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Transcript 

[00:00:00] Bill Stark: Welcome everybody to the LeaderGov podcast. My name is Bill Stark and I'm a co founder of LeaderGov along with Tim Finburt. And Tim and I love equipping local government leaders in this area of leadership and LeaderGov exists to equip leaders all around the country, both in cities and counties and special districts, taxing districts, to be better leaders, to, to lead their people, to lead their teams.

[00:00:27] And at the end of the day, make a great impact on the communities in which they serve. Uh, it's all about other people at the end of the day serving others. And so today we're really excited. We have a special guest with us. Colonel Paul Trotty, Marietta, Georgia is with us. And, uh, Colonel Trotty has a distinguished military career.

[00:00:50] And I'm going to get him to share a bit of his background in the military with us for here at a few minutes But he also is a leader in the community and a leader of course in his family life Colonel trotty and I paul and I serve in a men's ministry Based in atlanta called solely business which has been around for about 20 years.

[00:01:13] It's a men's weekend retreat ministry that actually Talks a fair amount about leadership. And so that'll probably come up today, some in our conversation, but we're excited to have Carl Trotty with us today. We're going to be talking about what he has termed the four C's of leadership for major principles of leadership for areas that as leaders, we need to be.

[00:01:38] Focused on, we need to be equipped and we need to be skilled in, and then we're going to make a little bit of a shift and talk about decision making, get some thoughts around. Uh, team decision making, but I want to say welcome Paul. Good to see you. How are you today? Great.

[00:01:53] Colonel Paul Trotti: Great Bill is a great honor to be able to be here with you.

[00:01:56] Let's talk about leadership What an incredibly important topic to talk about to leaders, uh throughout our governments At whatever level whatever position they have so it's so good And thanks for the honor

[00:02:11] Bill Stark: Yeah, yeah, if you would for the folks listening, we've got city cities and county employees listening mostly Supervisors managers directors city managers county managers that we have some elected officials listening So this is a very unique local government group that's listening and you come from your career was in government It was in military.

[00:02:32] So if you don't mind if you could just rewind Whatever 30 or 40 years and give us just a quick flyover of your service To our country in the military. Okay.

[00:02:44] Colonel Paul Trotti: Well, I was originally from Georgia and went to the United States military academy at West Point, graduated there, was commissioned in 1973 as an infantry officer and served in a lot of places in the world.

[00:02:59] Germany, South Korea, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and a number of places in the United States. Participated with the 82nd Airborne Division in combat operations in Panama, Operation Just Cause from 1989 to 90. And later on with, uh, with the 82nd again in Desert Shield, Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

[00:03:27] As an infantry officer, I commanded companies, then an infantry battalion out of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is an infantry battalion, a task force, about a thousand soldiers. Infantry soldiers supported by all the other combat arms and took that to, uh, to the desert. As a colonel, I was a garrison commander of 13 camps from the northern tier of South Korea up to the DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone.

[00:03:55] Thank you. And, uh, I spent some time on, uh, major staff of, uh, Forces Command, which is the largest command in the United States Army, and got a great blessing to be able to serve our country in, uh, lots of different places, lots of different soldiers, lots of different times. After I retired from the military, I spent about 15 years heading up, uh, Human Resources.

[00:04:22] In three different companies, basically in metro Atlanta and in different industries. And after that, I spent about five years, uh, my own company called the to the top leadership and did leadership coaching. So, uh, it's a great opportunity here today to talk about leadership. I can't think of many subjects.

[00:04:46] It would be any more important for leaders as you all are to talk about and think about than leading our people to pursue those objectives and goals and missions that we all have. And I take my hat off to you because I know that in the positions you're in, You are at the grassroots level of all the things going on in our country, in our communities, in our counties, our states,

[00:05:11] Bill Stark: and thank you for what you do.

[00:05:13] Yeah, I wanted to ask you if you could touch on briefly your time at West Point where you were a professor teaching at West Point for a while. What was that like? And kind of inside that question, I'd love to know something else about your history. Before we get into these, these three Cs of leadership, I'd love to know who was a leader that you maybe most respected as you look back on your career.

[00:05:41] I know there probably were a lot of strong leaders in the military, but is there one that kind of stands out on a, on a particular area where he or she may have been a standout leader?

[00:05:54] Colonel Paul Trotti: Yeah, when I was a cadet, one of my tactical officers, uh, who is the, usually a captain or a major who is responsible for the training and administration of a, of a company of all four classes of cadets, about 150 to 60 as they go through the training, as they go through the schooling, et cetera.

