****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Thom Mayer 0:00

Hi, I'm Dr. Thom Mayer and you're listening to A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:20

Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I'm Kenneth Kinney, the friends call me Shark. I'm a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver, host of this show, and your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:32

So I took a few weeks off because I was sick. You can still hear it in the raspiness in my voice, but I saw a doctor, at least I interviewed one for the show. And what an interview. I saw him speak a few weeks ago and had to get him on the show. Really, really good speaker by the way. And there's so many lessons to learn from today's guest about leadership, corporate culture, medical advances, burnout, humility, and so much more.

Kenneth Kinney 0:56

Dr. Thom Maer is the Medical Director for the NFL Players Association; the Executive Vice President of Leadership for LogixHealth; Founder of Best Practices, Inc.; the 2018 winner of the James D. Mills Outstanding Contribution to Emergency Medicine Award; nominated to the Pro Football Hall of Fame; named by USA Today as one of the “100 Most Important People in the NFL”; he’s lead a mobile team to Ukraine to train medical personnel; he served as the Command Physician at the Pentagon Rescue Operation; has served on 3 Defense Science Board Task Forces advising the Secretary of Defense; an author of books including Battling Healthcare Burnout; and he was the originator of the NFL Concussion Guidelines program.

Kenneth Kinney 1:41

And on this episode, we will discuss the NFL, service, when leadership is a noun and when leading is a verb, the we-suite 9/11, CTS, Damar Hamlin and three great resuscitation doctors, Hall of Fame gold jackets, physician burnout, dealing with stress leading a mobile team to Ukraine, a usual suspect, Roger Goodel's middle name, great football movies, best G of all time, what Tua should to do, and a lot lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 2:07

So let's tune into Dr. Mayer with yours truly, Dr. Shark, on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 2:18

Thom, welcome to A Shark's Perspective. If you will tell us a little bit about your background and your career to date.

Thom Mayer 2:25

Well, my background is going to a small town Midwest, growing up world war two veteran father and a great mother not rich in finances, but rich in integrity and heritage and all that and grew up wanting to be a NFL player and played football from third grade through college. And then strangely enough, played one year in medical school tried out with the bears and the Vikings. And they informed me that except for I was really good except I lacked one thing, which was what was it oh talent, many talent. So ended up going to medical school drawn to critical care, the sickest of the sick, and therefore went into emergency medicine and sports medicine and became the medical director for the NFL Players Association in 2001. And had been doing that since but have led a for me at least maybe not for your listeners. An interesting like a life in crisis having led the I was a command physician at the Pentagon on 911 inhalational anthrax, incident commander in that same year, obviously, we've led in the NFL Players Association through COVID, concussion, multiple injury issues field turf now that we're dealing with, as well as forming a highly successful emergency physician group. So I've been very fortunate that when a crisis occurs, people pick up the phone and say Come help us. So the life and crisis has suited me very well.

Kenneth Kinney 4:02

I had the pleasure of seeing you speak a few weeks ago, it was outstanding. And you talked about everything from medicine, to resilience to burnout, to a lot of leadership principles. I thought it was great, but I want to start with football. And if you think about the conversations today that we have about player's health, especially with concussions, you were the originator of the NFL concussions guideline program. And that changed the nature of the way we diagnose and talk about this a lot. But now that that's improved, where would you as a physician like to see that conversation continue to go and grow?

Thom Mayer 4:39

Well, we finished NFL new NFL physician training yesterday in San Francisco at Levi's Stadium. And one of the points I made to them is you have to change culture. If you're going to change action, you know from our conversations, and it's such a privilege to be on your show. Thanks for having me. thing that I believe that that leadership is worthless. But leading is priceless. Which is counterintuitive to a lot of people. But at the same time, leadership is a noun. It's just something you say. But leading is a verb. It's something you do. And so as we move the culture of both concussions in football, Injury in football, there's 2500 NFL players every year. If you look at the total number of people in the roster, there's 7000 injuries, half of which are miss time injuries. So the injury rate in the NFL is over 100%. You'd say, well, mathematically, that doesn't make sense. But it means that many of our players are being injured multiple times per year. So I think where we're going is when I look at a slide that shows us, even if we have injury reduction, concussions actually bumped up last year. My question is, why not have? Why not have? Why couldn't we have half of that number of concussions. And one of the things I always love to say is what would have to be true? When someone presents me with a problem and issue Doc, I need your help. It's what would have to be true in order for you to attain that vision of why not have. So as you know, from your experience, personal experience in your, your speaking experience. People, when you tell people, the way we're working isn't working. They don't always want to hear that they know that they feel that in you know, in their day to day lives. But to come in, particularly at this at the C suite level and say the way we're working isn't working. So why we have so much burnout and frustration all that it's not a criticism of the system. It's a criticism that the system is is people ask me who's my, our ask them? Who's your greatest competitor, who's your biggest competitor? And I listen to what they have to say, but I always say, I don't think so. Your biggest competitors yourself. Your biggest competitor is what you could be, but have not yet done. And that's not a criticism of us, or self loathing or anything like that. It's simply saying, man, there's a world out there, you know that I mean, you're a diver, you love swimming with sharks, you just never know what you're going to see. You never know what you're going to encounter. And same should be true of the way we live our lives.

