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Welcome to Lead Wisely by WonderTour We are back with episode 132.

This time we're talking about Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning.

This is episode two in our game theory series.

So in our previous episode on Mission Impossible, we talked about the prisoner's dilemma.

We talked about the Mexican standoff as models within the game theory tool set.

So kind of expanding on that, on Wondertor.

We talk about superpowers, leadership superpowers, heroic superpowers, and then we talk
about tools.

Tools are like the things a leader has in their tool belt.

They are things you pull out for certain situations in order to help solve a problem.

So what we're talking about today is how those two things align.

Brian, I'm going to ask you to talk to us about Ethan Hunt's leadership superpower.

And Ethan Hunt uses that superpower alongside of the tool

of game theory in order to be able to solve problems.

So Brian, what is Ethan Hunt's leadership superpower?

Clearly it is jumping motorcycles off of very tall things.

Okay, maybe not.

Ethan Hunt's leadership superpower in this movie is unquestionably trust.

And by trust, don't mean like blind trust, faith that things are going to go right or just
like assuming that everybody has good intentions.

Cause he clearly doesn't.

He does not live in a world where everybody has good intentions.

He does not live in a world where everybody is trying to help him out.

He does not live in a world where the people that he interacts with that he needs to be on
his team are even necessarily reliable at the start of the movie.

Right?

The first.

35 minutes of his interactions with Grace involve her repeatedly picking his pocket and
abandoning him in various terrible situations and handcuffing him to a car in the path of

an oncoming train.

He doesn't start with trust in a lot of these relationships, but the thing that we see in
his team and the thing that we see him deploying very skillfully is the tactics and

techniques of how to build trust with people where you don't have it to start with.

and how to act on the appropriate amount of trust with basically everyone.

and how to act on the appropriate amount of trust with basically everyone.

So let's talk about some examples.

Right at the beginning of the movie, Ethan has a relationship with Kittredge, is this
director, effectively the director of the IMF, the person that keeps giving him the jobs.

he trusts Kittredge to give him missions, and he trusts Kittredge maybe to get him some
resources or something.

But he doesn't really trust him at all in any other way.

And so the first interaction they have, Ethan very strictly controls the parameters of
this interaction, right?

He sneaks into the room and he knocks everybody else out while wearing a gas mask.

And then he has this very direct conversation with this guy who, you know, who he knows is
in the process of, you know, calling the security to try to betray him.

And then he knocks him out and puts a mask on and sneaks out pretending to be him.

Like, you know, it's ridiculous, but he's like, okay, this is exactly how far I can trust
this.

Then he's got this relationship with Grace through the entire first half of the movie
where he recognizes right away that she has a physical object that he wants and skill sets

that he really respects.

that he really respects.

Her pickpocketing and her confidence and her ability to get in and out of situations.

And so they go through this comedy of errors of chase scenes in Rome and all sorts of
ridiculous things that happen to them.

But throughout the movie, he keeps giving her opportunities to trust him.

Like, I'm going to try to take care of you.

No, I'm to get us out of this situation.

You just have to trust me.

He keeps giving her opportunities to take the next step of coming farther into his orbit
or to walk away.

then he progressively gives her opportunities to contribute I'm going to trust that you're
going to do this thing, even though you haven't been entirely reliable.

I feel like you could be an ally.

And so he's trying to walk her into being a core member of the team.

Even later in the movie, right?

We see him.

he's got the desperate fight in the alley with the two bad guys, including the ninja woman
Paris.

And right at the end of the fight, he knocks her down.

He's got her helpless.

He's holding the iron bar.

He makes eye contact with her and very distinctly saves her life.

There's no reason in that moment for him to do that, right?

He doesn't have any way to forecast that she'll do something specifically useful for him
in the future.

That's just his reflexes.

The way you act is that you take care of yourself, but given an opportunity, you show
somebody just a little bit of forbearance.

