EntreLeadership - How to Become a Leader and Stop Being Just a Boss with Dave Ramsey

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks with Daniel Ramsey—the executive vice president of EntreLeadership. They start this episode with a new segment where they discuss three telltale signs of bad leadership you need to know. Later, George chats with Dave Ramsey, the founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions. Dave shares how to become a leader and stop being just a boss.   You’ll learn: •      How to move from being a boss to being a leader •      The warning signs of poor leadership •      How to grow new leaders the right way •      Three telltale signs of bad leadership Sign up for The EntreLeadership Podcast takeaways—a weekly email where you’ll get three tangible takeaways and a tactical action step related to each episode: https://bit.ly/podcast-takeaways Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Give us your feedback by leaving a voicemail at 844.944.1070 or emailing [e-mail] •      The Motive by Patrick Lencioni: https://amzn.to/3GWAe8O •      Key Results Areas Guide: https://bit.ly/3BYPSPU •      Learn more and get your EntreLeadership Summit 2023 ticket today: https://bit.ly/3LRiZJH 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. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, three telltale signs of bad leadership. And then we're going to cover the difference between being a boss and a leader. Welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast from the Ramsey Network, where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. We've got a brand new teaching segment for you today with a special guest,

Daniel Ramsey. He's the EVP of Entree leadership, and he's going to share three tell-tale signs of bad leadership. You know, around here, we coach leaders every day to stop being a boss and instead become leaders. So let's get to it. Here's our conversation. Daniel, welcome back to the podcast. How you been? Good. I've been doing great. It's been a fun season. Well, you are back by popular demand to talk about this main issue here. In culture today, there's a lot of bosses and a lot of managers and a lot of toxicity, and we're seeing so many people resign and try to find work that matters with leaders who care. And so we want to go over some of these telltale signs of bad leadership that you see out there that you see leaders fall for.

You know, so as I've been in leadership, looking at the traps people fall into pretty often, and it's interesting. People hit it at different points in their career. Sometimes people reach a peak and a new struggle comes along for them, or a bad habit seeps in and festers. And so one of of the big things that I see leaders sometimes get overtime, especially successful leaders, is pride. Pride is a real hard issue that leaders face. And when they let pride sink in, it has a lot of horrible, horrible effects downstream in their life and in their business and in their team and the culture. And so some of those, for example, is if you're prideful, if a leader thinks really highly of themselves, they're not going to think highly of others. They're not going to

treat others with the same respect and dignity that they may have previously done. They'll also not be interested in learning from their team or the people around them. When someone's really prideful, I've seen them really fail to ask for people's input, ask for their perspective, and just be constantly learning. Jason Williams, who's the vice president of entree leadership, one of the things I love the most about him and that has made him so successful is he's so eager to learn. He's so genuinely interested in the people around him and getting their perspectives and growing all the time.

He's so hungry. That's one of the things I see most successful leaders have is that hunger to learn and to grow. And oftentimes successful leaders, they reach that pinnacle. They grow and grow and grow and grow, and they think that they've made it. They think they're at the top

and they think they've learned all they need to learn. And that's just unfortunately wrong. You know, the world changes, people change, and we have to continue to learn, adapt, gain perspective. So the antidote to that is, humility. And the best leaders, as I look around, they all have this trait. And a lot of, you know, in culture today, we look at humility as a weakness and as something that you shouldn't have. You should be confident. And we want you to be confident, but humility is not, you know, thinking

less of yourself, just thinking of yourself less and asking for that input and going, you know what, I don't know. And maybe I don't have the best idea in the room. And so that's a huge piece that leaders need to work on. Yeah, humility is massive. And so learning new things also humbles you. My coach, his name's George, he often challenges me to put myself in... Not me, by the way. Just from listeners out there. That's right. That's right.