Kenneth Kinney 7:30

You know, as I was thinking about this beforehand, we've always had issues with concussions. I remember that movies years ago about football, but it's really become front and center now because of a lot of players. But a lot of the conversation in the past was torn ACLs ruining somebody's career. Now it's much more dramatic. And if you think of what happened with Mr. Hamlin, could you have seen any different way that that could have been handled from the NFL or from the teams aspect? It stopped the world in in a good, very positive way. We saw how medicine could help treat something that we couldn't predict. I don't know how you would have predicted something like that? Well,

Thom Mayer 8:09

I think I would just say this, the the Damar incident, I've gotten to know Damar. I've gotten to know his family, I was at the bedside, flew immediately to Cincinnati, D Smith, my boss said Get Get your butt on a plane and get there. And of course, I was gonna do that anyway. But it's personal in that respect. But the NFL EAP emergency action plan program is first of all, it's a system number one, it's not an isolated event system. to it. Actually, the genesis was with the NFL Players Association. I was on the sideline with my previous counterpart with the NFL years ago and a guy went down hard. And I said, Well, who's going to intubate him, if if he needs to be resuscitated, they pointed to the end zone or paramedics. I love paramedics, I've been an EMS Medical Director my whole life. But you try to put a breathing tube down 380 pound lineman and you know, that's a nightmare for me. It's one of the most emergency, most experienced emergency physicians. So we put that in place. We insisted that it be there because to us it was it wasn't a question of if this is going to happen. It was a question of when this is going to happen. And it's drilled every year. There's certain personnel that have to be there. There's 30 People 30 NFL medical staff people and NFLPA, people on the sidelines to respond. I went to the stadium and measured you know, he went down just next to the Bengals logo at about the 49 yard line. Within 20 to 30 yards of him were three of the greatest resuscitation doctors in the world. emergency physicians from University of Cincinnati what's curry Brett? That's And Jason McMullen. And they were they were there, they were prepared. They were experienced. And they were unafraid. And and, you know, honestly, I'm going to admit I got cold chills talking about it. Because did I save DeMars? Life? Of course not. But I helped put a system in place, which did.

Kenneth Kinney 10:24

And it does help to have the three of them. That seemed like they had the speed of Usain Bolt getting too far to it was blinking. They were there.

Thom Mayer 10:32

Yeah, they think you know, and that's the unusual thing about emergency critical care physicians, firefighters, police, we had the same thing at the Pentagon, you know, normal people, and we're anything but normal. You see an explosion, you see a guy fall down on the middle of a football field after a collision, you know, smoke, fire, whatever it is, you run away. To mimic the great Monty Python line. We run into it. And by nature by training it and those guys I cannot, I did a full debrief with them two days after Damar was in the hospital, and it was exhilarating. It was nice to see them get the credit they deserve.

Kenneth Kinney 11:15

Well, you've received so many accolades as a physician. I'm curious, though, what was it like being nominated to the NFL Hall of Fame?

Thom Mayer 11:24

Well, that I'm sure was some hiccup on the nominating the way that happened. Bluntly shark was a bunch of former players said, you know, Hall of Fame, some Hall of Fame player said, you know, Doc, you know, we got all these people in there. We got coaches in there, we got broadcasters in there, you know, where's the doctor winning? And my answer was guys, there isn't even a doctor plausible in the Hall of Fame. So they took it upon themselves to do that. And, and I'm sure that will go precisely nowhere. But it was an honor. Not because of the writers, I love the writers and have a good relationship with him, I think. But because it was players, it was people I'd taken care of who had said, you know, we got to get doc in there. But trust me, why don't you take out your your schedule and write never, for when I'm going to be in the Hall of

Kenneth Kinney 12:15

Fame, I'm gonna and I'm looking for you to have that gold jacket on. For what you've done for players. It's easily worth it. Let's shift the conversation and talk about it. You've literally written the book on healthcare burnout for physicians, what is the problem that you see today in the scope of what physicians are dealing with on a daily basis?

