What’s at Stake in Your Leadership? | Dan Tocchini

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Episode Topics:

• Discover what it takes to transform from a nominal leader to a true influencer.
• Learn how to put real stakes into your leadership practice.
• Gain insights into overcoming common leadership pitfalls.
• Hear from a veteran coach about evolving to impactful leadership.
• Unpack the complexities of leadership with practical, real-life examples.

 

Rick Jordan  

Hey, what’s shakin, hey, I’m Rick Jordan today, we’re going all in. All right, today, I’ve got a really cool question to ask somebody. And my guest today is going to tell us how to do some amazing things with leadership. Now I’m a big fan of leadership, I’ve even thought about putting a course together, on leadership just because of some unique styles that I have. I don’t know if they’re not unique. But I’ve often said to my team, and my companies that I lead, like a baseball coach, I played baseball for nine years, right, I actually go out and, you know, I’ll High Five people I’ll put put an MVP out there. And I’ll say, Great job, that was an awesome, hit. Good, catch all of that. And then I’ll also be the same guy to say Sit your ass on the bench. You know, think about it for two innings. But you know what, you’ve got another at-bat coming up. So you got to get right back on there, get your head straight, I’ll teach you what to do. I’ll show you where your issues were. And we’ll work through this. So you can get back up there back up to the plate and hit another solid homerun, or single, double, triple, whatever. That’s kind of how I’ve led a lot of the years, a lot of high fives and a lot of direct coaching. Now, today, my question as I welcome. I think it’s Dan to Chini. I didn’t even ask you how to pronounce your name, buddy. Is it to Cheney? tacchini tacchini tacchini. 

 

Dan Tocchini  

Gotcha. speaks English, we’ll say touchy.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s awesome. Welcome to the show, Dan. It’s, it’s good to have you, my brother. Really good to have you. And this is, you’re a leadership expert. Right? And I have a question to ask you right away. And maybe this has been asked before of you, but what does it mean to turn leadership into leadership?

 

Dan Tocchini  

Alright, so you’ve been looking at our website? You know what, I’ve

 

Rick Jordan  

You are a great team man, just like, just like the Tonight Show just like Jimmy Fallon that binds us.

 

Dan Tocchini  

It takes more than you think it does. Always. It takes more than you think it does. And you better be ready to put something at stake. Otherwise, you’ll just remain leadership. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Oh, that’s intriguing. So put something at stake. That’s interesting to me because I was about to ask, like, where did you come up with leadership? Or is that for the people who don’t have the skin in the game?

 

Dan Tocchini  

Right? It’s, I want to play the game. But I don’t want to risk losing anything. looking bad, making a mistake, being embarrassed, you know, faltering. And so I think leadership is then some kind of magic formula, or I’m constantly on top or I’m always the right one. You know, that’s not the way it works. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, no, brother, it got there’s got to be a scenario right to where you look back at your own self, because a lot of the things that we develop, like, I like the word leadership, I’ve never seen that before, right? I’m sure you’ve looked back at your own leadership, or most of your leader shit, and came up with that word

 

Dan Tocchini  

was a confession. No, I see it out there. But it’s, you know, if you spot it, you got it. Yeah.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, for sure. Give me an example of that. It’s like, when did you actually look back and be like, oh, man, that’s just some shitty leadership.

 

Dan Tocchini  

Well, I had a company I ran for 20 years.

 

Rick Jordan  

What kind of company? 

 

Dan Tocchini  

It was a consulting, it was more of a training coaching company. I started training work back in the ’80s, early ’80s 82. We started a company called the coaching company back then, but it didn’t work out because nobody knew what coaching was. But we did a lot of work inside organizations, we call it consulting. 

 

Rick Jordan  

And that turned into, yeah, like advisory, right, those old school words, you know, yeah.

 

Dan Tocchini  

But I was running a company for a long time and had multiple, you know, employees, 14 years, many of the employees, many of the leadership, most of them, I’d say 97, eight or 990 9% of them, were there for 14 or so years. And it got to a place where I could tell we were we weren’t performing at our highest level, we could not even close. And we had for some time, but we faded. And rather than address it, I tried to become something I wasn’t, you know, tried to be this compassionate. To me, it was I was trying to live up to the imposter syndrome. I was trying to live up to something I wasn’t. Yeah. And I was trying to find ways to talk about very difficult issues, without addressing them directly. Or, you know, if it got people got upset, I back off, like what kinds of issues? Oh, like, performance issues?

