111: Craig Ahrens Believes No Team Is a Bad Team

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Businesses and scaling up from the way coaches coach youth sports or sports in general in that matter? Today's show is all about how no team is a bad team and how to be a better coach to coach your team to greater results. I think you'll dig it. Listen in.

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Welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your show host and growth coach Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is Craig Aarons who's going to talk about coaching, you know, how to create a powerful team, how to develop your personal team coaching skills. He'll say more about it. He'll probably say it better and all that. So Craig's the founding partner of Fungo Team Fungo and he'll explain that and everything else. He joins us from Connecticut today. He's got a terrific background in this world, but I'll let him tell all that. Welcome to the show, Craig.

Thanks, Bill. Really excited to be here. So let me really start at the beginning, right. I was the middle child of three. I grew up outside of Boston and listening to a lot of your your podcast. I too delivered newspapers as my first job. I did it for about eight to 10 years and just learned so much about it and it was just a great first job. But I also worked for and I'm going to date myself a little bit here. I worked for Howard Johnson's restaurants and they're not around anymore. But I really, I fell in love with the restaurant business. The pace. Yeah, Hojos, right, the clam strip. I fell in love with the pace, the people, just the variation of the business. And during my, you know, leading up to college, I worked for a variety of large and small restaurants. And then while I was in college, I had the opportunity over two summers to work for Walt Disney World in Florida for two different college programs that they had. One was the Magic Kingdom College program where they brought a lot of kids in, worked in the parks and really staffed themselves for the summer. The other one is where they selected 12 students to come between your junior and senior year and go through their management training program. It was an MBA from one of the greatest facilities ever out there, Walt Disney World in Orlando. So then I graduated college and I spent the next 25 years working for both large and small, regional and global brands in the restaurant business. I came out of college and worked for a company called the Chart House. And the Chart House has, and you're familiar with them in California. They're up and down the California coast. Kind of like Burger King's gone through several different ownerships since I was last there, but it was a great place to learn. Great people challenged you every day. And the business just, it really scaled. It grew from, you know, we were 20, 30 restaurants, 40, 50 restaurants. And we just saw how it continued to scale and grow from there. I had the opportunity to go to work for Burger King and I spent, oh, 10 years doing a little bit of everything at Burger King, where we started out, where we were quality assurance managers, where we were checking the product in facilities. And then we took the quality assurance program, took that into the restaurants where we started to check HACCP procedures in restaurants. And then we. That grew into a lot of other opportunities. I got into franchise sales within Burger King. I never really knew what a franchisee was because I never had any exposure to it, but learned about that at Burger King, got into development, training and just about every other position that you could think of and had a great 10 year run down there. Then had the opportunity to go to work for a company called Magic Restaurants. It was an individual who had bought the brand Fuddruckers basically out of bankruptcy and was involved with just growing and kind of, I won't say cleaning up, but refocusing the brand on the fundamentals and people development and brand development. And we really saw how the business grew over time. It was just awesome. From there we went on and had some opportunities with an organization with Dunkin Brands and spent some time with Dunkin Brands doing some operational support with them. And from there went to work for the largest franchisee of Verizon Services in the United States and learned a whole different piece about the service industry and brought my franchising expertise and fundamentals of operations to them and really saw the organization scale and grow both in a number of units and profitability for the franchisees. So with all of that, as my career was going, one of the things that we always did was stay based in Connecticut. We didn't want to travel. My father had done a lot of traveling and we had moved around a lot when we were growing up until a certain age. And then we kind of settled. But my wife and I decided that we wanted to kind of stay in Connecticut and stay where we lived and, you know, allow our children to kind of go through all the same schools. And as my career was evolving, so in my family, my two sons were growing. They were getting involved in youth sports. And like a lot of adults and a lot of parents, I started to get involved first as a spectator, some would say a crazy spectator, but then as an assistant coach, a head coach, a board member. And you were starting to coach against other coaches. And these guys, men and women who you coached against were small business owners, mid level managers for major and small corporations, senior level executives for Fortune 50, Fortune 100 companies. And as you got to know them, as you got to coach against them, and you were hearing what they were talking about themselves and their businesses, you really started to see some correlations to what they were saying, to what was going on in their businesses and how they coached and how their teams performed. It was really their leadership style on display. And I'll say, and I'll tell you, you really see it all right? You'll see people who you think are mild mannered just lose it over the littlest thing with where somebody who didn't perform a task that they shot, thought they should have, and then those who, when somebody made a mistake, went out and coached them through that situation. So during the various seasons, I began to notice what I thought were similarities to successful youth teams to success in the business world. And it really came down to, you know, regardless of who certain coaches had on their teams, they were always in the mix for the playoffs or the championships or whatever, while others struggled to maybe win three games, four games. Those teams that had, you know, that success had what I started to call the coaching mindset umbrella over them and they just performed better season after season. Regardless of sport. It just, regardless of sport, these coaches, managers had the ability to get these young athletes to meld together as a high performing team in a very short amount of team. So what I started to do is I started to began, you know, I began to take notice as to what the coaches were doing and what I was doing that both had some positive and maybe some negative results with some of the Teams that we were coaching and some of the incidents that were happening, I then started to play with this and I started to test this coaching and building high performance teams through this lens of coaching you sports hypothesis, as I'll call it. As I was giving speeches around the country and talking about different things and operations for some of the different organizations we talked about or that, you know, when we were leading various operations or training or other teams, I started to begin to introduce this philosophy to not overriding, not a huge billboard on it, but just little pieces of starting to talk about the power of coaching and youth sports and what you learn. And when I did, I gotta tell you, Bill, it was a wow. Right from the very beginning, I found out that during after speeches or training sessions, I just had people coming up and telling me what their experiences were with teams, coaches, bosses, good and bad. They wanted to share. They had either coached themselves, played as children, had children who played, had relatives who played. They wanted to share their observations. This was really. This just really hit a nerve with people. And at that time, I knew I was onto something. And really with that came the creation of Team Fungo. And so we left the Verizon organization and I began to introduce the coaching mindsets to organizations around the country. And for those who don't know what Fungo really stands for, a Fungo bat. And this really came about from a conversation with one of the guys on my team. The Fungo bat is a tool that baseball coaches use at all levels to develop and enhance fundamentals for players and teams. And so when we were talking about building an organization, focusing on coaching, focusing on stressing the fundamentals, it just made so much sense that the Fungo bat in baseball kind of became the spearhead for all of this. And we say that fun Fungo really stands for fundamentals, ultimately net great organizations. So that really brings us to where we are today.

