In this episode of The SAFE Leader Podcast, host Mark McBride-Wright sits down with physicist, entrepreneur and emotional intelligence advocate Randy Lyman. From early success in engineering and business to a profound personal transformation, Randy shares how uncovering and releasing hidden emotional baggage reshaped his approach to leadership and life. Their conversation explores the link between vulnerability, compassion, and high performance, showing how leaders can build stronger teams and deeper connections by embracing their emotional truth.
Through powerful stories and practical insights, this discussion challenges outdated ideas of masculinity, authority, and leadership. Together Mark and Randy uncover why engineers and technical leaders must recognise their human side, how authentic leadership creates belonging, and why true power comes not from titles or positions but from serving others. This is a must listen for anyone ready to rethink leadership and discover the lasting impact of emotional intelligence.
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:01
Mark, hello. Welcome to the next episode of the safe leader podcast. I’m your host, Mark McBride-Wright, and I’m delighted today to be joined by Randy Lyman, who is a physicist, entrepreneur and emotional intelligence advocate whose journey from humble beginnings to inc 500 recognition has spanned three decades and multiple eight figure businesses, despite achieving material success, Randy experienced emotional Randy experienced emotional disconnection, prompting a deep personal transformation that reshaped his leadership style and business philosophy, blending scientific rigor with spiritual depth, Randy now teaches service based leadership through the third element his methodology and book a number one release in personal growth. He empowers individuals and organizations to turn emotional mastery into strategic advantage. His work centers on leading with strength and vulnerability, building cultures of belonging and healing old emotional patterns to unlock lasting success outside of business. Randy is a craftsman at heart restoring classic cars and building custom motorcycle motors. His mission to inspire leaders to embrace their emotional truth as a source of clarity, connection and high performance. Randy, nice to meet you. Good to meet you. Mark, great to be here. Welcome to the safe leader podcast. So you you’ve had a fascinating journey. You know, you’ve got elements in there that link to what our audience love. You know, physics, physics, engineering. So talk us through about the young Randy and what inspired you to start the journey that you’ve taken.
Randy Lyman 1:47
Well, the young Randy was completely left brain science and finance and engineering and business, and I achieved good success, but I kind of ran into some some limitations, which were me, and then I met a woman 35 years ago named Maria. I spent three years with, and she had been immersed in the world of the unseen spirituality and the emotional side of the human experience, and so she opened my eyes to another way of looking at life that led me down a path of a lot of personal growth, primarily with releasing old disappointment and anger and frustration, which allowed me to show up different and take a completely different approach to business, which brought me 30 times the success I had prior to meeting her.
Mark McBride-Wright 2:34
Wow. So what? So what do you mean by what? What’s your definition of spirituality? Talk about how you discovered that and how it underpins your your thought leadership now with the third element.
Randy Lyman 2:48
So for me, spirituality is about the being part of our human beingness, our human experience. We are spiritual beings on a human path. We have a human mind and a human body, but our emotions are close to spirit, and there’s a bigger part of us, our soul, the part of us that that really feels each other and enjoys life, that’s the unseen, and that’s the part that is most important to me. Now, I’m still a logical thinker, I’m still a planner and take action, but I enjoy not only clarity, emotional clarity, but also intellectual clarity, physical health and the ability to be effective in the world. And I was affected before, but by addressing the unseen and specifically the emotional side of the human experience, and allowing myself to work through that rather than avoid it. It improved all areas of my life.
Mark McBride-Wright 3:45
Oh, if, I mean, if this is too much prying, then tell me to move on. But What? What? What needed unpacking for you, it sounds like you had a bit of an epiphany, like a deep experience that almost created transcendence for you that made you think this is the way I want to be. You know, you got that not, not every it’s quite, I mean, you meet quite a lot of people who go through life with a lot of heavy baggage and never quite tap into that emotional, sorry, that positive energy, that that I’m feeling from you. You know, there’s the logical side and the physical side, but then there’s the people that just kind of espouse optimism and hope. Is that? Is that what you sort of untapped within yourself when you discover this, this side?
Randy Lyman 4:34
Okay? So I was always optimistic about myself and God and universe, so to speak, but I was not optimistic around about other people. I was very pessimistic about other people in the world, and once I worked through my own issues about self doubt and my own emotional issues about questioning myself and my deservedness and such that I began to see the people around me as much more capable. It’s not that they weren’t capable. Yeah, it’s that I was seeing the world through the distortion of my own emotional baggage, and I didn’t know I had any emotional baggage. We don’t know. We just feel what we feel, and we think what we think, and until either we have an epiphany, which I can talk about, or somebody points out, hey, wait a minute, you’re not seeing things clearly here, then our ego does not want to look at what other way is there to be here in the world? And I had several epiphanies, but one of the biggest epiphanies, the one that really, truly led me to understanding the third element, the emotional part of the human experience, is address about 1991 or so, I went to a four day business communication workshop, and on the third day, we went through an exercise called the seven levels of truth. Well, my issue at that point in time was many of the people I was working with were incompetent. So my my mentor, Maria, she says, Look at yourself. Look at your thoughts and your actions. Are you competent? Everything around you is a mirror. She didn’t touch on the emotional side because she didn’t really understand that. So third day of this, this retreat, I have an exercise I’m going through with a partner about people around me being incompetent, and as we went through the levels of truth they’re incompetent. It causes problems in my business. Business problems can cause me to look incompetent. And the bottom line was, maybe I look incompetent to my family. Well, then an issue came up from 12 years prior, where my uncle had said, I wish you were more like your friend, John. Well, what I took from that was he didn’t believe that. He didn’t connect with me. He didn’t believe in me, and that was not what he meant. What he meant. What he meant was, I wish I could communicate with you better, because I love you. But what I heard at 17 years old was he didn’t approve of me. So you get to that lower level of my family not approving of me. I remembered the incident from 12 years prior, and man, I just burst into tears. I let go of all this emotion and work through all that. And because it just it overtook me in a good way. And at least say so, I go back to work four days later. And out of the six or so people who were incompetent, and just for weeks, and some of them for months, had been incompetent, they suddenly became competent, or they left my life. And so this issue I’ve been approaching with my mind and my action for for weeks and months suddenly resolved itself when I released the emotional energy and the challenge and the charge around my own competence. And then I’m a scientist. I’m a physicist, cause and effect I saw, wait a minute, I went through this emotional release, and the physical world around me changed. Maybe there’s a connection here,
Mark McBride-Wright 7:47
interesting, interesting. So it’s almost like when you an analogy is like when you have a massage and you’ve got tension in your back, and then you get that momentary release, when you get that pressure point, and it feels good. I guess that’s the equivalent of having, for you know, 12 years of emotional energy held in a negative space by being able to release it. It just is a weight off your shoulder and brings more. It helps you see the world. Helped you see the world in a new in a new way, or see other people through a different lens,
Randy Lyman 8:24
two things that helped me see the world through a different lens. And also I realized over time, over analyzing that and really focusing on my own emotions and emotional healing, I realized that the universe, the law of attraction, is obligated to remind us of our old wounds that we have the opportunity to heal. And the way it reminds us of our old emotional wounding, our old trauma, is by bringing irritations and challenges into our daily life now in real time. So I have found over time that any irritation I’m experiencing today is related to some unresolved Trump trauma from the past. And for over 30 years, I’ve approached my challenges with okay, what action do I take? What how do I plan different? Or what do I need to think? More importantly, what do I need to feel underneath, to release? And when I do that, every single time my world gets better,
Mark McBride-Wright 9:22
interesting, interesting. And when you apply the the gender, sex lens through it men, when you know, a lot of my work looks at how men show up in the world, and masculinity and as men were, were taught to be in a certain way, and we’ve had certain emotions role model to us in a certain way over the decades that the majority of men don’t really do what you’re describing and being able to do that self introspection and be cognitively connected to their emotions and know the connection. Shouldn’t between how they’re feeling inside to how they’re showing up outside. So how have you found that relationship in your work with masculinity and the third element are men different to women and how they how they approach it, or just in your taken in manhood and masculinity,
Randy Lyman 10:18
absolutely, as men, historically, if you go back 1000 years or 100,000 years, we are providers and protectors. That’s who we’re designed to be. So that’s part of who we are. And in order to protect my family, 1000 years ago, I might have to to take violent action to turn off my emotions and take action to protect myself or protect my family. Now I don’t condone violent action, but what I’m saying is, historically, we had to the other thing is, I look up my own life, and in junior high school and in high school, as a young boy, if I showed any caring or compassion, the other boys just beat the crap out of me, whether it was physically or emotionally or verbally, we knew at some level that we were supposed to supposed to is not real, but we were supposed to be tough. We’re supposed to be men, and if we weren’t, then the Eagles around us said, Oh, you’re not as strong as me. You’re not as good. And I’m going to point this out. So the natural evolution of a man from a young man to a man is we cannot openly display our feminine traits, of intuition, of caring, of compassion. And so until somebody shows us an example of caring and compassion, and somebody, until somebody shows us an example of how to show up a little softer, still be effective. We’re not willing to try that, because what if I’m compassionate and it doesn’t work, then I lose the respect of the people I lead. Now, fortunately, I took a lot of risks, and as I learned about my own personal growth and spirituality and releasing emotions and the emotional side of the human experiences. I took chances, I took risks, and I showed up differently, maybe with just a small group my shipping department or my service shop with six or eight employees at a time. And when I showed up differently and experimented, they responded positively, and then that gave me the confidence to expand that into more of my business. But if you take the average business leader today, especially an engineer, they’re focused on logic and reason and for God’s sakes, if I take emotions into consideration at all, and I fail, I could lose promotion, promotion, I could lose my job. I could be ridiculed. So it’s a big risk for people to, especially men, to take that, that risk of addressing our more feminine characteristics. The other thing I want to say is, just because I’m caring and compassionate doesn’t make me less of a man. Just because I use my intuition doesn’t make me less of a man.
