EntreLeadership - #366: Creating a Culture of Contribution with Tom Rath

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

If you ask researcher and bestselling author Tom Rath, it’s never too early to start making a lasting impact on the world around you. His best advice? Start small. Tune in as Tom explains how even the smallest things repeated consistently over time really can make a huge difference in the lives of others. And from a work perspective, the benefits (like increased productivity and lower stress) of having an outward focus are just icing on the cake.   entreleadership.com/podcast Life's Great Question by Tom Rath Tom Rath's website Tom's website about The Contributions Tom's resource on the contribution of large companies on the wellbeing of our lives. EntreLeadership Master Series How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie Build Your Profile on The Contributions Mission Statement Mapper 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

There's this crazy thing going on right now. The United States is filled with people that deeply want to care about the work that they do every single day. And at the same time, the United States is simultaneously filled with business owners who are desperately looking for people that care about the work that they do every single day. So why exactly can't we figure this out? Why can't we bridge this gap? 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 today we're talking to World Renan researcher and the best-selling author

of the new book, Life's Great Question, Tom Rath. And in the mounds of data that he has collected on high-performing leaders, teams, and the workplace, he's found one very specific pattern, a pattern that could help bridge the gap between leaders and their teams. That pattern is an increased focus on contribution. Yeah, you know, one of the things that I realized pretty quickly is I started to look at the broad challenges that we face out there today in terms of the fundamental relationships people have with their work, which on average across organizations are nowhere near as good as they

could be. One of the challenges is that there's just a huge misalignment between. between all of the individual talent that's out there in the marketplace today and what the world needs. And so, you know, we've been pretty good over the last 100, 200 years at aligning products and services with what customers need. But we haven't made anywhere near as big as strides in terms of matching who individuals are with the demands that are out there in the workforce today. And what I realized as I dug deeper into this is that we've done a pretty good job of helping people to understand their own talents, their own passions, and their own interests. But we really haven't done much with trying to determine what are all the unique ways in which we can contribute to others' lives

in a real meaningful and productive way. And, you know, I was deeply inspired by one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And it's something I ask myself every single day, which was his famous quote about life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you? doing for others. Boy, I think that's just a great way to orient your day, and it orientes your day around contribution and adding to things that will continue to grow in your absence. So that's what helped to focus a lot of this work. That's powerful. As you were saying that, I was thinking about that John F. Kennedy. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And it's amazing how the Martin Luther King quote, the John F. Kennedy quote, there's something that when we

hear that, we kind of say that's right. That's what I need to be spending my time on, and it's related to that topic of contribution. So I'd like to know how do you define that word contribution? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I worked through a lot and was the first thing about how do you help people to connect with a purpose or meaningful work, which you hear a lot about. But when I really got into the practical application of how do you get people focused outward instead of inward every day and focused on how they're adding to another person's life. Contribution is really about the small bricks that you're adding to a wall over time, essentially. And it's, what are the things that you're doing in the next hour today that might add to someone else's well-being that might

inspire someone a day from now that, in my case with my kids might contribute to their development and growth, even five, 10 years down the road on days when I'm not there helping? So I think contribution, I would define it as anything you do that has a positive influence on another human being that continues to grow in your absence. And those things usually start small and grow over time. Continues to grow in your absence. Why that phrase or why is that important as part of this definition? Well, you know, that's important to me from some of my own personal learnings. I talk in the opening of this book about how when I was 16 years old, I was diagnosed with a real, rare condition. I went blind in one eye because of it, and doctors told me that I would be likely

to have cancer in my kidneys and pancreas and spine over whatever course of a life I might live. And I've battled cancer in all those areas. And I bring that up because what it did was, even from that young age over the last 25 years, it got me very focused on what are all the things that I can work on this afternoon that will continue to grow tomorrow, a week from now, a year from now, and eventually when I'm gone. And what I've learned from that experience there is, you know, it may sound kind of morbid from the outset. But when you start to think like that, it really does get you focused on more productive efforts during the day and things that you can feel good about tomorrow and many years from now.

And it gets you focused on what I would call or what I think David Brooks talked about this about a year ago in New York Times column, more eulogy values instead of the things that go on a resume that are more stuble. Daryl and tactical. So it almost sounds like you're talking about it like a mindset or an attitude for leaders, but also just for individual team members. Is this mindset developed? Like, do you have to go through a life-altering transformative experience like you did to change your mindset? Or is it learned? Or how can we build up this kind of way of looking at the world that contribution is the first thing that we're thinking about? Yeah, you know, I think it's like a lot of habits. It's a great question because it's in my experience in working with people and working with leaders, it's built

