EntreLeadership - The Best Leadership Advice of 2022

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, recaps the best leadership advice from this year’s top episodes. Whether 2022 was your best year ever or one you’re glad is over, we hope you feel a sense of accomplishment. You didn’t give up. You didn’t back down. You kept growing, learning and listening. So, here’s to you! Thank you for letting The EntreLeadership Podcast be a part of your journey this year. You’ll learn: •      How to confront underperforming employees •      Why having a problem-solving framework is critical •      If Jocko Willink takes days off •      How inconvenience is the key to greatness •      Why you can’t afford to be an indecisive leader •      The real reason why people are leaving their jobs •      The one skill most leaders are never taught •      Craig Groeschel’s daily habits for crushing goals •      The biggest barrier to leadership success •      How to have an uncomfortable conversation with a team member Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre •      BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Give us your feedback by leaving a voicemail at 844.944.1070 or emailing: [e-mail] •      Listen to the full episodes: The Keys to Growing as a Leader This Year with Patrick Lencioni: https://apple.co/3g8Zm4j How Successful Leaders Solve Problems with Ryan Michler: https://apple.co/3URUTSq Why Your Routines Shape the Future of Your Leadership with Jocko Willink: https://apple.co/3dXueDj Maximize Your Day for Success with Ed Mylett: https://apple.co/3tOpxB2 The Secret to Being a Confident Leader with Dr. Karyn Gordon: https://bit.ly/3Fitd44 Make Better Decisions With These Key Principles with Dave Ramsey: https://apple.co/3Gia7Mx How to Master the Most Overlooked Leadership Skill with Brendan Wovchko: https://apple.co/3OaMOWC How to Use Systems to Achieve Your Goals with Craig Groeschel: https://apple.co/3AI8jZJ The Leadership Habits That Sabotage Your Success with Dr. Marshall Goldsmith: https://apple.co/3XknamP How Constructive Criticism Leads to a Strong Team Culture with Will Guidara: https://apple.co/3hMwfV3 •      Learn more and register for EntreLeadership Summit: http://bit.ly/30Ucjrg •      Listen to Smart Money Happy Hour: https://apple.co/3NT6ZIN Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices: https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, we've got a special year in review with clips of your favorite episodes of 2022. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcast from the Ramsey Network, where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. Well, as 2022 comes to a close, you might be reflecting on the year that was and looking ahead to 2023. Now, let me say this episode is a little bit longer than normal, but I hope it's a refresher on what you've learned this year and an encouragement as you head into the next one. All right, our first clip is with our friend Patrick Lanchione.

He's a best-selling author and president and founder of the table group, and he was my guest for the first episode of the year. We talked about the keys to growing as a leader in 2022, and this first clip you're about to hear is all about confronting underperforming employees. So without further ado, here's Patrick Lanchione. How do you know when it's time to let someone go? When you've given them all of the opportunities you can as a leader and it's not working out.

Yeah, it's a great question. And we all wish we had some quantitative way to go, hey, there's the number. It's time to go. So we could take it off of our backs. And it's a judgment call. But here's the thing I've learned. This is one of the most important things I think I've learned in leadership or the simplest things. And Alan Malawi was the guy who did this the best, the guy who turned the Ford Motor Company around in like the early 2000s.

what we have to do when we want to figure out whether it's time to let somebody go is we have to commit as leaders to constantly calling them out when we see them doing the thing that they're not supposed to do. So let's just say it's like if a person isn't hungry. If I want to know what to do about that, it's not an intellectual decision. It's more of a behavior one. I need to say I will tell you every time I see you failing in that area. Because if we do that, now, by the way, I'm going to tell you something, I'm not good at this. because I'm a wuss as a leader, and I don't like to do this, which is not good. So what I do is I'll go tell that person, like when I see them mess up with it,

you're not working hard enough, you said you wanted to be hungrier, so this is what I need you to do. And then they do it again, a week later. And I go right to my wife and I tell her. And then I go, the next time I go right to my staff members, which is terrible, because I don't like to have to confront people. But if we confront people, if we are just so consistent about staying on top of that, the third time you confront them, they're going to go, oh my gosh, there's no way. to run and nowhere to hide. This is not going to go away. And they're going to do one of three things.

They're going to improve their behavior. They're going to go, I need to get better at this. I need to demonstrate more hunger. That's beautiful. That's the number one thing. Second, and it's the next best thing, they're going to go, I don't want to work that hard. I don't want to be that hungry in my life. I'm going to leave because it's never going to be fun for me here if they're constantly reminded me. That's actually a good second best because they can leave. It's dignified. They make their own decision. You don't have to pay a lot of severance. It's not messy. The third, which happens, I don't know, 5% of the time is that they're going to say, I'm not going to leave and I'm not going to get better. That's their problem. And then you've got to get HR involved in all that stuff.

But when we don't confront people and we don't consistently stay on top of them, we actually make it likely that we're going to have to do the HR thing. And they're going to be surprised. And what you told me that one time, no, but I told you and you never did it. Just keep saying it. Alan Malaville used to go to people and say, hey, you need to change your behavior here. But if you don't want to, that's okay. And they'd say, really? He goes, yeah, you don't have to work here. We could still be friends.

And he wasn't mean about it. He was like, we could still be friends. You could have good life. But if you're going to work here, you need to know I'm going to require this of you. And every time I see you not do it, I'm going to call it out. That's actually a form of love and it dignifies people. So if you want to know, should I get rid of this person, just keep reminding them. And after a few times, if you really do it, they're going to opt in or out.

And if they decide they're not going to do either, then you've got to say, say it's time to take him out myself. Yeah. Dave Ramsey is so good at that. He'll regularly remind us in staff meeting that we're free to leave. This is not a cult. We can still be friends, but if your heart's not in it, if you are not that ideal team player here for the right reasons, doing the work, then it's your time to go. So some great reminders there in a great framework. You know what's funny, though? People will accuse a company like that of being a cult. And of course, Jim Collins used to say, you should have a cult-like culture, not one that doesn't let people leave, but that says we believe in a few things. And if you don't meet that,

then it's best for you to move on. And so I think people like criticize companies with strong cultures by accusing them of being a cult when it's like, no, no, no, but cult is in the word culture. What it just means is there's something that we have in common that without that, it doesn't make sense. Yeah. So it's actually a good thing. Man, I love that guy. Always love getting to sit down and talk with Patrick Lanchione. And he's going to be joining us for Entree Leadership Summit, 2023.

