David Dye Show Notes Page

David Dye experienced the lowest moments of his leadership during one particular team lunch. The things he was communicating to his team did not feel relevant to them. David realized that he was executing his own vision and did not ask the team what their vision was. Realizing his mistake, David learned that it’s not just about his own vision, but about their vision together as a team. It helped him get over the hump of needing to engage his people. Today, David is sharing his experiences to help other leaders become better versions of themselves and teaching them that together they are able to build something much stronger and much more cohesive.

David grew up in Denver, Colorado and was the oldest of six children in a single parent family. Which, not coincidentally, is where he learned many of his earliest leadership lessons.

He studied political science, education, and has a masters in nonprofit management. He served as a city planning commissioner and then ran for city council at the age of 21 – and was elected.

At the same time, he started his career as a high school teacher, eventually working in human services where he served in every leadership role from volunteer team leader to CEO and Board Member. Those early lessons in influence and leadership were vital preparation for parenthood.

David believes everyone can master the principles of leadership and influence and lead without sacrificing their humanity in the process. One of his greatest joys is helping a leader master a practical strategy they can use right away to help their team be more successful.

Today, David and his wife Karin Hurt own Let’s Grow Leaders, an international leadership and management training and development firm located north of Washington DC. He’s written several books including Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem-Solvers, and Customer Advocates, Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results without Losing Your Soul, and The Seven Things Your Team Needs to Hear You Say.

David and Karin are committed to building clean water Winning Wells to help the people of Cambodia. When he’s not writing or helping leaders, David relaxes by reading, hiking, and a good cup of tea.

Perhaps the accomplishment of which he’s most proud is that one time, he successfully matched every pair of socks in three consecutive loads of laundry.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @davidmdye get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow – Click to Tweet

“If you want your idea to gain a listening ear, make it relevant to whoever you’re sharing it.” – Click to Tweet

“If you want your idea to be embraced and get moving, make sure that it’s doable.” – Click to Tweet

“One of the most important things a leader can do is practically ask questions that create vulnerability for you as a leader.” – Click to Tweet

“Pay great attention to how you’re responding to the ideas you’re hearing.” – Click to Tweet

“We hear ideas everyday, but we’re not always paying attention to them.” – Click to Tweet

“Always start with gratitude for all kinds of ideas.” – Click to Tweet

“If you can respond with regard even to ideas that are out there, you are on your way to building a truly courageous culture.” – Click to Tweet

“We’re going to have good days, we’re going to have bad days, are we moving forward?” – Click to Tweet

“It’s not about being invulnerable to criticism, it’s not about never making a mistake, it’s about taking the best action you can.” – Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Be more confident in your leadership.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Self-criticism

Best Leadership Advice

Have the confidence to lead

Secret to Success

Patience

Best tools in business or life

Listening and understanding people

Contacting David Dye

Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidmdye

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmdye/

Let’s Grow Leaders Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/letsgrowleaders

Let’s Grow Leaders Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letsgrowleaders/

Let’s Grow Leaders YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA76vROsneNZDsHGnasov7A

Resources

Karin Hurt episode: http://www.fastleader.net/karin-hurt-2

Courageous Cultures book website: https://letsgrowleaders.com/courageous-cultures-2/

Show Transcript

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Unedited Transcript

Jim Rembach (00:00):

Okay, fast leader Legion today. I’m excited because we have somebody on the show today. Who’s going to help us put some very important things into practice in order for us to build backbone and greater organizational courage. David dye grew up in Denver, Colorado, and was the oldest of six children in a single parent family, which not coincidentally is where he learned many of his earliest leadership lessons. He studied political science education and has a master’s in nonprofit management. He served as a city planning commissioner and then ran for city council at the age of 21 and was elected at the same time. He started his career as a high school teacher, eventually working in human services, where he served in every leadership role from volunteer team leader to CEO and board member. Those early lessons and influence and leadership were vital preparation for Parenthood. David believes everyone can master the principles of leadership and influence and lead without sacrificing their humanity.

Jim Rembach (01:02):

In the process. One of his greatest joys is helping a leader, master a practical strategy they can use right away to help their team be more successful today. David and his wife, Karen hurt own let’s grow leaders and international leadership and management training and development firm located North of Washington, DC. He’s written several books, including courageous cultures, how to build teams of micro innovators, problem solvers and customer advocates winning well, a manager’s guide to getting results without losing your soul and seven things. Your team needs to hear you say, David and Karen are committed to building clean water, winning Wells to help the people of Cambodia when he’s not writing or helping leaders. David relaxes by reading hiking and a good cup of tea. Perhaps the accomplishment of which he’s most proud is that one time he successfully matched every pair of socks in three consecutive loads of laundry David dye, are you ready to help us go from home?