Good job. I challenged him as we got ready listeners that to tell the full story, usually I have to prompt people to say more about how we got here. Craig laid it out, so. But I definitely can get that.

And you know, as you're telling the.

Story and kind of how you got to this point with a focus on using coaching to develop that. I remembered my daughter's first and only attempt at sports and she played soccer like a lot of kids, right? And first year out playing soccer, the team, the coach was super excited because the team went undefeated. Right. All season. Right. Then there's like seven. But my daughter and quite a few of her teammates never, ever Wanted to play again because it was not really about having them win their game, develop a lot of the sport, or anything like that. It was about how the coach was determined to do this. Right. Some like frustrated footballer and Bill, that's a great point.

And. And although we're not there yet, one of the things we always talk about, the success of a coach, I always would tell my assistant coaches and other people that I coach with that you could tell how successful you were as a coach by how many kids you had showing up for your last few practices. Everybody shows up for the first ones because they're excited. Right. Your daughter, when she went to the first practice, it was great. But by the end of the season, if they're not having fun, they got a lot of other things they want to do. And it always is. It is a clear reflection on how that person is as a coach. And the kids are telling you, and that's the value. And employees tell you they leave your organization. And so it really is just. It's the same thing. You need to look at how you can get them engaged and excited about what it is you want to accomplish.

Our son played a couple years, and then he gave up because he didn't like the. The way the other teammates were with him and in particular, the coach's own kids. So the favorite players on the team, the way that they chided and berated him for his performance or lack of performance from one moment to the next, he's like, this isn't fun. I'm not here. Like, you know, I'm done.

