EntreLeadership - #285: Is It Time to Reinvent Yourself? with Dr. John Hillen

Episode Date: September 24, 2018

When your business is on the growth track—think more locations, more customers, more payroll—it’s easy to forget that with growth comes new challenges. And, as author Dr. John Hillen warns, a blind spot will quickly turn into a full-blown crisis if you’re not adapting your leadership along the way. Tune in as John shares common signs of trouble and, better yet, exactly what to do to avoid it altogether. Also joining us is Ramsey Solutions Senior Vice President Daniel Tardy and EntreLeadership Vice President Sarah Sloyan to talk about the importance of replacing yourself as your organization gets bigger. entreleadership.com/podcast Buy the book: What Happens Now? The EntreLeader's Guide to Delegation from EntreLeadership Personalized Growth Planner from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What really tends to cause leaders to stall is not challenges of complexity, but challenges of sophistication. And what this requires ultimately is not that the leader change their organization, but that they reinvent themselves. 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. so much for joining the conversation. Here's what's coming up. We're going to start off with John Hillen, who is the author of What Happens Now. Reinvent yourself as a leader before your

business outruns you. John understands his subject. He is a former assistant secretary of state for political military affairs. So understanding this, not just from a pure leadership standpoint, but also military structure. Then you're going to hear from Daniel Tarty and Sarah Sloy. Daniel Tarty is our senior vice president of leadership here at Ramsey Solutions and Sarah Sloyen is the vice president of Entree leadership. But first, we have a request. We would love for you to leave a review in the podcast format or the app that you're using. In reviews on Apple Podcasts specifically, write out which episode and what leadership principle you have applied. We would love to read your stories on the program.

So, again, go to reviews on Apple Podcasts. and give us a review with a specific piece of content or episode that you have used. All right, let's get right to it. Here is my conversation with John Hillen. I love that you've got seven stalls. This book is about seven stalls that every leader will face, not might face. You and your co-author say, you're going to face these stalls. And I absolutely believe it's true.

I think it's wonderful. And so we'll go through some of them. can't get through all seven. But I thought we'd start with chapter one where you make the case why leaders actually stall before you outline the stalls and then how to get through those. I think it would be fun to start with why in fact all leaders stall. Yeah, Ken, so the setting of this book is they stall because they've been successful. We're looking at a set of leaders who've achieved. And so some leadership books kind of come on the scene like, like it's an accident scene. You look around, oh, what happened here, what did they do wrong? Our book's quite

the opposite. What we found is in our work with hundreds and hundreds of executives and companies over the years, over five decades combined of work with different organizations, every single one of them we've ever worked with makes plans to grow or change. And a tiny percentage of those make plans to grow or change their leaders with the same deliberation on the same path as they make to grow or change their business. So the setting of the book is what happens when your organization grows or changes. Congratulations. You've been successful, but you don't. And so people stall because they've been successful. The circumstances have changed because they want them to. And they confuse the new challenges from the new playing field onto which they've just entered between challenges of

complexity and challenges of sophistication. That confusion causes the stalls. Yeah. All right, let's break that down a little bit more. So the changes are made within the organization, but if the leader does not make the same changes or the requisite changes to stay with it, that's where the stall begins? That's right. So when organizations grow or change, they face this new wave of challenges. Much of it welcome. That's what they wanted. More customers, more supply chain, more products, more services, more financing, more of a lot of things.

and you wanted to work yourself into more locations, more employees, bigger payroll, more vendors, all these different kind of things. Well, more of the same are problems of complexity. And it turns out that leaders have a lot of tools from management techniques to data analytics, artificial intelligence, reorganizing, restructuring, new kinds of reports, consultants, all these things to wrestle down all that new complexity. But what really tends to cause leaders to stall is not challenges of complexity, but challenges of sophistication. And that's not more things, that's different things. So not just more customers,

but totally different kinds of customers, not just more stakeholders, but completely different kinds of stakeholders. And what this requires, ultimately, is not that the leader change their organization, but that they reinvent themselves. Yes. Okay, that is absolutely beautiful setup. Now, I'm going to roll through these, John, real quick. And I don't think we'll have time to really be fair to all these. That's why I want folks to go by the book. But I'm going to roll through these folks, because you've got chapter two, leader without a story. This is stalling when you failed to provide purpose. Leader of Team Zero. Stalling when you let your team splinter. A sleep at the stakeholder wheel. Stalling when you neglect your stakeholders. Nobody gets it. Stalling when you're

failing to lead change. Master of the old universe. Stalling when you lose your authority. Hamster on a wheel. Stalling when you focus your time and energy in the wrong places. And coach of the B team stalling when you can't keep your leaders from failing. Now, I've got several that I've highlighted that I want to spend a little bit more time on, but this is very interesting when you look at all these different ways that leaders stall. Why seven? Were these the most common things that you saw? Yeah, seven turned out to be, you know, it's a number that sticks in everybody's heads. And maybe I think at one point we argued between six, seven and eight, but seven seemed like the right number. And the reason we chose these stalls is because they're going to happen to everybody,

regardless of your leadership personality, your style, your action logics, your position or station in life or organization. And we've just seen leaders hit all these things. And so what we tried to do is not only identify the seven stalls, but provide warning signs and test and ways to work yourself out of them. Exactly. And that's why I love this. So let's get right to the first one I want to call out is leader without a story. It made me cocked my head sideways because I knew the premise of the book, which is this happens when you've had success. And so I thought, well, that's interesting. How does a leader in a company that has great success find themselves, you know, a leader looks up one day and they don't have a story? They're stalling because they failed to

