Trust Leaks Through Tiny Choices

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Dearless nurses, you know, like here is something I have noticed after enough conversations with people who have built and lost and rebuilt things. Yes. So nobody ever loses the trust in one dramatic moment. It leaks out whitely on one small compromise at a time until one day the room just doesn't believe you anymore. And yeah. And by the time you notice, the damage is not even about that one decision. It is all about the one or the ones before it that nobody was counting in, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:38

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

So welcome back, dear listeners, to Mind Meets Machine. I'm your host, Avek, and today we are sitting with the foundation underneath leadership itself, the part that doesn't show up on a quarterly report, but quietly decides whether everything else holds or not. And yeah, my guest has spent decades building companies, writing books, and studying exactly what separates people who earn lasting trust from people who only look like they have it, right? So please welcome my guest, Dr. Rawson. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I appreciate that introduction. Thank you. Yeah.

unknown 1:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

And dear listeners, like be with us because we'll have a very, very great discussion because today's topic is very, very important and a lot of information we can have from Dr. Rawson. So it's we will be talking about the foundation of leadership and at the bottom line, like character plus integrity, which is equal to the credibility. So we will have a discussion, but before we get deep dive into it, I'll quickly love to introduce with Dr. Rawson. So he is a president of the Las Vegas Television

A CEO Story About Respect

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Network and the founder of the CIC Leadership Institute, built around a simple but demanding uh equation, which is character plus integrity, which equals to credibility. So he's launched over 30 companies and spent his career watching what actually holds leaders up when the pressure hits, right? So I do not want to take much of a time to listeners. Let's get started because there are a lot of things to discuss today. But yeah, welcome to the show again, Dr. Rossman.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Thank you so much. I appreciate the introduction.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Yeah. So so I mean, before we get into the framework itself, like uh I'm I'm curious about the person behind it. Like you have uh you have launched more than 30 companies written across the children's and adult books also published hundreds of articles. So there's a lot of ground. So from there, like, what is the actual thread which is running underneath all of it? Like the thing that made you start asking this particular question that about the character and credibility in the first place. So, what do you say?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Well, I'll tell you. I've been a CEO since I was 21. My first company was literally given to me. They said, Well, pay for everything, you just make it happen and then pay us back to two years. I had no idea what I was doing and no idea how to lead a company. I'd I'd been a leader in other circumstances uh for in sports. I played uh semi-professional football. And so I've been a leader in those areas, but not in business. And so I did this company. Lo and behold, I did so well I sold it in 14 months, paid all the investors back, took a huge amount of money home, and said, Well, I guess we got to work for somebody else because isn't that what people do? And so I did, and he was a jerk, and so I bought his company, and it just kind of grew from there. But what I learned in that first company was that people trusted me because one, I was transparent, okay, I respected everybody. I didn't care what their rank was, I didn't care what their what their job title was, I didn't care who they were, I didn't care where they came from, it didn't matter to me at all. I respect everybody. As a result, that respect translated into trust because they realized if I respected them, then they were going to give me trust back. And as a result, that worked great because with that trust, I could say to them, hey guys, this is a situation we need to cover it, and we need to do it now. Do you guys are with me? Can we get this done by Friday? Okay. They'd take off and go do it. No questions asked. That to me, that was pretty important. Three years later, I sold the company to all the employees. Wow. Which was kind of fun. So every company after that, and I've had companies that went to billions, I've had companies that just kind of floundered a couple of them that were not so good, and I've had lots of successes in between. One thing I've noticed is that as I respect people, and this isn't just in company, I was a minister for 22 years, and I learned that in church. As you respect people, people will want to follow you, people will want to trust you, they want to trust you. We're all looking for somebody that we can trust. And in order to get that trust, you have to first respect them. One of the things I've learned over time is that just like love, if you don't give love, you can't get love back. That's just an irrefutable law of physics or whatever you want to call it, because it's just the way it is. If you don't love someone, they will not love you back. Period. If you don't trust someone, how would you expect them to trust you back? And respect begins with listening. Listen to the people who work for you, work with you, your family, your children in a community, what others are doing. Don't be the loudest voice in the room. It's not necessary. Listen. And when you listen and people understand you do listen,