Mark McBride-Wright 12:54
Yeah, so do you, do you think? Do you think it’s changing? Do you think there is a new world coming through where we can lean into that challenge, and people of the older generation, where, you know, it’s always been done that way, are open to like new ways of of men, showing up as men and connecting at the different sides of their masculinity.
Randy Lyman 13:20
Well, the world is changing, but some over the last 10 or 15 years, people have pushed to, Oh, don’t be a man. Okay. Well, I’m not saying don’t be a man. I’m saying Be a man, but also be a compassionate, caring man. Yes, be a man who takes action and can set boundaries and can communicate, can deliver difficult communications, but do it with caring. Do it with compassion. Do it with empathy. And it’s a balance. It’s not just one or the other feminine traits or characteristics or masculine traits or characteristics. It’s a balance of using both. And that works. I know it works. I see it work. But the challenge is, again, as you’ve kind of pointed out. There aren’t many leaders right now who are sharing that. And I think that one reason I’ve kind of been chosen to share this message, go down this path and share this message, is because people who are engineers and scientists and business people, I can relate to them, and they can relate to me. I’m not just some guy sitting in Sedona, Arizona in a in a monk’s robe on a rock, meditating and chanting. I’ve actually implemented this in the real world and had great success. And that’s, I think, the reason that I’ve been chosen to do this. And in my book, The third element, I give people an understanding of how all this works. That’s the first part, is education and understanding, and then an example of somebody who’s used it and it works. And then some exercises and some things people can do to actually address their emotional self while staying firmly rooted in clear thought and clear action. And one thing I want to add is not making decisions based on emotion. Be aware of our emotions. Make decisions. Is based on intuition, which is different than emotions, but still being clear headed.
Mark McBride-Wright 15:06
It’s so true. It’s so true. It’s the I find as men. As men, there’s a statistic that as men get older, they have fewer and fewer friends like or they live their lives through their partner. And I see this, you know, in my family life as well, my family circles, different elements in my family, where, if I think about the men in my family, actually, you could count on a single hand the number of close friends that they they they would claim to have, versus their partner who might have, you know, a lot of friends. So do you think as men, we how do we buck the trend of becoming more and more isolated and inward in ourselves?
Randy Lyman 15:59
Well, okay, so part of the evolution of a human lifetime, and I believe in reincarnation over multiple lifetimes, we start out as an infant, and we’re trying to figure out, where’s the food and water, and how do I get around here? And then as a baby, how do I communicate? And then as a young soul, we learn that power and wealth and and power over others doesn’t bring us happiness. And then we learn that large crowds of people and a lot of friends don’t bring us happiness. And then we learn at some level that connection with ourselves at a deeper level, or connections with others at a deeper level. And for me, connection with love and God and spirit in the way that I experience it, and mostly just classify that as good, brings us real answers and real fulfillment. And so part of the normal human evolution is to find a connection to something bigger than ourselves. Now, when we do this, and we are able to really connect at a higher level, then when we find our centeredness, not finding our value, not finding our strength from things outside of us, but when we find our value and our strength from who we are at a deeper level, yeah, then we can connect with others at a deeper level. That doesn’t mean we’re going to going to go out and connect with the masses always, but at least the connections that we have with the people in our lives are from a place of deeper connection, and that’s what I hope for people, is to find their own connection to good, and then to find connection to the people around them at a deeper level.
Mark McBride-Wright 17:32
If it’s so amazing the feeling when you find it, why do not more people not seek it out? Why do you think we’re in a world where it feels like there’s more negativity and more more tension against different groups, rather than love and peace?
Randy Lyman 17:57
That is a great question. And it really comes down to once we decide, as we become a little more mature and a little wiser, and we say, Okay, I’m going to be open to looking at my own issues, which means my own emotional trauma. Yeah, we know at some level, when we open Pandora’s box to look at the love and the good and the joy and and enthusiasm, we’re also going to find in that same box. We’re going to find anger and resentment and jealousy and frustration, and when we open that box to look at our emotions, it all pours out, not more than we can handle, but it starts to pour out. And if we don’t have the tools to address those challenges and understand what’s going on. It’s overwhelming. So it was scary for me as a young man to start to look at my emotions, because the negative emotions that I had held down for so many years started to pour through, and that’s one reason I wrote the book. The third element, I’m not doing this for money. I’m sad. I don’t mean to do this. I did this because what I have learned has helped my life in so many ways and helped the people I’ve coached in so many ways. I want more people to understand we can take charge of our own life, and once we understand the simple rules of the game of being human, we can improve our own life. And I make a plug for the book here. The reason I wrote the third element is because it’s not that complicated. And I want people to understand that life can be good. It doesn’t have to just be pain. But when we first open that that part of ourselves to looking at our emotions, pain is going to come through, and that’s okay. I feel like that,
Mark McBride-Wright 19:37
yeah, it’s it’s that I feel like there’s so I’m interested in moving on in a moment to your to your experience like leading engineering teams, and find out a bit more about your commercial success, in your in your businesses. Um, but the the you know, the journey for for me, right in the safe leader and the safe leader framework, it’s. Safe, stands for share, act, feel, empower, and it’s ultimately about trying to get more men to share their difference, to share their story. Because I’ve, I guess I’ve found in the time that I have been working thus far, men are reluctant to share, but when they do share elements of themselves that you can’t see from looking at them, more people build greater empathy for those stories. You know, when you start talking about things that are taboo in the workplace or don’t often get spoken about it, it helps the individual, but also everyone else, because you’re bringing more oxygen to that root cause that is driving this mental state, but you’re also then helping, helping the individual and engineering, and I know it’s similar in the US, engineering construction has a very high suicide rate, suicidal ideation and self harm. So I wonder if there’s hope, I guess, through leaders, and not just leaders, but just people in general, within the engineering workforce, taking up the frameworks within, within the third element, starting with, you know, starting with opening that Pandora’s box in a in a rate which doesn’t overwhelm but then talking about that and sharing it with others, it might flip the needle, flip the balance to then have more men opening up and sharing things, and all of a sudden we get this tidal wave of more positive masculinity, and fathers talking to their sons in a different way and having different expectations, and giving them the tools to be more emotionally connected in a younger age, and then we just have this sort of whole new radical way in which men show up in the world. I guess that’s a really big, bold ambition, but I think we need that. I think we need that for to change, to get with this rot that we’re in society at the moment.
Randy Lyman 22:12
So I want to say something may sound silly, but it’s something to consider, which is engineers are people too, with hopes and dreams and feelings, and we primarily approach the world from a mental point of view, and we’re about taking action, but at the same time, we still have our own hopes and dreams and goals and feelings and emotions, and that’s okay. Now, if you go back to 20, 3050, years ago, we just put our feelings aside, and we worked through our job, and life was different then, but today, we have the opportunity to feel life more deeply and to lead people from a place of genuine connection. And what I found is when I showed up more authentic and was willing to be vulnerable when I said, I’m not, I don’t have all the answers. I’ve made mistakes in the past, and I could use some help. That’s vulnerability. Yeah, people didn’t respect me less. They actually respected me more. And then, and then I also realized that my power wasn’t from me. My power is what my team could accomplish. That’s the power I have when I’m pulling the levers. It’s not about me, and it’s not about forcing them to do things. It’s about giving them the incentive to get involved at a deeper level, and when they can truly sense that I’m there to support them and support their success. And now they’re on my side, and they know, they know I’m on their side. Now I have a whole different team, instead of people who fear me. If I go back 40 years ago, and my teams feared me, they got a lot done, but once my teams knew that I was there to support them, and I understood my power came from their accomplishments, that it changed everything completely. My power originally, when I was younger, I thought it came from my authority or my title or my position, or I signed their paycheck, but again, once I turned that around, and I was there to serve them, and they felt that, because they have to feel it, it has to be genuine. If it’s not genuine, it’s not going to work. That’s true. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 24:17
interesting. So tell us a bit about your engineering background then and all these businesses that you’ve built and sold and created a fabulous life for yourself. What were they and what are they at now? What do you do now to keep yourself busy?
