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:
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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.

Ep. 90: Cassandra Worthy on The 3 Step Strategy For Change Enthusiasm

In this episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 Trusted Leader Summit where Cassandra Worthy, Founder & CEO of Change Enthusiasm Global, Keynote Speaker, Author, and Consultant, took to the stage to discuss the 3 step strategy for change enthusiasm.

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

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

Cassandra’s Bio:
With contagious energy that radiates throughout every room she steps into, Cassandra Worthy is the world’s truly DISRUPTIVE thought-leader on CHANGE that companies need to build organizational resilience and adaptability. During times of major shift such as merger, acquisition, organizational restructure, new systems integration, and market disruption RARELY do businesses ever face the tumultuous emotional landscape of the organization head-on. Only 10% of successful change adoption is about know-how…the other 90% is squarely centered on an organization’s motivation and willingness to embrace the change. Without addressing the emotions standing in the way of motivation, any transformation journey is stopped in its tracks. This is where Cassandra steps in. She has created and cultivated the unique strategy of Change Enthusiasm® which is arming individuals around the world with the means to harness the power of emotion, a resource in infinite supply, to embrace and accelerate change and transformation journeys. Cassandra’s message nurtures highly resilient and adaptable organizations beginning at the heart of the individual.

Cassandra’s client base spans the Fortune 500 and larger all over the world including Procter & Gamble, Allstate, Jones Lang LaSalle, Centene Corporation, ConferenceDirect, and WeWork. Cassandra invigorates and inspires organizations, C-suite executives, and business associations alike going through significant change, disruption, and transformation. Cassandra’s customized keynote and workshop programs motivate the workforce to embrace Change Enthusiasm® and subsequently become self-actualized in working towards a change vision. In her leadership-centric presentations, she is not only sharing this unique strategy of Change Enthusiasm® but also 10+ years of M&A experience distilled down into the critical leadership traits required to lead with exception during high-stress times of change and transformation.

Cassandra’s Links:
Website: https://cassandraworthy.com/
“Change Enthusiasm” by Cassandra Worthy: https://amzn.to/3akZif7
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cassandra_worthy_speaker/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearechangeenthusiasts/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandra-worthy-802ab623/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRSgcTNQnQPCTF_0ydJdZvw

Key Quotes:
1. “We are living in an ever evolving hugely dynamic world.”
2. “Change is constant.”
3. “The emotions of change are real. They cannot be denied.”
4. “You have the power to control how you experience change and how you inspire trust through change.”
5. “You can either get bitter or get better. It’s your choice.”
6. “Make a conscious productive choice to inspire a better feeling and ultimately a better result.”
7. “The biggest disruptions never happen to you, they happen for you.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com
“Change Enthusiasm” by Cassandra Worthy: https://amzn.to/3akZif7

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 Cassandra Worthy, founder and CEO of change enthusiasm global, keynote speaker, author, and consultant, took to the stage to discuss her three steps strategy for change enthusiasm. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Cassandra Worthy:
Cool. So let’s start with the why, right? So why should you care? Why not just get into your phone? Why not just walk outside of the room? Right? Why is this much as relevant? So for me, I see your why to be threefold. Okay. The first part of your, why being that we are living in an ever evolving hugely dynamic world. If I were to ask you to raise your hand, if you could name at least one change that has impacted your business in the past year, who, who could do that? Who could gimme one change? Yeah, everyone, right? Everyone we’re living in such a highly evolved and ever dynamic world that will demand us to be agile and change ready. It’s the reality of no matter what business you’re in, what organization you are a part of change is constant. We’ve all heard that.

Cassandra Worthy:
And it’s real. And I think it’s been made very real over these past couple years. Now, the second part of your Ry is a data point that I’ve experienced in my own personal life, as well as seen across my clients all over the world. And that is the emotions of change are real. That cannot be denied. Not only emotions like excitement and anticipation, but also those more difficult emotions like fear, like frustration, like anger. These emotions are real and cannot be denied in ourselves nor in those around us. Okay. Now the last part of your, why is what I feel to be the most compelling. And that is that you have the power to control how you experience change and how you inspire trust. When you’re going through and leading through change, it’s up to you. You have that power, it’s your choice and what you’re gonna be learning over the next 50 or so minutes are some tools, some skills that you can leverage when you’re in that seat of choice, in that seat of power to help you move forward, to grow through change and nurture that all important element of trust when you’re going through change.

Cassandra Worthy:
Okay. So hopefully those reasons are relevant and I haven’t lost any of you. I didn’t hear any doors opening. So I think we’re good. We gonna keep rocking. All right. So let’s start with the mindset. Okay. This is a growth mindset and it’s a mindset that I’ve coined change enthusiasm, right? Change enthusiasm. So what is it right? I’m sure some of y’all looking up at the screen thinking, okay, how is this any different from being a change agent or a change optimist. She just put in that little cute word at the end of change with no real meat behind it. Well, if you’re thinking that you couldn’t be further from the truth, because this is actually a workable strategy and it’s a strategy that’s worked through the practice of three simple steps and those steps are the signal, the opportunity and the choice. All right.

Cassandra Worthy:
Think of it like a traffic light, the red light being the signal, the yellow light being the opportunity and the green light being the choice, right? The signal, the opportunity and the choice. Thank you all so much. You’ve been amazing. I’m of course kidding. I joke with you. No, I’m actually gonna unpack this. I wanna share a story with you on how I came to cultivate it and put it in a practice in my own life. But before I do, I want y’all to engage with me. All right. So I already hear, I heard the yays. I hear a lot of energy out here, but I wanna keep that going. So by show of hands who in here has seen the movie cycle, either the original or the remake. Okay. A handful of y’all. Now, for those of y’all looking concerned and sideways at me, this is not where the presentation takes a horrible turn left. Okay. Everyone’s fine. Everyone’s safe. But for those of you who’ve seen that movie. You remember that one scene in the film, it’s probably the most memorable scene in the whole movie, the shower scene. Y’all remember that really chilling, stabbing music that they play.

Cassandra Worthy:
Yes. Y’all remember this. I see you greeting. Yes. So listen, we’re gonna do whenever I point to you, when I’m telling the story, I want everyone to do their loudest and best rendition of that chilling, stabbing music. Okay. Now we all gonna practice this. I’m gonna count to three. We’re all gonna practice six. I don’t wanna be the only up here St. Standing here. Looking silly. Okay. So on the count of three everyone’s loudest and best. Okay. We ready? Here we go. 1, 2, 3. Love it. I get every time I love it. So remember when I point to you, that’s the energy, that’s the motion that I want you to give. Cool. Cool. All right. So my very first major change challenge in my professional life came after I’ve been working at Proctor and gamble for about three and a half, four years. And I transitioned into a recently acquired business.

Cassandra Worthy:
Now this is a multi-billion dollar acquisition. So it was a really big deal. And upon transferring, I was told I was being brought in not only to help continue delivering breakthrough innovation, but also to help integrate parent company tools and processes into that technical community. Now, I was naive in thinking that this is gonna be something similar to work I’d done in the past. Right? I created tools. I brought them to life and other businesses in that parent company. But day one, I walked into a completely different business culture. The language was different. The behaviors were different. The cultural norms were different, right? Those common norms that I had grown so accustomed to, and that it served me so well up until that point just did not exist. And on top of that, despite my very best intentions, the use of those tools and processes that I was supposed to bring to life, and that business was met with what I’ll call great adversity. I was lost. I was frustrated and I felt like a fish outta water. And then to add insult to injury, I discovered one day that a colleague of mine had shared my results, my data, my conclusions, and recommendations with senior leadership. Not only without my not being in the room, but without even acknowledging that it was all my work. And upon hearing this, of course, I shared it with my immediate manager and they just simply brush it off, said, don’t worry about it. It’s not that big of a deal.

Cassandra Worthy:
This is, he goes, boo. Yes. This is the signal, right? It’s these feelings, these emotions. I felt resentful towards my colleague. I felt so angry and frustrated with my manager because at Proctor and gamble day one, in that culture, you were taught the importance of your pie, pie, meeting, performance image, and exposure. And so here, someone was stealing slices of my pie. And with every passing day, I became more and more disengaged in my work, cuz my manager could care less. And I was looking for ways to escape. And that’s what this signal to notes. It’s these feelings, these emotions, the, the fear, the frustration, the anger, the anxiety, the feelings you just wanna run away from the feelings you just want to escape. In fact, as I think about all of you in your respective businesses and everything that you’ve been through over these past couple years and everything that lies ahead in the months and years to come, I’m certain, some of you have felt some of these emotions. And if you have, I want you to turn to your neighbor right now and tell ’em good. Gracious. Yes.

Cassandra Worthy:
Talk too. Tell about it. Yeah. I see some of y’all starting to tell stories. Okay. All call yourselves. We don’t get through this, but we’ve all been there. Right? We’ve all felt these emotions. And if you have, if you are one of the ones who just shouted to your neighbor, good gracious. Yes. And then told the story, let me be the first to say, congratulations, you got the signal. And it means something very big is happening for you. Well, you know, for me back then, I was like, all of you in the room, I hadn’t yet created, let alone started to practice this whole mindset of change enthusiasm. So I was left to sink in that mental downward spiral. The brightest part of my day was lunch because I would sit with a handful of other parent company colleagues who had transitioned in and we would vent.

Cassandra Worthy:
We would commiserate. We would talk about our horrible things were, I was very quickly reaching a breaking point and really looking for any opportunity to escape. Well in a last ditch effort, I decided to reach out to a mentor. Now she was a director at the time and she was heritage parent company. So in my mind, she was the solution to write every wrong in my work experience because not only was she in a position of influence, but she also would have the capacity to understand where I was coming from, unlike my line management. So, you know, I got on her calendar, got together, an agenda got together. What I felt to be three very actionable help requests, although y’all know hindsight’s 20, 20, right. Hindsight, 2020. So in hindsight, those help requests might have, well, have read number one, fire this dude. Number two, fire my manager and number three, promote me so I can fire these other eight people I’m struggling with y’all don’t judge me.

Cassandra Worthy:
Don’t judge me. I was younger, was younger. Regardless. We met, you know, I’m going to the agenda talking to the help request and really by the end, I’m just venting to this woman. And as I’m wrapping up, she looks at me and she says, Cassandra, I wanna offer you some advice. You can either get bitter or you can get better. It’s your choice. Woo. You talk about signaling emotions. Now of course I responded in kind, thank you very much, but as I’m getting up and leaving her office, I’m fuming, I’m fuming. And I’m thinking to myself, my choice, it’s not my choice. I’m not the one in a position of influence. It’s her, not me. And she wasn’t listening to me. And so I made the decision that I was gonna keep looking for anyway to escape, but I was how she’s gonna quit. I was gonna quit the company, but then something happened, those words that she said bitter or better, they stayed with me. And over the next several days, I started to embrace this idea that I had power that I had control and say over my own work experience. And the more that I stepped into that idea, I stepped into a major moment of opportunity.

Cassandra Worthy:
Step two, I had just reached step two of the strategy of change, enthusiasm, the yellow light. In fact, this is a good place for me to take a little quick aside and get to know you all a little bit better. All right. So I want, y’all do me a favor. I want you to think about yourselves and your car, your driving, and your approach, a traffic light. And it turns yellow. And in that moment I hear y’all laughing already. And in that moment, I want you to signal with your fingers, the behavior that you are doing when you’re behind that wheel. Okay? So I want you to gimme a number one. If you’re slowing down safety first, you got your seatbelt on. I got one, one in the room. I got two right here. Appreciate, gimme number two. If you’re flooring it, you, Veronica. Veronica was like, I know exactly what I’m doing.

Cassandra Worthy:
I don’t need to know. Number three. I’m coming back to you, Veronica. All right. Give you a heads up you number two. Now gimme number three. If it depends, right? It depends. Okay. I see a lot of threes. Some of y’all staying committed to you. Twos like Veronica, Veronica. I gotta ask. What kind of car do you drive? Chevy tra a Chevy traverse. She thought about it too. A Chevy traverse. What color is it? It’s black, black, black on black. When y’all are leaving the conference, just slick out for a black Chevy traverse. We don’t know what Veronica’s about to do. I’m just kidding. Do you, but obviously, you know what we’re doing in this time, what we’re doing in this time, we’re in a decision making process, right? We’re weighing options, exploring what’s possible. How much distance do I have between me and the light?

Cassandra Worthy:
Right? How fast am I going? Are there any children or squirrels that I don’t wanna run over? Right. And really, really, what are we thinking? I don’t know about Veronica, but what are we thinking? Are there cops are there like, are there cops, like, what’s really gonna be the consequence if I run this thing. Right. But ultimately, yes, ultimately this is a decision making process, right? Wayne options exploring what’s possible. And that’s exactly what step two of the strategy of change. Enthusiasm is all about, right? You’ve recognized these feelings as a signal you’ve accepted their invitation into your opportunity to learn, to grow and evolve. And then you weigh options, exploring what’s possible for you to milk that opportunity for all it’s worth. Yeah. So for me, for me back then having, let those words of wisdom resonate bitter or better, I saw a couple options.

Cassandra Worthy:
All right. I could either remain resigned, despising going into the office, resenting the majority of my colleagues, basically in a state of misery looking for any opportunity to quit, or I could choose to trust that despite their behavior, they had my best interest at heart. The one that shared my results, cause that was really the behavior that was giving me the worst feelings, but I could choose to trust that they were not acting maliciously to put my trust in that. And the more that I leaned into making that decision, I started to get a different feeling, right? I started to feel intrigued because if not acting maliciously, then why, why would they have done the things that they did? But in that moment, intrigued felt better than resentment and intrigued successfully created a path for me to reengage in my work. So that’s what I did.

Cassandra Worthy:
I made a conscious, productive choice to bring about a better feeling. That’s step three, the choice, right? You’ve recognized these feelings as a signal you’ve accepted their invitation into your moment of opportunity to learn, to grow and evolve Wayne options. And then from those options, you’re making a conscious, productive choice to inspire better feeling and ultimately a better result, right? The signal, the opportunity and the choice. So what right. I do like to share what happened as a result of me cultivating this mindset, practicing it on a daily basis, reaching for my better. Well, at first it just looked like me engaging with my colleagues in a different way, right. Seeking first to understand. But ultimately I was inspired. I was inspired to write a series of intercompany articles, articles that I called my diaries. And the intent was to share where I thought there was true strength in that business that needed to get reapplied and where I thought there were opportunities.

Cassandra Worthy:
And for one of those articles, I decided to interview several of my working team colleagues, including the one that I thought wronged me. And I asked questions like, what are you most proud of? And how do you think your functional expertise cannot only explode results in this business unit, but also other businesses around the parent company. And in having these conversations, I unveiled discovered the fundamental differences in cultural norms, across the two different companies and come to find out that colleague wasn’t acting maliciously. They were just abiding by a different set of cultural norms. And in having these conversations, it was so eye-opening and healing for me. And when I published them out, I just wanted one person. I wanted one person to read them and feel the sense of healing that I felt, cuz it truly was tremendous. Y’all know what happened. It was nuts.

Cassandra Worthy:
It was crazy what happens. So that article, the one in particular with the interviews became in the top three most widely read in the entire company for several weeks in a row. I think when it was all said and done, it had like over 6,000 reads. Now let me CA y’all so up until this point, I was lucky if I got like a hundred reads on a report. So this is a really big deal. I had colleagues stopping me in the hallway, thanking me for writing their reports, saying how my words had helped nurture much needed conversation between them and their working team colleagues. But you know what the best part was the best part of taking control of my work experience, working this mindset, looking for my better in the opportunities. I ended up going to a women’s networking event and we also invited a speaker in and it was the president of that business.

Cassandra Worthy:
And in between or during his talk, he pointed me out in front of everybody. He was like, you’re Cassandra. Right? And of course I’m looking at this dude, like a deer in headlights. I had no idea. He knew who I was. He was like, you’re Cassandra. Right? He said, I wanna thank you for writing those reports. He said, although there were a couple points I didn’t necessarily agree with. I wanna thank you for the courage. It took to write them. And then he got really honest with me and the rest of the group. And he said their most glaring mistake in the acquisition and the integration was not recognizing and fully embracing the differences in cultural norms across the two different companies. But he said it was perspectives like mine that helped he and his senior leadership team understand where those tension points lied so that they could create plans to address them as a junior engineer in that company, I’d effectively influenced the culture of the organization from bottom to top, simply by taking control of my own work experience, reaching for that better and better feeling.

Cassandra Worthy:
Now y’all please don’t get me wrong. I continued having challenges in that business. It wasn’t all sunflower seeds and Daisy pedals. It wasn’t all good. Right? I don’t quite know that. So you always make it up. It wasn’t all good. I continued having challenges. And at any given point in time, a better feeling might have looked like stress because stress felt better than depression. A better feeling might have looked like annoyance because annoyance felt better than rage. A better feeling might have looked like intrigue because intrigue felt better than resentment. Yeah. So by working these steps to signal the opportunity and the choice, I actually ended up getting myself top rated in that business landing, a growth opportunity I would not have had had I not transitioned into that business. So the more that you can work, these steps recognize your signal, emotions, stepping into your moment of opportunity, choosing that better feeling and ultimately a better result. You’re gonna come to find that the really big changes, the biggest disruptions, they never happen to you. They happen for you to serve you, to serve your evolution, to your absolute best self, enabling you to unleash that inner rock star that I know you all have within

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 the trusted leader summit is happening again next year, November 7-9, 2023 at the jw marriott mall of america here in minnesota. To find out more information or 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. 89: Joe Schmit on The #1 Job Of EVERY Leader

In this episode, David sits down with Joe Schmit, Award-winning Broadcaster, Community Leader, Author, and Speaker, to discuss what the #1 job of EVERY leader is.

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

Joe’s Bio:
Joe Schmit is an award-winning broadcaster, community leader and popular keynote speaker. He joined KSTP-TV in 1985 and has won 18 Emmys from the National Television Academy. He was also honored with the Emmy’s Silver Circle designation for extraordinary contributions to the television industry.

As a speaker, Joe was inducted into the Minnesota Chapter of the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame in 2019. He also has earned the CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) designation which only 15 percent of speakers nationally attain.

Joe is past president and board member of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Greater Twin Cities. He was the winner of the Jim Kelly Distinguished Service Award from Big Brothers and Big Sisters and Odyssey Award for commitment to youth mentorship. Joe was also honored as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund (JDRF) Community Leader of the Year in 2005.

Joe and his wife Laura chaired a 5.5 million dollar capital campaign for VEAP, the largest food shelf in Minnesota.

Joe’s Links:
Website: https://joeschmit.com/
“Silent Impact” by Joe Schmit: https://amzn.to/3bDWc6b
“The Impact Blueprint” by Joe Schmit: https://amzn.to/3NxhDDc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joeschmitsports
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoeSchmitKSTP
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-schmit-speaker/

Key Quotes:
1. “We make our biggest impressions when we’re not trying to be impressive.”
2. “Ask one more question.”
3. “Everybody wants to be acknowledged and feel valued.”
4. “You need to listen with your eyes not with your ears.”
5. “You need to listen to learn not listen to respond.”
6. “You have to let people know that you care.”
7. “Every company has a gap.”
8. “You need to have a culture plan within your organization.”
9. “A tenet is a principle or a belief that people live by.”
10. “Too many times we compare ourselves to other people.”
11. “Everybody has a journey.”
12. “Clarity is the catalyst for growth.”
13. “Trust is earned.”
14. “People want to tell their story.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
“Silent Impact” by Joe Schmit: https://amzn.to/3bDWc6b
“The Impact Blueprint” by Joe Schmit: https://amzn.to/3NxhDDc
2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com/
Thumbs Up For Mental Health: https://thumbsupformentalhealth.org/
“Uncommon” by Tony Dungy and Nathan Whitaker: https://amzn.to/3bCaJ28

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: hello it’s david horsager and this

is the trusted leader show today i’ve got

David Horsager: a dear friend as a guest he’s

an author he’s a culture expert he speaks

David Horsager: a lot around the world he’s also

sports director of channel five and we’re just

David Horsager: thrilled to have him thanks for being

on with me joe schmit

Joe Schmit: all right david it’s an honor to

be on there and and it’s always fun

Joe Schmit: to see you and work with you

oh

David Horsager: joe you’re you’re you’re an amazing guy

you had an impact um certainly

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: in our part of the world and

everybody knows you here kind of a local

David Horsager: celebrity but you’ve also taken your message

research and work with your books and

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: speaking all around the world let’s get

away from that for a

Joe Schmit: m

David Horsager: second and just like hey people don’t

know joe just give us a couple of

David Horsager: things a little background couple minutes

Joe Schmit: okay well i’ve been a television sports

anchor pretty much all my life i’ve been

Joe Schmit: at k s t p t v

in the twin cities here for thirty three

Joe Schmit: years now so

David Horsager: holy cow year old you are

Joe Schmit: i think i’m the reason nobody ever

wins championships in here in minnesota except for

Joe Schmit: the links but you know i’m a

really lucky guy it’s something i wanted to

Joe Schmit: do and along the way i started

speaking to day and rotaries and athletic banquets

Joe Schmit: and things like that and i started

telling stories about people to make an impact

Joe Schmit: and then it became my passion my

mission to study people to make an impact

Joe Schmit: and why they do and that’s that

became my air you have experts and they’ve

Joe Schmit: taken it now to the whole building

world class cultures

David Horsager: and joe you’re your book that did

really well and i gave copies of these

David Horsager: but many of you’ve seen those of

you that are watching it with silent impact

David Horsager: and it’s just a great book your

newer book is all about the framework or

David Horsager: the impact blue print and we’re going

to touch on that before we do

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: i want to bring up a quote

from you that i love and i want

David Horsager: you to respond to it you said

we make our biggest impressions when we’re not

David Horsager: trying to be

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: impressive

Joe Schmit: yes and i tell stories about that

and go and research the impact twenty thirty

Joe Schmit: years later and i think if we

look at our own lives when we’ve had

Joe Schmit: impact on somebody or somebody had an

impact on us it was just because we

Joe Schmit: happened to be at the right place

at the right time and said the right

Joe Schmit: thing and it’s not that we’re trying

to

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: be heroes but usually when you try

to be impressive put on your sunday suit

Joe Schmit: and you get ready to roll here

not impressing anybody but where you’re really impressive

Joe Schmit: is when nobody’s really watching you or

expecting you to act that way and and

Joe Schmit: it’s amazing to me how many great

leaders have this quality and sometimes how many

Joe Schmit: failed leaders do not have this quality

David Horsager: tell me about this you you’ve interviewed

some of the great in the world in

David Horsager: our part of the world i can

remember you you know with the microphone in

David Horsager: front of our great kirby pocket and

a host of others along the way morin

David Horsager: and going back and going forward but

tell me tell us about one or two

David Horsager: of those first from the sports old

then we might jump to even the corporate

David Horsager: world but but who’s who’s the impact

players you see it that made a difference

David Horsager: twenty years later

Joe Schmit: well i’ve been lucky enough i’ve interviewed

one on once with tiger woods mahomed lee

Joe Schmit: wan gretski michael jordan on so ‘ve

been very fortunate that way but the story

Joe Schmit: that always resonate with me is joe

mower who is six time wall star three

Joe Schmit: time batting champ l v p well

when he was in high school he walked

Joe Schmit: a special need student who was blind

to the lunch room and what i did

Joe Schmit: as i went back and twenty years

later i found all the guys who sat

Joe Schmit: around that table and they told the

stories and the impact it had and dave

Joe Schmit: you don’t even know this yet but

recently i video taped i brought joe and

Joe Schmit: this mike holley back together in the

same high school in the same lunch room

Joe Schmit: at the same table brought them together

had him sit down and talk about the

Joe Schmit: impact it had in each other’s lives

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: and it’s really compelling powerful stuff and

to take it one step further this is

Joe Schmit: the way silent impact works you know

how we

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: make our biggest preston we’re not trying

to be impressive a young woman got the

Joe Schmit: book silent impact read that joe mower

story and because of it she was struggling

Joe Schmit: she her her grandfather had just died

of suicide she was really struggling what to

Joe Schmit: do she started a non profit called

thumbs up for mental health she’s working with

Joe Schmit: high schools all over minnesota right now

we’re using that ideo to to do a

Joe Schmit: video called no one eats alone using

joe

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: mower and this story in the reunion

as the basis of it

David Horsager: you know that that speaks to something

i’ve never shared i don’t think on the

David Horsager: podcast but my we moved when my

daughter was in seventh grade um and i

David Horsager: think if i got this right from

her the first day she sat down at

David Horsager: lunch the whole group of girls she

sat by got up and left and she

David Horsager: was alone and part of her first

several months at that high school or school

David Horsager: alone and of course she’s amazing now

and become great and we

Joe Schmit: right

David Horsager: love her through it and she has

a very high e q today but those

David Horsager: are some lonely tough times you know

and actually see that in adults today people

David Horsager: you go to events you go to

receptions people don’t know how like they’re over

David Horsager: alone in the corner there’s a lot

of people alone out there what can we

David Horsager: do just in our work and in

our world what’s one we we could be

David Horsager: more intentional leaders could be more intentional

about making a silent impact

Joe Schmit: first of all i think it’s an

awareness you have to be aware and what

Joe Schmit: i have worked with leaders i say

schedule yourself fifteen

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: minutes a day or every other day

in all it impact time and the impact

Joe Schmit: time is really just to go check

on people how you doing ask one more

Joe Schmit: question how was your week end it

was fun what did you do i went

Joe Schmit: fishing where you go i went up

to me were you catching while i up

Joe Schmit: there all of a sudden you make

a relationship

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: that is deeper and more meaningful and

you let these people know your fellow employes

Joe Schmit: whether they’re higher on the food chain

or lower the food came from you that

Joe Schmit: you really care because all these different

generations in the workplace right now

David Horsager: my

Joe Schmit: i don’t care whether you’re seventeen or

seventy seven everybody wants to be acknowledged in

Joe Schmit: fee valued and if you’re

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: a leader that’s your number one job

