GA 594 | Common Failures in Modern Leadership with William C. Davis

To me, the building of the relationship is an investment that is more important than any monetary investment we put in people. Because once you do that, you've got somebody who's loyal, somebody who is invested. And when somebody's invested in what they're doing, they're much more innovative.

Today, I'm excited to welcome William Davis to the show. Now, William was actually able to come into our Gemba Academy studio here in Keller, Texas, and we recorded this in our. In our audio rooms, face to face. So I don't often get to do sort of in person, live, face to face interviews. We do them from time to time, but it's always a blast when people are able to come in. So today, William and I talk about what he would call sort of a leadership crisis. And now, as you'll hear, he's actually retired. So he's got a lot of experience, a lot of industry experience, and he's seen a lot over his career. And so he's actually written a few books. And we kind of dive into just really his opinions on why there is what he believes to be a leadership crisis. There are some, some really high statistics. Like 78% of Americans believe there's a leadership crisis. Like, that's, that's statistics that live. That's not his ideas. That's like facts. And so we sort of dig into like, what is that and why is that? And then we really get into, like, what can we as leaders be doing differently to make sure that we don't have this crisis and if we do have an issue, what we can do to sor. So again, he's got a lot of experience, a lot of wisdom, and I really enjoyed chatting with him. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 594. Again, Gemba podcast and look for episode 594. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. William, welcome to the show.

How's it going? Doing all right. Ron, how are you doing?

Doing well, man. It's nice to have. Have someone. We were, as we were talking in person here in the studio, so we don't get to do live inter use all that often. Most of the time, well, they're always live, but people are calling in, you know, so, yeah, it's fun to do it in person.

That was a great facility. It's beautiful out here and you guys got such a nice setup.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate that.

All right, well, so I know, you know, William, how we like to get started here and that's with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Well, I actually had two for you. Okay. The first one was. Is easier. Leadership's not about being in charge, but leadership's about being. Or about taking care of those you're in charge of that are in your charge. That's Assignment Cynic. The other one, though, I love just from the perspective that it speaks to what I've tried to do through my whole career. A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, but a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves. And to me, that's the huge thing about being a leader, is you want to build people up to feel like they are really making progress, contributing, you know, feeling really good about what they're doing.

I like that one.

Even.

Even maybe applies to parents.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Raising up kids and.

Exactly. Yeah.

Fantastic. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, William. Tell us about your background and. And what. What kind of work you're in and how you got involved in all that.

Well, I just recently retired. First of May. Congratulations. Thank you. After 38 years in corporate America, spent time with three different corporations during that period of time and originally started out in graduating from the University of Oklahoma a long, long time ago and been married for 39 years. So I've been married almost as long as I worked, or actually longer. We have two kids, both married and well established in their careers. But I worked in the financial industry for about 25 years, and the majority of the time that I was there, I worked mergers and acquisitions, project work and on the road a lot. Had a variety of teams and various sizes. Then I went into consulting work for a HR outsourcing organization and was there for 13 years and then went into retail. And I knew I didn't like it, but where I was at was kind of losing allure as far as what we were doing and how we were doing it. And so I did retail for a year and a half with company and said, you know what? I got about five years left as far as what I was planning on working. And I asked my wife, I said, how about I give back that final period of my career? Because I think there's a lot of things I could do in trying to help people improve how we lead, and not just corporately, but in all areas. And she's. Boy, she was on. She's like, let's do it. Nice. So, as you seen, she was with me today. I love it.

