EntreLeadership - How to Develop Your Team Like a Navy SEAL Commander with Mike Hayes

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Join us as I talk to Mike Hayes, former commanding officer of SEAL Team TWO and the current chief digital transformation officer at VMware. Mike explains what he does to build an organization that’s prepared to grow their people—and how you can do the same. Later in the episode, I chat with Brian Williams, the senior executive vice president of Ramsey+, about how you can develop a person by focusing on their strengths. You’ll learn: What a Navy SEAL commanding officer does daily How to avoid fatal mistakes when delegating to direct reports How failing to develop your team can cost you How to identify and develop your team members’ strengths Support our sponsors: BELAY: https://bit.ly/3epUiVK Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre Exodus 90: https://bit.ly/Exodus90Entre Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital Links: The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast Never Enough by Mike Hayes: https://amzn.to/3JKc3ww Never Enough audiobook by Mike Hayes: https://adbl.co/3JKa4sc Download 43 Easy Ways to Recognize Your Team: https://bit.ly/3HDajDh Schedule a call with Tim, our producer: https://bit.ly/3bJOSmi Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipElite Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Weekly Report Tool: https://bit.ly/WeeklyReportTool 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

Every great leader knows the value in developing their teams. But in order to grow, a team member has to stretch beyond their current capabilities. And that process can be risky. Giving them something that's a stretch can lead to dropping the ball. So how do you stretch and grow your team without fumbling along the way? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, but we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel.

in today's episode is all about building an organization that's prepared to develop their people without putting the business at risk, which connects to our business driver of people. Our first guest today is Mike Hayes. He's the former commanding officer of SEAL Team 2, and he's currently the chief digital transformation officer at VMware. He's also the author of a new book, Never Enough. I sit down with Mike to talk about what he does to build an organization that's prepared to grow their people. In our second conversation, I talk with Ramsey leader Brian Williams about how he builds amazing teams by honing in on their strengths. Up first, my conversation with Mike Hayes. Mike, it's so great to have you on the podcast. How you doing? George, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you. So I was looking over your resume, and it is extensive. You've had an amazing career.

Currently, you're in the tech space, you were in the investing space, and you had an incredible two-decade career in the Navy as a commanding officer of SEAL Team 2. So I want to talk about some of all of this today because it all really ties back to leadership. Tell us about what a day as a commanding officer of SEAL Team 2 was like. Wow. Good fastball question right off the bat. Such an energizing and really challenging job. Nothing better. As a SEAL commander, you're doing something a little bit different every day. But in reality, when I ran the task force of 2,000 people overseas in Afghanistan, sometimes we were dealing with, you know, very, very hard, darker the night operations. Sometimes we were dealing with the softer things like infrastructure projects or things that seals or special forces may be

lesser known for. But on net, what we're really trying to do is energize people and help people in the organization go achieve great things because really ultimately, as you know well, it's really just about energizing others and pulling them up to go do great things. Yeah, and that's tough to do with 10 people, let alone 2,000. So tell me, how did you lead to? 2,000 people? Well, the thing I would say first is by recognizing that everybody in that 2,000 person group is both a leader and a follower. You see, a lot of times people hold the actual, like one person on top as the leader.

And I like to say, no, no, no, leadership is everybody. It just depends on the situation. So everybody needs to be able to lead. Everybody needs to be able to follow. And then most importantly to know when to do which, because in a high-performing organization, you know, usually everybody's capable. And so it doesn't take the highest ranking person who's the commanding officer of the SEAL team.

What it takes is the person who is closest to the problem or the opportunity and who's best suited and then for the rest of the organization to expertly surround the person who's best place to achieve the objectives, to put others before self and just do the best thing for the team. Yeah, servant leadership, a little redundant,

but that's what you hope for. You hope for people who have that heart. Talk to us about what a day might look like. Tell us a story of what normal was like in Afghanistan as you were leading these troops. The truth is your days and your nights get really mixed up because sometimes you're sleeping three hours a night for three, four, five days on end. And to paint the picture in Afghanistan, this is 2012, but pretty representative of the entire two decades of conflict that were there.

Being a leader there is overseeing, in my case, 25 different outstations, if you will, each of those outstations being anything from like six to 16 seals or green berets and then having them augmented with other experts that were not seals and green berets to help achieve an overall objective. And so out of the 10 months in Afghanistan, we counted, you know, about 60% of the time there was at least one of those 25 outstations was in direct conflict combat with the Taliban. So complicated situation. man, well, I appreciate your service and the service of so many out there who are in the middle of this conflict day to day.

