GA 576 | Authentic Leadership with Tony Hayes

When they know that you have this level of authenticity and genuineness about yourself that says we're all going to make mistakes together, we're all going to learn together, and we're all going to exceed together. Right? We're all going to get these, you know, achieve these high level goals that we have for ourselves.

Today. I am very excited to welcome Tony Hayes to the show. Now, Tony has a really strong, deep, continuous improvement background. You'll hear all about that here at the beginning. And what we talked about today was just sort of some deep underlying principles that are so, so critical to the things that we're trying to accomplish within continuous improvement. In particular, really more of the behavioral sides of things. We don't really get any tools or anything like that. Instead, we spend a lot of time talking about humility, respect for people, authentic leadership, and just really kind of diving into that. And you know, I always go into these interviews, a whole series of questions that I, that I plan to ask. And this is one of those episodes to where as we got going, man, it was like things just kept coming into my mind. And my favorite question was actually the last one that I asked them right at the end of the interview. So you'll need to listen to the end to hear that one. So just, Tony's just full of wisdom and, and I really, really enjoyed this.

One and I think you will too.

So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 576 again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode five. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Tony, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going really well. Thanks, Ron. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

We were, we were chatting a little bit before we hit record it. We're, we're, we're actually recording this. You know, just kind of date it a little bit on March 24, 2025. And there's some thing going on right about now that you, Tony, who with a Michigan State basketball thing right over your shoulder, I could see on the video here might be a little excited. So what's that all about?

Look, I'm always excited during attorney time. Proud Michigan State alum. I look forward to the tourney and we're advancing to the sweet 16. So you can't, you can't beat that.

Hey, who knows? By the time people listen to this, it'll be over. So they'll, they'll, they'll know who won it.

So maybe I'm hoping we can Be in that national championship discussion. That would be awesome.

Love it. Love it. All right, well, good stuff, man. All right, well, hey, Tony, you. You know how we like to begin? We like to start off with a guest showing a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, you know, look, my favorite quote is by Taiichi Ono. And that quote goes, you know, where there is no standard, there can be no improvement. And, you know, a very simple statement, but says a lot. You know, I think people, you know, when they think about improvement, continuous improvement and the idea behind that, it's hard to do that if you don't have a baseline, if you don't have a foundation or a standard. So I always have enjoyed that and kind of embody that when I think about continuous improvement in Kaizen.

Yeah. Love it. Awesome. All right, well, hey, Tony, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, how you first got into all this continuous improvement stuff and then what you're up to these days.

Yeah, what I'm up to these days, I'm the global operations director. I work for itw. It stands for Illinois Tool Works. It's in the Chicagoland area, based out in Glenview. So I get the opportunity to, you know, manage some awesome folks. Have a great team there and just joined, so it's very recent, just joined in June of last year. And ITW is made up of, you know, a conglomerate of different businesses. The business that I'm associated with is the construction segment and more specifically residential renovation. We manufacture fasteners and tools for the construction industry. Largest customers are Home Depot, Lowes and Menards. Probably some familiar names to some.

Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah, sure. And you know, really, when I think about, you know, how did I get started very early on, probably like most of us started out in engineering, kind of in a process improvement type of role. That kind of morphed into, you know, more of a kind of a lean, focused elimination of waste. But most of my roles have always, you know, been kind of characterized by this continuous improvement mindset. So I've had operations roles, I've had business transformation roles, operational excellence. You know, been associated with ge, Alcoa and a few others over my time. Most of my career was in the automotive industry. Okay. With Ford Motor Company. And so that's kind of what I've been up to lately.

Nice. Awesome. All right, well, the theme of the day for this episode is going to be authentic leadership. In particular, we're going to spend some time talking about aspects of leadership, namely humility and respect for people. But before we get to humility and respect for people, I want to just start with the phrase authentic leadership, because, you know, it's, you know, if we're not careful, it could be like a. A buzzword or the title of some leadership book probably is, you know, and. But I'm wondering, like, for you, Tony, like, what does it mean? What does authentic leadership mean? And why is that important?

