Ep. 100: Molly Fletcher on The Key To Effective Negotiation

In our 100th episode of The Trusted Leader Show, David sits down with Molly Fletcher, Former Top Sports Agent, Keynote Speaker, and Author, to discuss the key to effective negotiation.

Buy David’s book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Molly’s Bio:
Hailed as the “female Jerry Maguire” by CNN, Molly Fletcher made a name for herself as one of the first female sports agents. During her almost two-decade career and as President of CSE, Molly negotiated over $500 million in contracts and represented over 300 of sports’ biggest names, including Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz, PGA TOUR golfer Matt Kuchar, broadcaster Erin Andrews and basketball championship coaches Tom Izzo and Doc Rivers.

As a World’s Top 50 Keynote Speaker, she delivers her inspiring message to audiences around the world. She is the author of five books, including The Energy Clock, Fearless at Work, and A Winner’s Guide to Negotiating.

Molly is the founder and host of the Game Changers with Molly Fletcher podcast, where she interviews experts and celebrities in every field including Arthur Blank, Dabo Swinney, John Mackey, Matthew McConaughey, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Simon Sinek.

Her insights have been featured in prestigious media outlets, including CNN, ESPN, Forbes, Fast Company, InStyle, and Sports Illustrated. As the founder of The Molly Fletcher Company, she helps leaders transform workplace complacency with her Game Changer Negotiation Training and The Energized Leader programs.

Molly’s Links:
Website: https://mollyfletcher.com/
“A Winner’s Guide to Negotiating” by Molly Fletcher: https://amzn.to/3DtHmLg
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollyfletcher1/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MollyFletcher
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FletcherMolly
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MollywFletcher/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzTNQYQ8mfJgfH2rDI102Sg

Key Quotes:
1. “It’s not about talent. It’s about drive.”
2. “Success can breed complacency.”
3. “You’ve got to know why you do what you do.”
4. “We have to keep our purpose and our why front and center.”
5. “Negotiation is a conversation.”
6. “No is just one away from yes.”
7. “No is just feedback.”
8. “When we’re authentic, that’s what people want most from us. That’s how we truly connect.”
9. “Change is going to continue.”
10. “Great leaders hold people accountable.”
11. “You’ve got to have a core purpose.”
12. “People get stuck and they don’t know it.”
13. “Wherever you are right now be incredible.”
14. “Be brave not perfect.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
“A Winner’s Guide to Negotiating” by Molly Fletcher: https://amzn.to/3DtHmLg
Hello Fresh: https://www.hellofresh.com/
Molly’s TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXBuG90iGcg&ab_channel=TEDxTalks

Buy David’s book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
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Show Transcript

David Horsager:
Trusted leader show listeners. It’s David Horsager from our studio here at trust edge leadership Institute. I want to just give a huge, thank you. It’s our hundredth episode coming up. Those of you listening from 85 countries on six continents across industries, from government to sports, to business, to entrepreneurs, to healthcare, to education. I wanna just say personally, thank you. Thanks for being in this journey with me. You’ve been with me when we listen to the founder of the Ritz Carlton and we listen to athletes. When we listen to CEOs of startups and companies to the, the, the gentleman that has sold more books in categories about half billion books to, you know I was thinking of just some of my favorites, so many different people that we’ve listened to and learned from about being trusted leaders and about creating trusted teams and trusted cultures. Thanks for joining me in this journey. We have some amazing guests ahead. So we’re just celebrating this milestone of a hundred shows because you’ve made it happen. Thanks for joining us. And we’re looking forward to the next show the next year, the next episode, the next celebration of trusted leader show.

David Horsager (Intro):
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m your host David Horsager join me as I sit down with influential leaders from around the world to discuss why leaders and organizations fail top tactics for high performance and how you can become an even more trusted leader.

David Horsager:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. It’s David Horsager and I’m here with a special guest. We AC I think we actually met face to face the first time keying both of us on the, I, I some have said it’s the biggest event one day event in north America, that leader cast we had a great time there we’ve crossed path. Certainly other times she’s known as the Jerry McGuire, female, Jerry McGuire, she’s negotiated contracts, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars for coaches, you know, pro athletes, you know, hall of fame athletes and a host of others, golf pro golfer. I know PGA golf tour folks and others. She knows P peak performance, and she’s just playing an amazing lady on stage and off. She’s a multiple best selling author. She’s got some amazing courses on peak performance and other things, but she’s also a friend, please welcome to the show. Molly Fletcher. Thanks for being here.

Molly Fletcher:
It’s great to be with you, David. This is gonna be fun.

David Horsager:
Hey, it’s gonna be fun. We’re gonna go fast and furious knowing you and knowing me and our energy. And I’m just I’m grateful to have you here. I’m grateful to call you friends. So let’s, let’s just give us a co a, a, a one minute background on Molly Fletcher.

Molly Fletcher:
Yeah. So G you know, I, I mean, I’m married with three daughters now who are all in college, but I grew up in Michigan played tennis at Michigan state, moved to Atlanta to get into the sports business right after I graduated with, you know, it’s sort of a fun story, 2000 box, no job. And I was sleeping on the couch of a friend’s apartment and negotiated a deal to teach tennis for, for my rent at a, an apartment complex with gave me an opportunity to take a job in sports where you make, you know, $18,000 a year. And so I got into the sports business when I was young and, and evolved in that space and became an agent and represented about 300 athletes, coaches, broadcasters built a team of agents and then wrote a couple books and companies started saying, Hey, come talk about it.
Like when you write a book, people think you have something to say, right? So , so then I started and the phone just kind of kept ringing. And then I thought, man, you know, and Zig Ziegler had told me when I was young, when I told him I wanna do what you did, he do. He said, well, go do something first. And then maybe you can talk about it. And so it’s funny how life works, but you know, now I like you, I speak and right. And we have training programs and all that kinda stuff.

David Horsager:
So let’s jump in on the front row seat you’ve had in life. You’ve seen some amazing peak performers. You’ve I mean, I, I look at your client list. It’s unbelievable. So what, what do you think what’s kind of common, not just to peak performers, not those that get there, but those that stay like the kind of the, the Tom Bradys of the world or the Serena Williams, like what does it take to, to, you know, to, to not just get there, but stay there.

Molly Fletcher:
Right, right. And it’s different, right? I mean, I, I saw a lot of people ho hoist a trophy once and never again, I saw a lot of coaches win championships and never again. And so, you know what? I, I gave a Ted talk on this too. I mean, it’s not about talent. It’s about drive, right. Everybody that gets to the big leagues, everybody gets to the PGA two or everybody that, I mean, they have talent, but the ones that stay there have drive and, and, and drive, in my opinion, it’s not the drive to achieve David. It’s the drive to get better every day. Because if all you’re focused on is achieving is getting to that one place. That you’ve always, it’s not enough because success can breed complacency, which is so interesting. But when you have a ton of success, you can get and settle in and become complacent. And so, you know, it’s, it’s about mindset. It’s about discipline. It’s about resilience. It’s about connection and relationships.

David Horsager:
So I wanna ask you right there, because a lot of people are talking about this today. Oh, resilience. Oh, resilience. And some people are saying I’m burnt out. I’m just plain burnt. I, how do I pick myself back up? How do I become resilient? Are there ways we can do that? What, what, what say you?

Molly Fletcher:
Well, I mean, I mean, I think number one, you’ve gotta know why you do what you do. I mean, because when we’re grinding, it completely grinding it day after day after day. If we don’t know why we’re doing it. And if we don’t have a greater purpose, if we don’t have a north star, then when you do get burned out, when you do hit the speed bumps, you don’t wanna put in the effort, the grind, because you don’t know, know why you’re doing it in the first place. So we have to keep our purpose, our wide front and center. We’ve also gotta be intentional about managing our energy. You know, it’s always been fascinating to me, David, in the world of business, I came from the sports world where great athletes, they don’t live by their calendars at all. Tom Brady, isn’t waking up every day, looking at his calendar.
He’s looking at what are the kinds of things that I need to do to perform at my best? What are the things that I need to, how do I manage my energy to optimize performance? And, and the problem today is people’s level of demand is, is ex exceeding their capacity. And when demand exceeds capacity over a long period of time, it’s not sustainable. So you have to pull back and say, what are, what are the things that give me energy? What, what are the things that give me energy? What are the things that fry my energy and how can I be intentional about managing my energy and more intentionally, more than my time.

David Horsager:
So let’s answer these two and get nitty gritty. Number one, you said, why is important to this? What’s your why right now

Molly Fletcher:
To lead, inspire and connect with courage and optimism. So I say yes to things in which I know I can live my purpose, which is to lead, inspire and connect with courage and optimism. If I’m inside of an opportunity where I don’t think I can do that, I’m gonna say no. And, and no is hard in life. We don’t like to say no particularly I’m a, I’m a pleaser, but you know, my purpose now with you is, gosh, can I share some words that could lead, inspire others to live with courage and optimism.

David Horsager:
And, and with that, what gives you energy on a daily basis? You’re, you’re managing your energy. Well, you’re vibrant. I’ve seen you on stage and off. You’re ready to roll. And your team is so it’s fun. Sure. But what, how do you manage it? What gives you energy?

Molly Fletcher:
Well, I mean, I I’ve pulled back and I say, what drains my energy? And I’ve tried to delegate, remove, delete, get rid of those things, whatever those things might be and optimize ’em or, or be more efficient. And then the things that gimme energy for me personally, it’s things like working out it’s things like walking, my dogs, it’s things like, you know, sitting with my husband at the end of the day. I mean, and, and our kids are in college now. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s getting clear on what those things are and then ensuring they live inside of my every day, the things that give me energy, and then the things that drain your energy, you’ve gotta create first awareness around it. Right? What are the things that you see on your calendar? And you go, oh my gosh, you know, it, it, we wanna try to delegate those or remove them.
And, you know, there was a, you know, for me, you know, the kids always looked at me at four o’clock mom what’s for dinner. I don’t like to, to cook. I, I really don’t. I don’t love it. Food is fueled to me. And so I was like, I gotta figure this out. And so I did one of those, you know, fresh every, every day they’re showing up at my house. My kids were pulling, it’s like paint by numbers, cooking. So I share that only because that was a drainer for me, that I turned into an Energizer and an opportunity to teach my girls and, and, and have them step up and help, or my husband step up and help in that way, in a way that that was easy for them. So we’ve gotta get clear and have awareness around those things and then live into it.

David Horsager:
Let’s jump to negotiation. You’re a pro clearly you’re negotiating these massive contracts. You get a lot of people have different views of negotiation. It’s hard, it’s bad, it’s negative. You gotta hold your cards. You gotta do this. You gotta that. What would you recommend for those? I mean, I feel like every day is negotiation, whether it’s with my teenager or, or, or a sale or, you know, or, or a company or whatever or a business deal. And we want to create win, win wins, but, but tell me your perspective on negotiation.

Molly Fletcher:
Well, I mean, to me, it’s just a difficult conversation and, and it generally conversations go better when you have a good relationship with the person on the other side. And, and people would always think, gosh, as an agent, I mean, you just took your gloves off all day long and went at it on the other side of the table. And the truth is I found the better, the relationship, the better the outcome and the quicker I could close deals. So negotiation’s a conversation. And to your point, David, it is everywhere. It’s all around us. We negotiate who we spend our time with our energy. With we negotiate deals. We negotiate things personally, professionally it’s everywhere. And the more that we recognize all the opportunities that exist, the better we can get at it, because the more we can practice. And to me, the reason that people are afraid to negotiate is generally in the data shows this it’s a lack of confidence, but the reason they have a lack of confidence is cuz they haven’t practiced. So what I encourage people to do is practice, practice everywhere, practice at the coffee, shop, practice with the yard guy, practice with your kids. I mean, it’s everywhere, but we gotta practice. We gotta pour into it and recognize that relat relationships can actually enhance our ability to close deals quicker.

David Horsager:
You’ve said something I read said basically some people where some people see obstacles, others see opportunity for

Molly Fletcher:
Sure.

David Horsager:
What does what’s that look like?

Molly Fletcher:
Well, to me, no is just one away from yes. Right? I mean feedback. No was just feedback to me. I mean, you can imagine as a female sports agent at 25 years old, I mean I heard no all the time people thought I was somebody’s wife that, you know, guys were hitting on me behind the dugout when I was trying to recruit a player. I mean, you know, no was, was, was. And when, when I moved down to Atlanta trying to find a job in sports, you know, with 1700 bucks, I was eating grapes, walking through the grocery store to save money. I mean, no is just feedback. And, and so what I found that the, you know, it’s like, I, I, I was out on the phone with a friend of mine, Eric Thomas this morning and, you know, winners win and losers lose. I mean, it, it, it, you gotta find a way. And, and that’s what I saw always with the best athletes in the world is they saw obstacles and challenges as a gift, as an opportunity to grow as a as. And, and if you know why you do what you do, you wanna embrace and step into those challenges makes you better.

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David Horsager:
How did you, I mean, you’re in a, it was a highly male environment. It was a, there’s a lot of other things you could have made excuses about. Sure. How did you well, you know, all we talk about outta the Institute trust edge leadership Institute is how do you build trust? How do you build trust fast? How do you, how did you build trust? Like with your first dealer, maybe you have a story from some somebody you were able to sign. I mean, you’re kind of an outlier and you got it done, and then you got it done over and over and over again. I wanna hear, like, how did you start to build trust?

Molly Fletcher:
Yeah. Authenticity. I mean, you know, I was lined up on the fence with, with Scouts and khakis and golf shirts, right. She went tobacco with a whistle around their neck. I mean, you know, I’m, I’m, I didn’t wanna try to be like them. I wasn’t them. I wasn’t gonna show up in khakis and a golf trip that wasn’t me. So I, you know, for me it was about authenticity and when we’re authentic, that’s what people want most from us. That’s how we truly connect in my opinion, that’s how we build trust because we show up the same way consistently. And when we do that, we can connect. And when we do that consistently, we can build trust. So for me, it was consistency. It was outwork and everybody else, it was, it was over delivering in a way that surprised and delighted the athletes that I wanted to represent, it was giving so much to the athletes that we had, that if I asked them to, to say a nice word about me to another prospective player, they couldn’t wait to do it.
They wanted to do it. They, they were like, yeah, Mel, no problem. I got it. I’ll do it. So it was, it was, it was pouring in, I mean, I think, and that’s the interesting thing to your point about negotiation. That’s so, so unique. I mean, I think people sometimes think that you don’t give to the people that you wanna negotiate with. But in fact, I think that when you do, it creates an opportunity for more yes. As it creates an opportunity to drive connection as well. So you know, P pouring in and over delivering, I always wanted to make sure that my guys felt like they owed me so that if I picked up the phone and I called a second basement, and I said, dude, tonight, you guys are playing the giants. I’ve been trying to get their middle and fielder. When he round second, if he gets stuck there for a hot minute, will you talk to him for me? Will you run over to the other clubhouse and give, you know, check, you know, check in with him before BP and guys would do that for me. And, and, and that was really, I, I built my roster of clients primarily through referrals from my existing guys, mostly athlete. Most of my guys were guys 10%.

David Horsager:
Tell me a story, tell me a, tell us, I’m just gonna push you. And this wasn’t pre-done. Yeah. And ask us, I don’t know where you’re gonna go, but I, you know, you’ve been around some interesting folks and people have seen ’em on TV TV. Sure. Not met him in person. Maybe what’s a story you have for us from this this experience in the sports world.

Molly Fletcher:
Well, I mean, you know, gosh, I mean, I’ve got a thousand, but I, I guess I’d give you a couple, I mean, you know, one of my, one of my favorite guys, who’s now calling games on, on TV is Smallz and, you know, John was a guy who was a starter forever, and you hall hall

David Horsager:
Of Famer give, give those that don’t know that

Molly Fletcher:
Don’t hall, Famer. Yeah. Hall of Famer. Now he’s on TV pitched forever in the big leagues. And you know, so many people that you’re, that your listeners, your leaders, aspiring leaders, they’re dealing with a lot of change and change is gonna continue. And I, I, I don’t think we’re ever gonna be on the other side of that. And, and, and MTY was a guy who for over a decade was a starter. And then all of a sudden, you know, the organization reached out and said, Hey, Molly, can you talk to John about whether he’d consider being a closer next season now, for those of you that don’t know. I mean, a, starter’s a guy that steps out on the mound at the beginning of game throws 80 or 90 pitches. And does it again, four or five days later now they were asking him to step on the mound at the end of games and throw maybe night after night after night, long story short through, you know, a, a lot of conversations that we had.
John stepped into that closer rule. The following season, the team needed him to the 24 other guys on the dugout, needed him to the, the, the coaches, the manager, they needed him to John led the national league in saves as a closer the following season. He went under the hall of fame. One of the only guys as not just one of the best starters, but one of the best closers John loved and leaned into change. In other words, the best want the ball when it’s tight, they don’t mind getting uncomfortable. You know, the pit that we all have often in our stomach when we’re dealing and navigating change, both in our own lives with, at, with our companies, with our teams, it, we don’t love that feeling, but the best of the best know that the person that comes out the other side of that change is a better version.
You know, Tom is a longtime client, great guy, great human being had had men’s basketball coach at Michigan state national championship. He’s won. And, you know, Tom sits with us with his players at the beginning of every season. And this was great for leaders. And he sits down with him and he says, Hey, get, give me real quick. On his three by five card, he gives ’em all three by five card. What do you want out of this season? He tells everyone of his guys give it to me. So they all write down what they want out of the season. And then Tom gathers all the cards and then he sits with each guy one by one, and he looks at me. He goes, all right, John, you wanna win a national championship? Yeah, coach. That’s what I want. Okay, cool. Hey, and you wanna graduate in all American yeah.
Coach. That’s what I want. Okay, cool. And, and, and you wanna, you wanna get drafted into the NBA? Yeah, coach. That’s what I want. Okay. Well, so let me ask you this as your coach, as your leader, if these are all the things that you wanna do, what would you like my role to the, in this to be? Well, what do you mean coach? Well, gosh, I mean, what, what, what can I do to help you achieve this? You just told me these, they’re the things that you want out of this season. What can I do to help you fulfill this well? And they kind of pause, they look at Tom and then they say, well, coach, I guess, I mean, you could hold me accountable, help me reach him. Okay, cool. You know what Tom does. If you’ve ever seen him on the sideline, he is about his heads, about to explode when he is talking to his guys, he goes insane on his players, but you know what? He’s gotten permission to hold ’em accountable. He he’s gotten permission to hold them accountable. And I think, you know, that’s what great leaders do. I, I, I’ve got a database of stories, David, I could go on and on. But to me, those are things that we, as leaders can lift up and apply to the people that we lead and serve in a way that allows for alignment and allows us to make other people that we lead the best version of themselves.

David Horsager:
Love it. You know, what, what do you doing these days? What I’ve noticed at least is, is people that are leading great organizations and leading well, they’re doing some things personally spiritually health, you know, athletic fitness wise with their health, whatever it is, what are a couple habits you keep so that you can lead your organization? Well lead well from the stage and the spaces you’re in these days, what are you doing? Maybe their habits are repeaters. We call ’em sure. What are some things

Molly Fletcher:
You’re doing rituals. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, at the highest level, I always like to check in mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and relationally. And I try to do that every morning and every night, you know, where am I? What are some gaps? What am I doing well, where could I do better in all of those five categories? And I think when we think about our lives in those categories, we can then have the courage and the vulnerability at some level to identify the gaps. I think having people around us that need absolutely nothing from you, but for you to be the best version of yourself is imperative. Right. For me, it’s my brothers, my husband, you know, my sister-in-law my, I mean, my, my parents, you know, those people that aren’t afraid to tell you what you’re jamming up, so that, so that you can get better because when you get to a certain point in your life where nobody tells you the truth, so you’ve gotta make sure you’ve got people that will, so that then I think tactically, it, it’s saying to myself often what can only I do, and I gotta give away everything else.
What can only I do, and then give it away and then spending more time working on the business. And instead of, you know, in it, right, which means pulling back and creating, you know, repeatable core processes, ensuring that, that I’m helping hold and, and support my team relevant to their, their weekly and their quarterly and their annual goals working on the business versus in it is, is something that I’ve been really working on lately too.

David Horsager:
Yeah. It’s been fun to watch you and you do that so well, I think I’ve had to work on that over years at to 22, 3 years almost now of this let go of certain things. So that better things happen. Right? Sure. What do you, you know, you’re a continual learner. Are there some other things you’re doing that you’re learning these days just, or what are you curious about right now?

Molly Fletcher:
You know, I’m, I’m, I’m really I, I, I’m really curious a about why people get complacent. What, what is it that gets people to that place? And, and, and people don’t like to talk about complacency. And, and to me, I’ve identified eight core pillars that help get us from complacency to drive. But I have a book that I’m working on. That’ll come out in 2024, that will be threaded with research too, around how do we unlock drive in people and how do we combat complacency and not just the drive to achieve, but the drive to get better every day. So I’m give us a

David Horsager:
Teaser, give us a teaser that this is interesting to me, give us a what’s the teaser. We don’t have to go through all eight, but what’s, what’s a teaser. And what does it take to go from complacency to drive?

Molly Fletcher:
Well, I mean, I think it, it, it takes a limitless mindset. It takes resilience, it takes discipline. It takes energy, it takes connection. It takes a core purpose. I think you’ve gotta have a core purpose. And, you know, those are some of the things that I think we need and research would support that. But, but to me, people get stuck and they don’t know it. They get stuck mentally. They get stuck relationally, they get stuck emotionally. They get stuck spiritually and they don’t know it. And so how do we challenge people to dig in and ask themselves tough questions consistently to allow him to identify these areas in their life, maybe where they’re a little bit stocked and what to do instead, right? Because we only get this life thing one time we only do, there’s no dress for rehearsal in this deal. Right? So you, we don’t wanna settle for less, less than we’re meant to be less than we’re supposed to be, unless that the lesson we can be to contribute to the people that we lead and the people that we, that we serve.

David Horsager:
Absolutely. Oh, there’s loads more I could ask. I’ve got probably one more question or two at least, but tell us where we can find where’s the one key place. Everybody you’ve, you’ve got books, you’ve got some amazing training programs and a host of other things where where’s the key place to find out more about Molly.

Molly Fletcher:
Yeah. Thanks. David, Molly, fletcher.com. If people go go to Molly, fletcher.com, they can find out all kinds of stuff from there.

David Horsager:
And you can find the new training program, the newest books, and a whole lot more about everything from energy to negotiation, to going from complacency to drive. Yeah. So before I ask my final question, Molly, and this has been a treat and we could talk all day, but you know, we’re kind of similar in certain ways we did some things and then we ended up really not just speaking, we ended up crossing paths from speaking, but kind of trying to, and caring about creating these learning and development businesses that reach the world to go beyond us, that touch people in ways that we’re passionate about. And sure. But if, if, if you, you did have and have had over these years, so many amazing different, you know, coaches, athletes, leaders, one advice, you’ve got some piece of advice that you either heard from them, or maybe even surprised you from somebody you talked to like that, but it stuck with you mm-hmm in this time, some, some coach you watch like, oh, or is there any like outlier piece of advice that you kind of keep thinking back on that you heard over the years from some of the leaders you’ve served

Molly Fletcher:
You know, I, I, I would say Dabo Sweeney said who I have a lot of respect for as a person, as a human being, but he is a great football coach too. And a great leader is bloom where you’re planet, you know, bloom where you’re planet, in other words, and, and Saban says it in a different way, head coach at Alabama, right. Be where your feet are now Saban says, but, but it’s, in other words, wherever you are right now, be incredible, be the best, whatever that is the best and, and crush it because you know what, if you do that, opportunities are gonna be unlocked. They just are. If you over deliver, if you execute, if you show up, if you behave with discipline, if you then opportunities will come, they, they, they will. So bloomer your planner. Dabble said, I also had another one tell me once, you know, be brave, not perfect. And, and, and I think, you know, that is an important thing to remember for us as leaders, because we aren’t perfect. , I mean, we are and not even close. So be brave. Cause that’s what our people need us to do when we’re leading them is be brave and step into the discomfort and the change and the challenges and, and, and, and, and be that first guy or gal on the front of the line.

David Horsager:
Be brave, not perfect. Bloomery planted simple but powerful. Thank you. That’s right. Hey, it’s the trusted leader show. It’s the final question. This has been a treat. Thank you so much, by the way, for, for all this. And just for being my friends, it’s been a, a, a great privilege of my life. But last question, trusted leader show. Who’s a leader you trust Molly. And why?

Molly Fletcher:
Honestly, I would say my parents, my mom and dad,

David Horsager:
I’ve heard you talk about ’em before.

Molly Fletcher:
Yeah. They’re and, and my husband, I mean, to me, they, they have humility. They have discipline. They, they believe they they’re resilient. They have drive in their own way at 80 and 85, but I trust them in being a north star for me in, in, in choices in life. And I’m so grateful for that.

David Horsager:
It’s nice. When the closest ones to you are the ones you trust the most on. Mm

Molly Fletcher:
Amen. Yes.

David Horsager:
Yes. Lots more. We could say Molly, fletcher.com. Molly. Thanks for being on with us. I there’s there, like I said, there’s a lot more we could say and talk about. You’ve got a lot of stories. I’ve heard some of them, but I appreciate this Molly about you. I appreciate who you are on stage, but more than that, even off stage. So that’s a gift to everybody. It’s been the tall the trusted leader show until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 99: Kent Senf on The ONLY Time You’re Allowed To Be Critical

In this episode, David sits down with Kent Senf, President, Material Handling and Marketing at C&B Equipment, to discuss the ONLY time you’re allowed to be critical.

Buy David’s book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Kent’s Bio:
Kent Senf is President, Material Handling and Marketing for C & B Equipment. In this role, Senf leads a team that develops and delivers upon C & B’s diversification strategy to grow the Material Handling Division to the size, performance, and scope of their Agricultural Division and continues to lead marketing for all divisions. He was appointed to the role in August of 2022.

As a leader, Senf has spent the past 14 years helping lay the foundation of C & B’s Agricultural Division and, most recently, leading the Material Handling’s acquisitions strategy and execution. In 2008, when Senf joined C & B Operations, the company had 14 stores operating within five states. Now, with 38 agricultural and 10 material handling locations operating within 8 states, he helped move it from a mid-sized, regional John Deere dealer into the largest John Deere AG dealer in North America and one of the most respected agricultural dealers in the United States. During those 14 years he served as the Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President of Sales, and Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Senf joined C & B in 2008, after leaving AGCO Corporation as Director, Midwest. Senf also spent time with CNH as a Global Product Marketing Manager for Tillage and other positions.

Senf is an advocate for doing business the right way—leading his team to do what they say they’ll do, delivering on the basics consistently, and creating a trusted relationship between the customers, employees, suppliers, and the stakeholders. As part of doing business the right way, Senf brought in David Horsager, used the Trust Edge Coaching Program for several developing managers, and brought his leadership team to the Trusted Leader Summit.

Senf graduated from Minnesota State University, formerly known as Mankato State University, with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He and his family live in Minnesota and are strong advocates of the community and volunteering.

Kent’s Links:
Website: https://cbequipment.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentsenf/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kent.senf/

Key Quotes:
1. “A high performance organization has to have performance measurements.”
2. “If we’re all on the same page, if we have the right intent, you can get a lot done.”
3. “People love the purpose of working together for something greater than themselves.”
4. “You can’t have experienced people if you don’t give them experiences.” – Rod Burwell
5. “Let them put holes in the boat just don’t let them sink it.” – Rod Burwell
6. “Have broad lanes that people can walk within, not tight sidewalks.”
7. “If it’s hard to sell, make it easy to buy.”
8. “You have to think of the customer and what they’re looking for.”
9. “To first create value, you have to listen.”
10. “You’re allowed to be critical only when you’re creative in helping find the solution.”
11. “Success leaves clues.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
“The Trust Edge” by David Horsager: https://amzn.to/3TQWTup
“The Daily Edge” by David Horsager: https://amzn.to/3Rv0H2R

Buy David’s book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36AXtp9
Follow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Follow David on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Follow David on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Show Transcript

David Horsager:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m your host David Horsager join me as I sit down with influential leaders from around the world to discuss why leaders in organizations fail top tactics for high performance and how you can become an even more trusted leader. Welcome to the trusted leader show it’s David Horsager. I have a special guest with today. He’s part of leadership team of the largest John Deere ag company in the world. 38 ag stores, 10 material handling stores. They were 14 stores when I started working with them and got to know them. So they’ve grown from under a couple hundred thousand to significant well over billion organization. And what’s more, he’s just a plain, a great guy. And so I’m grateful to have you on welcome to the show Kent Senf.

