To Lead Is Human – Episode #37
Leading with Your Life on the Line (Len Forkas)
Len Forkas: When people have a sense of respect and recognition and that their work has meaning and they have the trust of be autonomous in doing what they do and they belong to something that’s bigger than them, that’s a high performing team.
Sharon Richmond: You I’m Sharon Richmond and this is to lead is human. For more than 30 years, I’ve run a business called Leading Large, helping C level executives increase their impact. When we work together, we focus on clarifying their priorities for growth, energizing their organizations, and building cultures of accountability and respect. In this podcast, we highlight ways you can supercharge your leadership by introducing you to real life leaders who have intentionally built organizations where the customers, business, economics, and employees all thrive together.
These successful executives demonstrate the principle of leading large. They know that as leaders, the power that comes with their position demands an equal measure of responsibility to their customers, their employees, their shareholders, and their communities. Our guests lead organizations that deliver stellar value while also fostering purpose, meaning, and a healthy work environment for their employees. In every episode, we have the opportunity to learn from the challenges and successes they’ve experienced on their own leadership journey.
My guest on the show today is Len Forkas. Len is the founder and president of Milestone Towers, which develops and owns wireless towers across the mid-Atlantic US. He’s also the founder and chair of the nonprofit HopeCam, H-O-P-E-C-A-M which provides technology and support to kids battling cancer so they’re not socially isolated during their treatment. Since its start 20 years ago, HopeCam has connected more than 5,000 kids with their friends, classmates, and teachers. And when he’s not busy leading his business or as a nonprofit, Len is an accomplished international endurance athlete who has twice completed the grueling 3,000 miles bike competition race across America.
He’s climbed five of the seven continent’s highest mountains, run marathons in all 50 us states, plus four continents, and much more. These accomplishments have helped Len raise nearly $3 million for his nonprofit, and he’s used the leadership lessons he’s learned from these adventures as the basis of his two books and a TEDx talk. We’ll put the links to all of that in the show notes.
Welcome to the show, Len. That’s a fascinating mix of business, nonprofit, and adventure. I look forward to hearing about your leadership journey as we talk today, and thanks again for being here.
Len: Sharon, thank you so much. It’s quite an honor to be on your show and I’m really excited about spending some time with you today.
Sharon: Thank you. Very kind. So maybe to kick us off, I’m curious to learn more about with the intersection of leadership across these three different kinds of environments, business, nonprofit, and all the adventuring, you’ve been at this for a long time? About 20 years, I think, give or take.
Len: Yeah.
Sharon: And so what have you found common across the three environments? And if anything, have you found different with regard to leading in those environments?
Len: Well, I think the common denominator in all of the opportunities that I’ve had to be a leader, whether it’s personal or charitable or professional, is that you just have to be passionate about surrounding yourself with the right type of people. I’ve been very fortunate. I’m a small business person. I don’t run big corporations. I’ve run pretty much been my own boss for over 30 years. And I’ve always found that if I can surround myself with positive, unselfish, highly skilled people, I can create effectively high performing teams. When you start with the right people and sharing a common purpose, well, that’s my job, is to instill the purpose. And so to me, it’s all about really who’s on your team and the characteristics that you look for and if their values align with yours.
Sharon: So what are some of those values that you look for today when you pulled a team together? And is it any different from what you looked for in the beginning as you were just figuring this out?
Len: No, they’re all the same. I mean, I’ll give you a quick example. When I did the bike race in 2012 and 2017, I rode 3,000 miles in eleven days on my bike and I had ten people on my crew. And I had to find those exact same characteristics because you’re going to be under stress, you’re going to be eating poor meals, sleeping crazy hours. And when I was choosing those people to help me, support me on that team, I thought, I need the same type of people that I have in my company because you’ve got to have people that can overcome setbacks. You’ve got to have people that are going to help each other and they’re going to work together.
And so from the athletic things that I’ve done in building teams, in the nonprofit work that I’ve done in bringing folks on, that will help us achieve our mission for HopeCam and in my business is that it starts with being that person. You have to authentically be that positive, unselfish person. You have to be that person that is going to create a culture where people will run through walls for you and for each other. And that has to come from you authentically, look, emotions are contagious, and if you have negative emotions. They rip right through every form of organization, whether it’s a family or business or core group. So I think those are the key elements to me. And you got to be that person.
Sharon: So I bet everybody listening is like, I want those positive people, too, and I want those people that are unselfish. How do I find them? So maybe some tips on how do you identify these folks when you’re in the search stage?
