EntreLeadership - How Recognition Drives Team Success with David Novak

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to David Novak. David is a co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Yum Brands Inc., a Fortune 500 company that owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. David talks about his passion for purposeful team recognition and why it is a must-have leadership skill if you want to see results in your business. We also talk about Crystal Pepsi and Cool Ranch Doritos—and that alone is worth the listen! Later in the episode, George chats with Jason Williams, the vice president of EntreLeadership. Jason shares how you can create a culture of recognition and gives some simple ways to encourage your team to recognize each other. You’ll learn: •      The story behind Crystal Pepsi and Cool Ranch Doritos •      The real reason people leave companies •      The must-have leadership skills that drive results •      How to fuel your team’s success Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      David Novak’s website: https://bit.ly/3ADtxZd •      How Leaders Lead with David Novak: https://apple.co/3v2JViD •      Take Charge of You by David Novak and Jason Goldsmith: https://amzn.to/3PeKKfE •      O Great One! by David Novak and Christa Bourg: https://amzn.to/3RpboV2 •      Our recent episode with Marcus Buckingham: https://apple.co/3yWVrhL •      Download 43 Easy Ways to Recognize Your Team: https://bit.ly/3HDajDh Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode is all about the power of recognition. We're going to talk about how it drives team performance and then how to create a culture of recognition on your team. From the Ramsey Network, I'm George Camel and this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders like you grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. Joining me today is David Novak, co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Fortune 500 company Yum Brands, which includes KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. David made Harvard Business Reviews list of 100 best-performing CEOs in the world.

And today, he's going to share why purposeful recognition is a must-have leadership skill and how recognition leads to results for your business. We also talk about Crystal Pepsi and Cool Ranch Doritos, and that alone is worth the listen. So let's get to it. Here's our conversation. Well, David, it's so great to have you back on the podcast. How are you? I'm great, George.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's been a few years. We've been through some things as a society. So how are you doing? I'm doing fine. In fact, my wife and I just recovered from COVID, you know, a couple weeks ago. But we're doing well.

I mean, you know, we've weathered the storm and tried to stay positive just like everybody else. Good to hear. I told my wife I was interviewing the inventor of Cool Ranch Doritos and she was finally impressed with me for the first time. So we've got to talk about this. Now, Cool Ranch Doritos is still around. you're also known for the invention of Crystal Pepsi, which I just saw some news articles earlier this year.

They're bringing it back through a limited run with a social media competition. How do you feel about that? Yeah, well, I think it's fun. You know, when I look back at Crystal Pepsi, I look at it as, you know, the biggest idea I had ever had that was the most poorly executed.

You know, there are a lot of things that I've talked about in the past, that I wish we would have done better because I think that product would be on the shelves today. You know, it'd be a five-share brand, which is mammoth in the soft drink category. But, you know, I didn't listen enough to some of the feedback that we got along the way. But it's kind of nice to see that the product is coming back

and, you know, they're leveraging it on a promotional basis. So it's always fun to see that. But the Cool Ranch Doritos is more of a success story. I had some yesterday, as a matter of fact, with my sandwich. and here's the situation where I was working with Frida Lay, and they really needed some product news. So I said to my team, you know, let's go figure out, you know, how we can get, you know, some new news for Doritos, because they had had nacho cheese Doritos and toasted corn Doritos, but the nacho cheese was a big driver. I said, I think we need a new flavor.

Let's go to other places to find out, you know, what might be growing. So I said, I took my team to the supermarket, and we just went. I said, let's not go to the snack. aisle. Let's go to every other aisle and see if we can get ideas because I believe in pattern thinking. You know, if this is working here, how can you make it work over there? So we're going through the salad dressing aisle. And at the time, the hot new salad dressing was ranch dressing. It had just been introduced and was just blowing off the shelves, had lots of facings and, you know. So I said, what if we did a ranch flavored Doritos? Well, I came back and I called Dennis Hurd,