[00:06:18] And a tactical officer that I remember the best was Major Mallory. Major Glenn Mallory. Fast forward about 25 years and Major Glenn Mallory was a Lieutenant General in the Army, an incredible soldier. But what made Major Mallory so awesome is that he was tough, very high standards, required us to do the things that we were supposed to do.

[00:06:48] But he also cared about us. He was there not to just write us up for demerits or, or whatever, but to teach us, to train us, to develop us. And he is a guy that when I was getting close to graduation and we were getting close to the time to pick our branch that we would serve in, and the branches in the Army are like the infantry.

[00:07:14] Or the armor, which is tanks, or the field artillery, which is cannons, or, uh, supply, order master, et cetera, et cetera. And I was pretty sure I wanted to be an infantryman. And I knew that Major Mallory was an infantryman. And so I asked him one day, I said, Sir, I also want to get married. I also want to have a family.

[00:07:34] I also want to be involved as a dad and a husband. Can I do that? Because I know that an infantryman, And then Truman's gonna spend a lot of time in the field, a lot of time away, and then more time gone for unspecified periods. And he said, yes, you can be a dad, you can be a husband, said in the infantry, but what you will have to do is make a decision so that when you are with the family, you're It is quality time.

[00:08:04] You're intentional about what you do. It can't be just you show up, you're there for a while, and then you're gone again. You've got to be intentional about being a dad, about being a husband. And the fact that he had thought about that, and he spent enough time, and we talked about that for a while. I loved Mitchell Mallory.

[00:08:24] He died a few years ago. Great, great soldier and a great, great leader. But those were good years. So I spent four years there as a cadet to graduate. And then, uh, I went back and taught an ethics course. And, uh, that was an awesome time. I taught ethics, uh, as a required class for cadets to take and also coached in the rugby club.

[00:08:53] Now it's, uh, one of the top programs in the United States with, uh, the army rugby program. It was in earlier days back then, but we had a great time. They had some great young, young men at that time, uh, that I got to coach.

[00:09:09] Bill Stark: Nice, nice. I want to transition over to the, these, these four areas of leadership. I know that you have spent a lot of time in, in leadership, leading other people.

[00:09:20] There are a lot of leadership skills at LeaderGov. We teach literally a dozen or two leadership skills, but I like the way that in your consulting business and leading an HR, and of course, probably for the military as well, you've highlighted four. Areas for essential skills. Uh, they all happen to start with the letter C.

[00:09:44] And so for our folks listening today, whether it's a frontline supervisor, all the way up to a city manager or mayor, I'd love for you just to walk through those communication competency. Compassion, and the fourth one,

[00:10:00] Colonel Paul Trotti: character. And I'll talk about those, the four C's of leadership. And really they are, for me, a model.

[00:10:08] There's nothing magic about them. You can talk about twelve different principles, you can talk about the ten leadership values. There's lots of stuff in different ways that different people have written or talked about leadership. I think having a model of some kind is helpful, just to be able to talk about all the things that you think that are important, and then to be able to go back to and say, okay, well, am I considering this?

[00:10:35] Have I thought about that? How does this influence or affect somebody else? So that's why I came up with what I call the four C's. And I will tell you that the most important of those

[00:10:46] Bill Stark: four, I was going to ask you, why is it the most, seems like competency would be up there pretty out, but you're saying, you're saying character outranks them all,

[00:10:56] Colonel Paul Trotti: well, all of them are either related because you can talk about one and bring each of the other three in.

[00:11:04] So it's not like each of them is a separate box is totally on its own. They're all very, very interrelated. So when I talk about character. I'm essentially talking about who you are, who I am, what kind of a person, what kind of a leader am I, what are my values, am I a person of integrity, am I someone that you can trust, uh, am I going to be consistent in the things that, that, that, that I do.

[00:11:35] I tell you or hold you accountable for if I'm your leader Those are the things that I look for in a leader to be a person a character and and for me Central to that is faith be a man of faith. What do I believe in what's bigger than me? Because if it's all about me You are going to follow it. If it's all about me, I'm not worth your following.

[00:12:02] So, character, I think, is absolutely foundational. Tied to character very closely, Uh, and it's, it's really a branching out from character because the character is going to determine that I should be also a competent leader. Am I aware of, trained in, capable of doing, am I getting myself better and better in terms of, of competence?

[00:12:31] My competence as a leader, my competence as a leader. The skills that the organization requires us to have, and which you're required to have within your job, if you're working for me. So, we've got to be confident, because if people don't think you're confident, they're going to follow you. If the boss doesn't know where he or she is going, I'm not going there with them.

