The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mark Villareal, Business Coach & Consultant, Leadership Trainer, Speaker, 3x International Best-Selling Author

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

Mark Villareal, Business Coach & Consultant, Leadership Trainer, Speaker, 3x International Best-Selling Author Markvillareal.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with a lot of great uh a lot of great information data we're gonna bring you another uh multi-book author.

Oh, my gosh. This guy has written so many books. You're going to learn so much. I don't know where you're going to put it all. You're going to have to grow a second brain or something. So we'll be talking to him about his amazing book series and everything he talks about. In the meantime, to see the video version of this amazing gentleman, you can go to youtube.com, Forchess Chris Voss, hit the bell notification button.

Go to goodreads.com, Forchess Chris Voss. See all the books we're reading and reviewing over there as well. And you can also go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all those crazy places those crazy kids are posting on their social media. We're there as well. Anyway, today we have an amazing author on the show. His name is Mark Villarreal, and he is the author of eight, count them, eight published books with his most recent release, A Script for Aspiring Women Leaders, Five Keys to Success. Let's see. Jack Canfield recommended the book to his TV audience with Villareal's guest appearance on Hollywood Live. He spent 35 years in corporate America with 21 years at the C-level reporting to the CEO or president. His passion is leadership and soft skills, in addition to helping individuals develop for long-term success.

He is a three-time international best-selling author with his first book, Shortcuts Get You Lost, a leadership fable on the dangersangers of the Blind, Leading the Blind, The First to Achieve Status, followed by Leadership, Lessons from Mom, and The Millennial Factor, 10 Steps in Managing Millennials to Success. I definitely got to hand that book to a friend of mine. Welcome to the show, Mark. Great. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the intro.

There you go. And I've got one friend who's definitely reading your Millennial Factor book because every time I talk to him, you can't see the M word around them. I hope they don't treat it like a bad word. Maybe they'll learn to grow with the millennials a little bit better than they're currently struggling. Let's put it that way. They're going to be 70% of our workforce. So I think that's why you've seen the fright sometimes on some or, oh, they're so different because it's such an influx of them.

70% of the workforce is a big portion of them. Yep. Kill me now. Excuse me. Sorry, I had a cough there. No, they're wonderful people, I'm sure. I've heard, I don't know, maybe I read, I don't know. The participant generation, that's not the millennials.

Is it the participant generation? It's Gen X. Yeah, I think it's what they call the participant generation. I say it on the millennials. My quote on them is I say they're most courageous workforce I ever had worked for me. And I had I had to slow them up more than push them forward. It's some of it, I would say, is environment. They were raised in the digital age that I wasn't. You see my gray hair. They're used to quick answers or if not, I'll just Google it.

I'll find it on the Internet. And many times I'd have to slow them up and teach them to, I have a saying called stop, look, and listen, which my mother used to tell me, slow them up to listen to the coaching, look around in their environment and really have a goal for the objective that they were going to move forward. And I had a high success in working with them. And that's why I formulated the book on discussing about some of the myths about millennials and some of the things that are true. I need to read that book. And yeah, definitely.

Please do. I welcome that. There you go. We all do. So order the book. I give us your plugs. So people can find you on the internet. My website is markvillareal.com.

You can find my books on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and the other bookstores as well. And on LinkedIn, in fact, I'm maxed out on connections, and the other bookstores as well. And on LinkedIn. In fact, I'm maxed out on connections, but you can still follow me as well. But when you go to my website, you'll find my email and my YouTube site and all those where you can join me. Cool. So you've got YouTube videos that can help people with what they're doing? Yeah, I have three sets up there. One is what I call tidbits, which are 10 to 15-minute videos on a little bit on what I coach on when I work with businesses and workshops or one on one with their leadership teams or sales teams.

And then there's other like two minute videos where I'm talking about lessons and a lot of those come from my book Leadership Lessons for Mom. My mom was very instrumental in and, instrumental. And I say she was the best leadership coach who chose to be a housewife. And ironically, that wasn't going to be my second book. But when I started blogging, I would tell stories about childhood and the lesson my mom taught me. And that's where my following really grew. And I told my wife, I got to write that book. And it did really well when I wrote it and put it out there. When you have the following jump on it, it's people want to hear the stories. Yeah. Moms are the best in the world. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be here.

