Dr. Carol:
Hello, welcome. Welcome to The People-Forward Leadership Podcast. Today I am absolutely thrilled to sit down with someone who's practically the industry's living archive of leadership wisdom when it comes to the transit industry. Paul Comfort is the voice behind Transit Unplugged, the number one and go-to podcast in the transit industry where he's interviewed hundreds of CEOs and changemakers across the globe. He's also a number one bestselling author of The Future of Public Transportation and Conversations on Equity and Inclusion in Public Transportation, and is the author of a forthcoming book that we'll talk about in a moment. He's a transit veteran and evangelist, a mobility futurist, and current senior vice president and chief customer officer at Modaxo and former transit CEO, who steered agencies through growth, innovation, and cultural transformation.
Paul has a panoramic view of what works and what falls flat. Paul has had and continues to have a front row seat to the leadership Blind spots, breakthrough strategies and people-first culture shaping transits next decade. And I'm excited to explore those patterns through the pillars of our People-Forward leadership framework and dig into what technology, equity and generational change means for leaders at the top. So, with that, Paul, thank you for being on the show and welcome to the podcast.
Paul:
I'm excited to be here. Thanks, Dr. Carol.
Dr. Carol:
And I appreciate you fitting me in because as we talked offline, you're expecting your ninth grandchild, which is so exciting.
Paul:
Yeah, we're very excited about it. So, it could happen any hour now.
Dr. Carol:
Yes. Yes. So, thank you so much for taking time off for that. So, Paul, you have logged a lot of time as a CEO, consultant, author, and now host of the industry's most downloaded podcast. And I would love to know where it really all began, what pulled you into transit and the industry to begin with?
Paul:
Sure. Yeah. Well, I've always had, Dr. Carol an interest in my heart to make a difference in people's lives. I grew up, actually, my dad was a pastor and I grew up in the church, played piano and was active in ministry there and felt like I wanted my life to make a difference in other people's lives. And I didn't feel like called "to the ministry" like my dad was, but to be honest with you, I really felt like my calling was in government. I really wanted to be the guy that said, "I'm from the government. I'm here to help you," and really be there to help people. And I felt like that happened mostly at the local government level, not at the national federal level where it's basically money moving around and changing hands, but I wanted to be literally where the rubber hits the road. And so, I got active in local politics as a teenager.
Dr. Carol:
Wow.
Paul:
I talked my brother into running for office because I was too young. And so, he ran for House of Delegates in Maryland where we're from, and I managed his campaign when I was 16 and just dove headlong into government and politics. I was elected president of the Governor's Youth Advisory Council representing all the youth in Maryland to the governor and the legislature when I was a teenager. In college, I was elected president of student government. Actually, while I was in college, I ran for county commissioner at age 21 and also ran for Democratic Central Committee. I won for Central Committee, but lost for commissioner. I think they thought I was too young. But out of that, out of running for office, I met a guy and I've got a chapter in my upcoming book called I Met a Guy, and it's a story of my career.
I met another guy running for office. We both lost our races, but he was head of the Department of Aging. And it really fit what I wanted to do with my life, which was to be involved to help people that needed it. You see, I think that's the definition of equity we need to focus on, is helping people that need a little extra helping hand. People with disabilities, the elderly, others. We have to, and this is what I preach to transit leaders around the country is I know it costs a lot of money to do paratransit. It's like one 20th of your passengers, but it could be 20% of your budget, and that's a lot of money. But these are the people that really need us more than any. Their life would be much worse off if they did not have mobility.
And so, I got involved there, and that's kind of where it all started in 1991, after I started the county's first public transit system called County Ride, we won an award from CTAA, the Community Transportation Association of America. I'm actually going to their conference next week in San Diego and will be speaking there and doing a book signing, et cetera. But we won the award for the best community transit system in America. And I had only been doing this for four years I guess at that point. And my career took off from there. Then I started getting offers, et cetera. And so, I moved through the industry for 30 years and wound up as CEO of the MTA, the Maryland Transit Administration, which is also the general manager of the Baltimore City Transit System. It's run by the state government, like a lot of state agencies, New Jersey Transit and Connecticut Transit, et cetera.
So, yeah. So, I spent 30 years. What I was trying to do was help people, and I'm a people person in my heart. Obviously you need good leadership skills to be able to do that. I know we'll talk about that some today. But that's kind of a walkthrough of how I got started and where I'm at now, how it's going for me lately.
