Finding Better Ways: A Guide To Becoming An Indispensable Leader With Darby Vannier

Welcome to beyond you'd why podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now, let's meet today's guest.

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. So if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And this week, we're going to be talking about the why of better way. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator and you are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better? You contribute to the world with better processes and systems. While operating under the motto, I'm often pleased but never satisfied. You are excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something. So today, I've got a great guest for you. His name is Darby Veneer. He has over 20 years of experience in leadership development and strategic consulting. He has led effective teams of more than 100 employees, coached others into their own leadership positions, and created stability during challenging organizational transitions. Darby built his career on the philosophy that developing the right people and is the key to success. Darby, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks a lot, Gary. It's great to be here. I appreciate you having me on.

Hey, well, so leadership sounds like it's your thing, right? That's where you've spent your time.

I literally wrote the book on it.

That's right. Well, hey, so let's go back in your life. Take us back through where were you born? Where did you grow up? What were you like in high school? How did you get on this path of leadership?

Yeah. So it's an interesting story from a young age. I was born in a small town in Nebraska and when I say small, I mean really small. I watched several or listened to several of your podcasts and you had JB Owen on she said small town of 70,000 and I was like, that's not very small. But so I was born in a small town in Nebraska and I had a great childhood. But about first or second grade I suppose it was, it was the mid-80s and the economy kind of was bad. My father and grandfather owned a Ford dealership and people just stopped paying their bills because they didn't have any income. So it affect the dealership. And I, at a certain point, I remember I can tell you exactly where we were and what we were eating and what we were driving when my parents said, we're going to have to move, the Ford dealership is going to close and we're going to get in the car and we're going to drive west until your dad finds a job and that's where we're going to end up. And that's what we did. And we ended up in Longmont, Colorado and we weren't there very long and we made our way back to Nebraska. But that set off a series of moves, I think five times in six years at one point. And I kind of got to the point as a kid where I was like, you know, this is not really worth trying to make friends. So I kind of shut down and I was, I remember starting a school and I was like standing outside the classroom with the teacher and my parents trying to convince me to go in and I'm like, nope, I'm not going to do it, I'm not doing it again. But, but I tell you that because it caused me to be and whether this would have happened or not, who knows. But it caused me to be an introverted person. And I continue to be to this day. Although there's a broad spectrum of introverted people. I love standing in front of people and speaking and that sort of thing. And a lot of introverts don't. But what that meant is I got really good at being self reliant and planning things and understanding exactly how I was going to make things happen. So when I came into college, I was the one that wanted to be in charge of every group project because I want it to be to be organized and I wanted to know who was doing what and that everything got done and I could check all the boxes and everything. And at a certain point I actually had somebody asked me to participate in our residence hall council and they needed some assistance in getting funding from the student senate from our university. So I agreed to do that. And that really, like, that's where I like took off from a leadership standpoint. And that was kind of a turning point because from that time on, like in college, I helped start, I don't know, three or four new campus organizations and served as president of those. And so pretty much from that time on, all the way into my career since then, like leadership's been a thing and like that sort of feeling. So going through your process and understanding the better way, it made total sense actually, with that part of my life and my career and everything.

You're always in search of a better way.

Right.

Okay, so you, where, where'd you go to college?

I went to a small college here in Lincoln, Nebraska called Nebraska Wesleyan University. And then later I got my master's online from University of Phoenix. I was working in retail, so I was like, I got to have a creative way to do this because I can't, I don't have set hours very well with what I'm doing. So the online thing worked great for me. And my master's came from University of Phoenix. But.

Okay, so graduated from college then. What was your career path initially? What did you do right out of school?

