Wisdom From Charlie

In this episode, Ralph and Bill discuss identifying the key takeaways, insights, and concepts that we as leaders want our team members to remember, and perhaps more importantly, how we can help them apply those learnings to deliver positive results for the organization.

Bill Berthel: Welcome to the Get Emergent podcast, where we discuss leadership team and organizational topics and best practices. We like to provide ideas, concepts, and pragmatic experiments to help you develop your potential in your work and leadership. And today we have a special show with Ralph Simone, sharing some, life and leadership advice inspired from a book he just read.

Bill Berthel: I’m Bill Berthel

Ralph Simone: And I’m Ralph Simone. And I am chomping at the bit. I was actually up at 04:00 a.m. And we had only planned to do one podcast today, and I got to the end of this book, and let’s end the suspense. It’s called the Book of Charlie. It’s on the New York Times bestseller list. The author is David von Drell, and the subtitle is wisdom from the remarkable American life of 109-year-old man.

Bill Berthel: Oh, wow.

Ralph Simone: And it was just a delightful book. It’s a little different than maybe some of the books I usually read and a lot of interesting stories. Now, what I was hoping for is that throughout the book that I would kind of dispense these words of wisdom. And, it wasn’t until the last few pages that the author kind of recounts a list of wisdom from Charlie White, the 109-year-old man, former, was a doctor, GP, and then an anesthesiologist. And I’d like to share some of them and talk about their connection to leadership.

Bill Berthel: Oh, that’s great. Can’t wait to hear it.

Ralph Simone: Yeah, the very first one.

Ralph Simone: And we’ve seen this one on other podcasts, do the right thing.

Bill Berthel: Yeah.

Ralph Simone: I mean, when you have a choice, do the right thing. And I think we’ve talked about in the Ted Lasso podcast, doing the right thing is never the wrong thing to do. And sometimes we need to take that strategic pause. We need to check in with our conscience, with our values, to determine what that right thing is.

Bill Berthel: I love grounding that in values, and I often think of that space of doing the right thing because we are subjective creatures and the situation could influence us differently. I was always subscribing to that. You do the right thing no matter who’s watching. And that’s your character showing up? That’s your character.

Ralph Simone: So the second one, which I think is one that I’ve subscribed to, and I think it makes some of the people we work with go crazy, is think freely. I love this idea of thinking freely. Thinking for yourself, doing the research. Don’t just believe something just because someone said it, or even that you read it somewhere.

Bill Berthel: So, free thinking to me, Ralph, is that beautiful space of creativity and it allows us for any and all possibilities. I think we suspend judgment and then we can think freely

Ralph Simone: And we ask ourselves what could be?

Bill Berthel: Absolutely.

Ralph Simone: And it’s amazing.

So tied to that, there was a long list and we’re only featuring a handful of them.

Ralph Simone: Practice patience.

Bill Berthel: That’s so hard.

Ralph Simone: As a parent, as a coach, as a business owner, this idea, part of my purpose is to allow things to flow and unfold at their ow