Chris Edmonds

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more. 

Okay Fast Leader Legion I hope you’re up and ready to move because that’s what our guest today has been doing for organizations for a very long time. Chris Edmonds was raised in Long Beach, California in the 1950’s. He grew up in a typical neighborhood with his dad, who ran a mortgage company, his stay-at-home mother and his brother nine years older than Chris. Like any little brother Chris annoyed his brother Jim for years quite effectively. Chris was an active kid he served in Huntington Beach, played guitar, went to YMCA camping summer and played football to his high school. He went to Whittier College and despite spending a great deal of time chasing a record deal earned a degree in education. Rather than join his father’s mortgage firm, which his father encouraged him to do desperately, Chris became a YMCA executive. 

In his 15 years of YMCA leadership, Chris led high-performing teams of paid staff and volunteers, manage several national projects, experienced his worst boss ever and thankfully enjoyed his best boss ever. Hs best boss, Jerry Nutter demonstrated servant leadership in daily interactions. Jerry’s teams were high-performing, values aligned and incredibly fun. Jerry’s approach form the foundation for Chris’s understanding of the importance of culture in organizations and how leaders can build safe, inspiring, productive work cultures. Chris opened his consultancy firm in 1990. Chris helps leaders create and maintain high-performing, values aligned teams, department, businesses and companies. He’s also been a senior ion with the Ken Blanchard companies since 1995. Chris is the author of seven books including the Amazon bestseller the Culture Engine and he’s one of Inc. magazine’s 100 great leadership speakers. Chris and his lovely bride of 36 years Diane live in Conifer Colorado at 8400 feet above sea level with their flecked coat retriever Shady, the wonder dog. Chris Edmonds are you ready to help us get over the?

Chris Edmonds:    I’m so excited I can at steady Jim it’s delightful to join you and the legion here today. 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for being here Chris. Now I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we get to know you even better?

Chris Edmonds:    You know my current passion is truly to help leaders craft a workplace where people are treated with trust, respect and dignity. And it’s all encompassing, all consuming, it’s what I think about constantly and it is almost a framing through which I view the business world and in so cases I even assess families because there’s values in families that could be beneficial or not, so I can’t turn this mind off around how to craft organizations, department, teams, families, communities where people are treated with respect and dignity.

Jim Rembach:    You’re talking about turning your mind off you’ve also got a production line of contact that you’ve been generating too. 

Chris Edmonds:    I do. I do. I was online a couple weeks ago, and said, I counted them up I do roughly 70 blog post a year and that’s a lot of content and probably three quarters of those have podcast around them too and you certainly as we’re experiencing here very experienced there, so that’s a little bit of extra effort but offers people another avenue to learn from you and maybe be inspired to change behavior a bit, so I write a lot.

Jim Rembach:    You do. I mean it’s amazing the amount of—I think I’ve shared this with you earlier, I said gosh, Chris, you’ve been doing it so long you have so much knowledge, you have so much `(4:00 inaudible)generated it’s almost like too much information.

Chris Edmonds:    Yes, it is.

Jim Rembach:    But there is one thing that stood out to me here recently that I read which to me it’s kind of a plague not just in businesses but our society as a whole and that is something that you talked about in regards to the cost of waiting.

Chris Edmonds:    Yeah, it’s amazing we humans are procrastinators and sometimes professional ones. That blog post and podcast was really driven by a couple of clients who had engaged me they knew they had some opportunities with the way their work environment was operating. And we went to a process of educating them about the phases I use and how I’m going to help them basically craft a more inspiring, a more productive work environment, I got the data to prove it. And they came back and said, you know, we’re not ready quite yet we’re going to wait a little bit and it was almost like it’s not that bad to have to have our leadership begin to behave so differently. And that’s what I’m very, very crystal clear about is that senior leaders, leaders of organizations drive the culture for better or worse, and it takes time and energy to fix that. It’s just like I said in my post about the cost of waiting I had Dr. Stellame—that if I continue eating fatty foods and don’t exercise I’m going to continue to be too heavy. And I was like well, apparently. Get me a couple of years to take that to heart and now I’m way smarter, and way thinner. 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for sharing that. I’m kind of go on through that same effort of getting rid of some of that extra poundage to take the pressure off of my bad right knee. But you’re right it’s like—for me I had to get to the point to where not only was my knee hurting, my right hip was hurting, my lower back was hurting, my neck was starting to hurt and I’m like okay, okay that is enough.