Finding The Leadership Foundation

SPEAKER_02 5:55

you stand out and people begin to trust you. So that's where I learned it. Over years and years. Then the principals of the CIC Leadership Institute came to me when I when I came back from Vietnam. My parents had died, and I had to raise my younger brother and younger sister. And my grandfather calls me, he lives like 2,000 miles away. And he says, DR, he says, you can't handle this. I said, Well, I'm going to do the best I can, Grandpa, because at the time I was 21 years old. And he said, I'm telling you, you can't. But he says, I'm going to help you. I said, Grandpa, you live 2,000 miles away. Come on. And he says, No, here's what we're going to do. He says, I'm going to give you the principles and values that you need to understand the problem and make a decision. But I'll never make it for you. So for 25 years before he passed at age 87, he did that. I, if I had a problem in church, if I had a problem with the business, if I had a problem with my family, if I just was suffering from whatever, I could call him and he'd say, okay, this is the principle you need to use. And occasionally say, You remember that principle that I taught you about? Exactly. So recently I was thinking about all this knowledge that I've been able to accrue over time, and I said, why don't I put it down so that others, you younger people, can access that in a way that's meaningful. Then I, as I got to looking at leadership, I did research. I've got over 10,000 pages of research. And with that research, I looked at it and I realized all the books that have ever been written on leadership. And can we agree there's a lot of books on leadership? My gosh, lots of books. You go into any library in any country and say to the person, I'd like to see books on leadership. And I'll take you to a whole aisle full of leadership books. But the problem is that none of them address the foundation. Now, if you've ever built anything, you know that without a foundation, it'll fall. It just can't support itself. So what we came up with was the foundation, and that foundation is character plus integrity equals credibility. Credibility is the currency of business. You do business with people that you trust. You do people, business with people that you feel are going to be in your best interest. And that's because they've got credibility. Now, what erodes it? You touched on it on the introduction. What erodes credibility is your integrity. So you can have all the 53, actually, there's 53 character traits, but we teach 10. The rest are all mostly supportive. Of all those character traits, you can have them in spades. You you can practice them daily. But when a crisis comes and then you're you're threatened in some sort of way, do you do you give in? Do you change your attitude? Do you change the way you look at something? People notice that. When they do, that erodes your credibility. Erodes your integrity, which erodes your credibility. So you ask how we came up with it, that's how we came up with it. Sorry for the long story.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

No, definitely. It's it's it's totally, totally fine. And because because I I I thought like I'll just ask you, uh, was there a kind of specific moment or not? Uh, but you mentioned it, so it's it's really great. And yeah, I mean that's the part people uh skip like when they tell their success story, right? Like the moment before the framework existed, when it was just kind of confusion, bad outcome, kind of you are trying to make sense of it. I I