I love it. All right, well, let's let's dive in. So I know that it's an interesting topic as kind of exploring what we're going to be talking about, but there's a statistic out there that says that 78% of, of Americans and I don't know, we might be able to extrapolate to the world really. But right now we'll just talk about the US Believe that there's a leadership crisis. So first of all, where do you, where did, where did the stat come from? And then what do you think it means? And why is it the way it is?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. It was for a 2023 poll that the US News and World Report Harris poll did, and it had come out in November of that year, but in March of the year, that same year, the World Economic Forum had come out as one of their final statements in their, in their meeting in Innsbruck that we had a world leadership crisis. And it took on various characteristics. It had a lot to do with the fact that we were changing from a technology perspective so much and so quickly that, you know, it needed more leaders that underst how and why we're doing. But then when that poll came out from US News and World Report, I looked at it, I told my wife, I said, you know, all of these things that they're talking about are exactly what I'm seeing in my career. The fact that you have a disconnect between leadership and your associates. And if you talk to a lot of the organizations that are in the Fortune 500 when they do their employee assessments every year, one of the categories is how satisfied are you with leadership? And usually those are in the 50, 60, 70 percentile. And they're like, hey, how do we get that up? Well, I believe the way you have to get it up is that you have to build a genuine relationship with your people. I think we have gotten to a point where we look at our people as commodities, if you will. They are just people who do the job. You know, they're expendable. We don't consider them as human beings. And, you know, they are people that have desires. They have people that have challenges. They have people that they have to deal with stuff inside office, outside of office. And as a true leader, you know, your responsibilities, get to know them well enough and help them navigate those times of stress and such. And we don't do a good job of that. And I blame a lot of it on the fact that we have, you know, we always talk about leadership training, but it's usually nothing more than Management training. And I wrote a book, my first book dealt with the difference between leaders, managers and bosses. You know, leaders are, you know, the ones who help people improve, help people believe in themselves. Managers have leadership qualities, can have leadership qualities, but are generally more responsible for the get from A to Z. Right? Let's, let's get the work done. And I don't even talk about bosses because if you got that mentality, you really need to find something else to do. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Well, sticking with the steam of leadership, I know you've written about this, but what are some of the most common failures that you've seen with modern leadership and what's that do to the company, that dealing with that?

Well, I think one of the biggest things that I've seen is the lack of investment in our people. And when I'm talking about investment, I'm talking about from an emotional perspective. You know, we always talk about, we put monetary investment into them, training and such, but the emotional investment is, you know, again, going back to getting to know them and understand them so that you can have a trusting relationship where you can have the communication that you need to have to be successful, not just for the company, but for them also. And what I have seen is, and this has changed over, you know, obviously the 30 plus years that I've been in the business, but what I have seen is that our ability to have these one on one conversations or build these one on one relationships is not there anymore. It's, it's, you know, whether it's the tech boom, whether it's, you know, the changes, when you go to, you know, we talk about texts, we talk about emails. Yeah, that, that has changed society so much. And you know, I, I have talked to a lot of people. Like, you know, you go to the restaurant anymore, what do you see?

You see people staring at their phones.

People staring at their phones. And I look at building a relationship, business wise, same as I do a marriage. You've got multiple people, two people coming together that have got various experiences, various backgrounds, various components that make up who they are. And now you're trying to blend them together. Right. And hopefully you have 30, 40, 50 years to do that. But in a business perspective, it's the same thing. You've got people with varying backgrounds, but it's not just two people. It's usually 5, 10, 15, 20 more or more. And now you as the leader are, you're trying to blend your ability to relate to that person so that you can know how to deal with them. And they trust you and know that you've got investment in them, but then you're trying to help them relate to everybody else on the team or everybody else that they deal with, right? And then you are trying to deal with everybody then together as a group. So it's a very complex dynamic. And what I've, you know, I spoke to a group in Dallas a couple of weeks ago is 1100 college students that are in future Business Leaders of America. And what I told them is that you need to understand that when you want to be a leader, and I'm firmly convinced that you have to be wanting to be a leader. If you're not going to be, if you don't want to be a leader, you're not going to be a good leader, right? And I told him, I said, if you want to be a leader, that's the job. That's the job. Because you have to continually be changing because of the times. Again, I go back to thinking, you know, when I grew up on the farm, you know, how I always learned everything from dad was hands on, right? And we worked together, you know, 8, 10, 12 hours a day. And he taught me when I got into, you know, workplace in the 80s and 90s, same thing. You know, I traveled all the time, I was with my boss all the time. He taught me. But now we've gotten to a point where, you know, we do zoom calls, we do team meetings, we do webex, whatever. And so particularly when the dynamic hit or pandemic hit, you know, you know, took people out of the office. And so that again, you got a period of five years there where people, particularly if they were entering the workforce, haven't had that opportunity to build that in person dynamic?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I worry about it. Even with my, my kids and, you know, asking them to, hey, call such and such to, you know, arrange this appointment or something like that, you'd think that I was, you know, asking them to, you know, they're like, what haul? You know, and I'm like, no, yeah, pick up the phone and call. And I'm not trying to pick on the kids because there's, you know, there's adults like that as well. But yeah, I mean, the whole, I don't know, it's weird. Like, I, like, what do you, what's your take on just like society at large right now with the way that we sort of communicate and the fact that we all have got these computers in our pockets and, and they're here to stay, they're not going anywhere. And I Do think that we're, you know, at a high level, better off?

