EntreLeadership - #156: Sydney Finkelstein—Finding and Developing Super Talent

Episode Date: July 18, 2016

What makes a super leader? After 10 years of research and more than 200 interviews, best-selling author Professor Sydney Finkelstein says they share a common goal—finding, nurturing, leading and even letting go of great people. Sydney shares what he’s learned and how you can be an incredible leader too. Also on tap, we’re sharing a special panel discussion with Dave, Jim Collins and Patrick Lencioni from this spring’s EntreLeadership Summit in Dallas. entreleadership.com/podcast A 90-day Plan to Jumpstart New-employee Performance Infusionsoft's Free SEO Guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here's a really good thought from author Sidney Finkelstein on the reputation of a leader. If you gain a reputation as a leader that helps other people get better, helps other people accomplish more than they ever thought possible, well, that's a pretty powerful asset to have. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City,

and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. That means it's for you, great people. And we're grateful for you for joining the conversation. That little carrot we gave you at the top of the podcast from Sidney Finkelstein, who is the author of Superbosses. How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent is just a sample of, I think, some really practical stuff that we're bringing to you in our feature conversation. That's coming up in a few minutes. And also, I'm very excited about this. major kudos to the man who serves you more than anybody else on this podcast, and that is our producer, Eric Anthony.

I asked him if he could go into the vault from the 2016 Entree Leadership Summit that we just did in the spring and get the panel that we did on stage. Dave Ramsey, Jim Collins, and Pat Linceioni join me on the stage for, when I say exclusive conversation, you know the word exclusive gets thrown around too much. This was exclusive. It's really fun. So it's very exciting. We're going to let you hear some of that conversation. And just going to tell you, it's live miced in the room, so this is not in a studio.

We're literally transporting you back into the ballroom with over 1,500 leaders, men and women, just like you, listening to these three great leaders, have a transparent conversation that is absolutely guaranteed to make you better. Speaking of guarantees to make you better are free stuff, Entree Leadership tool coming at you, and Infusion Soft has a great tool that we're giving you in the month of. July. So all that coming to you in this podcast. All right, let's get right to it. You're ready to learn. I hope you are. Sydney Finkelstein, new to me. I've said this to you folks before, that Eric and I have a great library going. If things ever get tough, Eric and I will start selling books, we'll create our own Amazon store, and we'll sell the books that people send us. It's split the profits.

No, I kid. But we do get a lot of books. And we literally think about what is it that you folks told us in our survey. What do you want? And I'm not a big fan of the title of this book. I'll be very, very frank. When I saw Superbosses, I was like, but here's what's interesting. The subtitle reached out and grabbed me. I said, Eric, let's look into this. The subtitle of the book, Superbosses, is how exceptional leaders master the flow of talent. And on the cover of this book, I think this sets us up beautifully. Why this interview jumped out to me is something we needed to dive into. Big giant arrow going forward, but the arrow is made up of people.

And we've talked a lot about that on this podcast. In fact, recent podcasts, you heard an excerpt of my interview with the legendary coach, Pat Summitt. She told the story of her father saying, you don't take don't take donkeys to the Kentucky Derby. It's about people, people, people. And he really did a lot of research on this. studied leaders who have transformed entire industries. And so he reveals in the book how do exceptional leaders master the flow of talent? This is an important conversation.

So get ready to learn from Sidney Finkelston. Sydney, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Let's start off with the subtitle. The Superboss is how exceptional leaders master the flow of talent. I love the phrasing there, and I'm curious to know how specific were you in using the word. the flow of talent, because I find that fascinating. Yeah, it's a great question, Ken. The truth is that most people think about people coming into an organization, maybe developing some of those team members, but they don't talk about how they flow from spot to spot and sometimes even out of an

organization. And I think that's why we really settle on that term to highlight the idea that managing people is about a long-term process of managing them in, during, and sometimes out, and what you do with them after if they even leave your organization. All right, so I want to start with one of the examples that your PR folks sent to us, and specifically they highlighted a few leaders that kind of modeled this idea of mastering the flow of talent. One of them, Ralph Lauren, the fashion iconoclast, and I want you to use him as an example. Why was he one of the names when we set the context for our conversation, how he and some of these other leaders like Larry Ellison, Bill Walsh, Lauren Michaels from Saturday Night,

life, what makes them different? Well, you know, you look at, first of all, their track record and developing talent. They're super spawners. Take Ralph Lauren. You look at the people that have worked for him over the years. We're talking about, you know, Vera Wang, Tori Birch, John Varvato's, Joseph Aboud, the guy that's the CEO of Michael Coors today, John Idol. These people have developed a long track record of tremendous superstar talent. And that's what really makes them so special. And the key is to identify, you know, what are, what are they doing that's really different on a day-to-day basis? And it gets to a lot of things from how they find talent, how they think about talent in the first place, to how they motivate and energize people and inspire people into how they

manage teams. All right. So let's dive in specifically to hiring. What have you found and what do you share in this book that we can grasp today to understand how these great leaders are finding super talent and then retaining them for a while? I'll give you a couple of quick ideas. Number one, these great leaders are really all about looking for untapped talent pools. It's actually a very logical thing. Everyone keeps going back to the same type of person. Whoever had the job before, well, let's find somebody that has the same skill set.

