Leverage HR to Scale Your Team with Dave Ulrich

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Scale It Method where we teach you how to reach the next level in your business. Build your dream team and scale beyond eight figures. Too many business owners are stuck trying to do everything themselves and their businesses are suffering as a result. And I don't want you to be one of those people. I am Alison Maslin and my company, Pinnacle Global Network has helped thousands of business owners scale their companies using our framework, the Scale Up Method. All business owners face similar challenges when it comes to growth. So on this podcast, we're delivering the tactics you need to finally reach that next level in business. Build your dream team and scale beyond eight figures. And today I'm so excited. I have Dave Ulrich on the show, the father of modern hr. And we're going to learn what all of that means. He's an author, speaker, professor and management coach and and thought leader in HR. And Dave Co founded the RBL group in 2000 and has served as a Rensys Leakert professional at University of Michigan Ross School of Business since July of 1982. He was named the number one management guru by BusinessWeek and most influential global HR leader of 2021, sponsored by People first and HRD Forum. I wanted to bring Dave on the show because having a solid HR department is critical for any growing business. So many companies are using outdated HR practices that are actually hurting your ability to scale. And Dave is going to teach us how to refine our HR departments to help us succeed and not hold us back. So, Dave, welcome to the Scale It Method podcast.

Alison, what a delight to join you. Thank you. What a privilege to be with you. Thank you.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, you have so much wisdom over the years. And you and I were talking about this before we actually started the show and, you know, we're building our HR department. We have about 50 employees, and it has been a game changer for us. I'm excited to learn from you. And so, you know, walk me through a little bit about how your career unfolded and how you found your niche in HR specifically.

I mean, everybody has their own story and we love to share them. I got to hear some of your story and the 10 companies you founded and all the incredible success you and your partner have had. I was on my way to law school decades ago. You shared that I'm old because I've been in Michigan for a long time and I took a course in OB and I got infatuated. The professor said, write a paper about the organization that affects your life, where you work, where you worship where you live, where you play, where your hobby and start writing papers about how organizations operate. I got captivated. I wrote a 10 page paper for one a week for 14 weeks. And at the end he came in, he said, the professor said, what are you going to do? And I said, I'm going to go to law school. He said, don't you dare. We don't need attorneys. We need people who think about organizations. So I called my parents and I'll keep this short, and I said, mom and dad, I'm not going to go to Laska. I'm going to study ob. And they were thrilled. They thought I was going to be an obstetrician. And I said, no, it's not obstetrician. It's organizational behavior. And they said, what's that? And I said, I don't know, but I love to look at organizations. My wife, who's a very good psychologist, said, I have ocd. Even today, OCD is not obsessive compulsive behavior. It's. It's organization compulsive behavior. When I see an organization that's inefficient, I try to fix it. I just went shopping in the grocery store where I shop and I saw three inefficiencies. And I was about to ask the cashier, is your manager in? I could help improve your efficiency a little bit. I was with my 93 year old mother and she looked at me and she said, dave, avoid the temptation. Do not become OCD in this setting. So that's what I love. Allison. I look at organizations for decades. What can you do to make an organization work? They change our lives. They change where we live, what we work, what we wear, how we eat, how we go to restaurants. Organizations are one of the most pervasive forces, for good or bad. And so your entrepreneurs. How do I create an organization that's more than me? Because ultimately the entrepreneur goes away. Leaders matter, but building the next generation of leadership matters even more. And that's the kind of stuff I love to study.

Well, it's so fascinating and I can't wait to dive into this. I just have to say, one of the things that my husband and I love to do is like, we're walking by shops and we look into a store and we're like, you know, if they just change the racks over here and they move the, you know, the desk where people pay over here, it would really drive you.

Welcome, welcome.

So I.

Welcome to the OC you have, you're part of the OCD club with Me. And by the way, we're not good dinner dates, we're not good social people because we're always constantly trying to change the system. But welcome to the OCD club.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I think I'm a founding member, too. So, anyway, so your expertise and change in hr, Dave, is really needed now more than ever. So many changes that are happening in the workforce. We're all feeling it. New demands on the employee side since the pandemic, frustrations on the business owner side. Difficulty finding people. What's your take on why we are dealing with this? Right.

