Contextual Intelligence and Leadership: Matt Kutz

Summary

In this episode, Christian Brim interviews Matt Kutz, a professor and leadership coach, who shares his journey from athletic training to developing a consulting business focused on leadership enhancement. Matt discusses the evolution of athletic training, the concept of contextual intelligence, and the importance of understanding intuition and personality in leadership. He emphasizes the need for leaders to adapt to their environment and the significance of personal growth in achieving organizational success.

Takeaways

• Matt Kutz has been a professor for almost 30 years.
• Athletic training has evolved significantly over the years.
• Contextual intelligence is crucial for effective leadership.
• Leaders must adapt their styles to fit individual team members.
• Intuition is rooted in tacit knowledge, which can be developed.
• Personality is not permanent and can change over time.
• Fear can lead to rumination, hindering decision-making.
• Foresight should be distinguished from fantasy in goal setting.
• The culture of an organization is influenced by external context.
• Personal growth is essential for the growth of a company.

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.592)
Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Matt Kutz of MK Leadership. Welcome to the show, Matt.

Matt Kutz (00:13.281)
Thanks, Christian, really appreciate it.

Christian Brim (00:15.374)
I did pronounce that right, correct? Okay. I was second guessing myself. I do that all the time. In any case, give the listeners the abbreviated version of who you are and how you came here.

Matt Kutz (00:16.789)
You did. Yes, you did. Perfectly.

Matt Kutz (00:30.507)
Yeah, so the abbreviated version is my day job is a professor. So it's what I do during the day. I still am a professor. Love it. Been doing it for almost 30 years. Now, teaching a variety of different topics. My actual area of training is sports medicine or athletic training. And recently, recently, mean the last eight to nine years or so, I ventured into the entrepreneurial space of kind of developing.

my own version of corporate training and leadership coaching. And so that's where I'm at now, about to take another big step. My wife actually just resigned her position at her job to help me full time, you know, take this business to the next level as best as we can. There's the short, short, short version. The full version is a three beer story.

Christian Brim (01:21.216)
Okay. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, I asked for the short version so I can, you know, then go back and pick. So, okay. You said athletic training. Is that like physical or psychological? So I'm thinking PT like physical training, like manipulating joints and muscles or is it more psychology? Okay.

Matt Kutz (01:44.301)
No.

physical, it's physical. So athletic trainer is the person you can best identify us on any sports event or venue. When somebody gets injured on the field and you see the person run out onto the field, they usually the commentators and the sports casters and up will say, the sports medicine team or the physicians or doctors are running out on the field. No, that's the athletic trainer. And then they do a quick evaluation assessment and determine if they need to go on to see a physician or not, or the concussion protocols everybody talks about when they're

watching an NFL game, those are all governed by athletic trainers and administered by them and things like that. So yeah, it's very much the physical rehabilitation, diagnosis and evaluation of injuries, and then rehabbing those injuries, return to play decisions, things like that.

Christian Brim (02:32.79)
I hope that it has progressed from my experience, you know, 35 plus years ago in high school where our trainer, his answer was one of two things, tape it or ice it. Yeah, was pretty much it.

Matt Kutz (02:44.653)
I got saddened, taping or icing. I wore a t-shirt in college when I was training 20 years ago that said, just ice it. It has progressed dramatically. And that's actually a fantastic question I'm glad you asked because it has progressed.

Christian Brim (02:51.212)
Yeah, that was.

Matt Kutz (03:01.005)
just exponentially just because now you have to even have a master's degree in athletic training. can't even, you can't do it if you don't have a master's degree and a state license credential. You're licensed by the state. Same thing a physician, a nurse, a chiropractor, an osteopath would have to do. And then also a national certification, all of those things. Yeah, it's advanced dramatically. In fact, we no longer actually even preach just ice.

anymore. Research has come out quite profound. It is. You can never hurt something by icing it. That's absolutely true. But it's not as helpful as we once thought. So that is another thing. But yeah, no, it has grown substantially.

Christian Brim (03:33.152)
It's good advice.

Christian Brim (03:37.422)
That's correct.

Christian Brim (03:46.69)
So what's the distinction just from my own understanding between athletic training and say physical therapy?

Matt Kutz (03:54.027)
So the emergency management care.

That's the big difference. And as matter of fact, I happen to be the incoming president of the World Federation of Athletic Training and Therapy. And all around the rest of the world, they would call what we do very similar to either athletic therapy or sport physiotherapy. Now, physiotherapy is a different discipline entirely, but it's a cousin too. So we're kind of cousins in that space.

