EntreLeadership - #117: Les Parrott—How Conflict Can Help You Win

Episode Date: October 19, 2015

Can conflict be a healthy thing? Absolutely. And Les Parrott, renowned author and psychologist, tells how to deal with disagreements in a healthy way, so everyone wins. Dave Ramsey also stops by to share his tips on casting your vision—telling your team where you are going and how you’re going to get there—and why it’s so important to your company. entreleadership.com/podcast Mission Statement Mapper Another great episode sponsored by our friends at Infusionsoft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now here is your host, Ken Coleman. Can you make conflict at worth a healthy thing? How do you cast vision effectively? These are the two huge questions that we will give you the answers to on this edition of the Entree Leadership Podcast from the Music City. We're glad to have you here with us.

Thanks so much for the download. Les Perrett is a New York Times best-selling, an author and a long-time friend of mine. He is a world-class psychologist. He wrote a book many years ago with John Maxwell called Winning with People. This is a huge topic. How do you handle relationships at work specifically conflict? Lest is touring all over the country with his psychologist wife. Leslie Parrott, they work with couples and with corporations. And so the specific topic we're going to talk about today is conflict and then the types of styles. You will identify yourself and how you handle conflict as a part of this conversation. And more importantly,

learn that conflict at work is a good thing and it can be healthy. And then, of course, we've been talking about vision casting. And so we got Dave Ramsey to sit in the studio with us and actually talk to him about how we cast vision corporately. That means how he and our leadership team cast vision. It's really, really good stuff. This is get out your notebook type stuff, as always, so you want to be taking notes. Also, we want to do something that we have never done before. If you are a listener of the Dave Ramsey show, you know that the debt-free screams, well, this is what really the show is about, right? This is where people meet that goal. They reach the finish line, and it's a big celebration.

And so we want to do our version, and we're not going to do any screams, but we would love to hear some win stories, right? You're an entree leader. You've been listening to the program. You have read the books. You have taken part in all access. How are you engaged with entree leadership? And you are an entree leader, and you have won. you are winning. We would love to hear your story. So we want you to email us podcast at

entreeleadership.com. Podcast at entreleadership.com and just send us your win story and how maybe we've been able to just come up alongside and be a trusted guide, help you on the journey. We would love to hear those stories because we want to share them. So please email us podcast at entreleadership.com. Well, Dr. Les Perrett is going to be on stage with us for two smart conferences this fall. Those are going to sell out, but as you're hearing this, you might be able to get tickets to the event in Denver, Colorado on October the 24th. But we would love to have you there with us. Again, you can just go to Dave Ramsey.com and click on events. But Les is a mainstates speaker for us there and a renowned author and psychologist, as I said at the top. And I wanted him

to talk specifically about the conflict styles and how we can win with something that, quite frankly, inevitably causes great tension just through the nature of conflict. Tension between others, tension in our stomachs. Conflict isn't fun. But what if you could take conflict and flip it and turn it into this healthy thing? Well, Les Perra is going to tell you how. Listen in. Well, Les, I want to talk about conflict. Obviously, you and your wife, Leslie, you write books on conflict.

I thought you're going to say you and your life, Leslie, have had a lot of conflict. No, no. But you have. Any married couple has had conflict. Tell me all about it. Well, you talk about it all the time. And you teach about this all the time, and I think it would be great for leaders to hear from you. What do you teach in marriage and relationships in general about conflict that leaders can learn from?

Because we certainly understand the context of a relationship like marriage or a dating relationship, but so much of what makes an effective leader is their ability to handle stuff in the workplace that is clearly revolving around conflict. You know, actually, I love your question, because there's so much that translates. from research on marriage to leadership within companies, you know, because it becomes a small family. You have these close working relationships, and so lots of it applies. One of the things that we discovered, we wrote this book called The Good Fight, but when we did the research on this, we discovered that one of the things that contributes to conflict most is people's personalities and the lack of understanding or empathy for other people. And this happens in the workplace all the

time. And that's why you see things like the disc and you see personality profiles in an attempt to help us do that to really put ourselves in somebody else's shoes and appreciate their gifts. But we notice that people have different what we call fight types. And this has to do with just how you process conflict. It's influenced by your personality, maybe by some of your family background. But if you think of it, it's really based on two things. How expressive are you? And think about this as a leader. Are you an expressive leader? Do people know when you're upset? Are you more low expressiveness?

