EntreLeadership - Why Every Leader Fails Without Community with Dr. Darren Whitehead

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

We can all agree the last year put us to the test! Has fighting through all of the craziness put your relationships on the back burner? You’re not alone, and we can help. In this episode of The EntreLeadership Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Darren Whitehead, the senior pastor of Church of the City in Franklin, Tennessee. He talks about how we, as leaders, can create deep, meaningful relationships with the teams we serve. Then in our second segment, we chat with with Ramsey Solutions’ Chief People Officer Jack Galloway. He gives you the questions you need to ask to discover if you care more about your ambition or your team’s well-being.   Take The EntreLeadership Podcast Audience Survey   The EntreLeadership Podcast Church of the City website Upstream by Dan Heath The EntreLeadership Podcast: The Importance of Looking Upstream with Dan Heath Ramsey Solutions’ website Learn more about EntreLeadership Elite Coaching. 43 Easy Ways to Recognize Your Team Schedule a call with Tim, our producer.   Learn more about the offers from our EntreLeadership Partners: BELAY | Gravy | Hite Digital   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844.944.1070 and leave a message, or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This past year, you've probably had less face-to-face conversations than any other year. You've been on so many Zoom calls, you're Zoomed out. And less people time has led to a gaping hole in one of the most important aspects of a healthy organization, community. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entry Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and in today's episode, we've got two interviews on the importance of community for you and your team. which hits on the business drivers of both personal and people. First up, we've got Darren Whitehead. Darren is the senior pastor of Church of the City here in Franklin, Tennessee.

He's a friend of Ramsey Solutions, and he happens to be my pastor. He knows the importance of community and connecting with other people. It's the foundation for you becoming the leader your business needs. Then our second interview, we've got Ramsey leader, Jack Galloway, on how to build community on your team, so stick around for that. Up first, we've got our conversation with you. Darren. He talks about the feeling of isolation and the toll it's taking on you and your team. We were made to be around one another. You know, there's something about the full embodiment

of being with one another that is the way that God has actually designed us. You know, when you're physically with someone, there are terabytes of information that is going between brain to brain and it's spatial communication and it is the things that you sense in emotions and you just have like this so much of communication is nonverbal. So when we are in the presence of one another, that is the maximum level of communication flow. When you reduce it to a screen and you say you're face timing, now you're looking at megabytes of information that is going by. You don't have that same spatial understanding as you have. you're in the presence of someone. Well, then if you then reduce it to a phone conversation,

now you're just hearing, you're not seeing, and so you're not actually even getting to watch someone's facial expressions, you're not able to discern what they actually meant by something, because you're just hearing the audio. Well, then when you reduce it to, say, an email, you're just talking about bytes of information, and you're having a difficult time discerning, you know, what did they mean by that? Well, then you get even less than that, start looking at a couple of characters on a text message. You see, we were made to be able to discern one another's presence and communication by being in the presence of one another. And we've been essentially starved of that for the last year. So I think people are lonely. I think people

are missing a reference group. In other words, they're missing. What natural relationships do when you're with one another is you're reading people's response on how they're receiving you. And that in many ways curtails things that you say or things that you don't say. You're working on humor. All of that kind of natural interaction, emotion, shared experiences, happens in the presence of other people. You don't get that on Zoom. You don't get that on a phone call. You don't get that on email to the degree that you get when we are an embodied space with one another. Yeah. I can't remember how many times we've been on a Zoom call and someone like tries to make a joke or bring in some humor or depth.

And it's like, wait, what did you say? Sorry, you cut out. Oh, you were on mute. It's so flat. You lose that sense of communication and communication. Well, and the other thing is, and I've had the opportunity, sadly, to be speaking to lots of people on Zoom calls, and just about everyone's muted. So if you say something, if you say something that's funny, or even something that's

mildly funny. It's just a black hole. It's just like the death of the moment, you know? And you just drown in that moment. The other interesting thing is. is that people don't feel the same obligation as they do when you're in the presence of someone to smile or to laugh or whatever. They're very, very content, just stoic looking into the screen, or they're checking the email and you just don't realize that that's what they're doing.

I love the quote. The biggest problem with communication is assuming that it's happened. And I feel like the same thing happens with community. The biggest problem is that we feel like we're connected because, oh, I messaged them on Instagram the other day and I saw it. them post about the fact they had a new baby and I just hit the heart, you know, button on there. Do you think that's happening more and more of we feel like we're connected, but that actually isn't happening in our spirit? You know, I think when we look back at this time in history one day, we're going to look at the great irony is that the people that you connect with on Facebook are called friends.

Facebook friends. What a diminishment of what that term is supposed to be. I am Facebook friends with people that I've never met, and I don't know anything about them. And I think that we have so devalued the term of friends. And in many ways, that's sort of iconic of the time that we find ourselves in. We are filling our lives with trivial things at the expense of that which is important. And so we know lots of things. about trivial pieces of information. That comes from scrolling, right? And so you scroll on social

media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whatever it is. You find yourself scrolling. You're able to take in fractions of pieces of information about lots of people's lives, but you don't go to any degree of depth with anyone because you're not actually in the presence of anyone. It gives a faux sense of community. You have a sense of being connected to a lot of people, but you you're actually not connected to anyone. So what is that power of community, of real life people who you can go deep with? How does that help me as a leader, as a business owner?