Christian Brim (03:57.015)
Okay. Okay.

Matt Kutz (04:25.457)
And so yeah, it's similar to that. The difference would be we do a little bit more, a lot more of the emergency management care at the beginning where a physiotherapist do a little bit more of the after emergency care kind of treatment and intervention.

Christian Brim (04:43.598)
So it's mostly like sticking the bone back under the skin. That's kind of what I'm thinking. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. So all right. You've you've built this business. Did you use that education background to build the consulting business? Or is your overlap? Okay.

Matt Kutz (04:47.405)
Correct, correct. We need physicians to help us with that, but yes, pretty much, yes, yes, yes.

Matt Kutz (05:07.885)
100%. Yeah, no, 100%. In fact, I'm one of those people who often say, you know, everything that I learned about performance enhancement in the physical space.

Christian Brim (05:15.15)
Thank

Matt Kutz (05:21.237)
I've been able to translate over into leadership enhancement or what I call the organizational athlete and use very much the same principles. For example, in an athletic training setting, we, like all other healthcare professionals, use the acronym HOPPS for an evaluation. HOPPS stands for history, observation, palpation, and special tests.

And that's how, when you go to the physician for your regular checkup today, they're gonna use a version of hops. What's going on, how you feeling, they're gonna observe a few things, take your height, weight, blood pressure, stuff like that. They're gonna palpate around, where does it hurt here there? And then they're gonna do special tests, either pull or poke on some bones or whatever, maybe even x-ray, something like that. So.

I took that same model and applied it to organizational diagnosis or personal diagnosis. How do you diagnose your efficiency as an entrepreneur or leader, for example? Take a history, ask about your competition, ask about what brought you to this situation, this space. Why do you think your services solve a particular problem? What is that problem that you're solving, et cetera? Then we observe. We take a landscape shot of our environments, our surrounding. Who are my competitors?

are they at? What are they doing? How are they doing it? Then we do palpations. We do a couple of field tests. We do some focus groups. We see what people are thinking and feeling. We ask questions and then we do special tests. And then we, so we actually offer some services and see how they go. Offer a few products, see how it goes. So, so I kind of made that leap over and use a lot of what I've learned.

in that and especially the determination to come back after an injury or after a setback. What do do after a setback? Well, here's what an athlete does. This is what they need to do. How about we apply very similar principles to what happens when an entrepreneur experiences a setback, a leader experiences a setback. How do you recover from those things? So yeah, I would say very much what I've learned in that space, I've moved over to this space.

Christian Brim (07:25.986)
Well, that's interesting because on the surface I wouldn't have drawn that connection, but you obviously drew a connection. So how did you get into the consulting side of it?

Matt Kutz (07:39.692)
Yeah, so another great question, because that's another two beer story. So now we're five beers into this full story. But how that worked for me was completely by accident, Christian. And I was actually have kind of the professor's dream, as it were, the academic's dream, is I actually did some research on leadership behaviors that people practice.

in every environment that they find themselves in. So that's a little unique because most of the stuff you're going to read on leadership and leadership thinking and behaviors are idiosyncratic. Well, if you're in retail, you need these skills. If you're in politics, you need these skills. you're in government, whatever, you know, you need these different skills for different industries. Manufacturing, for example, needs another type of skill. And I wasn't interested in the nuances of what each place, I wanted to know, are there universal skills that are used across the

board in every space by everybody regardless of context. So I was able to identify those through a few rounds of different research projects that I was doing. so I wrote an article on it. And I wrote an article in a business journal, which was strange for me because I'm working as an athletic trainer at a D1.

institution, know, doing that kind of thing, just a traditional sports med thing. And I wrote this piece and lo and behold, about a year or two even after I wrote that article.

Christian Brim (08:56.419)
Right.

Matt Kutz (09:07.213)
a huge fortune 500 come back. See at the time they were fortune 50 company and read the article. That's a whole nother two beers to the story of how they even found it in the healthcare journal. But, but any rate they found it and they're like we and I called it by the way contextual intelligence.

and what is contextual intelligence and how to let the things that people use across settings and industries are the set of 12 behaviors that collectively result in.

Christian Brim (09:25.454)
Mm.

