The Leadership Currency Nobody Talks About | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

Matt Zaun sits down with Todd White, founder of Clearpeg, to unpack the causes of organizational chaos and how leaders can reduce stress by clarifying decision authority, strengthening leadership behaviors, and aligning on values. Todd, a self-described “recovering engineer,” shares how his background in systems thinking and global business assessments led him to focus on professional development for leaders who can “make you a million or cost you ten million.”

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun 

Todd, welcome to the Stories of Attraction podcast.

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

Thanks for having me, Matt. Looking forward to the conversation.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on today, Todd. I really appreciate your time. And I want to start with when you are at a party or a networking event and someone asks you what you do, what's your response to them?

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

That's a dangerous question. I've done so many different things. We'll get lost in the conversation in general, but typically I start with I'm a recovering engineer.

And that gets a few chuckles here and there. But I'm a recovering engineer. a engineer. My last 10, 15, 20 minutes strategy consulting.

And last couple of years in corporate, I got into the global HR and then started Clearpeg five years ago with a real focus on professional development.

When you ask what I do, I deal with the folks that are really on the front end of the client engagement, professional services, what have you.

But I deal with leaders at a specific level. They're the ones going to make you a million or cost you 10 million, and it runs all the way up to through the CEO.

Down to the folks that they assume are safe but might be at high risk so somebody reaches out and snags them away.

Yes, you mentioned recovering engineer.

 

Matt Zaun 

You know, what I know about engineers is they're very focused on processes and systems and making sure they bring all the pieces together.

So when you say strategy consulting, do you see a gap in a lot of companies where they might not have a good process or a good system?

And that could be one of the reasons for increased stress.

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

So from. Well, that nails it 100%. I've done a ton of global business assessments, but you always find a story behind this story.

Most things have a tendency to run on autopilot. There are gaps in systems and structures and particularly communications. I find one of the biggest things that hit me like a bolt of lightning and it has to do with decision authority.

Recognizing where you have decision authority or not. As a decision already been made, that's the direction we're running. I may not have decision authority, but I certainly have the ability to influence that.

People, processes, technology, organizational structure influences all of those bits and pieces. But yeah, when you talk about, I can get very detailed on the engineering side and that's very process driven.

And I love building systems and equipment and all those bits and pieces. But what you find, I've been very successful building teams.

So you mentioned decision authority.

 

Matt Zaun 

want to talk a little bit about that. And I want to make sure the picture that I have in my mind is the picture that you're referring to.

So I guess what I'm thinking is being able to delegate, right? Like giving people the, empowering them to make certain decisions.

Is that what you're talking about when you mentioned decision authority?

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

It's a piece of it. Oftentimes when you're talking to folks at the, you go into a meeting or you're dealing with people at a high level.

And oftentimes decisions have already been made. And people want to go against that. If you understand, well, do I have decision authority?

Yes or no. Okay. You have decision authority. Make a decision. People, people will forgive many leaders in the, even.

If they make a decision that's wrong, 57% of the time, they appreciate somebody that can make a decision versus not having the ability to make a decision.

And so once you, if I, if I reckon, like I have no decision authority over when you publish our podcast, I have zero decision authority over where you go on vacation, any of those types of things.

I can influence that, but when you get certain people, it's a very cathartic experience. I don't have decision authority over that.

I can advise, I can have conversations, I can bring perspective, a point of view, a strong opinion, but that's the thing.

when you get certain people to recognize, oh, I don't, it's like, you can stop me here at any moment, but I'll give you a very specific example.

One of the world's largest projects, the People's Improvement Fund in Neom in Saudi. I'm talking with one of my, one of my coaches at that point, and we're having a conversation and he says, is what?

Well, I know the client needs this, but I know they don't have money, and he starts down this path, and he's just going to give the work away.

I was like, listen, it's not your company. It's not your money to give away. I said, now, if you want to go home and work for the weekend for free, that's up to you.

But if you think the client doesn't have money, they got deep pockets. They got billions of dollars, and you know they need to work.

But that's the level of decision authority. It's like, ah, it's a business. I don't have decision authority. Give away the time, the energy, the money.

And that's where so many organizations get caught up, and they get frustrated because they're giving away work. They're not getting paid for it.

They're taking on liability and a lot of other pieces. So that's the aha moment around decision authority. And once you get somebody to recognize that, you calm them down.

You stop the chaos. You stop the fretting and those bits and pieces. It's not an easy thing to get there, and sometimes you just have to keep pushing until you get that conversation to be recognized.