 

Rick Jordan  

It’s a big one, right? I mean, I’ve talked about this in my own organizations from time to time to where it’s, I call it like the Yin without the Yang, where, you know, everybody talks about all the amazing incentives, you know, and the Commission’s and the bonuses and all the amazing positive things that you can, you can have from doing your job the right way and going above and beyond. But then never ever really talk about that when it comes time anyways to talk about the performance issues. Everybody, like leaders, just tends to run away, because it’s great to talk about all the good stuff they’re doing right. But then when they screw up, which happens, we’re all human, right? All human things happen, but even more so it’s not even so much that we’re human. We all have a need to grow. And you need good leaders in order to point out that Yang to the end and be like, Hey, you screwed up there too, right? 

 

Dan Tocchini  

So you’re starting to have that uncomfortable for a lot of people, they didn’t want to do the exploration, I didn’t want to risk what they thought, I mean, we became good friends over the years, I was just full of shit. You know, and in, in by not really being authentic with them at the time, and saying what I was seeing, because I could see things, I tried to work around it. And in the withholding of what I saw was a lie was just so you know, there’s all kinds of shit, you know, there’s bullshit, and there’s rat, you know, bullshit is you’re lying, you know, and the unwillingness to talk about what needed to be talked about, or at least talk about it in a very, in a way that brought it to the surface where we all could look at it. Yeah, I was more about saving myself from the pain of doing that. Or the potentiality of losing people that were doing things I didn’t want to do again. And so in a way, I was trying to be about them. But really, it was about me. I didn’t want that back on my lap. I didn’t want to face that. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Brother, I was gonna have to pay for sure you turn it into a problem. Right. And that was it. That’s an ego thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I’m hearing you. And there’s it’s interesting because there’s a lot of people that say, Oh, I’m not good with conflict, right? And you’ll see leaders that are say, I don’t like conflict. And it’s like, well, conflict does not mean combat. You know? Yeah, I think there’s a lot of that fallacy that exists. It’s like conflict is actually a, it’s tool, man, it’s a resource to be able to actually get to a point.

 

Dan Tocchini  

It is the yellow brick road to success. I mean, it’s my the, you know, there’s only three kinds of problems, you got a normal problem, you got an abnormal problem. And you got to put that pathological problem. And I think one of the biggest things I know as a leader I struggled with for a long time, was which problem do I need to solve first? Because anything you do that’s new is going to bring a new set of problems. Yeah, which problem, you always have problems, which ones are the most one important ones to deal with? And you really got to think of that in context. So there’s a normal problem. Like if you and I are running a business, and, you know, the economy shifts, and we have to deal with, you know, people leaving or you know, we have made cuts, et cetera. And that’s a normal problem. But let’s say we have turnover over and over and over again over the year, or over the years. That’s an abnormal problem and probably pathological. So I need to pay attention to that. That’s when we have a cashflow problem, right? Yeah, the first couple of years might be so but after seven or eight years in business, if I’m continually having a cashflow problem, then I’ve got something pathological I need to look at and go at it. Yeah, really put it in the front and center with everybody. 

 

Rick Jordan  

I don’t see you ever have a problem with conflict, though, because as I’m hearing you, it’s like, it’s almost like you might be part of your own mafia or something. I mean, that’s, I mean, you’ve got the great last name, and you’re sitting here, you’re talking to me like this. And it’s like, you’ve got this pathological problem. And I’m, like, just waiting for your hand to go up and messing with you, right, but it’s not gonna make any. But even with that, it’s like, I could see the way that you carry yourself and you’re all smiles here, you know, but I can imagine you in a workplace setting, you know, in a leadership setting to where you started to. Now listen, we got to have a talk.

 

Dan Tocchini  

I tried to stay calm, I have, from time to time got upset, but I welcome it back. By the way, you know, one of the things we do, at least with our team, and we do it with the teams that we work with, is we work with what it means to be able to argue well, right? We’re going to argue that it should improve both of our sense of what’s wanted and needed, our sense of logic needs to be sharpened, if we’re having a good argument. And, and usually, if we’re arguing, we’re arguing, because we care about something, we would just see it differently. So, so many times I’ve had guys or gals come to come in this video we’re gonna talk about getting into a good argument. And as a result, we get smarter. 

 

Rick Jordan  

I want to explore that a little bit because I wish I had my team here and pulling up my phone because actually, the meaning of words carries a lot of value for me. 