So if you want to hear more of him alongside the rest of our incredible lineup, speakers like Dr. Jordan Peterson, Malcolm Gladwell, Dave Ramsey, and so many more than you've got to get your tickets now. It's happening in Nashville, Tennessee, May 30th through June 2nd. Go to Entreeleadership.com slash summit to secure your spot. All right. Our next clip is with Ryan Mickler. He's an Iraq combat veteran who started a movement and podcast called Order of Man,

which has been downloaded over 20 million times. And I got to sit down with Ryan and talk about how successful leaders solve problems. And in this clip, we're talking about why having a framework is critical to problem solving. Enjoy this clip. There's a lot of leaders listening right now who probably have resolutions in all areas of life, things they want to approach this year. But they have a lot of problems they need to solve and a lot of things to juggle. So I want to walk through this framework that you've developed to help kind of figure out what the problems are, find the right solutions, and move forward.

Sure, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is important that we have these frameworks that we work in because it might just be, well, number one, you're probably going to miss a lot of opportunities if you don't know what to look for. And then number two, you won't have a method for solving those problems. And then number three, you won't actually know if what you implemented is working. So I work best in frameworks. And yeah, we can explore and talk about all these little side conversations and things. But for the most part, like keeping it within a framework is really helpful for me. So I imagine it's the same for other people.

To have that filter, your brain can go, all right, I can burn less brain calories and walk through this process that can help me get to the result I need. Yeah, because I think a lot of people seem to believe that action is prudent. So they're run around, scurry around, do everything, try to fix everything themselves and think, well, I was busy. I must have been productive. No, you were just busy, but did you actually move the needle? I don't know. But we need to know that, right? And so that's what frameworks help us do.

So the first part is, is that what you want to get into? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, I mean, the first is just to look to identify problems. Some of those are going to be low-hanging fruit. And what I would suggest that you do is just start writing these things down. And you don't have to be in a leadership position to do this. Okay, so if you recognize and acknowledge that there's problems in your home or problem in your work environment, just start documenting those things.

One trap I'd say is don't list them all and then give them to your boss or your man. And say, here's all the problems that I've identified. That's not going to serve you well. This is for you. Okay, this is what you need to deal with. There might be one or two problems in there that you acknowledge that, hey, if we fix this, this will make everything else better. And I've noticed that.

There's some problems that will just wipe out a lot of. lot of other issues that are taking place. And if you're going to present this problem, you better have a solution to it as well. If you're going to go to an employer or a boss or a team leader to be able to have a solution to this as well, at least something to propose. Because what I see is when somebody comes with a problem, whether it's my kids or somebody at work, great. You just signed on to fix that problem. And if you already have a plan in place, I think your leaders are going to see that and be excited that you're around because that's what they're looking for as well. Yeah, that's a different conversation and a different posture to take when you say,

hey, I've noticed all these problems, I've got some ideas on how we could solve it. I'd love your help. Every leader is happy to hear that. So as you look around, you're finding all these problems, which most leaders don't have a hard time with. How do you know which ones are worth solving? Because some of them may, you know, not my monkey, not my circus. Do I have to decide what we're going to do for the team lunch and what kind of paper thickness we need for the printer? there's a certain level where the leader needs to go,

all right, I need to figure this out, but I need to delegate it. Yeah, you got to look at your objectives first, right? So if your objective is to give everybody lunch, like it really doesn't matter if you bring in turkey sandwiches or ham sandwiches, like lunch is lunch. Do half of each and you're good, right? But we do get caught up on that stuff. But you've got to have a purpose for your organization or your family.

I use them interchangeably because we work them very much the same way. But there's got to be a purpose. But if you haven't thought about, okay, what are the most important things that I can get done within an organization or your family, you're never going to be able to judge potential problems and solutions against. So if we're looking at my business, for example, my number one priority is to get interesting, fascinating guests on our podcast. That's it. That's the single most important thing I can do. And then it's to take that information and then present it to the public who can be serving. by it. So there's other problems that that creates like, well, what if the video's not good?

What if the audio is not good? What if this is not good? Well, the first thing is to get a good guest. And so I've brought on somebody who's been very, very helpful, Brandy, to help me secure podcast guests because I recognize that although that wasn't a problem, I wanted to elevate that and have help in that department. Now that that's checked off the list and that that's covered, I can start looking at some of these ancillary problems that are created because of it. It helps you focus on different issues, more important issues, strategic opportunities that you might have in the future. That's right. That's good.

And the other thing you have to consider is with the problems that you're identifying and recognizing, are you the best person to solve those problems? Because as a leader, maybe it's a bit of narcissism, maybe it's a bit of ego, maybe it's just a bit of intense care for the project that you don't want to let it go. and what I found is that I'll take my podcast for example not only do I not want to edit my podcast I am not as good as having an editor for my podcast and my sole purpose is to put good information out in the world and fascinating conversations then that means I need to bring somebody else in to do this

who can do it better than me and it does something else it frees up our time to focus on what we are uniquely qualified to do so I might have a great and I do have a great podcast editor but he's not going to be as good as me when it comes to doing the podcast. So I've got to free up time for him to do that, free up time for me to do my thing, and we're both better served because of it. And the people who listen are better served as well.

