Combating The Great Resignation With Dr. Anthony Klotz | SDR #213

Welcome, everybody, to this edition of Service Driver Revolution. Today we have a fascinating interview with a professor of organizational psychology, Anthony Klotz, who coined the term the Great Resignation during the pandemic. He is also a speaker at this year's Top Dog event. If you don't have tickets to Top dog, go to ChrisCollinsInc.com right now and make sure you sign up, because it's going to sell out quick. What we talk about today is we talk about how do we get more younger kids to come into our industry as technicians. We talk about what should our approach be to interviewing, what is acceptable turnover, what are the biggest motivators for production and retention of good employees and much, much more. You're going to want to have a pen and a notepad to take some notes because it's an incredible conversation. You're going to take a lot away from it. It's going to inspire you. Remember, make sure you sign up for Top Dog. And that's what's coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution.

So, Anthony, thank you so much for joining us. You're in beautiful London, my probably favorite city in the world. I love London. Do you experience the art there? Like, have you gone to the National Gallery and done all that?

National Gallery, Tate Modern, and then, you know, a lot of the street art in East London is pretty wonderful too. So soaking in all of it, yeah.

I was blown away how just the setup there with the government and the way they subsidize art, the scene there seems. Seems way more, I don't know, just bigger than what we have in New York or la. It's incredible and very inspiring. Super fun. Okay, so I gotta ask you this question right out of the gate. What is it like being of a viral, you know, sensation, or somebody who's coined something that became viral as you coined the Great Resignation, and then it kind of caught on fire. How does it feel to have that sort of impact on the world?

It feels really strange, but sort of great at the same time. I mean, as researchers, a lot of the time, our research and our ideas never see the light of day. And so our hope is that we have an impact on the real world instead of just the academic world. And so I don't take for granted that this isn't an opportunity that a lot of individuals get. And I also try to keep in mind this is something that I mentioned offhand in an interview, that I had no idea the impact it would have, or that a year and a half later, I'd be doing a podcast about it and it would continue, but it's given me a voice I never thought I'd have and I definitely don't take it for granted, that's for sure.

Do you feel a little bit like.

Being famous for that is a little slice of what you're actually trying to communicate? Because I've watched a lot of interviews that you've done and I mean, you have so much more to say and to contribute. Do you feel like it pigeonholed you a little bit or do you feel like it's just an opening?

Yeah, I mean, for the most part it's been an opening. And part of that comes from, I mean, the prediction sort of came from just like a broad understanding of organizational psychology. And so a lot of getting to talk about the phenomenon allows me to pull from different areas of org psychology. If anything, a number of individuals think that I'm an economist, which I'm. Which I'm absolutely not. I'm a psychologist. And so, you know, the most awkward part is when people say, you know, what's the next prediction that you have for the overall labor market? And really I was sort of probably out of my lane making a prediction about the overall labor market to begin with because I tend to just think in terms of individuals. But in that moment things came together such that it was a pretty good prediction, but that's not the business that I'm in overall.

So kind of give, give us an idea of what got you interested as a, as a kid or a younger adult in organizational psychology. Like what was it that sparked your interest or, you know, was there an event or what happened?

Yeah, so I, I've always, I mean, most kids wouldn't say they're interested in management or leadership as children, but. But I grew up in a family business. It was a chain of heavy dealerships and truck stops. And I was always around my grandpa and my dad who were, who were managing in that environment and sort of always imagined that I would one day work in that family business. So often thinking about leadership and interacting with the employees and then went off to college and got a degree in business, but worked in a small business development center during that time and really was just interested in the different ways that small businesses were led. And after I got out of college, I went and worked for a large organization for Fortune 100 organization in manufacturing plants across North America and got to work in union environments, non union environments. And so I just had all these different management experiences and you know, really got to appreciate what a big impact that your direct manager has and that your leaders have on your organization, aside from things like pay and benefits and promotions and so forth. Just, just how much of an impact managers had. After I worked for that Fortune 100 company, I went back and went into business with my best friend and opening a few collision centers. And it was during that time I got my mba. I took my org psych class in the evenings. And when I took that class and I thought, this person who's teaching this class, all he does is think and study management and he doesn't actually do it. And I think after 20 years of being in management in some sort, from a family business to a big company, I thought if I could dedicate all my time to thinking about management and coming up with these insights and hopefully applying what I learned in the real world, what I learned in the academic world and hopefully have a positive impact on managers out there, that would be a bigger impact than me being an individual manager or leader, at least in my profession. The other thing I realized as I, I really love the people side of management and I worked around these leaders who were excellent operationally and people wise and I realized the operation side I can do, but it doesn't really light my fire. It's the people side that I love. And so everything sort of came together for me to go back and study it full time, which is what I've been doing for the past over 10 years now.

