[00:00:07.390] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots Podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.830] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we leave.
[00:00:17.810] - Chris
I don't know what you think.
[00:00:19.240] - Brandon
I was kind of serious.
[00:00:21.170] - Chris
Should we laugh.
[00:00:25.890] - Brandon
Brother? Yes, dude. I have a topic I'm actually really excited about. So I was good.
[00:00:30.940] - Chris
I intentionally told you not to tell me about it because we killed somebody.
[00:00:33.720] - Brandon
Excited by conversation. You don't even know if I'm coming from left field or right field on this one.
[00:00:39.610] - Chris
Trust me, you want it. Dude.
[00:00:40.510] - Brandon
I know I'm not a consistent listener, but I do listen to Entree.
[00:00:45.580] - Chris
You're not wrong, dude. You're not a consistent listener sometimes.
[00:00:48.550] - Brandon
You son of a okay, listen.
[00:00:51.000] - Chris
Sorry. You just walked right into it.
[00:00:53.370] - Brandon
I feel like I set up a Tball stand, set the ball on it you did. And then walked away and pointed at it so that you could take full advantage.
[00:01:01.290] - Chris
I just ran home, didn't I? Okay, start over. Apologize.
[00:01:06.120] - Brandon
Can we get back on task, please? I'm going to remember that forever. Okay, entre leadership. Let's get back a task. I'm blown off by your I haven't.
[00:01:17.650] - Chris
Listened to that podcast well, and I.
[00:01:19.230] - Brandon
Don'T listen to it a lot. I think at times it feels just a little too they are very consistent with what they do, how they do it, when they do it, the rhythm that they have for it. And it just sometimes it kind of comes across a little too packaged.
[00:01:34.540] - Chris
My preference with podcasts in general, there are exceptions to this. Like the Knowledge project. My preference with podcasts, I like them to be a little bit more unscripted.
[00:01:44.250] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:01:45.610] - Chris
Rough and tumble.
[00:01:46.630] - Brandon
Yes, I agree with that. I totally agree with that. Oh, by the way, hey, gang. Those of you that are listening, we're actually going to start something a little bit new. Feels awkward for us, probably feels awkward for you, but we're all going to get through this together. Chris and I made a commitment to each other with the show. We love it. We love doing it. We really like the experience that we have in this more long form to hang out with you guys and talk about topics that are relevant to our businesses and not necessarily completely restricted to our industry or the kind of nuts and bolts topics. Anyways, that being said, the easiest way for us to get more listeners to have more opportunity to hang with you guys is if you see value in this show, if you're actually getting something from it, share it. Friends, family, people in the industry, people at your shop, help us out. We're going to be a little bit more diligent about asking you folks for that kind of support as we continue to grow the audience and really work to make sure that we continue to have the freedom to do this and spend this kind of time with you guys.
[00:02:47.280] - Brandon
So like I said, we're not really great at that. And all of us get a little bit uncomfortable with promotion, but we really enjoyed doing this. We hope it brings value for you. And if it does, please bring somebody else in so that we can share that experience with them too. Okay? So anyways, back to the topic. So I was listening to Entrepreneur Leadership, I think how they pronounce it, and they had a gentleman on. He was a big CEO and COO roles with some of the big companies. For instance, the conglomerate that owns, like, Kentucky Fried Chicken, like Yum Brands, Pizza Hut. Yum branch is who it is. Exactly? Because they have a Yum award. Okay, so it is them. But one of the things that they were really dialing in on is that this particular gentleman in the show notes will add his name. I apologize that I don't have it off the tip of my tongue here, but they were really talking about his secret sauce. His magic that he brought to the industry was this focus on employee recognition. Okay? And we've had some discussions about this in the past and some shows that talked about it.
[00:03:46.040] - Brandon
So I'm actually going a little bit different direction here. But what I really appreciated about what he was saying is that he used this term coaches instead of leaders a lot. And there was something that really resonated with me on that particular item. A little inside joke there between Chris and I. Apparently I have speech problems when it comes to resonated, and I just did. It beautiful. That's beautiful. Anyways, it resonated with me that this guy was really talking about creating coaches instead of bosses, managers and just leaders. And so it got me thinking about something. We have a dear friend in the business. Her name is Amy Shannon. Pinnacle Leadership Group. She's a very HR directed person. She's got a rich background working with large corporations specifically on this HR and staff development side. She's pro. You and I both were fortunate to have her as an executive coach at some point in our work history and our professional development. And she really taught me a lot about this coaching consulting. In a lot of ways, it was my experience with her that kind of set the stage for where we would end up going with our professional focus.
[00:04:51.380] - Brandon
But one of the things that her and I spent a lot of time talking about was creating a coaching culture. And one of the reasons that she kind of more formalized that or was bringing that up more intentionally was she saw some natural gifting or skill set in some of our team. The way that we developed our leadership team, the way that we communicated with one another and work through challenges, she just said, hey, this is very similar to and looks a lot more like this coaching culture. And we did double down on that. We formalized a lot of that commitment, and we taught tools and resources to our team to be better at coaching their staff. Anyways, I wanted to hang in that zone today. I want to talk about what it looks like to create a coaching culture within our companies and what the effects of that are potentially on our business, and specifically creating bench depth right. The succession planning that we can do within our organization. And so that's kind of where I want to hang this morning. It's cool.