Kent Senf:
Hey, thanks, David. Glad to be here. Super excited to talk with you today,

David Horsager:
Kent, you you, you run a great home. You’ve got two beautiful daughters, so and Bergen, and you’ve got an amazing wife and they’re golfers and they’re academics. And it’s tell us just before we get into kind leadership and, and other parts of life, what a couple other things to know about Kent SEMP.

Kent Senf:
Well well thank you for my for sharing about my daughters. Actually I’d love to take credit for it, but as you know, my wife, Beth does, does most of the hard lifting there’s they’re they’re great kids. One is one is going to St. Ola college in Northfield, Minnesota. It plays golf there and is getting ready hopefully to go to law school at some point in time. And my youngest is a senior in high school and doing great things there, but a little bit about me. I’m from Fairmont Minnesota farm town kid, much like yourself just happen to be really fortunate and blessed to be where I am today and be around people like yourself and many others that I work with every day. So I, I just, I consider myself extraordinarily blessed.

David Horsager:
Well, I am too. And just to know you, and I will tell you one of the most fun things. One of the first times I worked with you, this is over a decade ago, I think, but we jumped in your, your your, your team jet. And we went out to several of the dealerships and got to talk trust. And we’ve done several things since then, but we’ve had some, some fun journey together and you, your team has been doing some amazing things. What do you think if we jump right in and we’re gonna talk personally, we’re gonna talk leadership. We’re gonna talk company wise, but you’ve, you’ve led in many different ways. What, what do you think it takes to kinda have an effective high performing culture built on trust?

Kent Senf:
You know, let me, let me step back to David for a second and say thank you. So back, I, I can’t imagine if it was 12, 14 years ago. It was 14 years ago when I started at CMB. We were a regional player at the time and really was coming into an organization that was doing good things, but I really needed to focus on some clarity and and really get an understanding of the goals and where we wanted to head and, and consistency and, and where we’re at. So we brought you in as well as some others. And one of the first things that we did back in the day is we looked at the mission statement of the company and, you know, mission statement at that time was a lot of words. And people didn’t read ’em all the time.
And so we broke it down really into three things to make it very clear. We broke it down into, we wanted to be the dealer of choice really dealer or supplier of choice. We wanted to be the employer of choice for engaged employees. And we wanted to be the investment of choice for our stakeholders, stakeholders being customers and community and employees and, and suppliers and bankers and owners and everybody else. But what it really happened was we talked a lot about that. Three-Legged stool. And if the, if one of the legs felt a higher priority than the others, well, then one of the, one of the core features of our mission statement felt outta balance. And so just by clearly going through the mission statement, getting everybody on page, and then consistently talking about it in a very organized fashion, I think led a lot to where we were going and how we were gonna get there. And then you could break down the key goals from, from there. And, you know, a high performance organization has to have performance measurements and that investment of choice side of it. But if you take so much of your emphasis there, you forget about your team and you forget about your customers. So I want to, as I look back, one of the, the best things that we did was really build a foundation upon that

David Horsager:
It’s been amazing to see, and it’s been fun to watch. What, what, when you take and think of cascading a message, and you’re so distributed, you get locations all over the country a couple different kinds of locations. And for everybody to know with, with all smiles on my face that most people can’t see, you know, I live in a hobby farm these days with my wife and four kids, and we have all green because of this relationship. And we have tractor and Gator and snow removal and a lot of green equipment. All John Deere were happy as can be with it. And we’re looking at looking at getting something new here before long, my dad, as you know, I grew up on, we, we joke kind of a multicolor farm where we had red and green tractors, even yellow ones, but dad in his later days when he was 80, I think it was 82.
He bought his first brand new tractor and it was a, it was a John Deere tractor. And you know, he’s 93 in a couple in a month. Wow. And and he is still running the farm and you know, up there and he is fixing some, the hurricane came through a few months ago and he’s up there putting, putting tin on one of the sheds himself. And it’s been fun to see, but you know, you got a lot of great you know, great brand. You got a great great organization, great dealers, but, but yet it’s distributed. How do you keep that common language going? You say, we got this common language, you’ve got this mission. Now we got this three-legged school stool. You’ve built many things now on trust. How do you cascade that from, you know, Idaho falls to Alabama?

Kent Senf:
Well, it’s first and foremost, I think it is, is the consistency of the character of the people that we have. And if we, if we’re all on the same page, if we have the right intent, you can get a lot done. And so I think it, it, the foundation of it all is the people that we have, the team that we have. And, you know, we have, oftentimes we talk a, a lot about if it’s right for the customer, if it’s right for the companies that we work for, or work with the suppliers, if it’s right for our company and it, and it’s right for our employees and it’s morally legally and ethically correct, make the decision. And we empower our people at the local level to make some really, really important and great decisions for our customers and for our employees.
And so you know, we are, we’re, we’re very much all over the place. Like you said, we have in our ag stores, we’re in six different states with material handling, we go out to 10, 11 different states and we have customers all throughout the world. But the reality is that the foundation of the morals, ethics, and values and, and who we are you don’t have to talk to everybody, everybody, or every day to tell them what to do and how to do things. There’s a great deal of trust because they live the character that we’re, we’re looking for. And then how, how

David Horsager:
Gonna jump in here, Kent? How do you hire for that? Because you got a lot of people say, well, yeah, I wish I had that. How can you say, oh, you have all these high character folks, how do I actually create that team that does have the right values and morals that, that fits us that can make decisions on their own at a high level? How do you, how do you do that? That’s what I can hear people asking.

Kent Senf:
Sure. Absolutely. Well, number one, we get lucky sprinkle some magic dust everywhere. Right. and not always do we have everybody that way, but I would say the vast majority of it is, and I, if I look back at it, we we have instituted regional managers who are really high quality regional managers. They, they work with our VPs all the time. And, and in doing so, we, we have a work, hard, play hard relationship at our company. And, you know, I often think about it this way, David, that you can fool somebody for 20 minutes or half an hour or, or maybe even an hour. But when you have a work hard play hard relationship and you build those connections that are deep if you are not following the same moral, legal, ethical characteristics, then that shows up it comes up and it, and it shows up over time.
And so once you build that, I, I think kind of people weed themselves out in our, and the character of our company stands firm and stands strong, and you want to work with, and you want to connect with people that are much like yourself. So starting small you know, it’s really building connections. And I think about it just, it, it let’s take it in a different way if we could, for a second. The reason I know you David, is because one of my childhood, lifelong friends, Ross, Bernstein connected us well, Ross wouldn’t have connected us if he didn’t think it was mutually good for you and mutually good for me, he wouldn’t have connected us if he thought our morals and ethics and values were different. He would’ve refrained from ever having that connection together. But now, you know, that was what, 14 years ago. And you and I are as connected sometimes as Ross and I are. And I, I think that’s true for our employees as well.

David Horsager:
Absolutely. Well, Ross is an amazing human being and a dear friend and definitely a lot of, lot of when, when he recommended you, it was like absolutely as well. How do you how do you, you know, keep your people, I’ll give you two questions at once. You know, retention is a big problem right now, how do you keep the right people? And how do you said you build connection? How do you actually build connection? Whether it’s with your leadership team or with those people? I think a lot of people are having trouble right now, building connection, especially here you sit, you know, at the corporate office and you’ve, and you know, you, you’ve got people way out here, way you’re buying that new property or new, new LN location down in Alabama or whatever. Like how do you, how do you increase connection and how do you actually retain the talent you want to keep?

Kent Senf:
Yeah. Well let’s talk a little bit about what people often refer to as, what is it, the great reg resignation and quiet quitting and all these different things that are out there today? Right. Well, the reality is we’ve been very fortunate not to have that. Number one. We have not seen a, a large reduction in people that are employed with us and largely is that largely because I think we care. And we’ve connected in a different level. I’ve been blessed to work with, and for the Burwell family for years. And so much of, of what they offer is is really this connection piece. It it’s talking and working not just the normal eight to five hours, but we’re, we’re connecting on, on a personal level. We go do things together. And in fact, during work hours, we do things like so we have a community impact day where we’re going out into the community, the whole store, whether you’re in billings Montana, or you are in Treeport at Louisiana, that team goes out at as a whole, they select a charitable organization to work with and we pay them that day to go out into the community, do something great.
Well, the reality is I think people love the purpose of working together for something greater than themselves and great, you know, greater actually than just the business themselves. And so when you combine all those things together, I think it’s been really, really cool. I’d also say some of the things that we have done here in the last little bit have also connected in a, in a meaningful way. So inflation has come into our environment pretty significantly. We recognize that in a lot of our employees, whether you’re making a little bit of money or a lot of money, they tend to spend the money that they make. And so when you go and you go from $3 gas to four 50 gas or, or whatever it is that that has a significant impact on what the family can do. So we instituted and gave everybody in the company a 5% raise just out of the blue in, in announced that January 4th and said, we understand what the in economy is like, we wanna do the right thing for you, cuz you’re part of the family.
you know, those kind of things. And then most importantly, remembering that that our team has, has obligations into the community and into their family and recognizing the importance of that. I think has people really interested in who we are? We’re, we’re blessed to have this really good connected team. And I, I think it comes from years of, of working together with them hand in hand, close together and, and Rob Burwell used to say, Kent it’s a couple different pieces of advice he had for me is number one, you can’t have experienced people if you don’t give them experiences. So go out there, give ’em experiences, but don’t do it for ’em. And he often said as well let them put holes in the boat. Just don’t let ’em sink it. Well, you know, the reality is we’re looking for leaders, we’re looking for people who can connect, who can connect with customers in a meaningful way.
And if you, if you tighten down what they can do and what they can say so much. So they’re not really leaders for who, for what the customer wants and what we want. They’re people that are carrying out a MIS are carrying out a, a tactic. If you will. We try to keep it more broad and say, you know, again, if you can do the right thing for the customer and the supplier and the company and and the employees and it’s morally legally and ethically, correct, make the decision, have broad. If you will, lanes that people can walk within, not tight, tight sidewalks,

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David Horsager:
What’s your, how do you hold people accountable? Like how do you hold ’em cuz you have, you have amazing connection. You have amazing people. I’ve met many of them. And they’re just, I do see this values driven environment. I see the work hard part for sure and play hard but at some point you gotta hold ’em accountable to the KPIs and everything. So some people there’s a lot of talk today about just connecting, just showing care, just showing compassion. And yet I see the, the, the, the healthiest companies, you know, have this, this mix of a, a healthy accountability. And you see, I see frustrated CEOs, well, they’re all saying do this and this and this for my employees. And then I found out there aren’t even doing anything for us and I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta take care of the stakeholders. So you have this mix. I feel like of what you say what’s for many would be trite. Oh yeah. Play hard, work hard or work hard, play hard, but you do it. And they are working hard and they are hitting KPIs and they are moving the organization forward and they are motivated. And yet there’s some sort of clear accountability. How do you do it?

Kent Senf:
Well, thank you. But and hopefully it didn’t sound trite as much as it is the characteristics of the team of we go out and we go do things collectively together, but really we’re a performance based organization. We talk performance a lot every week, in fact well, let’s, let’s go back every day. We’re measuring our, our key KPIs as you put it and making sure we’re doing the right thing where we trend a lot. We look not just at a point in time, but rather a trend in which way we’re going. You can have a, you know, the, you can have a scenario where all of a sudden something falls off, but if the trend is going in the right direction, we, we tend to follow more of the trend. Then the actual individual score, if you will. But we were watching it on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
And on the weekly calls that we have with our, our team, we cover those same same dashboard measurements over and over again, every week we cover whether the week was a good week or a bad week, we generally start our meetings a little bit wider, open. So we, we talk more about the company and then we narrow it down into the scope of the, maybe the department or the store or the person. And then really we recognize high performers you know, and it’s, it’s high performers that are doing the right things, not just high performance for high performance. And, and I think, you know, the long and short of it, we’ve built also an, an incentive plan and a pay plan that rewards people for hitting this investment of choice. And, and by the way, we’re, we are a for profit company.
We have to provide profits for the company to be able to provide back to the employees. And it’s that three-legged stool again, if we, and, and we talk about it often, if, if we cannot perform to the level that we can perform to, we can’t do the other things really, really well. We can’t invest in technology. We can’t invest in taking care of the customer if we can’t also get a reward for it as well, ourselves. So I think a lot of it really is the, the commitment to a standard smaller list of KPIs. I think it’s consistency that we bring with it in, in talking about it and working through it often. And I think once I believe that once, you know, somebody falls out of that, we definitely show grace, but but you have to be an active participant in the improvement of, of it as well. And if you’re not that demonstrates not an engaged employee. So I’d like to say, it’s this Nirvana place. It isn’t absolutely Nirvana, but it is a place where high, high, productive highly engaged employees do really well.

David Horsager:
You say if it’s hard to sell, make it easy to buy.

Kent Senf:
Yeah.

David Horsager:
Tell me about, I’m gonna give you a couple of your quotes back to you that I hear from you. And then I’m gonna get land the plane on a couple personal leadership thoughts, but give, give, give the idea. That’s a quote around CMB and your world. It’s it’s, if it’s hard to sell, make it easy to buy, how do you do it?

Kent Senf:
Well, you know, you gotta think of the customer and what they’re looking for from a, from a standpoint of not a feature and benefit, but what’s the value that we can produce for the customer, and then turn that around and, and help the customer see the value. First. I think there’s a guy, one of your friends Phil Jones says it really, really well, and that there’s this value proposition with your hands. And, you know, you gotta be able to, if, if your, if your value is extended out further than the price and the price, and then the it’s all about price, but if the value extends closer or brings closer, it’s about the value. And oftentimes I think a lot of sales sales people, even within our organization, they cut right to price. They cut right to something that, that doesn’t extend the value in really what the customer’s looking for. And to first create value, you gotta listen, you gotta have curiosity, and you have to have compassion for where the customer is at. And when you go from curiosity to compassion, you can really go into and, and help that customer find the value proposition. So we like to find those reasons why the customer really would like to buy the product is as opposed to selling something that that’s, that’s really not what the customer needs.

David Horsager:
I’m gonna give two more quotes than I’m gonna land the plane with a personal, personal question. But I, I like these things that you have said, and I have heard one you’re allowed to be critical only when you’re creative in helping find the solution.

Kent Senf:
Yeah. You

David Horsager:
Got an example of, yeah, go ahead.

Kent Senf:
Yeah. I use that one all the time. In fact, people use it back on me as well. So, you know, it’s part of the culture. When, when all of a sudden you come in and you say, why did you do that? Or why didn’t we hit this? And, and they say, well, what’s your creative solution, Kent. And if you know, you know me well, well enough, I’m a highly creative visual guy. So, so it’s, it’s fun to be a part of part of those conversations, especially when they use it back. But I will tell you we, we talk about it often. You can be, you can be highly critical of a person or a process or whatever, but in that phrase, in that moment, help us understand how are we gonna do it better from your perspective? And if you can’t be there, then, then don’t bring the argument up. And and that often leads into David too. Another one that we say fairly, fairly often, that if it doesn’t stand the a, a good debate, a great debate in our, our boardroom, it will not withstand the marketplace. So let’s, let’s be honest. We have a thing, or we talk about it often times too. You, when you come through the threshold of the meeting, you get into the get honest room, we’re very honest with each other. But you can’t be adversarial honest. You have to be creative in helping us find the solution.

David Horsager:
I love it. CRE, I got a new one here, then I’m writing it down. Creative, honest versus adversarial. Honest.

Kent Senf:
Yeah.

David Horsager:
Good word. So, well, there’s lots more, I love what you’re doing. I love that idea. What, what the, the critical piece, what we just talked about. It, it keeps people solution minded, right? When we think of, oh, okay. But be a part of the solution. That’s what we wanna drive people toward, be a part of the solution. Yeah. There’s more we can do than you think we can do. When we get solution minded. It also reminds me of my own work where, you know, I, I teach these eight pillars. I’m very open with the team that I’m imperfect at all of them, just ask my teenagers . But I, I, I believe in it to my core, I’ve seen it on six continents and across industries from pro sports teams to companies and you know, corruption issues and whatever. But but I’m imperfect at it.
And one of the things I teach and preach is the first pillar of the eight pillars, which is clarity. Yeah. And one of the models we have is ODC teach, you know, when you expect something from whenever you’re managing someone, give ’em a clear outcome, a deadline for the next phase. It doesn’t have to be the end, cuz you may not know the final and then give a space for clarifying questions, ODC. And I’ll ask something and not have given a clear deadline or given a clear outcome and they go right back at me. Okay, Dave, what’s the ODC, what’s the OD. Did you ODC that? And I love that when there’s a safe enough space in your organization where people can push back on you. And I know the reason people can do that with you is you’re great leader and you’re a humble learner, always learning and willing to take it.
And I just think it’s worth saying today, cuz the last call I was on with a significant leader, we talked about this, how those that are, there’s a lot of arrogant leaders today and here’s one truth about arrogant leaders. They’re all opposed. There’s something in our universe that opposes the proud it opposes. But there’s for those that are humble, people want to get behind one them. They want to you know, they want to, you know, work for them. They want to follow them because they know they’re hum. They will take another opinion. They will listen. Maybe not always. But that humility that you have, I think in the midst of competency and strength and in a lot of wisdom is a, one of the things that makes you a great leader. Kent, let’s go personal. I’ve learned that great leaders do something well at home. They have certain habits. You’re, you’re imperfect like I am, but they, whether it’s physical or with the, you know exercise with their family, we, you know, we all want to do other things differently. You have a beautiful family. That’s amazing. But what are some habits, any habits you have at home that keep you either physically or emotionally fit so that you can be a great leader at work.

Kent Senf:
Oh wow. Well thanks for also for the comments a second ago. So when I think about habits things that maybe that are characteristic of who I am and what I do on a daily basis, a couple of ’em probably that stand out is I wake up every morning at 5:00 AM or five 30 and I never really set an alarm. In fact, my wife is often amazed that I I’ll need to get going and, and travel six o’clock in the morning or whatever it is. And I don’t set an alarm. I just have a the, I guess the old farm boy mentality of get up before everybody else doesn’t get the work done. I am Maynard Sam’s son. And even at 53 years old that still connects with me today. My dad was also a person who taught me that work hard.
you will not outwork me is his saying you know, and work starts in the morning. And for me it’s different than what it was for my dad and work is oftentimes starting. And I, I like to read or listen to books, podcasts news, first thing in the morning, a lot of times, 30, 45 minutes, I’m, I’m, I’m learning about what’s going on. And, and I, I like to, I travel enough. I, I, I like to listen to, to books on tape as well as have them in person as well. And and take notes. And you know, one of the fun things is I’m I’m right back to Dave ER’s daily edge that I did. I, I got your book a long time ago. I went through it, but as I took on this president role, one of the things that I wanted to go do is get back to some of those daily edge tactics that you have in, in really, really mind mapping is something that I didn’t, I call it something different, but I use that most, every morning, I’m a, a visual person, a creative person I’ll oftentimes draw what I want the future to look like.
And then and then use that to help get people, to see what, what I’m, what I’m envisioning or what I want to envision. And then once I believe that they can see it, David, I believe that they will believe in it and they become committed to it and they act on it as a result. And I spent a lot, I spend a lot of time probably most often in the morning, just connecting with those kind of E either I’m reading or, or I’m listening to a book on tape or a podcast, or I’m taking the time to reflect and say, where do we really wanna be three months, six months, nine months a year down the road, or, or at some point in time. And I, I have a notebook, oftentimes I’ll I’ll write those down in the last one. I, I have picked up, you know, in the last probably year or so. Success leaves clues that’s another one that’s that’s a big saying out there, but I’ve created a notebook that anytime that we’ve had this a recent success or I look back on success, I’m jotting those down and I’m trying to figure out where did that success originate from? And then and oftentimes going back to that and saying, how do we replicate that same success? So I don’t know if that was what you were looking for. Love it. But that’s what I do.

David Horsager:
I love it. Read, keep putting good input in podcast reading, take time to journal. I can’t tell you how many leaders I work with. When I say, what are a few year success habits? Journaling is one of ’em. And that’s like, you’re talking about journaling, drawing it out, mind, mapping it, whatever it is, because there’s something that happens when pen hits the paper and we kind of write through the problem or think through it or whatever. So, so everybody, there’s a one final question before we get there. We will put in the show notes where you can find Kent on LinkedIn and more about C and B operations and his great work and his role there. We’ll put all those links in the show notes, trusted leader, show.com, but we always have one final question. It’s a trusted leader show Kent who is a leader you trust and why?

Kent Senf:
Oh my gosh. Well so I guess if I’m gonna go think back to all the different leaders I’ve had and I’ve been a, I’ve been blessed to be a part of, probably one of the ones that stands out most to me is a personal one, a guy named Bob or Robert Robert Radcliff. And he was the founder of AGCO corporation. And unfortunately he passed away in 2017, but I was very fortunate to, to work with him when I was at AGCO years, years ago. And one of the reasons why I probably liked his leadership style the most is he was very, very performance oriented David, and he knew the numbers extraordinarily well, but one thing that stands out and stands firm with me in thinking about RA Bob rat Ratliff, excuse me, was that one day he came up to me and he said, Kent how’s things going. And I said, well, you know, Bob, we’re a hundred and X percent of plan and we’re we’re doing this. Cause I knew he was a very performance based person and he had these big, huge hands and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, no, Kent, what I ask you is how are you doing? I can read the numbers too.

David Horsager:
Powerful, cared about you. Mentee who

Kent Senf:
Cared about me,

David Horsager:
Kent. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing with all of our guests and our audience. This there’s lots more we could say. I’m just so grateful for our friendship. All the good work you’re doing in work and in play at home and around the world. So thank you so much for joining us. This has been the trusted leader show until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 98: Allison Shapira on 3 Strategies To Maximize Trust In Communication

In this episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 Trusted Leader Summit where David welcomed to the stage Allison Shapira, Public Speaking Expert, Entrepreneur, Speaker, and Author, to share her 3 strategies to maximize trust in communication.

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Allison’s Bio:
Allison Shapira is a former opera singer turned entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and expert in public speaking. She is the Founder/CEO of Global Public Speaking LLC, a communication training firm and certified woman-owned small business that helps people speak clearly, concisely, and confidently – both virtually and in person. She teaches public speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School and has spent nearly 20 years developing leadership communication programs for Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations around the world. Allison is a Certified Virtual Presenter and a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP). She holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and is the author of Speak with Impact: How to Command the Room and Influence Others (HarperCollins Leadership) which was a Washington Post best-seller. She was a finalist for 2017 Woman Business Owner of the Year by the National Association of Women Business Owners, San Diego Chapter. She lives in the Washington, DC area.

Allison’s Links:
Website: https://allisonshapira.com/
“Speak with Impact” by Allison Shapira: https://amzn.to/3r7aMJ9
Global Public Speaking: https://www.globalpublicspeaking.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonshapira/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allisonshapira/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allisonshapira
Twitter: https://twitter.com/allisonshapira
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/AllisonShapira

Key Quotes:
1. “If you are bored with what you’re saying you will be a boring speaker.”
2. “Your why you is constantly changing.”
3. “When you’re the most senior person in the room your energy dictates the energy of the room.”
4. “Intention is focused energy.”
5. “That consistency of message, in the way that you present, is a driver of trust.”
6. “Intension and smiling is what takes that warmth and transmits it to the audience.”
7. “The more senior we become, the more our audience takes their ques from us.”
8. “We have to build trust first and then demonstrate that trust in our communication skills.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com/

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36AXtp9
Follow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Follow David on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Follow David on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Show Transcript

David Horsager (Intro):
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m your host David Horsager. Join me as I sit down with influential leaders from around the world to discuss why leaders in organizations fail top tactics for high performance and how you can become an even more trusted leader.

Kent Svenson:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m Kent Svenson producer of the trusted leader show. And for this week’s episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 trusted leader summit, where David welcomed to the stage Allison Shapira, public speaking expert, entrepreneur, speaker, and author, to discuss her three strategies to maximize trust in communication. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Allison Shapira:
It starts with these three strategies. The first strategy is around connecting with your sense of purpose before you communicate. Here’s the challenge. We are tired. We are overworked. We are stressed. We are filled with uncertainty and, and even if we’ve we’ve dealt with this uncertainty over the past two years, there’s always something new around the corner. We talked about this this morning. When we do that, we tend to go on automatic. Our language goes on automatic, our speeches, our meetings, our, our content goes on automatic, and we simply bring the, the professional image of ourselves into every interaction. We default to jargon, acronyms talking points. Perhaps we, we hide behind complexity because we don’t have the energy to go. How, how, how in order to get to the clarity. And we, when we do that, that lack of clarity and that lack of authenticity holds people back from relating to us because as David says, it’s our vulnerability that people relate to, not our title, not this image of a perfect leader.
And so often when there’s a crisis, we feel like we have to be perfect. We have to have all the perfect answers. We need to know everything. And there’s no such thing. So, so when we hide behind that ideal of perfection and we bring in this, this formal language, it holds people back from connecting with us and what they need most is to connect with us and the way in which we connect with our sense of purpose in order to bring our authenticity into every interaction is by asking one question. And I know you’ve, you’ve received a lot of questions over today and, and David gave you a lot of questions to ask. I’m gonna ask you to bear with me for one more question. That question has become one of the core tenets of my methodology, my philosophy that I use every day. And that question is why you, and by why you, I don’t mean where did you go to school?
What’s your title? What company do you work for? How many years do you have enroll? Those are external validators by why you, I mean, why do you care about your work? About the people you serve and by extension, when was a time in your life that made you care and I’ll give you two examples of this. The first example is of the why you missing in action. I have a friend named Patrick and I met Patrick in downtown Washington, DC dancing, tango, and on the dance floor. Patrick is this incredible tango dancer. He’s charming. He’s funny. He’s confident. He’s relaxed. He’s the life of the party in his day job. He works in real estate development and he asked me for help preparing a presentation to a community board. So I go to Patrick’s office. I sit in a comfy chair. I sit back and I wait for tango, Patrick to Regal. Me and Patrick gets up, takes the clicker for the PowerPoint. And he goes behind me. We have the schematics of what the project’s gonna look like. There’s the timeline, any questions?
And Patrick was afraid that he was a boring speaker and I’m not gonna lie. Patrick was a boring speaker, but I asked him why you, why you, why do you care? I really pushed him. He was my friend. I could push him. I cared about him and it turns out he didn’t, he didn’t care. He hated his job. He hated his boss. He didn’t like the industry. We realized Patrick, wasn’t a boring speaker. He was just bored. And if you are bored with what you’re saying, you will be a boring speaker. Contrast that with Stacy, Stacey’s a woman I worked with at a financial institution where we will do, we were doing this intensive leadership communication cohort program. And we were preparing a new business pitch for her. And she was pitching the bank’s business, their suite of services to a small business client.
And I asked Stacy, why you, why do you care? And she gave me a, a very general answer. She said, cuz I believe in service. I said, okay, why? She said, cuz service is important to me. I said, when was a time in your life that made you care? And she said, well, growing up, my parents were small business owners. And every single day I saw them wake up and put their customers needs before their own. And that sense of service was instilled in me and what I love most about my job and what keeps me here 30 years later is that every single day I get to wake up and live my parents’ legacy. That’s why, what do you think Stacy could do with that? Why you, how about start the new business pitch with it? Because she’s competing in an industry where all the banks have similar services and it’s the relationship that she’s selling.
It’s the trust of the client that she’ll be there for them when they need her. And by telling that story that why you, they get a sense of her character and that’s what helps her builds trust. The Y U has two main purposes or at least there are two ways in which I use why you and that I recommend others use it as well. The first way we use it is right before we craft a presentation. Before we start a meeting, before we enter a room for a networking event, why you, we pause and breathe maybe in between zoom calls, when one went over and the other one we’re running late to pause and breathe. Think about that. Why you and it centers you to remind you why what you’re doing is important. And it changes for every meeting because the topic changes and the people change and the issues change. So your Y U is constantly changing. You use it to center yourself when you’re distracted, multitasking and not fully present with people, pause and breathe. It brings you back to the present. The second use of the ye is in the language that you use when you communicate. Because by answering that question, you’re automatically going to craft a message or deliver a message with authentic language. That’s conversational to you. Nobody answers why you with, to increase shareholder value.
It it’s something personal to us. So by nature of answering that question, you come up with this rich language that you can use when introducing yourself to a new group of people when motivating a group of direct reports and sharing something that feels vulnerable about you, but that helps them see your character. So it gives you rich material. You can use in a presentation, in a meeting, in a pitch, in a one-on-one mentoring conversation. That’s the power of the why you, and it helps you connect with your sense of purpose, which is the first strategy that lets you build trust with your audience. Once you’ve done that once you’ve connected with your sense of purpose, the second strategy is around delivering a message with energy, harnessing your best energy. The challenge is because we’re tired because we’re really busy. We have so much going on. We’re now balancing our, our new workflows and the great resignation is happening to everyone. If it’s not happening to you, it’s happening to your clients. All of that stress that we feel physically shows up when we communicate and it affects the people we work with. When you are the most senior person in the room, your energy dictates the energy of the room. They take their cues from you. How should I feel? Should I feel calm and reassured? Or should I feel anxious and nervous? Your energy tells them how to feel.
So the technique that you can use to harness your best energy, this isn’t about trying to fake it or, or act like somebody else to harness your best energy. I want you to speak with intention. Now the word intention means many things to many people. That’s the beauty of the word intention. It can mean many things. When I say intention, I mean focused energy, whatever it is that you say, or do you focus all your energy on saying or doing it? This is not an intellectual activity. It’s a physical activity. Imagine for a minute, you’re going to the gym. You are excited to work out. You go to the gym, you find the machine it’s available. You work out with zero intention. How effective are you going to be? Not very, this is like the people who lay on the mat pretending to do abs. And they’re really texting. nobody’s laughing cuz they can relate to that. They’re laughing cuz they’ve seen other people do it, right? You will not be effective. But now let’s imagine you go to the gym. You’re excited to work out. You find that machine, you work out with 100% intention, 100% focused energy. Now you’re gonna see results.
How does this relate to our communication skills? You’re here at this summit. Let’s say and why don’t we do this right now? You’re gonna introduce to yourself to someone you haven’t met before. I want you to stand up. If you can approach someone, introduce yourself to them out loud with zero intention. Do that right now. Stand up, introduce yourself to someone you don’t know with zero intention. How do that stay? Where you are, stay where you are. We’re gonna have, don’t worry. There’s a round B to that. How did that feel? Shout it out. Awkward. What else? Me? Great. What else? Blaze. How did it, when someone spoke to you like that, how did it make you feel curious? It’s first time I’ve heard curious is that response, like they didn’t care. How many of you know people who speak like that? How does it make you feel? Now we’ll try this again. You’re gonna approach that same person. Shake their hand or fist bump whenever you’re comfortable with. But this time focus 100% of your energy. A hundred percent intention on introducing yourself to that person. Give it a try. All right. Take your seats.
What was the difference in the second round? Shout it out. What was the difference? This time more

Audience:
Energy,

Allison Shapira:
Exciting, more energy. What was it? More exciting? What else?

