how you can have Legions of people that you're routinely under deliver what the mission is I like that for me the connection actually started over um you know kind of a you're reading the book and then kind of looking at my own life but then it continued and as I moved into you know more senior leadership roles I realized like it changed my entire way of thinking about not just myself but the teams I lead the companies I work for the the missions on which we are and and that has I mean that's been transformative and that's why I actually you know spoke with you guys about it on the first meeting because if you can get somebody to really lean into what their strengths are it'll change you know how they apply themselves it also changes their level of confidence because now it's like I'm doing something I'm good at and when it's something I'm good at it's like I can stand tall I can take on new challenges because I'm a little bit less afraid and some of that imposter syndrome it goes away when you realize that you actually have built an entire career an entire life really on things that you are actually naturally good at this is the only I think the confidence I think the confidence thing is is what did it for me Mike and I think I've in the past have been just so focused just on Shoring up those weaknesses and spending more time figuring out what those are that I really didn't even know what my strengths are and to continue the story the first conversation that I ever had with Mike was um Mike asked me that right off the bat he says well can you tell me what your strengths are and after a moment of awkward silence followed by some some stuttering and stammering I I kind of started listing off things that I was you know halfway decent at or things that I thought were good I was good at and Mike's response to that was well those are those are things you're you're good at but what are your strengths and I couldn't really answer that and that's that's when I got the the homework assignment to to read this book and go through it and I took the the uh companion Gallup survey to give you your your strengths and everything so that that was really eye-opening for me and what's what's interesting about that is that when I got the results and I got that top five none of them were really a surprise to me but it's because I never thought about it and I never put time and effort into figuring out what they were that I never really exploited those so that's I thank you very much for for that because I really leaned into those and I like to go back and and look at them from time to time and and just to see you know it's kind of a self-audit to make sure I'm doing the right thing but uh me being kind of a definitions person I wanted to see Mike that there's multiple words that come up in in that book that are strengths and talents can you kind of demystify what the difference between those two are I think a strength is something that you lean to it's it's kind of inherent to who you are um you know talents are are learned and kind of honed with experience so if you're someone who's very persistent that's actually a strength now keep in mind strengths are not inherently good they can be good or bad right you know the the distinction between um you know I probably have a bad example but um like I always think of like when you're you know teens that are dating right like you know the difference between someone who you know who who likes you who's really into and someone who's clingy is basically it's the same behavior it's just if you like them or not um you know if you like them then they're really into you if you don't like them then they're really clingy um but it's the same behavior right so you know persistence is good right you know being a bull in a in a china shop you know a dog on a bone in ways we describe people you know but at the same time it's like stubborn you know um you know I pigheaded you know there's all kinds of ways to describe it's the same it's the same trait though like those are your strengths and what you got to figure out is once you know what they are then you you can work yourself into situations where you can leverage the strengths and you can grow at things a certain way if you're really analytical right you know you might say that you're oh that person is very sharp they're a pattern matcher analytical could also mean that they're you know slow to make a decision you know indecisive it's the same core strength but it exhibits in different ways if you understand that you're analytical then there's then you put yourself in different positions to do things you might choose to gravitate towards projects that don't have really short timelines you might choose to take a different role in the team where you know your job is to essentially surface ideas and to provide analysis as opposed to you know kind of take the firm hard decision you might choose to communicate to people that I'm an analytical person and so my nature is to look at things more methodically there's all kinds of ways to work around your strengths but if you can do that you know in a team context even by yourself by the way but really in a team context what happens is that you can take those strengths you accentuate those strengths you make the entire team better if you can do that across a broader organization if you can help other people become self-aware so they understand what they're doing why they're doing it and how they can be better like that's all of a sudden now it's it kind of moves from being an individual who sort of you know contributing at the top of their capabilities and moves into an environment where you're actually helping other people do the same and that that's actually what leadership is right it's not about the the management delegation of tasks on Twitter you ask what leadership is and you'll get a oh my gosh you get these like brutal threads uh it kills me to read these things everyone's talking about oh your job is to remove obstacles and your job is to delegate and your job is to you know set True North all of those are certainly things that you do but that's like not the core job of a leader um and you gotta you gotta think through you know kind of how you how you rise and then Andy kind of your question you know I didn't understand what leadership was until I had failed at it you know three four five different times you know just absolutely doing a terrible job as a leader but every time I went through one of those failures and then I managed managed to come out the other side it's like I picked up you know something and eventually I had enough some things that I was like oh I actually kind of understand what I'm doing now um and so now I only you know I think I only feel like half the time instead of instead of every time do you have a working definition of what leadership is to you because I you know I even looked up one in you know Forbes definition they're all pretty terrible everything I find it's just a gobbly book of words that don't really mean anything to me yeah I think to quote Ted lasso quoting the Supreme Court you know there's a lot of definitions for it but you'll know it when you see it um for me leadership is is really around you know how do you um actually let me put it slightly different I had a woman who was on a who's on a different team a few years ago um gosh maybe like eight years ago now and she she she said she wanted to be on my team and and I and so I I asked her I said you know are you a good leader she said no hesitation at all yeah I'm a very good leader so I asked the simple question I said how do you know and she told me she's like well people she works through