Episode 252: LMA & Feedback Loops with Dr. Jack Wiley

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.

My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Dr. Jack Wiley. We're going to be talking about all things The Employee-Centric Manager. He's got an amazing book called The Employee-Centric Manager: 8 Keys to People Management Effectiveness. Now, this is based on a study over 27 countries and 80,000 workers. Now, you may feel like that just over your career, depending on how many people that have worked for you, that you may have an idea of what it means to actually have an engaged workforce. Well, we really dive into his framework that I know is going to really help serve you. That those 8 keys, the 5 behaviors, the 1 skill, and the 2 values. I got a ton out of this podcast. I actually invited Jack. To come back on the episode because there were so many different things that I felt like we didn't even get to cover. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Jack Whiteley.

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Dr. Jack Wiley, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Well, thank you, Bradley. I'm delighted to be with you.

Yeah, we're excited to have you. Well, before we get into it, we always start with background and origin story, and so I'd love for people to be able to tell your story and kind of your journey and about how you got to where you are today.

Well, thank you for that. Well, I was born and raised in the great state of Indiana, and of course that means that I'm in love with the sport of basketball.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, but after, uh, graduating from undergraduate school at DePauw University, I went to the University of Tennessee to study psychology applied to the workplace. Uh, after that, I worked in Fortune 500 companies in financial services, uh, heavy manufacturing and high tech, and then started my own consulting firm, uh, in 1986. Formed a company called Gantz Wiley Research. We conducted employee engagement surveys and customer satisfaction surveys for companies all over the United States and internationally as well. I sold that consulting firm, uh, in 2006 to a fast-growing HR technology company known as Connexa, stayed with them, started a new division, headed up their High Performance Institute And we built that business up such that in 2013, it was acquired by IBM. At that point in time, having been in large organizations before, I decided that working with 450,000 coworkers wasn't going to be a great fit for me. So I did opt out, and I had a rather restrictive non-compete. But after one year of just making conference presentations and talking here and there, I actually joined the faculty of a local university, started a new program in industrial organizational psychology, and stayed there for 6 years to get that program up and running, but left almost exactly 3 years ago, finishing up my academic career in the spring of 2020 so that I could devote my time and energy to the book that I recently published entitled The Employee-Centric Manager. And so that's a thumbnail sketch of, of where I've been during the course of my career. I've had, interestingly enough, the opportunity to work with leadership teams in person in about 25 countries around the world. So There was a time when I was racking up a significant mileage on Delta Airlines. Still have hundreds of thousands of miles to my credit, but happy to be with you this afternoon and to talk about leadership.

Okay. Well, first of all, what I said before I hit record that we're going to go 35, 40 minutes. No, forget that. This is going to be a 3-hour podcast. We're going to release it in multiple episodes. What an amazing background. Holy smokes, that is incredible. We might have to— I might have to ask you if we have time around some of your exits that you've had, or maybe we'll just have you come back on again for another episode and just how you've built companies that were attractive for an acquirer, etc., because I know a lot of our listening audience loves that and loves to think about either their current business or maybe building another business. And so there's a lot of different places I could take this conversation. That's amazing. All right. So first thing I want to ask you, um, did not plan on asking this question. You did your first employee engagement survey in what year was it again?

I would say I did my first employee engagement survey while I was a graduate student at the University of Tennessee. And I would peg that into the 1975, 1976 timeframe.

Wow. Okay. So I won't make a joke of Tennessee Vols.

Okay. All right.

He and I joked about basketball beforehand, so I won't make a comment there. No, but serious question here. What have you noticed? I mean, you have been in organizational psychology now for decades. Okay. I'm really curious. What have you noticed that has stayed the same, okay, and also evolved in organizations over that period of time, you know, since 1975 to now 2023? What has stayed the same and what has completely changed from the first time that you were studying this?

Well, I would say that one of the things that have changed would be the interest that leadership teams have in the opinions and attitudes of their employees. This is much more important now than it was decades ago. My first job out of graduate school was working on the personnel research department at Ford Motor Company, of course one of the largest organizations in the world. And at the time, Ford Motor Company conducted employee attitude surveys, but only of the salaried workforce. And interestingly enough, the primary driving force behind that effort was that they wanted to make sure that their salaried workforce did not unionize. And so it was really a union vulnerability type of survey. Uh, what do we need to do to make sure that the conditions, um, of our salary workforce don't create an interest on the part of salaried workers to want to form a union? But nowadays we see that very differently. It's a much more positive point of view with regard to, let's say, the employee survey process. The main interest now is really around the quality of the work experience for employees, because that is seen as the means to employee engagement. And employee engagement is what organizations seek to achieve on the belief that what that construct really means is that if we have an engaged workforce, workforce, then we have a workforce that is motivated to perform at a high level, committed to stay with the organization, and very importantly, willing to apply discretionary effort to get the job done. So these are the people who are willing to, to go the extra mile in order to get the job done, do what's necessary to meet the demands and needs of customers.

