77 – The Importance of Leadership

In this episode, Peter and Sonny recap their trip to San Diego to attend the Kellogg Executive Leadership Forum. They share what they learned about the partnership between the association leaders and the volunteer leaders from the Board of Directors, and how they should work together towards the success of their organizations. 

If you know why Peter and Sonny are ringing the bell, email us to theobvious@abceastflorida.com to win a podcast tumbler.

The full audiovisual version of this episode is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uaiqFJHlqY8 

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Transcript

Sonny Maken 0:10

Hey everyone, welcome to the Obvious Podcast. This is episode number 77. My name is Sonny Maken. I'm the CEO at ABC Florida East Coast.

Peter Dyga 0:18

And I'm Peter Dyga, president and CEO at ABC Florida East Coast.

Sonny Maken 0:23

You are listening to the Obvious Podcast, where all opinions are our own, unless we say otherwise. Or there's a guest on the show and he says, hey, in my opinion, blah, blah, blah. Then you know it's their opinion.

Peter Dyga 0:36

Love the show. We ask you to subscribe on any major podcast platform or watch us in action on YouTube. Follow the Obvious Podcast on TikTok, Instagram, X, and True Social. All the links you need are in the show notes. And reach out to us anytime at theobvious@abceastflorida.com. And if you're enjoying the ride, we help we ask you to help others find us by leaving a review wherever you listen. So all right, Sonny. Happy Friday.

Sonny Maken 1:03

Happy Friday. Peter, can you believe that like March is almost here?

Peter Dyga 1:08

No.

Sonny Maken 1:09

2023. As you get older, it gets worse. It gets worse, yeah. So if you're young and you're like, man, life is so slow, enjoy it because it's gonna change quickly. Exactly. So what are we talking about today? So today I wanted to ask you a question.

Peter Dyga 1:23

Okay.

Sonny Maken 1:24

Can you name an area where God's beauty is abundant and the impact of man's terrible policies is also abundant? Uh it's hard for me to admit it.

Peter Dyga 1:39

But yes, California is a beautiful state. Right? It'd be a beautiful state. Gorgeous. And humans have wrecked it.

Sonny Maken 1:47

So uh the reason I'm asking you about California, because you and I just came back from one of I think the most beautiful parts of California, which is uh the city of San Diego, which according to Will Farrell in the uh movie Anchorman, is uh German for a whale's vagina. Do you remember that scene? No. She goes, and he's sitting he's sitting with a he goes, San Diego. It's German for whale's vagina. And the girl that he's sitting with says, uh, actually, no, it's Spanish name for San Diego. And he goes, Well, let's agree to disagree.

Peter Dyga 2:28

One of my favorite stupidest movies ever. The uh much underutilized line, let's agree to disagree. Let's agree to disagree. So anyway, that's my that's my standard. So aside from that, what do we think about it? I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Sonny Maken 2:42

Anchorman is not an obscure movie reference. Okay.

Peter Dyga 2:44

Well, they're all obscure to me. That conversation. Movies are entertainment to me. It's like I go I leave the movie theater and five minutes later it's like dump. You know? Anyway. I would highly suggest you watch it. It's very funny. I'm pretty sure I've seen it. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it is funny. Right.

Sonny Maken 3:05

It does, absolutely. Then I remember when he comes home and his dog's barking at him. He's like, you know I don't speak Spanish. Lord. Anyway, we just came back from San Diego, and I would love to share with our audience why we were there and what we did. Okay, so go ahead, share it.