But in fact, untapped talent pools are looking at people that maybe others have bypassed. And as a result, you begin to expand your thinking about who you might be able to go after. By the way, this also has an added benefit of boosting diversity into your organization. because you have people like Jay Shiat, who in the advertising business, that greatly expanded opportunities for women in the advertising industry, go back to Mad Men. They're not that many women running advertising agencies. He saw that opportunity and others like that as well.

And the second thing I'd say about talent is, well, what do they look for? What kind of skill sets turn out to be really, really valuable? And here I'd say that while there's a lot of variety, because, of course, you know, the people you already mentioned from the Ellisons and the Walshs and others, there are in a lot of different industries. But they're always looking for great intelligence, not just IQ, by the way, but emotional intelligence. They're looking for creativity. They're looking for flexibility, people that can do a lot of different things.

And they love competitiveness. They love people that are really competitive and love to win. And those are the characteristics they kept going after time and time again. Both those ideas I just shared are completely actionable. Anyone could take them and apply them into their own business. That's all right. Well, you just led us into a question I was going to ask, which is Chapter 2 of your book is entitled, getting people who get it. And just as a review for folks that Sydney just lay those out,

those three things, lay those three characteristics out. And then I want to ask you a question. So hit those three characteristics of people who get it one more time. Yeah, sure. So people that get it are really people that have the intellect, the capability to make great things happen. And that intellect is not just IQ. It is also emotional intelligence, your ability to manage relationships and other types of intelligence, if you will, creativity. They love people that can come up with new ideas, new ways of looking things, and flexibility. They're big fans of flexibility. They want people that can do a lot of different things. And they also like the idea of moving someone who has a deep knowledge in some aspect of business into a different area so that they can

apply that brain power and that experience in a new way. And again, it gets back to this idea of always coming out with something new. That's central to how these leaders think. I'm glad you reviewed that because I want to lock in on flexibility because I think this is a term. When I read this, it was a light bulb for me because I think sometimes we forget about how strong a value or how strong the idea of being flexible is to a great team. You know, we think of the stars. We think of the super talent. But flexibility as a characteristic or flexibility as a talent, I think sometimes is underrated. Why do you think it's so huge?

It's such a big deal because the only way to survive for any organization, small organization, medium size, any organization is you got to adapt, you got to adjust, you got to face up to the way the world is on a day-to-day basis. That requires people that are not doctrinaire, that are not locked into one way of thinking. And for someone who's worked in, say, market research or sales or manufacture, any area, which is great. If that's all you ever did, if that's all that you know, you will only, you'll be more likely to look at the world only in that narrow point of view. And I don't think we can afford that in

this day and age with the types of changes that are going on. So flexibility is really a huge advantage, I think, for an organization for a team, for a leader that can build team members with those skill sets. Chapter four, you talk about how leaders are uncompromisingly open. We understand that phrase, but what does that look like in the workplace in this leadership perspective that we're talking about? It's one of these counterintuitive things that I found these great leaders were really doing. And it means two things. Number one, having a strong vision, a real meaning, a purpose in life in a sense. You know, you look at a leader like Alice Waters, who is a famous restaurateur from Chepanese

restaurant, Berkeley, farm to table, local sourcing, sustainable, and all the rest. That's her passion in life. That's her mission in life. She's not going to compromise on that. That is who she is. And you've got to be part of that if you want to work for her. But at the same time. this is the part that's counterintuitive. At the same time, she wants to hear your best ideas,

and she wants to hear them every day. She expects you to be creative. She expects you to come up with new ways of doing things. And because she's so passionate about fulfilling this mission in her life, she wants the best ideas to come to the fore. And that's why these leaders are really, they're uncompromising, but at the same time, they're open. And you can imagine that would be pretty attractive combination for a lot of people to work with. And I want to go back to something And you said at the very start of the conversation, I drew out Ralph Lauren, and you mentioned several fashion. Honestly, now they're icons that have come out of his shop, if you will. And you write about masters and apprentices.