Thom Mayer 12:36

Well, first of all, as you know, because we've talked about it, but for your audience, I believe people have made burnout more complex than it is. That's the reason I wrote the book. To me, it's just in definition, strive solutions. By defining a problem, I should be able to solve the problem. I don't need any ethereal paragraph chapter all that just tell me how to fix this. So it's a ratio, the numerator is job stressors, and the denominator is adaptive capacity, or resiliency. And we'll get into that if you want. So if I if that's what causes the cardinal symptoms of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and loss of meaning at work versus loss of meaning in life, depression, then how do I fix it? Well, I fix it by lowering job stressors, and increasing adaptive capacity. And that it really is that simple. How can I lower job stressors. And hopefully, we're doing both building our personal and our organizational adaptive capacity in a way that helps us say, Let's look forward as opposed to looking back, let's focus on leading, acting in the active voice, creating culture every day, by the actions we do not in the C suite, not in the boardroom. But in my case at the bedside and on the field side and terms of the sports medicine part. And in the gratifying thing has been how many people have called me told me some you know, you know, people actually still occasionally send notes as opposed to email that, say how much it helped them. Because that's all the only reason I ever talked to anybody is to try to help.

Kenneth Kinney 14:24

How have you dealt with it in your own career? Being an emergency physician seeing the worst of the worst, you've also had to wear a lot of that stress? What did you do to deal with it?

Thom Mayer 14:34

Well, people, certain people are born for stress, or trained for stress, or usually, at least in my personal experience, a combination of both. And have that sense that you know, it's not always gonna go well, it's not always you're not going to save every life. You're not going to turn anger successfully in all cases, and being able to deal With that, without internalizing that, meaning deal with it, you know, people talk about the death of a sibling a death of a child death of a parent, you know, how do you ever get over that? Well, you don't get over it, you learn to live with it. And, and that's true in in acute care medicine and emergency medicine as well. And that is you have to realize that that it's not always going to go well. But did you do the best you can? I love doing an exercise when I'm on site with people. And it just shows a slide simple slide and says, Do the best you can. And I asked people in the audience, what does that say? And then what does that say to point to another person? What did that say? The first Myres might say, boo. And the server second person might say do the best. And someone might say Do the best you can. But almost no one says, Do the best you can. And I think it's a tragic mistake that people don't put the emphasis on you do the best you can. Don't compare yourself to other people, your siblings, the other Doc's, the other people that work in your environment, the other salesman who's getting prizes and trophies and bonuses, and you're not do the best you can. And I think that's what I have experienced is in emergency medicine and sports medicine. You know, it's all about life. It's not just health care. So I was the health care book, certainly a life book. And that's one of the greatest compliments I've gotten from people to say, Man, I gave this everybody I could find because it's going to help them as well.

Kenneth Kinney 16:44

You help lead a mobile team to Ukraine, you treated hundreds of patients and trained 1000s of Ukrainian medical staffers. What was that? Like? Did it kind of help you de stress and give back and why did you go?

Thom Mayer 16:58

Well, I went because the problem was there I went, because I was trained for it. And

Kenneth Kinney 17:03

this was in 2022. When the past when it was a really big problem to start not a tiny problem. Huge.

Thom Mayer 17:12

For the month of April 2022. So the problem was there, the experience that I had had was unique, having been there before. And as D Smith, my boss says, you know, Doc, we were born for battle. He and he and I, he also by the way, refers to me as Kaiser. So as a

Kenneth Kinney 17:32

result suspect Oh, yeah, exactly. I take

Thom Mayer 17:35

that as a compliment, you know, some strange, twisted way. But at any rate, you know, the problem was there, they needed to be addressed. There weren't that many people that could do it, and get freed up to go. And as it happens, I thought that the unique need of these internally displaced people IDPs, horrible, a sterile term for people that have been disrupted from their lives, their homes, ripped out from under them by a fanatic and his myrmidons have to get on a train and go 900 miles and hope that someone will be there to take care of them. And Ukrainian people were, but there wasn't a system of physicians, nurses, firefighters to take care of them medically. So that's what we went to do. And and shark it was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. You know, these people, they're the real heroes, not us for going over there. But they're the real heroes. You know, their courage, bravery and tenacity is without air.