 

Dan Tocchini  

It always says I am a work. I’m a I’m a nerd, my team gets crazy, because as soon as you use a term I want to go What do you mean by the 30? Yeah, exactly on the same page.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yep. Right on. So I mean, as you’re, as you’re talking about this, because I think of I think of an argument or the word you know, a lot of people will throw that around, you know, almost like conflict and combat, right. They think at least mentally it’s a psychological thing or pathological as you said, where it’s interchangeable, where people will think that a conflict and you know, whether it’s workplace or even in a relationship, it means combat. So argument I’m curious, right? As I’m looking at this, it’s like a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong. Like there’s a strong argument for submitting a formal appeal  I mean, it’s almost going like off of what a lawyer would look at when you have a lawyer presenting a case in front of a judge, you know, this is why words have, I mean, the, the meaning of words have so much value to me, because it’s like when, you know, when you talk like, partners, right? husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, boyfriend, boyfriend, and then you dive into, oh, we had an argument, a horrible argument, you know, or I want an even better, man even better than it’s like when people say, I don’t want to argue, you know, but really, they’re saying I don’t want to fight. And that’s, that’s the conflict versus combat thing, again, because they’re relating argument to fighting, when really, it’s like an argument like a lawyer walks into a room, is he fighting with the judge? Is he fighting? Is she fighting with the jury? No, they’re presenting a case, which is called an argument. It’s like literally saying, This is what I feel. This is how I think this is my view. You know, and it’s, it’s a discussion, but it’s, that’s why the value or the meaning of words has so much value to me, because it’s like, so many people think argument equals fight, just like conflict equals combat. This is getting really good, man. I mean, I’m glad you brought this up.

 

Dan Tocchini  

You know, it, you hit it on the head. I mean, when I talk with executives I work with I talk about our argument as the art and science of effective reasoning. And that we’re actually going to be it’s a cooperative activity. Yeah. And I’m gonna get passionate about what I see or what my perspective is. And I want you to, to be what however you need to be to be to get your point across, and I let them know Look, I’m going to argue, I’m going to state my, my claims as if I’m right. But I want you to know, I’m listening as if I could be wrong. And I need you to address which your hearing is congruent so that we can sharpen and we’ll make the best decision out of it. Dude,

 

Rick Jordan  

I think we’re gonna chop that down to a clip in a real because it was incredible what you just said, right? You’re going to state, your opinions as if I’m right. But my ears are going to be open listening. In case I’m wrong is if I’m wrong. That’s all

 

Dan Tocchini  

I’ve been married almost 50 years.

 

Rick Jordan  

Okay, how many years into it? Did you finally figure that out? That’s what 35 or 35? Yeah, that’s good. At least it wasn’t 49.

 

Dan Tocchini  

Just to say the last 15 or so years of my life have been the best and most peaceful and enjoyable, right on with my 50

 

Rick Jordan  

years, when I  just want to draw attention that real quick. So yeah, when did you get married? I mean, I can obviously figure it but 1920 2160

 

Dan Tocchini  

I’m 16. I’ll be 69 in December. Wow. And I married my wife when she was, I was 26. And she was 23. I think 2120.

 

Rick Jordan  

Okay, so you’re like at 40-something years? Yeah. So you’re rounding up to that still incredible, man. I

 

Dan Tocchini  

mean, it’s she I was 23. I was married at 23. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Okay, so you like, yes, you’d like almost 4547 years into it. Seven? Yeah, yeah. Wow, man. That’s incredible. First, that’s awesome. Good job sticking through it and pushing through it. I mean, I’m sure there have been like, if you look back, right? There’s been ups and there’s been downs. And it’s almost kind of like I’ve written a book about I’ve written books. That’s great. Yeah. But it’s when people can see rollercoasters, too, you know, and it’d be like, Oh, we’ve had the highs and the lows. It’s like, I don’t think that that’s the case. When you look at you and you like you reflecting back, you know, people in relationships. Sure. They can look over a short period of time, maybe a year, and see the highs and the lows of a relationship. But when you look at a span of 50 years, like you’re saying, I would think and correct me if I’m wrong. But could you not call those more of a season? Or seasons rather than highs and lows?

 

Dan Tocchini  

Oh, yeah. I mean, I met her when she was 16. And I was 19. Wow. So I could have been arrested. Created an agreement with her mom, thank God.

Rick Jordan  

It was an old involved a little bit of a payoff.

 

Dan Tocchini  

And they were both from the old country. But so I knew very young. We split up before we got married and went through a lot. We got married and went through a lot. You know, it was quite, quite advanced. But I think like any relationship, it requires a willingness to be committed to something bigger than your own self, which I really didn’t get a hold of, till about 10 years into the relationship. Well, I started to get a hold of it, then. That’s

 

Rick Jordan  

amazing, man. I appreciate you. I really do because I think you have a lot to teach people. It’s because quite literally, you’re 69 years old, I did an episode just me a solo episode A little while back talking about my grandmother, and how she passed when she was 93. You know, and it’s like, I’m 44 and I love having conversations with those who are you know, like 20 years and more to my elder. And I say that my dad’s 90 He’ll be 91 Oh, dude, he’s still that’s amazing. That makes me so happy for you for real. because you still have, you still have that that’s like, like blood relatives that you’re able to look up to and talk

 

Dan Tocchini  

1. I mean, he’s here just present like, he runs his business. He goes down to the office and usually sleeps for a long, but makes deals and then goes home every day, you know, is he loves it,

