The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 589: Sam Reese - Leadership Coaching, Setting Big Goals, Setting The Tone at the Top, and Why We Should All Be Part of a Mastermind Group

Episode Date: June 30, 2024

Read The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3zbDGhi Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Notes:  How to create a learning organization - Set the tone at the top. The senior leader needs to model this behavior. Create peer groups at your place of work. Team learning is important. Give people the responsibility to lead training sessions. Support your teammates. Pay for them to go to conferences, hire coaches, and learn. Commonalities among leaders who sustain excellence: They are curious. They have no confirmation bias. They have high standards. They respect all members of their team. They have a vision and goals and they share them with their team. GPS - Goals, Perspectives, Strategy. Process -- Full transparency, one meeting per week. Start with a story about a member at each meeting. "If you know what to do, what would you do?" Help high-integrity leaders make good decisions for their company, family, and community. Hiring "must-haves" They believe in the mission They don't think they're better than others They listen They collaborate well Advice: Give back what you can to help others. Be generous. Learn. Get away from bad bosses. Be balanced. The power of being part of a peer accountability group – I've learned firsthand the impact this has on leaders through my Learning Leader Circles. The differences between leading, managing, and coaching, and why you must do all three... Leader - Set direction, make sense of the outside world Manager - Know the details Coach - Help you activate what you already know

We got to get the genius from everybody. And it is, it's amazing what you can learn when you can do that. Why do we work for people that, you know, make us miserable? Get the heck out of those situations. Think of this is world's largest CEO coaching organization. Members across the globe doing crazy innovative things. What is your goal-setting process? The way people make decisions better is when they're surrounded by peers that are going through the same things they're going through.

Great questions. That's how you do it. sharing the good, the bad, everything that's in between. I told me, I sucked. You don't suck. You just need some help. I stayed on as a CEO, and that business ended up being, you know, over a couple hundred million dollars. What great coaches do. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

Text Hawk through 666-866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my new book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 66866. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Sam Reese is the CEO of Vistage.

Vistage is the world's largest CEO coach. and peer advisory organization for small and mid-sized businesses. Over his 35-year career as a business leader, Sam has led large and mid-sized organizations and has advised CEOs and key executives of companies all over the world. During this conversation, we discussed the power of being part of a peer accountability group. And this is something I've experienced firsthand from running my learning leader circles over the past five years. It was great to talk about this with Sam.

And then he describes how to turn your company into a learning organization. Fascinating stuff. And then he shares the differences between leading, managing, and coaching, and why you must do all three. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Sam Reese. Sam, it is awesome to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thank you. Nice to see you.

You too. I'm curious, you've spent a good portion of your career surrounded by leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. I'm curious, what have you found that those leaders seem to all have in common? Great question, right out of the gates. I love it. I have been really fortunate, by the way, to see so many great leaders. And I've seen some pretty wacky ones, too, that you have to have that to juxtapose it against what excellence is. There's a couple of things that I I try to emulate, and I'm certainly far from perfect on it, but what I've seen is I've seen, first of all, there's just real, real belief in truly being curious and not to the point

of pretending to be curious, but people that stay away from any confirmation bias, they're really curious about what's happening in the business, people that actually want to be somebody that you can hold in a high standard. And I mean that, you know, Simon Simic talks about leaders eat last. People really that have that kind of selfless approach. People that respect individuals, that's a big one for me. You know, anytime, any decision you have to make, you got to respect individuals. And I see people that really want to put their vision and their goals out there for everybody. Like put it out there. And that's what we're going to go chase instead of these mushy ones where you kind of don't know if you're successful or not. And I'd finally

add to that to say, win or lose, the ones that really continue. to count what the score is and let you know where you stand. They're optimistic when they have to be and they're realistic when they have to be. Those are some of the things to jump out. Interesting. When it comes to goals, you're a CEO of Vistage. You're a CEO of a company and you work with other leaders of businesses. So you probably get a great view on how people set and then strive to exceed goals. What is your goal-setting process? I do. That's one of the things that's sort of, yeah, I know you're a big believer in continuous learning. In my job, in my job right now, you can't but help it. You know, we've got 45,000 members across the globe doing crazy,

innovative things. Our process looks like this is, and the best way I would create a synopsis is I call it a GPS plan. You know, GPS shows you where you're headed. And it really stands for goals, performance objectives, and strategies. So we try and work through what it is we're trying accomplish in the year. And then we're very clear about what that means in terms of the specific numbers we're after and the strategies to employ it. So think of goals as high level. You know, we want to create more market share. We want to satisfy our members better. We want to create an employment culture that, you know, gets us best to breed. And then I, we take it down to the specific performance objectives and then strategies. And we do that by department. And then I use that

is a way to set budgets as well. That's kind of our simple model. Yeah, and I love the focus on the actual system put in place, even more so maybe than whatever the large number is to hit. And so if we could drill down on that, and maybe you can even use an example. I know you have lots of different ones based on departments and things that you guys do. But what about like the system, the day-to-day behaviors, the processes that are in place in order to exceed those big audacious goals that you set for yourself and your team. Love it. You're a grinder, too. That's how you got to run the business. Just what you said. Here's, this is, first of all, you got to be excited by the stuff that I'll talk about may sound

like grinding. You got to be excited about it if you want to win in business in my view. But ours starts with a pretty simple concept if you just think about my communication channel. First of all, everything's in front of everybody. Every coworker in the business knows exactly what our numbers are and what our goals are. And I reported every month when we get together. Good, bad, ugly, incredible. So you got to have full transparency and full visibility. Then you pull it down to your executive leadership team meeting. This is a once-a-week meeting every week. And what we'll talk about that is we'll review what we are from a goals perspective, and then we'll review everybody's priorities. This happens every week, every Monday or

Tuesday. And we'll usually talk about some opportunities we have to improve as leaders, insights we got from studies or insights from information. We start every one of those meetings off, by the way, with a story about one of our members. I want to be grounded by the reason we're in business is to satisfy our members. So somebody's responsible, meeting starts. Say, it's you, Ryan, and you say,

great, let me tell you about an incredible member story that happened out in Dayton, Ohio. And we celebrate that. We dig into the numbers. We talk about priorities. We talk about opportunities to improve as leaders. That cascades down to every single. single employee in the business, beginning with my direct reports, has one-to-one.

