Louis Carter Show Notes Page

Louis Carter was working for a group of people who locked him in an office to do all of their work until three in the morning. He tried to escape, but the door was locked and there was an alarm in the way. He didn’t have a key and didn’t know the code. He was able to get out with a little help from the police. Through that experience, Louis vouched to never work again for somebody like that. He confronted them and left the group and was able to get over the hump.

Louis Carter was born and raised in Waterford, CT, a small suburb of New London, CT, an even smaller city in Southeastern, CT. He has one sister, and his parents were divorced at age 20.

In his Freshman year at Brown University, Lou’s best friend committed suicide. This experience changed him forever, and he vouched that he never wanted another friend or person to have the same fate as his friend.

As a way to begin this process, Lou transferred to Connecticut College to focus on his long-time studies of Economics and Government with a focus on social systems and how governments form and effect organizational systems and economies.

Lou was always involved as the President of his class, and founder of new organizations on campus at school that fought for the rights of students – to be heard, respected, and understood. When he was hired by the President of the college, Claire Gaudiani, to lead a professor development program, he knew he could make the most change.

In the program, he focused on helping professors respect differences as well as create and drive a positive vision for the future. His first job out of college in his early career, he worked at Gemini Consulting (now owned by Ernst and Young) as a strategic analyst. He quickly found out that this was not bringing him closer to his purpose of helping leaders understand their immense power to influence the lives of thousands of people for the better.

From there, he became a product development specialist at Linkage, Inc., where he became a product development specialist and later became their VP of Research. It was here that he worked with the leading industry experts to bring their work to life – including the late Warren Bennis, Richard Beckhard, and luminaries such as Edgar Schein, Marshall Goldsmith, John Kotter, and Chris Argyris.

He created one of the first global leadership development competency programs. He was able to work with leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu, Senator George Mitchell, Bhenzair Bhutto, Hunter “Patch” Adams, and others who fought for the rights of their people – with grace, compassion, and respect.

This inspired him to write the best practice book series for John Wiley and Sons – which included all of the best-in-class leadership development, learning, and talent management programs and practices from around the world with Blue Chip and Fortune 500 companies like Pfizer, Volvo, Boeing, Corning, Allstate, GlaxoSmithKline, Bose, Motorola, BP, Colgate, Microsoft, the IRS and 100s more.

It was his lifelong purpose to help others create a culture of respect and positive vision of the future that brought him to write his most recent book: In Great Company: how to spark peak performance by creating an emotionally connected culture.

Lou is a family man – and spends as much time as he can with his family – they are an integral part of his life, and he considers them to be his most important legacy. In Lou’s opinion, there is no greater purpose or legacy in life than family, and the support system you build around them – community, teachers, coaches and extended network that develops them to become the very best in life.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

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

“Be careful of what you think because it will affect what you say. Be careful of what you say because it will affect what you do.” – Click to Tweet

“The number one way to collaborate systemically is through co-creation.” – Click to Tweet

“Co-creation means that you have a vision for what you want to create inside of your organization.” – Click to Tweet

“When you have a positive vision, you can move forward a lot better and people all know where you’re going and what you’re doing.” – Click to Tweet

“When people know your values, people align with those values.” – Click to Tweet

“Respect is a currency that you give and get back.” – Click to Tweet

“Friendship for engagement. It’s not about friendship, it’s about respect.” – Click to Tweet

“Great leaders have all the great competencies, and when they have clear vision and collaboration, their outcomes are going to be great.” – Click to Tweet

“Affective commitment is about how we feel when we’re committed. If we are affectively committed, then we want to be at our peak performance.” – Click to Tweet

“For resilient organizations, the one rule they adhere to is embracing failure to leverage the learning.” – Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Invest in stocks and real estate.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Emotion regulation.

Best Leadership Advice

Take it easy, be cool.

Secret to Success

Heart and passion.

Best tools in business or life

Relationships and accountability partners

Contacting Louis Carter

Lou’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/louislcarter

Lou’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louiscarter.bpi

Lou’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louiscarter/

Lou’s website: https://louiscarter.com/

Best Practice Institute: https://www.bestpracticeinstitute.org/

Results-based Culture: https://resultsbasedculture.com/

Resources

Lou’s YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/LouisCarterChange

Show Transcript

[expand title=”Click to access unedited transcript”]

Unedited Transcript

Jim Rembach (00:00):

Okay, fast leader Legion today. I’m excited because I have Lou Carter on the show today and Lou is really going to give us some good perspectives on how we can make it a connection in a, from a, from an organizational perspective, that’s really going to assist in our performance and help us link all that together. Cause oftentimes when we start talking about culture and things like that, we often don’t see how we can actually make it, uh, and how to get those high-performance impacts that we want. Lou Carter was born and raised in Waterford, Connecticut, small suburb of new London, Connecticut, and even smaller city of Southeastern Connecticut. He has one sister and his parents were divorced at age 20, but in his freshman year at Brown university lose breath, boot, best friend actually committed suicide. And it was this experience that changed him forever.