Well, if I could answer that, I'd write another book and be famous. But, you know, I think the world is changing. We know it's changing. I don't know if you have children. Let me give an example. Do you have children by chance? How old are they? I don't want their names, just age.

I have one daughter. I have one daughter. She's 34.

Do you know where she's going to live in five years? Do you know what she's going to study? Do you know what her children or family situation might be? And I ask those questions advisedly because the world we live in is just uncertain. And I put it at a very personal level with family. We have three children in the same age range. We don't know where they're going to live. We don't know what they're going to study. We don't know their lifestyle, their life choices. So I say that's the world we live in. And it's confusing. How do you live in uncertainty? So let me ask you now a more pertinent question. What do you know about your. And this is getting so personal. You can tell me to go away, but what do you know about your daughter and your relationship with her? No matter what's going to happen.

What I know about her is that, you know, she'll definitely land on her feet whatever she does, because she's just a mover and a shaker. But the other thing I will say is she's a bit of a gypsy. She doesn't like to live in the same place for that long. She likes to move.

So wherever she goes, whatever she does may ask a very pointed question. Do you know that you'll love her?

Oh, my gosh.

By the way, I hope everybody. I hope everybody just felt the emotion shift. That's the certainty in a world of uncertainty. We have three kids. I don't know where they're gonna live. I don't know what they're gonna do. I don't know if they're gonna be gypsies or business people or health. I don't know anything about their lifestyle. And by the way, I feel that in me. I am certain about my affection for my children. By the way, when they were teenagers, they tested us. Maybe your daughter didn't test you, but we all get tested. Now why do I say that? You're a business leader. What do you know for sure? You know that the people you bring into your company will make or break your future. And if you as a leader can help bring in the right people, the right men, the right women, the right team, the right organization, your customers are going to have a better experience. Now how you do that may vary. It may be full time, it may be part time, it may be family, it may be non family, it may be a different set of skills. But if you know for sure that your future organization, your scalability in your line seven to eight figures is going to be dependent on the people you bring in, by the way, that's something we know that organizations scale for the future. Not by just a founder having enormous personal energy, but by the founder building the next generation. That's what we know. And then we get in. How do you do that? How do you make it happen? That may vary, but I bet there's no question you love your daughter. I love my children and we'll do things for them. That's what we've got to feel about our company. We know that our people count.

I love that. I love that. And I definitely love our team too. And I truly mean that. And I wake up in the morning feeling, thinking about that, how much I appreciate them and feel so blessed. It's really the, it's, we call it building a team managed company. And I do think we talked about this before we started. A lot of the CEOs are in the weeds of their business. You know, they're so afraid to let go. But really it is about empowering the team to take it and run with it.

