High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 462: QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and in Life with John G. Miller, Keynote Speaker and Author

Episode Date: October 31, 2021

John G. Miller is the author of QBQ! The Question Behind the Question, Flipping the Switch: Unleash the Power of Personal Accountability, Outstanding! 47 Ways to Make Your Organization Exceptional��and co-author of Raising Accountable Kids. He is founder of QBQ, Inc., an organizational development firm based in Colorado dedicated to “Helping Organizations Make Personal Accountability a Core Value.” A 1980 graduate of Cornell University, John has been involved in the training and speaking industry since 1986. He lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife, Karen.  In this episode, John and Cindra discuss: The story behind QBQ Why moment-to-moment discipline with your thoughts is important 3 guidelines for powerful questions 3 ways blaming negatively impacts organizations Powerful questions to ask yourself instead HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: https://www.cindrakamphoff.com/429-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2/ FB COMMUNITY FOR THE HPM PODCAST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/highperformancemindsetcommunity FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong TO FIND MORE ABOUT JOHN AND HIS WORK: https://qbq.com/ Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best. So you can accomplish all your goals and dreams.

So I'm over here following my big dreams. And I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Miss Pac-Man. Yes, the 1980s game Miss Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. Winston Churchill once said, the price of greatness is responsibility. Sharon Salzberg said, taking responsibility for oneself is by definition an act of kindness. And John G. Miller, who I have on the podcast today, said this, personal accountability isn't about hiding behind the team and making excuses. And it is certainly not about changing others. It's about making a difference by changing ourselves. Welcome to episode 462.

This is Dr. Cindra Kampoff, and I'm so grateful that you are here ready to listen to an episode with John G. Miller. And I heard about the question behind the question several years ago and picked up John's book and have loved it. And several other times people have mentioned John's QBQ concept. And finally, a couple of weeks ago, John and I were booked at the same conference. He is the opening speaker and I am the closing speaker, upcoming in January. And I thought to myself, I need to have John on the podcast.

And here we go. The conversation with John was incredible and did not disappoint. John G. Miller is the author of four books, QBQ, The Question Behind the Question, a second book, Flipping the Switch, Unleashing the Power of Personal Accountability, Outstanding, 47 Ways to Make Your Organization Exceptional, and the last book he co-authored with his wife, Raising Accountable Kids. John is the founder of QBQ, an organizational development firm that is based in Colorado, dedicated to helping organizations make personal accountability

a core value. He is a graduate of Cornell University, and John has been involved in training and speaking since 1986. He lives in Denver with his wife, Karen. In this episode, John and I talk about the story behind QBQ, why moment-to-moment discipline with your thoughts is essential, three guidelines for asking yourself powerful questions, three ways blaming negatively impacts your organization, and powerful questions to ask yourself instead.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to find the full show notes along with a transcription of this interview, you can head over to cindracampoff.com slash 462 for episode 462. Without further ado, here is John. John, thank you so much for joining me here from Denver. How is your morning going? Well, Sandra, I'm with you. How could it be better? There we go. Well, I'm excited to talk. Yeah, it's going to be wonderful. And John and I have crossed paths in a different way, several different ways. I read his book several years ago,

and then we're both keynoting at a conference coming up. And I thought, wow, how exciting that I was going to reach out to him and see if he'd be willing to come on the podcast. So I'm really excited that you're here to offer your wisdom with us today. And to start us off, give us the insight on what you're passionate about and what you're doing right now, John. Well, I'm doing right now what I've been doing for decades, actually, and that is teaching a message on personal accountability. That's it. I'm a speaker, I'm an author, I'm a father of seven, a grandpa of 13 now, lucky number 13. We had number 13 come a few months ago. And I've been married to Karen for 41 years. So those are the most more important roles. But I am an author and a speaker and I speak on personal accountability and a book called QBQ, the question behind the question. And you can ask me anything you want about that book,

because I kind of know it because I wrote it. And we are going to dive into that deep today. So, John, what led you to really speak on personal accountability? I was selling training in your fair state, Minneapolis, St. Paul, from 1986 to 1995. I was selling leadership training, management training, sales management training, and selling skills. I was representing a company based out of Georgia and a couple of mentors who had brought me onto the team, I'd found my passion. I found I was pretty good at selling. I love teaching and facilitating and training. I love closing deals. I love supporting my clients. And I did that for a decade in the Twin Cities. And because I sat in what I think, Sindra, could have been 10,000 hours of workshops with good people, managers mostly, I started hearing some lousy questions. Questions like, why do we have to go through all this

change? And when is someone going to train me? And I remember one day thinking, there's got to be a better question here. And so I said to a group, how about we turn around questions like, when is someone going to train me? And call it and ask, what can I do to a group, how about we turn around questions like, when is someone going to train me? And call it and ask, what can I do to develop myself? How can I improve me today? And I started teaching this idea. The first client I ever taught it at formally was St. Jude Medical in Little Canada, Minnesota. Very successful firm.