Len: I’ve given hundreds of speeches on this topic after I wrote my first book called What Spins the Wheel, and one of the questions somebody asked me was really important. It’s a person that worked for federal government. She said, what happens when you inherit a team and there are people on that team that don’t have those values, that don’t align with what is important for you? And to me, and I said, well, first of all, that’s an amazing question, but I said, you have to show the type of behaviors that you want from others.
So first of all, you have to be that. Second is you have to be able to accept that conflict is a positive in your organization. If you have an organization that doesn’t have any conflict, it means people aren’t talking about what’s painful or talking about their mistakes or they’re afraid. So you’ve got to embrace conflict. And if there are people on your team that aren’t aligned, you have to embrace that, and you have to be able to openly talk about it and share with those people. And in the end, really, a lot of times, some people just aren’t a good fit when a new leader comes in.
Sharon: So when you’re interviewing folks, what do you listen for? Do you have questions you ask or, I don’t know, is it just a vibe that you get from folks?
Len: Well, I’m really big believer in getting data and asking people to take tests and have them, everyone to my team or everyone that I’ve ever had joining my organizations and so forth, I’ve always taken a type of test that helps kind of outline what their strengths are and what their focus is and the areas where they just glow and the areas that they run from. And so big part is really, look, no one’s 100% anything, right? We’ve all got things we hate to do and all have things we run toward.
So to me, the key is to make sure that you can find the data from the testing and then also be able to really ask the questions that are pointed in that direction. As to what is it about this opportunity that really gets you excited about jumping in your car? And coming to work or jumping to your desk at home. Right. I have to write investor reports every quarter. I loathe it, but I got to do it. So I think sharing transparently our pain points as leaders kind of helps people understand that it’s okay to have a pain point.
Sharon: So how about a story about that from your own experience from any one of the three environments?
Len: Well, so a couple of things. So here’s what I’ve learned as a speaker in leadership. I’ve always learned that it’s so much easier to share a really important point when you can attach to something that’s kind of really indelible. So I’ll share with you an experience I had. I wrote a book about this. I flew to Antarctica to climb Mount Vincent, which is the highest mountain in Antarctica. And we have to fly from South America to the continent to a big camp where a jet can land. And then from there you fly in a small plane to get to the mountain where you start to climb. And it takes five days to go up and down with good weather, the main hill, and then the plane comes back and picks you up.
So my team, we succeeded. We made this flight, we came back, and we were stuck in that camp on the side of a mountain for eleven days. And when the planes finally came, we had one day of food left. And so in that instance, I had to learn to adapt to that new environment. And I realized that I had no control over when that plane was going to come get me. There was no amount of money or influence or arguing that was going to make that plant pilot come and get me. And so I had to learn to accept my environment and then look for pivot.
And I looked around, there were 30 other people from 20 countries on different expeditions, and I made it my mission to go meet all of them. And that is how I mentally survived the grind of that environment. And so I think so many times when everything turns upside down on us in our lives or in our, you know, the cost of capital right now, people are frozen. We have to look for the positives. We have to say, okay, I can’t change Jerome Powell’s mindset on lowering rates. I can’t do that. I can’t lower my cost of what my stuff cost to build my towers.
But what can I do? I can focus on the things that I can control and get better where I can and wait for things to subside. And I think so often as leaders, we were looked at as these superhuman people that are going to fix everything and find the right path. But a lot of times, it takes a lot of pain to find that path.
Sharon: And there’s no guarantee that the leader is the one that knows the right answer. And I think that know, as information has become so much more widely distributed, we don’t even know, and our team members know unless we ask. And sometimes, they’ll have skills we didn’t even know they had.
Len: In doing my homework, Sharon, I listened to a lot of your prior speakers, and one of the common themes I really enjoyed hearing about was the quality elements of leadership is being a good listener and asking the right questions, because oftentimes, the answer is right there in front of you. It’s in the minds and the thoughts of your team. You have to find a way to get it in a way that they’re not threatened. And I think so often, one of the things that I’ve learned early on is the more I listen, the less I talk, the better solutions that come out. And it takes that humility to ask the right questions and just to be quiet and just listen.
And oftentimes, that’s where the solutions are right in front of you. If you empower your people and make sure that they’re fearless about saying the stuff that nobody wants to talk about, you can say that as a leader, right? You can say, look, I’ll never fire you for telling me the truth. I always honor transparency. I always honor. But no one really believes that unless you can give some examples of where someone in the past has told you something you didn’t want to hear, and it helped you in how you reacted to it.
