EntreLeadership - #214: Ken Blanchard — Cross-Generational Mentoring

Episode Date: July 24, 2017

We’re all familiar with mentoring. But this week’s guest, leadership guru Ken Blanchard, puts a new spin on it. It’s not always about the older, wiser, seasoned business vet giving advice to a newbie just starting their career. Each has their own gifts they can share. In fact, developing effective communication and relationships across generations can be a tremendous opportunity for companies and individuals alike. entreleadership.com/podcast 43 Ways to Recognize your Team Templates for the Taking EntreLeadership 1-Day Live Stream 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. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thanks for joining the conversation. Well, folks, we're going to just keep it simple this episode. Recently got a chance to talk to Ken Blanchard, who I believe is probably on the Mount Rushmore of leadership and personal growth gurus.

Such a great guy, such a humble guy. Fantastic conversation. A little bit longer than normal. So that's what we're bringing you. And don't forget, we're going to give you some free resources as well. Two fresh resources for Montre leadership and InfusionSoft, so don't miss that. Well, folks, I've already said it. So let's get to it.

Here's my conversation, Ken Blancher. Well, this is the latest book from Ken Blancher, one-minute mentoring, how to find and work with a mentor and why you'll benefit from being one. Of course, he co-authored with our good friend and a previous guest on this podcast, Claire Diaz-Rourtees. And Ken, so the first question I have for you is, why one-minute mentoring? What was driving the desire and then the project here that turned into this book? Well, to be honest with you, Ken, Claire came to us and said that, you know, mentors in the past have always been older than you. And she said, I think that us youngens can learn a lot of wisdom

from you all. I mean, Claire's in her early 30s and I'm in my late 70s. And she said, but you know, can you, older folks could learn a lot from us younger folks, particularly around technology. And so we got interested in the whole concept of cross-generational mentoring. And I hadn't really thought about it that much, but I just realized, you know, so much of the success I've had really has been by mentors I've met, you know, and I've co-author with a lot of people who have mentored me, and I've mentored a few in books I've written with them. So that's how we got into it. And Claire, as you know, is an amazing human being. So what a joy to be in a cross-generational mentoring relationship with her. Well, what did you? Give me some practical things as you begin

to obviously work together on this book. But how did Claire mentor you? Claire really understands social media and she really helped me understand about that and how we could, you know, spread the word and do various ways to communicate and that was really fun. And also the interesting thing, as you probably know Ken, she lives in Argentina and we're in California

so we did a lot of work on Skype and on the phone and various media as we work together besides the few times we got to meet face to face. We're going to break down the book. Of course, it's a parable, and you guys make the word mentor come alive as an acronym. We're going to get to that. But I want to start with maybe what I believe is that first step. Someone is listening in, Ken, and they say, all right, I know at a core level that I need to be mentored.

And I also know that I need to then in turn give the gift of mentoring someone else. When someone is in that very early stage, okay, I realize that, but they've not done the deep homework necessary to kind of identify, all right, where is my greatest need and then who can help me with that need? Take us there. What should be the mindset and then the posture of someone who says, okay, I need a mentor, but I need to focus on where best to get that mentor in what area of my life? Well, I think the first thing starts, as you know, with intentionality. You know, if you have the intention that you want to be mentored or you have the intention you like to mentor someone else and you start sharing that with people around you, opportunities and people will come to mind to them and all of a sudden you'll be talking to people.

I think one of the most powerful things, Ken, that we talk about in here is that there's two aspects of having a mentoring relationship. One is essence and the other is form. And essence is heart to heart and values to values. And our young character, Josh, who's in sales, but, you know, his numbers are going down. He's not sure that's what he wants to do. And he explains to his folks and his brother that he'd need some help.

And they said, well, you should get a mentor. And so he said, where am I going to get that? And so they had some suggestions. and he met several people, and they just weren't a right fit just in terms of his values and the kind of person he wanted. And what I've noticed, I wonder if you've noticed the same mechanics, is if you jumped a form with somebody before you have essence, essence will always bite you in the tail eventually.

