EntreLeadership - #176: Mike Abrashoff—Taking Command of Leadership

Episode Date: December 5, 2016

Imagine trying to lead a team without the power to hire, fire or promote. Even tougher? That team was the worst-performing one in its entire division. So what do you do? If you are former Naval Captain Mike Abrashoff, you focus on your leadership—not the crew’s deficiencies. His results were spectacular. Abrashoff turned the ship around and made it number one. He joins us to share his story and give some practical tips. Also on the show, EntreLeadership Coach John Felkins answers your business questions. Don’t miss these great conversations! entreleadership.com/podcast EntreLeadership's Recognition Free Tool Infusionsoft's Target Market Worksheet 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. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Our feature interview is with Mike Abershyshoff, the author of It's Your Ship. I'll tell you a little bit more about him in just a few moments. We also have John Falcons coming by as we answer your question.

And then we open up Ken's electronic mailbag. And of course, because it is the start of a new month, unbelievable. I can't believe we're in December. But that is good news for you because we're going to bring you two new tools, one from our Entree leadership team, and one from InfusionSoft. So hey, let's get right to it. It's that time again. I love it when we can give you folks some answers. And the man who does that is our head coach of our All Access Community.

He is coach John Falcons coach. Good to have you in studio. Thanks, Ken. Love being here. up a question from Kelsey. She says, how do you recognize employees without breaking the bank? I love this question, Ken, because we in our early days, in Dave's early days, he didn't have a bank to break. That's true. But the spirit and the principle was there. We do get this question a lot from the members in our program, and what we consistently help them with is, hey, this is

an issue of where your heart is and what the spirit is. So if what you can afford to do is to stand there in a meeting and talk to somebody eye to eye and tell them how much you appreciate specifically what they're doing, or maybe just sit down and have dinner with them and their spouses and talk directly to their spouse about how amazing their spouse's contribution is to the effort, those things don't cost much, except for some intentionality and some time on your part. And they still are some of the most meaningful things that you can do. So don't let finances be a limiter on this. Make sure that you have that focus and that heart and that spirit and people will get that and that'll do everything you need to do in terms of recognizing them. That's right. And Kelsey, here's the deal. Recognition is free.

Sometimes it costs nothing at all just to recognize someone. So you got to be strategic about how you do it. Great stuff from John there. And thank you for the question, Kelsey. All right. Up next is Janet. And this is a question about something that is, this is a touchy situation for any organization. It's a staple around here. That's our no gossip policy. And so Janet has a question around that issue. How do I make it a natural aspect of our team and not just have it work for a little while? So I like that. How do you make a no gossip policy stick? So this honestly, Ken, is something, as you know, is so different inside this organization. It generates a ton of questions. If I could rank all of the questions we've gotten from the members

in our coaching program, I would say this is top three. Our gossip policy and how it works, probably a top three question because it is so unique. And our members are always working through that with their companies. But here's how we've helped people with that. First of all, you just have to define it for people. You have to help them understand, look, we live in a society where gossip is pretty normal and it's pretty accepted. But you have to just go to the organization and say, you know what, I've allowed this to go on. That's, was a mistake on my part and it stops today, then start to move forward. And it really only becomes real to people when you actually start to take some action on it. Now, here's the

bad news. The question is, how do I make this a natural thing? How do I do this so that I don't have to mention it? How many times have we heard Dave talk about gossip? A lot. It's not natural. We're all imperfect people trying to do a perfect thing. I'm sorry, but as a leader, one of your Jobs is the chief reminding officer, you are going to have to go back to this over and over and over again because we're dealing with imperfect people. It won't be natural. It's something that you have to go back to. That's why being on a journey, being in a process, like a coaching program, is so important because it's step by step day in and day out that we help you and we're there to give you that feedback that you need in these situations. Going to an event is awesome. It can be a