It's a different guy. He challenges me to put myself in situations that I'm not good at or things that will naturally frustrate me because not only it helps me adapt and grow and overcome, but it also keeps you humble. You know, like when you're constantly putting yourself in different situations where you don't have it all figured out, it does humble you. And so it's really good to check yourself and to, be humble. And that's one of those things. If you're the team member, we all want to look up to a leader who has that humility, and that's going to trickle down to the rest of the team. We don't want to create a whole team of prideful people because that's what we see the model is. So this is super important long term for building culture as well. That's right. So other than pride, what's another sign you've seen of just poor leadership? One of the hardest things to do, and this is something I've really struggled with over the years, is my ability to create clarity for the team or clarity for myself. What I mean by clarity, is not only just communication and communicating well,

but it's being really clear on what our team members are responsible for. What am I responsible for? What is the lane that I should be driving? And then same with the team. I can look at each individual and they know what their priorities are. They know the expectations I have for them. They know what they're responsible for driving. And that helps them be a better teammate that helps them focus on the right things

and say no to the things that they shouldn't be focused on. And so clarity is always something that goes away quickly unless you continue to maintain it. And there's been a lot of times, and right now I'm having to double down on adding clarity to where we're going and the things we're working on and the things we should be focused on. And so I have to do that for myself. It's easy just to focus on others and think about the team and what they need. But I have to also create that clarity for myself of, hey, what should I be focused my time on? George, I don't know about you, but oftentimes during just the go of business throughout the, a week. I'll look up towards the end of the week. And I'm like, what, what did I do? What did I accomplish?

Everything happened to me. That's right. And so one of the questions I try to ask myself every day is what's my number one thing? What's the number one thing I need to knock out today to make the business move forward? And so by doing that for myself, by doing that with my team, I'm creating clarity on where we focus and what's the biggest impact I can have. And there's a direct connection there. If the leader has a lack of clarity, then the team definitely has a lack of clarity. and your team craves that clarity. Everyone wants to know what winning looks like, what they need to do to get there,

have those expectations set. And yes, that comes down to very clear, open, frequent communication, but it also comes down to things like key results areas and putting things down on paper so that we can all look back with accountability and go, this is what we agreed on. One of my favorite tools we have at Ramsey is a KRA, exactly what we were describing,

key result areas. We've done a podcast on that before. We'll do another one again soon, I'm sure. I love talking about key result areas because it is clarity on paper. And we always say to be unclear is to be unkind.

And our friend of Donald Miller says, you confuse, you lose. And that's more on the branding side, but it applies. No one wants to be confused. That's where mistakes are going to happen. Failure is going to happen. No one's going to see amazing results

in the midst of confusion and chaos. So this is a huge one to get a handle of. So what's your last one here, tell-tale sign of bad leadership? The last point I would make is fear. Fear is something that I see creep into leaders and has a huge horrible effect on the team and the morale and the culture. And so I see this come, again, like pride, sometimes it seeps in later in someone's career. Sometimes it's something that someone's more naturally they struggle with.

And so, you know, Dave, one of our core values that our company is fear not. And he exemplifies us so well of pushing through decisions and not letting fear negatively impacted decision. Now, sometimes fear causes you to take a step back and wisely discern and get perspective on a situation. And that's not what Dave's talking about when he says fear or not or what our core value states that. But I see fear. What it causes negatively is it causes leaders to slow down too much. They become paralyzed. They don't make decisive decisions. They don't move forward in a meaningful, intentional way. They just kind of wait for things to happen.

I also see fear create where leaders are willing. unwilling to embrace change. If they're afraid, they're not going to embrace how the environment around them is changing or things that their customers may be asking of them or maybe a marketing campaign isn't as effective as it used to be. And so we need to create a new strategy. I've seen leaders resist change because they're afraid. They're comfortable with what they know. And so if you as a leader can really focus on, hey, am I letting, like check yourself, am I letting fear cause me to not move at the speed I would normally move at and really make sure you're not allowing it to negatively impact you. Yeah, this is a tough one, especially because the team is looking to you for confidence.

And if they sense fear, if they smell fear, they're going to then go, oh my gosh, the leader doesn't have this under control. So how do you communicate to the team with vulnerability where you go, listen, I don't really know what the next step is, but I know how we're going to make that decision. How do you communicate that? Yeah, so there's oftentimes the team asked questions of me, or I get up in front of the team and give them an update, and I don't have a clear answer of what's next, or I don't have a clear answer to the problem, like a solution to the problem.

And it is really good and healthy as a leader to admit that and just acknowledge that, that you don't have it all figured out in front of the team. Now, what's dangerous, and we talked about this on our previous episode, what's dangerous is when you don't actually show your team that you're doing what you can to solve that or to get the answers or to create a solution.