Character Built Before Crisis

SPEAKER_00 9:45

I believe that is that is the best part about it, and I'm really happy that you mentioned it uh deeply. So thank you so much for that. Yeah. And and also about because I I always try to focus on the misconception part because whenever we bring any topic, be it leadership or into business, I believe there are a lot of misconceptions as well. Like because I think most people hear like character and integrity and mentally file it under kind of nice to have things, soft stuff, right? Kind of thing. So what is the what what's the thing like leaders get wrong when they think credibly? I mean credibility is separate from the performance.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Well, first of all, it begins with character. Most people think character is developed. First of all, a lot of people think character is just because when he talks funny and so forth, he's an interesting character. Character is developed long before you ever need it. Before you ever need it. So most people think that when there's a crisis, that's when you discover your character. No, no, no. Character is developed long before you ever need it. Because it's the things you do when nobody's looking. Okay? So the idea of being honest, nobody has to look. You should be honest just because you should be honest. The idea that you're accountable, that you you're a responsible person, nobody else shouldn't have to watch you. You should just be accountable. That's your character. The same thing with resilience. One of the things we're suffering from right now is in the 20 and 30-year-old group, is that because of the way they were raised, and I don't know what's wrong with the parents, but because of the way they were raised, if you hit these kids with, here's the problem, they just fold. They fold like a house of cards. And they're not exactly sure how to come back from it. And the friends that support them all suffer from the same problem. They don't know. So that's a huge problem. Resilience is one of the most important things that that you need as a person because life is full of ups and downs. Oh my gosh, you knew you know that. You you think your family's going to grass great, and then something hits you. Somebody dies that's really important to you. That's that's a setback. Oh my gosh, that's a setback. Well, how do you recover from that? Do you grieve? Do you do whatever whatever you do? But the point is it's resilience. And a lot of people just haven't figured that out. Well, that's all part of character. Forgiveness is part of character. The un the understanding of of others is part of character. So you develop that, as you said earlier on in the introduction, one little decision at a time. You decide to do this, you decide to do that, you decide to do this. It's not, oh my gosh, there's a crisis, and so I make a decision, so

Why Title Based Leadership Breaks

SPEAKER_02 12:40

there, therefore, that defines my character. Not at all. Your character is created long before somebody would actually notice that you have character.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

That's interesting. So here's like I I went to just push a bit, like because plenty of people who cut kind of corners will win at I mean at least for a while. But yeah, some pretty leaders, I mean, I do not want to use a word, but kind of I'm so sorry, like uh pretty uh ruthless leaders have built enormous success. But so how how do you kind of square that with the idea that character is actually the foundation of it?

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Very easily. Some people lead by title.

unknown 13:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

I'm the dad, you do it my way. This is my home, you do it my way. And then you've got business leaders who say, look, didn't you not understand? I'm the president of the company. You do what I tell you to do. I'm not looking at advice from you. Who are you? And so it goes. And when you start leading by title, you you got a real problem. As soon as you have to say to somebody, hey, this is the way it gets done, you've lost. You've absolutely lost. And that person is an ideal candidate to say, you know, I think I'm gonna move on. So these people who are ruthless, yeah, they have a lot of money, they've been successful, they can hire people in a mill, just keep hiring people and hiring people and doing all that. And they're not even thinking that if they were smart, that retention would increase their bottom line, and their employees would be more engaged. And that would increase their bottom line. They don't see it as a bottom line issue. They see it as I'm the boss, you don't threaten me, you don't challenge me because I know exactly what needs to be done. That's a huge problem. And there are a lot of ruthless leaders out there like that. And there are a lot of companies that have been built to last, to use a comment from an old book. But the problem is that if you look inside the company at the culture, the culture sucks. It's just terrible. People go to work because they have to, because they're going to collect a check because their family needs it. It's not because they enjoy being there or it gives them some fulfillment as a person. None of that. So that's why ruthless leaders can succeed. Any anybody can succeed at business. You don't you don't have to be full of character or anything else. You you can concede, you can succeed, but at what price?

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

When I've talked about leadership to people, I I pointed this out. At what price are you succeeding?

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Exactly. And you know, like I I totally agree with you on this part where you mentioned about some leaders go by the title. But I mean, if it's a if it's

Who You Are Beyond The Role

SPEAKER_00 15:35

a own business, then fine, I can understand that comes from that ground zero and from there uh he or she grew up. So maybe they knew some of the areas about it. But my one question, I mean, it it is it is just I mean, it's a kind of out of context, but somehow I I feel it is related. Like when we think from the title perspective, if I am the CEO, if I'm the vice president and all, and from that perspective, I'm saying, okay, this needs to be done and all. So who am I? Who am I? Like, I mean, am I the vice president only, or am the CEO only, or I am uh the chairman only? Who am I? Who the person I am when I am connecting with another person? So anything you want to uh touch upon or highlight anything on this?