All right, next up is one of my favorite conversations of the year, Jocko Willink. He's a decorated, retired Navy SEAL officer, a best-selling author, and co-founder of Echelon Front, where he's a leadership instructor, speaker, and executive coach. I talk with Jocko about why your routines shape the future of your. your leadership. And in this clip about discipline, I asked the question we've all been wondering, does Jocko take days off? Let's see what he had to say. So when it comes to all this discipline and these routines, is there ever a worthy excuse where you go, all right, I slip today? You know, I'm sure you've had days where there was some kind of failure. I mean, maybe not for you. For the average person,

you might miss a workout day, you miss the routines, something comes up with family. What is a worthy excuse to lose that level of discipline for the day. No, I mean, what? A broken water heater, a kid calls from school, sick, kid throwing up all through, I got four kids, you know, I've done all, every one of these things that can happen has happened to me. You know, the kid throwing up in the middle night, you're up all night with a little kid, you could take into the hospital, taking the emergency room, water heater's broken, floors flooded, car, you name it, all these things.

Life happens. Life happens. That's one of the reasons I say when people say, oh, do you ever take a day off? I say not voluntary. because life is going to give you days off where you can't, let's say, physically exercise because you got to take your kid to the emergency room because they slipped and cut their head open. Okay, well, you just got a day off. Sometimes travel. Look, I like to work out when I have to travel. I like to work out before I travel. But sometimes, you know, it's a, it's a, that would mean I'd have to get up at 2.30 in the morning. And now I'm on four hours of sleep or three hours sleep. I know that's not healthy. So, you know what? Travel day with a really early flight,

maybe that ends up being my day off. And look, life is going to give you days off. No big deal. If you slip off the path, if you fall off the path, and maybe just feel like crap in the morning, that's okay. Now I can tell you, here's one small rule that I do have. If I get in that mode of where I feel tired, like, oh, I just, I think I'm overworked. I think I'm over-training. I think maybe I should just take today off. I won't take that day off. I won't take that day off. I'll say, okay, if I'm still tired tomorrow, okay, I get it.

But if I wake up, 4.30 in the morning, I go, man, I really don't feel like working out today. I think I might be overtraining. Cool. I'm going to go work out right now. If I feel the same way tomorrow, then I get the day off. You don't want to make, you don't want to rationalize the situation, right? You don't want to give yourself an opportunity to say,

well, you know, I'm, because there's a million excuses you can come up with at 4.30 in the morning. I'm overtrained. I need more sleep. I need more rest. I think I've, my, my sarcadia. cycle is off. Whatever excuse you want to come up with at 4.30 in the morning,

you can do it. You're smart. You can win that debate all day long. That's why I don't negotiate. I don't negotiate those things. I say, oh, if I'm still feeling tired tomorrow, I'll take a day off. Cool.

Got it. But don't take today off. Save it for tomorrow. I like that plan. So as we wrap here, there's a lot of people who don't feel like they're wired like Jock where they just have this level of discipline 4.30 every morning.

They're up. They're doing their routine without fail. How can people develop that discipline? Can they get there if they don't feel like they're wired a certain way? Yeah. So first of all, 430 is kind of arbitrary, right? That's what works for me. That's not what works for everybody.

Everybody has a different life. Everyone needs a different amount of sleep. If you want to wake up earlier, what you need to do is start waking up earlier. And you don't need to wake up at 430. But I would say what I would recommend is start off by waking up a half an hour. earlier than you normally wake up. Try that. And then, and listen, you can't just do it for one day. You've got to do it for three, four, five, six days in a row because what will eventually happen, you'll start going to bed a little bit earlier. That's what you want. You wake up with

an extra half hour in the morning. That is 20 minutes of exercise. That is 20 or 30 minutes of whatever, you know, you're trying to write a book. That's 20 or 30 minutes of writing. That's 500 words of progress. You need to craft a couple emails to some clients that you haven't reached out to. 30 minutes, you can get that done. Oh, you get your morning routine done, and now you have a half an hour to sit there

and have breakfast with your kids before they go off to school. But a half an hour, if you utilize it correctly, is a huge amount of time. So don't sit here and say, oh, I want you to wake up at 4.30 the morning. No, but if you normally wake up at 7, try getting up at 6.30.

Try getting up at 6.30. And when the alarm clock goes off, get out of bed. People say, how do you wake up so early in the morning? I'll tell you I'll wake up so early in the morning. When the alarm clock goes off, I get up and get out of bed.

That's what I do. That's the magic. That's the secret. That's it. When the alarm clock goes off, get up and get out of bed. And the first few days, you'll be a little bit more tired.

Good, go to bed earlier. Because you're not doing anything productive at 10.30 at night. That's true. You're not. You're surfing the internet. You're looking at some stupid social media algorithm that's programmed to actually waste your time.

to take your time away from you. That's what it's been programmed to do. And you're just sliding into the algorithm and being part of it. So don't do that. Go to bed earlier. Turn off your phone and wake up and be productive with your life. Our next clip features Ed Milet.

He's an entrepreneur, bestselling author, speaker, and host of the Ed Milet show, which is a top-rated business podcast where he interviews peak performers across all industries. Now, Ed and I talked about how to maximize your day for success. And in this clip, he shares how inconvenience is the surprising key to greatness. Check it out.

So let's get into productivity because I think time management, we're all trying to manage time to be more productive. So we have to talk about inconvenience and to-do lists. I love what you say in the book. Greatness and convenience cannot coexist. They are diametrically opposed forces. What do you mean by that? Well, it's counterintuitive, right?

What we do normally is we want to move away from inconvenient things. The average human being has become very familiar with doing convenient things and avoiding the inconvenient. DePaulian Hill says in Think and Grow Rich, which is my second favorite book after the one I just wrote other to my scriptures. Because you don't just think and get rich. You have to do certain things. And that's why I wrote one about thinking and doing in congruency. But having said that, he says that if you can get to the other side, the temporary thing you're going through, that you get introduced to your other self.

And that other self is why that process. exists. And so what you got to do when you're looking at a problem that you've got or something that you need to solve, the inconvenient thing is the path to get it done. And so I've sort of started to build this muscle when I look at my day, what's the most difficult thing I have to do? What's the most feared things first, first things first, not inconvenient things. Most human beings are not wired to do difficult things. They don't do hard things. And when you become familiar with doing hard and difficult things, I believe you become somebody comfortable. completely different. So if you're constantly doing the easy stuff, you're not getting it done.