Audience:
Connection

Allison Shapira:
Over here. What was that connection? What else? Smile. You smiled? What else? Eye contact. Eye contact. What else? Interest.

Audience:
Happy to see you makes you

Allison Shapira:
Feel good. It made you feel good. How was the handshake?
Nice, strong handshake. So if I’m trying to teach you your communication skills and I’m like, okay, this time I want you to do more eye contact. I want you to have a better handshake. I want you to have more energy, more excitement. I want you to be all in alignment. It’s too much. But this simple technique of speaking with intention focuses you. It makes you more present and it focuses all your energy on what you’re saying or doing. It has nothing to do with the content. You’re simply tapping into your best energy. Theu helps you find the right content, but then speaking with intention helps you deliver it with your best energy. And, and it’s not yelling. A hundred percent. Intention is not yelling at people.
I can speak with a hundred percent intention and I can whisper. Whatever is natural to you. This is simply bringing that out and being intentional. And, and when we talk about clarity as a driver of trust, it’s, it’s not just the language of clarity, it’s the clarity of our pronunciation and our, the intentionality of our words. And it’s also consistency because what you were talking about is making sure that everything about you is communicating the same thing, your eye contact, your gestures, your energy, your voice, everything was an alignment. And that consistency of message of the way in which you present is a driver of trust. Also, if I say one thing in my body says something else, then there’s an inconsistency there, right? If I started our session today by saying, good morning, everyone I’m really excited to be here and we’re gonna have a great time.
I know it’s late in the day. Don’t worry. I’ll get you up and energized. Okay? the inconsistency in my message makes you think, oh no, she’s the, she’s not telling the truth. You’re not, you don’t trust me. So the idea is that I wanna make sure every part of me is communicating the same message. Very often we are unintentionally sending mixed signals to people. When we communicate our words, say one thing, our gestures and tone say another. And that disconnect makes it difficult for people to connect with us, which is why that, why you brings out your authenticity. The intention brings out your best energy and you can turn it on in an instant log, into the zoom call, pause and breathe, speak with intention. Smile because it changes the shape of your face. And it makes the words sound more confident, sound more capable. And that’s what I’ve been recommending for two years of teaching people, how to, how to project their executive presence through a camera lens, intention and smiling is what takes that warmth and transmits it to the audience. And the more senior we become, again, the more our audience takes their cues from us. So I wanna be intentional about how I make you feel

Anne Engstrom (ad):
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Allison Shapira:
These two, the first two strategies that we covered are around what we do. We tap into our sense of purpose. We then deliver that message with intention. The third strategy is more directed at the people we’re speaking to. And the strategy is around. How do you build connection? We’ve been talking a lot about connection as a driver of trust. We know it’s important. How, how, how, how do we build connection with the people in our organization? In our network? The challenge is connection is one of the ways in which we keep people with us in our circle, working with us. And when people are leaving, then how do we validate the people who are here? How do we raise them up and remind them why they’re why they’re here. We do that by tapping into shared values and I’ll show you how to do that. What are some of your core values? Shout them out. What are some of your core values? What was that respect? What else? Accountability. Accountability. What else? Generosity. Honesty. Honesty. Okay. What else? Gratitude. Now choose a value that the people in your organization will relate to. Not just your value, but a value people on your team in your organization will relate to.
And think about a time when you saw people on your team demonstrate that value. This is not about you. This is about them. What’s a value that, you know, you share with people on your team. When was a time in which you saw them demonstrate that value. If it’s in financial services, perhaps it was when you saw everyone on your team, come together with the cares act. If you’re in education, maybe it’s how everyone rallied around this one student in need in healthcare. Maybe everyone came together together to support one particular patient. When was a moment in which you saw your team demonstrate that value? I ask you to find this material because this is what you put into your meetings and presentations. Can you start a meeting, especially when you have a difficult message to convey, can you start by building up the team by reminding them why they matter how we work effectively, how we can come together when we need to.
And then once we connect based on that shared value, now that we’re in alignment, we’re able to effectively address the task at hand instead of just walking into the meeting and saying, all right, I have something difficult to share with you. Can we first align based on why we’re here and what we do well, and then we can deliver that difficult message. So those three strategies to build trust. Every time you communicate are first and foremost, ask yourself why you, why do you care before you craft that message? Before you log into that meeting, before you introduce yourself to someone, pause and breathe, remind yourself of your, why you then when you speak, no matter what you’re saying, whether you’re virtual or in person, one person or 300 people speak with intention. And when you speak to a group of people that you work with, that you lead tap into the shared values between you and that group build a bond with them through those shared values.
And then you’re more effectively able to mobilize them to take action around a shared goal. Those are three strategies that I have found to be transformational in my ability to connect with and build trust with others and teach people how they can use communication skills to build trust. We can’t simply think about what do I wanna say? And what’s the perfect hand gesture to use. When I say it, we have to build trust first and then demonstrate that trust in our communication skills, it all comes back to this concept of authenticity. Nothing I shared with you today should feel forced. It’s simply giving you an avenue to find what’s already in you. And then you give yourself permission to share

Kent Svenson:
That’s it for this week’s episode. Be sure to check out trustedleadershow.com for all the show notes and links from anything mentioned in today’s episode. And we are so excited to announce the trusted leader summit is coming back next year, November 7th – 9th, 2023 at the JW Marriott Mall of America here in Minnesota. To find out more information and to register head to trustedleadersummit.com. And if you haven’t already make sure to subscribe to the trusted leader show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcast so that you never miss an episode. But in the meantime, that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 97: Dave Sparkman on How To Spark Your Culture

In this episode, David sits down with Dave Sparkman, Former SVP of Culture at UnitedHealth Group, Founder of Spark Your Culture, and Executive Director for Crossroads Career, to discuss how to spark your culture.

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Dave’s Bio:
Dave Sparkman is the former SVP, Culture at UnitedHealth Group, a Fortune 5 company. Over 9 years, he led efforts to infuse an over 300,000 person organization with a corporate mission and values that would improve corporate results.

Currently Dave serves as the Executive Director for Crossroads Career, a national non-profit career transition ministry. He’s also the founder of SPARK Your Culture, an advisory firm specializing in helping organizations transform and flourish through healthy, high performance cultures.

Dave’s Links:
Website: http://sparkyourculture.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsparkman/

Key Quotes:
1. “Culture is the thing or environment that permeates through an entire organization.”
2. “The more that you help an individual become grounded in who they are and what they believe, that will then translate to the organization.”
3. “People are looking at people more than they’re looking at memos.”
4. “Our behaviors are driven by what makes sense to us.”
5. “Community is so important.”
6. “You will never really get alignment unless you have clarity.”
7. “Leadership shadow is everything.”
8. “Wins often time come from where you least expect.”
9. “You’ve got to allow people the time to engage.”
10. “Integrity and trust are core to the core values of every organization in the world.”
11. “Most importantly, listen to your people.”
12. “Almost everything can be defined.”
13. “Very few people like to be micro-managed.”
14. “Unification doesn’t mean uniformity.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
Crossroads Career: https://crossroadscareer.org/
Spark Your Culture: http://sparkyourculture.com/
2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com/
Trust Edge: https://trustedge.com/

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36AXtp9
Follow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Follow David on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Follow David on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Show Transcript

David Horsager:
Welcome to the trusted leader show it’s David Horsager and I’m thrilled about my next guest. He is a friend. We got to know each other when he was the chief culture officer at the massive United health group, fortune five company. He’s up to some interesting things today, and I’m just grateful to have you on Dave Sparkman. Welcome to the show.

Dave Sparkman:
Thank you, David. Pleasure to be here.

David Horsager:
Dave, give us a little quick little update, a couple things you’re doing now. You’re writing up a new book. You’re up to some cool ministry things. What’s the, what’s the two minute update.

Dave Sparkman:
Yeah, well, I’ll make a less than two minutes. I’m currently serving as the executive director for a faith based job transition ministry called crossroads career where we help those people who are unfulfilled or unemployed. And I’m also in the process of writing a book as you know called spark your culture lessons learned to ignite and fuel lasting results. So hopeful to have that out in circulation by next year.

David Horsager:
I love it. Well, this is some of the work we got to do together, and of course I’ve even employed you and, and asked for your advice multiple times and had consulting from you as we’ve tried to grow our company. And you worked with us on the trusted leaders summit most recently, but you know, we had some great years working together and partnering, I guess we are Institute partnered with United health group and all the great work you were doing, but let’s jump in on this culture piece right away. You know, what, what is culture?

Dave Sparkman:
You know, culture is defined by many, many different definitions depending on the person in the day. David, what I like to think of as culture is it really is the thing or environment that permeates through an entire organization. And that’s driven most of the time by behaviors because that’s what we can see. I believe it’s deeper than that though. I believe it is, is founded in the core beliefs that individuals bring to an organization and how an organization can create a culture of shared beliefs that then drive everything that that organization is doing. So it comes out of the core values.

David Horsager:
We can get into the how soon, but tell us just what was the progress you saw and you were with a big consultancy before this before United healthcare, but what was some of the progress you said? You know, it was pretty fun for me to watch some of the cultural change at a massive company. Many people think they can hardly turn around a little company or, or add to a small company. And yet there is a lot of great progress that happened at United health group. Just tell what does that look like when you see healthy culture, at least in parts of an organization

Dave Sparkman:
For, for us at United health group, what it looked like was becoming very clear with what we believed and what we valued and, and how should we behave. And you’ve seen our core values, David, and, and prior to the establishment of that there were some core values which no one knew what they were. Each of the different divisions of the business had their own core values, some of which overlapped, some of which didn’t and of course, no discussion ever took place around what those core values were or how they could be used. Once we made the decision. And in this case, our CEO, Steve Hemsley made the decision that we needed to become grounded and, and unified. That’s where the actions started to happen. And we saw a lot of good results coming out of that.

David Horsager:
And it seemed like one thing you did is, well, let’s just let me just ask, how do you cascade that, you know, this, this idea of unity and alignment and I guess a common language, how, how did you cascade that throughout an organization?

Dave Sparkman:
Well, we didn’t begin the way that societal culture begins today with a hashtag and a social media campaign. We did not go that route. Instead. We went directly into help helping people, person. What I call personally appropriating the values appropriate is a very strong word. I, I believe it’s it’s U and usually when you’re seizing something from someone else, and we wanted people to not just be accountable for the values and not just take ownership of the values, we wanted them to appropriate those values for themselves. And we did that through a workshop. And as you know, we also utilize the trusted edge leadership workshops to additionally fuel that because we feel that the more that you help an individual become grounded in who they are and what they believe that will then translate to the organization. So we started with the, with the individual and encouraged individuals to do things with their teams to cascade it. And then of course we employed all of the normal corporate communication vehicles. We could to get the word out. But people are looking at people more than they’re looking at memos and how those people show up is what I think helped cascade it even more.

David Horsager:
I’m gonna come back to a little bit more of the cascading and your role in culture, but let’s go to behavior, cuz we’ve had some fun discussions about this. How do you actually change a behavior? We see so many people say they want to change a behavior. They want to change a habit and they rarely do what does it actually take to help others? We say, we can’t really motivate anyone else. Right. But how do we do, how do we help actually, where you’ve seen behavior change happen what’s been present.

Dave Sparkman:
Yeah. Well I’ll just share my own example of me personally, David, the first step is awareness, right? Do you even, are you even aware you need to change because our behaviors are driven by what makes sense to us. We do what makes sense to us. Otherwise most sane individuals wouldn’t do it when I become aware that there could be a different way to behave and I’m shown what those alternatives could be. Then I make a decision, oh, if I use this, I’m gonna get better results. And that’s where the, the root starts. So I’m aware. And then I get an insight that I could change to something different. And then of course, forming new habits. And that’s where the, how, how, how coming out of trusted leadership was just huge for me and some of my own personal habits in changing because I then tied it to something that was meaningful and changed some habits. So awareness, insights. And then how, how, how to make that habit really stick is, was key.

David Horsager:
How did you keep it going, you know, for a decade or so? I mean, United health group had a tangible and maybe they do more now. I, I, I’m not touching there as much you’re have moved on to other things, but, but in those days, I mean, for someone to even see positive culture change for a decade is pretty significant in organizations. How did it get reinforced?

Dave Sparkman:
You know, we, we tried to reinforce it by telling stories of what others were doing to make significant improvements in their own operations, their own departments, their own teams. And whenever we would hear about that, this comes into the cascade. Then we tied into the communities that had been established through our culture work and community is so important to all of us as individuals generally associate with some group of people. And we formalized that to some extent by creating an outfit called culture ambassadors and culture ambassadors were simply someone that had been grounded in our United culture. And they voluntarily said, I want to continue in this. I want to know more. And that then gave us license to utilize that group of people and shepherd them if you will, but also receive from them many of the things that they were doing to then reshare it back out, basically broker that information back out to the community. And that just starts the wildfire burning because people get encouraged from what they see other people like themselves doing. So it’s not, you know, memos from Dave talking about something that maybe doesn’t really resonate with them. These are their teammates, their peers that are doing things in different ways that get different and better results. And when we share that, that starts to get that flywheel turning faster and faster.

David Horsager:
And I think you got you, you also did a really great job of at back to the beginning of having a common language at the beginning, creating a common language in those, those values. And then you can, you know what, you’re reinforcing, you know, what you’re cascading. And I remember Steve also had really clear priorities. I think at the time it was quality and something. They could, everybody knew it right throughout the whole organization. So having clear suit over 300 and some thousand employees, but cl people know their priorities and think, can think about what that means to them here now and know this common language of how we do life. What, what these behaviors look like, mattered, speak to that.

Dave Sparkman:
Yeah. Clarity, of course, one of the eight pillar is huge. And alignment is huge and you will never really get alignment unless you have clarity. there, there is a pattern of the chicken and the egg here, and clarity does come first because unless you are able to, in our case specifically define what we’re looking for in our case, the, the core values and then start to attach things through those core values. And as we shared at the trusted leader, some of the values lens that people can look through you will see life differently when you’re given a filter and you start to, you know, make a point of looking through it and you start to see things you didn’t see before. And then with the workshops starting to make people aware of their own behavior, letting them personally appropriate it, letting them tell the stories of what they did, sharing that. And then also recognizing it, we created a recognition platform around our core values and used a technology tool through another company to enable people all the time share what’s going on. So it no longer became necessary to be brokered. So there was no bottleneck of me or anyone else. It was just out there and basically taking the social media internal to United health group did a lot to help us progress.

David Horsager:
You’ve had all these years of the chief culture officer you’ve had years and consulting at one of the biggest consulting firms in the country. You’ve had years leading a ministry. And a lot of other things, what do you’re, you’re writing this book, let’s jump in and here just a little bit about where that came from and the heartbeat of it. And then I wanna get into a couple of the lessons at least that you’re writing about these days.

Dave Sparkman:
So I I don’t consider myself an author David, as, as you and I have talked about words I can usually verbally process fairly well, but getting them onto paper and articulating that has been a challenge. So it’s not something that I was really eager about doing. I do feel compelled that that’s something that I should do and I’m doing it because it helps my life purpose fulfill my life purpose, which motivates me which is to glorify Christ by helping people and organizations achieve their aspirations and his purpose. So the book is a vehicle to help that happen. And I feel like those nine years that I spent in that role, I certainly learned a lot. I made a lot of mistakes. How could I help other people benefit from some of the mistakes and the lessons learned? And that’s something that I feel we’re all supposed to do in serving others. So if there’s somebody that can benefit from that, that’s the purpose of the, of the book.

David Horsager:
Tell me about your biggest mistake. If you’re up for it, what’s one of your biggest mistakes.

Dave Sparkman:
Oh, how many can we count?

David Horsager:

Dave Sparkman:
Oh, I I’ll two immediately come to mind. One, which I think is common to a lot of people is we always think when we wanna change the culture, it’s about George needs to change. It’s not me. Our culture would be great if it were full of Dave Sparkman’s it’s about George. And if George were only getting it, if George, so the first mistake I made was looking to point to somebody else instead of pointing at myself, I needed to make changes. So that was the first mistake. And thankfully I got through that one and then continued to learn over the nine years. But then programmatically, there was a mistake we made. We, I made a, a decision that we wanted to try to Institute a, another role, another community of called values coaches. And it was trying to get, trying to get after the natural intact teams, because we saw the leaders of those teams. Many times, weren’t really taking full advantage of our United culture, the way we thought they could. Oh, so let’s create a role where someone can come alongside them and help from their team, their natural work team and help guide and influence that. And that just didn’t work. It didn’t take which goes back to a host of other things where personal appropriation and not fully happened. And you can’t substitute for that. People need to get it or they don’t get it. And you’ve gotta work around that. You can’t substitute.

David Horsager:
How did you get buy-in from leaders cuz many leaders, senior leaders, even at United did buy in. And that’s a big challenge for a lot of people when they can’t really do anything about it, but they need the buy in of their senior leaders. How do you get that?

Dave Sparkman:
Oh, it, it is a key essential thing. David’s leader leadership shadow as we call it is everything which is walking the talk. If our CEO, Steve Hemsley didn’t want this to happen, it would not have happened. But what Steve did do was show extraordinary commitment and continuity of the longevity of what he wanted to see happen with our United culture. The other thing I be, I am grateful for is he empowered myself and the communities to do work that maybe he would not have done himself. And that enabled us to try some new things without it necessarily being his. And so he, of course, as the CEO always had the prerogative to overrule something, but he gave us a lot, lot of leeway to try new things, many of which happened to work. And so that, that leadership buy-in is one that I explore a little bit in the book and it comes back to a belief system and a faith of taking action upon those beliefs that the core values are truly what will drive the end game of people’s behaviors. If all you do is focus on behaviors. In my opinion, you just have compliance and compliance. Ultimately doesn’t motivate people the way a, an insight or a belief in the conviction that goes with those beliefs can do

David Horsager:
That’s so true. Wow. What we saw and I was privileged to watch you and your team make some immense change and have a great impact and just come alongside in a few ways. Over that time, what a, what a, what a treat it was. Let’s get to this book, spark your culture. What are a couple of the key lessons you especially come top of mind, I guess for sparking a high performing healthy, I would say high trust culture.

Dave Sparkman:
Well, you, you hit one of them, Dave, and that’s a common language. If, if you don’t have a common language it’s just as silly as if you were speaking in Spanish or another language. And I was speaking in a different tongue, we would not understand each other. We would not be able to move quickly. We would not be aligned. We would never get clarity. So a common language is something I expand upon and closely related to that is to be very specific with what you’re talking about many times leaders will say, well, you know, we’ve got the core values written out and that’s what we should do. I, I was talking to a leader of another company just recently last week and he is a manufacturing facility CEO, and they were having some safety issues, nothing significant, no one passed away was killed, but people were injured and he goes, Dave, we’ve got safety as one of our values, but it doesn’t seem to be taken seriously by our workers.
Well, let’s back up the train a little bit and let’s start to describe what does safety mean to you? and what is articulated already. And then how does that resonate with the people to whom it’s being said, and you and I have both been around the block enough, Dave, to know that we can all hear the same message and interpret it very differently. And so unless you allow some time for that to settle and, and get more specific and granular then you won’t have that clarity in that alignment. To me that are key to a hugely successful transformative, transformative culture.

David Horsager:
What does it mean here? What does it look like to you? I, I remember that even about your values. It correct me if I’m wrong, but the values had attached behaviors so they could see what does that value look like? A lot of people have core values, they have values, but that’s like, what does this look like here?

Dave Sparkman:
True, correct. Correct. Yeah. We, we had a paragraph about the behaviors and then of course, once we established that then in our learning and development department was able to more fully blow that out into more specificity for a call center agent, for example, versus a nurse and versus a doctor for example. And that’s what we encourage our senior leaders to do is take these values and now get very specific with your group of people. What does that look like every day? And let’s go to some of your pain points, apply the values lens, get specific with what you expect. Because most of the time when, when peop a supervisor and a supervisee are in conflict, or there’s a lack of performance, David, it’s simply a, a mismanaged expectations. You know, the boss is thinking they, they were clear and the, the person doesn’t show up intentionally there to not do a good job. They’re trying, they just don’t seem to connect. And that’s what we’re trying to be more

David Horsager:
Clear. Even we, we take the pillars we go through and exercise, especially with character. You know, and we say, what define, what does character look like here? Because it turns out some people incentivize their sales teams in ways we never would, as far as character or people have argued with me, you know, oh, Hitler had more character than Churchill. And what they mean is if integrity is being the same, in thoughts, words, and actions, of course you know, Hitler would get up at a certain time go to bed. So he wouldn’t even drink coffee. I mean, he was very congruent, I guess you could say in a, in a way, and yet you know, Churchill had moral character that was different. That really probably saved us all at the darkest out of the 20th century. And so we have to put integrity with moral character in some way, if we’re gonna get what we mean by character, right? Because just integrity being same. You can be the same and thoughts, words, and actions in ways that I wouldn’t agree with it all

Dave Sparkman:
Correct. Absolutely

Anne Engstrom:
Most training and development initiatives don’t last or even solve the root problem, hindering an organization. That’s where trusted certification comes in. Trusted certified partners are equipped with a suite of tools to identify benchmark and close gaps in trust for good, because when you solve the real issue, you get measurable results and a culture where people actually wanna make an impact. So whether you’re a trainer, a manager, an HR executive, or a leader in learning and development, check out trusted platform.com and see how you can start solving the root issue and get lasting results in your organization. And now back to the show.

David Horsager:
So there’s a CEO out there or, or VP or a C H R O listing right now. And they’re thinking, you know, I think culture’s important. I can see how we could be higher. Our, our culture’s dying, there’s poison, there’s all these issues. And I could see how you know, in our company, we part of our mission is dev, you know, creating high performing cultures built on trust, but, but they, they see the need, but they’re like, where do I start? What, what, what would you encourage them to, to even do, to think about, to, to move forward and to even care, or even, you know, get buy in from others in senior leadership to take culture seriously, as a real goal. In fact, I was just thinking about our research. I think I have it right here. I, I, this was not set up.
Actually I had this from the last interview. I did. I wonder if I can find it very quickly basically if I can pull it out right. What people are ask. Yeah. If you, you know, most people are listening instead of watching, but the, by far in organizations when people were asked, where did they want their executives to spend their attention or focus on, you know, from not finance, not technology and equipment, not strategy, not the product or service, not this, but culture was by far number one, people in culture. And so what, what would you just encourage the, the executives to do, to just start thinking about how to create, how to start this process toward a high performing culture?

Dave Sparkman:
I think a lot of companies, Dave rely on what I call the five PS to drive their business and the culture. They rely on the platforms, the programs, the processes, the projects, and in some cases, the personalities to drive what they’re doing. And those are all very useful and necessary for a, a company to execute. But for culture, one of the lessons learned was wins often time come from where you least expect it. And if you’re not allowing every person to be empowered to execute the culture, if instead, you’re relying on the five PS, you will never get that fulfilled or never sustain it as well as it could. And I, there are countless examples to go through, but if I were a C H O or a CEO or a COO, trying to say, how can I start to transfer my co culture first?
I’d say, have you, are you specifically defining what you want that culture to be? You’ve been around enough people where leaders that talk to you, Dave saying, we need a culture of innovation, or we want a culture of trust, or we want a culture of integrity fill in the blank, but how well can they articulate it? So one specifically defined two. You need a personally appropriate, allow people to take ownership and seize what the values are. Three, you need to actively apply. And that’s where these communities come into effect. And so to think that you are going to do it through a senior leadership team and then send memos out. That to me is just save, save your time and breath and paper. You’ve got to allow people the time to engage and encourage them to engage and re recognize them and foam that activity.
And then you’ve gotta reinforce it all the time. And then last is, and this was a lesson learned. We had to keep it fresh. And, and that’s where you and trusted Le edge leadership came in because we had already established the values. We were well in our way, but yet how do we get, and I’ve said this at the trusted leader, summit integrity and trust are core to the core values of every organization in the world, in my opinion. So how do you do trust? Well, tell, has it trusted leadership has a methodology, has a platform to use that. So we were able to augment supplement, compliment trust edge within what we were already doing. And that helped people say, oh, there’s another angle at which I could look at this. And as you know, we, we used other organizations to continual continually keep it fresh. So senior leaders listening today, when was the last time you tried something new, it may not work, but bring in some fresh voices, some fresh eyes and, and allow your people to see that this is earnestly, what you want to have happen. And if you’re listening to them and empowering them, you’ll get some great answers that you haven’t gotten before.

David Horsager:
What I think is brilliant about what you did is, you know, many organizations go in and they create AFL, have a flavor of the month. And that’s a lot of times when people even bring in us or others, and they just do that flavor of the month, just do the, a keynote or a workshop or something. Right. And on the other hand, you have people have something that might be kind of good, but get stale. And what you did is you have this core that kept getting fed in fresh ways. And so this core kept true and yet there was a freshness to it. And I think that was that’s in all my work on culture, in all the big fortune 100 companies and universities and everything we work with. I think there was a uniqueness that I saw at United health group that I was really proud to be a part of.