Yeah, so I appreciate you mentioned the chaos is that inability to make a decision.

 

Matt Zaun 

Do you think that due to AI tools now, it can empower leaders to make better decisions? Or have you seen danger relying too heavily on AI?

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

Oh, boy, that's a huge can of worms. I both love it and hate it at the same time. What AI doesn't currently have the ability to do is to exercise judgment.

And when you're looking to the professional services side of the thing, if you're paid for some level of subject matter expertise, if you're paid for being able to think critically, and then exercise judgment on direction and making decisions around that, that's paramount.

So when you talk to when you take the AI, it kind of becomes not it's a bit of a decision partner.

But it's also giving you information that you can, you can Aggregate a whole bunch of stuff, but you have to have the ability to parse that and make sense of it, and I see too many people looking at it, you got AI taking notes, you got AI doing a whole bunch of other stuff, and then you find, well, AI is generally, nobody goes back and reach those things, when you look at the way coding is now done and other bits and pieces.

To me, have the perfect storm brewing with AI, that we're very quickly heading to the point that nobody's really in control of the conversation and having the ability to make the decisions that secure the right business outcomes.

 

Matt Zaun

Yeah, appreciate you mentioning that, and I'm also seeing pieces of this as well. I'm seeing a fraying of trust, right?

And I've mentioned this on this podcast numerous times, but I think it's worth repeating, is I'll get an email from someone, and my initial thought is, wow, this person can really communicate, and then I'll meet them, like I'll have a call with them, or I'll meet them in person, and they don't.

As well as just a process-oriented person. So I want to go back to your teenage years. And if I were to ask teenage, let's say 13-year-old Todd, what he wanted to do, what he was into, what kind of response would I have gotten in return?

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

Well, I'm a Gen Xer, so the first thing you have to recognize, the mere fact that you live to be 18 or older is a miracle in and of itself.

 

Matt Zaun 

That's awesome.

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

I think we talked earlier, I guess we'll call it the green room before we got started. But I grew up in the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia.

And I grew up in a family-owned business. My father, he started out used cars in 1966. I grew up under his desk.

That's how far back I go from dealing with people. But he started used cars, got into travel trailers and sporting goods.

I grew up in that business, always felt I would just kind of shoot. I just assumed that's what I would.

Would be doing when I grew out, right? Grew up. And then as a teenager, my last couple, three years of high school, I watched my father lose his business.

You could argue it based on his fault or not, whatever. But at that point in time, during the Carter years, et cetera, inflation was 19, 20%.

He was paying 2% prime on all of the units or floor plan that was on his lot. I remember the, I remember just as clear as day, sitting there in the middle of winter, the snow's flying.

You know, there's no, we're sitting there and I could watch this. didn't, the phone rang and it was the vice president of the bank called and says, hey, we're calling your note, Duke.

And so my father was prepared for the call. He says, listen, I got my sons here. I got some other people ready.

So I figured in the next hour or we'll have at least 10 of these units up there in your parking lot.

And the banker says, no, no, no, you can't do that. I don't have room for any of these. I don't have any, I can't do anything with them.

My dad says, all right, works for me. You can. I answered a blind ad in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They wanted six engineers.

There's backstories to all of this. I'll just hit on it. But I answered a blind ad. Then I wound up in Taiwan early January.

I was in Taiwan for six months. That's where I met my wife. She was my Chinese teacher. I don't speak Chinese, but she came back to the States to get her master's degree at UMass Amherst.

But we stayed in contact. That's how we made that connection. Ten years later, we went back and adopted my daughter.

And the world works in a lot of different mysterious ways. But that's what we got started on my engineering side.

And then I started recognizing a few other things, moved into my own business with software technology. At some point, somebody reached out to me.

Well, they reached out and said, hey, would you be interested in coming up here for an interview? And I said, sure.

I went up to Connecticut. to Connecticut. It was... was a strategy consulting, and that's the first time I walked into an organization where bodies of knowledge like SMRP, PMP, ISO, all these things are, 30 years ago, they weren't there.

Those battles were still being drawn and fought. So as an engineer, you're designing, building all this stuff yourself, but you recognize those bits and pieces, but that's what got me into strategy consulting.

Led me into a world of business engagements, business assessments. I've done more than 50 global business engagements and assessments, but you can stop me at any time, but from that part, I got into just a lot of different things.

If you look to my LinkedIn profile, you see all those bits and pieces, but I'm comfortable in a high-rise in Dallas or New York.

