Keep It Human: Embracing Uncertainty and Sharing Power in Leadership

In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about embracing uncertainty as a leader. What does it really mean to lead with humanity—especially in an age of AI, change fatigue, and constant uncertainty? My guest this week is Jim Bouchard, author, speaker, and founder of The Human Centric Leader. In this powerful conversation, Jim shares how his personal journey from addiction to leadership taught him what transformation really takes—and why the best leaders don’t have all the answers.

We explore what it means to lead through uncertainty, the importance of sharing power and time, and how AI may actually amplify our humanity rather than replace it—if we use it well. We also dig into why resistance is a powerful compass, and how impostor syndrome can get in the way of becoming the leader you were meant to be.

About My Guest

By his own admission, Jim Bouchard should have been dead or in jail many times over. Martial arts helped him overcome a life of crippling self-doubt and self-destruction. In his programs, Jim shares his inspiring transformation from dropout and drug addict to Black Belt and Sensei -- and how that experience made him a genuine leader. He went on to open 5 martial arts schools, helping hundreds of people achieve their Black Belt rank, and thousands more discover their best selves.

Today, Jim helps leaders around the world connect on a deeply human level to attract, engage, and lead people to their highest levels of performance and productivity.

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Connect with Jim:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimbouchard/

Website: https://www.thehumancentricleader.org/

Join the Community: https://keep-it-human.mn.co/landing?space_id=17243140

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Transcript

Kim Meninger

Welcome, Jim. It's so great to have you here today, and I would love to start by inviting you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jim Bouchard

Oh, wow. Do you want the grizzly details always Well, I think, you know, I started this adventure really as a drug addict and a dropout, and I used to think that was a pretty poor resume for people working with leaders, but I came to realize it was a pretty useful one. I mean, leadership is about a lot of things, right? But one of the most important things that's about is transformation. In fact, I'd say as leaders, we're kind of in the transformation business, right? We want to trans transform ourselves. We want to transform the people around us who want to transform our organizations. You know, all that's a huge, huge part of it. So who better to talk about transformation than someone who had to learn how to do it in order to survive? So a lot of the lessons that I learned, you're trying to transform myself from a loser to a leader, if you want to frame it that way, you know, from a drop on a drug addict to a black belt, then later to Sensei and then speaker and author and all those self-aggrandizing terms, right? So it was a long, long trip a lot of, lot of different, you know, little currents and eddies along the way. So, you know, that's part of it. So that's, that's where I came from, and that's here we are today, by accident, right?

Kim Meninger

Well, so it's interesting you say by accident because it wasn't necessarily a master plan, but tell me more about how you came to know that this was the work that you wanted to do given your non-traditional background. Shall we say?

Jim Bouchard

Yeah, that's a pretty fascinating question. In fact, in workshops, one of the things, one of the exercises, I ask leaders to do, and it's going to sound horribly simple and maybe even stupid at first, but I asked, I asked them to think about two questions that we, we reserve pretty significant amount of time. If it's not a workshop, I ask leaders to do this at least once a year, and I do it once a year to just take a day off, take a day away from everything, and think about these two questions, very open-ended, who am I and what do I do? And believe me, the first couple of answers you come up with are not going to be the most meaningful. It's only after we really start thinking about we, we can. So that's why it's fun in workshops, because when people give me their first answer. I said, No, come on. No, no, no, that's not what you do. Let's get into it more. That's not who you are. Let's get into it more. Well, I started to learn this exercise a long time ago, and the what I kept coming up with the answer for both was teacher, which was kind of ironic because one of the people who helped me a lot through in my entire life was my guidance counselor in high school who became a lifelong friend, a brother by choice. Really sadly, we lost him a few years ago to cancer but that was one of his things that he kept encouraging me, and I didn't know why at the time, he kept saying, You're a teacher. You got to teach. You got to teach. So certainly, when I got involved in martial arts, which I didn't think was going to turn into a 30-year career, but you know, that's what it was, is teacher, and what I do now, you know, whether it's writing or speaking or doing workshops, what is that really? It's teaching, right? Which is, which is really sharing so that, yeah, that's, that's it. That's, that's how I got to where I am here talking to you. How about that?