So you’ve got to share. You pull those stories out and put them out at your table and remind people that I’m human, I’m flawed, and I can’t get better if I don’t get feedback. But people are so fearful of it. So you have to really create that environment.
Sharon: What you’re really describing is, I think, what Amy Edmondson describes really beautifully as an environment of psychological safety where people aren’t afraid and they’re willing to step out of the normal interaction rules, whatever those are, to say, hey, Len, not that that didn’t come across well at all, or, ooh, optics problem here, buddy. So what did you hear that caused you to have to look at yourself as a leader and say, ooh, that’s not the leader I want to be. And what’d you do about it?
Len: I brought on a new business development person. We went out in a client lunch, and on the drive home, she says, you talk a lot. I said what? She said, you talk a lot. Sometimes when we’re with clients, you kind of want to let them talk, give them an opportunity to talk.
Sharon: You are so not the only CEO with this problem. Let’s just be really honest. All you guys who are listening recognize most many leaders start out with this and have the kind of wakeup call that Len’s just telling you about.
Len: I just said, you’re brand new. You just started. I said, wow, we’re going to get along great. But how about that, right? But the fearlessness, you have to create a culture of fearlessness and that there’s not going to be retribution for people speaking, sharing what really bothers them. And again, it’s how you deal with these conflicts and mistakes. And when people make mistakes, how do you deal with that? I mean, I got some really fun stories on mistakes, if you want to hear them.
Sharon: I do, because I know our listeners, you. So let’s have a few stories on mistakes.
Len: All right, so I’m riding my bike across the country, right? And we’d stop and I would sleep for 3 hours. And on the third day, we stopped in a little town called Prescott, Arizona. We got out of the desert. I rode through the Sonora desert for 30 hours without stopping. We got to Prescott. I slept for 3 hours. And then it’s 7:00 in the morning, and we woke up and I get on the bike, and behind me is a van. And the van’s got three of my team members.
The other seven are sleeping or preparing, whatever, but I have two backup bicycles on the top of the van and all my gear. And I got a driver and a navigator and nutritionist. They’re all ready supporting me for the next 8 hours. And then they switch.
So anyway, so they said, hey, Lenny said, there’s a Starbucks over here. It’s probably the last Starbucks you’re going to see in probably three days. You want a coffee? I said, oh, my God, that would be awesome. And I knew the route. So it’s straight line. I said, okay, so I’m going to keep paddling. You guys just them back an hour later. An hour later, they show up and I look, and the bikes that were on the top of the, they’re gone, and the rack’s gone. And so they came up and they gave my coffee, and it’s cold. And I said, hey, guys, so nice to see you. Thank you so much for the coffee. But where have you been? And where are my bikes? And I knew exactly what happened. I knew exactly what happened. They took the drive through.
Sharon: Oh, no.
Len: And the bikes got peeled right off the roof. And I knew this, but I didn’t say a word. I didn’t say a word because I knew that my job was to ride the bike and their job was to fix what happened. And I trusted them to get it done.
Sharon: But you were on 3 hours of sleep. You must have been on the edge of your last nerve.
Len: Didn’t matter. I had another seven days to go. But the point though, is that at that moment, there was nothing that I could say to them that would help, but I trusted them that they’d figure it out. And I think sometimes as leaders, we want to fix everything. But sometimes, the best way to fix it is to remind them that you trust they’re going to find the solution. And if they need you, they’ll call. But the point though is that engendering that trust in your team, because, look, none of us can move up to higher levels in our careers if we don’t build trust amongst the people that are working on our team.
And so that to me was such a valuable lesson was, and they fixed it. By the end of the day, the bikes were back up, they found the parts that they broke, and we had another van that was identical. Like they could take the rails off it and they swapped it out. By the way, there’s something about planned redundancy, just in case. And I knew those things happened. But anyways, that’s the lesson there is that you just got to delegate, don’t look back, let them solve it, and if they need you, they’ll come get you.
Sharon: So, of course, there’s a bit of an assumption, I think, that people, that you and they trust each other well enough to know that that’s going to happen. So here’s the tricky question. What did you do in that moment to keep yourself from exploding with frustration or irritation? How did you manage your emotions in that moment? And I have to guess this is going to be the story of how you manage moments on a lot of these physical adventures.