And so that's the first thing is the intention, and then, you know, talk to people and and see if there's a match, a mutual match with you, and then you can get to form, and form is really where our mentor acronym could really come in. But it's a special thing to do that, and I give you a wonderful example of this. I had an idea a number of years ago to write a book on the power of positive management, and so I went to one of the top guys in the country everybody thought was a real big positive thinker and all. And a meeting with him, all he wanted to do was talk. about form, who's going to do what, how we're going to divide the royalties and all this kind of

stuff and all. And so I passed and our publisher called me and said, I know you were disappointed in your meeting. He said, have you ever thought of writing a book with Norman Vincent Peel? And I said, is he still alive? You know, my parents had gone to his church before I was born. And I said, not only he's alive, he was 86 at the time, but he's really something. So they set up a meeting and I flew to New York to meet with Norman and his wife Ruth and our publisher and we had a three-hour lunch and there was not one form question asked whole lunch it was all essence you know norman ruth said tell us about yourself can and we've heard about your wife margie tell us about her and let us tell you about us and it was just a most

wonderful deep dive into each other's lives and then at the end Norman turned to ruth which was to me was the ultimate essence question he said well ruth do you think we should write a book with this young man. We hadn't even talked about what we were going to write. And she said, absolutely under one condition. He said, what's that? From now on, when we meet together, he will bring his wife Margie. The four of us will work on this together. And it was just a absolutely delightful experience. You know, here we were in our early 40s and they were in their, you know, Bormor was in his late 80s. And I tell you, it was just such a win-win relationship. It was It was one of those magic moments, but it was a beautiful example of essence versus form.

Yeah, that is such a great story. Folks, I hope you got that. I mean, that really answers that posture question and how to approach these folks. This is from the book, Essence is all about sharing heart to heart and finding common values. Form is about structure, and the structure comes after you're on the same page. Okay, we don't have time to go super deep, obviously, folks here, but let's break down mentors. So that speaks to mission. And again, this is from the book.

This is a statement from the book. Ken, I'll let you teach on this for a moment. The first step in any working relationship is to have a clear mission statement. So coming off that story you shared, take us through that. Well, mission is what would we like to accomplish together? What's our goal? The first secret of the one minute manager is a goal setting. All good performance starts with clear goals.

And so you want to make sure you're on the same page in terms of what you'd like to accomplish. And then E stands for engagement. Once you know what you'd like to accomplish, then how are we going to interact? Is it always going to be face to face? Or can we do some on the Internet? And what if we get busy and won't be able to meet for a month? You know, as it makes sense to make sure we're emailing each other once a week.

You know, so it's all about how you're going to engage with each other. That's really important. Then N in there stands for network. because both parties in a mentoring relationship have people that are interesting that might be helpful in addition to the relationship you're having with each other to help you on your journey. And so you want to share your network. Then T is about trust. Trust is just the most important element in any relationship.

Can I trust if I share a network person with you, can I count on how you'll deal? and there was an issue in the book where Josh got carried away and tried to, you know, put the sales hat on with somebody who his mentor had suggested. And so he had to deal with that and fess up to it. But trust is very important. And then the O is opportunities. What kind of opportunities can you share with each other? So Josh, who's the younger guy, actually, is a big brother and they're big brothers, big sisters. and he shares, you know, with Diane, his mentor,

that she might want to think about doing something with Big Brother's Big Sisters, you know, because she's trying to sign what she wants to do. She's exhausted, you know, being top manager for a long time, and she's about to hit 60. So that's important. And then finally, R is you need to review how have we done and do we want to renew because, you know,

some mentoring relationships goes on for a long time. time. Others, she'd say, I think we've accomplished what we need to do. So it's a nice little description, I think, Ken, of the form that you might want to think through. It's really strong. I want to go back to, again, to the start of this on mission, because I think people are listening and are going, okay, I want to find a mentor, I want to be a mentor, and that's certainly what we want to come out of this conversation. But I want to go back to that idea of essence and mission to have a clear mission when this conversation begins to start with a mentor or with somebody you're going to mentor. And here's what I'm asking. It's the big warning sign, isn't it, Ken,

that it's not going to sustain if both parties aren't completely in agreement and passionate about the mission of what they want to come out of this relationship, correct? If you're not seeing that or feeling that, that's probably a good sign maybe to either dig deeper or maybe walk away to someone else. Is that correct? Yes, I think once the essence is there and you start a relationship, then if you can't agree on mission, then that's another reason to see. say, well, maybe let me suggest somebody else that might be better for you on that, you know. And so that mission is just so important. And, you know, a lot of people say, well, how do I, how do I even decide what I want to do?

My wife has a wonderful exercise. She calls it a fantasy Friday, you know. She says it's a Friday, and you can do it five years or ten years from now. Where are you going to be living? Who are you going to be living with, you know, because will you be married? will you have kids, you know, or are you going to be having some aging parents living with you? And then the final was, what are you going to be doing hour by hour? And she always says, the more detail, the better.

