EntreLeadership - #307: Know, Feel, Do: 3 Steps to Effective Communication with Craig Groeschel

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

What’s the one skill that all great leaders have in common? They’re master communicators. And on this week’s episode, we have one of the best. Craig Groeschel, founder and senior pastor of Life.Church—one of the largest churches in America—joins us to share his tips on how to sharpen your communication skills. He says it’s all about what you want people to know, how they should feel and how you’re going to lead them toward action. Staying on the subject of communication, Ken interviews two of Ramsey Solutions’ long-time leaders on the importance of staff meetings and how to do them well.   entreleadership.com/podcast Craig Groeschel's website Corporate Lifecycles by Ichak Adizes Predictable Success by Les McKeown Download: Team Communication Field Guide   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

Just because you said it doesn't mean they hurt it, doesn't mean they believe it, it doesn't mean they'll do it. We want to create the emotion that leave to the action. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Entree 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. Here's what we have coming up for you.

We highlighted this last week. Our featured guest is Craig Groschelle, pastor of the largest church in America, and I believe one of the best leaders in America. Great thinker. You're going to get some great content. Craig is going to absolutely open up your mind on some very important conversations. Now, Ramsey Solutions leaders, Suzanne Sims and Laura Johnson join us to talk about the importance of the staff meeting. And this is a fun conversation because we go back into the early days of Ramsey Solutions where many of you companies are right now. How did we get started? Why do we do what we do? How do it? How does it change as we've grown?

Going to be great stuff. Let's get right to Craig Groschelle, who's a best-selling author and, as I said, founder and senior pastor of one of the largest churches in America, Life Church. We're going to talk about communication, building a culture and growing an organization. Here is Craig Groschelle. Craig, good to have you back with us. Always fun when we get to talk with you. And we're going to cover some great content today. and I'm excited about talking about this first topic, and that's communication. We don't talk a lot about honing, sharpening our communication skills on this program. This is fun for our audience to understand from a professional communicator like a pastor who's speaking to tens upon tens of thousands of people, and your specific platform is, it's not always in front of a very large live audience,

but it is in front of a large television audience. So I was looking at the notes that the team sent, and I love this because I've talked about this before as well. I want you to talk to our audience about this idea of making sure before you communicate anything, you need to know what you want the audience to know, feel, and do. So let's just take you on any given platform that you're on. No feel do. How does that inform even an outline in an entire talk? I want to be real clear on just what you said,

before you communicate anything, before you preach a message, before you cast vision for something in your organization, before you lead a meeting, there are three things that we want to be able to answer in communication. One is what do we want the people to know? Almost everybody in communication starts there. And then a good communicator will also say, what do I want them to do? We don't want to just communicate information. We want to communicate information that moves people toward action. The missing ingredient for a lot of communicators is not just what I want them to know and do, but what do I want them to feel? Because information just doesn't necessarily move people to action. It's emotion that moves people to action. In fact, Dave Ramsey has said it so many times. He'll say things like, I want to make you angry. I want to give you passion. I want to have some fight in you because you know you're in debt,

but that doesn't change how you behave. But if I can create some sort of emotion in you, that can change how you actually behave. So in communicating a message and talking to my staff, what do I want them to know? What is the information? And we want it to be crystal clear. What do I want them to feel?

And this really, really matters. The fastest way to change someone's behavior is not to connect with their head, but to connect with their heart. There's a lot of different studies about emotions. I think I read one article that said there's like 165 different emotions. Marketers tend to teach their seven or eight, depending on which studies you read. But if they're marketing you to buy a product, they want you to feel maybe a fear of missing out. They want you to feel surprised, happy. They may want you to feel passion. What I want to do as a communicator is I want to really tap into the emotion that I want people to feel. When I'm

working with our communicators, one thing that I'll do is I'll tell them this. The hat you wear determines the emotions people feel. Let's say it again. The hat that you wear determines the emotions that you feel. For example, right now when we're talking, I could essentially put on a different pretend hat. I could be talking to you from a perspective of a dad. I could be talking to you from a perspective of a husband. I could be talking to you from a perspective of a pastor. I could be talking to you from a perspective of a business leader. I could be talking to you from a perspective of a friend.

The hat that I wear determines the emotion you feel. So if I'm giving an announcement at church, I might say as your pastor, this is why this is important. That helps you feel one's emotion. I could say, hey, as a fellow dad, I get it wrong all the time and this is why this is important to you. I might say, hey, as someone who just cares about you, here's what I'm going to tell you. And those different approaches would change the emotion that we feel. Sometimes I want people to feel a righteous anger that's going to move somebody. Sometimes I might want them to feel a fear of missing out.