with repetitions and it's built one day at a time. And if you can step back and say in the next three hours, what could you do even for 15 or 20 minutes that would make a meaningful contribution of the growth and development of one other human being, whether that's someone who looks to you for leadership, whether that's a customer, whether that's a family member, just taking that daily focus is what helps you to build cumulative days that are better and better as time goes on. And, you know, the other thing I've learned that's been fun through this project in the last year with the book and the website around contribution is that the more time you can allocate that's directed outward toward contribution to others and meaningful efforts during the day,

it actually minimizes a lot of the normal stressors that we have with all the things flying at us and all the pressures and demands of a day. And the more time you spend looking inward, it actually leads to more insecurities, more stress and the like where when you can anchor even a few of your efforts outward, it takes a lot of that pressure off in the process. That's pretty remarkable. And I love that you talk about it as a habit because that sounds like something I can take action on. That sounds like something I can control. That sounds like something every leader can invest their time into. So what is the practical action? people can take daily or maybe even hourly to just start moving their mind towards an attitude and a posture of contribution. Yeah, I think that's where it starts. It starts with bringing the humanity back into the work that we do on a daily basis

and having conversations about it with our team members. Because one of the things that I realized when I got into this is every time we sit down as a team to start a new effort, instead of looking at other members of the team joining the group and saying, what's their background, what does their resume look like, what's their bio, what's their job description, we need to sit down and have a more personal conversation about who we are and why we do what we do each day. So that's why as a part of this book I put together a resource for people where they can go through and say, what are the big roles you play in life? So for me, that's being a dad and a husband and a researcher and sometimes a writer.

and what have been the most influential life experiences that have shaped why I do what I do. So if you sit around and talk about that as a team, it helps a bit. And then maybe most importantly, anytime you bring a group of people together, whether that's two or three or five or 15 people, if each person can go around and say, how do I think I can make a unique contribution to this team? Because so often we all get excited about something, and we're just off and running without even having a discussion

to make sure that each of us feels like we can, make a meaningful contribution, and we're doing that in complementary ways, instead of ways that essentially overlap, and it takes six months to realize, oh, we were all doing the same thing. That brings up a little bit of attention, I think, especially for the small business owner, because the people we work with typically between 10 to 20 team members, but even up to 200 team members, they're in this spot where they deeply desire for the people that they employ to have meaningful work. They really, really want that to happen and they want the people that they employ to feel like they're contributing and playing their best role. And at the same time, they're caught in

this tension of like, we've got work to do right now. I've got to make payroll by Friday. I've got to make sure we keep this thing running. We've got people that we have to serve. And I'm sorry, it's not always going to be exactly in a line with what you're passionate about or what the highest and best use of your time is. But we've got work to do and we all kind of have to do those things. So what would your advice be to the small business owner that is kind of caught in the middle of that tension of I want people to do meaningful work and we still have a job to get done today that really, I mean, just has to get done? I love that exact scenario and the tension you described because I think it brings up an important point that I learned as I got into the research on this, that you really can't just start and say everybody go work on what they're passionate about or go follow or find your purpose, whatever. that is. If you do that, it essentially assumes that the person is the center of the universe and the universe and customers and clients, everyone better come into alignment around the individual

person. I don't think we can afford to look at work that way. And that's why if you really get into the kind of pragmatic, actionable discussion about contribution as a team, it should be a negotiation and kind of a storming process to say, you know what, here's who I am, here's what matters to me. but here are the things we have to do to meet what our customers in the world around us needs. I think you have to work back from what the world needs and then line up these points that are your talents and your passions and the roles you play and how you want to contribute. And there are going to be times there where especially, you know, I'll join a team and there are three or four people on that team who all want to play in that kind of creative, big idea area. But you know what? We also have to build relationships.

We have to find customers. We have to scale. We have to do all these other things. And on any given team, someone needs to take those assignments and we have to divide work clearly and we have to have expectations from day one about who's going to do what. Otherwise, the team will end up coming off the rails. And I've found that when a team can have that discussion very early on, it creates much faster and smoother work along the way.

Two words in there that you use that I absolutely love the word expectation and the word negotiation. So how does the leader properly set expectations that this is going to be a compromise? We can't go all in on your passions and your gifting, but we want to do some of that. And at the same time, we can't go all in on just treating you like units of production. How does the leader properly set expectations to where this is going to be a negotiation? It's going to feel a little bit like a tug of war, but it's going to be healthy. Yeah, that's a good question. I think one simple way for a leader, to start talking about that is to say, instead of starting with who each of us are as individuals,

let's start with point B, which point B is how we positively influence the world as an organization. And if you start with what the world needs and then you start to work back and say, point A is each of our own individual talents and what we want to do. Point B is what these people need from us. And you start to work back in connecting those dots. It yields a much stronger conversation there. and also essentially clear division of labor. And it inherently tells each person that they are connecting their efforts throughout the initiative with the way it makes a positive influence on the world. And so often along the way we lose sight of that.