catalytic moment, but it fades. And being in a process with your team and with somebody that can give you great feedback will help you on this journey. Hey, folks, what coach is talking about is our all-access community. And here's a deal. I'm just going to tell you this. If you love this podcast and you're digesting it on a regular basis, but you want to go deeper and get the content on how we run this place, what are some successful principles? What is entree leadership when you break it down and apply it in your business? The best way to do that is All Access because you're going to get great content from our amazing coaches like coach John Falcons and his amazing team of coaches. And here's the best part, community. You're not in this alone. And we know with what you're saying, John, it's absolutely

right. When you've got that community and that some accountability and someone's spurting on going, hey, man, I went through that six weeks ago. Yep. Trust me. Hold the line. You'll get through. That's a game changer. And absolutely is. All access is this community that is just blowing up. Great tribe of people. If you want to learn more about it, very simple, entreeleadership.com slash all access. Entreeleadership.com slash all access. And trust me on this, if you join, there's no contract. It's totally risk-free.

Why wouldn't you take my word for it? You think I'm going to lie to you? Just try it. I promise you. It'll absolutely pay dividends. So there you go. Entreleadership.com slash all access. Coach John Falcons, always good.

When you join us in studio, we appreciate that. I want to remind you, folks, if you'd like more of your questions answered, just send us an email, podcast. at Entreeleadership.com. Podcast at Entreeleadership.com. Eric, the producer and Entree Leadership team are always working together to bring you some themes around

topics of content that can help you win and win big. And when I heard that December was going to be focused on recognition, I dusted off a book, if you will, that I read many, many years ago and it's still relevant, a phenomenal book from a phenomenal leader

that I think really will help you and challenge you. The title of the book is It's Your Ship, Captain Michael Abershoff. He goes by Mike, and he was the commander of the USS Binfold. Phenomenal story, in short. It's his first ship. First commission. The guy takes over a ship that, as you will hear him talk about, was very low-ranked in the Navy. And he totally turned it around, and there's so much that's applicable.

he's now a widely sought-after speaker and business consultant. And I think this is going to really challenge you. It's good stuff because at the end of the day, there's so much similarities between a Navy ship, right, a military vessel, if you will, because they're living and working and operating and fighting together on that ship. That is essentially a wonderful caricature for winning in business, fighting together for your goals and vision. So it's really good stuff. The book was written in 2002, but very, very relevant. So let's get right to it.

Here's my conversation with Mike Abrashoff. Well, Mike, this is a real treat for me to talk with you about this. I love anytime we get an opportunity to talk with military leaders because of the unique environment that it presents. And also, it's just so applicable to leaders in the business space and nonprofit world as well. And for those who may not have heard of the book, because I do believe there's some in our audience who may not have heard it was a wild success over a million copies sold.

But the story itself of you taking command of the ship and what you learned and how it turned into a wild runaway bestseller is so fascinating. So give us the summary of that opportunity when you come on board and you realize you've got to make some leadership changes and how it turned into this book. So it wasn't the worst performer in the Pacific Fleet, but we were probably third or fourth from the bottom. And I didn't get to choose my missions. I couldn't choose my crew. I couldn't change anybody out. I couldn't go back and ask for more money. And I was feeling sorry for myself thinking I'm never getting promoted again.

And then one day I decided, you know what, I'm going to stop being a victim. And I'm going to start focusing on the things I can influence. And I decided what I could influence was the crew. And so I tried to create a culture where I would be proud for my own sons or daughters to come be apart. And for your business owners out there, you know, they need to run on one question. Would you want your family members, your sons or daughters, or loved ones to come work for you. And if you'd be proud, you're on the right track.

