Standards Are the Difference Between Chaos & Culture

The most loving thing a leader can do is tell you the truth about what is expected and then hold you to it. That doesn't sound like love in the way we've been trained to think about it in today's world. Love according to the world is supposed to be soft and warm and easy. It's a hug and a thank you card and a bonus at Christmas and you do you, boo, and everything you do is okay. I love you. But hear me when I tell you, the people who actually shape your life, the ones that you still talk about, the ones you credit in your keynotes and in your wedding toast and in your book dedications, those people did not get there by being easy on you. They got you there by holding a line you did not know you could reach, and they would not let you fall short of it because they refused to believe you were someone who would fall short. That is love. That's the real thing. Love comes with expectations because love believes in you. And today we're gonna talk about how amazing leaders put that into their organization's own purpose. This is Real Talk and I'm Leigh Brown. We don't do fluff here and we don't do fear. We do the truth about leadership, business, and what it actually takes to build something that lasts. If you've been with me for the last 2 episodes, you know where we've been. Episode 1, we talked about the gap between being nice and being effective. Episode 2, we talked about how culture is not decor, it's what you tolerate. Now today, we'll finish the arc because once you are willing to lead honestly and once you are willing to stop tolerating what is quietly eroding your culture, there's only one question left. What are you going to build in place of what you are fixing? Well, the answer is standards. Clear standards, clearly communicated, consistently enforced. That's the structure. That's what turns a brave leader into a built organization. Now, I want to change the way you think about standards because for most of us, we've been trained to see standards as restrictive. As rules that somebody else made, regulations, fences. Oh, it's just beating us down. It's the stuff that HR sends around in an email nobody reads, like, mm, TPS reports. Well, that's actually not what standards are. Standards are how a team knows it's safe. Think about this. When you walk into an organization with real standards, you know what to expect. I don't even have to remind you of how you know you've been in a Chick-fil-A drive-through. The standard at Chick-fil-A is that their employees respond to any question or request with, "It's my pleasure." That is a standard in the organization, but what makes that safe is the employees know what to expect and the customer knows what to expect, so it's easier to elevate. In fact, I want you to think about how meetings can run and how decisions get made wherever you are. You know how people are treated when they underperform and when they overperform. You know what gets you promoted and you know what gets you removed. There's no mystery, there's no politics, there's no guessing. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? Because that is an organization that has built safety in. That builds in dignity because When we have a foundation of everything that elevates the experience, people get to succeed. Think about this. When you walk into an organization with real standards, you know what to expect. Let's take Chick-fil-A, for example. When you drive up to a Chick-fil-A and you speak to the young person taking your order, you tell 'em thank you. How do they respond? It's my pleasure. That's a standard in the Chick-fil-A organization. That's a standard that the employees know to deliver. It's a standard that the customers have come to expect. That allows the employees to succeed because they're measured by a bar that the organization set that absolutely sets them apart in a really crowded space. Now think about that in terms of how meetings run. When you know how decisions are made and you know who's in charge, well, then that gives you a chance to get started. And when you see and expect how people are treated when they miss the mark and when they overachieve, well, then you know what's going to get you promoted and what's going to get you removed or ignored or blasted. There's no mystery in these organizations. In fact, it diminishes the power of politics in an organization that has clear standards. There's actually no guessing. Since I've mentioned politics, one of the biggest frustrations of the voting public and the public that refuses to vote is that when promises are made, promises are not kept. When bad behavior is discovered, the bad behavior is not punished. There are different standards for those in office than those who are the regular citizens, it leads to a high level of distrust and a high level of, frankly, dysfunction. But when you start to realize that a well-run organization has standards, enforces the standards, and there's no favorites, well, you're actually providing dignity to the people that are part of that group. Dignity should be the foundation of everything you're doing because over the history of humanity, it's been the foundation of everything good that's ever had human beings involved. Dignity doesn't mean agreeing with everybody all the time, by the way. Dignity means providing a space