And you use a great example of the early days of art where there were no art classes. And so, you know, if you're going way back to the 15th century, you draw out the Italian Renaissance. I want you to give us the context of that story, how you write it in the book, and then explain how these super bosses, if you will, are doing such a good job of apprenticing folks under them so that they can then go out. Because I think that's so huge when leaders figure out, there are some key people that if you do it right and transfer a lot of what you know, transfer a lot of what you do, you could really propel somebody. That's absolutely right, Ken. You know, how have people developed over time? How have people learn their craft, their skill? There was one model in place literally for centuries. And that, of course,

is the apprenticeship model. And where is it today? It's gone by the wayside. And you go back to Florence in Renaissance, Italy. And even Leonardo da Vinci worked in the workshop of Varocchio. He learned how to weave the tapestry. And he was a particularly talented young man and he did pretty good stuff on his own. But he started. Even somebody with that skill set started the same way as everybody else. It's gone today. You barely ever see that. But these great leaders that I studied, they have resurrected the apprenticeship model. They have absolutely resurrected it. And what that means is that they create huge opportunities for people.

And this is another one of these counterintuitive things. They will roll up their sleeves and work hand in hand with the people on their teams on a regular basis. I'm not saying every day because you have a lot of things you're doing and you have more than one person that reports to you as when you're the leader. But they'll look for big opportunities and they'll work closely with you. And they won't go over that micromanagement line that everybody, you know, talks about is the worst thing you can do as a manager. But they're getting really close. And I think that's not always appreciated by leaders. They have this deep understanding of what the business is about. And as a result, they become these great teachers, these coaches, where they help other people get

better. They help accelerate careers. It's really remarkable when you think about why more leaders don't adopt more of an apprenticeship approach to developing talent. It's such a giant win-win. You said something that I locked in on, and that was they're not micromanaging. You said they're not go on paraphrasing, but they're not going over the line of micromanaging. So it seems to me there's a fine line, but a huge difference between showing by virtue of teaching versus picking apart or inspecting only and saying, this is what's not right. You know, it needs to be this way as opposed to showing. Do you see that to be true? Yeah, it is. And, you know, it takes a little bit of time to get on the right part of that line. The place you don't want to be is when you're doing your

subordinates, your team members work. When you're doing their work, that doesn't make any sense. If you feel like you have to, then you either got the wrong people on the team or you just don't trust them at all. And that's a whole other problem. So you don't want to go there. But to just delegate and kind of forget about it and tell people, you know, come back in a week or a month when you figure this out, you know, you see people do that. But wouldn't it be more powerful to periodically spend a bit of time hand in hand with that person? The learning is greatly accelerated. So, you know, you got to find the right place for you, for what's comfortable for you and where you want to be. But if you look at some of the greatest leaders of modern times, most people that work with them

will say that they're pretty similar to this. They sometimes even go over that line. You know, the Steve Jobs and the Jeff Bezos, the Larry Ellison's Bill Gates, for that matter. They generally don't go over the line, but they're going to be attuned to what's going on. And there's such value to doing that. Why wouldn't you want to do that? Oh, absolutely. All right. I want to move to Chapter 7. It's called the cohort effect. What do you mean by that? What's that look like? Yeah. A cohort means literally a group of people that work together and actually get better by the

mere fact that they interact with each other. And you may have seen this if you've been fortunate enough to be on a team where you have a lot of great individual contributors and people push each other and challenge each other. But from the point of view of the leader, you can accelerate that. You can kind of create a culture that accomplishes that. And my favorite example is Lauren Michaels. If you think about Saturday Night Live, how do you get on the show? if you're a performer or a writer,

the only way to get on the show is by creating a skit. It's not a stand-up comedy show. So you have to collaborate with other people. And that's how you get on. But the way that Lauren Michaels has structured the show is as you get closer and closer to Saturday night, he has produced and encouraged the production of something like two and a half hours of material, of content.

But the show itself is only an hour and a half. And so in the last day or two, you're going from two and a half hours to one and a half hours. Now, how does that happen? In a sense, that's the definition of competition. You need some sharp elbows to make sure that you're doing everything you possibly can to get your skit on Saturday night. And who are you competing against?

The same people you're also collaborating with. That's, again, another counterintuitive idea that comes out of this research about these amazing leaders. But it points out how combining collaboration and a degree of competition at the same time helps other people get much, much better. and again another way of accelerating careers. And let's not forget all these things that you're doing to help other people get better, of course it comes back to help you because you're now surrounded with better and better team members. You're going to be more successful as a leader at the same time.

When you were researching this book, then you put it all together as you look back. Is there something that really surprised you from the research? Yeah, there were actually several. But if I guess if I were to highlight one thing above all else, I'd probably say it's this idea that some of these leaders actually were willing to help their team members get a job to go elsewhere, to help them go somewhere else. And if you really think about it, most companies, most people think about talent retention as one of these ultimate goals. And I came to the conclusion after studying super bosses, as I call them, these leaders, I came to the conclusion that talent retention as a goal is actually, may actually be a bigger mistake. and most people think.