And if you're embarrassed, you know, you might want to think about fixing it. And I decided to fix everything I was embarrassed about. I interviewed every sailor on the ship individually, all 310 of them. I got to know their names, their spouses' names, their children's names, their hometowns, what motivated them, what they wanted to do with their careers. And I traded them with respect and dignity. And what's sad is the same crew that was performing near the bottom. Fifteen months gets awarded the trophy for best ship in the Pacific Fleet, which means the

talent was there all along. Nobody felt engaged. They were treated poorly. They didn't take ownership and accountability for the results. And all I did was, you know, try to create that empowerment. I never told a sailor how to do anything on that ship. I would say, well, what do you think? And when I said it the first time, a sailor said to me, nobody's ever asked me to think before. And I said, well, I'm asking you to think. And when people give their opinions and you say, hey, run with it. They feel empowered. And then they feel ownership and they feel accountable for the results. And I was in a speech about a month ago and the CEO was pointing his finger at everybody and says, you're accountable for the results. And I took a step back. And I thought to myself, in two years,

I never told one sailor they were accountable for the results. What I used to do was empower them and get them to feel like they owned it, and then the responsibility for the results came along with it. It's not rocket science, but it's executing on simple things extraordinarily well each and every day and just stand back and watch the results. And I'm very proud of what my sailors accomplished. At the end of the day, they turned their own ship around, not me. In my book, It's Your Ship, chronicles it. And as you said, it's sold over a million copies, and I'm very grateful. Well, it's a great summary, and I want you to share some stories throughout as I tee you up on this conversation, and that is a great summary of what happened. But I want to dive into some of the things for leaders who, like you, you were given command of this ship, and there was little that you could do about a lot, but you could do a lot about a few things, and I want to really break that down.

So let's talk about that. So curious to know, what were the rankings based on when you come in and this ship is one of the lowest rank than the Navy, and then, of course, you said 15 months later. it's at the top. Give us a scenario of what was going on there and how those things change, because I think it'll lead us beautifully into how you begin to work on culture and empowering, which you've already mentioned. But what was going wrong on the ship specifically? What were things that you saw that you had to address? Retention was number one. The quarter before I took command of the ship, the retention rate was 8%. And we had had 31 sailors take our 4th. form of workman compensation over the previous year.

Maybe 15, 20% of the billets were empty because people had left and the system couldn't generate replacements. So we were operating on reduced manpower, which meant those that were left behind had to work even longer hours to get the work done. And so it's a vicious downward spiral. And I had a mentor that before I took command of the ship took me aside and said to me, no matter how hard you try, your ship will never be perfect. And he said, you're going to have disappointments every day.

And he said, if you're disappointed in an outcome, I want you to remember one thing. He said, assume your crew wanted to do a great job. And if you didn't get the results you were looking for, don't blame them first. And he said, look inward and ask yourself, did you communicate the goals? Did you give them the training necessary to be successful? Did you give them the time and their resources to do a great job? But most importantly, did the process support them delivering the results you were looking for? So in two years, I never blamed anybody if we came up short.

I always took a deep breath and say, what did I do wrong? What could I have done differently or better to have generated a better outcome? And so I start looking at the process on how we retain people in the Navy. And when you enlist, you enlist for a four or six-year contract. and we know your contract end date, but even knowing that, we wait for you to tell us whether you're going to stay in or whether you're going to get out. I decided to change the process. Nine months prior to the end of any Sailor's contract end date, they would come up to my cabin

for an interview. And I'd say point blank, are you thinking about staying in? Are you going to get out? And if you're thinking about getting out, is there anything we could do now to help you change your mind? And what I heard from Sailors was, gee, if you give me this education, you. or put me into this training program or put me into a different job classification, I'll re-enlist. And my goal when I started this program was to get the fleet average on retention, which at the time was about 32%.

And what happened was, in my last year in command, two of the three retention categories were at 100% retention. And when I did lose this sailor, I was never surprised because I knew it was coming. and it gave me the opportunity to train a replacement. And many of your business owners run small businesses. And the loss of one trained person unexpectedly can have devastating consequences on the business and the business owner's quality of life. They need to think about, am I surprised when somebody leaves? And if I am, maybe I'm not as in touch with my team as I should be or need to be.

