Sean Quigley, a former Marine turned business consultant, delves into the core of leadership shaped by adversity. Starting with his time in the Marine Corps, Quigley emphasizes the importance of resilience and crisis management, attributes that he later applied in the corporate world at Deloitte and now at his own consulting firm, Nighthawk Consulting. Throughout the discussion, Quigley shares poignant stories from his military service, illustrating how these experiences equipped him with a leadership toolkit that's highly effective in the business sector.

Quigley also touches on the critical role of contingency planning, likening it to his days as a helicopter pilot prepared for any emergency. He stresses the necessity for businesses to adopt a proactive rather than reactive approach to operational disruptions. This mindset not only prepares organizations for unforeseen challenges but also ensures they are quick to recover without compromising their mission.

Want to learn more about Sean's work? Check out their website at https://www.knighthawkconsulting.com/.

Connect with Sean on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanquigley6/.

Key Points with Time Stamps:

• [00:01:24-00:01:49] Sean Quigley's introduction and background in the Marine Corps and business consulting.
• [00:10:18-00:11:20] Discussion on crisis management and continuity operations in business settings.
• [00:19:24-00:20:02] Real-world application of leadership during Craig Andrews' unexpected absence due to a medical emergency.
• [00:25:00-00:25:41] Concept of commander's intent in business decisions and its impact on operational efficiency.
• [00:34:38-00:36:18] Strategies for fostering initiative and problem-solving skills in structured environments.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;24;01
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Sean Quigley. And biggest challenge is going to be having this conversation within the time frame. Sean's a former marine, so I love him already. And every time we talk, it's just we could literally talk for hours. But the things I want you to walk away with today is, Sean has been a leader of men for many years, and he has an important message today, for you to learn about leadership in your business.

00;01;24;03 - 00;01;49;18
Craig Andrews
he graduated from the US Naval Academy. he flew helicopters. He, flew the president's helicopter. And, when I got out of the Marine Corps, he, he joined Deloitte and led and, help people figure out crisis management and resilience. Now, Sean has his own business called Nighthawk Consulting, and it's based up in Strasburg, Virginia, which it's just west of DC.

00;01;49;18 - 00;01;55;10
Craig Andrews
It's beautiful land. And so I'm really excited to have Sean on today. Sean, welcome.

00;01;55;13 - 00;02;01;27
Sean Quigley
Thanks, Craig. This is, this is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. I'm always sorry we have to interrupt our conversation to do the podcast.

00;02;01;29 - 00;02;40;08
Craig Andrews
I know, it's, but it's, I mean, it's it's, you know what? People don't always understand. You know, I can meet any marine, and it's from from the second we meet. We just have a common bond. And it's like we've known each other for years. And, you know, I'm so thankful to be a part of an organization. That part of the Marine Corps that creates that type of brotherhood and, you know, and, and, you know, apologies to those in the other services, but I always thank God that I was able to be a marine as opposed to some other branch.

00;02;40;09 - 00;02;46;08
Craig Andrews
It's just I just feel like, God shined on me and allowed me to join the Marine Corps.

00;02;46;11 - 00;03;11;00
Sean Quigley
Yeah. No, I'm, I'm with you. There's something about our shared experience. I like to tell people that, when they say, hey, what's. You know, what's the difference about being a marine? I said, well, you just said it. We we are Marines. You joined the Air Force or you joined the Army, but you become a marine and that's that.

00;03;11;01 - 00;03;17;04
Sean Quigley
That's something different, that that's powerful. and you don't really understand it until you are one.

00;03;17;07 - 00;03;30;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, I can say this. When I was learning how to walk again. I don't know how I would've made it through that if it hadn't been for the Marine Corps, for the mindset that they gave me.

00;03;30;21 - 00;03;52;10
Sean Quigley
there's something about that. that boot camp or OCS, whatever your experience, you know, it's going to be hard. You know, it's going to be difficult. You know, you're going to be tested. But as you get up and you run, you jump, you climb, you swim, whatever the case may be, and you see others doing it next to you.

00;03;52;12 - 00;04;06;11
Sean Quigley
There's, there's there's some sort of cohesion there that that just fires everybody up collectively. And I think that fire just continues to burn in us. And it clearly did in you to be able to recover the way you did.

