92 - Embracing Humble Leadership and Cultivating Kindness with Kevin Sherman

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Kevin Sherman, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO of Tractor Beverage and can be found at drinktractor.com. Got that right, huh? Pretty good. Not bad for an old lawyer. So tell us a little bit about your backstory, Kevin.

Sure. Again, you know, I've been with Tractor. I've been with Tractor for, in totality, about 7 years. I started off as an advisor to the company, and then I got on the board of directors of the company about 4 years ago. I came in as the chief marketing officer of the company. I'll give you the background before I got there too, but kind of speed up with Tractor. About 4 years ago, I came in as the Chief Marketing Officer of the company, worked with our current Chief Brand Officer to help get that brand to where it is today. I'm going to give him most of the credit because he did a phenomenal job, Justin Herber. And then about 3 years ago, I was moved into the CEO role of the company. So I've been the CEO for, for 3 years. That's just the Tractor side before Tractor. And I will let you dig in where you see significant. I'll make this kind of quick because it's a long and winding road, and I think it's pertinent, though, to how I ended up at Tractor. I grew up in a kind of a hardscrabble life. I had to help take care of some very ill members of my family. My mother came down with cancer. I had a father with a cerebral hemorrhage. Severely mentally handicapped sister that at a very early age I had to kind of, you know, pull together and really help them financially at an early age. So, you know, during high school I had to work through high school, pay for high school, help my mom pay the mortgage. And then when it came time to go to college, I was faced with the reality that if I wanted to go to school, I had to find a way to make that, make that work. So I worked all the way through college while at the same time helping my parents financially. I bring that up only because I think that work ethic that was established at such an early age was so critical to who I become. And more importantly, I'm going to kind of translate that into even the Tractor story, being a startup, being an entrepreneur, being on the startup side of what we did tractor takes a lot of grit and it takes a lot of just the reality of there's a lot of hard obstacles along the way when you start a company and you start to build a company. So I just give you that background because I think that really paved the way. I graduated with a degree in philosophy. There's not much you can do with a degree in philosophy. Yeah, it was, it was great. I'm very grateful for it, but I thought I was going to be a professor. Due to the fact that I had to really kind of help out financially, I decided that, you know, being an academic wasn't going to be the best path. So I started a job at Fidelity Investments. In Boston, Massachusetts. I did that for some time, and I quickly realized I did not want to be in finance, and I didn't want to really be in an office. I was much younger at that point, so I packed up my Jeep and I went out to the Apache Indian Reservation in New Mexico, where I became a teacher for some time. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I was a teacher there on the Apache Indian Reservation in northern New Mexico, developed some programs for some of the high schoolers as a pipeline for their GED. After my time there, I went directly into South Central Los Angeles where I became a teacher in the Watts District of Los Angeles, South Central. I thought I was going to be there for maybe a year or two. I was there for— in that, in that general area, so covering everything from Watts to Wilmington to Long Beach, California, more in that urban area. I spent the next 10 years, was a teacher, became a principal in some of the schools there, and really devoted a huge portion of my, my entire life to just advancing urban education for, for children that just didn't have the same opportunities that more affluent areas had. While I was doing that, I was also spending some summers in Africa building teacher training programs in Uganda and Tanzania for children. And that was incredibly eye-opening to be able to do that on many levels. Then after education, I started working for a company called Beachbody, which their claim to fame was P90X. So I was on a team that kind of saw that meteoric rise company just really took off. I left that company. That's why I'm kind of speeding up here, and I'll let you stop me wherever you want to stop. But I left that company and then became a CEO of a publicly traded company in the nutritional space. This was back, I think, in 2008 during the financial crisis. That company ended up getting picked up by some private equity. Left that company, started another company, another beverage company that eventually reverse merged into another company, and then I landed at Tractor. Wow. So that's a long kind of overview, but there's a lot of interesting parts to kind of how I got to Tractor. But I just wanted to give you that background.

I'm really glad you did. So much of what you have done in your life resonates with me. I am the co-founder of Prison of Peace.. And we started that project in 2010, and we trained life and long-term inmates in maximum security prisons how to become peacemakers and mediators to stop prison violence. So the work, the service work you did for all those years really resonates with me because I've had the same, same basic experience of serving the underserved in very difficult circumstances. And Wow, hats off to you, man. That's really powerful.

