Howard Partridge

188: Howard Partridge: I was a terrible leader

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. 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 today I get to talk to somebody who hopefully is going to really help me and you about putting some things together that will help our business move forward faster and really impact the customer. Howard Partridge grew up in LA, that’s LOWER ALABAMA! Mobile, Alabama to be exact. He was the 5th of 7 kids they were all on welfare and crammed in a little 600 square foot shack. The roof on that house was so bad that when it rained they had to get out the pots and pans to catch the leaks. At a young age he could be found going to the beach and riding his bike. At the age of 18, he got in to a fight with his stepdad and got kicked out of the house. He had no money and a friend helped him scrape-up enough money for a Greyhound bus ticket to Houston. 

His real dad, who he had only met twice in my entire life lived there. To make a living he worked in a grocery store, was a painter’s helper, washed dishes, and waited tables. After working as a waiter in several restaurants, he worked his way up to working in high-end restaurants. After getting married, he started his first business out of the trunk of his car with $3,000.00 of their wedding money. And they are still married, because over the last 30 years he has built that wedding money into a multi-million-dollar enterprise. He has owned nine small businesses altogether and currently owns four. 

Howard is the president of Phenomenal Products, Inc. He’s an international business coach with coaching members in over 100 industries in nine countries. He is the author of The Power of Community and six other books, a TEDx Speaker, the exclusive business coach for the Zig Ziglar Corporation, the first Ziglar Legacy Trainer in the world, the first founding member of The John Maxwell Team and a Master Trainer DISC Certified Human Behavior Expert.

He has led hundreds of seminars, webinars, and workshops and holds his own live multi-day events which have featured some of America’s top business trainers including John Maxwell, Michael Gerber, Bob Burg, Dr. Joseph A. Michelli, Darren Hardy, Dr. Robert Rohm and American legend Zig Ziglar. Howard and his wife Denise have been married for 34 years and live in Houston, Texas mostly, and part time in Destin, Florida. They have one son, Christian who is 25. Howard Partridge, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Howard Partridge:    Absolutely.

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

Howard Partridge:    My current passion is developing people as simple as that. Whether that is one of my forty team members or the handful of people that work directly with me especially the younger ones I love helping them develop and I love to see life change happen with our coaching members we’ve got almost 400 coaching members in nine different countries and I lead 273 trainers in  19 different countries. So to see people have breakthroughs that’s what it gets me up every day today. 

Jim Rembach:     What I found really interesting is I started learning more and more about you and really diving into the book The Power of Community is it seems like—first you’ve kind of had this business focus running a good business and all the systems and processes and everything around that and then you’ve kind of, I don’t know if you say it’s gained the wisdom or really found the passion or you can actually alluded to, but you really started getting to the whole people component and that has really been the base of everything else.

Howard Partridge:    Absolutely. Just a quick snapshot as I started my business and I was really great at customer service because as you and I talked before I came from high-end restaurants where the service experience was everything. That’s true the experience that your company delivers is what’s going to set you apart from the competition. But what happens to get there is really interesting. My epiphany came I was a slave to my business work 24 hours a day 7 days a week and every time I travel, I love to travel, it seemed like I was always on the phone talking to customers or employees back home. I read a book called the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and it changed my life I saw that I could have a turnkey business so I started building systems in my business.  Well, I realized that there were a couple more components that needed to take place one of them was personal development. I got involved with Ziegler, I ended up becoming great friends with Michael Gerber by the way and mentored by him, I got involved with Ziegler because I realized that personal growth was so important the person that you become because everything flows out from that. And then I learned about leadership and everything rises and falls on leadership and so it’s really all about the relationships through and through. So I came to the conclusion that we need to grow personally we need to have systems in our business so that things don’t have to be recreated and everybody knows what to do. And then we need to develop ourselves as leaders we need to develop our team so that they can grow personally and they can grow as leaders, those are our future leaders, and then of course the whole idea of community of having created a sense of community in your company as well as around yourself as a leader. So those are the five values that I have. 