00;04;06;13 - 00;04;26;25
Craig Andrews
Well. And one of the things that drove me was, you know, whether it was my eyes or people around me, they knew that was a marine. And when I thought about how I was going to recover, I was going to recover the way a marine recover. So I wasn't going to recover like a normal person. Yeah.

00;04;26;28 - 00;04;35;06
Sean Quigley
Yeah. Bring it on. Make it harder. But thank you, sir. May I have another? Oh. All right.

00;04;35;08 - 00;04;37;06
Craig Andrews
yeah. Yeah. So, anyway.

00;04;37;06 - 00;04;41;23
Sean Quigley
We should you you should have got a couple of. The pain is weakness leaving the body t shirts?

00;04;42;01 - 00;05;04;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah. yeah. I had, I, you know, I do Camp Gladiator, and I can't tell you the number of mornings I was at Camp Gladiator standing over at the side puking and, But, you know. Hey. So, anyway, we're, obviously we're going to reminisce about Marine Corps, where we spend the whole show talking about this. So for those listening, I promise we're going to get to leadership in business.

00;05;04;16 - 00;05;13;00
Craig Andrews
But before we go there. So tell us, what did you do in the Marine Corps and give us kind of a quick flyover of, what you did?

00;05;13;02 - 00;05;29;09
Sean Quigley
Yeah. Okay. All right. Fantastic. I actually, like you said I went to the Naval Academy. I thought I was going to be a Navy pilot. That's what I wanted to do. I saw Top Gun when I was a junior in high school. You know, you can't help but be be swayed by such things. And, I did my.

00;05;29;09 - 00;05;50;23
Sean Quigley
I actually had to go to to prep school because I wasn't academically qualified. So I enlisted in the Navy. I went to prep school a fabulous experience, made lifelong friends, went to the Naval Academy, finished the year, went to my first cruise. I was on the battleship Missouri, and I had a bit of an experience with one of the Navy ODS one night on watch, and I came down to breakfast in the wardroom.

00;05;50;25 - 00;06;10;07
Sean Quigley
beautiful. You know, by 63, the USS Missouri beautiful ship had been reactivated for, you know, for for Desert Storm. And, I'm eating breakfast in there. I just had this bad experience. But there's two marine officers on board because there's a platoon of Marines, and they're sitting down there with their sleeves rolled up, and they're high and tight, and nobody's talking to.

00;06;10;10 - 00;06;32;12
Sean Quigley
And I thought, that's what I want. I want some of that. and I didn't talk to them either. Yeah. But from then on I decided that's what I'm going to do. So, I finished, I graduated middle of my class, went to flight school. was had helicopters chosen for me. But they say that the aircraft you fly tends to match your personality.

00;06;32;12 - 00;06;50;17
Sean Quigley
Absolutely played out for me. I did five years in my first squadron, deployed to the met a couple of times. I was the air officer at second Reconnaissance Battalion, second Force Recon Company. Got to do a bunch of cool things, meet a bunch of fabulous Marines, get a real taste of the I say, the real Marine Corps.

00;06;50;19 - 00;07;15;21
Sean Quigley
I spent some time as a, ROTC instructor. I went overseas to Japan, took my family. I was on a staff over there. I did the, the the flying for HMX one and direct support to the president, which was a fabulous experience. I got to go to some very unique places. played a lot of free golf, went to a lot of cool sporting events, and also stretched my box quite a bit.

00;07;15;24 - 00;07;30;02
Sean Quigley
and then I finished it training in education, commanding Quantico in 2015. I retired out of there. I was, supervising all training for pre-deployment units. and then I joined the very fortunate to join Deloitte as I retired.

00;07;30;04 - 00;07;55;13
Craig Andrews
Wow. Now, one thing I don't think most people realize, you know, people say, hey, the, you know, Uncle Sam's invested heavily in you and it's going to protect you. One of the things I've heard is, especially with age 46, is if you fly more than 1000 hours in age 46, you're going to have back problems. Is that true?

00;07;55;16 - 00;08;21;06
Sean Quigley
I got an MRI the year before I retired on my back, and, the doc throws the the, you know, the film up there, and I'm looking at it and you can see and I'd never seen a spine before, but you can see the, the vertebrae and then the discs and the vertebrae in the discs. Well, three of my discs were just flat and black.

00;08;21;08 - 00;08;43;27
Sean Quigley
Oh. And he said, yeah, well, and I said, what does all that mean? And he said, you got the back of a 40 year old helicopter pilot. Yeah, I bet it probably hurts a little bit. I said, what can I do? And he said, buy an inversion table. That was a prescription. Buy an inversion table.