And so it's fine. I think it's really healthy to get up in front of your team and admit that you don't know the answer, but then you need to follow up and show that you're committed to figuring out what that answer is. And so that's both through your words and through your actions. And so if you're not following up with them soon

with the answer or following up them soon of, hey, here's what we're doing to figure it out, hey, we're taking this action, this action, this action, to help us learn more so we can make a decision, that goes so far with the team when they see you do that and you actually live out what you're saying in front of them. Yeah, and that's where things like core values

and frameworks and processes really come into play because it gives you a foundation to where you go, okay, we're not just going to wander through this fear. We have a way to navigate this with our leadership team or for myself as a leader. So what is the antidote to fear as you've experienced it? Wow, that's deep, George. We can't just, you know, we can pray and do all kinds of great things,

but how do you actually push through that and make the right decision. I think you have to believe that there's a solution or believe that there's something on the other side. And so, you know, there's been plenty of seasons where we've had a problem and you don't see light at the end of the tunnel. You don't know what the solution is

to getting over that obstacle. But if you look at an obstacle, you look at a challenge with a healthy level of intensity of saying, hey, I don't know how we're going to solve this, but I'm committed to figuring it out. I think that confidence, that eagerness, that wanting to dive in

and see a problem as an opportunity really can go a long way and help you. You know, you may feel fear and fear is natural. It's a natural feeling. It's okay to experience fear. It's not okay to make decisions based on it. It's not okay to slow down, you know, or to be paralyzed by fear. You should continue to move forward. You may continue forward more cautiously, and that's okay. But as long as you're moving forward and taking steps in the right direction, it's okay, you'll push through that fear. Yeah. And, you know, that's a contagious feeling. And so if you're feeling that fear and And that's kind of now spreading amongst the team. That's going to create gossip.

It's going to create a lot of terrible things. And so there is a level of optimism you need to have as a leader that isn't unfounded. You're not just going, everything's going to be fine while the ship is burning. But there is a level of calm and optimism that you need to relay to the team that instills hope in them. Exactly. That's good. So how do we get to the point where we've, you know, we can't master these. It's something you have to work on every single day.

Like you said, this can seep in. if you've been a leader for 20 years, it could happen today. Pride, lack of clarity and fear. How do you make sure that you're protecting yourself from falling into one of those traps? You know, I think it's just being aware that there are traps you could fall into. I think simply you checking yourself on a regular basis or taking time to get above the business and look down and assess your own performance, assess your own, hey, how am I really doing as a leader? How is my team really receiving me? If you can be honest with yourself and look in and do that hard work, then you can really see if those things are becoming an issue for you.

Well, Daniel, always love having you on the podcast, always bringing us great, great wisdom. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks, George. I appreciate you. Always good stuff from our friend, Daniel Ramsey. Appreciate him being on with us today. All right, it's time for your feedback. Did you like that segment or not?

Call and leave us a voicemail. Let us know at 844-944-1070. That's 844-944-1070. All right, up next, we cover the difference between being a boss and a leader. Stick around. All right, we're back, and our next guest is none other than Dave Ramsey. He's the founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions and author of the book, Entree Leadership. Now, he's going to cover the difference between being a boss and a leader.

And believe it or not, he didn't always start out as the Entree leader we know him to be. Check out this conversation. Well, Dave, welcome back to the Entree Leadership podcast. It's good to be back, George. I know you love to talk leadership. Usually it's money and a lot of other things. today we're focused. So you have been leading this company now for 30 years. And I got to know, at one point, were you a boss instead of a leader? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, in the early days for sure.

Because I just couldn't get all the work done by myself. And so I needed help to get the work done. And so I got people and I thought if I paid them that they would just like to come and they would work and they would care. And then, no, no, I started realizing in order to have 18. I had to learn how to do something other than just crack a whip. So what do that process look like to move from boss to leader? Well, I started reading and learning and studying the whole concept of leadership. Because, I mean, I'm an old-school dinosaur guy. And really, I mean, blue collar is you just clock in, you do your work, you go home and clock out and go home, you know, kind of thing.

And so I knew that that wasn't going to work. that we had to get people that were engaged and that were thinking on a higher plane rather than just working at J-O-B because the quality of work, the quality of customer service provided, because this whole thing we're on in Entree leadership and in Financial Peace University is all a crusade about changing people's lives. And that's not something you can just kind of clock in and clock out. Yeah, it was much more missional. This is a crusade. And you have to find people, who don't see it as, well, I'm just a manager. I'm just here to manage people.