When he's on top of the train and the FBI guys show up to arrest him, he surrenders, but
then he tries to talk to him into helping him out.

And then he hands the gun back to the FBI agent.

He's like, I need you to help me save all the people on this train.

I trust that you're aligned with me at least on that element.

Right.

And so he does this over and over and over again.

And the punchline, what we see is the people that are on his team are

acting with a great deal of independence.

They're acting with a great deal of their own leeway and how they're going to do things.

And they are choosing what to tell him and choosing not what to tell him.

And they're choosing what they're going to do while he's doing other things.

But he sort of just has this baseline understanding that they're all trying to accomplish
the mission that they all have.

They're all on the fundamental goals and nobody else in the movie has that.

None of the other characters, none of the villains, none of the underworld bad guys, none
of the government characters.

None of them have anybody that they can unquestionably trust to act independently in
service of their same goal.

And so it's a real superpower for him is to find people and bring them into his orbit and
act, as we always say, using his other leadership superpower of self-sacrifice, putting

himself in harm's way to protect people so that they will then be available to him, be
available to help make the changes happen in the world that he sees.

Yeah, I like how you said that there.

He does use the leadership tool of self-sacrifice.

And oftentimes we talk about how that leadership tool of self-sacrifice comes alongside of
the superpower of compassion.

And in that moment with specifically the example with Paris in the alleyway, that is
definitely a moment of compassion where he has no obligation to let her live in that

situation, but he offers her mercy and it is repaid to him later on.

And I love how you kind of showed through and through like in each interaction, Ethan is
skillfully building trust.

is showcasing that he understands the boundary of current trust that he has with each of
these individuals and organizations, And he's also teaching other people about trust.

He's not explicitly doing it, but he's implicitly.

teaching them how to build trust with each other.

And I love one example that you didn't share was the two FBI agents or whatever at the end
when they're in the train and the younger black guys like, I've just been thinking about

this.

What if what if Hunts actually right?

Like what if everything that he's doing is really the magnanimous thing and the older
white dudes like, yeah, I don't know about that.

Like we just got to turn this into the man, right?

And then in the end, of course, in the example you gave when he handed the gun back to
Briggs, the older agent, Briggs is like, crap, I think he was right.

Like I think Conn actually is trustworthy and it builds a two way relationship.

And that's what we're going to talk about after the intro.

Hi, I'm Brian Nutwell And we are on a journey to lead wisely, to become better leaders by
touring fantastic worlds and inspiring lore by going on a wonder tour.

We connect leadership concepts to story context because it sticks to our brains better.

You can find out more at wondertourpodcast.com or by searching on YouTube Lead Wisely, all
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All right, so let's get back to Ethan's heroic superpower of trust, he's clearly using the
tool set of game theory.

know, he's playing the odds.

He's trying to figure out what people are going to do next.

Everybody in this movie is kind of doing that.

But he's using this superpower of

as we say, not creating followers, but creating other leaders, right?

Creating allies, creating colleagues, creating other empowered humans, right?

And this...

to think about that, Brian, because a lot of times when we look at the Ethan Hunt type
role in the movies that we review on Wondertor, we do a differentiation.

In fact, we just did when we talked about the Queen's Gambit.

We said, is Beth a leader or is she a hero?

And we said for 99 % of the Queen's Gambit series, she is a hero.

And maybe at the end, she starts to show that she's learning what it is to be a leader.

Now, with Mission Impossible, we're on movie seven here.

And so while in Mission Impossible 1, Ethan Hunt may not have been a leader, he was more
of a hero.

He has really developed to meet the requirements of what we would say it is to be a
leader.

And you just gave one of them there, which is a leader doesn't create followers, a leader
creates more leaders.

Right.

And so this is not an Obi-Wan or a Gandalf character who's trying to stay in the
background and be more of a mentor figure, right?

You know, he's definitely more of a, more of a Dom Toretto from the Fast and Furious
franchise where he's also, yeah, Batman, right?

