The 5-Minute Habit That Prevents 99% of Leadership Failure | Dr Michelle Johnston

23:59Ryan Hanley:Awesome. Sorry we didn't get to connect, but it's because you're killing it and I got three jerks over here I'm dealing with. But keep going. You're amazing, right? Ryan, if you said that to me, I would be on cloud nine. Yeah. That's all it takes. That's all it takes. So it sounds to me like maybe a lot of people, maybe they think it's more than it needs to be. They make it too complicated. Yes. And that's why they don't do it. Yes. And Chester Elton, one of my favorite people, he wrote Leading with Gratitude. And he kept hearing because he believes that that is the secret sauce to great leadership is really saying thank you.

24:40I'm grateful for the work you're doing and leading with gratitude is going to get you far and the pushback he received was leaders would say well I don't want to say it too much because then it's going to kill their motivation I don't want to be like too nice how many times so he conducted a study to see how many times was too much and he said he found that the average per day was maybe one one thank you and that and because leaders were scared they do it too much and that too much was over nine times and no one in the history of his research ever did it nine, seven, eight, nine times. So you almost can't say it enough.

25:18Ryan Hanley:What does it say about like human nature that like the first instinct of people is see this awesome thing? Well, I don't want to do it too much. Like you would think, you know, I guess the way where my mind goes with that is like, let's say I said it five times a day, which would still be a lot and great, it almost is a – it doesn't demotivate them because they don't want to go to three ass-pats a day. Like what if I'm getting five ass-pats of practice and all of a sudden I start getting two ass-pats of practice? Now I'm like, well, shit, where do my other three ass-pats go? I need to work harder.

25:52Ryan Hanley:I need to get that. I want those five every day. Yeah. Like it would be – it does not seem – not a human psychologist. I was a math major in college, but it doesn't seem like human nature to me that that would demotivate anybody. It almost seems like it's confidence building. It's security. It's, you know, those – my brain is not working. Those things. For the audience, no, my entire house, the circuit breakers all went down right before Michelle and I were supposed to get loud or go live. Oh, get loud too, I guess. So my brain is running. And the more specific you can be too, you know, by just saying thank you, that's fine.

26:36But how about, again, thank you for that excellent conversation. Thank you for the energy you brought to that meeting. Thank you for hitting your numbers every week. What would I do without you? So adding more specificity to your thank you goes a long way as well.

26:50Ryan Hanley:What does connection mean outside of the office to our performance inside of the office? You mean with customers and constituents? I think, I think. I think oftentimes, and it's incredibly important, the connection conversation between leadership and team. But then there's the connection with our customers, our vendors, with our peers, with our family, right? The people that are important in our lives. There's all these other connections. And, you know, a lot of the time when I get, you know, I have people reach out or DM or have questions. The question will be framed as a business problem. but within like two or three whys or just kind of follow-up questions, oftentimes the problem is rarely relegated to just business.

27:41Ryan Hanley:Totally. So is cultivating all of these connections – like does that become the leader's job? Is this really cultivating the connections in my life so that I can be healthy and lead with gratitude? Is this kind of become my job? And where I'm going with this, let me just frame this one more for a second. My opinion is that very few people understand the job description of a CEO, a leader, a founder, the top of the pyramid. They think it's still to be the best salesperson or the best business development person or the person who's always on stage talking all the time. And I'm of the opinion that you have this dialed, that your job is actually when you get to the top is you invert the pyramid and you're actually the supporting pillar of the organization.

28:36Ryan Hanley:Me too. And this connection piece to me that you talk about in your book, like this is the only way your message gets through. So this feels like not like a nice to have kind of thing. I know I was kind of making fun a little bit about luxury problems at the beginning, but obviously that was in Jess. Like this feels to me like a core skill to being a great leader, not just this nice thing to do if I want to take my business to the next level. Like you cannot move forward without being at least adequate at building and developing connections. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I love the description.