I just interviewed Phil Heath, seven-time Mr. Olympia, and I said something to him that, this is a guy's just gigantic, right? I'm sure there's some supplementation going on there at some point, but the point that I made to him was, Phil, you have a different relationship with pain than most human beings do. Your relationship with pain is completely different. He says, gosh, I never even thought about that before. But he goes, I kind of chase pain because I know that's where all of my growth comes from. I said, when you hit the gym, you do the most inconvenient things, build the biggest muscles. This is true in every area of our life, but we have this proclivity, and if we're not conscious of it, we'll do it all the time. I don't want to do the inconvenient thing.

I want to do the easier thing, the easier path. You build yourself or a company full of people who are willing to do the inconvenient. You are now in that success area of life. I really believe the athletes, even that I coach and work with, and I don't work with Tom Brady. But one of the things I've studied about him is the people that I know, that have been around him, have told me that he's a psycho about wanting to do the inconvenient stuff in any given day, and that that's changed the culture of the teams he's played on where everyone's sort of chasing the inconvenient. And so that's my recommendation of the

book is look at your day, look at the agenda, and say, what's the inconvenient thing, and run towards it, not away from it? Wow, that's powerful. I think that inconvenience is where any growth that's, you know, real comes from, is that inconvenience. And that sees, of pain and, you know, suffering and grinding that out, you go, wow, I'm a different person than I was before, that other self that you're talking about. So that's such a great reminder. Think about the fact that you have a business when you're listening to this. How dagum inconvenient was it to start this thing? It was unbelievably inconvenient. You probably had to leave a job that no one thought you should leave. Maybe you had to borrow some money, startup capital. You're probably

negative financially in some cases, right? Like, you're all, you've already done the most inconvenient thing which is start your business. Stay down that road. You're too often. avoiding this. And here's the last thing I'll say. Or you've had a little bit of success. And once people have a little bit of success, now they don't think they have to do the inconvenient anymore. I already did that stuff. It's someone else's turn. Not if you want to go to the next level. The next level requires the inconvenient thing. Every time it requires the inconvenient thing. Well, that brings me to do lists. Now, a lot of leaders set up their to do lists to try to gain those quick wins. They want to check it all off. But what you're saying here is completely different.

Explain to us how to take an inconvenient approach to our to-do lists. If you do the inconvenient thing first, you build gigantic momentum. The rest of your day is downhill. The rest of your six hours is downhill. So I'm a big to-do list person. Mine are not fancy. I just list the stuff I got to do. And when I start checking them off, I gain momentum.

But I also believe if I knock the hardest thing off that list first, like I'm crushing the rest of my day. Like, it's just slayed. If I can get that done, all this other stuff becomes incredible. There's an important thing, though, when you're building confidence. I say in the book, I have a chapter on conference, which is linked to this to-do list. If you lack self-confidence, you have a relationship or reputation with yourself

where you do not keep the promises you make to yourself. If you want to change your self-confidence, you have to begin to keep the promises you make to yourself, okay? But the power of one more is the following. We don't always get our goals long term. We don't. We get 20-something percent of them. We will always eventually get our standards.

Always get our standards. And so if your standard is that you don't keep the problem, as you make to yourself, you're going to lose. If your standard is, I do the things on my to-do list every day, and you knock them out, you're going to have self-confidence. But if your standard is, I do everything on my to-do list and one more, now you built somebody that is not going to be taken lightly in the business world. So the standard should be, I do what I say I'm going to do, and one more. I'm going to do 30 minutes on the treadmill in the gym. I do 31. I'm going to make 10 contacts today. I make 11. I'm going to tell my daughter I love her. I'm going to tell her twice.

you start having the one more standard in your life, and all of a sudden those to-do lists, these really inconvenient things, you now bring a confidence level with you to that list that allows you to do the difficult thing to build the momentum because you do one more. All right, next up is Dr. Karen Gordon. She's a best-selling author, TED Talk speaker,

and CEO and co-founder of DK leadership. We talk through ways we can improve our relational and emotional intelligence so that we can lead our teams well. enjoy this conversation. And really we're focusing on why confidence is such a secret to great leaders, both at work and at home. And so you talk a lot about this.

And I heard you quote the Gallup research staff that said 50% of employees leave their job to get away from their manager. So it sounds to me like there is a leadership crisis out there. We've always had bad management and leaders out there. But what do you make of all this? Well, I think it's, you know, science is always an interesting thing. And what I love to do is I love to take science and good research and simplify it so it's really easy for people to understand. And then we know with what to do with it to make a practical.

Right. So, you know, for anybody, for any of us that work outside of the home, we all know that boss, that manager that all of a sudden we're like, we just want to get rid of. Like, we no longer want to come into the office. And so I think it's, you know, it's something we've always known. But I think now people are making different decisions about their career. You know, before it was around money and it was around status. and certainly within the next generation, they're looking more for meeting,

they're looking for purpose, people want balance. So we're seeing a real shift happen in terms of how people are making decisions. And so now what's happening is people aren't going to, they're not going to tolerate. They're like, you know what? You know, 70% of engagement scores is now predicted by the quality of the manager.

And so for all businesses and leadership, we have to properly equip leaders and managers, otherwise they're going to have a major engagement and retention problem. Yeah, you're going to see a lot of leaks and employee retention and engagement. And just like you mentioned, you know, we have a buyers and sellers market in real estate.

And we're seeing that it's an employee's market today where they're getting to call the shots and go, I want flexibility. I want to do this on my terms. And so as leaders, you know, you don't have to bend over backwards, but we have to look in the mirror and go, what's going on in our world that we can control

to become better leaders so that when employees do show up, they stay. You're absolutely right. And it's interesting because I've been doing this work for 25 years. My doctorate's in marriage and family. I actually started working with families. I'm actually a registered therapist. I worked with teenagers, millennials, for the first 10 years.