You know, I'm going to correct one of the things you started with. And I don't mean to be correcting, but I do. I mean, if I don't challenge an idea, you said we've got to have a great HR department. My experience is until a startup organization has 50 to 60 to 70 people, the founder is the head of HR because you are the people, you are the one people look at and, and you can, I mean there's a whole lot of HR issues that have to be managed, pay, hiring, training. But ultimately, HR is about the relationship between the employees and my company. And I model that relationship. I'll give an example. I teach at the University of Michigan and have for a long time. When I was teaching MBA students, I had a favorite final exam question. Here it is. Who has primary accountability and responsibility for the HR issues around people and organization and culture in a company? That's primary accountability. A line manager. Two, head of hr. Three. It's shared. D, the consultant, which I thought was a great answer. If you're going to go into consulting, E, I don't care. I'm going into finance. So that was my question and almost everybody answered. Three, who's got real accountability and responsibility? I marked it wrong. I believe the ultimate accountability for our people is with the business leader, the line manager, number one. I'll give an example of that. I took off for three years, a number of years ago to run a mission for a Christian church. I had 200 people report to me one month, every day. I had wear coat and I buttoned my coat, by the way. It got tight some months because I. My coat shrank in the closet. But at the end of the month, everybody button their coat. I never said a word. Then the next month, I left my coat unbuttoned. I never said a word. And they all had button their coat. And the next month I buttoned for a day and unbuttoned for a day. And people would come up and say, president, my title. I got a really serious question. Should I button my coat or unbutton my coat? And I said, you fool, don't look at your leader for that. But people do what their leaders do. And I can tell, Allison, just from our brief interaction, your employees feel your passion and you can bring in HR people. No question. There's a time. But ultimately we you the listeners of this, you're the leaders. You model, you live, you reflect the world that lives. I'll give one other example that's more businessy. There's a CEO many people have heard of named Jack Welch. He's passed away, which is tragic. One of the great CEOs. Many have heard of him at General Electric. I was doing work with him many, many years ago, and he said, dave, I demand that my employees practice participative management. And I said, say that again. You're a smart person. I demand that they practice participative management. I said, you can't do that. That's hypocrisy. Total hypocrisy. You've got a model, participative management. You can't demand it. That's the message I hope for your entrepreneur leaders is that as they try to scale, they model what they hope others do. They use their power to empower others. And I'm babbling. I'll give one other thought and then I'll shut up. And I'm talking too much. I have ocd. I get excited about these ideas lately. And I love research, I love data.

And by the way, those of you listening, he's written 30 books, so if that isn't a sign of his, you know, obsession, OCD anyway.

But, but my ultimate test of a leader, when someone walks away from an interaction with you. I interact with my employees, I interact with my customers. I interact with a whole bunch of people. Will they feel better or worse about themselves? What a simple test. Leadership is not about your skills and your vision. Did that person walk away feeling better and have I made them feel better? That's easy to do and it's great news. Hypothetically, I've got an employee two weeks after they work here. They have to be let go. That's a hypothetical. Can I do that and still try to help that employee feel okay about him or herself? That's my test of using your power to empower others.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Wow. That's just in thinking that way, you know, the interactions that we have for our team, thinking, how can I make this. Whether it's a net positive or negative situation, how can we help them leave feeling better about themselves or the experience? Just, just that thought alone is so powerful. So let me ask you, what were the reasons that you realized we needed to change the way we view and, and utilize hr? I think just for those of listening, I want them to really understand how you see HR and, and what's the.

The mic is cutting in and out. I hope that's not on my end. But you know, a lot of people when they, when they look at, quote, hr, they see the policy police. They set policies, they hold us back, they look at what's wrong, they manage risk. I look at HR very different. I look at HR as three things. Do we have the right talent? By the way, if people are watching this, I, I do this visually because it makes me look stupid, but it's memorable. My fingers represent talent. That's the people. My fist represents the organization or team. You've got to have great people and they've got to work right as a team. The combination, the hand over the fist represents leaders. Leaders bring people and teams together. For me, human capability or HR is managing your people, your organization or your team and your leadership in a way that creates value for others. So we want people who our customers will get value from. We want a team or a culture that is reflecting what we promise our customers. We want leaders, those who follow you as an entrepreneur, to have the knowledge and skills customers would want. And so for me, HR is not about all the policies. In fact, I'm not very good at all the policies and the blueprints and all the administrative stuff that's got to be done. But the real differentiator is do we have the right people, do we have the right team or culture? And do we have the right leadership?

Yeah, exactly. Those together, right. And you know, having really empowering people to step into their own leadership, I feel like that's something that I really enjoy. And I, I do feel like as a leader, it's my responsibility to do that. So, Dave, you are known as the father of modern hr. And so explain to us how does modern HR differentiate from traditional hr?

