KF #13. Develops Talent Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis

Jon, welcome.

Jon Rennie

It’s good to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis

I am excited to have this conversation. I’d love for you to kick us off with a riveting tale from your days in a nuclear submarine during the Cold War. Bring us into the scene.

Jon Rennie

Well, can you imagine 155 guys getting on board a submarine, then locking the hatches for 100 days, where you deploy out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for 100 days, and you’re with the people that you deploy with, you have to get all these very difficult things done? We had 24 nuclear missiles, a nuclear reactor, and the average age was about 20 years old, and I did that seven different times in my life. So, it’s kind of an interesting experience. It’s certainly a great place to learn how to deal with people, how to get along with people.

Pete Mockaitis

Absolutely. And, jeez, you know, Jon, do people ever just go nuts down there? Like, how does that work? How do we prevent for that? Because that seems like there’s a reasonable probability that at least a couple of those folks would just mentally lose it. I don’t know if I could handle it. Like, how do you train for that?

Jon Rennie

I don’t know if they train for it, but they do screen, they do a lot of psychological evaluations, but here’s how they really test you. On your first deployment, they actually have you climb inside of a torpedo tube all the way with a grease pencil to write your name on the end, on the outer door of the torpedo tube, and then they shut the inner door while you’re in there. And that’s their test to see if you’re claustrophobic.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so you’ve got a couple books here in terms of sharing what business professionals can learn from sailors and their experience in submarines.

Could you give us a cool example of a story, of a principle that you know you’re right, you teach about it, and how it really came to life and transformed someone in their profession, or, in particular, into a leader worth following?

Jon Rennie

So, one of the big things about being on a submarine is that there’s a shared level of responsibility, so every sailor is critical to the operation of a submarine at sea, and no person is more important than another. So, we have a shared responsibility to operate the submarine correctly, complete the mission and get home safely.

Now, the other side of it is we have a shared vulnerability, so if anything goes wrong, if your most junior sailor turns the wrong valve, everyone perishes. So, there’s not like one person dies, we all die. So, there’s a shared level of responsibility and vulnerability that is kind of unique to just about any other organization.

And you can imagine, when I came out of the military and went into the corporate environment, I didn’t get that same feeling.

There were certain people that had certain privileges and other people that had other privileges. And when things went bad, the people with the lower privileges are the ones that get laid off. So, the manufacturing workers or the call center people, they’re the ones that always got the brunt of whenever there were layoffs.

But when I started running manufacturing businesses after I got out of the Navy, I took that philosophy of “We’re all in it together and we need to have a shared level of responsibility and accountability to the business results.” In fact, my second belief, “All in the Same Boat,” because, literally, I learned leadership in a boat, all of us together working towards a common objective.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And could you share with us a tale of a time where you shared these principles with folks and someone really latched on and incorporated it, made it their own, and put it into practice, and saw some cool stuff happen?

Jon Rennie

Yeah, my first plant that I took over, I was young, 32 years old, I was the youngest plant manager in that plant’s history. And I came there and I noticed that there was an us-and-them attitude in the manufacturing plant. So, the hourly people kind of stuck to themselves, they had their own bathroom, they had their own areas where they congregated, and the salaried people had their own areas, too. And I kept thinking to myself, “How do we become one team?” We have sort of two separate areas, we live two separate lives, we didn’t have a lot of shared experiences.

And I wanted to get back to those days, like, for example, on a submarine, you stood long watches, six hours at a time, with your coworkers, and you really got to know them, they understood what your challenges, you understood their challenges. We just didn’t have that in the corporate world in this manufacturing plant.

So, I implemented this process called Fridays on the floor, where the first Friday of every month, I went out on the shop floor for four hours, and I work, and every month, I go to a different department and I work. And so, I’d actually operate the equipment, I would get to know the people, they would get to know me, and I learned that there was a tremendous amount of information on the shop floor that most of the salaried, most of the manager, they weren’t even aware of.

So, it was like there were two different worlds we live in. We weren’t one boat; we were two separate boats. And when I started doing that, I kept learning more and more about the way things operated, and the concerns that people have, tooling that was bad, procedures that were bad, all these things that I learned when I was doing it. And when I would come back and talked to the other managers, they didn’t understand my passion, they didn’t understand what I was talking about.

So, over time, we actually created Fridays on the floor for all of our management team, so we all would go out every Friday, we’d rotate different areas. And then after those four hours, we’d come back into one of the meeting rooms, and we would talk about what we learned. And what was interesting is that we basically started bridging that gap between the hourly and salaried people on that site, and we started fixing all these problems that have been going on for years and years that kind of have been ignored.

So, just by doing that, by getting out on the shop floor, and actually spending time with people, we actually built that bond, we built a connection, and we sort of built a common view of the businesses. And so, we ended up on that business, well, I was there for almost four years, and we were able to just improved our processes, reduced our scrap. We ended up having record-level of sales, record-levels of profitability, and a very high-performing operation, and we became sort of the top factory in our division.

But it was all about connecting the people. Instead of having two worlds, we brought them together into one world. And this came straight from the ideas from the military.

Pete Mockaitis

That is good. Back in episode 149, we had a guest S. Chris Edmonds, who said, “People in the organization see stuff that’s dumb all the time.” We see stuff that’s dumb, and then, whether or not that gets shared or implemented upon is, I guess, there’s all kinds of variables that might speak to it in terms of what’s the culture, what’s the psychologically safety in the organization.

And what’s fun about your approach there is we don’t actually have to rely on someone speaking up to get the information. And, hopefully, as you do that over some reps, we build some real trust and communication lines that go both ways so that people will just say, “Hey, our mallet is worn down.” “Oh, got you. Okay. Well, boom, here’s a new one.” So, you see these sorts of ongoing improvements in the communication, the culture, and the ability to fix the stuff they see that’s dumb all the more quickly and readily instead of waiting for years to get a fresh mallet.

Jon Rennie

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing, too, is I think we built shared experiences, and that’s one thing that we had on the submarine, is we had all these shared experiences where I’d noticed, when I got to the corporate world, they had different experiences about what work life was like. A lot of people on the shop floor didn’t even know what the people in the office did, they’re like, “I don’t know. There’s just a bunch of people over there. I don’t know what they do.”

And so, part of it was them getting to know what we did every day. And I think that was one of the eye-opening things about this Fridays on the floor, is that the people were actually thankful, they were like, “I never knew what you guys did all day long. I never knew what marketing did. I didn’t know what accounting did. I just knew there’s a bunch of people in the office, they got to sit. I had to stand all day.” Really interesting, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so I want to hear about you got a few books. The title I love the most was I Have the Watch: Becoming a Leader Worth Following. A fantastic subtitle. Generally speaking, how does one become a leader worth following?

Jon Rennie

Well, it comes with the title, which is “I Have the Watch.” I was a Naval officer, and part of that, when you took over the watch, you’re responsible for the mission and the people. So, if I was the officer of the deck, for example, I was responsible for six hours for the mission of that submarine and everybody inside of it.

So, in the case of, maybe, the midwatch, the captain was asleep in his rack down in his estate room, and I was responsible for that shift, everything that happened on that shift for those six hours. And so, it’s the idea of mission and people, and that’s really critical, because a lot of times people get promoted into management jobs, and they sort of go back to what they were used to doing, maybe as an individual contributor. They do emails, they go to meetings, and they forget that it’s about the mission and the people.

And so, the idea of “I Have the Watch” is that you have responsibility, you take ownership of the mission, you take ownership of the people, and that’s a really critical part of leadership. And a big part of this book I talk about is that leadership is a people business. It’s about people. So, if you are doing and not leading, then you’re really not doing your job as a leader. So, your job is to lead, your primary function is to lead.

And it’s different than when you’re an individual contributor, like maybe an engineer or an accountant. When you become the manager, you have leadership responsibilities, and sometimes we forget about that. Oftentimes, I saw it in corporate that people forgot their people responsibilities.

Pete Mockaitis

Could you share with us an example of a common people-responsibility that people forget?

Jon Rennie

So, the big thing I saw is busyness. So, we stay busy as managers, and in a lot of cases, it’s fear-based, where managers really don’t want to deal with people because people are messy. I always say that, too, people are messy so they don’t want to deal with it, so, “It’s easier to be in my comfort zone and answer emails, or be on the phone all day, or be in conference rooms all day than going out to the uncomfortable place where my people work, and they may have complaints, or they may have concerns.”

And maybe you’re overloaded, maybe you got a lot of things on your plate, and you don’t want to spend that time getting out and talking to the people so you isolate yourself. And I see a lot of managers, in my 22 years in corporate, I saw the managers isolating themselves, and mostly it was fear-based. They just didn’t want to take the time and listen to the challenges that their employees are having.

And so, I always challenge managers to get out, to go where your people are. It’s an essential part of what we do, is to get out of our offices and spend time to where our people are. So, I have a manufacturing company that I run, and in the afternoons, I always push myself away from my desk, and I go out. I pretty much can work any job on the shop floor, so I’ll just jump on the line and help out the employees. And I’m not there to help, I don’t really do a lot helping, but I’m there to listen, I’m there to talk, and I’m there to communicate because that’s really what’s important. We have to be present as leaders.

Pete Mockaitis

Now, Jon, I’m wondering, so manufacturing is really cool because, well, one, it’s just fun to watch how stuff gets built and it’s unfolding along the process. It’s a beautiful thing to witness.

If folks are in other industries that are a little bit less hands-on or tactile, how might we implement that with regard to that joining together on the frontline and observing? I’m just sort of imagining, I’m thinking about my audio people, like, “So, how do I hop in on that?” It’s like, “So, you’re many miles away from me, and you’re doing audio stuff and software, which I appreciate, I love it.” How might I apply some of these Jon principles in these contexts?

Jon Rennie

So, we’ve seen a lot with remote and hybrid work these days, and the concept, by the way, is not something that I developed. It’s called Gemba, it’s part of the Lean Manufacturing principles that come from Toyota. And the principle of Gemba is to go where the value is added. And, usually, in the case of any type of business where most of your people are, that’s where the value is added. So, you want to go to where your people are.

So, now the question is, “What do you do with hybrid and remote work?” Well, you have a normal check-in process. So, you have a check-in process where, in this case, I would say probably more like once a week where you check in on individuals, and you have a one-on-one, and you say, “How are things going? How are things going with this project?” And you have that chance to be able to touch base. It’s a little different than pushing yourself away from your desk and walking out to where your people are.

So, it’s the idea of Gemba where the value is added, go where the value is added, and it’s going to be different for every type of business.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Thank you. I guess I’m also thinking about sort of screen-sharing type stuff, like, “Hey, here’s what’s up. Here’s a software I use, etc.” and they could just behold, “Oh, what’s going on there? Oh, wow, that’s really cool.” It’s like, “Wow.” But I think you could still learn some things, like, “Wow, it seems like you’re spending a lot of time dealing with this.” Like, “Yeah, man, we get the audio, it’s a mess.” It’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry. I had no idea. Maybe I should be sending guests microphones,” and we do.