[00:05:53.430] - Chris
Yes, totally, man. You know where my mind immediately, I think inevitably we're going to go here and then we're going to go there. We're going to kind of bounce around a little bit on the subject. But, you know, where this takes me is a theme, I guess, a phenomenon that we've seen a lot both in ourselves, but also with the clients that we work with over the years. And that is as owners, a lot of times as we're struggling with how to coach or how to course correct team members, develop them, grow them, help equip them with the stuff they need to do, what we need them to do, and to grow in the company, oftentimes we struggle to take those thoughts and the narratives in our head and communicate that directly to our people. What am I trying to say? We were having a conversation with one of our owner clients, and it's so funny because they can always tell when we talk about them on podcasts, but nobody else can, of course. But we were having a conversation about an employee that they were really struggling with, and it's a quality person. They're a good addition to the team.
[00:06:58.490] - Chris
But, man, there's just a handful of behaviors that they have just struggled to consistently deploy, and it's messing with the mojo of the team, right. Because there are parts of the process that are not following, blah, blah, blah. And so as the owner, as we're talking through this and the owner was sort of describing the story in their head several times over the course of several sessions, you or I or both of us were like, hey, we'll just say, Bob. Bob, have you said it to them just the way you said it to us? Well and then there was almost always a pregnant pause and like, well, no, not exactly, right? And we said, Why? Well, I don't want to offend them or I don't want to push them out the door. I don't want them to think that their job is being threatened or something like that. I said, well, it didn't feel that way at all to us. It sounded direct and it sounded honest. It was very clear, the way you communicated that to us. Have you ever been that clear with them about how you're experiencing them, what the net effect of this misbehavior is?
[00:08:08.590] - Chris
Or have we kind of danced around it.
[00:08:10.490]
Yep.
[00:08:13.090] - Chris
I think that's a really interesting point for us to make is as owners, sometimes maybe part of it is that we're just high merchant and we're so fiercely committed to diplomacy and not risking the relationship that we're afraid to be totally clear and honest, which is some of our issue, mine generally. Or I think the other reason why sometimes we do that as owners and we tiptoe around issues and behaviors is we have desperation.
[00:08:43.350] - Brandon
Brand and many of us are in that.
[00:08:46.990] - Chris
I would say yes. And often it's both. It's like we don't want to burn a bridge, we don't want to make somebody mad at us, and we don't know how we're going to replace that role in a short term period. But what's interesting as an outsider looking in these conversations, right, is most often when we're talking with owners in the same kind of context, they don't sound offensive, they don't sound threatening. It's just very clear, like they're communicating really clearly how they see the problem, what they believe needs to happen. And yet somehow we struggle to deliver that same exact message or story to our people directly and we never give them the benefit of full clarity.
[00:09:28.040] - Brandon
Yeah. And that's one of the things I think you kind of hit it on the head because I think a lot of times when we think about company culture, we think about valuing employees and those kinds of things. It's easy to come from this perspective where it almost feels like we're trying to defend against malicious intent. And the reality of it is over the last probably 1213 years. Or if I go back. Like military and the whole kind of 20 plus years of being in leadership roles. I think I can count on less than one hand the number of times I actually came across a leader manager with poor intent. Like. Where they really did see themselves at a different value level than the other human beings around them. Most of the time it's a lack of confidence in the role, in this coaching mentality, I guess, is clear. That's the issue. It's not that people don't respect their employees. Right.
[00:10:23.870] - Chris
I agree with you. And I think there is a little bit of a dark side, though, that you and I have seen and frankly, I've lived out. And that is when we let this go too long, where we find ourselves unable to have that clear conversation, what inevitably happens is bitterness and resentment starts to set in towards that person. And we think that it's all contained in our own head. We think that nobody notices they were unhappy with their performance or unhappy with some aspect of their work or their behavior until at some point we can't contain it anymore and we're ready just to lose it. Yeah, screw it all. I need to get them out of here. It really isn't a form of passive aggressive behavior.
[00:11:07.690] - Brandon
I think it is. And people don't realize that.
[00:11:09.880] - Chris
We don't realize it because, again, it's not intentional. We're not intentionally trying to damage that relationship or harm our business. But it's all these things going on in our head that prevents the conversation, but then ultimately triggers anger. And I think anger is an important part of this conversation. Like, it makes me actually think of my relationship with my daughter, which I've talked a lot about. I love you, Lily. But truly, when I'm able to give my daughter clear feedback after I've processed it and thought about it, and I'm able to deliver or ask those questions without anger, it makes 100%. And she can tell. She can tell if I have thinly veiled. If she can tell I'm kind of mad or frustrated. She can read that from a mile away. But if I can settle myself, if I can think through, I can get rid of all the shoulds, this should be different. This should never have happened, which is part of what causes that anger. If I can just let go of all of that and just bring the story in my head to her without any anger attached to it, most often she hears it.
[00:12:13.220] - Chris
She can hear it now. There may be a process of agreeing or negotiating what we do next, but she doesn't automatically clam up. She clams up when she senses my anger and frustration. And I think that's probably true of our employees, too.
[00:12:27.330] - Brandon
Yeah, right. For sure. And I think that's just like, a major part of the challenge, is that we have, I think, in many ways, a misunderstanding of what's the healthiest kind of relationship to have with our employees. And so we end up kind of falling into these categories of distancing ourselves and being very transactional, or we fall into this space of overly relational where there's a lack of accountability or a temptation to not really breathe, as you like to say, severe and clear feedback. And so there's a couple of things I kind of want to set the stage here, I think, before we go into some of the nuts and bolts of this, is I just want to remind all of us, and this is really important for me, too, and you used a great example with your children. I think it's same with mine. Like, my kids, I have adult kids, right? And there's this transitional relationship that we're in. Some of the ins and outs of how we do life together is definitely looking different. But one of the things I've noticed is that over the years, as my kids get older, they're more capable of giving me feedback on some of those coaching experiences are kind of driving experiences that we had in our relationship in our past.
