The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:16 - 00:00:28:17
Kevin Eikenberry
Stress. We all experience it, and for the most part, we wish we had less of it in our lives. But what if we looked at it and understood stress differently? What if we could use stress in new and effective ways to help us and our teams reach our goals? We'll explore those questions and more in today's important and inspirational show.

00:00:28:23 - 00:00:57:13
Kevin Eikenberry
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, organizations and the world. If you are listening to this podcast in the future, you could join us live and to get information about how to do that, you can join our LinkedIn or Facebook groups to get the inside scoop, as well as the schedule for when upcoming live episodes live streams will occur.

00:00:57:19 - 00:01:32:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Join our Facebook group by going to remarkable podcast.com/facebook or our LinkedIn group at Remarkable podcast.com/linkedin. Pretty simple. Do that and then you'll get all the info and you can join us. Today's episode is brought to you by my upcoming book, The second edition of The Long Distance Leader Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership. If you lead a team that is distributed in any way, this book will give you new skills, insights, and the confidence to lead more effectively in the new world of work.

00:01:32:19 - 00:01:56:23
Kevin Eikenberry
You can learn more and preorder your copy today at Remarkable podcast.com/ldl remarkable podcast.com/l. The l hope you'll do that. And now I'm going to introduce my guest. And we bring him in here and there. He is. And then I'm going to introduce him for you if I can get my screen to work. There we go. with me today is Doctor Steven Stein.

00:01:56:23 - 00:02:26:17
Kevin Eikenberry
He's a world renowned clinical psychologist, an international bestselling author and sought after speaker, and the founder and executive chair of Multi Health Multi Health Systems, a publisher of scientifically validated assessments for over 40 years, which has been named a three time winner of the prophet 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Canada, one of Canada's best managed companies since 2013, and Canada's ten Most Admired Corporate Cultures in 2016.

00:02:26:19 - 00:02:57:06
Kevin Eikenberry
This guy is a practitioner, and a leader. He is an researcher. He's a leading expert on psychological assessment and emotional intelligence. He has consulted with military and government agencies across Canada and the US, including the FBI Academy, as well as corporate organizations like American Express, Air Canada, Canyon Ranch, Coca-Cola Mexico and professional sports teams. He's also worked with all sorts of reality TV shows, which we might get to or not.

00:02:57:07 - 00:03:21:07
Kevin Eikenberry
He has coauthored this book that we're going to talk about today, hardiness making stress work for you to achieve your life goals. He's also the author of the EQ Leader and Emotional Intelligence for dummies. He coauthored the international bestseller the EQ Edge Emotional Intelligence and Your Success, and wrote Make Your Marketplace Great seven Keys to Emotionally Intelligent Organization.

00:03:21:09 - 00:03:25:10
Kevin Eikenberry
Today, he's our guest here. Stephen, thanks for joining me.

00:03:25:12 - 00:03:27:12
Steven Stein
It means to be with you, Kevin.

00:03:27:14 - 00:03:45:09
Kevin Eikenberry
lots of good stuff for us to talk about. I really kind of want to start, like, you've gotten. We've all gotten a bit of a background on you from that, bio, and, we had people joining us and following the rules that I gave, which is to tell us where you're located. Thank you. Jessica.

00:03:45:11 - 00:04:04:02
Kevin Eikenberry
but what I really want to do, Stephen, is really have you start by sort of telling us a little bit about your journey. How do you end up doing this work around EQ and around hardiness and stress? Like how do you end up doing this work?

00:04:04:03 - 00:04:35:23
Steven Stein
Wow. Well, that's, I'll try and give you the shorter version of that story. So I came out of, grad school as your typical clinical psychologist, working in a children's treatment center. and at that time, something brand new came out called, computers, micro computers by a couple of guys in California named Steve. And what was happening was I was doing some work with kids and in the treatment said, we're doing a research study, and, I had to do pretest and post test to see if the treatments worked and none of the kids wanted to do.

00:04:35:23 - 00:04:55:23
Steven Stein
In fact, they would throw my test. That means they take this and shove it wherever. So what happened was I saw they liked these computers, so I brought in computer, had a kid program or someone program it, and we started doing diagnostic assessments on the computer and kids loved it. I actually had some kids lining up asking me if I had any more tests for them to take.