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for that. Now, first of all, first off, first and foremost, you are you, you're an individual. Avic, you you you have done lots of things, you've done all these kinds of things, and suddenly somebody says, you're vice president. Well, does that change you? Does it have to change you? It just means that you've been given some certain responsibility. Now, how you deliver on that responsibility, now that's where Avix training comes in all these years. The way you treat people, how you act with people. Have you ever seen people that you say, well, he's not like this normally. When he's at home, he's not like at all. Are you kidding me? If you're a right person, you're the same at work as you are at home, as you are in church, as you are in the community. Doesn't matter. You are you, and you have your values. And those values should be deployed wherever you are, because that's you.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

That's that's topping. Yeah, I mean, that is that is something which I thought, okay, I'll just bring this up. But yeah. So and also like you talked about the integrity showing up most clearly under the pressure of fear. Right. Kind of convenience. So, like, because most of us don't think of ourselves as kind of compromising, we think of ourselves as being reasonable in a very hard moment as well. So, what is actually happening underneath the pattern

Integrity Drift And A Company Turnaround

SPEAKER_00 17:55

that most people don't notice in themselves when a small compromise actually starts.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Right. And that's why you lose integrity, as you said at the outset. You lose it one little decision at a time. It's not, oh my gosh, if you don't do this, you're gonna do this. No, it's not that decision. It's the decision, I don't think we need that. That's that's probably okay. We'll we'll just slide on that today. And you start making these decisions that are inconsistent with who you are. I when I my second company that I I bought, I went to work for them, and this guy hired me. Now, mind you, I'm 23 years old. He hires me as national sales manager because he had seen the success I had with my first company. Okay, so he hires me and he treats people awfully. He doesn't know their names, he doesn't know the product. I mean, it's just terrible and tells customers, I don't have time, talk to somebody else. Are you kidding me? So I said to him one day, I said, Jim, sell the company. He said, Why would I do that? I said, because you don't like the employees, you don't know their names, you don't know the product. All you want to do is get whatever the bottom line is and take it home to Palm Springs and live like a king. That's what you want to do. What's wrong with that? I said, all these people are affected because of your attitude. You really don't have any integrity, Jim. He said, What? I said, No, trust me, when it comes to real people, you have no integrity at all. Your wife may think you have integrity because when she says something, you do it. Okay, that's one level of integrity, I suppose. But when you're dealing with the people whose lives are affected, he had $5 million painting hanging over his desk. This was at a time when the average warehouse worker made $4,000 a year. What do you think their chances are of ever acquiring a $5 million painting? And then he would tell people, yeah, I got lots of paintings like this at home in Palm Spring. I mean, it's just a show off. And I said, get out of here. You need to leave. Yeah. Well, who's gonna buy the company? I said, Well, I might. You, how old are you? I said, I'm 23. He said, 23? Well, and I said, Jim, you're proving my point. You don't know anything about me. You hired me, you know nothing about me. Put down the amount you want. If it's what I can afford, I'll buy it. So he put it down. I realized all the money I had left in the bank was gonna go with this thing. And I I mean all but about 20 bucks, literally. And so I said to myself, this guy has pissed off so many people. He's upset, he's just inflamed people. I said, the way I lead, I think I can turn that around. And I think the people will find so I'm gonna gamble on myself and the people that are here. So I paid all that money. We were doing a hundred thousand a month. This is in the year 1970. A lot of money back then. Within six months, we were doing a half million a month, and all the money I spent to buy the company, I made back. I gambled, I won based on the respect that I had for the people that I worked with and the opportunity that all of us had. They all made more money, I made more money, the company did well, and in three years, I turned around, created the deal that I could sell it directly to the employees, and now they're on the third generation of running that company. So it worked. So that's what this kind of attitude and credibility and integrity can do. I kept my word, I did what I was supposed to do, and we had lots of crisis. I remember NASA came to us one time and they said, We can't figure out how to make a collapsible steering device for the lunar rover. I looked at that and I said, I think there's a way to do that. I said, How could you are you an engineer? I said, No, I'm not. An engineer, but I got a lot of common sense. And he said, Well, how would you do it? I said, Have you ever seen a soapbox derby racer? Those racers that come down the hill and they got a two-four out here, and they got a little steering wheel, and you got wires that go out to it to pull the steering wheel. And so the steering wheel just pulls it in, pulls it out. I said, We'll build the push-pull device. You put this on the similar situation, only with your fancy stainless steel and all the things that have to be done to meet moon requirements. But I said, the essence of it is going to be this push-pull device that you wrap around a steering wheel. That's it. And it'll fold completely flat. The guy from NASA said, Who are you? I said, Well, besides owning the company, I said, I'm just a guy with a lot of common sense. So NASA gave me a preview plaque for doing that. And they went on a moon trip and that's how they did it. So it's just keeping your integrity, keeping who you are, no matter what the circumstance. That's it. That's that's what integrity is.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Lovely. So I I mean it is really great

