Unknown Speaker 0:01

Welcome, everybody to building my legacy podcast today I have with me Michael Oster. He is a fellow Gallup coach. I met him because of Gallup coaching and international coaching Federation. He has done a tremendous amount of work in various arenas. He is principal of level up advisors. He’s author of a brand new book, and we’re going to talk about that book today. It’s entitled level up. It launched yesterday, so it is hot off the press. And as an executive coaching advisor, he has had 20 plus years of experience as a CEO and board of directors leader, to help clients be their best versions of themselves. And I think that is something that we all look forward to is how do we be absolutely our best how do we get our companies to be the best They are. And he has worked with the private sector as well as the not for profit sector. He’s worked as a CEO of organization and also been on boards of directors. So your experience is fast. And I would love to start Mike with knowing a little bit about why did you write this book? What brought you to this realization that there needed to be another perspective on how to look at becoming better to move up the ladder to achieve what we want to achieve more effectively?

Unknown Speaker 1:45

Well, thanks, Lois. Are you ready?

Unknown Speaker 1:47

I’m ready. Let’s go.

Unknown Speaker 1:51

Well, I’ve noticed and thank you for the nice kind introduction. Fellow Gallup coach and consultant I’ve noticed in and lowest thank you for the introduction and a brief bio and some some, some high level titles aside most of my work has been as a shirtsleeves executive helping my teams perform as well as a can. And over the years in lots of different work environments. I’ve noticed that somehow people want to be successful yet they feel blocked, they don’t quite know how to get traction on how to achieve their own personal goals. Now when it when it comes to organizational goals, that’s what managers and leaders are for, you know, is to help guide and incentivize and, and measure and provide resources. But the employees or if you’re a manager or a leader, or if you’re an individual trying to make some progress in your own life. Sometimes you just feel you just You know, you have it within you, but you’re having trouble getting traction toward your goals. And then for that that’s the long way around Lewis, answering your question on why I created and wrote the book level up.

Unknown Speaker 3:14

I think that is so true. I think there’s people want to be more, they want to be better. But you’re absolutely right. They feel stuck sometimes between the difference in their personal mission, vision and purpose and what they see as the cultures. And you know, one of the interesting things that one person said to me one day is my organization has multiple cultures, how do you work in that environment? And so there’s, there are many pressures that people deal with. So tell me a little bit about what is level off what’s the basic framework behind it?

Unknown Speaker 3:57

Well, I love to and to To add on a bit to your comment about individuals dealing with different cultures, my, my goodness, isn’t that an issue and now there is an organizational term that is very popular called matrix management. And yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s fluid, fluid fluid. It’s it’s an equation with all variables, right? It’s fluid teams reporting in different organizations with different purposes, on different goals with different team members. And each one of those little groups and subgroups has its own culture. You know, and we learn at an early age in adolescence, how adolescence is how important it is to blend that. And when we when we become successful in organizations and business. The name of that changes to collaboration and collaboration occurs within a culture and if you’re in multiple cultures, you have to collaborate differently and it’s a it’s a Real is a real challenge. And and it’s something that and I’ll use this as a segue that that level up can really help individuals with. So here’s your here’s the answer to your question. So, I’ve, my observation is that we have two things that really drive us and often it’s subconsciously, and I hope that with my book level up, you can do so more consciously. You know, and we have experience and we have education and all these things, but what we bring and attitudes and personalities, but the thing we bring to help us solve problems and address issues in our lives, is our strengths. Now, whether or not you’ve taken a formal assessment or you have a good idea of your strengths, your strengths really help you and they define you and they help you address things. You know, Just as a quick review, what are strikes and there’s all kinds of different strikes, but strikes are the things you use that help you do things easily you can you feel it, the time is passing, you feel you’re posting results in an effortless manner. You look forward to doing that thing. Again, those are all strengths. The other thing that drives us is our values. You know, what do we believe in. And, you know, people don’t often because they don’t want to have touchy feely conversations in work environments, you know, they usually, there’s no conversation around values, but our values, the things that we hold dear, and our strengths are the things that give us the most ability to approach our life in an enjoyable and productive way. So actually, level up the book and the whole title of the book is level up how to use your unique strengths to improve your competencies and reach your goals. And we’ll get to that in a moment. But back on values I have in one of the dependencies, my level up large list of values, and it has 400 values in it. And if you’d like to revisit and find your, and just circle three or five of them, you’ll be surprised at how often you’ll be thinking about those thinking, yes, I’m doing something now that’s aligned with how I feel and believe.