they all like her and she's able to identify the things they have to go do I said what if it what if I told you I don't actually care if anyone likes you now don't get me wrong all things being equal I I hope people like you I'd rather them like you than not like you but the measure of leadership isn't you know do you get along can you identify the tasks that they have to go work on I said for me the measure of leadership is simple um if I if you're leading a team does the team perform better because you're in that role no I put differently it does like could you inherit a team that's performing at some level you come in and because you're there the team does better and if you leave the team's performance drops like that's like and I know so it's a weird way to think about it but it's like do you matter as a leader and she looked at she was like I don't know now with that in mind the question for me is is you know what's required to get the very most out of a team now some of that is team building you know can you bring can you assemble the right sets of people you know for whatever the task for admission or objective is right do you understand how to not just select people but can you recruit and get people to to want to join you right then the second piece is do you understand how to put them to use like can you can you inspire them and can you put them in positions to succeed and there's a couple ways to do that right obviously you can you know if you delegate things you're basically saying I'm dependent on you to perform figure it out right and if they figure it out then you're a genius leader but what if people can't do that what if you're leading teams that are slightly larger that on average not everyone's going to do that then how do you make sure that you get kind of higher performance and so for me leadership is about that it's like how do I get the right set of people together how do I unify them how do I Inspire them to action and then how I support them in pursuit of whatever it is that we're doing like that's and there's and then obviously I think as you'll know Andy you know I believe in servant leadership so I do think there's tactics that are more effective than others I think that you lead from the front I don't think you'll lead from behind um and I think you lead by doing before you lead by asking so there's certain things like biases that I have in terms of you know what I would do but I think it's it really is it's about cultivating the very best out of the group of people that are you know gathered together either you know for for a short time or in an organization for a longer time in pursuit of something that matters and and that if you can do that really well then you get like dramatically different results out of out of different teams um so that's that's kind of where I'd start I guess when you're building a team can you automatically um identify people's strengths talents is that one of your skills does it help you in leadership and building teams that you can survey the the landscape and go oh he's good at this she's good at that it's obvious to me I need some of that let me get them on my team or is it not that simple I don't know that I always was was very good at it but I've become quite good at it but the key to getting good at it is is uh like being observant and caring more about the person you're talking to than yourself like I have a giant ego I am crazy arrogant and it's been a huge weakness my entire life um and it wasn't until I was able to set that aside and be like look the person I'm talking to is more important than me and so rather than in my head constantly formulating what I was going to say next go in and have like literally nothing in my mind and then just observe and people will you know they always say look you know listen when people tell you who they are okay that you know usually that's these days that's meant in some you know political context but like literally people are always telling you who they are you set to pay attention and if you actually care about the relationship I mean like sincerely care about that that that moment not just the transaction what you're going to get on the other end of that of that moment but actually care about the moment then you'll notice things you'll notice when their energy perks you'll notice where they gravitate alert no you'll never you'll notice when they get nervous you'll you'll notice the types of things the exchanges that give them energy you'll notice when they move fast like you can you can see all this people will even in like this this you know teams in Zoom world uh you can see it and if you figure that out and You observe that not even over a long period it's not like it takes a year even over a short period of time you can start making some guesses and then shocking if you surface those guesses and just ask people about themselves they want to talk about themselves and they will literally tell you what they want they will literally you make a guess and if I'm wrong there's no downside to me hey you know it looks like you're you seem to be really motivated by you know autonomy nope it's not autonomy okay maybe you seem to be motivated by having you know great impact is that closer right and then people will tell you and then once you know that and you iterate that on on that over like the the life of the relationship but once you have that information then I can start like genuinely trying to help and you don't have to be Mike stradamus to do this you can literally just ask people is there anything I can do to help like we complicate leadership like it's some black art it's just not it's just not that hard but the number of people who are willing to just ask questions you know to subordinate themselves to somebody else you know willfully to pay attention and then to genuinely care like for some reason that's like a rare thing in in corporate world um but if you can do that then yeah you can read almost any team and you can start to formulate plans and thoughts and ideas that that help the team perform quite a bit better I think listening is a superpower I like that you brought up you know effective listening to try to figure out who people are you're right like they will tell you who they are right and it I I don't know if I developed it there but I feel like I've always actively listened to people I had to read people as a kid so it's funny the stuff that you pick up as a kid but it was a skill early on but I remember in sales just get people talking what are your interests and you know you know they tell you in five or ten minutes what they want what they're there for you know you you figure out what they can and can't afford and then and then start doing the math um there's like a powerful question there so just in that though there's one question I frequently ask people right like you know what are you worried about you know the proverbial what keeps you up at night like what's your biggest like what's your biggest fear like just asking people about because fear is a very powerful motivator when you just ask people what like what problems are you dealing with they'll tell you all kinds of stuff and and you you only ask the question if you sincerely want to know and only ask the question if you think that that you know if you can you would actually help don't just ask to to manipulate somebody um but if you add but if you ask that question and you get a feeling for the constraints that people are operating under then you can start to and this is where servant leadership steps in right you can you can really start to to help craft a world that is better for them and if you understand what