Yeah, I had a pretty diverse set of circumstances throughout my career. So right out of college I actually started managing at a 22 screen AMC movie theater. So I was one of like, I don't know, we probably had six or seven managers at this huge movie theater. But that's how I started my career and I took over. Everybody kind of does operations manager in a theater that size, but then you also have a specialty area. And I became the HR manager and training manager. So I did all the hiring and training and everything of all of our people as well. So I started out there. From there I moved on. I actually moved further into the retail setting. I took over as a store manager of a Kinko's, which is now FedEx office, which was quite an experience because at that time all the kinkos were still 24 hours. So managing a 24 hour retail store was interesting because you'd work 10 hours and go home and have dinner and then you'd get a phone call and that your overnight person was calling in six. You'd like have to go back and work all night then too, and everything. And I did that for about six years. And I got to the point where I'm like, you know, these hours are kind of wearing on me and I'm kind of tired of the retail setting. So I went into the nonprofit world and I took over managing a national association, livestock association. And I did that for about 11 years. Took that organization through a variety of challenges. It had a lot of challenges from the very start. So it worked well for my personality because I'm good at solving problems. But took that organization, grew, it actually merged with another national organization. So went through that whole merger process and everything. And then again, kind of got to a point where I'm like, I'm kind of ready to be done reporting to boards because I got new bosses basically every single year as new board members came in. And 11 years of that was a long time. So I moved into my current role, which is with a leadership development company. So we do leadership coaching and leadership training, strategic planning for companies. So that fit really well for me, especially being on the operations side and being able to help the organization from that standpoint. So that gets us up to date anyway. Yeah, yeah.

So what took you? Why did you decide to go into leadership development?

I don't know that I ever like made a decision early on in my career to do that, but leadership's always been a big part of everywhere that I was. Even when I was at Kinko's, I actually, while I was a store manager, I actually did training for our district and our region. Leadership based training for Kinko's as well. And I participated in a lot of groups, like CEO groups and stuff within that organization. And so it's always been an important part to me and the people side of it. I tend to build really strong relationships with. With my team members. I spend a lot of time on the hiring process to get those individuals in and then I try to coach them along because that's. That I think is really important. So when this opportunity came up to go to a company that specializes in that, it just seemed like a perfect fit. And. And that's how I ended up doing that.

Okay, so you wrote a book on leadership. What's the title of your book?

It's called the Indispensable Leader.

And why did you title it that way?

So the whole premise of the book is this idea. You've heard people say, are you a manager or are you a leader? And I kind of start out the book by saying, I think that's the wrong question because I know a lot of really great managers who are also leaders. And by asking the question, are you one or the other, it means you can't be both. And I don't think that that's right. So I said, look at it like you have manager characteristics and you have visionary characteristics. So you have those manager characteristics that are like, highly organized, process oriented. They are the people who are asking about what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. And then you have the visionary side where you have those folks who are like high visionary, lots of ideas. Those are the folks who are asking or explaining why we're going to do it. They're highly passionate. So the premise of the book is you should try to become an indispensable leader. And what that means is rather than trying to exist on one end or the other of that spectrum between manager and visionary, which you don't want to be on the far end of either side, view it more like a Venn diagram where you're taking the manager and leader characteristics and you're overlaying them and you're picking the best traits of both to try to create your into this indispensable leader position, because that serves you well. So the book kind of takes you through that. And I use a lot of personal stories from throughout my life that illustrate various things and various characteristics that are important, both from the positive and a negative side. And I kind of talk through those things as well.

Okay, so how do you define leadership?

Well, that's difficult because I think everybody views it a little bit differently.

What is leadership? Everybody talks about it.

Yeah. So in one form or another, it's really just the ability to be able to influence others towards a, a vision. So you have to be able to convey what the vision is. And that that might be some overarching vision or that might be some, hey, we have this project to complete. This is what it's going to look like in the end. So you have to rally people behind some vision in order to accomplish some task or some overarching vision. And that's the, that's the whole essence of, of leadership. Now, there's a lot that goes into it because you have to build a lot of relationships and you have to deal with interpersonal things between team members and coach people along. And depending on what the task is or what you're trying to accomplish, those can be easy Things or they can be very complex things that take a long period of time to accomplish.

So what is it that makes a great leader?