00;08;44;00 - 00;09;20;16
Sean Quigley
so yeah, there that's what they are back there. And not only 1000 to 2500 plus. it's a lot of sitting in a metal bucket just going like this for three hours. it's, it's it's it's something else. I'm actually pretty fortunate. I've made fitness and since physical fitness and taking care of myself such a priority, because I want to be able to continue to, to walk and play with my kids and now my grandkids, well beyond, you know, my 70s and hopefully into my 80s, if I'm, you know, God willing, last that long.

00;09;20;19 - 00;09;39;15
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, I hate it that that your career in the Marine Corps made such a mess of your back, and I. I wish they would do something. Oh, it's one of those problems I wish they would fix. I just don't think Maine people realize is the price our pilots make in serving.

00;09;39;17 - 00;10;02;10
Sean Quigley
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I've got a couple of friends who ejected from Harriers. I, they, they say the, the, the stress on the spine in that ejection protocol is, you know, ten, 12 GS, something like that. It's unbelievable. I I'd, I'd be curious to see what an X-ray their spine looks like.

00;10;02;12 - 00;10;18;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah. No kidding. Wow. So anyway, you get out of the Marine Corps and you went to Deloitte, doing crisis management and resilience. What's that mean? Yeah. What? That look like? It was.

00;10;18;19 - 00;10;53;15
Sean Quigley
It was a continuation of what? In the DoD we call coop of continuity of operations. Basically, when when something happens to your organization, when some sort of disruption is so significant that you are unable to accomplish your mission, how do you how do you deal with it and how do you recover from. So what we would help do is identify those those things, those possible triggers that could cause some sort of mission degradation to the point where you can't accomplish your mission.

00;10;53;18 - 00;11;20;26
Sean Quigley
We'd help them with our clients with some sort of framework, some sort of process, some sort of exercise tools, if you will, that they can train on in practice so that when that disruption occurs, they can execute this process and they can get back to being mission capable, maybe not full up, maybe not functioning at 110% like they'd like to be, but they can get the systems back on track so they can accomplish the mission.

00;11;21;02 - 00;11;33;02
Sean Quigley
It's very simple. I'd like to say it's very similar to being a helicopter pilot. You're always looking for the bad thing to happen, and you're always building a plan of what you're going to do when it happens and where you're going to land.

00;11;33;04 - 00;11;42;17
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. And that, you know, that same mindset again, that's a mindset that I got out of the Marine Corps. you know, I remember.

00;11;42;22 - 00;11;43;11
Sean Quigley
We're good at it.

00;11;43;17 - 00;12;07;26
Craig Andrews
Yeah, exactly. I mean, when I left sides, I spent five months in the Philippines where you had to literally grow eyes in the back of your heads or you were going to be in trouble fast. And I go up to Japan and I'm walking back to base one night and the scroll gets off a bike and starts walking with me, and it's dark and and I'm like, what is she doing?

00;12;07;29 - 00;12;33;19
Craig Andrews
What's her goal? And I'm just start running. I start running scenario planning in my head of what she want, what she going to do and how will I respond. And I'm just sitting there, I'm looking, assessing everything around me, trying to figure out what my options are, what my avenues of escape. You know what? Because, you know, for those who realize it, you know, Marine Corps kind of frowns on going to foreign countries and beating up on the locals, even if it's warranted.

00;12;33;25 - 00;12;49;07
Craig Andrews
You know, they they had sort of a dim view towards that. And so you don't want to escalate the situation. You want to get, you know, get out of the situation. And as I finally passed the road where I would have to turn right to go to the main gate at the base, I say, well, this is my turn.

00;12;49;10 - 00;13;09;15
Craig Andrews
And she says, okay, well thank you. Have a good night. And I later realized she was just practicing her English, but I'd just spent five months in a place where no, they weren't practicing their English. They were trying to figure out how to relieve you of your money or your health or something else.

00;13;09;18 - 00;13;32;00
Sean Quigley
Yeah. but that's it. That's a sense of awareness. We call it situational awareness in aviation, situational awareness is key. You got to know where you are, what you're doing, what may happen next, what's happening around you to protect yourself and those for whom you are responsible. And that's what you were doing. You're just conditioned.

