EntreLeadership - #364: Why You Should Bet on Talent with Dee Ann Turner

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

When it comes to running a business, things like strategy, marketing and technology all play a big part in your success. But Dee Ann Turner, who spent 33 years recruiting and training employees at Chick-fil-A, says there’s one thing that trumps them all: talent. Unfortunately, finding good people can be challenging, especially now when unemployment is at an all-time low and the competition is fierce for top talent. Tune in as Dee Ann explains why people matter most, how to attract A-players to your organization, and the three things that should be a part of your hiring process.   entreleadership.com/podcast Bet on Talent by Dee Ann Turner Dee Ann Turner's website Intentional Interview Checklist Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   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

As a business owner, you get paid for the decisions you make. Every day, you are forced to make decisions about your organization's people, the finances, the vision, strategy, culture, and direction. And inherent in every single one of these decisions that you have to make is a question. What are you going to bet on? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host Alex Judd, and our guest today is Deanne Turner. She spent 33 years as a lot of the vice president of talent for a company that has become globally recognized for having one heck of a chicken sandwich and an even better organizational culture. It's Chick-fil-A. And in this conversation and her new book, Deanne argues that of all the variables and resources that you could bet on as a business owner,

there's absolutely one thing that you should bet on. Well, when you think about a business owner, there's a lot of things they can bet on, and many do. They bet on strategy. They bet on market. They bet on the newest technology. And from my experience and what I learned when I was working at Chick-fil-A, of all the things you could choose, I'd choose to bet on talent because it's the talent that actually drives all of those other things. You're going to have the best strategy, the best technology, the best marketing plans when you've selected the best talent for your organization.

Now, when I was selecting franchisees for Chick-fil-A, Truit used to tell me, people decisions are the most important decisions a leader makes. And for our business, out of all those, the most important decision was who we gave the keys to the restaurant to. And so, and that's true of any business. Whatever your key leader is, that's the most important people decision you make because it's going to affect every other people decision. So when you have a great customer experience at any business, I think that you're able to turn around and look at the leader and you know that's why. One of the things we challenge business owners with all the time is that you are not looking for B players that can't find a job.

you're looking for A players that are currently on a B team and want to work for an A team. What would your advice be to finding and then kind of really attracting those A players that want to be a part of an A team? Sure. Well, that's definitely the way to go about it. And finding those people are often going to come from those A players that you have now. You want them to bring other A players into the organization. And you are, always recruiting. Even when you don't have jobs available, you're building relationships. You're building a pool of talent. One of the best franchisees I ever worked with, he was just so great at that. He built relationships everywhere he went. He kept business cards. He kept names. He put contacts in. He followed people on Instagram, whatever it took. And then when he had an availability, he had a whole pool of

people to go to. And he'd already built the relationship. And so they were much more apt to want to work for those are all important steps to be taking to prepare yourself for when there's a time like this that there's a real war for talent. Gosh, that's so good. It's kind of like it's winter right now, but spring is coming. And when spring comes, you better be ready. What are some other things people can do intentionally to make sure that they are prepared whenever there are people looking for a great job or whenever there are people looking for

employment? Well, I think having your employment brand out there is so important. So have a presence on social media. Have a great Instagram account that shows what it's like to work in your organization. And again, not just people having fun in throwing pizza parties or whatever, or Chick-fil-A party, sorry. That's right. That's right. I mean, you want to show them having fun, but, you know, they want to do meaningful work.

So talk about the results your organization is achieving. Talk about the impact your organization is having in the community. where the organization serves and highlight those in those social media campaigns. But that's really important at getting your presence known and use all of those channels to do that. And invest in the communication of an employment brand that describes who you really are. Gosh, that's so good. We see small business owners all the time that invest a lot of money in creating a great culture in their organization. And they celebrate whenever they hit big goals.

Their team is serving in the community. and no one knows about it. And it's like, man, if you would just publicize, it's exactly what you're saying. If you would just publicize this a little bit, again, people would be attracted to you. And again, I've seen examples of that at Chick-fil-A stores around the country

where the operator was intentional about doing that. And it seems like that's one of the reasons why parents want their kids to work for Chick-fil-A as opposed to any other restaurant on the street. Well, another thing that some of these best franchisees that you talk about is they do let people know. And they, you know, they think of it as it's a sales opportunity.

