129: Fusing 40 Years of HR, Leadership Development and Life Lessons with Mark Rumbles

Mark Rumbles reflects on his career of 40 years, what he’s learned in the leadership development space and what’s next for him.

Mark recently retired after 40 years in HR and leadership development. Mark and I discuss his career journey, the concept of retirement, and insights gained from his extensive experience developing leaders. This conversation touches on various topics, including mentorship, career planning, motivation, and the challenges of leadership development.

Mark shares his perspective on career transitions, emphasizing the importance of curiosity, relationship-building, and maintaining a flexible approach to one’s career path. He also discusses his current interests post-retirement, including exploring podcasting and working towards fostering more civil discourse in society. Throughout the conversation, Mark offers his insights on leadership, personal growth, and navigating career challenges.

Key Takeaways

• Careers are more like arcs than rigid plans, requiring flexibility and adaptability
• Effective mentorship often develops organically through relationship-building
• Leadership development is about influencing factors that bring out internal motivation
• Follow the fear, energy, and incentives to understand and overcome challenges
• Retirement doesn’t mean stopping; it’s a transition to new opportunities and discoveries
• Relationship-building is crucial for career success and personal growth
• Curiosity is a key driver for personal and professional development
• The term “networking” can feel manipulative; focus on genuine relationship-building instead
• Leadership development is a fusion of various approaches and frameworks
• Behavior is a language that often speaks louder than words
• Self-reflection is crucial for aligning one’s words and actions
• Fear often stems from a desire to preserve one’s identity or self-image
• Motivation is complex and can’t be directly controlled by others
• Balance is essential in leadership, knowing when to debate and when to act
• Civil discourse and the ability to disagree respectfully are valuable skills
• Career transitions can involve multiple steps (e.g., full-time to part-time to retirement)
• Volunteering (e.g., joining a condo board) can be a way to stay engaged post-retirement
• The concept of “career” is often misunderstood and over-emphasized
• HR practices have shaped how people think about careers, sometimes unrealistically
• Podcasting can be an alternative to writing a book for sharing ideas and experiences
• Leadership development aims to bring out the best in people and help them bring out the best in others
• Understanding one’s “wiring” and sources of joy is crucial for career satisfaction
• Early career experiences, even if unenjoyable, can provide valuable foundations
• The balance between debating ideas and executing decisions is crucial in organizations

Connect with Mark Rumbles

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## Related Episodes

– [How to Make Networking Humane (40)](https://johnpoelstra.com/humane-networking-040/) — making networking humane
– [Career Coaching Isn’t a Crystal Ball with Tammi Scott (131)](https://johnpoelstra.com/career-coaching-crystal-ball-tammi-scott-131/) — career coaching with Tammi Scott
– [Exploring The Coaching Habit with Ken Dreyer (99)](https://johnpoelstra.com/coaching-habit-ken-dreyer-99/) — coaching instead of advice when you’re a mentor

Credits

• Hallon by Christian Bjoerklund
• Cold Funk by Kevin MacLeod

All songs licensed under Creative Commons

## Transcript

*This transcript was created automatically and may contain small errors.*

**John:** Today, I’m talking to Mark Rumbles. Mark and I overlapped at Red Hat, and he was instrumental in introducing me to people in the wider coaching community at Red Hat, which was, I guess, sort of emerging at the time. Maybe we’ll get into that. Mark recently retired and we had the chance to catch up. And during that call, he asked me about podcasting, which is always a dangerous question because Usually when people ask me about podcasting, I say, well, why don’t we just do it? So it was a couple of days later when I was thinking about Mark and careers and retirement that I thought, oh, I got the perfect thing I want to talk to him about. So I asked him if he’d join me and he said he would. So, um, we’ll probably get into, well, I guess the thing that really caught my attention was, was a career and what is a career and all that kind of stuff. So we’ll get into that in a second. But anyway, thanks for joining me today, Mark.

**Mark:** My pleasure, John. I appreciate the invitation.

**John:** So who is Mark and what are you up to?

**Mark:** Wow. Let’s start with a real big open-ended question. I’ll try to simplify. I’m retired, as you mentioned. I spent about 40 years in the general HR community within my work. But for the vast majority of my time, I focused on leadership development by choice and by opportunity. That was the opportunity that kept coming to me, was to dive deep into that field of leadership development. I recently made the decision that I’d done enough at that point in time in terms of a regular paid job, retired effective May 1st, and have been enjoying the last, uh, 6 weeks of figuring out what it is to be a retiree, though I don’t love that word.

**John:** It’s fresh.

**Mark:** Talk about that. It’s fresh.

**John:** Let’s go there right away. What’s wrong with the word retiree?

**Mark:** Now, so let me just say this. Anybody who uses that, I don’t have a problem with that. I think for me, it’s the, it’s the idea That you’re leaving something and stopping. And I don’t feel like I ever want to stop. I would say I am in this seasonal transition from being a full-time employee, even though I was a part-time employee before I left. That’s a— that’s another subject. So my transition was actually 2 transitions, full-time to a part-time, and then And part-time to this retirement phase. So, I think that that’s where I’m coming from, that I never want to stop learning. That’s why when this invitation came from you, I jumped on it because I have something to learn and maybe people have a few things to learn from me. And I’ve learned a lot from you.