David Horsager: wow talk to me about that tell

me jump into the

Joe Schmit: yes

David Horsager: traits in the blue print you’ve got

all these traits of leaders that are making

David Horsager: an impact what’s what’s a favorite trait

we can talk about right now

Joe Schmit: well

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: how about trust

David Horsager: i like it

Joe Schmit: my boy i do have trust in

there and i quote you and my in

Joe Schmit: the impact blueprint the impact blueprint has

fifty two trades of people who make an

Joe Schmit: impact and then there’s a little story

in each one and then something to do

Joe Schmit: but i would

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: say besides trust i think the number

one issue is communication you know how are

Joe Schmit: you communicating you need to listen with

your eyes not with your s you need

Joe Schmit: to listen to learn not listen to

respond i think too many people in the

Joe Schmit: conversation they’re listening to say now what

am i going to say next to make

Joe Schmit: me feel smart listen to learn and

listen to ask questions you don’t want to

Joe Schmit: be the kind of person i always

i always tease i said i’ve got a

Joe Schmit: couple of friends who’ll say you know

now that i’ve talked about me for

David Horsager: yah

Joe Schmit: the last half hour why don’t talk

David Horsager: yah

Joe Schmit: about me for the next half hour

David Horsager: exactly well

Joe Schmit: but

David Horsager: i love

Joe Schmit: communication

David Horsager: it

Joe Schmit: you know that

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: david you mean in trust tell me

that communication is not high in that food

Joe Schmit: chain

David Horsager: absolutely you know it weaves through all

of them and it’s often the what’s trusted

David Horsager: is the type right the clear communication

compassionate communication you know consistent communication end so

David Horsager: forth

Joe Schmit: okay

David Horsager: so let’s let’s jump in here you

know you’ve become in all your time interviewing

David Horsager: grades and in all your time

Joe Schmit: m

David Horsager: working with companies and you’ve had some

significant impact with companies on their culture let’s

David Horsager: jump into culture for a few moments

you

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: you talk about these three areas of

making a great culture but

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: give us an example of a great

culture

Joe Schmit: okay one of my companies that i

worked with is any time fitness and any

Joe Schmit: time fitness promises every employe you will

never miss a monumental moment of your life

Joe Schmit: that’s there first promise to you so

what they’re telling you is they care about

Joe Schmit: you because when i work on i

call it the culture first mind set there

Joe Schmit: are three areas we work on compassion

connection and clarity you have to

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: let people know you care and that’s

one way they do i worked with a

Joe Schmit: with a small title company that had

five different outlets throughout the midwest and when

Joe Schmit: they bogh people together i went

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: to one of the managers meetings and

the co started off with a profit and

Joe Schmit: loss statement i said i said you

got it all wrong you’re not letting your

Joe Schmit: people know you care you’re letting know

you care about money you really don’t care

Joe Schmit: about them

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: just get me a lot of money

and we change the whole perspective they celebrate

Joe Schmit: everything right now everybody you know if

somebody’s kid wins a little tournament on monday

Joe Schmit: everybody knows it because they elebrateid he

starts off meetings now i gave him this

Joe Schmit: advice and i used this quite often

i said don’t start off your meeting with

Joe Schmit: profit and loss statement start off your

meeting with a question of the day what’s

Joe Schmit: the best concert i went to and

you go around the room and everybody gives

Joe Schmit: thirty seconds well all of a sudden

across the table you find out that this

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: person you’ve worked with for the last

ten years is a huge rolling stones fan

Joe Schmit: to and you are at the same

concert that’s called the connection it makes you

Joe Schmit: dive a little bit deeper into that

connection you can ask questions and guess what

Joe Schmit: the next time the stones are in

concert

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: in your town you might go together

that’s the it works out

David Horsager: i love it what

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: what when you take culture

Joe Schmit: m

David Horsager: we talk about this a lot but

all of

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: these things

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: i’m just thinking about this right now

because i was in the boardroom

Joe Schmit: ah

David Horsager: yesterday on a significant deep project with

senior leaders of a publicly traded company and

David Horsager: we’re talking about trust and we’re alkigabouthow

do they get it from their but they’re

David Horsager: like what about them what about them

being committed to us what about them connecting

David Horsager: with us what about what about our

employes and we have such a you know

David Horsager: such a challenge challenge of retention and

attrition right now and yet i do see

David Horsager: the challenge because around that board room

you get all these people that got to

David Horsager: answer to the state holders that are

talking profit loss and they’re talking all these

David Horsager: things but marry those together for a

little bit so people see the val ou

Joe Schmit: well first of all i think a

company has to realize that there’s a gap

Joe Schmit: every company has a gap no matter

how good you think your culture is and

Joe Schmit: here’s the gap the gap is the

culture

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: you have and the culture you straw

four and what

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: are you doing to fill that gap

and and that’s where it comes down to

Joe Schmit: the three seas so what are you

doing to make better connections what are you

Joe Schmit: doing to let people know that it’s

actually p

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: over profits and guess what when you

put people over profits you know what the

Joe Schmit: buyproduct is profits wild success fantastic customer

service people who will want to stay there

Joe Schmit: david when in our reason sears when

people look for a job today sixty percent

Joe Schmit: of the people before they even fill

out an application look at the values in

Joe Schmit: the culture of that company before they

even apply you need to have a culture

Joe Schmit: plan within your organization and if you

don’t have a culture plan

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: it’s you got a financial plan you

got a crisis management plan you know in

Joe Schmit: our personal lives we got vacation plans

we got weddin plans we got funeral plans

David Horsager: yep

Joe Schmit: do you have a culture plan if

you don’t have

David Horsager: so

Joe Schmit: a culture

David Horsager: let’s do

Joe Schmit: plan

David Horsager: it let’s let’s start

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: we’re known for here here’s my you

know this is that i do podcastfrea consulting

David Horsager: right so so let’s create a culture

plan how would i do that at least

David Horsager: give us give us a little let’s

let’s create a plan we got our companies

David Horsager: people are listening instead of talking about

how do i do how even start creating

David Horsager: a culture plan

Joe Schmit: okay the first thing you do is

you work with your team and you get

Joe Schmit: your team to realize i have to

look inwardly first i started this i’m gonna

Joe Schmit: i’m gonna i got

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: i’m going to show this i started

this thing i call the triple play because

Joe Schmit: i think everybody needs to do a

self examination of how they are either helping

Joe Schmit: or hurting the culture of their company

and here’s the triple play david what are

Joe Schmit: you going to stop

David Horsager: ah

Joe Schmit: what are you going to start and

what are you goin to continue with the

Joe Schmit: culture and then under each one you

put down the three wise or the three

Joe Schmit: results because of that so so for

for example for me my stop is sarcasm

Joe Schmit: i tend to think everything is funny

and that can be sarcastic well underneath sarcasm

Joe Schmit: things i have to stop and the

reason i have to stop is one in

Joe Schmit: sarcasm there’s there’s a shred of truth

to

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: some

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: people don’t have a sense of humor

won’t understand it three you can hurt people

Joe Schmit: without without even realizing it with sardcasts

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: so then what am i going to

start doing i’m going to schedule impact time

Joe Schmit: fifteen minutes every day i’m going to

reward progress i’m going to find out how

Joe Schmit: people are doing guess what i’m going

to acknowledge them and tell you tell them

Joe Schmit: that they’re valuable you know our mutual

friend mike mc kinley he used to do

Joe Schmit: a bit on the stage where he

said where he said you know nobody ever

Joe Schmit: quitted job because they were getting patted

on the back too often you know

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: nobody ever quitted job they quite a

job because they feel under appreciated

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: solutely but they never quit a job

when they feel appreciation

David Horsager: yeah and what are you going to

continue

Joe Schmit: what am i going to continue i’m

going to continue praising heavily

David Horsager: h

Joe Schmit: um i started

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: i started doing it a few years

back you know sometimes dave you’re a hundred

Joe Schmit: percent go go go guy and and

i’m the same way so sometimes we expect

Joe Schmit: everybody to be the same way

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: we are well guess what some people

work at a different pace and some people

Joe Schmit: work

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: at a different level it was interesting

sports back ground i sat down with bud

Joe Schmit: grant about a year ago and bud

and i were just talking i said to

Joe Schmit: bud i said but what leadership worked

for you and if you’re don’t know who

Joe Schmit: bud granted but it was a legendary

hall of fame coach for the minnesota vikings

Joe Schmit: he led him to four super balls

unfortunately they lost all four super balls but

Joe Schmit: but it was a great leader and

bud said he got to know his people

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: that was his most important job and

he said i had to know who i

Joe Schmit: could yell at in front of the

team i had to know who i had

Joe Schmit: to bring behind closed doors i had

to know who i needed to kick in

Joe Schmit: the butt and i had to know

who i put my arm around and say

Joe Schmit: it’ll be better next time and he

said once i learn that leadership became a

Joe Schmit: lot easier so

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: stop starting

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: continue think about that how you can

figure out how to make different people click

Joe Schmit: so we do that that’s stage one

David Horsager: love it

Joe Schmit: you want more

David Horsager: look more look inwardly first and it

stop start continue simple

Joe Schmit: yep

David Horsager: actionable powerful how how many steps are

there

Joe Schmit: well well then then so

David Horsager: next

Joe Schmit: so what happens is i have not

made this one thing i decided originally when

Joe Schmit: i was doing this i was going

to do it just like you do a

Joe Schmit: strategic plan you

David Horsager: yep

Joe Schmit: to have objectives you at dates all

the

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: and obviously i realized nobody wants that

because that’s word smithing that’s that you get

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: down where you know you put it

in the file and two

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: years later we dig out the strategic

plan

David Horsager: yep

Joe Schmit: so

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: what i do with the companies i

work with is i tell them let’s all

Joe Schmit: agree on it tenant a tenant is

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: a principle or a belief that people

live by this is not a word smith

Joe Schmit: belief for example one of the companies

i just worked with it a company t

Joe Schmit: is a nine one one company throughout

the world basically what you know with everybody

Joe Schmit: with their cell phone now you know

in the old days you called nine one

Joe Schmit: one from your house you can go

right to your house well this company said

Joe Schmit: software that you could be in the

middle of the woods and call nine one

Joe Schmit: one and they can pin point where

you are so they work all over the

Joe Schmit: world and in any way their tenet

that they came out with after we worked

Joe Schmit: with them for a i was we’re

here to help

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: everybody flourish very simple but basically i

was telling you i am here to make

Joe Schmit: you better you’re here to make me

better you’re here to make them better and

Joe Schmit: all of a sudden everybody every it

goes up everybody rises up you know our

Joe Schmit: research said that employes want three things

from a company they want a company that

Joe Schmit: cares about their people okay that’s pretty

soon they want a company that’s successful because

Joe Schmit: they don’t want to worry about that

company moving away and they also want a

Joe Schmit: company that cares about the community that

they serve and not just by giving it

Joe Schmit: you know you know showing up at

some event and calling it a charity event

Joe Schmit: but really digs down and cares about

the community and communities they serve

David Horsager: love it so number

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: two agree on a tenant work through

a process

Joe Schmit: m right

David Horsager: you lead this process agree on a

tenant may be e’ll go

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: just a little bit further what’s after

that

Joe Schmit: well after that then is the follow

up how are we going to follow how

Joe Schmit: are we going to follow this up

what are we going to put into implementation

Joe Schmit: so during during a session we will

talk about different ideas that worked for different

Joe Schmit: companies you know we will talk about

you know instead of doing a zoom talk

Joe Schmit: you know another zoom meeting why don’t

you both go for a walk and you

Joe Schmit: can

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: talk about you know what you’re seeing

on the walk it just changes thing up

Joe Schmit: you

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: know everybody is having a hard time

connecting coming back into the real world out

Joe Schmit: of the pandemic so what are you

doing to make it easier to connect you

Joe Schmit: know

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: broadcast from home for an entire year

i’m the most social guy in the world

Joe Schmit: when i went back to k s

t p for the first time i had

Joe Schmit: an i hadn’t

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: been back there working with people it

was like if i have to kind of

Joe Schmit: s things flow off my back imagine

somebody who has anged over a lot of

Joe Schmit: things that kind of ance they had

so what are you doing to make it

Joe Schmit: comfortable for people to connect and and

you can get a lot information and ideas

Joe Schmit: just kicking it around with your people

David Horsager: i love it

Joe Schmit: it

David Horsager: so here we go we’re going to

have culture first you lead this process it

David Horsager: can take a lot more time than

this to do it right but look inwardly

David Horsager: first think about you’re going to stop

start continue sarcasm is interesting by the way

David Horsager: i think i think the latin root

of that word is dog ripping flesh so

Joe Schmit: was

David Horsager: i think

Joe Schmit: it really

David Horsager: i think it’s something like that so

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: you know there you go but number

two is agree on a tenant number three

David Horsager: is follow up on figure out the

implementation process and follow up and i

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: love it there’s more to it but

that’s just

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: a start and i really it’s exciting

you’ve got a lot more examples of where

David Horsager: that’s worked and what you’ve done with

it

Joe Schmit: es

David Horsager: joe i have

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: to jump in so the books are

great silent impact the impact

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: blue print and those trades are inspiring

you talk about culture first i want to

David Horsager: back step just a little bit to

all your anchoring days and continual you know

David Horsager: anchoring what’s first of all just what’s

our favorite interview where you gained an idea

David Horsager: you could

Joe Schmit: ah

David Horsager: apply in impact leadership or team work

Joe Schmit: that’s that’s that’s a really really good

question because sometimes it’s not the biggest names

Joe Schmit: that you interview

David Horsager: okay

Joe Schmit: with it have the biggest impact you

know sometimes it’s the young kid with the

Joe Schmit: isis is saucers excited to have big

goals it’s fun to watch these kids have

Joe Schmit: goals and then then you know ten

years later they’re whole thing the stanley cup

Joe Schmit: you know

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: i’ve witnessed that and and that’s a

that’s a very cool feeling

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: two things come to mind one i’m

a lot more aware and intentional when i

Joe Schmit: listen to somebody talk now especially leaders

on something i can steal just from

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: p j flex the other day p

j flex

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: over football coach

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: and i asked him a question i

said if you

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: could make wave a magic wand

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: over your program what would you add

to your program that maybe another program has

Joe Schmit: and you would like to have what

bigger stadium you know more money for recruiting

Joe Schmit: what is it and he said joe

comparison steeled your joy i was

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: like

David Horsager: uh

Joe Schmit: that’s probably been out there a long

time

David Horsager: h

Joe Schmit: but i thought

David Horsager: h

Joe Schmit: you know what too many times we

compare ourselves to other people you know how

Joe Schmit: come david sogers talking to the government

in cana

David Horsager: ye

Joe Schmit: and i’m talking to the government in

in cambridge minnesota you know you know whatever

Joe Schmit: but

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: if you do that comparison seal your

joy by by i think the most impactful

Joe Schmit: interview i ever had i interviewed a

coach at north western college football coach in

Joe Schmit: roseville minnesota and he was dying of

cancer in but he knew he was dying

Joe Schmit: and he was coaching till the end

and i spent three hours with him on

Joe Schmit: the golf cart coaching that day and

it was my tuesdays with more moment and

Joe Schmit: what i saw was amazing humili amazing

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: even though he had all this impact

he always thought he could give more and

Joe Schmit: and what was interesting is he was

trying to hold on as long as he

Joe Schmit: could and i thought to myself here’s

a here’s a good lesson to it yeah

Joe Schmit: he wanted more he wanted more impact

he wanted more memories he wanted to get

Joe Schmit: more knowledge to his kids i went

to his funeral and guess what his kids

Joe Schmit: his team his former players they wanted

more to they wanted more from him and

Joe Schmit: i thought

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: okay we always can do more we

know that don’t

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: beat ourselves up over it when we

don’t do it but when we have the

Joe Schmit: opportunity let’s do it and that’s that

awareness and intentionality that i talk about has

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: to become part of your d n

d n

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: i mean and that’s hard to say

because

David Horsager: yep

Joe Schmit: we all make mistakes and we’re all

human we all get too busy but if

Joe Schmit: you put it fore front that’s why

the impact resolutions i do that would be

Joe Schmit: another step along the process where every

month you t a different value or trait

Joe Schmit: and you concentrate on it it’s just

a way to so for example my impact

Joe Schmit: resolution i have it right here at

my desk so i see it every day

Joe Schmit: it’s when we’re put in camera grinding

focus those are the two things i’m concentrating

Joe Schmit: on this month now when the month

ends i will put up another impact resolution

Joe Schmit: but every day i look at that

i realize keep ending and focus because we

Joe Schmit: can easily get distracted

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: by the shiny object

David Horsager: yep absolutely

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: as an interviewer what’s what’s a favorite

question you ask i remember

Joe Schmit: um

David Horsager: asking what was in sight ful

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: fun to come back to my head

right now because i don’t talk to that

David Horsager: many media folks but i

Joe Schmit: m

David Horsager: got to ask before he passed away

larry king this question was kind of you

David Horsager: mind shift but you have interviewed so

many grades what’s a favorite question

Joe Schmit: that’s a really good question itself first

of all the best interview is listen so

Joe Schmit: you can you’re

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: you’re not thinking about the next question

you’re listening and then it becomes more conversation

Joe Schmit: than a question i have a i

have a default question that i use that

Joe Schmit: in case i’m not getting anywhere i’ll

ask an athlete to describe himself as an

Joe Schmit: athlete so then they can talk ittle

bit but but i think the idea is

Joe Schmit: one of the great questions you can

ask is is all the work you did

Joe Schmit: on the jury has it been worth

it because anybody who has had any success

Joe Schmit: at all there’s a journey it’s kind

of funny once in while you’ll hear about

Joe Schmit: some guy being an overnight success

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: maybe it’s a comedia and maybe it’s

an athlete they don’t realize that for fifteen

Joe Schmit: years they were working their craft like

crazy to become that overnight success so everybody

Joe Schmit: has a journey and what did you

do on that journey and and how did

Joe Schmit: you push through the tough times when

people didn’t believe in you and maybe you

Joe Schmit: didn’t believe in yourself

David Horsager: ah

Joe Schmit: and which kind of leads me to

when we did we did researh and the

Joe Schmit: best bosses and you’re gonna like this

one david because it falls into your category

Joe Schmit: so we did research who is the

best boss and we found out that the

Joe Schmit: best bosses are tough but fair and

that equals trust

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: how about that so so what that

boss did is that boss saw something in

Joe Schmit: you that you didn’t see in yourself

so they pushed you you’re not going to

Joe Schmit: waste your time somebody doesn’t have potential

to take their game to the next level

Joe Schmit: so that boss saw something in you

and one of one of the other exercises

Joe Schmit: i do quite often is the the

mount rush of influence where you know you

Joe Schmit: had to name the foremost impact ful

people in your life who would be on

Joe Schmit: your list and why would you be

there it’s just another reason to

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: another way to be more aware

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: and intentional with your impact and there’s

very often that a former boss will be

Joe Schmit: on there and guess what the boss

was tough but fair and they trusted him

David Horsager: m that’s so true i think of

the coaches have had the teachers have had

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: the you know tough

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: but fair

Joe Schmit: they’re not going to waste they’re not

going to waste time

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: on you if you’re not worth

David Horsager: i

Joe Schmit: helping or saving and and so

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: so i think it’s always interesting the

other thing that i think i learned through

Joe Schmit: interviewing people is there are different styles

that work and different styles work times the

Joe Schmit: hard guy works sometimes the nice guy

works but through it all you better let

Joe Schmit: them know you care you

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: bet they better be clear on the

clarity clarity

David Horsager: h

Joe Schmit: is the

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: catalyst for growth

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: better be crystal clear on what your

role

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: is why that role is important and

guess what there’s more than just trying to

Joe Schmit: earn a pay check every

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: two weeks were

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: trying to raise the bar the younger

David Horsager: eh

Joe Schmit: generatio they want they want a reason

that they want passion they want they want

Joe Schmit: something that they can do to help

the world

David Horsager: this is many of you listening were

at the trusted leader summit and you’ll recognize

David Horsager: joe from the summit there’s a reason

we put him on

Joe Schmit: my

David Horsager: stage and have an interview guests and

i think what i’m impressed by with you

David Horsager: joe we had let’s see

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: an olympian we had a five time

m national the most national championships from the

David Horsager: w b a and a few others

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: and you were the interviewer but you

have a way of drawing out the best

David Horsager: in them and making them look good

and i think you know are given them

David Horsager: given them allowing them to be their

best

Joe Schmit: m

David Horsager: even if they want to share where

they’ve failed you help them bring out their

David Horsager: best and and what i love is

not just their best for them but for

David Horsager: the audience so the audience you know

what they’re thinking how you think about what

David Horsager: the audience would be thinking is there

anything else there

Joe Schmit: yeah well

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: i know we were talking gabel steveson

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: who was the n c wrestling champion

olympic gold medal wrestler he was one of

Joe Schmit: the guys we brought on stage and

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: and it was interesting because gabel i

didn’t really even ask him the question but

Joe Schmit: he went there to a failure and

why he failed and what that failure did

Joe Schmit: to him and changed him and made

him the rock star in wrestling that he

Joe Schmit: became and i thought that was very

i thought that was very interesting but believe

Joe Schmit: it or not i’m not saying this

just because you’re on the other end but

Joe Schmit: you develop a relation relation ship where

people are going to trust you i remember

Joe Schmit: one time years ago tommy cramer was

a quarterback of the minnesota vikings you know

Joe Schmit: that’s how long i go back and

tommy was mad for asking him questions he

Joe Schmit: had a five interception game and i

went to tommy i said tommy i’m going

Joe Schmit: to be here when you throw five

touched on passes and i’m going to be

Joe Schmit: here when you throw five interceptions so

you as we just get used to it

Joe Schmit: you know but but then trust is

earned

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: and and and then that makes the

conversation a lot easier people want to tell

Joe Schmit: their story

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: they do like telling their story and

out one other thing david that and i

Joe Schmit: think we’ve probably seen this in a

lot of other injures industries too i became

Joe Schmit: a much better sports caster when i

realized it wasn’t about me

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: it’s about the audience that we’re catering

to but also about the person that i’m

Joe Schmit: talking to

David Horsager: yep

Joe Schmit: you know and and i think that’s

a maturity thing like when you first start

Joe Schmit: off you want to be on t

v and hey look at me and questions

Joe Schmit: you know

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: but but then you kind of turn

it around to you know how is how

Joe Schmit: is how is least horse oker going

to be interested in this story you

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: know you know when at i put

this story

David Horsager: yep

Joe Schmit: on the air you know

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: so so so when you start thinking

that way and i think as leaders

David Horsager: totally

Joe Schmit: we have to think about our audience

you know you

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: know our vendors our employe are people

who work for us and you know how

Joe Schmit: is it going to impact them not

how am i going to

David Horsager: yep

Joe Schmit: look my

David Horsager: so many leaders get up get in

there and like i’m the leader now i

David Horsager: just had somebody on a board right

me it’s like i’m a male head of

David Horsager: this what do you know whatever but

then you get people like a know it’s

David Horsager: all about them some one that comes

to mind that at the summit that you

David Horsager: are at is the former director of

miniapplis saint palinternational airports and he got in

David Horsager: there came from humble beginnings here is

the big direction he started right away what

David Horsager: can i do to serve you he

took six months of listening around the airport

David Horsager: before he really did much and now

as many of us know it’s the best

David Horsager: airport in north america and he’s been

rated the top airport you know for years

David Horsager: and now you know he’s he’s moved

on and consulting with airports and seattle salt

David Horsager: lake and copenhagen but i think there’s

there’s an example of someone proud of in

David Horsager: steve warm that lives that out this

is a really good set up go ahead

David Horsager: joe before we

Joe Schmit: i

David Horsager: go

Joe Schmit: want

David Horsager: to

Joe Schmit: to

David Horsager: our

Joe Schmit: just

David Horsager: final

Joe Schmit: say one thing

David Horsager: question

Joe Schmit: that i’m thinking about because this is

another little exercise for leaders on your impact

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: time with your schedule impact time i

did this with grant casino it’s a big

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: casno they got two casinos in minnesota

and i worked with their leaders and i

Joe Schmit: said i want you to go around

and ask your people what their job is

Joe Schmit: and they would go around and say

well i’m a waiter and i said you

Joe Schmit: have your come back ready now year

aunt you help nourish the soul you give

Joe Schmit: people great food get the energy so

they can go out and have some more

Joe Schmit: fun well i’m a you know i’m

i’m a pit boss no you’re not you’re

Joe Schmit: you know so you you give

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: them value by you because a lot

of times people say i’m in sales no

Joe Schmit: you’re not what are you selling like

the nine eleven people you know

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: i’m helping saving lives by trying to

and make sure everybody has this great g

Joe Schmit: p s system we have whatever the

case

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: might be so so as a leader

you can you’re basically adding value to that

Joe Schmit: person by telling him how important they

are

David Horsager: what do they really do right at

the end of the i don’t sell

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: insurance

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: i give people you know let people

sleep at night

Joe Schmit: yea

David Horsager: or or give them freedom or

Joe Schmit: perfect

David Horsager: peace or whatever

Joe Schmit: hundred percent

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: ye

David Horsager: well

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: before we get to the final question

we ask every time joe hey you still

David Horsager: are anchoring sports you’re

Joe Schmit: a

David Horsager: still doing great interviews here but you

also spend a lot of time

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: speed in consulting and

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: equipping people you’re still writing tell us

where can we find out more about jos

David Horsager: mit

Joe Schmit: i have a website joe smith dot

com that’s schmit with one t no d

Joe Schmit: s c h m i t you know

i got the books and all that stuff

David Horsager: yeah

Joe Schmit: available just call i put my own

number on my website how about that

David Horsager: all and every everybody this will be

in the in the show notes if it’s

David Horsager: okay with you will put your phone

Joe Schmit: m

David Horsager: number in the show notes and

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: and well just well just do that

so

Joe Schmit: m

David Horsager: josh mitt dot com we that and

more you’ll have links to his great books

David Horsager: and how to find more out about

joe it is the trusted leader show joe

David Horsager: smith who is a leader

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: you trust and why

Joe Schmit: you that’s a really good question but

i think mac to me the most trusted

Joe Schmit: leader i’ve ever worked with in death

with was tony dunge and tony

David Horsager: m

Joe Schmit: dung was the defensive coordinator of the

minnesota vikings when he was here he went

Joe Schmit: on and coach a couple of teams

as the head coach and one of super

Joe Schmit: wall with the indianapolis cults and my

personal library i have all my favorite books

Joe Schmit: right in front of me and in

one of the books he wrote is uncommon

Joe Schmit: and it’s it’s all about you know

how can you be uncommon today but tony

Joe Schmit: was

David Horsager: my

Joe Schmit: a guy who walked the walk and

talk to talk and and tony gave up

Joe Schmit: a very lucrative coaching career so he

could help he was trying to help the

Joe Schmit: african american men who maybe weren’t the

best fathers in the world he was trying

Joe Schmit: he set

David Horsager: oh

Joe Schmit: his goals much bigger than just being

a football coach once he accomplished that but

Joe Schmit: as genuine and as real as they

get and there is no phoning it’s there

Joe Schmit: and being of trust um that that’s

why tony was a successful coach people trusted

Joe Schmit: him tony never

David Horsager: hm

Joe Schmit: yelled tony never swore this is a

football coach he wasn’t vince lombardy i’ll tell

Joe Schmit: you that

David Horsager: just recently actually was at the uncommon

awards banquet it was ben rothsburger is the

David Horsager: early award

Joe Schmit: yep

David Horsager: this year and it was a treat

to see them both

Joe Schmit: yes

David Horsager: but tony

Joe Schmit: m

David Horsager: dunge s a great example for all

Joe Schmit: oh

David Horsager: that know him

Joe Schmit: yeah

David Horsager: joe you’re a great example thanks for

being on the show thanks for being my

David Horsager: friend and so it has been the

trusted leader show till next time stay trusted.