And I came back a few months later and the VP of HR and the VP of operations were standing in one of their offices talking about some problems they were having in the business. And one of them turned to the other and said, hey, we got to ask the question behind the question, because that's what I'd called it in the workshop, the question behind the question. So instead of asking, why can't we find good people? Maybe we should be asking, what can I do to develop the people I have? And I called it the question behind the question. Well, when I, when St. Jude was still using it three months later and Sandra, you're in training, you know, how little of this stuff that is taught in the training industry ever gets used. I thought, well, I've got something here that's important and

good. And soon after that moment in 1994, 1995, I went off and started speaking on personal accountability and this new idea the question behind the question I remember I was in Des Moines Iowa speaking for a big insurance firm and they shortened it to QBQ and I said that's a good idea and so I like it yeah so I was smart enough to trademark it and copyright it. And off I went. And a couple years later, I grabbed the wife and the four kids and we moved out of Minneapolis down to Denver and the rest is history. Personal accountability and the QB know, as someone sitting in your audience that, or someone even listening today might say to themselves, well, I take responsibility. I hold myself accountable. And do you find that that's actually accurate or give us a little insight on what you find most people do? That's a good question, Cintra. Most people would say, yes, I know what accountability means, but there's a couple of, Cintra. Most people would say, yes, I know what accountability

means, but there's a couple of myths. They get confused about accountability. They think it's something we do to others. You know, a manager's got to hold people accountable. That's what we've been taught. Or we think it's kind of a team thing. Well, if the team would just succeed, if the team would do the right things. So when we come into a corporation or an association or a nonprofit, it doesn't matter. I've even spoken in churches. We make sure they understand that personal accountability is not something for others. It's not something we hold other people to. It's not something we do to our kids. My wife and I wrote a book called Raising Accountable Kids. And a lot of the people that first got it thought, oh, this is great. This is for my sixth grader because he's not doing his homework. And we wonder what they thought when

they got to the first page or the second page, actually. And we said, my child is a product of my parenting. So the book is accountability is not for someone else. It's not something a mom or a dad does to a child, something I do. It's not something a manager does to somebody. So when people first hear about accountability, they oh I know what that means but it's it's different with you with QBQ the QBQ just seeps into the brain and makes us realize we've been asking some lousy questions like something as simple as in some side of big corporation why doesn't management tell us what's going on well the minute I've asked that, I become a victim. When are they going to get back to me?

Well, the minute I say that, I'm procrastinating. Who dropped the ball? Who missed the deadline? The minute I ask those questions, I'm actually pointing fingers, blaming and looking for culprits. So when people find out about QBQ, they realize it's not something we do to others. It's not a team thing. It's something I can do. And then it challenges me to change the questions my mind, I'm asking in my brain.

So instead of outwardly focused questions, like why doesn't Sindra do more for me? The better question to be is what can I do to support Sindra? The question behind the question, the QBQ. Awesome. So let's make sure people really understand what the QBQ is and the question behind the question. How could you define it for us? The QBQ is a tool for leaders. Now I got to stop right there because that's another point of confusion. People think leadership is title and position and tenure. It's not. Leadership as defined in the QBQ book, is the moment-by-moment disciplining of my thoughts.

So when I take control of my thoughts, when I elevate my thinking, strengthen my thinking, take hold of those bad thoughts, those negative pieces of thinking that run through my mind, and really switch them to a positive thought. Sounds very motivational and inspirational and like deep psychology. And in some ways it is. We have a lot of people in the counseling world using QBQ to change the way people talk to themselves. But all we're talking about here is just to pause and ask a QBQ when you're frustrated, disappointed, or angry, just pause and say, as a leader, what can I do differently right now? But back to that leadership thing, who amongst us today, Sandra, does not have

