The Power of Genuine Leadership, with Dr. Patrick Donahue

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Help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molotour. Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molotor Group, Ed Molotour, and I am really excited to bring you today's podcast conversation with a good friend of mine, someone who I've admired for many years. I first met today's guest, Pat Donahue, back when he was an associate head basketball coach at Bradley University. Though it seems like yesterday, it was almost 30 years ago. And Dr. Patrick Donio is a Vice President of Leadership Development of the Donahue Corporation and author of his first book, newly released book, incredible book, by the way. I absolutely love it, the Power of Genuine How Authentic Leaders Earn Trust. And the book is available in Kindle and paperback at Amazon.

We'll have that link in the show notes. And this really is just a phenomenal conversation. A little bit more about Pat. Before joining the Donaher Group, Pat was at Eli Lilly. And prior to that, as I mentioned, he was Division 1 Associate Head Basketball coach at Bradley University. And in that role for 10 years, he led his teams to two NCAA tournaments, four NIT tournaments. And here is really what's really cool. Cause you don't see this a lot in college coaching. He served as faculty member in the Bradley University Foster School of Business where he taught organizational development. Again, great conversation. Here we're going to jump into how a leadership conference early in Pat's career at Eli Lilly sparked the realization that he had the opportunity to impact others by bringing his coaching skills to the business world.

And of course, we're going to jump into and really unpack why authenticity is such a powerful leadership characteristic. And we're going to talk about the key role that consistency plays in Pat's authenticity trust model. Great story about how the process of receiving his doctorate and the pushback that he received inspired Pat to write his book again, the Power of Genuine Leadership, How Authentic Leaders Earn Trust. And another thing we'll talk about is why it is so fundamentally critical for communication to be supported by courage and accountability. We get into all sorts of amazing topics and just a wonderful conversation. So have your pen and paper ready and I hope you enjoy this conversation with Pat as much as I enjoyed recording it. Pat, thank you so much for joining us today on the Athletics of Business podcast.

I am beyond thrilled to have you here with us today.

Well, thank you so much, Ed. I'm really excited about it. We're going to be able to tell some great stories and hopefully some folks will get some nuggets out of it.

Well, I know they will and I know they'll get nuggets out of your new book, your first book, the Power of Genuine How Authentic Leaders Earn Trust. I absolutely loved it. And before we dive into that, because I want to talk a lot about that, there's so much there to unpack. I'd love for you to take our listener through your journey a little bit if we go back to your high school days and really bring them up to speak because I think that helps put everything into context, all the great work you have done.

Sure, Ed. Originally from the south side of Chicago, St. Thomas Moore Parish for your listeners from the south side. I went to St. Ignatius High School and then went to Elmhurst College. Played basketball all the way through and really loved the sport and wanted to get into coaching. So I went back to St Ignatius to be their freshman coach. Paul Prima at the time was the high school coach, which was a great influence on me and then had the opportunity to go to Northern Illinois with coach Jim Molinari and happened to come into a great situation in that year. Northern probably had one of the best teams they've ever had as a tournament team. And that turned into a 10 year run at Bradley University with Coach Molinari and he had a lot of success there.

But about 10 years in, I decided to take another career path and I had a friend named Willie Brown who, you know the best, who got me in with Eli Lilly and I became a sales rep at Eli Lilly. I had already had my MBA and I was teaching business at Bradley, but never really had any great business experience. So that started a 13 year run at Eli Lilly. I was a sales rep, I was an operations and marketing associate. I ended up being a manager. That was a great experience for Eli Lilly. And then I went to a leadership conference. But at the time I wasn't even thinking through what kind of impact that would have on me.

But as a district sales manager, Lilly went to this leadership conference and the people up on stage were talking about things like coaching and motivation and engagement. And I literally stood up and said, this is what I want to do. This is a combination of the coaching and the business. And that launched me into kind of a training and a leadership career at Lilly, which I learned a ton about the business. And then about nine years ago now, Danaher Corporation called and said, you want to come here and we didn't have anything. And it was an opportunity to build it from ground up. And I took that and it's been just quite a ride since.