And I think the other thing that, frankly, is an important role for the leader in particular is once everyone starts down that path, they need to view a big part of their role as reminding people how the things that they volunteered to uniquely do have a positive influence on those customers and clients that they serve. Because if people lose that connection throughout the process and as they start to do the work, it slows everybody down and it takes a lot of the meaning and purpose out of the work. That connects exactly to my experience working here at Ramsey Solutions. We have a 900-person organization and I can't tell you how many times our CEO says this, but we are also saying this in meetings, it's the phrase, we exist for those who are not here.

And we're saying that over and over and over again. And I'll tell you, it took me about two years to really take that mindset on and allow that mindset to affect my decision making. But what occurs once that shift actually happens is you're surrounded by a bunch of people whose first priority is we need to serve those people and whose second priorities, I need to make sure I understand how my role serves those people. And then whose third priority is if there's other time and energy that I have to do things that I want to do or that I could go above and beyond, that's where I get to focus on those things. But it sounds like it's exactly like what

you're talking about, where you have to start with other people outside of this place first. Yeah, when you start with another person in mind, you do better work, you feel better by the work. I mean, this starts just for a simple example. There's been good research done in almost every industry and field I can think of. And food service is a great example where if someone is working in a kitchen, cooking food or they're a cook or a chef at a restaurant, if they can see the person consuming the food that they've prepared, they make higher quality food, it's more nutritious, and they feel better about their work. So, and I mean, even radiologists, you think, you would think that a radiologist would understand that the work they do is meaningful because

it's saving people's lives, right? But what happens is when researchers try to experimental conditions, and they attach a simple photo of the patient's face to the radiographic record. Those radiologists produce longer reports, and it increases their diagnostic accuracy significantly. So we've just got to find little ways to remind us of why we do what we do and bring that humanity into our work. And managers and leaders can be powerful catalysts for making that happen, but each of us as individuals kind of need to take responsibility for that too. Man, you're just putting all the science and the study behind kind of the, experience that I've had here working at this place, but also our team, we started doing something

it was about a year and a half ago here in our organization. We call it fans of our fans. And one of the things we do is we help people find financial freedom through walking them through baby steps of getting out of debt and building wealth and investing properly and then ultimately being outrageously generous to the world that they live in. And it was about a year and a half ago that I think probably leadership here started to have the exact realization that you're saying the data supports is they said, we need people that work in this building to be able to draw a direct line from the work they're doing every day to the impact it's making out in the world. So they started spending large amounts of money, flying people in who our work has impacted. And those people

stand on a stage and tell the story of how they were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, but they coincided with a web page that our organization built. And they started following the steps and they listened to Dave on the radio. And now they're debt free. And now they're contributing to their community and giving. And it's like, wow, how generous of that organization to fly those people in. In reality, I think we're getting the better part of the deal because the room lights up and it's like, you've got 900 people that have found purpose in their work. It sounds like a practical action that you're saying people can take is find a way as a leader to connect people to how their role is adding value directly, whether they're a web developer or in shipping or janitorial staff, connect that work to

the impact it's making outside this place. And that's an awesome story because if you're in the audience and you hear that story of someone who's turned their life around because of what they learned from the organization, you go home that night, you treat your kids better, you have a better relationship with your family members. You go out and have more fun with your friends. You're a more involved and engaged member of your community. And that carries forward. So the more we can help people to maintain that other orientation, their work, see who they serve,

bring the humanity into it, make work much more personal. It pays off dividends in a lot of different ways, as you described there. It makes contribution not some massive dramatic shift that your team member has to make. Like, I need to go drop all of these responsibilities and either start a new role here or go build my own business because I can't contribute unless I go build my own business. And it kind of changes the conversation to, no, you can absolutely contribute where you are right now from the seat that you're in. Yeah. And, you know, contribution in your work is, it's really not that different from when you're talking about contribution finance. whether that's a 401k or any type of investment account where you're putting a little small amounts in as you go along with each paycheck or each time you have some earnings.

And that continues ideally over time to grow and pay dividends even when you're not working on it and you're not adding to it. And our work functions in the same way. So if you can spend even a little bit of time today, a simple example, my daughter last night was working on some new word studies and new roots of words and I was helping her and quizzing her and talking to her about it. If that time that I spent with her helped her to identify something a year from now, three years from now, that's making a meaningful contribution. We've got to take the time to step back and realize that those things do matter.

So where I'd like to shift next is kind of from an organizational perspective. We work with a lot of people that would probably classify themselves, and a lot of them called themselves this accidental CEOs, right? They stepped out and maybe they were unemployable anywhere else because they were so entrepreneurial. and they realized I just need to go start my own thing and they didn't want to have a boss and they wanted to have the freedom to build their own business and to have a creative opportunity in that way and they wanted to serve in that way. They had that entrepreneurial gear, that switch inside of them. And they really started off and their primary goal whenever they started off was I want to be able to serve people in a meaningful way. I want to have some freedom for myself and my family and I want to be able to put food on the table. And ultimately, like a lot of them, we coincide with them and they are at that point.