provide purpose. What's happening here? And as you take us into this, start with, I love the order that you've given to us. What's the warning sign? And then what actually happens if you've fail to see the warning sign. So too many leaders can, in my experience, in all different kinds of organizations, not just companies, but nonprofits, government agency, and others, if they feel like they've got the mission, vision, and values posted in the break room, that everybody understands what they're all about. You know, Simon Sinek says, start with why, and we think that's great, but we add on an additional question about purpose, which is start with, what are we about here? I once heard a leader asked that in a question saying, I'm not sure what that's what we're

about here. And I thought, wow, that captures a lot. That captures identity, mission, vision, strategy, culture, values, all these things are kind of wrapped up. And what are we about here? And what happens is organizations grow and change, the leader has to constantly reemphasize and retool and restructure the narrative that captures purpose, identity, culture, and values for the enterprise, not only because new people are generally being added, but because things have shifted. So, for instance, we tell the story in there, a young, CEO who runs a software development company who's walking through a trade show with his best customer. The customer who totally gets his firm, even though they're adding on all kinds of new

things, and they meet a potential new customer. And his current new customer says, let me tell your story. I know you guys cold. So tells the story. And to the horror of the CEO who founded this company gets it completely wrong. And so then he realized that if my best customer can't tell others what we're about. I must be doing something wrong. People aren't able to easily repeat the narrative of our purpose, our place in the marketplace, what we do different and what we're about. And so we have a lot of tools in there to help leaders do that. And the principal warning sign is when you're not around and people start making decisions, they do things that you just can't figure out. And you track them down later and say, why did you go left instead of right last night when I wasn't around? And if they don't

have a answer that's consistent with the way you've defined purpose for them. It's probably your fault as a leader. You didn't give them enough purpose so the purpose you gave them could be the boss when the boss isn't around. Yeah, I want you to speak to something we've heard Pat Lynchione say on this program. And it's basically that it takes seven times minimum for a leader to say something before it really, really sticks with people. Oh, gosh, at least. Yeah, at least. That's what he's saying. It's like it's just like a minimum there. And we're talking about intelligent men women. It takes that much time. And I'm teeing you up to talk about this because you're taking it a step further. At each level of changing the organization, you're saying the leader is constantly

got to be re-hitting that drum. And as the purpose slightly changes, you've got to keep re-hitting it. It's like you can't hit it enough, correct? You've got to, and you've got to reframe it, too. First of all, we're big on repetition, but it's got to be creative repetition. Right. Because, you know, as Patrick Lencioni, others have pointed out, transmission is not reception. Right. And we actually have in there, as a joke, a rule of 100 from an experience of mine when I had done a big acquisition and had my dozenth meeting with the new acquisition, and still couldn't get them to understand how we fit together. And I was very frustrated. And one of my people said, well, you only got 88 more times to go. So we called that the rule of 100. But being creative, having rich rather than lean communications, and ultimately trying to pack into a very simple narrative, all these pieces that capture mission, vision, values, strategy, distinctive advantage, place in the market, culture. If you can get those things wrapped into a tight, compact statement, a narrative of a story like the great storytellers have always done for their groups over the course of time,

then you can do it. And we often say to test it, go to your kitchen table, do the kitchen table test. If you can't explain to your mom or your spouse what you're enterprising about in 35 words or less, employees are not going to understand it. Yeah. Boy, that's good. That's so good. All right, moving on. We'll go two in a row here, and then we'll skip around some. But leader of Team Zero is the title of Chapter 3. Stalling when you let your team splinter. Boy, this chapter, this really addresses something that's so key. And this takes down many a great company, doesn't it? It really does. And there's been so much good work done on teams. My friend, Stan McChrystal, you know, who I served with in the government and the Army, gave us a great blur for the book, who has this magnificent book, Team of Teams. But the real take we have on it, which is building on the work of others, is looking at all-star teams and senior management teams and including, you know, when I was running a public company, I hired in these amazing, accomplished people who are all terrific executives in their own right.

And I figure, well, these people make so much money. They're so good at what they do. They have resumes that are so awe-inspiring. They'll self-manage, right? I mean, they don't need me. I don't need to babysit them. There are grownups. And what we found in our experience in our research is exactly the opposite.

All-Star teams need the leader to be even more engaged in constantly being with a team and having them act as a team instead of just a loosely coordinated working group whose results kind of blend together at the end. So the real difference there is, you know, a working group is more like a track and field team where all the events are individual, but the scores add up to a team result versus a basketball team where every movement, where every movement, of every player on the court, constantly changes the game every second. And so to get senior teams, senior executive teams, to truly think that they're working together as a team

rather than simply being responsible for other parts of the organization and coming together to coordinate their results, it turns out to be one of the hardest challenges of all. What are the warning signs that we leaders need to be looking forward to avoid the splintering? Well, one of the ones I always like, and now I'm a chairman of several companies,

and serve on the boards of a number of companies. And if I'm a comp committee chair, even if I'm not, sometimes I'll say to the team, I'll say, how much of this year's results and the bonus plan are willing to toss into a common pool so that everybody is dependent on everybody else's results? Sometimes you get some really interesting answers back. And we'll say, oh, I'm all about the team. But gosh, you know, I don't want to be penalized when Bill screws it up. You know, that's a really good warning sign.

