EntreLeadership - #243: Todd Henry—Be the Leaders Creatives Need

Episode Date: January 22, 2018

We all know the creative process is unpredictable at best, but if you ask best-selling author Todd Henry, the one thing you can control every single time is the way you are guiding that work as the leader. Not only is your role more influential than you may realize, says the international speaker on leadership and creativity, but the stakes are about as high as they get. Without clear expectations from you—yet enough margin to allow them to take risks—your makers simply cannot do their best work, which threatens the very lifeblood of your organization. Tune in to find out the two things every creative needs to thrive, as well as what you need to do to lead creatives well. entreleadership.com/podcast Todd Henry's book: Herding Tigers How to Achieve Work/Life Balance from Infusionsoft Read Chapter 1 of Herding Tigers Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message for Ken with the details. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Our feature guest this episode is with Todd Henry, multi-bestselling author, and he's got a new book entitled, Herding Tigers Be the Leader That Creative People,

people need. And we wanted to have a follow-up to that conversation. So we asked Luke Lefevre, who is our executive creative director here at Ramsey's Solutions to stop by and give his perspective on leading creatives. And we also have some great free resources from InfusionSoft and the Entree Leadership team. But I want to start off with a post that I saw on LinkedIn. A guy by the name of Josh. I don't know how to say his last name. so I'm not going to butcher it. He's a CEO of an agency, calls himself an influence coach for executives. He wrote this, and this is powerful stuff, and I wanted to share it with you, pretty sobering stuff. He wrote, I might be arrested for what I'm about to say, but I think it's important to come clean publicly.

Of all the employees I haven't treated as well as I should have, there's one I have seriously abused. I made him work 100 hours per week for years with no overtime pay. I frequently made him pull all-nighters. Saturdays off? Yeah, right. Vacation days? I gave him a week off after a few years. I've made him miss weddings and family reunions. I've forced him to work when he was sick and on holidays, even Christmas. I've also made him take crazy risks. I forced him to guarantee company loans and leases. At one point, he was personally liable for over half a million dollars in business debts. Perhaps for all this, he was paid more than other employees? No. He's never been the highest paid.

employee in the company. On top of all that, I always paid this guy last when I paid him at all. One time, I even made him work four years without taking a single paycheck. And I've still never paid him back for that. What a sucker. I've always kept my promises to other employees. But this guy, I break my promises to him all the time. I should be arrested for how I've treated this employee. But thankfully, if he tried to press charges, nobody would take him seriously because, as you've probably guessed, he's me. Pretty sobering stuff. And it just really jumped out to me.

And I thought, you know what? I'm going to read this because he took the time to read this and it impacted a lot of people. But I'm hoping it hit the right people that needed to hear it in the chest. Nothing more needs to be added to it. But you can't forget that you've got to treat yourself the way that you would want someone else to treat you. But for some reason, we've got this

dichotomy and we chalk it up to passion, we chalk it up to, this is what I've got to do, because I'm the boss, I'm the lead dog or dogette, whatever you want to say there, and we forget that we're abusing ourselves. And here's the reality. You're the lid. You are the leadership lid on your organization. And the organization is not going to grow any faster than you. It's not going to outgrow you. Really, really powerful stuff. So if that's you, you need to find a way to make an intervention in reality, whether it's with a good friend, other executives in your organization, family members, whatever it is, you can't do this. Your company needs you, your team needs you, your customers need you to be a healthy leader. Well, coming off of that haunting article,

how about a great resource from InfusionSoft on this very issue, how to achieve work-life balance? We've got a guide coming to you from our good friends at InfusionSoft. 70% of small business owners report sacrificing family or vacation time for work. And this guide, InfusionSoft, is going to help you see how other small business owners have won on this critical issue. They have achieved harmony with their work and personal lives. It's going to give you some actionable tools, some apps, techniques from the experts that allow you to work smarter so that you can unplug when you need to. why wouldn't you take us up on this? I just don't understand.

If you're a go-getter and you've got a lot going on, infusionsoft.com slash worklife balance. That's infusionsoft.com slash work-life balance, or we have a link for this resource for you in the show notes at entreleadership.com. Well, I'm excited to have Todd Henry back on the program with us, heading on before, and I really like this guy. He's a great thinker, a great writer, tremendous asset. to you the leader and also to you the person. Everything that he has written so far,

he really does come at it, I think from a very balanced approach because you are a human being, you're also a leader. This new book, Hurting Tigers, be the leader that creative people need a very important discussion because as Todd supposes in the book and he's right, leading creatives is a different type of leadership. He joined me in the studio recently. Here is our conversation. Well, this is fun. It's all. Always exciting when we have repeat guests in studio with us. In our new Entree Leadership Studio is Todd Henry.

Joined us back in 2016. He's got a new book coming out, Hurting Tigers. Be the leader that creative people need. First and foremost, Todd, welcome back. Good to have you in studio. Ken, it's great to be here. All right. So this is fun.

On camera here, I'll show you this. Look at that. That book cover will jump right off the shelf. So congratulations on a great looking book cover. But, okay, Hurting Tigers. So we were talking before we started recording that this title didn't come to you right away. It was something in the book. So because it's in the book and it wasn't your first choice, I love the backstory on this stuff.

What's going on here? Obviously, this is about leading creatives. But what is the imagery that you're building off of with this idea of hurting tigers? Yeah. So for, I mean, for a long time as a leader of creative people, I'd always hear this, this aphorism, the leading creative people is like herding cats. And it always rubbed me the wrong way because it's, It implies that, you know, creative people can't stay focused.

It's all about the idea. They just want to bounce from thing to thing. And it always sort of, frankly, just kind of insulting, whenever I would hear that. And one day I was speaking at a conference and I said, you know, actually, it's not more like hurting cats. It's more like hurting tigers. You know, these are creatures that are capable of amazing things, you know, amazing beauty and majesty.