That had to be a heck of a thrill though, building it from the ground up, kind of having your own baby, so to speak.

Absolutely. It's funny you say, you know, building it up. You know, we're having our book launch party tomorrow, Thursday. And the people that I've asked to speak at that book launch party, they are all of the people that started with, you know, when you start something, you always remember your first couple hires or in basketball as you know, your first couple recruits, you'll never forget by actually having them come to speak about the book and about their experiences because they were so special to me because they helped build everything.

Yeah, well. And you're a phenomenal leader. And great leaders, just like great coaches in our life, they take pride in watching these people grow. They not just pride, they have joy. Right. I mean, it brings them joy. I talk a little bit about that as you saw them and how much you actually learned from them, even though you were the one that was doing a lot of the teaching.

Oh, yeah. I mean they are. You can go down the line of. And it's all about. You talk a lot on your podcast about listening and I think that is a key leadership trait that people need because you can learn from everybody. I mean, I have a 16 year old daughter at Rebuff here indianapolis and we have the best conversations. And I am learning so much about the mindset now and it is not judgmental, it is just learning both of us. And so, yeah, learning is just key. And those folks were just fabulous at the beginning.

Well, again, congratulations on the book. I mean, a ton of fun, a lot of success. And I want to jump into it a little bit. But there's a story early on in the book and I want to back up a second because I mentioned this in my introduction, but one of the things that drew me to you when we first met in 1992, not to date ourselves. Okay. When I was working the Bradley basketball camp, I was fresh out of college and I'd met a ton of guys that summer. I mean, I just traveled the country, work at basketball camps, I mean, just in pig heaven. And I remember us sitting down, our first conversation. You were so genuine, you were so real and you were so sincere. And there's a story in the book about your mother in law.

Can you take us through that? Because that's a little bit about where this book actually came from without you even knowing it?

Yeah, it was kind of the inspiration a long time ago that I look back now, and that's where it started. But like I said, I'm from the south side of Chicago, and I went to St Ignatius and met this beautiful girl named Laura, and she happened to live in Riverside, and as you know, that is a suburb coming from Chicago. Riverside, as far as I'm concerned, was the wealthiest suburb I've ever heard of in my life. Right. I mean, they literally had trees and grass in their front yard. And so I told my mother at the time, you know, I'm a little nervous about this. And she just said, be yourself.

And then, you know, 10 years later, when I asked Laura to marry me, her mother, Cheryl Zuber, said, you know, one of the things I always loved about you, Pat, is you never tried to be anybody but yourself. And she never used the word authentic, but she used the word just be yourself, which is, in essence, the definition of authenticity. That always stuck with me. And as I went through my career, whether it's a manager or a leader or a coach, I always thought the best ones were just that they were themselves. Of course, I talk in the book about there's guidelines to authenticity, because just a simple definition or a simple approach of it is actually problematic. But in general, authenticity is a powerful leadership characteristic.

So how did the book evolve? How did it first come into play? And what was the motivation and starting point?

When you go through a doctoral program, it's so interesting because during that doctoral program, you'll have certain thoughts about things, and the professors will always say, we're not interested in your opinion. Were interested in experts opinion.

Right.

So for three years during my doctoral program, I was getting very frustrated because, darn it, I had opinions, particularly around authenticity. So. But they always said this. They said, you know, save your opinion, Mr. Donahue, for your first book. So that's what started getting me into. I started writing this thing even as I was getting my doctoral dissertation done, and I knew it was going to happen. It just took four years to get there.

Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. So why do they do that? Is that just a pushback? Is that the challenge is that to get you to really stand up for what you believe in? Even a more of a foundational stance?

Yes, maybe a little bit of that, but more so toward really pushing you and challenge you to read and to learn from the experts. There's a lot of research out there about all of these topics, and. And it is important to do Some rigorous research so that when you do have your opinion, it's an informed opinion. And that doesn't mean that you agree with everybody. However, it is informed. And you know what else is out there and you know what else has been working. So I think that's the main reason for it.

