The Social & Psychological Aspects of Business, the Power of Your Network, and the Politics of Business with Mike Rega

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Michael Rega, Managing Partner of the Ecliptic Consulting Group. Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form

Showtimes: 
1:17  Nic & Laura talk about leadership qualities
6:28  Interview with Mike Rega starts
9:45  Social & Psychological aspects of business
39:06  Power of your network
42:06  Politics of business
46:02  Field Notes

Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review. 

This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Michael at https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-e-rega/

Guest Full Bio:
As a Managing Partner at The Ecliptic Consulting Group, I leverage my 20+ years of experience and expertise in international business and organizational leadership to deliver innovative and impactful talent and business development solutions for ESG centered growth firms. My mission is to help clients achieve their sustainability and profitability goals by enhancing their human capital, operational efficiency, and customer loyalty.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello, and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Nick and I talk about leadership qualities. We talked to Mike Riga about social and psychological aspects of the business, the power of your network and the politics of business. And finally, Nick read an article about the perils of de extinction recently. So here's some fun facts about the dodo. They were flightless stood around three feet tall and weighed up to 45 pounds, that hence flightless. They used to live on the island of Martinique it were basically big pigeons. Thank you for that Nick. Everyone. Send him a message and tell him how much you love that fact. Hit that Music

All right, today's the last day to submit an abstract for the 2024 NAACP annual conference in case you needed a reminder and everybody save the date for May 5 through eighth it will be held in Minneapolis. You know, I am a big fan looking forward to that. And if you'd like to sponsor an episode, head on over to environmental professionals radio.com/sponsor and check out the options there and submit that form. Now let's get to our segment.

Nic  
I don't know I would like for you like what makes a good leader? I think there's a lot of it's a really broad question. And there's a lot of ways we could go with it. But where do you want to start?

Laura  
Oh, you know me. I hate the word leader. I hate when people are like I'm a leader. I don't think that you are a leader. Like you do something and you lead like it's, you know, do your thing. Do it well, and people will follow right. The notion of like, I'm going to be a great leader someday just rubs me the wrong way. Because

Nic  
it's counting everyone else helping you get to her Yeah, kind of

Speaker 1  
in not like in intentionally or outright

Laura  
but I think you can kind of miss the mark. If you're like, Oh, I'm a great leader, but you're not considering like, Are you a great communicator or a great mentor or you know, those are all things that are wrapped up into leadership.

Nic  
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's funny. You say that way. I think there's a really, there's lots of different examples you can pull from right. And one of the simplest way for the military, for example, is they'll say things like, we're gonna go up this hill, come with me, right here. There's a better way to be the lead and like you guys, go take that hill. You know, and I think that speaks to your point where it's like, you have to be forward thinking and you have to make good decisions, you know, because, you know, if you make bad decisions, and everyone gets wiped out, and there's no leadership left, right, quite literally. So yeah, it's sometimes sometimes it's luck, too. And I think we forget that, you know, even great leaders can make bad decisions, or people who are in charge and all that. So it happens, you know, yeah.

Laura  
But to that point, like a good leader, when they make a mistake, recognizes it acknowledges it takes the blame and then makes up for it. Not even just like, I'm sorry, it's, you know, what can I do to make this right?

Nic  
Yeah, yeah. And you know, when you come into a new position as well, I think there's a really, there's good and bad ways to approach that and most good leaders will lean on the people that have been there for years, learn their strengths, and allow the team dynamics and then work on where do we need to go from here, but if you just go in there, you know, guns blazing, pardon the phrase, but, and just be like, well, this is what we're doing. And I'm doing it this way. This the way I am, you know, it's kind of like an old coaching mentality as well. You know, it's like it's working with the crew that you have, not the ones that you wish you had. And sometimes people get caught up in Well, I'm a system. I'm the reason that this works. It has nothing to do anyone else. It's because of me. And those are the ones that usually fail.

Laura  
Yeah, actually had a boss who his boss retired and they took over and they went to a meeting and just said my team, my team this my team that he got better rated. I am yeah. Because, you know, first of all, you just stepped into this role. So it's not your team yet. And even if it was like, it's our team, the team us we you know, like I established I created this team and then they went out and did my bidding. Right,

Nic  
exactly, exactly. It's really easy to get wrapped up in your own ego when it comes to leadership sometimes and you know, if you do well if you are doing well in a group is doing well. It's easy to do. I remember we, we've talked about bad advice before the guy who was like, Well, you could be an asshole and it's fine, because they'll forgive you. They have to or whatever it was, it was just a terrible way to be like that's bad leadership because something goes wrong. None of those people are going to help you know, yeah, zero

Laura  
that say like you're not a leader without followers. So and that doesn't mean like, like I love turn the ship rounds, my favorite books and he talks about the leader leader model. It's not about you know, they're not followers, they're just other leaders. Right, you know, that just just situated around you differently. And like, always learning I think probably that's for a leader a good you know, you asked about what are good traits for a leader? You know, you're never is just stopped. You're always learning and trying to be better the next day. If you've just decided, like, I've made it. Now, I'm the director and I stay here and I go on to trainings, I'm not trying to improve myself. You know, that isn't leadership either.

