The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:12 - 00:00:32:01
Kevin Eikenberry
When people talk about building leadership effectiveness, the focus is usually on skills. And we can we talk a lot about valuable skills on this show. But often what is underappreciated is the role of habits. Today we're going to change that. We're going to talk about habits and heighten and highlight the role of habits and what they have to our success as an individual, as a leader.

00:00:32:03 - 00:00:54:05
Kevin Eikenberry
And we're actually going to identify some of the most powerful ones that you can exhibit. Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership podcast, where we are helping leaders grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger difference for their teams. Organization and the world. If you're listening to this podcast in the future, you could join us when we are live, which could give you access to this information sooner.

00:00:54:10 - 00:01:18:18
Kevin Eikenberry
And you can watch live in the future on your favorite social channels. So if you'd be interested in doing that, you just need to join one of these two groups, either our Facebook group or our LinkedIn group. You can do that to get information about when we're live and other information about the show by going to remarkable podcast dot com slash Facebook or Maqbool podcast dot com slash linked in.

00:01:18:20 - 00:01:42:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Simple as that. Today's episode is brought to you by our remarkable master classes pick from 13 important life and leadership skills to help you become more effective, productive and confident while overcoming some of the leader's toughest challenges. Learn more and sign up at remarkable master class dot com. Our guest today you see him beside me if you're watching.

00:01:42:11 - 00:01:49:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Our guest today is William Vanderbloemen. That's how I've been saying in my head, am I right?

00:01:49:09 - 00:01:51:16
William Vanderbloemen
Pretty close. I've been called a lot worse.

00:01:51:18 - 00:01:57:06
Kevin Eikenberry
It's like, well, you say it, you say it the way it needs to be said, and then I'll introduce you.

00:01:57:07 - 00:02:04:04
William Vanderbloemen
Well, I'll say it the way the Americans have said it. I don't know how it was set over in the Netherlands, but Vanderbloemen. Like flowers.

00:02:04:10 - 00:02:10:18
Kevin Eikenberry
Vanderbloemen. And so that was my second choice in my head. Vanderbloemen and William Vanderbloemen as our guest. Yeah.

00:02:10:19 - 00:02:19:12
William Vanderbloemen
I only know that because I somehow during middle school it got out that it's like Flower Boy is pretty much the name, so that didn't work.

00:02:19:12 - 00:02:49:21
Kevin Eikenberry
So yeah, that sounds like a very middle school sort of thing. William has been leading the Vanderbloemen Women's Search Group for 15 years, where they are regularly retained to identify the best talent for teams managed succession planning and consulting on all issues regarding teams. This year they will complete their 3000 executive search. I bet by now they've done that prior to founding this company, the Vander Blumen Search Group, he studied executive search under a mentor with 25 years of executive search experience at the highest levels.

00:02:49:23 - 00:03:10:08
Kevin Eikenberry
His learning taught him the very best corporate practices, including search strategies used by the internationally known firm Russell Reynolds. Prior to that, he served as senior pastor at one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the United States. And now he is the author of this fabulous new book, Be The Unicorn 12 Data Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest.

00:03:10:09 - 00:03:15:12
Kevin Eikenberry
That's the title of this episode, and that is our guest. William, welcome. Glad to have you.

00:03:15:14 - 00:03:19:23
William Vanderbloemen
Thanks, Kevin. Super glad to be with you and appreciate you having me on.

00:03:20:01 - 00:03:47:17
Kevin Eikenberry
It's my pleasure. So that intro says, Well, we already heard about your middle school scenario, but that that intro tells us a little bit about your journey. Like you're in executive search and have been for a long time. But before that, you were a pastor. So I don't need you to tell us your whole life story. But I would like to know, like, how you and how you went from that being a pastor to do and this like Tell us a little bit about that last stage of this journey.

00:03:47:19 - 00:04:07:22
William Vanderbloemen
I think it actually the last stage is just a bookend to the first stage. And the first stage is growing up as a kid, I was always the one with an entrepreneurial bent or an idea. You know, I was the paper boy back when you had to do that, which was a fabulous job that we've lost as times have changed.

00:04:07:22 - 00:04:36:16
William Vanderbloemen
But, you know, I'm eight years old. I had to keep my own pencil. I had to do my own collections. I, I mean, it's amazing. But I actually bought out the roots around me and then redistributed the densities and sold them back off to other paper boys. And that's the picture of of young me that took a long winding road and now ended up back in sort of an entrepreneurial thing, trying to help a part of the world that I spent part of my career.

