In this paradoxically heart-felt AND tactical episode, John D. Erickson, Owner and Co-Founder of Eden Business Concepts, LLC , shares how he helps founders and leaders navigate chaos and crisis starting first with themselves.
You will discover:
– How to figure out how your heart works
– How to lower the noise in chaos
– The first question you need to ask in any crisis
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach and I’m here with yet another high demand coach and that is John Erickson. John Erickson’s career began as an engineer with the US Navy in naval aircraft development, and in the US State Department traveling with the Secretary of State and developing security protocols for US embassies around the world. He earned a doctorate in practical theology in Trinity International University, and is the author of a book three paths out of paradise, which the main idea is you’ll either flounder or flourish in every relationship depending on how well you own, you know, your own heart. He’s now the owner and co founder of Eden business concepts, a consulting company that focuses on innovating workplaces to build companies that are both smart and healthy. Well, John, we were talking before we kicked off here, I think we met something around two years ago, we were speaking at the same event. And since then, we’ve kind of kept in touch. But I’m so excited to have you on the show. And before we kind of jump into some of the really cool work that you do, I’d actually like to pause and rewind a little bit. Here’s some of the story. What were you doing before becoming a coach? And how did that ultimately lead you to making the leap?
John D. Erickson
My dad told me when I was in high school that since I probably wasn’t going to get into medical school, which is what I wanted to do, I should go get a degree where I could actually get a job. He was an engineer. And so he said, I could go to either Purdue or IU and he hoped it was produced. So I went to Purdue and got an electrical engineering degree. Instead of going to medical school, I’ve never done anything I plan to do. And so that was that was the beginning of the process. I knew I didn’t really want to I had an epiphany when I was co opting for McDonnell Douglas, standing next to a 50 something year old engineer looking at an oscilloscope. And I looked over at him and I said, Man, I said in my head, when I am your age, I do not want to be standing in front of a oscilloscope. So I didn’t, I went to work for the Navy, traveled around the United States in the world looking at naval aircraft, and then the United in the State Department was sucking engineers out of every place they could find because they were blowing up embassies. And so anybody that had a security clearance and engineering degree, they were like, you’re just come work for us. So I started and they immediately stuck me on the airplane, with the Secretary of State and said, You’re gonna go figure out how he can operate in a foreign environment and read classified information in a secure way. So we figured it out. Then we moved. Then they sent us to Kenya and I traveled all over Africa. And then they sent us to Israel. And we lived there for several years and traveled around the Middle East. And all of that was just good training for how to be independent had to figure out how to solve problems on the fly in foreign environments, learned a lot about other cultures. And that was my world. Before I then went to seminary, it was a totally the Dutch took a right turn and said, Let’s do something else.
Scott Ritzheimer
So walk me through this. So you go from Navy to Secretary of State all over the world. And then you come to seminary, how does seminary you know, connect the dots from seminary to today for us?
John D. Erickson
Well, the bridge there was I was living in Israel, and I was taking some courses and just enjoying the history and geography of Israel. And I thought this would be a cool thing to study. So I thought, well, if I do a PhD in Old Testament or PhD in in kind of the history of Israel, that gives me a leg up into some areas I was interested in. So I thought that would be a good path forward. Again, never didn’t turn out the way I planned it to be I got sucked into the practical theology department and helped to build out that department in the seminary and actually got my doctorate in that world and communications and so taught there for about 15 years. And then they another thing I didn’t plan to do was I got asked to come down to the city of Chicago and take over a church. This is part of where the conflict piece comes at church where there had been a real mess happening. And as to take that church over in the city of Chicago and kind of redevelop their their ministry down there. And so that whole thing of working in the city of Chicago with the gangs and the drugs and the homeless people and multiple different cultures. Plus, you know, teaching at the doctoral level at the seminary, I was I was kind of learning once again, this idea that what really matters here is we’ve got to get leadership development moving. And so I really fell in love with the, the students and the people I was working with, especially the emerging leaders, the guys in their 20s and 30s. Because if you like I always say if you can get two parts of your life, right, the rest of your life is gonna go well. One is kindergarten and one is your 20s. I can’t help you with kindergarten because if you didn’t learn how to share and stand in line, that’s up to you, but I can’t help you with your 20s. And there’s been a lot of literature developed around the idea of that the 20s to the early 30s is the most critical part of our lives for learning how to be the leader that we’re going to be and so Even to this day, I still rely on things that I learned or didn’t learn when I was in my 20s. And so that’s the passion. That’s the bridge was, I saw the need for developing emerging leaders. And I latched on to that. And that became the passion of everything else I did from that time.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, well, so fast forward, then you’re now coaching, consulting with business leaders, and others. So tell me, what’s some of the most important work that you’re doing right now, for your clients?