The Helpful Mindset That Pays Back

SPEAKER_00 23:10

having conversation on there. So I I know time is constrained, but still, like if you have to give one advice to the listeners today. I mean, maybe they have just started their own ventures, or maybe they're at the highest position as well. So what do you what do you love to advise them?

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Simple. And when I was 25, my wife came to me and she said, you know what? You're just using people. I said, What? She says, You yeah, you just use them and then go somewhere else. I said, What? She says, I'm telling you that's what you do. Well, I spent about 10 hours just literally contemplating that. And I came out saying to myself, so I'd had a mentality that says, get, I want to get. So I came out with the idea that how can I be helpful? That's a different attitude. What can I give? What can I give that will help you? And my idea was that if I help you achieve your goals, if I help you get what you need, you're gonna pay me. And I've lived my entire life that way. I've never worried about a paycheck, I've never worried about money coming in from this deal or that deal. If it's structured right and I've helped them accomplish what they want, I get paid. It's that simple.

How To Connect And Final Question

SPEAKER_02 24:20

And so the advice I would give is think about turning your life around and asking yourself, how can I be helpful?

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Amazing. Amazing. And if listeners want to connect with you, how can they connect?

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Well, my email address is pretty simple. It's my full name. So right there on the screen, my full name is drosson at gmail.com. So you can email me. My website is drrawson.com. You can go there, and uh there's a contact form. You can connect me with me that way. You can go to cicinitiative.com and that will take you to our whole series of books that we produce on leadership that are they're dropping September 23rd. So this interview is kind of in advance of that. So I appreciate that. But yeah, those those are some ways that you can get a hold of me. And I I'm I usually respond to every email that people send and every call that they make and everything. Um I'm pretty available. And I still only work Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

So dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for easy reference. And um I have to say that I mean, you know, like I mean, if there is one thing I want to leave with all of you today, it's like every reputation is really just a long series of ordinary decisions. And at the same time, eventually those decisions answer a question that you never actually get asked out loud. So, like, what do you stand for?

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Yeah. I I intend to put some serious leaders on the hot seat and just ask them that question. What do you stand for? Yeah. What are you willing to put a flag in the ground and say, this is my position. What do you what do you stand for? It's gonna be an interesting show, I can guarantee you, because some of the leaders we have lined up are not only politics but heads of major corporations and organizations. And it'll be interesting to see what they say.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Exactly. Exactly true. Yep. So thank you so much, everyone, for being here with us. And if something in this conversation named decision that you have been avoiding or kind of compromise, you have been quietly kind of tolerating, right? So let it sit with you a little longer than usual. And that discomfort is usually pointing somewhere honest. So with this, this is your host, Avik, and this is Mind Meets Machine. Until next time, take care of your mind and we'll see you in the next one.

unknown 26:52

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Lovely, lovely. I mean, it's uh it's awesome.