Today, our guest is Dave Lane. Dave is founder of Grove & Grain—which I love the name—Leadership. Grove & Grain Leadership. He is a business executive and leadership coach, a keynote speaker, and actually a fractional COO for a CPA firm. And that’s pretty much probably how I met him. He was with that leader of that firm out in Vegas at a conference we were all attending and got to meet them there, which is a lot of fun. And in addition to all that, I love Dave’s—I don’t know what you would say his tagline, his model—he tells everybody they’re “a force for awesome,” which I think is pretty cool. Dave, welcome to The Unique CPA. 

Yeah. Thanks, Randy. I’m stoked to be here. 

Yeah. Before we even get into it, I want to go, I didn’t even think about this, but I’m going to break down that “force of awesome.” Where did that start? How’d that come about? 

So yeah, decades. But it really took shape, I would say probably about 10 years ago. So I grew up on a board—skateboard, surfboard, snowboard, you name it, I was on it. And so like, “awesome!” was always like part of just my vernacular, but then as I was going through different life experiences and then going through a career, the “awesome” started to wane a little much and things just started to be less awesome, unless you had this hobby that you had time and money and energy for. But then, I have this belief that every single human being is unique and has gifts and we can learn from every single person and that’s awesome in itself. And so when you’re able to actually untap that, that is the force of awesome. Like when you are able to actually live in your true self, be your unique awesomeness, that is really cool and really awesome. So that’s how it comes to be. And I just want to get people excited about being themselves.

Yep, being themselves—that’s key because that’s where their awesomeness comes through when they’re able to be themselves. We can dig into that later I guess a little bit. But before we—and now I already sidetracked us once, which will happen quite often while we’re talking today, probably—but I introduced you and the company, but why don’t you dig a little deeper into what you do in Grove & Grain. And I want to hear where the name came from, but we can save that part for later.

Yeah. So what I currently do is I’m a business executive leadership coach, consultant, and fractional COO. And what I do is I help small to mid-market business owners and leaders and their teams, like, get unstuck from some sort of situation. I help them identify like what matters most to them and not just their business, but in their lives, and then operationalize and integrate that into the fabric of their company, and then orchestrate that monitor, measure it, and then I walk alongside them. So I’m kind of this trusted advisor, partner, person for seasons. And then you go and you flourish and live. So that’s what I do in a nutshell. 

That’s what you do in a nutshell. And then the name, where did that come from? Cause it’s really cool. 

Yeah. So the name is a picture word. And the name comes from an experience that I had with my wife, and I’ve always been fascinated with trees. So, I live in the Pacific Northwest, and there’s a lot of trees here. 

Yes, there are. 

But, it came from an image that I received, and I had this image of trees, and the roots are actually underneath the ground, are connected to other roots, and they’re connected to other trees. Now, when I look at a team, or a business, or an organization, like how strong that team or organization is, is basically by the strongest or weakest person. And so the whole team or grove—so the grove is a picture word for a team or an organization—needs to have like teamwork, team development and awareness. So that’s the grove. The grain is I need self awareness and self development. So the individual grain of a person and the knots and the different colors and the textures, that makes us our unique self. And so it’s a picture word of like, I need each other, like healthy leaders know that they need other people in order to be successful and move towards the vision that they have, and they need self awareness and self development. That’s where that name comes from. 

Nice. Well, when we first met, I don’t even know the month, whatever the month was, we shouldn’t even talk months because we don’t want to, we want to make sure when this comes out, I think it’ll be out fairly shortly.

Sometime last year. 

It was sometime last year! Exactly. I was telling you before we started recording, I think I’m a little out of practice right now. I haven’t recorded a lot lately. So actually you sat in a session that I did and I really appreciate that. But after the session, we started talking and we realized we have a lot of the same passions, a lot of the same ideas. Even I was looking through your LinkedIn posts before we started recording and I’m like, “He’s right. That’s spot on. That’s exactly everything you were posting!” I’m going, “Yeah, this guy gets it. He knows.”