Ep. 88: Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV on Transformational Leadership in DEI

In this episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 Trusted Leader Summit where Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano, Founder and Board Member of ImpactLives, Inc. and Founder of Third Sphere LLC, takes the stage to discuss his model for transformational leadership in DEI.

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

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

Dr. Ramon’s Bio:
Dr. Pastrano is founder and board member of ImpactLives, Inc. and founder of Third Sphere LLC, a center for transformational leadership in cultural competence, social innovation, and entrepreneurship. Pastrano is fluent in human-centered design, design thinking, system thinking, service learning, social responsibility, social innovation, transformational leadership, and entrepreneurial leadership. Additionally, his innovative approach to intercultural competence and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging have been lauded by many local and national organizations.

Serving 15 years as a surgical consultant and medical device specialist with Ethicon, Medtronic, and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Pastrano has received numerous awards, including the Doctor Act Award, presented by TRANS4M Council for Research and Innovation in Switzerland. This award is given in recognition for outstanding achievement in Social Innovation. Pastrano has traveled extensively for leadership engagement and humanitarian efforts throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. As a graduate of the U.S. Naval Supply Corps School, he also served as a Commanding Officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.

Pastrano earned his Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications/Media Studies from Briar Cliff University. His advanced degrees include a Master of Science in Management from the U.S. Naval Supply Corps School, a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Bethel Seminary, and a Doctorate in Global Contextual Leadership from Bethel University.

Pastrano volunteers at Mill City Church in Minneapolis, with FINNOVATION Lab as a Fellowship mentor, and at Third Sphere LLC, where he mentors and coaches young leaders. He served on the general board for the YMCA, where he continues to volunteer, and currently serves on the Alia Innovations board of directors and on the 2Restored board of directors. Pastrano enjoys family time with his wife, Shelly, their two sons, Xavier and Kryston, and their grandson, Rowan.

Dr. Ramon’s Links:
Website: https://impactlives.org/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-ramon-pastrano-iv-d-min-mats-msm-b184525/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ImpactQuest

Key Quotes:
1. “People are no longer interested in truth. They’re more interested in finding people who think like them, act like them, behave like them.”
2. “How do you build trust in a society and in a culture that is not interested in truth?”
3. “We do not see things as they are we see them as we are.”
4. “We create what we expect. We see what we expect to see.”
5. “We need to be aware of our own biases and the assumptions that we make and take responsibility for that.”
6. “It’s not what’s in your wallet, it’s what’s in your brain.”
7. “Context really matters.”
8. “As a culture, we are a reactive culture. Therefore, we treat symptoms for the most part; we are not treating the issues at the source.”
9. “We need more compassion.”
10. “Organizations that have diverse teams are always going to outperform homogeneous teams.”

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:
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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 Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV, founder and board member of impactLives, Inc and founder of Third Sphere LLC, took to the stage to discuss his model for transformational leadership and diversity equity, inclusion, and belonging. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
I always like to teach, and I always like to begin with quotes. These two particular quotes are very close to my heart. The first one is the Alchemist, which is the sculpture right at MIT. And it really let no one enter who cannot see that the issues outside that are mirror of the issues inside. So when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, we talk about systemic issue. And what I try to remind people that our collective thinkings habits of mind, beliefs and values are colliding and is part of the system that we are creating. The second quote is a quote for our time. And I think, you know, David pretty, you know, pretty much capture, you know, today, the polarization that we’re seeing in our culture, one of the great challenge in this world is knowing enough to think you’re right, but not knowing enough to know when you’re run. Think about that. Right. So right now, one of the biggest problem that I see as I work with different organizations is that people seem no longer interested in truth. They’re more interested in finding people that think like them act like them behave like them. How do you build trust in a society and a culture that is not interested in truth? Pretty tough, right? So how do we build trust in a society that is not, doesn’t seem to be interested in truth, but more into, you know, being validated in what they already believe.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
When I talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, for me, the conversation begins right here. So a lot of company come to me, Hey, can you gimme your program? Bad news? There’s no such a thing as a program, right? And when we talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, there’s no finish line. This is a live long journey. Why there’s no finish line because culture is dynamic. It’s no linear. It’s always evolving. It’s always changing. Two years ago, we were doing something very different. Then, you know, we got hit with pandemic. We have to pivot. Then, you know, civil, Andre, we have to pivot. Now we got a war going on in Eastern Europe. Now we have to pivot.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
Culture is always moving. It’s always expanding. And we as human being, we always adapting. We are projecting all our, you know, worldviews and values and beliefs into the culture. And we are shaping the culture, but the culture is also shaping us. It’s constant movement. So when people ask me, do you have a program? I say, no, you wouldn’t ask a doctor for a prescription without an evaluation, right? So we need to understand your organizational culture. We need to evaluate your people. We need to evaluate your programming. We need to evaluate your mission, your vision. We need to understand your organization before you can engage in this conversation. So as such, we do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. The reality that you are experiencing in this moment is based in the past. If based on past experience, the brain is not wired to perceive what it doesn’t know.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
So it’s using previous information to help you understand what I’m saying to help you deal with this information that I’m sharing with you. So we do not these things as they are. We see them as we are. And as we see them as we are, we’re using one perspective for that reason, being able to take multiple perspective into account is part of this journey. When, you know, when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and the second statement there, we create what we expect. We see what we expect to see. We can condition our brain to do that. About five years ago, my son began driving. And of course that is everybody. Every parent’s nightmare at one point or another, right, grandma and grandpa gave them gave him this huge gray van, full size van, that it was perfect for him. Not for me, but for him was perfect, was a great, you know, van.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
And that, you know, the kid is excited. You know, we give him all the rule. You only, you are the only driver and the only passenger in that, in that van and that we want you home at this time. So he goes to, you know, school, he’s been doing tracks. And one day we get a call. I’m gonna be there on time. Dad, I’m gonna be there on time. I just picking up, you know, some, a few things. And I told my wife, he’s not gonna make it on time. My wife agreed with me. We went on a walk and for the entire walk, I was just really excited because I wanted to show him my muscle. I was going to ground him. I was going to explain to him why he need to adhere to the rules. So when we walked through the driveway, we just got, you know, super, you know, charged up.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
I get home, I open the door, I turned the phone. Where are you? And he said, dad, I’m here, here. Where upstairs in my room, what happened to the van? Dad is in the driveway. So we both, my wife and I went down to the driveway and below and behold, there was the van. Why didn’t we see the van we created what we expect to see, right? So we know that we have a particular activating system, which is a membrane that connect your brain to the spine. And that regulates what you see and what you don’t see, where you have the focus of attention. That’s what you will see now, what happened when it becomes to people with human differences, with diversity of all kinds, right? There are some things that we don’t see and there’s some things that we actually see. We have to be careful again, what is it that we carry in our mind?

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
What is it where we’re putting our focus of attention, because we can live some people out. So when we talk about you know, our, our mental models and worldview and frame of reference, we all have a frame of reference. As what David shared about me at the beginning is just a little bit of what make me who I am. That is the programming of my mind being in the us Navy, working for different pharmaceutical, medical devices, company being an athlete being in different parts of the world, doing my research, all of that create my frame of references. But all of you have a frame of reference. And none of us, none of us in this room right now is understanding and processing this information the same way your brain print is as unique as your fingerprint, 7.9 billion people in the world, 7.9 billion way of seeing what we’re seeing here.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
How do we account for so much differences, right? Free, challenging. So all your experiences, whether accurate or inaccurate will impact what you value, what you believe, your attitude and that become what your well view the lenses through which you interpret, what is in front of you. And that’s how you make decisions. And the product that you will produce is based on those experiences and those well viewed mental models and processes that you have built. So if your mental models and your experiences are not accurate, what’s going to happen. You are going to produce, you know, behaviors and products that are not congruent with the person that you want to be. So we need to understand this really well. We have social media and use media, which is very highly influential in the work that we do. And, you know, on a daily basis, where are we consuming information and how that information is impacting, how we think and how we make decision, we need to be clear. We need to be aware of our own biases and the assumptions that we make and take responsibility for that.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
So the question for all of you, all of us here today is do you wanna make decisions without knowing how those decisions are informing your informing them and what impact it might be having in the people that you’re trying to lead and on yourselves? So I tell people it’s not, what is in your wallet, it’s, what’s in your brain, what’s in your brain. We need to understand what is in here and how that is impacting, how we make decisions. So, first things that we need to do to understand is that our mindsets, our mental models, our frame of references not only the limit, but also shape how we understand each other, right? So our frame of references, you know, create the structure of assumptions that we make when we connect with each other. And it’s also our mental models, you know help understand our employees.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
You know, especially when we are recruiting, hiring, retaining we need to, you know, which, which what they believe about achieving, about being connected about feeling like they are part of the organization, but they also help us also understand and impact how we perceive, how we see people and how we perceive reality, our attitude to our certain people, our behaviors, you know, how receptive or friendly we are to our certain people, our attention, which part of a person do we pay much more attention to our listening skill. Do we listen actively to certain people, but other people we don’t. And we know, and we know that male voices seems to capture more attention than women, you know, voices, how do we close that gap and micro reformation, who do we comfort, or, you know, more than others, especially right now in a moment where we are experiencing so much, you know, crisis mental health issue, burnouts.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
So when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, your best weapon is a process of attention and intentional. Self-Awareness the more aware you become of yourself, the better you are going to be at doing this work. And we also need to ask ourselves, what traps are we you know, what, what might we possibly fall into when we are doing this work? So we need to understand a lot of what happening in our context, when it comes to the United States, we have about 58 million Hispanic, Latino, according to Nielsen, we got about 44 million African-American 16 million Asian Americans. And we have about the LGBTQ plus communities between 10 to 12, you know, million people within each and every one of those groups, there is a vast range of of, of diversity. There are diversity, not only of thoughts of opinion, but also there is diversity that is not even, you know accounted for because we cannot see it.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
But then there are also generational, you know, diversity, and then let’s not forget you know, generations like millennials, you know, they expect the organization that they work with to be an organization that is focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. So here’s a model that came as a result of my work in the middle east, in India, Southeast Asia and Latin America. We call ’em the four I model for transformational leadership in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. It should be in your handout. The first I is for is for identity and identity is not just understanding who you are. It’s really understanding who you are at the deepest level. Do you know how to identify your emotions? Do you know how you wire, how you think, how you process information? You know, I’m a maximizer. I know that in the StrengthFinder I’m, I am an T J in the Meyers Bri.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
I am an integration when it comes to the intercultural, developmental inventory, all of these things, all of these, you know, psychometrics assessment, inventory date, help you understand yourself a little bit better. And by understanding myself better, I’m also able to understand the others around me. The second one is integration and integration is now that I understand myself, do I understand other people for those of you who have done emotional intelligence, not as how close this model follow the emotional intelligence model, right? Self-Awareness right. Self-Management social awareness, relationship management. It is the same. So emotional intelligence and, and system thinking cannot be divorced from cultural competency. And this model, because it’s followed the same pattern. When I talk about integration, we need to understand that context really matter. In some context, I am part of the dominant culture. In some context, I am not.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
And being part of the dominant culture, brings some power differentials. It is important to understand that as well, right? So context really matter, in which context are you relating to people in which context you are interacting, communicating, or designing for your organization context really matter. So integration is about understanding the other and the proximity to which you engage other people, intrinsic motivation. And now we go notice that the first one identity go from ego to the, you know, from the internal integration, you step outside to the ego. Now, intrinsic motivation. You come back to the ego. Why do I do the things that I do? Am I interrogating my thoughts, questioning my thoughts, my motivation for, you know, for doing what I’m doing. So constant process of critical reflection, and the last one is influence and influence is now that you can, that you understand yourself better.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
You understand the context and the people around you. Do you understand your motivation and your inspiration for doing what you do? How do you create the conditions where those around you can become the best version of themselves that is influence in case you wondering about the two picture? It’s just two images that I used to talk about. What transformational leadership and transactional leadership I heard in India, the phrase nothing grow on their Banian tree. And when you look at a Banian tree, this roof system can take, you know, a whole, you know, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 acres. I mean, it can take, you know, quite a bit out of a land. And once that tree die, nothing grows on their Aban tree. On the other hand, I grew up with a banana tree. When you plant a banana tree at six months, you get another banana tree from the same root.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
At 12 months, you get another banana tree from the same root. At 18 months, you get another one, the 18 months produces the fruit and die, but you have four generations coming. So for transformational leadership, my thing is, can you create the stage or share the stage with those that need to be developing to becoming future leaders? Are you okay doing that? Are you producing life in yourself and yourself? And in other people, that’s what transformational leadership is about. And then how do we understand, how do we use this information to understand how to address problem when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Let me say this on a daily basis in corporations, in our society, we talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging almost all day long. It is one of the most talk about topics. Unfortunately, it is one of the least understood. We assume for the most part that we understand, you know, when you know the, in, in the same manner, what we’re talking about, what we don’t to assume that we understand what these things mean in the same way that I do can create misunderstanding in communication.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
We have a common language when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, but we do not have shared meaning. It means something different to a lot of people. And to assume that we have shared meaning can get you in a lot of trouble. So we need to understand what the things are. So the first things is, as we are dealing with structural barriers with system, you know, systemic issues, we need to understand the asset culture. We are what we call reactive culture. We are reacting to the things that are at the surface, the things that are visible, and therefore we treat symptoms for the most, for the most, you know, for the most part, we are not treating the issues at the source. When we look below the iceberg, we can see the tango web of issues that are creating what you’re seeing at the surface.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
This is true for organizations, and this is true for individuals. So when we start looking down, we can see the structural barrier, the system limitations, personal disconnect, and at the bottom, the source of which, which creates some of the problem that we’re seeing is what is us. And David just pointed out a moment ago because we don’t trust, we don’t trust. And that creates all these issues that you see here. So how do you address? So when organization come to me and ask me about doing D I B work, this is where I start, and this is the model by Robert Livingstone. How do we use the, you know, the press model to make decision? The first question is about condition and condition is about this. Do you understand the problem that you’re trying to solve? And do you understand the root cause of that problem?

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
Do you understand the problem that you’re trying to solve and the root cause of that problem? Not every organization is the same for that reason. There’s no such a thing as a magic bullet or a program. Do you understand the problem and that you understand the root cause of that problem? That will be the PR. And when it comes to concern, is do you care enough about the problem and the people that is harming? Do you care enough about the problem and the people that is harming and that’s empathy, but I will be Frank with you. I prefer compassion. And right now as we can see what’s happening in the world, we need more compassion. I think it’s one of the eight pillars that David brought up compassion will get you closer, you know, to the person, compassion in the Latin, mean to suffer with the other, to enter into the suffering of the other people.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
And I know that is countercultural. You know, people don’t like suffering, but it will help us develop more connection with other people. And when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, it’s understanding the lived experience of other people. When we said I am colorblind, I don’t see color. We all human. What you’re doing is you’re minimizing those differences that really matter to people. And by minimizing those differences, you are also denying the lived experience of the individual. So the next question is about correction and correction is, do I have a strategy to address the, you know, the problem, right? And when I talk about a strategy, I tell leaders don’t think about on a strategic plan, think about on a strategic process. When it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, it’s about selling the ship, because guess what, you’re gonna get these storms coming back and forth, and it’s gonna be very difficult.

Dr. Ramon A. Pastrano IV:
You need to learn how to pivot. So to lack yourself into a, plan’s not gonna help you. So having an strategic process, a D E I B roadmap is the best, you know answer to that particular problem. And the last question is the most important is are you willing to do whatever it takes to do this work right? And that mean stand with courage in the gap right now that we are facing that we are, you know, experiencing not to go with the narratives or the rhetoric that we’re hearing in social media, news media, but understand that this is good for the organization. And for individuals. In fact, you will see pretty soon here, how diverse team in organizations that have diverse team are always going to outperform homogeneous teams, diverse team that are culturally competent, will outperform homogeneous teams in every single study. And they will increase more collaboration, more innovation, more sustainability, more profitability. So correction is, are you willing to do whatever it takes to do this work, right?

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 announce that the trusted leader summit is coming back next year, November 7-9, 2023 at the JW Marriot 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 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. 87: Horst Schulze on How To Deal With A Customer Complaint

In this episode, we revisit David’s interview with Horst Schulze, Founding Member and Former President and COO of The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, Founder of The Capella Hotel Group, Expert in Residence at Arch + Tower, and author, where they discuss how to deal with a customer complaint.

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

Mr. Schulze’s Bio:
A legend and leader in the hotel world, Horst Schulze’s teachings and vision have reshaped the concepts of service and hospitality across industries.

Mr. Schulze’s professional life began more than 65 years ago as a server’s assistant in a German resort town. Throughout the years he worked for both Hilton Hotels and Hyatt Hotels Corporation before becoming one of the founding members of The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company in 1983. There Mr. Schulze created the operating and service standards that have become world famous.

During his tenure at The Ritz Carlton, Mr. Schulze served as President and COO responsible for the $2 billion operations worldwide. It was under his leadership that The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company became the first service-based company to be awarded the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award — twice.

In 1991, Mr. Schulze was recognized as “corporate hotelier of the world” by HOTELS magazine. In 1995, he was awarded the Ishikawa Medal for his personal contributions to the quality movement. In 1999, Johnson & Wales University gave him an honorary Doctor of Business Administration degree in Hospitality Management.

Most recently, Mr. Schulze has been honored as a “Leader in Luxury” by Travel Agent magazine and its sister publication Luxury Travel Advisor.

After leaving The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, Mr. Schulze went on to found The Capella Hotel Group. This luxury hotel company managed some of the most elite properties worldwide, and gave Mr. Schulze the opportunity to further define the luxury hotel industry, receiving countless awards and recognitions.

Today, Mr. Schulze serves as Expert in Residence at Arch + Tower, a boutique, organizational strategy consulting firm. He recently completed his first book on Excellence Wins.

Mr. Schulze’s Links:
Website: https://horstschulze.com/
Additional Leadership Content: https://needtolead.com/
“Excellence Wins” by Horst Schulze: https://amzn.to/3tRb8l5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHorstSchulze
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehorstschulze/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/horstschulze/

Key Quotes:
1. “The greatest driver of eventual loyalty is the caring piece.”
2. “The product is not creating loyalty.”
3. “Loyalty is nothing but trust.”
4. “Trust is not created with a product, its created with the relationship moment.”
5. “Taking something away from the customer is not efficiency.”
6. “Hope is not a process. Hope is not a strategy.”
7. “Behavior cannot be taught after you’re 16 years old, unless there is a significant emotional event.”
8. “A team is a group of people that have a common objective.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
“Excellence Wins” by Horst Schulze: https://amzn.to/3tRb8l5

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 Horst Schulze, founding member, and former president and COO of the Ritz Carlton hotel company, founder of the Capella hotel group expert in residence at arch + tower and author to discuss how to deal with a customer complaint. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

David Horsager:
You know, you talk about three universals. Tell us about those.

Horst Schulze:
Well, the, the, the expectation of the customer, I guess that’s what we talk about. Yeah, well, yes, it’s in universe, the market, you can look at your market over there. What is a market or potential market and you, there are two or three things for sure they want, so you better have processes and systems on measurements if you deliver it. And that’s a subconscious expectation like that. What you have anybody has, you want the product to be defect free. You know, I always use an example of bottle of water. If you buy a bottle of water, you don’t want anything to swim in there. You expect subconsciously that is defect free. Number two, very important by the way, and you have to underline it 10 times is timeliness. Everything. Today is very important that your timely responses that you, you, you want that bottle of water when you want it.

Horst Schulze:
And you want an immediate answer to your email, et cetera said timeliness. So not that time minutes. So no defect timeness and number three, what you want? The one, the people that give it to you, the bottle of water or whatever it is to be nice to you to care for you. Now, here’s the, here’s the crazy thing I, and I, and why businesses don’t get that. The creative driver over venture subscriber of eventual satisfaction, eventu loyalty is the caring piece, which means you have to, you have to process and make sure that there’s excellence and relationship between your employees, between you and those that buy from you. The product is not creating loyalty. Loyalty is nothing but trust. They trust you the three times of customer, very fast as the one that distrust you, who are, who are, who are terrorists against your company. Now they go on social media, whatever destroy you. Then the loyal done, the satisfied one. They got night next door. If they, they think there’s a better deal. And then is the one that are loyal to you. Why are the loyal they’re trusting you? And trust is not creative with a product it’s created with the relationship moment.

David Horsager:
Only the relationship. You say this in the book, page 77. I highlighted it. Every relationship in life starts out with distrust.

Horst Schulze:
That’s correct it the moment when I meet you, I, I, I don’t know who you, I don’t, I, I’m not gonna trust you with anything. I mean, and, and of course it moves right away to neutral. It depends on the subconscious decision that I make about you. That, and that depends on how we say alone and, and, and how my thinking is how we look and so on. We can’t help that. Now society tells you other BS and Delta, you should be, look this ridiculous. The fact is we’re human being does how we react. We react distrust. It moves to neutral and, and in business, or in relationship, you try to move it as POS as fast as possible to trust. And that depends on your behavior and how you think that it’s that simple. No, if you don’t mind for a moment, please, that’s part of human excellence. Human excellence is, is from, from is number one. If you do your very best in your functions that you fulfill in life, number two, do your very best in relationship. And of course, number three, do your very best morally if I put those things together. But it’s the relationship piece, that piece, which creates opinion and others about you or your organization.

David Horsager:
Number three, you talk about morally, and it seems like we have some challenges in our world today. And I think it’s interesting, even in the book, you talked about the benedicting model that you went by of tr you know, treating everyone as if they were Christ welcoming them this way. Tell me about that.

Horst Schulze:
Yeah, well at Benedict and you, you understand Benedict from the monasteries in Europe and the MOS were used as shelters when you travel through the land. And he wrote to his Arab in 500 as one, the first teaching that I learned, I could find on teaching hospitality. He said, if a, if a traveler arrives, treat him as if it was Jesus himself. In fact, if you’re the, a, you should wash his feet and end in fact, if you’re the, and the, the trouble is by himself and you are on a fast break, the fast and have dinner with them. So he’s not by himself now. And if that is hospitality, how close can I come to that today? so I have to question myself that if that

David Horsager:
yeah. How does that play out in a Ritz Carlton or your work today?

Horst Schulze:
Well, my, my work today, by the way, after it’s called, I formed a group called Capella, which has sold a little bit over a year ago, which Capella would tell, and, and body was just bought the best hotel in the world. So the philosophy works everywhere, and it worked in five continents in, in Ritz car, five continents, everywhere we were, when I was running the company, we were the leader absolute. And how does it, how does it work out the same way you, you come as close as possible, make sure that you, you creating is exceptional because it is, it is in that initial contact where the customer makes a decision about you subconsciously. Now he, or she may change that decision going forward, but there’s a pretty deep decision being made in the initial conduct. So we taught, for example, no matter what you are doing, if a, if a customer comes within nine feet, three meters, you look up, you do stand up, you look him an eye and say, good afternoon, welcome or more, whatever.

Horst Schulze:
So you establish this positive in their mind immediately, which makes them feel respected and looks. They make them feel about that. You are a professional in what you’re doing in your service world. So it, it very important moments and always say, and again, and instead of saying, okay, when the guest wants something, say, I’m happy to do that. It’s my pleasure. It etcetera. So we had about 20 points, which we taught, which were non-negotiable that had to happen any customer interaction and had to happen superior to anybody else who, who is in the business. That’s we taught, we keep on teaching that, reminding them every day of it.

David Horsager:
I love that because you know, one of the pillars of trust is consistency. If you’re late all the time, I’ll trust you to be late. If you speak, you know, it’s the only way to build a reputation or brand is consistency. And I know you teach those every single day, but what about, I’ve got a complainer and I’ve got someone whining and you have a whole process for how you deal with a complaint. How do you do it?