So did you early on see a difference between what was taught, like the idealized version of what's taught in school and what really is happening on the front lines when you're running a business like that? There's a gap there between the two?

Absolutely. I mean, there's a gap in. And really it's a gap where this is like an easier said than done sort of thing thing. So in the classroom, the answers seem fairly easy, but they assume perfect conditions are surrounding the situation. And of course, managers in the real world never have perfect conditions where just one problem is happening and it fits into this perfect box where there's a clear solution. And so it's not so much that what's taught in school is wrong, but it just can't be directly applied. So that's part of what's nice about organizational psychology is we have 30 or 40 theories of how the world works in terms of motivating employees and leading employees. No one of those theories is going to necessarily be a silver bullet when it comes to management. But if you have a broad understanding of them and say, okay, this situation has about 10 different things going on. I think I can navigate through this with the help of that knowledge. Again, there's no sort of silver bullets or aha's because situations are just so different. And you know, when you're managing people say you're managing five people. Like the number of combinations of managing five people, their personalities, the situation, what motivates them is just so much more complex than anything we could get into one theory or one textbook. So that was the big gap that's there. And you'll probably hear me say as we talk today and as we talk in the future, you know, I know what I'm saying is easier said than done, but. And so, you know, what I try to do is offer ideas from my knowledge and the knowledge of the literature and my research. And often leaders will take that and say, yeah, I wouldn't exactly do it like that, but that gives me an idea of something that will work in my situation. And what they've done is they've taken my theoretical idea and said, that won't work in my situation. But if I tweak it to work for me, that is sort of useful. Thanks.

Yeah, that's, that's refreshing. It's interesting because a lot of times in our society, people are looking for a magic pill, so they want it to be, you know, that simple thing. I think about something I talk about in, in our leadership training is, you know, there's a couple people out there and I'm not picking on anybody. I'm just talking about the theory of it that, you know, the idea of like leaders eat last, right? Like that that's a fix all for everything that, that will, you know, impress your employees in a certain way and it'll change you because it's changing your position kind of in your mind when you're, when you're doing that. And my point is like, that's one toolbox, you know, that you can pull out of many tools. But I've seen many successful leaders that everybody stands up when they walk in the room and, you know, they, they don't eat with the, with the rest of the employees. And that serves a purpose in that situation. And so there's many, you know, there's many different approaches and being open to the different approaches and understanding why they work and how you can apply them is probably more important than being really good at just one of them.

Yeah, I think that is, that's spot on. And it's all about, you know, having those toolboxes with you and having those skills and Then getting into a situation and saying, you know, which of these tools are useful to me and which ones aren't, based on the situation that I'm coming into. Is this an established team that's performing well already, or is it a complete turnaround I need to do based on the personalities of the team? And to the point that you were just making about leaders eating last, like, what sort of cultural context am I in? Is it one where the boss is the boss and the world only makes sense to me when the boss acts like a boss? And that's true in many parts of the world where the boss eating last would be viewed as like, you're making the whole team look bad if, if the leader looks bad. And so I think, I think that's exactly right. And that's what, you know, I'm always impressed with leaders who can move from one situation to another. And you see, they're not using the same style in each situation. They're not making the teams and the employees conform to them per se. They're pulling different tools out of their toolbox and changing their style based on the situation to be successful.

Yeah, I think the best leaders are the ones that are asking a lot of questions and trying to understand the situation, not impose their will. Initially, there's a time of fact finding and then imposing your will. But the fact finding sets up the other part, I think.