00;13;32;03 - 00;13;46;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So you were doing that for companies. Do you find that companies for you and me. This is natural. We just think this way. Do you find that companies struggle with this sort of contingency planning?

00;13;46;22 - 00;14;20;04
Sean Quigley
Yeah, because it's number one. It's unpleasant. Number two. it's like I used to equate it to buying an insurance policy by buying life insurance, right? You you buy that life insurance policy, particularly if it's permanent. Whole life. Right. It's really expensive. You got to pay for it forever. You're not even going to be around to take advantage of it, but it sure will take care of those you leave behind.

00;14;20;06 - 00;14;51;00
Sean Quigley
and you have to make an investment. You just have to acknowledge that this is the thing to do, to take care of those who are going to be here when I'm not. And I think business owners, in a way, see that sort of contingency planning the same way they're so focused on making their widgets and tightening up the margins around making those widgets that to invest in something like contingency planning for when things could go wrong, they feel like it pulls them away from their main thing.

00;14;51;02 - 00;15;19;17
Sean Quigley
It costs them money. It takes time and, and and this is why we would be we would be trigger agnostic and we'd say that, hey, what we're most concerned about is the effects of that disruption. So we wouldn't plan for or we wouldn't help them plan for a, a bomb or a cyber attack or specific thing, but rather something that affects their technology, their operations, or their people.

00;15;19;19 - 00;15;40;10
Sean Quigley
So they only really need like three templates to be able to apply it to that thing. And that would make it easier for them to swallow and not feel like it was so daunting, and pull them away from making their widgets, because anything that's not, that's not directly focused on making a widget sounds like extra to them.

00;15;40;12 - 00;15;49;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. No, I get that. So high level. What are those three templates? What what do those templates look like?

00;15;49;21 - 00;16;09;28
Sean Quigley
well, they're all in a way, they're all based on a what do I what do I know? What do I need to know? Are the right people in the room? And, what, who else do I basically have to attract or, you know, keep informed stakeholders.

00;16;10;01 - 00;16;11;03
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Right.

00;16;11;05 - 00;16;35;14
Sean Quigley
So it's kind of like what you were taught the general orders of the century and stand and watch. You're the duty officer. You're the duty NCO. What do I know? And who do I need to tell in other words, how do I build situational awareness? this disruption occurs. you're a small manufacturing firm, and you have, you have a key machine breakdown.

00;16;35;17 - 00;16;55;01
Sean Quigley
Okay. Immediately. I'm the operator or I'm the manager. The operator comes and tells me, I ask him what happened. how long do we think it's going to be gone? Or how long do we think it's going to be down? I ask him the basic, you know, five W's, if you will. Now, I have to take that information.

00;16;55;01 - 00;17;19;25
Sean Quigley
I have to pass that on to up the chain, if you will. And I have to anticipate what their questions are going to be. And theoretically, I'm probably need to anticipate what his boss, you know, what the president's questions are going to be so that I'm providing as much information to build their security awareness so they can make a decision to get us back to being mission capable.

00;17;19;28 - 00;17;56;03
Sean Quigley
What whatever those decisions may be. and so when we would do this with particularly government agencies, the executives in the room around the table, we'd convene a crisis action team, and we'd prepare a document that was, well, we'd call it the cop. The common operating picture, and we just have a couple of boxes on there that were kind of the bare minimum of what had come up through the chain so that we could all look at the same information and make a decision, look around the room.

00;17;56;03 - 00;18;15;19
Sean Quigley
Do we have who we need here? Hey, if this if this is an operations thing, is my plant manager here? If this is a technology thing, the CTO is here. Is there anybody else you need to help make the decision? CTO because most of this is going to fall on you today. Yes. I need you know, my my IT architecture guy and my cyber guy.

00;18;15;20 - 00;18;37;05
Sean Quigley
Okay. You got five minutes. Go do what you need to do. We're going to be back here at 1506, that sort of thing. and it's key that you move quickly. That golden app, we literally called it the golden hour. That first hour after the disruption, a whole lot of stuff needs to happen then, and you have to be thinking about how do you keep your stakeholders informed.

00;18;37;09 - 00;19;03;27
Sean Quigley
That machine just went down. Do customers need to be informed? Do does the supply chain need to be informed? Is that going to affect the shipment? I'm supposed to take a raw material. If I can't, if I can't use any of it, all those sorts of questions all immediately come to the surface. And to have the right people there to answer those questions is really key, because otherwise you're stumbling and you're guessing.