who's the head of R&D for Frida. I said, do you think we could do a ranch flavor Doritos. He's, yeah, well, let's give it a try. Well, when that comes off the line, man, it was so good. It was absolutely fantastic. And, you know, now it's the second most popular flavor category after cheese in the entire snack segment. You know, everybody has something ranch. But it started by, what I always talk about is that I didn't get this, you know, with my team by going to the snack aisle. It went to another aisle, another category. And just saying, if they're doing it. And, you know, it over there, you know, how can we do it there? And I've done that throughout my career, because I think you can learn from best practices from other leaders, best practices from other

companies, and then apply it to your business. You know, I remember when I went to Pizza Hut to run marketing, took my team out to see California Pizza Kitchen. You know, we just love their specialty pizzas. I said, well, how could we do their, they had bar, they had Thai pizzas and BLT pizzas and all these specialty Asian pizzas. And I said, how could we do something like this at pizza? Well, we didn't have any of those kind of ingredients on our make table. But we said, okay, what if we just doubled the number of pepperonies and created a pepperoni lovers? Guess what? We got like 13, 14 percent same store sales growth with that simple idea. Then we said, well, what if we put extra meat, do some meat? We created the meat lovers, then the veggie lovers and the cheese lovers. And it became the lover's line of

pizzas, which still exist today, and it's one of the biggest segments on the Pizza Hut menu. But it came from, in that case, looking at a competitor and saying, okay, what could we do that's right for us that kind of leverages what they were doing? Because people really love trying different products. And if you can give people more of what they love, we learned that was a big idea as well. That's fascinating. Yeah, innovation on your own terms, not trying to copy, but go, what makes sense for our values, our culture, our ideals, and you've done very well in that regard. Pretty amazing stories there, an amazing career, taking young brands from $4 billion to $32 billion. That's no small feat.

Well, thank you. Yeah, well, you know, I always say nothing big happens by yourself. The only way you can make big things happen is to take people with you. And, you know, we had a phenomenal team. They made me look good. Well, we're excited to talk to you about recognition, which is apt because you have been recognized by, I mean, I couldn't, there was too many names to list, Fortune, Barron's, Harvard Business Review, you name it, Chief Executive Magazine, so highly recognized CEO,

a pretty amazing career. There's an article you wrote called Breaking Through the Recognition Deficit, and you cite the study that's fascinating, that found 88% of employees feel unrecognized by their coworkers, and 82% think their supervisors do not recognize what they do for them. Why do you think there's such a recognition deficit going on? I just think it's a problem with toxic leadership. I think people don't really value people the way how they need to be valued, let them know that they're appreciated. You know, there's two reasons why people leave companies. One is they don't get along with their boss, and two is they don't feel appreciated. And those go hand in hand together. And it's one of the reasons why, you know,

I really think that you need to develop coaches. That's why I recently wrote this book called Take charge of you, how self-coaching can transform your life and career. I think you want to become a coach, not a boss, and then you want to make sure that you appreciate the people that work with you. And that's where I think purposeful recognition comes into play, George. You know, when you take the time to really recognize people when it's well-deserved and well-earned around the principles that you know are going to drive great performance in your company, guess what happens? People will want to do more of it. And they're going to feel appreciated and they're going to want to stay in your company because as the research will tell you, not many people are really doing it well.

Yeah. Do you think part of that is a generational gap? Do you feel like Gen Z millennials have different values than maybe the older generations? Now, I think people have craved recognition throughout time. I just think it's an innate thing that's out there. But, you know, people oftentimes don't recognize other people, but for, you know, a couple of reasons. One is they're afraid that if they recognize one person and another person will be upset. Well, I always tell everybody that's crazy because, you know, that would only make a difference. It would be a problem if you only planned on recognizing one person in your life. The other thing is, believe it or not, people think when you recognize people, they might not work as hard. They might take the pedal off the metal. And,

you know, that's not true. What I've found is when you recognize people, it ignites their performance and they want to do even better. Those are just a couple of reasons why people don't recognize. And I think another big reason is that people get so occupied, so preoccupied with what they're doing, their world, that they're not externally focused enough to look around and to really celebrate all the actions that are being taken to help them get to where they need to go. You know, leaders get so intense and so driven about what they want to have to get done that oftentimes they forget that you really can't do anything big alone. You've got to do it with people. So where did this shift come from for you? Was there this moment where you realized the power of recognition?

