SNS 151: Saturday Night Special – Interview with Darby Vannier author of The Indispensable Leader

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 151.

[00:00:05] Darby Vannier: I'm Darby veneer, and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to become an indispensable leader is key.

[00:00:22] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott made.

[00:00:30] Leaders have to remember that like work is just one part of somebody's life. And that really does figure into how you should be leading, because if you take two hard line of a, of an approach and somebody's having some stuff in the background that you're not aware of, you can easily push them over the edge.

[00:00:49] The other thing is I mentioned earlier, you have to be a really good listener and I. Listen to understand.

[00:00:55] Scott Maderer: Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. [00:01:00] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time. Your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast, who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:21] And tonight's Saturday night special. I interviewed Darby veneer. I asked Darby about his life and how it led him to writing the book, the indispensable. I also asked Darby about his views on what leadership really is. And I asked Darby to share about the differences between being in a formal leadership position and being a leader without the position to go along with it.

[00:01:45] One reason I like to bring you great interviews. Like the one you're gonna hear today is because of the power in learning from others. Another great way to learn from others is through reading books. But if you're like most people today, you find it [00:02:00] hard to find the time to sit down and read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible.

[00:02:06] Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And instead of reading, you can listen your way to learn from some of the greatest minds out there. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast.

[00:02:34] Darby veneer has over 20 years of experience in leadership development and strategic consulting. He has led effective teams of more than a hundred employees, coached others into their own leadership positions and created stability during challenging organizational transitions. His career has been built on the philosophy that developing the right people is the key to success.

[00:02:55] Darby started his career as an HR and operations manager for a 22 [00:03:00] screen AMC movie theater, where he hired, trained and managed a team of over 100 employees and is a branch manager of a FedEx office store where he coached half of his team into their own leadership positions. These positions ready him to fulfill the role of executive director and CEO of the alpaca's owners association, an international livestock association there.

[00:03:23] He built a foundational systems, built the processes and a team and a newly open corporate office, fostering the company and industry through difficult transitions, including a long term rebranding program and an organizational. Combining the diverse knowledge and experience gained through these positions.

[00:03:40] He now serves on the leadership team of a highly successful leadership development organization, leadership resources. Darby recently released his book, indispensable leader and Darby lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his spouse, Erica, their daughter, and their dog named Fresca. Welcome to the show Darby.

[00:03:59] Darby Vannier: [00:04:00] It's great to be here, Scott. I appreciate you having me on. Absolutely.

[00:04:04] Scott Maderer: We talked a little bit about your past career. You've had some interesting journeys and a little bit about your personal life in the intro. How do you think that journey that you had led you to this realization that you're putting forward in, in the book about look about being a great manager, being a great visionary leader and how this isn't necessarily an either or, but a both, and is the term that I use for those.

[00:04:35] Darby Vannier: Yeah, I think it's a variety of things. Certainly as you mentioned, my, my career has been diverse. I've had quite a few interesting situations. We'll just call it that throughout my career that have happened. And that's caused me to learn that. Things happen that you don't expect will happen.

[00:04:55] And it also caused me to amend my [00:05:00] thinking on leadership. So there's that piece specifically with regard to my career, but then just more broadly And it gets it. The reason that I wanted to write the book one was that piece that I just said being more specific about as I was coming into my career, what are the things that I would've wanted to know that I've learned over the course of my career?

[00:05:23] But the other piece of it is that as I look at. Society in general. I just think we have a fundamental lack of really good leadership in a lot of areas. And it's in all areas, it's in various areas of business, depending on where you're at. Certainly within politics and it doesn't matter which side of the spectrum you're on there.

[00:05:45] You can look at all of your leaders on either side and they have some challenges. And part of that is, is I just don't think that we have. A well balanced form of leadership in our minds. I think that we are [00:06:00] choosing to Make it so that, like you said, it's the either or rather than let's take a look at the good things of both ends of that spectrum and pull those things together.

[00:06:14] So all of those things came together in my thinking over the course of the last 20, 25 years. And ended up that's how I ended up writing the book. And that's how we got to where we are today.

