Welcome to the Corvus effect. Where we take you behind the scenes to explore integrated self leadership and help ambitious family men build lasting legacies for themselves, their tribe, and their community. I'm Scott Raven, and together we'll discover how successful leaders master a delicate balance of career advancement, personal health, financial growth, and leadership.

And meaningful relationships. Get ready to soar.

And hello everybody. Thank you once again for joining us here on the Corvus effect. I am so excited to have Brandon Jenkins here with us founder of tier one. Coaching, and he is a leadership coach with over 21 years of experience leading and developing teams in the Navy. He helps leaders unleash their best selves so they can do the same for their teams.

He has his ICF membership and he really emphasizes his focus on helping leaders find their unique path. As his journey was basically done by that in terms of the golden fallacy and learning about the golden fallacy and not only how it applied to his life, but to the lives of who he now works with. So Brandon, thank you so much for helping us and joining us, man.

Yeah, Scott, it's a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate you thinking of me to come on here and just have a conversation with you and hopefully help out your audience. Uh, you know what, that is what it is all about, right? It is what can we share for wisdom that helps the audience that's listening to this, and I'm sure in the intro where they heard.

20 plus years of experience in the Navy. First off, thank you very much for your service. And I could only imagine the leadership lessons that you learn by being enlisted for so long. I could take an entire episode just on that topic with you. But if we were to summarize some of the key leadership lessons you've learned from your time in the Navy, what would you say?

Oh, wow, man. How do you sum up 21 years in a sentence or two? But I will tell you, I can articulate it now probably better than I could have. Five, 10, 15 years ago, uh, it really boils down to a dose of humility. Um, and by, what do I mean by that? It's just recognizing that you don't have to have it all figured out.

In fact, you don't have it all figured out. You don't know what does. And so as you step into new leadership roles, I think having that mindset. Of just, let me observe a little bit. Let me listen more than I talk. Let me see what I can learn about this environment that I'm stepping into and about the people that I will be working with on this team.

Hmm. I love a phrase, inquiry over advocacy, that it's far better as a leader to be curious first, rather than have a bunch of statements out the fact. And it seems like that's a philosophy that you have learned and agree with. Curiosity, probably over the last year or so, I've just come to think of curiosity as a superpower.

Leaders a superpower, which by the way, I don't know that I have developed that fully But it's definitely something that I think we have as kids And then throughout our lives, as we grow up and the cultures we live in, and just depending on kind of what your environment is growing up. I think a lot of adults tend to lose a little bit of that curiosity or that natural curiosity.

And so then it becomes something you can develop. Yes. Yes. I take a look at it every day. I have my daughter who is big into the arts and just how expressive she is in terms of finding new ways to see the world and present herself in the world. And you're right that somewhere along the way as adults. We lose that.

We lose that ability to push beyond the boundaries that we see or the boundaries that we've set for ourself. And I want to segue that into your transition from naval leadership. To the establishment of tier one coaching and how you had to push yourself through your own boundaries to make that happen.

Yeah. So something core to my blueprint that I have uncovered over the years and specifically with working with my own coach to help me with that, something that's very important to me is to empower my teammates and over the last three to five years, I'd say that. The tool that I have come to realize helps me empower my teammates the most effectively is coaching and I realized that really when I was introduced to the concept of Peer coaching.

So I had my own coach, but then I was introduced to the concept of peer coaching. It began to be able to practice that with other military leaders that were in this program that I was in. Great way to do the reps. Absolutely. Exactly. And I just realized then that, wow, this is a really powerful way to empower the person sitting across from me to empower my teams.

And when I thought back to some previous leadership opportunities that I had, and I just, Think, wow, had I used more of a coaching mindset, coaching style during that leadership time, it would have been a game changer. So that's a great way to segue into a concept that you call the golden path fallacy and how Reflecting back, one of the biggest things that I feel you've learned along the way is that if you're following a path without examining your own values, you may not be set up for success, and I'd love for you to elaborate on that thought from your own experience.