Sometimes I might want them to feel the joy of being part of something bigger than themselves. But I want to go into the communication, what I want them to know, what I want them to feel, and then very, very clearly, what I want them to do. When I'm working with our pastors, a lot of times they'll give an out. we do not ever announce. What we do is we lead people toward an action. And so I can tell them about an event on a certain day or about a certain opportunity, but unless I'm really crystal clear on the do, what's the action step, I've just wasted everybody's time. That's why it's what I want them to know, feel, and do. If you can answer those three questions before a podcast, before a meeting,

before an interview, before vision casting, before a planning session, before a sermon, before leading people toward an outcome that'll drastically change how people hear it. Just because you said it doesn't mean they heard it, doesn't mean they believe it, or doesn't mean they'll do it. I'll tell our team that all the time. Just because you said it, doesn't mean they heard it, doesn't mean they believe it, or doesn't mean they'll do it. We want to create the emotion that leads to the action.

Yeah, I want to stay right there because I was listening. And I wanted to ask, you said, believe it, then do it. The order of no field do, is that intentional, Craig, for the communicator? because we need to feel something, an emotion leads to thought change, and then thought change leads to actual action? Or do I have that mixed up a little bit? I'm just curious. Does it go both ways, or is it that we've got to change the way people feel in order to change the way they think? And then if we change the way they think, we can change the way they act. Just curious what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, I think you could debate it in any different way. I think multiple

combinations would work. But when I look at what Dave does, because I'm not only, a fan of what he does. I'm also a student and of a product, meaning I've listened to him since I think I was 28 years of age. And so it seems to me what he does and what most effective communicators do and what naturally I end up doing is get some sort of information across. For example, okay, you're in debt, so you're worried, you're stressed, this is a weight on you. What would it feel like if you weren't? Are you sick and tired of it? So first we've got the acknowledgement, here's the communication of the what. Then I've got the emotional. Then I've got the emotional. motion, which is, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'm sick and tired of being broke.

Then we've got the application. Let's do a $1,000 emergency fund. Let's do the debt snowball. Let's move forward. And so I think generally speaking, and there would be exceptions, I generally think it's some sort of what, here's what I want you to know, followed immediately by the feel. And then the do becomes so much more doable. For example, if, let's say, Ken, you're dangerously overweight. You probably know that right now. So what I've got to do is I've got to create an emotion. You may not get to be there for your grandkids. That's creating an emotion.

Then you may get on the treadmill or push the bread aside because the emotion connected with the knowledge created the action. And so I think, you know, in some form or fashion, the direct communication mixed with the emotion up front matters, at least to the action. Yeah, that's really good. Great stuff there. Okay. Now, four types of communication. I think when we hear the word communication, most of us immediately go to the spoken. word. You talked about emotions a few moments ago. That would be another one. Appearance and body language.

We've got a lot of personal growth junkies here. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we don't think about what our appearance and what our body language is communicating. Yes or no? Oh, 100%. You know, studies would show that body language and appearance, that's often the first thing that communicates. And some would say that's the loudest in communication. If I say something that's meaningful and yet my arms are crossed or I've got a posture of defensiveness, I look angry, I look afraid, I look insecure, then that weakens and may even completely eradicate any confidence in the what that I said. I could say something that's not even very impressive, but I could say it from a posture of strength with boldness. You might hear it in a different way and say that's good.

So what I want to do is I want to both match the message with a physical form of communication. For me, if this doesn't, I hope it doesn't bore anybody, but it's all the way down to I'll change the color of a shirt depending on the type of a message that I want to communicate. For example, if I want to be strong and visionary, I'm probably going to wear a black, something that communicates authority. If I'm trying to help people get relationally connected in small groups, you're probably going to see me wearing a blue shirt because I want the warmth of what you see visually to match the warmth of what I'm trying to communicate verbally. And so to me, it's all the way down to thinking about the posture, the stance. If I'm doing a video the way the video is shot,

what I'm doing with body language, if I'm taking a strong, aggressive posture, or if I'm taking more of a relaxed relational posture, all that matters. And so when I'm working with our communicators, what I'll even do is I'll have them communicate like a verse of scripture with no words. So, okay, everybody say, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only got the son, whosoever believes in him, would not perish, but have eternal life. Now what I want you to do is say that with your body without any words. And so they have to preach it physically. Then let's go back and let's take the words and let's match it with our physical emotions.

Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell them to say it in a way that's urgent. Then I'm going to tell them to say the same verse in a way that's loving. Then I'm going to have them say the same verse in a way that's excited about the possibility of experiencing the grace of Jesus. And essentially what I'm doing is I'm trying to give them different muscles, different gears, different tools to communicate in a different way. I'm stretching their perception of what communication really is, and therefore they have more opportunities, more tools, more weapons

to increase their effectiveness of communication. Really good stuff there on communication. Let's talk about culture. Life Church has got a great culture. Ramsey Solutions is a great culture. It continues to be a very important item when we're out at live events, talking with our entree leadership community.

Using some of the things that you talk about, trust and clarity, very important components of a great culture. Talk about trust and clarity when they don't exist together. Well, Ramsey Solutions does have an incredible culture. In fact, anyone has ever been there behind the scenes. You can feel it. You can sense it. When you walk in, it's contagious. When we think about culture, what's interesting is that what is contagious.

sickness is contagious, but health is not contagious. Meaning, if I'm healthy and you're sick, there's no way you're going to catch my health, but I could catch your sickness. And so in culture, this is one of the top priorities that every leader is we want to work really, really hard to create a healthy culture. Why? Because culture determines what we do, how we behave, how we think. You talked about trust and clarity.