Okay. Cool. You’ve got a number of interesting turns of phrase, which I like to dig into a little bit. What do you mean when you suggest that we let people fail?

Jon Rennie

Failure is a powerful teaching tool. We don’t like to fail, right? So, as humans, we don’t want to fail. We want to succeed in everything we do. One of the things the Navy taught us was that was the best way to learn was to fail. And the way they did it was they put you in a position as junior officer of the watch, so you would have like an officer of the deck, and you have a junior officer of the deck.

And so, when you were junior officer of the deck, you were under the supervision of a more senior watch stander. And so, typically, then you take that junior position, and they would throw all sorts of different casualties at you – flooding, fire, you name it, an incoming torpedo. And they wanted to see how you fought the ship as a junior watch stander. And, inevitably, they would throw everything at you, and you would fail because it was impossible. They threw too many things at you.

And then they would stop the drill, we’d get the ship safe, and they would start talking to you, “What do you think you did right? What do you think you did wrong?” And it was the teaching session, the coaching session, and through that, we became better watch standers because we failed, we learned, and we got better at each of these individual tasks.

Now, what do we do in corporate a lot of times? And one of the things I noticed, kind of coming into corporate, is that we take our really difficult jobs and we give them to our senior people because we don’t want any mistakes, we don’t want failure. We take our junior people and we give them grunt work, and we make them do grunt work until you’ve been around long enough to take on a more important task.

And I think we miss out on opportunities to give younger people challenging assignments and a mentor to help them through that process, so they get exposure to the difficult things in business instead of just doing grunt work. The problem when you give a junior employee grunt work for two years is that they get frustrated.

They might come into your company very excited, very happy to be there, with a lot of passion, and that goes away as they continue to just do stuff that’s beneath maybe their skillsets, or beneath the things that they trained for in college, or maybe they got a certification in something that they never got a chance to use.

So, I really do believe that we need to allow our employees to fail in a controlled manner if we want them to learn and develop and become better.

Pete Mockaitis

Can you give us some examples in practice of folks failing in controlled manner, specifically in terms of what’s a person’s normal responsibilities versus new stretch responsibilities? And how is that controlled manner executed?

Jon Rennie
So, in my case, I’m always looking for leadership potential in employees, like someone that can maybe step up to the next level. And so, one of the things I like to do is to give them a stretch assignment. So, this might be anything from, “Develop a marketing literature for this new product that we’re coming out,” or, “Give me a market study for this particular region for this product,” or, “Lead this effort to setup pricing for this new product.”

So, I’ll give them a stretch assignment that might be outside, which is almost always outside their comfort zone, and then I want to get a chance to meet with them and assess how they do with that, so how did they with the project that was outside their comfort zone. And you learn a lot from those sessions, so you get a lot of feedback. A lot of times, the employee is excited, they get an opportunity to do something different. They’re going to mess up and it’s a great chance for coaching.

You find some employees aren’t ready to step up, and they even say that, like, “Wow, that was way beyond what I want to do. I’m maybe not interested in that.” And others are just energized by it, “Can I do it again? This was fun. This was what I want to do in my career.” So, I think finding great employees and giving them stretch assignments is a great way to evaluate their skills and give them a chance to do something kind of exciting and different.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, then with the marketing study, for example, I suppose if they give you a terrible study, nothing disastrous has happened there, it’s just like, “Okay, we’re not going to use this information to make any decisions,” like nobody has died, injured, or millions of dollars have been destroyed. Like, they just said, “Okay, you’ve produced a document that is of no value,” so that is a failure, but it’s controlled in the sense that no major damage has been done. Is that how you think about it?

Jon Rennie

Yeah, I think so. And, again, the more you get a chance to see somebody in action, the more you’re going to give them more responsibility that may have higher risks associated with it. But, yeah, so you do where failure is not going to be fatal.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, so failure is not going to be fatal. And then you’re sharing with them great feedback associated with, “Hey, thanks for taking a crack at this marketing study. Here are some ways you can make that useful for us, etc.”

Jon Rennie

And also, too, is the feedback of learning from them, like, “How did it go? Where did you struggle? Where did you have a hard time finding information? How do you think you did on this?” Just hearing their experience helps you understand kind of their mindset going into it and coming out of it, and how you can coach them to even be better.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have pro tips for how you do deliver that coaching?

Jon Rennie

I think it’s kind of being honest. I think being honest is really important. Obviously, you’ve got to be sensitive to people’s feelings. I’m maybe a little more sensitive to that. I don’t want to be too harsh but I do think we need to give them the honest feedback. And I would tell you, I’ve had people where I’d given them stretch assignments, and they have failed, and when I say to them, “This isn’t really working out,” and they know it’s not working out, they’re like, “Yeah, I recognize that, and it’s probably not something I want to do more of.” So, I think both parties recognize when this is not a good fit.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, Jon, just for thought, I’d love to zoom in. Let’s say I handed you a marketing study, which clearly appeared to be assembled in 45 minutes with Google and ChatGPT and had factual inaccuracies but a couple of cool-looking charts, and so it’s no good. How do you share that with me?

Jon Rennie

Yeah, I would ask the process, “So, how did you develop this? Where did it come from?”

Pete Mockaitis

“Oh, I did some research across the internet.”

Jon Rennie

“Yeah. Well, what kind of research?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, I was looking to see different competitors and their potential revenue associated with these offerings.”

Jon Rennie

“Did you talk to anyone else as you went through the research? Did you talk to anyone in the marketing department or anybody in our sales department?”

Pete Mockaitis

“Oh, no, I didn’t talk to anybody.”

Jon Rennie

“Okay. Why not?”

Pete Mockaitis

“Oh, it didn’t occur to me.”

Jon Rennie

“Hmm,” so I think there’s the discussion, there’s the sort of finding out what and where that they could do…where they see the aha moments, like, “Maybe I should’ve talked to more people.”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so, I’m wondering, how do you also convey kind of the standard or what good is?

Jon Rennie

Does it answer all the questions we’re looking for? Typically, with an assignment like this, we have things that we want to get out of it, and if they fall short, then we’re going to have those discussions.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, there you go in terms of, “Okay, the study to go into a little bit more detail, these are the particular questions we were looking to get answers for, and this deliverable does not presently answer those questions, or has false answers to those questions.”

Jon Rennie
Right. Exactly, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. You also have the turn of a phrase “earn your oxygen.” What does that mean and how do we apply it?

Jon Rennie

So, we have an expression on the submarine that was, how do I say it, it’s a little controversial because there was a high level of positive peer pressure on a submarine. I mentioned earlier, every sailor has to have, “We have to trust you with our lives.” And so, when you first come on a submarine, we call you a nob. A nob is a non-useful body. Until you could earn your oxygen, until you could be responsible for some area of the submarine, then you were a useful body.

So, you were taking in the oxygen and the food from people that were useful, and so there was a high level of positive peer pressure to get qualified, to become a qualified operator. And so, what qualification meant on a submarine was for the sailors, junior sailors, to work with more senior sailors to prove their competencies in various operations, procedures, watch standing.

And so, as they prove their proficiency, they would actually have, what’s called, a qualification card, a qual card, and they would get signatures that, “Okay, a senior watch stander says this person understands how to use the torpedo launch system. This person knows how to repair a steam fitting.” So, you would get qualified over time and become qualified.

So, earn your oxygen means that everywhere you go, not even in the Navy, but in the civilian world, “What are you doing to earn your oxygen? What are you doing to add value to the business that you work for, the organization that you work for?” So, I often talk to high school students, and that’s one of the messages I say, is, “Don’t be a nob.”

And so, the concept there is that there are so many people in our world that are consumers and not creators. They’re consumers and they’re not builders. And so, I really encourage high school students to “Not be a consumer, not spend your time online just entertaining yourself. What are you doing to build? What are you doing to grow? What are you doing to add value?” So, the idea of earning your oxygen is becoming valuable to your organization, whoever you work for or whatever you’re doing in the world.

Pete Mockaitis

And I think that’s important to consider. And I think about in business-y terms, there’s the value you consume associated with there are costs, associated with keeping you employed with a salary and benefits, equipment, office space, etc. and then there’s value you, hopefully, are creating through your work. And so, I guess if you talk about oxygen versus dollars, it’s interesting that in some fields it’s very clear, like sales, like, “Okay, man, this is what you sold, this is what I’m paying you,” or a fundraising, it’s very clear.

And then it gets a little fuzzier the farther away it gets from that in terms of, it’s like, “Oh, well, I am doing accounting or finance work.” And so, it’s like, “Okay, well, that needs to be done, we have to stay compliant, that’s valuable.” And so, it’s tricky to precisely assess that, and yet I think, it’s my belief, as we see layoffs and such, that the more clear and massive the value you’re contributing is, the safer your job and the more likely you’re going to be on an upward trajectory there.

Jon Rennie

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say a lot of people will kind of come into a job, and they say, “Well, this is your job responsibilities,” and people will do the bare minimum, or they would just do that job responsibility. And I also say look for the extras that you can add value to in the organization. So, I started out in corporate world as an associate design engineer in a cubicle. And five years later, I was running a manufacturing plant.

Well, it didn’t happen that I just magically got there. It was through earning my oxygen and adding value in everything that I did. And, in my case, going from a cubicle to the corner office was all about volunteering, learning new skills, being there when the company needed me, and doing anything I could to support the organizational objectives. And that eventually got me the opportunity to lead a plant.

But I think if you haven’t put the extra work in, you say, “Well, I want to be promoted, I want to move up the corporate ladder but I’m not willing to put the work in,” you’re not going to get there. It does take extra effort if you want to get noticed, if you want to achieve goals that you have in your career. I didn’t necessarily have a goal to run a manufacturing plant at 32 but it happened because I was adding a lot of value in everything I did.

Pete Mockaitis

And, Jon, I’d love to hear the counterpoint to that in terms of if employees are doing that and have seen, “Hmm, the meritocratic forces do not seem to be operational here. My added value appears to amount to squat and it feels like I’m just sort of burning the midnight oil for no extra compensation, and it feels like a raw deal,” how do you speak to that perspective? And how do we assess whether extra efforts are likely to result in extra goodies?

Jon Rennie

Well, it doesn’t always work out that way, does it? So, I have a good friend, John Brubacher, who always said, “Go where you’re celebrated, not where you’re tolerated.” And I think a lot of times that we are in positions, or in organizations, that don’t recognize that kind of extra effort, you have bosses that don’t care necessarily, or they’re looking out for themselves and not looking out for their team, so there are times when you can do a lot of extra work and not get noticed, and maybe that’s not the right organization that you should be in.