[00:06:27] Scott Maderer: So one of the things I wanted to call out from the intro too, and just dive in a little deeper I said went from being a branch manager of the FedEx store, where you were coaching people.

[00:06:39] And then it says these positions readied him to fulfill the executive director role and CEO of the alpacas owners. How does that stuff prepare you for being the CEO of the alpaca owners association? Yeah,

[00:06:53] Darby Vannier: certainly when I there's no connection . Yeah. Certainly when I coach people on [00:07:00] careers and career decisions, one of the things and young people that are just coming into the business world one of the things that I say is everything you can imagine right now for your career is probably not how it's gonna end up

[00:07:14] So the alpaca industry change was an interesting one. I obviously didn't go to college thinking I'm gonna go run a livestock association. And if I had it wouldn't have been for alpacas gotta make sure you knew

[00:07:30] Scott Maderer: what an alpaca was. When you were in college,

[00:07:32] Darby Vannier: right? Yes, exactly. And actually, when I went to my interview, they didn't list the name of the company.

[00:07:38] They were hiring through an agency. And when I went to my interview, I didn't know what it was for for the first interview. And then the second interview, which was actually then with the interim executive director there. I had to actually look up by that point. I knew what the organization was.

[00:07:55] I had to look up what an alpaca was. I had a general idea that it was like a Lama. [00:08:00] So that was an interesting change, but I would say that, yes, ironically, my. Previous positions did prepare me for that role because what that role actually required setting aside the fact that it was for a livestock association for alpacas throughout the whole United States.

[00:08:18] It really was running a company and the whole idea of the job. And that's why I actually applied for it. When I read the description, there was no company name, like I said, and the description described what it was, which was. Running this company, reporting to a board of directors helping them grow the organization.

[00:08:36] Obviously I knew it was a nonprofit organization at that point. And that's what I went after. And that's what it ended up being. But what it required was certainly a great deal of. Managerial and leadership experience on the side of growing the organization, but it also required a great deal of collaboration [00:09:00] building because I worked with, like I said, at that point, it was a seven member board of directors that expanded to nine later.

[00:09:06] And. Definitely. That can be a challenge because of the fact that you're dealing with so many personalities. These are board members with different priorities that are coming on at different times. And I was the only constant over the course of my 11 and a half years. There you have nine

[00:09:23] Scott Maderer: bosses and they're not always

[00:09:24] Darby Vannier: even the same.

[00:09:25] exactly. Every year I had the potential to gain two or three new bosses. So it was an interesting time and definitely. That actually then added to my experience as it does throughout your career. Of course moving forward as well. So

[00:09:44] Scott Maderer: let's back up too. And we just talked a lot about leadership in the first answer, but I've learned over the years that's one of those words that not everybody means the same thing.

[00:09:53] when they say it. So when you talk about a leader or leadership, what do [00:10:00] you mean by that?

[00:10:02] Darby Vannier: Yeah. Essentially what leadership is it's a it's influence. So it's your ability to influence others to help you accomplish a goal? Whe whether that's completing a project or that's growing a company or it's increasing sales or it's solving a challenge that's all that it really is.

[00:10:22] And what that means is well influence, it sounds like so simple, but what that means is that you have to use. Your skills as a leader, which include from my perspective, using those managerial traits of organization and trying to understand the what and the how, but then it also includes those visionary traits of Being passionate about it and selling the message and getting people on board with the culture and excited about it.

[00:10:51] And the why why are we doing this? Because that's very important. If you really want to influence somebody and have a good [00:11:00] leadership relationship, they need to understand the why. If they only understand the, what, go do this, for example, then it's not gonna be highly effective in the end and they may do it because it's their job, but they may not be bought to the actual outcome.

[00:11:18] So it's gonna be important to, for them to understand the why of that. Of course.

[00:11:24] Scott Maderer: And that's the dichotomy, I think that you referenced in this book is the idea of some leaders. Our good managers, some leaders are good at casting vision, and you're proposing that to really be a good leader.

[00:11:39] You need to have some of, both of those skills.