[00:13:35.080] - Brandon
And really, for the most part, most of it has been effective. I'm not saying that to toot my own horn, because the reality is I messed up a lot more, probably more than I got it right. But this hard love almost is important. It teaches, it stresses the right things. It brings focus and attention to the right things and more importantly, it provides clarity on expectations. And so one of the things I just want to encourage business owners and key leaders on as part of this conversation is if this is new behavior, it's going to feel awkward. However, if we get consistent at establishing really clear expectations and we establish a coaching relationship with our employees, which we're going to define better here in a moment, we're going to find out one of two things. Either A, we're going to find out that that team player is the right team player. They've got the mojo. And now that we're providing clarity on what we want, what we need in that role, now that we have this mutually beneficial relationship that's beginning to get established, we often and more often than not we'll see the kind of success that we want and then that individual in return gets to experience winning on my team.
[00:14:49.430] - Brandon
And so I think that that is going to happen more often than we think when we provide more clear and feedback and we really establish this coaching mentality. But I think the other thing that we will identify as well is that we've got someone that's not coachable, that's not willing to learn, that has too much of an ego in place for them to continue to advance and or be willing to modify behaviors and actions to win, to succeed. And the reality of it is it doesn't matter how nice you are, how mean you are. When it's the wrong fit, it's the wrong fit. And when I say wrong fit, I mean that individual does not meet the DNA requirements for them to succeed on the team you're building. And that's okay because they may go to another organization, likely outside of our industry and find a home and that's great. But how many of us want to develop a business full of employees that really do not have a learning mentality, a driven mentality, a coachable mentality where they're constantly providing feedback that helps us and they're really good at taking feedback that helps them?
[00:15:52.390] - Brandon
If you're not that individual, most of the teams that I've been a part of and wanted to create, it just meant you weren't a good fit. And that's totally fine. But it's also totally fine as a leader to admit that and understand that some people won't stay and that's okay. Coaching mentality. I wanted to find coaching a little bit because a lot of us have heard stuff, leaders and managers and of course Clint Pover. I love his perspective on this marriage of accountability and relationship connection he calls it. So being a coach and creating a coaching culture to me kind of starts here and I'd like to hear your perspective on it. It's very similar to the kinds of relationships that you and I have had over the years, regardless of what position we were in in terms of title. Okay. It's this kind of dialogue that is, hey, Chris, I really liked the way that you handled this situation. Here's what stuck out to me in that particular event. You really took charge of this. You did a great job of proactively setting the stage for me to come in and know what my purpose was in this meeting.
[00:17:01.720] - Brandon
And there was this challenge spot in the conversation that I felt like we lost momentum. What was your thought process during that part of the conversation? Where were you coming from? Interesting. Okay, here's my feedback. Right? It's this idea that we have a dialogue where we're not skirting any part of the conversation because it's uncomfortable. We're just talking about it almost in a tactical way, meaning, this happened. These things were great. We talk about this and after action reviews, but then there was this section. I want your input first. Talk to me. What were you thinking about? What did you see? And then I'm going to provide some guidance or some coaching from my perspective. It could be because of my time and grade, my experience, I've got a little additional insight. It could be I was just emotionally a step back from you in that particular conversation, and so I had a little bit more visual continuity in what I was witnessing. Right?
[00:17:59.190]
Yeah.
[00:18:00.130] - Brandon
But I think when we think about coaching leadership, it's this idea of, we are going to be very diligent calling out the attitudes, the behaviors, the actions that align with the goals of the company. A right just like a coach on a sports field would be very diligent about calling out the drills that it requires to succeed. And when he or she sees that activity, we're hooting and hollering. We're getting excited. There's high fives. There's the things, right? And then also, what do we see a lot of coaches do? They're very good at drilling. They're very good at asking questions. They're very good at calling out in us. If we're going to be a championship team, we need to act like champions. And champions do the right stuff at the right time consistently, which means we have to have direct conversation when we're failing to meet that standard. Right. So I know, again, Clint does a great job, I think, of marrying this concept. But in my mind, coaching is coaching. It's being very deliberate about highlighting what we want to see and what success looks like. And in turn, it's very diligent on, hey, this is a problem area.
[00:19:15.810] - Brandon
We need to solve this together. Right? And then it's my job as a leader to provide the resources, the time commitment, whatever it requires to do enough drills to prep up that individual's weakness right. With them. And that could be as a department leader, it could be I send them to training. It could be I sit with them a couple of times throughout the month, and that could be where somebody's concern is with this. But that's where that relational coaching opportunity comes into. ICU is just equally great when you're doing awesome stuff. And I also see where you're challenged, and I want to have input in that, and I want to work through that to help you make up for that weakness in your skill set. How does that land with you in terms of kind of that coaching mentality?
[00:20:04.760] - Chris
Well, I think what I hear you saying describing is a mutually respectful interaction, whereas I've made the mistake many times. It's probably my knee jerk behavior when it comes to coaching is to assume that I have a perspective. They need to know, like, I have a right perspective going into that conversation, and I'm going to just kind of try to coax them over to my perspective.
[00:20:30.710] - Brandon
Oh, sure.
[00:20:31.870] - Chris
And I don't know if anybody else gets kind of stuck in that where it's like when I go into a coaching conversation giving somebody feedback on maybe some negative behavior I saw or whatever, I'm going into it with the intent of showing them or helping them see the negative behavior I saw versus the way I heard you approach it. And I think it's better is to go back to that situation, unpack the story in your head, and invite them to bring their own clarity. What was that situation like for you? Because I think inevitably, there's a lot of times I experienced this with my wife and my kids and other relationships. And certainly in the workplace, there are other things going on that I'm unaware of. Affecting a person's judgment, affecting a person's sense of urgency, affecting a person's mood. Right. All the things.