Managers count stuff. Yeah, how do you actually, on paper go, here's the difference between a boss and a leader. And you do this at our entree leadership events, walking through what an entree leader is. Well, bosses push, leaders pull. Bosses, you know, in general, have things that they are demanding of. They're, you know, they've got a certain task. And so in a sense, when I'm bossing, I'm a taker. A leader is more of a servant and pulling and inspiring and giving people great dignity.

And the bad news is that a boss can actually get more done today with the team than a leader can. But then the people don't stay engaged because most people don't want to be bossed. Very few people do unless there's something wrong with them. And they don't want to be told what to do all the time. They don't want to be micromanaged. They don't want a sense of an iron fist over everything they're doing. And so it works short term. You can get, you know, a little bit like parenting in that sense.

You can make your children behave and they turn into little robots, but then they don't have any critical thinking skills to become adults. So over time, the work landscape has changed. Back in the day, you could get away with being a boss. It just doesn't cut it anymore. As we're seeing, Gen Z and millennials, they want to serve under leaders. And that's what's going to keep them at these companies. and you mentioned the word servant leadership.

We talk about in the Entree leadership book, it's redundant that all leaders should be servants. At what point did you even hear about that term? And was there kind of this lightbulb moment? Yeah, I don't think that this generation is any different. You know, we talk about millennials, you know, demanding or needing this or whatever. You know, no human being that has any self-esteem

and self-confidence has ever wanted to be told everything to do. So that's not new. That's always been that way. But now the work culture, you know, had a lot more bosses in it in the old days and fewer real leaders. But the real leaders in those days even stood out. The real leaders in a military culture where you have to, you know, you have to follow orders. But even those situations, real leaders have that servant mentality. First time I heard it was I was reading John Maxwell.

And John is a good friend. and he's in the Christian space primarily about leading, leading in churches, but leading with a biblical mindset. And he said, you know, great leaders are servants. And I thought to myself, not a chance. You know, I sign their check. They're supposed to do what I tell them to do. I'm not serving them.

They're serving me. I'm, you know, but that's a boss mentality when I thought that. And so it doesn't work. But I also, when I heard servant come out of his mouth, I didn't hear servant. I heard subservient. Big difference. Like somehow I have to do everything in your case. You know, what you were talking about there are the millennials tell me to do.

I don't have to do everything. You know, I don't have to acquiesce to every little request from the folks that are on our team. That's ridiculous. So I'm not there subservient. I'm not bowing to them in that sense. But servants simply means, do I have their best interest at heart while we're doing this together? And sometimes I have someone's best interest at heart. I realized when I let them not work here anymore because they suck at their job and they need to go find a job they don't suck at.

And so that's serving someone. Sometimes I'm serving my children when I made them brush their teeth against their will so that they have teeth later. That's a good thing. So that's serving, but serving can be setting out, you know, real expectations, challenges and holding people accountable to them. That's serving because people are growing into who they can be that way. versus, you know, I'm not going to allow anyone to coast around here. I don't coast and mail it in and half but do stuff. And so, but that's serving them to create a culture and environment of high productivity,

high energy, high intellect. I mean, you're running with thoroughbreds when you're running at Ramsey. And so that's serving. It's serving people when we don't tolerate misbehavior inside the organization. That's serving. But, you know, that's different than I have to do everything you tell me to do. and I pay you. That's, that's backwards. So this is not, you're a dormant, you're not soft, they're still, it's just not militant.

And so there's this weird space in between. And so I have your best interest at heart. You know, I actually can care about you and still hold you to high expectations. I did that with my children. They're growing up, you know. You can feel that I love you and that I care about your future and I care about your spouse and I care about your dreams. And simultaneously, the best way to get there is for us to go freaking win. Yeah. So when someone, gets promoted into leadership, sometimes what runs through their mind is, oh, I'm going to get a new office, I'm going to get this pay bump, I'm going to upgrade my lifestyle, those feel a little bit vain and frivolous. What should be going through someone's mind as they step into leadership for

the first time? Well, they feel vain and frivolous because they are. That's a vain and frivolous, shallow mentality. Our good friend Pat Lanchione has a new book out called The Motive. And, you know, it's a great read, by the way. You got to read it. But it's, again, one of those parable style books where he tells a story of a guy who had the wrong motive to be a leader. And when he changed his motives, he actually became a real leader. But your motive, again, is not what you can get. It's what you can give. And the paradox is that when you approach it from that, not only does the person and the organization get more done, is shinier, all those kinds of things, but you actually also, at the end of the story, end up more satisfied.

as a leader by serving and how you can knock blockers down for your team, get things done, help them, lift them up, hold them accountable, all the different things you have to do in the leadership seat that has nothing to do with the corner office or the pay or the, quote, privilege of being a leader. And so, yeah, we don't want anyone that's moving into leadership unless their goal is to make their team better, not, I want a corner office. Yeah, you've probably seen a lot of great leaders, and you've also dealt with some crappy ones. Where do you, how do you draw the line of, hey, I'm going to sniff this guy out and see if he's got bad motives?