You know, I think there's a lot of things, but some of the, a few of the specific things that I talk about in my book, one of them is really great leaders are people who are curious. They want to constantly be learning. They know they don't have all the right answers. It's one thing when I hire people, I always say I'm not trying to hire a cookie cutter of Darby because we already have a Darby, and that's plenty. I need people that can fill the areas that I know that I have less skill in or that sort of thing. So I'm looking for people to fill those gaps. And that is how. How you know that is is by constantly learning and thinking about what you know and trying to stay curious about things. The other thing is, is a great leader really understands that not everything's going to be easy. I've had a lot of setbacks in my career, and I talk about some of them in my book, and you just don't let them sink you. And you hear that a lot when you talk about people who are entrepreneurs. But that applies to just general leadership, like stuff. It just happens. You're dealing with people, you're dealing with situations. There are going to be setbacks. You have to view those as challenges and opportunities, things that only add to your experience. And I guarantee you, when you look back, certainly when I look back at some of the challenges I've had, I can see exactly how they helped me in my career. Didn't feel great at the time, but it was beneficial in the long run. And then a couple of other things, really great leaders listen. They listen to understand. They don't just listen to respond. What I mean by that is, is you sometimes have people where you're talking to them and you can tell they. They're trying to think in their head and they know what they want to say. So they're just. That's all they're thinking about, is how they're going to respond to you. So they don't actually hear what you say. So you have to really listen and listen so that you can understand. The other part of that listening is, is. And this is actually one of my mentors told me this at one point, and it made total sense. Spend your time listening. But then when it comes time to act, you have to be able to act like you have to make the decision. That's why you're in the role that you're in. So make the decision and move forward. And then the last thing is really great. Leaders are just. They're kind. I tell people, just be kind. Everybody has their own stuff going on. If you think about the team members that are on. On your team, everything that they have going on, you aren't going to know everything that's going on in their life. So they're going to make mistakes. They're going to have days where they get upset and say something stupid to you that they probably shouldn't say to their boss or their manager. You have to just understand that everybody has stuff. You have stuff in your life and that will help you as a leader. There's certainly a lot more than that, but those are some of the main things that I usually talk about when I coach individuals.

So do you think that being a great leader is something that's just in you, or is it something that is you're able to learn?

Yeah, that's a great question. I actually talk about this in the book, and I am a firm believer of that leaders are made and not born because I'm a perfect example. I gave you that story of being an introvert and everything. I never would have imagined that I was ever going to lead people until that point in college where it kind of shifted. And that was all because of the experiences that I had in college and the opportunities that I was given. It had nothing to do with how I was born. Are there people who are born who may be more charismatic or that sort of thing? Sure, and those things help, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be a great leader. You can have a highly charismatic person who's not a great leader, but I'm a firm believer that leaders are made and not born.

So has leadership changed, maybe leadership style, leadership teaching changed over the last, say, 15 years?

Yeah, I mean, certainly over the last. It's changed over the last 15 years. But if you go back further, it's definitely changed over the last 25 or 35 years, for sure. Just because of the economy in the United States itself changes. So obviously that means that things are going to shift. We certainly have a much different workforce today, even today than just a few years ago. Obviously, with all the challenges with hiring and folks moving on more quickly, those create different leadership challenges and that forces you to adapt as time goes on. But certainly now things are more. Let me do it in reverse. Things are less dictatorial than maybe in my father's age, where if you had a boss and the boss said, do this and you just did it. That doesn't work as well today. Certainly in some industries. I think that that still happens and it's probably necessary. Obviously, within the military, you follow orders. That's much different. But out in the world, in industry, it's become a much softer approach where you have much more open communication, much more dialogue. There is a need to have much more explanation to your team members as to why something is important, not just go do this. You don't need to know why, they do need to know why. Because you want them behind your product, behind your business. You want to have that culture built because otherwise you're not going to be successful. Especially now, where you really want to retain good employees, you got to have a great culture. And that means that they have to really understand what the company is, is trying to achieve and what the company represents as well.