 

Rick Jordan  

that’s great too. Because I mean, when you look at that, and I hear people like to retire at this age, you know, or, or like this big thing for a lot of people who are 25 and 30. I hope you’re listening right now, which is most of our audience, right? A perk up your ears for this is that I don’t feel like there’s ever an age in life when you should be retiring. Or actually, you should be going towards retirement and be like, I’m gonna make so much money that I’m gonna retire now. Because just like, just like Dan and I are talking about here, there are seasons in your life. Yeah, and you can go through seasons of education, making a lot of money, and then going back and recycling and learning more and making more money. And then, you know, buying more amazing crap, right, and then learning a gofund going through a season where learning leadership and excluding leader shifts, and then you go through another season. And then you get to a point where it’s like mentorship, like Dan is right here, where you can look back and be like, This is my place in life. Right now. I write books, I talk to people, and I tell them what I know, from what I’ve experienced over the last 50 years of my life. And

 

Dan Tocchini  

I love the work and I love to get in it with the teams. I do a lot of work with startups. And we do I do. My specialty is establishing culture through leadership in the organization. So we do a lot of work with boards and leadership teams, you know, and, and those communications between, you know, the governance and the execution and opera, opera operationalization. of, you know, strategies. That’s

 

Rick Jordan  

a big word I wouldn’t attempt to.

 

Dan Tocchini  

I couldn’t listen, I’m it’s a miracle came out. Yeah. That’s

 

Rick Jordan  

awesome. Dude, I appreciate you. I’m I’ve had so many questions on here. There’s one more. There’s one more that I want to hit before we close out today, because there’s intriguing to me, right? Obviously, we had the leadership versus the leadership, but paradoxical leadership? Yeah, but what do you mean by that? Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Because you talked

 

Dan Tocchini  

earlier, we were talking about, you know, the kind of how I blew that company up? Yeah. You know, and I was struggling with a paradox. A paradox is a tension that exists, that we navigate, you don’t resolve a paradox, you don’t just, you know, there’s no answer to it, you’d have to learn to negotiate it. And the paradox you and I were talking about at that moment when I was telling that story, is the paradox between empathy, which is creating affinity with people, which you need, you know, they get that you care about them and what they’re up to? And enforcing is the other aspect of it, enforcing what’s needed is unnecessary. And what holds the game in place, right? Yeah, can’t you know, that’s everything from contracts to deliverables, you know, everything you’ve got in place. So that tension between maintaining an empathic or affinity with the people you work with, and also enforcing what’s wanted and needed is a paradox. And there are, we’ve identified quite a few, like, more than 14, but

 

Rick Jordan  

it’s an interesting balance, isn’t it? And it’s something that’s not very easily obtained, and probably something I mean, I know I, I’ll even struggle with it at times, because I genuinely want what’s best for people. But what’s best for people is like, I have to try to balance because I’ve got, you know, almost 100 employees in a public company at the same time, I want what’s best for that person in their own life. It’s like, you don’t want to destroy a person by not giving them a chance you want to help a person, but then there’s, you have to say, Okay, what’s my threshold? What’s my time period? So I’m just gonna tack on a little bit, there’s probably boundaries and certain thresholds you need to have for yourself that you understand, right, yeah, there are

 

Dan Tocchini  

consequences. Yeah. And, you know, to to discern the asymmetries in the process requires an ability to inquire and to weigh, what the prices and rewards are. And I have very specific frameworks to do that. That’s incredible. Yeah. And the other thing is to be able to have hard conversations that will deepen the relationship, even if it’s going to break apart that there’s respect and a deepening of the relationship. Yeah. And I think that that requires an authenticity that many leaders aren’t willing to do. And that’s where the leadership comes in is, like, trying to lie about what you’re up to, or trying to make it about the other person when it’s really some a preference you have for sure. And you can’t see exactly how it’s good for the other person. Yeah, like that’s when the leadership starts to leak in. Oh,

 

Rick Jordan  

man. We got to plug those holes, brother for real Dan. Dude, thank you for being on today. This has been an amazing conversation. We went a little deep, you know, got into some awesome concepts and I feel like we’ve only scratched the surface. Everybody. I think you need to go follow Dan at Dan Tacchini right at Dan underscore Tacchini on Instagram, and amazing dude, I’m telling you reverting back to this. I love talking to people like Dan who are to me, to my senior to my elder just because of the breadth and wealth of knowledge that guys like Dan right here incorporate into their lives. We can learn something from everybody, especially those who look at those who are older than us to be able to look up to them and gain their knowledge and experience because they’ve paid the dummy tax write-down so that we don’t have to pay it. I know. You got a thank you, brother. Thanks for being on today.

 

Dan Tocchini  

Oh, thank you. It’s wonderful to be with you. Thanks.