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095: Steve Goldstein: You don’t get 30 mulligans

Steve Goldstein Show Notes

Steve Goldstein was thrilled to escape the cold of Chicago in February for a speaking engagement in Miami. As an executive at Sears, Steve loved to visit the stores on trips. But this time Steve thought he was hallucinating when he saw snow blowers in Miami. Listen to how this experience led to Steve moving onward and upward.

Steve was a middle child born in the Bronx borough in New York City and had an older sister and younger brother. His mother was a teacher and father was bridge operator.

Always big think and explorer as a child he knew, even with growing up in the city of New York, he know there was more to life and he was willing to get it. Like as a youth when he worked two jobs just so he could buy a car.

Steve eventually graduated from City College in New York and NYU/Stern for business school. He’s had the good fortune to have worked for 3 Fortune 500 companies (American Express, Citigroup and Sears) in various senior level positions including Chairman & CEO of American Express Bank. Steve has also worked in the venture capital arena, investing and helping lead startup companies to transform ideas into viable businesses.

Being a non-conformist at heart, he’s always been challenging the status quo – both in his professional and personal life – and deriving lots of satisfaction in breaking the china and seeing what happens next. Steve is a pioneer at heart.

Currently, he is working with several private equity firms as a senior advisor; speaking to large groups and smaller corporate groups about engagement and leadership and out promoting his new book, Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami? Transform Your Business Using The 5 Principles Of Engagement.

Steve currently lives in NYC with his wife and has two grown children, both of whom also live in NYC.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @sdgoldstein and get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Engagement is not a word that has gone into the lexicon of business.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“If you’re not engaged it’s really hard to be an effective leader.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“At the end of the day, leadership is what makes a company work.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“More so than its products, a company’s leaders are more responsible for the results.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“Most leaders are not as good as they need to be.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“It’s executing on the basics that makes the difference between success and failure.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“Be aware, observe, and then act.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“A lot of what is happening in your company is hiding in plain sight.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“Leaders sit in meetings all day and don’t have a clue on what goes on at the point of sale.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“Get out of your office and connect with your customers.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“The more people know, the more successful and effective they can be.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“Be open and trust your employees.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“Larger companies move at glacial pace.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“With leadership you keep finessing and get a little better every day.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“Treat everyone the same whether it’s the cleaning lady or the president.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“If you don’t know why, you have no reason to assume it’s going to be the same next month.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“My best tool is to listen very hard.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

“You really need to have an effective team to get great results.” -Steve Goldstein Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Ask questions; dig.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

I work at my leadership finesse. There is no end state; you just keep getting a little better every day.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Treat everyone the same whether it’s the cleaning lady or the president of the company.

Secret to Success

I’m very inquisitive. The question I ask most is, “why.”

Best tools that helps in business or Life

To listen very hard and ask a lot of questions.

Contacting Steve

website: http://stevendgoldstein.com/

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sdgoldstein

Resources

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript:

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

095: Steve Goldstein: You don’t get 30 mulligans

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’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

Jim Rembach: Okay, Fast Leader Legion today I’m excited because when I read the title of this person’s book I knew I had have him on the show. Steve Goldstein, was a middle child born in the Bronx Borough in New York City and had an older sister and younger brother. His mom was a teacher and his father was a bridge operator. Always a big thinker and explorer as a child, he knew, even with growing up in the city of New York that there was more to life and he was willing to go get it. Like as a youth, when he worked two jobs just that he can buy a used car. Steve eventually graduated from the City College in New York and NYU Stern for business school. He’s had the good fortune to have worked for three Fortune 500 companies, American Express, Citigroup and Sears, in various senior-level positions including chairman and CEO of American Express Bank.

Steve has also worked in a venture-capital arena investing and helping lead startup companies to transform ideas into viable businesses. Being a non-conformist at heart he’s always been challenging the status quo both and his professional and personal life and deriving a lot of satisfaction and breaking the China and seeing what happens next. Steve is a pioneer at hear. Currently, he’s working with several private equity firms as a senior adviser, speaking to large groups and small corporate groups about engagement and leadership and out promoting his new book, “Why are There Snow Blowers in Miami? Transform your business Using Five Principles of Engagement.” Steve currently lives in New York City with his wife and has two grown kids both who also live in New York City. Steve Goldstein, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Steve Goldstein: I am. Good morning, Jim. Nice to be with you.

Jim Rembach: I’m glad you’re here. 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?

Steve Goldstein: My current passion is really around engagement. And it’s interesting when you go on Google to look at engagement the first hundred listings or so about weddings and party planners and how to buy a wedding dress and things like that, it’s really not a word that has really gone into the Lexicon of business. But to me engagement is really where it starts because if you’re not engaged it’s very hard to be an effective leader. And I’ve really been fascinated over the last 20 years about leadership because at the end of the day that’s what makes the company work, more so than its products it’s the leaders in the company who actually are responsible for the results. And I found that most leaders are not as good as they need to be and that’s part of what I’ve been working on for the last 20 years. Eventually I decided I wanted to share my experiences and write a book about that so I could help other leaders improve.

Jim Rembach: When you say engagement, for me, it’s kind of funny when you’re talking from your perspective saying how it’s not part of the Lexicon of business and all of that. Gosh! I’ve been so immersed in customer care and engagement of customers and employees for 20 years so for me it’s kind of like—what do you mean it’s not part of the Lexicon? But when you talk about the book and the five principles, to me I think I’m reading it and I’m saying, “Well, of course this is common sense” but you’re saying, “no way it’s not common. Can you share the five principles?

Steve Goldstein: Yes. You know, it’s funny, when I finish writing the book and I read probably for the 30th time my first reaction was, this is so obvious who’s going to buy this book? And I realize that because it’s so obvious, is why the book needs to be written. Everybody’s looking for the shiny new object or the latest buzzwords or things of that nature, but the reality is that sometimes doing the basics, not sometimes most times, it’s executing on the basics that really makes the difference between success and failure. So, I codify these five principles basically to give people lanes in which to operate. These are not rules that you have to memorize, these are really sort of flashcards in a way that people can utilize to sort of be aware and observe and then act.

So the first one is called, fresh eyes. And it’s exactly what it means, it means looking at things as if you are a new person coming into a situation. A consultant by definition has fresh eyes, he’s coming in to a company, he’s tail a lot a money and he looks at things and he asks lots of crazy question. A new CEO comes in to a company does the same thing. But if you’ve been the president of the company for five years a lot of what is happening in your company is actually hiding in plain sight and you don’t see it. And it’s in those areas that there’s gold but you have to look for it.

The second one is, connecting. What I mean by connecting is, it’s really engaging at the most intimate level with your employees and your customers. If you think about a story like the Gap, the number of levels between the CEO of a Gap and a part-time sales clerk in San Francisco selling you a T-shirt is in excess of 20. The issue is that the part-time person who’s making $9 an hour is the only person who’s interacting with the customer and the leaders sit meetings all day reviewing numbers and presentations and they really don’t have a clue as to what’s actually going on at the point-of-sale. And the and the and the amazing thing is that these people who are interacting with customers they know exactly what’s going, they know what’s working, they know what’s not working. The things that are not working they know how to fix, they know what the customers want because they’re hearing from them in real-time what they need and want, but no one’s asking them. So, the whole part of connecting is getting out of your office—I was giving a speech the other day and someone says, “what do you mean get out of your office?” I said, “Nothing good happens in your office, nothing.” I use to spend as little there as possible. So that’s the second principle.

The third principle is transparency. Actually on the on the door of my high school carved in stone was a saying. “Knowledge is power.” And I didn’t know what it meant when I was going to high school, but I do now. I’m a firm believer that the more people know the more successful and effective they can be. We suffer from two problems. We either suffer from not giving people enough information because we don’t trust them or it’s a power thing where you have to ask me for stuff that makes me more powerful because you don’t know the information and it stand in a very sort of subconscious weight. So, one problem is you don’t have enough information to do your job properly. The flipside of that situation is your bury the information. You don’t know what report to look at, you know what’s important, okay. So, the whole thing about transparency is really being open and trusting your employees and communicating with them in a way where they can actually do a great job.

The fourth one is speed. Mario Andretti the famous race car driver has a great quotes, he says, if your car’s under control you’re not going fast enough. And the problem, and this is particularly true with larger companies, larger companies move at glacial pace. They express things in terms of months, quarters and years. I was in a meeting in June with C-Suite of this very large company and in this meeting we came up collectively with a great idea, and it was really a tremendous idea, and the CEO said, “Oh, let’s put that into our planning process for 2017, we’ll bake it in to next year’s plan.” And they’re all saying great. And I said, “Wait a minute, if this is really a great idea why don’t we have someone start it next week because you have to believe that there were three other meetings like this going on around the world or that they all think I’ve come up with the next brilliant idea which is the same one as we just came up with, right? And one of those companies is going to start it next week and they may have it in a marketplace by the end of this year. So if you put it in a plan for next year by the time this actually hits the market it could be the summer of 2017 and this other company could’ve walked away with all the winds.” And they said, “Oh, do you really think that’s going to happen?” I said, “Of course it’s going to happen.”

The fifth principle I call hot buttons. And it’s fascinating to go through this process. None of the ideas are stupid. None of the initiatives are dumb but they’re nice to do, they’re nice to have but are not jugular. I’m talking about things, like we don’t do this we’re dead. If we don’t do this we’re going to lose market share. If we don’t do this we can’t grow at 15% compounded for the next three years. So, going through the process of really figuring out what’s absolutely essential from what is nice to do is really the important thing. So that’s a brief summary of the five principles.

Jim Rembach: Okay, so one thing that really stood out to me, and like you said a lot of them speak for themselves, you use hot buttons a little bit differently than what most people do in regards to thinking about hot buttons, hot buttons there are referring to—hey, that really upset me, that really tick me off. But you’re talking about hot buttons in a different way.

Steve Goldstein: Right.

Jim Rembach: So your hot buttons are really things that are going to ignite people to do something different.

Steve Goldstein: Yes, exactly. And they’re expressed in a way that doesn’t use jargon. It’s done in way where someone in the third grade would understand what the item is so that everyone in the company is very clear on what these three items are. Oftentimes, what happens is the leader will say something in a manner that makes sense to him but if it doesn’t resonate throughout the organization people may have slightly different interpretations about what that means so part of the hot button component is to be very precise with the words. So that whether you’re in 30 states or 30 countries, everyone in the organization knows exactly what those mean and why they’re important.

Jim Rembach: Also it seems to me like you have to really look towards the operating or the functional position because you give an example on the book where you talked about a used car company and their financing expenses and saying how a used car sitting on a lot cost two bucks a day just an interest.

Steve Goldstein: Yes.

Jim Rembach: And just by communicating the fact that that two bucks a day was something that was occurring cause people to act and behave quite differently than they did previously.

Steve Goldstein: Exactly. And what was interesting is if you think about that example the people who this was directed to we’re the people who responded to this, I should say, were mechanics, they were auto mechanics. These are people who basically, probably don’t have more than a high school education, they surely don’t have college degrees, I’m not saying that in a derogatory sense what I’m saying is these guys are master mechanics, they know how to fix cars better than anybody else. But now when they understood there was a financial consequence for every day the car was sitting there and not out on the lot to be sold they themselves figured out how to change their work processes to move the cars faster through the shop.

They came up with this because they understood it was a consequence to not getting the cars out a day or two or 30 days sooner. And that was the beauty of this hot button, that people at all levels in the company could take away from it what was essential for them to do their own jobs better and then working in teams, they brainstormed and came up with 20 ideas about how individually and collectively they could change the way they behaved in order to recognize this two dollars a day. It frankly was amazing to me to see how they responded way beyond what I ever might’ve expected and that’s the beauty of that.

Jim Rembach: And so for me, I think it’s kind of like using fresh eyes in order to find out what’s the right hot button, I think we have to do that. Obviously, you’re a tenured—a person who has accumulated a wealth of wisdom and I’m sure it’s being leveraged by the venture capitalist that you’re working with but we need inspiration, this book is inspirational and the five principles, I would love to even get in the conversation about difference between principles and rules, but we’ve got to move on. And so, when you start talking about quotes, we love quotes on the show and I’m sure you have a lot that you’ve accumulated over the years, but is there one or two that you can share with us the gives you inspiration?

Steve Goldstein: There’s one quote that I came across, I think it was the late 70’s in a BusinessWeek article, and it was said by a guy named Edward Cole who was an executive at General Motors, he had been a lifelong employee of General Motors and I think at this point he was running the engine in one of the divisions, and this is what he said, “Leadership is the courage to admit mistakes, the vision to welcome change, the enthusiasm to motivate others, and the confidence to stay out of step when everyone is marching to the wrong tune.” And that to me sort of epitomized what a great leader should. Actually I try to follow this, I mean I really do my best to follow this and it’s not always the most popular way to behave but I think this quote really sums up what I believe a leader should be.

Steve Goldstein: Well I think even reading your bio when you started talking about breaking the China and seen what happens, I can see why that quote means a lot to you. And obviously in order for you to get to the point of being that young kid in the Bronx, who is that constant explorer and wanting more knowing there was more, being the CEO of some large division for some very large organizations, there’s had to be a lot of humps along the way that you had to get over that cause you to get the place where you are now and being able to write this book and help others move forward. Is there a story that you can share with us when you had to get over the hump?

Well, the most, I think, profound story is really the story that became the title of the book. When I was at Sears running the credit card business, I’ll give you the short version of this the longer version’s in the book, I was based in Chicago obviously were Sears is headquartered and it was February a blustery cold winter like the polar vortex we just had. I had to go to Miami to give a speech, in February, so I was very excited to the warm weather and I always made a point to visit the stores to see what we could do to help improve sales. So, I went in to the store, I happen to go into the Lawn and Garden center entrance and I saw lawn mowers, rakes, shovels, patio furniture, barbecue grills, then I saw a show blowers and I thought I was hallucinating. And I went over to see them and there was an elderly salesman named Pete and it just came out to mouth I said, “Pete, why are there snow blowers in Miami?” Basically the short version of the story is every September the snow blowers were delivered, they were told to put on the floor every April they pack them back in Carnes and send them back to the distribution center. And when I said to him, “What do you do about it?” He says, “Well, my boss calls, his boss calls, the store manager calls, and they basically tell it’s part of the national allocation. I said, “You know what that means?” He said, “I have no idea what that means.” I said, “Have you ever sold any?” He said, “We sold one to a couple who is visiting their kids in Minnesota for Christmas, they put it in minivan, they drove up from Miami to Minnesota, and that was it.”

