Minter Dialogue with Dan Docherty

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dan Docherty, a fascinating leader who’s made a remarkable pivot in his career. We explored the power of personal vision, the importance of perspective in leadership, and how neuroscience intersects with effective communication.

Dan shared his journey from C-suite executive to academic and consultant, emphasising the value of lived experiences in coaching. We discussed the critical role of understanding personal stories and values in leadership, and how this knowledge can transform team dynamics.

We also delved into the concept of ‘play’ in business environments and its potential to unlock creativity and innovation. Dan’s insights on building trust, balancing compliance with compassion, and creating psychologically safe workplaces were truly enlightening.

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone interested in modern leadership approaches, the power of personal connection in business, and how to navigate the complexities of today’s workplace dynamics.

Tune in to hear Dan’s thoughts on rewiring our brains, the importance of context in communication, and why taking risks is essential for true adventure – in business and in life.

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Dan Docherty:

• Visit BrainTrustGrowth.com
• Check out Dan’s eponymous site here
• Find/buy Dan Docherty and Jeff Bloomfield’s book, “Neurocoaching, Mastering Situational Coaching Conversations | The Neuroscience Behind High-Performing Leaders,” here
• Find/follow Dan Docherty on LinkedIn

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on Megaphone or in iTunes.
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Doctor Dan Docherty. I say that with the Irish accent, hoping that’s, that’s the right way to go about it, but perfect in your own words. Let’s start off with who is Dan?

Dan Docherty: Yeah, I love it. So, who is Dan? That’s a deep. That’s a deep question. So, you want the personal side or the professional side?

Minter Dial: Well, I usually have to let you decide that because I can’t impose upon you, but where.

Dan Docherty: All right, I’m going to start with the personal side first. So, Dan is a father of three beautiful children. I’m a husband of an amazing wife for coming up on 34 years this year. So, we’re very, very proud of that. Still best friends today. And, you know, and, and Dan’s. Dan’s an adventurer, dreamer. I don’t like to say academic mentor because it’s like, then there’s a whole nother, whole nother lane. But I’m a, I’m a very curious person in my entire life. It’s like if you, if I see something out there that’s an adventure I love to go at. Love the concept of dreaming. I love when people say in the world, ah, dreaming is this or that. I’m like, do you mean, try to tell me you don’t dream? You know, it’s like, I highly recommend that you should feel. No. And so, I’ve been very blessed to have an amazing professional career and made a big pivot kind of in my midlife when a lot of my buddies were like, what are you going to do? And. Or what am I going to do? And that was a big turning point for me. But I’ve been very blessed in my career personally and professionally. A couple kids getting married this year and not to each other, which is good, but getting married and then my youngest going to college So, my wife will be empty nesters. And so, outside of that, professionally, we can get in that in a little bit. But just had an amazing career in kind of sales, marketing, leadership, all those good things.

Minter Dial: So, one of the things that attracted me to your profile, Dan, is that you have real experience as well as the sort of the coaching, consultancy side of things. There’s nothing worse in my opinion of just having been a consultant, never done the shit and.

Dan Docherty: Yeah.

Minter Dial: How much has that been instructive for you?

Dan Docherty: Well, I’m with you. I can’t imagine being a consultant. First of all, I probably would have never even put myself in the bucket of a consultant because to me it’s like, what is consultancy? And so. And how do you do consultancy without Experience. I don’t, I don’t quite honestly know. It’s almost like how do you just teach but yet you’ve never kind of lived any of those experiences. And so, for me, the lived experiences have been huge for me. And again, what I love now is and we do more skill-based training than kind of strategic consulting or consulting like we’ll take on any challenge. You know, our thing is communication and communication impact to build relationships, drive performance. So, we tried to say our consultancy is down a very specific lane. And that lane you have to be very passionate about. And you’ve had to see a lot of good and bad mentor, you know, in life, I think to really help you be the best consultant. Because life just happens, does.

Minter Dial: And it is not all about being good or happy.

Dan Docherty: No, no, it’s not at all actually. It’s not at all. And you know, the other thing for me is I kind of looked at if you would have told me, Mentor, 10 years ago that I would be on this podcast with you and working at a university and working with some of the best companies in the world, I would have said you’re crazy. You know, I was a C suite guy that was running companies and I would have said that’s no way would that be. But the more I lined into my personal vision and, and fortunately had an amazing mentor come into my journey, that forced me to really look at my personal vision. Then that shifted the whole game for me, you know, and, and it’s that. And actually in that pivot point was at a low point, not a high point.

Minter Dial: That somehow makes sense yet. So, the idea of doing a PhD, Dan, I mean, holy smokes, you’ve already got an MBA, you’ve got a illustrious career and this idea of doing a PhD. What was the itch that you were scratching to do the PhD?

Dan Docherty: It really wasn’t an itch. It’s it. What, what happened was. And I’ll give you the short version of this, unless we wanted to sit here for like two or three hours and I’m not that interesting and I’m.