And one of the things we talk about in our first book is exactly that. Right. And one of the things we talk about in the success lineup card is communication, and it's closing gaps. And what those gaps are, grumblings, apathy, you know, performance and just perceptions. And Scuds. Right. Where people fire scuds at others. And that's what was going on within that team. You had teammates firing Scuds back and forth, and that really is the coach's role and responsibility and leadership's role and responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. And if it does, it gets addressed.

So you've got great stories of this. Work with different clients. Why don't you talk with us about perhaps the first piece where people get on the same thing, they create the same common goal.

Yeah. So it becomes, you know, and you're right. Right. We look at it as, you know, we talk about it as kind of the success lineup card. And to have the success lineup card. There really are. And we came up with nine, right? Because there's nine batters in a baseball batting order. There's nine that we have here. And one of them clearly is having the goals. And we look at those. That's what you want to do, kind of the accountability. But it's setting short term, midterm, long term and what we call, I know you call them, I think you call them bhags, we call them bags, right, Baseball bags. But it's the same thing. Big audacious goals. But there's that style of management that's out there and it's been out there, which is a control and control and command style. Here's your goal, here's what you'll do, here's what's expected, here's when you'll reach them and we'll talk about them at our yearly or quarterly review, whatever, what that looks like. What we look to do with organizations is, as you said, short, mid and long term goals to keep people engaged, which is another one on the lineup, is to know their whys and get their buy in and get their input into the goals, the short term, the midterm and the long term goals. Because they're going to be responsible for them, they're going to be held accountable for them. You want them to have buy in and some say in what they're going to be. Now they have to fit within your parameters where you want to go within the organization. And there's always some give and take that goes on there, but it really is about clearly defining what they are, getting their input. And I'll share a story with bags with big goals in a little bit, but then holding people accountable and the accountability is, it's not, you know, I know a lot of people still do the yearly reviews, but in baseball that accountability is instantaneous, right? If you're supposed to put down a hit and run and you miss the pitch for whatever reason, you didn't do it. The runner gets out, you get out, the inning ends, that's not good. But that's a coaching moment where you can then go work and figure out why that didn't happen. And the player understands that, the runner understands that, the other team members understand it. And so you can go and you can go and teach that same thing at work. But if you have a mistake at work on a goal and it doesn't get talked to from for about a month or six months or eight months, you're talking about the Kentucky Derby when the Super Bowl's going on it just doesn't make any sense to anybody.

I totally get that. Well, why don't you tell the story about getting aligned in the bhag and what happened there?