What we want to do is we want to communicate with absolute clarity. this is what matters to us. This is what's important to us. These are the boundaries. Anything outside of these boundaries, this is not, this is different than our values. This is who we are. This is what we stand for. Then what we have to do is we have to give trust a way to empower other people to actually live out the culture.

If we try to do everything ourselves, then we're not embodying a new generation of culture guards or culture spreaders. what we want to do is we want to communicate with absolute clarity, and then we want to give them the trust of you carry this out, you're on a mission, you then help correct behavior, move people in the right direction. And so clarity and trust, clarity and trust, clarity and trust. And if you can forgive the preacher in me, if anybody did this well, it was Jesus. Think about what he did. It's amazing. Is he before, in Matthew 28, before he ascended into heaven, he said, here's what I want you to do, go into all the world, preach the gospel, make disciples, baptizing, in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey every. And he said, everything. What was he? He was crystal clear. This is what I want you to do. This is where I want you to do it. What he didn't do is he didn't give them the how, okay? And that, which is amazing. So he was very clear, but he trusted them to carry it out. And now here we are some 2,000 years later, many of us Christians because of what one man did, he created a culture with all disciples or 11 in this case. And he empowered them. Well, how did he do it? He communicated with clarity and he extended trust. Yeah, because clarity, you say clarity without trust produces fear and inaction. So I think we see a lot of leaders

do this. They may be crystal clear, but they're not fostering trust. How does that lock the organization up? If I go around and say, you know, kind of here's what I expect from you and then I become controlling, I'm limiting the growth of the people around me. And honestly, the leaders will not become great unless they have freedom or if they are great or there's greatness in, they're not going to stay around. I become the lead to their progress. And not only do I become the lid to their progress, but I become the lead to the whole organization's progress. I always say it a million times is you can have control or you can have growth, but you can't have both. If I try to control everything that happens

in the organization, I'm going to inadvertently keep it small and I'm going to keep our leaders from growing. What I have to do is I have to communicate clearly. Here's what we want. Here's the outcomes we want. Here's the parameters, but I'm going to trust you to bring your gifts, your talent, your passion in the parameters of our values and create something with it. You have to have a little freedom there and you have to be okay with the outcome, even if the process is a little bit different than you would normally do the process. And that's giving some freedom for creative expression, different gift mixes, different ways of thinking. And ultimately, you can do so much more if you're really clear on the front end, here's what we

expect. Here's the outcome we need. Here's the values. But I'm extending trust. You're a capable leader. You created. I'm not just giving you tasks, but I'm giving you authority to go and create something. And that's how we create big movement and can scale something up quickly. Well, it's interesting to talk to somebody like you who has started something from absolutely nothing and then to see it grow and scale and become so big on a national level. I'm just curious what you have learned, you and your leadership over the years at Life Church about how to properly assess where the actual organization is, you know, because you can be so in the middle of it, and especially when you begin to see some critical mass or some momentum, if you will, and things are just going so fast and furious,

you're experiencing good things, we know this, you know this, that all organizations go through cycles. How have you learned to properly assess where the organization is? Well, it was later in my leadership development that I started studying organizational life cycles. And I think every listener, if you haven't studied this, a couple of great resources. Adiziz, I think is kind of the master teaching. There's another book called Predictable Success, I think by McEwen, if I'm not mistaken. Those are, and there are other books as well. But learning that in different stages of the organization, we have to bring different levels of accountability, different systems. We have to be more flexible at times, less flexible at others. And so we have to rightly discern where we are. Or if we don't,

early on, we won't succeed or survive. And then if we, at some points, if we're succeeding and we start over bureaucratizing, creating too complicated a system, too many rules and such, then we'll actually stifle the growth. So to answer your question, the first thing we have to do is we do have to learn to accurately assess where we are in the organization. And many times we're working so hard in it, we never step back to look at it. And that's something that I have to do. It really helps me to get away from the office with key high-level thinkers and then start to look at it. We'll look at everything from numbers and study everything. The quality of the decisions that you make is often determined by the quality of the data that you have. So we want to

have great data. But then there are other times, too, that we don't just want to look at data. We want to look at some of the intangibles. We want to look at kind of morassum. We want to look at kind of morale. We want to look at levels of passion. We want to try to assess, do we have real buy-in from people? Is there resentment? Or are we losing that kind of first-generation type passion? Or we becoming more corporate in our thinking? And so all those things matter. It's really hard to have a concise conversation about it because this isn't a science. Sometimes it's very data-driven. Other times it's more intuitive in what you recognize. The key is just kind of to learn objectively where we are As leaders, sometimes I always say, or jokingly, nobody lies like leaders.