they're worried about and where they're like kind of where their gaps are and the things that they're kind of that they don't see when you start to to understand that then as a leader you can start you know moving things around you know not just with the individual but all the the surrounding environment and that's also allows you to unlock some of the potential that in some cases is sort of stranded in people who are misplaced I like the example you brought up when you were talking to that person about whether or not they'd be a good leader and you one of the questions was hey if I put you in a team of people is that team gonna get better we talk about books a lot on this show and and actually one of one of my leaders had the team read a book called Extreme ownership and and the premise behind that one is is to really drive home taking responsibility um not just trying to push blame when things don't go your way all that kind of stuff and and one of the examples in that book was Navy SEAL training and there were a set of boat races and there was one team of people that was consistently coming in last and one of the trainers kind of stepped back and looked okay what if we do this what if we take the leader that's in the boat that is continuously winning every race and all we do is take the leader from the boat that's continuously coming in last place and we swapped the leaders and see what happens and after about the second or third race the team that was coming in last place all of a sudden was taking first almost every time all they did was swap the the leaders in those boats so I guess leaders have to inspire right I mean based on what Mike said so far and and I I read the beginning of that book too Tim where they were talking about that if and so so boating I mean I wrote on the crew team in high school and yeah that that the guy who sits in the eight spot he sets the pace for the boat he's he's the captain in the boat basically and it's amazing just changing that person out how the entire Dynamic of that entire crew changes when you got a strong confident person you can believe in and you feel like they're gonna take you where you need to go and win something just happens it's like a Synergy thing like the one plus one equals three you know when when you have a good leader and someone's inspiring and you're excited and you're doing it it's it it creates this not weird just this other energy that takes over I can only think of it as like Synergy but um I guess you have to be inspire firing too and and I don't want to get stuck on the listening thing but I'm thinking of like not so great leaders I've had and I don't recall too much listening and then action to try to help you know based on that feedback it was like this is my job I am pushing it down this is what you need to do if you don't like it I can find somebody else I've worked in a lot of orgs that way that is not inspiring that's not someone who's listening and they don't make me feel good right about my job and want to even work harder because I'm not you know they're not instilling that that passion in me um well let's let's let's take that up let's let's look at that a little bit though right so so why does that happen if you were to ask people what makes a good leader you would get a pretty short list of of things that we would all mention right everybody would say you know create Communicator everybody would say a great listener supportive you know you'd get the the the same list if we you know if we brainstormed for five minutes we'd probably make the list if you take any other people who are you know in in you know corporate world they make you know almost the same list right so if everybody has a common understanding of what makes a good leader then you know riddle me this Batman why do we all know or why do we have like more examples of bad leaders in our lives than than good leaders and the reason is that these leadership skills you know we talk about them as if they're soft skills anyone who's who's paid attention to me on Twitter over the years like this is I rail on this because I think this is just brutal leadership and communication are not soft skills they are hard skills they're trained and practiced if you if you work on them like with real purpose right and there's a difference between training and practice right practice is going through the motions training is like practice with purpose if you train these skills communication leadership whatever if you train them over and over and over again deliberately then you will get better at it in the same way that you'll get better at playing piano or hitting at baseball or dancing like it just requires this this this you know constant engagement and the reason it requires constant engagement um good leaders will talk about this idea of intentionality the idea that when you're doing something you want to be intentional about it what that really means is in the moment are you making a decision to behave a certain way or not if you're being intentional then you're sort of surveying the landscape and you're saying you know based on the conditions right here I'm going to choose to do or say or or be this way right if you're not being intentional then it's just an autonomic response it's just muscle memory it's whatever you you're just reacting you're not really responding it's like it's like you know Sun shows up flower kind of bends towards the sun right um what most leaders do is even if they have the the cognitive understanding of what's required to lead when they get in these moments their muscle memory and their trained behaviors are and I'll just say that it's lazy they don't think about it they're not in the moment they're existing somewhere else they're thinking about their part of the transaction they're not really kind of thinking about how to behave and so they forget and if you forget all the time right or if you choose not to then that becomes your muscle memory and so what ends up happening is that you're now ingrained behavior is sort of counter to everything that you think to be true but it doesn't occur to you to change anything because you're never in the moment right there's a reason that great leaders you know pick like any of these great like people talk about um you know ignoring political affiliation people used to talk about Bill Clinton and about how he would you know when he was talking to you you were the only person in the world in that moment and he would make you feel so big and important that's because in that moment the only thing that existed in his world was the six inches in front of him and kind of the distance from you to you know from whoever he was talking to to him and that conversation for however brief it might be it mattered and so let me give you like a really easy example okay so we all well these days we don't really walk down office hallways but imagine you're in corporate in your corporate environment you're walking one way it's a long hallway you see somebody walking the other way you're walking towards each other okay as you walk by hey how's it going that's the that's the person says that to you you probably don't even stop you might not even turn your head as you're walking by there's just a trailing fine how are you and you don't wait for the response that is like lazy um autonomic Behavior where you're just kind of going through the motions you don't care about the exchange in the moment and so you've wasted an opportunity to to tighten that relationship imagine if that's what how you went through every engagement in Corporate America now let me give you a very specific example I was working on a board of directors deck when I