The Being vs. Doing Framework Leaders Are Missing

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:00:59

Welcome to Becoming Bridge Builders, the podcast where we bring together voices and ideas that help us connect across divides, lead with purpose, and create pathways to transformative change. I am your host, Keith Haney.

Today's guest is someone who is at the forefront of leadership development and personal transformation, Dr. Ryan Gottfansson.

Ryan is a cutting edge leadership author, researcher and consultant best known for helping organizations vertically develop their leaders, primarily through science of mindsets.

He is the Wall Street Journal USA Today bestselling author of Success Mindsets, the Elevated Leader and his new book, Becoming the Groundbreaking Science of Personal Transformation.

Ryan has partnered with top leadership teams and organizations like CBS Health, Deutsche Telekom, Experian, Nationwide Insurance, the Federal Reserve bank, and many more, elevating leaders and cultures from inside out. He's also a leadership professor at Cal State University, Fullerton. With research published in premier journals and cited thousands of times.

We welcome Ryan to the podcast. How you doing, Ryan?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:02:06

Doing great. Thanks for having me on. And you know, I think both of us love talking about leadership, so.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:02:11

Yeah, definitely. I'm definitely a leadership geek, so. But I'm gonna ask you my favorite question, Ryan. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:02:23

Oh, you got me on the spot. I think. I don't. I. Maybe I've never heard.

I'm sure I've heard it explicitly, but maybe it's a lesson that I've learned is that a healed person can have a more positive impact on their world.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:02:47

I like that.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:02:48

And, and so that's. That's kind of started to. Or, I mean, it's become a driving force in why I do what I do in, in helping leaders is.

Is I've learned that if we want to have the brightest, most positive influence on the world around us, we've got to do work on ourselves, heal our minds, our bodies and our hearts. And I just imagine as a part of our conversation that that will become, you know, part of our.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:03:14

So I'm trying a new question and you're my first test subject of this new question. What does it mean to be a bridge builder to you? And that is personally and professionally.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:03:28

Yeah. Right. So immediately the first word that comes to my mind is connection. But, but I just, it's. It's. I want it to be more than just connection. Right.

It's. It's a mutual benefit, beneficial relationship where they're. We are better off because we now have this bridge that connects us. And, and so this.

I love the idea that we, not only are we connected, but we're receiving benefit and we're, we're better because of it. So it has this elevating impact on us and our ability to kind of bring positivity to other and positive impact to others.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:04:09

I like that. And to be fair, the way I see bring a bridge builder is again, the word connection is so key to that.

But I like to connect even people who disagree and find some common ground. And so a lot of times with guests on my podcast, I'll bring people on who I don't necessarily agree with.

I mean, that's kind of a boring conversation. But I also want to find, like you said, common ground what unites us way more than divides us. And I'll find out through conversation.

If you're willing to be curious about things, you'll discover a lot more to people than you gave them credit for and a lot more to the issues that you may disagree with than you thought about.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:04:48

So, yeah, no, I love that. And if it's okay if I, you know, riffing off what you said and maybe deepening some of my thoughts on it is being a bridge builder. Right.

Is somebody who does facilitate those connections. And I agree maybe even people with different perspectives.

And I think one of the tools that they use to make those connections is to tap into and understand purpose and values of the parties involved. Because I think generally when we start to see people at the level of purpose and values, we have a lot in common.

Now it seems like it's the periphery elements that, that we may differ in, but at the core, at the trunk, our purpose and our values are generally things that we share. And I think the most, the people who have the greatest positive impacts, the best leaders, they lead from a place of purpose and values.

And I think that that's, I just imagine we have much more there in common than we don't.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:05:55

So let's talk about your book.

I love the word transformation because to me, I just did my dissertation on organizational change in congregations and I compared that to figure out what type of leadership style was most effective at managing change.

I went into with the premise that servant leadership would be the one that'd be number one, especially in churches, only to find out they were not the most effective. They were probably one of the least effective. The ones that were most effective were transformational leaders.

And so I'd like to dig into that with you a little bit about when you talk about your book is about transformation at its deepest level, about our identity, our mindsets, and how we navigate the complexities. Let's dig into that a Little bit more with your book about becoming better. What prompted you to write that book?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:06:46

Yeah, really good question. So I'm going to take you back. And kudos on your doctorate degree. Having one myself. It's a grind to get through this, that. So kudos for. For.

For making that grind. I. And I did likewise.