Yeah, look, and I really applaud you for that work as well. Look, I've always said that, you know, this gets into a much deeper conversation, but I feel like service, right? And I think that there's a— it's overused when you hear servant leadership and you hear it all the time. And I feel like it's just kind of thrown around and I was just talking to someone yesterday about this, and they work for a very, very large beverage company, and they were saying how it's almost used as a simple phrase that they throw around, but it's not really lived. I think it's hard to live it unless you've done it. I think it's really hard to understand, um, how critical it is. I just think for your own just maturity and your own development as a human being to just be at the service of another human being first and foremost. You've got put yourself in those uncomfortable situations. And once you do that, you realize just how deficient you are in some virtue and where it just gives you some huge opportunity to grow in the virtues that you just lack.

That's right.

What does come out is your vice, like the areas that you just are really terrible at. So a big part of just kind of my leadership model and the way that I try to you know, lead is by encouraging people to just put themselves in those uncomfortable positions and, you know, branch out and recognize just how grateful one should be because there are so many people in this world that are just really going through very, very, very, very challenging, challenging times. And sometimes you just got to get out of your head and put yourself in someone else's shoes and you know, see a whole side of things.

I think we would both agree that what gives at least you and I meaning, uh, in life is service to others. I mean, that's what Viktor Frankl wrote about.

100%.

And when you devote yourself to a life of service to others, I mean truly in a way that you and I have experienced it, it really changes you. In profound ways. And it's very hard to describe to people who haven't had that experience what, what it, how it changes you. Um, and, and when I agree with you, when I hear the term servant leadership, I see it's a nice sounding term, but unless you really truly served at a deep level in a difficult situation, you really don't understand what it means. You can't understand it because you haven't experienced it. And I think that's, that's the difference.

Wow. I love that you brought up Viktor Frankl because, um, you know, I, I refer people many times to read his book. Um, and, you know, one of the things that's so fascinating about Viktor Frankl is that the one takeaway that I, I, I got from the book was you know, people can take an awful lot from you, but they can't take away your dignity unless you give them the right to take away your dignity. And this gets into the very profound thought of, you know, the comment around knowing one's worth, knowing your worth, you know, and I think when you work with people that are less fortunate, you start to see a dignity in them that is robbed so often. It's constantly robbed. And you realize that literally through some strokes of luck and just the universe, that you're not in their shoes, but they are as dignified as you are regardless of their position, regardless of their, you know, their, their status in the eyes of so many. But they have such a profound dignity just being a human being. And I think that is so lost. And in this culture, more than ever, where we put such a concentration on things rather than people, dignity just becomes so diminished. And Frankl talks about this, and I think it's just such a— such an amazing concept.

Um, I, um, well, of course he was a Holocaust survivor, so lived in the most horrible circumstance you can think about. What I learned, which I was really quite surprised at, was humility. Working with incarcerated populations, both men and women, we started in the largest, most violent women's prison in the world. And I was the white guy, gray hair, lawyer, big. I'm a big man, 6'1", yeah, 215, 210 pounds. Um, I was— everything that had happened to these women was bad was because of somebody like me.

Yeah.

And having to learn how— having to drop any pretense of who— that I knew what I was talking about, or I knew who I was, and I was here, you know, as a professor.

Not at all.

All went out the window. Yeah, it was really, it was probably one of my— I've had several life-changing experiences. That was one of them.

Yeah, Doug, you know, that's another just again profound word because I think it is, it is overused. You know, I was just thinking before our podcast today, one of the things I've been just thinking a lot about is that whole concept of humility and even in leadership. It's so hard for, I think, so many people in leadership positions to be humble because they think they have all of the answers. They think that they know it all. And it's difficult for so many to just ask the opinion of others and to let other people weigh in because they might have a better solution or they might have a better idea. Than the so-called leader in the room. And true leadership is to listen, to really listen, and to pay close attention to the opinions of others because you start to realize that you just don't have all the answers. But I think, you know, again, in leadership, I think it's a really, I think it's trying for some because it's kind of this concept of they think that they have to have all the answers and they have to be the one. And yet, what's the purpose of building a team? The purpose of building a team is to rely on one another to help you arrive at a destination, to arrive at a solution. And it takes great humility to just step back and just to say, hey, what is your opinion on this? What is your recommendation?