But if you don't lead them, right, they're capable of turning around and ripping you to shreds. And it sort of stuck. It became a line in the book. And then my editor fought for the title, like fought and fought and fought in spite of, you know, like me and a group of others trying to like knock it off the mountain. And I'm glad that it won out because it certainly is, it's catchy and memorable for sure. All right. So we got people that are listening and watching us right now. Yeah. And they're going, what? You're telling me, Todd,

that if I'm not careful, a creative person can rip me to shreds? Well, I think if we don't understand how to lead creative people effectively, I think that they're capable of doing a lot of damage, right? There's a tremendous upside to getting it right. But there's also a lot of downside to getting it wrong. And why is there? Why is there such a danger there and not leading creative as well? Well, because you're entrusting them with a lot of responsibility within your organization. They're really the creative lifeblood of your organization. Your next great idea, your next great product, you know, how you position your product, the messaging that comes out of, comes out of your organization. A lot of these things find their synthesis within the confines

of the creative team within your organization. If you don't learn how to lead them effectively, then you're not going to get the best work out of them. And so, you know, it's really important not only that you understand as a leader, what is it that creative people need from you, but it's also important to understand what are some things maybe that I'm doing that are putting a cap on their potential, their ability to bring their best to the table. All right. Before we dive in, let me tell you where we're going, folks.

He's going to talk about, I want him to talk about two things that leaders need to do to create the right environment, but something I want you to weigh in on, and this may be a distraction, but I think it's important. So we've got leaders listening in right now, Todd, and they may be going, okay, I do need to figure out how to do this because I'm not very creative. I've always chafed at that idea. Because obviously there are more creative people than others. However, I'm leaning in here for you because I want you to help them understand.

Wait a second. They may be a creative person. They may be more creative than you. They may be in a creative role. But to say as a leader, I'm not very creative, that's a little bit of, I don't think that's true. What's wrong? Yeah. I mean, the reality is, I think people conflate creativity with art.

So they think, oh, because I don't design or I don't paint or I don't write, I'm not creative. But being an entrepreneur is a creative act. You have to find white space in the market. You have to identify, you know, solve problems every day. Really, creativity at the heart of it is problem solving. That's right. That's what it is. And so some, you know, designers solve problems by designing something.

But an entrepreneur solves problems by developing a new system or figuring out a new way to reach their, you know, intended audience or whatever it is. So all of these are creative acts. and we're all creative in various ways. But I think the problem often is that, like you said, people think they're not creative simply because they don't make art, which is a misunderstanding. And the reason I bring that up is the follow-up question. Do you believe that when we have that mindset,

well, I'm not creative and I don't understand each creatives, that it creates a wall, an unnecessary wall or barrier to understanding and leading them? Absolutely. There are several myths about creative people that exist that I think have unfortunately been sort of fed over the course of, you know, a long period of time in the marketplace. You know, like it's all about the idea.

You know, they only want the cool idea. If it's not a cool idea, they're not willing to work on it. It's a myth. It's not true. I mean, the reality is a lot of creative people are very strategic and how they think. And I mean, they understand the importance of getting things to market on time and all of that. So, you know, I think the problem is that there are these baked and inherent myths that

exist in the marketplace about creatives and who they are and what they need. And I think once we begin to transcend those and we begin to understand what it is specifically that creative people need, I think that we can not only be a better leader, but we can equip them to be better contributors to the organization and provide what it is we need from them. All right there.

You argue in this book, there's two things that leaders need to provide to make sure that creatives are thriving. What are those two things? Yeah, so the first thing is stability. And again, to get back to the myths of creative people, well, they just want the, you know, give me complete freedom, just wide open spaces to play in. And that's not really true. The reality

is that great creativity requires boundaries. Orson Wells once said that the absence of limitations is the enemy of art, right? We have to have good boundaries in order to be able to create. And most highly creative people know that they need boundaries. They need clear rail. So they need clarity from their leader primarily, and they need protection from their leader. They need to know that you're going to fight for the focus, the assets, the time, the energy I need to be able to do work. So if you create that environment of stability, then creative people know they have firm footing when they take risks. The second thing that they need, though, is challenge. They need to be pushed. They need to know that you have faith in them. They need to know that you see them, that you recognize

them. You know them individually, what makes them unique. You know what it is they're capable of and that you're pushing them to take risks and to try new things and to experiment and to develop their skills and to bring their unique perspective to the conversation. The problem is that and challenge exist in tension with one another. So the more stable you make things, the less challenging somebody might feel the organization is, right? And the more you challenge people, the more you destabilize the organization. So as a leader, you really have to keep your finger on the dials and make sure that you're monitoring stability and challenge within the organization to make sure that people don't get, you know, for example, if there's too little

challenge and, you know, too high as stability, they're going to get bored. Highly creative people are going to seek better horizons if they feel like they're not being pushed. If there's a high degree of challenge, but a low degree of stability. So these are kind of shooting star organizations where you're cranking out a lot of work and you're doing a lot of, maybe even a lot of really publicly recognized work, but they're going to grow angry with you because it feels like the terms of engagement are constantly shifting. There's no stability within the organization. And so you have to keep an eye on not only what does my team as a whole need, but also what do the individuals on my team need for me right now in order to be positioned to bring their best work? Yeah, I want to

stay here too because I think you bring up a really interesting tension. And you explained it well of the balance, but practically speaking, you want to challenge these creators so that they feel like, hey, I'm creating because these folks are creators, they're artists at their core, but the balance of stability. So what's that look like? Let's go a little bit deeper into what that practically looks like. How do you keep challenging them, but also keep those boundaries of stability in place so they feel at least safe to be stepping up to the challenge you've put before them? Yeah, so that's pretty much what the rest of the book addresses, right? Oh, of course. All right. But really, it's really a matter of ensuring that you are keeping your eye on a couple of things. Primarily, number one, does my team understand what I expect from them? We've been walking around this fantastic building here.

You know, we're in the Entree leadership offices right now, and you have your Ramsey organizational values, you know, throughout the organization. I saw break stuff, fix stuff, you know, make your marketing. it's important as a leader that you have a leadership philosophy. It's important that your team understands what you expect from them and that you've clearly articulated to them, here's where you're going to get in trouble, and here's where you're going to feel my blessing as a leader. And you have permission to do these things.