Yeah. And there's all this talk about analytics right now, and what you just described is to me, a form of sort of evidence based management of sitting. And when you're new in a leadership role, collecting data, not in the sense of like giving everybody a survey and analyzing it, but sitting back and seeing, you know, what are the dynamics in this group? What is the situation that I'm in? And so often when I'm teaching MBA students, you know, they're very gung ho and ready to go, and they say, what's the first thing I need to do when I get into a new leadership role? And I say, you know, shutting up is a good idea. Like just sitting with your mouth shut and watching the situation that you're in and then deciding what you need to do is probably a good start. And that's a bit counterintuitive because there's this thought that good leaders charge in and take control of the situation. But that's not, not necessarily true in the real world.

Yeah. For, for a big part of my career, early on, I would go into businesses that were underperforming or broken and turn them around very quickly. And one thing that I realized right away is because part of the process was to interview all the employees. Most of the time, I learned more from the frontline employees, like the cashiers, customer service reps, shuttle drivers. They knew who was good, who was calling back, who was sleeping with who. You know, they kind of knew more about everything. But when then I would sit with ownership and, you know, the managers, I knew more about what was going on than they did. They could have worked there 10 years, and they really never asked anybody on the front lines what they thought. The second thing is, I had all this equity because I just sat and listened to the employees. I could then go out. And even if my. What I was doing was a dramatic change, I had enough equity with them that they would give it a shot because I'd listened to them. And.

Yeah, I think listening is probably the most important thing, not to show your cards at all, because once you listen, also, you can repackage what you're trying to do as their idea. A lot of times, you know, I could say, well, you. You in the interview, you guys said this, so. And, you know, this is the. The answer to that. And they'd be like, oh, okay, yeah, you're right. So it gives you a lot of equity.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And it's sort of strange. I mean, you mentioned listening, and I could not agree more. And listening has been around. Right. Since the dawn of time, and it's something that we all know about, and yet it's only now, I think, becoming recognized, especially in Western cultures, as a really powerful and impactful tool that leaders should have. And I was just suggesting the other day, like, in our executive education and MBA education. This seems silly, but are we emphasizing listening enough because it's such a great tool. Exactly what you said. For gaining information, but also for building trust. And we think for building trust and building relationships, we have to be the talkers, but it's actually a lot of the time, the listening, because we all like to hear ourselves talk, and it's great when somebody wants to genuinely actively listen to us. That's a great way to build a relationship and build trust.

Yeah, I think, too, like, I was lucky in the sense that I was really young, so I was, like, 24 when I started, and I was surrounded by older, experienced managers that I was coming in to tell them what to do. But I was a kid without a huge resume. And so I think me listening was out of almost being shy and a little insecure in the beginning. But what I realized very early on is if I. If I said anything, it would be taken. And, you know, the narrator. I wasn't controlling the narrative anymore because they would take it and run, like. So. For example, early on in one of the interviews, one of the employees asked me, are you going to change our pay plan? And I said, oh, yeah, we're changing all the pay plans. And then the next day I come in and everybody's going to quit, and we want to see the pay plan. And what. And, you know, there was no reason for me to say that. And I. I just learned that all I do is listen and just reinforce the positive until it's time to change the pay plan. And then when you're going to change the pay plan, you're packaging it with other things so they can see where we're going to end up.

And.

And it isn't, you know, hey, we're just cutting. Because that never. You know, that never really works either. So I think my. I got lucky because I was. I was shy and a little, you know, a little.

Insecure, I guess, with what I was doing. Because sometimes I would go back to my hotel and I would think, like, I can't believe I'm doing this. Like, they're listening to me. I'm a kid, you know, so it's. It's funny that I lucked into that, but it really was something I noticed early on that was my tool. The other thing about listening that I think a lot of people don't understand is.

If you're a good listener, it comes off as a little intimidating, and people tell you more. So if you just listen and you don't tip your hat, people will tell you, oh, yeah, no, I've been stealing out of the tiller. There's so many times that I would. That people would admit to things that you would never expect somebody to admit to just because I wasn't talking. It's funny.

Yeah. There's this interesting discomfort that we have, me included with dead air, with open space. And so if you have somebody who's really good at just sitting there listening, and I think probably a lot of therapists have this strength, we tend to disclose more information than we normally would. And so, yeah, I think that's brilliant.