Yeah. So this is. As we talk about organizations set big goals. Do they do it with the control and command way? Here's the goal, period. But in baseball, we work with the other coaches and we develop and set goals and challenges for the team to achieve. Some during the season, some, you know, during the baseball game. You know, bat around the order and I'll buy you ice cream. Every player gets on base during the game will buy you a soda, whatever the case may be. Or we won't have to, you know, do one of the drills they don't like in practice. But to engage the team. We really wanted to challenge them. This was a pretty unique group of about 11 and 12 year olds. And they were just, they were, they were just a really good group of kids. And we started talking about big goals and they're like, well, we want to set one. And I'm like, okay. So we set some ground rules and we let them develop their own goal. And I gotta tell you, Bill, what they came up with was tremendous. Their bag is what we call, and we write about it in the book. It's. It's the three pitch, three out challenge. And somebody had seen it in the college World Series years ago or college baseball game years ago, where one pitcher, one inning, three pitches, three outs, inning over. Now in the major leagues, when that happens, the manager will buy the pitcher a steak dinner. It doesn't happen a lot because pitcher, you know, hitters and pitchers are, you know, they don't want that to happen. But this is what they came up with. And we as coaches looked around and go, okay, that's a big goal. That's a big, big goal for 11 and 12 year olds to want to set that season. They came close, but they didn't get it. But the goal kind of grew a life of its own. So the next year, when we were coaching again, the kids were like, coach, can we do the three pitch, three hit or three out challenge? We're like, absolutely. Here's what it is. If you get it, we'll get the pizza in the second game. First pitch, one out, second pitch, two outs, third pitch, pop flight of the first baseman, foul territory. He dropped the ball. The kids. And as you talked about it earlier, where your son, the other kids were riding him and shining him and all that other stuff, the kids at first started, that was their natural instinct, how could you help? How could you cause us to miss that big goal, the pizza party that was out there? But then they realized that there were other things that going on. They were a team that they knew it was a realistic goal that they might be able to get this. So sure enough, I don't know, nine games, 10 games later, it's, you know, it's a late evening game under the lights. In Little League, I never played under the lights. Kids these days have some neat advantages. Ground ball, first pitch, ground ball. One out, second pitch, ground ball, two outs. I'm going to tell you, Bill, the kids, the coaches, everybody got excited. The other coach who was coaching the first base team was like, what's going on here, Mike? It's a long story. The next pitch, ground ball back to the pitcher, picks it up, throws to first base. Three pitches, three outs. The kids are throwing their gloves. They are so excited because they've just hit their bag. The game's still going on, so we got to get them back and focus, settle down. But the engagement of what went on there was just unbelievable. And by getting them involved in it. So then let's take that to the world of business. We started to talk to a company about their big goals and what they were looking for. And they were struggling. It was a restaurant company who had been struggling with selling gift certificates at the holiday season. It sold about 300,000 the year before, and it just wasn't a lot. It was about 15, $1600 a restaurant, and the average was much higher at that time. And they just couldn't seem to get it. So we talked it over with the coo and at the. At the their next managers meeting, they did exactly kind of what we did with the little league team. They put it out there. They clearly explained what the challenge was, what the opportunity was, what the goal might be. And then they kind of said, but we need you to figure it out. So a couple hours later, he came back and they had come up with a goal of just over $900,000, targeting to get to a million dollars. So they were looking at doing over $5000 in sales in each restaurant, up from 1600. They had developed communication plans, they had convenience, develop clear standards where the restaurant operations, their qar, their visits that occurred couldn't be less month over month. So they had to make sure that they were maintaining what was going on in the restaurants. They developed outside training programs. They did all kinds of things to drive this. And it was amazing. The first year, they just missed it by 10 or $20,000. They had made just unbelievable improvements and they still had a celebration the year after that. They just blew it away because they had gotten so much better. But they had set a big goal. They had set the focus. They allowed their team input into what that goal was. And with that, everybody, you know, all ships rise with the tide. Everybody got excited and held other people accountable. So if a restaurant was falling a little light on their sales, you know, the managers may say, you know, do you need help? I can cover my labor shifts. Whatever was going on, there was a lot of teamwork, bonding and just explosive excitement going on in the business. It was a really neat thing to watch happen.

So I hear the big goal, I hear the team coming together, I hear people dealing with breakdowns and focusing on stuff, and I hear some results produced. Where does the coaching piece come in?

Well, really, it's all of it, right? So the coaching piece becomes all of it. When you look at the success lineup card as we look at it, and it really is for organizations to have, you know, the clear mission and vision, the clear standards and core values, the communication, the trust and respect, learning, clear roles and responsibility, engagement, setting goals and then making sure you're celebrating in recognition. That's really all, you know, that's what coaches do, right? They're making sure that it's not just, you know, putting your arm around somebody or hitting fungal balls to somebody or, or doing pop fly drills. That's a piece of it. But it's making sure that your team has a clear understanding of what the mission and vision is, right? That's a coach's first responsibility. And then to make sure that as a coach and I use coach and leader kind of interchangeably, but to make sure that the coach and the leader of the organization has clearly defined the standards and the core values, what is it that you stand for? Right? So for your son, when that occurred, that his teammates belittled him, that's just a core value that a coach has. That conversation early on with the team, here's what we stand for, here's what I stand for. Here are my expectations. The communications piece is a whole big piece, right? And that's the. There's so many components to that of the two way communication, active listening, closing the gaps. As we talked about, you know, in baseball, you know, you look at organizations, right? So I've seen companies come with these great rollouts where they're about to introduce, whether it be a new phone, a new food product, a new drink, they'll get everything all set up they'll have everything lined up, they're all set, ready to go. But the communications just isn't there at one channel or another. And the rollout has its glitches. And they'll blame operations or they'll blame training, or they blame marketing. Where it comes back is it's the coaching, making sure that the communication and everybody understands all of those pieces that go on. And so it really becomes, you know, and there's so much to talk about of being a coach. Right. Being a coach isn't just saying, oh, I'm going to be nice to kids and I'm going to coach my team and I'm going to listen. It's making sure that you're doing all of those things on the success lineup card when they need to be done with, whom they need to be done with or for. And that's where it really becomes an important component of building high performing teams, of having all of those things. And it's not checking the box, it's making sure that it really runs into the organization and the person's DNA. So.