Okay, well, and I'll tell you, one of the things I loved about your book is you took something that some folks see as really messy, really complicated and you really streamlined it and made what I think in a very simple, powerful format. Can you talk about what the book really dives into and what separates it? Which is what I love. What separates it from all the other books that are out there right now in authenticity?

Yeah, great question. And I think it's very. The word that people use to describe it is very digestible. Sometimes you get these books and they have a great title, but they're about 4 inches thick and you're like, man, I'm never going to really get through this. This is about 120 pages. And the other thing about it, so it's very digestible. There's only three major chapters and it's around how to communicate, how to coach, and how to make sure that you're demonstrating respect at all times. And it has two or three actions about what you can do as a leader right now in order to get better at these three critical components that lead to authenticity and ultimately greater trust. So the digestible part I would say is really important, actionable. Like I said, it's repeatable.

I think one of the powers of the book is it's got three things, it's got great research. Secondly, it's got a model, a very simple model that you can hang up on your wall and remind you of the things you need to do to be a great leader. And then thirdly, it's got an assessment. You can literally go in there and take five minute assessment and figure out where it is that you as a leader can get better at. Whether that I need to concentrate a little bit more on my communication coaching or respect and then take it from there.

And I want to point out, because I think it's very important because we've all taken those assessments, they tell you take it one time, you can take it three years from now, it's going to be the same result. This is an assessment that you can take at a certain cadence and you can see the trajectory of your growth curve, is it not?

Absolutely. And especially if you read the book and you say, for example, coaching one of the Things in the book talks about how powerful patterns are in coaching. We've been, whether it be an athlete or a sales rep or whatever your endeavor is. Did you ever have a coach that points out every little tiny thing you do wrong that gets annoying, and sometimes you kind of tune them out? The best coaches that I have found, both in athletics and in business, are the ones that kind of wait and have a little patience and watch you do something two or three times that might need to be corrected so that when they correct you, they can say, you know, this wasn't a one or two things.

Let me give you a couple examples of when I've seen this, I think you need to watch a little bit, and then people are a little bit more receptive because, wow, I didn't even realize that, you know, so this notion of patterns becomes important as a specific action in coaching.

Yeah. And how do the communication, the coaching, the respect, they all play together so well. Right. And underneath communication, you have courage and accountability. Can you talk about that? Because courage is a word that just resonates. I love words. Courage. To me, I always talk with my clients about run to the fight, and I mean that in a metaphorical way. In other words, confront the reality that's in front of you right now, and let's figure out the best way to work through it, to grow through it and deal with it. But how is talk about courage and communication and difficult conversations?

Yeah. I think as a leader, you do have to have that courage, particularly when you're communicating with folks, because, of course, you tell them things they're doing well, but you have to have the courage to confront them on the things they need to get better at. And a lot of leaders won't do that. Sometimes it's a difficult conversation, but again, if you go back to a pattern, it's a lot helpful. And you have a little girth, if you will, behind your communication. And as far as the accountability part, I think you can communicate with your team without even directly talking to them. For example, in the book, I talk about a story where a leader.

Someone comes to a leader with a big problem, and the leader goes to their supervisor, which was the VP at the time, and talks about the problem with the associate in the room. And that VP started getting into whose fault it was and looking to blame. And the leader just stood up, said, if you want to blame somebody, blame me. I'm ultimately responsible. And of course, the associates sitting there, who knows, they were kind of the issue, and they come out of that meeting saying, wow, so without even talking to the associate, they walk out of that meeting saying, I will go to bat for that guy because he just went to bat for me. That's a communication that was never spoken. Right.

And that goes back to our coaching days where you could go through just brutal things with your team, with your players. But we knew as coaches, it was our job to protect our players and to keep them insulated from the media or keep them insulated from the naysayers. And it's on us. And how powerful is that in building trust in the business world?

Oh, for sure. I mean, people, I always talk about the audio and the video have to match, and they are watching. What you do is much more important than what you say, and it definitely has to match. But if you have to pick one, people are watching your actions versus what you're saying, and they do have to match. And you were talking about consistency early. That's part of it. That doesn't mean perfection. I've had conversations with people like, man, it's so hard to be a leader. Absolutely. And there is no perfect leader. And consistency doesn't mean people are looking for perfection. But they want to come in every day and they want to know what they're getting. And if you are going to be inconsistent, it shouldn't happen very often.