If you do these things, you're going to be rewarded organization. If you take these risks, you're going to be rewarded. If you do these things over here, this is when you're going to come crossways with me as a leader. And so it's important for stability's sake that you have a leadership philosophy, that you have a point of view, a clearly articulated point of view, so your team understands what you expect from them. In many organizations where creative people struggle,

it's because the leader's philosophy shifts with the political wins, right? So they're not getting clear direction. The edges of the work aren't clearly defined. We don't know exactly what it is we're aiming for. And then at the last minute, the leader steps in and fixes everything for us because they've changed their mind at the last minute. And so people start to figure out, well, wait a minute, I'm doing all of this work. In the end, I'm not really getting to do the work that I'm capable of doing. So I'm just going to wait for you to tell me what to do, right? Because the expectations weren't set early on in the process for me and you can create an environment in which I could thrive. So having a leadership philosophy is critically important. And also ensuring that you're creating an environment in which you're protecting the focus, the assets, the time and the energy your team needs to be able to do its work. You know, that you're creating margin for your team to do its deep creative work.

One organization that I work with established something they called a no-fly zone time, which was a period of two hours a day of predictable deep work time where you're under organizational mandate not to interrupt someone if they were working. Now, most organizations are the opposite, right? It's like, oh, well, you're given permission to interrupt if you need to unless I tell you not to. But in this organization, it was do not interrupt unless I give you permission to interrupt me. And what that did for the organizations, it gave them a predictable two hours a day to do their deep creative work. And that was a way of their time and protecting their focus, giving them space to be able to do that deep creative work. So really, in many ways, stability is about predictability. It's about knowing I'm going to have the margin that I need to be able to do the highly unpredictable, highly creative work that I'm accountable for. Ooh, that's good. Predictable unpredictability. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. Because you've got to be unpredictable in the moment of creation. You do. And this is, you know, when you live in a create-on-demand environment, I mean, most of us do, right? We have to solve problems on demand. you know, when you're in that kind of environment, you know, it's sort of like, you know, okay, well, hey, you know, you better have a great idea between 9 and 10 a.m. because we're going to move on to this next project. And that's a really tall order. It's really difficult to do. If you as a leader are not building an infrastructure for your team to have the space, the capacity it needs to be able to do its work, it's, you know, over the course of time, they're simply not going to produce for you. Yeah. You write about trust in this book. And obviously we started off the conversation by saying, look, you got to lead creatives a little differently. You can't just do it one size, fits all leadership, management philosophy, whatever you've read. And so if that's the case,

I'm curious, because I know you're right about trust. Interesting that you use managing trust. You say earn the right managing trust. That's the title of chapter six. I know you're specific there. You didn't say building trust. That's right. Why? I think there's a misnomer, a misunderstanding we have about trust. We tend to think of trust kind of like a bank account. You know, if you put a little bit in, you can take a little bit out. As long as you keep a positive trust balance, you're okay. That's not really the way that trust will. works, especially in a creative environment. Trust, I like to describe it more like a water balloon. You fill it up, you fill it up, you fill it up, but if you puncture it one time, you're going to

lose it everywhere. And that's why often teams seem to be firing on all cylinders, everything's going great, and then you get to the end of a big project right before a client presentation, and everything blows up. You know, like, what's going on? And somebody says, like, oh, you said you were going to bring bagels to the meeting two weeks ago, and you didn't bring bagels, right? It's a silly example, but it's probably not the bagels. But the reality is most leaders don't blow trust in the big ways. Like we're not overtly lying to our team. At least I trust that most people aren't overtly lying.

Sure. It's the little things we do that lose trust. And when we forfeit trust in little ways, it tends to play out in big ways. So we forfeit trust in little ways. And then we get to the end of a project and we need somebody to deliver. And the trust simply isn't there for them to be able to make that creative leap. We have to manage trust. you know, we have to treat it like a precious commodity because it is. You know, we have to

earn the right every single day as a leader. And we do that really, frankly, we do it more in the little ways than we do in the big ways. That's really good. All right, I want to jump forward. By the way, I want to mention to the audience that Todd breaks down this book, two main sections, your mindset and your mechanics. So this is how you, the leader, are coming at hurting these tigers. And so we're spending really the balance of our time, most of our time in part two on the mechanic side of things. And what to talk about chapter 10, be the muse. I love that this is a challenge to leaders who may not be as creative as the people that, of course, they're leading and guiding and really depending on to be creative.

How are they supposed to be the muse? So as a leader, you're the chief dot connector. You have a point of view of perspective that people on your team don't have because you can see not just what's right in front of you, but you can see a month out, two months out, six months out. And so you have the unique ability to plant seeds with your team to get them ahead of the work, right? And to connect dots and to say, hey, I heard you talking about this. And somebody over here, your teammate was talking about this. And you guys should talk to one another because you're talking about similar things. And I think these two ideas are connected.

Steve Jobs once famously quip that creativity is just connecting things. And it is, right? Really at the heart of it, creativity is just connecting dots. Well, as a leader, you have access to more dots than the people on your team. And so if you are strategic in how you listen, how you pay attention to what's going on, because again, you're probably in more meetings than most of your team members are. And so you get to see across the organization. You get to listen across the organization. And if you're intentional about connecting those dots, then you can create a fertile field for creative inspiration in your organization. And it's really, it's not only about that, but it's also about the kinds of things that you feed your team.

So for example, you know, if you're reading, if you're studying, if you're out there and you're as one, leader told me over indexing on things like books and podcasts and magazine articles, then you can winnow those down. You can begin funneling them to your team strategically. Like, hey, I know we have this big project coming up in a couple of months. And so I'm going to start funneling things to you that I think are going to begin sort of killing the soil, you know, for you so that you can begin thinking about these things that are coming up. You don't need ideas yet, but I'm just going to start planting some seeds here for you because I know that's going to bear fruit here in a couple of months. So, you know, again, it's really more about your perspective as a leader, the fact that you see more than your team does.