Yeah, in the military, people just openly talk about the golden path and. It's pretty established that if you're depending on what community you're in the Navy, so I'm speaking from the Navy perspective and I'm a pilot aviator. So depending on what community you're in, there are jobs to take that if you take them and you are successful.

They will continue to give you the best chance to increase in rank, increase in responsibility, and they're openly called the golden path. And so that's what initially got me to think. About this golden path fallacy and to me what it is, even if you're on a path where it seems like you're taking all these steps, you're climbing the ladder, but it's automatic and you're not examining the path you're on against your own, like you said, values.

Your passions, your purpose, like what you believe you're uniquely meant to be doing. If you don't examine the path against that, it's a bit of a fallacy because even while you may be on a good path for you, you don't know. And so when you don't know and you don't have the clarity, you can't be intentional about it.

And it's harder to see those times while on the path that it's like, Oh, it's time for me to get off of this path. And you don't know that because you haven't taken the time to examine it yet. I want to go deeper on that. A good number of the listening audience that I have are currently in the corporate world and they're always asking, particularly at year end, what do I have to do in order to get to the next.

Elevation state of my career, and sometimes they get an answer. Sometimes they don't get an answer. I think that there is a certain desire for certainty that comes with that environment in terms of do this, do this, do this, do this. You're pushing back against that a little bit to say now, wait a minute.

Have you examined you and what do you want 100 percent because eventually, and this goes into something else I think about a lot. It's copy and paste. And I think about the mentors in my life, the people that were always a couple steps ahead on the path I was on or in life. And I just looked up to them and they helped me get to where I was.

And I think, man, that's incredibly valuable. But then it makes me think. Even though that's incredibly valuable, copy and pasting somebody else's past, somebody else's style. If you're a leader, if it works at all, it only works in the short term because eventually your unique. Blueprint, your unique environment comes into play.

External factors come into play that are different. No matter how I like it, that mentor seems there are factors that come into play that are just different. And so if you don't understand the principles behind what you're doing, if you haven't learned yourself enough to lean into yourself, when those external factors come into play that were different.

Then what you were copying and pasting, right? You will have trouble. Do you feel that is a key reason? I'm talking broadly, but you certainly talk about it from your military perspective that there's a degree of. Unfulfillment when it comes to the professional paths that we take that because we are copying somebody else's path or I know in your particular example that being there for your teammates was a core reason that there were some decisions you made along the way that not being true to one's self.

Can lead to unfulfillment. A hundred percent. If you think about that, if you're following a path and you haven't examined it against what's important to you and what you believe you're meant to be doing, how can you, I guess it depends on how you define fulfillment. Which that's unique. Everybody defines it.

Everybody defines that differently. Right. But that just goes further into what I'm talking about here. You define it differently, but if you've never taken the opportunity to uncover that for yourself. Then how can you have a good definition of what it means to you? And then further, how can you truly attain fulfillment if it's always just automatic copy and pasting?

Those are some initial thoughts. I don't know what that brings up for you. I think that what it brings up for me is they often talk about the first step to solving a problem is to be aware of That you have a problem and I talk all the time in terms of one of the biggest pillars of self leadership is self awareness.

So how would you give somebody some guidance in terms of you're falling into this trap? You're falling into this trap of just copying and pasting. Yeah. If you're, if somebody were to ask you, why do you want this next promotion? Why do we want to move into this next role? And you're in your mind, you're.

Thinking well, because it's the next step, right? Because that's what I'm supposed to do. And let me caveat that it's what I'm supposed to do. Not because I've uncovered my true purpose, but it's what I'm supposed to do because. It's just, I'm in this career field. I'm working for this company. This is the next position.

This is the next one on the ladder. I'm in the military. I'm going to finish this tour. Then I'm supposed to go to the next tour and I'm supposed to promote and I'm supposed to write. I, this was the aha moment for me, specifically for me. I was a department head, so this was mid career, and my commanding officer asked me, hey, why do you, Jenks, my call sign's Jenks, why do you Jenks want to be a CO?