Yeah, they want to know what they're getting. They want to know what they can expect of you, and they want to know what they can expect of you in certain situations. So let's talk about consistency. As you mentioned, were talking about this before we started recording the podcast, but it's almost. And you hit me over the head with this inside of the book, because we all just assume that everyone knows the significance of consistent behavior, consistent communication, consistent execution, but no one really takes a deep dive into it. It's just not out there. Everyone pays lip service to it, so to speak. Everyone mentions it, they talk about it. But there's that. No, put our arms around it, Embrace it. No, this is where it's at every single day. Did that shock you?

I think so. And I think what. When people that are reading the book are having this aha moment where they find themselves, because I talk about how you can very easily give yourself an excuse, you know, when you. You have a lack of respect or decency or civility for someone because you're caught up in the moment. And you will say something to yourself like, well, they know me. They know that sometimes I get a little out of control. They'll be fine. Pretty soon, it happens Three or four times and you're still making excuses as a leader. And guess what? You've lost that trust and you don't even know it. So it's important not to let yourself off the hook. It's important as a leader to always reflect on your day.

And I talk about in the book too, the best thing you can do is go back and apologize, especially if you made the mistake. Now, if you're doing it all the time, you have an issue. But there's nothing wrong with saying I blew it and I need to do better. And that goes to this notion of vulnerability, which I know you talk a lot about.

Yeah, yeah, I was literally tip of my tongue, I was waiting to bring that up. Let's jump into that because we've had some great conversations wrapped around vulnerability. What are the up. I mean, when you make yourself vulnerable as a leader and we'll get into the timing and vulnerability here in a second, but when you do open up and try to get to this solution by making yourself vulnerable to your people, what are some of the benefits of that?

It's interesting. It's the two main concepts of the book. It makes you authentic and the impact of that is trust. Because everybody knows that people are not perfect. And so I think it's a huge strength. This is a key that I found out in the research too. How many times the word someone who's not confident doesn't normally use vulnerability, which is so interesting to me because, you know, this notion of someone who is very secure and confident in themselves, you would think would be. It's easier to say, you know, I blew it or. But what's interesting is the people that are most confident are the people that are most vulnerable. The people that are most insecure are the people that are less vulnerable. And it's one of those things that's very easy to see but hard to describe. It's powerful.

It's so powerful. Especially as you're coaching your team, especially as you're watching your people. Let's just take sales, for example. And you see someone kind of thick skinned, bullheaded, not communicating a lot, not asking a lot of questions, not opening up. And as much as you think maybe I should jump him or sit him down or hold her accountable, the reality of the situation is they might really be struggling, they might really have a self confidence issue. And then why do they have a self confidence issue? What is it that's missing?

Yeah, it's so funny. In preparation for this call Ed, I had. I'm a big Fan of your dad. And I know your dad was on a recent podcast and I listened to that and there were so many insights I got. First of all, those coaches like your dad, been doing it for so many years, they are some of the most insightful people I have ever seen. And your dad, just an example of that. I've been through a whole doctoral program. I've been with leaders for 30 years. I work with CEOs. And I'm listening to your dad and I'm like, the insightful things that he talks about were unbelievable. The stories were great. But the thing that hit me, talking about your dad, I think if I'm not mistaken, it was a while ago. He is known as a tough, nonsense coach.

I've seen him in action.

Yeah, well, guess what? I have two. Close up.

Yeah, yeah, you saw it close up. But deep down, as he's reflecting on his own career, he tells stories and whether, you know, he's very vulnerable, talking about the changes that he had to make from everything from strategy around the three point line to kids and probably the most powerful thing, I think there's vulnerability and emotion. And the thing that hit me about your dad's podcast, I mean, he's talking about a story from 30 years ago about a kid that comes in and is ready to quit the night before a big huge regional game or sectional game, whatever it is, and you know, he talks him out of it, he comes back and helping to win the game. Your dad, I don't know if you caught this or not, but he got a little choked up.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

So that to me is just a powerful moment when of leadership. And that's probably a big reason why your dad is so successful.

