What if Leadership is Just Navigating Through Fog? with Pete Behrens

The fastest way to break a great technical team is to promote your best individual contributor and then pretend leadership is “common sense.” Jay Johnson sits down with Pete Behrens, an engineer turned leadership coach and author of Into the Fog, to unpack why so many new managers underperform within a couple of years and what to do differently before the promotion happens. 

We dig into the real difference between leadership and a leader title, and why influence without authority is the skill that predicts success. Pete shares what he looks for when considering someone for management, plus concrete ways people can practice leadership right now: guiding decisions, running better meetings, pulling quiet voices into the room, and creating alignment around a shared purpose. We close with the fog metaphor: leadership means moving forward into uncertainty, and the hardest fog is often the inner fog between our ears, including blind spots, ego, and imposter syndrome.

If you enjoy conversations about leadership development, engineering management, organizational behavior, and leading through change, subscribe to The Talent Forge, share this episode with a manager you care about, and leave a review with your biggest leadership lesson from the last year.

About Pete Behrens: Pete Behrens is a speaker, author, and coach who helps leaders navigate uncertainty when the path forward isn’t clear. An engineer by training, Pete spent the first half of his career solving technical problems before discovering that the most complex challenges aren’t technical at all—they’re human. 

He is the CEO of Agile Leadership Journey, where he works with leaders and organizations facing uncertainty, change, and growth. Pete's work is grounded in a simple belief: leadership isn’t about having the right answers, but about the curiosity to ask better questions, the courage to make difficult choices, and the willingness to move forward without certainty. 

He is the author of Into the Fog: Leadership Stories from the Edge of Uncertainty, a collection of honest, story-driven reflections on what leadership looks like when clarity is elusive. Pete also speaks internationally and hosts the Relearning Leadership podcast, blending practical insights, vulnerability, and real-world experience.

Connect with Pete: https://www.agileleadershipjourney.com/

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Jay Johnson 0:38

Welcome to this episode of The Talent Forge, where together we are shaping workforce behaviors. My name is Jay Johnson, excited to host today, and our guest is Pete Barrens. Welcome to the show, Pete.

Pete Behrens 0:50

Thanks, Jay.

From Engineering To Human Systems

Jay Johnson 0:51

So, Pete, uh, obviously you've got a book into the fog. You've got a lot of experience in the leadership development. I would like to start. How did you get into this space? What brought you into this uh domain?

Pete Behrens 1:06

Uh if I want to use a confession, it's failure. I actually started out as an engineer by training. And most of what I focused on is technical problems. And as an engineer, we're trained to optimize for efficiency, whether it's a parking lot and trying to get more cars safely through a parking lot or an elevator bank and get people up and down, or in my case, a lot of computer systems, database systems, fast retrieval systems. How do you optimize that? The challenge is as I continued in my career into tech leadership, I started to realize most of the problems that are most difficult aren't technical. They're human. And that started to intrigue me. And long story short, it put me on a journey that started to realize organizational systems are likely the most challenging, complex systems we have. So if I look at what I do today, I still look at myself as an engineer solving complex problems. Leadership, if you think about it, is an engineering problem to a degree. What are we trying to do? We're trying to optimize a people system to get the most value at the least cost in the fastest time possible. And that's in and of itself an engineering kind of optimization problem. So that's what I do today is focus and help leaders navigate this very complex terrain of human development, human interaction, collaboration, competition, all of those things in order to deliver more value for our customers.

Why Top Performers Fail As Managers

Jay Johnson 2:41

Okay. So I'm going to share this with you. I have no engineering background, but I have been teaching in the engineering management master's program at Wayne State University for over a decade at this point in time. And part of it was, as I learned with my behavioral science background, helping them to connect with people and to elevate was a great spot to be. Now, this is a challenge that I've seen. And I think this is going to resonate for any of the technical audiences out there, whether you're in HR, whether you're in management or anything else. A lot of times, especially in a technical organization, what we see is somebody is really good at the technical side. So, of course, what do we do? We promote them because we don't know how to actually elevate somebody's career other than making them a people manager after they've been an incredible individual contributor. So we promote them. And oftentimes, and this is, you know, well documented by Gartner and by everybody else, you know, more than 50% of the managers that are promoted end up seeing is underperforming in less than like two years, partially because it's a very different skill set to manage people than it is to manage technical systems or processes or anything else like that. How did you make that transition? What did that look like in your world when you went from probably a very, very uh incredible technician to being an incredible leadership person?

