Randy Conley 10:57
Yeah, definitely. So you know, I like to say to folks, you need to be building trust today, or you’ll be losing talent tomorrow. And you know, all the studies show that one of the main reasons people are leaving or, or looking for, you know, better opportunities is they don’t feel appreciated and valued at work. They’re not working, they’re working in toxic cultures, rather than high trust. Service Oriented cultures, and people are gonna go where they feel valued. It’s not always the money. Sometimes there’s those big cases, right? Where it’s just, you know, the godfather making an offer, you can’t refuse, right, you know, when it comes to the money, but usually, it’s because they aren’t feeling appreciated and valued. And that’s something that’s largely under the control of US leaders, right? We can do a lot of things to help people feel part of the community and build trust with them so that they are loyal, and they want to stay with the organization.
John Corcoran 12:06
Yeah, you make a great point about the the cost issue, because there’s been a lot of conversation within the male business owner community these days about, you know, the war for talent, and oftentimes it defaults to Oh, you just need to pay more. That’s the issue. That’s the reason why people are leaving, they’re leaving for a bigger paycheck. But what you’re saying is that that’s not actually the case.
Randy Conley 12:31
No, that’s not that’s, that’s the, that’s the symptom that gets a lot of the headlines. Right. But it’s not really the underlying issue. Can you say something?
Dr. Ken Blanchard 12:44
Yeah, no, I mean, we’re really saying is so, so true, is that, yeah, sure, money is important. But people if they really feel valued, as Randy saying, and, and feel important at all, is going to have to take a lot of money to drag them out of a environment where, you know, I always say to people, how you treat your people remember is going to be discussed at dinner at night, to their whole, how do you want to be discussed? And so it’s a, you can make a difference in people’s lives? That’s for sure.
John Corcoran 13:18
Right. I’ll also ask you, I wanted to ask about, you know, a lot of these companies, in the last two years have gone from in person meeting in an office to all of a sudden, a distributed team, many team members moving to different parts of the globe, maybe they’ve not met face to face, if ever your your your boss, your manager, is someone on the other side of the globe. How do they build trust in that new environment? Dr. Blanchard? I’ll start with you on that one. Well,
Dr. Ken Blanchard 13:49
I think the neat thing about this is you can meet more frequently with your people because of technology. I mean, one of the things Peter Drucker said to me years ago, he said, Remember can nothing good happens by accident, put some structure on it. So one of the things that we teach our managers and I think it’d be a good idea for your audience, is to meet with each of your direct reports. A minimum once every two weeks for 15 to 30 minutes, you schedule a meeting with they set the agenda, they can talk about anything they want. And if you met with each of your people, 26 times a year, you would know them and they would know you. And I think that that’s what’s really key is that you now can communicate more frequently more easier than trying to get everybody to come to the office and meet here and all that me now you can call and say, you know, could we just have a 10 minute zoom call, I want to ask you a question. And all and I think it’s fabulous. I’m excited, but my age, I’m not gonna have to travel anymore. Because if anybody wants me to speak, I’ll just zoom in. Yeah,
John Corcoran 14:54
yeah. It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to be able to have that kind of impact and not have to to deal with the hassle of travel and things along those lines, Randy, I’ll go to you the same thoughts on building trust in the new virtual world that we live in.
Randy Conley 15:10
It’s a really interesting dynamic that I have encountered with several clients that I’ve worked with recently, as, as more face to face events have started, you know, coming back online, so to speak. I’ve worked with teams where they’re telling me Randy, this is the first time we’re meeting in person, you know, we hired a number of these folks over the last two years. And I like to emphasize that virtual leading virtual teams is not better or worse than in person teams, it’s just different. You know, I encounter so much initial resistance from leaders about virtual, they say, oh, we can’t build a culture that way around, we can’t really deepen relationships that way. Well, it’s like Ken was saying, you can you just have to approach it differently and have a little more structured process around it. You know, you can’t leave well, in the face to face world, right? We had all those hallway conversations just by random chance, right, you just bump into people as you’re moving about the office. Of course, that’s not going to happen by chance in the virtual world. But you have to put some structure around building those frequent interactions. And when possible, get people together face to face. So I think many of the fundamental dynamics of building trust in leading are the same. You just have to approach them differently and be much more intentional about it.