Dave Sparkman:
And you benefited us quite a bit, Dave, and that provided you at another lens to look at life through a trust lens, which helped make our values even more secure in being our values. A lot of organizations have the word integrity as a value. Well, that was the value for us. But when you start to put together, all the people that contributed to what integrity meant at United health group trust edge leadership was part of that as was a host of other organizations and individuals who helped us see it more broadly. And that’s where I think a leader who’s looking and maybe frustrated with something, not working, get some fresh eyes on it, get some fresh voices and see what they come up with. And also most importantly, listen to your people. They know what work is gonna work, and isn’t gonna work, but most companies are, are really into control , which is necessary for good UCA, good execution. But how does that make the employee feel? And that’s why I think we have the great resignation because companies are trying to make good decisions on hybrid work environment, remote work, all these other things, very difficult to navigate through, but are they really talking and listening to their people versus, well, I’m looking at a number and I think I can do some math. And that’s where I get there. Well, anyone can do math,

David Horsager:
So I’m gonna jump here. We gotta land the plane and I want to get personal. But before I do, you brought something up and I’ve gotta go there. Sure. How in this work environment, this virtual work environment, I mean, I’ve got both sides. I feel both sides. You’ve got the workforce seemingly wanting more. I want this, I want that. I can get, you know, I, I was just talking to someone yesterday, this, this person was interviewing at this place. And they said, yeah, they have two free meals a day and there’s a climbing wall. And I said, is that what makes culture right? Is that what is gonna make it might get them there. But I don’t know if that on its own makes culture, although it might bring in better people. And so you, you, you’ve got this thing of I’ve been doing interviews lately of new people and I’ve noticed several have been like, well, this is what I want.
I want this, this, this not what I’m gonna give. Right. Well, I actually need some people that are actually going to further the mission, right. That are gonna give too. So where we’ve become much more flexible in everything. And, and I was talking to a senior leader about this also where, where the more, the less uniform you are, I’m not saying it’s right. We have all different people, but the more, the less uniform. So you want this flexibility, you want that flexibility you want that is takes a lot, another level of management. It is difficult. So you have people that want more in certain ways and motivated, and there’s different things. And you have leaders that are called to quarterly earnings and driving results and, and, and, and furthering missions too. You know? So how do we in this more virtual work environment in some cases forever how do we balance basically this honoring the unique human and helping them be their best while having an aligned unified culture while having accountability, because Bo you know, there’s an article today.
It’s either in the wall street journal or the times that talked about the whole new industry of basically policing right. Of, of surveillance of your people, right? Checking the key strokes. How much are you working? How much are you, not even people that are coming in, like checking this. And it kind of, for me, it kind of, you know, grates against trust, right? It feels like, Ugh, on the other hand, we also do know employees are, you know, checking social media and websites and buying stuff on company time. So, you know, this is, this, isn’t so easy of a problem to solve. How, how, how should we, we just, you got two minutes just solve it for me.

Dave Sparkman:

So it’s a, it’s a, a long conversation, but here here’s an illustration. Dave, when we had COVID 19 hit companies had to make a lot of decisions very quickly with what to do. And I’ll just pick on call centers, for example. Well, you can’t, can’t put 300 people in the same, big room, all on phones next to each other, three feet from each other in a COVID 19 environment. So what did they do well at United health group? In a matter of a couple days, this is what I was told by a couple guys in their operations. They got those entire 300 force purse, people to work from home. They could do that. Well, why weren’t those people allowed to work at home before? Well, because they didn’t want them to work at home before. So desperation caused something to happen. And I believe people saw their organizations.
That’s just one example, do amazing things to stay afloat and to be, and to actually thrive. I mean, earnings continued for many companies. I mean, obviously hospitality, leisure got pounded as did travel, but a lot of companies did very well. Now what’s happening. Organizations are saying, well, we wanna go back to the way things were. And I believe the employee is saying not so fast. You guys, it wasn’t that you couldn’t do it. It’s just that you didn’t want to do it. Give us some rationale for why it needs to change. And I believe it’s harder and harder as a senior leader to thoughtfully understand and articulate why something needs to happen. So employee would go, oh, okay. I, I understand it. And I’m going to do it because as you said, David, there’s a, there’s an exchange of an employment arrangement. I give you money for the value you contribute.
But if I don’t feel valued and add valued, then the exchange is not going to work. And I believe that a lot of employees don’t feel very valued because their opinions are not being asked their overridden. They feel like they’re being controlled. And, and a lot of this will come into the word feel. Now feelings don’t make earnings per share. Every quarter show up that’s execution, that’s accountability. And there has to be a blend as you well know, people will remember how they feel much longer. So unless leaders get that emotional quotient to work that in which to me gets into some core elements of, of good culture, healthy culture.

David Horsager:
How can you hold accountability there? Just one more jump here. Just how, how have you seen healthy accountability work virtually because call centers make sense, cuz you get this many calls and you can see they went through this many calls, but I’m just like a, a people manager, a, a role that doesn’t have defined number of sales.

Dave Sparkman:
Well, I believe almost everything can be defined David, but we just haven’t taken the time to do it. Most job descriptions that are out there are cut and pasted from the previous job description, the leader doesn’t thoughtfully go through and think about, well, what do I need this person to do? What outcomes am I trying to achieve? What can be empowered? What do I need to stay on top of and, and look over their shoulder. Very few people like to be micromanaged. So I think there is a yearning for employees to say, look, tell me what you want to have done, articulate that, be clear. And then I’ll be accountable to that. That’s hard work for a senior leader, very hard work, particularly when you get into scale of tens, hundreds, thousands of people. So I think I’m not saying David, there’s an easy answer as you well know. But it does take some time and some focus for senior leaders to get back to the drawing, drawing board on clarity and alignment, recognizing, and also to be unified Dave, because unification doesn’t mean uniformity. You can still have huge diversity while being unified around the core values and mission of what you’re trying to achieve.

David Horsager:
Totally well, there’s a lot here on culture and more let’s get personal just for a few moments. How you know, I think people that lead well tend to lead themselves at least in some way. Well, and we’re all imperfect certainly. But what are some things you do habitually to lead yourself? Well, health wise, fitness wise, Lifewise relationally, is there a couple habits that come to mind that help you be better so you can be better for others?

Dave Sparkman:
Well, the, the first habit is one that you helped me achieve on November 8th, 2014, where I went through the workshop of trust edge. And we got into the how, how, how, which gets into my own personal fueling up time in the morning. And when I was able to recognize that I needed to attach that priority, I had said it was a priority for years, but I didn’t execute, but I never missed breakfast. When I said, I want that priority to be, to be before my physical food breakfast, Dave, I haven’t missed many times since November 8th, the 2014. So the how, how, how to go after habits has been very, very useful. The other thing is a lot of people talk about work, life balance and, and, and the boundaries that we may have. And for a lot of years, I thought that I could blame the organization for my own lack of boundaries while the organization needs this, the needs that no, they don’t, no organization needs any one person. So to have the elasticity versus I’m not gonna quit work at six every day, but I’m gonna have thoughtful boundaries and blend what that looks like. That has been, he helpful to me because my priorities do change and the urgency of those for real deadlines versus just made up deadlines to keep me moving, to discern what that is, has been very, very useful.

David Horsager:
Well, we’ve got a lot here and a lot more to go tell us where they can find out and we’re, we’re, we’re gonna have to close it down for now. I’d love to have everybody meet you in person. I am so love the way you work, what you’ve done for work and how you’ve made me better along the way. And so let’s go. Where, where can people find out more about spark your culture and the future, the upcoming book and so forth.

Dave Sparkman:
So I have a, a website spark your culture.com. It’s undergoing some changes right now, but you can reach me at my email address at Dave Sparkman, 16, gmail.com. And

David Horsager:
I’d be all right, and that’ll all be, that’ll all be in the show notes, trust leader, show.com. It’ll all be there and you’ll be able to find out more. It is the trusted leader. Show one last questions for question for you, Dave, who is a leader you trust and why?

Dave Sparkman:
You know, there are several former leaders at United health group that I trust that are leading other organizations now. And I, I trust them because I’ve gotten to know them and I know what their values are personally and how they attach to the organizational values. So the reason I trust people is I see the personal character flowing into the organizational character. That’s when I that’s when I trust.

David Horsager:
Hmm. Great. Lots of those Dave Sparkman. Thank you so much. And thanks, especially for being my friend, this has been the trusted leader show until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 96: Josh Linkner on Top Tactics For EFFECTIVE Brainstorming

In this episode, we revisit a previous episode where David sat down with Josh Linkner, New York Times Bestselling Author, Global Innovation and Creativity Expert, Founding Partner of Detroit Venture Partners, and Chairman and Co-Founder of Platypus Labs, to discuss top tactics for effective brainstorming.

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Josh’s Bio:
Josh Linkner is a Creative Troublemaker. He has been the founder and CEO of five tech companies, which sold for a combined value of over $200 million. He’s a New York Times Bestselling author and a globally recognized expert on innovation and creativity. He’s the founding partner of Detroit Venture Partners and has been involved in the launch of over 100 startups. Today, Josh serves as Chairman and co-founder of Platypus Labs, an innovation research, training, and consulting firm. He has twice been named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and is a recipient of the United States Presidential Champion of Change Award. Josh is also a passionate Detroiter, the father of four, a professional-level jazz guitarist, and has a slightly odd obsession for greasy pizza.

Josh’s Links:
Website: https://joshlinkner.com/
“Big Little Breakthroughs” by Josh Linkner: https://amzn.to/3QRgrML
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlinkner/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/joshlinkner
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joshlinkner/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshlinkner/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCClYbC0H2Q-bXPaFCo1188A

Key Quotes:
1. “There absolutely is a process and methodology by which all of us can become more creative.”
2. “Everyday innovators don’t wait.”
3. “You really show your character when things are tough, not when they’re good.”
4. “Fear is the biggest blocker.”
5. “The only thing that supersedes accountability is trust.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
Ballot Bin: https://ballotbin.co.uk/
“Big Little Breakthroughs” by Josh Linkner: https://amzn.to/3QRgrML

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36AXtp9
Follow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Follow David on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Follow David on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Show Transcript

Kent Svenson:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m Kent Svenson producer of the trusted leader show. And for this week’s episode, we thought we’d take a look back at a previous episode where David sat down with Josh Linkner New York times bestselling author, global innovation and creativity expert, founding partner of Detroit venture partners and chairman and co-founder of Platypus labs to discuss top tactics for effective brainstorming. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

David Horsager:
So how do, how do you encourage your team? Like, I, I, we want our team to be more innovative. We certainly create it in, in one of our business units, a massive pivot this year. And I was so proud of him and it was a part of, you know, partly brought on by the pandemic, but how do we create that? How do the, the micro, like, give us an example, maybe run us through what would be a micro innovation today.

Josh Linkner:
Yeah. So I’ll give you an example. Again, I call these big little breakthroughs, which is the title of my next book, big little breakthroughs, how small everyday innovations drive oversized results. And let’s take a trip together. Let’s hop over to London. So imagine you’re walking through the streets of London, you’re, marvelling at the architecture and there’s bustling crowds and all this history. And then you look down and what do you see? You see cigarette butts all over the ground. It turns out that cigarette butts are the biggest litter problem in central London. And in fact, many, many cities around the world and all the things they’ve tried to do to stop this problem, really fail, like finding people or shaming them into compliance. And, and you might think it’s just unsightly, but it it’s harmful for the the environment and, you know, small kids or animals can adjust them and it’s pollutants all these bad things.
So here’s an example of a big little breakthrough. There’s a guy that I interviewed for the book named Tren rustic and Tren is an average everyday dude, he’s just like, he’s not Elon Musk. He, he, he went to college and barely got through. He took an ordinary job. He is trying to pay the bills, just like all of us, but, but Tren had this, this kind of passion for the environment. So he saw this little problem and he decided to solve it with a big little breakthrough. He invented something called the ballot bin, which is a bright yellow metal container mounted at eyesight. And the, the front of it is glass. And it’s, there’s a divider down the middle at the top. It’s a two part question such as which do you prefer hamburgers or pizza, and there’s a little receptacle or smokers can vote with their butts.
So you put your cigarette butt in whichever slot like you, which food you like better. And, and you can see an instant based on how many butts have stacked up underneath it. And of course you can customize this to any two part question. It could be, which is your favorite sport, or, or, you know, do you prefer blondes or brunettes? Whatever, two questions you wanna ask. Here’s the thing when these ballot bins have been installed, they reduce cigarette litter by 80%. And they’re now in 27 countries. And the thing I love about this story is like, it didn’t take six PhDs and a billion dollars of capital and material engineering degrees and resources and equipment. This is an average person like you and I could have easily thought of that idea. And here’s somebody who is not famous. He’s a normal person. That’s using creativity to make a difference in the world. And when I hear stories like that, it’s so much more inspiring to me than watching ELAU Musk or, or Jeff Bezos making an extra billion dollars, cuz that feels inaccessible. Whereas Tren is totally within our grasp.

David Horsager:
So I love that. Is there a process? And once again, the book is called big little breakthroughs, how small everyday innovations drive oversized results. We will link exactly where you can get it along with all the information about Josh Linkner and his companies at the show notes, trusted leader, show.com. But is there a process to, to just think a little more creatively, a, a process to think a little more innovatively to kind of, you know, I think part of it almost is like believing I can, but what is there any process you could give us?

Josh Linkner:
There is in, in fact really that’s the whole source of my body of work over the years. And, and of course this book, I tried to demystify it. You know, we think of innovation as like wizardry. Like you have to be imbued by the God’s with some magical powers. It’s actually much more like a magic trick. When you see even the best magicians, they, they don’t actually possess magical powers. They’ve learned a skill and, and the truth is that all of us can learn to develop that skill. And so the book goes into, we sort of dissect, like how does an idea happen? What are the individual components? What happens when you put under the microscope? What does the research say? And then I really walk people through the eight core mindsets of everyday innovators, which are sort of easy to digest, easy to get, get your arms around mindsets that people can put into action.
And furthermore, we go into, into depth on tactics. You know, most of us use brainstorming as the, as the preferred tactic, by the way, brainstorming is invented in 1958. I’m guessing we need an upgrade. Like a lot of things had changed since 1968. So I, I actually have this whole thing called idea jamming. I have this whole like idea toolkit where we PR provide much more fun, modern exercises for like idea extraction, which but, but long story short, there absolutely is a process and methodology by which all of us. And I mean, all of us can become more creative.

David Horsager:
So, you know, the give us this, we gotta have a little secret sauce here. We can’t go through all eight today, but you know, everybody’s gonna hear it and it’ll be called as, as my friend JLB says the sauce, because we’re gonna tell people, but you, you, you know, the, the full secret sauce is in the book, but what is maybe one or two mindsets first and then maybe one tactic like, oh, I can see how this would be helpful. I can see some, so can you give us a couple mindset shifts first?

Josh Linkner:
Yeah, absolutely. Again, I, nothing secret here. I’m happy to share the secret sauce cuz I actually really feel like I’m on a mission to help people become more creative and I’m, I I’m happy to share. So a couple of the mindsets and these are studied through over a thousand hours of research and interviews with CEOs and celebrity entrepreneurs. And we dove into, you know, how, how does Linman well, Miranda and lady Gaga and Banksy do their art. So, so is well, well founded in, in, in substance. But a couple of mindsets I’ll share. Some of ’em are more intuitive. There’s one called start before you’re ready, which is essentially the notion that everyday innovators don’t wait, they don’t wait for permission. They don’t wait for direction. They don’t wait for a perfect game plan. They get going. And then they course correct and adapt along the way.
but there’s some actually more, more strange, funny ones, one ISS called don’t forget the dinner mint, which is the notion that before you ship a piece of work product, it could be an email. It could be a keynote speech. It could be a financial report. What could you do to plus it up? Like what’s an extra, teeny little, extra dose of surprise and delight of creative surprise and delight that that makes your work transcended. And that the return on investment is gigantic. That’s a high leverage activity because a 5% extra dose of creativity could yield a hundred percent or more results. Another fun, one real quick in terms of mindsets is I call it use every drop of toothpaste, use every drop of toothpaste. And the notion here is around being scrappy. It’s sort of you doing more with less figuring out how to be resourceful and using ingenuity rather than relying on external resources.
You know, when I talk to people about being innovative, most people say, I love to, I want to, but I don’t have fill the blank. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough raw materials. I don’t enough degrees, et cetera. And so what this does actually turns that on its head to say, okay, what can we do when we are resource constrained? And by the way, I’ve thought about this many times, think about this. If the amount of external resources you had equaled your level of creativity, the federal government would be the most creative organization on the planet. And startups would be the least. And of course we know the exact opposite is true. So those are the couple of mindsets. There’s eight of ’em, but those, those are a couple ones to get started.

David Horsager:
I love it. So, so if I take one of those, is there a tactic like we can start to use tomorrow? Like, is there a tactic, like let’s start at that first, first phase even, or, or maybe the brainstorming tactic. I’m thinking about thinking through a problem. How can I think about this problem more creatively?

Josh Linkner:
Yeah. So the, the techniques that you use think of them as tools, and let’s say you were, you had an oil well in your backyard and, and you got, you know, the, the, the little plastic shovel from your kids from the beach, like that’s gonna take you an awful long time to get to oil and you’re not gonna fully extract it. Obviously, if you had commercial grade equipment, different story. So brainstorming is the equivalent of that, that plastic shovel. It’s just not that good. So let’s let me share some tools that are much better. Here’s one for you. It’s fun. It’s called the judo flip, the judo flip. And so the judo flip is basically as follows. You take a look at what, whether you’re facing a problem or an opportunity, write down what are, what are the things you’ve always done before? What does conventional wisdom dictate?
What do most people do? Then draw a line down the page and just ask next to each entry. What’s the polar opposite. What would it look like if you judo flipped it and that oppositional thinking, just forcing yourself to consider the polar opposite of what most people do can be very, very liberating. Just a super quick story that I, I just read like two days ago turns out there’s 65,000 Chinese restaurants in north America. So how in the world, if you own one, do you stand out? Well, most people, what they do, the average average thing is people use a lot of puffy. This is the best Chinese chicken in the universe. It’s the world’s best, the New York city’s best egg roll, whatever. And it’s a bunch of puffy and we all have strong BS detectors to your point of trusted leader. And we shut all that down.
So in this particular restaurant in Montreal next to every entry on the menu, there’s a printed something called owner’s comments. And so he did the opposite. He judo flipped it. So one of his comments is I don’t really like this dish. I think you’d prefer the other one. Another one’s like this one’s a little, little too much salt. I keep trying to get him to use less of it. Another one is don’t try taking this thing home. It gets really mushy. Another one is you might think this is authentic, but honestly it’s not authentic at all in this particular dish. And so he gives these brutally honest, completely transparent commentary on his own food. And first of all, it’s hysterically funny. It separates him from the competitive set here. We are talking about this one out of 65,000 Chinese restaurants. Not because he did what everybody else does.
It’s because he judo flipped it. So just a couple of little quick tactics, cuz I wanna make sure people are armed for battle. Another really fun one. So, okay. We get together to brainstorm and what do we do? We share our, our safe ideas, not our crazy wild ones and largely because of fear. Fear is the single most poisonous force that holds our creative thinking back. And, and by far that’s a bigger blocker than natural talent. So actually two really fast ones to break through that. Number one, I call it roll storming, roll storming. So roll storming is brainstorming in character. You’re taking on an actual real world brainstorm challenge, but doing it as if you are somebody else. So David, instead of you being David in the room, and now you’re saying, well, I’m gonna be judged by my ideas or what if I say something that looks foolish, you’re playing the role of Steve jobs or Hemingway or Darth Vader.
And so you could pick any character you want real fictitious, it could be a sports hero or a movie star, whatever you want. And you literally pretend that you are that character because when you’re that person, you’re no longer responsible for the idea. It’s not a reflection on, on, on your, you as a human being. So that’s a really fun one yields, amazing result. The other one I’ll just share real quick. It’s called the bad idea brainstorm. So we get together for a brainstorm. Presumably we wanna have good ideas, but we generally anchor them in the past. And we end up having these kind of puny incremental ideas. Here’s the way it works. Two step process. Step one, everybody in the room sets a timer like eight minutes, whatever and brainstorm bad ideas, not good ones. What’s a terrible way to solve it. What’s the worst possible thing you could think of what’s unethical and immoral and illegal and, and you know, too expensive or whatever.
So you come up with just terrible ideas. It’s hysterically funny. The whole team is energized. Everyone’s laughing and you fill the boards with all these awful ideas. Now importantly, step two, step two is where you then take a minute and look at all the bad ideas and say, wait a minute, is there a little gem in there? Is there a little something, is there a pattern, a nugget that I could flip to, to take it from a bad idea to a good one? So the idea here is you take your creativity weight in the edges and then yes, you’re ratcheting it back to reality later on, but it’s much more effective than fighting the gravitational force of going bottoms up.

David Horsager:
Fantastic. I love I am enticed, trusted leaders are enticed. I mean, this is, this is really, really, really, really great usable stuff. What I love about Josh is grounded in research. Like we love out of the Institute, but also usable tomorrow morning. And so I, I love it.
So, you know, Josh you’ve sold businesses, combined value over a couple hundred million. What you’ve, you know, written New York times bestsellers before you, you’re doing all these things. You’ve been a part of a hundred startups or whether that’s intimately or, you know, VC or certainly advising. And so tell what’s it take to have a successful startup today?

Josh Linkner:
Well, it’s a lot of it is opposite. What you think, you know, first of all, we think that it’s about an entrepreneur that fills the room. That’s charismatic like Steve jobs, actually the best entrepreneurs are much more thoughtful. Often. Not that larger than life, they’re humble. They, they give credit to others. It’s not about themselves. It’s about the success of the team and the business. They lift other people up rather than push other people down. So I think one thing it takes is an open-minded coachable, you know, humble leader who has empathy and compassion. And again, these are skills that you don’t often associate with business success, but I truly believe that they drive drive results. I think another thing is that a real commitment to your, to the customer. I’ve heard so many companies talk about the financial model and how much money they’re gonna make.
And then you’re like, well, how are you helping a customer? Like what, and, and I think not losing sight of that, you know, you’re, you’re there to serve any business, is there, but to service or product to, to deliver value, to, to real paying customers. And, and not just in a way that they’re an annoyance that will, you’re just trying to cash their check. It’s that you’re really there, you know, your heart’s gotta be into, to providing real value to them. And so when you push the creativity on, on providing real value to customers, I think that’s something that sounds so obvious, but is often missed.

David Horsager:
I think that was the Einstein quote. We’ve heard it before, but you know, don’t work so much at being a success work at giving value, right. And a, a huge key. In fact, one of the things we saw this year, especially last year the pandemic and everything is we noticed empathy is more important than ever before in leaders. And in fact, our, our annual study phone, 90%, 92% of people would trust their leader more. If they were more transparent about their mistakes, people stop at transparency because, oh, transparent. No, it’s not transparency. It’s transparent about their mistakes willing to admit when they did it wrong and willing to lift others up when the team succeeded and, and defer the good. Right.

Josh Linkner:
Yeah. Can I actually, Dan, can I tell you a quick story about that? It’s so it’s, it’s a very personal one for me. And it’s about a screw up that I did. I didn’t write about it in the book or anything. I just thought was thinking about you today and in your incredible body of work around trust. So I was building my company. It was called Eris. We were sort of like half ad agency and half software company. And at one year I set a bonus program up that was terribly flawed. Like it was awful because it was binary. If we hit the target, I think it was like 40 million in revenue at the time everybody got a sweet bonus. If we missed it by one penny, everybody B got nothing. So again, ill conceived totally my fault. I was the CEO, but it did work to like drive performance.
So we all anchored around that goal. Every, we had charts and graphs and scoreboards and we were gun and heart. So on December 31st, David, I get a call from my CEO my chief sales officer. So he says, Josh, we did it. We hit the 40, where I at 40 million, $200,000. And I gotta tell you, like, I was deeply moved, not because I was greedy. I didn’t care about the money. Honestly, I just was proud of my team. We accomplished something together. And so I immediately fired off a note to everybody. Congratulations, you guys did it, everyone’s getting their bonus. So the bonus, according to the plan was gonna be paid like 45 days after the end of the year. So we could, you know, get the accounting straight and all that. So about a week before the bonus to be paid, my CFO comes and knocking.
He says, Josh, you know that $40 million. I’m like, yeah, wasn’t it great. He says, yeah, we got a problem. He said, it turns out we double counted one deal and we didn’t calculate for a particular cancellation. So instead of just making it, we actually just missed it. Now, keep in mind. I had already told my team, like weeks before that they were getting this bonus and, and they like put deposits on new houses and sent, you know, signed up their kids for camp or whatever. So I go to my board of directors and I said, guys, like, here’s the situation? And their first response was sweet. We don’t have to pay a bonus this year. And, and by the way, this was over a million dollars of cash of collectively. And, and we were successful, but we didn’t have like, you know, a giant, we weren’t Amazon.
Like we didn’t have lots and lots of extra money. This was meaningful amount of money. And so I, so they said, and, and rightfully so, by the way, they, I’m not pointing blame at them. They were a fiduciary board and they said, look, you don’t get a Superbowl trophy for almost making it into the end zone. And we have to, you know, celebrate accountability and, and like, we didn’t hit the result. You don’t get the championship. And I said, I hear you. And I agree with that. I said, however, to me, the only thing that supersedes accountability is trust. I told all those people that they’re getting their bonus. So we had an ethical debate for a while. Then I finally said, look, put aside what’s right or wrong. Because if you look at yourself and they mirror, you know, what’s right, but let’s just look at the economics here.
That million dollars I argued was gone. Whether you like it or not, if we don’t pay the bonus, it’s gonna come out in the form of bad morale, employee turnover. Someone will walk out for the laptop like it’s gone, or we can look at it as an investment in who we are. You know, you really show your character when things are tough, not when they’re good. And now’s the time it’s tough. So, so for the next week, David, it was like the Cuban missile crisis. I was taking heavy artillery fire from my board of directors, but here’s why that ended up happening. I gathered my whole team together at the time. I think it was about 500 people or so I explained in absolute detail, here’s the email I got. Here’s the numbers. Here’s the cancellation, here’s the date and notes from the meeting with my CFO, we did not make the bonus.
Everybody is legally entitled to zero. And by the way, totally my fault. I own it. I BU buck stops with me, not pace it past any blame. I said that after I pause, I said, however, the only thing in my mind, that’s more important than accountability is you have to know that I have your back and that we have each other’s back. So therefore we are paying every penny of that bonus on time. The motion of that room that day, like there were tears streaming down people’s faces. I was getting bear hugs from grown men. And, and, and I did it because it was the right thing, but by the way, best million dollar investment I ever made because years later people were like, if we had a tough problem with a client, people would work all night on it. And, and people would pour their heart and soul.
We had almost no voluntary turnover on job interviews. Candidates would come in and say, I heard what you did. I, I wanna work there. I never told the story to anybody. But my only point is that when we think about trust, at least I understand, you know, your body of work to me, it’s not only the right thing. And by the way, it is the right thing. But besides that, in addition to that, it’s also good for business. And I, again, I just really admire the work you’re doing. And I just wanted to share that story. Thank you to a degree, I guess that might be using creativity, but, but you know, that, that, that’s what happened.

Kent Svenson:
That’s it for this week’s episode, be sure to check out trusted leader, show.com for all the show notes and links and information from anything mentioned in today’s episode. And if you haven’t already, we greatly appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcast as this is a great way to help support the show and help others too. Discover it. But in the meantime, that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 95: Pro Athletes on How To Build Trust In A Team

In this episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 Trusted Leader Summit where Award-winning Broadcaster Joe Schmit sat down with Rebekkah Brunson, 5X WNBA Champion, Minnesota Lynx Assistant Coach, Broadcaster, and Entrepreneur and Gable Steveson, 2X NCAA Wrestling Champion, Olympic Gold Medalist, and WWE Wrestler, to discuss their unique perspectives on how to build trust in a team.

2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com/

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Rebekkah’s Bio:
Rebekkah Lamar Brunson is a former Women’s National Basketball (WNBA) player who has used her platform to stress the importance of diversity and inclusion. Rebekkah is Co-Founder of Sweet Troo•vi Waffle and Assistant coach of the Minnesota Lynx, while continuing to be an ambassador for her community and committed to outreach enriching the lives of all Minnesotans.

She attended a diverse high school in Oxon Hill Maryland before attending Georgetown University and realizing there always needs to be a space created to cultivate, express and empower diversity.