So the next day I go back to—again my speech was like this thing was bothering me the whole afternoon, we are at our weekly leadership meeting and not surprising we’re out of snow blowers because of the snowstorm and I pull at my pocket this guy’s business card and I say we’ll there are four in Miami, call Pete, you have them and they’re hysterically laughing. And I said, “Why is this funny?” And now it’s hysterical, and I said, “No, it’s terrible.” And so, I then had my—this is free Internet, I had my assistant find out in the history of recorded weather, how much does it snowed in Miami. And then she came back 45 minutes later and said it’s snowed one time seven years ago a third of an inch. So you said to yourself, how the heck could this be part of a national allocation? And you know, to me it was a metaphor and I started to think at that moment, of all the other sort of experiences I had that were equally insane, and you know in golf you got a mulligan if you hit a bad shot, you don’t get a 30 mulligans. And so, this was not just a problem that someone sent snow blowers to Miami the problem was that no one was looking, no one cared, no one saw this things going back and forth for 30 years. No one was asking questions, no one was interested to talk to the store manager, it was a complete and utter breakdown in business processes. And by the way, it’s not unique to Sears every company has snow blowers. In fact, when I went to write a book I interviewed 15 CEO’s and I told them all the story because I wanted them to understand what I wanted from them in return and out of the 15 people I interviewed I had the same reaction a hundred percent of the time. First they laugh, then they said that’s crazy and then they said, oh, I’ve got 20 snow blower stories which one do you want to hear, became a noun because people have all seen this craziness.

Jim Rembach: How could you not laugh? So I have to know—you went back and you had that meeting and what eventually happened with the whole snow blower thing in Miami?

Steve Goldstein: I don’t know what had happened but this December, just literally less than a year ago, I finished the book and I was going to go down to Miami to see if they’re still there. I said let me call. And I call the store and I said, “Can I—so it turns out they’re no longer there. So they weren’t there this December. I don’t know when in the prior 20 years they stop being shipped there but finally the practice was corrected. I thought I would have been hysterical if they were still there I could take a picture and put it the book, but fortunately they were no longer there.

Jim Rembach: If we all only had 20 years in order to fix problems I guess maybe they’ll all get fixed sometime, I don’t know or is it kind of run into an infinity, I have no idea. Okay, so, you had mentioned some of that working—as an advisor, working with a venture capital firms, working with a lot of different organizations in order to help them with these five principles and all of that. And you also talked about several other things you’re working on but what are some of your goals?

Steve Goldstein: My goals now are really to—I have a few goals, one is to work with private equity firms to help them run their portfolio companies more effectively and that really comes from leadership. So, I’m spending a lot of time with them working with their individual companies as well as helping them evaluate new acquisitions. I’m spending a fair amount of time writing in part to promote the book but in part to just get my ideas down on paper or on blogs and promulgate some of those thoughts. I’m spending time promoting the book, now that I have the book out there I want to let people know about the book so that they can buy it and learn from it and apply some of the things that are in the book. And I spend a lot of time trying to keep fit, which I think is really important so you can enjoy your life. My wife and I like to travel so we’ve incorporated that we took a great trip almost a year ago to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, it’s part of the world that I always wanted to see and so that was that was a lot of fun. And I’m recently, I haven’t had the time, but I’m trying to carve out the time to re-engage back to engagement playing the saxophone. I played the saxophone when I was a kid I just decided I want to for a long, long hiatus I want to get back in and start playing again. So, that’s keeping me pretty busy.

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:

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So move onward and upward faster by getting significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to empathymapping.com to learn more. Alright here we go Fast Leader Legion, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Steve 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 a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Steve Goldstein, are you ready to hoedown?

Steve Goldstein: Yes.

Jim Rembach: Alright. So what do you think is holding you back from being even better leader today?

Steve Goldstein: I think I’m pretty good as a leader right now and I think what I’ve learned is it’s more about finesse which I think comes with practice. And I’m very conscious about this I work at this every day. I’m very I’m very careful about what I say, I’m very careful about how I listen and it’s all designed with the notion of how do I get the person I’m interacting with other people I’m interacting with to really understand what we need to do and to enable them to be more successful. I don’t think there’s end state here I think it’s just something—unlike being a great artist or anything else where it’s not something that’s measurable I think it’s just something that you keep finessing and doing and you just get a little better every day.

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

Steve Goldstein: The best leadership advice I’ve ever received which is actually from my first boss when I got out of graduate school is to treat everyone the same, whether it’s the cleaning lady or the president of the company. I was in a meeting with him, I was only like 25 years old and we were doing an all-nighter because we had a big pitch we were making and I went in to his office at 11 o’clock to show him my work and to see how I was going to mark it up with a red pen. And so we’re in this heated discussion and the cleaning lady walks in to clean his office. And he starts talking to her like his best friend—how’s your kids, son had broken his leg and everything—and she leaves and I said, “You know the cleaning lady?” and he goes, “Yeah, she’s got a family, she’s got a life.” And I realized, and he was curious like…cause I didn’t know how you suppose to—I just had this—I don’t know I was stupid I thought because you’re an executive you don’t talk to certain people, that’s we saw on movies or on TV. And so I saw from him in a very human way that you really do treat people the same and so I’ve been doing this from that moment on, I became friends with the window washer when I lived in London in our building who all of my leadership team saw this crazy American is going out to the pub with the window washer, what’s wrong with him? And I told them, I learn more from this guy than I learned from them, about our company. Because he was in the building every day he knew everything that was going on.

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

Steve Goldstein: I’m very inquisitive. I’ve always been this way and I think the question I asked most is why. I think a lot of people and I was talking to somebody about this the other day in a board meeting, you know, everybody focuses on what and how and where and when and it’s all static but the real motivation for understanding why things happened no one asks. You know that if you made $20 this year and last quarter you made $10 you doubled your results. Great. But most people don’t know why and if you don’t know why, you have no reason to assume it’s going to be the same next month because you don’t know what caused it in the first place. I know this sounds silly I’m amazed that people really don’t dig. A lot of retailers when I have bad results they blame the weather. It’s amazing to me that a food like Walmart will say, we had great results. Macy’s will say, we didn’t have great results and it is attributable to the weather. Are they operating at a different weather system than Walmart? So, you have to laugh when you hear that because what it really means is they don’t know they’re just grasping at straws to come up with something that seemingly explains what is inexplicable because they really don’t know what the underlying reason for the outcome is.

Jim Rembach: What is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Steve Goldstein: I think my best tool is to listen very hard and ask a lot of questions.

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

Steve Goldstein: The book I would recommend is, why there’s snow blowers in Miami? Actually I would recommend a good book that I read recently which I thought was terrific, is David McCullough’s book about the Wright brothers. When you realize what these two guys did to learn how to fly to prove that man could fly it was one of the most inspiring books about persistence, sticktoitiveness, ingenuity, solving problems, working as a team, marching to their own beat when everybody was telling them they were marching to the wrong tune, it was just a fantastic book.

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

Steve Goldstein: I think the thing I would do differently is to learn how to collaborate better and work more effectively in teams. When I was younger it was more about proving myself and sort of creating my own space and seeing what I could do to move up in the business world. And I think I always was a good team player but I probably was a little bit more interested in moving myself forward that moving the team forward with being conscious about it, subconsciously I’m sure I was but not consciously and today I’m extremely conscious of that. I know that you really need to have an effective team to get great results just like in sports.

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

Steve Goldstein: Yeah. The best way to connect with me is on my website, stevendgoldstein.com or on Twitter @stgoldstein or you can shoot me an e-mail at steve@stgoldstein.com.

Jim Rembach: Steven Goldstein, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thank 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

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072: Susan Fowler: This is a chance for me to live my values

Susan Fowler Show Notes

Susan Fowler has a career that requires a lot of travel. But travel had become a pain in the neck and getting through security raised Susan’s tension and stress. Then Susan realized she had an opportunity to live her values. Listen to her story of how she aligned with her values so it can help you to move onward and upward faster.

Susan was born and raised in Enid, Oklahoma and Raised in Denver, Colorado as the oldest of four children.

Susan discovered the power of teaching at an early age when her sister, Terri, was born with spina bifida, paralyzed from the waist down and retarded from water on the brain. Doctors explained that if Terri lived, she would never have the mentality beyond that of a 3 year old.

Terri did live and Susan couldn’t help but notice a spark in her sister’s bright blue eyes. Defying the doctors’ diagnoses, Susan used rather innovative techniques, to teach her sister to read and write. Terri became the first handicapped child integrated into the Colorado school system. Doctors asked her parents: How did Terri learn to read and write? Their answer: Our 12-year-old daughter, Susan.

Susan has never stopped teaching—or leaning. Her motto is “I teach what I most need to learn.” She is the lead developer of product lines taught globally to tens of thousands of people through the Ken Blanchard Companies, including Situational Self Leadership and Optimal Motivation.

Susan is the author of six books, including the bestselling Self Leadership and The One Minute Manager with Ken Blanchard and her newest bestseller Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work… And What Does.

Susan lives and works with her husband, Drea Zigarmi, in sunny San Diego where she is also an adjunct professor in the University of San Diego’s Masters of Science in Executive Leadership program and a rotating board member of Angel Faces, a nonprofit group dedicated to teaching adolescent girls how to cope with transfiguring burns and trauma.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @fowlersusann to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“What’s the penny you want to leave the world?” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“If people understood the nature of their own motivation, it would transform their lives.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“It is our basic human nature to thrive.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“Nobody wants to be bored and disengaged.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“People want to make a meaningful contribution.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“We all want to grow and learn every day.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“We assume without incentives or rewards that people won’t do what there’re asked to do.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“What is it that promotes thriving and what is it that erodes thriving?” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“Suboptimal motivation is what erodes people’s natural ability to thrive.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“We know how to promote thriving through our psychological needs.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“Things that people think they have been motivated by are eroding the things they need to thrive.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“There’s an entire industry devoted to providing junk food motivation to workers.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“It’s important to do the right things for the right reasons.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“If you ask, is a person motivated? It’s the wrong question.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“People are always motivated. The questions is, why are they?” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“Not all motivation is created equal.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“When it comes to motivation, the reason is what matters most.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“Whenever you feel tension you are in a suboptimal motivational outlook.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“We are never going to love everything we do.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“We’re never going to have passion for everything we do.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“Try to make a difference in someone’s life every day.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“I got a wonderful opportunity to live my purpose every single day.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“Leadership is from the inside out; it’s got to be about the people you lead.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

“Care more about how people are feeling as a result of your presence.” -Susan Fowler Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

When it comes to motivation, the reason is what matters most.”

Holding her back from being an even better leader

I judge too much. Myself and others.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Make sure you are prepared for leadership. Leadership is from the inside out. It can’t be about your needs, it’s got to be about the needs of the people you lead.

Secret to Success

Have a deeply felt sense of purpose.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

I can talk really fast.

Contacting Susan

Website: http://susanfowler.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-fowler-955a174

Twitter: https://twitter.com/fowlersusann

Resources

Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work . . . and What Does: The New Science of Leading, Energizing, and Engaging

Creating an even better place to work

Show Transcript:

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

072: Susan Fowler: This is a chance for me to live my values

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.

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 unleash of skills in everyone. Using this this award winning solution’s guarantee 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 beyongmorale.com/better.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast leader Legion today I am just so thrilled because I have the opportunity to share with you somebody who has written one of really my top 10 reads of all time. Susan Fowler was born in Enid, Oklahoma and raised in Denver, Colorado as the oldest of four children. Susan discover the power of teaching at an early age when her sister Terry was born with spina bifida, paralyzed from the waist down and retarded from water on the brain. Doctors explained if Terry live she would never have the mentality beyond the age of a three-year-old. Terry lived and Susan couldn’t help but notice a spark in her sister’s bright blue eyes. Defying the doctor’s diagnosis Susan used rather innovative techniques to teach her sister how to read and write. When Terry became the first handicapped child integrated into the Colorado school system doctors asked her parents how did Terry learn to read and write? Their answer, our 12-year-old daughter Susan.

Susan has never stopped teaching or learning. Her motto is: I teach what I most need to learn. She is the lead developer of product lines taught globally tens of thousands of people through the Ken Blanchard companies including Situational Self Leadership and Optimal Motivation. Susan is the author of six books including the best-selling self-leadership and the One Minute Manager with Ken Blanchard and her newest bestseller Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work and What Does? And I’m telling you this has to be your Amazon five-star review. Susan lives and works with her husband Drea Zigarmi in sunny San Diego where she is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego’s Masters of Science and Executive Leadership Program and a rotating board member of Angel Faces a nonprofit group dedicated to teaching adolescent girls how to cope with transfiguring burns and trauma. Susan Fowler, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Susan Fowler: I am. I think I never felt better about myself in listening to you read that bio.

Jim Rembach: Oh, you’re too much. I’ve given our listeners 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.

Susan Fowler: You know Jim a number of years ago my husband asked me, Susan what’s the penny you want to leave the world? And I was really deep in a research around motivation and I have been, as you said the lead developer of a self-leadership for the Ken Blanchard companies, and I realized that the research on motivation was so compelling and really makes a difference in people’s lives and I said, You know, I want to be the person that takes the research around motivation and makes it accessible for the greatest number of people because I honestly believe that if people understood that nature of their own motivation I will transform their lives. So in that moment he helped me catalyzed my life purpose which is to be a catalyst for good but through the science of motivation. And so he says now too—once I got my hammer everything’s a nail, I look at everything through that prism of motivation. What’s compelling people? What are their values and how was what they’re doing related to what I’ve learned through the science of motivation? And it’s so exciting, it’s really fun.

Jim Rembach: Okay Susan, thanks for sharing that. You talk about passion and connection and all of those things and I think that’s kind of one that had done it for me. I actually purchase your book on Kindle and I had to get the hardcopy too because for me I’m like, I want to annotate on lower place and I’m not an expert annotator on my kindle yet—I don’t know if I ever will. But I was just like—this had so much impact and meaning to me and so different in so many different ways. One of the things I found really compelling is when you start looking at optimal motivation and how as you continue past it there’s kind of a point where it doesn’t become as optimal. Help me understand that a little bit better?

Susan Fowler: Well, if I could start with the basic premise—the basic premise that I think is one of the great discoveries in motivation science is that it is our basic human nature to thrive. In other words nobody want to be bored and disengaged. People want to make a meaningful contribution they even appreciate a challenge and we all want to grow and learn every day. All of that is actually the antithesis of the way we treat people in the workplace especially. We kind of assume that without incentives or rewards or bride people won’t do what they’re asked to do, that they’re basically are lazy until you give them something to motivate them. So if we start with a different premise and the premise is that people by nature want to thrive. Then we ask what is that promote thriving and what is it that erodes thriving? And what we call suboptimum motivation is what we have discovered erodes people’s natural ability to thrive. And so we are motivated by rewards, incentives, bribes, power, status, image, peer pressure, tension, guilt, shame, disinterest, overwhelmed, when were motivated in those ways, those are considered suboptimal because they actually erode what I think is the most extraordinary finding in motivation science and that is we know how to promote thriving through our psychological needs. So all of those things that people think had been motivated by are actually eroding the very things they need in order to thrive.

