Ken Blanchard’s Secret to Great Leadership: Catch People Doing Things Right

Leaders. What if the fastest way to better performance wasn't pressure, but love? And what if greatness came from catching people doing things right instead of proving them wrong? Today, far too many workplaces still run on fear, correction and control. Engagement is low, turnover is high, and people feel unseen. Traditional leadership simply isn't working. But decades before vulnerability and empathy became leadership buzzwords, Ken Blanchard was already teaching and living something radically different. That's leadership is service. That love belongs at work and that nice goes don't finish last, they build thriving organization. And to help tell the story is Martha C. Lawrence, today's guest. She spent more than 20 years by Ken's side, shaping his books, diving into his personal papers and capturing the stories that reveal who he truly was. Her new biography, catch People Doing Things Right, doesn't just highlight his ideas. It reveals how he lived through joy, loss, resilience and an unwavering optimism. Over the next 30 minutes, you'll hear the real Ken Blanchard, the leader who changed the way the world leads. And more importantly, you'll walk away with practical ways to lead with love, elevate your teams and transform customer and employee experiences. Welcome to Chats with Jason. I'm your host Jason Espratchell. Martha, it is so great to have you with us today.

Jason, it is an honor to be on your show. I am a true fan and it's delight to see you today.

Martha, we had a great chance to catch up before the recording and you've had such a phenomenal career in publishing influencing the work that many of us have read and enthusiastically so thank you for your contribution and thank you very much for taking the time to write this book. It's an absolute stellar and I think it's a such so important that the man behind the man is, if you like, is exposed as someone that didn't just talk about how great leaders lead, but lived it every day. Now you've worked with Ken for a long time. When did you first realize that his story needed to be told, that his biography needed to be told? Not just as the leadership icon that he is, but as a human being?

Boy, you summed that up super well I gotta say. For starters there and in case any of your listeners don't know who Ken Blanchard is, most of them may. But he was the co author of a book published in 1982 called the One Minute Manager and that book took the world by storm, sold tens of millions of copies, was on the New York Times bestseller list for three years running and many years after that off and on and really fundamentally changed the way people thought about leadership. So Ken is a business leadership guru for anyone who doesn't know. So I had known about Ken. I started my publishing career as we were talking Jason in New York City back in the early 80s. So I knew about Ken Blanchard. I remember when the 1 minute manager hit and I had been following his career for many years. And then in 2003, I had the opportunity to actually work with Ken. He needed one to help with his publishing program. And I'd been writing a bunch of novels and I just jumped at the chance because I love business books, I love leadership. So it was a couple years after I started working with Ken and working with him on these books and saw the man that he was and watched him in action with people. And I thought, somebody needs to write the story of this man's life because he's had such an incredible impact on this industry. Not only the training and development industry, but on business generally really shifted the way people thought about leading others. And I didn't think I would be the one to write the biography, but I started collecting materials. I'm like, someday some biographer is going to come along. So I'm going to. I'm going to gather all this correspondence and all these white papers and this dissertation here and all the. All these letters. And eventually the time came where no biographer appeared. And it was like, I've got to write this story. So that's how it came about.

Hmm. I can remember reading the One Minute Manager when I was just a teenager. And I've read it many times. I've lent it to people to read. Why do you think it became such a global phenomenon? Why did the message land the way it did?

Looking back, it's easy to see why it became a phenomenon. Back in the early 80s, business books, they tended to be long and dry and boring. They had no narrative at all. It was very top down. This is what you do. This is organizational management. And Ken and his co author Spencer wanted to write something that people would read. They knew it had to be short. The book is only like 100 pages long because managers don't have time to read a heavy tome. They don't today. Even less time. And Spencer had been a children's book writer and they decided to write a children's book for managers, basically. And so it's the story. It's a parable about a young man who's looking for an effective manager. Is an effective manager an autocratic guy or is he a democratic guy? And then they Introduce these three secrets to leading. Well, one minute goal setting, one minute praising, one minute redirects. It's called redirects today. Back in the old days it was called reprimands, but that's paternalistic now. So the language has changed. But that book, as the publisher said, it's a bathtub book. You take the book, you run your bath, you read the book in the bathtub, and by the time the water is cold, you've finished the book. So. So I think that's why it took the world by storm. It's a pass along book. If somebody's new in a leadership role, hand them the one minute manager and they're going to know what to do.