Well, people say often that leadership is lonely at the top. And it is because if you're leading an organization, you have a disproportionate weight that is upon you. and if you don't have community, a squad of people that are surrounding you who are ideally not on your payroll and have no sort of financial relationship with you, if you don't have that, then you're going to be missing something significant in your life and in your leadership. I heard someone say recently that we all have 3.7 blind spots or on average we have 3.7 blind spots. That is 3.7 things that the people around us know about us that we don't know about ourselves.

And we don't know about them because they're called blind spots, right? And we need honest people around us to be able to mirror back. And if we don't have that, right, then the organizations we lead will most certainly reflect our strengths, but it will also reflect our weaknesses because we don't have people that are surrounding us that are mirroring back where we are in error. And we all have this sense of lack of self-awareness at different times where we don't even know we're doing something that's a little off. And having people around us that have the relational equity and trust and loyalty in relationship to be able to say, hey, bro, can I just talk to you about something that I just saw you do? Or lately when you've been talking, there's a theme that keeps coming up.

And I just want to push on that for a second and just see if there's something. underneath that because I really care about you. Yeah, having that conversation is so important to get that feedback and have a little bit of accountability. Right. And you've seen a lot of leaders just this past year who have had a fall from grace, right, where they made some moral decisions, they had a burnout, they had a moral failure. And I believe a huge part of that is a lack of community. So there's a lot of community does for you, but there's also something that it helps you avoid. Talk about that. Absolutely. Yeah, I think in this last, certainly in this last season, but even prior to that, I feel like there is a pandemic that is going on in the world, but there is

an epidemic that is going on in leadership, and that is that people are making destructive decisions. And no one wakes up one morning and says, I'm going to, I'm going to destroy my life today. But there are some themes that are common among a lot of these leaders and they are unknowingly making decisions that can ultimately lead them to a place of destruction or, you know, a lot, a lot of pain. And we've seen in this last era, we've seen our heroes and we've seen our friends make unthinkable decisions and it has disqualified them from the organization that they have been leading. And there's a book that came out a year or two ago called Upstream. And the idea of this book is you get the whole

book when you just read the introduction. And the introduction of the book goes that there's a bunch of people and they're playing by the side of a river and they all of a sudden see a baby that is floating in the river, right? A live baby. And someone runs in and immediately grabs the baby and rescues this baby, right? And then a few minutes later, another baby is in the river. And they immediately go and grab that baby. And then a few minutes later, there's another baby that is in the river. And then all of a sudden, one guy just takes off running and he's like, where are you going? We need to be rescuing these babies, you know? And he goes, I'm going upstream to find the guy throwing all these babies in the river. And this is what we're trying to do, right? We're trying

to have the conversation about not just redemption when someone falls, but prevention. How do we go upstream? It's a little bit like that movie Minority Report. Did you ever see that movie was like pre-crime. It's not the thing we often talk about because it ends up being ultimately the thing that never happens. And so it's difficult to measure. But we've got to go upstream. We've got to be asking the question, like, how can we be preventing these leaders from making these terribly destructive decisions? And this is something that I've been spending a little bit of time talking about lately. So what is that preventative measure that we can take? Obviously, community is a part of that, having good people in your life who are asking the hard questions.

And you know, you've talked about checking in with people who kind of pop in your mind and go, I need to check in with that person or that leader on my team and just see how they're doing. Not on a professional level, not a work thing, but on a human level. Yeah, you know, I lead a church. And so less people have been showing up to church than any time that I can remember. I've been doing this for 23 years. And a year ago, oh, just prior to COVID, the biggest problem we have, had was we didn't have enough parking at our church. And by God's grace, we've solved that problem

in the last year. We've got plenty of open parking spaces now. But talk about solving problems. But the question that I'm encouraging people to throw out there as people come to mind is not where are you, but how are you doing? More people have been having a difficult time than any time that I can remember and it's been a shared experience. Certainly some people have had it worse than you and some people have not had it as bad as you, but everyone has been experiencing a sense of loss. And as far as the human psyche goes, we don't grieve change. We grieve loss. Like if you win the lottery, you're not grieving the fact that you won the lottery, right? And that's a change. But you grieve loss and there's been a lot of loss.

And even now, as we're recording this podcast, we're not entirely out of this pandemic season. It's still difficult to evaluate what the losses actually are. And so people find themselves suspended in a space of not knowing what to grieve because we haven't quite yet clearly seen what our losses are of this particular season. Yeah, but dust hasn't quite.

settled yet. And a lot of business owners listening, we're hearing from them that one of their biggest struggles is just kind of pivoting from COVID and trying to figure out a new normal and what they should be doing and making sure they're following all the rules and making sure the team feels seen and that they're okay. And that's a very stressful time. On top of now we're telling them, hey, you've got to find a good community. Right. These are busy people. How do you foster that sense of community when you're running and gun in, you know, 40, 50, 60 hours a week. What does that look like for the busy business leader? Well, the challenge is that authentic community and the fast pace of life are incompatible with one another. And what happens is

when you're trying to pack 120% of commitments into 100% of life is that the first thing that will go will be authentic relationships because that takes time. And we tend to skim relationships and we create, we do the minimum requirements to be able to maintain some degree of connection with people. But it's unfulfilling and it's inauthentic. It's a faux sense of community. And we also find that these kind of relationships, when you start to have a really difficult time, they become ineffective for providing the emotional scaffolding for difficult times. and shallow relationships are cultivated when people only know us by our strengths, they don't know us by our weaknesses. Our weaknesses are what actually create a level of intimacy and connection with other people.