But I think it’s good to have a discussion. You’re always going to have those opportunities to have a one-on-one with your boss, and a lot of companies it’s once a year. During annual performance review, you get a chance to sit down with your boss. And at that point, you can have that discussion, “Hey, I’ve been trying to do this. I’ve got this dream, or this desire, or this goal, to get to this level. I’ve been doing a lot of extra work. What else could I be doing to try to earn or move into the position I’m looking to do?” Have that frank conversation. But I would also say is be willing to move to find those opportunities.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Thank you. Well, Jon, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Jon Rennie

I think the one thing I would say to this, when it comes to like a similar analogy from the Navy to the businesses is that without a crew, the ship is just a hunk of steel sitting in the harbor. It takes a crew to bring a ship to life. It takes people to bring our businesses to life, our plans to life, the things we’re trying to do. So, I think people are very critical to our business, and without them, we’re not going to go anywhere. So, I think we sometimes overlook the importance of people in our organizations.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, now, Jon, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jon Rennie

Well, I like Teddy Roosevelt just as many of the things he said, but “The Man in the Arena” quote is probably been best for me. So, the idea of being in the arena is where I want to be, not a critic in the stands. And I always say be a builder, not a critic. It’s hard to be a builder. It’s easy to be a critic.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And could we hear a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Jon Rennie

I’ve been doing a lot of work right now in my Ph.D. program on perseverance and grit, and, especially, in small teams, “How do you develop grit in a team?” So, Angela Duckworth did a lot of work on grit. I love her work. So, yeah, perseverance has been something I’ve been into lately.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Jon Rennie

First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham. It’s the one book that sort of changed my outlook for how leaders can lead.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite habit?

Jon Rennie

I get up at 4:00 a.m. every morning. So, I write until 5:00, and I work out from 5:00 to 6:00. So, I’ve been doing that for about 10 years, and so I feel like I get a lot done in the early morning.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; you hear them quote it back to you often?

Jon Rennie

The big one is leadership is a people business. I see that quite a lot.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jon Rennie

My website JonSRennie.com, and I’m on every social media @jonsrennie. I’m pretty active on Twitter, so. X, I guess, now.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jon Rennie

Hey, you want to be awesome at your job, don’t be a nob, don’t be a non-useful body. Be useful in everything you do.

Pete Mockaitis

All right, Jon, thank you and good luck.

Jon Rennie

Thank you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Sara, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Sara Canaday
Thank you for having me back. I’m glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear your wisdom about coaching but, first, I need to hear the story. You became a Cupcake Wars judge which was a longtime dream of yours. What’s the story here?

Sara Canaday
Oh, yes. Well, okay, so before anybody gets too excited, I didn’t actually appear on the Food Network show by the same name but what I did do is, for my birthday, I had my husband recreate the show right here in my home. So, we invited, I want to say it was, eight couples, and part of the invitation meant you had to show up with a homemade, not store-bought, from scratch cupcake with a Texas theme, or something that’s inspired from the year of my birth, the year I was born. And so, these cupcakes were going to be judged on taste, theme, and presentation.

Pete Mockaitis
And how many people did you get to sign up for this punishment, Sara? “Show up with some work and I’ll judge you.”

Sara Canaday
Every single couple came with cupcakes. One couple’s daughter ended up making them, they admitted it to me. Some couples had a blast doing this on their own together and were extremely competitive, I couldn’t believe it but, nonetheless, I got to sit and taste eight different cupcakes and judge them. And so, hey, I may not have been on the actual show but recreating it was just as good if not better.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, fun, I’m glad that worked and good birthday memories there.

Sara Canaday
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Way to do it up as opposed to just like, “Oh, I guess we’re going to go to dinner…”

Sara Canaday
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“…for my birthday.”

Sara Canaday
We did something different.

Pete Mockaitis
Nifty. Well, let’s hear about your latest book Coaching Essentials for Managers. Any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made while putting this together?

Sara Canaday
Well, nothing extraordinary other than I’ve had people tell me that it is a really good handbook more than just a book. It serves as a guide. There’s a lot of how-to’s in there. There are powerful phrases you can use to kind of get you off center under varying circumstances of coaching. There’s a coaching prep sheet that you can use before a coaching session so you can feel more confident with the process.

And then there’s a myriad of actual scenarios that you can read about so that if something similar happens, you have a way to navigate the conversation. So, it is a book but most people tell me it’s like a nice handbook, like a guide.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, what’s the main idea or key takeaway or thesis here?

Sara Canaday
Well, I think the main idea is that anyone can be a good coach. I think we used to think that a good coach is somebody who’s really charismatic, and they know how to be uber patient, and they just have this knack for more of a counselor-type approach, and that’s not true. Again, with the right tools, understanding the core skills that it takes and how to sharpen them, anybody can pursue coaching today.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And we talked about the book title there says, Coaching Essentials for Managers: The Tools You Need to Ignite Greatness in Each Employee. You say anyone can coach. Any thoughts for non-managers in terms of, are there particular skills or tips that you think would be resonant for those folks who don’t yet have direct reports reporting to them?

Sara Canaday
Absolutely. In fact, I am working on a course right now for LinkedIn, and the title is Peer Coaching, and it derives a lot of the same applications and concepts and skills from leadership coaching. So, the very types of attributes and formulas that work for leader-to-employee coach also work for peer-to-peer coaching, and that’s becoming a really growing trend in corporate today.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And so, with peer-to-peer coaching, is it sort of like we switch off in terms of, “Okay, you coach me then I coach you”? Or, how does that go down?

Sara Canaday
That’s exactly right. And it can be a pair, a partner, of coaches but oftentimes it’s a group of about four or five people together that peer-coach each other. And so, there’s a streamlined approach, certain questions are asked, “Bring your latest challenge to the group,” and everybody gets their turn, and then peer coaches are listening not to fix – this is the hard part, it’s just like a leader with an employee – resists moving to fix-it mode right away.

But they’re listening to ask the right questions so that that person that has a challenge can put more structure around their thinking so that they can reflect on what exactly they want to have happen, and then they move in to potential solutions based on what they’ve already tried, based on what the potential roadblocks are or facets that are part of the issue.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’ve had really cool experiences with peer coaching. I did the first course in the Co-Active Coaching, the CPCC folks, and I was amazed at, okay, none of us were coaches yet, certified. We’ve done the first course out of, like, six, I don’t remember, and yet folks are having these wild breakthrough conversations with tears and whatnot, it’s like, “Huh.”

To your point about anyone can coach, it’s true. It doesn’t take a superhuman with crazy almost psychic-like empathy skills but rather it’s just, hey, you’re paying attention, you’re equipped with a few tools, and you have just a modicum of patience and good listening and discipline and humility to not try to make the mistakes that really shut down a conversation that’s going somewhere, and away you can go.

Sara Canaday
Yeah, it is amazing. And it’s hard because, for leaders especially, and any high-achievement professional, we’re wired to fix. And coaching, you have to sort of sit on your hands because you want right away to say, “Oh, either that happened to me,” which isn’t very helpful. It can be but to say, “Oh, that happened to me and this is what I did,” it doesn’t let the person you’re coaching reflect on their particular situation because what you did to solve something may not even be applicable or work for them.

And you have to just be patient with asking the right type of questions, open-ended questions not yes-or-no questions because you won’t get anywhere with those. So, absolutely, anybody can do it but it does take discipline because of the way we’re naturally wired.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And can you share with us what’s at stake, or what’s possible, or what’s at risk if we are coaching well versus not well or not at all, or being coached well, or not well, or not well at all?

Sara Canaday
Yeah. Well, this is interesting because when I was writing my book, I did a lot of research around different statistics because I wanted to compel readers about the advantage of coaching.

Pete Mockaitis
As many businesses would start, yes.

Sara Canaday
Yes. And so, there are numerous studies that show that well-coached individuals are higher performers, are more productive, and they’re more engaged. Now, that seems to be a benefit for the leader and the company, but from the employee’s standpoint, there were other studies, Gallup being one of them, that found that when employees were well-coached and they felt like a leader had their progress and best interests in mind, that they were much more loyal and they didn’t feel that they had to look elsewhere to grow and for opportunities.

And I think that latter part is probably what’s going to get people’s attention because, right now, we all know that retaining talent is a challenge. And what studies have found, multiple studies, is that what people want more than a larger paycheck is the idea and the feeling that they’re progressing. And let me just say, that progression doesn’t necessarily mean an advanced position.

And I say that because I think that’s why leaders tend to hesitate to do what I call developmental coaching, which is more about, “How do I help you get more of what you want and do more of the work that you want to do?” Because I feel like, “Well, I know there’s no position for me to advance them to, so why am I going to start this conversation if I can’t promote them?” But nothing is further from the truth here, in that those conversations aren’t strictly about advancing and getting a new role.

They’re about sharpening new skills. They’re about maybe getting a broader network, being introduced to more people. Maybe they’re about taking on a project where they can shine a light on something other than what they typically do. So, there are a lot of things leaders can do to help people feel like they’re progressing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so let’s hear about that. We talked about developmental coaching. You say we’ve got two types. We got performance coaching and developmental coaching. Can you expand upon what each means and the difference between them?

Sara Canaday
Of course. So, performance coaching, for many people, they think in terms of short term. It’s any conversation that points towards helping the employee improve their performance, meet performance expectations. Whereas, developmental coaching is more future-oriented, and that serves to help and support an employee who wants to grow and develop.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so then, do you recommend both or one under certain circumstances versus one is more appropriate for another context?

Sara Canaday
I absolutely recommend both. I think a natural cadence with a leader and an employee, or peer to peer, is there are going to be situations that call for both. If you’re having regular one-on-one meetings with your employees, sometimes you’re going to talk about missing a deadline, and what may have caused that. And so, that’s performance coaching.

But other times you’re going to circle back to, “Hey, I noticed that in your individual development plan, you want to get advanced knowledge in Excel, you want to learn how to do pivot tables. Where are we on that? How can I help you?” Two different things but both are scenarios that are perfectly within the realm of happening to the same individual in the same month.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then you’ve got a five-step model we’re going to chat through. But, first, could you share with us are there any key guiding lights, fundamental, essential principles that we should keep in mind if we think, “Yeah, coaching, that’s something I should do more of or I’d like more of”? Are there some must-remembers before we dig into the one, two, three, four, five of the five steps?

Sara Canaday
Well, I think it’s a little bit of a mindset shift because those of us who are in corporate for years may have seen coaches or coaching reserved for individuals who weren’t performing at their best. So, instead of it being a positive, it was almost a negative. So, that’s number one. Now, coaching is, in some cases, reserved for those who are being groomed for the next level. So, it can be absolutely a positive thing.

