EntreLeadership - How to Love and Excel in Your Work as a Leader with Marcus Buckingham

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to Marcus Buckingham. Marcus leads research at the ADP Research Institute. He’s a bestselling author and is known for his research on strengths and leadership at work. Marcus shares what he calls red threads and the impact they can have on your team, your culture and your bottom line. He’ll also dig into the education system and why it’s not setting up the next generation for success in the workforce. Later in the episode, George chats with Jason Williams, the vice president of EntreLeadership here at Ramsey Solutions. Jason talks about how you can have a good conversation with someone on your team when they say, “I’m having a hard time finding passion in what I’m doing. It was fun at first, but now I’m not loving it as much.”   You’ll learn: The key to finding satisfaction at work How higher education is failing you How leaders answer “I hate my job!” How to help team members level up   Sign up for The EntreLeadership Podcast takeaways—a weekly email where you’ll get three tangible takeaways and a tactical action step related to each episode: https://bit.ly/podcast-takeaways   Support our sponsors: BELAY: https://bit.ly/33SwBlO Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre   Links mentioned in the episode: The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast Marcus Buckingham’s website: https://bit.ly/36K0hUa Love and Work by Marcus Buckingham: https://amzn.to/3vFKWfT Marcus’ previous episode: https://apple.co/38p6MvW From Paycheck to Purpose by Ken Coleman: https://bit.ly/3GLZ6QV Brendan Wovchko’s episode on uncomfortable conversations: https://apple.co/3vIzAYv Download The EntreLeader’s Guide to Key Results Areas for free: https://bit.ly/3kOLPhe 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

On today's episode, how to lead someone who doesn't love the work they're doing. Then we'll ask the question, whose responsibility is it to get that team member doing more of what they love to do? Is it the leader or the team member? From the Ramsey Network, I'm George Camel, and this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders like you grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. Thanks for joining me today. Coming up, I talk with Marcus Buckingham, head of research at the ADP Research Institute. He's a best-selling author and researcher on strengths and leadership at work. We're going to talk about what he calls red threads and the impact that it can have on your team, your culture, and your bottom line.

We'll also get into the education system and why it's not setting up the next generation for success in the workforce. Let's get to it. Here's my conversation with Marcus. Marcus, welcome back to the podcast. How you been? I'm very good, mate. How are you doing? Good.

We had you on last year, and we had a great conversation about, resilience and how leaders out there can be resilient and this is in the midst of coming out of a pandemic and dealing with all kinds of issues that business leaders are facing and part of that conversation we talked about a key part of resilience being love in work and I'm really excited about your new book love and work that's out now and it really dives into this piece and it's something that every leader needs to grapple with whether they want to or not you know we want our people to to love to do what they do our teams to be excited about the work they're doing. And in your writing, you call these activities red threads. Everyone, it's famous. The red thread analogy. Describe someone in their workday who is living that out, living the red thread principle out. Well, red thread's really based on the idea that every day is made up of a fabric. If you think about it, it's like a blanket where you look at the blanket from afar and it just looks like one big blanket. But you get up really close and you realize there's many thousands of threads that make up that blanket or that quilt. And the same is true of a day. A day looks like a day,

it looks like a Monday, or looks like a today, well, like a Thursday. But actually it's made up of thousands and thousands of just different moments or situations, context, people, interactions, many threads, if you like. And some of those threads are black or white or gray or yellow or green. They lift you up a little bit. They bore you a little bit. But some of them are red. Some activities in your day today, for you or for me, are seemingly, made of different material. They are activities where you instinctively lean into them. You volunteer for them. Time flies by when you're doing them. You feel like you have mastery in them. You kind of have to be tapped on the shoulder to stop doing them. There are moments like that for every one of this in every day.

