Ep. 6: The Seldom Spoken Aspects of Leadership (2 of 4)
Creating the perfect company from the organizational experts Multi-View Incorporated. This content is based on MVI's work with over 1,300 organizations extracting nine eighty nine data elements with nine twenty two cross calculations over twenty seven years on a monthly basis and then systematizing the operational success patterns of the ninetieth percentile. Our intent is to get beyond the brag and the boast and simply share insights from our experience without manipulation or coercion to sell anything except helpful ideas. These messages range from intimate recordings from the Awakened Forest to concerts, national conferences, and broadcasts.
Speaker 2:Welcome to this edition of Creating the Perfect Company, and this is the second installment of the seldom spoken aspects of leadership. It was a national broadcast and done from the MVI broadcasting facilities at our headquarters building. So here we go. Part two. Okay.
Speaker 2:Next topic in this leadership quest. Leadership, what is it? Leadership is the impossible task of motivating others towards a result. That's what it seems like a lot of times. How do I get all these people organized to go in this direction?
Speaker 2:Why? Because you can't control others. Heck, you can't even get your kids to clean the rooms or to move the lawn. But the best you can do, as I like to describe, is provide these conditions for success in an organization, you know, like the garden. And it's an illusion on some level, again, to think we can do anything else than show the way and provide that motivation.
Speaker 2:Because we cannot directly control people, is really what I'm getting to. Most of life, I'll just say this, is beyond command. So, to illustrate the garden, you have the seed, the rose seed, and some people have heard this. You do not know the potential of that seed which represents a human being. And so, what do you do?
Speaker 2:What's the best you can do? You can plant it. You can put in good soil. Make sure it's getting sunlight. Make sure it's got nutrients.
Speaker 2:It's getting water. Right time of the year. Play classical music, probably stay away from the ACDC. Okay, you keep going. But you have no control.
Speaker 2:I mean exactly when it's going to sprout out of the ground, when it's going to break through like so much of life breaks through. And then when it grows up, you just can't demand or command that it win the blue ribbon at the county fair. Mean, might half open, tilt to the right or left, whatever. But that's your employee. So, best you can do is create these conditions for success and then trust the sovereign of this universe for the result.
Speaker 2:Takes a little heat off. Okay. So, somehow we have to figure out how to do this impossible and get past this illusion of control of human beings. So, what is an organization? It is an organized body of people with particular purpose, especially a business, society, association, etc.
Speaker 2:Okay, basically, it's a group of human beings going in the same direction. Or a group of humans going in a similar direction. So, are humans in human organizations serving humans. We better get humans. Or we better get human and understand all those realities.
Speaker 2:So, leadership is essentially in human organizations that can be boiled down to the motivation of others towards a goal, destination, attainment, ROI, vision, result. All these we could just sum up as success. So, the job is motivation. Leadership is the job to inspire. And not so much reliance on what we'll call position power.
Speaker 2:Okay, the title, the CEO, the vice president of X, you know, whatever. So, we want to get beyond leading from position power and titles to leading from true inspiration and authority. Okay? And because people want to work with you. Now think about that.
Speaker 2:Can you make yourself endearing enough and powerful enough, profound enough that people say, I, boy, that's the person I want to be around. I I my life would get better. It would be benefited. Yes. Because it's like this, and this gets us beyond this position for title power.
Speaker 2:People do not want so much for someone to tell them how to live a great life. Rather, they want to see a person that's actually doing it. Someone that's actually living a great life. That's inspiring. So, to be inspiring, if that's part of the job, well, do amazing things.
Speaker 2:Live an exceptional life. Fortune favors the bold. Those calculated risks done with intelligence. Okay. But every single person that you lead wants to believe they are working with a winner.
Speaker 2:Is that not true? Why? Because everyone wants to win. And notice the subtlety here. Everyone wants to believe they're working with, underlined, a winner, not for this person.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, MVI will say, I work for Andrew, and I will correct them. I'll cut them off right there and say, What? Oh, with Andrew. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2:I just don't look at it that hierarchically. I mean, it's very much a linear horizontal thing as far as I'm concerned, know. Yeah you gonna say something?
