Interview with Mark McMillion - A Discussion on Growing Our Leadership and Mastering Conflict Management

Discover the leadership secrets that can transform your team from functioning to phenomenal as I'm joined by retired Lieutenant Colonel Mark McMillian. With a storied 22-year military career and a passion for coaching as the founder of McMillion Leadership Associates, Mark offers a wealth of knowledge on the importance of clear communication and defined expectations.  Our conversation is a treasure trove for anyone looking to inspire and guide teams to greatness, especially in high-pressure environments.

Navigating the rough seas of conflict with emotional intelligence—this is what separates good leaders from great ones. We unravel the complexities of managing stress and interpersonal dynamics in today's high-stress climate. Drawing from personal experiences, including stories from frontline employees like Mark's daughter during the pandemic, we spotlight the need for self-awareness and understanding of others' emotions. Whether you're leading a public-facing team or an internal corporate group, the insights shared here will equip you with the skills to create a more harmonious and effective work environment. Join us as we explore the power of emotional intelligence in leadership, an essential tool for anyone striving to excel in their role and foster a thriving team culture.

To connect with Mark McMillion, please visit McMillion Leadership Associates: mcmillionleadership.com

Please connect with me on:

1. Instagram: stephen.mclain
2. Twitter: smclainiii
3. Facebook: stephenmclainconsultant
4. LinkedIn: stephenjmclainiii

For more resources, please visit Finance Leader Academy:  financeleaderacademy.com. 

1. To learn more about the Conflict Management and Emotional Intelligence training, you can find it here. 
2. On the website, you can download the Become a Finance Leader Guide. You can use this guide to build your Finance Leadership skills so you can help senior leaders develop and execute the strategy.

Transcript

Stephen McLain: 0:04

This week I am sharing my interview with speaker and author Mark McMillion of McMillion leadership associates. Mark conducts training and speaks to corporate teams and other organizations. We talked about leadership, how to plan effective team meetings, communication, and conflict management. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, Stephen McLean. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Please consider following me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. My usernames and the links are in this episode's show notes. Thank you. This is episode number 117. And I am interviewing army retired Lieutenant Colonel Mark McMillion. Mark is a seasoned leader with over 25 years of leadership experience, who is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. He was invited back later in his career to teach at West Point. As a veteran leader. He's learned and practiced the soft skills of leadership. Mark is the principal of McMillion leadership associates. And He has authored several books. Please enjoy this incredible discussion in I'm sure you will leave with a few insights you can apply today. Welcome to the finance leader podcast, I have a special guest and longtime friend and colleague joining me today, US Army retired Lieutenant Colonel Mark McMillion. After retirement from the army, Mark founded McMillion leadership associates where he gets to live out his passion of teaching and inspiring others on leadership, building trust, workplace culture, and many other critical topics. Welcome mark to the finance leader podcast. And please tell us a little bit more about you. Hey, Steve,

Mark McMillion: 2:00

great to be here. Great to see you. It's been a while since we've seen each other face to face. But I'm really excited to be with you. And I'm a big fan of the finance leader podcast. I love what you're doing. About me, I know I grew up in a small town, West Virginia went through high school, I was a big fish in a little pond. Then I went to West Point, and found out that I was not nearly as big of fish as I thought I was. And I so I had to sprint hard to keep up with the pack. And from there, I went into the Army spent 22 years in active duty as a field artillery officer, loved it great assignments, so many different assignments, so many different places. And then retired. And of course, we served together my last tour of duty with NATO in Norway, which was magnificent country, magnificent Assam I loved the work. But then I wanted to come home to West Virginia, and I wanted to come home, I wanted to help West Virginia as a state to get better. And I found out that that's my mission, my calling in life is to help others get better. I'm not always going to be I'm not going to be the guy in the spotlight, I'm going to be the guy helping others Excel and do really well. And that's what I do now is I help companies polish their leadership skills and abilities so they can execute better. I help companies nonprofits, and I do some individual coaching as well. But that is where I brought my life over a few decades. We don't need say how many, but to help people get better. And that's what I tried to do. Yeah,

Stephen McLain: 3:34

that's awesome. Hey, I really enjoyed our time in Norway, you came in about the year and a half or two years after I showed up there one of the things I wanted to ask you today, you have obviously served in the Army just like I did. But what are those some of those key lessons that you learned from your army career?