Pete Behrens 4:11

Yeah, well, you're well positioning the problem. And that is when I went through this journey, I had I'll say zero training and leadership. You get some communication training, some hiring, firing kind of training, communication 101. But to be honest, not leadership. What does it mean to manage and lead people? And that's a human discipline. So you're right, it's a very different landscape. I'll often say we're incredibly scrutinized in getting our job inside of a company. And there's resumes, there's interviews, there's background checks, there's all of these things to get a job. But think about the scrutiny it takes to go to a leadership position from that job, almost zero. And yet we have zero competency in that job we're being promoted to. There's zero support once we get there. So, what I find is my journey of struggling and failing and refailing over and over again and looking back at what I see as a stumbling leadership career, I see over and over again today in all the leaders we work with. It's not something that organizations and the senior and the HR divisions and organizations are giving enough credit to what it takes to truly be an effective leader in that sense. And so, especially from a technical perspective, but this is true in every discipline, doctors becoming leaders in a hospital, or lawyers becoming leaders inside of a law firm, the same problem exists. We take an expertise and then we start to layer a people on top of it, and we just become dictators, we become micromanagers, we just haven't been taught other ways of working.

Jay Johnson 5:58

And it's so true, and I see I agree with you. I see this in pretty much any industry or anything else. You you mentioned healthcare, and we often see some of like the top level, um, you know, the top level leadership just completely lost and going, okay, well, you know, yesterday I was making rounds with you know my team, and today now that team, I'm their boss, and I'm not making the rounds anymore. It is, it's a very different skill set. So from my question, and where where I want to see what your thoughts are on this, is you're right. You get you're good at the job, you get promoted. There's no sort of like barrier to entry other than being good at the individual contribution. What would you be looking for if you were leading an organization? What would you be looking for in that person that you'd want to promote into engineering leader or management, you know, management position for leadership? What are some of the things that you'd be watching out for?

Pete Behrens 6:56

Maybe I'll share a story. Uh I was uh engineering leader and and I had a system administrator. Basically, it means they managed a lot of the technical infrastructure for IT. And the this system admin was a great technical person, no doubt about it. And he kept wanting the job of manager. And I said, prove it to me first. And he's like, uh I can't do that until I get the position. And I think this is where we start to run into a catch-22. Do we need the position to be a good leader, or do we need to be a good leader to get the position? What chicken and egg, which one is it? My philosophy and what I've seen and what I look for in other leaders is demonstrate the competency. And this is where we say leadership, the ship, the act of leading, is something anybody can do in any position, regardless of where they are, inside or outside of work, you can demonstrate leadership. What is that? Simply aligning people towards a common purpose. That's it. Influencing others towards a common goal. Leader, on the other hand, that's a title. That's a position, that's an authority, a status. The problem is if we learn leadership after we get the leader title, we often aren't very effective because we start to depend or leverage that title. So we're influencing not because people want to follow us, we're influencing because we have the power, the authority, the status for others to obey us because they have no choice. So that's the first thing I look for is that awareness and ability to influence others from wherever position you're located.

Jay Johnson 8:37

Well, and what you said there is so smart because when we're thinking about the ability to influence others, influence does you can influence people extrinsically. I can give you a promotion, I can fire you, but that's not the kind of influence I think you're speaking to. You know, from that leadership perspective, it's about helping people find purpose, or it's about helping people be able to feel a sense of belonging inside of a legacy or inside of a larger impact or feeling connected. What does that process look like in helping a manager? Let's say, you know, for the managers that are listening or the leaders that are listening, you know, you identify and say, all right, I've got to, I've got to be looking for people that can build influence or that can actually align to a particular purpose, goal, et cetera. How have you seen training them, supporting them in that process if they're feeling like, well, I've got to be in the position to have that leadership title? What does that pro what does that conversation look like? Because I can imagine that would be a fun one to have.