Dr. Carol:
Wow, what a fascinating journey. I love that. And I love to hear stories of how a thread through your career has been helping people, and so you just found those opportunities in order to do that through your passion and your interests, but really helping people. And I love what you said about that equity is about helping people who need a little bit of a helping hand, right? That that's really what it's about, and I really love that. So, you were CEO of the Maryland Transit Administration and you oversaw the development of America's first FM radio operated by a public transportation system, which is fascinating. So, was that the precursor for Transit Unplugged, and what made you decide to do that?
Paul:
Yeah. Well, good question. No, I don't think it really was, but it was on the way. So, I've always been interested in radio. Again, when I was in my late teens, I started working at a local radio station in Chestertown, Maryland, WCTR AM 1530. I started out as a weekend Saturday DJ. We played middle-of-the-road music, MOR for those of you in the business. And I ended up running the station. I was the only person there on Saturday. So, I'm 19 years old running a radio station. And so, I did that for 16 years and I ended up starting a talk show called Comfort's Corner. And at one point I was interviewing people like local celebrities, movers, shakers, Chamber of Commerce type people in the front window of Callahan's Gas & Appliance in Downtown Centerville. And I was producing the show, set up their microphone in the front window, move whatever they had in the front window out while I would interview them on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I think at 11:30 in the morning.
And I had county commissioners and that kind of stuff, and so that really was the precursor in my 20s doing that. And then I started a syndicated radio program called Power Minute. It was a one-minute while I was in law school actually, I felt like I really wanted to do it. I did it for about four or five months. I had it on 11 radio stations. I worked part-time at other stations doing news, was a reporter for UPI, United Press International for election coverage in my county. Just did everything I could with media, was a local newspaper reporter and a columnist in my 20s when I was at University of Maryland, UMBC, where you were in, you spent some time you said in Baltimore County. So, I went to college there and I was news director of the local radio station on campus and a DJ. And it was my favorite time, Carol was of the whole week, 5:00 to 7:00 PM on Monday nights.
I would sit in the studio and there was a window behind me into the student union, and I could see the instant reaction of the students to what I was playing and what I was saying. And I loved that, I got hooked on that. Yeah. So, then later on, various things happened in my career and I ended up as a county administrator running two county governments. There's like the city manager so to speak, but America has 3,000 counties. So, I managed Queen Anne's County government and Charles County government and both counties I got started their public education, government TV channel, they're PEG channel and hired staff and grew it and felt like we wanted to get information out to the public. And then as you said later on, when I went to the MTA, there was a guy named Mark Jones who was doing... He had a couple of people in his team working for the MTA, and they would call into 20 radio stations and TV stations every morning to give updates on the light rail system, the subway system, the computer train.
And he said, "Paul, I actually have got a low power FM license and I could do this, but nobody's given me the authorization to do it." "How much is it going to cost you to start it?" "$100,000." I said, "Done, baby." We had a $100 million budget. Sorry, it was an $800 million operating budget. And so, I was into that and I said, "Why would we want to not take advantage of vertically integrating our communication to the 2 million people in our region?" We also had a cable TV program there called Commuter Connections, which they still have. And so, I invested in that and grew that. We were in a million homes in the Baltimore, Washington area. We won a local Emmy called A Telly, and I'm excited to say my new program, Transit Unplugged TV, we just won a Telly last week, our first, which is the highest honor-
Dr. Carol:
Congratulations.
Paul:
... shows, yeah, for our Rocky Mountaineer episode where we covered that. So, yeah. So, I've always had this thread, as you mentioned that word earlier. I like that word going through and it has been my interest. And Carol, that is my philosophy, my new book, which we'll talk about in a minute, it's called Finding Your X Factor, but it's where your interest and abilities intersect. So, my interest, I've always found myself pulled toward public communications, whether it's written, speaking or on the radio or on TV. So, that's what I'm interested in, I'm interested in... And I think if you do one of those, if you do the skill finder books or you do analysis of what you're good at, mine has always been communication. That's where I've excelled.
And so, I've always tried to work that into my work and I found myself drawn to that. And I think that's the secret to success. One of the key secrets to success in your career is to not just do what you like because you may not be good at what you like. I remember there was a buddy of mine named Don growing up, and I had a band, Sons of Thunder. I played piano and sing. And so, we recorded and toured and all that in Maryland, and my buddy, Don went to church with us and he was like, "Paul, I want to sing." And he was awful.
