The Discipline Protocol: Self-Leadership in the Age of AI w/ Dusty Holcomb

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:01.229)
AI will not replace leaders. It will expose them. Welcome to The Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building your future. I am your host, Michael Salomon. Today's conversation is not only about AI, it's about something more fundamental. Because in a world that is accelerating, right, where technology is moving faster than ever, the real question is not can you keep up, but it is who you are becoming while you try.

Dusty Holcomb (00:29.614)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:30.577)
My guest today is Dusty Hobcom, former CEO, five-time Ironman. Right? I heard that about you. We'll probably, we'll ask you a few things about that. And Dusty, welcome to the Human Protocol.

Dusty Holcomb (00:46.562)
Thank you so much for having me. And I love the way you framed that just in the, in the very kickoff is that, you know, AI won't replace the leaders, it'll expose them. And I might even say that it will sharpen those leaders who lean into what I believe AI can bring, which is the ability to sharpen thinking, move faster, but only for those who are willing to grow and change and then deploy new skills that they may not have.

have used quite the same way. So thank you so much for having me today.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:18.459)
Yeah, it's a pleasure and thanks for taking the time to be with us. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. You know, because I know you don't talk about leadership just as a theory. You're also very passionate about talking about leadership as a discipline, right? On, you know, discipline something that we repeat on a daily basis that we earn it. And for our audience to get to know you a little bit more, Dossie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? And I'll let you go as personal.

as you want it to go, okay?

Dusty Holcomb (01:49.056)
Awesome. Thank you. And, you know, I think this idea that leadership is a discipline was rooted for me when I was a very young child. And, know, when I was in the fifth grade, you say, go personal, when I was in fifth grade, my parents pulled me out of school and said, Hey, we're going to homeschool you. And so all of my primary education was based not on structured process of learning, but it was instead based on basically giving me a free range and a library card and saying, Hey, go learn.

Go study, do whatever it is you want to do. There are some gifts that came from that. there were also some challenges, you know, I didn't have the formal structure of learning mathematics and things like that, but what it did and it is it ignited within me curiosity and it allowed me to explore things I was passionate about, which was specifically history and learning about what other people thought and how they thought about the world. And, that I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I was just exploring whatever was interesting to me, but

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (02:21.531)
Mm-hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (02:48.15)
My life has been built on this precept of learning and curiosity and how do we get better at what we do and hone a craft. And then I got tucked under the wing of a retired Colonel when I was 20 years old, who taught me the most important and valuable thing I've ever learned about leadership, which was the simple idea that leadership is not about you. Leadership is about ensuring that those you serve are successful within their roles.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (03:11.377)
Mm.

Dusty Holcomb (03:17.888)
And that when you lean into that and you embrace that as a core first principle, what you really do is enable the organization to succeed because you're putting the success of those in those most important roles before your own. It's not about you. It's about them. And so my entire leadership journey, you know, I've spent 28 years as an executive, 15 of those years as president or CEO. And my entire leadership journey has been around this core

first principle belief that leadership is not about me and how do we ensure the success of others. But that means you have to be disciplined. That means you have to be focused. That means you have to be relentless in your pursuit of growth and knowledge. And I'll just leave it with this as a little background on myself. love this idea of leadership is not a, you're not born into it. You're not like giving fairy dust when you're born and say, hey, you're gonna be a leader.

Leadership is not a learned behavior. It is a learning behavior. And I think it's an active, tense, continuous process of evolution. And I think that that is the most important thing that a great leader or someone who aspires to be a great leader can fully embrace. And I think that the overlap between that and AI and all the things that are going on is this beautiful playground that we have right now to continue our learning so that we can become better.

So that's a little bit of my background. I didn't go to school. I had to learn, went to school with hard knocks, but I was curious and learned how to think. And that's probably the greatest gift I've ever been given.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (04:55.151)
Yeah, thanks for going over all that. I think especially in these new times with AI and where we're heading to the future, this type of mindset is really what's going to set people apart, right? We don't know everything. But as far as we are coming with an open mind, right, embracing that maybe a challenge that we see now, it may be an opportunity in the future, then we may be getting ourselves up to great things in the future. for

Dusty Holcomb (05:16.526)
Mm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:24.315)
for the sake of this conversation that we're gonna have today, and especially in times of leadership. we first connected, you mentioned something to me that caught my attention, which is leadership begins with self-leadership. And when you mentioned that to me and said, yeah, this is probably what we need to talk about, kids, you don't teach leaders on how to be...

the best leaders they can be. mean, there are trainings and a lot of things, but for the most part, leaders, they learn on the job, right? And they keep learning. But when you mention and when you talk about self-leadership, what does actually that look like on a good and on a bad day?

Dusty Holcomb (05:58.712)
Mm.