Like you, I did my dissertation on leadership, and I allowed me to study the last 70 years of leadership research and servant leadership, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, or are common things that we study in that space? And one of my main takeaways from that review was that most of the leadership research primarily focuses on answering one question.

And that question is, what do leaders need to do to be effective? And that's led to some really good answers. Right. We need to do these different transformational behavior things.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's some depth to that that I'm skirting over. But by and large, it's how we boil down that research, at least, is what do we need to do.

And that just didn't sit very well with me because I think that leadership is more than just doing certain things. It's about being a certain type of person.

And so when I took my job at Cal State Fullerton, it became my mission to explore what are the being, what's the being side of leadership. And what I've come to learn is that we do have two different sides of ourselves. We've got a doing side.

That's our talent, our knowledge, and our skills. And we need a doing side.

And in fact, our education systems, our athletic programs, our organizational development efforts, almost all focus on our doing side. But what seems to set really great people apart is not their doing side, although it can in some ways. Right.

We know who Tiger woods is because he's really great at golf. But Tiger woods also has a significant amount of controversy around him.

And the controversy that he has doesn't have anything to do with his doing side has everything to do with another side of ourselves, which I call our being side. And the being side. This is our character, our psyche, our mindsets, our emotional regulation abilities, and.

And that's the side of leadership that is most. That.

That side, the being side, is the side that is most important for leadership and leadership effectiveness, but it's the side that we focus on the least.

And so when I work with, with groups, you know, get on podcasts, that this is the primary idea that I want to bring forward, is that we have two sides of ourselves, our doing side and our being side. We typically focus on our doing side, but it's the being side that that really matters.

And so as I explain it in that way, does that make sense to you or do you want to add.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:09:42

No, it does make sense and I'm thinking about that because even when you mentioned just now the idea of leadership being about, is it doing certain things to get a certain result? You can take a servant leader and make him transactional if his mindset is what skills do I need to get this thing done?

And it can feel transactional even if you don't intend to be transactional.

Really your point of leadership, what are the give me the four or five steps I need to learn to be effective because it's really about getting something done versus the people I'm trying to impact, maybe in getting that done. So I like that how you added that little depth to it.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:10:29

Yeah. And I mean, if I can just riff off of the servant leadership idea for a second.

As I know from a theoretical perspective, servant leadership is more than just doing certain things.

But when we, when as a public, as a society, when we translate servant leadership research into a practitioner setting, we generally boil it down to, to be a servant leader, you need to do A, B, C, D and E. And oftentimes it involves, you know, let's just say the notion of caring or being empathetic. But being caring and empathetic actually aren't doing side abilities, they're being side abilities.

Our body and our body's nervous system has to have the capacity to be able to care more about others than we do about our short term well being. And, and that's a being side capacity, not a doing side skill.

And so that's where I think some of the, you know, as we translate research into practice, that some of the limitations that I think exist there.

But so I fully agree with the spirit of servant leadership, but I'm not sure we talk about it or develop it in the most effective ways because we focus typically on the doing side where we need to focus on.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:11:55

So to make my research more fun, I also added charismatic leaders or narcissistic leaders to it too because I thought, you know, how many, especially in the church, it's easy to find charismatic leaders who lead large churches because they draw people to this big personality.

And so I thought it'd be fun to compare, adding that little piece to it too, I want to dig into because you def, you talk about vertical development and horizontal development, so maybe define those two for us.

We talked a little bit about the other depth of leadership, but we can maybe bring more into this leadership component by talking about those two depths as well.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:12:36

Yeah, and we've laid a really good foundation for that. So if you've never heard of these terms horizontal and vertical development, I'm not.

I wouldn't be surprised because these are actually fairly new terms. They were coined about 13 years ago. And the reason why they were coined is because.

Is to separate that when we improve along our doing side, that's horizontal development. That's the type of development that we're used to. Vertical development is improving along our being side.

And so how you know these are going to look and feel differently, we are used to the horizontal development. Tell me what I need to know, help me practice some new skills. But. And that's horizontal development. We are used to that.

Vertical development looks very different. And I'm gonna. Let me talk about three layers of depth of vertical development efforts just to try to bring this to life.

At the surface level, these are things like meditation, journaling, gratitude, journaling, yoga, cold plunging even. And the reason why these are surface level is anybody could do them.