And you kind of keep it buried. You never know sure how to read that person, you know? Expressiveness. That's one continuum. And then the other is flexibility. Are you low on flexibility like my wife is? I mean, like I am, rather. Leslie is super high on flexibility.

You know Leslie. She, I mean, where do you want to go for dinner? Truly, where do you want to go? Yeah, and she really means it. And it's not to code for figure out where I want to go, you know? Right, right. And so as leaders, we do the same thing. We can be very flexible leaders, and we want to get a committee together,

and we want to hear about this and consider all our opposites. And some leaders, not much flexibility. That's me. I kind of know where I want to go, and either you get on board with it or step aside because this is where we're headed, you know. And how you fall on those two pieces, high expressiveness, low expressiveness, and then high flexibility, low flexibility will determine your fight type. Now, let me tell you what I mean by that.

If you're highly expressive and you're low on flexibility, you're what I call a competitive fighter. And this is what I am. I'm a competitive fighter. These are people that they don't shy away from conflict. If there's a problem, we're going to talk about it right now. And it may not even be the most opportune time, but they just can't help themselves. They're going to put it out there. Yeah, that's me.

It's right now. Let's settle everything. Right. And it might be in front of another employee. Oh, yeah. And it can be inappropriate. And so these people really have to be careful about their fight type. But the nice thing is they get to, you never have to guess where they're coming from.

You know. But then there's the people that are also highly expressive, that are high on flexibility. And we call these collaborative fighters. These kinds of leaders are pretty fun to work for because, first of all, high on flexibility. You got an idea? Well, yeah, let's hear about it, you know? And you never feel like you're walking on eggshells with these leaders, you know? Collaborative.

And then you have people, what I call conciliatory fighters that are high on flexibility. and low on expressiveness. And if you're getting lost and just hearing us, you can think of this as this little two-by-two design. And so down here in one quadrant, you have the conciliatory fighter, low on expressiveness, high on flexibility. This person really can't stand conflict.

And that might sound like a pretty cool thing at the start, but that can really create some problems in the workplace. If you have a leader that won't face up to conflicts, they have a difficult time shifting somebody's job, they have so much grace for people, but underneath it, they start to see some real frustration, and that'll eventually come through. And then the final one is the cautious fighter

that's low on expressiveness and low on flexibility. And the cautious fighter, this is the leader that's, they have a good memory, and they come prepared to a fight. They don't just fly off the handle. These are people, they're going to make sure they got all their ducks in row. They have Exhibit A and Exhibit B. And let me tell you, last Tuesday, you sat right there at your desk, and here's what you told me.

Did you not tell me this? Right? And it's kind of a little bit like an attorney's approach. And so if you can understand your fight type, you know, we have a school of thought in psychology that says awareness is curative. Once you become aware of something, then you can do something about it. Same thing is true in leadership. You become aware of your fight type, how you're hardwired to manage conflict.

You can then do something about it and understand why other people don't do it the same way you do and have a little more understanding for that. You have a statement and you can say it better than I will. you'll remember how you say it, but you really tell us over and over in the book. And, of course, when you speak, I've heard you say this, that conflict is the price we pay for a whole or healthy relationship. And that transfers to the business world. So one thing I want you to address, and I love that we just went through the types,

because there's a myth out there that conflict in the workplace is this awful thing, and we want to create this culture where there's no conflict, and that's just a bunch of nonsense. Yeah, if you're going to have a productive team, if you're going to have a team that really produces results, it's not going to be smooth sailing. You've got to hammer out some stuff together. And that means there's going to be some friction. And that's why it's so important to have this understanding of people's different types, their fight types, because it creates empathy.

If there was one gift I could give to everybody listening to us right now in their leadership capacity, it'd be that capacity to put themselves in their employee's shoes and understand what the world looks like from their perspective. We had a wonderful lunch today with Dave Ramsey. And we were talking about how he treats his employees and what happens at Christmas parties and all that kind. of stuff. That's a man that has worked diligently on seeing life through the eyes of the people that work with him on the team. And that's what we all need to do to have an effective leadership team. This is not easy stuff. This isn't something you go, oh, yeah, okay, I'll do that now. Boom, check that off my to-do list. It's always in process. We're always sharpening the song. I don't want to stay here because you just mentioned empathy and you teach a way to have a good fight. And you use the acronym, Core. Yeah. And empathy is one of those. And this is really freeing. And for leaders who are listening in here right, now they're going, okay, this is great. Certainly don't disagree with anything this guy's saying.