Speaker 3:I have a hospice that I work with and the CEO is very adamant about not saying new employee or new staff member. You say team member or teammate.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because that's the culture that is important to him.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Now in my dialogue, I've got to make this for everybody on some level, so I will use the terms employee, whatever. But again, for teaching purposes, teaching convention. So, leadership. Yes, it is about success.
Speaker 2:And, I mean, if it's not about success, then let's all go home. I mean, you know, I mean, not much happened around here. Nothing's happened and we're not going anywhere. Nothing's been accomplished. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, it's about success. And nothing unites a team like success. And nothing destroys a team like repeated failure. So, there's great importance in winning.
Speaker 2:When employees see a leader coming down the hall, they're saying to themselves, I work with a winner or we're screwed. And human beings make assessments of other human beings very, very quickly. I mean moments. As soon as a person opens their mouth, You know, we assess a great deal about a human. So, they pick up on this.
Speaker 2:And let's face it, it's just hard to get behind someone you perceive as dumb as a rock. Who doesn't have the smarts or the firepower to figure out how to win and how to be a success. I know that's brute. Now, and this is kind of related to intelligence on some level too. Here's the thing is, through the human will, through wanting to be a success, through wanting to be more intelligent, you will become those things.
Speaker 2:If this is what occupies your mind. Your mind is a problem solving machine. That's what it does all the time. That's the game it plays. And so, you can almost will a higher level of intelligence, a higher level of success.
Speaker 2:Oh, planning is important. Oh, I better incorporate that rate that in my habits. Hey, getting enough sleep, having that juice, the energy, whatever. If a leader is not impressive, why would any smart talented person want to work with them? And this goes right to the top.
Speaker 2:You know, CEO, ouch for some. I mean, so this CEO or whatever leader you are, if you're in the executive ranks or whatever, you've got to become this profound impressive person. And that's part of the burden of leadership that we're going to be talking about. Being this person. So leadership, we show them what?
Speaker 2:That a talented, sensitive, compassionate person, toughness, strength. And then we show them what? Revolutionary stuff. Bureaucracy busters, the pirates. I like to look at the NBA as pirates a lot of times.
Speaker 2:So did Steve Jobs. The outliers. Why? We're doing something different. We're innovating.
Speaker 2:That's exciting. I can get a hold of that vision. Okay. Rather than, hey, we're kind of gonna do the mediocre organizational stuff here and we need some real lukewarm people to contribute to this, know, totally milk toast operation. You know, it doesn't get people going.
Speaker 2:And a few more points here. A leader has to get very, very clear about the results they want. You know, or your vision. Because without a vision, people perish. They don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:People dissipate energy, everything. So, we get very clear about what you want. Because later on you're going to have to say, how do I motivate, inspire people to give me that result? Right? So, leads us to what compensation.
Speaker 2:Compensation can be called motivation. It's just the economic aspect of it. And for a lot of people, this is kind of a duh. Yes, your comp system provides motivation, but it's very similar to leadership. And we'll talk about that a little bit more later.
Speaker 2:Well, in fact, we'll talk about it right now. Effective leadership. Realizes that we live in this world of incentives and disincentives. And so, therefore, the intelligent leader incentivizes the results they want. So, if you want a certain result, incentivize it.
Speaker 2:It also could be de incentivizing something that if you cross this line, if you do not do this standard, here is the pain. Here is the consequence that will be experienced. If it's not done. A lot of people, again, people that are just looking at the sweet side of life, they all look good, all light. The people that only get half of life and are therefore frustrated because the world is somehow unjust, aren't recognizing the shadow or the manure side of life That has equal value.
Speaker 2:Especially in the design of compensation systems. But that negative has to be there just as much as having the carrot of the positive. It's just easy to get more, but you got to have that strength of character and knowing that this is how human beings work to harness the dark side. So, if you have losses, fix them. If you have losses in any of your business segments, fix them through compensation or your compensation system.