in uh 2011. I was a a senior director or maybe a director I guess working on a board of directors deck this is like crazy I'm in this room with all these with like two EVPs a couple of svps we're reviewing a slide deck that I had created of course you know who's going to do the work in that room right like it's all me so they're provided like they're lobbing in all these feet all this these comments and I was gonna have to work on this over the weekend after the meeting's over we exit the conference trip we have to walk about I don't know 200 feet and then before I'm gonna um go to separate ways of this EVP so Stefan dykeroff as we're walking in that moment the most obvious thing to talk to me about is the slide deck and the work I have to do that weekend to get it done what he did in that moment he asked me about my shoulder I had had shoulder surgery like I don't know six months before in that 200 feet rather than asking about the thing that he needed he asked me about what I needed and how I was doing what he did either knowingly or not was a net 200 feet he secured my absolute commitment to getting the slides done over the weekend because he chose to invest in me he took that 200 feet and he was and in that moment I was the only thing that mattered to him not the thing that he needed that like as simple as that is that's leadership and I would I would challenge anybody like do you make the most of these these uh mundane interactions are you intentional is it about somebody else are you thinking about serving is that like an intentional or a deliberate choice that you're making if you if you don't know the answer to that then chances are you're not naturally leading you're merely reacting and whether you get a title or not doesn't change the fact that you're probably a poor leader in those situations but if you could be intentional if you can deliberately bring to bear everything that you've learned then then you can be not just an effective leader but you can be a breakthrough leader because the number of leaders who are actually good and trained at their craft is so like dismally small that you will stand out and you'll be immediately you know among the what top half a percent of all leaders anywhere and when you do that I'm telling you the performance you will get out of your team is going to be like like well I don't want to use the word 10x because that has different it'll be like 9.2 X right so much better but not a 10xer um but like that's how you lead teams it's just it's that it's that level of actually you know giving a shit about the person who's who's there not because they're going to do something for you but because you actually care about them and and to me like that's that's uh Central to the ethos that I have and Andy as you mentioned like kind of the culture in our team that's why the culture is what it is because I don't have room for people who don't care God hey Andy yeah probably don't want to let Mike listen to our soft skills episode deleting it now from the from the catalog now you see God there's so much there right like being present there's a sense of intimacy genuine care for people um I you know I don't know if that all falls under emotional intelligence or if that's just a quiche word that that doesn't mean anything anymore but all these things you're telling like I can see it's not emotional intelligence though so you know so I'm on I'm on Spectrum so I have like I have zero empathy that's not like this is not my I'm an I'm an intense introvert so I was like crazy nervous before this thing started by the way I was like quaking in my boots tonight um yeah yeah I'm I I mean I was but that's because you're my super boss man I didn't want to mess it up no no you could no you could destroy it you could destroy me with the Press of a button I I should be nervous I I I find talking I find stuff like this I find it stressful I find it hard um I don't I have no I have no EQ or empathy everything I do is I I observe it so I kind of fake it but I tell that because uh and so I guess in in uh an easier trip I'm neurodivergent or whatever um but I I mentioned that because these are things you actually can teach yourself to do some of this stuff it's not that like people somehow sense it which then reverts back to this idea these are all soft skills and some people are just better suited to it than others it might be true that some people are better suited to it than others I think that's true based on even strengths um but I don't think that there's some prerequisite prerequisite set of skills that you have to have but you have to be sort of you know inclined to behave a certain way I think there's things that you can learn and then through training I think you can you can cultivate these things the leader that I was let's say 10 years ago is very different than the leader I am today thankfully because I was a terrible leader but but my failures as a leader back then should be everybody's kind of hope and optimism for who they can be because you can take those behaviors and through repetition and through like deliberate again intentional training you can make yourself a stronger leader everybody I mean everybody here has the capacity to do it in some measure some will naturally do it better than others that's fine but I don't want anyone to sit there and and say I don't have the EQ I don't have the the IQ to go do these things that is that just is false um and people when they when they conclude that usually they're they're saying that I lack the the skills required to try um and you're not surprisingly if you don't try then magically the results will never show up God that's so I'm so glad that you're being vulnerable and saying that stuff it's so refreshing to hear because through this conversation I'm thinking that the bad leaders I've had you know they were assholes that it wasn't their strengths their strengths weren't intimacy and caring and engagement and you know and all the stuff he talked about I thought well they're just born assholes and they're power hungry and they just want to step on whoever they can to get to the top but I wasn't aware that you weren't you know naturally empathetic because you're the faking that you're doing that I'm finding out it's super effective and super good so now we're talking about talents things you've learned which now makes me even think about my life in a different context like my parents were a young mess they divorced when I was six most of what I learned is what I didn't want in life but today fast forward I'm a great dad and a great husband holy shit I learned those skills I I was it wasn't a strength right I had to learn these talents so to hear that this is really eye-opening every time I talk to you kind of explode my brain in a great way um and we kind of said the same thing with soft skills like I I always thought people were just born I thought everything everybody was good at was just a strength right that you're born with what you have and that's it and assholes don't you know they have different things you know the sociopaths are great leaders because they don't give a shit about anybody but the bottom line Yay but that none of that is true they were just preconceived notions you know based out of out of ignorance um can a can a manager be a leader I mean I think so right like you don't have to be gvp to be a leader right oh I I don't even think you have to be a manager to be a leader I mean I think people lead in all you know like on our team we use what I call the Swarm method I tend to run our organization as flat as I can um you know the idea generally is that people will come together um you know for a project or