Horst Schulze:
Yeah, well, we, we call that problem resolution. In fact, every employee was certified in problem resolution, because again, the three types of customer, remember that the, the, the, the terrorist they satisfied and the ambassador, you are ambassador customer. And I want ’em to all the ambassadors. Now, if the, if the customer has a problem, there is a potential terrorist. So in that moment, we taught our employees. If the guest has a complaint to first of all, to follow five steps, if you will, number one, listen, very careful. Listen, attentive. Number two, empathize, number three, apologize. Number four, make corrections when necessary. Number four, delight with that. We, if you have a complaint about something and to the bus point in the morning, hypothetically that the bus point afterwards said, I feel so bad about it. I buy your breakfast. Now the key element in the apology is, forgive me, not forgive them, because we know that over 96% of customers that have a concern and complain, they don’t want anything.

Horst Schulze:
They just want to get rid of their frustration. So we have to show that we take it empathize. Forgive me. I’m I’m so sorry. I make sure it will be corrected. Yes. And, but not say, well, they do it all done and them, I don’t have, I don’t. I have nothing to do with the TV in your room. I’m a bus boy. No. And, and, and why wouldn’t your, all your employees be taught that way because you don’t want customer running in the situation where, when we said, while I tell them happens all the time and you be, and you make a terrorist. Instead, if the passport says, please forgive me here. He moves our immediately being an ambassador. He’s amazed.

David Horsager:
And, and you give leeway to, for everybody it’s trained every day. By the way, every single day, these 24 principles are trained. So people hear them every day and people, and, and one, one noteworthy piece was when you, when you said you, you give everybody a, up to $2,000 to decide themselves how they can take care of somebody. And, and all of a sudden you’ve got the whole team buying metal detectors and finding a wedding wedding ring, right?

Horst Schulze:
That’s right. Well, I, I have to laugh every time this subject comes up because you have to understand David. That sounds like a story today at the time. And I said, every employee has to write up to $2,000. It was a nuclear bump, went off. the investors everybody’s declared me insane. They want to put me in asylum. I mean, you want fast boys to give $2,000 away. Everybody, the dormant, no. I want them to keep the customer. I want, I want to tell them, I want to tell each employee, I trust you with that decision.

David Horsager:
So this goes, this gets well to your your four Supreme objectives. And this changed the way I thought about business, because number one, isn’t get customers. Number one is what you talked about right there. And that is customer customers. Tell me about the four. Tell our, our audience about these four Supreme objectives. Just

Horst Schulze:
Think about if you’re on an organization, what are the four principle things that you have to work processes behind and organize and, and measure and so on. For me, absolute number one, and it cannot be on by two, three and four, absolute number one, keep the customers that they have. And that of of course, was one decision that we made. Okay. We make sure we keep them and, and particular today. You, you business people, you must understand that today, a dissatisfied customer can go out and destroy you on the internet and in social media. So number one, keep the customer and every employee should be aligned to that. That’s called alignment. Number two, what you do find new ones, of course, but much to dissatisfied ones that you have to the loyal ones that you have. Number three, what you do get as much money as you can from the customer.

Horst Schulze:
Oh, oh, oh. Without, without losing them with other words, you’re giving value. And it has to be very clear charge as much as you can. My goodness, we have some hotels now with Capella a thousand dollars a night and so on. And, and when, and we are busy than anybody else, because we are given value for it. So number one, keeping number two, new ones, number two, make sure you get money. Number four, efficiency, efficiency, you, you don’t do it blowing money. You do it efficiently. Well, not cost cutting because that’s what everybody is an expert in, particularly in my business that comes to order from, from, from corporate office, somewhere in the world, to a hotel, somewhere in the world and saying, we need a more efficiency. And what do they do? Take the flowers away from the customer. Taking something away from the customer is not efficiency. It’s cost cutting, looking at your own processes and make sure without changing the outcome, you save money. That is a efficiency that you do that by limiting your own mistakes, et cetera, et cetera.

David Horsager:
I like the, you know, these four and, and, and there’s so many people that talk about getting new customers. How do you get clients? How do you get clients? And it’s so much easier, better, and more fun to keep customers. And I, I just, I love where you start with this because it made our thinking, are, are we really taking care of those that we have well, and that, you know, changed our business and they tell others,

Horst Schulze:
They tell, well, think about, think, think you have a hardware store. I don’t care. And it should be. Everybody’s objective in that store that works for you and yourself. That as soon as somebody walks in there, you convince them by you caring that they will come back. Even if they don’t buy anything this time that you are there for them, that you respect them. And that they, you have to look at that and, and then process this. And you, you hope is not a process. Hope is not a strategy. You have to then make sure processes are created by selecting the right employee by teaching them right, by reminding them by role playing for them, everything.

David Horsager:
I like what you said also in the book about we don’t hire, we select, in fact, you want to, you select, at least you gotta have 10 people to select one, but how do you get it? Right. So many people, I was just reading a study recently that said, people get hiring executives, right? Whether they do assessments or not about 51% of the time.

Horst Schulze:
That’s correct. That’s okay. Smart. Let’s think about that. What if I can move it to 55%, I’m winning have a better team. And that was my, and I, I was really struggling on that for years and have tried all kind of things to run into an organization that helped me to assess what talent is needed in each job that I have. And then assess, be able to ask question and says, if that talent exists in the person that applies for the chart. And, and, and, and it turned out when they said don’t hire, they were 90%, right? If they say higher, they were 70%. Right. But it’s better than 50 50. So I spend the money. I want to have people that I want to have the team that I know is a better team than they have my competition had. And so we, we use this exclusively, very careful from dishwasher to vice president. Mm-Hmm everybody, but, but what’s the result. Let, give you one result the all, if there’s hotels on the restaurant, people listening, you know, that our industry has over a hundred percent turn over a year. So with other words of knowledge books right out door again, we pro our, our turn over down and rich count to under 20% while the industry stood over hundred percent. So my, the knowledge was staying inside.

David Horsager:
Absolutely.

Horst Schulze:
And of course the saving with money of that and long term, of course, in the beginning, it costs money, but long term, keep you keep more customers who save money. You have knowledge

David Horsager:
And keeping the employees. I mean, if, if you even figure, I don’t know for sure the hotel industry, but I meant in many industries, even frontline, the, the cost of turn or retention of something you want to keep is at least two and a half times hiring costs. So of course, you’re, you’re saving millions right there.

Horst Schulze:
Oh, it goes without saying, that’s the right thing.

David Horsager:
So, you know, you’re an expert in customer service and in people and relationships, but there are some difficult people out there. You talked about something in the book that I was fascinated by, because this is what I liked about the book. It wasn’t this Pollyanna, just this, or just that it was a balanced, big view. But you know, there are jerks that just wanna take something away from you and you call it the jerk factor.

Horst Schulze:
That’s right. That’s right. Well, it exists, you know? I mean, we, we, particularly in our industry, we like to say, say every guest is right. And I will tell all, everybody in our, my organization, every guest is right all the time, but I also know that’s not true. , it’s just simply, it’s not, except I, I look, everybody knows that I delegated, I mean, I delegated everybody up to $2,000, et cetera, et cetera, decision making. But I didn’t delegate that. You could say a customer is a jerk because otherwise, pretty soon, if you have a problem with a customer, you meet it, wasn’t you, it was the customer. And that’s not a decision I could delegate. So I said the only one in, in the organization on the, in the hotels, around the world, I’m the only one that can make a decision. If a customer is a jerk or not.

Horst Schulze:
And I understand that sure, we called it a jerk factor and it happened very seldom. And I, I tell the story and there, when the guest called and, and when when my manager called and said, this guest horse, if you like it, or I know we cannot draw guest out hotel, but this guest is impossible. Here’s everything that happened, including he pinched some ladies and the club lounge. I said, okay, that’s a joke. Now. Here’s what he do. You throw him out, but you do it to its garden way. You double lock his room. You have a limousine ready for him. You have a reservation ready in another hotel. And you tell him, look, we are here to make sure every guest is happy. You are obviously not happy because he was complaining every day. Now we have tried everything. We don’t know what else.

Horst Schulze:
The last thing we can try now is this. We got another hotel for you. And the beautiful li in, we have people stand by to help you packing and carrying everything down. And, and, and they will. They made sure that they have a beautiful room for you. So you are, you’re gone. and of course I knew he would find me. I that’s clear. They find you. And, and when, when I answered telephone, there was somebody screaming. I will own you and Sue you. I know that was Mr. Jones. and I say, Mr. Jones, when you Sue me, I will be in the courtroom with the ladies that you pinched, right? So you go right ahead. He didn’t Sue. He showed up again in another hotel of powers, fascinating. And the same thing happened, same thing.

David Horsager:
And you got another hotel ride, another limo ride out of it.

Horst Schulze:
another limo.

David Horsager:
well, I, here’s something interesting. You know, we talk all the time about how do you build trust in crisis? How do you build trust in the midst of change? And one really important thing, even before, you know, these social, the, you know, certain social UN risks, certain, certain pandemic, and all these things we’ve talked about. It’s how you do it. Many people complain about change. Change is gonna happen, but how we deal with people, how we deal with it matters. I watch a big company. You would know, we would all know that basically the way they laid off a thousand people ruined their trust for a decade. And I watched another CEO friend of mine here. You would also know that brand. And in the midst of the pandemic, laid off 2000 people and kept trust with them and the brand and his leadership because of the way he did it. So I think the big, big takeaways here is how we do it matters in how we keep or build trust in the midst of change. Change is gonna keep happening

Horst Schulze:
Well in, in, in difficult circumstances, what is strange to understand people, all of a sudden change their vision and their values. If you, that means they ne never really existed. I mean, the one thing that cannot change no matter what the situation is, if in, in the case of Capella, we, we said we will be the FiNet service organization in the world. In the case of Wisconsin, we said our vision was, we will be the finest brand and finest hotel company in the world. Well, just because it is a crisis, I don’t change that objective. And we said, here’s our values. We respect everybody, et cetera, et cetera, that change doesn’t change either. So if I respect everybody, all, all investors, guest, and employees, I have to do what I do with total respect, SI, total caring, or I had no values to start with

David Horsager:
You, have you, you talk about, this is interesting because it jumps to something that you call the most important speech. And your, your way of onboarding is very significant. As far as getting people bought in, in fact you said something I want to see if I have it, human beings cannot relate to orders and direction. They relate and respond enthusiastically to motives and objectives. And that kinda leads into your most important speech. Tell us about it.

Horst Schulze:
People. What, what, what you want from your employees, no matter what organization, part of what you want for them is the right behavior, the right attitude, the right behavior. But behavior cannot be taught after 16 years old, unless there is a significant emotional when in alive, in the first day of work is a significant emotion event. And what do we do? They arrive. We let them fill out some papers. And then the manager makes this pathetic speech of being a team. We are a team here. Well, wait a minute. Without giving an objective or

David Horsager:
A family.

Horst Schulze:
yeah. All family. Yeah. All we family. Yeah. And what is a team? A team is a group of people who have a common objective and help each other too, without objective, but we don’t give them their objective. After all, they’re only here to fulfill a function. That was the first mistake. We should hire them to become part of us and not just fulfill the function. So the, the, the employee come in and we done. And then after making our, our speech, we say the new way bill work with Joe over here, he knows the ropes, the rope speech. I mean, the it’s so pathetic, everything. I mean, you’re not in a role business. So instead of telling them the first day who you are showing me in what we do join me in the dreams. And here is the dream that we have. I’m giving them purpose because even, even Aris startle said people to, to do well in life, need purpose and belonging.

Horst Schulze:
So why wouldn’t I give it the first day, given the purpose, tell ’em why? Tell ’em how our desire, our purpose, our dream of becoming known as the finest will benefit. Everybody. In fact will define you in you, the individual employee and, and why not explain it all and, and explain the first day, align them to the thinking of our customer, connected to the thinking and the being of the organization. Now they’re part of something rather than just fulfilling the function. I always said, David, the chair in which you’re sitting is fulfilling a function, but we are dealing with human beings. We have to recognize that

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 or wherever you get your podcast, as this is a great way to help support the show and help others to discover it. And don’t forget to subscribe, to find out when we release a new 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. 86: David Horsager on The 3 Questions That Drive Strategic Clarity

In this episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 Trusted Leader Summit where David takes the stage to discuss the 3 questions that drive strategic clarity.

Learn more about the 2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com

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

David’s Bio:
David Horsager, MA, CSP, CPAE is the CEO of Trust Edge Leadership Institute, Trust Expert in Residence at High Point University and The Wall Street Journal best-selling author of The Trust Edge, The Daily Edge, and Trusted Leader. He is also a podcaster, creator of the Enterprise Trust Index™, and director of one of the nation’s foremost trust studies, The Trust Outlook®.

Horsager has advised leaders and delivered life-changing presentations on six continents, with audiences ranging from Delta, FedEx, and Toyota to the New York Yankees, MIT and the Department of Homeland Security.

His work has been featured in prominent media such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and MSNBC. Through speaking, training, consulting, and coaching, David and his team at Trust Edge Leadership Institute make it their mission to develop trusted leaders and organizations. With his trademark 8 Pillar Framework, David breaks trust down into tangible steps that can be leveraged right away to build a high-trust culture— because high-trust leaders and organizations bring out the best in their people and get measurable results.

David’s Links:
Website: https://davidhorsager.com/
“Trusted Leader” by David Horsager: https://amzn.to/3luyqf1
LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2Xbsg5q
Facebook: https://bit.ly/2S9O6mj
Twitter: https://bit.ly/2BEXgla
Instagram: https://bit.ly/2QDFOE5

Key Quotes:
1. “The why is critical in times of change.”
2. “A final how is always something you can actually act on today or tomorrow.”
3. “A final how always has a who, a when, and a where.”
4. “Co-leadership is terrible!”
5. “If you have more than one person on a final task, you have 50% less chance of it ever getting done.”
6. “Stress goes down when clarity goes up.”
7. “We’re in a more critical world than we’ve ever been in without the ability to critically think.” -David’s Older Brother
8. “If you want to be critiqued for a living, give a talk, write a book, or lead anything.”
9. “If you lead anything you will get critiqued for a living, so do what’s right anyway.”

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
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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 David took to this stage to talk about the three questions that drive strategic clarity. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

David Horsager:
There are many questions we ask in strategic planning and while the why is a great question. And I agree with cynic that if you don’t have a why you might last not last 10 days on a project and the why is critical in times of change, most leaders in change, they lose trust. Not because of change. People are used to change since their diapers were, but the problem is people don’t share the why enough and change. So why is a good question?

David Horsager:
Collins and others who talk about the who? That’s a good question. Get the right who’s on the bus. No doubt about it. But often we see still buses full of really fun. Who’s singing kumbaya about their why going right up the cliff, because they’re not asking these three questions. I believe these, these are the three most overlooked underused questions in strategic work. These are the questions that actually give hope. These are the questions that actually take an idea to an action. These three questions. They are the most important questions you have to get good. ’em If you want clarity, this doesn’t by the way, come against a acquaintance colleague friend in this, in the business who just wrote a really good book called who not how that argues. You should just get the right who’s around you and the who’s will kind of solve a lot of your problems. It’s a really good inspiring book. However, there are many things you can’t leverage. Many of us leaders wanna leverage everything. Everybody else do everything. It turns out if you leverage everything in your health, you can hire a great fitness trainer and not get healthy.

David Horsager:
You can hire someone to save your marriage, but it turns out you have to do some work. So the three most important underused questions that actually drive strategic clarity, many of you know it, number one is number two is way more important. And the most important question of all is ladies and gentlemen, you must ask how, at least three times it might take seven.

David Horsager:
I’m much faster explaining it when it’s recorded and cut. So this is what they made me do. I started asking people when I knew that I needed to lose weight, I said, how do you stay fit on the road? Traveling like we do. You know what people told me, eat less exercise. That was not clear enough for me. I said, but how, how, how one idea a doctor came up to me after an event, 80 years old fit as could be. I, he said, David, here’s an idea that actually, I think has a final, how most men, if they just wouldn’t drink their calories, they could eat exactly the same. And they’d lose 30 to 50 pounds. Now, at least that was a clear how cuz I can look at something. Is there calories in that? No, I can drink it. Right? So for six months I didn’t drink a calorie, but the, the point isn’t anything about calories and it certainly isn’t healthcare advice.

David Horsager:
The point is, can I look at it because I would get on a plane and I would have a Coke. Two Cokes was a meal. I didn’t know what I was doing. Now, if you sit next to me on the plane, you’ll notice I order something without calories, but it’s gotta be that clear. You’ve gotta ask how until you’re gonna do something differently today or tomorrow. How, how, how what’s this mean for you? Don’t tell me you’re gonna call people. Don’t tell me, tell me you’re gonna set meetings and tell you, ask how until you’re gonna do something specific today or tomorrow. I do not trust you. How you gonna do that? Okay. Then how are you gonna do that? Okay. Then how are you gonna do that until you’re gonna do something today or tomorrow? And you can always ask how until you can do something today or tomorrow.

David Horsager:
Okay. So the, how is it? How plan is critical. This is a critical part of our work under the clarity pillar. Many of you know, the two sides of clarity. We have strategic clarity in how we communicate that communication clarity. So this comes under strategic it’s after MVP, mission, vision, values, priorities but is when we take something we need to ask how in most people, this is way too much work. You think it’s easy. I’ve had senior executives from a massive company that you all know say it took me. It was the fourth 90 minute meeting where we finally said, oh, I finally got the, how haha. A final, how is always something you can actually act on today or tomorrow doesn’t matter how big your company doesn’t matter how complex your government. We’ve always, you can always do it, but you have how you gonna do then?

David Horsager:
How you gonna do that? Then? How you gonna do it? It was that it was that thing with the, the weight loss thing. I was okay, I’m gonna eat less. Okay. I’m gonna bring in less calories. Okay. Until I can act on it today or tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. That final. How gives hope and you have to do something you will do. If you said to me, David, you can never, never have ice cream again. It’s not gonna happen. So you have to pick something you will do, right. Ha and tell you can do it. I can still remember. One of the biggest healthcare organizations in north America, we were at a private hospital systems. We were at a big private location meeting. I was up on a little stage like this. There was a hundred senior executives and the senior leaders here. We’d done all this trust work. And I said, it happened to be a gentleman, the CEO. I said what would you, what do you actually wanna do? We’ve talked about all this stuff. What do you and your team, what do we want to actually start to solve?

David Horsager:
And he stood up in front of everybody and said, we need a better culture. We’re dying. I said, great. How are you gonna start to have a better culture? And this Harvard graduate, C E O sat down, talked to his team and he stood up and he said, well, we like that clarity pillar. We’re gonna start with that. We’re gonna be more clear. Do I trust him? Not for a second. I honor him. I said, great. How are you gonna be more clear? He sat down. He talked to his team when he was ready, he stood up and said, we’re gonna communicate more. I said, great. How are you gonna communicate more? He sat down, talked to his team when he was ready, he stood up and said, we’re gonna hold each other accountable. After I threw up in my mouth

David Horsager:
I said, how, you know how many companies I go into? They say they have accountability as a value. And they don’t know what it means. Oh, we got accountability. I said, great. How do you hold people accountable here?

David Horsager:
I, you know,

David Horsager:
Accountability stuff. They don’t know. That day we asked how seven more times that leader got to something they could do today. Tomorrow seven, nine years later, they wrote us a letter that said this organization, you would all know. They said that was the tipping point of their organization because all hundred of those senior leaders got to a final, how they could act on today, tomorrow. And we think we got it, but it’s hard. A final. How always has a, who a when and aware. How, how, how, how, how so we do these at least every 90 days in our company, we, you can do it as an individual. You can do it as an organization, but how plans drive clarity. That gives hope because the final, how can actually happen. So when I do it individual, whether it’s me individually, or whether it’s a team, the final, how always has a who, when or aware the, who you’ve been lied to co-leadership is terrible. What does the data say? If you have more than one person on the final task, you have 50%, less chance of ever getting done. You can’t have bill and Jane

David Horsager:
All person. If you say, well, David, I know these co look at this successful company with co CEOs. We look at that. You’ll find if they’re successful and healthy, they have two different roles, even though they call themselves that, I mean, this is in life. Isn’t it having more than one person I’m not pushing. Let’s just take four or away from traditional marriage. But whatever in marriage, if you have, if you don’t have some role separation, you know how much stress that is? You mean you both, let’s say you both work. You both get home every night, you got a sparkle or what do you call it? Rock, paper scissors for okay. Who’s gonna do dishes tonight. Who’s gonna mow lawn tonight. Who’s gonna do this tonight. Every time you do that, you know how peaceful it is? Oh, I know they got the lawn.

David Horsager:
Oh, I know they got the meal. Doesn’t mean don’t help each other. But stress goes down when clarity goes up and a final, how always has a who? And by the way, it takes away stress from that person. Because if they don’t know if they totally got it or someone else doesn’t mean they don’t need help, doesn’t mean we don’t CLA we still have the connection bill, but you’ve got to drive the final. How to one, it gives them peace. They know what they own. How, how, how, how, how, how, how it might take seven might take 10, but we have to how it, until we can act on it today or tomorrow. How, how, how, so? First of all, we’ve gotta get this right? We’ve got to get good at this. If we’re gonna get the clarity pillar. So at your table, ah, think of just for now, just for, for 90 seconds, I wanted you to see how fast, if you haven’t done this, I want you to see how fast you can start to solve your biggest issue. One of your biggest issues.

David Horsager:
You ask how until you can do something, not everything, just something. Okay. So don’t get to everything, but we try to go backwards to a Keystone habit because somebody will say, well, I wanna start to read more. Well, great. You’ve had that opportunity for years. How you gonna do that? Oh, I’m just gonna read more. No, you’re not. How, how you gonna do that? Well, I suppose I should get a book. Yeah, that’s one. Okay. How you gonna get a book? Oh, I’m gonna get on Amazon. Do I trust you yet? No. How? Until you tell me at the next break, I’m gonna get on. I’m gonna punch this on my Amazon account or whatever. Right. Then you get to a final how see I’m gonna get up earlier. Good idea. You’ve been able to do that for a while. How you gonna do it?

David Horsager:
Ah, just get up. No, ah, set an alarm. Okay. You’ve done that. Okay. How you, maybe it’s all the way back to, I need to go bed earlier and then maybe I have to put something. So I start getting ready for bed earlier, but I have to go backwards so I can actually do something. How, how, how until you will do something today or tomorrow, are we clear? This is really critical. And this is a differentiator for all the people we’ve seen triple sales, lose weight, get this clarity pillar to actually take an idea to an action. So let’s do it. Take one thing right now on your journal. Put it down. What do you want to change? Try to be as specific as possible. What’s something you’d like to change. Let’s say in 90 days it can be at work. It can be at home.

David Horsager:
I’d like to gain 10 pounds. I’d like to have a better relationship with my kids. But if you do that, let’s say you want a better relationship with your, your kid. Try to think. Well, where am I right now? Just a gut check. You don’t need to do an assessment. Oh, I feel like it’s about a six out of 10. I’d like it to feel like a nine outta 10 in 90 days. Then you, how, how, how well, I’m just gonna start to try. I’m gonna, how, how and tell you tell, oh, I’m gonna write a note to them every day. For the next 90 days by breakfast, you got something.

David Horsager:
How, how, how, how, how, and this, this can change personal relationship. It can change sales. It can change your, your team, but the, how are we clear on the, how it has to be something you can act on today, tomorrow? And you have to have something you can do. So what is the thing you would like to do? Put one thing down. Maybe you thought about it today. Maybe it was, I want to increase this pillar. Well, what do I wanna do? Maybe I want to whatever it is, put something down at the top that you want personally. Okay. This is just for you. Thank you. We’re just gonna stay silent for about 90 seconds on this one. What are you gonna do? Okay. What’s the thing you wanna change. Everybody wants to change something

David Horsager:
Tomorrow. We’re gonna talk just briefly about habit change and what it really takes or some of the things it really takes most people miss, but this is part of it, getting this clear now, okay, you got that thing now. You’re gonna how it put a how? Okay. What’s that first? How, okay. I’m gonna, I mean, the simple, it’s simple, obviously on this one and I don’t judge anybody, the calorie thing, we’re all working on different things in our lives. Are we not? I’m working on other things today. And I was, then we’re all working on different things. I hope. But on that thing, I say, okay, how I gotta take in less care? How am I gonna do that? Okay. How am I gonna do that? How am I gonna, until I can do it today or tomorrow, be ready. We’re gonna share this in a moment.

David Horsager:
If you’re willing, if it’s private, no problem. You don’t have to, but try to get this to a, how you could do tomorrow morning and interesting thing at a football over here. Mike one of the university football teams that said we took them, helped them go from three and seven to seven and three in a year was a team that took this process. And every every week, every position, the pitch decision group and the team would, whatever happened last Sunday or Saturday in their case. And they would like, okay, we want this. We wanna win next week. Ha ha. I’m gonna do it. How’s my position group. Ha ha haha. Until we can actually do something today or tomorrow. Okay. Let me give you silence for a minute 60 seconds and see if you can get to a final, how that you can act on today or tomorrow.

David Horsager:
So that that’s the point is so when you do this on teams, you know it, some of you know, the full 90 day, quick plan process, which starts with three other questions, which is why you gotta have a strong enough why you don’t last on a project. So why am I actually doing this? The, the then the next question is where am I right now on this? So here’s where I am. Where do I want to be in 90 days? Okay. This is where I’m going. And then of course it goes to how, how, how, and it might, the point of this is it might take 10 hows. It might take however many, it’s not a final how until you can do it, act on it today or tomorrow. So when you do this on teams, you you’re, you’re, you’re getting to something somebody can do starting to. Then they have hope. Now sometimes, and we’re not gonna take and do this together in this session, but on teams sometimes you’ll get to things that you think someone else should do. Oh, I found a final hall for that CEO. I found a final hall for that superintendent. I found a final Hal for them. Can’t ever do it.