[00:21:22.530]
Yeah.
[00:21:23.270] - Chris
And I think when as a coach, you really ask these open ended questions without targeting a specific answer, it helps us figure out new things about how that person process that situation. How are they thinking about it?
[00:21:39.940] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:21:40.430] - Chris
Because they may have been thinking just right and their skill hasn't caught up with their judgment.
[00:21:45.250] - Brandon
Right.
[00:21:45.960] - Chris
It's like they were thinking about the situation clearly. It was just kind of a skill thing. They didn't know the best way to say it to that person or whatever they procrastinated. And that's what created the problem. You know what I mean?
[00:21:57.090] - Brandon
And if you're wanting to adequately teach and train somebody, you want to help them get better in this area of weakness, if we make assumptions about why somebody did a certain thing, we may not be hitting the mark. So when I go to do my teaching, my training, my coaching, I may be teaching to the wrong thing. The other thing that happens in a case like you've described is I think people shut down. So if right out of the gate, I start talking at and I clearly show I didn't have an understanding of it from their perspective. They've stopped listening to me before I've even gotten into any relative points because they already know what you're about to tell me. They assume what you're about to tell me is not on target because you didn't even understand the situation in the first place.
[00:22:42.150] - Chris
And they go into defensive mode and protection mode. They're catastrophizing what's going to happen from this. Am I going to get a write up? What's happening here? They can't hear. They can't process. I think that happens a lot. And certainly I know I've led into those conversations, and I've seen the consequence of it, for sure. All right, let's take a minute to recognize and thank our MIT Resto Mastery sponsor, accelerate Restoration Software. And I'm fully aware, by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software, that that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there. Right? Because we probably all fall into one of two camps when it comes to software. We've either cobbled together kind of a version of free website tools and spreadsheets just to make our business work, or we're in the camp where we've adopted one of these existing restoration platforms, one that has all the bells and whistles and supposedly does it all, but we can't get our team to consistently adopt it and input information to it.
[00:23:46.590] - Brandon
Yeah, and that's really where Accelerate has honed their focus. They've created a system that's simple, right? It's intuitive, and it focuses on the most mission critical information. I e, guys, your team will actually use it.
[00:24:01.560] - Chris
Let's talk about sales, right? After years of leading sales and marketing teams, the biggest trick is getting them to consistently update notes about their interactions with referral partners and clients. And the essential piece there is, there's got to be a mobile app experience. And in our experience, the solutions that were previously out there were just too cumbersome and tricky to use.
[00:24:25.010] - Brandon
Yes. Imagine, guys, how your business would change if your entire team was actually consistently using the system. Do yourself a favor. Go check these guys [email protected] MRM, and check out the special offers they're providing to MRM listeners.
[00:24:44.830] - Chris
All right, let's talk about actionable insights. Owners. GMs, you can't be your business expert on all things estimating you might have been three years ago when you're writing sheets in the field, but the industry is always changing, and so are the tools. If you're the smartest person in the room when it comes to exempt in matterport, how does that scale you're the bottleneck? I know I'm preaching to the choir, but this is where actual insights come in. They're a technical partner that can equip your team with the latest bleeding edge information and best practices and then update them with webinars and training resources when the game inevitably changes again. For this reason, we recommend actual insights to all of our clients.
[00:25:25.060] - Brandon
Yeah, three of the kind of big things that stuck out to me when being introduced to AI and their team. First off, is this consistently updated training. I mean, at the end of the day, these guys are the experts. They're out front all the time. They're constantly learning new trade secrets and ensuring that your team's got access to those things. A 3700 plus page database of exact emit templates. I don't know what else to say here other than don't reinvent the wheel, it's already available. Download it, copy it, use it. Bam. Database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple of points and those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world. So go check them out at value. Gitinsights. orgFC. It kind of reminds me of something and we'll bounce around a little bit here, but I think eventually the ship will land. Right? This kind of reminds me a lot of teams when they're reviewing their PNL, whether you're a service company of any kind, whether you're in our specific industry, it can be easy for us to look at our business and want to be on the most skeleton crew possible, the most efficient team size to maximize the amount of revenue that we can produce and still save that EBITDA.
[00:26:47.130] - Brandon
Right? Which is great, that's good business. 1100. That's fantastic. But I think the struggle that we have when we literally every person's last minute is used up in order for us to produce the consistent, the current workload. We have no way to build in bandwidth to be coaching and teaching and proactively engaging our personnel.
[00:27:08.230] - Chris
And we've made them an object. Well, to a degree, they know it. And that's why I see it on Facebook, I even see it on LinkedIn all the time, is that I think there is a general narrative in American business amongst employees. And I think millennials are driving some of this conversation. Sure, that we as business owners exploit our people. We try to ring as much out of them and there is truth to that. It's like we're trying to maximize we're trying to make people as efficient as possible. The right butts and the right seats. There's all this narrative around it. But I think if there isn't love built into that equation, people feel like they're simply a cog in the machine, like it ends up feeling that way. It doesn't mean we have to like, completely reorient ourselves and say, well, it doesn't matter how productive each of my employees is, it doesn't matter if I have people in the right seats. Of course that's not true. But I think part of building this coaching environment is that it's adding that love and that employee focus back into that equation. So I'm having Theofan Mackenzie, who's a past executive coach and now a friend, he loves this topic of coaching.