And I said, "Don, why don't you pick up guitar or be our sound man in the band?" But he was adamant. He wanted to sing. But you know what? If you're not good at something, you're not going to excel. You're not going to be good. Even if your heart, "Oh, I really, really want you to be a singer." But if you're not a good singer, if other people tell you, "You're not a good singer, man, try something else," then you need that other factor, which is what you're good at, as well as what you're interested in, where they intersect. That is your X factor. And so, anyway, thankfully I've got some skill I think at communication. The fact that we're heard in 100 countries or a podcast number one in the world, people enjoy listening to kind of how we organize and bring thoughts together and thought leadership, et cetera.
So, I do talk too fast for some people, but it's my enthusiasm. I get going. I can't slow myself down just like when I eat, I eat too fast. That's how I gained 50 pounds of overweight, I think, so. But anyway, yeah. So, that's a little bit of background.
Dr. Carol:
I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for that. I know my father used to tell me, "I inhale food, I don't eat." So, I totally get about eating too fast. But I want to jump into this because I love this conversation around your book, Finding Your X Factor, because I've done a lot of work over my career working with leaders and executives who are reached the pinnacle of their career and maybe have not been unhappy or may have maybe struggling with it or wanting to do something else, but feel locked into something that isn't really right for them. But because they've already gone down that path, they have to stay in it. I mean, we talked about being lawyers in our past and realizing that's really not what we wanted to do, but love the training that it provided.
And so, this idea of not only looking at what you're good at, but your interest I think is so powerful because I often tell people, "Stop looking at titles and start looking inward at what really lights you up, what really excites you, what really... Find those patterns. Look for those things throughout your life that really would speak to an interest that would guide you into a variety of things because it's not, as you're demonstrating, it's not about one thing, it's about taking what you're good at and applying it to multiple things where you can make an impact." And so, I would love for you to talk about a little bit about your book that's coming out, this leadership development book about finding that X factor and you already began, but I would love to learn more.
Paul:
Sure, yeah. I think to kind of set it up, I think that's why people go through a midlife crisis to be honest with you, is because they get in their forties usually and they realize, "Yikes, I'm already 15, 20 years into this career, and I'm not excited to get up every morning and go to work." Actually, sometimes people dislike their work or they hate their work and they're like, "But..." Like you said, "I got family now, I have responsibilities. I can't just start something new. Can I?" No, maybe you can't, but you can inch by inch adjust on the way, which is what I've done. As I mentioned earlier, I've always been... So, I'll give an example. All right.
So, picture yourself if you're listening to this, you're in my shoes and you love communication, so what do you do? So, I've got a job where I'm the first transportation coordinator in the county. I've got 15 employees. They could all be my grandparents, by the way because I'm in my early 20s, and they're all drivers, et cetera, and there's no real opportunity for me to do that. But you know what? Maybe I can start a newsletter and communicate that way, which is what I did. Start a newsletter, and then maybe I can on the weekends, get a part-time job at the radio station, which I did or offer to be the reporter for UPI on election night coverage or just reaching out little by... You may not be able to switch your careers midway through, but you can start volunteering, looking for opportunities to do what you love. But Carol, first, that means you got to know what you love, what your interests are. So, you need to take some time to think about it.
For me, I did an analysis a long time ago, but there's books out there, StrengthsFinder, there's other books that you can use, tools that you can use. Hopefully when my book comes out, you'll be able to use it because walking you through exactly how to analyze what are your strengths and what are your interests, and then how to find what I believe is a treasure map inside of you to X mark the spot. I think we're all hardwired for success, but we have to look inside. We have to take time, shut off the social media, stop sitting in your bed all night long and on weekends flipping through Instagram or TikTok or whatever you're doing, and focus on yourself for a minute if you want to be successful. I have a chair in my bedroom office area where it's real comfortable chair. When I sit in it, I literally feel like my mind goes into neutral and I'm not in drive anymore, and I'm not in park, I'm in neutral, and I let my mind wander.
My dad taught me this about meditation, the power of meditation, and just emptying your mind of all the go, go, go thoughts and all of your... Some people have thoughts of negativity about themselves, "I'm no good," or whatever, I've never had that problem, but a lot of people do. I have the opposite problem, but let it all just go through and let your mind go. And then sense where your subconscious, your heart, whatever you want to call it, your soul is moving you toward, what thoughts are coming to you when you're neutral. You know you get these thoughts in the shower, right? Everybody does, right? When your mind's in neutral, things are coming to you, but it's identifying that core inside. I was at a friend of my wife and she recently retired. We were at a retirement party and her daughter, Jessica was there, Jessica's in her early thirties.