And, and the job that they do for us is we don't gain any knowledge or skills by doing this, but what we do is we improve our capacity to better regulate our body. And so those are some surface level. The next layer down, we could call them deeper level strategies.

This is oftentimes where I focus in the work that I do with organizations.

And this is when we focus on mindsets, we start to become aware of our body's programming, such as when I receive constructive criticism, do I get defensive or do I create space? Right. And that's, that's generally programming that we have built into our body. We either lean one way or we lean towards the other.

And one's better than the other. So if we can awaken to that, we can make some shifts. And, and so I focus on mindsets as a way to help people awaken to that programming.

And then the third, the deepest level, this is generally when we need some professional assistance.

It could be things like trauma therapy, for example, or even neurofeedback therapy are a couple of examples of probably not where you want to start, but where a lot of us, myself included, need to get to if we really want to upgrade our being.

And so those are just approaches and tactics that are less common, we're less familiar with, but if we can engage in them, they could be transformational.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:15:17

For those of us who grew up studying leadership styles, servant leader, transformational, what you're talking about really doesn't fit into a particular quote unquote leadership style. It is kind of improving the overall leadership capacity or the leader's ability to, to be successful at it.

What does this fit into the bigger scheme of identifying what your horizontal development skills are and then adding a vertical development to make you into what kind of leader. When you get done, say you improve both of these to the utmost degree. What kind of leader are you?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:15:55

Yeah, I commonly one of the terms that has historically been used.

I don't know if you're familiar with Jim Collins's book Good to Great, but in his book he talks about, he's got a framework, it's called the level five leadership framework. And he talks about level three, level four and level five leaders or kind of three, three of the level.

Level one and level two are more individual contributor than level three, level four, level five are more in leadership roles.

And one of the things that he comes across in this book is that great leaders, the leaders that have a great and transformational impact on the groups that they lead, are level five leaders. And so I leverage a lot of that language because research is interesting.

When you look at level three, level four and level five leaders, what research has found is that 7% of leaders operate at level three, 85% operate at level four, and only 8% operate at level five. And so very few leaders operate at that level. But when we could find them, they're generally having a transformational impact.

And I think when you think about stereotypical great leaders, you think about Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, even currently like Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Mary Berra at gm, you know, these are leaders that are these kind of level five leaders. They're high on their doing side. They're also high on their being side.

Now what's interesting to me is I as I've kind of studied these leaders is that it seems to me, you could correct me if you think I'm wrong, is that they're in the. When they are influencing others, they are not leaning on their doing side, they're leaning on their being side. And, and so both sides are important.

We need both. But if we really want to have a positive transformational impact, we really need to leverage that being side.

And I think those are some good examples to, to kind of demonstrate that

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:18:13

that's very helpful. So as a, also a researcher, I geek out on this. What was the most surprising thing of your research that stands out to you even today?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:18:26

So I'm going to lean a little bit more towards my Practitioner research that I do. So I do academic research. I also do practitioner research that's more connected to my. My consulting practice.

And I think one of the most surprising things that I found is I don't know if you're familiar with the difference between fixed mindsets and growth mindsets, but that's a pretty common kind of mindset pairing that that's out there. And that's one of the mindset sets that I focus on when I work with leaders.

And what I found is that if I'm in a room of 100 different leaders and I asked them, do you know, raise your hand if you have a fixed mindset, which is generally considered more kind of negative, I don't get any leaders that raise their hand. Right. And that doesn't surprise me. But what I found really interesting is I have a mindset assessment.

It's on my website, if you want to take it, to evaluate the quality of your mindsets. But I've had, you know, thousands of leaders take my mindset assessment.

And what I found is that in businesses, on average, 60% of leaders have a fixed mindset, as opposed to a growth mindset. And so I've just found that disconnect really interesting.

Almost all leaders think they have a growth mindset, but it's actually only 40% of leaders on average in an organization have a growth mindset. So that I found that really interesting.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:20:06

So what are some of the components of a growth mindset?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:20:10

Yeah, and really the distinguishing factor between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset is how do we. Well, I'll give multiple distinguishing factors. So one factor is do we believe that we could change our talents, our knowledge and abilities?

People with a fixed mindset generally kind of think we are who we are, and we can't really do anything about it. People with the growth mindset believe that they could change their talents, knowledge, abilities.

But where we generally kind of see it is when a leader encounters a learning zone challenge. Now, what I mean by a learning zone challenge is this is a challenge that we come up against that we are uncertain about.

