failing

143: Josh Seibert: I’m not good at giving up

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.

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Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion, today I’m excited because I actually have the opportunity interview somebody who’s local to me I’ve known him for a long time, actually many, many years ago. I’m just so just so glad that we get to reconnect because he’s talking about something that is critically important for us to be able to do in today’s world to really develop a stronger work-culture environment and really people –centric skill set.

Josh Seibert was born and raised in the small town of Sharonville, Ohio. Typical traditional Rockwell style, blue-collar family of four with one sister until his parents added another sister and a set of triplet boys to the family during his teenage years. Although he had an older sister, Josh was the firstborn son in the family which came with high expectations. Solid values including honor, integrity and a hard work ethic were instilled by his father, inspiration and a can-do attitude was his mother’s gift to him. Josh volunteered and served six years in the elite force of the United States submarine Navy. He will tell you that it was truly an honor and a distinct privilege to have served our country. 

The submarine force built and instill in him the highest levels of courage, commitment, and respect during a time when those that were serving weren’t necessarily welcomed by our society as thankfully they are today. He has always been proud and thankful for the opportunity and for all who have ever served. During submarine school in Groton, Connecticut, Josh found his bride and even now 40 after years of marriage he still refers to Anne as his bride. Anne and Josh have three daughters and eight grandchildren including a set of twins. After his service in the submarine Navy, Josh entered the world of sales with Prudential Financial in Charleston, South Carolina. After building a successful insurance practice he entered management and began to climb the corporate ladder and became the director of sales training for the company. After a 20-year career and years of extensive corporate travel living on planes and in hotels and faced with yet another move in 1999, Josh acquired a Sandler training franchise and began to build a training and development business in Greenville, North Carolina. 

Josh is often heard on local as well as national business talk radio. He has written numerous articles for business magazines and is a well-known informational and motivational inspirational keynote speaker and the author of Winning from Failing. Josh Seibert, are you ready to help us get over the hump 

Josh Seibert:    As best I can, thanks for having me on the show, Jim. 

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

Josh Seibert:    My current passion is in the realm of training and development, leadership development and building a learning culture. I love doing the work. I’ve been doing it for over 30 years now and I can’t see myself doing anything else moving forward.

Jim Rembach:   It’s easy to think from the perspective of Sandler and the work that you do of sales that Sandler selling systems, Sandler selling processes, however, when I start looking at your book Winning from Failing and  I was going through it, it really isn’t just sales–centric or focus it’s much more than that. 

Josh Seibert:    Yes, the focus of the book is how—there’s a lot of how to sell and the selling systems, the techniques, and how to manage sales people and to manage the sales organizations.  There’s systems and processes and techniques that are specific to those roles—the sales role, the manager role, the leader role. The book that I wrote is more about structuring a learning culture such that development can be ongoing and supported and never ever stop. So the book focuses in the passion that I have focuses more about how to build a learning culture and really span it across everything even beyond sales and in every role either we’re growing or we’re failing. In small business, midsize businesses , they struggle and many leaders struggle with how do I get from where I am to where I want to be is this huge gap? How do I get there? And how do I not get back there to that gap again? 

Jim Rembach:   And I think that’s a really good point. As you were talking and I started thinking about what I’ve read and reviewed in your in your book that doesn’t happen overnight. And it often is a situation where you where you have to build in the timeline and expectations and like you said, the systems and the processes in order to develop and get there, you can’t push the process. 

Josh Seibert:    No, you didn’t get there overnight. We have not created or I have not discovered the purple pill that will allow one to get where they want to go overnight to be developed, to grow, to train, to fill in those gaps that are significant overnight. When I do find that little purple pill, I will sell it for a whole lot more than what I charge today.

Jim Rembach:   That reminds me of us saying that my father has always had, it says, when he figures out to put ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag he knows he’s really done something well and he’s going to make a whole lot of money.

Josh Seibert:    That’s right, well done.

Jim Rembach:   There was something in the book that kind of resonated with me so strongly in that when you start thinking of human behavior and human expectations when it comes to learning and development we’ll say things and like you have in the book, “Hey, can’t we just hold a weekend training event or a single intensive or half-day super intensive or keynote speech that will transform everyone overnight?” But the  fact is that you say that, “Time and experience has shown that the only way that adults learn is by doing and the only way adults get around to doing something at an acceptable level of mastery is by failing trying again it’s just how humans are wired.

