Backstage Business Secrets: How to Drive Operational Excellence

Once in a while, I just like to play. Okay, I like to play all the time. But today, I'm taking questions. I've amalgamated a bunch of questions I've received over the year and thought if the person I was speaking to had these questions, perhaps you do as well. So, that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast That challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode. I am your host, customer and employee experience strategist Marc Haine. I am so glad that you're here today because today I will be taking your questions live. But since I typically only get 3 to 5 people watching live each week, I have a list of questions that I've taken from conversations and coaching sessions I've had all year. If you'd like something deeper, if something resonates with you, I do offer a 30-minute complimentary coaching session. Go ahead and book a time that works for you on my online calendar at meetwith.marchaine.com. You know, our world is in a constant flux. As leaders, we must be lifelong learners. Otherwise, the reality of current conditions will quickly make us obsolete. We are seeing that now with Gen Zs in the workforce, and in 2025, Generation Alpha will be a critical mass with new conditions, new expectations, and new needs. And I'm speaking from both the customer and the employee perspective. The bottom line is that if we are not constantly challenging ourselves, we will be relegated to the majority of frontline managers who are constantly exclaiming, these kids these days! So today, I'm fielding questions. If you are watching live, please go ahead and put them in the comment box. I will be watching for comments, and I will make those the priority. So, let's get started. Before we get into that though, I have to ask you our question of the day. So, here's A question for you before we get started. What are you doing as a leader to keep yourself up to date and aware of the changing conditions? It is so easy that we put our heads down, that we just keep on working in our businesses. And sometimes, it's really difficult to step up and out. There are resources out there. For instance, things like Chamber of Commerce meetings where we can actually step up and listen to people in our own network, our own communities, talking about some stuff and some angst that they're going through. And we're able to network and keep us aware. But sometimes, it takes us to— we have to take it to the next level. Sometimes, we just need to bring in outside awarenesses, people from outside our businesses to come in and be able to pinpoint some stuff for us because sometimes, we can't see the forest for the trees. I do have a couple of episodes of this podcast around the idea of coaching and how to hire coaches. So, feel free to check that out. And again, if you ever would like to have a 30-minute conversation, just something is just rearing its ugly little head and you want to discuss it with somebody, please feel free to book that time on my calendar. Again, the link for my calendar is meetwith.marchaine.com. Okay, so let's get started. I have a whole bunch of questions here. I have pre-read the questions but I haven't given it a lot of thought. And I hope I want to keep this as kind of authentic and kind of off the cuff as possible because then you're going to, I believe you're going to tap into my best. So, I'm just going to take one question. We're going to get started right now. First question I have, crisis management. Can you describe a time when you helped a business navigate a major crisis through improved customer and employee experience strategies? The one thing that's absolutely certain is we're going to get hit with crisis. On our best days, we can just float through it. And the real test of leadership though is when things go horribly, horribly wrong. I had a major crisis at a hotel at 2 o'clock in the morning. I get a phone call from the front desk agent that they found a child running around the hotel. And we had, of course, we had a pool. We have concrete stairs. We were pretty challenged that we had this little child running around. And I had left because I had to commute so far to the hotel. I had left instructions that the front desk agent is to call all the rooms that had children listed. And then once he goes through that list, go through and start calling the children who have the rooms that had no children listed. He got about halfway through the list on the first floor and had all these people cursing at him. And so he decided he would stop there. But meanwhile, we had this child that we were now in custody of, had no idea where this person came from. When I talked to the nighttime duty manager, We decided that since the front desk clerk told us that he called all the rooms, which was a fabrication, that we should call the authorities and we should call social services because our main concern was we had to make absolutely sure we took care of this little girl. We wanted to make absolutely sure that she was safe and that nothing, that she wasn't gonna be privy to any harm. So we called the authorities. Social workers came at 7 o'clock in the morning.

Pretty early.