00:04:56:01 - 00:04:56:22
Steven Stein
So because they.

00:04:56:22 - 00:04:58:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Got to play on the computer, I.

00:04:58:12 - 00:05:19:03
Steven Stein
Was great. Yeah, but I got the data that I needed for the research. So, I thought, wow, this is great. And then I published some research showing that we discovered more stuff about these kids in a one hour computer interview than, like ten therapists who had interviewed them and taken the history. You know, they never told them about the sexual abuse they experienced.

00:05:19:05 - 00:05:36:21
Steven Stein
They never told them, but the drugs they were taking. so there are a lot of things that they wouldn't really confess to the therapists, but they did to the computer. So I said, wow, this is amazing. It's going to change the world. So I want to pursue this in a research vein. But the hospital said, no, we're not interested in that.

00:05:36:23 - 00:05:53:23
Steven Stein
So I ended up, my wife was on maternity leave. She was working in the addiction center, and we ended up setting up a little company on our own and doing it at night. So it was the two of us, programing some of these tests. And lo and behold, we grew into a company that now has over 200 employees.

00:05:54:05 - 00:06:14:13
Steven Stein
But the emotional intelligence component, we started with the typical clinical stuff. And I spent a long time, you know, working with people who are anxious or depressed or schizophrenic or even psychopathic, like all kinds of weird psychological disorders. And it came to a point when I thought, you know what? I spent a lot of my time looking at what's wrong with people.

00:06:14:19 - 00:06:38:07
Steven Stein
Why don't we start looking at what's right with people? So I started studying. People who were really successful were doing well in life, whether they were athletes, whether they're performers, whether they were CEOs or top salespeople from a whole gamut of of occupational groups. And, and that led me to emotional intelligence. That's when we got into, the factors that that we use to measure emotional intelligence.

00:06:38:07 - 00:06:45:04
Steven Stein
And we've measured several millions of people since we started doing that over 20 years ago.

00:06:45:06 - 00:07:09:20
Kevin Eikenberry
So I opened the show, we got a little feedback for the first time, even though we were together for a while earlier. so I, I opened the show by by talking about the word stress, which is the second word in the subtitle of the book, and it's sort of the title of this episode. so all of us experience stress, all of us have thoughts about what it is and what it isn't.

00:07:09:22 - 00:07:22:09
Kevin Eikenberry
what do we all need to know from you about stress? Like most of us have some misconceptions. So what do we need to know about stress that you can tell us?

00:07:22:11 - 00:07:41:12
Steven Stein
Well, there's a few things. One is that it's natural. If we're human, we're going to experience stress. Right. So it doesn't really have to be your enemy unless you let it be your enemy. And what we're finding in a lot of the research that's being done in this area is finding that stress actually has a purpose in our lives.

00:07:41:12 - 00:08:05:00
Steven Stein
It's there for a reason not to drive us crazy or make us insane. It's really there as a warning, as a signal, as something to help us. And what we've also learned is that the people who deal the best with stressful situations, difficult people, difficult things at work are those who know how to sort of manage it or transform it, which is what we talk about in the book.

00:08:05:00 - 00:08:22:22
Steven Stein
We talk about the three C's, and learning how to use those skills just turns it around and makes it something else. You're not going to get rid of it. You know, you can relax all you want. You can count to ten all you want. You do all those things which are wonderful things, right? But they're not going to get rid of your stress.

00:08:22:22 - 00:08:28:02
Steven Stein
So let's work with it and use it to get us to the next level.

00:08:28:04 - 00:08:56:03
Kevin Eikenberry
So, Stephen, I, I didn't realize this till you and I were chatting before we we started. usually when I have guests, they have new books, right? This book came out, but back when Corona was still a beer, like, pre-COVID. so, you know, in the time since then, there's been a heightened awareness, a lot more discussion about mental health.

00:08:56:05 - 00:09:21:04
Kevin Eikenberry
And, and you talk about that later in the book. And I really don't want to make that the focus of our conversation. But since I opened with that word stress, do you have any any thoughts for us? Like, like as a clinical psychologist, having seen what's happened in the world and how people are thinking about talking about mental health now, what would you say to us all as it relates to this conversation?