John D. Erickson
The most important thing I’m doing is is twofold. One is I help leaders in a pretty quickly figure out how their heart works. Because as I say, in the book, one of the books I wrote, you will either founder flounder or flourish in all your relationships, even your leadership, depending on how well you know your own heart. Look at all of the business complications and failures we’ve seen over the last several decades, all of them can be traced to what’s going on inside the leader. Very few of them were because they made a dumb mistake with their finances, or they made the wrong decision about a risk they were taking almost always was because something was going on in here. And so I spend a lot of time helping leaders figure out how their heart works, what motivates them, why they make decisions the way they do, so that when they’re hit with something they don’t expect, or they’re hit with a crisis, or a conflict that they didn’t know was coming, they immediately just kind of knee jerk, make the right decision. So that’s number one. And then number two, the other big thing that I do is I help lower the noise of chaos. And when we’re in chaos, whether it’s emotional chaos, whether the world around us is going in a way we can’t control. That noise keeps us from hearing the right voices, and making the right decisions. And I am very good at helping leaders and their companies and their organizations figure out how to lower that noise. And once we can lower that noise, we can move forward.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I want to tackle both of these because there’s the really big E and you bring up a fascinating point. And that is when you look at most of even the content on a show like this. The vast majority of it is how do you grow your organization, the strategy, the tactics, the leadership, the fill in the blank, but these major, major issues that we see time and time and time again, are and they don’t have to do with much of any of that, right? It happens, you know, here. So how do you understand how your heart works?
John D. Erickson
Well, I’ve developed in with my business partner and close friend does Humphrey, who’s also a convening chair with me, he, he and I, over the course of the time, we started seminary together in 1991. And we began to see that as we looked at the way we’re doing a lot, we were doing a lot of coaching and a lot of mentoring in that process. And he was in the mental health world. So he was doing a lot of counseling. And what we’re beginning to see was a pattern that was developing about why people reacted to pain, the way they do, people react to pain or to to crisis or chaos in their lives. And usually one of three ways one of three things is motivating either need for respect, their need for value, or their need to be to be attached for approval. So respect, value and approval are three of the are the three main motivations or weak icon root motivations for everyone. And everyone works out of one of those three, for example, I work out of the one of respect and so I have a quote unquote entitlement to respect and if I, if I get a whiff, that in a conversation or in a situation, the person or people around me aren’t respecting me, I’m gonna have a negative reaction to that. I have a big huge button on my chest. It’s a big red button, and it’s a failure button. I hate failure more than I hate brussel sprouts. And so when I am in a situation where I don’t have clarity, or when I don’t have some sense that I can be successful, or that I’m right about what I think is going on, that failure button is getting pushed. And I’m going to respond in some very negative ways. Now there’s an opposite to that, which is if I choose to drop my entitlement to respect Am I really strong powerful need for clarity and to be successful? Then I can see forward more clearly and move all the gifts I have an ability I have to what we call wisdom, the antithesis of the demand for respect is the is the providing of wisdom in question. So that’s one of those three value and approval work the same in different with different language and there’s a chart on my website that pulls all this out and explains it but that too Rule, understanding the root motivations of a heart is where I always begin understanding where leaders that.
Scott Ritzheimer
Oh, that’s fantastic. There’s so much in there. Is this something that you overcome? Or is this something that’s just kind of a constant companion that you have to learn to walk with?
John D. Erickson
What’s interesting about root motivations is that they’re different from your, your psychological profile, you can take any number of assessments and there are dozens of them out there that will give you some idea of what your personality is. And there’s five main factors that those all function, and we know that what they are. But this root motivation is actually underneath that, it’s more part of is what how you’re wired. And it bubbles up through your personality. So someone who is a respect based person like I am, can be a type D, for example, on, you know, on the disk, which I’m a high D. But there can also be pride based people who are high seas, the price a pride base, because pride is kind of the root of that respect base, the respect based person can be a high C or a high, you know, I, so, so it doesn’t really depend on your personality, so much. So that’s one thing that’s different about it. The other thing that’s different about the route motivations is that they pop up most primarily in situations where we are feeling either attacked, or in pain, or in chaos, or in crisis of some way, so that when something happens to us, that kind of comes out of that backside of our fight or flight part of our brain. This is where our root motivation kicks in, and says, This is how I’m going to respond to that input.