Okay, I'm going to throw a scenario at you. You know, I was going to do this. You've got a business where the leader, the team is made up of five generations now you've got the baby boomers, the Gen X, Gen Z, millennials and one other in there somewhere. It's challenging to have to lead different generations because they think differently. So how do you do that? How do you, as a leader that's say in their 50s, that's trying to connect, not be dictatorial, have a softer approach. How do you do that with so many different generations and now particularly more women than ever?

Yeah. So interestingly, I got asked probably a couple of years ago now it's pre Covid, so it's been at least two years. Somebody asked me to come and speak on the topic of generational differences. And one of the things that I, one of the points that I made is that this is not something new because they actually said, come talk to us about managing millennials. And I said, I don't want to do that. Like millennials get a bad rap. And I'm not a millennial, but millennials get a bad rap. But I will come and talk to you about managing multiple generations. And the idea behind it is one of the things that I said and the whole point of my whole talk was this is not any different than it's ever been. There's always been new generations coming into the workforce and other generations slowly exiting. So there's always been this mix of people. Certainly it's different today just based on technology and products that we do and the service based economy that we live in and that sort of thing. But really what it comes down to is you just have to understand in particular learning and communication styles. And this isn't based on just generational. This can be same generation. If you think about even just within one generation, individuals on your team, some people learn better by reading, some people learn better by hearing something. Some people need to be shown, and you have to take all those things into account. So I spend a lot of times with people that I coach talking through some of those things and basically saying, you need to be able to understand and adapt to all of these because you may have a preference, but you have to understand you're working with other individuals who have a different method of learning or communicating. So what that means is if you're dealing with a situation where you have a Boomer and you have Millennial or a Gen Z or those are two totally different types of personalities a lot of times. But that doesn't mean they can't coexist. What that means is, is that that Gen Z or that Millennial has to understand when they want to go and talk with the Boomer, they need to either pick up a phone and talk to them, or they need to walk.

Appointment and sit down and talk to them. The boomer at the same time needs to understand that sometimes that Gen Z or that Millennial doesn't have time or doesn't want to have a face to face conversation all the time. So they may need to send them an email or send them a text message nowadays. So it means that everybody has to be adaptable. No matter what. Your generation is Generation X, they're the most adaptable because, and I'm in the X generation, so we kind of are a bridge between multiple generations a lot of times because of just the timeframe we grew up in. But that, that happens throughout history. So even if you go back before Boomers and you go back to the greatest generation during the World wars, you had the transition taking place back then as well, when you were going from. And it's funny because when I did the research for this talk, you go back and you look at different research on it, different articles that were written at the time and everything, every generation says the same things about the next generation. So you had the greatest generation saying about the boomers that, you know, they're hippies and they don't care and everything. And you nowadays you see the same thing. People say it's those sorts of things about Millennials, they just don't care about anything, they're not loyal. But in reality, it's been the same all throughout history. Yeah.

So, okay, so here's a challenge that so same people, same scenario that I was telling you about. This leader CEO tried to be adaptable, tried to handle all the different ages, different scenarios, different drama, trauma, all the stuff that comes with each one, and it ended up being a mess because nobody was happy. Everybody was trying to do everything their own way and it didn't work well. And so we started losing people, morale was down. And I keep hearing that that's the way to go, but I don't necessarily ever see it work. And I'm curious what you're seeing. If there's an example out there that you can think of that it's actually work, because in theory I get what you're saying, but in actuality I've never seen it work well. So maybe you have some examples of that.