Jim Rembach (00:49):

And he vouched that he never wanted another friend or person to have the same fate as his friend. And as a way to begin this process, Lou transferred to Connecticut college to focus on his longtime studies of economics and government with a focus on social systems and how governments form and affect organizational systems and economies. Lou was always involved as the president of his class and founder of new organizations on campus at school that fought for the rights of students to be heard, respected and understood when he was hired by the president of the college, Claire Gaudium Guardini to lead a professorship development program. He knew he could make a significant change in the program. He focused on helping professors respect differences, as well as create and drive a positive vision for the future. His first job out of college and his early career, he worked at Gemini consulting, which is now owned by Ernst and young as a strategic analyst.

Jim Rembach (01:46):

He quickly found out that this was not bringing him closer to his purpose of helping leaders understand their immense power to influence the lives of thousands of people. For the better. From there, he became a product development specialist at linkage, inc, where he became a product development specialist and later became their VP of research. It was here that he worked with the leading industry experts to bring their work life, including the late Warren Bennis, Richard Becker, and the luminaries shut Edgar Schein, Marshall Goldsmith, John Kotter, and Chris arduous. He created one of the first global leadership development competency programs, and he was able to work with leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu, Senator George Mitchell, Benzir Bhutto Hunter patch, Adams, and others who fought for the rights of their people with grace, compassion and respect. This inspired him to write the best practice book series for John Wiley and sons, which included all of the best in class leadership, development, learning and talent management programs and practices from around the world with blue chip and fortune 500 companies like Pfizer, Volvo, Boeing, Corning, Allstate GlaxoSmithKline, Bose, Motorola, BP Colgate, Microsoft, the IRS and hundreds more.

Jim Rembach (03:01):

It was his lifelong purpose to help others create a culture of respect and positive vision of the future to have brought him to write his most recent book in great company, how to spark peak performance by creating an emotionally connected culture. Lou is a family man and spends much of his time possible with his family and they are an integral part of his life. And he considers them to be as most important legacy and Lou’s opinion. There’s no greater purpose or legacy in life and family and the supporting system you build around them, community coaches, teachers, and extended network that develops them to become the very best in life. Lou Carter, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Louis Carter (03:37):

I love that. I did. Jim. It’s awesome to be here today and thank you so much for having me. I appreciate that. Awesome introduction to it. Thank you.

Jim Rembach (03:45):

Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity and being here on the show. Now I’ve given my Legion a little bit about you, but can you share what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Louis Carter (03:54):

Sure. Yeah. My current pression is working with, um, organizations, especially healthcare clinics and really helping them to, uh, to grow and uh, come from sort of from here to there, right? Because healthcare clinics and healthcare right now today, they are in a very challenging position because patients are coming back and they there’s, uh, elective surgeries that people aren’t don’t feel that comfortable doing. And a there’s also COVID and pandemic that they’re dealing with. And we have to look ahead. So it’s the healthcare clinics that are creating those external collaborations and the leaders at the top. We’re really doing extraordinary things to get those clinics back up and running. So my passion is working with those Todd, the CEO, CFO, COO. I just love it and their board and bringing them to a place where they can create awesome practices to serve patients to their best possible level.

Jim Rembach (04:51):

Well, needless to say, that’s a very important mission that you currently are undertaking. And for me, when I started Lexton going through the book, I didn’t have that context. So thanks you for sharing. And I think that brings things on a very, very different light, um, because oftentimes we have a separation, especially in those environments, you know, because we have the pressures of all the finance elements, you know, with the caring elements and that, that, that oftentimes creates a whole lot of friction that we don’t want to have. But you talk about four very important benefits of emotional connectedness and they are that it fulfills intrinsic needs. It makes emotional intelligence more actionable. It creates psychological safety and it drives discretionary effort. Now, how did you come up with these four?

Louis Carter (05:40):

Yeah, so we, we did a survey and a bunch of primary interviews, a bunch of surveys and ask people, what is it that’s going to make you love your workplace and do even more that’s the voluntary discretionary effort. And then the psychological safety came in because they said, well, how am I to create moral? I’d feel safe talking and why it’s that I’m not harmed or lose my position if I don’t, if I don’t, uh, if I say the wrong things and it wasn’t just about psychological safety, it’s that intrinsic reward system that’s intrinsically what will drive me to do these things. And what we’ve found that drives people to do, things has more to do with practices and behaviors, things that you do and others do around you that enable you to really just skyrocket. And in the absence of these behaviors, you can’t, it doesn’t matter how great of an accountant you are upgrade of a technology technologist. You are strategist just doesn’t matter if you don’t have them, your team suffers your organization suffers

Jim Rembach (06:43):

Well and you, and to give it justice. I mean, in the book, you actually break down all of these particular elements, these four now benefits, and you go into that detail to a greater degree. But here’s the thing that I find quite interesting in what you shared though, is the whole whole self-reporting element of, you know, what I feel. And, and even if why I feel it. So how do you actually prevent people? Just saying things that they may think is the right thing to say without actually connecting with them as an individual?