Dusty Holcomb (06:11.074)
Yeah. I love the way you just frame that that good and bad day is such a good dichotomy. So this, this idea of self leadership is an understanding that in order to create an opportunity to have influence and impact on another person, you must have clarity for yourself of what is important. You must be aligning your behaviors to that sense of purpose or that sense of direction that you've created. And then you have to execute.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (06:15.197)
Hahaha

Dusty Holcomb (06:40.842)
in accordance with your beliefs, those core beliefs. And so the idea is that self leadership is leading yourself first so that others can be influenced and impacted. And here's what it looks like. When you have taken the time to make the decisions you need about what's important and align your behaviors to them, on a good day, it shows up where the things that you say and the things that you do

are aligned and so that reinforces accountability and trust and authenticity because you were showing up in a way that matches your words. So leading yourself is setting that standard and then following it with discipline and process. It doesn't mean that it's easy, but it means that you do the hard thing because you've decided that on a bad day, you are the classic person who says one thing and does another.

And you know, there's that huge disconnect. I'm sure you know, people like this, like they're really good at saying, do as I say, not as I do. And there's just this, there's this huge disconnect. And so we, as people who are led by people who don't have that internal self leadership, the discipline of actually being the person that they say they're going to be. When they don't do that, we don't trust them. We don't respect them.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:43.035)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dusty Holcomb (08:02.912)
We don't follow them. In fact, what we do is we, you know, obligingly go along to a minimum standard because we know that they're not, you know, they're just, they're stuffed shirts. They're not the real person, but that leader who actually behaves in a way that's consistent with the words that they share and, and, and are clearly investing in how they lead themselves.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:16.934)
Hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (08:28.706)
man, that's the person you follow. That's the person that you give discretionary effort to because you believe in them. You know that when they say something, they'll do something. And so self leadership in a very, very simple manner is articulating what's important, leading yourself to that path, and then executing in a manner that's consistent with that. Good days, they honor that. Bad days, yeah, you fall short. And we all fall short, right? The difference is the person who gets better.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:57.755)
Yeah, and you know, especially when your leadership, not everything, it's black and white, you're gonna have good days and bad days, and you're gonna have very bad days where you need to make decisions. And how are you gonna lead people through chaos and through challenging time if you are chaotic yourself, right? It's like, that's why this conversation is so important, because it has to start with you. And you cannot be the best leader.

Dusty Holcomb (09:14.638)
Yes, correct. Amen. Amen.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (09:26.833)
if you're not the best leader to yourself, right? How are you going to lead others if you're not able to lead yourself in a way that you're disciplined, that you know what needs to get done, that you recognize your, you know, your shortcuts and also the skills that you bring to the table. So, yeah, I like this approach to make you think about really self leadership starts with you.

Dusty Holcomb (09:30.818)
Mm-mm.

Dusty Holcomb (09:52.108)
It really does. And this idea that in order to do this, you have to be disciplined about setting aside the time. And it doesn't have to be like you need to go away for a week and sit on a mountain with a journal and drink special spring water. It just means you need to build into your life daily processes of identifying what's important, how you want to show up and then go doing it. know, allowing yourself to navigate the chaos because it's always going to be there.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (10:03.281)
Mm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (10:18.831)
Yeah, always going to be there. And you cannot predict when it's going to come. When the bad times are coming, it just happened out of the blue. And people are going to be looking at you for answers. And that's the part of leadership that sometimes people don't think about. It's not all the shiny and fancy stuff and title and, you know, and money that comes with it. It's really what happens in behind the scenes. It's a lot of stress, a lot of

Dusty Holcomb (10:30.936)
Yes. Yes, they are.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (10:46.191)
you know, making the best decisions that you can do for your people, for the company with the information that you have at hand. it's not easy to be a leader. It's not.

Dusty Holcomb (10:57.774)
It is not, and most people aren't taught leadership. They've moved up into roles. They've been successful in their role. And then they're given a role that has a leadership capacity and component to that. And so they have to figure it out. In fact, one of the things that, you know, when I work with leaders and this is, you know, from CEOs and senior executives, and as well as leaders who are emerging into their core competency and expertise as leaders.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:06.47)
Mm-hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (11:25.614)
Is to remind them that the thing that got them to the place where they were successful is not necessarily the skill set and capability that is needed at that next role, specifically around leadership, right? Because, know, an individual contributor who grows up through the ranks and is promoted, they're promoted based on what they've done and all the skills, talents, and expertise that they've had, they got them the promotion are not necessarily.

the things that are going to be sick, keep them successful in their new role. So they have to work on themselves. And that's the art of self leadership.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (12:00.837)
Yeah, it's like when you get promoted into a leadership role, basically we're given an opportunity, hoping that you have the basic skills needed to continue to grow and develop what needs to be developed to be a great leader. Right. It's like I'm giving you two cents, you know, I'm giving you an opportunity, hoping that you're going to become the leader, because no one is ready. Right. No one is at the beginning.

Dusty Holcomb (12:17.293)
Yes.

Dusty Holcomb (12:29.9)
No, no one is and you know, there's a reason that imposter syndrome is the number one challenge that senior executives and CEOs speak. mean, the amount of times that I've talked to a CEO or an incredibly successful person, you know, and I feel fall prey to this same mindset myself is you talk to them and they go, I don't belong in the room. Like I don't, I don't, I'm not qualified for this. I don't.