Well, and that's so true though, because when you're a transformational leader, you have an emotional attachment to the growth of your people, to the success of your people. And that emotion doesn't really go away, does it? I mean, you think back to so many incredible young men that you've coached and the people that you've led through the years, and when you get news or have those conversations or think about some amazing memories, you could still feel that.

Oh, no doubt. And there's a lot of those kids that I'm sure your dads have, hundred dozen that come back and says thank you. You don't even appreciate it as much at the time. And that's the same thing in business. You know, there were sales reps, there were marketing associates, there were training directors that, you know, we've all had in the past, you know, at the time that was a struggle. But they come back and as long as they learn something, it's good. You know, going back to the book again, if you're consistent with your communication, if you're assistant with your coaching and you're consistent with your civility and decency to folks, they will always remember the message.

They will. And they'll go to battle for you too.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And they'll be there to pick you up as a leader when you need to be picked up and to talk about kind of put everything together here for a second, your coaching career. We talked about my dad's podcast, the book, and we know this. You correlate and tie it into this. We know that today's workforce wants three things. They want to know that they're valued. They want to know that the work that they do is important. And right now they want to be coached. How significant is respect in the coaching relationship? We talked a little bit about this, but if we could dive into that because it's very easy. If you let your guard down and your self awareness goes down and you're in a situation where you react a certain way, it could damage a relationship.

Can't talk about the respect factor of it.

I know that you studied emotional intelligence a little bit and there's five levels of emotional intelligence around first, being self aware and that second one of being self regulated is key. We've all had those moments where our self regulation is tested. And by the way, this notion of respect and civility and decency is not to say to be soft. You could be very direct and you could be very challenging. But the smart ones and the good ones and what I call seasoned leaders are the ones that do that in a way, still having stability and decency doing it. And I think that's becoming more and more important as time goes on, because I do think it's changing that people are less okay with being disrespected.

That's okay. I mean, that's just. You and I probably weren't okay with being disrespected when were younger, but we didn't have a whole lot of options. That was just kind of the way of doing things back then. But then you have this wonderful model that shows a consistency. It shows the three components of authenticity and the end result being trust. So it seems really simple, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination easy. What are some of the bigger challenges you've seen shown up in the business world with people I don't even want to say buying into this. They might buy into it, but they might not buy into the fact that they are able to do it.

Yeah, there's some work with this stuff. You have to get into your own patterns of doing this stuff on an everyday basis, communicating correctly with courage, coaching with humility, making sure you're teaching respecting through civility and decency. And that becomes your authentic self. But I would say the biggest problem, I mentioned it earlier is giving yourself excuses when you have that bad moment. Oh, that is my authentic self. I think people misuse authenticity. That's me. People know how I am. I can get away with that. Time out. No, you're responsible for your behavior. Quit making excuses. Or if you continue to make excuses, you're not going to be that leader that people talk about in their retirement speech.

Well, that's right. It goes to resume Virtues and Eulogy. Virtues. A great book right there. Character. But that's the thing, that's what gets me sometimes is people who use that. Well, it's just me. They get it. They understand. Have you asked them? Do they really? Did you get their feedback, Ringville? Because I don't think they really do appreciate that. And this speaks to everything that you've done over the years in terms of developing leaders, developing folks into seasoned leaders as they might still be in sales role. Okay, what advice can you give besides read the book? Okay, besides read the book, because it's an excellent tool.

But what advice could you give folks in the millennials, the younger workforce, as they have a vision of where they'd like their career to go, but they also know, they're also aware enough to know that the most important job they could have or the best job they could have is a job that they have now. But they need to continue to develop and work and prepare for that next step in a leadership capacity. What advice could you give?

I think the word that comes to mind is be resilient. You're going to have good days and bad days, especially early on. But the resilience that you show, as hard as that is going to propel you for bigger things. Your dad talked about that. You know, this notion of resilience or grit. Angela Duckworth wrote a book around grit. And in essence, it is resilience. So that's the thing that probably transcends all of these different models and so forth. When people have resilience and they have the. And they're still standing after all of these tough things and adversity that happens I think you talk about, you know, growing through adversity versus going through adversity. The growing part is only if you learn from and keep on going.