Len: I think so many times wisdom comes from age and I’m not a spring chicken. So I think it’s just your life experiences mature you to a point where you’ve got to be stable. And high levels of emotions just are really tricky. Emotions are contagious. And if you’re a really emotional person, negative or positive? Positive. Yes. Okay. Because it’s contagious. You want that. But I’ll give you another example. When I was stuck in Antarctica with one of my teammates, who was the team leader, I was talking to an airline pilot another group. And he was talking about flying, and we started getting this conversation about, what’s wrong with these guys? I mean, why can’t they fly?
And so my friend pulled me over. He said, you got to stop that right now. I said, what are you talking about? He said, negativity. You were bitching with that guy. He said, people are watching you, Len. You may not realize it. There are other people in this camp. They’re watching you. They look at you as kind of one of the leaders in the camp. You’re one of the most positive guys I know. And if you start being complaining, other people are going to say the same thing. So you really have to keep your emotions in check because they spread.
And I also learned this the hard way in my team six years ago. We had some issues in our company. We had some people on our team that created conflict, and I didn’t deal with it, and it became contagious, and it became septic in some places. It was horrible. And I learned out the lesson the hard way, Sharon, when things aren’t right and you have to fix them fast, sometimes it means people may need to transition, but you have to attack the negativity if it occurs. And so I will always thank my buddy Chris Warner, who invited me on that trip, to tell me, know, sometimes you don’t see that, and we all have blind spots. Right? But he said, yeah, you got to be deliberate as a leader.
Sharon: Yeah, I do talk a lot with folks, and if you’ve listened, you’ve heard this about the intentionality needed. I think a lot of times, people forget that being a leader, it’s a frame of mind and a way of behaving. It’s also an identity that people choose and take on. And so if you’re not intentionally, you’re just kind of wandering through without paying attention to the impact you’re having on others. I think you’re right. You can end up in these conflict situations. So you realized there was that toxic person. They were making it septic. What did you say to them?
Len: Well, it’s really hard because sometimes people are like that, they’re kind of wired that way. And so they are sometimes it’s just not a good fit. But I just said, look, I mean, we can’t go in the room and close the doors anymore. We got to be open. And if there’s an issue we got to talk about, we got to deal with it. Let’s just find a way to deal with it. And ended up that person left, and then we slowly healed, but it took months. It took months to get over it. And it should have taken less because I should have identified it earlier. And I learned never to let it go and take it on because it just grows infestures and gets worse. You just got to confront it, run toward it, not run away from it.
Sharon: It is one of the most common characteristics, especially first time, C level folks, that you don’t want to be unfair to people and you don’t want to make an unfair judgment. But there is that moment for, I think, all leaders, when you ask yourself or you say to yourself, I don’t know if that person can do this or I don’t know if this is a good fit, and then from that moment until it’s addressed can be months, sometimes years.
So I think I have to say I really agree with you. Like, get to it sooner. Get to it as soon as you can. When it’s a smaller pinch before. I like to say when I. Sometimes I teach leadership workshops or give talks, and we talk about the difference between addressing something conflict, when it’s a pinch or when it’s a punch. Because if you let it pester inside of you, your emotions inflame as well, and it’s a lot harder to manage and contain. What do you think about that?
Len: My best phrase for that is you got to eat the frog.
Sharon: What does this mean for people who have never heard this?
Len: If it’s in that place, it’s disgusting and you don’t look forward to it. But sometimes the first thing you got to do is you got to eat the frog, take it on, call it out, and then move forward. And people can’t grow, people can’t thrive if they don’t have the trust. So I think you got to have some love, too. I mean, all these soft conversations about being humble and being transparent and being human and being vulnerable and so forth, they’re all strengths. They all make you relatable.
I’ve had so many jobs in my life. I mean, I used to deliver newspapers when I was a little kid. I used to work in a nursing home, cleaning sheets. I worked in a stamping plant in Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up at the night shift with ex-convicts making auto parts, lying about my age to get that job at 17. And so, believe me, there’s so many things, so many life experience I’ve had. And my biggest mantra is, I will never ask someone to do something that I wouldn’t do myself. I will always roll up my sleeves. I will do it. If you’re sick. I’ll do it. I’ll get it done. Somehow, we’ll get it done.
But the point is that there’s no job above me or beneath me. And I think that every person on my team knows and respects that. So I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you one example. So I had a massage therapist that would help me every night when I was usually asleep after riding my bike for 20 hours a day. You get really stiff neck and water on your knees and so forth. And my massage therapist was the youngest person on my team. And after the third night, I woke up and my neck was sore and my knees were swollen. And she would usually massage me while I was sleeping because I was unconscious minutes after my head hit the pillow. And I don’t know what she’s doing, but we’ve practiced this before we went on the experience.