She grew up with my son, Joe. They were good friends, but I haven't seen Jessica for probably two years. So, I wanted to catch up. "Jessica, what's been up? What's going on?" She said, "Mr. Paul, I found my perfect job." I said, "Oh, really?" This just happened like three months ago. And I said, "Well, tell me about it." She said, "I was doing spreadsheets for a company for a long time, and everybody told me you're really good at spreadsheets, but I didn't want that to just be my career. I felt like it's more like an administrative assistant job. I wanted to manage people and projects. And so I found a job where I can still do my spreadsheets, but I'm a project manager over assigning people out into the field to work at clients. So, I book their travel, I assigned them, I'm tracking everything they're doing through these spreadsheets, but it is my interest in wanting to lead people and manage them and oversee projects combined with my ability, which is spreadsheets that I found the sweet spot."
And she actually used the words, "My interests and my abilities," and I said, "Oh, my God, Jessica, I'm actually writing a book about that, and those are the exact words I used. I'm going to use you in my story." And she said, "Oh, please do." So, that's what we're talking about, and that's the book I'll be writing about, which is how to identify that because that really is... Obviously, there's an old saying, right? "If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life." So, that's your interest side of things. But don't be like Don and put your whole, like quit your job to become a singer if you've got a terrible voice, no. You've got to cross-reference that with objective analysis of what you're good at, not if you're a young person. I've given a speech similar to this many times at college commencement exercises and high school graduations.
You're looking for what you should do. Don't just follow your heart. That's bad advice. You'll end up broke. Living in an apartment where you could barely afford the rent. No, not just your interest, not just what your mom says you're good at, but what other people say you're good at. Your mom thinks you're good at everything, right? My mom thought I was-
Dr. Carol:
Yes.
Paul:
... I could do no wrong, right? So, find what other people say you're good at, independent and objective, and then write it all down. "What are my interests? What do I do for hobbies? What are the shared common denominators of these things?" Maybe you are into building models and you like breaking things apart. When you were a kid, you would take apart the radio and look at the parts. Obviously you've got an engineer's aptitude, right? And then you've got to cross-reference that. So, that's your interest, and then what's your ability? So, you figure out how to cross-reference them and circle that spot and then start doing little things that you can do to begin to become more fulfilled in your job so that you wake up every morning like I do with a fire in the belly, excited about what I'm doing, thrilled about what's next and what's happening today.
So, that's my suggestions to people is that find those two, circle that intersection, and then start what you can where you're at. Don't jump ship out of your boat and hope somebody will pick you up. Wait until you get knocked out of your boat, then hope somebody's there to pick you up or plan for a rescue boat. So, that's my initial thoughts on the subject.
Dr. Carol:
I love that. I think that is so amazing. I often talk about on the way to getting a doctorate to a PhD, before you do your dissertation, they require you to do a pilot and to test it out, to test your theory, to test your ideas out to see if you're moving in the right direction. And I often akin what you're saying to just kind of pilot it, test things out before you make any massive leaps into something to see if you're moving in the right track. I remember when I stopped practicing, one of the things that I loved doing when I was practicing law was mediation, and I was pretty good at it, and I thought maybe that would be the next path when I was talking about transitioning. And so, what I did was, while I was still in my job, I did an internship with a mediator to see if that's where I wanted to go, and quickly learned that's not where I wanted to go. That was not the direction that was right for me. And even though I had an interest, I didn't have that passion, right?
And so, finding that connection about what you're good at, what you're interested in, doing that work, piloting and testing things out, I think is really a great, great suggestion. And I can't wait for your book to come out for people to read it and get those tips and advice. But I love what you said. One of the first pillars of the framework is around leadership awareness, leader awareness, I call it, which is foundational. And I know I often quote Tasha Eurich's work where she talks about that 85% of people think they're self-aware, but only 15% of people actually are. So, I love this idea of going into neutral, as you talked about it, not in park or drive, but neutral, to really allow yourself to think deeply.
So, you've used the term or called blind spots, the invisible villains for senior leaders. And so, these blind spots that I think people can gain deeper awareness of if they allow themselves to go into neutral. So, I'm curious, what are the two or three blind spots that show up most often across agencies that you've seen for leaders, and what are some ways that you've seen them help to neutralize those?
Paul:
Yeah, I think it starts with knowing what your role is. What is your role, right? So, I've got another chapter coming to this theory I have that is are you a change agent or are you a cheerleader? If you're a change agent, if you're coming into an agency at a senior leadership position or a company, whatever your job is, you have to identify, what's my role here? What do they want me to do? What do I want to do? If you're coming in to make big changes like I remember at the MTA, the governor, Larry Hogan had me in his office and he said, "Paul, I want you to blow the place up and start over again," metaphorically speaking. He said, "It's one of the worst run agencies in state government. It's bloated. They don't really have strong direction. You really need to get in there and make change."