So there's so much there for small business owners who we have a lot of of in this audience as they're listening in. Retention is absolutely huge beyond some of those questions. And so when these sailors are giving you their answers to the questions you were asking, and they said, well, if this happens, then I'll reenlist. I want you to get some practical thoughts here and maybe some details on how you went to that next level, because there are times on a small business owner may not be able to promote or give them exactly what they want. What did you do in those situations? Well, I didn't have promotion as a possibility. The way they get promoted is to take a standardized

exam against everybody else, and I can't take the exam, so I can't promote them. But many times, sailors want to expand their capabilities and get hard to obtain training that will help them do their jobs better, but also will make them more marketable when they do get out eventually. They'll have this experience and they're more marketable to civilian employers. So if sailors, if they think through that, where they want to be 10 years from now, and gee, if I stay in and get this training that helps me get there, and I'll do whatever I can to get them what they need. And if you give me nine months to solve a problem, I can solve it. So I couldn't pay them more. I couldn't promote them more. But when I interviewed them and I got them to think about what their career aspirations were,

it helped them start planning for the future instead of just planning for tomorrow. It was, gee, where do I want to be 10 years from now? And so that's what I tried to get them to think about in these retention interviews. It's not just a short-term thing you need to think about. What are your long-term goals? And can I help you achieve them? Now, you write about leading by example in Chapter 3, and that's a phrase we all know, and I certainly think we understand it.

Yet I am fascinated by the military model where more than anything, there is a positional leadership. These young men and women have to obey their superior officer. I mean, it's a command. It's not an option. It's not a suggestion. These are commands. And in the military, you have to follow commands. Yet, you talk so much about the importance of leading by example so that people follow you because you are modeling the way, not just because they have to. How did you instill that, not just from your example, but through the example of the other officers that you were leading and as a result were leading them in? So what is necessary first and foremost in the military is discipline. And if I've got a missile coming at me and I give the order to shoot, I expect everybody to be disciplined and trained and carry out the actions necessary to defend ourselves. some people have used that as a crutch for leadership 24-7 is to command and demand.

And you can do that for a short period of time, but it's not sustainable for the long-term. And so what I focused on was to create a climate by which sailors felt engaged and took ownership. and then they would do what was necessary to get the job done, discipline improved. And then if I did have to give that order in a time of crisis, I knew that I had a well-trained and thoroughly disciplined crew that would execute to a T what needed to be done to keep ourselves safe. So you cannot sustain the command and control model for long periods of time because one, people get burned out, and two,

They just sit around waiting to take orders. And I don't want an organization of order takers because order takers don't take responsibility for the results. If something goes wrong, they say, well, I was just doing what I was told to do. I want people to critically question things and say, how can we do this even better? And so, yes, there are times when I have to be command performance, but if it's 100% of the time, your people aren't going to be disciplined and it won't be sustainable. So the leader has got to take that model and say, this is what discipline looks like in this organization.

This is what's required of me, not just required of you. Exactly. Yeah, I want to talk to you about the idea of recognition. You mentioned, you didn't say this directly, but earlier you've talked about how the men, you know, they had never been asked what they think or to think. And yet you talk about this idea of rewarding people. And so when we recognize others, how does a leader effectively, recognize and reward great diligent, disciplined execution? So prior to taking command of the ship, I was the number two military assistant to our

Secretary of Defense. His name was William Perry. And I wasn't in a leadership position. I was an individual contributor. But every day I watched the senior military assistant. He was a two-star Army general. It was the same job Colin Powell had when he was a two-star. And I watched him how he made decisions and how he worked. And I would always train myself, if I'm in that position, if I'm a two-star, what do I need to be thinking about so that I can fulfill the rule someday if I ever get chosen? Well, near the end of the general's tour, his son got sick and almost died, and the general was off work for 45 days.

And normally when the senior assistant is off, they bring in a visiting two or three-star admiral or general to fill his shoes. And William Perry said, let Mike do it. So for 45 days, I filled the role of a two-star, and I didn't do it perfectly. I was working 18 hours a day, seven days a week. I had dark circles under my eyes. But in 45 days, I never let one ball drop. And the general son recovers and comes back to work.

He goes in to see the secretary. And they never knew that whenever they were having a private conversation, I was always standing in the doorway listening to their private conversation. I call it intelligence gathering. and the general went in and said, Dr. Perry, how did Mike do in my absence? And William Perry looked up and said, Paul, Mike did great.