**John:** So, 40 years of leadership development. How did it begin? How did it evolve? And I have so many questions about this.

**Mark:** Well, again, just for the sake of our listeners, I’ll do sort of the executive version. But I always knew that I was interested in human behavior, specifically relationships among people and how to create and foster you know, positive relationships. So I majored in psychology, and then I went and did graduate studies in a couple of different areas. One was I got my master’s in human resource development. And so I think I always knew that that was something I wanted to do. And so I kind of fell into an HR My first job was actually in recruiting, which was in a state university system in Illinois. And so there really wasn’t much recruiting. There was just more interviewing going on at that point in time. So I don’t think I learned how to recruit anybody and was very fortunate to have a mentor who took an interest in me. And so I think that’s one thing that I would— maybe we talk about at some point too, the importance of a mentor. I didn’t really go out and search for that person. They sort of found me, and that was very helpful. And this individual was the head of HR for the University of Illinois. And he just, again, took sort of an interest in me as a young person starting off in this field. He orchestrated probably the first 2 or 3 moves for me within the HR arena. And I did some jobs that I hated, but I realized later that they were super important to building a foundation. But it wasn’t until the middle part of my career that I discovered there was this whole area of leadership development. The interest that I had at that point in time was I felt like that was the highest and greatest leverage point for me to have an influence within an organization, if I could have an opportunity to work with leaders within the organization. So, you know, there’s a lot more to that story, but that’s kind of the very broad arc.

**John:** And what brought you to Red Hat?

**Mark:** One of my other transitions was I left a full-time job to start my own company. And one thing you’ll learn about me is I maybe have a few gifts. One of them is not timing, because I started the same sort of gig that you’re doing now, but I started it in 2008, in the middle of the Great Recession. Not great timing, but I was just ready, and I had, I had sort of built a platform for that time in my life. And so I spent 5 years doing coaching, HR consulting, working in that arena under my own shingle, and did that for— I committed to doing that for 5 years. And during that time, the last year or so of that, I got connected with some people at Red Hat. And I started doing what I call kind of— it’s the equivalent of ghostwriting for somebody. But there was a bunch of leadership development going on at Red Hat. I knew somebody who was contracted to work with Red Hat, and they needed some help. And so I did a lot of work helping this individual with the project that she was hired for. And it became— more and more and more and more to the point where she said, Mark, I really feel like I need to tell Red Hat who I’m working with. And so, and this person, I don’t mind naming her, her name is Deborah Mangum, probably the world’s greatest coach that I’ve ever met. And so, she was very instrumental in introducing me to Red Hat. And at that point in time, I’d met my 5-year commitment. I was ready to go back and work with colleagues and rub shoulders with people. It can be a little bit lonely out there when you’re doing your own thing. And so one thing led to another. They offered me an opportunity, and I took it, and I stayed at Red Hat for 11 years.

**John:** Amazing. You mentioned having a mentor earlier in your career. A lot of times people, when they come to coaching with me, they’ll say, I want to find a mentor. I don’t have a mentor. and they ask me, how do I find one? I’m not sure I always have a good answer. What would you say to someone that’s looking for a mentor?

**Mark:** Well, one thing I would say, there’s a lot of mystery around a lot of this stuff in the career area. Mentorship is kind of like one of those mysterious areas. I think I want to just try to demystify it for people. It’s about building and creating relationships with people that can introduce you to ideas and people and experiences that you haven’t had. And so the first thing you need to do is make that a priority. I don’t love the word— just like retirement, I don’t love the word networking because that always sounded a little manipulative to me. It’s like, I’m going to build my network and I’m going to crush the people that I have to climb over in my career. And so, you know, words mean a lot to me, and sometimes I take it a little bit too far, but I just call it relationship building. And I think if you do that well and you’re generous in those relationships, you will many times identify somebody who’s very interested in you and has maybe, again, been to some places, maybe they’re more senior than you. That’s, you know, many of the, many of the times it’s that. It doesn’t need to be, but it’s helpful sometimes, somebody who’s had some experience you haven’t. And then I find you just have to ask. And most people, at least the people that you want to serve as your mentor, are flattered that you would ask them. Now, they may be concerned about may not have the time. They may not feel like they have all the expertise. But it’s very rare that somebody will just turn you down and say, no, I’m not interested in doing that. And if they do, then you just go on to your next person on your list.

**John:** How would you go about developing that list? Because that’s often another thing. I have nobody, you know, I, I need a mentor. I’m like, okay, who, who could you reach out to? No, there’s no one. And of course I never believed that, but you know, how would someone start with that?

**Mark:** Well, I think as a good coach, you would probably tell them, well, pretend like you did have somebody.

**John:** I would, but I’m not coaching them now. So they’re listening to this and they, they haven’t coached with either of us. They’re like, yeah, that’s— yeah.

**Mark:** That was always one of my favorite coaching questions. So, well, I don’t know how to do that. Well, just pretend for a moment that you do know how to do that. And you get very blank stares.

