EntreLeadership - Game-Changing Leadership Advice From the Working Genius Patrick Lencioni

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Today we’ll hear about: Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius Assessment and how he used Dave Ramsey as a guinea pig when developing the assessment A leader who’s asking how to handle entitlement with their team around compensation and time off A business owner who fires 50% of the people he hires doesn’t know how to make his hiring process better Organizational health and the pure gold leadership insights that Dave and Patrick provide  Next Steps 📘 The 6 Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni:  https://amzn.to/4aaMMrG ⚙️ Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius Assessment and other books: https://bit.ly/TableGroupStore 🗳️ Submit your question for a chance to be on the show with Dave Ramsey: https://bit.ly/3HUgAgi 👣 Find out what Stage of Business You’re In:  https://ter.li/axd39b ✉️ Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://ter.li/y8qdo7   🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit: https://ter.li/fcazl2   🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series: https://ter.li/wcjhpu ☎️ Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: https://ter.li/ycznhl 💵 Learn more about Ramsey SmartDollar: https://ter.li/4imot0   🗳️ Help us make the show better! Please fill out the quick survey form. https://bit.ly/3O8fRvh   Offers from Today's Sponsors NetSuite: https://ter.li/x1t20q BELAY:  https://ter.li/yohiu6 Payority:  https://ter.li/fh2oau Trainual:  https://ter.li/a8zexl Listen to more from Ramsey Network 🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 💼 The Ken Coleman Show Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy https://www.ramseysolutions.com/compa… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where I take calls from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. I've been doing this crap for 35 years. That means I've been in the trenches shoveling and I know what it looks like, know what it feels like, and I've got the calluses to prove it. We're here to help real people with real business questions. If you want to think tank, go somewhere else.

This is real for small business folks. One of the beautiful things about being me these days is that I have gotten to not only meet, but have become good friends with other people that are geniuses in this leadership stuff. And one of my good buddies has stopped by to hang out with us. He's going to be with us at the Entree Leadership Summit in a few weeks. And we're going to have him to stop by here in the studio. He's going to eventually be my neighbor out here, I guess. And in the meantime, we get to hang out.

His name is Pat Lynchione. He is one of the founders of the table group. He's authored 13 different books. Eight million copies translated into more than 30 languages. As the president of the table group, he spends time speaking and writing about leadership, teamwork, organizational health, and consulting with executives. We started speaking together in leadership settings and been coming to Entree leadership for many years. And gosh, I'm trying to remember.

It's 15 years. I guess we've been friends. That sounds about right. It's gone by fast, though. Yeah, it has been. So his book, Pat's book, Ideal Team Player, Hungry, Humble, and Smart, became a whole key part of our hiring process here. We've recommended it to you guys over and over.

You've heard me do it on the podcast. You've heard me do it from stage. His book, The Advantage, talking about the advantage of an organization that has good organizational mental health can do conflict well, has a distinct advantage that talent, hard work, creativity cannot overcome. You will win if you. you have that advantage in the market. Those are two of the great books.

The latest book, The Motive, is absolutely incredible. Love The Motive. Very, very good book. And the work you're doing right now and I've done a bunch of on, and we've been talking about it, I guess, for you and I have been talking about it for three years. I don't know how much, how long you've been talking about in the public eye. The, this idea, the six types of the working genius, this book, this material, this assessment, a better way to understand your gifts, your frustrations and your team.

you're having a lot of fun with this. I think I never knew I would be having so much fun after all the years I've been doing this. This is like a whole new, I feel like I work at a startup again, and this is the biggest thing we've ever done. Five Disfunctions of a team is the book that sold the most and everything, but when this came out, Cody, one of my coworkers said,

this will be bigger than that, and it's proven to be. I've taken two of our leadership teams back through, and Daniel, my son, who's the president, took a couple of our leadership teams back through five dysfunctions just recently, we realized we were violating some of it, and we just said, okay, we got to reset, rebuild the trust, rebuild the cohesiveness in the room, and five dysfunctions, it's become, you know, it's a bellwether in the industry. Most people out there running businesses, no five

disfunctions by now, or silos. You know, you coined the term, I guess. I don't know if I heard it before that, but, I mean, we've kicked a lot of silos down around here over the years, and part of it using the vernacular from that book. But this working genius stuff, I just have seen you light up when you're talking about. You're having a lot of fun with it. I am because, you know, part of it is just because it has explained things to me about my life and my work that I'd been carrying around in a bad way for 30 years, Dave. I mean, it explained why I failed at my first job in a way I never understood. It explained why I hated mowing the lawn with my dad as a kid and I felt guilty for that and I shouldn't. You know, when I heard you talk about it

from stage the first time and I got the whole picture and I was going through the assessment which we'll talk about in a minute. I remember thinking about the old Jim Collin stuff from good to great. This helps you get on the right bus and helps you get on the right seat on the right bus. And that is vital. That's why you lost the first job. It's why I got fired from one of my jobs early in my life.

And I still don't know why, except that I was in the wrong seat and I probably needed to be fired. Yeah, you know, it's funny. The humble, hungry, smart that you talked about, that's to let somebody inside the building, they better be that. But sometimes they're humble, hungry, and smart, or they fit the core values,

they belong at the company, but they're just in the wrong seat. And like, one of the first people that used this stuff was the CEO of a company who was going to fire his head of sales. And it was this woman who was a cultural fit. She had been making her numbers for years. He loved her.

Her customers loved her. Her sales staff loved her, but he had to revise the sales strategy, and he said, you've got to figure this out, and she couldn't figure it out. And he was, I was about to let her go. and they did working genius, and he said, oh my gosh, she doesn't have the geniuses to do that,

but she has other geniuses. And as a result, they borrowed somebody from another department. He came in, helped them figure out the sales strategy. And he said, I was about to fire one of my best performers because she didn't have some skills. And I thought maybe that meant she didn't belong here anymore. I mean, he was like mortified that he almost made that mistake. Yeah.