00:04:36:16 - 00:04:58:22
William Vanderbloemen
And so did a prodigal journey in college. I was really good at that. I know everything my daughters better not bring home in a date and then I kind of got back on track and that included a spiritual journey. And that led to, well, I guess I should try to help others find this kind of wonderful life change.

00:04:58:22 - 00:05:30:23
William Vanderbloemen
So I went into the pastorate, didn't want to. I thought pastors just sat around in robes all week with bad hair and asked people for money. And I know you know, but I had a chance to serve some really great people. Was probably always a little too entrepreneurial for the more established part of churches. Went through divorce, which I would not recommend, but that left me as a single dad with four kids and having to figure out a kind of pivot in life.

00:05:31:01 - 00:05:39:13
William Vanderbloemen
I wasn't in any shape to get given very spiritual guidance. I was trying to put my life back together and I went to work for an oil and gas company.

00:05:39:15 - 00:05:41:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Because you're in Houston. Why not?

00:05:41:13 - 00:06:00:18
William Vanderbloemen
Well, that's the thing, right? I had a lot of friends in the business. One of them runs or was on the lead team at a Fortune 200 company and he said, Come work for us. And I said, I don't know anything about all that. He said, Yeah, but you know, people. So we'll put you in h.r. For a year and we'll teach you the business and then we'll rotate you around and so forth.

00:06:00:20 - 00:06:25:17
William Vanderbloemen
So during that year, the ceo decided I need to find my successor. He'd been there nine and a half years, which is a lifetime for a ceo of a fortune 200 company. They hired this thing called a search firm. I'd never heard of it. It was a brand new idea to me. And since I was brand new on the H.R. team, I was on the succession team, which air quotes means I was kind of a waterboy and nothing.

00:06:25:18 - 00:06:29:00
Kevin Eikenberry
But you get to learn a bunch of stuff. But I got to watch a lot of the search business.

00:06:29:06 - 00:06:48:21
William Vanderbloemen
That's right. And 90 days after they started, they had a new CEO. And that is not the way the church works. Kevin First Press, Houston, where I First Presbyterian, Houston where I was, which was in the small world of Presbyterian ism, kind of a big thing. They took three years to find me. I was there six. They took three years to find the next guy.

00:06:48:22 - 00:06:52:13
William Vanderbloemen
So 12 years, half with somebody, half like.

00:06:52:13 - 00:06:55:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Half with somebody, half without money.

00:06:55:04 - 00:07:16:16
William Vanderbloemen
That's crazy. No company can begin to endure that and all the momentum would be lost. And so when I saw the business solution, why didn't the church have a as good a solution as I know the church world, maybe I can help them get a little bit more efficient in how they run things. And I went home and Adrian and I had just gotten married a few months prior.

00:07:16:16 - 00:07:29:21
William Vanderbloemen
We blended our families with six kids, a house we could barely afford, really no money at all. And I said, Adrian, I think I'm I think I'm supposed to quit my job and start something new for churches. And I said.

00:07:30:00 - 00:07:31:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Awesome, I'm sure you're going to.

00:07:31:03 - 00:08:01:09
William Vanderbloemen
She said, Even better. She's smart. Bad taste in men, but smart. She said, that's because churches love new ideas, right? Said No one ever in the history of ever. Right. And and Kevin, the kicker is it was the fall of 2008. So if you're if you're younger listeners that doesn't compute. Just Google 2008 economy.

00:08:01:11 - 00:08:02:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah you'll figure it.

00:08:02:13 - 00:08:25:00
William Vanderbloemen
Works like this. All right. Stupidest job in the world to quit your job and try and start a new business. But off we went. Now, 15 years later, we've had more good fortune than I ever could have deserved. And I've got a team that's smarter than I am, and we've gotten to help a lot of people. It's grown past helping churches to helping schools, nonprofits and then values based businesses.

00:08:25:00 - 00:08:31:02
William Vanderbloemen
But as a long story, sorry, I'm a I'm a recovering preacher. I ramble.

00:08:31:04 - 00:08:56:14
Kevin Eikenberry
So you did some research in so you've been doing this for 15 years. 12 years at the time. Yeah. And you had some time during COVID and decided to do some research around like we're trying to find this great talent for folks and like, how do we how can we figure out who the what is it that makes those people the best folks you call the unicorns?

00:08:56:18 - 00:09:05:08
Kevin Eikenberry
So like, tell us about how you did this research. Yeah, that got us to this to this idea. And to this book.