**John:** It’s very effective though. Yeah. I asked it to someone the other day. They had an organization like 250 people and they needed to do this whole thing. And, and I said, well, if you were giving advice to someone in your— this very same situation in this, because I had no idea what to tell them what to do. And they paused for, you know, 15 seconds. They’re like, oh, I’d hold a meeting and I would do this and I would do that. And it was the next step. Anyway, go ahead.

**Mark:** There you go. Yeah, I mean, we all suffer from a little bit of learned helplessness sometimes. And, you know, it’s kind of triggered by our fear or our insecurity at times. And like, I love your approach with me on the podcasting thing. I said, hey, kind of interested in that. I know that you’ve been doing that. And you go, well, my best advice is let’s just get out there and do it. And I thought, well, okay, I’m game. So you learn as you go. So, you know, honestly, it takes a little bit of work. I like kind of a concentric circle type of approach. The people that are around your circle who you trust the most and kind of springboard off of some of those Relationships. I do think I actually have a tool that I developed, and I don’t know always how well these kinds of tools work, but it is kind of this concentric circle thing. And then you break it into quadrants and you can then begin to identify people that fall kind of close to you or they’re kind of distant from you. The further you get away from the center, the more distant. You just don’t have a relationship with them, but you want to. And you can put in those quadrants anything you want. So maybe it’s mentorship in a particular area. For example, if you don’t know much about strategy, and so it’s sort of, I want to learn about strategy. And so how can I start branching out with some people that I know? And then it’s always this idea of connecting with people. And if it’s not the right person, well, who do you know that might be able to connect me with. And so it’s kind of a telephone game that way. It’s not a great answer, John. I don’t— but I guess I just don’t think there’s any magic to it. But here’s the thing I would say is, and this is a big leadership thing with me and the teams that I’ve worked with, is relationship building is a lot of the work. So you try to figure out how things get done inside of teams, and inside of organizations, and inside of communities. And a lot of that is built upon the quality of the relationships that you have. And so sometimes people say, oh, it’s kind of a waste of time Do this kind of networking, relationship building. I don’t see the end result. It’s because it’s so interwoven inside of what we’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes it’s a bit invisible to us, but it’s really, really important and it pays dividends. Like now I’m retired and I’m talking to people all the time. People are reaching out to me. Because they just want to keep the connection and they’re hot and heavy inside of their career.

**John:** Have you found a way with that to make it so that it’s not transactional? To me, that’s the stinky part of networking is I want to meet that person because I want something. I don’t really I just want to meet Mark because Mark has all the access to dot dot dot. So, but I’ll pretend that I’m wondering about Mark and his family, but I don’t really care. Like, I just want access. How do you help someone with something like that?

**Mark:** That’s a great question. Um, I would say model John here because, uh, one of the things you just said to me a couple days ago when we were talking was, you know, I like to approach these Podcasts from curiosity, a genuine curiosity. And so if you can kind of cultivate that, I do think it requires some work. And it is okay to admit that I have an end objective in mind. You know, you don’t have to pretend. You know, it’s like, yes, I need help. I— it is a bit transactional, but almost any kind of relationship has a bit of a transactional element. It just can’t be It just can’t be the core motive because that doesn’t build a relationship because it sounds way too one-way. So I think you can always ask, look, you know, I may be very junior to you, but is there anything that I can do, John, to help you in the work that you’re doing? And so you try to make it a little bit more of an exchange as opposed to a transaction. But most people, that you’re talking to are smart. They know that there’s an objective that you have, but you don’t have to pretend.

**John:** Okay. I like that. This idea of a career, that was really when we met and then I started thinking, oh, okay. If Mark and I were to talk, what could we talk about? And this question comes up so often. People Come to me, they’ll say, I need to craft my career. I need a career plan. I need a plan for the next 5 years. I’ve, oh, you know, I got assigned to you as my coach through this program with my company. And I, or I picked you because I looked you up on LinkedIn and you have this perfect progression from finance to technology to working for yourself. And I want to know how you did that. So that you can help me craft a similar plan. What is a career? What is this whole term career? I feel like people are like, I know what it is and I know I need to have one and I know it needs to be good. And yet it’s this kind of amorphous thing that we think that we all know what it is. And the older I get, the more I’m just like, am I having a career? I don’t know.

**Mark:** Yeah, I, um, having come out of the, the HR I think it’s HR’s fault. They came up with this idea of career, and then you gotta have a career development plan, and you follow the plan. I honestly, in 40 years, I don’t know many people that have designed a career plan, like a map, and followed it. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s why I like to talk in terms of arc. There is a sort of an arc that you want to follow, and the arc is not a step-by-step. It’s like in your case, you probably didn’t know exactly what the progression was going to be. But for me, it has always been, I want to make sure that I stay relevant and that I have impact, impact that matters inside an organization that’s doing good things. So I have a big arc. And a lot of room inside that arc for it to be expressed in this way or that way.