Recruiting is just about selling jobs versus selling a product. And so they take that approach and they invest in it in the same way that I have to sell this opportunity the same way I focus on selling my service or product. So if you look at it as selling an opportunity, how does that affect how you write a job ad or something that you're putting on LinkedIn or indeed? how does that perspective shift the way you write the initial ad? Well, I think you begin, as Stephen Covey says, with the end in mind. So if you're thinking about the experience, the amazing customer experience you want a customer to have,

you want to win the hearts of customers, then you have to write a job ad or a LinkedIn profile that is more apt these days, but that really describes the person you want that's going to achieve that. So, you know, you're not talking about, hey, I want somebody to come in and make chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. I want somebody to come in and exceed the expectations of customers. That's a lot more challenging. That sounds a lot more exciting. And my job and my role one day may be to make the best chicken sandwich ever, or it may be to stand behind the counter and smile, or to take orders to the tables or to clean up in the dining room. But all of those things come together to exceed the customer's expectations, whatever my role is.

And so if you're creating an employment brand that says this is what it is versus just listing tasks that you'll do every day, you have a lot better chance of attracting a different kind of candidate. And maybe even weeding out the people that don't belong before they ever even schedule an interview, which is also a positive. I like to tell a funny story. Go for it. It's about my own son, and I don't think he'll care.

but you're looking for different people to do different things. And I talk about this story in bed on talent, but I don't think that I say that it's my son, that there's an operator in Athens, Georgia, and he is really smart about the way he places talent in his organization. And so one of the toughest jobs in a Chick-fil-A restaurant is actually filet the chicken. You might not know this, but the chicken arrives, and it's hand-bredded in the restaurant. We call it fileting when we open it up and we, For lack of better term, smash it down, press it out. Because the flatter it gets, the better it cooks evenly, the faster it cooks, and it gets more bun coverage.

Now you know more than you ever wanted to know about cooking a chicken sandwich. That's a thing y'all are focused on. Very good. Boy, that's a KPI if I ever did hear one. That's pretty good. So my son was a football player in college, and this operator hired him or selected him. And his job, his whole shift would be to prepare that chicken. And he would hire athletes to come in there and do this job because they would start to compete with each other.

And he was a very high-volume operator. He's got a lot of chicken going out. And my son said, I asked him, I said, why do you like that job? He said, well, I get to use my competitive nature. I get to use my muscles. And he said, I really don't want to stand at the counter all day and say, my pleasure. And I said, well, if you don't want to stand at the counter and say, my pleasure, then that's probably the right job for you. That's right.

And he had other employees that that's exactly. what they were good at doing was to greet the guest and to, you know, give them that my pleasure service, but wouldn't want to stay in the back of the house all day doing that. So that's a very important part of job satisfaction too, is finding the talents of people, not just what they can do, but also what they enjoy doing and placing them in the right role. That's so good. I'd love to know, Deanne, what are some of the fundamentals of a great hiring process to start seeking out character, competency and chemistry and all of the other skills and abilities that you're looking for in A A players. There are two things that I just believe are the most important pieces of what can be a

lengthy process. You know, the company I work for, Chick-fil-A, we historically had a very lengthy and in-depth selection process. But there are two pieces of it that I feel like are most critical that make the difference in getting the quality of candidates that someone's looking for. The first one is the interviewing itself. And most people know this, but sometimes it's a new idea to people. The concept or the technique of behavioral interviewing is really important. Okay, explain what behavioral interviewing is. Sure, absolutely.

So instead of just going down somebody's resume or through an application and saying, oh, so you worked here, how'd you like that? Instead, what you really want to learn about is their past performance because we know past performance is the best predictor of future performance. So if our job profile calls for somebody, let's just continue with this idea of this front counterperson, if the job profile calls for someone who's going to greet customers every day, I'm going to say, tell me about a time when you've had the responsibility to provide customer satisfaction with someone.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be a job. It could have been a volunteer role. It could have been in all kinds of capacities that somebody could make that connection. And then the thing that I try to do is what I call go three questions deep. So once they explain to me, well, you know, one time I worked at the retail store down the street and I folded the shirts and sweaters and put them back. And I would do that so that customers, when they came in, they wouldn't see clumps of stuff all over the place. And I'd say something like, what kind of feedback did you get about how you did that? Oh, my supervisor was very pleased.