Unknown Speaker 7:27

So, so but if you have 400 values, how do you get congruence in an organization?

Unknown Speaker 7:36

Well, that’s a good point. But values are for values, you know, values, in my view values are for individuals. You know, now, if I’m consulting organizations and in a strategic planning exercise, which is not related in any way to what we’re talking about today, then in a strategic planning Exercise you’ve got, you’ve got mission vision values, right? And, and I, I like the saying about, you know, the values are on the wall, you know, you walk into a lobby and you say these are our, these are our organization’s values, but the values on the wall are not always the same as the values in the hall. Right? People aren’t living the values because why? Because those values are somebody else’s values. They’re the organization’s values. If you adopt them, will you be more successful in the organization? I think absolutely. But that’s the purpose of organizations is to bring two or more people together, that’s the only purpose for organizations if to produce results. If if you need two people to work together, you need an organization. You know, the, the basic unit of organization is two people, maybe you and your significant other that’s the that’s the basic team right then it It goes from there. And then from that, you know, back to your point. Organizations feel the necessity and I think it’s important to have values and we talk a lot about values in the book and you’ll, you’ll find some interesting values and, and vision statements in my book, for example, one from Richard Branson is my vision is to have fun. That’s it. You know, a lot of these vision statements go on about it, you know, I want to be a durable invested sustainable leader and etc, etc. So Richard Branson says, while I want to have fun, he doesn’t talk about his transatlantic sailing record or his aerodynamic planes or his airlines or anything, he just islands in the Caribbean. He just wants it to be fun. So I’m betting that the things that Richard Branson considers fine are many, many so but as individuals, you know, the 100 values are just there as a dartboard, you know, for you to throw the dart and say which pick, pick some that resonate with you. And I think it’s important, you know, if we have a good sense of our strengths, and our values, and then they, we bring those to every, every table at which we sit, and and then the next thing that we bring is our we have our strengths and our values. And then we have goals, right? We have goals and objectives, and what level up and finally I’m answering your question, Lewis, I hope what level up has is a secret ingredient that I’ve discovered, which is how to use your, your values and your strengths to accomplish your goals. And, you know, strikes are when I was a little kid you grew up In in Asia, so you’re familiar with fireworks. And I remember firecrackers when I was a kid had a label on I said, light fuse and run. You notice a strength is like that it’s a 360 degree burst of energy. And what I’ve discovered is something called competencies. And I’ve ordered 17 competencies that I provide the reader and level up. And you can use these competencies as channels, their specific competencies to carry your strengths to your goals and interests as these Yes, and these competencies in in time you know, everything every time you every time you do something and you’re successful, it kind of imprints and you’re able to call upon it again. And this gives you a tool, which are the combination of your strengths and one of our 17 competencies and These competencies and strengths become woven together. And I call them competency strength combinations. And competency strength combinations are the method that I propose. It’s called the level up method. It’s very powerful. So new method to address almost any issue in your life and start working on your goals.

Unknown Speaker 12:22

So can you give me an example of somebody that you’ve or an organization or leader that you’ve used this with, had a strength had a goal, and how did they use that with this

Unknown Speaker 12:39

method to achieve that goal?

Unknown Speaker 12:43

Well, that’s, that’s a great question. And I’ll, I’ll start at the bottom. I’ll start with with an aha moment that I had at a very young age and when I was thinking of it experiences I have had, and trying to where I had been successful for some reason, and I thought why and this is, this is where I actually discovered the level up method. And then from there we can talk about higher levels. So I was, I was a child in Southern California, I was in eighth grade, and I was working on my Eagle Scout and I was having a devil of a time and my mom was the wind at my back. The Scout leader was a tough guy. He was a principal at a at a at a high set another high school, not in the district. I was in where there’s a lot of roughhousing going on. And it was really a challenge, but I got I wanted to get my Eagle Scout before I entered high school, and I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. And my grandmother, very wise soul. Notice I was down and she said, Mikey, what’s wrong, you know, and I said, I Just just can’t do this grandma. She said, you know,