These are red threads. And the research on this seems to suggest very strongly that, A, when you are doing an activity like this, your brain chemistry changes and you are more in flow, your cognitive abilities are much faster, you are more emotionally astute, you are more creative, more resilient. So doing activities like that where you lean in, clearly you are a better version of yourself. So that's the first thing the research tells us very clearly. Second, there's a significant amount of data that suggests that you don't need an entirely red quilt to thrive or excel in your work. In fact, the threshold seems to be 20%. If you've got 20% red threads in your day, then you are much more likely to be productive,

to not quit in the next 90 days, to not feel stressed or burned out. All sorts of good things happen for you when you have just 20% red threads. You get below 20% and everything starts going south for you. But weirdly, above 20%, if you're 40% or 60%, it's not like you are three times more likely to be productive. It's almost like a little love in your day,

a little red threads in your day woven every day, though, goes an awfully long way. That's the point of that analogy of red threads. Every single day for each one of us has the opportunity to show us which particular activities have those red thread-like qualities for us. It's our job to pick them out,

and it's our job to weave them into contribution every day. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. We need that red thread in there to get us through the day. Otherwise, the monotony, the emails, the meetings, when you're not doing that thing you love, it can be draining.

Have you heard any objections as you've shared this with leaders? What do they tell you like, oh, Marcus, that sounds good and well, but this whole red threads idea, it's just not going to work for me. What are the kinds of objections they have and what do you say to them? It's not really objections, actually. I was with probably the 15 of the most powerful chief human resources officers last week. I mentioned all the names of the companies, but just imagine all the biggest companies in the U.S., and it was all of them.

We were talking about this. for them it wasn't really about pushback on whether or not we need to make less loveless work. And it wasn't a pushback on, yeah, you know what we have. We've created loveless work, loveless workplaces. We haven't taken it seriously. They weren't pushing back on that at all. In fact, they were saying, no, we realized that we've made an awful lot of jobs that were basically focused on enforcing conformity and making every single person do every single job in

exactly the same way. They were also saying, by the way, that we've built a world in which we don't trust people to contribute their loves. We've got surveillance software. We've got cameras everywhere. We've got incredibly tight rules and regulations so people don't have the choice even to make bathroom breaks. And I mean, we've really created a world in which we are assuming that people make really bad choices. So they seem to be aware of all of that. I think the challenge that they're seeing is that you, for example, in hospitals, if you has nurse supervisor to nurse ratios of one to 60, which most hospitals do, that that nurse supervisor can't be interested in what this particular nurse loves, what she's into or he's into and how to help her find that red thread

or set of red threads today and what can I do to help you tomorrow, what can I do to help you tomorrow, all of that stuff that the great managers do when they help people find love and what they do, You can't do it when you've got an org structure of 1 to 60. And if you look at a lot of jobs, manufacturing, distribution centers, hospitals, schools, funnily enough, you've got these huge org structures which are, well, they might make financial sense, but they don't make any human sense at all. So that's really the challenge for many CFOs and CEOs today. We've created organizations which almost in terms of their structure,

prevent people from being helped to weave their, well, first find those red threads in their job and then weave it into contribution. That's one of the big things that we have to fix. We've created workplaces that aren't really designed for humans. Yeah, all the rules and the policies and the red tape and the bureaucracy and the bloated organizations, that is always going to be a hindrance to those red threads

where we really get to connect with people one-on-one. That's good stuff. So for a company that hasn't had this mindset, they haven't taken a hold of this red thread idea, can they retroactively bring it in? Have you found that that's more difficult to go, all right, we're going to change everything all of a sudden with this organization? Well, no, because the place where work happens in every organization is a team.

You're right. There's a bloated bureaucracy. There's bloated red tapes and policies and procedures and standard operating practice. But in terms of where work actually happens, and this has been true for human beings for 50,000 years, work happens on teams. We know that north of 70% of people say they do most of their work on teams, and 65% of that 70% say that they do it on more than one team,

which often is not reflected in the org chart, actually. But humans do work on teams. I don't mean just talking about teamwork. I mean the actual location, as it were, where work happens, is almost always a place where you're relying on other people that are part of a team. So, of course, what that means is, for any organization that wants to help people find love in their work, with all the benefits that come with that,

more creativity, more collaboration, more resilience and so on, all you've got to do is start with the teams, which means you don't need big grand policies. I mean, yes, if you've got an org structure that prevents any teamwork from happening, like, say, hospitals, yes, you're going to have to look at the org structure. But for many companies, you really just have to start with the team leaders and just go, hey, what can you do?