Why do you want to be a commanding officer? Right. And at that moment, in his office. The only thing that came to mind was because that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm going to, I want to stay in for 20 years. So if I'm staying in for 20 years, what else would I do? Right. And I realized then I'm like that with a little help from him, right.

Mentors. It was like. That's not good enough. Jinx. That's not good enough. Yeah. You may continue and you may do a great job, but really just because you're supposed to, like you can't connect more meaning to it than that. And so that was my aha moment to get serious about understanding what was truly important to me.

And I want to go into uncovering one's true purpose in just a second. But to finish this part up part of what I believe. Based on things that I've learned along the way is that it's especially hard for men to get away from the trap of conventional things or conventional paths that we are supposed to take.

That there are certain responsibilities or obligations that come along the way for the path and that you're very successful at fulfilling the needs of others, but maybe not so successful of fulfilling the needs of yourself. And certainly that conversation that you had with your CEO was an element of that.

I want to better understand how you then translate that into the people you talk to, to get them that enlightenment. Well, that's a great question. I would say it's about those pivotal moments in your life. You can learn so much from the aha moments, the memorable. Moments with memorable people and influencers in your life, right?

And it's not so much remembering and recalling the moment. It's not so much, Oh, I remember my CEO asked me that question. This was my answer. It's then going layers deeper and saying, okay, you told me that story. Why was that so pivotal? What was it about that? That changed your thinking and how did your thinking change?

So we start with those kinds of stories all the time when I'm working with clients. And then we go deeper. Like I just gave you an example, because those are the clues to the sparks, right? The, the energy sources that are giving you clues to. Purpose. Right. And let's continue down that path. Obviously, we're now talking about purpose, right?

Simon Sinek has his quintessential book, Start With Why, as an element of that. And you certainly have alluded to that. But I want to better understand some of the core strategies that You use with your clients to help them uncover their life's purpose. And in particular, we're all about taking action as part of the Corvus effect, how that translates into their decision making.

Yeah. Without action. I mean, what's really changing. Right. But the thing about action is our beliefs. Our assumptions, the stories we're telling ourselves directly lead to the actions that we take, right? And those actions are either contributing to the direction we want to move, or those actions are actually acting counter to what we want to achieve.

Right. So it's all about action. But where we start when I'm working with a client is we start with what is truly important to you. What beliefs do you hold? What are some of your core beliefs? What assumptions are you making about how things work and about the environments that you're working in and what, what types of environments would you rather work in?

What types of people do you value being around? And so we go through this bit of a research phase to uncover what you truly believe. What you truly believe what you truly value and this will be refined throughout your life So right i'm working with you right now. We're working with scott right now in the present and What has shaped your thinking to now?

What do you believe right now? Right. Okay, so i'm not putting any limitations on you. You're not putting any limitations on yourself We're just trying to uncover what you believe now Because until you do that, it'll be tough to change your actions if you want to depending on where you're trying to go Do you find in that discussion that the concept of blind spots and points of lack of awareness comes in and presents opportunities for a critical reshape of thinking?

Yeah. A hundred percent. That's one of the beauties of working with somebody else. But you know, we can, I'm very introspective. I spent years self reflecting. In fact, Simon Sinek's book, Start With Why, was one of the motivators for me. It's what I use as a catalyst. It's a great read. Yeah. Yeah. You can do that kind of work on your own.

And in fact, I highly encourage it and the people, the clients that I work with that do that already, man, I think they get even more out of working together. What happens when you start working with somebody else to help you, a third party, somebody outside of your head is they can listen and then they can point out things that you're saying.

The things you're saying are important, the things that you're doing, right? They can point that out. It's almost like a mirror, right? They can hold a mirror and all of a sudden you're seeing this from a different perspective and you're like, whoa, I didn't even realize I believe that, I didn't know that, I didn't even know I was doing that, right?

And those kinds of aha moments are huge in this process. Yes, so part of what I know you take people through on the journey is the development of confidence regarding the big decisions that they have coming up in life. Why is confidence, along with other C's like commitment, clarity, etc. Such a big element to driving the success that you want in life.