But, you know, come on. I mean, can I really do this? I'm busy. I'm leading in a high-pressure situation. I really want you to just briefly go through the acronym. The E, of course, is empathy, and you've already mentioned that one. But this is huge. And what's really great is you listen into these. We only need to really, you say, exhibit one of these to really have good conflict. Wow, you've really read this book, haven't you? Well, yeah, and I listen to you. I think this, but I think This is breakthrough stuff. Well, it is super helpful. And we found all this research on conflict.

I mean, there's mountains of it. And we thought, how do we make this accessible? How do we put the cookies on the bottom shelf? And if you're a leader, you know, your pace is so fast. And you're trying to survive in the business world and just make a buck and have a fulfilling life and provide a good income for your employees and everybody else. And that's consuming, you know. So how do you manage conflict in a way?

way that you can get your hands around it really fast. Well, we came up with this thing. We call the core of a good fight, C-O-R-E, and this is all research. This is empirically based. The C-N-C-Core stands for cooperation. So I want people to know, this is not armchair psychology. Oh, let's be clever with a little act. You know, it's not that. This we know for sure. If you want to have a good fight, you've got to have this cooperative spirit. Now, that's really tough to do, a cooperative spirit. But Leslie, I love how she thinks of this. She says it's like soccer. And the problem is the ball. It's not the other player. And we're just kicking this ball around. And we've got to figure out how to get it down there into that goal together. And so that's a cooperative spirit when we both win, right? And to

engender that attitude, critically important. That's C. O is for ownership. And that means owning your piece of the pie. Now I've got to tell you, this is a tough one for me. Ownership, because I want to play the, I like the blame game, you know? Plus, you have this kind of sense of entitlement. These are people that work for me. Yeah. Right? And so it's their problem. Not mine. Yeah. But when you own your piece of the pie, I have this friend who says this little statement that's so silly, but it sticks with you. Humble Pie is a pastry that's never tasty. That humble pie, that's a tough, that's tough to swallow, you know. But that's what this requires. It requires that idea of saying, okay, guys, I'm not going to own all the chaos that's going on right now. I'll own my piece of the pie. I know what I'm doing. I know I'm contributing to

this in some way, probably in ways I don't even know yet, but I will, I'll admit it. Well, man, that's leadership. Somebody does that and you get people to follow you. Hey, guess what? And start going up around the room. Me too. That's a great statement right there. You want people to follow you. Yeah. Ownership. Ownership. That's huge. Right. Which requires a little bit of vulnerability. And that's, this is not saying, oh, just put it all out there on the table. That's not what we're talking about. It's saying when somebody has to admit to a mistake that you own your piece of the pie. So that's ownership. C, O, the R in core is for respect.

And, boy, I've seen, and you have two, a lot of business leaders that can't wrap their heads around this. It's just difficult for them to respect somebody else when there's chaos in the room and they let loose. You know, that's not fun to work with. But that's what we mean by respect. There's got to be respect that's present. And then the E is empathy. We touched on this already. but I'll tell you something, if we could reach through the airwaves and to the person that's listening to us right now

and hand them something that's going to help them be more effective as a leader, interpersonally I'm talking about, it would be empathy. That capacity to see the world through somebody else's eyes, to walk in their shoes, to live in their skin. You do that. You talk about a hallmark of a leader. A leader knows how to see the world from somebody else's point of view. Henry Ford said it best. I can't quote it exactly, but it was that idea of you can't please everybody.

But what I can do is be the person I'm supposed to be and help that person be the best they can be and do that by looking through their eyes. Yeah. And here's another encouraging word. It's contagious. The people that you're leading, they'll begin to pick up on it. And they begin to see that you have empathy for them.

Guess what? They have empathy for you. And when you have that going both ways in a company, it's unstoppable. Because you begin to forge this relationship where we can really focus on what matters in this company, rather than getting bickering and fighting over stupid stuff that doesn't get us anywhere. Les, this is contagious. And so when we start thinking about contagious conflict management, we're talking about not just with the people you manage, but we're talking about with your vendors.

We're talking about with your customers because conflict exists in every facet of the organization. This is breakthrough stuff when we can begin to model. conflict less that actually leads to a win-win situation. How do you describe win-win in conflict? Let me qualify something, too. There are certain occasions as a leader that you have conflict with somebody on your team where it's not just a matter of conflict. It's just not a good fit.

Yeah, that's right. Something has to take place. We're not saying that you just gloss over everything. Hey, man, all you're going to do is core. If you're not doing that, you're not a good leader. Right. Yeah, that's not true. There's sometimes a time to make a pivot spot.