How do you feel that out? How do you discern? I don't know that you can in one technique or one formula or anything. It's just reps. If you just watch what they're doing, pretty, I mean, most people have a pretty good sniffer. You can sniff them out, and they'll, you know, over time, and it doesn't take two years, but you know, you're not going to be able to have one. eating with a person and go, that gal, she doesn't, she doesn't cut it, or that gal is a superstar. You know, you're not going to find that out. But, you know, check the fruit. What's happening?

How's the team's attitude? I remember years ago, we had a lady on our team that was a world-class leader. And really, she, the thing that she did the best was she created an environment on that team that her team members were intensely loyal to her, as well as to, you know, the mission that that group was working on. And she was just naturally pastoral in how she went about her life and created these deep bonds with her team. And they would do anything for her as a result.

And, you know, how she got that tremendous loyalty, she gave tremendous loyalty. So you can watch the fruit and go, oh, I'm a fruit inspector. That's what's happening over there. This apple's rotten or this one, that tree's full. Look at that. Versus someone who's raising their hand going, oh, I want to be a bit of a fruit inspector. be in leadership, but there's no fruit there. And you go, what's the real reason? Yeah. Almost always someone who's jumping up and down, pick me, pick me, pick me is not who you want.

You know, because that tells you right there it's about them. It's about them. Instead of, hey, how can I add value? How can I add, that's a John Maxwell phrase or Ken Coleman phrase that we use around here all time. How can I add value? Because every one of you guys out there, gals out there listening right now that run a company. If someone comes in and can add value, you're not going to keep them from adding value. And you're like, okay, I can show you how to do this. And that would be awesome that you did that. And all of a sudden, they are leading. You can watch around the company, around the culture. And there's people who are leading, even if they don't have titles. They're following them in social engagements. They're joining their Bible study. They're, you know, they're on their softball team.

Everybody wants to be on that guy's team. Everybody wants to be on that gal's team. And outside of work. And so you've got some natural, some people who are leading, but they've just never been given the job of leader. We talk all the time around here that we breathe the brayer air. And this place is different. It's not corporate America. We try very hard intentionally to go the opposite way as corporate America. And you've seen a lot of things over 30 years of leadership. What still grinds your gears when it comes to seeing poor leadership out there? Well, poor leadership out there is almost always selfish, and it's almost always greedy. Poor leadership is a taker rather than a giver. Poor leadership is pushy rather than pulley. Poor leadership is more worried about optics than principle.

They're worried about how something looks, and they spend all their time building this facade of the way the company looks rather than actually going and doing stuff. And it's been a lot of energy, a lot of bandwidth, a lot of resources in virtue signaling out there today. We saw a lot of that with the pandemic for sure. Yeah, a pandemic and a lot of the political stuff that's happening. It's like, I got work to do over here. You know, I'm not mad about it one way or the other, but, you know, I don't have time to stop and do all that. I got people I'm trying to get out of debt. I got people I'm trying to teach out of lead an organization with Hontrey leadership.

And so, you know, that's not my thing. And so, but, you know, part of what happens is companies get to making enough money, and it's happened to us that we take our eye off the ball. We forget to dance with a girl that brought us, you know, we forget to stay on task because we've got this money and this bandwidth. We've got these resources, and we're like, we could do that over there. We could do that over there. Maybe we need to make a statement about this, and nobody gives a crap, you know?

Just do your deal. But poor leadership with this virtue signaling is grinding my gears. big time right now in corporate America. Now, every leader wants to be seen as confident, you know, successful, strong, like they've got it all together. But at the same time, they're bound to screw up. We're all humans. We're all people. So in your experience, how do the best leaders approach failures and mistakes when it comes to the team?