Oh, I love discretionary effort. That's great. I've never heard that before. That is fantastic. It's a different way of saying going the extra mile, but discretionary effort, because there's— everybody has a little bit more in the tank. So do you agree that an engaged workforce, small business, medium-sized company, even a large company, is a key to higher performance?

Absolutely. You know, in the field of social sciences broadly, we do a lot of correlational studies. Actually for the last, I would say, 40 years, we've been able to demonstrate that there's a correlation between employee engagement and performance, whether that be individual or team productivity or even organizational performance at, at an aggregate level, if you will. But because our research techniques have improved and been refined, we're, we're able actually to move beyond saying that there's merely a correlation, because what science really tells us today is that employee engagement, or better yet, workforce engagement, is actually a predictor of organizational success. So we've, we've moved to this, to beyond just establishing a linkage, to showing that there is a predictive relationship between workforce engagement and total organizational performance.

How does someone that does not have the sophisticated tools that maybe you would have— I mean, you sold a company to IBM, etc. So how do I know without just relying on my gut, my instinct, my emotions, which, let's be honest, can go up and down? Okay, mine can, the team can. How do I actually measure the engagement of my team, not just in an isolated day? Because everybody listening to this that has a team can say, oh, there's days where the team is just locked in. We just know that they're engaged. So if I measured it on that day, sure, they're engaged. There's other days where everybody feels like they're checked out, basically. But how do I actually know what the current engagement level of my team is so that I'm measuring it, not necessarily just going off of my gut instinct. I mean, if I gave you— if you asked me, I would just throw out a number of 1 to 10 and go like, I don't know, you know, 8, you know, but I don't know what that— how to actually measure that, number one. And then I'll ask a follow-up question in a second about how to improve it.

But right, so if we think about measuring employee engagement. Obviously, you can do that by walking around and seeing what the tone is of the, of the staff or the office or the workplace on a given day. That's probably not going to be highly reliable. What we would do, and I think what science would indicate, is that we would either create structured discussions with employees to measure employee engagement, or better yet, what I spent a big part of my career doing is actually surveying employees to determine whether or not they're engaged or what their level of workforce engagement is. When we think about the experiences that create an engaged workforce, and I've been studying this for several decades, in fact, it really boils down, Bradley, to about 4 things. Number 1, do employees have trust and confidence in their senior leaders? In other words, I trust my senior leader of my organization, regardless of what the size of the organization is. I trust my senior leaders to have determined a winning formula, a strategy for success, and I have confidence that that strategy is going to in fact produce the desired outcomes. That's number 1. Number 2, my immediate boss. It could be the senior leader of the organization, but in larger organizations, most likely it won't be. But my immediate boss, do they recognize my contributions and do they treat me with dignity and respect? That's number 2. Number 3, do I actually like the kind of work I do? So am I jazzed up and excited about the actual content of itself? That's really satisfaction with the work itself. And number 4, do I see opportunities for, for me to develop my career within this organization? Is this a place where I can achieve my career goals? And is the organization growing, developing such that new opportunities are emerging? So these are really consistently four pillars, if you will, of employee engagement that really measure, represent that experience that's needed in order for employees to be fully engaged.

That is awesome. All right. Here's what's going in my head. You tell me where maybe my analogy is correct or maybe slightly off base. But we all know the Good to Great, Jim Collins' book, right? Get the right people on the bus and then get them in the right seats. Okay. So my feeling is, number one, trust and confidence. Where is this bus going and what's the route that we're going to take? So is this the right strategy? Is this the winning formula on the path that this bus is going? Number 1. Number 2, the boss, the person driving the bus. I have confidence in him or her, but they're also going to recognize my efforts in the, in the bus itself. And then number 3, the thing that I'm doing while on that bus. I'm not just sitting there, but I enjoy the things that I'm doing. and then I'm going to continue to be able to move up maybe from, uh, coach to business class to first class. I know that's a plane analogy, but does that make sense? Like, that's how I was trying to think through that analogy and applying it to those 4 things. What's correct? What's off base on that?