00:09:21:05 - 00:09:39:00
Steven Stein
Well, you know, it's kind of an irony as we've done more research and more science over the years, like tons, I think I cite at the time I wrote the book, the number of scientific papers on stress. And the reality is it's getting worse. We're finding our kids are getting worse. We're finding people at work are getting more stressed out.

00:09:39:06 - 00:10:07:04
Steven Stein
So what's going on if we know so much more about it? We've done all of this research and people are just suffering all over the place now. There's a lot of work looking at kids and and the influence of, of smartphones on kids, anxiety and stress and that's getting pretty well established how that works. And, and we're looking at adults and the way that they are sort of managing their lives and the things that are causing them to be out of sorts with stress.

00:10:07:06 - 00:10:28:05
Kevin Eikenberry
So even though this book came pre-COVID and as you told me, there's no Covid stories in it, I think there's lots of lessons for us here. and so let's talk about let's talk about this word that is the title of the book hardiness. what do you mean by it specifically?

00:10:28:07 - 00:10:52:04
Steven Stein
So hardiness, like my coauthor is the real expert on the area of hardiness. It's a term that was, started in this area about 25 years ago at university of Chicago. And, and the research they were doing, was with organizations. So the psychologists were looking at executives and how they manage stress, essentially. And it was a typical sort of psychologists study looking at people and their ability to manage stress.

00:10:52:06 - 00:11:12:22
Steven Stein
And in the middle of the study, there was an amalgamation going on. Was the company in the telecommunication industry, and it was a result of that merger, acquisition. A lot of the people got let go from their jobs, and it just happened to affect a lot of the people that were being studied for the research. Right. So they didn't want to stop the research, but what would they notice was something really interesting.

00:11:12:22 - 00:11:34:22
Steven Stein
During that process, there were a number of people, maybe 80 to 90% of them, who were really upset, really angry, just, you know, angry at the company, angry at their boss, angry at all kinds of people. They were not adapting well to losing their job. On the other hand, there were about 10% of them who had a completely different way of looking at it.

00:11:35:00 - 00:11:52:16
Steven Stein
They said, well, you know what? This may give me a new opportunity. I've always wanted to open a bakery and, you know, make bread or sell muffins or something, or they said, you know what? I was really getting tired of this organization. This is a perfect opportunity to dust up my resume and start looking for other places to work.

00:11:52:18 - 00:12:18:03
Steven Stein
So it was a really interesting difference. So they started there and started looking at what's going on, what's the mindset of these two different groups of people. And that led to over 25 years of research. We've got tons of data now and all different groups really solidifying what they started to find, which was that there was three sort of ways of thinking, three mindsets that contributed to doing well.

00:12:18:05 - 00:12:22:01
Steven Stein
Well under stress. And yeah, we call them the three C's of hardiness.

00:12:22:03 - 00:12:40:19
Kevin Eikenberry
And we'll get to those. But I'm curious, and I'm guessing that some people who are listening might be thinking this. They might be saying, Stephen, this sounds a lot like grit or this sounds a lot like resilience to words that have, sort of blown up in the popular psyche in the last ten years or so.

00:12:40:21 - 00:12:44:15
Kevin Eikenberry
How is hardiness the same or different than those other two ideas?

00:12:44:20 - 00:13:00:01
Steven Stein
So it's, there's a significant difference between hardiness and grit. So grit is really, you know, putting your nose to the grindstone and plowing ahead and plowing ahead. So suppose, you know, I'm a musician. I'm a saxophone player. Suppose I want to be John Coltrane.

00:13:00:03 - 00:13:01:12
Kevin Eikenberry
You better get started.

00:13:01:14 - 00:13:27:11
Steven Stein
I have grit, right? I'm going to go and go. I'm going to spend my whole life trying to be that saxophone player. Guess what? It ain't going to happen, right? It just isn't going to happen. And the problem with grit is you keep chasing a goal, even though you may not be able to achieve it in hardiness. One of the seeds that we talk about has to do with really shifting gears, dealing with change and saying, hey, you know what?

00:13:27:13 - 00:13:48:09
Steven Stein
I'm not going to be the greatest saxophone player, but maybe I can play at a local band, maybe I can teach saxophone, maybe I can be a studio musician. There are other things I can do with that same skill. And just another thing that I think I say some of this in the book, there's been some new research in the area of grit, and if you're really high on grit, Kevin, I'll tell you one thing.