Nic  
No, no, and it's easy to sometimes to plateau, I think in lots of careers that happens. And you know, including my own I've also done that a couple of times and you just kind of sitting there going through the motions, things are all good. You know, they're fine, you know, rocking boats, then you start getting a little bit bored and then you can even start to head down instead of going back up. And you know, your goals and where you want to be all matter to that as well. But it is easy to kind of forget to be curious or to stay curious. So I mean, I don't know that's that's a pretty big one for me. It's a dead last. So for anyone who watches it. There you go. Be curious. It's a good leadership.

Laura  
Well, our guest is a leadership and persuasive communication all day long. So I think we can bring him on and get some more answers.

Nic  
All right, sounds great.

Laura  
Welcome back to EPR. Today we have Mike Riga managing partner of the ecliptic Consulting Group on the show. Welcome, Mike.

Mike Rega  
Thank you. Welcome. I appreciate it.

Laura  
It's nice to finally have you on the show. Been working with you for a couple years now. And I think this is going to be great talk about some leadership stuff. And before we get into leadership stuff, let's talk about your career path and how you got started with ECG.

Mike Rega  
Yeah, that was almost sort of by mistake. I was working for Stryker medical back in the day and they make hips and knees and all kinds of things that you really don't want in your body. I mean, they're great if you need it, but if you don't, then it's not something that you want coming down. The pike. So I was they're launching what they call the striker cot, which these big football players ride around on on things when they get injured. And my roommate for the meeting, got laryngitis. So they stuck me on stage last minute, which I really didn't know anything about. Right so I saw it. I heard him chat about it a little bit. And I got up on stage did my thing and people seem to like it, but in the audience was a man by the name of Maynard Garfield, and he was one of the founders of ECG ecliptic group. And he came up to me afterwards and said, hey, you know if you ever want to get into consulting, whatever, give me a shout and give me his card and I thought wow, that's who the heck would want to be a consultant. I'm a medical professional here, you know, and, and then about six months later, Stryker went through a massive layoff and laid off about half of us.

Unknown Speaker  
dugout, it's hard

Mike Rega  
to say and that's how the whole thing started with a strange connection through a national meeting. I

Laura  
love it strange connections. What does ECG do that much? Let's

Mike Rega  
go there. Yeah, well, it's been a journey like many people in consulting I mean, just the nature of consulting is client says, do you do that? And you say, Yes. And then you figure it out later. So throughout time, it has been wildly different things. The firm was formed in 1958. You can imagine business in 1950. It was wildly different those of you who are fans of like madmen and things I would imagine, that's what it was like. But as you move through time, I was very much connection between sort of the social aspects and the psychological aspects to business and that seems common today with all the books of Daniel Pink and, and things, but it was very uncommon in the late 50s and early 60s. So we started in the realm of sales, training, sales development, combining those two sciences of marketing and psychology. And through time that has evolved dramatically and we're much more focused on global stem companies and talent like that, and only play in a couple of sectors. So built environment and EHS environmental world and then in tech, and today we do everything from leadership development is one of our big areas and also, within strategy consulting so many of these consultancies are amazingly smart people with no real strategy on where to go and what to do. So that's the focus. We grew from a 1958 sales development to today's world of strategy and leadership development.

Laura  
Yeah, that's great. And I like I like the candidness about that, like, you know, consulting, you gotta shift and change as the needs change rate. But you're here because you work with a lot of environmental firms. So can you give us a little insight into like, what they are specifically struggling with and what they come to you for? Yeah,

Mike Rega  
and you know, you don't want to be too negative on these firms because they have been wildly successful across the spectrum from the DSLRs to the rambles, the environs, the RMS of the world, etc. And the way they grew up, really this business was born in the 70s with the Clean Water Act, etc. And it was engineers that really started saying, Hey, hang on. A second clients are calling us and asking us for things. We have no idea what they're talking about half the time, but they're under these new regulations, they want to stay in compliance, etc. So the businesses grew up very much like that with engineering, which traditionally don't make amazing managers. And so we come in and we say, Hang on a second, can we help shape what you are and what you do, from strategy to building proper teams and then a major focus on the commercial aspect or business development, whatever you want to call it, depending on the firm because the other thing you'll find out about STEM people is that's not typically their comfort zone. They don't, they're not wonderfully comfortable face to face with clients. And you realize pretty quickly in a career. Wow, that's the whole business. I mean, there's lots of smart people out there. It's the client side that really makes a difference. In your overall career. Yeah, so

Laura  
that was Nick and I talked about that all the time. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Nicole each year awesome questions.