[00:12:56] They've got to be confident. Communication. Absolutely essential. Absolutely essential. For more information, visit www. FEMA. gov I worked for a great CEO one time who said, you know, Paul, if I could get everybody in the organization, this was a, an international company. If I could get everybody though, in the same room for breakfast every morning, and we could talk about everything we did yesterday, everything we're going to do today and what our vision is for the future, and then took questions for the next hour or two hours and then send them back to work.

[00:13:30] There'd be somebody who'd say, you know, he's not telling us everything. So. Because people want to know. So communicate what you can. And be very specific about it. And that gets into things not just what you should do or how you should do it, but holding people accountable. It goes to establishing what your values are.

[00:13:51] Uh, people often will say, well, you know, the values are on the plaque that's on the wall as you enter the building. That didn't mean anything. Do you live, do you hold people accountable for, we would put 'em on our performance evaluation tools so that we talked about how we were measuring up to values or not measuring up to, to values in the workplace.

[00:14:14] And it's hard for me as the boss to talk about that or require that of you if I'm not reflecting those same things. So communication, got to talk, got to be, uh, you've got to think about what the people need to know. What they will want to know there will be things that you may not be able to talk about with everybody And people understand that generally but if you're as open as you possibly can be then they're going to trust you

[00:14:45] Bill Stark: Yeah, I was going to ask you the the the key there is Am I?

[00:14:50] Willing to share what I can share. And am I actively thinking about what do they need to hear right now? What would help the team from a communication perspective, get them from where they are to where they need to be. So it's not just the idea of communicating for communication's sake, although that's important, but putting some thought into what needs to be communicated, how, when, and those sorts of things, what I hear you saying.

[00:15:19] When we were

[00:15:19] Colonel Paul Trotti: in the desert. In Saudi Arabia, during what was referred to as Desert Shield, we were there preparing for what might happen if the Iraqis did not pull out of Kuwait. So we spent huge amounts of time training in the desert. Which is a totally different kind of environment than, than the jungle or, or most anywhere else.

[00:15:45] When I could, at least two or three times a week, I would get the battalion task force together and talk. Talk about what I knew, because, uh, the rumors were right, you know. Okay, they're gonna send us back to the states, or we got something happening. Obviously, because of security concerns and all, couldn't talk about everything that I knew.

[00:16:07] But I told them the things that I could tell them and answer questions about it. And then I would tell them, I can't talk about that. Uh, but because of that, I think we had a situation where people trusted that. And in the military, if you're the commander, you're referred to as the old man. The old man would tell us if he could, or if he knew.

[00:16:30] And, uh, so that was a very, very important that we establish that communication that goes both ways. So they would tell me, you know, I wouldn't know things that were bothering them or things that were, that were irritating to them. But I always think that that is so important. Uh, you know, a lot of people get wrapped around in the astral of, uh, okay, tell me everything is bad.

[00:16:54] A great person who's an employee or a great soldier, if you ask them that question, they'll figure out something to tell you that's bad, but I, I, I generally think. Let's don't create to despise to figure out what's bad, but if you have a relationship in which Communication is free and easy. They're gonna tell you if there's a problem.

[00:17:17] Bill Stark: Yeah,

[00:17:17] Colonel Paul Trotti: so communication absolutely key And finally the fourth C is compassion and I care about my people. Do you care about the people that work for you? And I don't mean a, uh, you know, we could talk about love, because ultimately compassion and the word and the structure in Latin talks about love. I can't love everybody, but I can act and treat people as if I love them.

[00:17:43] I can act and treat them as if they are creatures created by God and they deserve love. dignity and they deserve me to care about their future. I tell people that if you're not as worried about your subordinates being developed and promoted and being successful as you are about your own career, Then you're in the wrong job.

[00:18:11] That should be something that you are very concerned about. How do I develop Sally to be the best leader, manager, whatever it is that she's in that position that she can be certain she can go on and get developed? And some of that gets back to the character and telling the truth. If she is in a job that there is no step up from that, you should be honest with her about that.

[00:18:37] And can we train you for something else? And sometimes that's not a possibility. So be honest about it. Be honest about it. People want the truth.

[00:18:51] Bill Stark: Whether they like the truth or not. The thing about compassion and even faith, you mentioned faith there, is, you're right, not everybody on our team acts lovable all the time.