David Horsager:
It always has to be something you can do. So let’s take something. Let’s say you’re doing it as a team. And you came to a final, how you came to something that you really think would help the company that would help the organization, but you don’t have overall control. So how do you get buy in on an idea? I’m just gonna jump to this in my head really quick here. I hope it’s what I’m supposed to say. Gonna give you five, five words that actually create buy-in and two questions. If you can’t do it, but the CEO, the manager, the senior leader, you need them to do this things. What do people actually, what gives, what helped you get buy in one number one, empathy. I know you’re busy. I know you got a million ideas. I know you got all these people coming to you. I know you got people pulling on you. I know you got all this, but I just wonder like coming to them and putting your feet in their shoes. Because if you wanna get critiqued for a living, my, my wise older brother, economist is known for saying we’re in a more critical world than we’ve ever been in without the ability to critically think

David Horsager:
You wanna be critiqued for a living. You want that to be your role in life. Give a talk, right? Something’s wrong? Oh, he’s from Minnesota. You should have won a tie. I mean something. I mean, you get critiqued. If you speak, write a book or lead anything, you lead anything. You will get critiqued for a living. So do what’s right. Anyway, you have to, that’s your call if you wanna lead. And I talked about some of you school boards, right? Where’s okay. You, if you don’t wanna get critiqued for a living, don’t be on a school board. That’s your role in life? You have to do what’s right. Anyway. So you’re gonna get critiqued, but, but number one, start empathy. Number two is you do need to have some credibility for this. Like here’s a way forward. I may not know everything, but here’s, here’s a pathway forward. Here’s some credibility. And I want to share another thing, but, but I, if you have, you know, this is the balance of humility and credibility in, in work is it’s great to have humility, but you have to ha they have to trust that you know something about this. Another idea, another part of getting buy-in from others when you don’t have control is conviction.

David Horsager:
Some people there’s other, some people have said David, about that trust work. Why, what, when we have your show conviction, when you do your own research or write your own stuff or, or you’re in it, or you see it, I have deep, deep, deep conviction about, I don’t have deep conviction about horse soccer, David. I can’t spell my last name. I couldn’t tell eighth grade, whatever, but trust I have conviction. People will buy in. If you have conviction, that’s genuine. Next is anticipation. They buy in when they anticipate something changing. This is why on the way on certain things that you got a picture before and after of anything, oh, I could be like that. I might buy in. Oh, you mean you’re my leader. And you could lead me to this better place with a culture where people actually could perform at their best. I, I want to join in on that, cuz I’m anticipating a different culture, a non poisonous one, a different place. So I might buy in on that. So, eh, empathy, conviction, anticipation, credibility. And of course the final one is authenticity. If we’re not authentic, everybody can tell miles away. In fact, the top question senior hires were asking in one study over the last several years is, is it real? They’ve been lied to generation, right? Is that real? Is that virtual? Is it not? Is it this? Is that, what is it really real? Is that picture on Instagram real or not? Is it real?

David Horsager:
They will buy in if they feel like in a way, if you are genuine and real. So those are five, five ways to get buy in two questions.

David Horsager:
The first question is why if I go to a senior leader and your final, how and your, how plan was, we need them to think about this idea differently. I’m gonna give I, we tell, we talked to our team about having five why’s. Why is the question? But you might have five of them. Hey, I know you got a lot of priorities to consider. I know you get all that stuff, but here’s five. Why’s maybe it’s three whys, but here’s the why behind why I think this would help us. And if you have a narcissistic leader, one ear wise has to be something that would make them look really.

David Horsager:
Here’s why this would. And by the way, you people could actually maybe follow you or they’d like you or this would help you. Or you might get that promotion or you might what, right. And the other question is, if you can, with five whys, bring a how or two as possibilities that you’ve thought of your chances go up dramatically with the senior leader. Here’s an idea. I don’t know if this would work, but here’s why you use those five others I’m with empathy and all this, but then you said here’s a couple ideas I thought of for this that would really help us, I think is we could either do maybe this process for it or this, your chances go up on, on getting buy-in from senior leaders. Does that make sense?

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 trusted leader summit is happening again. Next year, November 7th, through the ninth, 2023 at the JW Marriot mall of America here in Minnesota, if you wanna find out more information or even register head to trusted leader, summit.com for all the information, and if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate a review on apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. 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. 85: University Leaders on How To Cascade A Culture Of Trust

In this episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 Trusted Leader Summit where David sat down with Dr. Brent Hales, Associate Dean, College of Agricultural Sciences and Director of Penn State Extension, and Lisa Kaslon, Professional Development Coordinator and Extension Educator at University of Nebraska – Lincoln Extension, to discuss how to cascade a culture of trust in your organization.

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

Dr. Brent’s Bio:
Brent Hales serves as an Associate Dean, College of Agricultural Sciences and Director of Penn State Extension. He received a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Brigham Young University, a master’s degree in sociology from Middle Tennessee State University, and a Ph.D. in rural sociology from Iowa State University. Dr. Hales previously served as the Senior Associate Dean and Chief Financial Officer of the University of Minnesota Extension, Associate Dean for the University of Minnesota Extension Center for Community Vitality and the Director of the University of Minnesota Crookston, Economic Development Authority University Center.

His primary area of research is holistic community and economic development and entrepreneurship. He is the founder the Southern Entrepreneurship Program, which teaches entrepreneurship skills to high school and community college students, and to displaced workers throughout the U.S. and across the globe. He is also a past president of the Community Development Society.

He is the father of 6 children and has been married to his best friend Candy for 27 years.

Lisa’s Bio:
As Professional Development Coordinator my role is to: 1) foster an organizational culture dedicated to regular, high-value professional growth; 2) identify, create and implement contemporary professional growth offerings; and 3) organize and coordinate professional and personal skill development programs.

Dr. Brent’s and Lisa’s Links:
Dr. Brent’s Website: https://extension.psu.edu/brent-hales
Lisa’s Website: https://epd.unl.edu/profile/lkaslon2
LinkedIn (Dr. Brent’s): https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-hales-818ba15/
LinkedIn (Lisa’s): https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-kaslon-89276420/

Key Quotes:
1. “Organizations don’t change, only people do.” – David Horsager
2. “Common language is absolutely critical.” – Dr. Brent Hales
3. “You have to have a safe environment for learning to happen.” – David Horsager
4. “You have to help the individual do their job better.” – David Horsager
5. “We can only control what we can control.” – Lisa Kaslon

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
2023 Trusted Leader Summit: http://trustedleadersummit.com/
Measurement Tools from Trust Edge Leadership Institute: https://www.measuremytrust.com/
“The Effective Executive” by Peter F. Drucker: https://amzn.to/3xbgFYi

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 have an exclusive clip from 2022 trusted leader summit, where David sat down with Dr. Brent Hales from Penn State University Extension and Lisa Kaslon from the University of Nebraska Lincoln Extension to discuss how to cascade a culture of trust in your organization. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

David Horsager:
One of the things about universities and extension specifically are they are complex in a very unique way. We’re not gonna get into all of that today, but if, if they can make a dent, then others can, and of course, these are great institutions already. We’re not saying we changed everything, but some great things happen. Let’s start with you, Dr. Brent how, how did you even come to this? How did, why did you decide to what was your trust journey to start?

Dr. Brent Hales:
Well, I had the opportunity to listen to David speak at a couple of conferences. And at the time I was with the university of Minnesota extension and they’re here today, the leadership of, of university of Minnesota extension. And we decided that we wanted to make an investment in trust building. And so I took on the responsibility of becoming a certified facilitator coach. We trained others and in the organization, and then I was given the opportunity to interview for the director’s position at Penn state. And it was interesting. I had a little bit of insider knowledge per one of the leadership team members about some of the issues that were salient at Penn state and the word toxic kept coming up a toxic culture. And so I use some of the skills that I, I gained from the facilitation to create a vision for trust and trust building in my interview process. And as a result of that, I got the job, but when it came time to get hired I said to my now boss, I said, look, you’re hiring me on the basis of this presentation, which included the trust edge work. And if you don’t let me do that, I will have zero trust in the organization. So I need that commitment. And he said, do you want it in writing? And I said, yes. And so that’s how we launched into this. Mm-Hmm

David Horsager:
Amazing journey. It’s been a privilege. So Lisa, how about university of Nebraska extension?

Lisa Kaslon:
So I think we all know, we hear in our organizations, the word trust thrown around a lot. People say it every time they’re unhappy. Every time there’s an issue, right? That I don’t trust my boss. I don’t trust my supervisor. I don’t trust this organization. It was it’s evident for all of us, I bet. And it was evident for us. And I think the, the statement that you have said three times today, I believe, and I’ve heard for seven years, is that organizations don’t change. People do. And so the basis and premise for us was everyone kept saying, you guys need to change. Administrators need to change. The leadership needs to change, do something about this organization. And it became very apparent that we needed to take a step back and think about how do we really do this. Mm-Hmm . And we really do this one individual at a time.

Lisa Kaslon:
So it gave us the opportunity to take individuals in our organization, work with them through the trust edge experience, surprised them by the fact that this wasn’t a session to come and learn about how the organization was gonna change, but to make them look at themselves, see where they had pillars of character or pillars of trust they needed to work on, and then to take that individual journey so that together we can make the change. And I, I really think looking back, that’s why we started how we started, why we’re still going and we have lots more work to do.

David Horsager:
We all do. And I think so just on your, I, I can’t remember what was in this little clip for a minute, but basically, you know, there’s a lot of parts to this. You guys have measured trust multiple times, as far as the enterprise trust in index, you have you know, I’ve spoke there. We’ve had a lot of different things, but really cool thing in your certified, trusted certified partners, facilitators have trained over 500 people in pods of about 20, over the last six years in three days, many of the companies are gonna be like, no, we get a day if that, but that helped build a common language. Tell us about the impact of that real quick.

Lisa Kaslon:
Yeah. So you can, you can decide right. Half day, three days, whatever you want in our, in our situation, we need to, to invest the time with people. This isn’t an overnight fix. I’m doing a lot of research right now on transfer training. We’re gonna, he’s gonna, David’s gonna throw out a lot of things today. Nothing sticks if you don’t want it to, by

David Horsager:
The way, her PhD is on transfer, transfer training. So how do we actually, so many people, sorry to interrupt. Good. They waste millions of dollars in in leadership development and nothing happenings, right? So

Lisa Kaslon:
Yeah. How do you make it stick? And for us, we really felt to help it stick as we needed to invest some time with people and really live out the, the pillars within that three days, you know, let’s have some connection, let’s get people networking, spending time together. Let’s build their competence by putting this in front of them. Let’s provide some clarity and have a session with the Dean. For many of our staff. They don’t get to meet daily with the Dean. And so we bring the Dean to them in a session and allow them to talk about some of the trust issues they have with our leader, which was transformational mm-hmm over time, it went from very skeptical conversations about what we were doing to, gosh, I don’t have trust issues, but it’s so cool to get to know you let’s talk about your family.

Lisa Kaslon:
And you know, it, the culture changed over that time by putting the Dean, the leader in front of them. And so those three days were impactful. It, it forced people to look inside themselves, spend some time thinking about my character, my competence, my clarity, what can I improve? How can I do better? And we kind of stepped back from that with COVID because after doing all those face to face, we’re like, this cannot be done the same way virtual. And so we need to regroup and it’s time to get going back face to face, to bring along new people.

David Horsager:
What, what I think is cool, a couple things one, and I don’t know if we’ll get to all this, but that you, the way you contextualize it, ultimately that be, it became much better and better. We might come back to that. And number two, you started to hear, at least when I came back in about the fourth year, I’m significantly common language. We talk about common language. If people don’t know common, you can’t build a common language without dripping it over and over and over now you’ve had this reinforcement in some of those kind of things.

Lisa Kaslon:
It’s a joke. The word clarity is like now the joke. Yeah. Cause everybody’s like I need more clarity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know

David Horsager:
yeah. Stop saying communication. I didn’t say it this morning, but you never have a communication issue. Never have a communication issue at the core communication happening all the time. Clear communication is trusted, unclear. Isn’t compassionate communication is trusted hateful. Isn’t high character trusted low character. So when you define that, you start to get the communication you meant. Right. So Dr. HAES, what do you think? I think to just think through this, what do you think were some of the keys to starting the cascade of trust as you’ve, as far as your perspective?

Dr. Brent Hales:
Well as you know, David, what came to Penn state at the best time possible to do the executive training with us in March of 2020 . And it was during that executive session that we found out we were shutting down. And so during,

David Horsager:
During in the middle.

Dr. Brent Hales:
And so I kept going out and getting calls from the provost and, and getting calls saying we’ve gotta shift cuz I’ve got 67 offices in every single county of Pennsylvania and all those had to be shut down and there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. And so we began to figure out kind of on the fly how we could do this while simultaneously adjusting to this new reality. And so we brought in the leadership team, we brought in some of our amazing facilitators led by Renee psy to figure out how we can actually do this. And it, that language, that common language is absolutely critical. And so we launched our first trust enterprise index at the beginning of COVID. Now you can imagine you would expect a high level of trust, but going back to that notion of toxic we had a lot of work to do.

Dr. Brent Hales:
And so we began offering the trainings virtually and very quickly pivoted. And over the course of the last two years, we’ve trained 400 people virtually. And, and we use the language, the eight pillars in every single interaction. Additionally, I keep the trust in the, the, the pillars. I keep the cards on my home computer, cuz we were initially working from home and then on my work computer just below the monitors. So in every interaction that pillar, those pillars are coming back to me, what do I need to be focusing on? How do I need to be doing this? And then as a leadership team, initially, just myself I began mapping mapping every single

David Horsager:
Initiative that surprise you here. Shocking

Dr. Brent Hales:
Every single initiative that we do back to trust.

David Horsager:
Thank you. And with permission, I’m gonna show that that picture and we haven’t run through these, but I just thought I asked you I’ll show ’em in just a second. Maybe first I should show this our perspective on how, you know, how many would like to on any let’s not take trust. Let’s say how many would like to have a better culture? Like how many need to, to kind of transform their culture in some way. Okay. So we’re kind of, so here’s my perspective and this was inspired a bit by a Harvard research back in 2016 that showed the loss the wasted money in leadership development programs. And we added to it, tweaked it and made it what we think it takes to create cultural change, which is not easy, but it can be done. And so here, I’ll just give you whip through the nine steps to culture transformation from our perspective.

David Horsager:
And then we’re gonna come back and say what was hardest and what was maybe most important to you guys. And I might even come out in the audience in touch with touch with a few people to keep us going here. But number one, it, I don’t care what you do this. If you’re chief people, chief culture officer, if you’re you care about culture and you, you have to go beyond a person this has to align with whatever it is. It has to align with your strategy and values. It won’t last number two, you have to find a champion. This is our experience. You’ll see chief culture officer United health group tomorrow in our almost decade of working with him. It, you had to have a champion like that and it has to last, you can’t, unless you wanna be one and done or flavor of the month, which you can do with great things and terrible things.

David Horsager:
But you have to have a champion that actually cares at least in the business unit. And it can be small. It doesn’t have to be big university, but you have to have one. I believe this to my core, if you don’t help the person with an actionable they can use today. When we talk about, you know, whatever we talk about, you have to take that eight pillar framework say what’s a way I can increase trust tomorrow. So when you, many of you’ve seen our deeper work. So the ODC model or the DMA model or the how ha ha model, you have to take that. And I have to be able to use it tomorrow to help me. You have to help your people use it. If it doesn’t help them have less stress, more sales, quicker results, it doesn’t matter. They need to bring research down to usability.

David Horsager:
Number four, you have to create a, if you’re in the learning and development process, there has to be a safe environment. You have to have a safe environment for learning to happen. Number five is I believe more than ever today. You have to include live interaction, even if it’s virtual live. So we did some of, you know, we had 250 virtual events from our five camera studio at the Institute up in white bear lake. But the best ones were not everybody sit down and watch a video. The best is if you’ve seen the way we do it, it’s interact right there. Even through virtual. You have to have a live component so people can respond. Number six, I believe just like Drucker as you know, the, the late great Drucker. What’s his first name? Peter, thank you. Like I said, Peter Drucker you know, what gets measured gets managed and that’s where we, we believe if you’re not measuring trust, you’re not measuring the right thing.

David Horsager:
You know, you can measure other things, but if you’re not measuring trust I, I hope with just passion and, and humility say that, but you have to measure it to close gaps. And that’s why I use the enterprise trust index or the trust industry, 60, those kind of things, whatever you wanna change. And there’s other things you can measure that are good. Number seven, you have to provide, this is just added because we saw things stop unless you provided healthy accountability. I’m not gonna teach it today. Many of the certifieds know it, but if you’d like our simple sex six did I say, did I say something six, six with an eye six step process for accountability, anybody here’s welcome to it. Email Gabe or Margaret or somebody. And you can see that six step process. Of course we can go into it, deeper with you, but we’re happy to give that to you because you have to have healthy accountability to have things keep going.

David Horsager:
Number eight, it must be reinforced consistently the cultures that have changed Lisa with a seven years. Several of you, it’s a multi-year process, even though in one of the organizations here, we saw attrition go down by two to 4 million in nine months. If you want things to keep going, it has to be a consistent process. Number nine, it has to, a lot of organizations go with training and development that only helps the organization. It doesn’t work. You have to help the individual, do their job better to get buy in and keep with it. They have to have tools they can use tomorrow morning. So of these, what what was, what was the hardest and most important,

Lisa Kaslon:
Hardest is probably that we are. So in extension we’re a large group within the university system, but there’s larger systems around us, right? So there’s an Institute of ag that we’re a part of. There’s the, the entire university of Lincoln system. There’s the, the three campus system. And so there’s a lot of other people, right? We’re a people business. We’re reaching out, working with stakeholders. So there’s, there’s our stakeholders across the state. And so we can only control what we can control. And that’s working individually with our faculty and staff. So somebody outside of us that we’re connected to though is still gonna create a trust issue. We can’t control that. We can’t manage that even right now in the midst of everything going on, we in trying to build trust with our own faculty and staff who knows what pay raises might look like this year.

Lisa Kaslon:
So does that affect their trust? Absolutely. And so I think the biggest thing for us is this ongoing idea of how to manage that with people and not now say, oh, geez, this organization has trust issues. Well, there’re always gonna be trust issues. Absolutely. There’s always going to be something. How do I step back? How do I get the clarity to understand why we might not get pay raises so that while I might not agree, I understand. And then I don’t distrust you know, the organization. So I think that for me has been always the hardest because you can do all you can. I mean, I care deeply about our faculty. I wanna help them succeed. I want them to say, we love this organization. We trust it. I don’t know if they’d all stand up and say that today after seven years, because there’s always something. But I really want them to figure out then how do they manage that? Yeah. And I would, I would say that eight pillars do that.

David Horsager:
Thank you. So let’s jump here. You can add whatever you’d like to it, but I was very encouraged when you were working through a project and this was your this is your board. Tell us what that means. What’s that about?

Dr. Brent Hales:
So as you can see on the left hand side, those are some of the initiatives. We took the data from the enterprise index. We took our initiatives and said, what are we doing that we can map back to the eight pillars? And if we can’t map it back to the eight pillars, if they’re not contributing to trust, why are we doing it? Mm-Hmm . And so initially individually, we took these initiatives and please forgive the, the acronym soup. But we looked at all of our initiatives and said, why are we doing it? Is it contributing? Is it not contributing? What pillar is it reinforcing? And this became, this exercise became the core of where we’re going and how we’re gonna do it.

David Horsager:
Love it. So I’m gonna give another slide here to keep us moving along. And when we look at it, how do we simplify all this down while most looking at most organizations, we simply fi down to IEA, most organizations, we need to shift thinking around trust. First, most of you that have hired us have to do culture work, have seen me speak at an event, seen Michelle seen Dave Cornell seen Milton. You started by just, oh wow, there’s an aha that, oh, trust is this important. And so it started with this inspire. And the second piece we often do is equip. That’s where we certify some of your folks to keep it deeper, to kind of be the ambassadors. That’s the second step. And I don’t care what you do, no trust stuff, whatever you want to do, you have to have a group of ambassadors to take it forward, to carry it in your context, you know, better your context than any of us do, even though we might be experts on trust in a way, you know, I mean, the way we do it in in Kenya might be leading a certain way with something even the pillar.

David Horsager:
So the way we do it over here, policing issues or whatever it is. So, but we wanna equip some of your people to be certified partners. And then align is where we go deeper that’s can be a significant project. It always starts with a measurement tool. And usually with the enterprise trust index, because of all the cool thing all the times, we’ve done it over all the years. One time has the index not gone up with work, not, and there was a very unique, specific situation, but we align and we align in align. We align leadership to it. It’s there’s a whole lot that goes into aligning, but it starts with an index. So that’s, that’s that,

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 for interested in learning more about the measurement tools that trusted leadership Institute has to offer, be sure to check out, measure my trust.com to learn how you can cascade a culture of trust in your organization. And if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate a review on apple podcasts 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. 84: Christine Cashen on How To Stay Inspired When You’re Tired

In this episode, David sits down with Christine Cashen, Business Humorist, Hall of Fame Speaker, and Author, to discuss how to stay inspired when you’re tired.

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

Christine’s Bio:
One of the world’s most sought-after business humorists and Hall of Fame Speaker, Christine Cashen delivers a fast-paced, uproarious program brimming with memorable quips and relevant content that helps audiences spark new and innovative ideas, manage conflict, reduce stress, energize employees, and create a happier more productive workplace. She is the author of, THE GOOD STUFF and IT’S YOUR BUSINESS. Christine resides in Dallas with her hottie engineer husband and two teenagers.

Christine’s Links:
Website: https://christinecashen.com/
“The Good Stuff” by Christine Cashen: https://bit.ly/3MTTmYk
“It’s Your Business” by Christine Cashen: https://bit.ly/3NEzN6u
Christine’s Phone Sleeping Bags: https://bit.ly/3GsCCVH
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christinecashenspeaking
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinecashen/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adynamicspeaker/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/christinecashen

Key Quotes:
1. “There’s a lot of things you can’t change, but there’s a lot of things you can.”
2. “Stop focusing on the things you have no control over.”
3. “Wean from the screen.”
4. “You’ve got to set some boundaries.”
5. “Find that common ground.”
6. “Find the things that you can agree on.”
7. “So much miscommunication occurs through email and text.”
8. “Don’t hide behind the keyboard.”
9. “Do your tasks in blocks of time.”
10. “If you need help, ask for it.”
11. “Communication is the key.”
12. “Focus on the little goals.”
13. “Check in with people on a personal level.”
14. “People can feel authenticity.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
Phil M Jones’ episode: https://apple.co/38UZeBZ
“The Good Stuff” by Christine Cashen: https://bit.ly/3MTTmYk
“It’s Your Business” by Christine Cashen: https://bit.ly/3NEzN6u
Christine’s Phone Sleeping Bags: https://bit.ly/3GsCCVH

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 have a very special guest, a friend. She is a hall of fame speaker. She’s an entrepreneur, she’s an author of a couple books and she’s an amazing lady. We’re gonna talk about some of her expertise and before we do that, Christine Cashen welcome to the show.

Christine Cashen:
Hello. Hi, David. Great to see you.

David Horsager:
Hey, tell us a little bit about maybe something we don’t know about you. I know you got two really cool kids, amazing husband living down in Texas, but what what’s something about Christine before we get into the, into the work?

Christine Cashen:
Oh wow. I, some people might not know that I grew up in a town without a stoplight in Michigan.

David Horsager:
Wow. That’s interesting. That’s close. That’s actually, I guess that’s the same as I grew up, you know, of course I grew up eight miles from there on a, you know, a 1500 acre bean farm or 1200 acre bean farm. But I guess that’s true. No stoplight in bedale Minnesota, 500 people. How many people in your, what was your hometown?

Christine Cashen:
There was, it’s called Pinkney Michigan. Okay. It’s near Ann Arbor. And it, even though it was a small town, it was a bigger community. So like our high school was pretty average sized because it was all these little towns together. In fact, the joke is the town next to us was called hell . And when I worked, I worked in radio and people would always call to see when hell froze over. It was like a big deal.

David Horsager:
oh my goodness.

Christine Cashen:
I know.

David Horsager:
Well, Christine, you’re speaking all over the world. I’ve, you know, I know your client’s list, Walmart and United and general mills and at, and C and all these other places, and we’ve gotten the incredible privilege. I’ve had the incredible privilege to be on the same stage with you at a, at some events around the world. But let’s dive in here. You, you have this expertise around really energy and positivity and working with people and building teams. And so let let’s, you know, let’s start actually, and then move from there quickly because of the, we don’t keep going back to the pandemic, but we’ve got people right now that are still overwhelmed, frozen challenged. They’re some are having to come back, live work, some are virtual, some are alone. What do, what do we do? We have some tips for people as, as we move out of this kind of collective, just time.

Christine Cashen:
Right? Right. That is a good question. And I think I have the answer. I am on a mission and I hope you and your listeners will join me as we stop global whining.

David Horsager:
Let’s do it

Christine Cashen:
Things. Aren’t gonna go back to the way they were BC before COVID we just need to embrace it and look forward. I’m tired of looking back. I am looking both on both eyes are forward and you know what? There’s a lot of things you can’t change, but there’s a lot of things you can so stop focusing on the things you have no control over. My mom called me yesterday. She said, oh my gosh, did you see the monkey PS? I’m like, oh, for the love of all, that’s holy, I can’t, I can’t control that. I’m gonna still wash my hands, do my best and live my life. Right. I can’t worry about all the things I have no control over. I can just control me. Right. So that, so I think that’s the first step is looking at ways that you can have power to change your situation.

David Horsager:
So focus on what you can control. Now someone’s on there. Someone’s listening right now. They’re critical. They’re like, well, yeah, but if I don’t complain or want the squeaky wheel gets the da da, then I need, you know, I’m, I’m not gonna get the attention I need or the thing that I need, unless I am that person. What say you?