I stay right on top of that. You know, every time my supervisor came in, he would find me over there folding the shirts and I would have everything in place. And so from there, I might say something to the effect of, well, tell me about, as you think about this role, how you think you can transfer that skill that you learn there into this role. All of a sudden, we've had a whole conversation on just one topic of customer service. We repeat that six, seven or eight times. We've had a very in-depth conversation that gives me a real look at this candidate and, how well in the past they've been able to perform at some of the roles or tasks they'll be asked to do in this job. And then here's the key. Well, I was just going to say, I think that it seems like

that's so crucial because one of the challenges we see people face is how do I know I'm not just getting the face, right? Anyone can show up for one interview. I mean, you're saying you asked three follow-up questions per the initial question. Yeah, I don't, let me, it's not like it's a rule or something, But just in my mind, what I'm trying to accomplish to be sure that we have a really in-depth conversation. And it's a way, I mean, somebody's not snowing me. You know, it's a whole lot harder when you ask those follow-up questions than you just say, hey, give me an example when you, oh, I did this, I completed this project, and then you go on to the next question.

But if you're like, oh, well, tell me about what your team members thought about your work on that project. You know, how did you interact with them? What was the most difficult thing about working with them on that project? All of a sudden, we've had a much deeper conversation. them. But here's the key after all of that. And the second, the real ace in the hole for any organization to get great talent is to invest in referencing doing the background check of the candidates. Because so often it's either people don't do it at all because, A, no, there's somebody's going to tell them, no, we won't give you a reference, and so they don't want to do it. Or secondly, it just takes

too much time and they're afraid they're going to lose the candidate or cost too much money. They don't want to make the effort. But this is where you really find out, if you're getting who you think you're getting and it's worth the time and investment, particularly if you have the kind of interview just like you had with the candidate. You don't just say, oh, I understand they worked here. Would you rehire them? But, well, I was told this was the job. How did they perform in that role?

What did you see as the highlights? Can you give me an example of when they exceeded a customer's expectations? Tell me about times they exceeded your expectations. How did they handle it when they didn't exceed expectations or meet expectations? So it's a whole different kind of conversation. Now, those two pieces of information, wouldn't you think you have a pretty good picture of your candidate? That's so true. And I think most reference calls, first of all, if the reference call is done, and that's a big if, most reference calls if they are done just become, oh, tell me about your experience.

And it's like most people don't want to step into the conflict of saying, oh, they were actually a horrible employee. So they say, oh, it was good. It was fine. But thank goodness they're gone. But they don't say that. And so the fact that you're telling people ask really specific questions to get really specific answers, that's so good. One of the things in this section of the book that I thought was so powerful and it was so unique is you talk about how you don't want references just that people work with, but references that they were accountable to. Why is that so important, D.N? Well, because you want to hear from anybody they were accountable to. It's not even just former supervisors. Sometimes that can be hard if they're still employed, but it could have been a coach or a teacher. or some community volunteer organization that they were part of. And having people that they actually had to perform for will give you much better information

than just a friend that says, oh, yeah, I like Steve. And yeah, he did a good job. But, you know, it's not the same as the person that they were accountable to. That's good. Do you have a favorite interview question? I had a favorite interview question, particularly when I was selecting franchisees for Chick-fil-A. and it was the very last question I would ask a candidate. And that would be, why would I want my children to work for you?

Because if I didn't want my children to work for them, why would anybody else want theirs to? And I really had great conversations with candidates. Honestly, I selected thousands of franchisees. I don't remember anyone telling me something that made me not want to select them, but it made them think about the responsibility of their job and that they, you know, predominantly young people are working in quick service restaurants. And so they had responsibility for somebody's child. And why would somebody want their child to work for them?