Yeah, I think it definitely has proven that it's a book for that. Not only do people want to read, but that has standed the test of time because the teachings in it as relevant today as they were back in the 80s. You had access to Ken's letters and private papers. What surprised you most as you work with Ken about the man behind all the bestselling books?

I think what surprised me most when I started getting into all that material and looking at it through a biographer's eyes is how early Ken really started developing his leadership philosophy. You know, he was very fortunate to have had incredible parents. His father retired as a rear admiral in the Navy and taught him some of his earliest leadership lessons. There's a famous story of Ken. He was a very popular kid and he won the president of his seventh grade class. And he goes running home and he says, mom, dad, I'm the president of the seventh grade. And his dad pulled him aside and he said, so, son, that's great. We're so proud of you. Now let me tell you a little lesson about being a leader. People follow leaders not because they have a fancy title like president, but because they trust them and they respect them. So be the kind of leader that people trust and respect. So there all kinds of messages like that that Ken was getting. And also I saw how inclusive he was early on. He's a very inclusive, collaborative person. That thread runs throughout his work. But like even back in high school, in the mid-1950s, this was long before the United States had something called civil Rights movement. Okay. Ken was collaborating with the black kids in his class. He was a basketball player. He had a lot of black friends. He partnered with one of his best friends who was black, and they created something called the Youth Fellowship Organization. And the idea was to bring the school together to break down the silos and bring the school together. So. So he was doing this stuff long before he became a college professor, let alone a best selling author or the co founder of a giant global leadership development organization.

Talks very much to who he was at his core. Now Ken believed deeply in catching people in doing things right. For leaders listening today, what does that actually look like in practice?

Ah, yeah, People doing things right. The reason the book is called Catch People Doing Things Right is because somebody once asked Ken, if you could only keep one leadership principle that you've taught over the years, what would it be? And he said people do not get enough acknowledgement. It would be catch people doing things right because it is such a great motivator of people and it's actually much deeper. It sounds facile, right? It sounds like it might be toxic positivity. Oh, attaboy, atta girl. That's not, it's really much deeper than that. Catching people doing things right is assuming that you have been with that person one on one. They understand the mission, they are implementing the vision and you are watching what they're doing. And when they have done something well, you praise them for that. Let them know how it made you feel. Not just say add a boy, add a girl. Let them know how it made you feel. Let them know what a difference they're making in terms of attaining the goals and just really acknowledging people's performance. It's something that's too overlooked because we're all too busy, we're all so busy getting to the next thing we forget to praise people along the way and thank them for what they're doing for us and with us.

Yeah, it's so important that we take gratitude seriously that we're intentional about it. You've described Ken as a non threading, non conformist. We've heard already a little bit how he wasn't conforming to social norms when he was in college and in school. But what does that mean? And why was it such a powerful leadership posture for Ken to take?

Yeah, non threatening, non conformist. He had this way he knew what the rules were but if the rules were stupid, he, he wasn't afraid to break them. And so just one example, before he became a best selling author and an entrepreneur, he was a college professor at UMass and later at Cornell. And what he did was he'd pass out the final exam on the first day of class to all his students, hey, here's the final exam. To let them know what they needed to know. So when the faculty found out about that, they said, Blanchard, what are you doing? You can't pass out the final exam on the first day of class. And he said, not only am I going to pass out the final exam, what do you think I'm going to do all semester? I'm going to teach them all the answers. Because life is about getting A's, not about some stupid normal distribution curve and rank ordering people. That's just bs. So that's a classic Ken Blanchard non conformist story. He was not afraid to write a little parable book about management, even though the people who he founded his company with were some of the most brilliant minds he'd encountered while he was a professor. And they looked at that manuscript and they said, Ken, this is embarrassing, it's not scholarly enough, how can you put this out? And he wasn't afraid to put out a parable about a young man looking for an effective manager because he had a goal. Let's get the goal done. Let's not stand on tradition, let's achieve the goal.