00;19;04;00 - 00;19;24;23
Craig Andrews
So I've got two scenarios I want to throw out to you. And maybe this fits into what you're talking about. Maybe it's different. I'm really curious. the, the first situation is nobody anticipated on August 22nd, 2021, that was going to be put in a coma, maybe not coming back. And the.

00;19;24;26 - 00;19;25;13
Sean Quigley
Yeah.

00;19;25;15 - 00;19;30;08
Craig Andrews
Unfortunately, my team just kept running the business without me.

00;19;30;10 - 00;19;31;09
Sean Quigley
how about that?

00;19;31;12 - 00;19;57;13
Craig Andrews
So in terms of this, I mean, obviously I couldn't be in the room. I was taken out unexpectedly. the. I gotta admit, I'm listening to you. I don't have any of those things in place. the one thing I did was I, you know, I would I would let my team kind bob around the waterline until they figured out how to swim.

00;19;57;16 - 00;20;00;11
Craig Andrews
going into that. And so.

00;20;00;14 - 00;20;02;04
Sean Quigley
yeah.

00;20;02;07 - 00;20;07;07
Craig Andrews
So, yeah, when the water rose, they knew how to swim.

00;20;07;09 - 00;20;17;05
Sean Quigley
Yeah. Well, point their nose in the air, right? Yeah. So what? What could you have done? What could you have done prior to right.

00;20;17;07 - 00;20;38;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah, I, I guess. I mean, from one angle, I could have had some more documentation, but we were in such a groove that we knew exactly what, you know, we had a process that we practiced every single day that when I was removed, they just kept doing that same process.

00;20;38;27 - 00;21;02;25
Sean Quigley
Beautiful, beautiful. That's actually something we like to do in a PT, I mean, that that we used to do in a we'd take the head decision maker and we'd get an hour or two into the exercise, and then we didn't. We'd call it a meal, we'd inject a meal and we'd say, okay, you're the you're the director who's convened the crisis action team.

00;21;03;01 - 00;21;24;04
Sean Quigley
We just take you out. all right, guys, Craig is no longer functioning. He he he had a heart attack or a stroke or a car accident or something. He's not here. What are you guys going to do? And if you don't have a succession plan, all of a sudden you realize, oh, goodness, we need a succession plan.

00;21;24;06 - 00;21;44;08
Sean Quigley
if you don't have written SOPs of a functioning process already, that's got to be something more than just tribal law, because if you pull enough of the right people out, all of a sudden that tribal law doesn't stand up anymore, right? Yeah. You you need to. And it does it need to be written in a book, in a binder.

00;21;44;08 - 00;22;05;03
Sean Quigley
Well, maybe not, but it needs to exist somewhere other than up here, because every one of those positions, your C-suite, your key managers and advisors, everybody needs to have somebody who can step into their role. And I'd even offer that. You probably need somebody who can be a third in step in.

00;22;05;05 - 00;22;06;11
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;22;06;13 - 00;22;32;02
Sean Quigley
So you got a primary a secondary and tertiary probably sounds kind of familiar from your Marine Corps experience. Now, everybody doesn't have to have exactly the same skills or be the same level of authority or responsibility. But in that crisis action situation, that that disruption, that's preventing your company from functioning and making your widgets, then all bets are kind of off.

00;22;32;04 - 00;22;50;18
Sean Quigley
And we got to do what we can to keep this thing afloat. And so if that means that Shawn's going to step up to seat to come and join the table, because I happen to be the duty expert on this disruption, even though Craig's not here, then the rest of the group has to accept me. I'm making the subject matter input on this thing to help everyone else make their decision.

00;22;50;22 - 00;23;08;16
Sean Quigley
And you, as the CEO, you need to have a designated number two. Absolutely. Who can act in your absence because everybody then is immediately going to turn to them. XO Operations Officer You know, the CEO gets shot. Who's stepping up? The XO.

00;23;08;19 - 00;23;13;11
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And and for the uninitiated, XO is executive officer. The,

00;23;13;15 - 00;23;18;18
Sean Quigley
Thank you. Yeah. The number two. Then the number two, we would call it the evolution of command.

00;23;18;20 - 00;23;47;22
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. So here's the other situation. And apparently this has changed to the apple. But back during the there of Steve Jobs and a little bit context, Apple was a fledgling company until they invented the iPod. The iPod was the thing that really made Apple a very, very profitable company. And one of the engineers from the iPod team found out that iPods were leaving the factory without being fully charged.