Louis Carter (07:16):

Hmm. So a lot of people have, they have two responses or two ways of thinking. Some are physical thinkers and others are more cognitive focused and they actually have to think through things before they say them. So physical thinkers just immediately blurt things out and they’re reactive and this kind of self reflection, self reflection, self awareness of how they’re talking and how it has an effect on the others is an enormously, incredibly important competency to have to be emotionally connected because it allows us to take us a breather, a meditative step to download information. And there’s known to be terabytes of information that comes into your brain all at once from you share information terabytes, you think about those no longer can give gigabytes terabytes. And the question is, how do we do, how do we take that information and then give it to you, give it to others that are, that are hearing us in a simple way. So we’re not just reactive thinkers, we’re thinkers who can take a tremendous amount of data and provide it back in a simple way that other people can receive it, just so that it’s not so harmful or hurtful, even

Jim Rembach (08:30):

Really interesting that you say that. Um, because for me I’m like, okay, you’re data driven, right? You’re all about analytics and understanding the analytics and being able to use them in order to be able to affect these drivers. Right. Um, be able to go in and modify certain behaviors. I mean, all of those types of things. So what I was referring to and your response or what I was necessarily looking for. So that’s why I’m asking a different way. And I appreciate you allowing me to do that is I’m asking somebody, these things in regards to what would fulfill your interest. I mean, all of those things and for us as individuals, a lot of times we can’t necessarily, you know, know why, right. We can, we don’t understand that. So how do you make sure that your data isn’t tainted, um, because, and start doing something that really isn’t going to have impact. Yep.

Louis Carter (09:20):

So, so we have something called the ladder of inference. So, uh, and, and, uh, were you in the middle and sort of the bottom of the ladder is, is data. It’s raw data. It’s things that we hear. It could be anything. This is why I’m here. You know, I’m saying something to us and it’s things that we just automatically take. And it just that thousand people in their own mental models can take it different ways. And you walk up the ladder and you suddenly you get to environment, right? That’s some of the things that you believe in sort of environment. And you’ve been talking about and, and judgments and search kinda the judgment portion. If he gets to know how you grow up and what are, what are the things that, uh, affect your perceptions and, um, and your experiences. And, um, those kinds of things have impact and often they’re triggers.

Louis Carter (10:09):

So these are triggers that you’ve had from inside of your life that can trigger a response in your mind. And to calm that response is very important because they affect your judgment, which affects your actions. And one of my good friends, Frances Hesselbein once I was at a meeting with her, she’s a former CEO of girl Scouts of America. She came out to me. I don’t know why she did this, but I was sitting there at the meeting. She says, be careful of what you think, because they’ll affect what you say, be careful what you say, because they affect what you do. And she came in and she’s, she’s 102 years old, by the way. And she sit her in my ear and I went like that. I couldn’t believe it. I said, Oh, she’s talking about the letter of inference. It’s like, I put it in the book and it affected me. It touched me because I know think that when I have experiences, when something, I say, well, maybe this is triggering me. Maybe I need to think of it in a different way. Maybe need to expose her open myself.

Jim Rembach (11:11):

Oh, thank you for sharing that. Okay. So then what we’re, what you’re talking about is by having those four benefits that actually result in five elements that spark a peak performance, and it’s an acronym. So it’s systematic collaboration, positive future alignment of values, respect, and killer achievement. And so again, I have to say that this is probably evidence-based right.

Louis Carter (11:37):

It is evidence-based exactly. And, and one of the things that it, it came from, it was spark from, was an experiment by Arthur Aron’s, um, BA back a long while ago, seventies, it was called the love experiment. And, uh, the love experiment was when two people come together and they basically look at each other, not too long after three minutes, it starts to get kind of freaky. Uh, but, uh, for, for both three or four minutes, really, and then they ask each other a series of questions and those questions largely have to do with these five areas that came up in the survey. When we asked, what’s going to make you feel really comfortable and want to produce even more for your company. So this, these questions, these five areas are very much attributed to work or attribute to life are attributed to any environment that you’re in and I can go through them and explain them for you

Speaker 3 (12:36):

Most definitely.