And to that point, this getting us a little deeper requires a level of authenticity and vulnerability which also requires a level of deep self-confidence that you can be wrong, you, you can be ignorant, you can be not the man on the mount, but you're just there present and authentic and open and willing, willing to be told things maybe that you don't want to hear, but you're okay with that because that's part of the process.

Right.

Well, not, and not feeling like you've got a command and control. That's a tough place to be and it takes a lot of maturity to get there.

Yeah. It's an uncomfortable place to be, but yet I believe wholeheartedly is that is exactly the crucible of growth, right? The only way you can truly grow, truly, truly grow is to know that you don't have all the answers and to know that there is a lot of room for improvement. Hence the reason why I bring up the idea of growing in virtue, right? First, understanding and identifying what are the virtues that you just want to grow in? Where are some areas that you just see personal growth that you're just not good at? And then attacking those by putting yourself in an uncomfortable position to grow in those virtues. But it's the only way to grow, right? You have to first identify what are you not good at and then put yourself in that situation to grow in that, because it doesn't happen through osmosis that you say, hey, I struggle with humility, I'm just going to become humble.

Well, you—

it doesn't work like that. You do it by humbling yourself. That's how you get there. You do it by just simply realizing that sometimes the people around you are much smarter than you., and they might have completely different opinions and completely different solutions to the problems that we're confronted with, and allowing them to lead, allowing them to take the mantle and giving them the credit to lead. And again, that is, you know, to your point, confidence and self-assurance. Once you kind of get over yourself, you're not so worried about always being number one. You're more concerned with making sure that the team is number one.

Exactly.

That's a—

that— I mean, we're talking about stuff here that I don't think many leaders really talk about very much. Um, I'm not reading— I mean, when I'm looking, looking at readership stuff, you know, there's so much fluff on Inc. and Fast Company and Forbes, just a lot of garbage out there. And but you don't hear people talking about this very much. Why do you think that is?

Well, I think we're I think we're conditioned. I think we're conditioned to think that business leaders, CEOs have to give a certain talk track, right? You know, it's about performance and revenue, hitting numbers. And I believe that those are all critically important because you do have a fiduciary right, you know, responsibility to your shareholders. But at the same time, something we're trying very hard to do at Tractor is kind of flip the script where we firmly believe that if you encourage people to have and live their best life personally, really making it concrete to put your family first before the job, put your husband, your wife, your significant other, your children, put that before your job, your job actually becomes that much more awesome rather than saying your job is more important than your family. And I think a lot of people talk about this, but I think it's a very hard thing to actually live and to do it. And one of the things that we're trying to constantly do here at Tractor is just enforcing that with the team is that we believe that the unlock to a balanced life between work and your personal life is to put your personal life first. Get that right. Put your emphasis in getting that, you know, mind, body, and spirit component of your personal life right. Get that right. Once you get that right, And if we can help in any way with that, then the work life just enhances that. It becomes that much better. I think a lot of business talk now is so focused on production and people are second. And we've said, you know, kind of something we've coined here is, you know, we put people before production. You can be incredibly successful. Tractor's on a great tear. We're doing really well, but we are because of the team that we built and because they're the ones that are executing on the plan. But we're always reminding them to make sure that you don't lose the balance of making sure that your personal life isn't sacrificed for the job. To your point, I think a lot of these articles we read, it's still so focused on production. People are second.

Yeah, that goes all the way back to the beginning of the industrial age, and workers were just fungible goods that came in and did labor in the factories, and, you know, the higher-ups just commanded like generals on a battlefield. And that model still persists in people's heads. I'm curious, at Tracker, how does— can you give me a story or an example of how this manifests with the people? Can you think of anything that comes to mind where you've seen how you have, when you put people first, somebody, you got them to put their family first, for example, that all of a sudden they shifted in terms of their contribution to the company?