So Ken never led with his title and that probably stems from those that early conversation with his father. But he led with presence. And I'm wondering what did that look like day to day and how did people respond to it? Because it would have been quite different when he was first becoming a leader.

Well, it's interesting. Ken knows his strengths and for most of his career with his organization, which is Blanchard, he did not hold a position like CEO or president. In fact, his wife Margie was the president for many years. Ken by his own admission, couldn't balance his own checkbook. The reason he started a company is because he was on sabbatical from his teaching at Cornell and he was speaking to this large group of young presidents organization. And he was so compelling and charismatic that he got this standing ovation. And afterwards people came up to him and said, what are you going to do next? And he said, I'm going back to college to teach. And they said, when you're hot, you gotta start your own company, your own consulting company. He said, I can't even balance my own checkbook, how am I going to start my own company? Ken never attempted to be that kind of leader. His title was always chief spiritual officer. He saw himself as the cheerleader and knew how to put the right people in the right positions. As chief spiritual officer he kicked butt, definitely.

What strong sense of self awareness does that demonstrate? Like imagine so many people are about the title, not the impact. And Ken obviously wanted to lead from a place of impact. He championed leading with love long before it was Safe or popular. It can somewhat be a bit of a buzzword that we use these days. From a corporate perspective, at least. How did he define love in leadership, though?

The best definition he gave, he borrowed from his brilliant wife, Margie. It's really about understanding that as a leader, your job is to lift other people up. Your job is to serve others, help them implement that vision. It's not about you, it's about the vision and how can you help others achieve their goals. So that's really what the essence of love and leadership is, getting out of the way. Ken always says the biggest problem in leadership is ego edging out. We gotta get our egos out of the way and look and see what needs to be done and how can I help people do it?

Yeah, that's great. That's great. I'm wondering, Martha, was there a moment in your research that moved you personally? A story that revealed his heart, perhaps in an unexpected way or in a new way?

There is one section of the book that every time I went back to it, and you're an author, Jason, so you know this. You go over that manuscript many times before it's published, and it never failed to get me. And that's a story of how Ken caught his father doing something right. His dad was a heavy smoker, like so many in that generation, that great generation of World War II heroes. And he had lung cancer. And Ken, I think, was training somewhere and he got this call that it was close to the end. And so he flies out to visit his dad in the hospital and he can see his dad can't even talk at that point. And Ken used to carry around a tape recorder in those days, a cassette tape recorder. This was before iPhones. And after he left that afternoon after visiting, he went out into the hallway and he just poured his heart out into this tape about to his dad, saying, dad, thank you so much for all the ways that you've contributed to me and the family. He was very specific, catching his dad doing all the things, all the ways his dad did everything right. And he went back in before he left for the day and gave the tape recorder to his dad and said, dad, listen to this. If you get a chance, I think you might enjoy it. And he went back to his hotel, and then in the middle of the night, he got a call from the nurse who said, your father passed away. And Ken sat up and he burst into tears. He was very close to his father. And he said, oh, I gave him a tape recorder before I left. Do you know if he got a chance to listen to that. And she said over and over again. I was so happy that the publisher. There's actually a transcription of that tape in the back of the book, in the appendix of the book. And I challenge anyone to read that and keep a dry eye. And it makes me think about all of you out there who are fortunate enough to still have parents. Catch them doing something right. Tell them before they're gone, let them know being a parent is a tough job.

Yeah. And definitely leave us earlier than we ever expect, that's for sure. It can help to bring servant leadership to the mainstream. I think no one could debate or argue that point. For those still new to servant leadership, how is it different from the more traditional leadership hierarchical models?