And in Canada, I became quite well known because my work was sponsored. I started writing books and doing television. And it was 15 years ago, George, when millennials entered the workforce that a lot of the companies that were sponsored through my work, they started calling me saying, Karen, you know your doctor's in family systems. Could you take what you know from family systems and integrate into organizational systems? Because our managers are having problems. They don't understand this next generation.

people are showing up late, they're quitting, they want all this feedback, our managers don't know with what to do. And that's when I actually started shifting and expanding our work as a company to really look more at the organizational context. And it was when I started researching and looking at great leaders, great managers, what is it that makes great managers? What is it that makes great leaders? And as I looked and I dug into it, it became super clear. The secret sauce was emotional intelligence. And managers and leaders that had that, they had really great retention. And the great thing about EQ, it's learnable. We can all learn it.

This is not like IQ that's more genetic. EQ is actually a set of learned skills. There's five core skills. And one of the core skills is confidence. And that's kind of how confidence kind of fits into this big puzzle around leadership. Man, what an episode so far. So many highlights, so many nuggets from so many amazing conversations.

And you might be wondering, how could it get better than this, George? Well, somehow it does. Because up next, we've got Dave Ramsey, himself, founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions. Now, this was a special episode where I gave you exclusive access to a part of a talk he gave at Entree Leadership Master Series. His talk was all about decision-making for leaders, and in this clip, he shares why you can't afford to be indecisive. Here's Dave from the Entree Leadership stage. Your business, your ideas, and your team will be paralyzed by an indecisive leader. I have leaders on my team that are very deliberate. They need all

the details, they need time emotionally to process it, and they make decisions very slowly, and I am fine with that, as long as they make the freaking decision. I have leaders on my team that are like me. I'm a super high D. I make a decision. If I don't like it or it's wrong, I'll just make another one, like in the next 13 seconds, you know? I'm fine with that. So that's just the speed at which you're doing it. Neither one is correct. The only thing that's incorrect is simply not doing it. That's not okay. An indecision in general, the paralysis of a decision facing you and you're not doing anything is only caused by one thing. Fear. We all have things come out of us that we fear, that we don't understand, we don't know what to do with. And not dealing with them

means the fear won the argument. And fear is not a fruit of the spirit. The Bible says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Sometimes people are like that, squirrel in the road. Y'all got squirrels in your area? And they run out in the road and they go, Blum, bum, bum. That's a double-minded man. You're going to get run over. I don't care if you're left or right, just be it. That way you don't get hit by the truck. Just be what you is. Somebody's not going to like whatever you do, and you're going to be dead in the road if you decide to try to, you're going to try to please everybody. So just get out of the road. Make a decision. Blum, blum, right? Criticism comes with the territory.

The only way to avoid criticism, Aristotle said, is to do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. These are not options. My friend Max Likato says his daddy used to say, dogs don't bark at parked cars. The trolls are there, the criticism's going to be there, you're going to make mistakes, and people are going to misunderstand your motives. Oh, well, criticism is going to come. If you are, if it is necessary in your personality for you to keep everyone, happy, you will destroy your mental health. You simply cannot keep everyone happy. I don't want to be

unkind to someone. I don't want to purposefully pick fights unless it's for the entertainment value. But in general, I'm not trying to go out here and just rough people up. That's not the point. But the point is, I am well aware that as long as I do anything of scale, the scale of criticism is going to continue to stay with it. It goes with the territory. Some of it's close to you. It's your mother, the lady earlier. Some of it's, you know, team members or former team members, or sometimes it's a customer, sometimes it's a competitor, and sometimes people that just make up crap. And so just count on it. Trolls, cancel culture. fear of COVID mandates of one kind or another.

This is, you know, managing, if you manage to the optics, if you lead to keep everybody happy, you lead, you're one of these companies that leads to make everybody happy. You want to look like you like, that you did the right thing, you love everybody, you're going to get nothing done. You have no value. You've completely neutered your whole process

because you have no soul left. You become agnostic to everything. anything is okay, everything is okay. So nothing is okay. And that's what a lot of these publicly traded companies have done. They're trying to take these stands where all the little groups and all over their little problems are all addressed when they're supposed to just be selling stuff at their store.

And instead they've gotten in the political business and in the political correct business, politically correct business, trying to keep from getting canceled by somebody. Well, there's a good way to keep from, getting canceled, by the way. Own it. A little tough to cancel me on the network. Now, I'm not trying to be offensive to some group or whatever. I'm not setting out to do that, but I'm also not going to live in fear of that. We're going to get business done. We're going to love people well. We're going to be kind and we're going to be excellent in what we do. And because we're

moving things around, somebody's pissed all the time. Just get used to it. It's part of the process. elements of good decision making deciding not to decide can be the right decision sometimes you don't have enough information sometimes it's in the heat of the moment you need to calm down so sometimes just saying not right now that is a decision it's an intentional act it's proactive it's not passive and you're simply saying not right now not right now not right now not right now not ready to pull the plug not ready to pull the plug we're not doing that all right let's keep it moving with one of our own ramsie leaders brendan wochko he's the chief technology officer here ramsie solutions and we sat down to talk about how to master one of the

most overlooked aspects of leadership accountability and in this clip he shares why accountability is so rare in leadership today enjoy this clip a few months back you did a great talk at Entree Leadership Summit all about accountability, how to repair it, how to become a credible leader. And a lot of leaders go, yeah, that sounds like a talk for someone else. I don't think I need that. Yeah, I think a lot of people react that way. And it's a big part of the reason I actually talk about it. Accountability is a far harder skill than I think most people give it credit for. Like people have a lot of false confidence around accountability. And, you know, I've been talking about it a lot in the last couple years, and I probably won't stop talking about it.