So, what was my job? I'm going to be a change agent. But I found out like I found out in a previous job where the government asked me to come, you last about two to three years in those jobs, people that come in to be change agents have a limited lifespan in my experience, because you are making dramatic changes, pushing people out of their positions, shifting the direction of the agency. We changed everything about the agency. Within 100 days, I had done my analysis and figured out we needed to change the focus of the agency to safety, efficiency, reliability, and world-class customer service, and everything around the agency had to focus on that. And so, eventually you're basically rocking the boat big time when you're a change agent and you say the blind spots. So, if you come in and you're not aware that you're... There are some people who have a vested interest in the status quo.
They've been there for a long time, a lot of times in the back office support function. So, they're HR, IT, finance, legal, procurement, PR. They're people that have been here a long time. They're not on the front lines delivering the service. They're there to support the front lines. Unfortunately, the frontline leadership seems to churn over every two to four years. And these folks stay in their positions for 10, 20, 30 years, and they've seen leaders come and go, and they are going to slow roll your proposed changes, they're going to backbite you. They're going try to dissuade you from making your changes. And if they can't, they'll try to get you pushed out of the boat, which is what happens a lot of times. So, I think a clear blind spot, I remember some of my closest leaders friends telling me, "Oh, you need to be careful here. This is a sign." And I was like, "Nah, nah, nah, nah, everybody's got my back. I'm going to do what I think is right." And then I learned the hard way.
Now, thankfully, I had enough friends and enough experience and enough respect in the industry that I had other opportunities. Lots of them rise up shortly after, but I'm not interested in being a change agent anymore, Carol. I'm getting to the end of my 50s, and so I want to have a cheerleader job, which is what I have now. I'm cheerleading the industry. I'm cheerleading the people in my company. I'm making them look good. I've done my changes, I think, except to help people change their hearts and change their lives so they can be more successful. So, I think the other thing I wanted to mention is that you need to have people around you that you trust if you're in a senior leadership position who can speak to you and that you don't get so full of your own smoke as they say, breathing your own fumes, that you lose sight of the fact that, "Hey, you don't have 360 observation powers."
You're looking at something on the front of it. You're only seeing 180, the other person's seeing the back, and you need to have a friend or two or three, and not just your spouse, but a person at work who can tell you, "Look, listen, if you do this, I can see bad things happening. You need to count the cost beforehand." I speak into CEOs' lives every month. A CEO will call me or I'll be on site with them and I'll say, "So, tell me what's going on." We'll go out for dinner or lunch, and they'll tell me, "Well, here, the board is doing this and that." And I'll say, "Well, listen, how long do you want to keep your job? Because you won't be able to make change if you're thrown out of your job. So, let's talk about that. If you are like, the torpedo is full speed ahead, okay, just know the consequences. You probably won't have a job here in six months. You're going to get that change made, but the next person's probably going to come and undo it and put it right back the way it was."
So, there's a second law of thermodynamics that says, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." And so, we need to figure that out. That's to me, the biggest blind spot of leaders. They don't realize that when they have a big thrust, a big thing they want to do, there's going to be a reaction to that, equal and opposite to that, it's going to push back. So, you need to analyze ahead of time, "What's the pushback going to be?" And then adjust your initial push. I'll give you a quick example and then let you finish up whatever you want to say. But my example is we had a program called BaltimoreLink, and it was a great program. It was to change the bus routes in Baltimore that had not been changed comprehensively in 50 years. It's what every major transit system in America did over the last 10 years, and they're doing it again now post-COVID.
And it is to analyze your routes and figure out where do people want to go today? And so, we had two years of data that had been collected before I got there, but it was sitting on the shelf. Nobody had done anything with it. So, I took that data, we added more information, we took it out, 200 public meetings, blah, blah. We came up, I had a guy named Kevin Quinn who now is the head of the... He took my place when I left the CEO in Baltimore, and now he's doing a great job in Vancouver at TransLink where he's CEO in Canada, but he was the architect of it. And we designed a beautiful system. We were going to strip out 1,000 bus stops that weren't needed anymore and change all these routes and do all this. Well, in the end, we only ended up doing about 50% of what we wanted to do.
There was so much pushback from legislators, from the mayor's office, from city council, from the governor's office, from state legislature, from the community, "No, no, no, no. Don't take Aunt Susan's bus stop away," even though she's the only person that rides it, she needs that stop. And so, all right. Well, her uncle is somebody, right?