And it's a difficult thing to do. But it requires, to your question, I mean, it requires evaluating how you're spending your time. And you have to prioritize. There has definitely been some seasons of my life where I have been out of control with my commitments. And I remember my wife encouraging me to go see a therapist one day because I was burned out and I was exhausted. And I sat down with this therapist and he started asking some questions. And he said this one thing. He said, I need to ask you a question. Why do you consistently say yes to things that you should be saying no to. And I had this distinct thought, oh, this is going to be expansive. And that was the question I had to ask myself, like, what is going on inside of me that is creating this perpetual

obligation of saying yes to a bunch of these different things that I should be saying no to? Now, of course, when you get married and when you have children, the obligations turn up even more. When I was a single guy, I just kind of said yes to everything. And when I got married, I felt an appropriate restraint because my wife deserved my time. When I had kids, everything changed again because these little children, I'm the only father that these little children are going to have. And it is imperative. It forces me to prioritize the way I spend my time so that I can be investing in them. But ultimately, if you want to surround yourself with authentic community, you, with relationships, with your true self, people who know you, you have to prioritize it.

It does not accidentally happen. And if you like a lot of men, and particularly men, but business leaders, organization leaders, there is a level of drive that is often consistent with this group of people. And you can prioritize achievement. You can prioritize hanging skins on the wall, as people say sometimes. times, and you do it at the expense of an authentic relationship, a community of people that you're actually doing life with. Yeah, and you're talking about, you know, being vulnerable and sharing weaknesses, and that can be really hard for the business leader to do because they feel like,

well, I've got to have it all together. My whole team is looking at me to be the anchor here. And that can be so difficult to go, hey, I need help. And one of your campus pastors, Derek Barman, I've heard him talk about the 2 a.m. friend. That person you can call at 2 a.m. for anything, any reason, and they'll be there for you. Yeah. I doubt most of the people listening have that 2 a.m. friend. How do we find those people? Are they out there? Well, they're definitely out there. I've heard someone say once that, and I love this, you know, you can make new friends, but you can't make old friends. and a lot of people, you know, their friends from college or the friends that they grew up with, you know, these ones that they've got longevity with, they end up becoming the people that have the level of history that becomes a bank of trust that enables them to be a 2 a.m. friend. Now, you can create 2am friends, but you've got to be intentional about it.

And if you want someone to be a 2 a.m. friend, you need to be a 2 a.m. friend for them. And, you know, that's an important discipline to have and a level of intentionality to have. Yeah, I've been there where I'm going, why don't I, why have no one texts me to hang out? And I'm like, well, who have I text to hang out? Who have I been intentional with? And it's easy to kind of feel alone because you're not reaching out either. And the other person on the other side, it's like, well, I'm not going to reach out to anyone. They'll reach out to me. they really need me. And like you're saying, just being brave, being willing to go first, will create those friendships. And then there's this kind of quid pro quo accountability that people want to have where, you know, it begets more and more friendship. Because Darren was there for me. I want to be there for him. I'm going to check in with Darren. Darren's going to check in with me. And it becomes a cycle. And one of our Ramsey personalities, Dr. John Deloney, he has this quote that I love. Other people are the emergency fund for your life.

life. And I love that. It's easy when things are going well as the leader, but it's when things kind of go bad that you really need those people. Have you found that to be true? Oh, that is absolutely true. I mean, this past year has been the most difficult year of church ministry ever. And that is because there's been more conflict, there's been more criticism, there's been more tension, people on both sides of the argument, whether it be politics, whether it be COVID, whether it be issues of race. People feel a sense of conviction. These are not just arbitrary conversations. People feel like they have a developed point of view. And in the church space, it's they have a developed theology around why they should be thinking a certain thing.

So it has been a more difficult climate to lead in than any other time that I've ever seen. And it's been more lonely because of that. I think when you're trying to develop these kind of trusted relationships, one of the places that can be the easiest for developing these is to find peers who are doing the same thing that you're doing in another space. And so for me, I meet with other pastors. None of these guys work for me. They're not on my staff. They're in a different context doing their own thing. But we have like just this enormous amount of commonality.

And when we start talking about our struggles or the things that we're finding that are working right now, there is a deep sense of connection that comes from that. Is that hard to kind of swallow your pride and go, I'm going to hang out with who could be seen as competitors, right? If I'm a plumber and I'm going, I'm going to find other people in the trades and in the plumbing space in my area, is that a hard thing to be vulnerable and make those relationships happen? I tell you, George, my experience has been 10 years ago I felt there was much more of a spirit of competition among churches. Ten years later, I feel like there's more of a spirit of collaboration.