00:09:05:10 - 00:09:23:19
William Vanderbloemen
Well, you're just spot on, Kevin. I mean, like, we get paid by companies to go find their next unicorn. Go find the mythical, wonderful candidate that will be able to do it all. That's what. That's why people hire us, Right? And we've gotten pretty good at spotting them. But every now and then, I've missed one. You know, I'd underestimate it.

00:09:23:19 - 00:09:47:15
William Vanderbloemen
Somebody in an interview and then other times, I don't know if you ever have this happen, but within 5 minutes meeting somebody, you're like, This person's amazing. This one's different. I should hire them. And that's not necessarily the right. So. So how do you figure out what is it that that unique chemistry when people grab you within 5 minutes and what is it that you can look for so that you don't miss somebody who might fly under the radar?

00:09:47:17 - 00:10:15:12
William Vanderbloemen
These are the questions in my mind, and I've never had time to answer them. Pandemic shuts down all of our clients. All of them. Our business lesson I learned since I don't have a business degree, if all of your clients close indefinitely, your calendar and your PNL will change that year. So. So fortunately, the panel we were able to work out, but but the calendar, I was able to sit back and say, well, let's let's talk about this.

00:10:15:12 - 00:10:35:08
William Vanderbloemen
Let's study. So we realize in a in a search, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people that might come under consideration. But when you get to the bottom of the funnel, the very best of the best, the last eight or ten, and they've been through several virtual interviews already, then we get on a plane and we go sit down with them for a long face to face interview.

00:10:35:10 - 00:11:04:07
William Vanderbloemen
And we keep pretty meticulous notes. So these are the best of the best. And during the pandemic, we realized we've now done 30,000 of those face to face interviews. And we have all of the data on what they interviewed, like, how they behaved, how their careers gone and that sort of thing. So could we figure out if these are the unicorns, so we figure out the best of those and we found them, and then we said, you know, do they have anything in common so we can learn how to spot a unicorn?

00:11:04:09 - 00:11:45:13
William Vanderbloemen
Cool thing is the research came back super clear and super surprising. Surprising on two fronts. One, it was not the list I thought it'd be. I thought it would be the smartest people, the best educated people, all the best looking people, whatever the, you know, quarterback in the head, cheerleader, that sort of thing. No, it was habits, as you mentioned, in the front of the show, habits that these people seem to bend toward almost innately, sometimes frenetically, and their habits that were really common among unicorns and completely uncommon among most everybody else on the planet.

00:11:45:15 - 00:12:14:01
William Vanderbloemen
And and then the second surprise in the research was these habits are actually teachable, coachable, learnable. So I went off on a selfish project to figure out how to spot unicorns faster or not missing any that go by. So I could be a better search guy. What I found was here's a roadmap that I need to share with people so they can stand out in the crowd and they can become one of those people that in 5 minutes people are like this one special.

00:12:14:03 - 00:12:27:13
William Vanderbloemen
And that's why we wrote a book. We didn't write a book to make money, that's for sure. But we felt like this is a resource that could help people because given it's noisier than ever out there right now, it's hard to stand out.

00:12:27:15 - 00:12:43:00
Kevin Eikenberry
So we're talking with William Vander Blumenthal, the author of the book Be The Unicorn 12 Data Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest. What I'm going to do, William, is there's no way that in the time that we have left that we can talk about all 12 of these habits. What I'm going to do is I'm going to read them really quickly.

00:12:43:00 - 00:12:52:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Then I'm going to ask you two or three questions and then I'm going to pick a couple for us to chat about. How about that? We to have the chance to talk about this ahead of time. So I'm just giving you a little head's up where I'm headed.

00:12:52:07 - 00:12:52:23
William Vanderbloemen
that's all good.

00:12:53:01 - 00:13:22:15
Kevin Eikenberry
So here are the 12 and I'm just going to say them all to you relatively quickly. If you're listening to this, you can stop at any point to write them down if you want to, but you should also just go copy by copy the book. Here are the 12. The Unicorns are the fast, the authentic, the agile, the solver they anticipate are the prepared, the self-aware, the curious, the connected, the likable, the productive and the purpose driven.

00:13:22:15 - 00:13:46:15
Kevin Eikenberry
That's the 12 that we promised you at the front end of this situation. So now, both from your research and from your observation, I know that you've identified one that you think is the most important of the 12. We're going to get. We're going to get back to the fact that they're learnable and teachable and coachable and all that, but which one is the most important?

00:13:46:17 - 00:14:00:06
William Vanderbloemen
Yeah, well, two answers. One, it depends on what job you're doing. And two, if everything else is equal and you don't have a job, I'd say self-awareness. So.