Scott Ritzheimer
Got it. Got it. And yeah, I was gonna go down another bunny trail, but I’m not going to. So let’s, let’s, let’s go there, then. So we’re in chaos and conflict. And I think one of the things that you were, you mentioned almost in passing was the idea of working ahead of the chaos and crisis so that when it hits when you are blindsided, like you fall back to a position you’re proud of. And so this is something that’s come up in a number of my conversations. Recently, it’s this idea of practice, right? In leadership and in a work environment. And it’s a lot easier to understand on a football field than it is, you know, in the the C suite. So tell us a little bit like what do you do? when’s the right time to work on these things? And, and what do you do to prepare yourself for chaos and crisis when it’s not there?
John D. Erickson
The metaphor that I use with a lot of leaders in their companies is three dumpsters. And if you look at three, you have three dumpsters, you’ve heard of the dumpster fire. Well, there are some situations where you walk in and the dumpster is already on fire. And so what you have to do his walk in and put the fire out, first of all, and then make sure everybody’s okay, and find out why the fire happened. And see if we can make sure that doesn’t happen the same way again, the middle dumpster is one that’s a full, it’s a full dumpster and the leader standing in front of it with a lighter. And what we’re trying to do is get the leader not to throw the lighter into the dumpster. The first dumpster is empty, and the leader standing in front of an empty dumpster. And we’re trying to help that leader say let’s not put anything in the dumpster. All right. And so we have to first of all determine when we when I come to a leader and we come to a situation and say where at which dumpster over. The next thing we do is then we say okay, what’s the best way forward from here based on how that what that leader is wired, to get them to understand what was going on in their hearts that got them to that place? What was the entitlement that they were demanding? You know, what has gotten me into more trouble as a leader over the course of time has been my demand for clarity. Now clarity is a very, very important tool. And we need clarity to do things well and accompany Dr. Lindsay on his whole book. The advantage is about understanding and communicating clarity to create a healthy organization. We want to do that. However, when clarity becomes the thing I’m demanding, and I am pounding away on people to get clarity when they may not have it. All that’s doing is creating friction in my relationship with them. Yeah. And so if that leader is a person who’s always going around banging on people for clarity, but never actually reaching into their into their hearts and saying what’s going on with you today, or accepting the idea that maybe that person doesn’t have the information that they’re looking for. That’s going to change the way that whole operation works. So that’s one example of how we get ahead of things. How we get ahead of things is By understanding that those are the entitlements that I typically would have, and say, if I’m talking to someone who’s more of an approval based person who hates conflict and hates pain and discomfort, and wants to be approved, I got to completely change my approach to that person as a leader, if I’m going to help them both grow and provide what we need.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, it’s so good. As you’re talking, I’m going through a lot of our audience knows about the visionary operator, processor and synergist. And without kind of diving into each one of them, those different leadership styles, those personality traits to show up on top of these, one of the things that I find is that how these kind of what you’re calling, would you call them route, motivation, route motivations come out, it looks very different. And so we’re very quick to ascribe some kind of a character flaw, right? On the other style, the way that they’re showing up when you know, it’s the same thing going, I may, it may be a character flaw, we all have plenty of those. But it may also just be a miscommunication. And so how, like when you’re leading, how does this show up for teams, right? Because we’re all walking in and to an extent broken, right. But we also have to find a way of working together. So how do we take this and apply it to leading a group of individuals well?
John D. Erickson
And this is a critical question, because we don’t use the root motivations as an assessment to judge other people. But we do walk in with with it and say, I know what I’m typically probably going to get triggered within this room, if if I hate failure. That means if someone questions, a decision that I made, or if I’m presenting an idea, or even a vision for something, and I’m getting pushback for that, my initial reaction is going to be if you push back against an idea that I know is right, I’m going to feel disrespected. But I can head that off at the pass and say, That’s not what I’m entitled to. What needs to happen in this room is that everybody brings their gifts, and that push back as a sign that we’re gonna get an even better decision at the end. So if I put down my entitlement to respect and clarity and demand to be right, if I just put that on the table, and I say, for example, if you’re a value based person, a value based person is someone who normally would just, you know, suck all the affirmation, they would, out of the room, they would suck all the attention out of the room, because that’s what they want. They love to be valued in that way. I call them idolaters in some way, they love to be worshipped, you know. And if you don’t bring affirmation all the time, to someone who’s value based, they’re gonna feel like you don’t value them, like they’re worthless, like you don’t, you’re not interested in listening to them. And so if I know that, that’s your motivation. And what you really want to do is inspire the room with what you who you are, and on the ideas you have. And what I need to do is create safe space for you as someone who by affirming you affirming your ability to inspire the room and give you the space to inspire us. Yeah, you know that so so as long as I kind of have figured it out, and I go to the other side, because the other side of that, of that demand for value is inspiration. And that other side of that demand for approval is actually peace, peacemaking, I’ve got powerful tools in the room wisdom and inspiration and peacemaking. They are going to create an environment there where we can actually get something done.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. Yeah, that is so good. So I’ve got a question here that I want to ask. And it’s something I asked of all of my guests. And it’s this, what’s the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing that you wish everybody listening today knew?