The management of people is not new. In fact, Peter Drucker, the godfather of management, once said, the greatest management in the history of the earth is the pyramids. Because you move people together to build this. Personnel grew with terms and conditions of work. Who do we hire? How do we pay? How do we do industrial relations in union? And then we started looking at systems of hr, hiring, training, compensation. Now what we're looking at is less that that work's got to be done. If I'm an entrepreneur, I've got to hire people, go get technology, go contract with one of the great providers. What HR today is about is what I call human capability. Do we have the right talent? My fingers or your fingers? Right team. That's the organization, my fist. Do we have the right leadership to better serve our customers? And that's the. Modern HR is using the human capabilities of talent, organization, leadership to drive customer value. When that happens, HR is part of the scalability that every entrepreneur wants to make happen.

Yeah, I love that. So it's, it's not just all of the systems and processes. It really is so much about the people.

Absolutely. You know, we, we make jokes about hr. It's the policy police. And that's not, I mean, yes, that's got to be done. But the real issue is how do we manage our talent so that our people are not our most important asset? There are customers. Most important asset. Are the 50 people you have working for you? The most important asset that your customer sees in your company fascinating criteria. And again, I encourage you to think about that. I asked that in one company, if your customers could hire the 10 of you to run this organization, it was a large company, what would they say? And one of the people raised his hand. He said, but they don't know who we are. And I said that's a problem. They should know who you are and they should be delighted you're doing that because they're buying your product and service and they're buying their trust in who you are as a leader.

Yeah, powerful, powerful. Now one of the pillars of the scale up method is alignment of the team, which HR plays a huge role in. And so we talk about it a lot on this show is team. And so how can having a strong HR department, whether it's internally or externally, that is like a fractional HR department, how can that improve company morale, attract better candidates?

Yeah, the research we've done, and I've not gotten into research that I don't want to bore people, but we actually have enormous data sets. If I hold up my fingers, that's the people I hold up my fists, that's the team which has the most impact on business results. Team talent or team and its team? By a statistic of 4 to 1, you fight a war with people, you win the war with the organization or the team. And so, and, and, and by the way, there's some evidence of that. I'll just give one simple, simple example that people can quickly relate to. Michael Jordan was probably, and everybody knows who he was, probably the best basketball player in history. He was the leading scorer in the league nine times. Nine times. And he won six championships. So three times he was the leading scorer, the best person, the best finger, the best individual talent. And he scored 36 points a game and he didn't win the championship. The six times he won the championship, he scored 29 points a game. His personal scoring dropped 20%, but the team won. I love that metaphor. Our job as leaders is to surround ourselves with people better than us, with incredible teammates who come together and give insights. In fact, one of my tests of a weak leader is I look at the leader and I say, who have you brought in lately? Are they better or worse than you? Good leaders bring in people who are better than them. I'm not sure you'll admit it, but Alison, I bet you have on your team some people you're so proud. They are so much better than me. And some things that I don't do well, that's the sign of A great leader because you surround yourself with people better than you in some places.

Yeah, no, I say that all the time. They really do not need me to run this company now, obviously my role, holding the vision for everybody and so forth and all that passion. But you know, the people on our team, they are, they're incredible leaders. They're super, super smart and I love that because I'm so impressed by them, I'm so proud of them. And it takes a lot of pressure off of me to have to know all this stuff. So.

So, yeah, so let me go the next level deeper. So I'm an entrepreneur, I'm trying to build a good team. I get it. This makes sense, it's all logical. What makes a good team? Again, where I sit as a professor, as I edit journals, I read books, write books, there's four things and I love simplicity. Four things to pay attention to on your team that will allow you to say, I've got a great team. Number one, do we have a clear purpose? Does everyone on my team, what you just said, Alison Trigger. I set a vision, I have a purpose. We have a shared agenda. Here's why we exist. Number two, do we have good governance? How we make decisions, how we include people, how we manage our decision making and processes, how often we meet, how we manage meetings, all the governance stuff. Number three, how well do we get along with each other? Part of getting along is we like each other and part of getting along as we manage differences. I've been in a relationship and married for a long time, over 45 years. You know what, there's times when we disagree and managing those disagreements in a team is critical. Purpose, governance, relationships. And the fourth, are we learning and improving? If I'm a CEO, just in your mind, think about, is my purpose clear with my team and ask everybody, what are we trying to accomplish? Do we have a common answer? Governance. How do we make decisions? How do we get things done? Relationships, do we care and do we manage conflict? Conflict, by the way, is also critical. Diversity. And what are we getting better at when we make a mistake? Are we learning from it? So those four things might be helpful to some of the listeners that you've got as they try to scale.