00:14:00:11 - 00:14:08:00
Kevin Eikenberry
So from your perspective, what does self-awareness mean? And then let's dive into that, the two of us, for a sec.

00:14:08:02 - 00:14:17:12
William Vanderbloemen
Yeah, I don't I don't know your history well enough, Kevin. If the podcast is the podcast that you're doing, the first time you heard your voice recorded.

00:14:17:14 - 00:14:19:18
Kevin Eikenberry
No, no, no, no. Okay.

00:14:19:20 - 00:14:25:12
William Vanderbloemen
Okay. Well, do you remember the first time you heard your voice recorded and you're like, That is like how I smelled.

00:14:25:12 - 00:14:29:16
Kevin Eikenberry
50 years ago. But yes, of course it's not. It's not the way it sounds in our ears for sure.

00:14:29:16 - 00:14:55:14
William Vanderbloemen
No, that's not me. That's some of it. Get a new microphone. Right. That's self awareness. Like, I don't know, a simpler way to put it, how we see ourselves is fundamentally flawed because we're we don't we can't even see ourselves. We're seeing out our own eyes. Our best chance is a reflection, right? So what we found was so we identified all the unicorns and then we said, okay, unicorns, will you let us survey you?

00:14:55:19 - 00:15:22:08
William Vanderbloemen
Yes, we will. So we did. We found that we asked them to force rank, like, what's your top habit of these 12? What are you best at the the least popular number one gift or the least common among unicorns is self-awareness. Okay. Now, I think part of the reason it's the least common is because they are unicorns and they know they really need to learn themselves and don't know.

00:15:22:10 - 00:15:22:17
William Vanderbloemen
I think.

00:15:22:17 - 00:15:32:11
Kevin Eikenberry
That's right. Like the research says that 90% of 90% of the population say they are self aware, but like most aren't. so. So it's interesting about.

00:15:32:13 - 00:15:47:01
William Vanderbloemen
That but is spot on. We surveyed a quarter million people after serving the unicorns. 93% of them said they were above average at self awareness. Like, I don't have a math degree, but I don't think that adds up.

00:15:47:03 - 00:16:12:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, you know, like 80% of American men think they're above average drivers, too, which takes us back to the whole self-awareness thing as well. So so I think that fact alone is super interesting because among this self-selected group, it was the least selected item. And yet in the general population, your data and I've seen other research, 90 plus percent of people think they're above average of being self aware.

00:16:12:21 - 00:16:13:05
William Vanderbloemen
Yeah.

00:16:13:10 - 00:16:19:04
Kevin Eikenberry
And so that that discrepancy alone like sort of Mike drops this whole show I suppose some.

00:16:19:08 - 00:16:28:17
William Vanderbloemen
But I have a religion and philosophy degree behind me and I never thought would come in handy in business and if you're going to go in business, I would not suggest majoring. start.

00:16:28:17 - 00:16:29:00
Kevin Eikenberry
There.

00:16:29:06 - 00:16:53:14
William Vanderbloemen
No, no, no, I that's a different podcast. But, you know, Socrates, maybe the maybe the father of of Western philosophical thought didn't write much down. There's a lot of debate about what he actually taught and didn't teach. The one thing people don't debate is his cornerstone. Teaching was one sentence. No yourself. Yep. People don't want to do that.

00:16:53:14 - 00:17:00:17
William Vanderbloemen
They don't like you ever do a 360 at work. How fun is that? I don't want to hear that. Right. But and.

00:17:00:17 - 00:17:07:17
Kevin Eikenberry
Yet I could argue and in fact, I will be on a webinar tomorrow arguing that that's the single best place to start if.

00:17:07:19 - 00:17:26:06
William Vanderbloemen
Well, we actually built a software tool like a unicorn index people can take and they can take it as a team in a 360 fashion so they can learn, I think I'm good at these three. My colleagues and my boss think I'm better at these three, so it gives you a path of development. But most people don't want to take that time.

00:17:26:10 - 00:17:50:05
William Vanderbloemen
You know, as in my previous life as a pastor, I'd hear these scripture verses and they mean one thing to me. And now I'm like, maybe there's even more. Like Jesus was talking to people at one point said, Look, don't don't worry about the splinter in your brothers. I get the log out of your own first. And I thought this was like, Judge, not lest you be judged or you don't know what hard time another person is going through or something like that.

00:17:50:07 - 00:18:12:18
William Vanderbloemen
I wonder if there's not an additional layer here now that says, hey, until you, William, until you get to know your own issues, you will not be able to help others. You're just not going to be able to. So if if I could have all things equal, you don't have a job and it's not job specific. I would say self-awareness is the one I would work on and it's the easiest one to start with.