Now, I'm not a leadership expert, I'm a biographer. Anything I know about leadership, I have to say I learned from Ken and the wonderful co authors that I've worked with. There's a lot of leadership philosophy. Let's take Jack Welch, for example, GE's former chairman. Just how this philosophy of numbers and let's just cut off the bottom 10% every year, just as a matter of course. And it's not people centered leadership. Right. The idea of servant leadership is that of course you have to have a healthy bottom line so that you can be doing your leadership in the world, whatever it is you're selling or building or service you're providing. But the idea of servant leadership, again, is that it's not about you, it's about your people, it's about your customers, it's about the mission. The focus shifts from look at me, I'm number one, to what can I do to help you. If I translate it to this book, it's not about look at me, look at the biography I've written. It's like, how can this book help inspire you? If you're an entrepreneur, a small business person, or a manager, if you're looking for an uplifting story, hopefully this book will help you see how someone else navigated all those minefields that we go through in life.

I absolutely believe the book achieves that. I haven't had a chance to read the whole book, of course, and I'm blessed that you gave me an advanced copy. But when I was reading through the book and preparing for today's episode, the one thing that it reminded me the most of was the way you show up when people aren't watching is your true leadership style. If we want to take it from a leadership lesson, right. And I think that message comes through in the book quite strongly.

Well, it's funny you mentioned that. There's a story in the book about Ken having a business meeting with a very well known author here, Mac Anderson. He had a company called Successories. And he was in the middle of this business meeting and there was a knock on his office door and it was the widow of an employee, a Blanchard employee, who had passed away. And Ken wanted to spend time with her. And he turned to Mac and he said, Mac, how much time do you have? Do you have 45 extra minutes or so? He introduced her and he said, it would really be important to me if we could spend some time with her. And Mac said, sure. And Ken took the widow and went over to the department where her husband had worked and he pulled out his trusty tape recorder, still carrying that thing, and went around to all the deceased employees, former colleagues, and asked them to share stories about him. Tell us about him. Tell us about a funny moment you had and just captured all these amazing stories. And at the end of that, handed it to the widow and he said, here, keep this and just know how much we loved your husband and how much a wonderful part of the company he was. And to me, that story just said everything about Ken's servant leadership because he could have been focused on the business deal that he was trying to close there, and instead he wanted to spend his time acknowledging somebody who was important. So it's classic. Ken once asked Ken, what's your favorite part of the day? And he said, interruptions. And I'm like, I hate interruptions. I'm so task oriented. And interruptions to Ken are an opportunity to connect with people.

Yeah. Yeah, that's wonderful. Before the show, you shared with me actually a, a YouTube video of Tony Robbins talking about, about Ken. And I'm just wondering if in that story Tony shares that Ken's on safari and everyone's panicking because the truck's broken down and it's getting late and the lions and tigers and elephants might come and cause some grief, shall we say? And Ken's just sitting there being calm and optimistic about it all throughout his career. Was Ken that guy that no matter the disruption, the chaos around him, was he always able to just stay optimistic? How did he achieve that if that was the case?

Yeah, for the most part, yes. There are many junctures in the book when 9, 11 hit. A lot of times in his life, he faced failure. And it's basically those lessons he learned from his parents. His mom taught him. She said, when something bad happens, don't hang your head and mumble at your shoes. Keep your head up and look for opportunities. Ken's house burned down, for example, in the 2007 wildfires in southern California. That's one time he talks about being caught off guard because when he heard his house had burned down, he wasn't even home. He was like in Florida somewhere. And he got this phone call that the house was gone. And he had a real moment of what you'd feel. He used that moment to turn within. He's got faith. He has faith that he leans on. And I think his faith actually is also what helps him stay optimistic. When 911 hit and the management team was talking about, yeah, we've got to cut 10% of the staff. We got to do it. And the famous story is that Ken looked up from the table and he had tears pouring down his face. And he said, I didn't build this company to kick my friends out on the street at a time like this. Let's open up the books. Let's all figure this out together. Now, you can't always do that. I recognize that there are many businesses that you just. Not everybody has that luxury, but that's where his heart is and that's what he goes to first. That place of, we're going to figure this out together. Everything's going to be okay.