29:11You said you have a lot of, you know, I don't even think you use the word dude, but that's how I heard it. Like bros, dudes, like who are like, just come on. I just need to get the results. Come on, man. Don't bore me with that stuff. and I agree with you Ryan you can't afford not to and so I had on a great guest on my podcast recently and and and he goes look he goes I had to learn how to do this I was not a natural I said okay so how did you go from not caring with your people and not talking about how are you doing really I want to get I want to get to know you as a person tell me about your family to all of a sudden you showing up wanting all of that how did you frame that and he said I showed up in my one on ones and said, okay, for 2026, I need to do a better job connecting with you.

29:54And I haven't, and I'm really sorry. And I'm kind of embarrassed because I realized like this connection and our relationship that we have, that's what is going to grow this company. So I'm going to start asking you kind of deeper questions about you and yourself and what motivates you a little bit more about your family. Don't be freaked out. I'm doing it because I really want to get closer for the organization to succeed. I think it's all about selling the why. Why are you all of a sudden asking me how I'm doing when you never seem to care before?

30:24Ryan Hanley:Yeah, because it could come off as you're angling for something if you don't set it up properly. Yeah, inauthentic. And that's the last thing we want, right? So I really do think that you, as a leader, should begin every meeting, whether it's one-on-one. And you did a great job with me today, Ron. You're like, Michelle, where do you live? Where are you? Like, what brought you to New Orleans, right? You just kind of, and I got to know a little bit about Albany and when I need to visit. You really need to just kind of get to know somebody before. You don't have trust and comfort and safety unless you get to know somebody.

30:55And you need all those elements to drive results.

30:58Ryan Hanley:Yeah, I completely and utterly agree. One of the first, what's called quasi-viral pieces of content that I ever created was a blog post. And this was years ago. This was viral for a decade ago. Let's put it that way. It was titled About People, colon, give a shit. That's the name of your book. Yeah, seriously. And I didn't have the psychological background. Like I said, I was a math major. I cheated my way through college. Basically, I started as an engineering major because I thought that would be – that was like – so I grew up very poor. I have this very distinct memory of being 12 in my town looking around going, I got to get the – out of here.

31:41Ryan Hanley:Like this can't be my life. It was a shithole. 900 people, one streetlight. We used to say you could leave the doors open because the criminals lived in our town. They didn't rob in our town. In my little brain, engineering was something that could get me out of this place. So I go to school for engineering. I also got a baseball scholarship. And I got to my second semester of my sophomore year, and I had a 1-2 GPA and hadn't been able to pass a full rack of classes in any of the semesters because engineering was really hard. Yeah. And my guidance counselor or whatever the person says, you can either choose baseball or engineering.

32:20Ryan Hanley:And I was like, baseball, drinking, chasing girls, engineering. So I became a math major. And, you know, so you can tell how important academics were to me coming out. But my point in saying all this is that without any of really understanding the psychology behind it, I've never understood how someone could demand something of another person in a business environment without that connection. It doesn't produce results. That's the part that has always been interesting to me is, like I said, I tend to try to work everything through reality. I may not like reality, but I try to work it through reality, and it just doesn't produce results.

33:09Ryan Hanley:If we have no connection at all and you just show up to this podcast and I start pounding questions off your face, how open are you going to be to sharing insights or stories or laugh or zero, right? It's just going to be this bland, generic thing that whatever we kind of get through and then we're done versus I love New Orleans. Most drunk I've ever been. Worst hangover I've ever had. You know what I mean? Like also some of the best food I've ever had. Some of the most interesting people I've ever known. You know what I mean? Like now we're going, okay. And then you're asking me. Like it just, it doesn't.

33:44Ryan Hanley:And that, what was that interaction? Two minutes? Exactly. My point. Exactly. This does not take a long time. And I bet you, if you ask every listener who's tuned in, do you want your people to climb the mountain with you? Do you want them to walk through fire when you need them to? Because it matters. yeah well they're not going to climb the mountain or walk through fire or stay up until 2 a.m unless they know you care about them as humans yeah and i would love for you to break this one down for me i hear a lot of people a lot of leaders will be like yeah well but you know if i do it myself or if i just tell them how to do it then it gets done the way that i want And I see that as complete cop out.