That's really intense. So how many direct reports did you have personally? Obviously, there's a leadership team in place. How many were reporting directly to you? Well, George, just like any good business, we try to set up a pyramid so that, you know, roughly seven or so direct reports. Because what's really important is thinking about the flow of information and where decisions. get made. In any organization, the SEALs or, you know, now I'm at VMware, a 35,000 plus person organization. And it's really the same thing. It's how do you push decision making where it should be

made? If every decision needs to get made at the top, you can see that you paralyze an organization. And so the key is, is helping the organization learn how to think, not what to think, and not rely on the people that are further up the classic hierarchical chain of command. And so what I did was really, I tried to not have a job. I joke around that the L. George stands for Lazy and seal, because the more that I can push to other people and sit back and watch the magic happen, then my brain can think about what are we missing. Just like any time we're doing work, there's the positive space in front of you, but the negative space is where all of the risk and all of the opportunity is. You have to be able to get in that negative space and think about

what's your organization missing. Yeah, we talk a lot on this podcast about working on the business and not just in it. And it sounds like you found a way to avoid being the lid. You know, we talk about how the leader is the lid to the business and how they can become the bottleneck where all the decisions have to flow through Mike and now there's this huge bottleneck that's stopping us from growth and achieving success. So what were those steps that you took to put those systems in place? It doesn't happen by accident.

Great topic. I love talking about this. Let me answer it in two ways. One is individually, the other is collectively. From an individual basis, I think the most important concept is humility. right? I like to describe careers in three phases. Phase one, we come out of school and we build the foundation of something, whatever we choose. The second phase of career is going to try to show the world how well you're doing, you know, and that you're really good at your chosen path. Many of us

never make it to the third phase of the career, which I think is what really liberates us and accelerates performance. And that is being so comfortable that you're good at what you're good at, that you can stand in front of the room and say things like, I don't know, or not need any credit and being so comfortable in your own skin. So to your question, the thing that actually really accelerates that organization is seeing others step forward and then, you know, me not needing any individual credit, but just saying the organization's outcomes are my outcomes and I take more pride in seeing others achieve things. So that's kind of the individual answer. And then, you know, collectively, of course, it's teams really thinking about will that success or that lack of success be

equally shared. It's not just when it's equally shared, but the perception of credit or blame being disproportionately shared is the first way to break down a team. In the seals, we don't do that. We win or we lose together. Every single seal element task, you know, team, et cetera, is the exact same. Everything's shared. Wow. Well, this ties perfectly into the conversation I want to get into, how to best design an organization to appropriately balance stretching and growing people and trusting them to lead while simultaneously not really allowing the organization to assume too much unnecessary risk because there is risk when you allow others to lead and stretch and grow them up front for failure. And sometimes, you know, especially in your field, failure is not really an

option. So I want to talk about how you did this. How did you help your direct reports stretch and grow in their role. I think the most important thing to recognize in my mind is that you have to set up a system where individuals can fail, but the organization doesn't. And see, if you have a culture where celebrating that trying hard things and potentially, classically, I'll put in air quotes here, failing is okay. That's what you really need. I like to think about success and failure a little bit different than some. You can't just, you know, success is obvious, but down the failure part of the the logic tree, you have to go one more node down below and say learn or not learn. And I would say it's only failure if you fail and didn't learn.

And so what I like to do is push people around me to take on really things harder than they may have thought they could do before. They'll either succeed or they'll fail and learn. That's what makes us stronger. And that's what makes that next level of leaders ready to step forward and take on more. And that's the health of an organization. Yeah, that can be hard to do as a leader to even allow that. to happen because it feels like you failed as a leader if someone on your team fails. And so how do you

kind of grapple with, okay, we gave them this opportunity to lead this thing and they didn't quite get it right. What is the next step you take as a leader? Let's first take one step to the left of that question, which is why don't people take on harder things? It's usually because we don't go that last, you know, spend that last 10 calories of mental energy to say, what's going to happen to me if I try the really hard thing and air quotes fail. Well, you know, if my friends or my colleagues or my family is going to think less of me because I tried a really hard thing and didn't succeed, I'm around the wrong people, you know. And so as an organization, you have to set the culture where trying those hard things and learning is celebrated. And then when people do that, you need to hold them up and say,

hey, look what we just learned. And look how this sets us up for the future. And really just very practically speaking, take the people who have done that and celebrate them, don't ever, ever, ever make them feel smaller. You know, I was getting ready to go on an operation one time in Afghanistan. I was the leader of the organization. And I'll never forget, after doing this mission brief, a 23-year-old seal, back of the room, raises his hand and says, hey, sir, I think that you're going about this all the wrong way. I think there's a better way to do this. In that moment, George, I can do one of two things. I can cut that guy down by an inch so I look an inch taller, or I can celebrate like we're talking about. And man alive, be absolutely certain that if you cut somebody down for doing that,