Jim Rembach (02:05):

Let’s do it. That’s a true story, by the way. Hey, we have to take those many accomplishments because they lead into big ones. Right. That’s all right. Okay. So now I’ve given my Legion a little bit about you, but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better current passion outside of leadership and management development? Right now, I am very focused on bread. I love cooking in general. And so I’ve been expanding my breadwinner repertoire over the last several months. And my favorite right now is a, uh, a seven seated whole wheat loaf. That is just spectacular. And I love that you shared that, uh, in a lot of ways. Uh, first of all, that we, we all need to have, you know, other passions to focus in on in order to give us purpose and value and all of those things.

Jim Rembach (02:52):

So also if you start talking about that activity, you’re being very courageous by experimenting and trying to find that perfect recipe. So it’s so apropos now, today, what I want to do is expand upon a conversation that was started with your wife and business partner and coauthor Karen hurt, uh, that was started, uh, on episode two 78 of the fast leader show. Uh, that is all about, um, building occur, courageous culture. Now Karen focused in on the entire elements associated with awareness and understanding behaviors, identifying behaviors. And for your episode, what I wanted to do is focus in on, okay, now we’re aware and we know, but we have to start doing. And so what ends up happening is that knowing doesn’t necessarily translate to doing so we have to close the gap. All right. So now we know Karen shared with us the knowing part.

Jim Rembach (03:48):

And so you’re going to help with the doing part and which really in the book kind of separates out the difference between prior to chapter 10 and then post or chapter 10 all the way through the end. So thank you for doing that. Uh, so when you start looking at creating that courageous culture, I have some identifications, um, you say that there’s several things that you need. We need to talk about, uh, in order to be able to start implementing practices, uh, and focusing in on new behaviors, right? We’re transforming is that you say, okay, we need to identify how to scale, what works, scaling micro innovations and backer best practices, and then how to find the principles in best practices, localizing the principle, and then refining an idea that just might work. So kind of give us some insight into what we’re talking about here.

David Dye (04:41):

Absolutely. Jim, thanks for having me on the show. Really appreciate it. And I want to capitalize on something you said just a second ago, about the knowing and the doing. I had a soccer coach when I was in second grade, who was trying to get me to perform. And, uh, and I was lousy athlete as a second grader, but, uh, one time he sat me down after a game, he said, David, look, you just gotta run her. And I said, Hey, coach, I know, I know. And he stopped. And he looked at me and he said, David, I don’t care what, you know, I care what you do with what, you know, so let’s dive into some of that, that doing. So when you’re talking about, uh, the scaling and of best practices and everything you were talking about there in terms of principles, uh, it might help to talk about it with some real examples.

David Dye (05:22):

So, um, I remember one time working with a guy who would do these operation rallies, and we tell this story and courageous cultures, but he’d do these operation rallies where he would, uh, you know, have the agenda that every other director would have, but he would, he was a cook. And I mean, when I say cook, he would go hunt his own venison, make his own sausage, grow the herbs in his garden, homemade pasta, I mean Italian heritage. And he just threw down and he would cater self cater. These meals for his operation rallies and his team loved it. They just adored the human touch, the connection and what that meant for, for his team. I was talking with another director in the same organization who just threw up her hands. She said, look, I can’t boil water. I’d rather be a part of his team.

David Dye (06:11):

His teams, our operation rallies are better than mine. And she was making a mistake that many, many leaders make when it comes to innovation and scaling practices and principles and so forth is that she was focused on the practice. His practice was, he was cooking this, this self-made meal for, for his team. That’s the practice. That’s the specific action he was taking. That may not be the action you need to take. You could do the exact same thing. And even if you’re a good cook, it falls flat because it’s not coming from the same heart. It’s not got the same connection and so on. So when we’re talking about practicing the principle here, what we’re, what we’re talking about is figuring out, okay, this is working on a particular team or, or for a leader or whoever it is, what is underneath that? What’s the principle that is scalable, that will translate into different contexts.

David Dye (07:04):

And so for this example, what she wants to do is not figure out how to cook a meal. What she wants to do is figure out, okay, how do I show up personal and connected and invested in my team in a way that’s authentic and real for me, that’s the principle. So in your organization, if you’re looking at your team or if you’re an executive and you’re looking at the entire organization and you see this team is doing something very well and it’s working and they’re getting great results, a mistake that people will often do is they’ll say, wow. So you know, that team is, they’re asking every customer, this question, or they’re having this interaction and they’ll take that practice and immediately say, everyone’s doing this starting today. Everyone’s doing this well, the mistake is you’ve just taken a practice that worked in one context and tried to apply it everywhere.