**John:** When did you figure that out, though?

**Mark:** You know, some through coaching, coaching that I’ve received. And honestly, you learn a lot in coaching other people. I think reflection, reflection on the things that Bring me joy and the things that zap my energy and wanting to align my career more with the things that give me energy and feel like I’m in a bit of a flow. And so you have to look at those because I believe we are wired in a certain way and then we can rewire some of the circuitry. We know a lot about the brain and how that works, but— But I think you have to discover what is your basic wiring and what are the things that really do— I love that word joy. You know, what are they? It’s not only things I enjoy doing, it’s like these bring me joy. I mean, I can get kind of lost in this. What is that? What does that look like? What are you looking for in terms of not only the outcome of your career, but the experience of it? What do you want to experience? If you get too outcome-focused, you can— and it’s too specific, I feel like you’re going to be disappointed more than you’re going to be pleased and happy.

**John:** Yeah, that’s how I started out. I got an accounting degree because I had this passionate accounting teacher that said, if you’re a CPA, It’s the fastest path to becoming CEO of a company. And I thought, well, yeah, I want to be CEO of a company. Let’s do this.

**Mark:** There you go.

**John:** I did the auditing. Was not fun. Passing the CPA exam was not fun. Then I started to see quarters and Ks and Qs and year-ends, and I’m just like, wait, what? Like, I don’t like any of this.

**Mark:** And then again, you don’t know it until you know. And so that’s a— that scenario probably repeats itself multiple times with people. Sometimes it’s somebody else’s voice that’s in your head. I remember when I was a kid, my dad asked me, well, what do you want to do, you know, when you’re an adult, when you grow up? I said, I think I Dad, I think I’d either like to be a police officer or a teacher. There was dead silence. Dead silence. I still remember the moment.

**John:** Those are the wrong answers?

**Mark:** Yeah, apparently, apparently were not what was in his head. And he says, his one response, well, you can’t make any money doing either one of those things, which is kind of true and kind of sad. But it depends on, again, if my outcome goal was to make a lot of money, then those might not be great choices. But there was something in my heart, I think, that really loved learning and this whole idea of service and doing something noble. And so part of it is it’s a discovery process, and it’s back to that curiosity word that we talked about a little bit. And so I gotta— I have to be open to discover things. You discovered some things that you don’t want to do, you know, in your first jump, right?

**John:** And that’s what I often tell people when they’re like, so how did you plan this? Like, I’m like, I just kept getting rid of the things that didn’t work for me and following the things that I was curious about, including podcasting. 15 years ago— yeah, 15 years ago or so, I’d listened to them before they were kind of a thing.

**Mark:** Wow.

**John:** And I started recording stuff with a friend thinking, I don’t know, let’s do this. And then I went to some conferences and then it was just pure curiosity.

**Mark:** See, I, you know, I think we’ve answered your question there. And at least for some people, this may not be satisfying to some that want more of a concrete plan. It’s fine. I think what we may be saying is some people will say, well, it’s got to be really specific. Well, in the world in which we live in, I like to say, hold the rope loosely. You got to have a rope. You got to be going somewhere. You got to have something that you can hang on to. But if you hold it too tight, you’re going to get jerked all over the place. And if you hold it too tight, you’re going to miss opportunities to do other things. So hold the rope loosely, be curious, do what you did, which is like, I’m just kind of curious, I’m going to give it a shot. It’s the best learning.

**John:** Did you think that you would spend 40 years in leadership development?

**Mark:** I mean, depending on what time you ask me, what snapshot. You know, in my career, you asked me, I would say probably early on, no. Right now, honestly, I feel like I’m still in leadership development. That hasn’t changed for me.

**John:** So, yeah, then the society of career, like, is your career over? I don’t think it is. I mean, I’m going to speak for you, but I’m like, when does the career end? Does it have to end? What does it even mean?

**Mark:** Yeah, it’s a great question. I hadn’t really thought about it until just now. I think my career at Red Hat has ended. My journey, or that arc that I’m still following, which is to help people be the very best that they can and to bring out the very best in others, That remains alive and well. When that goes away, then maybe my career has ended there, but I don’t see that happening anytime real soon.

**John:** Then you’ll really retire.

**Mark:** I’ll really retire, yeah. I’ll be dead.

**John:** What are still some things you want to do?

**Mark:** Oh, man. You know, it’s funny, people ask me that a lot. When you get to this zone that I’m in— we’ll just call it a zone, right? now, or this transition time, people always say, okay, well, you must have like a bucket list. I said, no, that was a movie. Um, I— there are a few things I want to do. Like, my wife and I want to go to Spain and Portugal. And, and, you know, I, I’ve, I’ve just kind of zipped through those 2 countries. And so now I want to go. But I mean, that’s not really— I don’t think what you’re asking. It’s sort of like, well, what’s the next big hill?

**John:** Oh, it doesn’t have to be big. You could be like, no, I want to go to Spain, and then I want to go to Switzerland, and then I want to sit on the beach for 6 months until I get bored. And then, like, I don’t know.