It does and for those that who haven’t had the opportunity to read the book that are listening, I said you’ve got to have this book, for me it’s going to be a desk reference for many years. You talked about junk food, and many of the things that I see organizations doing in regards employee engagement as well as customer engagement for that matter, are really those junk food items that quite frankly, they spend millions if not billions on, and there’s some pretty large companies who are providing products and services to fit that need, so it’s kind of like without getting into the brand names of fast food, it’s kind of like they’re just feeding the junk food problem and everybody’s getting obese to so speak and not being able to engage their employees. What does the company do? There’s a whole, as you said, an entire industry devoted to providing junk food motivation to workers and that’s a tough thing. So that is why I think it’s up to every leader who I helped or has read the book to say—what do I do with the people I lead to help them maneuver in a workplace, in an environment that is pretty much dedicated to unhealthy ways of motivating people. And the smarter organizations get, and I have to tell you, I am starting to work with some really smart organizations and at the very top levels are changing the culture.

I was just in Miami last week, I won’t name names because I’ve signed a nondisclosure agreement, but it’s a major financial institution that I wasn’t sure I wanted to work with because of a reputation was built during the horrible economic crisis and is actually named in that movie, The Big Short in Michael Lewis’s book. So I went to New York City and I met with the CEO and he read my book three times and he was dedicated to changing the culture of this organization and I asked him why. And he said because it’s important for us to do the right thing for the right reasons. Not because the government is coming down on us, not because we have to do it by law in the near future but because it’s the right thing to do. And for that reason I signed on to work with them and I just met with 200 of their top level executives and we talked about changing the culture so that people are not in the financial industry just for financial gain and to make a buck and just charge a higher fees as they possibly can but to focus on what gives them their joy which is helping people become self-sufficient, help them have retirements and they are able to put their kids to college, it was so refreshing Jim. So I do feel like there’s companies that are willing to take a stand, leaders who are willing to start to back the system. But I think where were really going to make headway is with individual leaders who are willing to have conversations with their people and talk to them about their motivation and why they’re motivated.

Jim Rembach: And that is very inspirational to me and if I can help with that in any way and hopefully this show will help do just that and created that awareness I am excited to be able to do that because I’m right there with you, I’m part of your legion.

Susan Fowler: Thank you Jim.

Jim Rembach: You’re welcome. Okay so, gosh, this journey that you’ve been through and what has come to be able to produce this book, now the work you even adeep part of that, I mean there’s just so many inspirational stories that we can use in order to grow that bigger platform and awareness and we use quotes on the show to kind of help us from an inspirational perspective, is there a quote or two that stands out for you that you can share with us?

Susan Fowler: I think, and I’m not even sure and this may have come after I wrote the book, one of the beautiful things about writing a book and then speaking and training and doing all this is that you start to really get to the other side of complexity in a different way. In the book what we say is that if a person is motivated it’s the wrong question, the question is why. People are always motivated, the question is why they’re motivated because not all motivation is created equal. So I think that my quote today is, if I can remember, when it comes to motivation the reason for your motivation is what matters most. So everybody is motivated the question is why, what is the reason and some reasons are higher quality than other reasons. And when I say high quality what I mean by that is that you’ll have later sustained energy, you will produce higher quality, you will have a greater sense of physical and mental well-being, that you will be able to sustain that positive energy overtime and be a greater role model for other people. So the reason for your motivation is what matters most.

Jim Rembach: And talking about that, in order for us to be able to find what our motivation is isn’t always an easy task and so many times we have to get over a hump or two in order to be able to really hone in or identify what our true real motivations are. Is there a time where you can think about where you’ve had to get over the hump and it helped redefine your motivations?

Susan Fowler: Every single day. I have one of those hump experiences a while back. Jim I think that I’m really lucky, I don’t know if you can call it luck but I’ve really designed my career around what I love to do. So I love to talk to people, I love to learn, I love to teach and along with that goes a lot of travel. And anyone who travels knows that today it’s not like it used to be and it’s a pain in the neck. I don’t know if you know the singer songwriter Dan Fogelberg, he was somebody I met when I was at the University of Colorado many, many years ago, and in one of his songs, Same Old Lang Syne, he has this line, the audiences are heavenly but the travel is hell. And I could really, really relate to that, I was standing in line—I don’t stand in line I’m not kind of person my personality is I will look to see which line is shortest and I’m going to get in that shortest line and I’m going to get through the fastest and everything I do is I make sure that I’m not getting in a line that has families, and forgive me for this, but men because men don’t carry purses and so they’re taking everything out their pockets and will take their belts off it takes them forever to get through security. So, I’m like in the shortest line and getting really uptight and really frustrated and then I thought, “Gosh, Susan, this is exactly what you have written about what you talked about all the time, whenever you’re feeling this tension and this pressure you’re in suboptimal motivation outlook so you should do something different.” And I said, “Okay, this is a chance for me to live my values.” What are my values? And I thought, “Okay, I have a value around learning and being patient, so okay, patience is a good thing. What can I learn about myself?

So, anyway, I went to this whole inner talk thing and I said, “Okay, Susan, get in the longest line. So I found the line that had a family in it and I get in line, they have a toddler, a new born, and all the paraphernalia that you can possibly imagine and there’s struggling and they look at me they go, “Do you want to go ahead of us?” Because I’m pretty organized you know, and I go, “No, No, No, it’s fine.” And so they’re trying to get all their stuff up and finally I go, “Excuse me, you seem to be really struggling here, would it be helpful if I held your baby? And they look at me and “Yeah.” And I’m thinking, oh, this is awesome because I love babies, I love holding babies. And so they get to the line, and actually I just start to go through security and I said, “Excuse me you do want your baby?” they were so plastered like, “Oh, yeah, give us our baby.” On the other side I took the baby again helped them get all their stuff together and then we all went on out merry way. At the gate I see the man coming towards me and he says, “Excuse me, this is the first time we’ve ever travelled with this two kids and we didn’t even stop to thank you. We just want you to know how much we appreciate your kindness. I don’t know that we could have gotten through this without you.” And all this, I have to tall you Jim, I literally had goosebumps and I was thinking, “Oh, my gosh, I love holding that baby it was so much fun and I did some good for people, wow, this is really cool.” And so now I actually enjoy going through security and finding ways that I can be helpful to people it’s totally change my energy going through security at the airport. We are never going to love everything we do. We’re never going to have passion for everything we do but if we really understand what are values are and can find a way to live those values or sense of purpose to whatever we’re doing, it really changes the quality of your life. And so how that was it too long or too silly but I think that all the time because I travel a lot, so I think about it every day.

Jim Rembach: Thanks for sharing that. That was a real world hump that probably so many people can resonate with and because I know even myself, I’m like, okay I need to get all my stuff, and I need to get— instead of thinking about others that I can potentially help. So now I have a very different perspective when I have to go through security line.

Susan Fowler: I share this with a friend and now he’s in his (16:35 inaudible) and he says that when he goes through security he’s like, how can I help people laugh? And he’s a real jokester and he’s really funny, so now he’s like helping people laugh within the guidelines of the TSA.

Jim Rembach: An important note. We had talked earlier about some of the work that you’re doing at many different levels and also about this particular book and of course a lot of research behind it and you have so many things going on, all the traveled course and I know the relationship with your husband and all of those things there’s just so many things on the plate. But if you’re to say that you had one goal, what would it be?

Susan Fowler: I don’t know if it’s a goal because I don’t have one goal Jim but I definitely have a very important purpose. I stated it earlier but let me just clarify it. My purpose is to be a catalyst for good and to use the science of motivation as the impetus for that. So, I have a goal when I speak that if I can make a difference in one person’s life that I’ve made a difference and that’s good enough. And so at the end of the presentations or a training session if just one person comes up and says thank you for being here today, I think that was a good reason to be there that day. And it’s interesting if you change one person or you help one person you usually end up doing it to a lot more people because at least speaking to individuals and not just kind of feeding your own ego or your own needs. So, I guess if I had a specific goal, my smart goal, would be to try to make a difference in someone’s life every day through a conversation, thorough an interaction, through my formal training or speaking or writing. And I’m writing every day, I’m writing a blog, or I’m writing a tweet or at LinkedIn message. You know, I’m having multiple conversations with clients and sales people every day so I’ve got wonderful opportunity to live my purpose and achieve that goal every single day.

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 sponsors.

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynotes 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’ll help your attendees get over the hump, now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

Now here we go Fast Leader listeners, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Susan, 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 a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Susan Fowler, are you ready to hoedown?

Susan Fowler: If I can ** fast.

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

Susan Fowler: My judgement. I judge too much, myself and others.

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

Susan Fowler: To make sure that you are prepared for leadership, that leadership is from the inside out. It can’t be about your needs, this can be about the needs of the people you lead.

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

Susan Fowler: I’m having a deeply felt sense of purpose that I’m hope is a noble purpose.

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

Susan Fowler: I think it’s overly fast.

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

Susan Fowler: Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Susan Fowler. Okay Susan 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 the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, so what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Susan Fowler: You know, I read this so many times from people who say that when they get to be my age is that you wish that you hadn’t care so much what other people are thinking about you I think to care more about how people are feeling as a result of your presence. To be less self-centered, to be less worried about my own image and more concerned about how I’m affecting the energy and quality of life of the people around.

Jim Rembach: Susan, 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?

Susan Fowler: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I’ve got a website, www.susanfowler.com and you can also go on Amazon to see the “Why motivating people does not work” book page and there’s all kind of information on there as well.

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

END OF AUDIO

[/expand]

069: Kirk Weisler: I never wanted to be the poop guy

Kirk Weisler Show Notes

Kirk Weisler had a small adversity that really had a great impact on him. One that he didn’t really foresee or intend. As an assistant soccer coach he was warned by several parents, with all of the drama parents can bring, about an obstruction on the soccer field. Listen to Kirk tell his story of how he got bugged about it and how taking action changed his life forever.

Kirk was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and lived in several cities in Michigan and Tyler, Texas. Kirk was the middle of three sons.

After High School he lost more money than he made. After a couple of years he joined the US Army as a Ranger because he needed to gain some discipline.

After giving four years to his government he decided to serve two years to his God and serve a two year mission for his Church.

After that Kirk went a two-year college because he was rejected by every major university he applied to. That’s where he met his lovely wife Rebecca. After completing his degree Kirk was accepted to Brigham Young University where he received a degree in Organizational Behavior & Youth Leadership.

His unique background as a US Army Ranger, a member of the 19th Special Forces Chaplaincy, his work with At-Risk Youth and experience as a Master Storyteller & Team Builder make him a very fun, engaging, and sought after speaker.

Kirk is the Chief Morale Officer at Team Dynamics and works with companies and organizations around the globe. He is an expert speaker, author and creator of outrageously cool workplace cultures and high performance teams.

Over the past 17 years over 50,000 Leaders have specifically sought Kirk’s advice and wisdom on building teams, strengthening leaders and improving culture.

He authored the Best Smelling book, The Dog Poop Initiative and the semi–sweet best smeller, “The Cookie Thief.

Kirk currently lives in Phoenix AZ with “Wonderful wife Rebecca and thank God he has a lot of energy because they are busy raising six (remarkable) children.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @kirkweisler to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“My goal and my passion is to raise confident kids.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Just like leaders, parents have to be very intentional.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Parents probably have the most significant leadership role out there.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Are my actions and my beliefs going to match my words?” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“As a young leader I thought my job was to go and motivate the team.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“It’s not my job to motivate people…your personal motivation is your responsibility.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“The spirit, attitude and energy you bring to work; you’ve got to be in charge of that.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“My job as a leader is to create a climate where passion can live and grow.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Your motivation is your job; my #motivation is my job.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“We move towards and become that which we consistently think about and believe.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Act the way you want to be and soon you’ll become the way you act.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Choose it until you become it.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Bring the power of choice into your life and choose who you want to be.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Practice who you want to be until you become who you want to be.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Some of our biggest aha moments happen after tremendous adversity.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“If pointing and complaining is the model we’re not going to have good leaders tomorrow.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“What was the poop? Did they want to be pointers or scoopers?” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“We’re all pointing and complaining instead of taking the time to fix it.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“The number one reason people don’t take initiative isn’t because it’s not their job.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“The number one reason people don’t take initiative is because of peer pressure.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“All of us to some degree can be guilty of stopping others from doing what’s needed.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Sometimes people are stopping us because we might make them look bad.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Don’t be a human being, be a human becoming.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Human becomings are very becoming humans.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“If you can’t invest an hour a month in your own development then you need to recheck your priorities.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Always read a book that your leader loves.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Always have one or two books in common with your leader.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

“Authenticity resonates. Be Authentic.” -Kirk Weisler Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Always read a book that your leader loves.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Organization. I need to let someone with great organizational skills carry the load.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Never stop growing. Always keep yourself in a state of becoming.

Secret to Success

It’s always important to read a new book. I try to read a new book every month.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

Authenticity. When people can sense you’re authentic they’re going to forgive the majority of your shortcomings.

Contacting Kirk

Website: http://www.kirkweisler.com

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kirkweisler

Resources

Creating an Even Better Place to Work

Show Transcript:

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

Kirk Weisler: I never wanted to be the poop guy

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 tennis 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. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

Jim Rembach: Okay, Fast Leader Legion you better hold on tight because there’s going to be a lot of energy on this episode because I have Kirk Weisler with me, who’s born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, lived in several cities in Michigan and Tyler, Texas. He was the middle of three sons and after high school Kirk loss more money than he made in two years so he joined the US Army as a ranger because he needed to gain some discipline. After giving for years to his government he decided to get two years to his God and serve a two-year mission for his search. After that went to college and was rejected by every major university that he apply to. He went to a two year college and met his lovely wife Rebecca and started on the journey that were going to learn about today. After completing his two years at community college he was finally accepted by Brigham Young University and received the degree in Organization Behavior and Youth Leadership.