Matt Kutz (09:38.356)
again, what I named contextual intelligence. And they read the article. They called me. You have to come speak to my team about this. I've never read anything like this. I've never heard anything like this. This is the next leadership mega insight kind of a thing. And I'm like, okay. So I did and they helped me. I didn't know what I was doing. Like I said, I was taping ankles and doing rehab injuries and stuff like that. Yeah. And icing them in big ice buckets, you know, and

Christian Brim (10:01.91)
Icing it.

Matt Kutz (10:07.941)
And so I don't know what I'm doing. They invited me in to do this little talk to their team. And it turned out to be a much bigger deal than I thought it was going to be. and next thing you know is like, well, we need we want to hire you to come in and work with our team to develop these 12 attributes that you've identified. And so I did. that long thing. And anyways, it was a big company. So they're like, when people find out that you're working for us, you know, blah, blah, blah, they're going to ask.

Christian Brim (10:35.95)
Sure. Give you credibility.

Matt Kutz (10:37.909)
Right, instant credibility. And that was my very first client. And so that's exactly what happened. They actually encouraged me, could you have a book on this? I'm like, no, just the article, we'll write a book. So I did a Kinko's version of a self-published little book, which is basically embarrassingly rookie, but it did amazing. They bought the...

600 copies and then I turned it into a little self-published book. It sold 3000 copies. Eventually it was picked up by a publisher and then in a few years back it was Leadership Book of the Year for Innovation and Cutting Edge Perspective and second edition was actually just released September, just a couple months ago. And that's what launched me into the space. All of a sudden they were right. People are like, who's this Matt Coutts guy and what's this contextual intelligence? If you guys are using them, then we want to use them.

That's how my first three clients were Fortune 500 companies. And now it's just a side hustle still that I do, because I love teaching. I'm not going to leave that. But that's kind of how I got into the consulting training space.

Christian Brim (11:47.545)
So if you're looking at your entrepreneurial journey and or any of the people that you've worked with, obviously not the Fortune 50 or 500 people, because that's more enterprise corporate stuff, but like entrepreneur founders, what are some of the common things that you've seen or experienced?

in applying, where applying your principles have helped? That was a long question. I hope it was clear.

Matt Kutz (12:23.479)
So yeah, no, I think I get it. I can tell you this. The executive management teams that I've worked with after our training or whatever is over our conversations and what have you, there is definitely a common thread here. And what they have said is, thanks, Matt, that was great.

but here's what's interesting. Nothing that you said, and I know I'm probably getting myself in trouble or not pitching my business very well, but they said, you know, nothing that you said was rocket science. It's like everything you've said, I've always known in my heart or in my gut that it's true. But what you did was amazing in another kind of a way. You've given me a language to communicate.

Christian Brim (13:01.091)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Kutz (13:09.323)
what I've always known to be true in my gut, but could never articulate to my team or to people around me. You've given me that language and that in and of itself is a tremendous asset. Cause now we can be on the same page using the same language, using the same terms and knowing what we mean. And that has been a tremendous resource and help to me.

And what they're talking about there is my language around contextual intelligence and what it looks like, what it is, how it behaves. Contextual intelligence is rooted in a three part model, what I call 3D thinking.

3D thinking stands for the three dimensions of time in this case. So not like three D's, but three dimensional thinking. And three dimensional thinking is the simultaneous use of hindsight, insight.

Christian Brim (13:55.053)
Right.

Matt Kutz (14:03.743)
and foresight. So hindsight being what did I learn from the past? What mistakes have I made from the past? What benefits, good things have happened in my past that shape what's going on today. Insight is what is going on today. What's actually happening in real time in my life in these moments. Seven seconds in my future and seconds in my past is what most psychologists consider the immediate moment. So what is actually happening right now? What is coming to bear on my decision?

Christian Brim (14:05.367)
Mmm.

Matt Kutz (14:33.847)
right now and then foresight of course it's pretty self-explanatory that's the vision the aspirational identity where do you want to be how do you want to get there etc and when we think of those three dimensions

as equal inputs into the decision making process, you find that you are much more likely to make a better decision because you're considering more variables than you normally would have beforehand. So most people statistically overemphasize hindsight.

Christian Brim (15:08.088)
Yes.