So we have one-to-one every week, and that one-to-one is a pretty simple concept. What's going well? What's not going well? And where can I help you? Really simple. But that cadence throughout the entire business, there's all sorts of things we do when projects and initiatives pop up. But that's really the crux of how we stay on track.

There's not one person in the business doesn't know where we stand at any time on our goals and our objectives and the things that we're striving for. Appreciate you drilling down so quick. Let's now zoom out for a second. What is Vistage? Great question. You got me in the detail so fast. I love that.

We're going backwards, but I'm going wherever I'm most curious, just so you know. So anyways, let's go. Think of Vistage, world's largest CEO coaching organization. But it's anchored by this whole model that we believe in, the peer advisory model. So for us, we just have a belief, though the way people make decisions better is when they're surrounded by peers that are going through the same things they're going through. So our whole model is led by what we call a chair, chairman, chairwoman. They lead these groups, think of groups of 12 or so CEOs. It could be anywhere from 8 to 15

CEOs. They come together on a monthly meeting, and it's all about the biggest issues that they're facing. Very confidential. And then we have some proprietary ways that we go and solve those issues, but we only act as the facilitators. So we don't believe CEO coaching is me saying, you know, Ryan, you should do this. We literally figure out how to package that issue, give it to the other CEOs, and we have conversations and a process we go through that brings clarity for everyone. We think that's how people make the best decisions. And then we do all sorts of other things to help in that process as we become, as we're coaching them. So from outside speakers, to events, anything we can do to help bring more perspectives. So we have this belief that

the more we give to you, you're not going to get overwhelmed. You synthesize it and you figure out where you're going to make the decisions. You said we have this proprietary model. What are some of the things that are part of that model that help people solve problems? We call this proprietary model at the core of it is something we just call issue processing. And the best way to think about it is that, you know, as you go through a conversation, we allow you to frame your issue. So you would you would frame it with the help of the chairman or chairwoman. And then we allow questions to be asked before we get into any kind of solution mode. There's some structure behind it. So we don't get a solution mode. Simply frame it. Tell us what the challenges are. We ask questions. We reframe that.

And we go through a process before anybody gets to provide it any recommendations or solutions. So you never get off course with 50 things people are telling you to do. It's very, very disciplined. I've found, Sam, that the power of bringing a group of growth-focused people together is truly one of the best ways to improve, to learn, to grow, and to build some kinship amongst the group to where now maybe when you're traveling in that person's city, instead of staying in a hotel, you're staying in their spare bedroom, you're having dinner with their family, you're building genuine real friendships because you're vulnerable, you're showing up telling the truth, you're willing to be there for one. one another. And I'd have to believe that that's, that's got to be some of the power behind how Vistage is grown. What do you think about this, this importance of peers getting together, being open, sharing the good, the bad, everything that's in between, and then developing transformational lifelong relationships from it? I really believe, and I say this all the time, is what you just described, Ryan, I say that's how leaders learn. It's a common comment you'll

hear. That's how leaders learn. What you just described is, I love. I learned by being vulnerable. I learned by having humility. I learned by telling you what's going on with not just my business life and my personal life. Because that's what, you know, that's what I think happens that sometimes surprises people when 12, 15 CEOs get together is very rarely is it just a business issue. Something's connected to what's going on in your life as well. And you got to pull those things together. For me, I have the benefit that I was a Vistage member for over a decade before. I became the CEO when I was running another company, when I was running Miller-Heimann. So I got to experience that. It took me a little while. I'd say, and that's one of the things, is you don't fit in Vistage.

If you think your job is to come tell everybody how smart you are. If you don't want to be vulnerable, if you want to just talk about what a great CEO you are, you'll last very short time. You've got to really be coming in, wanting to give up yourself

and wanting to help people. Like, getting excited. When somebody says they have an issue, like getting excited that you want to help them. Is there a vetting process for people to become a member? Oh, yeah. What is it? Well, there's a whole process, but we have, across the world, we have 1,300 of these chairman or chairwomen.

And they'll go through, I won't bore you with ours, but just imagine we have a couple of different interviews that we have with the member. Final one is the selection interview. So we have some, we exchange information, we learn about each other, then we have the final selection interview. sometimes we'll even have that interview with the other members of the group. If the chair is nervous that maybe they're not sure it would fit with the group, then they might bring them to the group and have that person spend some time with them. But we just want to make sure you say you have experience with group learning. You can't bring in something that feels really foreign to that group.

And now it feels like the group is off-kilter. So you've got to bring people in that is really an interesting concept, not people that just blend in because you want new perspectives, You want new child, but you got to have people that are going to help the group get better. Yeah. What about for the chairs? Because they're leading these groups. So that's an extremely important position.

You said you have 1,300 of them. So that's a lot of people leading groups. What does it take to become a chair? These are, I mean, these people are the best of the best. You know, average age of one of our chairs is 67 years old. They have been there. The average age is 67? Oh, yeah.

They've been there. We have several. we have a gentleman, Rolf in Tampa, Florida is 94 and still coaches 30-something plus CEOs. These are the best of the best. So my whole business, that's what we're looking for all the time. Great chairs. People have been former CEOs or business owners. And we have a really long vetting process there.