David Dye (07:52):

And it may not grow there. The soil is different. The people are different. The customers are different. So better is to ask to identify the bet, the principle that’s within that best practice and then replicate and scale that, you know, as you’re talking, I start thinking about this, creating that courageous culture element, you know, and, and what we talked about. And I think it’s appropriate to say on Karen’s episode is, is that, you know, what, what we’re, what we’re trying to do is address this situation where executives are sitting there and saying, Hey, nobody’s talking and giving us ideas. And then the people on the frontline are saying, Hey, nobody listens to my ideas. There’s a huge disconnect now. And both of them are saying things that are about the other groups. And so essentially they both have worked to do executives, have to do a better job of creating the environment and the frontline people. And when I say frontline people, let’s just talk about people who aren’t on the executive level. Sure. They get, as you get closer to the frontline, you’re closer to the customer. And what we’re talking about is the benefactor of all, this is the

Jim Rembach (08:56):

Customer are, should be. Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, so when, when we start thinking about that is at the executive level, creating the culture, allowing the experimentation to occur, like making these different bread recipes, right? So sometimes it’s like, you know what? That didn’t work so well, but an executive also has to be able to take these multiple perspectives, kind of like what you were talking about, not make the mistake of, Hey, everybody does it. Um, and the reason that we do that is because we often haven’t created, created the environment where all of these people were getting all this feedback. We’re gaining perspectives that as an executive, we can say, okay, well, given all these factors and all these perspectives, you know, what is going to essentially be the things that we start doing our testing to see if we can roll it out to everyone.

David Dye (09:42):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so it’s that that process of scaling is, is when you think you’ve identified a principal, something that will work in a variety of contexts, test it, get it in three or four different situations and see if it works the way you anticipated, if it does great, if it doesn’t, uh, is have you revealed that, you know what, this is really only specific to this segment or such situation, or is there another level you need to go a little bit deeper and figure out what that looks like?

Jim Rembach (10:11):

Well, and I, Steven start thinking about that, the frontline level, I could be doing the same thing at that micro you’re talking about that micro innovation component. So if I’m talking about the front line, right? So it’s the people who are interacting with the customer. It’s the people who now have to take, you know, all of that insight and information and feed it up to the executive level. What are some of the things that they can do in that area?

David Dye (10:31):

Sure. So if you are a, a, and as you said, anywhere in the organization, it could be a frontline employee. You could be in a middle level management position, and this still works. Uh, the concept of having an idea, that’s going to get legs and that you’ll be able to run with. Um, we’ve actually created an acronym for that. And it’s one of the more popular tools as courageous culture has been rolling out, but we call it the idea model. And this is a way to vet and think through your ideas to make them as relevant and give them the best chance to get traction and get support and get implemented, which if you’re suggesting an idea is ultimately what you want. So if you are a leader, I invite you to share this model with your teams. And if you are a team leader or frontline person, you know, you can invest in this model yourself and think through your ideas this way.

David Dye (11:19):

So idea is an acronym. Uh, I stands for interesting. And what we mean by interesting is, is it relevant to a current strategic objective? Uh, if you want your idea to gain it, listening ear, make it relevant to whoever you’re sharing with and what’s on their mind. So a quick example, one time I was doing some work with a, uh, uh, senior controller, vice president and, um, an insurance organization. And she was frustrated because her team of accountants, uh, had a morale problem. And she came to talk to me and get some coaching and so forth because she had to the CEO and said, you know, listen, my, my accounting team has a morale problem and we’re frustrated and so forth. And well, what do you think the CEO told her, fix it? Do you have a morale problem? Go fix it. Right. So she said, listen, this is an important issue.

David Dye (12:08):

I gotta figure out how to present myself better. So it took all of 20 minutes to have the conversation and she was able to make her idea interesting. Her next conversation started like this. Um, you know, mrs. CEO, my team has uncovered a way we believe we can save the company $3 million a year, and it’s gonna take just a five or ten second change in the way that we, uh, in process our customers. Would you be interested in hearing more about that? And what do you think the CEO said, then she said, absolutely, come in, let’s grab a cup of coffee. Let me hear all about it. Right. Same exact idea. But the idea was interesting because it was relevant to a strategic objective that mattered to the person she was talking to. So that’s I, is it interesting? Is it relevant? It may be a great idea, but if it’s not on the radar of things that need to happen, now you have less chance of it being embraced D doable.

David Dye (13:02):

This means, do you have agency, are the, the group that you were proposing this idea to, is it within your ability to do something, to take action and frequently we don’t know. So you might have to do a little bit of homework here and find out is this something that the organization can actually take action on? Or is there a, a regulation and at your state or Washington level that, you know, prohibits that, or, or influences it in a particular way. And maybe the doable is that you need to write a brief to somebody to help get that that changed. But can you take action if you want your idea to be embraced and get moving, make sure that it’s doable. It’s something you can, you can do next is so ID he, that he is engaging. And this means is it engaging to other people?