John Corcoran 16:50
Yeah. Dr. Blanchard, I’ll go to you, you also write in the book about restoring broken trust, and what to do in those circumstances, your thoughts on that? Well, the
Dr. Ken Blanchard 17:01
key thing is when trust is broken, somebody’s got to take the lead to restore it, you know, and we always say leader first, you know, and one of the simple truths we have is about apologizing, you know, and if something is broken, and all, if you went to your people and say I just want to apologize, you know, I just realized that this has happened, and we’re not communicating as well. And I gotta take part of the credit for that, or the load? And how are you all feeling? And I think it it’s interesting, I wrote a book with Colleen Barrett, who took over the presidency of Southwest Airlines when herb Keller stepped down. She had a wonderful saying that people admire your skills, but they love your vulnerability. And a lot of people think if you are vulnerable with your people, and you admit you maybe made a mistake, that they’re going to say, how come that person is a leader? No, they say, God, this is going to be a great place to work. Because we can be natural, we can actually admit when we make a mistake. And so if the if the leader takes a lead, when it’s broken, trust that other people are going to take that lead and come back to
Randy Conley 18:13
what you think, Randy? I agree. Can you know, John, we advocate that there’s a three step process that leaders can utilize whenever they’re trying to restore trust. And the first step is to admit that you broken trust, right? It’s, we’ve learned that from the success of the 12 step recovery movements, right? The first step to admit the problem, right? You can’t, you can’t use the ostrich method and put your head in the sand and hope it all goes away because it won’t. And then the second step is you have to apologize. And I like to joke around that. Ken and I are experts on apologizing because between the two of us, we’ve we’ve been married a combined 93 years 16 between him and Margie and 33 with me and my wife, Kim. So we’ve had to apologize a lot. So we’ve gotten really good at apologizing. But that’s a key step in the process. Right? A great apology just says I’m sorry, folks, you take ownership for what you did you express remorse for how it impacted the other person. And then the third step is you have to act. Right? That’s where the rubber hits the road. You can apologize until the cows come home. But if you don’t change your behavior and act differently, it doesn’t matter what you say it matters what you do. So, just those three simple steps of acknowledge admit that Knowledge, apologized and then act that’ll get you back on the road to restoring trust.
John Corcoran 20:06
I feel like there’s so many examples in the media that you see of business leaders who make a mistake, and then struggle with that apology piece.
Randy Conley 20:17
Oh, it is so fascinating,
John Corcoran 20:20
isn’t it though, and we all kind of cringe as we watch it unfold. Right? You know, it was like, Why doesn’t he or she just apologize?
Dr. Ken Blanchard 20:29
You know, the big issue, John is, is the human ego, we talk about that in, in the book. And that stands for kind of edging God out. Everything important outside. But there’s two ways your ego gets in. And the big one, of course, is false pride, when you kind of act like you’re better than anybody else. And you never want to admit that you’ve made a mistake. But the guy years ago wrote, I’m okay, you’re okay. Said the worst life position is I’m okay, you’re not. Okay. And all the research shows that people act like that. We have false pride, or really covering up not okay, feelings about themselves. And so what we really say to a lot of leaders is that one of the first things you got to do is be comfortable with who you are. And remember, you don’t have all the skills in the world. But between you and your team, you probably got them all covered. And so if you will play the role where you know, we’re in this thing together, as I said before, it’s we’re not me, then they’re going to start to get excited.
John Corcoran 21:34
I know we’re running a little short on time. So I want to wrap things up. But before I do, The Mulligan, new book movie coming out, based on your work, Dr. Blanchard, tell us about it.
Dr. Ken Blanchard 21:47
Well, The Mulligan which I wrote with Wally Armstrong was a great golfer. In fact, he for years, he held those lowest score. For first timer at the Masters it was over, he was eight under par after four rounds, which is really, and The Mulligan is all about an uptight businessman who’s lost his relationship, his wife for five years, hasn’t talked to his son at all. And he goes to a program and, and plays with Tom Lehman. And Lehman sees that he’s got problems, we found that people who have problems with golf are having problems with their life. And so he says, go see this old pro, he’ll fix you up, you know, he sits up on the deck. And the old pro is Pat Boone. He’s 87 years old. And he plays the mentor in this thing, which really kind of shows this guy that a relationship with a good Lord could really help him get out of his own way. Because the ego is the biggest problem. And if you as I said earlier, if you learn to feel comfortable with yourself, you can build your relationship much better at home with your kids and your spouse. And all because as Randy said, mistakes will be made apologies are needed. And so it’s a full length motion picture is going to be in the theaters on the 18th and 19th of April next week. So look in the local area and see where it’s playing. I think you’ll enjoy it. I showed it to a group of people the other night, they gave it a standing. Oh.
John Corcoran 23:20
That’s very, very cool. Very exciting. All right, well, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust Making Common Sense Common Practice. Ken Blanchard, Dr. Blanchard, Randy Conley. Thank you both for being here today.
Randy Conley 23:35
Thank you, John.
Dr. Ken Blanchard 23:37
Good, John’s good to be with you. Bless you.
Outro 23:39
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.