And some people just kind of draw blank. And she always says, well, that's really one where you kind of need somebody to help you kind of flush this out. So don't feel badly. You can't come up with this right now. But just be aware that that's something that you need maybe some folks to kind of help. you facilitate through. And I want to ask you just a practical piece of advice on this. When someone gets to the moment of the ask, and what I'm talking about here is asking the potential mentor to mentor, I think there's some practical stuff here, Ken, and I'm sure you've been approached,

but I want maybe some of our younger listeners to hear this. And this is good for all ages. But I know that when I was younger, my enthusiasm sometimes colored everything so much that I didn't have a good posture. And I touched on this earlier. What's the right way to approach a potential mentor? And I mean this relationally, because usually you're going after somebody who is as busy as you are, if not busier. They've been asked this before. What do you think is the right way to ask? Well, I think one of the key characteristics in so many things is humility, you know, and a lot of people think the humility is a weakness. When I worked with Norma Vincent Pio, we said that people with humility, don't think less of themselves. They just think about themselves less. And so I think you need to

come and sort of say to just be honest and open, you know, here's where I am. I'm kind of trying to decide what I want to do when I grow up. I feel good about myself. I'm just not clear about my direction. And that's really what I'm looking for with help. And I know you're probably pretty busy, but, you know, is there a way we could chat to see if it made sense? Because I get a lot of people, who asked me if I would mentor them. An important element here is a mentoring relationship doesn't have to be a long-term commitment. It might be just a telephone call or a luncheon or what have you. You know, I was interviewed by a guy recently and he said, this has been great.

Cam, would you consider, you know, mentoring me because I want to tell you, I'm trying to think about this and all. And I said, well, we've had a good discussion on our interview here, so I see some essence. with you. So why don't you give me a call in about a week? I'll be up at our Lake Place and let's just talk and see what you have in mind. It was a nice ask, you know. I mean, I just think that you also need to recognize that if somebody says, no, I don't think I can do that. Don't get down on yourself because they didn't turn you down. They just turned your suggestion down, you know. I love Eleanor Roosevelt once said that nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. If you ask people and you get some turn downs, that's not turning you down, it's turning down your proposition.

So you're okay. I love that. I love that. One of the things that you and Claire do so well in this book is you begin to help us think through mentoring in a segmented fashion. What I mean is obviously there is the traditional relationship, young person. a little bit older person, but there is mentoring in an organization with new hires, whether that be a new hire and a veteran coming together or a leader spending some time with a specific hire, and then, of course, peer-to-peer mentoring, where you're just, you know, best practices

spurring one another along, and then cross-generational mentoring, which you mentioned, of course, happened with you and Claire. I just want you to walk us through some of those relationships and why those are so important for us to not just have mentally kind of top of mind, but to really be intentional in those specific mentoring relationships? Well, it's interesting. Let's just take the first, you know, time manager or when you start a job. I think it's really important that organization feel it's important that you find a mentor somebody who can orient to you to the values of the company and, you know, show you around and help, you have. you meet the proper people.

But one of the things I was talking to an executive recently, and I said, we have this mentoring program. We assign somebody to each new employee. And I said, I wouldn't assign somebody. I would sort of say to them, we really want you to try to find somebody. And here's three people you might talk to, because giving that essence as an important factor, because if a new employee comes in and you assign somebody, it's not a match. they're not going to come and say, God, you gave me the wrong person, you know, I mean, you really put them in a tough spot.

But if they get a chance to talk to two or three different people and they said, God, I really connected with Max, you know, I think it's important because very often people fail in organizations because nobody orientes them to the culture and what they're doing. And with first-time managers, we just started a first-time manager program. the recent research shows that 60% of the first-time managers fail in terms of performance. Because they aren't really getting anybody to mentor them. We assume that somebody is a good producer, they're also going to be a good manager of people who do that. And they're completely different traits. In fact, sometimes a person who's not a great performer, but an average performer would be a better manager than somebody.

who's a superstar because they kind of can get a chip on their shoulder and kind of lean on everybody to be like them, where somebody else would be much more of a listener and a coach. So that's a thing. I think the peer-to-peer thing is really important. You know, did you have any peers when you grew up that really mentored you? I mean, it was really interesting. You know, like I grew up with Bill Rookhizer, who became the editor of Fortune magazine. And he used to help me write my speeches because I was running for class president and stuff like that.

And he wasn't that interested in that, you know. But that was really an interesting thing. And then I had, you know, mentors who were in different ethnic groups that helped me understand how to relate to people with different backgrounds and all that kind of thing. So it's really fun to think about learning. One of the things I've felt, Ken, if you stop learning, live. down and let them throw the dirt on you because you're probably almost already dead anyway. But if you're open to learn, I don't know what your age is, look around and there's people you can learn from.