And, you know, what I found the kinds of answers I received and then saw demonstrated was, I want it to be their very first best employer. And I want to have them to have that opportunity to learn skills and grow, knowing I'm not going to keep them forever, but I want them to have skills as they go into the marketplace and that they've learned by working. for me. There's something so unique about that specific question, and it's what you clarified, it's that you are sending a message to the interviewee about the type of work that they're going to be doing and the impact and responsibility that it holds. And it seems like anytime we talk to

leaders within great organizations and great companies, that's one of the things that they look for in the interview process is our company needs to be sending a message to these potential employees about what we stand for. Is that something that you were really deliberate and intentional about? Well, I think it's actually what I would say was the third biggest and most important part of the process. We talked about interviewing and referencing, and it's this third thing that you just mentioned, which is making sure that the candidate has a view of who they're working for and what they'll be doing. That's a really clear picture of what this job looks like and what this organization looks like, because the decision is still 50 percent theirs. And if you want to keep

people for a lot longer than the way to do that is to give them a realistic look. And so when I was interviewing candidates in my role there at Chick-fil-A, what I would often do is I'd tell them everything. I actually try to talk them out of the job. You've got to give us an example of what it looks like to try to talk someone out of the job. Well, so I'll go safe here when I was interviewing franchisees. You know, I would say things. And in final interviews, they'd bring their spouse in. And so I wouldn't just try to talk. the franchisee. I've tried to talk their spouse out of it too. So I'd say things like

you know, you're going to smell like peanut oil a lot and you're at the bottom of your shoes are going to be greasy when you come home and when you open this restaurant it's going to be long hours and I'd look at the spouse and I'd say to him or her and say, and you'll probably have to bring the children up to the playground to

see mom or dad sometimes because this is hard work and it's going to take a lot to get this going. And then I'd say things like you're probably going to walk in the walk in freezer occasionally and cry. And I've had a few call me back and say they did because it's hard and things happen. And I describe a day when, you know, six employees call in late and a customer's upset and complaining at the front counter and the delivery truck has decided to arrive at lunchtime.

And, you know, all these things happen. Interestingly, as I described that, I have found people really resilient people that have overcome big things in their life. They look at me and said, I got that because I've overcome these things in my past. Where's the freezer? Let me start crying, right? Exactly. Gosh, that's remarkable. But you're setting expectations in that way.

That's related to something else that I was really curious about, specifically with Chick-fil-A, is y'all hold people to such a high standard. And anytime I'm in a Chick-fil-A, it's like, I'm probably allowed to say this, but you're probably not. It would be so much easier to go work at Burger King, right? I mean, it's like it's not as crowded. It's not as busy. You don't have such high standards. But y'all expect such a great deal from people.

What is the return or what are you promising the team members as a result of expecting such a great deal from them? Sure. I can't speak for all of those franchisees, but I can't tell you what I've observed and what they do. And what they, first of all, they care. They just simply care more about their team members. And it's expressed in a lot of ways.

I think about the franchisee here in the Atlanta area where I live, and he has one of the most diverse, because where he's located, he's an extremely diverse team. He has employees that are from all over the world, literally. And when their families come to the U.S. to visit, he invites them to his house for dinner so that he can get to know who they are and have the experience of meeting someone for somewhere else, but also letting them get to know who their loved one is working for. I think about another Chick-fil-A franchisee that I know. And when he was visiting the support center one time, he was visiting with Truitt and he had his daughter with him. And Truitt, Kathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, he said to this operator's daughter, he said, you have the most beautiful smile. That's really going to help you in the future.

And he was so moved by Truitt's encouragement and compliment that he decided he wanted to provide beautiful smiles for his own employees. And so to date, he has provided over a couple of double. dozen sets of braces to his employees. And the part I love about the story is, not only does he do that, but if his employee doesn't have transportation to get to the orthodontist, his wife will come and pick him up and take him to the appointment. That's just that care. I really care about you as an individual. That's the number one thing I see. The second thing I see is this desire to develop people, knowing that they're just passing through. They're on their way to something else. But they're developing them and giving them skills that, you know, you can go to other employers.

And in those other fast food restaurants, it might not have mattered so much if you have that on your resume. But being a team member at Chick-fil-A on your resume helps with professional positions. Because employers know what these people have been taught about serving others, taking care of customers, and working together as a team. That's powerful. So we talked about attracting the right. talent. We talked about how to interview for the right qualities and competencies. I'd like to get into onboarding because we see so often the stats of how the success or failure of an employee is often

made in the first 90 days. So how do you come at that topic of onboarding to make sure that you actually get your team members up and running to be successful? Again, I think onboarding actually begins during the interview process. If you do a really thorough job of helping them understand what to expect in the interview process. By the time you get to onboarding, you've already done half the job. But again, I think the very first thing, regardless of the role in any organization, the very first thing someone needs to understand is the culture. One of the organizations I worked with that was a client of mine, they did something that they actually learned from Chick-fil-A, and they put all of their employees on, it's a child care company, and they teach the culture