Basically, it's about a year. The best way I would describe it, I had a great speaker who has an incredible podcast. You may have heard, Jocka Willick. He's been on. Yeah, what a stud. He's awesome. He just described it as the way he describes being a Navy SEAL. It's pretty similar to what it takes to be a Vista's chair.

We get the best of the best. Really? Yeah, and about a year later, you know, we end up figuring out whether or not you're right for the job. What's the process like that year-long thing? Because being in Navy SEALs, you know, there's a lot of washout. You know, a lot of people go in, but not a lot come out. Yeah, I would say for us is for every 100 that we find, 40 are going to make it long term. And so we just want to make sure, you know, just think about our brand.

We just got to make sure that you get trained, you get time in front of real members, you see if this is work that you really want to do. So we kind of make a slow process where I'll call it nine months to a year. You figure out if this right for you. But we have this incredible dynamic that once you say yes, so I told you what the average age is, This ends up being somebody's last career, and they'll be here over 10 years. Once you start, everybody will be over here 10 years. And this is the key to our business.

These chairs are world-class, best of the best, the best listeners you'll ever meet in your life. So who's training them? Who's helping them become world-class of what they do? Right here in San Diego and across the world here. That's where we spend most of our time is training and supporting these chairs, who all of them are entrepreneurs themselves, you know, trying to build their own business

and using the Vistage resources. Incredible. Some of the most, the thing you'd be so impressed by is you'll be meeting one of them. We just had them all here two weeks ago. We had 900 people in San Diego. Wow.

And they'll just be listening, providing insights, won't tell you anything about their background. Then, you know, you might ask, like, hey, what'd you do before I? And it'll be some incredible role they had. But they aren't, They feel like that's in their past.

Now they're here letting other people get other people get the limelight. So you said you were an actual member when you're running Miller-Heiman prior to this more than a decade, right? So I'm curious about your path and your career, Sam, because you've had some big-time roles and you're currently in one. My natural curiosity would say, dude, how did you get these jobs? So maybe we walk through a little bit about you where you started because you said you're a Xerox. sales guy. I'm a LexisNex sales guy. So we have that kinship of having these really tough rejection heavy jobs at the beginning of our careers and how that's really helped us, even though we didn't realize it at the time. I'd love to learn more about the beginnings and

the history of your career, which have led you to these big time jobs. Yeah, it's funny. I like how you said the rejection heavy, man, you're bringing me back. But yeah, I'd love to tell you about that. I was really, just as you were a college athlete, I was really fortunate to have my college paid for as an athlete. I was an All-American distance runner for the University of Colorado, which a great team. And then I had some injuries. I wasn't able to continue running after college. But my first job, that's what got me the job at Xerox, is I'm interviewing with all sorts of people and don't think I have any chance to get it. I realize I can't run anymore.

And a guy comes in and says, one of the interviews says, wait, are you that runner guy? from CU. I'm like, yeah. He goes, let me, let me give a little hint on this next stage of the interview. And his, his hint was one I'll never forget. He just said, you know, gave me a few questions to ask. And then he said, and then when they tell you that you shouldn't, they don't want to give you the job because the job's below you, because that was their strategy then. Just tell them, no way, I want this job. So it was, so that's what exactly like that. They're saying, hey, we'd like you, Sam, but you know, you're too qualified. This is a dirty job. And I'm like, I want this job. So it ended up. But it was a dirty job.

25 cold calls a day. I'd come back, Ryan, every day. And I'd wheel a copy around on a gurney, you know, going door to door. Door to door copier sales. That's what you're doing. Door to door copier. That's awesome. That's awesome.

It's amazing. It was a blast. But I have to come back to the office every day and say, hey, you get your 25 cold call, Sam. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here they are. And I have to show my manager, the business cards. He'd look through. them. I don't know. It was a grind. But I learned a ton probably like you did early on. And then about

two years, just less than two years, people started calling and they were paying double. Are you kidding? Me? I'm listening. So I got a call from just telecommunications company, one of the biggest in the world, British Telecom, prior to the internet, just said, hey, we're selling global networks. I didn't know what that was. But I interviewed, I got the job. And I remember my training. Xerox training was so great, you know, six months before I could talk to a customer. Instead, I get a box of tapes from British Telecom that says, hey, for the next three months, learn what we do. And it's like tapes of people presenting. And so, I mean, I would watch them all day, start, stop. And I learned the business that way. But where really broke out is I went to

meet. I had three existing customers before I had to start closing new business. And One of them was a big cable company. And the guy that ran the department there was not that nice at the start. He just said, you don't know anything. Man, you don't crap. And I said, I don't. But I'm really a hard worker. Why don't you teach me?

And I'll be a good rep. He put me under his wing and he showed me why he used us. Taught me what the data center was. I mean, showed me everything. By the time I went back another six months later to British Telecom with all the other people they had hired, I knew more than any of them. They were trying to figure out what the business was, and I'm like, here's my customers buy from us.

His name was Ron Riggin, R-I-G-G-E-N. I'll just be thankful to him for the rest of my life. And it's just the business, I just started finding my niche, selling big accounts, close, some really big deals, got promoted. It was a great, a great experience until it wasn't. What it sent me on the next one is we were getting ready

to merge with MCI, I'm coming down the elevator. You'll love this. You think you're great. Like I'm kicking butt. I'm the best district manager you have. You think you're great. Coming down the elevator of one of the senior executives and I,

who went with me to Exxon, big deal. And I said, hey, what's going to happen with this merger? What's my role going to be? He looked at me and he said, do you think I'm thinking about what happens to Sam Reese? I said, well, I don't know. I'm your top district manager. My team is the best team. He goes, why don't spend any time thinking about that?