Yeah, it's a challenge. And I think the places that I've seen it be successful is when people don't focus so much on the generational differences, but they look at what are the similarities and then they also focus on the company culture itself. So what does the company itself believe? And how do people of all ages and all genders, how does that affect them and how do they get engaged in that culture? And that's a challenge. Like, it takes a lot to build a culture and it takes a lot to change it if you have a culture that you're not happy with. And here's the thing about culture. You know, a lot of companies have core values and they think that's what they build their culture around. We have these core values and we put them on the wall and you know, we're trustworthy and we have a high amount of respect. And whatever the problem is is that those aren't true core values. True core values are. What is it that your culture really supports? What is it your people believe? How is it that they act on a day to day basis? And if you look at that and you determine what those things are and they're not what you imagine or want them to be, then you have to slowly start making a shift. And that means it takes a concerted effort. The company I'm in, we altered our core values a number of years ago. We weren't having a major issue, but we just kind of decided it's time to go back and reevaluate them. And we spend a lot of time talking with all the team members and understanding where people were and we adjusted them. Well, you could do that and then you could just hang them on the wall and say, yep, these are our core values. But it doesn't really work and it doesn't really help the culture. So what it meant is, is that it took our leadership team constantly talking about them when an issue came up, when something good happened, we would say, how does this relate to the core values? And we would constantly ask those questions in team meetings. We would ask individuals, how did you see your team members over the last week use our core values? And we've done that now consistently for the last four or five years. And it took a long time, but eventually that became so ingrained in our culture that we used those core values. Then everybody believes them, everybody's on board with them. We use them to hire, we use them to make decisions on firing. And as we do coaching, we use them with our clients, everything. And I think if you focus on it from that aspect, instead of the generational differences, I think that's where seen the most success happen with companies.

I love that. And so what are your core values of your company? And maybe give us an example of what you were talking about, how something connects to those core values so we can kind of put this into practice.

Yeah, yeah, you're going to test me here. So they are better together. Continuous development, authenticity, get shit done and love what we do. So all of those, those five things are what we focus on. So when we come into a team meeting, it's a great example. You hear a lot of times where team members will reference other team members for better together because they'll say, I talked to so and so and I needed help on this with this client. We were having this issue and they stepped up and they helped me out. So those are great examples. The authenticity piece is a great core value because we use that with team members. Are you truly being authentic? And that doesn't mean being trustworthy. Trustworthy. It doesn't mean being honest because you can be honest with somebody and actually not be authentic. What authentic means is, is that you're saying, even the, you're even saying the unsaid thing, like you don't hold something back because I can tell you something, that's true. But if I hold something back, you don't get the whole story. So we use authenticity within our team. It's also a great core value with our clients because sometimes we have to use them. Especially, you know, if you're coaching somebody. I mean, sometimes we have to say, you know, one of our core values is authenticity. I'm going to be totally upfront with you here on this, and you give them some honest feedback. Sometimes you be authentic because you screwed up. I mean, we. We build somebody wrong or something, and you call them up and say, hey, one of our core values is authenticity. We want to be totally upfront. We. We messed up, and we build you wrong. Here's the situation. We want to make it right and work through it with you. So that's what I mean. Like, you have to ingrain those things in everything you do every single day.

I love that. Okay, so let's talk for a minute about culture. You know, everybody talks about culture. You got to have a great culture. What the heck is culture?

Yeah, I'm not sure I have a great definition for it. I will say that it definitely is a buzzword. You hear it a lot. And like I said, when we focus on culture, we tend to focus on identify your true core values and what your beliefs are, because that's truly what the underlying pie of your culture is, how you live. And that's what I mean. Like, when you actually do the work and get into it, you may find that you have a negative culture or a culture that you don't want, and that takes quite a bit to shift. It may mean a total shift in how you lead. It may mean that what will happen is eventually you're going to realize certain team members are not the right people. They're not the right people in the right seats, or they don't belong in your organization at all. Or they may realize that as you start to shift the culture. If they were adept to the old culture and they were happy with having the negative culture, they will eventually figure out they're not going to fit in the new organization. But those core values will lend themselves to help you build that base, which is the basic underlying piece of what culture is in every organization. It gets a lot harder in really large organizations, because as you get bigger, you have so many levels, and sometimes you have to take that down to a department then, and what that looks like within a department or location or that sort of thing as well.