Mark McMillion: 3:54

There are so many, I brought so many things out of the army that helped me that I see sometimes lacking in civilian companies. But I tried to help them. Three, three key things that really come out for me are communication. The idea is you really have to share with people what you want from them share those expectations, set standards and boundaries for people. That was the first thing. The second thing is teamwork. And I've always loved teams, I've always been part of a team and I played football and basketball growing up and in the army, I think is the greatest team of all. But that idea of a group of people working together towards a common purpose. A common goal is so powerful and quite frankly, that's one of my biggest struggles since I left the Army as a solopreneur is is that lack of team or what I do love is I've been able to integrate myself with some of my customers and clients as part of their team. And the third piece is really the commander's intent, which is an extension of communication. And that Commander's Intent is so powerful for a leader to communicate with his or her people to let them know where they're going. And if they do if the leader does that really well, I know in the army, we say commander's intent. And sometimes in the civilian world commander has a low, negative connotation to have imperious or whatnot. But that's not what is the leaders intent. And I think that is a critical thing that those are the three things that I've really brought to bear and help share with people in my work with companies.

Stephen McLain: 5:38

No, I think that's a great list. One of the things I think you really hit on was that commander's intent or leaders intent, one of the things that I have noticed working with corporate finance and accounting teams, is that the lack of clarity on what the leader wants, if we were to just nail down that leaders intent, we probably could avoid a lot of the micromanagement, and also the lack of direction. But if you really nail down that Commander's Intent, or leaders intent, to really, that leader talks about what they really want to accomplish either a project or a task, then that team could go ahead and accomplish that task, knowing what the final outcome is supposed to be, and not having to always come back and ask permission, as they go ahead and start accomplishing that task. So I think that's a great, great part to include. As part of what you learn in your army career,

Mark McMillion: 6:37

Steve, you used a couple of words that I really love clarity, leaders have to achieve clarity in their communication. And that leaders intent is the second part of what you talked about how it empowers people, to get the mission done, to do what they need to do to be successful in that company. And that's exactly what the lesion is a great word, you really, you really hit the nail on the head right there.

Stephen McLain: 7:05

We could probably talk the entire episode about this. So but I do have a couple of more questions for you. You did talk a little bit about your transition to civilian life after the army once you retired. But what are some of the challenges that you had to overcome?

Mark McMillion: 7:22

They've been mountains, it felt like mountains, maybe they weren't, but it felt like mountains. One of the things was was being a solopreneur that that that one man band, and learning to do all the stuff. I've never taken a business class. No, my undergraduates in silver engineering, I have a master's degree and some called cognitive systems engineer, but no business No, no marketing, no accounting. No, say none of that's. So all that is, is stuff that I had to delve into, and learn the school of hard knocks really, and quite, quite frankly, I stumbled sometime, but you learn failure is that great opportunity to learn. And I learned that. But the biggest thing was that as as I mentioned earlier, was that lack of camaraderie of being that team of having my team, my people around me. And I'm very fortunate, I have a great family, I have four kids, and they were all at home when I retire. So I've always had my own little tribe, so to speak, and my own family, but it's not the same thing when you're out there in the business world. And I really, really missed that. But that was the biggest challenge. And then understanding some of the differences in civilian culture as a veteran, you know, four years at West one, which is the military academy, 20 years and active duty. My entire adult life was deeply steeped in military culture, and learning that sometimes people communicate a little differently in civilian world, learning that people don't have that where ranks on their shoulder or their collar like like you do in the army, and understanding that how civilian companies work. Those are the biggest challenges that I've struggled with.

Stephen McLain: 9:04

No, that's great. Thank you for sharing that. And of course, you know, on the finance leader podcast, a passion of mine, and I know a passion of yours, is talking about leadership. So one of the things I wanted to ask you today is why is learning leadership important? Or why would learning leadership be important to a new a want to be Team Manager, particularly in finance and accounting, where we normally would focus on becoming a technical expert and not necessarily on our leadership ability, but please tell us what you think about about learning leadership and why that's important to a team manager out there.