00:13:48:11 - 00:14:12:14
Steven Stein
Don't go to casinos because people high on grit lose their money. Just keep going. they keep playing. Right. And the other study that came out looking at people high in grit is when it comes to mountain climbing, they're the most likely to die because they won't come back down when the conditions start getting really bad. They just keep pushing through, saying, I'm going to make it so.

00:14:12:14 - 00:14:23:15
Steven Stein
So grit has some benefits, but it also has some serious downfalls. So that's one of the main differences between what we look at is hardiness versus grit.

00:14:23:16 - 00:14:39:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Cool. Thank you. so you've mentioned it. And this is really what I wanted to make. The cornerstone of our conversation are the three C's of hardiness. So, why don't you mention the three just sort of at a high level, and then we'll we'll chat about each of them a little bit.

00:14:39:18 - 00:15:00:15
Steven Stein
Okay. So the first one is commitment, which has to do with having a purpose in life. The second one is control. Knowing what I can control and what I can't control. And the third one we call challenge, which is looking at what can I learn from even a bad situation when I go through what is challenge?

00:15:00:17 - 00:15:16:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So the basic idea here is that all of us have all three of these in our lives. It's sort of how we use, think about, and shape them that has an impact on how we transform stress into hardiness. Is that a fair way to say it?

00:15:16:21 - 00:15:36:14
Steven Stein
Absolutely. Yeah. And, and sort of one other point, you mentioned resilience. So differentiating from resilience. When we look at resilience it's usually we go through something difficult. And then we bounce back to where we were, what we find with people high in hardiness who trained in hardiness. They don't come back to where they were. They come back even stronger than they were.

00:15:36:14 - 00:15:48:20
Steven Stein
And I'm sure you've seen this, some people call it post-traumatic growth, but it's that kind sap that I've learned from a difficult situation, and I can use that to do better the next time.

00:15:48:22 - 00:16:16:02
Kevin Eikenberry
So I'm very well aware that when people are listening to us or even watching us, that it is not everyone's watching us in this moment, at this moment, we're in, the end of July of 2024. So the Olympics are on. And so as I was reading the book, I was thinking about the fact that watching, the Olympics, listening to some of the backstories of some of the athletes, you see all three of these things playing out.

00:16:16:02 - 00:16:26:09
Kevin Eikenberry
So I don't want to over do that because so many people are going to be watching this long after that took place. But is any comment that you want to make just about that in general before we dive into the three CS?

00:16:26:11 - 00:16:51:03
Steven Stein
Yeah, I mean, if you're interested in how it applies to athletes, I actually have a section in the book, with a, a tennis player with a fascinating story about this young woman who, at a young age determined that she wanted to win the US open. And, I spent some time with her coach learning about because I figured the coach really as the story of the inside story of how she trained, where she was at the beginning and so forth.

00:16:51:05 - 00:17:12:12
Steven Stein
And we talk about that in terms of both, the three CS and some of the techniques that he used with her to get her to actually beat Serena Williams. And when her name is Bianca Andreescu and she won the U.S. open a few years back. So, it's a really interesting story. And, and I've talked to other athletes and work with other athletes.

00:17:12:14 - 00:17:32:04
Steven Stein
So if you want to learn about some of the techniques, such as visualization and and and one of the reasons I learned that or I spent time with athletes is because I think we can take from that world and apply it to the business world. We can use some of those same techniques when we have to make a presentation, do a sales call, and so on.

00:17:32:06 - 00:18:00:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. I love that, and I agree with that. so I want to talk. you just said something. I think it's really important. most people listening are probably thinking about how do I, I think about these three C's. How do we think about this conversation as it relates to me? You just said, Steven, hey, I talked with a coach, worked with a coach who was coaching the athlete and thinking about what the coach did.

00:18:00:15 - 00:18:25:10
Kevin Eikenberry
So as everyone, as you're listening to the rest of this conversation, I want you to be thinking about this with two hats on, both personal hat and your leadership hat. Right? And so, Steven, feel free to sort of cross between the two of those as we go. let's talk a little bit more about the commitment piece. In short, the higher our level of commitment, the harder we will be.