She is the current assistant coach for the Minnesota Lynx of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Brunson is a former forward for the Lynx and is the only player to win 5 WNBA championships. She held the WNBA record for rebounding during her time on the Lynx.

Gable’s Bio:
Gable Steveson is a professional wrestler from Minnesota. He attended the University of Minnesota where he won two national championships. He also represented Team USA at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo Japan, where he won a gold medal in freestyle wrestling. He is currently signed by WWE.

Rebekkah’s Links:
Website: https://www.sweettrooviwaffle.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rebekkahbrunson/?hl=en
Twitter: https://twitter.com/twin1532

Gable’s Links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gablesteveson/?hl=en
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gablesteveson?lang=en

Key Quotes:
1. “If you don’t have a relationship with someone then you cannot trust them.” – Rebekkah Brunson
2. “Once it’s hard and you’re trying to figure out how to trust somebody it’s too late.” – Rebekkah Brunson
3. “You have to trust in yourself.” – Gable Steveson
4. “It’s character first.” – Rebekkah Brunson
5. “You have to pick people that are going to buy in to what you want to accomplish as an organization.” – Rebekkah Brunson
6. “It’s always about the relationship first.” – Rebekkah Brunson
7. “If you look too far forward you kind of get lost.” – Gable Steveson
8. “When you start to evaluate yourself I think you figure out your strong suits rather quickly.” – Rebekkah Brunson
9. “Consistency is about showing up.” – Rebekkah Brunson

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36AXtp9
Follow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Follow David on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Follow David on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Show Transcript

Kent Svenson:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m Kent Svenson producer of the trusted leader show. And for this week’s episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 trusted leader summit where award-winning broadcaster. Joe Schmit sat down with Rebekkah Brunson 5X WNBA champion, Minnesota Lynx assistant coach, broadcaster, and entrepreneur and Gable Steveson 2X NCAA wrestling champion, Olympic gold medalist, and WWE wrestler, to discuss their unique perspectives on how to build trust in a team. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Joe Schmit:
Well, Rebecca let’s first. I I’m gonna first ask you because obviously great success in basketball. Where did you grow up? And when did you get your love for the game?

Rebekkah Brunson:
Well, yeah. I’m originally from Maryland, so right outside of DC, about five minutes outside of DC, that’s where I’m from. And you know, I loved basketball since, since I picked up a basketball, really, it gave me an opportunity to compete. I have a twin brother, so naturally competition was always there. So I had the opportunity to compete. And then, you know, after that, I didn’t get into organized basketball for a while until I was 12 years old. And if anybody has any child, children who are athletes, you know, that’s very late to the game. I mean, kids started at 5, 6, 7, so I was a little bit late to it. As far as being playing organized, basketball was concerned, but as far as my love for the game, I mean, as soon as I touched a basketball and started playing started, dribbling started shooting. I loved it immediately.

Joe Schmit:
And Gable, when did you get your love for wrestling?

Gable Steveson:
My love for wrestling came. I got older brothers that wrestle my dad wrestled too. So it was kind of just blood for us. But we tell the story about came out the womb where wrestling shoes on. It’s just the easiest way for me to tell you guys how long I’ve been wrestling and you know, with, with sports like these, you gotta get ’em to ’em quick and you gotta adapt to ’em really well. So just taking my time with it and leading to this point has been really special

Joe Schmit:
Rebecca to win all those championships. Obviously you had to trust your coach. Yes. You had to trust your teammates. You had to trust in your own abilities. Talk about how trust helped you win the only person to win five w NBA championships.

Rebekkah Brunson:
Yeah, I mean, that was key. I think we always talk about that as a organization about trust being something that we really hold strong. But before you get to the trust, I feel like it’s really about the relationships. If you don’t have a relationship with someone, then you cannot trust them. So that is beyond just going to the gym and playing that is beyond just going to your meetings that is beyond just going to practice. It’s really ingraining yourself and your teammates lives and your coaches’ lives. Having conversations with them, being there for them before we’re in the thick of things, because once it’s hard and you’re trying to figure out how to trust somebody it’s too late. I don’t trust you when it’s easy. Why am I gonna trust you in these difficult moments? So to be able to compete at the highest level and to win championships, it first started with forming the, the simplest of relationships with each other and then building from that. So when it was hard, when it was game five as a series and we were down and we had to really regroup and you had to start holding people accountable and saying the things that maybe they weren’t doing right with the things that they were doing wrong, then we already built that trust. So it was easy for us to compete when those championships and do it together. As a group

Joe Schmit:
Gable, you are in more of an individual sport, although you wrestled for the university of Minnesota where did trust play into your training, working with your team and your coaches?

Gable Steveson:
I think first of all, you gotta you have to trust in yourself. You gotta love what you do, and you gotta have a deep burning passion to keep winning and keep pushing forward. You know, you don’t win so many titles by just showing up and think you’re just gonna go through the motions. You gotta trust yourself outside of the, the resting mat or the basketball court. You gotta trust who you’re with. You gotta have a good solid foundation. Whether it’s moms, dads, families, coaches gotta be on 0.2. Just being able to understand that there’s more to your sport and there’s more to who you are than just winning and losing game going out there and putting on a good show for the people too.

Joe Schmit:
I wanted to could we queue up that video tape? I, I wanna show a videotape of Gable’s last amateur match. It was the NCAA championship. He was going for a second in a role. And if we can run the video tape we’re gonna talk it over. First of all, who are you up against in this match?

Gable Steveson:
I was up against a multiple time Greco world team member and world champion too, in the junior age group level, which is eight, which is 20 and under. So he was a stud big guy kind of a grizzly bear, like, so you’ll see he has a video plays.

Joe Schmit:
Yeah, I remember I was watching it. So if we could roll that video tape, we’ll take a look at Gable, Steven Stevenson going for his second national championship. Now you went all the way through the tournament where you did not give up a point, unless you let the guy escape, right? Until this championship match.

Gable Steveson:
I got taken down in the quarter finals actually in the

Joe Schmit:
Quarter final. I was, I was, that was the first time you got taken down all year, right? That

Gable Steveson:
Was the first time I got taken down like three years.

Joe Schmit:

Gable Steveson:
I was just, I was just trying to have fun and trying to enjoy myself. You know, you get so caught up in, how are you gonna win? And I feel like if you’re trying to win, you’re gonna lose. You’re gonna give us some, if you’re trying to score points, you’re always gonna get that end factor of winning.

Joe Schmit:
All right. We’ll get to that video, I guess, as soon as we can, do we have it one minute? Give, give you one minute to get to the video. So there are some perks in winning a championship when Rebecca won her fourth, w N B a championship with the links you get in a nice ring, correct?

Rebekkah Brunson:
Yes. Gorgeous.

Joe Schmit:
Gorgeous. Okay. Okay. But I think you had one of the more unique moments anybody’s had talk about the special party that the team went to. Oh, after you won this title.

Rebekkah Brunson:
Yeah. Well, when we won our actually this was our, our third championship that we won. And when we were playing, you know, we could hear some like murmurs on the bench. You look up in the suite and prince was at the game. So we were like, okay, that’s pretty cool. Prince is here, you know, all right, don’t look, just keep playing everybody. So we played the game and we got through it. We won. That was our, our third championship. We were excited. We were celebrating. And then we got a message while we’re in the locker room. Hey guys, first don’t drink too much champagne. I know it’s celebration, but prince just invited us to go to his house.

Rebekkah Brunson:
Oh, okay. So we all pile up. We get on our, our buses where we get dressed. We, we look nice. We go on the princess house. And when we get there, you know, the, the sad thing about it is there are no phones allowed. So, you know, thinking back in hindsight, we wish we would’ve had footage of this. We walk off the bus, we go in to, to Paisley park and we just walking in the back door and you hear somebody just on the stage is strumming the guitar, super casual. We walk past the stage and we look up and prince is just hanging out, playing the guitar. So the whole team, the staff, the coaches, we got to go to our own concert at Paisley park that night. I mean, we were like doing the electric slide on the stage with prince. It was amazing.

Joe Schmit:
So you had basically a personal concert with prince. How about that for winning a championship? all right. We got the video ready. I wanna, I wanna show you just how special this is. And there are a couple of very special things I want you to recognize when we look at this video, he has a signature move that only, maybe the only 260 pound gold medal winning wrestler in the world can do. So let’s look at this video, you winning the championship. All right. So there you are getting you ready. Are you nervous at all? There you go. You get the takes out. You get another take down. You’re starting to add up some points and there, when the championship, and then here comes the signature move, coming up, look at that.

Joe Schmit:
Where did you come up with that? And then at the end, at the end, I should point this up. Before we talk about that. A wrestler who is retiring from amateur wrestling takes off his shoes and leaves him on the mat. What was that moment like

Gable Steveson:
Hard to describe a lot of feelings, a lot of just different things that you can think about, like what’s gonna happen next. What’s your reaction to it? I think going into WWE, this had to like happen. This had to be my stopping point, just because amateur wrestling can only bring you so far, you know, you have to get to the next level. And the next level for amateur sports is get to the pro. And my goal is to get to the pro and be the best I can possibly in any spot possible.

Joe Schmit:
And let’s talk about this signature flip. How did this evolve? And I also have to say something, you were the most confident wrestler I’ve ever known. One of the most confident athletes. He was not afraid to tell his opponent he was gonna win. And guess what he’d do, he’d go out there and win. So that confidence obviously showed, but you were able to back it up and then you would do the victory flip

Gable Steveson:
The flip game. When I was really young, I just, my mom bought us a trampoline in the backyard when me just live in Indiana. So me and my brother would see how many back flips we can hit and taking the kids consideration. I’m probably like five to like 130 pounds. So I’m a little thick on the thicker side. And she would take me to gymnastics class all there, moms and dad would be kind of like weary of how I was flipping, just cuz I got hurt. And I did a back hand springing one day, but I got too big and I didn’t wanna land on my wrist. So I just did a whole back flip and that’s just how it came.

Joe Schmit:
Everybody should have a signature role. Impressive. Right? Impress. That’s fantastic.

Rebekkah Brunson:
I feel I don’t have a signature. Right? What have I been doing with my life?

Joe Schmit:
Now Rebecca, when you played for the links, you played with a lot of great athletes, but three very exception. You were the, the fab four. It was Maya Moore who was simply one of the most amazing winningest athletes ever. Lindsay Whelan, who just went into the, is going into the basketball hall of fame. And there’s Simone Augustus who was a pre all star and one of the best players in league history. And then there was you, you all had a role, but you all have egos. You could have scored 20 points a night. I’m sure if you wanted to, how did you go into this? Develop a culture where it was team before? What I could do

Rebekkah Brunson:
That is one of the biggest things that allowed us to be successful because you know, you talk about being a competitor. All of us were ultra competitive, but the goal was always the same. We wanted to win. So we all could not do the same thing. If we had five players on the court that only wanted to shoot, then everything else would not get accomplished. You need somebody. That’s going to be able to cover all of the bases. Somebody that’s going to be able to add something. You have an elite score. You let them score. You have an elite rebounder. You let them rebound. You have an elite passer. You let them pass. So we all were able to just understand what we, what we could do that would be most beneficial to the team. And you know, it started when you talk about these players, the thing that is so amazing about them is their character first.

Rebekkah Brunson:
And that’s why we’ve been so good as an organization is because when we go out and we pick players, it’s character first who is going to buy into our common goal, who is going to sacrifice that ego as big as it might be to allow us to accomplish what we want. And I mean, as a organization, that means that we have had to let some very good athletes go. I mean, some people that can play the game at the top level, not be a part of our team because they didn’t buy in. And I’m sure that’s probably some of the situations that you all go through. You have to pick people that are gonna buy into what you want to accomplish as an organization. Even if they’re they’re really talented and really good if they don’t buy in, it doesn’t matter.

Joe Schmit:
Now your coach with Cheryl Reeve and Cheryl Reeve is a tough coach. she? She is a, I guess, kind of a Vince Lombardi, more coach than maybe a coach that will hug you. Although she could do both. How did she earn the trust of the team? How did you believe everything she said, because I know there were times where maybe that wasn’t the case.

Rebekkah Brunson:
I mean, she, what you said first, she is a great coach, but she is going to do whatever it takes to win. But what I said initially, when I got here up here is it’s always about the relationship first. She’s the person that’s picking these players that are gonna buy in. She’s the person that’s making those decisions to ensure that character is at the top of the list. And she has a relationship with all the players too. Yeah. When we’re playing, when it’s between the 94 feet, it’s a different beast, then we’re competing and then we’re playing for something. But she will ask you, how are you doing? How’s your family doing? How is your day, how this goes. She remembers everything. That you’re a part of everything that you care about. Those are the things that you don’t necessarily see. Because when you talk to her, you ask her about basketball.

Rebekkah Brunson:
You ask her about the team, you ask her about her accomplishments, but the reason she’s so great. And the reason that she has so much buy-in as a leader is because she cares about us as people. What she make sure that she lets us know that. So when she is screaming at us, we know that it’s just to get to where we wanna be. It’s not because it’s about me. And she feels this way about me. It’s like, no, I already trust you. Cuz I talked to you before. We have a conversation in a relationship.

Joe Schmit:
And Gable I know at the university of Minnesota, you did everything you could do to help you were a leader on that team too. How did that role go? You were, you were the guy who got all the attention and, and, but yet you had other teammates that worked just as hard as you did.

Gable Steveson:
I think one thing we gotta understand is like, when you get all the attention on team, you have to diversify it and make sure others are doing the right thing too. I didn’t wanna, this year, I kind of focused on what can I do to help the program and what can I help do to make myself the best like person possible. I didn’t want to have me winning in a national tournament and me winning the Hodge, trophy, me winning Olympic gold and so many other things. And just having all eyes on me, I would rather have all eyes on a program and I hate to, to go places. And people respect me so much just because of the accolades that I have, but people don’t understand like the foundation that has CU came with it. You, like you mentioned, there’s coaches that remember everything about your day and Brandon EGA, Mar Hey coach. He’s been with me every single step of the way since I was in seventh grade. And just to commit to him and you gotta buy into your team, you gotta buy into yourself is the most important thing. If you don’t, if you don’t have that burning passion, the win and love what you do on and off the, the field, the mat, the court it’s it’s hard to become the person you wanna be without having that leadership and guidance too.

Joe Schmit:
So Gable went from winning the NCAA championship to about a week later, made his WW E debut in front of how many thousand people at Jerry stadium.

Gable Steveson:
I think it was 78,000,

Joe Schmit:
78,000 people were at Dallas cowboy stadium. You are now a WW E superstar. Talk about next.

Gable Steveson:
What’s next is just, I like to say things one day at a time, you look, you look too far forward, you kind get lost in the, what you’re really supposed to be doing with yourself. I, my goal is to, I wanna be like the rock. You know, the rock is the, the biggest name out there. And he’s brought so many eyes to movies, WWE and so much other things, you know, to, to have to be in a business that he went through and guys like rock Lesner. And so many other people I went through and been successful and even makes like my fire burn even more. And so I just wanna be the best man possible, be the showman that people wanna see, whether you’re watching a movie and you’re watching it with your family on Netflix or on TV. And then maybe the number one selling movie out there, you never know. It’s just, I wanna be a part of something big and I wanna lead the, the next group of kids that are coming up to have that dream too.

Joe Schmit:
All right. That’s gonna be fun to watch. Watch that blossom cuz you’re what 23 now,

Gable Steveson:
21, 21 21,

Joe Schmit:
Babe. He’s tall. Good looking. And soon to be very rich. I’d take any one of those for three minutes with him. What I wanted to do here was go down the seven pillars of trust and ask you how they impacted your career. We’ll start with clarity. Dave has seven pillars of trust. We’re gonna just kind of talk about clarity. Does that word ring a bell? Does that word mean anything to your career and success?

Rebekkah Brunson:
Oh, absolutely. I think as a player and, and as a coach, you know, as a teammate, you have to be very clear in what you want to accomplish and what the goals are that you want for everybody else around you. You know, that’s part of the communication that allows you to be successful is making sure that you draw things out of a specific way. For me, I always had to make sure I understood what my goals were. Very, very well defined goals so that I could work to make sure that I kept myself on track to achieve those. So clarity is key.

Joe Schmit:
I’m glad that somebody gave, gave a book. Dave’s gonna charge him 25 bucks. Come on, Dave, loosen up a little bit. Gabe gave will the clarity. When do you have clarity, obviously part, part of your clarity had to be, you were a showman

Gable Steveson:
It’s my clarity would probably be most definitely showman. Most definitely the heart that you put on the mat. What’s what’s most important about wrestling is it’s it’s two guys battling out for one championship. Like it’s not, there’s no one else to blame if you lose and if you win and you think you wrestle bad, you blame yourself just because you think you can, you, you had more to go in, go out there and do. And so it’s clarity is definitely a big step. Having that heart is a big step too. And being a showman for making nobody really wants to watch heavyweight wrestling, but I hope that I went out there and made people wanna watch 260 pound guys like go head to head and put on a good show.

Joe Schmit:
Oh, I know you didn’t show any compassion to your opponents. so maybe we should go to Rebecca for compassion.

Rebekkah Brunson:
Oh, I didn’t show any compassion to my opponents either. So

Joe Schmit:
That’s right. You did.

Rebekkah Brunson:
Let’s make that clear.

Joe Schmit:
Yeah. These guys are too competitive to have compassion. Okay. Let’s go to character. You’ve talked. They wanna bury you. You’re gonna be the kind of, you’re gonna be the kind of parent that’s gonna beat your kid in checkers. Aren’t you they

Rebekkah Brunson:
Gotta learn

Joe Schmit:
Everything. Character talk about how character is important character. When you had to work out hard, you had to work out alone. There were times where you had to dig deep.

Gable Steveson:
I think character is key. One thing about this is with, with wrestling, you’re kind of like breaking someone’s spirit to win. And it’s like, it’s weird for me to say like, you have to go out there and you have to dominate that person. I think when, when I was a freshman in college, I was also worried about how good I can look and how good I can make myself look. And as the years went on like maturing and being able to understand that there’s more to it than just you was the biggest character jump for me. And it made me understand how to mature quick and how to respect everybody. Even if you’re gonna go out there and you’re gonna beat somebody by 15 points, you’re gonna win a w N B a championship. You have to understand that those, those people out there are the same goals as you, and you have to respect the, the person that they are off the, off the court and off the mat. More than you respect them on the mat.

Joe Schmit:
I think we can pass competency. I think you guys were fairly competent. talked a little bit about connections. Connections with your teammates, connections with you, the people you train with. I, I, I thought about this Gable. You had to trust the people you worked out with. You had to trust your opponent, that you didn’t wanna get hurt. We all know that they grab an ankle. They can twist that ankle. You know, they can, they can do some things to you. So you had to trust people.

Gable Steveson:
It’s not really a trust factor. It was like, just don’t get in that spot. it was cuz like the, the person wants to go out there and he wants to beat you. And if you get put in a bad spot, you blow your ACL out. You’re done for six months. And if you’re coming up the core and you’re dribbling in, someone follows you and you fall wrong. You’re done for nine to 12 months. It’s, there’s so much trust and commitment to trust yourself to, if you get put in that spot, you know how to get out of it and you know how to maneuver and be flexible and be nimble and be the, be the person that you train yourself to be too.

Joe Schmit:
Rebecca, I want ask you about contribution because you, as we mentioned before, could have scored more points. Did you actually get to the point where you were happier getting a rebound than you were scoring a bucket because that was your role on this team and nobody in the history of the league did it better?

Rebekkah Brunson:
Yeah, I think that that pretty much came early on. When you take, when you start to evaluate yourself, I think you figure out your strong suits rather quickly and rebounding and being athletic was something that I had, you know, as soon as I started playing. So I did understand that that was my way of making sure that I can continue to do something that was gonna benefit the team night and, and night out. So whatever team it was, I was on no matter where I was playing, whether it was in Europe, whether it was in Sacramento, where I first got drafted, whether it was with the links, that was something that I could always do. And that was something that my teammates understood that they could rely on me for. So it was easy

Joe Schmit:
Consistency. You’ve been the most consistent heavyweight wrestler in the history of the United States of America. I have. Yeah, you have. I looked it up. I, I looked at on Wikipedia. I know that. But, but talk about consistency of training, consistency of rest, consistency of diet, all those things that play up to you, competing at the highest level.

Gable Steveson:
My consist, my consistency really came when freshman year I lost twice and that was my only loss to my, my collegiate career. I went 86 and two throughout the, my collegiate career. And I lost a guy from Penn state. He did everything right. And you can tell he did everything right? Cause when I lost to him, I was, I feel like I was a better wrestler. He was just a better person that ate. Right. He slept at the right times, he got up early, went in practice. He stretched out more than me. He did, he did everything better than me that year. And as the years went on, I wanted to be that person that did everything better than, than everyone else. And I wanted to eat. Right. And I’m gonna sleep. Right. I wanted to have the right group of friends around me, the right foundation. There’s so much that comes with consist consistency of wrestling. It says feeling the feeling the moment too, you gotta be able to understand that there’s gonna be people. There’s gonna be a target on your back. Every single time you gotta be consistent. You gotta be that person that wants to keep winning and keep going forward.

Joe Schmit:
And if I recall one of the guys that beat you, you went back and took care of him a few times. Right?

Gable Steveson:
He unfortunately graduated.

Joe Schmit:
Okay. that’s one way to take care of him.

Gable Steveson:
someone got

Joe Schmit:
To all right. Rebecca consistency. What, what did it mean to you? You had a long career and I always, I covered professional sports for a long, long time. And I always say, whenever you see somebody around for 10 or more years, there’s one reason they’re around. I mean, it’s not just athletic ability. It’s, they’re a pro and they’re a pro at getting their body ready. They’re a pro at getting their mindset. They’re a pro at being a good teammate. Otherwise you don’t survive.

Rebekkah Brunson:
Oh no you don’t. I mean, you see the turnaround and professional sports is, is really quick and people’s careers don’t last that long. But you know, just like Gabe just talked about it’s about everything else you do before you start to compete. What are you eating? What are you putting in your body? Are you resting? Are you training? Are you recovering? Are you doing all of those little miserable things that no one else wants to do? The extra cardio? The skipping of that dessert looks real nice, but I can’t have that tonight. Those are the things that you do for your body, but you also have to, you know, consistently show up mentally, you have to consistently be a good teammate. You can’t bring everything that’s going on into your life and, and lay it on people. You have to be a good person.

Rebekkah Brunson:
You have to consistently communicate. You have to do so many things. There are so many things that go into the product of being an elite athlete that nobody sees of being an elite teammate that nobody sees. It’s all the work that you do behind closed doors before you get there, that allows you to show up because at the end, consistency is about showing up, showing up for yourself, showing up for your teammates, showing up for your family, showing up for your friends, all of those things matter. So, you know, just making sure that you put yourself in the, the right head space to continue to do that. And another thing again, we just said was surrounding yourself with good friends, people that are going to keep you in check people that are gonna make sure that you continue to do those things. Cuz we all need somebody that is going to make sure that we stay on our path. So surrounding yourself with good quality people that want the best for you. That’s all consistency, consistency.

Kent Svenson:
That’s it for this week’s episode, be sure to check out trusted leader, show.com for all the show notes and links and information from anything mentioned in today’s episode. And we are so excited to announce that the trusted leader summit is coming back next year, November 7-9, 2023 at the jw marriott mall of america here in minnesota. To find out more information and to register head to trustedleadersummit.com. And if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcast as this is a great way to help support the show and help others to discover it. But in the meantime, that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 94: Kris Lindahl on How To Build The Best Team For Your Organization

In this episode, David sits down with Kris Lindahl, Real Estate, Marketing, Leadership, and Philanthropy Pioneer, Innovator, and Influencer, to discuss how to build the best team for your organization.

Show Notes: http://trustedleadershow.com/

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Kris’s Bio:
Kris Lindahl is a pioneer, innovator and influencer in the worlds of real estate, marketing, leadership, philanthropy and many more things to come. Raised in humble surroundings in Blaine, Minnesota, Kris was a natural entrepreneur. After losing his father in a tragic accident while he was just a sophomore at Fridley High School, he soon learned that he had to make his own opportunities. And he hasn’t stopped since.

Kris’s Links:
Website: http://connectwithkl.com/
Kris Lindahl Real Estate: https://www.krislindahl.com/
“Sold!” by Kris Lindahl: https://amzn.to/3SfY9q9
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krislindahl/
LinkedIn (Company): https://www.linkedin.com/company/kris-lindahl-team/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/krislindahl
Facebook (Company): https://www.facebook.com/krislindahlrealestate
Twitter: https://twitter.com/krislindahl
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/krislindahl/
Instagram (Company): https://www.instagram.com/krislindahlre/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@krislindahl

Key Quotes:
1. “It’s all about the people.”
2. “It all comes down to the people and it all comes down to their desire to lead and grow.”
3. “You can always learn a lot about people based on how they respond when things don’t go right.”
4. “It’s all about the questions that you ask the candidate.”
5. “Assessments aren’t the end all be all.”
6. “Most people aren’t the same at home as they are in the professional setting.”
7. “We tend to judge a book by its cover.”
8. “The amount of things you learn from sports is just so incredible.”
9. “You have to lead by example.”
10. “Every single day we get to wake up in this world is an opportunity.”
11. “People aren’t willing to look in the mirror and be real and honest with themselves.”
12. “A lot of people in the world have a scarcity mindset.”
13. “Time is the hardest for people to give.”
14. “You have to differentiate yourself.”
15. “Having people in the right spots in the organization matters more than anything.”
16. “We listen to what our customers say.”
17. “You learn a lot about people when things go wrong.”
18. “When challenges come up you’re actually growing so much.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
Culture Index Assessment: https://www.cultureindex.com/
Kolbe Index Assessment: https://www.kolbe.com/kolbe-a-index/
Strengths Finder Assessment: https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/254033/strengthsfinder.aspx
Star Tribune: https://www.startribune.com/

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36AXtp9
Follow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Follow David on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Follow David on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Show Transcript

David Horsager:
Welcome to the trusted leader show it’s David Horsager. I have a special guest today. He is a force of nature. He’s generous. He’s fun. He is running one of the top real estate companies in the country, and he’s doing a lot more. So those of you that, that are into sales and real estate, it’ll be great. But those of you are thinking, oh, real estate. I’m not gonna listen. He there’s, we’re gonna talk about so many other things today. Thank you for being on the show. Welcome to this show, Kris Lindahl.

Kris Lindahl:
Well, thank you, David. I’m so excited to be here and I, I love what you just said there, because I, you know, I used to think all the time when I’d hear in industry, I thought I didn’t relate if I wasn’t part of it. But what you start to realize is is that everything applies to all industries. And so I’m excited to, to have a conversation with you today. Thanks for having me.

David Horsager:
And, and, and, you know, as I’ve gotten to know you, you’re a multifaceted force of nature. So we’re gonna have a whole lot of fun here today, but let’s let’s let me just give you the mic for, for two minutes. What are some things people don’t know about Chris? Lyal you know, many people know this huge team, certainly in Minnesota, they know you, they see you and even across the country, but tell us a couple things behind the scenes.

Kris Lindahl:
I appreciate you asking that. Thank you. It, it, you know, everyone thinks of the branding, right? And, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be the, the, the front of our brand. And a lot of people know who I am, but what most people don’t understand is it’s all about the people like every organization. And, and that type of statement is so cliche, right? It’s it’s like, oh, the people, the people, right. Seats and the, and the right seats on the bus and all those things. But really when I, when I look at our organization, we wouldn’t be where we are today without them. Right. I mean, that’s the reality of it. You could create the most amazing marketing brand and everything else, but it all comes down to the people. It all comes down to their desire to lead and grow and get into those really uncomfortable moments. And I always love, you can always learn a lot about people based on how they respond, when things don’t go. Right. And so that’s what we have in, in our organization is a lot of that. And I like it.

David Horsager:
Tell me, tell me this let’s jump right in, and we’re gonna get more to personal and other parts. But, but you just, you beg a question here that a lot of people are struggling with today, both retention, but more importantly hiring, how do you get the right people? We know hiring costs, maybe two and two and a, if we lose someone that we wanna keep, it might be two and a half times hiring costs. How do we actually hire the right people? How have you done such a good even hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people? How do you hire right? Then we can get to, to keeping boom. But that that’s a big job because, well, the, well, the, the people of course are our biggest benefit. They can also, it can be a poison, right? So ho how do you hire, right.