Louis Carter (12:38):

So, so I’ll start it out. The first part of it is systemic collaboration. And in our lives, we have a family, we have extended family, we have coaches, we have people all around us and that’s part of our system and how we collaborate with them. And we listen and we give, and we form alliances and structures. And we’re very honest and open about what things are, and being also generous with our humor, or even if we need, if we need to in a way, and being kind of just, uh, there for people on a, on a, on a personal level and resonate with them is all as part of systemic collaboration. So if you approach that for your company too, it’s the same, right? So if you’re CEO of a company, you form relationships with other, perhaps even competitors, people who could, uh, who you can help to get even to a higher level because of the reality that they need to, uh, they need to come to terms with, or they should come to terms with.

Louis Carter (13:36):

And that often happens. Um, and also for people who are part of the extension, essentially on the side of the government or local, all these relationships that happen. And then inside the company, how does the board work with the executive team, the executive team with the different divisions, all the way down to the magic middle of the company and to the, and to the customers themselves. So these are, this is the system. This is how we collaborate. And the number one way you collaborate systemically in our, in our world of, in great company, emotional connectedness is co-creation, co-creation means that you have a vision and that’s the second part is his positive future. You have that positive future, that vision for what you want to create inside of your organization or inside your family or your life. And that is very clear. You present it, you create it with others through inquiry, questions, and advocacy, advocating what you want your future to be what that inner diamond is really of what that future should be.

Louis Carter (14:39):

And that becomes what you create within your system, in your strategy for your system. I’ll talk a little bit more about that, and you can go through the five and I can explain it a little more. Um, so you, if you look at that, that inner diamond, that kind of where you’re at, what your vision is, think of a example of a case for it. So Hugh bear Jolie is the CEO of best buy, uh, when Spencer Stewart brought them in, brought him in, uh, that’s my children. Uh, do you want me to pause it for a second? And I, can you hear them? Uh, let me just tell them, tell my wife, Hey, paint a second.

Louis Carter (15:26):

So one of the parts that we were talking about was positive future and Hubert. Julie is the CEO of best, who was a CEO of best buy. He was brought in by Jim Citron, from Spencer Stuart, who is a CEO executive search consultant. And Jim looks for one thing when he brings in new CEO’s vision. If you have a really strong, compelling vision that will bring the company from here to where they want to go, which is essentially a best buy. They wanted to go from being a showcase to being profitable because the best buy people were coming in, they looked like a showcase, a showroom. They were taking pictures and looking at barcodes, and then they were looking up on Amazon and other places and figuring out, I don’t really need these things or buy these seats here. So who bear said, I’ve got a vision for the board.

Louis Carter (16:13):

And he said, this said, I want to make you and everybody here, a community I want to, I want to create a way for us to help our customers and for them to stay in the store as long as we can, so they can make a possible purchase and not leave the store, find a better price, but be with us as a community, created the geek squad, of course, and everybody knows, and the rest is history. They’ve been, become very successful and profitable as result. Same is true of positive vision. When you have this positive vision inches, the key and the spark, you can move forward a lot better, and people all know where you’re going and what you’re on, what you’re doing.

Louis Carter (16:54):

Go to the AA, right? So the alignment of values. So planet value is important because when people know your values, especially at the top, and they know what you respect and what your, your boundaries are and what you want in life and what, and how you, and what, you know, your strengths as well, what your strengths are and areas you can improve on. So you’ve had, self-awareness people align with those values and the right people come as well. And it’s easy to spot people who do not align with those values so that we can help them either develop those values as competencies, actual behaviors, or choose. Maybe it’s not the right place for them. And that’s okay, no guilt, no blame. So always no guilt mode blame. We find places where we should be, and we’re where life is good for everyone. And I would say that you have to create a world of work where everyone wins.

Louis Carter (17:44):

So that’s alignment of values. My values align with your values. We find out a commonality in this, in a spark relationship and a spark conversation. It’s always there, whether it be, this is something I share, this is something you share could come from our background, could come something from your family, my family, something I’ve experienced, you’ve experienced that kind of commonality, same thing for studios, same thing for really anyone in relationships. So the, the R is, is a, is a fun one. Uh, and I get a lot of questions about it because there’s so much controversy over respect, which is funny. It’s, it’s an enormous, it’s like one of the biggest possible subjects. We’re actually, we’re going to call the book respect because we had so much consternation and questioning about it. And here’s why there, we’ve seen so much question about it because people’s definition of it is very different.

Louis Carter (18:38):

So they say, well, I expect respect, right? And I have to have respect before they even give respect. And we found that respect is actually a currency, something you give and then get back of. And we also found it to be there’s reciprocal as a system, you give it, you get it. These aren’t, these are very, uh, you know, complex topics, right? We give respect, get respect here for years, but happening since the beginning of time during, you know, Machiavelli eye for an eye to the right or the history of time has happened. What’s different though about it is that we took the concept of friendship as being needed for engagement, which we don’t. We’re not about engagement in this book. We’re about doing more and feeling more connected and actually creating peak performance friendship for engagement. It’s not about friendship. It’s about respect. And the example is Jackie Robinson was greatest baseball player of all time.