Got it. I think I'll be getting another job. That's when I moved up. gone from there after that. I remember when I told him, I was leaving. He's like, he was this about that elevator ride? You go, yeah, an elevator ride when you told me he didn't care about me. Wow. So that's what moved me the next step. Wow. And eventually you become the CEO of Miller-Himon. I'm always curious how CEOs get roles, whether they blew away the board in some meeting, they made the most of a moment. They just chipped away day after day after day. How do you get a big

job like that? Lucky break. So lucky break. So lucky break. is basically I'm Millerheimen's largest customer. I'm now running a 1,500 person sales force and office products business. I'm their largest customer and I hear that they've got, they're looking for a new CEO. Like, I've no experience, but I'll give it a try. So I end up, I pick up the phone and say, I'd love to have a conversation. And I didn't even know what private equity was. Private equity, you know, owned the business, a great firm by the name of Griffin. and they gave me a shot. I remember thinking, are you guys sure?

I was literally like saying, are you sure? You know, I could do this because I always wanted to be a CEO. Yeah, how big was a company at the time? Wasn't that big. It was only at the time, it was, believe it or not, it had this big brand. So this is what was scary.

It was only a $15 million company at the time. And I was spending a million myself. So I thought it was, when I first started interview, I figured it was $150 million business. Oh, yeah. You're spending a million. Wow. You're one-fifteenth of the whole business.

Okay. Exactly. And then, you know, just ended up having a lot of lucky breaks early on in that. But how I found Vistage, you love this connection, is I quit two years into Miller-Heiman. I told the board, you know, I basically here was my discussion. I have to have a discussion with the board. I said, I suck. You know, I was a great sales leader.

I suck. And I know I suck. They're like, well, hold on a second. Why? I'd just gone through, you know, 2001 and two were tough. years. And I'd started in 2000. I wasn't, I wasn't doing as well as I thought. I had other people calling to go back to run sales organizations. I told him I sucked. And the guy head of the board said, you don't suck. You just need some help. We need to find you coach. I led me to Vistage,

but I tell the story to this day, they really believe the guy who runs the private equity firm. He's just an incredible person named David Andrews. He really believes to this day that I was negotiating because not only do I stay there, he gives me a big bonus to stay. But I was literally quitting that day. I called my wife and she goes, how'd they take it? I said, I'm staying and I just got a big bonus. What? But thank God. And then they help me get to help me improve. I just thought I needed to know everything, Ryan. I thought I was as a screw up the first few years. Yeah. So after that, then what happened though? You learned, you got better. I assumed the business. improved what happened. Incredible. The business, you know, for the next 15 years, learned, brought

great people along, got rid of my ego of thinking I had to, you know, be an all-American runner every day I walked into the office because I realized pretty soon nobody cared and started listened to people a lot smarter than me. And then we just had an incredible run. We were able to, if you can believe it, sell the business three times, transacted three times. I stayed on as a CEO, made created a lot of wealth for people that worked with me and incredible and ended up that business ended up being you know uh over a couple hundred million dollars wow when you yeah so you went 15 million dollar business to that sold a few times and then why leave and go to vistage well we sold the business one more time and um and and uh and i i i agreed to uh the firm

that we dealt with great great company ended up working with him later again but we just at a different way. They had a belief of rolling up the sales training industry. I didn't know what that meant. So I just said, I'm not going to do that. I'll stay on the board for a year, which I did, but I'm not going to do that. And then I actually stand on the board and then I retired. For a year, I was doing what you were doing. I was coaching basketball, AAU team. It was a blast. And I was, hanging with a few boards and doing some consulting as well. But I thought I'd finished because I just love so much what I did there. And I literally said, there's only two jobs when I retired. I'd work, I'd lead Vistage or I'd lead USA Track and Field.

And I got an interview with both of them. If you can imagine, in that year, USA Track and field has their head CEO role. And I was a disaster in the interview, by the way. It just went horribly. You know, horribly. It was like, it's different than a business. So, you know, you go, you meet, and they've got 40 people that are all board members, and they're all asking you questions and telling you what you're going to have to do if you work for them. And I'm like, well, you know, I'll be the CEO, so I'll be telling you guys what I'll be doing. They're like, that's not how it works. And, you know, when you're talking about organizations like ours. So the sponsor that brought me in, I knew I was doing badly when I see him putting his hand

over his eyes when I'm, but then Vistage asked me to learn more about the business. to sit on the board, see if I wanted to be interested in it. And while I was doing that, they said, would you want to be the CEO? And I don't know. I didn't think it was going to happen. But when they said that, I really couldn't even believe that that opportunity was coming my way because it was sort of my dream job. Wow.

That's amazing. Well, you say luck, but why do you think they said, do you want to be the CEO? They don't do that. It's not a charity. They're not doing that just for fun or to be nice. They're doing that for a reason. Why do you think they did that? Good question. I think it's because I understood the model, not just as a member, but the business

I had built at Millerheim and I built in really similar way with these high-level consultants, you know, chairs and knowing how to work with them and how to make sure that this became something that was their passion, not just no coin operated, helping those people really see this as their calling. You've written a lot as well and published, and I've read some of it, most of it online, that I could find. And I've thought a lot about this. And maybe this is into the weeds, but I think it's important because words matter and defining jobs matters to me. And so if you break down someone as a leader, a manager, and a coach, which I remember when I got newly

promoted, my dad told me, like, you got to do all of those things. You know, you're not just one of them or you can't just be this. Because I was like, I'll be the big inspirational speech giver guy. Somebody else can worry about the management and the business stuff. And he's like, You are so wrong. You are so wrong. You're to do them all. So can you describe the difference between those three as well as why they're all important for somebody who is in a senior leadership role? Yeah, great question. When you run in a company, you got to be all three of them. There's no question. I think like the way I would talk about is there there are some old definitions. I love where you started with the, hey, I'll be the inspirer. I find that around. Those are the leaders that I would just sort of call.

the ones that are, you know, try and hard, but they're pretend, because you still got to know the details. I'm not going to imagine we're out in battle. And I'm saying, take the hill, charge. You know, I don't have any details behind what the, what the enemy looks like. So, but what I look at it like from, from a management perspective, to me, that all says is, I got to know, I got to know the details. I definitely, and as a leader, I always have to know the details.