And we talk a lot in the book about what you can do as a team leader, to say, we're really interested in the six people on your team. We're really interested in who you are, what you love, what you loathe, how you can contribute what you love, how you can turn into contribution. And yes, we're interested in how some of the other people on the team might support or help you in those areas where you struggle, where you don't have any loves, where you're like a deer in the headlights. That happens on teams in a very intimate sort of way.

You don't need new policies. You don't need new human capital management software. You just need to be able to say to team leaders, you need to be curious about the uniqueness of each of your people, particularly about which aspects of their job are red thread like. Because one of the findings from all this, of course, is that even people in the same job, let's say you've got six housekeepers you're supervising,

or six front desk clerks that you're supervising, even though they're in the same job, we all find different aspects of that job, the things that we love. Our red threads are different, even if we're in the same job. So it's the job of a team leader to be interested. I mean, that's where it starts. Just be interested in what each of your people loves to do.

They don't need to do all of it. You don't need 100% red threads, uh-uh. But you can't have less than 20%. Everything starts to go wrong. So therefore, team leaders, hey, you are the mechanism for helping people feel seen at work. So it really just starts there, George. It's not really macro.

It's much more team-focused in micro. and every company, of course, can start doing that. Yeah, we've got to stop being busy and start being interested. And that takes some intentionality. That's huge. So our friend Ken Coleman, he's got a new book from Paycheck to Purpose. And I think you guys are very aligned in what you're trying to do to help people find these red threads. And I love this quote from Ken.

I think you'll agree with it. The American education system is programming us to be test takers, not question askers. We are producing job seekers, not pathfinders. So let's talk about the education system. It's clearly we can't change that overnight. That's something that's not in our control as individuals. So whose job is it to help these workers, and this next generation especially, find the red threads? Is it the educators?

Is it the parents? Is it on the individuals themselves? Whose job is it? Yeah. Well, Ken is completely aligned with the frustration with the education system that I share. We should be comforted by the fact that. that those 15 CHROs from last week are equally frustrated. In a sense, the customer of all colleges is the workplace.

And the workplace is basically turning back to the colleges and saying, I don't know what you're producing here, but you're not producing students with self-mastery. You're not producing people that can come in a hybrid, flexible work environment where you need a lot more self-initiative. You can't continue to produce graduates who don't know themselves, who can't explain themselves to themselves, let alone to the people they're just joining,

on a brand new team, who may they, they might not actually physically come into contact with. So there's frustration all around. And I think, frankly, to some extent, companies like UPS or Home Depot or William Sonoma or Lulu Lemon will probably be more powerful in changing our education systems than perhaps even the federal government, because they'll be the ones going, I think you need to be graduating people that have got some of this self-mastery and self-understanding. Having said that, we can, as parents, we can start this earlier than we think. Like, you start to ask a kid at 11, when was the last time a day flew by? Or when was the last time an hour flew by?

And even if they say video games, okay, which part about that video game? Which video games? What about it? Is it that you're playing with people or is it you're playing against people? You can start being curious really early about what kind of things, activities, moments, situations your particular kid loses themselves in. That's, that kid knows the answer to the question, when was the last time a day flew by? Better than anyone else does. Now, we don't teach that, we teach that kid geometry. We teach that kid Spanish, but we don't actually teach the kid how to use

the raw material of their own day to start to identify responsibly their own red threads. We don't do that. Could we as parents start to do that? Absolutely. It's one of the reasons I wrote the book is to say to parents, you don't need to wrap your kid in tinfoil to protect them from the world. Because when you look at your kid, all you see is yourself reflected back. Instead, we should be helping a kid all the way through their teenage years start to be more articulate and more, to use your word, more intentional about using a day, a regular day to start picking out on the difference between, well, this activity is a white thread or a gray thread or a black thread or a brown. But this one,

this is a red thread of yours. Okay, write that. That's where one of the things in the book we do is learn how to write a love note, which is I love it when. And then finish the sentence. I love it when what? Like, what are you doing? And we've done that with kids as young as 11.

So frankly, George, one of the things I'm doing for the next 10 years is I think we can, as parents, we can start to build curriculum that help kids all the way through their teenage years become more fluent in their own love language and how they can then weave those loves into learning, studying, or contribution at work. There's a lot we can do. Yeah, such a simple question, simple exercise, but so powerful. And in your book, you talk about this in the chapter Love in Learning.