So understanding these blind spots on a team are a competency issue, it really can turn loose a whole organization. You know, we see this happening. The stories, Dave, that we're hearing about companies that are seeing there, and this is real, this is not theoretical, they're seeing their productivity go up by exponentially, only because they're finally realizing why some people thrive in certain situations.

So we had a team, this lighting company, and it was a pretty big company. It wasn't like a massive company, but it wasn't just a couple people. They had probably 100 employees. and they were pumping out six new ideas a year. That's it. And they had three teams that were working on new products.

And they never understood why they didn't work well together and why things took so long. The leaders of these three different teams got together and did working genius and realized they were all completely different. One was really good at new ideas. One was good at activating things and one was good at implementing things.

But they were working separately. So they eliminated the three departments, brought them all together, changed the way they worked based on getting this stuff done. They went from six ideas a year to six a month. And that's not like a theoretical thing or anything touchy-feely. They said, we are putting out more products in less time in ways we could never imagine,

all because we didn't understand why we needed each other and we needed to rethink the way we worked based on our working geniuses. Well, we've all seen the benefit in a completely different way, but in the same way, of taking some sort of taking something like disk and just the benefit of knowing yourself or strength finders or Myers-Briggs all these different things you guys have used Myers-Briggs a lot at the table group we've been more disc over at ramsie but either way it doesn't matter but this is different in that this is how it's not a personality

evaluation it's how work gets done exactly and we love all those tools I was a junkie for those things too but what we didn't like I'm an ENFP in Myers-Briggs and I'm an ID in the in the disc I know my stuff on those, but it didn't say what kind of job I should do. Even as the CEO, like, what's the kind of work I'm best suited to as CEO? And when we came up with working genius, not because we thought the world needed another tool, but we were trying to figure out why I was grumpy. I mean, I was coming to work getting grumpy a lot. Well, we need an assessment for that.

There you go. And that's where this came from. Somebody said, why are you grumpy? And I said, I don't know, I love this company. I love everybody I work with, but sometimes I come in here and at noon, I'm kind of complaining. And it was because I was doing stuff that I wasn't meant to do. And so I realized that

And I said, gee, when I'm doing these other two things, I'm on fire. And it's good for the company. And there's other people that are better than me at this. If I gave him that job, his productivity's going through the roof. If I'm not doing it all the time, my productivity's going through the roof.

We reorganized our company. And things just have exploded. So there's six working geniuses. Yes. Which one? They're all required, by the way. If you're building a new house, planning a family vacation,

launching a company, releasing a new product, any kind of work requires all six. Okay. And so the first one is up at 50,000 feet, and it's called the genius of wonder, and this is a person, and this is one of your least favorite things to do.

And it's not one of my favorite either, but it's required. And that somebody has to sit around and stare at the sky and go, maybe things could be better. I don't know. I think something might be missing. And you ask them what?

And they go, I don't know. But I just, they ask the big question. This whole tool came about, because Amy, this woman at work with me, said, why are you grumpy? And I said, I don't know. She goes, I don't know either, but I'm curious. Somebody asks the question, maybe we should do this. The second one is what?

Invention. That's the person who hears that question that says, I want to figure out an answer. Give me a whiteboard and a pen, and I'll come up with something new. I love that. I live to do that. Yeah, you are. For sure. That's you.

No question. The third one is? The third one is one that you and I share, and that's called discernment. And that is instinct, intuition, gut, feel. integrative thinking. It's not magic. It's being able to look at a problem, and this is what you do every day on the radio,

and it's so dang fun to listen to. And somebody tells you a few details, and you can see the pattern, and you go, I think this is the answer. And usually you're right, and other people can't do that. It's integrative thinking. It's like looking at things in a different way,

and it looks like it's magic. It's like your gut feel, your instinct. It's just you can take a bunch of variables and make sense of them very quickly, and it's just good judgment. or a fourth one? Fourth one is one I was doing all the time, which I don't like to do all the time.

You and I both can do it, but if you'd have to do it every day, and that's galvanizing, that's pushing people out of their comfort zone constantly, not on the radio, not in a speech, but having to walk into somebody's office and saying, you've got to do better, you've got to do better, you got to do better.

What about this? What about this? Come on, guys, I don't want to have to do that. I already told you once to do it. Why do I have to tell you again? And you know, there's some people, Dave, that love to keep reminding people. Yeah.

They're like, oh, I'll do that. Yep, okay. And the fifth one? The fifth one is called enablement, not alcoholism or drugs, because it's the kind of people, and these people are magic on a team. They love to do whatever you ask them to do.

There are people in the world, Dave, you can win, and this is not, you and I both have this as our least. When somebody walks in and says, I need your help, I don't go, yeah, whatever you need, I'll do it the way you want to. I'm like, what do you need? And what do you want me to do?

I'm kind of suspicious. There are other people, Dave, the wake up of the morning, and all you do is you say, hey, I need your help. And they're like, you let me know what, and they're glue on teams. We have them all around us in our organizations.

They're very helpful people. Oh, truly. And it's a genius. It's not just that they're nice. They're good at helping on your terms. The way they're wired. Yep. And the last one.

Tenacity, this is one of years, and this is my lowest. So this is your top and my lowest, Dave. And that is, people with tenacity like to just get things done, cross things off a list, plow through obstacles and just finish. Like you and I are building, you're having a house built and I'm having a house built.

And you're like, I'm on top of that guy, and I know what it's going to cost. and I know when it's going to get done, and here's the thing, and you do that, if you couldn't do that, you'd be very unhappy. Oh, and he would be too. I got none of that, Dave. I would have written none of my books if somebody hadn't made me finish him. Yeah, I'm the to-do list checker.

For sure, no question about project management for me is about completion. Right. So you have discernment and tenacity. Those are your two geniuses. You're called the judicious accomplisher. So you live to accomplish things, but you have really good judgment about what should get done and what shouldn't.