Oh, yeah.

Because of it. But there's also major potential issues, like, what do you make of just where we are as a society?

Yeah, I think all of your points are absolutely dead on. I think we are a lot better off. Right. But then we've lost some things in the process. You know, I always told my teams, I said, I don't ever want you delivering a message via text or email because people lose tone, lose sense of what you're. What you're saying or how you're saying it. You know, if we have something that's really important and really needed to be talked about, we did it on, you know, where people could hear the inflection of someone's voice or could see, you know, the person's reaction in their face. And I think that's one of the things that we've lost. We. We have. And I don't want to say this in a bad way, but we've become lazy in a lot of ways, communicating. Because again, it's so easy. Yeah. Just, you know, pick up and, oh, do an emoji. You know, half the time I get an emoji and I'm like, what is that?

Right.

I don't even understand what that means. Right, right. But yet that's the way we do it. And so, you know, we've got to, in my opinion, we've got to get back to the, you know, where we are actually having civilized conversation face to face, where we can talk and deal with each other in such a way where we can learn and. And get a sense of camaraderie. I think that's one of the biggest things that we've lost, is that sense of camaraderie because we're not together.

Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. So when you think about just leadership overall, again, looking back with your experience and the things that you've seen over the years, what do you think are the most, I don't know, common failures in leadership, and then maybe then how do they sort of impact our ability to trust one another?

I think the biggest challenge that I've always seen through my career was the fact that people would be promoted into leadership roles that couldn't do the job they had.

You mean before they were a leader?

Before they were a leader. I mean, it was either. I don't know if we were trying to just get them out of the way or what the situation was, but they weren't set up to be a leader. And, you know, leadership's not about a title. Leadership's not about, you know, where my office is. Right. Leadership is about the ability to inspire people, get people to trust you and get them to understand that, hey, I'm here for your success and to help you. And some of the greatest leaders I have worked with throughout my career never had a title, and then we had a corner office, had a little cube, Right. But it was just because they invested in the relationship with the people that they worked with. And people knew, hey, if I have a challenge, that's someone I can go to. That's someone I can. I can, you know, trust. And I think where we have lost from a leadership perspective, I think part of the problem is a lot of immaturity, particularly from an emotional perspective. And again, I think this goes back to some of what we've talked about in regards to the dynamics that we faced over the last 25 years with technology advancements, where we're not, you know, getting together, you know, as people and interacting in the same way we did back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And so I think immaturity is part of it, but I think the other piece of it is that, you know, when you commit to being a leader, you have to understand that the mission is now about the success of your people, not you. Right? And part of that is understanding that your people are not your competition. Your people are a completion of you. The greatest accolades I ever got in my whole career had nothing to do with me, but it had to do with the success of my people. And, you know, I never did understand why people felt threatened when somebody on the. Their team outpaced them in a career or, you know, got promoted over them. Hey, if that's what they wanted, that's great. How do I help you get there? Right? And I think we've lost a lot of that. And because, you know, we've gotten particularly in the larger corporations, we've gotten to such a competition process in our, you know, stacked rankings and, you know, the bell curve and all that of how we give people raises and how we look at them from a. And if somebody does the job and somebody does the job well, then you give them the raise, give them the bonus. Quit trying to look for ways to cut it from them. And there's too many corporations I've worked with and have talked to that do that. And I think, again, that breeds distrust because we don't look at them as a human. Hey, you know, things have gone up, you know, inflation, 8, 10, 12, 15%, and, you're giving me a 1 and 2% raise. You know, the dynamic there doesn't work. Yeah, right. I have to now figure out how to, how to live. And that goes back to, I have a commitment to my people financially. If I can do it, I need to take care of them. Right. Guys who are making 22 million dollar bonuses sitting in a corporate office need to say, you know, I need to get mine last. My people need to get their money first and I'll take what I can at the end.