[00:11:41] Darby Vannier: Yeah, definitely. So you do run across and I'm quite sure you've run across them in your career of people that are at either end of that spectrum that are high managers. So they're all about, let's just get stuff done. They wanna check off the box all of those things, and you got people at the other end that are high visionary that are coming up with a lot of [00:12:00] ideas and in their head.

[00:12:01] Once they generate the idea it's done. Like they're there. Like they can see it. We're done. Let's move on to the next thing. And that's a problem to be at either end of the spectrum. You really don't. So in the book, I actually encourage people to look at it and think of it more like a ven diagram, where you have two intersecting circles where you're actually trying to choose the best traits of both pieces and pull those into what your experience is as an overarching leader.

[00:12:26] And let go of those things that are not so positive.

[00:12:30] Scott Maderer: so when people are approaching leadership or are coming into a leadership position or an influence position, as you're talking about, what do you think, what do you think we most get wrong about our approach to leadership? Yeah, I think it varies because obviously it depends on your experience.

[00:12:47] Darby Vannier: I think that on the negative side, what I would say is that people who come into a role and I think that we can all be guilty of this, especially early in our careers. I look [00:13:00] back some of the decisions I made very early in my career, and I think they fall into this and that. You come in, you get promoted and that this is the first opportunity you have a formal leadership situation where you have people reporting to you that doesn't immediately make you a leader.

[00:13:18] It makes you a boss. And I think that. We look at it sometimes as great. Now I have authority. You really don't. You have authority on an organizational chart in reporting structure and that's it, but you really have no authority in the people that you're working with and what you're trying to help them accomplish in their positions.

[00:13:41] I think that some folks come into this too, and they think that. I've been promoted. So obviously I'm all knowing. Most people, unless they have a really high ego, don't think bad exact words, but I think that's the outcome.

[00:13:54] Scott Maderer: I was promoted because I must know better that's why I got the position, right?

[00:13:59] Darby Vannier: Yeah. Yes. [00:14:00] And unfortunately we have a lot of situations where people are promoted either because they've been there the longest, or they were good at doing the task associated with their department, which doesn't necessarily equate to being able to I'm good

[00:14:11] Scott Maderer: at sales that doesn't necessarily mean I'm a good sales manager.

[00:14:15] Darby Vannier: Yeah, exactly. So I think that the downside is that folks can come into this and think of it more about power and authority in that sort of situation. Certainly. If you look at politics, we can see that very evident in politics, but it definitely happens throughout business as well.

[00:14:35] Oh yeah.

[00:14:36] Scott Maderer: So what would you suggest is an approach to take instead of if that's the mistake we make, what's the better way to approach it. If you've come into a leadership position

[00:14:48] Darby Vannier: It's about an evolution too, so people are gonna evolve over the course of their careers.

[00:14:54] That's again, why I wrote the book, I wanted to give those things and illustrate with [00:15:00] stories throughout my career where I screwed up and learned from it. And this was what I learned so that people have that. Information going in so that they can actually sit down. I encourage folks to just sit down and really think about what are the traits that you have, if you look, if you think about the manager, visionary spectrum, where do you fall?

[00:15:22] People will have a general idea. If you read the descriptions of what that looks like you'll have a general idea of where you fall. That's the first key is understanding where you're at. And then you could actually then start to look at that other side and say, okay, great. What are the things I need to work on?

[00:15:39] And what do I need to gain? And being a leader, I is all about continuous learning and development. And. That's gonna be the most important thing. Like you're gonna evolve over time. You're not gonna get everything right. That's something else that I talk about in the book. And I always coach people on.

[00:15:56] You're gonna screw up. Like you just do. I have [00:16:00] several stories throughout from throughout my career where I made significant mistakes. It just happens. But over time as long as you're open to learning new things and you're open to listening and doing those sorts of things, you can gain the skills necessary from both sides.

[00:16:18] Once you understand where you lie for example, in my, you will move. If you think about the spectrum, Piece you'll you can move on that spectrum too. I think I was probably much further to the managerial side early on. I probably fall just to the right of the middle right now.

[00:16:39] I probably fall a little bit more on the visionary side because of how I've evolved over the course of my career. And different positions require different quote waitings on those two skill sets. I know one of the first leadership positions I was in. I was really charged with the managerial role, even though on the VIN diagram on the [00:17:00] chart, it was now granted, I still brought some visionary skills to it and tried to help people understand the why behind what they were doing along of that.