I consider you and him interchangeable now. And his shoulder slumped. He was a West Point graduate. I was a Naval Academy graduate, 34 years old, and he's being compared to me. But my chest went out and was like, gee, I can do two-star level work. And what William Perry unwittingly gave me that day

was validation. And from the validation, it gave me confidence to go out and become a better captain and a better leader. And what I can tell you about a lot of the people coming behind us, they're good young men and women, but many of them have never had anybody in their lives to give them validation. And as a result, they don't have a confidence to necessarily do what we expect of them. And they didn't get the validation at home and they didn't get it in their schools and they didn't get it on the playground. All they did was get torn down. And what recognition is is a means to thank people, but also to build them up and to give them validation so that they then have the confidence to become even better in the future. And so I couldn't pay my sailors more. Everybody

thinks, oh, you've got to pay somebody more to give them that validation. Think about what meant something to us as we were coming up through the ranks. One of our role models caught us doing something great, gave us a pat on the back, and we stood a little taller, and we took a little bit greater pride in our work and in ourselves, and it gave us validation to be the confident business leaders that we are today. Many times, that's all it takes with those young men and women coming behind us is to, you know, give them a pat on the back and thank them and let them know that we know that they're doing great work. And so that was what my recognition program was. I told my five department heads, I can't know everything that's going on.

your department, but use me as a tool in your toolkit. If one of your people is up all night, working on a piece of equipment, come tell me about it first thing. And I'll go out and search them out and thank them for going the extra mile. And so we make recognition sometimes too difficult, but it's about giving people validation so that they then have the confidence to deliver even greater results in the future. You know, Mike, one of the things that leaders always have to be on guard against is blind spots or this aloofness or their heads in the sand, largely because they have poor communication coming back to them. They're not getting good feedback from their team, and thus they're walking around, quite honestly, a bit clueless. And I'm thinking of, I think

any of our listeners right here can be transported back to a military movie where they've seen a member of the military speak to a superior officer and they'll say, permission to speak, and it's granted. That's a formal engagement there. But I want you to talk about what you did specifically to create this openness to where your men and women on that ship they were thinking, okay, we can speak to our superior officers. We can't speak up on what we see. How did you foster that? You know, it's funny with my chain of command, sometimes I had to request permission to speak freely. But among my own crew, what existed there previously was fear. and fear is a cancer in any organization.

And I wanted my sailors to respect their chain of command. I didn't want them to fear us. So it's about how do you create trust by which people can feel open and honest to tell you the truth. And what you have to do is to be accessible. I used to have lunch on the Mestex with my sailors once a week. Every Wednesday noon, I would go down and have lunch with the sailors.

and how many business owners, you know, never have lunch with their people or go out and have a Coke with them or whatever. And so since I was accessible and visible and I pinned my door open, you know, some people pin their door shut. I pinned my door open so that people knew that they could talk to me and not fear telling me the truth. And I learned this from William Perry. In many organizations, people will wait to hear what the boss says.

and then they say, oh, that's what I'm thinking. You get this group think. William Perry in a briefing would never let on to anybody what he was thinking. That way, people couldn't skew their recommendations based on what they thought he wanted. And so he would go around the room and say, what do you think? What do you think? And so he got an open and honest response from his subordinates. And so I would never tell people what I thought the answer was.

I would say, what do you think? And that way they were able to speak freely without fear of any retribution. And so I was able to create a climate of trust where people didn't fear telling us what was going on. It became part of our daily fabric. Art, I want to talk about calculator risk. You devote a chapter to this. And again, I think it's very interesting to see the parallels between the military and the private sector for leadership, specifically when leaders have to take a risk. They know at some point that risk is coming, they've got to prepare for it. What did calculated risk taking look like for you? So I would sit on my bridge wing chair and stare out at the water, and I would go through what if