Mark McMillion: 9:42

Great question. technical expertise is always important, no matter what field you're in, so I don't ever want to downplay that. Too many times, leadership, people talk about leadership as if it's some magic potion. But if you don't have an underlying technical expertise, you're too aim is going to understand that you lack that technical competence. So I don't want to downplay that whatsoever. But we'll take that as a given. But the end of the day, companies, nonprofits, they're groups of people working in concert working together to get things done, whether you're an accountant, whether you're a CFO, whether you're the Comptroller, you've have to work through other people. And that's what leadership enables you, those are the leadership skills. That can mean that clarity of communication we talked about earlier, the idea that when you communicate with some, you appreciate their emotional state, you appreciate your emotional state, to enable you to influence them positively. And to get things done. Unfortunately, what happens is when you enter that, when you enter that company, that that entry level, and that we're technical competence is everything. As you move up the corporate ladder, you have to learn as people skills. And if you don't start learning them as you go, you're going to run yourself up to a cliff. Well, not Yeah, Cliff, but you're at the bottom of the cliff. And you've got to figure out how to get to the leadership top that cliff. And that's a steep steep climb. But if you do it as you go, you're going to set yourself up for success in the future.

Stephen McLain: 11:21

No, that's great answer. What the the other follow on that, to that I think you answered it started, the answer was that one of those future impacts on leading learners leading leadership now can help with your career in the future?

Mark McMillion: 11:36

Yeah, exactly. And what you're gonna do, and remember, leadership's about building relationships, fruitful relationships, relationships that go above and beyond, Hey, Bob is see at the watercooler every morning at the coffee machine, where when you develop those relationships, those are the things that help you elevate your game, help you elevate other people's games, and you help other people get better. And they're gonna appreciate that as you go.

Stephen McLain: 12:07

You'll absolutely you also talked about the difference between a successful leader and not? So what do you think is a difference between being a successful leader and an unsuccessful one? And then what kind of advice would you give to that new team manager out there to start to achieve that long term success? And I'm particularly interested in what kind of tools you could give to a new manager? And then where should they focus when they probably most of these managers don't have enough time? To really, to deal with all the tasks that they have to deal with? How can they what kind of tools out there?

Mark McMillion: 12:44

I get asked that question a good bit by by people, potential customers, other people just interested in leadership. The things that I emphasize, especially for young leaders is time management, you have to lead yourself before you can lead others. And that ability to focus to achieve clarity in yourself is critical in order for you to achieve clarity with others, and that communication, good communication. So many times I see leaders stumble, because they don't communicate meant one of the two key giveaways that I hear when I talk to clients. Well, he should have known that. Or the leader will say, well, everybody knows that. Typically when the context was when one of their employees makes a mistake. And when I hear those two phrases, those are red flags for me, where that leader is not doing a good job of communicating. They're assuming someone knows a standard, someone has something in their experience. We're not all the same. And that difference in backgrounds and experience. That's what makes us stronger. When a leader communicates really well. And by the way, let's remember communication is not always about transmitting. It's also about receiving a good listening is a nother key leadership skill that you develop, wherever you are, whatever level you are, where you learn to listen to people hear what they're saying, and not just think about what you want to say next. And I know I

Stephen McLain: 14:20

definitely think all of us are a little guilty of that one. I had mentioned, as I introduce you to into the podcast, and you also talked about some of your clients, but companies reach out to you to give internal trainings to speak. To give assessments. You are asked to teach about leadership and team culture, trust and many other critical topics on developing effective teams in your assessments. What do you consistently see on why teams are not effective and what are often the first actions that leaders need to do to correct that issue?