Josh Seibert:    Yeah, it is, it’s how we learn it’s how we grow. We learned so much more from experiential learning than we do from knowledge transfer and typically a one-day program on anything on management success, on leadership success, on sales success you picked the topic all of that knowledge transfer is very important in the learning process. It’s what we do with that knowledge that matters, that experiential learning that follows knowledge determines whether or not we adopted as a sustainable behavior moving forward as opposed to another binder on another shelf. We remember the 90/10 rule, 90 days after a training event, we retain about ten percent of what that knowledge transfer is. Unless there is a strategy to apply it in sustainably fail with it find those boundaries that experiential learning on the back end of it which includes the ability to fail in a determined specific quest to fail with.

Jim Rembach:   Someone referred to it as having a safe environment. Because when you  think in today’s world with a competitive aspect of it when you start thinking about dwindling and shrinking margins when you start thinking about people will say that, failure’s not an option, and that’s driven home in our heads over and over again that you just can’t fail but what we’re also doing by having that behavior, because it does come out as a behavior, is that we prevent any innovation, any creative thinking, people are just going to start following the process because it’s safe. 

Josh Seibert:    Right. One day we’ll all be minions as it were if we’re not careful that overprotection that happens Jim. I think it stems from the culture, the generations that moved forward as well. We baby boomers, I’ll speak for myself, protected our children from things that my father never protected me from and allowed me to experience those failures as I grew up in a small town in Ohio I didn’t have that and nor did he want that. I think there’s a difference and there’s a paradigm shift, I think there’s a difference between failure and failing. Here’s what I mean by that, being a failure is a self-esteem issue, it’s a self-esteem it’s a self-image issue is very damaging so being a failure is to me catastrophic. But failing from a control it from a role perspective I can be, what we call identity wise, I can feel very, very  good about who I am as a person and I should in my own eyes and eyes of God I’m perfect. Now am perfect in the roles? No, I have many roles in life, I’m a father, I’m a husband, I’m a son, I’m a trainer, I’m a leader, I do many things in my life and some days I do them very, very well in other days I don’t perform as well. But that is a role it’s failing in a role as opposed to a failure as a person. So first thing we have to shift the paradigm of understanding the value of failing as opposed to defining who is a failure.

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s a very important distinction that we often blur the lines on. One of the things I think, to kind of help really give—let me take a step back and say that one of the things that I really like about Sandler is that it you guys really do a good job of creating visuals and processes and frameworks that make practical sense and are just so easy to follow. One of the things that you shared in the book was called the knowing to owning a type of progression. Almost maturity processor or pathway and it talks about knowledge, application, skills, habits and then results.

Josh Seibert:    Right, you begin with the end in mind, what kind of a result are you looking for? There’s something we’re looking for when we’re about ready to make a change. And whatever that result that we’re looking for we get there by changing our behavior. If we continue to do the same things over and over again expecting a different result we know that’s the definition of insanity. So we know that if we’re going to have a significant impact on long-term results then we have to have a sustainable behavioral change that supports that result. The tough formula is to allow us to take it from knowing what we should do, need to do, want to do and owning the behaviors as it were, it’s muscle memory you just own it. I once heard and play a little bit of golf and I don’t know if you do Jim, I’m not very good at it I’m better at what I do here that I am at golf, but golf is very simple the game itself is very simple execution is the problem but it’s a very simple game. In most sports if you use sports analogies most of them are very simple in theory but execution is where it is and that’s behavioral base. Going from knowledge to that sustainable behavioral change in effect is going from knowing something to owning it. When you own it you don’t think about it you just do it and later you can peel the onion back and think about what you did, what you did right what you could have better those things. But as we pick up the phone and dial it we own that behavior we don’t think about what we have to do and that’s the process.

Jim Rembach:   Thanks for sharing that. When I start looking at this it’s almost like the arc to impact. Meaning that like you were saying earlier when you start thinking about adult learning or learning in general is that, hey we only retain so much but it’s still get its information. Information does not deliver impact nor will it ever when you start thinking about in the workplace and growing an organization or even fending off competition or any of those things that we talked about on a day-to-day life basis. It has to get to the point where we do some behavior modification you have to practice it you have to be willing to fail so that you’re not a failure because in fact if you don’t do that you will become a failure.