Peter Dyga 3:23

Hold it first. Here we go. You're not gonna explain that, are you? I'm not. Okay. So people have to figure it out. So um we just came back from actually it's uh something that I've been seeing for a number of years, Sonny, and you know, you being here has kind of got me like, Sonny, I've been looking at this for a number of years and never actually done it. So uh, you know, what do you think? You know, and so uh, you know, gave uh me some new inspiration and to to uh consider it. So um I think we've mentioned before, you know, there's an association for everything in this world, which is crazy. So there's an association for associations or association executives. It's called the American Society of Association Executives. Um they're the accrediting body for the CAE, you know, accreditation and what does that stand for? Certified Association Executive. Okay. And uh they do an awful lot of great publishing over the years, you know, which uh, you know, this kind of thing I've enjoyed reading about associations and good governance and benchmarking and all that stuff. This is why you don't watch movies because you're busy reading these things. Maybe in part, in part. So you know, uh they might be the organization that would sell that book that you and I have talked about that we're gonna sell. Yep. So um but anyway, they also do some great um conferences and symposiums and whatnot. And they've had for a number of years a symposium called the uh CEO and and chairman. I think they just call it the CEO symposium, but it's really about getting your leadership on your volunteer uh board, uh in particular your chair and or you know, people who are in that path, that glide path for chairmanship, uh, along with the you know chief staff officers, if you will, of uh the organization. So um so yeah, we pulled the trigger. I think we asked, uh I don't know when it was last summer or when it was, but uh, you know, and we originally were gonna have both the the institute uh incoming leader and the uh chapter. Um, you know, we had to pivot a little bit on that. So but we did end up going out there with uh you your yourself, me, and uh and Rudy uh from the case.

Sonny Maken 5:25

I didn't I cannot say his last name ever.

Peter Dyga 5:27

Yeah. Elena.

Sonny Maken 5:28

Yay.

Peter Dyga 5:29

Yay. Yeah, I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna be able to. Rudy Elena, um, who is the incoming chair or chair elect of the ABC Institute. So he'll be the chairman for the 26th. And the chairman and CEO of DNB Tile. That's right. So yep. And we've actually uh he's had us as a guest on one of their biggest.

Sonny Maken 5:48

That's right. Right. When we uh the first time we took our show on the road, it was in Orlando.

Peter Dyga 5:52

So in any event, they do um, you know, a a number of these around the country at different times of the year in different places. So, you know, we we picked San Diego. Not because it's San Diego, honestly. We thought the time of the year was good.

Sonny Maken 6:06

It was beautiful. So anyway. Right. The weather was nice, and of course we got cloudy and rainy one day. Uh-huh. Never rains in Southern California, but it did on us. It did when we showed up. So there was about a hundred people there, a hundred and you know, from all different I mean, there was a group sitting at our table that was a bunch of therapists or from the I don't know, Cognitive and something therapy association or whatever. ABCT is what they call themselves. Right.

Peter Dyga 6:31

That's right.

Sonny Maken 6:32

Yeah. Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy something. ABCT. And then the and then the table next to us was uh the uh boozemakers of America.

Peter Dyga 6:42

Yeah, the American Distillers Association or something.

Sonny Maken 6:45

Anyway, so it's a it's an interesting group of people.

Peter Dyga 6:47

So anybody interested in good governance and whatnot. So any event, yeah, it was spectacular. The uh actual facility was awesome. It kind of was Hotel California-esque to me. You know, it was probably built, I'm guessing, in the 60s, but it was very well maintained, very cool. The gardens and everything were beautiful. You know, little wells and fountains and things everywhere. So anyway, it was a great experience.

Sonny Maken 7:09

Um let's before we get into that, why are we even talking about this?

Peter Dyga 7:14

I don't know. Why are we talking about this?

Sonny Maken 7:19

One, I think to give you an insight into sort of how we do things at ABC, but really to talk about leadership. Because this is really about leadership and how do you get two leaders, you know, one one who's employed by the association and one who's a volunteer leader, how do you get them to work together? And then the whole idea of this foundational piece that they talked about, you know, which I think is true of sort of any leadership in any context or any environment, you know, when you're talking about strong personalities and how do you get them to sort of congeal together so that they they pursue a common goal and a common mission, which really is the whole purpose of associations, right? A bunch of people coming together and pursuing common goals and common missions.

Peter Dyga 8:00

What about that relationship and the governance structure of the organization is going to make it most um effective? Exactly. You know?

Sonny Maken 8:06

So really this is we're joking around talking about our San Diego San Diego experience, but this is really an episode about the importance of leadership and the idea of how do you congeal around a common goal and a common mission.

Peter Dyga 8:19

Yep. There were some people there. Um I forget um he'd been going for like 28 years with his leadership.

Sonny Maken 8:24

So Oh, the guy from the dental colleges uh from Canada.