Jim Rembach:     For me when I started initially looked that community I probably had a different lens and then when I started getting into the book it was like kind of opened up my mind and my eyes to where you’re talking about the community that we create that is of more of a personal community, not a social community like well we get inundated with these days, but it was definitely more of an intimate type of focus and connection. You talk about really three keys to having a community that is strong. You talk about support, encouragement, accountability and then you talk about six steps to building that community. You talk about valuing or value true community, pursue champion connections, inspire emotional trust, practice gift exchange, and I want to dig into that one a little bit more when I started getting into that it really was a different perspective that I wasn’t necessarily interpreting when I first read it and then invite open hearted encounters and then building growth pods. So when you start talking about these six steps of building that community how did that evolve or come out?

Howard Partridge:    Well, it actually happened about 25 years ago and it happened through church, even though this conversation is not going to be about church or religion. By the way the community in this sense is not a neighborhood not a nationality but a group of people that operate by the same vision the same values, and I open up the book with the quote that every human being has a longing for belonging. We all want to feel loved we all want to feel valued we all want to feel like our life matters yet 70% of American workers still are disengaged 80 percent of those workers who are actively disengaged. And I have had this sense for a long time, I’ve been studying leadership for 25 years, I’ve had this sense that creating a sense of community in your company is a good idea and it just took me a few years to finally come to the place where I was ready to outline a solution to create the steps and I actually worked with a consultant for two years but I’ve known about this for 25 years and what happened was I would go to church every Sunday and the message was good it was one person too many which is important to inspire people and maybe to even instruct or to teach but then on Tuesday night we had a small group home group and this is where the real action was this is where a real ministry happened this was where  each person had a gift speaking of gifts and one had a song one was a teacher people were helping each other and serving each other and involved in one another’s lives a real change was happening in those human beings. And I started finding out about the cell church movement which is organizing a church around what are called cell groups and realized that this was a total movement I spent several years in that movement. 

And then I started applying it to my business instead of having a traditional staff meeting where one person is in front of the room and does a meeting, which typically is not very good, I would get our folks in a circle and let them share. Because the thing is that most employees the reason that they’re frustrated is they don’t feel heard and the manager, the business owner, the leader doesn’t want to hear from them because then they might have to change what their agenda is. My mentor taught me that vision plus vision equals the division and eventually different agendas are going to develop and there’s going to be this struggle. So let’s just have an open conversation about the vision and about the values. So community is any group of people that are pursuing the same vision and living by the same set of values. Doesn’t mean that we’re going to agree on everything we might like different movies we might have different values about different areas of life but when you create the vision for your company, which in my mind I call it MVP, includes your mission what you do every day your values who you’re going to be and how you’re going to act and your purpose why you exist, I call it MVP, then everybody can get around that. And they can decide, is this company the company that I want to be associated with? Is this the vision that I want to pursue? Will it add meaning to my own life? And are these the values that I’m willing to live by? 

Jim Rembach:    I think we’re starting to see that more and more where people are focusing in on fit more than they are as far as background, experience, skillset. If people have a core foundation and exposure to a particular area and they’re teachable and that MVP is a fit, that’s really where we should be focusing and I think you cover that as far as building proper teams and the pods and all that. That one that one section that step is called that practice of gift exchange there was one area in there that you talked about helping your team focus to me that I think was an excellent framework when you really start getting to the point where you have that deeper relationship and helping people kind of find some of their own purpose. And you and you talk about seven core areas of life and they’re personal, financial, career, family, physical, mental, and spiritual. Now I have to say that there’s probably some Church basis in that as well but where did some of that come from? 