you will never get any other ideas out of that person. So what we need is an innovative idea-generating organization that thinks about all of the different ways we can go do something. And that's what will ultimately not only mitigate risk, but enhance success. Yeah. And that does take humility like you were talking about to go, all right, let's hear it. instead of cutting them down as a power move there. So that's powerful. Thanks for sharing that. And you know, you so wisely just connected it back to humility

because the leader has to feel comfortable. If you're not confident and comfortable, that can feel really awkward. And a lot of that is trust, too. And a lot of leaders, they end up kind of micromanaging out of a lack of trust because they want to get it right. They don't quite trust the team. And that usually just points back to the leader because they haven't equipped them to where they feel confident.

And so it really does always come back to the leader and always is that mirror that you're holding up going, okay, where did I fail here as a leader? George, you're ready to run a SEAL team. Yes. The guys in the booth are just shaking their head like, no, don't do it. But thank you for that. So this is a great topic, though. What are some of your favorite ways you found to stretch your own people? Well, I think the thing to recognize is, are you going to stretch them deeper in the area that they are in or broader in things that they haven't tried before?

So I think the real question there is starting with what motivates people. You know, in the seals, it's a little bit narrower. It's very much mission, mission, mission. How do you do something larger than self, et cetera? In the private sector, it's a little bit broader. Some people are motivated by compensation or promotion or public recognition. Or, you know, if you named five or eight things, you'd capture what all of us as humans are motivated by. And so how do we recognize that other people are motivated by different things and say that's okay?

I don't personally care about public recognition, but if the person next to me does, all I have to do is connect the outcome, the vision we're trying to achieve as an organization, and put it, translate it to what motivates the person to my right or left that may be different than me. Those are real conversations. A lot of times in my view in the world, we say, hey, how are you and we don't actually listen to the answer? We don't care. You know, how do you really lock in in today's busy times and crazy pandemics and say, hey George, really let's talk about where you see yourself in two or five years.

You know, and what is it that you're not just what do you want to be, but who do you want to be? What's that more fundamental foundation of who George is or whoever, obviously? And so when you listen to that, then you can say, well, gosh, now I'm starting to get a picture for how to stretch you. You know, it's that depth or breadth thing. So the first thing starts with connecting back to what gives you energy. I've hired a lot of people as many people have. and I always talk about three circles. What gives you energy?

What are you good at? And then what is the business need? And if you don't paint the middle of those three, the middle of that Venn diagram, you're not going to have success. It's that circle of energy that really we need to spend the time on. Yeah, and the best leaders are super intentional

about really connecting with their team. And that can feel awkward at times when you're kind of getting personal going, hey, no, really, how are you? No, really, what do you want? What are those things that are going to motivate you? But once you get to that core, the team feels seen, they're more motivated, and you know what motivates them.

And so you can then formulate a plan where everyone wins. Love how you're thinking. Thank you. I'm glad I'm tracking me. This is fantastic. So those direct reports, they had their own teams. How did you equip your leaders to then grow and stretch their teams? Obviously, leadership doesn't go anywhere if it doesn't cascade through an organization. And so sometimes people have varying levels of cognizant. of the fact that what you're doing with them, they need to do with their direct reports.

So what I do is kind of the Socratic method of let's get there by questions and hopefully, you know, like the right answer comes out of like, and I hear answers that are cascade-y, if you will. But if I don't hear those cascade-y type of answers making up a word, I'm great at playing Scrabble and inventing the words that don't work. But if you don't have the cascade going, then I just get more direct and I say, hey, you know how we interact?

You know, I'm not saying you have to be exactly like me, but what I really want you to think about is, how do you do what, achieve the same goal? You might get there a different way. I respect that, but I do want everybody else to be on, have a development plan and feel much larger than life and connect them to the vision, the mission. You know, today's during this great resignation that we're all seeing,

there's a lot of writing about this comp arms war that's out there. Everybody's paying more money for more people, et cetera. sure, of course you need to be with them, keep up with markets or whatever, but the real connection is mission, it's meaning, it's learning, it's growing. That's way more valuable for most people than any, you know, of course we have to get paid in work. I'm not putting comp off the table, but I think the things that are non-comp related are very, very much equal or greater importance. Yeah. And as we're talking about stretching and growing your people, there's always something at stake here. So what is at stake if you're not stretching?

and growing your people at different ranks? It's simple. You're going to regress to the mean and be mediocre at best. That'll be a lucky day for you. You know, the company that doesn't do what I'm describing, I believe they'll regress. And you'll see talent flight. You'll see people move to the places that I'm kind of describing.