Peter Dyga 8:29

Right. Yeah, well, there were some people there from Canada. Yep. Um So it was an international group, we can say that. It was. It was awesome. Yeah. Food was good. So I keep sorry for keep reflecting on the my the experience rather than the one. We'll get into that more in a minute here. So did I told you the story, I think I took pictures of uh, you know, I was enjoying the well, first off, when you come from the East Coast, right? You're up at 4 a.m. It's like a good glow. Yeah. When you get to be our age, you're affected by that time difference. Well, I mean, I sure am. I don't know what it has to do with age or what it has to do with so but anyway, so I'd get up early and you know, the first thing I want to do is open the slider on my I had, you know, I usually my preference is for a ground floor unit. They gave me a nice ground floor unit. Also easy to escape if there's a fire. That's true. Right. I was thinking of earthquakes too, you know, when in California.

Sonny Maken 9:14

So you know that happened to me in uh where was I? Uh Tucson. Uh-huh. Not that Tucson's in the news. I spent the first week of January in Tucson. Yeah. I was on the seventh floor. We had a fire alarm at three in the morning.

Peter Dyga 9:26

What? Yep. Seventh floor. That was like on the campus of uh what what Arizona was. Well, Arizona, uh, what was it? Was it because the students are pulling the fire up?

Sonny Maken 9:37

That was a Marriott property. Oh my god. And uh had to climb up seventh floors like when you're groggy because the elevators didn't work. So either you wait in the lobby for the elevator. Get out of the building. We had to walk down, yeah. Which is easy. Walking down, so going back up, you know, when you're like half asleep was not fun.

Peter Dyga 9:55

So I'd get up to the four. I get up at four, and you know, it's cool in the morning out there. It was actually pretty warm. It was like 80s during the day. So um one of the rare occasions I think when South Florida was actually cooler, cooler than Sandy. Southern California. So when I'd open the open the door every morning to get some fresh air, fresh, cool morning air into my room. And um it's still pretty dark outside. And I start, I think I told you this story. I showed you pictures, I start to hear this like sound out there, and I'm like, what the scared that, you know. It's gonna show what kind of a wuss I am, I guess. So I I I go to the the patio, which is again on the ground floor, and there's an irrigation system that runs every morning, and water kind of like pools in the patio. So I turned the corner to look what the hell's going on, and there's this raccoon and I were like staring at each other face to face, like you're not supposed to be here. You know, and this poor little raccoon is just trying to find in dry Southern California a little water every morning lapping up this water. And let me tell you, a raccoon lapping up water makes a pretty weird strong sound, you know. So anyway, that was my introduction.

Sonny Maken 11:00

That's the difference between you and I, because I never open my screen door, doesn't care. I don't care if it's night or day. I'm not taking any chances with weird animals like you know, plowing into my room.

Peter Dyga 11:10

So Sonny, I would say like having look seen this and looked at it for years and and thought about you know uh going and inviting our leadership to go, um, it was well worth it. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Um I'm curious, you know, you're a little newer in this business than I am, and um, you know, I th I know Rudy uh seemed to get a lot out of it and found great value in it. Um I see us, you know, maybe again trying to continue to do this. You know, I think there's a again, I the real dysfunctional organizations I've seen over the years, nonprofits, chambers, ABCs, you know, it's it boils down to that relationship, I think, between uh your leadership and and you as the CEO or COO has to do with trust. There was an awful lot, I think. There was some a lot of time talk talking about trust.