Josh Seibert:    Well if we’re protected from failure it doesn’t allow the full circle of the learning path to happen. We celebrate success, those good things happen we tend to engages in endorphin release and we’re happy about those things it’s a right-brain emotional experience is what happens. So oftentimes we truncate the learning from successes because we’re happy and elated and feel good about what just happened. The real learning process happens is balancing that against what it feels like, looks like, and sounds like when we do fail and we balance those two things and then we can take the next step on the learning path. 

Jim Rembach:   One of the things that you share in a book is one of those that I always see people really also confusing and quite frankly just totally messing up big time is you talk about the four roles. In the learning and development type of organization you have to make sure that you know these four roles and you know which one you’re in. Those four roles are the supervisor role, the training role, the mentoring role and the coaching role.

Josh Seibert:    Yes, most leaders of organizations or managers spend a whole lot of time as it were in the supervisor role that one is what’s required by the company of course by the organization that’s what makes it run. It’s the overseer, it’s the supervisors the one who makes certain processes take place, people are accountable measures them implements them those types of things so it’s a supervisor role. As a matter of fact most leaders will spend most managers will spend about 45% or should spend about 45% of the time in that role because that’s a very, very important role but I always relate that role to the other three roles. And then just imagine you’re on a mission to go to the moon there’s NASA they’re down there in Houston that’s the supervisor role. And they’re monitoring and they’re measuring the flight of that rocket that’s going to the moon at each stage each step they’re directing the other elements to move that. Do we turn this burner on? Do we turn that burner on? What do we do next? And how do we engage with that? Or relate those things to the coach, the mentor and the trainer role that we have when we’re running that organization. Sometimes the supervisory role pulls up an opportunity that someone is not performing. Well, if it’s a “can’t perform” that’s different from addressing a “won’t perform.” A “won’t perform” that’s a counseling issue. If someone will not do the behavior and it’s not because they cannot do the behavior then we go to the counseling role. But coaching role, training role and mentoring role all comes from they can’t the inability to. So if we’ve discovered that they’re not performing or someone is not then we have to engage that coaching role that training role and that mentor role. They have to be in a learning environment to where they can gain the knowledge through some form of training, not that the manager or leader has to do it but they have to support that training. 

We got to ask ourselves, if we’re a leader how are we actually supporting it? And in beyond the—“Josh, you need to go to training” or “Jim, I’ve signed you up for some training” that’s supervisory, that’s task assignment but how are we engaged in supporting that training that should be going on? That’s the training responsibility engaging in that developmental role. The mentor and coaching role equally important, does that trainee when they come back that employee when they come back are they seeing that knowledge that they gained or maybe the skill they started to build in that training and development session, are they seeing that behaviorally in the environment that they come back to? Is the culture I’m actually doing what the training provided for them, is it being supported and from mentor standpoint are we doing it? As leaders, are we mentoring the behavior we’re expecting those to perform? I don’t mean do their job. But if we happen to step in and perform that role we’d better be not working out of a different play book that we’ve told them to learn so that’s a mentor role. But the most important of all of these is everybody needs a coach, everybody needs a coach. If you’re a leader and you’re in management your folks need a coach they need someone there to help them “peel the onion back.” We all had coaches throughout our lifetime whether they were physical sports coaches or they were teachers or they were our parents or guardians or those that helped us along the way and those that are very good at what they do they have a coach whether it’s a sports figure or not everybody has a coach. The best sports figures have a coach and that coach isn’t on the field doing it for them but is supporting them so when they come off the field to help them be brief to learn to help that learning process go forward so someone doesn’t get stuck those four roles are crucial in building and creating a learning environment. 

Jim Rembach:   And it seems to me where I find most people making the mistake is really saying that they’re coaching or thinking that they’re coaching but in fact that is not what they’re doing they’re supervising or training but they’re calling it coaching. 

Josh Seibert:    Yes, you’re absolutely right. Personal training is different from coaching. And what I find like you do is oftentimes they fall into training and telling mode. Telling is not coaching, coaching is caught not taught I learned that a long time ago. Coaching is caught it’s not taught so if you find yourself flipping into this is  how you should do it either through mentoring or you’re in training role. But allowing the learning to happen by being there and helping that person “peel the onion back” and discover for themselves the genius and the brilliance of a coach is to allow that discovery to happen. And to become a coach there is a learning and development process that one must go through to become an effective coach or to be able to perform in that coaching role. Many leaders have never been developed and that coaching role. 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a very good point. For me, I would even say to that I have to stop myself when I want to be or need to be that particular coach to where I don’t do the instructions, I don’t do the show how an I’m like, wait a minute, you already have this in you. As a coach I’m supposed to help you see that connection so that you draw it out, let me pull it out of you. 