for some Mission they'll come together for a short amount of time and then we'll and then once that's done everyone swarms to the next thing um the reason I do that is I want there to be variability I want there to I want people to have a chance to to work sideways I want them to get exposure to different things but the result of that is that the leadership is rarely function nature leadership is really around what's the thing that has to be done and I don't I think if you rely on kind of management structure to be a leader then you're not really leading what you're doing is that's all that's command and control I think it works especially in the military command and control is a big deal I think in in organizations I mean I uh less so I don't think command and control is really the ideal way to to do things and then what you've got to do in general I think even like an individual so you know I've got Andy working on some stuff within our organization you know Andy I expect that you you lead in some of those things right which means that it's less about you know following someone else's Direction it's about you know determining you know what's the right course to go and then you know convincing others to get there now interestingly you know as an individual you're going to exhibit more leadership than a manager who has command and control because to get anybody to follow if you don't have direct you know line or direct management responsibility then you can't just tell somebody to do something you have to inspire them to do it and inspiring someone to do something well that's leadership right so I would argue that in our organization you know uh 90 something percent of our people well maybe even 100 our leaders in some way whether they explicitly acknowledge it or not and I think that the best organizations are actually built with leadership as an expected trait or an expected competency across the entire org people who are earlier in their career might have a smaller time Horizons that they manage they might have smaller scope that they're for which they're responsible that's fine but I do expect you know even people who are earlier in their career to start at least practicing some of those leadership skills and if you do that over the course of a year or three years or 10 years or 15 years then all of a sudden you have a career where you know the option is yours not everybody will opt into being leaders it's not for everybody if if the whole world is full of leaders it'd be pretty ineffective um but I think giving people the opportunity and the option and really let people try it on and see what it's really like I think it opens up opportunities for the broader organization all right Mike I want to put you on the spot what what's been one of the the biggest challenges that you've had to overcome as a leader um it's been a few ultimately the biggest challenge I've had to overcome is me um in almost every case where I've run into a challenge it's because I I didn't have my head right and I'm going to give you like one one good example it wasn't like a leadership moment but it's well it was kind of related to leadership but but it's a good example and it's one that's kind of in my staple of things that I share with folks there's a woman Michelle batia Michelle batia was a uh she was a senior director of operations I think she got a VP of operations when this happened I was in charge I was running the product management organization for our Central OS team I had strategy and business planning and product management and marketing and Communications and operations out of all these different things I was responsible for and I took all those things on with such Pride because like I wanted I wanted to build my Empire frankly I thought that I was gonna if everything ran through me that I had complete control I wanted more power and influence I thought this was the path forward and as a result I like loaded myself up I had too many things to do and we were doing strategy planning and Michelle batia she asked me she said where's this deliverable I said I don't have it I'll get it to you in a couple days she said I really need it now I said don't you know what I'm working on like don't you know all the things I'm doing and she looked at me and uh and and she basically said you know and I want to be clear she had the generosity of spirit to give me real feedback a lot of times people would duck this conversation she actually had the courage to have a good conversation with me and what she said she said Mike you think you're helping your career but you're killing it like you think that anybody's everybody sees all the things you're doing but they don't see all the things you're doing all they see is that you're always a day late on the thing you're doing for them and that you're always in a bad mood because you're grumpy because you haven't slept and I froze I did not know how to react to that I knew enough not to say anything which is good um and I I let that I let that crawl around in my ear for the next for the next like probably six months and so I finally realized I'm like she did me the greatest service and it changed everything about how I manage the you know being a leader is a you got to be aware of all the things that are happening sort of in and around the organization you have to set expectations um setting expectations inappropriately is a is a recipe for disaster and what she taught me was that that this Empire building this ego maniacal path I had been on Not only was it not serving me it was working to my detriment and it was creating this perception you know a halo effect around me that was actually negative and I had no idea I was under this this stupid belief that the levers I was pulling that the actions I was taking was somehow vaulting me to the the Pinnacle of where I wanted to be and it wasn't until she told me that that I actually backed off took my relationships more more seriously and and I subordinated the tasks to the relationships I made it about the people and then that and then once I had those in place I was more effective at essentially delegating outcomes to folks I activated people in a much more honest way there was less about elevating myself it's about elevating them it changed where I put credit on things like it became much more generous in in giving praise to folks and interestingly the more praise I gave to other people the more praise I got as a leader my career actually accelerated after that point once I got out of my own damn way because she had the kindness in the moment not to shy away from confrontation and tell me the actual truth like that that challenge if she had not done that I don't I I would probably still be struggling with that um and so like your your question what's my biggest my biggest challenge is is perpetually it's a me and having and surrounding that's not one of the things I do differently by the way I surround myself I invest in relationships I surround myself with people not everybody will have the courage to tell me the truth about stuff but I try to surround myself with people and I try to deliberately uh create a culture where it's okay to tell me what's really going on and I will ask questions like is there anything that you think I should be doing different is there are there any blind spots in the organization if you explicitly ask those questions you give people permission in the moment to provide a little bit of honest critique so that you're not the blind leader that doesn't know what's going on like that's you got to be thoughtful about about not just how you lead and how you manage people and the teams that you build but you also