Nic  
I literally I mean, I you know, there's there's meetings and I literally just had a meeting where some of my teammates asked me what our dress code is. I'm like, don't wear ties. I know the person who's running the meeting. He hates wearing ties. So if we show up without ties, he'll take his off. And that's exactly what happened. And it was, it was so great as I was really nervous because he's wearing it and then he's like, hey, they're not wearing ties, arthritis, then he just threw it down. And I was like, okay, that's kinda what you're talking about rather than client thing. Having an understanding of how people are and we are meeting with great, it really does. Yeah, because yeah,

Mike Rega  
I think when you get most engineering science back to people in a dark room, and with the truth meter turned to 10. They will tell you, they're most comfortable, alone working on really intricate, hard problems. They're most uncomfortable in front of a group of people talking to them about why that problem needs to be solved and by the way, we're going to charge you for it. Comfort, discomfort, right we sit in the middle of that we say hey, not every one of you needs to take this track towards a commercial and client facing role. But a certain number of of you have to otherwise there is no firm you know, there's the business books are littered with wonderful, really smart people who couldn't talk to a client and it just cratered. The firm. Yeah,

Nic  
well, how do you find people that do that? What do you look for when you're, you're meeting with leadership? Yeah,

Mike Rega  
you know, we try to catch them early. So some of this frankly, is is boring. Some of it is sort of family, you know, did you sit down together and have dinner with your parents did? Did you have a crazy uncle that you're always talking with? Or maybe were you isolated in a situation where you just didn't have that much interaction? So you are more buried in a book concept. And so some of that, frankly, is born. But these skills can be taught, you know, one of the classic stories is somebody asked me one time if you can learn this stuff, really and I said, Well, yeah, and he said, I don't think so. And I said, you know, Doug, I said do you snow ski said Yeah. Were you born a snow skier? No, not at all. I said snow skiing is damn hard. Yeah. Is it? Yeah, I said okay. So that skill set can be learned but somehow talking to clients and having commercial acumen is not and that's sort of adjusted him and is it easy Are there people that are much natural on a snowboard or snow ski? Of course, yeah, but those skills can be learned. So how we find them is a little bit of a filtering between Hey, do you have natural acumen as far as speaking to people do you have some leadership skills that bubble up and the firm's that we work with? Then start to select those people to be in our LDP leadership development programs. And then we put the polish on them and everything like that. So a little bit self selection a little bit on that way, and then a lot of training.

Nic  
So what does the training look like?

Mike Rega  
Yeah, so we start with a pretty in depth needs analysis, because one of the death knell is in any of these LDP leadership development programs is you either start way too low, and the people in the room are saying, Yeah, I learned this stuff, you know, from San Diego or you start too high, and they look at you and go, I can't do that, you know, you have to target that content beginning with your audience. So we do quick interviews with everybody that are going to be in our sessions and we ask them, you know what, without being aggressive, we say, what's your background? What do you do you know what are you comfortable in those kinds of things, and that gives us a pretty darn good look at at the starting point. So our usual first phase is around what we call persuasive communication and it is the ability to frame up an idea to have a cogent argument about what it is that you want to do with that client or your team or whatever the case is. And then we run through usually three or four different sessions with them, usually two to three day live sessions, so they are onstage in front of each other and instructor This is not Hey, virtually you can learn a golf swing kind of concept. I mean, I'm sure you can learn a few things, but it's trial by fire. It's an intense process. And you see that behavioral change in real time. Yeah,

Nic  
so yeah, this was funny. We really did want to talk more about persuasive communication and what that means. So when you're telling the trial by fire, how do you set that up? How do you get people to walk through that and get that practice? Because it's, I think, for me, one of the hardest things to do is to practice something like this, you know, and how do you get a group of people to sit in a room and, you know, have that be valuable to the company you know, that's the thing no matter what it takes time, even if you have a group of people that will be willing to sit there and listen how do you pull it all together? Yeah,

Mike Rega  
great question. So So after the interview, so we get our right content, level start, let's just say then we sit with the client and many times we have built a strategy for them about hey, this is your go to market campaign. This is the areas of focus these are the practice areas that you need to drop and these are the years that you need to focus on. We're pretty well versed in their strategy. And we bring those two things together, because the other death knell in these programs is yeah, that was really good. And the instructor was interesting and funny, but it doesn't relate to us. So that that's actually so now we've got the right content beginning because we've done the interviews, and we understand the strategy because many times we wrote the strategy. So we bring those two together. So immediately, Nick, we say okay, these items are going to be valuable and relatable to you because they are you we use their terminology so we get through that. Then the second component of that is you. You have to build trust in the room because these are smart people that are also massively skeptical. They've seen way too many YouTube videos and so they sit there and go, Hey, what is this clown gonna teach us? And that's a really good question. So we forced the issue of trust. We forced the issue of it's okay to mess up long before we get them like trial by fire. Those are the pieces. Am I relatable? Am I at the right level for this class? Am I gonna learn something out of this? And do I feel comfortable in front of my peers trying these skills when we have those building blocks put in place, then we can move forward? If not, you've probably all been to these sessions where you just sit there and you want to stab yourself in the eye with a spoon. After 20 minutes. I cannot do this anymore.

Nic  
Right? Right. And it is funny that the willingness is really important. And I know that's something that you know, even even in my groups like United say we have people who are really young, who will really like and like that's one of the things we look for. It's like okay, well, who's doing really well? How do we get them the experience they need? To continue to do well, and you know, I think that that we call it I was telling Laura we call it soft skills, you know, maybe that's not the right term for it, but those are the hardest ones to practice. I think it's really hard to be like okay, well, now that you're you've been here two years, go ahead and tell the client everything that I would say. You seem to be scared. I don't understand, you know, and so, isn't really hard things. I commend you for it. It's not easy to do.