[00:28:21.750] - Chris
And he would say coaching has to. Be about the person that's receiving the coaching or it's not actually coaching. Oh, I love that there's management so we can get clever with management about how we do after action reviews and how we're saying things to our employees. But coaching is truly about being oriented on what is best for this person in front of me. And I'm either absolutely committed to that. Which could ultimately mean this person doesn't belong in our company. And I'm going to watch talent walk out the door because either they don't enjoy this work. They don't feel good about it. Or there's something about our values or our standards or something that just don't mesh with them and we have to let them spread their wings and fly somewhere else. Right. That's the ultimate nature of coaching, is helping others get what they want and helping people grow in the areas that they want to grow. And so in some ways, there's like this component where, like you say, it isn't so much that they're the wrong fit, it's just that they don't want what we want.
[00:29:29.460]
Yeah.
[00:29:31.430] - Chris
And we're looking for that magic of let's coach people so that if they want what we want, they can go as far as we're going to help them, go as far as they possibly can. But if they want something different, I think true coaching means is that we help them get that as well. That's been a part of a lot of their employee relationships that you and I have had, and some of them have sailed off into the sunset doing their own thing. In fact, I can think of a few people when I started their own.
[00:29:57.060] - Brandon
Businesses, we're still friends, and I'm as excited about them succeeding in that new arena as I was when they were on our team.
[00:30:03.730] - Chris
I got one that's about ready to do a kitchen remodel for me. Right.
[00:30:07.960] - Brandon
And if you're listening, you know who you are. Yeah. No, I dig it. I totally agree with where you've gone there. So let's think about this a little bit though. So there's a couple from a tactical perspective, I think there's some things for us to consider. So first off, I think we need to be clear when we're establishing our organizational chart, our roles and responsibilities, I think we need to be very clear right out of the gate in terms of setting expectation about what we're anticipating the leadership in our team to be responsible for. And again, we've talked about this a lot. We do seminars and training on this, this idea of like, we have somebody that's technically field competent and we just increase their responsibility and oversight tasks, but we've never equipped them to be ready for that change. Like, they were really good at their trade craft, but now we're asking them to lead people. And that's where this coaching component comes in. So if we're going to create a coaching culture, we have to do a series of things. One is we need to [email protected] chart and we need to break it up in such a way that each key leader has a limited number of personnel that he or she is responsible for speaking in to their professional development.
[00:31:19.230] - Brandon
Okay? And what that means is it's pretty common for someone to be in this, like one to ten ratio. Okay? So what that means is, is it possible for a GM or a single business owner to speak into the life of every single one of their employees with a real coaching intent? No way. You can't do it. And all of you listening to this, no, because many of you are great. You're all great people and you care about your people. You just don't have enough time in the day. So when we think about our.org chart and separating our areas of responsibility, we need to understand this ratio element. Right? Maybe one to ten is not set in stone, but it's pretty decent. Just think about how much time you have during the week. How many people can you legitimately understand and speak into their life? And so what we encourage people to do, for instance, is to establish either a team lead, again, based on competency and natural wiring, or a full on department manager, depending on size and scope of your organization. But what this allows us to do is that an owner now can speak to two or three key people in their organization, teach them how to coach, teach them how to by mirroring this relationship of we call the good when we see it, and we also call the bad in a respectful, intentional, and clear way.
[00:32:41.090] - Brandon
I want you to do the same thing with your people. Now, my department head has got six 7810 team members and they are coaching into that individual, right? And then what you see happen as this or chart develops is you even get influencers down the ranks. And so we might have technician staff that ranges in technical competency in time and grade. And if our down line leaders are really adopting and living out this coaching mentality, you're going to see tech Threes and commercial texts and senior technicians doing the same thing. And then again, following our own rulebook when we see it, right? If me as a MIT manager, see one of my senior level technicians talking to one of his peers or her peers and talking about, hey, man, this kicked butt on the Smith job. Hey, this other gig, right? This other component, that was rough. Here's some thoughts. Here's what I want to take on that situation. Yeah, right. Exactly. And if we see that happening, that's the coaching culture that we're talking about, because we then divide our responsibility and we limit the number of people that we're putting the expectation on us to speak into in a consistent and proactive way.
[00:33:55.740] - Brandon
And then what we just see is this very supportive organization that begins to develop over time because we're hitting on a series of responsibilities or behaviors that really are magical. We're getting better at identifying when our people are winning because we're intentional about because it's part of this coaching culture formula. In order for me to provide feedback on your performance, I need to be watching, I need to be paying attention to you right. And how you're doing, what you're doing. So we get that. We get this marriage of we're complementing and calling out the kinds of positive behaviors that we want and we're being direct and we're being proactive on challenging the areas where we need some tweaks and that performance level.
[00:34:38.080] - Chris
Yeah. It's also just synonymous with a high performance culture. Right. I think there's a struggle to build a culture when the owner of the GM or even the department leaders are the key source of discipline and accountability. It's too difficult, especially as you grow.
[00:34:59.590] - Brandon
When they're the only when they're the.
[00:35:01.100] - Chris
Only one that's perpetuating that right. I mean, clearly that responsibility for sort of building and maintaining that culture falls to the key leaders. But man, when you can push that commitment down into your frontline teams and everybody starts to adopt this way of working with one another right?
[00:35:20.280] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:35:21.010] - Chris
It's incredibly powerful when it doesn't have to be the boss that's providing that feedback. But there's this mutual respect that's developed, to be honest. Right. I don't know the teams ever fully arrived there all the time. We had intermittently. We'd recognize pockets of that growing in our teams. And so we've always been in the state of nurturing that I don't know if we ever fully arrive. You're always going to have misfits on the team that just feel threatened by that environment and ultimately rotate out. And so it's hard to get everybody on board all the time with this mentality or perspective. But boy, does it feel healthy when you start to move in that way.