Parents called down in a panic screaming about their child missing. They started blaming us. Why didn't we have locks on the doors? Why couldn't the locks keep the kid in? And so on. But, you know, the fact of the matter is there was stuff that had happened. The kid reached up to the handle, it automatically unlocked the door. They didn't have the overlap clasp done up. And so the child was able to get out. But the big question in the eyes of the customer is, how could you possibly do this to us? Why didn't you call us? And so on. Now, recognizing that we let that customer down, we had a lot of damage control to do. And so as I drove in for my hour and 10-minute commute in, I was kind of putting myself into the perspective of the client. And I thought, what for me would be the biggest thing? Yes, there's this inconvenience. This hotel, you know, called social services. They called the police. They made a bigger deal out of all this. All they had to do was just call my room to figure it out. And they didn't do that. And so knowing full well that that's what their mindset would be, because that would be my mindset, I went in fully prepared to start thinking about and start wanting to focus the parents on the most important aspect of this whole condition, which was number one, the safety of their child. And so when I got to the hotel, I put my jacket down, put my briefcase down, and I came running out to talk to the parents. And the very first thing I said to them, I am so thankful that we were able to take care of your child. And as much as they were really angry, the one thing that I did in that, just with that one phrase, was I refocused their attention to the inconvenience of everything that they were going through that morning, to the fact that the one aspect that was the most important above all else was the safety of their child. I acknowledge that we dropped the ball. I acknowledge that We had challenges that evening, but our purpose and our outcome was to protect the child at all costs. And we had done that and we delivered on that. So, this was a major crisis. This was a major crisis because there were so many different variables that were involved in it. Yes, we had to— I definitely had to have a sit-down and I had to talk with and discipline the front desk agent because he did not do what we had asked them to do, which was, number one, we had to forego the discomfort of people yelling at us, and we had to find the child's parents. I doubted very much that somebody would just take a child into the hotel and just abandon the child. But again, with things like child trafficking, we don't know what the circumstances are. We don't know if the child escaped a dangerous situation. We don't know if the child just climbed out of her crib and Walked out the door. We just don't know. And so, we have to keep an eye on during critical situations, we have to keep an eye on what is the most critical factor here? What do we need to do to make absolutely sure that we're living our purpose, which is in our case was the safety of our guests and the safety of the guests' guests, in this case, the child. And then, we would run everything else afterwards. Did we have to make up and give some discounts to people who had to be woken up at 2 o'clock in the morning? Yes, but that was a small price to pay to know that we were taking care of this child. At the end of our conversation, the mother was still really angry, really upset, but the husband kind of understood the direction I was going with our conversation. And as much as we were able to turn around and apologize for the fact that we didn't do everything that we could have to locate them, we still went with the information we had and we did the one thing we needed to do, protect the child. So, that's a really great way of being able to look at how we can use customer experience and customer service to mitigate the effects of a major crisis. So, on to another question. Let's go. So, this one's about personal growth. How has your experience in theater influenced your personal leadership style and approach to business consulting? This is really interesting because of course, I did write a book called Lights! Camera! Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater. And I have just finished and wrapped up a show. We did 6 shows in front of 180 people each night. So, one of the things I told a colleague is it feels so cool because we were able to positively affect the lives of about 1,500 people over 6 shows. And that was absolutely magical. But there's a lot of lessons to be taken from live theater and putting on live productions. How has my leadership style changed? As I wrote my book, I started kind of breaking out management and leadership strategies and filtered them through the lens of live theater. So, for instance, something like hiring employees. I do know in hospitality we have a horrible habit of hiring employees because we'll interview somebody and go, oh, you got 3 years serving experience? Really good. Okay, so here's