Otherwise, I'm making really uninformed decisions. As a leader, I got to set direction. And as a leader, I got to make sure that I am making sense of the meaningful outside. I have to make sense. So it's not just the manager. I'm running the inside. As a leader, I got to be the one. You know, I can't be scratched in my head if we get disrupted.

If there's some problem that we hadn't seen. That's my job. My job is to make sure I'm continuing to make sense of the meaningful outside. And then when it comes to coaching, when you coach, I got to make sure, and I've really worked hard to get better at this, is I got to make sure my job isn't. to coach people to do what I would do. I used to do that. I mean, and then I,

then I'd be frustrated. I'd be like to, you know, as a junior CEO, I'd be frustrated. Nobody's doing anything. And then I'd be starting to realize, because they're waiting for me to tell them what to do because that's my style. Right.

Hey, I'll coach you. Hey, Ryan, yeah, try this, try that. All right, get back to me. Who wants to work for that, right? And so I started, I, at one point, had people surrounding me that were waiting for orders. Now when I coach, and when I see what great coaches,

do is that they're not trying to figure out what, they're not even thinking about what they would do. They're trying to figure out what's going on with you and how to help you activate what you already know is the right move. One of our very best chairman, his name is Dwight Frent. He tells me that when he's coaching someone, he fights the battle to think about his own experiences, his own insights, his own, he just fights it. Like, I can't think about that. I have to be completely focused on the person I'm coaching to help them get to their own conclusions. How do you unlock that in a person? What are the ways that you understand the genius of somebody or where they really excel,

but they're just, they're stuck for whatever reason and you help unlock that. So you get them unstuck to really in a way like unleash what they can do best, but they're just not doing it for whatever reason. Like how do you do that? Great questions. That's how you do it. Great questions.

You've got those great questions. You know, here was one that was asked of me. You'll love this. Early on in my career, by a Vistage chair, a great chair by the name of Don Myers. And I was stuck, but this is by early days in Miller-Heimann. He said, like, if you knew what to do, what would you do? Like, and this was all about hiring, it was me trying to make a decision on whether I brought in a high-level CFO. But if you knew what to do, what would you do?

I'm like, I don't know what to know. But if you did know what to do, what would you do? And I'm like, well, I would, I know, I'd probably talk to the board about needing more money. And then I'd probably go find this out. Oh, that's interesting. But that's what I, the way we unlock it is we ask questions. And then we got to find as leaders, the leader side of it, has to find where this person gets their inspiration and their confidence. Because sometimes, and you know this as an athlete,

somebody's got it. They just don't, they don't have the courage to step forward because they've had something in their past that makes them afraid. You've got to find that and make it safe, make it safe for them to make those decisions. We've mentioned multiple times about the importance of being a continuous learner. I would call it being a learning leader. My favorite leaders that I've ever either worked for or been a student of or played on their teams. So coaches, teachers, bosses. When I was thinking, nine years ago,

with the name of the show, I like, well, they're leaders, and they're always learning. They're always taking notes. They're reading books. They're meeting with mentors. They're bringing back these interesting stories

that help our team or help me do better. And so when you're thinking of creating a learning organization or an organization or a group based on continuous learning, how do you do that? Because I've actually had this question posed to me. Hey, I just got promoted to CEO. I was a C.O.

Or head of sales. And I'm now a CEO. And one of the things that I always said when I would be the top person is we need to be learning leaders. We need to be continuous learners. And I don't think we necessarily were prior to me now being in that role. So how do you create and set up an organization to be a learning organization? Yeah. Great question.

I don't know how you can compare the way now if you're not consistent. consistently learning. A couple of things that jump to mind for me when I think about it is that you got to set the tone at the top, first of all. You got to set the tone at the top. So it can't be pushing everyone else. And then someone says, hey, are you up to speed on the latest, the coming wave, the new AI book? And you go, what's that about? So you got to set the tone. And what I find is like people definitely start to come on board there. But you got to create some structure. And so, for instance, what we do in my world here, it's really similar. is that we make sure that we've got something happened for our coworkers.

So not just for the executives, something's happened for our coworkers every quarter. Like, you know, an outside speaker. We get together a big opportunity for big learning. And then I have the executives all the way down to our, what we call our emerging leaders. They're all in peer groups themselves. So, I mean, you know, that's happen.

Every day, there's somebody in a peer group here. So it's a little easier in my structure right now. But I like to get people to be connected with other people that are in their role, if you would, so they can start spending time having the same experience I'm having with other CEOs. But to keep it rolling, you've got to give people responsibility. And when I say you don't have to, this is what my belief is, is making sure that you don't, even though you set the tone, you're not the one that is the agenda giver. Right.

And driving it all, it's, hey, you know, a couple things going on. Hey, Ryan, I know you're pretty interested in what's been happening in some of the things that Marcus Buckingham's been studying about love and work. Once you take a crack at that, bring something back to the executive leadership team. Let us know if there's some key insights that we can game from it. That's pretty good. Why don't we pull, and what we always do is why don't we pull that down through the rest of the organization? Why don't we even create, let's have a discussion guide, every manager can have. But we're constantly trying to push those things down.

and then supporting people on their own individual leader journeys if they want to take a class. But it has to be in the system. Now, it's easy. It's almost unfair advantage at Vistage because these chairs, chairs that we work with, chairman and chairwomen, that's how they're wired. That's why they're chair. They're reading books. I mean, to keep up with these people is flipping unbelievably hard.