This morning, I was at an event, and the gentleman that was speaking had built a very large plumbing company here from nothing. And he talked about the origin of his business, and he started just he and his wife, and now they've got, I don't know, a few hundred employees and done really, really well. And he built it all on culture, and he built it all on investing quite a bit into his people, which typically, you don't see that industry that people do. And he said it took Him, I can't think. I think he said 30 years to build an amazing culture, and it took him three months to destroy it by stepping away and bringing in a new leader. And then it took him another two years to get back what he had before. And so I asked him what was the difference between the great culture and the bad culture? And he said it was leadership and it's really the leader that brings the culture, which then makes things better. So culture has always been that hard thing. You know, everybody says what culture eats strategy for breakfast, but how do you build a culture? So you're saying, identify your core values and beliefs and then what do you do with them from there to build that culture?

Yeah, you have to use them in everything, like I said. So we took our new core values when we did those four or five years ago and we designed our entire hiring process around it. And then we ended, designed our entire. We don't, we don't do the, the, the old style employee reviews, but we do quarterly one on ones with our team members. We built the, that, that process around the core values. And in each of those meetings we talk through the core values and, and we basically say, how do you think you're doing on this one? And then I would say to them, I think I agree with you. Or I would say I actually disagree. I don't think you're doing as well on this one. And here's what I mean. And it's not meant to be a punishment and it's meant to help both of us. There's actually a process, if you've heard of the author Gino Wickman and the traction process, that's what they do. They have a thing called the people Analyzer meeting, which is kind of, that they do a plus minus on core values and that sort of thing. That's what I'm getting at. So you use those core values in everything that you do and it takes a long time. Like you said, the gentleman that you were talking about said it took 30 years to get it right. So you're constantly trying to evolve, evolve that. And that is true, though it does not take very long to ruin it. We've seen it with our clients a number of times where we had, we were working with a CEO that was highly engaged in, in developing their people and they were working with us to help them do that. And then they exited. Or in a lot of cases, they retire and another person comes in and that person doesn't care as much. They're a little bit more dictatorial. They Just want the stuff to get done and the culture like totally takes a nosedive. And we have seen the same scenario where the original person was brought back in and had to fix everything again. So. But yeah, I mean, it's not, there's not a silver bullet to building a good culture. It takes a lot of work and a lot of time. That's something when I, when I coach leaders that they, they always want to have what's, what's the easy button for that essentially? And there is not an easy button for that one. It takes, it takes a lot of effort.

Yeah, leadership is not easy. That is for sure. And I spent a year, the last year in this leadership course knowing that, you know, being a dentist for 32 years does not qualify me to lead a global company. And I wish it did. I don't know what it is that qualifies somebody to be a good leader. What do you think?

I'm not sure there's a good answer for that either.

It, it just comes with a certain number of traits and kind of some of those things that I talked about earlier.

In making sure that it's somebody who wants to constantly learn and evolve, obviously somebody that can adapt to change easily so that they can be successful over time. Somebody who's understanding, somebody that understands they don't have all the right, all the answers to everything. I'm not always right. That's one thing I stated earlier. I try to hire the right people and I've coached employees throughout my career where I've had folks where they're like hesitant to give you their opinion. And I'm like, no, you need to tell me like, I hired you for this reason. Argue with me. Tell me why I'm wrong. I want you to tell me why I'm wrong. We're going to get to a point where I will have to make a decision. Yes. And we'll move on. But tell me why I'm wrong right now. And that's a really great characteristic for a leader because that means that they're open to learning, they're open to trying new things. And it definitely means that they're going to be good listeners and that sort of thing as well. But they have to be understanding. And those things, like I just really come back to those, those core things as, as things that are good for, for, for leaders.