You also did some talent development when you were working with Burger King, and I think that is relevant here. Talk to us about that piece, the a player development there.

Yeah, this was, you know, one of the things that we, you know, we talk about is, you know, building the player, building the team. And that's such an important piece. You know, we'll go out and we'll talk to organizations and when we're going through and we're doing kind of our success lineup evaluation, we'll ask them where they, you know, what they've done for developing their people. And then we'll go and ask the people what they've been developed in. And oftentimes there's a chasm that occurs. Well, and then when you ask the harder question, why isn't this going on? We don't have the time, we don't have the budget, there's too much going on. You know, it's easier if I do it myself. All the wrong answers of trying to build your team for scalability. So years ago, when I was with Burger King, we were quality assurance managers. And our group was responsible to ensure that our teams went out and did a certain amount of unannounced quality assurance. Visit at randomly selected restaurants. Restaurants love to see us come. And monthly we would present our findings to the various regional vice presidents whose territories we visited. And these, you know, sometimes were one on one with the RVP or sometimes with the regional leadership teams. And here we were a corporate team auditing a regional person. Silo, if you will. Right. There was a lot of animosity. There was a lot of. Of just Ajita that was created. Oh, very much so. It was, it was unbelievable. But our vice president wanted to ensure that we were all doing a professional job in these presentations. So he had us not just go to a, like a quick one, you know, hour seminar on how to do presentations. This was a several. It was, I think it was four day presentation class to improve our skills, where we went, you know, it was, it was an unbelievable training and he wanted to make sure that we were all getting better and that in turn we would be presenting his department professionally. This lesson. Right. So he was making us better. He wanted to make his department look stand out better and make sure we were providing good information to the vice presidents, but he wanted us to get better as this department grew and as our responsibilities grew and other people came into the team, you know, Nelson and Gus continued to look for opportunities to develop their entire team and, and the group of quality assurance managers, as we went into other groups, started to develop our team. And it really just became part of our DNA of growing and making those around us better. Right. There's nothing worse than when somebody sits in there and says, I did this while this team or her team standing behind them who did all the work. It is about making sure that your team gets better so that when you scale that you're able to do it with people who have the ability and talents to do that. We see that in the franchise business all the time. Where people want to go from 2 to 4 to 8 to 10 to 12 restaurants or retail shops or retail locations, but they still do it. You know, I hear this over and over. It's easier if I do it myself. Well, Right. There's going to become a time where that's not the right answer.

Right, Right. So you also shared some examples of companies doing it badly. Right?