Speaker 2:If your quality is poor, fix it through your compensation system. And Nancy can testify just over and over and over the success pattern. This this is part of the magic. Otherwise, all your standards are just suggestions. Oh, it does me.
Speaker 2:Oh, let's see if I can cross that line. Oh, no one pinched me there. Oh, I'll go a little farther this time. Oh, nothing happened. I guess this is just a make it up.
Speaker 2:I should go place. There are no standards. It's just a placket on the wall. And that's the way it is. I didn't mean to get so dramatic there, know.
Speaker 2:Anyway, it was fun though, I must say. The other thing is that a leader is going somewhere. Again, as we you know, there's there's movement is really what I'm implying. Again, because humans what? We want that bright horizon.
Speaker 2:We want the prospects of a brighter tomorrow. And we have to provide it in leadership. Almost this is the nauticalized version of leadership, you know, leadership going through the rough seas, you know. It's not always smooth sailing, you know. All those cliches could be introduced at this time, which we'll avoid.
Speaker 2:One of the most valuable aspects, though, of a vision that's probably overlooked, at least regarding leadership, is that it shows you as a leader what you need to become. So, you get the vision of where you want to take your respective organization or department or whatever. Here's where I want to go. But, oh my God, there's a price that has to be paid. I've got to learn X skill.
Speaker 2:I've got to learn have this knowledge. I need to make these adjustments in my department or my life. I need to think differently about this. I need to work on my own BS. BS meaning what?
Speaker 2:Belief system. Of course, I would never think anything other than that. But a vision informs you of what you need to become. So that's one the most valuable aspects of a vision. And how do you increase the power of that vision?
Speaker 2:I have found that just by making a written list of all the reasons a move makes sense. That helps me a lot. And each reason that you have, the more reasons you have it builds energy behind the initiative. So, I'm using, okay, I collect property a little bit. You might say, I collect a lot of things, golf clubs, guitars, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2:Anyway, so let's just say that as you're developing that. Well, and I've turned down deals, but then I get thinking about them and I say, maybe I'm overlooking something here. Oh, it's a store of value. Great. Oh, I can protect my other properties from low consciousness human beings that would trash the place and all that.
Speaker 2:Great. Oh, it likely increase in value. Great. Oh, I can rent it to other people for income. Wow.
Speaker 2:Oh, I can entertain all my fancy friends. I can hold meetings, events there. Wow. We can corporatize this thing. It can be increased in value just through some improvements.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I can even depreciate it. Oh, I can enjoy it. Okay. That list right there and each thing I list increases the power. So I wake up in a low energy state or when I'm not feeling so great and I can look at that list and go, this still makes sense.
Speaker 2:And you can do this for not only a vision but even making your personnel moves. Okay. Success. And we'll wrap up at this as far as this little part. Not wrap up, wrap up.
Speaker 2:What is success? Probably ultimately it can be stylized as personal liberation. Being all that you can be. Yeah. In the MBI.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That doesn't quite work. Self actualization. Being you. All I know is that every human being, we live in this world where no two snowflakes are alike, no two particles of dust are alike.
Speaker 2:It seems to be a world of infinite variety and color. Therefore, the universe must love variety. Therefore, everyone that's here is somehow necessary for some function or purpose. And that's probably the goal of really being a success. So not to get too philosophical here, but there's something to that.
Speaker 2:Okay, leadership. Turnover is directly linked to the leader. A lot of people complain that there are shortages of different clinicians. There's lack of this type of skill set or whatever. But I find the biggest thing aspect of this is not the external environment.
Speaker 2:That's for the wieners and whiners. That's their world of excuse. But it comes right down to leadership. How can I explain that? Because we can repeat the pattern of filling up an organization with top rung clinicians because we simply provide a better working environment and conditions than the alternatives.
Speaker 2:Duh. You can, you know, whether it's so there's pay, but there's also the environment and all this. So, when an organization reviews this list of problems, the majority are either directly or indirectly related to the loss of people. And in a clinical organization, the clinicians. The loss of talented people is the number one destroyer of value or quality.