Practicing Influence Without Authority

Let Go And Grab The Next Rung

Pete Behrens 9:41

Well, yeah. You know, you look at as a system, I'll go back to my system administrator. There are so many things we can lead besides people. We can lead decisions, we can lead technology, we can lead projects and programs that do include people. There are so many ways that leadership shows up, just in a meeting, facilitating dialogue, pulling people in that maybe aren't talking, pushing back on people that are being too bullying in the meeting, like small little micro aspects of behavior that demonstrate that concept of influence and position and alignment. So that's the first thing that I would recommend starting to look at with somebody who doesn't manage people per se. But to me, the biggest barrier is our own awareness, right? What's between our ears. We need to start to realize there's opportunities for leadership all over, right? There's opportunities with your kids, there's opportunities in on the little league field, there's opportunities in a city council meeting. There leadership isn't constrained to work. And what I often will talk about is you can develop leadership competency in all sorts of ways. And specifically, when we start thinking about that technical understanding to the next step, what does that mean? What does that step look like? And often people say, Well, I gotta let go. I gotta let go of this thing that I'm doing. And that is true to some degree. As an engineer, if I'm coding, okay, I've got to start to let go of that coding in order to help others get into that coding. But what I find is that when a leader lets go, they feel lost. It's like, okay, now what? And then they act like I would call a helicopter parent. They come in and they hover and they micromanage because they have nothing else to do. So the next thing I'll say is you got to grab the next run. You can let go of this one, but unless you grab the next rung, you're gonna constantly be in this micromanagement mindset. What does that next run look like for you? Is it strategy? Is it process improvement? Is it a new technology? Is it something else in the organization that's catching your attention? Is it people management? Figure something else out to do that your people that your people aren't doing. That's the key we find is what's after the letting go that we find to be so significant.

Identity Loss After Leaving IC Work

The Soft Skills Pushback Problem

Jay Johnson 12:12

I love that. And I like that sort of analogy of letting go, but making sure you grab that next rung because I think that that is important. It's like, all right, I'm stepping out of the individual contributor, but what am I going to be known for? Because, and this is something here like we build a reputation as a contributor, and then that becomes a part of our identity. Like Jay is the go-to person in uh lean. If you need something lean, you go to Jay. And now all of a sudden, I'm not doing the day-to-day anymore. So I'm losing a part of my identity. I I want to dig into something else here. You know, in addition to grabbing that rung, I find, and and correct me if I'm wrong, maybe this has not been your experience. I find in a lot of the technical fields there's almost like a stigmatization of soft skills, quote unquote. And I am using, if you're if you're just listening in, I'm doing air quotes, soft skills, which is the people skills, which is the leadership skills, but um, it seems like there's almost like a pushback, like, oh, there's we can just solve this. And I'll share a quick story on this, Pete, but I want to get your take on this. You know, I remember I had worked, I was working with a highly technical organization, and one of the guys, of course, was just like soft skills that's BS. I'm like, all right, here's the deal. You get to pick your team of five, I get to pick my team of five, and we're gonna have a competition and building a tower out of the materials that I brought here. If you can beat my team of five, then you don't have to participate in this conversation. You can go have the rest of the day off. But if my team wins, you will be here with a notepad, sitting and taking notes in awe of soft skills. What's the deal? And he's done, done. Picks his best team. We destroyed them both in height, speed, and everything else like that. And it was funny because afterwards he was just like, I had the most technical people here, and I wasn't, I there was no possibility of us losing this. And I was like, and what happened? He's like, we started arguing with each other, we started getting each other's way. One of us had a a direction, and it was such, I mean, like, I wish I could have planned this. It was completely ad hoc, but it was just it was telling that the the resistance, let's start with the resistance to soft skill development or leadership development when we're in that technical position. Have you experienced that? What does that look like for you? And how if you help people maybe navigate away from there?

Pete Behrens 14:43

Well, first of all, I went through that trough of denial. Uh I saw soft skills as weak. I saw soft skills as many technical leaders do. Uh, it's okay, but over there, this is what's important product, service, technology, whatever it is we're doing, that's more important. I had to learn the hard way, as you're describing. That's not how it works. And unfortunately, today, I would say our brotech culture propagates this mindset that the soft skills are to be put aside. Study after study, whether it's MIT, HBR, Harvard, they will show you whether you talk about it as collaboration, whether you talk about it as connecting, whether you talk about it as a male-female construct of you know, power and engagement, assert and accommodate. There's there's all sorts of language around this. Study after study shows if you don't have those connectors, those accommodatives, those people who are the glue between the team, the team suffer.

Jay Johnson 15:52

Yeah.