Chris Edmonds:    Yeah, yeah, I get it I’ve get enough data points. And it’s interesting I’m convinced, I’ve had a couple of back surgery so this this body is doing okay but I’ve got some new parts in me. But the idea of the that organic system, that and if we don’t walk as were designed to we compensate and the musculature supports that compensation and all the sudden the pain doesn’t go away because our muscles are holding this into doing things that really aren’t healthy, aren’t effective, are inefficient and clearly are painful.  And you know what, organizations do the exact same thing. 

Jim Rembach:    And I think that’s the irony. I have this conversation at’s the irony no had this conversation with my kids as I was taking them to school the other morning and I was talking about insanity in the definition of insanity as adults were using so that they can really get attune and understand it. It’s like look, I’ve already been through this experience and I’ve seen other people’s event to this experience that you’re complaining about and the fact is that you can choose not to listen to me but then that’s called insanity. And they’re like, huh what. What is that? Yeah. What is that? And I said well, we talked about insanity been doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I said we have life examples and may not be necessarily first experiences but we can see all of these mistakes that other people and organizations make around this whole issue of waiting, but yet we repeat that same darn thing.

Chris Edmonds:    Yeah. And sometimes it’s not just the fear of change it’s that we don’t know anything different and we’re doing the best we can and I think that’s quite true of leaders as well in organizations. And so, what kind of education do we get before we finally say, Okay, I’m not going to get there for results and I really I’m now tired of these results so I’m going to have to change my behavior.

Jim Rembach:    It’s one of the things I always say too is that self-inflicted wounds they are the most. 

Chris Edmonds:    Yes do they do. They definitely this will get me no better. 

Jim Rembach:    Yeah we do. 

Jim Rembach:    And so oftentimes, especially on the show, sometimes we have to search for inspiration from places in order for us to get off or get over these hump of waiting move forward. And so we look for quotes a lot. Is there a quote or two for you that’s helped you get over hump that you can share?

Chris Edmonds:    You know it’s interesting, Jerry and I, we talked about fabulous best boss and one of the things he used to say, and this again—yes, we all think about great bosses we’ve had, okay bosses we’ve had, really lousy boss we’ve had, and there’s warnings that came from all of those experiences. And Jerry was very, very intentional with the way we operated as a team. We had very clear values and behaviors and he paid as much attention to how we treated each other and how we treated internal, external customers and it was a shock because it wasn’t the experience I had with other bosses, the bosses were focused on getting crapped on. And yes, getting stuff done is important but it’s not the only thing that’s important. And so Jerry would call me up my crap which he would with all of us, and I kind of push back little bit, no I didn’t really do that (9:30 inaudible)to him. So, this is what I was trying to do and Jerry would turn to me and say, “I believe you, believe that” and he let this pause. It was a big pregnant pause and then it would to my head with, “Is that working for you, it was kind of a Dr. Phil this day. How is that serving you? How is it serving us? How does it help us perform better? How does it help us be more innovative together just like aircraft. So he went to my beliefs, which were driving behaviors that’s worth serving. And he didn’t say you’re a moron he just said, “Brrrr. I believe you, believe that.” And the behavior has to change, I still to my core belief that it’s easier for me to get people to consider their behaviors to get those different results than to try and chip away at their beliefs, but Jerry worked on my mine.

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for sharing that because there’s something that stood out to me in that that I talk a lot about and that is learning to try to find you way next to the person who you’re engaging with or confronting whatever the case maybe. Instead of Jerry coming back and saying and then calling baloney on you and hitting you right between the eyes, he affirmed and got alongside you and said, “Hey, I will take your hand, I believe that you believe that but this is where we need to go.” 

Chris Edmonds:    Yeah, yeah, and he wasn’t let me off the hook. He wasn’t going to let the existing misaligned behavior. And that’s what effective leaders do that’s what effective parent do, it’s what effective coaches do, it’s what effective teachers do we’ve seen it and yet it’s often hard to do. There’s some conflict that comes from that there’s some challenging we have to do, caring, challenging, authentic challenging to help people get alighted.