And so I got on the bike and paddle, and I got 20 hours to think about what to say to her. And I said, finally, the next 03:00, 01:00 in the morning, I roll in and I asked, I said, Katie, sit next to me. I’m going to talk to you. And I looked at her and I said, Katie, I said, I know you have a hard job, and I know that you’re tired. Everybody’s tired. And the only two people awake right now are three people are you and me and the guy that Wayne is fixing my bike. But I said, all I know, Katie, is that I know how hard your job is, but all I know is that when you’ve done your job well, I wake up in the morning and I feel ready to go get on that bike and go ride for 20 more hours.
And I said, when we cross that finish line in Maryland on day eleven, it’s going to be because what you did when everyone else was asleep and I never had to say another word, my neck was fine. I was perfect, because I needed to paint the picture of how important her job was. And I said, look, I’m the single point of failure here. If my neck goes out and I fall asleep, I crash because I’m sore or stiff, whatever. It’s not like you go home. We all go home. It’s over.
So I said, every person, no matter how big or how small their role is, it matters. And sometimes, rather than most people just say, why didn’t just tell her what she’s doing wrong? I said, how am I supposed to know what she’s doing wrong? I’m asleep. It’s like how am I supposed to know how my project manager is doing? They’re at home. Besides, if I have to watch them, I hired the wrong person. But the point is that everybody contributes, and when things don’t happen, the outcomes aren’t there.
Sharon: What I love the most about your story is you didn’t ever say, I’m assuming, unless you left it out of the story. You know, I woke up this morning and my neck hurt and my knees had water, and I didn’t feel good. You never said that. You just helped her focus on how important her role was and how much you rely on her. I’m guessing, then, because of the kind of person she is, that was enough. And I do think, as people are listening, like, this is the joy when you have a team of people that are like minded, with common goals, shared vision, and similar.
I want to pick the word carefully because I don’t mean it to be like personality or temperament the way we often think about it. But maybe mindset is what I would choose. You’ve talked a lot in your books and in your talks about generosity, about gratitude, about forgiveness. These are all very human, deeply human emotions. I mean, a lot of people, I think, wonder if those have a place in the business world.
Len: Oh, it’s the most important part of the business world, because it’s the mission. And so I’ll give you another example, is we were doing this bike race, by the way, to raise money for cancer. And the first year, we raised $350,000, and we were able to partner with St. Jude. And I did it again in 2017, raised a million dollars. And people would ask that my crew would be filling up the gas tank, right? And they say, what are you guys doing? What’s this HopeCam charity? What are you all about? And they said, well, we’re here to help kids with cancer. And you see that guy over there in the bike with the spandex? Well, we’re trying to get him to Maryland.
But the mission wasn’t me. The mission was to create the impact of visibility and financial resources to do more for kids that need it. And when you can instill that sense of purpose in your team, like my team, we build and own and operate wireless communication towers. We provide them for Verizon and T Mobile and ATT. So what’s our purpose? What’s our mission? Our mission is to make sure that, look, the infrastructure has to be there for your phone to work. And when you need your phone to work, I mean, when it’s life or death, it’s going to happen because of what we do every day, because we build the towers that that infrastructure sits on.
And we create the communication during hurricanes. We create the communication during COVID. We create communication in rural areas where it’s really valuable. So to me, it’s like we change lives. I mean, yeah, we may be in front of a public approval process to get zoning approved, or we may be out pouring concrete, signing leases, or modifying equipment, whatever, but the purpose is really the impact of how people are affected by what you do. And I think as leaders, that’s our job, is to distill that. And when people have a sense of purpose, when people have a sense of respect and recognition, and that their work has meaning, and they have the trust to be autonomous in doing what they do, and they belong to something that’s bigger than them, that’s a high performing team, and that’s the kind of leader I strive to be every day.
Sharon: I think that’s just incredible. And by the way, that sort of leadership, you’ll have to echo whether you’ve seen it in all of your environments or not. But what I’ve seen is when you start with those human characteristics and you’re interacting with the people in your organization from that human place, it generally tends to lead to better outcomes, better performance outcomes. It’s a little counterintuitive to a lot of people that if you pay attention to the people and the relationships and the trust building that you’ve described, you’ve got a team behind you that will make happen the things they agree to make happen. They’ll be jointly committed to the outcomes they’re creating.