They can check that box. They have freedom or they're working towards freedom. They're feeding their family and they're providing for themselves. And it's almost like at that point, they've earned the opportunity to now think bigger, right? They can now think not just about providing for themselves, but making a real impact in their community. And a lot of times it's like they know they want to do that, but they don't know how to to start down that line of thought or how to start down that conversation. So what would your advice be to that individual that's in that position?

Yeah, you know, I think it's a common challenge that entrepreneurs and business owners face where they get to that point. When you're in that, let's build it and scale it and just make sure it works phase. It's easy to lose sight of some of that, but I think it's important to come back and say, how can we continue to feel good about the, at that point, once you've got it going, 10, 25-year plan and trajectory of how we continue to have a meaningful and sustainable influence on the communities that we want to serve in the future. And then it's, I mean, it's like we were talking about an individual level.

If at an organizational level, you can draw some lines back and say, what will it take over time to get to that point where we're doing it in a way that we feel good about? We know it's good for the well-being of the constituencies we serve. And I would say the obvious constituencies, I would start with employees. It's good for the customers that we serve. And then shareholders and communities as well in a lot of cases you have right there. And I would challenge business owners to actually ask themselves the question about, can we prove and demonstrate that our organization is having a quantitative, demonstrable,

positive influence on each of those constituencies over the next decade. You know, as a part of this book I worked on, I cut out a whole section because it was more leadership, high-level organizational oriented, but it was about, I asked 10,000 people a question of, is your life better off because company X exists? Or is it not? And I did kind of a one to 100, from negative 100 to positive 100 scoring on 25 of the largest names. And that question, were you asking the company?

that they work for, or were you just asking companies in general, large companies or companies that they would have? Large companies, consumer level. And I just want to know, do people think their lives are better off because Coca-Cola exists, McDonald's exists, Facebook exists, Netflix exists, and their answers to that are on the website I posted as an appendix, even though it's not in the book. People are interested in checking it out. But what I learned from that is people do have a very quick and easy reaction to whether

their lives are better off because of whether a company that they know pretty well exists. And they could absolutely answer that for the employer that they work for. So I think for employers to begin to ask that question of do our people know quickly that their overall lives are better off because they chose to be a part of our organization instead of going to work for a competitor, doing something else in life, or starting their own business, or going off and doing something entirely different. I think that's a pretty important question to ask because in the future, what I'm seeing, is that individual employees joining and leaving organizations are going to be much smarter

and scrutinized more deeply and maybe even ask questions of their friends and relatives and family members about whether their lives are really better off because they chose to be a part of that organization. And when people can answer a quick yes to that simple question, they're going to be far more likely to be satisfied in their job and stay with that organization and bring their best effort every day. Gosh, there's so much gold there. I mean, you said 10,000 people, correct? Correct. Okay, so that's a pretty good sample size. Were there any things that stood out about the companies that people had an automatic yes to? A couple of the companies that people said, do make their lives better. Let's pick on Google for a minute. And I asked a follow-up question of, I don't know if it was a thousand or how many

people. I said, in your own words, why does this company make your life better? Google, people think it makes them smarter. So people like Google because it makes them smarter. People like Amazon quite a bit because it makes their life easier and faster, right? You underestimate that, but Google does make us feel smarter. We have knowledge of our fingertips. Amazon, maybe you get to spend more time with your family because you don't have to go to the store and spend time in lines buying things and driving there and so forth. So I do think we can also help people to make real quick connections with why their lives are better because they engage with this company as a customer. as a client or as an employee.

How should that understanding or that recognition affect the guy that owns a 10-person plumbing company? If you can show your people, your employees, how they're making someone's life a lot better, especially in a pinch. I mean, boy, there's no time when you're in more crisis than when you have a plumbing emergency, right? If you can help your tech who goes out to work with a customer to see how they just took someone's day from extreme stress and chaos to one where they feel like they have a solution and end insight and they feel a lot better about their day and they know what the problem was and they can move on. Boy, that's a powerful contribution.

You see that in service industry. You see it in retail where if someone walks in and they're really wound up and upset and you can even get them back to neutral, getting that person to neutral is a much bigger victory than we often consider, and it's easy to take that for granted. We had someone at one of our events. It was an open Q&A time at our Master Series event, and she got up to a microphone, and I've thought about this question a lot because I've thought to myself, I don't know how I would answer this question.