Matt Kutz (15:08.749)
you people actually emphasize insight at all and those executive senior level leaders, the visionary type leaders over emphasize foresight. So the goal here is to get all three time orientations to be represented equally in your decision making process. And of course, we talk about the, I've developed an instrument. This is the other big part of the entrepreneurial thing is I developed an assessment that can help you see that it's a 48 item quiz.

you take or questions you answer and they expound on how frequently you practice each of those 12 behaviors. And coincidentally, it works out statistically or through the research that of the 12 behaviors, four of them are insight behaviors for our foresight, for our hindsight. So we can look at how frequently you practice each of those 48 behaviors and then I can extrapolate from that, well, you're really weak in your foresight and here's

where you're weak. Of these four behaviors, two of these you don't do very frequently. And I could do that for individuals and the whole team. And I can say your department is foresight oriented. That's why you're missing out on this market share. Because you're not thinking about older users or whatever it might be. And so that's kind of how we use the model.

Christian Brim (16:31.15)
Well, that's brilliant. think, you know, oftentimes we have this understanding. We have, I don't know, intuition, learned experience. could be any of it. But like you said, they reflected back to you that it was like, yeah, I knew this, but I didn't have a way to communicate it. And I find that oftentimes those deep truths are similar between people, but there isn't that common language.

And and when someone presents you with the common language it really Clarifies things and it's it you get traction on it my recent this year my recent epiphany was I always understood that You know my my behavior was largely controlled by

things other than my rational thought, right? And I had a coach, it wasn't a personal coach, he was presenting at a group of entrepreneurs, and he said, well, he said, you he did this graphically and it really resonated, but I'll try to describe it, he said, you know, most of your thought, most of your actions, most of your words come from

Matt Kutz (17:32.333)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (17:58.975)
subconscious routines that could be described as habits or beliefs, etc. And, you know, we think that we're acting out of our conscious brain, but we're not. There's only a very small part of it that's really conscious. And the ability to bring that subroutine up into the conscious and evaluate it, or even just be aware of it.

Matt Kutz (18:00.664)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (18:27.086)
like that it exists like you're you're saying this you're doing this you're feeling this you're acting like this because of something that's not conscious that that clarity allowed me to say yeah I knew that but I wasn't able really to communicate it that way and that that was very helpful the the second thing I'd say about what well actually it's really a question so when you talk about

present time. Does that include like intuition like what your gut feels or is it just an observation of fact?

Matt Kutz (19:10.721)
Thank

Yeah, so that's a great question and it's a perfect lead into what I would like to say next. that is, yes, very much so because of those 12 behavior, talk about insight for example, they are all predicated on what I call three meta skills. And so we won't describe meta skills other than to say meta skills are a combination of soft skills and hard skills. And so when you are operating both in the appropriate soft skills that you need to be successful,

and the appropriate hard skills that you need to be successful. What comes out of that is what's called a meta skill, something you are uniquely good at that you manifest by the combination of those two things. In order to practice contextual intelligence correctly, especially insight, like you just asked about, the meta skill that's associated with that is tacit knowledge. Now what's interesting about the concept of tacit knowledge is it is the scientific term for what we would say colloquially as wisdom.

or intuition is the two things. So anytime you want to look up scientific literature on the concept of intuition or wisdom, you need to type in tacit knowledge and you'll.

Christian Brim (20:11.086)
Mm.

Christian Brim (20:24.578)
That was not what I was gonna go with, but you know.

Matt Kutz (20:26.667)
Yeah. So, but tacit knowledge is the word that psychologists and sociologists use to describe the phenomenon of intuition. So in order to use insight correctly, yes, you need to be very adept at tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge defined is the things that you know to be true and believe to be true in like a faith religious belief to be true. I know this is true.

but then someone asks you why or how come or where did you learn it? The answer is, don't know. I just know this is right. I just don't know where that came from. And it's the domain of expertise. So experts and thought leaders kind of live in this tacit knowledge realm, which is why they make the worst.

professors and teachers because when you ask an expert how to do something, they'll say, I don't know, just experience, just keep trying, you'll get to it. Whereas someone who's a little bit more novice, maybe a little call him proficient, someone who's very proficient can show you, this is what I did to do this. Do X plus Y and it leads to Z, know, kind of thing. Experts don't do that.

Experts don't tell you do this, do that, and then you'll get this. Experts are like, well, I don't know. It's a little bit of this. It's a little bit of wing bat in the stew, a little bit of eye of newt, a little bit of hair. You mix it all together and that's kind of what you get. That's what experts do. And they have a hunch that this is gonna lead in the right direction. What they can't communicate is where that hunch came from. I'll give you an example.

Christian Brim (21:35.075)
Right.

Christian Brim (21:59.96)
Right.

Matt Kutz (22:01.235)
Early on in my career, not early on, was 10 or 15 years into my career when I was working a football game as an athletic trainer.