Laura  
No,

Mike Rega  
it's not easy to do but with humor and you get to a point where these people can sort of make fun of each other and that that sets a feeling in the room. We also do these by cohorts. So each time they go through, you know, session to session three, it's the same group of people. And there is a bonding process that takes place there. And by the second time where they've gone to dinner and they've had cocktails and you know, everybody asks about hey, how's the dog doing or whatever. It's a different feeling in those rooms, then sort of, I don't know, an American mantra Association meeting where you have no idea who those other people are. You sort of put on a face about your education level and your experience because other people are judging you in that room and again, not to say anything about those are great content courses. It's just not what we do. And we find that if we can get those building blocks together and get those people to start taking chances to your point, they are scared. They are intimidated. Yeah. One of the worst things to do is to have somebody you know, brilliant onstage like Laura Thorne come off stage and say, okay, Jimmy, you're up next. And Jimmy hasn't said two words in three days. It's like, I gotta follow her. And so it's setting that room where it's okay. It's going to be humorous. It's okay to fail. It's okay to mess up. But we're we're all trying to get better if you can set that and not learn anything.

Nic  
You know, it's funny that you mentioned that I want to relate that to you know, like, I know Laura is gonna yell at me for saying sports but the I remember once I playing softball, and I was and I was late, right I was late for the game the games was about to start I ran out to second base. Ran out there didn't warm up, right? Very first hit is right to me. And I took that ball, and I launched it into outer space, because I hadn't bothered to warm up right my arm was tight. And I just sailed it off into I'm pretty sure it never came down. Like that's how far but if I had warmed up, that wouldn't have been an issue. Right? And it's funny you say that because we don't think about that when it comes to communication. And in talking in front of a group of people. I think that's a really, really important point. Like you can't just show up and walk out on stage. You know, if you haven't said a word to anyone in three days, I think that's really important.

Mike Rega  
Yeah, you know, without grossed out your audience or anything. We call that in in our firms show up and throw up. You know, what you've done, you've sat in the car or in virtual settings and you went over your PowerPoint, nine times and you went through, you know, table six, which they're gonna really be interested in Table six are never interested in Table six. Right? Then you get to that situation, and you haven't practice what you're going to say how you're going to say it, how are you going to answer questions? What happens if you get a little pushback? How are you and I are going to act to each other and farcical even you've not done any of that. So of course, you're gonna launch it into the seats, the first hard shot that you get, of course you are. Yeah. And that's what we do. We sort of forced those situations in a safe setting. And frankly, we push them to fail. We push them to the point where we want that situation by the time they get to this four session, which is group persuasion, which is super intense. They're always on stage. By the time we get there. The Trial by Fire has happened so much that no client would put them through the same kind of things that we just did to them in a session that feels like hey, this

Unknown Speaker  
is a breeze.

Nic  
I got this. Right. Yeah,

Laura  
I have to say, I've been working with Michael disclosure, been working with Mike for a couple of years now and I've gotten to see him work the room and lead these trainings. And he really does like after watching the cohorts get together a couple of times, they really know they're checking in with each other. They know each other's names. And these people work in different parts of the country. You know, they don't see each other every day. So they're, they're strangers when they start most of them. They may have been in a meeting together or know each other's names, but they're getting to know each other on a personal level that they then leave the training with. And so they also have each other to lean on after the trainings and it's really cool. Well,

Mike Rega  
when you think about that, I mean, look at it from the leadership of the farm, right? They're sending these 2025 people through an intensive program and you know, they're sitting in their office sitting there going wait a minute, is this investment worth it? You know, what are they going to learn? What's our ROI? But Laura, what you just said is, hang on a second, the bonds of that cohort that I would pick up a call, I would pick up the phone and call or get on a virtual call with somebody that I would never have to because I didn't know that I saw their name and an email somewhere. If that happens one time with one client over the entire rest of their career. They have a long since paid him for that. And we know through our data that that happens multiple times a month after the sessions. It's the glue that sticks these firms together. It's those kinds of cohort relationships. It's magic, frankly, and why firms don't do this on a universal basis is mind boggling to us. Yeah, I always thought

Speaker 3  
ya know it's funny though, because I think this has been kind of, I mean, this is not a surprise for anyone who listens to the show, but one of the reasons I started doing stand up comedy was to get better at public speaking. And I couldn't think of anything harder than that.

Nic  
Maybe this is a healthier approach.

Laura  
Well, my actually does a lot of comedy like you know, doing standup but he definitely brings humor into the room.

Nic  
But I will say before he started like I would say, one of the things that I learned is that you have to be prepared. Even if it's stand up comedy and you're supposed to do a little bit of improv and riffing or whatever it is. You still have to be prepared. If you don't know your job is not going to work. And I got through with any speech, right. If you don't know it doesn't matter how charming you are, it won't work. Yeah.

Mike Rega  
And I would imagine in the world of stand up to I mean, you can't get up in front of the Sarasota seniors club and start talking about tick tock, right. There's gonna be something that not to make any kind of ageism joke, but you've got to make sure that it's targeted to that audience, otherwise, they don't find it interesting or funny. So what we get out of the interviews is everybody tells you something, a little bit of something, stand up comic background in this I have four dogs, I live on a farm something and that comes out in the sessions. We weave that into the discussions of the sessions, and then all of a sudden sort of their ears perk up and they go oh, that's that's my farm, you know, in Manitoba or whatever, but it just, it brings it live and so much in the training and development world just doesn't it's, Hey, we're gonna go through these 94 slides and I know we have two hours.