scenarios. And I would try to dream up every scenario that we might face. And then I would check to see if we were doing the training so that if we ever did see that scenario, we would have the training and the familiarity to meet that challenge and to make it work to our advantage. And so one of the leader's job is to envision what the future looks like. And if you're bogged down and $10 an hour work all day long, you're never going to have the time to take your head above sea level and see what's coming down the pike a year from now or five years from now so that you can position your business better to face what the future is going to look like. And so I've disciplined myself every day to do what if scenarios and are we doing

what's necessary to meet the challenges that I see coming at us? And I viewed that as my primary role was to prepare them because you can get bogged down in the day-to-day minutia and somebody has to have their head out of the sand and be looking for the future challenges or future opportunities and be able to position your business accordingly. And that's part of our roles as leaders is to not become victims, but to be proactive and controlling our own destiny. Mike, I've heard it said many times that one of the roles of leadership is to work yourself out of a role, to reproduce yourself.

What did you do that worked? What did you see that worked on the ship as you began to do all the things we've already kind of talked about? You built trust and rebuilt the culture and performance went up. But how are you pouring into other leaders underneath of you so that they could continue to grow as leaders and move on up? So it's funny. My last year in command, I maybe worked four hours a day because I had worked myself out of a job. The expectations were set.

People were engaged. They took ownership. And I just came in and did my interviews. And so I really did truly work myself out of a job. But as far as my next level of the leaders go, that story. is still being written. My second in command went on to make admiral, and he's now a two-star. He's president of the Naval War College, which is one of our most prestigious billets in the Navy. And then this summer, one of my department heads got selected for Admiral. And we have 293 ships in the Navy,

but we only have about 140 admirals. And so not every ship will make an Admiral. And here I had two officers make admirals. And so I flew out to San Diego to have congratulatory dinner with the second officer. And we started reminiscing about other officers on the ship and what they're doing. And before you can get selected to be an admiral, you have to have commanded a ship like I did. But then the intermediate level is to command a squadron of six ships. And there are 30 officers on each ship, six ships to a squadron. So that's 180 officers. So statistically, only one out of 180 officers in a squadron will get to be the squadron commander. And my two admirals were squadron commanders.

And three other of my officers are squadron commanders right now as we speak. And two of those will probably make admiral within a year or two. So when statistically you have a one and 180 chance to make squadron commander. And Benfold made five and potentially four admirals. it's a statistic that's not kept, but I think there is no precedent for that in the history of the Navy of how many officers went on to achieve this level of success. And so then I sit back and I think, well, gee, maybe I wasn't as good as I thought I was. You know, maybe they made me instead of me making them.

But I think we made each other. And we showed each other what high standards look like and how you interact with people to achieve those high standards. and my five officers are taking it to even greater success. And so I called my command master chief. He was the senior enlisted guy in the ship, and I was telling them about how well the officers are doing. And he said, that's only half the story. We had 30 chief petty officers on that ship.

And statistically, you have a 1% chance to make master chief. We made five master chiefs off that ship. So who were on that ship and who stayed in the Navy are enjoying unparalleled promotion opportunity. And I just sit back and I'm just proud as anything. They're the ones who are doing it, but I think what I tried to do was to show them how to do it and to give them validation and the confidence. And they're carrying on a tradition of excellence and serving our country and I couldn't be more proud of them. That's so good. What a great lighthouse of an example there to not just win with the organization, but to help your people win beyond.

your leadership. All right, final question for you, because I think we have a lot of people in this audience who have yet to lead or maybe leading on a smaller level, and that opportunity is coming. What I love about your story is the USS Binfold was your first ship, and here you are. You put on the ship, and this is where you have to lead, and you stepped into it and stepped in nobly. What would you say to those who have yet to lead men or women yet, but that, time is going to come and it's a daunting task to lead others. It has its fear, it has insecurities and all kinds of things attached to it and yet they have to step up and lead and command. What would you say to them from your experience when they get that moment or maybe

they have just stepped into that moment? I go back to my tenure with William Perry where I was an individual contributor and every day I put myself in the two-star shoes and I would say to myself if I'm the two-star based on what needs to be done, how do I go about doing it? And so from my desk, I could watch the two-star work. And like he never knew this, I watched him everything he did. I watched every decision he made in meetings. And I got to the point where before he made a decision, I would anticipate what that decision was going to be.