Yeah, yeah, I know. I agree, Ron. I think, you know, authenticity, you know, if you just think about the word, it's. It's being genuine, right? Being real in your interactions with the teams that you have and the people that you interact with, right? So they can see this, you know, genuineness of who you are, this. This vulnerability, right? I've always characterized, you know, this. This idea of authentic with vulnerableness. Being vulnerable to make mistakes, you know, not feeling like you. You know, you have to have all the answers. And when you're authentic with your teams, they can see that, right? They can see that you're passionate, but they can also see that you're a real person. Right? That you're human and you will make mistakes. And so showing that authenticity to me has always been very important. I think you can get the best out of your teams if they know that you're a real person. You make mistakes, and so. So that allows them, okay, the freedom, if you will, to make mistakes and learn from them. Right? You don't want your teams making, you know, multiple mistakes and surely not the same mistakes.

Right?

But you do want them to learn from them and make decisions with. With the facts and with the data, you know, as we. As we would like, but showing them as a leader that you also can make mistakes and have made mistakes, and probably we will continue to make mistakes. I think it's important for people to see and it shows them that you're, you know, authentic and real and genuine in your interactions.

You mentioned in the beginning they're kind of the importance of sometimes even being vulnerable or being okay with sort of like uncertainty, sort of paraphrasing what you said there a little bit, but talk a little bit more about that, like, because that's tough, you know, like, for a leader. I know you said you're new to. To your organization or newer to the organization. So it's kind of like, well, you know, you got a lot of experience and seen all this stuff and hiring you to come in and lead the charge here, and then you're like, I don't know, you know, like that. That a really difficult thing. The higher you are Especially because, hey, you pay the big bucks to know. Right. So how do you balance that, like, as a leader when there are times where you just don't know?

Yeah, look, that's a great question. You know, I remember, you know, upon joining ITW's organization, not only is it a new organization, you know, I'm kind of going deep back in my roots from an operational perspective and drawing on some of those experiences as well. And it's. It can be uneasy to not know the exact answer to a question that you may be asked, especially because you're new. I've had to balance that. It has been a challenge. But, you know, for me, being able to kind of rely on that humility type of approach and mindset has helped me to ask questions, rely on my teams. Right. Because in some cases, you know, the folks on my team have been at ITW for, you know, 10 or even 15 years. In some cases, I rely on them and their knowledge and helping me navigate the organization. But then I can also draw on earlier experiences. Right. It's not like this is the first time I've ever done this. I've been doing this close to 30 years. So I can draw on that vast base and foundation of experience. I can rely on them to give me some of that, you know, what I would call organizational system type knowledge that I may need to help me do what we need to do. But it is a balance. It is a challenge because we, look, we all grow up as leaders and we get to a certain level. Well, how do you get to that level? Right. You get to that level by having the answers and doing the things you're supposed to do and being good at what you do. Sometimes it's hard to relinquish some of that. I'm kind of in this position now where I don't have all the answers. What do I do? Right. And then that's when you kind of rely back on that humility and that vulnerableness to be able to rely on your teams.

Yeah. And then on the flip side, you know, you could roll in and Mr. Big Shot and, you know, I've got all this experience, this and that, and like, act like you know it all, even though you clearly don't. Like, that's more annoying, probably, for an organization. Right. When a leader comes in acting like that.

Right. Absolutely. No, that's detrimental. Right. That's the opposite of authenticity. That's the opposite of, you know, having a humble and respect for people type of approach. Yeah. You know, and, you know, when you come into an organization, I think you want to be as effective as you can be. You want to solve problems and do all the things that are necessary in the role that you have. But you don't want people to get the impression, right. That you're coming in, even though you may have the experience that you're coming. You're just going to solve all the problems because that, that's. It's harder to get the work done that way. For sure.

Yeah. Now for sure. For sure. All right, let's. I'm going to dig in more on, on humility because I mean, obviously within the lean world, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about it, but sometimes is my opinion, we say words so many times, you know, like respect for people or whatever, you know, like we see it on all of our posters on the wall. Right. Like, like in humility is another one. Like we say it so much that I quite sure we all deeply, deeply in our heart, like, understand what it means and, and, and how we are supposed to sort of respect it. So, like, can you talk just a little bit more about your thoughts on humility as it pertains to leadership?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think early on in my career, and I'll probably date myself, there's early 90s, maybe first frontline supervisor role. You know, that role was very foundational, very pivotal to the, the leadership piece and what you really have to do in a situation where you might be a little bit uncomfortable, you might be a little bit uncertain, there's a little bit of ambiguity and coming into a new role, especially as a young leader and helping the team solve problems. And I think I learned very early on that people respect you more when you, you know, not necessarily fall on the sword and say, hey, I don't know anything, but you at least are honest enough with them. You have enough integrity to say, look, I'm going to probably ask you more questions than I will have answers to, and I hope you're okay with that. Okay. Because that's probably how this will go for a period of time until we all are going to be learning together. You're going to learn me. You're going to understand what my expectations are, but I'm also going to understand where you kind of fit into this picture and we will operate as a high performing team. So to me, that humility goes hand in hand with creating trust. Okay? And people trust you when they know that you have this level of authenticity and genuineness about yourself that says we're all going to make mistakes together. We're all going to learn together and we're all going to exceed together. Right. We're all going to get these, you know, achieve these high level of goals that we have for ourselves. And that's how the best, to me anyway, the best high performing teams do really well in those environments because there's this high sense of trust. Right. They trust me to give them the information when they need it. Or even better than that, say I don't have the information but I know that I will get this for you.