Kim Meninger

Great, and, and I would love to hear more you talk about leadership and transformation. I think are, are things that you and I have in common, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you see as the transformation opportunity when you think about leaders like they start at point A, what is point B?

Jim Bouchard

Oh, yeah, that's a tricky question, isn't it? Who knows? I mean, it's interesting because one of the things I'm asked to talk about more now, in fact, I was just working with my AI guy. I call him Chad. Do you name your AI guy?

Kim Meninger

I’ve been thinking about that because I'm using it so much more often. I was trying to, yeah, yeah.

Jim Bouchard

Yeah. Well, Chad and I were talking about this just a little while ago. The working title is the only certainty. And that comes from an old saying, and I've quoted this many times through the years, the only certainty is uncertainty. Pliny the Elder said that about 2000 years ago. Lao Tsu said it pretty in a similar way too, a long time ago, this is nothing new. But, you know, we're swimming in a cloud of uncertainty all the time, right? The best things that ever happened is the really best things that ever happened to us in life comes sometimes from the worst of times, right? From uncertainty and chaos. That's where we discover our talents, we discover our courage and, and, you know, different things like that. So, you know, it's really interesting that that's really one of the things I'm asking leaders to embrace. You know, celebrate uncertainty. We could say we got to make a t-shirt. Celebrate uncertainty. It's your chance to discover the person or the leader you might not have ever discovered without it. And so that's certainly a big part of what's going on now. And of course, that has to do with the transformation. Conversation too. Where does the process of transformation come from? It comes from facing challenges, facing adversity, facing uncertainties, and then, like I said, discovering ways to manage it. Not to, you know, it's really weird because not really to reduce uncertainty, although we do want to do that in places right, where it's appropriate. But like I said, rather to embrace it, you know, to become flexible and adaptable and comfortable with uncertainty. Because that's, you know, that's the place where you know how many great things ever came out of the status quo. [Yeah.] Yeah. So, so that's kind of cool. So that's kind of interesting. Did I lose track of your original question?

Kim Meninger

I actually want to build on what you said because I think that certainty is a really…

Jim Bouchard

I do that because I've had 12 concussions, so if I go off track, just slap me in the head.

Kim Meninger

Oh, my goodness, no, I, I think uncertainty has, I mean, you mentioned 2000 years ago, there's always been uncertainty. We feel as we continue down the path that there's even more uncertainty than ever before. And so that can bring…

Jim Bouchard

Well, it feels that way, doesn't it?

Kim Meninger

It certainly does and you know, there's, I don't know, I think people are just moving at a very rapid pace, and that uncertainty always brings anxiety, and we're not mindful of it, it could bring really bad behavior. And so one of the things I think about leadership is that when we get anxious, when we get stressed, when we are afraid, we don't show up as our best selves, right? That doesn't necessarily bring out the best in people. If we're being active to it.