Howard Partridge:    Well you bet. In the book since the book is published by Mcgraw-Hill and is going to all over the world as you notice in the book I left that last one I said that’s really up to your culture obviously I have my own faith that probably comes through in all of my books including this one. Certainly some of them that I published with smaller publishers but the idea here is Mr. Zig Ziglar who was my mentor he’s my hero the late Zig Ziglar and I work very closely with the company and help really run his company and his favorite quote until the day he passed away in November 2012 is, you’re going to have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what it is that they want. And I found that that’s leadership all of business and all of life is about relationships and I think the challenges today is that were focused so much on skillsets and we’re too afraid to get close to people. It doesn’t mean that you need to have a super close personal relationship I mean you need to be inappropriate. Mr. Ziegler also said that—the old the old saying that nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. And Mr. Ziegler added to that about them no one nobody cares how much until they know how much you care about them. Even people like Kevin Turner who was the chief operating officer at Microsoft everybody that came on to his personal team he would have them do a presentation that I think was like 30 minutes on called Who am I and they would share about their life. We forget that that humans are not just resources that were living breathing if it’s true and I always get the nod when I say this, if it’s true that every human being has a longing for belonging they want to feel loved they want to feel accepted they want to have meaning to their life they want to know that their life matters and if it’s true that what Jim Collins says is that meaningful work equals a meaningful life then we’ve got to figure out how to create some kind of meaning. 

And the way that I have seen it be successful is that when you join this community you’ll not only grow professionally but you’ll grow personally. And if you help people personally if you help them reach their goals again back to this quote back to this truth, you as a leader you as a business owner you as a manager can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what it is that they want so the three keys or support, encouragement, and accountability. We take those seven areas of life that you mentioned and we approach life in such a way that we ask our team members when they come on board people who are on our team tell me about your goals what are some of the things that you want to accomplish personally. I don’t need to know all the personal details of your life that’s totally up to you how much you want to share or not share but the thing is that we want to provide resources. Support is helping other people have the things that they want to have. Everyone wants to have a better life. 

If I can help someone reach a goal if I can help someone learn a skill if I can help someone provide a contact or a book or a resource or a podcast or download or something it’s just a demonstration that I care about them. Even if they want to go do something like run a marathon or write a book or something like this so many managers so many business owners are afraid that well if they write this book and become successful they’ll leave. Well good because you help them reach their goal and then you’re going to have the Lou Holtz syndrome. Lou Holtz syndrome was—reporter asked, hey you winning all these titles and all your assistant coaches are moving on to head coaching jobs isn’t that a problem for you? He said, quite the contrary. He said, you ought to see all the assistant coaching applications that we have we got the best in the world that want to come to work for me because they know it’s the fastest way to success.

So the first key of creating this sense of community this sense of belonging this sense of total engagement is to support people. Help them have the things that they want to have. Everybody wants

to have, Mr. Ziegler used to say, everybody wants to be happy. You can’t make anybody happy but you can create an environment where if they choose to be happy they can. You could help someone be unhappy I guess. Everybody wants to be happy healthy reasonably prosperous they want to have friends they want to have peace of mind they want to have good family relationships they want to be secure they want to have hope for the future. As Simon Sinek said, we can create the environment for change. 

The second key in building a sense of community is encouragement. That is helping people do the things that they want to do. Maybe they’re afraid to write that book maybe they’re afraid to take that promotion maybe they’re afraid to speak in public maybe they’re afraid—in fact, I’ve got one who works for me who when I hired her, I have habit of people who come on my team—first of all I’m talking about gift exchange we have to look at their personality profile and fit that personality profile with that behavior style with the right position I should say because you can’t have a reserved task oriented person out there on the front lines doing the promotion and onstage in front of people and at the same time you can’t have that person who is the entertainer locked up in a closet doing accounting. So when you get that piece of it right, that’s why the disc profiles that we recommend are so important, then we can have a conversation during the interview process, so what do you like to do? What’s your favorite thing to do? What was your favorite thing to do at your last job? You keep that conversation going even after they work for you. And so I have one that said, I don’t want to do sales and I don’t want to be in front of the room. Now with the training business those two components, and I was like, I can live with that because I’ve got a lot of admin stuff to do. Well guess what? She does now? She does sales and she gets in front of the room she’s getting better at that. The reason is because of encouragement. She’s got the gift she’s incredible in both respects and so she just needed to be encouraged. So encouragement is given people the fuel helping them do the things that maybe they’re afraid to do doing the things that they want to do. And when you do this the way that it works is—support has two steps underneath it which is to value people, when you don’t value people you devalue people. And show them that you value them. The way that you show them that you value them is by helping them. 