And I was standing with somebody who was observing me, cause they were thinking about maybe getting into the profession or whatever. And one of the athletes got hurt returning a kickoff. He planted, he cut, he rolled, then he falls down, grabs his knee. And I looked at, there's a woman in this particular case, I looked at her and said, he just tore his ACL. And she looked at me like I had six heads. You how could you, you don't know that. I mean, that's what she said to me. You don't know that. And I said, yes, I do kind of a thing. And in end we got a little argument.

there for a moment but meanwhile he's rolling out on the field out there. So we go out there and doing our evaluation took him anyways the next day he was in surgery for a torn ACL because he did in fact tear his ACL. As I was following up with her about it she was insistent to know how did you know that you didn't do a clinical exam you never asked him one question you never palpated anything you didn't get an x-ray you didn't have an MRI you know how did you know that and I just looked at her like and I said I don't know I just knew.

You know, that's tacit knowledge. Now, when you unpack that at a deeper level, which is what Malcolm Gladwell did in his book, Tipping Point, he talks about this idea of thin slicing. And basically, all tacit knowledge is based on a whole bunch of years of experience stacked on top of one another. You're not even aware that you're going through files in your mind of all these different experiences that you had because it happened so quickly. so because of that reality, though, tacit

that knowledge can be learned, you can accelerate it despite your youth. Because we all are not novelty, so to speak, if you're a novice. We've all know people who have an uncanny wisdom or an uncanny intuition despite only being 26 years old or whatever. How do they get that? Well, they've learned this.

Matt Kutz (24:00.458)
over the years through this use of intuition, wisdom, or again, tacit knowledge. So to practice the art of insight, know, knowing what's going on in real time, yes, you do have to have a strong element of intuition or tacit knowledge that can be developed. That's one of the things I do in my workshops are show you how to develop that insight, that intuition.

Christian Brim (24:28.524)
That's very interesting. So, okay, you said that a lot of people gravitate to putting too much emphasis on past experience.

Matt Kutz (24:38.059)
Yes.

Christian Brim (24:41.95)
I'm and you also said that visionaries tend to put too much emphasis on foresight To me You know thinking back about my own experience I've experienced both where you know where where I've relied, you know too heavily on either of those I think when I'm Relying too heavily on past experience

It's when I am acting out of fear.

Matt Kutz (25:17.421)
I was gonna interrupt you and say fear, right? But yeah, for sure.

Christian Brim (25:20.918)
Right. Okay. And, then the flip side of it is that when I'm, I'm looking towards the future foresight too much, it's maybe the opposite. I, know, I don't know if you want to call that optimism. is, is that scientifically backed up? mean, is there, is there, is that

Matt Kutz (25:44.238)
It totally is. Yes. And I'll say this because when you look back in the past and frame through the lens of fear, the word for that is rumination. We ruminate.

Christian Brim (25:56.706)
Yes, yes.

Matt Kutz (25:57.554)
And we are like, yeah, what if this happens? Remember last time that happened and this could go really, really bad kind of a thing. And that's ruminating. And that's what we tend to do. Rumination is stuck in the past. Whereas foresight on the other hand, the word I like to use and I use it in the book is aspirational identity. So when we think about the future, we generally think...

Christian Brim (26:12.088)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Kutz (26:22.891)
new things, positive things, exciting things. Boy, wouldn't it be nice if kind of a thing. In fact, I go through great links in my book and in my workshops to distinguish foresight from fantasy just for that reason. Cause a lot of us confuse foresight with fantasy. And we think, boy, wouldn't it be nice if I had a golden parachute out of this thing right now? Or wouldn't it be nice if when I retire I can get a lake house or a beach house or.

Christian Brim (26:27.875)
Right.

Matt Kutz (26:52.907)
whatever it might be, finish my novel, finish my doctoral degree, whatever it might be. And we think about it then we follow it up immediately with.