Randy Lyman 24:33
Well, now I’m busy with writing and speaking and coaching, but if you go back to my younger years, I was kind of born a mechanic and a mechanical engineer. And I started in college. I was never gonna go to college, and a girlfriend taught me into going. So I started mechanical engineering, and after a year and a half, I wanted to learn more about coding. They call it now, programming and electrical engineering, advanced electronics and so long story. Short, I ended up changing my major to physics, and I got my Bachelor of Science in physics, and I had a concentration in mechanical engineering. And then in my business, as I started designing product, as we started doing distribution and manufacturing in that, I have multiple patents, and I just love designing parts. I love building motorcycles and classic cars and doing machine work. I have a lathe and a mill and welding equipment in my garage. Oh, cool, doing all that stuff, and that’s still a huge part of who I am, yeah, but again, along the way, I learned about the spiritual, unseen, emotional side of being human, and that that really gave me so much of an advantage in the business world, and understanding people, understanding myself, understanding people, understanding how to communicate and how to motivate. So I’ve been able to bring it all together. Now I’m an old guy. I’m 64 years old. I graduated from high school in 1979 so I’ve seen and had a lot of experiences, and that really helps me, but that’s who I am today. I’m still a mechanic at heart. I still rewire things on my own farm. If a pump needs to be repaired, I do it, but at the same time, I really enjoy and I’m really fulfilled by helping people find a deeper sense of who they are at a spiritual level, so that people let go of their doubts, people let go of their fears, and people know that they’re worthy.
Mark McBride-Wright 26:30
Wow, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. So in the so tell us about the companies that you built, though. Tell us about like, what they did, what they were, what they were called, what they are called. I started
Randy Lyman 26:44
my garage in 1982 with $600 and then in 1986 I started, well, okay, in 82 I started my garage. 84 I started going to college. I moved out into commercial building. I was working summers as a computer programmer at Aerojet Rocketdyne, and I got really disenchanted with the corporate world. So then again, I moved my business out of my garage in the commercial, commercial building, the commercial world. And then in 1986 after I graduated with my BS in physics, with honors from the National physics Honor Society, then I decided to do parts distribution. Took me about two years before I figured out how to make money. That was called West Coast differentials. It’s still in business today. I sold that in 96 and in 90s, 1996 I started over, started what ended up being called Randy’s worldwide automotive, and we made the Inc 500 list in 2003 I started Yukon gear and axle in about 1998 or so, and so I sold those operations, ranges, Randy’s worldwide and Yukon gear in 2015 I got nine and a half times multiple on that because we had such a great group of people and such a strong base that they could build on top of and today they are somewhere between 300 And 400 million a year in sales and about 600 in sales and about 600 employees. And I was able to do that by attracting and working with great people. So I’ve had had a really great run. I learned a lot because I was open minded and people, when we ask them questions and we say, Help me, we can learn so much.
Mark McBride-Wright 28:23
Yeah, and because you got behind the people and built became that servant leader for your people, you got the trust and longevity, I guess, their commitment to helping build sustainable, successful companies that still operate today.
Randy Lyman 28:43
Yes, so they still operate today. So again, West Coast differentials and Randy’s worldwide, and Yukon gear and axle, they’re great companies, and they’re doing amazing things. Randy’s now has taken on it’s an umbrella for a lot of other companies, but the basic structure I built between 1996 and 2015 with people who I acknowledged for who they were as individuals. They felt acknowledged and they felt appreciated. I helped them understand and feel that they’re contributing to the cause that’s important, and there was a sense of belonging. We all did it together.
Mark McBride-Wright 29:18
What’s your take on where things are currently at in the US right now with regards to diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging,
Randy Lyman 29:29
okay, well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna just address my opinion on the human experience. And every one of us can find a path to success once we believe in ourselves, and when we believe in something greater than ourselves, the moment we say, I’m a victim, then we find what we go looking for, and we’re a victim the moment I say, I know I can find a way through this. For me, I turn to God, source, whatever you might be. I’m not religious, but I believe in spirit. I believe in good, and I believe there’s a lot. Good people, and I believe when I ask for guidance, I’m always shown a path to success. But I don’t believe any of us are victims. I believe we’re all capable. We are all a spark of the divine. And when I go out of my way to show somebody else so you don’t know what you’re doing, you need my help, that’s a disrespect to who they are. And yes, people do need help, but, and I talk about this on page 112 in my book, we can’t help anybody until they ask for help. And I contribute a lot of money. I’ve contribute, contributed close to a million dollars over the years to charitable causes to create environments, not to give people a handout, but to create an environment where people can find their own way. So I haven’t stated this publicly before, but I believe that everybody is capable, if they decide they want to be capable, and if they look for good,
Mark McBride-Wright 30:58
yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It All. Yeah, it’s
Randy Lyman 31:06
thing, if I may. I’ve had a very I’ve had a very diverse staff for the last 30 years. My staff today, my team today, is very diverse, and I don’t see them as men or women, or Filipino or from South America or wherever they’re from, I just see them as people who are capable, and they treat them all the same. I treat them individually. We all have our own personal characteristics and traits. That’s one thing, but we’re all capable, and I treat everybody as capable, and if I sense for any reason that in any of my organizations, people are not getting along, then we dive into it directly and we find ways for people to get along. And that, to me, is really what about inclusion is, is, let’s accept it and allow except everybody is who they are. Let’s allow them to be the who they are, and let’s find ways to help everybody succeed. To me, that’s what’s most important.
Mark McBride-Wright 32:05
Yeah, I think especially in that that’s especially important for, I mean, in engineering, in particular, where we have a skills crisis, and, you know, we don’t have enough engineers coming into the sector to meet the demands of today and tomorrow. We need to get engineers from all backgrounds, and that’s why these these programs to be doing outreach into communities where they maybe don’t have as much. You know, interfacing with engineers are so vital.
Randy Lyman 32:38
Well, let me, let me, let me interject something. I think today, a lot of the modern media tells people they’re victims, yeah, and people don’t realize what they’re capable of. And I’ve never come across anybody who isn’t capable of learning and becoming more the janitor at Randy’s. I’ll just use the name Jim. That’s not his name, but he was a part of our organization, and he had his his challenges, and he had his limitations, but when we treated him with respect, which we treated everybody with respect, and we acknowledged him, when he did a good job, he learned to shine and rise to an even higher level. And that’s what that’s what leadership is about, is seeing the best in everybody and helping everybody find a greater strength within themselves they didn’t know was there, and that’s not what most of society and that’s not what the mainstream media does today, but that’s what I am on a mission to do, is to help people understand we don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to do it all on our own, and it’s okay to make mistakes and it’s okay to take risks and it’s okay to fail, because through our failure, we learn and we become stronger, and that’s what I want people to understand today. This isn’t about I’m less than, or I’m greater than, or somebody else is less than, or where we all stand on some stupid pedestal system. This is about every one of us is a spark of divine source, a spiritual being on a human path with the ability to address our emotions, think more clearly and take the right action, even if we are engineers,
Mark McBride-Wright 34:11
the way. What advice would you give to that? To an engineer leader who’s listening to this and they don’t know where to start, and maybe they’ve, they’re, they’ve never quite stepped their toe in yet to any of this self introspection. How did he start
Randy Lyman 34:30
two things I’m going to say. One is, again, we don’t have to be perfect. Don’t be hard on yourself, and don’t have to be perfect. You can make mistakes and also be willing. To look at your own emotional baggage, your own where’s my anger, where’s my frustration, where’s my jealousy, where is my self doubt? And that’s what I cover in the book. The third element is I break it down from a scientist and engineers perspective as to how to deal with emotions. I don’t talk about emotions because. I’m an emotional person. I’m not naturally an emotional person, but through experience, I understand the power of learning to work with our emotions, and that’s what I share in the book, is, is you don’t have to be perfect and be willing to deal with and look at the underlying emotions that may be holding you
Mark McBride-Wright 35:18
back there. Was A I, when I first moved to the US, I felt really alone in that respect. I’d uprooted from my connections here, my community, my identity, and then I was, you know, in in the middle of a country that I hadn’t built any close connections with yet, and I discovered this group called walking, talking men, and it was brilliant. We met up every Tuesday. There was walks scheduled around Central Park. You could just show up, and the agenda was just walking, talking men, walking side by side in a group setting. And it was there. We were there to just chat, talk about how we were showing up, what’s going on. It wasn’t business. It wasn’t networking. It wasn’t like, what do you do? Where are you from, etc, etc. And I built some really great connections through that, really new friendships.
Randy Lyman 36:19
So then, then the what you and I are doing is we’re taking what we’ve learned about being a different type of man who’s in touch with our emotions while we’re still masculine, and then sharing our success with others. And when others, when other men can hear about our success, then they’re willing to try, but in a vacuum. If you if I go back to me 35 years ago, definitely 40 years ago, what I had been willing to be caring and compassionate and open about my own failures and my own doubts, hell no, because that was scary, and for most men today, that’s still a place that’s really scary, and that’s why you’re sharing the message, and why I’m sharing the message to help men understand we don’t have to be just masculine. We don’t have to have be just feminine. We can be masculine men who accomplish things while addressing the world with caring and compassion.
Mark McBride-Wright 37:13
So when someone is not yet receptive to hearing the message. Yourself, 20 odd years ago, you said, 30 odd years ago, are there some can seeds still be planted in the minds of these men that lie dormant that then, as their experience in life evolves, they they start to have those aha moments, or they make the connection retrospectively that, oh, that’s what Mark and Randy were talking about. How do we still sprinkle the seeds, even though we may not get the impact yet?