And so you can strategically plant seeds. You can strategically connect dots. And you can sort of keep them in this kind of place of fertility creatively. Yeah, I like the strategically planning seeds. I love what you're talking about there. This is something that I believe. I'm curious to know what you think and how it should be manifested. But I believe that even small business leaders, you know, who may not have a huge team. Okay, because they have a lot of small business owners that are and operators that are listing in here. it could even be the outside relationships, you know, people that you respect that are highly creative, but people on your team. But no matter how big the organization is, Todd, I really believe, I just started thinking about this when you mentioned this idea of, of course, the chapter being the muse. But it seems to me that it would be better off if leaders got the most creative people around them, whether again they work for them or not. And they got involved with these people early and often on casting vision.

new vision, updating vision, because there's something special about a creative mind when you're not asking them to just make this idea better or make it look good or sound good, but help me actually create a better version of the vision. Right. Absolutely. No question. Well, and that's important for the creative people, too, that you surround yourself with because people, your creative people need to understand the throughline.

They need to understand the why behind the what. And this is one of the big things that contributes to dissonance in organizations. You know, a disconnect between the why and the what. And highly creative people also tend to be highly perceptive people, highly intuitive people. And when they don't see a connection between what they're doing and the core why of the organization, or at least some kind of why, right? When they feel like they're just producing work, producing work, but there's no through line. It can be very maddening and be very frustrating.

You're not going to get the best work out of them. So by staying involved with them, casting vision, getting them involved in the process of helping shape and develop that vision. You're not only getting them aligned with the team and you're not only getting the best vision for the team, but you're also ensuring that they're going to be rooted in the work that you're doing and they're going to be bringing their best effort because they're going to make that connection between the why and the why instead of spending their precious creative cycles trying to reconcile. Now, why am I doing this again? Why does this matter? That's so true. And it seems so obvious and yet we don't do it. We assume that as a leader, we assume,

everybody else gets it the same way we do. That's right. And we don't realize we have to keep going back. We have to keep connecting dots. We have to keep going back and making sure that people understand that they're rooted in the through line of the organization, the productive passion of the organization. I absolutely love that. I just, I see a lack of that. You know what I mean? Don't get the best creatives involved after you've already crystallized the vision. Get them involved early.

That leads me to something that I want to talk about with you very, very practical. And this is the brainstorming meetings, you know, or just let's not box ourselves into just that idea because I think that conjures up different things for different people. I love brainstorming meetings only under a certain set of rules. You know what I mean? Where it's like it's a free for all. You know, it's a yes and process. Kelly Leonard, I've had him on, you know, from Second City here on the show. And we talked about that.

But I want to talk about what works, what doesn't work from your research, what you write about in the book. And then just the importance of getting this process started. But you kind of espoused for a little bit of a decentralized process. Explain that. Yeah. So I think one of the mistakes. that we make as leaders, especially in this idea generation brainstorming processes, we treat everybody the same, right? So it goes, typically goes something like this. This probably

sounds familiar to people listening, right? So it's like we get everybody in the room together, the leader stands up, write some project or problem on the board, turns around and says, all right, who has ideas? And then there's the first maybe five seconds of awkwardness. And then the hyper-caffeinated person in the corner all of a sudden starts throwing it. Well, What if we did this? What if we did that? What if we did that? And then the hypercaffanated person in the other corner starts shouting, what if we do this? What if you did it? And so then you end up with like four or five people basically triangulating among one another. And you've got 50 ideas on the board in the first 20 minutes. And then it's like, okay, well, which of these do we like best? Meanwhile, there are probably six or seven people in the room who haven't even said a word yet. And probably are shutting down due to all the mess on the board. They're freaking out. That's right. Absolutely. So one leader called this dynamic. dynamic fast-twitch and slow-twitch people. You have a lot of people who are wired for this brainstorming. They love this brainstorming thing, this traditional method where it's like, let's just get

in the room, let's throw out ideas. And maybe like one out of 50 is going to be a valuable idea, but we're going to get a lot of them on the board. And then you have some people who are slow-twitch people who probably aren't going to contribute in that meeting. And maybe they'll sit there and they'll kind of stare at it and their wheels are turning. And then four hours later or maybe 12 hours later or 18 hours later, they're going to have some brilliant insight. But by that point, it's too late because you've already settled on your

decision and you've moved on. So when you conduct brainstorming sessions in the traditional way, you're basically alienating all of those slow twitch people. So what he advised me to do was to instead give everybody the problem ahead of time, define it for people, let them know, hey, on Thursday at this time, we're going to talk about this specific problem. I want you to come to the meeting with a couple of ideas, the ideas that you think are best. So, of course, you know the fast-twitch people, immediately, they sit down and they start mapping out like their 50 answers and they want to it down to the two. The slow-twitch people start working on the problem, maybe a day later, maybe a day and a half, maybe five minutes before they walk into the meeting, they have a hunch

and insight, they bring it in. But it puts everybody on equal footing. So then when you go around the table and you say, okay, everybody bring your best couple of ideas, let's get them on the board. Everybody's on equal footing, the fast-twitch people, the slow-twitch people, you're getting the best of both groups. And at that point, you can have a meaningful conversation. Then you can talk about what you like, what you don't like, what's working, what's not working. But basically, you're giving people an opportunity to think about the problem in advance instead of expecting everyone to just generate ideas on demand. We should probably point out here that you might have several, if you do this, and I think it's a great exercise, I think it's absolutely brilliant. But just for fun,

because it's true, some of your fast switch people will not do it ahead of time. Well, that's very true. You're doing it into five minutes before the meeting. Absolutely. No question. So I love the process. I would just add that caveat because I'm the guy who's going to get the email and I'm going to go, okay, I could spend time on my own doing this or I could come in and be fresh and just go. Right.

So just be prepared as the leader and some of your fast-fitch people and don't expect. And I'm having fun at my expense. But honestly, Todd, you know I'm right. That's absolutely true. Don't require the fast twitch people to send this stuff in ahead of time unless they want to. Right. That's right. Well, and they shouldn't.

And they don't have to. The point is to bring your ideas to the meeting, right? Yeah, the point is bring it to the meeting, bring your top couple of ideas to the meeting. And it doesn't matter if you generate them on the way to the meeting, right? It doesn't matter, right? Oh, man, yeah. Not that, you know, not that you would do that. Yeah.