You know, I think my mom and dad always recognized me when I was coming up, and, you know, that was great. So it kind of was in my DNA to a certain extent. And I always recognized people at work. But when I became chief operating officer for the Pepsi Cola company, you know, I went out and I would go to the bottling plants. And I would sit down and have roundtables with people on the front line. And I'd ask them, what's working and what's not working. And so, you know, one time I go to St. Louis, and I'm meeting with a group of route salesmen at Pepsi. Now, at Pepsi, you know, route salesman, the number one leader.

I mean, they are out there talking to customers and, you know, making sure you get displays and the product looks just perfect. So I'm asking people what's working and what could be better and all those kinds of things. And everybody starts raving about this guy named Bob. And, you know, you're saying, Bob is the best merchandiser that you've ever seen. I mean, I learned more in four hours than I learned my first three years here. This guy's amazing. Everybody started raving about how great this guy is, how fantastic.

fantastic he was. And I look straight across the table, just like I'm looking at you right here, George. And the guy's crying. Wow. And I said, Bob, why are you crying? He said, well, I've been in this company for 47 years. I'm retiring in two weeks. And I didn't know that people felt this way about me. And that just hit me in the gut. And I said to myself, from that point on, I'm going to make recognition the number one behavior I'm going to drive in any culture on any team that I have the privilege of leading. And sure enough, shortly after that, you know, I became president of KFC, and that's when I really started doing, you know, the recognition that I think ignited all kinds of great results and really helped me achieve the kinds of things that you could only dream of achieving. But I couldn't have done it by myself. I had to get everybody excited about being a part of the mission. And I used recognition as the real catalyst for doing that. And, you know, I think that that's the secret weapon that I think leaders have, they just don't realize and they just don't take advantage of it, even if it's just saying thank you to people when you see them do a good job. Now, I took it to a whole different level. I had personal recognition awards and always had a lot of fun doing it. And then everybody in our company developed their own personal recognition awards. And everybody started recognizing people for the performance

that we knew that would drive great results. And it really became contagious. And I genuinely believe that's why we had such great results. When you do the right things for people, the right things always happen. Yeah, absolutely. And we do a lot of that here at Ramsey because we've realized the power of that. So we have a lot of award ceremonies and we love celebrating people's wins and their performance and their growth and promotions, all of that stuff. And I have not seen a spirit of, you know, envy and anger of why did that guy get recognized. I think people love to see others get recognized. I think even more so today with this generation. I think people love to see their teammates get recognized. What they don't like is someone that's trying to just be overly

competitive and distinguish them themselves. And, you know, what I've never found, you know, I've always found that people love the recognition. You know, we had a roving recognition band at our company and they'd go around and say, we are here to appreciate you. And, you know, it's like a singing telegram. It was, it was amazing. and I had nothing to do with it. It just was developed by the people in our company because they knew recognition was what would make our place really special. And it did.

I mean, I spoke at the Young Brand's 25th anniversary a couple of months ago. I came in as the past founder of the company. And, you know, everybody came up to me and said, David, you know, the thing that makes our company great and we've kept it going since you left, and I moved on six years ago, is the recognition. we still have fun recognizing people. And, you know, it was fun to me.

I gave away my recognition award when I was there to the CEO, David Gibbs of Yom. It's just walk the talk teeth, and I write on him and personalize it and tell why he deserves the recognition. And, you know, people love it. And, you know, it's not expensive to do. All it takes is just a little bit of time to do, but it means so much to people.

Yeah. So we talk about recognition, but you take it a step further with purposeful recognition, and you say it's a must-haping, have leadership skill that drives results. So talk to me about the relationship between recognition and business results, because it can sometimes feel like they're not in the same world. Yeah, I think recognition is the soft stuff that drives the hard results. All right. And here's the way how you do it, George. You know, it's what I call purposeful recognition.