The thing is this, nobody is fooled. Everybody knows you might have a mistake. So not dealing with They're not talking about it Is not gonna like Well I've got it all together I didn't make a mistake They already know

Or you blame someone else You know oh well are you You know hey I hand the credit Steal the credit and hand the blame right And but no that The leaders that That I've enjoyed Following the most

Were the ones that You know They get her done And they're excellent and they push But when they stumble Or when they make it When they screw up When they get mad or when something happens and they come back in, they go, you know what?

I really, this is, I screwed this up. And, you know, what I had, I had one this week that I had to sit down with our leadership team. And I went, guys, that right there just, that really got me in a bad place. And I really made a bad decision on that. And I screwed up. And not only did I screw up, but let me just, not only do I tell them that I screwed up, but I unpacked why. Okay, what's going on inside of me that caused,

me to do that, or almost do that, or whatever. What's happening? And that's with my closest leaders, our top, our top gang. I don't necessarily get on stage in front of a thousand people and go, well, I'm an idiot, you know, but, but even there, if there's times we're going through stuff, and I'm going, guys, we made a mistake on this. And I'm not proud of it. And, hey, but I'm also not quitting, you know, and I'm not going to, you know, I'm everything, I don't do cancel culture on myself. So I'm, I'm not quitting just because I made one mistake. Um, you know, I apologize, even talk about why, what was happening inside of me that did it. Just be authentic. Just go, you know, this happened. And the way I grew up, man, this, that activated me in a way it shouldn't

have. And man, I'm not, I'm not proud of that. I'm not doing that again. I don't like me when I do that. And I know y'all didn't either. So, you know, let's all work together on and sorry guys next time next time but it's like you know if let's say you get frustrated with your kids when they're little and you know they're jumping around all the place and you know you're like would you please sit down you know and then you go i got apologize okay so look i'm sorry i raise my voice on this sometimes uh dad does that but that doesn't mean i'm resigning as parent i'm still in charge i'm still going to take care of this child i'm still going to nurture them I'm not going to go, well, you know, I made that one mistake, so you're going to orphanage now.

You got to keep going. Yep. And there's a level of extreme ownership and humility that creates trust with the team when I go, man, Dave really owned that one. And that showed me that I can own my mistakes too and I don't have to hide stuff. And that's actually great leadership. Yeah. And, you know, I had one guy that made a huge error that cost us. Some zeros on the end.

Yeah, some zeros. I'll just leave it at that. And he came in and he said, oh, I need to resign. and I'm like, uh-uh, I just invested that amount of money in your tuition at the school of life. So, no, you're not taking all that knowledge somewhere else. We just all learned a hard lesson together, and, you know, you're staying. Because he doesn't have a pattern, a track record of regularly doing that. Now, regular pattern of that kind of failure, that means you can't do his job.

And that's a different thing. I would accept that resignation. But I read that about Andrew Carnegie a thousand years ago. of Carnegie, if you're from proper, proper from the Pittsburgh area, Carnegie Steel, and one of the steel magnets at the turn of the century and turn of 1900 or so. But a guy made a $250,000 error, which in those days would be, what, millions today, right? Maine came in, and that's exactly what Carnegie said to him, no, I will not accept your resignation. I've just invested heavily in your education.

And so that's what we all do. And we go, okay, one, you know, it's not a pattern. It's not repeated. I make a lot of mistakes. My goal is to not make the same stupid mistake twice because I'm going to make new ones. So I might as well have a variety in life, you know. Spice it up. Yeah. So we have now raised up a whole lot of leaders around here. We call it Ramsey Solutions Leadership, I think over 200 leaders now inside of this organization. If you're trying to raise up new leaders, how do you go about that the right way? Are some people just poised for leadership? Can you turn someone from a boss to a leader? what does that process look like for us? Well, I think whoever's leading them, it's their job to mentor them and to continue to grow them and on a case-by-case basis go, okay, here's what we do and here's how we do this. And we've got our core values in place. We've got lots of processes in place here that are standard Ramsey ways of doing things. And you need to conform to that to start with. The big thing, though, is you've got to have that right spirit, that humble, hungry, smart from, again, from Shione. Humble is not that I think less of myself. It's that I think of myself less, according to C.S. Lewis. And so that's real humility. And so all I'm doing is I'm looking at the team going, how can I serve you that we all get our work done, easier, better? My job is to run interference, you know, take out the blockers, get the bureaucracy out of the way so you can get your deadgum work done, make sure you've got the resources and the tools to get it done,