I meet with other pastors across the Nashville area, and I'm telling you, man, there is not one percent of ego and competition. There is a genuine sense of trying to help one another and encourage one another. It's sort of a sense of like, this is really hard right now. And how can I help you, bro? That's been a really, really positive development, and I've had a lot of joy that has come from that. In fact, Dave has been great at kind of bringing pastors together. You know, sometimes we go over his house and we just hang out. And some of the richest times of community in this last year have been a bunch of us pastors,

young and old across the city hanging out at Dave's house. And when it comes to community, you know, we often think of big groups of people. But just as important are mentorships and kind of coaching relationships. How have you seen that play out for leaders where they go, all right, I need someone who's a little further ahead of me. I need to find a mentor or I need to find a coach that can help me take this thing to the next level and help me see those blind spots. What are the differences between those? Well, the older I get and the longer I've been doing this, the more I start to respect the importance of faithfulness and longevity. Like I said, I've been a pastor for 20,

three years and there are definitely days that I don't want to do it anymore. You know, there are definitely days where I'm like, I'm not even sure I can do this one more week. Something about the intensity plus the longevity of just doing this week after week after week after week and taking criticism and taking opposition and taking resistance. When you or when I sit down with someone who's been pastoring for 40 years or for 50 years, or for 50 years, the level of respect that I have for these leaders who have pushed through the 23 year mark that I'm at right now and doubled that. I have so much respect because staying in

it is really, really hard, the elongated season that we find ourselves in of tension right now. So there are certain things that only someone that's been doing it 20 years longer than you can speak into. It's easy to start out, flashy, it's easy to start out with a ton of energy. The real question is how are you going to end? And what are the resources that you're going to draw from that are going to help you to persevere? In the Bible, the book of Revelation, the chapters 2 and 3 are all the, there are these letters that Jesus wrote to seven churches. And it's really interesting because there's sort of like seven report cards on the way that these seven churches are doing. But the reoccurring theme is this theme of perseverance.

In the Greek, the word for perseverance is the word hoopah mune, and hoopper means wait, and Mune means to remain under it. And this past year in many ways has felt like a test of perseverance, staying under the weight of something. Well, when I sit down with leaders who are a lot further along than me, decades ahead of me, they draw from a reservoir of wisdom that I have not yet developed because I have not yet done what they've done and gone when they've gone. And that is of enormous value to me. Yeah. I mean, it's like you taking marriage advice for me, someone who's been married for less than three years. You know, you go to people who have done what you want to do. Whether you want to be a millionaire, you go talk to millionaires, right? You don't talk to broke

people about how to get there. And the same goes for anything in leadership, no matter what business sector you're in. So when it comes to community for a team, obviously in a church environment, it's easy to understand community, right? We're going to create small groups, and you guys have done that really well, at church of the city, where it's a big church, but you can make it feel small through these small groups. But for people who maybe aren't a part of their local church, is there a way to kind of foster that, whether it's in the workplace or otherwise?

Well, yeah, well, the first thing I would definitely say is that it takes intentionality. You don't accidentally create these kind of things. I'm amazed at when someone takes on a sense of leadership in a certain environment, how much the atmosphere of that space can change. And I have seen that happen, in families. I've seen that happen in communities. You ever been hanging out with a group of

people, right? Let's say there's, there's 10 couples and they show up at a table and everyone is talking about Netflix or they're talking about some TV show that they've seen. And unless someone provides leadership, that will be the totality of what happens for the rest of the evening. But you've been in an environment where someone says, hey, can I just have everyone's attention for a second and everyone looks over and you go, what if we went around the circle? And we just shared like the biggest challenge that we have faced in the last six months and the biggest blessing or the best thing that's happened in the last six months. And everyone's like, all right, we'll do that. And so you go around the circle and inevitably you have moments of raucous laughter and you have moments of deep

emotion. You have tears. You have people sharing like, this has been really painful. All of a sudden, one person with a well-orchestrated question provided leadership to the table. And at the end of that evening, instead of talking about trivial things in little pockets, you end up having this shared experience where people feel like emotionally, our souls drank deeply tonight. You move away from that table with a sense of soul satisfaction. You've connected with other people. I think that that is true in any kind of relationship that you have in your life. But it takes intentionality.

one person, a leader, a single person has to have the vision and the fortitude to say, hey, can I remember his attention for a second? Let's spend this time in a meaningful way rather than just letting this time happen to us. Wow, that's powerful. When you said those words shared experience, I feel like that's, when it comes down to it, that's community. And one of our core values here at Ramsey Solutions is team. And so we're very intentional about creating shared experiences. And that has really cultivated what is now known to be, you know, such a great work culture here at Ramsey. And it's something people want to work here for. So what role does community play in creating a great culture in the workplace? Well, early in my leadership years, back when I was in youth ministry, this is when I was in my early and mid-20s.

I grossly underestimated the importance of cultivating team dynamics. In fact, it seemed like a waste of time. Getting people together to do some sort of team experience, it honestly felt like it was a distraction from the work that we were supposed to be doing. And it wasn't until I sat on another team where someone really understood the importance of cultivating team dynamics that I got to see firsthand. that when you cultivate a team culture, it becomes this lubricant amongst the machine of the team. And you start functioning together as a singular organism rather than single people.