Absolutely. But seriously. So a lot of your books seem to rotate around the topic of leadership. Is that correct? Yeah. I was, like you said, in corporate America 35 years, but especially with 21 years at the C-level, I really had a passion for helping other people develop. And I think all things really built from leadership on out. And in fact, it even says on my LinkedIn profile that the more I realized that if I focused on other people's success, mine came naturally. So I really learned about servant leadership. John Maxwell preaches that all the time, that if things are built and structured correctly and you focus on helping others drive their success and develop their skills,

your success will come naturally. And that really helped drive that. And it's what I teach when I work with companies and organizations on how to set that environment or how to reset to get that environment. So I think you mentioned a term serving leadership or servitor leadership. Yeah. Servant leadership. Yes.

But what is that? What is that? How is that defined? It's really defined that you have a sometimes you have a leader out there that's worried about their own goals and look what I have to do. And certainly we all want to make sure we achieve our goals and objectives. But a servant leader realizes of how can I serve you? So if you work for me, Chris, what are your goals, Chris? Let's help define those.

What are your skills? What are the gaps in your skills that we need to build? And let's really build a plan out that helps you grow and helps you succeed. And I earn your trust. And I realize that trust is something that I earn daily. So it's really that you see that I'm serving you. But in that serving you and earning that trust, I really build accountability. I teach you what a self-accountability is.

And it's probably one of the first communications that you receive from me when I set expectations, because I set those early and often, that I expect you to have self-accountability in your own development as well. And how, if you take self-accountability, that when I have time to invest, money to invest in someone's development, or I have a promotion, how you make that opportunity for it to be you easy. And that's how you eliminate entitlement. They say millennials are entitled. I would tell you that when I ran millennial teams, I would set expectations day one on self-accountability and what it took to get promoted. And I lived that. And it eliminates accountability on day one on how it's going to work here. Yes.

So is it setting just a good foundation, boundaries? I say expectations start before you hire, when you hire. So before you hire, it's real big on, I believe, in listing your mission and your values on your website so people see those. They should be in your hiring ads. Here are the values that we live by. Here's our mission statement. And then here's the opportunity that we have. If you believe you're fit,

come and work for us. Then when I'm interviewing you, I would say, Chris, one of the reasons that you were chosen for an interview is we exceed expectations here, and we believe that you're a match. And that's why you're being interviewed. When I would hire you, then I would say, okay, Chris, we hired you because we believe that you'll exceed expectations. And then I would go into one, a little nuances about myself. Hey, Chris, a few things about me is I repeat myself a lot. I believe great leaders do. And I would state that if I repeat myself on things, you might take note because it might be important to me. Second, I manage my rewards or consequences.

And I'd like to manage my rewards all day long, but there will be consequences. But Chris, your success is important to me. So if I see that there are things you're doing that might be detrimental to your success, I want to make sure I point that out to you. In fact, I feel I owe it to you. Would you agree with that? And I can tell you that when you set that expectation on day one, I've never had anyone say no. But because I say that on day one, it's easy to remind them of that when I have to go correct them in an action, whether it's three months from there. Hey, Chris, because you want to make sure I point out to you, let me do this. Yeah, I believe what you're doing here might be detrimental to your success. Let me explain. Boom. We talked about behavior modification.

We talked about rewards and consequences. Chris, how quickly you modify your behavior when I am correcting you, we get you back on the reward side. But then I talk about one of the things that I need to see from you is self-accountability. We want to see you develop here. Here is what we call a career lattice. I don't use the term career ladder anymore. Career lattice are here are all the positions in our organization where you can make lateral moves up or down and the skill sets that are required for each. So if you have an interest in moving forward or moving laterally, you know what skill sets there are.

And in fact, you're welcome to come ask me or your other leaders here on how you can learn those items. But if you take self-accountability and learning that, that when it comes time for me to invest in someone's development or an opportunity for promotion, you'll make that opportunity easy. And here are some of the things that I require. So that's just a little part of what I talk about, setting expectations early, always, and often. I like how you lay that out. And you also lay it out in a way that says, hey, I care about you, and I'm trying to help you be successful in setting down those things. What about you have to put a lot of this in writing, too? It seemed like as the millennials entered the market for me and my companies, our contracts, our initial contracts you'd sign for employment just got thicker and

thicker. I haven't had to put a lot in writing, but we do communicate that. You always have what you call a HR handbook. And so, and in fact, in my millennial book, I talk about how to build a communication plan. And one of those, what are all the things you want to make sure are communicated and expectations is a big part of that. And when do you want them communicated? So I've talked about day one. But they're in the handbook as well, as a reminder. There might be some things that I have even on the wall, which are our mission, vision, and values.