a chance to impact, influence, affect another person? Our behaviors, our action, you know, modeling is the most powerful of all teachers. We teach that in the parenting book as well. And the minute I realize people are watching me and I'm in a leadership position, no matter what my title is, then I can say, you know what, I got to practice personal accountability. How do I do that? A motivational speech through a Zoom meeting? No, I do it by asking better questions and we can get into how do we formulate those questions too. Okay, wonderful. I really appreciate what you said is the moment to moment discipline with your thoughts. I think that's essential to high

performance and for us to reach our best and be successful as someone who is trained in psychology. And I also appreciate what you said about like pausing and noticing what the question is that your brain automatically goes to. And in the book, you talk about how our first question is typically negative. And you said the question behind the question is built on the observation that our first reactions are often negative, bringing in mind incorrect questions. But if we, in each moment, those initial incorrect question, first questions that people have and how they're negative. I'm going to need you to repeat that question, because something went wrong with the internet of the world and you disappeared for about 10

seconds and I missed you so much. So I don't need the preamble. Just ask the question and I'll get going from here and all your listeners and viewers will understand. I love it. Absolutely. So why is it that our first question in our mind is negative? Oh, that's probably just a human thing. I mean, we're just humans. It's easy. It's easy to be cynical. It's easy to go negative. It's just, you know, Sandra, I sold training for a decade and I would go in and meet with companies in St. Paul and Minneapolis. And I'd often end up selling to a team, like six or eight executives in one room. And one thing I've learned about selling to a group is the negative person in the group always had more influence than anybody else. It's just a funny human phenomenon. If I went in there to talk about my training program,

and then they all look at each other when I leave, and the CFO says, well, it's too expensive. Bam. The negative thinking can control the room. It's really remarkable. Well, just like in our minds, it's so easy to say, well, why doesn't my wife do more for me? And when am I going to find those good people I really need in the team? And why don't people want to work nowadays, you know, after COVID? And when are we going to get better people? Why can't HR do its job? And when is that department going to get it right? And why can't the CEO give us the vision? And when are my people going to be motivated? See, I just rattled off about six or seven incorrect questions. We call them IQs. But if I just said pause and said, okay, it's tough right now. Can't find good people. What

can I do to be more creative in my recruiting? How can I develop the people I have? So I think we go negative just because we're human, but that's the power of the QBQ. It's like a switch. That's why the companion book to QBQ, I have no hesitation telling you because I'm a sales guy flipping the switch. The companion book, the sequel to QBQ is all about using QBQ to flip the switch and change the way we live life. Yeah, really powerful. And I agree that we have the negativity. I mean, we have a negativity bias, so we're more likely to look at what's wrong than what is right. And, you know, what I also appreciated about the QBQ book is that it was really easy. Well, it's simple to practice, not easy to practice, but you provide a really simple

formula. And give us some examples of maybe the types of questions that are more powerful. If we know the negative questions are not as powerful and incorrect, how should we ask the question instead? Yes, thank you. Let's get into the guidelines. We teach in the book and in our training programs, wherever we do QBQ, we teach that there's three guidelines. The better question, the QBQ begins with what or how. And we juxtapose those against why, when, and who questions. Why is this happening to me? When are they going to get back to me? Who made the mistakes? See, all those questions, obviously I put a purposeful negative tone to them. But those why questions make me a victim.

Those when questions say, well, I'll do something when Sindra takes action. All I've done then is procrastinate. What value is that? No value in that at all. And then, you know, who made the mistake? Who gave me these people? Wait a minute, I hired them. That's just blame.

So we ask what and how questions as opposed to why, when, and who. So what can I do to be my best today? How can I move forward? What action can I take to find the better people that want to work out there? Well, how can I serve the other department? What can I do to excel in my life today and be my very best, as I said? So the QBQ begins with what or how, but there's also another pattern. If you heard all those QBQs I just gave, every single one of them contains the word I, the personal pronoun I. That's right. So, well, and it's just very simple. I can only change me. And we all know that, but we don't do it. We all know it. We don't live it. We all know it, but we don't practice it because only if my wife

would do this or only my teenage son would listen to me. If only my teenage daughter would speak to me respectfully, you know, that the if onlys come out so quickly, but if I could just change those too well, what can I do to improve me today? Relationships just change overnight the minute I start working on me and not trying to fix others. And then the third guideline of QBQs, they begin with what or how, they contain the word I, and they always focus on action. And we hardly even talk about that because, Sandra, just built into a QBQ is moving forward, getting stuff done, taking action. As we say in the QBQ book, one of the chapters says, I'd rather be the type of person who is sometimes told to wait than be the person who waits to be told. Now, I know we're different. I'm a risk taker. I left the big company in 1985 to go off and sell training on