And from there on out, I have prioritized how much we spend on just cultivating team dynamics. So I have an executive team on my staff. We have about 120 paid staff in our church. And I have an executive team. And every Tuesday morning we meet and we spend the first hour going around the circle and just checking in with one another. And I know all kinds of specific details about the lives of my key leaders because we actually have a shared group experience. for the first hour of what is the beginning of our work week every single week. And that is a deposit in the team dynamics.

I feel very connected to this group of people. And they are very, very important people to me. Now, when we get to the end of that and we start getting to the tactical or the strategic leadership that we're going to be tackling that particular day, we are drawing from the relational equity that we have cultivated with one another. And that creates when we step on one another's toes, we think the best of one another because we know what's going on in one another's lives. We have trust built with one another.

It ends up being you go so much further and you go so much further faster when you have cultivated these relational, relationally deep shared experiences with one another. Yeah, we say things move at the speed of trust. That's exactly what these shared experiences and sense of community can do. When I trust you, Darren, well, now I'm not going to second guess why you said that and what that meant and how that affects me. I'm going to trust that we're both on the same mission with the same values, the same principles. And because of our shared experiences, we now have this kind of shared language that we can fall back on to trust each other and work faster with more results. Yeah, it's the benefit of the doubt.

It's thinking the best of one another. It is when someone says something, you think of the best possible way they meant that rather than the worst way, rather than being suspicious of them. Well, as we wrap, what final encouragement would you give to that business owner who they don't want to burn out? They know they're maybe heading towards this isolation and they're feeling like it's lonely at the top and they know they need community, but they're not sure the next step to take. You know, the most famous sermon in all the world is the sermon on the Mount. And Jesus gave this sermon in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and whether you are a faith person or not, I would encourage you to read it. He's incredibly inspiring words about caring for the poor and loving people well.

and it's like a secret handbook of life, honestly. It's really, really brilliant. Whether you believe Jesus is the son of God or not, it's great reading. But Jesus gives 14 practices in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 6 and 7, and 11 of them center around the themes of money, sex, and power. And 2,000 years ago, Jesus is basically saying, now there are three major pitfalls that you can fall into as a leader. It's money, sex, and power. Whether you're a person of faith or whether you are not, these are three things that if left unchecked, they will ruin your life. And what's

interesting about the church in the first century is that they lived counterculturally on those three things and it was something that was beautiful for the culture to take hold of. I would encourage leaders to be keeping an eye on on those three pitfalls in their lives. If those, if, if any one of those things is like a gauge that gets, that gets, you know, out of, out of alignment, it can actually train wreck your life. And that is definitely something to pay attention to. Yeah. They've got to have the right accountability in place, the right friendships in place. Maybe that's a leadership team that holds them accountable. And if they don't have a leadership team and they're on their own, maybe that is, you know, a buddy, partially a spouse. What kinds of

ways can we implement to curb that? Well, if it's a leadership team, if it is someone that is on your payroll, you have to give them permission to be able to say that to you. Otherwise, they won't. You have to be able to say, I need you. When something seems off in me, I need you to tell me about that. Now, one thing that is important is that loyalty in public brings leverage in private. Say that one more time. That was real good. Loyalty in public brings leverage in private. So if you're going to share something with your leader or you need to, it needs to be done in a private space. And it looks a little bit like this. Hey man, can I just talk to you about something? Sure. So you know I'm with you, bro. You know I'm like in this with you. I'm on your team. I love this. I've just seen this and I just wanted to ask you about it because I care about you. You don't do that in front of a bunch of other co-workers. So there's that. There are those who are on your staff. There are those who are on your team who are on your payroll. You have to give permission to be able to speak that into you. The other group of people are the ones that are not on your payroll.

And they've got a lot less to lose, right? And, but you also need to be cultivating that kind of relationship with them as well. Like, hey, man, I just need people to mirror stuff back to me because there are things that I'm not aware of that I would like to be aware of because I want to improve as a leader. Wow. That is powerful stuff. Well, Darren, thank you so much for being with us today and helping leaders out there cultivate those communities to not just avoid burnout, but actually become better leaders, grow their team and grow their profits, and most importantly, grow themselves. Honored for you to be my pastor and honored that you took the time with us today.

Thanks for having me, mate. Appreciate it. What a great reminder that we need to be creating relational equity with the people around us so that we can go further faster, because we know business moves at the speed of trust. As Darren talked about, you need community to grow and thrive as a person and a leader. But what about your team? How do you create community at work that leads to you? to a unified and trust-filled team. We'll have a conversation about that right after this. Our second interview is with Ramsey leader, Jack Galloway.

Jack is our chief people officer here at Ramsey Solutions, and we had a conversation on how to create community at work. And it all starts with a clear definition of community. What I mean when I talk about community is simply this. Does a team member on your team, do they feel like they belong? When they sit down at the lunch table with a couple of guys or girls that they have known for a short period of time, do they sit down and feel like, these are my people? Like, I belong here. They're glad I'm here.