Len: And right now, it’s so hard to do that when you see so many people being highly virtual. So as a leader, you realize that there’s only so much trust that can transmit on Zoom. And you’ve got to bring your people together, and they need to get to know what each other team members like and what they care about and their family or whatever it is that is important to them. But you’ve got to create that opportunity because it has a multiplying effect in terms of trust and sharing and helping and empathy. So it’s so hard. I really admire teams that can achieve that as being 100% virtual. I mean, I don’t know how to do that.
But we are more virtual. We only come to the office once or twice a week, and we talk every day because we’re in the new world now. And I don’t think I’m not the kind of guy that believes that you can’t do that. You have to be there together every day to do that, but you have to be really intentional about it. And the trust comes from so many other non-work-related experiences that make people, like I said, feel really connected to each other.
Sharon: So in this kind of new world of work with the virtual hybrid, what do you do to keep those connections? What kinds of leadership practices have you adopted in this new world?
Len: Well, I’ve been buying lunches for my team on Tuesdays for the last ten years, so feed them. But more importantly, it’s expected that we all end. So one day a week or two days a week, you’re going to work from a cubicle or an open desk instead of your home office. But I think that’s it. Is that really? We do that every single week. We try hard not to miss it, but it happens. People have traveled and so forth, but I think that’s a key for me, is the face to face. But also, we’ve got a lot of younger people, and a lot of younger people on our team aren’t apt to pick up the phone or apt to get in the car and go take someone out to lunch or go meet people and tell you it’s tried and true. Dale Carnegie taught this to us in the ‘30s.
Sharon: So amazing, isn’t it? If any of you listening haven’t looked at this Dale Carnegie book, I think, let’s see if we can get the title right. How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Len: Best book ever written.
Sharon: It’s pretty amazing. Added maybe Peter Drucker on Leadership.
Len: Yeah. But it’s like, again, and I think culturally, it’s up to us to be able to really hammer that home. So now we’ve got so many tools that give us the ability to connect with people in so many ways, but you can’t forget how you got there, which is face to face.
Sharon: Yeah, that’s very true. So this past spring, you made it very close to the top of Mount Everest, and then you had a medical emergency. And I guess given all the training and the prep that it took to get to that point to attempt it, how in the world were you able to work through that disappointment? And what leadership lessons do you think come from that?
Len: Well, thank you for sharing that. I’m still smarting from it. But look, I mean, I did all the homework. I mean, I did all the work. I climbed Kilimanjaro with my son. I’ve climbed Vinson in Antarctica. So I’ve got glacier training, but I did all the work step by step by step. I trained. I climbed Denali, which is in North America. 100%. Nobody supports you. I climbed out Aconcagua in December last year. Highest mountain outside of the Himalayas at 23,000 ft. And I had a wonderful guide. I had done all the work. And then I got what’s called a pulmonary edema. And the only reason I’m here to tell you the story is that I had 36 hours from the moment I realized my pulse oxygen was 60, which is really very bad. Really bad.
And I had 36 hours to get off that mountain and I couldn’t walk more than 5 feet. And unfortunately, the weather broke. It was snowing all day and the weather broke and they were able to come pick me up and take me down. And I recovered the next day. But you know what’s interesting is that when I summoned these other mountains, you celebrate the victories, right? You celebrate them, but you deconstruct the failures second, minute by minute. Those 24, 48 hours, I deconstructed every trip wire that I walked over, every single one. Why did I do that? Why didn’t I stop? I mean, I trusted my guide, and he’s a very good guide, but there were so many things that I knew in my heart that I should have said, can we just lay up here and give another day.
But I kept pushing myself and I think, so wisdom comes from failure. And when you break down your failures and you look at exactly what happened, it makes you stronger and smarter. And I like to translate this into business because no one wants to talk about their failures. But when you can bring failure in front of your team as lessons learned, because once you find something you’ve done wrong and you can deconstruct why it happened and then not blame anybody, but just share the fix, then you can look at all the other places where you might be exposed to that. And now that one failure, when you deconstruct, it now becomes a lesson that makes you stronger.
Sharon: Yeah, I actually love that. And I wonder also if you’ve ever tried the inverse of deconstructing the successes to see, like, what were those choice points as well, and comparing the two.
Len: Oh, my God. Every project we build, we have a post mortem, and we look at the budgets, we look at the schedules that we set when we started, and we look at the outcomes. Oh, every single project we have to. How else do you learn?
Sharon: I personally wouldn’t know another way to learn. You can read things in a book, but until you try them out and start to practice, you just can’t really see the full picture. So I’m going to dig even a little deeper if it’s okay, for a quick second and just say a lot of listeners really value hearing what leaders have learned in those moments of vulnerability, the ones that are those growing pains that are so hard. So what could you share with us about maybe one of your more powerful or painful lessons in leadership in terms of your business? And then we’ll talk to the adventure piece in a sec.