Kirk is currently the chief morale officer at Team Dynamics and works with companies and organizations around the globe. He is an expert speaker, author and creator of outrageously cool workplaces over the past 17 years. Over 50,000 leaders have specifically sought out Kirk’s advice and wisdom in building teams, strengthening leaders and improving cultures. He authored the best smelling book, the dog poop initiative and the semi-sweet smeller—The Cookie Thief. Currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wonderful wife Rebecca and thank God he has a lot of energy because they are trying their best to raise six remarkable children. Kirk Weisler are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Kirk Weisler: I sure am Jim. Thanks for letting for having me guest on the Fast Leader show, how fun.

Jim Rembach: I’m glad you’re here. We’ve had such incredible things to learn about you in our conversation prior to the interview and I hope we can bring a lot of those things out because I think they’re going to help a lot of us get over the hump. But for now I’ve given our listeners 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?

Kirk Weisler: Obviously with six kids you’ve got to be passionate about family, I don’t think that’s unusual to any of your listeners. So as the six kids, we’ve got one in theatre, one in dancer, those kind of things are a lot of fun but the real passion that Rebecca and I share is—one thing that we think makes people the most attractive is confidence. And so the goal and the passion is to raise confident kids. Kids that are confident about who they are, confident about what their passion about and confident about life and they’ve got that sense of confidence they won’t fall into some of the things that kids fall into when they’re insecure and trying to fit in. So confident kids, that’s my passion.

Jim Rembach: That’s pretty huge. There was something that I was reading the other day that talks about especially for girls when the age 14 hits that whole confidence, structure, framework foundation that they may have had previous to that just kind of just crumbles.

Kirk Weisler: It can, it certainly can. That’s why I think parents have to be, just like leaders, parents have to be very intentional. You can’t just think, well I hope my kids are confident. There’s got to have a plan, there’s got to be purpose, there’s got to be goals, there’s got to be some intentionality and all rigorous leaders and parents probably have that most are going to be (3:47 inaudible) out there.

Jim Rembach: That’s for sure. Listening to you talk, thanks for sharing that, you’ve shared with me that when startups we’re going wild and crazy, that you’re part of seven different startups. Some of that confidence thing, I think, came into play based on the story that you were telling me and what you decided to do, can you please share that with us?

Kirk Weisler: You bet. Back in the early 2000’s before the.com crash and bomb, everyone is talking we’re going to do the start the best thing and so we are part of a startup that was going to create a thousand jobs in two years and we did. And that success got to be part of something else, and everyone was offering this signing check to come here, come there. And I was very flattered and was kind of caught up in this—why you can do you anything and wanted to be successful so I would take one offer and then I would take another offer and a few years later you’re making huge dollars a month more than you’ll ever imagine. But my wife kind of pointed out something that I knew and that was, Oh! my gosh, I wasn’t happy. She said, why don’t you go back?

Jim Rembach: When you were doing training when you’re working with people in training and leadership development, helping people gain skills and relation to their potential you’re much happier. And when you’re happier doing that you also a happier dad and happy husband, she said, I can tell that you’re not fulfilled in your work and that bothers me as a wife. And so I said, well yeah, but I’m scared. I know I’m not happy that we’re having this conversation but I’m scared, I don’t know how to replace this income that we have now. I don’t know how to, you know. She said, why don’t you just stop doing this and go back some of the offers you (5:37 inaudible) why don’t you just become an entertainment speaker and trainer. And I said, “Okay, that’s a great idea but what if nobody calls, what if nobody wants to hear what I want to say?” And she said, ‘What if they do?” She said, “It’s time for you to kind of practice what you preach. Give it a go and risk it.”

And so with that kind of support and encouragement that’s exactly what I did, I finally step away from things and hang up shingles as it were, call the few people that I’ve spoken to before and said, hey, this is what I’m doing now if you need someone. And Jim, no question that that first year was a little bit worrisome but at the end of the year all the bills were paid no one was calling to take things away and the next year double the first year and then 17, 18 years later now I’ve enjoyed the full calendar for 18 years essentially build on word-of-mouth referral work I don’t have any marketing plan, I don’t have any marketing materials, I don’t have a business card, I’ve just been blessed and I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way about that. And so, that was a great chance for me to say, what do I really believe and am I going to put my actions in my beliefs? Are they going to match my words? Are they going to match my feet? And are my feet going to match my mouth? So it was a big thing.

Jim Rembach: That’s huge, and thanks for sharing that. And for myself, and one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show is because you left a very clear mark on me when I had the opportunity to see you speak—probably about 15 years ago now, so in those early stages—

Kirk Weisler: Back when I was pretty rough.

Jim Rembach: But even raw it left such huge impact. And you said something without exactly quoting you to the effect that, you can’t motivate people—to think that you’re actually going to do so is ridiculous what you can do as a leader is create the environment by which people motivate themselves.

Kirk Weisler: Jim, that’s so huge. As a young leader I thought my job, and a lot of young leaders too they think—well I got to go motivate the team it’s my job to make sure the morale’s high, it’s my job to get you fired up like this type rally guy at a local high school pre-game show and that’s just not what leadership is. The minute that the leader can decide and realize or come to the realization that—Hey, it’s not my job to motivate people right? It’s but it’s my job to help people come to that understanding that—you know what, your personal motivation is your responsibility. The spirit and attitude and energy you bring work you got to be in charge of that. My job as a leader is to create a climate where that sense of passion can live and grow and become more and then whereas my job is make sure we’re not throwing cold water in motivation but your motivation is your job, my motivation is my job. And maybe you can help people come to that place you’ve helped them laid a foundation for taking ownership for their entire life.

Jim Rembach: It’s so true. And I know when you started talking about the transition that you went through about, the not being happy, being scared about the loss of income really just taking that leap, what you shared about motivation and there’s so many quotes that I start thinking about and in the show we look at those because they help us through a lot of those times and give us sometimes a beacon or way point or direction to go. Is there a quote or two that you can share with us that kind of give you a good sense of direction?

Kirk Weisler: This is one of the unique things about your show Jim as I listen to some of your past interviews and every one of your guest shares these quotes. You have a collection of quotes that is phenomenal on your website. A couple of quotes that I hope will be worthy of your current collection that have kind of set the best one for me. When Rebecca and I first got married and I was getting started I was very inspired by a guy name Steven Cabby, she actually want to get a job working for Steven Cabby, so she was working with the Cabby Leadership center 20 years ago and I was hoping that somehow be good enough to be hired as one of the trainers, which never happened, I just got busy with my independent work.

One of the quote she brought home that hang in our refrigerator for years went like this it said: “We move towards and become that which we consistently think about and believe.” And that really invites you and I to consider something. What is it that I consistently thinking about? And what is it that I believe? If my life and my energy is moving towards my thoughts I sure my thoughts aren’t negative, I sure my aren’t cynical, I sure my thoughts aren’t belittling to myself or others, I sure my thoughts are filled with potential and power and positivity, I sure my thoughts are filled with creative energy about what can be and about the good that exist in people, so that quote helps me to be much more intentional about the characters and the acts that takes place on the stage of my mind. And so that was a big fall for me.

Jim Rembach: That’s huge. Thanks for elaborating and filling and giving so much more richness to that quote, I appreciate that.

Kirk Weisler: Let me give you one more. Again I give the credit to my lovely wife, Rebecca. This is one she pulled out for the kids and that’s one that I’ve been using again and again in my work. Essentially she says, “After what you want to be and soon you become the way you act.” And she was telling this to the kids saying “You know listen, act confident, and soon you’ll become confident” what do confident act like? What is it like? And as I was sharing this idea in a seminar and sometimes you do this, and Jim I know you done this too when you were asked to come speak to a group and some of the group wants to be there and some of the group their management made them come, so could kind of tell the difference. There’s the folks in the first few rows that have their pen out with their notebook and there’s those few people on the back row that came in last, sitting in the back row they’ve got their arms folded like—try to motivate me dude—and they kind of give me that look. So I’m with one of this groups (11:47 inaudible) they want to be there yet, so I rule out—they’re actually want to be (11:51 inaudible) and this guy’s—oh, you mean fake till you make it? Fake it till you make it. Here’s a guy that just took something potentially positive and somehow gave a negative tone. But something it could have been my mind that I responded and I said no I don’t mean fake it till you make it, I mean this, I mean choose it until you become it. Bring the power of choice into your life and choose who you want to be and practice you want to be until you become who you want to be, choose it till you become it act till we want to be. So there it is a couple of more quotes for you all there.

Jim Rembach: That definitely I’m sure notably twitted, re-twitted and shared across many different social platform, so thank you for that. We had such great conversation and we talked about many things you even shared a story about a friend of yours that you were just amazed and thought you a huge lesson, but can you think about a time where you’ve had to get over a hump and it totally defined you and put you in a much better direction? Can you share that story?

Kirk Weisler: You and I before talked about—really a careful and quite exploration of our history and some of our biggest aha moments where we gain confidence where shawls went back, happened after tremendous adversity, opposition in their lives, whether great or small and I think we can all tell a story—a child in the hospital, horrific accident those kind of things. Let me share a smaller and maybe a little bit more of a lighthearted story with you and your listeners. About a small adversity that really had a great impact on me and still does today, one that I didn’t foresee or intend. And the situation, and this is the true story and this is the foundation of a book that I wrote called: Dog Poop Initiative, it’s a very simple looks like (13:40 inaudible) book a five minute read, but my job Jim was I was the assistant coach dad for a group 4 and 5 year old soccer players.

My wife was born in England so soccer has to be part of the family culture, that’s just what they do in England. So, little Josh, he’s 17 now but Josh was 5 years old he’s on the soccer team, my job as the assistant coach dad Jim is basically to keep the kids off the soccer field and on the parking lot until it’s our turn to take the field. The soccer field that we’re assigned to that day were the third set of teams assigned to that field. As we arrive, and I’ve got few of the kids in the neighborhood, I said, “Guys, stay here and I’m now watching the little kids on the field their finishing up their game, as I’m watching their games some parents sitting there watching their kids play get my attention and said, “Hey, you want the field next?” and I said, “Yes, I am.” And they point to the field and on the field on the corner of the field on one end is a huge pile of dog poop. And they pointed that us the dog poop and they say, “Tell your kids to watch out for that” and they were very, very serious about this and very dramatic and they’re very disgust with this pile of dog poop and they let me know.

The active service they’re rendering that day is to make sure that everyone knows about the poop. So I look at the poop, I acknowledge them, I thank them for their warning and then I begin to ponder what just happen. I few minutes later some parents who didn’t see me get that warning got my attention essentially gave me the same warning with the same level of drama. They’re servers for the day, their good deed has been done they let somebody know about the poop. Now I know and you know we had to clean that up, right? I know that as soon as the soccer game is over I got to clean that pile of poop out because genetically for as many generations as I can trace back in my family history, genetically Weisler’s always steps on poop, that’s just something we do. Our feet are like magnets drawn to metal and if it’s poop we’re going to step in it. So I’ve got to clean that up because I know my son will step in this, somehow he’ll be the only boy today that will find that pile and step in it, so, I’m going to clean it up. About three minutes later Coach Coleman shows up, he’s the real coach of our team, and he shows up he got the same two warnings I got, he looked at me and I looked at him we just shrug our shoulders we both know we’re going to clean up the poop. Now the game is over we’re going to get out kids do their warm ups in the net, we’re going to clean up the poop we didn’t even discuss it we step on to the field. Then the two coaches on the field, cause at that age group the coaches are on the field with their kids, and the teenage referee in stripe shirt with a whistle who looks like he might be on some court community service time they approach us and this two adults and this young adult stop us and explain to us about the pile of poop. But the referee explains, “Don’t worry about it. If the ball start zooming towards that pile all this blow by whistle, we’ll pick up the ball and we’ll look back to the other side of the field then continue the game. They are now changing the rules of the game to play around this pile of poop. As they’re explaining about this new rule, Coach Coleman can’t take it anymore, and he shows no sign of disgust he just simply walks towards the thrash can, I followed his example I leave the huddle of poop discussion I walk towards the thrash, we find a piece of cardboard and a stick and within 90 seconds the poop is clean up, it’s thrown away and we’re ready to play the game. At which point a parent of the departing team who sees this happen, remember they sat there for an hour and watch the poop—for an hour and before that it was there for another hour for previous game. The parent of the party came, looks at me and says, “Yeah, the job somebody really needed to do that.” So I hollered back, it could been you—I mean, for an hour, for an hour, I was blown away. For the next hour Jim we played a soccer game and what did we worry about? What was one thing we did not even worry about?

Jim Rembach: I was trying to contain my laughter.

Kirk Weisler: For an hour we did even think about the pile of poop we were really, “Oh, no it’s coming on this other field—we just played the game. Now I thought I was done, I thought this is the end of it. But your question was how does this change my life? The next morning I woke up—you ever have something happened the day before its churning in the back of your subconscious, I woke up the next morning and I was just bugged. I woke up bugged and when we’re bug it’s a good thing because we’re bug about something, it’s when we’re bugged that we do something or at least we can and we can complain a point or we could take action, so I took action. So you got this great show and you’re changing the world with your Fast Leader show and your leadership and helping people share their story and inspire others. Today they call it blogging but back then it was just email. I wrote an email describing to a thousand people what did happen the day before on soccer field. And my main point in that email was simply this, I was worried that all these children, all these future leaders were watching all these adults including their parents do all this pointing. The model was pointing, it wasn’t an issue that was in scooping it was pointing and complaining. And if that’s the model we’re going to give the leaders of tomorrow, we’re not going to have good very good leaders tomorrow.

And so, I kind of describe what I just described, I set this email out and I said, “We’ve got to be better examples, people are watching.” And I thought that’s the end of it. Here how it change my life, over the next two weeks I got email, after email, after email, after email back. People had cut it off this email that I’ve written and they took it in their staff meeting at hotels, restaurants, businesses, military units and they read this poop story, it was basically four paragraphs, this little poop story it was basically four paragraphs, this little poop story, and they had meaningful discussions in their workplace what they we’re pointing at, what was the poop, and do they want to be pointers? Or do they want to be scoopers?

So I got these emails back and then my brother, he was in the military unit—my older brother, military intelligence in fact, he said, “Kirk you said your poop story was a big hit.” And I said, “Greg, I got these emails, people are reading (20:15 inaudible) me can even believe it. He goes, “Kirk we had the most amazing discussion.” We’re all laughing so hard a story but then we realize, “Oh, my gosh, it’s about us.” Here’s the thing that we point at, here’s this broken process, here’s this broken product, here’s this work around we’ve created and we’re all pointing and complaining about it and we’re warning others about it instead of taking—the time it takes to solve it to clean it up to fix it. He said, “Kirk you’ve got to do a book about this.” And I was like, “I’m not going to do a book about poop.” He goes, “Kirk, think of this too man, you’re not thinking.” He said, “It would drive mom nuts, if the only book her three sons ever wrote was a book about poop, right? Because mom always (20:56 inaudible) raising people, that was all we talked about anyway.”