Yes. You know, there's a type of mentoring that we really haven't discussed yet, and I'd love for your insight on this, but there's mentoring with somebody like a Ken Blanchard by reading his books and watching his talks and going to events. You may never spend time with you, even like I'm getting to. today, but that's a type of mentoring. I don't know what you call it, but it certainly exists. And I think people take advantage of that a lot, but they don't think of it that way. But if you can begin to extrapolate from somebody that you really admire and do it intentionally, you are in effect

getting some long-distance mentoring. Do you agree with that? And then how did you do that early on in your career? Yes, I think that's really so important as to realize that you don't necessarily have to interact with them, you know, some people who had gotten hooked on my books and then kept keep on reading them. And I, I remember my father was in the first class for the author that wrote The How to Win Friends and Influence People. Dale Carnegie, Dale Carnegie. He was in Dale's first class in 1927. And so when I was in elementary school, you know, and I, you know, got to become a decent reader, one of the first books my dad gave me was Dale Carnegie's book, and I got really hooked on that. And then later on,

my mother was a big fan of Norman Vincent Peel. I have this most wonderful picture of my mother and Norman Vincent Peel hugging each other, cheat to cheek, because when I started to work with Norman, my dad had passed away. But I brought my mom out, and Norman was giving a sermon at the Crystal Cathedral. and afterwards we went in to see Norman and my mother says, Norman looks up and he said, Mrs. B, I've been so looking forward to meeting you. And my mother said, meeting you, I've been looking forward to hugging you. And he said, hugging you, I'm going to give you a kiss, you know. And, you know, I mean, it was just to see the two of them was just such a hoot, you know.

And look, I think being a parent, is an amazing mentoring relationship. And I tell you, if you haven't said you haven't learned anything from your kids, then I want you to tell me about, you know, you lie about other things too. Right, that's right. You know, and so I love the fact that people ought to think about that as a mentoring opportunity, you know. How can you really help that young person become the best that they possibly be, not become who you want them to be?

That's right. Yes, clear distinction. If I were to put you on the spot, I'm going to, actually. So give me top three, if you have to think back, top three things you learned, or the top three ways that Norman Vincent Peel influenced Ken Blanchard. Well, Norman was just influenced me tremendously spiritually, you know, because I had kind of turned away from the Christian church because I saw a lot of hypocrisy there and all.

And I never forget early on, I said to Norman. I said, Norman, do you believe Jesus is the truth in the way? He said, absolutely. I said, what about the millions of people never heard of them? Are they going to go to hell? And what about the millions of good people that heard about them and decided not to follow him? He had a good buddy who was killed in 9-11. I don't think he ever had a mean thought in his life, a Jewish guy.

And Norman said, I believe in a loving God. He said, I bet he handles that in a loving way. He said, I'm in sales, not management. And boy, that has been so powerful to me is that my role is to love on people, not to judge on them, you know. And I think there's too many Pharisees in religion, you know, that are judging people. So that was a powerful thing. And that another way he influenced me was exercise. Here's an 86 years old.

He's influencing me. I would meet him at a plane. and I said, Norman, do you want to wait here and I'll get the car? He says, no. He said, I've been sitting for five hours. Let's take a brisk walk. You know? I love it.

I mean, he just always wanted to, you know, keep on the move. And then another thing he taught me is that you can influence people with just a smile or a nod and kind of a positive gesture. Like we were walking one day and this woman was walking towards it. And she had this real sour look on her face. and Norman said, let's send her some love. And we just stopped, you know, and all of a sudden, this woman is walking towards, and all of a sudden she gets a smile on her face.

I don't know where it came from. And Norman says, see, he said, we sent her positive energy, you know. And, I mean, those are just some samples of the way he impacted me. And my dad, my dad had a lot of impact. He retired as an admiral in the Navy. And I remember I won the president of the seventh grade in Nourichelle, New York, and junior high. And I came home. I was all pumped up.

And I said, Dad, I'm the president of seventh grade. And my dad says, congratulations, Ken. But now your president, don't ever use your position. He said, great leaders are great because people respect and trust them, not because they have power. And that was the beginning of his leadership training with me. He said, Ken, it's a myth. the military is my way or the highway. He said if you act like a big deal in the military, particularly in battle, he said your men will shoot you before the enemy.