Kenneth Kinney 18:39

One of the things that really stood out femur speech was how much actually translated from health care to corporate life. What lessons can people in the corporate life take from your experience in the medical world in order to leverage to do with burnout and better leadership? Because again, you talked about leading as a noun, and I just a lot of what you spoke about on stage specifically about leadership could apply in yours just like blew me away. It was, it was fantastic. The advice you gave that didn't involve talking about tourniquets, and slings and everything else all day long.

Thom Mayer 19:17

Well, a couple of things. One, regardless of where you are, regardless of what you do, regardless of what current position you're in, don't aspire to become a leader you already are leading your life. So embrace the fact that you're a leader embrace the fact that you know when you swing out of bed in the morning, evening, night when you're getting ready to go to go to your job or your life or take your kids to a soccer or lacrosse football game, whatever it is, when you plant your feet, say I am a leader, I am going to lead today and then inspire other people to do that to feel the same way, particularly your kids but the folks you work with on a day to day basis. You know, as I said culture is not the words on the walls, it's the happenings in the halls. Now, with those three things in mind, I think you have to think about leading in a radically different way. You have to think about, you know, the boss doesn't have what I want, I have what I want, you know, the answer is not above me, it's within me and among us, the team of people, you have to act on that within a week, you know, my hope would be that after this podcast, anybody who listens to it, whenever they listen to it, it'd be three years from now listens to it, and acts differently in some way at large or small, different because you know, us as human beings, if we don't change our habits, within a week, we're not going to change, we're going to have a nice set of slides or a memory or a chuckle about what, what shark said, what doc said, and all that. And then third, innovate, because the way we're working isn't working, got to change the way we're working. And that doesn't take getting into the C suite. It takes the team, the we suite, being able to say, We can do this, we have it within us. And when you do all those things, it really magically changes from dropping the word someday out of your vocabulary. Someday I'll be a leader, someday I'll be the boss. Someday I'll be the top salesman. Someday I'll be in the C suite, to today. With an exclamation point today. Go act today. Lead today, lead yourself lead others feature kids to do that teach every person no matter who they may be housekeeping cleaning floors, or wherever it is that you work, but say hi to him, embrace them. Now you do not embrace them, like bringing up on charges. You know, we've all seen that. But embrace their humanity embrace their, the the love they have for what they do and how you might be able to help them today.

Kenneth Kinney 21:51

Doctor is as of everyone who appears on the show, you're in Wyoming. And there's not a lot of these there. But do you have a favorite kind of shark? And why? You know, one of the great travesties is that Roger Goodell never put a team in for the sharks. Maybe with a guy like that, whose middle name, you have to look it up his Stokoe Roger Goodell's name, middle name is sto Ke.

Thom Mayer 22:20

Well, the players might come up with a different middle name, but we won't go there.

Kenneth Kinney 22:23

Exactly. Middle finger. But that's another story. Yeah,

Thom Mayer 22:26

yes to just to be clear to your audience, as they probably already know, we didn't prep these questions. No, this is no surprise to you, or anyone who knows me great white, great white, you know, the big dog, the alpha predator, if you will. Not that they're that's what they primarily do with human beings, you know that much better than one with them before and interacted. But, you know, if you don't want to be your big dog, if you don't want to be your great white, if you don't want to say, You know what, I may be the smallest gray white in the history of mankind, or sharp kind, but I'm gonna meet my biggest great wine. So that that's my sense.

Kenneth Kinney 23:16

Very true. All right. Well, Thom, it's a special time in the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today? Absolutely. All right. These touch on football a lot. I mean, number one, better movie about pro football. But I got to that I think you'll appreciate North Dallas 44 Brian song?