Speaker 2:And I'll just say this, losing top leaders decimates an organization. It's one thing to lose a top rung frontline worker as opposed to, hey, a great leader. That's a big hit. Talented people don't quit the organization normally. They quit the leader.
Speaker 2:After training thousands of leaders, over 10,000 this I actually stopped counting at a certain point. I'm always taken a bit back when they don't see the connection between themselves and the retention of staff. And there's this tendency to blame other factors and not recognize that they are the factor. Like I spent a couple days with one organization, they had all 40 of their top leaders there. We went through it.
Speaker 2:And then finally, one of the leaders said, you know, Andrew, we just have a hard time keeping people. I mean, we had this great aid come and she didn't even get through orientation or boreentation before she quit. And I said, well, did you happen to go meet with her To make friends? To sit down next to her and say, hey, this is going to be great. That idea had never even crossed her mind.
Speaker 2:Even the way that question was phrased, we, our organization, can't retain clinicians or employees. Okay. So, what do we know from Gallup? Seventy percent of an employee's development, morale and retention will come from the relationship of that employee with the immediate supervisor. So, there's that retention right there.
Speaker 2:70% of it has to do with that rather than benefits, pay, all that. People would rather have a crappy job working for a great manager than a great job for a crappy manager. I mean, no matter how much money you pay people, you will lose them if they don't feel that their lives or work is significant. And that comes from that leader, that vision. Why are we doing this?
Speaker 2:Why does this make sense? Why is this profound? And that's why for a lot of organizations, people would take a pay cut just to work in an incredible environment that gives them life. But I'm saying most of the time that's actually a silly idea because if people manage well, they can pay well. Okay.
Speaker 2:So, employees don't usually quit because they are overworked or burnout. But rather they lose their sense of meaning and purpose. Of why are they doing this? Is this significant? And then that's just a picture of us winning our sector mount from Baldridge.
Speaker 2:Very proud day of that. But one of the things was like, you know, the design of org chart. And I had this Wall Street investment company said, Andrew, we want to make a whole revolutionary healthcare org chart. And this is basically what we came up with. And so at the top of the org chart is the boss, patients and families, community.
Speaker 2:They will write every paycheck we will ever receive. And then it goes right down the front lines and then the super secret sauce and it's why we're talking and focusing on leadership today because we want to get crystal clear that the 70 percenters are right here and that's where we need to focus. So when we were building that Baldrige winning organization, the only one in the home care space, Norman said, I read in Gallup that 70% of the development morale and retention come from that relationship of the immediate supervisor. Let's focus on that. Boom.
Speaker 2:And that's why leadership development and even what we're talking about today is so important to where the light bulb goes off. This is significant work. And here, and then it goes down to COO, your people development, and then all your supporting functions, HR, finance, IT, marketing, board of directors, what have you. And here's another way to stylize it. How do like this?
Speaker 2:The patient chair, the customer chair, whatever. At the top, all focusing on the feelings, the emotional things, the basis or foundation of all memory recall at the top. There's the boss's chair. Oh, that's pretty sexy. We need to do that.
Speaker 2:And then cascading down. Leadership. Characteristics and qualities. Why should you learn what happens in the trenches and frontlines? In a healthcare context, why should you learn the perfect visit or the visit structure of your organization?
Speaker 2:Why should frontline employees listen to you if you don't intimately know what they do? A lot of people are confused when they come to the mountaintop. We say go down to the first level recording studio. We're going have you teach an aspect of the perfect visit. Four, two, three minutes or whatever, or a very short period of time.
Speaker 2:The reason we do this is for one reason. This word right here, trust. A leader needs to be trusted. A leader needs to be trustworthy. If you want people to really get behind you.
Speaker 2:This is why leaders, I don't care what you're doing. I mean, you're in a health care thing, you better go out on visits. You better see what it looks like when people die. You better see whatever if you're making a product or whatever, get down there in the factory. Put on the scrubs, whatever.
Speaker 2:Get in the trenches if you don't know. It'll do great things for you. It'll increase your your confidence. Rather than saying, well, I think product, know, CFO comes in there or CF No comes in there and goes, well I think productivity needs to be X and Y. And they you know and then the nurses or clinicians go or physicians or whatever go.