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah. You know, well, it takes off very long time. Right? And so anyone that’s that’s, you know, that’s, that’s tuning in today. It took us years and years and years, and we still don’t get it right. Every single time. Right. Because the reality is is that someone can be great on a resume. They can be a great culture fit. They can interview really well. And then they show up in the real world and they don’t deliver on what they sold you on. Right. And so there’s, it’s, it’s really challenging to, to, to get that perfect. And we still have our learning opportunities, but one of the things that that I’ve found is if you’re truly not hiring people to your core values, first, you’re gonna have a really challenging, you’re gonna have a really challenging situation. I’m

David Horsager:
Gonna jump right in. And how do you hire to your core values? Everybody talks about this, I’ll hire to your core values. And by the way, this was interesting. When I had horse Schultz, the founder, founder of Ritz Carlton on, he said he didn’t really think assessments were that much until he found an assessment that now is just blown up. But, but an assessment that helped him basically hire to his values. And he said, the percentage of people they got right. Went way up. But how do, are there any tactical things you do to hire, right.

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah. So, so there’s you, I mean, the easy one is, is you can evaluate it, you know, depending on who’s hiring, in our case, we have HR and we have department leads. And so you could, you could do some sort of checklist. Do they, you know, do they match, did demonstrate these things, but it’s all about the questions that you asked the candidate, right. And the easy, you know, cliche, like, are you, this? Are you that? Well, of course, they’re gonna give you some scripted can’t answer. That’s gonna be easy. When you start asking questions to people that are thinking about a career inside your organization that are in, that are in the perspective of someone else. I know, Hey, what would your spouse say about this? Or what would your best friend growing up say, what would your previous employer say about this? Give me an example in your life where this happened.

Kris Lindahl:
Right? And so when you can get ’em out of that, just that, that cookie cutter Q and a, the better you’re gonna be. And I, and I’ve seen so often that most people that are interviewing, they don’t stay in the box, right. They don’t stay in the box, they ask a question and they move on and they’re just like checking questions and answers off of their sheet. Instead of getting real intimate. I love that. You said, you know that like, Hey, we’re gonna get personal here too. And like, that’s really important, right. When you’re looking at, at connecting with people that could potentially be part of your organization, you have to be so thoughtful because yeah, there’s a, there’s obviously a, a ratio of, you know, what a bad hire costs you and all those other things, but there’s also the culture impact to that as well. Right. And so, yeah, they, they might not be able to do the job, but if they affect the culture and all of a sudden, now you brought someone in and they’re not the right fit, but now 10 other people are now all of a sudden off task, and they’re no longer the right fit because of what that person did. It can exponentially grow and it can be super painful for an organization.

David Horsager:
So get the right questions. Any one more, one more good question or piece of device to find the right questions.

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah. So I always, I always love asking the question and it’s not really a question, more of a statement. Tell me more and pause. Oh, I’m curious. Can you go a little deeper on that? Right. So just like just, I, I think the tendency that most people have when they’re looking to to hire or evaluate talent is they do all the talking. Yep.

David Horsager:
Right. Do

Kris Lindahl:
All talking like you have to be the facilitator. Right.

David Horsager:
I think of this, the last, the, our, one of our great recent hires, we actually really followed a process and we really set up the question and we said, we’re gonna do this many interviews. This is a high, higher level person here. And we hit it. You know, who we hired, hit it outta the park, happens to be who, you know, Josh, he’s a fantastic, perfect, amazing fit. But we followed a process that time when I started, you know, what, 22 years ago I had these conversations and, you know, and, and once in a while, actually, sometimes we gotta, right. Sometimes we didn’t because of, you know, but I was all over the place. I was that guy just, well, let me just tell you, it’s such an amazing place to work. We’re doing such amazing work. Well, yeah. They , that doesn’t help us vet exactly. The right people. One

Kris Lindahl:
Other thing. Yeah. Oh, spot on. One thing that you mentioned there too, that I think is also really important is you mentioned assessments, right. And, and assessments, aren’t the end all be all right. But they definitely help you get closer and, and to have, and, and when you get an assessment, you’re able to have deeper conversations with the candidate about their strengths and the areas where they need improvement, right. To better understand, you know, what is their natural state and, and, and where do they elevate to in their career? Cause it’s really important, cuz most people are not the same at home as they are in the professional setting and understand the difference between the two. Some people have to level up their energy so much when they get into the professional setting, that it’s uncomfortable for them. And they get pushed outta their comfort zone where others they’re the same personally as they are professionally. And so, so those assessments really help you understand that. And I, they’re not the there’s no assessment. That’s perfect. We’ve done. ’em All. But it definitely opens your eyes to sort of different things that you might not be able to identify in an

David Horsager:
Interview. Do you have one that you like offhand? I mean, we use a few, but do you have, do you have something that comes to mind offhand?

Kris Lindahl:
So we use there’s no perfect assessment. So we use several of ’em to sort of get the results. I mean, we, we love culture index. Kobe’s another one, strength finders is another one. And, and really we input several of ’em in together to really get what we’re looking for. And the beautiful thing about our organization is because we track data. So, so detailed, we understand from previous hires, what things work well for us, that doesn’t mean that someone can’t have success outside the industry or in a different organization, but we’re really clear on what it looks like to be successful at crystal doll real

David Horsager:
Estate. I think that’s a key knowing what it looks like to be successful, but those three real hit hit on different angles. And people’s in, in case people didn’t hear them. Colby looks at motivation the, the culture index or predictive index, they’re very similar and that’s been super valuable for us. And then of course, strengths finder just can give an overview of, okay, what are their strengths when they’re at their best? Love it. Let’s go backwards for a minute. You know, you are very young, sophomore, Fridley, Minnesota, your dad has a tragic accident and passes away. Tell us about that and how you kind of came through that to be who you are today.

Kris Lindahl:
No, I appreciate you asking that, David, thank you. You know, a lot of people don’t know the story and I, I remember the moment when my career changed, but before I get into those details, I just wanna share this really quick. I was on the front page of the star Tribune, which is the, the, the major newspaper here in Minnesota and the, the front page story was about, you know, my dad’s accident. And, and it was like, here’s what Chris has had to overcome in his life. The perspective of that, that people felt about me changed in that moment for the people that read it. Right. And so I think so often we tend to judge a book by its cover, or we try to look at where they’re at today. Like, oh, Chris Lind doll is this brand. That’s known all over the country.

Kris Lindahl:
And he, you know, and he is at this level, but people don’t really understand the things that I had to overcome to get here. And so with, with my dad’s situation, what had happened is, is him and his girlfriend were, were out drinking all day long. They got in an argument and he walked in, she jumped in the in the driver’s seat of his work van. He walked in front of the van, she hit the gas and dragged him a hundred yards and killed him. And that moment changed my entire life. Right. I remember I was, you know, I wanna date myself now, but I had a pager. Right. And my mom paged me. And I remember the, seeing the house phone number on the pager. And then that, that little asterisk, that in 9 1, 1, which I’d never got a text message like that from her.

Kris Lindahl:
And so it was, I was out for a walk. It was a, you know, it was a beautiful night. I remember exactly how, how it felt outside. And I got home and she’s like, your dad’s been in an accident. We didn’t know any details or anything. We, we drove down to the hospital and I ran into my great uncle my dad or my grandpa’s brother who very successful, had a great relationship. That’s actually where I really grew up learning about the outdoors was from him and what he, you know, what he, what he shared with me right. When I walked out, he’s like, you don’t wanna go into that hospital room and see your dad. And remember your dad like that. Right. You don’t, you just don’t want to go in there. And, you know, being, being the age, I was, I was like, ah, I’m gonna go in there.

Kris Lindahl:
And then I, and I paused for a second and I, I respected him so much that I listened to that. And it was one of the, the greatest gifts that that I’ve ever received to not go in that room. Right. I can only imagine being dragged a hundred yards to, to see the, you know, the last memory of, of your dad in a hospital, you know, in that, in that sort of that space. I’m glad I didn’t do it. And, and what I realized after that, a after that accident is, is my dad and I were, were, were drifting away a, a, a bit before that because of of how often he was drinking and you, it’s, it, you know, what’s interesting is, is so often I hear in really successful people, the connection to like parents alcohol, and like, there seems to be a direct correlation there.

Kris Lindahl:
But as I got older, I started to distance myself a bit. I’m like, I, I just don’t wanna be a part of this way of, of living. Mm-Hmm, not that I didn’t love my dad and have a lot of respect for him. And he played a huge impact in my life, but I was growing up and I was like, this isn’t what my life’s gonna look like. And then the accident I had to grow up really fast. And and I think that’s part of why I am, where I am today is because I did have to figure it out at an early age mm-hmm and it was done. What other

David Horsager:
Mentors came around you?

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah, the, the, the biggest one, and this is why I have such a I have such a sweet spot for teachers and coaches a guy’s name, John Swanson. He was my football coach in eighth grade and basketball coach in ninth grade, made a massive impact in my life were still dear friends today was just talking to him the other day. We go golfing together. We go to events together. We go to sporting events. He still coaches basketball and football and, and he just, he changed my life. He really did. He changed my life. And, and you hear this so often about coaches and teachers and, and it, it’s sports really changed my life to have that place, to, to compete, to grow as a leader, to learn as a, as a young adult. I have, I just have so many things that I’ve taken from sports that I’ve incorporated into my professional life. Tell

David Horsager:
Me about a couple of them.

Kris Lindahl:
So the big one is that is the competition, right? The drive, right? That’s a, that’s a massive one. And, and what I, what, the way I was when I was younger is I’m gonna run everyone over. Like I’m gonna win at all costs. It doesn’t matter what it takes. And as I got older, I started to realize that the competition for me is inward, right? It’s an internal drive now, not external. Right. I don’t, you know, I, I don’t disrespect anyone. You’ll never see, see me say anything, hurtful, hateful about anyone ever. Because I want the best. And I believe in people, I push myself internally and go, okay, this is the internal score, right? You’re like, all right, you gotta keep going. You gotta keep going. You gotta get up at five o’clock in the morning. Here’s what you gotta do. Like, and, and you’re, you’re pushing yourself.

Kris Lindahl:
And the drive changes. You realize you get older, like you don’t need to necessarily attempt to run people over all day, every day, right? Like, that’s not good for, that’s not good for you. It’s not good for them. And when I was younger, like I just wanted to win whatever it took. And so that’s why, that’s why, when you, you know, I look at my career, right? I had that drive that it didn’t matter what everyone else was doing. I knew what Chris needed to do to win. I wasn’t ever worried about the noise. I wasn’t worried about the naysayers, the doubters. I was like, here’s what I have to do every single day to win in my life. And I just continue to show up. And then the, the, the, the second part that, that is big. And I know you talk a lot about that is trust, right?

Kris Lindahl:
So I see it so often we won’t hire anyone anymore. If they don’t have some sort of team environment background, right. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s sports, but really diving in and understanding how to win together, how to lose together, how to communicate in difficult times, how to have confrontational conversations when things are tough. Right. And so I learned all of that through sports, and I’m just such a big proponent. My daughter, you know, Victoria’s 12 and she has soccer tryouts this weekend. And we’re going through that journey right now. I’ll tell you right now, you know, raising a, a, a young woman in this world is not easy. But we’re really talking a lot about, you know, how to be the best teammate, right. You know, when you lose how to, you know, you go, you go shake hands with everyone on the other team. You pick people up when they, you know, when they fall over, you go sit next to someone when they’re injured, even if they’re on the other team. And so just the amount of things that you learn from sports is just so

David Horsager:
That’s interesting, cuz you know, you didn’t have a dad for a part of your life there later on as, and, and now your daughter, what, what did this whole experience, what does it make you, what, how have you become a better leader at home? Like leading your daughter?

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah, no, I appreciate you asking. Yeah, no, I, I really, I remember, you know, so I got my real estate license in may, 2009 and three weeks, you know, at the absolute bottom of the market. And a, a couple of weeks later I found out that we were having Victoria, right. So she was born September, 2009. So it all came at once. Hey, I just went commission only. And now, now I have to support a daughter. That’s gonna be here in just a few months. So but I remember that moment when I found out and I said, I’m gonna do things different, right? The way that I’m gonna be as a father is gonna be different than the way that my father was. And, and it wasn’t that he was that he was, that was bad. I just had the opportunity to learn from what he did right.

Kris Lindahl:
In the areas that he can improve in one of the things from the story that I didn’t share, that I think is really important is that back when, before you know, about a couple years before he passed away, he was in the national guard. You know, he was in the reserves and he was getting deployed and it was back when everything was going on with desert storm. And, and we thought that he was gonna have to go to Iraq. And we weren’t sure if he was gonna come back. And so what he did is he wrote letters to, to me, my sister and my brother, and gave them to his mom, my grandma to hold onto. If he didn’t come back from war, it turned out that he ended up getting deployed to Russia. And he, and he didn’t didn’t end up in Iraq, but my grandma held onto those letters and the night that he passed away, she gave us those letters.

Kris Lindahl:
Hmm. And I remember reading that letter and, and I read it and I, and I could barely even read the words that were in that letter. It was so hard for me. And I took that letter that next day. And I gave it to my mom and I, and I really wasn’t in a position to actually read it for a long time. All the, you know, and after I graduated college, I started to get a little more courage. I remembered the words and I finally asked my mom like, Hey, I’m ready to take that letter. I framed it. I have it in my house now. And, and I can read it. And, and one of the things that’s crystal clear when I read that letter is that there’s certain things in that letter that my dad had regret. Right. And a lot of it had to do with drinking.

Kris Lindahl:
Right. And, and what he said is he’s like, there’s things that I’ve missed along the way because of my drinking. And also there was passion there too. He loved to play the guitar. And he said, the way that I play the guitar, it reminds me of the way that you play sports. And I know that you’re gonna be all right in life. Right. And so, so it’s just, and, and that’s a, you know, for everyone listening today, it’d be a recommendation that I’d give to everyone, kids, grandkids, you know, maybe it’s coworkers, family members, friends is to, to write a letter that if something were to happen to you tomorrow, that someone could hand that to them. It’s just such a powerful thing that I have and a, a reminder sort of the life that, that, that I’m gonna live. It’s my guide. It’s my guide for what my life looks like. And for the father that, that, that I have been, and I’m gonna continue to be for Victoria.

David Horsager:
So did that make you jump totally, as far as alcohol, even like I’ve seen, I get a walk next to leaders and I get a walk, it could be senators, or, or it could be, you know, pro sports teams or it could be CEOs. And I see alcohol actually just kill a lot of relationships and futures. Did it make you absolutely turn from anything like that at all? Did you, how do you navigate that?

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah, so that’s a, a really good question. I mean, fortunately for, for fortunately, for me, I’ve, I’ve never been really big into drinking. Obviously those life experiences played a massive role in that. But I’ve also been so focused on being the best leader that I can be personally and professionally that it’s not a good look. If I, if I want others around me to elevate and be the best they can be in life. And then I’m off doing something different earlier, we talked about trust, right? If I’m, if I expect people around me in my life to be a certain way, and I’m doing something completely different, like that’s not gonna work. They don’t trust me. Right. So, so if, if I’m committed to wellness and fitness and, and, and, and all these other things, then if I lead by example, they trust me and they’re more likely to do it. You know, how many times in life has someone actually done what you’ve told them to do? Never right. So you have to inspire them and you have to lead by example. And so that’s one really important thing for me.

David Horsager:
Tell me this, you talked about discipline before, and we, what I’ve noticed, at least in all the leaders I’ve interviewed basically all, all of them. They have certain habits and routines, you talked about getting up at five in the morning. What are, what are some routines that you have that set you up for success? Yeah. Daily or in life?

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah. So, you know, I think, you know, balance rhythm, you know, everyone uses different words on what that means. Rhythm happens to be for me. I, you know, when I get up at five o’clock in the morning, my typical day, I say typical, cuz it doesn’t happen a hundred percent of the time. Anyone that says they do it a hundred percent of the time that life shows up and different things go on, you might be traveling. Right. There’s there’s in

David Horsager:
Your fishing, right?

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah. Fishing, right? Yeah. That’s part of it too. Right. So, so the, the ideal schedule for me is, is I’m up early. And I, and, and I go for a bike ride, 15 to 20 miles. I drink a lot of water. I start the day with a lot of water every single day. Staying hydrated is super important for me, but there’s some days where I’ve got a different agenda and I might go for a bike ride in the evening, but I don’t miss it. Right. It might be eight o’clock at night where it’s like, you know, the, the sun setting and, you know, the last several days in Minnesota, the sunsets have been absolutely spectacular.

David Horsager:
Unbelievable. I, I know this is, I, I gotta call this out since it happened last night. I, I was biking last night, coming back and along the lake. And it was an unbelievable sunset. I did something a little different this week. So we do a few of ’em, but I, I did a, a, just a sprint triathlon with my son. And I just gotta try to keep being able to keep up with him heading toward 50 years old here and like, oh my goodness, it’s a, a 17 year old. He hardly has to train. It seems like to, to do it. So we just, we did one this Saturday and I got whooped by his speed, but ,

Kris Lindahl:
I’ve gotta, I’ve got a 12 year old daughter that soon to be 13 and I’m running around a soccer field right now. And, and you know, all those, all those sports that I played, you know, all the life lessons I took with me, I also took with some injuries and a little bit of a sore, tired body at times. Yeah.

David Horsager:
Any other routines, like, I, I don’t know what it would be, journaling, prayer workout other things that are kind of like, this is something I rarely miss. Yes. I, or I do consistently.

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah. I think gratitude’s another one. Right. I mean, it’s, you know, just every single day that we get to wake up in this world is an opportunity. Right. And so really diving into like, okay, what, and, and as I think about gratitude, I always think about, okay, what went right yesterday? Where do I have room for improvement? And what am I gonna do today? And, and, and speaking of that rhythm, sometimes I do that before I go to bed. And sometimes I do that right when I wake up, depending on the day, but I always reflect. Right. And that’s, and, and, and, you know, there was something I just shared in our all company meeting the other day is that if anyone is feeling a certain way about something I did or something I said, or suggestion for improvement or any sort of constructive feedback, I’m a hundred percent open to anything that anyone wants to talk to me about.

Kris Lindahl:
And someone actually pulled me aside after the meeting and shared a few tips that will improve my life. And I think that’s the same thing about leading by example, if I can stand in front of our entire company and say, there’s no question off limits, we can have any conversation that we want. I think it’s super powerful to reflect because I’ve seen so often that people aren’t willing to look in the mirror and be real and honest with themselves. Right? There’s so many people in the world right now that are, that are just totally delusional about who they are and where the areas are for improvement. Totally. And so the more that I can be honest with myself, the better I’m gonna be

David Horsager:
Individuals, leaders, and companies, if many people, they wanna know what they, they wanna win and they won’t ask their customers how they could. , you know, it’s like, I know many of them would tell them same with leaders. Oh, you wanna be a good leader, but ask your people, you know, this, this feedback can be so valuable and can be the you know, such a huge opportunity. That’s missed, you know, jumping into your, be generous. You know, you’ve got a new mission or not, you know, it’s, it’s been, you’ve become this, this be generous that you, at the beginning, you had this drive and it is probably a little self focused 20 or, or 30 years ago. And now you really have become this, this mission of be generous. And your, your whole foundation supports this idea of be generous. Tell us about it.

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah. So, so originally it was, it was the B generous project and what I realized, and, you know, we always have learning opportunities along the way, even for the amount of branding that we’ve got, right. You know, throughout my career, we, we tied, we, we named the the five, one C three B generous project, and everyone would go, what does that mean? Right. And so the name that everyone knows is Chris Linda. So now it’s the Chris Dale foundation. And B generous is the mission. And we give back our time treasures and talents. And what I’ve learned along the way is the easy thing for people to give is money, right? That’s the easy thing to give. And I’m not saying that people are giving hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, but even if it’s a dollar on GoFundMe, it’s really easy to click a couple of buttons and say, I contributed to that.

Kris Lindahl:
Cause what’s difficult is sharing what you’ve learned, because a lot of people in the world have a scarcity mindset, right? So, oh, if I share this with them, then they’re gonna be able to take me out and that’s our secret sauce. And so you see so often that people are so scared to share what they’ve learned. And I wanna be around more abundance mindset. People they’re like, Hey, let’s give and share everything. And over time it will level up everyone. And that’s the environment that I wanna be in. And then the third one is time is time. That’s the hardest one for people to give. And you know, how crazy life is for so many people right now, but what we found inside of our world, right? Our community of, of, of people inside our organization, our customers, our past clients, and all of our supporters is that people wanna get behind that group environment of giving back and making a difference. And what very few people in the world think about is legacy, right? And so when we see people come with their friends, their family, their kids, their grandkids, their nieces, their nephews, and they all come together to give back all three of those. It’s such a beautiful thing because they’re creating this long lasting legacy. That’s gonna be there forever. And I just love being a part of it.

David Horsager:
How about this? Let’s, you know, you’re known and I think this might have something to do with it, but I wanna hear the story firsthand, but you’re known for your arms wide open. You’ve been on billboards around the country, across the country, these wide open arms that everybody’s, you know, everybody in Minnesota seen, but everybody, you know, a lot of people have seen tell us about where that came from.

Kris Lindahl:
So it was the desire to be different. Right. So I think one of the things in, in, in business is that you have to differentiate yourself, especially in, in industry that, I mean, most industries, these days are, are in some shape or form or some sort of commodity, right? There’s a lot of, you know, a lot of people that homeowners could reach out to, to sell their house. Everyone knows like 10 real estate agents and the desire to be different. I mean, I remember the, the first photo I took and it was, you know, chrisling doll and a suit and tie just like everyone else that’s been that same way forever. You know, a lot of people have probably seen bus benches all over their communities, right. Realtors forever have done that same thing. And I’m like, let’s shake it up. Let’s do something different.

Kris Lindahl:
Right. And, and we tried a couple of different things. The one before the arms out was Chris nine times in a row in a suit and tie. Right. And it was, I remember back then it was, I, I sell a house every nine hours and it was nine, you know, photos of Chris. And, and I thought that was gonna be like, oh, this is gonna break through, like, everyone’s gonna go, like, why are we seeing Chris Lindel nine times in a row on a, on a billboard. And then all of a sudden, we, we, we came up with this idea to do the arms out, which means a whole lot more to us. Right. Of, of, I mean, trust is a big part of that. Right. Love, you know, a lot of people have related to like free hugs, giving back generosity, like arms wide open. And, and there’s a lot of things that, that have, that have come from that arms out. And what I love about it is it’s all in the eye, the beholder, anyone driving by it, they all go, I wonder what that’s all about. I wonder why he started that. And so everyone genuinely has this like curious state of what does arms out actually mean. Right. And so it, it’s just a disruption.

David Horsager:
Yeah. You’ve won, you know, and, and, and thrived in a very competitive market. And in so many ways, tell, give me three differentiators, or maybe just touch on, I, I think there’s at least from what I’ve seen, this, this scholarship idea, the arms open idea, the, the way you guarantee a sale, like, what are the, what are, when you say, Hey, what are the differentiators? Because I, I know I don’t wanna stay in real estate forever here. Most people listening have nothing to do with real estate, but people, you, what you’ve done in your space, other than be generous, other than love people, other than figure out hiring the right people and being an example to them and building this great culture. You, you, that front end, there is a uniqueness that is absolutely clear. And I think people need to get this clarity is one of the, is the first pillar of trust being clear. We trust the clear we mistrust or distrust the ambiguous. And so how do you’re clear about a few things that make Chris lend all real estate absolutely different than everybody else? No,

Kris Lindahl:
I, I, I love that question because it’s the, obviously the successful campaigns and the innovation do differentiate us, but having people in the right spots in the organization matters more than anything. I am an off the charts, visionary. Like you look at any of this assessments, I almost break it because I’m so high in vision, no detail, zero follow up. Like I own that space. And everyone else around me does too. And, and I look at the early days and there was almost like this guilty feel of being a visionary because I couldn’t follow through on other things. And, you know, you had people that like, almost like parenting where you had people in the organization that started made me, like, you didn’t follow through on this. You didn’t do this. Like, and now I have people around me that embrace who I am and, and those ideas and, and campaigns that you mentioned, those are all my ideas, right?

Kris Lindahl:
Because I’m in that vision spot and I stay focused in that place. It makes a big difference. And having really dedicated ops people and integrators and people in our organization that are so dialed in on getting things to the finish line. I have a thousand great ideas a day, 24 hours later. There’s about five that are still decent and 72 hours later, there’s one that I’m like, oh, that can change the industry. And so the other thing with that too, is what makes us so special is that we really don’t get that many great ideas to the finish line, right? One of the mistakes that most people make inside organizations, especially when they have a visionary, is they give everyone in the organization whiplash all day, every day, let’s go here, let’s go there, let’s go here. Let’s go there. And everyone’s running around completely dizzy.

Kris Lindahl:
And we have so much discipline to vet ideas before we ever get them to the finish line. And that’s one thing that most people don’t figure out, but it’s also has to do with the way you hire, has to do with the assessments has to do with clarity, has to do with trust, has to be, you know, but the vulnerable, transparent conversations I mentioned earlier, all of that comes together. Cuz you can create all the most amazing marketing campaigns and innovation in the world. But if your people can’t execute on it and they’re exhausted and they’re fried and they’re burnt out, you’re not gonna last. It’s gonna, you’ve seen them a hundred times before. It’s like that flash in the pan where all of a sudden they shoot up and all of a sudden like they decline or they go out of business. So they file bankruptcy.

Kris Lindahl:
And I remember in the early days when we first started this, everyone said, oh, this is never gonna last. There’s no way that Chris Leal can continue to do this. And we just continue one after another, we just keep climbing, keep growing, tune out the noise. We don’t respond to everyone. We just keep doing what we do. And, and you’re right. Like a lot of the things that we’ve, that we’ve really invested in and, and, and made big, actually came from one thing. And you said it earlier, it came from our customers. We listened to what our customers say, right? Our customers said, Hey, we’d like to have this. We look at emails, we look at text messages. We go to appointments. What are people saying that they need in this market right now? And that tells you where to go people all the time. Say like, Hey, Chris Lindo is a marketing genius. I just am really good at listening.

David Horsager:
So yes, as we get toward the last question or two here, what’s I wanna go back to one of the words that came out early and it’s drive. You have an enormous amount of drive. You have an enormous amount of vision in a day where a lot of people are looking to work less and work, you know, certain things around work, life balance and certain things. I, I, I just, from what I see, a lot of the healthiest people mentally, physically in other words, actually are, are kind, are actually work. Like work is a healthy, big part of their lives though, you know? But, but how, it’s not just you, it seems like you’ve hired, driven and motivated a certain type of drive toward an exciting, positive possibility. How do you actually, in this environment, motivate this, go the extra mile align we’re in this together. We’re this, this drive that is positive. It’s generous and a host of other things. But how, I guess in this world, are you taking hundreds and hundreds of people and basically hiring and motivating drivenness?

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah, I, yeah, that’s a real, that’s a really good question. I think

David Horsager:
That’s a big uniqueness by the way. Yeah,

Kris Lindahl:
For sure.

David Horsager:
There’s a lot of people that aren’t today.

Kris Lindahl:
That’s right. And, and, and one of the things when people hear the word drive that I think where there’s some real major confusion. When people hear the word drive, they think workaholic mm-hmm right. They always think that like, oh, I don’t wanna work. You, you mentioned that, you know, the work life balance, which suggests that there’s some sort of 50, 50 Teeter totter, right. And people all the time, they, they think that that all of a sudden Chris Al’s 24, 7 running through walls and never stops working to get to this point. Right. And, and, and you know, obviously at the beginning of any journey of, of any business, right? When you’re on your own, you tend to work more. You have to make a lot of sacrifices. You know, anyone that’s done anything big. There’s a lot of sacrifices they had to make along the way to get there.

Kris Lindahl:
But when, when we hire people, we ask the tough questions before we hire them, Hey, what does life look like? When things get tough? What do you do? Give us examples. Tell us more. What do people around you feel when things get tough for you? Right. So we’re asking a lot of questions about challenging times. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s like anything, you know, you learn a lot about people when things go wrong, right. When things are great, it’s, it’s really nice and fun and Hey, we’re winning, everyone’s winning. It’s, it’s all good. But then the moment that flips and all of a sudden, it’s like, Ooh, we didn’t expect that to come. Oh, we had a little more turbulence than we expected. Then all of a sudden you start looking around and you start understanding like, okay, this is what they’re built for. This is what, this is what is inside.