by putting all their employees on a bus, and they take them around to the first child care center. They take them to places that are impacted by the benevolence of the organization in the community to see where the money goes to and how they use it to help the community. And they show the culture that way. That's how they share it. It's a living, breathing, active opportunity. They learn that from Chick-fil-A, which that's how they onboard all of their staff and franchisees

is the very first day. A lot of times it's Dan Kathy himself that loads the franchisees and the new employees up on a bus and takes them to the original Chick-fil-A restaurant, takes them to the top of the Coca-Cola building to the chairman's office because Coca-Cola is a really big supplier, obviously, to Chick-fil-A. So they talk about supplier relationships, and they go to the Chick-Fillet JA Finance, junior achievement finance center in Atlanta, and they explain how, you know, at Chick-fil-A, you're not just working to grow the company,

but you're actually impacting other lives and organizations too, like junior achievement. They go to different pieces of the company's history and go and visit. And then at the end of the day, they all go to Dan's house for dinner, which is an incredible thing that the CEO does that. I was about to say he's the CEO of the company and he has new hires over to his house for dinner. Yeah, exactly. It's a caring company.

They really care about people. And so that type of onboarding, starting with the culture is number one. Then the second thing is people have to know what's expected of them. So hopefully you've had that discussion in the interview process, but then when they get on the job, after they've gone through all the orientation and all those things, really helping them understand what's expected and checking in with them constantly. Don't leave them on their own. It's not once and done, you know, set the expectations.

And in that early onboarding process, you're checking back in, demonstrate how it's done, walk alongside them as they do it, then allow them to. do it, give them feedback about how well they've done it. But that's a very, very important part of the onboarding process is people feeling confident in their role so that they can succeed in it. Dave tells us stories every once in a while. He's our founder and CEO, and he'll tell us stories about how when the company was just getting started, they didn't have a ton in terms of process or system or onboarding journey that they were taking people through. And it's like they would hire new people. And the onboarding process was people come and watching him on the road.

radio show, and then he'd come out and shake their hands and say, welcome, make more than you cost, and this is going to work out just great. And that was the onboarding process. And that's so often we run into small business leaders. It's that they know onboarding is important, but they also have 10 billion other things going on, and they're working in the business, and they're just trying to keep this thing up and running and keep up with all the growth. What are some of the core essential elements that you would encourage business owners to focus on just to get a really, really basic onboarding process up and running, Dian? So I think that what I would encourage them to do is in a small business, because of the

time elements, first of all, it's good to have somebody who's responsible for that. You know, if you have 100 or 200 employees in small business, it's good to have somebody that that's their role. They might have other roles too. but as new people come in, making sure they know where to be, what to do, why we do things the way we do, and it's really a mentor to that person that walks alongside them during the early days. I actually consider the entire first 12 months to be part of that onboarding process. So that's one of the things is having somebody a companion to walk along with them to understand the who, the what, the why,

and the how of everything. The second thing is a feedback system to be sure. they're getting feedback often and early in their job. They're going to be much better employees if they're learning how to do it from the beginning and you're taking that time. If you take that time on the front end to give that feedback, it'll take a lot less time later on in the process. And then I'm thinking about who in the organization do they need to spend time with to learn history, to learn best practices, to learn innovation, to learn where the organization's going. Who do I want to make sure in the first 12 months that they're there,

I connect them with, that they have that opportunity. So, and then, you know, to get tactical about it, have the checklist, you know, hand it first day and have them own that checklist. A small business owner has a lot of things going on. They own their onboarding checklist. These are the tasks we want to accomplish. We're going to provide the people to do it. It's your job to make sure you get it done in whatever time period it is that we want to get that done in. And so they need to follow up to be sure they're getting those elements of the onboarding process.

I love that Henry Cloud line where he says, I'm responsible to you, but I'm not responsible for you, right? And it's like, the business owner is responsible to providing them with the checklist, like you're saying, but the individual is responsible for checking off that checklist over the course 30, 16, 90 days. You talked about feedback earlier, and that kind of, obviously, this is hopefully well after the onboarding process takes place. But inevitably, even if you hire great people, there will be those times whenever there are performance issues. And so what would be just some initial coaching you would give to business leaders about how to handle just basic performance issues in their organization? Sure. Well, let me start with a story about what I learned about this early in my career. I worked for a master around this idea of committing to people's performance.