No, listen, it's true. I think you have to be cool with that because, you know, I actually like this conversation. I like parking here, Todd, because it brings up a very good point. And I wonder if you even have different variations of that. And what I mean by that is have a fast Twitch brainstorm. Yeah. Where it's only fast Twitch people. have a slow twitch where they, you gave them time to think about it at a time, they come in and

they operate in slow twitch as well. And then you take those ideas from both meetings and look at them, maybe bring people together because I do think that there is such an energy there. Right. That you might yield best results. I'm just, I'm not trying to change it, but I'm just saying maybe that is, you get a couple different iterations of brainstorm. Absolutely. And when the point is that you want to make sure that you're allowing everyone in your organization to contribute, right? You're not falling prey to this idea of we're going to value the loudest and the fastest

and the most adamant person in the room. But instead, we're going to make sure everybody feels welcome to contribute ideas. Because the energy is different. You know that. Absolutely. I mean, I can go on one of those meetings and there'd be slow. By the way, I've never thought about it this way, fast switch, slow twitch. But I can read slow twitch people and they're just like their natural instinct many times

is to go, well, let's not move too fast. I haven't had a chance to process that. Right, right. And letting them just kind of free flow that. Yeah, you know what I mean and not be so under pressure. Very interesting stuff. I really love that. I want to go forward into this idea of how do you then create the right environment? I know we've talked about it some, but an environment where you've got slow twitch and fast switch people working together, you've got a healthy leadership situation where you're attracting more creatives.

Because that's the next level. If you're leading and hurting tigers well, you're going to create a company that attracts other creatives. And you can't have, in my mind, too many creatives. I guess it's possible structurally, but you get my point. You want to always have an environment where creatives go, this is great. They see stability, but they also see, okay, I've got a lot of freedom to do my best work. In the book, how do you walk the reader through that, not just learning how to manage the ones or lead the ones you have now, but creating a culture where it goes, this is a great place for creatives to work. That's the word right there. It's culture, right? I think the big transition, we have to make when we move into leadership is we have to recognize we're moving from a maker mindset and a lot of entrepreneurs frankly struggle with making this transition where it's all i'm the one doing all the work i'm making all the work i'm making all the decisions and basically a maker mindset is all about control so it's about if i control the work well enough it's going to be up into the right i'm going to get better results things are going to work out for me right and so i'm rewarded the better i control the work. But at some point, when you hire your first employee as an entrepreneur, you have to transition

from a maker mindset to a manager mindset. And if you continue to have that control mindset as a manager, when you transition to a managerial role, you're not going to continue to get an up into the right result. Instead, your results are going to decline because essentially you're not unleashing the person that you've hired to do what it is they're capable of contributing. So you have to transition from a mindset of control to influence, which means you have to own. You have to own. You not just own the work, which is what you've owned all along, but you have to own also the culture and the talent. And so how do you own the culture? Well, first of all, you have to define what kind of culture you want, which means you have to establish a leadership philosophy and you have to establish cultural tenants that

help people on your team understand how we make decisions. And then you have to aggressively fertilize the stuff you want and you have to aggressively prune the stuff you don't want. You know, a lot of organizations in the absence of any kind of leadership philosophy or strong leadership, they see this dynamic called ghost rules emerge, which are these invisible rules that exist within the organization about who can say what, who can't say what, who can talk to whom, who gets to introduce an idea, who doesn't, how you get promoted, how you don't get promoted.

None of those things have ever been explicitly stated. It's just these are rules that are invented to fill the gap where there's no clear cultural identity. And so if you want to create a culture in which creative people thrive and also a culture that attracts other people, you have to aggressively identify this is what we want more of and this is what gets rewarded,

and then you have to aggressively prune the stuff that you don't want. You treat it like a garden, right? People talk about a culture as if it's like a building, we're going to build a building, right? It's not. A culture is like a garden. And if you don't regularly fertilize the stuff you want, you don't regularly prune the stuff you don't want,

then you're going to end up in a situation where people don't understand the rules of the game. There will be no stability within the organization. And creative people can't thrive. when they don't understand the rules of the game. If they're trying to do the complex, highly fluid work that you've tasked them with and at the same time trying to read your mind and figure out what you want from them, it's going to drive them crazy.

They're not going to stick around for very long. But if you create a stable environment in which there are clear ground rules, you're protecting them. They know that you're creating the margin that they need. You're defending them from the pressures from on high, right? Your boss's boss who has, well, I just need one more thing. Right. Right.

That's right. And they see that you're willing to step in and protect them from those requests. and you're willing to negotiate up for them so that they have the protection. If you create that kind of environment, not only are the creatives in your environment are going to thrive, but it's going to attract other people. They're going to be talking to their friends.

People are like, I want to work there. That's right. Because that's the kind of place that values what I bring to the table. And I'm not talking about pampering people, and I'm not talking about making it, you know, the kind of environment where people are like, oh, we have so much space and so much, no,

none of us get to do that. We're in a create-on-demand environment, right? We have to deliver results. But that's what people want. They want to work in an environment where they feel like, yeah, I'm being expected to stretch myself, to push, I'm being challenged, but that's happening within an environment where at least I understand that there's some predictability about my work so that when I'm making a strategic leap or I'm taking a creative risk, I'm doing it

from a firm platform. I'm not leaping from unstable ground into more instability, which is what a lot of organizations do. You write about fighting well, and, you know, when you think about creatives, speaking on behalf of creatives, they just naturally challenge the process. Some more vocally than others, but they challenge the process. And as a leader, you really got to learn how to handle that conflict and that challenge and learn how to fight well, like fight over ideas, but not turn it into this big personal battle. I think that's maybe one of the most important chapters in the book. What's the challenge to leaders? Well, part of the challenge is that conflict is a natural result of getting talented people in the room together. I mean, if you have talented

people around one another, conflict is going to be the norm. I actually have one leader once approached me and say, oh, we never fight. Where the healthiest team you'll ever encounter. I'm like, you're the most dysfunctional team I've ever seen, right? Because that conflict is happening. It's just being pushed beneath the surface. Nobody's talking about it. So when that happens, when you don't handle conflict well, it creates all kinds of dysfunction. And again, all kinds of instability, right, within your organization. So the first thing we have to do is recognize conflict is a normal thing. It's a healthy thing. And then the second thing, and you hit on this a minute ago when you said, you know, not making it personal. We have to

make sure that we're fighting over ideas, not personality. right, the moment that a conflict gets personal, everybody loses, period. And we see this in organizations, these cults of personalities begin to emerge. And it's like, this is my school of thought. And I'm against this other school of thought within the organization because these two leaders are kind of having it out. And it just creates rifts. It creates destruction within the organization.