And that's because, of course, you want to hold on to great talent. But is it the case that you have control over those people so that they have no choice but to work for you? And obviously, they don't. People could go work wherever they want to work. They can create their own careers and their own jobs wherever they want to. So you can't control them. But yet, as you go through these things we've talked about from the cohort and the apprenticeship

and finding this great talent and vision and creativity, you're helping people, you're creating superstars in a sense. You're creating tremendous talent. Well, their bar has been raised. They're going have pretty big aspirations and they're going to want some big stuff. And if you can't accommodate that in your own business because maybe you're not growing fast enough, yet another reason why growth is so powerful. Well, what are you going to do? And what I learned from the super bosses is that they actually are in a position to create opportunities for people sometimes to leave and they don't forget about them. They continue to work with them. They'll look for business opportunities. give you a great example. Again, go back to Lauren Michaels. If you look at the two late-night shows

on NBC and the two hosts, it's Jimmy Fallon and it's Seth Myers. And both of those people were part of Saturday Night Live for years. They were two of the superstars of Saturday Night Live, and they were getting a lot of opportunities to do a lot of different things. And Lauren Michaels realized that. He realized he couldn't just keep them because they had a huge runway in front of them. So he helped them get these jobs as the host of the two late-night shows in NBC. And by the way, who is the executive producer of both of those shows? It turns out is Lauren Michaels. So he's actually benefiting financially and reputationalally by helping some of his people move on to a bigger job. And so if he had focused only on talent retention, he would have lost these people. He would

have created ill will and he would never have this opportunity to create additional value. So the odd thing here, the ironic thing is when you adopt what these leaders have adopted, you actually you probably retain people even longer than you otherwise would because they value that relationship. They're learning so much from you. And even when they go, they're still in your circle in a very positive, kind of not just positive in a social way, but in a business way as well. That was really a fascinating and different approach to leadership that I had seen. Yeah. And it's very healthy, but there's a flip side to this, I think. And the flip side is that they've built such a great culture, they've built such a great organization, that when some of those people, not all, move on into different roles.

roles, they keep winning. They put other people in those places. You see this in sports a lot, too. I want you to talk about that because they have done such a great job that when someone leaves and they let them fly, if they want to fly, but the organization, like Ralph Laurenne doesn't fall, you know, way down the charts, if you will, when Vera Wang leaves and does her own thing. No, that's completely true. And it's true with Larry Ellison, it's true with Lauren Michaels. What they've done is they've created talent pipelines. And think about that. If you gain a reputation as a leader that helps other people get better, helps other people accomplish more than they ever thought possible. Well, that's a pretty powerful asset to have. What ends up happening,

and I saw it time and time again, is that great talent would seek out some of these super bosses to work with. And as a result, you now are becoming a talent magnet. You know, at the end of the day, you know that you have to be successful in any organization. You've got to generate and you have to regenerate talent, really on a continuous basis. That is the key component to surviving and thriving for any organization. And these leaders have figured out how to do that, and they're doing it because, as you say, they're creating this pipeline and they become these talent magnet. So it's a system that perpetuates itself in a really positive way. That's right. Well, Sydney, this is great. Before I let you go, one of the things I love to ask our guest is to share something

from your head or your heart that would encourage our audience of small businessmen and women. people who are personal growth junkies who want more out of life and out of their career, what would you say to them? And maybe in the context of this book, or maybe just from you to encourage them as they look to become the type of leader that we're discussing? You know, the thing I would say, and it is a very personal thing, is the word is legacy. What is your impact when all of said and done? And I'm not talking about legacy in terms of leaving a business as incredibly important as that might be. But what is your legacy in terms of helping other people get better, accelerating careers, creating opportunities for people.

I talk about that actually in the book quite a bit, and it's a really good question to think about, what will people say about you after you've retired and even after you're gone? Will they say, well, you know, she built a great business and that was great, or will they say she built a great business, but she also helped other people do more than they ever thought possible? She accelerated careers. It would be something really to be remembered that way. When we're done, we've accomplished what we've accomplished.

and it gives you a bigger, I think a bigger and a broader perspective about all the good that we can do from creating businesses. It's not just about wealth as important as that is. It's also about wealth of ideas and wealth of talent, wealth of people, wealth of opportunities. That's what I would say. That's good stuff, Sidney. I appreciate it. I really enjoyed reading the book and we appreciate you spending time with us. We're better for it. Thank you very much, Ken.

Really good stuff from Sidney Fingleston. Again, the book is entitled Superboss, is how exceptional leaders master the flow of talent. Now, one of the ways you can master the flow of talent is by using the resources we give you, specifically this month, if you haven't taken advantage of the resource from our entree leadership team, it's called a 90-day plan to jumpstart new employee performance. If you want to talk about the flow of talent, baby, you want them flowing from the minute they get in the door, and our team does this very well. I've been here just over two years, and I'm telling you, I hit the ground at a pretty good sprint, almost pulled a hamstring the first week.