So we did have this long selection process that I've described, which is expensive, and invests a lot of time and effort to get somebody on board. And so in my early days at Chick-fil-A, I would sit in an interview with Truitt, and he would look at the candidate and he would say, now, I hope you two are happy with each other because you're stuck with each other until one of you dies or retires. Well, as an HR professional, I got kind of nervous about that, and later on, stop using that terminology as a promise. But it was the spirit behind it is that this is a long-term relationship. So fast forward, if that employee had a problem and you went to see Truitt because he held all the people decisions because they were the most important decision that a leader makes. So if there are going to be any changes, if there are any concerns, you'd actually go see Truit about it. And so we'd have a conversation.

He'd ask you what you've done to make the person successful. And you might name a few things or maybe you haven't tried at all. You've just shown up to say this isn't working. And Truit would say, you need to go try harder. You selected them. You're responsible for making it work. And so you'd go try for 30 days and you'd come back to Truitt and, you know, maybe it still wasn't working.

And he'd have another little talk with you. And he'd say, try harder. More training, more coaching, a new role, whatever you need to do. Well, he's a really smart man because, truthfully, most of the time he never went back after 90 days because the employee got better. Sometimes people just don't want to make the effort because they feel like they have options. But, you know, in this employment, low unemployment that we have now, none of us can afford to lose employees if we can.

and make them successful, it's the least expensive thing we can do, rather than reselecting, re-onboarding, re-training, doing all of those things all over again. So the first thing is as early as possible. Don't wait for a formal review, but as early as possible, point out where the employee is not meeting expectations. Try to find out why. Maybe there's something going on that you don't know about. Maybe they weren't trained in something. Maybe they need help with something.

Now, by the way, we're not talking about people who aren't willing. We're talking about people who are willing who are not yet capable. And so we have to help make them capable. And so find out what it is they need help with. Then provide that help, whether that's training or sometimes just pointing it out. It was just a blind spot. They didn't recognize they were doing that. The employee that shows up and complains first thing in the morning every day

sort of has a little bit of a negative attitude. Well, maybe no one's ever pointed that out to them. Maybe no one said, hey, we'd really like for you to show up and smile at the customers, you know, and do you think you could do that? Hey, thanks for pointing that out. Didn't realize I was bringing so much to work with me. I'll work on that. Hopefully that gets better. Maybe it's something bigger.

Maybe somebody really is lacking a competency. So you go to work and help them get better. Then come back 30 days later, assuming there's no major problem that impacts somebody else. But if you're just trying to come back 30 days later, check in. How are we doing? Maybe it's better. If it's better to them, it's better. Hey, you know what?

It's still not where we need to be. So we're going to try this now. Again, whether it's more coaching or mentoring or training or need different equipment they don't have, whatever it is, try to ascertain what it is that they need. And then finally, 30 more days. If it hasn't improved, then that might be a time that you need to deal with that situation. But being honest and candid, focusing on what the impact is instead of the intent. You know, some people are, well, I didn't mean it that way. I didn't intend to do that. And what you want to do is talk about the behavior and its impact that it has on customers, the team, and others not so much addressing their motivation. You have no idea what their motivation is. But you're just saying, hey, this is the behavior. This is the impact that's having. And we need to change that. And if you go through those steps and you're not able to do that after 90 days, it might be time to make a change.

Were those difficult conversations something that you were naturally good at or naturally comfortable with? Or was that a developed skill, Deanne? I think giving feedback is one thing. But when you're managing performance is very, very hard. And, you know, the only time you enjoyed is when you see it turn around and you go, aha, you know, they got it. And so that makes it all worthwhile, the effort that you go to. But I think it is a learned skill. I think that you really have to practice it and you have to commit to this whole idea of I'm going to be truthful, I'm going to be candid.