Randy Lyman 37:49
Yes, we can, and we can do that by first being grounded in who we are and very, very, very solid and confident in who we are, outside of our title, outside of of our position. And when I’m confident, because I know that I’m a spiritual being connected at a deeper level, I am capable of accomplishing things through cooperation. Then when I show up, I know I can be vulnerable, and when I can be vulnerable, and I can share my own stories of failure and success, if people are ready to hear they’ll hear me when I’m calm and confident, yeah. And before we can be vulnerable, we have to be confident. It’s a it’s really an oxymoron, but our confidence allows us to show up with vulnerability, and then people can feel us, and they can hear us, and they can see that we’re human and we’ve made mistakes, and we found success through our vulnerability. Now they have to they have to be open minded, they have to be curious, and they have to be willing to look at themselves at a deeper level. So curiosity and and being willing to look at themselves at a deeper level. Those two things are important. But when we’re confident enough to be vulnerable, people can hear us even if we think they’re not ready, they’ll still feel our confidence that comes from a completely different place than Macho.
Mark McBride-Wright 39:17
So what’s your vision for the third element? Then, over the next few years, the
Randy Lyman 39:23
vision is to help men and women understand that there is power in embracing our emotions and working our way through the wounds. It’s not about avoiding it’s not about pushing our emotions down or pushing them aside. It’s about finding the time and place to feel what we’re being called on to feel so we can feel it completely and heal it. It’s like emotions are bigger than time and space. They store like gasoline in a petroleum petrol, whatever you call it, in great vision, petrol stores for five or 10 or 20 years in a metal can. And when you open that can and you pour it out, it still burns. But here’s the. Beauty, you only have to burn it once, and it’s gone. And emotions are the same way when we feel them completely, whatever we stuffed from an earlier age, when we’re willing to dive in and feel that completely. Sometimes, for me as a grown man, to cry the tears, to feel the pain, to express whatever I need to express, that energy is gone, and it’s no longer attracting chaos into my life.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:23
How can people, aside from well, in addition to reading your book and taking on the lessons, how are you scaling your impact? Like, what are you doing right now
Randy Lyman 40:36
corporate coaching and leaders, helping leaders understand how to show up differently and how to motivate their teams differently, and both on a corporate level, with CEOs and vice presidents and managers at all levels, and with individuals who want to show up differently at work in hopes of a promotion, in hopes of being a better leader, and In helping them find a way to have a deeper connection with their family. So coaching and speaking is how I’m showing up, as well as through the book
Mark McBride-Wright 41:09
that so the speaking is a one to many forum, and then coaching can be one to one, or do you do group coaching as well? Sometimes with people,
Randy Lyman 41:18
coaching works, whether they’re similar, like minded individuals, or whether it’s group coaching of a CEO says on my management team, they’re ready to learn this, then I do group coaching and one on one with their team leaders. So I am. I did this in my own businesses for years, and I’m very comfortable with it, and I’ve been effective, and now my goal is to share what works with people who don’t have the luxury of taking risks, who want something that’s proven.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:47
Do you find some time because I’ve dabbled in coaching, but I haven’t gone full in on that. I’m I’ve gone in a different direction, where I’ve evolved sort of training courses on the back of the frameworks in my book, and I’m hoping to add coaching on further down the line as I start to scale the training linked to the framework. But do you find it quite it’s an energy exchange that happens with with with coaching, and so sometimes when you’re, I’d imagine, with when you’re helping people tap into that energy that needs to be released it. You must absorb some of that energy as well. You need to have a bit of resilience a filter. It must be quite heavy to
Randy Lyman 42:31
so it used to be for me. That’s exactly how it used to be for me. So now what I’ve learned is when I ground myself to the earth, and this sounds like, wait a minute, this is woo stuff that some spiritual teacher who has no experience in business would talk about, but I have both. Yeah, I ground myself to the earth. I’m present in my physical body, so I can feel my feelings and if they’re going to come through and be aware of not turn them off. So I ground myself, and then I open myself up to love, energy of the universe that comes through and supports me that I share with others. I don’t share my personal energy that’s limited. I can tap into the energy of all that is in whatever way. I do that a little differently, and there’s there’s different ways to do that. We can find power in something larger than ourselves, and we share that. That’s the space I hold for people to have breakthroughs, not because I can do it, but because I’m able, and I’ve learned to hold that energy of love. And here’s the most important part, no judgment, zero expectations and zero judgment. So when I hold that space of of love and caring with zero expectations and zero judgment, then people can be themselves. They can feel what they need to feel. Then they can work through their personal challenges that are keeping them from finding their power at a deeper level.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:49
Very inspiring. Randy, it’s I’m going to listen back to this podcast, and how do I be more like that when, as I evolve my my business. You’ve got 20 odd years on me. I’m 37 and I’m like eco engineers. My My business is my it’s my first business. It’s eight years old now, and I’m looking at how we develop products and services and that are in alignment with what’s needed, but by
Randy Lyman 44:20
developing people, by first developing who we are as a leader, so I show up clear without my own emotional baggage, and then I can track better people, and the people can hear what I have to say, because they feel safe and they feel supported. And for me, that’s it in a nutshell.
Mark McBride-Wright 44:34
Yeah, that’s the psychological safety that you then create in the in the teams that you build and the teams that you lead by having that service.
Randy Lyman 44:42
I could not do that 35 years ago, 35 years ago, 30 years ago, even 25 years ago. At times, I struggled with that when my own emotional issues got in the way. It takes time. It’s a it’s a evolutionary process, but it’s worth going down the road. I can tell you the financial success and the personal. Fulfillment that I’ve been able to experience was absolutely worth the journey of my own emotional healing.
Mark McBride-Wright 45:10
Okay, like it, right? Quick Fire question round you ready? Do it? Okay? One tool or practice from the third element, every leader should start using
Randy Lyman 45:24
writing down our problems, writing down our challenges, three columns, what is the problem, what is the solution, and what’s the underlying emotion, or feeling around it? And engineers, we love to make lists, right?
Mark McBride-Wright 45:35
We do? Yeah. What’s the most misunderstood emotion in the workplace?
Speaker 1 45:40
At
Randy Lyman 45:45
the deepest level, being alone, we cover that up with we cover up our aloneness and disappointment with anger and frustration. So anger and frustration, I guess, is the most misunderstood, because underneath that is I feel alone, and I feel I’m not sure what to do. The
Mark McBride-Wright 46:02
strongest trait of an emotionally intelligent leader,
Randy Lyman 46:09
compassion and allowing people to be who they are without judgment.
Mark McBride-Wright 46:15
What’s a business book that isn’t about business but changed how you lead?
Speaker 1 46:22
I I
Randy Lyman 46:28
don’t have a good answer for that. I’ve read so many great books. The one that comes to mind that’s really odd, and I don’t know how it works, is I lost my cheese or something like that.
Mark McBride-Wright 46:39
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Psychology behind
Randy Lyman 46:43
that once when I read that, and then I’m not I’m optimistic again, and I don’t know why, but that’s a good, yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 46:49
uh, coffee, tea or something stronger during deep, emotional work.
Randy Lyman 46:55
None of the above, because they’re all a distraction from what I need to feel coming through my body. I love scotch. Holy cow, I got a great Scotch collection. I’ve got about 80 different scotches. But the challenge is, if I need to get through it, through an emotion, I can’t have any distractions, not my phone, not the internet, not alcohol, not caffeine. I got to be willing to feel the pain
Mark McBride-Wright 47:20
classic car or custom motorcycle. What clears your head
Randy Lyman 47:26
riding my dirt bikes off road or working on a classic car? I have a 76 Bronco daily driver that I love. I love the old vehicles. I even have 1920 a couple of 1920s Model T’s. So the action is riding a motorcycle. The meditation also is hands on repair.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:46
What is a quote or mantra that you live by? The
Randy Lyman 47:53
best way to find success is to help other people find success.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:58
What’s the biggest myth about success that you’d like to debunk,
Randy Lyman 48:05
the money and the financial gain and all the all the trophies are not as rewarding as helping people find out that they’re capable and powerful and to See the lives that we touch improve and change.
Mark McBride-Wright 48:23
What brings you joy outside of work,
Randy Lyman 48:28
my dirt bike,
Mark McBride-Wright 48:30
and finally, in one word, what does emotional truth mean to you?
Randy Lyman 48:38
It means not holding back and knowing that when pain gets out of the way, that love instantly replaces that pain we released. And only love is real, and the illusion of pain is is what we’re here to overcome by walking through it, not around it.
Mark McBride-Wright 48:56
Wow, brilliant. Some powerful stuff there. Randy, thank you so much. Really, really enjoyed that. Really enjoyed that chat. If, if people want to get in touch with you, find out more about your work. How do they do that?
Randy Lyman 49:09
The easiest way is through my website, Randy lyman.com Lyman L, Y, M, a n, so Randy lyman.com they can find a have links to my book, to coaching, to free offers that we have to book recommendations, a lot of other things, and they can find links to find me on social media, on all the major platforms, and my book. The third element is available through major booksellers. Brilliant.