And, you know, one of the things as we hire other senior leaders into an organization, you know, talent attracts talent. And so, you know, how do we, like the difference between hiring the A-plus, person and the A minus person can be a massively different outcome for a company. Yeah. And that can be hard to do when you're trying to attract that talent and retain them and train them and give them that growth plan. That can feel like a lot for the leader who's overwhelmed running the business. How do you kind of take the time to focus on those areas instead of just reacting to whatever fire is coming at you that day? Yeah, another awesome topic. So the recognition

is that it is all about the people. It is all about the team. If you get the governance right for any organization, the governance is both the how and the who, everything else will fall into place because you're gonna have people that don't need direction. Like my job at this point has always been to surround myself with people smarter than me. I like to say that we're the average of the people

we hang out with. I've always hung out with people who are smarter and faster and stronger and they pull me up. And sure, there's certain ways where I've got different experiences and that's why I wrote my book or I'm passionate about speaking or whatever. And that's where we're trying to pull people

up is really what it's about. And I just think the name of the game is unquestionably people and team. Yeah. Well, I can see why you've been an incredible leader for decades now and your C-suite roles and obviously in the Navy. So I want to talk about this idea of risk. And we talked about what's at stake here. But I want to talk about how to not assume unnecessary risk while you're growing people. So what are those risks that are involved when it comes to stretching and growing your people? So the framework that I think of along these lines are first vision, where is the organization going? You know, my econ professor said in grad school, Mike, beware of fast trains to the wrong station. You know, so first is where are we going together?

And then from there, after you have the vision, the where, then there's the strategy, which is the how. And now, how do you have a process that doesn't just evaluate one strategy, but how do you get five or ten or more different strategies on the table and look at what do those? How do you de-risk each of those strategies so that you can just make a decision that says, do we want the higher risk, higher reward strategy or the lower risk? It's kind of like in wealth management, you know, do you say, I want a certain return for my money and then you take a minimum amount of risk to get the return or vice versa. I'll take X amount of risk. And for that, I want to maximize the return.

It's kind of the same question of in a business. There are riskier paths, which always have potential higher rewards and vice versa. so that the question really is, where is my organization comfortable taking how much risk? And once you have that conversation, it's only a question of how you need a resource to go achieve that and meaning both, you know, people or capital investments, et cetera. Yeah. And when you have that vision and you've got kind of that desired future in front of you, it helps you assess, hey, how much, what do we need to do to get there? And then you go, okay, well, that's the risk I'm willing to take because this is where we need to go.

And so there's definitely a different driver there where you're letting your vision drive that instead of going, hey, I don't want to make any, I don't want to take any risks here, and therefore I'm not going to see any success or growth in my business. It's a question of being deliberate. So many people end up on paths that are not thought out in a top-down kind of way. A lot of us, think about jobs, right? When we think about changing where we're going to work, you know, you get hit, the number of people that have been hit with one opportunity that call me and tell me that they're going to go think about this thing,

I say, okay, that's great, but if you're going to make a move, why are you going to react to one out of one thing? Why not go generate 100 ideas and then see the dimensions that are important to you? And then you can choose one of 100 instead of one of one things that randomly landed in your inbox. And so that being deliberate is a thing that a lot of organizations fail to fail to do. I find that a lot of leaders as they hire people, they go, well, I hired them to work, Mike. I mean, I pay them. They do the work. They go home. Everything's fine. I can't sit here and baby them and help them grow. And what do you say to that leader who feels like, hey, this is a waste of my time? I hired them for a job. And what if they leave after I've trained them and helped them grow? And they go, wow, I don't need you anymore. What would you say to that leader? I'd say the first measure of a leader is how many leaders that leader creates. And that's a question that can never be answered until a couple years down the road. And so just do the right thing now. If you're worrying about your in the moment is this is me speaking to this person to answer your question. If you're worried about those issues in the moment, you're not focusing your energy on the right thing. If you just invest

in people, they're going to stay. And if there's a reason to go, then it'll be a great reason. There are a lot of firms that do a great job of marking their alumni, you know, and say, okay, where are our alumni after they left this organization? And how can we work together to create, you know, more revenue or more synergies or more just goodness for the planet? and recognizing that the organization that doesn't celebrate their alumni, in my view, a bit missing out on a great opportunity. So that's one part of the question and the conversation. And then the other, I think, very importantly, is just to push the person to recognize that if the failure and the learning isn't good enough, you know, if you repeat that over and over and over, sure, maybe you do need to exit the person, you know, or maybe you need to exit yourself. And so, like, let's recognize that every large enterprise has a bottom 5%.