Speaker 4  
Right, right. No, if you could do that, why don't you just email them to me, please?

Nic  
Yeah, it has the same value. Yeah. So okay, I got it. I mean, I know I'm, I'm hogging the interview. Here a little bit. But I want to know, too, because there's a couple of things that happen. I think sometimes when companies go through this program, or these kinds of programs, they realize, you know, there are people in leadership positions positions that maybe shouldn't be. So how do you approach that? Is that something that well, you everyone can be tired? So even people who are not good leaders can still learn and become good leaders, or their chart decisions that have to be made sometimes and say, you know, maybe this isn't the place for this person? Do you guys talk through stuff like that? Or how do you kind of manage leaders who are really struggling by being last? Yeah,

Mike Rega  
we absolutely do. I mean, we are a consulting firm. It just so happens so much of the consulting that happens in our space have to do with people. We don't do much consulting in the automotive space. We're trying to know maybe you're working on stamping machines and there's a problem there. You got to fix the stamping machine. Well, we don't have any stamping machines. We got a bunch of people and they happen to be really smart people, assertive people with usually low end communication skills, which makes it really, really interesting for us to maneuver through this. And so we say, you know, Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great talks about do you have the right people on the bus and do you have the right people in the right seats on the bus? And the answer to that, in many situations is absolutely not. Right. So many times in these firms. They grew up because this particular person happened to be brilliant in air, and so they made her the National Air leader because she really knows there Yeah. Despite the fact that no one can stand to work with for her she's a tyrant. Yeah, has never really built a team but man is she brilliant and they're so we made the air Practice Lead and what have you done to yourself? Right so I would much rather have somebody who is not particularly brilliant and air but he builds an amazing team of people that really create a talent magnet for that firm than to have a tyrant running their practice. Not to mention any particular names but Laura you know exactly who I'm talking about. So, with that said, Yes, we go back to the leadership of the firm and we say, hey, there needs to be some reconfiguring here because artificially you are tamping down the growth of your firm. This person is valuable to the firm and in the wrong seat. On the bus, right. So we make those suggestions. We don't have the power to make those moves, but many times they do.

Nic  
Yeah, I think it's a really fair point. I actually have one of my my right hand for my job is not the foremost expert. In what we do. But she is the best people manager I've met. And she's fantastic at it. She's like, I don't know all the information here. I'm like, Yeah, but you know, every single player, you know how to help and support them without me having to ask you or tell you, hey, check on so and so. And that's so much more valuable for that position that she's in. I almost feel like I'm like, you could almost know nothing because the people skills that she has are so good that you can learn the job, you know the technical part of the job at some point, but I need so much more that motivation leads
________________
Mike Rega  
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, if you look at sort of a graph of this and you say technical skills, leadership skills time, there's a point early in your career where technical skills get you when you have this degree and you've done all these, you know, soil study, so you're hired to do x rayed. You don't need much leadership skills because you're a taskmaster, you're out there collecting samples, blah, blah, blah. But as you move through time, suddenly leadership skills and technical skills in terms of importance cross over the top of each other. And what you're saying is when you get into the very top levels of the organization, leadership skills have a much more important component to your success than technical skills, not to suggest the technical skills diminish, you still have to have them otherwise people don't take you seriously. What do you what do you know? What do you think that's a fair that's a fair question. You know, I mean, and most people don't go through and get a master's degree in geology and learn a heck of a lot about leadership skills. That's not what happens. So a trick is played on us, especially in the consulting realm, but it sounds like this. Hey, no one told me I was ever gonna have to talk to clients. I thought I was gonna talk to rocks. Yeah, no one ever told me that I had to lead teams because rocks don't care. So as you move through time, that's a really dangerous trick. And the earlier you realize that in your career, the better off you're going to be. Now for sure.

Laura  
That's a great segue to my next question, because, you know, you mentioned earlier, having to earn the trust of the people like what does this clown gonna teach me? What does he know about the work that I do? And leadership is cross cutting? It is you don't have to have the technical skills to be a good leader. I know. When I've been trying to promote myself as a business consultant, and I've worked with architects in manufacturing. Some of the people come to the training. Their first question is, what do you know about architecture? So how can you be here to teach me leadership? And so I'm sure you've run into the same thing. So what is your take on that pushback? And you know, you don't have an environmental degree, you don't have it. 10 years of experience in ESG. How are you here to teach me this training? Yeah,