Jim Bouchard

It can, but it's interesting too, not to lose track. Now, it occurred to me what you would ask that point A to point B. You know, that's why I say point B. Is that really all that important? You know, leaders, the best leaders in the world today, the most effective leaders, and I don't mean celebrities. Doesn't have to be somebody necessarily famous. You don't have to be Elon Musk. You can be the shift leader at your local 7-11 I don't care. But the greatest leaders are the people who you know understand that they don't have all the answers. I mean, we have a name for people that have all the answers. I won't use it on your show. It starts with A ends and E, right? So anyway, you know, the best leaders are the ones who understand the process of asking the right questions, identifying and formulating the right questions, and that's a continuous process. It never ends because there's always another question on the horizon. So that's why I say that point B not all that important, you know. And I'm not against setting goals, but goals should serve as kind of a, you know, kind of a, an inspiration for us, right? We'd shoot for the stars. We might land on the moon, that kind of thing. The more concrete our goals are, I should say it this way, the less flexible we are in our goals. It can be very dangerous, which loops us right back to that whole certainty thing. And don't believe me, I mean, you know, so many studies have been done in this area. Now it's nice that psychologists and leadership experts are really explore academic leadership experts are really exploring this. So you read it in Gallup, you read it in Harvard Business Review, that uncertainty is a marker of effective leadership, especially, and there's two ways to approach it. We can approach it with external uncertainties, the conditions and circumstances we face every day, which is what you just alluded to, and also internally, right? It's very dangerous to be too certain of yourself at any given time, especially as a leader, it's very dangerous to assume that the decision I just made is absolutely the right one. It's more powerful to challenge that decision as soon as it's been made and try to anticipate what could go wrong, to be you know, I guess, and to be comfortable with that uncertainty and to share that with the people around us, the people that we serve, you know, the people that trust in our leadership, right? Because if they see us as being the person who's only professing answers and too much certainty, we're not seen as certain or confident. We're seen as arrogant, right? And that leads us to another marker that's very strong for effective leadership is vulnerability. And I don't mean coming out, oh my God, everything sucks. The world's going to Hell, yeah. Nobody wants to see that, right? We want to project a certain level of confidence. But it is. It is a projection of confidence when you go in front of people and say, hey, you know what this challenge came up. Here's what we're facing. You know? How should we manage? How from your chair, how do you see us getting through this? What can you offer and sharing that you know and that now we're back to that key element, and not to skip ahead too much, but when people press me to summarize all of leadership, and one thought that's a pretty difficult thing to do, huh? But I welcome the challenge. Actually came out of a television interview that I was doing, and the person asked that, and I didn't have a good answer that day, so it challenged me to think about it, and now I say it almost every time I talk to anybody you know, leadership, above all leadership, is sharing. A leader shares the rest of the conversation is about what we're willing to share and how and that we can spend the rest of our lives doing. Right? Hopefully, hopefully, I'd rather be busy than bored.

Kim Meninger

Yes, absolutely. Well, I think those you. We made some really important points here, and I think that to be able to get to the level, or to be able to engage in the kind of behaviors that you're talking about, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable in certain situations. [Right?] Ego is a very powerful force that can get in the way of that fear. So do you see, or maybe I should ask this a different way, like, what kind of resistance do you see when you talk to leaders? Do they embrace what you're saying? Does it sound like what are you seeing out in the world right now?