So I love how you define a win-win in conflict because the whole point of the good fight is that you say we can handle conflict in a way that is a win-win. Right. Yeah, exactly. And in a marriage relationship, it's really easy to see because you have two people. They love each other. And yet they're going at each other. And one of them wants to show how I'm right. And so does the other person. And when you approach it that way, somebody's got to lose, right? And when one person loses in the relationship, the whole relationship loses. Why do I want my spouse to be a loser? right? And so a win-win is when you have two people like that soccer ball. You got a goal. Let's get this thing down the field, man. Let's get this thing so we can get on to what really matters. Why are we fighting about this, right? Let's resolve this and move on. Curious, in the context of winning with people and Pete Carroll, the Seattle Seahawks football coach, that's right there in your backyard, Pete Carroll has gone in at the biggest league in all the professional sports with millionaires and the guy has had positive

style of leadership. He wins at USC and he wins at Seattle. But many of you fans will know he lost big time with the Jets and the Patriots earlier. Here's a guy that's figured out his style. I would just love to have you opine about what's working there and what we as leaders can understand about winning with people. Well, I'll tell you something. I don't know Pete Carroll personally, but I know Jim Zorn, who was the quarterback coach in Seattle. He's in my small group, but we call our 5% club.

And we've been meeting for years and years. And we talk about the 5% of our life that we don't broadcast to everybody else. Could be the top five or the bottom five. And Jim, Zorn, of course, an incredible quarterback in his day. And then a quarterback coached. And then he coached the Redskins and on and on. And the one thing I know about him is that he has respect for his players. And I know Pete Carroll does too.

And they sense that. And he's not trying to browbeat him. He's not trying to win through shame. He's really winning through respect. And that gets at this thing. Does that mean they don't have corals? Of course not. They have big time courts.

Oh, sure? For sure they do. And you bet they did after the last Super Bowl. That's right. We all did in Seattle. Sure, right. There's a lot of conflict in Seattle. Oh, man.

It was funny, though, because the city really did turn around. They're still our boys, you know? Yeah, absolutely. It was such a disappointment. That's good. But we'll let it pass. Well, that's actually what they did. They let it pass.

That's right. I had to get that joke in there. They should have run it to Marchand, baby. But you get the idea. It really does come down to respect. It's just a cornerstone of good leadership. They respond because he respects them. Yeah.

He expects them to do a job. But I really love what he's doing there and that positive style of relationship-based leadership. And by the way, you know, that's true in any relationship. It's true, obviously, not just in sports and in business. It's true at home, too. I got a 12-year-old and I got a 17-year-old. If there's one thing I want those little guys to know,

Well, one of them not so little anymore, but I want them know I respect them, you know, that this isn't daddy that, oh, you never measure up. I respect where you're at. I know where you're at, developmental. And I want to put myself in their shoes as best I can, not easy to do all the time. But you and I've talked offline about fatherhood, what a challenge that is. And you just want the best for these little ones. But respects a big part of that, too. Well, the book, folks, is The Good Fight.

This will help you in your marriage. It will help you in your relationships. It will certainly help you in the office. make sure you check it out the good fight and also their website is chalk full of amazing resources and you know many times we talk leadership on this podcast but I wanted less to be on here

folks because the fact of the matter is no matter how well or how poorly you're doing in your business or in your organization you still have key relationships in your life and we want you to win in every facet not just your business so Les Perrett thank you for being

with us we really appreciate it I know we're better and you and I have known each other long time and what a service you do for all of us. So thanks for having me on. Hey, if you want to learn more about Les Parrott, check him out at less andlesley.com. Less andlesley.com. Incidentally, it's very funny. His full name is Leslie. And he married a Leslie. Funny stuff. But they are great. You can check them out online, less and leslie.com. Well, we love what InfusionSoft does for Entre Leadership. InfusionSoft brings entree leadership tremendous value. And Jeff Mask, with our one question series, is bringing

it to you. Here's Jeff with another one question. There's never going to be a time when we've replaced looking a customer in the eye and shaking their hand and dealing with their challenges one-on-one. And yet, we have to be able to automate certain parts of that relationship or certain parts of that communication to be able to do what we need to do, which is solve their problem. So there is a tension there between how do we automate but not lose the touch, the high touch, that we want. How do you do that? That's a great question, especially in small business, because as we've said, in small businesses and entrepreneurs, it is personal. Our connections