Right. That's right. You know, that is interesting. You know, we think of military leadership as obviously a hierarchy and you have to follow their position. And boy, you're right, though, out on the battlefield where leadership really counts, it's a whole different ballgame and men are only going to follow you because they trust you and respect you. That's really good. That is so good. Wow. Yeah. And my dad retired early. actually as a captain, but he had gotten the silver star, and they had passed the legislative law if you got the Medal of Honor or the Silver Star, they would bump you up. And I said, Dad, why is you retire early? You're going to stay in to be admiral on your own

term. And he said, Ken, I hate to say it. He said, but I like the wartime Navy better than peacetime. Not that I like to fight, but in wartime, we were really clear why we were there and what we were trying to accomplish. He said, the problem in peacetime military, nobody knows what we're supposed to be doing. As a result, he said there's too many leaders who think their full-time job is making other people feel unimportant. And he just hated that, you know, like the bureaucracy stuff that just drove him nuts, which never was out there when you were in action.

I want to switch gears because I'm not going to miss this opportunity. I love this book, but I want to ask you, you know, a lot of questions that are just, you know, exploding in my head right now for our audience full of entrepreneurs and small businessmen and women, one of the things that I think Ken Blanchard is known for is teaching on servant leadership. For the business leader that is listening in right now, whether they lead to or 200, would you just unpack for them what you would define servant leadership as and how do they begin to take steps to become a true servant in that small business role?

Well, it's interesting, Ken, when I talk about service. servant leadership initially in some businesses. They think I'm talking about, you know, the inmates running the prison or trying to please somebody or some kind of religious movement. But to me, it's the only way to get great results and great human satisfaction because there's two parts of servant leadership and all that are interested in this now to understand. There's the leadership part, which is all about vision, direction, values, and goals. because leadership's about going somewhere

and people, you know, it's that mission part. What are we trying to accomplish? What do we stand by? What's the day-to-day goals? And it's the traditional hierarchy that's responsible for making sure that happens. It doesn't mean you don't involve your people. But if your people don't have clear goals

and you're a manager, shame on you because it's your problem. And so you need to sit with them and establish goals because without goals they're never know where they're doing a good job. Now, once the vision and direction is set with the traditional hierarchy,

now you turn the hierarchy upside down and now you work for your people. Your job is to help them win, help them accomplish their goals. And I wrote a book with Gary Ridge, the president, WD40, who got excited. He was in a class.

I taught. We have a master's degree program at the University of San Diego. leadership that my wife and I started with them. And I related a story early on where when I was in a college professor, Ken, the first day of class, I used to always give out the final examination. And the faculty would say, what are you doing? And I'd say, I'm confused.

They said, you acted. I said, I thought we were supposed to teach these kids you are, but don't give them the questions on the final. And I say, now am I going to give them the questions in the final? What do you think I'm going to do all semester? I'm going to teach in the answers. Right. So when they get to the final exam, they get A, life's about getting A is not some stupid normal distribution curve.

And Gary said, God, why don't we do that in organizations, you know, because it's so silly. You know, I say to people all the time, how many of you go out and hire losers? We lost some of our worst people last year. You know, we need to hire some new losers to fill a low slots, you know. You either go out and hire winners you steal from other companies or you hire people with potential. so you're not hiring a normal distribution curve. And so why would you want to help them win? I've never understood.

I have a lot of respect for Jack Welch. But this idea of getting rid of every year the bottom 10% that's just ridiculous. I mean, that's lousy management, you know. Why would you want to get rid of the bottom 10%? And because you can't you? So Gary set this thing up. He calls, don't mark my paper, help me get an A,

where each manager would sit with their direction. report and set observable measurable goals at the beginning of the year. And the job of the manager was to get them an A average because they rated themselves each quarter on their goals and they gave themselves an A, a B, a C, or an L. And L stands for still learning so don't evaluate me, but there was no Ds or Fs. But the goal was to get your people all A averages. And if it's observable and measurable and measurable and some of the goals help the organization. goals, duh, it's not insider trading stuff, but look at the stock performance of WD40 over the last five years. It's unbelievable. And then they do an internal employee satisfaction survey,

and most people, if you have one of those out, if you get 50 or 60 percent return rate, you're lucky. They get 98 percent return rate in WD40, and they're in 60 nations. And the last time they did it, the highest rated question was 98.7 people said, yes, to the question, I am proud to tell people I work for WD40. I mean, that's really amazing. I think 98.5 said I'm clear here on what I'm being asked to do to be a high performer. And then another high question is I get the help I need to be a high performer. There's too many organizations that don't recognize that it's all about winning.

And so servant leadership is all about making sure vision and direction is clear. And that's the leadership part of servant leadership. And then you move to the servant part where now all your effort is to help that person win. Man, folks, rewind that, listen to that a couple times. There's so much there. I'm going to go back that in a second. But I have to ask. Ken, is there a more valuable product on the planet?