I want to always stress that that's the guide for every decision we make within the organization. We want to live these values. Our mission is so important because it's our reason for existence. And as an employee, you need to embrace that because you need to know how it benefits our potential customers, current customers, partners, and your peers next to you as well. So all that drives culture. That's really important.

Like you say, a culture environment is really important. And I like how you have a multifaceted approach to it, where the communication comes from all sides and the vision comes from all sides. And that helps keep a continuity of the data and information and probably keep everybody in that hallway. Let me ask you this. One of my friends, it's the same one who's not an excited guy about millennials. He likes them, but he struggles with them. Maybe struggle is the wrong word. I'm going to send him this video, so he'll probably hate me for saying that. One of the

things that he's had issues with is millennials want to do a lot of different things. They can wake up one morning and they go, I want to go, I don't know, do this and be whatever. I just want to be whatever and do whatever I want in the organization. He has a really hard time keeping them or he's had a challenge keeping them in the hallway of this is your job this is what you're doing every single day for us until that changes any advice on that I would first ask them if they do have a career lattice built and that if they show them that on day one because that adds transparency and so here are the lateral moves and here are the moves that you can make and the moves that you can't make but also with that South accountability comes

commitment as well so when we build your plans, we build an action plan, which has, I think everyone's heard the term of smart goals from the book, Good to Great, which has timelines. And it's really important that we choose which direction you're going because it takes an investment from our team to help drive your success. And once we make those commitments, we want to make sure it's a commitment from you as well. Does it mean that we can't change because things happen in the business? I'm sure COVID brought a lot of change within the organization. They had to move.

Certainly it can. And we'll have those discussions. But for the benefit of the business, we need to have these 80 percent done that we make sure that we stay focused and as we achieve these that's what brings the next opportunities this is uh that's really insightful so i'll share that with him and i think he does a little bit of he's learned to do some of it it's always trying to keep them in that frame and if you want people to be successful and you can't show up to work, why don't you be doing a different job every day?

Like, I'll just be CEO today. And you're just like, yeah, that's taken. I think if I ever run a large company ever again, I'm just going to have a name badge that says, I'm not your father. I'm not your father or your husband. I used to spend so much time in playing psychologist to people's marriages and divorces and stuff.

And I'll probably have a psychology department. The psychology department is down there. It's not here. I'm not your dad. If I can just finalize on what we were just saying about the millennials. Sure. I state in my book that the top 10 things that are important to me, I'm a baby boomer,

that are the same top 10 things that are important to millennial, but they're in a whole different order? So to me, it was tell me what I'm going to get paid. How stable is this job? And that's probably nine and 10 for millennials. There's just what is your mission? What's our reason for existence? I want to know who I'm working for.

What are the values we're going to live? How transparent is this job? Are you going to tell me the why behind everything? And the why behind things to me was number eight or seven or eight. In other words, why? Because you give me a paycheck, right? That was to where millennials, when you let them understand the why we are doing things, they embrace it more.

And that's sometimes the struggle because if I want to change these roles all the time, I need to tell you the why and how it's affecting the business, why I need you to do what we committed to and why we can't change to and help you understand that. Now, I would say that I have found managers that are real strong leaders with the other age groups are also still real strong leaders with millennials because they do the other things of being transparent and they over communicate, which is real important with the younger age groups as well. The over communication, explaining the why and being very, and sometimes those of us that are maybe older in leadership

or management are like, why do I have to do that? It came natural to me and that's why I had success, but it really opened my eyes on why I was having that success. And in my conversations with them, I'm like, okay, this is what they're feeding on. And the more I add these elements, expand on it, the more it drove success and really loyalty. And that's one of the big myths is that, oh, millennials aren't loyal. And why should I invest too much? Because they'll have seven jobs in two years. And my comment is you haven't shown them what a career is. So they think that they're going from job to job.

If you can establish what a career is to them, you'll actually earn their loyalty. That's where I had success. That's awesome, man. This is one more reason people should buy your books. This is an interesting question for you. And I do want to try and hit on a couple of these questions that we have for each of your books because you've got so many. So we'll try and speed around these a little bit. But this was a conversation that we had in my book that just came out. What is the difference between a leader and a manager? And we had a lot of discussions on the Clubhouse app in open debate about this as I was writing the book.