**Mark:** Yeah. And I’ll say, this is going to sound maybe a little weird, but it does go back to what we were talking about discovery. And for me, because my wife will ask me things like that, and I’ll say, you know, I’m 6 weeks into this thing, I’m still discovering. The first month, you know, after I left Red Hat, we traveled because I have 4 grandchildren, you know, and they’re up in North Carolina. So, we wanted to spend a lot of time with them. And the month of May is real big. We got some birthdays, we got some other stuff going on. And so, we In fact, there are no birthdays in May, but there was a bunch of other stuff going on. The birthdays are all in March. But we went up there, spent some time with them. And so we were gone more than we were here. And then sometimes when you’re traveling, it’s not your normal rhythm and pace. And so I talk a lot about what is a rhythm and pace that I that I want to get into on a daily and a weekly and a monthly basis because you have a rhythm and pace when you’re working, right? When you’re in this, I’m trying to discover what that is. Sorry, that was a really long answer, but that’s kind of where I am right now.

**John:** So you’re still figuring it out?

**Mark:** Yeah, I think so. And it’s awesome. It doesn’t feel weird at all. It’s like—

**John:** It’s not a problem.

**Mark:** It’s not. When I’m done talking to you, it’s like, well, I’ll have lots of time during the rest of the day. It’s like, well, I can pitter around, or I can run— I can run some Mary’s, you know, errands. I can, I can do that. I have gotten myself on a condo board. Which probably deserves its own podcast.

**John:** When I hear condo board, my heart just— my stomach just sinks and I’m like, ah, nightmare! Is that not the case where you live?

**Mark:** Not completely. There are days— my wife and I were traveling a year ago. We were in St. Augustine, Florida, and we stayed at a bed and breakfast. I don’t know if you’ve done a lot of that, but, you know, when, when the bed and breakfast is, is kind of full with guests, you, you end up meeting those people sometimes over a dinner, you know, in the common areas. Oh yeah. And, and so it was, you know, we, we— it was the next morning. We’d stayed overnight, and we’re, we’re out on the porch, a big, big beautiful porch veranda, and we’re drinking coffee. And I, I got talking to this one guy out here And, uh, it just, you know, he’s asking me what I was doing, stuff like that. And somehow this condo board thing came up, and he paused in the middle of it. He said, wait a second, you volunteered to be on a condo board? And then he, he turns his head and he, and he goes, hey, John! Because I guess they were traveling with some friends. John! Come over here. You got to meet this guy. John comes over and he goes, yeah, do you know this guy volunteered to be on a condo board? And John goes, what in the heck were you thinking? So this long conversation. So it seems like there’s something that people know that I apparently was naive to. And so I, I am very much in the discovery thing. But in all seriousness, it’s an opportunity within a community to build a community, which should be right in my sweet spot as a leadership development person. Yeah, coaching myself here.

**John:** What’s something you’re super curious about that you haven’t explored yet?

**Mark:** Well, one is what we’re doing right now. I honestly, when I discovered podcasting, and I didn’t realize it was around as long as it has been until you just said what you said a couple moments ago. But I found a bunch of young people listening to podcasts, and I thought, boy, it sounded an awful lot like, you know, people in the ’40s gathering around their radio. And I thought, why would young people want to listen to a podcast? And then I got into it and I thought, well, there’s some really cool and thoughtful things that people are talking about. And it’s a very interesting medium of communication and learning and sharing. And so that’s— I’ve got a huge curiosity about that. And for sure. And it’s kind of an alternative because I thought for a long time, John, I really— I wanted to write a book. I felt like I had a book or two in me. And then I realized at least— and I may just maybe be dealing with a warped group of friends and colleagues. I don’t know. Sorry, friends and colleagues, if you listen to this. But I don’t know that many people that read. Anymore, like a book. And so I thought, I got to write a book and have it sit on the shelf with 50,000 other books on leadership and figure out who this dude is and why I would want to read what he has to say. And so for me, this is another avenue. to express and have good dialogue, conversation, provocative kinds of exchanges, maybe that’s the podcast for me. So sorry, I’m one track, so to speak, right now.

**John:** Are there any things in all of your years of leadership development that you were never able To solve, like a particular problem or something, you’re just like, I really want to solve that and it’s not solvable or it wasn’t solvable?

**Mark:** Wow. It’s actually a brilliant question. I’ll answer it and sort of attack it from a tangent. It was another discovery for me. When you can see the right path, and you’ll identify this with this very quickly as a coach, when you can see the right path for somebody and you can see something that is completely— they’re blind to, and you can see how they can alleviate some pain or make progress or achieve great success, and their motivation is just not there. They may even see it, but they’re just not motivated. The limitation of a coach or somebody facilitating development of leaders, you can’t supply the motivation for somebody who lacks it. I don’t know if that means anything, but there are many times when I was trying to do that. It’s like, you should see this, you are so brilliant, or the thing that you’re looking for is right there. But that’s just a wish for me. And so I think kind of backdooring your question a little bit, it’s like, well, how— can I go about and create the circumstances that bring out their motivation and their ability to see it, I think, is the— is kind of the ongoing challenge. Sometimes I’ve been successful with that, but a lot of times not. Does that make any sense to you?

**John:** It does. And it also taps into something I’ve really been playing with, which is I don’t know. I’ve been really questioning, and I’ve been questioning it for a few years, this whole idea of motivation, if it even exists, if it’s even a thing. That’s one thought. Then another thought is, and what I’m starting to— I’m seeing this a ton in work with my own coach, but I’m starting to see it more and more in the people I’m working with. There seems to be an element of self-preservation. Like, if you want to get really deep and psychological, like ego protection, identity protection, this is who I am. I have to maintain this sense of who I am. And that feels more important and more critical to me remaining me than venturing out into this other way.