Well, I think you're on base on all of them. I would expand the 4th point just a little bit, and it gets into learning new skills. Sometimes People don't have necessarily a desire to move up the chain of command, to move up that ladder of hierarchy, so to speak. But what they do want to do is to continue, continue to grow and to develop and be excited about learning new skills. And of course, when we approach things that way and even get involved in cross-training our employees, uh, we're building more capability within the organization because we've got more flexibility over people taking time off and people get excited about learning new skills and being able to take on additional responsibilities. That, that source of variety to what people do is one of the elements that, that also jazzes them up. But, uh, the point I would make is it's not always up the chain of command. It's broadening our skill base. And sometimes when we broaden our skill base, it better prepares us for another job, maybe in another organization, but we still have good feelings about the company we left because of the opportunities it provided.

That makes a ton of sense. Because Courtney, who has worked for me now for a number of years as my EA, she's kind of evolved into her position in terms of an assistant. Thankfully, she has made some comments about, like, you know, she always wants to be on the team, be an assistant. But what she's saying though, she wants to develop more skills. She wants to be exposed to more things. So she's not looking to try to move up in the organization per se. She just wants to develop in that role. She doesn't want to stay the same as she is today as she will be in 2 or 3 years. I think that's a really important key point that you make there. Yeah.

That's— Yeah. Sounds like Courtney's a perfect illustration of that point.

Yeah, I really love frameworks and concepts because if I can get my hands around something, it really helps me. So in your book, The Employee-Centric Manager, you talk about 8 keys. And what I love about it is that you go through then the 5 behaviors, 1 skill, and 2 values. Can you just begin to kind of break, break apart that for us and dissect it for us about kind of what you mean and what each one of those is?

Right. So first of all, let's just recognize that these 8 attributes were distilled from multiple years of data collection from a representative sample of employees in 27 countries around the world. We surveyed 80,000 employees, got their input in answer to this question: What is the most important thing I want from my immediate boss? So this wasn't really a theory that I came up with on my own. I mean, we did the research, we did the work, but all of the data is based on what employees told us. So this is really the employee voice indicating what they want in a manager. So if we look at it that way, it boils down to these 8 attributes. Number 1, that my manager will show support. Support and understanding. In other words, they're going to be accessible, they're going to be helpful, they're going to be considerate, and they're going to be good listeners. Number 2, that my boss will treat me with dignity and respect. And so what that means is I want to work for a boss who presumes that I'm coming to the job in order to do good work and to make a contribution. They're a boss who's going to invite me to be involved in decision-making where possible. And they're going to be concerned about my, my welfare, both physically and psychologically. So if we think about those two behaviors, those are behaviors that really contribute to the quality of the relationship between the boss and the subordinate.

One moment.

Number, number three, though, we get into some different kinds of behaviors. The third behavior would really be communicating clear performance expectations. This is about defining what success looks like. It's really about making sure that, that priorities are established and, and that the manager is providing the employee with useful feedback, helpful feedback on how they can do even a better job. That's followed by the behavior of providing recognition. Recognition is psychological appreciation. Pat on the back, attaboy, attagirl, thank you for the contributions you're making. It's not about pocketbook, it's, it's really about the heart and showing appreciation for what people bring to the job. And then finally, the fifth behavior is rewarding performance contributions. And that is, you know, this is basically the reason people come to work, right? For most of us who, you know, aren't independently wealthy, we come to work for the purposes of getting a paycheck. But the idea here is that I want to be rewarded fairly for the contributions I'm making. That shows up in the paycheck, but it also shows up in training and development opportunities. Employees were equally emphatic that they wanted their boss to help them create a career path, help them develop new skills, support them in training and development opportunities, that is perceived as a form of reward. But those last 3 behaviors— communicating clear performance expectations, providing recognition, and rewarding performance contributions— are really about building employee performance. Now, the, the 6th attribute is problem-solving decision-making. And you, you know, Bradley, you might say, well, that sounds like a behavior to me. And in fact, you would be right. But in the data, what employees said was, I don't merely want my boss to solve problems and make decisions. I want them to be good at it. I want them to kind of clear the deck, remove obstacles to the performance of work. Make decisions in a timely way, think through the downstream consequences of the decision so that, you know, there's not a blowback to the decisions. And so they really want their bosses to be good at problem-solving and decision-making and to invite them in to that process when that's possible. Then the last two attributes represent what I call values. Values are personal standards of conduct, and what employees said was that they want their boss to be fair and just. So in other words, they're going to be consistent, they're going to be equitable, they're not going to play favorites, they're going to show the same flexibility to all. And so there's a sense of being fair. And then the final attribute is similar to it, kind of the other side of the coin, so to speak, that they be honest and trustworthy, that they're forthright in their communication. They, they say what they mean, they mean what they say. They walk with a sense of integrity, which basically would be defined as doing what you say you're going to do. And they're credible. They protect confidential information. They don't undermine others. They're honest and they're trustworthy. These are the 8 attributes of the employee-centric manager. So this simply defines what, from the viewpoint of employees, what they most want in their immediate boss.