We like to lie to ourselves. We like to deceive ourselves and try to think everything is good when it's not. I just did a 360 review where I had a bunch of team members anonymously review me. And that was helpful because I learned certain downsides about my leadership that I just wasn't aware of. I kind of lived in a bubble of like, yes, I'm the leadership teacher. And so I'm obviously good, right? No, actually, I've got some places to grow in. And so getting that objective feedback helps and then stepping back and looking at the organization and asking what's slowing the growth, what's impeding the growth, where do we lack systems, where do we need systems?

What are the next steps that we need in order to move this forward? And those are the kind of questions we have to ask as we go. Okay, I love that, but I think I'm asking this question on behalf of a lot of people. And it may just be me because I think feedback's amazing. how do you handle it when you get some feedback on something that you maybe previously and even after the feedback you go okay i appreciate that feedback but i just know or maybe the word is believe that i'm right or maybe it's i believe that i need to say it this way even though the feedback didn't necessarily validate that i hope i'm asking that question right yes so i would say it's dependent on the

type of the context of the feedback. For example, I've been publicly communicating now for well over two decades. And so I feel like based on my time in and my experience on, I've got certain instincts that have been developed. So if everyone says, I really don't like that, but I just know, based on experience, that they're very likely wrong and I'm very likely right, I'm not going to listen to it. On the other hand, if I've got everybody in the office saying you're bullheaded, you're inflexible, you're demanding, and you don't listen. Well, that's a different context, meaning that's an area I know I'm a little more vulnerable in, and that's not the strongest suit of my leadership. So for me to push back there would be a real mistake. Context matters.

There are certain areas where I probably reserve the right to say, I've actually heard you, I've thought about it, and I do disagree. There are other areas that it would be completely unwise and foolish of me to ever say, I heard you, I thought about and I disagree, because those are not areas that I have the experience or the giftedness in as much. Okay, good. Because for the leader, you know, getting feedback from your team and your staff, you know, I'm thinking of a general, you know, in a military setting. They've always got counsel, but at the end of the day, somebody's got to make the call.

And is trusting that gut? There are those times where, you know, as a leader, you may have eight people in the room that disagree and you just deep down sense and gut, this is, this is the right thing. I can feel it. I hope I'm right, but we're going to go this way. And if you're doing that often, meaning, you know, once a week, you're doing that. You probably have either the wrong team or you're narcissistic, arrogant, and need to be reined in. But if you're not doing that every few years somewhere, sometime, then you're probably not doing your job as your leader. So I think, you know, frequency matters. Wow. That's a great perspective. I love that. That is really good. So I didn't plan

to ask you this, but it feels like this is where this is going. When the leader gets counsel from their team of leaders, and it's one of those once every few years, and you just say, all right, this is what I think we've got to do. I don't know if I'm right, but I believe we've got to go this direction. And that is leadership. And it doesn't work out the way you saw it. And they're a little bit of good, but maybe it just was on you. You made the call. Other people didn't agree, but they followed you. How does a leader handle that? I think what you do on the front end of that, and let's make sure our listeners understand it, is, you know, I've got seven people around me that are trusted leaders. All seven of them disagree or have raised their reasons why they're concerned. And I say,

no, I believe we're going to go this way and we go. And we're looking for a 90% return and we get a 7% return. It's not what we hope for. And it really was a venture tried and failed. I think that my posture on the front end of that will determine how we recover on the back end. If I've created a, I told you so culture, then I'm probably going to pay on the backside. If instead what we've done is we've created a culture where we're going to say, you know what, we're going to make some mistakes. And when we do, we're going to be making mistakes swinging and not taking a pitch. If we make mistakes, it's going to be that we made an aggressive mistake, not a passive one. We're not going to get it right all the time. And so if we create a culture that allows for failure,

and embrace this failure as a very big and important part of success, then we can recover from that if, on the backside, I say, you know what, I was wrong. I thought it was right. We tried, and I'm really, really sorry. And then I say, thank you for standing with me. And publicly, I'm going to own this, and then we're going to move forward. So publicly, I'm going to own the failure.

Publicly, I'm going to share in the successes. I'm never going to own the successes. I told you so, and so that's why we're here. Instead, I'm going to say, our team thought about this. We looked at it. We analyzed it, and our whole team decided it was a risk, but yes, it was worth it. And so I want to applaud our team for their courage to do this new venture. So we publicly affirm everyone in success.

We privately own it when we failed. And then if we do those things on the front end, you know, we've built a culture that embraces failure as a part of success. We own it when we mess up. We apologize and we say, you know, let's move forward and pick up. team will follow us if we do that. If any of those pieces are missing, you might get grace one time, but you're probably not going to get grace the second time. How we lead around those failures really determine the capacity for our team to recover from it and continue to believe in our

leadership. Well, I think we've got a master's class, folks, and some great leadership practical philosophy and methodology here. Craig Groschelle, good friend of Ramsey Solutions and Dave Ramsey and, of course, the Entree Leadership Tribe. Craig, this is always good to hang out with you and I know our audience appreciates it man thank you for being with us thank you I appreciate what you guys do like I said I'm a fan I'm a student and I'm a product of it and so I'm eternally grateful for you guys I love your friendship thanks to Craig Groschelle he's a great friend of our organization hey our team has a great tool for you speaking of communication that you heard Craig Grosheel talk a lot about we've got a communication field guide for your

team how to keep your team engaged and productive Dave Ramsey says a lot that communication is the grease in the gears. So this guide is going to include tools that we use every day at Ramsey Solutions. And it also will help you handle difficult conversations and how to make the most of a meeting. So this is jam-packed with a lot of practical goodness. You've got to communicate well if you're going to lead. So get the guide. Text the word communication to 33444.