00:18:12:18 - 00:18:33:02
William Vanderbloemen
You can go take our index or you can take a disk inventory or an angiogram. Just get is the best age ever to get to know yourself. And it might be the thing that leads to the most improvement. My favorite one is it's called the Fast and the book. It really probably should be called The Responsive. The ones who get back to people quickly.

00:18:33:04 - 00:18:36:04
William Vanderbloemen
That to me is the easiest upgrade in.

00:18:36:04 - 00:18:46:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Your life, by the way. It's very clear it's your favorite. If you read the book like it's pretty clear that it's your favorite. Just saying that did not surprise. So ask the responsive.

00:18:46:07 - 00:19:01:05
William Vanderbloemen
I I it's just so freaking easy if you just get back to people, you will separate yourself from the crowd. Salespeople don't follow up on leads. People on eHarmony don't follow up on. I would like to meet you like.

00:19:01:07 - 00:19:03:18
Kevin Eikenberry
Like that's why you're here.

00:19:03:20 - 00:19:18:04
William Vanderbloemen
That's right. Lonely people on a website don't get back to each other like we are horrible at this. And if you just flip the switch to say, I'm going to get right back to people, first chance I can, you will stand out in the crowd and you can work on your self-awareness too.

00:19:18:06 - 00:19:36:20
Kevin Eikenberry
There's there's another one on the list. And again, I read the list. Everybody very, very quickly. There's nothing in the list that I believe is connected to the fast. And so draw the connective tissue for us between the fast or, as you now said, maybe it should have been the responsive and the productive.

00:19:36:22 - 00:20:09:12
William Vanderbloemen
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the ability to have bias for action is very uncommon among people. Most people put things off like the old again, the religion in philosophy degree, the old Latin word. That means tomorrow is literally the word. Cristina. So when you put it off for tomorrow, you procrastinate. This is as old as we are. And and most people do that, you know, here's the connective tissue.

00:20:09:12 - 00:20:39:10
William Vanderbloemen
I'm 27 years old. I'm a young pastor at this church in Alabama. And they brought me in while they were in the middle of relocating. So they didn't have a venue. We had to find places to be. We outgrew the space in our building one to be ready for a year. I needed to find a new spot. I'm riding around with a friend of mine who used to be on the board and had left the church and I was trying to woo him back and we drove around the launch, drove me back over to the office, and he said, You know, there's a YMCA right across the street from our property that we're building on,

00:20:39:12 - 00:20:58:00
William Vanderbloemen
and I don't think they use it on Sundays. I said, Wow. He said, Yeah, maybe we can be there. I said, Cool. He said, I know the board chair. Like, great. So let me right here. Here's his number. Okay, cool. So we stand around and talk for about 10 minutes and he looks at me and says, Why haven't you called the board chair yet?

00:20:58:01 - 00:21:14:15
William Vanderbloemen
And I said, Well, I'm sitting here talking to you. I thought he said, No, no, no, no, no. You had called me because you've already put it off the first chance to get something done is always the best chance to get something done that might be turning left in a heavy traffic. The first chance you get is the one.

00:21:14:20 - 00:21:37:23
William Vanderbloemen
But but we as people, our research shows we're prone to put things off. We're prone to hit the snooze button When what in the world does 7 minutes of sleep do for me except throw off whatever REM cycle I had, like just get it done. And the people that have that bent for action are the ones that are dumb don't ever get fired.

00:21:38:01 - 00:21:54:11
William Vanderbloemen
Like, who do you ask if you want something to get done? The busiest person, you know, because they've figured out I'm going to be productive and it's not hard. It's just a matter of actually following through with developing a habit.

00:21:54:13 - 00:22:12:01
Kevin Eikenberry
And that's why I one of the things I love about the book and about the research is that you frame them as habits and we could talk about them as skills. There are skills inside of each of these habits and it becomes it's a skill, as you've already alluded to. It's learnable and it's coachable and we can build them.

00:22:12:03 - 00:22:32:21
Kevin Eikenberry
And so I love that that you frame them though, as habits because ultimately it doesn't matter if we have the skill. It only is if we do it right. And that's what I love about it. I want to talk a little bit about another. I thought about a couple that perhaps like if no one that's listening would be surprised that being connected would be on this list.

00:22:33:02 - 00:22:55:12
Kevin Eikenberry
No one on this would be surprised to hear that they're solvers. Right. But what people might be surprised is when you hear this idea of being the anticipate or what do you mean by that? Because I'm not sure people will think about this one as a habit, which is why I'd like you to unpack this one just.