00;23;47;24 - 00;24;11;07
Craig Andrews
He called China. He shut down the production line, an engineer shut down the production line, said, we need to stop and start charging these iPods. The guy kept his job. It was it was something in the culture. It was something in the culture where he knew he could not. Only he could do that, but he should do that.

00;24;11;09 - 00;24;27;14
Craig Andrews
And he was able to make an executive level decision. I mean, I don't know. That's kind of scares me. I think I'd be calling, you know, Tim Cook was the CEO at the time. I think I'd be con at least calling Tim and saying, hey, Tim, you may want to fire me, but I think we should shut down the production line to fix this.

00;24;27;16 - 00;24;30;24
Craig Andrews
and that's fascinating. And I mentioned, you know, where.

00;24;30;24 - 00;24;31;24
Sean Quigley
I think that comes from.

00;24;32;01 - 00;24;33;24
Craig Andrews
What.

00;24;33;26 - 00;25;00;23
Sean Quigley
In the Marine Corps, we'd call it commander's intent. Yeah. In the private sector, we refer to it as executives intent. Right. The commander, the boss. He can't give everybody specific instructions for everything, but he can issue his guidance. He can issue his and share this over and over. And it may just sound like his vision and his values and reiterating the purpose of the organization.

00;25;00;26 - 00;25;26;16
Sean Quigley
But that engineer who shut that thing down, anybody, any of your audience who knows anything about Steve Jobs, knows that everything has to look and feel perfect for the user, right? And that example you just use? Absolutely. I can see Steve saying, oh, yeah, shut that thing down. Charge all those before they go out the door. I want everybody who opens the box to be able to plug it in and use it immediately.

00;25;26;16 - 00;25;41;10
Sean Quigley
That's absolutely the right call. So by issuing that executive intent, that commander's intent, everybody knows the kind of left and right lateral limits in which they can operate to make those decisions in the absence of specific instruction.

00;25;41;12 - 00;25;51;05
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. Now and that's powerful. And it's powerful to have organizations where people have that boldness to act on that intent.

00;25;51;08 - 00;26;16;14
Sean Quigley
Oh yeah. Right. They have to feel safe and empowered. So safe that what they're doing does comply with the command, with the with the president or the executive's intent and safe that they know that by complying and taking action, they're not risking essentially, their, their own skin in a way, which is the kind of the wrong phrase to use.

00;26;16;16 - 00;26;24;21
Sean Quigley
But they know that, the, the, the repercussion aren't necessarily, cataclysmic.

00;26;24;23 - 00;26;41;26
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So for those listening this, I just threw on two big curveballs that he. Yeah, he took them. He swung at them, he saw them come in. He's like, oh, crap. What's that? I'm going to swing at? And you did it amazingly.

00;26;41;28 - 00;26;43;02
Sean Quigley
But thank you.

00;26;43;04 - 00;27;11;00
Craig Andrews
I think that's a lot of what we're talking about. but, in the few minutes that we have left, I don't feel like we'll be able to do justice to this, but there were two things that you mentioned. One is that you turn managers into leaders, and the second is that there's a mismatch. there's a misunderstanding, a generational misunderstanding that's holding leaders back from getting things out of the millennials that they're looking for.

00;27;11;00 - 00;27;12;00
Craig Andrews
And I want to make sure we cover.

00;27;12;01 - 00;27;44;19
Sean Quigley
Before we wrap up. Okay. All right. Yeah. This is I actually, I wrote a paper on what I call trends, in this, this generation's thing. and I've delivered a webinar multiple times on this. I believe that generationally in the workforce, Gen X and boomers have kept this mentality of, we're in it. We're in it for the long haul, no matter what.

00;27;44;21 - 00;28;07;29
Sean Quigley
For the pension, the gold watch, salary security is more important than anything else. We became the helicopter parents of the millennial generation that it's perfectly okay to fail and lose, and you still get a good job whether you hit a home run or you strike out. Good job Johnny. Oh, and then even if you're on the last place team, you still get a trophy.

00;28;08;01 - 00;28;37;14
Sean Quigley
So what we've done is we've we've continued to reward failure with the same sort of recognition that we would have received had we won. And I think that has destroyed a sense of competition. and therefore what millennials and I know I'm being very broad and categorically perhaps unfair in some cases, but their work style preferences are different.