Minter Dial: Not a Joe Rogan guy. I don’t have any joys to smoke right away.

Dan Docherty: Yeah, very good. I totally, I love it. I love it. So, So, I’ll, I’ll lean it, I’ll lean into it this way. And I think this might help some, some people. So, running a company, part of a leadership team, private equity-based organization. We had won a huge project mentor. The company was growing like crazy and I got moved into a role that really wasn’t my natural domain. And so, I got asked to run operations for a period of time and I asked my CEO, you know, how long do we want to do that for? And he’s like three months. And then I blinked my eyes and it was like five years later. And here. And here was the pivot point. I, I always love and I know you and I both have a heart for, for leadership, for communication, for empathy, for compassion, for building amazing teams, for neuroscience, all that stuff. I never put all those pieces together, quite honestly as a guy that was in running a company. And here was the moment. All of a sudden what I realized was I wasn’t coaching very well. And I’m very honest with people about this because I think if we’re not a little bit vulnerable in our stories like it, I don’t think other people relate as much, you know, but for me, I wasn’t coaching that great. I wasn’t walking the floor when people walked into my office. I wasn’t nearly as present. And I always prided myself on being an effective coach and knowing that that role was leading people from where they are to where they’re going and driving performance. And so, it was a Saturday morning and I was on my computer and my wife’s like, what are you doing? And I was like, I’m looking at PhD programs. And she told me or first she asked me why and I was like, I, I don’t really know fully. I don’t. I said, I just. And I’m a faith-based person. But I was like, I feel like there’s just a different path for me. And I didn’t know exactly what that looked like or why I was going down that path. Which was the scariest part. Having two kids in private college at the time here in the states budget. Yeah. And like everybody in my world mentor was like, don’t do it, you’re crazy. You’re out of your mind. Not a single person other than my wife was like, yeah, that seems like a reasonable thing to do at your stage of your journey. But, but I’m telling you and I’ll just end it with this. When, when all that was happening, I was in that low man. My, my CEO we were sitting down as letting him know this. He later then said, well, you know, it’s interesting. I’m in seminary. Nobody even knew he was in seminary. He was an economist from Yale, lawyer, built an amazing company, was in seminary. Nobody even knew he was in seminary. And he kind of led me, pushed me like if that’s what you Want, we’ll work it out type of deal. And. And so, that was where. But. And again, there was something I really specifically wanted to study. And as that kind of came more and more clear and transparent to me, then my passion for what I wanted to try to make an impact on the world for that started to. Started to show itself to me, even though on day one I couldn’t see it.

Minter Dial: I want to put out a little sort of anecdote element, which is it feels for me that So, many leaders are performance oriented, which is what you have to do. That’s how you get paid. Yet do they all have this sort of side hustle, seminary art, this other thing that, you know, thank God I have that I do this on the weekend when any spare moment I go and do this, I just do. I do the other thing because that’s what I’m good at or that’s what I have to do. I have to pay the bills, college tuitions or whatever. I only wish I could, you know, do the side hustle. Of course, seminary is a whole other gig.

Dan Docherty: But.

Minter Dial: To what extent do you see the side hustle as. I mean, do you come across the idea of the side hustle and. And I think of it as a problem as opposed to a good thing.

Dan Docherty: Yeah, I think it kind of depends on what it is. From my experience, you know, I was a worship leader for 20 years in our church and I never got paid a dime for it other than the fact I just love to be there. So, I’d put that more as a passion than a side hustle. Right. You know, and I do think that in people’s visions and leadership, understanding what they intrinsically value and what really motivates them and how, and allowing them to let their identity have some space in some of those things, I think it makes people, generally speaking, stronger, no matter what that might look like, you know, but So, I think when. When side hustles, depending upon what we’re defining a side hustle as, you know, you know, over. If it overwhelms or overtakes and is not aligned and, you know, we’re not really sure why we’re chasing it or why it’s sitting there, then yeah, I think for sure, I think it can both. It can, it can work on both sides of, of that fence. You know, it’s interesting though. I’ve never really. The way you just positioned that question, I’ve never thought of in my entire life, to be quite honest, which I find interesting. So, I like interesting people with interesting thoughts So, I’ve never really thought about it as maybe a negative or even distracting or a detractor potentially from what the end game is. But so, it be. But it is interesting for me to find out what are people passionate about and then where they use it. Like you light up like crazy. You talk about padel manual, you go, you know, you go and you just see it in your eyes. And you being an athlete in sports and an author and elite, you know, I think certain people are wired for some of those things and other people, you know, other people maybe not So, much the wire.

Minter Dial: Well, the, the thing that. Why I’m illuminated by that, at least the way I feel it is that dovetails into who I want to be. And so, I’d love for you, Dan, to explain because what I heard you say, this is my interpretation was that you had a mentor, you were in a down period and all of a sudden sort of the light switched on or at least there was something that started to drive you in a different way, if that’s a fair description. Correct me if I’m wrong and then describe to me us. Well, how did that come around?