Louis Carter (19:34):

We know you’re a coach too. So you, I believe he was like, we’re created spiteful players all the time. When he was, when he played baseball, people threw tomatoes at him. They booed him. They were disrespectful of him. And he started, he started hitting that ball and making home runs. And he was one of the best baseball players of all time. You know what though? Jackie said to him, I don’t care if you’re my friend, you have to respect me. And that’s the one thing we talk about here is you respect me for who I am and what I, and the fact that I work hard and affect you. You don’t have to go out with me for drinks later or tea, whatever your training, whatever liquid you drink there, just respect me and I’ll go home and I’ll live my life. So that’s what respect means at a deep level for individuals like Jackie was, I like to talk with Jackie in a way to kill her outcomes is really about how, what we do as individuals and what we do as a company, we have to really connect these things.

Louis Carter (20:30):

So as an individual, if I’m the head of accounting, I want to get my numbers in correctly and accurately really it at the end of the day, if that doesn’t happen, there’s gotta be reasons for it. Relationships, collaboration. It’s not a clear vision and understanding of what my values are. All those things are off chance. So that’s why your numbers aren’t coming in well. So that’s, that’s really about outcomes is that it can be misaligned when all those other things are, are not aligned, right? So the same with a COO or CEO, great seat CEO’s, or have all the great competencies and CEOs, and they have that clear vision and collaboration, their outcomes are going to be great. They’re going to get, do great demos. They’re going to get, they get the best possible customer outcomes, same with CEOs, great strategy, great vision, great financial outcomes. That’s it spark.

Jim Rembach (21:23):

And you know, I think you said it several times, so we probably need to hone in on it. And you talk about, you know, leading and being a leader in all of this. And you talked about both individually and collectively, and you mentioned about an emotionally connected leader. They actually have five different elements. Um, they have the systemic collaboration, um, the positive future, the alignment of values, the respect, uh, and then also killer achievement. And, and, you know, you’ve mentioned in sparks some of these things and some of these things, it creates that, uh, or enables, you know, the spark to occur. But, but they’re all important obviously, right. But when I start thinking about, Hey, this one carries heavier weight. I think I know the answer because you kind of talked about it a little bit, but which one is it and why?

Louis Carter (22:12):

Yeah, it’s funny. Like I see it, actually, we always said that there are variables that are all, you know, equally weighted and we equally weighted them in the way that we created the survey. So ideally or scientifically they’re supposed to be all equally weighted. So, so now if you’re going to ask me qual like qualitative me, like which one I think is the most important, that’s a lot different. So I definitely think it’s the respect. And I think it’s about that kind of, that aspect of, you know, what are, what are, what are my values because it runs into everything, right? So the respect is necessary with collaboration with co-creating it’s respect is important for values as well for aligning our values, because we need that established that in order to even get to the second line there. And then, you know, the, the, the aligned values, the positive vision of the future, we still gotta get the respect to get there. And then the outcomes, right? So it’s, it’s really about internal respect, others, respect, group respect, organizational respect, customer respect. It all comes down to that. And respect comes a really is fall usually cause lay, you know, love, appreciation, emotional connectedness, because if I get that very baseline, I can start to formulate deeper, deeper emotions, just like in a relationship.

Jim Rembach (23:37):

Okay. Well, as you’re talking for me, I mean, there are several, you know, light lights that were going off in regards to that. But before I get to that, um, you know, having worked for organika working, worked for an academic for 15 years, you know, the whole multivariate analysis and being remembering what are key drivers and all the becomes important. So even if I have that equal waiting, you know, and I don’t know if you, you, maybe you answered it in a, in a non, uh, analytic way, but there has, there had to be statistically significant, you know, significant impact. And you’re saying, it’s respect.

Louis Carter (24:11):

I am, I really am saying it because if, if we want, we get into the science of it, which is there’s, there’s three things, just psychological safety, organizational, citizenship behaviors, and something called effective commitment. And those are the three scientific concepts with people are interested in the psychology of it that really impacted it. Um, and if you look at those three concepts, there’s one that really kind of blares out, um, psychological safety. You do need respect for it, but the other one is effective commitment. And if you looked up a effective AFF E C T S E effective, the commitment I, uh, to two people admire now, and back in 1991, like, you know, we don’t people who we don’t even know, know who these people are. They’re able one of the most significant studies, I think, in the history of organization development. And they said that effective commitment is how do we feel when we’re committed?