We did. Right. And there are, you know, there's a lot of them that are out there and just as we went and looked through, and some of them your listeners may be, you know, aware of and some of them that they may not have never even heard of. Right. But there's obviously Theranos, the blood company that obviously, you know, they're in the news now. They are. Right. They're, you know, they're all illegal action. But they misled, they just, they bullied employees. They were just. Everything about coaching a team and following the fundamentals not to do. They did they did, right? Yeah, they raised a ton of capital. They had a, they had a charismatic leader that did a lot of, you know, that said a lot of the right things and everybody bought into it, as you know, no reason why not to. But they never were able to deliver and they never execut. And they didn't have those core values, that mission, they didn't have any of that. It was, it was, it is what it is. You know, you look at Uber and I give the Uber new president, chairman, whatever, you know, you know, some pats on the back because he's out there, he's standing up in front of the brand saying, hey, here's where we made some mistakes, here's what we're doing to correct it. So all of a sudden he's gone back and reevaluating their fundamentals. Right. We're not working with Uber, but that's clearly what they're doing. They're going back, he's coaching his organization on what his expectations are, what their mission, what their vision, what their values are, all of those. So it'll be interesting to see where Uber goes. You know, Volkswagen is another one, right? Where they just. Their fundamentals were flawed, their coaching was flawed. Right. They were, you know, and they're in the news again, right? Is that whole emissions thing and what, what once was that great automobile where people would just buy the Beetle, buy a Volkswagen, it'll last forever. I think a lot of people have a lot of second thoughts as they're thinking about where they want to go by not focusing on the fundamentals and, or coaching your team. It can be so detrimental. Then there's a company you may or may not be familiar with, but Zenefits, Zenefits was an online basic HR organization, helped companies manage their benefits and do all of that. They received a ton of capital, were growing very quickly, but their core values and their coaching was non existent. They had to take regulatory tests so that they could pass, so they could sell and do what they had to do. They were teaching the people how to do this, how to cheat on these exams so that they could take the tests and pass them, but not really have those strong core values. You know, that's like teaching a baseball player to go up and you see this in the college playoffs, if you've been watching out of that, where sometimes players don't get out of the way of a changeup coming in and it hits them and they get ready to walk down to first base and the umpire's like, you don't get to do that because you know, that's not how the game is played. And when you saw that with Zenefits and Volkswagen and all of those, it really is that they've lost sight of their fundamentals and their coaching values. And as I said, you see that with smaller companies and franchise units all the time where they, they want to grow, they want to build the skyscraper before they built their foundation, their successful coaching, their successful lineup foundation of all of those components. And it's not easy. Running a business is not easy. Coaching a team is not easy. And coaching and managing the fundamentals is not easy. But when it's done well, the success stories of some of those franchisees we saw with Burger King who just, you know, even to this day, 10 years, 15 years later, still come to mind for what great organizations and what great coaches they were to their 10 unit, you know, 10 restaurant chain or 50 plus, you know, unit Burger King chain.

Yeah, I'm hearing it. And the thing that I'm mostly getting is this success lineup card card that you've got. Right. That's a lot of pieces that we would find. It's, it's some of the key elements of our one page strategic plan or it, you might even hear it as the. Some of the. And see the relationship. The distilled element. Easy for me to say, right? The distilled elements of our vision summary. So we've got a mission vision that would be purpose and bhag. Typically standard are core values communication. What do you mean by that in this world?

Well, so communicate and that really, that becomes a big piece. And that really is what the second book is. Right. It's a good segue for that on 30 second coaching because we talk about the power of timeouts and business management and the whole, you know, a couple of pieces that come out of the 32nd coaching is that to be an active listener, Right. A lot of people listen to respond. So they're not listening to what you're saying they're listening to. Well, I don't agree with that. Here's what I'm going to answer to that. They're missing what it is and you're not having that conversation on what it is you're really talking about. And when that happens, all things just blow apart. Right. You walk out of meetings and go, what did we agree on? I'm not quite sure what the expectations are. So it really is about making sure you have two ways. Active listening skills when you are a coach. Because it's so important. So many people say my Door's open. Always come in. Feel free to come in and talk to me at any time. Well, you come in, they'll have their two monitors going. Their phone will be ringing, they'll be looking at their phone, they're taking notes, they're not listening to you, they're placating you, but they're not really coaching you or taking you to that next level or being invested in you. And really, when I say invested in you, it's understanding what somebody's why is. Right. Why are they there? Why did they come to work? Why are they in this career? You know, what is it that they're looking for out of this? And those leaders that can answer and understand what somebody's why is, can then, and this always sounds silly when I talk about it, but can then take their why, their corporate why, their department why, whatever that why is, and start to. To show that individual why my why and their why has some value together and why you should do why, you should work together towards that.

Where there's alignment. Yeah, we've spent a lot of time on shows talking about finding and listening for that alignment so that you can get the best work out of people in it. Right?

Correct. Absolutely.

So roles and responsibilities sounds a lot like the work that we've done. We've talked about scorecards before. And the goals is both personal goals and team goals. Right. Short term, long term, celebration, recognition goes to the culture stuff. What does it mean? What does engagement mean in your world?