If people are willing to put part of their reward and incentive system, into a true collective, codependent system, or if they just want to be judged on their own accord. And so that's, you know, one of six or seven warning signs we put in there about when you need to take a look at your team. Right. So what is the leader, now that we know what it looks like and how it manifests, and we see, you gave us a warning sign, how does the leader make sure that he or she is adjusting to change

to make sure that the splintering doesn't happen? Yeah, we have a great tool in there. We call the team charter. and we lay out in their assistant failures to do. We often do it with teams at off-sites. And the team charter is a document, a founding document for the team, about what they're about, why they're there, how they operate together, how they communicate,

how they solve conflict with each other. A lot of teams don't have an approved in advance method of solving conflict. So they default to snotty emails at 8 at night, which tends not to solve a lot of problems. It just whines everybody. up, right? So you predetermine how you solve conflict. You'll even predetermined and everybody will agree to the rhythm by which we analyze how we're doing as a team, reflect and go into an improvement cycle. So we have a format there for what we call the team charter. If you can get a team away at an off-site

a couple of times a year and either construct or reaffirm that, then a lot of the other stuff tends to fall into place. Once you can get senior teams to actually believe they're a team that they're all operating by the same rules. And a lot of the other issues tend to sort itself out. We do an exercise. I just did it with a company recently when we run off site. And we'll say, hey, just the very first day, let's introduce each other. Tell me what you do.

Tell me your name, what you do, and tell me who's on your team. And inevitably, as you go around the room with executives, they'll say their name and what they do. And when they say who's on their team, they talk about the people that work for them, the people that aren't in the room. And almost nobody says the people. in this room. My peers are my team. So you often just have a kind of psychological block in the minds of senior executives that their peers are their team rather than the people that just work for them.

Yes. Oh, that's good. All right, well, jump to chapter five. Nobody gets it. There's an exclamation point on the end of that one. Jumped off the page to me, stalling when you're failing to lead change. This is so difficult for so many leaders. And even when we think we might be doing it well, we have a lot of blind spots because leading change, there's really no script for it per se. You've got to be adept. You've got to be flexible. What have you learned? What do you challenge us to do here in the book? Yeah, well, this is an area of real passion for me because I've never been brought in to, I used to always sell people, I'm never here to run the company we are. I'm here to run the company we ain't. Right. Because my job was always to create. And if you think about that, so I'm here, here's a new guy. I'm here to lead you into a future that has a, yet happened. Well, that's pretty scary for people. And so change leadership, I think, is probably

one of the hardest things the leader does. But that's what a leader's paid to do. I think great managers can manage the known, and they can wrestle complexity into order in known systems and with known tools. But leaders have to create a playbook that hasn't been written yet, which you just alluded to. And so we provide a series of tools in there that really rest upon two major principles. One is creative, rich communications. And this really means being highly dialogic, listening a lot, talking in small groups or with individuals. We offer some exercises that have worked for us, including one called honest conversations. And then the other principle is constantly stating the change on the terms of your audience, not on yours. So I once led a big

change management process. And because I'm trained in strategy, I teach strategy at a business school. I'm a natural strategist. I would always express the change in strategic terms. There was nothing more inspiring in the world to me about this change. And I talk about where we'd be in the market and which kind of competition we'd crush and the promised land, which we'd reach. This all sounded terrifically exciting to me. And as I watched the body language of fear and anxiety of a lot of people, know, in my company, I realize that doesn't turn them on. I need to talk about change in terms that they appreciate, which meant I had to stop talking and start listening to really understand their value system and then try to express the change we were seeking as an organization in ways

that appeal to their value system. Okay, that is great. I want to stay right there, where you left off. Tell us about the different range of emotions or personality types that you've dealt with that are going to be consistent with the folks that are listening in here when they see that. They stand up in front of their company. They're going, I'm so excited. And this is where we're going and why we're going and how we're going to get there. And it all squares up. But they're not even hearing anything because they checked out because they're worried about what it means to them. I mean, this is real fear to them, even though the facts are, nothing to be afraid of. What did you navigate? Give us some examples of some of the fears or the anxieties, maybe different personalities,

types, you know, that these folks will see. Yeah. So I had in one company I ran a public company, I had a highly technical workforce. I'm talking about people with PhDs in crypto mathematics. Oh, wow. To this day, I still don't even know what that is. Yeah, I don't either. But I had PhDs and acoustic sciences and all these very special science disciplines that certain agencies of the U.S. government were taking advantage of, this unique scientific

knowledge. and talking to them about what I'll call general corporate ambitions. We're going to make more money. We're going to raise the stock price. We're going to beat our competition. We're going to have an admired place in the market. None of that really mattered to them. Only having sat down and listened to them.

These are introverted, brilliant scientists, by the way. So getting them to talk in and of itself, you know, you need to be a really open person, a really good listener, and be patient and take time. But you hear about their value system. What did they prize? They prized the mission of their customers and how to help that mission. They prized odd and obscure pieces of technological advantage that, you know, take a lifetime

sometimes to understand. They prized working with the latest and most interesting tools and technologies, those sorts of things. They prized stability in their job because sometimes they're in a laboratory environment for a year or two years before they get the result they need, like pharmaceutical companies. So to be disrupted in that to them was a high point of anxiousness for them. So to sit down and understand that and then to be able to talk back to them about the change in those terms and on their terms so that it wasn't important what I was saying, but it was

important what they were hearing. It takes a long time and it's a bit of an art. But the point we make in the book is it tends to be a totally different skill-sense. set for leaders that have mastered the go, go, go, roll up your sleeves, get it done, kind of way to the top. Once they get at the top, they actually find out they need to slow down, stop talking, and start listening to master the next level of leadership. Yeah, that is a wonderful example because I can see you.