But they're nonstop. And then we're nonstop. I mean, if you can imagine, I told you their average age, they're getting trained every other month too in a day-long session on another topic. And they want more of it. They can train, train the best, the best. Leading a sales team, I remember that was one of my favorite parts where I would give them plenty of notice, but I'd say, okay, the training on this state, that's your show. And I want you to, we're going to have a one-on-one about it, but I want you to pick the thing that you're most passionate about, the thing that you deeply want to learn even more,

something you do well, you're willing to do the work to learn more. And then the ultimate, I think, of thought activity is when you teach somebody else. And so having a member of your group lead the session, not the manager or the leader leading it, but having a member of the group lead it is the ultimate next step for, I think, a learning organization. And it's fun. Like, it's really cool to see the genius of each person in the group say, okay, you're in charge today.

And sometimes, like, me as the leader, I'm like, oh, that was a really good way they ran that. I'm going to start doing that. And you learn as the leader because they did something that you've never thought of or never done before. And I think that's like the next level of learning organizations to see when your people are starting to run the meetings. And that's a really cool feeling. Oh, what a great. That may have been, by the way, the most fun job I ever had was a frontline sales manager. Yeah.

That was just such a blast helping people, you know, create lives for their families and a lot of people that didn't have the confidence to do it and helping them get there. but I think you make a great point when you have to teach you really got to know the topic here and it's inspired to create like to just watch other people's genius one of the things I'm a big believer in is that you got to stay away from hierarchy

if you can and also find these introverted people and create space for them too it can't just be the extroverts can't just be the sales guys that are raising their hand and teaching we got to get the genius from everybody and it is it's amazing what you

you can learn when you can do that. Can we compare and contrast one-on-one coaching versus being a part of a peer group? And I'm not saying one is better than the other, and it probably depends on the person. But I am a big believer in team learning and group learning and peer accountability and showing up regularly for group meetings. And if you need to have one-on-ones beyond that, I think that's great. But can you share your thoughts on the differences between one-on-one coaching, being a part of a peer group and why maybe one could be better than the other. And if so, for what type of leader? Yep. I certainly have a bias on it. And I would start by saying that, you know, the average relationship when you look at a typical executive coach, the average

relationship is like six months with their client. Where in our world, in our world, it's seven years, right? And really, seven years, yeah. And the difference, in my opinion, is I think what happens is one-on-one. I think there's some good things you can get out of a one-on-one interaction, but I feel like it's more short-term, and here's why, and you might laugh at it, is even if my coach is Warren Buffett, let's just say it's Warren Buffett. Can you believe Warren Buffett is coaching me?

After the fourth session, I'm going, didn't he say that last time? Did he forget my kids' names? And all that stuff just, it ends up, it just naturally, the relationship between the two of it ends up being a, make me feel great about myself and, you know, I can do it. And it gets too prescriptive when it's with the group. Hold on real quick with the one-on-one.

I want to get to the group, too. So Tony Robbins is kind of notorious for having these clients, like the most powerful, richest people. They all pay him at least a million dollars a year on retainer. Yeah, he's amazing. He's had these clients for years. A lot of them like decades in some cases. Now, he's Tony.

He's Tony Robbins. He may be a one of one, but I think there are others trying to do that too, and some are doing it not maybe at that level. What do you think of that kind of where these senior leaders say, I just need my guy. Like I need my guy to go to, I don't know the curriculum or I don't know the structure of those relationships, other than I see him taking them sitting court-side at basketball games. But what do you think about the stories like that? I'm sure they work for some people. I believe what's different about me when I say I'm biased is I believe the best leaders aren't

the celebrities that you're seeing, I believe the best leaders are small and mid-sized businesses. The woman running a manufacturing organization in Denver, Colorado, that's $20 million, because she's got to employ people, she's got to be part of her community, she's got to run her family. I'm not talking about the billionaires. I'm talking about the best leaders are literally come from roots where they're grinding, and now they're part of their community. Those are the ones that we celebrate here. And so I don't see them as the ideal client.

for these celebrity coaches. What I think they get the value is when you're sitting with a group of peers, you come there with humility, you bring some vulnerability, people remember things you said, people help them, help each other, you help them. And then what we believe is we believe the one-on-one, because our members still have a monthly one-to-one with their coach. We believe the one-to-one is all about helping you get your thoughts together

so we can take it to the group. We have no belief. And I don't believe it anywhere in the world that anybody is omniscient enough. as an individual to give me the advice of what I should do. I don't believe people have that power. Now, the power of a group, that's different. So that's what we believe. Everything's in the power of that group, process, an issue, and helping me figure out what my next course of action is. What do you mean is different? What's different about the power of a group? Just say you have 12 or 11 other people's potential ideas to knock around and the power of the group is just much more

powerful than just one static person? Yeah, because you don't get connected to anybody's individual bias, their own background. It's everybody's got a voice there trying to help you. And then what you have with the group that's really different is you have the backstop that if this goes sideways, don't worry, we can bail you out. So you get this, I always say, you leave it a different level of confidence because, oh, yeah, so I'm going to give it a shot. If it doesn't, oh, Bob raises his hand and and say, yeah, I had it go sideways on me. I can help you if it goes sideways. Yeah. And remember what happens with the bonding instead of a coach, just a one-on-one relationship,

is I'm helping you too, Ryan. So you're in the group. You've been through difficult situations. I'm bringing credibility to you. And now we know how to work with each other more because I'm thinking, I've got to listen to Ryan's point really tight here because last time I helped him,

he really understood and really executed the way that I thought made sense. It's a whole different relationship. And then the group, the accountability, is a whole different level. Accountability is, to 15 of you here to tell you what happened. Not bail out with my smoothness on one conversation and tell you why I didn't do it. What's the difference between Vistage and something like YPO or EO,

that's YPO Young President's Organization? I've spoken a number of YPO events seem great, great groups. EO, entrepreneurs organization. There are other ones like that. Like, what's there, or are you guys all kind of doing similar stuff or what's the difference? Great organizations, different. YPO is much more about business connections. right and they're great at it and many of our members are YPO members too oh okay it would feel strange in a Vistage meeting even though many of our members end up doing business together it would feel strange in a Vistage meeting if your first meeting you're passing out business cards YPO that's why you're there is you work with people you trust you get to know them you do business