00:22:55:14 - 00:23:13:07
William Vanderbloemen
Yeah. Okay. Well, each of the each of the habits are and are a chapter in the book. And each chapter has a here's a case study in an anticipatory. Here's what we learned from the unicorns, and here's how you can apply this to your life. So you're not going to read this book and say, William's going to cure cancer.

00:23:13:09 - 00:23:44:07
William Vanderbloemen
Now, that's not the point of the book. It's simple steps toward becoming a unicorn, right? And the anticipatory was a really interesting one because, well, most people don't think ahead, and it's just not that hard to think one or two steps ahead. You talked to Tiger Woods about how he's going to hit his drive on the tee. He says, well, where's the pin or the the greens three full shots away.

00:23:44:07 - 00:24:03:03
William Vanderbloemen
Why do you care where the pin is? That's going to affect where my third shot comes in from. In my second shot takes off from in my first shot lands. So where's the pin? Like, that's the difference. It is just a habit of saying what you don't have to see five years into the future to be ahead of the crowd, you only have to see a half step ahead.

00:24:03:04 - 00:24:22:18
William Vanderbloemen
There's a there's a knot to go all, you know, scripture. But this whole project has made me rethink a lot of the things that I've learned over the years. There's a word in the in the Hebrew scriptures where King David says, your word is a lamp unto my feet, a light under my path. And I used to think that meant like xenon headlights that could see a mile down the road.

00:24:22:21 - 00:24:33:04
William Vanderbloemen
You wouldn't talk about that at all. You're talking about tiny little lanterns that people would tie on their shoes and it gave them enough light for the next step.

00:24:33:06 - 00:24:34:14
Kevin Eikenberry
That's all. And then the next step.

00:24:34:20 - 00:24:56:17
William Vanderbloemen
And boy, did we learn that during the pandemic. How did you stay ahead in business? You didn't have to see how this is going to end. You had to stay half a step ahead and people can learn to do that. It's just a shift in thinking. And when you get that shift and you start to think, well, now how do I anticipate, man, then you're thinking differently.

00:24:56:17 - 00:25:22:14
William Vanderbloemen
And we don't think that way. We we are like, you know, sheep that just look down at the next tuft, a grass or maybe a sheep of the opposite gender. That's about all they're interested in. And they end up walking off cliffs. You know, we, we as a people and we've gotten lazier as time has gone on. Back in the ancient times, Greek and Latin word order in a sentence didn't matter at all because every word had an ending that told you exactly what it was doing.

00:25:22:18 - 00:25:43:18
William Vanderbloemen
And the verb for the sentence didn't come to the end of the sentence. So you had to listen to the entire sentence before you knew what was going on. You had to think. I got into dissipate, not just act on the one thing that I just heard. And I think in an age of more divided attention than ever, this one is one that will separate people.

00:25:43:20 - 00:25:49:23
William Vanderbloemen
You know, when you get a check, 15 social media platforms to check your messages, like think ahead a little bit.

00:25:50:04 - 00:25:55:01
Kevin Eikenberry
We could have a whole conversation about that. Like, don't do that. But that's a whole different thing.

00:25:55:01 - 00:25:56:14
William Vanderbloemen
Yeah, yeah.

00:25:56:16 - 00:26:16:15
Kevin Eikenberry
So I can't have you on here with all this experience and search and all the experience with interviewing, because I'm sure a lot of people are now saying, okay, so how do I you've now given us a roadmap and not only to think about ourselves, but to think about who I'm going to add to my team. Yeah, So this could be a whole conversation.

00:26:16:15 - 00:26:43:04
Kevin Eikenberry
I know. And I would be remiss to not ask you to give us a couple ideas about how to how to do a better job of finding these or sussing these people out from your list. So give us a couple or three things that people can take home in this area, because I think it's it's it's important that we talk about it because this is your life's work.

00:26:43:06 - 00:27:08:03
William Vanderbloemen
Yeah, well, I'll tell you what I'm learning from my own mistakes as a younger leader and interviewer. All right. I had a propensity early on just to hire talent. That's not helpful. Just talent is not helpful. I had a propensity early on to hire people I liked, and I thought that meant they were great. Well, actually, as a young leader, it turns out I liked them because they were like me.

00:27:08:07 - 00:27:29:04
William Vanderbloemen
And I like me. We end up with a room full of me, so maybe we're coming full circle to your first question about habits, the most important one before you ever interview somebody new to come into your organization, do you have a full grasp on your organization? Are you are you clear in your self-awareness on what we need on the team?