Well, I can't because and I call it the I can't because clause and that's how you know. That's how I know if someone is operating between fantasy and foresight. They'll I'll ask what are your goals? What are your ambitions? What do you want to do? How do you want to be there? How do you want to get there, et cetera? And they'll lay out this elaborate detailed plan and then they'll say either to themselves or out loud even. Yeah, but I can't because or this won't happen because and that's when we have to stop and say, okay, wait a second.

let's stay in the realm of foresight here and develop a plan to get there as opposed to developing excuses as to why you can't achieve that or what it because what what that is it's the current projection of your current moment people have a very difficult time an incredibly difficult time I'll actually even say of looking at the looking at themselves in the future as different than they are now

Most people can look at the future and see the world differently than it is now, but they place themselves as they are now in that different future and they don't know what to do with it because it's not compatible. The real trick to foresight is understanding that you will also be a completely different person in that aspirational future. So what will you look like there and then what are you going to do to get there? And then that helps them overcome the immediate obstacles that are in their way.

because the obstacles they see now are the obstacles that they will always assume are there. So that's a big part of the foresight piece. To the hindsight piece of that fear part, we just have to be open, vulnerable, and aware of our own insecurities, our own biases. The thing that I work very diligently to do with people who are ruminating and who are really sticking to the...

Matt Kutz (28:57.373)
a hindsight bias it's called, is the idea that we, A, the past is already the past. I mean, you can't change it. But again, what we do is we go back and we keep seeing.

ourselves in the past as the same person we are now. Again, not realizing that we were also different back then. So if we can get them out of that space as well, it helps them to see the value in all three spaces. I very much liken it to the Ebenezer Screwed story. You know, I thought it was an interesting idea when I had it, but then I, a years ago, I was watching it at Christmas time with my family and I realized this is what Charles Dickens is talking about.

Christian Brim (29:42.006)
Yeah.

Matt Kutz (29:42.112)
Exactly, say listen, Ebenezer Scrooge's crotchety old man is not practicing hindsight, insight and foresight correctly. He needs three Christmas ghosts to come in, recalibrate his past, identify his present and help him see a different future. And that's what we need. We can't do this 3D thinking thing without help.

Christian Brim (30:04.558)
That's a fascinating insight because you're exactly right. The constant that we assume is ourselves when it's not. And I've lived enough life to recognize that. But like, you know, I can sit there and look at, you know, my 25 year old self and

be like, I don't know that I really identify with that person anymore. Like I want that. It's clear. I'm not that person. Right. Except that it feels like it is because it was you and those are your memories and those are your experiences. But objectively, you can look back and say, well, that's not that I'm not that same person. If, I had been put in that situation going backwards, I would not make the same decision or choices. It's very clear.

right? I hadn't really thought about looking at it forward, but it absolutely comports with my experience and beliefs that if you want something to be different, I think a lot of people start focusing on external things like this, this, this, this, this, and this have to be different for me to achieve what I want.

rather than starting with the internal work. I reference Dan Marcos, he is a scaling up advisor in San Antonio, Texas, I believe. And he wrote an article many years ago that I go back and read, you know, at least once a year. And it's essentially, I think the title is, you have to grow yourself to grow your company.

Matt Kutz (31:33.483)
for some

Christian Brim (31:56.407)
And it's, it's kind of a roadmap of how the company evolves over time and what you need to be as the founder leader for those different stages. And so like, if you, if you're not willing to progress personally, change your skillset, change your mindset. you, you can't be what your company needs to be. And therefore the, the company's growth is capped. Like you can't go past the founder.

So that that that's exactly what I think you're describing.

Matt Kutz (32:29.323)
And that is exactly what I'm describing. When most people think about the future, like we said, we envision a different environment. I'd be in a different house. I'll be in a different state, know, this kind of thing. same wife, but I'm going to be the same person. And no, it actually works the opposite of that.

Christian Brim (32:40.632)
Same wife. We'll clarify. Yeah, okay.

Matt Kutz (32:48.321)
you've got to recognize that you're gonna be different. You're gonna want different things. And that's why it's so hard to forecast. That's why it's so hard or so easy to fall into fantasy and so difficult to get into foresight. Cause fantasy includes a different future with the same self. Foresight includes a different future and a different self in that future. And then what I need to do to get there. And that's incredibly difficult to do, but I think a critical discipline.

Christian Brim (32:53.005)
Yes.

Matt Kutz (33:15.501)
that we need to be able to adopt. And again, we need help to do that. And, you know, going back to your example of my 25 year old self, it's very, very popular practice to say, all right, write a letter to your 18 year old self, you know, write it. we, what would you encourage your 18 year old self to do or whatever? Not so much talk to your 80 year old self. Now I'm 53. So let's just say, you know, what's your 70 year old self look like?

And we do that, but not as much as going back and what would your 53 year old self tell your 23 year old self, so to speak. And we have a heart, it's easy to do. the reason is because we recognize we're not the same person. But see, we say that, but we don't really believe it. The best example of that is the psychology research on personalities. We were raised and grew up in a world where...