And if I made the same decision that he eventually made, it was, I can think, like a two-star. If he made a different decision, it meant that. there was a gap in my training or something I didn't understand. So I would go fill in that gap. Or I'd wait till the end of the day and I'd say, hey, general, you made this decision. I don't understand what your thought processes were. Can you help me, you know, fill in the gap?

And he would say, sure, I would never challenge him in the moment only later in the day when things had quieted down. But that way, I didn't put him in an embarrassing position. And what happened was I started to be able to anticipate the decisions he would make and his thought process, and I could then anticipate the requirements and be there with the solution when he asked for them. And what happened was he started to trust me. And my job was created in the 1940s, and historically my job has only ever been an individual contributor. Because I could anticipate what the general needed, he started to trust me more. And he put me in charge of the security detail for the Secretary of Defense, the communications team, the trip planning team. I had about

45 people reporting to me in a job that historically was an individual contributor. And so what I would advise up-and-coming, aspiring leaders, put yourself in your boss's shoes, try to understand how they think, how they position themselves, and train yourself to think like your boss's and then become indispensable to your boss. And that way you're ready when the time comes. You've trained yourself to think like a two-star or to train yourself to think like that manager, and you're prepared to do it.

And I think that's the ticket to success, is don't wait to get promoted to be thinking about how you're going to lead. You need to be planning for that today so that when the opportunity does come, you're prepared. That's a good word. He is Mike Abershoff.

The book is entitled It's Your Ship. This is a phenomenal story. So many stories throughout his command that unpack each of the principles that he teaches us. Really, really good stuff. Mike, been an admirer for a long time. Appreciate you spending time with us. We're all better for it. My pleasure.

Thanks for having me. Hey, if you want to learn more about what Mike is doing, you can go to Mikeabrshoff.com. That's A-B-B-R-A-S-S-E. H-O-F-F-Mike-Abershoff.com. You can get the book there and learn more about what he is doing. Hey, speaking of doing things that will help you win, our tool this month from the Entree Leadership Team. How to Inspire Your Hires. 43, easy ways to recognize your team. This is unbelievable. 43, it's just chalk full. And I'm going to tell you this now.

This is one of those things that you probably should just print off and hand out copy. to everybody in your leadership team. It's available, as always, as we give you something every month, it's absolutely free. And there's a couple ways you can get it. You can text the word recognize to 33444,

or the link to download it is in the show notes. Now, again, we're talking 43 specific, practical, applicable ideas to recognize your team. This is not time-consuming stuff. This is practical stuff that takes the old add a boy and at a girl to a whole other level. And it doesn't matter what generation they're in, by the way.

These things really work. So we're going to give you a spreadsheet template that the Entree leadership team actually uses to keep track of what are the things the team responds better to. So you get 43. We're basically giving you a plethora of options that you can use, and this form is going to make you look like the most empathetic, just intuitive leader, and you're going to win big, and your team's going to win big.

And so we do all the work for you. So again, text the word recognize to 33-44-4, or you can go to entreleadership.com slash podcast. Go to this episode, and the link is in the show notes. Oh, folks, you know, I love getting your mail. It's actually email. We have a little fun with it, call it electronic mail. And this time we've got a very interesting email and question.