You had military experience. You've worked at high levels of government. You know how to cast vision. You just do. Yeah. So that wasn't the issue. The issue is they don't even see the vision. that you see because they're worried about all the things you talked about. I mean, that's a

wonderful example. So let me ask you this. Let's stay in that specific example. You did the listening. You just listed all the things that mattered to them. You then had to tie the change that would lead to more profit and how it would make all those specific areas that mattered most to them. Hey, more profit means you get more time in the lab longer than you ever thought to solve the problem that matters most to you. That's how you tied it in, yes? That's right. A bigger company, some of them were scared of being bigger. A bigger company means we have more things to work on. So after a couple of years over in the acoustics lab, you might be able to transfer over to the space sciences lab. Because we now have that contract too. Hey, have you ever wanted to go back

out to the valley? I know you started your career there. Well, you can go out to the valley and work at Ames or the research facility of Berkeley or something like that because we're now there too. We have multiple locations. And then for some of them, that was a source of anxiety. Like, oh, no, no, no, I never want to work anywhere else. We don't have to because we're going to have this work for 40 years, I hope. And so learning to speak to that, while at the same time satisfying my obligation to shareholders and to customers is that really was the art, which is probably why, you know, we spent a long chapter on talking about managing stakeholders because if you're doing change management, right, you end up getting a lot more

stakeholders you have to manage. That's exactly right. Which, by the way, that's chapter four. You've got to go get the book to dive into that. Let's go to chapter six. I think it ties in beautifully to chapter five, with nobody gets it, failing to lead change. So chapter six is master of the old universe. I love that, by the way, a child of the 80s, a little he-man reference, potentially, I'm not sure if that's what you were doing there. But stalling when you lose your authority, now this is dicey territory here for a leader. When they think they've got positional authority, but let's be honest, they don't have any authority outside of just that positional leadership. That's right. And usually this first occurs to leaders when for the first time in the

career, they're in a big meeting in which they're in charge and they have to make the decision and they know less about the topic under discussion than everybody else in the meeting. So then they ask themselves, why would anybody follow me? Right. I no longer have the expertise. I no longer have the customer relationships. I no longer have the science. I don't have the data. I didn't have the process. I don't know any of that. Why should anybody follow me? And what we chart in there is the need for leaders to have a development plan to shift the source of their authority over time so that it rests less in their expertise and more in their decision making, less in their business skills and more in their judgment, less in their acumen about

the kind of business around, whether it's engineering or technology or finance or something else, and more in their character, the character to lead successfully. We don't talk about it in the book because the book was done before it came out, but we did write an op-ed for Market Watch a couple of weeks ago about Mark Zuckerberg, the testimony on Capitol Hill about Facebook and this, because Mark Zuckerberg said to the Senate panel that was interviewing them, we don't have a business problem. We have a philosophy problem. We need to figure out where we fit in the scheme of American society and wrestle with issues about privacy and data usage and other things. So business leaders aren't generally trained to do philosophy problems, and yet they have to do them all the time. So we

asked in the op-ed, who's the chief philosophy officer at Facebook? And it turns out every organization needs the elder statesman or stateswoman, the chief philosophy officer. They need those kind of people to make decisions. And that's you. That's you, the leader. And in order to have the kind of gravitas and the presence and the range and the wisdom to make the big decisions for your organization, you need to build a different source of authority. So you come to the point in your career where you're judged less on your competence and the

stuff on your resume and more on your character and who you are. And you can build that just like you can build any other set of skills. That's right. I love that, the character, and you said it earlier, the decision making. Right. So when you're not the smartest person in the room, which, by the way, that's the case that you want. I mean, that's what you want. You want a bunch of people around you that have to explain to you and close doors what's really going on.

But I love the example you gave there. So let me ask a follow-up question. Because I hope this will relieve our listeners, people who are leading and they realize they're quickly becoming the least knowledgeable person in the room. doesn't it free us up to just simplify our leadership, which is what you described. You've got to have good character. You're making good ethical character decisions. And you simplify your decision process. By being able to ask the right questions and being a good listener with all those smart people around you, they can simplify everything for us, the leader, so that we can make a good decision.

Isn't that a great freedom? That's the key of the book. We have a constant theme in the book of backing off and elevating. So stop working in your business and start working on your business. And if you back away and elevate, you can see more clearly. And simplicity can be deceptive. We quote the former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said, I don't care about simplicity on this side of complexity,

but I give my life to understand simplicity on the other side of complexity. And so you need to work through the processes and the systems and crunch the data. But on the other side, great leaders are able to see through all the smoke, and noise on the battlefield and know exactly where they need to be. We have some tools in the book focused on, where are your eyes? Where do you put your eyes? What does your leadership dashboard look like? The great leaders look at only a few things, but they're the decisive things,

and they lead to simplifying complex decision processes. John, this is such a practical book because you walk us through the seven stalls, the warning signs, what does it look like when you're in the middle of the stall? How do you get out of it? It really is a practical book. And as you've mentioned multiple times, there's some great exercises in each of the chapters. I want to give you a final word here. Website for the book, something that you want our listeners to take advantage of as they read this book.