[00:17:09] Scott Maderer: I think that's why I was pretty good at it. But. Technically it was everyone who'd done it before and did it since it's a managerial role. The job was to make sure that the product was out on time all the time. That was what. Measured by. So I think you're waiting a CEO may have a little waiting.

[00:17:30] That's a little different than a middle manager, so to speak too.

[00:17:33] Darby Vannier: Yep, exactly. And some things when you're lower on the totem pole they just aren't in your control. So even if you're high visionary it may not make a difference for you at that point. You have to find ways to use that information in your position.

[00:17:50] And I will say it can be very frustrating so for that person, because they may have a much different vision for the organization or the department or whatever [00:18:00] it is than what the actual person who's in charge has. So it can be very frustrating for them. So that means that they have to constantly be thinking about that and it applies to the other side too.

[00:18:10] You can have. Somebody who moves up to a a CEO level who needs to be more visionary and more thinking, big picture, who is constantly looking at their people, going the details aren't right. Like you're not doing it right. They're not doing it my way. And the spreadsheets to

[00:18:32] Scott Maderer: have purple for that column, not red.

[00:18:34] And it's who

[00:18:35] Darby Vannier: cares? yes. And that's a big problem as well. yeah, I've

[00:18:40] Scott Maderer: had that boss. . That's one of the reasons I've no longer with that particular organization, but that's a whole nother story for another day. So when we think about that VIN diagram that you're talking about, and as we're talking about this in different positions how do you describe that kind of more hybrid model [00:19:00] of leadership versus what are the traits of 'em what do they look like?

[00:19:04] What does it sound like? If you're taking on that hybrid leadership.

[00:19:09] Darby Vannier: Yeah. So it's pretty much gonna be a mix of the manager and visionary characteristics along with some other overarching things. So you're gonna use from the manager side, you're going to use the piece of being organized and methodical in various cases.

[00:19:24] You're gonna be able to explain how we're doing something and what it is that we're doing. You're going to be able to identify the steps to get there and actually be able to look at what the roadblocks are to focus on. Okay. These are the challenges that we're going to encounter. Then on the visionary side, you have to have the passion behind the idea or the initiative.

[00:19:50] You have to sell it to your team. You have to be the cheerleader because they're looking to you for guidance. You have to be able to explain the why, [00:20:00] like I talked about this is why we're doing it because. This sales growth is gonna launch us into this point by next year. And that's setting us up for the following year.

[00:20:10] So in my company, we have a reoccurring revenue model. We talk a lot about that. But explaining that early on, when we switched to that model. Explaining that to the team. What that means is that everything we sell today is actually providing us income for the next 24 months. And the more we build that, the easier the future becomes to grow the organization.

[00:20:31] It, wasn't easy to explain that, but you have to be able to get those sorts of things across. You have to be able to explain the idea of think about how great it's gonna be when we accomplish it. So give them the idea because a high visionary person in their head, like I said earlier, They think of an idea and it's done, it's fully formed.

[00:20:52] They don't know how we're getting there. They don't really care, but they can see the end. The managerial type person, they can see [00:21:00] all the steps it's gonna take to get there, but they may not be able to see what it looks like in the end. They can only see the tasks associated with it. So take those things and bring them together in a hybrid type of situation so that you can actually accomplish both.

[00:21:14] And then just overarching as a leader in general. You gotta have in order to be a good leader and build a great team. You gotta have good empathy. Have good understanding. Everybody has their own crap going on. We, you don't, we don't all realize just think about in your own life and all of your listeners think about in your own life, all the stuff you have going on in your back in the background that your coworkers have no clue about challenges with health or challenges with kids or situations like that you have.

[00:21:49] Parents who are in the hospital or having issues or whatever those are, everybody has their own issues. So leaders have to remember that, like [00:22:00] work is just one part of somebody's life. And that really does Figure in to how you should be leading, because if you take too hard line of a, of an approach and somebody's having some stuff in the background that you're not aware of, you could easily push them over the edge.