Thank you. 

And so a lot of it comes from, you know, first off a few different things, but a lot of it comes from for me and that session I was doing was, you know, cultivating that people first culture, and I know people are a passion of yours, and helping people. And so why don’t we get into, you know, what that is—how do you see working with people and what do you try to do when you work with people to make sure that they are this force of awesome? 

Yeah. Well, so thank you for saying that, that I feel honored, that you just said that that’s, it’s hitting me. So how I do that? I’m going to go a little bit back of like how I got to get to do this. And so the reason, like the why, and we talked a little bit about this before we started recording is that there’s a large divorce rate in the United States, 51 percent I believe it is. The Surgeon General, I forget how many years ago, created this white paper that, you know, anxiety, depression, loneliness is on the rise, and it’s not stopping, and it’s going at greater rates. There’s a great book that came out for any parent out there, The Anxious Generation is a great book. Scary as all get out, but it actually is like it’s, you get to look at the mirror and you get to do something about it. 

Long story short, when I was about a year into my career at Intel, I had a mentor of mine that said, “Hey, look to someone about 10, 15 years older than you, that you can kind of emulate—take what you like from them, don’t take what you don’t like from them and try to emulate.” And I was looking around, I was searching and seeking, and I really had a hard time finding anyone—a lot of sickness, a lot of death, a lot of overweightness, a lot of divorce—and it was heavily engineering, as I was an engineer to start out with, and I just, I didn’t understand this. 

I’m going to rewind a little bit beyond that. I’ve come from a Holocaust surviving family, and I have had this question inside of me of how could people do this to one another? How? It just seems so far out to me. But if I go and examine and this is like years and years of therapy and other work, we all have the capability of actually doing that to one another.

That’s crazy. I mean, I guess I can probably see it, but man, just to think that can potentially be in everybody, it’s weird. 

It is weird. It’s weird, but we have choice. So that’s the part where we have made decisions over our lifetime that have moved us in a certain direction. And others have made other choices. So, we have choice. And so, I want to help other people recognize that they actually do have agency. And that’s where a lot of this comes down to is that and so I work with a lot of business owners and their teams and the leadership teams of understanding, okay, what do you really care about in your—not just your business—but in your life, and how are you making decisions based off of that? Are you afraid? And most people are actually quite scared to make decisions that are deep down in their heart and soul that they know is like, this is the truest sense of who I am, as it’s really scary for me because they’ve been taught, early on in life, that is actually dangerous for them to do. 

That’s crazy. I think I need you to clarify that. So people won’t make the decisions that they really should be making, because there’s a fear built in that they’re not supposed to? Is it a selfish thing? What is it? 

Right, yeah, so I mean, it’s a complicated thing to go and examine. Yeah. But so, follow me. The way that my, that I think about it is that, okay, If we’re working two thirds of our lives, divorce is at this rate, anxiety, depression is at the rate it is. If you go look at Gallup, McKinsey, Gartner, all the studies show that engagement is not good, that people are relatively unhappy, and I know that this is heavy in the accounting industry, and I know that’s one of the reasons why, like, your heart and what you’re doing, you’re so passionate about. But, like, if you go through that, we are making decisions to be successful and to move forward in something that was prescribed for us, not something that’s like deep down inside of us, and it is really personal. And we are afraid of that integration. 

So the integration, when we say that, like they can just, I mean, I talk about this all the time. You have outside of work passions. I want people to be able to integrate those passions into what they’re doing at work. Now, they can at some level, maybe they can’t at some level, but you, there are things, let’s do it this way: There are things you love to do and there’s things you’re good at. And then there’s things that you hate to do and there’s things you’re bad at. And so why not concentrate on those things that you’re good at and you love doing, and that probably somehow integrates into these outside of work passions you have because you love it. And so even if it’s an inside of work passion, it becomes an outside of work passion because you love doing this. And so, people just don’t see that this is the path they should be on. Am I on track? 

Yeah, you’re getting on track, yeah. And a lot of times, people aren’t actually taught these things, that it’s actually possible. 