And she was asking a panel, and she said, here's the deal. I believe everything you're saying about purpose, about rallying the team around pursuing a big vision and around getting everyone bought in and engaged to serving other people. And she's like, here's the deal. We clean septic tanks. And she's like, I don't know even where to begin. It sounds like one of the things you're saying to focus on is what would occur if your company didn't exist? Like, what if there's no one there to clean septic tanks? I don't want to live in that world. I mean, is that fair to say that that's kind of the approach that you're taking? It's a great point. Back when I worked at Gallup, one of the best customer engagement questions,

Gallup ever asked is, I can't imagine a world without X, right? Company X. And I mean, yeah, I can't imagine a world without someone to clean a septic tank. I can't imagine a world without someone to fix a plumbing emergency. And you've got to help your employees to connect back with the difference that makes really on a daily basis. It's not unlike our financial decisions or the choices we make about our diet where it's really those small things we do each day that add up. And we have to help people to see the accumulation of those moments where they add a little bit of positive influence to another person's life. And, you know, even in I mentioned my case where I have these extreme health challenges and that's shaped who I am in many ways, it's really the things I do

throughout the day. And I mentioned that question from Dr. King about life's most persistent, and urgent question being, what are you doing for others? And that may sound like one of those grand existential questions. I've tried to ask myself that question every day before I start my work. I think it's a really good daily focusing question to say, what are you going to do today that makes a difference for others and grows in your absence each day? And when I ask myself that question, I'm less concerned about getting to inbox zero. And I'm more concerned about having a meaningful conversation with someone I care about or writing something that someone might be able to read a week from now. Can you give us that question once more because I want to be able to write that down for myself? But I want other people to be able to do this too and put it on our computer or put it on our phone.

So give us the question one more time. Yeah, the exact words of Dr. King, I believe, were life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others? And I think that's just a good anchoring point for a meaningful day, let's say. And I love that too, because it's like, it's a question you can actually ask. And that's what you've done, Tom. You've said, I'm not just going to read that as a nice quote that I can put in my book. I'm actually going to ask myself that question, and I'm going to let the answer affect my actions.

I think that sets this up perfectly. I want to dive into some of the unique contributions that you lay out people can make in their everyday walk. And specifically, I pulled out a couple that I really want to focus on because I think that they are directly related to the work a business owner does every single day. So the first one, I thought was a unique one because it's that topic of challenging. And a lot of times when I think of challenging, like when I think of either arguing a point or pushing back on something, I don't always think about that as contribution. So explain to us why challenging is a contribution. Yeah, you know, that's a fun one for me because of all the things I didn't value early on in my career and I do now, I put that challenging at the top where I've realized. through experience and working with a lot of leaders and leadership teams in particular, that when I see leaders who have yes men and yes women around them who agree with almost everything they say and they have similar personalities and the like, that's almost a certain recipe for group think and a lack of

growth and a lack of success and a lack of productivity over time. In contrast, when I see leaders who have the confidence to put people around them who are even smarter, and better than they could be on certain topics and who can effectively challenge their thinking in areas where those people are stronger and have more experience. Those are the teams that are set up for success and growth and scale down the road and into the future. So one of the things I think we need anytime we get a team together is someone needs to put their hand up and say, I'm going to be the one who challenges us to say, are we doing the right things? Do we have the right techniques and processes to make sure we're doing things at a level of quality. Are we asking the

right questions? And of all the best work relationships I've had over the last 20 years, my best friend at work is someone who challenges me almost every day. And in the process of learning to embrace that, I've learned to love it when someone proves me wrong because it means I'm being open-minded. It means I'm learning something new and I'm challenging my own status quo on a daily basis. There's so much content out there today about the adverse effects of surrounding yourself with negative people. And I know that that's not what you're talking about, but it seems like it can be this tough line to walk in that, okay, I want to surround myself with people that challenge me. But then so often when someone challenges a leader, the leader's just like, you just have a negative attitude. You just focus on the problems and not the solutions.

So how do you identify whether someone is challenging in a positive, helpful, constructive way versus just being a negative personality in the meeting that isn't actually helpful? You know, that's a great distinction. I think someone should write an entire book on the delineation between those two because there are people who are just naysayers and more chronically negative for a lot of different reasons. And then there are people who are smart about challenging assumptions and being catalysts. for new innovations and change and the like. And I think it's really important to delineate between the two because if you have someone

around you who no matter what's going on or what ideas you or others are bringing up, they're constantly telling you that things are wrong and pointing out what's not working. Over time, that can be an extraordinary impediment to growth. And it takes a lot to counterbalance someone who's doing that with kind of ongoing negativity. So I think a leader has to be the one on a team who says, I'm going to make sure that people feel like they have the freedom to challenge when they know it's the right thing to do and to do that smartly and wisely in doses. But at the same time, the leader has to protect the rest of the group from people who are consistently bringing it down with more perpetual negativity and delineate between those two. It's a great point.