Mark McBride-Wright 49:32
Well, we will add the links in the in the transcript as well. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed our chat.
Randy Lyman 49:39
You’re welcome. Mark. Your questions were brilliant. This was a lot of fun. Thanks. Bye.
E036: Emotional Leadership and The Power of Vulnerability
Podcast Description
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:01
Mark, hello. Welcome to the next episode of the safe leader podcast. I’m your host, Mark McBride-Wright, and I’m delighted today to be joined by Randy Lyman, who is a physicist, entrepreneur and emotional intelligence advocate whose journey from humble beginnings to inc 500 recognition has spanned three decades and multiple eight figure businesses, despite achieving material success, Randy experienced emotional Randy experienced emotional disconnection, prompting a deep personal transformation that reshaped his leadership style and business philosophy, blending scientific rigor with spiritual depth, Randy now teaches service based leadership through the third element his methodology and book a number one release in personal growth. He empowers individuals and organizations to turn emotional mastery into strategic advantage. His work centers on leading with strength and vulnerability, building cultures of belonging and healing old emotional patterns to unlock lasting success outside of business. Randy is a craftsman at heart restoring classic cars and building custom motorcycle motors. His mission to inspire leaders to embrace their emotional truth as a source of clarity, connection and high performance. Randy, nice to meet you. Good to meet you. Mark, great to be here. Welcome to the safe leader podcast. So you you’ve had a fascinating journey. You know, you’ve got elements in there that link to what our audience love. You know, physics, physics, engineering. So talk us through about the young Randy and what inspired you to start the journey that you’ve taken.
Randy Lyman 1:47
Well, the young Randy was completely left brain science and finance and engineering and business, and I achieved good success, but I kind of ran into some some limitations, which were me, and then I met a woman 35 years ago named Maria. I spent three years with, and she had been immersed in the world of the unseen spirituality and the emotional side of the human experience, and so she opened my eyes to another way of looking at life that led me down a path of a lot of personal growth, primarily with releasing old disappointment and anger and frustration, which allowed me to show up different and take a completely different approach to business, which brought me 30 times the success I had prior to meeting her.
Mark McBride-Wright 2:34
Wow. So what? So what do you mean by what? What’s your definition of spirituality? Talk about how you discovered that and how it underpins your your thought leadership now with the third element.
Randy Lyman 2:48
So for me, spirituality is about the being part of our human beingness, our human experience. We are spiritual beings on a human path. We have a human mind and a human body, but our emotions are close to spirit, and there’s a bigger part of us, our soul, the part of us that that really feels each other and enjoys life, that’s the unseen, and that’s the part that is most important to me. Now, I’m still a logical thinker, I’m still a planner and take action, but I enjoy not only clarity, emotional clarity, but also intellectual clarity, physical health and the ability to be effective in the world. And I was affected before, but by addressing the unseen and specifically the emotional side of the human experience, and allowing myself to work through that rather than avoid it. It improved all areas of my life.
Mark McBride-Wright 3:45
Oh, if, I mean, if this is too much prying, then tell me to move on. But What? What? What needed unpacking for you, it sounds like you had a bit of an epiphany, like a deep experience that almost created transcendence for you that made you think this is the way I want to be. You know, you got that not, not every it’s quite, I mean, you meet quite a lot of people who go through life with a lot of heavy baggage and never quite tap into that emotional, sorry, that positive energy, that that I’m feeling from you. You know, there’s the logical side and the physical side, but then there’s the people that just kind of espouse optimism and hope. Is that? Is that what you sort of untapped within yourself when you discover this, this side?
Randy Lyman 4:34
Okay? So I was always optimistic about myself and God and universe, so to speak, but I was not optimistic around about other people. I was very pessimistic about other people in the world, and once I worked through my own issues about self doubt and my own emotional issues about questioning myself and my deservedness and such that I began to see the people around me as much more capable. It’s not that they weren’t capable. Yeah, it’s that I was seeing the world through the distortion of my own emotional baggage, and I didn’t know I had any emotional baggage. We don’t know. We just feel what we feel, and we think what we think, and until either we have an epiphany, which I can talk about, or somebody points out, hey, wait a minute, you’re not seeing things clearly here, then our ego does not want to look at what other way is there to be here in the world? And I had several epiphanies, but one of the biggest epiphanies, the one that really, truly led me to understanding the third element, the emotional part of the human experience, is address about 1991 or so, I went to a four day business communication workshop, and on the third day, we went through an exercise called the seven levels of truth. Well, my issue at that point in time was many of the people I was working with were incompetent. So my my mentor, Maria, she says, Look at yourself. Look at your thoughts and your actions. Are you competent? Everything around you is a mirror. She didn’t touch on the emotional side because she didn’t really understand that. So third day of this, this retreat, I have an exercise I’m going through with a partner about people around me being incompetent, and as we went through the levels of truth they’re incompetent. It causes problems in my business. Business problems can cause me to look incompetent. And the bottom line was, maybe I look incompetent to my family. Well, then an issue came up from 12 years prior, where my uncle had said, I wish you were more like your friend, John. Well, what I took from that was he didn’t believe that. He didn’t connect with me. He didn’t believe in me, and that was not what he meant. What he meant. What he meant was, I wish I could communicate with you better, because I love you. But what I heard at 17 years old was he didn’t approve of me. So you get to that lower level of my family not approving of me. I remembered the incident from 12 years prior, and man, I just burst into tears. I let go of all this emotion and work through all that. And because it just it overtook me in a good way. And at least say so, I go back to work four days later. And out of the six or so people who were incompetent, and just for weeks, and some of them for months, had been incompetent, they suddenly became competent, or they left my life. And so this issue I’ve been approaching with my mind and my action for for weeks and months suddenly resolved itself when I released the emotional energy and the challenge and the charge around my own competence. And then I’m a scientist. I’m a physicist, cause and effect I saw, wait a minute, I went through this emotional release, and the physical world around me changed. Maybe there’s a connection here,
Mark McBride-Wright 7:47
interesting, interesting. So it’s almost like when you an analogy is like when you have a massage and you’ve got tension in your back, and then you get that momentary release, when you get that pressure point, and it feels good. I guess that’s the equivalent of having, for you know, 12 years of emotional energy held in a negative space by being able to release it. It just is a weight off your shoulder and brings more. It helps you see the world. Helped you see the world in a new in a new way, or see other people through a different lens,
Randy Lyman 8:24
two things that helped me see the world through a different lens. And also I realized over time, over analyzing that and really focusing on my own emotions and emotional healing, I realized that the universe, the law of attraction, is obligated to remind us of our old wounds that we have the opportunity to heal. And the way it reminds us of our old emotional wounding, our old trauma, is by bringing irritations and challenges into our daily life now in real time. So I have found over time that any irritation I’m experiencing today is related to some unresolved Trump trauma from the past. And for over 30 years, I’ve approached my challenges with okay, what action do I take? What how do I plan different? Or what do I need to think? More importantly, what do I need to feel underneath, to release? And when I do that, every single time my world gets better,
Mark McBride-Wright 9:22
interesting, interesting. And when you apply the the gender, sex lens through it men, when you know, a lot of my work looks at how men show up in the world, and masculinity and as men were, were taught to be in a certain way, and we’ve had certain emotions role model to us in a certain way over the decades that the majority of men don’t really do what you’re describing and being able to do that self introspection and be cognitively connected to their emotions and know the connection. Shouldn’t between how they’re feeling inside to how they’re showing up outside. So how have you found that relationship in your work with masculinity and the third element are men different to women and how they how they approach it, or just in your taken in manhood and masculinity,
Randy Lyman 10:18
absolutely, as men, historically, if you go back 1000 years or 100,000 years, we are providers and protectors. That’s who we’re designed to be. So that’s part of who we are. And in order to protect my family, 1000 years ago, I might have to to take violent action to turn off my emotions and take action to protect myself or protect my family. Now I don’t condone violent action, but what I’m saying is, historically, we had to the other thing is, I look up my own life, and in junior high school and in high school, as a young boy, if I showed any caring or compassion, the other boys just beat the crap out of me, whether it was physically or emotionally or verbally, we knew at some level that we were supposed to supposed to is not real, but we were supposed to be tough. We’re supposed to be men, and if we weren’t, then the Eagles around us said, Oh, you’re not as strong as me. You’re not as good. And I’m going to point this out. So the natural evolution of a man from a young man to a man is we cannot openly display our feminine traits, of intuition, of caring, of compassion. And so until somebody shows us an example of caring and compassion, and somebody, until somebody shows us an example of how to show up a little softer, still be effective. We’re not willing to try that, because what if I’m compassionate and it doesn’t work, then I lose the respect of the people I lead. Now, fortunately, I took a lot of risks, and as I learned about my own personal growth and spirituality and releasing emotions and the emotional side of the human experiences. I took chances, I took risks, and I showed up differently, maybe with just a small group my shipping department or my service shop with six or eight employees at a time. And when I showed up differently and experimented, they responded positively, and then that gave me the confidence to expand that into more of my business. But if you take the average business leader today, especially an engineer, they’re focused on logic and reason and for God’s sakes, if I take emotions into consideration at all, and I fail, I could lose promotion, promotion, I could lose my job. I could be ridiculed. So it’s a big risk for people to, especially men, to take that, that risk of addressing our more feminine characteristics. The other thing I want to say is, just because I’m caring and compassionate doesn’t make me less of a man. Just because I use my intuition doesn’t make me less of a man.