Yeah.

And then we kind of come to the middle.

What about vulnerability? Is that important in your mind for a leader?

Absolutely. But vulnerability is scary. Vulnerability is scary for a leader because again, you rise and ascend to the level of leader by, you know, showing a high level of authority or high level of, hey, I've got the answers to this and I'm going to provide this for you because that's what you expect. Right. Creating as a leader, you create a vision, you create followership for folks and who wants to follow someone that doesn't necessarily have all, you know, all the pieces or all the answers. Right. So you. That vulnerableness is sometimes hard. I've seen this, I've seen an example of this where a leader was very vulnerable in front of a team. One of my previous organizations, and I was extremely impressed. It was a very, very senior leader who was in front of a team. We're kind of having a tiered management type discussion right in front of a nice board and we're going through all the different KPIs and this leader actually did not focus on what our minds kind of tell us to the red. Right. Like we want to focus on the red. All the things that are not going well. He focused on the things that the team was doing really well and he helped him understand that it's okay. Okay. If you don't perform at the level that is expected every single day. As long as you understand how to course correct and understand how to get to the point of solving that problem to get you back on track. The danger is not knowing that you're, that you have a problem or you're not meeting the expectations and you don't know how to get back on track. Right. That's a different discussion. Yeah, but he was very vulnerable in that, you know, look, we all will make mistakes. I'm here to support you. And I thought that was just an awesome example of your senior leader that sometimes that doesn't always happen.

Right.

Every case.

Right, Right. I wonder if you could talk A little bit about. You obviously got a lot of experience in many different industries. Are there any misconceptions out there about leadership that may even undermine some of the things that we've been talking about, especially like respect for people and that sort of thing?

Yeah, yeah, we talked a little bit about this a little bit earlier. To me, one of the biggest misconceptions about leadership is that you absolutely have to have all the answers in every situation, no matter what. I think leaders feel that way because we're groomed to be that way. We read all the books, we draw off all the experiences we have. And yes, we do have a vast amount of things that we can kind of bring to the table. But if you feel as if you have to have those answers all the time, I think it kind of undermines the trust that you're trying to build because then your folks are probably more apt to say, well, I don't know that I have to have the answer because I know my direct supervisor, my direct manager will always give it to me. And then that way I don't really have to solve problems, I just have to be here. And so then they're not bringing their best to the table. And I think that's a misconception, you know, that leaders sometimes have is that, yeah, I have to have all the answers because my team won't and I have to lead them in that way. To me, the best high performing teams are the ones that solve problems together. And there's a high level of collaboration, but even more so than that, there's just a high level of trust between the teams that you lead and the followership that you create. Right people to do the things that are important and meet the vision of the organization. So you want to get them there, but to close that gap, it's all about trust.

Yeah. I was actually talking to a friend of mine recently and he was super frustrated with his job and his career and all the rest of it. And in fact, his, you know, according to him, I'm not there, so I just, I only hear his side of it. But according to him, you know, he doesn't respect his leadership and he feels as if his leadership isn't supporting him and all the rest of it. And here he is trying to make things better, but he's, he's almost in a way sort of like fighting against, in his mind, bad leadership. Speak to that employee. Like, speak to my friend, you know, like, like what, what did, like what can you do in those. I'm short of quitting Your job and finding a different one, which is obviously an option. But, you know, he's been at this company for, gosh, like, 20 years, you know, and he's just, just. I can just see, like, just defeat in his heart, you know, like, what do you do in those situations when you. As an individual contributor and he is a manager, but, you know, he's got a boss and he wants to do good and he's trying and all that, but it's almost. You're almost fighting against what you believe to be a bad leader. What can you do in those situations?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's tough. You know, I'd be, you know, lying if I said I never experienced a bad leader. That's not true. Okay. We've all come across folks that don't necessarily exhibit the, you know, the traits or the attributes that you have. Right. And I've. I've always learned that, you know, you have to be true to yourself in these particular situations, and you may have a leader that doesn't exhibit everything that you think is above, you know, above grade. So I just, you know, take the best of the best and leave the rest. Okay. Take the things that, you know, maybe this leader has some good things that they're doing really well, and you can kind of grab ahold of those. Yeah. And kind of separate yourself kind of. Right. Look, and I will tell you this, too. I've learned actually really good things from bad leaders. I've learned really, really good things from bad leaders because it actually gives you the roadmap of things not to do. Because if you follow a good leader. Yes. You're going to pick up amazing things. You read great books about people who have done awesome things in their career and whatnot. You can pick up all those things. But when you see someone doing something that is not correct.

