Marc Pitman: Welcome to the Concord Leaders Podcast. I’m Marc Pitman, the CEO of the Concord Leadership Group, where we’re trying to help leaders focus through these really trying times. Today, our guest is Tony Chatman, the president of Chatman Enterprises. Tony, I am so excited to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for joining us.

Tony Chatman: Thanks for having me, Marc. I can’t even get it out of my mouth, wow, I’m so excited, it can’t even come out.

Marc Pitman: Well, the feeling is definitely mutual. I’ve loved getting to know you over the years and hearing you speak and having sushi with you — you’re one of the bright people in our space that we work together in, and super honored that you said yes to being with us today. I know you’ve been in a lot of different leadership roles over time, for different reasons. What do you love about having been in leadership, but also working with leaders?

Tony Chatman: You know, for me, a main component of leadership is an investment in the relationship. I love seeing people actually grow and mature and blossom, and to see that progress. And I love to see our relationship evolve, as well as strengthen — ideally to go from almost a mentor-mentee relationship to a peer relationship. That’s really the goal — that at some point, I won’t be their leader anymore.

Marc Pitman: Wow, wow. I don’t know that many people think about that. Would you do that even in an organizational structure?

Tony Chatman: Absolutely. There are so many ways to define leadership, and I’ve obviously defined it a few ways, but I think one of the things that’s important about leadership is that I am preparing people for the next step, right? So if at some point I am not preparing the person who’s going to replace me, then, God forbid, something happens to me, there’s a void in that organization. And I have enough confidence in myself and what I offer to say I can do that without them feeling like a threat.

Marc Pitman: Oh, thank goodness, I wish we could drop the mic if I had sound effects. That is remarkable. It reminds me of a parenting book I read once, where so many parents just kind of go by positional authority — “I’m your parent, do what I say” — as opposed to knowing there comes a point where that doesn’t work anymore, and you have to have built in the trust and the relationship where your child will still trust you even though they’ll make their own decisions. Very few leaders have actually verbalized it the way you did, about knowing that you’re raising up your next — your peer. How have the people you’ve led responded to that? Did that weird them out, or did it excite them?

Tony Chatman: For most it excited them, but it was especially a function of the opportunities I had to choose, right? Even if you’re leading 20 people — and I mean 20 direct reports, not just leading 20 people, but 20 people you’re directly influencing — at some point you know who you’re going to really invest in. Part of doing it for me is trying to be a good steward of the energy and information I pass on. So I don’t prematurely judge people, I let them kind of figure out where they fall within that. But at some point — you know, we’ve been testing this out — these people, when I give it to them, they’re not really responsive. But these few people, just as you and I were talking before the podcast started, these few people do the work, right? They take the time, they ingest it, they absorb it, they do the work, and it produces some form of fruit. And then you say, okay, for them, I’m going to give them more, and I’m going to show them that vision, and they’re able to embrace it, because they see the value of it, but they also see the value of our relationship in the process.

Marc Pitman: No wonder — I am totally energized just thinking about that, because when you have people who do the work and are showing signs of growth, it becomes incredibly energizing to see people latching on and doing the stuff.

Tony Chatman: Yeah. Here’s the crazy thing about it — when you do that, then even when it doesn’t work out, if you’ve done it for the right reasons, it doesn’t feel that way. I’m thinking now, there was a point in time I took over a group, and the two people I was entrusted with — they were going to do the majority of the work — neither of them worked out. At some point I had to let them both go, but both of them knew it wasn’t personal, it was just a business decision, and this was going to be the best thing for both parties. And the crazy thing is, the following year, we all went on vacation together.

Marc Pitman: Wow.

Tony Chatman: But we could do that because, A, I had invested in the relationship, and they still continued to grow — it was just obvious they weren’t going to grow into being a fit for the organization we were in.

Marc Pitman: Wow, wow, that’s powerful. Well, that alone could be something we’d all learn from, but has there been another time where you’ve just done something — that sounds like most people would call it a failure, but it wasn’t — is there a time you’ve tried something as you’re leading and it just didn’t work out?

Tony Chatman: Plenty. I think, gosh, how do you not have a situation not work out — and I have no problem calling them failures. I think people say, “Well, it’s not really a failure.” No, some of them were failures, they absolutely were. I’m thinking now of a particular situation — I have my own company, so it’s a little different, but it was with an organization I was a member of, and myself and some other people saw some things in terms of inclusion and diversity that were real blind spots, and we began to bring it to people, and it was a complete disaster. They weren’t ready for that conversation. And in truth, that would have saved them from what happened this year, in 2020, as we started to have a national conversation. And yet, no matter how we said it — and there was a person involved in this who took it a little too far, honestly — but no matter how we said it, they wouldn’t hear it. And it became such a disaster, I had to leave the organization. We had irreconcilable differences. But I think what I’ve learned over the years is that in the moment, I have to assess: did I do the best thing I could do based on what I knew then, not what I know now? Because that’s not fair, right — it’s not fair to say, “Well, now I know this.” Of course I know it now, that’s how I learned. But based on what I knew then, did I make the best decision and do my best? If I did that, I have no control over the outcome. And the second thing is, a lot of times, if you’ve had that failure, there are underlying dynamics you’re not aware of. So, another failure — I had a training session that was a disaster. As a speaker, that’s horrible to feel. But it was even worse because I do a lot of work in the federal government, and I actually had a presidential appointee in my class who was like the boss’s boss, the person who hired me. I was able to pull them in for a bit, and then I couldn’t, and it just didn’t go well. Well, I found out later that the real issue was not between myself and this presidential appointee, not between my topic and the appointee, but this appointee was in the middle of a power struggle, because he was newly appointed, and there were two other people in the group he was having a major power struggle with. And when I walked into the room, those were the first two people to greet me and tell me they were excited about the training, they were looking forward to it. So now I was the enemy by association. Learning that later, I can go back and say, well, I was in a situation I couldn’t have done anything about. But a lot of times we don’t get an opportunity to have a window into the back workings of things — we don’t get a chance to pull back the curtain and see the wizard. But when you do, when you actually see the wizard, that informs you for the future. So you go, okay, now let me assess this more objectively — there may have been things I couldn’t have done anything with, but what could I have done better? And, you know, I have two sons, one’s 22, one’s 20 — and they use the phrase “an L,” right, you take an L, that’s a loss. So learning to take my Ls and turn them into lessons when I can, so my losses are no longer just losses — they still are failures, I’ve got to just accept that — but what lesson can I extract from them? And other times, hey, I just did the best I could based on what I knew then, and I’ve got to roll with it, because not every situation is set up for us to be victorious — you just can’t win that way. I think of this — I remember one of my old mentors, we were talking about Alexander the Great, and how he conquered the known world at such a young age — how did he do so without being injured? Well, if you start reading, he was completely injured, his whole body was covered in scars. You can’t be victorious and not face some losing battles, or at least some injuries — it just happens.