And so with a little bit of encouragement from my brother we did this book called Dog Poop Initiative and it’s now have several languages and it’s around the world and it opened so many doors for me. I had people call me or email and say, “Hey, are you the poop guy? Which I never wanted to be the poop guy obviously but I notice some sort of the poop guy and I’ve been on some radio shows. So, let me close this story with an experience I had on the radio show that was again change of me. In my mind Jim, I thought this book was about initiative very simply. I thought the number one reason that people don’t take initiative is because—it’s not my job and I don’t want to get my hands dirty, that’s what I thought. But on the radio show, I learned a valuable lesson and it changed me. So, some disc jockey, some morning show disc jockey is having me on, he intends to talk for about five minutes about the book because he discovered the book and he thought it was really funny so it was just kind of fun, quick interview, give away a few books to the first five callers. And so, I told the story and boom! I thought I was about to be off the show. And the producer comes on and says,” Hey the phones have lit up, take some callers.” So he says, “Kirk, will you stay on and take some callers?” I didn’t expected to be on a radio show or write a book about poops—sure I’ll take the call.

For the next 45 minutes we talked to callers about initiative. They told their stories, they told their version of the poop story about something. One young lady came on and she told a story that was a great example, I think of the theme that was in everybody’s story that day on the phone. The number one people don’t take initiative isn’t because it’s not their job and it isn’t because they don’t like it their hands dirty. The number one reason people don’t take initiative is because of peer pressure. The story that she shared Jim went like this, she said, the week before the radio show she was walking in the wharf from lunch with 6 or 7 of her co-workers they’re all coming back together they’re walking towards the front end of the building. Outside the door is a couple of trash cans, about seven people (23:17 inaudible) the thrash can is a great big double big Gulp cups just lying on the grass. A couple of her co-workers walk by the cup, she steps off the sidewalk to pick up the cup thinking I’ll just throw it in the trash can. As she bends down to pick up the cup, what happens Jim?

Jim Rembach: What are you doing?

Kirk Weisler: Yeah. Her co-workers say, “What are you doing? Don’t touch that you don’t know where it’s been. Let the grounds crew get it. Now were her co-workers genuinely concerned that she might pick up some germs? What do you think that really bothered them the most with her picking up that cup?

Jim Rembach: They didn’t do it first.

Kirk Weisler: That’s exactly right. They don’t care about the germs. They didn’t want her to pick up the cups because they didn’t pick up the cup and if she did it would make them look what?

Jim Rembach: Bad.

Kirk Weisler: Yeah, they’re worried about themselves and their image. They didn’t do it and so I don’t want you to do it because you make me look bad. This very simple idea resonates deeply through every aspect of our lives where all of us to some degree could be guilty of stopping others from doing what needs for and needs to be done simply because we think that if they do that they’re going to make us look bad. And sometimes people are stopping us for the same motivation. If we take the initiative if we solve the problem, if we go the extra mile, we might make them look bad. It’s the most insidious mind, potential robbing form of peer pressure that’s out there. But it’s out there in droves it’s holding companies back, it’s holding things back, it’s holding entire cultures and countries back. It’s the most amazing thing and it’s been again change for me.

Jim Rembach: Wow, Kirk, that’s awesome. Thanks for giving us all of the insight that you gave us because I can tell you that from—even when I had the opportunity see you speak 15+ years ago to where you are today, it’s amazing to me how much depth and how much insight you’ve gained throughout the course of those years that you now can impact the world yourself, so thank you again.

Kirk Weisler: I think you’ve been candid, Jim but if I had any wisdom or depths it’s from people that I’ve met along the way and so teach me things on radio shows.

Jim Rembach: That’s why I did the Fast Leader show, I’ve learned a ton.

Kirk Weisler: I love it, I love it. So Kirk keep doing what you’re doing because the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

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So here we go Fast Leader listeners. It’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Kirk, 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. Kirk Weisler, are you ready to hoedown?

Kirk Weisler: I’m ready to hoedown, let’s bring it Jim.

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

Kirk Weisler: Definitely organization. It’s never been a strength for me to be more organize and I met that place where I’ve got to have another administrative assistant kind of step in I’m just awful on those things. Focus on the things I’m good at get rid of the things I’m not good at and to let someone else with great organizational skills carry the load.

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

Kirk Weisler: Never stop growing always keep yourself in the state of becoming. My wife says, “Don’t be a human being be a human becoming and a never ending state of growth and development. Remember human becoming are very becoming humans.

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

Kirk Weisler: I think it’s always important to read a new book. I’ve been for 18 years try to read a new book every 30 days. Now that sounds like a lot but you read (27:32 inaudible) Raving Fans, you can read those books in an hour so if you can invest at least one hour a month for your personal development, then you need to re-check your priorities. So reading a new book also, for those young leaders out there, if you work for somebody your boss, your supervisor has a favorite book, always read a book that your leader loves. Always have one or two books in common with your leader, that’s great advice.

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

Kirk Weisler: Authenticity. When people can sense your authentic they’re going to forgive all those shortcoming—they’ll forgive the majority of the shortcomings. When people sense to your genuine intent and you’re authentic, they’ll open the doors. It’s like you said Jim, people do business with people, people they can trust not just any person but people they can trust, authenticity resonates, be authentic.

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

Kirk Weisler: There’s a thousand great leadership books out there I know you talk about many of them. But one book that I still think about, reference day is the book called, Orbiting—the Giant Hairball by Gordon McKenzie. It tells about his journey working for Hallmark cards and it’s a wonderful—for me it’s a culture book, it’s a leadership book, it’s a creativity book, it’s an innovation book. Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon McKenzie, it’s a game change you’ll love it.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader listeners, you can find that and other bonus information by going to fastleader.net/Kirk Wiesler and I’ll even provide links to The Dog Poop Initiative and the Cookie Thief. Okay, Kirk, this is my last Hump day hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, so what one skill or piece of knowledge that you take back with you and why?

Kirk Weisler: This is a great question Jim and an easy one answer. When I was younger I worry so much about what I didn’t know, if I can take one thing back I’d spend far less time worrying about what I didn’t know, what I felt I had to know before I was ready or worthy to try something and be a part of something new. Instead I would just dive in, believe me not so much of myself as in my ability to find, solicit and successfully put into action the expertise and advice of others. I’d be confident I could do anything and then the people would be there to help me if I would simply ask.

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

Kirk Weisler: My website is simply kirkweisler.com

Jim Rembach: Kirk Weisler, 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!

END OF AUDIO

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068: Chantal Bechervaise: It was not something I expected

Chantal Bechervaise Show Notes

Chantal Bechervaise found herself in a management position where the senior management and above created a very toxic work environment. As a person that is normally positive and perseveres, she eventually became very apathetic and depressed. That’s when she did something that helped her realize that she was totally empowered to change her own destiny. Listen to how Chantal was able to move onward and upward faster.

Chantal was born and raised in Montreal, Canada with her younger brother.

In 5^th grade, when on a field trip Chantal was left behind at the museum. Instead of freaking out Chantal went to a phone booth and looked up on their next stop on their field trip to tell them to come back and get her.

Chantal’s family and friends always comment on how she is one of the strongest people that they know. She is a rock and perseveres, constantly looking for ways to learn and improve. Chantal says it’s all about attitude and she can always be found encouraging others to reach their goals.

Chantal is bilingual, speaking both English and French and works in the Canadian Federal Government. By night, she is a blogger, and social media fiend and in her ‘spare’ time likes to volunteer to help support organizations in her community.

Chantal has a few core principles that she tries to live by. The first is her favorite, from quote from Maya Angelou ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said … will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” And the second is that it doesn’t cost anything to be kind to others, but that kindness could mean the world to the other person. She says that you never know what others are going through and when being kind can make a difference in the life of someone else.

Chantal also prides herself on being a HUGE Sci-fi geek. And her goal is to create workplaces that don’t suck.

Chantal currently reside in Ottawa with her husband Blair, of 15 years and with their 13 year-old daughter.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @cbechervaise to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“My current passion is creating workplaces that don’t suck.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“Trust in the abilities of your employees.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“A lot of times people are given the job but not the why.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“Trust in your ability that you hired the right person.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“For me, it’s always being kind and nice to the other person.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“Help other employees with what they need to get done; that is what they remember.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“When you’re dealing with a toxic environment…it wears you down.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“I slowly started to realize that it was in my power to change my situation.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“Work doesn’t have to suck, you can change your work environment.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“There are opportunities to break down silos and to break down some of the red-tape.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“It doesn’t matter where you are, lead from where you are.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

“No matter what’s going on in my life, I am very blessed.” -Chantal Bechervaise Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

You control your destiny and outcome. Don’t rely on other people to make you successful, take charge of your own situation.

Holding her back from being an even better leader

Myself. The only person I can blame is me. That little voice in the back of the head…I need to send that voice back.

Best Leadership Advice Received

It’s not about you, it’s about them. Take your ego out of the position…focus on them.

Secret to Success

My attitude. Even if something is negative, I turn it into a positive learning experience.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

My community and network. Friends, family and people I met on social media.

Contacting Chantal

Website: https://takeitpersonelly.com/

LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/chantalbechervaise

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cbechervaise

Resources

Creating an Even Better Place to Work

Show Transcript:

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

Chantal Bechervaise: It was not something I expected

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader Legion, I’m excited today because I have somebody who I’ve admired her work for a very long time, and hey! She’s on the show on the show. Chantal Bechervaise was born and raised in Montreal, Canada with her younger brother. In 5th grade when on a field trip she was left behind and instead of freaking out, Chantal went to the white pages, use the payphone called the place that the next stop was and then they came back and got her. Ever since then Chantal’s family and friends always comment on how she is one of the strongest people that they know.

She is a rock and perseveres, constantly looking for ways to learn and improve. Chantal says it’s all about attitude. She can always be found encouraging others to reach their goals. Chantal is bilingual speaking both English and French and works in the Canadian Federal Government. By night, she is a blogger and social media fiend and in her spare time likes to volunteer to help support organizations in her community. Chantal has a few core principles that she tries to live by. The first is her favorite from a quote from Maya Angelou: “I learned that people will forget what you said, will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

And the second is that it doesn’t cost anything to be kind to others but that kindness could mean the world to the other person. She says that you never know what others are going through and when being kind can make a difference in the life of someone else. Chantal provides herself in being a huge sci-fi geek and her goal is to create workplaces that don’t suck. Chantal currently resides in Ottawa with her husband Blair of 15 years with their 13-year-old daughter. Chantal Bechervaise are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Chantal Bechervaise: Yes I am. Thank you so much for having me.

Jim Rembach: Thanks for being here. 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?

Chantal Bechervaise: My current passion, which you touch on is creating workplaces that don’t suck, that’s my passion and that’s my goal. To create work environment where leaders thrive, where employees thrive and where it’s such a great place and a fun place to be.

Jim Rembach: We had the opportunity to chat a little bit before our time here together and you had mentioned something that I think can also contributes to that is that—talking about being a sci-fi geek, there’s some things that are in your office. You’re talking about trying to create a place of work that doesn’t suck, share with us how people respond to your workspace.

Chantal Bechervaise: People response to my workspace they usually laugh when they see my office because I have a lot of sci-fi geek career around. I volunteer with comic I’m going on my fourth year volunteering with Comic Con a lot. I’m going on my fourth year volunteering with them here in Ottawa, so I have a lot of pictures of me with various sci-fi actors, my favorite shows, the wallpaper on my computer is Dalek’s, I’m a huge Dr. Who fan, so, people usually laugh when they see my office.

Jim Rembach: For me, I started thinking about the personalization and I had a lot of experience in contact center operations. We always have the dilemma on know how much can people have—that their workspace in regards to personal items and it really kind of a petty thing after a while. When you start thinking about creating a workplace that doesn’t suck, what is one thing somebody can do in order to make it not do that?

Chantal Bechervaise: I think the one thing that most leaders or anybody in a workplace to help not make it suck is trust in the ability of their employees. You spend the time hiring someone, you went through all the steps of interviewing, screening them out, checking references and then a lot of times what happens is people get to work and then they’re sidelines, they’re given a job but they’re not give the why they’re doing or they’re not explained the full scope of a project. And that’s not fair for the employee or the leader so trust in your ability that you hired the right person and that they have the right skills to carry out job.

Jim Rembach: I definitely see how that whole trust issue plays out in a lot of different ways even when I was talking about how we use to try to limit or tell people it really came down to trust issue. And trust is one of those things that we often have to really kind of remind ourselves of certain things, and we use quotes in the show—you have mentioned quote that drives you, from Maya Angelou, that maybe the one you want to share with us. If you do, I would like to know really what it means to a depth, but if you have another quote that you can share with us, can you do that for us?

Chantal Bechervaise: One of my favorite is the Maya Angelou, that’s the one I try and live by. For me it’s always been kind and nice to the other person. That doesn’t mean that your pushover or people walk all over you, but it is helping people achieve their goals. And I think as a leader, even if you’re not a leader whatever position you’re in, if you can help other employees or friends or family with what they need to get done, be there to encourage them, to support them, that is what they remember and that to me is what the heart of the quote mean.

Jim Rembach: That’s one of the things that we really have found to be one of the differentiating factors for folks that really move forward and upward faster with regards to leading their selves and others is that they put more passion and emotion into it and sometimes we don’t always do that and we have humps that we have to get over and defined who we are, where we want to go and sometimes they draw connections that we didn’t necessarily realize things in ourselves. Is there a time where you had to get over a hump and how it changed your direction? Can you share it with us?

Chantal Bechervaise: Yes. This happens a few year ago. I was working for an organization and I was in a management level position so I had staff reporting to me but I have senior directors above me. And unfortunately it was a toxic work environment so I had problem with the management level, I had no problem with the staff level but the senior management and above created a very toxic work environment. It wasn’t something I expected, I think everybody’s had a bad boss or boss that wasn’t their favorite but when you work in an environment where every day you’re put down or yelled at or people are talking about you behind your back, it changes you.

It was a huge obstacle for me because I’m the type of person that’s pretty positive and I persevere and I’m a rock. But when you’re dealing with the toxic environment, if you’re a rock the toxic environment suck the water and water eventually erodes rocks. So for me it was wearing me down and it came to a point where I was very apathetic, I was depressed, I don’t want to get up in the morning to even go to my job. And in know everybody has those days where your alarm goes off, you don’t want to go to work. But this was something that was constant it was affecting every part of my life where I just want to give up and didn’t care anymore and that was not like me at all.