brainstorm with you new ideas and the newer you are, the more hand-in-glove I've got to be, and the longer you've been doing the stuff, the more delegatable it is. But you've just got a mentor. You've got to spend T-I-M-E with them, and then as they learn it, back off. And the more they learn back off more, and the more they learn back off more, and the more they produce, they've earned the right for you to, you know, lessen your training time with them. Yeah, and we invest a lot of time and money into raising up these new leaders. and it started obviously with just one leader, now with over 200,

that, you know, we have obviously layers of leadership at this point with our executive team and board members. So how and why do we invest so much time and money into this? Is it worth it, in the end? Oh, well, it's the only way to get things done. I mean, it's a very practical thing. John Maxwell says everything rises and falls on leadership, and he's right, including revenues. You know, and so when things are led poorly, then you've got hot turnover, which is very expensive. when things are led poorly, the business ideas aren't coming out.

The customer's not being served. The execution is poor and limping. And so it does. I have had areas of this business over 30 years that I look back on. I go, why is that such a good idea? Why can we not get that moving? And eventually we keep looking at it, and we end up changing the leader out, and the thing takes off. The idea wasn't bad.

You know, we just didn't have the right people to push it through in there and pull it through, for that matter, in there. And so, I mean, I can think about three examples at the top of my head right now, inside the building. They're very successful business units that at other times decades ago or more than a decade ago had a different leader in the seat. And it was producing nowhere near what it is now in terms of results, life change out there, you know, the people coming back and saying this information, this inspiration that you gave us, changed everything.

and we're really, really, really going zoom-zoom on some of this stuff right now. And it really is because we've got better leaders in the seat. Yeah, right person on the right seat on the bus. It's important. So most people listening, they want to assume that they're, you know, solid, servant leaders. But what is a good way to gauge for yourself if you lean towards boss or leader? Is it getting outside feedback? Is there, you know, a test we can give ourselves?

How do you measure that? I'm not positive. I don't think there is a test. There probably is a test. I don't have one. But this idea that if you just step back and go, okay, what is my motivation? And again, back to Lynch-Yoney's book, what is my motive for this? Am I just trying to get work out of this person?

Then that's a taker. Now I'm a boss. But if I'm going, all right, I'm looking here at George. I know what George's dreams are. How can I help him hit those dreams? Because along the way, our dreams will all come true. you know and so the more successful georgia is the more successful ramsie is thinking about your wife whitney and i'm thinking about the new house you guys just got and how can i in the midst of that

go okay and we got some work to get done and george is a big part of that and you know those things aren't they don't have to be like the only way for ramsie to win is for its employee or team member to lose it's quite the opposite it's a win-win symbiotic relationship and so if you're approaching it from what can I get rather than what can I give so that we all win together and a win-win, that tells you right there. Well, you have done a great job of that. You and the leadership team of raising up now almost a quarter of the company is leadership. And that tells me there is a culture of leaders around here, and we've been very intentional

about that. And I appreciate you for 30 years now, really being honest, showing us the playbook of how you did it with all the failures and mistakes and all the successes and the things you've learned to help the leaders listening, avoid some of those, and, continuously grow. So thank you for that. I appreciate that. The failures and the mistakes are give you a sense of humor. You don't have something to laugh about. You'll be crying all the time. That's a big part of leadership. We need to lean into that for sure. Well, thanks so much for being on the podcast, Dave. Dave, I appreciate you. Thank you, George. Big thanks to Dave Ramsey for taking the

time to inspire us all to move from boss to leaders. I got to ask you a question. Have you ever met a born leader? Well, guess what? There's no such thing. Leaders are built, not born. And that means we've got to keep building every day and every year. And that's why we host our Entree Leadership Summit event every year. This is the premier leadership conference that will challenge, inspire, and motivate you to blow past the status quo with teachings from the world's top minds and leadership. And next year, we're going to be right here in our hometown, Nashville, Tennessee, May 30th through June 2nd, with a lineup of speakers that will knock your socks off. Check this out. We've got Ken Coleman, Dr. John Deloney, Willie Robertson, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Patrick Lynchone, Dr. Amy Cuddy, Manit Chohan,

and of course, Dave Ramsey. So get ready. If you want to learn more and get your tickets, go to Entreleadership.com slash summit. If you enjoyed today's episode of the show, give us a follow or subscribe and leave us a five-star review.

And if you really love this episode, share it with someone you know. Maybe it's a friend, your team, or on social media. Speaking of which, you can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. 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.