He's also in the thick of things.

He also is acting heroically.

Like he is the hero of this movie.

But interestingly for a heroic action movie, right?

He spends a lot of time empowering other people.

He spends a lot of time running very dramatically across pan shots that are zoomed way out
with a drone, right?

But we also have a bunch of scenes where other people are doing interesting things, where
he's kind of sidelined and we're watching the people that, you know, he's sort of are in

his orbit doing their own thing, right?

So we see...

We see Palm showing up with her sword cane to try to defeat Gabriel on the bridge to
defend his other new friend, Grace.

Right.

And we see Grace going under the train by herself, even though he's not there yet, even
though he was supposed to be like to try to, you know, we have quite a long scene with

her, you know, kind of taking initiative and having to work her way through this
complicated situation without having any backup, without having any guidance, without

having anything resembling a plan other than, Hey, you can disguise yourself as a bad guy.

Like, and so.

It's an interesting thing for an action movie to show the hero being sidelined, you know,
and trying to get back in on the action while other characters are doing heroic things.

But that's part of his shtick as a leader, right?

Is that he's modeling this behavior of taking personal risk and taking action, but also
trying to build up trust and trying to empower the people that take action.

So we see them acting quite independently, quite a bit.

And wouldn't we, you know, I would not like to be in this situation.

I don't want to be facing the AI that's going to wipe out the world.

I don't want to jump the motorcycle off of the, know, off of the mountain.

Like those don't look like fun, but I would love to be in a situation where my team was
that level of independently acting and cooperating and trusting and supporting each other.

Right.

And when you're on those situations and the, the, experiences that I do have where I'm in
those groups, it's incredibly rewarding, right?

It's incredibly comforting.

to not be in the standoff where everybody's pointing guns at each other.

But just like walking in the room, maybe like, all right, I got this problem, who can help
me out?

And to have people raising their...

Yeah.

You want to have Luther stepping up and providing advice to you, authentic advice, right?

Where he's coming in and you can tell there's so much trust there.

He's like, Hey, like you're going to have to check your pride because I think that, if you
kill Gabriel, you're going to sacrifice this whole mission.

And it's only because hunt and Luther have built up that trust that he's able to have
that.

recognition in that moment at the end when he's holding the knife to Gabriel's neck.

He's like, crap.

Yeah, Luther's right.

I can't do this.

Otherwise I've just sacrificed the entire success of the mission.

And we love it over the course of time, right?

They have different characters come in and out of this IMF team.

The core team is really Luther

And Simon Pegg's character, Benji, but now what I loved most the first time I watched this
movie in theaters, I just remember being in awe the whole time.

Like, my gosh, Grace feels so much like she's a member of this IMF team.

she just feels like the outcast, the loner who finally finds this weird home on this IMF
team of misfits, but they actually.

care about each other, they trust each other, and they do impactful things together.

So I think that leads us up to our mountaintop moment, because of course, we couldn't talk
about Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning without talking about grace.

Right.

And of course we have to talk about a mountaintop moment, off which we will jump a
motorcycle.

Yeah, there you go.

Hey, I know you don't want to jump a motorcycle off a mountaintop, but to me that does
seem kind of fun.

I would love to do that.

It was pretty cool and also nope, super nope.

All right, well, let's talk about this scene, right?

So our mountaintop moment here is going to be, we've been through a lot of the adventure
and we're planning the train heist scene, right?

we know where the key's gonna be.

We know where the buyer's gonna be.

We know what's gonna try to happen.

We have to try to get in there and break it up.

And so they've got this kind of cocky-mamy plan where they're going to disguise themselves
as the bad guys that have the key and they're going to steal the key and then they're

going to go make the sale.

And then they're going to follow the person that has the key and go find out what the
actual MacGuffin is at the end of the other MacGuffin.

Right.

So, okay.

So this is the plan.

and as part of this scene, Grace has this, opportunity to effectively join the team.

Right.