I saw a thing the other day that. That was something that Steve Jobs did when he interviewed people, is he would ask a kind of weird question that wasn't really answerable and just see if people were quiet or if they had to fill the space, and if they had to fill the space. Then he thought, well, they're, you know, they're insecure. Was kind of his judgment there.

Yeah, I, I would, you know, I would guess that if we gave those individuals like a security insecurity survey afterwards, it pro probably would correlate pretty highly with his informal test.

What do you think is the thing that most of us misunderstand about organizational psychology?

That's a good question. You know, I think most leaders see the value in organizational psychology or I like to think are somewhat organizational psychologists at heart. Because if you really enjoy leading, managing individuals, you realize that it's an act of organizational psychology getting to know each individual and getting to know how they respond in different situations. And that's it. These person and situation interactions that can happen in millions of ways and trying to solve that and trying to put together a process for bringing out individual performance in that situation. I do think there are workers and there are individuals who are very suspicious of organizational psychology in terms of like, should work be a place where managers or psychologists are trying to get into employees heads or should that, you know, really work should just be a transaction. I show up, I work, you pay me for that. End of story. And you know, there's been a lot of discussion about this over the past month with this concept of quiet quitting that has come up and there has been pushback on organizational psychologists who part of what we do is say like how, how do we make it so that employees enjoy work or that, you know, that they bring, we bring out the best of employees at work, not only for the benefit of the worker, but obviously for the benefit of the organization too. We've all seen the statistics of how many hours we spend at work. And I think we want to maximize employee well being and understand it so that we can maximize employee well being for those hours. And so I do think there's a number of individuals who say, you know, psychology is great, but psychology and work gets a little uncomfortable because are you manipulating employees for the benefit of work organizations and those sorts of things? Which is certainly not the case. We're just trying to understand how to bring out people's best at work. But I can also understand some of the suspicion or cynicism about it.

Don't you think that that is a little naive though? In the sense like I'm always blown away by like cult leaders or you know, people, even politicians that get people to believe a certain narrative that isn't true doesn't benefit the person. And at the end of the day we can't get our People to show up on time. Like there is. There is a degree of psychology in understanding of human behavior that you have to have in order to create a culture where people are working, they're enthusiastic about the problem that we're trying to solve in the marketplace, the value we're trying to add as a company into the marketplace. And so don't you think it's a little naive to think that we don't need those tools?

I think it is a little bit shortsighted, and it might be naive, and it also might be.

A problem or something that's brought up where I say, well, what is the solution then? I mean, if you view work as just this necessary evil where the best way to handle it is just, you know, to be very transactional for eight hours a day, I don't think that leads to a very pleasant society. And so, yeah, sure, if we could create this utopia where work didn't exist, you know, then maybe you'd look at organizational psychology and say, what's the point? I don't see that world, you know, happening, and I don't know if it's that desirable anyway. And so the reality is we have plenty of evidence that shows that work can be this fulfilling place and that can give employees a lasting sense of satisfaction, a lasting sense of meaningfulness. And that correlates strongly with life satisfaction, you know, for much of us, because of how much of our lives happen at work, if we're happy at work, we tend to be pretty happy at life. And so if we're. If we're going to have to work, which most of us do, and we know how. How work can be made meaningful, then I think this is something that we. That we ought to share. I think it's important to say, like, the meaningfulness and satisfaction of work that I'm talking about doesn't happen by default. Like work just sitting there in and of itself. I don't know that that leads to satisfaction and meaningfulness for everyone. What we do know is leaders and organizations can imbue work with purpose, meaning, and be a source of contentment for employees. And so I think that's where organizational psychology can come in, is, you know, leaders and managers are busy, and in the midst of firefighting, in the midst of the extreme job demands they have, they sometimes make bad decisions and sometimes lose sight of some of the understanding that we have in organizational psychology. And so the point is just, you know, going back to the toolbox that we've been talking about is to make sure they have access to the tools to design work in a way that helps people live better lives.

I had an experience years ago that was very profound for me. Do you know the actor George Hamilton, older actor, early.