commission. I'm a risk taker. Not everybody's a risk taker. You're a risk taker. I left the big company in 1985 to go off and sell training on commission. I'm a risk taker. Not everybody's a risk taker. You're a risk taker because you're self-employed. We're not all risk takers. However, even if you're working inside a company, you've been at 3M for 400 years, you can still ask, what can I do today to move forward? What action can I take right now to add value? So QBQs do tend to focus on getting stuff done. Yeah. Awesome. So three simple guidelines begin with what and how contains an I statement, not a they, we, or you and focuses on action. And John, one of the things I'm thinking about is, you know, energy attracts like energy. And I think about if I'm blaming my husband for such and such and such and such,

right, instead of thinking about how the energy I give him attracts energy, maybe I want to give back. I can see what you mean about changing the question really does help improve relationships. And I think, yeah, I think our natural tendency is to blame and complain and to act like a victim because that's a lot easier than looking at ourselves and taking responsibility. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was speaking in Colorado a couple years ago at a school district. We don't do a lot of school districts, but, you know, local districts said, can you come up and speak to the after school people, the ones who do childcare? And I was all done. And a young woman came up and she said, recently, the trainer of the school district had given her two books. One was love and logic. A lot of parents will know that book, love and logic. And he also gave her the QBQ book. Okay. So she

started reading it at lunchtime. Well, guess what she had done that morning? She had packed up her stuff and put boxes on the porch to pick up later. She was leaving her husband. She read half the QBQ book at lunch. She got into that part where we're always trying to fix others and I can only change me. And she went home and she said to her husband, you know what? I'm sorry. I've been trying to change you. I need to work on me. She decided to stay that night. This was a few months after that moment. I said, how's it going? She said, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better because we're both working on ourselves. It's just that simple. And that message, even as I say it here, you know, it gives me chills because it's that simple, simple to heal a relationship is just stop trying to make the

other person be what you want them to be and just say, what can I do to improve me? So good stuff. That's a powerful story. Wow. To know that your book helped mend a relationship. Well, by the way, we've been married 41 years and if we hadn't stopped trying to fix each other, we wouldn't still be married. Yes. The QBQ works in the Miller house too. Yeah. And the Campoff house. Not 41, but 25. So we're on our way. I'm old, you're not. Sometimes I'm feeling old. But I do, I'm kind of thinking about that leads me to one of the questions that I wanted to ask you. And on page 68, you talk about that you can only change me. How do you think? Wait a minute. Page 68, you're going to make me open my own book and see what I talk about? Oh, you've got an older version. Come on, Sindra. This is a hardcover. This is the newest edition, number five. It's basically the same. But every time we wrote a new edition, we changed a few words and edited it

and made it a little better, but okay. Page 16. Don't worry. But for people who are following along in the old version, but the point is that, you know, I appreciate that you said it, you can only change you, right? And I'm wondering how you've seen that realization

help leaders and organizations, you know, when they really take a step back and say, I'm the only person that I can really change. Well, depends when you say the word leader. If we're talking a non-management type person, that's one thing. If you're talking a manager, we do a lot of training on QBQ with managers because, first of all, managers are fallible. Okay. We all know that now. I used to be probably back at 50 years ago is the manager who knew everything kind of like father knows best, right? That's not true, but the good managers do demonstrate humility. As we say in the book, humility is the, is the foundation of leadership. It's the cornerstone of leadership. And there's no way to demonstrate humility and

pull a team together unless we ask QBQs. Because otherwise we're going to ask, well, I'll give you an example. Up in Breezy Point, Minnesota. Yeah. 30 years ago, there was a CEO. I'm sitting in the back of the room facilitating a three-day project. Three days. Now people can't sit down for three hours, but these were three days. And he was an imposing guy, about 350 pounds, six foot six, just a very large, big man, physically imposing. And he looked at his 11 vice presidents and he said, what do you mean you don't know our mission statement? It's been on the wall for a year.