Also, performance coaching, to me, does not include corrective action, so I just want to make that clear. If you were to read and go through any of my literature on coaching, some people may think, “Okay, what’s the deal here? This sounds a little too soft.” Well, that’s because I’m assuming that this is not corrective action. You’ve not coached the person multiple times before on an issue. You’re not to the point where you need to think about whether this is even the right fit for the person or whether they need to move on. So, coaching is not corrective action.

Coaching is a conversation. At the heart of it, that’s what it is. And it is a way for you to partner with the employee and discover mutually what the issue might be, and then co-create potential solutions to rectify, to close gaps, to move forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got it. Understood. And so then, you’ve got your five-step model for coaching. Can you walk us through each of the five steps?

Sara Canaday
Yeah. The first one is what I call just assess the situation, and that can happen before you even have the conversation. So, whatever data you have, let’s say it’s performance coaching, let’s say you have monthly reports of somebody in a call center, and you’re able to see from the reports how many calls they’ve taken, how many calls they kept in queue, what was their hold and wait times, whatever it is you’re measuring, and/or you’re collecting feedback from others who are on a project team with that individual, or somebody has come to you with feedback.

That’s part of the assessment but it doesn’t end there. You’re continuing to assess it at the first conversation because one of the first things that I always recommend is that you get the employee’s perspective of the situation. Even if you feel like you understand it, you know it, it’s pretty clear, I would say give that person the opportunity to share their perspective.

So, the question goes, “How do you think that meeting went yesterday? Tell me about the project. What’s new? Do you have any concerns? Where are we on this initiative? Is there anything that’s making you uncomfortable?” So, you’re starting to get their perspective so you have the entire picture instead of jumping to any conclusions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. So, that’s one, we assess the situation and then, two, we generate ideas.

Sara Canaday
Generate ideas, right, and this is the co-create part. I think this is another reason maybe leaders hesitate is because they’re like, “I’ve got a multitude of things happening, I’m not sure I’m going to have the exact answer for what’s plaguing this individual or what’s keeping them from meeting these goals at my fingertips, so I’m a little intimidated.” Well, you don’t have to have the answers.

You simply ask the person, “What could you have done differently?” You might have ideas but that’s how the conversation continues. Or, you say, “What might be missing? What’s keeping you from showing up as your best self or for meeting these metrics? What do you think is keeping you?” And even if they don’t have any idea, you come to the table, “Do you feel knowledgeable about the products that you’re selling? Do you feel that you can manipulate all the platforms within a given phone call? Is that what’s plaguing you here?”

So, you come up with solutions together of how to move forward, to get the performance on track, or to help the person feel like they’re progressing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And to your previous point associated with not leaping in and saying, “Oh, this happened to me and this is what I did,” you also talked about co-creating. How do we do that dance associated with we’re not jumping in and doing the idea generation, we’re prompting them? How does that work?

Sara Canaday
Yeah, and I’m glad you asked me that because I will say that true coaching that uses what you have heard as the Socratic method, which is asking question after question, “So, what did you do? So, how did that make you feel?”

Now, I’m going to go on record here saying that if I were to be graded as a purist on coaching, I probably would not do very well because I think there is a point at which once you’ve asked the questions and the person has explored, and you can tell they’re really kind of at a loss, then it’s okay to step in with, “Hey, are you open to hearing what I think might help?” or, “Are you open to a suggestion about how to move forward here?” And then it’s perfectly okay to give your suggestions.

I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just saying don’t start there. Give the person an opportunity, but then it’s perfectly okay to say, including, “Here’s what’s worked for me in the past.” The point I was trying to make before is that we tend to get caught up in the story, and that’s what I mean by, “Oh, that happened to me,” or, “Oh, well, why did you do that?” “Oh, and then what did he say?” because then we start going backwards and we spend too much of our time in the story and not enough time moving forward in the coaching process.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the third step, develop an action plan, how is this done?

Sara Canaday
Again, together. More than anything, you encourage the person, once they’ve decided how they’re going to move forward, “Great. Who can be of most help as you do that? Can you think of anybody who can help you with that?” or, “When do you think you’ll want to have this done by? This has been on your individual development plan, I see here, for eight months. If you want to get it done this year, let’s put an aggressive timeline in here. What do you think of that?”

So, again, you’re holding them accountable for their own action process but you’re giving them some nudges, some support, and you’re challenging them at the same time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the fourth step is provide support. What does that look like?

Sara Canaday
Yeah. So, anything you can do, if you can introduce them to somebody who knows a particular skill or can help them get exposure to a project that has more of the type of work that they want to be doing, then make the connection. If you have access to budget that can be given to them to take on a course, if they need to spend more time with you going over some of their decks for presentations because you found out that they go into too much detail, again, not necessarily a performance issue, maybe a career development issue.

Smart as a whip, know their stuff inside and out, but maybe they’re used to delivering presentations to technical-only professionals, and you want to help them present to non-technical. So, maybe it needs more of your time to go over some of their presentations and give them feedback. Any way you can support them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And the fifth step, follow up?

Sara Canaday
Yes. And this is like anything else, it’s like having an accountability partner. This is why the peer coaching works so well. You are the person that’s going to help to ensure that there’s follow-through but it also shows on your end that this wasn’t a gratuitous conversation, that you actually do care, and you are going to move forward helping the person see that these things happen for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Sara, can we maybe do a demonstration roleplay in which you coach me about a thing?

Sara Canaday
Certainly.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s say I find myself procrastinating on processing my email inbox, and I’ve got a backlog that piles up, and I don’t like it and other people don’t like it. So, where shall we begin?

Sara Canaday
Yeah, and not probably an uncommon scenario, especially as people’s projects get, you know, we get more projects and they get exponentially bigger. So, I think I would start by saying helping you be more open with what may be going on, “So, tell me how the projects are going,” and that’s when you can say, “They seem to be fine but I feel like people’s expectations of me maybe are not the typical what I’m used to. I feel like things are falling through the cracks.”

Again, I’m just going to explore, “What do you think might be going on?” And that’s when you can say, “I feel like my inbox is always full. I can’t keep it up.” My question would be, “So, what kind of organizational productivity system do you have? Do you have a certain cadence to how you handle your emails? Tell me about how you organize your work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure thing. So, I’d say, “I use the Superhuman email app. I do it when I have a free moment in between things and that’s maybe the extent of my organization in the email world.”

Sara Canaday
Great. Well, for most of us that may have worked to a certain point, but when we get under pressure or when the workload is even more heavy, those moments are fewer and far between, and we find ourselves behind. So, what could you do differently? What do you think you could do differently if just reserving for when you’re free to get to those emails? Any other thoughts about what might be helpful for you?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I suppose real time needs to be allocated for them, and the amount of time that they have been getting has been insufficient to bring it to zero. So, one way or another, I guess more time needs to go there. I guess I’ve just been reluctant to do so because it’s not interesting and I’m not sure it’s going to be value-added relative to the other things I can be doing.

Sara Canaday
Well, I see your point. We get a lot of emails that aren’t necessarily germane to what we’re doing right now, and it can be frustrating. But if you were to do that, what would that look like? Would it look like in the mornings? When are you at your best, most productive, most efficient?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is in the morning, and I guess I’m wondering if email deserves my best or I should give it time that is my worse, or middle ground. We had Carey Nieuwhof on the show talk about either sort of green-zone times, yellow-zone times, and red-zone times in terms of your energy, attention, focus, motivation, oomph going on.

And so, yeah, that gets me thinking maybe I need to figure out, “Hey, email doesn’t deserve my best time but it needs some time, and so here is the time in which I am medium-functioning in terms of I can be motivated enough to answer these emails but not feel like I’m casting my pearls before swine, or wasting the most precious gold of the day on sort of the administrative feeling matters but still reach that inbox zero which feels so freeing, and feels like I’ve got a lot of mental space when there’s not a big load of emails waiting for me.”

Sara Canaday
Yeah, I hear you. I’m with you on that. I am almost too distracted during the day when I know my emails are piling up. There’s this anxiety, this anxiousness that I know it’s there. And so, I’m all for using your most productive time early in the morning.

For example, I know some people do their best writing or their best strategy-thinking, but I like your idea of at least giving it the medium productivity action so that you can get through it, and you can get through it efficiently but that it also leaves what energy you do have left for the day without that that being that sort of taxing feeling that you’ve got this hanging over your head.

And let’s not forget, you’ve got other people who, for whatever reason, may be waiting on your response for their own production. And so, I would just say think of that, too. You may see this low-value administrative but there may be a couple of key emails in there that need your attention and that others are waiting on. And so, from that standpoint, I think it’s important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. So, that makes sense to me in terms of it might not be my number one thing, but other people maybe their number one thing is hearing from me so they could proceed. So, just in terms of being a good citizen and team player, I can sacrificially and generously do that for them in the hopes that, hey, we all reciprocate and it works out for everybody.

Sara Canaday
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, I’m thinking maybe 4:00 p.m. might be a good time to put in half an hour a day on the emails, and that should probably get us close to zero if I’m doing that with consistency.

Sara Canaday
Great. Pete, when do you think you can start that?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, probably today.

Sara Canaday
Wonderful. Why don’t we reconnect in a couple of weeks? I’ll be curious to see how that’s working for you, and happy to help you if it doesn’t seem to be moving the needle forward. We can maybe come up with other solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good deal. All right. So, there we have it. We assessed the situation, we generate some ideas, we developed an action, we have some support – thank you – and the follow up. Nifty. So, any reflections on your end on the roleplay?

Sara Canaday
One thing I always say as a primer to coaching is that you have to know your employees, and there has to be some semblance of trust and rapport. You can’t skip that when you’re coaching. In fact, I tell a story of trying to help somebody better connect with their project team, and I did what I tell people not to do, and I jumped to the fix-it mode, and I said, “Well, why don’t you start meeting with them individually?”

And that suggestion failed miserably because, A, I didn’t ask her for more questions, but, B, she didn’t know them very well. And so, when she started asking questions, there was almost a kind of look on their face like they didn’t trust her or they weren’t sure what her…

Pete Mockaitis
“What are you trying to pull here?”

Sara Canaday
Yeah, “What’s your M.O. here?” So, this is just a good place to bring up that we’re just doing an on-the-spot, we’ve known each other through professional as colleagues through the years, but we don’t work together. I don’t know what makes you tick on a daily basis necessarily. And so, I would hope that that conversation was a little more refined based on knowing you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay.

Sara Canaday
I could’ve said something like, “Oh, yeah, Pete, I know how much you like those emails.” It could’ve been funny, but it would be a way to build rapport and get you to see that I’m just not going to be rigid about getting your emails done. I’m going to try to approach this in a way that works for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay. And then I’m curious, when it comes to coaching, any super favorite questions, words, phrases that often yield goodies on the other side?