00:18:25:12 - 00:18:46:15
Steven Stein
Right? Yeah. So yeah, commitment really means being invested in the world, having an interest in what's going on around you and having a purpose in your own life. We find that, leaders who are really successful and managing, their way through stressful situations have a greater purpose. They're not ripped down by small, you know, obstacles that get in the way here and there.

00:18:46:20 - 00:19:05:07
Steven Stein
But they say, hey, this is where we really ultimately want to go. This is our purpose and can deliver that purpose to the team and to the people reporting to them. So commitment is is really all about having that purpose, having that drive and desire to to get to that purpose.

00:19:05:09 - 00:19:32:02
Kevin Eikenberry
If if we realize for ourselves that and like I coach people who sometimes are saying like, I just don't feel that like I once did, I just don't, I don't have I don't have that sense of purpose or commitment that I once had. what what are a couple of things that people could do or that we could do to help others sort of refind, rediscover that.

00:19:32:04 - 00:19:48:09
Steven Stein
Yes. I like to explore with them. So. So what are your interests? What are your hobbies? What are the things that get you excited? What got you excited, your job in the first place? Like what took you on that path to that? You know, you're in engineering or plumbing or whatever. What was it that you liked about that?

00:19:48:11 - 00:20:03:18
Steven Stein
And if we could sort of get that initial spark, what is it that that you really, you know, and it may have changed, right? Oh, I want to be an engineer. I expected to do this, but now I got all this paperwork and I got bosses I can stand and I got blah, blah, blah. How do we take you back to those original things?

00:20:04:00 - 00:20:17:17
Steven Stein
To working with your hands, or to working with people and spending more time talking to people, less time writing it up. So we look at how do we get you excited about the thing that really drove you in the first place.

00:20:17:19 - 00:20:50:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And sort of refining that or reframing that? I think that's exactly right. And that's and, we can we can help others with that. We can help ourselves with that as well. And so so that's the first C commitment. You talked about the next one as being control. So this one to me in my work as a leader I find that the this one is a huge one because there's so much that's that's mindset related and sort of belief related for people around control.

00:20:50:15 - 00:20:56:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So talk about this one a little bit because I think that this is a really big lever. Everybody, as you listen to Steven here.

00:20:57:00 - 00:21:17:22
Steven Stein
Yeah. Because a lot of times things happen and we take on responsibility for it. And it may be something that we have no control over. Right. There's someone else did something or whatever. So what it means here is really learning what it is you have control over and what is beyond your control, or what else somebody else can help you with in terms of that particular situation.

00:21:18:00 - 00:21:31:21
Steven Stein
a lot of people just get out of joint and spin their wheels trying to change the weather, right? When you can't change the weather, it's just going to rain. Whether you la, you can dance all you want. It might change it during umbrella.

00:21:31:23 - 00:21:33:21
Kevin Eikenberry
But you're not going to change it. It's going to rain.

00:21:33:23 - 00:21:55:05
Steven Stein
A lot smarter. Getting an umbrella because that's within your control, right? That's what you can do. And we see so many times that there are situations that come up and you worry and spend so much time problem solving the the uncontrollable, whereas you, you come up with some solutions, like getting the umbrella in the workplace, you'll be able to deal with it much more effectively.

00:21:55:05 - 00:22:07:08
Steven Stein
So it's a way of thinking about situations where is that? I'm not managing. I'm not in charge of everything in the world, but these are the areas that I am in charge in, and I can make a difference with those areas.

00:22:07:10 - 00:22:33:02
Kevin Eikenberry
I think for leaders, this is especially especially well, let me put it this way. For new leaders, it's one of the biggest challenges that people face because, they got promoted to being a leader because they were really good individual contributor. Like they they got stuff done. And we we typically have more control over doing that report, creating that design, having that phone call, making that say all that stuff.

00:22:33:05 - 00:22:58:01
Kevin Eikenberry
But now we're leading people that are doing that work, and we don't have the kind of, or that type of control that we had before. And, and getting clearer about this and recognizing what's in our control. And it's a lot control and influence, but but recognizing what's not like the weather, like gravity, like time. Right. Like is is a huge piece for us.