are personal. Our referrals are personal. We live and buy by that word of mouth referral. And so just thinking of a system, sending an email out, it's like nails on a chalkboard. That's just too corporate. I'm personal. I like to look someone eyeball to eyeball, as does every entrepreneur. And there's a way to do that through our marketing automation as well. It's called personalized automated follow-up. When you can connect with the likes, the dislikes of your prospects of your customers. How do you do that? By having a centralized system that has all that data there for you,

that you can pull from different data points in the system to interject. We know that you purchased X and you talk to them personally. You literally reach through the computer to their heart, to their mind, and the way they go, they get me. and you've done certain type of marketing surveys the like that you can actually interweave in your marketing communications to help them know they care about me. Then when you can connect with their heart in a personalized way,

use their name, use where they live, use what they've already submitted that you know about them, they feel that connection. When they feel that, again, you're sending the right message to the right person at the right time through personalized, automated follow-up. That's impossible to do on your own. And you'll only scale to the level that you'll scale until you do that.

But you've got to let go to the point of it can be personal. People can feel your connection and your care for them through this automation. Such that, they get it and they realize, wow, thank you for thinking of me. You don't have to do this nice, glossy, beautiful looking thing. It can be a very simple text email. It doesn't have to have all the nice things about your logo and the like and your branding. It can just be a connection point. They feel it.

And what happens? They convert. Your business grows. much more efficiently. Your marketing and sales spends decreases dramatically because people buy when they're ready to buy and it's just a perpetual cycle that continues. Hey folks, thousands of you are taking InfusionSoft up on a special offer to connect with them and get their small business playbook. You can do it in about 27 seconds. Go to infusionsoft.com slash entree and get the small business playbook. Trust me,

you need this. It's tremendous value. So it's always fun when you get Dave Ramsey in the studio. It just doesn't happen very often. The guy's got a lot going on. In case you have forgotten, I think you should be reminded that Dave is the day-to-day chief executive officer of this organization. Now, 500 team members and growing. If we're not careful, Eric the producer, we're going to look back at our big celebration we just recently had. A 500 team members is going to be like in the rear view mirror.

We're adding people all the time. And so we wanted to have Dave come in in light of this because with this pace that we're on of adding new people all the time, you have to continually be casting the big vision, not just the specific vision of 2015 and 16 and 17 and where we're going as an organization, but the grander vision of why we exist. What we're here to do. And so we thought we'd bring Dave in and talk to him about this because this is an important thing for our organization to keep clear. clear on how we cast vision. And so this is a masterclass on how we do it, what it looks like, and beyond. So here's Dave and I talking about vision casting. Dave, we want to talk about vision casting with you today. And in our staff meeting, you talked to our team. It was good stuff. And we thought it would be fun to bring you on here and talk to our entree leaders,

men and women who are needing to cast vision on a daily basis. Where do business owners start when it comes to preparing to cast vision and then casting it. Well, sometimes a small business person, I mean, that's me, is when you say vision casting, it sounds like some kind of a woo-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-thing. Very intimidating. Yeah, it's just, you know, where are we going? Where are we going? And how we're going to get there?

That's all your vision is. And so don't turn it into something it's not. But you need to be talking to the team all the time about where we're going and how we're going to get there. The Bible says where there is no vision, the people perish. So don't turn it into some kind of thing you would learn from some professor in college or something. This is just where are we going and how are we going to get there? And what are the principles we're operating on that are going to take us there and begin to lay those things out?

Because most of the time people work in some place, if they don't know where you're going, if they don't see the bigger picture, then their job becomes a grind. It takes the energy out of their job. But if they see that in the distance where we're all going together, then they immediately see their part of it. and it gives them energy. There's a process for this. And over time, I know you always work on the process.

And I was in a meeting the other day when you were talking about this idea of over time, we figured out what didn't work and then we changed it. And so walk us through maybe what has worked and what didn't work when it came to casting vision here. Well, what hasn't worked is the thing that frustrates the crap out of me. Because I feel like, and I know people listen to us right now, feel the same way. I feel like once I said it, everybody heard it. And then I, and, you know, if I said it in one meeting and you weren't in the meeting, I still think you heard it. And I think, and then when we are going along and the people are going, well, I didn't know that's what we're doing.

I'm going, well, where are you been? Where's your head? You know, get your head out of your armpit. Let's go. And what I realized was is that we weren't saying it a lot. And we weren't saying the philosophical steps and the practical tactical steps a lot. to where everyone, you need to say them so much, everyone can recite them and make fun of you in your voice. Then they're starting to hear it.