Mike Rega  
fair point. So my master's degree is in sustainability. But I know you're not picking. But let me give you sort of the worst example that I've ever seen. And there was a true story is a guy who literally sold the Brooklyn Bridge, and when they tore down the old Brooklyn Bridge, there was all these wood splinters and ties and you know, whatever laying up in the side of the road, and he's driving by happens to be from that particular part of the country. He's driving by and he says to the construction people, Hey, do you mind if I throw some of that in the back of my pickup truck? That's shirts, that's gonna get hauled away in a couple days. Anyway, who cares? Me so that's the Brooklyn Bridge, right? Yeah. So throws it in the back. And he took little tiny white cards and he splintered all the wood down to like toothpicks size, glued it on there with a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge and said you can now own part of the Brooklyn Bridge. And he sold hundreds and 1000s of these darn things. And so he comes to this discussion, and he's talking about his great idea to sell the Brooklyn Bridge, which seems like you know, part of the end of a joke right? And to prove his legitimacy, he shows us his bank account, and I was mortified that somebody could be that arrogant, to not only say, This is what I did, but here's my bank account to prove it. And so Laura, to your question, please don't do that. Don't show anybody. Don't walk up there with your degree pasted on your shirt. Don't say I'm the PhD I wrote this book with how we suggest you do it is with stories and examples. And Laura, you've seen this happen. As you take the stage as you start talking about the content, you will start to weave in examples from firms like theirs. So if I'm in front of an A E Comm, I'm going to talk about W SP if I'm in front of etrm. I'm going to talk about SLR or environ, or the wide variety of firms out there because that tells them oh, this person is an insider in the industry without wearing a master's degree or whatever the case is or got help us showing a bank account.

Speaker 2  
Okay, okay. I have to know this has been asked you to at some point anyway, so you have to have some really big bombs that you've seen like people who have gone through these things, maybe their first time up, and it hasn't worked out. You've got to have a story.

Mike Rega  
Yeah, so I don't know when this happened, but I suspect it was during sort of the Iraq Afghanistan incursions. Everybody I met that was a big tough guy. Suddenly, that person was a Navy SEAL. I don't know where that came from. But all of a sudden is like what how many seals could possibly be and I'm getting all these seals all over the place and and of course, you don't want to ask them what like, right like, You got to click something there was this one particularly big dude, and he had tattoos and everything. And he was a marine biologist by training, and a seal, allegedly. And we go through and we're in the fourth session, and it's intense, you're up on stage and all that kind of stuff. So here's this alleged Navy SEAL tats all over the place. Got to be 250 Big, good looking strong dude nice up there presenting to his whole peer group of sort of, you know, engineering, you know, biologists people. And Nick he completely lost it. And broke down in tears. I completely lost it under the pressure of peer review. And I had to come up on stage. I came up on stage and said, Hey, and it's okay, let's back up just a second and I don't know if I don't know what happened in that moment. But that was a bomb that I will never ever forget. Because I was tricked into this feeling of oh, this guy's gonna kill it. Oh, my God. He's He's, he's been in war zones. I mean, he must be must be the man. And he's, he's in front of a group just talking about his practice and lost IP. So that was one of my career moments when I said, Are you doing the right things here? Are you? Yeah, are you psychologically ruined this person? I do have to ask him as well. And we're friends to this day and he said that was a seminal moment in his career. And he gives amazing presentations today. And I found out he wasn't a seal. He was he is what they call a Jag and it's basically an attorney in the Navy and he was deployed with the seals to go out and like make sure they're not doing things. They shouldn't be doing it. So that was his role, but he sort of pass themselves off differently. Yeah,

Nic  
of course. That's Wow, that's good.

Laura  
That's an incredible story. You know, you hear about certain musicians or people you see on stage and it looked like that or killed it but then you find out like, oh, they barf every time they perform.

Nic  
I mean, yeah, one of the comments about Bo Burnham a good example of that, he had social anxiety a really hard time he quit camp Santa for five years. Even though he was great at it. Just because he couldn't handle the stage. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Wow. While Yeah, you know,

Mike Rega  
one of the things we teach is you don't want that to go away. And maybe it's the same in stand up. You know, people say how do we get rid of the butterflies? Well, you don't want to get rid of the metroflex. You wanna harness the butterflies because the minute you step up there and say, I got this 50 of time I've given this presentation that you will be flat. Your brain won't work at this level. It is you're not going to get the laughs They can feel that in the room that Nick doesn't care about tonight, and he's getting the door money and beer. You know that kind of thing. You don't want that you want to harness butterflies, not eliminate them. Yeah.

Nic  
And that's good. Like that. It's totally true. I mean, heck, I've even had that happen. Like fairly recently, where you're like, why am I Oh, I went, I didn't care. I had it in the bag. That's why I'm coming off kind of I gotta be better at this, you know? Yeah, so totally true. Totally true.

Mike Rega  
Yeah. And I think in the careers of consulting that manifests itself as maybe not being onstage all the time or telling jokes or whatever, but it probably manifests itself in trying things other practices, projects that are just outside your comfort zone, like oh, man, I don't really know that. Great. That's the moment when you're on the bleeding edge and you should have some butterflies and if you can sustain that through a career, you will be energized. You will be animated people can kind of feel that and we live in a world within the STEM community that really sort of conflict adverse. They're not risk takers by nature and sort of a broad brush. And I'm suggesting do the opposite. Now, I'm not suggesting that if you have no engineering degree, and you're biologists that you start designing bridges, that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting, you know, go back to your Venn diagram, something that's relatively close, just stretch yourself a wee bit. That's it. Yeah,