Unknown Speaker 14:05

life by the inches of cinch by the mile is a trial

Unknown Speaker 14:11

That’s what she said we live by the inches of sense by the mile is a trial. And I went home and I thought about it and I you know, I, I am facing in my mind a tsunami of all these extra merit badges I had to get and projects you know, for your Eagle Scout and whatnot. And I thought it is some some big monolithic wall. It’s just a bunch of little things and I, I used a strength that I have which is a ranger. and arranger, for example, is a strike that conductors have or ringleader of a circus or anybody who can, people who are good puzzle solvers. You know, they can see the patterns and the best combinations of things. And I use my arranger strength to break down this big massive individual projects which for little kid merit badges. And then I use my strategic planning competency to arrange them in groups of three that were similar. So I could work on them together, like small batches, right? And I use that competency strength combo and jam to the summer the eighth grade and got my Eagle Scout when I was 13 years old. So,

Unknown Speaker 15:21

oh, wow, good for you. Congratulations.

Unknown Speaker 15:25

That because I was particularly talented, I had a great support team and, but I figured this little thing out and that was that was, there’s an example I think that we can all relate to have strengthen a competency. Now.

Unknown Speaker 15:41

I can,

Unknown Speaker 15:43

you know, to pick to pick other examples, and I’m, perhaps it might be better to paint, paint the glance paint the landscape, you know, before we do a portrait, and the landscape that I see is we have character strengths. We have work strengths. So how what are those all about? And what’s the difference? What’s the difference? So, you mentioned Gallup and I like for work strengths. I like the Gallup, Clifton Strengths Finder, Clifton strengths and there are 34 of them. So, we have 34 work strengths for individual personal character strengths, I like the via vi a Institute of character strengths. And they, for a complimentary bless via a nonprofit organization will in a complementary manner will allow you to take the assessment and give you a report and they will tell you about your 24 character strengths. So if you have 24 character strengths and 34 work strengths, you have a total of 54 strengths to choose from, but you don’t have to worry about Balancing 58 rather strikes, because the only ones that we really use are the top 25%. You know, it’s like everything in life, you know that about the top quarter Hylas is where you want to live. So if you ran those numbers, you might have six good character strengths that you could actually use and activate, and he’d have nine work strikes. So that would give you a total of 15 strengths that you, you own them, you know, and what we have to do with it. And if we’re looking at if we bring those into the into the room where we’re running to decide what things we want to achieve, all you have to do is push, we just push our strengths through any one of my 17 competencies, one strength and one competency at a time and you’ve got a winning little equation that only has three parts to it, your strength, your comp Let’s see what you want to achieve. And if you try a one competency strength combo, and it doesn’t get you traction and, and take you progressively toward where you want to go back up, discard it, save it for later, try another one. Sooner or later one will work and you we all will make progress with it.

Unknown Speaker 18:20

So like for you, as you were writing this book, and you started down this journey, what strength and what character strength did you use to get to your goal?

Unknown Speaker 18:33

That is a great question.

Unknown Speaker 18:38

You know, one of the character strengths is perseverance, right? And writing a book, you know, for those of you who, who haven’t written a book, I’ll bet you thought about writing a book, and maybe you’ve thought I could do that. If only you know if I had the time. And if this And maybe some of you thought, well, maybe I’d like to do that, but I don’t think I could do that. So I, what, what drove me wasn’t necessarily I had to bring a lot of perseverance. And it’s an intermediate strength for me. It’s not It’s not something that that that I really owned, but I had to develop it because we have, we have signature strikes that the top 25% then we have intermediate strikes so my perseverance is in the middle. So either really amped perseverance up but I used my strategic which is another thinking strength and my arranger and, and my communication and my hope. Hope is a character strength, because I’m positivity is a character strength. So I, my job as an author, I think is to serve serve my reader audience, you know, I’m, as you mentioned, I’m a consultant, also with level up advisors and it’s level up advisors that solutions level up, comm was taken. So there’s a there’s a domain for consultants now called solutions. So, so I really had to, kind of it’s such a great question. It says I had to consciously remind myself of the strengths I needed to complete this project and, and engage them consciously, and I didn’t get and use my competencies as I was creating the competencies and the voyage of creating competencies. You know, if, if, if, if you want to see how many competencies there are the Office of Personnel Management of the US government has a system called mosaic like the tiles right They have that you can go online and look at this, they have thousands of competencies. There are hundreds of them beginning with every letter. And, you know, I distilled them down to 17 that are very straightforward. And they, they live in what I call the categories of competencies and strategic thinking, navigating change, leading people, driving results and developing yourself. And there are three to five within each one of those categories. And all we have to do is pick one of those categories that we want to use to accomplish a goal and then drive it with one of our strikes that we already own.