[00:19:06] There's some folks that, what we call drominators, they like to stir up drama. They're unhappy for some reason. They strike out, they create teams, and frack, uh, and, and, they, they break teams apart. And so, having a, I, I like what you said, having a, a, more of an eternal, more of a faith oriented perspective for those of you listening that have faith, because God certainly values those people more than I do.

[00:19:38] And if it's hard for me sometimes to disconnect my feeling, my negative feelings for the person, but as a person of faith, I'm called to something higher. I'm called to a higher standard of care and compassion. And so I really appreciate what you say, because it's easy for me to have compassion and empathy for people that are, are caring and kind and, and agreeable.

[00:20:05] It's hard for me to do that for people that, that are difficult.

[00:20:10] Colonel Paul Trotti: Well, I think really what we're talking about, it has been described in a lot of the books, a lot of the discussions about leadership as a sort of a leader, Bill. I also think that we have, use my French here a little bit, but bastardized that term some because we tend to treat it sometimes as if that's somebody who's just soft all the time.

[00:20:36] Somebody that's gonna love me whatever I do, let me get away with whatever because he or she loves me. I would say that that's really not what a servant leader does. Now, all those things, talking about compassion and caring about people, absolutely true. But a servant leader also is responsible for the organization, for profits, for success of the organization.

[00:21:01] And that doesn't go well with letting people, uh, be unaccountable, letting them not do their job. It's to hold people accountable. It's to reward them for great service, it's to give them credit for the things that they do, it's to, uh, promote them and develop them, but it's also to hold them accountable.

[00:21:23] It's also disciplining them when that's necessary. Yeah. And, uh, servant leaders do all of those things.

[00:21:31] Bill Stark: Yeah. So when you say compassion, uh, the word that comes to mind for me is empathy. Somebody, someone comes to work Monday. They're disheveled. Their eyes are red. They can't focus. They're out of sorts.

[00:21:44] Something's going on with this person. And do I simply look beyond that and just, Hey, we got to get the task, focus, task, task done today. Or do I pause and slow down and check in and say, how you doing, John? How you doing, LaShawn? Everything. Okay. And that's me getting outside of myself and what I need to do that day.

[00:22:09] And connecting with the person and maybe offering empathy or compassion. Is that what you're talking about? Or is something different than that? Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I've

[00:22:16] Colonel Paul Trotti: talked to the leaders often about what do, and we may talk about one of their employees, what about his children or her children?

[00:22:30] Did you know that they are in a sporting event tonight? Did you know that his wife is about to have a baby? Did you know that Her husband is in the hospital. Uh, we can't talk about those things. Those things, you know, off the hours, we can only talk about what goes on at work. Tell them that's ridiculous.

[00:22:50] When a person comes to work, he or she comes with a whole package. A whole package. And they're bringing the frustrations that they haven't known. They're bringing the issues that they're dealing with. They're bringing the problems that they've got. And so if they're having problems, you can't force them to talk about 'em, but fuck what's going on.

[00:23:10] I can tell you're upset about something. You okay? Mm-Hmm, . Nothing go wrong with that. Yeah, nothing wrong with that. Yeah. I've always been convinced that 40 force of the answer when a soldier or an employee is having troubles is the fact that you, listen, we talked about communication a few minutes ago.

[00:23:33] Never forget that communication is two way. Two ways. I listen as much as I talk. That should be my mantra as a leader. I'm going to listen to what Sally or Bob or Jill or whoever is thinking or saying. So important.

[00:23:53] Bill Stark: Yeah, which of these four, which one do you think Most people get tripped up on would you say that they tend to overlook or maybe minimize or not think about a whole lot and maybe it comes up to bite them bite them in the rear later

[00:24:09] Colonel Paul Trotti: and you could talk about character all day long because we can see leaders whether it's in government whether it's in public or private companies who are either incredible People of character or habit of character.

[00:24:22] I mean, that's all out there. In terms of specifics though, I think communication is very hard for a lot of people. Don't want to be up front, don't want to sit down and tell another employee, a subordinate, you're not doing the job here. They're afraid they're going to get sued or they're afraid it will make somebody angry.

[00:24:43] Communication is hard. We can never over communicate. And the other one is difficult is compassion. People think for some reason that that's personal. I don't want to get into how they're feeling. Today, I just want to get the work done. And if I get into a feeling I'm dealing with things that I don't feel very comfortable with, let HR take care of that.

[00:25:10] That's why I'm like when I was an HR executive, I would have leaders say, okay, I want to give a promotion to this person. I'll handle that. This one's going to get fired. Will you do that? I said, no, you're the leader. You are the leader. You do both the patting on the back and the kicking in the tail.