Translation was like, you fools. And I'm sitting in the back. Remember, this is a top management of a retail chain company. You might know the name. I can't mention it. I'm sitting in the back age 35 years old. And I'm thinking, boy, there's got to be a better question here than him saying, why don't you know the mission? It's been on the wall for a year. How about this? What can I do to be a better communicator? What can I do as the CEO to understand my people more fully? What can I do to get out and about and hang with the people and get to know them? I mean, there's all kinds of QBQs that can be asked by a manager leader. That story just comes to my mind because there was no humility in the moment and the 11 vice presidents were cowering. You know, like, I'm sorry. That's not the way to run a good business. So, you know what?

Leaders slash managers, they need to be asking, how can I become a better coach? What can I do to change me? How can I better understand my people? What can I do to get to know each one individually? My mentor used to teach what he called idiosyncratic management, meaning working with the idiosyncrasies of each individual. His point was people are so different. You can't manage them all the same. It's like children. We have seven. They're all different. There's some principles that are common as we parent all our children, but each child is different. Each person on my team is different. So I got to ask, what can I do to get to know each person on my team and what motivates them? Some people don't mind being yelled at, right? I'm not recommending

yelling, but other people will be shamed to the core if they are yelled at on the job. Recently, I was talking to a grocery store manager about all the problems getting people and finding people who want to work. And she made a comment Now she's old, Sandra, she's 27. And she was talking about the teenagers you can't coach. I said, why can't you coach them? She said, because if you tell them they did something wrong, they get their feelings hurt. Isn't that sad? But good to know your people. Good to know your people. So maybe she, if she has someone on our team who gets their feelings hurt real easily, maybe she just got a coach in a little different way. I'm not saying she should let the person off the hook or stop coaching, but manager leaders do need to know their people. So this all comes back to personal accountability

instead of asking, why don't my people get it? When are they going to work harder? What can I do to be a better coach for them? I could go on and on about where QBQ applies because it applies in every area of our life. Yeah, I think those are great examples and really powerful examples because similar to you, I've heard people say, yeah, this generation is different, right? And I think that's blaming and it's easy to then not take a step back and think about how you can impact your people. So this idea of blame, which is an automatic negative response, how do you see that impacting organizations and leaders? Well, the blame thing, as we all know, is not new. I didn't invent it. Adam and Eve did okay. And the snake, I did not blame. I did not. I was not the first person to become aware of blame.

Sure. But as we talk about in the QBQ book, if you want to bust through those silos, every organization still has silos. I mean, it's kind of funny as enlightened as we are today about a lot of things, psychology and teamwork and high-performing teams, HPT, you know, we still have people in one department saying, why can't that department get it right? We still have people saying, when is he going to tell me what to do? We still have people saying, when will she give us the vision? It's really amazing.

I've been out in the marketplace since 1986, selling training, 35 years, Indra. And people will say, well, it's different now. No, it's not. Because the human individual still wants to whine, complain, blame, point fingers, play the victim, procrastinate, wait for others to tell us what's going on. We're doing business with a large Minnesota firm. And just last week, I did a virtual meeting just like this. And I know this is an interview, but I did a 90 minute talk on QBQ right through my laptop for these 20 top executives. And only they know I was telling a story here or there from 1996, you know?

But the point is, as a speaker, I don't say, no, this happened in 1996, because then the audience will go, well, then it's out of date. I just tell the story and they go, yeah, we have that problem too. Yeah. Isn't that true? So nothing's changed. Okay. So back to your question.

I told you I spoke in long soundbites. Blame. It destroys creativity. It creates fear. It increased costs because people are going to make more mistakes when they're afraid to take action and do things. Blame is just so bad. It doesn't solve any problems.

It drives people apart. It causes people to build their little fiefdoms and they get in their trenches and they hide they hunker down there's just nothing good about whodunit questions who dropped the ball who missed the deadline who made the mistake hey how about this well we have a problem what can i do to contribute to solving it it's just that simple yeah yeah that's a powerful reframe and um i appreciate what you just said about blame destroys creativity increases fear. I'm thinking about this concept that organizations are talking about recently, like psychological safety. Right. And I could imagine that changing your question behind the question also improves psychological safety. So people feel like they're safe in the environment. Do you think that blame and the lack of accountability, has it been consistent over the years that you've been working in this area? Or do you think we have gotten worse at personal accountability and we blame more often? What do you think?

I know what you're getting at. I'm no sociologist. When I was out speaking in the late 90s on personal accountability. So again, I left my mentor, the training company I represented about 1995. By 1997, after a speaker's bureau, and you know what a speaker's bureau is, they book speakers. After she told me I couldn't go out and talk about accountability because it wasn't a topic. And I went and did it anyway. She said, well,'ve got to speak on leadership and customer service and all this stuff. And I said, well, I want to talk about personal accountability because I think that's the biggest problem. And I went out in 1995, 6 and 7 and started speaking, and my career just took off.