[00:36:07.160] - Brandon
When your employees are the ones referring your next employees and they've grown to love and find success in these coaching environments where we have this clear marriage of accountability and support, then it means the likelihood of your organization, the percentage of players on the team growing and growing and growing to where far more of them fall into that category versus not. It's pretty powerful. And I like to just kind of recap this as consistently as possible as we're not asking to build a team where everyone is the same. That's exactly what we're not talking about. We're not looking for sameness. What we're looking for is an equal commitment to where the mission of the company is taking us, the vision, the why, what kind of work environment do we want to create? And there's all sorts of diversity in backgrounds, experience, communication styles, natural wirings that feed that culture. So again, we're not trying to be the same. We're trying to have an equal focus. All the team members have an equal focus on the mission at hand and where we're going as an organization. Okay, so this coaching culture here's, some things like some specific strategies, I think that we want to consistently think of if we're going to start developing this.
[00:37:25.810] - Brandon
And for those of you listening, you're probably a department manager, you could be a business owner, you could be a GM. Whatever the case may be, there's a strong chance that you might be the first one to plant this flag in your organization. And that's okay. And we can always lead up that organizational chart and do everything you can to professionally lead up that chain of command, as jocko would say. And it's okay for you to just do it well in your own team. Start there.
[00:37:54.320] - Chris
Create health in your own space.
[00:37:56.110] - Brandon
Create health in your own space. It will get noticed, and that in turn will have some profound influence. Okay, so here's some things to consider. And these are things amy, Shannon, thank you so much for the time that you spent with us over the years. A lot of these things do come from you. We talked about this briefly. This Delegation 101 proactive delegation, that is a tool or a model that you use inside creating a coaching culture. What does that look like? So, for instance, from now on, making a commitment that if I'm going to create a coaching culture within my organization, I am going to delegate in a very specific way when I assign tasking. And here's what that looks like. We start by clearly defining why this individual is great for this role, task, project, title, whatever the case may be. You're saying to this individual, hey, I see these skill sets, strengths, natural gifting in you. And that's why I'm coming to you with this task, with this responsibility. Here's the mission, lay it out. Here's what success in that mission will look like for us. So many new leads generated by XYZ time frame, so much revenue, dollars created, timelines in our job life, whatever the data is, be very clear when we're delegating that this is what success looks like.
[00:39:17.820] - Brandon
And then that two part conversation of what do you see right now that we've kind of talked about this mission, I've laid out some of the wins. What are you seeing? Can we add something to that? Some tweaks and modification. Great. We're all on the same page here's. When these deliverables are due, here's the role I will have in supporting you in this project. We could do a whole again, this is a podcast. These are hours and hours of content training potentially, but just that as a tool guy learning how to delegate in a really effective and proactive way is part of creating this coaching culture. We're telling people what we need. We're inviting them in because of the skill set that we see in them. And then we're helping them create a very clear picture of winning. Major important tool, another important tool is being very utilitarian. For some of us this is natural instinct. For many of us it's not. And so we have to be fairly utilitarian in the way that we're going to create a system to help us succeed in this. That means use your calendar. Okay? So if that means that you need to up your game on employee recognition, put something on your calendar, 15 minutes block Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
[00:40:29.160] - Brandon
And it is okay if it's robotic as heck when it first starts, that Monday morning. I've got a 15 minutes marker. I'm going to go to the shop for 15 minutes and try to find something I can point out. Awesome for you. That's great. That is an awesome first start. So what that piece is do what is necessary to give you the opportunity to follow through on this. If it's a natural gifting for you, great. This is going to be easy. If it is not, that's okay. It's still valuable, it's still mission critical.
[00:40:58.690] - Chris
Schedule it in.
[00:40:59.410] - Brandon
Use your calendar. Schedule it in. Another tool or resource that I think creates a really healthy coaching culture, contributes to it is what we talk to our folks about is two things after action review rhythms and a coaching summary. Okay? And the reason we really promote coaching summaries is that it allows us to create time date stamped records of these coaching opportunities that we have with our personnel without it being so disciplinary in perspective. Because like we've said, to create a coaching environment we need to be calling out the good and the challenges. And so these summary opportunities just gives us the ability to do that in a formal way that's trackable and there's a record of it and it doesn't feel like disciplinary action whatsoever. So example is that, again, we just trying to burn through some of these tools is what the conversation was about, what you committed to doing. What I committed to doing. Right? So that's one where we need to move the needle somewhere. It's coaching summary time date stamped. It's positive. It's mutually beneficial. We may just see a Kudos go out. Same thing. Hey, I saw you doing XYZ today.
[00:42:12.310] - Brandon
Hands down that's money, it's right in line with what we're shooting for. Thanks again. Same thing. Tight time date stamp. Because what we see in a lot of cases and why this coaching culture is so important is that so much of our staff feels unappreciated for what they're doing. But man, if they can go back to their email inbox and see that multiple times throughout the quarter, their direct line leader is calling out in them the things that they do well and then they took 30 seconds to type it up and send it to them. Powerful. Now we call it a summary for a reason. This coaching relationship is happening live, right? It could be the cab of the truck on the way to a job. It could be at the job site, could be in the training room when we're with our admin team, whatever the case may be, take advantage of it in the moment, be aware, but then we just follow it up. That's where that kind of more intentional element comes from. And then I think kind of the last tool or resource that we talk a lot about is the after action review.
[00:43:13.130] - Brandon
Do you want to kind of just unpack the brief version of that? Yeah.