**Mark:** Hmm.

**John:** In the sense of, maybe a better way to explain this is I was talking to someone recently about They’re like, well, I’m just not motivated to do this thing or whatever. And I was like, well, how committed to— what would this thing— what would this get you if you were to do it? And what we found out, the why wasn’t big enough. And then they had kids. I’m like, so are you motivated to be a good dad? It’s like, well, I’m like, you don’t wake up in the morning like, well, gotta find the motivation today to take care of my family because, you know, I really don’t give a crap about them at all. It’s like, no, it’s like you’re committed to them. The same thing with courage. I put courage in the same— like, I gotta find courage to— your kids are awake in the middle of the night because they’re, they’re sick. You’re not like, well, I better get motivated to get out of bed to help them. I don’t know, what do you think of all those things?

**Mark:** Yeah, wow. That’s a lot. Yeah, sometimes I think we— when I have something like this that faces me, I always want to turn it inside for a second and say, well, geez, have I ever done that? Because it gives me empathy.

**John:** Yes.

**Mark:** Oh, you need empathy. Empathy for the people that I work with. It’s just like, because I could say, oh, you know, like, people, they—

**John:** If they would just—

**Mark:** If they would just— see the logic that I’m laying down for them, you know, the world would be better. But it’s not that way. So I have to turn it to myself. And I said, well, sometimes that’s just fear, right? Um, when I say, you know, I, I need to be myself, that’s just not me. So I have to be me, whatever that is. Sometimes that’s a fear response.

**John:** Oh, that’s an immediate red flag when I’m talking to someone. Oh, that’s just who I am. You know, I’m the kind of person that I’m like, okay, you might be, but it’s that whole idea keeping you completely stuck and cemented into the place that you say that you keep wanting to leave.

**Mark:** My favorite response in a situation like that is, and how is that working for you? How’s, how’s that working out for you, you being you? You know, you being you is getting you everything you need, and you’re getting great feedback from other people. And, and so Then nothing needs to change. Right. But people genuinely, generally and sometimes genuinely will admit that, yeah, it doesn’t always work for me and people don’t see that. So, yeah, I agree with you on the whole motivation thing. What is that and how to unpack that? That’s a tough one. Maybe I’ll add it to my career lexicon and just going from retirement and whatever the heck these things really mean.

**John:** You’re going to come up with a whole list of words that are off limits.

**Mark:** I’m going to ban those things. For years at Red Hat, we had— you’ll remember this— we had a Well, it’s proper, I guess, logo was Shadow Man. It was this idea of Shadow Man. Shadow Man was always sort of mysterious in the Red Hat culture. And so somebody started kind of codifying what Shadow Man would never say. And so you’d be in a conversation and somebody would say, well, Shadow Man would never say that. And I, every once in a while, would take issue with Shadow Man. I said, well, if you would bring him out here, and let me have a conversation with him, maybe he would allow me to use the word leverage. Um, but apparently Shadow Man did not love the word leverage.

**John:** Oh yeah, because leveraging— people talk about leveraging the community and then all the alarms would go off. Yeah,

**Mark:** right, right. You can’t, you know, that sounds manipulative and you don’t leverage people. You know, I, I guess that’s where that came from. So you kind of get it, but Obviously, another whole conversation we can have one day maybe is the power of words, because words matter a lot. Yeah. So motivation is one of those things. Tricky, tricky idea. And because in the leadership development arena, a lot of times you ask leaders what they want to work on. And oftentimes it’s like, well, I want to learn how to motivate people. Like, oh, good luck. Because one, we’re going to have to wipe out a lot of the things that you learned. We’re going to have to unlearn a bunch of stuff, and then we’re going to have to build some new neural pathways because it’s super complex. And I hate to disappoint you, but you don’t have the power to motivate somebody. You only have an ability to influence certain factors and hope that that brings out somebody’s internal motivation. That was at least— that was the world according to Rumbles on motivation. You asked me a little while ago, about, you know, what, what’s out there. And I just peeked over at a couple notes that I took before we got on the air here, and I have a budding mission. I guess that’s a good springtime word, you know, kind of a budding mission to see what I can do in my small area of the world to, to bring back more civility. and ability for people to disagree and to debate, to have healthy conflict that doesn’t polarize people and create hatred. But you and I can have a spirited debate and not agree completely with each other. But we build respect through the process, and maybe I learn something and maybe you learn something. So I don’t know exactly what form that takes. Sometimes you just have to start in your individual relationships that you have with people. But that’s an interest of mine, and seems like there’s— seems to me like there’s a need for that.

**John:** Yes, yes, I agree. Would not disagree with you there. Well, what’s interesting is I think of that as, I mean, my time from Red Hat is aging, but I remember there was kind of an ethos around arguing meritocracy, arguing for the, like, a lot of discussion around like, what’s the best way to do this? A lot of argument, a lot of disagreement. Sometimes though, it felt like, which I thought was useful, except that sometimes things tilted too much in that direction and then decisions didn’t get made.