And I was all over the country speaking for State Farm and Merck Pharmaceutical and all that. Well, guess what was happening? The Bill Clinton impeachment. Oh, wow. It was during those years. And so people were linking my message to, and I'm not trying to make this political, but they were linking my message to the politics of the day. Well, guess what? All these years later, people still link my message of personal accountability to the politics of the day. Nothing's changed. What I would say though, what has grown for many people believe this is, I'm just going to use the words, please don't

take them too negatively, but the whining, the entitlement thinking, the I deserve mentality, the when is someone going to take care of me? I mean, you know, 70 years ago, our grandparents were fighting on the beaches of Normandy. And now we've got people complaining in America about very first world problems, like my latte wasn't made right. So, you know, a lot of people hear QBQ and they immediately say, yeah, the world needs this. There's too much whining, too much entitlement. What's wrong with these people? But the minute they start studying QBQ, Sandra, they start going, okay, I need this. This is for me. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I mean, I can,

sorry, I spoke for, I spoke for a Meineke a couple of years ago. The CEO hired me because I told him the book was all about no excuses. I own the results. He said, okay, you're hired. I'm shortening the story quickly, but this was on a phone call. So like every CEO, he brought me in to speak to 600 people, right? And later he told me after I did my one hour keynote, he said, okay, 20 minutes in, I realized you were talking to this father. You were talking to this husband. You were talking to this leader. QBQ and personal accountability, it's really not for others, but in our society today, people like boomers like me, you're probably a Gen Xer. boomers are gonna say the world is

going to pot well it might be it might be but this boomer still needs to ask qbqs yeah well and and what i really heard in that response is qbq is still relevant right it was relevant when you started it's relevant today and also And also that there's a lot of acknowledgement that when people are listening, they might hire you to work with their team, but really then they can take a step back and say, wow, I actually need to continue to improve my own personal accountability. Now, keep this in mind, because you're just, I probably offended you. You're probably a millennial. I think I'm a Gen Xer. I can't remember. But as sales professionals and speakers, remember this, no client hires us for themselves. They always hire us to fix someone else. Always,

always, always. It's the psychological reason buyers contract with speakers and trainers is because they want us to fix someone else. I've got actual stories on that. Okay. But then if you're good as a speaker, as I'm sure you are, you'll be teaching your material and the person who hired you will start to think, okay, this was for me. I needed this. Yeah. Yeah. That's powerful. What I really like about the book, John, is just the powerful questions you provide kind of towards the end. And, you know, you ask a good question behind the question is, how can I serve them? How can I what can I do today to be more effective? How can I add value to my customers or my people?

How can I better understand the challenges faced by the field. And when you think about how organizations and companies have used the question behind the question, and you've given us some examples today, but are there any others that come to mind just so that we can kind of help people even make stronger connections behind why they should do this? You see this piece of rebar? Yep. I see it. Three inches long, probably. The tire shop took it out. The tire shop took it out of my daughter's tire. When you've got that kind of rebar in your car, you're not going anywhere. No. If, if, well, at least you're going to be slowed down. You know what this rebar is? This rebar is blame and victim thinking and whining, procrastinating and entitlement. Because all of those things slow companies down. They are slowed down. They can't reach their objectives and their goals when they're pointing fingers at each other. It's like having a three inch piece of rebar in your tire. And so our clients, they don't, if they're smart, they don't do QBQ training just to do QBQ training.

No training should be brought in just because it's fun. You go have fun somewhere else, you know, go to the circus and have fun. Yeah. You do training to drive something. So if you've got a client who's trying to drive past the problems they're having right now with the supply chain, if you're trying to get past the problems with the inability to find good people, if you're trying to push the organization forward, when there's market forces working against you, you better not have a three inch piece of rebar in your tire. You better be asking, what can I do to move forward? And how can I contribute? What can I do to be my best today? So my clients, and by the way, my daughter, Kristen, she's 39, and she's on this team. And she speaks on QBQ now since 2008. She will tell you, and she's a Minnesotan. She lives in Maple Grove, okay? Awesome. She will tell you the same thing. Our clients, when they hire us, and then we ask them good questions, they say, well, what we're trying to accomplish is this.