David Dye (13:49):

And this is again about doing your homework about thinking through the other stakeholders. So your idea, if you represent the customer service team might be great for customer service. How’s finance going to think about it, what will happen with it? Have you thought about their concerns, how they would approach it, um, and is there a way to shape it and to craft it in a way to get all of those people on board and address their issues and their concerns upfront, if you do that thinking and do that homework, and you’ve got other people saying, yeah, this is a good idea. And everybody’s nodding a lot more likely you’re going to get traction. And then finally, the, a stands for action. And this is what are the next steps. So when you propose an idea, it may be relevant. It may be something you can do, and it may be engaging to other people close that loop. I say, can, if you like, I do believe this is a good idea. Here are the next two or three specific things we need to do to take action on this. We’ve got to call this person, we’ve got to put this data together and then we’ve got to send it here. And if we’ll do those things, we’ll be, we’ll be on our way. So that’s the idea model. That’s a way to vet and present your ideas. That’s going to help them get traction no matter where you are in the org.

Jim Rembach (15:01):

And I think that is a great framework. And I start thinking about something that from my very young age, we get conditioned to doing, which is a trap of your idea model that I needed to really have some clarity in and is when we start thinking about possibilities. Okay. Um, you know, that gets into the whole divergent thinking process. And I talk a lot about this because it’s something that, unfortunately, like I said, talking about the practice, the practice and the conditioning that we’ve been put to put into a unfortunately causes an issue between divergent, convergent thinking and meaning that we’re conditioned to do it all at one time. And that’s a problem when it started, when you start thinking about creative thinking and innovation, we need to, we need to be very aware, very intentional and separate the two. So if I’m thinking about the idea model, I have to be able to come up with possibilities and separate that out from actually doing the idea analysis. Absolutely. Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about that.

David Dye (16:03):

You know, it’s a lot like any kind of creative endeavor. So I also write, I read a lot and there is an every writing guide book you’ll ever come across. We’ll tell you separate creation from editing. There are two different acts and they use your brain in a different way. And so what we invite leaders to do is to ask the, how can we question? It’s one of the magic questions, and if you’ve got constraints, you have to work within, it’s a beautiful way. And you know, there’s the book called the beautiful constraint, but the idea of, if you’ve got an objective you want to achieve, and you’ve got a constraint that you’ve got to deal with a budget limitation or a personnel issue, or a customer preference, whatever it might be to ask, how can we do this and work within this limitation? And when you combine those and just let your brain start going and thinking it through, that’s where you’re going to get what you’re talking about in terms of the divergent, getting all of the different ideas to come up, then as you start filtering through them, now you shift over to the editing process, the analysis process and thinking through, okay, so that’s a great idea, but to do that, ah, you know, we’d have to change laws in Washington.

David Dye (17:14):

That’s at least five years out. Alright, let’s table that one for a little bit. Let’s see, what do we, you know, we could do that. That would not cost much money. That’s something we could handle. Let me put that on the maybe list. And you know, you’d go, you work through it that way until you’ve got some, some really good pot potential solutions to whatever challenge, problem, or, or obstacle you’re trying to,

Jim Rembach (17:34):

You know, and he’s, even as you say that listening to the, the terminology and the potential framing that could take places, I almost want to stop myself and say, don’t call anything a great idea. You just call it an idea. You know? So therefore we just want all your ideas and no idea is great until we’ve gone through the filtering process. That’s what makes it a great idea is that we now have addressed, you know, the, the doable we’ve addressed, the engaging and they, we had, we Indra, we addressed the whole action component. And of course, um, I don’t think we would even go through this process if it wasn’t interesting. Right,

David Dye (18:11):

Right. You know, and there are different, we talk about in the book too, that in building an infrastructure for courage, that there are different kinds of personalities. There are different kinds of people. And some people are just idea machines. And if you’ve ever had somebody like that in your team or your organization, you know, w they can be like idea. Grenadiers where they’re just coming in and lob and ideas at you that are just 10 a day. And, and they just kind of drop them on, on you and expect you to do something with them. And this can be a helpful framework to get them doing a little bit more thinking, but then you also have people who are the, the silent ponderous types. And these are the folks who tend to do all the analysis in their head, and they will not present an idea until they are convinced that they’ve done the spreadsheet and everything else.

David Dye (18:56):

And that sometimes limits their contributions. It’s self limiting, but it limits their contributions because they don’t share until they’ve got it all thought through. And by the time they’ve got it thought through the team has moved on to 15 other subjects. And so as a leader to help invite those people, you know what, we don’t need to fully bake it out. What we do is to tell you is how can we X, Y, or Z, we have another model that we share called the own, the ugly model, which is a way to help uncover and cultivate these kinds of ideas. So, um, in the context of asking courageous questions, one of the most important things a leader can do is practically ask questions that create vulnerability for you as a leader, you don’t have all the answers. You recognize, things could be better, and you’re confident enough.