I don't deserve to be here. And it's because the little voice in our head says, I'm not prepared. I'm not good enough. And it's so common. And this idea of self leadership says, okay, the way to quiet that voice is to do the work on myself so that I feel like I deserve to be in the room. But knowing that if I'm in the right room, I'm

always going to be stretching. I'm always going to be a little bit out over my skis. And the most successful leaders that I know that I have learned from aren't the ones who feel the need to have all the answers. They're the ones who are comfortable knowing and saying, I don't know the answer to this. What do you guys think? And then when they do that with their teams, man, they are bringing all the folks into the room and they're they're making missionaries out of them.

not mercenaries doing the minimal viable work. It's it's magic when it happens, but you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't call out like for anyone who's listening, if you feel like you don't deserve to be in the room or you're having, you like you're challenged this imposter syndrome, it's the most normal thing in the world. It's, and it's the, you every person I talked to at a senior executive level, if they're not a raging narcissist, they had that same challenge.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (14:18.417)
At the end of the day, we're human beings making decisions with human problems, right? And there's no way that you can know what to do in a specific situation if you haven't experienced that. And for the most part, what leaders go through are new experiences and new challenges to them. So what we do, right, and what leaders do, it's through, you know, surround yourself with the best people that you can that can augment the skills and the knowledge and,

Dusty Holcomb (14:22.946)
Yes, yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (14:47.887)
help you to make those sound decisions that you need to make from time to time based on the data and the situation that you have at the time. But no one will be ever ready 100%, Asti. It's like that's not going to happen.

Dusty Holcomb (15:03.83)
It's not possible. so what you have to, instead of saying, instead of what you doing this place where you feel like you have to be ready for this thing, you're actually preparing yourself to be ready for that type of decision or that environment. I don't know what thing is going to come up tomorrow, but if I have installed the right frameworks and thinking discipline, then I know how I can respond. so when I, when I think about self leadership, it's like deciding in advance,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (15:19.877)
Mm-hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (15:30.754)
what's most important and how I'm going to respond to situations is way more important than trying to figure out the answer to a specific situation. Cause I can never plan for all those things. But if I have my core ideas and philosophies locked in, I know that I can navigate them.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (15:45.115)
Yeah. And you know, at the end of the day, with everything, experience matters, right? We're not going to lie about this experience really matters. The more you get experience in handling people and situations, even when you don't know the answer on when something is new, you have, like you say, your values and processes locked in on how to handle a specific situation. But this conversation, it's really also important for those

Dusty Holcomb (15:51.331)
Mm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:13.613)
young leaders getting started right now. Right. And I'm curious to hear from you, Dusty. When you started your leadership journey, right? What did your younger self really misunderstand about leadership that you can share with us?

Dusty Holcomb (16:14.776)
Mm.

Dusty Holcomb (16:31.886)
Okay, I'll be super raw and vulnerable here. When I started my young career, I was so goal-oriented and so task-focused that I was not aware that I was leading people in the process and that I needed to bring them with me. Instead, I was so focused on pointing out where they needed to be and where we needed to go. Frankly, I was a bit of a jack, you know what?

Because I was so focused on here's the target. Here's what we're going to do. Go do it. Yeah, no matter what. And I had someone on my leadership team. God bless them. They were so wonderful at giving me this. They worked for me, but they were, they gave me the best advice ever. We had finished a, a weekly staff meeting.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (17:05.326)
getting things done and achieving the goals no matter what.

Dusty Holcomb (17:24.59)
And they came to me after me said, shut the door to my office and said, can we talk? I said, sure. And they said, I'm 24. So at 23 years old, I was hired to relocate a call center from one city to a very small community, hire everyone. was the only person that moved. at 23, I was hiring 350 people building out this entire operation. So I, you know, I was very blessed to be able to do that, but I was also, like I said, a bit of a jerk. And so this person shuts the door to my office and they said,

Can I tell you something? said, sure. And they said, dusty, you're a Jack, you know what? And I went, well, please tell me more because that was never my intent. I didn't want to be a jerk. And they said, you are so focused on getting things done. You've, you have forgotten that the people that are here with you, they want to get these things done too, but they don't want to be numbers in the machine. They want to be part of the operating, you know, culture here. And the specific example was I had our

staff meetings at Monday morning at 730 AM at 731 AM. I locked the door. You know, I was so focused on getting the things done and you know, the locking of the door wasn't the problem. The problem was, is that at 731, I started right into results and I didn't ask a single person. How was your weekend? What's important? What's going on? And they, this person gave me that feedback. And when they did that, like my eyes opened that I was leading people.

I was leading humans that had lives and I knew that I cared. It's not like I was an uncaring jerk. I just didn't think about how much it mattered. And so that was my biggest aha. Again, 24 when someone had the courage to call me out. And you know, that was one of the many gifts I've been given in my career.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (19:12.207)
And you know, those type of moments are important in part because you allow that to happen. So it's for leaders listening and watching, it's important to be able to put you in a place that you allow people, your people, ones reporting to you to make you see things that you may not be seeing, right? Because sometimes leaders, just close the door down and they just don't care about what anyone thinks about them. But those

feedbacks are the one that makes you also better leaders because it makes you realize, you know, the things that you may be lacking or the things that you may not be doing well. And it helps you to, should help us to become better leaders that way.