00:22:58:01 - 00:23:07:04
Kevin Eikenberry
And I think and I find that leaders often really struggle with this one. And they don't even they can't even see this is a blind spot.

00:23:07:06 - 00:23:28:07
Steven Stein
Absolutely. They want to micromanage. Right. Because this is the way I did it, or I've been doing that job for so long, and you have to do it this way. And the micromanaging may be new ways of doing things. I mean, you know, it's we should be looking at outcomes, not a process. So, it's it's a huge area, especially when you go a new leader into that, into that position, learning how to step back.

00:23:28:09 - 00:23:44:00
Steven Stein
You can influence your control becomes influence, how to influence that person. And you can do that by just asking questions, hey, how do you think that's going to work out for us? Is that the best way? Have you looked at other ways of doing this? Okay, great. You know, just being helpful and being a good coach.

00:23:44:02 - 00:24:04:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, I love that. And the third C is challenge. And it again it comes down to how we frame a challenge. has a huge impact here. So talk about challenge as as a component of and a way to help us be hardier, if you will.

00:24:05:01 - 00:24:22:07
Steven Stein
Yeah. So this one really, you know, this one's a harder one. And you got to really work at it to get it right. But, you know, when things are crappy, they're crappy. I lose a major sale. I'm going to be upset about it. But if I'm good at challenge, at least I can say, okay, what did I learn from this?

00:24:22:09 - 00:24:40:23
Steven Stein
What can I take away? This has been a bad situation. I'm not going to beat myself over the head, you know, a hundred times a hundred lashes. I'm going to look at the situation realistically and say, okay, what? What's the gain? What can I learn? Where can I improve the next time? And people who are high and challenge, are good at that.

00:24:40:23 - 00:25:11:15
Steven Stein
They can shift. They can, you know, feel bad, get through that feeling of losing something or a bad situation. But they could turn it around relatively quickly by starting to think in a more positive way. and the constructive way by what did I learn? What can I do and move forward? And we see this again. You know, we learn so much from athletes because they're performing constantly and they're in front of a huge, you know, when when you and I make a mistake, I don't know, maybe three people see it, but you know, you're talking about few Olympics.

00:25:11:15 - 00:25:24:19
Steven Stein
You're talking about like millions of people seeing their mistake. You could really and I've seen it where they really get down on themselves. But if you have that challenge, you're able to come away from that situation and still feel good about yourself.

00:25:24:21 - 00:25:48:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. so how we frame it, really in all three of these, but certainly the second to, it's a huge piece of this. So before we start to wrap up, I want to talk about the connection between hardiness and stress and a little more directly with what what you and Paul call the hardy stress response.

00:25:48:14 - 00:25:53:02
Kevin Eikenberry
So talk about that a little bit before we start to close up here.

00:25:53:04 - 00:26:14:16
Steven Stein
Okay. So basically this is all about a mindset a way of approaching situations. something happens where we go where we start. We there's questions we would ask ourselves in terms of dealing with the situation. How will this affect me in the long run? What can I learn from this? What can I manage? What's beyond my control? What's within my control?

00:26:14:18 - 00:26:32:23
Steven Stein
and where does this fit into my game plan? Overall? Is this going to, you know, hurt my ability to ultimately be a senior level leader or whatever it is I have for the goals? So it really comes to a series of questions and analysis that you do, and hopefully you'll start doing it before the stress hits you.

00:26:33:02 - 00:26:44:23
Steven Stein
So when it does come, you're inoculated yourself. Basically, you've inoculated yourself so you can feel the stress, but get through it much more quickly than you otherwise would have.

00:26:45:01 - 00:27:05:06
Kevin Eikenberry
We're talking with Stephen Stein, coauthor of the book hardiness. And, before we finish, I have a couple of other things I like to ask everybody, Steve and and the first one is you've hinted at this twice, so I think I might know your answer, but what do you do for fun?

00:27:05:08 - 00:27:21:21
Steven Stein
Well, I do a few things for fun. I play tennis, which is an athletic thing that I do, but I'm also a saxophone player. Right. So I'm a musician, and I have a band. I have a jazz rock band. And, we perform, once a month at a bar, a local bar. We play tunes of the rock band, group Chicago.