You say the education system is built to pressure us, to separate us from ourselves. And I think that's what you're getting at with that quote, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, no. Education in this country is not only not interested in the uniqueness of a child. The education system in this country is frustrated by the existence of uniqueness in the child. Now, it's couched in lovely words like growth mindset, the idea that your child is basically an empty vessel. And we can fill your child with whatever information we want to fill it with so long as you have a growth mindset. Because that kid can be whoever that kid wants to be. Of course, we know biologically that's not true.

Every single unique child, every single unique person, has more synaptic connections in their brain than there are stars in 5,000 Milkyways. And as you grow, you don't rewire your brain into somebody else's network. You actually grow more synapses in those areas where you have the most pre-existing. So your network, as you grow and learn, actually becomes a more defined version of your network, not someone else's. That doesn't mean a kid can't learn. it means that each one of us learn, derive love and satisfaction and joy from, super different things. Really different things. And our education system, unfortunately, has no language about that at all.

It's almost like all the brain scientists have not spoken a word to all the teachers. So we know a lot in terms of how the brain grows, but nothing in our education system seems interested in it. So education really is just information. I completely agree with Ken. Teaching is just information transfer and confirmation through testing. And the testing is designed to see which student is the fullest. And the best student is the one that's the fullest with the best GPA. And then, of course, we start to impose on the kid a whole load of standardized scores,

which deep down don't concern the kid at all. They just really actually scores that enable a college to brand itself as having a certain level of GPA for its incoming freshmen or a certain level of GPA for its graduates, which it can then report to the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, which help the school differentiate its brand and get funding, which is all fine for the school, I guess. You know, brands important, but of course the challenge is the college is using our children as the mechanism for their funding and branding. Okay, that's wrong. I mean, it's morally wrong. But as the chiefs, human resources officers were saying, it's also pragmatically wrong because you end up graduating

students who really have no idea how to talk about the unique network in their brain and what kind of behavior, strengths, loves, passions it leads to. They're clueless. I don't mean that to be cynical, but measurably, we are graduating students who are super inarticulate in describing their uniqueness and then what it might lead to in terms of roles on a team, jobs, or is. Yeah, man. And this all ties back to the leaders listening because they're the ones hiring these people who are coming out of this education system and they've no clue what those red threads are. And I think we could have a whole generation of people who are aware of that, who are intentional about that, and we could see productivity go through the roof,

passion go through the roof. It could change everything. So I'm really excited about the work that you're doing. And as we wrap here, we all want this fulfillment, this happiness, this meaningful impact that you talk about in the book. What's the one thing that every leader can do, this week, this month, to help their teams start pointing to that? Well, there's two things, actually. One is you as a leader. It starts with you. Put your own oxygen mask on first.

If you don't want to burn out as a leader, and resilience is actually lower for team leaders than it is for team members. So if you want to build your own resilience and your people need it from you, then you've got to change your own relationship to your own life. You've got to not wake up and look at it as something to get through, a list of to-does rolling over from yesterday that you've got to get through, or withstand. You've got to wake up every morning and try to think about intentionally, my life's putting on a show for me. It's trying to show me a bunch of different threads every day.

And it's basically asking you every day, which one of these are red? Not all of them, but are any today. So for you as a team leader, think about every day, what red threads might I weave today? What red threads might I find today? And then weave into contribution. Every day starts that way. Change your relationship to your own life. That's the first thing that a leader can do. because your life is showing you these threads. You're just not paying attention, and therefore they're withering. Pay attention, be intentional because your life offers you them every day. Second, check in with each of your people for 15 minutes every week.

Ask two questions. What do you love and load last week? What do your priorities this coming week? What do you love and load last week? Do it 52 times a year. It's 15 minutes with each person on your team. And if you're like that nurse supervisor who's got 60 and 60 nurses and you go, I can't check in.

I got 60 people. then your span of attention is too big. We should change the word span of control to span of attention. If you can't give 15 minutes to each of your people on your team, then you've got too many people on your team. So try and do like a little red thread exercise every week. It's what your people want. If you want to increase diversity, feelings of inclusion,

feelings of resilience, feelings of engagement, the solution to all of them is frequent attention. We know that from data. It's frequent attention. So the biggest takeaway from this, in a sense, for leaders, is check in with each of your people for 15 minutes every week with those two questions. And together, you and that person will figure out what are these threads of mine and how can I weave them into contribution?