Sonny Maken 12:03

Yep. Big big part of the conversation. Anyway. What were your thoughts? So you know, uh what I find really useful and and great about this whole experience is when people people join organizations for all sorts of reasons, right? Everybody has uh motivations that are that are as varied as can be under the sun. And then when they get into the leadership path of whatever associate association or organization they're a part of, they get into the leadership path for all sorts of reasons and motivations. And so when you are part, especially in leadership, right? And I get sort of when you join an organization, everybody has a different value proposition. So you sort of extract whatever value you want to extract based on what you think you need. You know, now you are short-changing yourself because the the value proposition horizon in most organizations is extremely varied and there's all sorts of value props lying all around the sphere that you don't know about because you're only focused on the thing that you think you need. So I would encourage you, whenever you join an organization, to sort of be more open to all of the areas where you could derive value from, right? Don't be so myopic in your sense of I just care about events or I just care about education or I just care about this part of that or advocacy. There's all sorts of avenues for value that you might not even be aware of. So that's I think doubly true when you get into leadership, right? So as a volunteer leader, your motivation could be one thing, but all of the little sort of nuggets of value that you could get out of it, whether it's personal, professional, for your business, you know, none of that is really going to be manifested to you until you really sort of open yourself up to the experience and you and you look at things from a from a uh open uh perspective. Right? So but then what that I think what that does is you bring to your uh leadership those values and opinions and perspectives. I mean that's natural, like this is not a bad thing, this is what we all do. And I think the greatest benefit that I saw in what this uh symposium was really about was it really crystallizes around what really the the partnership between the two leaders ought to be, you know, and what should be the basic foundational understanding of those two leaders. And I think a lot of our leader, not our leaders, I think a lot a lot of volunteer leaders in general think the value lies in what they bring from their own experience, which to a certain degree does. But the effectiveness can really be hampered if you don't go get past that. So I really appreciate the fact that there there is a a groundwork that's just laid down uh of the best practices and and uh policies and ideas, and really more sort of a philosophical underpinning of what uh matters and what areas where you can agree, areas where you can disagree, areas where you can sort of you know agree to disagree, you know, that sort of thing. And I think the the guys who did the uh the teaching, uh one of the uh I think one of the guys was just incredible.

Peter Dyga 15:25

I mean the man just kind of sat there, older gentleman and I mean had the outline obviously, but yeah, and he just never looked at notes. Never looked at anything. You know, it's spectacular.

Sonny Maken 15:34

And then uh one of the guys was just like full of platitudes, and I was like, okay. But he was also good, but just a lot of platitudes. And you know how I feel about those. You will never you're planting trees, you'll never sit under or something, you know. And I'm like, oh come on, bro. Like let's just, you know. I don't know. But that's just you know, I I I don't like things that are overly emotional anyway. You know, I feel like we should just stick to the facts, you know?

Peter Dyga 15:57

Right, right. But he really spoke to me. So I, you know, I've been around 26 years. So he's sitting there talking about how have you ever had anybody, you know, take credit for any talking more to the volunteer leadership, I think of you know, everybody has some great ideas, but everybody's also to use a overused phrase, standing on the shoulder of giants, you know. Uh right? Because there's uh you know, and and you think about our experience.

Sonny Maken 16:23

Yeah, I mean, we're a 68-year-old organization, you know, right? And you are the you're the third CEO of this organization's ever had. You know.

Peter Dyga 16:30

And then awful lot of amazing uh creative risk-taking decisions made in in the past, you know, before either one of us. Right. You know, that have reaped amazing benefits and hopefully we're just doing more of the same, you know, absolutely building on that legacy.

Sonny Maken 16:46

So but yeah, I mean it's uh But honestly, Peter, when when you're like l long retired and you're sitting in Costa Rica, you're not gonna be sitting there thinking, Well, I hope they're giving me credit for all the great things I did. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean none of us are like, I planted those trees and they're enjoying the shade. Yeah. I mean, you just kind of you know, you do the best you can with the life you're given and you just move on. Sure. You know, I mean the guy was like getting like and then of course when he told that story, I hope he didn't never watch the show, by the way. But when he told the story about how he got some woman's name wrong and then he cried about it, like I was like, what? Bro, well like apologize and just move on.

Peter Dyga 17:26

He was like the I don't know, he was like the new president of the organization and he got one of her staffers' names wrong.

Sonny Maken 17:31

So anyway. I'm glad I'm not we're not using real names in this in this episode. So anyway. So what was your okay, we're running out of time already. So what was your biggest your one sort of takeaway?

Peter Dyga 17:47

Oh, geez. My one sort of takeaway. You know, and and at different times in my life and career, maybe my big takeaway would have been different.

Sonny Maken 17:55

But um um By the way, that is the most fascinating part about sort of takeaways, because it is so dependent on like the position you're in. But I mean it's an obvious, obvious statement, but it's very true. Right. One two reminders.

Peter Dyga 18:08

Yep. So I would put in that category, I think, the uh times, and it was uh you know, not just a one and done uh proposition, but when we focused on um how important trust is.

