EntreLeadership - How to Effectively Lead Through Uncertainty with Stephen Mansfield

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Join us as host George Kamel talks to Stephen Mansfield, friend of Ramsey Solutions, entrepreneur, speaker and bestselling author. Stephen lays out how to lead your team when the when the direction isn’t clear—and how you can navigate these situations with your team. Later in the episode, George chats with Suzanne Simms, the senior executive vice president of B2C, about how we make decisions at Ramsey with a new framework our leadership team has developed.   You’ll learn: The six steps to confidently leading through uncertainty A time when Winston Churchill made a major communication fail How to turn a hard decision into a victory for your team How our leadership team makes decisions at Ramsey Solutions   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 Stephen Mansfield's website: https://bit.ly/3qQbkRC Leading in the Gray Areas by Stephen Mansfield: https://bit.ly/3G5Cw5v Check out Leading Thoughts from Stephen Mansfield: https://bit.ly/3q2syvT Download the decision-making frameworks from Stephen Mansfield and Suzanne Simms: https://bit.ly/334V2wG 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

In the past two years, you've had to make some really hard decisions. And sometimes the direction wasn't exactly crystal clear. But as a leader, you've got to make them anyways. So how do you lead in these situations when the path is as clear as mud? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and today's episode is all about how to lead your team in the gray areas

and craft a victory out of the fog, which connects to our business driver of people. Our first guest today is Stephen Mansfield. Stephen is a friend of Ramsey Solutions, an entrepreneur, a speaker, and a best-selling author. And today I get to talk to him about how to lead your team when the direction isn't clear. He's going to share some examples from history, along with his six-step process to lead in those types of situations. In our second conversation, I talk with Ramsey leader Suzanne Sims. She shares a new framework our leadership team has developed that really helps to make decisions that are tied to our core values.

values. Up first, my conversation with Stephen Mansfield. Stephen, it's so great to have you on the podcast. Man, it's great to be back. Thank you. We are big fans of yours. You've been a friend to Dave's in this organization for how many years now? Oh, gosh, probably 20, 25. It's been a real privilege. You're aging yourself. I am, actually, I am. I'm everybody's grandfather around here, but that's all right. Well, we love when you come by, and you bring so much wisdom and humor and you're a

masterful storyteller. So I'm hoping for some stories today. You got it, man. I came, I came our. Okay, good. So we're here to talk about how to lead your team when the direction isn't clear. And this is something that you've written about leading in the gray area. And I feel like every leader out there in the past 18, 24 months, there's been some gray area, to say the least. Yes. Well, most leaders think that they're going to, they have a vision of themselves, you know, leading troops on horseback, you know, in a fight between good and evil. But normally the decisions they make don't break down between black, white, good, evil, you know, one thing or another. They're gray area. They're nuanced. They're intertwined. And you have to, those are the tough things. And that's what we're dealing with a lot in our society today.

I can just say one word, masks. Well, right there, a business leader has got to make decisions and it's controversial. And there is no black and white. There is no absolute, certainly not a moral absolute. So unless the government's issued a mandate of some sort, I'm talking about beyond masks in any other area, or there's an absolute moral mandate coming from your own faith, then, you know, you're trying to make a decision as to what to do it in an area that doesn't have easy, answers. And those are the decisions that most leaders will struggle with. Yeah. In all those decisions,

it's good to be rooted in something and have a foundation. And so obviously here at Ramsey, we talk a lot about your core values and your mission and your vision and constant communication. But there's still this element of, you know, when the options are intertwined with each other, it's fuzzy. You can't just point to the core value on the wall and say, well, now I know what to do. Well, some situations suggest the moral absolutes themselves. You know, kill them in. or don't to be extreme about it for a moment. Okay? The situation itself sort of indicates to you what the moral breakdown is. But most of these things don't. Most decisions leaders make, and this is something they don't teach in business schools or leadership schools, most decisions don't suggest

the clear moral line. So you've got to bring that to the game. You've got to be able to apply your moral values in a way that gives you wisdom for leading. And then you've got to be able to articulate it afterwards, which most leaders aren't very good at. It's one of the hardest parts. They want to act, but they don't want to explain. They want to act, but they don't want to narrate. And so all of this is part of the art of leadership. Yeah. And it's hard, too, because you want to, you know, keep the team morale going. But on either side, people are upset, they disagree.

How do you kind of grapple with that piece of it when you're trying to make a decision? Does that come into the equation? Yeah, it does. You're going to get smacked no matter what you do, quite frankly, especially in these decisions that are gray area. But I'll tell you what, survey show time and, again, and certainly my consulting experience shows, and that is that people respect somebody who proceeds from clear veterans. who makes a reasoned decision and then who narrates it afterwards. I use that word narrate a lot because most leaders don't want to explain themselves.

Most leaders want to do something and then say live with it, baby. But people like it when somebody says, here's why I did it. I did it for certain reasons. I did it for compassionate reasons. It was the best decision I could make at the time. Let's move on. And that wins them the affection that they would have lost had they just acted and thrown into people. You don't have to always respect the decision, but you can respect the way the decision was made.