Thom Mayer 23:39

Well, they're both phenomenal. And I you know, I knew Brian Piccolo. And Peter, you probably you know, Peter, again, who wrote North Dallas 40. If you want the raw veracity of what the NFL particularly was like them, then North Dallas Fort, he's going to tell you, this is the underside. This is a soft underbelly. This is the raw reality of dealing with it. Because, you know, Mark, we don't call our players retired players, the NFL calls them that. Why? Because most of them weren't, didn't retire. They were retired, they go clean out your locker, get out of here. You know, love you, you've been great. But you no longer are welcome on these premises. And I tell NFL doctors that all the time. What if somebody said that to you? What if somebody said you've had a great doc, but you're done. You're out of here. You know, their eyes. It's like they just seen a great white right in front of them. So for that, that's the that's the reality. For for their courage, that integrity, the sense of of brotherhood and camaraderie. And it was well played in the movie as well. But the book is you've read the book is the half. Yeah, it's

Kenneth Kinney 24:55

which would you rather watch if you had one to pick

Thom Mayer 25:00

Well, I think if I could only pick one, I'd pick Brian song. Because I usually am not looking for. I mean, I pretty much know the soft underbelly. But I love to be inspired. And I think Brian's story, and in the possibilities, I mean, he might not have passed away, at least from that cancer now with newer therapies that we have. So if I'm usually looking for inspiration, I'm always looking for great performances, but both movies had that.

Kenneth Kinney 25:36

Alright, number two, Hanover college or Duke University?

Thom Mayer 25:43

Well, it's a great question. Both our elite level institutions where not everybody who wants to go there has the chance the opportunity to go there. There without Hanover there wouldn't have been a Duke, meaning if I had not done well, at Hanover, I wouldn't have gotten into Duke. But at the same time, you know, and Duke, we call it for for 14. And whether we're recruiting athletes, or whether we're recruiting medical students or residents or anything else. And of course, what that means is, you know, you're going to spend four years here, but 40 years, that name Duke is going to open doors. People are going to say you went to Duke and I'm widely known as the only mistake the Duke Medical admissions committee ever made. I actually showed up a grant I spent more time riding my horse and fishing than I did in classrooms at Duke I showed up for graduation my classmates said are you still here? I didn't know your medical school. But no, you gotta You can't argue with with Duke University. It can certainly coming from a Hanover foundation, but it was instilled as a transformational experience. Alright, number

Kenneth Kinney 26:57

three, it's a little bit of a softball question. Best guard of all time. 10 time pro bowler and Hall of Famer John Hannah of the Patriots or and you know who the Oreo is? Some pro bowler, two time Super Bowl winner and Hall of Famer Gene Upshaw of the Raiders.

Thom Mayer 27:16

Well, love them both loved Janie's passed away, you know, but, of course, I gotta choose Jean,

Kenneth Kinney 27:23

is his he was the one that got you in.

Thom Mayer 27:25

He's the one he called me and told me you're going to become our medical director. And, you know, we've talked about this before, but people say how do you get that job at the NFLPA Medical Director, what kind of resume do I have to build? And I always tell him, You know what, I didn't get that job. Because of my resume. I got that job. Because Jean was my best friend, his youngest and my youngest, were still our best friends to this day. So don't build resumes, build relationships. And Jean was the kind of guy that you know, I went into his office matter of two months, three months had a really tough problem. I've never been in his office before. And for reasons that you'll hear I didn't go back since. But I sat down with him. And I said, Jean, I got a really tough issue here. And I was smart enough to know I got to present gene at least two, preferably three solutions. So I said, here's three, three solutions. And I said, What do you want me to do? And he looks at him and he says, Just go be Thom Mayer. That's why you are Thom Mayer. That's why I hired Thom Mayer. And I walked out and I called Maureen. In. She said, What did Jean say? And I said, I don't have a clue. But you know, I figured it out. He was saying, I trust you. That's why I say innovation is worthless, but trust is priceless. And and you know, another quick when we showed up for our first meeting at NFL headquarters after I became Medical Director, I'm very punctual. To me relatedness is a sign of rudeness. Jean wasn't that way. So 10 o'clock meeting, we're at NFL headquarters. We're downstairs at 938-940-8950 and we're still not going upstairs and we got to clear security to get up in the conference room. 1012 We finally get a conference room walk in. It's me, Jean and trace Armstrong, our president at that time. There's 32 NFL team physicians, Paul Tagliabue, who was the commissioner that's been doing this, about 18 trainers and about 50 lawyers, and Jean looks around the room and says, we may be outnumbered, but we'll never be outmanned. And so, for those reasons, no offense to John and a great, great man and a great, great guard. I'm gonna go with Jean.