Speaker 2:You don't know anything. How many many visits have you been on? So there's great value of getting in the trenches. And I'm not saying you have to master all I'm talking about it within the reasons of whatever, but you better get very familiar with what's going on. So, trust is what is needed.
Speaker 2:And employees need to know that you know the business and you know what they do. And here's the acid test if whether people trust you. You know that you're trusted if you can fairly easily convince employees to move to a new compensation system that involves accountability and pain. That is a takeaway if the job's not done. That's how you know you're trusted.
Speaker 2:And if you're gonna go, well, we can't. Well, I guess, I mean, you're being trusted with their livelihood. It better be fair. I've never had much problem putting in a comp system and we've done tons and tons and tons of them. And this is what one of the main things MultiView does Because it's so effective.
Speaker 2:But that's the acid test. The other characteristics are a few others that employees are looking at. When they're looking at their leaders. The first thing they're evaluating, they're seeing he or she come through the door. Is this person bright?
Speaker 2:Do they have intelligence, horsepower? Again, because nobody's gonna get behind them if they're not. Next, what's their level of energy? And I think there's a couple levels of energy. Obviously, there's their personal dynamics, vibration that they throw off, that the leader always has to be conscious of.
Speaker 2:As well as well, I guess that's probably the main one is that we know that when anybody human being comes into the room, at least three happens. There's this atmospheric thing is really what I'm talking about as far as the leader. But also, when any time somebody comes in the room people are really thinking three things can happen. Like, oh, Betty Jo's here energy up. Or is it just Betty Jo's here, you know, neutral.
Speaker 2:Or is it like, oh my God, Betty Jo's here. Hope she doesn't start talking, you know, energy suck. Again, level of energy. That's a big thing. And then integrity.
Speaker 2:Am I working for a liar? I consider any exaggeration of the truth to be a lie. And all of us are prone sometimes to misspeak. I've gotten way better. And that's kind of a maturity thing where you just learn how to tame your language a little bit, leave a little more gaps for different things, get away from always, must, you know, should.
Speaker 2:But this integrity thing of just knowing that when you say things, you mean it. And that your, you know, your intentions are in the best place and you're going to look out for people really for the right reasons. But it's just hard to get behind a liar. And you can look at all this stuff like you're trying to make it, you'll say, let's put in a military thing. You're trying to take a hill.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We're going to take that hill. If again, you got some dumb guy says, hey, let's just just everyone charge up and I'll follow. You know, it's hard to get behind that, you know. And then the energy.
Speaker 2:No, I'm gonna be in front. Oh, great energy. And then, hey, listen, maybe we shouldn't do like the frontal attack like why don't we have a diversion like you you guys start the fire over here and then we'll sneak around back. Then less of us will get killed. That's what people are looking for in the leader.
Speaker 2:But all of these converge into the quality of the most successful people on the planet. This has been demonstrated in studies by Duke, Western Kentucky, Stanford, whatever. And that's the quality of self control or self regulation. The ability to focus on singular things to the exclusion of all thing other things in our consciousness. And this is where you find the Elon Musks, the Steve Jobs, the Sam Walton's.
Speaker 2:Just to name a few people that have been spectacularly, the Martha Stewart. It also can be called focus or love. Okay. So Apple, for example, became the most valuable company on the planet within a few years after almost being bankrupt because of the focus of one guy, the leader Steve Jobs in his second run at leadership said, we're going get rid of all of these silly products that Sugarman from PepsiCo CEO introduced, trying to get more market share, we're only going to focus on three things and that was one of his things, always minimalistic. Boom.
Speaker 2:And that focus of that guy with laser beam focus turned Apple into the most successful company in just a few years. So, focus is rapid. But most organizations are exactly the opposite of that. I mean, people are bringing, I mean, they're coming to meeting after meeting, and we'll talk about that with their cell phones, they're answering texts, they're doing whatever. I mean, the antithesis.