Dusty Holcomb (19:56.782)
It absolutely should. You know, if I could go back to that 24 year old self and give myself any advice, it would be at this point, start practicing a process of reflection to learn. Like I did it, it was organic, but it wasn't intentional. And you know, I've over the last 25 years or so, I've really focused on

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:00.506)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:14.897)
Hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (20:21.062)
learning and curating a skill of intentionality, intentional reflection, intentional learning. And, you know, if I could go back and tell that 24 year old self, start the process of building the journal to learn from the insight, to do the one new thing that you've learned this week about yourself and your leadership. And, you know, it took me a number of years later and some other mentors before I started that practice, but I think that's the most intentional.

process of learning that a leader can deploy and it applies whether they are leading a team for the very first time or they're the CEO. You must curate a practice of intentional reflection so that you can sharpen your own sword and get better at what you do because our job is to improve our craft. And the only way to do that is to take the time to pause and go, what did I learn? How can I be better? What do I want to do differently? And then deploy those

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:57.541)
Mm-hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (21:18.43)
actions into your active processes. And when you do that, I mean, you're leading yourself. And when you do that and you do that well, the people that it benefits are those that you lead.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:30.053)
Yeah, and there's no other way of you becoming a better leader if you don't become a better human being. If you don't grow from the inside, And people notice people see our leadership style, the actions that we take, the way we talk, the way we lead. And all that comes from really from within all that comes from the work that we put in.

Dusty Holcomb (21:39.128)
Yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:55.867)
to become better person and consequently better leaders, right? Because what we do on the personal side, it just transfer to the rest of our life, professional lives, et cetera. And it all comes back to the discipline, right? Looking at repeating and going through very disciplined steps on trying to become better person and better human beings.

Dusty Holcomb (22:21.4)
Yeah, it really is. it doesn't have to be, we often use this word discipline as punishment. And we have to think of discipline as this thing that's a punishing, we have to do it. Well, no, it's the process of choosing what's most important and then just following the process. it doesn't have to be seen as punishment, but it's like the word criticism. We see this word criticism through this lens of negativity. We see the word discipline through this lens of negativity.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (22:27.801)
Mm-hmm

Dusty Holcomb (22:50.632)
And I believe both of those things are actually more of a crucible where we are removing impurities and we're getting a pure, better version of ourselves. So thinking about discipline, thinking about criticism, thinking about feedback, it's the opportunity to remove the impurity that allows you to have a more human connection, a more real alignment with those that you lead and those that you serve. And, know, when you do that and you do that well, it creates this

continuous loop of self-improvement and leadership impact. And, you know, I've got examples like we have had to do that for myself in my own personal life and, and how those little things show up. Like you mentioned Ironman at the beginning, like you don't race an Ironman race because you just wake up one morning and decide, Hey, that looks like fun. Let me go do that. You do it by getting up and doing the effort sometimes that you don't want to do because you know that when you do it, you'll be ready for this event that you've, you've signed up for.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (23:41.393)
Mm-hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (23:51.662)
And, I think that there's so many ways that we have to reframe the language to instead of thinking about it through this negative lens, we think about it as an improvement lens, an opportunity to get better. And so the idea of discipline for me or the idea of criticism is an opportunity to improve myself for the effect and impact that I can have on others.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:16.481)
and it's looking at discipline as being part of who you are, your identity, right? Then it does not feel like it's a punishment, as you were saying, right? When you start putting in practice and developing action that makes you better, it becomes something part of your identity of who you are. Then it doesn't become or feels like, my God, I have to do this, right? That we humans are always pushing

Dusty Holcomb (24:23.309)
Yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:46.106)
back again. my God, I have to do this. No, just, it comes naturally. Yeah.

Dusty Holcomb (24:51.118)
It does. And I'll give you a recent example. like at the intersection of AI, like where we started off our AI can sharpen us as leaders. like many people, I struggle with the, being caught in the gap. There's a wonderful book by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy, called the gap in the game. And I, because I'm so goal oriented and outcome focused, I can live in the gap. can be so focused on where I'm going that I forget.

turn around and look how far I've come or how much I've accomplished. And, you know, as we record this, even yesterday, at the end of the day, I've looked at, I felt like I had spent the entire day running in mud. And I'm sure you've had those days and, and, you know, your audience, everybody has these days where you look around and you go, what on earth did I accomplish today? Did I get anything done? And there's nothing more demoralizing, right? It's certainly not for me. And

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:43.354)
Right.

Hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (25:48.29)
You know, the quick reframe that I was able to do last night when I was just doing a quick journal and I use my own, I built an AI chief of staff, that I, I, you know, record my thoughts into, to sharpen myself. It's like, okay, I'm going to do a gain assessment. Here are the seven or eight things that they actually accomplished today. And then I started talking about this, you know, as I recorded this, this little transcript, I was like, wow, I actually got a lot done today.

actually improved. And so my little AI chief of staff, you know, comes back and says, and it's, knows this about me. It has this, you cause I've given it my own, fallacies and it's like, wait a minute, this is great. And here's how you lock this in. So it actually helps prompt me, encourage me so that I can have a circuit breaker between a default operating state. And what is it that I can do that will show up the best way? Because if I hadn't done that, I probably start this morning frustrated.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (26:25.521)
You

Dusty Holcomb (26:46.784)
out of sorts, not ready for the day, thinking about all the stuff I have to do as opposed to platforming up from what I did accomplish. So a little example of how we can leverage some AI technology to help us sharpen using what I believe are core self-discipline skills.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:05.424)
Yeah, it's definitely a multiplier, right? AI as a tool, as a technology, it's really reshaping our lives. And when you use it wisely, it goes from leaders to individual contributors. think everybody should be getting on board and start leveraging AI to help us, right? To help us not only to do more with less, but also to...

to be better organized and try to multiply and build more impact as I see it.

Dusty Holcomb (27:42.818)
Yeah, I agree with you. And I like to think of AI. I think we have to lead AI processes and tools the same way we lead people. And it's like we have to think about it the way we lead people. And if we do it right, it makes us better leaders of people because the human is more important than ever. But when I sit down and work with an AI tool or an AI process, I'm thinking about like, if I'm managing a team member, I need to make sure that they understand the vision. Where are we going? I need to make sure that we are clear.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:51.226)
Mm-hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (28:12.504)
clearly articulating what great looks like, defining the outcome that we want to achieve, giving clear guidance and instructions and guardrails to operate within. And I think when we think about it, I actually think, I love your word, it's a multiplier. I actually think it can be an exponential tool set for us because we get to practice leadership skills in how we show up with the tool that allows us to actually make those locked in operating paradigms within our own daily

work so that we do it better for people because the I believe firmly that there's five core questions that a leader should enable their team to answer when the leaders not in the room. And those questions are really simple. Number one, why are we here? What's our purpose beyond making money? Question number two, where are we going? What's our vision? How are we going to get there? What does the culture look like? Question number three, exactly how are we going to get there? What's our plan?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (28:59.696)
Mm-hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (29:09.23)
You know, what is it that we're going to do to make this vision a reality? And the question four and five are where I find most leaders and specifically many companies really fall off the mark, which is question number four. How do I fit in? And so when the person can connect their work to the meaning, the purpose, the vision and the plan, suddenly what happens is they know why they do these things. They know why it matters and they don't just do the minimal viable effort.

What they do is instead is deploy their own self into the job. They become the, the cathedral builder, you know, versus just the simple stone mason, because they can see how it fits. and then the last question, and I think the leaders, you know, really have to think about this is how do we connect the dots so they can understand what's in it for them? Because if we're not doing that, we are by default, you know, it's making it all about the work and not about the person.

So I think when we think about those things and those questions as leaders, what ends up happening is we lead ourselves better, we lead our teams better, we lead with tools better, we get to practice every day with what we do.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (30:20.645)
Yeah, all those are very valuable insights. And it made me think while you were touching on one of those, it's, well, how do you stop being the one doing everything? And I think that's a challenge, Dusty. I faced it myself. I'm getting better at it. But it's hard for multiple reasons, especially if you're coming from an IC, spending years as an IC.

and being good at what you do, which is getting things done, getting into a leadership is not more about you getting things done. It's more about leading people to get more things done, right? And especially when you are kind of getting started on leadership, I know a lot of young leaders are probably facing this challenge. It's how do you transition, right?

Dusty Holcomb (31:04.536)
Yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:18.487)
into just leaving your old self back or, know, leave it in the back and then transform yourself into this new leader that needs to get the best out of your team.

Dusty Holcomb (31:32.398)
Okay. I love this. And let me just say for anyone who's listening, that's a young leader or, you know, a senior leader, the single most common, challenge that I hear when I work with CEOs and senior executives is delegation. Like people not being good at understanding how and when to delegate and how to follow up and all of this, like people take on too much. And the default state is.

Well, I'm the best at it. I'll do it. And how do you get rid of that? How do you get rid is the wrong word. How do you not let that be an anchor to where you've been and get better at getting these things off your plate and making sure the right work gets done? And so the first thing, you know, as a framing question that I encourage folks to think through is as a leader, your job is not to ensure that the, that the work you do, the work your job is to ensure the right work gets done.

And your job is to ensure that everyone understands the outcomes. Why is the work being done? What does great look like? What does success look like? So as a personal practice, you know, in that daily discipline process of leading yourself, what I like to look back and recommend, and I did just this just last week with the CEO, we're walking through his calendar because he was frustrated. And I said, I want you to start a practice at the end of every day, just doing a quick look at your calendar.

What one decision, what one action, what one output did you do today that could and should have been done by someone else where they would be better for it? They would be the better person to do the work. They would create a better outcome. Why is this on your plate? Because what happens is we can't solve all these things with like a silver bullet and a magic bell and all of sudden, you know, life is perfect. We have to

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (33:16.337)
Mm.