Alright, alright. 

So, that’s another element of this. Is that, fortunately, like some people are taught these things: Like, hey, you have certain passions in life, you have certain skills, and go marry that with a career. Go marry that with hobbies or whatever. And that’s awesome. But some people don’t have the luxury of figuring those things out. Now, this isn’t just about matching passion with skill set. This is also understanding, like, at the truest sense of who I am, I’m living that out and expressing that through my work, through my hobbies, through my relationships, in all aspects of life. And so, when I work with clients on this, I show them a model: This is my coaching model. It’s that leadership starts with self leadership. So we’re first going to examine yourself, then, do you have a family? And then, do you have a team? And then, do you have an organization? And then, do you have a community? And so it works outward. It’s inward to outward work. And that’s how this has to start. Because you could start at the third rung on that, it’s only going to go so far, and it’s not going to be sustainable.

Right. And then, so, if they do this, if they start with themselves, and I love that, that eventually leads them into a leadership—they’re already in a leadership role, let’s say—and now they’ve used this skill that they just learned that, hey, I need to work on myself first and then, you know, expand out that circle or however you look at it, the next step along the way. How does that—I’m excited and I can’t get the words out. How does that—how do they pass that on to the people they work with to help them do that same thing? 

Dude, love your question. Yeah, ’cause it’s only so good if like, it only goes so far if it’s just you. Right. You gotta like, we’re meant to be in relationship with other people. That’s how we are created. And so this actually comes into a lot of the work that I do with clients and that a lot of the work that leaders, I actually try my best to like, I don’t know if it’s preach or whatever, but it’s like, “Hey, people are following you, and you need to think about the relationships that you have and manage that intentionally.” And so this is not just about leadership development, it’s relational development as well. And so you actually have to be intentional about how you do that. 

It’s like, okay, I’m, my cup’s getting filled up—great. Now, how do I go fill up other people’s cups? How do I make sure that this team is as well functioning as possible and that we know each other and we understand When Sally or Joe are having an off day, we know what that means and we know how to actually support that and step in. And then when we seek out a vision or a goal for ourselves, we know how to coalesce and debate and have conflict, and then move in a direction that is Most beneficial for the greater good. 

And I love what you just said there, because we actually just talked about that this past week in our company annual state of the union address, where, you know, we had something out there that kind of shows that we, hey, we want to be this cohesive unit and, you know, all work together and avoid—and it didn’t really say avoid conflict, but it kind of looked like that’s what we were trying to say. And so we clarified that right away: No, we understand. We want a diverse group of people working here because one, we all learn from each other. You all have great ideas. If everybody was a clone of me, we would go nowhere. And so having this diversity, like you think of DEI, diversity, but in addition to that, diversity of mindset, diversity of faith, diversity of ideas, diversity of skills, diversity of passions of whatever. And when you put that together, everybody’s going to have a different idea. You know, is that conflict? No, I think we don’t want conflict to the level that people are screaming at each other, but conflict, because there’s a difference of ideas and somewhere in there is the perfect—or at least as close as you can get to what we need to be doing. So do you teach that when you’re with groups? I mean, this conflict discussion you have. I want to hear more about this. 

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, ’cause we deal with conflict every single day, like a thousand times a day. And conflict really is just your needs or expectations not being met, and conflict arises. And it can be at different levels. And this is where I actually teach the majority of my clients, this one tool called “Listen, Reflect, and Ask,” and that’s something that I learned from my colleagues back when I worked at Intel, my coaching colleagues. And it’s a fundamental coaching model. And so when you’re in this conflict, like how are you actually listening? Like most of the time we are actually listening to respond, find the hole. You know, give our wisdom out there. 

How do I make them think the way I’m thinking rather than listening?

Correct. Yeah. And so when you’re in conflict, like, and this is where I teach them not only to use this for other people, but use it for yourself. So are you listening to the voice inside your head? Are you listening to what you’re feeling? And how do you reflect that back, not only to yourself, but to other people? And then how do you ask an open-ended question that furthers the conversation? 