And that has been proven time and again throughout history and time and again in recent history with polls and what have you. People will respect someone who makes a reasoned, wise decision, even if they don't agree with that. Well, I know you're a big history buff. And so give us a story of a leader who has had to face something like this, where there was some gray area, the options were intertwined, and they had to make a decision. All right. My man is Winston Churchill. I show that with a lot of people around here in this organization. But my man is Winston Churchill. And right at the beginning of World War II, 1940, the Nazis had taken over France.

Well, France had a fairly sizable navy. So now the question becomes, what do we do? They are right across the English Channel from England, is this French Navy, and the Nazis are about to have access to it. So Churchill has to decide what to do. And there are French in the country who are sort of cooperating with the Nazis trying to keep peace. And there are a lot of options. Do we sink these ships? Do we sail them to the U.S.?

Do we sail them to Britain? What do we do? So I'll leave a little bit of a mystery here as to what actually happens. But this was a huge decision because France is an ally. The French Navy was sophisticated. This could determine the direction of the war. And Churchill really was in, really in turmoil about what to do. And he had a lot of opinions and he had a lot of people upset with him.

Yeah. And, you know, with something like military, there's lives on the line. Exactly for the business owners, leaders listening, it's not that serious. And so it is good to go, step back and go, okay, the world is not over based on this decision. Right. And often we think in military affairs, tactical decisions are easy. Or you go, hey, we go left, we go right.

The troops are here. We go after them. It's not that way. Often you have a very gray area kind of decision. But they have huge implications. And this is one of them. Churchill himself said this was one of the biggest decisions he ever had to make. Well, I'll leave the listeners with a cliffhanger for now.

I want to get into kind of a framework that you've developed to bring some clarity to those gray areas. So how do you distinguish the right path if you're that leader making the decision? Well, the first thing you do is go back to your core values. Again, the situation itself is not just going to suggest the moral grid that you need to be operating from. So what do you believe? What is your organization built on? What are you committed to? You're going to have to come back to that.

And I'm going to explain in a minute that Churchill did that. He went to his core values. What's my role? What's my job? What am I here to accomplish? What do I believe? And I don't mean that belief can mean religion. But I mean beyond religion.

What's your company committed to? What are the core values that you're built upon? We believe in the individual. We're doing this. We're trying to alleviate poverty. We're trying to sell this. We're trying to accomplish this in a certain amount of years. Those core values help you decide make those critical decisions.

But the problem is that it's like pulling apart spaghetti. So how do you decide what's most important? It's going to be your core values. You need to stay in touch with them. You need to have people around you who will hold them up to you because a leader can easily get, removed from their core values. And you need to be rehearsing them often.

That's why I'm a big believer I'm putting them on the wall and tattooing them on your arm and producing t-shirts and everything else. Does Dave have the tats yet of our core values? That's a great question. I haven't looked, have you? That's why he wears a lot of long sleeves.

That's my guess. So you make these core values and you get to make decisions from this, but there's another piece of this that's the next step. And you talk about crafting your language. You talked about this earlier. We've got to start talking about this

and articulating it. What does that look like? If you'll focus on crafting your language. It will actually help you make the decision. How are you going to articulate this decision? So you have a major business decision. You're going back and checking in with your core values. But the next thing you're doing, you're saying, how will I explain to what language can I use? And I want to say it very bluntly because we have a lot of leaders obviously listening to this podcast. Leaders often fail, not in the action area, but in the articulating area. In our era,

in our social media society, in our highly verbal era, you're going to have to, you're going to have to articulate why you're doing what you're doing. So grappling with the language is part of what sharpens you in the decision-making. Churchill did this. Other great leaders did this. They would sit and they would think, how will I articulate this to the people? It wasn't just PR. It wasn't just how can I convince them.

That actually was part of the decision. We used the phrase today, elevator pitch. If you can't make an elevator pitch, you don't know what the heck you're doing, right? If I say to you right now, what's your job at Ramsey? If you can't tell me in a sentence or two, then you're at sea a little bit, right? So the battle of language is part of the battle for the clarity to make the decision. And people should pause, not just go from core values to action, but take a moment to craft the language and think it through and have people give them feedback because that's part of the

decision making. It's part of what brings the moral clarity that allows you to act. And it sounds like there's a lot of distillation and simplification that has to happen there because there's a lot going on and you've got to go, what is the clearest path? What is the clearest way I can say this that will connect to the team? Absolutely, absolutely. That's good. So you've crafted the language here, and you have this interesting step that's arrive at a slogan.

Yes. Who doesn't love a good slogan? Why is this important? Well, it's a distillation of the language into action. Most people act based on simple slogans in their minds. My firm does a lot of leadership crash analysis. When big leaders fail, we go in, try to fix it, try to figure out what went wrong. And people tend to act, both positively and negatively, based on a slogan.