Dan Docherty: Yeah, So, for me, it was deep down for me and I talk about him a lot. But you know, I had some, I’ve had some like most of us do have some amazing people that kind of come across our path and in our journey and you know, I have amazing parents and you know me, my father, great wife too. It sounds like I do have an amazing wife, you know. But you know, early on I had, and I share this story a lot with people, but I had a music teacher that absolutely changed my life back in high school relative to when I realized, unlike you actually, that I wasn’t really a great athlete. You know, that wasn’t. It’s not like I’m terrible, but I wasn’t a great athlete. And you know, that music teacher saw something in me that I never saw in myself. And so, I’ve always honestly mentor. I’ve always had kind of a little, A little bit of an interest and passion in teaching and in training and in development and it just was called different things throughout my journey. But I think the curiosity for me that all those triggers that led me back to kind of pursuing a non-traditional path in my late 40s, you know, to, to do that was. There was. There’s an underpinning of a value for me and an impact for me that really had nothing to do with. About going back to school. It was about some. How could I take that Knowledge and then transfer it to something that is much, much deeper for me, that I hope people find for themselves, you know, those. Those things that they’re really passionate about that just kind of, you know, get them and light them up and work is hard. You know, I have people tell me all the time, well, you haven’t made. Because you love what you do and getting up early. No, work’s hard. Building a company is really hard. Going back to school in your late 40s is really hard. But when you have a purpose and you’re really passionate about something and you go for it, and then you get people around you that, you know, even the naysayers are going to be the naysayers, you know, But. But then when I had those people that said, yeah, you know, you go and you do you. And then that whole pivot point where the teacher and me kind of came out, you know, So, I don’t view myself actually as a consultant. I see myself as a teacher to help people take concepts in order to activate them. Because I’m tired of actually people saying, consultants with information is one thing, mentor, but we have So, much. You know, this. You talk to. You talk to some amazing people in the world and on your podcast and in the business that you run, and we have information. Man, I’m. I’m tired of, like, information. We can get information. It’s about how do you do. How do you get people to activate and apply at a higher level? And that’s the. The kind of the teacher in me and that exploration to be like, you raise their awareness of where they are in order for them to see. If I see that, then maybe we can take information, help activate in a different way, and that you and I were talking about rewiring, and then that magic starts to happen. And I think what really happened through the whole program is I saw neuroscience and leadership combined, and I came out of a neuroscience background in pharmaceuticals, and I was like. But I’d never seen it in the context of leadership, and it was like a collision course. The minute I saw it, the minute I’m like, that’s going to change my life. And in some small way, maybe I can help change others, you know? So, I don’t know if I answered your question directly, but in.

Minter Dial: In that there, I. I’m just giving this premonition, if you will. You do talk about a lot, the idea of purpose in. In your book, but having a personal purpose that can be expressed in not just your personal life, like with your wife and three kids and maybe what you do with your friends, but also in your professional and, the both can dance together once you actually get a good grip on what is your purpose. Was that part of the transformation that happened for you or.

Dan Docherty: Yeah, it really was. I appreciate you asking that. I had to do a personal vision project that I honestly thought was a little ridiculous. And I wrote this in the book that I was like, I was like why am I doing this exercise that’s looking at my values and looking at impact people in my journey and looking at the things that, the things that I dream about, my aspirations beyond maybe a one year lens and push me out three, five years. I’m like, I ain’t have time for all that. And as that whole thing kind of. And there was like 10 or 12 different exercises. But as that whole thing unwound, I remember getting down to having to write like a personal vision statement that I’ve subsequently I’ve sent to my children. You know, it, it literally when I couldn’t even see it mentor, I articulated that I saw myself actually teaching at a university and consulting. And again, as you know, I was So, far from that. That was not in my field of vision at all. But through an intentional process I started this and somehow that’s what came out, you know. And so, I try to carry that forward now, you know, relative to others because I think you nailed it earlier when, when people understand not only who they are, but who they want to be, often known in the psychology world as the ideal self, who they want to be, who they desire to be, that journey never ends. And no matter whether we’re in our late 50s, 60s, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t end. Doesn’t end.

Minter Dial: And it’s. And it can still be elusive for that matter, for sure. But, but the process, I think you say the word intentional is such the thing. And when you mentioned the naysayers before, in my mind I’m thinking, oh, they just don’t believe in this stuff. It’s woo woo stuff. Or they haven’t done the, or they’re jealous that you’ve actually done the work because it does take work. I mean work is difficult. And this work, including you know, my, my foibles, my imperfections, my, the, the lesser good sides of me are part of getting to know who you are. And I think that that feels for me the chip on shoulder that ends up being bad leaders who are control freaks, micromanagers that you talk about and not in sort of touch with their. Themselves. And how can you be in touch with others when you’re not in touch with yourself.

Dan Docherty: Yeah. And let me ask you a question in reverse. Aren’t you tired of that as well? You know, where people look at things relative to the things that you and I in our disciplines and our professions that we hear all the time? You know, how do you feel about that question in reverse?