You can cut through the BS and look at things and go, okay, that's what's most important. Here's the way to get there. Get it done. No excuses. And we say judicious, and by the way, I should tell people listening to this, we used you in developing this tool.

Yeah, I was one of the first people to take the test. You are absolutely. We said, who do we know that we know so well that we can give them the assessment? We know what it's probably going to say and we can reverse and see the pattern. make sure that it's right. Right.

You know what? People like you have in common, and we know a lot of these people, when we say judicious, it means they have good judgment, and they told us this, this wasn't you. Another person like this said,

and they can be a little bit judgmental when people are slacking. Oh, sure. Yeah, they're like, I have no patience for that. Definitely. And that's D.T. My son, Connor, is a D.T, and it's the same thing.

And you see these commonalities and people go, yeah, that's totally me. Wow. The project, the book, the assessment is called working genius. I was one of the original lab rats. You were? And proud of it. I don't know what noise a lab rat makes, but cue the lab rat noise right now. And I was that guy and proud of it. And ever since then, Ramsey has been plugged into Working Genius. And Pat's presented this to

Entry Leadership Summit a couple of different times. And you'll be talking about this and other things coming up at the next Entry Leadership Summit. And is always a guest around here. So Pat Linchione, my guest here, I don't do a lot of guests on the Entree podcast anymore. Most of the time you guys are the guests. Matter of fact, we'll just jump in and take a couple of calls after the break. If you want to be a caller on this show at any time, go ahead and call us at 844-944-1070 or go to Entreeleadership.com slash ask and leave us a voicemail. Pat Lenzioni, the famous author, speaker, and the inventor, there we go, of Working Genius,

the assessment. So we'll talk about more about that and take your calls. Pat and I both together here in just a moment on the Entree Leadership Podcast. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. This is the show that honors leaders, particularly small business leaders. 54% of Americans of America's goods and services, the gross domestic product, are created by businesses that have 500 or less employees. Small business is the backbone mathematically. of the American economy. You are the backbone. I know Washington peas on you all the time, but that just means you're good. So you guys keep it up. We're here to fight for you. We're in your corner. You deserve to win. We'd love to have you on the show. The phone number is 844-9-44-1070 if you want to be a

caller. Pat Lynchione is one of my guests, or is my guest this day on the Entree podcast. And I don't have many guests, but Pat and I've been friends a long time. He's got a lot to say. Pat, let's take some calls. Let's go to Tracy in Georgia. Pat, Tracy, what's your question for Pat and me? Hey, Dave, Pat. Thanks for taking my call today. Again, I'm Tracy. I'm from Southwest Georgia, and I'm the founder and owner of several healthcare businesses.

And we have approximately 125 employees that have to which report directly to me. And my question today is around entitlement. So we work hard to gain the buy-in of our team to be inclusive. but how do you manage that if you start to see some of the entitlement behaviors that often occur with that? Give me an example. Well, so we're a small organization. We've been together for a very long time. Sometimes, especially as I see it mostly around compensation and developing compensation packages.

We want it to be inclusive. We want it to be incentive-driven. We want to be able to share our profit. And sometimes they have a tendency to advocate for themselves, especially on the compensation side, more than, you know, what we as seeing the bigger picture can a lot for. Okay. So one of my answers to people that do that kind of stuff is your raise is effective when you are.

And so, you know, people get paid for the revenue they produce or the expenses they help us avoid. they get paid what it costs to replace them. And so if you've got someone that's doing a certain job and you can replace them for that amount, that's the market value of that position. Anything that they get above that is due to their personal production or it's due to your generosity and your bonus program

or something like that. And you can't, you can create a culture where incentive is rewarded, but you can't create a culture that no one ever gripes. That never happens. So, I mean, what I wouldn't do is I wouldn't tolerate it en masse. I would have some individual discussions behind closed doors on something like that. But I'm not sure exactly what you're struggling with. But that's a couple comments.

What are you thinking? Well, one thing I, because I run a small business too, although yours is bigger than mine. I mean, I have a small consulting firm, but people adjust to their wages going up or their compensation going up very quickly. And they start to go, okay, that's my new baseline. And sometimes they need to be reminded of what they have. And as a leader, I don't like to do that

because, boy, I love to be generous and I love to tell people when they're doing a great job. And the last thing I want to do is have to tell a strong performer that they're actually well paid. And yet that's my job, because otherwise I might be creating that entitlement. And let me tell you, I am, Tracy, I'm an entitlement creator.

The people that work with me know, like, Pat, it's your own fault because you reward people well, and then they get used to it. Yeah. One of the things we did Tracy early in our company is we decided we were going to pay people relatively low base salaries and pay them handsomely in terms of bonuses. And their total compensation always exceeded what they would have gotten someplace else. But from the very beginning, we said we want you to live as though this is what you're making. and we want you to be happy and surprised.

But I will tell you something, that doesn't work anymore for me. We've realized that oftentimes people will look at whatever metric, like my base salary or something like that, and they'll compare whatever metric doesn't work out well for them. And then they'll come and say, well, I need my base salary raised. And so I have to keep going back and saying, well, let's look at your total compensation. Let's look at the non-monetary parts of your compensation

about the flexibility you have and the other things you can do. And I always felt bad like I was having to be defensive, but that's actually in their best interest so they can go home and say to their spouse, actually, honey, I'm really well paid and I just didn't realize it. Right, I'm glad to hear you say that because that is a struggle.

You do feel like you're on the defense when they're coming to you and they don't feel like they've been rewarded appropriately. It automatically puts you on that defense. And we're in South Georgia. The compensation here is sometimes much lower than the rest of the state of Georgia. and so we work really, really hard to be competitive with our packaging.

And I hear you say that reminding is not a bad thing. Not at all. And you know, I don't know about you, Tracy, but if you're a humble human being, the last thing you'd ever want to be accused of is being cheap. Like when I go out to dinner with people, I'm like, I'm going to pay more than my fair share. I just might want to pay the whole thing just because I don't want anybody to ever think I'm being cheap. Okay, Dave, I'm going out to dinner with Dave tonight.