that's in their brain. If it feels good, do it. How many lies is that ruined? Other kinds of things. You know, each one teach one. I mean, there are things going in their head. And so what you want to do is you want to craft a slogan. I'm thinking right now of a company that I've worked with, and it's mainly military vets. Company was having to decide in COVID, you know, are we going to lay some people off or how are we going to get through this financially? And finally, they decided they were going to ask everybody in the company to take a 20% reduction in pay. And they used, and they used, you know, used a slogan that's actually used in the military, no one left behind. Now, in the military context, that means you don't leave a body, a man shot, you don't leave him in the field,

and that's very comforting to the soldiers. This company, though, borrowed that slogan and said, no one left behind. And everybody in this big company took a 20% reduction so that nobody got temporarily laid off for furloughed. And so you understand, the slogan is what rallied them. I'm sure the boss could have gotten up and talked by the hour, used big words, use language, put up charts, it would not have motivated anybody. A lot of people, most people, have got certain slogans in their head, and that's what prompts action. So a wise leader will go from core values to the language, the battle of language, and then come up with a slogan, come up with the phrase, come up with a brief motto that will rally action like this company. And that company now, by the way,

is back to paying beyond their original salaries, but they kept everybody on board because they were able to rally people around a core value. That's incredible. And as we're talking, talking about this, it makes me think of how Dave Ramsey led in 2020. Yes. And he's following these exact steps. I don't know if he did it intentionally going. I'm going to walk through Stephen Mansfield's principles here. But I remember in 2020, our slogan, it was hope is greater than fear.

Yes. And that was internal. That was, it became external. Yes. As he led through this weird gray area and this weird time. And we had our principles. And we crafted the language and we got to the slogan. Well, Dave's a great leader.

And this is what great leaders do. If you read the great leaders, if you read the lives of the great leaders, they almost always come to language that motivates people. I mean, this is Lincoln. This is Churchill. This is all the great leaders. So, you know, Dave's read enough history and just viscerally senses that this is what he should do. We can talk for hours about the difference that slogan made. But that's the way it is with great leadership.

And most leaders miss that step because leaders themselves have got the decision going in their head. They don't think they have to articulate it well. But it's how, not just how you sell it and the PR side, but it's how you motivate it. people. How can you embed in people's hearts, values expressed through language that will cause them to act and act courageously? Yeah. And this is not a cheesy marketing campaign. You know, when you're the leader, it's not, well, my team's going to think this is weird if I come up with a slogan. This is really important, especially as it gets to the next part. It's not just a slogan you put on a billboard and give up. You talked about this earlier. You've got to narrate. What does that look

like? Narrating means you've got to explain to people over and over and again why you're doing what we're doing. You know, it's like if you and I are out to lunch and I just say to you, well, now remember, we believe in so-and-so. Remember, we did this. How many times have you been in a meeting and somebody said, and guys, remember, we did this originally for this certain reason. Everybody goes, yeah, that's right. We did that for that certain reason.

And now they're all unified again. And so you've got to narrate, you've got to have your speech down, you've got to say it in long paragraphs and short phrases. Constantly narrate what you're doing. There's a principle of leadership every leader needs to know. If you're asking people to follow them, show them. your map. If you're asking people to follow them, show them your map. And narrating is not just talking on by the hour trying to convince them with an abundance of words. It's showing them the map.

How did we arrive here? How did we come to this decision? Why are we doing what we're doing? This company that I'm referencing repeatedly that decided not to lay anybody off. I was there when this happened. The leader said, this is what I believe. This is what I believe we can do. This is what I believe is important about this company and about our culture. We can model something. And he showed them his map. He showed him his entire. grid, so to speak, of how he got there. And people rallied to it. And in fact, it was the only meeting I've ever been in

where a wage reduction was announced and everybody stood up and applauded. Guy got a standing ovation. Why? Because he narrated it well. He'd condensed it to a slogan. He really called out destiny, in a sense. He captured that core value in a few words.

Wow. It's amazing how much of leadership is really good communication. Yes. Yes. And if you go to leadership schools these days, they don't stress that. You know, one of the things my firm does

is we coach leaders in D.C. And it's amazing what happens when somebody who's gotten to their certain height based on their natural skills as a speaker, get some tactics, get some coaching, get some input, and how much further they can go, how much more they can impact people, how the crowds grow, to put it crassly.

Because communication is a major part of leadership. In fact, I would say that half of leadership is communication. And when you think about it, think about the great leaders, there are always people who communicate, well, you and I can't see, here and name one leader who just was mumble-mouthed and never could speak and never could put string sentences together. It's just, it's the main tool of leadership. Yeah. And it's one of those

things we look to in a president to be a great communicator and a great orator. Yes. So that's an interesting thing there. And you can see the difference between the two. Okay. I don't want to, I don't want to get politically here with you, but like Trump or not, he at least won his audiences with his unusual manner. Mr. Biden, not so much. I mean, it doesn't matter where you are politically. just looking at their communication styles. Reagan, brilliant. Bush, not so much, you know? And so this is part of the art of that thing.

This is really part of the art. And the thing that's happening is they used to say that communication was going to be less and less critical when it came to leadership, but I think it's dramatically increasing. It's dramatically increasing. If you can't get on the air and articulate while you're doing what you're doing,

you're not leading. So you're just not leading. And people are going to blanch at that because it almost, as though I'm trying to make every leader into some kind of, you know, somebody who does really well with words, but you just have to be. You just have to be. There are good people in D.C. where I work, failing all the time to rally people to good causes

because they don't communicate well. And that's a tragedy. Yeah. And communication is a big part of this, but we talk about taking action as the next step. So we can talk all day long, but we've got to do something about it. Yes. You've got to actually act. The other part of our society, our social media and high verbal society,

is people talk forever and never act, but act and act decisively. Churchill said things do not get better by being left alone. If they are left alone, they explode with a horrible detonation. And he was always joking about that. But you have to act and you have to let your action be seen. And it's not just symbolic action. It's not just something that you do for show. You have to be decisive in your action and you have to act clearly.