So we have to make sure we're fighting over ideas, not personality. We have to agree on the common objectives. Listen, we're all on the same team. We're all trying to do the same thing. let's make sure that we're fighting about the right thing here. Are we both trying to accomplish the same objective? Or is my understanding of the problem different from yours? And is that where the conflict is sourced?

So we have to make sure that we're fighting over the same thing. And then we have to make sure that when we approach a conflict, that we are trying to see things through the other person's perspective. And this sounds really simplistic and it sounds really almost like naive. But it's a really effective technique. If I think, okay, what parts of your argument do I agree with? A lot of times when we're having an argument over an idea, we'll just dig our heels in. I'm not willing to concede any ground to you.

No, we're on the same team. We're trying to accomplish the same thing. That's right. So I'm going to tell you, hey, here's what I like about your idea, but here's where I diverge from you. You do the same for me. Here's what I like about your idea, but here's where I diverge. Great. Now we have some common ground.

We can fight on, right? Versus, I'm just going to dig my heels in and fight for my position. And listen, a big chunk of this is how you define the culture as a leader as well and what you reward as a leader. because if people feel like the only way I'm going to get on my management's radar is by digging my heels in and being a contrarian, nobody ever sounded smart for agreeing with everyone, right? That's the thing. Nobody ever said, well, that person's really smart. They agree with everything everybody else says. No, the way that you get on the radar is by objecting, by raising it. You know, so if as a leader, if you're allowing that to happen, if you're normalizing that kind of deviant behavior on your team, well, people are going to start doing that. You're going to have all kinds of ancillary conflict that isn't really useful. So make sure that your mom. modeling what good conflict resolution looks like and then make sure that you're actually fighting over the things that you should be fighting over. And then it's not just some technique people are using to try to get on your radar. Is this good if you've not done this? You're listening

in and you go, okay, I'm tracking with you, Todd, but they haven't done this. Maybe just lead one of these meetings. Absolutely. Just come around and go, okay, here's what we're doing. Leaders are afraid to look stupid. You know, leaders are afraid that they're going to lose their credibility if they admit I don't know what's going on. And hurting tigers, I call this being the superhero, right? They're afraid to let other people into their thought process. They're afraid to admit, I really don't know the right direction. We think that by playing the superhero, we're going to gain the trust of our team.

Well, that person obviously knows what they're doing. But listen. They don't think we're a superhero anymore. No, everybody knows the score. People know we don't know what we're doing. That's right. We might as well admit it. We might as well invite them into our thought process.

We might as well let them contribute. Now, it's also important we make the distinction between permission to speak their mind or permission to contribute and permission to make the decision. Because when the time comes to make the decision, I might make a different decision than what your contribution would warrant. And so it's important they understand there are clear lines of authority here.

You're not making the decision I am. But I do welcome your insight. I welcome your opinion. So when we do that, you know, when we invite people in. So as it relates to the conflict thing, right? We often don't want to engage in conflict because we don't know where it's going to lead.

So true. Yeah. It's the fear of the unknown. That's what really freaks us out. That's right. I try this meeting this way, Todd, we've never done it this way. I don't want to get this person mad at this person. But again, it comes back to, I think you've already laid out some beautiful ground rules. Certainly the philosophy that if we take what you just said moments ago and go,

all right, we're going to try this. And as the leader, I'm going to be the strong leader and go, this is what we're trying to get. Let's go. Let's have some debates. It's not personal. We're looking for common ground. Let's reward solutions here. That's right. And not the best idea. That's exactly right. And I think, and part of it, part of the struggle is that, you know, I think a lot of what unhealthy aspects of what you're describing is rooted in insecurity. That's exactly right. And I think as a leader, our area of greatest insecurity is the place where we have the potential to do the most damage to our team. I think that's that whatever we're trying to get from the team, whatever we're trying to feed ourselves from our leadership position, if we're trying to be liked, if we're trying to be the fun boss, if we're trying to be the stable boss, whatever it is about ourselves that we're trying to feed our area of greatest insecurity is.

the place we have to really watch out because that's where we could really do significant damage to the team. Final chapter of the book, Be a Leader Worth Following. It's a pretty lofty chapter title there. You are equal to the task. Final question, because I love this question for our guest, if you could sit down with all the leaders in our audience and say, be the leader worth following. What do you tell us? What's the challenge in the last chapter? You have to know who you are. if you don't understand who you are and what you value you know most people think that leaders are made when they rise to the occasion the reality is that the rising to the occasion is the test it's the test of your leadership and your character right i was in new york when i was writing the book and

i was just kind of walking down the street kind of absorbing the sights and sounds and smells and all that and as i was walking down the street this person walked out of a building behind me and i just heard a snippet of their conversation but the guy said well what did you do and she said well i lied to the pope i had no choice. And I was like, what? It's like a record scratch moment. Like, what? You lied to the Pope. Like, how do you get to a point where you think you have no choice but the lie to the Pope, right? Well, I mean, you know, it's sort of a silly example or I have no idea what they were talking about, but, or if I misheard them, who knows. Right. But the point is, in those big moments of testing, our character is only tested in those moments, right? When we have these big meetings, these big

conflicts, these big conversations, we have to understand who we are and what we're about. And we have to understand when we're willing to walk away. You know, we have to understand what is not worth it for us as a leader. I am not going to compromise my integrity over this decision. I am not willing to allow myself to get subsumed into the organizational will to the point that there is no longer a distinction between who I am and who the organization is. Because if that happens, I'm no longer anybody worth following. I'm basically just a faceless, you know, void that is enacting the will of the organization. And you know, I see this with a lot of entrepreneurs. They can't distinguish themselves from their business.

There is nothing that separates them as a person from the business that they are running. And if your people on your team don't understand that you have a life, an identity, and a set of values that exist in a decision-making framework, if they can't see you making decisions on a regular basis that cost you something because your values are more important to you than a little bit of profit, or a little whatever, they're not going to follow you. They might follow you for a while while they're looking for another job, but they're not going to follow you.