Yeah, leaders eat last, right?

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah.

Well, so so far we've sort of presented or you've presented quite a few challenges that are facing us today. Some might even say, I don't know, do you have like sort of like a pessimistic outlook on where we are today or you optimistic or in between?

Well, I'll tell you, if our leadership future is based upon those kids that I worked with or talked to a couple of weeks ago, it was June 2nd. Our leadership future looks bright. Because they were sitting in the audience just yes, yes, yes. And I had a ton of them come up to me afterwards saying, yeah, that's exactly what I thought leadership should be. I'm not experiencing that, but that's what I thought it should be. Right. And that's what I'm going to try to start being like. So I think we have the ability to get there. We have to get the message out though, because I think we have gotten to a phase in leadership where we've lost sight of the people aspect and the fact they're humans and that we have a responsibility toward them.

So. All right, well, let's talk about then some, maybe some practical ideas or almost use the word solutions for how we might go about, I don't know about this across business and really just the world at large.

Right, well. And I go back to when I say leaders, leaders, that is the job. Right. And that's where I always looked at it. So when I went about building relationships, it wasn't the hey, come into my office, let's sit down and talk and let's get to know each other or the boardroom or whatever because, you know, it always still set the banner for that. I was up here and they were down here. Right. And they never could get comfortable. And so I learned very on early in my career that I've got to try to build a relationship with somebody based upon their comfort zone. What gets them comfortable to open up and feel good. Give you a couple of examples had a young man, very early in his career had just been hired, but he was always constantly nervous about being fired. And I'm like, dude, you just got hired, you're not going anywhere. But what I had to figure out was, okay, how do I get him comfortable with the arrangement that, you know, he's productive and he's going to be a help. So I just asked him, I said, what do you like to do outside of the office? And he said, I like to golf. Well, so back then I still golfed. So I said, okay, we're going to take an afternoon and we're just going to go golf first. He was shocked, like, can we do that during the workday? And I said, sure, you know, we can do that. And so we golfed and I let him drive and man, his, you know, the, the student driver position, you know, on the golf cart steering wheel. And I'm like, we're only going like two miles an hour. You can relax. We're not going to crash. And so the first few holes were real tense. I mean, we still had that, you know, authoritarian type feeling that he had. But then I shaked a tee shot and I mean, it was awful. It was so far out in the trees, I don't know that anybody ever found it. And he kind of paused for a second and look at me like, how was he going to react? You know, because, you know, some people take themselves so seriously that they're going to. And I just started making fun of myself, you know, self deprecating the whole bit. And the dynamic at that moment changed completely. And from then on, I mean, he opened up, we talked, we laughed, we joked, and it's like we'd known each other all our lives and I. It was a comfort zone that he was now able to, hey, he's got an investment in me. He looks at me as a important. He looks at me as somebody that can contribute and be a part. And there is no one size fits all in trying to do that with your people. And so that's why I said, every individual that you lead, you have to figure out what that comfort zone is for them. I had a young lady that went to work for me that horrifically micromanaged in her previous role and never gave me any indication of it when I interviewed her. And Brilliant girl knew I wanted to hire because of the role I wanted for. But when she started working for me, she was consistently sending me, is this okay? Is this okay? Is this okay? And I'm like, why are you asking me if this is okay, never tell me, never tell me. But kept doing it. And she liked walking every day at lunch. And so I just asked her one day, I said, do you mind if I join you? And she's like, no, no. So we started walking and eventually we got to the point where she told me the whole story about the micromanaging person that had been over her before. And I mean, it was to the point where she couldn't do anything without him approving it first. And I said, that's not me. I said, I hired you because I saw abilities in you. I saw you because I think you're a great fit for this team. I love your personality. I love you, you know, how you work ethic. And it took probably three or four months, but we finally got there where we weren't there anymore. But I would have never found that out if I'd have just taken the standard, hey, come into my office and talk. Right? And so to me, the building of the relationship is an investment that is more important than any monetary investment we put in people. Because once you do that, and it doesn't always click, I understand that, but it does the majority of the time. Once it clicks, you've got somebody who's loyal, somebody who is invested. And when somebody's invested in what they're doing, they're much more innovative, right? As opposed to just the standard, same old, same old. And, and when you then get a team that's like that, oh man, they can, they can just. Just, you know, achieve astronomical things.