have to be thoughtful about the culture that you create and can you use that culture as you know as an effective tool so that the entire organization it becomes like it changes the way everybody interacts and then ideally that same feedback goes to all the people on my team who also lead their teams it makes us stronger as a whole I can relate to getting in my own way it's okay that's definitely uh so I I wanna I don't know if it's so much of a pivot but I want to I we can't end without talking about cognitive biases and and the context I think for this yeah for this conversation is it sounds like part of leadership is influencing you know Behavior decisions you know things that are going to happen right convince people that this is the way um I'm guessing that a big barrier or you know impediment to convincing people of something and and again this is something that you I've heard you talking about in different places and I started to dig in and look at it and I'm Amazed at how difficult it is to convince people um beyond what they believe to be true right the the um what's that one that you always talk about confirmation bias I think is the one that you know somebody sent me a video the other day of you know um the certain political parties people talking about January 6 now it was great it was just like like they just total alternate reality in somebody or I think it was on Twitter somebody said you know we're doomed and now that I've learned about some of the stuff I'm like man it looks like confirmation bias 101 to me like they they refuse to accept any data that is different than any of the preconceived notions and beliefs like they're just not going to even consider it it bounces right off of them they can't even hear you so do you think I mean how do you do you agree that that's a an impediment to leadership is overcoming cognitive biases and and how do you navigate that if it is a difficulty yeah so um I mean we should do a whole like hour on just cognitive biases and how to how to how to bend those that's a that's just such a deep topic the idea of cognitive bias if people aren't totally familiar with the term it's the idea that that the way we think is not always you know completely irrational that there's things that that we are sort of hardwired that will um prevent us from reaching like rational decisions so the confirmation bias is one choice supportive bias is a similar one which is you know that we're hardwired to not just see the world the way we see it but uh but to them you know see things that validate decisions we've already made there's things like recency bias familiarity bias um you know which are really around what what information how do we weigh information and and who do we kind of believe um the one of the ones that is really important survivorship bias which is interesting it says that we we tend to to believe or overweight our own contributions to to where we end up in life this is one of the ones that sits behind um a lot of the um issues in gender and race and and you know sort of socioeconomic and all the equality bits it's difficult for me as a you know middle-aged white man who grew up in a in a you know upper middle class family to believe that I'm where I am not because of my own hard work and toil but because I started on third base I'm actually hardwired you know not to think that and then that's you know it's one of the reasons I don't want to give people a free pass and say it's okay to think that way because of cognitive biases but it is a thing that you have to kind of work against to make sure you're thoughtful about it um you know so these cognitive biases they they the the important thing is that you can't um if you want to convince people to that you know to take on a different position or to reach a different conclusion it's not typically it's not enough to merely educate them so if you just tell them you know here's the education let me build up my case and then they're going to conclude the same thing you know that that doesn't often work and so yes it totally changes how I lead because if I can't merely educate people um if I have to get them to reach the conclusions on their own then the tools that I use in order to to drive those outcomes are actually very different think about how most of you do your like when you debate think about how you most of you try to convince whether it's one of your kids or maybe it's a spouse or a loved one or a partner maybe it's somebody at work think about how you try to convince them to take a different position how often are you educating you know stating and restating the same points sometimes with more volume trying to get them to come to your side right versus how often do you sit there and say what's the actual constraints and if the issue is that you're asking them to conclude that they were wrong maybe the path isn't to just say hey you know conclude you were wrong maybe it's like look the the position you held before was right based on the information that existed at the time but the conditions have changed maybe what you need to be talking about is how conditions have changed allowing them to be right in the past but have a different point of view now that actually leans into the cognitive biases and says you know making them a hero in their own story but our ego is get in the way because we want to be the champions for the cause we want to be it's not enough that they agree with us we want to be right in our in our pursuit of Rights we get in the way of the the psychological tools that allow us to make the transition that's just one example but I would say like like if if you really want to be kind of a gifted like a higher level leader understanding the psychology that underpins a lot of these interactions like that is a big part and you can you can do things um that are I'll use the word manipulative but not in a bad sense right it's actually like you can you can meet people where they are and you can make it much easier to get to outcomes that you want um by leveraging or understanding how people think right you know as a let me give you like just one easy example um if we do so if we took a dollar and we said okay um you know Andy Andy and Tim I'm going to give you a dollar okay um Andy I'll let you decide how much of the dollar the two of you get if Andy takes 90 cents and Tim takes 10 cents and then I say but Tim you have to approve if you you then it's your choice whether we we give the money away as it is or whether we do nothing at all in that scenario if I give and do 90 cents and if Andy says he's going to take 90 and Tim you're going to take 10. it's in your best interest to let the transaction go because if you say yes you get 10 cents you didn't have before but because it feels like you're losing 40 cents your loss aversion you're you're sort of you don't want to lose you'll actually mix that deal because it feels unfair to you framing things around loss will give you one answer whereas if I say Tim I'm going to give you an extra 10 cents I'm going to give Andy an extra 90 cents but you're both going to get the like framing it around what you get you'll make a different decision if you understand that then the way you'll engage in those in those environments it's it's very like it's different right loss versus gain you have to be thoughtful about that that's an example of kind of where the the you know where some of the cognitive biases come in for those who like to read there's a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by um Daniel Kahneman and that's a great book on all this stuff it will make you a fierce a fierce negotiator with your family and with your colleagues I would