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That's great. Go over those. Just go over those high level, uh, uh, one by one. And then, um, uh, and then I want to come back and I've got some clarifying questions I want to ask on each one.

Sure. So the, the, the 5 behaviors, uh, first of all, show support and understanding, treat employees with dignity and respect, communicate clear performance expectations, provide recognition, and reward performance contributions. The skill is problem solving and decision making. They want their boss to be good at it. And the values are being fair and just and being honest and trustworthy.

These are great. These are awesome. One thing that you mentioned at the beginning before you started in there, and I think it's a really key point distinction is that you did not go into the survey with an idea of what you thought it was and then tailored the survey to basically prove what you were already thinking, right? You didn't go into it and say, we think it's these 8 things, and so therefore we'll tailor the survey. You actually went into the survey and said, well, we're not really sure. Let's actually go through this. 27 countries. I mean, it begins to be the data as— oh, Atomic Habits, James Clear wrote— is that at the end of the day, the votes have piled up enough to where it becomes irrefutable, the evidence of what it is. And that's the same kind of thing I think about with your data is that you were like, look, we're going to survey a thousands of people here and we're just going to then see what the data says versus this is the idea we have and what are the— then we'll go about proving that idea. Thoughts on that?

Right. Yeah, that's exactly right. You've, in many respects, you've just defined the difference between inductive and deductive research. But inductive research, basically we started from ground zero and the question was simple: what is the most important thing you want from your immediate boss? They provided the answer. They didn't select from a dropdown, they didn't select as a multiple choice questionnaire, they actually provided answers in their own words. Now that did create challenges in terms of data analysis because we had a mountain of data. But I was seeking, Bradley, I was seeking universal answer. I wanted to know globally, worldwide, if there was a universal set of attributes that employees wanted in their immediate boss. And that is exactly what emerged. A lot of people, you know, have asked me about, well, are there differences in terms of cultures? Are there differences in terms of genders? Are there differences in terms of levels of jobs? But the fact of the matter is that the real story here is that there are many more similarities than there are differences. I mean, we have to scratch really hard to come up with significant, practically significant differences between different subgroups of employees. So I believe what's emerged would be a universal statement about what employees most want. I mean, the, the, the countries that we surveyed provided representative samples of employees. So we do have a true representation. And those 27 countries, by the way, represent over 85% of the world's gross domestic product. So I am— I'm— those economies, um, with that background, I'm very confident about the universality, uh, of, of this. If you, you know, in scientific terms, we would call this a taxonomy. I'm very comfortable with the defensibility of this taxonomy or this framework, these 8 attributes indicating from the voice of the employee what they want in a boss.

Well, you've definitely convinced me. There's no question about that. And I know you've convinced our audience too. All right. I'm not going to go through every one of those just for the sake of time, but there's one I really want to call out, especially on the 5 behaviors. And I'm sure you have read this study. But the one from Gallup that said the reason most people leave is because they were unclear of the expectations of their position. And again, I'm paraphrasing that study, but it's quoted quite a bit. And so you talk about the importance of clear performance expectations. What exactly are you asking me to do? And then you went on to talk about feedback too, that you're actually going to give me feedback about whether or not I am doing that. So can you just talk about that specifically and how that relate— possibly relates, or maybe is even different than the study from Gallup that they did on that one?

Well, I would say that it's probably parallel with the Gallup study, but, uh, when, when employees said they want their boss to communicate clear performance expectations, they really said define what success looks like for you. In other words, What do you want me to produce? How do you want me to serve customers? What is the work product that meets your standards? Uh, clearly define what success means in terms of how I would perform my work, regardless of what that role is. Now, in addition to that, especially for positions that, uh, are filled by knowledge workers, they have a lot more discretion, let's say, over how they go about doing their work. And sometimes they have multiple projects. So they need the boss to tell them, I need this project done first, this project done second, this project done third. That would be a very simplistic way of saying clarify the priorities, you know, so that there's no confusion. I don't want to be working on something that if I finish now prevents me from doing something of higher priority that you're expecting me to do. Let's get real clear about those priorities. And by the way, you're my boss. Help me get my job done. Give me honest, direct, useful feedback on how I can improve in the delivery of whatever product and service it is that I'm working on. So what I find when we assess managers on this particular attribute, that surprisingly, this is one of the attributes that managers score lower on when they're rated by their employees.