Maybe duct tape. But a WD40, if you have, if you're a guy like B and you're not handy, I can barely hammer a nail. WD40 and duct tape. If I've got that in the garage, I can solve most of my household problems. Agree or disagree? Oh, I know. And Gary, Rich Laugh, laughs at some of the ways WD40 is used, you know. It's the wonder product. It's unbelievable. That's so great. All right. Now back to serious conversation. So we just can't leave this. Because, Ken, we've got leaders listening in here by the tens of thousands who are hiring, recruiting talent.

and they are recruiting and hiring people who have been shaped by the Western education philosophy, which is you just address this. It's all about test scores. It's about doing well on the test. When you said Gary has this idea, this philosophy of, you know, don't mark up my paper, help me get an A, that just hit me in the middle of the forehead. How do leaders begin to understand, okay, this is, I've got people coming to. to my company who have been trained like this from kindergarten through college, and now I'm

going to try to switch their thinking on that. How do they begin to help people understand that you're going to lead them this way? If that's how we need to lead, it's almost like a re-education of the way people think, correct? Yes, well, they can get Gary's in my book called Help People Win at Work, but it's a mindset, and I think it's your job as a manager to tell people what the whole philosophy is. I mean, that's all part of orientation, you know. I mean, in our company, we always say to people, when you hire somebody and the first day they walk in the front door, if you don't feel a chemical difference in your body because you're glad to see them, why did you hire them? I mean, there's enough jerks in the world. We don't need them working for us.

And so what we do is, and Gary really believes this, too, is that the two aspects about hiring. One is character and values. Are they going to be a good cultural fit? And then the other is competency and skills. Now, of course, you'd love to be able to hire people who have both the values and the skills that you need. Those are real winners. But if you've got to have a choice with other people, if you're going to hire somebody who's a real high performer, but they have competitive values and all this kind of thing, versus somebody.

who shares the values that you have that you could train to be good, you're much better to go with the person who's a values match. In WD40, not everybody gets A's because they might be in the wrong job, you know? Like if you asked me to be

the vice president of finance of your company, you'd be in real trouble, you know, because my wife has the checkbooks. I've never written a check in our 55 years of marriage. I mean, it's not an interest or a skill area for me. so sometimes people are the wrong job but in WD40 if they don't perform in a job

because it's not in their skill set but they are a good citizen they will try to find another job for them but at the same time if somebody's a really high performer and they are keeping going account of the values they will fire a high performer who's not a good citizen and that's a I remember we did that one time

with our top salesman we fired because I tried to work with him and all that, but he was pushing and shoving and doing all kinds of stuff that was inconsistent with what we wanted to be. And everybody went, whoa, I guess they really are true about some of these values, you know. And you didn't lose a massive amount of productivity

when you let the high performer go, did you? No, no, because, you know, other people come in and the word gets out that, well, boy, if you're a high performer, this is a culture, you might want to come in. into and so that's what we hope to get. I want you to talk about creating a culture. I interviewed you several years ago for the Catalyst podcast and we talked about this and I

want to bring it back up, but we talked about some servant leadership and a big part of servant leadership is love. And I'm not talking about, you know, Pollyanna Kumbaya Love, not that there's anything wrong with that, but you really teach a lot and have taught a lot on this idea of loving your team, loving your people. challenge the leaders that are listening in here today on how to do that effectively. And what does that look like on a day-to-day week-to-week month-to-month basis? Well, first of all, if you don't love people, you know, I mean, you just love to be around them,

stay as an individual contributor. Right. Don't be a manager, you know, because it's about people. And once you'd get a management role, the key thing is that just three parts of your job a manager. One is to do your job, which you're evaluated on. Number two is to develop your people, and we've been talking about that. And three is to talk to your people about, you know, their career aspirations. And a lot of people say, really? Yeah, without the idea that you got a job in mind. But the point of that means is that people really want somebody who cares about them. And

Peter Drucker told me years ago, Ken, nothing good happens by accident. So if you want to have something good happen, put some structure around it. So a concept I want to share with the audience, and if you only took this away as a manager, nothing else, it would be a winner. Once every two weeks, meet for 15 to 30 minutes with each of the people who report to you, and we call this the one-on-one meeting. And you as the manager should schedule a meeting, but your direct report sets the agenda, and they can talk about anything that they want.