Mark McBride-Wright 12:54
Yeah, so do you, do you think? Do you think it’s changing? Do you think there is a new world coming through where we can lean into that challenge, and people of the older generation, where, you know, it’s always been done that way, are open to like new ways of of men, showing up as men and connecting at the different sides of their masculinity.
Randy Lyman 13:20
Well, the world is changing, but some over the last 10 or 15 years, people have pushed to, Oh, don’t be a man. Okay. Well, I’m not saying don’t be a man. I’m saying Be a man, but also be a compassionate, caring man. Yes, be a man who takes action and can set boundaries and can communicate, can deliver difficult communications, but do it with caring. Do it with compassion. Do it with empathy. And it’s a balance. It’s not just one or the other feminine traits or characteristics or masculine traits or characteristics. It’s a balance of using both. And that works. I know it works. I see it work. But the challenge is, again, as you’ve kind of pointed out. There aren’t many leaders right now who are sharing that. And I think that one reason I’ve kind of been chosen to share this message, go down this path and share this message, is because people who are engineers and scientists and business people, I can relate to them, and they can relate to me. I’m not just some guy sitting in Sedona, Arizona in a in a monk’s robe on a rock, meditating and chanting. I’ve actually implemented this in the real world and had great success. And that’s, I think, the reason that I’ve been chosen to do this. And in my book, The third element, I give people an understanding of how all this works. That’s the first part, is education and understanding, and then an example of somebody who’s used it and it works. And then some exercises and some things people can do to actually address their emotional self while staying firmly rooted in clear thought and clear action. And one thing I want to add is not making decisions based on emotion. Be aware of our emotions. Make decisions. Is based on intuition, which is different than emotions, but still being clear headed.
Mark McBride-Wright 15:06
It’s so true. It’s so true. It’s the I find as men. As men, there’s a statistic that as men get older, they have fewer and fewer friends like or they live their lives through their partner. And I see this, you know, in my family life as well, my family circles, different elements in my family, where, if I think about the men in my family, actually, you could count on a single hand the number of close friends that they they they would claim to have, versus their partner who might have, you know, a lot of friends. So do you think as men, we how do we buck the trend of becoming more and more isolated and inward in ourselves?
Randy Lyman 15:59
Well, okay, so part of the evolution of a human lifetime, and I believe in reincarnation over multiple lifetimes, we start out as an infant, and we’re trying to figure out, where’s the food and water, and how do I get around here? And then as a baby, how do I communicate? And then as a young soul, we learn that power and wealth and and power over others doesn’t bring us happiness. And then we learn that large crowds of people and a lot of friends don’t bring us happiness. And then we learn at some level that connection with ourselves at a deeper level, or connections with others at a deeper level. And for me, connection with love and God and spirit in the way that I experience it, and mostly just classify that as good, brings us real answers and real fulfillment. And so part of the normal human evolution is to find a connection to something bigger than ourselves. Now, when we do this, and we are able to really connect at a higher level, then when we find our centeredness, not finding our value, not finding our strength from things outside of us, but when we find our value and our strength from who we are at a deeper level, yeah, then we can connect with others at a deeper level. That doesn’t mean we’re going to going to go out and connect with the masses always, but at least the connections that we have with the people in our lives are from a place of deeper connection, and that’s what I hope for people, is to find their own connection to good, and then to find connection to the people around them at a deeper level.
Mark McBride-Wright 17:32
If it’s so amazing the feeling when you find it, why do not more people not seek it out? Why do you think we’re in a world where it feels like there’s more negativity and more more tension against different groups, rather than love and peace?
Randy Lyman 17:57
That is a great question. And it really comes down to once we decide, as we become a little more mature and a little wiser, and we say, Okay, I’m going to be open to looking at my own issues, which means my own emotional trauma. Yeah, we know at some level, when we open Pandora’s box to look at the love and the good and the joy and and enthusiasm, we’re also going to find in that same box. We’re going to find anger and resentment and jealousy and frustration, and when we open that box to look at our emotions, it all pours out, not more than we can handle, but it starts to pour out. And if we don’t have the tools to address those challenges and understand what’s going on. It’s overwhelming. So it was scary for me as a young man to start to look at my emotions, because the negative emotions that I had held down for so many years started to pour through, and that’s one reason I wrote the book. The third element, I’m not doing this for money. I’m sad. I don’t mean to do this. I did this because what I have learned has helped my life in so many ways and helped the people I’ve coached in so many ways. I want more people to understand we can take charge of our own life, and once we understand the simple rules of the game of being human, we can improve our own life. And I make a plug for the book here. The reason I wrote the third element is because it’s not that complicated. And I want people to understand that life can be good. It doesn’t have to just be pain. But when we first open that that part of ourselves to looking at our emotions, pain is going to come through, and that’s okay. I feel like that,
Mark McBride-Wright 19:37
yeah, it’s it’s that I feel like there’s so I’m interested in moving on in a moment to your to your experience like leading engineering teams, and find out a bit more about your commercial success, in your in your businesses. Um, but the the you know, the journey for for me, right in the safe leader and the safe leader framework, it’s. Safe, stands for share, act, feel, empower, and it’s ultimately about trying to get more men to share their difference, to share their story. Because I’ve, I guess I’ve found in the time that I have been working thus far, men are reluctant to share, but when they do share elements of themselves that you can’t see from looking at them, more people build greater empathy for those stories. You know, when you start talking about things that are taboo in the workplace or don’t often get spoken about it, it helps the individual, but also everyone else, because you’re bringing more oxygen to that root cause that is driving this mental state, but you’re also then helping, helping the individual and engineering, and I know it’s similar in the US, engineering construction has a very high suicide rate, suicidal ideation and self harm. So I wonder if there’s hope, I guess, through leaders, and not just leaders, but just people in general, within the engineering workforce, taking up the frameworks within, within the third element, starting with, you know, starting with opening that Pandora’s box in a in a rate which doesn’t overwhelm but then talking about that and sharing it with others, it might flip the needle, flip the balance to then have more men opening up and sharing things, and all of a sudden we get this tidal wave of more positive masculinity, and fathers talking to their sons in a different way and having different expectations, and giving them the tools to be more emotionally connected in a younger age, and then we just have this sort of whole new radical way in which men show up in the world. I guess that’s a really big, bold ambition, but I think we need that. I think we need that for to change, to get with this rot that we’re in society at the moment.
Randy Lyman 22:12
So I want to say something may sound silly, but it’s something to consider, which is engineers are people too, with hopes and dreams and feelings, and we primarily approach the world from a mental point of view, and we’re about taking action, but at the same time, we still have our own hopes and dreams and goals and feelings and emotions, and that’s okay. Now, if you go back to 20, 3050, years ago, we just put our feelings aside, and we worked through our job, and life was different then, but today, we have the opportunity to feel life more deeply and to lead people from a place of genuine connection. And what I found is when I showed up more authentic and was willing to be vulnerable when I said, I’m not, I don’t have all the answers. I’ve made mistakes in the past, and I could use some help. That’s vulnerability. Yeah, people didn’t respect me less. They actually respected me more. And then, and then I also realized that my power wasn’t from me. My power is what my team could accomplish. That’s the power I have when I’m pulling the levers. It’s not about me, and it’s not about forcing them to do things. It’s about giving them the incentive to get involved at a deeper level, and when they can truly sense that I’m there to support them and support their success. And now they’re on my side, and they know, they know I’m on their side. Now I have a whole different team, instead of people who fear me. If I go back 40 years ago, and my teams feared me, they got a lot done, but once my teams knew that I was there to support them, and I understood my power came from their accomplishments, that it changed everything completely. My power originally, when I was younger, I thought it came from my authority or my title or my position, or I signed their paycheck, but again, once I turned that around, and I was there to serve them, and they felt that, because they have to feel it, it has to be genuine. If it’s not genuine, it’s not going to work. That’s true. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 24:17
interesting. So tell us a bit about your engineering background then and all these businesses that you’ve built and sold and created a fabulous life for yourself. What were they and what are they at now? What do you do now to keep yourself busy?