Right.

If you just go through it, you're not learning. But. So I think that's a great little tagline. But resilience, I think, is a common denominator for these folks to be successful.

Well, that's why I think this time we're going through right now is so interesting, but it's also so opportunistic. I mean, it's awful. I mean, we're all in this fight, and all of us are a little bit deeper than others. And the thing is, when we get to the other side of this, we're going to look back and we're going to say, okay, this is what I was able to accomplish. Here's what I was able to grow. Here's where I strengthen these skill sets. Here are the things I develop more. And I think when you. The more resilient you are, the more opportunities you see, and I think the higher your level of authenticity, the more resilient you're going to be. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. I think going back to the resilience thing, everybody has so many stories. You know, in preparing for this podcast, you know, I started thinking about even just what I learned going through my basketball career, whether it be a player or coach. And here's a great example of I started out at Indiana Wesleyan. I don't know if a lot of people knew that, but I played for a guy named Coach Bridges. I came out of St. Ignatius thinking I was a pretty good player. Well, they were a very good Division 3 team. And I went there and said, I got this. I'm going to play. Long story short, I didn't play at all. As a matter of fact, I didn't even practice. Dennis Bridges was a guy that, you know, he's going to send a message, you're not good enough.

I was so upset, but I do remember, you know, going through it and being very resilient about it, and that was who I am from an authentic standpoint. But I left there. But I always remember how mad I was because I thought he made a mistake and I could have played there. Fast forward six years, freshman high school basketball coach, and Jim Molinari is going to hire me. Guess who was Jim Molinari's college coach? Dennis Bridges.

Dennis Bridges.

Yeah. And I'm thinking to myself, thank God. I wrote Dennis Bridges a letter when I left, and I said, I'm sorry this didn't work out. I do think I'm better than you think I am. But I do appreciate you telling me and do appreciate you being honest with me. Thank you very much. When I was interviewing with Jim Molinari, the first person he called was Dennis Bridges. And that's the story that Dennis Bridges told them all.

I've got goosebumps. That's awesome.

This notion of resilience. Yes. But also handling situations right in an authentic way. Who you are, even if you're mad. Going back to that self regulation. I was a 19 year old kid, thought I was better than I was. Granted, this is all just Division 3 stuff. People are like, are you kidding me? But as you know, it doesn't matter what division you're in.

No.

And you care just as much if I was a counter Division one player.

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And you never know when that's going to show up. Right. Think about that. How did you have the presence of mind to write a letter thanking him even though you felt like he shortchanged you?

I do think that goes back and I know I mentioned your dad a few different times, but your dad talked about this too. When he started talking about how he got started, he started talking about things that were ingrained with your own parents. And I do think handling, you know, handling situations correctly and having a little bit, you know, I think I mentioned early, I'm the youngest of seven boys.

God bless your mom.

There was no, you know, kind of everything's okay and it's someone else's fault. Even when it was someone else's fault, growing up became your fault. So I think that actually, you know, how you're raised has a lot to do with that because no one told me to do that. I just knew it was the right thing. And I'm sure through the years, both mother and father taught me those kind of things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's amazing. Seven boys. Where did you fit on the pecking order?

What age I was, the baby.

Were you. It didn't matter whose fault it was.

That's going to be the next book. I already got the name for it. It's called the Caboose Lessons Learned as the Caboose on the south side.

I love it. I'm holding you to that. I absolutely love that too. And that's the key on the south side. Because the caboose on the south side is a lot different than caboose in the northwest suburbs. I don't mean that negatively. It just. It is what it is. That's the reality. Of the situation. So let's go back to when Willie Brown brings you in, gets you the interview with Eli Lilly, and you get into the business world because there is a void. We know this, right? Like when you leave the coaching world, there is a certain rhythm to your life and there's a certain edge that you. I mean, I was. When we got fired at A and M in 98 and I got into the mortgage business, I was a completely lost soul. Without even knowing I was a lost soul.