Sara Canaday
Most of them are open-ended, for one. If you asked, “How is the project going?” “Good.” You’re just not going to get much, right? But if you’re really conscious of asking, “Okay, so what might make you more comfortable with this solution?” that kind of question, you can ask individually or to a group that you’ve just announced a new project or initiative.

And, to me, that gets the meeting after the meeting out in the open, or it gets your coachee to tell you something that they would’ve walked away saying, “Ugh, easier said than done. I knew she was going to suggest that.” But if you asked that right then and there, then you’re peeling back the onion layers and you’re getting to more efficient information.

Maybe you say, “I don’t necessarily see it that way. Can I tell you why?” That’s very different than saying, “I don’t agree,” because you’re putting the person at the defense. Whereas, in the other case, it’s a little disarming. You just don’t see it that way. It doesn’t mean it’s an indictment against them or their idea. You just don’t see it that way, “And can I tell you why? I want to offer another kind of angle here.” So, those are just some examples of open-ended questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell me, Sara, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Sara Canaday
No, other than the book has several pages of good, powerful phrases or questions. So, they don’t always have to be a question. It could be, “Tell me more,” which is not a question. But if anybody is interested in those types of tools, the book is full of them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Sara Canaday
My favorite quote is “Please be responsible for the energy you bring into this room.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Sara Canaday
Well, this probably has to do with coaching and it has to do with leadership, but it was done by the Journal of Economic Psychology, and there, there were a group of researchers that wanted to study the optimal strategy for goalies, soccer goalies, and blocking penalty kicks.

And what they found, after watching hundreds of videos and speaking to expert coaches and goalies, is that when goalies stay in the middle of the net, they block the ball 33% of the time. When they move to the left or the right, it goes down by half, 14% on the right, 13.3 on the left. Point being is that we, as leaders, as professionals, I think, sometimes mistake motion for meaning, and we have a bias for action.

I get it. I’m a work in progress on that. And that study, to me, sort of highlights this idea that we would really benefit from taking more pauses, more pauses to think strategically, more pauses to coach our employees, more pauses to reflect.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Sara Canaday
Favorite book, it just came out. It’s called The Chrysalis Code: Becoming the Type of Leader Other People Want to Follow by my good friend and colleague Ron J. West.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Sara Canaday
We talked about this the last time. I’m going to say it again. LinkedIn, huge tool for me. And then I’m going to throw in a few personal ones that save me time. Amazon, I don’t know what I would do without it, it’s kind of scary, because when I need something, I don’t have to run out to OfficeMax or fill my day with errands on top of work. My fingertips right there. And, similarly, Instacart, which is not everywhere but a lot of places. And I can imagine, with three kids, this would be a boon for you, but getting my groceries delivered is hugely helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit, something you do to be awesome at your job?

Sara Canaday
Well, it’s a word that I didn’t know of until, I think, a year or two ago, and I read about it in one of Adam Grant’s posts. And, apparently, I’m a precrastinator. So, it’s the opposite of a procrastinator. I actually do things really far in advance, and that has served me very well because I guess my years in corporate, I knew that fires would always have to be put out. And so, when I have the time, I would get projects done early so that I wouldn’t feel as overwhelmed when things popped up that were not planned.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate; folks quote it back to you often?

Sara Canaday
I mentioned one earlier that I think resonates with leaders, which is this idea of mistaking motion for meaning, and that’s probably the key one lately. Ever since COVID, I think, I find that people are just…they have no buffer time between any of their meetings, and no time to actually make connections and put things together, and be creative and innovative.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Sara Canaday
I’d point them to my website, SaraCanaday.com, and there’s no H in Sara, and Canaday is just like Canada but with a Y at the end. Or, LinkedIn, of course.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Sara Canaday
I do. I would say make one final or baby step toward this idea of coaching. It doesn’t have to be, “Okay, I’m going to coach somebody.” Pick a meeting this week where you’re just going to intentionally ask an open-ended question, or you’re going to intentionally paraphrase so that you can actively listen, “So, what I’m hearing you say is…” or, “Let me see if I got this right.” So, those are the things that are really important in coaching. So, just pick one aspect of coaching, and pick a meeting where you’re going to try it on.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sara, this has been a treat. I wish you many good coaching sessions in the future.

Sara Canaday
Thank you. It’s been a treat to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Stephen, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Stephen Covey
Hi, Pete. Excited to be with you today.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited as well. I’m really looking forward to digging into your wisdom on trust and your latest book Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others. But just to warm it up, I’m thinking about my son right now, he’s four years old, and my dad, and how there were a few special moments in terms of memories that were really instructive and stuck with me. And since you and your father are both great when it comes to leadership development, is there a memory that comes to mind for you in terms of something that sticks with you and was really instructive and lasting?

Stephen Covey
Yeah, absolutely, several but I’ll share one of them, and I actually put this in the book. It’s in a story that my dad wrote about in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the green and clean story, where he was trying to teach his son how to take care of the lawn. Well, I’m that son, I was seven years old, and my dad was trying to teach me responsibility and teach me how to work and these types of things. And so, he basically, over a two-week period of time, he’s got to train me how to make sure that the lawn, our yard, we had a big yard, how to make sure that it was green and clean.

Now, this was back in the days before automatic sprinklers, which ages me, Pete, but this was I was just a young boy and he taught me, “Look, to get a green lawn, you got to water it. The key to watering it is you got to turn on the sprinklers but how you do it is up to you. If you want you could just use a hose or use buckets or spit all day long. It’s up to you. All I care about is green and clean.”

And then he kind of taught me what clean meant. He cleaned part of the yard, left the other part unclean. So, again, seven years old, so it was a two-week process. I actually distinctly remember it. And then he added one more piece. He built in an accountability piece. So, I had very clear expectations – green and clean – how I did it was up to me. I would judge myself. And here was the accountability, that twice a week that we would walk around together and I would tell him how I was doing against the standard of green and clean.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Stephen Covey
And so, he goes, “I’m not your judge. You’re your own judge. You judge yourself. I’m your helper. If I have time, I’ll always help you but it’s your job.” So, two weeks of training, and then he turns it over to me in the middle of the summer. And it’s this scorching hot time during the summer and I did nothing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s not going to be green.

Stephen Covey
I did nothing. I was over playing ball across the street. Sunday nothing, Monday nothing, Tuesday nothing, Wednesday. It’s five days, it’s scorching hot, the lawn is turning yellow by the hour almost, and we had a neighborhood barbecue over the weekend, and there was garbage just strewn all throughout the lawn. It was anything but green and clean.

And my dad, he later said, “You know, I was just about to just yank that job right back from him,” thinking, “Maybe he’s just too young. He’s seven. He can’t handle this yet.” But he didn’t. He stayed with it, and he said, “Hey, son, we’d agreed that we’d walk around the yard and you would tell me how it’s doing, so why don’t we do that?”

So, we started to walk around, and I realized, “This is not looking green at all. It’s yellow and it’s not clean. There’s garbage everywhere.” And I began to break down and cry, and I said, “Dad, this is just so hard.” And he kind of said, “Well, what’s hard? You haven’t done one single thing.” But what was hard was learning to take responsibility, it was me taking ownership for that job and taking it on as my own.

And I said, “Well, can you help me, dad?” He said, “I’d agree I’d be your helper if I have time.” I asked, “Do you have time?” He said, “I’ve got time.” So, I ran into the house and I got two garbage sacks. I came out, I took one and I gave him one, and then I started to instruct him and tell him what to do. I said, “Dad, would you go over there and pick up that garbage that’s fallen out because it makes me want to vomit?” So, he said, “I’m your helper. Whatever you say, I’ll do it. I’ve got time, I’ll help you.”

So, he started doing what I asked him to do. And it was at that moment, as I was directing my dad as a seven-year-old on, “Pick up this. Pick up that. Do this,” and he was doing what I was asking, I realized, “This is my job. I’m responsible.” And it was at that moment that, suddenly, I took responsibility and took over this job of making sure the yard was green and clean. I did not have to be asked the whole rest of the summer to do it a single time. I owned it. I took responsibility for it, and the lawn was green and it was clean.

Now, my dad used to always tell this story when he taught The 7 Habits about how this was the creation of a win-win performance agreement but, Pete, I was a seven-year-old boy. I didn’t know what those terms meant but here is what I did know as a seven-year-old. I felt trusted. I felt my father trusted me and I didn’t want to let him down.

So, I was too young to be worried about allowance or status, but I didn’t want to let my dad down. He was important to me and he trusted me, and I felt it and I responded to it. I was inspired by it. I rose to the occasion. I developed capabilities I had no idea I had at age seven and I took responsibility for a huge yard, and it was green and clean.

Now, that was a defining experience in my life because, first of all, my father built such a relationship with me that his whole purpose was one of love and caring, trying to teach me, so I received it differently because of that. But it’s interesting. I experienced, as a seven-year-old boy, a trust and inspire leader, a trust and inspire parent who was believing in me, and he saw potential in me that I didn’t see in myself at that time as a young boy but he didn’t…when he gave me trust and I didn’t follow through, he didn’t take it back and just say, “Oh, too young, can’t do it.”

Or, he didn’t hover and micromanage me, and say, “Now, look, here’s how you have to do this job, and do it precisely the way I say. You got to get out there and water.” No, he gave me the responsibility, he trusted me, and then he let me do it. And I learned, and I grew, and I came out of it better. My dad, later, was also asked, “How did you not just take it over and just either micromanaged him or just take the job back?” And he said, “Because I reaffirmed my purpose, which was to raise kids, not grass. So, getting the grass green and clean was a bonus. That was a nice thing but it was more important that I raise a child that learned responsibility and a work ethic.”

And so, I used that little story as a great example of how if this kind of extension of trust can work for a seven-year-old boy, I bet it could work for a 27-year-old or a 47-year-old or a 67-year-old. We all long to be trusted and inspired. It’s a better way to lead, and we respond to it, and I did as a seven-year-old. So, it’s a great story. It’s a fun story. My dad gives his side of it in The 7 Habits, and my side of it is that I was seven years old, what do you expect?

But really, it’s that I felt trusted. I didn’t know what a win-win performance agreement was but I did know that I felt the trust of my dad, and I didn’t want to let him down.

Pete Mockaitis
That is powerful. Thank you. I love it. And a great way to set up a conversation, talking about trust. You’ve done a lot of research and teaching and writing on this topic, is there a particular insight or discovery that you find particularly surprising and powerful when folks really grab onto it when it comes to trust?

Stephen Covey
Yes, there is one. I don’t know that this one is going to be surprising per se but it is extremely powerful. It’s not necessarily surprising but it happens all the time. So, it’s surprising that this is still an issue because it’s pretty self-evident. And it’s simply this, you could have two trustworthy people working together, both trustworthy, working together and yet no trust between them even though they’re both trustworthy if neither person is willing to extend trust to the other.