Part of the problem in D.C., a lot of talk, a lot of rhetoric, lot of this isn't acceptable, a lot of, you know, this is what I want to do, and we have to do this, we have to do that, and then nobody actually acts. So the fact that somebody actually acts, there's actually a veto in political world, there's actually the action that happens. The action speaks for itself. Yeah. So we've got five steps there, and there's an interesting sixth one, and you say that you need to publish your position. Yes. What does that look like? Well, some of the best leaders I know are people who have been convinced that they shouldn't talk very

much about themselves. But I believe that a good leader, again, is always giving people a map for what he or she is doing. And so I'm about, I'll tell the story, the Churchill story in a bit, but every leader who has decided to take a certain course of action and act on a large scale has to publish that, has to get their firstest with the mostest. In D.C., we're always saying, if you want to win the PR game, get their firstest with the mosts us. So put it out there, Put it in press releases. Don't give the press a chance to make up their story. Get their first is with the mostest.

Actually, publish your story. Get it on the website. Get it out there in social media. Get it out there to the press. Publish your story. Tell them what's going on. And by the way, put it in story form. I was faced with this situation.

I checked it with my core values. I decided that we were about this. Here's what I'm going to do. Here's the slogan we're rallying to. Here's what we're trying to accomplish. And this is how leadership works. So you have to publish the rationale, the actual. the explanation, the narration for what you're doing.

So instead of just keeping this internal, the team knows, but hey, we need to let the public know. We let our customers know. Yeah, you can't live in your head. You can't, leaders are sometimes cerebral people. You can't just live up inside your head. You can't live in your office. You can't live inside of a book.

You have to actually think about the man on the street, right? Most politicians, again, I'm just keeping this political for a moment. They're thinking about they're wanting to get people to do things. They're wanting to get people to rally. And so you've got to think, what's going to motivate them? I wrote a book on Churchill. and when I was researching about that, there was a tank commander who was still alive,

and he'd been a tank commander in Northern Africa during the war. And he said, we were losing the war, we were taking shells, and we were in horrible shape, and then we heard Churchill on the radio. And he said, this is going to be their finest hour. This is going to be our finest hour. We will create broad, sunlit uplands that our grandchildren will live in. If we will sacrifice now, we will win that day.

And he said, we were shouting in our tank, and we were ready to go, and we turned the war around. Why? Because of a BBC broadcast by a good communicator. So this is what that's all about. And you do it over and over and over and you can explain yourself and you make it part of your culture. Remember, ultimately, leadership is about creating a culture around you. And all these steps that we're talking about, it's about creating a culture. And when you cut into a good company, you see the culture bleeding. And it's just at every level. So this is the art. It's a great reminder of just the power of words. I think as a leader, sometimes you can forget that and you're in the minutia and you're like, well, I hired this guy to do. a job and they should just do it all. And I'm here to lead and fix the problems, but there is so much power. Even in, you know, we talk about recognition a lot on this podcast of just walking up to someone and say you're doing a good job.

Right. And to communicate that well, communicate your why really well, that's the stuff that takes your business to the next level. Well, and I'm going to say something that's going to be fairly radical here, and that is that it's certainly as important that you make good decisions. But almost equal with making good decisions is how you communicate them to people. In other words, as we're talking about decisions where there's really not any right or wrong about them. There's not ultimately a moral absolute.

There's not ultimately a, you know, black and white. It's gray area. So how you make that a success is how you communicate. It sounds like I'm saying the decision is not important. The decision is important, but you haven't won the victory yet by just making the decision. You've got to explain it and narrate it and weave it into values. And this is what Churchill did. He often made mistakes.

but he rallied people to the cause through the way he communicated so that ultimately the country and the military effort was stronger and victory was won. Yeah, the story you tell is largely how it's remembered. Yes.

That's part of that. Well, yeah, and that is the victory. So I'm not engaging in some kind of moral relativism here where I say the decision is not really important and how you function is not really important. But you can craft a victory, you know, whether you and I are drinking water or coffee now doesn't matter.

I can present it in such a way that I make one or the other look like just the obvious right choice. And it's not just PR. It's the way that you rally people to a certain cause. Coffee is better for you. It actually energizes you. It's got a lot of new training. You just, you create a victory out of something that might have just been a gray scale kind of decision. And that's the art of leadership. The art of leadership is summoning people to a purpose. And again, what we're talking about are these decisions where there's not an obvious black and white, but you can still rally people to the decision that you've made. and that's part of the art.

So you left us with this cliffhanger earlier with the Churchill story. What ended up happening? Churchill went back to his core value. What am I here to do? I'm here to protect England. My job is not primarily to protect France. That's not good news to the French, I realize. I'm not primarily here for that purpose.

I'm here to protect England. So Churchill made the most controversial decision of his entire leadership, and he bombed the French fleet. 1,300 Frenchmen died. The entire fleet was destroyed. So British planes went and bombed the French fleet and destroyed it. So the Nazis wouldn't get it. And this was grievous.