[00:22:16] The other thing is I mentioned earlier, you have to be a really good listener and listen to understand, and I say that. Because I think sometimes people listen to respond. It's one thing to just shut your mouth and listen, but then be constantly thinking in your head about the next thing you're gonna say, because you're gonna respond to what they're saying.

[00:22:34] You're not actually hearing them at that point. so listen to actually understand what people are saying. And then the other piece is really. You hired these folks for a reason. I'm a big proponent of having really good hiring and onboarding processes and then having great on ongoing coaching because you hired these people for a reason.

[00:22:54] So let them do their jobs. There is not a need to micromanage them get them [00:23:00] trained for what they need to do, and then let them go along their way if they screw up. And as I mentioned earlier, they will. And you'll screw up. They will then just address it at the time and say, what did we learn from this?

[00:23:12] How are we gonna move forward? What's next? Don't dwell on it. You can move forward from that point. You're gonna be far better served by doing that than trying to micromanage somebody to ensure that they don't mess up because you're gonna probably actually create so much stress that you may actually cause them to mess up more often if you do it the other way.

[00:23:30] So those are a few of the things anyway, but but yeah I think it's a combination of the two areas of traits. And then, like I said, those overarching things, just as a good leader, you should be doing those as well.

[00:23:44] Scott Maderer: Yeah. So we've talked a lot about formal leadership and kind of getting promoted to those positions and things.

[00:23:49] But I don't think I'm putting words in your mouth when you started the definition of leadership as influence with recognizing that. People can be leaders without necessarily [00:24:00] being quote in the corner office or having a particular title or position. So what about those folks that find themselves wielding influence maybe in a company, maybe in their church, maybe in their family, but they aren't in a kind of formal leadership position.

[00:24:15] What's different. And what's the same about that?

[00:24:19] Darby Vannier: Yeah. What's different is really the idea. You have to almost be a little bit reserved, so you have to control it. You have to understand cuz if you don't have the authority to make the decision, there's only so much you can do. The other thing is depending on the person that you're working under, you have to be careful how you position, what it is that you're suggesting.

[00:24:42] But yeah, informal leadership is a big thing, cuz I think that sometimes folks think that leadership only comes with a title. Or with a reporting structure and it really doesn't first off titles do not make a leader. So let's just get that out of the way right now. It doesn't matter. [00:25:00] You could have somebody who has the title of CEO or COO, who is a terrible leader.

[00:25:04] That does not mean they're gonna be a good leader just because they have a title. So then when we get into reporting structure you could have a situation where you have folks who are good leaders, who have nobody reporting to them. I talk about this in my book a little bit, and I use the example of if you ever saw the movie hidden figures.

[00:25:24] And if you think about the fact that you have these young African American women who were hired as calculators to help with the space program, All that they accomplished in their careers and for the space program and for the United States as a whole, they were leaders, but they didn't have anybody reporting to them at the beginning.

[00:25:49] They ran in a time period that wouldn't even allow that for the fact that they were women and African American. It was not a situation that they probably could have even envisioned[00:26:00] at the beginning of their careers. But yet. Look at everything that they accomplished and they helped actually make those decisions, even though it wasn't their decision to make, they were able to use their influence to help those around them, understand what actually needed to be done in order to move the initiative forward.

[00:26:21] And that's a great illustration, I think of informal leadership that I think people can identify with. Absolutely. So before I kind of transition and ask a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests. Is there anything else you'd like to share about the book indispensable leader or anything that we've talked about this today?

[00:26:41] Yeah, I think we've covered quite a few things, but one of the big things is just in general. The book I is meant to target folks who are coming into leadership positions. And when I say new to leadership, that doesn't mean young because it could be somebody who's just moving into actually leading people later in their career.

[00:26:59] [00:27:00] It could be people who have been leading teams for years and are struggling all of a sudden and not understanding why I really go through the book. In the book and illustrate some very basic things through stories from my career. So it makes it easy to identify what those situations are and how you can go about dealing with them.

[00:27:22] So yeah I think that, that kinda gives a broad overview at least.