But the reality is that the hardest part about being a leader is to give to other people what you were never given, right? It's really hard as a leader to model behaviors for other people that actually haven't been really modeled for you, right? And, you know, accountability is a skill like any other skill, right? And most of us as leaders learn those skills either through making mistakes or failing, right? And so I guess my goal when I talk about the topic of accountability is I just want to raise the overall awareness that this isn't as easy as you think. We're probably all a little bit worse at this than we think we are, right? Well, that's a good place to start. And you have a good way to kind of self-assess where you

are. There's a scale, there's a spectrum, there's quadrants. I mean, there's a lot going on here. There's a whole genre. So how do I figure out where I'm at? So, you know, one of the things I walk through at Summit was just talking about, like, kind of the stereotypes that I see leaders fall into when it comes to accountability, right? And so maybe we just spend a second talking through those. Because I think it'd be valuable for everybody to kind of self-assess as I'm walking through it and try to identify, like, which quadrant or, you know, which descriptor kind of best matches them, right? The first one is that I like to talk about is the blindsider. So the blindsider. So the blinds, the blinds. is the leader who doesn't do a great job at setting expectations, but is very, very quick to attempt to hold people accountable, right? And so the thing that you'll oftentimes hear a blindsider say is, you know, well, well, you should have known better than to do that. It's common sense, right? That's something that you would typically hear a blindsider say, right? The next one I want to talk about is called the scattered leader. And the scattered leader is really good at setting expectations.

In fact, they're setting expectations all the time. But they're actually really poor at the follow-through around actually creating accountability for all those expectations that got set. Right. So the thing that you would probably hear a scattered leader say a lot of times is like, remind me what we talked about last time? Oh, yeah. They kind of have a problem tracking between conversations. So big on expectations, kind of poor at accountability. The third type that I encounter a lot is what I call the absentee leader. This is the one that you really don't want to be, but if you're really honest as a leader,

probably all of us have had like those absent team moments with members of our team, which is we're not setting expectations and we're not creating accountability, right? So the thing that you would probably hear... Which means the team has no clue what winning looks like and if they're even heading in that direction. Yeah, you know, a lot of people, you know, kind of use the excuse.

Well, you know, I hired you for a job. You know, you should just kind of know what to do, right? And, you know, so that's definitely not a good setup as a leader, you know, in terms of leading people. You got to. One of the poorest forms of leadership because there's not even an attempt being made on either side. Right. Yeah, it's just kind of lazy, right? So the thing that you'll hear absentee leaders say a lot of times is like, well, something feels off.

A lot of times they'll kind of speak in platitudes, right? like, well, something's not right. I really need you to lean into it and figure it out, but I can't really give you any advice or any insight or any coaching or anything like that. Very helpful. That's the absentee leader. Yeah, right. The leader that we all want to be is the credible leader. And the credible leader is a leader that's really great at setting clear expectations and really, really great at follow through in terms of, you know, creating accountability for those expectations that have been set. So, you know, the classic thing that you might hear a credible leader say is, you know, hey, what's the latest and what can I do

to help you? You know, they're, you know, checking back on a really regular basis. Yeah. And when you have rhythms of that, that creates that credibility with the team where I know exactly where Brendan's head is at. I know his expectations. I know what he's going to ask me when we meet, and I'm prepared. Right. Yeah. Consistency is really, really important. Now getting there is a different story. Right. And that's what we're all here to do today. Right. So let's dive into this. Let's start with a quick, definition of accountability? Because that means a lot of things to a lot of people. Right. What's your definition? No, you're right. Yeah. When I jumped in all this,

it was pretty clear that like a lot of people are just operating off a different definition, a different sheet of paper. And so here's my definition for accountability. Accountability is a repeated pattern of verifying that expectations are turning into results. Oh, say that again. Okay. Yeah. Accountability is the repeated pattern of verifying that expectations are turning into results. So like when you think about that and kind of break it down, accountability can't be a one-time thing, right?

You just, or really, it can't be an infrequent thing. It's got to be a frequent thing. It's not something that you do spontaneously, right? You got to have a plan, like you were mentioned in a little bit, a couple minutes ago. It's got to be in a pattern and in a routine. And, you know, great accountability can't actually happen if you haven't also mastered setting expectations.

expectations really well. All right. Next up, we've got Craig Rochelle, a best-selling author, co-founding, and senior pastor of Life Church, which is one of the largest churches in America today. He also hosts the Craig Rochelle Leadership Podcast. And I talked with Craig about how to use systems to achieve your goals. And in this specific clip, he shares his daily habits for crushing his goals. Here's a snippet of our conversation. So have you found any personal wins recently when it comes to systems that you or your team had put in place? Yeah, so I'd say on both personally and professionally, in fact, we were talking just kind of personally before we started about fitness and how you have a good diet and such.

And, you know, my personal life is really a reflection of systems, meaning someone may say, how do you stay fit at your age, or how do you have a good marriage, or how do you stay spiritually strong, or how do you grow in your leadership? and the result of all those things would be a system. From the time I wake up in the morning, and like I said, boring. George, I tried to write a book called Boring Your Way to Success, and the publishers wouldn't go with it.

They weren't excited about that. Not at all. I think boring is the new exciting. And so it's the small, consistent things that people do that bring about the visible results that everybody wants. So it's anything that you see, in my personal life or in my professional life, or my spiritual life, physical life, anything

that's good is a reflection of a good system. Anything that's not there. So from in the morning time, it's boring. I get up at the same time, I eat the same breakfast in the same way, in the same bowl, I do my devotion in the same way, I go through kind of a mental checklist of my mind in the same way, I get to the office,

and I spend the first three hours doing the same thing. I leave at the same time, go to the gym, and so those are systems. In our office right now, we've restructured our office, and we're creating new systems to expand our impact. Systems are a multiplier. If you've got systems, there's less energy, there's less oversight, there's less thinking,

there's fewer decisions. So by creating more systems, that frees you up mentally, creatively, spiritually, relationally to invest in other places. and so it takes work. You have to put a lot of work on the front side to create a good system, and then once you have a healthy system in place,

it takes a lot less oversight. So you do the hard work at first, you create the steps, who does what, when, and how, then the system starts running, and then it frees you up to do more things and to expand. So it may seem like a lot of work that's unnecessary,

but it's a multiplier of influence, of impact, of profit, of ministry, whatever, over time, if you do the work to put the good systems in place. Yeah, it reminds me of the legendary Steve Jobs' black turtleneck that he would wear every day because it was one less decision that freed up more creative space to do the job that he had to do. And it's boring, right? Like you mentioned, culture celebrates the exciting, the new, the fun. And what you're saying is it's the small, consistent, disciplined habits that you create is

what actually leads to something. success. It is 100%. It's the small things that no one sees that leads to the big results everybody wants. It's it's what we do consistently that makes a difference, not what we do occasionally. And a lot of leaders, we want to occasionally, we want to systematize everything. We want to systematize our feedback. So we're going to have a great feedback culture. So we don't wait to give feedback until we feel moved until there's something that's worthy of feedback. We say everything's worthy of feedback. So we're going to, we're going to create those systems. Same thing. If you want to stay small, let your systems be accidental. Let them be incidental.