Christine Cashen:
Yeah. You know, I thought people were gonna come out of this last two years. Kinder in gentler. No people are ready to fight. I think they’ve been under control for so long that they now wanna over exert their control over everything. But again, there’s so many things you do have power over. So I know I’ve been complaining about the pandemic. I gained a little bit of weight over this baking bread time. but it’s like, yeah, you can vent once, but what are you gonna do about it? When are you gonna make your health a priority? I have control over that. I have control over it. Stop drinking as much wine, drink, more water, all that kind of stuff. They’re just our choices that we make every single day. And so for people to complain about things, well, unless you have total control, you’re wasting your energy, put it towards something you can. If you’re miserable, where you are, find another place to be.

David Horsager:
So I think one of our challenges is people are tired and it’s very hard to move or do something different when you’re tired, because he was like, well, I wanna start this new habit. I want to change this thing. I want to get rid of these pounds, but I’m just totally worn out. Somebody could say, emotionally, physically, you have something. I think you even say, I quote you here. How, how to stay inspired when you’re tired, how do we do that with ourselves? How do I, how do I get inspired when I’m tired?

Christine Cashen:
Okay. I have the best tip. I hope everyone’s listening. When you go to bed at night, go to sleep. You gotta go to sleep. So too many people take their phones. They start the scrolling mm-hmm right. Cause that’s their way to calm down. And you know, you have a problem. If you’ve ever dropped your phone on your face. if any of you out there, if you’ve dropped a phone on your face, you have a problem. Okay? And don’t be smug cuz you lay on your side and the screen bounces back and forth. You gotta get that. You gotta get that phone out of your bedroom because too many of us spend an hour or so scrolling. Your partner is two. You wake up. The first thing you do is you grab your phone. You start looking at your emails you’re behind. Before you even get out of bed with one eye open you’re feeling those stress, the stress hormones mm-hmm . And it’s like if people would just wean from the screen the last half hour of your day, the first half an hour of your day, start with 10 minutes. Maybe no phone front, no screen, a television included at night. And in the morning, in fact, I developed these little they’re called cell phone, sleeping bags and people put, I, when we’re out to dinner, when we’re out with people, I bring bunch of sleeping bags. We put our phones to, to rest because they work really hard. They need a nap. So ,

David Horsager:
By the way, you can get those sleeping bags@christinecashin.com. You’ll put all this in the show notes. I know that. Any other tips, by the way, this is a, this is a massive problem for everybody. Any other tips or ways to build this habit in essence to wean from the screen, we know there’s places that screen, we need it. We can use it. We, we, you know, get our Delta tickets on it. We get our, you know, whatever. But how, how, what else can I actually do? It’s cuz it’s one thing to say it and then like, oh, but this time, let me just, you know, what do I do?

Christine Cashen:
It’s that? It’s so tempting, right? Yeah. So you’ve gotta set some boundaries. Like our family is like no phones at the table, period. The end, cuz at one point we’re all eating. I look and everyone’s heads down. I thought, are they saying a prayer? No, the phone is underneath the table and they’re sending texts to their friends or whatever. And it’s like, no, no, no. So that’s a rule. Yep. Whenever I go out to people for when we go out to dinner, everybody needs to put it away. In fact a friend of mine has a cell phone. She calls it a tech tower. Everybody puts their phones in a pile. Have you seen this?

David Horsager:
No. First

Christine Cashen:
Per first person to check pays the check.

David Horsager:
Oh there you go. That’s a motivator. I like it. Great. What else? You know, I’m gonna keep going with this a little bit. You can jump anywhere you want, because I think it’s very interesting for those of us that have teenagers or kids, younger, whatever, what I mean, this is I, I told I, my, my parents, my dad is gonna be 93 this year. Okay. So, and, and I’m actually proud of how they’ve kept up with technology, but not too much, you know, like they they’re, they’re in the world, they’re learning all continued learning, but I told them, you know, they were down this weekend and I, I just said, I’m a, I could, I’m a good parent without phones. Like I could have been a really good parent 40 years ago, 30 years ago, like this phone thing. And we were like the, the LA we were the last ones to give our kids phones in the class. We were the, all these things and still it’s, it’s, it’s challenging any tip for, for parents as much as we have leaders of companies and everything else on this you know, a lot of ’em have kids. What do we do?

Christine Cashen:
Yes. I there’s one rule and that’s no one brings their phone into their bedroom at night. I think it’s giving your kid a loaded gun to give them their phone at night where they can scroll post pictures, do whatever, and you need to do a check. So when I get those phones at night, we just, everybody, you know, charges in the kitchen and all, every once in a while go through and I start, I start looking, I start looking at the pic, well, that’s an invasion of your privacy. Are you kidding me? I, you have to do it. You have to look what invasion of your privacy to see if someone’s getting bullied. What kind of pictures are being sent? What they’re looking at. And for me, it wasn’t what my kids were sending. It was what they were receiving. Mm-Hmm

David Horsager:
that was I’m on the same page. We, we, they, they put our, their phones actually in our, in, in our in our room every night. So it’s the right at the door. There’s a place to plug in charging, whatever. Yep, exactly. Mm-Hmm and, and in our heart’s case, and this might, people might think too strong, but they sign a contract with us because we, now, if they break their phone and everything, they can make the money to buy it and whatever, but we own their phone. We own the phone until they’re 18. So this is our ownership. We own it. That means we can own everything about it. you know, same. So anyway, it’s, it’s part of what we’re

Christine Cashen:
Trying. Exactly, exactly the same. And I had, I bought this thing. We haven’t used it much lately. But it’s called the circle. It’s by Disney. Yeah. And everyone’s phones got connected to it. And then I could, they had a certain amount of time online. You’re shaking your head. Like, you know what? This is?

David Horsager:
Yep. We absolutely,

Christine Cashen:
The internet turns off for them when they’ve reached their time limit. Yep. And then if they wanted more time, they had to do some chores to get more time. But it, I don’t think people realize how, how much time is spent. And this was a great indicator. I put myself on it too, because you just, if you’re on the tickety talk time just goes by and you wake up. You’re like two hours later. What happened in my life? What are you doing?

David Horsager:
Yes. Yep. People don’t know that absolutely screen time measures it. We use echo in our home. We have a wall on or whatever they call it. But anyway, I think this is really interesting. You, you know, I wanna jump to something else that’s very relevant today and we’ll, you know, we’re gonna get into it here. We talk a lot about getting along. Like you talk a lot about helping people that are opposing get along. I mean, we’ve got a polar world, as you know, all of our workers around building trust. How do we, Hey, let’s jump in. How do we get Democrats and Republicans to get along? you are,

Christine Cashen:
We can solve that problem, David, if we would be king and queen of the universe,

David Horsager:
Right. How do we just, well, but okay. Let’s just take take it easier. Somebody on our team, it’s like, I don’t agree. This is a pain. How are we gonna, because we know teams get things done. We need to be able to get along in some way. Doesn’t mean we always have to agree. What can we do?

Christine Cashen:
I think it’s trying to find that common ground. And I wish that the politic politicians out there could do that. But it’s finding those things that you can agree on first maybe. And a lot of it is the language that we use. Right. I call them wise words. Hmm. So for instance, instead of saying the word, unfortunately, I like to use the word as it turns out

Christine Cashen:
Right. So someone says, oh, we need you for a speech. I’m like, oh, unfortunately I’m busy. No, no. Unfortunately I’d say Uhuh, as it turns out, I have, you know, when I’m asking my family to do things, I don’t say you haven’t, you know, you never feed the dog. I say you have yet to, if you have someone who owes your report, like I haven’t seen that report. You need to go, I have yet to see the report, leaving them open to doing it. Instead of saying, I disagree with you using the words, I see things differently. I feel like we’re not using the right words. And it’s inflaming people on the, you know, not on purpose, it’s just happening. And then if you get a, an email from someone that makes you wanna lick your fingers and, you know, tap out your response, that’s not the thing to do. You gotta pick up the phone face to face so much miscommunication occurs through email, through text. I mean, it’s just, I couldn’t make anyone’s email sound like they’re being mean by the tone of my voice. Look at what he wrote. Good warning. Happy to work with you on this. Yeah. Right?

David Horsager:
Yeah. absolutely.

Christine Cashen:
So if you get a, especially when it’s a, a sensitive or hot topic, like always, always pick up the phone, don’t, don’t hide behind to the keyboard.

David Horsager:
Love it. What about you know, you had some other tips I’ve heard and I, I think brilliant. I, by the way, I love what you just said about words, all this, these using the right words. It can, it can

Christine Cashen:
Words matter.

David Horsager:
Yes. It, it can deescalate. It can open up. It can. So it’s so motivating. You and I both know Phil Jones who was on the, on the podcast not too long ago. That’s and is, you know, think had us thinking a lot differently about words, but as far as, you know, a lot of what you’re talking about, it’s so fun to see you on the platform and you bring this fun and you bring this energy and you bring this customization and connection. And you’ve been on the stage with presence of countries, including ours and others. But what, what about this? How can we bring, you know, some, some of the things I’ve heard you talk about is less stress and more productivity. How can we be more productive? Because we turns out we still need to get things done. There’s a lot of focus and for good reason on mental health and taking this day and take that. But I run a company and I actually still need people to work. I actually still need people to get things done. So how do we motivate this kinda less stress environment, but we actually, we still need to be productive. What do we do?

Christine Cashen:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And I, I think the answer is, is in each person finding out where their strengths are, what, what, when’s your biggest productivity time? Is it in the morning? Is it the afternoon? Some people don’t get going until like 11 o’clock for other people. They’re like, oh, it’s lunch and home. They’re mentally gone because they’ve been up working, you know, first thing straight away. So know when your high productive, high energy time is and capitalize on that, you know, do the things you don’t wanna do first. A lot of times you get that out of the way you’ve been putting it off for three days. Well, finally, you did it. And it was much easier than anticipated. And then if you can do your tasks some blocks of time. So you know, I will try to power through my email. Then I turn it off and go to something else, a project that I needed to do or whatever. But the problem is we’re always distracted. Right?

David Horsager:
How do we get rid of that distractions? Yeah. How do we get rid of the, yeah.

Christine Cashen:
Turn off your notifications. Hmm. Turn off your notifications. So you can actually focus. I take everything off my desk that I’m not working on because I find myself going, Ooh, I don’t know if anyone like me has that, you know, attention span issue, where you’re like squirrel over here and you never, I start 10 things and never finish anything. So really just getting your groove on. And if you need help, please ask for it. And the thing is today, everyone’s really mad because they can’t get what they want when they want it. Well, due to whether it’s supply chain or lack of employees being honest about what’s going on, what the holdup is. Communication is the key. I think people would be a lot less angry if they knew what was going on rather than just making them wait and wonder if they’ve been ghosted.

David Horsager:
Absolutely. What about you? You’ve got, you’ve got this business. You’ve started 26, 27, 8 years ago. What? You’ve been speaking, you’ve been you, you know, you’ve come through we’ve, we’ve come through some challenging, different times and business for you. You did used to do a lot of live, live events. What have you learned? As far as pivoting? I talk about this, you know, some there there’s people that like consultants that want to know, like, be absolute, well, it’s always this, or it’s always that, you know, it’s always this way. It’s always that it’s always oh, be patient, but the early bird gets the worm. Well, what should I be this time? Or it’s it’s oh, you gotta low end to pivot. You gotta know when to pivot, but well, this one won just because they persevered in through. So should I persevere? Should I pivot? How did you manage well, in this time of knowing when to pivot, knowing when to persevere, how to, you know, what did you learn?

Christine Cashen:
I just learned, I, I am actually really good at this because I’m super flexible. You know, it’s like when I started to do virtual, everybody was buying all the equipment and all this stuff. And I was making hand drawn signs that I was holding up in front of the camera and throwing ’em over my head because I didn’t wanna mess with the technology part. I just wanted to have fun. So I just realized that I didn’t have to follow the rules that everyone else had set forth. Like you have to have this, this special thing for your screen to flip and all that stuff. I just wanted to bring who I was. And I feel like through all of this, I just realized we all have the same issues. We all struggle, you know? And the more I can be authentically myself and relatable to the audience. And I think that’s always been my secret sauce is that people see themselves in me rather than, oh, she’s so much better. She’s got it all together. You know, I’m not a hot mess. I’m a spicy disaster. , I’ve learned to embrace that.

David Horsager:
What are you learning today? What are you curious about today? You keep learning and growing. What, what do you learning these days?

Christine Cashen:
Oh, that is a really good question. I I am learning, I really wanna start doing a little micro habiting. So in other words you know, it’s like, oh, I should go work out, but you know what I’m gonna do today? I’m gonna drink more water. Like, I’m just gonna start small. I, when I get overwhelmed by get big goals, I do nothing, but it’s all the little baby steps that make me feel like I’m, I’m being productive. So I’ve been trying to focus more on the little goals and having some quiet time for my brain, because I don’t think a lot of us have, and probably your listeners are the same. We don’t leave room for any quiet.

David Horsager:
When do you have, when do you take, when does margin work for you? When do you have margin or quiet?

Christine Cashen:
When I feel like I’ll, I’ll notice my shoulders are up around my ears, especially these last couple of weeks. Yeah. Because with everything going on the month of mentalness mental health awareness, mental. I think I said it correctly the first time. Right? Cause that’s kinda what it is. Although it’s funny. I, the moment I feel like all of a sudden, I, I’m not breathing. Yesterday I stepped outside. I put my feet in the grass and I did some grounding. I’m just like deep breaths. Feel the earth under my feet, just get grounded for just five minutes, three minutes just looked around, took it all in. And when I came back in, I just felt like I had gone on vacation. I felt so much better. I know people meditate. I have trouble with that. I know I’m try. I’d like to learn more about it. Mm-Hmm I just, my brain sits there and starts worrying even faster. Did you know, did I take the sheets out of the dryer? You know, all that kind of stuff, but when I take a minute, even if it’s a quick break outside, breathe, breathe. I put my bare feet into the grass. I’m I know that sounds like very

David Horsager:
Sounds very Minnesota in January. Just go

Christine Cashen:
Out in Minnesota in January, go. Do you still could put on your boots, get outside and breathe. The cold absolutely

David Horsager:
Lost air. That’s funny. You know, when we had the I remember our, our first kiddo of the four, she would, you know, was crying, crying, crying, and we learned something. All you have to do is go outside, just open the door and go outside and they get a different perspective. They get the wind in their face. They got it. Just change. You talk about even in a six month old, right. They just, oh, okay. And sometimes we act like six month olds or need a little wisdom there probably too. So.

Christine Cashen:
Well, I have another good. I have another good tip. Well,

David Horsager:
Please give us a couple more tips. And then I’ll this is so good.

Christine Cashen:
When, when you’re feeling kind of down and out of it, I find that there is a huge gift in the lift. And what I recommend is called the 10 coin challenge. And what it is is you wake up and you put 10 coins in your pocket, make ’em the smallest coin you have. I know you have people listening all over the world. So something smaller, maybe it’s a small bead, something as a remind, 10 of them, then you look for things that are going right. Someone you can appreciate someone you can compliment. And when you do that, you get to move a coin or bead from one pocket to the other pocket. What this does is most of us put on our gotcha goggles. Who’s screwing up as a leader. Who’s not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and yes, you need that. But this helps you also put on grateful goggles. Who can you appreciate and why can you appreciate them? And some days you really have to look hard. Mm-Hmm , but it’s there. You will lift others. You will feel lifted and you want all 10 coins to be one pocket to the other by the end of the day, and start with your family.

David Horsager:
Great idea. Start your

Christine Cashen:
Family. And this is like a physical reminder of all right. I’m dishing out the criticism. Let me also be a good supporter and person as well.

David Horsager:
Just shout out the dish out the gratitude. Yes. That’s a, that’s a huge habit. Hey, any other habits you have? You know, we, at least when I’ve seen leaders that I trust and follow I’m, I see leaders that are doing something to lead themselves. Well, what are you, you, you influence all these people on the platform, all these huge companies and everything else. What are you doing to lead yourself? Whether it’s you know, physical, mental input, emotional, your family, what other habits do you have?

Christine Cashen:
I try to be a really good connector. I think it’s really important to check in with people on a personal level, as opposed to just the professional level. So, you know, I try every week to reach out to some people that I don’t see or talk to all the time and just say, I’m thinking of you. No need to write back. I just wanna let you know I’m here. I think a lot of people are dealing with a lot of things right now. And I, I that’s most important to me that I’m a good friend and a good human being. Mm-Hmm , you know, not only for my friends, but for my community, like, I’m the one that has the neighborhood get together at the end of school, you know, I just love,

David Horsager:
And you had a beautiful get together that I had the opportunity to be at in your beautiful home. But

Christine Cashen:
I just love bringing people together. Yeah,

David Horsager:
Fantastic.

Christine Cashen:
That’s that’s one of my favorite favorite things to do is to really reach out and you know, who, who has time. We don’t have time, but a little note card, a little note in the mail, I’ll see an article I’ll forward it to someone, a class client. I, I thought you might appreciate this. And I also try to maintain my sense of humor. I just think it’s not a lot to laugh about these days, but I find those things and just, you know, you bring the joy, Bluetooth phone, you know, I’ve got a I have all these toys and things that I just love making people laugh. And I think many leaders think that if they’re not serious all the time, they’re not taken seriously. But I feel like is the person that can evoke the laughter that can lighten up themselves. Other people that is an effective leader. Cuz everyone knows we’re the same underneath. We really are.

David Horsager:
They’re real. Give us a tip. How can I let’s just say we’ve got some people that are just like, oh, but how can I bring laughter, I’m not funny. I’m not this. And I wanna be more approachable as a leader. I wanna be more understood. Like what, what could I do?

Christine Cashen:
Okay. Well I think that, you know, a lot of us get irritated by people. ,

Christine Cashen:
You know we all, we all have rules for people that people don’t always follow. So hello. So start out with this. It’s called make up a story about people’s past. Now you don’t tell them the story it’s just for you. So let’s say you’re even driving to work. You’re getting irritated because nobody knows how to drive. Normally you’d get angry when someone pulled in front of you now you just think, ah, you know that person, that’s their first time driving. They’re a permit driver. oh, they’ve got, they didn’t use their turn signal because they have a broken arm. Like I just make up stories for people this way. I’m giving them a break and sometimes they’re suit. They’re very funny. Like my daughter, one time, this guy was bobbing and weaving through traffic. And I said to my daughter at the time, very young in the backseat, I said, look at that crazy driver. She said he must have to go potty

David Horsager:
and she’s got it.

Christine Cashen:
Yeah, you never know. So I just started having fun just with people. I called the reverse wishing. Well, like I wish them, well, I don’t use the wishes for me. I wish them well, good luck getting where you’re going. You’re walking so slow. You must have had a hip replacement recently. And I just find it makes me giggle makes me lighter because when I’m stressed out and angry inside, I find that that manifests itself being critical and angry with other people. Hmm. But when I’m lighter and having more fun just by myself, it just tends to come out and people feel it.

David Horsager:
Absolutely. Anybody that’s ever been around you feels that that’s

Christine Cashen:
You know, David, you can catch mood poisoning very easily. Yeah.

David Horsager:
no doubt about it.

Christine Cashen:
Point thing is a thing. Oh yeah.

David Horsager:
Yeah. Oh with that, I’ve got a final question for you, but before I do, where can people find out more about you? We’ve got it in the show notes. We’ve got it in the and we’ll put it there, but some people might be interested in couple of your books are the good stuff by Christine Cashin and it’s your business by Christine Cash. And you can even find the cell phone sleeping bags, but where is the number one or one in two spot to go?

Christine Cashen:
Yeah, the number one and only spot Christine cashin.com. Check the notes. Yeah.

David Horsager:
Christine cashin.com. We’ve got it spelled correctly below if you don’t know Christine yet. And we’ll we’ll, we’ll look there. So it’s the trusted leader show first. I just have to say thanks for being a friend that I trust and it’s a, it’s just a treat to be together, happy on the show, but it’s a trusted leader show who is a leader you trust and why?

Christine Cashen:
Hmm. I, I really look up to Brene brown. Mm-Hmm as a trusted leader and speaker, she just speaks the truth. She talks about vulnerability. I didn’t know if any of your listeners are familiar with her. Of course it should be. She’s like the next Oprah kind of. And I just, I feel like she’s not trying to put on an act. I feel like she’s the real deal and I, people can feel authenticity.

David Horsager:
Absolutely.

Christine Cashen:
And I can do that with her.

David Horsager:
And she’s one of your fellow Texans, so yes, there. Right? Isn’t that true? There’s that? Do you both? Yeah. All right. Well this has been a treat. Thank you so much. Lots of nuggets, lots of fun. And lots of good from Christine Cashen. It’s been the trusted leader show until next time stay trusted.

Ep. 83: Dan Dye on Why Partnerships Drive Innovation

In this episode, David sits down with Dan Dye, CEO of Ardent Mills, to discuss why partnerships drive innovation and new ways of thinking.

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

Dan’s Bio:
Dan Dye is the CEO of Ardent Mills, the independent joint venture of its parent companies –Cargill, Conagra Brands and CHS. Ardent Mills operates community flour mills and bakery mix facilities along with a specialty bakery in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. It is a values-based organization committed to being a trusted partner delivering innovative and nutritious grain-based solutions with a brand promise of “Nourishing What’s Next.” Prior to the formation of Ardent Mills, Dan held various merchandising and managerial positions since joining Cargill in 1981. In 2009, Dan was named president of Horizon Milling. In this capacity Dan was responsible for the flour milling, mix and bakery operations of Horizon Milling in the U.S. and Canada, offering wheat and flour products and solutions for a wide range of ingredient applications.

Dan’s Links:
Website: https://www.ardentmills.com/
Dan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-dye-120947159/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ardent-mills/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ardentmills/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArdentMills/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ardentmills

Key Quotes:
1. “Listen to and learn from other leaders.”
2. “Find joy in the journey.”
3. “Be willing to be open.”
4. “We need to treat essential workers like essential workers long after the pandemic.”
5. “We have to treat our people the right way.”
6. “We all have to work together.”
7. “It’s how you treat people day in and day out.”
8. “Partnership is so important.”
9. “Partnerships can help really drive innovative and new ways of thinking.”
10. “We have to reinvent and continue to learn.”
11. “Learn as much as you can.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
“The Infinite Game” by Simon Sinek: https://amzn.to/3PzgY6d
“The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni: https://amzn.to/3lt0Pl1
“Built To Last” by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras: https://amzn.to/384yzST
“Good To Great” by Jim Collins: https://amzn.to/3wIx30L

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’ve got a special guest, a special friend we’re on a university board together. He is the CEO of Ardent Mills. He was with Cargill for 33 years. The biggest independently owned company privately held company. I believe in the world for sure in the us. He was, is president of horizon milling. He is president of Cargill ag horizons, us a whole lot of other things. He is an amazing gentleman, a father husband, and just a friend he serves in his community. And I’m just grateful to know you as a friend, please. Welcome Dan Dye.

Dan Dye:
Thanks David. It’s an honor to be on the show. I just so appreciate the work you’re doing around trust and all the different aspects of that. I it’s making organizations better, making leaders better, making people better. So thanks privilege to be with you today.

David Horsager:
Well, we’ll get into leadership, Dan and I there’s so much we could talk about in a short time together, but think thinking about our audience, what are a couple things people don’t know about Dan dye or they, they ought to know, or, or maybe you should just pull the curtain back and tell ’em?

Dan Dye:
Well, you know, I mean, I’ve had the, the, the honor to be part of great organizations. You mentioned Cargill. I spent 33 years there. And then eight years ago we started our at mills, which is a joint venture that Cargill has ownership in, along with ConAgra brands and CHS. So that’s kind of a unique part of, of my journey. I’ve spent the last eight years leading art at mills and we’re you know, we produce flour. So I, you know, really enjoy baked goods. I’m a, I’m a big fan of our products. We’re now expanding into some other emerging nutrition space, like quinoa and chickpeas. That’s been really fun. So from a business standpoint or career standpoint, I guess that’s a little bit about me. I think other than that, you know, I just you know, my faith, my family are really centered for me.

Dan Dye:
That’s really what, what drives and motivates. And, and I, I just enjoy my work. I love, you know, I love the opportunity to be with our team. We have great great team across art mills. And it’s just been, it’s been a lot of fun being part of a new organization, you know, a little later in your career to be able to do that. So, you know, I, I think you know, we won’t pull the curtain back too far, but those are, those are a few things, probably a little more on the professional side, but you know, personally I’m a grandpa and that’s, that’s an incredible gift as well. So I have two young grandkids and enjoy that aspect as well of life.

David Horsager:
Did I see this right? Because I’m gonna jump into the journal you wrote in a little bit here, but you run. Do you still run kind of every day? Is that a big thing?

Dan Dye:
I do. I, I don’t run every day. I’m getting a little old for that, but I am still, I still run or walk or I find for myself it’s a great way. Not only to just keep in shape and enable me to eat some of my you know, great products that we make, but I, I find it to be a great place to listen, to shows like yours or books on, you know, audible on books and, and think, and pray and just reflect on things or just get a little time. And I think even during the pandemic even more so that’s, been helpful. So, yeah, I’m a I used to play basketball quite a bit even later into, into a number of years ago, but I, I focused more running, walking, hiking, those kinds of things to get a little exercise and clear the mind.

David Horsager:
That’s good. I I love to, I love to walk. I, I I, you know, when I was losing weight a while back, that became a thing kind of this weird thing of walking with weights, that’s what the trainer had to be doing. It was actually significant. He, that trainer believes that a Nordic skiing or cross country skiing is the best possible ice. He, he coached like 53 national champion swim teams. So a lot of people think swimming is he himself said, even though he was a Southern California guy said there something great that happens when you get your hands above your heart. And so there you go. Anyway, there you go. So before we get in a little bit deeper to your leadership, you know, since we started on personal habits here, I found this to be true. At least you’ve got, what is it about 2300 employees? Is that right? Something like that, about

Dan Dye:
2,500, we’ve had a couple acquisitions, bought a couple new businesses, about 500 across us, Canada and Puerto Rico.