How do you handle your bottom 5%? We even had it in the seals. Like, if you think about who wins the Super Bowl or the World Series, you know, the winners of each of those teams has a bottom 5%. Now, I'm not saying they need to go away, but how do you identify where that is? Because that's the opportunity to make that World Series winner even better for next year. Yeah. And as that leader is thinking through those risks of, hey, what if this doesn't work out,

what are those ways that you can mitigate those risks? I'll answer the question. I think you're asking you if I missed the question, then please push back on me. But I think the most important thing for the risk around people leaving is that you don't treat them, people don't treat levers with enough respect. You know, ultimately when people are leaving, you need to say thank you for the great work that you did. You know, we've, whether it was the SEALs or in the private sector, you know, people made a

contribution and nobody comes to work and says, what can I go screw up today? you know people come to work bringing their best self to work and so you're investing in those people until you're not and then when you decide that you're not then you're you're absolutely in appreciation and thanks for the contribution you did make and showing the people that are leaving that ultimate thanks and respect for what they did do for the organization yeah it's almost like the leader wants to control the outcome as much as they do the process and there's not you can't always do that you can control how much you invest in your team but whether the they fail, whether they stay long term, those are things that are out of your control. And there's

pieces of that that it feels like the leader just needs to let go. You just said it way more succinctly than I did, George. I'm just summarizing all of your brilliant thoughts. Thank you so much for that. So tell me a story of maybe a time you balanced that risk of stretching and growing your people. What did that look like for you? Oh, wow. Okay, so here's a good one. When I'm running the task force in Afghanistan, I was woken up at three in the morning hundreds of times. I was ultimately the last person to decide what operations our nation's sons and daughters went on. And when we drop bombs from aircraft to the ground, you know, that's a decision you do not want to get wrong. I'm really proud to say we never harmed anybody who shouldn't be harmed.

So full stop there. The way that happens is by creating a decision-making system where you separate the input from the decider. And so how do you surround yourself with other inputs? And so in this particular story, I was literally had a red light in my ceiling that the, think of like a this plywood building in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, and, you know, satellite radios and a couple big screen TVs that are feeds from unmanned aerial vehicles or satellite imagery or things like that that would just be information in the operation center. Well, the reason that I had the red light in my ceiling was because I was the one who had to approve whether we do an airstrike

or not. So this particular night, there was a situation where we called troops in contact, TIC, T-TUC, troops in contact. I started waking up by. the sound of the light coming on, not even the light. I was like Pavlov's dog or something, you know, ring bell and then drool. But I sprinted the 20 or 30 yards down the hallway and I'm in my operation center. And I walk in and my job is to not have a job. My job is to watch everybody else doing what they already know how to do. And so the stretching and the pushing that you refer to was really making sure these people knew that they, A, to do their job, and then B, that my approach was to be there for them when they want me there and out of their way when they

want me out of their way. And that I love the feedback to say, Mike, dial it in so you're closer or further based on what is needed, either in the moment by the day, by the week. And there was a situation where there were some seals wounded. You know, we needed to actually make a decision about whether I stopped giving units of blood to some Afghans who were already wounded in our medical center. We had 10 units of blood normally on state, on hand, and we were down to three units of blood. and I had to make the hard decision to save that blood for the Americans. And because our first mission was, of course, to take care of our own. And that's not an easy decision when you're a commander of a task force like that

is literally a life and death situation. And so the thing that I got was great performance, great advice, great insight from everybody around me so that it wasn't just a Mike Hay's decision. But I will tell you in this particular situation, the reason I could think of, like to ask the question of how much blood do we have in our blood bank? think, well, that's because I'm sitting back, listening and not having that job and thinking, what's that whole, the greatest risk and the greatest opportunity? I wouldn't have been able to do that if I walked into the task force and I specifically had a task that I had to go do because my

mind would go to that positive space instead of that negative space. So sorry if that was a little long, George. No, that's a fascinating story. And clearly you had to make some of the toughest decisions any leader would ever have to make where it's literally life and death. That's a tough thing to balance that, but you're saying a lot of the ways you mitigated the risk was having the right leaders in place that you trusted and having a lot of systems and processes and decision-making frameworks that really made it a lot easier. There wasn't a lot of guesswork involved here. Great summary. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that story. I want to switch now and talk about from your time in the Navy to then kind of switching to these C-suite roles. You were at Bridgewater