**Mark:** Yeah.

**John:** Oh boy. Decision slash execution was maybe not as robust as the robustness of the arguing.

**Mark:** Right. I think there was probably arguing for arguing’s sake and then a bit of pride that comes in when I’m able to express my opinion and it’s a passionate opinion, and I might even express that to power. That was part of that ethos that you’re talking about. It’s like, oh yeah, this is built in the culture. I can do that.

**John:** Anyone can say anything to anyone, including the CEO.

**Mark:** Right, right. And then I would say, and what is your objective in mind? Is it that, are you trying to influence something for the collective good? Are you just trying to be argumentative? Or is this a power trip or what? And I love the word that you used there was this balance. There is such a need for— there’s kind of a yin and yang to a lot of things that are super important in the world. And understanding and maintaining the right balance. And by balance, I don’t mean it’s always equal. I mean, there’s a time to kind of ramp up one side of that yin and yang equation because of whatever the circumstances are, but you just can’t forget about the other side. There is a time to be passionate and to speak your mind. And then there’s also, to your point a second ago, a time to act. Like, we’re just not going to debate to debate to debate. It’s got to be to make a better decision within a reasonable time frame.

**John:** Yeah. The back and forth.

**Mark:** Sorry. No, I was just going to say that’s a lot of what we focus on in the leadership development

**John:** So do you have ideas where this idea of civility— do you have any ideas so far in terms of where you will do that?

**Mark:** Yeah, I mean, I think I would like to see it modeled more. For example, and not to pick on any networks or anything, but it’s just crystal clear if you live in the United States and you have a television that you can dial in one network and get a strong sort of worldview and dial into another and get a completely different one. So if I spend all my time in one of those areas, it’s obviously going to flavor my thinking and the news that I’m consuming, if it is news. Or opinions or whatever. Rarely do we see any more— there was an old show called Point/Counterpoint or something like that back in the day where it was 2 people really debating important issues from 2 different sides. And the important thing was not to necessarily come to a resolution. But just to understand both sides. And if you’re going to live in the world, you got to be able to do that. So kind of a long answer. I think even in, say, the podcast arena, to be able to talk to people, to invite people to have a discussion and model it. But it’s not a role play. It’s about a real issue. Right?

**John:** Right. I’m thinking like from our previous world, it would be, you know, the benefits of open source software versus the benefits of, say, proprietary software. And that could be a real—

**Mark:** It could be.

**John:** It could be a real interesting conversation. And I mean, coming from our background, it’d be like, well, there’s, yeah, proprietary software, there can be very little good about it. Well, that’s probably not true. I mean, there’s probably more good in it than— there’s probably more good in it than maybe we’re aware of because we’ve never gone down the path. We just kind of wrote it off as like, well, no, open source is the best way.

**Mark:** Right. Well, and it comes down to sometimes in those kinds of situations, you know, if you’re a business like Red Hat that’s trying to make money through open source software development and deploying that, it’s important to have an enemy. So the enemy becomes proprietary software. And so you usually don’t name your enemy in glowing— these are the benefits of the proprietary. And we do that with social issues as well. Right. So rather than just— there are attributes of both and there are downsides of both. And depending on what your circumstances are and what you’re trying to do, those attributes and downsides kind of play out differently. To me, that’s a civil society that you can have that kind of discussion without making somebody into a— making issues a pariah or turning people into villains.

**John:** Yeah, I mean, someone will probably hear me say proprietary software has its merits and write me off forever. Who knows?

**Mark:** Yep. You’re done. I’m done with you. Yeah. It’s like, well, you know—

**John:** It’s way more complicated.

**Mark:** Maybe that’s all that there was and we seem to progress okay. And maybe open source software is a better idea or it’s an additional avenue. And so, yeah. To me, There’s a great story that Jan Smith, my former boss, tells about— I’m going to just butcher it, so we’ll have to find out.

**John:** Let’s make it really good. You can attribute it to her and then— yeah.

**Mark:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then go call Jan and get the real story. But it’s a story about Abraham Lincoln, and he’s responding to somebody who just looks sort of adamantly opposed to him and what he’s trying to do. And Lincoln’s response effectively is, wow, I really just don’t like this person at all. I’ll have to get to know him better. So, you know, it’s sort of like, well, you’re very passionate, you have some opinions. And his response was, well, I need to— again, leaning into that curiosity thing, like, maybe I ought to know something here.