I did it because it was the start of the refi boom. I just thought this would be great, get back to Chicago, make some money, live life a complete different way. But there's that void that every single day that you missed. So when did you start realizing all the positive traits, behaviors, characteristics show up in your business world that are what made you so successful in the athletic world? In other words, your ability to develop great relationships, your ability to pull out the best in others, your work ethic, when did it all start to show up? And then when did you really start to feel comfortable in the business world?

Well, a funny story about that. When I interviewed with Eli Lilly, you're right, you don't know anything about the pharmaceutical business. You don't know anything about these medical devices and some of these medicines. And I remember interviewing. And I just came off this basketball career, and I was still very excited, still wanted to get something that gave me a rush. And I was talking to the hiring manager about this. I said, I want to find something I can get really excited about. And she started going through, well, this is a diabetes sales representative job. Think about what you're doing. You're going into doctors and you're selling them these diabetes drugs from this wonderful company, Eli Lilly. And in essence, you're really saving people's lives because if they are compliant with their medicines, that you're saving those lives. And I remember stepping back to.

And I said this to her in the interview. I said, yeah, that all sounds great, but it's not like beating Michigan. But she laughed out loud, because, as you know, in college athletics, there's a rush that quite frankly, cannot be replicated. But she ended up hiring me. Going back to your original question, obviously.

She didn't go to Michigan.

She didn't go to Michigan. But going back to your original question, she saw that it goes back to leadership. She was a great leader who saw that these transferable skills around building relationships, resilience, authenticity, can manage itself in pretty much any kind of an industry. And those are the transferable skills. And I ended up doing very well. But I give her a lot of credit because as you say, you're a little shaken when you're starting something new or when you get fired and you have to start something new. We've all been there. And you need someone to give you that confidence back. Even if you're a confidence person, you need a little something. That's where leadership comes in.

Was it tough for you to leave Eli Lilly and jump into.

Very, very. You're basically set for life. I don't want to say a comfortable job, but it was comfortable and bad. Eli Lilly is one of those companies you can stay forever. And they had one of the few companies that had pensions and everything else. But this notion of starting something new that I would be responsible for. And Eli Lilly was such a great training ground. I mean, it was. I had the best training in the world, had a leader there named Dick Scott that showed me the leadership development business and the training business, and he was just tremendous. So I had all this knowledge and it was a little bit of a challenge and say, can I do this at a Fortune 150 company? And that goes back to the people you surround yourself with.

It end up just being a great run, not over yet, still there, but it's just fabulous.

The businessman in me has to ask you this question. When you started from scratch at Danaher, what in the world did you do for intellectual property and developing your leadership program? Because I have to imagine, like Eli Lilly said, hey, don't take our stuff. How big of a challenge was that starting from scratch?

Well, in training there's this notion of either buy it or build it. And at these bigger companies, the good news is you're able to buy something. So your normal. Ken Blanchard situational leadership, Stephen Covey speed of trust all of these tried and true models, you can just go out and have some money and buy those and get those. But in terms of building those specific executive leadership programs, certainly don't take anything from your own company, but you can do things like you did there, you know what I mean? You know, storytelling sessions, making sure that there's a good change management model in place. And that's not intellectual property as things that you can just take from, you know, different folks.

But it's, you know, to be honest with you, it's a great job because when it comes down to it, getting great leaders in the room together, which is hard now, we're doing everything virtually, but I always thought that we are in a tremendous space because if you get the right people together and you ask them the right questions, leadership development will happen in front of your eyes.

Yeah. And that's pretty powerful, too, when it does.

Yes.

Yeah. And I love the buyer. Build it. Okay, so in addition to Power of Genuine Leadership, because it's a phenomenal book, in addition to that, what would you say if someone's like, you know, what. What helped create, what helped cultivate Pat Donahue? What were some of the first things you mentioned? Covey. Okay. You mentioned Ken Blanchard. What were some of the folks that served as mentors to you and their content mentored you, even though you may not have met them somewhere along the way or you may have, but what were some of the folks that you really pulled from?

I think those two. I think I was influenced early by Daniel Pink.

Daniel Pink, the book drive.