[00:27:27] Scott Maderer: Awesome. So one of the questions that I like to ask you, obviously, my brand is inspired stewardship, but I run things through that lens of stewardship yet, like leadership that we talked about earlier, I've discovered over the years, that's one of those words that doesn't necessarily mean the same thing to everybody.

[00:27:45] So for you, what is the word stewardship bring to mind? And what is the impact of that understanding?

[00:27:53] Darby Vannier: Yeah. Stewardship is basically taking care of something or shepherding something almost. And that can be [00:28:00] in your personal life. It can be in your spiritual life. It can be in your business life whatever.

[00:28:05] It can be a in a group or a task or a specific business, whatever, in, in my case. One thing I illustrate in the book is that. People don't always understand the significance of a moment that may seem insignificant to you. And this is something with stewardship that you have to think about because you may be actually.

[00:28:28] In a situation that's providing something to somebody that's gonna have an immense impact on them. And you may not realize it. That puts a lot of pressure on us as leaders and certainly as people in general to be careful how we interact with individuals. And I'll give you an example from my career.

[00:28:48] And I talk about it some in the book as well, and that is early in my career. I started out my career at. AMC movie theater, a 22 screen movie theater. [00:29:00] I was one of, I don't know, six or seven managers there. But on Thursday nights, this is in the days before digital digital movies. So you actually still had celluloid and on Thursday nights the new movies would arrive that we're gonna be opening on Fridays and they would come, they come on six or seven or eight, depending on how long the movie is six or seven reels.

[00:29:24] And then every Thursday night, when they arrive, you have to take those and you have to basically put them on this big platter and you splice those reels together into one giant reel. Basically that's laying on a platter so that they're prepared for the next day so that they can. When I managed on Thursday nights, it was always the longest night because of that situation.

[00:29:44] And you also then had to take all the movies that were leaving on Friday and take those B splices apart, put them back on their individual reels. So there was a lot that had to be done. So I always, when I finished my closing duties for the night and had all the financial stuff done and [00:30:00] everything was shut down and whatnot, I would always go help the projectionist.

[00:30:04] Not all the managers did, but I always go, would go help the projectionist finish that work because I wanted to go home and it was already two o'clock in the morning. And I remember one time again, very early in my career there and I. Was taking apart, one of the movies that was going back and essentially you got this giant movie print, that's laying on this platter and in the middle there's this metal ring that has spikes that go down in the platter that hold the print on there and you feed it through.

[00:30:36] And then you have this table that you have the little reels on, and then you have this knob and you can speed it up and slow it down as to far how fast it goes back onto the other reel. And when it gets to the end, you break the splice, take that one off, you put another empty reel on and you. Continue the process.

[00:30:51] Yeah. So I get this thing going and I'm like, I wanna get outta here. So I speed this up. I'd done it before. It's it wasn't [00:31:00] anything new. However, apparently those spikes that hold the print on in that center ring were not actually down in the holes and this thing gets spinning. And I see all at once this movie print, And across flying off into the projection booth and it was like slow motion where you're like, no, and I'm looking at this on the floor and I'm.

[00:31:24] I am so fired because it's for people who don't understand what this is, it's not, you can't just pick it back up and set it back on. It's if you had a 2000 foot long extension cord that you had coiled up in, you threw it on the floor and jumbled it about a little bit. That's what it's like.

[00:31:43] try to unwind that. Or your Christmas lights, your big bundle of Christmas lights every year that you're trying. That's what it's like. So I spent the next four or five hours pulling out pieces of film and cutting them because there was no way to get these knots out [00:32:00] without doing it. And. UN nodding it and pulling some more out, splicing that back together, continuing on down the line.

[00:32:06] By the time I got done this movie print probably had so many splices in it. It was crazy. And all I can think is that we're gonna get billed for this this is gonna be expensive. I have no clue, but I'm sure it was thousands of dollars per reel and we're talking six or seven reels or more.

[00:32:26] So I got done, I got it all in the cans to go back. This was like seven 30 in the morning. The managing director was gonna be in at nine. So I went home and I showered and I came back immediately and I went to tell him, and I'm standing outside of his door again, thinking, huh, this is the end of your job here.