Yeah.

Or isn't the way that you may do it or is disrespect, disrespectful to people in general, you can just check that off your list and say, yeah, you know, if I ever get in that situation or ever, you know, rise to this. This level, I'm probably not going to do that.

Yeah.

Okay. And you can, you can. You. You can use that actually to your benefit. Yeah. Okay. And so that. That, that would be a little bit of my advice. I know it's a little bit tougher, you know, being in a situation that you think you can't really get out of, but you can always take. There's always good to take out of even a bad Situation.

Yeah, I remember me. I remember back in my corporate days, I had a, A leader who they were, I suppose, a good leader, but for whatever reason, like, I was a director of continuous improvement in this. I shouldn't say too much. People are going to look at my LinkedIn.

I won't look you up, Ryan. I won't.

But, well, the fact that this, you know, I was reporting to this individual and, and the fact that this individual didn't care. Okay, let's just put it that way. They didn't not support me. I, I was, you know, they just didn't support me. They didn't care. Right. The fact that we. This was just put underneath them, this division that you've. They were in charge of many things. Right.

And, and this was just inclusive to that.

Right. Again, you know, they could truly care less. All my approach in that situation, the, the blessing was they didn't get in my way. Right. And so I just went nuts. Right. And did as good as I could and got all the results that I could and I gave this individual all the credit like they needed. Like, they would meet with the president of the company, like, literally every month. And, and here's your bullet points from your continuous improvement group, you know, and, and then eventually the strangest thing happened towards the end. I got an email. Our text one time is like, hey, you got some of those bullet points. Like, okay, that's pretty cool. You know, at least they asked if I had some of those bullet points, you know.

So, yeah, it's a great example of, you know, staying true. I think I said that earlier on when you posed the question staying true to yourself, you know, and understanding what value you bring to the table, and it will ultimately shine through. Right. Like it ultimately will. So I appreciate you sharing that example, is that I won't say I have not been in maybe a similar situation at some point in time, but, yeah, it happens.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reminds me of, of Mother Teresa had a famous. I was trying to look it up here real fast, but it is basically saying, like, you know, if you're kind, people may accuse you of being selfish, having ulterior motives. Be kind. Anyway, if you're successful, you'll win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies succeed anyway, and it goes on and on. So in this example, maybe it's the, you know, improve anyway. Right? Just like, keep going. Right. In spite of what's in front of you.

Right, Carry on. Yeah, no, it's like that, you know, when I think about humility and creating Trust and being genuine. Right. You know, I've come across many leaders in my career. Like I said, some good, some bad, you know, but the ones that, you know, I always have picked up and learned the most from are the ones that are humble, the ones that are vulnerable in their interactions and just understand that creating trust and followership, quite honestly, is how you get things done. Yeah.

Because I think that there's a misunderstanding that if you're vulnerable or, or if you, you know, don't have all the interest that, that, that's, that that's weak or something. It's not. Right. Like what's weak is when you pretend that's weak.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And, yeah, and, and, but as a leader, that's that misconception. We talked a little bit, you know, about earlier is I have to have all the answers because I know my team won't or they expect this. Right. But if you're not genuine and you're pretending as if you have all those answers, that will not work for you as well.

Yeah.

You just have to be, you have to have an awareness of, of that and know that they expect you to, to lead them in a certain way, but they also don't expect you to have every answer to every situation. Yeah.

So maybe to wrap things up, Tony, I'm wondering if you, you know, we've, we've obviously spent a lot of time on respect for people and, and that sort of thing, but I'm wondering if there, if you have any like, practical examples from your, from your care. You know, you've seen the fruits of respecting groups and individuals and that positively impacted the business. Do you have any examples of that?