Jim Bouchard

Well, that's what helps us book a lot of workshops, right? Because, naturally, we all have resistance to these things. I do too, right? And you know, whether it's a workshop or whether you're doing this work on your own, or you're helping guide your team through this process, it's the resistance that kind of gives us the compass for what we should be working on. No. I mean, you think about it, when we start pushing back against something, that's a really good indicator, right? And it's an indicator of two things, and it could be an indicator, it can be an indicator just of fear. And hey, that's, that's not always a bad thing either, right? I mean, your courage isn't the absence of fear. The absence of fear is stupidity. Courage is our ability to take a look at those fears, acknowledge them, and do what we need to do in spite of those fears, right? That's what courage is. And so without fear or risk or danger, there is no courage. Courage is defined by that. So we could go off in the weeds about that, because arguably, we've created an environment now where we've artificially or we've given too much weight to safety, I think, and security, right? And that can be really dangerous because the world is not a safe and secure place. I mean, the reality of this, like, can we talk about uncertainty in these philosophical terms? Which is fine, especially if we have a glass of wine, it's even more fun. But, you know, it's inevitable. Uncertainty is inevitable. You know, danger and risk is inevitable. And how many times you hear people say, the greater risk in almost any endeavor is not taking a chance, right? Not taking a risk, and fear and resistance can prevent that, but when there's resistance, that's something to pay attention to, and that gives us something to focus on, then we can address that and understand, you know, well, why are people, especially as a leader, why are your people resistant to, for instance, you know, almost any kind of change. But I just worked with a group who was going through a pretty significant technical change. Right now, I don't work on the technical part, but it was really cool to get them in a room and listen to, you know, not only what they were hesitant about in this change, and overall, they were really embracing it and doing well, I've got to say it, there was a terrific group, but when they did bring up, you know, places where there was a little bit of resistance or friction, that was important, because those are the things they, they really needed to pay attention to, the things that are going great, you know, hey, that's, that's fine. You enjoy it, right? But it's really where the resistance, and particularly outside this, this was affecting their, their customers, right? And they were really cool about looking at that and saying, how are the customers going to embrace this new technology, and in technology, wow, that's that comes up all the time, as far as challenges that we're facing, right? Adopting this, this new technology, and how we were just talking about AI before, right? How do we how do we embrace it? How do we use, use it properly? How do we use it to, to help keep us more human, not to detract from our humanity, which can be a real challenge, and particularly when you're dealing with customers. One of the biggest challenges I see with technology these days is in customer service, right? A lot of organizations want to automate their customer service, and here I am the keep it human guy coming to say, at some point, people want to talk to a person. What's the resistance when you, you know you might roll out this technology and say, This is great. It's going to streamline everything. It's going to make your life easier. You can just go online and hit a couple buttons and get your answers well sometimes right. But more important than that, I always use my mother-in-law as an example. I say she, she isn't going to do that. She isn't going to want to do that. She's not going to touch that. I don't care. how much you try to convince her it's going to make her life better, she ain't going to do it. So what do you do with those people? But again, that's a point of resistance, right? And by acknowledging that point of resistance and facing it, that's when you start to formulate the right questions. You know, well, how can I help somebody be more flexible, more adaptable, more comfortable with that? And of course, at the other end of that, what we have to accept that sometimes people just aren't going to, to, to accept what we share it with them. That's a whole different can of worms, right?