Yeah, yeah. You know, so we just onboarded someone new with my company, Lauren, and she's been awesome. And one of the things in the last week, she asked me, she said, hey, will you give me feedback? And when I think about that, I think of it in two ways. I would love your input here, but it's both on giving feedback. It's more of this, and then sometimes it's less of something else. So in other words, nope, always try to find and give feedback of all the things that they're doing wrong. I don't like this. I didn't like the way you did that. That email tone was not right. That document you put together was not good. This is not how, you know, Okay, fine, sure. But then it's also, hey, this was really good. I like this type of thing. I'll give you a specific example. She and our sync meetings is what we call them. She's been asking really great questions, clarifying questions. I want to make sure of this. Well, I told her I love that, continue to ask questions. So it was basically trying to give her feedback that I like actually her asking more questions because it shows me that she's paying attention. She's respectful. Respectful, she wants to do a good job, etc., etc., etc. Thoughts on those two things?

Yeah, so I'm noticing that the sunlight is coming through my—

no worries.

All right, um, I'll make a little bit of an adjustment here. We'll see that Jack can actually multitask. Um, so what I would say about that is that, um, positive reinforcement is incredibly powerful. So, and employees, you know, all of us in our careers and in our jobs want feedback on how well we're doing. So positive reinforcement is extremely important. But what I would caution managers about would be that if you're going to recognize somebody for the good work that they're doing, I would probably leave it at that. I wouldn't mix in the criticism in that same interaction. Because what employees are going to remember is the criticism. They're going to remember the failure. They're going to, they're going to forget about the, the acknowledgement and the appreciation that was, that was indicated. Now, if you're doing a performance review, that's different, but I'm talking about when I talk about providing recognition, it's really what happens on a day-by-day basis. The show— I'm not suggesting you shouldn't put point out how people could improve, but it's better to share observations and talk about how something could be made better than it is to focus on, you know, this is what you did wrong. Let's talk about how you could make this better, or, and, and really invite the employee into the discussion about performance improvement.

Yeah. Um, okay. So I think that this may be the critical question of all of this. I really do love these 8 keys, these 5 behaviors. And so we're going to make the assumption somebody listening to this podcast, it's a leadership podcast, and we look at leadership, as I shared with you, a lot of different ways. We'll look at it sometimes from the— I just did an episode earlier regarding sales and it was objection handling. So we talk about that at times. We talk about our own personal leadership at times. We talk about marketing efforts. We talk about bringing on a team, et cetera. Anyway, so we're looking at it from a lot of different angles. And so we're going to make the assumption people are listening to this are not a narcissist and they're not going to go through here and say, oh, support and understanding. I do that great. I'm a 10 of a 10. Dignity and respect. Yep. 10 out of 10. And they go through.

Yep.

I got all this licked. So somebody is looking at this and saying, yeah, okay. I really want to make sure that I am being clear. And they survey their team. They're humble. They say, OK, I want to get better in this area. They see an area that, man, I thought I was being clear, but I'm actually not being clear in my expectations. That happens a lot, by the way, I think. I thought I was recognizing my team or giving them recognition. Maybe I'm not so much, as much as I thought it was. Maybe I am playing favorites in ways that I didn't even realize that I was with being fair and just. And so they do this thing and they come at it from a really healthy perspective. Of, what do I do now? Like, you know, and so that's what— and so they hear this and they say, this is awesome, I want to get better. Jack, where would you recommend that people then start to improve?