recommend reading it it's a bit of a dense read though so you gotta like you gotta take a couple runs at it because he does a bunch of like you know research stuff in the middle but if you can get through that whole 400 Pages or whatever it is they will absolutely change the way you negotiate and the way you talk to people and that it gets into a lot of the cognitive bias pieces that I think are very interesting what do you got Tim I know you got a whole list of questions there do we run out of questions one of the last things that I wanted to Pivot to was around so Mike we do a lot of discussions around mental health and taking care of yourself and all that good stuff now just knowing you and now taking a stroll down your LinkedIn I I see a lot of product manager senior product manager vice president just just tons of of high level leadership roles you know it looks like you do a lot of you've done a lot of high level cool stuff and that's a compliment I know I'm summing up your career as high level cool stuff man um but me being outside looking in I I take a look at your LinkedIn and I go holy crap that guy has had to put a boatload of work in to not only get where he is but to stay where he is how what is your advice for somebody that is career driven wants to get the most and the best out of life but knows that they have to try to maintain some sort of balance between being career driven and taking care of themselves taking care of their family how have you done it um at times I would say poorly um so if you were to look through my LinkedIn there's a couple of things that would be important um the after I left brocade in 2016 um brocade was had been acquired by broadcom and so that kind of opened me up and they said they invited me to come and I got you know we were selling off parts of the business and I had a couple different opportunities I chose to look outside I interviewed for you know I don't know four or five weeks I got you know maybe I don't know eight to ten different job offers for different things and I lined him up my wife and they were like EVP at public company down to individual contributor you know Founders kind of level at different startups like all kinds of stuff we quickly weeded out the stuff in the middle and we got it down to this one SVP at a public company job and an individual contributor job and we took the individual contributor job and we moved to from the Bay Area down to San Diego I have OCD so I am like hyper competitive everyone thinks they're competitive I'm like hyper competitive and I've we fundamentally I was making bad decisions because in the Bay Area there's you know I like the barrier don't get me wrong but it is there's just it's a it's a rat race there's a lot of people jocking for money and title and position and whatever and I and when I'm in that game whether I like the game or not I compete and so we made the decision and we moved to San Diego I took a 67 pay cut we rebased our family down in in Southern California but for me it was like I needed to make a hard you know firm decision to remove myself from Temptation so that I could get away from making decisions that ultimately would have been bad for the family you know from there I basically what I did was I took all of my time before all of my time was kind of the companies that I would claw back bits for my family then I said you know what all the time is mine and I will selectively give time back to the company and in doing so that allowed me then to to control how much time I gave away and I was able to move back into leadership positions but instead of a leadership position anchored on the company owning all my time and me just praying for a night in my family I took it all of my on my own and then I decided what was mine and what wasn't and when I did that uh I got right with my family and then it made a much more healthy base to start from the second thing that happened in 2020 I had a I had a sports related hip injury years and years and years ago I had to get a hip replacement at age 45 which is crazy it's crazy to get something that young I'm not that I wasn't like the 75 year old demographic everybody was like what are you doing and my hip replacement it went bad and I got it got infected and like like six weeks afterwards it was a crazy like one in a million kind of fluke it didn't get affected right away it's like six weeks later and I almost died I had 104 fever I had a fever for 35 days and I went from like I was I was working on Friday to Saturday I was in the hospital I was out for four months and when I came back they had to redo the hip surgery this is like crazy brutal like the amount of I lost so much blood I almost need to transfusion it was like it was crazy but as a result of that I had to go through like my rehab and when I went through my rehab I told I I basically set my calendar up and I I said um I'm going to block every morning from uh from 8 to 9 A.M every morning I'm going to block 12 to 1 every day and I'm going to block five to six every day and it's I sit in 45 hours of meetings a week it's crazy to think I could I could just block out those 15 hours a week but we did because I had to do my if I don't do my rehab I don't walk and if I don't walk I don't sleep and if I don't sleep then I'm not going to be any good at work so we just blocked it out and magically after the first you tell people like I can't do I'm doing my rehab all of a sudden meetings start to move what I would tell people is this like there's a it's a river right and you can decide whether the rocks in the river are your life or whether the rocks in the river you know or or your job but everything else will flow around the rocks what I did was I put my life in that position and work float around it and it's it's amazing and and I've been doing it now for two years and every once in a while you got to make a concession here there but I do it but if you do it from a position of it's your time draw a hard like it's a hard no around that stuff right unless you like if the CEO says something like okay Rami you get permission to go do that but but but put a hard a hard block on that and then and then selectively give time back it changes everything and so I've been able to even though I've been now in a more aggressive role running a business that's you know let's let's say approaching a billion dollars right with you know all the stuff that comes with it I'm able to do that and still maintain my work-life balance which by the way right even this podcast we schedule for 5 30 and I was on 20 minutes early Andy Philly is Andy it's all right though whatever but no but that I was able to block out that time because it was something that's personally important to me you can do that it's just most people don't have the courage and then they don't have the discipline to maintain it just do it like work will adjust to to you know what you can and can't do now I get that it's a little bit easier depending on title and whatever sometimes you don't always get to pick the so I don't want to be like blind to that but I'm telling you make some hard rules on that stuff and people will find a way and if you can't get people to to move then I would I would challenge you with this have you invested enough in the relationship of the person you have to move in order to get them to understand your constraints and see things your way because if you really are critical to a project and you have more than a transactional relationship then they will start to they will come your way that's another case where life and work like the work will bend to the life you just have to make sure people understand what it is you're up