Christian Brim (33:43.533)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (33:55.48)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Kutz (34:06.529)
This is my personality and that personality goes with you everywhere you go. I'm an extrovert, I'm an introvert, I'm a whatever, a feeler, a judger, I'm an I if you're a disc person, an enneagram, whatever it might be, I'm a this and this is who I always am and you can't help that. Sorry, it's who I was born to be. That's actually totally bunk.

Christian Brim (34:16.919)
Right.

Matt Kutz (34:27.405)
And there's some tremendous new research coming out that shows personality changes over time. And we know that because you look back at your 18 year old self, your 20 year old self, you're like, yes, I am not the same person. What I liked and I don't like now, how I would have responded then, that's not how respond now. How I would have taken that comment now versus then, I isn't the same thing. You have changed. Your personality has changed. But all the research up until the last decade

Christian Brim (34:47.235)
Right.

Matt Kutz (34:57.359)
has only looked in small bite-sized chunks. the longitudinal studies, the best one is a 77-year study on personality. And what they found...

What they reported originally was personality doesn't change. And the reason they did that, cause they checked someone at eight years old, made a personality check, then they checked them again at nine and they compared nine to eight, not a significant change. So personally, I must stay the same. Then they checked 10 to nine, not a significant change. So it must've stayed the same. Then they checked 10 to 11, know, nine to 10 to nine, 11 to 10, and you see where I'm going. And then they realized, personality never changes. They're the same every time, or at least the change is not significant.

Again, literally eight years ago or so, did they get that same data back out? And they looked at, well, look at the person at 77 years and look at them in eight years. And all these tiny little nonsignificant changes from year to year end up being a catastrophic monumental change over 50 years or 60 years even. And that's exactly what they found out. Now they're realizing, my goodness, we've had this wrong for decades.

Christian Brim (35:50.38)
Right.

Christian Brim (35:56.739)
Yes.

Matt Kutz (36:04.301)
people's personalities do change. And that's why CI, contextual intelligence, is so important because it's not your personality, it's not even your charisma, whatever it might be, that influences the culture. know, was Drucker that said years ago, strategy eats breakfast for lunch, or culture eats strategy for breakfast.

And we have always thought, the leader sets the culture of the personality of the, and the personality of the organization. That's not true. Context does. Your environment does, your setting does, your current situation does. And when we can learn to see the world through the lens of context and through the lens of our hindsight bias, which most people do, we actually begin to see a different world and can now act more appropriately based on the conditions we're in right now.

Christian Brim (36:58.798)
Okay, let me me talk on that a little bit further. You're saying that the the leader doesn't set the culture, the context does. Can you elaborate on that?

Matt Kutz (37:10.637)
Correct. Yeah. So, take COVID for example. I don't care how progressive a leader was, how insightful a leader it was, whatever. There's nothing they could do about the context of the moment.

Okay, the ethos of the time, the zeitgeist, as the Germans would say, you know? And so that is actually the driver of what people feel, what people understand. They don't come to work because of a great work culture. They come to work because of what the context demands of them at the time. They are not there because they love you or your vision or your mission or even the product you make. Let's be honest. They are there because they have bills to pay and they need resources, they have a family.

Christian Brim (37:25.261)
Okay.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Kutz (37:54.912)
to feed, etc. Things like that. That's the context. And when the economy goes up, when the economy goes down, the work culture shifts. It's not when the president comes in with a bad mood or the CEO comes in having just had a fabulous weekend in Vegas and won a million dollars. No, you don't see the morale of the organization shift with the mood or even who the leader is. You could change CEOs, you could change leaders, and generally the morale...

and the culture stay very similar. They might say, we need a new CEO because we need to reset the culture. It doesn't happen like we think it happens, even in the sports world. The culture is still pretty much the same. But what does change the culture.

or the climate of an organization is the mood swings of society. It's the greater grander culture. Who's in government? Who's the administration? This kind of thing. What are the rules being in place that no one can control? Those are what set the culture and standard predominantly. Am I saying the president or the CEO doesn't have an impact? No, I'm not saying they do not have, they do have an impact. But they are not.

the tone setters by themselves exclusively. In fact, there's a greater influence on the context that dictates the appropriate behavior. Well, I'll leave it at that and see what that brings up.