as a C-O-O there, and now you are the chief digital transformation officer at VMware. So how did you take what you learned in the Navy for 20 years and take that into your role now in the tech space? It's all the same thing. There's a scoreboard, you know, whether it's revenue or profit or leaders that you're creating on the human front, et cetera. It's just a high performance organization. And so, you know, in the SEALs, it was really an organization of agility. How do you have something that needs to get done come down the pike and you say, okay, how do we plan for this? How are we going to go do it? It's not different at VMware. We're just transforming our ability to transform so that we're constantly that, you know, we're a large software

company for those who don't know, we are the trusted foundation on which like 97% of the Fortune 500 operates in different ways. And so what we're really doing is listening in an empathetic kind of way and saying, what are the opportunities that our customers have and working backward from that and we're solving their problems, whether it's helping them do things more inexpensively or more securely or more quickly, et cetera. And so, These are exciting kinds of things because ultimately what VMware does is we help others transform their ability to transform. I wrote in my book, in the Seals, there's a great expression most have heard it. Like no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

Well, in the Seals, we're actually already ahead of that because we're going on the operation, knowing that we're going to need to replan in the moment and take new information in. And markets are always moving fast and how do you stay ahead of markets? well, you can't plan where markets are going to be. And so all you can do is plan, what are the attributes that are essential for my organization? And how do we have the ability to react quickly to what's going on? That's the most important fundamental thing to me, George. Yeah, thinking one step ahead and giving them the ability to make a plan when that plan doesn't work.

That's huge. 100%. So as we wrap here, what encouragement would you give to the leaders out there who they want to stretch their teams, they want their teams to grow and reach their fullest potential, but they don't really know where to start. They don't know what that looks like. What would you tell them? Understand mission and meeting and purpose. And I know I've referred obtusely to my book twice, but like for me personally, never enough. So for me, my mission and passion is taking that learning and helping others and pulling others up. I donate all my profits just for the record to

a 501c3 that pays off mortgages for Gold Star families with that book. So actually, well, George, this isn't the question you asked, but what's really cool is just last night, I chose the family who is going to have their mortgage paid off this weekend. They don't know it. We're going to pay off our sixth mortgage this weekend. That's incredible.

What a cool mission. Well, these are women and families who have paid that ultimate sacrifice and lost more than any of us can comprehend due to service. And so my point is, you know, for me it's writing never enough. But for somebody else, it's different things and understanding what

are the passions that people have that aren't their narrow jobs? And then how do you just help people bring those things so that they're contributing? A lot of people will say, hey, Mike or others, thanks for your service. But, you know, 1% of our nation has or is serving. And so for the other 99% my answer is, no, thanks for your service. How are you serving? Because we all serve each other in different ways based on our gifts, our abilities, our skills, and our interests.

And so for me, the passion is helping, you know, you, George, or other, say, what is going to be the way that I contribute to my, my neighborhood, my town, my school, my street, my state, my country, and the planet. And I recognize that we all have different ways that we serve. My thing is just getting people off the sidelines and serving each other and helping us depolarize this world that we're in now. Man, that's so good. Well, Mike, it's been such an honor to talk with you. I've loved this conversation. I love the way you embody servant leadership, your heart, your generosity, your new book, Never Enough. And obviously with the mission, of paying off mortgages for those families is so incredible. So I appreciate your time.

I appreciate your sacrifice and your service to this country and appreciate you being on the podcast today. George, thanks for all the incredible impact you've had on this great nation and planet. And it's just been a pleasure to be here. I've loved the conversation and look forward to doing it again sometime soon, my friend. Thanks again, Mike, for your incredible service to this country and for an incredible conversation. As Mike mentioned, 100% of the proceeds from his book, Never Enough, goes to paying off mortgages for Gold Star families, those that have lost a family member in service of this nation. So if you want to grab a print copy of the book or listen to it on Audible, you can use the appropriate links in the show notes. Now, Mike shared some great strategies for growing our people

without putting the company at risk. And one of the best ways to grow your people is to know them first. When you're that intentional with your team, it'll become much easier to understand where you can help them stretch and grow. We'll have a conversation about how to do that right after this. All right, our second conversation is with Brian Williams. He's the senior executive vice president of Ramsey Plus, and we're going to talk about how to develop a person by focusing on their strengths, including my personal story of how Brian helped me stretch and grow. Here's our conversation.