In an organization, you could have two trustworthy teams or departments working together, both trustworthy, and yet no trust between them if neither team or department is willing to extend trust to the other. So, to have trust, the noun, the outcome, yes, you need to be trustworthy, and that is earned, we earn that, but we also need to be trusting to give that. So, trust is both earned and given.

I get asked all the time, “Stephen, is trust earned or is it given?” And my response is, “Yes, absolutely it is earned. We’ve got to demonstrate our character, our competence, our credibility. We’ve got to be trustworthy but it’s not enough. It’s necessary but insufficient. We also have to be trusting.” And what I find, as I worked with organizations all around the world, that maybe the bigger factor in those two halves, and they’re halves, I think the bigger factor is that we’re not trusting enough as leaders. We don’t extend enough trust to our people and to others.

That’s a bigger issue than if we’re not trustworthy. Now, we can work on both halves of the equation. We need to work on becoming more trustworthy but, as leaders, we especially need to work on becoming more trusting. And, at some level, that’s not a surprise. But what’s a surprise is that how we’ve almost ignored that piece, and we focus so heavily on the trustworthy side and not near enough on the trusting side. And I want to bring that to the fore, that, as leaders, we got to become more trusting. We gotta be extending trust.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so, since we kind of say the word trust a lot, how about we do a little bit of defining of terms? What do you mean, precisely, by trust? And what are some ways that we extend trust or we show that we are trusting?

Stephen Covey
Yeah. So, by trust, I simply mean confidence. That’s the most simple definition I can give. In fact, Pete, in many languages, trust and confidence are the exact same word, like in Spanish, in French. I have personally presented now in some 55 countries on site, in person, and in about, I’m going to say, over at least half of those countries, where they have a different language other than English as their native tongue, in at least half of them, trust and confidence are the exact same word.

So, in English, we have two words for it. So, think it means confidence. Now, the opposite of trust – distrust – is suspicion. So, confidence versus suspicion. That’s the most simple definition. Now, where does that confidence come from? I suggest it comes from two sources. It comes from having both character and competence. Character and competence, both are vital. If you have one but lack the other, you will not sustain the trust.

This makes a person credible. It makes them trustworthy if they have both character and competence, and that is something that we earn. So, we earn trustworthiness through demonstrating character and competence but then we extend trust, we give trust by being trusting. And I think the opportunity here is to find the ways, as a leader, as a colleague, as a partner, that you can extend more trust to people.

And when you extend the trust, I’m not advocating that you just blindly trust anyone and everyone. That’s not smart in a low-trust world because not everyone can be trusted or there could be that the context matters. If there’s really high risks on the trust you’re extending, or the credibility of the person is either unknown, or is known to be low credibility, low trustworthiness, then you’re going to be very limited or careful or cautious on how much trust you extend.

But, generally speaking, we need to be more trusting, not less, and find the opportunities to extend that trust, always creating expectations, always creating the process for accountability, like my dad did with me on green and clean. He had expectations, “I want the yard to be green and clean,” and accountability, “Let’s, twice a week, you tell me how you’re doing against the standard of green and clean.”

So, here’s a great opportunity right now that companies have had over the last two years coming out of this pandemic. People have started working from home, working from anywhere, remote work, hybrid work, intentionally flexible work, and that’s continuing, and it’s going to continue in some format going forward.

Actually, a lot of organizations really do a great job at demonstrating to their people, as they’re working from home, “That we trust them,” that they trust their people. And it’s explicit, it’s clear that they come in, they say, “Look, we trust you. Here’s the expectation, here’s the accountability, but you need to know we trust you.” And people feel it and they receive it, and they’ve actually accelerated and grown the trust through this difficult circumstance by being deliberate and intentional about the trust that they’re extending to their people.

On the other hand, I’ve seen some other companies with the same setup, where the people working remotely did not feel trusted at all. They felt they’re now just being micromanaged from a distance because there was no choice or option in the matter, and some companies put in place surveillance software and the like, all in the name of productivity to make sure that people were actually doing their job, and it just conveyed and screamed distrust. And so, yeah, they were working remotely but they still did not feel trusted. And rather than increasing the trust, they actually decreased it.

So, what’s happened in the last couple of years has been a great opportunity to actually increase the trust and generate the reciprocity by demonstrating that you trust your people, or maybe have it go the other direction because you’re actually demonstrating through your behavior, your actions, that, “I don’t trust you and I’ve got to micromanage you.” It’s just done differently now because it’s remote.

And, going forward, as people come back, and we come up with a new way of working in this new world, what matters more than the precise mechanics of what it’s going to look like, some hybrid combination of remote and on site, intentionally flexible work, what matters more than the actual structure is our leaders are actually leading with a trust-and-inspire approach with their people where they actually trust them with whatever model they come up with.

Or, are they trying to still operate from a command-and-control model that leads out with distrust with whatever they come up with? That matters more than the actual structure. There are many right answers. What matters more is the paradigm, the mindset of trusting your people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to dig into that contrast quite a lot shortly. Maybe, first, I want to dig in just a little bit, so in terms of trust is confidence, and someone is trustworthy if they have character and competence. And so, I’m interpreting that to mean character, they have virtue, they’re not going to lie to you or steal. They’re not only looking out for number one all the time.

And competence is like they’re good at the things that their job demands of them. And, thusly, when someone has that, I trust them and that I have the confidence that if I give them some bit of responsibility, they are going to have the smarts to do the job sufficiently, and the ethics to not, I don’t know, skim off the top or do something shady along the way in executing it.

Stephen Covey
Not cut corners.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Stephen Covey
Yeah, you got it exactly. It’s both halves. And too often, we’ve equated trust with just character, and I say, no, it’s equal. Equal parts, character and competence. And a big part of this show, How to be Awesome at Your Job, it’s all about trying to make sure that we can become really good at our job because we know what we need to do. And that’s building the capabilities around what’s needed to do, and the expectations so we know, as well as then delivering on that, performing and delivering.

And so, the confidence is both kind of capabilities and results that, “I’ve got the skills and the talents and the expertise and the knowledge and the insight to stay relevant in a changing world, and I have a track record of performance, of results, that gives people confidence that if you give me a job, I’m going to get it done. Look at my track record. But I’m always learning and getting better and improving, the things that you’re doing with this podcast of, How to be Awesome at Your Job, because I’m learning about the capabilities that are needed to succeed at a job.”

So, that confidence is half as vital because someone could be an honest person and very caring and selfless, but if they can’t deliver or they don’t come through, they don’t do what they say they’re going to do because they’re not capable of it, even though they’re honest, I’m not going to trust them. And the reverse is true. If someone could deliver, get the job done, but if they’re running people over in the process, or violating the values and the beliefs of the company, cutting corners, I’m not going to trust them either, so I’ve got to have both.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. And it’s interesting, at How to be Awesome at Your Job, we have quite the contrast, I think, in terms of getting a feel for, “What is awesome at your job and true excellence look like versus mediocre, ho-hum, like okay?” So, likewise, with character, I’m thinking that, could you paint a picture for what excellence in character looks like versus, yeah, mediocrity? Because I think most of us are not…we’re not sociopaths. We have some level of guilt and conscience. We’re going to obey applicable laws.

And, yet, even with that, like sometimes I still don’t trust folks because it’s sort of like, “Hmm, I don’t believe you care about me and/or I think, if given the opportunity, if there’s ever a tradeoff between a little bit more expediency and profit, and my needs, wants, wishes, you will choose your expediency and profit.” And so, I don’t know, how do you think about what is a picture of real excellence look like in character?

Stephen Covey
In the character?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Stephen Covey
Beautiful. Love it. And, by the way, you identified, beautifully, the two components of character – integrity and intent. And integrity is honesty, truthfulness. Like you say, that someone might say, “Well, I’m particular and I follow the rules and the laws,” but compliance alone is necessary but insufficient. Someone could be legal but not ethical.

But here’s the big opportunity to what you just identified, that the real test of integrity, of doing the right thing, is when there’s a cost or consequence in doing so. Until then, I haven’t fully been tested. What do I do then when there’s a cost or consequence in doing the right? Do I still do the right thing? Another test of integrity is when nobody is looking and may never look. Do I still do the right thing?

So, integrity is, yes, it’s honesty and truthfulness, but it’s also congruence, an authenticity, that we are who we say we are, do what we say that we value, we walk the talk, the say-do ratio is aligned. And then, also, it takes humility and courage to have integrity. Humility, that there are principles that govern, courage to do the right thing when there’s a cost or a consequence, or when no one is looking. And that’s a deeper drive towards excellence.

So, someone could comply, someone else could act on commitment to do the right thing and make judgment calls doing the right thing even when there’s a cost or a consequence, and maybe when there’s degrees of this, where someone could get away, and say, “I was legal,” but maybe the right thing goes above and beyond that. That’s a higher standard, higher expectation of excellence.

And just like how I put competence in the two halves, I put competence in the half of your capabilities, and your results, your track record of performance. I put the character in the two halves – your integrity and your intent. So, the second half of character is your intent, and that is your motive. Do you care? And you mentioned this. Do you care about the people that you’re serving? They know and feel that you care about them. Or, do you not care?

Caring matters in terms of how people feel, in terms of trusting the person. If someone doesn’t think that another person cares about them, they often will tend to withhold the trust, wondering, “Do they really have my best interest at heart?” That’s the motive, caring. The agenda is to seek mutual benefit, that’s win-win. Especially, partners working together, collaborating, in charge of different departments, they just feel like, “Do I feel like you’re truly seeking mutual benefit and trying to do the best for all of us? Or, is it just are you just being self-serving and only acting in your best interest alone, and not really looking at mine? You might not say that but that’s what I feel and experience.”

And if I feel that, that you’re self-serving, I tend to withhold the trust. Or, if you’re only acting in your best interest and not in a shared best interest, I tend to withhold the trust. So, that’s your intent, which is the motive of caring and the agenda of mutual benefit. So, there’s a standard of excellence there for both integrity and intent that you can go much higher than kind of the mere threshold level.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Well, now, let’s talk about sort of the big idea behind the book Trust and Inspire. So, you say there’s trust and inspire, and then there’s command and control. How would you sort of expand upon the differentiation between the two?

Stephen Covey
Yeah. Well, here’s what the data shows, that most organizations today, in spite of all our progress and our management thinking, are still operating in some form of command-and-control style, about nine out of ten.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting.

Stephen Covey
Yeah, the data is surprising. And, in some form, now here’s what’s happened though, Pete. They’ve become, it’s a far better version of it. It’s not necessarily the authoritarian command and control of the industrial age that was more accepted but it’s more of what I call an enlightened command and control. It’s more sophisticated. It’s more advanced. It’s a better version. A kinder, gentler version of it. We’ve brought mission into it. We brought emotional intelligence into it. We brought strengths into it.