Sure. So the website for the book is What Happens Now Book.com. And we'll constantly be posting new things on there. We've got a video going up about the book in the next couple of days. We'll have all the appearances, the road shows, and the workshops and the other things that are going on around the country related to the book on that. So that's what happens now book.com. That's great. So conceivably, some of the folks in the country that are listening around the country right now can get to a workshop near them. So what happens now, book.com? When will you be announcing that or are those workshops already posted? Oh, they're already started. Many of them, our organizations just reach out to us from the federal government through we did one recently. for the women's president's organization through to companies. My co-authors, Alf in California,

doing one right now for a big insurance company. So some are sponsored for organizations and you can join, but a lot of them are just organizations and companies that reach out to us and say we'd like to have workshops or presentations based upon the practical methodology and exercises in the book. He is John Hill, and the book is What Happens Now, Reinvent Yourself as a Leader before your business outruns you. John, this was a delight. I know you got a lot going on, and we appreciate you being with us. We're much better for this conversation. My pleasure. Thanks.

Now, when you think about reinventing yourself and really the last part of the subtitle of John's book, your business outrunning you. That should be something that every leader loses sleepover. And one of the ways to make sure your business doesn't outrun you is if you replace you. That's succession. Dave Ramsey has been very, very intentional to do. so in the business and two people who really embody succession and leaders replacing themselves by developing other leaders are Daniel Tarty and Sarah Sloyant. But first we're going to start off with a clip of Dave Ramsey talking to our staff meeting, which is nearly 800 people, specifically

about delegation and growth. This is huge for leaders to be able to understand this when you talk about succession and replacing yourself by developing other leaders. So we're going to start off with Dave, and then we're going to bring you Daniel and Sarah having a fun conversation here in our studio. Here's Dave Ramsey from our staff meeting stage. The way we teach leadership delegation in entree leadership and in this place as well is you don't toss people the keys to a car if they've never driven. You give them driving lessons, and then you sit beside them and you talk about driving. And you give them a manual. And as they get better, you let them drive more and more and more. But it didn't happen instantaneously. And we don't just blindly just go, oh, hey, try this.

No, I mean, it's, you build confidence in the person doing what they do. If you're leading, when you can trust someone's competence and you can trust their integrity, both of which take time. you don't get given that because of a position. You're given that because of performance. Because you act out properly. Competence and integrity. When you can trust someone's competence and integrity, you can give them more and more and more and more to do.

And you don't have to worry about it. If somebody's screwing something up and you keep giving them stuff to do, well, you're a bad leader. Well, you keep getting all in my business. You're a micro-micron. manager. No, you're just not competent yet. When you're competent, I'll get out of your business. It's not micromanaging when you're incompetent. It's called training. It's called mentoring. It's

called discipling. But it is micromanaging when someone has proven their worth, proven their ability, proven what they can do, and then you still stay in their business. That's something broken inside of you then as a leader. All right. I hope you enjoyed Dave speaking to you. Now, let's get right to Daniel Tarty, our senior vice president of business and leadership here at Ramsey, solutions. Talking with Sarah Sloyin, the very woman who he chose to replace him, and she's doing a killer job, which means they both have worked very well together and understand what they're talking about. You'll do well to listen and to learn. Here is Daniel and Sarah. Okay, we talk about this all the time, especially in a fast-growing company where we've got leaders who are always stepping

up to another level. One of the worst things that happens is it's time for you to step up and you don't have a bench of leaders underneath you. And so one of our things is you've got to always be replacing yourself. We've got to backfill ourselves as leaders, right? So let's talk to our podcast listeners about this because I think it's a pretty common thing where we feel insecure about that. And you and I talk about this all the time. Like what are the things that keep us from kind of go into the next level or training our people early enough to bring them up to the next role. Yeah. I mean, I learned this a hard way. Can we just start out with a mistake? I learned it Genuinely by mistake. Well, you know when I was moving from director of sales to VP,

I was so busy trying to protect our salespeople and make sure that they had all the time on the phone, I mean, they're commission-based, that I didn't expose them to any of that stuff that the next level up would bring to them. And so if I could go back, I would have started exposing them to some of those things in a non-fatal way. You know, getting to observe certain conversations, getting to make decisions around things while it's not, really fatal. It's still, I'm still the... Like the training wheels are still on. Yes, exactly. No one, their personal brand isn't impacted if something is kind of a decision is made incorrectly because I'm still in charge or responsible for that thing. So yes, I would say

I learned that. We talk about it. But don't you think that's where leaders, like even if you understand the training wheels concept, like we, I know, I do. I have this fear sometimes. When I'm lengthening someone's rope or I'm giving them a test, if they get it wrong and it backfires, And then one of my leaders or someone else is going, oh, you let so-and-so run with that, and now it's all screwed up. And then it's really a failure on my part. Like, how do you give yourself permission to do that? Because you're kind of taking a risk when you do that, right? Well, what's the alternative? You don't do it. You're stuck, right?

What was it? Dave said the other day at staff meeting. If you don't backfill yourself, you never get that opportunity to move up because who's going to take on those responsibilities? That's right. So I think for me, what I have gotten comfortable with is knowing that there are going to be times where they make decisions that are not the way I would have done them. And sometimes they're just wrong, that they incur certain feedback from other people or they create a problem. And I believe that we have hired great people. And I believe that they make decisions based on caring. And when I know that that's their heart behind it and that they're not being sloppy,

then I just, I know that that's a learning lesson. There are going to be times, I just tell them at front, hey, there's going to be times that you're going to run too fast. and I'm going to sit down with you later and say, hey, let's talk about how I would have done that a little differently, or what did you learn from that situation? And that's normal part of the, I prepare them that that is normal. Because they're waiting, they're also very,

they want to make you proud. And so they freak out the first time they do something wrong and they go, ah, yes, and they either don't want to tell you about it, so then they mask a problem and it gets worse, or they tell you, but it's too late, you know, it's months later. You want to encourage them that this is normal. What I tell them, though, is in this process, in the beginning, we may not be exactly in line month one, month two, but really we should be coming closer in line. So by month five, and I'm just making up a timeline, every position is different.