I'm also comfortable with my sleeves rolled up out in the Gulf of America now on a rig. So depending on where you found me or where you saw me, you'll have a different idea across.

I've worked across 20 different industry functional areas. Wow.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah. Let me pause there. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I want to touch on something because you had mentioned earlier in the conversation the five fears.

And then the story that you shared with us about your father being called from the bank and, you know, you're in the office.

I can only imagine, you know, it being thick with fear. That's pretty fear-inducing. But what you mentioned your father saying really speaks to boldness.

And earlier you talked about, you know, making decisions. And that really speaks to confidence and boldness. So I do want to talk a little bit about this confidence piece because it's very easy to say, right?

It's simple to say, you know, we need to be more confident. We need to empower our teams to be more confident.

But when you think of confidence, how can someone be more confident? How would you even train confidence? How do you how do you if you're working with a C-suite executive and you're telling them like, hey, your team, they have an.

And in them. them. They're not able to make the proper strategic decisions. They need to be more confident. What do you even recommend to start with?

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

Well, I mentioned bodies of knowledge in a process, et cetera. One of things I've done over the last five years is to really work hard in that professional development, leadership, executive coaching, sounding board process.

And the reason I talk through that, I look to behaviors. It's like people say, oh, you got a bad attitude.

I can't tell you you got a bad attitude. I can tell you don't show up to work on time.

I can tell you irritate people when you're around them. But when I look to those behaviors, that's what gives us presence.

And presence is what people think or say about you literally when you're not in the room. Presence is when somebody won't start a meeting without you.

Presence is when somebody says, we don't want you in that meeting. But I look to those under that first part.

You ask about confidence and people get into confidence or credibility. Posture Syndrome. Confidence comes from having the right behaviors that are rewarded or punished when you learn.

You've got to have sensory acuity. But to me, it's the knowledge and experience. And there's a box of things that equate to what that is.

But when you get those pieces and parts right, you have confidence and credibility. It's not a matter I walk around and fake it till I make it.

But people, if people want you, when they have confidence and credibility in you, that's why somebody will pay $75,000 to go to Necker Island and spend time with Richard Branson, or they'll pay Alex Hermosa.

There's different people. There's people that they can't give their time away. And there's others just to get five minutes of their time, you'll risk everything to get it.

But I've yet to speak to a CEO. I've yet to speak to anybody that doesn't wrestle with confidence and credibility at some level.

If they tell you they don't, they're lying. Maybe that gave you some idea. But I always go back to behaviors.

If you don't have the right behavior. You're just going to sink. People will torpedo you if you're demonstrating the wrong behaviors, and all it takes is to say the wrong thing at the right time in front of that wrong group of people, and you're done.

Flip side of that, you say the right thing at the right time to the right people, and you're in.

There's a side story. That's how I actually got into engineering school when I was at university.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, so I want to touch on this a little bit more, and I'll just share with you my experience, and I want you to, you know, maybe you have a similar experience, and maybe you can add a little bit more to this.

I mentioned to you earlier that my background was in the political world, and I work with a lot of politicians, and one of the things about politics, unfortunately, is you can get a pretty big ego.

So, you know, you work with someone, they get involved in politics, and I will mention for everyone listening that the overwhelming majority of people...

People get involved in politics for the right reasons. Something happens. There's a big aha moment. They want to get involved.

And then as they continue to get involved, whether it's lobbyists or special interest groups, they lavish them with praise and they get a much larger ego and they forget why they ran and why they're serving in the first place.

When I made the transition from politics into business, one of the things that was just mind-boggling to me was I came in contact with very, very successful individuals, high achievers, people that society would put on a pedestal, and they were very humble.

And this was wild to me that I would go in these rooms of hyper-successful people, and some of them are the most humble people.

They're thirsty and hungry for how do I learn, how do I grow. And it leads a little bit more to humility.

And I also found it fascinating that even when I was working with very successful people, all of them had some form of an inferiority complex.

For some reason, they felt inferior. And the reason I bring this up to you, Todd, is because you mentioned behaviors.

You know, someone can be very, very successful at something specific, but they lack confidence in a big, big way for something else.

So what would you say about that? Would you say that it's been your experience as well, that most people have some form of an inferiority complex?

And if so, if they're so confident in one area, why are they, why is it difficult to transfer confidence to another subject or another instance in their life?

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

Well, this one's, this is like how long is a piece of thread, right? Everybody's different. Sure.