to to that point I was putting my children to bed 20 minutes before this show started I I have my work-life balance and check now do you like my hat I know you said Philly so I just this is necessary who do you Padres fan uh I'm sorry for your loss condolences what do you if you're clever you would have said I'm sorry for your four losses this is why I'm the boss man that's what I got done quicker I got a lot to learn um I I'm sorry if I missed the context I know we're wrapping up here but did that um move and 60 pay cut and all that but did that happen as a result of um you know some event some uh imbalance did you know did you realize you were out of balance or was your wife like dude enough like I realized it I mean I realized that I was I was driving into the office in Bay Area traffic I was going 15 miles an hour in my uh my little uh what did I have at the time like a a Honda uh no no I had a driver I don't care about cars I have a CNG it was like it's Honda CNG it's like a sixteen thousand dollar car but it was my commuter car um and there's a Maserati next to me with paper plates and for for 10 15 minutes I was like I want a Maserati now I don't know how to drive a stick I couldn't I wouldn't know what to do with a Maserati and but for 15 minutes I was like I want a Maserati and when I was done I was like why the heck would I want a Maserati what would I do with a Maserati and I went home and I told my wife like we have to we have to go I'm just like this isn't healthy I'm getting sucked into like bad decisions this isn't good um so that was that was actually the that was the catalyzing moment for me was was realizing that my values were out of whack with who I want to be and anyone out there who likes cars I got a begrudge anyone who likes cars you should the heart wants what the heart wants but my heart doesn't want cars but for that 15 minutes it did I I do want to call something out there is another thing that we talk about quite a bit here is is doing what you can to maintain and give support back to your own support systems and when you mentioned that you have that point in your career where you could pivot and you had that list of of job offers that you were going off um going through you didn't say that I was going through these lists of job offers you said we were you made sure that you made that a family decision which I just really wanted to highlight because yes you are the one in the role you are the one that's going to it day to day but your support system your family is a hundred percent a part of that and really should be a part of that decision my wife can tell you a crazy amount about Juniper's strategy you don't go through we don't go through very much alone I will tell you that I I you know I consider the people that my priorities generally I take care of myself first um because if I'm not taken care of then I can't do anything for anyone else I take care of my team second and I take care of the company third and it's a goofy thing to put the company like last in that list of priorities but I found that that makes the company you know sort of well taken care of because everything else is is going well when I put the team for me the team is a family affair I've got personal relationships with literally every person in the organization I have a different relationship I invest a lot of time in that I meet with everybody individually periodically to make sure that we're just connected not to check on their projects and status but just to find out like are they happy or how we how am I doing for them right um but because like the teams are such a family affair you know like my wife knows like so you know she knows Andy and and she knows like you know a lot of the stuff we've in the conversations we've had um we are you know actually she would be a great succession plan she could just step in because she kind of knows whatever what's going on um but it yeah it's working in any work that I lead is is like a it's a labor of love it's a it is a family thing I know there's a lot of people a lot of talk you know your work is your work you shouldn't call it a family that's I I understand why people say that um but for me if the relationships were purely transactional I think I just I wouldn't be able to do half the things that I'm I'm asked to do Mrs Bouchon knows me as that goofy new hire who eats fruit in ridiculous ways to try to one-up his super competitive and highly successful big boss I'm gonna win I don't care how many teams in swim in swims in his outdoor pool in late fall it was so much fun when I think about leaders that weren't great Mike there was no connection they didn't care it was you know did you do the thing I told you to do and why is it a week late and I need you to do the thing because we got to do the next thing because our stock isn't performing the way it is and it's all your fault and I need to just beat you in the submission until you do the thing right and there was no so I I just love how you lead I love where you're coming from I really appreciate you coming on the show um got anything else Tim I just wanted to say thanks Mike I had been uh politely and probably annoyingly begging Andy to get you on here for a little bit so thanks for joining us we appreciate it we should do the cognitive bias thing I'll come back it gives you a reason to come back so yeah there we go now I feel bad that this is you I don't want to ask you again because it'll be painful for you Mike I want to fill your cup up I don't want to take from it now I would love to do a cognitive bias hour with you I think that would be really really yeah when you were kind of defining that and saying for people who don't really know what this is I am those people so I I would love to dig into that let's do it it's fascinating Mike where can folks find you out in the uh in the world on the interwebs I am M bhushong on Twitter uh we'll see if that how long that lasts with uh today it's D-Day or what is it em day I guess oh is there something happening is this the Elon thing he owns it today right oh does he oh okay oh he can't destroy it I got a lot of followers Tim I got some cred it's going away now I can't start over somewhere else I give up on socials if Twitter goes away yep all right so Ambush so many people need to know need to hear what Andy has to say not really I just retweet other smart people um thanks so much for coming on Mike you can find him at uh ambushang on Twitter um you can follow us on Twitter at um art of netenge we're in all the places Instagram Facebook LinkedIn um you can check out our website art of networknetworkengineering.com uh we have some really cool and smart folks that have been blogging for us lately uh Andre huggerthunders been putting out some great content actually Tim uh timbertino uh is right now uh in the midst of a flurry of awesome blog posts that I've been reading um most recently DHCP helpers and IP Helper and snoping and snooping and all kinds of cool stuff so um you know check us out anywhere podcasts are sold thanks so much for listening thank you Mike and we'll catch you next time on the art of network engineering go Phillies everyone this is Andy if you like what you heard today then please subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher click that Bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on Twitter and Instagram we are at Art of netenge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at artofnetworkengineering.com where we post all of our show notes blog articles and general networking nerdery you can also see our pretty faces on our YouTube channel named The Art of network engineering thanks for listening foreign