Unknown Speaker 21:43

So, using that process for you, do you think that what was the impact on your reading your book to completion, on schedule, on time on budget, and all of those things Things that leaders worry about when we start implementing a new concept.

Unknown Speaker 22:07

Well, that’s another great question. Because the answer to that, and I, I think I’ve thought of it subconsciously, it’s, it’s not a question that I’ve even asked myself, but there we have, we have powerful, powerful forces that we all live between. and we live at the intersection of everything that we are and our environment. There’s a little slice of a place that we live in there. So you know, sometimes the environment pushes us in a direction and then sometimes we’re pushing the environment in another direction and sometimes they’re both pushing and sometimes both of them are lacks a week at the beach, you know, with a with a beach read. So, what I had a goal, which is, it was it was an internal goal. to write this book in a way that was understandable, and valuable to the readers and, and my, my readers are, this isn’t an entry level book. It’s for high achievers who want to take themselves to the next level. It’s for leaders who are facing new challenges. And it’s for high potentials. You want to hit the ground running. So I, I knew I had to deliver value to those three audiences. And to the environment in which in which that desire lived was an external one, which is I can’t go on about this forever. I have to deliver it. Right. And if it’s so you know, I’ve kind of got trying to wrap this up with bookend comments, because I talked about a moment ago. If you’ve ever thought about writing a book, first of all, the answer is yes, you can If I did it, you can do it. And the, the, the you have the internal drive to do it and the knowledge and you know what you’re never done done is never done since the book was published yesterday, cinco demayo. Since the book was written and went to print, I’ve discovered all kinds of things, you know, can’t go chasing after printing the printing truck saying, wait, I’ve got some other other changes. So life is, that’s what makes life interesting for you, right? You know, it’s a, it’s a variable. So this environment we live in, is always going to be moving, always going to be moving in mind. I thought, I’ve got a, I’ve got to have a date and put a bow on it and call it call it done. You know, so I had the desire to do something and learn and be as good as I could, which could go on forever. And then I had to self impose a deadline, which was this year. You know, how, how convenient. It looks better on the publishers page right 2020

Unknown Speaker 25:00

It does look better, especially since you came out so early in the year. So for your audience, what’s your wish for them as they look at this? How do you think it’s going to influence? how people work? How they lead? How managers may manage?

Unknown Speaker 25:22

Good question. Yeah. So, you know, there’s a lot the book has a lot of concepts that you’ll recognize so those of you who read it that that you’ve been exposed to as you’ve been solving problems in your life and I, I try to phrase concepts I’m bringing to you using your strength competency combinations, through lenses that you’re familiar with, you know, to look through different telescopes that you’re used to looking at and the overall goal is to help you be more successful at whatever you want to do. And, you know, success is defined by others. Not by ourselves. But you can use the level of method to help you find your sense of purpose and achieve the goals you want to achieve. There’s lots of methodologies in here, there are lots of what they call listicles. Right? You know, five ways to do this four ways to do that. And that’s everything from setting goals, resolving conflict, leading teams, whatnot. But in the end, we have a personal development program for you called the seven steps to level up and it is we won’t we don’t I don’t think we have to go into into that specifically right here but I just want you to know and and your and your listeners to know that at the end, there is a very simple format you can use to apply these principles. You know, you have to do the work, you already got your you’ve already got your strengths, and I give you the competencies, all you have to do is put them together, one at a time. And if you work Work my personal improvement plan the seven steps to level up, you will find yourself making progress, immediately making small wins immediately. And small wins help us be more enthusiastic, more energetic and make bigger and bigger, bigger wins.

Unknown Speaker 27:15

You know, Mike, one of the things I loved it was at the outset, they were talking about your Eagle Scout experience and how you took all of the requirements, grouped them into where they were similar activities. So you could get the similar things done simultaneously. And I think, first of all, that’s brilliant for how most of us work today in a matrix type of environment. You’re going to be doing so many different things, but there are similar tasks within that. And so, now I see that right there as being such a practical and useful tool for team leaders for managers, project managers, perhaps people of the C suite leadership team, as they’re looking back.