Louis Carter (25:10):

Right? So if we are affectively committed, it means we want to be there. It means we feel respected. We want to be there. We want to be at our peak performance, however, when we have normative. So it’s a three part model it’s effective. Is it the, kind of the best you have normative and commit and continuance normative is this kind of, kind of interesting, it’s kind of a little bit, people have a psychiatric condition to use as normative because it’s the truth. It’s like they’re saying to themselves, they have kind of this ritual thing where it’s like, if I’m not here, something bad will happen to me. That’s what they’re thinking. If I’m not here, something bad will happen to me. And that I, this, I have to keep the norm the status quo and less harm myself. I was going to be harmed. Then there’s continuance, which is continuous is have to cause that’s the only job I have.

Louis Carter (26:06):

I have to continue here. So both our two are forced. And we talked about even, and we talked before about my background, you know, what, how people feel when they’re forced, when they’re coerced into a position. And I think, uh, you know, if you looked at, you know, just depression and we look at people who feel out of control today, they don’t feel like they have control of their lives. It’s largely because they feel forced into something or that they have to be somewhere. And there is chief affective commitment. They have to have a community, or even if it’s three people and they don’t go to other to people, it doesn’t matter that respect them. And if you, and then if you open up into a larger sort of community where respect, isn’t thought of continuously or other things might be on their mind, they may be some other places on the ladder of inference, probably hundreds of places in the letter of inference.

Louis Carter (27:04):

Now we’re in trouble. So the deeper you go into community and you start getting the help from either social help or other help from an external’s. The, the less that, that risk, that the more that respect flattens and lessons can’t happen. It’s one of the most dangerous things for people that can happen today, happens with vets. It happens with people who are, who have severe depression and people who really need deep help and, um, caregivers, uh, people in organizations, leaders need to know the immense power they have. And, um, in, in, in other people’s lives,

Jim Rembach (27:50):

I think that responsibility is quite massive. Um, but, uh, and I think, you know, the whole high performance thing, um, when you start looking at all of this and being able to create this, and you said it early on is, you know, you, you talked about, you know, the customer and the customer experience and the high performance. So how, tell us how all of this actually does impact the customer.

Louis Carter (28:12):

So one of the first people I’ve talked to in this book was, uh, Amar Bose. He, and he, so the, uh, and, uh, Mar I knew him back when I was at linkage. And, um, so, uh, and one of the things Boz really talks about is this feeling that a customer has with their, I have one on this, a Bose headset with their Bose headset. They love it. They feel an emotional connection to boats. People wonder why is this well, the design, the feeling, the values, it’s everything. It’s the respect for brand it’s respect for excellence, whether it’s the best decibels, musical, uh, audio experience in the world. I’m not sure, but something tells me it probably is. I don’t have my ears. Aren’t that trained? I’ve had swimmer’s ear for about it know for a long time. Cause I splint, but I’m not. So I’m not really certain.

Louis Carter (29:08):

These are the best, but I love them. Some people don’t know why. I’m not sure why, but I love them. And, uh, it seems like the best. So I think a lot of us are like that. We go to certain brands, we use certain brands because there’s an emotional connection to those brands and the same thing, really for why we choose to work for companies. There’s an emotional brand for these big names, for Apple, for Google, for, you know, for Twitter. You know, if we can all stay from home, they’re massive brands. I really want to work for them. I have to work for them or even our institutions in our, in our United States and things. We’re working for the army, the Pentagon, Oh, wow. I have, I have further a clout or something of that nature. These are things that define us in as a, as a, as an individual, and then define us in, in who we are, what we buy, where we, where we work. And that’s why the emotional connectedness comes in. It’s hard to, it’s really, it takes a lifetime to create that emotional brand. And, uh, and, and when you do it, um, it has to be done carefully, has to be done with a lot of investment. Um, and you’ll see the biggest brands have the most investments buying them.

Jim Rembach (30:30):

I mean, that’s a very, very key and important point. Um, but if I’m sitting there and I have a small work group right now, I’m in a contact center, I’m a supervisor and I have a team of, you know, 10, 15 people. And gosh, now they all been thrust into being remote, probably. Um, you know, how do I, how do I actually create all of this emotional connectedness and how do I even break through some of the fear and all of those insecurity issues and trust. I know I have trust now issues with all of humanity, right? I mean, I was talking to somebody earlier today and they’re like, you know, I’ve been stuck in my home in New York city for a long time. And she goes, and I hear all this stuff going outside. And she goes, I’ve never been this afraid in my own home. It’s like, how do you,

Louis Carter (31:15):

Yeah, that’s it. So I’ve heard a lot of, uh, ways that we can start to build trust with people. And one is the, your internal confidence, inner confidence. So one of the resonance of our voice, the way that we come through the cadence, the belief in product, the connection you have to your product and your brand has to come first. All of that has to come from you. And if that doesn’t come through, if people can’t hear it right now, they’re not going to believe you. You have to make things very simple for people right now. There’s so much noise. There’s so much noise out there. We have to knock out the noise and begin to say, this is all you need to do. This is the value. Be very distinct about the value and then help them through it, help people. The hardest part of people, both buying and being served today is helping.