Kenneth Kinney 29:39

Alright, so I got a backup one if this one's too political. But if he were your own son, to a tongue of Aloha, should he retire or should he stay in Blade?

Thom Mayer 29:50

Yeah, that's easy. He should follow his heart. He should look in his heart and follow his heart and, and you've heard me say this, but when my boys were younger, I used to tell them Have one more step in the journey of discovering where your deep joy intersects the world's deep needs. If he looks in his heart, talks to his family, and says, I my passion, as the Martian said, my story is not finished yet beautiful life. And I had nothing to do with that. He's got to do that himself. It's always the personal decision on the part of the player. You know, that said, every player, at some point in their career starts to think about what I tell him on day one, which is you're going to be a former football we don't call him retired former football player much, much longer, and may have more significance in terms of impact on people in your life, or that part of your career than you did when you played on the football field. And so he I know he will make that decision, it will be the right decision because it's his decision, not anybody else's. And he'll follow his deep joy wherever it takes him.

Kenneth Kinney 31:01

One of the greatest quarterbacks that could have been if he had only had John Hannah and Gene Upshaw, as his guards and arrest of the offensive line by backup question was going to be one of my most stressful ones that I go through this practice every year, but it was gonna I was gonna ask you if you thought the Dallas Cowboys would ever win the Superbowl again, because I've been crying about it for over two decades and I've given up on that so not maybe not in my lifetime, but number five and the most important question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits, or cornbread.

Thom Mayer 31:38

I'm going biscuits. You know, we eat a vegan diet now, but but there's nothing like you know, biscuits and green gravy. You know, it may be sinful, it may be bad for you. But boy it is just a taste that as you know the smell brain obviously you deal with sharks. That Ryan and Cephalon the technical name for it but the taste brain is the same way there's just something that you know you smell them biscuit you smell it, and it's them biscuits by the way, I know you smell in biscuits you gotta be having a good day.

Kenneth Kinney 32:17

Well So Thom, where can people find out more about you learn more about what you're doing keep up with your speaking events and and so much more.

Thom Mayer 32:26

Well executive speaker's bureau is handling my work and they do a great job. So on their website, executive speaker's bureau.com my email, it is not a website. Not trying to sell anybody anything is just th O N ma yermd.com. If I can help reach out and we'll get a conversation, we'll get a phone call with Zoom whatever works. You know, it's subject to my schedule, which is sometimes torturous, but I love to help people my mind to you. The question I almost never get asked is, what's your deep joy? My deep joy is helping other people find their deep joy. And if I can do that for your listeners, I'd love to do so.

Kenneth Kinney 33:12

Thom, thank you so very much for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Thom Mayer 33:16

It's a pleasure and Shark truly the honor is all mine. Thanks, brother.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 33:27

Well, despite my raspy voice, there was my conversation with Dr. Thom Mayer, the medical director for the NFL Players Association, the Executive Vice President of leadership for logics health founder Best Practices Inc. The 2018 winner of the James D Mills Outstanding Contribution to emergency medicine Award nominated to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, named by USA Today is one of the 100 most important people in the NFL. He's led a mobile team to Ukraine to train medical personnel during the war. He served as the command physician at the Pentagon rescue operation has served on three Defense Science Board task forces advising the Secretary of Defense and author of books including battling health care burnout, and he was the originator of the NFL concussion guidelines program. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 34:16

First, so many notes I could call out from the show, but I'll just grab a few here. Loved his comments about comparison. Great lesson, he reminds us that your biggest competitor is yourself. It's what you could be but have not yet done. So very true.

Kenneth Kinney 34:31

Second, we all have a lot to deal with daily and it's stressful but don't get burnout. I love the RE emphasis if you will that he reminds us when thinking about doing the best you can do the best. You can put the emphasis on you when dealing with it and don't ever let it overwhelm you. Do the best that you can. Don't think about what someone else can do. Do the best that you can.

Kenneth Kinney 34:54

Third, love his comments about C suite to the G Suite and changing culture with leaders. He says don't aspire to become a leader. You already are in for all of us. When should you start? Start today? He reminds us that culture is not the words on the walls, but the happenings in the halls. Want to change that culture? Think go act today. Change someday to today.

Kenneth Kinney 35:14

Got a question, send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 35:18

Thank you again for the privilege of your time, and I'm so thankful to everyone who listens. I'm gonna get my voice back again soon. And I thank you for your patience.

Kenneth Kinney 35:27

Join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)