Unknown Speaker 28:14

Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 28:17

So, Mike, you have the seven step to level up course. And you have you mentioned it in your book, as I understand, and then people can participate in that and begin to gain some proficiency with these competencies and strikes. Is that is that correct?

Unknown Speaker 28:39

That’s, that’s right, Louis. Well, those are the seven steps to level up. We go them into them in a lot of detail, but it just fits on one page. And it’s, it’s just, it’s a format, really, it’s a frame it’s a it’s a framework that the reader can adopt as their guide and You know, it’s it starts with, it starts with vision, you know? And, you know, your vision is your why your your vision is why, why we’re here you know and all that the the what is accomplishing your goals and objectives. So the steps in the middle of the seven steps are all about the what you know how to how to set achievable goals and just set them in a way where you can use your strengths and competencies. And the How is using your competency strength combinations. So you’ve got your why your what your how, and at the seventh step you’ve got, measuring how well you’ve done and we don’t try to work on really big goals. We try to work on tertiary objectives. In other words, if there’s something you want to achieve, you know, I think it’s better to break that down and break a goal. down to three objectives and break the each objective down into secondary objectives and work on one at a time, you know, go for those small wins, and the level up system and what level of methodology is all about incremental small wins that will drive you to those posting those big results.

Unknown Speaker 30:19

Wow, that sounds great. I think coming out of this pandemic, all of us are going to need big, big results. And in short periods of time, so it’s that planning and pulling together every resource we have within ourselves to make that happen.

Unknown Speaker 30:39

We’re all going to be redefining ourselves. You know, the The future is, the future is uncertain, but we The future is going to be great. There’s, there’s no doubt about it. But we’re going to have new challenges. We’re going to have new ways we meet them and we’re going to need to use powerful methodologies to do that to shine to be our very best, so I didn’t have that in mind about you know how to create the new you or meet that meet the new future. I didn’t know this was gonna happen. It’s been 100 years since we’ve had something like this, you know, so pandemic of 1918. But I think it is in this time. It’s especially useful.

Unknown Speaker 31:24

Like our time is almost up thoughts that you want to leave with the audience, things we haven’t covered that you would really like them to know before we leave.

Unknown Speaker 31:35

Well, thanks. Thanks, Louis. I think once again, the book is level up and it’s brand new in the Amazon algorithm. If you try to find it, the algorithms are working their way through, you might have to go in the Amazon browser and because level up actually was a gaming term. I adopted it for for our purposes here, but some

Unknown Speaker 31:57

of you say my accent, all of them is a game anyway?

Unknown Speaker 32:03

Well those are we coaches Lewis knows this any every kind of coaching you know there are marriage coaches and performance coaches and strength coaches and business coaches. But you know all coaching after this after this second session is his personal personal coaching you know, it’s about helping helping the person not so much solving the specific problem but helping the person solve the problem. So if we go on Amazon and we we enter in the Amazon browser level up, but then my name Michael C. Oster. You should see it and it has a blue cover. I could, I don’t even have my own copy yet. I just have the manuscript. I could grab it.

Unknown Speaker 32:46

We have a photo of it. We’ll put that in the show notes below so people can see that.

Unknown Speaker 32:53

I hope you Yeah, I hope. I hope you check that out. We’re having a free for you listeners here today. We’re having a and everybody this week we’re having a free five day ebook promo so you can go on Amazon. And you know, when you look at the book, you’ll see it’ll say Kindle and then the the paperback and then the hardcover version underneath Kindle, there’s the ebook version. And then you don’t have to be a Kindle subscriber in the E book this week only is you’ll see it in blue type 0.00 dollars free. So the three magic words right you free and now So, you know pick up the book, it’s I have to warn you it’s it’s it’s it’s dense, you know, it’s kind of like a reference test text and if you get into it, you may want to pick up the hardcover or the or the paperback but you can get the free ebook now. So just I just want to leave our listeners with you know, you can do this we have a level up way if you check this out. You Have your strengths. You own them, revisit them either take an assessment or just write down on a list what, what strengths you have, and use my competencies and you can address almost any issue in your life very successfully.

Unknown Speaker 34:18

Wow. Wow, what fun actually, I think it’s a great challenge and great, great fun to look forward to just knocking off some more of those goals.

Unknown Speaker 34:27

Let’s do it.

Unknown Speaker 34:29

Yeah. Mike, thank you so much for being with us today. And for those of you listening to building my legacy podcast, thank you for joining us as well. Thank you.