Marc Pitman: Wow, I’m just scribbling tons of notes.

Tony Chatman: I know that was a lot I just threw at you, but hey, that’s the way it’ll work sometimes.

Marc Pitman: That’s why we record these, so I can just do it over and over. Well, I love that you own the word “failure.” My wife and I were part of a project that failed, and we were shocked at how many people around us tried to put a nice spin on it, when there was no nice spin to be put on it — we set out to do something, and it didn’t get done. It was a failure.

Tony Chatman: Right.

Marc Pitman: We were not failures, but it was a failure. And so we ended up getting together with three other couples who’d experienced similar failures, and we called it “Church for Losers” — because there’s no system in our society for validating failures, for saying, “Yeah, you’re right, that was a big one, but that doesn’t define who you are.” So when you’re in that headspace, where you don’t have all the story, or the training just didn’t go right, or whatever — are there some things you do to keep your head focused, to not let that define you, to not let your most recent experience define you? Is it looking back to other times, realizing maybe there was more information than you had, or more going on than you knew? Or have you found some clues to help keep your head in the right game?

Tony Chatman: Well, I think first we have to know ourselves. I know for me, I’m going to have a reaction first — so it’s great to say, “put it in perspective, do all of this,” but I know I have to weather a momentary storm of all the emotions, that’s just the way I’m wired. Knowing that, I now know those emotions are not a good gauge for reality — I’m just going through the process, and that helps me immensely. I think the second thing is, often in those situations, they’re not complete disasters or complete failures. If 85 to 95% of people love it and 5% hate it, you can’t focus on the 5% that hate it, because that’s what we often do — and honestly, that’s what often starts the spiral down to failure in these situations, we give the critics or the naysayers or the negativity way too much of an ear, and it changes our emotional state. So those two things help me. There are times, if it’s like a training or something, Jerry Seinfeld says, when it’s going bad, you’ve got to trust the material. So I’ve got to trust — I’ve done this so many times, it’s gone well, this has been vetted, I’m not having a good moment, or at least it feels like it’s not a good moment — trust the material and get through it. Don’t start to deviate in the moment, because you’ll start to make mistakes that aren’t vetted or proven, and that’s really helped. And then, when it comes to something more like an organizational failure, in those moments I have to start saying, okay, who am I surrounding myself with in this moment? That “Church for Losers” is really, really smart, because there are a lot of people who want to give me input, but they don’t know the right situation, and they don’t come from the right perspective. And I know, in that moment — Les Brown has this phrase, we used to travel together — “You can’t see the picture when you’re in the frame.” So I know I can’t see it right, but I have to make sure I have people whose eyes I trust.

Marc Pitman: Well, I know from your talk at the National Speakers Association, “you can’t see the picture from the frame” — that quote has actually been something that’s helped me immensely since then, because you’re right, when you’re — yeah, that is so good. Could you give us that quote again?

Tony Chatman: “You can’t see the picture when you’re in the frame.” I also thought of it more personally, like when you’re watching a movie and you see the whole cast going the wrong direction, and you’re like, “Why would you do that?” Well, they’re in the scene, so they can’t see the plot.

Marc Pitman: Yep, that is so good. Tony, we could talk — I could listen to you for hours — but we’re really at the end of this podcast episode. If there’s one thing you’d recommend a leader do when they finish this episode, what would it be? One action, one strategy?

Tony Chatman: One strategy I would want leaders to do: get to know the people, interact with the people, and view leadership as a relationship. That’s the thing I want people to do.

Marc Pitman: That is wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Tony. Where can people find out more about you and the work you do?

Tony Chatman: Here’s the thing — my last name is C-H-A-T-M-A-N. In this world of Google, if you know my last name, you could find me. I’d say go to my website, tonychatman.com — it has links to all my social media, a lot of video information, and it’ll make clear some updates on some products coming up that I think will be very helpful for a lot of people.

Marc Pitman: Well, I want to thank you so much for investing in us today, because this has been incredibly rewarding, I know for myself, and I know other people are going to want to listen to it over and over again. This episode, like all episodes of the Concord Leaders Podcast, can be found at concordleadershipgroup.com/podcasts, with an S. It can also be found on your favorite podcast app, wherever you listen to podcasts — just search this up, and Concord Leaders will be there. Till next time, remember, healthy organizations start with healthy leaders.