Minter Dial: Well, I like it because it’s opportunity.

Dan Docherty: Yeah.

Minter Dial: To, to you know, layer in my, my ideas. Hey listen, let’s go and do something. I have. So, I, I throw off. I, I did. I want to get to the book, but what do you think of this notion of play? What is the, what is the possibility of play playing in, in a business environment? You don’t talk about that in, in the book per se, but is, is there a role for, you know, kid like imagination and, and being a, and a playful, maybe even humor at work?

Dan Docherty: I did, I, yeah, I do. I, I do believe that, you know, and it’s, it’s kind of, I put it through like a slightly different lens on, you know, divergent thinking. You know, when you allow play, you know, Legos made a fortune out of it. The Legos company goes into corporations relative to serious play, you know, and it’s phenomenal. You put Legos in somebody’s hands and you watch them just go. And they stop thinking. And the science, you and I both know the science by that you bypass parts of the human brain and it opens up creativity, imagination, just problem solving, all of those things. And when you allow no space for that, you don’t get people contributing and challenging at a higher level. So, and I think what you’re talking about here is, I think it’s serious business, which is the interesting playoff of the word play. But I think play is serious business, actually. Yeah, we get it that we all have to build companies into your point perform and all that, but it’s, it kind of dovetails ourselves into like the concept globally on psychological safety. And everybody likes to talk about it, but what I really love is if you don’t create kind of that inclusion learning environment, people are not going to contribute at their highest level. They’re going to leave stuff in their notebooks or on their iPads or in their head and it’s not going to come out. And until you create environments like that, I’m like, stop trying to talk about the topic of like things like psychological safety and start talking about the root of how you get people to contribute and challenge. And you and I both know innovation happens when people feel like they can contribute their Ideas when they feel that they can challenge the status quo without fear of retribution and amazing things happen. So, yeah, I think, I think, I think play’s a big deal. I think it’s really hard to put into a culture because people are like, oh, I’m wasting time. Or you know, we’re going to do it once a year at a holiday party. I’m like, not what I’m talking about.

Minter Dial: Just like you’re a one-time seminar and you expect change.

Dan Docherty: It doesn’t change, it doesn’t happen. I tell people that all time in our business. I’m like, you can hire us for neuro coaching, but if you don’t, we don’t do any reinforcement after that. You’re, you’re, you might as well be wasting your money.

Minter Dial: Totally fair. You, you mentioned curiosity. I mean, basically I, and I’m no psychologist, or at least not an academic in this regard, but it feels for me that the two defining characteristics of children are eternal curiosity and a love of play. Yeah, and the curiosity is sort of easier to mandate as a adult. You can still learn and you know, you can read books for God’s sake, but play is poo pooed because it’s sort of, oh, you’re just being a kid again.

Dan Docherty: Anyway, you know, real quick on that. I see that in the classroom being that I, you know, I’m fortunate enough to work with 18, 19, 20-year-olds in our leadership center at the university. And you know, they are, they’re trained in, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re trained through school to take in information, absorb it, regurgitate it, move on. Not all schools, not all programs, but they’re trained that way. And then you expect them to kind of play, you know, and we don’t create that inside the environment that is safe enough for them to do that. And they learn that behavior over time. And you, and, you and I both know the research from George Land and others relative to curiosity and the fact that we, we lose that divergent thinking as we get older and it’s, and it’s, and it’s quite, quite contagious by the time we get into adulthood, you know, and, and you and I are both people that like to play, you know, so, you know, that’s, you know, but in the, in the work environment’s a little bit different context.

Minter Dial: Right. It’s about contagion. So, you mentioned before we got online about music, for example, being a way to approach PTSD, trauma of the brain. And I’m, I’m a psychonaut AKA someone who takes psychedelics and, and, and believes that psychedelics are a tremendous root to exploring what’s going on in the brain. The idea that you use different parts of the brain through psychedelics, which also is for sure happening in music, which I’ve seen studies on and shows the MRIs, the FMRIs that show how music connects different parts of the brain. I think that playing sports connects different parts of the brain and that more holistic approach to the brain is where you get much more juice when it comes to thought, power and, and connections and, and performance.