And that's really what the job of a leader is in the end. That's super practical. Great takeaway for our listeners out there. Well, Marcus, thank you so much for taking the time. Super excited about your new book, Love and Work. We are pumped for you and grateful for all the research and education and encouragement that you give to people out there. Well, I appreciate it.

Big thanks to Marcus for a fantastic conversation. If you want to get a copy of his new book, Love and Work, how to find what you love, love what you do, and do it for the rest of your life. Just use the link in the show notes. Now, this idea of red threads is great if you can find them. But as a leader, what is your responsibility in helping a team member do more of what they're passionate about?

Is it on you as the leader or on the team member themselves? We're going to have a conversation about that. right after this. All right, we're back. Coming up, Jason Williams, VP of Entree leadership, is going to sit down with me and talk about whose job it is to help team members find their red threads at work. He's also going to share a personal story

of what this process looks like. Here's our conversation. Jason, so glad to have you on the podcast. Thanks, George. So excited to be here. And on your birthday, nonetheless. That is my birthday. Well, happy birthday to you, sir.

I appreciate it. Very exciting. It's been a good day. The team's already celebrated. My family has been great. Well, what better way to celebrate than talking about leadership? I know. You know?

I know. I love this thing. So what we're talking about today is love and work and helping our team members find those things. So here's what I want to know. What do you do when someone comes to you and says, Jason, I'm having a hard time in this role? I don't think it's what I want to be doing. It was fun at first, but I've kind of lost the zest for this role. What does that conversation look like?

Yeah. In my experience, like there's a couple different reasons for that. Number one, as a leader, my idea is always, you got to be curious. Ask questions. When somebody comes in and drops that bomb, it's probably unexpected most of the time. And so it's like, okay, I'm going to get my bearings. I'm going to kind of sit there. I'm going to ask you some questions because I've got to start formulating how I'm going to respond to this.

So just be curious. Ask a lot of why or ask a lot of like, what was it like before when you were having fun? What do you not like what's happening today? and just really get that to the bottom of what they're feeling like, really so I can recover. Most of these conversations happen, they walk in your office like, I'm not happy anymore, and you're like, oh, man, that's not what I was expecting this conversation to be. Yeah. The other thing is have kind of self-reflection, have I defined what winning looks like?

Because a lot of people, when they're in their job, they're having fun because it's the honeymoon period and they're doing stuff they really like. But then the job is changing a little bit because your business is probably growing. And maybe that job that they're in today has moved, significantly from where they started. So have I updated their KRA? We talk about KRA all the time here. And KRAs are something that's really important that if the person knows what winning looks like, they're probably going to be more engaged. They're going to think they're winning. They're going to have a much better time at work. So just those first couple of thoughts.

Yeah, a great reminder that jobs evolve. And over time, the same role you did five years ago is probably not the same today. Yeah. And hopefully your people are evolving. Like, hopefully they're not the same person you hired five years ago. The job may have changed, but hopefully they've gotten better. Maybe they've gotten new skills. And so being curious and finding out what really makes them tick is important. And Mark has talked about that earlier with the 20%. It doesn't have to be all like giggles and they're having a great time and living in their like dream position 100% of the time. None of us really have that. But like giving them enough thing to make them feel like they can keep going forward. Yeah. Is it hard for a lot of leaders to not get defensive or go, well,

I guess this isn't the place for you anymore. Time for you to go. You know, it's when a leader's passionate, they go, well, you're not passionate, so you need to get out of here. How do you find that line? It's a tough line. And I've done it well, and I've done it wrong because my initial thing is, well, I'm bought in. Why aren't you bought in? You exactly articulated that.

But, you know, it is about the other person at that point. As a leader, it's not about you. It's about the company and it's about that other person. And so it's really taking my own defensive posture off and really trying to get them to understand or to reveal to me what's going on in their heart. Yeah. Well, it's interesting you mentioned that the leader has to hold up a mirror and go, well, what's my role here and how much of this is on me.