That's 33-444. text the word communication to 33444 or you can click the link in this episode's show notes. All right. When we talk about communication, the company-wide staff meeting is the most important communication you're ever going to have. Just period. It's where everybody's together. You're talking about the good, the bad, the future, the past, the present, you name it.

We talk about it every Monday. So we brought in two of our leaders, Suzanne Sims and Laura Johnson, both been with the company for a long time. Suzanne Sims is a board member and the senior executive vice president of our business to consumer division and Laura Johnson is the senior director of Ramsey Solutions media production. They've seen the company grow and as a result they've seen the staff meeting change and grow. You did some really practical stuff and this is also really fun as you look back into the past of Ramsey Solutions. Here is my conversation with Laura and Suzanne. Well this is fun. We've got Suzanne Sims and Laura Johnson in here with.

us and this is fun. Suzanne, you've been on Entree leadership before. To my knowledge, Laura, this is your debut on the Entree Leadership Program. Is this correct? Do I have good production notes? This is my first time on the Entree. That is so long overdue. I know. And this is special for me because me and you stand on the shoulders of this one. Well, I do actually because for those of you who are Entree tribe members only, there's not a lot of you, but you've heard of this thing called The Day Ramsey Show and we have a video channel. which is live programming of Dave in the studio. Then when we go to radio break and we keep filming and live programming on YouTube and of course Dave Ramsey.com, now Facebook.

So when I started almost five years ago, one of my main parts of my KRA, we talk about that on this program, was host of the video channel. And the person that I reported to was none other than Laura Johnson. And I had an affectionate nickname for her. Yes, you did. Can I share that on the printer? You can share that. I'm open with that. Laura Mama.

She would. Just because she was an authority figure when I would have to, I would say, hey, what do you think about this? We would talk during the show. We all basically report to her. It's not formal, but that's understood. I prefer it that way. You know, that's probably the better. Instead of Ms.

Hey, speaking of when I first started almost 18 years ago, I reported to her. That is true. She was my tent assistant. Shut up. I didn't know that. She worked three days a week. I knew that you were here before her. Yeah, that's how she started.

Okay, so this is great. Okay. So you, because this is actually a great context for what we're about ready to talk about because of y'all's history. What was your position when she reported to you? I was the administrative assistant to Bill Hampton, who was the vice president of radio. Yeah, you weren't screening. I was screening.

You were. Screening calls for day. Yes. I was also the associate producer to a degree. And what was your role? I came in two days a week as a temp and just did whatever she didn't have time to do. Right. Paperwork.

Yes. Phone calls. And how it evolved. I didn't have time. to call all of our affiliates. And so I handed Suzanne a list of affiliates to call. She called them. And she's like, I love these people. They're great. And I was like, wow. Hey, this is a great segue to what we're talking about because the point of this story, there's a lot of points. Yes. At that point, we had about 35 team members and Dave was not as near as big a deal as he

is today. But there was this sense that there was something bigger going on. This thing was going places and if you got in, like, you were just happy to be there. Right. Happy to be here. And you did whatever they asked you to do and nobody complained. We were all just pinching ourselves that we had an opportunity to be a part of this cool thing that was getting started. And if you're a business owner with a small business, like, one of the things I was going to point out was like, what separates you? If you're a heating and air company, why do I want to work for you versus the heating and air company down the street? Where are you headed. What's that exciting thing that people want to be a part of because they're a part of your

business, which is the way Laura and I felt, you know, 18 years ago? Well, so this is great. Because 18 years ago, Dave was doing what we're still doing and what we're here to talk about today. And it's a huge part of leadership success. It gets overlooked. It's a word that everybody knows. A few leaders know how to do well. And Dave and our leadership team does it very well. And it's communication. And we're going to talk about communication in the context of company-wide meetings. 18 years ago, 35 people. The room's bigger. There's more people in the room, a lot more to talk about, but it's largely, I'm guessing, the same concept. Yes. Very much so. Dave would lead it. Take us back 18 years ago to what a staff meeting look like. When I started, there was 25 people.

I started 20 years ago this year. And I remember walking in and 25 people, we were in one small room, and everybody's chair was up against the wall, and each person talked about what they were working on. And it was amazing to see the synergy and the different people jumping in and going, oh, that's a problem for you? I have a solution. And it was just this.

Dave used to say so the right hand would always know what the left hand was doing. And this is cool. Did you put the phones on hold back then, too? Oh, yes. Like right now, if you come to our office next Monday, at 8.30 and you walk in the lobby, it's like the rapture has happened.