And then two is serving them that’s called servant leadership, there’s a lot out there on servant leadership and again the idea is if I demonstrate to you that I’m a leader by serving you, not doing your job for you not holding you accountable but I’m here to help you I want you to be successful. You would think the way that some business owners and managers and leaders treat people you would think that they don’t want them to be successful. They criticize them they condemn them they complained and those are three things that Mr. Dale Carnegie said that the first thing if you want to win friends and influence people don’t criticize, condemn of complain. Smile for crying out loud that was (20:42) number two he had 31 principles. And so once you support people they’ll begin to trust you a little bit more and then you can encourage them no one wants encouragement from someone that they don’t know is for them. If you value—why do I want you to encourage me? So then you can move to the next two steps that you mentioned, inspire emotional trust and to practice gift exchange.  In these two steps that are building on the first two is you show them that you care and you develop them you help them develop themselves. We provide all sorts of goals, training, Ziglar training, disc training and different things like that so that they can develop the gifts that they already have. If I already have a gift of say writing or speaking or editing or organization or whatever I can put you through training and help you develop yourself. By showing you that I care about you as a human being that’s going to create this relationship of trust. 

I did a big huge study on the leadership challenge series and there’s several books, and this is a 40-year study and the thing is that at the end of the day leadership is a relationship it’s all about trust it’s all about credibility if you don’t have trust with people they’re not going to open up to you they’re not going to give you the feedback that you need they’re not going to give you the information that you need. When you support people and you encourage them now you’ve built a really good foundation for having the right kind of accountability. What managers and business owners do is do your job I pay you so many times its negative and there’s no relationship there. Sure, I understand I got to do my job but where’s the relationship here? And the idea is that you’re going to get more accountability when there is that trust when there is that relationship and accountability is helping people become the person that they want to be. Mr. Ziegler taught that you have to be before you can do and you have to do before you can have. If people are struggling there’s something inside of them there’s some value some belief that they’ve adopted about themselves that causes them to do or not do the things that that they do or don’t do so. It opens up a tremendous opportunity and it can’t be taken lightly and it can’t be forced some leaders may not be willing to go there. 

Jim Rembach:   In the book you call it welcomed accountability and I really like the way that you addressed that. 

Howard Partridge:    Yeah, yeah, 

Jim Rembach:   Because it’s really what you’re talking about. It’s the difference between having the command and control and the others you talked about being caring coach? 

Howard Partridge:    So the command and control model you might get a lot done but you’re going to have a lot of turnover. People aren’t going to want to come to work it’s going to be a negative environment and when you care in coach people want to be their best because you’ve supported them encourage them that welcomed accountability becomes—now they look at you as a coach they look at you as a mentor. The final two steps is that phenomenal leaders love others to the point where they’re willing to have these open hard encounters is what I call them where someone has a breakthrough personally and they want to share that with you because you have guided them you have helped them you’ve coached them and then the final one is that a leader is a coach. And you look at your role as a business owner as a leader as a manager is you have your team you have your players it’s your job to coach them and direct them. Coaching is more about asking questions that it is telling people what to do so that’s what accountability is.

When you enter into that level of relationship with people it’s amazing. I had one of those kinds of conversations with my 35 year old employee this morning, he’s been with me since he was 17 years old and he’s learned all this stuff as we’ve gone along the technical skills he’s amazing as hard as amazing and we have a person on one of our teams in one of my companies who is about to lose a daughter to cancer. And he’s close to this guy and he’s just telling me I don’t know what to say to him. And I told Santiago, I said Santi, I’m 57 and I said, you are the fix that guys like Superman, he can do anything, and you like to come in and fix things and you like to share with people—hey, think about it this way or think about it this way, you’re facing this for the very first time in your life you can’t expect to know the answer. But who did he come to when he needed to talk this over? His boss. And he’s really my best friend in the whole world outside of my wife. So it’s that kind of relationship— it’s iron sharpens iron—we build one another up and we support one another encourage one another and hold one another accountable. And I’m convinced that if the leadership starts like that a chick-fil-a’s like this Southwest Airlines is like this there’s a lot of companies even big companies, they might not be able to do it as complete with that number of people as you can in the small business but it’s very, very powerful.