**John:** Yeah.

**Mark:** That’s pretty cool.

**John:** Well, is there anything else we should be curious about today?

**Mark:** Yeah, I got one more thing on my mind that I’m really curious to hear your response. And maybe it’s just because you challenged me a little bit to think about my so far 40-year journey, sometimes called a career or continuing career. And that is, you know, I realize I’m a bit of a— we went to a restaurant the other day and it was one of the fusion restaurants. And I forgot what they were fusing, but it was really tasty. Okay. It was Mexican, Spanish, something else fusion. And I realized that that’s kind of how I looked at leadership development. I’m kind of a fusion guy. So, you know, there’s there’s certain authors and certain frameworks and approaches that I like more than others. But ultimately, you know, I’m not going to be somebody who’s probably going to say, well, you know, I’d like to adopt this and we’re going to run with this. I’d like to, you know, take a little bit and kind of fuse it together. So my thinking about leadership development has kind of moved down that path. And I get to the point where I’ve come up with sort of— I don’t know if this is the right math— it’s the right terminology, but sort of an axiom or kind of general rule. And that is we need to be better diagnosticians in our relationships with people and inside of organizations and you inside of your coaching relationships. So I often have said, follow the fear. So the thing that tends to hang a lot of people up, all of us, back again, pointing the finger first at myself, is when I get stuck, sometimes I have to ask myself, what am I afraid of? And it’s a huge question. Right. And so you asked me to kind of wrap things up, and now I’m doing what I always do, which is like open up another whole big cano.

**John:** Perfect.

**Mark:** Which maybe says we should continue. The other thing is to follow the energy. So when you’re having a discussion with somebody or you’re helping somebody find their career path, It’s back to what we were talking about earlier, which is there’ll be— you can see when people light up. Even the most non-expressive people will be different when they’re energized by something. And so follow the fear. Yes. To get at something deeper, follow the energy to kind of see how people are wired. And then unfortunately, inside of a business, follow the money. And so if you’re trying to figure out why people do certain things that they do inside of a company, and I don’t want to overplay this because it just sounds like I’m talking about just greedy people and companies, and I don’t really believe that. But by money, I really mean incentives. People have incentives to do things. And sometimes the incentive is not money, but maybe it’s recognition or it’s someone’s attention. I get more attention when— and sometimes it’s even subtle. It’s so subtle that I don’t even realize it. So that’s my big axiom. It’s kind of 3 things kind of packed into a molecule. And it helps me when I get stuck and when I’m trying to help other people get unstuck. Those 3 things, understand where the fear is, go with and explore what that energy is all about. and, you know, follow how people are— their behavior is being rewarded.

**John:** Well, it reminds me, there’s this, uh, therapist guy, John Delony. He always says behavior is a language. What’s being said?

**Mark:** Yeah.

**John:** And I like, I like that a lot. He’s often like counseling people in the context of relationships and what they should do and their partners. The partner says this, but the partner’s always doing that. It’s like, okay, well, if behavior is a language, what is this that? Like, what is this telling you? Yeah, they’re long gone. Like, they are— they say they’re in the relationship, but their behavior says they have— they’re not. What does that tell you? What do you want to do with this? Which is often a really hard truth to deal with.

**Mark:** Yeah, it, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s I love the language there. It’s really expressive and makes a lot of sense. And that’s why relationships sometimes go off track, because my words don’t match what you’re seeing with my behavior or even sometimes my body language. And so people are not stupid. They realize it’s like, well, their brain goes, something just doesn’t add up here. And if it doesn’t add up, then Are you trying to manipulate me? Are you— if you think about it from the recipient’s side of that.

**John:** Well, it doesn’t build trust.

**Mark:** No. Perfect. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. People need to see that continuity. And that’s why you have to reflect very carefully yourself to say, okay, am I really in line with what I’m saying? what I’m doing. If I’m not, then I may be sowing seeds of mistrust.

**John:** No, and I like this. What is the fear? I mean, that gets to my earlier thing around self-preservation. When I look at my own fears, it almost always comes down to some notion of preserving John. Is it preserving my physical safety? which is usually overblown. And even usually, and the real big stuff is around preserving this notion of who John is and who John is in the world to myself, to other people. It’s more often than not to other people, but sometimes to myself. And there’s— oh my gosh, you could spend years there.

**Mark:** No, you definitely could. Yeah, it’s back to that whole identity thing. And Yeah, you get threats to our ego. Now, some of that is sort of hardwired in our DNA, and some of it’s really good. You know, if you, you know, you need to be, you know, there are things we should be afraid of, and that’s good when we know that. But like you said, sometimes we are reacting in fear to things that I should not fear and they are holding me back. This has been super interesting.

**John:** Yeah, we asked more— we asked more questions than we answered.

**Mark:** Yeah, well, there you go.

**John:** If people wanted to talk to you or find you or whatever, where’s the best place for them to do that?

**Mark:** I am fine with people, um, reaching out to me. I am on LinkedIn. So pretty easy to find Mark Rumbles. There aren’t a lot of us. The Rumbles seems to be an English name. And so sometimes you might, you know, you may, you may find yourself in, in somewhere in the UK or in England or— but yeah, I’m pretty easy to find there. And, you know, email if people want to, want to contact me. I’m happy to respond to that. REDACTED will get to me. Probably the best thing I would, you know, I’m always open to anybody that wants to reach out for anything that I might be able to help with and maybe lead to something that’s really kind of interesting.

**John:** Thanks for listening to The John Poelstra Show. Notes, links, and all that other good stuff for this episode are at johnpoelstra.com/podcast. Send your questions, ideas, or a simple hello to REDACTED. Want to stay up to date on new episodes and receive notifications? of upcoming events? Register your email address at johnpoelstra.com/updates.

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