They have a nice little thing where it's not just Ethan talking, but it's the whole team
talking and saying, Hey, this is what we do here.

This is kind of our stick is that we, you we go on these missions to save the world and
it's kind of lonely, but it's also kind of much better than what we were doing before by

ourselves.

we've got a purpose and we've got each other to rely on and you could be part of this
team.

you can see this coming kind of through the course of the movie, you know, that we're
building up trust with her.

We're building up her integration with the team.

We're building up her relationships.

And in the moment, she's not convinced.

She's thinking about it.

It's appealing.

It's probably better than being pursued and murdered shortly thereafter.

But she's not convinced that this looks like a really great lifestyle.

But then it gets worse, right?

Immediately afterwards, she's like, OK, well, I guess I'm going to go through it.

You can't promise to protect me, but Ethan promises, your life will be a higher priority
than mine.

I'll do everything in my power.

She's like, all right, I think so.

And then the, face printing machine breaks.

And so then it turns out that he can't even go.

She's got to go in by herself and he's got to figure out some cock and maybe way to get on
the train later.

Right.

And so now it is not just like you can, join the team, but almost like you have to buy
into the mission.

have to buy into this goal that we have together to the extent that you're going to go
take the risk for yourself.

And yeah, we're going to try to help you out, but you've got no guarantees at all.

Like you got no, you may not have any back.

all.

And this moment of how much do I believe in this?

How much do I trust these people?

How much do I believe in this mission?

How much is this a better choice than my other life choices that are available to me?

It's kind of a neat moment for her, why would she do that?

Why would she choose to get on that train wearing up somebody else's mask and go put
herself in this terrible situation?

what do you think is going on here?

Yeah, because it's not in her past to go do that.

In her past, it's always been about, you know, getting get out, get the money, keep
yourself alive, keep everybody else at arm's length so that you're protected.

Assumedly, because this is the archetype of character that she is, right?

She's been betrayed in the past.

She had family, whatever somebody.

Yeah.

default behavior in this universe is like everybody's in it for themselves, except for
this weird little group of misfits that keeps getting into these terrible situations.

Well, and I would like to purport, Brian, that this is the default behavior in our
universe as well, even though it's not always so obvious.

it's like we say we make mountains out of molehills in movies so that we can see what's
actually going on.

Right.

So we can analyze it.

We can go to the mountaintop and then we can go back and apply it to our little molehill
in our lives.

But I think this is correct.

I think this is how the default human works I know because I see it in myself.

Right.

My default is to grab for the thing and assume that the thing will satisfy me and that
everybody else will just be fine and they'll deal with their own situation.

And what we have here is this superpower that Ethan has of trust that he's using to build
up belief in grace in something greater.

And he's trying to teach her, he, Benji and Luther are trying to teach grace who they see
themselves in.

the lesson that they also had to internalize.

And if I were to make that lesson overly simple, the lesson is that to you, freedom looks
like taking the hundred million dollars and running away and you'll have your autonomy,

quote unquote.

But what I'm telling you is that that is death.

He basically says that.

He what I'm telling you is that the alternative is that you submit your entire life to
this choice.

that you're about to make, that you choose to be a part of this team.

And you will, in a way, lose a lot of your leeway you won't be able to go wherever you
want.

You won't be able to do whatever you want to do anymore.

You won't be able to run away and hide.

But this is true freedom.

And that is really, really hard for us to accept as humans that that could possibly be the
case.

to quote the great music producer Rick Rubin here Rick says discipline and freedom seem
like opposites, but in reality they're partners and That is what is trying to be instilled

here in a way They're trying to say that yes IMF will require of you great cost and great
discipline you will now submit your will to somebody else's will or the greater good but

in doing that is true freedom running away and taking your hundred million in crypto and
living on an island or doing whatever that's going to seem great but it won't last you

eventually you're going to get surrounded and you're going to get continually constrained
by the world until you're just suffocated and that's what they found in their own lives

over the course of these movies

Right.