As I was reading this section, I thought about, and I think many people could relate to this, the best. coaches and teachers and pastors and leaders in my life are the people that pushed me just a little bit beyond my comfort zone or sometimes a lot beyond my comfort zone. But they also knew, okay, I'm willing for you to experience a little bit of pain right now. And this is going to hurt a little bit, but I'm not going to harm you. Like, I'm not going to push you too far. And they had a really good way to monitor that dial. And it seems like a lot of business owners want to have that impact on people. Like I want to push people so that they reach their potential, but I want to make sure I don't harm them.

And in doing so, I want to challenge them. So what would your advice be to that person to make sure that they're leveraging that contribution in the proper way? Yeah, you know, one of the things I realized is I started to put together this profile of contributions for people is that we don't spend enough time thinking about the experiences that we expose people to. And so as a part of this inventory, we ask people about their mind. or most influential life experiences. And when people talk about those life experiences, half the time those are real challenging experiences, to your point. And it's here's where I faced a major challenge

and someone held me out over the fire. And I didn't think I would resonate with me. I didn't think I'd succeed, but I did. And here's why. And I think as leaders, we need to think very deliberately about how do we challenge people and give them unique life experiences that may put.

them in a new direction because in so many cases we get caught in this comfort zone and we don't try out these new challenging life experiences and much like the focus on contribution and focus on others I think has been under explored out there today I think giving people unique experiences to try we haven't done anywhere near enough in that regard either and even we see sometimes that if you give someone a little bit more responsibility than they're currently capable of like it might put the business owner a little bit out of their comfort zone. It may put the person a little bit out of their comfort zone. But a lot of times when people's back is against the wall, people are surprised what can actually get done. It sounds like that's what you're talking about.

Yeah. One of the things, one of my best learnings personally over the span of my career was in grade school, I was really into numbers and computers and like. I had an English teacher tell me that I should never try writing and I should stick with math because my writing was so bad. So I was scared to share any writing with a public audience as I entered the work world. And, you know, because of some extraordinary circumstances, my grandfather asked me when he was in his final months of life if I'd help him to put a book together. And he challenged me to do it in the next two months because he knew his time was really limited. And he asked me to do that because I'd written him a real personal letter about all the influence he'd had on my life. And he said,

you know, I've noticed a talent in here for bringing things to life with words. And I'd like you to help me bring these stories to life and share your story. So I was uncomfortable to even share that letter with him, but he said he spotted a talent and he gave me a very specific challenge. And we worked together frantically over that last year of his life. And that book we put together ended up being the book, How Full Is Your Bucket, that kind of took off and took a life of its own. But I never would have written anything for public consumption if he hadn't challenged me in the moment with that experience. And so, boy, did I learn a lot about a leader and mentor giving somebody a specific challenge and the difference that can make over time. Man. And how many books have you written now,

Tom? This is the 10th. You need to send a really well-written letter to that teacher and just let her know that you've released 10 books now and that you're not just going to stick to math. You're going to get to writing. There you go. Let's jump to the next contribution that I think is absolutely in every leadership conversation that you hear is that topic of visioning. And I think a lot of times leaders feel this pressure and this responsibility for being a visionary. The first question I would ask you, is that a skill that is natural and inborn and it's a way that we're wired or is it a skill that can be developed or is it both? I think it's a little bit of both. People naturally are probably wired to be more idea-oriented, have a little bit more creativity and the like. But what I've found

when it comes to leaders and leadership teams is you need to get the group bought into that process of visioning. So visioning is something that leaders need to shepherd and drive, whether they have a lot of that natural creativity or maybe they're more operational oriented. I've spent time with a lot of business leaders who have kind of moved up through the organization because they were just amazing operators and they were great at execution. They were great at scaling things and the like. And they know that they need to rely on others to bring some of that vision in. So I think the vision can be a part of a team process. And as long as a leader is engaged on the topic, frankly, I admire greatly leaders who know that they need to bring in more purely

creative types and people who are better teachers in certain situations in order to help the organization do a better process of visioning. So it sounds like what you're saying is you are responsible for making sure the organization has vision, but that vision doesn't necessarily have to come from you. It's just you've got to get the right people in the room to help you. Yeah. And, you know, in a lot of cases, as an organization grows and gets bigger, if the leader thinks they're the only one that's going to come up with good ideas, the organization's already

sunk anyhow because I think you have to have that openness to say, I need good ideas. is to come from pockets throughout the organization where people know the most about what customers need and our current challenges. And if a leader's stifling that by saying, I'm the only one with the creativity and big ideas, I don't think an organization can grow that much over time. If someone is naturally gifted in this arena and they would say, like, I'm an idea guy. Like, I am very creative. I come up with a new business plan every time I get on the treadmill or take a shower or get in the truck and I'm never lacking for ideas, how do they, focus on honing and properly expressing that strength? Yeah, you know, there's a whole

another stage to it where a lot of people who do have those good ideas and their idea people, they need to have people around them who can kind of catch that vision and help to translate it, both in terms of the implications for what people need to do and how they can help to influence using that. So how do we reach more people doing this? How do we make sure this idea can execute? How do we make sure we're doing it at the right quality levels. And that's why one of the things when I was trying to work around kind of how to start a bigger conversation and build a science around contribution, there are certain boxes that teams essentially need to check to make sure that those ideas can make it to market and execute and continue to grow smoothly over time.