Mark McMillion: 14:56

I don't mean to beat a bit a dead horse but community occation communication, communication, it all starts with communication. That's the first thing I talk about. When I create a program of instruction for a company, it always starts with communication within that within that, though, is also the necessity to set clear priorities. When leaders don't set priorities, I use a visual, I have a slide that I like to throw up, and it's got a picture. The first picture is a stagecoach with six horses just gallop. And you can see they're just flying or everybody's moving in the right direction. That's a team with good clear priority set by the leader. The second picture is a wagon wreck with horses, and they're all tangled mass. That's, that's what a lot of teams look like when leaders don't set the priorities. Because you know, this person pulls this way this person pulls that way. And even if it doesn't result in a wreck, the idea is that when you have members of your team pulling in slightly different directions, you may still go forward. But you're not gonna go forward at full speed as you can when everybody is on that same sheet of music, and they all have those clear cut priorities. So prioritization, I think is a really underrated leadership skill that many people overlook.

Stephen McLain: 16:16

Yeah, so what's a great tool in order to get everybody on that same sheet of music or that same priority? What's a great tool that leaders out there can do or use?

Mark McMillion: 16:25

Well, I know as a finance guy, finance, people are very attentive to the numbers to KPIs yet leading indicators, lagging indicators, and whatnot. Those are helpful for the leader. And honestly, sometimes leaders don't understand the numbers as well as they ought to. So while you're maybe a finance leader, you may be talking to the CEO or the business owner about things. Those are the things where you can help that person understand what's driving what a leader has to understand if the leader isn't asking the question. And this is kind of part of what I call leading up. Sometimes leaders are not asking the right questions. And that's where when you see things very clearly, you can help them focus themselves. By leading up asking questions, you don't tell your boss what to do, of course, right, that doesn't work. But what you can do is ask questions, and help lead their thinking to the to what's important. And priorities are, what are should be what drives your numbers to make things happen.

Stephen McLain: 17:30

Nope, completely agree. I like that. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, you have several books that you've written and are in publication, one of my favorites that I've gotten in read, it's about conducting effective team meetings. This is a particularly sensitive topic that I see all the time I see it posted on LinkedIn, and other social media, about why can't we have more effective team meetings. So tell us a little bit about that book and some of the key points and where an organization can have an effective team meeting? Because I think it leads back to communication and clarity that you had talked about earlier.

Mark McMillion: 18:12

It really does. It really does. In fact, I wrote that book out of frustration, because I sat through, as I like to say, 1000s of meetings. I'm not sure that how much of an exaggeration that is over time. And what I saw was, I thought maybe that was an Army thing. And then I started going to some business meetings. I see. It's everywhere. It we had the pandemic of bad meetings before we had COVID. But the bad meetings, those are leadership problem. I I'm glad you gave me a heads up and I brought that with me. But that communication, it it takes discipline, Jocko willing says, discipline sets you free. And what he is talking about, and I really love his work, is the idea that you set those clear boundaries, and you stick to them. So everybody says, Well, you know, to have yeah, having a good agenda. Well, yeah, of course, you have to have a good agenda. But in the book, I talk about having a pre meeting instructions. And that's where you tell people, hey, when you get here, this is what we're going to talk about. We're not going to sit around the table waiting for you to read up and do your homework. Before we discuss it. That's waste everybody's time. So here's what I want you to do to prepare for them. I want you to do your homework before we come together. So we're not figuring things out and catching up with everybody where we show up. We're well versed in the topic and ready to go. The second piece that see people come up short in meetings, is what I call pinning the Rose who has responsibility for what so we talk about an issue we thrash it out, we look at the different sides. And then at some point you got to look down the table say, Lisa, I need you to take the lead on this You have this, you take this. And then I guess the set the column as well like Parts A and B, but the next step, and then the way ahead, and that way head combined, kind of ties back to what we talked about earlier with leaders intent. You know, this is where we're going, this is the destination. And that's for this project for the company, for the crisis does your, whatever you're doing, the leader has to figure out, here's where we're going. The next step is the very next thing we're going to do. So as you finish your meeting, you go through the topics, the task says, Hey, Bob, you have this, Lisa, you have that, Joan, you get this. So everybody has a rose pin, and we know exactly who's responsible for those tasks, then we say, here's the next step, it may be another meeting in a day while they go work on those things. It may be maybe waiting for someone to get something else done to trigger the next action. But it's a very concrete step, you can't do out all the steps. That's not reasonable. But you can get that next step. You can iron that out and let everybody know, everybody's on the same sheet of music. And then you have to weigh in and say, remember, folks, this is where we're going. We want to be we want to prepare to deliver product in time for the Christmas shopping season. So we need to have the prototypes, all that stuff, user testing all that completed about one November, so we're ready to mass production, or whatever the timeline might be.