This was terrible. But the next day, Churchill went to Parliament. He explained it to the nation, explained it to Parliament, got a standing ovation, rallied the British people. And again, we were talking about action. People saw him willing to act. Yes, I'm willing to destroy what I have to destroy. I'm willing to kill of death.

That's what a war is. We don't want to celebrate killing, but that's what a war is. I'm willing to do what I have to win this war. And then he basically said, what are you willing to do? So action was its own message. And then he rallied the country. So you can imagine the controversy now. Where Churchill failed in this area, it's an interesting little study and communication. Remember, Churchill is the master wordsmith. And Kennedy said he sent the English language into battle during that time. But what Churchill didn't do was you. use a brief slogan to describe this particular episode. It's one thing he failed to do. He usually did it. So the French in their anger said, this is our Pearl Harbor. And that has lived down through history and is often quoted.

Churchill gave no counter slogan. I know that sounds odd, but he gave nothing to galvanize. It would have been easy to do. In fact, what he often did was give people credit for something that wasn't really their credit. So typical of Churchill would have been

if he had said, well, this is the French protection of British liberty. You know, this was the French sacrifice that guaranteed British liberty, you know, even though the French were opposing it for the most part. But that still would have given them credit for something that ultimately helped save the war. They were mad. He provided no counter-narrative that sold the French. And so they said, this is our Pearl Harbor. And you now have books written about this that caused a problem.

So Churchill did not do something he normally did when he came to the slogan. But his rationale was clear. and overall his leadership. Again, this is a morally questionable decision. It's a gray area. Not everybody agrees to this day. But he affected a victory with it by calling the nation forward. And when they saw their prime minister articulating it, he gave them a map.

He acted decisively. It rallied the country. Wow. That's a great story. And you told it very well. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much. So that's history.

Take us to, you know, current times. Is there a recent story you can think of where, leader or a company followed this and really excelled because of it? Well, that's the one I've been talking about. I probably brought it too early into our discussion, but the one I'm thinking about that employs vets, I was very amort. I was standing there when this happened. And the idea that you would take basically the announcement of a cut, make the decision

not to lose anybody, cut salaries, and then turn it into a victory, turn it into a rallying point, not just an idle sales effort or PR effort, but making people realize, look, I'm asking you to sacrifice for Joe. This is what the CEO actually did, for Joe and for Joan and for Bill. I want you to sacrifice for them. You're sacrificing for each other. We leave no one behind. And the place, I'm talking about thousands of employees, the place went nuts.

And then, of course, they acted, they cut salaries, and they brought them back within six months and gave everybody a 5% raise. So you can imagine that, nobody's leaving that company. They are committed. So in the same way that Churchill used his action in the French with a matter of the French fleet to rally Britain. I mean, Britain went crazy and was more unified and more committed to victory than ever. This particular company that I'm asked to keep nameless, I'm sorry. They are stronger today than ever.

They've grown. Their people are just as loyal as they can possibly be because of that moment and the way it was articulated. That's incredible. Very cool. And it reminds me of Ramsey. We didn't have quite the slogan around that piece, but this idea that, hey, we're not going to lay people off, and here's how we're going to approach this.

If times get tough, here's how we're going to do it. But our goal is to have no one let go. And it's a really cool way they did that and brought it into their world as a vet. Well, and not claiming to be Dave's best friend, but I'm a close enough friend that I often see him wrestling with these decisions. But then I know he's going to get with his team.

He's going to finalize the grasp on four core values. They're going to come up with language. They're going to begin to explore how to do this. They're going to take it to the people and they're going to affect a victory. We've seen it time and time again. You've seen it because you work here. And that's the art of the thing.

The problem for many leaders is they sit in their office, they grapple with what to do, and then they take that kind of soul grappling to the company or the people in the company, and they kind of bring the conflict. They sort of bring to them the, I'm not really sure what to do here. I'm really grappling. And the people are like, look, lead or get out of the way, whatever. But the good leader says, I'm going to solve this with my team. And then when we step on the stage to announce what's going on,

we're going to have our stuff together. we're going to have our map down, so to speak. We're going to have our language tight. We're going to know what we're going to do. We're going to act in the next five minutes. And that's the art of great leadership right there. That rallies people. Because really what you're doing is not just for the moment, it's long term.

And like I say, right now this company that I keep referencing without naming, they've almost doubled since the beginning of COVID. And I think it's on the strength of how they handle that situation of having to cut wages temporarily. Yeah, who would want to work there? Talk about snatch victory out of the jaws to defeat. I mean, unbelievable. Wow. Well, you know, I've been here eight and a half years now and seeing our leadership.

It's no surprise that the Entre Leadership brand has exploded and people are going, hey, I want to know how Ramsey does leadership because we look up to a leader like Dave and Dave's leadership team for their stance and how they make decisions and the principles behind it. So I think you beautifully unpacked really the heart of how Ramsey does leadership in a really cool way today. Well, I appreciate you saying that. And I got to tell you that I really appreciate the Entry leadership team. And the reason is you can have entrepreneurs, and they can go out and they can start new projects and new ventures. But the fact that you wed the word leader to the beginning of entrepreneur, it says to them, look, real greatness is not just that you start, you know, a chain of burgers or burger stores or what have you. Real greatness is that you articulate a message based in your core values and you wed business to it.