Now, I'm sure it's your company. There's four or five things that you know that if you do well, you're going to get great results. You know, you want to collaborate, you want to be innovative, you want to be creative, you want to be proactive in getting great guess. I don't know what those four or five things are. But you lay them out, and those are the behaviors that you want to recognize. Those are the cultural behaviors that you want to recognize because they'll get results. And then you start looking for people that are collaborating and being proactive and doing the things that you know will really get the results.

And then you recognize them. And then people will do more of the behaviors that you know will get results. You know, I've had engineers say to me, you know, that's just not what we do in our field. And I said, well, what are the things that drive performance as an engineer? Well, we've got to be innovative. We've got to be on budget. We've got to be proactive with our clients, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, well, why don't you start recognizing people when you see those things happen?

And you know what? They start doing it. And then all of a sudden I get this call from the guy and he says, you know, we did this. And you cannot believe the attitude of our company now that we're. we started really recognizing the performance. And by the way, we're getting better results now. And they're inextricably linked. You know, I don't think you recognize people in a willy-nilly way. I think you do it, you know, in a purposeful way. It's got to be earned, and then it's got to be the behaviors that you know will ultimately drive performance. When you do that, you turn

recognition into a powerful weapon for you. There's a lot of ways to do recognition. Sometimes it's celebrating in a team meeting, sometimes it's in private, sometimes it's with a $500 handshake. What have you seen to be the most effective ways to kind of build that culture of recognition? Well, I think the most important thing you can do is be on the lookout for it and have everybody in your company on the lookout for it and then make it spontaneous. You know, I'm a big believer in annual celebrations and monthly meetings and all those kinds of things. But, you know, everybody does that.

what really turns a culture on fire is when you do it spontaneously. You know, when you see somebody who helped you, George, maybe put this podcast together or give you three questions that maybe you ought to ask or whatever, you recognize that person for it, they're going to feel valued and they're going to want to help you even more in the future. But don't wait until the annual meeting to make it happen. I think the monthly meetings, the annual meetings kind of give people an excuse to say, oh, yeah, we do it.

But not really, okay? But when you do it is when you do it every day and you make it spontaneous. And I don't think you can do too much of it. People would say, can you recognize too many people? Well, maybe I might have recognized some people in the past that maybe might not have deserved it. But I'd rather err on the fact that I'm out there looking for people doing great things and recognize as many people as often as I can as long as I think it's earned.

Yeah, that's a great call out. There's people who would never get recognized because they're really. might not be in the spotlight as much. You know, I think of our customer care folks who are on the phones. They're interfacing with our fans every single day and the amazing work they do, but they're not out in front of the camera, you know, like me getting the, the claps and the accolades, and wow, what an amazing job, because no one's really seeing it. So how do you intentionally look for opportunities to recognize? Well, I'll give you a good example. When I was the CEO of Young Brands, I'd go out, always go out in our restaurants. And I started doing

that's when I was actually the president of KFC. And, you know, we had KFC, Taco Bell, and Peach Hut. And, you know, for example, my recognition award was a floppy chicken. It was a rubber chicken, okay? A simple rubber chicken. And I would go into a restaurant, and I would look around and, you know, if the food was really good, I'd say, who's the chef here? And I would go back at a house and I would say, you know, I want to recognize you

because the food here is absolutely fantastic. So I'd pull out my floppy chicken and I would number it, you know, because now this person might be floppy chicken number 27, okay? And I'd write on it, right in front of them. I'd say, you are what makes this business tick. Quality is important in everything that we do. How long you've been here? Oh, I've been here for 15 years. Well, thanks for 15 years of dedicated focus because you're the guy who really makes it happen for our customers.

I'd give them the floppy chicken. And then I'd take a picture. and I'd say, I'm going to send you a copy of this picture. You can throw it in the trash if you want, but you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put your picture in my office because you're the person that's really making things happen. And, you know, I did that, you know, throughout my career. And my office is lined with people that I recognize from floor to ceiling. And people say, well, what happens when you run out of wall space?