David Dye (19:38):

And humble enough to ask the question so own the ugly questions are like that ugly as another acronym, you is, what are we underestimating? Or, you know, are we underestimating our customer? We underestimating our staff. Are we underestimating, uh, the environment? What are we underestimating? A G is what’s got to go, you know, we, as leaders, we spend a lot of time adding, what are we, what do we need to take away? Uh, L where are we losing? Where are we slipping from the performance that we are accustomed to, whereas a competitor, um, getting the better of us, uh, or whatever that, wherever that applies. And then why is one of my favorite questions? Where are we missing? The yes. And where are we missing? The yes. Is looking for those opportunities that are hiding in plain sight. They’re right there in front of us.

David Dye (20:23):

If we can, if we can take a minute to look for them. Um, one of my favorite examples of that was, uh, that was a HBR case study a couple of years back. Uh, it was, uh, a company that made the motors, the replacement motors for like dirt bikes. Um, and they noticed a spike in sales for their motors in India, while they weren’t distributing their bikes in India at that time, what on earth is going on? They want investigated. And they discovered that farmers were buying these replacement motors because they had the right power and set up to power, their localized irrigation. Well, there’s a tremendous yes. Available to them. Right. And so they were able to invest in that. And another more recent example, uh, Kareem, before they were purchased by Uber, um, most of the Uber and like Saudi Arabia and middle East, and they noticed a drop off in passenger ridership.

David Dye (21:18):

Um, and you know, people would ride for a couple of years and then stop riding. I said, well, what’s going on there? They investigated, found out they were missing the yes, because what was happening is that these were younger people who were getting married and having kids well, once they had kids, they weren’t putting their kids and, uh, a creamer and Uber anymore because there’s no car seats it’s not safe. So they started Kareem kids, guaranteed car seat. If you order that car, it’s going to be safe. And they were able to recapture that ridership and serve their customer more effectively because they asked, where are we missing the yes. So those are kinds of questions you can ask specifically to help people generate some of these ideas. And then you follow as you address all this, then you follow up with how can we start addressing this? All of those are ways to engage your people who may be shut down for being a very analytical. And I can be one of those by the way. So I’m talking about things I know help me, like, we’re not solving all of it. We’re just generating right now.

Jim Rembach (22:15):

So as you’re talking, uh, and what was happening when we started this conversation, we talked about the five things that we needed to do. And so we’ve been hitting those as far as, you know, how to scale what works and all of those types of things and refining an ideas. And, and so just to kind of hone it down a little bit, we have the idea model. We have the own, the ugly, we have all of these different tools that we can leverage and utilize, but how, how do we start really making the impact and difference and changing the behavior and creating that more courageous culture. And so we close the gap between the head and the feet, the people at the top that are saying, Hey, people are giving their ideas, you know, and then the people down at the front are saying, Hey, they’re listening to me.

David Dye (22:52):

Yeah. So the, Hey they’re listening to me is so critical. I, and if I had to focus anywhere and I, you know, from coaching a leader and you really want to create a courageous culture, um, after doing the work in yourself, that Karen talked about, the next thing I recommend you do is as you start asking, these questions is pay great attention to how you’re responding to the ideas you’re hearing, because you’re going to hear ideas. We hear them every day, but we’re not always paying attention to them. And we’re definitely not always paying attention to how we respond to them. And so we talk about responding with regard. This is where you reinforce and create the momentum for a courageous culture. Somebody shares an idea. Well, there’s one of four things. That’s typically the case with that idea. Uh, either you can do something with it right away. Um, or it’s already implemented, which in our research, we found out like one organism, big organization, like 50% of the ideas that they were receiving through their suggestion system were already implemented. And we said, are you circling back and ask and telling people that that was a great idea. In fact, it was so great. We implemented it six months ago before you even came up, suggested it.

David Dye (24:03):

They said, no, I guess that would be a good idea. Yes, it would. Because what’s happening to all those people, they’re feeling ignored. They just reinforce that whole idea of doesn’t matter what I say, they’re not going to listen. No, they were listening, but they weren’t closing the loop. So this idea of closing the loop, um, then you’ve got ideas that you can’t implement because they’re, half-baked, they’re off target. They need more. And then you’ve got some ideas that you’re just not going to implement. It’s just not going to happen. So you’ve got those four types of ideas. How do you respond to them? Well, I would recommend you always start with gratitude for all four kinds. Somebody brings you an idea, first words out of your mouth. Thank you for thinking about that with us. Really appreciate you investing some, some energy in thinking about the future of the company, how we’re serving our customers, trying to solve problems.