So what is the leader's responsibility in helping that team member do more of what they're passionate about? Is that possible? It is possible. I think there's, we talked about KRA. So making sure that person knows what winning looks like. If you haven't done it as a leader, the person, they're not going to feel like they're winning all the time because they don't know what winning looks like. Playing a whole set of darts and not having a board to throw at and just somebody saying, hey, just throw it wherever.

You don't know if you're scoring. You don't know if you're missing. Like let's figure out what winning looks like for this person. And then really the other responsibility of a leader is to be curious. Like that person probably hasn't fully thought of the reason why they've made the statement that you just said. And so it's really just trying to get behind the scenes and finding out with a question behind the question of like, what are you really feeling? What really does feel good? What are you passionate about?

That's a important part for the leader. So don't get dejected, don't get defensive. Just be curious. Yes. That's an important step. Yeah. So what is the responsibility for the team member? What responsibility do they have in this process?

Yeah, I mean, I think that at the end of that first meeting, I think it's really important for the leaders set some guidelines going forward about your role and their role. Brennan Washco talks about that a lot in uncomfortable conversations. And I think if you walk out of their both understanding of what work you both are going to be doing, it's really important. So for your role as the leader, you want to make sure that you set clear expectations. You've given them a chance to open themselves up, that it's a safe space. And then for them, the expectation you have to set is, like, are you?

going to do the work because you've said some things that you're passionate about that we don't really see the skills today we feel like you have some raw material you wouldn't be here if you weren't so then let's move you forward into some of those areas of passion if there's spots and so it's really about for the team member their responsibilities to do the work and to be open to feedback you know I've had team members come in and say something similar to like I'm not having fun anymore I really want to be doing this and I say like I've seen you do that and it's not great and so I can help you get better but that's not something we're not going to move you you there today because that'll actually be bad for our team. That can be a hard pill to swallow there.

Yeah. Yeah. And so somebody has to be open to, if you're going to throw that out there, be open to the feedback. And hopefully, as a leader, you have the relationship with your people and the trust where you can give them some hard stuff, but do in a way that's kind and, like, a way that helps say, okay, maybe not today, but let's help you get there. Yeah. So as the leader, if I'm listening to this, I'm going, Jason, I didn't hire these people to handhold and babysit and help them find their passion, you know, do you grapple with that where you go, man, I hired you for the job. Okay, do the job. You get paid, go home.

Like, there's a piece of that. And obviously, work is way more than that, and it has a lot more meaning. But how do you talk to leaders who feel that way? Yeah, it's really hard. Mark has articulated this earlier. Love is a word that some of us are uncomfortable using. I'm not personally, but I've talked to friends and colleagues that have a hard time with that word.

You do have to care for your people. And part of caring for their people is understanding that people, lives change and their responsibilities change at home. They may have a sick parent. They may have to move away. There's all different things that happen. And you have to at least care about them. Like leadership is stewardship, as Andy Stanley says, and it's really important for us to steward our people. At Ramsey, we talk about shepherding people. And we know that not every organization is going to be like that, but you at least have to care about them and want to understand where they're coming from. And, you know, if you're just, if you have a bunch of team members that you're just saying,

hey, they're just here for a paycheck and I'm just going to treat them like that, that's the loyalty you're going to get back. There is a law of reciprocity there. As much as you live into them and love on them, they will in turn do that back to you. Wow, that's powerful. So we've got to care, we've got to be curious. And what team member doesn't want that from their leader? That's powerful stuff. So you've seen this process go a lot of ways.

You've mentioned you've done it well, you've done it not so great. Tell me about a time where you saw a team memory go through this transformation and there was a happy ending. Yeah. I'm reminded, as you said, that there was a guy that used to work on a team in a previous company that I worked with and I was his leader and he was killing his current KRA. So one of the things we always say is like don't ask for other opportunities unless you're currently killing your KRA. And he was killing his KRA.