Randy Lyman 24:33
Well, now I’m busy with writing and speaking and coaching, but if you go back to my younger years, I was kind of born a mechanic and a mechanical engineer. And I started in college. I was never gonna go to college, and a girlfriend taught me into going. So I started mechanical engineering, and after a year and a half, I wanted to learn more about coding. They call it now, programming and electrical engineering, advanced electronics and so long story. Short, I ended up changing my major to physics, and I got my Bachelor of Science in physics, and I had a concentration in mechanical engineering. And then in my business, as I started designing product, as we started doing distribution and manufacturing in that, I have multiple patents, and I just love designing parts. I love building motorcycles and classic cars and doing machine work. I have a lathe and a mill and welding equipment in my garage. Oh, cool, doing all that stuff, and that’s still a huge part of who I am, yeah, but again, along the way, I learned about the spiritual, unseen, emotional side of being human, and that that really gave me so much of an advantage in the business world, and understanding people, understanding myself, understanding people, understanding how to communicate and how to motivate. So I’ve been able to bring it all together. Now I’m an old guy. I’m 64 years old. I graduated from high school in 1979 so I’ve seen and had a lot of experiences, and that really helps me, but that’s who I am today. I’m still a mechanic at heart. I still rewire things on my own farm. If a pump needs to be repaired, I do it, but at the same time, I really enjoy and I’m really fulfilled by helping people find a deeper sense of who they are at a spiritual level, so that people let go of their doubts, people let go of their fears, and people know that they’re worthy.
Mark McBride-Wright 26:30
Wow, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. So in the so tell us about the companies that you built, though. Tell us about like, what they did, what they were, what they were called, what they are called. I started
Randy Lyman 26:44
my garage in 1982 with $600 and then in 1986 I started, well, okay, in 82 I started my garage. 84 I started going to college. I moved out into commercial building. I was working summers as a computer programmer at Aerojet Rocketdyne, and I got really disenchanted with the corporate world. So then again, I moved my business out of my garage in the commercial, commercial building, the commercial world. And then in 1986 after I graduated with my BS in physics, with honors from the National physics Honor Society, then I decided to do parts distribution. Took me about two years before I figured out how to make money. That was called West Coast differentials. It’s still in business today. I sold that in 96 and in 90s, 1996 I started over, started what ended up being called Randy’s worldwide automotive, and we made the Inc 500 list in 2003 I started Yukon gear and axle in about 1998 or so, and so I sold those operations, ranges, Randy’s worldwide and Yukon gear in 2015 I got nine and a half times multiple on that because we had such a great group of people and such a strong base that they could build on top of and today they are somewhere between 300 And 400 million a year in sales and about 600 in sales and about 600 employees. And I was able to do that by attracting and working with great people. So I’ve had had a really great run. I learned a lot because I was open minded and people, when we ask them questions and we say, Help me, we can learn so much.
Mark McBride-Wright 28:23
Yeah, and because you got behind the people and built became that servant leader for your people, you got the trust and longevity, I guess, their commitment to helping build sustainable, successful companies that still operate today.
Randy Lyman 28:43
Yes, so they still operate today. So again, West Coast differentials and Randy’s worldwide, and Yukon gear and axle, they’re great companies, and they’re doing amazing things. Randy’s now has taken on it’s an umbrella for a lot of other companies, but the basic structure I built between 1996 and 2015 with people who I acknowledged for who they were as individuals. They felt acknowledged and they felt appreciated. I helped them understand and feel that they’re contributing to the cause that’s important, and there was a sense of belonging. We all did it together.
Mark McBride-Wright 29:18
What’s your take on where things are currently at in the US right now with regards to diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging,
Randy Lyman 29:29
okay, well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna just address my opinion on the human experience. And every one of us can find a path to success once we believe in ourselves, and when we believe in something greater than ourselves, the moment we say, I’m a victim, then we find what we go looking for, and we’re a victim the moment I say, I know I can find a way through this. For me, I turn to God, source, whatever you might be. I’m not religious, but I believe in spirit. I believe in good, and I believe there’s a lot. Good people, and I believe when I ask for guidance, I’m always shown a path to success. But I don’t believe any of us are victims. I believe we’re all capable. We are all a spark of the divine. And when I go out of my way to show somebody else so you don’t know what you’re doing, you need my help, that’s a disrespect to who they are. And yes, people do need help, but, and I talk about this on page 112 in my book, we can’t help anybody until they ask for help. And I contribute a lot of money. I’ve contribute, contributed close to a million dollars over the years to charitable causes to create environments, not to give people a handout, but to create an environment where people can find their own way. So I haven’t stated this publicly before, but I believe that everybody is capable, if they decide they want to be capable, and if they look for good,
Mark McBride-Wright 30:58
yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It All. Yeah, it’s
Randy Lyman 31:06
thing, if I may. I’ve had a very I’ve had a very diverse staff for the last 30 years. My staff today, my team today, is very diverse, and I don’t see them as men or women, or Filipino or from South America or wherever they’re from, I just see them as people who are capable, and they treat them all the same. I treat them individually. We all have our own personal characteristics and traits. That’s one thing, but we’re all capable, and I treat everybody as capable, and if I sense for any reason that in any of my organizations, people are not getting along, then we dive into it directly and we find ways for people to get along. And that, to me, is really what about inclusion is, is, let’s accept it and allow except everybody is who they are. Let’s allow them to be the who they are, and let’s find ways to help everybody succeed. To me, that’s what’s most important.
Mark McBride-Wright 32:05
Yeah, I think especially in that that’s especially important for, I mean, in engineering, in particular, where we have a skills crisis, and, you know, we don’t have enough engineers coming into the sector to meet the demands of today and tomorrow. We need to get engineers from all backgrounds, and that’s why these these programs to be doing outreach into communities where they maybe don’t have as much. You know, interfacing with engineers are so vital.
Randy Lyman 32:38
Well, let me, let me, let me interject something. I think today, a lot of the modern media tells people they’re victims, yeah, and people don’t realize what they’re capable of. And I’ve never come across anybody who isn’t capable of learning and becoming more the janitor at Randy’s. I’ll just use the name Jim. That’s not his name, but he was a part of our organization, and he had his his challenges, and he had his limitations, but when we treated him with respect, which we treated everybody with respect, and we acknowledged him, when he did a good job, he learned to shine and rise to an even higher level. And that’s what that’s what leadership is about, is seeing the best in everybody and helping everybody find a greater strength within themselves they didn’t know was there, and that’s not what most of society and that’s not what the mainstream media does today, but that’s what I am on a mission to do, is to help people understand we don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to do it all on our own, and it’s okay to make mistakes and it’s okay to take risks and it’s okay to fail, because through our failure, we learn and we become stronger, and that’s what I want people to understand today. This isn’t about I’m less than, or I’m greater than, or somebody else is less than, or where we all stand on some stupid pedestal system. This is about every one of us is a spark of divine source, a spiritual being on a human path with the ability to address our emotions, think more clearly and take the right action, even if we are engineers,
Mark McBride-Wright 34:11
the way. What advice would you give to that? To an engineer leader who’s listening to this and they don’t know where to start, and maybe they’ve, they’re, they’ve never quite stepped their toe in yet to any of this self introspection. How did he start
Randy Lyman 34:30
two things I’m going to say. One is, again, we don’t have to be perfect. Don’t be hard on yourself, and don’t have to be perfect. You can make mistakes and also be willing. To look at your own emotional baggage, your own where’s my anger, where’s my frustration, where’s my jealousy, where is my self doubt? And that’s what I cover in the book. The third element is I break it down from a scientist and engineers perspective as to how to deal with emotions. I don’t talk about emotions because. I’m an emotional person. I’m not naturally an emotional person, but through experience, I understand the power of learning to work with our emotions, and that’s what I share in the book, is, is you don’t have to be perfect and be willing to deal with and look at the underlying emotions that may be holding you
Mark McBride-Wright 35:18
back there. Was A I, when I first moved to the US, I felt really alone in that respect. I’d uprooted from my connections here, my community, my identity, and then I was, you know, in in the middle of a country that I hadn’t built any close connections with yet, and I discovered this group called walking, talking men, and it was brilliant. We met up every Tuesday. There was walks scheduled around Central Park. You could just show up, and the agenda was just walking, talking men, walking side by side in a group setting. And it was there. We were there to just chat, talk about how we were showing up, what’s going on. It wasn’t business. It wasn’t networking. It wasn’t like, what do you do? Where are you from, etc, etc. And I built some really great connections through that, really new friendships.
Randy Lyman 36:19
So then, then the what you and I are doing is we’re taking what we’ve learned about being a different type of man who’s in touch with our emotions while we’re still masculine, and then sharing our success with others. And when others, when other men can hear about our success, then they’re willing to try, but in a vacuum. If you if I go back to me 35 years ago, definitely 40 years ago, what I had been willing to be caring and compassionate and open about my own failures and my own doubts, hell no, because that was scary, and for most men today, that’s still a place that’s really scary, and that’s why you’re sharing the message, and why I’m sharing the message to help men understand we don’t have to be just masculine. We don’t have to have be just feminine. We can be masculine men who accomplish things while addressing the world with caring and compassion.
Mark McBride-Wright 37:13
So when someone is not yet receptive to hearing the message. Yourself, 20 odd years ago, you said, 30 odd years ago, are there some can seeds still be planted in the minds of these men that lie dormant that then, as their experience in life evolves, they they start to have those aha moments, or they make the connection retrospectively that, oh, that’s what Mark and Randy were talking about. How do we still sprinkle the seeds, even though we may not get the impact yet?