So, you end up not being able to do... But you know what? If you want something to last, there's a lot of compromise that have to be made along the way. So, that's all the analysis that I think you need to make when you're analyzing, "What do I really want to do? What's my goal here? What's my role first off? And then what's my goal? How long do I want to keep my job? It's just like a retirement job. Do I want to stay here 10 years?" Then you need to analyze what's the best way to do that. You still want to make a difference, you don't want to sit on your hands and do nothing, I think that's a big mistake too. But you may need to compromise. You definitely need to communicate upward, outward and inward to your agency and all that. So, those are a few thoughts I have on that subject. Long answer, sorry.
Dr. Carol:
No, no, no. I think it's great. You said something that I think is really powerful in that you need to have people around you that you trust to be able to see when you may be hitting one of those blind spots, right?
Paul:
Yes.
Dr. Carol:
And so, where do you see leaders most underestimating their own impact or overestimating their impact because they think they know? And when trusted people do try to say something, they aren't in a ability to be able to listen. And I'm not sure what that blind spot is, but I am curious, what suggestions do you have for helping to manage that process, to be able to listen to people that you trust to kind of lower that guard and to realize that you may be underestimating or overestimating the impact that you're making?
Paul:
Yeah, I think you said it right. So, that's the key. So, most leaders do know what they're doing, what I found. They know. They've been there, especially if they've been in the agency for a while, if you've been in this job for a while, you know what to do. The problem is it's not just you, right? There are no emperors. You can't just do whatever you want and-
Dr. Carol:
As much as you may want that, but that's not true.
Paul:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, think about it. We live in a democratic republic, a democracy, and so there are elected officials that have opinions and all that. And so, I think we need to pare down sometimes expectations and say, "I may not be able to change..." A matter of fact, I just went through my own personal analysis just recently and changed my life mission. I've had the same life mission for the last decade or two, which is to make as big of an impact in the world as I can, but I've changed it. Now that I'm reaching the end of my fifties, going to go into the next phase of my life, it's not a retirement phase. I still want to make a difference, but I want to make a difference in my world, the people that I'm interacting with and in my industry.
And then there's other factors that are factored into. So, I think the way to make sure you don't underestimate or overestimate yourself is to take those quiet times. I gave a speech maybe eight years ago, I was a closing keynote speaker or one of the ones on a panel at APTA in Los Angeles, the American Public Transit Association. I was on stage with Andy Byford who at the time was my colleague heading up Toronto, and there was another guy from England there that heads up Network Rail now. And there was a woman on the stage who was the head of LAX Airport that now heads up the airport in Toronto. And I sat in the middle of the stage and I said, "So, as CEOs and as leaders, here's what I would suggest you do. Find a quiet chair, turn off everything and be still, be quiet, empty your mind and see where you feel the pain, metaphorically."
I mean, we all have lower back pain, but where do you feel the pain, metaphorically speaking? And then where's the biting coming at? Are the little dogs biting? Are they big dogs? Is this something sense? Let your inner self tell you where is the danger coming from and don't lie to yourself about it. Don't think, "No, no, I'm better than this. I can overcome this." I've made that mistake myself. "No, no, no, no, I've got this." No, you don't. Your inner self is telling you your mind, your subconscious is in tune with what's happening, and it will tell you if you're quiet and then cross-reference that with what your friends are telling you that are close to you. You've got to have people that you can close the door, take off the title and be your real self with them. I've always had them. Matter of fact, some of them come with me from job to job.
I trust them. I feel like I can just tell them, "John, this is what I need you to do. I need you to get our on-time performance up by five points by the end of the quarter, and you do whatever you have to do within legal means to do that, but you have all the resources you need to do it, and I'm going to trust you to get it done." So, you have to have people like that on your team, I think. And then listen to what's going on and then address those issues where you feel the pain points. Don't let it go. Don't think I'm special and it's going to work out because it may not work out for you. You need to... It can work out if you work it out.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah.
Paul:
There's these guys that always say, "I don't know, I just kind of go through my life and everything seems to work out." And their wife is like, "Yeah, because I'm behind you doing all the little details that need to be done in order to make sure things do work out." And so, you can't always rely on everyone else to do that cleanup for you. Sometimes you have to do cleanup on aisle six yourself.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah. Well, I know you said that you've been in conversation and you have an intimate relationship with so many CEOs. Where have you seen, in terms of that effort, 360s or coaching or leadership development programs really play a part in helping in that effort?