I'm curious if we're going to find 10 years from now that the soft style leadership, the listening to everybody's needs, the trying to be there for everyone and understand everybody, the emotional Intelligence, all that stuff. I wonder if we're going to find out that that's just dead wrong and that dictatorial is really where we need to be. It seems like there's a swing back and forth and back and forth, and right now we're saying, okay, dictatorial doesn't work. You need to be there and present and listen. And all the stuff that I hear that we talked about, and I wonder if that's going to end up being a better leader than someone who just goes in and says, hey man, this is what we got to get done. Let's just go do it, suck it up, quit crying, and let's go.

Yeah, I think the most successful situations are going to be the ones that have combination of the two. So kind of what I was saying earlier, where you do have to listen and everything, but at a certain point, you have to make a decision to move forward. I mean, with my better, better way personality, I just want to get stuff done. Like. Like we're going to find a better way to do it, and then we're going to do it. Like we need to get the stuff done. So I think that what you're going.

To say, I don't feel like it right now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Darby. I just, you know, it's just I'm not really emotionally here for that right now.

Yeah, well, I am a very open leader, but I don't have patience for that level of attitude. And we would have to have conversations about that. But you're definitely right. There will be shifts back and forth. It also depends a lot on the lab market because it right now, companies struggle to find people, but eventually it'll shift again and there will be high unemployment and there will be people that looking for jobs. And if you got companies who are like, I can go out and hire five people today, makes it a lot easier for them to say, just do your job. I don't want to talk about it. So there are shifts, but ultimately I believe that having the combination of the two things, you got to have it at a certain point, but then at a certain point, you got to act and you got to get stuff done, because that's how we make our money as a company. And I think that's where you're going to see the most success, even. I think that's been the case throughout time.

Yeah. You know, the situation I gave you earlier with the gentleman who has kind of gone down the path of trying to be soft and understand everybody and listen to everybody's needs and try to meet everybody's needs and create his organization based on that. Has become quite disillusioned and he's just like, you know what? F this I'm going to go back to. I'm only hiring people that are here that want to work, that want to actually contribute, that, you know, leave your stuff at home and come here and let's go accomplish something and we'll see how that goes. I'm watching it. To see he's going swinging the pendulum the other direction in the matter of months, and we'll see if that ends up to be a more successful path for him. I don't know.

So, yeah, we'll see. Yeah. And that's that same situation. Like, I don't have time for what you were describing at the beginning of that either. So it's all about making sure you have that hiring process. I want my people and I want my leaders to be open and to be understanding and have those things. But we have to get the stuff done. Like. Like the. That's. That's the priority. And if you can't do both, then it's not going to work out. Like, we're going to have to find somebody else and you'll move on to where you want to move on to. If you just want to come and you only want to do a certain activity all the time, there are jobs out there for you. Doing what I do in my company is not where you need to be right now. Yeah.

So, Darby, if there's. Well, last question I have for you. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever either been given or the best piece of advice you've ever given?

Yeah, I think that it's the same for both because it's things that I've heard from mentors over time, but it comes back to some of those things that I. That I already said. I think one of the biggest things is, is keep learning because change is going to happen and we have to be adaptable, especially as leaders. So make sure that you're constantly curious about trying new things. And then the other thing is, I also said this earlier is just. It's something that comes up all the time when I coach people. And it gets back to the easy button thing also. And that is understand there are going to be setbacks. Like, this is not easy. Leading people is difficult. Sometimes leading organizations is difficult. If you're an entrepreneur, starting a company is difficult. It's hard. There's going to be challenges. Use those as opportunities. Step up to the plate. Accomplish what you need to accomplish, and then look back and look at everything that you learned. It's interesting. Early on in Covid, I was part of a group in early 2020, probably mid-2020, I guess it's been going on so long now. But a group that we were meeting, it was just local business leaders. I say local. We had people in multiple states that were getting together to talk about how we could support each other through the challenges that had arisen. Because a lot of people had business challenges very early on in the process, obviously. And I just remember one of the things that I said to the group. I am like, here is the thing I want you to all remember and think about. Imagine what we will learn this year. Imagine a year from now when we look back what we will have learned. And it was interesting because we had some restaurants and stuff that were in that group, and just the restaurant industry is perfect. Look at all of that shift that they made. I mean, they had takeout before, but suddenly you saw a curbside, and suddenly you saw more takeout and bigger takeout windows and places that were popping up that were takeout. Only imagine, like, adapting to that. My church is a great example. We shifted. Like, we did video recording, and we have a pretty big church, so we did video recording that went on the local cable station and stuff already, but we didn't stream. We had the capability to, but we never did. We switched to streaming, like, overnight. And, like, we learned how to do it well and, like, put the words up to the songs on the bottom, all the stuff that we learned. So that's a. Those are great examples for leaders because you have to be able to adapt and learn throughout time. And that gets to that other piece where not everything's going to go how you think it's going to go. It's just stuff comes up.