Dusty Holcomb (33:28.695)
build on it every day. So looking for one thing every day that you did that could or should be done by someone else where they will do it better because they're closer to the customer, closer to the problem, closer to the opportunity, or it's an opportunity for growth. One of my mentors, when I was griping about delegation a number of years ago, they said, well, Dusty, do you care about your people? Well, he knew it was a trick question. It was a trap.

For me, I said, of course I do he goes. Why are you stealing the opportunity for them to grow by holding on to things for yourself? Talk about a gut punch you're right

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (34:02.107)
Huh. wow. Wow. Yes.

Dusty Holcomb (34:10.369)
You have to reframe when you reframe delegation to instead be a lens of I'm the only person that can do it. Poor pitiful me. Nobody does it as good as I do. And instead you reframe it to through this lens of why are you stealing the opportunity for someone else to grow and do it better? You suddenly start finding ways to get rid of stuff and it's a simple practice. I do it once a day and here's the thing.

This is again, you can use this as an AI process. When you capture that thing, the follow up question is, so what are you going to do? So this CEO I was working with, we talked through his day, I could do that. We walked through his calendar and he showed me a couple of things and said, okay, good. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do? Like it doesn't matter what we talk about. It doesn't matter how good we are at, you know, self discovery and journaling and all that stuff. If we don't turn it into a concrete

action step, then it's all just bluster and noise. So we say, okay, I'm going to take this conversation and I'm going to, instead of owning it, I'm going to deflect or I'm going to say, I would like for you to handle this. Here's what it looks like. Here's what great looks like. Let me know what questions you have. And so doing that simple process once a day.

what one thing could or should have been done by someone else where they would have been given the opportunity to grow. And then what are you going to do? Like that sets the stage for an action tomorrow. And so like I might come to you and go, Hey, you know, yesterday we were talking and I took this process on. I realized that I'm not the best one to do that tomorrow. Let's do this. Like instead I'm going to let you handle this. I'd love for you to come back to me and show me how, how I might be missing because you're better at this than I am.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (36:00.325)
Yeah, and I know it's for people listening or watching, it may be something hard to let go at first, but eventually we'll understand that everything we do in leadership, it's really to create capabilities in others, right? If we go into leadership thinking, hey, we are the smartest person in the room, then we are setting up ourselves for failure.

because that's really not what leadership is about. It's really about creating capabilities, developing others, and making sure that you make the best decisions that you can with information you can and with the people that are surrounding you to make those decisions. And it's hard. I'm not gonna lie to you. The beginning is hard to let go. You being that great person, achieving and executing tasks. This is a totally

Dusty Holcomb (36:50.797)
Hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (36:57.627)
different role. This is a totally different profession. It's kind of, you know, not all, it's not about you. It's about the team that you're building and creating those capabilities and enabling people to continue to grow.

Dusty Holcomb (37:12.769)
Yeah, I could, I couldn't agree with you more. And you know, this idea we have to get used to or be comfortable with that it's not about who is right. It's about making sure we define what is right, what great looks like, and then orienting people towards that. One of the tools that, that I helped leaders walk through, and I'll give this as a gift for your audience. It's a process of creating a draft of your own rules of engagement and where you sit down.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (37:39.834)
Mmm.

Dusty Holcomb (37:42.156)
And you, take, can be done in an hour or less, but you actually write out how you want to show up, like setting kind of your own charter as it were. And it's really, it's very intentional. It's very curated. Actually have my book coming out later this fall on this process. And the first step is, you know, like identifying your leadership values, like what's important to you. And, know, depending on your stage, it could be growth. could be learning. could be mentoring. It really depends on where you are.

The second section of this and the rules of engagement is capturing what you expect of yourself. And the reason I think this is so powerful is when you write down what you expect of yourself and then you share it with another person, you're inviting them to give you feedback when you violate your own rules because your rules of engagement are not about how they have to follow your rules. It's for you taking the time to

capture and codify for yourself what's important so that you can have others help you follow them. And so this whole process walks you through again, it can be done in an hour. and I'll, when we wrap up, I'll, I'll tell folks how they can get it, but it's a, it's just really, whether you share it with anyone or you just do it for yourself, it's this really powerful process of taking the time to get clarity so that you can then show up. And it's, it's like, once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. starts a flavor into your language and how you show up.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:44.433)
Hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (39:09.163)
and it's, it's been an absolute game changer for leaders. I've, I've used this process for 20 years and now I have, you CEOs who have gone through the process and now make it a standard operating procedure with their company, the whole company, you know, leadership team builds their own rules of engagement and they share them. But it's the simple premise. I'm, I'm going to write down what's important to me. I'm going to share it with others.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (39:31.813)
That's awesome. Yeah, thanks for sharing. We'll be making sure that we share that also when the conversation goes out. And it is important, right? And I think sometimes also, Dosti, some leaders may think that delegation may be seen as something negative. looking at them, hey, you're delegating, you're being lazy. But people know, our people know, it's when you're delegating because you want to make people grow.

and when other leaders are maybe delegating just because they don't want to do anything. That you know, we know. There are those cases, right? I agree, agree. Dusty, I would like to get next to a segment where we're gonna discuss what is it gonna take to lead humans in really in the age of AI, Especially with AI.