the menu. Here's your apron and here's your card to access the point-of-sale system. That's going to be your section. Go. And I thought, it's so funny because in theater, if we were to do auditions for a role and somebody came in and we see their resume and we look and go, oh, you got 10 years doing Shakespeare? Oh, so you're really good actor then. If you could do Shakespeare for 10 years, you must be awesome. Okay, here's the script, here's your costume. You go in in 10. Of course, we would never do that. And so the lens of live theater kind of highlights the idiocy of some of our practices in the business world. And my thought process was that if we were to focus our attention on the details and the commitments and so on that we need to put on live theater, if we did that in businesses, that we would have amazing businesses throughout our communities. It would be absolutely stellar because every day that we open the doors, we'd be saying, okay, We're putting on a show and it's showtime. So I would say that this has taken— putting together this book has been kind of a catalyst for me to reframe how I think about our interactions with my coaching clients, with the businesses that I coach through and help problem solve. So I think my personal leadership style is more understanding of the fact that, you know, in— as a director of a live theater, we have to give directions, but then we also have to give notes. And the notes aren't knocking people over the head with a club. When we give people notes in theater, it's kind. It's recognizing what people do well and then giving them a point of improvement and give them a venue to be able to try something different and risk failing. And that has been one of my biggest lessons, I think, writing the book is this idea of the improv yes, and, and eliminating the fear of failing. So many times, we're so worried as business owners, what happens if the staff don't do their job? What happens if they try something and they fail? I always turn around and think, well, what did they learn? Because I bet you any money that when they made a mistake or when they tried something brand spanking new, that there was a realization of what could happen next to make it more of a reality. And we learned our lessons. Thomas Edison was asked by a reporter, you know, Mr. Edison, what did it feel like to fail so many times in inventing the light bulb? And Edison looked at the young reporter and said, young man, it took me 1,000 times to figure out what I needed to do to invent the light bulb. Everything is evolutionary. Just in nature, everything is evolutionary. So why do we have this expectation that when we try something new for the very first time, we're going to knock it out of the park? So I challenge people now as a leader, I challenge people to look at their failures and start isolating and recognizing what they'd learned as part of their own evolution and whatever mistakes were made. So that's kind of long-winded, isn't it? Okay, so why don't we take a quick break and we will be back right after this message. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with a new book, Lights! Camera!

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Business operational excellence through the lens of live theater by Marc Haine. Marc uses his business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show so you can create a performance your customers will never forget.

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today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com. Welcome back! I am so glad that you're here with me today. Of course, I'm doing questions from a hat but I don't wear hats. So, I just have a shuffle of papers that I'm pulling questions from. I'll give you a little insight. If you do buy my book, if you go to my website and click the Buy Now button, and I will make absolutely sure that I sign a book for you. I just sat down with a young lady who is a manager of a grocery store. And I went through the book with her. And then, she is now using the book, copies of the book. And she does a book club with all her frontline and middle managers to go through the lessons in the book. And then each week, they get together Having read the chapter to work through what they can do to apply this knowledge to the various departments within the grocery store and within the organization as a whole. And it's actually been rather magical transformation. Her name is Kim Kwok, and she's been doing this, and she's just been nominated, which is really thrilling. She's just been nominated as the Woman in Grocer for the Year from the National Grocers Association here in Canada. So, It's a very, very exciting time for her. But it just goes to show how powerful it is when we as leaders step up and make absolutely sure that we're taking what we learn and applying it and teaching and mentoring the people who report to us. So anyway, having said that, we have some more questions. So, what do you think? This one? Does that one work for you?

Yeah?