How did it feel for you, Darby, when your why came up as better way?

Well, I didn't know exactly what it meant until I read everything, but as I read it, the vast majority of everything made total sense. Like, I'm constantly looking for a better way to do things. Like, you'll hear a lot of, like, the words efficiency. You hear me say a lot. Like, how can we make this more efficient? You hear the word scalable. Like, is this process going to be scalable? That's great for us as a $4 million company. Is it going to work for us as a 7 million or a $10 million company? So I use those words a lot also. Looking through the stuff with like, building processes and everything. I'm very big on that. Like, if we can create a process to make it more efficient, more scalable, then let's do that. So it pretty much made total sense.

Yeah, it's awesome. And so my why is better way as well. So as I'm listening to you talk, I just. I resonate with everything you're saying, because that's exactly the same process I'm going through in my head. And, you know, our wheels are kind of clicking together. So.

I have to be really careful, though. And I'm sure you found this, because those wheels start as soon as I hear an idea. So I work with a very high visionary person, and I'm kind of right, like, right in the middle, if you looked at it as a spectrum, maybe a little bit on the visionary side, but I have a lot of manager characteristics. So I work with a very high visionary, comes up with a lot of ideas, and I have to be really careful because if he starts telling me ideas, I immediately start thinking of all the problems associated with them, and that could be a challenge as well. So you just have to balance that.

You can't stop this up here, but you can stop this. You can't stop your brain, but you can stop your mouth.

Exactly.

So, Darby, if there's people that are listening that want to reach out to you, they want to follow what you're doing, or they want to maybe hire you to come work with their leadership team or speak at their event, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Yeah, I'm pretty much on all social media. I'm Most active on LinkedIn, so you can just search Darby Veneer. But my website is beindispensable.com so you can go there. The social media links are there. There's a contact form that has information about me and my book and everything as well. So if they visit beindispensable.com that will get them everything that they need.

Awesome. Darby, thank you so much for being here. Enjoyed talking with you today.

Thanks a lot, Gary. I appreciate it.

So it's time for our new segment, guess the why. And for this segment, I want to use somebody that's kind of current. If you're watching the the TV series Yellowstone with Kevin Costner, then, you know there's a gal, his daughter named Beth. And Beth is an attorney. Definitely doesn't follow the rules. Definitely beats to her own drums. Definitely willing to throw a tantrum and fight and kick and scratch and do whatever she needs to do. To win. And so if you've watched it, you know who I'm talking about and I would love to know what you think. Her why is because for me, I think it's pretty cut and dry. I think it's pretty obvious. But I believe that best why is definitely to challenge the status quo and think differently. She doesn't do law the way everybody else does. She says whatever she wants to say, she drives and creates problems for people in ways they never thought of, and I'm sure she solves legal problems in an outside the box solution. So I believe that Beth's why is to challenge the status quo. What do you think? If there's an area for you to write below, go ahead and do that because I love your perspective. So thank you so much for listening. If you've not yet discovered your why, you can do So@why institute.com with the code PODCAST50, you'll be able to get it at half price. If you love the beyond, you'd why Podcast, Please don't forget to subscribe below and leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you're using to listen to the podcast. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. Have a great week.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez and I'll see you on the next episode.