Josh Seibert:    That’s correct. We’re not looking at films on Mondays we’re in the Sunday game. Now is not the time to train now is the time to coach so the connections can be made so folks can grow and learn from those and begin to connect those dots when we can’t be on the field with them.

Jim Rembach:   That’s a very good point. Now, what we’re talking about here is just loaded with a whole lot of energy and excitement and emotion and one of the things that we look at on the show are quotes to help provide that. Is there a quote that you like that you can share? 

Josh Seibert:    There’s so many quotes out there that I could share with you but the one that strikes me as related to the book and related to allowing for controlled failure. We also know this in controlled failure, and I’ll get to that quote in just a second, but the control failure, you mentioned it before, means not allowing catastrophic failure for or something someone’s learning along the way what we have to go from that knowledge to application in that we have to apply it in a controlled environment such that it’s first, safe enough and allowing them to do it and then in the environment on the job to build skills. Skills are built on the job they’re not built in a training room they’re started there and they’re refined may be there but really to own it you’re going to have to use it effectively on the job. And that’s where we tend to overprotect we don’t want this person to fail so therefore we jump in and rescue them or we don’t put them in a situation where they have the opportunity of failure we protect them from failure. The quote I heard a long time ago was, “No one has ever achieved anything great by playing it safe”. So we think of all the greatness that’s ever happened it wasn’t someone playing it safe and wasn’t allowed for her it was performed by those who embraced failure’s was part of the process so no one’s ever achieved anything great by playing it safe, that’s the quote I’ve always remember. 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a good one and I think we always have to keep that little voice in our head saying, that one when we go to actually step outside of that comfort zone. When you start talking about—you write in a book of course, family, being married as many years as you had been married, the different careers being a part of the ownership group within that Sandler office there and there’s a lot of humps that we have to get over. Is there a time where you’ve had to get over the hump that you can share?

Josh Seibert:    Oh, gosh if you have gone through a lifetime as long as I have there are multiple humps that you can go back and relate to that I had to get over that we had to get over as a family but specifically to this. I would say and I write about this in the book as well, moving from the role of salesperson I was in the United States submarine Navy for a number of years. And as I went through that journey and exited that career and move into the sales career with the Prudential Financial in Charleston, South Carolina I became and learned through many humps learned how and to overcome adversity and succeed and some training, some coaching, some mentoring but tough road to go and as it were back then.  As one word in the world of sales I climbed that corporate ladder and the first rung on that ladder was when you typically in a sales organization when you’re at the top of your game and you’re at the top of the leader board you get offered the brass ring as it were and you are offered, as I was, a manager position because all you got to do and that’s I heard was Josh you’re doing such a wonderful job all you got to do is teach people to be like you and then show them what you do and wow we can make just music out of this. So, I went from being a professional salesperson into the role of an expectation of being a sales manager while the competency difference between the two was astounding and I failed miserably. In the first six months of that of that process I was able to take a mediocre sales team and turn them in to a failing sales team at that point. So to get over that hump and hang with it and figure that out, what was I doing wrong? And to get through that and succeed at that role that was probably the biggest learning curve that I went through and the most valuable hump in my life I’m one of the most viable what I remember. 

Jim Rembach:   So, I can imagine like many others they have had something similar happened to them, however, when they hit that bottom they’re actually shown a career redirection. You’re fortunate.

Josh Seibert:    ell, I would call it fortunate and persistent. I grew up in a time period and my father had the value of honor and he transferred that value to me and it’s one that I hold near and dear to my heart. I made a promise, and I had to and was compelled to uphold that honor that I that I told them that I would do, so that inspired me as well as—I’m not good at giving up, I’m okay with failing but I’m not good at giving up, so I went in to—look, I’m probably not the best at this but I can’t be the worst there’s got to be something I’m missing. During that process, the epiphany as it were, during that process was discovering that I can’t make many me’s. I can’t make them like me they have to be who they are and I have to allow them to develop and grow with their strengths so I had to not do it for them because I couldn’t sell for twelve people, seven to twelve people, and I certainly couldn’t it was clear that over six months the all you got to do Josh wasn’t working so I had to discover what would work and how it would work. What I discovered was there are certain competencies defining any role, there is one in sales, one is in management, one is in leadership, one is in engineer or a doctor there are certain competencies that make that role work. And when you can work on the gap within the strengths and the weaknesses of one’s competencies and start specifically allowing that development to happen, wonderful things happen. So, instead of trying to hire and create many Joshes that couldn’t happen I had to create a model of competencies that would help them become themselves. And they all today are very independent and that was the epiphany to stop trying to make them look like me.