Len: That’s a tough one. They’re painful when you have to go back and look and think about ways that you’ve really dropped the ball. And there’s so many I can’t pick. But I think, again, the real lesson that’s learned here is as a leader, you have blind spots. Nobody can see everything. And there are certain behaviors that I have. Sometimes I have facial expressions that don’t reflect my mood. So I have to be very thoughtful about, okay, what do I look like? How do I present myself? So rather than one thing, it’s like this overall arching, knowing that you’ve got to be self-aware and you’ve got to understand sometimes how people perceive you. And you have to, like I said, you have to be measured, but still a human, but you’re going to make mistakes.
I have a friend; his name is Kevin Reynolds. He lives as a banker here in the Virginia area. And he always says, look forward, go forward. Can’t change yesterday. You can only change how you adapt and how you move forward. And another one is my mom and she’s Patty O’Donnell and she’s famous Irish proverb is, don’t pray for lighter burdens, pray for stronger backs. And, you know, there’s another thing that adds to that, and that’s called belief and validation. And I’ll share one last quick story.
So I’m 50 miles from the finish line and I’m in first place in Race Cross America in my age group, but I was also in 10th place overall because there were 50 athletes from all over the world. And 50 miles to go, this German guy, younger guy, just goes flying past me, just right past me. And I’m in 11th place. So my crew chief’s in the van behind me and he pulls up next to me, he rolls down the window, he looks at me and he says, Forkas, are you going to let that skinny German guy just steal 10th place from you? And my legs are rubber. I have bike 2,950 miles. I got 50 miles to go. The closest guy next to me in my age group is 100 miles away. So I can just pedal in easy.
But at that moment, I realized that I wasn’t in 10th place overall. My team was, and I owed it to them. But more importantly, my crew chief’s name was John Moore. He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself, and he knew, with the proper words, to motivate me that I had more gas left in my tank. And think about this. We can all validate other people and tell them, you did a great job, or I’m so happy, I’m so proud of you, or you can do that next task.
You can step up. I know you can do it. I know it’s going to be hard, but I believe in you. And that validation that we can give each other, our families, our children, our coworkers, it costs nothing, but it creates so much impact. When someone else believes that you can do something that you doubt yourself.
Sharon: Not only do they believe, but they tell you with enthusiasm and with passion that they believe in you.
Len: And I think that’s our job as leaders and leaders, coaches, whatever, right? Parents. That’s our job, is to help people see something they don’t see in themselves.
Sharon: It’s great. So I always love to ask guests, what does this title of this podcast, To Lead Is Human mean to you? And then we’ll take a quick minute to tell people how to catch up with you.
Len: You got to care about the whole person. I mean, people, look, everyone’s on your team is a person. They have a job to do. They have skills, they have experiences. They have KPIs and whatever, right? But in the end, they’re a person, and they got all sorts of layers and problems like everyone else does. And if you’re not in tune to what’s going on in their world, then you’re not doing your job. If you’re just looking at a person as their output, they’re not going to stay. They’re not going to feel connected. They’re not going to feel that they’re recognized or respected, and they need to belong.
And you can’t create a culture of people really wanting to do something for a larger good without really caring about them and making sure that they’re growing and that their needs are met and that they’re achieving what they want to do. So that, to me, is what it means is lead as human means that you care about the humanity, which is the old people around you. So that’s what it means to me. Is that what it means to you? What does it mean to you, Sharon?
Sharon: What it means to me, in part, is leading is so natural to being a human being. Leading and following both. We’re communal animals. I mean, I hate to say it because we don’t think of ourselves that way, but we are, and we are best in teams and groups working towards comical. We don’t have the sharpest teeth. We don’t have the sharpest nails. We’re not the biggest, strongest creatures on the planet earth. But when we band together, we can really accomplish a lot.
And so to me, it’s an encouragement to people to recognize and be willing to lean into leadership wherever they are. Lead a family, like you said, lead a team, lead a nonprofit. Lead your neighbors in going for a healthy walk every day. It doesn’t really matter what, but I liked to inspire people to say, oh, I can influence the direction that we’re going in. So that, to me, is part of what it means. And I love the way you described it as, well, we have to be human beings together in order to accomplish the greatness that I think is inherent in our potential.
So I know people are going to want to find out more about your upcoming adventure. And then the other thing, Len, is what’s the best way for folks to stay up to date on your work?