Dan Docherty: Yep. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I’m fortunate enough. I, I don’t do personally any work relative to art, music and things relative to that rewiring that happens. You and I both know enough to know that neuroplasticity is real and we can rewire at any stage. Maybe it’s a little bit harder as we get a little bit older, but we can do it. We can do it through experiences and through repetition. And you know, my friends that do that, do that cut type of work, it’s really amazing mentor to watch them go into places like the Ukraine and go into places that have had tremendous disasters and them even fighting their own natural position of do I take music and art into those types of war torn countries, into the. And when they do it, it’s, it’s absolutely unbelievable. And one of the gentlemen is working on his doctorate degree in how we rewire based on the power of art and music. And I know you love that thinking relative to sports, but. Yeah, and that kind of gets back into playing a little bit as well. And it’s like I feel safe enough, I calm down and a lot of our emotional energy gets a little bit under control, opens up some of our thinking and that rewiring happens and it’s So, powerful to watch. You know, you see it in hospitals, like music therapy. I mean, you and I are old enough to know music therapy was never even a degree, you know, and my daughter studied music at Nashville, in Nashville here in the States, you know, at Belmont University. And they have a whole music therapy program, you know, and you walk through hospitals now and you’ll see guitars, you know, what are they doing that for? Just because the music sounds nice? No, because it’ll draw back into the hippocampus and long-term memories and it’ll, it does some amazing things in the brain and it allows us to go back into those states that as you were talking early, pulls more out. It’s like, it’s So, powerful. Why can’t we also do that in the way we communicate, in the way that we lead and we can. I just don’t think that people take some of the stuff that we’re talking about seriously enough relative to putting it into their artillery, if you will, relative to how they lead and how they communicate and how they build teams and build relationships.

Minter Dial: I don’t. I. I mean our notion. There’s So, many things I wanted to draw into this, but I’ve. I’ve already had at least one musical therapist on my show talking about how music connects different parts you can connect in. And, and the interesting part and this where I wanted to. It gets a little bit more complicated.

Dan Docherty: Is.

Minter Dial: Is music as a therapy for end of life. We were just talking about PTSD and psychedelics. Has four different pathologies that it’s. That academics are looking at as to how it can help. For example, with fear of death and, and fear of play, fear of death, the lack of self-awareness. All these for me feel like they’re all same of the same gestalt somehow. And that those who are not listening to us, who are not believing in the power of being more wholesome. I mean wholesome in. Not in a perfect way, but more entire in the way we approach things where we can include a Gibson guitar and a. And. And maybe even talk about some psilocybin and, and get some serious LEGO out there.

Dan Docherty: Yeah.

Minter Dial: It’s the power of this. When you put that together and you’re open to it in a psychologically safe way, it’s just voluminous. What it could be, could be producing.

Dan Docherty: Yeah. And you know what, mentor? One of the reasons I really wanted to be on your show in particular, not only because of the things that you’ve written, but, you know, when I see someone that like puts a word like empathy out there, you know, it’s. And you look at like what’s. There’s lots of definitions of empathy. But when we’re really in a position where we can sense others’ feelings and the words that I often like this is often used in the emotional intelligence world, it’s not just sensing others’ feelings, but it’s. And their perspectives, you know. And in our framework, what a lot of people don’t know is that like in our framework on situational conversations, I honestly believe that we can change the world with that simple word perspective and saying man, can we re. Do we really take an active interest in not only the person, but their concerns, what we sense their feelings to be. And I mean I fundamentally believe and you’ve written books on this. And one of the reason perspective was in our communication coaching framework was that I think it’s at the heart of empathy and then not only empathy, but also compassion, you know, and having that kind of positive impact. And I, I’m telling you, man, I will have people, I have people through our training be like, wow, that’s really nice to have, Dan, but is it really a must have? I’m like, perspective taking can change the world, in my humble opinion.

Minter Dial: Oh, God.

Dan Docherty: Yeah.

Minter Dial: Well, I, I usually use the, I mean, I think perspective is, I want to get back to that in a moment, but I usually use the word context. Yeah, I talk about it because there’s the thoughts, there are the feelings, and then there’s context within which these things are happening. You know, I’m stressed because my mother is sick or I’m stressed because of, or, you know, whatever is happening that clouds my ability or impacts anyway my feelings and my thoughts.

Dan Docherty: Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate that because, you know, and I totally agree with that. If people are listening to us, like really dialing in that situational context and then the fluency in communication to be able to navigate that. And, and, and you said it twice in the power of self-awareness. And I’m still convinced as we sit here in 2025, you know, and you go around, if you and I had a thousand leaders on this call and we said, hey, I got an idea for you. Just tell us the four major domains of emotional intelligence. Now that we’re like 30 years into the research, you know, I, you know, and people will use different words, but they might not come out with self-awareness and self-management and social awareness and relationship management or even anywhere near close to that, you know, let alone the competencies. And then to your point, identifying the context, how do those emotions actually impact what you do and the impact on others in order to build deeper relationships? It’s like, how much more information do we need? We don’t need more information. We need people to understand those. And to your point, in the situational context, in order to like, ooh, maybe I ought to think about that from mentor’s perspective. Because even on a call like this, what am I doing? I’m trying to predict a little bit in my brain what you’re going to ask me So, that I can respond. And thus it’ll dial down my act of listening and not being fully present as compared to you, make me feel safe enough, just be like, okay, just settle in, go with the flow on this. And you know it’ll be a richer conversation because I’m not trying to think two, three, four steps out.