Yeah, yeah, I do. I mean, I have to go back to the same example of my frontline supervisor example. You know, that was a very daunting situation. I took over a role from actually one of my counterparts and colleagues that I worked with at this organization. So that was also interesting. We were both, you know, co workers and then all of a sudden I took over a leadership role. So that was interesting. But when I took over this team, it was probably close to 100 people. Again, very, you know, senior, you know, mature team. And I, I remember during this time period, it's probably about a two or three year time period, we achieved a higher level success of success than I ever thought we would. We actually manufactured fuel systems, fuel injectors, and there was a certain number we wanted to do every single month. Right. There was a production number that we were trying to hit and we more than Tripled that over the, over the three years that was in that role. And I really do attribute that to standing on this foundation of creating trust with the team and being humble enough to know that even in a leadership position, I was not there to provide them the answers. We were there to work together as a team. And I think it really propelled the team to do different things, to not just be status quo, to look for opportunities for improvement because they knew that we were working in a very collaborative type of fashion. It wasn't this hierarchical. I'm the leader, you guys are the operators and the workers in this situation. We're all a team and our goal is to break and exceed everything that's in front of us. And we were able to do that. I was very proud of that. And I know that if I wouldn't have probably had that experience early on, I just don't know that I actually would have been the leader I am today. I learned a lot. I was very fortunate to learn that at a very young age and kind of carry that throughout my career. And for me, it wasn't just pivotal for them, it was very impactful for me and how I lead. Even today, I lied.

I got one more question.

No worries.

It just came to my mind when you were talking.

No worries.

So I was recently talking with a different friend, a lot of friends that I've been talking about business stuff with. And this individual is a senior leader in a company and they have a very, very strong team around them. Like his direct reports, very strong, high performing, almost to the extent that like he has the regular check ins and this and that and all that. But they don't need him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he actually came to me almost in a moment of crisis of like, oh my gosh, like I've built such an amazing team or you know, together we've built this such an amazing team that like, I'm worried that I can't add value. Have you ever seen that in an organization? Like speak to my friend because he's listening right now.

Absolutely. I mean, I've had that happen myself multiple times actually in my career. Have I been part of or helped develop or build such a high performing team that it did make me question what true value am I bringing to the team. And I kind of stepped away from that and said, that's my job. That's the role I have as a leader, to create other leaders. And when you do that and you have that as a result, that's quite honestly that's kind of the ultimate Goal that you want to do. You want folks to. I want people to be able to take my role. I want people to take roles that are similar to mine in other parts of the organization. Kind of like the, you know, the coach Bill Belichick coaching tree. Like when you think about that, you know, he's created a lot of very, very talented coaches that are now coaches in their own right and beat him in certain situations. Yeah. And so don't you want that, right, as a leader to be able to do that? I know in the moment it probably doesn't feel great to go to a meeting and it's like, I'm not sure exactly what I'm adding here. You guys carry on. I'll catch up with you at the next touch point. Yeah, but that's what you're supposed to do. And you have to be comfortable as a leader. That, that, that really is the role that you play. And if your team is, is, is that successful and that high performing, you can kind of step back and take a look at that and say you had a part in that. You know, I think that's, I think it's actually a really good position to be in for sure.

Good stuff, man. Hey, Tony, this has been a lot of fun, man. I really appreciate you taking time to come on and visit with us. So maybe to wrap things up, do you have any sort of final words of wisdom that you want to leave with everyone?

Yeah, I think, I think one of the things is authenticity and being genuine and being vulnerable is not weak. Right. We talked a little bit about that. It's, it's a very strong characteristic, a very, very good leaders. And don't confuse the two about not necessarily having all the answers of being vulnerable or making mistakes is not being a good leader because those two things are different. And I think you got to embrace that side of it. Right. So I think I would just leave folks with, you know, authenticity and genuineness creates trust and then I kind of builds this high performing scenario. So.

Awesome. If folks want to connect with you personally, Tony, what's the best way?

Yeah, I think the best way for me, I'm on LinkedIn, so for folks can look me up that way. Pretty easy to find. So yeah, look forward to connecting with, you know, people that are going through this and want to know a little bit more, get a little bit deeper as well. So.

Nice. We'll have it all linked up on the show Notes, everybody. So go ahead and scroll down there and find Tony, go connect with him and thank him for coming on the show. So hey, great job. I appreciate you, man.

All right. Thanks, Ron. Really appreciate it.

All right, Take care.

You too.

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