But I never use that with Dave Ramsey because that would be a bad financial decision. But so the thing is when somebody comes to you and they said, I think I might be underpaid. Right away I kick into, oh no, they might think I'm taking advantage of them or I'm lying my own pockets at their expense. And all of my defense mechanisms go up. And what we need to do is go, no, no, no, wait a second. We know our intention isn't that.

Let's go back and take an honest look at this and then sit down and remind them. Yeah, so Tracy, there's two or three things there that come up. Number one, if it is exposing, an attitude of I am here for what I can get rather than I'm here for what I can add if it's exposing that attitude the conversation at Ramsey will be pretty short because that's just your opportunity to leave

because it's you know we're exposing I'm here for what I can take but if instead the person is coming and saying hey help me understand this because I feel like I'm trying, I feel like I'm trying to do all the right stuff and I feel like I'm not being paid right. Okay, let's check on that. Yeah, and if you come out of it with that attitude,

I'll work with anybody from now on, and I'm not mean. But if there's a level of, I guess, belligerence, or passive-aggressive belligerence in the questioning, then now you're starting to almost question our honor, our intent, or our integrity, and we're kind of done talking at that point. point. It's pretty well over because all we're doing now is just finishing up the relationship. You're done. So I'm not saying I fire someone for questioning their comp. I would fire someone

for how they question their comp because it reveals where their head is. And sometimes if there's entitlement, that's come to mean that I am God's gift to you people and you haven't realized it. That's entitlement. And we don't have much time. for that around here. You know, it's funny, Tracy, Dave and I were talking earlier about humble, hungry, and smart. It's something I wrote about in the book called the ideal team player. And if a person is humble, they don't come in there thinking that's entitlement to, and hungry, like, man, I want to work really hard. And they're emotionally intelligent and they're going to come in and ask in the right way. Heck, that makes me want to go like, hey, I want to figure this out with you

because I want you to feel good about what you're compensated. And I want to feel good that I'm being fair to you. Yeah, and we'll do, you know, let's do a comp, let's do a comp study on your, on your area. Okay, you're a developer, you're a dev three. Let's make sure we're paying our dev three's all right. You might be revealing to us that, you know, we're getting ready to have a bunch of turnover because we're underpaying the whole batch. And we've got to look at this.

So thank you. But let's look at that. But then we go, okay, the average pay for this position is why. And that's, you know, we're right about there. And so, you know, anything you get above that with bonuses and with profit sharing is called gravy. It's called gravy on the biscuit, baby. So, you know, eat the biscuit and be quiet.

Let's go on. Let's get our work done. But, you know, so how you ask it, if you come to me, the level of entitlement it reveals would matter. And then, because I don't hear you trying to be cheap with them, Tracy, but I hear you saying that occasionally you're running into one that no matter what you do, it's not good enough. That's right. Yeah. And if no matter what you do, it's not good. enough, then that really just means they're done.

That's great. That's great. Bound goodbye. And the last thing I would want to say is that, so I love what Dave said, how are they asking and why are they asking? And if they're genuinely not sure, then you can welcome that question. You should not feel guilty, though, that you have to be defensive. No, I'm not going to be defensive. And you can go, hey, this is great. Maybe you're going to point something out. But if they don't point something out, and you say, hey, so I feel better than ever, I'm paying you the right amount. And if they're not happy with that, then you know that. But I have used the story on stage and I've used it, I think, of the Entry Leadership book even,

I did really have a guy walk into my office many years ago. I mean, we were probably a couple hundred people at that point. And he said, well, I've got this degree and this degree and this degree. He had more degrees than a thermometer. I mean, he was a well-degraded guy. And he said, guys that have degrees like I have make a lot more money than I'm making here. And I said, well, that's because you work for a small business. and he said what do you mean i said well a small business you're raised is effective when you are

when you use all of that knowledge to bring revenue in here you will share we will share it with you as long as you're strut in the hallway throwing your sheepskins around getting no work done then you're not ever going to win here because this is not a bureaucracy we're not a fortune 500 company and we don't really respect degrees or pedigrees we respect results because that's what small business is dependent upon we got to make payroll Friday baby and you're part of that. And so, yeah, I mean, you drag it, you kill it, drag it home, we'll share it with you. That's right. Meritocracy, and it's about contribution. Yeah, not a bureaucracy. And, you know, and there's nothing unfair or wrong about that or mean about that or greedy about that.

There is a lot wrong with demanding pay based on, you know, my years of service. Well, if your years of service are serving, then you're going to get rewarded because you're going to be creating value for the organization. But if you're years of service, you're going to be creating value for the organization. but if you're years of service or you continue to show up and use some of our air Yeah and let's just say Tracy let's just say there's a person that's complaining like this and they are and they really aren't doing it for the right reason

More often than not that person leaves and the morale of the rest of the team goes up Because they realize that person's all in it for themselves Now I'm not saying the person asking you Because what you don't want to do is misunderstand If they're coming to you with good intentions, honor them, love them to help them figure it out. For sure.

But if they're not and you feel like, oh, I know they're just being kind of selfish, but I don't want to lose them. No, take the risk of losing them because the rest of the team will probably do more. For sure. That's exactly right. My guest today and taking some calls with him is the one and only Pat Linsioni, author of 13 different books, about 10 million of them in copy. This bio is old.

I think you've sold more than that. I don't even know. That would be you. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. All right, guys, this is Entry Leadership Summit. It is a month away. If you haven't gotten your live stream pass yet, you're almost out of time. Get your phone out right now.