 

Matt Zaun 

I have, I have been around.

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

Those that have a high ego, they're one person at work. They're a completely different person at home. You talked about systems and structures and decision authorities and how they work.

There's so many different things that come up that I find when people absolutely get sideways in most aspects or elements, their values are clashing, which I thought that might be where you're talking about with politics, because right now we're so polarized on everything.

But the moment you start getting sideways with somebody, typically it has to do with values, and that's an extremely important exercise that I've done with a few different ways.

But values are important. The other thing is most CEOs will, I think at a certain level, it's a matter of being humble as a child.

I think there's scriptures around that. And then when you meet the right leaders, and I don't like working with leaders, I won't work with the wrong people that don't have the values and don't have the idea to grow.

there's of that And build. You don't build by tearing things down in general, which is a whole other conversation, but I find there's some particular people I can think about, but humble as a child, and they recognize all I got is 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I can't be everything. I can't do everything. And true leadership, at some point you recognize it's not what I can do, it's what the resources are able to achieve with the environment that I create, how I build, grow, and develop those resources and lead them to a particular direction, which comes back around that chaos factor.

But the best CEOs that I know of, and organizations I can think of, I mean, somebody told me about Shell one time, you know, large oil and gas, which I spent a lot of time in, but when something got cocked up or sideways with Shell, it wasn't, we're going to go after that vendor, or we're going to do ABC, XYZ.

No, how did we mess that up? What did we do to make that happen? And I know that with one particular CEO, I work

Because I've worked a lot of different corporate side. And it gets to, you know, most organizations, when something happens, they start a progressive disciplinary process and a bunch of other stuff.

And they're going to go at that individual. And he's like, no, how did we mess this up? How did we hire this person?

And how did we lose them that quick? Or what was it? They look internally, and they also say, whatever happens when lose or draw is my fault.

They're never taking the victim role. They're never blaming somebody else. And that's what I look for in growth-minded individuals.

They're accountable. They're not afraid. They look forward to learning and growing and building off of failures. And they're also very optimistic.

You won't find a single entrepreneur out there that's not optimistic about what they're doing and where they're going. And that's contagious.

That's leadership. That's eliminating the chaos. They're not completely blind to the future, but they're not afraid of it. They're looking forward.

It's what gets them up every morning.

 

Matt Zaun 

And if they're not, then they're in trouble, right? Yeah, they're not. For sure. So I do want to touch on a little bit, I guess, expand on the values are clashing piece that you mentioned, because you said that you've, unfortunately, you've been around people that they're completely different people, you know, at work that they are at home.

I feel like often we have these blind spots where even if we have really good intentions, even if we keep our values top of mind, even if we're focused on them, there are some blind spots that we might not have as much synergy with our values as we may think.

Is there any kind of tip or exercise or something that you would recommend someone do as it pertains to values to make making sure that their values aren't clashing in other areas of their life?

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

First things to be done. been around extremely competent technical people, and they worship the God of correctness. When somebody says, correct me if I'm wrong, they don't want to be corrected.

Or, hey, with all due respect, in the South, they say, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, bless their heart. You know somebody's fixing to unload.

But when I've noticed values clash, and it can be as simple. There's certain things. People will say one word, and they're in forever for life together.

And others, you say one word, I don't want to be around that person. I don't want to be associated or what have you.

But I find when people clash, it's typically the values piece. And then once I understand that, the first thing, if I need to be aware of my values, it starts with self-awareness.

And once I have self-awareness, I understand who I am and what I'm doing. But I like to, I use a combination of disc or Myers, but there's like 300 different of these assessments or whatever.

Daniel Kahneman thinking fast and slow, open or close. People are tasked, but it starts with self-awareness. And I go through a specific conversation.

When I was with Sony, we needed to spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars on a fluidized bed cleaner.

Without that, the operation shut down because it was volatile organic compounds. I go in with a big stack. I had all engineering and operations under my purview.

I go in with a stack to the president of the company to get him to sign off. He literally leaned back in his desk, pulled out the drawer in the center, started cleaning his Japanese.

He starts cleaning his ear with one of these wooden Q-tips. I'm like, well, this conversation's over. On the drive home, I'm like, well, this won't work.

I got to figure this out. I walked in the next morning, said, Kondo-san, I need you to sign this.

Or what is it? Remember yesterday I was in here? I need you to sign it because if you don't, here's what's going to happen within 24 to 48 hours.