I think that what's coming up for me is belief, but not exactly the way we were just talking about it. For me, confidence stems from a really strong belief in what you're doing. So like a belief in the purpose, a belief in your capabilities, right? And so when you believe that, The confidence stems from that and you're willing to withstand some greater adversity.

You're more resilient. You're able to bounce back and you courageously move forward even when things are kind of murky. Yeah. That makes sense. Totally makes sense. And part of your orientation is it's not just about you as a leader and the ability to lead yourself, but then to your team. Very similar to what we talk about here in Corvus, where once you enhance yourself, you have to be able to expand that to your tribe and extend that to your community.

I'd love for you to go deeper in terms of the ripple effect that growing yourself and becoming a better leader of yourself has a positive impact on the team that you work with. Oh, man. Raise yourself. Raise your team is a bit of a motto of mine. It's a bit of a, I mean, I put it on a coin that I made for tier one.

So I feel it like you just talking about it, right? I feel that up in my chest and I just resonate so much with me. You start with yourself because your team expects you. To lead authentically. And you hear that authentic leadership word thrown around all the time. And yes, and I think it's important to define that for yourself.

For me, that authentic leadership means that I know myself, I'm clear about what I believe. I'm clear about values, passions, and I'm clear about what my purpose is on this team, right? And then I can lean into that and make decisions when there is no checklist, nobody telling me what to do, I can make decisions from that foundation, right?

That's authentic leadership to me. And I think everybody needs to define that for themselves. It certainly does. And it certainly self clarity seems to be a important strategy. As you have defined authentic leadership for yourself, what are some other common strategies that go into authentic leadership in your mind?

And they don't necessarily have to be for you personally. But as others are thinking, how can I be a more authentic leader? What are some probing questions that they can ask themselves? Why? Maybe. Is this important or what about this that I'm about to lead my team through connects to me personally? What are the values, the passions that are energized by it?

I think that when you tap into that, you're going to have a greater sense of what you are uniquely able to bring to the team for this mission, this project, whatever it is that you're working on. So I think those are some good questions to ask yourself. Yes. To tap into that authenticity. Do you find that to be a critical enabler of the empowerment that you are desiring to produce for the teams and the clients that you work with?

And if you have an example of how that has actually shown up in practice? I think the empowerment, so for a leader to be able to empower his team or her team, they have got to. Have confidence in their self. Yes, absolutely. When they don't have confidence in their self, they begin to see relinquishing control, which to me, when a leader is empowering their team, they're relinquishing control of every activity.

Right. There's a trust there. There's a trust. There's a mission and you have teammates and they're fully capable. And now you're empowering them to do their job. But that means you're trusting them to do it. And so you are not going to be controlling every little aspect of it. Right. Trust me. Verify. Yeah, exactly.

Man, that's huge in the military. Trust me. Verify. But if you are a leader who are not confident, you don't have that self clarity. Verify. Right. Then it's like, well, I gained my confidence by believing I need to control everything. Believing I can control these outcomes. Believing that, oh my gosh, the only way to do this is this one way.

And so, right. You start to micromanage more. So that would be to me, the number one factor in empowering your team is to. That self clarity, that confidence in yourself humble enough to know you have a lot to learn and you don't know it all. In fact, humble enough to know that, wow, all these experts, they probably actually have a better way to do this than me.

And so, man, let's empower them to do it and let me learn. Yep. You know, Scott, you lead the way you go do your job and I'm going to sit back and I'm going to learn from you. Yeah, I'm sure that there are lots of leaders who are listening to this podcast that are thinking to themselves. I wish I could do that.

I wish that I could have the trust in others for key expertise that I am showing a good front. But right now I feel like an imposter, but I feel like I don't have any other choice because I don't feel anybody else can do this but myself. How would you get them to those first couple of steps to let go for lack of a better term?

Well, I wouldn't say that I would get them to do anything, but what I would start with would be a dialogue of what is it about? Your current role or this current situation, this project or whatever, what is it about that, that leads you to believe it has to be your way and no other way. And we would start there because why the purpose would be to help this leader unpack and uncover again, sweeping away the gunk.