I mean, we're all over in the conference center. We know it hasn't happened because we're still. I don't know. Right. It always worries me a little bit. You know what I mean? I start looking for people that I know should be here. So let's talk about the history there of how it developed into what it is today

because then it was everybody going around. And of course it's about communication. But now with a company of where are we at right now? Do you have an idea? Right at 800. Right at 800 people. Which is crazy. Closing in on what, $200 million,

it'll be north of $200 million in revenue. This year. Every Monday we do this. And when Dave's out, we have a board member, like a Suzanne, who is presiding over it, and then we have team members

come up and communicate. Paint a picture for what it is today. Back from where we were 300 people. Every leader could get up and maybe talk about their area. We can't do that today. It would take us three to four hours. So now the process is you put in a staff meeting request

and someone like myself will look over all the request and kind of have a bird's eye view of what's coming down the pike, what are we doing, and just make it make sense and make it flow well. You don't want to have too much of one department talking in one staff meeting, so you make sure it flows well. And you also want to be cognizant of things that are happening in the company.

You know, we're about to celebrate Hogan's book, coming back off of book tour, and making sure we have a time slot for that. Yeah, we just want to make sure that all the departments are represented on a basis and a schedule. So that's what we, what's we do? We've talked about, we've kind of talked to our leaders about bringing their quote, wow moments to these meetings. Like, be thinking in terms of what would not only be the good for the company to know and have an awareness around back to the early days,

the right hand knows what the left hand is doing for synergy and collaboration. But what would wow everyone? Because we want these meetings to be energetic and fun. We don't want them to be boring. Back to what I said originally. like what's the why behind why people come to work for you? That's that drum you beat in these staff meetings because there's got to be a reason to even gather and have one to begin with, not just to dispense information. You know, like if you're not doing these right now, you don't have staff meetings, you don't have this regular communication and you go back to your team and say, hey, from now on, we're going to do this.

Why? You've got to be able to tell them why and talk about what separates you. Dave does this a lot in our staff meetings. He beats this drum and it's okay to be really repetitive. And he talks about why we do what we do. What's our motivation? What's the thing that's bigger than all of us that drives us to come to work every day and really, you know, be excited about it? It's important to point out that many times, folks, Dave will end the staff meeting after we've gone through all the relevant information that Laura talked about, the types of communication that Suzanne just mentioned. He'll close with teaching on one of our core values.

And we need to understand this. it's good for the person like me who's been here almost five years, the person who's been here 18 to 20. And then we've got to remember we've got new people starting almost every Monday. We might have eight to 10 people starting on a Monday. It might be four to five. And then you get people that are sitting out there that have been there six months and a year and they've not heard this stuff. That's important as well. Yeah, that is why. And that's why Dave talking about the core values, it might be repetitive to me. But you have to keep repeating those things for the new people. And Pat Lachian, the other day on your podcast,

said, great leaders have great meetings and they're always repeating themselves. And I think that's what staff meeting is a good vehicle. Something important to point out, one of Laura's jobs is not only does she keep up with the agenda for staff meeting and oversee all of that, but she has an idea going into it. Like if you've got a large company like we do with 800 people, you've got to keep up with how long each announcement's going to take, like we have an hour set aside. Are we going to fill 30 minutes of that or a whole hour? If there's a lot of time left over, she's the one that goes to Dave and says, hey, you should do a core value talk. And by the way, it's probably time for you to do this one. And sometimes he'll push back and be like, no, I don't want to do

that one. And sometimes he'll be like, okay, I'll do that one. Now, we're going to get into what we do from the quality, the planning, how we expectations. But before we do that, I think it's important for a lot of our audience. If you've got a company of 20 people or 50 people, there was a point where the quality level it went up. And there was a reason for that. So I think it would be great before we move into what we do now. I think it would be great because you've been here through all this. At what point does a company go, all right, now we need to probably start putting in a little bit tighter standards.

You know, how is how much time you're going to be up here? We're going to get into some of this. But when was that moment for Ramsey Solutions where we got a guy who's full time almost, you know, not full time, but almost full time helping with staff meeting because it's such an important part of what we do. Because it's a full production at this level we are now. We have slides,

music, it's crazy. But Suzanne do you know when? I'm going to tell you when I think it was. Now listen, we've always had really high standards when you are presenting yourself internally or externally, we've got very high standards here. And if you listen to Dave or listen to this podcast, that

does not surprise you. But when we used to do staff meetings and you would literally just stand up where you were sitting and give your update. Well, as we grew and grew, we started putting microphones in the aisleways, and you would just stand up and go to the closest microphone. Well, then we realized we're too big for that. People can't see you. So we put the microphones on the stage, and you had to get up on the stage in front of maybe 400 people at the time and give your update. And all of a sudden, everybody freaked out. Exactly. And that took, right. That's what took everything to the next level, because now you're not just presenting on the floor of the conference center,

You are on stage with a microphone with screens behind you, with your slides. Oh, unless I forget, Dave Ramsey most times six or seven feet away from you. Exactly. And that's intimidating. Staring you down. Right. Staring a hole through your ear. Making notes.