Paul:
Yeah, I think APTA does that. The American Public Transit Association, they'll bring in experts to your transit agency. I think you pay them. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but they'll come in and analyze and show you what best practices are in the industry. For me, the best time at a conference is talking to my fellow executives about what's really going on and sharing lessons learned from each other. And that normally doesn't happen on the stage. People on the stage have their chest puffed out and trying to say the greatest things that have been going on. No, but it's the interactions you have quietly sitting down over a cup of coffee somewhere where they say, "Here's what's really going on." And so, I think it's very important to network with your fellow peers to talk to them about what's going on in their lives and learn from them as well as learn from your inner voice.
Dr. Carol:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I love that. I love that. So, you've mentioned boards a few times, and I would love... For executives in transits, in many ways, the board is effectively another team member as somebody that they have to deal with. And I know you've moderated, you've dealt a lot with boards and had some communication with boards. What's the single most underrated practice for keeping boards and leadership teams working in a cross-collaborative manner, working as a team? Particularly when I think you talked about when there's resistance or there's a differing of opinion between what the board wants and what the organization or the agency is looking to do, and there's a little bit of conflict there.
Paul:
Well, for me, I found... So, I was a county administrator in two counties and I reported to a group of elected county commissioners in two counties, Charles County, Queen Anne's, and I felt like part of the key to my success if I had any there was individual relationships with them as individuals, taking them to lunch, talking to them about what are your needs? What are your priorities? I remember one guy took me to breakfast one time and said, "This is great because I wanted to tell you, these are the things I care about." And he launched into three things. And so, then you become like a facilitator of what the majority of the board wants. You also need to know what the roles are. People need to understand what their power is, and you don't have to do that yourself. I just recently suggested to one CEO of a major transit system here in America that he needed to bring in an outside consultant to do a board training session for his board because they were trying to micromanage him.
And that's not really their role. Their role is to manage by outcomes, not by inputs. And it's hard for you though, as the person they've selected to tell them that. So, you need to have an outside facilitator come in and talk to them about what their role is. Their role is to look at the KPIs and say, "Okay, your on-time performance is at 92%. That's amazing. Your efficiency rate for your routes is this. You're on budget, you're under budget and on time for these construction projects." That's how I need to be measured by. And you can develop and promote your own KPIs that you want to managed them, but... So, does that answer your question?
Dr. Carol:
No, that does answer my question. So, what I'm hearing you say is that it's important to develop individual relationships to make sure that while you're maybe dealing with the conflicting issues that may be going on and the expectations that the board has of the organization, the agency or the executive team, that if you have those relationships somehow or other, that may minimize some of the conflict that may be going on. I don't want to speak for you, but it sounds like that's one of your strategies in trying to deal with those types of things.
Paul:
So, for four years, I was president of the Maryland County Administrators Association, which was all 23 counties in Maryland. They all have county administrators, and they elected me to be their chair. And so, my role to them was... Normally they had five commissioners, on any given Tuesday, you got to be on a count to three. That's the main rule. You have to have three votes because we're all at will, and so we could be let go by a vote of three. And so, the other thing is on controversial projects, I don't know, I've always had projects I was working on, things I wanted to do, and a lot of times the county commissioners didn't care about that. I created a CountyStat program. Remember when CitiStat was big and I did CountyStat. So, I had each department establish one or two goals for their department.
So, for the emergency services, it was that an ambulance needed to be to the scene of an incident within eight minutes after called in 90% of the time. I let them help set that goal. I let each... The commissioners didn't care about any of that. I was focused on managing the government effectively, and they had their own individual concerns about whatever they were concerned about. And so, the other big key is, in addition to having individual relationships with them, is understanding what the priorities are, the majority of the board. And I've been in boards, I've had to manage boards where one commissioner was the outcast and they were constantly fighting among each other. And so, you have to kind of lay your claim to, "Okay, I'm going to work with this group before and I'm not going to be mean to this guy, but I can't listen to him because he wants to do the opposite of what everybody else is telling me."
I mean, I'll listen, but if I try to do what he wants, it's not going to be... The majority doesn't want that. And we even live in a democracy here, so we have to do what the majority says. And so, I'll have to let him know, "I'm sorry, I can't fire that person, or I can't move that budget item there. Sorry, I'm not allowed. The full board has not authorized me to do that." And sometimes I had to meet individually with the four. Still you can do it, an executive session if it was a personnel matter or whatever, and talk to them about what we needed to talk about. And this is the crisis of management. Last comment on this, I've got a relative of mine who is a driver for FedEx, and he's been offered management so many times. He's such a good driver.
