you deserve it, right?

Darn it.

But the great slapping is, and Mike, think back to your development, right? There were people in your professional, even personal development, that saw more in you, in your potential than you saw in yourself at that one particular time.

And they were trying to get through to you and it just wasn't working.

So eventually they had to kind of proverbially grab you by the shoulders, shake you a little bit and maybe give you that verbal backhand that said, what are you doing? What are you doing? You can't do this or you need to do this.

And so the reason I call it the great slapping is because there is sensation similar to getting slapped and having somebody that cares about you and your success and giving you the same thing, but in words, because there's pain, right? There's a little bit of that, oh my God, that hurt, right? And it was constructive and it was painful to hear.

And then there's this moment of clarity where you shake the cobwebs out and you realize, oh, maybe that's it.

When is the appropriate time to slap and what's not appropriate time to slap? I guess that's a question.

It's like, what exactly is The Great Slapping?

Yes, to all of that.

So the great slapping is not a physical slap.

I don't advocate violence, no matter how much I deserve it, right? Darn it.

But the great slapping is, and Mike, think back to your development, right? There were people in your professional, even personal development, that saw more in you, in your potential than you saw in yourself at that one particular time.

And they were trying to get through to you and it just wasn't working.

So eventually they had to kind of proverbially grab you by the shoulders, shake you a little bit and maybe give you that verbal backhand.

When is the appropriate time to slap and what's not appropriate time to slap? I guess that's a question.

So who gave you the slap you didn't know you needed, and how did it change you?

So, you know, I write about this in my first chapter.

His name was George.

And he was a boss that I highly respected.

He was my leader's leader.

And I always remembered him just beating me up in terms of nothing ever seemed to be good enough.

I always felt I was disappointing him.

Could you tell me about a time you got leadership completely wrong?

But what do you think is special about comedy?

That is an excellent question.

And, and I, I think I'd break it down to two or three things.

So the first one is as a leader, in order for you to be effective, you need to understand, as you, I think you said, the room.

I think you want, you need to know who's in the room, what do they need, and you need to be able to respond to that.

You need to be able to deliver to what's in that need.

You can't go in with just one direction and expect you to always be effective.

So how do you advise? You know, because it's, it, it becomes very difficult to, you know, gain back that confidence or just do the next action, because now you know that, you know, already you are one step back or you're back to square one.

We don't have to go in order the same time every time.

I've been playing with this phrase a lot lately and doing some thinking around it, and that has to do with training is always viewed as important or development, but it's rarely seen as urgent.

And what happens, especially in, in an operational mindset, is if it's not something that is usually a fire that needs to be put out, tag onto what Kamaria said, there's no priority to it.

So everybody will say it's important, but when it comes to whether it's making money, if you're talking about a for-profit or staying solvent or delivering the service that is very passionate, that ground floor, where the rubber meets the road type of world is where the priority is, and sometimes training is not positioned as something that's important to help that tire stick to the ground to help you move forward, and I think that's key.

One of the things that, uh, we face all the time in our world is being relevant, is getting that seat at the table, and sometimes you have the privilege and pleasure of working for an organization that understands it, and other times you don't.

And I think the more we can tie, and I, I know, I know Kamaria is gonna agree to this, and I know Rachel as well, is the more we can tie it to the business, we tie it to what is that priority, what is the thing that they measure, and how do we attach the benefits to training to that, the better off we're gonna be to make that a priority.

Like, what happens when we've been able to tie specifically to those outcomes? What changes?

Well, I think there needs to be something that's concurrent in this as well, and that is, and, and back to Kamaria was talking about when us young people were starting in the business, sometime there was a shift to see that where people became absolutely just a cost center, and it kind of ties in what Rachel was saying about the reduction of these things when the chips are down.

When we say the career ladder is changing, what does that actually mean on the ground in the employees that you work with every day in your organization? What does that change look and feel like? Yogi, let's start with you.

When you talk about career ladder, I, I think we've been, at least in my world, have been pushing away from that terminology for quite some time and talking career lattice, so it's not necessarily a, a direct ascension up or down, it, it's sideways.

But, uh, you know, I, I tell you, we had the, the, the general session yesterday and, and, and Betsy mentioned this, this elimination of a lot of frontline early entry roles and, and how that impacts.

And I think that is the, the, the way she framed that yesterday really just e- e- exemplified the red flags and the, the warning signs that are going out in terms of career ladders.

Where is...

Because the, without those entry level positions, there is a massive gap to jump.

You know, I, I mean, even in, in traditional ladders, if you were a frontliner, to get that supervisor role or that manager role, it seemed like an, a insurmountable chasm-

[laughs]