OS Podcast 0007 ROI RTL

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. One question that keeps coming up over and over these days is, oh yeah, this human-centric leadership stuff is pretty damn nice, but what's the return on investment? Show me the money. Okay, we've got to credit our partner in Nairobi, Kenya, Nana Wanjau, for that one because She's the one who inspired the Show Me the Money thing, and here's why. She just did an interview with me, actually. She was sharing some questions and concerns that some of our prospective clients had over in Nairobi, in Kenya. And one of the ones that kept coming up, and it comes up all over the world, is, yeah, what's the ROI? What am I going to get back if I invest in this type of human-centric leadership training that we do at the Sensei Leader Movement? Now I am going to get into some detail and I'm going to give you some dollars and cents stuff in a couple of minutes, but think of this because this is the most important. When I'm pressed and people say, you know, what is the ROI on a Sensei Leader Movement training program, I say, well, the ROI is RTL, and that stands for respect, trust, and loyalty. Let me explain really quickly. We know the research is bombproof, and I'm going to cite a little bit of it in a minute. People perform at their best when, and only when, they know their leaders care. When they know their leaders care about them. All right, in addition to that, they have to know that their jobs have meaning, that their work has meaning, and that they have a reasonable opportunity to learn, to grow, to develop, to advance themselves. So that's it. Now, when you do those things— well, I should say first, to do those things, leaders need, first of all, emotional intelligence. They need strong interpersonal skills and a well-developed, or probably even more important, accurate sense of self-awareness. And that's what we call a human-centric leader. Of course, around here at the Sensei Leader Movement or in the dojo, we call that kind of person sensei. So my job really is just to help you be the sensei. And what does a sensei do? Well, sensei's job's really pretty simple. We inspire, empower, and guide people to their very best. In the dojo, that means helping them get to black belt, obviously. But what does it mean to you? What does it mean to you in your life and your role as a leader? Right? And all effective leaders do the same thing: inspire, empower, and guide others to their very best. That's what leaders do at its root. And when you do that, you earn their respect, their trust, and their loyalty. Now to me, those are the 3 most essential assets of any leader. And think about this before we talk anything about dollars and cents. What can you possibly produce? What can you possibly do? Where are the dollars and cents if you don't have the respect, trust, and loyalty of the people you serve? And even if you're making some money, you're leaving a lot on the table if you don't have those 3 things. So the ROI is RTL. Your return on investment is most directly the respect, trust, and loyalty of the people you serve when you invest in the support, development, and training of human-centric leaders, the type of leaders we develop here at the Sensei Leader Movement. Now, promised you some dollars and cents. Again, I'm going to point you to that article, uh, Screw the ROI, because the other part about that article, it means this, you know, what do you want? What do you want from people? How do you want people to think of you? What legacy do you want to leave behind? Do you want to know that you, you've given people the opportunity to have good lives for themselves and that you've supported your community? Or do you want to be lumped in with any number of corrupt and lousy so-called leaders that, that we know over the past few years? One example, the folks from Enron, which we'll get into in a couple of minutes, I'm sure. But anyway, I want to point you to some, some of the data. And again, that'll be shared in a lot of articles on, on the Sensei Leader blog. So just Just root around there and you'll find a lot of this stuff. But anyway, one of the books I continually point people to is Richard Keel's Return on Character, because everything he's talking about there, when he's talking about character, he's talking about the things that we help leaders develop in themselves. And you want some numbers? One study I know that he cited showed that organizations that adopt this type of human-centric leadership mindset, a character-based leadership mindset, can outperform competitors who don't by as many as 500 to 700% over time. Now that's, that's interesting. That's a number though that scares some people. That sounds pretty grandiose, right? He did an article recently in HBR, in Harvard Business Review, and he cited a study from KRW International in this article. That's a— he says it's a Minneapolis-based leadership consultancy. The researchers found— I'm quoting the HBR article now— The researchers found that CEOs whose employees gave them high marks for character had an average return on assets of 9.35% over a 2-year period. That's nearly 5 times as much as what those with low character ratings had. Their return on assets averaged only about 1.93%. So, it's not that you can't be a jerk and still be profitable, but what are you leaving on the table? I think 5 times return is a pretty significant number. In this article, and by the way, it's from March 31st, 2015 article in HBR, he also cited a couple of examples of some pretty impressive leaders who showed these, and again, like I said, the character traits that he's talking about are exactly what we train in the Sensei Leader Movement: courage, compassion, wisdom. Empathy, right? He cites one person, Dale Larson, took over— I'm quoting again— took over his family's storm door business after his father died of cancer, growing it from 30 employees to