Christian Brim (39:25.294)
Yeah, no, that answers it. mean, so I would agree with that because I think culture is really, I mean, you take it outside of business and put it in a community or a country or whatever. The culture is the shared values, right? And so if you have more than an organization of one, it's going to

it's going to involve other people than the founder. and it's going to be limited by its context, right? So, so, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, taking your thought and expanding on it. So like in COVID, like it, it, it, the, the, the external factors affect a culture.

The culture is still the culture, but there's only so much culture can overcome or deal with or right. Contextually, somebody that you live in a community that follows the Mosaic Law and they're like, we're not going to steal. That's a bad thing, right? But you're in a situation of famine or drought and you contextually say, I got to feed my family.

Matt Kutz (40:53.493)
Right.

Christian Brim (40:53.782)
You might steal right so that that culture can't overcome the environment, I guess is a.

Matt Kutz (40:59.501)
That's a great example. That's a great example. But yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, I will. Thank you. But no, that's what's going on. And so this is why contextual intelligence as a general concept now is so important because this is one of the things that I try to help leaders understand is instead of trying to dictate or establish a culture, why don't you?

Christian Brim (41:02.956)
You feel free to use it.

Matt Kutz (41:24.629)
become a reader and discerner of the culture better so that you know which skills to apply when. And I think one of the greatest leadership behaviors and one that's not talked about as much is the versatility of the leader to switch leadership styles. If personality isn't permanent,

Christian Brim (41:45.774)
Mmm.

Matt Kutz (41:48.352)
leadership styles are not permanent either. And the best leaders among us understand what I think it was John Maxwell that said, one of the cardinal sins of leadership is treating everyone the same. I don't think, I know it was John Maxwell that said that. And he said that and that to me is a tremendous encouragement for what I'm talking about is a truly astute leader understands how

each person's history, insight and their aspirations, their future affects how they do their job every day. So now my job as a leader is to identify with each individual person. And believe me, I know what I'm saying. I know this is incredibly time consuming. I know it's incredibly difficult to do, emotionally draining, like maybe nothing else. And so I know what I'm saying when I say this, but those are what the great leaders do differently than other people don't. It's just easier to

in and say, here's what the culture is going to be. I'm going to set it. I'm going to model it. I'm going to example it. I want everybody to do it like I do it. And that rarely works unless you are such a powerful personality. And those leaders are few and far between, especially in your mid to smaller size entrepreneurial endeavors. You're going to... Nick Saban could do it. Jack Walsh could do it. know, few people, Julius Caesar could do it. Very few people can do it like that, but that's the elite.

Christian Brim (43:04.778)
Nick Saban Nick Saban comes to mind that that sounds like right.

Matt Kutz (43:16.065)
know, half of a half percent in the picture.

Christian Brim (43:18.274)
Yeah, and I think a lot of people are looking to emulate behavior rather than to learn their own behavior. so like, you know, they look at a Jack Walsh or Nick Saban and they're like, well, I'll do it that way. But you know, you're not realizing you don't have the capacity or the gravitas to pull that off. Like that's not gonna work. Yeah.

Matt Kutz (43:40.701)
or the good, that's right, or the commitment that it takes to do that. Ironically, you talk about Nick Saban. So in my athletic training days, he was actually one of his first head coaching jobs at the University of Toledo, of which where I was at GA. And we'd never crossed paths or anything like that, but his way out was my way in. So we actually crossed paths in the athletic department for about two or three weeks there. Never actually talked to him or met him, but I saw the team.

and how they responded and how they interacted and to do things like what Nick Saban did. And again, I'm watching from an armchair here, but he had a commitment to his ideas in his way that very, very few people have the ability to commit to because we vacillate too much.

Christian Brim (44:29.984)
I would would I yeah, I would I would almost label it a psychosis. I mean, I'm not a psychologist, but but but it really has to be that level of commitment like you're you literally don't understand any other way like.

Matt Kutz (44:38.177)
Yeah, right.

Christian Brim (44:49.666)
Yeah, fascinating stuff. I feel like we could go on and have some more beers, but unfortunately my time with you, Matt, is up. How do we get in touch with you if we want to learn more about contextual intelligence?

Matt Kutz (45:02.165)
Yeah, so the best place is my website. So matthewkoots.com or drmattkoots.com. Two different, same place, but drmattkoots.com. And on there, there's assessments on there, there's articles on there, that my books are on there, my email's on there. So happy to connect with anybody about any of stuff.

Christian Brim (45:25.912)
Perfect. Thank you for this. This has been very insightful. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, and until next time, remember you are not alone.