I'm connected. Or do they sit down and go, how fast can I eat and get back to my desk? Because they're telling inside jokes that I don't get and stories about the past when I wasn't here. And people immediately, almost instantly, just have a feeling of, do I belong? long or do I not? So it's these kind of shared experiences in the shared group. And for the small business out there, you know, they may not have this amazing culture. If you've got six people, it's kind of hard to feel that level of camaraderie. So when you talk about belonging and connecting, what does that look like for the people who go, yeah, Jack, that's not for me. I'm not Ramsey.

Well, I've got bad news then. It's essential. Having this feeling, how this feeling gets done, may be different in one organization versus another. But in any small group, whether it's just a social group, a church group, or a office group, either the person plugs in and they feel like these people are glad I'm here and I want to hang out with them and work with them and get to know them more. Or they start to withdraw. And when they start to withdraw, they stop talking and they start making some assumptions in their head that are usually false instead of just asking questions when they run into a snag or a frustration or something's not working well. But the good news is this, whether you've got six people, 60 people, or a thousand people, culture all rises and falls

with a leader. And so if you've got six people, the good news is you can affect your culture in a shorter period of time with a small group of people. And a lot of times that has to do with when you sit down and you're going to have a meeting with somebody on your team and you're the leader, do you start right into what they did wrong yesterday and the number they didn't hit and what are they going to do for you tomorrow? Do you spend any time check it? Do you know their spouse's name at all? Do you know if they have kids? Do you know if somebody in their family is seriously ill or if they've just had a fantastic personal victory in their life, you don't have to spend 15 minutes being touchy-feely, but you do have to know enough about your employees,

your team members, to care about them. And it's tough to care about them if you don't take the time to get to know them. So recently, I moved into my new position and one of the things that I did was sit down for 20 to 30 minutes with each team member. Now, let me tell you, when I I looked at my schedule. That was a lot, and I thought, you know, that does not fit the importance of all these other things that really need my attention. But every time I sit down with, I'm sitting right after this, I'm sitting down with another team member for 30 minutes, just to hang out with them, get to know them. Tell them, I'm glad we're working together. Ask what their opinion is on some things.

It's just a time to say, hey, I just wanted to slow down long enough to say, I'm glad you're here. And I'm glad I'm down here with you. And I look forward to what we're going to do together. Do you know that person almost always goes home and tells their spouse, you're not going to believe what happened to me today? A board member sat down with me. My leader, the chief people officer, whatever your title is, sat down with me for 30 minutes and they really just wanted to talk about me. And that makes a big impression on them that's genuine. It's not in the sincere, that then as you begin to work together and then eventually as you have problems together, it starts to build the relationship that you're going to need. And community is nothing more than

relationship. When we talk about relationships, I feel like there's some business owners out there who go, Jack, I hired this guy to do a job. Okay, I'm not here to be his best friend and babysit him and make him feel good and ask him about his personal life. That's personal. This is business. What do you say to that guy? I say that's what you'll get. You'll get somebody that'll just do a job. And if that's all you need, that's your choice. That's not the way we are here. We're very missional here and we care about the people that are here and the people that we're serving outside of here.

But if all of you're doing is a transaction with a person, you're paying them $12 an hour and not a penny more, that's all the work they're going to do and not an ounce more. They're not going to care about your business. They're not going to care about your customer. If you don't care about your team, don't expect them to care about you, your family, other team members, or the customers, and that's a short-lived business in most cases. Yeah. One of the biggest questions I feel like we get is, how do I hire people who care?

And it's funny because I feel like what you're saying is it starts with you caring. That's right. You have to care first. You have to care about the business first. You have to care about the customers first. and you have to care about that new team member coming on. And whether you ever talk about caring about them or not, that could be weird in the first interview,

they know they will get your nonverbal cues as to whether or not you're a leader who cares about people or you're a leader who just cares about themselves. People come to us all the time and go, hey, do you have any remote jobs? How can I do this from home? I'm a developer. I can do this, right?

Talk through the importance. of us working from work. It's a very controversial stance we take to work from work. What is the value that brings to community and culture? We do work from work. We love working from work. When we work from work, we're near each other. We have personal interactions. You know, we were remote for a period of time last year when everybody was working remotely due to COVID. And do you know our efficiency short term stayed the same and in some cases actually went up? It's not that you can't get work done remotely. But the longer we went, meetings that required some creativity and some brainstorming and some disruption, those things were very difficult to do remotely. And we

could feel the difference. We began to do transaction with each other and get tasks done. But the personal relationship side got difficult and just the creativity. creativity on the business became difficult as people had Zoom fatigue over a period of time. And so when we came back, people were glad to be near each other in a room with other humans, having meetings. Creativity filled the air more. And it just is a big part of our culture that the people that are here care about each other while we care about the people outside of here. Yeah. We talk a lot about how we move at the speed of trust.