34:34Ryan Hanley:Like that's fear, that scarcity mindset. Like how do you rattle someone out of that cage? Because that road leads nowhere. That dog does not hunt. Oh, my gosh. So I always you had mentioned how to get people's attention to that. They need to kind of pivot towards connection. And I begin any coaching contract, any coaching relationship with a 360. And that's what really motivates change is when you see it in writing how other people say your inability to delegate is causing me to want to look for another job. It's making me feel like I'm not adding any value because you're going to end up doing it anyhow, or you're going to come behind my back and second guess or proofread or change this.

35:22That is the number one theme that comes up in 360s that really gets in the way of great leadership is the leader thinks, oh, I'm going to get in all the details because then I know it's perfect. But perfection is not disconnect. Perfection is disconnection. So you will not have a close relationship with your people if you're constantly micromanaging. You got to pull up, man. You want to be a great leader? A great leader is strategic. Pull up. Trust your people.

35:56Ryan Hanley:Plus, like, this is – so I was talking to a guy the other day. That was after a keynote.

36:05Ryan Hanley:After I get done keynoting, I want, like, a beer so badly. Like, I don't know what it is. I don't want any. It's not I don't need five. I need one. And I need a beer. No other alcohol. It's just, like, something about that. Like, all my dopamine comes back. Whatever I lose during it. Okay. So I'm standing at the bar. I'm just kind of having a beer. Whatever. Guy comes up. And we start chit-chatting. and we're talking about um i'd done like uh i have this keynote that i do around you know positioning yourself as a leader in the age of ai like how to handle this technology philosophically and system somatically okay and um and he's asking a couple questions and he's like you know just i know if i do it i get it done right right i get it done right and i said well you know so there's only one way to do it and he goes well i go you know and i'm like so so so there's multiple ways to get it done.

36:57Ryan Hanley:Yeah. Okay. Well, so why is your way the only right way? Well, I mean, I guess it's not, I just know it's going to get done. Oh, okay. So, so it's not that your way is the only way. It's just that you then know it gets done. So are you just not holding your people accountable? Did you not set boundaries for what's acceptable for success? Like it, that, that I'm holding as a badge of honor their perfectionism and it gets done the right way, in my opinion, is scaffolding for the real problem, which is I didn't build an elevator in my business, right? That's what this is. Like, I didn't build the systems and processes and communicate to my people what actually needs to get done.

37:42Ryan Hanley:So I'm just going to do it myself and then go, woe is me. Look how hard I work. Why doesn't anyone else want to work 20 hours a day bullshit. And I'm like, this is not you being a great leader or some grinding pound entrepreneur or whatever meme you want on the internet. Like you're being an idiot. Like you're not able to scale your business because of this. And look how much stress you have. Like true. It's so much systems and processes. Yes. And I have, I have a great piece of advice or great recommendation for your listeners. It's what's called, and I didn't come up with it and I wish to good, wish to goodness.

38:13I did. Michael Bungay Stainer wrote, he's all about these little bitty books, how to work with almost anyone. And he came up with this concept called a keystone conversation. And he said, if you really want to have a successful project, a successful interaction, a successful relationship, a successful performance appraisal, you got to start with that keystone conversation. And that keystone conversation is going to share with people. And it's two way. It's no longer that I'm the leader. So I'm going to tell you what you need to do to work best with me. Here's what I need from you. It's okay. Here's how I'm at my best.

38:51How are you best? How are you at your best, Ryan? When are you at your worst so that I know what not to do? Here's when I'm at my worst. What does success look like to you? Okay. So you have all of that in the beginning and then you have the conversation of, okay, what's the timeline? This is going to be your role, my role. If you have that keystone conversation at the beginning of every new project, then that's the elevator. That's the scaffolding, right? And it just takes one, not just not, it takes one conversation in the beginning. I will tell you, it's never too late. I'm embarrassed to tell you, I did not have the Keystone conversation with my co-author and he has, and I took a sabbatical to write this book.