Well, and I think that we talk a lot about freedom as a human goal, as a thing that we all
aspire to.

And it is true, but it is also true that we all aspire to purpose.

Right?

Right.

And we all aspire to community.

you kind of need all those things in your life.

And what we're seeing here is yeah, yeah, Grace's choice for freedom is to give up
community, give up purpose.

She didn't really have either of those things before, but now she sees what it looks like.

And if they have this conversation with her at the beginning of the movie, if they have
this conversation with her in the police station in Rome, she doesn't have any reason to

believe, she doesn't have any reason to trust them.

She doesn't have any reason to feel part of the community.

She doesn't have any reason to believe that their purpose is greater than just getting
money from other people.

Right?

But at this point in the movie, she's seen, know, they've repeatedly saved each other's
lives and she's, they've got this team that's clearly not living a glamorous lifestyle,

but they're taking care of each other in ways that nobody is doing for her.

And so she's recognizing the choice that she's making is not just the choice between
freedom or not freedom.

The choice that she's making is between absolute individual freedom and less individual
freedom, but community and purpose.

Right?

would be the ancient wisdom is that like true freedom is not the ability to choose every
single day what you will do with every option on the table.

It's the ability to choose the thing that gives you purpose and not choose everything
else.

And in that way, all of the options being available on the table and enticing is actually
considered to be constraint.

is slavery.

grabbing for the wrong thing that doesn't actually give me long-term satisfaction, instead
of narrowing my choices by the character that I cultivate to the point where what I can

choose now is the thing that is good for others, is the thing that is self-sacrifice,
service, whatever, right?

That's the only choice that even appeals to me.

Right.

And that's what trust gets you.

Right.

That's what giving trust, you know, what's, what Ethan is skillful at is giving trust when
it's not deserved, but earning trust by these, you know, by these small incremental

actions of like, I'm going to give it myself, even when it's a little bit risky, I'm going
to take care of you.

Even when I don't have to, I'm going to show you what it looks like with these other
people that I have that I trust.

Right.

That gets you to the point of like,

Like this is a radically different worldview than the everyone for themselves pointing
guns at each other standoff that everybody else in the world, every organization in the

world, everybody else involved in this movie is acting like, and they're showing a
radically different way of living.

Right.

and the method by which he does that.

love that you're saying that, right?

Because Brian, you and I can sit here and we can literally quote a hundred different
quotes about what freedom is and what will really satisfy you in your life and stuff like

that.

And it could be as true as can be, but that's how meaningful is that?

How easy does that make it for somebody who listens to this content or even for you and I
who talk about it to go and actually live in accordance with that?

How easy?

It's not that easy.

to just hear about it, right?

But what Ethan does is he actually does something about it.

He shows and builds trust in other people.

It's actually that building of the relationship, I think, with Grace, that helps her to
just slowly believe that what Ethan's saying about, there is, given your specific

situation, there is a better and worse choice you can make.

I'll give you both choices.

You can take what you want.

but I would lean this direction if I were you because this one will be fulfilling."
Slowly, she starts to believe that truth until we get to the point where she's sitting

there with the phone and the cryptocurrency, right?

And there's a hundred million dollars on the line and she can either take the money and
try to become a ghost or she can decline the money.

And her only option is then going to be to ask to join the IMF basically.

Yeah.

Run back to this potential community.

that's the choice of having fear and being by yourself.

Right.

And having to deal with it or having fear and having people that could be there to have
your back, right.

Having fear, but because you have chosen a purpose, That's the choice that she's making.

So, this cycle of building trust can squash fear.

The cycle of building trust can.

build community, this cycle of building trust can offer an alternative to this selfish
pursuit of absolute freedom.

So going into our practical application here,

So going into our practical application here,

You know, okay, so everything that we've discussed so far is great.

Ethan is able to build up grace to become this IMF agent.

He's able to convince her to make this choice to sacrifice herself for the greater good.