Brian, it's so great to have you. Thanks for having me, George. I can't believe this is your very first time on the podcast in this studio. Yeah, new studio, new digs, new us. Look at us. It's been too long. Yeah. Well, you are one of my favorite people in the building.

and I can say that because you are one of my leaders. Yeah, absolutely. In my eight and a half years here, and I can say you're one of my favorites as well. Well, I appreciate that right now. That's great. So I want to talk to you about how to grow people by identifying their strengths and calling that out of them. And we thought of you when it came to this topic because you are a master of this in this building. Thank you.

How long have you been here now, Ramsey? Almost 16 years. Wow. And over those 16 years, you have gotten really good at this. this thing that I think you have coined people chess. Yeah, absolutely. What does that mean? Well, it's just identifying strengths in people, opportunities, and the business, trying to put

the right people in the right seats. Jim Collins talks about right people, right seats. And I got kind of pigeonholed as someone that would, like, steal people and put them on my team. But the reality is I've done just as much for other team members on the other departments to try to just kind of play matchmaker, almost from a professional setting. If Strengths Finder had Thief, would that be your number one? That would be my brand for sure.

But it's in a good way. Yeah. You have been known to build amazing teams somehow out of thin air. Wow. And my story gets intertwined in that, which I'm excited to talk to you about in a little bit. But a large part of leading people is helping them grow in their strengths. Do you remember a story of a time you've done that with someone that was on your team? I mean, you come to mind pretty quickly.

Just from the growth trajectory that you've had here, I can in no way claim, like, I was, a big part of that. But I remember in the early days, you were doing email marketing for the company at large. We needed a spot on our team. I was looking for the right people dynamics to build a really small team. And it really was focused on people that had a core strength, but had opportunities to grow outside of that. Because there was like six or eight of us, and everybody had to do everything. And so it was a small, small team and a really big company. And so that's the type of person I was looking for. You came to mine quickly, and we just jumped in and started to figure it out. Yeah. And that's a delicate art to do that well, because sometimes you are stealing someone

from another team. Obviously, you're doing it in a very tactful way, communicating with leadership. You're not literally just stealing people. But what is that process like? How do you go about that? Let's say a leader sees a skill or strengthen someone, and they go, man, I need that person on my team, or I need to shift them to a different role where we have a need. What is that conversation and process like? It always starts with their leader. And so there's some back-channel conversations that happen. And it's a little bit of a sales process and a little bit of like, hey, we want what's best for a team member.

And you kind of pitch the sale of look at where this person can go, can grow to, all their opportunities. Meanwhile, you're looking at that leader in the eyes and they've given you the desk stare at, of like, you're taking my person. And so there is an art to it of just trying to create the best opportunity. And there have been many times where it's like, you know what, that's great. Now it's not a good time. But it really is trying to put the right person in the right place so that they can grow to their best ability. Yeah.

And we talked about how, you know, this conversation hits close to home for me because you kind of stole me for a team on the marketing side. And then I also grew into a different role. Yeah. as a host. So what does that look like when someone's kind of moving off of that and someone else is going, hey, we see this for this person. How do you start even identifying those strengths? Because I feel like you are very keen of what's going on on your team and the company. How can a leader get better at those things? Well, part of it is relationships. It started with you and I, like, we'd go out to lunch and just kind of figure out what it was that really made your heart sing, really made you want to like propel yourself forward because you could do a lot of things.

Yes, you were doing email marketing, but you were also doing design work to, like, create the emails. You were doing automation. But it was the stuff that you did when you were up on stage that you were like, man, if I could just figure out how to make that a thing. And so that started some back channel conversations with myself and another leader of like, hey, if ever there's a day. And so those conversations went on for a few months before you and I sat down at a burger shop just down the road. And we were like, George, where do you want to go with your life? And you're like, man, if I could really get up on stage enough, if I could do some of the stuff that, you know, other people are doing from hosting or leading, that would be great. And so the groundwork had already been laid long before you and I had to have that conversation because I wanted to make sure there was a path because I kind of had a sense for where it was you wanted to go.

You had a good spidey sense there. A little bit. And part of that is being intentional with your team and going to lunch with them and hearing their heart and helping them create a growth plan to help them get there. And I think a lot of this great resignation talk we've been hearing about stems from a lack of leadership. Yeah. And no one's helping them figure that out. No one's looking at their strengths and unique giftings and going, man, how can we get you in the right seat on the bus so you really shine? Absolutely.