Power Styles And Balanced Leadership

Pete Behrens 15:53

And this is still not understood well, especially in our technical leadership realm. And it's something that I had to learn the hard way. Now, for me personally, what happened was my partner, Janna, is on the soft skill side. She was trained in psychology, she's a human connector, she is like the epitome opposite of me in terms of that mindset. I always saw her softness as weakness, my assertiveness as strength. I've had to learn humbly over time, there is strength in her softness, and there is weakness in my strength. And it's the combination that blossoms awesomeness. And this is true in an individual leader. Give you one example. We teach a construct called power style. Now, I could come across as assertive as I'm doing now, very forceful and confident and coming forward with authority. I could also say, hey, I'd like to hear your thoughts, Jay, on this and be accommodative and approachive and open-minded. The best leaders are constantly like on a bicycle in those two realms, not flip-flopping, but like on a balance board, just constantly in this assertive accommodative spectrum. That's where the best leaderships emerge. That's what research tells us. What's fascinating is this is something teachable. But the problem is we're not aware of it, or leaders aren't aware of it. So our job is mostly awareness and then activating it. But once we activate it, it's amazing what it can do to your performance as the leader.

Jay Johnson 17:36

It's so true. And I mean, the example that you give really rings true. One of the things that we talk about is finding balance. Now, I know that I'm in a soft skill world as uh a behavioral scientist, but I also study psychology, neuroscience, and uh neurobiology and everything else. I'm very data focused, I'm very logic, I'm very logic-oriented, I'm very research and solve the problem. And what I ended, so like I'm I'm a little bit more of the harder side of soft skills, potentially, like, give me the data, I want to see this. But something that you said triggered that sort of data. Daniel Coyle of the Culture Code talks about the connectors and you know, talks about a study that they had done where they sent in a researcher as a confederate to go in and just disrupt the groups. And there was one group that wasn't disrupted, and it was somebody that had that heightened level of just human empathy and connection. And even the researcher that was sent into sabotage was like, I found myself just wanting to follow this person. I want, like I was laughing. I couldn't do my job in sabotaging because I was just like, you know, you're right. Let's go with that. So I do find it really interesting that that sort of human element, that personality element, this quote, soft skill element, literally can make or break a technical team, a social work team, a retail team. It doesn't even have to be in the technical industry. So as as you said, there can be a lot of strength in the soft skill, and there can be a lot of weakness in the sort of over-assertive. Again, another lesson you you resonated with it. You hit me like right in the heartstrings with that one, Pete. So how do you help the shift to awareness? You said awareness is one of the biggest things because I I do think, and you said the brotec culture, or you know, anywhere else, you know, sort of that toxic masculinity and in a number of different fields. How do we get through to raise awareness? Like, I'll use one quick example of how I've seen it done. In an organization, they just kept paying people higher, higher, higher, higher, higher, giving them more benefits, more benefits, more benefits, and people were still leaving. When we did a quick research, uh, we did a survey alongside of some focus groups and interviews. Every single person was saying how they didn't feel connected, they didn't feel a sense of belonging, they didn't feel safety. And it was like, okay, you can pay as much as you want, but if I'm not safe, I'm gonna go find a different job. May not pay as well, but at least I'm going to be quote happy. And happy as a modifier, is a soft modifier for business, or at least it's perceived that way. How do you raise awareness to it? May not be all the technical pieces, it may be that human piece. Because I think that's a big challenge still, even in the highest technical leadership.

Virtual Work AI And The Ego Trap

Pete Behrens 20:37

Yeah, unfortunately, it's becoming harder and harder. Why is that? Number one, our technical world is becoming more virtual, and so meetings like this are more and more common, in which case we lose a lot of that capability, or we it starts to to compress into a small little window as we have here. So there's less opportunity to practice. And so that's that's a that's a blocker. And like, and I can see, I get the advantage working from home. I get the advantage of all those things we can do and those jobs that we can do those. At the same time, it's hurting team innovation, collaboration, and organizational development. Secondly, AI is making accessibility to knowledge infinite. We are all infinite knowledge beings, with you know, before it was Google, now it's AI, telling us everything we need to know. Knowledge isn't the barrier, it's understanding and applying that knowledge and interpreting it in a meaningful way in real time. That's the the hard skill. So what happens is it's a bit of a Dunning-Kruger effect, a bit of a uh I know, so therefore I am. The hurdle to get past this confidence that I know, so therefore I'm doing it. This is a false summit. We we see leaders who are saying, Yeah, I run team meetings. We're collaborating, we're connecting, but when you really look at it, what are they doing? The leader already has their mind made up. They're facilitating a dialogue that confirms what they already know to be true and and pushes back the things they don't. I did this as a leader. I thought it was collaboration, I thought it was connection. No, it was me simply behaving as if it was, but inside we got everything I. Wanted done. And that's what happens is we are so blinded to our own ego, we can't see this. We don't see this. So this is the number one challenge we have as educators, as coaches, as enablers of improvement is to get past this ego hurdle we all carry. Now, some leaders will tell me, Pete, I'm an old dog, not willing to learn new tricks. And I'm like, cool, you know where you stand. Doesn't make you like you're going to get better, but at least you're aware. The ones I worry more about, I think they're already there. That's the harder one. That's the one that you cannot, you know, you it's lead the water the horse. I am a good leader. I don't drink, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jay Johnson 23:28