Vistage it's a natural outflow it's not why people join Vistage they do it to become a better leader and then EEO is a great organization just for much smaller EOs for like startup up companies. And they got a tremendous guy that runs. A guy named Vern Harnish. It's a great visionary. Oh, yeah. I've ever run on. Great guy. So you're also running a business. We've been talking about kind of like the things your business does, but you're also running it. You're making big decisions. And one of the biggest decisions is hiring. And all leaders, this is the area where if we do it really well, you're going to crush it. And if you mess it up, which a lot of us do, I certainly have. It's painful. It's painful. It's painful.

So now you've had some experience when you're hiring a leader for your team, what are some of the things you look for in that person beyond the competence of that role? What does a person have to have for you to say, yes, I want to hire them? Great question. I've been so fortunate to Vistage. My leadership team is so solid here and it's been for a while. But I think a couple things. I mean, number one for us is you got to believe in our purpose. You can't go, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You got to believe that our purpose, we call it, we say we're trying to help high integrity leaders, make great decisions that benefit their companies, their families, and their communities. And we define high integrity, not as a green word, but that means somebody who wants to be the same person at home and at the business and the community. You don't have to put on different masks. You got to believe that, right? If that's like interesting, but how much money you're going to pay me, you're not going to fit here. And I would call that our whole wheel, mission, vision, purpose, values, and operations.

principles. You've got to believe that. If you have any hierarchical views, see yourself as better, see yourself as more entitled, you're probably going to last less than two minutes in an interview with me. And I get to those pretty quick when I find why people are successful and why they went to certain colleges, took certain positions. If it's about status and prestige, you won't make it. You're going to listen. You're going to collaborate. Do you believe you know the answers you believe by talking to people, you get the answers. And then I always look for biases. You know, if you have biases, whether it's prejudices, whether the biggest bias we look for is confirmation bias. You know, a lot of leaders never see that. But they're like, you know,

they get an idea. Then they go, hey, I guess my idea is great. Yeah, because you're only asking people that told you they're supposed to tell you your idea is good. We look for a lot of those things. And I, here's the funny you would laugh. Here was sort of the test at Millerheim. And I do it here, but people are, is, don't laugh as much as they did at Miller Hyman. New person comes on board. I walk in and I'd say,

hey, Ryan, I heard you're a new employee. I want you to know I'm very, very, very important. And see, you laughed, right? If you laugh, like, this guy's gonna make it. If somebody's like, yes, sir, you'd be like, come on. Do you think I'm really saying it happens? Well, seriously, does somebody actually be like, oh, God, he's, does that happen?

Oh, yes. All the time. Oh, yeah. I'm very, very important. Yes, sir. Like, come on. I did have a boss like that, by the way. I did.

It didn't last for long, but I did. I'm sure you probably had one too. We all have stories where you have the boss who genuinely thought he was, in this case, it was a he for me. He was just a lot better than me based on, he was higher up in the organization than me. It must be better. It was, it was, yeah, wasn't going to go long, you know. Oh, well, because you feel it.

And I think even, yeah, I'd say like, I think I just have a different role. And of course, I have to make decisions as the leader. But if I walk around the halls, hierarchical, thinking, hey, you're in accounting and you're doing payroll, ask me a question. I'll tell you what to do. Well, what do you, you know, you tell me what you're doing. If there's any way I could support you. But I just find that leaders, and when I say it, what's tough about it, even when you ask

me that question is I often think of myself as an early leader when I get really negative, because that's that's who I was. I was the answer person. Must show you how smart I am. Must show you how competitive I am. Aren't I incredible? Yes. Man, that's so boring.

We're insecure though, remember? I mean, I said when I was a new manager, I was the C-A-O for about a year or more. That's the chief answer officer. I just had all the answers, right? You asked the question, I had an answer. And I just didn't know what I was talking about. And so I feel so bad, some of those people who are on my first teams,

I talked to them out and I just say I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry it wasn't intentional to be bad it just was you know but that's the funny part about leading is it just sometimes you just got to you got to grind through those early years I still hear stories I'm really blessed that I've a lot of people at thisage that have worked with me in my previous days at Millerheim and even some before that you know been worked with me for 25 30 years and they'll tell stories sometimes and everybody's laughing

and I sit there and I go that was me. I mean, that's hard to believe. That was me calling everybody up on December 31st when people are trying to be with their family saying, we got to get this deal in. And, oh, yeah, I love it. I actually have one more question, Sam, before we run. That is, let's say you're meeting with somebody who was a bit earlier in their career. Maybe they just graduated college. And they're not 100% sure what they want to do other than the fact that they know they want to leave a positive dent in the world. They want to do good. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? Really, I really benefited from this. I think not only having sons, but also being a coach,

I've got a chance to be mentors to many, many people. It's such a blessing here. A couple of things I say is, I say there's one magic in the world that you'll be surprised by, and you will. And it's amazing how many people get back to me and say, it's true. And I say, you got to give back. You can't just take. So like every time you meet with someone, what is it you can do to help them? And it's amazing if you do that. And not just that, but give back of your time, give back of your charity. So be generous is one of the things I always say, and it's amazing the people you meet.