Go to ontraryleadership.com slash live stream to reserve your spot. Today, you'll tune in with over 3,000 other leaders from across the globe and hear world-class speakers like my guest today. The one-and-only Pat Linschioni. New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits. James Clear, the one-and-only coach Kay, Ney Smith Memorial Basketball. Hall of Fame. First female F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot, Carrie Lorenz, me, Dave Ramsey, John Deloney, Ken Coleman, and other important people will be there. With one live stream pass, you and your team can stream the whole conference without worrying about the travel expenses

because you can't come to this one. It's sold out. So this is your only way to get it. That's how that works. You got FOMO now. We'll get ready for next year and don't miss your dadgum ticket. Okay. So this time you can watch it on the live stream, though. Don't wait. Go to Entreeleadership.com Live stream, lock in your live stream pass right now. Tom is in Atlanta. Hey, Tom, your question for Pat and me. Why do I end up letting go half of my people? 50%.

They're not team players. They lack technical or human skills. The emotional intelligence that Pat brought up. Also, part of my question is, you know, we look for hungry, humble, and smart, but I can't seem to get the smart part down. They're qualified. I give them a Myers-Brick test.

They score great. a disc test, working genius test. I even got certified as a working genius coach. And I hire these guys, I vet them, we interview them, and then two or three months later, it's like, what have I done? Wow. Well, I want to sit down and spend some time with you to help you figure this one out, Tom.

But I think there might be, I'm going to channel some Dave Ramsey here, and there might just be some inconsistencies about the way you're interviewing people and the way you're managing them. in other words because if you're doing all those things and you're vetting them and good for you

but if that many of them aren't working out I don't think it's the vetting I think it might be the reality of what's happening once they start there but I don't say that glibly I want to help you figure this out so what kind of industry are you in

I'm sorry I'm a custom home builder and remodal okay and how many team members right now I have six. Okay, so you hired like two or three people that didn't work out. Four. Oh, okay. This helps me.

I was amazingly going into the dozens or hundreds. Okay, and the four people were doing construction work or doing office work or what? Office, office work. Okay. Are you in the field with your pickup? A couple of project managers and a couple office people. Okay. Are you in the field with the pickup managing the jobs?

No. You're in the office. In the office. So you got custom. work going on and you have superintendents or project managers on each of those jobs physically and you're not physically on the job? Correct. Okay. And so they get there and they're having relational trouble inside the office because they're not people smart on the hungry humble smart model. Is that what you're describing? They're not they're posers. They're not really

qualified to do what they're doing. And I ask them questions. We take them out in the field. I let them spend time with other project managers. Everyone gives them a thumbs up. But when they get down to business, it's like perplexing. Like, what are you doing? And you're even using the working genius. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

So, yeah, but that's different than you're saying they don't have the skit. So you're hiring a project manager that doesn't know how to manage a project. Yeah, they don't understand construction as well as they let on. I mean, one thing we try to do is we're using, train you'll and I'm getting all of the positions and we're doing all kinds of training videos and those types of things with testing that'll help but it just it just seems like an awful lot to go to here it used to be you could just you know somebody would come in the door they'd someone I've had people that have been referred to me by

you know other trades that I've known for years and they're just I don't know they're just not they're not they're not the speed I'm spending so much time I think trying to vet them on the personal side how quickly are okay a new person starts, how quickly do you turn them loose in the wild without training wheels? Typically, they're with me or with one of the other guys for about six weeks. Are you noticing the problems during those six weeks, or is it after that? No, no, it's after that. It's when they get let go on their own and they start doing. Tom, first let me back up a little and say, since this is a relatively small sample,

you know, applying the percentages like 50% or whatever else. So you've had a hard time hiring a handful of people. and getting them to stick. Yeah, that's all it is. It's not like you're a 50% failure. It's like you screwed up on three. Right. You know, that's different. I agree with Pat on that.

So, because I screw up on three a week. So, I mean, you know, that's just, but we're running with larger numbers. Sure, yeah. Three for me is a lot more. I know, I know. It's a serious problem. It's a problem because it carries so much weight,

percentage-wise, inside your organization, but to indicate that somehow what you're, doing is 50% off. I don't think that's the indication. So I agree with that. So it feels like that when you are walking with them during their training period, you suck. Yeah. It feels like you're not doing a good job, getting them to do the job the way you want

it done. Because we've got like a Ramsey way to do things. So if you come in and do sales and you're a good salesman, that's different than doing sales at Ramsey. And so you're going to walk with one of our salespeople for a little while, and you've got to learn the Ramsey way to make that sale. And it took us a while to get good at that. We sucked at it at first. And so we would have salespeople doing sales five different ways, and we had all these inconsistencies and different kinds of complaints from different kinds of depending on who their rep was. And so, yeah, somebody can function with them in their personality,

but we've got some core tenants on accounting or some core tenants on project management or some core tenants on sales that if you're going to do it the Ramsey way, if we're going to do it the Tom way, you've got to do it this way. And I don't think you're doing a good job of transferring that. Dave, one is the actual processes that we use

to manage the project, record things, you know, change orders, purchase orders. They have able to understand that a week. They do all that stuff great. Yeah, yeah. It's actually the technical knowledge of, you know, this is how a piece of, you know, is supposed to look. We don't leave drywall looking like that. You know, we cover floors.

That's what I'm talking about. You're a custom home builder and you may be hiring somebody in this built, built mass homes and they don't, they're not as hard on quality as you are. You know what's interesting, Tom? So many people who would, oh, I'm sorry, Tom, go ahead. No, no, I didn't hear what you said, Pat. You would, go ahead. Well, so many people would call in and they'd say, I'm hiring these people and their technical skills are so good, but they don't fit on the team and behaviorally. You are so indexed on the behavioral stuff, which is great, but there is a point at which they might not be technically as good as you need. Can I ask you a couple questions, though, Tom?

Sure. What's your working genius? Galvanizer and discerner. Okay, okay. And what is your Myers-Briggs, do you know? It's not good. It's not good. They have that.