I think that relates to the idea. We say that a lot of times entrepreneurs have squirrel syndrome where it's like every time they see something new, they run after and they're squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. And I think there's probably a lot of people laughing right now saying, that is totally me. So what would be your advice to that person that can be a great strength of theirs, but it can also be a tremendous advice because people can't follow every squirrel that you see? Yeah, you know, one of the books I worked on 10 years ago is called Strength-Based Leadership. And we went out and asked followers what they need.

And there's been so many books on leaders. I wanted to write the book about what do followers want and need from leaders. And if I'm remembering this correctly, it's been about more than a decade now. The four things when we ask 10,000 followers open-ended, what do they need? It was trust, compassion, hope, and the fourth was stability. And the stability piece is important because what we heard from followers is, yeah, we want leaders to give us hope for the future and all that stuff you hear about. But if the leader is essentially pulling the rug out from underneath us and changing it based

on the shiny object they're chasing, there's no way that we can continue to function and have the psychological stability and continue to move forward and scale and make sure that nobody drops the ball in different places over time. And so I think it's becoming on leaders and their teams to think about how do we make sure the entire organization has some things that they can count on and they know what they're supposed to do and things aren't just changing to change on them on a weekly, monthly basis when they show up at work. But the four things you're saying, team members and employees are looking for in leadership are trust, compassion, hope, and stability.

Is that correct? Yes. Those were the four needs of followers in their own words when we asked back then. Wow. That's pretty remarkable. I need to start focusing on stability a little bit more. I need to stop changing direction every five minutes. It's the one leaders often miss because they're not thinking about that as a part of

their responsibility. but if you ask their followers, their followers say they need to do it. The next one is kind of the step that follows vision and that's scaling. And so we often run into leaders that the core question that they are trying to answer is I've built this business. Now, how do I scale this business beyond myself? So how do you come at this contribution in terms of how it is expressed in the marketplace, Tom? Yeah, that's where my one hope from this kind of book and body of work and the website profile that's a part of the book is that people will use it, not just individually, but they'll use it in a team setting to say, how do we all sit around a team and say, here are these 12 contributions that most teams need to make in one way or another? And then someone on the team, whether that's what they're naturally good at or not, or someone needs to stretch a little bit out of their comfort zone into a new experience.

to the earlier part of our conversation, someone on that team needs to say, I'm going to take responsibility for making sure that what we do is scalable over time so we can continue to reach more people with the things that we're passionate about and how we as a team want to contribute to the world. And I think early on in a business, early on in a team launching a new product, we often don't take the time to think through how things can execute scalably over time. And as a product, maybe we don't even invite the right person to join the team that we will end up knowing that we need three months down the road. And what I found is that if leaders can ask those questions earlier on in the process, it usually makes things a lot smoother and more scalable three, six months into the initiative. So you're truly kind of giving someone in the room.

If it's not you, you're giving someone in the room the authority and the ability to look through the lens of scale. scalability and any time that it's not matching up with something that's scalable, it kind of raise that flag and say, how do we make this scalable? Exactly. And, you know, there are some teams I'm on where I get to spend all my time in the creative areas hiding out where I'd like to and doing the things that I'd opt into right away. But there are a couple teams I'm on right now where I've been the one that has to say, I'm going to take the responsibility on this team to say, scaling is my department and

I'll work with the groups to figure out how we make that happen, even though it's a little ways out of my comfort zone. But the good thing is all five of us on one of the teams where I'm doing that, we know that we can come back six months from now. And if we're not reaching any scale, everyone can point to Tom and say, he's the one that put his hand up and said he was going to do that. And they're back to where we started, that ensures that we at least have clear expectations from the outset. Whenever the organization is in a very scrappy stage and maybe even don't have a ton of specialists on the team at that point. You have a bunch of generalists that they do a bunch of things. And everyone is kind of chief everything officer. And if we need to pick up trash, we'll pick up trash.