Super, super helpful. I think I'm going to go back and listen to this interview because that was really powerful. So talking about hr, you know, are there outdated practices that, you know, businesses are still using that they should let go of? And how does, how do, using these old practices hinder the alignment of their team and their growth?

You know, the, the, the outdated practice is to do what we've done before. Let's hire people that we've always hired. Let's pay people the way we paid them. Let's train people the way we trained them. I would encourage those listening to say, when I hire, train, or pay people, don't look at what I've done. Look at what I want to promise my customer. If you're going to scale and go from seven to eight digits, that means revenue. That means there's got to be more customers who are willing to buy your product or service. Why? What is it I will give that customer? Is it price? Is it innovation? Is it relationship? Is it product features? What do I then need to do inside? Guess what that might mean? I need to hire people with different skills because I'm going to try to sell a different product. I may do to incent people to move quicker because speed is an issue the customer wants. I may need to do something else inside. So I think the easiest way to overcome outdated practices is not be locked into them. My rule of thumb. And then you'll create. I'd love to know yours. You've created 10 businesses. I'm a teacher. I do presentations. I do PowerPoint slides. Every year I want to do a test. Do I have about 20%, 15 to 25% new slides every year? And you say, well, that's not very much. Well, it is a lot. Because year after year after year, I've got to let go of some of my favorite stories. I've got to begin to create new, to adapt to the changing customer. And I'd encourage entrepreneurs. What got you here won't get you there. That's a great line from Marshall Goldsmith that coaching is not about what you've done and mentoring is not about where you've been. It's about where you want to go. And how am I going to put in place the systems to scale. And again, the key is to read your books and use your services. But scaling is not to do what you've done in the past. That will get you to where you've got is to begin to anticipate that future.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, really, in any area of your life or your business, you want to let go of what you've done before because you should be evolving and growing all of the time.

So.

So especially in the marketplace now that is moving so fast, you have to be willing to innovate and to not get. I don't know. Lazy is not necessarily the word that Might be true, dramatic, but you know, it's worked. This is what we've done in the past. But I really find, Dave, that this is where the business owners hit a ceiling and they don't grow because they keep going to that fallback of this is how we've resolved the situation. This is how we communicate, this is how we hire and so forth. But you really have to reinvent your business from that higher level.

And the tip I would give to the business owners is reinvent not by looking back, but by looking forward. Who are my customers of the future? If I'm going to scale from seven to eight digits, that's new customers. Who are they going to be? Are they going to. For example, they may be in Africa, they may be global. Well, how am I going to respond to those customers? They may be customers who want more technology or digital as part of the service. How am I going to respond to them? And then what do I need inside to begin to make that happen outside? Again, I'll do a simple example. McDonald's. And again, big company has obviously scaled well. They used to say we want our employees to communicate customer satisfaction. We used to say, did you smile at a customer? And then they said, that's not the metric. Here's the metric. Did the customer smile back? So as an entrepreneur, the goal is not what you do, it's what the customer does in return. Am I doing things that will cause the customer to have a better experience with my customer, with my company? And think about those next generation customers because they're the ones that are going to allow you to scale.

Yes.

Anyway, that's the. By the way, that sounds so easy. I'm guilty of that. We're all guilty of that. I love to wear my old clothes on the weekend because they're so comfortable and they're so nice. But sometimes I've got to try something new and keep. And keep fresh.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we know it, but it's still right. We have to be conscious of what we're doing and because those are things that will definitely keep us in the past. How involved.