Kim Meninger

No, you're absolutely right. I think it's interesting. I really want to spend some time on the human piece, because we have been thinking about, or I have been thinking about, the transition away from command and control. I know you do that too. Go to, you know, a more human style of leadership, but when we talk, it's funny now to think about talking about human leadership, given that AI and these other technologies are rising so quickly too, like how what does being a human leader even look like? Right?

Jim Bouchard

Given that I'm establishing kind of an interesting relationship with my AI guy. I don't know if anyone else's name would Chad, but it's interesting because I've been doing a lot of thinking about that. And in fact, somewhere on my desk, in this mess of things when I'm writing, my desk is a mess. I was trying to find out because I was taking a more personal tone when I was dealing with AI. Actually asked, it does tone affect AI responses? And it turns out that science is it's, I don't know how it does it, but it does respond to our tone, and it adjusts its learning patterns that way, right? So ironically, the more human we are interacting with AI, the better, more powerful responses we're going to get. Now it's critical, though, because a few months ago, when I first started to test AI at all, and I had leaders very concerned, was AI going to replace us as leaders? So I said, you know, let's ask it. So somewhere out there, I think I wrote this for cu insight, there's an article floating around, can AI replace you as a leader? Well, the AI hadn't named him yet, but the AI responded back and said, No, it can't. And one of the most interesting reasons that it gave is because it said, I'm not a human being. I can't accept responsibility for anything that I'm sharing with you, you know, and it explained that it was a way of amassing data and presenting it in, in understandable terms, right? Which can make our lives a lot easier. So my response to that was kind of interesting because in the face of resistance like you said, you know, I started asking leaders, I said, Well, how about this for a challenge? Can we use this tool to help us handle a lot of the mundane tasks, or to streamline things, to give us more time? Now, what are we going to do with that time? Are we going to use that time to get caught up in more process, or we're going to use that time to interact on a deeper level with the people who trust in our leadership, right? The people we serve. Can it make can it help us be more human and more presence for present for the people in our lives? And that's really the critical thing, isn't it? Because, above all, I don't care what you and here's a distinction too you should make. Admiral Grace Hopper said, a long time ago, she said management is about things, leadership is about people. Now they're both very important skill sets, right? But when we're dealing with people, you know, management processes, management tactics, don't work really well when we're dealing with genuine leadership issues, especially when people are facing challenges in their life or their work, or challenges in their life that's affecting their work, right? That's what we have to be willing to sit down and, and relate on a deep level with, with human beings. So can it free us up some time? I think so. I mean, I just asked it to report that normally would have taken me two or three weeks of pretty intense research, and it gave me almost everything I needed in about 30 seconds, right? But the cool thing there, and it even said this, so this is the beginning of the process, not that right now. It actually prompted me to go and check on the sources and to dig deeper. And so that's pretty fascinating. I don't know where it's going, but you know, in many ways, I'm a very traditional person. My whole mission is to keep it human. So it's going to be interesting how we embrace these technologies and make sure we keep you and understand that it is going to displace some people. And we have to face that. We have to we have to figure out what we're going to do with some people who will be displaced by AI so and other technologies.