If we need to launch a Facebook ad, we'll do that. And we'll also lead the leadership meeting. And you've got that across the organization. How do you simultaneously deal with that reality while also empowering people to bring their highest and greatest contribution to work as a leader? Yeah, that's where, you know, what I did was I went back and looked at because essentially we haven't been spending enough time looking at the demand side of the equation in the market of what the world needs and what communities need, I went back and looked at thousands of Bureau and Labor Statistics job categories. And I asked myself, what is it that people actually do in our society that they get paid for and that are valued by others? And from that, I narrowed down to about 50 job descriptions,

and that's where those contributions we've been talking about are derived from. But our team went another step further and said, well, are there a few things that every team essentially has to do just to survive as a team? And from that, we narrowed down to three basic functions. And a team basically needs to create something. So you need a product or service. A team needs to relate to one another. You have to have relationships or nothing really grows. And you have to operate and get stuff done on an ongoing basis. So even at the most basic level, I would argue, teams need to do those three things and someone needs to put their hand up and be responsible for making sure that you have a product or service, you have a few relationships with your own team with customers, and that you're

operating and getting stuff done regularly. And if you don't have those three things on your radar screen of create and relate and operate every day, the team is not going to be growing in a given week or month or year. What is one specific action you? What is one specific action you? would recommend business owners take to start creating a culture of contribution in the organization where it's not just them that starts to focus on this, but they get their team involved in that line of thought as well. Every leader should think of themselves starting today as the chief contribution officer, and their job throughout the day is to identify where people are making unique contributions and to call it out and to recognize it. Because there's really no shortage of people

in any organization making awesome contributions today. But there's a huge gap and shortage of people who are not realizing and recognizing how they're making a contribution to another's life today. And if a leader can walk around and identify where people are doing things that are really important that they haven't seen and they haven't realized, that may be one of the most powerful things that you can do as a mentor, as a coach, as a teacher, as a manager, as a leader over the next 10, 25 years, because we get so caught up in all the stuff flying at us that if one person in the workplace stops us during the day and says, hey, I noticed you doing X, and I saw the difference that made for a customer or someone we serve in our organization, that just changes the entire

trajectory of that person's day. It shows them what's valued, and it motivates them to do good work maybe for weeks or months at a time. There you go. That's a clear action item. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to ask all of you that are listening right now. What he just told you is I want you to find someone in your organization that you work with who's making a unique contribution and call it out. So write him a letter, shout them out verbally, shout them out in front of your team, but then I want you to tell us how you did it on social media. So come find us on social media at Entree Leadership and let us know how you took action on Tom's advice. Tom. Tom, A lot of what you're describing right now, I think people will agree with it.

I think they'll say absolutely that's something I want to do. It's something I need to do. That's an opportunity for us to grow as an organization is focused more on how we are better serving the people outside of this place by bringing our unique contribution in this place. My question for you to close out today is why is all of it worth it? You know, I've spent 20 years studying the relationship between employees and their workplaces, and on average right now, most people are not better off in terms of their health and well-being because the organizations they're a part of. But I think the big opportunity in that is that organizations in our society day businesses are probably the most powerful social networks that can be rallied and catalyzed for, positive social change. And so if you were to ask me, how can we create the greatest amount of social well-being around the world? I think it's by helping people lead better lives through the

organizations that they're a part of today. And so I think anything that business owners and leaders can do to demonstrably show people how their lives can be better off because of the organizations they're a part of today, I can't imagine a more profound contribution to society. We always say that when a leader chooses to get better, everybody wins. And I think that is kind of a theme that's woven throughout your entire message. Tom, we're so grateful for the thought that you have so clearly put into this subject. We're so thankful for the way you shared it with our audience today. We're rooting for you.

Tell people how they can get in touch with you, how they can fill out the profile, and also how they can get the book. Yeah, you know, they can check out tomrath.org for information on any of the books that we've talked about and Contribify.com is where they can hopefully build that profile that's a more human version of a resume about why they do what they do. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time. We'll see you soon. Thanks so much.

Appreciate it. The topic of contribution is so powerful because it challenges all of us as individuals but also as teams to lift our eyes beyond ourselves, beyond the work that we are doing day to day and really focuses on the difference that we are making. because that's what businesses exist for is to add value to other people. And that connects directly to the action item that he gave to every single leader that listens to this podcast to find someone in your organization that is making a unique contribution and to call that contribution out. So we want to challenge you to do that, to recognize it, and then let us know the outcomes of that on social media at Entree leadership. Also, one of the things that was prevalent throughout that conversation was the ability of great leaders to tie individual roles and responsibilities to a greater purpose.

That's why we have a mission statement here at Ramsey's Solutions so that we all know that regardless of where we sit in this 900-person company, why we do what we do. And so if you don't have a mission statement as an organization, that has got to be an A1 priority for you as a leader. and that's why our team created a resource that we called the mission statement mapper. It's a free PDF that will walk you through some of the core questions that we know are necessary for you to identify your why. So if you want to download this free resource, just text the word mission to 33444. Again, that's the word mission to 33444 or just click the link that's in the show notes. 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 is 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.