But if they can't make fun of you and do their version of you, you know, and laugh at you behind your back or in front of you, whichever, however brave they are, then you haven't done it enough. Let's talk about something practical here, because we launch big things all the time. As we talk today, we just pre-launched Chris Hogan's new book, Retire, Inspired. And there's a lot that goes into this. So now we've talked about vision casting and some of the practical things and what hasn't worked, what does it actually look like when it's been casted well and then it leads into the launch of something? What does it look like on the end? Well, confetti, champagne and a party because you freaking won.

That's what the end of it is, you know, because you don't schedule a lose. You schedule a win. You know, if you start the football season, you want to win the Super Bowl. And that's your vision. You're going to start. And if you didn't start that way, then you start it out to lose. So no one aims it. We don't want to have a New York Times bestselling book that's number two.

We want to have a number one. And so that's what we're aiming at. So when that happens, we'll pop a cork, baby. I mean, we're going to go. And we celebrate because we aimed at it and we did the stuff, the hard work to the practical detail, nitty gritty, crossing the T's, dotting the eyes to get there, the hard work, the paying attention to everything, not letting your foot off the gas, not breathing some days because you have to push it, push it, push it, push it. And then when you hit it, you hit it.

But you've got to break that down. That's the big goal. That's the vision. Launching Chris's book becomes the number one. Launching something in entree leadership becomes the number one, whatever it is. And then you say, okay, now, what are the things we've got to do to get there? And we back down from that. One of the incremental goals, what are the incremental tactical steps, what are the driving principles of this?

And we write those all out and we talk about them until everyone's sick of talking about them. Because then they know. This is what we're doing with social media. this is the principle of the book. This is the message of the book. This is the target of that product line. And we talk about it and talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. It drives you nuts because you think, again, once you said it once, you said it once,

everybody ought to just go do their job. But they don't. They don't get it because they're not in your head. As soon as I announce what we're doing and where we're going, I can see all the steps to get there and I assume everyone else does. And that's something that has been one of my biggest failures on vision stuff is I'm not made sure. But boy, we've corrected that.

I mean, these days, I pound it, pound it into people's heads, the steps and the processes and where we're going. This leads to an important part of the conversation. When you pound it like that and everybody's making fun of it and everybody gets it, well, not everyone always gets it. And this is an important part of what we're talking about today. What do you do when it's so clear and some people just can't get on board? What do you do next? Well, then if everyone is getting it but one or two, then that becomes a personnel issue with that one or two. It's like, you know, are you not smart enough to follow this?

Are you not working hard? Are you dialed out? Are you sitting back there playing, you know, free cell on your cell phone while we're talking about this? What's your problem? You know? And because the whole team is going this way and we're all running left and you ran right. Did you miss the huddle, you know? And so that becomes a personnel thing if it's one or two.

But what happens is I've stood up in front of world-class leaders and world-class people, you know, talents inside of our organization. and I'm going, and I'm looking at them, and none of them knew where we were going. And I thought I had said it. So we had to go back. So the staff meeting the other day, what we did was we went all the way back to basics, the philosophical basics in our organization. And so it was a little bit of a vision casting thing rather than a real tactical, practical launch or something. But it always leads us to the tactical.

And so we have, I kept hearing, well, people don't know what our vision is. And I'm like, well, where are they? Why don't they know? So we actually wrote it out. And we came up with spent a lot of time. And it's frustrating for a guy like me because I'm real practical and all this philosophical stuff drives me nuts. But we wrote out our seven vision pillars. And when I say that, it just makes me mad.

But it's just when we wrote them out, everyone goes, oh, okay. Now I see what Dave's saying. Well, it's a communication tool is what it is. And so we put those seven vision pillars, where Ramsey Solutions is going and how we're going to get there, who we want to be in the different spaces that we're in. And we put them on the screen while everybody's coming in a staff meeting. And they flip around and you see a different one. And they're being driven every Monday, every Wednesday.

Anytime the whole group's getting together, they're cycling on the screen at the front of the room. You know, and ever so often. So I talked through those the other day as if they had not read them for the last year they've been cycling on the screen. And they're still, it was amazing, Ken. I'm looking out there at our 500 people. And those things have been on the screen for two years. And some of them are going, wow, that's pretty cool. And I'm like, where have you been?