You know what I'm saying? And boy, you want to do that. You want people on their first week to just feel like, man, I'm right where I need to be. And it really is a great way to jumpstart their career with you. And so this is a great resource. It's a PDF and it's absolutely free. Step by step, we're going to walk you through a very practical checklist. What do you do before you even hire them?

Then we get super specific. What do you need to be doing one week prior to their first day? What happens on day one? What are the first 90 days need to look like? How about some required reading? I mean, just stuff that's going to help you, help your team. What should they be reading? You know, things of that nature.

And then I love learning from people's mistakes more than I do their recommendations. I just do. And so we give you that four onboarding mistakes to avoid from Armando Lopez, our director of HR. So this is all in this amazing PDF. It's absolutely free. Here's how you get it. You text the word. New hire. We know that's two words, but we've smashed it together because we can. It's new hire, and you text that to 33444. That's 3344. Or, of course, you can go to the link in this episode's show notes if you'd rather not text, and you can get the free resource. You definitely want to do this. All right, so this is fun. It's rare that Eric, the producer, comes from behind the glass into the studio. Welcome on this side of the room, pal.

Oh, this is special. Yes, it is. All right, so I brought you in here because we were talking before we recorded today. And you said, hey, I've got an ask of the audience. And I said, I want you to make the ask because you are the guru of podcasts in this building. And so you want folks to subscribe to iTunes. Why specifically? Because there are people who listen to multiple different platforms.

Why do we want our listeners? And this is for you folks who are big time fans. You love what we're doing. You trust us. We want you to subscribe to iTunes. Why is that? It's twofold. one of the reasons we want you guys to subscribe

is so it actually shows up in your podcast app the day you want to listen to it. We do this on Monday mornings because we want to jumpstart your week. So if you look at it's in your way to work, you see the podcast app, it's there. If you're one of these people that kind of just stream it on your desktop and you see iTunes,

it might not show up for hours and hours. Just that's the way iTunes is. But if you are subscribing to the app, it will be there automatically. You won't miss an episode. And we just want to serve you guys and then subscriptions help us in iTunes. It's almost like Billboard rankings,

and it allows a lot of people to discover it. And we just, I want to share that. And here's the deal, folks. We're not bragging here. You look at the rankings. You go to iTunes rankings, and we're routinely in the top ten. I mean, when a new one comes out, downloads, bump us up, and down on all that kind of stuff.

But you know we're one of the top business podcasts in the world. So if you are listening and partaking, and Eric's a single guy, he's going to appreciate this. He's getting married in the fall. We don't want them to date us anymore. If you're streaming and you're kind of picking a choose, but you're not subscribing, we want to put a ring on it. We've been with them for two years, man. You've been in this chair.

That's right. Eric and I've been here two years. We want you to put a ring on it. If you're listening to us semi-regularly, give us a subscribe for heaven's sakes. It helps us spread the word. You know how good the content is. Am I right? I mean, let's just put a ring on it.

Eric put a ring on it recently. Yes, I did. Which, by the way, while I've got you in here real quick, people, Now people want to know. All right. And this is very excited. Angela is a lovely young lady. I have the privilege of knowing her.

And as I have done, he has outpunted his coverage. There's no question about it. And that's a sign of a good man. So when's the big day? It is just under three months. Under three months. Yeah. October 8th.

And this is very disheartening because I know some of you are wondering, is Ken going to host the reception? I know many people at that very moment were thinking that. Well, Angela did look, and I think he's, give an event that night. I don't think you guys actually wanted me to host it. We're having fun with it. But I would have loved to have been there, but we have a smart conference on that day. We do.

We do. So I'm going to have to find somebody that's there, and I'm backstage when I'm not on stage, with FaceTime a little bit. Could do listener tryouts? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I feel like I need to zoom in for some of the wedding ceremony. This is going to be great fun. And thanks, buddy, for what you do.

We appreciate you. Thank you, everyone. All right, another giveaway, Infusion Soft. Again, this is our July giveaway from Infusion Soft. It helps us power this podcast. This is an SEO basics for small business resource. SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is a big deal.

And we've been talking about this, very, very practical stuff. And Chad Kirby talked about this, why this helps you, why this is a very practical resource, and all the different things that you get as a practical guide to help you win in this area. The link is in our show notes. or you can visit infusionsoft.com slash SEO basics. Infusionsoft.com slash SEO basics. Or again, the link for this great resource is in the show notes of this episode at entreleadership.com. Well, I got to tell you, one of the super, super amazing things that I get to do is sometimes have conversations with people who belong on the Mount Rushmore of their industry, right?