And to get to a resolution, it's going to require us to kind of get to a place we've never been before. So we. We don't really have much experience with this challenge. And what I've found is that when we.

When leaders with a fixed mindset approach learning zone challenges, they avoid the learning zone challenge. And why is this?

It's because at a very deep level, their body is telling them, if you take on this challenge, and you don't succeed, you will be seen as a failure.

And so leaders with a fixed mindset, they tend to hold on to what's worked in the past, and they're reluctant to what might work better embrace what might work better in the future. A leader with a growth mindset, when they approach these learning zone challenges, and I'm not going to say they enjoy them necessarily, but they.

They're much more willing to step into them. And they recognize as they step into them, I might fail. And if I fail, that doesn't mean that I'm a failure.

It means I'm one step closer to being successful. And so what I find is that 60% of leaders, when presented with the learning zone challenge, tend to default back to what has worked in the past.

And then they're unwilling to embrace that learning zone challenge, largely because their body has a fear, and this is normal, that has a fear of looking bad or a failing. Whereas those with the growth mindset, they've developed the capacity to recognize if I fail, that does not mean I'm a failure.

If I fail, that means I'm pushing my limits and I'm learning, I'm stretching myself, and I'm learning and growing, and I'm going to be better off because of it. Did I articulate that in. In an okay way? Does that make sense?

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:22:48

Oh, that was. That was perfect. Yeah. Yeah, that's perfect. I like that. Um, so it's. It's really about.

It's more important that you keep moving forward than being afraid that I'm. That I can't improve.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:23:02

Yeah.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:23:02

And so, yeah, I like that. I. I run across that with organizations, too, where it's like, it.

Is it more painful for me to take on something that maybe that I could fail at, or is it just more comfortable.

Just stay where I'm at and just deal with the fact that I'll never actually achieve, you know, success, really, on organizational level kind of a thing.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:23:22

Yeah. And if we think about kind of leaders in churches, I think one of the challenges with leading in a church community.

You correct me if you feel differently, you're more the expert here. But most churches have.

Are steeped in tradition, and tradition has some really great aspects to it, but it could also be an impediment for learning and growth. And so church leaders have to walk a fine line and what we find.

And I'm not here to tell you where that line is and where to stand on that, but what I just found is that it is really common for church leaders to Play conservative and hold on to tradition when maybe there's opportunities to loosen our grip on tradition in order to connect better and more deeply with those in our, you know, within our stewardship.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:24:27

Yeah, no, you're right. My. My last book was about that. The. As I talked about organizational change, it was the struggle between tradition and having to adapt.

So you're still connected with your community, so you still want to keep what makes you you special and unique the core foundation of your beliefs. But there are things you can tweak and still not compromise your beliefs to do that. So, yeah, it is definitely a fine line.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:24:54

Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Not easy. There's a reason why I'm not in that role. So.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:25:01

So in your book Becoming Better, you have. You have a roadmap for a repeatable pathway for personal transformations. What are some of those key steps in that pathway?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:25:11

Well, I think at a really high level, if we want to elevate along our being side, we need to first learn what our being side is. Okay, we. We've talked a little bit about that. The second step is then it's really helpful to understand what our current being side altitude is.

And that's where I leverage my mindset assessment. I've also got a couple of other assessments on my website that are designed to help with that.

But I generally will use assessments to help people to awaken to their being side altitude. When we know where we are and we know what's possible, then it becomes clear what we need to do to get there.

And that's where I talked about the three different layers of being side development activities. And those are all things that can allow us to get from where we're at up to a higher level. So I think about those three steps.

Learn what our being side is, awaken to our altitude, and then do the work of elevating.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:26:13

I love it. Life is. And we talked about change and how difficult change can be.

How do you approach triggers and setbacks when you're helping people navigate that?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:26:25

I think, and I love. Right. The word trigger. Right. Because what we're connecting into is a trigger is something that generally is bringing up some emotions for us.

And when people are triggered, that means emotions have come up. And oftentimes what that means is our body moves into a position of self protection.

And that can be beneficial for right now because it helps us to feel better in this environment. But if we move towards self protection, while that may make us feel good, it may hold us back from learning, growth, and impact.

And so one of the Things I've learned about vertical development is vertical development is increasing our capacity to step into short term discomfort in order to create long term value in the world around us. So I kind of referenced this example earlier.

If we think of receiving constructive criticism when people get defensive, that's our body being triggered and then moving towards self protection and we get defensive. And that will make us feel good right now, but it holds us back from learning and growing in the long term.