David Horsager:
So Cargill was massive, but 2,500 employees, that’s still significant, but I find that people like you that are leading the team well and certainly have led through a pandemic well the leading themselves. Well, so you still have this exercise piece, anything you’re doing personally, other, other just habits that think with that’s been a significant habit for me to be able to lead well,

Dan Dye:
You know, I think this reflection time you know, in, in addition to what I mentioned while running or walking, I try to spend a little just focused time of just kind of silence and prayer reflection you know, and, and for me, again, I said that faith components, that’s a, that’s a really important starting point and habit for me, I find that it helps me to, to be others focused. It helps me to, to think a little bit differently maybe about what’s, what’s upcoming in the day or, or a big challenge or an issue that I might be dealing with. I think that’s, that’s been really important. You know, the other thing I, I, I really try to do as much as I can is listen to and learn from other leaders. I, I just think there’s so, so many great leaders out there, and there’s some that aren’t so good, so you can learn from that as well.

Dan Dye:
But, but just trying to, to watch others lead, you can do that again through books and things, but I think often it’s you know, connecting in again, I found during the, I, I connected in with a few different leaders that I respected and kind of knew, but I just wanted to better learn from them during difficult times. And I think, you know, sometimes we think we’re kind of a little bit on an island, but the fact is there’s a lot of folks out there leading different kinds of organizations, not just other businesses, even leaders in education leaders, in nonprofits, leaders in numerous different fields that we can learn from each other. So I think that’s another, you know, personal habit I try to have is constantly listening and talking to and learning from others.

David Horsager:
I love that. I was just thinking we just have out a big, our trusted leader summit, as you know. And I think the gift of what we get to do is we’ve got senators using this in government. We’ve got, you know, police chiefs, you’ve got companies, you’ve got everything from, you know, a John Deere type to a, to a banking type, to a a schools to across industries and, and even pro sports teams. And it’s like that the cool thing that I get a backup and see and learn from is something that someone might have only thought of in in agriculture they could use in banking. And then this healthcare organization brings this idea. And, and so while our whole focus and expertise is around trust how people apply it, we learn so much from each other. And just, you know, of course we have a, we know, we know even, even about trust some thing we’re experts at, we know a sliver of monumental more to learn.

David Horsager:
So, but I love the idea of not just being stuck in, I we’ve seen that in hospitals, especially where they’ve got just kind of hospital consultants that come in and they bring some other perspective and it changes everything. And you see that in industries that get just, just focused. So I wanna jump to something here. I, I, I wanna, I, one thing I gotta remember that this just popped in my head of where we actually met decades ago and how that happened. I’m gonna try, I’m gonna keep that a secret. I wasn’t even thinking about it, but I’m gonna try to remember to come back to that at the end. Everybody can can listen for that little surprise at the end, before we get there, though, you, you know, we were talking through this you know, pandemic through the crisis and by the way, people that think, oh, the pandemic’s over, or if they think crisis is over, I just think they’re dead wrong.

David Horsager:
There’s so much change gonna be had. I’m not saying the pandemic isn’t coming to an end. I am saying if we CA don’t learn how to deal with crisis, there’s more ahead in the next decade. Blockchain is gonna throw our country and world for a loop. If we’re not ready for it, there are other fast changing crisis type events that are gonna happen. And we have to get good at dealing with more rapid change. And I think you wrote something, I was very impressed by it. It was almost like journaling to your people. You call that leading through crisis. You let me have a look at it. It’s basically like journal entries. It seems like every day as you were going through the pandemic, very inspiring, very valuable. Tell us where that came from and what happened. Your first entry was March 14th, 2020.

Dan Dye:
Yeah, no, I, I you know, I find that, like you said, leading through crisis is it kind of culminated here in the pandemic and, and put everybody in that situ, right. But I think you are exactly right. This is not over. I mean, just even recently, you know, we’ve had the war in Ukraine, we are facing Mo you know, a lot of change from a lot of different angles. So to think that we’ll get through the pandemic and things will calm is, you know, I think false thinking right now, I mean, there’s gonna be one crisis or another, and just the, the amount of change we face. So when we first, you know, made the decision to close our offices and everyone was gonna work remote, it was actually, it was Friday the 13th that that happened. And on Saturday morning, March 14th I was out for a run and I kept, I kept thinking in my mind, man, I’ve gotta really be thoughtful about how to lead.

Dan Dye:
This is different. You know, you don’t go take a, a course on leading through the next pandemic and figure it out, right. It was thrust upon us. In our business, we had this massive, all of a sudden demand for our products. People were baking at home. They were, you know, flour was gone off the shelves, the bread was gone. Our customers were saying, Hey, we need more flour. I mean, it was just a massive shift in a very short period of time. And I, I remember thinking, Hey, I know I have to think about how I’m gonna lead differently during this time. And I, these words kept, you know, and I’m a list guy and you’ve kind of come to see that. So know I had this list of words that started with C and it was about BA we’ve gotta be calm. We’ve gotta be consistent. We gotta make sure we have compassion for our people, cuz this is gonna be hard and all those things. So I, I had these five CS that I wrote down and, and came through.

David Horsager:
They’re almost like our eight trusts pillars, by the way. They’re

Dan Dye:
Very similar. They’re very similar. And so, so, you know, I started that on that Saturday and just said, Hey, these are things that we need to, to lead their learnings. I’m I’m thinking about personally, I just wanted to share ’em. So I shared it with my leadership team and then actually it was every week for the first 15 weeks of the pandemic. I had a new list. I challenged myself to a different letter. So I got, I got through, I probably did about I out about five since then, but the first 15 weeks it was every week because it was just, things were changing so rapidly. And so, you know, each week I was thinking about what I was learning and what I needed to do different as a leader. And I just wanted to share it, like you said, it kind of became journaling.

Dan Dye:
It was one of the ways I was managing and, and coping and again, learning from others as I had have conversations. And you know, I just remember one time one, one of the weeks, it was probably in week 12 or 13 or somewhere. I don’t know it was along the journey a little, but I just kept thinking, man, this is a tough time. And I had a few HS in my mind and, and you know, it was all of a sudden that that was right for that moment. It was hope it was help. It was healing. It, those kinds of things would, would just kind of think things I had to focus on as a leader leading through crisis. So it turned into, I think there’s been about 20 of ’em. I haven’t shut the door on it yet because we’re not done yet, I guess. But you know, I, I in fact, my most recent one was around the journey, Jays, the journey

David Horsager:
Room. I just have that in front of me, the join just juice and joy.

Dan Dye:
Yep. It was, how do we, how do we keep the juice? How do we keep the energy going? You know, how do we join together, not split apart? How do we, how do we do what’s just, and what’s right. Because as, as you pointed out earlier David, we’re in the midst of a lot of different crisis going on throughout these, these last couple years, and that will continue. And, and, and the last one of those was finding joy in this journey, as hard as it is, there’s learnings, there’s silver linings, there’s positive things happening. And we tried to really make sure in our organ, we kept people feeling, Hey, you’re doing really good work. You’re helping to feed people. You’re helping to manage through this crisis and, and making a difference in other people’s lives, find joy in that and helping each other, all those different things. So that was kind of how that came about is it was my way of, of trying to learn and trying to you know, trying to develop myself as a leader, knowing this was new ground. And, and it just kind of ended up being this, this flow of like you said, journals things I, I wrote out and you know,

David Horsager:
It needs to be a book. It needs to be a book. I love it. I think it’s, it’s powerful. But I think what you did is you, you know, when I saw the, the read through it, you taught, but you also gave vision. Like here’s where we’re headed now. Oh, we need healing with our people now, oh, we need hope we gotta come on leaders. And you’re, you’re writing it to your SLT senior leadership team the whole time, Hey, this is where we’re headed. This is what we’re about. This is what we need to be thinking about. And I, I think if people would’ve done this, I think it’s a huge takeaway for others. Is that keep mentoring your team, keep sharing vision with your team, keeping coming with different angles. The other thing that made me think of is, I don’t know how many times on this show I ask some of the greatest leaders in the world.

David Horsager:
What’s a habit that has just been, you know, important to you. And people will say what what’s, I I’ll say, what’s that personal habit that makes you a better leader. You know, what’s, you’re doing off stage that makes you better on stage. Right. And you’ll hear people, many people say, well, health, they, they are on top of their health. They go for a run or walk, like you said, they’ll, they’ll say I keep my home life, like with my, you know, family or faith or whatever. But one thing I, I, I can’t tell you how many times those people have said journaling. Yeah. And I feel like this right here is like, you’re journaling with a little bias to sharing, like you’re journaling what’s happening, but a little bit in your mind, it, it just seems to be going to, and how could this help them? How would, what it was so relevant I could see as you threaded through all these different in essence journal entries, how even, you know, there was a time when yes, we always need healing, but in that moment, oh, we really needed hope. Let’s say in that moment, we really needed this. But yeah. How did, how did the journaling process change you?

Dan Dye:
You know, I think it was a lot of reflection. It is, it is a bit of a habit. I’m not a, I’m not like a, a very conscious like journal, or just in general. I do a little bit of that. I’ve done more later in life, but what I do do, and, and a habit of mine is if I’m in a really tough situation, pre you know, pre pandemic, a, a tough personnel decision, for example, or maybe a, a key strategic decision that needs to be made in the business. My way of managing through that is I get, I get, you know, sit down with a computer or write down on and just, just process in words. And that really helps me to think through all different sides of things and so forth. So when I was doing this, it was helping me by processing, you know, my different emotions, my challenges, cuz it, it, you know, you’ll see in there, there’s, you know, one of the vs was vulnerability mm-hmm and, you know, I was feeling vulnerable at times.

Dan Dye:
And, and I remember, you know, that this was a learning process for me. And, and I found out I was, you know, I would, I would end up sending that out to, you know, my kids and, you know, other business leaders that I had been, you know, in contact with who were going through their own journeys and they’d share stuff back with me. And so it really helped me reflect on my own leadership journey so that I could be a better L you know, better leader for my team, but just a better leader overall. And I think, I think sometimes for me, I, you know, the power of words, that the importance of, of words and, and I can be a little too wordy sometimes. And, and but, but it helps me to process. It helps me to, you know, think through the different circumstances, different things people are going through and then try to try to capture that. And that’s, that’s one of the habits that I have that, that I, I think is helpful for me anyway, to come to grip with. Okay. Here’s what I’m really thinking and feeling. How do I express that? And then how can I lead better as a result of that?

David Horsager:
What, what did you see happen? Cause I, I saw you, I read about, you know, talking about a little bit, this power of vulnerability, but what did you notice the more you were vulnerable or what did you notice around some of that vulnerability, you know, being vulnerable as a CEO, a lot of it say, oh, we gotta keep like this. We gotta look like the CEO gotta, but you kind of pushed the boundary on that. What did you notice?

Dan Dye:
I, I found that during the pandemic it was really important to be very personal. And so, as you saw in there, there were several very personal, for example, I, I, I had a, my W’s, one of ’em was wisdom and it happened to be father’s day, week. And my father who recently passed away was big influence on, on me, but he was still alive at the time. And, and I shared a very personal story of my dad and his influence on me and my leadership in there. And I found in the pandemic that people wanted that vulnerability and personal touch, cuz they were feeling things and, and were having challenges at work. But they were also having challenges at home mm-hmm and, and they were dealing with their team that were having challenges and trying to figure things out, whether that was at our plants where, you know, 80% of our people worked at a plant that were, they went to work every day.

Dan Dye:
They, they didn’t never have a, a option to work remotely. Right. We had a produce flour, we had to keep food on people’s tables. So I, I found that, that, you know, being personal, being vulnerable that opened the door and I would start to hear stories from my leadership team about how they had connected with some of their teams. And they had, they had opened up a little bit about what they were going through. And, and I, I, I give a huge amount of credit to one of my leaders on our leadership team. And, and I’m not saying that this series of things helped to do that, but it was part, I think, of his processing, but he talked about, Hey, I had to take a pause and I had to get some support and utilize some counseling and some help, you know, for a, a senior leader to, to come out and be willing to say that.

Dan Dye:
And he was willing to say it in the organization so that then others would take away some of that stigma, Hey, this is, this is hard. This is an easy to go through this. And we’re all kind of going through that. So I think that was probably the most important change or thing that I saw shift was others were, were, were willing to be a little more vulnerable as well. And then it opened up more conversation, you know, our, our senior leadership team, you know, for the first month or so we were, we were having crisis meetings every single day, you know, for an hour. So we were together more, even though it was remote more than we normally would be by far. And it really brought an intimacy in a, in a sense, cuz we were also in each other’s homes, you know, we were for the most part working remotely initially. And so we were, you know, we were going through this together. So I, I think that vulnerability really can draw that personal side out, which I think is so important.

David Horsager:
I wonder if it really was like a lot of people say, well, the pandemic, we need to be personal. I wonder if we haven’t needed to be more period or if it would make a difference. Anytime I do think there is a move, certainly there’s a move in companies to be more human in many ways you know, throughout the pandemic and, and beyond. But I, I wonder if some of these things, I guess, are there any takeaways for you that you’re like pandemic or not? We kept meeting together more as a team because we noticed that help. Yeah. Or we kept what was a learning that you kept with us that doesn’t matter if we go out, you know, beyond the pandemic, but in the midst of the world we’re in any S yeah,

Dan Dye:
I think there’s, yeah, definitely. I think one of the one would be this willingness to just be open and, and like you said, this, this more personal side and keeping that going, staying closer in touch with your team even when you get beyond it, I’ll tell you the other thing, David, and I hope this does stick. I hope it’s, it’s getting a lot of attention, but I think it’s so important. And that was how we look at our, our plant workers, how we look at what we called essential workers, you know, and I’ll, I’ll never forget. One of our team members spoke. We had a, some of our, our essential workers that had been working in our plants speak to one of our leadership meetings here a year or so ago. And they, they talked about having that piece of paper that they carried in those first few weeks that that said they were allowed to be on the road, cuz they worked at a, a flower mill and they had to be their, or cuz it was an essential, critical infrastructure industry job that they had and how proud they were of that.

Dan Dye:
And even though they knew they were taking risk and it was hard and they had to wear mask and they had to do all these new things. They did it. And, and I think to your question, my hope is, and my belief is that we need to treat these essential workers like essential workers long after the pandemic. And, and we have to make sure that we recognize that people do the work right in organizations. We have to treat our people the right way. And I know at art mills we talk about real, really focusing on having a people first values based culture. And that’s really amplified in the pandemic. And I believe we’ll amplify even further going forward because we’ve seen the value and the importance of everyone in the company, right? Whether you work remote in a plant or whatever, we all have to work together. We talk a lot of together. We make art mills. And so we, we really I think have learned that we have to treat people well, no matter what right before, what does that look like? What now I’m going forward.

David Horsager:
Like gimme a specific like, this is what that people first actually looks like. What what’s that look like today?

Dan Dye:
I think it’s, I think I’ll give you a very specific example for the first time. Ever, we, we closed all of our mills on Christmas day and Thanksgiving day. This last year we normally run 24, 7, pretty much 365 and, and some mills maybe are ABI. And other than maybe a few, a few volunteers, cuz we had some, some critical things. We, we were able to do that because we said, you know, you people need a break. You here, our, our, our team members are so valued. Another thing that we did was we, you know, we did some appreciation, pay things long after it was kind of popular at the beginning of the pandemic. You know, we did one recently and, and again, it just shows that reinforcement. But I think most importantly, it’s how you treat people day in and day out and really you know, showing you care about people and how we, you know, how we treat them.

Dan Dye:
And I’ve, I’ve had people tell me, you know, this is different than any other organization I’ve worked for because of how I’m treated. I, I feel valued as a person. So you know, those are some things that we do. I, I could go on cuz I, I think we really try to, to bring our, of values to life. One of our values by the way is trust. As you know, and so we really try to bring those values to life, trust, serving simplicity and safety and make them real. And, and we put safety first. That’s another way I’d say, because we tell people your safety is more important than our profitability. It’s more important than the, you know, production match at the plant. It’s more important than anything we do. We want our people to be safe and because we wanna put people first,

David Horsager:
I love it. Let’s take a jump here because I think it’s really interesting how you have thought about in your life and certainly in this position about partnership and collaboration. I mean, you, you’ve got this, you, you think of, you know, these kind of come competitors in ways or, you know, you’ve got CHS and ConAgra and, and Cargill and I mean, that’s quite a conglomerate to put together to make this thing called ardent mill or own to have partial ownership to different you know, different significant organizations. Tell us, tell me how that came to be. And then what do you think just quickly that we can take away as far as thinking differently in the future about partnership?

Dan Dye:
Yeah, I, I think partnership is just so important. We, you know, we try to do things on our own independent, you miss opportunity to learn, to grow, to develop obviously in a competitive landscape that we all face in the business world, you have to manage around that. But I think in partnership, Arden mills is a great example of that to your point. So it really came about with, with, you know, a desire for both organizations to commit and grow even in the flower milling space, but recognizing to really drive innovation and change the, there was actually value of, of doing that together as one organization versus two different organizations. And so the partnership idea kind of came out of, Hey, this is kind of a unique way that, that we could grow, help serve our customers better, which we’re going through. A lot of consolidation recognized that the trends in our business flower to it is relatively flat.

Dan Dye:
Can we find different ways to be innovative and change and, and really partnerships I think can help really drive innovative and new ways of thinking. So, you know, we, we came with that you know, with the joint ventures where it landed and it’s really been exciting and successful. I mean, they’re very different owners and yet we have a great board. We have a great you know, business that, that works well together with all of our parent companies and has business relationship with all of them, which is kind of unique as well. You know, so CHS, we buy a large amount of wheat from them. Conagra’s a very important flower customer, you know, Cargill, we have a lot of customers we go to market together with. So there’s just a lot of different ways we work together. And I think that shows the power and the strength of partnership

David Horsager:
Really strong and very unique. How did you deal with, you know, a lot of the organizations we work with, they’re going through an acquisition or a merger and they’re trying to put two cultures together and they’re trying to keep trust or build trust. We’re one of the biggest pharmaceuticals in the, a world we’re working with right now. And you get a global pharmaceutical and you’re putting two almost the same size together, significant challenges and opportunities with the merger, especially of culture. What, what do you do to create one strong culture with all the different voices in the heads of your board and partners? What, what have you done? Because it seems like a pretty strong culture.

Dan Dye:
Yeah. I mean, we, we were fortunate that we were, we had actually a little extra time to do integration work because the part time from the department of justice approval process, which, which was painful, but the positive part of it was it gave us a little more time to think about integration. And one of the things we did right from the start, we established our values. We established a vision, a mission for art mills. That would be unique. We didn’t use words from the parent companies. We used our own words. Another thing we did was we established Denver as our corporate headquarters that gave us a sense of everyone kind of moved, you know, that was gonna be in the, in the corporate headquarters, had to move there and come there, come together and be a part of that, obviously a lot more remote today.

Dan Dye:
But at that time, a lot of people moved to Denver that helped give us a cultural identity as an organization of where we were together. And, and it brought us, you know, in this excitement of new and, and so forth. But I think those values really set the set, the tone. And one thing you’ll appreciate this story. One of our values, the first value we established was trust. And one of the things that was a bit of a mantra that we had in that integration planning, because we were direct competitors, you know, going into this. And so we had to, like you said, bring different constituencies, different mindsets, different cultures together to create this new culture. And our, our mantra became trust on day one. And we said, we know that on, you know, May 28th, 2014, we’re competitors and May 29th, 2014, we’re supposed to be one happy family.

Dan Dye:
We know the only way that we can do that is to have trust. And we have to assume positive intent. We have to have trust across the organization and, and really driving that value at the very beginning, I think really helped us create culture that that would be our culture and have that trust for this new organization. And I think that’s that those values have served us so well. And, and I talked, like I said earlier, people first values based culture. And so establishing our values and then driving those deep in the organization, we’ve done some other things we’ve brought in some leadership principles that bring the values to be more behavior based. We, we now have what we call our promise, which is really again, makes it more personal and intimate around our values, but those things have really helped to shape that culture to have a brand new company with our own identity. In fact, we’re just now launching some new work around our branding around being art and art. The word itself is about passion and energy and excitement. And so building on that brand as a new organization and now building on it even further eight years later,

David Horsager:
I love it. What are you curious about these days? What are you learning now? What’s new,

Dan Dye:
You know, I think there’s so much change. Like we talked about earlier. I think for me it’s trying to stay out of the immediacy of the pressures of today and really start to think about some of those, those future, you know, realities that, that are gonna be, you know, with us a little bit further down the road. So I think having you know, really thinking about how organizations are changing I think one of the things that’s new that I think will not be a, a very simple and easy one that I’m trying to learn about now is this whole different way of working. You know, if you think about remote work for us, you know, like I said, about 80% of our people work in a plant, but 20% work in an office setting or whatever. And we’ve gone with a, a, a really, a pretty much a hybrid approach where we’ve got a lot more flexibility and I’ve read a lot and, and studied a lot and thought a lot about what’s the impact of this on culture, you know, and there’s some people that say, Hey, if you’re not all physically together, your culture’s gonna be diminished.

Dan Dye:
It’s gonna be hurt, destroyed. And I’ve said, how do we actually strengthen our culture through the us new way of working? How do we let people know? We care so much for them that we’re gonna let them have some flexibility in their personal lives and work maybe from somewhere else or whatever, but, but we’re, we’re all gonna be in this together working towards the same goals and outcomes, but doing it in different ways. And so trying to learn about some of this I think is really fascinating. And, and it’s, it’s so different from when the pandemic hit, when we were forced to work remote boom overnight. And so we had to adjust now, it’s been this slow, you know, painful process of trying to figure out what you’re gonna look like in the future, and it’s gonna be very different. So I’ve been trying to learn all I can about that and really understand, but, but actually my commitment is we’re gonna strengthen our culture through this, even though we’re hybrid and we’re not all together in the same ways we actually can add to our culture in different ways.

David Horsager:
I’m excited to come back and hear what you’ve tried. That’s worked because this is a big question for the leaders I’m talking to. It’s like, how do you keep trust or build it remotely? We got, we have this balance between you know, accountability that we feel like we’ve lost in certain ways with caring for employees and employees feeling cared about in the midst of being gone enough, connectedness enough accountability. You know, in, in some cases, results only hasn’t worked as well as people thought. And yet it gave some you know, gave some legs to being able trust people remotely. And, and, you know, it’s a big mix. So

Dan Dye:
It is, and it’s not an easy one. Like you said, I, I, I wish I, you know, there’s a formula, right. But there isn’t and each organization’s gonna be different, but I think we have to be together some, right. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s so much value in those personal connections. It’s find those right balances and ways to do it, you know, differently. And, and so far, I mean, before the pandemic, we had a number of people that work remote. We had people that traveled a lot, you found ways to, to connect, we have to just reinvent and, and continue to learn. And we’re, we know we’ll have to change and adjust as we go.

David Horsager:
Yeah. I love that. About the way you do it. Do you have a favorite book or resource? How do you, how do you stay fresh as a leader? How do you stay relevant

Dan Dye:
Rather than learning from, I know Canada, the best source and resource for me is the Bible. I find great principles there, and I, but I love business books. I love you know, new ways of, of thinking. I listen to a lot of, of books. You know, I like, I like, you know, your work. I like you know, if you think about you know, people, you know, Simon Sinek and others, and, and talk about the infinite game or, or, you know, some of Patrick Lyon’s work and different ones that do different things about thinking about business in a, in a little bit different way than just the nuts and the, the bolts of it. Right. And so I’m, I, I really like to read about culture and organizations that are successful at leaders that are successful and, and just, just better understand all I can.

Dan Dye:
So I, I, I don’t, I, I, you know, I, I really enjoyed Jim Collins work. You know, I actually had a chance to meet him here recently in at a conference I was at that he spoke at and I, you know, I, I really liked, you know, bill to last originally and then good to great and his other work. And those have been ones that I think earlier in my, my leadership journey were very impactful and very helpful. And I still draw on some of that today. And and, and he continues to refresh in some of his work. So those are a few examples of things that I try to stay, stay abreast of. And there’s so much out there. It’s just trying to, trying to learn as much as you can

David Horsager:
Cur it, cur it down to what what’s the bite size piece for today. Well,

David Horsager:
Yes, everybody can find out more about ardent mills, great organization, ardent mills.com. We’ll put it in a show notes, trusted leader showed.com. We’ll link you up just so you can see what he’s up to and his public linked in there. You’ll find more about Dan dye, if you want to. And, and we’re so grateful that you could be on share, inspire. There’s so much more to you and so much more to all that you’ve done and are doing. And I’m just grateful for that and grateful that we get us served together. I get to see you once in a while being on the board together and you know, a host of other things. So we always finish with this question, Dan, it’s the show trusted leader show, who is a leader you trust and why,

Dan Dye:
You know I’m, I’m really blessed to have been around a lot of, of great leaders. But one leader that I, I just will call out just because that, that level of trust is a guy Greg page. He’s a former CEO of Cargill. He’s a he, he just was a great leader that I trusted. It was a, at different times in my career that I could look look to him, him. He was, he was the CEO at the time we created art mills. So, you know, that, that trust I had to have in him as, as we made that change. And he’s been a great influence. And, and I would also say, and I don’t know if it’s fair to have too. But I, you know, my dad was just such, such a great, trusted person that I, he wasn’t in the business world. And yet I learned so much about trusting other people about leadership about caring for, and loving other people and how important that is and everything that we do. And so, you know, if I had to only have one, it’d be my dad, but Greg would be one from the business world that was just a, a great leader. Someone I, I, I trust and has helped me to learn to be a better leader,

David Horsager:
Two great examples, you know as you know, my dad has been a huge, huge role in my life. And you hear about leaders today, great leaders. They, they, their dad is often either was really great or really not great. And they learned something in either case I’m grateful to have one. As I say, it wasn’t my fault that I had a great dad, but grateful for that. You know, we usually end on that, but I did just remember wh where I should have really started. And that is way back when I was in college. I came out to interview at Carll. I didn’t know what I was doing. Clearly. I kind of got thrown. They said, oh, you can come out and do this. I didn’t know what the job was for hardly. I was not prepared well. But I did that, that did get invited into your office to shake hands and say, hello, you were already a vice president.