And, you know, when you think of some of the most influential leaders in the business space over the last 20 years, Jim Collins, Dave Ramsey, Pat Lynch,ioni, all number one bestselling authors in the business book category, all having amazing impact. Impact that we will never fully, truly understand, and be able to define. You can say that, but all three of them. And this was at our Entree Leadership Summit I mentioned at the top of the podcast, and it's just something that was a special. moment. All three gentlemen spoke, of course, to the capacity crowd of over 1,500 leaders. But then we had a special moment where I got to get them together on the stage and throw some attendee questions at them, questions that were popping up in my mind. At one point, Jim Collins looked at me and he said, it was so funny, I was on the far right, if you will,

and Jim on my left, and then Pat and then Dave. At one point Dave and Pat were saying something, and Jim was listening intently. And he looked at the far right. And he looked at the far right. at me and he said, can I ask a question? And I said to the crowd, is that in there, by the way, Eric? Is that moment in there? It's great. And I said to the crowd, you're Jim Collins. You can ask whatever you want, and everybody kind of laughed. It was kind of like, and it was just a beautiful moment. And these guys were learning from each other. So I can't think of anything better to give you folks than letting you eavesdrop in to the ballroom at the beautiful, beautiful Omni in Dallas, Texas, 1,500 plus leaders listening to three great leaders learn from each other and also

encourage us. So now you get to listen to that conversation. Here it is. Give a huge welcome to the stage. I'm calling at the Super Panel, Dave Ramsey, Jim Collins, and Pat Lynchone. Well, we're going to start off with a topic that all three of you gentlemen speak about regularly. You write about it in your books.

And I think it's huge. A great topic to start off with. for this audience, and that is the topic of humility. So the specific question is, how do you individually define humility? I think I probably know more about humility than anybody up here, so I was going to say that. There it is, right there. Mic drop, we're done.

I love it. That's classic. Yeah, because I mean, a level five leader, humble, ideal team player, humble, humble. You guys, when we were defining leadership Monday morning, humble. And yet there's a toxic definition in the culture about humility, particularly in the Christian culture, this false, toxic kind of weird humility, like I'm a worm thing. You're not a worm. You know what C.S. Lewis said, you know, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but just thinking about yourself less. And I'm going to be talking a little bit about that tomorrow, that a great team player isn't,

oh, I'm not worthy, you know, because then they're robbing you of their skills. and their God-given talent. So it's not about lacking confidence. No. I think you can be the most ambitious person in this entire room and have humility. It's just that the ambition is for something really significant that you want to see happen. And if it means you have to get out of the way for it to happen, then you want to see it happen. And I think there's a big difference between a lack of humility and the question.

of self-knowledge. I think that one of the things that I've observed with people who have tremendous humility, like Tommy Caldwell, I was talking about earlier. Tommy's actually a very humble person when you meet him. He's very, very aware, but I think what humility gives you is this very deep self-knowledge of the very few areas where you are encoded to do something uncommonly well, to use Peter Drucker's term, and to really understand where you are not encoded to do things uncommonly well and to accept the fact that most of us are incompetent at most things. So therefore, we should focus on the few areas where we have distinctive contribution.

And I think humble people know the difference. For me, as I look at Level 5 leaders and I'm hanging at, you know, I get to spend a little time with them, even up here yesterday with George W. There was a humility, but there was not a lack of confidence or competence. but it's just people that are other-centered, more than self-centered. To me, the arrogant is the person, it's just freaking all about me. And the level five leader is it's all about the mission. And the ideal team player is, you know, in that case, they're humble.

That humility means not that I, oh, I'm a worm, I'm not any good at anything. And that's somehow sometimes people call that humility. That's not humility. That's humiliation. Right. Let me ask you to stay here all three of you because I want to move from the individual. individual leader, that's what you've just been talking about, and move to this hubris or confidence as a brand. So same discussion, same question, but what's the right amount of healthy

hubris or confidence, if there can be such a phrase, for a brand, confidence in its brand, but still serving the customer. I'd love for you three to talk about that. You know, I will say this. People always ask me, who's the best CEO out there? And I think, well, you mean a famous one? I mean, Gary Kelly, if he walked in the, in most, if he sat on, yeah, Southwest Airlines. Southwest in the house. But if he walked into most places, people aren't going to know who he is. And Alan Malawi, I had a chance to meet him recently.