So if Ken was looking at today's hybrid, remote, AI shaped workplace, I know he loved disruption, but some would say there's a bit too much disruption going on right now. What do you think he would say to leaders who are feeling overwhelmed by it?

All the overwhelmed as you take it one step at a time. But I'm going to actually quote you, Jason, from a POD podcast I heard recently where you said, the future of leadership isn't more automation. The future of leadership is more humanity. When people have asked Ken about AI, no matter how many machines or how fast or how disruptive, it's always going to be about people. There are people behind these machines and that's where the focus should be. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. You know, you just take it a step at a time. Don't be, ain't it awful? That's a challenging time. I just know that he believes that the machines aren't the important thing, it's the people using these technologies.

Yeah, absolutely. I'd add to that that AI can help us be more accurate. AI can help us be more efficient. But what AI can't do is build trust, because trust is a deeply human emotion. And it takes humans to deliver on it and to build it. So I think Ken and I would be fairly aligned there. I'm wondering from your years of research, your time putting the book together and your time with Ken, what's one practical shift leaders can make today that will help them lead more like Ken to lift their people and elevate the experiences they deliver to catch people doing the good, if you will.

That's exactly it, Jason. That's what I would challenge listeners to do. Try implementing catch people doing things right. We're all busy. We all have a to do list. But integrate somehow, somewhere in your day, catching someone doing something right. And this isn't just about people you're leading. This also applies to family. It goes up as well as down. Ken hates that word supervisors because he doesn't like the idea of super and subordinate. It's like it makes it imply that someone's better or worse. Wherever you are on the organizational, everybody on the organizational chart needs praise, including the top banana. That's a hard spot to be for all you business owners and business leaders out there. I feel you. It's a tough place to be, especially when the economy is churning and all that. And wouldn't it be nice if you had staff that would catch you doing something right and lift you up, that human element? It's a powerful thing. It's a pull energy generator.

I'm just imagining what the culture of the business would look like if the default position was let's catch people at every corner of the business, every title in the business. If the culture was let's catch people doing things right. What a fantastic reminder of how Ken approach the world of business and leadership. Martha, I'm wondering, as we come to wrap up the show, after you spent years inside Ken's life and you've put together this phenomenal biography, what do you hope leaders will take away from his story told through your book?

I hope leaders take away what we talked about, Jason, that in moments where things are challenging, there is always a way forward. It may not look like what you want it to look like or expect it to look like. I hope they take away hope. I hope they take away practical ideas. There's a discussion guide at the back of the book that people can use to take the lessons of Ken Blanchard's life and apply it to where they are now. And I know that working with Ken has improved my life. And you mentioned Tony Robbins. Tony actually wrote a foreword for the book that didn't end up getting used in the book, but the Publisher decided that nobody needs to introduce Ken Blanchard. We'll just have everyone introduce Ken Blanchard. But he's inspired so many people and I would just hope that leaders could let him inspire you through this book.

Martha, thank you for your time today. I've really appreciated you being with us on the show.

Thank you, Jason. It's wonderful talking with you. Keep up the great work.

Thank you so much. What an extraordinary conversation. Hearing Ken's philosophy through your eyes, Martha, through the letters, the stories, the moments where he chose love over ego. It reminds us that leadership isn't about power. It's about presence. It's about service, and it's about lifting people up to everyone listening. If you take just one idea from the day, let it be this. Leaders create the experience. Your team feels it, your customers feel it. And as Ken taught the world, you get more of what you look for. Martha, thank you for capturing the legacy of a leader who changed the way the world leads and for reminding all of us that catching people doing things right is still one of the most powerful tools we have. And to our audience, go lead with love today. Don't forget, when you transform the experience, you transform your business and the world around you. I'll see you on the next episode of Chats with Jason. Hey, just quickly I wanted to reach out and say thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode of Chats with Jason. I'd really appreciate a five star review on your favorite podcasting app. Or if you're watching along on YouTube, give me a thumbs up and show that you like this video and be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss out on the awesome content and and the great guests that we've got coming up for you.