Pete Mockaitis
Psychological safety.

Stephen Covey
Yeah, we brought a lot of good things into it but what we haven’t done fully yet is shift the paradigm, the mental map of how we view people, how we view leadership. We’re still trying to, basically, contain people as opposed to unleash them. We’re still trying to control people as opposed to release them. And we don’t see the greatness inside of people. We see it inside of some who we deem high potentials and not inside of others.

So, the idea that everyone has greatness inside, “I’m sure I’m not ready to buy that,” some people might say, or at least their style has not matched that belief. And so, we haven’t shifted the paradigm. We’ve incrementally improved within a limited applied paradigm, mindset. And that will take you so far, and it’s a better version of it.

So, we made a lot of progress but, in spite of all our progress, we still fall short of really shifting the paradigm to a trust-and-inspire approach, where I start with the fundamental belief that people have greatness inside of them. So, my job as a leader is to unleash their potential, not to contain or control them. I start with trust and inspire. I start with the belief that people are whole people. They have a body, heart, mind, spirit. They’re not just economic beings. They’re a whole person.

So, my job as a leader is to inspire, not merely motivate. You see, motivation is extrinsic, carrot-and-stick awards, external. Inspiration is intrinsic, internal. To inspire means to breathe life into someone, into something or someone, and so it’s inside of them. I light the fire within, and that’s a better thing. And when people are seen as whole people, yes, they have a body, they want to be paid; but they have a heart, they want to connect; and they have a mind, they want to contribute and develop, and use their talent.

And they have also a spirit, with the idea of meaning, of purpose, of mattering. That’s the whole person, and that can inspire people instead of just merely motivating them. So, these are some of the beliefs. Also, another belief is that there’s enough for everyone, an abundance mentality. So, my job as a leader is to elevate caring above competing because there’s many organizations in which they’re competing internally all the time with each other because they’re operating on the basis of scarce resources.

And while scarcity might be a sound economic principle, it’s a lousy leadership principle. Abundance mentality is a better way to lead, elevate, care than about competing. Leadership is stewardship. It’s a responsibility, not a right. So, my job as a leader is to put service above self-interest. And another belief is that enduring influence is created from the inside out. So, my job as a leader is to go first. Someone needs to go first. Leaders go first.

So, these are, collectively, a paradigm of a trust-and-inspire leader. They see people and leadership more completely than more of a fragmented narrow view of, partially accurate, but incomplete map of people in their ship. And until that paradigm shifts, we’re going to stay deep in command and control, a better version of it, an enlightened version of it, but we’ve got to shift the paradigm. And we’re so deep in command and control, we’re not even aware of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s actually exactly what I was curious about in terms of like the trust and inspire sounds awesome. It’s like, “Yeah, that’s where I’d like to work, and that’s what I’d imagine leaders would like to believe is the case in their organizations.” So, when you said the data reveal that about nine out of ten companies are still in command and control, not to get too deep into the weeds on the research process, but I got to believe, if you just asked, “Hey, are you more of a command-and-control or more of a trust-and-inspire organization?” they’re like, “Oh, I’m a trust-and-inspire organization.” People would, self-servingly, want to click that and be shifted there. So, how do you make that determination when you are doing the research on that matter?

Stephen Covey
Yeah. Well, again, we’ve come from different sources in different forms, and some of our own research in which we asked, “If you were to assess the predominant leadership style of the organization,” not what they profess but this is people assessing it, what they experience.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, gotcha.

Stephen Covey
So, it’s not the senior leadership. If you asked the senior leaders, I think it’ll almost be the other way around. Most of them would say exactly what you’re saying, Pete, “Of course, we’re trust and inspire.” But if you ask the people, “How do you describe the management style of leadership?” and you get far more into command and control.

Also, there’s a beautiful study by LRN, a consultancy that focuses heavily on ethics and things like that, a superb firm that looks at these archetypes of what they called blind obedience, informed acquiescence or self-governance, kind of three different archetypes. And, again, almost everyone is in some form of what would be, in my words now, command and control, either the blind obedience or the informed acquiescence, that they move a lot.

There’s a lot more now in informed acquiescence, so it’s a more transactional type of thing versus a blind obedience, but very few that are into self-governance, which is another capture away for this idea of trust and inspire.

And, again, you’ll see a lot of, again, there’s been progress, but we’re so immersed in a command-and-control world, even to this day, that it’s right in our language. You look at span of control, chain of command, rank and file, recruitment. These are all military terms, and command-and-control is a military term. It’s kind of coming from this mindset, and you see it in our systems and structures. Structures tend to be more hierarchical.

Now, there are some shifts again, of course, we’re seeing in traditional hierarchies and the like. You see it in systems of forced rankings, and your high potential is identifying different things, and performance appraisals and reviews. You see it in all kinds of paradigms of bosses and subordinates and all kinds of different things. So, it just shows up in a variety of ways.

I call it fish discover water last. We’re so immersed, we don’t even recognize it, and we see this command and control is so all around us, we’re often not even aware of it. But another thing is this, that we kind of know all this, that command and control doesn’t really work today as well as it maybe did in a different era, and I don’t think it worked that way that great before either. But to know and not to do is not to know.

And so, it’s one thing to say, “Yeah, we’ve got to lead with trust and inspire,” but it’s harder to say than to do it because people have a hard time letting go. They have a hard time truly empowering. They have a hard time truly extending trust, and abundantly extending trust because they’re worried that they’re going to be held accountable, “What if it doesn’t work? Or, what if I’ve been burned before? Or, what if I don’t know how to do this? What if I can’t let go? Or, what if this is who I am? I built my whole career being this kind of leader, and now you’re asking me to change because we’ve got a different mindset of the new generations coming up and the like?”

And so, it can be really a challenge for people. But one last thought is that old paradigms can live on almost indefinitely, like bloodletting, 3,000 years old. Egyptians were doing it, then Romans, and then it went through the Middle Ages, and then as late as in the 1600s, that’s when the people discovered the germ theory, another thing that said, “Bloodletting is bad map. The map is not the territory. Bloodletting is not it,” and yet it continued for another 250 years being the common practice, or at least a common practice, among many, even though it had been disproven 250 years earlier.

So, old paradigms can continue to lead on, and we’re seeing much of that. Command and control is like a native tongue, and trust and inspire is like an acquired tongue. And when the pressure is on, and if I’m hammering, I accidentally hit my thumb with the nail, I’m going to cuss out in my native tongue because that’s just second nature. So, all these factors are just really why we remain somewhat still a little bit trapped in a command-and-control style of leadership, and we need to shift the style.

That’s why I like to use the word style. This is a meta style. And trust and inspire, you said it, Pete, it sounds better. We all like that. We all want to be trust and inspire. It’s like me and my dad. He didn’t hover over and micromanaged me. He trusted me. He inspired me. And it’s aspirational, we all like that. And I’ll bet some of us have had a trust-and-inspire leader in our life, at least one, maybe many. But at least one whether it be a family member, or someone at work, or a mentor, a coach, who believed in us, had confidence in us, extended trust to us, maybe believed in us more than we believed in ourselves.

So, I ask our listeners, when you had someone like that, a trust-and-inspire leader in your life at some point somewhere, whether at work or at home, or in the community, what did that do to you? Did you need to be managed or did you self-govern? And how did you respond to that? Did you need to be motivated with a carrot stick or were you inspired? Did you rise to the occasion? Did you want to prove justified and give it back, and just feel gratitude, and you perform better? So, that’s the idea.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’m curious, you’re right. It does sound awesome if you’re to have that kind of vibe, the trust and inspire, and it does seem, in some ways, almost too good to be true in terms of like a large organization can really work and operate that way without chaos somehow taking over. So, could you give us an inspiring example of a team or an organization that made the leap, they were running in a command-and-control kind of a way, but then they did some specific things such that they are now operating in a trust-and-inspire kind of a way, and it’s worked out okay?

Stephen Covey
Yeah, absolutely. There’s many. Here’s one of them. Microsoft under Satya Nadella. When Satya Nadella got in as CEO, Microsoft had been kind of fading. They’re still huge because they had so much market share but they no longer had the same great culture that people wanted to be a part of. They were starting to lose people quite a bit. They were not innovating and they kind of rested upon their laurels in the past. Not innovating.

A cartoonist in Seattle drew a cartoon of the Microsoft culture in which he depicted silos and pyramids with people from within pointing guns at each other. It was seen as this cutthroat culture that was internally competitive, and the way to get ahead was to take out your fellow Microsoft person there within the company.

I call this the two epic imperatives of our time that we have today. They were not, at the time, winning in the workplace. They did not have a culture that attracted, retained, engaged, and inspired the best people. They were losing too many. And they were also not winning in the marketplace through collaboration and innovation. They’re starting to fade.

In come Satya Nadella, did many things, but among those things, it really was a leadership style. His style was different in kind. He was a trust-and-inspire leader. He modeled, he trusted, and he inspired. Their words for this were model, coach, care, and those were the things they expected of their leaders, and, again, Nadella modeled it.

He modeled humility and courage. He modeled authenticity and vulnerability. He modeled empathy and performance. But, also, this, he adopted a growth mindset, the work of Carol Dweck, not just for him and for their management but for everyone, to see the greatness out of everyone, to have a growth mindset not just for yourself but for everyone.

Because of that growth mindset, they now said, “Let’s trust people. Let’s not manage them. Let’s coach and let’s extend trust.” And you always extend the trust with expectations and accountability so you don’t have that chaos we talked about, or you don’t lose control because you build it in to an agreement and through context and through culture as opposed through more rules or through micromanagement. You can still have control without being controlling.

And they trusted and then they inspired both by caring, which is a big focus for them, and connecting with people through caring at an interpersonal level, and connecting to people at a team level through belonging and inclusion. And that inspires people when they feel like you care about them and they have a sense of belonging. But, also, by connecting to people, by connecting people to purpose and to meaning and to contribution, making a difference, mattering. They did all these things.

Long story short, under him, now they’re really winning in the workplace. They’ve got a high-trust culture that inspires, they’re not perfect, but it’s a cooler place to work than it has been, and they’re winning in the marketplace. They’re collaborating and innovating. They’re a cloud powerhouse. They recreated themselves and they’re innovating again, and their stock price went from, I think when the Dow came in, it was 38, today, it’s about 300, and so dramatic turnaround. They modeled, they trusted, they inspired, led by Satya Nadella and his leadership style.

Here’s another one. Cheryl Bachelder, what she did at Popeyes. A complete turnaround of Popeyes. They’ve had four CEOs in seven years before she came in, they’re just spitting them out. She had advisors say, “Don’t take this job.” There was distrust completely between the franchisees and the home office, and they didn’t trust each other at all. It was contentious.