00:27:21:21 - 00:27:40:00
Steven Stein
We do Amy Winehouse and, I love music. Right. And I get to perform, and, I have a group of friends, and that's real teamwork. You want to learn about team run a band? I have a 12 piece band, and that's, that's a lot of fun. And we all like each other and and, and have a blast.

00:27:40:02 - 00:27:43:18
Kevin Eikenberry
So two questions. So you're the band leader and not just the sax player?

00:27:43:23 - 00:27:58:23
Steven Stein
Oh, I wouldn't say I'm the band leader. I'm, I'm not the best musician of the group. We have someone who's a really good musician who came out of the Berklee School of Music, who does our arranging and and leads the music part of it. I'm more in charge of booking gigs and doing those kinds of things.

00:27:59:00 - 00:28:05:20
Kevin Eikenberry
And then then also as a former, I'll say, former sax player, tenor or alto.

00:28:05:22 - 00:28:07:16
Steven Stein
in the band on baritone.

00:28:07:18 - 00:28:08:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Oh, very.

00:28:08:15 - 00:28:10:11
Steven Stein
Sax, I love robberies.

00:28:10:13 - 00:28:27:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Listen, I was, a freshman in high school and, I was only a little taller than the very sax, I suppose. And I marched with the virtual sax about why they didn't let me march with my tenor or an alto, I don't know, but I marched with the very sax, played it for some period of time. Well that's.

00:28:27:21 - 00:28:30:22
Steven Stein
Great. We're on the same wavelength. That's amazing. There you go.

00:28:30:22 - 00:28:45:13
Kevin Eikenberry
Are both there, and we're both wearing blue shirts. For all of you who are only hearing us later. So, the only thing, Stephen, that you knew I would ask is this, like, what are you reading these days? What's something that you're reading or have recently read that you would that you would share with all of us?

00:28:45:15 - 00:29:06:09
Steven Stein
So one of the things I'm partly through is the the book about Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. you know, I guess he's, a pretty big figure in the world these days. And, as a psychologist, I find, his is growing up really interesting where he came from and and how we ended up the way he is today and maybe down the road.

00:29:06:09 - 00:29:10:05
Steven Stein
That'll be a good analysis for how this fit into his life.

00:29:10:07 - 00:29:25:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Could be, So, now, the question you most want me to ask all along, like, if where can we learn more about your work, about your assessments, about the book? I didn't mean the books. Like, where do you want to point us? Where can we learn more about you?

00:29:25:02 - 00:29:39:11
Steven Stein
you go to my website, Stephen stein.com. And to learn about, the assessments that we developed. you go to Ms. dot com, so, pretty simple to reach, either way. And you'll find me there.

00:29:39:13 - 00:30:10:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Mastcam Stephen with a V stein.com. I hope you'll check those out and get your copy of hardiness Making Stress work for you to achieve your Life goals. I think this has been an episode that has focused on both us individually, as leaders, as well as our role as a leader, and hopefully you've taken something from all that. So before I say a final thank you to Steven, and before I say goodbye to all of you, I will ask you the question I ask every episode, which is now what?

00:30:10:09 - 00:30:29:05
Kevin Eikenberry
What action will you take as a result? There's there's at least one question that you heard that that's in the back of your head. Now that you've listened to this conversation, make sure you answer that question. Maybe there's something about one of the three C's commitment, control, or challenge that is gnawing at you or encouraging you to think more about.

00:30:29:05 - 00:30:47:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Or maybe, you've gotten a bit of self-awareness today about something that might be helpful. Or maybe you've gotten an idea that might help you in coaching one of your team members. Whatever it is, leaving it as an idea is only of limited value in comparison to taking action on it. I hope that you will do that.

00:30:47:07 - 00:30:56:13
Kevin Eikenberry
If you do that, this will be a far more useful, a better use of the time that you've just spent with us. Steven, thank you so much for being here. It was a pleasure to have you.

00:30:56:15 - 00:30:59:19
Steven Stein
Thanks for having me. Great. Just to be talking with you. Given.

00:30:59:21 - 00:31:20:10
Kevin Eikenberry
And so, everybody, I hope you found this useful. If you did, make sure you set yourself up with whatever, podcast platform you're listening to. So you come back and join us again. If you've been here before, make sure you invite someone else. Encourage someone else to join us in the future, because next week we'll be back again with another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.