He writes notes the whole time. Or he'll do it. The best thing, ask you a question. You better know the answer to in front of everybody. Or interrupt you. What you don't want is an email at the end of staff meeting. Please come to my office. Yeah.

So it's another level. Okay. So, now let's talk about where right now. So we're at 800 people. I mean, it's a full hour. There are Sundays as the spirit leads, right? Right. Where day will take us a little longer.

We do some special things with our fans of our fans. Appreciate you thing. We'll bring somebody in. But generally, we're talking about an hour. We talked about how the planning process that people submit their thing and you're the judge. You're making sure, hey, we haven't heard from these folks in a while. Obviously, certain updates are maybe more important others.

I'm the great Oz behind the curtain. That is exactly right. That's right. You are just moving all the strings. You're the puppeteer. So what do we require, the quality? So we kind of, Suzanne led us to this beautifully. We know you've got to be up on stage you front of 800 people.

You've got to be coherent. We get that. But beyond coherent, what do we require for a staff announcement? It has to be, of course, relevant to what we're doing. So hopefully it... You don't even make it on the agenda. Right. They don't hear back from you if it's not relevant.

If it's not relevant. I'm not on time. But we also make sure that the slides are good quality if they have them. I'll look at who's presenting. Have they presented before? Do they know what they're doing? Has their leader talked to them? You know, those kind of things. So you've done that before? You've shot an email going, hey, I see so-and-so is going to do this. Have you prepared them? Right. Are they prepared? They know. Right. And because we don't want them to create a problem. Yeah.

And then their personal brand is, you know, that. It'll kill you. Yes. And so we don't want that. And so set people up for success. Other things we look at are. Do you give them a time limit? I've always wondered this as somebody who's sitting in the chairs. Do you give them a range of? at least. They usually give us a range of what they think of. Yeah. And usually I look and go, you don't need 20 minutes. You really just need 10. She's pretty bossy. And, and we have an hour, and we got Dave up there who's very time conscious. Right. He wants us out of here. Sometimes. Sometimes. Well, let's say this. Davis, here's a big secret for our audience. I love giving people, like it's, Dave is time conscious when he's not talking. When it serves his needs. Right. If it's 920 and you'll let you all say that's a way, wait for this comes out. He would

totally agree with this. But when he's feeling it, his name's on the building, he gets to change the time anytime he wants to. At the end of the day, that's how it works. All right. So what happens, what happens if somebody gets up and doesn't do such a good job? And they went through all of the prerequisites with you. We got them prepared. Everything looked good. They get up there and they don't do a good job. Has this happened and what do you do? Their name becomes a verb. Yes. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We try not to make their name a verb, but it can happen. But what I would do is probably reach back got to that leader and say, hey, they kind of struggle. It was obvious. Maybe we need to get them. If we know that person is going to be doing a lot of these, we probably need to put them in front

of some smaller groups, get them some reps under their belt and let them feel comfortable. Get them some tips and techniques. Right. Right. I would like to volunteer my services to help people with three points. You are absolutely the first person I would call. It's just here's three points. Take your overall message. Give me three points. Right. But it's really huge though because I want to say this. T you up talking about this. Then we're going to switch gears and go to something I saw you do. I think the first time you did it and I thought it was great and I think we need to talk about because we're talking a lot about structure. So that's a tease. You know where I'm going with that. But why do we talk about and celebrate the things we do and even the difficult things? Because

there are times where Dave will say, hey, we got to share some news that's not so fun. And he still does. Now he doesn't tell every detail. He tells us what that group needs to know. I'm teeing you all up to talk about that because I have found that to be just as effective as anything we're celebrating. I think Dave does that because he wants to be transparent. He wants all of us to be unified and you're unified in the good times and in the bad times. And we all have to deal with it. And we assume that if you're a grown up, we can talk to you like you're a grown up and not like you're in elementary school. Exactly. And we're not going to put you in the dark and just feed you a bunch of crap. What's the response of our team when Dave does

it? Oh, it's so refreshing. It is refreshing. Listen, if you don't tell people what's going on, they imagine the worst. Their imaginations go places they shouldn't. If you just tell them what's going on, treat them like adults. If they choose to not act like an adult, then you deal with that. But that should be the outliers. That shouldn't be the norm.