She comes in. Long story made short, she modeled, she trusted, she inspired even when some people said, “You can’t trust.” She said, “No, we’re going to trust,” and dramatic turnaround. She took their stock price from 11 to 79, doubled their market share from 14% to 27%. They began to innovate, they began to win in the workplace, and they built a high-trust relationship between the franchisees and the home office when it was fractious and contentious before in the old model, and now they also are collaborating and innovating. It was a trust-and-inspire approach to leadership, not a command-and-control. Involvement. Listening.

And Eric Yuan at Zoom is a trust-and-inspire leader but he was that way from the beginning. That was not a turnaround. That was one from the beginning with trust and inspire. So, examples are everywhere. You can become a trust-and-inspire leader in a command-and-control company, so you don’t have to wait for the CEO. You can do this. You can lead out with this.

But I’ll give you one distinction on this, that this is the one piece I wanted to add to it. Command and control, the idea’s that you manage people and things. Trust and inspire, you manage things and you lead people. See, we need great management. I’m not against management. We need management. We need great management. Management of things. And things include systems and processes and structures and technologies and inventories and financials. You manage things but you lead people.

The moment we start to manage people as if they were things, we’ll end up losing a lot of those people. They’ll go elsewhere because we’re trying to be efficient with people. You can be efficient with things but not with people. Be efficient with things, effective with people. Manage things. Lead people. The danger is we get really good at management and we’re starting to manage people as if they were things. That’s kind of the mindset of command and control, they treat it that way. Even the name managing people, the very wording, the language is a command-and-control mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, like people don’t think, “I want to be managed. Like, that sounds great.” I guess we want, even I who, I’m self-employed, at times I would like a great manager, but I guess what I really mean is a leader in terms of someone who really sees what I’m doing well and not so well, and giving me kind, honest, enriching feedback that pushes me to greatness. But, yeah, that doesn’t feel like management per se.

Stephen Covey
Yeah. I like to put it this way, Pete. People don’t want to be managed; they want to be led. They want to be trusted. They want to be inspired. So, again, you can call them your manager if that’s what they’re called but they manage things, lead people, and people respond to that. They still want their help. So, maybe the one piece on this that maybe for our listeners that they might think, “Well, this trust and inspire sounds good but I feel like I’m going to lose control, or it may not be as strong enough for our world and such.”

I want to distinguish and say this. Trust and inspire is not the opposite of command and control. The opposite of command and control is advocate and abandon. Command and control is kind of like excessively hands on, really hands on. Advocate and abandon is like completely hands off to where I’m not even directing, I’m not leading anymore.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “Do what you want. I’m out of here.”

Stephen Covey
Yeah, “Do what you want.” Like, a holacracy or just no structure, no vision, no expectations, no accountability. That’s not what we want. That’s not going to work. Trust and inspire is a third alternative that includes trusting and inspiring people but also builds in the control into an agreement, into context, into the culture.

Like, at Netflix, they call it freedom and responsibility. They don’t have policies on most things – vacation policies, sick days, all these things. They trust their people. They call it freedom but it’s not a wild loose freedom. It’s freedom and responsibility. It’s a third alternative. They build the control in through context not through controls like most organizations have that say, “We’ve got to control people with systems and structures.” They do it through context, through agreements, through responsibility that goes along with the freedom, through a culture that does that. So, that’s the idea.

And so, trust and inspire is a third alternative. My dad, with me, on green and clean, he actually had built in accountability. He was still holding me accountable but I was holding myself accountable through the agreement we had created together. So, the point is you can be in charge and have control without being controlling. You can be strong without being forceful. You can be compelling without being compulsory.

A trust-and-inspire leader can be authoritative without being authoritarian. They can be decisive without being autocratic. So, the point is, this is strong. This is not weak, kind of like, “Yeah, maybe for a few things but you don’t know my industry. We’re a command-and-control industry with heavy regulation and compliance.” You can still be trust and inspire in these contexts because it’s not weak; it’s strong. It just does it through different means.

It involves people. It creates agreements. It creates contexts versus rules, regulations, policies, procedures, controls. And that’s kind of the big breakthrough. This is a third alternative that is very strong.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Stephen, if folks are like, “Yes, I want that,” and they’re either an individual contributor or they’ve got a small team, what do you recommend as some of the very first steps to getting some of that trust-and-inspire goodness flowing?

Stephen Covey
Yeah. I’d go back to start with your paradigm, how you see people, how you view leadership. Look at those fundamental beliefs. You see greatness inside of people? And if you do, then are you working to unleash that greatness not contain or control it? Most people feel like they have a lot more they can give to their organization than they’re allowed to give. They had a lot more creativity and talent and ability to influence things than they’re allowed to give, and, yet, people are under greater stress to do more with less, and there’s this gap there because we’ve not unleashed our people well enough.

So, start with that, the paradigm. See the potential, communicate the potential to people so they can come to see it in themselves. Develop the potential, grow people, develop capabilities, and this is a big part of what you’re doing with this podcast, is, “What do I need to work on? What do I need to do? What do I need to know? What skills do I need to develop?” Give those people those chances. Develop them and give them opportunities. And part of that includes trusting them so they have an opportunity to learn and even to make a mistake and to fall short like I did on green and clean.

So, you develop the potential and then you unleash it, you tie it to what you’re trying to accomplish and achieve so they can use what they have for the betterment of the mission, the purpose, the organization. And so, I call that see, communicate, develop, unleash the potential that’s inside of people, and you see the greatness. And so, your job, you’re like a gardener trying to cultivate the right conditions for the seed to flourish.

The power, the life is in the seed, it’s in the people. You’re trying to create the conditions for the seed to emerge, to be cultivated, versus a mechanic where it’s all mechanistic. No, it’s organic. You’re a gardener.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you.

Stephen Covey
That’d be the first thing. Start with the paradigm. Have a growth mindset not just for yourself but for everyone on your team.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now let’s hear about a couple of your favorite things. Can you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Stephen Covey
This is kind of a mantra that’s in the form of a quote that I learned from my father, and it’s what I’ve adopted for myself, and that is simply this, “Seek to bless, not to impress.” It’s a whole approach of how to work with people and add value to others. So, I do this any time before I give a speech, Pete, as I go into an organization. I come back to, “What’s my motive here? Am I trying to impress people with who I am or am I trying to bless, to serve to make a difference, to add value?”

And if I find that I’m in my head and focused on, “I sure hope I can impress them and dazzle them with a great speech or be seen as really smart,” then I’m putting self-interest above service, and I’m putting my head above heart and not reaching people. But, instead, if my motive is one of caring, and my motive is one of serving, and my motive was one of blessing, not impressing, so I’m really focused on them and helping them succeed, not me looking good, then I find I actually do a better job.

It’s just a simple phrase that I constantly check with myself. And I had to course correct all the time because it’s natural to want to impress but a better way to impress is to focus on blessing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Well, hey, I think we feel blessed and impressed with this conversation, so one makes the other happen.

Stephen Covey
Oh, thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Stephen Covey
Well, I’m biased, I love my father’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I’m in there as green and clean. And I liked how Jim Collins said it about that book, that what the browser did for…it became the user interface that made the internet accessible, because the internet had been around since 1969 or something like that but it was not accessible, it was not usable except for extreme scientist types, but the browser made it accessible.

He describes The 7 Habits, Jim Collins did, as the user interface for human effectiveness. It made it accessible. And it was that for me, and I think it’s that for many others. So, my dad brought together the ideas and languaged it and sequenced it to make it accessible, practical, tangible. And so, that’s, I think, a big contribution. That’s why it’s maybe my favorite book.

I like my own, too, but I’ll let you talk about Trust and Inspire not me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. And is there a particular nugget that you have coined or shared with audiences or your books that gets lots of Kindle book highlights or re-tweets; it’s the Stephen M. R. Covey quote that you’re extra famous for?

Stephen Covey
Yeah, there’s a few. One is that “The first job of a leader is to inspire trust. And the second job is to extend trust.” That’s what leadership is – inspiring trust, extending trust. Another one is, “Treat people according to their potential rather than their behavior.” So, you’re aware of their behavior and informed by it but if you treat them according to their potential, they tend to live up to it far better.

And, finally, one last one, that while we tend to judge others on their behavior, we tend to judge ourselves on our intent. What if we could know another’s intent? I think we’d see them and judge them differently. So, those are a few quotes or expressions that people repeat.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Stephen Covey
You can go to TrustandInspire.com. We’ve got a website for this book, Trust and Inspire. You can get the book. It’s available on bookstores everywhere and, obviously, online through Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com. And then you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn, I’m @StephenMRCovey. I’d love for you to follow me and dive deeper into what I’m calling the new way to lead in a new world.

A new world of work requires a new way to lead – trust and inspire. It’s aspirational, it’s what we want. You said it, I agree. It’s what we want when we’ve experienced it. It’s hard to not feel gratitude toward that and want that. So, my challenge for our listener, I’ll go full circle on this, is I ask the listener to think about maybe someone in your life who was a trust-and-inspire leader for you and what that did to you. So, I’m going to do a 180 on this and say for whom, listener, could you become a trust-and-inspire person? Who could you become that person that would look at you and say, “Pete trusted and inspired me, and here’s what it did to me”?

So, we’ve maybe had someone that’s done it for us. What if we could do it for another? And if you can do it for one, you can do it for many. This is a better way to lead in a new world of work. I think trust and inspire is part of the solution to the future of work. It’s not enough to just deal with the structure and the methodology. It’s the mindset. It’s the style of leadership. And don’t let your style get in the way of your intent.

I think most people’s intent is trust and inspire. I think most of our style, much of our style still falls in command and control. Our style is getting in the way of our intent. And we can change that, we can re-script ourselves, we can learn the skills to lead in a way where we’re very trusting, while also building in control into the trust, into the agreement that we’re building. It’s having control, not being controlling, and that’s possible. We can get good at this.

So, I hope our listeners will find that, the tools, the resources, the book Trust and Inspire to be helpful. I love the subtitle because the subtitle tells it all, which is, “How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others.” This is a book about people and about leadership. Whatever your role, you can apply it as a parent because you want to see the greatness in your children; or as an aunt, or uncle, or grandparent, or godparent. You could apply it as a friend in the community. It’s about unleashing the greatness inside of others. That’s what great leaders do. Trust and inspire.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Stephen, this has been such a treat. Thank you for all you do and for your trust and inspiration. And keep on rocking.

Stephen Covey
Well, thank you, Pete. I feel the same about you. You’re a trust-and-inspire podcaster that’s really trying to focus on helping your listeners succeed, become truly awesome at their job because they know what to do, and you’re helping them succeed. So, commend you and commend what you’re doing here. Wish you every success and also all of our listeners.