The guy reeks of humility. But he's very confident and very driven, but it's not about him. And then there's these other CEOs that we tend to know who they are because they want you to know who they are. And many of them work in technology, where hubris is kind of rewarded. And you don't have to have that. I don't think the brand should be about the leader. I think it should be about the product,

the service and the company. Is hubris, Jim, is hubris overconfidence? Yeah, I really love what Jay Rufus fears, how he defined it, which is it's an outrageous arrogance. Okay. And it's an outrageous arrogance to say deny risks that then when those risks go badly, it inflicts suffering on innocent people who didn't take those risks. So, I mean, a hubris would be to say, I'm going to engage in a business practice, whatever

it happens to be. and if it goes well, I'm going to do really well. But if it goes badly and those wrists turn against us and the bets that we've placed were not calibrated and I don't get hurt, but I have to fire 30% of my people because I did something that was ultimately going to make me rich, but my people were going to pay the price if it didn't work. That notion of outrageous arrogance where if it goes badly, it hurts others. That to me is the height of hubris. It's kind of a PR disaster for the Wall Street's.

firm when the guy gets a $100 million golden parachute, but 25,000 people lose their jobs. And then there's a public reaction against that kind of hubris. Yeah, I was like, Dave Packard of HP, used to believe that it was morally bankrupt to grow your company with opportunities that you know are going to result down the road in the fact that you're going to have to terminate a lot of people. And that's why they wouldn't take on certain kinds of businesses. and Hewlett said, you know, we won't do that because it's disrespectful to people. And so if we allow ourselves to grab that expansion, but we know the consequence is going to be carnage for humans.

We don't do that. And that's what makes the old HP no longer around because the rest of the Silicon Valley does not get that. I really don't think they do. We had several questions about core values. So I'm combining all those questions and just let you guys roll with this because I literally just heard Jim go, So core values, how do you all define them? And then what role do they play? Or maybe it's what role should they play?

Well, he, I learned about core values from him. And then I wrote an article about, because then I went out and made some mistakes working with companies on core values. Because, you know, you and Jerry came up with the idea. And what did, what did you learn? I'd be really crazy. So you and Jerry came up and built to last with, okay, enduring companies have great core values. And so, you know, a lot of CEOs, like, we got to get some of them. And so, so, so, I'm going to order in a bushel of them, yeah.

So they go to a, they get a flip chart in a hotel room, you know, conference room, and a phasaurus about this big and come back with 12 words that stood for everything. Yeah. You know, I always say, put love on there too. I mean, you can't leave love off that list. Yeah. So we realize core values and are those two or three, you will never violate that. You said this.

You're willing to get punished for them. And then we said, but there's some other values that they put on that. lists that weren't core, like aspirational values. I was working with a famous CEO once, and I said, so he wanted us to help him with his values. I said, what do you think your core values are? He goes, sense of urgency. And I was like, well, I knew the company. Well, I said, so you think people have a sense of urgency or get things down? He goes, no, they're complacent as hell. That's why this has to be a core value. And I said, no, no, no, no. See, and that's what a lot of companies did. And I will say this, Enron, one of their core values, and this is like shooting

fish in a barrel. It's not fair. One of their core values was integrity. But the reason, and I don't want to say like they're evil people. They were sitting there going, ah, we're doing some sketch. We should probably put that in there too. And we said, call it what it is. It's aspirational. You've got to get better at it. You're going to have to do it on purpose. You're not good at it right now. But don't call it core, because you're going to look really foolish. So there's aspirational, there's permission to play,

which are low bar ones, accidental ones. So there's all different kinds. The core that you guys wrote about is so important. Dave, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because I know this is something that you have thought a lot about. I think one of the things that I have always very much admired is that your whole approach has been,

you kind of start at a foundation of values and everything you've done. So I'd be really curious to hear how you think about this. You know, what caused us to do it was not nearly that sophisticated, or highbrow, I wish it was. What we figured out is everybody has core values. Some people just don't know what they are. You have values.

You make decisions based on what you believe the world to be and how you believe it to operate. That's your core values. And what we didn't realize was that we had them. And so what happened was we hired in our first, First HR director, he's here back there somewhere Rick Perry is still on our team. And Rick had this uncanny ability. We would be facing a crisis or an upside situation and we would all pile in a room and

fight the problem, but you don't yell at each other and fight on the problem and turn and polish it off. And we would finish the meeting and go, okay, got to plan action, everybody going to do your thing because we would figure out what we were going to do to reaction of that. And Rick would say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's just quantify what happened here. And he would say, you know, like in one sentence, you just made the decisions based on this, didn't you? And we went, yeah.

And he goes, well, that's value. And I went, okay, whatever you said, write it down, that's good. And he started collecting those. Now we have too many, okay? They're on the wall. There's like 15 outside. I know there's only supposed to be three, but we violate that. So, but what those 15 are is there the collection of Rick Perry's notes over the years,

and then we wordsmith them a little bit and put words. But those aren't things that we said we wish we were. There were things we discovered we are. then we put words to them. And so that's the search for the core value. If you're going to do aspirational, that's a different issue. That's a goal to shift your culture. And then when you become that, only then can you call it a value. Is that right? Yeah. Okay.

We, um, uh... How'd we do? Really well. Yes. Phil, I learned this from you. Wait, wait, don't tell me. So, uh, I really like what both of you say about the sort of getting down to the authenticity of them, what the values are versus. is what you think they should be. And that's very clear that what matters is what they actually are. We found no correlation.