By exhibiting trust by first putting faith in her when he's not exactly sure if she's
going to be able to reciprocate it.

And so that's the practical application here.

We're to use this term called a propitiatory relationship.

So a perpetuatory relationship is a relationship that starts with one party that chooses
to offer a gift or a service or something to the other party in good faith with no

guarantee of any return.

There's no contract, right?

There's nothing in place.

There's no existing relationship, basically.

It is just, I will do something for you in complete good faith.

And let's see what happens.

And this is the tool that Ethan uses over and over and over again, right?

In this movie, he gives the gun back to the FBI agent.

He swings the crowbar.

It's not a crowbar, is it?

Yeah, he swings the bar and he doesn't kill Paris with it.

Instead, he has mercy on her with grace, the exact same.

you know, when she's stuck in this bad situation, he could easily just turn her in and run
away with the key.

But instead he stays in the situation with her, even when she continuously tries to screw
him over and get away on her own, he sticks with her and he keeps building her up,

building her up, building up.

So to me, that's the takeaway is this propitiatory relationship is one of the key ways to
build trust.

And it sucks because you got to put yourself out there a little bit to do it.

But if you do it wisely, if you reflect often,

if you seek wise counsel, know, mentorship, to be able to learn how to properly do this so
that you're not enabling people, so that you're not putting yourself in danger

necessarily, but so that you're, helpfully and in love building other people up until they
can trust and have rich relationships with you and in turn have rich relationships with

other people.

and Ethan does this very skillfully.

He does it when it's earned.

He does it in small doses and then sees whether it goes somewhere or not.

he's very tactical about it.

but the other thing that occurred to me as you're talking is we talk about this as a
leadership tool, right.

Is that.

A lot of times in order to be in a position where you can do that, where you can give
somebody a gift, where you can give them some indulgence, when you can help them out, when

they can't possibly help you out, it's because you're in a position of privilege.

It's because you're in a position of advantage or power, right?

Maybe you have a leadership role.

Maybe you are a manager, even if you don't really know your team very well yet.

Like you're the boss, you're the person with the title and you're the one who has the
ability to be demanding, be critical, or possibly offer a little bit of grace, offer a

little bit of support.

And you can't do that.

Right.

You're the person that has the thought, you're the person that has the time, you're the
person that has the emotional energy, you're the person that has the money, right?

Like, you know, recognizing that you may be advantaged in one of those ways, if not all of
those ways.

And that taking that advantage, taking that position of privilege or that position of
opportunity could allow you to build up some relationships, could allow you to nurture

some others that may come back to you, but you can't do it because of that.

You have to do it.

just offering it to the world with the idea that some people will learn from it.

And some people will take advantage of it and walk away.

can you think of an example in your life where you've had this position of authority that
maybe offered you something without a specific expectation or demand of return?

Well, I think the example that I think of here I'm going to go with more of a personal
example.

It's small, it's micro, but everybody wants the people around them to change.

Right.

I mean, you know, Brian, we want people to change.

That's why we go forth and do this podcast.

It sculpts us, but we hope that it makes an impact and that other people become more
magnanimous as a result of it.

And there's never a closer spot where you want somebody to change than in your own
personal life.

You know, it's your family, it's your spouse, whatever, right?

You want that person to change.

But like one of the first things you have to learn if you're going to become a
well-developed human is the way that you do that is rarely asking.

It's not the way that you do it in a business often where you're like, here's the bar,
here's where you are, here's the gap.

Kate, you gotta help find a solution.

I've decided to establish a metric for our relationship and this is the threshold that you
should meet in order to be a satisfactory spouse, right?

Like that's probably not how this is gonna go down.

No, that's not how this is going to go down.

And I think there's, a good example in my life.

You know, I've talked previously about how I have wandered at points in my life where I've
been wayward and not really had a purpose in life.

And I've just been doing my own thing.