Kris Lindahl:
And I think you can’t really train that. You just have to find people when you’re evaluating talent that have that level, that when things get tough, they show up because there’s two types of people in the world right now, when things get tough, there’s a lot of the world that just shut down, right? They’re like, I can’t even get out of bed. I’m not gonna get up. Things are going wrong. What’s gonna go wrong today. And then there’s the other side. They just embrace those opportunities. And they’re so excited to enter that growing season. And the thing that I’ve seen so often in life is that when all these challenges come up, you’re actually growing so much. But when you’re in that moment, it doesn’t feel like you’re growing and tell you, get outside of it and you look back, you go, wow. Those were some of the greatest opportunities of my life. And, and so I just, I love those moments cuz that’s really where you grow.

David Horsager:
Well, this has been fun. I’ve got one more question for you before I do Chris. There’s so much more I could ask you. I know there’s a, a bunch of differentiators I’ve heard about read about, I think you have a new partnership come with the Minnesota twins and a host of other things happening that are exciting and interesting and a whole lot of not just how you hire, but how you built such a great culture. We might have to have you back before that you you’ve written the best selling book sold, but where’s one place we can find out more about Chris Lindel or connect with you.

Kris Lindahl:
Yeah. So, so the best place is connect with kl.com, which is right there on that link as all my social media channels, I personally manage my social media. I love, you know, getting messages from so many people that hear and see, and then I get to connect with around the world. And so if you’re listening, you know, make sure to follow me, send me a message. I’d love to hear what things I can do better based on the interview that you just listened to today

David Horsager:
And all that’ll be in the show notes at trusted leader, show.com and more about Kris Lindahl. Hey, this has been a treat, Chris, you know, it’s the trusted leader show. Last question. Who’s a leader you trust and why?

Kris Lindahl:
The biggest one for me is coaches and teachers, right? And so I mentioned, you know, John earlier, who’s made just a massive impact in my life. And, and he’s one that, that I call all the time for advice just to, just to level set and figure out how I can improve in life. And he’s just played an I a major impact in, in my life.

David Horsager:
Everybody needs a teacher, a coach, and a mentor, and a friend, right? Walk beside you. Walk ahead of you. Walk that behind you. We need him. Well, Kris, thanks so much. This has been a treat and this has been the trusted leader show until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 93: M. Gasby Brown on Why Racial Literacy Is Critical For EVERY Leader

In this episode, we revisit a previous episode where David sat down with M. Gasby Brown, CEO of The Gasby Group, Author, Visual Artist, and Nonprofit and Philanthropy Expert, to discuss why racial literacy is critical for every leader.

Show Notes: http://trustedleadershow.com

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Gasby’s Bio:
M. Gasby Brown has a passion for the nonprofit sector that is beyond the norm. She heads a consulting firm that believes strongly in the power of well-run nonprofit organizations, board governance, programmatic strength, and ethical fundraising that leads to changing lives and impacting the world. Her cabinet level experience in organizations such as Greenpeace, National Urban League and The Washington National Opera, placed her in leadership positions that were instrumental in restructuring organizations, recalibrating program models, reenergizing boards and senior staff, and enhancing fundraising. It’s not surprising that she is the product of Harvard University’s Kennedy School where she earned a Master’s Degree in Public Administration (MPA). At MIT she was a team member in the renowned Media Lab where she conducted advanced research in new communications technology. Gasby is an entrepreneur, author, professor, visual artist, thought-leader, meeting facilitator, podcast host, as well as a nonprofit and philanthropy expert. Her Christian faith is woven through all of her accomplishments.

Gasby’s Links:
Website: https://www.thegasbygroup.com/
“Business of a Spiritual Matter” by M. Gasby Brown: https://amzn.to/38BXvxJ
Gasby’s Art: https://nopermissionneeded.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-gasby-group-9b33104/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100007176917626
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegasbygroup/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GasbyBrown

Key Quotes:
1. “There needs to be racial literacy.”
2. “Always be open to learning new things.”
3. “It’s not in the thinking about it, it’s in the doing.”
4. “CEOs who are most effective have that sense of humility.”
5. “We have to meet people where they are.”
6. “Relationship is so important when building trust.”
7. “Many are called but few are chosen.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
“Business of a Spiritual Matter” by M. Gasby Brown: https://amzn.to/38BXvxJ
“Not On This Board You Don’t” by Arthur Frantzreb: https://amzn.to/3BDeAUd

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36AXtp9
Follow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Follow David on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Follow David on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Show Transcript

Kent Svenson:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m Kent Svenson producer of the trusted leader show. And for this week’s episode, we thought we’d revisit a previous episode where David sat down with M Gasby Brown CEO of the Gasby Group, author, visual artist, and nonprofit and philanthropy expert to discuss why racial literacy is critical for every leader. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

David Horsager:
Let’s jump to de and I, it’s a big topic DEI. I justice some say in belonging these days, but diversity equity inclusion. You know, we talk about trust and it’s you, you can’t, it seems like you can’t have the best kind. At least there was a, there was a study on diversity har massive Harvard Putnam study that showed kind of diversity, diversity of many kinds on its own tends to pit people against each other, unless you increase trust. So we’re all about how do we increase trust to get the best of that? We know there, you know, we know there is greatness in diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, justice. So how do we increase trust so that we enjoy the best of this beautiful array of diversity, but I’d like to talk to you, how do you, how do you tackle D E and I in a way, or how can we as leaders maybe even think differently about it so that we increase trust and get the best of diversity?

M. Gasby Brown:
Boy, that’s a great question, David. And the onus is really more on the learning, then the learn it in this case, in my mind. And so it really comes down to, and I will deal with the racial part of it because there’s so many moving parts to de DEI and justice. There needs to be racial literacy, a curiosity that to learn and openness to learn and to be a lifelong learner about the various historical issues that have led us to where we are now with regard to racial equity, there needs to also be in my mind, I kind of deal with three RS, RS and CS, and what have you. But another R would be racial humility. There are some people who feel that they have read a few books and they have watched a couple of movies and documentaries, and now they know all they need to know, and they maybe attended a couple of DEI trainings and they know they feel that they know all there is to know about racial reckoning and what’s going on, but that is the wrong attitude. The attitude has to be humility where you’re putting yourself in the position to always be open to learning new things and more. And then the, the racial sustainability that you’re in this for the long haul, this is not just a flashpoint in history, but this is an opportunity to make change. And it starts with each of us,

David Horsager:
Where are some places you see people doing these things well, like, you know, furthering racial equity in a, a, where is it working? Is there places you can shine that are, that are examples for leaders to look at and say, okay, I never thought of that. I think I could not just, could I learn something here, but this would, this gives me something tangible we could start to do in our environment. Mm-Hmm

M. Gasby Brown:
, I think the NBA has done a great job in this regard and worthy of studying their model of how they’re dealing with justice. Equity and inclusion is so interesting because everybody’s tall there in the NBA. And one of the big optics that we use a lot would be everybody looking over a fence at different Heights and not everybody can see over the fence because of their height. And that’s where the justice diversity equity and inclusion comes in because the more you adjust the height, the more everyone is in the position to see. But true equity is when you remove the fence all together and everybody can see where they are. And I think that’s where we talk about that belonging part that you mentioned,

David Horsager:
Right? How are they doing that? How is the, I know I’ve met the, you know, CEO of the MBA and certainly many of the I’m on a I’m on an high point ex expert in residence with the amazing CEO of the of the Mavericks. And she is a, an amazing, you know positive force in this work, but how, how, what do you see them doing?

M. Gasby Brown:
Well, I see them utilizing, first of all, their stadiums with the health disparities during the pandemic and the stadiums were not being used anyway, what foresight and what, what thought, what great insight I think they utilized and being able to say, we’re gonna take these stadiums and we are going to try and close the disparity, the health disparity, amongst minorities with who were getting vaccinated or tested or all of the things that were a part part of that. These are the real things. It’s not in the, the thinking about it, it’s in the doing. So when I saw them pivot along those lines that would be something that I would consider an example. And I’d love to hear from you David, about the qualities that you’ve seen in those people that probably helped to lead them to a point where they would think this way.

David Horsager:
Well, I think the number one, you said, curiosity here, I think was the onus is on the learner either any way you look at it, but I, the, the great leaders I’ve seen deal with this and almost anything, well have had a humility, I would say humility of, of understanding. We don’t know it all a humility of, of that, that leads to, you know, I, I guess you said it, yeah. Number two was racial humility. Yeah, it was that exactly. I thought you’d said something before, but so it’s just, but it’s just plain humility and that leads to racial humility. It leads to kind of gender humility. It leads to a lot, you know, there’s but the, the, the thing that I’ve seen work is a start with humility. And

M. Gasby Brown:
Go ahead. I, I, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but I, it just brought a thought up about, I’ve seen so many CEOs and as I’ve navigated around in my professional career, and I see the ones who are most effective are those who walk in the room and begin to want to meet other people, not the ones who want everybody to flock to them and, and pander to them, if you will, because they have power and authority. But the ones that just walk up to people and say, hi, I’m Jane DOE or I’m John DOE. And and ask their name and then be interested in other people. I find being interested in other people being very important. That’s an aside, but it was just a thought that came to my head, that I found as a common thread that CEOs who are most effective, have that sense of humility and have the confidence that they can walk in a room and get to know people rather than being the center of attention.

David Horsager:
It’s almost that I think I like what you said, it’s almost a, it’s a healthy confidence that you don’t need. Like, you know, these, these needy you know, if, if you’re a CEO that needs the limelight or you need this or you, or you need to be right. I, I, I just talked to a very good friend of mine, Phil Sterling, brilliant gentleman, but he said, I no longer, he, he, he said his whole life is, is now, like, in these older years, like, I want to be curious about how to solve the right problems. I no longer want to be right. Or something like that. His, his quote was much better. And he’s, he’s so wise, but I think, you know, this, this idea of curiosity about others care for others, interest in others. Yeah. I, I think all that goes together, there’s a whole lot more, we could, we could say about this.

David Horsager:
Are there, are there structural things that you’ve seen that are working or you would recommend, I think, you know, people on, on some boards where it’s, there’s, there’s, there’s you know, there’s metrics, we are, we are, here’s one idea that in one company they change the equity equation by saying you can hire the best person for any job who you feel like is best for that job, but there has to be a top three, and one of those three has to be a person of color. And, and it, it actually, interestingly enough, this what some I could see, and I could see white folks possibly saying, well, that isn’t, you know, that, why do you need to do that? Or, you know, just, I just, you, you could see certain things being said, and yet that just put certain people in the room.

David Horsager:
It, it forced certain people to be in the room that actually from that group of three, then the number that were hired as best of many more of color and the health of the company and the output of the company went up. So they, they, they, they found a way to get the right people in the room without, without saying, you know, you have to hire 50% of this or that. And I think it, it was one simple idea, I guess I’m just asking your perspective on that. And are there other ideas that maybe we should be thinking about that can help, you know, start to solve this problem in our own spaces?

M. Gasby Brown:
Well, a couple things, there is a name for that procedure, and it’s called the Rooney rule where the three are, are finalists are captured. One of the things I, I really a bristle when someone says, we are trying to find, when you’re talking about those three, we’re trying to find qualified black people or minorities. Well, they wouldn’t be qualified. They, they have to be qualified to be one of the three. So what are you talking about? So eliminating that kind of lexicon is, is very important. I think it’s also very crucial for the diversity equity and inclusion person to report directly to the CEO and president that this is not someone down the line that reports to the HR person, but has the importance of being on the cabinet, if you will. And then also it’s very important, especially for corporations for that executive committee to be able to receive the frontline training and the hard nose training of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. And therefore it trickles down from the top. If you start with the employees at a ground level, that is not the place to start, the entry level has to be at the top. And I’d also encourage white CEOs to seek training from experienced white DEI. People who have walked in their shoes, understand some of their discomforts and challenges. And it can be talked about in a very Frank manner. So those would be a few of the things that I would recommend right off the bat.

David Horsager:
Yeah, those are good ones, very good.

David Horsager:
Speaking of motivation, and I don’t always ask this one, but you know, if you’re trying to motivate someone else to do something, let’s take a board or a leader or a someone else needs to change that you’re dealing with. And many people think, well, motivation is just intrinsic. So whatever you wanna call it, if you wanna inspire ’em to do so, but you need to move someone to think differently or do something else. How do you motivate them

M. Gasby Brown:
By finding out where they are? Because I have to meet people where they are. So to come with a formulaic approach, oh, I’m gonna teach you this. And this is what you need to know. In my mind is not the most effective approach. The most effective approach is to find out where people are. So for example, on a board that probably as an uneven pattern of understanding of a certain topic first of all, do a little survey of how they feel about certain things and to get that in its aggregate and to have small group discussions so that you can have an understanding and they can have an understanding of each other, put things candidly on the table about it and discuss it in a transparent manner, moving from a, a base of knowledge about your audience is always very, very important instead of coming in with your own agenda. That is just one way

David Horsager:
Building on that. That would certainly be a huge part of it. Thank you for that. How would you go into a board? Let’s take a new board and build trust. How would you build it? You build it, but how would you build it amongst each other?

M. Gasby Brown:
Well, through small group interaction, first of all, you know, I facilitate a lot of board retreats and doing the kinds of things that help people to get to know one another. I ask them about what, what is something on your resume that no one else know that you don’t put on your resume? In other words, what is something about you that you don’t put on your resume? And people come up with some of the most fascinating answers that then connect, it’s almost like the Saint Francis of a Sisi. Oh, I didn’t know. You felt that way. We have something in common and that getting to know you and getting to know others is a very important part of trust. The fact that there is for people to be on a board, if it’s operated in the right way that you know, that you’re all there because you’re offering something good.

M. Gasby Brown:
But to get to know the people that you are navigating with on a deeper level is I think very important. And that helps to build the trust to know that you think I’m okay because I climb Hills and I do mountain climbing because you do that too. Right. And I just went on a, I didn’t, I don’t do this, but for a person to say yeah, I just went on a 26 mile hike and the person to say, you know, I did the same thing two years ago and begin to have that kind of interaction and, and, and speaking in a, a trustful way. I think about there’s a us trust, which bank of America and literally family school of philanthropy, longitudinal study, that’s done every two years for high network individual. And one of the things that they have indicated in this study is that they trust nonprofits to do the work that they cannot do themselves individually. Isn’t that a wonderful entry point that speaks to relationship. And I think the bottom line of all that I just said this long winded way of saying it, relationship is so important when building trust,

David Horsager:
Everything of value is built in trust. We do a process that I’m am proud of, and it’s had significant results in boards and organizations, but it’s something we call the trust shield. And it just, it, it basically is a process that helps people build connection and kind of see some of the things you talked about like, oh, you, oh, that, oh, I’ve had people with totally diverse views, a board that were just not working together at all. And one, they, they felt safe enough to say, well, I’m a, I’m a, I’m a Muslim. Well, I’m a Christian. Well, I’m a, this well I’m. And at the end of it, they all saw each other as human. And they work together in a whole new way. It was a, is it it’s, it’s a powerful powerful piece. And

M. Gasby Brown:
So, yes, indeed. And in fact, my book as you mentioned before, business of a spiritual matter was written for that interrelationship between the Abrahamic faith. And so it’s, it’s very much tied to what we have in common.

David Horsager:
It’s a great book. Tell, give people a quick overview of, of what they would get out of. This is business as a spiritual matter. And tell, tell, just give a quick overview Gaby.

M. Gasby Brown:
Well, it’s going to tell you about strategic planning from a to Z, and it will give leaders all of the foundations as of a year ago that give to various nonprofit organizations. It’s going to test leaders on few are chosen, many are called, but fewer chosen are you chosen to be a leader and to really stretch yourself, to think about what a chosen leader means, how to build a board? There’s an author that I like his name is author Arthur, France. He passed away. Now he wrote a book called not on this board. You don’t, and the dysfunctions of boards is something that I’m dealing with all the time. Clients are asking me to weigh in. And so in this book, it gives all the right tools to build a board to deal in and in self, self evaluation, how to evaluate board members, how to retain board member members. And just from a to Z, what it’s going to take, how to conduct a capital campaign. There’s a chapter in the book for Christian schools in particular that says the bake sale will never be enough . So ,

David Horsager:
I see it,

M. Gasby Brown:
How to conduct an annual giving campaign, all of these kinds of things that sustain a nonprofit with the right tools is part of, of the business of a spiritual matter.

Kent Svenson:
That’s it for this week’s episode, be sure to check out trusted leader, show.com for all the show notes and links and information from anything mentioned in today’s episode. And if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate a review on apple podcast, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcast as this is a great way to help support the show and help others to discover it. But in the meantime, that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 92: Phil M Jones on The Advantage For Every Critical Conversation

In this episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 Trusted Leader Summit where Phil M Jones, Master of Influence and Persuasion, Author, Producer, Speaker, Advisor, and Entrepreneur, discusses the advantage for every critical conversation.

2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Phil’s Bio:
Phil M Jones is a master of influence and persuasion – the author of the best-selling “Exactly” Book Series with over 1 million copies sold – producer of the “Most Listened To” non-fiction Audiobook of all time – a trusted advisor for some of the world’s biggest brands – and entrepreneur since the age of 14.

Phil’s Links:
Website: https://www.philmjones.com/
“Exactly What To Say” by Phil M Jones: https://amzn.to/3H0bHiy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philmjonesuk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/philmjonessales/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philmjones/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/philmjonesuk

Key Quotes:
1. “The worst time to think about the thing you’re going to say is right in the moment you’re saying it.”
2. “No is not the enemy of yes, indecision is the enemy.”
3. “Your job as leaders is to help people make decisions not get stuck in maybe.”
4. “Every great conversation needs to start from a position of curiosity.”
5. “The more certain you show up to a situation the more uncertainty you create in other people.”
6. “Content before context is merely noise.”
7. “Empathy is to care about what the people you care about care about.” – Jon Acuff
8. “Motivation is a reason to move.”
9. “People do not move to become more comfortable. People move when they’re uncomfortable or there’s a reason that’s big enough.”
10. “Every decision that every human being has ever made has been made at least twice.”
11. “A story will always sell, a fact will only tell.”
12. “Questions create conversations, conversations lead to relationships, relationships create opportunities, and opportunities lead to action or change.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com
“Exactly What To Say” by Phil M Jones: https://amzn.to/3H0bHiy

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36AXtp9
Follow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Follow David on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Follow David on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Show Transcript

Kent Svenson:
Welcome to the trusted leader show I’m Kent Svenson producer of the trusted leader show. And for this week’s episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 trusted leader summit, where Phil M Jones, master of influence and persuasion author producer, speaker advisor, and entrepreneur took to the stage to discuss the advantage for every critical conversation. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Phil M Jones:
So why don’t I share with you the most important lesson I came here to share with you today? And the most important lesson I came to share with you today was oh.

Phil M Jones:
Oh yeah. That’s it. When is the worst time to think about the thing you’re going to say? It’s right in the very moment you’re saying it, right, right. In the very moment, you’re saying how many of you have come away from critical conversations thinking should or would’ve could have, how many times have you come away from a critical conversation and thought done? Why on earth? Did I say that? Yeah, it’s so difficult to do something after the fact, if you took that same energy, put that same energy up front chances are you’d increase your efficiency in the moment. Fair. You’re gonna learn in our time together today that I’m a little pedantic about word choices so much so that I did write this little book about them. So book I’m insanely proud of. I’m proud of it for like a gazillion reasons, but one big one is it’s like a genuine bestseller sold. Now over 1.4 million copies translated into 29 different languages. This little book right here, it outsold 50 shades of gray and Harry Potter did right for one whole day.

Phil M Jones:
You celebrate your wins? I’m taking mine.

Phil M Jones:
So book full of what I call my magic words. What are magic words? There’s sequences of words that talk straight towards the subconscious brain. Subconscious brain is powerful. You’ve learned a lot about it through the last couple of days. Why is it powerful? Because as a yes, output and a no output, there is no, maybe in subconscious. See, people think the no is the enemy of, yes, it’s not in decision is the enemy. Maybe is the enemy. Your job as leaders is to help people make decisions, not get stuck in maybe. So if you can speak to the part of somebody’s brain that is fundamentally more decisive, it will make decisions quicker. Therefore it will take action quicker. Therefore you’ll gain transaction quicker. Make sense. Still confused about this subconscious brain. I’ll give you an example of where it served. You do any of you remember like a familiar car ride where you remember getting in in the morning, and then you remember arriving at the destination and have no idea how you got there. Subconscious brain took the drive. Don’t worry. Anything unusual happened. Conscious brain would kicking grab the wheel in a nanosecond. You’d be in full control, but we are leaning on it all day every day. Think of it quite simply as nothing more than a little voice inside your head. That’s it. And if you are sat there right now, thinking that you haven’t got a little voice inside your head,

Phil M Jones:
Then that’s the little voice telling you. You haven’t got a little voice.

Phil M Jones:
We all have one learning to speak to other peoples is what gives you a fair advantage in almost every critical conversation. I’m gonna give you some examples, but knowing how smart you folks are in the room, I wanted to give you some of the structure and frameworks behind it. The book has 23 sequences of words, but they’re really built on deep rooted psychological principles. I thought that if you are thinking right now that the change that you are looking to make in your organization requires you to enter into some tough conversations, some critical conversations in order to win the trust that you know, you need to change the outcomes you’re looking for. Knowing the structure might give you everything you need. See for every critical conversation that you enter into. There are only three ingredients that you require three very specific ingredients in a precise order. First of those critical ingredients is curiosity. Every great conversation needs to start from a position of curiosity. I know you know a lot about a lot. I know that, but if you show up into a conversation, knowing a lot about a lot, what you’re gonna create is do you now,

Phil M Jones:
Right? Rubs people up the wrong way. Ironically certainty and conversation leads to uncertainty in the other person’s opinion in you. Isn’t that strange. The more certain you show up to a situation, the more uncertainty you create in other people, curiosity by alternative gets you towards certainty. Why? Because it helps you understand their context. You have a lot of content you wanna share with people yet. Your content before context is merely noise. Do the work to understand their context before you insert your content. What do we heighten trust? When you do the work to understand their context. First now you’ve understood their context. We dared towards the third ingredient. Second ingredient even. Wow, I can’t count empathy. It’s like a buzzword right now. Right? Empathy. People throw it around like confetti at a wedding. You still dunno what it means.

Phil M Jones:
Best definition I ever heard for empathy comes from a speaker author, friend of mine by the name of Jon Acuff. Jon Acuff describes empathy as to care about what the people you care about. Care about. That’s easy, right? Care about what the people you care about. Care about. If you wanna test how good you are at this, do me this favor. Check your last sent emails. When you’re back in the office tomorrow, go through your box and see who the hero of the story is on your last sent emails. See who the person is. The primary benefactor. See who you are showing you care about in, in those emails. See, there’s a button that exists inside our head. Every decision maker has the same button it’s called the show. Me that you know me button, the second you trigger the show, me that you know me button, it stops being this.

Phil M Jones:
And it starts being this. It’s not you versus them. It’s you and them versus it. That’s the goal we’re looking for. Empathy gets us towards being relatable, which is what people are looking for in a leader, right? Somebody who can relate to them, empathy gets us there. Show our hands in this room who has somebody you could ask them to do just about anything reasonable. And you’d say, yeah, sure. Who knows at least one person like that. Right? Sure. And you equally have people in your life that could ask you to do the exact same thing. And when they ask you, you’re like me really? Now you got a million questions and a dozen reasons why you can’t, what’s the difference? Trust, trust. So how do you get to trust in critical conversations? You start off curious, you then get to empathy. So you become relatable.

Phil M Jones:
You learn earlier on that. If you do not ask, you do not get, we know that to be true. Why do we not wanna ask for the things we want in life? Because we are fearful of rejection. We learned that we’re fearful of rejection because we didn’t do the work before the work to create the context and see things through their eyes. So the third ingredient is courage and not like jump out of an airplane. Courage, getting a wrestling ring, courage, not that kind of courage, not go to war courage. I’m talking about the courage to just ask, finish this sentence for me. If you do not ask you do not get, you do not receive because your success is in direct correlation to the quantity of quality ask that you make in your life period. And the trouble is, is if we start off courageously asking for the things that we want in our life, we’re rude, we’re obnoxious, all the things we didn’t want to be. But when you do it in this order, you get the action you’re looking for. That’s what happens, cuz it’s built on a foundation of trust.

Phil M Jones:
The secret to influence lies in our deep understanding of this word. One of the most overused words in the word of leadership, motivation, why? Because many people do not understand what it means. The word splits. That’s how it’s formed. Study it. Etymology is two words. First part comes from the Latin word mats. Second part comes from the word that we know is action. Modern day translation to mats is motive. Action stays the same. If somebody had a motive, it would mean they had a, what? They have a motive. They have a I’ll take reason. And if they’re gonna take action, it means they’re gonna move. Or it means they’re gonna do something. All that is meant by the word. Motivation is a reason to move. Now, if you can unlock somebody, else’s reason to move, you can get just about anybody to do just about anything, correct?

Phil M Jones:
Whose reason matters more yours or theirs? This, see, I knew we had smart people. So that is simple to understand. Correct. And very difficult to executing practice. Did you also know there are only three reasons anybody moves to do anything? You knew that dang gotta work. Yikes. Okay. Three reasons. First reason we move to do anything is to run towards something for an incentive because it’s gonna make us more comfortable, correct? We’re run to become more comfortable. If we’re not running to make ourselves more comfortable, we’re running from something, cuz it’s making us uncomfortable. This fear of voting it, I wanna get away from this thing makes sense. And if it’s not incentive to become more comfortable or fear to become less away from uncomfortable, the third thing is cuz we’re all selfish creatures and we do things for our own reasons that make our hearts sing.

Phil M Jones:
We’re doing things that are just for us question for you as leaders, do people move to become more comfortable? Yes or no? Yes. Yeah they do. Right? Some of the people, some of the time do people move when they’re uncomfortable? Yes. They do more of the people more of the time. And do people move to do things for selfish reasons that matter for them, them and only them. Yes they do all of the people all of the time. Interesting. Gonna try and make this as crystal clear as possible for you is knowing that it’s towards the end of a long couple of days. I’m gonna put this chair in the middle of the room and I want you to imagine something for me. This is not a conference chair. This is a chair in your house. This is not any chair in your house. This is your favorite chair in your house. It’s in your couch. It’s your comfy chair. It is your favorite spot on said comfy chair. And I know so cuz it has a perfect but shaped imprint right there that you’ve been working on for some time. Here’s what I now want you to imagine. You’re coming back from this brilliant conference. You’re stepping back into the house. You’re still wearing the clothes that you traveled in. You’ve got your bag alongside you. You look at the couch and you are the most decisive. You’ve been in a long time. You look to the couch and you say, I am gonna sit on you and you give it like everything you’ve got and it looks something like this.

Phil M Jones:
And then you start thinking and you start to think to yourself. You know what? If I went upstairs and got changed, man, I’d be so much more comfortable.

Phil M Jones:
I would. I know it. There is not a doubt in my mind that that is a brilliant idea. What if I what if I lay out that way?

Phil M Jones:
That’ll be a game changer, but you know what? This is fine. Am I right? How many of the people are you looking to influence agree entirely with everything you’re saying to them are in full understanding of the fact that they believe in what you’re saying yet. They’re equally fine as they are. How many too many, what is it that gets you out the couch? Dinner’s ready. Jobs to be done. Kids to be picked up game time. I don’t know what it is. Some form of pattern interrupt changes. It gets people out of their lazy backside helps. ’em Get up to be able to start making things happen. That’s your job. That’s your job is to help be that catalyst to get ’em out the couch. Cuz people do not move to become more comfortable. People move when they’re uncomfortable or there’s a reason that’s big enough makes sense.