00:27:29:04 - 00:27:54:18
William Vanderbloemen
Like, finally, I was old enough when I started this 15 years ago to say I need some really high detail people around me, or were never it. This book would not have been possible had I not known that because we wouldn't have had people that would have kept records. Right. Took me a long time to learn that. And then when I'm interviewing now, when we were smaller and, you know, it was eight, ten people we hired around our cultural values, if you matched these, that's fine.

00:27:54:20 - 00:28:10:16
William Vanderbloemen
Now that we're bigger, I have to learn that I'm interviewing for a marketing position or sales position that requires strength in a certain set of habits more than maybe a chief compliance officer or, you know, bookkeeper or that sort of thing.

00:28:10:16 - 00:28:13:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So you still matter. But I have to think beyond just the values.

00:28:13:21 - 00:28:37:14
William Vanderbloemen
That's right. I've got to think about how are you going to fit the. So I would say the beginning is self-awareness. You know what? What are you meeting? Where do you guys as a team flourish the best? Who are your five best hires and why were they great? Go look for that again. You know, it's it's all if you if you are clear on your cultural values, you can use those.

00:28:37:16 - 00:29:10:03
William Vanderbloemen
We wrote a whole book on that. But I would say being self-aware and not being blinded by talent would be my to our two best tips. And then, you know, Kevin, when people do this, I don't do searches anymore. I write books and speak and that sort of thing. We've got far more talented people doing the searches, but every now and then when we're doing one for an old client or a really complex deal or I have to be involved, I spend my time interviewing candidates by saying, Hey, don't bother, tell me your life story.

00:29:10:03 - 00:29:29:06
William Vanderbloemen
I've already heard that. Like, what questions can I answer for you about this job? That may be the best interview question I've ever stumbled on because people see it as disarming and interviewing is high anxiety. So any time you can lower anxiety, that's a huge win. They say.

00:29:29:06 - 00:29:34:14
Kevin Eikenberry
It again. So people that we're yeah, we're doing something else like underline it for people. Say it again.

00:29:34:16 - 00:29:54:13
William Vanderbloemen
Yeah, sure. Kevin, you're interviewing with us. You've already given us your life story like we're this is your third interview. Let's not waste time with that. How about the best way we could use the time today is for you to ask me questions about this job or working at this company. How can I help you? What can I answer?

00:29:54:15 - 00:29:59:08
William Vanderbloemen
And just hearing you're here, if they're not prepared, you're here.

00:29:59:08 - 00:30:01:12
Kevin Eikenberry
If they're here, if they're not curious.

00:30:01:14 - 00:30:30:00
William Vanderbloemen
You're here. If they're not connected, you'll hear. If they don't know themself right. You know, there's a lot of talk about work life balance and not being a toxic and abusive boss. And I'm all for everybody being healthy. But there are some jobs that require immediate responsiveness, like if you are an ambulance driver and the call comes in, you don't get to say, but I'm having dinner with my wife and I'm trying to protect my work life balance.

00:30:30:02 - 00:30:47:20
William Vanderbloemen
No, you know, so like, figure out what's essential to the job and see if they're asking the questions that will let you say they're going to be good at this. So I'd see what questions are inside people and I'd make sure you know yourself well enough to know, is this going to fit or not?

00:30:47:22 - 00:31:05:11
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that. So a couple of things before we finish, William. And one of them is I want to shift gears. Really. We started talking about you. We're going to kind of end talking about you. And so here's my next question. What do you do for fun?

00:31:05:13 - 00:31:27:14
William Vanderbloemen
Yeah, well, that's changed over the years. We have seven kids. I grew up playing golf. I played with one of my four grandparents at least once a week and played a lot of tournament golf, never world class, but pretty good. I functionally quit when we started the business because it's been growing every year and up into the right seven kids, you know.

00:31:27:16 - 00:31:39:13
William Vanderbloemen
So I'm starting to have some time to do that. And that's led my wife, who plays tennis, to say, I'll learn golf if you'll learn tennis. So now I'm painfully trying to learn a very difficult sport. I'm not any good at it at all.

00:31:39:15 - 00:31:42:14
Kevin Eikenberry
You couldn't just have her go pickleball. Maybe a little.

00:31:42:16 - 00:31:49:18
William Vanderbloemen
That's that's the third option. And we both agreed where neither one of us are going to try to get good at that. We're just going to go have fun with it.