Right, right. Well, uh, of course I have a point of view about this because of, you know, having conducted the research and, and written the book. I think the book contains a tremendous number of suggestions on how to, how to improve. But here's how I go about helping my clients with this. Uh, it, it follows sort of a natural individual development process. We actually conduct, uh, what's called an upward feedback survey where subordinates rate their managers on the extent to which they display these attributes. And we actually ask the manager to rate themselves so that we end up comparing how the manager self-rates to how the subordinates rate them. And I also have normative data from how employees have rated over 1,000 managers. So I can compare any given manager's results to what we typically see. Are they high? Are they medium-high? Are they medium-low? Or are they low on this, on this attribute? So first of all, what we're trying to do is create awareness. You know, how do I stand? And frankly, it doesn't— what matters most is not how you think you perform, but how others see you performing. Basically, that's what really matters, because that's what employees trigger off of in terms of their response to you. Then we actually conduct training programs. So then the manager can come to a training program They, they receive their report, and then we work through how do you improve in these areas that you've identified as the areas most important for you to improve on. We use a variety of different techniques to do that, but they end up at the end of the training program developing an action plan on what they're specifically going to do to improve it in the areas that they think they need to focus on. That action plan should be shared with their boss, who can help hold them accountable for implementing these actions. And what we recommend is 6 to 9 months later, let's resurvey, let's do a second assessment to see whether or not there's been any change in the manager's performance. Now, you, you, you know, you might ask, or one might ask, well, why is all of this important to do? Actually, what we've been able to demonstrate with our research is the strong relationship between the display of these attributes and important outcomes. If we were just to hit the pause button for a moment and think about, well, how would we in an organization identify who the best managers are? We might look at employee engagement survey scores of employees. We might look at the extent to which there's— the teams they manage are internally cohesive. There's the absence of problems within that team, or if there are problems, they get correctly— so we might look at interpersonal team chemistry, but most importantly, we're going to look at performance. Is the team performing the way you would expect the team to perform? Are they operating at a high level of performance? So what, what our research has demonstrated is that managers who display these 8 attributes actually outperform on all of those dimensions. Their employees have the highest employee engagement scores. They have the, the highest degree of interpersonal team chemistry and cohesion. And they have the highest degree of team performance as well. And they're really achieving about 90% of the potential, whereas the average manager is achieving about 70% of the potential, and the below-average manager is only achieving somewhere in the 30% potential range. So if, if I'm rated significantly low on the display of these attributes, I'm only accomplishing 30% of the potential in engagement, in team chemistry, and team performance. Whereas if I'm above average, I'm accomplishing almost all there is to accomplish. You're at 95% or higher, and you can't go higher than 100%. So that's really what you would call the validation of the model, because that shows you that managers who display these attributes at a higher level produce important outcomes for their subordinate employees and for the teams that they manage. And oh, by the way, not unimportantly, good managers are the ones who put themselves in line for bigger pay increases and greater opportunities themselves in terms of promotion and development.

I mean, it really is all-encompassing. I mean, I think about achieving potential. How many of us are there thinking about, you know, there's just more potential in our organization than what we're getting out of it. There's more there than what we're able to tap into. And this is the kind of the 8 Keys to unlock that, to say, no, let's actually get to 90%, 95% of potential. I mean, what would we be accomplishing if the people that we actually had in our organizations were achieving at 90%, 95% of their potential? That's unbelievable. I mean, to think about, even for me, I'm thinking about, man, we're not at 95%, not even close to that. I have to ask around this idea. It's almost a Charlie Munger's inversion, a little bit of this, and taking and saying, okay, well, If that's that, what's the kind of the opposite of this? And it's this concept that's been kind of floating around. I probably have heard it more in the last 6 months than I'd ever heard it before. I don't think I'd ever heard it until 6 months ago. And it's quiet quitting, right? You're hearing that quite a bit, is that people are not literally leaving and quitting their jobs, but they're, they're just like, I'm just going to give up, you know. And what are your thoughts around that?

Right. Well, I actually, I think it's a real phenomenon. I don't know, you know, as, as someone who studied these things over the course of decades, I'm not sure it's an entirely new phenomenon. I think there's always been some aspect or some degree of quiet quitting. It's, you know, another way to characterize that would be disengagement. I'm going to put in the minimal amount of work that I need to do in order not to be called out for my performance. But I'm not, you know, I'm not the engaged employee who's applying what we talked about earlier, that discretionary effort. I'm not the ex— I don't belong to the extra-miler club, you know. I'm not going the extra mile. I'm not putting forward that discretionary effort. I'm doing enough to stay out of trouble, but I'm not really exerting myself and accomplishing my full potential. And I think that is a true phenomenon. But what I think we've missed when we think about the national economy is that actually quiet quitting is also affecting the managerial class. It's affecting day-to-day managers. They're sort of the ones who have been overlooked in all of this. You know, when the pandemic came on, You know, that of course created an upheaval. Managers weren't necessarily— day-to-day managers weren't necessarily prepared for that. They might now be dealing with a remote workforce. They didn't expect to have to do that. They have to learn how to manage a remote workforce, or if they're essential workers, they're really managing against significant problems that they didn't have to face before in terms of safety protocols, staffing levels, and so forth. Now the pendulum seems to have swung the opposite direction. And they're dealing with a whole different set of difficulties now, attracting and retaining talent. And, you know, really, the concerns they have about just being able to meet the demands placed upon them. They've been sort of whipsawed, if you will, by these these effects that have had that kind of really negative impact on them. And so what we're seeing is that, that this disengagement is really beginning to affect in a serious way that those who occupy managerial positions.

Sure. You know, I was just thinking as you were sharing that I have a very real example with a friend of mine, and I won't say his name or the company he was working for, But for the past 3 months, when I think about all of these, and it's, it's a— he was working for a large healthcare company. Um, he wasn't getting any support. He wasn't being recognized. Um, the entire team he was on didn't feel like that they were had— that they were being, being treated with dignity and respect. He had no expectations whatsoever, with the exception of he had to accept this number of calls on a daily basis. There was no rewards, incentives in there for them, for him to do a good job, right? There was no financial incentives. There was nothing. Um, and, you know, at the end of the day, he quite quit for several months until then he finally quit, right?