Minter Dial: Cool. One of the things you write about, which is the 6Pmodel starts with purpose and then perspective, plan, path, progress, problems. I really enjoyed that. And one of those. I mean really, if Dan, we’re talking today and we’re still writing books about leadership, there seems to be some problems that are sort of almost eternal and never fixable. And I suppose obviously the context is changing and the problems we have may have been sort of eternal, but there’s always a new situations come around. And you mentioned Ukraine. And I feel that in today’s context, one of the problems of leadership is understanding what’s important. And, and, and in order for that to be accurate, you have to have the proper perspective. And if I could just one small story, which is, I have a friend of mine who, Whose husband was captured by the Russians and spent a month as a prisoner and then was sentenced to death and was. And survived the execution. My point is that a lot of us think we have problems and we lack in my opinion, the perspective of actually what’s truly important. And I feel like in today’s world, if I had a way to. And I would love for you to react, to describe why leadership is bass ackwards today as it has been for many. But today’s problem is a lack of perspective.

Dan Docherty: Yeah. First of all, that’s thoughts and prayers for your friend and that situation. You know, it’s one of those things like I could never, I was never a military person, So, I’m always. And I can’t feel what they feel, you know, for people that are not, not even that. But in going through something as horrific as that. So, thoughts definitely for that. You know, I, you know, kind of leaning into what you’re saying there it. For me, it’s, it’s interesting that you brought up as an example the six P’s. You know, the six P’s in our. In after I kind of did my research and read a lot about coaching and thought more about my. Where you started. My life experience as much as I did any academic experience was I realized at the front end before I ever get to how I have situational fluency in a context of a situation in coaching, it’s like I really lean back in on the power of shared vision. And you know, and that, and, and I say that because the shared vision is that what I fundamentally believe in there is that every person, mentor has a story and the, and, and the garbage that We’ve sold ourselves that, you know what, in like, organizational context. We’re here to do a job. So, I don’t need to know that story, you know, I So, fundamentally disagree with and that I. I don’t really care who I’m talking to. And from a Fortune 100 company to a therapist to I don’t care. What I care more about is when you get back at the values level of understanding what someone intrinsically values and their motivation as it what makes them who they are to what makes them makes them go, makes the motor go, then I don’t know how we lead anymore without that and think about even intergenerational tensions and all the things that we have in the workplace. You know, everyone, like what you just shared, that’s a story. That’s a unique story. Like, if that person or anyone in their family walked into my organization and I never uncover what makes them go. Or they say to me, hey, Dan, a mentor, you know what? Family is So, important to me as a value. And I’m like, oh, great family. Me too. I have family, three kids right where you asked me. But if I don’t understand the story underneath the value relative to why you might need to go back somewhere or take PT up, you know, pay time off or do whatever it might you might need to do, I don’t know how we lead without it. And older generations, and I’m a Gen Xer, you know, So, I’m kind of in the older of the generations that are still in the workforce. You know, we weren’t necessarily trained that that was our shared experiences. And so, nowadays as. Because I work with young people, when I show them curiosity and I show them that I want to understand their perspective and let their best thoughts come out, I’m telling you, light bulbs go off, the game changes. But. But I’ve got to really understand what they value. And I don’t worry about would they take advantage of mentor or Dan relative to having knowing that information. I don’t worry about that at all. At all. Zero. I’m like, I can’t lead you without knowing your story. And I’m shocked. Actually. I’ll do a values exercise with the team and they’ll look at me like, can I do this in the workplace? I’m like, their values or beliefs or personal character characteristics that matter to that person. How can you lead them without knowing that? And so, then that leads us ultimately later into perspective, you know, and into a way of navigating a situational conversation, you know, But I wasn’t going to start there. My research showed the power of relational climate relative to a direct correlation to workplace engagement relative to looking at that and dyadic relationships. Leader follower relationships or leader team member. And then I’m like, ooh. And then I just was right in the stream of the fact I’m the first one ever research or study shared vision. But it’s like, how do you really bring that out? You know? And I. So, I don’t know if I’m getting there, but, like, it’s. You can’t have a meaningful conversation until you set that foundation in my. In my humble opinion.

Minter Dial: Well, So, you write a lot about trust, Dan, and the name of your company, Brain trust, your president, the word trust. There’s. There’s professional trust. You’re. You’re good at doing what you do. You. You know how to count beans. You know how to saw off a person’s arm as a surgeon, great. But I fundamentally believe. And I don’t have any research to prove this. I mean, I’ve never gone and researched it, but there isn’t really trust unless it’s personal. And. And that includes knowing the personal story. Like you just said. I had a CEO who said to me, well, we’re all like family here. And unfortunately for him, I also knew that aside from having four kids, which is great, he also. I also knew one of his two mistresses and who had spent a lot of time in and out of a psychiatric ward. So, that’s family. Okay. That’s not the family that I want to be. But at least by knowing it, I was completely off guard. I mean, not going to trust him for a second. So, maybe that’s a reason why they don’t want to share their personal stories, because they actually have cadavers in their closets, and. And they’re not grateful for that. Those dead bodies. But this notion of personal, I. I think branding and business is personal. Someone says to me, don’t take it personally. I say, well, that’s bonkers. How do you react?