00;28;37;15 - 00;29;05;28
Sean Quigley
They're much more interested in flexibility, feedback, collaboration and the social values of the organization than us old fogies or, so they they're, they don't necessarily want to have to come to the office or come to the workspace. they, they want to be told that they're doing a good job. And even if they aren't, most of them aren't mature enough to accept that negative feedback.

00;29;06;01 - 00;29;31;04
Sean Quigley
Okay, to just tell me I just gotta hear it, I gotta know, I gotta have that feedback, collaborating as a team because they spend a lot of time on organized teams. They don't know how to play pickup basketball. They only know how to get schlepped from gymnastics to dance to, you know, to soccer practice to whatever, they're very comfortable with that, that structure.

00;29;31;04 - 00;29;57;07
Sean Quigley
And so ad hoc things are difficult for them. And I think Gen-X managers and, and boomer managers are trying to force our structure on them. and I think we need to meet halfway a little better. what's that? Look, that's a difficult thing to do. I think it starts with listening. I think it starts with listening.

00;29;57;07 - 00;30;19;02
Sean Quigley
And you hear people use the phrase active listening all the time. Yeah. What does that really mean? I think it means, look, man, pay full attention. Put this thing down. All right? Turn the TV off. Shut the door. Don't invite them to your office. Go. Go meet your young employee at a coffee shop or at the library.

00;30;19;02 - 00;30;19;17
Craig Andrews
Or in the.

00;30;19;17 - 00;30;51;10
Sean Quigley
Park or. Or someplace else. That, if this is for a feedback situation, because you bring them to your office and there's this aura of you're going to get it. And so if you make them the total and complete object of your attention by putting your phone down, closing the laptop, shutting off the TV, all that sort of stuff, use their first name, listen to understand rather than listening to respond.

00;30;51;15 - 00;31;14;22
Sean Quigley
Now all of a sudden you become a real person to them. And that's really important to some of our younger generation. I think it's Stephen Covey's rule number six. an individual, and I'll butcher this. But an individual's first name to them is the sweetest sound in the world, right? Think about it. I mean, when the sergeant major or the CEO ever called you Craig.

00;31;14;22 - 00;31;25;11
Sean Quigley
I mean, can you imagine such a thing? Probably not. And that probably wouldn't have been a good thing. But if they had. Oh, how about that? That's amazing. They know who I am.

00;31;25;14 - 00;31;36;19
Craig Andrews
You know, that's such a great tip broadly. You know, if you think about the number of emails that you fire off that don't say, you know, hi, Sean, or you know, something like that.

00;31;36;22 - 00;31;38;03
Sean Quigley
it's.

00;31;38;05 - 00;31;57;12
Craig Andrews
let me just throw this out because you hit on something really valuable. If you decide today, if you're listening and you decide today, I'm never sending another email that somewhere doesn't mention the name of the person I'm speaking out to. You put that in place. You're going to start seeing a difference because people love to hear their name.

00;31;57;14 - 00;32;04;24
Sean Quigley
Yeah, yeah. They they tune in in a way that they don't otherwise.

00;32;04;26 - 00;32;06;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;32;06;21 - 00;32;14;08
Sean Quigley
It's so special. That's why people like text messages more than email. because they know what's coming to them.

00;32;14;10 - 00;32;14;23
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;32;14;25 - 00;32;16;17
Sean Quigley
Right.

00;32;16;20 - 00;32;42;11
Craig Andrews
Well, let me ask you this because I hear what you're saying. And here's a challenge that I run into now, in any organization, you need a diversity of people. You need people that are great at turning the crank. You need to. They're great. But some of the most valuable people to me are people that I can throw a unstructured problem at, that people who can operate outside of, well defined boundaries.

00;32;42;14 - 00;33;07;08
Craig Andrews
You know, where of like that, that executive intent that you were talking about. They know the results I'm looking for. I don't care how they get it. As long as as long as it's ethical and integrity is preserved, of course. But, I mean, I have some I it works for me named, Elena. And she came up to me one day and she was talking and I was listening, and I said, Elaine, let me see if I have this right.

00;33;07;10 - 00;33;19;20
Craig Andrews
You're saying there was a problem, you identified the problem, you fix the problem and you're just updating it. She's like, yeah. I was like, oh my goodness, bless you.