39:34I was so honored. He's the number one executive coach in the world. Number one global thought leader had written 50 books. And I'm like, pinch, pinch, pinch. Oh my gosh. I get to write a book with Marshall Goldsmith. So I use my framework and every week I was like, Marshall, I need to get on your calendar. Marshall, I need to get on your calendar. Hello, Marshall, Marshall, Marshall drove him fricking nuts. He ended up just kind of ignoring me. And so finally I went to somebody else who had written a book with him. I said, how would it be best to work with Marshall? And it was Michael Bungay Stainer.

40:05And he's like, you got to have a keystone conversation. Marshall doesn't want to meet with you every week. What? I was like, I was just doing what I thought success looked like. He goes, yeah, for you.

40:14Ryan Hanley:Yeah. So my point in, in, in being really vulnerable and sharing that with you is then I called Marshall up, which was the appropriate channel. Cause he actually picks up the phone. He's old school. And I said, Marshall, what would work best for you? He goes, oh yeah, no, no, no, Michelle, I'm writing the book with you because I support you. I love your writing, love your brand, write the book first and then send it to me so it's never too late that was probably a couple months into this as I was banging my head against the wall but it's never too late like oh okay wish I would have had this earlier but we can course correct I will not bother you every week I will write my book and then we'll talk about how you can add in your martialisms so it's never too late.

40:57Keystone conversation, critical.

40:59Ryan Hanley:I appreciate you sharing that story with us. There's so much power in that. Because I think what gets lost for a lot of people that you just articulated so incredibly well is you thought you were doing the right thing. In your head, you're like, I'm being proactive. I'm showing him how excited I am to work with him and all this stuff. In your brain, you are doing nothing wrong. You're just full tilt value to him. And in his mind, he's like, holy crap. I can't, you know, and it took that one conversation. It's - I drove him nuts. He was probably thinking, why did I agree to write with this crazy woman?

41:41But we were, you know, we course corrected and we write, you know, we ended up writing the ship. Thank goodness. So yeah, Keystone Conversation, again, I wish to goodness I'd come up with that concept because I think it's brilliant and so easy.

41:53Ryan Hanley:Yeah, I agree. And I love your idea that it's not too late. Like I actually was talking to my ex-wife the other day. She owns a business and she was talking about one of her employees and, you know, they've just been struggling and da-da-da. And I was like, well, have you talked to her like about what's going on? And she's like, well, no, she's kind of standoff. I'm like, she's your team member. Like you can, you know, just sit her down and talk to her maybe. And, you know, whether she listened to me or not, probably not. But that's why we're not married anymore. But, you know, I was always right.

42:23And, you know, the speaking of which I'm divorced like you. And as I'm listening to you, Ryan, I'm like, man, I should have had a lot more Keystone conversations when I was married. Well, now it's so funny.

42:37Ryan Hanley:You know, it's you know, so I I teach I teach a framework called peak presence, energy, awareness and calibration, calibration with a K. and because because I have fairly severe ADHD and and at all times my brain and body want to go a thousand miles an hour right thousand miles an hour your brain just hitting yeah and and I tried uh medication I tried Adderall and found that while it works incredibly well to be task oriented it like just chops my creativity right off and I don't like that so I've you know so I've had to find frameworks and build frameworks in my life to get there. And, you know, one of the things that like under awareness is probably the key to the, to the entire framework is this idea of stopping and just being aware of, of what's going on.

43:30Ryan Hanley:I think we move so fast through our day that we're not aware that we were curt with someone or that we walked right by a team member and didn't even acknowledge their presence or, you know, that someone had an email sitting in our inbox for three days and now they're sitting at their desk thinking that you don't like them because you haven't responded yet. And it's because we just haven't slowed down long enough to just kind of go, how am I showing up here today? Like it's, that's a really tough skill, I think, especially for driven people because they just want progress, progress, progress, progress, progress and we so rarely like like just go how how how am i showing up for michelle like am i am i fully here with her like am i max energy today with her uh and then what do i have to do to put myself in that position and what what i love about what you teach and what you talk about in in this book is is that these you're giving them a strategy but that that strategy is is these little micro moments that produce so much value.