[00:43:16.100] - Chris
So the after action review, I mean, it's taken from the military concept. You get back from a mission and the whole team reports back kind of from their vantage point in a very non emotional, factual sort of way. Here are the factual events that unfolded from my point of view, and everybody shares that. And then the group looks at the actions of the whole team and says, okay, what was great? What was not so great? What would we change next time? What would we right. We're depersonalizing. We're objectifying. The experience, the interaction, the project that we're doing an after action review on, we're making it this little object in the center of the circle, and everybody's looking at it from their angle and saying, okay, this was my take. My job was this. Here's how I think I executed on that, but in a factual way. And it takes a while to set it up to where everybody's sort of coming to it from that angle, because all of us have this selfprotective thing we do. Right?
[00:44:18.650] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:44:18.910] - Chris
So it takes practice, but it's nonemotional. It's fact based. It's we language rather than you. I did my part, but you screwed up. That has no place in the AR.
[00:44:31.020] - Brandon
That's right. Yeah. That's spot on. It's a team sport, and this is just a continuation of that accountability in a team collective environment like that.
[00:44:41.850] - Chris
There's a book called Crucial Conversations or Critical Conversations. A previous coach I hired ten years ago, Tara Robinson, she was great. She talked about this concept from that book called Three Points of Conversation, and it's particularly good when the stakes are high or when there are difficult things to communicate. And the basic concept of it is similar. Like, there's a lot of crossover with the AAR, but it's when you're one on one with somebody, that can be a very intimidating thing, especially if there's a power differential. Right. You're the owner of the business and they're somebody on payroll. There is a power differential there. You may not feel it as an owner because it's all you know, and we talk even GMs, they don't realize the power they carry walking into the room, right?
[00:45:25.360]
Yeah.
[00:45:25.690] - Chris
Okay. So when we have a one on one coaching conversation, this Three Points of Contact thing is the idea of write the bullet points out of the thing that needs to be discussed, put it on a piece of paper, sit down on the same side of the table with your colleague, downline, person, whatever. And then as you start talking through the issues that are on the paper, look at the paper. And then of course, we're not saying this has to be some sterile thing. I'm not suggesting, like, you don't ever make eye contact. It's not like that. But what you're doing is you're putting the problem or the challenge or the difficult conversation on this other piece of paper that both of you are looking at rather than you looking at the other person and describing the problem that they are or they're creating. Instead, we objectifier. We depersonalize the issue at hand so that both of us can kind of come into that conversation neutral. One person doesn't feel threatened, so it's a mechanical thing that we can do. But man, every time I've tried it, it's gone well, it's gone better. I should say those difficult conversations are often still difficult.
[00:46:33.700] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:46:34.160] - Chris
We still have to ask those tough questions.
[00:46:35.830] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:46:36.740] - Chris
But it's not a personal attack, and it doesn't feel like it.
[00:46:39.960] - Brandon
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that's an excellent point. Okay, so I think some folks listening to this are like, oh, that sounds pretty easy. Most of us would be intimidated by this. So here's something that I think that we need to start with. This is foundational in order for us to begin adding these tools, these resources, these layers to ultimately create this coaching culture. And that is we need to have measurables. There needs to be data points in every single role that we are monitoring and measuring from a non emotional perspective. Now, for our analysts out there that are listening, it's like, Damn right. And for the rest of us that lead more from a gut perspective, we're like, oh, great, more crap. I got to pay attention to KPIs. More KPIs. Yeah. But it is mission critical, and I can tell you I would never use names, but I've been in very uncomfortable situations with people I really liked and I really respected. But professionally, their performance did not meet the standard by a long shot. And I was always blown away by the gap between my perception of their performance and the perception of their own performance.
[00:47:55.590] - Brandon
And the only way that I found over the years to close that gap, you'll never remove it because we're humans and we see the world through very distinct eye, but you can get really damn close to getting on the same page. The more intentional you are with what is it that we monitor, what is it that we measure, and how does that affect a win or lose for that particular individual's performance? Let's just grab a category. I'm a recon manager. I have four project managers. There's a couple of things that I'm going to do tactically to ensure that we get this mutual language that we can all speak from. And so I might put out a monthly recap of my project manager's performance, and it's going to have a series of things on there, and we're also very public. Okay. That's the thing about team sports, right? When you talk to a professional ball club, their stats are public. Not only does the team know the stats, but the world knows the stats. And so if we're going to create this coaching environment, this coaching culture, we have to be transparent with measuring of our performance.
[00:49:01.020] - Brandon
Okay? And so that benchmark, that monthly report that all my PMC is going to hammer on or really be focused on those key KPIs that put us on the same side of the table, total revenue that individual is able to produce. Right. Gross profit margin that they create on their projects, things like average job life cycle times or maybe something about collections and job closing activity examples. You guys have battle rhythms. You have KPIs in your organization. But here's my point. If in a very public fashion, it's standard operating procedure, we all see what we're producing, what kind of margins were producing, at, how long it's taking us to do it, and how consistently we attack our AR aging, it's closer to a black and white conversation. So if I'm going to have a coaching conversation with you in terms of performance, if there is a way for me to spend most of it around the things that affect those specific KPIs, my version of the story shouldn't be too much farther off from your version of the story in terms of how am I doing. Yeah, right. And then I think there's a myriad of other things that are critical there in terms of it helps us triangulate where the problems are so that we can support our staff's growth and development.
[00:50:13.510] - Brandon
So, again, I think if we're going to create this environment, we have to start by creating some kind of measurable competencies within our organization where for each key role, we're defining what wins look like and what are the data points that we're paying attention to and measuring. And then if that's done in a professionally transparent way, that's kind of the foundation. And now we can start adding these other tools and resources to develop the professional relationship that we have with the employee. But we got to start by trying to close that gap of your view of it versus my view of it.