All right. So I think I was in staff meeting the first time you did this because I remember it very well. And you were leading staff meeting and you said, you know what? Here's what we're going to do. We have this agenda. everybody knows about the agenda we've run like a well-oiled machine but you know what i'm going to open it up right now and it's pop-up time if you're a leader you got something you want to share and excited about please be brief you kind of gave a quick instructional but let's just do this we're

going to open up the next 20 minutes and we're just going to communicate we're going to celebrate some goodness and it was very spontaneous one brave soul kind of popped up and then boom boom boom, and then you cut it off, and it was really cool. Why did you do that that day? We went back to our roots is what we did, because what happened was we got to 800 team members, really high expectations on bringing good slides, presenting well. People got to the point that they, A, were afraid, or B, didn't have time to put a presentation together, right? But they still had exciting stuff going on in their area. And so my goal was, let's create a scenario where there's much lower expectations. Like if we're doing quote pop up time, then everybody knows you haven't

prepared in advance. You're going to get in front of the microphone for two minutes or less, a quick update. Sometimes it's a shout out to someone that did a good job on something. Sometimes it's a quick tidbit about someone that just got promoted. And sometimes it's like, hey, we beat our revenue goal last month. We did a million dollars for the first time ever as a business unit. It's things like that. And it brought so much energy. People were going on for days about how much energy it brought because we had kind of gotten into this boring rhythm. I mean, granted, our staff meetings are awesome. And we have such stellar presenters and leaders here. And Dave does a great job. But, you know, we've kind of gotten in a little bit of a rut

where it's like, okay, the next agenda item is this. And so doing these pop-ups when we have time has brought energy into it. Well, it's done one other thing that I want to point out to our audience. And that is it's added more opportunity for recognition. Just about every one of those up had some form of at a boy, at a girl. And we know from studies leaders that beyond compensation and beyond rewards. So we know what compensation is, bonuses, bumps and pay, and then rewards would be the vacation or time off. Recognition is more valuable to people than those other two things.

And you can't forget that. And those moments of recognition in front of everybody, that's a big deal. It's one thing to be recognized. in a team meeting of 20. It's another thing to be called out, stand up, and 800 people clap for you. Even if that makes you want to throw up, it feels pretty darn good until the nausea subsides. So, you know, that's a great thing. Hey, by the way, that's another thing that important to point out, like, there's a lot of applause in our staff meetings. Tons. There is. We applaud for people when they come up to the mic. Come up to stage, yeah. Sometimes. At first,

when that started happening, I was like, what are we doing? I know a little over the top. It feels all high school. But you know what? To your point, like, it feels good for a lot of people. It makes people feel good and it brings energy to the rent. It absolutely does. We always clap after an update is done. And I'll be honest, it's not always clapable, but we do it. And I think that's a good thing. It is. You know what I mean? Like, it's just a nice respect sign. If people are excited to work for you, which they should be, that's what your staff meetings should be like. Whether you have five, I don't know that you would need to applaud with five people, but if you have five people or if you have 500 people. Like, there should be that same level of energy that's applicable to

your organization because people are excited to be there. Yeah. We've talked about why we do it. We've talked about how we do it. Last question for both of you, you can weigh in here. For leaders that are listening, they're going, I'm not doing this consistently. So a regular staff meeting is not a consistent part of our cultural behavior. As leaders yourselves, advice, how should they reset and say, we're doing this?

What should the communication be? maybe a couple of things that you think, this would be a good way to start. I've done it. I'm going to tell you what I would do, and I have a funny story, too, about when I first started here, because I was in my 20s and really dumb and immature. But if I'm a business owner or a leader of an organization, and I want to kick this off, I'm going to gather people together, the whole company, I'm going to say, look, we've not been doing this.

I want to start doing this, and I want to tell you why I want to start doing this. And I would cast vision for it. Like, for instance, one of the reasons I started this company, was because I wanted to make an impact because of X, Y, Z. Maybe you've never shared that before. If you have, share it again and say, you know what? Because of that, that's what drives me. That's what gets me out of bed every morning, brings me here to lead you guys.

So we're going to gather every week at this time, and I'm going to remind you guys of that, and I'm going to make sure you're a part of that Y with me. And then we're going to make sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing so that we collaborate better. And this is what we're going to do and just walk them through it. And then the next time you meet, just get an agenda going and get in the rhythm. When I first started, we were doing it the way Laura described where we all sat in this small room and everyone gave an update. And I was really bored.

I'm very ADD. And I went back to my, Steve and me, I worked in an office like right next to Dave's office. And I was complaining to my coworker. And Dave heard me and came barreling down the hall and grabbed me. And he was like, I want to tell you why we do staff meetings. And he gave me the what for. But he was basically saying most things. things to me. Like, Suzanne, this is important. The right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing.

And if we don't do this, we don't have good communication and everything else will break down, you know, because communication is that important. And I was like, yes, sir, yes, sir. I never complain again, where he could hear me anyway. And that's a good point. You're going to have some people that are going to be like, why are we doing this? And they're going to complain. They're going to roll their eyes while you're at they're talking to them, do it anyway. And then address that after the fact, you know, the way Dave did with me, like, obviously that worked out okay for me. But he was not going to let that slide because he knew how important that time was for our company.

Good stuff. Laura Johnson, Suzanne Sims, two great ladies, two leaders here at Ramsey Solutions, giving you some very valuable information on the why and the how. And this is good stuff. Really fun. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Big thanks to Suzanne and Laura for hanging out with us.

Hey, if you apply what you learned just in that conversation, this episode is crazy valuable. On behalf of our entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey, folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Ken Coleman Show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you.

Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what it is you were born to do, and then will help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter, and you have what it's true. takes. Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman Show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman in iTunes or go to Ken Coleman Show.com.