Stephen McLain: 21:32

Yep, no, I like that. I think one of the other parts of conducting a meeting is decide on a meeting versus just an email, I see that a lot on again on posted on social media is like, Hey, I just sat through a meeting where we probably could have just done it, you know, a phone call or an email. I was. So what's the so what's the real trigger? To have a meeting, we've gathered people away from their day, to set aside and discuss something versus just putting something in an email and maybe a quick discussion or a phone call? What's that? What's that trigger? That we we grab people out of their day to beat?

Mark McMillion: 22:18

That's a great question. And that's addressed in the book as well. But the idea, why do we need a meeting? Somebody says we need to have a meeting. Okay, well, let's let's stop and think about that and say, Well, why do we need to have a meeting? Are we just sharing information, then that's not a meeting, a meeting should be you come together, and you exchange information exchange, you should be duking it out a little bit, there should be a little bit of friction and conflict, you know, argument about what's the best idea, hey, what are the costs, if we do it this way? What's the what's the benefit if we do it that way, and that exchange of information, that's for meeting. Now, I'll also tell you the one exception to that there are times when a leader needs to talk to everybody. And it's, it's not necessarily that interchange. But you know, that's like a town hall meeting and the idea when when something is happening, or a big event, or maybe it's the holiday break, the leader just wants to talk to everybody all at once. But generally speaking, we're talking about smaller project style level meetings. The idea is, do we need people to bring things if not, let's just put it in an email. Let's distribute it out there. And I know people sometimes suffer from email fatigue. But when you make this practice, when you set this standard in your organization, when you bring the discipline to bear, people will appreciate that. And people will respect that. And they know that you're not sending emails out willy nilly, and you're not CC and everybody just because, yeah, that question is, is there interaction required? If there's not interaction required, then you probably don't

Stephen McLain: 23:58

need a meeting. Right? Exactly. And I, and I mentioned the word email, you know, a lot of companies now are using other technology, you know, like, Microsoft Teams, or, or some kind of other type of technology instead of just an email, but, but it's anything that can capture the information that you need to share instead of gathering everybody together out of their day. There's one other issue with regarding the meetings and that's, I've often got called to meetings when we just want to get aligned. And I think that's a habit of some people that they just want to meet face to face and get aligned on a topic. And they'll usually throw a 30 minute meeting, grab people to just kind of like, talk go over a topic. But the problem with that is that when you start to get into that habit of wanting to just have a meeting to get aligned, you start to see your calendar filled up with a lot of these types of meetings. So what what's a good way to avoid You're constantly filling up your calendar with these 30 minute alignment meetings. Because alignment

Mark McMillion: 25:05

is so critically important. And that's that's what makes priorities matter is that's what priorities is they help you get aligned. Somebody is hand holding, you know, where a leader is, thinks everything's going wrong. When you work for someone like that, that's where you have to be a little more aggressive and push information to them. But just have just thrown in a 30 minute meeting, a little catch up or whatnot, is not, I don't think that's useful, and it's not necessary. What is important is to have in Progress Review set, and to identify those milestones in the, in the course of a project or a plan of what you're doing. The idea that, hey, we're going to we're going to meet this, but it can't be all the time, it should be designated and planned out. And really, barring some major change, you know, some change in the environment, or the operating systems or whatever you're working in, you shouldn't need that when you've set those clear priorities. And a leader can do that, instead of calling for that meeting. Just to touch base with your people, one on one could be a phone call, if you're if you're not, if you're remote or not physically together, faced, I'm a big Africa face to face. But those are also opportunities for that leader to, to touch base with you to build those individual relationships with their people. But just call them people together to make the leader feel good. That's a bad move. That's a bad move. And in lieu of that, is a leader can go and visit individuals.