[00:50:49.900] - Chris
Yeah. What does a winner look like and behave like in our organization? And that's going to shift over time, but having a clear message at all times of what that is and allowing that to grow and adapt over time is really important. Okay. So I have another angle on this that I think maybe we could even wrap up with because you and I got to get into another meeting. I think one aspect of coaching. I experienced this with Theofan and other great coaches that you and I both had the pleasure to work with, is finding out what they want and then being really diligent to coach toward that. Because once we can find out, what do you want? Where are you trying to go? What role do you ultimately want in this company? What aspects of the work do you love the most about your current job, and what would it look like to grow and have more time for those aspects? Where do you see yourself? Like, ideally asking those kind of dream and destination questions. What are you trying to get?
[00:51:42.800]
Yeah.
[00:51:43.480] - Chris
And really listening and being curious beyond money being part of it. Sometimes we're afraid to ask how much money they want to make, what their goals are, but just get it all out on the table and then helping them chart a path, create a vision of well, in order for you to achieve that. And maybe it's a multi prong conversation, right? Because sometimes we don't even know how to get them there right away, but it's like, well, I can tell you this. One of the things that would require is X. Does that seem like something you'd be willing to tackle?
[00:52:12.510]
Yeah.
[00:52:12.940] - Chris
Learning that, figuring that out, becoming better at that kind of thing. But then I think once we get clear on what they want and we can ask them, do you want me to help you get there? Are you willing? If I see something and I have a suggestion for you, do you want me to say it? Do you want me to give you feedback on these different elements? If you want this, you're going to need this. Do I have your permission to follow up on this stuff? And really getting their buy in? And then I think it reminds me of that quote by somebody. No, I think it was Henry Cloud. He said, Leaders will always get what they create and what they allow. And so I think within that coaching conversation, right. If we can get clarity from our people, we can be that external, for lack of a better word, like conscience. We can remind them of what they want.
[00:53:04.200]
Yes.
[00:53:04.660] - Chris
Rather than making it a punitive, managerial conversation, it's more of a mentor conversation or coach position of, hey, John, come on in here, man. There's a hallway conversation. Hey, come on in the office, man. I want to check in. And we can bring up a situation. We can say, hey, listen, I saw this. I wanted to check in with you because when we talked last month and when we talked two weeks ago, and you're one on one, we revisited this. You're trying to get here, and we talked about what goes into that. Is that still important to you? And if it is, I have a little bit of feedback. Can we talk about here's what I observed, what was that like for you in this situation? How would you potentially change that if you could go back?
[00:53:46.690]
Right.
[00:53:46.990] - Chris
And we're refentering them on the key behaviors absolutely. To get where they want to go. It's less about us changing them or managing them, but it's that check in of, hey, do you still want this?
[00:53:57.340]
Yeah.
[00:53:57.760] - Chris
Okay. Well, let's double down. Let's get back to basics here, right? Let's get the reps in, because you're going to have to figure that out before you can get to that next thing. And then all of a sudden, we're not punishing them. They don't feel threatened. They don't feel like, oh, man, they have a clear path of, if I want to get back on track, I just need to go back to these things that we've already agreed upon and discussed. It's less of putting words in people's mouths and just checking in and saying, hey, is this still what you want?
[00:54:26.110] - Brandon
It's the signpost, and being okay with.
[00:54:28.160] - Chris
Them saying, gosh, I just don't think this is for me. Like, that may sometimes be the outcome of, I don't think I have it in me right now, or, I don't know if I'm ready for this, which.
[00:54:38.120] - Brandon
Is totally appropriate and puts you on the same page, and that's actually a benefit to everyone engaged.
[00:54:43.320] - Chris
But that is the hardest part, right. Is when we do engage, we have to be ready to follow through, because if we have these visionary conversations with people and we get commitment from them, we get permission, which is a funny way to say it. When you're like the boss, you're getting permission from your employee. But the reality is, we're all individuals. That's the only way to really work with people, to get their permission, certainly.
[00:55:04.560] - Brandon
To get movement on their part.
[00:55:06.340] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:55:06.770] - Brandon
Right.
[00:55:07.220] - Chris
Otherwise, we just have objects.
[00:55:08.640] - Brandon
Yes. And if there is no permission, then there's a strong chance they're not going to fit on the team very long because they won't be making the modifications to increase their performance. So it shakes out in the end.
[00:55:18.410] - Chris
Okay.
[00:55:18.670] - Brandon
Hey, thanks for joining us for that show, guys. Hey, if there's value here, please, again, share it with a friend. Bring somebody else into the community, and let's do some life together with them, please, like subscribe. And if you have an opportunity, leave us a review. You guys, we love that stuff. It's really important to us, and we appreciate your feedback and input. Yes.
[00:55:37.700] - Chris
The only other thing I'd say to you is we have no shortage of ideas and topics and fun stuff we want to talk about. But if you've got a topic for the show or a guest you want to see, all of you know how to punch Chris Nordic or Brandon Reese into your LinkedIn search bar. Find us, shoot us a DM there. That's easiest. Or Chris at floodlightgrp or Brandon@floodlightgrpcom. But send us stuff. Chances are very good. We'll talk about. It. We'll bring it up on a future show.
[00:56:01.480] - Brandon
We might even poke you, give you.
[00:56:03.350] - Chris
A little shout out.
[00:56:03.970] - Brandon
Bring it up.
[00:56:04.560] - Chris
Yeah, you'll be podcast famous.
[00:56:06.050] - Brandon
That's right. All right, guys. Thanks a lot. Bye. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Boots.
[00:56:14.590] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show but you love this episode, please hit follow. Formerly known to subscribe, write us a review or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks listening.