And I said, we're putting them on the ceiling. And that's exactly what we did. And, you know, people walk into my office and they smile and they know that people is what really, makes things happen. But you know, you look for the people that are getting things done. And I love doing it with the front line. And I can't tell you how many times when I gave away a floppy chicken or a Yom Award or whatever, people would actually cry. You know, now they're crying for the right reasons, okay, because they're joyful. I think it's amazing. I actually had one person who was a very, you know, a great guy who died of cancer.

And in his casket, he wanted his floppy chicken. Wow. That's powerful. I mean, it is powerful. You know, and people said, well, it wouldn't work everywhere. So I did it in China. And, you know, I gave a Yom Award to this Yingling who was in Beijing. And Shirley Kuhna Mono, who ran operations first went over there and said, hey, I understand David Novak gave you a YUM award.

And she said, yes, he did. Can I see it? And Shirley goes, can I see it? And she said, no. It's at home locked in my father's safe. This stuff is powerful stuff. And that's why I think recognition is a real privilege of leadership. When you are the head coach or you're the coach or you're the leader of the team

and when you take the time to acknowledge somebody's efforts, okay, that says that someone's watching, that someone cares about what you do. And, George, you've done all kinds of podcasts with all kinds of leaders, but every really successful company creates a work environment, creates a culture where everyone knows they count. And it doesn't matter what level you are in the organization. I think you want to just say, thank you, a habit in your company. I mean, it's not that hard to do, but a lot of people don't do it.

It's crazy. Yeah, it's easy to get busy and just kind of make that call by the wayside. But Dave Ramsey does a great job of reminding us every staff meeting that every line of COVID, you write, every email you send, every phone call you make, that's what makes this place what it is. And so to your point, that culture of recognition creates a really healthy culture where there's joy and where people are happy to be there, they stay there and they want to do work that matters. Yeah, well, look at your company. I mean, we were talking before we came on, just the rapid growth

that you've had. Well, why is that? Well, you guys like to be around each other. You like to collaborate. You're creative. You know, you got a guy like Dave Ramsey telling you how important. is to value everybody that does anything in this company to make it great. And guess what happens? Your business takes off. You know, there's a reason why your podcasts are going through the roof. There's a reason why, you know, your programs generate all kinds of revenue. It's because you are doing the right things and you value your people. Everybody's business is based on, I think, a real formula for success, which is if you put your people capability first, then you satisfy more customers, then you make money. Too many people start thinking about, hey, I want to make money, but they don't think how you get there. You get there through people, and then I think you get there by through the people and then recognizing them purposefully for what they do.

Great reminders. Well, I want to shift gears here, David. Your new book, Take Charge of You, how self-coaching can transform your life and career. We talk a lot about the importance of having a coach, but you're talking about self-coaching. What does that mean? Well, self-coaching is when you take accountability for your own development. You know, the best leaders that I know have high self-awareness. They understand themselves very well, just like you would understand a brand if you were marketing a brand. You understand who you are today and then you use that to guide, you know, where you want to take yourself in the future. Now, when we say self-coaching, that doesn't mean you wouldn't go to somebody else

and get some feedback. But if you can self-coach yourself into what is really important to you, then you can pick the right coaches. We call them the right assistant coaches, okay, to help you figure out where you need to go and give you advice on how to get there. And, you know, I think that self-coaching is something that we can all do, but it requires looking in a mirror first. One of the wonderful exercises we have in the book is we ask people, what blocks your joy? What gets in the way of your joy? Then we ask them, what builds your joy? Okay, and if you look at the things, both sides of the ledger, and you're spending a lot of time over on the joy blocker side, you've got a problem because you're not living as fulfilling a life or pursuing as fulfilling a career as you could.

You know, what you want to do is understand what gives you joy and make sure that you spend as much time in that arena as you possibly can. Yeah. Well, your passion and joy are infectious, David. We've loved having you on. As we wrap here, give us just one step a leader could take if they want to improve those recognition skills. If they're going, David, I'm self-aware that I am not great in this area. What's one thing I can do this week with my team? I think the one thing I would recommend is ask your team and you do it yourself to just watch what's happening in them around them for one week. things that are being done that should be recognized. And then come back the next week and each of you share it.