David Dye (24:51):

Really appreciate that. Now let’s talk about this idea of option one. Yeah. We can do something with this. Um, in fact, here’s how we might go about trialing it. And we talked earlier about a small trial. How can you do that? And if at all possible, how can you involve the person who had the idea in that maybe, maybe you can’t, but if you can, it’s a really great way to get connection and ownership. If the idea was already implemented, tell them, Hey, that was such a good idea. We’ve done that. Here’s where here’s where you can learn more and see how it’s being used.

David Dye (25:22):

If the idea was missing information, it wasn’t as strategically relevant. It was a good idea, except they were missing this whole component or, you know, a classic one. Oh, you know what? We tried that last year and it didn’t work well, tell them why didn’t it work? You know, we did try that last year. Really appreciate you thinking about that with us. And here’s what we ran into. We ran into a budget constraint because, um, your colleagues in this department have this goal and that has to be met. But man, if you’ve got some ideas about how we can, this is the final part, invite them back. So add that information and then invite them to further conversation to keep thinking. And if you can come up with some ways that we can solve that constraint and do what you’re talking about, I would love to hear that.

David Dye (26:04):

And if you get enough people doing that, you got all this parallel processing power that’s out there. And then the fourth possibility is that you’re not going to implement the idea. You’re just not going to, it’s not relevant. It’s not right for your strategy, whatever the case might be. Again, close that loop. Thanks so much for thinking about this with us. So on this idea, here’s the deal. Our strategy is this and our values are this, and this is what we do to serve our customer in this idea, doesn’t really align with at least the way I’m seeing it. It doesn’t because of X, Y, and Z. Um, I love to get more of your ideas that do align with those, that strategy that do help us achieve those outcomes. Thank you again so much. And if you have any more thoughts on this, let me know.

David Dye (26:48):

You know, when you can respond in that kind of a way, even when an idea is kind of out there, they’re, they’re trying, they cared enough. They had courage enough to try. So if you can reinforce that and respond with regard, you’re on your way to building a truly courageous culture, all of the systems, we create, all the questions we ask, all the everything else that we do. If we don’t respond with regard, doesn’t matter. So even as you’re talking, I’m starting to think about the whole responding with regard component and that there’s a whole lot of practices and behaviors that are wrapped around it. I mean, I even think about the whole nonverbal communication thing, right. Um, whether or not we’re on zoom or we’re face to face and there’s proximity. I mean, if somebody starts giving you ideas and then you be paid, non-verbally in a certain way that can cause some issues.

David Dye (27:35):

So, I mean, do you even address that? Absolutely. You know, it’s, uh, I’m, you’re making me think back to one of my worst. It’s easy for me to talk about this, right? It’s like, Hey, this is all this stuff I’ve been thinking about it for forever. But, um, one time my daughter, uh, when she was in middle school, she had done a school project and it was a three dimensional thing she had built and it should put a lot of work into it. And, um, she brought it home and she had it there as I got home from work. And she said, Hey, look, I, I got an a on this project. I said, Oh, that’s fantastic. And I was looking at, I said, wow, you know, what would make this even better? What if we did this? And what if we did this? And she looked at me and she said, why is nothing I do ever good enough?

David Dye (28:25):

Now I have shared that story with her permission a couple of times in different contexts. And she laughed. She’s like, I don’t remember saying that, but yeah, that’s probably right. I probably could have said that, you know, I promise she said it, cause I will never forget that to the day I die. It was heartbreaking. And it was a great wake up call for me that I needed to be paying attention to how I was responding. And so yes, that includes our non-verbals. That includes, you know, like any kind of conversation. Are we on our phone the whole time when somebody is talking with us or do we put the phone down when we’re on a zoom call? Are we making that we were talking to eye tracking earlier today? Are we looking at the camera? We connected with who we’re talking to? Are we paying attention?

David Dye (29:04):

Um, I had, if they were to freeze the camera, you know, and this happens on these zoom calls sometimes if they were to freeze the camera at any given moment is the image of you, a person that looks engaged and interested, and yes, that takes energy, but that’s the energy of leadership you don’t want to lead. And that’s, that’s, you’ve signed up for a different game. And I think that’s a really important point is that, um, you know, that that is a self discovery component and element that I think a lot of people really never don’t really ask themselves that question cause of the answer is not, you know, into the affirmative for everyone yet they end up assuming those,

Jim Rembach (29:42):

Those roles for, you know, other types of reasons that they believe are, are important. You just can’t do that. Okay. So when I start thinking about all this work, that’s your, your, your wife and coauthor and business partner, aren’t doing Karen hurt. And again, we’re going to Lake her episode, which was episode two 78 for the fast leader show to this one, because these two together are critically important. Now, David, I have to tell ya, um, as far as if I, if it was me, you know, approaching those two episodes ladies first, so he has to go first because she built the cow, the foundation for the awareness and all that. And then you have really galvanized it for us in order to be able to put it into practice, but regardless, and all of this, it takes a whole lot of, you know, inspiration and, and energy and focus, uh, with your wife, uh, Karen hurt. We talked about no clarity and curiosity being critically important. Um, and so we need energy for that. And one of the things that we look into the show and did to get that, um, our quotes. So is there a favorite quote that you like that you can share?