We actually ran analyses. As you know, I love to run numbers and analyses. And we asked ourselves, are there certain core values that correlate with great companies? And the answer is no, actually. There's a huge dispersion. And what really separates is the extent to which people actually hold the values. Now, do I think you can have evil values? No.

But sort of outside of that, it's a huge range. and I just offer up one exercise for you. It's called the Mars Group. The Mars Group basically says your values are already there. And one way to get at it is to basically say, suppose you could take, say, five people that if you had to replicate the very best in the essence of what your company organization is on another planet, Mars,

and you could only send five people, who would you pick? And you're not asking the question, what values should we have or what do we put on a flip? We should basically say, who in our culture is? exemplifies the very kind of people we want to build this culture around. Now, we're going to put them in a spaceship, if you will, and then they go by themselves, and they then start with the following question.

What core values do I carry into the building with me? Not that I got here, but they're actually in my life. These are values that if I worked anywhere else or did anything else with my life, I personally hold these very dear. These are personal core values. They're not business core values. And then they look around at each other, the five members of the Mars group. They're like a genetic slice of whatever the Mars group is.

They look and they say, you know, what's really interesting, we look at each other and say, you know, one thing that just I absolutely carry with me, everything in life, I learned it when I was young, is, you know, you never, ever fail a commitment. You just never. I mean, there is no out on a commitment. And so you better be really careful what you commit to. You know, I really hold that too. And that, you know, I'll tell you, that just drive.

And so we have now something that is a shared core value that we carry in life. And then that Mars group sort of looks for sort of the intersection, and they come back, and usually there's like three things or something. It's just kind of like, we have these inside our bellies. That we were selected as exemplars of the very kind of culture we want to build. That then becomes sort of a snapshot. It's like a photograph, if you will, of what the values are. And then you basically say, ah, that probably are the very values that really exemplify what we're really looking for.

Because how do you build a culture? You hire and retain the right people. That is the way you do it. So it's a people-driven way of identifying the values. That is the most authentic way that I can recommend. And, you know, it's so painful to take people off the bus, those of us that love people. And we figured out it's real easy to take people off the bus if they don't line with the values. It's like the acid test.

You don't do the value? Oh, you're off the next stop. This is who we are and this is our bus. And you don't fit on the bus. And it just changes everything then. They just don't fit. Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that. And that was just a portion of it.

And so here's what we've done. We're going to give you the entire conversation on stage, which was just so much fun. You heard a decent portion of it. We're giving you the whole thing. And it is on this show's show notes. That's episode 156. You've got to go to Entreeleadership.com. The only place you can get it.

This is bonus footage. Many of you people have been telling Eric and I, we want longer interviews. Well, you're going to get it. More of that conversation. In fact, the entire conversation, right? Eric, we're going to give them the whole thing, start to finish, and you can listen to it all.

Episode 156, entreeleadership.com. The audio file is in the show notes. So that's some bonus footage. Go digest that. It was so much fun. I'm still reliving moments from that great conversation. as I learned on stage and you're going to love it. So go check that out. Episode 156, entreleadership.com. Well, as I told you, that panel was a part of our last Entree Leadership

Summit, the 2017 Summit already rocking in attendance. We've announced most of the lineup. We'll always have some goodies and surprises that are always possible. But we're really excited to have Pat Lynchione and Dave, of course, back. Then Simon Seneca, Lou Holtz, John Maxwell, Christy Wright, Chris Hogan, and Robert Hershevec from Shark Tank. That's always fun. And you never know what we're going to do. Daniel Tarty and the team, they're always cooking up surprises. You never know what's going to happen.

So you want to stay tuned to entreleadership.com slash summit. Entreleadership.com slash summit. That's where you can get all the information about the event and, of course, purchase your ticket. Now, folks, we've done two of these. Both of them have sold out. Summit number two that we just did in the spring of 2016. doubled in attendance. So this isn't hype.

This is a fact. If you're thinking about this, Entreeleadership.com slash summit, it's going to be in Orlando, Florida, and maybe just maybe, we'll pass out some Mickey years. I don't know. I haven't gotten that approved,

but it's going to be a lot of fun. What a great environment is over several days, leaders converging from this Entree leadership community from all around the country. I've got to tell you, some of the best moments.

I came back and told Eric, some of the best moments were the get-togethers with our VIP attention, attendees and other attendees after the sessions, where we just sat around and encouraged, we heard your stories of how you're winning and winning big. And it's just a great, great time. So do consider it, entreeleadership.com slash summit.

That's May 21 through 24, 2017, May 21 through 24 in Orlando, Florida, going to be a lot of fun. Well, I want to thank Sidney Finkelstein for joining us here on the podcast. Great value from him on behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony, and the entire Entree leadership team. We thank you so very much for listening, and we will talk with you again very soon.