Okay, let's go with that one. Digital transformation. How should businesses in traditional industries approach digital transformation without losing the human touch? This is a great question because so much conversation is happening now in the media about things like ChatGPT and artificial intelligence, how artificial intelligence is gonna be taking things away from us and that sort of thing. The one thing artificial intelligence can't do is they can't provide that human touch. But what we can do is we can leverage the technology to create more touchpoints for our customers. In my book, and I hate to keep slogging my book, but in chapter 18 of my book, I talk about the journey that people are on with us, whether they're a customer or they're an employee. And through their journey with us, there are multiple touchpoints that everybody hits. And if we understand the questions and the needs that people have on their journey with us, then we're better prepared to be able to serve them. And so this is where we can now leverage AI and technology to personalize experiences, understanding that somebody's going to come to a specific milestone in their journey with us and have specific needs. We can design technology to be able to recognize and take advantage of that, to be able to personalize experiences and to be able to do reach-outs and to be able to communicate in the way that our customers and our employees require as they hit those milestones. I think it's foolhardy to turn around and say, I'm not going to adopt any technology because I don't want to lose the human touch. I think what we can do is we can leverage the technology to help guide us and help allow us the new opportunities to create the touchpoints so that we can constantly show the human touch. Personalization is where people want to be right now. People want to know that you are talking to them directly, not that they're part of some mass mailing special offer, but that you have thought out exactly what that needs, what needs to happen. In the book, I talk about a story I had read. I think it was Daniel Pink, but I could be mistaken. It could have been Malcolm Gladwell. But they talked about how Target had put together a strategy. They were really going gangbusters on data mining. And so they could tell from people's shopping habits what kind of, where their life was in the throes of a hole. So for instance, they could tell chances are because you're buying a bunch of furniture, you're about to buy bed covers and stuff, chances are you've just moved into a new place. So they would be able to target you and send you special offers around moving. And so you would then get, you know, so you get ads for things like discounts on lawn mowers, because if you move into a new house, you probably need a lawn mower. Or bed covers or whatever, right? And so, they were very good at being able to manipulate the data and be able to figure this out. And they sent— they would send out like they could tell when somebody was pregnant and they would send out coupons on discount formula, cribs, carriages, the whole thing to be able to target the people who are pregnant. And one father called up one day and said, why are you sending this to my 14-year-old daughter? And they got hung up because the father didn't know the 14-year-old daughter was pregnant, but Target did. And so that's a story of misplaced targeting that they should have been very cautious about that. And I think they learned a huge lesson in targeting and how they're going to interpret data. So we have to use a little bit of critical thinking when we're using and leveraging technology. But I think the future is technology no matter what, and it can be our ally, it can be our partner in how we interact interrelate with our customers. So, don't shy away from it. Embrace it. If you don't know anything about it, find somebody who does. And then, have brainstorming sessions on how you could leverage it to help make your customer and your employee interactions better. Okay, another one. Okay, here we go. Service innovation. How can businesses use creativity and innovation to enhance their service delivery and surprise their customers? We're so afraid of innovation, I have to say. When I talk to hotel operators, when I talk to business operators, in fact, when I was just talking to an optometrist and talking about what it is, what is their customer expectations when it comes down to service delivery and so on. And I think we get a little bit skittish because we have the ability to become more creative and become more innovative. And one of the things that I find out a lot of times is we have top-down leadership. And so, I'm the owner of the store. And so, what I say goes. And one of the challenges that I think that behooves us is that we surround ourselves with employees. And I do believe that every employee comes with magical superpowers. I can't tell you time and time and time again somebody who surprised me because they're marginalized by their job description but they're capable of doing So much more. And so, just getting the team together once a month to go through a workshop session, an innovation creative workshop session where you can sit down with them and outline kind of a problem of dwindling sales, dwindling engagement from the customers, and so on. And get somebody who knows how to facilitate these sessions for you and bring them in and start pulling ideas out of the ether because they're there. And if we give our employees a chance to shine and share their ideas without shutting them down with things like, oh, do you know how much that would cost? Or, that's such a stupid idea because it's not our business model. If we can avoid doing that in these kinds of sessions, it's amazing what they will come out with. Like our people are so creative. And the fact that they're standing on your front lines 100% of the time, They have insights that you as the