David Horsager:
And that was the first time I believe we met. And that was at Cargill. And, you know, my brother, my older brother worked at Cargill. And he’s a 11 years my senior, but I, I think the first time I met you were kind enough to, you know, take me out of the interview for a second and, and say, hi, and connect. And I think that was my first kinda real interview, which I didn’t really actually brought prepared enough or know I was doing, but it was a treat and you were very kind. And that was back at Cargill days.

Dan Dye:
Yeah, that’s, that’s good. Good, good memories. And I, I remember your brother Kent working, working with him for a number of years, and then when he was at the Minneapolis great exchange. So that, that connection with your family goes back a long, long way. So you, you have a good memory to, to, to remember that specific moment, which is great.

David Horsager:
He was my first internship Kent was, and, and you think you talk about another great leader and I don’t, you know, shout out to him too much. There’s some you know, he’s I’ve got five siblings and I’m the youngest, but he is a great leader and was a great leader. And I really, I learned a ton. My first internship my sophomore year of college was on the floor of the Minneapolis commodity exchange. Cool. yeah. And so learned a whole lot. There’s a whole more here. Dan dye, president of Arden mill, AR mills, and just grateful for your work and all that you do. Thanks for being on the show. That has been the trusted leader show until next time, stay trusted.

Ep. 82: Lyssa Haynes on The KEY Attribute Of A Great Sales Leader

In this special episode recorded at High Point University, David sits down with Lyssa Haynes, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Marketing and Sales at High Point University, to discuss the KEY attribute of a great sales leader.

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

Lyssa’s Bio:
Lyssa Haynes, Assistant Professor of Marketing, joined the Earl N. Phillips School of Business after a long Fortune 500 career in sales, professional education, and marketing. Ms. Haynes started as a Xerox sales representative moving into a seventeen-year career at Johnson and Johnson. At J&J, Lyssa began as a medical device account manager. After reaching the $2 million Sales Club, she was promoted into sales training, professional education, then marketing working with many sales teams across the region. From there, Lyssa became an Allergan Medical consultant for a national development team working with many surgeons to help them to build successful medical practices. In 2013 Lyssa was part of the leadership team as the Director of Business Development for a behavioral health hospital in Winston Salem. In this role, she created and executed marketing plans, managed their website and social media, and led the referral marketing team to achieve objectives over many years. She has served in local community organizations to bring more awareness and support for notable causes.

Ms. Haynes attributes her success to being adaptable, relevant, approachable, hard-working, and enthusiastic to help others face difficult challenges. She believes in supporting her students and her peers to attain the best education to change lives, foster new leaders, and leave a positive, enduring impression.

At High Point University, Ms. Haynes teaches undergraduate classes in Principles of Marketing and Sales in a Dynamic Environment. A native of North Carolina, she earned her BS in Business Administration with a marketing concentration from UNC-Chapel Hill, and her MBA from UNC-Greensboro. She also holds a long-standing certification with the American Council of Exercise teaching fitness classes for over 20 years.

Lyssa is the proud mother of twins. Her daughter recently graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and is pursuing a graduate degree. Lyssa is also an HPU mom. Her son is a student at HPU in computer engineering.

She is very excited to be joining a part of her legacy since HPU is where her parents met and were married for 65 years.

Lyssa’s Links:
Website: https://www.highpoint.edu/faculty-staff/marketing/alyssa-haynes/
LinkedIn (Personal): https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyssa-haynes-56289841/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/school/highpointu/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/highpointu/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HighPointU
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HighPointU
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@highpointu
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/highpointuniversity

Key Quotes:
1. “The funds are in the follow up.”
2. “Be nice to everyone, you never know who they are.” – Randy Garn
3. “You are your own brand.”
4. “The impact of social media continues to grow.”
5. “Social media is all about frequency and responsiveness.”
6. “You are the outward voice of your organization.”
7. “The act of getting there and starting is the hardest part.”
8. “When people send you a message and want to hear from you then you need to get back to them.”
9. “You’ve got to adapt.”

Links Mentioned In The Episode:
2022 Trust Outlook Research Study: https://trustedge.com/the-research/
High Point University: https://www.highpoint.edu/

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

David’s Links:
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Show Transcript

David Horsager:
Welcome to the trusted leader show it’s David Horsager and I have a special guest in a special place. We’re doing a special episode today from high point university. And if you’re watching today, you’ll see the cool studio here. We’ve got a team of four or five people in studio. So I’m grateful for each of you around studio. We’re grateful for high point university. As many of you know, I serve on the board of the university, but at high point, I’m the expert and restaurant trust, expert and residence at high point university and love what they’re doing here. At high point, we’re having a great day together speaking, sharing about trust. But today in this moment, we get a learn from a great professor here. She started her career at Xerox. She spent 17 years at Johnson and Johnson. She was a consultant at Allergan. She has a fascinating life and loves fitness, loves family, and loves her work and her new career teaching here at Highpoint university. So please welcome Alyssa Haynes, Lyssa Haynes, Lyssa. All right. You got it right now. All right. Well, tell us just a little bit about your background.

Lyssa Haynes:
So you’re right. You’re absolutely. I started with Xerox, like the department chair here. So that’s a wonderful training ground for anyone. And then most of my career was at Johnson and Johnson in multiple different positions. I started off as a sales rep and then went from there into a position at Allergan working across the nation with a wonderful team. And then from there I went into working at a hospital in business development, and then I came

David Horsager:
Here and along the way you had some kids and now you’re at high point.

Lyssa Haynes:
I did have some

David Horsager:
Kids by the way, people can look it up. It’s a really cool spelling of Lyssa. So yes, my, my wife’s name is Lisa too, so I’ve got that down, but it

Lyssa Haynes:
Is unusual. I changed it in high school because nobody could say it

David Horsager:
Yes, no, it’s it’s great. So tell us this. Let’s let’s jump into sales. We’re gonna get personal a little bit later. We’re gonna talk about a few different pieces on sure. Leadership teaching sales, but tell us, what did you learn those first years? You’re going into Xerox. You became, you joined the $2 million club really quickly. What, what do you think it takes to be great at sales?

Lyssa Haynes:
Perseverance? Okay. I would say when everybody loves to connect to people, that’s a lot of the reason why students are interested in going into sales. But I think a lot of times they don’t realize how much true grit and true work ethic. And you have to self motivate those days when you really don’t feel like going out and talking to 15 different offices, you gotta make yourself do it. And it’s so it’s, it’s hard work, but you just keep going. It’s perseverance.

David Horsager:
Think we, we talk about, you know, one of the pillars of trust is consistency. Yes. We talk about sameness consist. I’d rather have a salesperson that is the same will do the same thing every time. Correct, consistently. And we’ve the, what do they say? The, the, the follow up is key. The funds are in the follow up, right?

Lyssa Haynes:
The funds are definitely in the follow up. Yeah. You can have the best plan. And I talked to my marketing students about this too. You can have the best laid plan, most beautiful marketing plan or sales plan that you’ve put together. But if you don’t follow up on it and you, you have, you know, you connect to somebody, but then you don’t get back to them for a month. Well, they’ve already forgotten who you are.

David Horsager:
We talked about listening a little bit ago. Tell, tell us what, what, what makes a person a great listener? I think I saw the research recently that we listen about half the time or are supposed to and yet people are trained on listening. Maybe 2% of the, of, of sales leaders and people are trained. Maybe only 2% of them are even trained on this amazing skill. What, what are some tips to be a better

Lyssa Haynes:
Listener listener? I would say for the primary thing is picking up nonverbals because, you know, if you’re really paying attention to somebody and looking in their eyes, you know, if they’re really picking up what you’re laying down or they’re like a lost and somewhere else. So I think picking up the nonverbal that people are hearing you, and if they’re not, then you gotta change it up a little bit. And what you’re saying. And also you’re listening not to continue to speak. You’re listening to try to get them to speak because as a salesperson, it doesn’t matter what I say. I’m not learning anything about my customer by talking, I’m learning by listening. So and then I know what they need and then I can help them.

David Horsager:
So how do, well, how has sales, it’s changed a little bit over the last few years now, we’ve got digital and everything else. What are some of the things we should be thinking about as we sell today in this new digital A.I. M.L. World?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I think in a way we were just talking about prospecting in my count in my class last week and prospecting today, I think with social media is much easier because you don’t have to rely on data directories and the phone book and knocking on just random doors. You can actually learn a lot more about people through LinkedIn and through various social media, business pages, Facebook business pages. You’re often gonna have more information there that’s current than what we used to have to deal with back in our little files, do that. We

David Horsager:
Flip, if we say, we need to answer the phone, how are we gonna get them to answer today? It seems like, oh, it’s a tough time. Sometimes actually getting their attention. What can we do

Lyssa Haynes:
Well when trying to get people’s attention often, it’s, you’re not gonna get right to the person you wanna talk to. So we just talked about this this week as well, you know, at that gatekeeper, that first person that you’re talking to and an officer on the phone, you’ve got it. They’re your first customer. So you gotta treat them just like you’re gonna treat the CEO that trying to actually talk to, or the surgeon that you want to be in front of, for me, for most of my career, they, if you’re not nice to the people along the way to get there they’re the ones that are gonna help you each and every time from that point forward, if you make that work,

David Horsager:
I was in salt lake city just two days ago speaking, or I guess I flew in yesterday and I was eating dinner with a friend of mine, amazing sales gentleman, but we sat down and next to us was the CEO of a massive company. And they run a huge foundation. And I won’t say that the, the name’s here to get us off track, but we just happened to sit down and notice something there and, and say hi to them. And they’re, they’re getting older, but they were celebrating their I think it was 47th wedding anniversary. Wow. And, and we just had a great visit, great encouragement time with them. And now it sounds like they’re coming to our trusted leader summit in Minnesota. And what, what I thought the interesting, what my friend Randy Garn said across the table from me said, be nice to everyone. You never know who they are. Absolutely. And, you know, be nice to everyone, be kind to everyone notice everyone. So

Lyssa Haynes:
You never know what influence that they have. So, and, and they everyone’s important

David Horsager:
Every absolutely. Yeah. In spite of what they can ever do for you. Yes. Every because of who we are. I, I like the idea. I remember this story when, when you know, this, the, there’s a story about this gentleman you know, tipping his hat to the prostitute. And the, the, the person with him said, what did you do that for? She’s a prostitute. Do you not know who she is, what she’s doing? And the, the gentleman said, well, I don’t tip my hat because of who she is. I tip my hat because I am a gentleman and a gentleman always tips his hat to a lady. Wonderful. So who, who we are matters. Right, right.

Lyssa Haynes:
You’re representing yourself. You’re your own brand. Exactly.

David Horsager:
Yes. So let’s jump to marketing for a moment. You know, marketing’s changed a, a, a lot, lot in the last years. What, what are some of the changes you see and what are you teaching about how to deal with those changes, especially as we’ve gone. So digital, and as an example something we’ve seen in the data we put out one of the biggest studies on trust and leadership out of north America, the trust outlook. And we see continually online testimonials, as example, as an example are tanking because nobody trusts or, or review

Lyssa Haynes:
Anymore

David Horsager:
Of reviews. Right. So what, what do we do? How do, how do we deal with this change in marketing? What are you teaching?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, one is, you’re absolutely right. It has changed dramatically. The impact of social media continues to grow E each and every year in the pandemic. I think it took some really big leaps. And that’s a way for the message to get across. It’s also a way for companies to get a pulse on what people are thinking and it’s, and yes, the testimonials and reviews nowadays can be purchased. And you’re paying for somebody to say something that, so they’ve lost some impact, but the, the, the interchange and the information that’s going back and forth on social media is real. And it’s in real time and people are talking, they just have to be making sure that they’re hearing it and that they’re responding quickly. And they’re you know, social media is all about frequency and responsiveness.

David Horsager:
So how do we, there’s so much now, I mean, we talk about trust and authenticity and all these things. And yet he’s like, is that really, that person that’s answering for me, E even for me, I can’t watch everything outta the Institute, or even people that are right. David HK. And in one of my biggest challenges, when we’ve had marketing companies just authentically, we’ve had some marketing companies help us. And in my opinion, they put a dent in our brand because they said something on behalf of the Institute or this trust, it doesn’t fit. I wouldn’t say it that way. I wouldn’t do it that way. And so we were, you know, trying to share this message we care about, right. And believe in and believe can impact the world. And yet we need help sometimes. So you hire some marketing or help, and you want them to have our voice. We want them to help share this message so that we can impact the world greater. But it’s a, it’s a tough thing. What should we look for when we’re looking at or I should just say it this way, what are the best marketing people online doing differently?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I’d say back to the consistency, I think you’re definitely looking for a consistent message. So whoever’s doing it on behalf of you has to, has to be completely trained and 100% understand and have a passion for what you’re doing so that they are trying to say it better. And more like you would say it because they are bought and sold in that idea as well. And they’re representing you the way that you want to be represented because you can’t, I mean, you know, one, one person is just a one person. So once a business becomes so large, you’ve got to have people that are there and representing your message. And I would say, you know, just trying to make sure if it’s not consistent with your brand, that you’re going back and revisiting, Hey, this is not, this doesn’t sound like me. This would’ve been the way I would’ve answered it. So constantly trying to bring those two closer together.

David Horsager:
One thing my brother always said, he said, never give your voice. When you have a strong brand, like we’ve tried to build over 22 years, right. I’ve never give your voice to someone else. Never give the marketing to someone else. So we are, we’re thinking about what do we have help with and what don’t we, so that it is right. Truly all us, as far as this is the same reason, I’ve always believed in, you know, writing your own books. You know, there’s a lot of people, I, I couldn’t believe it when I heard of how many books are ghost written. I don’t doesn’t mean I don’t need help to have editing or that kind of thing, but it’s like, if you’re gonna put your name on it,

Lyssa Haynes:
Don’t you wanna write it yourself?

David Horsager:
Yeah. Not ought to be you. And I think that’s wrong to have all these people, especially like I don’t have people, you know, I don’t want them writing certain things or being certain things on my behalf. I want that. That’s gotta be me. If I’m gonna have my name on it. Now outta the Institute, we have a bigger, bigger thing going, and we can go beyond, beyond me. But so tell me now you’ve got these students, they’re gonna be a, maybe they’re gonna be a sales and marketing leader. You’re you were a sales and marketing leader. What would you say? What are some of the key things to learn right now? What, what do people need to learn? I mean, we know they need to learn how to learn, because everything’s gonna change again in five years, right? What, what should we be learning? What should, and for those that are out there today, the, the sales and marketing leaders, what should they be actively learning? We, we talk about the competency, pillars, staying fresh and relevant and capable. How should they do it today?

Lyssa Haynes:
I think you know, obviously coming out of the pandemic for all of us, that things have changed to a degree. I see that you know, what their experience has been in learning has been different. So I think they’re more flexible with that, but they also need to understand the importance of preparation. And at this age I think they, they are in tune with social media and they are in tune with education, like as we were with education, but understanding that a large amount of preparation that it takes to go into any career. But for sure, sales and marketing, because you are the outward voice of your organization, you are the one that’s representing that culture and that brand. So you’ve gotta be prepared every time that you get into a situation. And, and when you’re new, it’s very difficult to wing it.

David Horsager:
Well, one thing I love about Highpoint university is there are plenty of PhDs and research based folks here, but in the sales department and in many the departments, there are people that have actively done this. Like you just joined the, you know, team of professors in sales, but you were a real salesperson. You didn’t just study it, you did it. Right. And so, but now you become an educator, you’ve become an academic, right? Yes. Wow. So how do you teach it in a way these days that sticks, that makes a difference? How, how, what are you thinking about how to take what you’ve learned all these years to be a top salesperson, right. And how are you gonna transfer it to these 20 year olds?

Lyssa Haynes:
I give them a lot of examples of things that I did and lessons that I learned, but I also make them for instance, you know, part of a marketing job is, well, every marketing job is writing a great marketing plan. So that’s what my students had to do this week. They had to write a marketing plan. They could pick the company, they could work together, cuz team is often done in a marketing setting. So I’m trying to give them real world experiences to the best that I can, or at least exercises. I had them create a social media content calendar, so they could, you know, what are the posts gonna be for the next week? And what are the, what are they gonna say? What’s the image gonna be? Or is it, are you gonna use a video? So they had to kind of plan all that. So they’re, they’re actually doing it. Instead of just hearing about it, because I think often especially young people, I think they gotta do to, to kind of digest it and really get it learn

David Horsager:
By doing yeah.

Lyssa Haynes:
Learn by doing, I, I liked the, the act of doing when I was learning, I felt like I could, it sunk in more and I retained it better.

David Horsager:
So we didn’t get to go through the questions ahead of time. So I’m just surprising you as we go. But tell us about a lot of times we learned from failure. A lot of us have had plenty of it. Right? What, what’s a big failure had sales market,

Lyssa Haynes:
A big failure. I had, I would say gosh, that’s a really good question. I’m trying to think of a very specific example. That would be most powerful. I would say that at the hospital that I was at most recently every year we made sure that we were making the plan for the hospital and, and achieving what we wanted to. And obviously when, when the pandemic hit, you have to completely all of your plan, your well laid plans have to be scrapped overnight and you have to turn around and come up with a new plan. And yes, it was a difficult time and yes, it was different. But I really thought that the new things that we came up with to do, and the new ways we tried to connect with people without being in front of them would work better than they did. It took more time than I expected. And, and it was a real big disappointment to me that, that so many people it just, they were just kind of frozen, not only our team, but the people we were calling on, it was just kinda like everybody was kind of scrambling with what to do. And I felt like I always felt like I could’ve done something better.

David Horsager:
Did you think of anything? I wish I would’ve done this differently. What would’ve I done? Is there something you would’ve done reacted?

Lyssa Haynes:
I think I would’ve started the, the, you know, it took probably about four to six months for people to get used to online meetings. And I think I would’ve pushed that sooner, than trying to come up the curve on that a little bit. I mean, we were doing it already to an extent, but I think if it would’ve been a little bit more seamless than maybe we wouldn’t have lost as much energy out there.

David Horsager:
Yeah. So let’s make a big jump here to personal what we’ve noticed about great leaders and people. Yes. Is that they lead themselves well, and while we all do it imperfectly I know you’re big into fitness and other things, but what

Lyssa Haynes:
I am passionate

David Horsager:
About it, what are some things you’re doing to lead yourself well, so that you can be a great leader, a great professor and a great example to others?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I do, I do passionately believe in fitness. It’s been something that I have done since I was very young right outta college. I started teaching fitness because it was, it was enjoyable to me to, to bring everybody into that world. Even the people that don’t think they can. But for me, it gives me energy. It makes me happy. I don’t do it for anyone else. I do do it for myself and not personally the way that it, it makes me feel. But I think sharing that with other people is also I really get a lot of enjoyment out of somebody who says, oh, I just started working out and I it’s really I’ve found something. I like, cuz it doesn’t matter what you do. As long as you enjoy doing it. You’ll do it again.

David Horsager:
Well, that’s, I believe in that, but I love to fly fish and I love to downhill ski and I only do ’em once a year. Yeah.

Lyssa Haynes:
It’s those are hard to do. So how do I, every day,

David Horsager:
Because I think the big excuse, isn’t a lot of the great sales leaders today that I would hear this an excuse from would say, I love to play this and love to play that when I was 20. But then I got so busy in my sales career, I’m flying three times a week, I’m doing this and this and this. Right. How did you do it? How did you preserve and prioritize time? You’re a mother of twins. You did all these things. You were had this career the whole time. How did you make time for it in the busiest times?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I’m a huge scheduler. I love to set up a plan and set up my time. I, I always schedule my time and it was part is just like an appointment. Like it was an appointment with for my time and that, you know, the thing about, I allowed people think with fitness, you’ve gotta dedicate all of this tremendous amount of time. You really don’t a daily, 30 minutes will work. If that’s all the time that you, you had, how did you, when you’re on road, even if it it’s 20, it’s better than

David Horsager:
None. So let’s take you on the busiest days you were on the road, you gotta show up with that surgeon. You gotta show this device. You gotta deal with this workflow of patients. Yes. How, how did you, how did you schedule then? Was there a best time right away in the morning later? How did you do it?

Lyssa Haynes:
I was in evening workout. I like to do it at the end of the day. A lot of people like prefer in the morning because they go ahead and get it done. I’m just already kind of on my day and thinking about my day. So that’s when I could kind re-energize myself is at the end of the day. So that the evening was you know, I had the, it gives you energy. A lot of people don’t think so, but for me it gave me energy. So that kind of revved me back up. And

David Horsager:
So, so there’s people listening and they, they believe in work. Of course, fitness isn’t born, of course is, but they’re not doing it right. What’s the first step. What can they start doing? What should they start doing?

Lyssa Haynes:
Carve out 10 minutes, carve out 10 minutes. Cuz most of the time, even if like, if you’re going to the gym, you say I’m just gonna go to 10 minutes or I’m just gonna go outside and walk for 10 minutes. Usually they won’t walk for 10 minutes, they’ll walk for 15 or 20 because they actually it’s the act of getting there. Mm starting that’s the hardest part.

David Horsager:
Just keep the

Lyssa Haynes:
Workout clothes on. That’s the hardest part is getting going. Like I tell when I would have fitness classes that would come and I’d say, you’ve already done the hardest part you got here and that’s the thing just get started and you don’t have to do anything. You know, a lot of people start a fitness program. They want to, oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do three days a week and working out and an hour of cardio and two days a week, I’m gonna lift for 20 minutes. You know, maybe that’s too much to start, like start with a little bit. And, and then once you start that as a habit, then you can grow from there.

David Horsager:
Any other habits that have helped you be a better mom or a better leader?

Lyssa Haynes:
I would definitely say communication, you know, making sure, you know, I knew what my kids needed. I knew when there were events that I needed to be there for them. I knew you know what my boss needed. I knew, you know, just keeping tabs with everybody, frequent communication as well as quick response. I was always one to, and I feel strongly about when people send you a message you wanna hear from you, then you need to get back to them because they send it to you for a reason, yeah. Even if it’s, Hey, I’ll get back to you. I got your message. I’ll get back to you cuz you didn’t have time to really thoughtfully think about the answer. At least you’re getting back.

David Horsager:
So you’re a, you’re an educator now you’re this in this academic world, what do, what are you learning? What are you curious about these days?

Lyssa Haynes:
Wow, this, I, I would say this definitely pushed me outta my comfort zone cuz after a long career and doing what you’re doing, you can do it in your sleep. It, you know, seeing students every single day and teaching them and sharing them everything that I’ve gotten up here that was different. That was definitely new. And you have a certain curriculum that you’re teaching. So I had to make it mine. So learning that, how to take the curriculum that we have and adapting it to what I know. So, you know you’ll have a whole PowerPoint in front of you and you’ll scrap the whole thing and write your own so it took more time, but it was now in a second semester doing it. I it’s it’s funny. I looked at something I did last semester yesterday cuz I was gonna present it today and I said, oh wow. I just and I didn’t have my notes in front of me and everything I wrote down was exactly the same thing I would’ve said before. So it’s, it’s learning about what connects and what works too. Yeah. Because you know, if you see a sea of students out there listening to what you’re saying, and you’re not, you, you just know they’re not hearing it. Yep. Then you gotta change. You gotta adapt

David Horsager:
Contextualizing. And we know our work. What we’re constantly thinking about when we teach even facilitators and coaches is thinking, okay, that’s really great content. That’s really good ideas. But what does that mean to them? Correct. Right now? Correct. What does that mean to them right now? We even talk about there’s a lot of people call himself thought leaders and we, yeah, we do all this research and stuff, but you’re thought leader, once you take that new research and ideas and, and adapt it mean something to them in that boardroom or that classroom.

Lyssa Haynes:
Right. And keeping it current. I mean, EV you know, they don’t wanna hear always what happened 20 years ago. They wanna hear what’s going on now. Yep. And what’s gonna mean when they get outta school. Yeah.

David Horsager:
Yes. Great. Well, you can find more about Lyssa Haynes and the other great professors here at high point university at high point university. Tell me, like I said, at highpoint.edu. All right. They might cut it. They might not, but you’ll never forget it. Highpoint.edu, you can see all of the experts in residence from a host of them from Wosniak to Sandborn, to McCain and other dear friends, the founder of Netflix and the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks. It’s been a treat to be a part of high point. You’re gonna just, it’s an amazing campus. If you ever get, get, come on campus, it’s a an amazing place. There are amazing professors. It’s been a treat to be with you, Lisa,

Lyssa Haynes:
Thank you so much.

David Horsager:
And the last question is it’s the trusted leader show, right? Who’s the leader you trust and why?

Lyssa Haynes:
Well, I would say my boyfriend who was major general for the United States army and he has, he’s retired recently and people from all over continue to call him for advice. People that worked under him, colleagues of his it’s the trust that they had in him. They want to hear what he would do in a situation. He was great in a crisis. He was great as a mentor. In fact, when he retired, the guy that led that was under him immediately under him, flew a flag across all the stations that he had worked. And in his whole career, even the one at the Pentagon. So to, to have somebody really be that passionate about their leader was to me, incredible. I certainly didn’t have that for anybody that did it for me, but you know, connecting and trust was key for leading people in very precarious situations for a very long time. So I hope to be that kind of leader someday. And I think that’s what leaders, I think that’s what it means to be a leader.

David Horsager:
Sounds like we need to have on the trusted leader show at some point.

Lyssa Haynes:
I think that would be fascinating.

David Horsager:
So another time, thank you, Lyssa Haynes. This is David Horsager and it’s been the trusted leader show until next time stay trusted.

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