Alright. Say it again: listen—wait, the three things?

It’s “Listen, Reflect, and Ask.” And it’s a circular thing. And so, this is a fundamental coaching model. So all coaches will use this type of model. 

No, only you. In my mind, it’s only you. [laughter]

[laughter] Yeah, I hope it’s not just me. If it’s just me, then, oh boy, that’s a problem. No, it’s not, it’s not just me. 

Okay, yeah.

But in conflict, so there are certain steps. There’s always the nonviolent communication where it’s saying, I feel that when this happens, like in trying to put yourself on a balcony. You know, third person language. And so you go to a third person. It seems like we’re, or that this situation it’s happening and here’s what I observe and blah, blah, blah. What do you observe? And then you put it on the second person, like. What do you think? And then you go into here’s what I need. So there’s a method called 3-2-1 for conflict resolution, where it’s third person perspective, second person, and then you, your first person voice in that. 

Yeah, I’m probably, I think I’m okay at this. I think I wasn’t in the past. And, you know, we started a new service line about four years ago. And we were, you know, it was, a little bit of like, “Hey, we got to build this out. We got to figure out how this work.” And I kept like saying, “No, I’m right on this,” and then I sat back and then, so it wasn’t, I guess I reflected, but I didn’t reflect immediately. And then after a few weeks, I’m like. “You know, they’re right. They’re sending us down the right path by what they’re saying.” And it took me forever—well, forever—two weeks to realize that. But I was, I guess, proud of myself that I did. Like, okay, I don’t have to be the one with the answers. We have so many smart people here and they have better ideas than me. And that was a huge, kind of a light bulb for me. 

That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s awesome that you, yeah, you experienced that. So that you showed vulnerability to your team. It took you a couple of weeks, and that’s great. A lot of times, people don’t do that at all. And so, what I believe is that, like, could you create a culture where that two weeks turns into seconds or minutes?

Right. And so, that, I think we’re pretty good at that. I honestly I’m not that active with our team that much because I’m out on an island a little bit, just out speaking all the time. But when we are, it just seems we’ve progressed so much and we’ve integrated EOS. And I think that helps with stuff. And EOS has a version, I’m going backwards now, but a version of that love it, hate it, bad at it, good at it, that EOS has their own version. I like this one because it’s a friend of mine, Sean Duncan told me about the love it, hate it, good at, bad at. And so one thing, and I guess I’m going backwards here, but one thing that I’m saying that we need to do internally, and I do presentations now, and I urge people to do this is, and this is kind of the vulnerability you just talked about, is take this self-assessment, very simple, list all your tasks, go through it, find the love it, good at it, find the hate it, bad at it, and then, you know, obviously one of them is where you want to spend your time, the other one you delegate, eliminate, automate, outsource, whatever it is.

And so now what I’m saying, to us internally and to people when I’m talking about this, when you do that, do it for yourself first, but then share the results with people, you know, because people are going to be afraid to take this self assessment because they’re not going to want to say I’m bad at something and they’re not going to want to say I don’t like something. But when you do that and you find the things that kind of like you’re saying, you know, finding your true self, when you find your true self and your true passions, there’s gonna be people that fall in this, you know, bad at it and hate at it that you don’t like that, but they love it and are good at it, right? And so when you do this now you just find people’s Happy spot with what they want to do at work. Sorry. I’m going on a tangent now. 

No, you’re spot on. You’re spot on. And I think it’s a little bit of a tangent, but I think it’s related to all of this where my mind goes with this is, so we were talking about vulnerability.

Yes. Vulnerability is the whole point. 

Yep. If I can get the red thread through it’s vulnerability. 

Yes. Yep. 