Right. But nobody had said it. So I said it out loud. And then I took them from those principles or those pillars to what's our flywheel. Our flywheel at our place is trusted content. And so, you know, what's the flywheel and how are we going to spin it up? How are we going to spin it up? What becomes the hedgehog principle from Collins?

And we walk through that. And okay, this is who we are. And they're going, okay. And that flywheel's been on the screen. Every staff meeting. But when I walked through it, I saw this moment where people are like, oh, kind of thing. And you can see it when you're talking to your team. And then you take the fly wheel into the tactical steps.

and that's the Ramsey personalities for us and advancing them forward as our succession plan. And, you know, or we've got to build a building because we're out of space and you start talking about things, the practical things that we're talking about in leadership, but the team didn't know all of them. And when they know you have a plan,

they see the plan and they see the execution towards the winning of the plan, whether it's company-wide, whether it's the real estate piece, we're moving to a different location, or whether it's launch of a product line. When they get all of that, then they can get all of that, get on board, but otherwise it's just work. They just feel like I'm just working. Redundancy,

as you've been stating, is huge for clarity of vision. But it's also important to be redundant, Dave, because with a vision as big as we have here, and it is clear, and everybody's on board, which means we're always adding people. So you have to be redundant just because between three months of staff means we may add 20, 30 people. We are growing like crazy right now. And so this is very important. Yeah. And again, you think you've said it, and I did say it, but it was a year ago. Right. And how many people are sitting here that weren't sitting here? It could be 100 people at that time. And right now, I mean, we have grown. We're 500 folk and we grew by 23% this year. And so, yeah, I've got to say it over and over and over. And Andy Stanley says this. He said it in the old book he wrote Visioneering, that you have to state the vision 21 times before people hear it.

And so I start to look at it like doing a radio ad. If you do one radio ad, nobody hears it. When you buy a radio schedule, you run the ad over and over and over and over and over. because everybody's not in the car, listen to the radio right then. And if you just play it one time during your three-hour show and the average time spent listening on talk radio 16 minutes, you're not getting exposure for your ad. And so you've got to run the ad a bunch of times for people to hear it, and the same thing's true here.

Somebody's out on vacation, they didn't hear it. They weren't working here yet, so they didn't hear it. They were zoned out that day because they had a fight with their spouse before they came to work, and they didn't hear it. And so you've got to say it over and freaking over. And as a leader, I got to as a practical, bootstrap entrepreneur, I don't think it'll ever quit frustrating me that I have to do that. It seems so lame. But it's the only way to pull it together, and it's the only way to get everybody

pulling together, and it's worth it to get everybody pulling on the same team. I saw something recently from our HR team that we're on track to have almost 15,000 job applications come in this year, because people want to be a part of this vision. We're looking for some key people who get the vision, who want to be a part of this work that matters. It's a calling for all. all of us, what would you say to folks out there who say, hey, I may want to be a part of this team? Well, you know, it's one of the reasons we cast a vision is the place becomes appealing when everyone knows where we're all going.

And it becomes very attractive. So we went like best place to work every year for the last eight years in our town. And there's a reason we're the best place to work. Shut up. That's it. And so, you know, yeah, we're adding developers like crazy. You know, these Ruby on Rails people. I thought that was a lady on a train, but it turns out it's a developer, and, you know,

we're getting them, you know, these senior Ruby developers in here. We're getting these database managers. The Salesforce people are coming in here like crazy because we've implemented Salesforce company-wide. And, you know, we're all of the, you know, hiring these people, hiring somebody's top sales folk coming in here. And I met a young lady in the lobby a few minutes ago before we did this podcast recording that she's here to interview for creative. and she had been working for one of the top country music people in the world doing creative, and she's going to come here because we're that studly. And so, yeah, we're hiring like crazy.

I mean, it's nuts. And it's wonderful. It's fun because the talent that is coming on board here, we always do a thing after 90 days with our team. We call it Rap with Dave. After they finish their 90-day probation period, I sit down and answer any question they want to answer in a small room, about eight, ten people, and we spend two hours together and eat Chick-fil-A raps.

And so we call it Rap with Dave. and we ask them what their aha moment is in their first 90 days. What kind of caught you off guard that was really cool? And two of the people out of the eight said, I am so thrilled to work next to people who are so smart. I have been working with dumb people for so long that it is so fun to come on this team and work with smart people. I take that stuff for granted because I don't tolerate not winning.