Laura  
I like that. And considering other career advice, you know, you mentioned early on how you even got involved with ECG was that you had this connection that you just held on to and hats in, didn't know you were going to leverage later on. And I have another friend here in Syracuse, who teaches networking, about the power of loose ties. And, you know, that's sort of how we met as well. I was volunteering with NAEP and was Stewart running the webinars and that's how you caught my name. So you know, what have you seen, or just advice that you have for career or not, I guess, career climbers, career seekers, people who want to move up and the importance of networking and get involved and getting over the jitters and doing things? Yeah,

Mike Rega  
wow. I mean, in people firms like consulting is it's everything. Imagine you work for SpaceX and you're an amazing engineer. And you're the one that's designing the next version of the rocket that's gonna take us to Mars or whatever the case is, you know, you're no pun intended. You're in rare air is not a lot of people that are going to mess with you or whatever the case is that people are trying to network with you. That's not the world of consulting. There is always going to be somebody who knows just a little bit more about that bridge or that design or that, you know, Eldar rule or whatever. There's always going to be that person. So your reliance on building an incredibly strong network is tantamount to your career. The most important thing that that we teach people in terms of networking is what is being said about you in rooms you're not in on what is that? And it turns out that if you allow the narrative just to be sort of by accident, oh, Laura is really great at this and she really likes people but that's not the narrative that may be Laurel wants Laura wants to be known as a brilliant this and a real driver of teams. And you know, and an amazing project manager well guess what that narrative it's on you to create. You're the person that creates the narrative in the firm. And when you're not there, you need somebody like Nick or another cohort to say, no, no. Laura's great at project management. But you don't allow Nick to dream that up itself. You drive that narrative, you build that network out, and the more times that that network can speak to you and about you when you're not there. The more powerful it is. Because if I asked Laura, hey, what do you like to be known? Of course, she's gonna say, I want to be known as a great project manager wool. Yeah, but I'm not asking her I'm asking the other people around because I want her on my project. It's like getting I don't know. References if you will, but you're creating an army of references out there for your particular career moves and the kinds of things that you want to do. Yeah,

Nic  
that's brilliant. That is absolutely brilliant. And, yeah, and it's so true. It's so true.

Laura  
Thinking Like what are people gonna say about me? No, no, no.

Mike Rega  
It's the same right? So if somebody asks, Hey, I found this guy on WebMD on YouTube or whatever, you know, saw a couple of jokes whatever. What do you think about it if that person says to the person who wants to hire you, oh my god, he kills it. Oh, well, you're gonna get hired. Yeah, but if it's left, yeah, I've seen him a couple times. Right. That's right. You can't allow that to happen. And you know, that bleeds a little bit into the sort of the political game again, with STEM people traditionally don't like to play it and and I totally get that I get the mindset. But in a people organization, of which many of you if not all of you are in, you don't have the choice to not play politics. It's being played. So your choices are, play it or it's played on, you know, those are two choices. There's no stepping away from it because you step away. And I'm not saying that crossing ethical boundaries are some moral BS. I'm not talking about any of that. I'm saying the connections that you make the right people, the right projects that you're on what you're known for the narrative about you that kind of politics is what I'm talking about.

Nic  
Yeah. 100% and I love that as a discussion point. I think so many people think that it's just oh, it's not for me, it's not my game. I don't want to I don't want to do that. I don't like I don't like you know, playing the game quote, unquote. I'm like, like you said it's happening. Whether you're whether you want to be or not, it doesn't matter what company where you are. They are all doing it. Absolutely. If you're not engaged, then you're not involved.

Mike Rega  
Absolutely. And I'll give you two warning signs for when politics crank up and you better be in the game. Those of you who are involved in venture capital deals where there's, you know, a three to five year turn and you get new new partners every three to five years. Right before a deal. Politics goes bananas, because everybody's jockeying for position, you know, who our owners gonna be, and, and you know, what they're doing their due diligence and who's doing what, et cetera. Et cetera. And then right after a deal, because traditionally, there's an infusion of capital and that capital has to be used in the business in some particular way. So potentially 10s of millions of hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into the firm. It's like, well, who's gonna get that? Well, I want control over the budget. Because that means I'm going to be able to hire people, open offices, fill in white spaces, geographically open new practices, etc. Those are the two times leading up to the deal. And in the funding session, right after the deal, man, you better have your political hat tight, because that's the time you get left behind.

Nic  
Yeah, I mean, I think I've seen it in many different places, many different ways. And even learning sometimes the politics of an organization may not line up with your goals, and the sooner you realize that the better off you are somewhere else. And you know, yeah, otherwise you're stuck there. And you're gonna be doing the same thing. 10 years from now? Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Rega  
Or option B, get yourself into leadership situation so that you can affect the politics and the you know, the overall drive of the firm that you've grown up and in love, change it. I mean, it's a people organization, right. There's nothing stamped in iron, just change the culture, the drive, what you're going to focus on, we've seen that again, and again, don't get apathetic about this is not for me because you know, they're going in the wrong direction. Try to change it first in Yeah, if you're too low on the totem pole and or you just can't get that done, then find then find some place that does align with your goals. Yeah,

Nic  
super well said. And it's a great time for us to segue because we're, we're closing in on the end of our time, which is just disappointing. I think we could talk to you for another hour here pretty easily. But we do love to do a segment we call field notes right where it's part of the show where we ask our guests to share memorable moments about the work they do. So we also encourage our listeners to share stories using the hashtag field notes so you can read those on future episodes. But we want to ask you tell us about the first visit to US Steel in India.