[00:25:28] That's part of your job as a leader. I'll be there with you. I'll coach you through it. We'll talk it through and discuss it, but you're gonna do that. You're gonna do that And and that's part of compassion too treating people the right way. How do I ultimately want to be treated? I want to be treated fairly But I want you to be honest with me, too.

[00:25:51] What could I do to get better if there are things that I'm not doing right? What am I doing right now that you really think is good? Tell me that. Always tell me that. Pat people on the back. Give them credit for the things that, that they have done. It's easy as the boss sometimes to say, Yeah, I'm really good.

[00:26:12] When it was Joe or Bob or Sally that did all the work, they made it happen. Give them the credit.

[00:26:17] Bill Stark: Yeah.

[00:26:18] Colonel Paul Trotti: It's incredible, you know, you could even look at that as, I mean, that could be self serving if it takes that to get you to do it, because when you give them the credit, what are they going to do? They're going to do even better work, right?

[00:26:31] Because they know that you are giving them the credit for the good stuff they're doing.

[00:26:35] Bill Stark: Yeah. We think about our leadership skills we teach, uh, and teamwork skills at more as human skills. We call it human skills. Yes. Uh, the task, the job, and the competency to do the job is, has human elements to it as well, of course, but we have to be skilled at the task we've been given and our technical ability, and we have to invest in that and get better at it, but for the most part, most of the other skills are all human related, and That's what

[00:27:10] Colonel Paul Trotti: so much of business calls the soft skills.

[00:27:14] And that used to always really irritate me because in a lot of ways,

[00:27:18] Bill Stark: those are the hardest. Yeah, they are the hardest. They are. It's uncomfortable for about half the population to have an interpersonal conversation about how you doing or how, why didn't that work out the way that we wanted it to? It's just that, that, that interpersonal ability is not natural in everybody.

[00:27:38] Now everybody can learn it. If they want to learn it, but it's not natural for everybody. And so we tend to shy away from the things that we're just not naturally good at. And so we've, and we've seen it come back and hurt, hurt people.

[00:27:52] Colonel Paul Trotti: I've had a lady that worked for me once that, uh, came in the door when she was a feisty young lady, she was a single mom, two children, 89 boy and a girl.

[00:28:06] And, uh, she came to the door one time and said, Paul, I've got to talk. And she came and slammed the door behind her. I said, well sit down, I'll use the name Jill, what's up to me, and said, uh, uh, what's up Jill? And she said, I want to know why you're asking me questions about my children all the time. I said, Jill, I know that there is nothing in your life that's more important to you than your children, when they're sick, how they're doing at school, their sports games, whatever.

[00:28:39] And so I want to see how they're doing. I want to see how you're doing, because I know that. That's so huge for you and I care about you and she said Okay, we never had another problem. I mean it was like It was that barrier of the personal side that for whatever reason She was afraid I was wanting to know for some, I don't know, reason other than I just cared about her.

[00:29:09] And maybe

[00:29:10] Bill Stark: you had never had anybody express care to her that way. Wow. And she was also employed. But once we had that conversation, it was amazing. Wow. I would like your, uh, your take on this topic of decision making and maybe collaborative decision making. In local government, a lot of the things that a leader has to do The leader needs to make a decision quickly, urgently, they don't have time to collaborate, get a bunch of input.

[00:29:37] But more often than not, the leader does have some time to collaborate with some of their team, maybe all of their team, to make the best decision for the team. So I would just, I know you all have the, in, in the military world, of course, you have a mission, Oftentimes there are decisions to be made in the moment there and you, you as a leader, make the decision.

[00:30:02] Sometimes you can, you have the time to afford to, to talk about it and get input. Could you just share some ideas that you have around, How to get good participation When you're trying to make a decision when you have time to do it with a few people or the team What are some thoughts that you have on really making the best of getting the team's input sort of a collaborative type decision?

[00:30:26] Colonel Paul Trotti: Well, that's a great question for a lot of reasons that in the military When you are leading an organization, generally you're leading an organization with a number of subordinates who one day will probably fill your shoes in your position. So everything that you do. Has an impact on developing them, training them to be in your position.

[00:30:55] Uh, I know that in a lot of companies, a lot of jobs, there's a lot of fear about, you know, knowledge is power. I don't want to share that because. I mean, you know, all the great things I know, I always think, uh, if you want the organization to do well, you want to develop those people and telling them as much as you can is generally important.