44:36Ryan Hanley:They're just micro moments. We haven't talked, nothing you've described today. This is what I love about what you're teaching is that nothing you've described today is this three month journey or I gotta do a week retreat somewhere to figure out this process. It's just like slow down and maybe ask some questions and like care about people. You just summarized my book. Slow down, ask questions, give a shit, show your people you care about them. Bring some positive energy into interactions. Try to show up as your best self. Yeah. And invert the pyramid so that you're not on the top, that it's all about your people.

45:13I love that. And if that's the case, that's connection.

45:17Ryan Hanley:So I've been in sales or tangentially in sales for most of my career. And about probably about a decade ago, like 2016, 2017, I was talking to a buddy who ultimately became a mentor of mine. And, you know, we're talking about the sales process and different stuff. And he's like, you talk too much. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, silence is a superpower. He's like, ask your frigging question and shut the up. He's like, and I took that to heart. Now, I'm not always great at practicing it. I do try. It's a practice. I haven't got there yet. But I do think, and this is, you know, maybe this is where I would love you to come in on this, is like, I feel like sometimes we try to solution before we understand what the problem is because we were not listening.

46:07Ryan Hanley:So how do, okay. So I finally sit down and I say, Michelle, what's going on in your life? How can I help you? How can I, how can I make your day to day better? What's going on? And then like, you'll say one thing and I'll come over the top and go, well, do you need a new tool? Do you need more time? Can I get, and it's like overwhelming. What mechanism or any advice that you have for people to actually hear the response from the person when they do slow down long enough to ask the important kind of give a shit questions. Yeah, I interviewed and he passed away right after our interview, Dr. Mark Golston.

46:45And he was the number one. Oh, gosh, he came up with surgical empathy. He helped kids prevent suicide. He was this renowned psychiatrist in California. And his whole mantra was, you just got to ask more questions and go deeper. And he called it the five reallys. So like you said, most of us, Ryan, just say, okay, like when you asked me, tell me what's going on in your life, I was imagining, okay, I would just start talking. And then you immediately want to solve the problem. And that's also very gender as well. There's very a male, female gender thing going on too. Men love to solve the problems.

47:24Women just want to know that you listen and you care, but don't solve my problem. Just hear me out. Right? So he recommends five really. So if I sat there and said, Ryan, you know what I'm really struggling with? I'm wondering, am I trying to do too much? Should I simplify my life? I'm pretty exhausted. And then say, tell me more or really. And I'd say, yeah, let me tell you a con thing. Really? Yeah. Tell me more about that. So it's just, He called it surgical empathy, where you just go deeper and deeper and deeper. And man, the world will be your oyster, particularly in sales. You teach the salespeople how to do that, how just to go deeper with empathy, deeper with questioning.

48:04You will know exactly what you need to do to solve their problem without ever telling them, right? Because you'll have them in the palm of your hands.

48:13Ryan Hanley:yeah i read somewhere that uh and i'm i'm gonna butcher this and someone can fact check me because i'm probably butchering it but there is an anecdotal stat where if you use the socratic method by like the third why there's like a 99 point something percent chance the person's no longer lying to you like if you ask why enough times like by the third why or whatever follow-up question, like you said, that like, like humans are unable. It's like, it's like an AI losing context of a conversation. Like they can't continue to hide or bend the truth after the third why. Like they have, it like cracks them open and they just tell you what's really going on.

48:52Ryan Hanley:So when you think about that, like, let's assume that's true or some version of that two, four or five, some, whatever. It, the point is asking somebody once a question and assuming you got the full answer, it's never going to be the case or very rarely. You know, I totally agree. And I even renamed the chapter. It was going to be a chapter on listening. And I feel like that's almost too ambiguous for people. To be a great listener is really just to be a great questioner. Ask great questions. Go deeper with questioning. So if you think about this whole conversation, trying to deconstruct connection, really is just asking people about them.