They might be having a sick kid at home, and so they may be not. I can't come in as much on the next week or so, or they might want to talk about a goal they're working on and all. But if you met 26 times a year with each of your direct reports, so we say, don't go more than a half hour, and you did that, boy, you would really know them and they would know you. And it's interesting. My wife got this idea initially because she was working with Dee Wiener-Snitzel,

you know, a fast food company. And the high turnover in those companies is, you know, up the 150s. and she found out this one guy had two de Wiener-snitzels, and he had like, you know, 15% turnover. And so she said, I got to talk to this guy. So she went to him and said, tell me, what are you doing differently? I mean, your turnover is, well, I don't know, no. She says, come on, you know.

And he said, well, I meet with each of the people that work with me for at least a half an hour once every two weeks. And I just want to see what's happened in their lives. and is there anything I could do for them, and I don't have any agenda. And what he's found is that why would a kid want to leave for 50-cent raise when they got an adult who really cares about them? And I think that's what the thing is. You need to take your love and your good intentions and put it to action by providing some structure, you know, and with that.

And like Gary Ridge also has a quarterly meeting with each of the direct reports, where each of them come to the meeting and the first question is, is the final exam still relevant? You know, I mean, are the goals still relevant? Because a lot of times where you set goals and then people file them and nobody looks at the goals

until somebody says, oh, you got annual performance review and everybody's running around trying to find the stupid goals and you might have had a tsunami or an economic downturn. So they can change their goals all the way up to the beginning of the fourth quarter. Then he has them give their report car because another thing that's stupid canon organizations is managers filling out forms on their people and evaluating them while the people are out there wondering how well they did.

Why don't you let everybody fill out only one form on their performance, their own, and your job as a manager is agree or disagree? And that's what they do at WD40. That's what we do at our company, and we got a number of people now doing that, you know, so that they share what they think they did on. each of their goals for that particular quarter and you can agree or disagree. Some people might rate themselves high because they've been at other companies and say they'll beat you down and you say, no, I don't think that's an A right now. I think it's a good solid B because

he hasn't rated A, B, C or L. L means I'm still learning. So I don't evaluate me. And some people rate themselves lower than they should. You'd say, that's not a C. That's a good solid B. let's talk about how we can get it up to an A. And it's putting in structures for, like in marriage, Ken, you know, you worry about the marriage thing. I love this concept of date night that a lot of people have. So where you go out once every two weeks for dinner with your spouse. And the rule is you can't talk about the kids. You can't talk about work.

You have to talk about your relationship. And if you met 26 times a year for dinner with your spouse and all you talked about your relationship and how are we doing, you wouldn't come home someday and there's a moving van there, moving out to furniture and everything. And you said, well, you never said anything to me, you know. Right. So, you know, there's some haunting advice. Go ahead and soak on that, folks. All right, two more questions. We've got to let you go. I want to ask you to speak to our leaders here that are listening in. And you said something earlier in our conversation. You said, if you're not learning anymore, they might as well just lay you down and throw some dirt on you. And I can

completely agree with that, not a new thought for our audience. However, if they're listening to that and they're going, boy, that's right, and they're self-assessing, where do I need to be learning, what do I need to be learning, and why? What would you say, rather, to those folks about getting started on that process or what's a Ken Blanchard process for continuing looking inward to say, what do I need to be learning? Well, I think the best way, again, I'm a great one with dialoguing with somebody, you know, could be a spouse or a good friend and say, you know me well, what do you think could be some things that I could learn, you know? So like one of the things I've been working on over the years is to be a better listener, you know, because I got so much

in my head that, you know, somebody will say something and then I think of a story and my wife will say, you know, listen. She said, let me hear you say. tell me more, you know, but I think it's people close to you that could tell you areas that you might improve on. And it's just that always kind of being open to feedback. I think feedback is the breakfast of champions and seek that from people close to you and then see how you can find somebody who can help you in that area. So final question for you, if you could sit down with each our listeners over coffee or lunch and just look at them as a leader of men and women, and you were going to give them an encouraging thought. What would you say to them?

Well, I just love Marshall Goldsmith, who's a good buddy of mine, was interviewing Francis Hesselbaum. Have you ever had Francis on your show? I've never had it on the show. I had a chance to meet her in New York in her office about 15 years ago, and she blew me away. She's 101 now, and she headed the Girl Scouts and then the Drucker Institute. And Marshall said to her, and I think this is great for your listeners. He said, Francis, what is the key to your success? She's been so successful. She said, I think it's my blood type.