And I was interested in other people's formats about what I thought the subject was between being, what is the difference between a leader and a manager? So I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are. I say the biggest one to me is a manager will stay within status quo and a leader will go outside status quo. They look for stretching it. And that's why they expand. That's why an entrepreneur, that's why the risk takers, but a leader will look for calculated risk, not blind risk, but calculated. And sometimes they're based on experience and knowledge and the skill sets. You hear sometimes, man, that person makes quick gut decisions, but it's usually a decision based on their experience. And, hey, I've been in the business 30 years.

I've seen this before. You know, it's not like I'm making blind decisions. But that's the biggest thing is stretching outside the stock status, taking those risks, develop. And with that, then they have to develop their people and expand on that more. I even teach that sometimes you might have a situation where you want someone to be a manager more than a leader. And I'll give the example. If there's one department in an organization I'm running that's making steady profit every month and the leader's going to be out for six months, then I want to put a manager in there and say, don't

change anything. Keep that. Our leader's going to be back in six months. I want everything to stay the same and that bottom line to hit every month. But I do like to see all managers transition to becoming a leader and what that takes and having, that's why I like the servant leadership. I think that's one part of the transition, that it's more about them than it is about I and what that means, that they give credit more than take credit. And they're more about planning and strategic. I think that's a big difference of a leader over a manager as well. The strategy is in everything that they do.

There you go. Let's touch on one of the other books here, Women in Leadership. You've wrote the book, A Script for Aspiring Women Leaders, Five Keys to Success. What are the five keys? In the book, and I've mentored women for over 25 years, I'm also on the board of Our Empowering Women.

And the five keys is I teach first, in fact, in the book, it's called define what you will live by. In other words, what are your personal values? And you might have a lot of them, but let's trim them down to the top five, no more than seven values that you will live by and make decisions on moving forward for the rest of your life. Certainly you can reevaluate in three to five years and add a value, but what are important to you? And it could be

ethics and integrity, but work-life balance, have fun, those types of things as well. And then what is your personal mission statement? So what is your reason for existence? Because just like in an organization, your mission and your values should drive every decision, every employee that you hire, every strategy that you embrace. It's the same for you personally as well. Every job, every role that you take. Step two is define what you will live for. So now we get into goal setting, personal and professional, and we teach how those cross over. We start doing some assessments on what are your traits that you have and skills and what are the gaps and the book provides those. And then

step three is how to build a support network. Usually when you take someone through step one and step two, they're gung-ho. Let me get out there. And what I found with mentoring women is to help them build a support network because they're going to face adversity. And a lot of times, I would say 80% of the times that comes close to home. The naysayer, the sister, the husband. It's like, hey, what you're starting to do is taking time away from our normal routines. And so that support network and I teach them how to find them, how to evaluate them, how to choose some that are women only, but also choose others. But when the ones that are women only is how to define of these are women who have been through what you're going to go through and that you'll have mentors

to rely on that because you're going to need to face chapter four is putting that plan into place and flushing out your action plan for your development and overcoming adversity. And in chapter five is how do you keep the momentum going and pay it forward because my mom used to always teach me it's important that you have mentors but it's important that you mentor others as well because actually when you mentor others you will probably learn more than from those that mentored you that's very true the teacher is always the the one who learns the most and you remember stuff like you're like, oh, yeah, I did that.

I need to do this more. And you see it from different perspectives as well. Yeah. And that network is so important. What a lot of people don't realize, and I read this in Harvard Business a few years ago, was that one of the ways people rise to corporations is they have, like you say, alliances and teams.

And usually as a team, they move up through the corporate levels and up to the highest echelons. And those are the people on the board and stuff. And having that team thing is really important. Being able to work with others, build a team. I do that with my communities. I build teams of people that I surround about me. I really try and fairly highly qualify them for loyalty and stuff. And there's a mixture of men and women in them. I do find women are great for the empathetic sort of stuff and understanding things. And there's a great good balance of effect. There might be more women than men in some of my teams, but having that team is really important.

I think people, I don't know, when I see some of the conversation I see on social media, people are like, it almost seems like a lot of people are trying to go it alone. Like, I'm trying to be successful on my own. And you're like, no. Even when I had my own company, we didn't have an official board. I had a team of what I called the virtual board that there are other entrepreneurs that I could call and run stuff by. And yeah, and I made a deal with them and I said, you can call me and do the same thing. I'll make myself available to you. And having that support network, like you say, is really...