Jim Rembach:    Yeah. There’s something that is—talking about this particular issue or subject the whole lot of empirical evidence longitudinal studies associated with people and their careers and kind of when they hit the ceiling and most often it occurs, you put an age on it it’s in the mid-40s, you kind of hit the ceiling and one of the reason that is, is because what got you there at that particular age is typical your technical skill and prowess.

Chris Edmonds:    Yeah.

Jim Rembach:    However when you start looking at how do you get past that and continue to excel your skill and your expertise needs to flip and it really needs to flip in what we’re talking about right here, it’s the dynamics associated with the human condition, human logic and being able to take that technical skill and prowess that you built and convert it to something that will now create the culture, create that next step or point of thriving.

Chris Edmonds:    You’re exactly right Jim. It’s one of the biggest levers that I have to create and utilize with senior leaders and it’s not just about the processes results that you’ve crafted and all your wisdom applying all this knowledge and skills that you had over the course of your career and with the leadership team it’s careers but it’s what’s the human experience here. Are you actually demeaning people, discounting people, eroding their confidence? And it’s like that’s the only thing we’re asked to do. I understand that and I have some suggestions about changing your incentives, right? But you’ve got a responsibility to create an environment where people feel valued. And I don’t know if you’ve looked at any of the tiny HR and in 2014 they did an engagement and culture report that was just brilliant. And what they basically found was that only 21% of employees feel strongly valued at work, that’s a flat out sand and it’s up to us as hopefully, guides, coaches, consultants and leaders ourselves to help senior leaders in the organizations pay as much attention to the human condition as do to them which is going out the door. 

Jim Rembach:    That’s very true and it’s a totally different skills that requires a totally different mode of learning as well as really practice building what you have to do things differently than  what you’ve done in the past in order for that to happen. 

Chris Edmonds:    It’s very funny because as I inspire leaders to begin to pay greater attention to that and I have to help them realize that, yes you’ve got production responsibilities you’ve got performance dashboard, you’ve got metrics that there’s a lot of systemic information and expectations of you around that and you just spend exactly half of your time managing performance. They look at me like I’m from another planet and the other half is managing relationships is creating workplace inspiration not frustration and anxiety and that means you got to wonder around and talk to people it means you’ve got to engage with people that means you’ve got to listen and how customers were treated, internal customers and external ones and they’re like,  “I don’t have time to do that” and I said, “Yeah you do, you’ve hired really smart people who can probably manage the performance side without your intervention talk.” You don’t have to spend more hours on the workplace but the hours you spend have to be balanced between the results you have to drive for. I get that, every organization’s in the same boat whether it’s government non-profit, for profit doesn’t matter but too few leaders, too few organizations have crafted an inspiring environment for people to exist and they spend how many hour there a week? It’s wild. 

Jim Rembach:    In addition to that when you start talking about going even further up the ladder, getting to the very top position that ratio shifts it’s no longer 50-50 it’s more like when you get to the very top it’s like 80% needs to be focused on relationships.

Chris Edmonds:    Exactly!. And they look at me like you’ve already spent 70% of my time wandering around checking on the quality of the culture. And I said, 80% but 70 % is not a bad (16:17 inaudible). But if I get in to that then their behavior changes, they push themselves away from meetings, they push themselves away from keyboards and monitors. I had a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, old-school senior leader that I’ve worked with for a couple years with he and his leadership team and, don’t matter the business they were in, but he was a tough on to pull along because every example, every role model he had of leadership was performance, performance, performance and here I am this little voice at his shoulder going and relationships, relationships, relationships.

 And probably two years into our relationship, we do monthly coaching calls and I saw his team live about every six months, is that I am an epiphany this morning. I said, “Okay, Lee tell me what your epiphany was? He said, “I use to see my job as managing results and processes and now I see my job as managing people’s energy. And I said, “Okay that’s awesome. Now tell me what you did today to do that? He actually had. He had.  That’s a fabulous shift, but it takes a while, it takes a while. 

Jim Rembach:    It does. Also when start talking about our own selves, making the right shifts and moves that can take a while as well. There’s humps that we have to get over that sometimes we have to go over in order to set us in a better direction. Is there a story that you can share with us that helped you get in the right direction?