Right. And figure out what it is they believe. What assumptions they're making that lead them to this has to be my way that I have to micromanage this until we get to the root belief, the story they're telling themselves, it's going to be really difficult for that leader to change, right? It just is. And so I guess the first and foremost is they have to believe that it's in their best interest.

To actually work on themselves and make this change once they believe that now they're open to working with somebody to help figure that out, a coach, and then we get to, we try to get to the assumptions and the beliefs. Very cool. So as we start to wind down this episode, I always start the close with a tip of the cap to Randy posh and his book, the last lecture and.

At the end of the book, he says, this is my last head fake. This was written for my kids. So I want you to envision you have the next generation of leaders that are listening to this podcast. What are the two or three biggest things you want them to take away from this discussion? Oh man, one would be, be humble.

And don't mistake humility with weakness. Yes. Humility is self awareness, situational awareness, really strong understanding of yourself, and then the confidence that comes with that. To, to know what you know and what you're uniquely meant to be doing and then to ask for help when you need it, right? And this mindset that you can always learn from every person and every situation you're in.

I would start there. So I would start with the mindset. And then I would also want them to know that the sooner you can start to uncover what you believe. And this is about you. It's not what anyone else believes that you should be doing. It's about. Right. Uncovering what you believe that you, yourself, are uniquely meant to be doing.

And that can change. You're not handcuffing yourself. Yes. You are just gaining that clarity of passions, values, skills, purpose, and cause. Yes. I would work to start to do that as soon as you can. As soon as you're ready for it, tune into those clues that you're ready and do that and lean into you. Lean into you.

Lean into you. That is fantastic way to close. How can Brandon people learn more about you to your one coaching? I know that you have a blueprint process that kind of talks about the way that the journey goes with you. How can they learn more about you? Two, two primary places, Scott. One. My LinkedIn, Brandon L.

Jenkins, uh, I'm active on LinkedIn every single day. I post content every day and it has to do with leadership, coaching, blueprint, all that. That'll give you a primer. And then if you jump on tier one coaching. com, that gives you a little bit more into the process, the different ways we can work together.

And then just. Jump on a call with me, click my Calendly link and let's see if we'd make a good team. And we'll put those links in the show notes for everyone. But just to go one level deeper in terms of the blueprint process and what somebody who works with you through the blueprint process will go through.

Yeah. Great. So again, on the website, there's a whole page that goes through the process, but in a nutshell, there's two ways. To work with me on that one is self paced with community, and this is a recent release from us. So it's a course that walks you through your blueprint workbook, and there's videos of me explaining things and just asking you questions to reflect on.

And the power of that though, is that you're also in a community of graduates and alumni of the blueprint process and people going through it. That's one way. The other way is to work with me. One on one to do it, in which case you have the workbook and then we work one on one and I help you think through that and then that becomes the foundation, something, a tool, right?

A foundational tool we use with coaching you through whatever goals you have, whatever you're trying to achieve. Right, right. And that's something that somebody can reach out to you and you can help give them the guidance in terms of if the one on one or the group environment may be better for them given their situation.

Would that be fair? 100%. Cool, cool. We will put all of that information up on the show notes so that people can come and reach out to you. Any final words before we close out this episode of the Corpus Effect? Just that I'm grateful that you asked me to be on here, Scott. I always enjoy our conversations together and I love what you're doing with the Corvus effect.

And I wish you the best of success with that as you move forward. I appreciate it. And with great guests like you and great folks joining our community. I have no doubt. I'll put it that way. So Brandon, thank you so much for your time today. To those who listened to this episode, thank you so much for taking the opportunity to listen, please subscribe and share with others who may benefit from this.

And we'll see you next time on the Corvus effect. Take care. Thank you for joining me on the Corvus effect to access today's show notes, resources, and links mentioned in this episode. Visit www. thecorviceeffect. com. While you're there, you'll find links to our free tools and resources to evaluate where you currently stand versus your aspirations with personalized recommendations for action.

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