It works for men and women. There's not a CEO that I haven't worked for or a president that wasn't a part of a CEO group or a high-level group from presidents, or you've got Vistage and C12, so many different groups out there that they hold each other accountable. One of the things that Jack Canfield and I spoke about that we agree on is having an accountability partner as well. And that could be within your same organization. I teach that to organizations, or it could be outside your organization. And that's why the CEO groups, they have accountability partners with people in different organizations. And it works well. And that's where it works in the women's support networks.

And in fact, there's an anonymous saying out there about working with women's support networks that it says behind every successful woman or other successful women who have her back. But it's important to choose the right one. And I always tell them, you're having a struggle, reach out to me. You know, I can find some locally for you. Obviously, with today's environment, virtual groups are in abundance up there as well. And many of them actually endorsed my dad said, wow, if I had this when I started, how much easier would it have been? How important is accountability and leadership or especially in women's things? One of the issues I always have with a lot of my girlfriends, they would come home and it was just an endless complaint about Janie and Johnny at work sabotaging them.

And I'm sure Janie and Johnny or doing the same, Janie and Janie or whatever, we're doing the same thing. How important is that accountability thing in being able to succeed, whether it's in men or women or leadership? It's one in every business and with every team. Talk about setting expectations. I call that a first team environment. I had a CEO. It comes from the book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team. So I can quote books all day, but I don't have to reinvent the wheel.

I teach also from where I've learned from or give reference to. But the first team environment is important that the leader sets that within their organization. What does that mean? It means that we hold each other accountable peer to peer. It means it's okay to disagree, but here's what that means. Or if you want to express a difference of opinion, we do it professionally. We do it behind closed doors or during planning. And we don't talk behind each other's back. And if I come to Chris and say, Chris, let me tell you about Mike. Chris should stop me right there and agree to the and say, Mark, you need to go to talk to Mike directly.

You need to have that first team conversation. So I even teach the vocabulary. And in fact, I work with an organization, an automotive organization in Oklahoma. And they said, man, I wish we would have set that from the beginning. What do we do now? And so we taught them, then you have a reset. And here's how you have the reset. And you explain what you're rolling out and how it's changing.

But then you have to hold people accountable. But what is peer-to-peer accountability? So whether it's men or women, two-way accountability is very important. That's why I like an accountability partner. Chris, if I knew I was going to meet with you once a month, even for five to ten minutes, and go over the three things we discussed that we wanted to be held accountable to make progress on. And I always say, first, it's a personal goal, something I want to do for my personal development, and then a professional goal, something I want to do for my professional

development, and then something I want to be measured on in an achievement. And if you saw I had the same thing there three months in a row, I would expect you to truly hold me accountable to question, Mark, this is garbage. But and what it really creates is if I know I'm going to be held accountable, I'll make movement on it to it also create some mentoring. And when you choose them, I tell a story about when I worked in an organization and I ran the sales team. It was a 50 million dollar organization. And I ran the and I had a lot of conflict with the vice president of operations. And people were surprised that when we chose accountability partners, I chose him. And I chose, when I chose him, okay, we started, but as we opened up, we learned more about each

other's operations and how we were hindering each other. And we actually, near the end of the year, when we're doing nominations for awards, I put them up for a nomination and the whole room just turned and looked at me like, what are you talking about? We actually overcame and began to work together very well. So sometimes you choose that one you're struggling with because it might be something you need to learn from. And that's why I always say, if you look on my website, my first value is humility. My mom used to tell me humility is a strength, not a weakness. And it'll teach you that you always can learn from others no matter what level they're at. And, uh, and so sometimes,

even though you may quote humility, it takes action to show, to show that you're utilizing it as well. That's true. Cause I always walk around and tell everybody humility is my greatest personality trait. And they look at me funny. I don't know why. No, this is really interesting because lately I've been really getting in depth with accountability, self-actualization, and what's the third part of that? Oh, victim mindset. And I've been really finding that with victim mindset, there's a real accountability problem. And I think the two are deeply connected.

And so you either have two types of people. You have those that are accountable and walk and talk their stuff and go, yeah, I'm responsible for my own stuff. And then you have those people who just live in this victim mindset, mainly because they're never accountable. It's always everyone else's fault. Correct. Yeah. And that's why hopefully they have a mentor and a coach or a leader that calls them out on that. One of the first things I teach when I work with leaders is confrontation is a benefit.