So that was my biggest work hurdle that I had to work through and I don’t there was a defining moment when I woke up and said, “That’s it I’m going to change” it kind of happen gradually, and this was a few years ago. When I was using social media but didn’t know how to use it and there was one day when I was on social media and I just started to discover other people that had the same passion and outlook of what a workplace should be as me. I came across this people, Megan (8:01 inaudible) Jean Asher and few others and I started to realize that it’s within my power to change how I felt about work and change my situation and that’s how I got involved in blogging and social media.

Jim Rembach: You definitely been very prolific and headed an impact on me and I’m always finding myself reading some of the contents that you have developed as well as shared. When you start thinking about where you are—with Blair and family and work and all these different things, what are some of your goals?

Chantal Bechervaise: My goal is trudging ahead to doing what I’m doing. I want to make a difference in the workplace whether it’s through my blogging or talking to people like yourself or your audience, just reaching people to tell them that work doesn’t have to suck, there is a better option out there that you can change your destiny, your work environment. Whether it’s finding a new job, whether it’s going into your job and looking for different opportunities to change and create a better job and work environment, that it is possible.

Jim Rembach: One of the thing that I find very interesting is that many of the folks that are active on social media that are doing a lot of content development are folks that are consultants, authors. Speakers—you work for the Canadian Government?

Chantal Bechervaise: Yes. Yes I do. That’s fairly new I start working for the government a couple of years ago but I do consulting and other work on the side, it’s just I’m the type of person that kind of takes on a lot and I like that.

Jim Rembach: When you start thinking about—at least here in the United States, when we start thinking about government work, we don’t necessarily think about workplaces that have a lot of focus on creating great environments, so what kind of connection, impact, effect, comments have you gotten in regards to the work that you’re doing there for the Canadian government with the other work that you’re doing in regards to creating workplace that don’t suck.

Chantal Bechervaise: I think that I that I’ve been able to combine the two in a way that is positive for myself. When people think of the government they think of big, large organizations with a lot of red tape and in a lot of cases that’s the truth but there are opportunities to make work better and to break down fallows and to break down some of the red tape. And I’ve come in here with ideas I’ve done once you learn where I’ve spoken about social networking, I have people that approach me on how to use social media, leaders are now becoming more and more involve in social media whether they’re government leaders, organizational leaders or everybody so I Google a lot of social media questions because a lot of people know that I’m very familiar with it.

Jim Rembach: That’s one reason why we have you on the show because—to me you’re a huge inspiration to a lot of folks because you haven’t allowed where you are to dictate who you are.

Chantal Bechervaise: Thank you, I think that’s something that I learned later on in life, if I have known that early in my life I think things might be a little bit different than they are now. But it’s something that I’ve known that it doesn’t matter where you are you don’t have to be CEO, a leader to take charge of your career, of yourself and lead from where you are.

Jim Rembach: Thanks so much for sharing that and being such an inspiration. Okay, so you talked about doing some consulting and doing some work on the side, what kind of organizations are you finding yourself working with?

Chantal Bechervaise: I do a variety of things. I volunteer, so a lot of my time on the side is spent volunteering because I feel that I should give back to my community, I’m very passionate about that. No matter what’s going on in my life that I’m very blessed and very happy with results I’ve achieved, so I feel that I need to give back. So, I volunteer with a couple of organizations and give back that way. I help them with their social media, I help them with reaching out to companies and doing sponsorship for them. I work with the local library and done social media classes for them as well. Other than that I do some social media and blogging campaigns with various companies. I’ve worked with Sony and Gorilla and Google and there are few other companies I’m hoping to work with in the upcoming months. And sometimes it’s just one on one I have people that approach me through work after working with them, there’s self-publish fathers that we’ll approach me and ask me to teach them how to use social media. So a lot of my time in consulting and spent teaching others how to use social media.

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.

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Jim Rembach: Alright Fast Leader listeners, now it’s time for Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Chantal, then 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. Chantal Bechervaise are you ready to hoedown?

Chantal Bechervaise: I’m ready to hoedown.

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

Chantal Bechervaise: Myself. The only person I can blame is me, nobody else. So it’s the little voice in the back of the head that’s sometimes comes up and says, “You can’t do this” I’m going to send that voice back.

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

Chantal Bechervaise: The best I think I’ve ever received was when I was told it’s not about you, it’s about them. So when you’re leading no matter what you’re doing you have to take your ego out of the position, it’s not you, focus on them.

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

Chantal Bechervaise: My attitude. I think it’s my approach. Even if something is negative or goes wrong or doesn’t turn out the way I want, I turn it into a positive learning experience.

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

Chantal Bechervaise: That’s easy, it’s my community and network, friends, family and people that I’ve met on social media.

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

Chantal Bechervaise: Oh, that’s so hard, I love so many books but one book that stands out is, The Go-Giver by Bob Burg. I think it just embodies everything that I believe about giving to others, about kindness, about putting others first.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader listeners, you can find links to that and other bonus information from today show by going to fastleader.net/ Chantal Bechervaise. Okay, Chantal 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 the knowledge and skills that you have now 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?

Chantal Bechervaise: So much I’d like to take back. If I could pick one I think I would pick that you control your destiny and outcome. There’s so many times in my early career when I was relying on other people to make me successful and to help me with my career when it should have been me taking charge of the situation.

Jim Rembach: Chantal it was an honor spend time with you today, can you please share with the fast leader legion how they can connect with you?

Chantal Bechervaise: Sure they can reach me on Twitter @cbechervaise, you can look for the spelling of my name on the show because it is a hard name to spell. They can connect with me on my blog, takeitpersonelly.com or they just click on the Fast Leader show and reach out to me that way.

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

END OF AUDIO

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066: Eryc Eyl: I got laid off and I went broke

Eryc Eyl Show Notes

Eryc Eyl had worked for an organization for ten years and was laid off. He went broke and had to find a job. It wasn’t the job he wanted so he decided to do things differently from his last job and make his work an integral part of his life. By bringing his whole self to work he ended up creating the job he wanted. Listen to what Eryc did so you can learn to move onward and upward faster.

Eryc was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in rural Northern Colorado with ducks, turkeys, chickens, cows, pigs, parrots, ferrets, raccoons, and dogs.

After high school he ran off to the East Coast to attend Vassar College, which forever changed his life, though not immediately.

After college, Eryc went broke living in Austin, but found the gravitational pull of Colorado too powerful to resist for long. He returned, attended graduate school at the University of Colorado, and has worked in nearly every function of businesses in nutrition, IT distribution, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods, and publishing.

Through Eryc’s diverse experience, he has developed a focus on improving the human experience of business. While he has worked in Corporate America for more than 20 years, Eryc has invented most of the jobs he’s had.

Eryc is an author, speaker, storyteller, coach, consultant, and DJ who helps working folks integrate their work with a meaningful, fun, and fulfilling life, so they can keep their heads and their hearts while keeping their jobs.

Eryc currently lives in Longmont, Colorado, with his incredibly talented actor/director/community organizer wife, his brilliant and kind 11-year-old daughter, and their overly affectionate cat.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @eryc_eyl to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Business is humans serving humans.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“We’re way more effective and happier when we bring our whole self to work.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“Are there things from your personal life that would make you more effective at work?” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“The one thing that hasn’t been invented yet, is your life.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“Taking that active approach is the key to creating the life that people want.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“If you work inside an organization you’re working within rules, procedures, and policies.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“Folks can spend a lot of time just complaining about where we are.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“Often times we assume limitations where there aren’t.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“We all need to keep our heads and our hearts while keeping our jobs.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“A lot of advice about careers is either about climbing the ladder or jumping off of it.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“So many of us want the safety, security and stability of a job.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“The way that we transform is through a bunch of little micro moments over time.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“How am I going to make my work an integral part of my life?” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“We all have this unique combination of experiences, expertise and eccentricities.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“When you’re seeking a job out of desperation, you don’t get the right job.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“The root cause (with many problems in our world) is a lack of empathy.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“We all need to focus a little more and say “no” to things.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

“Be so absolutely clear about your mission and purpose that those who share it will join you.” -Eryc Eyl Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

“We all need to keep our heads and our hearts while keeping our jobs.”

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Doing too much.

Best Leadership Advice Received

I don’t want to ever be a person who is trying to convince people to follow me or collaborate with me. Instead, I want to be so absolutely clear about my mission and purpose that those who share it will join me.

Secret to Success

Trying to always focus on being of service to others and trying to build quality relationships.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

Good questions.

Contacting Eryc

Website: http://www.eryceyl.com/

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/eryc_eyl

Resources

Eryc Eyl (DJ Savior Breath): Life is a Mashup on Youtube

Show Transcript:

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

066: Eryc Eyl: I got laid off and I went broke

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 tennis 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. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

Okay, Fast Leader legion, I’m excited to have the guest that I have on the show today. When I saw his DJ Savior Breath: Life is a mashup on YouTube@ignite Denver, I just had to invite him eon the show. Eryc Eyl was born in Boulder, Colorado and grew up in rural Northern Colorado with ducks, turkeys, chickens, cows, pigs, parrots, ferrets, raccoons, and dogs. After high school he ran off to the East Coast to attend Vassar College, which forever change his life, though not immediately. After college, Eryc went broke living in Austin but found the gravitational pull of Colorado too powerful to resist for long. He returned to attend graduate school at the University of Colorado and has worked in nearly every function of businesses and nutrition, IT distribution, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods and publishing. Through Eryc’s diverse experience he had developed a focus on improving the human experience of business. While he has worked in corporate America for more than 20 years, Eryc has invented most of the jobs he’s had.

Eryc is an author, speaker, storyteller, coach, consultant and DJ who helps working folks integrate their work with a meaningful fun and fulfilling life, so they keep their heads and their hearts while keeping their jobs. Eryc currently lives in Longmont, Colorado with his incredibly talented actor, director, community organizer wife, his brilliant and kind 11-year-old daughter and their overly affectionate cat. Eryc Eyl are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Eryc Eyl: I sure am Jim, thanks a ton for having me.

Jim Rembach: I’m glad you’re here. I’ve given our listeners a little bit about, but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Eryc Eyl: Absolutely, absolutely. I think as you mentioned, my current work is really all around the improving the human experience of business. You and I met through work that I do around customer experience but I also do a lot work around employee experience and specifically work life balance. That YouTube video you saw, Life as a mashup is a piece of what I’m trying to work on which is helping folks integrate their work with the meaningful fun and fulfilling life. But for me it’s really all about the fact that business is humans serving humans and I feel it’s too easy to lose sight of that. So, it’s my mission to improve the focus on that and give folks some tools and techniques in human experience.

Jim Rembach: I know that when you start talk about this human experience both inside and outside of organization I think there’s this is slow and it’s this undercurrent that is happening in society that people are bringing those two things together. And you had talked about this mashup concepts, can you explain that? What does that really mean?

Eryc Eyl: Absolutely, I can explain that . I think one of the big Aha’s that I’ve had in my working life—I’ve worked in a lot of corporate organizations, a lot of rules and one of the big aha’s along the way was way more effective and were way happier when we bring our whole selves to work. And so the idea of life is a mashup, there’s all these aspects of ourselves that we tend to think of our work life and our home life and our life with our significant other and our life in our community we tend to think about these things as separate and when we do separate those things me miss out on opportunities where one my actually make the other stronger or better.

So, I to look at life as a mashup concept, when I DJ I play mashup, that’s what I do. Just to make it clear for your listeners, a mashup is when you take two or more songs and put them together to create something that is new and in some ways not better than the original but includes the power of the original in a multiplicative way. So, I think the Life is a mashup idea is, you know, are there things from your personal life that would actually make you more effective at work or vice versa or are there things from your work life that would make you better able to help out your kids school or your church or somewhere in your community, so really helping folks look at how these things are complementary as opposed to separate pie pieces that you’ve carved up.

Jim Rembach: I think you bring up a really good point and thanks for sharing, is that when you start looking at creative thinking and innovation—really the mashup I guess based on how you explained it is what truly accursed, the argument is that everything that has is going to be invented has already been invented and the difference is taking the powers of two things and putting them together to make something that isn’t necessary—actually I would disagree, I say it is greater when you’ve actually taken the power of the two, and that synergistic relationship we all talk about but that really is what invention, the definition of invention, a lot of people think it’s the lightbulb moment but that isn’t really it it’s the mashing of the two that makes the difference.

Eryc Eyl: Absolutely will. And I think that’s really interesting perspective because the idea of invention and innovation and everything has already been done. The one thing that hasn’t been invented yet is your life and you have the opportunity to create that actively and I think taking an active approach is really the key to creating the life that people want.

Jim Rembach: I think that word that you said, active is vitally important these days, there was a statistic that I saw in regards to entrepreneurship and the percentage of people that were starting businesses at an earlier age so when you look at people under 30 years old essentially. I was looking at the statistic 15, 20 years ago and it was almost double digit it was like 11, 12% something like that were entrepreneurs who are starting their own business and these days it’s down like 3%. So when you start talking about your action, what is something that somebody can do in order to do just that, take action?

Eryc Eyl: I think it’s so vital, it’s so important. When I work with coaching clients or when I work in organizations we often run up against this. If work inside an organization you’re working within rules and procedures and policies and that sort of thing and what’s interesting is that a lot of times folks can spend and I’m as guilty of this as anybody, can spend a lot of time just complaining about where we are, what the limitations are and oftentimes we find when we ask questions about those limitations is that some of them may not even actually exist. And oftentimes we assume that limitations with their arms and so I think that the first step to take is really asking questions. It’s really looking at things and saying, “So why is that? Why do we do it that way?” And I think that’s the genesis of all sorts of great ideas.

Jim Rembach: And when start talking about innovation and great ideas and mashups, there’s a lot of inspiration to be found there, and on the show we look at leadership quotes for inspiration. Is there one or two that you can share with us the gives you that?

Eryc Eyl: For myself personally?

Jim Rembach: Certainly.

Eryc Eyl: Yeah, yeah. I think you mentioned in my introduction there’s something that I really strong feel which is we all need to keep our heads and our hearts while keeping our jobs. And the reason I say that is that first of all a lot of literature and advice around careers is either about climbing the ladder or jumping off of it it’s either about how much can you achieve or you’ve got to strike out on your own. And so many of us we want the safety, security and stability of the job and so if we we’re going to have that then we need to make sure that we’re keeping our heads, that means that were thinking clearly we’re being clear about what we’ve want to accomplished and then were keeping our hearts which is that we’re keep in focus on what matters to us and who we want to be in the world and what we want to do for others so that’s the one that I come back to again and again.