Louis Carter (32:19):

So being a servant leader, that leadership style is more important than ever serving people first, putting people first, helping people first, not and giving them your full attention and presence, that it will win every a hundred percent every day. If you focus on that presence, that resonance that value and folk, it really gives your full self. I guarantee you’ll win every day. Take it. It’s a daily practice though. You have to ask yourself, did I do my best today to do that? And if you did not do it again tomorrow and you’ll do your best tomorrow, every single day, that’s what I’d say to context centers.

Jim Rembach (33:04):

Well, I mean, being someone who is certified in emotional intelligence, I mean your emotional intelligence is all wrapped up in your book and it’s vitally important. And one of the things that’s also important for us in order to be, to connect emotionally that we use on the show are quotes. Is there a quote or two that you like that you can share?

Louis Carter (33:23):

One of the things that I love about emotional intelligence in general is that [inaudible], as you know, was built on two things, really, when you come down to it, the emotional regulation and empathy, if you really broke it down, right. And it would so that if I were to say, what emotional connectedness is, is emotional connectedness is emotional regulation, empathy. Plus that added extra connection between individuals in the organization. So you’re going at, beyond the EEI, you’re going beyond empathy and emotional regulation is so important, by the way, I believe it’s one of the most important competencies possible to create psychological safety in the universe. Daniel, Goldman, and Rubin Baran were completely right in that. And they were so important in doing that. And they connected to neuroscience. And one day you have Elon Musk said, and in a recent, in a recent podcast, Joe Rogan, he said, we’re going to have a chip in our brain, literally in five years, that will create new neural networks for us to re to become more regulated and more connected. And we’re able to meditate to before making really important decisions. So, you know, this rewiring of, of our universe of people to beat, to create more emotionally intelligent, emotionally regulated, empathetic, um, connected decisions is what we all really need.

Jim Rembach (35:12):

So he didn’t give me my quotes though. Lou,

Louis Carter (35:17):

Do you want a coat for my book? Okay. Well from the book, hold on a second, let me get it

Jim Rembach (35:23):

Awesome response. And I don’t know if I want a bore hole in my head to put in the probes that Musk is talking about, however, that crazy, you know, and I don’t want to say never, especially with an Elon Musk.

Louis Carter (35:38):

Um, gosh, I think he’s on the road. He just put that he just put that spaceship into orbit there and he, he’s done incredible things with those Teslas. And now he’s going to put a chip in her head crazy. Who’s going to be the first person. I like the neuro renewable bundling. So my favorite quote, I like this one. So, uh, this is actually okay. So this one was from my killer achievement chapter on page one 82. And we’re talking about failure parties that Intuit had, right? So they had, they hosted failure parties and P and G had, it has its, you know, heroic failure award. And, uh, so it’s, it’s the, it’s the courage to fail and learn from our failures. And so, so, uh, and, uh, WL Gore is actually a neat one. Um, cause they have one, this is action is prized.

Louis Carter (36:36):

Ideas are encouraged and making mistakes, his views, if you’re just part of the creative process. So that’s a cool one. So the quote that I said, because you wanted me to quote myself, right? The quote I said is for resilient organizations, the one rule they all adhere to is embracing failure to leverage the learning well, and talking about the embracing, the failure thing, we have to do that a lot. Um, and in order to be able to move forward, when we talk about getting over the hump on the show, is there a time where you’ve gotten over the hump that you can share time I’ve gotten over the hump? It’s probably been a lot of those times. Uh, let’s think about time I’ve gotten over the hump.

Louis Carter (37:22):

Well, I think if we’re talking work life, especially, I would say it was when I quit my first job and I quit it and I, I remember doing it because of, you know, and, you know, look, I, I have failure too in this because I had failure to communicate and formulate, uh, deep relationships in that company. But, uh, wait. So I want to know they’re all Harvard people, right? So it was not a Harvard guy, so they immediately excluded me. And uh, so they all went out to for drinks one night and, and uh, they locked me in the office to do their work until three in the morning. I had a lot of work to do cause it was everybody’s heart. So I went downstairs and I wanted to, I opened, tried to open up the door was locked and there was the alarm that was in my way. That was one of the humps in my way. So I didn’t know the key. I know the code, I didn’t have a cake. So I had to call up the owner said, Randy, I’m locked in the office and I don’t have the key or code. What do I do? He was a little bit too drunk to answer me. So I had to, I had to stay a while longer and the police had to help to bring me out.