Chris Edmonds:    You know it’s interesting because I often go to the help side of things and trying to be an effective influencer be in my family and my neighbor, broader community with senior leaders that I work with I’ve got to be kind of walk and the talk. And I mentioned that I had a couple back surgeries so from a physical side there’s kind of challenges of eating healthy on the road. I travel a great deal and food is one of my vices for sure. We talked about leaders having an organizational heart attack an organizations coming to a realization that they can’t keep doing what they’ve been doing is that new definition of insanity. 

And for me, I actually had a myocardial infraction in December ’93. I was working hard and I had a great boss and a cool environment and apparently the way I was eating and the way I was behaving, my heart kind of set me a shot a flare up. Back then they were not doing stents, I had three blockages and once I got done with the arthroscopic clearing of those I was mad, I was hungry but I realized that my life changed and that heart attack caused me to lose 30 lbs. to really be very, very intentional about exercise and about foods. And then I get busy with going out on the road again and feeling that at the end of the day I work hard and I can have that cheeseburger and all of the sudden I found I’ve gain back 20 lbs. 

My doctors are lovely, they’re driven, they are crystal clear with me but I had to come to the conclusion as you did, that the pain points that I was having, the energy, the gaps that I was facing day-to-day setting up trying to challenge people to change their behavior while I will be at 20 lbs. overweight isn’t necessarily a very credible platform to be on. So it’s literally only been about six years since finding a diet that would work for me at home and on the road. Unbelievable changes—lean proteins and veggies—it’s a Paleo slow carb kind of thing, but I had to get to the point where I realized that I was at risk again of having another heart episode of being too heavy. So the skeletal thing is going to push back and boy it’s going to win. But along with that discovery on my own and discipline it require, I couldn’t eat anything I wanted to anymore. I could eat as much as I wanted to of these healthy things, but men, I had to embrace that. The benefits are fabulous—new clothes are a little more expensive than I’d like, but for the energy and the optimism and the enthusiasm for this hard work, I’ve got to have the same focus to help leaders be disciplined about holding true to some of the behavior change that they’re going to need to shift their workplace from frustrating to inspiring. 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for sharing that and I’m glad you’re still with us and heading in the right direction

Chris Edmonds:    So far I think I am. Woot! Woot!

Jim Rembach:    I like that way that you do the connection with what you’re referring to in regards to culture change and also the whole cost of waiting thing. The whole cost of waiting thing could be and it has been for a lot of organizations debt. 

Chris Edmonds:    Yeah. It really is. And what I found is that as a kind of fan of employee engagement and a fan of customer service, and a fan of servant leadership I look for research I want proof and so I look for research that extends that and deepens that and I so I grab it, I love it. And reality is that senior leaders have never been passed to manage relationships, to manage culture on they’ve been asked to do is manage widgets, products, services the very clear stakeholders, very clear expectations there. So they’re coming from this absence of true experience, of successful experience they’ve seen the change, a culture change work leading a change that’s a handful of folks that I’ve run into. 

So part of my challenge is that education of, it can be better, and you’re going to behave different, you have to invest you’re time differently, you’re going to have to focus on different things, you’re going to have to praise progress on things that you think should be common sense. Treating people nice is common sense, certainly it is, it just not common practice in the workplace. Once I got my arms around—these leaders aren’t dumb, they’re really not dumb, they’re really smart, they’re just not doing the best they can and I need to educate them so they can see that there’s additional responsibility that they need to invest time and energy in, and boy, they’re showing. 

And I know that leaders are very much looking for research as well, so let me give you a kind of a high level if you’re intentional with your team the really smart they just doing the best they can and I need to educate them survey can see that there’s this additional responsibility that that a need to invest time and energy and boy is it beneficial and you and I know that that leaders are very much looking for research as well some and give you can a higher level if you’re intentional with your team, your department, your region, your company, your multinational in creating an organizational constitution and being as intentional about serving others about values and behaviors as you are about performance you’re going to gain 30 to 35% gains in results and profits in 18 months, 40% gains in employee engagement, 40% gains in customer service, I see it every single time. The big number that people care about, I can’t get 30% in result, yes you can but it’s not a quick fix it’s not a flip of a switch this is intentional 70% shift the time, the managing, the quality of the work of course. 