I remember I read early the emotional intelligence stuff. That's like 25 years old from the Harvard Business Review. Daniel Goldman, Powerful. That's a, you know, a key concept, I think, that those folks come to mind. But probably more than anything is the leaders that you learn from. You know, I go down. You know, I was talking about your dad earlier, but I think about, you know, Coach prime at St. Ignatius, Coach Weitzel, who we both worked for, and, you know, they have some. I have stories about all those folks that I will never forget. And I think that's where you learn the most. You know, people start calling you a leadership expert because you get a doctorate degree and you write a book. But what I realize is that. Thank you for that.

But all of us, including all those people I just mentioned that have written 5,000 books, they're all still learning, too.

Yes.

That are all still learning. They'll be the first one to tell you. So I think being curious is more important than actually thinking that you figured this stuff out.

Yeah. And I love the word curiosity, and it's such a powerful thing. And you mentioned Coach Weitzel, you mentioned Coach Prima. And I'll tell you, one of the things I learned from being around great leaders, great men, great women in the athletics world. They're very transformational. Right. There was nothing transactional. Now the college game was something different. We know there's some transactional coaches out there, but for the most part, very transformational. But the cool thing about athletics is you are literally every single day enrolled in a leadership development course. You don't even know. I mean, you talk about Coach Weitzel. Some of the best advice he ever gave me. One day I was in too big of A hurry to wet mop the floor before practice. He thought I didn't want to do it. No job is too big, no task is too small.

I'm like, I went back and wrote it in my notebook in the office. I'm like that. That just. It stuck with me over the years, you know, so it's just. It's amazing. But, Pat, hey, I, you know, I know.

Can I tell one more? Ed, just one is a powerful and it's very relevant. You were just talking about the power of everyday learning. I have a. My oldest child wants to get into coaching. And like you and I already talked about, we're trying to tell them, no, please don't do it.

I mean, you're skilled. You need to be able to talk them out of it.

But he is right now, and I won't mention any names, but he's volunteering for a college program here indianapolis. And this is a true story. Two weeks ago, the star player in the locker room got a text message that his girlfriend was COVID positive. And this was 30 minutes before a game against a ranked opponent. And the kid told his coach. And my kid is sitting there watching, and right now he's thinking, what is this coach going to do? Best player, ranked team. You got all hyped up. The coach did not hesitate and said, get dressed. You're not playing. I want you to go home. I will call you after this game. We're not messing around with this stuff. We're following protocol. They went out and they ended up winning the game. Not as much as they probably should have without him.

But the kid comes home at 10 o' clock at night and says, dad, this is what happened. And I said to myself, that is exactly why I sent you with that guy. Because that lesson of doing the right thing versus what most might do. I can see coaches saying, hey, I didn't hear that. We'll deal with it after the game. All of that.

Are you sure?

He learned a lot. Yeah, he learned an unbelievable lesson. And I would argue that kind of stuff happens on a daily basis. I remember Coach Molinaria, Bradley got a phone call from another college player that was probably one of the best college players in the state at the time, telling him he wanted to transfer to Bradley because he's having a hard time at his school. And I remember again, Coach Molinarity, without hesitation saying, what I want you to do right now is I want you to go back to your coach where you're at. You need to stay there, tell him that you called me and work this thing out.

And even me, at a time when I was 25 years old, trying to recruit kids, even me, I was thinking at the time, oh, my gosh, that would have been a great player for us.

Yeah, no doubt, Coach. Wait, hold on.

Call him back.

Let's talk through.

Yeah, but he never hesitated. And you just know right away these people integrity is unshakable. And you learned that. The lesson I learned from Mo when I was 25 about that player, the lesson my kid learned when he's 22 from this. I'm talking about it now, 30 years later, and so will my child. So to your point about learning from athletics and coaching, those things happen in the business world all the time, too.

Well, that's a great story. And the fact that they won the game is just. It's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Pat, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. I appreciate you sharing so much about the book. The Power of Genuine Leadership. How Authentic Leaders Earn Trust. The link will be in the show notes. Okay. Get it. It's a great read. It really is. And Pat, thank you so much.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

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