I don't tolerate excellence in my life, lack of excellence. you know, I wouldn't have stayed as long as they stayed at the dumb place, I guess. But so it was like, but that was an aha moment. They're like, you all talk about how good you are and how excellent you are. These people are so smart around me. They're almost intimidating. I'm smart too. I'm good at my craft, but man, it's so nice to look.

And I'm, you know, if you're going to be Peyton Manning, it sure is good to have Jeff Saturday in front of you. You know, I mean, you really need to have, you need to have these things. And so that just makes it really attractive. And it's a fun thing we're doing right now. These hires that are coming on board. And if you know somebody looking for a gig, they want to live in Nashville, and it's the best place to live in the world. And, you know, it's a booming area. And so, you know, just hit Dave's hiring over there on the Dave Ramsey.com website.

It's over on the right inside. Let your friend. I mean, you guys listen to this podcast. You're on your own thing. You're not going to come to work for us. But you probably have a sister or a brother or a friend or somebody. Or you just know this guy who's a Ruby developer at your church or whatever. And, you know, he's at a place that treats him like crap.

And so however that works. I don't know. But it's just, for those of you listening, though, let's go back to the thing. The vision, that's what it does. Because, you know, there's an old book, before there was good to great, there was a book called In Search of Excellence, which was a good to grade of 1982. It studied excellent companies, and Tom Peters wrote the book. And one of the things he said in the book is those great companies, those excellent companies that they studied. One of the attributes was they had a big vision and they were going somewhere and they found,

that people wanted to be on a train that was moving. They didn't want to go, they didn't want to climb on a train and sit in the station. They wanted to be a part of, everyone, human nature is we want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. And so you have to have something bigger than yourself. And it doesn't have to be something huge like we're doing.

I mean, it could be your heat and air company, guys, but it needs to have some oomph to it. You need to be some passion. You need to freaking care. And then if you don't care, you don't need to work on my team kind of thing. That's a vision cast right there.

It can be that simple. If you don't put the blue booties on, baby, you don't show up on time. You don't make Mrs. Ramsey's heat and air go buzz buzz like it's supposed to. Then you don't even be on my team because Ms. Ramsey's my customer, you know? And that's all the vision is. People, a repair tech wants to be part of a team that cares. That's right. Instead of a team that doesn't care.

And that has a bad reputation for caring. So all you do is have this big idea, even if it's a three-person business, it's a big idea. because you're bigger than the other three persons' businesses because the way your mind works at that point. Well, folks, you heard Dave say that we just reach 500 strong. We are not anywhere close to finish. The vision is strong. It's way out there.

We're going hard to reach it. And we want some Eagles. If you've heard Dave ever teach on hiring, well, he lives what he talks and teaches. And so if this fits you or somebody you know, as Dave said, here's what we want you to do. Send them to Dave Ramsey.com. Right side of the page, click on

Dave's hiring, and we would love to have them be a part of our vision. Dave, this was a master class in Visioncasting. Thanks for hanging out with us. Honor to be here, and we love small business people, man. We love you guys. You make the economy work, and if we add value to you, we had a good day. Now remember, you can text 33444 with the word mission. That's right, just text the word mission to 33444 so that you can get this free tool we've been offering all month, the mission statement mapper. You just heard Dave and I talk about this. So we're going to walk beside of you and guide you through this process. It can be intimidating. But with this mission statement mapper, it'll be easy. Text the word mission to 3-3-444. Now, if you're international or you don't

want to text, we have an option for you at entreleadership.com slash podcast. You can download the PDF, Entreleadership.com slash podcast and click on this episode. Hey, leaders, we are smack dab in the middle of our fall season. Don't forget our big Kahuna event, the Entree Leadership Summit, May 22 through 25, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Entreeleadership.com slash summit

for all of the details. The speaker lineup is bananas. I've been telling you about it. Just go check it out, and we have a mystery speaker. We're talking top of the A-list. You're hearing what I'm saying? It doesn't get any higher up the A-list than this guy.

But we can't talk about it via contract. This is not a marketing play. I literally can't or I get shocked. Eric, the producer, has a shock button on me. And if I say anything, I get shocked. They drag me out of here and put a new host in. It's that simple. So anyway, check it out, folks.

We'd love to see you there, entreeleadership.com slash summit. Hey, this has been a great episode. I learned a lot. I hope you did as well. We want to thank Les Perit and Dave Ramsey for being on with us. Of course, Jeff Mask with InfusionSoft. And to you, our amazing loyal audience. On behalf of Eric, the producer,

and everyone on the Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.