Jim Rembach:    That’s huge. Okay, so I know, like we share you’re cranking out an amazing amount of content, you’re traveling, your help working with a lot of these organizations and we share a little bit about where you live, which just sounds absolutely gorgeous—

Chris Edmonds:    Gorgeous it is. 

Jim Rembach:    If you’re to stop and think about one thing as a goal, what would it be?

Chris Edmonds:    You know what, I am so blessed to have experienced—there’s a lot of us that have ideas and   the ease with which we can blog today and get some ideas out into the blogosphere right the Internet allows us to have a platform for telling people, what’s some of our DSR and what not, the benefit that I’ve had with getting published and having a hardcover book on shelves in bookstores is been a dream for a long time because ultimately my primary goal is to help leaders create workplace inspiration. And I know it can be done, this is not impossible but it’s that education, it’s that it’s the kind of constant chipping away at the belief system that my job as a leader the truly manage performance. 

My goal is to help more organizations get this. I would love to have small businesses embrace this because the bulk of our economies globally are built upon small businesses not huge, huge corporations. And small businesses aren’t always wonderful culture, so my target is of course—you talk about how much I travel, I would love to work, we’re locally here in Colorado with small businesses with leaders who realize their cultures could be a little bit better and to help them with that and to in essence try and make—if I can get 20 companies a year to embrace this, I probably work today with 10, but if I could get 20 companies a year of all sizes, shapes, colors, types etc. to gain traction on a more healthy, more higher-quality workplace culture that would be awesome.

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

An even better place to work is an easiest solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement and leadership skills in everyone. Using this award-winning solutions guaranteed to create motivated, productive and loyal employees who have great work relationships with their colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work visit beyondmorale.com/better. 

Alright, here we go Fast Leader listeners it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Chris the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Chris Edmonds, are you ready to hoedown?

Chris Edmonds:    I’m ready to hoedown.

Jim Rembach:    What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Chris Edmonds:    The thing that holds me back is my fears. Absolutely my fears. I’m fearful of making mistakes, I’m fearful of looking stupid, I think that’s shared by a number of humans on this planet, we can get past that and try some new things actually it might make some traction here. 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Chris Edmonds:    It’s not about me it’s about them. It’s about serving the needs of your team members who then can in turn serve the needs of customers, it’s going to make everybody way happier.

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Chris Edmonds:    I am a persistent little bugger who keep chipping away at getting these ideas out working on leaders, coaching leaders, pulling them back to the core it’s all about values and behaviors if we can change those expectations we can make this world a better place.

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of your best tools that help to lead in business or life?

Chris Edmonds:    I am convinced that my sense of humor. I believe I’m hilarious, so if nothing else I laugh at my own jokes but I realize there’s times with some difficult conversations about getting companies to change, getting leaders to change, getting parents to change, that an injection of effective humor can really move things forward to help people kind of breathe a little bit again but I’m still going to hold on to—that the goal of the target that we’re driving for. 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, it could be from any genre?

Chris Edmonds:    I was immensely inspired as I was building this culture change process by Jim Collins, Jerry Porras’s, Good to Great, I still think it is one of the most fabulous books on the importance of values and behaviors in organizations, can’t recommend it more highly.

Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today show by going to fastleader.net/Chris Edmonds. Okay, Chris this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you have been given the opportunity to take your knowledge and skills back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

Chris Edmonds:    Boy, there’ so many things I would love to go back and change. From my 25th year on this planet I’d still like to go back to when I was a supervisor at that stage, it was the early stages of being a boss for the first time, you did a bunch of really dumb things best of intentions, mind you, and I go back to demonstrating the values that I wanted others to lead and live, I would held us all defined behaviors that we can agree to that would’ve made those years way more fun, way more effective.

Jim Rembach:    Chris, it was an honor to spend time with you today, can you please share with the Fast Leader listeners how they can connect with you? 

Chris Edmonds:    Absolutely, you can find me online at drivingresultsthroughculture.com. I am on Twitter@scedmonds, first name is Steven so I go by Chris anyway, scedmonds is where they’ll find me on Twitter. You’ll also find links to Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus etc. on my website and of course you can (30:49 inaudible)high up there for my bi-weekly newsletter and be able to stay in touch with the episodes on my podcast, and my blogs, and all that stuff. 

Jim Rembach:    Chris Edmonds, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

END OF AUDIO