So you have to know who you are. And at the end of the day, the greatest legacy we have as leaders, it's not the work. It's not the, I mean, you know how few people are going to actually be remembered 100 years from now? You know how few businesses are actually going to be remembered? I mean, of course, you know, Ramsey will, and ultimately, you know, you know how few businesses are even being remembered.

But great leaders understand that their legacy is the people. people they lead. That's right. You know, and the people that they lead, I mean, the challenge I always give people is 10 years from now when somebody asks you, hey, think of a leader who really impacted your life. Who was it? I want you to be the person. I want you to be the person they think of, right? Because when we're a great leader, when we bring ourselves and we dedicate ourselves to unleashing the potential of the people on our team, we make echoes. And those echoes resound through generations of people. So then they turn around and they invest in other people and other people. And those echoes continue to resound. So I really really.

think that's what it means to be a leader worth following. It's to be a leader who makes echoes. Well, I love that. That's a great final thought right there. Just let that sit. He is Todd Henry, the new book, Hurting Tigers, be the leader that creative people need. There it is. Great looking cover. You've got to love the tiger in the office chair. Fantastic stuff. Todd, you're a good friend of the organization. Thanks for hanging out with our Entree leadership team all day and spending time with our audience here on the program. We're better for it. We appreciate it. I appreciate you. And it's like, I know people only see a sliver of insight. into the organization.

I only see a sliver of insight when they listen to the podcast or they watch a video or something. But I just say, like, if you slice this place, top the bottom and open it up, I mean, what you see is what you get. I've been so impressed

with the organization, with the values, with the way I see you living out your values here. It's been a really, really amazing day. Well, thank you for being with us, and those are kind words.

We have a fantastic leader who models the way very well with Dave Ramsey. Todd Henry, thank you, buddy. Thank you. Hey, excited to give you some goodies as relates to Todd Henry's new book, Herding Tigers Be the Leader.

That creative people need, Todd has graciously allowed us to offer you the introduction and the first chapter of hurting tigers for free. Completely free, the introduction to the book and the first chapter. I'm going to give that to you. You're going to love it. All you've got to do is text the word tigers. That's plural. Tigers.

Text the word tigers to 33444. 3344. Or get the link. in the episode's show notes. Well, I told you at the top of the program that Luke Lefevre, our executive creative director, who just recently celebrated his ninth year at Ramsey Solutions this past December, was going to be joining me in the studio. This guy, very, very thoughtful.

And what I love about having Luke on this episode is he's somebody that came here on the bottom levels, if you will, of being just a creative designer. He designed, design, design, grew. Started getting more influence, grew, got in some level of leading. leadership grew and now leads the entire company's creatives. He is a fantastic thinker. This is a little bit of a different twist. I want you to hear from somebody who is a creative and has transitioned into leading creatives. All right, folks, this is exciting because from time to time we get to lasso some of our leadership at Ramsey Solutions, come in the studio with us and give you some

perspective on what you've heard from our feature conversation. Really excited to have Luke The fever here. He's become a good friend. He's our executive creative director. So this is a guy that when he came on board here was in the weeds creating and now leading creative. So we thought this would be a really fun perspective. Welcome to the Entree. Thank you for having me. This is amazing. It's a little intimidating to have an executive creative director in the studio because I saw you when you walked in, you were doing this number. Yeah. Yeah. It's gray and the word is. Once a creative, always a creative. I love it. I love it. So I want to ask you first. Yeah. What has the position been like? What comes to top of the line is you go from being one of the creatives and you

were in leadership role but then moving in. I wasn't at the beginning. No, but you've been in it for a little while. So you've gone from creating. Yeah. A little bit of leading. Yeah. More leading. Now true leadership, pure leadership position. What's that been like for you? It's been a long process, more like a dimmer switch versus a light switch that flipped. And it actually was easier than I thought it would be because I was never in love with design as a craft. I started as a web designer and did web design, but I also loved being in bands, and I also loved public speaking and all of those things.

So I was okay letting go of the design after a while. At the beginning, I knew what I had in my head, and so I would. I'd take the work, and I'd get it to where I needed to go. And then a slow process over time of letting go of a little bit, how did they do, letting go of a little bit more, a little bit more. Till now,

someone who really loves design or content or videos way better at it than I am. I'm better at finding. And I always say, my job is really finding and getting the right people in the right seats

so that we can do good work. Right. Yeah. So what was it like in the early days when you realize, okay, now I'm going to move into a role where I'm leading creatives?

Yeah. Did you come at it and go, okay, this is kind of interesting because I feel like I know how I wanted to be led. I know how others like me wanted to be. Did you have? Did you have a couple of little philosophical things that you said, okay, this is what I'm going to do now that I'm leading.

I didn't have too many from here because I really liked my leaders here. I didn't have any of those things. Well, I'm not going to do it like so-and-so. But let's see. Or that you're going to do it different. Not so much that they didn't do it right, but you're going, okay, I'm coming at it this way. Here's what it was. At the beginning, it was very much about, so I was a designer first.

So I did lots of web ads for FPU. did tons of ads and it was the realization over time that what you're putting into your head comes out into your work. So I would learn that as a designer. So if I was listening to like, I'll get to your question there in a second. But I was listening to like super sad depressing music and I would, because I just love it. I love like acoustically, you know, fall, sad music. But then the ads I was working on were like super dark blue and angst-ridden, like, fighting pictures. and clouds of struggle of people getting out of debt and all this stuff.

And so once the creative director I had at the time, what he did was, this is, so here's to answer your question, he brought me into his office one time, and he pulled out all the ads I'd worked out over the year. And he goes, Luke, we're supposed to be about hope and joy. And you're giving us sadness and struggle. Right. And once he kind of pointed that out to me, I was like, oh, I got to get my head in the right place to get to the right work.

Then when I started leading people, I was very concerned about where their heads were at. Oh, that's good. Emotionally, you know, so that they could put out the right kind of work. So that's something I took from one of my leaders. It wasn't immediately about leading people. It was in my brain, this is my vision for this big campaign or this big project. And then over time, it turned into leading the people because I had to scale it somehow. Sure.