David Dye (30:45):

Oh, can I do too? Absolutely. Okay. So these two have been anchor string since childhood really, uh, first as Longfellow, uh, not enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end or way, but to act that each tomorrow finds us farther than today. And so we’re gonna have good days. We’re gonna have bad days and am I moving forward? Uh, and moving forward takes a lot of different ways of, of being, but am I moving forward? And then, uh, my other is from Abraham Lincoln. Um, he said in response to receiving criticism and so forth, and I think this is really pertinent to, uh, courageous cultures and having confidence in sharing our ideas or in leading an organization. He said that if I were to answer every attack that’s made upon me, um, if I were to take that time that this shop, this shop might as well be closed for any other business, I do the very best.

David Dye (31:38):

I know how, and I mean to keep on doing the very best, uh, until the end. And if the end brings me out great, you know, all right, like I did the right thing. Um, all the attacks aren’t gonna amount to anything. And if the end brings me out wrong, 10 angels in heaven, swearing, I was right and going to make a difference. And so his point there is that, you know, you, it’s not about being in vulnerable to criticism. It’s not about never making a mistake, but it’s about taking the best action you can and having the confidence and the humility, um, and moving forward together. So those two go together for me to kind of two sides of the same coin.

Jim Rembach (32:18):

Thanks for sharing another thing that’s important for us as you know, going through this life’s journey and the work that you’re doing, um, cannot do it in isolation of self. And what I mean by that is you learn from your own mistakes. Like you were explaining your daughter and about bringing home the project and all that stuff, Hey, we, we, we’re human. We falter, um, we’ve hopefully learned by those lessons. And one, the ways that we can also learn

David Dye (32:40):

Is by hearing those situations where others have done that. So we call it a getting over the hump. So it was a time where you’ve gotten a little hump that you can share, Oh man. So many, um, the, the one that comes up right now is where, when I first took I, it was my first middle level management leadership position and I was a director. Uh, I was younger than every single person I was supervising. Um, and I believed that I warranted the promotion. I don’t think there is anything wrong with having the position, but, um, and the organization, it was a tough place to be. And I remember a meeting where I took the team to lunch and we, and then we’re having, maybe everybody was exhausted. I didn’t think about these things. I was, I was in my twenties. I was, you know, late twenties.

David Dye (33:32):

I was young and I didn’t know everything I was doing. And I don’t think I’ve had a worst team meeting in my career like ever in my life, everybody was exhausted. The things I was asking didn’t seem or feel relevant to them. I made, and it was near mutiny and it was one of my lowest leadership. What what’s, where, what am I doing? And, you know, I took some time to regather and realize that among the many mistakes, one of them was that I had prepared a vision because as a leader, you got to have vision, right? I had prepared a vision. I’d given it a lot of thought about what the team was capable of, what we could do, amazing results we could achieve.

David Dye (34:14):

And it fell on deaf exhausted ears, because I had not asked a single person on the team about their vision, about what they thought we were capable of achieving what we could do together. And from that point forward, for me, it was one of those wake up calls. And it helped me get over the hump of, I need to engage the people. It’s not about my vision. It’s about our vision together. And I’ve got some components of that and believe me, mine are important. And I was able to take that organization and Doosan, and we did some incredible things together. So my perspective was important. And so was theirs. And together we built something much stronger and much more cohesive and that achieved much more than would have been if it was just mine. And so that was helping get over. The hump for me was in that moment, learning that I couldn’t just come in with my own ideas without talking to everybody and getting there as, and, you know, it’s kind of leadership connection one-on-one, but that was a vital moment for me in a really bad day.

David Dye (35:10):

That’s a great lesson. One that I still learn. I mean, I don’t think some of those things never really changed because you’re also dealing with different team dynamics and kind of like you explained, you have somebody who likes to analyze and here’s a little bit more introverted and all that, and they want to be so competent and their idea. I mean, you have all these different dynamics that changes all the time, and then you have this whole proximity issue that we’re going through right now. And I think that’s a con that’s also part of being courageous and understanding is that this isn’t perfect. Right? Absolutely. And we’re all in process. We’re all in process answered the question just the other day from a leader who said, you know, I, I want to be getting better as a leader and I want to take this course and do this thing and get in all the different activities, but I don’t want my team to think I’m not a good leader.