And then I think that'll show you that there's a lot going on that's really positive that people, you know, really don't feel valued for because nobody is recognizing them. And then as a team say, okay, what are we going to do about this? And if you want to read a good book on that, read the book I wrote on recognition, which is called Oh, Great One, okay? and it's a parable on everything that I did to drive recognition in our company. And it's a fun read, but it really makes a point very, very well. But you just have to take ownership of this, and this is not something that you can delegate.

You know, people out there are star for it. Give it to them. Yeah. Well, we need all the positivity we can get, especially in the toxic work culture that's out there, the toxic leadership culture. So thank you for revitalizing all of us today with your wisdom and advice, and congrats on the success of the podcast. as well as your new book.

Thank you very much. I appreciate, George. Thanks for having me on. Thanks so much, David. What an incredible career and an incredible conversation. If you want to get a copy of his new book, take charge of you. We've got a link for you in the show notes. So David gave us some great ideas on how to recognize our teams,

but how do you create a culture of recognition? How does it spread so that team members are recognizing each other, and it just becomes second nature? We'll have a conversation about that right after this. Coming up, I sit down with Jason Williams, our vice president of Entree leadership here at Ramsey Solutions. He's going to share some keys to creating a culture of recognition, along with some simple ways to encourage your team to recognize each other. Here's our conversation. Jason, it's so good to see your smiling face.

Good to see you, too, George. Thanks. Well, we thought of you when it came to recognition, and we wanted to recognize you by having you on this podcast. Wow, that's very nice. You feel that? I feel it. I feel it. So we're talking about the power. recognition and I wanted to know I asked David Novak the same question but was there a moment where you

realized how powerful recognition really was okay so there was a there's a situation that I had with a previous team member and they they were not one of the front line people a lot of times in businesses we recognize these frontline people that people are interacting with our clients and uh there's a person that was an administrative support person and I just watched something that they did and I was like wow that was really well done I just walked over their desk and just said, hey, I saw you did this. I was specific about what I saw them do. And it just did it in passing.

It was literally 10 seconds of my day. And just gave them a little knuckle and walked away. And later that week, I got a written note from them that it was one of the first times that they've been recognized. And I was like, wow, that's really interesting. And that person's attitude toward our organization continued to get better. I mean, she was a rock star already, but like she would do anything. It was really amazing. Wow.

Yeah, it's incredible because leader. sometimes don't realize the power of it. But the person on the other side, it can be like, I mean, they remember a moment that you're like, oh, that fist bump was really meant something to you. And so we've got to be really intentional and aware of all those moments and find those opportunities and catch people in the act of doing something good. Yeah, that's actually part of what Entry Leadership talks about in the book. Like in Chapter 12, it's all about recognition.

We talk about this in elite. But yeah, catch people. Like a lot of times as leaders, you feel like you're the police. You're trying to catch people doing something wrong. But one of the principles we talk about is catch people doing something right. It's like it's so easy to do. But as leaders, sometimes we just feel like we're the police. We got to just, you know, hey, you did this wrong or we need to get better here.

But the energy in the building goes up when you see somebody doing something well like you do here. And I just, George, I love listening to you on the podcast. And just recognizing people, just a moment of passing, but you're just catching people to do something right. It's so powerful. Yeah. And some of the principles here, just to give people a picture of what this looks like in practice, in the book we talk about recognizing people in public and correcting in private, which I love. So celebrate someone in front of the team, but don't correct them in front of the team.

That's not the time and place for that. We say you don't have to spend a lot of money to do it. A lot of people go, well, I don't have the money to throw a big party or do the big gift cards or the $500 handshake. But it could be a handwritten note. It could be the fist bump. Yeah. You walk by somebody's desk and just tell them they're doing something great. It doesn't cost you anything.