[00:32:44] and I went in and I explained it all to him and I'm like, The center ring, clearly wasn't in I should have checked it. Here's what happened. There's so many splices in this. I'm sure we're gonna get billed. And I just sat there [00:33:00] so let's see how quick it takes him to fire me. And he looked at me and he said, Darby, I appreciate you coming in and telling me and go home and get some sleep.

[00:33:11] And that was it. That was it now to him. That moment was probably an insignificant moment other than the bill. I'm sure the bill was expensive, but to him, the interaction was probably insignificant. But do you know, I have used that moment. Throughout my entire career. Anytime anybody has screwed up, who's come to me in the same way.

[00:33:37] I have told them that story and I'm like, look, we're gonna go forward. Let's figure out how to solve it. And that's what I mean, like we don't realize the impact we're having that was 20 plus years ago. For me. And it still affects me today. And I've used the story many times throughout my career and it has shaped how I lead.

[00:33:59] [00:34:00] So I think that's a good example of that stewardship because we don't always realize what it is that we are conveying to somebody and how we're helping them along their life, essentially. Yeah.

[00:34:11] Scott Maderer: So that brings me to my favorite question. This is the one I like asking everybody. If I invented this magic machine and I could grab you out of the chair where you set today and magically transport you into the future a hundred to 150 years.

[00:34:27] And through the magic of this machine, you were able to look back on your entire life and see those impacts of those ripples that you've left behind. Like the story you just told that left a ripple on you, what impact or what impact do you hope you've left behind in the world?

[00:34:45] Darby Vannier: I would love to be able to see how I changed the trajectory of somebody else's life.

[00:34:50] When I. Have over the course of my career. As I have changed companies, when I evaluate a [00:35:00] company, I interview them almost more than they interview me. When I evaluate a company, I am evaluating a lot of things. I wanna know what good that company is doing for society. I wanna understand the impact that I will have.

[00:35:14] To people and the world as a whole. Now that sounds probably a little bit crazy and I'm not thinking of it. Like I'm trying to end world hunger or something like that. Although that would be wonderful. I just want to have an impact on somebody else's life and throughout my career, what I get the most joy out of is seeing the success of others.

[00:35:39] I've had a wonderful opportunity to work with some amazing people that I have hired over the years. I have seen some folks that I hired as a retail cashier at Kinko's when I was there, who progressed? They promoted with me up through supervisor and assistant manager. And then I left that organization, but they continued to [00:36:00] move up and I've seen them move to store manager and then take over and move to move companies and take over larger initiatives.

[00:36:07] I've had that happen a variety of times, and I get so proud of those situations proud of those individuals and what they've been able to accomplish. If I was looking back, that's the sort of thing that I would wanna see if it has a greater impact on the world as a whole, and I've inspired somebody to do something great.

[00:36:27] Even beyond just their own life, then that would be wonderful. But it's the specific moments that I actually look at on a day to day basis.

[00:36:38] Scott Maderer: So what's coming next for Darby, as you continue on this journey, what's on the roadmap for the second half of the.

[00:36:44] Darby Vannier: Throughout the rest of this year, I'll be obviously working on promoting the book.

[00:36:50] Everybody the next question is when you starting your next book and I'm like, whew that's not on my mind right now takes a lot to get this one done. [00:37:00] But yeah the. The big thing is continuing to talk about the book to get content out there, to help others to convey this message because the messaging is what's more important to me than anything.

[00:37:13] And I'll continue to do that in through podcasts and speaking and those sorts of things as well.

[00:37:19] Scott Maderer: So you can find out more about Darby over on Facebook as the indispensable leader or on Twitter and LinkedIn as Darby veer, or find out more about the book and Darby's coaching and services over@beindispensable.com.

[00:37:35] Of course I'll have links to all of that in the show notes as well. Darby, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:37:41] Darby Vannier: No, I think the big thing is just again, understand. A moment that's insignificant to, you may have dramatic significance to somebody else. And I would say just, don't forget to be indispensable.

[00:37:55] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship [00:38:00] podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively. Listen. But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.

[00:38:23] All one word. iTunes rate, it'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.