David Dye (35:57):

And apparently they would interpret the fact that she was working on her own leadership as an admission. I’m not a good leader. And I said, no, you’ve got to own that. Right. Every single person on this team should be growing and improving and moving forward. And, uh, and I’m going to model that and I would never want to be on a team with a leader who thought they had arrived and had nothing to learn. So, absolutely. Uh, I love that. Okay. So now when I start thinking about, uh, the work that you’re doing in Cambodia of building Wells, when I start thinking about, you know, the, the speaking, now that may shift a little bit, but you know, we would talked about building a studio up there and you’re in your office in order to continue to try to make impact absolutely. The writing of the book.

David Dye (36:37):

Um, more books I’m sure to come in the future. But when I think about all of these things that you’re doing, including the bread baking, but I know you have a goal and you have several of them, but is there one that you can share with us in terms of, in terms of the immediate goals? I think one of the things that we want to do is, you know, with this social distancing and everything that’s going on, um, one of our goals is to be able to be as relevant and, and add as much value to every single organization we work with as we can. And so that’s the, you know, that’s the motivation and the meaning behind what we’re doing here. I mean, my, what drives me every morning is helping somebody become the best version of themselves they can be. And, you know, that’s why I do this work.

David Dye (37:20):

That’s why I get up in the morning. It’s why I’m on with you right now is it’s all about helping unlock and help people tap into that best version of themselves. And if we get everybody who wants to leading in a, in a human centered results oriented way, I mean, I don’t think we have an idea yet of what we can achieve together. So that’s part of my goal is I want to, you know, and if you want to go bigger, so that’s the short term you want to go bigger? I always talk about, um, uh, you’re familiar with Dilbert, right? The Dilbert cartoons, uh, Dilbert was one of my earliest textbooks on leadership. I remember in my early twenties, my first management role, I got ahold of a Dilbert, uh, book of Dilbert cartoons. And I started reading it. They’re hysterical on laughing, Scott Adams.

David Dye (38:02):

And I am reading about Scott Adams and he says, you know what? I don’t even have to write these anymore. All the scenarios people send me, it’s easy to get material. And I thought, how sad is that? So one of the things that fuels me as a leadership and development, uh, leadership development management, um, person is someday. I want to create a world where Dilbert, isn’t funny where our grandkids are reading it and go, I don’t get it because the workplace has been so transformed that it’s just not funny. It doesn’t make sense them it’s like who would do

Jim Rembach (38:36):

That? And we’re a long way away from that. We got a lot of human nature to work through and courageous cultures to build, but that’s one of my ultimate goals and the best leader, Legion wishes you the very best. Now, before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor and even better places.

Speaker 3 (38:50):

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Jim Rembach (39:11):

You go Fastly Legion. It’s time for the home.

Speaker 3 (39:15):

Oh, down.

Jim Rembach (39:17):

Okay. David, the hump, they hold on to the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m gonna ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet Reverend responses that are going to help us with onward and upward faster

Speaker 3 (39:27):

For David Dyer. You ready to go down? Ready? Alright. So what is holding you back from being an even better leader today? Self criticism, what is the best

Jim Rembach (39:39):

Leadership advice you have ever received have the confidence to lead? And what is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success? Patients, patients that came from a lot of tough situations and suffering in different relationships and things and seeing how the world actually works. And what do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life, listening, understanding people and what would be one book that you’d recommend to our Legion? It can be from any genre course. We’re going to put a link to courageous cultures on your show notes page as well. Gosh, if you go any genre at all, I still think to kill a Mockingbird is one of the best books out there. Um, so much going on there from a leadership perspective and from a making life better, for everybody perspective and the work that leaders do okay. Fast, literally each. And you can find links to that. And other bonus information from today’s show by going to fast leader.net/david dye. Okay, David, this is my last hope they hold on question. Imagine you’ve been given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you can take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you, but you can’t take it all and only take one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Jim Rembach (40:57):

Oh, I like that question.

Jim Rembach (41:03):

You know, earlier I said the best piece of advice I got was have the confidence to lead. If I could go back and tell my 25 year old self, basically you’re better than you think you are, you know, more than you think you do. And get that confidence earlier. If I could just impart that confidence, uh, I think that would have helped me and a lot of the people I was working with David, I’ve had fun with you. Can you just share with the fast leader Legion? Oh, they can connect with you. Absolutely. You can find me on, uh, at our website is number one. Let’s grow leaders.com.

David Dye (41:34):

I can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter, a search for David M dye, middle initial M. There are a couple of David dies out there. So use that middle initial M and you will find me there.

Jim Rembach (41:44):

David dye. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom. The fast leader, Legion honors you, and thanks you for helping us get over the hump.

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284: David Dye – Taking Action in Creating a Courageous Culture