Now I’m going to share a story. So I was part of a large leadership development program. We ran over 300 people through it and the impacts were in the tens of thousands across the globe at a large global Fortune 100 company. What we started doing was that each leader that was part of this program in our cohorts, there were cohorts of 10 to 12, but they each received one-on-one coaching. What we did at every single cohort session and every single one-on-one coaching session was that we did an emotional check in with them, where we actually provided, we used a tool called the Mood Meter, which Marc Brackett from Yale created, wonderful tool and it provides you language of, what am I feeling? And it was as simple as that. It’s like, we just want you just do a one word check-in. That’s what we called it, one word check-in, of how you’re feeling, how you’re showing up. And they would just say, what they’re saying. Spitball. And that just provided this little air, like room to breathe. Like, “Oh, I don’t have to hide this in that I’m really frustrated. Just like, cause I just got out of a meeting and the vice presidents just reamed me. Like I’m fuming inside, and now I have to show up to this.”

And so how often do we go through our days where we’re actually just like we’re holding on to this thing and so like you’re in conflict, you’re trying to come up with this new idea or this new membership service or whatever, and you’re feeling this like uneasiness, but you hold it in, you hold it in, you hold it in. And if a team and a leadership team had that practice. It was, it was like, “Oh yeah, I just want to do a quick check in 30 seconds. That’s it. Based off of this member service line. What are you feeling? Go.” And then it’s all it is, is data. It’s just data. 

Right. But this, I like the idea of this because we have, and they wrote me in and to getting involved in an L10 meeting recently with our EOS. At the beginning of that, everybody shares a, hey, you know, tell us a personal positive from the last week and a business positive from the last week. I think adding to that the mood check in is probably not a bad idea just to see where everybody is going into this meeting. Would that make sense? 

So, with the CPA firm that I’m working with, we are implementing EOS ourselves. We do a level 10, L10 meeting. And the thing that we are recognizing that we’re missing—and the EOS is amazing. It’s wonderful. But it does leave this stuff out a little bit. In my mind, I think that there’s room to provide a space for this, but this requires a certain level of emotional maturity from the people in the room, right? And so that’s the thing that I think is, it could be a little bit dangerous. And so that’s where having a coach or a consultant that’s walking alongside with you that can hold that space, provides that value of like, hey, you’re going, like, we said 30 seconds, we said one word check, and you gave us 10. We need to move on. Like, can you respect that for everybody? 

And that is kind of like what the L10 leader’s role is, too, to keep it on track, I think. I’m not fighting the EOS, I think it’s good. I just, like I said earlier, I stay in my own lane. And so when they got me in this, I’m like, alright, sure. It’s our marketing and sales L10, which I’m actively involved with marketing and sales. So that makes sense, but yeah, it’s good. So, all right. I’m going on a tangent now. So are you enjoying the EOS implementation? 

I am. So I was a trained engineer and I like process, I like structure. It provides—it’s helpful. My nature is not that like you and I could probably I’m like, can I just get on a plane and fly over and let’s go hang out like all day long and just see where that goes, but that’s my nature.

Me too.

But I know that it is really good for me to have this structure in place and I know that just look at the statistics of businesses, how they fail, it’s mainly because of poor structure and process. And so we are a very small company. It’s a collective CPA and advisors, very small as a seven people total, but there’s a plan for large growth. And we know that we need to put structure in place in order for us to be able to not just go insane. Like the culture and the values that we have are so like, they’re very people oriented. And so we want to make sure that we are living that out, and we know what got us here is not going to get us to the next step, and EOS, I believe, is helping us work through that. 

Yep. I can see that. Are you finding conflicts with EOS and what you’ve thought, you know, like helping people find their true selves, and you know, people and their families are important, and business comes in, and is there any conflict with what you have traditionally believed and thought and implementation of EOS?

No, no. I’ve gone for, from my experience: So started as an engineer program management, then I ran product teams for a long time, and then I became an internal executive leadership coach. This was all at Intel corporation. And I’ve gone through these iterations where I’ve seen these organizations, I worked in little startups inside this large company, and we just like, we’d start it up and grow it, and then, you know, until we make certain decisions, blah, blah, blah. But I’ve seen where you don’t have this structure in place, and it is, it not only doesn’t work well, it’s, it just, it sucks to live in it. It just sucks. And so like that, like when I go back to the force of awesome part, like that force of awesome is pretty low and we need it to be running. 