Sonny Maken 18:19

Yeah.

Peter Dyga 18:20

You know, I think um because you know the nature of our two roles is different. Um in in order to be successful, you need to respect those, you know, those roles, I think. And that's that's always a challenge. We've talked probably talked about this many times on this podcast, but it's always a challenge because our leaders tend to be people who are problem solvers. You know, they they play they play, you know, eight to five or whatever, you know, every day of the week, you know, a different role than they're asked to play as uh you know as a volunteer leader on a the board of directors. So but any event, it you know, I think you know the the times um when uh you know you you you need to be a little more careful looking back at examples of other uh relationships similar to ABCs or other nonprofits or chambers where um it becomes very dysfunctional and uh problematic, you know, probably boils down to trust a lot of times. You know, so in any event, how do you build that? You know, I mean that's a you know, because it's not you know, it's not something that you just automatically have with every volunteer leader that comes along uh and with you, you know, but hopefully you're you know it's a combination of the relationship that's built over the years, you know.

Sonny Maken 19:32

Well, I had a I had a very interesting trust conversation my first week of uh my MBA program. And our entire program is based on um group work. So they within the first week, you're they they create these teams.

Peter Dyga 19:47

Did you do any fun trust exercises?

Sonny Maken 19:49

Uh no. Oh good.

Peter Dyga 19:51

For that quality of education. We didn't need to do any silly trust games. No, nobody's like falling backwards.

Sonny Maken 19:57

But the and I and I don't even remember if it was a staff person or a pro professor talking about this. But they basically said, look, we've done a lot of like uh they made us do personality tests. And so and then they picked the groups based on that. So they said we've done a lot of like research.

Peter Dyga 20:13

Yeah, we did a little bit of that during this, didn't we? We did, yeah. And the people at our table were like scoffing at the Chris Myers. They were part of the uh American Bay Cognitive Thinkers Association, and they were like, oh yeah.

Sonny Maken 20:26

And they were and anyway, I'm not even getting that's a different uh episode. But one of the things that always stuck with me was like, listen, if you want to have a successful group at Kellogg while you're while you're getting your MBA, uh-huh, you have to start with all of your team being in a place of trust.

Peter Dyga 20:46

Okay.

Sonny Maken 20:47

Don't make them earn it. Right? You start with trust. And that's also true of a and and I remember the person saying it's also true if you're professional.

Peter Dyga 20:54

This vision of a jar full of marbles is coming to mind. Right.

Sonny Maken 20:58

The marble that was a great I thought was I thought that was a great analogy.

Peter Dyga 21:01

Yeah.

Sonny Maken 21:01

Right? And so a lot of groups that I remember during my sort of MBA journey that did that were phenomenally successful. Yeah. And sort of the outliers who who ignored that advice and wanted people to earn their trust really struggled. Interesting. You know, and I feel like that's a that's a lesson that I think I wo I really would love for all volunteer leaders to understand that. You know, don't make people earn your trust on the front end. Give it to them, and then let's see how how they do.

Peter Dyga 21:32

So I don't know. I think um, you know, we'll probably be doing this regularly. Yeah. In fact, I you know, I think there's probably um you know, different probably leaders in organizations that don't have to be um the chairman of the board who could really benefit from this. They could be committee leaders. They could be absolutely you know, just uh anybody who's interested in uh a pr a satisfying and and productive tenure, you know. Serving on a nonprofit uh in in whatever capacity that may be. Um so in any event, okay. Um I would encourage them. We don't want to come across too much as a commercial for ASAE and their CEO symposium, but I was impressed.

Sonny Maken 22:13

It was yeah.

Peter Dyga 22:13

Um only regret is that you know for in years past I didn't think to, you know, that's all right. Uh coalesce our our leadership team around going out to it. So but anyway, it was uh well worth well worth the effort, I think.

Sonny Maken 22:25

So thank you for joining us. Uh we hope you enjoyed this episode and and got you know learned some some things about leadership and trust. And we look forward to welcoming you next Friday.

Peter Dyga 22:36

And for comments, we ask you to send us an email at theobvious@abceastflorida.com. Until next time, ciao.