Jim Rembach:   So the interesting part is that it totally aligns with what you do today because you’re teaching organizations how to essentially do the exact same thing that you went through.

Josh Seibert:    That’s what brought me to today.  I think from that moment on through more humps became successful at that particular role and climbed the corporate ladder at Prudential, end up being the director of sales training for that organization out of Newark, New Jersey, if you’ve ever been to New Jersey God love you. And throughout those rungs on the ladder going through I remember that in every rung of the ladder that I went through and then whatever position that I was in beyond that first one I had to approach it from a learning and development perspective because if it’s what carried me through that and made that strong and when I left it didn’t need me which was wonderful. So the next person that took over that role built upon what I left and didn’t have to replace it, I was very proud of that. It worked on every rung of the ladder that determining what is the outcome that we want, look at the end in mind and start building and developing the people to help achieve that and a learning culture it’s so very different from typical cultures in business. 

Jim Rembach:   So, I know you have a lot of things going on, you have the new book, you are continuing to do your work and helping to be the coach, be the mentor, be the person who helps organizations get over their humps, what is one of your goals?

Josh Seibert:    More of philosophical goal at this particular point, we all go through that process in business of growing. When you open your own business like I did in 1999, I found that my first goal was survival. Let’s just survive this business and many are that way and at some point through survival we get to that next level of what I would be or I’ve heard, it’s a sense of stability. We finally aren’t worried about the things of survival it’s just, can I keep it stable instead of this rocky boat and rollercoaster activity? So the pursuit was stability and then some form of getting it to that success that I had defined back at that time and what would be successful for me I would enjoy that success that of achieving that goal that I had mapped out in the business plan and so forth and I’ve done that a number of years. But really my primary goal now is significance, I used that word in that I’m blessed a lot of hard work and we have a very successful business. Certainly that doesn’t mean that I’m on a plateau by any means, we will continue to grow and continue to work with what we do, but significance is the next goal. How can I take what I’ve done and provide it to be some significance beyond the success that we’ve created here and that’s the passion that I’m moving forward, why I wrote the book. What we did is in the book, it’s what we do it’s how we got success. How I cause significance and transfer to the book itself is one step towards that goal of significance.

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, here we go Fast Leader Legion, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Josh, the Hump Day Hoedown is a 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, Josh Siebert are you ready to hoedown?

Josh Seibert:    Let’s go to hoedown.

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

Josh Seibert:    Nothing. The only thing that could hold me back is myself. 

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

Josh Seibert:    That’s what I heard not received from Winston Churchill, Never give.

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

Josh Seibert:    here’s no secret it’s just my core values and my honor won’t let me quit.

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

Josh Seibert:    Oh, gosh, I guess the best tool that I have in this is tough, but the best tool I have in life is my belief.

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, and it could be from any genre and of course we’re going to put a link to Winning from Failing—Build and Lead a Corporate Learning Culture for High Performance.

Josh Seibert:    That’s a great book right there but beyond that book there’s another one from a colleague of mine called, Transforming Leaders the Sandler Way and it’s put out by Dave Arch. Look that book up if you want to be a better leader it’s a great book.

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going too fastleader.net/Josh Siebert. Okay, Josh, 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 back you can only choose one. What skill or knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

Josh Seibert:    Certainly the value of failing. Because back there I at 25 years old I didn’t know the value of all that struggle I was going through maybe that might have helped me pursue it a little bit better.

Jim Rembach:   Josh, it was not under spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader legion how they can connect with you? 

Josh Seibert:    Sure. They can find me at training.sandler.com—that’s our website here. You can email me at joshs@ sandler.com. If you tend to want to do that you can contact me locally at 336-84-1438.

Jim Rembach:   Josh Siebert, thank you for sharing you knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

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

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