owner do not have. I know, I hate to say it. But as the owner, people don't tell you everything. It's just a fact of life. You don't hear everything about bad employees because nobody wants to piss off the bad employees. And you don't hear things about the customer interaction because some people just can't be bothered. It's a reality. So, you bring these stakeholders together and you start with your employees. Bring them together. And then, when you start kind of churning out these ideas, you bring customers together and you start churning out ideas. And before you know it, you have so many creative, innovational ideas that people who know your business can help you define. And really, the outcome can be absolutely magical. It's amazing. But it does take the investment of bringing people together, bringing a facilitator, help pull those ideas out. And we do this with like when I Do the journey mapping exercises. I do this all with sticky notes, and we just pull ideas out of people's brains. And we tell people when we're doing it, there is no bad idea. Just throw stuff on it and see what happens. And it's amazing what happens when you say, hey, you know what? That might be something. Let's explore how that might work. And then from there, we can create a strategy and we can create ideas. Nothing is impossible. The only thing that's impossible is when we turn around and say, That's impossible. That's the only thing. So, okay. I think we have time for one more before we get to another break. Let's pick another one. I'm not looking. You see, I'm just picking at random. Here we go. This is— I love doing this stuff. This is like playing for me. Could you share an anecdote where applying principles of live theater dramatically improved business operations? So much. Share an anecdote where applying principles from life theater dramatically improved a business's operation. When I sit down, so I mentioned Kim Kwok just recently. So, Kim was a young manager who 9 years ago stepped into a supervisory role. She was a really good employee and they promoted her saying to her, you're such a good employee. Why don't we make you a supervisor and you can teach everybody how to be as good as you? And for me, that usually spells kind of death because what we're asking people to do when we promote them is we're asking people to take the skills that they have that made them a really great employee and then put 'em into a leadership role where they have no training as leaders and saying, just teach them how you were a good employee and that should work. The two are radically different skill sets. So part of what We did with one particular business was we went through this idea of if we wanted to take an actor in live theater and make them into a director, what skills would they need that's going to be different? I mean, obviously, as an actor, you have to be really good at taking direction. You have to be really good with acting and fulfilling the expectations on stage. But as a director, what needs to happen? And it's interesting when you kind of Do that. Just in me saying it right now, did you get an idea that the skill sets are entirely different? That directing actors on stage with a forethought of what the overall picture is going to be, what the overall production is going to look like, and so on. Can you see how the director having to go to an employee or to go to an actor and say, I need you to fulfill this ambition. I need you to work with the 6 other people on stage to be able to this outcome. Well, we do this. We should be doing this with the leadership. Again, it would be ridiculous for me to go to somebody and say, hey, you're a good actor. I want you to become a director. Michael Jordan was a wonderful basketball player. But he was a lousy coach. But Michael Jordan's coach was a wonderful coach. But he was a lousy player. So, to move people into roles, we need to create a skill development set. We need to take their skills. that they do have and their curiosity on how to become better. And we need to leverage that by giving them the training, giving them the mentorship to be able to succeed. The outfall is if we don't do that, ultimately what happens is they get frustrated, the team gets frustrated, things start to fall apart, and sometimes you end up with dysfunctional corporate cultures or worse, the person you just promoted will quit and go somewhere else. So that is, I think that covers kind of the, like at a 30,000-view thing, an anecdote about how live theater can affect our business. So, I'm going to get a quick sip of tea and we'll be back right after this.

Attention meeting and event planners! Is your company or association planning a live or virtual conference, seminar, or staff retreat? Are you looking for a fresh, energetic perspective on what it takes to put on a jaw-dropping experience for your customers or staff? Book customer experience expert Marc Haine for your next group event. Past participants have said, Marc kept us in stitches while teaching us how important and powerful actually designing our customer experience can be. Read more testimonials and find out how Marc can serve you and your group at marchaine.com. That's M-A-R-C-H-A-I-N-E.com.

Welcome. We are answering questions from the imaginary hat. We're asking— answering different kinds of questions. I hope this is of value to you. As I suspected, there are no questions in the chat window, so I'm just going to keep pulling questions from this thing. I hope this is— so far, I hope this has been valuable to you. Please do share this episode and ask questions, or if you need clarification on any point I've talked about thus far, put it in the comments on this show. And I'm more than happy to reach out to you or even type out a clarification statement based on what I've talked about thus far. So, okay, let's pick another one. What do you think? This one? Is this one a good one? Let's just—

who knows?