I didn't know they had that. There's no such thing. I didn't know they had that. There's no such thing. Okay, well, see, the Myers-Briggs, I use this construction, this company that vets people and gives them a test and that sort of stuff. And I'm looking for, it's all the personality qualities, you know, the blame and honesty and those types of things. And it pretty much gives me the, you know, they're this percentage of a good hire. Tenacity is my working frustration.

So to really get in the weeds, I'm like, I'm the big cheerleader, you know, it's, I get everybody fired up. It's go time and let's do it. Absolutely. Yeah. And then you're shocked that they don't know what quality looks like. That's right. But his tea is down here with mine. So here's the deal, Tom.

I want you to feel good about this. What you just need is somebody close to you that has tea. Because you have good discernment, but you're like, ready to go, let's go. Yeah, I can see this. Come on. But you can't cheerlead a person who doesn't understand. You in some cases, what I think I'm hearing is you're the type of guy that wants them to succeed in some cases more than they want to.

Yes, I cast on them what I want them to be. Exactly. You said in your book, Dave, that you know, you don't hire people anymore because you're terrible at it. Because you spend more times selling them all on the company, which I do the same thing. It's like, this is such a great place. We're such an awesome team. Yep, you're right. So my only suggestion is from my – and I'm just looking at this through the practitioners' eyes only,

is I'm probably going to change some of my internal. interview questions that you're using. I think you're asking them how many years of construction experience they have, and you're assuming based on that that they know how to put up a piece of trim the way it looks in an expensive home, not necessarily a cheap home. And so I'm going to be saying, okay, our values are extreme detail and quality because we're dealing with rich people's houses and they are pissed when things aren't excellent. So how do you feel about that in the construction world? And they go, well, I never done that. I mean, all we did was just put some nails in the board, you know. And that's, you know, all of a sudden you got a 20-year guy who's not

qualified to work for you. Yeah. And Tom, I want to say, there's nobody out there. I want to say to you, okay, and because like when you came on, you said the 50% stuff, you're probably kind of tough on yourself and you're feeling bad about this. So get rid of that because you've learned stuff. I mean, you've learned stuff. I think you're making more progress than you realize. Right. So now based on what you've learned, just take that going forward and say, I have to be more tenacious. I'm hopefully somebody around you can help you with that about making, you can now check and take somebody into a place of work and say, what do you see here? See if they notice the stuff that the other ones didn't. Yeah, you've done a fabulous job for a company,

of your size on figuring out the character qualities and the personality pieces of who's going to be involved. I don't think I've ever talked to anybody with six or seven people that does as much assessment as you guys do. That's amazingly good. But probably what you are, as reaching over into your values and communicating out of those values, what that looks like on a technical application to do this way. And so, you know, you can't do it the way it's over those other place, and still call it nail on a board. It doesn't work because we are in a completely different world here. Hey, I have a question for you, Tom.

How long did those people work there before you got, they left? So I had a guy that worked for me for three and a half years and just broke my heart. I even gave him two months severance. He was, he tried so hard. He tried so hard. He did everything right, but he just made bad decisions. and he was insecure and he was a burden everybody because he called everybody because he didn't want to call me because he just didn't want to bother me. So finally, I let him go.

And then the other guys, one lasted for about, let's say after his initial startup and training and everything else, he probably lasted for about four or five weeks. And then another fellow lasted for about five or six months. And I tried really hard to get him to work out. and then I had a cat operator and he just wouldn't engage with anybody ever. It was quiet and just withdrawn.

How long did that one take to fix? That one, when I let his direct supervisor go who was doing estimating and assisting with project management initially estimating, I let him go and then after he left, probably about three weeks later, I let the episode. So one thing, congratulations for some of those people moved out quite quickly because if you made the wrong hire,

the worst thing you can do for them and for you is to keep them around for a long time while they're suffering and you're suffering and you're trying to do that. The guy that was there three and a half years, sounds like you loved on the guy and he's a good person and all that and you finally realized you just couldn't do it. I think you go forward just with your eyes wide open and learn the things you've learned

and realize you're probably, I can't believe I'm saying this, you're probably over-indexing a little bit on the behavioral stuff. I think you're right. And that's okay. I've been to two summits and I've listened to what you've said and I've listened to your stories, and it's like the technical side everybody wants to go to and they don't want to do the person side.

So I probably, I think you're right, I think I've overdone it on the personal side. And that's an easier fix than the other way. Also, let me just tell you, after I haven't done this for 30 years, hiring people, and at varying degrees of years or violence, they work out or don't work out, right? I mean, it's, you're probably a whole lot better at this

than you think you are right now. Now that I've talked to you a little while, I do think there's something about the way you're communicating your expectations of how to execute the technical thing that probably could use some work. I think that's probably there. But I think you're probably better overall than you think you are. You're being pretty hard on yourself to pass point. But yeah, it's it is the hardest part of business.

Business is easy till people get involved. that's the title of the chapter on hiring and firing. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's hard. So I'm not going to tell you it's going to get easier, but you're going to get better at it, and it is going to get easier. And it's not going to rip your heart out as much every single time

as it does right now either, because you'll get better at that process too. Not calloused, but just better. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. One of my favorite people on the planet, Pat Lincione, hanging out with me today, answering your calls and questions. Good, good stuff.

So we've been talking about the six types of working genius, a better way to understand your gifts, your frustrations, and your team. The book is out, has been out, and on Working Genius, and the Working Genius Assessment is available online. You go to tablegroup.com slash store, or you can go to workinggenius.com, either one, in all of Pat's books, the ideal team player book that we've been referencing. And by the way, you've got to read that book.

You've got to read Advantage. You've got to read Five Dysfunctions of the team. You've got to read everything the guy wrote. The current one, motive, that's an incredible one. All of these things. You can get them all. Tablegroup.com slash store or WorkingGenius.com or click on the show notes,

and it'll send yourself right over there with that technology thingy that we do these days. So it's all good stuff. So let's shift gears for a second. I think one of the things I am still enamored with, and you and I have spent a lot of time talking about this, but I'm still enamored with it, is this idea that a company that has good organizational mental health and can do internal conflict well because it's required in a healthy way, a loving way,

but to still get the result done, has a distinct advantage, the thesis of the book the advantage. And part of that is being aligned with working genius. Part of that is having the right motive. Part of that is putting the ideal team players on the bus. All those kinds of things are pieces of that, turned down the silos, attacking the five dysfunction of the team. All of that goes together.