If you want to be big, have a bigger impact, be intentional about it, do the work up front, and watch as it multiplies your ability to grow or impact whatever you care about. Okay, coming up next, we've got a clip with another Ramsey, Daniel Ramsey. He's the executive vice president of Entree leadership, and we sat down to talk about how to break through your own leadership lid so that you can become the best leader you can be. Check it out. You've probably found out early on your own leadership lid as you stepped into leadership many years ago. What were the things that you found were holding you back, holding the team back, and holding the business back? Man, that statement of what got us here won't get us there, I feel like I used to weaponize that statement to try to influence people upstream.

You're trying to break things. That's right. And I felt like the one that was pointing the finger and saying, hey, you're the old dinosaur that needs to change. or whatever. Honestly, over the last several years, especially being in leadership, I realize that I'm the problem. I'm the one that needs to reinvent myself. I'm the one that needs to change. I'm the one that's, that's, I'm going back to my old bag of tricks, expecting them to work the same way they worked in previous years or seasons or teams. Now, some things do. You know, principles, just basic leadership. A lot of stuff we teach don't tree leadership is, it doesn't matter what industry you're in or whatever. It's going to work.

But when it comes to the ideas, when it comes to being fresh with how we go to market with something or a strategy, man, I have learned and I've been really humbled that my ideas aren't as good as I used to think they were. And so I've had to rely way more and more on the team. And I've had to look for opportunities and spend more time asking questions and seeking out ideas and opportunities from around our team and the market and researching online. And so I definitely have been the lid the vast majority of the time. The first step is self-awareness, and you got that down. And, you know, Dave started this place on a card table in his living room famously with one team member himself and obviously scaled it over time. And it's a great example of what got us here, won't get us there because over time, the process has changed.

And he talks to our team about this and staff meeting all the time. Hey, our mission, our values, our principles, those will not change. they've been the same for as long as we've been around. But the way we do things has to change over time. So have you found yourself kind of stumbling? Maybe as you've entered this new role in entree leadership, are there any mistakes that you look back and go, man, wish I did that differently?

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of mistakes I can look back on and I have regrets or I realize I really screwed it up. One of the things I've been learning recently is how often that I can look back in a season or a time where I made a decision, I was decisive, and I held onto that decision too long, meaning the environment changed, the team changed, things changed, and I held fast to a decision I had made that had probably expired. And more recently, I've been challenging myself to think, hey, what are decisions I should revisit and maybe make a new decision? I've been trying to give myself the freedom to change and make new decisions along the way and not being stuck

in a decision that I've made in the past. And so I look back at different seasons of business that I've been in on various teams. And I'm like, I made some big decisions where I didn't necessarily think through all the consequences. And when those consequences came up, I chose to stay the course versus making a new decision. Is there some like sunk cost fallacy in there where you're kind of going, oh, I've got to stick to my guns. This is going to make me look bad with the team and for the business. We're going to stick it out.

Absolutely. figure it out later. Absolutely. That's hard to do to kind of swallow your bride and own it and do it in a way where you're communicating that to the team about your failure. Have you done that? It is horrible.

George, like, there's nothing worse than stand up in front of the team saying you're wrong and you're going to change direction. Like, oh, it's the worst. Mostly that makes the team lose trust in you. Have you found that to be the case? No, not at all. Yeah, it blows me away.

Whenever I get up in front of the team and I own a mistake or I own something that went wrong if I take ownership of it like Jocko talks about, take extreme ownership of it, when I take ownership of a situation that didn't go right and then I talk about a path forward, I always get, the team trusts you more.

They come to me and they believe in me more, they appreciate me more, they feel freedom to make their own mistakes and learn from and grow from it. And they don't hide their mistakes. They actually learn from them and grow from them. And so, you know, communicating and being open, and honest is so important.

And you can't just sit it up there and apologize. You actually have to apologize and then take action to be different and change and grow. If you just stand up and apologize over and over, then people don't believe it because they don't actually see the change. All right. Last but not least, we wanted to end on a fun note. Now, we started to do some new segments this year, and one that stood out was a roleplay segment that I did with Casey Maxwell, our executive director of marketing for Entree

leadership. He and I act out how to have a hard conversation with a team member, and we got tons of positive feedback from you all listening out there. So we wanted to be sure to include it in this year-in-review episode. So enjoy this last clip. So let me roll out the scenario for you. We're going to roll play how to have a hard conversation with a team member who happens to be gossiping.

I'm talking about a problem with a guy named Tyler at lunch with a few other team members, and my leader, who's played by Casey, has sent me a text that says stop by for 15 minutes this afternoon. Now, Casey's been my leader for about six months now, but this is our first real hard conversation. So he's going to be using the uncomfortable conversation method that we've talked about on this podcast before, and we'll link to that episode in the show notes.

Let's get to it. Hey, Casey, is now a good time? He's text me, said you wanted to meet. Yeah, come on in, George. Have a seat. Yeah, what's going on, man? Yeah, hey, sorry for the last minute text. I just wanted to talk to you about something

that I just kind of found out about. You can go ahead and shut the door. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So how long have we been working together? Six months now? Yeah, yeah. So we've never really had a conversation

that I guess I would call an uncomfortable conversation. So one that I'm giving you some feedback. So because we've never done this before, I just kind of want to let you know how I handle these. Okay? Oh, okay. Yeah. So the first thing is,

I'm going to give you some feedback, and you're probably going to get a little defensive. But I want to let you know, like, you're not going to get fired. This is a really important thing that I want to talk to you about, but it's not to that level. So you can, yeah, so we can calm down about that. The main thing I want to hit is I just want to make sure that my expectations of you are clear so that when we get into this situation in the future, we're both, we're both on the same page. It's not going to be a long conversation. It should be relatively quick.