But by that month, we should be a lot more in lockstep. These areas where we differ in style and how we do things is probably getting a little less. And you find there's just like this day where all of a sudden you're like, why am I making this decision? This other person, they totally got it. Like they've been, if it's done right, like you just look up. And a lot of times it doesn't even take until month five. It's month three, if they're a stud and they're really stepping up to the plate. Or if they're not, it's like month seven, they still hadn't got there yet and we're

realizing they're probably not the one to backfill or step up to the plate. And you've got to ask yourself, have I slown down enough and talked about the why behind things? We've talked about this a lot. Oh, that's so huge. Because you were talking about coaching on the back end. What you're saying here is like get on the front of them and go, here's the principles. I did this the other day. Right.

A new leadership team came up under my direct leadership. And their previous leader had a very different personality style from me. I'm very high D. I like to move fast. And the other leader was a little bit more kind of in the trenches with them and more approval driven. And I told this leadership team, I said, look, here's my value. Actually, I wrote them down. And you help me kind of look at the list.

And you know me. I'm like, is this me? Is this right? And I took these guys to lunch. I said, these are my values. This is Daniel's personality style, leadership style. Here's what you need to know. about me. It's kind of like a cheat sheet

for your leader. And so I'm giving them permission to make mistakes inside of these values. I told them, one of their eyes got really big when I told them, I said, hey, anything less than $1,000 in expense, I don't want to hear about it. And they're like, are you serious? And I said, yeah, I mean, are you going to just go

blow a bunch of money? You're an adult. You make good decisions. I trust you. Up to $1,000. I just want you to make a good decision. I don't want to see it. And everyone's got their number, and everyone has a track record on how much you would trust in terms of decision rights to lengthen that rope. But on the front end, I think about how many decisions I freed up just by saying, I don't even want to know about it if it's this magnitude or smaller. And you do that too, right?

Right. Well, and it's not just a dollar amount. Talk a little more about with decision rights. That is such an important idea because it's not just about how much money someone can spend. It's also, here's your sandbox and here are the parameters. Yeah, this decision right thing has really become a big buzzword inside our leadership culture here at Ramsey because this summer we had this really great board executive offsite with Dr. Henry Cloud, who has been on this podcast, many of our listeners know. And Dave was talking about delegating more things to his board as he's continuing to get himself ready for this generational succession that we're having as a company and we're identifying what are the areas that Dave still has to speak into or carry as the

CEO. And we realize this framework that Cloud brought to us completely changes the conversation. And it's these four categories of decision rights. And if we can agree on what kinds of decisions go into each category, we can move so much faster. And the first category is, I don't even need to know about it, just make the decision. The next one is make the decision, but give me context on the back end so I'm not caught off guard or so I'm not surprised. The next one is get it to 80% ready to make the decision, but I'd still like to speak into it to add some value or maybe just make a tweak because it's big

or because it's new or because I'm just interested in that thing and I'd like to be involved. And then the fourth category is, hey, I'm the shot caller still. I don't trust the team to make the decision without me. It needs to be an approval, right? And so if we can get the things in that fourth category to move into the third and the third or the second,

the second, you're pushing decision-making to the front lines, but you're doing it through a framework where we all agree, these are the kinds of decisions we wait. These are the kinds of decisions we go. These are the kinds of decisions you don't even have to know. And it changes the whole conversation. And as a team member or a leader, having that kind of safety net and knowing with specific clarity, okay, these are the things I'm freed up to, just like that person said, oh, okay, so I'm freed up. If I have a decision, it's within $1,000, I mean, that gives them a clear sandbox. I have a team member who has started bringing his one-on-one formatted like that.

And it's awesome because I can just quickly, we go through it and we talk about that and we talk about, all right, let's fast forward several weeks. What would it take the things that are currently in your column three to move over to the column where we don't have to have as much discussion about that? So is it my confidence needs to increase? Is it your confidence needs to increase? What are the things that have to happen? Yeah, that's huge. I would say, you know, one thing I've noticed with you and I, we didn't have that written framework. And I was just thinking, as you're saying that, like, why were we able to organically get there so quickly and naturally?

And it could be that, you know, you and I are both salespeople. We're both kind of the, on the ENFP on the Myers-Briggs, your ENFJ, our empathy, our intuition, our ability to just perceive someone else's kind of pet peeves and what they want to know is relatively high because we're used to using that intuition in a sales conversation or, you know, something like that with a prospect. So as leaders, we kind of just play jazz and really quick, kind of figured out and go, all right, I kind of know where Sarah is going to want to know about things before I make a decision. Same thing, vice versa. So I think as entrepreneurs listening to this, typically also a lot of, you know, salespeople, don't assume your team necessarily knows. Right. Because you're going to have some leaders on your team like Sarah with me where I'm like, she just gets it. And then I go, why doesn't so-and-so just get it that's another person?

They may need more of this framework that you guys actually sit down and do a whiteboard exercise together. And frankly, it probably would have empowered us if we'd done it earlier. We've worked together for five years now and we can finish each other's sentences. But if that's not the case, I think getting that framework on a whiteboard and spending some time going through, what are the things we need to do together? What are the things you can do on your own and tell me about later? Because the whole goal, Sarah, is if we run faster and if I have to speak into less things, then you can do more as a leader and we operate at the speed of trust. Right. Trust is there that we're going to do those things without me.