That's what we do in the world. We promote the line workers into management who are doing a good job, which is, we could go into that too. That's a big mistake a lot of times. And he's self-aware enough to use your term to say, "I've turned them down every time." I said, "Why have you turned them down?" He said, "Because I don't want to worry about all the crap managers have to deal with. I don't want to go home and be thinking about problems. I want to drive my route, go home and do my hobbies and hang out with my family and my friends and not have to worry about that. What? For three bucks extra an hour, whatever it works out to on salary after I'm getting my overtime. The monetary difference is so small and the responsibility difference is so big and the liability is so high. Why would I want that?" I said, "You know what? You're probably right. Whoever wants to be management, you got to examine your head."
But a lot of us really want to make a big difference, and it's always been my goal in my life. And so, it's now doing what you're teaching people to do, Dr. Carol, which is how to do that wisely and effectively.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah. And this is a perfect segue because I want to have this conversation. I had Billy from NTI or previously with NTI on-
Paul:
Oh yes, he's a good friend of mine.
Dr. Carol:
Yes, yes, yes. He mentioned that on the podcast.
And that was one of the conversations we were having is about that promotion that you go from line to management, but there's not a lot of support in how to develop that leadership acumen as you're going along that line. And I would love to hear your insights and opinions around that.
Paul:
Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
And the challenges with that and then not being able to have that support, learning that leadership acumen to be successful.
Paul:
Yeah, I do a whole talk on this. I speak at transit agencies all over the country, by the way. And if anyone is interested, I don't charge. I can drop into your staff meeting and do a 20-minute talk on any number of topics, five hidden flaws of most transit systems, seven steps of safety. One of the talks I do is the three Cs of leadership, character, competence and communication. And the illustration I use a lot of times is Larry is a great mechanic. He's your A mechanic in the shop. He's turning the wrench, he's doing great. A supervisor job opens up because someone retires. And so, you're like, "Larry, it's a perfect job for you. You do so good at this." But no one ever teaches Larry that his job responsibilities now are completely different. His job prior to this when he was a mechanic was just to turn the wrench.
Now, his job is to lead people and to manage things, completely different. What they do for Larry often is HR comes down and says, "All right, Larry, here's how you keep track of hours and leave." All right. And then somebody from procurement says, "Here's how you order parts. All right, you good to go? All right, you're good to go." They totally leave off the table the training that Larry needs on how to turn his former friends who were his buddies, now he's got to get them to work and do a great job. And they're like, "Screw you, you're our buddy. We don't care." So, it's a whole other mindset when you're in management. And even then sometimes they may teach them how to manage the things, but they don't teach Larry how to lead people. And there's a whole other skillset required to lead people.
And then what happens is Larry's not a success and then you saw the branch out under him and he falls down because he hasn't done... But you didn't give him the tools he needed. So, don't do that, right? If you're going to promote somebody from within, from a line operations job to a management job, at least send them to one of these one-day Fred Pryor seminars on how to be a first-time supervisor. At least give them some help at getting some leadership training because otherwise poor Larry's going to be left out on his own and he's going to be very unhappy. He's going to be like my relative who said, "Why would I ever want to go into management?"
Dr. Carol:
Yeah, that is so true. And that's what we see in our people leadership forward programs and the trainings and the consulting that we do with organizations as well. Paul, I want to thank you so much for talking to us and taking us behind the curtain of your experience and your background and your knowledge in this particular field. How can people get on the wait list or be able to be the first ones to be able to purchase your book when it comes out?
Paul:
Yeah, go to my website, paulcomfort.org and sign up for my e-newsletter, which I'll start sending out soon. We're just getting it going. Yeah, and you can follow me on LinkedIn and drop me a line. I have like 25,000 followers. Easy to find me on LinkedIn, Paul Comfort on LinkedIn. So, happy to connect with any of your listeners and happy to provide any assistance I can. Again, my goal is to make a difference in the lives of people in my world. And so, I'm hoping I can do that. And that's why I came on your show today, Carol. I'm hoping I can help make a difference in what I said will help people a little bit, at least.
Dr. Carol:
I love that. Paul thank you so much for being here. You’ve given our listeners a master-class in what People-Forward Leadership™ looks like on the ground. As you listen to this episode, I invite you to ponder the question: Where does my own leadership ecosystem need an outside perspective to unlock its next level of performance? I’d love to explore how our framework can help your team put these insights into action.
Well, that’s it for this episode. Thank you Paul, and thank you so much for joining me, and until next time, keep leading people forward. I’ll see you soon.