So, so, so what about the situations? And I don't know if maybe you had some or you haven't had any situations like this where you've got an employee and. Or manager, leader, whatever you want to call them, and for whatever reason, they're not.

I don't.

It's not working. You know, they're either they're in the wrong spot or they're just not able to do their job the way that you need them to do it. Like, aside, obviously coaching and all the rest of it, but have you had situations to where, like, just to be blunt, like, you had to let someone go or, you know, like. And how do you handle those really tough situations?

I have two different examples that I always use. One, the financial institution I worked for, we merged with another giant in 1998, and they gave me a team from one of the other banks. Never met them before, never worked with them. And very early on when I traveled, traveled and was meeting with them, my new boss told me that, hey, so. And so which was the leader of the group? I want her gone. And I'm like, okay, why? And so he would give me some reasons, but they were all personal. They were all, you know, nitpicky, and they weren't consistent with what I was seeing with her. And so I worked with her for a while until it came time for her evaluation. And I just told him, I said, what you're telling me I'm not seeing in. It's not that. He said, well, we got to move her out anyway. And I said, I'm not going to do it. And he says, you don't have a choice. She's going to be gone whether you do it or whether I do it. And I said, okay. So I went to someone, other group that had an opening, and I said, this is someone that I have a high degree of respect for. You know, they're a little rough in personality at times, but they do great work, and their knowledge is indispensable. She'd been with the organization 40 years. I said, her knowledge is indispensable. And they said, why do you want to get rid of her? I said, I don't. I said, but I'm being pressured. So I placed her somewhere else. They took her. She finished out her career there. I got ripped for doing it. That's not what I told you to do. I said, yeah, but it's the right thing to do. What you were asking me to do was unethical because what you were saying was the reasons for getting rid of her weren't valid. Weren't valid. Now, the other example I have, I had a young man, very intelligent, did a great deal of work for us and did a great job. But he had a king attitude, where he was king attitude, boy. He was what he said went. And if you didn't like it, he'd scream and yell and everything that. And counseled with him a number of times, and he then did it to a client. And I told him, I said, you got a lot of potential, but it's not here. Just not here. And there are times you have to move them out. I mean, you know, what I propose doesn't work with everybody, but to me, it has worked far more than the standard, hey, just, you know, not create that relationship.

Right. Yeah. Within our sort of our lean world that most of our listeners are familiar with, we talk about sort of two pillars of a house, and one pillar is continuous improvement. And I know you've got some experience with it as well. And then the other one is Respect for people.

Right.

And without both pillars, you know the roof's going to fall.

Right. Yeah. And I became familiar with Six Sigma back in the early 2000s and got my green belt, and that's what I loved about it. I loved the. What I perceived was the group dynamic of what we're doing. Right. We all have to win together, lose together. Right. We all are in it. Yeah. Obviously, we've got certain phases that we are more focused on as far as our role in success, but, you know, the clients that you bring in or the customers that you bring in at the very beginning of the phase, hey, they're just as important all the way through.

Yeah.

Right. And. And you. You build that relationship so you know what they want. Yeah. Right. And then you understand that you're fulfilling it.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, this has been a great conversation. I appreciate you coming in, maybe to wrap things up. I don't know if you have any sort of, like, final words of wisdom for that person listening right now. Maybe they're a leader who's in charge of some folks and they're trying to do the best that they can, maybe speak to that person.

Well, I think the easiest thing that you can do is just take a step back and ask yourself, why do I want to be a leader? If you want to be a leader, because it's the title. If you want to be a leader because it's the exposure or because of the perks that come along with it, I'm not saying that's wrong, but you're inhibiting your ability to be a great leader. When you turn your focus solely on your people and their success and nurturing them and bringing them along and making sure that they get to a point where they feel good about what they're doing and that they're contributing, at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. That's what it's all about. Love it.

William, if people wanted to connect with you personally, what. What's the best way.

I have a website, williamcdavis.net williamcdavis.net and they can reach me there. Got a number of different pages on there, and each page has all my contact information. Love it.

Awesome. All right, well, thanks again for coming in.

Thanks, Ron.

All right, take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos. We also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to Gemba Academy.