more than 1,500 and gaining a market share of 55%. And he quotes these, these are the people who scored very high, what he calls virtuoso CEOs, those who earn very, very high ratings in these areas from their employees: integrity, responsibility, forgiveness, and compassion. And he does— he rates these leaders this way. He calls them virtuoso CEOs if they rate high in these areas, self-focused CEOs when they rate very low. And he goes on to quote a bunch of different things. So we'll put a link to that article and you can look that up for yourself. I don't want to get bogged down too much in those details, but also I'm borrowing Another article I came across: An inspiring manager creates more team engagement, according to research by leadership development experts Dr. Brad Shuck and Mary Ann Honeycutt Elliott. Higher levels of engagement come from employees who work for a compassionate leader, one who is authentic, present, and has a sense of dignity, holds others accountable, leads with integrity, and shows empathy. And that comes from an article entitled, from the 155.com blog, Employee Engagement Trends for 2018. Now those things are very, very interesting because it speaks to another benefit, another return on investment, if you will, from this type of leadership training. Engagement is a huge issue all over the world right now. We're seeing disengagement levels as high as 40 to 50% in some areas. Active disengagement means people are consciously checked out of their jobs, as high as 20% in some areas. And these are not extreme numbers, these are averages. So how do you engage people? Like I said, you know, my job is to help you become the sensei. What's the job of a sensei? To inspire, to empower, to guide others. And that's how you get people more engaged, when you lead with courage, compassion, and wisdom. When people know that you care about them. And that's our sole focus here. Now sometimes though, I'm going to be real honest, we're going to get back to the evil Enron, where it's sometimes easier to see the return or the lack of return or the disaster that happens in the negative when you don't pay attention to this type of leadership, right? And as I said at the beginning, you know, if you're a good company, you're not going to see a big bump. If you're a good company And those are the companies we prefer to work for because we can bring more value to help you support your existing leaders, your existing human-centric leaders, and to develop new ones. It's hard to fix bad in this area. If people have low character, it's very hard for them to change, especially if they've been entrenched for a while. You're usually going to clean house in that case. All right, but if you don't, you don't pay attention to these things, then just look at the examples of companies like The iconic one, Enron. Now most of the leaders that were involved, that was a terrific company, but most of the leaders that destroyed that company and almost destroyed the American economy along the way were focused on either greed, selfishness themselves, right, completely self-focused, and/or that bottom line mentality, especially short term. You know, what's going to happen this quarter? We can do anything we can to get a bottom line mentality, get the best ROI this quarter. And look what they did. They destroyed one of the best companies in the world. And most of those people right now— and here's where I'm going back to the screw the ROI thing— think about what happened to those people, some of them who were once very, very good leaders. Those who weren't thrown in jail, many of them committed suicide. And I'm not making light of that. That's the type of consequence when we forget about our humanity as leaders. We forget about our impact on people, on the community around us. That's what happens. So, well, you might not produce staggering ROI because you're investing in human-centric leadership, but if you don't do it— and plenty of research, we'll get into this in another day— plenty of research shows that unless you focus, unless you discipline yourself and your organization to reinforce good character human-centric leadership traits, then you're probably headed for disaster, and it can happen very, very quickly. So anyway, we always like to wrap up One Step with a discipline, right? And this one is admittedly, and I'm going to say unashamedly, kind of self-serving. Your discipline today is just to come over to thesenseileader.com and check out our programs. That's it. I'm not asking you to buy anything. I'm not asking you to make a phone call. All I'm asking you to do is go over there, read some of the blog posts, listen to the podcasts that we do. The course, this One Step mindset podcast and Walking the Walk, where we interview really tremendous leaders. And just pay attention to what we're trying to accomplish here. Our sole mission at the Sensei Leader Movement: to support and develop human-centric leaders all over the world. Leaders who care. Leaders with the ability to attract willing followers and the will to serve them. Notice the emphasis on the word willing. Leaders who are willing and able to earn the respect the trust and the loyalty of the people they serve. Because that's how you help people achieve their very best. And let's face it, as leaders, we are only measured by the success of the people we serve. When they succeed, we succeed. And when they fail, well, you know what I'm gonna say to that. Always grateful for the time you spend with me, really grateful that I get the chance to share these ideas with you. I hope you find them useful. And please help us share the movement and share these ideas with others. If you know somebody that might find these ideas helpful too, and I always forget to ask this, please share, right? Leadership is sharing. A leader shares. Looking forward to the next time we visit. I'm Jim Bouchard, founder of the Sensei Leader Movement.