Right. Right. And you have a trust for how they're going to make those decisions that is in parallel to how you would have made those decisions versus wondering, okay, I asked them to check into that thing. Are they actually doing it or do I need to follow up? And it starts stealing your mind space. So if the idea is we're working on backfilling ourselves, we're working on replacing ourselves, we kind of understand that principle of like, yeah, we got to get ready for growth and to grow, we've got to bring leaders up and they got to bring leaders up. And over time, a healthy growing company is just constantly doing that. But I think, we all have this insecurity in our mind of, but wait, if I replace myself, what do I do? So what do you think keeps us from really investing in the idea of replacing ourselves? Because it can feel kind of scary. Yeah. I mean, it's scary on multiple levels. It's scary that they're not going to do it like I do it or they're going to severely break something that I've worked really hard to get in a good place. Or like you said, is this going to mean that I am not valuable, that I don't have a place here that I'm not needed. And we've, we've had conversations about this. And I always love the perspective that you've brought that as you grow, your value is less about tactically what

you do. But as you grow in terms of leading people and growing in your responsibilities, it becomes more about what you know. And then what was the third layer that we were just talking about the other day? You start getting paid for what you do. Right. Then you shift to getting paid for what you know. And then the third shift is getting paid for who you can grow. Right. And that's kind of the ultimate level five leadership where you're leading people who are leading initiatives and projects and you're just mentoring them, they take care of all the tactical or they take care of the teams who take care of all the tactical. Maybe they're not even doing it at the next layer down. But if you don't do these things, then you become the lid on the business because you're

not allowing anybody else to grow in their capacity if you're not doing those things. And if you're not growing in your capacity, if you don't step up and do those things as your business grows and changes, who is it that's going to do that? I think it's tough for entrepreneurs, people wired like us when we think about getting paid for what we know because we're so, it's almost like we're addicted to doing things and the gratification that comes from checking things off your list. Oh, absolutely. And of course, we still do that.

You and I, before we came in here, both just madly going through emails and moving things forward. We're still very tactical and entrepreneurial in our organization. We don't have any leaders that just sit around and stare at a wall and come up with the idea and dream. We're very hands-on. But if all you're doing is managing the work and you're not thinking about strategy, you're not thinking about clarifying the vision, you're not thinking about core values that are going

to help shape the culture and empower people to orient around the right behaviors, who's going to do that? You know, you're the only ones that can do that as leaders. Yeah. We talk a lot about how good leaders need to have vision, results, and relationship. And so this really falls in that vision bucket for me. What my day-to-day tactical looks like now is more around the tactical of casting vision. Okay, what is my vision?

How am I going to flesh out a plan to match that vision? And that doesn't mean I am the one who's physically having to come up with that plan. That means who am I getting in a room to talk about it? Is there a pre-work that they need to do? So it's interesting that for me the definition of tactical has changed. It totally changes. And I think if we get familiar with this concept of our job is to replace ourselves, our job is to all always be going, who else could do this.

Which is scary. It feels scary. It totally does. But it's so good. You will cap out. But doesn't it change the way you look at people on your team? Absolutely. I see this potential in them.

So I'm excited to grow that in them. I genuinely, when I start reframing it for myself and I identify, okay, I feel fear about this, but what does that mean if I don't do this? And then go, okay, well, what does it mean if I do that? Well, I have people on my team who are amazing at certain things. And I am not allowing them to grow in that. I'm stifling them right now. It's kind of like when your kids do something for the first time, and you're like, it's so rewarding.

They've reached this new level, and this is so awesome. I feel like that with our team members. It's like they reach new capacities, and they're so good at it. And sometimes they're better than I am, and that's great. Yeah, my goal is to be the dumbest guy in the room. I want to lead a team of people way smarter than me and pull them all together and help maybe solve the problems, not because of what I know, but because of who I'm getting in the room and kind of rallying everybody around that. You know, Sarah, if you look at your team and you go, I'm the only

one that can do all this, probably not true. Right. And if it is true, you're not hiring people that have a trajectory towards leadership. So talk about, you know, in our hiring process, even the most entry person we're interviewing, you and I talk all the time, like, do we see them potentially leading someday, even if their title starting out isn't a leader? So how do you look for that in the hiring process, someone that's going to be a leader or going to have the potential to grow into leadership versus who can just do the job for what it is this year for the first year? Well, I first thought when you said, if you're the only one who can do it, I thought, how exhausting.

Oh, yeah. How do you ever take a vacation? Oh, yeah. How do you turn that off at night? How do you take a sick day? How do you, when we're hiring, you're exactly right. It's important to think about what are the needs of this position. But with my vision in mind, we are growing so rapidly.

And I can quickly fast forward and think about what this team is going to look like. like in five years and 10 years. We were just talking with the team at Stand Up Today. We used to be seven people almost six years ago. And now we have 50. It's crazy. And so if I don't do the work in the interviews to go, can this person, can I set the tone for them to know we find growth really important?

And part of that is asking for feedback, soliciting feedback. Part of that is listening to podcasts or books or finding an area that you're like, man, I really am interested in that and I want to stretch myself. and then looking for those opportunities to do that. So really, we talk about that in the interview process. You can kind of find the people who constantly seek feedback, take feedback well, thrive off of that, who are out there looking for growth opportunities and who are reading and who are listed to podcasts and who are looking for opportunities or things that would provide that information.