And that's what you guys are doing. You're taking core values. You're taking social good. you're taking dynamic leadership, great communication, and you're wetting it to the entrepreneurial process. And that's going to make, that's going to, it has produced great change and produces change from the lives of those listening right now. We appreciate that. So for the leader listening who's going, all right, this year, I'm going to have to make some hard decisions. I may be in that right now. I may be facing that soon. What do you think they need to hear? What is that final encouragement you would give to them? They need to hear that they are in that position of leadership because they have the right moral,

compass because they are people who have a clear sense of what needs to happen. Confidence needs to come from your own history. Confidence needs to come from your own moral grid. Confidence needs to come from what you've already been through. Every leader needs to take a moment. So look, I didn't just fall off the turn-up truck here. I've been at this for a long time. It doesn't produce arrogance. But when I had to make a tough decision this past year and I thought, Stephen, you have been leading for, I don't give a sense of my age. You've been leading for 40 years. You've been through some serious battles. You've literally been shot at. Listen, grab God with one hand and grab the lessons of your history with the other and make this dang decision and own it. And that's what leaders need

to hear. Leaders need to not operate out of insecurity. They don't need to be listening to voices in the society that might try to destabilize them. Be confident. You've come to your role for such a time as this. You've come to your role based on your history, based on your experience. You have inside of you what you need to make the right decisions. Own it. Walk out some of the steps we're talking about. Craft a victory. That's really the phrase I would want to leave them with. It's not a matter of, let me do a few things and hope that victory flies in on gossamer wings and lands on me. No, make it a victory. Craft a victory. You can do that. Wow. Beautifully said. Well, Stephen, you're an incredible communicator. I love your level-headed intelligence and wisdom and

brilliance you bring to this podcast, and we appreciate you being here. You're very kind. Thank you very much. Thanks so much, Stephen, for a great conversation. Always appreciate your wisdom and your stories. You know, our conversation today originally started as a post on Stephen's website. And if you want to hear more leadership stories, tips, and principles from Stephen, you can check out his weekly newsletter, Leading Thoughts. To sign up, you can use the link in the show notes or just go to stephen mansfield. com.

Stephen gave us some great examples of what leading in the gray looks like. And coming up, we're going to dive deeper into the principles that we use here at Ramsey to make difficult decisions. We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right, our second conversation is with Suzanne Sims. She's our senior executive vice president of business to consumer. And we're going to talk about how we make decisions at Ramsey with a new framework our leadership team has developed.

We'll also talk about how you can create a similar list for your team. Here's our conversation. Suzanne, it's great to have you back on the podcast. It's great to be back. Due to popular demand. Oh, okay, whatever you say. one of my favorites. And here's why. I'll tell you exactly why. I love your passion. You care deeply and you always drop some mics while you're here. I do. Are you talking about the one I kicked

over last time? Yes. That's exactly, very aggressive. So I want to talk about this decision-making DNA that our leadership team has developed. And I had the pleasure of hearing about it in our leadership team meeting. And it resonated because it gave people a clear path when sometimes it's not so clear. And so where did this list come from? How did this list come together as you were sitting with our leadership team? It kind of came together over a period of years. We would walk through really difficult situations that as leaders made us really uncomfortable and it caused a lot of arguing back and forth.

And we would walk away from that and go like, why did we make the decision that we made? And, you know, we'd kind of talk about it. And then we literally, our operating board, set aside, I think it was a full day. it might have been a day and a half and just made a decision that we were going to list out what were the core things that were principles that we wanted to make sure we applied when we made decisions. And we argued back and forth through the conversation because there were so many nuances and we were bringing up examples of just things that have happened over the years that caused us to have an emotional reaction. But we landed on this list. And it can change over time. It doesn't

have to stay the same, but we're pretty happy with it as of today. Yeah, and this is different than just core values. There's a lot of nuance, like you talked about, and a lot of these are born out of something that we didn't do right, or something that did go right, and we went, that was, we need to do it like that. Perfectly said. Okay. So let's walk through this list.

We're kind of giving them a peek behind the curtain here. Okay. And this is really cool. I want to start with number one, we pray. Yes. What's that about? Okay. This is obviously very important if you are faith-based at all, but,

here's the way I would say it. As a leader of this organization, we encourage you to always be in the word, in prayer, seeking God in your own private time, whatever that means to you, if that's once a day, if that's once a week, whatever that means to you. But what we believe is, if you are dedicating and devoting time to do that, then you will naturally have wisdom and discernment to make decisions that you would not have otherwise. So I would say that, and there are some things that happen, decisions that need to be made, and you may need to stop with your team and actually physically have a little bit of a prayer time

before you make the decision. You don't need to do that before every decision. My high-see folks are always like, do we have to stop and pray before? No, but sometimes you may need to and just don't be weird about it. But when something big's going on, stop and pray about it. Yeah, this is not, hey, what are we going to eat at the team lunch

for catering. This is a bigger decision. Very true. Very helpful. Okay. Number two, we don't make decisions based on fear. That's right. And it's important to say that we acknowledged when we had this conversation and made this list, we do have fear. We get afraid. Things happen that calls us as leaders, even Dave, to have fear. That's okay. That doesn't mean that something's wrong with you. You are a human being, even if you're a badass CEO, okay? It's okay to have fear. And by the way, I would recommend you let your team know that you have fear. You show that vulnerability because it gives them permission to have fear in that same situation because they already do, by the way. But when we make the decision, we don't make it out of fear. Like we play out and think about worst case scenarios.