And so, you know, it makes sense why people get defensive. But I would say it's not a very sophisticated response to that situation.

And if we can elevate along our being side, we will increase the sophistication by which we navigate the challenging situations that we encounter.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:28:04

So we've talked about the individual and the vertical development. You've worked a lot with major organizations. What does that look like in a corporate setting for the whole team to level up together?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:28:18

Yeah. So here's I think about it as you allude to in multiple different levels. Here's what I've learned about vertical development.

The vertical altitude of the leader sets the ceiling for the groups that they lead.

And so if we want to elevate an organization, if we want an organization to transform, we have to help our leaders to elevate the executive team, whoever that might be, to elevate. So generally when I work with organizations, I work with that start with working with that executive team and I help them to elevate.

Now here's what I've learned is as leaders elevate, their mindsets will change generally. And this is where 85% of leaders are most leaders. These are our level four leaders are focused on outcomes and results.

That's not what level five leaders focus on. Level five leaders, here's a term that I'll commonly use. Level five leaders are gardener minded leaders. Now gardeners know three things.

They know that they can't force a seed to sprout, a plant to grow or a tree to bear fruit. They can't force it.

Number two is they know that if they could create the right conditions, the seed will sprout, the plant will grow and the tree will bear fruit. And then third, the better the conditions, the greater the growth, the greater the yield.

And so when leaders elevate from level four to level five, they shift gears from being focused on outcomes and results to focused on gardening, making sure the environment is right for their people to thrive. And when the people are thriving naturally, the results and outcomes take care of themselves.

And so after I help organizations to or Leaders to elevate. Generally, I'm then next helping them to cultivate that environment that brings life and vitality.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:30:14

I love that.

So without breaking any confidentialities, is there a story that stands out in your mind of how you helped significantly change or transform a culture and the ripple effects throughout the entire organization?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:30:27

Yeah.

So one of the things that I do when I start working with organizations is I'll have their employees take my mindset assessment, I'll aggregate those results up to the collective level, and then we'll do some work for a period of time, and then we'll reassess the, the mindset levels. And so there's been multiple organizations that I've worked with and kind of done this work.

And what I've learned is even through relatively simple things, even just teaching them about the concepts related to mindsets like fixed and growth mindsets, what they are, and then engaging in some repeated kind of efforts to kind of keep these things top of mind to, to help them upgrade their mindsets. Over the course of six months, I've seen, it's common for me to see 20% swings in the quality of their mindset.

So for example, if we started where there's 40% of leaders have a growth mindset, it's really common for me to see at the end of those six months, 60% have a growth mindset. And that's when we see those shifts occur.

The way that I kind of describe what's going on in the environment is it's like the environment is coming to life, there's greater life in the system. And I even think, let's even talk about a church congregation, like, how do you measure life in the system?

There's probably a hundred different ways, but I, I just kind of imagine maybe one of the ways that you can measure life in the system is how loud do people sing? Right. If people aren't singing very loud when you sing hymns like it, it probably says something about the health of the culture.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:32:18

Right.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:32:18

But when there's life in the system, and I'm not saying that we need to have like, electric guitars and drums to have life, but when there's, when we're kind of singing louder, that that might be one indication there's more life in the system. And so what I find is that when we see these mindset shifts, we'll see indicators like that of, of life infusing within the system.

And, and that word that I used earlier is vitality starts to come about. And, and that's what's been really cool to see. I mean it's just, ah, it's really cool to see an organization come to life.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:32:57

Yeah. Because when I imagine you said that was. It's really about the joy.

When people are happy to be there, they're joyful, they like being around each other. There's an energy that you can't really measure, but you can feel it. They can't wait to get there. They can't wait not to leave.

I mean they're not like the first one's out the door so they're mulling around. There's just this, the sense of camaraderie, community that you can really sense when

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:33:22

it's, it's really good and it's not always like rainbows and butterflies.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:33:28

Right.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:33:28

So it's also we, because we are invested in each other and we're invested in the purpose that we have, we are more willing to kind of bring forward divergent perspectives and point of views. Now that doesn't always feel good, but we're okay with it because we know the value of bringing in those divergent point of views.

We will end up in a better place in the outcome, you know, at the end of things.