Mike Rega  
Yeah, I I'm glad most of these people have retired because I think the liability is now off you know. So, it's my first day on site, and I had no idea what I was doing and we were designing scaffold for US Steel shut down. They're doing a big maintenance project Valhalla. And some of these scaffolds can be three four storeys tall. And now as I was a kid, I was 2324 years old. So my mom buys me my first work shoes, you know. suit you know, I talk about your tie. Comment before I'm in a white shirt in a suit nice goofy shoes. My mom bought me. And now I'm climbing through scaffold and already these project managers are looking at me like come on, man. They've gotten busted up Red Wings and steel toes and everything. And I've got I think they're JC Penney. shoes or whatever. So I'm wandering around and remember we're building scaffolding on three storeys up, and this is a long time before health and safety was taken very seriously. And there's people down below welders and things, welding plates and all kinds of stuff, and I managed with these goofy shoes to kick off a seven foot piece of scaffolding pipe that was just laying there. From three storeys up. No, and this place is mostly dark with just work lights around and so on. I froze because I didn't know what to do. I yell heads up, do I yell? Pipe starts clamoring hitting the scaffold on Well, yeah, bang, bang, bang bang. And from there, nothing but F bombs flew through that and that was the last first and last visit to US Steel they ever took me on and I think got through the shoes over the next day and miraculously, no one died as far as I know. And it was horrifying. That was day one.

Nic  
Yeah. Oh, wow. So embarrassing.

Mike Rega  
The loudest thing you've ever heard in your life. That's why

Laura  
we share these things though exactly know someone else listening is like I have an embarrassing moment or they're embarrassing moment is yet to come because we all have one

Nic  
or the other. Okay, well, I have an embarrassing moment but it's not nearly as bad as mine. Yeah.

Mike Rega  
I actually called my mom on the way home and I I complained about the shoes. Yeah. I advised somebody right, right.

Nic  
One of the shoes he got me maybe kick something very dangerous. Yeah, come on.

Laura  
That's great. All right. We are getting close to the time but I did want to mention you know, I've known you for several years now. I love doing this. I love inviting when we have people on that we that we do know because I always learned something new about them. I didn't know you were kiteboarder Oh

Mike Rega  
my god. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I live in Florida most of the time. And we have hurricanes, you know. And I like to go down to the beach sometimes during those events, not during the hurricane but when the wind is starting to pick up and just check out things what's going on here right away and so and this is about seven, eight years ago, I saw these two massive kites just ripping past the beach and I thought, oh my god, they're out in a hurricane. That looks amazingly dangerous. Have to try that. So I chased these two down the beach and they finally got off and I've asked them all these questions and there's only one or two chi chops back in the day of that and they said that you didn't take lessons and all kinds of so I did and living in Florida gives you lots of opportunities. So now my wife Kim and I were ever we are in the world we are chasing when all over the place. And it's just an amazing sport, and surprisingly very soft on your body like it you know, it looks violent and you see things on YouTube. But once you start to get it, it's very soft, it pulls from your waist and it's just one of those things that erases your mind. You're totally in the moment when that happens. I hear people talk about like surfing and skydiving and same thing it is therapy beyond belief.

Laura  
That's so cool. Like I don't know if you can wakeboard, but I have never turned kite surfing.

Mike Rega  
Well, there you go. We'll we will strap you to a kite the next time you're down. That'd be awesome.

Nic  
Yeah, make sure it's doing a storm though. Really, really raised the hair on the back of the neck. Well, Mike, we are running out of time. And before we do, is there anything you'd like us to talk about that we haven't mentioned it? You know

Mike Rega  
just I think when people get involved in their careers, they have this sense of this is how it should go. I should be moving in this direction. And I should be learning more about this and I should be getting my PE and you know what? That's not the way it's gonna go. The way it's gonna go is it's going to be market driven. It's going to be firm. driven. And it's going to be the people you surround yourself with driven and make sure you're making good choices about those because that's going to be the major drivers in your career. And you know what? It's okay that it didn't go exactly the way you want it to go. It's going to be amazing and if you go all in with those concepts, you'll have an incredible career. Rarely do you meet somebody in their 60s and 70s and say, Yeah, my career went exactly the way it went. That's not going to happen. So don't put that stuff on your just be open to ideas. Stretch yourself a little bit. scare yourself only every once in a while and you'll be amazing.

Nic  
Great great advice. And last but not least, where can people get in touch with you if they want to reach out? ECG

Mike Rega  
pc.com is our website and you know that's a it's a mess, but it's it's the it's like many of your firm's it's a merger. So ECG pc.com is the website and you can reach out to us and see all kinds of stuff. And maybe we'll have a session someday.

Nic  
There we go. Thank you so much. Excellent. Thanks, guys. It's

Mike Rega  
been fun. Appreciate it.

Laura  
That's our show. Thank you, Mike for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe. rate and review. Bye See everybody

Transcribed by https://otter.ai