But it is kind of, I guess I always thought treating people right. And that includes being a truth teller, telling them the truth, not hiding from them, not allowing gossip in the organization, those kinds of things. I always thought that those biblical principles of treat other people like you want to be treated, what Jesus said, the golden rule. You know, all these kinds of things require a level of personal character to be part of the team. All those kinds of things enter into organizational mental health and that that gives you an advantage. But you quantified that in a way that I've never seen it done before to where you said basically

everybody can be smart and work hard. And all companies do that. but if you don't have this other abilities, organizational mental health, you don't win. Yeah, and I don't know if it's the word quantify, but I characterize it, and I described it. It curated the idea. Yes, because the part of the challenge,

you know, I worked as a management consultant in my first right out of college, and it was back in the years when it was all data, strategy, technology, marketing, all these things. And I would just sit there, Dave, and I was a kid from Bakersfield. It was my first job, and I did not succeed there. I mean, we all failed in one way or another,

but after two years, my tenure was up. But I would sit there in these meetings and watch these really smart people make decisions and I'd be like, but this isn't going to work? These people don't even like each other. They're not even honest. They're not even putting all their cards on the table and they don't know how to go rally around these things.

And I remember I saying to one of the people there, we got to help them with that. And they don't pay us to do that. And at a very young age, I said, we're not, there's this thing I call it the sophistication bias, Dave. you'll love this. Oh, yeah.

And that is, well, if it's not something that's not being written about in the Harvard Business Review this week, or if it doesn't make, if it doesn't confuse me and if regular people can understand that it must not be important. And I really think it goes back to biblical principles.

It goes back to what you do. There are some simple principles, and you have to follow those. And really smart people are bored with that. Yeah. They're bored with the law of gravity. Exactly. But it'll still knock you on your butt.

Exactly. And so what I found is that the world had passed over, all these simple things. I don't think I'm terribly smart. I think I was actually noticing the stuff they were walking over and saying, what about that?

Somebody once said to me, I don't know who said this. It's what's assumed that is what's most important. People assumed that people worked well together and they were clear and they worked. And it's like they're not. So when we're trying to over-focus on the technology and the intellectual side of business

and the people are behaving in ways that will never tap into that, we have to go learn that. And people were like, I don't want to do that. I don't like that. That seems boring or it seems messy. And it's like, well, then it's not going to, the smart stuff is not going to work.

The self-deception that we can enter into when we're in leadership sets us up for these assumptions. Yeah. I mean, because it's like, you know, I've been working with this person a long time. I trust this person and I'm turning them loose. and then later on you just almost feel ashamed when you discover how crappy

that they've been doing things and you weren't watching. And that's happened to me multiple times in my 30-year career that I just look back and I go, God, that person's awful. And you know what's worse than that? I hired them.

And you know what's worse than that? I kept them. And you know what's worse than that? I promoted them. I was going to say it's promoting them. Holy jeez. I mean, unbelievable, how's to, they're bad, but I'm worse. You know, and it's like, but in order to get there, I had to deceive myself at some level.

And that, you know, the ability to bust through that crap is so much more important to me to success. It's a strider path to success than someone being smart. Absolutely. We're intellectually intelligent. And it's, and that kind of vulnerability and honesty is painful at times. And if you want to be a leader, it's going to be lonely and painful at times. Because you are going to find out, oh my gosh, for three years, I've been operating under this assumption, and I was wrong.

And now I have to fix it. And that person's going to suffer for me having to fix it. But it's what I have to do. But you cannot hide from that. And you've got to go to people, hey, this isn't working out for you. I probably should have noticed this two years ago. I know this has been really hard for you. It's my bad, but it's also my responsibility to do something now.

Oh, if anybody that these wonder kind kids, who come out of college and start a tech company and they want to be famous and rich, it's no wonder they're all dysfunctional. Their companies, because they don't have any of this character to admit when they're wrong or to apologize or to feel that pain. They just do away with all their problems.

I know I'm all over the map here. No, but you're exactly right. And in the motive we get into this, what's your motive for work? What's your motive for being a leader? And if your motive is, I can get in the other person's shoes, I can love them well,

and that includes going, you're not capable to do this shop. That's love. Exactly. I have a situation right now where some people came to me in my organization and they've proposed something. And Dave, it's an entrepreneurial thing.

I love these people. They're great. I want to say yes. I've encouraged them. Then I looked at what they were doing and it's not even close. And I'm going to, and I'm meeting with them

when I get back the day after tomorrow to love them to say, I don't know that you guys can do this. If you can, I'll let you, but if you can't, you try, that's going to be on you. And I, that's not, nobody comes out of the womb wanting to have that conversation. No, no, that need for that level of conflict. But the conflict driven by, I actually care about the individual while simultaneously, and I care about their family,

their spouse, while simultaneously caring about the organization, that will drive you to healthy conflict on a continuous basis. Yes. And, And if you avoid conflict and you still want both of those, you're going to suffer personally for it. In your life, in your family, in your health. No, an organizational fail. Yeah. Because if you don't deal with it, the splinter festers.

And it just, then you end up, a little splinter, you end up having to amputate the whole freaking leg. Yep. You know. And what happens is though people go, I don't want to take the splinter out. I don't want to take the splinter out. I don't want to take, we pass over that. It's like, do it right away.

Pretty soon you've got a log in your own eye. Absolutely. It's really a big deal. Oh, my gosh. That's so powerful. So as you've been working on the The power of this working genius stuff Working on the working genius is starting to be redundant

But are you seeing Are you seeing the productivity change Or the communication change more? I think that what happens is the productivity more than anything Because it's the realization We're not giving people jobs to do They're not wired to do So simply the job gets done.