And get those people in the right places. But immediately, my brain didn't go there, as it probably should have. Well, it's an organic development there. Okay, so we've heard from Todd Henry talk about how he sees it as very different in leading creatives. I'm sure you agree, but just from your world, Luke Lefevre, what would you say to those who are listening right now who have to lead creatives? They've heard some great stuff from Todd, but just from your personal experience, what one thing would you share about leading creatives? To people who are not creatives? To those who are, well, you know, to who are leading creatives, whether they consider themselves creative.

Because here's the point that Todd and I made. And I think you agree with this. I think everybody's creative. I do too. Absolutely. I think it's a cop out and a bunch of hogwashy. Yes. Well, I'm not creative.

Right. If you have creatives who identify as creatives on your team, even if you don't consider yourself a creative, but you have a writer or a videographer or a designer of some sort, don't dismiss what it is they do. So a lot of business people are like, I don't know, just make it pretty. There's a lot more to do.

it than that. So acknowledge what that is because they put their hearts into it. So lead them like that. Like let them own that stuff. In the vein of everyone is creative, I agree. What one thing would I tell someone to do to lead creatives better is to make sure you're leading yourself better. I know that's something we talk about here and how to lead you when you're not in charge book. But really, if you are spending time, quiet time, listening, learning, reading in the mornings before you get to work and processing what you think and what you think it should be before the days, emails and texts and everything starts coming in, you will lead your people so much better if you have some quiet focus time in the morning to read and write and process what you're going through.

That's the one thing. I love that because I think it's so true to be healthy yourself because one of the things you said just a few minutes earlier, I thought was great, is you've got to make sure whatever the project is or the vision is that you and your team are taking on creatively for a much bigger vision, right, for the company as a whole. You want to get their heads in the right space. And how can you do that if your head is in the wrong space? Really good. Something I hear you talk about a lot. I'd love for you to expound a little bit and just a little bit of our time we have remaining is blank space. Yeah. How do you use that? What is blank space? I already get up pretty early. I

I normally get up at five. And I have tea or coffee or something in the morning. And then I'll read to get my head in a good space. And then I'll journal. I write a lot. I just freeform stream of consciousness write. Like I try not to filter what my brain's doing because I don't want to be like, oh, that's dumb or don't think that.

I just give myself that freedom in the morning. So since the first of the year, I've been trying four a.m. And today it was 4.20, you know. What's the reason for the extra time? I felt as though, you know, I tried to get to work at eight, I felt as though the time I had without anything to do in the morning kept creeping in. So I'd read, read a little of the Bible, I'd journal, I'd meditate on some of those things that I'd just read, and then I wanted like an hour just to start writing. And so I just want an hour where I don't really have a plan. And so

the other day I just started writing, the plan is to write and see what happens. And so I just started riding and it sort of gives you the struggle of what you're going through. And my head's thinking about this and what about this. And I come up with these three or four or five things I'll probably do today. And it's an hour without an agenda, but I'm wanting to see what comes out of it. And sometimes I'll just explore an idea and I'll go search for something and I'll Google something or I'll watch a 10-minute talk and then go to the next thing. And it's really interesting what comes out of it. So that's that white space. If I wait to do it during the day and I'm like, I'm going to have an hour of white space from 11 to 12. There's no, it does not happen. I think the power in what you do,

and I find the same thing for me early in the morning, is the solitude. Yes. It is amazing how loneliness and quiet are actually really good things. It's great. If we allow them. And then one of the thing you said, too, that I find refreshing, and I love this about you and your leadership style, because you're very authentic to it. And that is that we don't edit thoughts. There's got to be a point in our day where we allow stuff to just roll. Just go. then after it's out, you can then sift and filter into files that are just, it's all the things that I don't really want anybody reading. Right. But what would happen is I processed for so long that then these things would pop out later in the day and I'd go back and I'd reference this thing that happened in the morning.

And I'd edit out, you know, all the stuff that I don't need to hear. Tell me if you think this is right. Because this is me. I'm having my quiet time in the morning and I also do this late at night. So I get these times where I just let things roll. Yeah. It's like a, my visual is like a dryer. And so the thoughts are just kind of tumbling in there.

I have three kids. It's laundry's my world with my wife right now. So that's the metaphor. But when I don't get it out in the form of writing or let the thought continue, there's a debate that happens. And so then the whole thing stops. Or you just live in your head and it causes stress. Yes, the dryer's running all day long. I get stressed and I just need to get this thing out.

And finally I just vomit it out and just get it out. And then it's less stressful. Or it seems. so much smaller than I thought it was. And if it's a stressful thing and I write it out, you're like, oh, really, it's just like these three things I need to deal with. Or, man, I've got this huge idea I got to get out. The huge idea ends up being like two sentences. You're like, oh, there's really not that much meat there, you know? Yeah, I didn't know we were going to go here, but folks, I've got to tell you, this is the key to being creative. You can't have all this noise in your

head and then expect to create something pure. How can you have an original thought if you don't Give yourself time or quiet to have a thought. So good. Well, I think we leave it there because I think it's a really haunting thought. I think it's something that we want you to wrestle with. I can tell you this guy does this. He's challenged me to do this. I've taken a form of the Luke Lefevre strategy and certainly doing that because the last thing I want to do early mornings is right. Now, I'm thinking and I'm reading and I'm going.

I mean, I've got lots of thoughts. You got to slow down. But he's exactly right. The idea of writing allows for the best thought to come out. And then the other great thing is is to look back on it. Oh, man. To look back on it and go, look for growth, look for patterns, look for things that were emerging. It's just really a great exercise.

When you do that and you look back at the year, you're then like, oh, that's what that year was about. And then imagine five years. Oh, yeah. And then 10 years, you'll be like, oh, my gosh, that's what that decade was about. And there's a quote, I think it's Richard Roar who says it. He says, one day we'll realize what we've been doing while we've been doing. what we've been doing. And I love that. Wow. If you're journaling, you can look

back and see what was actually going on. Wow. That's incredible stuff. Luke, thanks for being on us, man. You got it. I love it. Thank you. Hope you enjoyed Luke Lefevre. Hope you enjoyed Todd Henry. Big thanks to both Todd and Luke for giving us of their time. On behalf of Will Rudder, our producer, our engineer, Jim Bab,

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