so let's get right to it. Ken's electronic mail. You've got mail. This email is from Dennis, a supervisory, U.S. probation officer, and he says some nice things about the show. And Dennis, we appreciate that. But he says, although I'm a government employee and not a business owner, I've been able to employ the strategies that you teach at my office where I supervise a team of six team members. He recently received his first leadership compliment from one of the team members who recognized one of the strategies. And here's this question. I think maybe some of you asked this question,

so I think we should address it. I'm wondering if you could have some talks that focus on leadership in government because we need it. One of my goals is to figure out way to reinvigorate government employees to the mission of the agency they work for when they're in the later part of their careers. Now, the reason I illustrate this question and want to answer it is because, while many of you may not be in government, I think what's happening is Dennis is going, well, I'm not in the private sector. I'm in government and we know that's bureaucracy and it comes with its unique challenges. It's slower moving. You've got some older employees. I think there's two issues here. One, he's kind of thinking about bureaucracy. And then he's also thinking about career employees who've been there many,

many years. And in government agencies, I used to work for the governor of Virginia and I know this about government agencies. The heads of those agencies change from time to time, right, as administrations change. but the rank and file, for lack of a better phrase, stay in place. And so they're dealing with a lot of leadership change and a lot of bureaucracy. So here's the encouragement, Dennis. Number one, congratulations on the compliment from one of your team who recognized the application of something you learn from this podcast. That's great news for you. That means you're modeling it and you're seeing the results.

But I want to encourage you on something else. I could have 10 straight guests on the show that can talk about leadership and some applications. in government, but the reality is I don't think it's any more practical or any more helpful to you than what we've already got. As a matter of fact, I would just go back and re-listen to the conversation you just heard from Mike Abrashoff, because those were government employees. He's got some restrictions and things that are much more similar to a government agency than obviously a private sector business. But here's the point, whether it's vision casting, culture creating, winning, whatever it is, teamwork, you name the issue. It's applicable across the board. You hear a guest

talk about something here on this podcast or Dave speak on something that maybe you think is aimed at the private sector of reality is you're in the people business, whether it's a government agency, a non-profit, a ministry, or a for-profit business. You're all in the same business. What? You've got people that you've got to lead to reach a desired goal. vision. Two, you have to make more than you spend, unless, of course, it is a government agency. And we can chuckle at that. But the reality is those are similarities across the board. So the leadership stuff we're teaching you, it does apply. And what you're going to have to deal with there is culture and morale. When you've got a government agency with long-time employees,

you can change culture, and you can address morale. So those would be the two things I would focus on. And appreciate you listening to Dennis. Appreciate the email. And again, You'd love to email us for Ken's electronic mail, very simple podcast at entreleadership.com. Hey, our good friends at InfusionSoft have a brand new resource for you this month. How to identify your target market? So here's a question for you. I'm always asking questions of our guest. Let me ask you a question.

Do you think your organization is truly reaching that ideal customer? That target market? Do you think you're doing it? Because if you can narrowly define your target market, then you have, have begun to be successful in marketing, and you've got to be successful in marketing to win. And InfusionSoft is really going to help you with this. This is an actual worksheet that you can walk through a couple of things like pinpointing your ideal customer's pains. You heard Donald Miller talk about this. If you've been listening to us for a long time, Donald Miller

talk about this, right? He talked about the internal problem and the external problem. And what you're really trying to lock in on is that internal problem. And that's what Infusion Soft is talking about here when they talk about the pain. Pinpoint your ideal customer's internal problem. Uh-oh, now you're reading their mind. And then you want to establish why your customers buy from you. Build your target customer. How do you build them?

Finding the ideal customer is going to allow you to be more efficient in marketing, your products or services. And who doesn't want to be more efficient doing that? Infusionsoft's going to walk you through that with how to identify your target market. Go to infusionsoft.com. slash target dash worksheet. That's infusionsoft.com slash target dash worksheet.

And if you are in a place where you can't write, that URL down, not a problem. Eric, the producer, has got the link to this in our show notes. So just go to entreleadership.com slash podcast this episode. We've got the link for you. It's an easy download. You're going to win big, and we appreciate Infusionsoft and their investment in you, our beloved audience.

Well, I want to thank Mike Avershaw. for his time, his influence, and his practical wisdom. So good to have our head coach of All Access, John Falcons, with us. And of course, we want to thank you, the listener. What you do matters. So on behalf of Eric the producer and the entire Entry leadership team, thank you so much for staying with us, subscribing for giving us reviews and hanging out with us each week.

We'll talk with you again, I promise, very soon.