Dusty Holcomb (40:06.349)
There's the difference.

Yes, yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:29.733)
being embedded more and more into our daily jobs, daily processes, daily lives, right? So how we as leaders, we can create clarity when we don't have all the answers, right? Because really AI and the future with it, no one knows what's gonna happen. We're gonna be making decisions as we go, roles will be evolving.

But how can we navigate as leaders the best we can with our people understanding where we're heading towards if maybe we don't have all the answers right now?

Dusty Holcomb (41:14.667)
Yeah, I love this. well, we're never going to have all the answers. It's kind of like we're never going to. And the age of AI is a different presentation of information. And, know, 25 years ago, whenever it was, we started the information age or, we the access to all these things via Google. And you, you remember how mind blowing it was when you could open up your Google or Lycos or whatever your browser was and ask any question, you could start getting information. We had to.

figure out what was important. You know, in the age of AI, think the real core skill here is to leverage our human capability for logic, for understanding what's really important and what's not. And I think AI can be incredibly overwhelming. You like you can go create this massive 30 page document that no one other than the AI agent is going to ever read. Instead, start thinking about

What is the right question to ask? What is the unique human component of what I have, what I know? And you mentioned this earlier, you know, we all have unique experiences. have gifts that have come to us through our experiences. It's our experience that allows us to ask the right questions and then leverage the AI to help us frame those and ask questions we wouldn't think about and how we do it. So I think the ability to

bring our best human selves to it and ask questions and engage with it is incredibly important. The other thing that I think is really, really important is the idea of what work is done that doesn't create value that can be automated. And how do we then automate the work so that we can deploy the thing that only the human can do? Critical thinking that has knowledge, skills, and capabilities, and an understanding of the...

the emotional quotient that's involved. And I'll give you an example. In preparing for this podcast episode, I have a entire agentic process that gives me the research I need to read a brief. So there's a process that goes out and it builds a preparation brief based on our last conversations. All of that's packaged up for me. Now I can't have it build my script or my playbook because I have no idea.

Dusty Holcomb (43:34.338)
what you're going to ask or how this conversation is going to flow. But what it does is it helps me prepare so that I can be the most human in the moment. But if I went and did all the research or had my assistant go do all the research to prepare, that could take hours of reading and summarizing and trying to figure it out. So leveraging tools to do the things that don't create the value so the human can create the value. So the human can really do the thing.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (43:35.889)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (43:42.619)
Hmm.

Dusty Holcomb (44:03.949)
And so I think there's so many examples of that of ways, especially in today's world where we can start using the tools to surface patterns that allow us to make different and better decisions, the surface patterns that allow us to ask different and better questions. and I was working with a leader yesterday and he mentioned, Hey, we, was able to use Claude cowork to go unlock something that we've been trying and wrestling with for three months. It's because the tool could consume a massive amount of information.

do pattern recognition and say, this is what's coming up. What do you think? And he could go, holy crap, I've never looked at it that way before. Here's some other questions I can ask. So I think when I think about AI, this intersection, it's leveraging our most human skills, discernment, the ability to leverage our skills, talents and expertise against a problem, and then use the tool to outsource the non-value added activity or to do the pattern analysis.

that allows us to make a better decision. That's where my head is right now, but it's evolving so fast that it's amazing to see what happens.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:08.545)
It is. It is. And I love that example that you just provided right now, which is even though when you did not know what are the questions that were going to be asked or how this conversation was going to go through, at least you prepare yourself with information and maybe patterns and you try to connect the dots and the tool allows you to get to that. So you could have some

base level of understanding of how things could go, right? Based on the pattern recognition and what the tool does that is very good at connecting dots, that's finding information and giving you some examples and clarity on how things may go.

Dusty Holcomb (45:42.359)
Yes.

Dusty Holcomb (45:56.364)
Yeah. And so like my brief was, you know, I had it done a week or two ago and it let it said, here's two episodes to go listen to. So I could prepare mentally, but then also I could reread the brief this morning and go, here's some patterns to look for. And I think that that's the thing that we have to be careful for or careful with as we use these tools. It's because we can surface so many patterns. We can create so much.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (46:06.117)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (46:10.203)
Right.

Dusty Holcomb (46:25.005)
complexity in our work. And we forget that, you we're human and we need to distill to the simple, we need to distill to the essence. And so I constantly have to ask my tools, my processes, what is the one thing and I love the Gary Keller book, the one thing you know, it's like, what is the one thing that by doing would make everything else unnecessary or easier? Okay, what's the one pattern I need to pay attention to help me see that.

because we could come up with 20 patterns and a 20 page document and nobody looks at it ever.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (46:59.695)
Yeah. And that's how things work, right? It's just focus on one thing and then execute and get it done. If you try to come up with multiple things at once, you end up sometimes not doing anything at the end of the day. Yeah, exactly. So I think we will all be in there done that type of thing with this. Dusty, I...