So I'm going to ask you a question. I knew I'd do this. I didn't know when. This is, for me, the highlight of these interviews. You've written the books, you've done 10 companies. What's on your mind? And this is a tough question. It's not scripted. What's on your mind for the next book, the next piece to say, you know, there's something, Dave, it's just and it's not fully formed yet, by the way. If it's fully formed, you got a checklist item, then you'll put it in a book. But what is it that's just nudging you on your mind that says, you know, this is something I'm sensing that I hope I can explore more. And I'm going to Talk for another 20 seconds while you think about it. For me, it's, there's so many things I could do in this world. Where do I focus limited energy and I don't have a great answer. How do I avoid the burnout that we all face? But what is it you're sensing that will help your listener scale, that you'll continue to help them?

Well, I actually have two books and one of them is getting close to done for so my book number three. And the so the book Scale or Fail is all about the journey of breaking through to that, that next level, that seven, eight, nine figures. And I talk about the scale it method, our system of these five pillars that business must have to shore up to get to their next level of scaling. And in this next book is actually called the scale it method where we really go deep into the processes that the businesses can put in place to scale. So that's already.

Let me tell you what, Go ahead. Got it. No, keep going. I'm learning from this. This is so helpful.

Yeah, so that's already coming together. But the interesting thing in the process, because you know when you write a book, all the it's things ideas start to take shape and formulate even more so as I'm as this has taken longer than I intended. I realize the wisdom of the universe because if I had finished this sooner, I wouldn't have had the idea of this, this and this that I'm going to be adding to the book. And that actually happened at the end of Scale or Fail was my five phases of scaling. And that is actually we had to almost fit it into the addendum. I had to beg the publisher to get it in. And it's the thing that I have led with the most with the book. But then what I'm also very excited about is going to be book number four. And that's about. I don't have a title yet, but I think it's going to be called Intention and the Power of Intention. Because I do really believe with all the strategies and all the things we do, that is my golden egg. Is that the intention, you know, of where it is that you're going and what it is that you're creating. I think that's the most important thing as a CEO.

Let me tell you what I'm hearing that I really like. There's a lot of ideas out there. I mean, you have cast, we have books, there's thousands of ideas, TED talks. How do we turn what we know into what we do? How do we really do it? So you've got the scalability, you've got the five pillars. Now what I love about your work is you're saying, if you're going to turn what you know you should do, and you can learn it from me and others. Create clear intention. Know what you want. Be very clear about your aspiration. Thank you. That confirms one of the things I gave a graduation talk. And it's really hard to do a graduation talk because I don't have a rags to riches story. My parents were normal. They were wonderful. You know, this isn't Oprah Winfrey, it isn't Steve Jobs, it's me. But I coach business leaders. And every time I coach, I start with a question. What do you want? What's your intent? What's your aspiration? Because if you don't know what you want and have passion about it, somebody will define it for you. And that's how to turn what you know into what you want. You can learn the five skill principles, but until I'm intentional about using them, they're probably not going to have impact. So I've just learned something. Thank you.

Yeah, I love that. I love your inquisitive nature. That's so awesome. And so, you know, some of the listeners are on here. They're like, where do I even start, Alison? I mean, I really see that we need an HR department or we need at least somebody on the team with HR to help. It's getting, you know, I don't even have the time to interview. We need more people. What are the first steps to starting on this journey of building that HR team again?

I think as a CEO, you've built a company, you've done hr, you've hired people, you've set goals, you paid people. Now you want to bring in some people who will help you scale that so that you don't spend your time as CEO doing the administrative work. So my counsel is to talk to your friends, talk to your peers, talk to the people in Allison's network. How have you found a way to take off your plate? The transaction part of hr, the payroll, the day to day stuff, so that you as a CEO can focus on the more strategic Part are my people, my team, my organization, creating value for my customers. My best advice is ask your friends, who have you worked with? Who's done some of that work? It could be a technology company. And again, I get tempted to start naming companies and that would be inappropriate. Find some company that you have a relationship with and are comfortable with to get rid of. And it's not getting rid of it in a bad way. It's putting it off your plate so that you, the senior executive, can continue to do the creation work not only with strategy and financial, but with human capital and people.