Yeah, no. And I agree. I think that’s why they kept me out of EOS at the beginning because, I am just a seat in my pants kind of guy and just go do what I want kind of guy. And the structure has never been my thing. But I realized that, and then seven years ago I gave up managing partner role one, a little bit of a struggle, but I knew it wasn’t my role. And just, I wanted to bring this up because Andy, who started Tri-Merit with me, is an engineer and when he became managing partner, it was the processes and the procedures and the KPIs and all the stuff that we needed that structure, you know, we grew nicely and, you know, at the beginning, but we took off once we got all that in place. So it’s extremely important. 

That’s awesome that you can recognize like the differences in your personalities and giftings. Yep. And that how you’ve helped and how he’s helped in other ways. 

Yeah. Well, I like to take credit though, even though he got all this process and procedure in place, it was me getting out in the field that really caused the growth. It’s a combination, obviously. 

So, alright, we got off track a little bit, even though I took us off track. Let me get us back on track to what we were talking about. So let’s get into the whole, you know, why is it so important to really, you know, identify your true self and help others do that. And then, you know, bringing that to a team. Why is all of this so important? 

Yeah. So if I’m speaking from like a business money perspective, this is lost revenue, this is extra expenses. And so when you look at other like surveys, I think I already mentioned some like Gallup, McKinsey, Kartner, all those things, they show like what this is actually costing industry. I mean, it is a thumb in the air, but it’s a general, like, estimation—it’s pretty educated on that. What I’ve experienced in the past is I’ve worked with a data scientist and we actually looked at measuring the, you have this goal and you’re going to work towards it for a certain period of time. And then we looked at like how much revenue was gained through working on that operational costs and cost savings, as well as retention and promotion rates, and what we did see was like at this company that we saw that is contributing about $1 billion annually to the operating margin. And we’re like, whoa! Like we were shocked by, by this, it was a $75 billion business, but $1 billion, like, that’s not chump change. 

I’d take it. Yeah. 

And so when you look at it from a business, we’re like, we can crack the nut and we can prove the ROI of this. So just from a business perspective, it is good business. When you think about it from like a personal human element, like we are meaning-making machines. At the core, like we, all of us want to be understood, we want to be seen, we want to be loved. If I am not living in my true self, then I can’t love me and you can’t either. And if you can’t do that, then vice versa. And I can’t see you, I can’t understand you, I can’t love you. And I’m going to make up stories in my mind because we’re meaning-making machines that’s not actually true. And so we’re going to move in this direction that’s just kind of mumbled and jumbled. And wouldn’t it look better, or wouldn’t life be more adventurous and fun and joyful and delightful, if we actually figured that out and help one another do that, too?

Yeah. I think I may have read this when I was doing that presentation you were at, but we have a culture code and one of the things is that, you know, allowing people to be their true selves at work. And to me, that’s so important because if you have hide who you are, or you don’t, you can’t be yourself, like you said, one, you can’t build a relationship because I don’t even know who I’m talking to because, you know, and so being your true self at work, I think is so important. 

Yeah. And this kind of, this is very personal. And most of the time when you find this is that you hide yourself. Like I’ve hidden myself in certain situations, because there’s a root fear—we all have a root fear that’s associated with some sort of experience that we had early on in childhood—and so my root fear is I am most afraid of being rejected and cast out. I’m pretty sure I know where that comes from is that I cut it comes from: me coming from a holocaust surviving family, as well as when I was about two years old, I was hospitalized for asthma, and I was set in the hospital room by myself. And I remember being alone and I remember nurses coming in, and I was like so excited that someone was in the room and I would like act out just to get attention and I would get yelled at and so rejected. And then I’m just, and then I’m alone again.