So that you're here for a long time instead of getting frustrated and going, well, they don't see the opportunity in me. And that's something that is it's hard to grow in as a leader. So what were the results like for the person, the team, as you've been shifting and moving people around and growing your own team on Ramsey Plus? So you guys have an incredible team that you've built. What happens if it goes well? What are the positive results? Well, ultimately, it serves the business better because you're keeping people in for the long haul. You're putting them in a place that not only are they thriving from a skill set standpoint,

but it's the thing that they get up every Monday morning and they're pumped to come in and go do. Yes, people can do a lot of different things and they get hired on and they're in their role. But when you start to find that path of like they can't help but do this, You as a leader, it's your responsibility to figure out how to help get them in that spot. And so there's a lot of benefits for them. There's a lot of benefits for the company. But for you as a leader, that starts to really show the way in which you're serving in the company. But also, like, just from a personal standpoint, seeing someone shine in a role that they weren't originally coming in for.

Yeah, that's kind of be fulfilling to see that. And the negative results. We've got to talk about that, too, if it goes poorly or if you're not. not doing it at all. What can that do to the team as you try to grow and stretch or not? Well, whatever you're taking somebody off of a team, especially if it's your team, there's a hole that you're leaving there. And if they were a great member of that team from a personality standpoint or for a team dynamics, you've got a hole that you're missing. Nine times out of ten, when I've seen it go poorly, is you've not set them up or the leader

that's bringing them on well. There's a lack of communication. There's a lot of assumptions made of like, yeah, they're going to be great there, but there's not a lot of, like, clear expectations of what great looks like. And so when you're not setting the stage for what winning is for that team member or that incoming leader, that's where the stuff usually falls off. Yeah. Have you found that a negative result can sometimes be, as you grow and stretch people, they grow and stretch, and then they leave? Not usually. What I've seen is most of the time when people leave is because they're stuck. The things that crush me is when I see that. the report of someone leaving because they didn't feel like they had a great growth trajectory

or a great career path moving forward because the way in which the normal ladder works is level one, level two, level three. But some people want to go level one and then level one in a completely different area over here and then move up. And so that to me is an indication of no one ever sat down and was like, what do you really want to do? Like what really makes the thing inside you just come to life? And like those are the conversations we as leaders have to have. Yeah, and the best leaders I've found, that's what they do. They're that intentional, and it's not always about just the result of that role. They care about the person and the dreams of that person and the vision and the mission and how it can align with the company. Yeah, that's good. So as we wrap here, you've got a lot of depth and a lot of trust with your team, and you're obviously really good at team building and people chess, as you've called it. So for the leader listening who may not be great at those things, what are some tactical things you can? could tell them to help them grow? To me, the easiest way to do this, I often say it's a lot more art than science.

But if you can line up where the company is going, sometimes there are roles that are needed that are down the road that you don't have an opening for yet. Know what the company is going, but know what really makes your team members come to life. And when you can align those two, you've got a great opportunity. And so it has a lot of foresight, a lot of strategic planning, but sometimes, it's just getting to know your people, sitting down with them and saying, like, hey, I know you really love development, but you're doing this podcast thing on the side. Is podcasting something that really fires you up? And when you see their eyes come to life, you're like, maybe we need to start a podcast.

Because it's in those things where you see, like, new avenues and new opportunities come to life because you've got the people to play those parts. And it may open up a whole new part of your business. Yeah, it's interesting because it starts with intentionality. And that's something you're really good at. But it ends with some incredible results if you do it, right? Yeah, absolutely. You can really see things move a whole lot faster than you can plan because something spurned up from your team member just coming to life. Yeah. Well, Brian, I love the way you approach this stuff. I love the way you care about your team, the intentionality you've brought to this place for 16 years now. I'm a beneficiary of that since you were

one of my leaders in one of my seven jobs here. But I can attest to the fact that this place cares about people, it cares about growth. And if you stretch and grow people the right way, it can have incredible results for your business. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. And I'm really proud of you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks for being on. Thanks so much, Brian, for an awesome conversation. As we talked about, part of growing your team is communicating with them. And a great way to call them out for their hard work is recognition. And if you're not sure how to recognize your team besides saying,

good job, then we've got you covered. Our team has put together a list of 43 easy ways to recognize your team. To get this free download, just click the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, please leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. and we want to hear what you think of the show, what you like, what you don't like, and what we could do better.

You can give us your feedback by using the link in the show notes to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison and Bob Orquez, 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. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like Borrowed Future. Not so fun fact, America has a $1.6 trillion student loan crisis, and it's out of control. I'm George Camel, host of the Borrowed Future podcast where we uncover the underbelly of the student loan industry and show you what you can do about it. It'll inspire you to see that it is possible to avoid student loans and graduate college debt-free.

Listen to Borrowed Future, wherever you. you listen to podcasts.