for people where they know how to succeed. Now you also can take this into your family. When you tell your kids, I want your room cleaned and there's a punishment if you don't, and they don't clean it and there's no punishment, what happens next? We all know. They don't listen because you didn't hold them to a standard. And now when they go to start their own families, if they try to set standards because they didn't have them growing up, it just becomes a really uneasy starts. In fact, it's a very unsettled foundation. Let's think about this. Any organization, association, brokerage, business, family, doesn't matter. Any organization of people that has no standards, it's actually not free. You are gonna create an anxiety-filled space. Everybody starts reading the room, trying to figure out, right, who's actually driving the bus and What are we doing today? And when people start reading the room, they start texting each other under the table, trying to figure out, well, what are we doing today? Who's in charge today? What's today's version of the rules? That's exhausting. Oh my gosh, it's so exhausting when you don't know what to expect from people. And you who love being on your A-game and you read the agenda and you did your continuing education early, and you are involved with your kids' lives and you take your spouse out for date night, you are at your best capacity. And when you're in a space where everything is a muddy mess, you burn out first because you were looking for a higher level and nobody else was looking for a level at all. So you walk away. And when you walk away, all of us lose out. So let me say this very clearly. Standards are not the opposite of grace. Standards are the structure grace fits inside of. That's what you get to write down for episode 3. Now, let me tell you what standards actually look like because I hear this word thrown around in leadership and usually it means nothing. Here's what a real standard is. A real standard is specific. Not, "We value excellence." Okay, that's a poster and it's a cop-out. A standard is, "We respond to every client inquiry within one business hour every time, no exceptions." That's our standard. Now, put yourself into the space of the consumer on the other end of that. Would you deem that to be excellence if you got a human callback inside of an hour? Oh, that will be great. Because when the call comes inside of the hour, they've just met their own standard. And that's what leads to excellence. If you just say, we're excellent, we're great communicators, you didn't provide the metric by which somebody else could measure your success. Because real standards are observable. Somebody can watch it happen or not happen. You either did return the phone call or you didn't. And you should know that when you miss the mark, you can still call and say, "I missed the mark," and it will still count as excellence because the mark is a finite and real observable thing. "We treat every person in this office with respect" is not a standard. You can see respect 100 different ways. "We don't interrupt each other in meetings." "We don't talk about each other in the hallway." Those are observable demonstrations of respect. We don't talk about each other in text threads that could be screenshot and sent around. Mm. That's why I should go ahead and point out real leadership knows that if you put it in writing, you better expect it to get screenshot around the world. That's also observable. And when we see those screenshots go around the world, Remember, the real standards are enforced. And here is where most organizations die. Quietly, loudly, in public, in private, they just start falling away because the leaders who write those standards announce the standard, print the standard, put it on the wall like this is your birthday, and then the first time somebody violates it, the leader says, well, You did your best. You were having a rough day, or I didn't see it, or it's gonna cost me too much time to enforce it. All of those excuses just tell you that the standards are optional, and an optional standard is not a standard at all. It's a poster on the wall, a decoration at best, fades when the sun hits it. Doesn't mean anything. Congratulations, you've achieved nothing. Okay, here's the framework. You just taught your team that those standards were optional. Can you fix it? Yes. Let's find the 3 questions that will take you from mushy nothingness to something that is observable and consistent. We're gonna run every standard through these 3 questions. Are you ready? Question number 1, is it specific enough that 2 different people would describe it the same way? And those 2 different people might be different in the way that they are aligned, 2 different people in their tenure in the organization, 2 different people in their expertise, doesn't matter. Any 2 people could describe it the same way. Number 2, is it observable enough that a third party could tell you what happened, good, bad, or indifferent? And is it enforced the same way for your best number one producing salesperson and the newest green person on the block who's never done anything and has barely figured out where the break room is? If the answer to any of those three questions is a no, you don't have a standard yet. You have a wish, and wishes don't build organizations, but wishes can