Dusty Holcomb (47:16.535)
Guilty, so I have to watch you protect myself from myself.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:29.091)
I want to ask you one question to get into the final segment of our show, which is one question that I always ask every single guest on the show. Okay. But it's one question, but intended to multiple, two different groups of, of human beings. It's four or five. So I'm going to ask you the same question, but it's going to be for four or five different groups of people. So what would be your piece of advice to

regular individuals, just going through this period, trying to find what I'm going to do next, especially with AI, getting more and more and shaping and reshaping our future.

Dusty Holcomb (48:17.697)
piece of advice that comes to mind is we often spend all of our time thinking about what we need to do. And I think instead we need to think about what are the right questions to ask. Like if we can become exceptionally gifted at asking questions that expose information differently, what we unlock is unique

answers because we're the only person that might be able to ask that particular question and I think that that's going to apply in this current age and the next age, you know in the prior ages the ability to connect the dots and ask good questions is far more important than being good at a certain skill in the moment. The skill in the moment is the thing that you need to do today. But when you get good at asking questions you learn how to

develop the next skill that's going to be necessary for success.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:22.585)
All right. Your piece of advice to leaders. What do they stop doing right now and what they should start doing immediately?

Dusty Holcomb (49:33.358)
Stop doing right now is letting the complexity of the day consume every second and reacting to whatever the world is coming at you with the start doing right now is setting aside a brief five or 10 minutes at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day to be intentional about what is most important.

to reflect on what is the single most important thing that I'm going to accomplish today, and then at the end of the day, how did it go and what one thing did I do that I should or could delegate to someone else to enable their success? I think if leaders do that and do that one thing of an intentional practice of preparing and closing a day, the compound effect of that is monumental. Every day you're gonna get better.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (50:30.063)
Okay. To companies, what would be your piece of advice to organizations, especially when, what are they getting wrong about people as human beings?

Dusty Holcomb (50:40.717)
This one's easy because it's an area of particular passion for me. I think companies tend to devolve to focusing on the task and the outcome and miss the opportunity to connect the dots between the work that's being done and why it matters. And I would say that if companies could deploy a capability in their leadership cadre to be exceptional at connecting the dots, what they will do is they will

unlock and tremendous amount of stored organization in their organization, in their companies that is buried because people are doing the minimum based at a task level as opposed to understanding why the task matters and, how they can make it better. So if companies could, if I could wave a magic wand and give any company a single skill, it would to be, it would be to enable the leaders in the company.

to be exceptional at connecting the dots at every level so that people doing the work can understand why the work matters.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:44.687)
All right. And to people building AI systems, AI solutions, what should they never forget about what human beings means being human?

Dusty Holcomb (51:59.234)
think that people should never forget at the end of the day, the human capability and human quotient is to see information that doesn't exist and connect the dots between emotions and meaning and purpose and data so that people and leaders can actually choose the right thing because it's not black and white.

and AI can help us surface all amounts of gray and all these patterns and all these things, the human needs to be able to make the decision and know and trust their own instinct when the AI is not right or when the AI is slightly off target.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:45.115)
Yeah, thank you for that, Dosti. I also think that we need to keep fighting for keeping us humans in the middle of all this conversation and what this type of conversation is looking for to bring in people. So I do appreciate you taking the time to be with us. It has been an extremely insightful conversation about leadership and probably

We will have to have a second round in the future because there's a lot more that we can discuss and go hours and hours. So I appreciate you, my friend.

Dusty Holcomb (53:17.357)
Oh, you're quite welcome. And I, feel the same way. could go for hours with your questions, which are so insightful. Um, if your audience is interested, you know, in doing that work on themselves, that are rules of engagement and crafting that, um, the gift I would give you is if they go to my rules of engagement.com, they can download the playbook and inside that playbook, give a, uh, disc assessment for a personality profile index assessment.

that normally when I'm working with clients, it's a $500 assessment. It's a free gift within this because I think it's so important for people to understand how they show up so that they can communicate more effectively. So that's part of the process and it's my gift to you and your audience.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (54:01.921)
thank you. That's very kind of you. I'm gonna make sure as well that whenever, I think this conversation is going two weeks from now, so I'm gonna make sure that the link and all this information is there so people can take this very important assessment and know a little bit more about themselves, right? Because we always need to know more about who we are. yeah.

Dusty Holcomb (54:25.847)
We do indeed.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (54:27.717)
So thank you everyone. Thank you, Dusty, one more time for being with us today. And remember that this conversation is really about becoming better human beings, better leaders, right? And discipline is not about control. It's really about alignment. It's about who we are and who we want to become. And if this conversation sparks something in you, make sure that you share it with your friends, with your family, with your loved one.

This is the human protocol because the code may change and will continue to change, but our humanity is the constant. Thank you everyone and talk to you next week. Thank you all.

Dusty Holcomb (55:10.766)
Thank you.