Dan Docherty: Yeah, I think you’re. I think you’re right. And I think you’re also right about why certain values might be risky to people. Because if I espouse a value, in other words, I say it, and I don’t enact that value. Well, you know, welcome cognitive dissonance. You know, my belief in my actions don’t align. You know, faith is my number one value. But mentor, I choose how I express that, you know, in. In some settings, because the risk of that is somebody like you’re Making that decision. Hypocrite, you know, and, and the reality is, yeah, it’s when it comes to building trust, exactly what you described, personal connection. And I hope everybody listening really understands this like words that you use in your writing and in your work, you know, whether it’s humility, vulnerability, honesty, authenticity, empathy, like those words in personal connection are So, paramount as elements to personal connection. And the science shows us that when we, when we have that, the way my brain processes that, as you know, is oh, I feel safe enough. So, that’s, then I start to build a little bit of trust. So, then I’ll, I’ll show you and give you more. And that makes me more open to information, to ideas, to data, to all of those things. And so, what you described is another, in my opinion is a non-negotiable in leadership and in communication. And I honestly think it might show itself in different cultures. But having one thing that I love about connection is if you study generations, connection as well as competence. This is according to Pew Research, but they are both needs of every generation. So, it’s never going away. But how do we activate that inside our teams on a consistent basis that then people bring their best self while they’re in that moment where we have them. And I always like to tell leaders, mentor, it’s like we don’t, we don’t own anybody like you think maybe because you have positional power like you, you, you own that team and you. No, you don’t. You’re renting them for a season. You have them for a season. And, and if you really want to be that type of leader, that when they look back on their journey like, wow, mentor helped me, guided me, gave me tough love when I wasn’t accountable to standards. But really, you know, that’s, that’s, that’ll be magic. And you know what? And I don’t know that we’ll fix it. I don’t know if it’s ever going to be fixed. It’s part of the human dynamic, you know, because we’re biologically wired for self-preservation. So, until, and that’s never going away. So, what we’re talking about, putting other people’s perspective out in front, that’s, that’s tough work.

Minter Dial: I, I completely agree. So, another zone of, of thought that just crossed my mind as I was listening to you, Dan, you, you had said you, you like adventure and, and we’ve been talking a lot about safety. And so, I’m going to trot out a little saying I like to say, which I I, I, I believe in, but it, it, it could sound counterintuitive or maybe paradoxical to just what you’re talking about now, which is that an adventure without risk is not an adventure. And I further than say a life without adventure is not a life. So, in businesses we are kind of programmed for risklessness. You know, get the number in, be sure, safe pair of hands and then we constantly talking about psychological safety, which doesn’t sound like risk taking. Of course. It, it can allow for it. I just wanted to just let you riff off that sort of agglomeration of thoughts.

Dan Docherty: First of all, I love both of your statements there. Number one, and it reminds me of one of the adventures. I don’t write about this too often, but I love to ride an adventure motorcycle. And so, you know, for me, what happens every time I tell anyone that I ride a motorcycle? I never get the story of like, oh my gosh, don’t you love riding through the beautiful countryside and smelling the air and seeing the trees? No, I hear about the person that got in the accident that lost their leg or their life. And I always hear that story like every time, matter of fact, it just happened like less than 48 hours ago, which then all sudden it starts to program you to be like, oh, I.

Minter Dial: Can’t take that risk, or the hippocampus that happens back in and all that. Right?

Dan Docherty: Yeah. I’m like, I know the risk, you know, but it’s, but to me you’re right that that adventure is with risk and building a business is risky and we’re going to make mistakes. And I always like to tell leaders, isn’t it blessing that you don’t have to have all the answers? Like how, how refreshing is that if you can dial that in and then dial, dial it in also, that we’re going to make mistakes and we, and I watch it happen and I’ve seen it happen in my own career and I bet you have too. I know when there’s those moments where I’m, I am leading out of risk aversion than I am actually like saying, oh well, if we really do try that and that doesn’t work, man, we got a culture. We’ll adapt and we’ll readjust and we’ll, we’ll survive, you know, and there’s certain things in certain businesses that could cost you your life. So, obviously there’s certain boundary conditions to your point, based on context, but generally speaking, yeah, that’s another one where I don’t think people are actually feel safe enough to actually Take the risks. Which is why Amy Edmondson and all the great work that her and her, you know, and around the globe now that concept, it’s another one that’s So, easy to say, So, hard to, to, to live through. And you got to set that in your culture really early and you got to hang on to it because the, because the minute it’s tested and you take a risk and somebody makes a mistake and you, you know, smack them on the wrist. Not literally, but you know, you know that all of a sudden that, that gets into the wiring and then we’re right back to well, that you do that over and over again. It’s no, no different than taking a dog or a pet that’s been abused, you know, and I’ve seen verbal abuse, I’ve seen, I’ve seen all of that and, and you’re not. Then all of a sudden like they, they stop, you know, and it’s a, and it’s a big problem.