He was a really good salesperson in a really tough environment. And he over time was just sharing what was on his heart about how he liked bigger negotiations instead of the day-to-day sales opportunities that we had. And so really there were a couple different things. I hadn't seen him do that a lot. I had seen him do it a little bit. And so we tried to set him up in some opportunities to do that a little bit more. and really clear understanding of, hey, we're going to give you some more opportunities,

gave him coaching during that. And then eventually, like, as he got better at that, I started talking to other people in the organization. I was like, hey, this guy's really good at high-level negotiations in the C-suite. He's not doing that a whole lot today, but I've seen him do it. I've watched him. He's been in some high-pressure stuff, and he handles it well. And so over time, we had a role, and I was his advocate, and I helped him get into that role. And he's been super successful since.

he's on like a second or third company, he keeps rising up. And when I say second or third company and the industry I came from, that's pretty normal. But he was rising up and now he has a big time title, leads a bunch of people and is doing what he's really passionate about, which was fun. So it took a leader recognizing that and giving them an opportunity. And that's been my experience here at Ramsey, nine years and five roles, not six roles. And it always took someone recognizing that going, hey, he's doing great. His KRA's crushing it. But, man, what if we could put him here?

He could really shine. And so there was always a little bit more rope given and opportunity given. And the team member gets excited and they want to excel in that. And they do well in that and you give him a little more rope. Yeah. And all of a sudden, you see some amazing growth. Yeah. I mean, you always hear about it with money, but it's the same thing with your team members.

If you're holding them so tight that you're not letting them move up, you're not letting them move on, you're squeezing them out. And that's not the, we try to keep them with an open hand. Like these are people, they have dreams, they have hopes, they have a vision for what they want their future is. and honestly you can help them there as a leader. That's my favorite thing about leadership, is to watch people grow in their career. That's my favorite thing is to help them get where they want to go

and be a cheerleader, a coach, you know, for a long time, and then cheerleader once they move onto that next step, and you're like, yeah, great job. Yeah, well, our leadership team has clearly recognized that. You've quickly risen up through the ranks and now VP of Entree leadership, working alongside Daniel Ramsey. I mean, I'm just, I'm proud of you,

I'm proud to know you, and I love the way that you treat your own team and you help them see those opportunities. Thank you, George. So how do we unpack this for the listeners? They're thinking of someone right now who they're going, yep, I'm thinking of Bobby. Man, he's not doing what he loves and he's let me know or I need to have this conversation. It's become clear. How can you help them kickstart in that direction?

What we do here is we do a one-on-one meeting every week with every one of my direct reports. Now, span of control is something that's really important, span of influence. And my previous company had 25 direct employees. There's no way I could have a one-on-one with them every week. But at Ramsey, I'm fortunate, and we've set up the structure here. We have a lot tighter span of control. So if you're a leader and you're starting to feel like somebody might be falling out of their sweet spot or somebody that is going to have this conversation, like sit down and ruin them.

I think having a one-on-one meeting regularly with your team members will just build trust. We'll make them more open to sharing some of the things that's on their heart. Maybe during that one-on-one has happened to me a lot. You're sitting there and you're like all of a sudden you're listening to this team member, George is sharing his heart. And I'm like, man, you know what? I really think George could do this. Like, we've got this other opportunity. Let me just keep asking some questions and keep watching.

And that will eventually lead to you getting an opportunity. If you're having these one-on-one meetings, it also won't be as abrupt. I doubt, you know, over time, somebody's just going to come in if they're having regular meetings with you as a leader and come in and drop this bomb. I'm not happy anymore. I'm not happy in my current role. It's more of a gradual conversation that you can help guide them through. So it's not just a stab in your heart as a leader because that's it. Sometimes it feels like that.

You're like, this trusted person no longer wants to work here or work in the role that I have them. And that's really hard. Yeah. Well, I love the care that you've taken and continue to take with your own team and how you're leading that team. Proud to know you and happy birthday. Thank you, George. I appreciate it. Thanks so much, Jason.

Honor to celebrate your birthday here on the Entree Leadership podcast. Now, Marcus and Jason both talked about the importance of being passionate about the work you do every day. And the best way to be on the same page about those activities is by having clear, key results for yourself and your team. We use these key results areas or KRAs to state in writing what success in a role looks like so that everyone has clear expectations. So our team here at Entree Leadership has put together a template for you to make it easy to write these KRAs for yourself. To download this free template, just use the link in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, I want to challenge you to share this with three people

on your team or in your circle. And if you really loved it, leave us a review where it, where you listen to podcasts. There's one guy in particular who would love to hear what you think, and that's our producer, Tim. If you want to reach out to him, you can use the link in the show notes. If you want to keep up with us on social media, give us a follow at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much 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 listen to podcasts.