Stephen McLain: 26:45

You know, completely I don't know how I like that. No, I like that. That's a great answer. I think we need to have fewer of these alignment, on particularly small issues, I think it goes back to leaders intent. And if you have the big picture aligned, I think you can get the other smaller issues aligned a little bit better. So yes, yes. So thank you for taking us through, I want us all out there to have a little bit more effective team meetings, because it's all about preserving our time and focus. And so we focus more time on creating value, leading our teams, instead of just going to another meeting where we could, you know, easily have accomplished the same thing and an email or a quick phone call discussion. So I like that. One of the other things that I wanted to talk with you today is that you and I have a partnership through finance leader Academy, where you offer an on demand self paced course that can help people deal with conflict management, and particularly for public facing employees. Now, I believe this is a key leadership issue. And this is why I wanted to host it on finance leader Academy. This training was designed and recorded during the COVID pandemic when you're all wearing masks. But I think that this is still relevant today. There's still a lot of tension, and a lot of issues facing our public facing employees. And and that's why I think it's so important. I think that those employees who have to face the public on a daily basis, have to deal with a public that's tense with it's dealing with still dealing with the after effects of the pandemic, or even dealing with economic issues, like loss of job or even inflation that we're dealing with right now. So can you please just take me through the course of why you felt that this course needed to be offered that I remember the reason going back why this was so important to you that you wanted to share this type of training?

Mark McMillion: 28:57

Yeah, yeah. One, I am so glad that we partnered together on that. I love that we were able to do that. And I appreciate your help, because you brought some stuff to the table that I could not get done on my own. So huge. Thank you for that. So yes, sir. And COVID My daughter was working in a grocery store. She was a frontline employee. And she was given no training, no guidance because no one knew and no one was dealing with the problems and stresses. But I'm sure you remember where you were. There are people mask no masks, why aren't you wearing a mask? Why are you wearing that stupid mask and just emotions? Sadly, our society just keeps escalating going up in stress. It seems like and you know, so a lot of talk this year about inflation has been layoffs, there's hiring there's the Fed rate mortgage rates going up. The stress is not going down in the world around us. So I think it's imperative the leaders learn the conflict management skills that we talk About in that course, a lot of it comes down to emotion to applied emotional intelligence. And there's a lot of models of emotional intelligence out there. But I simplify, I am very much on the side of pragmatism, I want to know what works. I like theory, I love talking about theory. But what works out there? First of all, is you got to understand yourself, you have to understand your own emotions. Why am I angry? Why am I irritable? And when you start doing that, and I give some, some ideas and some techniques to help, check in with yourself about where you are. And just acknowledging those emotions and bringing them to the front of the brain and said deep down inside that, they call it the amygdala, the reptile brain. But you bring those that let you deal with them, and you can mitigate and compensate for them. You know, I had a bad morning. My alarm didn't go off, I slept late. The dog got as leave and run the dog down, bring him. So I'm kind of hurry, Scurry. And I'm at work. Like, if I just stop in a parking lot outside the office and say, All right, all right. Crappy morning. We don't share this with everybody else. And just acknowledging that that sets me up for success going in. Because we've all we've all worked with people when they have a bad day, they think everybody should have a bad day. No one likes that. No one likes that. The second piece is understanding when other people are having a bad day. And realizing you may be all happy, happy, happy. But they're having a bad day. You come in at this level, and they're down here. There's some conflict there. How do you navigate that? And that's the essence of that book, is how do you recognize that and other people, and then how you navigate that? What are some things you look at some things I talk about our tone of voice, some of the things I talk about our body language, and not talking about micro expressions. And if you saw a TV show a few years ago lie to me, which was very entertaining. But it was a TV show. But I'm talking about some very obvious things you can look at and understand and evaluate where people are. And that changes how you may approach them in the moment. And that's what that whole course is about. And we tried to build it, we broke it down into small episodes. And we tried to make it so it was easy to digest right on your cell phone. And that's where we are with

Stephen McLain: 32:25

that. Yep, absolutely. So I know you're originally designed the course for those, again, for those public facing employees. But I believe that the same principles can be applied within our corporate teams, our teams that have to deal with, you know, the stressors, of everyday work, and dealing with each other and everything, I think those same principles that you cover in the course, can also help with everyday teams and doing the work they're trying to get done. Absolutely.