John D. Erickson
It would have to be around this area we’ve been talking about because as much as we work in the area of conflict, and we work in the area of crisis and walk in, when we walk into a situation that is that’s on fire. One of the first things that I begin to assess when I’m asking questions is what’s going on in your heart that lead up to this place? Yeah, what’s going on in here? What’s your What was the thing that motivated you? What was the fear that you were acting with? What what what happened here inside because once I get to that, now, I have some ability to say and you took these other actions, which which caused the problem. And so the secret sauce for me is to go in and discern what’s going on in that on the inside of that leader why or how are they motivated? So if the as I said, you will flounder or flourish based on how well you know your own heart, and my passion is to help leaders understand their hearts.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. So another question for you here, I’m actually going to shift gears a little bit on you. And I’m going to have you take off your coach, consultant advisor hat for a moment and put on your CEO hat, kind of jump into the ring with the rest of us. And talk to us about what the next stage looks like for you in your business and what challenges you think you’ll have to overcome to get there?
John D. Erickson
So I have two basic businesses that I’m running. One is Convene, which you’re familiar with it. So it brings cohorts of business owners and business leaders together to talk about how to build themselves and in their companies well, and then I have eaten business concepts, which is a small consulting business, and that’s the one we’re focusing on in a moment. And, you know, in your schema, you know, we’ve we’ve probably are still in that early struggle space in that because we, we really do need to find the connections to get to the people, we know that there’s chaos, we know that there’s crisis, we know there’s conflict going on, in many, many businesses. And yet, when they’re in those situations, they don’t know. You’re not going to go online and Google, I’m in a crisis. Typically, that’s not where you’re going, you’re not going to go look at your LinkedIn network, you know, you’re gonna grab the person that you know, or you’re going to call a friend and say, Do you know anybody that could help us here? And we’re looking, we’re trying to figure out how to become that person you call, you know who you’re going to call? When you’re in crisis, not Ghostbusters, you’re going to call us. And that’s where we’re at in our business. Now, we love to work with people who were in predictable success who are getting it right, we probably our niche is, is more in the whitewater world, because in the whitewater world, crisis and conflict are really working against you as you’re trying to build those processes and find out the people you need. And as you bring in more people understanding how they’re going to connect and build a team, we really have a niche in helping companies figure that out.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And what I think is a love about how you’re doing it is bringing in it’s such a personal journey, a lot of it’s one of the last things I find found found founders I find founders are able to really grapple with is, this isn’t just about their organization. Whitewater is not just an organizational architectural thing. It’s profoundly personal for the founder, leader person at the top. And I would just say, especially for those who founded the business and where they’re at the beginning, there’s there’s just so much emotion involved in it, that being able to have someone who can walk alongside you and help navigate what’s going on internally and externally at the same time is profound.
John D. Erickson
Yeah, it’s absolutely true. Once again, you know, even with Patrick Lencioni, his book about and we’ve all heard this, it’s the healthy, that has to be done, right. It’s not quite as hard to become smart. But it’s it takes a lot more effort to be healthy. And healthy companies are the ones that thrive.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, sure do. All right. So there’s someone out there I know listening in there. Like they just had like the worst. Monday, Thursday morning. I’m not sure what they were going to air here. But it’s just it’s that time, right? Like they’re in chaos, they’re in crisis, or they’ve been in and out of it and haven’t handled it well and they want to do it better next time. How can they find more out about your work and get in contact with you?
John D. Erickson
The easiest way is going to go to our website, edenbusinessconcepts.com And there’s a consultants click consultant, you’re going to come right to us that comes right to me or to Dennis and we will get back to you immediately. If you are having a crisis and there are a lot of people that are in that situation and you immediately need something just happened and you need somebody to walk you through that process. One phone call will get us our our attention.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Well, John, an absolute pleasure having you on it’s great to see you again. And for those of you who are listening, you know that your time and attention means the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact John D. Erickson
John Erickson’s career began as an engineer with the US Navy in naval aircraft development, and in the US State Department, traveling with the Secretary of State, and developing security protocols for US embassies around the world. He earned a doctorate in Practical Theology in Trinity International University. He is the author of a book Three Paths out of Paradise, which its main idea is: You will either flounder or flourish in every relationship depending on how well you know your own heart. He is now the owner and co-founder of Eden Business Concepts, a consulting company that focuses in innovating workplaces to build companies that are both smart and healthy.
Want to learn more about John D. Erickson’s work at Eden Business Concepts, LLC ? Check out his website at https://edenbusinessconcepts.com/
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