Kim Meninger

Well, as I'm listening to you talk, I'm just thinking about too that one of the reasons why we aren't doing as many human things as we could is because of time, and that's a realistic challenge when you talk about the productivity and efficiency that comes from using some of these tools. Ideally, it will free up time for us to do some of the human things that I've gotten lost in the shuffle. Right? If I'm a manager who's spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to gather information to share with my leadership team, I’m not going to have as much time to work on developing my people or managing conflict. Or are there kinds of human types of challenges? So I'm hopeful that technology can go hand-in-hand with human leadership if we are mindful and we sort of do it correctly.

Jim Bouchard

If we're disciplined, you know, it's interesting because that's where my past as a drug addict becomes very useful. You know, it's interesting. And people ask, you know, how did, how do you get involved in drugs? And, well, this, there's no one, one way. I mean, talk to any individual, you're going to hear a different story, right? There's some generalizations, but fundamentally, you get behind any of the reasons, I'll put in quotation marks, that we get involved with drugs or alcohol or any addiction, and what you're going to find is there's something missing in our life, right? And that addiction fills that void. Somehow, people misunderstand what I say is, but there is a comfort that I found in drugs, right? There was a safety that I found in drugs, that was a place that I could go, where I wasn't facing whatever demons that I probably should have been but at any rate, and those demons were much bigger than the drugs, by the way, so it's kind of interesting. If we have a void nature, our mind is going to fill that void. So we have to be very disciplined as leaders. We have to decide and with time, that's the critical thing. Yeah, we can talk about the limitations we have on time, but we're all dealt in any given moment. As far as we can tell, right? We've got a day ahead of us. Let's say we can count on, I hesitate to even count on that, but let's say we have the day to go forward, so we got, let's say, roughly eight to 12 hours of working time. What you choose to do with it, that's up to you, right? And if you, if you kind of, kind of put this idea together with what's the most, you know, we talk about three essential disciplines of leadership, inspire, empower, guide. These are not just pretty words. I think you can tell I'm not the lollipops, puppy dogs kind of guy. These are the most critical disciplines that a leader can, can embrace. All right? And let's talk about inspire, well and all of them, but inspire in particular. What's the most inspirational thing? What's the most powerful inspirational action you can, you can take to inspire someone else? It's to share your time and again. Don't believe me, surveys are rock solid on this, you know, but we hear it every single time we do a workshop. What's the most important thing you can do to inspire somebody, to show them you care? It's to spend time with them. So how much? I don't know if that's all that important. It's like I said, it's a discipline. Is it something you're going to embed in your practice every day, every week, every month, so you're going to dedicate a certain amount of time to devote to another human being, and sometimes the best thing you can do is just listen, right? I mean, haven't you had that experience in your life where someone really touched your heart just by listening? They didn't have the answers, they didn't have right? But they cared. They showed that they cared just by listening to you and, and appreciating what you were saying. So yeah, I think that's really powerful. And again, the research is bomb-proof. Don't believe me, Lao Tzu said it a long time. I always quote Lao Tzu. About 2000 years ago. He said the leader is best when the people barely know he. Know he exists. When the work is done, we will say we did it ourselves. Now let's, let's turn that into contemporary terms. And I almost sued HBr for plagiarism, for this. No, it was really cool. I was reading an article which was very validating, joking aside. I mean, I appreciate that. Like I said, academics are starting to validate this scientifically the way that I'll just share the way I've said it, and the first paragraph of this article was almost word for word. People perform at their best when and only when they know their leaders care. Their work has meaning and they have a chance to learn, grow and develop. Now, why it took a half-million-dollar study to validate that? I don't know, but I appreciate that these doctorate-level people did that. You know, I learned it from the streets. I learned it from working in the martial arts center, by helping people overcome a lot of fears and anxieties by helping people achieve things they didn't think possible, right? And that's how I learned to isolate those, those three things. But you think about it. I mean, it's universal, right? People have to know that you care about them, and time is one of the best ways to show that they need you know they need certain things to succeed. You need to empower them. And we talked about sharing. That's one of the things a lot of the things a lot of leaders are very hesitate to share. Is power, power and authority, right? But those are the two most important things you need to share. For one thing, they only expand when you share them. If I help you become more powerful, which you know, really we should define. It's power and control get conflated. Power philosophically, is nothing more than our ability or capacity to perform effectively, right? So if I help you perform more effectively, then de facto, as a leader, I'm helping the people around me become more powerful. I'm becoming more powerful. I'm getting more done. So we should embrace that in authority. You know, that gets a little tricky, because you talked about resistance earlier. I understand why people are resistant to share authority, especially if they feel their position or their status is threatened, right? But one of the saddest things I ever hear, and I hear it a couple of times a year, where somebody will say, I was being groomed for this great opportunity, this great promotion, I couldn't take it. Why not? Well, there was nobody to take my place, right? Oh, my God. Well, whose fault is that? You. You should. You should have been training your replacement. But again, I get it. Why wouldn't someone do that? If you're in an organization where that's their sole focus, they just, they're using you to get somebody to train somebody cheaper and younger. Well, probably ought to get out of there anyway. They're going to get ready for you anyway, right? But if I'm training my replacement all the time and again, we can wax philosophical on this for ages. One of the best things you can do for your own development is to teach somebody else your skills, right? Share your knowledge, your experience, your wisdom. Don't you always learn more when you're when you're teaching, when you're sharing these things? So it's, it's just an ever-expanding circle, and that's where we get heavily into what I learned from some of my martial arts masters, who I was blessed with some terrific people that were just great, great thinkers, you know, and they understood that's how we expand our power, that's how we expand our reach, that's how we expand our, our meaning in the world, is by sharing. And then the circle gets wider and wider and wider. Doesn't always feel that way in the moment, does it?