We'll talk through those. But at the end of the day, we make the right decision. It's not a fear-based decision. Does that make sense? And that one's born directly out of one of our core values, fear not. That's right. So that one is very, there's a clear path there. That's exactly right. You can see how we got there. So number three, we consider the worst case scenario. You just mentioned this. What does that mean? It's very important when you're making a tough decision that you actually play out and force yourself to say out loud, like this is the worst thing that could possibly happen here. I mean, it helps in parenting to have that discussion with your kids when they're freaked out, right? Like, just say out loud, what is the worst possible thing that could happen?

And once you say it out loud, it's never as big a deal as what it was in your head before you said it out loud. But say it. Like, what is that worst thing that could happen? And then once you back away from that, you can make the right decision with that in mind, knowing that more than likely won't happen. But you've played it out. So if it does, you're not surprised. And you still know you made the right decision. Yeah.

And I was talking with Stephen Mansfield about this. He had a lot of military stories, and I was like, it's good to remember that it's not life or death for most business owners, for most leaders out there. That's a great perspective. You know, it kind of takes the anxiety out a little bit. Yeah. That's a good one. Okay, number four, we consider unintended consequences.

That's an interesting one. You know, so many times if you're a high D or you're just real driven and fast-paced and patient as a leader, you don't pause and think, like, if I make this decision that will affect this person, you don't think about all the other people that might be affected. It's very important to stop and think, like, what are some of the things that could happen

that would be consequences potentially that I wouldn't have intended for them to happen, but they could happen. And then you might make a different decision as a result because if you, like, we've got a team of a thousand people, if we make the right decision for 10 of those people and it has a poor effect on the others, like that would be unwise.

Yeah, that's smart to think about. And there could be a trickle-down effect with this decision that you went, oh, I didn't even think about how it would affect this thing over here or this person. Yes. Okay. Number five, we use data.

Yeah. That sounds a little nerdy. What's that one about? It is nerdy. Michael Finney would be very pleased that we're talking about this, our chief technology officer, our chief digital officer.

It's changed so much. You know, those titles. But he's nerdy. He's nerdy, and he's a safe sweeter. And he's a lot smarter than me. We used to not have any folks on our team that understood data. We didn't have data analysts. We didn't have anyone that was looking at our data.

And we do now, and that's very important. That's not the only way we make our decision. We don't just go by data to make our decisions. Because, again, we've got this whole list. But we do look at it. We used to never do surveys. You know, like we would name, we would create, titles for books and titles for other things, and we would name stuff, and we never did any surveys.

We would make changes to a show and not survey our audience, and we do that now. And so if we want to make a significant change to a product or to a show, we will actually go out and survey a segment of the audience, and we will really study those results. We will look at how many people were surveyed? Was it two people or 2,000 people? And if they answered this question this way, but they answered this other one this way and those are in conflict, well, maybe the survey questions were wrong. Let's look at that too. But then we also go by our gut feel a little bit.

We apply that to the data that we're looking at. Does that make sense? Yeah, the data is a part of the decision, but it's not the deciding factor. But it's an important part. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, number six, we pay attention to patterns. Yes. I think sometimes as a leader, you can freak out when something happens.

If you've got someone working for you and there's something off with them and it's bothering you, but you can't figure out what it is, like really lean in and start to pay attention to whether or not there are patterns. And instead of freaking out that something might be off, like, just really pay attention. Or if you're dealing with a vendor and they are consistently late in supplying you, with what they've promised to supply you. Like, that's a pattern, and don't ignore that. You know, especially if it's a team member that you really like,

you can ignore patterns because you like them, and you can focus on their good qualities and excuse away the patterns that will get you in trouble every time. So don't ignore that. Don't ignore that. And you've got to be aware of it, too. Yes, yes. That's with outside vendors you work with.

That's with your team members. That applies to everything. Yeah. All right. Number seven, this is a fun one for you. We don't do business with evil or stupid. You've been here for decades now. 20 years.

This sounds like one that was personal. Yeah, we have learned this the hard way, is the best way I know how to say it. But like, and again, that feels a little crass to say it like that. Like what we're not saying is that fundamentally people are just really evil at their core or stupid. but if you remove the person, the human from the equation and look at the fruit of what's happening there, look at what's showing itself. When you're dealing with a client per se, in our world, it's been radio stations, it's been other clients that contribute in a significant way to, you know, our revenue and our growth as a company, if they are making decisions that show they

don't care at all about people, or it's just, they're in it for themselves and they're selfish and maybe narcissistic even or whatever, fill in the blank. But they're obviously making decisions for the wrong reasons and they are actually prohibiting us from doing what we're supposed to do and helping people ultimately. We can't do business with them. And if they make stupid decisions that aren't logical, that aren't data related at all, that just don't apply, like I said, logic, like don't ignore that and don't do business

with those people. Like, who said you had to? There's no rule. Just because you entered into an agreement with someone, like, by the way, when you're entering in agreements, protect yourself. Make sure there are clauses to protect you so that no matter how great they seem and charismatic they seem, when you get six months down the road and they're doing stupid stuff, make sure you're protected so you can get out of that relationship.