Jim Rembach: I think that’s also a really true statement associated with like mindfulness, I mean be mindful of where you are, enjoy where you are, make the most where you are, we can definitely do that and remove some of those humps that we oftentimes put in front of ourselves inappropriately inexplicably, I mean all of those things. So I think that’s a really good quote is that we just need to know remind ourselves of on an ongoing basis. I know you had mentioned something about having quite a few different jobs in different organizations creating your own job, and I know one of the reasons why I wanted you on the show is because you’re one of those unique creators that has the ability to make things understandable for those that aren’t necessarily out on the edge in regards to creativity is concern and I appreciate you being able draw those links for us. But when you start talking about yourself, is there a hump or two you had to get over that kind of help you move in a better direction that you can share?

Eryc Eyl: Absolutely. First thanks for the kind words I really appreciate it but we all have those struggles and I think for myself in those 20+ years that I’ve worked in corporate organizations I could tell a lot of stories I think it’s appealing to have a narrative with one single epiphany but I think in reality the way that we can transform is through a bunch of little micro moments that that changes over time and change the way we approach things it’s like those little mini sneezes that you have before you have that one big satisfying and exhausting sneeze I think my working life has been like that. I’ve worked for a company for 10 years in which I’ve got to work in a lot of different roles a lot of the capacities got to learn most of what I know today but at the end of those 10 years I got laid off. And when I got laid off I went broke to tell you the truth and that was one of those—I’ve had this thing that was certain for 10 years and then it was no longer certain that feeling of the bottom just dropping out when you are laid off, I’m sure a lot of folks can relate to that.

And then ultimately being broke and having to go back to work and realizing, well I’m going to do things a little differently this time. How I’m going to approach my work differently? How am I going to make my work an integral part of my life not just this thing I do for certain set number of hours a day? How am I going to integrate it? So, that was one of the big ones I think. In my first job ever I was fired and the experience of getting fired and actually—I got fired and the firing got rescinded which was the really interesting experience. And through that experience learning some things about humility and integrity and how I’m approaching my work that was not in line with actual values were things like that changed me along the way, there’s just so many but I think what it all comes down to in terms of what the big thing that I needed to overcome for myself was this notion of bringing your whole self to work. I think for a long time I was trying to be what I thought I needed to be. I was now trying to fit a mold that I thought existed and the journey I that I’ve gone on has led me to believe that we all have this unique combination of experiences and expertise and eccentricities. And we have to bring all of those to work for if we’re going to add the most value we’re going to add, it’s not about being a certain kind of person it’s about being the best version of you.

Jim Rembach: When I started reading your bio the thing for me that stuck out is just a huge uniqueness is when you mentioned something about basically creating all the jobs that you have had. So when you think about a job that you created that was the most fulfilling and rewarding, how did that happened?

Eryc Eyl: Great question. You know, after I’ve gone broke and went back to work—when you’re seeking a job out of desperation you don’t get the right job, you get a job. And I got a job and it was not the right fit it was not something I really wanted to be doing. As I was doing it though what I was doing was paying attention to what was going on around me. And I was looking around in the organization where I worked and identifying opportunities and problems that I felt like I was uniquely set up to help solve to help the organization get better. And I actually kept documentation of these things, make notes, put together little proposals and then brought those to my boss and said, ‘Hey, you know what, I know you’ve got me doing this work but I see this is a bigger problem we need to solve and I think I’m going to solve it.” And that was the first time that I had that experience and my boss said, “Okay, that’s your job now.” It’s as simple as that but it was—I say simple, it took a few months and it took a lot of work to get there but it was really my saying, what unique value can I add? What’s the problem that needs to be solved? And I’m going to solve it.

Jim Rembach: Thanks for sharing that because I know a lot of folks in the past year or two that I’ve spoken with fell into that scenario where they were affected, in other words, their job as it existed kind of went away. And it makes you think that, what if the things that you were doing in order to find or create that new position, and it’s something that we all could do if we are in a job, in other words you don’t wait for the effect or getting affected and getting downsized and eliminated happen, do the creative work all along the way.

Eryc Eyl: Absolutely, absolutely. I think that’s one of the things that I talk to folks especially when you’re in a position where you know downsizing is happening for example in an organization. The tendency that we all have is, well just keep your head down and don’t make any waves and let it be a let go by. But the thing to really do is to stand up and say, here’s how I can help in this situation. And yeah, there’s a risk you’re going to lose your job either way, but would you rather be on your feet or on your knees?

Jim Rembach: I think those are some great points that I think everybody could really benefit from. In addition to as you are talking through it I also saw that it wasn’t in a scenario or situation where you are trying to save your rear…

Eryc Eyl: Not at all.

Jim Rembach: Yeah, it was done in a positive way, it was done in the helpful and assisting way and that’s really the best that we can do. And I think that also probably aligns with what you’re talking about as far as bringing yourself to work cause I know for me I’ve had times where essentially I’ve sunk to a level because of the environment and because what was happening that I’m not just proud of. You’re talking about add an additional burden, unfortunately I was just too young to know that I was doing such of a thing until it was too late.

Eryc Eyl: Right.

Jim Rembach: So I know you and I had the opportunity to chat about the things that we’re working on things, things that we would like to be able to accomplish and you have a lot going on. But when you start thinking about some of your goals, what are they?

Eryc Eyl: Well you know, this year looking at 2016, this is a year that I’ve got a couple things I really hope to accomplish, one is more professional one as more personal, but they’re related. So, I’ll start with the professional, as we’ve talked about a lot of the work that I do is about helping folks integrate their work with their meaningful fun and fulfilling life and I get that balance that people talk about. I question the paradigm of work life balance, there’s some other better paradigms, there’s work-life integration, there’s work-life alignment is what we’re all striving for. But what I’m looking at right now is specifically so many parents that I know who are just burdened—a double burden of being working parents the way I characterize that burden is kind of comes with three flavors of guilt. One is you’re at work and feeling guilty because you’re not spending time with your family, the other is you’re spending time with your family and you’re feeling guilty about what’s not getting done at work. And then the third and the one that people don’t talk about very much is you’re spending time with your family and you really wish you were able to go to work, that make all of those things, and that’s real and trying to figure out how to—and this idea of work-life balance for a working parents. Most working parents I talk to say, well that’s a nice concept but I’m sure that’s not possible. And so, what I’m working on is some tools and resources and specifically an online course to help working parents make a plan and figure out how to integrate all those things together so that you can be a great parent and a great professional. So that’s the professional part that I’m really focused on this year and really excited to be able to reach people and help people.

On a more personal side, I’ve been really struggling, myself looking at things that are going down the world that I wish I could do something about. We all have those things, and you know, I had a list of things that I could get involved, things that I thought I could help with, then I realized I can’t, I can’t do all those things. But for me I’m big at getting to the root cause, one of my many jobs along the way was I was a six Sigma black belt and we’re all about getting to the root cause. And when I look at all these problems in our world that I wanted to help with, I feel like the root cause is a lack of empathy. Each year I like to have a word, an imperative, that guides my life for that year, and this year it’s empathized. And for me that’s twofold, on the one hand it’s my personal work of trying to empathize with everybody that I encounter especially those with whom I am most vehemently disagree and really try to understand as opposed to worry about trying to—whether I like them or not, do I condemn them or not, I’m just really try to understand and that’s a struggle. The second part of the whole empathize equation is frankly talking to other people about that concept, kind of evangelizing a little bit about what would it mean if we had more empathy, what would it mean for you how would you do it and really trying to spread that word. Those are the two things that really, for this year, I must focus on.

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

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Alright here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Eryc the ump 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. Eryc Eyl are you ready to hoedown?

Eryc Eyl: I’m so ready, Jim, thanks.

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

Eryc Eyl: Jim that’s easy. Doing too much. We all need to focus a little bit more and say no to a lot more things.

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

Eryc Eyl: The best leadership advice I have ever received was from Kurt Richardson, founder of Otter Box. And I don’t even think of it as trying to give advice but in the conversation that we had I came away with an insight and that was—I don’t ever want to be a person who’s trying to convince people to follow me or collaborate with me instead I want to be so absolutely clear about my mission and purpose that those who share it will join me.

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

Eryc Eyl: Jim I try always to focus on being of service to others and I try to focus on quality relationships.

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

Eryc Eyl: Good questions.

Jim Rembach: What would be one book from any genre that you recommend to our listeners?

Eryc Eyl: I can’t pick one book Jim it’s not fair but if I would, if I’d talk about one book that actually just dramatically changed how I think about how things work in organizations it has a ridiculous title it’s called—A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap book about studying organizations by author Chris Grey.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today show by going to fastleader.net/Eryc Eyl. Okay, so let me share with you Eryc’s name is a little unique just like Eryc.

Okay Eryc this 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 the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, so what skills or piece of knowledge would you take back with and why?

Eryc Eyl: I don’t know if my 25-year-self would appreciate but I have two pieces of advice, one is freaking exercise more you lazy jerk. And number two would be, stop trying to pretend to be you’re other people and be the best version of yourself.

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

Eryc Eyl: Absolutely. The easiest place to find is via my website, that’s eryceyl.com. and you can also find me on LinkedIn Eryc Eyl, love to connect with folks.

Jim Rembach: Eryc Eyl thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump.

END OF AUDIO

[/expand]

034: Louis Efron: I told my team to leave

Louis Efron Show Notes

Louis moved to Japan to head up HR and build a consistent global culture for the organizations he was working for. Louis focused on learning the Japanese language to help lead his team, but it’s what he learned about the culture that taught him the big lesson. Listen to Louis tell his story of learning about leadership behavior and what leading by example really means so you can move onward and upward faster.

Louis Efron was born in Santa Monica, CA, but has since lived and worked across the US and four continents.

His work experience ranges from Broadway theatre management and production and serving as VP of HR for a Fortune 300 medical device company. Currently Louis serves as the Head of Global Employee Engagement at Tesla Motors.

In addition, Louis is a contributing writer for Forbes and Huffington Post and the author of How to Find a Job, Career and Life You Love.

Louis hold a BA from California State University, Fullerton, as well as a BS and JD from Saratoga University School of Law.

He is an awarding winning Fortune 300 Human Resources Executive, thought leader, speaker, husband, father and the founder of the charity World Child Cancer USA.

He is currently working on his second book that will help organizations transform their employee engagement, culture and business success.

Louis currently resides in Livermore, California with wife and kids.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen and @louisefron will help you get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“My purpose in life is to inspire, enlighten and teach“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“The foundation of purpose is the magic that makes great organizations.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Being paid fair is one of the lowest factors for employee engagement.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Everyone wants to go into an organization where you feel cared for.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“If you don’t have trust in any relationship…you can’t go any further.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“If you don’t trust your organization…you’re never going to have that magic.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Employees need to feel you care about them across the board.” -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“It’s about helping other people become successful, grow and get wins.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Be the change you want to see in the world.“ -Ghandi by Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Your actions…is ultimately what drives their behavior and actions.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Be who you want the world around you to be.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Be who you want your team to be.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Be who you want your direct reports to be.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Be yourself, be genuine, be authentic.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“The more you can be yourself in life the more success you’re going to have.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“You always want to hire people better than you.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“Relationship building has been the key to all the success.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

“My best tool is shutting everything off and taking time to actually think.“ -Louis Efron Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Be yourself and be genuine and authentic. The more open you are with others, the more open they will be with you. Practice being yourself. People will appreciate you more and follow you.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Time. Trying to work smarter and not harder is the key thing.

Best Leadership Advice Received

I want to be the biggest idiot on my team. Rephrased to: You want to hire people better than you.

Secret to Success

Relationship building

Best Resources in business or Life

My mind. Meaning there are tons of tools that can be distracting, sometimes I need to shut things down and take time to actually think.

Contacting Louis

Website: http://louisefron.com/

LinkedIn: https://twitter.com/LouisEfron

Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/louis-efron/8/908/22b

More Resources

Get a FREE Chapter from “How to Find a Job, Career and Life You Love”

Free $750 Performance Package from ResultPal

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript:

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

034: Louis Efron: I told my team to leave

Jim Rembach: Contributing to the annual $150 billion loss in training and development investments is downright demoralizing so raise your spirits in training ROI by increasing learning transfer with ResultPal, get over the hump now by going to resultpal.com/fast and getting a $750 performance package for free.

Okay, Fast Leader legion, I’m excited today because we have a glamour man from a glamour brand. Louis Efron was born in Santa Monica, California but has since lived and worked across the US and in four continents. His work experience ranges from Broadway theatre, management and production, and serving as a VP of HR for Fortune 300 medical device company. Currently, Louis serves as the head of Global Employee Engagement at Tesla Motors. In addition, Louis is a contributing writer for Forbes, Huffington Post, and an author of the book, How to find a Job, Career and Life you love.

Louis holds a BA from California State University, Fullerton as well as a BS and JD from Saratoga University School of Law. Louis is an award-winning human resource executive, thought leader, speaker, husband, father and the founder of the charity World Child Cancer USA. Louis Efron are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Louis Efron: Jim, I am ready, thank you for having me.

Jim Rembach: Hoh, hoh, I’m so excited. Now I’ve given our Fast Leader legion a little bit you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you better?

Louis Efron: Yeah. I love writing that was something I’ve always love. But I always say my purpose in life is to enlighten and inspire and teach. So, my goal in life is to shift the employer-employee engagement issue where majority of people around just don’t really like what they’re doing. They don’t like their jobs and not fully engaged, I just think there’s such power, a global power in our economy, in our community to helping people align with what their purposes in life where they’re great at, with their passion about and just the explosion of potential around that, it’s really where I’m really passionate about where I focused most of my energy.

Jim Rembach: For the past decade, I’ve kind of been studying in the whole area of employee engagement and retention because my whole customer experience in customer service side led me to the realization that until you have that piece, that foundational piece, it’s darn, darn near impossible to have the other. So, if the inside, doesn’t have the engagement, have that intrinsic drive and motivation, people need to be there and feel that they’re making a contribution and then therefore, guess what—Great! Customer experiences are just going to be a default really. But when you think about what you have focused on in regards to purpose, there are several studies that basically say that: Purpose, and it’s not just me and my individual purpose, but it’s the purpose of the organization that really is what drives the worker of today and for generations to come. What are your thoughts on that?

Louis Efron: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. When you understand what your purpose is in life, like why you exist, why you’re on this planet and you’re able to find an organization that aligns with that purpose—so, you jump out of bed each morning wanting to change the world, your align with an organization is changing the world along the same lines that you had passion around and what you believe your focus is, that is remarkable you can’t get better engagement. And as you said, there’s a lot of research showing the connection to mission on purpose is by far the most important thing, baseline foundation behind employee engagement. And as you mentioned, once you have a ingrain and play engagement it naturally transitions over to high customer engagement and it naturally transitions in the business results. So the foundation purpose is the magic that makes great organizations and makes the things we’re talking about today.