Kim Meninger

Well, that’s what I was gonna ask you, too because I think that the going back to some of the resistance, and especially we just use imposter syndrome, since that's the…

Jim Bouchard

Yeah, no, that's what the appeal was to…

Kim Meninger

Yeah. You know, I think if you struggle with imposter syndrome, there's more fear around sharing your authority and your power, because you're already doubting yourself and your capabilities. And so it feels, [yeah,] gosh, if I share my power, people are going to realize I don't know what I'm doing. And so there's that defensiveness that comes in, right? And there are other forms as well. But I wonder, just in terms of the work that you do, is this simply a mindset shift? Is there an action component to it like, how do, if, for people who are maybe still struggling to wrap their brain around what you just said, What's step one?

Jim Bouchard

Well, it's, it's simple. It's not easy, right? Sure you can just decide to change it take change your mindset. That's a simple thing to do. It's not easy. It takes a lot of work, takes a lot of discipline, a lot of introspection, a lot of pain along the way, a lot of frustration along the way, right? Those are all the things we need to accept along with it. But I think to answer your question, I'll tell you a little story. I think I'll answer the question a little bit better. A few years ago, I had really a blessing to work in Cuba. This was a Caribbean confederation of credit unions, and they had their event in Cuba because I wanted to try to introduce the Cuban people to this type of financing and whatnot, right? Anyway, long story short, it was all the island nations together, and we were talking about these, these things. And one of the, one of the things that came up in the idea of sharing vulnerability uncertainty, was that I need to, I need to have a good, I don't want to say two way, a good circular line of communication with everyone in the organization, front lines to the C-suite, right? And, sometimes I need to go to the front lines and ask them for help, ask them for advice, ask them for their perspective. Well, as we were sharing, this, one young man from Jamaica, he came up to me and he said, he's I can't do that. I said, why? He said, because in Jamaica where I work. He said if I went to the front lines and asked them for help or advice, they'd think I didn't know what I was doing, which is what you just said? Well, I just said, but you don't there's a little back story he'd already shared. He was a relatively young guy. He came up, like a lot of people do. He came out of college, he went right into a management position. He'd never worked through the ranks, right? He never worked through the front lines. He had no idea what was going idea what was going on the front lines, really. So I said, you don't know anyway. Long story short, at the end of the workshop, he said, Yeah, he's going to try. Now. He had some resistance too, because he was in a kind of an antiquated command and control environment, and, you know, his superiors weren't going to embrace this, this mindset, very well, okay, so that's fine. In fact, he said they would think he didn't know what they were, what he was doing, yeah, yeah. Well, nobody knew what the hell they were doing there, right? Anyway, I couldn't hope for a better. Outcome was probably 334, years later, I was doing a convention in Las Vegas, and this guy comes running up the hall. He said, Hey, sensei. Sensei. I said, Oh, wow. Remember me? I said, Oh yeah, Jamaica, right? He said, Yeah. I said, Well, how did it work out? Did you try? He said, it was amazing. He said, people, the people that I hate to say, you know, his employees, I only use that a technical way, but the people he served downstream, they were coming to him with ideas. They were sharing, right? And they were bringing talk about resistance. They were bringing him problems before they became big. Ones back to Lao Tsu. This the greatest problems are always best solved when they're small, right? And so anyway, I asked him how, how his management was, was processing. He said, Not so well. They still weren't on board. So the only thing I could offer him there, as I said, what, you know, what those guys are going to be aging out in a few years, you're going to be the one in the corner office, and then you can expand on that culture, right? So hang in there, you know?

Kim Meninger

Yeah and leadership, current leadership doesn't last forever. And, and…

Jim Bouchard

No, they just think they might.

Kim Meninger

Exactly and just what you said, too, of I think of it as just experiment with some things, right? Everyone has an overhaul your entire personality, and one day, right?

Jim Bouchard

Just no, and that goes, you just triggered an interesting quote from Albert Einstein, of all people. He said, If we knew what we were doing, we wouldn't call it research. Well, this has got right? He's supposed to be one of the most brilliant people that ever lived. And basically he was saying, Well, I don't know what we were doing. That's why we were testing this stuff.

Kim Meninger

That's a really good frame.

Jim Bouchard

He embraced uncertainty. Yeah, in fact, he did a lot of work in it, didn't he?

Kim Meninger

Exactly. Yeah. Now this has been such a fascinating conversation, Jim, I really appreciate your insights here, and I know you do a lot of work in this area beyond our conversation. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and follow your work?

Jim Bouchard

Thanks for asking. I'm pretty easy to find. You can look up my name on LinkedIn is a great place to connect. The website if you're interested in booking me for speaking or for workshops, is the human centric leader dot org the human centric leader dot org and I'm inviting people to join our network. We've got a free forever level. We are going to be adding more levels as we get deeper, but we're being very generous with what we're offering in the free forever, which is called the Engage thing. And you get to that, join the network by keep it human dot network, keep it human dot network. And come on there. It's, it's just started. So there's a lot of opportunity for you to participate and add your ideas and get the conversation going so. [Wonderful.] Yeah, I'll make sure that I hope this. I hope this is our first conversation, not our last.

Kim Meninger

I do too, Jim, thank you so much. Yes, I will make sure that those links are in the show notes for anyone who is interested. And you and I will definitely keep in touch. Thank you so much for being here today and for all of your great work.

Jim Bouchard

Oh, thank you. Thanks for everything you do. Appreciate it.