I'm going to be caring at the same time. But I used to say that I wanted to be kind and not nice. You see, nice is when I care what you think about me. Kind is when I care more about you. Gosh. Yeah, that's, oh, man, that's so good. And what I love about that is that is servant leadership. at its core. I think a lot of times I can be susceptible to not thinking about having a difficult

conversation with someone as serving them, but ultimately, if you're guiding them towards the direct path, it's absolutely the best service-minded thing that you could do to approach them directly and honestly and be truthful when something happens. The way I used to coach leaders that I work with, and still to this day, I do the same thing is, you know, I want to treat people like I want the special people in my life treated. You know, every person I interact with, whether it's a candidate or it's an employee of mine is somebody's husband or wife, somebody's mom or dad, somebody's son or daughter. And I want that person to be treated like I would want those people in my life to be treated. And it really helps frame your conversations and your actions so much better when you think of it

that way. That's powerful. Before we close out today, you're one of those unique people in that you've had personal interactions with Truea Kathy, who really probably was one of the great leaders of a generation and built what is now a multi-billion dollar company. I'd love to know what was one of the greatest people lessons that you learned in your time with Truett? I'll tell you something pretty personal. Near the end of Truitt's life, he was not really in the business the last year of his life. He was ill and wasn't around as much. But the year before that, so he's in his early 90s and he would call me over to his office to talk about something. And before I would leave, he would say to me, Dan, don't forget, people decisions are the most important decisions a leader makes.

And I thought about it. And I thought, you know, I'd work for Trude at that point for 30 years. Why was he still telling me that? Did he have doubts about me? Did he think, you know, I was just going to quit doing that, you know? And so the next month he called me back. He wanted to talk to me about something else. Before I left, he said, and don't forget, people decisions are the most important decisions a leader makes. Now, I still have not caught on. I'm embarrassed to say. It took me to the third time, and I came back, and then I realized what he was doing. I mean, here in his early 90s, business is incredibly successful, and he's still reminding us of what made the business successful, and he didn't want us to forget. And he really believed that, and he was still teaching.

was still imparting. He was still making sure we don't forget. So that's why I wrote the book. I wrote the book because of what Truit taught me and because I wanted to be sure that those of us who knew him and learned directly from him, that we would never forget what he taught us about people decisions and how important they are and all the lessons around them. And for all the people who came after him that would never know him, that there would be some record to understand what he thought was so important. And what he thought was the most crucial issue. which is the selection of great people is how you create a successful business. What is one action that you hope every small business owner would take as a result of listening

to this conversation today, Dian? Well, I hope that they would be encouraged to recognize that even in these difficult times of low unemployment, that there is great talent out there waiting to be discovered and that if you put some of these actions in place, if you create the profile of really, understand what you're looking for in creating that profile. If you'll commit to improving interviewing and use these behavioral techniques, if you'll commit to referencing, then you'll raise the bar on your level of talent. You'll get extraordinary talent and put in a great backdrop of a strong culture. They'll win the hearts of your customers too.

Well, Deanne, we're super grateful for your time today. We're super grateful for the way that your leadership and your message really exemplifies the fact that people are the priority. So thank you so much for your time. Alex, thank you so very much for having me. It's been my pleasure and I really enjoy talking with you. I think the theme of that entire conversation and probably honestly Deanne's career as a whole is the fact that people are a priority. Certainly one of the greatest resources that you have on your team, probably the greatest resource that you have on your team, is the human resource. And it is one of your highest callings as a leader to unleash the best in the people that you work with every single day. But that all starts with getting the right people on the bus in the right role.

And here's the deal. It's so challenging for business owners to really read is the person that you see in the interview, the person that you'll actually see once they get the job. That's why Ramsey Personality and the former host of this podcast, Ken Coleman, created what we call the intentional interview checklist. This is going to give you some of the steps that you can take as a business owner to set yourself and your business up for a win by making sure that you interview candidates for the job properly. So if you want to get this free resource, just text the word intentional to 33444. Again, that's the word intentional to 3344 or just click the link that's in the show notes.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. If you did, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends. to subscribe. For a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the length that's in the show notes. And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, and it was edited and mixed by Will Rudder. I'm Alex Judd, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network,

like the Ken Coleman Show. Are you doing what you were born to do? I'm Ken Coleman, host of the Ken Coleman Show, where I give you practical advice to help you discover your purpose and then map out a plan to get you there. From accounting to advertising, from plumbing to production, you were created to fill a unique role, and the world needs what you have to offer. Join me on the Ken Coleman Show wherever you listen to podcasts.