00:31:49:20 - 00:32:06:04
Kevin Eikenberry
All right. There you go. And the other thing that I normally that I like to ask everybody that I've actually in my entire life, this is something that I've asked people. And when I started doing this podcast, 400 and some odd episodes ago, I thought it'd be a good thing to ask people here. So I'm going to ask you, you didn't know I'm going to ask this.

00:32:06:04 - 00:32:13:03
Kevin Eikenberry
So the question is, what are you reading or what's something you've read recently?

00:32:13:05 - 00:32:39:02
William Vanderbloemen
You know, I love history and biographies. I don't think it's hard to see. And usually I should say I read biographies of people who've been dead for a while just to give it a little time. As much as you'd like to see the Britney book on my bookshelf, it's not there. So and what is and neither is the Elon Musk biography, even though Walter Isaacson is my favorite biographer of all time.

00:32:39:04 - 00:33:03:20
William Vanderbloemen
So actually, the most recent read I finished was his Einstein biography, which was fascinating. I just if you learn enough history, you can start to see the future. It's pretty cyclical. So I'm kind of a history biography geek. We have a book challenge at home every year to read 35 books, and then I go and pick a 1200 page James Michener or Walter Isaacson.

00:33:03:20 - 00:33:07:17
William Vanderbloemen
And I'm I'm the last place I don't read a lot, but.

00:33:07:19 - 00:33:20:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, maybe you should go on pages and not books. There you see. There you go. I've read all the missionary, all that, so I don't need to read any more those anymore. There was a long time. I think I've read every single one. The easier ones are the short with like Kent State, you know. Not so long. Yeah.

00:33:20:21 - 00:33:22:07
Kevin Eikenberry
That state as opposed to Hawaii.

00:33:22:07 - 00:33:25:08
William Vanderbloemen
Centennial or. Yeah, well, the Covenant.

00:33:25:09 - 00:33:26:06
Kevin Eikenberry
The Covenant.

00:33:26:08 - 00:33:34:17
William Vanderbloemen
Pretty amazing. I've read that before. I made our first trip to South Africa and yeah, so I'm a history biography nerd.

00:33:34:19 - 00:33:43:10
Kevin Eikenberry
So the question you probably most wanted me to ask from the beginning is where can people learn more? Where do you want to point people? How can they get a copy of this fabulous book? Be the Corn?

00:33:43:15 - 00:33:44:09
William Vanderbloemen
Well, the one stop.

00:33:44:09 - 00:33:47:17
Kevin Eikenberry
Data driven habits separated the best leaders from the rest.

00:33:47:21 - 00:34:17:13
William Vanderbloemen
Of Thanksgiving. The best one stop shop is the Unicorn book dot com, the unicorn book dot com that's got you can find the personality assessment, you can find bonus material. You can find the book where to order and links for everything. The easier way to find the book is to go to Amazon and spell Vander Blume and how ever you would like to because my name is so messed up, it will source right back to my author page and you'll see it right at the top.

00:34:17:14 - 00:34:30:09
William Vanderbloemen
Same with Google. If you want to find our website there. Like 4000 free resources there just Vander Blue and however you want to spell it, it's Vanderbloemen Mint.com. You'll get there and hopefully you'll find some things that can help you out.

00:34:30:11 - 00:34:58:04
Kevin Eikenberry
So before we go, everyone, I have a question that I ask all of you as listeners or viewers every single week. And if you've watched before, listen for you know, here it is. Now, what what action are you going to take? Like What's the point if you don't do something with what you learned? And maybe you've got an idea about how to be better prepared for the next time you're interviewing or being interviewed, or perhaps one of the various ideas that we talked about around one of these habits is the place that you are led to start.

00:34:58:04 - 00:35:16:13
Kevin Eikenberry
Perhaps it's to think about how you can be working to be more self aware, being more curious, being more of an anticipatory, or perhaps it just might be getting a copy of this book, whatever it is. The reality is that unless you take some action from this, it will have been a very little real value to you when it's all said and done.

00:35:16:13 - 00:35:22:00
Kevin Eikenberry
William, thank you so much for being here. It is a pleasure to have you. Thanks again so much for being here.

00:35:22:02 - 00:35:25:04
William Vanderbloemen
Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate it. And thanks for having me on.

00:35:25:06 - 00:35:44:17
Kevin Eikenberry
So, everybody, that's the end of this week's episode. You know, we'll be back. So you should be back if you're a subscriber. It will show up in your feed. If you're not, this is your chance to subscribe. If you are a subscriber and like what you get here, this is your chance to tell someone else to. Join us next week for the next episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.