And so it is overall, yes, you by and large, it becomes more positive, but we become much more impactful because we're willing to kind of step into hard conversations in a pursuit of fulfilling a purpose.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:34:17

So what role does coaching play in the transformations you're trying to implement in organizations?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:34:23

Yeah, well, you know, we can see vertical development, growth being side growth without one on one coaching.

But what I know is that when we do have one on one or small group coaching, what we're able to do is we're able to get into the nuances of the individual's internal operating system. Right. So what triggers you, Keith? We all have triggers. What triggers you, Keith, are probably different than what triggers me.

And what triggers us generally is an indication this is a place in need of being side development.

And so when we're able to coach one on one or small group, it allows us to really personalize kind of these concepts and help them to do the being side development where they need it.

And so I think, you know, when you work at big groups and organizations as a whole, we see generally that, that growth and that movement, but we could really personalize it at that coaching level.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:35:28

Awesome. So I'm curious, what's on the horizon for you? What's the next, what's the next big thing you're excited about?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:35:34

Oh man. Well,: 2025

And I, I've written three books and I've never pushed writing a book. Right. I just kind of gotten to a point where it's like, ah, I have, I have got a book idea and I've got to write it.

So I'm kind of waiting around for what might come.

But what I, what I've realized is, is that ultimately these ideas and these concepts that we've been talking about largely being side development, it. If we engage in it, it is transformational. And I want to bring that to the world to a greater degree.

I mean, that's kind of why I'm on the podcast is I want other people to transform because they become aware of being side development. And so I've, you know, my mission for this year is to figure out ways to elevate this message to. So it reaches a broader number of people.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:36:37

Amazing. With that in mind, my other favorite guest from. My question from my guest is, what do you want your legacy to be?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:36:46

Yeah, I think since I'm talking to a leadership dude, I would love. One of the legacies that I would love to have is I would love to be seen as a pioneer of introducing being side development to the world.

Surely I'm not the only one and I'm going to need help, Right?

I'm not saying it's just only my job, but I would love to be seen as somebody who played a really significant role in changing the theory and philosophies around leadership development, because I think that that could be world changing.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:37:23

Awesome. So on season six, we have a new thing now, and that's a surprise question. Pick a number between one and ten. For your surprise question.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:37:31

Let's go with two.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:37:34

All right. No one's picked two yet. All right, if you got stuck in an elevator and were forced to listen to only one song, what song would you pick?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:37:44

Man, I think it depends on the mood that I'm in.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:37:48

Well, you are stuck in the Elevator.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:37:49

It's not an energetic song because I'm stuck in an elevator in a. I'll just give you one that. No, I'll give you one that comes to mind. It was actually like one of my favorite songs. It's like nostalgic to me.

And this kind of got a deep meaning, but it's. I don't know if you ever remember the song the Freshman by the Verve Pipe, but it was from the 90s kind of alternative.

But anyways, it was like my favorite song when it came out. And anyways, it's one that I feel like I could listen to and never get sick of, so that's why.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:38:26

Cool. You need that.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:38:27

Yeah.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:38:28

If you're stuck there for a while. Well, Ryan, thanks so much for sharing your expertise and you're giving us a roadmap to becoming better at levels.

Where can people connect with you, find out more about you, find your resources, your assessments?

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:38:44

Yeah, my website is a great place to go, ryangofferson.com, that you can find my books, my assessments like you said, and then I'm on all social media channels. But if you. I'm Most active on LinkedIn, so would love to connect with you.

And I'll even offer this up, Keith, to any of your listeners if they want to take me up on it. If you go to my website and take one of my assessments, I'd be happy to hop on a call and kind of talk you through your results.

So I'll leave that out there and would love to connect with any of you listeners. Appreciate you listening.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:39:16

Well, thanks so much, Ryan. That's great.

So for our listeners, if you want to dive deeper, pick up Ryan's new book, Becoming the Groundbreaking Science of Personal Transformation and explore his work, his tools and assessments. Links will be in the show Notes.

If you found today's conversation valuable, please subscribe to Becoming Bridge Builders on your favorite podcast platform, leave a review and share this episode with a friend or colleague who who's committed to growth. Together, let's build bridges within ourselves, in our teams and across our communities.

Ryan, thanks so much for being an awesome guest on the podcast.

Dr. Ryan Gottfredson: 00:39:52

Hey, thanks for creating space for me. I know that creating a podcast is not easy and you probably don't get enough. Thanks so huge. Thank you, Keith.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:40:00

Thank you so much, Ryan.