And I was really the grace pre mission, impossible seven, where she's just off, you know,
chasing her heists or whatever she wants to do, but not aligned to a team in a community.

And the example that I would give is my own dad that despite the fact that I was

terrible at returning calls and responding to texts and didn't come to visit very often
and things like that, he could have easily built up resentment.

He could have easily said, okay, well then I guess, you know, it just isn't worth it.

This isn't a two way relationship.

But what did he do?

He instead just continued to make not all the time, right?

Not every day.

Like you said, you got to be thoughtful when you want to do this propitiatory thing, you
know, very thoughtful gifts, very thoughtful time investments.

you know, continuing to reach out in ways that are loving and clearly like methodically
thought out, not haphazard.

Instead of just he didn't come at me and say, hey, this is the gap.

You need to just do better.

You know, we're a family.

You need to do better.

But instead, just to model what he wanted to see.

And that's why he's a great leader, because he recognizes that.

But I need to model what I want to see in others, not beat them over the head with how
they need to change.

And as a result, it took years and years.

And honestly, I'm still learning this lesson from him and getting better at it.

But as he gets older and I'm recognizing, like, my gosh, I have to spend more time with
him.

I'm seeing.

a little more clearly all of these little sacrifices that he makes, you know, when he
drives from Cincinnati to Columbus to be here for like a small event, like a dinner or

whatever it is, even when I didn't, you know, wasn't responsive or wasn't doing whatever,
right.

He's just keeping that going and that going and that going and the end benefit of that.

It's not just our two way relationship that I have a stronger relationship with him.

It's maybe that I'm able to do that for somebody else as well.

And that's the power.

of building trust.

not just as we always talk about on Wondertour here, so I can get some advantage, so I can
win the game, so I can defeat the AI.

It's so that that can scale, right?

So that one person teaches, two people teaches, four people teaches, eight, and so on.

No, that's amazing.

That sounds like he sounds awesome.

And you're fortunate to have that example in front of you.

I have similar admiration for my parents.

But being a parent of an adult human, which is a relatively new experience for me, is a
different kind of challenge, right?

Like it's a different kind of relationship and you start to get more of this, you, as
Ethan does in this movie, you need to give...

young adults space to be their own humans and make their own decisions and have their own
agency, but also still model caring, also still model trust, also still model, the kinds

of behaviors that may benefit them in the long term.

And so that's challenge.

It's a new thing to do when you don't have any authority anymore.

When you have a five-year-old, you have a great deal of responsibility, but you have a
great deal of influence over how they behave from hour to hour sometimes.

But yes.

16, 17, 18, that was where I look back and I can see the beginning of that, really the
inception of that idea where what's tempting to do, like you said, Brian, is still to act

like the child is five and be like, I'm going to punish you.

I'm going to do these things.

I, what I saw really in both my parents, but specifically in my dad is he would recognize
that there's a gap.

He would, catch me doing something bad or whatever.

But he recognized that the dynamic of the relationship had changed and that it needed to
continue to evolve and that the answer was not a harsh punishment.

The answer was open communication, continued service and modeling the correct behavior
over and over again until I understood what the correct behavior actually was.

Right.

And you won't have the influence to push people in that direction unless they believe that
you're on their side, right?

Unless they understand how you're acting.

That's a great example.

circling all the way back, right?

Ethan Hunt's superpower in this movie is trust.

managing, deploying trust very skillfully in the right situations, nurturing it in new
relationships, leveraging it in existing relationships, and also jumping motorcycles off

of very tall things.

Okay, well, I think that does it for this episode.

That was a really fun conversation.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed thinking about this as much as we did.

We thank you for joining us on our continuing journey to become better leaders, to lead
wisely.

In our next episode, we're going to do something completely different.

We're going to continue our series on game theory with the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine,
which should be an awful lot of fun.

We hope you join us for that one.

In the meantime, just remember as always two things.

Character is destiny and character can be cultivated.

Character is destiny and character can be cultivated.