[00:31:15] So if you go back to the four C's, character, competence, communication, compassion, if you do those well, and I'm not talking about being perfect. None of us are perfect, you know four star generals read books on leadership And then they talk about because they realize that nobody is perfect. How can I get better?

[00:31:37] I can get better So if I try to model myself on those four c's of leadership I am building relationships with the people that work for me. And if I build relationships, what I'm trying to do, what I want to do is build trust. Okay. So now I have a team that's listening to me, tall, knowing that I'm going to make decisions on things.

[00:32:02] Sometimes I can talk to them about those decisions. Sometimes maybe because of the security of involved in it, which that doesn't have to be a government kind of thing can be in your company. You have certain things that you can't share with everybody because of company, uh, information or whatever. So some things I can talk about some things I can't, but if we build a relationship of trust.

[00:32:26] They know that I'm going to tell them the things that I can and I won't tell them the things that I can't. They also know that there are times when there has to be a quick decision and I don't have time to talk about it. So when I can, if I have built a relationship where they trust me, I could ask for their input on this decision.

[00:32:50] Let's talk about it. What are the pros and cons? How is that going to impact us? Do we have a time constraint here, this part of it? Is one or the other going to be more profitable in some way, whether that's building trust, whether it's making money, whether whatever it is. I want your ideas, I want your thoughts, uh, and I'd like for you to share that with me.

[00:33:16] Now maybe you give them a heads up on that and then give them a few days to think about it and bring them back in where you have the time to do that because they're going to think about it. They may talk to their spouse about it and then they're going to come back in if they trust you with some ideas about what you might do.

[00:33:37] All of that said, then it's important to do two things. One of them is giving feedback. Because if George over there has this great idea, and maybe everybody around the table is saying, Ooh, that was a great idea, but we don't use that. Why didn't they use that? What was I thinking in order to make the final decision?

[00:34:04] So giving feedback is very important. I appreciate that. This is all good stuff. There is nothing here that I'm going to hold against you. Everything I'm going to consider and where I can, I'll tell you how we use or how we didn't use. But ultimately also remember that if you as running this meeting are the decision maker, never forget that you are the decision maker.

[00:34:33] We have so many people today who also want a decision that everybody agrees on and then everybody gets Into a palsy where they can't do anything because they don't have uh, Everybody in a collegial way making decisions. Don't forget it who the boss is. That's right. Don't forget who the boss is Uh, we use all kinds of terms like well, i'm a people leader.

[00:34:59] Okay Okay, that's okay. But ultimately

[00:35:04] Bill Stark: I'm the boss. And, and you're responsible. Ultimately, I'm going to make the decision. That's right. Yeah. There is a responsibility that the leader does ultimately have. They, they have to be okay with, otherwise I think that's part of that competency. That's just sort of a core element.

[00:35:21] I have to take ownership that I have to ultimately make this. Do I need input? Yes. Do I want input? Sure. Absolutely. Sure. But I have to make the decision at the end of the day and live, be responsible for, be accountable for the results and not blame it on my folks.

[00:35:36] Colonel Paul Trotti: And think about what you have built all that team by opening up that discussion to them for their feedback, because one of these days, whether it's next year.

[00:35:51] Whether it's three years from now or 10 years from now, they may be trying to make that same kind of decision. And so what you put into it, how you made that decision and the ideas of their compatriots that they had will also be valuable.

[00:36:06] Bill Stark: Yeah. Yeah. We have so many unique personalities. So many unique perspectives, opinions, uh, that, that when we're able to get this, this outside opinion, uh, and, and input on decisions, we definitely want to do those leaders.

[00:36:21] This has been an awesome time of sharing and I appreciate your. Spending a few minutes with the folks listening. Local governments really are on the ground floor of what happens in communities all around the country. And literally hundreds of local government leaders are going to be exposed to this message today of, of leadership and these four important C's and the, the thoughts on decision making.

[00:36:47] So I want to just say, thank you for taking the time, investing the time to give back to other people. What you've learned and captured and observed over the years the many years you've been in leadership and until you're thankful for that to tell you thank you for that because It will make a difference in a lot of people's lives today as as we listen in this podcast.

[00:37:10] So, thank you. Appreciate it Yeah. Uh, anyone in local government listening to this podcast, if you have any topic that you'd like to hear us discuss in the future, feel free to reach out to us at leadergov. com. You're welcome to share your thoughts with us and we love serving you. We hope you have a wonderful day.

[00:37:32] Take care. God bless.