But even if it does cost you something, a $5 gift card, a hat. I mean, it's crazy what people will fight over and we'll get super excited about. So it doesn't have to be something that's very expensive for it to be meaningful. Yeah. I went and bought a big pack of like $5 gift cards. And I just include those with a thank you note when I see someone that really went a little bit above and beyond. Or I've just noticed them crushing it and maybe no one else really has because of their role. And so I love doing stuff like that because it affects me as much as it affects them.

Yes, it does. It makes you more aware of the good things that are happening. I mean, as leaders sometimes we kind of just, we're tied. did numbers, doom and gloom, somebody left. But like when you're walking around looking for the positive, it helps my mental attitude as I'm walking around the building and saying, hey, that was awesome. And hey, that was awesome. I get the end of day. And maybe we had some tough conversations, or we had some arguments about like, you know, where we're going, direction, vision. But then I think back and I say, hey, this person was doing a great job. And wow, did you hear the story of that

client and the way that this coach served them? That was really amazing. So it's interesting. We do a lot of things for our clients and customers to recognize them, but sometimes we kind of neglect the team. So how do we create this culture to where it's not a once a year award ceremony where we do this, but it's just a part of our day-to-day. What are some keys to creating that? The once-a-year is actually important, too. So don't, like, I don't want you to hear me say that that's not an important thing. Doing it day-to-day, it has to come start from the leader. The leader has to be authentic. It has to be something that we really believe in is going to be the fuel for our organization. So that's really important.

So as you start to recognize this and start to do things, it will change the attitude of people around you. So if you're a leader who leads leaders and you set that example, people will follow that. They will start mimicking you. That's just the natural law of human nature. But if you're a leader who's leading frontline people and you're not leading leaders, just taking the time to recognize them, whether it's walking by giving a fist bump, you can do things. We do weekly standups. And we get together every week and we talk about the things that are going on in the business.

And every once in a while, we will actually do some shoutouts is what we call it. And that's something that's really important for our organization. And that's a chance for us to publicly recognize people who are doing a good job. We do quarterly things. So if it's not annual, you can do it quarterly. You can do it after big events. We just left Summit. And Summit is a huge event for our business unit.

It's something that we get a lot of energy from, something that a lot of work goes into. So we just threw a party. And we recognize the people that people have made huge impacts. And some of those people were the people out front that the clients that were at Summit recognized. some of those people that people were behind the scenes that were coding the app that was used to download something that was needed by a client. So you just recognize people across your organization for the cool things they're doing. Yeah, I recently crashed that party. Yes, you did.

Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Absolutely. So this starts with the leader, but it doesn't end there. This trickles down, and we want it to be something where the team starts doing this without us having any involvement. So how do you start to encourage the team? What are some simple ways for your team to recognize each other? Yeah, it's really interesting.

When the leader does it, people will follow, and they'll do it to each other. They'll start shouting each other out. So in our stand-up, which we have once a week, we do have a time for shout-outs. And a lot of times it's a leader shouting out someone else, but we'll have team members that will raise their hand and say, hey, I want to shout out George. And they're peers. They're not, you know, it's not leader to worker. It is peer.

And they'll say, I was working on this. I was stumped. George came in, swooped in, fixed, helped, did whatever. And it just, as soon as you hear that the first time, it's like, Oh, it's open season. They love to shout each other out. It's really cool to watch. And that's where the more powerful things

that I get to learn as a leader is when I see that marketing is collaborating with product or our coaching team is really working with our operations team and it's a lot of fun to watch and see the ways that other people are interacting with each other. Yeah, we've talked a lot on this podcast about, you know, with Marcus Buckingham's, talking about employees and team members feeling seen and known and loved,

not in a weird way, but in the sense of, do you see me? Do you see the value that I'm adding every day? And even regardless of my effort and results, do you value me as a person? And so when you start paying attention to your team, that's what creates employee engagement. That's what gets people to stay for a long period of time. And that's the kind of stuff we need more of in this toxic leadership culture that we're fighting against every day. Totally.