49:41Asking great questions that go deeper than surface will make them know that you care about them. You see them. They matter to you. They're not just cogs in the wheel. They're not just the bottom line results. If you just ask more questions, why don't we do that for 2026? Ask more questions. That's all we ask. Like you said, these are just micro things that are so easy to do and they don't take a lot of time. but man, you've got to show the effort. Ask more questions. That's connection.

50:09Ryan Hanley:That's actually a super hack for your marriage slash relationship as well that I learned post-divorce. But just asking questions, the other person just feels completely hurt and you're like, which makes sense, right? Like I love, you ask me questions, I love that. I'm like, oh, Michelle cares about me. Awesome. It doesn't even have to be a deep question, right? But when your partner asks you questions about your day or your life, it's like all you want. Like what – you know what I mean? How many sitcoms has there been a punchline? You know, the husband or the wife walks in the door and the other partner, you know, just ignores them or does it – and they – could you just ask me on my day?

50:48Ryan Hanley:Like that's like the punchline in some episode of every sitcom ever. And somehow in our – we know this about ourselves, yet if we can even practice in our relationship, it never makes it to our business life. and it's just basic human psychology. It's everything you've said today. People want to be, could you go through the list again? That list is so good. Cared, heard for? We want to be seen, heard, valued, respected and appreciated. And we all do because we're all humans. Yeah, I love that. I want to wrap up with this question. What is one thing that is vitally important to this idea of connection that we have not discussed today that you think weren't being called out, you know, so that people can drive deeper and come get your book and follow your content?

51:39Ryan Hanley:What haven't we discussed? What did I miss? Yeah, so we discussed shifting from what to who. We discussed the most important who is you. We discussed the importance of shifting your meetings so that you're asking and including, right? We discussed keystone conversations. We discussed language, and we discussed energy. The only shift we didn't address in today's conversation, Ryan, is the importance of shifting your calendar. I'm tired of people complaining to me. I'm exhausted. I'm in eight back-to-back Zooms a day. Well, whose fault is that? Own your freaking calendar. Do something. Have 30-minute meetings.

52:18But then I'll have twice as many meetings. Nope. Have 30-minute meetings and schedule time for a bio break. schedule time to go through your emails. You don't have to be kind of at the beck and call of, you have more ownership than you realize. So I think if we all shifted our calendars so that it works better for us and we're not just complaining all the time and reacting, that's going to serve us so much better. Oh my gosh.

52:46Ryan Hanley:We could do an entire episode on this. We could. We could. I'm – this is like as an entrepreneur, as a leader, this is my weakest spot. This is like my kryptonite because I live by my calendar. Like if it's not on my calendar – I've told my – I tell my parents all the time like, you know, if it's not on my calendar, I'm not going to be – like I don't know it exists. I just have too much going on. But then I never take control of it. I never slow down and then I do exactly what you – oh, I had a hard day today. had nine back-to-back Zooms and your smoke coming out of your ears and you know you're like slumped down in your chair and the last three meetings you were terrible on with no energy and nothing to contribute because you're exhausted but you're like but that's the job and it's like nope no it's not correct oh it's not correct so that's our end piece of advice and probably the biggest bang for the buck oh I love that shift your freaking calendar so that it works for you not against you.

53:46And I was just, I was so, Ryan, I was so honored. I was just on NBC News with Kate Snow, and this is what she wanted to talk about. And here's my quote, show me your calendar, and I will show you your priorities, and it might make you really uncomfortable, because the most important people in your life might not be there.

54:05Ryan Hanley:Amen. Amen. The seismic shift in you, where can people get the book? Where can they go deeper into your world? Yeah, absolutely. So it's sold on Amazon. We have the e-book. We have the audio book and the hardback at your local bookstore and on my website, MichelleKJohnston.com. I'd love to hear from all of you all. It is super exciting, and I think it's more important than ever before, the seismic shift in you. Guys, we'll have everything linked up below, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. I love you for listening to this show. We are out of here.

54:40Ryan Hanley:Peace. Peace. That was amazing. Thank you, Ryan. I loved it. I love the discussion.