And relationships and community is such an incredible way to build that trust quickly. And that's how we've really scaled this thing so quickly to where we are today with almost a thousand team members is because of those relationships. Like, I mean, most of my best friends are now at Ramsey. The people in this building are so incredible. They're such thoroughbreds as we talk about that you want to hang out with them outside of work. You know, most people go, my coworkers got, if I had to hang out with him outside of work. him outside of work. Goodness gracious. So talk about the importance of building that community and how that really works within an organization. Is that from a leadership down? Does that start with the

team? I recently made a commitment to myself to spend 100 hours with leaders in our company talking about engagement with their team, which includes community. What makes their team want to stay here forever instead of just until they can go get another job. And the first thing that they told me independent of each other was this. They told me that it all started and it rises and falls with the team members' relationship with them as the leader. Now, with every team member, it doesn't have to be that you are spending weekends with every team member. I know those watching us today are going, that's not who I am. It's not so much that. It is when we're together, when we're sitting together for 30 minutes, do I care about you? Do I care about your success? Do I care about your compensation,

your benefits, your success in your position? And do I care about how your work affects everybody else around you? If those things are true, some things start to happen in the meeting that will not happen between a leader and a person reporting to them when those things aren't present. When those things are taken out of the equation, things start to deteriorate and become just a boss worker relationship. And we've already said that's not going to take us where we go. And so it does require extra effort on part of the leader to sit down and get to know the person, ask what's important to them, ask what drives them.

ask what drives them, what are they motivated by, and give them some room to have their own opinion. And when they begin to engage with you as the leader and you engage back with them, now we've got the basis for them to have a relationship next with those that they work closest with. Then everybody else in the company, and then I find people rarely leave a company because they didn't agree with the CEO or even the mission, though those things, things are important. I often find that they leave because they had a bad relationship or a non-existent relationship with their direct leader. And when that begins to break down, the other things can't compensate. It's sort of a layered approach. They're all important, but it begins with that direct

leader and the person that reports to them. So if you're the leader out there and you're going, Jack, I don't have the time to put in this extra effort. Well, then maybe leadership isn't for you is what you're saying. That's true. And you're going to either put in the time to develop a relationship with them or you're going to put in that time looking for a new person to replace them when they leave in 18 months for a dollar more an hour because there was nothing more than that in the position that you had there. I talked with a leader the other day that had too many direct reports. And so he had to share, he had to make a change and have some of those direct reports report to another leader on his team.

but I could tell it pained him and it pained his team members to stop having those conversations because they had been meeting for several years and they were going to miss that time together. I don't mean that they're sitting down having personal conversation. They're doing business. But while they're doing business, they're building a relationship as well and they were going to miss that. And so that's a good sign that they had a good. relationship that they had built, that they were going to miss that when it was gone. Yeah. Well, let's get into some tactical ways we do this here at Ramsey because we're really

good at this. A lot of people listening, they look up to us for how we do culture and how intentional we are about building that community. So talk me through some of the easy ways that people listening out there can go, here's how I can serve my team and build that sense of community. Well, we found a few things back when we were small, did not have a lot of money. We found a few things that sort of became cornerstones in building community in our company on top of the things that we've just talked about. One is we eat a lot together. We call it breaking bread, but we have really found that when we have lunch together, dinners together, breakfast together, when we sit at the table together and hang out, we get to know each other at a different level

than when we just sit down with our laptops, flip them open and start doing some work. And so We have a lot of celebrations that involve food, anything that we do. If we can incorporate food and drink and having a good time, it just invites relationship even more. Yeah, that's interesting because our team, we do like to eat and we love free stuff. You know, we're a Ramsey crowd for sure. But it's fascinating when you get out of the meetings because that's your only interaction with a lot of your coworkers, your team members, is just sitting in meetings doing work. It can be tense situations.

You can feel withdrawn where you can just kind of sit back in the meeting and not talk. But getting outside of that environment, whether it's a happy hour or a lunch, it really does change things. If you can get outside the office some as well. I remember when we were small, we went, Dave had a lake house and a boat. It was not a fancy lake house or a boat during those days. And our leadership team went out there and we were tubing on the lake. and we were trying to push each other off the tubes. We were diving on top of each other.

And do you know in a leadership group, there's always tension at work because you're doing things that cause tension intentionally in an order in an effort to win. But when we went out there, there were probably some frustrations between some of us. But when you've knocked each other off a tube into the lake and then you've helped each other up and then you've shared a good meal. afterward and you've laughed your head off for an hour and a half, all of a sudden, all those problems seem smaller. They seem so much easier to solve. And when we go back into the office on Monday, those problems are still there. But now when I sit down, we're going to start laughing about what happened to us at Dave's Lakehouse. We've got some scars together. We've got something outside of that gray conference room to lean on in order to help us work through those problems.

So having fun together is obviously important, but something I've seen us do really well is not when things are fun, but when things are hard. And we have team members with 1,000 people, there's always something difficult happening in people's lives, whether it's health, there's a family crisis, a marriage crisis, a natural disaster. Talk me through some examples that you've seen and been a part of of how we have served our team members to build that community. You know, George, even when we were smaller, we had tragedy in the families of our team members, not all the time, and you almost never see them coming. But you've got to be ready as the leader.