Mark McMillion: 32:56

In many times customer service is focused on the public facing, but the reality is, in any company, you have customers within your company, whether you know marketing has to talk to operations was estopped, to shipping, all those people are have to work together. And there's conflicts in everlean. Why did they do that? What were they thinking? So there's the you get to the root cause of that, of course, you want to learn and that almost always comes back to communication. But you also have to deal with it in a moment, when the guy comes and says, I just got this, this is ridiculous, I can't believe let's deal with that in a moment. And those skills are so critical. And it turns from a confrontation, where you're butting heads to you, there are ways you can signal to someone, hey, I'm not here to fight, I'm here to get to a solution. And it's amazing how the other person could transform. And they're way up here to just fabricate. And once they see that you're not ready to fight, you're ready to work. They can come down so quickly, so quickly. And that's what conflict management is really about getting things done.

Stephen McLain: 34:12

I completely agree. I think this is this topic of this type of training is really lacking out there. So I think this could really help a lot of our leaders, especially our first time leaders and and first time managers out there and this is probably a skill that as you rise the corporate ladder, you go from manager, Senior Manager to director to VP that you'll be able to use those same skills and understanding emotional intelligence and how that applies. To be able to manage the conflict that's within your own team. I saw I think this is a great course. We have it on finance leader Academy and like you said it's easily digestible on the phone. But thank you Mark for putting that putting that course together and I think it's would be a really good value add for Are any of the teams that are out there, whether you're public facing or not. So I really appreciate that.

Mark McMillion: 35:06

Conflict is everywhere around us. And it seems like sometimes you can't even go to the grocery store and not eat. There's there's that risk of encounter. And it doesn't have to always spiral up, it can level out and be dealt with in time and place. Yep,

Stephen McLain: 35:24

yep, completely agree. Mark, thank you so much for joining me on the finance leader podcast, hey, please tell us where we can find your resources and where, where a company could reach out to you if they wanted to bring you on to, to conduct a conference or training or an assessment?

Mark McMillion: 35:43

Sure, thank you. My website Macmillian leadership.com as MC million like a million dollars, million leadership.com is the best place. And there's a Contact page there along with reviews about training speaking, as well as some of the writing I do. The books I you know, there's an accompanying book on de escalation, conflict management that's available on Amazon, all my, my writing is available on Amazon, here's the meeting book as well. And on Amazon, it's available in Kindle format, or order hard copies like I have there. That's the best place I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm very, I'm an avid LinkedIn user, I love the platform. And then I write it's behind a paywall. But medium.com is I do a lot of essays and shorter writings, very much to the point. But there's a lot of leadership stuff on there that I put out as well. So those are the three ways the website, my website, LinkedIn, and medium.com are the three best ways to find some

Stephen McLain: 36:46

Mark, thank you. Again, I'll make sure to add the link to your website into the episode show notes. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate all of your systems and your input today. And I really think what you talked about today is really going to help the community of finance and accounting professionals and leaders that are out there. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Mark McMillion: 37:07

Well, thank you, Stephen. I love what you're doing the fire. I love the niche. You're carved out with finance leaders. I think it's overlooked. I think people look at finance too much as bean counters when they're people. And they're part of teams. I think you're doing some great work. Great service to the community. Thank you for having me.

Stephen McLain: 37:24

All right, thank you. Now that was amazing. I had a great time interviewing mark for the podcast. He has a real passion for helping others and believes how important learning and applying leadership is in every organization. Also, his insights on conflict management are so crucial, because we all have to deal with adversity, stress and conflict continually. I hope you enjoy the finance leader podcast, I am focused on helping this community become more confident finance leaders capable of transforming organizations. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helped you today, please share with a colleague and leave a quick review. And until next time, you could check out more resources at finance leader academy.com and sign up for my weekly updates. Don't miss an episode of the podcast. And now go lead your team. And I'll see you next time. Thank you