Yeah, let me give you, let me just start because I do believe that just in my role as the CEO, if I don't live it, it's very hard for me to preach it. So on a very personal level, they all know I have a pretty severely autistic son. Um, in fact, it's one of the reasons why we missed one of our interviews, if you remember. Um, it is not uncommon for me, um, to have to alter my day and alter my schedule because there might be a situation where it might be overwhelming for my wife. She might need an extra hand. That I am very clear that I've built a team around me that can handle anything. If something were to fall, they can pick up the phone, they can deal with it. But if I need to go, I need to go. And I share this with my entire Tractor team that that will always take precedent over everything if there is a need there. Whether it's my wife that needs help or my son needs aid. And it's not uncommon that I've had to drop things and had to, you know, go home and help and just take him to therapy, whatever the case may be. I start that off by just saying, if I can't do that and I can't let the team know that the CEO of the company at times might need to do that, they're not going to do it. There are other cases within the company that people have come to me that are dealing with. And look, here's another reminder, Doug. I often tell people it's relative to a degree in that everyone is carrying a tremendous weight on their shoulders. I know that. I know that people at our company, they have their, their personal lives, they have their work lives, but everyone has obstacles in life that they're dealing with. And not that we're going to know what those are, but I do encourage one another to just constantly reach out and to walk in each other's shoes, because sometimes somebody just needs a break. And something that I often tell people is you have to know kind of your own gauge and like, you know, keep an eye on the, on the pressure valve that The reason why we're building such a strong sense of team is that there might come times where you just have to, you might have to bow out for a day or two and take a rest. And we give you the freedom to do that. We want you to do it. We don't want you to feel like you can't do it. Let me give you an example. There's an employee in the company who with some trepidation came to me once and was like, hey, you know, now working a tractor, it's a little bit different. I've always wanted to coach my child's team. I've never been in the situation where I can do it. I've always wanted to coach their team. And my immediate response was like, I'd be upset if you didn't do it. Well, it might come in some schedules, some days, like it's going to come during the workday. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I'd be upset if you didn't coach. You're never going to get that back. You're never going to get that time back. We will figure out how to work around it, but you better coach your son's team, right? Other cases with some members that have had some, you know, sick family members, and just reminding them that the care for their sick family members far outweighs the agenda of the day for work, meaning That's why you have a team. Hand it off to someone else. You're not going to get that time back. Be with that sick family member. Take the time you need to be with that sick family member. So we're trying to embed this into the DNA. It is really hard, obviously, as a virtual company, because you just don't, you don't see people face to face. And look, I'm really big on the human interaction. I don't think you can do this over Zoom. I don't think you can do this over a call. There's gears on people's Faces and body language, when you see that they're stressed and you can see that they're, they're carrying a lot of weight, you can make the call right then and there. Being a virtual company, that gets really tough. So we're trying to encourage one another to spend more time together. Um, you know, we had close to 20 people in our Denver office this week, which is not a common thing to be doing, uh, because everyone is remote. But, you know, there were just some people that I pulled aside and I can tell that they had some pressure and some stress, and I'm just like, you know, take, take some time, take some time off.

I suspect that because you as the CEO and Tractor as a company are showing deep loyalty to your people, that they're reflecting that deep loyalty back to you. Is that the experience you're having?

Yeah, I wouldn't say back to me as much as they're expressing it to each other. Okay, it's not just to me, it's It's to each other. Like, the team is so phenomenal in the way that they interact with one another, the way that they treat one another, the way that they know that this is kind of a company in a space where you can, where you can treat people first and foremost with kindness and empathy. Like, that is the culture that we have here. That's how you treat people. It just opens up the door. I had an employee yesterday tell me, working for a big company, that she pinches herself because she's so used to jockeying for positions and always having to defend her positions and always having to stand up for her dignity. And she's like, Tractor is a place where I don't have to do any of that. I just don't have to put all that mental gymnastics into just making a point. I can just be. And everyone just simply wants to be on the same page and win as an overall team. So it's not loyalty to me as much as it is loyalty to one another.

Well, that's even— that's priceless. It's priceless. Um, amazingly enough, we've eaten up 30 minutes. What a phenomenal— I could talk to you for hours, man. What, what an amazing conversation. And what an amazing leader you are. I really, I'm really impressed. I, I've done this, I know, somewhere in the 80s of podcasts and all CEOs, and you are, you are ahead above everybody else. And I don't mean to just compliment you because of that, but you truly are. I mean, um, you've got, you've got the right stuff. I hope a lot of people watch our conversation and learn from it. So thank you so much, Kevin.

Well, thanks for taking the time, Doug, and I really appreciate it. And keep doing what you're doing. I think it's so refreshing to have a conversation that isn't about the bottom line, the revenue bottom line, but the bottom line, which is people. Like, that is the bottom line. It's listening to people we work with. Right. So I really appreciate that you have this podcast, and I encourage you to keep it up and just Honor to be on. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episode, Go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.