We won't know until we open it, right? Okay, Customer Experience Evolution. How has customer experience management evolved over the past decade and what are the key trends businesses need to adapt today? Oh my goodness, this is such a big question. I could probably do a whole podcast just on this. How has the customer experience management evolved over the past decade and what are the key trends businesses need to adapt to today? I've already mentioned the importance of personalization. More than anything else in the last 10 years, especially since COVID came and has come and gone. Well, hasn't really gone, but We were wholly affected by that level of change and experience management for customers towards the customer's expectations to fulfill customer expectations. Those have changed. Right now, we see that, let's say, in the restaurant industry that things like DoorDash and Uber Eats and all that sort of stuff are very much a prevalent transactional source now. People have— they like the convenience of it. This was something that it took COVID to kind of really uncover. We did have delivery services before, but people are like, but why would we need it? And now that they've got it and, you know, the restaurants are really focused to make sure that they give out a really top quality product that's going to stand the 20-minute commute or the 30-minute commute to the destination. People have now kind of relied on those instead of getting into their own cars and driving to the destinations. So, this idea of understanding how our clients will purchase from us, how they will want to interact from us, I think is probably the biggest key. We did talk about leveraging technology to help make that happen. Our ability to adapt to our clients' needs first and foremost comes from understanding what those needs are. And so, one of the things again, I had just done a conference where with an organization to help them map out their member experiences. This was for an association, the same thing as doing— I do for customer experiences. And when we map out the customer experience, we map out exactly where people are from being a prospect, what are the needs and the questions, and we map them out to what it takes for them to be a brand ambassador. We're able to really shake out and understand exactly what needs to happen at every step of the milestone. And so, that is this idea that we cannot create a one-size-fits-all service model for everybody. It just will not work. And the more we understand that, we've been playing in this in hospitality, for instance, for ages, training our serving staff that if you know somebody, if they're a regular customer, try to get to understand what exactly these people need. I was blown away when I went and stayed at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. I drove up and somebody came in. He was directing traffic. And as soon as I pulled up, the porter opened up the door and said, Mr. Haine, so nice to see you again. And it's like, how did he know? Then I realized the guy who's directing traffic was calling in the license plate number. And there was a guy at the stand typing it in because I was a previous customer. And that got radioed to the guy opening the door. And so, when he opened the door, Mr. Haine, welcome back. It's so nice to see you again. I was like, what? I'm that important? And so, that's an example of a system that is in place to be able to create and exceed the customer expectation. And I was like completely blown away. I didn't even realize also that when I dropped off my keys and they packed up my bag and stuff, even when I was waiting in line, by the time I got to the desk, The person at the desk knew who I was. How they made that happen, I have no idea because honestly, I'm not that famous. I'm just not. But ultimately, their purpose is to create that experience that every customer is a VIP. Every customer to them is a famous person. And so, they treated you like that and it made you feel wonderful. And it was a case study that I think a lot of businesses need to learn from. is what can you do in the scope of your business operations to be able to recognize your repeat customers, understanding exactly what their preferences are and how they want to be interacted with. A lot of times, we go into the mall and you walk into a shop and right away somebody jumps on you and goes, can I help you with anything? It's like, I've just walked in. Can you give me a second to digest this? And so typically the response is, nope, just looking around. Okay, just let me know if you need any help. And then, as you go through and then now you need help and now you're looking around for them, it's like, where'd they go? They were here a minute ago. Where are they now when I need them? Right? So, we have to understand the path of what each of the clients wants. And I think being able to look at the trends in your industry, what is coming up, what are the innovations coming up. Use webinars. There's so many different platforms out there coming up with new and exciting ideas of being able to connect with your audience, with your customers. Check out the webinars. Check out and see. This is like never before we have access to information, access to new ways of doing things, new innovations, and that sort of thing. And so, understanding exactly what you want to accomplish with your