Randy Lyman 37:49
Yes, we can, and we can do that by first being grounded in who we are and very, very, very solid and confident in who we are, outside of our title, outside of of our position. And when I’m confident, because I know that I’m a spiritual being connected at a deeper level, I am capable of accomplishing things through cooperation. Then when I show up, I know I can be vulnerable, and when I can be vulnerable, and I can share my own stories of failure and success, if people are ready to hear they’ll hear me when I’m calm and confident, yeah. And before we can be vulnerable, we have to be confident. It’s a it’s really an oxymoron, but our confidence allows us to show up with vulnerability, and then people can feel us, and they can hear us, and they can see that we’re human and we’ve made mistakes, and we found success through our vulnerability. Now they have to they have to be open minded, they have to be curious, and they have to be willing to look at themselves at a deeper level. So curiosity and and being willing to look at themselves at a deeper level. Those two things are important. But when we’re confident enough to be vulnerable, people can hear us even if we think they’re not ready, they’ll still feel our confidence that comes from a completely different place than Macho.
Mark McBride-Wright 39:17
So what’s your vision for the third element? Then, over the next few years, the
Randy Lyman 39:23
vision is to help men and women understand that there is power in embracing our emotions and working our way through the wounds. It’s not about avoiding it’s not about pushing our emotions down or pushing them aside. It’s about finding the time and place to feel what we’re being called on to feel so we can feel it completely and heal it. It’s like emotions are bigger than time and space. They store like gasoline in a petroleum petrol, whatever you call it, in great vision, petrol stores for five or 10 or 20 years in a metal can. And when you open that can and you pour it out, it still burns. But here’s the. Beauty, you only have to burn it once, and it’s gone. And emotions are the same way when we feel them completely, whatever we stuffed from an earlier age, when we’re willing to dive in and feel that completely. Sometimes, for me as a grown man, to cry the tears, to feel the pain, to express whatever I need to express, that energy is gone, and it’s no longer attracting chaos into my life.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:23
How can people, aside from well, in addition to reading your book and taking on the lessons, how are you scaling your impact? Like, what are you doing right now
Randy Lyman 40:36
corporate coaching and leaders, helping leaders understand how to show up differently and how to motivate their teams differently, and both on a corporate level, with CEOs and vice presidents and managers at all levels, and with individuals who want to show up differently at work in hopes of a promotion, in hopes of being a better leader, and In helping them find a way to have a deeper connection with their family. So coaching and speaking is how I’m showing up, as well as through the book
Mark McBride-Wright 41:09
that so the speaking is a one to many forum, and then coaching can be one to one, or do you do group coaching as well? Sometimes with people,
Randy Lyman 41:18
coaching works, whether they’re similar, like minded individuals, or whether it’s group coaching of a CEO says on my management team, they’re ready to learn this, then I do group coaching and one on one with their team leaders. So I am. I did this in my own businesses for years, and I’m very comfortable with it, and I’ve been effective, and now my goal is to share what works with people who don’t have the luxury of taking risks, who want something that’s proven.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:47
Do you find some time because I’ve dabbled in coaching, but I haven’t gone full in on that. I’m I’ve gone in a different direction, where I’ve evolved sort of training courses on the back of the frameworks in my book, and I’m hoping to add coaching on further down the line as I start to scale the training linked to the framework. But do you find it quite it’s an energy exchange that happens with with with coaching, and so sometimes when you’re, I’d imagine, with when you’re helping people tap into that energy that needs to be released it. You must absorb some of that energy as well. You need to have a bit of resilience a filter. It must be quite heavy to
Randy Lyman 42:31
so it used to be for me. That’s exactly how it used to be for me. So now what I’ve learned is when I ground myself to the earth, and this sounds like, wait a minute, this is woo stuff that some spiritual teacher who has no experience in business would talk about, but I have both. Yeah, I ground myself to the earth. I’m present in my physical body, so I can feel my feelings and if they’re going to come through and be aware of not turn them off. So I ground myself, and then I open myself up to love, energy of the universe that comes through and supports me that I share with others. I don’t share my personal energy that’s limited. I can tap into the energy of all that is in whatever way. I do that a little differently, and there’s there’s different ways to do that. We can find power in something larger than ourselves, and we share that. That’s the space I hold for people to have breakthroughs, not because I can do it, but because I’m able, and I’ve learned to hold that energy of love. And here’s the most important part, no judgment, zero expectations and zero judgment. So when I hold that space of of love and caring with zero expectations and zero judgment, then people can be themselves. They can feel what they need to feel. Then they can work through their personal challenges that are keeping them from finding their power at a deeper level.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:49
Very inspiring. Randy, it’s I’m going to listen back to this podcast, and how do I be more like that when, as I evolve my my business. You’ve got 20 odd years on me. I’m 37 and I’m like eco engineers. My My business is my it’s my first business. It’s eight years old now, and I’m looking at how we develop products and services and that are in alignment with what’s needed, but by
Randy Lyman 44:20
developing people, by first developing who we are as a leader, so I show up clear without my own emotional baggage, and then I can track better people, and the people can hear what I have to say, because they feel safe and they feel supported. And for me, that’s it in a nutshell.
Mark McBride-Wright 44:34
Yeah, that’s the psychological safety that you then create in the in the teams that you build and the teams that you lead by having that service.
Randy Lyman 44:42
I could not do that 35 years ago, 35 years ago, 30 years ago, even 25 years ago. At times, I struggled with that when my own emotional issues got in the way. It takes time. It’s a it’s a evolutionary process, but it’s worth going down the road. I can tell you the financial success and the personal. Fulfillment that I’ve been able to experience was absolutely worth the journey of my own emotional healing.
Mark McBride-Wright 45:10
Okay, like it, right? Quick Fire question round you ready? Do it? Okay? One tool or practice from the third element, every leader should start using
Randy Lyman 45:24
writing down our problems, writing down our challenges, three columns, what is the problem, what is the solution, and what’s the underlying emotion, or feeling around it? And engineers, we love to make lists, right?
Mark McBride-Wright 45:35
We do? Yeah. What’s the most misunderstood emotion in the workplace?
Speaker 1 45:40
At
Randy Lyman 45:45
the deepest level, being alone, we cover that up with we cover up our aloneness and disappointment with anger and frustration. So anger and frustration, I guess, is the most misunderstood, because underneath that is I feel alone, and I feel I’m not sure what to do. The
Mark McBride-Wright 46:02
strongest trait of an emotionally intelligent leader,
Randy Lyman 46:09
compassion and allowing people to be who they are without judgment.
Mark McBride-Wright 46:15
What’s a business book that isn’t about business but changed how you lead?
Speaker 1 46:22
I I
Randy Lyman 46:28
don’t have a good answer for that. I’ve read so many great books. The one that comes to mind that’s really odd, and I don’t know how it works, is I lost my cheese or something like that.
Mark McBride-Wright 46:39
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Psychology behind
Randy Lyman 46:43
that once when I read that, and then I’m not I’m optimistic again, and I don’t know why, but that’s a good, yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 46:49
uh, coffee, tea or something stronger during deep, emotional work.
Randy Lyman 46:55
None of the above, because they’re all a distraction from what I need to feel coming through my body. I love scotch. Holy cow, I got a great Scotch collection. I’ve got about 80 different scotches. But the challenge is, if I need to get through it, through an emotion, I can’t have any distractions, not my phone, not the internet, not alcohol, not caffeine. I got to be willing to feel the pain
Mark McBride-Wright 47:20
classic car or custom motorcycle. What clears your head
Randy Lyman 47:26
riding my dirt bikes off road or working on a classic car? I have a 76 Bronco daily driver that I love. I love the old vehicles. I even have 1920 a couple of 1920s Model T’s. So the action is riding a motorcycle. The meditation also is hands on repair.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:46
What is a quote or mantra that you live by? The
Randy Lyman 47:53
best way to find success is to help other people find success.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:58
What’s the biggest myth about success that you’d like to debunk,
Randy Lyman 48:05
the money and the financial gain and all the all the trophies are not as rewarding as helping people find out that they’re capable and powerful and to See the lives that we touch improve and change.
Mark McBride-Wright 48:23
What brings you joy outside of work,
Randy Lyman 48:28
my dirt bike,
Mark McBride-Wright 48:30
and finally, in one word, what does emotional truth mean to you?
Randy Lyman 48:38
It means not holding back and knowing that when pain gets out of the way, that love instantly replaces that pain we released. And only love is real, and the illusion of pain is is what we’re here to overcome by walking through it, not around it.
Mark McBride-Wright 48:56
Wow, brilliant. Some powerful stuff there. Randy, thank you so much. Really, really enjoyed that. Really enjoyed that chat. If, if people want to get in touch with you, find out more about your work. How do they do that?
Randy Lyman 49:09
The easiest way is through my website, Randy lyman.com Lyman L, Y, M, a n, so Randy lyman.com they can find a have links to my book, to coaching, to free offers that we have to book recommendations, a lot of other things, and they can find links to find me on social media, on all the major platforms, and my book. The third element is available through major booksellers. Brilliant.
Mark McBride-Wright 49:32
Well, we will add the links in the in the transcript as well. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed our chat.
Randy Lyman 49:39
You’re welcome. Mark. Your questions were brilliant. This was a lot of fun. Thanks. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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