Another saying from my mom, so forgive me. But she would say it doesn't mean to be argumentative, but it means to confront issues. And sometimes they may be uncomfortable, but confront them quickly, get on the other side of them, and you get better as you do it. And so I was known to never let things sit on my plate. But I worked with one organization,

$5 billion organization down on the West Coast, very well known, to where one of the leaders had told me, I'm struggling with one of my employees and I need to replace them, but I haven't been able to hire anybody new. And they're really starting to affect the morale of everybody else. But if I let them go now, I'd have to work harder. And it was basically what they were saying to me. And so I had to stop them and coach them. First of all, do you think the other leaders on this team are watching you or not watching you and watching with the struggle and what you're doing?

Because if you think you're not being watched, you're fooling yourself. Second, the rest of the employees on your team are watching you and this person's not only affecting them, they're infecting them, what you call a cancerous environment. And we talk about problem solving and decision making. And sometimes you have to make that hard decision.

I tell a story where, and this was way back in 1985, but I had to let go of somebody. And with that, I had to work 57 days straight from 9 in the morning until 10 at night. But in that business, I won manager of the year that year. In other words, it set the tone for anything else that we did. And someone is poisoning your environment. I had some discussions with leadership with some folks in the military, and it was interesting their aspect on it. When you have somebody who's being a poison, you treat them like a virus.

You have to cut that thing out like right away. Absolutely. Yeah, because they spread. Oh, they spread and they destroy. There was one story that I had years ago with our telemarketing department. We had a huge telemarketing department with up to 75 telemarketers in a dialer system. And one day we had nine people quit, like just in the middle of the night, middle of shift. Just nine people were like, F this place, we're out of here.

And it totally blindsided us we didn't have any indication of it and after further research we found out that we'd just gotten some bad mole in the uh in the company and he was just this place sucks whatever and we had 75 people so somebody like this a thousand employees over the years and but yeah he literally infected like nine people and they walked off and we were just like like really and those type of people stir the pot i teach when i work with leaders i when i say the word character i'm good character so yeah i like to define and hire the old saying higher character train skills so sometimes we've all made the mistake of i think this person could do good. I'm not sure about their character. And bad character will always show itself. But my test is

when I start noticing if someone, if our behavior modification, if they can't modify their behavior, then they have bad character. And that's when it's time to cut them out and release them. And so that's what we teach in leadership is how to define that, how to test it, and then how to eliminate it because it's only going to infect everything else. I love your insights on leadership. Let's touch on your crisis management book. Give me the title of that, and let's talk about crisis management for a little bit. It's funny.

I wrote this during COVID. I was in the middle of writing actually the last book, and I stopped because when COVID hit, I thought, I need to write a book on the three stages of crisis management, understanding the three stages, because hopefully it'll help people out there. And I first put it out there for free on the e-book, at least, to let people download it from Amazon or whatever, just trying to pay it forward. And there's three stages to a crisis. Look, I name them differently in the book, but it's before the crisis, during the crisis and after the crisis. And what happens is no one ever expects a crisis because they think they'll see it coming and all react when that happens. No one saw COVID coming.

And and I've had many other crises where someone passing away within the organization and how it affects other people. There's so many things of crisis that can occur. So what I teach, and I learned this because early in my career, I was a turnaround specialist that I would be sent into a struggling organization and put a plan together. And so it's the same thing that I teach with crisis management is define who your leaders are and start testing their critical thinking and teaching them critical thinking. So first, it's if you're truly leaders, you need to really have skills and critical thinking. So I teach them how I problem solve and I have an exact method of problem solving.

And in fact, I have it that goes around a baseball diamond because it's easy for me to explain. And I like to put it on the wall because people ask me, hey, tell me about this. So I like people asking questions, but I teach them, here's how I problem solve. You don't have to do it the same if you have another method, but I ask you to have a method. But it's important that you know how I problem solve because then you know what questions I'm going to ask you when we have a problem or you have a solution because I want you to start bringing solutions. So problem solving, then how to make decisions, and then I would empower them on making decisions. And with the empowerment is here are your parameters. Some individuals commit so much of the organization's money or things like that. But when you do that, you see who are true leaders and who aren't.