Louis Carter (38:57):

And I’m I vouched at that time that I would never work for somebody like that again. So I was a little reactive, I think in the moment instead of really making friends with them. I said, I went marching into his office and I went over the hump. I tell him how I felt and I left. That was the, and, and I joined another company that was very respectful and he gave me the opportunity to provide products and do them and create products with them. And they made me their VP of research within four years. And I flourished had wonderful people there who were very kind and very, uh, really kind. And I made up all the greatest friends. Y’all from UNH are nice people. It was when I was younger. It was 25 years ago. Now from UNH, some reason I got along with people from people, the people from UNH and not Harvard.

Louis Carter (39:42):

So go figure they’re very down to earth. And I liked that. So that was the major hump in my life career wise. But when I think about, you know, a lot of the things that you have going on in the work from this book and you and I also have talked about some, you know, your, your family dynamic and, um, you know, the focus that you have there and importance of that need and mentioned some of it in your bio, but you’ve have a lot of things going on. But if I was to talk about one goal, you know, what is one goal you can share with us? The one goal that I I’ve always wanted in my life is to, is to get a Lake home and be totally honest. That’s where I’m looking at. And I know many years have said this I’ve been boating since I was a kid and I haven’t had a boat for 25 years and I’ve w and I’m getting older now.

Louis Carter (40:35):

And, uh, so, you know, family grow up and there’ll be, you know, 10, 15, whatever it might be when they get older, probably to get 10, 15 years, I want to have a Lake house. I want to have a boat. So I kinda put together a plan for it. Um, and a boat savings in the boat, um, how I can invest properly. And so I can make that in a 10 year timeframe and I’m very dedicated to it. So that really is my goal. Uh, and I can’t give you anything about, I’m not going to give you anything like about, you know, saving world peace. And, uh, I want to get a boat in a Lake. That’s the honest truth. That’s good man wishes you the very best. Now, before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

Speaker 4 (41:20):

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Louis Carter (41:34):

Relationships with their colleagues and your customers to learn more about an even better place to work visit [inaudible] dot com forward slash better. Alright, here we go. Fast leader Legion. It’s time.

Speaker 5 (41:46):

Oh God.

Louis Carter (41:47):

Okay. The hump day, hold on is the heart of our show. Lou, where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust. The Reverend responses are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Lou Carter, are you ready to it?

Speaker 5 (42:01):

Read out, ready to hold down, get ready. Ready?

Louis Carter (42:04):

What is holding you back from being an even better leader today? It’s probably a motion regulation, not regulation. I work on it every day. What is the best leadership advice you have ever received? Uh, take it easy. Be cool. And what is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success? Heart, heart, heart, and passion. What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life relationships and it accountability partners. And what would be one book you could recommend to our Legion? It could be from any genre. Of course, we’re going to put a link to great company.

Louis Carter (42:54):

So everywhere it’s, I can’t say in great company or any of my other books, I can’t say change champions, field guide. I’ll give you, I’ll give you one of my friends. I’ll get you another book. So the book that I think everyone should read, and I think it’s important for every leader to read it because you, everybody, because it, and I’m going to say just why just real quick. And I know it’s, this is the me around it is called the outcomist by Paulo Coelho. I love it because it talks about the fact that we are already home and we don’t need to venture out too much. We can do our work from home and stay focused on our goals here.

Louis Carter (43:35):

Okay. Fast religion. You can find links to that. And other bonus information from today’s show by going to fast leader.net/lou Carter. Okay. Lou, this is my last Humpday. Hold on question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you can take the knowledge and skills that you have no back with you, but you can’t take it all and only choose one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? By Apple? I would definitely buy Apple. I would buy real estate more real estate. Um, I re I would defend my portfolio would be different 25. I would know about the subprime mortgage crisis. So I would begin to buy out in 2012. It would be, it’d be literally I tell everybody right now. I mean, I don’t, I’m not giving it. I’m not an RIA.

Louis Carter (44:22):

Um, I think right now is the most important time to focus on, you know, if I was telling my 25 year old self, this focus, your real estate, focus on your investments. Um, focus on your tenure plan, because if you let that go, you know, 10 years, it’s, you’re just gonna be focused on your career. Your career is important. And in finances, you gotta, you gotta balance that careers, not enough jobs, not enough. Don’t forget about yourself and the legacy you’re providing to your family and to others, you can do a lot with it too. You can give it away to others to help them do things like philanthropy and has so many. It just has so much possibilities

Jim Rembach (45:04):

I’m with you today. Can you please share with the fast leader Legion, how they can connect with you? Can I save me?

Louis Carter (45:10):

Louiscarter.com. My name is spelled L O U I S. Carter in French version.com. Come to see me there at https://www.bestpracticeinstitute.org/, I own a company called best practices. She checked me out there or https://resultsbasedculture.com/. It’s another one. Throw all three. Thank you for sharing

Jim Rembach (45:27):

Your knowledge and wisdom. The fast leader, Legion honors you, and thanks you for helping us get over the hump.

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288: Louis Carter – Leading Great Companies and Sparking Peak Performance