Don't stay in a position where you have to do business with them. Yeah. And I've seen us do that. when there's money on the line and we say, sorry, we're out. We'll take the hit because we're not going to do business with these people anymore. That's a really good one. All right. Number eight, we do not become someone we are not.

We do not become someone we are not. I think this is where the core values are super important. Like you've got to determine what are the values of your business that are so important to you, that you never want to shy away from, and that's how you build your team. we never make a decision that undermines those values. That's who we are. And we use that phrase around here a lot like, this is who we are.

Well, if that's who you are, then don't make a decision that undermines who you are. But you have to know who you are, and you have to be very clear on that. And sometimes it might be really tempting to make a decision that seems really sexy in the moment that at the end of the day will undercut and undermine who you,

really are, who you want to be. And you've got to, you've got to be disciplined about that. All right. Number nine, we have an abundance mentality. This is a good one. Very good one, especially when times feel like they're tough. You go through a tough season. You know, the marketplace out there is, is huge. And in most cases, it is, it is endless. And if you operate your business, like there's this pie that's very limited, and there are only eight pieces to this pie, and you're thinking in those terms, that's the opposite of this.

If you operate out of an abundance mentality, then you're operating out of this feeling that, like there's always more opportunity. And if you think that way, and that's how you coach your team, and that's how you make decisions, guess what? There will always be more opportunity.

Most marketplaces, there is more opportunity. there's opportunity in really awful times. We found amazing opportunity during COVID. It's incredible. And we were, oh, by the way, we were terrified. There was a lot of fear. When our top leaders met on a regular basis during that time to make sure the wheels stayed on the bus

and to really stay on top of exactly where our revenue was, we were afraid. But we said there's got to be opportunity in this to help people, not to take advantage of people, but to help people. And when we looked at what are the ways we can help people right now? We came up with a whole list of them. And we quickly got to market with those things and started helping people right at their point of need in a really tumultuous time because we have an abundance mentality.

If you don't have an abundance mentality when COVID hits, you get in a fetal position in the corner and you do nobody any good. Yeah, great reminder there. And I met so many of our entree leaders at events and hearing how they had the best year ever, I think it's stemmed. largely from this abundance mentality that they naturally had, which is really cool to see. Yes. All right. Last one. It's a good one.

Sometimes we make decisions that hurt, not harm. Yeah, there's a lot of ways you can look at this. The one example that I would give is if you have to terminate someone, that hurts really bad, especially if you care about them, if you care about your people. And you've gone about it the right process. You've done it that you've treated them the way you would want to be treated. but ultimately at the end of the day, if you have to say goodbye to someone,

it hurts in the moment, but you've got to do it in a way where it doesn't harm them or your team. For instance, if we end up having to terminate someone who's pretty high profile with our organization, we tell our team, but we tell them in a way that doesn't bring harm to that individual. Like we don't air all the dirty laundry,

we don't share stuff we shouldn't share, but we share enough so that our team doesn't start to wonder what really happened or what's really going on. and so it's that fine line there, but it hurts, but we don't harm the individual. Does that make sense? Yeah, it sounds like the heart of it is we want to honor this person, regardless of the situation, and we're not there to air their dirty laundry.

That's not the spirit of it. Yes, and another way to look at it is you may make a decision to cut ties with a client. We just did that recently with a pretty, a client who spends a lot of money with us on an annual basis because they were not going to serve our customers well going forward. and it hurts so much to end our relationship with them because that's lost revenue that we're going to have to make up for. But if we kept them on board, it would cause harm because they would not take care of our customers,

the people that trust us, and it wouldn't be good in the long run. Yeah. Well, this is an incredible framework that you guys have developed, and I love that it was birthed truly out of the core values, out of the history of this place. And for the leader listening that goes, hey, Suzanne, this is awesome.

And I'd love to just steal this. and use it as my own cheat sheet, it doesn't quite work that way because this has to be yours. You can steal a few of these. Sure. But a lot of these are personal to us and what we've experienced.

So how can the person listening go create that for their business, for their team? You know, I would start with getting a room with your top leaders or even if it's just yourself and one other person, but start to make a list of all the painful things you've been through,

firing people, problems with vendors and problems with clients. Like, make a list, on a whiteboard of all the painful things you've been through, that when you look back on it, you either made the right decision or the wrong decision. Maybe you need two lists, but make a list of those things and identify like, where were we in pain? Where, you know, what things do we not want to repeat or what's that pain we don't want to have again? Just start there. And if you take that list

and a list of your core values, like who you are as people and as an organization, you've probably got your list of decision principles. Yeah. Well, Suzanne, it's always great having you on the podcast. I appreciate the way that you make decisions and how you care so deeply about this team, this mission, and this place. Thanks for being on. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much, Suzanne. Always great having you on the Entree Leadership podcast. Stephen and Suzanne both talked about some great steps and principles that will help you navigate great areas with your team and make those key decisions. And if you weren't taking notes, we've got you covered.

We've put together both lists so that you can reference them and be confident in taking on hard decisions as they come at you this year. To get this free download, just use the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, 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. 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 is produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison and Bob Borquez, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter.

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 Ramsey Call of the Day. Check out our new Ramsey Call of the Day podcast. It'll give you a quick hit of advice about life and money, in under 10 minutes.

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