We need to do this. And we can't get this done if we're pointing fingers and whining and complaining about each other. So we got to fix these problems over here. We got to remove the rebar from the tire so we can get all this done. That's why they use QBQ. Yeah. I love that analogy of the rebar. And I was, as I was thinking about your response, I was also thinking about COVID and all the changes that have happened in our society and how, you know, over the last year and a half,

it's been really easy to maybe blame politicians or blame COVID. And we've had to deal with a lot of change. So how have you seen people generally respond to, you know, this external environment of all that's COVID? And how would you say we can use QBQ in this time period? Well, let me give you the ultimate QBQ. We'll jump straight to the bottom line here. We teach this in the book. How can I let go of what I can't control? Bam, there it is. Yeah. That's the ultimate QBQ. How can I let go of what I can't control? Well, there's a lot of stuff that's gone on in the past two years that the average citizen could not control. So how can I let go of it? And the inverse of that is,

what can I do to control what I can control today? What can I do to be a better me? What can I do to improve myself? What can I do to support others? QBQ was very much needed during COVID because people were scared, lonely, frustrated, disappointed, worried about losing their jobs, whatever. Now it's amazingly, I don't understand in the Denver community, houses are popping up by the everywhere. I mean, there's just thousands of homes blowing up. Real estate is sky high. Everybody wants to move to Colorado. It seems like in spite of two years of COVID, everybody has money. But the reality is a lot of people were hurt employment wise, emotionally, there's depression.

Our kids are at risk more than ever right now. I know this to be true because my daughter is a school counselor. So QBQ, what can I do to be my best today? How can I support others? What can I do to serve? Just very timely. QBQ is always timely. Always timely. So I know Dave Ramsey asked you, what's the number one takeaway behind QBQ?

What's the number one takeaway? Dave is my, Dave Ramsey is my only famous friend. I have one. The number one takeaway, I did allude to it. I even mentioned it once or twice, but I am just amazed. If I said to you, can you change anybody but yourself? You'd say, oh, no, no, of course not, John. I can only change me. And yet through little and big ways, we're always trying to get people to be how we want them to be. And there's nothing wrong as a manager. You should be confronting and coaching.

There's nothing wrong as a spouse having an honest conversation with your life partner. There's nothing wrong, parents, with holding your kids to higher standards. They don't all have to drink and do drugs just because they're a teenager, okay? But in the end, I can only change me. And that is the number one takeaway that we hear about from our training, our speaking engagements, and our books is people say, I came in frustrated and disappointed and angry. And those negative emotions had to deal with other people. They had to do with other people. The minute I let go of other people's behaviors that I can't stop or change or the way they think and start asking, what can I do to improve me? The stress was lifted, life was better. So I always close interviews with asking the viewers who you've been trying to fix,

let it go. Let it go today. Yeah. Awesome. John, you have so many incredible books besides the QB. Tell us about them and where we can... You know, back in the day, Sandra, when you were probably in junior high, we used to give out, you know, phone numbers and mailing addresses at the end of interviews on radio stations. Now it's like QBQ.com. Just come to QBQ.com. We'll see you there. But we have the QBQ book, which we've talked about, Flipping the Switch, the sequel, Raising Accountable Kids. Yeah.

And then this book, Outstanding 47 Ways to Make Your Organization Exceptional. And this is just a result of me calling on companies for 30 years and seeing what the best ones do. And then Kristen recently created the QBQ workbook. So that's a great tool if you want to go deeper with QBQ. So thanks for that. Awesome. So many incredible resources for people to pick up. And I am a big fan of QBQ. So I really appreciate, John, you being on the podcast today. Here's what I took away as a good summary.

You talked about being aware moment to moment of your thoughts and the questions that you ask and those and then pausing. We also talked about this I statement as part of the QBQ. How can I become a better coach? How can I better serve my people today? We talked about how blame destroys creativity, increases fear, doesn't solve any problems. And then this final point about that I can only change me. And again, the three parts of the QBQ are begin with what or how, not why, when, and who. Second one, contain an I statement, not they, we, or you, and focus on action. So you can learn more at qbq.com. qbq.com. Come and say hi. We'd love to see you. Thank you, John. I look forward to

seeing you in person at the event we're both speaking in and I will stick around and listen to your keynote. So thanks so much for joining me. I'm so grateful that you are on today and thanks for blessing people with your knowledge and your wisdom today. I know it helped those who are listening. Thank you, Sindra. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com.

See you next week.