Yeah, that's a great answer. And you know, that's exactly one of the things with Pinnacle Global Network. We're a mastermind, mentoring and a community and being around other business owners. And just to ask, what have you done? What has worked, what hasn't worked? So I think that's super, super important. Now, speaking of mentoring, you work with business owners as well. And so how can people connect with you, Dave, if they want to learn more about you?

You know the best way. I've written a lot of books and I like to write and I decided two years ago and you just alluded to it, Alison, I don't know your experience. It takes me about a year to get a book written, then it takes about a year to get it published and then it takes a year to get distributed. And I think the world I'm in is so fast that my books can't be two years old. So I've started posting on LinkedIn every Tuesday. Every Tuesday I post an article on LinkedIn. Sometimes it's 150 words, sometimes it's 1500 every other week or 1200. Go to LinkedIn and put in comments or contact me through email or other vehicles. My email is d o u. My initials d o umich.edu. but just look me up on LinkedIn and make a comment. I. I have found LinkedIn, especially when we're not traveling, I like to have a. I had a really cool experience last week. I posted something on LinkedIn on technology and I got into a debate with somebody through the comments and then I thought, I wonder who this is, because I don't care about the person, I care about the ideas. And it was some graduate student in Pakistan. But he gave me a really cool idea and I thought that's the beauty of democracy on the Internet. You're not looking at title, you're looking at idea that will help you. And so connect with me on LinkedIn. If my ideas are helpful, that's good. If not, call Allison.

Oh, my goodness. Well, that is. I can't wait to dive in. And all of the wisdom that you're sharing consistently over the years, it really is so impressive. Is there anything else, Dave, that you want to share with our listeners today before we wrap up that we haven't covered?

I'm going to go back. I love. And it changes every three to four months. But I love right now the mantra. How often do people leave an interaction with you as a leader feeling better or worse about themselves? I just that little script in my head last night we were in an engagement and it wasn't going very well. And I was just about to say some things and I thought, Dave, your job is to say something so this person feels better about themselves. That doesn't mean you don't give harsh feedback. I'll give a quick example and I'll end with this big company. So it's not small. An employee made a huge mistake. Huge mistake. Literally cost the company millions of dollars. The company was very aggressive, did a lot in email because it was a global company. I'm coaching them. And the person said, here's the email I'm going to send. And I said, you can't send it till I talk to you. You made a huge mistake. It's going to cost us millions of dollars. If you don't get better, you're going to be fired. And I said, I'm going to change it with three things. Number one, I care about you. Number two, you have great potential at this company. Number three, you made a huge mistake. It's going to cost us millions of dollars. Do not walk away from that. They made a mistake. But then number third thing, let's learn from it so that you can get better. Notice the thing I like is you made a mistake. You've got to improve. We're not going to hide from that. And if leaders, if you don't, if you don't run into the mistake, you're not leading. But that employee sent a note back to the leader I was coaching and said, I'll try. I'll work at it. Suddenly you've changed the dialogue. It's not, you're in trouble. And if you fail again, you're fired. It's I care you have potential. You did make a mistake. Let's learn. Okay? That's the message. I hope the leaders who listen to you can help their employees feel better about themselves.

Well, I think they're going to listen more with that type of energy because they feel safe and they're gonna want to contribute more. Right. So I love that. So thank you, Dave, for being on the show today. This has really been so enlightening. Like I said, I'm gonna go back and listen to it again. I couldn't really take notes while I'm interviewing you, but so many great gems that were dropped.

So thank you, Alison. What a privilege.

Yeah. And thanks for all of you for listening to another episode of the Scale It Method. And a quick remind our free masterclass. If you want to build a scalable company that can thrive without you and you're ready to get the support you need, sign up for my masterclass today. And during that time during the class, I'm going to teach you the five critical phases you must know in order to scale to eight figures and beyond. All you got to do is go to scalemasterclass.com podcast to secure your seat, and I will see see you there. All right. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Dave. See you on the next episode.