Jim Rembach:   Even to get to this point there’s a lot of humps that we have to get over and times where we didn’t do a good job of coaching or creating community? Is there time when that happened to you that you can remember that you can share? 

Howard Partridge:    Absolutely, still happens it still happens. Not as frequently but I was a terrible leader. I saw this vision and my definition of leadership is leadership is effectively communicating the vision. Alright so I had this vision of a turnkey business and everything is systematized, just like McDonald’s this is how you do it this is the button that you push next, you never deviate from that because if you do the fries aren’t going to be exactly right, it was just that kind of thing. But what I didn’t realize is that my strong outgoing, task-oriented, demanding, direct, defiant personality was really turning everybody off. One day my bookkeeper, I would come in the office and start barking out orders why isn’t this done why is it that done, I wasn’t unhappy it probably seemed that way to everybody else but we just get stuff done. She took me aside and she said, Howard, I don’t know if you realize this or not but there are people actual human beings present in this office. You might smile and say good morning that might go a long way and I thought interesting. So I started learning about leadership, you have all the systems you want but if people aren’t willing to follow you—that is the more difficult part and that’s really what the power of community is all about is—you have all the vision that you want you can have all the goals that you want you can have all the tracking that you want and the systems that you want but leadership is influence but you gain influence by adding value to people. You can have everything you want in life in business if you just help enough other people get what it is that they want. 

Leadership is effectively communicating the vision. Effective communication means that I am sharing the vision with you you’re buying into me you’re buying into the vision you’re buying of the concept or you’re giving me enough feedback that we’re creating this vision together and adjusting the course together. I cannot think of a more powerful way to communicate than community. We’re literally communicating in unity where we belong together and people can get so much meaning from their work and the relationships at work can add so much value to their life it’s amazing. 

Jim Rembach:   Well, I’m glad that you actually have learned those lessons and that you’ve actually are sharing them with others. And the fast leader legion hopes that you continue to do that and we wish 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, Howard, 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. Howard Partridge, are you ready to hoedown? 

Howard Partridge:     Yeah, but I’m from Alabama, do I have to talk as fast as you’re talking right? I did move out to Houston so that helped a little bit and I married my Italian wife from New Jersey so maybe I can maybe this happen. 

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

Howard Partridge:     I would have to say just intentionally making time for my team. I’m so busy, I’m traveling I’m doing this I’m writing I’m having meetings and different things like that just to be with my leadership team more. 

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

Howard Partridge:     Probably what I shared earlier that you can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what it is that they want.

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

Howard Partridge:     Again it’s all about relationships. All of business and all of life is about relationships. When I see a person, even that’s a flight attendant I try to add value to them because you never know what conversation you’re going to have with someone that helps you to in some way. And so I would say that without a doubt it’s just valuing people, recognizing people appreciating people and building relationships. 

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

Howard Partridge:     Probably I would say if my reputation is a tool my character integrity how I live my life I think is my best tool and I think that that’s the best tool that anybody could have, obviously, books obviously seminars obviously podcast like this. 

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 The Power of Community—How Phenomenal Leaders Inspire their Teams Wow their Customers and Make Bigger Profits, on your show notes page as well.

Howard Partridge:     Well I suppose that would depend on where the audience member is coming from and what seas of life they’re in but you can’t go wrong with, See you at the Top or How to win Friends and Influence People, Top Performances, Mr. Ziegler’s leadership book we’re about to rewrite that, so that would be a good start for leaders. 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Howard Partridge. Okay, Howard, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the knowledge and skills that you have now and you can take them 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?

Howard Partridge:     Every single person I met I would add value to them and I would stay in touch with them. I would have a system of staying in touch and adding value to them and staying connected.

Jim Rembach:   Howard, 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? 

Howard Partridge:     Howardpartridge.com, just like the bird or if it’s Christmas time, Partridge in a pear tree. 

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

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

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