Sign. He could care less about the details. He wanted. to recognize the level of confidence I had. My engineering detail and all that other stuff was not, he was not task-oriented at that level.

He was people-oriented. He was quite open on certain levels. He just needed to know what decision and information he needed.

He had decision authority. I didn't. I had the ability to influence that, and it was my job to get what I wanted to pivot and understand what I needed to do to get there, right?

I kind of took all that and smushed it together, but if you're clashing with somebody on values, and I actually had a young lady project manager, actually from Ukraine, was living in Georgia, long story, but we went through that whole matrix I was talking about, and she was, ah, I get now why I clash with this client.

They think like this. I think like that. I have to adjust or pivot. I cannot make you think faster or slower than what you do.

It's impossible. You're going to, if somebody. If somebody that's very, you know, they think on an inner, they're introverted, they're going to go off and think, and when they come back, they got something that's really great.

If I don't let them have that time, if I keep pushing and forcing them to make a decision that they don't want to make, it ain't going to happen.

It's just going to backfire. There are others. If I don't get to the point within Lickety Split and now with AI and all this other stuff, well, I'll make a decision.

I got to have my pitch, right? Well, I'm going to convince you of something in 30 seconds. I don't think so.

But you see how all that works. But for me to get what I want, I have to be willing, capable, and able to adjust my level of thinking, which now we can go into the 35 or so different cultures that reported with me when I was in Dubai.

That's a whole nother conversation.

 

Matt Zaun

Yeah, you mentioned the culture piece. I would be interested in, and you don't have to give specifics, but I do think it's really important.

Thank Thank you. next time. I mean, regardless of where someone's listening in from, even in the U.S., there are many, many cultural differences.

How do you think the value piece, we just need to be cognizant of the cultural differences regarding values? Actually, everything we touched on today regarding decisions and behaviors and values, culture can really have a big impact on that.

So anything that you would want to mention regarding cultural pieces that people should be aware of? And again, you could get as specific as you want or as vague as you want to be, but what would be the first thing someone should be mindful of if they're going to do business in a different culture?

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

I think maybe the best thing is to keep your curiosity hat on as opposed to your judgment hat. I'll give you one specific example there.

won't mention any names, but I will tell you, I had a young lady work for me. She had missed out on her comp and promote twice, and it had to do with the system which in she was working.

She was out twice for being pregnant. I wanted and needed to get her ratcheted up back on the right position, pay scale, et cetera.

The system forced me to identify particular goals and objectives she had to meet. She smart. She had a master's in information technology.

She worked within our technical document registry, and literally for a period of about six weeks, I met with her weekly to try to figure out what are we going to do, what are you going to commit to, and how do you want to progress?

And literally, there was a point, she would literally cry leaving my office. She didn't know what to do, kept asking me.

It was one of those things you kind of back and forth, but she, it literally got to the The where she told me, I don't know, somebody tell me what I need to do, I'll do it.

But fundamentally, the only expectation out of her was to take care of her husband, her husband's parents, and raise the children.

Now, I'm in a position in the United States, I could make different moves to accommodate and level that out.

When you're in a different country, you're playing by their rules. You're not going to change that and how it works.

But once I was like, wow, there's really nothing I can do. That's culturally where you get it. And the other thing, I'm Western, I'm Christian, what have you, but when you're in a different country and you turn around twice and your workforce is gone, I'm like, where'd they all go?

They're off praying. But it's a different thing. I'm not going to change that. I had another young lady work with me.

And she said, stop asking me why you get this Simon Sinek. Well, why, why? Ask why five times. I get that.

But we started. She said. I want

 

Matt Zaun 

takeaways from this conversation. The first thing that you mentioned, I really appreciate mentioning the chaos piece. You said inability to make a decision.

And I really challenge everyone listening. Is there chaos in your organization because of that inability for you and your team to make those decisions?

The second piece is you touched on behaviors. You said behaviors gives us presence. And you went into talking about the importance of right and wrong behaviors.

I really appreciate that. then the third and final piece that I'm going to take away is you had talked about values clashing and the importance to make sure that there's synergy with our values regardless of where we are.

And I really appreciate that. Todd, if anyone wants to get more information on what you do, they want to reach out to you for your services, where's the best place they can go to get that information?

 

Todd White (Clearpeg)

One stop is LinkedIn. The other is my direct email, todd at clearpeg.com. And my website is a good place to just clearpeg.com.

 

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. I will include that in the show notes. People could just ask is Click and go from there. Thanks again for your time today, Todd.

Really appreciate it.