Minter Dial: I certainly live through that last question, Dan. I suppose I had So, many others, but that’s just the nature of conversation is we’re just talking about compliance. At least that’s what I was interpreting about this notion. You got to just do this. And, and you had previously talked about shared vision versus compliance in, in your book, you write a coaching climate isn’t soft, it’s strong. It’s what keeps top talent at the table in today’s world that seems to be, There’s a lot of issue around talent retention, talent attraction. And how do you go about architecting a sort of more of a coaching shared vision versus the compliance thing when, when you know, in front of you you have a CEO and a culture that’s all about compliance, fear and control, micromanagement. How do you even go about untangling that mess?

Dan Docherty: Yeah, you know, it’s, I appreciate that question. And in our framework we kind of, we build it in the three cassettes. You just hit the first one on shared vision. So, I’m going to understand your vision and your values and then that becomes non-negotiable for me. And then when you, then the second piece of that is aligning on the mission. And so, when people say compliance to me in that regard and my mentor, it’s not my work, but he refers to that as creating a culture of compassion and a culture of compliance. And it’s not that it’s one or the other, it’s. We need both. And compliance in, in, in our framework is really about the standards of excellence that are required relative to that job. And then if I align that with your strengths and then align that to your vision of where you’re going, and then connect that to strategy, you can’t live without any one of those. You have to live with them, with all of them. And so, that way, when I create the clear standards, and one of my favorite coaches of all time is coach John Wooden and, you know, college basketball coach here in the states, and, you.

Minter Dial: Know, the guy not part of my knowledge.

Dan Docherty: Yeah. Won 10 national championships in the state. Their team won 88 games in a row. An amazing, an amazing coach of people. But he, He’s. He says what a lot of leaders will say. He’s like, I don’t have to like all my players, but I have to love all my players. And when you really kind of get inside that, it’s like, people want great standards. So, your questions are really big. I mean, we’d have a whole hour just on compliance, of course. And we need it. We need. People want standards, they want to know accountability is what good looks like. But it’s not. It’s like that or this. It’s that the order of that matters. And then we get into the situational context and the fluency of having conversations every day that start with purpose and perspective. Because I’m always drawing between empathy and compassion and analytical and transactional. So, like the whole relational versus transactional coaching, it’s not either or.

Minter Dial: Right.

Dan Docherty: It’s. It’s both. But the world’s best leaders and the world’s best coaches, they know how to dial them up and dial them down and intentionally, because that’s become their highest level of training. And when. And when people don’t have that training, they’ll default to what they know or to what they’ve seen. And they’ll. And they’ll. And that’ll. Or they’ll say, well, that was So, bad, I’m going to remodel that. I’m going to rewire that. And that happens. But oftentimes, we’ll often fall into certain habits. So, until I think the reason you and I will be working with companies for as long as hopefully we can, is because some of that’s not going to change. But I like people to walk away and be like, compliance matters, but So, does compassion, and get it in the right order. And then you said, I think something I’m going to take away from this is really having a little bit more mindset when I’m teaching and working with teams experientially about context.

Minter Dial: Yeah.

Dan Docherty: You know, and really to find that situational context and the fluency of how you communicate and coach, you know, that’ll. That’s So, paramount in the most prosaic of manners.

Minter Dial: Whenever I used to do any sessions, I was running this company in the states, we did 2,000 education sessions and one of the things I was always doing was, anyone need to go pee? But I need to tell you where to go pee. Because if you’re, if you need to pee, then you can’t even listen to what I’m talking about because you got something else going on. And so, that’s your context. Get into it. And the loo is over there. Yeah, go to. Well, that, that was a much more low brow, perhaps ending to this. Dan, it’s been great having you on. Enjoyed the, really enjoyed the conversation. Feel like we could have gone on for several more hours, but you and Jeff Bloomfield who wrote this book, how can people get in touch with you find your books? Because you wrote two, by the way. I mean, at the same time, I didn’t even get into that. Neuro coaching and neuro selling.

Dan Docherty: Yeah. So, yeah, they can find us braintrustgrowth.com. braintrust and growth are all one word. And you can find our company there. Our books can be found on Amazon. So, they can go to Amazon and find those. They’ve only been out a few weeks. Neuro Selling had been out a lot longer. Jeff and I did a revision to that and then neuro coaching has been out for three or four weeks. So, you know, just direct people over to, over to the website. That would be phenomenal. And I, I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed our time. So, thank you for having me and thank you for the work that you’re doing, the great work that you put out into the world as well. And I know it makes a difference for people, you know. So, thank you for what you do.

Minter Dial: If it moves one person, I’m already happy. Dan, many thanks and maybe one day we’ll have a chance to catch up for real.

Dan Docherty: Although you have to teach me how to padel. So, then we’ll, we’ll do that.

Minter Dial: I’m enjoying.