121. Who You Need To Engage For Growth

Foreign. Hey, my friend Kenny Chapman here. Welcome back to leadership in a nutshell. I'm so pumped and so honored to have you. It just. This is one of the favorite things that I do in my entire life is sitting down with you. And I just, I picture riding in the car, being at the gym, on a hike, whatever it is you're doing. Part of your morning routine, part of your evening routine. I just, I'm honored to come into your life and share some energy with you today. I'm here for episode 121, who you need to engage for growth. And I want you to think about that. And I'm not saying it as a question. I'm saying it as who you need to engage for growth. And I want you to think about this as we work through, and I will ask you some questions, but you need to engage some people and sometimes reengage some people for growth in the business, for growth in your personal life. Even a lot of, if not 98% of what we talk about in this podcast, it crosses, quote, personal and quote, business life. And I say quote, because it's there. You have one life, period, and you have a business component and you have a personal component. But the more congruency you find, the more those meld together, the more success, fulfillment, happiness, and wisdom you're going to derive in life. And so when we think about engaging people for growth, I want you to just think about this like, engagement is massive. Engagement drives business growth. Engagement drives clients. Engagement drives team members. Engagement drives culture. There's this, whether you want to call it a new economy or there's this new emergence of how people do business, different levels of relationship in business, all these different things. Here's the reality. When it comes to the new business, if you will, engagement's crucial. And that's why there's attention engineers that are paid zillions of dollars to try to get your attention, get my attention. I don't have advertising as part of this podcast at this time. I just want to. To share with you. And I've thought about it, and right now I'm just. I'm not saying I won't ever, but as of right now, I just want to jump on and have a conversation. That's all. I'm not looking to make money from this podcast. I'm not. Yeah, I'll eat the cost to just come with you and share some time and energy together. That's. That's ultimately what it's about. I'm just here to serve. I'm here to Share. I'm here to ask some questions and I want you to think about the Blue Collar Success group. One of the things we talk about internally a lot is that engagement plus value equals loyalty. Chris, our president talks about this probably 3 out of 4 company wide team meetings that we have. We always go over our company mission and values. Every meeting we talk about our mission and values. It's our core values, it's that important to us and why we're here and what we're doing it and how we go about it that matters. And then we understand. Chris talks about engagement plus value equals loyalty. And when we engage clients and team and they feel value and validation and love and support and all those amazing things, then that leads to loyalty. And loyalty can change lives. And when you really start getting clear, engagement comes before loyalty though. And engagement there has to be a certain level of trust. And so when you think about your business and your operations and the changes that you want, need and desire to make based on current landscape, based on here we're pretty much middle of summer and a lot of people, there's businesses being ruined today because everybody's too busy and there's there. I've always said that businesses are ruined when it's busy. It just doesn't show up until it slows back down. And who knows what exactly is going to happen with the economy, with the current circumstances, whatever that's going to look like. There's going to be things that shake out in the wash, as they say, and the people that have the most engaged clients and the most engaged team members are going to win regardless of inflation, of economy, of so on and so forth. Fill in the blank. So here's what I want you to do today. I just, I really want you to think about your team engagement, your own engagement with yourself in the business. I ultimately sold my service business, what is it, five years ago now because I just wasn't mentally engaged anymore. It was a self managing company. When I say self managing, it was managed by people who can manage themselves and I had a great leadership team. I had a great business for a long time and I just wasn't emotionally engaged anymore with my team. That was when I knew and I had a friend of mine that actually pointed that out and said you're just mentally not engaged anymore. I had already launched the Blue Collar Success Group. We were rocking and rolling. I was focused on changing lives through, through Blue collar and building training programs and helping contractors and helping grow our influence and improve people's lives. And so it was Just time to pass the torch of that business to my long term operator that it was time for her to buy the business. And so that worked out great. But I didn't sell it for any reason other than I just wasn't engaged anymore mentally, not even physically. You don't have to be physically out of business in order to have mental engagement. And you know what I'm talking about. Because some of you wake up in the middle of the night, you're not at the office, but you're mentally engaged in the business now, aren't you? And so I'm not saying you got to wake up in the night tripping or freaking out or solving the world's problems. I'm just saying that there is mental engagement and there's physical engagement. And you do not have to have physical engagement to be mentally engaged. And so when you think about your own business, think about a, you know, or list out, depending on the size of your company or maybe just your leadership team if you're a larger business, but make a list of some team members. So let's just take a $10 million company, let's say, and take the leadership team, maybe there's four people on the leadership team and list that leadership team and then go, okay, who's engaged? Who's really engaged at the core level of the core values, the core level of the mission, the core level of the vision that we're trying to accomplish, who's really engaged? And is there anybody that needs some attention? No, Kenny. Everybody on my leadership team. Die. Okay, now go a level below that. Now let's look at service management, perhaps, maybe field supervisor level, who's engaged, who could use some more engagement? Maybe then we go to lead techs and lead salespeople. Maybe we go in the office, who's in the accounting department that's really engaged, who needs more attention, who's in the call center, dispatch, so on, you know what I'm saying? I'm not going to go through every aspect of the business, but when you take and list the team members of a certain functionality of the business, who's really engaged and then who could really use some additional attention? Because here's the key we've always heard, oh, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Here's what I want you to remember. The squeaky wheel is not scalable. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, meaning it needs maintenance, it needs a repair, it needs attention, it needs to be fixed. I can't scale with the squeaky wheel mentality. Squeaky wheel isn't scalable. Good leadership is scalable. Engaged team members is scalable. That's how we create scale. I was recently observing a client situation where there was a mid to high level manager that was a little disgruntled, a little frustrated and just seeing some different things happen in the business. A lot of change happening. As obviously any of you that that are staying up with the times, whether you're leading the times or not. If you're staying up with the times, you are changing a lot. Can I get a head nod? Absolutely. And that is a yes head. I guess you can nod your head no or yes, but yes, you are making a lot of changes. You're going to continue to make a lot of changes as uncertainty build, as certainty that you're going to win builds as all these different things that are going on. But this particular manager was just not totally there, not going against anything. Not one of these managers that's undermining or annoyed or talking out of both sides their mouth, not hosting the meeting after the meeting behind the dumpster and undermining everything that a top leader in the organization might have said, just not quite there necessarily. And so working with the president of the organization and going through this process and really looking at who, who could get more engaged and who, who needs more intention. Who's really engaged? This person's really engaged. This person's really engaged. This person's really man this. But then it identified and said this person's not really that engaged. Why a little this, little that. Then let's get in, let's have a meeting, let's set a couple meetings and start getting dialed in and start getting on the table. What is it that's missing? What would help? What would. And this particular manager has a specific skill set that was able to like from a technical standpoint. It's a. He's a leader in the business, but he's also very technical capable and ended up going kind of understanding where he was and what he wanted and re engaged in another level of the business where we needed some help in that business and we needed some somebody with technical help to help bridge a gap between young junior technicians and people that don't have a lot of skill but need to be running calls. And then people that have a ton of skill and are frustrated because the young generation isn't very skilled and then your top salespeople that are making all this commission money and all this dough and they don't really care about technical as much sometimes. And, and how can we bridge all that with Somebody that understands both sides and technically savvy. It was like boom, what a golden fit. But that came from the top leader in the business doing the work, doing the exercise and going, man, where's, where can I find some help in engagement? Didn't even know the problem that was going to get solved from this engagement or the opportunity in the business that was going to get solved from engaging this leader. Just looking for engagement. If you're a president, a CEO and a director level, any, anything like that, your goal is to engage your direct reporting team. If you're a mid level, say service manager type, if you're a field supervisor, your job is to engage your next level team. If you're a frontline technician, salesperson, call center operator, what your job is to engage the client in a future that's greater than what they currently have. So engagement is everything. And sometimes we forget in this business, oh well, I rolled out the process. Here's how you do it. Here's how you use the software. Here's how you make that happen. Here's how you replace the part, stop it with thinking. That solves everything. Engagement sets you free. Engagement is the key. Loyalty changes lives. But engagement happens before loyalty. So remember this, get focused on this. What about you? And I'm going to leave you with this today. What about you and your own engagement? Are you engaged in the business? Are you engaged in your own personal growth, your business development? Do you need to jump on some additional training yourself? Maybe some additional coaching for yourself? Where do you need some new fire? Who's identifying where you could use some more engagement? This is critical, this is key, who you need to engage for growth. Sometimes it starts with you. Check that. Not sometimes. It always starts with you. When you're engaged, you breed that energy. You bring that fire to the game and when you bring that, then you people want to engage in that energy. Not necessarily the business operation, but in that energy and then they bring that energy to that part of the business operation and so on and so forth. And that sets you free, my friend. I'm so grateful to have you kick this episode to somebody you care about that could really just use a shot of getting a little bit more engaged and make sure you keep coming back. I'm just so honored already 121 episodes with you at my side, by my side. I'm sharing with you truth. If you want a certain topic, kick me an email, share whatever, whatever topics you would like me to dive into. Kennyenny Chapman.com if you want to share any of that. Beyond that, my friend, continue to engage, continue to play full out. And until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week. And I'll see you real soon. Thank you.