Leadership, Behavior & Performance: Why People Drive Results | The Leadership Match

In this episode of The Leadership Match, Martin Rowinski sits down with Leon Morales, President and Chief Energy Officer at DNA Behavior International, to explore a powerful leadership truth:

Performance doesn’t start with numbers—it starts with people.

Leon shares how his military background, corporate leadership experience, and deep focus on behavioral insights have shaped his approach to building high-performing teams.

From understanding individual strengths to creating psychological safety, this conversation dives into what truly drives consistent performance inside organizations.

If you’re leading a team, scaling a business, or trying to improve culture and results—this episode will challenge how you think about leadership.

🔑 Key Topics Covered
How military leadership shapes structure and performance
Why behavior drives business outcomes
The importance of individual strengths in team success
Psychological safety and its impact on performance
Leadership lessons learned from real-world experience

Leon Morales LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leondna/
DNA Behavior: https://dnabehavior.com/

#Leadership #ExecutiveLeadership #TeamPerformance #BusinessStrategy #OrganizationalBehavior #LeadershipDevelopment #Culture #PsychologicalSafety #Entrepreneurship #Management #PersonalGrowth #TheLeadershipMatch

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today on the Leadership Match, I am joined by Leon Morales. Leon is the president and chief energy officer at DNA Behavior International, where he focuses on helping organizations unlock performance by understanding the behavior drivers behind decision making. With a background that spans finance, technology, operations, and leadership, including 17 years at CAX Communications and before that at Blockbuster, Leon brings a unique perspective to how organizations measure and manage performance. His core philosophy is simple but yet powerful. People, before numbers. So let's jump right into it. So, Leon, you come from military background. How has that influenced your leadership style?

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Oh, that's a great question, Martin. So, you know, the Air Force was one of the best experiences of my life. I had no one in my family that had been in the military. I graduated high school, went directly into the Air Force. And I did that because I wanted to go to college. That was my main motivation. My family didn't have the funds to send me to college. So I knew I could do it with the GI Bill. So what I learned in that, especially in basic training, because you hear so many horror stories about basic training. Well, what it taught me was okay, I evaluated because I love human behavior. Well, these training instructors, that's what they have to do. They have to make you sort of respond. So I started observing, I was kind of playing a game, and I literally was depressed when I left basic training. That's just how much I enjoyed the whole experience, the structure, all that. And then when I went to my first duty assignment, I worked with a group of officers that were just unbelievably, they were commissioned officers, colonels, and they they really took me under their wings around leadership development. And I think that's one of the things I loved about even joining at Cox was the structure and the appreciation and the system of how people were promoted within the military all made sense to me. And when I left, I had thought about staying in for a career, but I knew again that I had something in me that was I wasn't going to get in the military. And now it is DNA behavior. I just didn't know it, you know, 30 years after that, uh, because I had such a human interest in human behavior, but I was playing that game in all of my career. But I absolutely loved the military, loved the structure, but it heavily influenced me and around how people, especially in the chain of command, it's important that you have because a mission can really abort quickly if you don't have that. So we even run our operations here like that. It's not, you know, again, that slant of relationships and results, because you don't want to be so militaristic that you're not. Doesn't start with 50 foot care. No, we don't do that, but it's really around the appreciation of structure that's important.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Absolutely. And how do you create a culture where people actually perform at a higher level consistently, not just once in a while, consistently?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

You know, I that's a great question, Martin. And I think it's, you know, I'm a big believer because we are a small company, but I think it's important even in larger companies where the managers, because you have that span of influence over everyone in your company, I tend to hone in on one or two of their behavioral traits that stand out to the rest of the team. An example would be somebody that's really pretty structured and giving them assignments that really help them succeed because they are so structured in that, giving them an opportunity to work with the team. If somebody's really creative, the same thing. If somebody's really anchored, giving them work that they've got experience with. Because if you give somebody that's an anchored person a creative project, it's like giving a blank canvas and telling them to create a Picasso. They can't do it because they've never done it before. It's important to know and hone in on that, on those behavioral traits that makes people really feel valued. And that's one of the things I've always heard from anybody I've led is that you've really spent time, those one-on-ones with me. And I don't believe in doing sort of blanket sort of you know, feedback for people. It should be individual in nature, especially your span of control. It's important to give that individual feedback and really help them optimize those strengths because sometimes they don't even know it's a strength.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Yeah. And one more question: What role does psychological safety play in performance?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Oh, it literally can make or break organizations. I'm absolutely convinced. Because when you've got when I talked about the RD group earlier, you know, you got strategic people that are very creative, you know, they're always sort of creating new things. Well, there's a point where the it has to be implemented into the company. Now, if you ask that very creative person to build a process around it, that can be very waning on somebody because they don't really understand the operations of the businesses, how things fit in. You have to pair that person with somebody that really does understand it. How do we assimilate that? And I think that's where products and things can get off kilter, is that you haven't paired them up and with this with somebody that can implement into the business, and then psychological safety really isn't, you're not leveraging sort of those talents to operationalize that new feature or that new product in the business.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

So from all your experience, Cox, right? No, let me take a step back. I'm gonna focus on the big ones military, Cox, prior to Cox, Blockbuster. Obviously, at all of those levels, working with leadership, you've picked up some lessons, some things not to do, some things to do. You're bringing all of that into DNA behavior. What would you say from all three of those? So, again, military, uh, blockbuster, Cox. What's the biggest failing lesson that you learned that you told yourself, I will never do that?

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Wow, that's a great question. Um, I would say probably my exit from Cox was one of mine that probably should have handled that a little bit differently. And I would have done the same thing, Martin, but I literally it goes back to my spontaneous nature and my risk taking, which are two of my top behaviors. I went in and probably just dropped the bomb on our leadership and and without really having a plan. And I I kind of always reflect on that. That probably could have been handled differently. They treated me with respect, and it all worked out really well when I left. But I think I probably could have prepared a little bit better for that because I was treated so well in the company for so many years, and and just to drop that bomb, I kind of regret that that that's probably my biggest regret, just the way I exited. It was all fine, and I, you know, have really great relationships there, but that's probably the biggest one because I could have handled it very differently.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

That's funny. Well, you know, we all handle things like that differently, but here you are.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Well, it was a lesson in behavior. My behaviors are very spontaneous and risk taking, and that was one just waking up one day making such a rash decision.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

No more dropping bombs.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

I really worked not to do that.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Awesome. Well, congrats on everything. Um thank you again for being on the show. Uh super exciting. Um, we'll get all this published and I'll drop a lot of links on the bottom.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

All right. Thank you, Martin. It was a pleasure to be here.