Jim Rembach: Absolutely. And the other thing that I been finding in the research that I’ve been following in the work that I’m doing is that, the component that really helps with that purpose piece is really around well-being. When you look at the traditional way that organizations go about measuring employee engagement, measuring employee satisfaction, there’s so many different words that you can label that with. They oftentimes go to—hey, how do you like your performance package or your compensation package? How do you like—do you have a best friend at work? And it doesn’t seem like those things really make as much difference as—you know what, I feel valued. I think you’ve given me the tools that I need to do my job. Have you seen the transformation for you being in charge of the employee engagement, those measures are carrying significantly greater impact than—hey do you like this, would you refer us?

Louis Efron: It’s funny, there are couple of things you’ve mentioned that’s really interesting. Number one, when you mentioned about money and compensation there’s a great book by Daniel Pink called, Drive, and if you read that book. There’s research in there that shows that compensation—as long as you’re being paid fair you’re not getting robbed. That means paid fair, that is the lowest factors for employee engagement that drives employee engagement but that connection and mission and purpose in adding value is actually key. You mentioned about having a best friend at work, funny you mentioned that because I did—I work with Gallup Q12 for many years as Stryker and for 11 years I was going around doing action planning sessions and addressing that particular question, because that’s one of the questions in their engagements survey. And everybody always challenged it but it was a very emotional question a really good question I think, because it also helps bring in that value and care.

Everybody wants to go into an organization you’ve so cared for, you’ve so valued and the workers, people that you’re working with, are more family, I’m not saying family like they become who we have dinner with, but family that look out for you and care if you’re sick or there’s personal things going in your life. So, I think one of the main things that I’m trying to drive now when I look at employee engagement the three key factors are, reestablishing trust, demonstrating care and practicing servant leadership. These are three tenets that I’ve written about before, I’ve been talking about at Tesla and other places, it’s really, really key. And if you don’t have trust for example in any relationship, whether it be a personal relationship or your business relationship, you can’t go any further. If you don’t trust the people you’re working with such as your organizations or leaders, you’re never going to have that magic that’s going to drive engagement.

And then moving into care, if people only feel that you care about products, that you’re trying to force out the door and the hours your working at work and you don’t care anything about their personal lives—if it’s the kids birthdays that you don’t care about, or people getting ill, whatever it is it, employees need to feel that you care about them across the board. And then in demonstrating practicing servant leadership, is essentially when you’re doing the job yourself you’re responsible for making that successful. And you’re leading other people, it’s about helping other people become successful and grow and get wins, that’s how you establish more trust and more care. If you do that, if you practice serving others and being a leader that serves your team as opposed to serving yourself, those three combinations together really create that magic that we’re talking about here where people still care, value and so they’re winning they’re successful, and then you get the strong engagement that you need to drive business results.

Jim Rembach: Yeah. With what we’re talking about here, obviously you and I are singing from the same choir from a passion perspective, we feel so strongly about this. For me, we focus on leadership quotes on the Fast Leader show and when I say leadership it doesn’t mean that it comes from a business perspective per se but it just leads us both as individuals as well as maybe our teams that we help with. I know with your background in theater and everything from the artistic perspective as well as the human component and condition and passion, is there a quote for you that has stands out that gives you some drive and energy?

Louis Efron: Yeah. I love quotes and I frequently quote a lot of great speakers, but one quote that I really love is a quote that most people knows from Gandhi, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” For me it’s leadership by example. When I talk to leaders and I talk about what’s really, really important it’s what your actions and the way people perceive you and what you do is ultimately what drives their behavior and their actions. And so, that quote sums up for me what great leadership is about—be who you want the world around you to be and be who you want your team to be and be who you want to direct your reports to be cause that’s how it works and it’s the essence of great leadership.

Jim Rembach: There’s so much depth of a lot of the quotes of Gandhi and that is one that you can use as a continual challenge of self, challenge of team, challenge of organization, it goes on and on and I think it will live through the rest of human history. With that and with the passion, with the background and many things that you’ve done and the different continents that you lived in, I know there’s had to be humps that you’ve had to get over in order to be able to move forward faster, is there a hump that you can share with us that you had to get over and how it affected you, can you tell us that story?

Louis Efron: Yeah, definitely. A couple of stories, the first time I move, I move to Japan one time that’s the first time, it’s about six year ago I move to Japan to head up an HR for Stryker when I was working over there and it’s a remarkable experience and a chance from HR perspective to move into a totally as foreign cultures you possibly get, from language to history to just people practices, and I was sent over there to help to form HR department and build a consistent culture across our company—a global culture. We really hadn’t touched Japan much, Japan was always a very, very, successful business for us and as we got bigger and the economy start changing we needed to get in there and make sure that we had that consistent global feel in the organizations as well.

So, I came in, you had to learn a little Japanese, about a year before my wife and I took some Japanese and brush up when we got there and then we took some there, so I was trying to understanding the culture studying as much as possible, so I got to my office in the first day, I was essentially—I was trying to catch up on things and learn the business, I was in my office to probably about 10:15 at night, had my door closed and when I was done I open my door and I looked out, my entire team was sitting in front of my office at their desk so I’m like, “What are you guys doing here? You guys can go home. What are doing?”

And I found out that intrinsic Japanese cultures, your employees don’t leave before your boss. And so I said, “Listen guys, if you’re done with your work you can leave. You can basically leave when you’re done and I’m fine with that.” So, I reiterated that a few times and still there was no difference in their behavior. I was trying to lessen my hours, and this is not so funny, I realized that the only way I’m going to get this changed of behavior is if I start leaving at 5:00 o’clock so they’ll feel empower to leave. So what I start doing is I literally start leaving the office at 5:00 o’clock doing the work I needed to at home and queuing up e-mails for the morning to sending them the nights they didn’t think I was working and then suddenly they felt I could leave. It took time evolve but what I learned from that is essentially that, as a leader people follow your lead. Especially in Japan, such a traditional environment around that, it’s so blatant and clear to me but it really drove home the message, again leadership by example. The behavior I’m putting what people see that I’m doing is how my team’s going to behave. And if I want to change that behavior I’ve got to change my behavior and that was a great example that demonstrate to me how the power of that. That was one story around it.

Jim Rembach: That’s a really good example. One of the things you referred to quite often is the servant leadership aspects of the work environment. For me, as I started seeing more and more of the generational changes and societal changes, I started talking also more about servant teamwork and that we have to have more collaborative environments and that also the folks that are the team players have to do really a little bit more of what those folks and in Japan were doing, and that is you give that respect to the leader and the rest of the team and step up. Oftentimes I see us going the opposite way and to say that, “Hey, it’s me, me, me and I don’t necessarily have to participate in that?” But when you look at the why we are wired and where we do find purpose and then get to that point of having satisfaction with our well-being is we have to be part of a group we’re made that way, that’s the way we’re hardwired.

Hopefully we can find a blend—is Hawaii got in the middle? Is that where we all need to be? [Laugh]

Louis Efron: I’m onboard. Give me a ticket, I’ll hide out there with you, right now? [Laugh]

Jim Rembach: Let’s go. Alright, when you start thinking about all of the experiences that you have had and even that story, if you are going to give our listeners a piece of what would it?

Louis Efron: Number one is, as a leader to be yourself. Be genuine. Be authentic. The one thing that shows a lack of care to employees, and people pick this up, humans are intuitive. I always talk about from coming [13:43 inaudible] when I talk of the subtext of life and in a play there’s the words and then below the words is the emotion and when you move by a piece of theatre or a piece of film or a piece of a TV program whatever it is, you’re not moved by the words you’re moved by emotions of the actress and connection to what’s happening and how it connects to you. So, as a leader if you’re not yourself and your trying to be someone else, and being someone else’s is too difficult to become perfectly honest it doesn’t make any sense it’s too hard and usually it doesn’t work, so the more you yourself and the more genuine you are, the more people are going to see that and the more they’re going to trust you and the more open you are with them, the more open they’re going to be with you.

I see far too many leaders out there trying to emulate other people, we all know we work for certain boss and that certainly just colors our leadership during those times when we’re working for those people because that’s how it is, again leadership by example. That I’d really encourage anybody listening in the leadership perspective is to really practice being yourself and it seems crazy, right? Practiced being yourself but it is a basic thing that a lot people dismiss. And if you’re not if you yourself and it’s not working, maybe you’re in the wrong environment, maybe you’re in the wrong role. But the more you could be yourself in life the more success you’re going to have. So, that’s one key piece of advice I would give is, be authentic, be a genuine leader and people will appreciate that and they will follow you more as a result of it.

Jim Rembach: When you’re talking and explaining that one of the thing that came to mind for me was in a current assessment that somebody invited me to take, so it was like, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.” They talked about energy units, meaning that here’s how you think you need to behave in your role and here are your natural tendencies and if there is a wide gap between those you end up using more energy units. So, you have to emulate and be what you think you need to be even though that’s not you and after a while you just get wiped out. And it makes sense, so the question would be is if we can emulate long enough so that we actually do make some behavioral modifications and it becomes second nature you don’t use as many energy units, that’s yet another test I’m sure I had to pay for. [Laugher] But it makes sense what you just said and it connected for me, so thank you for sharing that.

If you start thinking about –you mentioned something about writing your next book, I know the work that you’re doing at Tesla Motors is giving you a whole lot of excitement especially with the way that you all are expanding and the recognition that you’re getting for having such a fantastic culture and I know for a fact that your work is contributing to that. But if you were to say that there’s one thing that’s giving you a ton of excitement right now what would it be?

Louis Efron: It’s watching—being environment, I’ve been very, very lucky in my life to have been blessed with my career. The environment where I saw a lot of people that are connected to their purpose in life and so have [16:40 inaudible]the mission and purpose of what they’re doing, certainly test is a great example of that. Pretty much every employee at the organization are connected to the larger mission and purpose of changing the world. Speaking about this, I got to meet a lot of other passionate people that are really in the right roles in life, that are making a difference and you just show the energy, we talked about the energy, there’s nothing more energetic and much more they’ll charge your batteries, and being around someone else who’s also has a fully charged battery, and that’s exciting. So, that’s the thing that really gets me out of bed in the morning, have a chance to interact with people like that in my life. The more I can do that the better I feel and the more positive I felt about my life.

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

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Alright here we go, it’s time for the rapid pace part of our show and it’s the—Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Louis, 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. Louis Efron are you ready to hoedown?

Louis Efron: I am ready to hoedown, Jim.

Jim Rembach: Alright. So what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Louis Efron: The bottom line is, Time. I mean there’s never enough time in a day and I think just trying to be more efficient and work smarter, harder, trying to balance your teams at work, balance your family, your wife, your friends, your personal interest—there’s so much and especially the more you do in life, the more—adding to your life, it’s amazing how that works. So, time is by far the key thing that if I had more of it or more actually—I can’t get more of it so the more efficiently I can get, how I use my time is probably the key thing I would say.

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

Louis Efron: The best leadership advice was is when I was back in High School, I was working at a video store and one of the manager said to me, “I want to be the biggest idiot on my team” and I rephrase that by saying the, “You want to hire people better than you” and that’s what he was trying to say. I think that’s the way how my career is, you want to always hire better than you. If you hire better than you, what happens is, when those people take over from you the organization gets better and they hire better than them and the organization can just get better. So, the success I’ve had in my life is because of great people around me. So I think it’s the one thing you ca do is hire best people they only not make you look great and that’s the way it works.

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

Louis Efron: Relationship building by far. That’s something I think out of everything that I do in life, it’s one thing I’m best at, really connecting with people I enjoy it, it’s a natural thing for me, so relationship building has been the key to all the success and bring the right teams together for me and inspire people.

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

Louis Efron: This is going to sound like a crazy response, but my mind. What I’m saying by that is, there’s so many tools out there, and your iPhones, whatever you’re using all day—BlackBerry whatever it is, that are great tools but I find them incredibly distracting sometimes to thinking. We are in a constant treadmill and life is so busy and there’s so many things and with e-mails and tax and social media you can’t get a break, so that my best tool quite frankly is shedding everything off and taking time to think and use my mind, which we use to do prior to all this technology to make decisions. I make much when I have the time to really think and use my mind effectively to balanced out, I’m a big runner so I go out for runs it gives me time to think, then I get the best outcomes as a result of that better than using any technology around. It’s a weird response but for me that’s it.

Jim Rembach: What would be one book that you would recommend to our listeners?

Louis Efron: One of my favorite staple books is 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell. I think every leader should have it in their and their bookshelf. It’s is powerful, it makes sense, it’s simple and is the essence of good leadership in there.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader legion you can find links to that book as well as a bonus chapter to Louis’ book on the show notes page that you’ll find at fastleader.net/Louis Efron. Okay, Louis this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age 25 and you have been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you, but you know what, you can’t take everything you can only choose one, so what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Louis Efron: This may sound like a shameless plug but I’m going to say it anyways, my book How to find a Job, Career and Life you Love, I wrote after—I’m 48 now and I wrote it based on my journey and watching the journeys of other peoples in their lives trying to find and where they need to be aligned in life. And in the book, I’ve written a lot of questions to ask. Had I had the experience I have now that I’ve written in this book back 25 years ago, to start asking the right questions I would’ve got to a point where I was happier and fulfilled and more successful a lot quicker because I find that majority of time in life people are on their deathbed when they start questioning, “Should I have done this? I wish I’ve done that” because you just get in the rat race and you try to make money and you’re trying to support your house and your family and things like that, but the earlier in life you can ask, and it’s never too late to change. The book is basically written so that as long as you start asking these questions you can always revert your path but the earlier in life you can start asking these questions the sooner you’ll get on the right path and the sooner you’ll have success, and the longer you have to work on your success the more successful you’ll be, which makes perfect sense. So that’s what I would say, if they’re having good questions, if I had the tools of those good questions back 25 years ago it would have made a world of difference to my life.

Jim Rembach: Louis 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?

Yeah, definitely. You can reach me on my site, it’s louisefron.com at Twitter@louis efron, my Facebook is Louis Efron The voice of Purpose, as you mentioned I write for Forbes, Huffington Post, I’ve got a lot of articles on there, Amazon.com is where you can get my book. I always love meeting new people so please LinkedIn with me I use LinkedIn intensely and I publish all my speaking engagements on my website and LinkedIn, so if you want to see me live somewhere, you can catch me there as well.

Louis Efron, 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!

END OF AUDIO

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