Birthdays are a big deal here. Birthdays, lampoverstries, Ramseyversaries, what we call it here. People, the anniversary of them starting here at our company, that's a big deal here. And we as leaders celebrate the people who work on our team. But now we see our team members go out of the way. There's candy, there's cards, like handwritten notes. They're all, the entire members of the team will, every member of the sales team will write an individual note to another member of the sales team when it's their birthday. And they walk in and there's 15 handwritten cards, which doesn't cost anything.

And then there's maybe a six pack of Coke or Dr. Pepper. Their favorite drink. Yes, we got a guy that loves Dr. Pepper and he shows up on his birthday and there's like mounds of Dr. Dr. Pepper all over his desk and just makes him feel special because he is. He's a person that God loves. And then we just celebrate those people. So we celebrate milestones like birthdays. We call it a Ramsey Versa. And sometimes we do that company wide. If you've been here 10 years, there's some speeches made in front of the entire company. And man, that's a really cool thing. But aside from the milestones, it's the little stuff too. It's still a fist bump for doing that random little thing on a Thursday. And so it's super important to know that all of that starts with intentionality. And so what I want from you as we wrap here is a recent example of a way you've recognized someone on your team. What did that look like? Yeah. We have a guy on the entree team who's been with Ramsey for a long time, and he's a well-loved member of the team.

And he's a very big supporter and lover of professional wrestling, not the wrestling that you see in college, the fake choreographed wrestling, which is very athletic, but is obviously predetermined who's going to win. And so he had a big milestone that was coming up, and his direct leader, somebody that works on our team, said, hey, it'd be really fun to get some people together and make some videos about them. So we went in and we used an iPhone. It was super scrappy. We didn't buy anything. And we just had people dress up like professional wrestlers. And we did those mock interviews, you know, the cheesy ones that sometimes you can go on YouTube and look at them. But the mock interviews are...

Before they get in the ring? Yeah, before they get in the ring, it's like the guy's holding a microphone up and saying, hey, you know, what are you about to go do to this guy or kind of... Yeah, the hype video. And so we did that. We got a bunch of people from all across Entree to do that. The leader compiled it using some iPhone app that I don't know how it works.

And then what we did was we actually spent a little money. We collected some money. And we used an online app and we actually had a professional wrestler, like record a video. We put it at the very end. And so we got the team members sit down. We got the entire team around as one of our stand-ups. And we just played this video.

And it was me and it was some of the other leaders and some of the other people on the team that were dressed up as wrestlers, just acting goofy. And at the very end, it was this professional wrestler that this guy loved. And he was in tears. And it was the sweetest thing because he just couldn't believe that we cared that much, that we knew that much about him.

It was really fun. And he has mentioned it. It happened a couple of months ago. He mentions it weekly. It's really amazing. So, anyway, that's just a way to, you know, really didn't cost it. We didn't even have to get the professional wrestler. It didn't cost us anything.

If we just did the goofy things because we knew we liked wrestling, it was really actually fun. We all loved it and had a great time when we were doing it. Yeah. And, you know, that level of creativity and thoughtfulness and personalization, that's what creates that special bond between the team, the team member, and Entree is leading the charge, for sure, at Ramsey Solutions. I mean, when someone mentions Entree leadership in the staff meeting stage, the entire team erupts. It's become like a meme. Dave's like, of course, there's Entry. They're all cheering each other on. But you guys really do such a great job of this. And it stems from leadership like you and Daniel Ramsey. But your team is just so supportive of each other. I love the.

way that you live these principles out, and we love having you on the podcast. Thanks for having me, George. Thanks so much, Jason. Love that guy. Always great having them on. As David and Jason both talked about, we've got to be recognizing our teams. And wouldn't it be nice if you had like a list of ideas to pick from to make it super simple to recognize your team? Well, you are in luck, my friends, because our team has put together a free resource called 43 easy ways to recognize your team. Be sure to get this free download to put this stuff into action. You can download it with link in the show notes. If you enjoyed today's episode of the show, do us a quick favor, follow or subscribe, wherever you're listening, and leave us a review. And if you're feeling

extra generous, talk about this episode with your team, with your friends, or on social media. That helps us reach more people and more leaders like you. Be sure to follow us at Entree Leadership wherever you hang out on social media. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.