Learn. You know, don't just think early on in your career it's all about how much money you're going to make. Like find opportunities to learn. I'm always passionate about this. Don't work for people. you don't like. People that treat you bad, get out of there tomorrow. Not one more day. I've had so many great stories, one with my son that I laugh about. Miserable job. He's in finance. And I just said, tell the CEO he was his numbers guy, you don't want to work for him anymore.

Well, we got the board meeting coming up. And I'm like, oh, no, no, today, today. So he did it. He called me up and he said, that felt great. Why do we work for people that, you know, make us miserable? get the heck out of those situations. Yes. And you know what I mean? And then I really try and push because of some of my own. I look back where I could get better. It's like, like, be careful that you're just one person.

I had the worst advice early on with a mentor that said, when at home, think only of family. And when it work, think only of business. So it sounds good. It allowed me to be really productive. And when I was home, I was really present. But those lives, I'm the same person. And it got dysfunctional because then I, would be too much of the office, right? So I just like be a balanced person and you're the same

person between the office, between your community and between your home. You're the same person. Don't be somebody different. Authentic. Be you. Right. Be you everywhere. Look, they don't like you. Yeah. I feel like if you're going to, you know, it's like, sometimes you play golf or you do other things and people cheat or they do things and you're like, hmm, that's concerning. That is concerning because you're, I think you're a leader and your character kind of travels with you wherever you go. And if you're willing to do stuff there, I did, I, you know, worked for a guy who wasn't the best with, you know, with women and his wife. And I was like, this is not a good sign. This is a bad, you know, this is all the same guy.

This is not a good sign of a place where I want to be because it's just, I lead with trust. I feel like you do too. Like, you don't have to earn it. You've got it. The problem is when somebody breaks it, even if it's not with me, they break it, they lie, they cheat, they do something stupid. Like that is kind of gone then. Like you got it, you don't have to earn it. But if you break it by doing something stupid like that, that's really tough. And it's probably not a relationship that I'm going to have for a long time.

So it's like let's lead with trust. Let's do it. But then it's just really important to be around those authentic people who you know that their character is high, regardless of where they are. You don't just like flip a switch and it's on or off. I agree with you. I agree. Maybe one of the things I would add that I've learned is that I've also, you know, we're not perfect. So nobody's perfect. So I have learned to do a better job of forgiving people. Like, because, and I have some incredible stories where people have made a big mistake. And they've been just incredible contributors since then. You know, so I used to have a belief you could never change. And that was, that was a fake story that I told myself. It was sort of like from my athlete days of, you know, somebody's soft. They're always going to be soft. it's just not true. Like people can change and they do change.

And as a leader, you know, when you were able to help someone get through a tough time, even if they did something really stupid, I found a lot of joy. I found a lot of joy in that. That's a really good point. I feel like that, like what happens through, in fact, having more life repetitions, so just living longer, more years, as well as having conversations like this, Sam, is you actually become more reasonable. You live more in the gray and less in the black and white.

because you realize we all are really messy. Life in general is like that stuff just happens. And there are times when we do, we just use poor judgment and we make a mistake. And instead of being, as Ted Lassau might say, judgmental, let's be more curious.

And I found they're doing this podcast now for nine years has actually helped with that because I learn more from people like you. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's a really good point that I was being a little bit too judgmental there. And in the moment, you can change. that viewpoint. So I'm, yeah, I really appreciate you, man. I think this is really, I could,

I, from the second you got on Zoom and to feel your energy and how positive you are and how much you wanted to do this and the research you did, that means a lot to me. So I just want to acknowledge that. I'm super appreciative of you. I enjoyed this conversation. Where would you send, my viewers and listeners to learn more about you online? Just go to our website, www.vistage.com. and you'll get not only learn about us, but you'll get all sorts of resources if you'd like and that we do everything to help small and mid-sized businesses who are the heroes of the global economy.

So go on site and get some free stuff. No doubt. Awesome. Well, thank you, Sam. As I mentioned before, I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progressed, man. I'd love it. Thanks for having me.

It was really, really appreciate it. I love having a chance to think through some of these things I haven't thought about in a while. Awesome. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. All right, buddy. It is the end of the podcast club.

Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Sam Reese. A few takeaways from my notes, life slash career advice from Sam. Give back. Be generous. Always look for ways to help others and add value to their life. Learn constantly.

Your learning really begins once you graduate college. and you get out into the real working world. Then, as he said to his own son, leave bad bosses. Now, don't waste time. Do whatever you got to do to leave bad bosses. There are good ones out there. Hopefully you can find one quick. And then be the same leader everywhere.

And that doesn't mean we flip on a switch or turn it off when we go to work or when we go home. We're the same authentic person at all places. And also, I liked Sam Corrid. directing me towards the end. Let's have some grace for people. Sometimes we're going to make mistakes or make a bad decision or do something stupid. Let's have grace. Remember that the world's pretty messy and it's not black and white. It's really gray. And then how to create a learning organization. At first, you've got to set the tone at the top. The senior leader needs to model this behavior. We as leaders need to model this behavior. And then it's a good idea to create

peer groups at your place of work. This creates a team learning. dynamic. It's really important. Then give people the responsibility to lead training sessions. I love doing this at work where you choose a member of the group who's not necessarily the boss, something that they're really good at, they excel at and say, hey, you're running the next training session and empower them. It's really cool to see them take over and be the leader and teacher of those meetings and support your teammates. Pay for them to go to conferences, to hire coaches, and to become learning leaders so that it never goes away. I think we have to put our money where our mouth is when it comes to supporting our people.

And I like the very beginning commonalities among leaders who sustain excellence. Very curious people. They have no confirmation bias. They have high standards. They respect all members of their team. And they have vision and goals. And they're willing to share them with the team. I'm going to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two.

hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Sam Reese. I think it will help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the Learning Leader Show and you write a review and rate the show, hopefully five stars. By doing that, you are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talking soon. Can't wait.