Yeah. So I love this. I really like the distinguishing between knowledge and the understanding and the interpretation of knowledge. I I really like how you drew a uh a division between that because one of the things I talk about from a behavior, just because we know something doesn't mean that we're gonna do something. You we may know that we should have healthy whole foods for every meal. We may not we may know that we should get seven and a half hours. It doesn't mean we're gonna do it. We have to have an understanding of what the impact is, we have to have uh you know an interpretation of this is what happens, and the negative side of when I don't follow along with these. So I really like that in terms of behavior changes, getting from I know to I understand and I see how that impacts on a larger scale, or I'm I I can interpret this and and be able to draw comparisons or extrapolations from hey, when I don't get sleep, this is the impact of that, and I don't love that impact. So and I want to make sure that we spend a little time because I do have a question about the book. I want I want to know where the the title came from, but real quick on this last piece. Um that transition from understanding to interpretation, and I love what you said about like those that think they already know. I am a big proponent of coming in with curiosity. I don't always do that myself. Sometimes I fail, sometimes I'm like, I think I know, and then I'm surprised sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not so pleasantly. I really do try to work towards that curiosity space. How have you how have you helped people become, I'm gonna call it curious?

Pete Behrens 25:20

Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting in leadership. Most uh other behaviors, the mindsets we can shape. Curiosity is one that I'm not sure we can shape. I'm still on the fence as to is curiosity one of those things that's that's ingrained in some is the fixed and growth mindset construct that we get from Carol Dweck. And that's so critical. We we did a an AI study a couple of years ago, and AI was just popping out in 2023, and Chat GPT-3 came out for the first time. And we said, Oh, what's this gonna do? And can leaders get better with this? It boiled down to growth-minded leaders grew, fixed-minded leaders didn't.

Jay Johnson 26:05

It's so it's so uncomplicated sometimes.

Pete Behrens 26:10

And and you're right, curiosity is the core of a growth mindset, it's the awareness that I only know so much, and that that I've only got one perspective here, and I'm not sure, unless life throws you into that challenge space, I'm not sure it's teachable by an external person. It can be influenced, we can tease it. I can certainly bring, and I like you, I'm a data person and I love data, and we can bring data. I think people have to experience something different. And that's where I found most of the growth has come, is seeing it firsthand. And I think that's, you know, you get back to a lot of our core human challenges of bigotry and racism and other things. I think it's because of a lack of exposure. And so if we can get leaders exposed to things outside of their comfort zone, those are the things that will start to stretch and challenge their ability.

Into The Fog And Leading Uncertainty

Jay Johnson 27:15

I you are absolutely right. It's the exposure that really does shift our perspective and create a more diverse perspective. But I think the thing that you caught me with is I was thinking of you like at 21 years old, I thought I knew everything. Then I turned 23 and I criticized the 21 year old, like God, what a dummy. You know, then I got 25 and I was like, who is this 23 year old? Jesus, do you see what I was doing? And at some point in time, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say it was at 27, 9, 31, or anything else, it may have been mid-30s that I was just like, every time I think I've got it figured out, I realize I didn't have it figured out. So I have um I am adopting this. I don't know what I don't know, but I'm excited to learn it. And and to that point, is it does keep me a little bit more open, but I still even even now, I still even now, there's points in time where I'm like, am I certain of this in every context? Can I be curious in a different context? And that brings me a little to the space. So, all right, how did you get to the title of your book? I love it, Into the Fog, Fire Away.