Phil M Jones:
So we got some theory helping unlock. Their reason to move is useful. We know that people will move for a few reasons either to run towards something, run away from something to make their heart sing. That stuff is useful. How do we take this further? Well, we need to understand some more about decision making, building on what Jerry said earlier on is did you know that every decision that every human being has ever made has been made at least twice? Did you know that every decision that every human being has ever made has been made at least twice? What do I mean? I mean, we first make decisions in our mind’s eye make sense in our mind’s eye ever said the words to yourself that I cannot see myself doing that. It’s a literal thing. Therefore logic would prevail and say, if I can get somebody to see themselves doing something before I invite them to do it, chance them doing it significantly higher.

Phil M Jones:
What else do we need to understand about psychology is when it comes to decision making, what we have is we have a point of reference when I’m making decisions. I reference my memory. What my memory is, is a catalog of images like a thousand million times of an Instagram account. All of these images up here are memories. When asked to make a decision, I reach in here for memories that are somewhere near similar to what I’m focused on at the moment in time, seeing how these educate the decision I’m looking to make. Makes sense. Here’s the interesting thing though. How did those memories become memories? Let’s ask the question another way. How many of your memories actually happened to you? Oh, it’s not all of them. Correct. See, your memories became memories because of either experience you lived through or an experience that was shared with you typically in the form of a story. Remember this, a story will always sell the facts will only tell that is worth remembering. Why cuz stories, paying pictures. There’s a period in our life that we’re all proven to learn quicker than any other point in time in our life. Scientists can’t agree on the date range, but they all agree. It’s when we’re kids,

Phil M Jones:
When we’re kids, we learn quicker than any other point in time in our life. How did we learn quicker experiences? We live through stories that were shared with us.

Phil M Jones:
There’s a lot to unpack here. Correct? People’s reason to move is the thing that drives ’em. They’ll either move to run towards Sunday, to run away from something to make their heart sing. Decisions are first made in our mind’s eye before we make them anywhere else. And to make decisions, we reference memories. How do things get in our memories, either experience we lived through or experiences that were shared with us, how do we take this all forward and use it? We do it in words. Yeah, but how? Yeah, but how well, how did a child know a story was coming? What were the magic words?

Phil M Jones:
Once upon a time, right? Child hears the words. Once upon a time kid kicks back and says, gimme, gimme, gimme, this is gonna be good. You cannot use the words once upon a time as a leader and expect to get the same outcomes.

Phil M Jones:
You can use the grown up version. What can I now do? I can now paint pictures in the mind of the person I’m looking to influence. What kind of pictures do I paint? I paint pictures of things. They wanna run towards pictures of things. They wanna run away from pictures of things that can make their harnessing that’s it. And the greater the contrast I create between those things, the more likely they are to move. Hey, just imagine the impact of you taking the eight pillars of the trust, edge work and giving the lens of the clarity around those eight pillars, full exposure within your organization. Just imagine you did that or just imagine you can, well, just imagine your competitor got to do it first. Am I right? Hey, just imagine the impact it have on you as a leader. If what you do is take back the information that you’ve learned today, put it into practice in your organization. What could that do for your career? What am I doing? I’m inviting you to see yourself in alternate realities, which is creating the motivation for you to act today. Gerry O’Brion do people make decisions based on logic or emotion?

Phil M Jones:
The answer is correct. Let’s see how this plays out in the real world. Show of hands in this room who’s married or has been married there. You asked a question. Was it because the person you were looking at met your multipoint inspection checklist or did it first feel right at the time and was then backed up with logic? I don’t know a cleaner example, right? It has to make sense here, but only after it feels right here, both need to be true. I showed you a second ago that we could passport people through time in their mind’s eye with the words. Just imagine what if I could passport people through time in their heart’s eye, getting them to feel something they haven’t yet felt to use that feeling, to trigger an outcome in the moment. That’d be cool. Right? It’s called a future conditional feeling and a future conditional feeling is simply the words.

Phil M Jones:
How would you feel if easy. Right? See, how would you feel if you could take these eight pillars back, implement them into your organization and start to see a positive change. How would you feel if that was true? Oh, very good. How would you feel if your competition got there first? Oh, how would you feel if by taking back your page of notes and your beautiful journal, putting them into practice and implemented them, you’ve got the promotion, the recognition you finally deserved. How would you feel if that was true? Ooh, I like that one. What am I trying to teach you? I’m trying to teach you about the power questions. Here’s a five step process that will never change all the time. I have air in my lungs. I believe this will be true. What I believe will be true is that questions create conversations, conversations, lead to relationships, relationships, create opportunities and opportunities lead to action or change. It starts first where with questions to create conversations that lead to relationships, that create opportunities that then create the action. The sales, the change, make sense. See, everybody wants this, but they forget that the work starts right over here. So you want a to-do list? Who do you need to be asking questions of? What are the conversations, you know, you need to be having, and you’re not. Where do you have relationships that hold untapped opportunities? And please get crystal clear on the action or change you’re looking to create

Kent Svenson:
That’s it for this week’s episode. Be sure to check out trustedleadershow.com for all the show notes and links and information from anything mentioned in today’s episode. And we are so excited to have the trusted leader summit coming back next year, November 7-9, 2023 at the JW Marriott Mall of America here in Minnesota. To find out more information and to register, visit trustedleadersummit.com. And if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcast as this is a great way to help support the show and help others to discover it. But in the meantime, that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 91: Paul Martinelli on How To Unlock Your Personal Transformation

In this episode, we revisit David’s interview with Paul Martinelli, Internationally Acclaimed Speaker, Mentor, Trainer, and Coach, where they discuss how to unlock your personal transformation.

Show Notes: http://trustedleadershow.com

2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

Paul’s Bio:
Paul Martinelli is an internationally acclaimed speaker, trainer, mentor, and coach who truly believes that if you can dream it, you can do it.

While many people know Paul as the Founding President and current lead faculty member of The John Maxwell Team, what they may not know is that he is a high school dropout who overcame a stuttering disability to share the stage with some of the biggest names in leadership and personal development – names such as John C. Maxwell, Seth Godin, Jack Canfield, Wayne Dyer, Brian Tracy, Denis Waitley, Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, Nick Vujicic and Mark Victor Hansen.

Paul was raised by a single mother in a Pittsburgh lower class family.

In the late 1980’s, with just $200.00, a used vacuum, and a dream, he founded a small commercial cleaning company in South Florida. He combined smart sales tactics with personal development teachings and propelled his business to unbelievable heights. Just 15 years later, he sold his commercial cleaning company to pursue his passion and purpose of teaching people how to achieve success in their own lives.

His awareness and ability to apply the success strategies and principles that he has learned and taught to others, led to Paul’s success in life and business, including building 5 multi-million-dollar companies.

He now leads the Empowered Living community, a global platform of more than 1.8 million followers, providing personal and professional development training and education to help individuals and businesses build and grow beyond their current results.

Paul Martinelli may not have a wall of diplomas, but you can’t argue with his PhD in results.

Having worked his way up from mop bucket to multi-millionaire, Paul has practiced and proven what he preaches.

Paul’s Links:
Website: https://paulmartinelli.net/
Empowered Living: https://yourempoweredlife.com/
Empowered Living Community Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/empoweredlivingcommunity/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paul.martinelli/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martinelli_paul/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@paul.martinelli?lang=en
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2Piv-pqwFx2zPUx-HeMcA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmartinelli/

Key Quotes:
1. “Habit is not a behavior. It’s an expression of a belief.”
2. “The starting point of personal transformation has to be that the person must see themselves complete and whole in relation to that which they want to change.”
3. “Transformation is an inside game.”
4. “Things don’t end well, they start badly.”
5. “Belief drives behavior.”
6. “Become a student of human potential.”
7. “Proximity is power.”
8. “You’ve got to model what you want seen.”
9. “Transformation isn’t an event, it’s a process.”
10. “The answer is really within us.”
11. “It all boils down to trust.”
12. “You can’t make it happen, you can make it welcome.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
Empowered Living: https://yourempoweredlife.com/
Trust Edge Coaching: https://trustedgeplatform.com/

Buy David’s NEWEST Book “Trusted Leader”: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1

David’s Links:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36AXtp9
Follow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Follow David on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Follow David on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Follow David on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Show Transcript

Kent Svenson:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m Kent Svenson producer of the trusted leader show. And for this week’s episode, we thought we’d take a look back at a previous episode where David sat down with internationally acclaimed speaker, mentor, trainer, and coach Paul Martinelli in the episode, David and Paul discuss how to unlock your personal transformation. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

David Horsager:
What does it take to, to, to transform as a person? You know, we, we, at least I see a lot of people that in fact, I used to ask audiences when we would do at our executive trusted events. How many of you want to change a habit? How many everybody wants to change a habit? I’d say now, how many have ever changed a difficult habit, a a, a habit from, from smoking to losing 25 pounds or more to, you know, some, a significant like 6%, almost nobody actually has changed a habit. How, how can people actually do it? How can they actually change from, from this? Whether it’s a habit or a you know, way they’ve always been a mind shift, but how do they actually change people go to conferences all the time. They go to all kinds of things. They hear a podcast. Like I wanna cha yes, that’s gonna be me, you know? And then January 2nd comes, right?

Paul Martinelli:
yeah, I laugh cuz January second’s my birthday. And I always say, it’s the worst birthday, because you know, on that day, you know, everybody quit smoking, quit drinking, quit eating, quit, doing all the kinds of stuff. But January 3rd would be a great birthday cuz that’s when they start again. Right, right.

David Horsager:
Exactly.

Paul Martinelli:
On my birthday, nobody’s eating the cake. Nobody wants to go to the dinner. Nobody wants to cheers.

David Horsager:
By the way, I gotta jump in there because my birthday is January 1st.

Paul Martinelli:
Oh, get out there. You I’m

David Horsager:
A new year. I’m a new year’s baby. So, oh, there we go. 1, 2, 1, 2. We’re the one, two punch today,

Paul Martinelli:
Right? We were both good for the taxes of the, of, of, of our parents. you know,

David Horsager:
, although my dad said he lost so much money in farming that year. I did, he didn’t need the tax benefit. So

Paul Martinelli:
that’s right. You know here here’s, here’s what I’ve, here’s what I kind of realize and, and believe and know for myself and other people. When we think of what a habit is, I think that’s that’s important is, is, you know, habit people say, well, habit is a behavior. And habit is, is a, is not a behavior. It’s an expression of a belief. It’s an expression of a composite made of three things. Our self identity, our self image, right? The image that we hold of ourselves and believe other people seeing us, it’s our, self-esteem our personal self regard, how I value me and how I believe other people value me the composite of that forms a, a self identity or self-belief. And we never outperform our own self-belief. It was the worker Dr. Maxwell malts, the book, psycho cybernetics. And so a habit is just an expression of, of an internal belief.

Paul Martinelli:
And I have always found that the starting point of transformation, personal transformation has to be that the person must see themselves complete and whole in relation to that, which they wanna change. If the starting point is, is that I’m broken or I need fixed or in somehow I’m inadequate or, or I’m incomplete or something new needs to be added to me. In other words, if I don’t see myself as fully resourced before I begin, the likelihood of me being able to change is very slim to none. Because what I will do is I will look at external conditions and circumstances and try to change from the outside end. And it doesn’t work. Transformation is an inside game. It’s a you and you deal, it starts with you a and so I think the starting belief is really critical things don’t end well, they start badly, right?

Paul Martinelli:
And so if the starting belief is that I’m fully resourced, that it would be impossible for me to be sourced with the awareness of this idea to change without being fully resourced from that same source that I got the idea to change it, it, it would be impossible for us to be able to have that idea and not be able to manifest it in our lives. So we are fully resourced. It’s about being able to get congruency and alignment with who we are, who we see ourselves as you know, who am I, you know, you know who we are and whose we are. And then the beliefs that would support the, the expression of the behavior for that habit, belief drives behavior, period. End of story. If you’re gonna make a sustained period of time,

David Horsager:
It’s so true. We, you know, I think Brene brown made it more famous. You gotta belong first than you believe. Then you behave, you, the belief comes first, but even I remember, you know, basic psychology thoughts lead to desires, lead to actions. It always starts over here. Thoughts. It always starts think about as a, as a, as a man think it, or as a woman think as, so are they, you know, that what, you know, we’ve got to change our thinking to change our behaviors first. So how do, how do we do that?

Paul Martinelli:
Yeah, I think, I think there’s several, there’s several great ways. One is get around good people, right. You know, get, you know I had an opportunity to do the last interview with Charlie tremendous Jones. And of course he shared his, you know, his, his favorite and most famous quote of, you know, you, you, your life is the sum total of the composite of the people. You, you spend time with the books, you read the seminars you attend. And so, you know,

David Horsager:
Being, I will never forget when he, you know, his hug and kiss, right.

Paul Martinelli:
Biggest guy in the world.

David Horsager:
You’ll never forget that. I mean, he, everybody you’re tremendous and a hug and kiss that is unforgettable.

Paul Martinelli:
Yeah. Yeah. It it’s a shame that so many, so many people who are now kind of entering in personal growth and human potential movement missed him. Right. So, you know, the, the many, many, many will miss Zig. But Charlie tremendous Jones was, was a literal giant, but he was a giant in, in, in, in this idea. But I think, you know, being part of this community, right. Being part of the, you know, trusted leader community so who, who, who you’re around with, I think also you know, you know, O observational thinking, you know, wa watching what other people do really, really become a student of, of, of human potential. And because success does leave clues.

David Horsager:
So how would I do that? How would I do that? Read a book. Well, how would I, how would I observe?

Paul Martinelli:
Yeah. I think, I think, you know, proximity is power. So I think you do whatever you can do to get as much proximity. If, if the starting point of your proximity is, is a book to get the book, you know I have traveled, I’ve traveled all over the world to be able to find, you know, a, a speaker. And I, I, I I’d go anywhere if I could hear a speaker. If, if that speaker had something that I wanted, if that, if that speaker had results that I wanted, I would go I, you, you volunteer, you put yourself in proximity. Most of the people that we would wanna, you know, be around have charities that they are very close to. So we can, we, we, we may not be able to get in the front door of working with their business, but if we were to work in the back door, by going into a charity that they love or cause that they love and, and making a substantial impact there, that would lead to an introduction.

Paul Martinelli:
You know, that’s how I, I got to meet rich DeVos, you know, founder of family. I mean, you talk about, you know, a, a giant and a really success. I mean, if you wanna model someone, I mean, he, he was a great one and you know, so, so be being able, being able to, you know, create that proximity. So if it starts with the book, it’s, it’s a book. If it’s watching their biography, then that’s what you do. You do whatever you can do, you, you, you, you have to be in the relentless pursuit of, of, of getting proximity.

David Horsager:
So, you know, there’s a couple questions I have here because you have created a community empowered living community where people get around great people and you encourage just tell us a glimpse about what that’s like and how that community, I think people are craving community. And if they, you know, get the right community, they become better because of it. Right? Yeah. So give us a glimpse of your, why you started that. And now, you know, 1.8 million people are a part of it or more probably today, but, you know the, the impact of that community and why even start it in the first place.

Paul Martinelli:
Yeah. The, the, the community’s grown at a 2.3 million people, and it is a, it is a community of tribes. So it is, there are the, the, the, the page, the community started as a Facebook page years and years and years ago even before there were ads on Facebook, when you could really grow a page, you know, now it’s now it’s difficult in social media to really grow a platform. And so that was one of the advantages of, you know, of, of, of the community was it was an early adopter. It, it, you know, seeing, seeing this idea of community in tribes before Seth God wrote the book tribes. Right. and before the concept was there

David Horsager:
Why, well, so first, why did you do it? Why did you create that community and then, and what now are people getting at? What, why are people still coming and it’s growing immensely

Paul Martinelli:
For me? I think the reason I, I, I started it was because community was so powerful to me when I was in the guardian angels. It was so powerful for me when I was in the dojo and the community within just my, my karate association. It was really, and so when I looked back at my life, when was, when, when was Paul at his best, and it wasn’t when I was alone, right. It was when I was with other people. And, and it was also when I was lifting other people up, you know, I, I always say, you know, I’m a really good number two. So I was number two to Curtis swell. I was number two to Bob Proctor. I was number two to, to John Maxwell. Right. I’m a really good, I was number two with Les brown. I’m a really good number, two of helping other people, you know, get their agenda express and helping, you know, helping other people, I think is, you know, what, most of us, you know, most of the people who, who are, you know, probably in your audience would identify themselves as an agent of change, right?

Paul Martinelli:
Somebody wants to make a difference maker in, in the lives of other people. They’re not doing that for themselves. They’re doing it. Cuz it’s some level, they really believe in this idea of being of service to other people. And so I realized that I had, you know, I, I had, I had a bigger platform than most people have and I wanted to give that platform and, and give people who otherwise would never get a shot, a shot. And so that’s why I started it.

David Horsager:
And what’s, what’s there to keep people, I mean, it keeps growing, what, what do, how do they connect? Like you have, you see lots of people trying to build social communities and whatever, but it doesn’t last there somehow this one, like people, there’s a generous feeling, there’s a connection. There’s a give like what are just a couple of things that are happening there that just keep building community and impact.

Paul Martinelli:
I think you you’ve gotta model what you want seeing. Right. And so, you know one of my, one of my life principles is tithing. I, I live my life by it. I talk about it, I teach on it. I, you know, I unabashedly, I don’t hide from it. I don’t hide that. I’m a person of faith, but I don’t, I don’t beat people up about it. But I model that and you know, we’ve been able to really create a big impact when you’ve got that many people, if everybody, you know, the old, you know, if everybody gave five bucks, we could do something here, you know? And so I was on a, I was on a trip a leadership development program in para way with John Maxwell ran across two young kids. They were 23 years old and they were 3d printing hands for, for, for kids like hand, like arms for kids. And they, they could print an, a functional arm for a hundred in about two days. So a kid would come in they’d measures. And two days later, kids running around with, with a hand, I’m thinking for a hundred bucks. Right. So, you know, I took $50,000 donated it, but then did a match with the community and said, you know, I’ll match the first $50,000. And I, I, I don’t know. I think we raised close to $200,000. Think of, think of the, just think of the change. Just, you know, it’s a hand, right? Yeah.

Paul Martinelli:
Wow. Spend, spend, spend the next five hours with your right dominant hand in your pocket and see how, how the day goes for you. Right. And then imagine pulling it out that’s freedom. Right. Yeah. And so I think because we model that in the community and and we don’t have lots of rules in the community and you know, you don’t have to, you don’t have to sneakily promote yourself. If you’ve got something you wanna promote, you schedule a time and we give you the platform for 15 minutes, you know, sell whatever you want. And, and we don’t, we, you know, we don’t do affiliates. We’re not an affiliate for any of them. So as long look, as long as it’s something that would add value to people, you know, is an alignment with, you know, our, our values, you know, is an Integris and we know that you’re gonna deliver on it. We give you the slot.

David Horsager:
Tell me about this. You know, I know you’re known for kind of a, a high level mastermind group or, and way that you help people transform over the course of a year. And I, I’m just interested in how people change. You know, that’s all we’re about is trying to create more trust in the world. More higher trust leaders, higher trust cultures, higher trust global governments. We’re trying to, you know be world changers for good, but you have a way you do it. You take leaders through a process. What does that look like? As much as you can share in a moment or two?

Paul Martinelli:
Sure. It, it, it is a year long program cuz transformation, isn’t an event. It, you know, you know, that’s, it’s a process. It it’s all really about, if you think about it from the filter of trust, it’s about learning to trust yourself that I truly believe that, you know, the answer is really within us that, that, you know, if we seek, ask and knock and look at the kingdom within us, it’s all there for us. And so it, it starts with a two day retreat at my home with about 15 people. And then each person is assigned a coach where they’re, they’re coached two times, two times a month for a whole year, a group meeting once a month and then a one on one with me. And it’s about understanding our, our potential code, our model, each one of us has a unique model about how we create a navigate life to create achievement and success.

Paul Martinelli:
That’s based on a learned model. All learning models are based on our awareness, our belief and our understanding and application of the principles within the model. And so we we’ve kind of taken what Carl Young said, where he said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it directs your light and you call it fate. We’ve kind of taken that approach where we guide people through a, an interactive process where they can look back at their life, tweezer out those times where they’ve been successful and then identify, you know, what was their model? What was, what was their motivation? Were they moving towards or away from something? Were they being a decider or a convincer? Were they, when they look at distinctions of sorting, were they looking for similarities, differences, or exclusions? How do they, how do they, what is that thinking process? And once they realize that they actually do have a, have a thinking process, and if they can tweezer that out, they can see, well, hold it, this code works. When I apply this, it works. And then it’s about, well then why are you playing small? Then let’s if, if, if you knew it would work, then, then let’s, let’s dream bigger.

David Horsager:
What I love about this is you’re doing it in community. So just back to, you know, the guardian angels to, to everything in, in life, like we, we say it often, you know, if you’re doing leadership alone, you’re doing it wrong. I mean, we, we need to be together. We need to be we’re and, and better things happen. Doesn’t mean we don’t need individual coaching or help or whatever. Our, our coaching community, I’m so proud of it around the world. These, these coaches make each other, the certified, trusted coaches. They make each other better. They make their leaders better. But a big part of that is because of togetherness, right? Because we can sharpen each other

Paul Martinelli:
And, you know, look, I think I’ve built the largest coaching certification program in the world. Fair to say. I, I think your coaches are probably the most resourced coaches that, that you’re gonna find in terms of if a, if a, if a coach needs to be fully equipped and resourced, right. From soup to nuts, right? From soup from beginning to end, I, I, I had an opportunity to really look at your program. And as I told you, I mean, blown away by, by far there isn’t another program that has a richness of resources that, that are that, that are, I, I don’t wanna say evidence, let’s call it evidence based. I don’t wanna say science based, but let’s say evidence based. Right. And I think that’s, that’s what, that’s, what establishes the trust, right. Is that, you know, trust and verified and your, your program has all of that.

David Horsager:
Thank you. Well, yeah, we’re passionate about it. That’s for sure. And that’s partly because of that, not just evidence, but doing the ongoing research. I remember, you know, now I don’t have to convince people so much, but 20 years ago when I started that grad work, it was like, oh, trust just a soft skill. Doesn’t really affect the bottom line. That grad work is what tipped it for people that saw the oven. And it actually tipped my heart and mind to see the impact of trust. Tell, tell me how, how does, you know, a big word for you is empowerment, big word for us is trust. They go together. How do you see it?

Paul Martinelli:
Yeah, absolutely I, yeah. I, I, I don’t really know that you could ever live an empowered life without trusting yourself and without, without people trusting you at the end of the day, you know if everything is sales, right, you, you talk about salesperson, they’ll say everything is sales. If they talk to a leader, they’ll say everything is leadership, but it all boils down to trust. Doesn’t it? I

David Horsager:
Mean, absolutely. And to empowerment or, or, you know, I think that trusting yourself, you know, we believe and know that the the, the truth of love your neighbors yourself, right? Which kind of this thing of, well, if you, you know, people that don’t love themselves at all, they have a hard time loving others. Well, you bet. And that’s the same with trust. If you don’t trust yourself at all, you have a hard time building it in teams and others. You know, it’s like, I may, I, I don’t share this very often, but I made this commitment when I was losing the 50 pounds and five months about, I don’t know, 10 years ago. I said to my team, if I don’t give you, if, if I don’t make it to there, you know, to this, my high school, wait by May 1st, I’ll give you 2,500 bucks, you know, each, and, and, and of course I knew that my biggest problem wasn’t paying the check, the biggest problem is I said it and committed to it.

David Horsager:
And if I don’t get there, I’m gonna stop trusting myself as much because I made a commitment and didn’t keep it right. So anyway we, we want to be leaders that empower others that, that do trust themselves. And we wanna be leaders that empower others so they can build trust in their teams and communities and everything, everything else. I think something interesting you as a leader and you’ve led multimillion dollar, several multimillion dollar organizations. What about you? What about what habits we, we find that, you know, at least high trust leaders they’re leading themselves, you know, I think Socrates say you don’t lead yourself while it’s hard to lead others or know yourself. Right. He said, know yourself. So if we know ourself, we, we build trust with ourselves. We we’re able to lead others. Well, what kind of routines or habits do you have to lead yourself? Well, you’re certainly leading a whole lot of others. What do you do? Is there routines or daily things that you do to lead yourself? Well,

Paul Martinelli:
Yeah. Well, thank you. I, I, I think there’s probably some big rocks there. Right. I, I, I, I, I make a commitment to myself to work out every single day 30 minutes a day, you know, serious sweat. Right. and

David Horsager:
What do you do? I gonna, I want to come back to other routines, but what do you do? Because everybody says, I believe in work, workout, I believe in exercise, but oh, I just don’t have time this way. I don’t really, you know, what do you do? How do you make that happen?

Paul Martinelli:
I have in my, in my, in my home, I have an escalator stair machine, like a stair master machine, but you know, it only goes up

David Horsager:
. Yep. Yep.

Paul Martinelli:
So I’m on level, level 12 to 15 every day for 30 minutes a day.

David Horsager:
You, I like going down. I like you going down

Paul Martinelli:
and you burn, you, you burn 500 calories and 30 minutes is most effective exercise you can do. And what the, the reason I choose that exercise is, you know, pre COVID I I’m on the road, probably 180 days a year. So in hotels, you know, everybody, everybody’s at the gym, nobody’s in the stairwell, especially in America, nobody’s in the stairwell. And so I could, I could easily get safe, clean, quiet, you know, temperature controlled. It’s always cold in the stairwell and up and down and up and down and up and down. And I’m, and you’re, I’m done in 30 minutes and you get the best workout of your life.

David Horsager:
This is amazing to me because I’m just reading the book by JJ Virgin, she’s a celebrity fitness coach and done all these things. She said exactly the same thing to me this week. Stairstep stairsteps stairsteps. So this this is fascinating.

Paul Martinelli:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I made a similar CLE. I, I lost 65 pounds five years ago and have kept it off. But it’s a daily commitment, right. The compounding effect of consistency. So, so there’s that I’m coached, I’m, I’m, I’ve had the same coach for 10 years and I’m coached every single month. So I’ve got somebody who, and I don’t ever bring, like, you know, an agenda to my, to the session. The agenda is one thing. One thing only challenge my thinking challenge, my thinking. So I just, I just, I just wanna, I, you know, because I, you know, I don’t have, I don’t have like, probably much like you, you know, if you’re the boss, if you’re the leader, you know, you, you don’t have people that necessarily really challenge your thinking or stretch your thinking. So I pay somebody to do that. I pay them well, and, and they’ve been with me for 10 years, so they know my BS. Right. They know my belief system, you know, they know my belief, they know where our limitations are. So there’s that yeah, I, I, I mentioned tithing as a practice you know, visualizing, praying talking to myself you know, daily

David Horsager:
Tell me about prayer. You’re a man of faith. Tell me about prayer for you.

Paul Martinelli:
Yeah. So prayer for me is it is anywhere and everywhere when I get, when I, when I get time alone and, and I, and I get time alone every single day. So in between, you know, calls, you know, I, I usually have a 10 minute window. That is a fantastic time. And really for me, prayer, I always viewed prayer as the sacred communication between the finite mind of man and the infant, mind of God. And so it is, it is a communication. Sometimes I’m talking and asking and sometimes I’m listening. And it’s usually best when I listen . And so I, I, I’ve learned to pray in questions, you know, you know, what, what, what do I need to know now, what am I missing? What would make me a better person? How can I serve at a higher level?

Paul Martinelli:
You know, where, where, where, where I going wrong in, in, in, in like in a moral code, not just like, Hey, help me with this. Like, where am I going wrong? What am I, what am I blind to? So I, I have a, a lesson I teach in a process I use called authentic journaling. So it’s just my own model. I came up with where I, where instead of journaling I’m, I’m transcribing what I’m thinking. So I start with a, with a big question, and then I just write any thought that comes in my mind. Sometimes the thought is, you know, don’t forget to do the laundry. Don’t forget to, you know, get gas in the car. And I write until those jumping monkeys kind of get outta my, so I quiet that part of my mind down, and then, you know, God steps in, right. And you know, when you make space, I always say, you can’t make it happen, but you can make it welcome. Right. And so writing is that, is that space for me,

Kent Svenson:
That’s it for this week’s episode, be sure to check out trusted leader, show.com for all the show notes, links and information from anything mentioned in today’s episode. And if you haven’t already, we’d greatly appreciate a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcast, as this is a great way to help support the show and help others to discover it. But in the meantime, that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening until next time stay trusted.

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