And I’m the youngest of three children. And so the fear is that, but you have to ask yourself, well what, like that experience happened, but it’s only like partially true. So what was really true about it, the truth was right, is that I wasn’t cast out, I was sick. And they were trying to do the best that they could. And my mom and dad were taking care of my older siblings. And so, I was not fully alone. When you go through that, and then you ask yourself, well, okay, through my life experiences, every single human being has had that experience where like, whoa, things just light up. Like, I feel so much joy, like, excitement, energy towards this thing. And it’s usually, for me, it’s like around being courageous. And so it’s really around like saying the thing or asking the question that pierces through whatever the matter is. And so, that’s really when you go back to this like when you understand those things like we carry those things, every single human being does carry those things. But how is it actually impacting you, right now, today?

Yeah. We gotta do some psychoanalysis on me and see why I am who I am, I guess. What with this childhood thing, I may be lying, but I honestly feel like I love everything I do and I love everybody I do it with. So, I think I’m in a spot where I think you want to try to get everybody to. I truly believe I’m in that spot. 

Yeah. It seems that way. It seems that way. 

Yeah. And so I love it. So, okay. So your goal is to get everybody like where I say is still, I mean, probably not your goal, but I say I live at the intersection of my passion and my skills. And that’s a beautiful place to be because it’s just, as you, the word you said earlier, there’s joy. People energize me, and I’m talking to people, so.

Yeah, yeah, it’s fun. 

Alright. I already went on another tangent of your, telling us why this is important. 

You’re good at tangents, Randy. 

I was talking to a speaker coach, speaking of this. I’ve never dealt with a speaker coach before. And I’m like, okay, maybe I should understand. And he was actually in that session you were in. ’Cause I often say I go on tangents and he said, stop saying you go on tangents, ’Cause what you’re saying is relevant to what you’re talking about. 

Totally. I agree. Just let it flow. So you say like you’re in this place where you love, but like you, you say that you have these, “Sorry, sorry,” I mean, you’re apologizing for these tangents. 

I do.

I’m like, well, what’s that about? 

Well, I think now I’m going to psychoanalyze myself. I want… I want everybody to love me. And so maybe I’m afraid that they don’t like that story or something. I don’t know. 

That could be. And what is that telling you? So like you’re afraid that I, so I’m here with you, that you’re afraid. 

Oh, that’s the rejection thing. I’m afraid of rejection. That’s what you said, right?

It could be, yeah. 

Alright. We’re going to have to work on this. No, I don’t want to. I love where I am. [laughter] I don’t want to find out anything else. 

So here’s the other part about, about this. Is that, so, and this is where I, why I love coaching, why I love what I do. This is just information for us to move forward on with, you know, like we’re not going to, you don’t stay in there and just like sit in it, you’re going to look at it and you go, how does this inform me about myself and my situation? And what do I need to do to move forward? Like what’s the next best step? 

Got it. Alright, so I think we’re about time to wrap up, but because of all these non-tangents that went on, they were not tangents, they were relevant parts to the discussion. I understand that now. We went in different directions. So I want to just kind of summarize the whole, Hey, you’re going to get in, you’re going to work with people to find their true selves. That’s going to lead them to doing with others. That’s going to lead team building. That’s going to lead to business development, and growth, and success. And so let’s just, you summarize that whole path that I know that’s a lot in one, as summarization that, that you’re looking to do when you work with.

Oh, totally.  Yeah. There is a methodology to this, like, believe it or not, like there is an actual structure to all this. And so when I first meet with somebody, whether it’s an individual or a team, it’s a coaching call. It’s a complimentary one hour complimentary coaching call where you’re going to experience coaching. And we’re going to try to uncover what the challenges that you’re facing, what your goals are and like, who are you and if there’s a good fit. And that’s individual or team. And now that it might be follow up conversations, and usually when there’s a team or an organization, there’s always follow up conversations because there’s more people involved in yada, yada, but you walk through like, what is the challenge, and more times than not, the challenge that’s presented is not the real challenge. It’s usually a layer or two below that. And so you work through that.