So those are the things in the interview process I'm kind of asking questions about, trying to dig into. Are they hungry? We talk a lot about hungry, humble smart. Do they have people smarts? Are they hungry for opportunity to drive value, not opportunity for them? That's a big difference for me. That's right. Say more about that because that does get confused sometimes. Yes. For me, I like to equate it to pro sports. You know, there's some athletes who they are in it for their own benefit. It's a performance. Yes, yes. But then you look at a lot of collegiate athletes and they are in it for the team. They're driving value for that team or they're driving value for those fans and you can tell what their heart is behind it. And those are the kind of people we're looking at. for. We're not in it for individual benefit and gain. They're hungry for making a difference.

They're hungry for the mission that we're on and how they can serve that. Exactly. When people interview and they haven't even read Entree leadership or they don't care about small business owners, why are we talking? Because they're kind of going, what can this company do for me? Exactly. How can it advance my career? Yeah. So you know, you were talking earlier about how exhausting it is to be the smartest person and to have to have all the answers and do all the approvals. and I couldn't help it think about how Tony Robbins talks about one of the biggest human needs is the feeling of significance. And as leaders, we're not immune to that. We all want to feel significant.

But if we're not careful, we'll get addicted to this feeling of significance of everyone has to come to me for everything. We kind of get lulled to sleep with how dangerous that can be and how we're actually using our teams that we've built to meet our own feelings of inadequacy. and as leaders, if we don't get our significance from the mission we're on and the impact we're making in the marketplace and we start to feel this false sense of connection and significance because people need me, they really don't need you. You're their boss and they have to come to you and you've created this artificial way to experience love and significance. It's not real. You write their paycheck. You can't do that to yourself. But I think we do on accident. I don't think people do that intentionally. But I would just encourage anyone like always do that gut check and go, why am I hanging on? of this? Is it because I feel like I need to be significant or do I really not feel that person

has the competence yet? That may be the case. If they don't have the competence, how can I train them up to it so that I can let it go? But if you hear the words, my job is to replace myself and that makes you cringe a little bit or it scares you, I would say there may be another layer at your soul that's going, where is your significance really coming from? Yeah, it's good. That is really good. I love it. You used to flip those questions on their head to me. When I would come in for a one-on-one, you still do this sometimes, and I would say, okay, I want to talk through this and this and this and you'd say, okay, why are you telling me this? And I would have to do this gut check. Oh, is it because he really needs to know? Is it because I need an approval? Is it because

I'm feeling insecure about this? And I want to make sure I cover my butt. Like, you know, so it's also good, I think, to kind of even flip that to your team members and force them to really think about why are we spending time talking about this? What are we driving at? Totally. Well, what a great conversation. And anyone listening, this is one of the toughest things that we do as leaders, but it's probably the most significant for the health of our organization over time. If we can replace ourselves, then we can take on more responsibility. Like you said earlier, we're giving our team the opportunity to step up and step into their highest calling. And if we do those things as leaders, then we ultimately make the biggest impact we can make

for our customers. And that's what it's all about. Fun stuff there with Daniel and Sarah. I found myself wishing I had been sitting in here with a bowl of popcorn, but that opportunity has passed. Hey, let's talk about our entree leadership tool this episode. It's the Entree Leaders Guide to Delegation. We've been talking about this. So the Guide to Delegation gives you 10 steps to let out that proverbial rope. Now, the rope is a longtime example that is a living, breathing example here at Ramsey Solutions, the idea of when you give someone more rope, picture a kid, and you're kind of helping your kid slide down that mountain and you're holding, you're the base, and you want to let them but that you're holding onto that rope really, really tight.

Well, at some point, if you keep doing that, you let more and more rope out, they get further down on their own, and eventually they can get down. That's a decent idea, not a great idea, of how the rope works, but the idea of essentially letting go and letting that leader take over. So this is a resource that's going to show you, as I said, 10 steps. It's going to show you how to do it well. Here's how you get it. Text, episode 285, that's the number.

So it's the word episode, then the number, 285. Episode 285. Text that to 33444. That's 3344. Or you can get the link in the show notes, episode 285 under podcast at entreleadership.com. Hey, InfusionSoft is bringing you the personalized growth planner this episode. Now, when you're creating a sales and marketing strategy for your small business, it can be overwhelming. But if you've got a plan, it's kind of like me putting the kids' toys together on Christmas

morning. It's a little overwhelming when I first pull all the bags out of the box. My brain is starting to lock up on me. My blood pressure is rising. And then I realize, oh, thank goodness, here are the instructions. And my wife is only 10 feet away. And so while my wife, Stacey can't be with you, InfusionSoft is taking Stacey's place. So they've got a plan for you. And they know how to do it. So this is amazing. The personalized growth planner that's going to take all of the stress away and allow you to accomplish what it is that you need to accomplish. Infusionsoft.com slash get my planner. That's infusionsoft.com slash get my planner.

Well, we had a lot of fun on today's program. Big thanks to John Hillen, Dave Ramsey, Daniel Tarty, and Sarah Sloy. We've talked about ropes a lot. I've been given a lot of rope here myself. So before I go off and do some jumping of the rope, because you've got to get that heart rate up every day, I want to say that we're done for now. Time for you to grow yourself, your team, and your profits. So on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, we thank you for listening, and we will talk with you again very soon. Hey, folks, I want to make sure that you're aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions.

Here's a sample of the Chris Hogan Show. I am so excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out. We're going to talk about your money, your life, your dreams, and your goals. You know why? Because I'm your coach. Whether we're talking about building wealth, paying off your home early, investing, paying for college, and guess what? How to become an everyday millionaire.

We're going to focus on taking your calls because you matter to me. Together, we can do this. This is the Chris Hogan Show. If you'd like to hear full episodes, just search the Chris Hogan Show in Apple Podcasts, or go to chrishogan 360.com.