And he said, blood type, what's your blood type? She said, be positive. That's so good. I can see her saying that. Yeah, but isn't that wonderful? I mean, that's wonderful advice. That's the advice they've been giving people. and I got that from Norman Vincent Peel

is it be positive you know look for the good in people my mother said there's a pearl of goodness in every human being dig for it some people you have to dig a little bit more but be positive about people about events even when things go against you

and you might even have some tragic loss and all how do you we lost our house in the 2007 fire we were in Florida at the time and we came home it looked like they had cremated the place and we had lived in it for 25 years and so my wife and I we ended up having a memorial celebration for our house and we and over a hundred people showed up to talk about their good times in our house because the house was a structure but it wasn't our home because we could

move our home to somewhere else but it was just a wonderful way to just bask in all the goodness and the joy that came out of that place rather than let's sit here and moan and grown about what we've lost. Wow. Good stuff. Did you folks expect anything else from Ken Blanchard? Ken, I've long admired you. I know our audience has. I know that you're terribly busy and you get a lot of requests.

And so we are beyond grateful for your time and your wisdom and the practical knowledge that we can plug into our everyday lives. So on behalf of our entire audience, a big, big thank you. Well, thanks, Ken. This was a real joy. and I feel a nice essence with you. So would you mentor me? It would be the joy of my life to do anything with you.

So yes, and I don't know if you want that, but I certainly take you up on it. But hey, man, thank you. We're so much better for our time with you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. A reminder, the new book, is One Minute Mentoring, how to find and work with a mentor and why you'll benefit.

from being one. And I just love that Blanchard is still intentional. Well into his 70s. Love how intentional he is. And folks, all you have to do is click the link in this episode show notes to get the book. We want to make sure that you take advantage.

Again, all of these books, this one minute series from Ken, very easy to read. And more importantly, very easy to apply. All right, I told you that we had some great resources for you, and we do, the Entree Leadership Team, bringing you 43 easy ways to recognize your team. I love that it's 43. I mean, it could have been 41.

It could have been 37. Our team said, no, no, it's 43. And I love too that they didn't go, well, we got 43. We're passionate about 43. I feel like it needs to be 45 because that's just kind of a number that feels better. Let's come up with two crappy ones. No. They said it's 43.

So that's what you're getting. 43 easy ways to recognize your team. And let me tell you something. In my mind, there is nothing, nothing more important to your individual team members as human beings than being recognized. Nothing. I will tell you that you can reward them and they'll be pretty stinking happy. But if you recognize them in front of their team, recognize them in front of the entire company, more important than any reward you give them. That's my opinion. You can disagree with me and you have the

right to be wrong. But the reality is this is a great, great, great resource because of what I just said. There's nothing more important than recognition. So this is going to walk you through so many different practical ways for you to recognize your team. This is going to make you look like a rock star leader and you're using a cheat sheet and that's okay. It's a great resource. all you got to do, text the word recognize. Text the word recognized to 3-4-4-4-4-3-4. Or you can click on the link in the show notes. And we're not done giving you stuff.

Infusionsoft, great resource. Templates for the taking. Now, what in the world is that? Well, they've pulled together 27 of their most persuasive email templates. So they're ready to go. They're going to help you with flash sale announcements, referral request, follow-up emails. And they've put this together in one guide.

It's going to tell you who to send it to and when. Again, I love this kind of stuff. It's a playbook that works, and this is so practical. All you've got to do is follow the instructions. I don't know if it gets much easier than this than the old school, you know, color by number or paint by number sets. That's what Infusions Office is giving you here. This is so great.

Templates for the taking. I love that title. And they're there for you to take and to use. It's absolutely free. 27 of them waiting on you. The link is in this episode's show notes at entreleadership.com. Click on podcast, and then you go to this episode 214, and it's all there for you. Big announcement here from our Entree leadership team, our one-day event, which is really the

Entree Leadership Playbook in one day. I mean, super efficient. We don't waste any time. We give it to you in one day. And this fall, October 27, 2017. You can actually stream the entree leadership one day anywhere, and you can put your whole team in a room and learn with them. I will be hosting the event.

Dave Ramsey, Chris Hogan, Christy Wright will be there as well. Here's the best part. An event pass for your entire team. You know what? Bring a couple neighbors while you're at it. Take the mailman. I don't care. Invite whoever you want.

It's $29. Not $29 per person. $29. You can't even take a buddy out for lunch for $29. Well, you probably can, but it's not worthy. You get my point. It's $29. Bring everybody.

Your cousins, your aunts and uncles. They'll all learn something. So good. You don't even have to leave your office. Here's how you get registered. Entreleadership.com slash E1D Live. Entreleadership.com slash E1D Live or of course we've got the link in this episode's show notes well that's going to do it

big thanks to the man the myth the legend Ken Blancher appreciate him so much on behalf of Eric the producer engineer will rudder and the entire entree leadership team thank you so much for listening to talk with you again real soon