You've got to think about this ahead of time, that when there is a death in the family of one of your team, that you've already kind of thought through. what is it I'm going to do to show that team member and their spouse and their kids that I love them when they've lost a loved one when someone is hurting? What if there's an opportunity? What if they've got a chance to adopt from overseas, but they've got to go overseas for two weeks and they don't have two weeks of time off? What are you going to do when that happens? These are opportunities that usually come along one time per team member. her career. So don't miss them. But if you are ready and you are deliberate and intentional and you step in and you go to the hospital and you cry with the family when they're hurting and you celebrate with them and you give them the time off that the handbook said they didn't have and you even pay for the

flights. I mean, let's have some fun with this. What you're saying is, hey, you're not a unit of production, you're family to this organization and we care about you and we're going to laugh with you and we're going to cry with you. And so whether it's somebody whose house has been flooded or burned down, we've had both happened in the last year here. Without us having a program in place, people show up and they start tearing out drywall and they send in food and taking care of that team member. Now, with a thousand, we have to, all of a sudden, we have to, all of a sudden, we,

We do have to have a plan. It's just harder at 1,000 if you're going to do it consistently. But we learned all those things when we were small. The spirit of it is it's small and it's in our hearts. Putting a process to it is just part of scaling to 1,000 or 3,000 people. Yeah, you can start small. You can send flowers. You can do little things. It doesn't have to be, hey, we're going to cover the flight and pay for this thing over here. That's a good reminder there. Small things that are unexpected usually make more impact. than big things that might be expected. My assistant was her parents were in town this weekend,

and we've been working together for about a year, and I found out where they were going to have dinner. And all I did was call ahead and pay for their meal. But I said, hey, go tell their family that I want them to get the best of everything. This is on Jack. I want them to have fun. I want it to be the best of everything. and she told me it made her mother cry.

And I thought, you know, those are happy tears because she's hoping that the place she works, she's hoping she has a leader that cares something more about her than just the work that she does. And do you know that impacts our friendship at work and it impacts how well we work together? Our trust goes up. We work faster together. We think the best of each other. And if you're doing that all the time, eventually, you as the leader will begin to lose track of all the little things, the handwritten notes,

the flowers, the bought meals, all those things, you'll begin to kind of forget some of them, but I promise they will never forget. That's powerful. Well, recently, I'm going to riddle off some examples of how we do things around here because I think they're fun. We took our entire team through Financial Peace University and to have that shared experience where we're all reaching our goals together. I'm shouting out the wins from stage as I call them out from the crowd.

People are paying off their houses. They're getting deals over here. They're paying off their student loans. And that sense of shared victories is also really powerful. And the other events you talked about, we do things like Flip Cup. We do things like bingo, trivia, battle of the bands. We do some big events, but we also do some things that are more heart-focused, mission work.

So talk to me about what that looks like here at Ramble. and how the leaders listening can maybe implement some of that. Well, here at Ramsey, we really do care. The work that we're doing, we believe in it. And the reason you come to work here is because you believe in the work we're doing that helps the people outside of here. So our work is missional. While we're here, we're doing things that are missional.

We do things. We organize groups to go and help in our community that when the health care workers during COVID crisis, we're working 20-hour days. our team went down and just pumped gas for health care workers. No proof necessary. Just pull up and get free gas. Dave was out there. Our leaders were out there. Not only does that bless our community, but it blessed our own team to do something that they felt good about and their families felt good about them doing. We do missional things in our community. We do missional things in our work. We do missional things for each other. And when we celebrate at the end of the year with Christmas, we'll often look for an opportunity to identify a local group and bless a bunch of kids with a bunch of toys. And this can't be something that's budgeted down to the dime. You've got to open the floodgates and have some fun and get creative with this as your budget allows. But do it as big as you can and it will return huge rewards.

Well, to recap, Jack, you tell me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like it starts with a leader who cares. It does. And it starts with starting small with what you have. And it starts with celebrating, having fun, but also grieving together. That's right. And serving together and doing things together to show that you care. And what that does, it inspires other to care more. And it creates a bonding to the organization to each other. And what that does is makes you more productive and you serve more people with more heart. And I love the way that you've served now for 21 years, caring so well for our team and continuing to do so in your new role as chief people officers. Thank you so much, Jack. Thank you, George. Always good to talk with passionate leaders like Jack Galloway. And as Darren and Jack talked about in today's episode, community is necessary for building your business. And we can help you take that next step, whether it's personally or with your team. For building community with other business leaders, check out advisory groups inside of Entree Leadership Elite, which is our online coaching program. In those advisory groups, you can connect and learn

from other like-minded leaders. If you want to learn more, just click the link in the show notes. If you need some ideas on how to build community with your team, we've got a great free resource for you today. It's 43 easy ways to recognize your team. And in it, there's ideas on everything from free food because who doesn't love some free food to team events to benefits. To get that free resource, just click the link in the show notes.

Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And if you're a small business owner with 2 to 200 team members, we'd love to hear your feedback on the show and ask you a few questions. Just click the link in the show notes, fill out a brief survey to schedule a call with Tim, the producer. As always, you can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Zach Bennett and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, and 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 The Dr. John Deloney Show. Mental health challenges and hurting relationships happen to everyone, but they don't have to define you. I'm Dr. John Deloney and I help people navigate through the messy things in their lives on the Dr. John Deloney show. I'll walk alongside you as you face parenting, marriage, and other relationship challenges. and I'll walk alongside you as you try to connect with people as you face depression, overcome anxiety, and learn how to change your life. Listen, I want you to be well. Listen to the Dr. John Deloney Show wherever you listen to podcasts.