Yeah.

And, um, I think to myself, he even said, look, I'm going to take a job paying me less because I could not stand the work environment. And then he was not specifically even talking about his boss. It wasn't an interpersonal thing about who that person was. It was just the way the entire structure was. And that's a very large organization. And so to me, as you were sharing that, it was just kind of an example of like, oh yeah, I mean, I totally see how everything that you are mentioning here was playing out in his career. So, Jack, this has been fantastic. I have learned a ton, and I don't say that all the time, but I have really learned a ton from this. This has been great. People want to connect with you, pick up the book, learn more about your work and how you might be able to support them, help them. Where would you point them to?

Right. Well, of course, the book is entitled The Employee-Centric Manager. Written by Jack Wiley, W-I-L-E-Y. They can also go to my website, www.employecentricity.com. It's a bit of a mouthful, but www.employecentricity.com. It's about employees. It's really about the employee-centric manager concept. So that, that's, that would be where they could learn quite a bit more about what, what we're doing and what we have available.

Awesome. Jack, this has been a great episode. I hope to have you back on in the future, and we'll have you back on to talk about some of your exits that you had along the way.

That'd be— I'd be delighted to do so. That'd be a lot of fun. I feel like we've just scratched the surface here, so I hope to talk to you again.

No question. Well, I do it every week, so what stands out to me? What are my key takeaways Well, I think this week it's going to be one, and it's going to be the 8 Keys, the 5 behaviors, the 1 skill, and the, the, the 2 values. So maybe that's actually 3, but it's all under his framework. And I, I just, I love things whenever they— not to try to fit in a box, but something where I'm able to remember them, because then if I can go through, okay, there's 8 Keys, 5 behaviors, 1 skill, 2 values, I can begin to remember what those are, and I can take clear steps. After we hit record, I was talking to Jack, and I really genuinely said, hey, you know, for me, and I know many other people, we really want to get better. We want to improve as a leader. And so I think about some of these things. I think I'm doing a pretty good job, but I'm not really sure. And so we're going to have him back on the podcast to be able to talk about not just not just about it from the perspective of the manager, but also about what is the most successful companies actually do. So from the company level, not just a managerial boss level, which was really the focus on today, what are the things we can do in actually structuring or architecting our businesses in a way that helps us to be able to attract the, the right kind of people, develop those people, and then be able to retain them so that we can actually have more of those performance. So what can we do on the business side? So I'm excited about that second follow-up conversation with Jack. I hope this served you. Make sure you check out his website. Go to employee-centricity— excuse me, make sure you go to his website, employeecentricity.com. employeecentricity.com. We'll make sure we put that in our email that we send out in our show notes. Thank you to our podcast partners and sponsors. We love working with them. Look, you know the importance just in this conversation around employee engagement. And one of the things I think that he mentions which ties to what Coach P does is the importance of skill development. I was giving the example with Courtney that's been with me obviously for quite a while, and she's really the the podcast assistant, um, but helping people to be able to develop in their role, in the acquisition of skills. And so I truly was thinking about, uh, Coach P and David Peterson and what he does. And so yeah, you may have some people that are wanting to move, you know, up in a role. They may be wanting to go from a service role to a sales role. They may be going to wanting to go to a sales manager role. They may even want to go on one day and own their own business. And that's through the acquisition of different skills. Well, what skills do they need? Um, and then how can we make sure we give them the skills? And sometimes even it was the access to training and development. Did you hear him say that? Well, that's what you can give your team for right now for $250 a month, which I can't believe David is charging that. $250 a month, twice a week on Tuesday mornings and Thursday mornings, you get a peek behind the scenes, but not just a peek. I mean. They're actually going to give you the things that they're doing that have success. And so it's kind of a different mindset between, you know, you should do this versus this is what we're doing now. It's working for us. I hope this serves you. And that's what you've heard me say that before. And so go to Coach Pete Consulting, let him know that you heard about him on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. He'll give you your entire first month off. Well, we want to have engaged workforce, but the reality is sometimes people are going to leave, uh, whether they quiet quit and they leave like my friend, uh, did, or, uh, maybe it's not the right fit for them, or maybe it's they're moving on to pursue another opportunity. And so whatever the reason is, maybe you've decided to move on from them. They're just not the right fit. You don't want to throw good money after bad. At this point, and you realize, you know what, we've done everything we can do. That happens from time to time. It's not going to be 100%. So you have to begin to make a change, but you've got a position to be able to kind of backfill. And so there's so many different hats you're wearing. For all of you, look, we know that the majority of you and who, who you serve, you typically doing, you know, certainly