00;33;19;22 - 00;33;30;01
Sean Quigley
Exactly what should happen, right? I mean, you're the boss, you're the CEO. You you empower her, you give her the authority to do that. And she does it.

00;33;30;04 - 00;33;49;10
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So how do we how do we take these people that have been raised by helicopter, parents that don't do that naturally? Is is there a pathway to get them operating that way where they can operate with less definitions, less, fewer boundaries?

00;33;49;13 - 00;34;38;00
Sean Quigley
Oh, I think so, because I think they have I think they have the inherent initiative, but it's been squashed over time. And they they feel like they have to slide into these, these structured frameworks. I think if you open it up and you give less specific orders and instructions and, and encourage your, your, your VP's and your C-suite and your managers to do the same thing, not necessarily to be vague, but to be less prescriptive, to encourage them to solve the problem, to empower them to bring a better idea than I had.

00;34;38;02 - 00;34;58;24
Sean Quigley
What I used to like to do with my project team. Two things. Number one, if I was really hell bent on the way I wanted it to happen, I might tell them what I want and then ask for, okay, now shoot holes in my plan. What's wrong with it? What can we do better? What have I missed? Where are we going to go wrong?

00;34;58;24 - 00;35;24;20
Sean Quigley
So we're doing our own contingency planning. The other thing I'd like to do is just say, hey, by next week, we need a thing that X, right. The result here's the result of what it needs to look like. Help me figure out how we get there. And then what we're doing is we're brainstorming and everybody's participating. And when Craig has a really good idea, I call him out on that.

00;35;24;26 - 00;35;46;09
Sean Quigley
And I thank him for contributing that. Who's who, who can help Craig make that thing happen by tomorrow so we can work it into the plan to get the product ready for next week. And you start building a team by encouraging and asking for that input. And then everybody who's who's participating feels like now they really are part of the team.

00;35;46;11 - 00;36;18;07
Sean Quigley
Yeah, they're more than just they're more than just playing their own part. Yeah. They're participating in a group and contributing to the big win. And here's the thing. If we pull this off by next week, there's you know, there's potential spot bonus or you know, there's there's some sort of incentive whatever that that may be an inappropriate because every I mean just like a dog everybody likes a treat for doing the right thing.

00;36;18;09 - 00;36;29;20
Sean Quigley
Yeah. and it doesn't have to be big. It can be as simple as public recognition. Yeah. That's why. That's why everybody loves badges.

00;36;29;22 - 00;36;30;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;36;30;28 - 00;36;34;10
Sean Quigley
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

00;36;34;13 - 00;36;42;06
Craig Andrews
I it's I feel bad because I feel like we should. There's so much more that we need to dig into here. but I'm fortunate.

00;36;42;06 - 00;36;47;15
Sean Quigley
We didn't even talk about some of the things I thought we were going through. That's okay. That's fine though. I love this.

00;36;47;17 - 00;37;14;20
Craig Andrews
But the, You know, it's very clear the there are businesses that could be radically transformed. And, and one of the things you do is you actually speak to businesses. And so anybody that wants to hear you come talk, or wants to connect with you somehow to talk about, you know, their business being resilient, them making managers in the leaders, them crossing this generational gap.

00;37;14;20 - 00;37;16;03
Craig Andrews
How do they reach you?

00;37;16;05 - 00;37;41;23
Sean Quigley
Yeah. easiest thing is via email. Sean. Asean at Nighthawk consulting.com. Nighthawk starts with a K and ends with K, and I've got, website. Same thing. Dot Nighthawk consulting.com. there's a schedule, a consultation button on there with me. you can find me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn. as well.

00;37;41;25 - 00;37;48;22
Sean Quigley
my name is spelled just like that. And if you look for somebody who's a connection to Craig Andrews, you'll probably find the right guy.

00;37;48;25 - 00;37;53;28
Craig Andrews
Sean, this has been awesome. Thanks for being on Layers and Legacies. Semper fi.

00;37;54;00 - 00;37;59;05
Sean Quigley
Hurrah! Take care. So far.

00;37;59;05 - 00;38;28;03
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;38;28;05 - 00;38;51;15
Craig Andrews
Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend, or posted on the socials. If you know someone who would be a great guest, tag them on social media and let them know about the show, including the hashtag leaders and legacies. I love seeing your posts and suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content to make sure you don't miss anything.

00;38;51;17 - 00;41;02;01
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe your thumbs up! Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Alize for me.com. or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.