Len: Yeah. Thank you so much. So to follow the adventure, it’s the website for the nonprofit HopeCam, H-O-P-E-C-A-M. I’ll be skiing the last 60 nautical miles from latitude 89 to 90 to the South Pole with a team of eight people and dragon sleds and -30 degrees and going about 10 miles a day. So it’s called the Last Degree South Pole. And every day that I ski, I’m skiing for a child with cancer and dedicating to that one child. And I usually talk to them before I leave and let them know where I’m doing and where I’m going and that they’re part of my team and they inspire me.
And then LinkedIn, Len Forkas. Let’s find me there. My company’s Milestone. We changed the name to communications, now called Milestone Towers. So milestonetowers.com or lenforkas@gmail or any way you want to communicate with me, I’d love to hear.
Sharon: And just, we’ll mention the two titles of your two books.
Len: Yeah. The first one is called What Spins the Wheel. Both are on Amazon. And the second is called Cold Hard truth.
Sharon: Well, Len, thank you so very much for being here today and sharing these moments along your own leadership journey just to help folks imagine what they could add into their journeys. And it’s just been a pleasure and a joy to meet you.
Len: Pleasure is mine, Sharon, thank you so much.
Sharon: Please stay with us for a moment and I’ll share some takeaways from my conversation with Len and a coaching tip to help you start growing your own leadership right now.
Talking with Len today, it’s pretty clear that he sees trust as the foundation for successful team performance, and many of the leadership practices Len describes result in his effectively reducing the natural inbuilt power differential between bosses and the people who work for them. By doing this, he’s creating an environment conducive to trust. I’ll give you a couple of examples.
First, he shows up as the exemplar, the role model of how he wants others to show up all his team members. And he describes this as positive, unselfish and highly skilled. And I might point out self-correcting when he wavers, as he did in Antarctica, when the peer he was talking to pointed out how he was spreading some negativity, he quickly changed and returned to being the positive role model that he believes is a key part of his role. As a leader, he focuses a lot of his attention on his mindset. And here are a few of the things he really values, instilling a common purpose and making sure every team member feels how they contribute to the purpose. The great example of this is the conversation he has with his massage therapist when he describes that.
A second thing Len prioritizes is maintaining his positive attitude. And he does this by managing his emotions proactively, not letting them manage him. He sees this as partly a function of his maturity, but it’s pretty clear that he’s had to learn how to do this as well. And then another thing he really prioritizes is actively seeking feedback. And when he does get direct and open feedback, as he did from that new business development partner, he celebrates it by saying, wow, we’re going to get along great. Working with his team, some of the things Len does is he trusts them implicitly, and he shows that by not piling on criticism when things are clearly going wrong.
And the great example of that was the story about the Starbucks drive thru. He’s also learned to get comfortable with discomfort, embracing conflict with open dialogue. And one of the key takeaways he shared with us is that he had to learn how to address challenges in the team sooner rather than later. And last, he reminds every team member. of the impact that they are collectively having, which focuses the team and inspires further commitment, not just to the outcome, but to each other.
The coaching tip I have for you today came to my mind as Len and I were talking, he reminded me of a great tool that I don’t think we’ve talked about yet. Stephen Covey called it the circle of influence in his book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And one of the habits is to be proactive, meaning to focus your efforts productively on where you can make a difference. The tool he introduces is called the circle of influence. Envision this as three concentric circles. The center one includes everything that you have control over, what you do, what you say, how you show up, the people you hire, many, many things you have full control over.
The second circle, the circle of influence. These are the things over which you can influence, but it will take you more time, effort, and collaboration. And the outer circle, he calls the circle of concern. Now, these concerns are things over which you have neither control nor much influence. But these tend to be concerns that a lot of us worry about a lot. What’s happening in the marketplace, what’s happening in the government, whether the weather is conducive or not. We can’t do anything about these.
So the trick for using the circle of influence to improve your leadership is to first focus on your inner circle, the circle of control, and then teach your team members to do the same. The more effort you’re putting on these areas where you do have direct control, the better the outcomes you will be realizing and the less time and energy you will be wasting on things you really can’t influence.
I’m Sharon Richmond, and this has been To Lead Is Human. You can learn more about me leadinglarge.com. That’s L-E-A-D-I-N-G large dot com. To Lead is Human is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Making It and Course Lab. This episode was produced by Cynthia Lamb. Melissa Deal assembled the episode, and Marvin del Rosario was the audio editor. Danny Iny is our executive producer.
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