Yeah, so engagement. And that really goes back to. And I kind of jumped ahead. And that's involving your team. Right. And that's knowing their why, understanding what it is that we just said, and understanding what their why is. But it also really starts with, with onboarding. Right. Making sure that you're understanding and having that conversation with them. Going way back to when I first started with the chart House, you know, to kind of work your way up in the chart House. You would come in, you'd work as a dishwasher, then as a busboy, then as a bar bag, then maybe as a waiter and a waitress and, you know, a valet or whatever the case may be. But whoever we hired, whoever hired anybody that first day, the manager or assistant manager met them at the back door and walked them around, showed them where to hang their stuff, where the time clock was, where to have their dinner break, introducing them to people, how the dining room flowed, whatever was going on. But it was really. And then spend maybe the first five, ten minutes helping them work through the dishes and showing Them, the dish machine before somebody else would start to train them. But it was all of a sudden showing that new team member that you cared about them, you wanted to know a little bit about them, but you were engaged and truly available with them because, you know, as we know as businesses look to scale, right. Gallup tells us that 36% of the U.S. workforce is engaged. 36%, you know, in rough numbers. If you do say that's three out of nine on a youth baseball team, right. You're not, you're not going to be competitive after you go through your first three batters if that's all you have. And so, you know, that's why we stress the focus on onboarding, the focus on knowing their whys, of getting involved and people not being their friends. Right. I mean, I think. And you know, Dave Behney and I worked for Dave. And one of the very first meetings I had with Dave was, I'm not here to be your friend. If you want a friend, buy a dog. We're here to get this business involved. But Dave and I grew to be friends because of just how he managed and what he did. But that's really that engagement level that comes on. And one thing I just want to kind of glossed over it. Celebrations are big, and some organizations don't do a great job with this. If you're watching any of the, you know, the Little League World Series will be coming up with the College World Series going on. When a batter sacrifices himself and moves a runner in the scoring position, he makes an out. If you watch what happened, that's a big thing though, right? That's an important thing. Teams come out, they high five them all of a sudden, you know, and people sit there and go, well, that's a failure. I made an out. Not if you don't understand it. Those little things that happen in business when you may sacrifice yourself for the betterment of the team, whatever that example may be, and you don't get celebrated for it, you don't get recognized for it, just kind of deflates. So I think that even. I think it's so important for celebrations that they are not only for big things, but small things. Because the power of praise goes a long way. And it doesn't have to be a prize, it doesn't have to be a gift certificate. It can be. Hey, Craig, you did a great job on that podcast today. Really enjoyed it. Thanks very much. See you next time. Right? And as people do training podcasts and other podcasts or other things, those things really become important is making sure that those celebration and recognition because when it's not done, then you know, people, you know, they start to feel maybe a little less engaged, a little less enthusiastic about why they're there and they're not. And you don't want them to be fake. You want them to be, you know, to be genuine and of value.

No, you're not talking about participation medals here. You're talking about acknowledging people authentically for the p the elements of whatever they did that was great. Sometimes that's just showing up, right? Sometimes that's what there is there. But whatever there is, like what can you pull on what's working, right?

Absolutely, absolutely.

So the premise is that there's not really a bad like you can get something more out of every team by engaging the team well by bringing good coaching skills to bear on it. The books are no bad team and 32nd coaching book. You can find those on Amazon of course. Or you can go find Craig and read more and connect with him@craigaarons.com we'll put the link right in the show notes as well, but that's craig a h r e n s.com craig aarons and I want to remind folks that our listeners that we're here every week with a speaker, a topic relating to scaling up, to growing your business or the leadership required to do that. I want to thank Craig for joining us. I want to thank you all for listening in and invite you to go to our website where you find over a hundred shows in our back catalog on all of these topics from strategy to developing your people to optimizing the cash of the business to improving your execution habits on and developing your own leadership. So that's all at scaling@business.com craig aarons.com craig thanks again for being on the show with us. We'll listen, we'll connect or talk to you all next time. I want to give special thanks to our original growth guru, Vern Harnish. Our show is produced by Nye Obeyed audio production by Podfly Productions Audio editing by Albert Burge show notes are compiled by Ein Codena with proofreading by Tim McGowan. If you got some value out of the show today, please share it with somebody else and let us know the parts that you loved so we can bring you more of that.

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