Speaker 2:The day is an antithesis of focus. And there is power to say no to distracting opportunities and say no, this is where we're going. Because every time we add a business segment or a product or whatever, we dissipate our focus. If I were to boil down the truly effective leader, at this point it's going to come down to a few points. First, the ability to focus.
Speaker 2:That is and you know, people always say, well, how do you increase quality? Well, it's enough by throwing more money at it. The government's tried that. How's that working for them? It's by caring enough to do a good job.
Speaker 2:Which says, I am going to just be meticulous about doing this. I'm going to shut off my cell phone. I'm going to whatever. I'm going to work on a weekend. I'm going to do whatever.
Speaker 2:So the ability to focus. Next. Effective communication or the teacher. Somehow you've got to get the ideas from your mind as the leader into the minds of others. So, we're focusing on this folks.
Speaker 2:Boom. Here's where we're going. Communication. And then creating this high accountability culture that this is what I need for you to do. Okay, you're monitoring that.
Speaker 2:You're focused on it. Hey, we got that done. Great. That's off. Next.
Speaker 2:Or hey, this isn't happening. You need to get this done like tomorrow. And if not, I'll find someone else that can. I mean that relentlessness. So self control is the characteristic of the most successful people on the planet.
Speaker 2:You can also call it self regulation, focus, discipline, even love. Things we love, we pay attention to, we focus on. Yes. Now, other aspects of self control. Your emotions are the number one thing as a leader that you use self control on.
Speaker 2:As bad and permanently scarring an employee with interactions can result when you lose your self control. I've done this at least twice over the last ten days where I step too hard on folks, wounding them so well. I mean sometimes with actually some pretty good benefit. But you always as a leader after you squash someone pretty good, it's like, God, did I step too hard? Know, because knowing that if you squash somebody too hard, you could lose them.
Speaker 2:And if they're talented, you know, you've lost a whole bunch of talent just because you couldn't control your own issue or whatever. So, it's great to be cool in these situations. So, controlling your emotions. Again, no matter how much you pay someone, you will lose them if you wound them badly. And probably most of us can look back and find examples of that.
Speaker 2:Self control. You hold yourself, okay, if you're in a low energy state, you hold your ass together. Stuff, of course. Until you get a gap where you can let your hair down and then you can bawl and cry and all that. But when you're in front of the group, you need to be strong most of the time.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying there's sometimes that you show your emotions about things. But you got to hold it together. Self control. Choose your time and place of battle. This has to do with good judgment.
Speaker 2:For example, don't fire the biller until after the billing has gone out. Okay, or sometimes someone's not quite doing it, but they're still giving you enough value that you shouldn't like kill them off like right away. Okay, so if you make that determination, you're gonna let this person live for a while. My advice is to go to your team and say, hey, I know, you know, he's not getting it done, but he's doing this for us and I'm not gonna kill him off now. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Whatever. Normally, they'll say no, keep him on for a while anyway and then go ahead and do it, you know. When we get a replacement in here. But that but you're what you wanna do is get that communication void filled with here's why we're not even though this person isn't doing the standards of the organization, we still need them in some way. But then, at the right time, we choose our place of battle and say, you're fired.
Speaker 2:Please clean your desk. Boom. Okay. Self control, a little more because it's so important. Self control in a six sigma quality, and we were very conscious of this when we won that award, that it's actually part of the position design process where we design this position state of self control or self regulation into the jobs because by designing it into this position state, we don't have to hire silly supervisors or leaders to hover over and do the inspection of work all the time because people can regulate.
Speaker 2:They know oops, I went too far here. I can self regulate get back. Went too far here. I can self regulate get back. And there's the beauty of using our brains to design it into the system as part of our standardization process, really.
Speaker 2:And if we're dealing in the post acute care space, hospice, home care, whatever, most of our work is being done autonomously anyway. And so we can't have a manager supervising or lowering over every visit. Okay. So design that self control, into the job position.
Speaker 1:We hope you are having the best day of your life. If you need something further, just visit one of the Multiview Incorporated websites or contact us through social media. Smoke signals, carrier pigeons, telepathy have not proven reliable. All calls are answered within three rings by a competent real person. Thank you for listening.