turn into standards, and standards do build organizations. So here's where the love part does come back in, because you know me. I know some of you are hearing all this and thinking, Leigh Brown, this sounds cold. This sounds like boot camp. This is not me. I'm a lover. I'm a hugger. I love my people. I get that, because you know me, I'm a hugger and lover of people too. I want to tell you something, the person over there who's feeling like you need to do this, but you're very nervous about it. I've learned this the hard way in my decades in real estate, running for office 3 times and failing, sitting on boards and chairing boards, raising kids, being married to a man who is far better at this than I am because If there's anything engineers are great at, it's standards. Well, the people who grow the most under your leadership or beside your leadership or in your space are not the people you're softest with. They're the people you believe in enough to hold them to a standard. Because when you hold someone to a standard, you are saying something to them that almost nobody else in their life is saying. You are saying, I see what you're capable of, and I'm not going to pretend you are less than just to keep the peace. That's love with a spine. That's the kind of leadership people follow for 20 years. That's the kind of leadership people come back to see when they retire and say, "You're the reason I am who I am." It's the reason I wish Glenn McClanahan was alive today because Mr. Mack is who I wish I could go back to and thank him for holding me to a higher standard. I'll just point out, if the person you're thinking of, that person who loved you with a spine, is still here, your homework assignment is to call them and send them a note and thank them. And then I want you to think about the boss who let you slide. The one who let you get away with everything. You don't really want to call them, do you? They don't generate in you the same emotive response as the person who loved you enough not to tolerate less than who you could be. So here's your actual homework this week, in addition to your little emotive note and phone call. And this, by the way, is the third test in this series. So if you've been doing the work, you You already know how this goes. Pick one area of your organization, your association, your brokerage, your family, wherever you are operating, pick the one area where the standards are super fuzzy. Maybe that standard is how the meetings run. Maybe the meetings never stay within an hour. They never have an agenda in advance. Maybe it's how you communicate with clients. It's how you select a channel or the timeframes for responses. Maybe it's how your teammates talk to and about each other. Maybe it's how business is handled. Maybe it's how you have family dinner. It doesn't matter, but you pick one. Now, write the standard in one sentence. What is it that you're looking for? And make it specific. Make it observable. Make it enforceable for everyone, no matter who they are inside that organization. Because you're gonna have to be able to measure it. And then you're gonna tell your team in person, this is not an email or a text or in your Slack channels, none of that. This is where you can look people in the eye and say, we are going to make our culture different. And here's the standard by which we're going to do it. This is why this standard matters. So don't just lay down the law, lay down what the benefits are of the law being enforced. Let them know what you're going to do as the leader when it is met, and more importantly, how you're going to respond when the standard is not met. Then, ahem, do it. The first time it's violated, no matter who it is, enforce the standard because that's the moment when your culture changes forever. It's not at the future retreat, it's not at the offsite visit, it's not when I come to do your strat plan, any of that. It is the moment when you, the leader, say, "This is our standard, this is how we're going to hold it to account," and then they watch you do it and they realize that your words had meaning and you meant it. Because you cared enough about them and the culture to pull it together so that everyone could rise. If any of these 3 commentary have been speaking to you and you wanna bring this conversation into your organization, this is what I love doing. I'd love to bring a keynote to your conference. I'd love to do a workshop for your leadership team. I would love to conduct a full leadership retreat that takes your executive team through all 3 of these conversations in person with no devices in the room, by the way, but with copies of a real live book, Next Is Now, in every seat. My team handles the details and the link to start that conversation is in the description. If you missed episodes 1 and 2 of the series, the links are here. Go watch those next, 'cause these 3 belong together. And if one leader in your life needs to hear the whole series, send it to them courtesy of Leigh Thomas Brown, 'cause You know who they are, and so do they. I'm Leigh Thomas Brown. This was Real Talk. I want you to go build something that lasts. And by the way, if you kind of like the whole 3-piece series setup, let me know that in the comments. I've got so many ideas that I want to bring to you, and I'm grateful that you stuck around for the conversation.