And we're allowing them to say, I suck at this. And that's okay. Exactly. Here's a great story, Dave. A guy was going for his performance review at a company. He knew he hadn't been doing well. And literally, the night before the performance review, he did Working Genius. And he went into the performance review and he said to the guys who were reviewing him,

hey, before we get into this, I know it's been a tough period for me, but can you guys look at this? And they read it and they went, you're in the wrong job. Of course you're failing. the things we want you to do, you're terrible at. We have a job over here that you'd be good at. They stopped talking about reviewing the last six months, and they started talking about, why are you in a job where you're not going to be good?

And he wrote to us, and he said, I got him raise because I went. And I didn't get fired. Right. Because he's going into review or he's getting canned. Exactly. But he was vulnerable enough to go, hey, I took this test. I suck at what my job is. He didn't even have to say it.

He'd let them say it. And that takes a comment. conversation between I'm going to punch you in the nose and tell you how bad you are to, I want you to succeed. Or sometimes you have to go, hey, you're really bad at the stuff we want you to do. It's the only job we have. You're probably going to have to leave, but don't feel like a bad person. Just go find a job you'd be good at. Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of my favorite stories, and I use this, again, it's an old story, so it's safe. But we had a kid in sales, he was horrible. He was just horrible. And we're constantly trying to make a silk purse out of a salesier. I mean, he just did not have. there was no chance. And finally the leader sat down and said, you know, what do you want to do? And he goes, I love photography. We're like, well, we don't have a photography.

We don't have a, you know, we do now. I've got a full-time guy now. But back in those days, it was like, we don't have a nurse and we don't have a photographer. And he said, but we do have entree leadership, which is in its early stages then. And he goes, we can show you how to set up a business. So they spent the next four months,

while he was trying to make sales, helping him set up a business. He left, and he became one of the premier photographers in Nashville, a lot of the album covers, you see, this kid did him. And what an act of love. Now, you did two things there. One, you told him the truth. Two, you said, I'm going to give you a runway. Yeah, an exit round.

And I think always treat people with dignity, but you didn't keep him in a job he was going to be miserable at, and then send him away saying you're a failure. And other thing is be frustrated with him, because it's your fault once you know it. Once you know it, as a leader, it's your fault. You've not served anybody here. Enabling never serves anyone.

That's right. And, man, guys, I'm telling you all, this stuff is gold because it changes your organization when you say, I love people, I can love my people well, I can compensate them fairly, I can exit them, I can move them, and I can be clear with them, and we can do conflict, and we can argue.

on a basis of the fact that I love you, and we'll get more work done. Absolutely true. That's what's weird. Because it's not soft or touchy feel or indulgent. It actually helps everybody get more done faster. It's not like we're trying to do, you know, unicorn dust and running a beauty parlor. That's not, we're not trying to run drama.

No. But we're going to deal with these things so that we can get our work done. and you end up with this very effective, loving, high conflict environment. It's very weird. Isn't it? And what's weird is when we realize that most of our employees actually want to get more work done and when they can. And they want to work with people who are getting work done.

Exactly. They don't want to work with losers. So it's like their satisfaction and the company's bottom line go up together. Hey, I have a great story for you, Dave. I don't know where the audience was. I don't know if his on-trade leadership or not, but a woman was in the audience listening to me speak about working genius. and she ran her own staffing company.

And she decided she was going to quit. I talked about working genius. She literally in the audience took it, the assessment, it takes 12 minutes. She went back to her team and showed it. They reorganized the business. We called her and said, are you going to sell your business?

She goes, oh, no, I love what I'm doing now because I'm doing the things I'm supposed to do. So she's an entrepreneur that was thinking, like, I have to be good at all of this. Yeah, you can't be the chief everything officer. Exactly. It's a good joke, but it doesn't work. No.

Yeah. But you need to be the chief something officer and you might as well organize the first part of that around the stuff you love to do. Yeah, yeah. That's why, you know, with my working geniuses, my role in my current role as CEOs, I work on new things and broken things.

Right, and broken things, your type, you look at something and go, that's the problem. There's the problem. Yeah. And then the new things, you have a lot of invention, so you're like, yeah, I can do that. Well, and I can see that we're going to have tenacity to push that thing through.

It's going to be harder than you think it is. Right. But sitting around, like you said, working in a think tank where people hug each other and contemplate their navel. Oh, strategic days off, I want to shoot myself while we're doing those strategic days off. They're necessary, it's valuable.

But I suck at it, and I sit there, it's like, it's like, yeah, it's like a root canal. And there's certain people wake up and then they go, ah, this is my favorite part of my job. I can tell you who they are here. Yeah. It's like, oh, good, oh, good, oh, good, we get to do this. It's like ice cream for them. And it's, you know, oh, I can tell you exactly who they are. You know, it's funny, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

In that case, yeah. And you know what, an organization that doesn't have these things, if you're missing one or two, you get real trouble. Absolutely. So you need a D-I-S-N-A-C. You need all six working geniuses. You need, you know, that kind of diversity you need. Oh, and when that's lacking, you fall off a cliff.

Yeah, yeah, you really can. Well, you got holes in your decision-making processes. Right. Your decision-making is incomplete. So good stuff. Good stuff. Pat Lynchione, thanks for hanging out with us. My pleasure completely. Good stuff. Tablegroup.com slash store, working genius.com to get the assessment, to get the books.

Make sure you're signed up for Entree Leadership Summit. Pat will be speaking. You will be watching it on the live stream unless you already have your tickets. And if you get your tickets for the next year, well, who knows, Pat might be there because he's there almost every year. So we hardly let him go. He's kind of like locked in. It's like a lifetime thing. Hey, remember, better a weary warrior than a quivering critic. This world needs more high-quality leaders. Take courage and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host.

Thanks for listening to the Entree Leadership Podcast.