Sometimes I start realizing this person's really not set for leadership. This person's learning. They're hungry to develop. But that's one of the first stages is whenever I helped an organization turn around, it's because I surrounded myself with problem solvers. What a great thing to do, right? Oh, yeah. People that are problem solvers, not afraid to make decisions, and they're empowered to do it. In fact, it got to where they would just start bringing me, hey, you may not know about this, but this occurred, and here's what we did about it. I just thought I'd let you know.

Here's the results we're seeing from it. And it was great. But then I start teaching them about habits, seven habits of highly effective people. Once again, don't reinvent the wheel. But what are the habits that you're utilizing? Because everything to me is mindset, that your mindset becomes automatic and it actually builds into your instinct. Do you start with the end in mind? Are you proactive? Do you think when, when?

One of my weaknesses, Chris, was to seek first to understand, then be understood. So it's one I even had to work on. And I would even tell people, I would start using even the terminology because I would jump to conclusions. And so now if you and I work together, you might hear from me, Chris, you just sent me this and I need to seek first to understand what you sent me. I believe you're asking me for this or you're telling me this. Am I correct or what else am I missing? And it has saved so much. The seven habits save time.

They don't create time. I always say to make a good decision or a bad decision takes the same amount of time. It just depends what you have in place that's automatic because those habits become very instinctful that you have them. And so when you do that with any team, you help start preparing your people that when a crisis happens, people aren't afraid to problem solve. Their habits are instinctful.

You have that first team environment. So those are the first big things that in stage two, you keep everyone empowered, but you evaluate your people, your strategy, and the results. And I have different documents that I utilize out there, but they're all pretty similar that businesses use on evaluation processes and manager accountability plans. But as you evaluate that, then you start noting first, okay, these leaders are really doing well. This leader is struggling. Who else on the staff might be next in line for leadership? How are some of your strategic initiatives working? What needs

adjustment now? What may need adjustment as we come through this crisis? Because once you come through the crisis, then you put a new action plan in the place on everything that you learned. Too many times people come through a crisis and they say, oh, good, we're back to normal. And I said, you should be stronger. That's true. Yeah. It's very true.

Yep. It's very true. So one last thing I'll fall back to, Mark, touch on your books about your mom. This is interesting. Your mother utilized the phrase that bad news does not get better at time. How did that test you then and now? And what does it mean?

Yeah, I think that's trust of any leader is if they live by bad news doesn't get better with time. When I reported to this, and my mom used to teach me that, any time that I had bad news and I tried to hide it, she'd say, look, it's going to be found out. And it only gets worse when we find out later. It doesn't get better. It doesn't get better with time. It gets worse. And it's going to be a true test of your character. And as I grew older, she says, as you start leading people, it's going to be that true test that you teach in others. And reporting to CEOs, sometimes I've had to call them up. And in fact, one CEO appreciate, he even knew that saying, he liked

the little sayings I had, but even though they came from my mom and I said, look, you know, I live by bad news. Doesn't get better with time. And I needed to tell you about something that we just discovered, but also then what steps I'm taking. And obviously, if you have any advice for me as well, let's talk through that. And it, we truly appreciate it. I was empowered. I had that self-accountability and I had that peer-to-peer accountability, but I always say reporting to CEOs or presidents can be sometimes the funnest thing, but sometimes even the most challenging as well. People, you know, being a leader, you've got to be able to listen and learn and grow. It's a never-ending process, really, when it comes down.

Absolutely. I always say the day I stop learning is the day I die. And so at the end of the day, I always have to question, what did I learn today? If not, let me go learn before I go to sleep. Well, in heaven, you'll be like, what did I learn? Oh, I died today. No, I'm just kidding. It's a horrible job.

So, Mark, it's been wonderful and insightful to have you come on. I could talk to you for hours about this, but give us your plugs one more time before we... My website is markvillareal.com. On there, you'll find my LinkedIn, my YouTube, my email, which is mark at markvillareal.com. But even my phone number, organizations, I say, hey, free 30-minute consultation. But if you're looking for advice as well, my book can be found on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and iTunes, all those out there as well. And I do the YouTube. I have the free videos out there to help, especially when I do workshops.

They always have an additional resource of information as well. There you go. There you guys. Order up his books, guys. Go to Amazon, check it out. Thank you very much, Mark, for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Facebook, thanks for who said great chat. I don't think it's going to give us a name, but thanks for the chime in there. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. Go also to youtube.com, Fortress Chris

Voss. Do that as well. Go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those great places on the interwebs. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other and we'll see you guys next time.