Pete Behrens 28:24

Yeah, fog has been one of my favorite metaphors since teaching leadership and dealing with uncertainty. I I work in a space of agility and change. So I'm working with front-end leading organizations who are trying to innovate. And if you think about leadership, what is that? It it's, I said before, influencing others towards a common goal, that's fine. But it's also taking us places we've never been before. Management is to manage things we already know. Leadership is taking us forward into an unknown space. That's inherently foggy. So this concept of fog is a metaphor for the uncertainty and change that we're going to experience. And what's fascinating about the nature, weather nature of fog is it's not something you can mitigate. You can mitigate snow and rain and ice and all the other things that apply in a weather setting. Fog, windshoe wipers don't work, headlights don't work, like nothing helps you except for maybe slowing down a bit, trying to pay more attention a bit. You've got to navigate it. So, this is the metaphor that I find sticks with leaders to say, all right, you are heading to a place we've never been. That's that's foggy. What do we do? Well, if we just speed through, we're gonna crash. We can't stop, we'll get hit from behind. So, what does this sense and respond look like in that world? What does it mean to make decisions, have courage when we don't have all the answers? That's the premise of Into the Fog. So these are simply stories over my lifetime, but a lot of it in my own leadership and consulting, but even as a child. What does this mean to make decisions when it's not clear what should be done, or there is no right?

Jay Johnson 30:09

I like this metaphor so much. And I think you're right, because we hear other ones where it's like leading when it's stormy, or you know, leading when there's sunshine and rainbows or whatever else. But this one really does stick. You're right. Windshield wipers are not going to fix it. Uh, turning on the high beams can even make it worse sometimes. And you have to know which tools to even try to navigate it, whether that's slowing down, whether that's deciding, hey, it's time to get off this highway right now because it's too dangerous, or hey, this is the time to you know just be on high alert. I I love that. When you are when you're thinking about helping leaders, and I and and your book's available on Amazon. I know that, yeah, and I'll ask you in a minute, uh, you know, where could could somebody find that or contact you? I think that when I thought about fog and into the fog, I thought about brain fog, honestly. Like it was just like the you know, the days that we have that so much stress, so much anxiety, maybe not sleeping well, maybe not doing the right things or whatever it is that we get foggy almost internally. I mean, there's an external here. Uh do you navigate some of those sort of internal aspects in the book about how do we how do we overcome our like self-doubts? How do we overcome uh, you know, the idea of um, you know, how do we overcome something like um imposter syndrome? And how do we overcome, you know, making sure that we're taking care of ourselves? Some of those types of things. Does that address in the book as well, Pete?

Pete Behrens 31:43

Absolutely. We have an entire section, we call it the inner fog. So you call it brain fog. We often think fog is an external event, something that happens to us. And that is true. Change happens, COVID happens, wars happen, uh, you know, trade tariffs happen, you know, things we can't control, market competition, etc. Those are fog-generating events that happen. Uh, divorces can happen, and deaths can happen, and things in our personal life, too. These are things we can't control that we've got to navigate. The thing is, what's often perceived as external fog is really think about the rainy day, and then the windows steam up from the inside. That's your inner fog. So we can't see in front of us, but we we're assuming it's something else, but really it's between the ears. And that's exactly what you're getting into. Blind spots, assumptions, our ego. These are all things we can manage and control with better understanding and awareness tools as you teach. And and so that is a significant portion of this book is choices I made where I thought confidence was competence, it was arrogance, it was naivety. And and sometimes that's helpful. It allows us to be courageous. You might get so woke you you're afraid to act, right? There can be downsides to to both of those. That's the fog that's in between your ears. Imposter syndrome and and those things you mentioned. Yes.

Where To Find The Book And Pete

Jay Johnson 33:11

That's super powerful. So I know you can find the book on agile leadership. Uh, what was it? I had it written down here in my notes. Yeah, agilejourney.com. And I can also find it on Amazon, which I have found it. Put it into the queue, Pete, because I am definitely interested in digging into this. Um, Pete, if if the audience wanted to get in touch with you, how would they reach out to you?

Pete Behrens 33:35

Yeah, I'm available pretty much everywhere. Uh, LinkedIn, just search me, Google. Uh the best place to kind of pull it all together is into the fogbook.com. It has information about me, our company, the book, and everything else there. Uh, but yeah, it's not hard to find me.

Jay Johnson 33:51

Awesome. Well, I want to say thank you, Pete. It's been a pleasure to have this conversation with you. I love having so being on the softer side, maybe the harder, softer side of the technical, but having that conversation. I do a lot of work in that space and and hearing you as somebody who's gone through that, you know, having that sort of individual contributor technical process systems, and then making that transition. It's really inspiring. So I just want to say thank you so much for joining us here on the Talent Forge today.

Pete Behrens 34:22

Well, thank you for giving me the platform and thanks for creating awareness to the space. And it's definitely desperately needed. And the models I think we see in our political and tech culture are not doing it justice.

Jay Johnson 34:34

Well said. So, and thank you, audience, for tuning in to this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we are shaping workforce behaviors.