less $5 million in top-line revenue. A lot of you, you know, less than $2 million in top-line revenue and have have a small team, have a team of somewhere between 5 and 25 team members, let's say. And so every person that you put in play is a really critical piece to helping you to be able to grow your small business. And so with all the different hats that you've got to wear, wearing the hat of Chief Recruiting Officer, CRO— I just made that up— is one that you— it's easy to put on the back-burner. Back burner. It's kind of one of those, uh, what's the Eisenhower Matrix where it says, you know, it's, it's important, but it's not urgent. Well, sometimes recruiting can be urgent. Oh my goodness. I didn't expect that coming. We just had a departure. Somebody has left. Now we don't know what to do. That's a concern, right? And so you get you on your back foot and you start to kind of skip steps in your recruiting process. Well, what if there was a different way? What if there was a way for you to have somebody that's recruiting on your behalf on an ongoing basis, sourcing great candidates? Because you never know when the perfect A-player candidate is going to, you know, move to your area or is going to be looking. Maybe they're— they've decided that they're going to, you know, move in a different direction. And so, but if you don't have posting up there, if you're not actively sourcing for candidates, then that person's gonna leave. And I'll even share this with you. You may have even had it as far as having it all set up. You've got your system and you know, you need to go in there every single day and look at the new people that have applied, but you kind of forget. And so that's exactly where Autopilot Recruiting is able to step in. And they take that from you so that they're constantly sourcing people. Now, at the end of the day, you're making the decision. They're not going to make that decision for you, and you wouldn't want them to make that decision for you, but they're going to get to know your needs and what it is that you're trying to accomplish. Maybe you're deciding you're going to bring on somebody that's part-time or full-time or in sales or in service, or maybe a marketing manager. Maybe you're going to bring on— you're going to buy back your time and get you— get your first assistant, whatever that may be. Whatever that's going to look like for you, they're able to help you with that. So go to autopilotrecruiting.com and let them know that you also heard about them on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. You know, when you're shifting from being the operator of your business to becoming the owner of your business, one of the skills— just kind of stay on that topic for today— that you can acquire is the skills of financial management. And so for some of you, it may be a little intimidating that you just don't really know how to manage the finances in your business. And I get it, you know, I've shared openly my story, um, in a kind of a vulnerable way about not really knowing what I was doing when it comes to my financials. And I, by no means to say that I have it licked now, but you can begin to stack skills. And so one become— one plus one no longer equals two, it equals four, because you begin to stack skills on top of each other and becomes a multiplying effect? Well, you got to have really good data, got to have really good financials, and you doing the bookkeeping and categorizing transactions, it's just not a good use of your time. So that is where Club Capital was able to give that to you. Plus they benchmark you against several hundred other insurance agency owners that you can be able to see, well, what are other people doing? And a lot of times you're not able to share that. I mean, how often have you ever wondered, you know, what are the financials of so-and-so? I mean, they're telling me their sales production numbers, but I don't know their financial numbers. Well, without knowing the people, you get to know exactly kind of where you stand on all those areas— median and mean, and what are the averages, and what are the top performers doing, etc. So go to club.capital, finally book that no-obligation demo, and have a conversation with share them with— share with them what you're doing now, and they can share with you how they're able to help, help you and how they've been able to help several hundred other small business owners to be able to use their financials to make better decisions. Go to club.capital. You know, outside of your team, we talk about team quite a bit, but outside of your team, one of the biggest investments that you're going to make is in marketing and marketing spend and get return— getting a return on your ad spend. Look, there's a lot of different places where you can invest that 5 to 8 to 10% of your top line revenue. At the end of the day, you want to get a good return on your ad spend. You want to get a good return on your marketing effort. How much time are you actually having to put into it? Sure, it's easy to just kind of approve a few things and have maybe a billboard as an example. But how many leads is that going to bring you? And are you investing too much in branding versus direct response? And what is even the difference between direct branding and direct response? And what's the right level as to where you are? If I'm my first couple years of business, where, where should I be versus I'm at year 10, 20, uh, or even 25, 30 years into the business, what should that be? Well, those kind of the decisions that Club Capital can help you to be able to see, but also specifically for you getting a good return on your ad spend. You want to work with someone that knows your business, knows your industry, and has been able to help others. Go to directclicksinc.com. Everyone, love this conversation with Jack. Really looking forward to chatting with him again in the future. Appreciate all of you. Till next episode, lead well.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.