customers, what you want them to feel, and then find stuff to support that. And again, please, please, please tap into your employees because they know stuff. Okay, enough of standing on that soapbox. I think we have time for one more and then we'll wrap up for the day. Leadership challenges. What are the common leadership pitfalls in customer-facing industries and how can they be avoided? Well, I know that the one common leadership pitfall, probably the biggest of them all, can you guess it? Lack of training. We're promoting people to leadership. Precious few of us have ever been trained in leadership. And so, I look at my daughter who is working in a restaurant. I have another daughter who's working at a trucking trailer company. And it blows my mind how leaders are constantly flying by the seat of their pants quoting what they think is policy to manipulate behavior. And it does nothing but build distrust. We need to train our leaders. And I know leaders Training costs money. But without it, these people are leading the frontline workers. These people are leading the middle managers who are leading the frontline workers. If you're not paying to train your middle managers, you're certainly not training to pay the frontline managers. And this is something this needs to change because this is such an easy investment to make in your employees and in your business. Now, you're probably looking at me saying, but Marc, Training is an expense. I'm going to pay somebody to train my staff and it's going to cost me a ton of money. And I have to pay them to attend the training. And so, that's just more money. And you're right, it costs you money to do that. But that's called the investment. And of course, there's the adage of what happens if I train my staff and they leave? And the retort has always been, well, what happens if you don't train your staff and they stay? I have seen cancerous situations happen within organizations because the leaders aren't trained. Time and time and time again, people are being put into these roles, given the power to manage your business without being given resources to be able to do that. And I can't tell you how important it is. And I'll hang my hat on this 100% of the time. When you take your people and you invest in their training, Your people will say, oh, my employer cares. When you take the time to invest in training your employees and help them develop, you create a legacy effect that they will take into their future. I have people, not to toot my own horn, but I have people who I've worked with 25 years ago who every once in a blue moon will message me on Facebook and go, Marc, I remember a situation where you did this, this, and this, and that changed the kind of leader I became. Because of the way that you reacted to it. I remember a young supervisor telling me, because I was talking about perception, something had happened, and I said, well, what is their perception? And she looked at me, she goes, I hate when you say that. And because it made her have to think critically about the situation. But she came back to me like 20 years later and goes, you know, that lesson stayed with me the whole time. So whenever I get into a crisis situation, I have to take a look and say, what is the perception of the other people? And that's the magic of training. It leaves a legacy so that when people look back 20 years from now and they turn around and say, you know what? I so enjoyed working at ABC Company because my manager was my mentor. My manager was my coach. And that's the other best practice I would suggest in this junction in this day and age. We need to take our managers. We need to not only train them to be leaders, we need to train them to be Coaches. We have to reduce all the to-do lists on a leader's portfolio. Not all of them, but I would say probably about 80% of that and let them focus on coaching the teams. You don't see in the Stanley Cup playoffs, you don't see the coaches jumping on ice to play hockey. You see them there to lead the team. And so, we have to figure out ways in our organizations to help them lead the team, the team towards excellence. I hope this has been valuable to you. I haven't even played. Look, I haven't even played with the screens or nothing. I haven't played with the screens or nothing all day long. I just got so into the conversation. But I hope this has been helpful for you. If you have some questions about today's topics or the topics we talked about today and you'd like to brainstorm some aspect of your business, feel free to click the calendar link in the show notes. And book a complimentary 30-minute session with me. Ultimately, I think you figured out I live to serve. And please, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to subscribe to this podcast and share this episode with your network. The bottom line is that if you are a leader looking to get better, all it takes is for you to make that decision that you want to become a lifelong leader. You have to be curious. about doing things differently. We have to get our face off the grindstone and we need to start facing the world around us and figure out what can we be doing better to make our organizations better. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception. It's been great hanging out with you. Thank you, Marc.

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