But then through the whole process, there’s always, and it really, I do this dependent on the person or the team or the organization: What are your values? What’s your culture? What are your goals? Like, what do you hope for? And so we start there. And depending on how vulnerable people are, that tells you a lot. And so depending on that, then, we’ll go through certain assessments. So I use a few different types of assessments. but then I also have some great programming. One’s called “Five Voices for Teams,” another one’s called “Five Voices, Leader Academy.” And we go through this, 6 to 10 month programming as a team where you will not only understand each other’s voice, what’s it like being on the other side of you, but you work through conflict situations and you’ll work through aligning how you are operating and moving in a direction and really understanding each other, like at a human-to-human level that enables you to do more of that performance, like the EOS that we’re talking about, like it’s just, it’s like rocket fuel for all of that.

So that’s at team level, but the one on one coaching level, understanding each other. Then you work through, like, here’s your goal. And we work typically in a six month duration of first, like inner work, outer work of like, who are you? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? And then we go through 360 feedback from other people, because this is just your perspective telling me, let’s hear it from other people of what it’s like. And then we work and develop a plan to build on that you can execute and monitor and measure throughout the whole coaching engagement. It is really, really, really, really, really fun and sweet, and I love getting to be a part of that with people. 

Nice. Is there ever tears involved? 

Sometimes, yeah. Depending, yeah. I mean, we’re talking about…

…Well, I like tears because there’s vulnerability there. 

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, for me, I guess it’s just my style, and like that statement, “You are a force of awesome.” And so I try to show that first. And so leaders, and if you are a leader of any organization, the team is only going to go as deep as you go if you are the top leader. And so in a coaching relationship or a team coaching relationship, at first, I am the leader. They’re looking at me as the leader, and so I need to set the depth and the breath with them, right? 

Nice. Well, you are a force of awesome. 

Thank you. So are you!

Nice. Alright. Well, before we finalize everything. I, there’s got two final questions I need to ask: first, because you are more than what you do at work, what are your outside of work passions?

Yeah. Being married. I love hanging out with my wife, my two kids. I have a 10 and a half. Oh no, almost 11 year old next month, son, Connor, and then eight year old daughter, Emma. And we’re always adventuring and figuring fun, cool stuff out. When I am not doing that, golf is like, is my thing. It used to be snowboarding, but snowboarding hurts a lot more, and golf, I love golf, and it’s, you have to be out in nature, it’s always in a beautiful spot, and it’s always challenging, so yeah.

Yeah, okay, so it’s good to hear you have more than just work, which I assumed you did. 

Oh totally. There’s a list more, there’s a guitar there too, I play that. 

Yeah, I did see, I saw the guitar, that’s nice. I have two guitars, but I can’t really play them. I mean, I can strum, I can do a few things, but it’s been, 50 years since I took my first guitar lesson and only did that for about six months and then did it again when I was about 40 for about six months. I can do it, but man, I’ve got no musical ability that I could tell. So it’s still fun. Alright. And then last question: Really awesome stuff, you’re—oh, I use the word awesome—stuff that you’re doing out there. If people want to hear more or see what you’re doing or get ahold of you, what’s the best places for them to look or see?

Yeah. Two places. One, you can find me on LinkedIn, Dave Lane Coach. The other is that you can go to my website. It’s www.GroveAndGrain.com – G R O V E, and, A N D, Grain, G R A I N, dot com. I know it’s a mouthful. And also there’s another—I talked about the Listen, Reflect, Ask model. Yeah. So you can go to GroveAndGrain.com/lra, you can sign up and you can get a free download of like, of a PDF of what I just talked about. And so I like to give things away like this because this is, I hope it’s not just me. Like you said earlier, you were kind of joking about it. 

Yeah, it is. That’s a motto of mine is share your knowledge, and so that’s awesome. 

Yeah. 

Well, Dave, I knew this would be a lot of fun. I appreciate you being on here and hopefully we’ll talk again before long. 

Awesome. Randy, thank you so much for having me. You are a force of awesome. And all those listening, believe that you are a force of awesome too. Let’s go!