Does that make sense? Okay. Okay. What's going on? I don't understand. Do I do something? Well, so, yeah, I would love to know. I kind of heard from a couple team members.

They shared that you and Tyler were having a disagreement. Is that right? I mean, not really. We were just talking at lunch. I don't think it was a disagreement necessarily. Well, could you share with me some of the things that are going on with you and him? I mean, we were working on a project together. I think we were kind of stepping on each other's toes a little bit.

It really was not that big of a deal, but I was just telling some friends at lunch, what's going on at work, projects I'm working on, kind of some challenges I've been having, and that was part of it. Yeah. I didn't think it was that big of a deal, though. They, like, brought it to you?

Sure. Well, was Tyler there at the lunch? No. Okay. So some of the feedback that I got is not that the actual disagreement that you had with Tyler is really the issue. That's actually something that I would love to talk about in our one-on-one, maybe this week. But the fact that you were bringing it up in a setting where, first of all, Tyler wasn't, he wasn't even there.

And secondly, all of the people that were at that lunch table were not involved in this disagreement, right? So you brought them into a disagreement. And that's actually what we consider gossip. Oh, I mean, I don't think I was gossiping. That feels like a stretch to say that. Well, you know, we have a core value of gossip, right? No, you have no gossip policy, sure. Yes, yes. Well, how we define gossip is actually talking about a problem with anybody that can't actually help you fix it. Okay? So of all of those people that were at lunch, could any of those people help you fix this problem that you were working on? I mean, not really. It's kind of what, you know, it's what happens with friends. You kind of just vent a little bit and have some lunch and move on with your day. Yeah. Yeah. But do you know what actually happens when you're doing that? The fact that Tyler wasn't there, right? You're starting to set a precedent in the team that whenever anybody has a disagreement, they can go talk about it with anybody else on the team. And what that does is that starts eroding the unity and the trust that we have. We really want,

to make sure that you understand that I know it seems kind of like, oh, not a big deal. Oh, I was just sharing this with friends. But it actually really is a big deal. That's actually something that I want you to bring to me as your leader so that we can discuss it because if you and I talk about this, I can help you figure out ways to solve this, whether it's you and I talking about it and you go and solving it or bringing Tyler in and have those type of conversations. Like, is there a reason you've never brought that up in any of our one-on-ones?

I mean, honestly, I just know you're so busy and half our one-on-ones have to get rescheduled because a fire comes up. And so when we meet, it's all business. It's just tactical. Here's what's going on. Is the project, you know, are we on track? What's the numbers? What's the results?

And so I haven't really felt like it was that kind of dynamic to where I'm bringing you menial little problems. I didn't want to bring you into the drama. I know you got a lot going on. Yeah. I mean, I appreciate that. I really do. Honestly, that's on me.

I mean, I love winning. You know, you've been on this team for six months. I love hard charging. I love hitting goals and doing all of that. And sometimes I can put blinders on and just be so focused on the stuff that you're doing that I don't ask what's going on. What are those frustrations? I don't give you a place that you're able to vent.

So, first of all, I apologize for that. That's not the type of environment that I want to create. I want to make sure that you know that you can come to me any, time and talk about this stuff. If you want to vent, if you want to just talk about frustrations or things that are going on, please bring that into me. And I'll commit to you to make sure to, hey, I'm going to bring this up. I'll make sure to ask questions. I'll slow down and I'll make sure that I'm not rescheduling our one-on-ones because they are really important to me. I appreciate that. Thanks, man. And again, because I wasn't clear on expectations,

this is not something that is, hey, we're going to hold this against you forever, right? This is something that now, hey, oh, George is a gossip. That's not what it is. But I also want to be very, very clear that now that we've set these expectations, if we have this conversation again, it's going to go very, very differently and there's going to be a very different outcome. That's why we have no gossip as a core value, right? It's a very big deal to us. Does that make sense? So the next steps, let's talk about this in our one-on-one. We'll make sure to dig in, and we can figure out, should we bring in Tyler, and we can handle that together.

I know this was uncomfortable. I know it was kind of weird. I really appreciate the way that you took this feedback. I think that you're a really important member of this team. And honestly, one of the reasons that I'm willing to have this conversation with you is because I know you're going to do great things at this company, and I want to set you up and set up your personal brand here so that you can actually win. So let's talk about this again in our one-on-one.

After you've kind of had time to process this, I know this was kind of dropped on you. But take some time, think about it. If anything felt off or weird or, you know, like you still had more questions, we can talk about it then. Sound good? Cool, man. Thanks.

Awesome. I appreciate you, George. You too, man. Well, hope you all enjoyed this special year-in-review episode, some amazing clips from some amazing conversations. And thank you all for joining us week after week on this podcast. we are so honored to be a part of your growth as a leader. And I want to challenge you here.

If you've been impacted in any way by this show, by these conversations, please share it with a few people in your life who might benefit from it. This is the best way to support this podcast at no cost to you, and it helps us impact more leaders out there. Now, we are not going anywhere. Let me make that clear. We are kicking off the new year in a big way with a five-part series on the leadership habits you need in 2023,

and we're starting it off with Dave Ramsey and James Clear, best-selling author of Atomic Habits. So you don't want to miss that. Be sure that you follow, you subscribe, and while you're there, give us a five-star review. We really appreciate that. As always, you can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. And if you enjoyed this podcast,

we'd get more where that came from. Check out some of the other great podcasts on the Ramsey Network, like Smart Money Happy Hour, which I happen to co-host, so you can check that out wherever you listen to podcasts. And on behalf of the entire team here at Entree Leadership, a very happy new year to you all. and until next time, keep learning and keep leading.