Can Your Workplace be to Good to Believe?

Hey, how's your turnover? I don't mean your breakfast Danish. I mean your labor turnover. In past episodes, we've talked about how dangerous and disruptive disengaged employees are to your business. But did you know that businesses with disengaged employees suffer over 30% more turnover than those with engaged employees? And when you consider the cost of hiring and training and turning over employees. That is absolutely horrible. Like, I mean, it does so much to your profit and your bottom line. But ultimately, you're just the boss, right? What can you do about it? And that's coming up next on Marc Haine Live. Welcome back to Marc Haine Live where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them work on their business, not just in their business. I'm your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. And today, I am so excited to be speaking with my special guest, the Leadership Whisperer, Loren Kelton. And we'll get to him in just a moment. But I have to say that I am so glad that you are here with us today. If you've subscribed to the channel, thank you so much for supporting me. I hope that the information I love to bring you each week is of value to you. And if you haven't subscribed yet, there's still time to become one of my raving fans. Okay, maybe not raving fan. Maybe a casual onlooker. A passing fancy. Anyway, go ahead and click subscribe. I'd love to be one of those people you can call a friend. And like always, if you find the information here valuable, please go ahead and click the thumbs up button and share this video with the people that you think can benefit from the content. We all know people who need the help. Through various episodes, I've talked about the role that leaders have in their business. I don't mean the job, actual job tasks that they do. I'm talking about the role as the leader, a leader of people who are committing their time and their energy to make sure they deliver for your department or for your company as a whole. And I use that word and some people will look at me and go, but Marc, I pay them so they have to deliver. But ultimately, you can pay people for their hands. But you can't necessarily pay people for their hearts and for their brains. So today, I'd like to know from you our Question of the Day. So, what is the biggest challenge that you have engaging your workforce? Think about that for a second. We all have people that you turn around, you go, wow, this person's so wonderful. They're so engaged. They're so into it. And then, you have other people who it's like, I don't know. They just don't seem to. Their head doesn't seem to be in it. And I would probably question that. Probably, it's their heart that's not in it. If you are an employee working for a company, what is missing in the mix to get you fully committed? And if you are fully committed, I'd like to know why. Why don't you put some comments in the comment box below? I'd love to hear your experiences. And I love it when people share those experiences. So, go ahead. Put it in the comment box. And let me know. As I mentioned, our guest today is the Leadership Whisperer, or if some people like to call it, the Performance Pontificator, Loren Kelton. Loren has been helping organizations develop their leadership, employee engagement, and critical thinking skills through a disciplined approach to managerial effectiveness. Sounds really super serious. That's not him at all. He is the author of I-Frame: A Manager's Guide to Critical Balanced Thinking and Powerful Communication: Never Be Stuck for Words Again. And his other one was Unstoppable Confidence: What Would You Do If You Knew You Couldn't Fail? You could check out iFrame on Amazon or you could check out the other 2 on his website. The link is below in the show notes. So, don't be afraid to click it and check it out. Loren's powerful combination of street smarts and contrarian thinking helps his clients uncover actionable out-of-the-box strategies that improve workplace productivity and creates inclusion and interpersonal relationships that meld teams together, that brings teams together, that gets them together. Welcome, Loren. Thank you so much for being here.

Wow! Thanks, Marc. It's a real pleasure to be here. And thank you for that nice introduction.

Yeah, no, it's wonderful. So, Loren, maybe to start off with, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you actually do. That was a great introduction. There's a lot of stuff in there. But what is it that you actually do for your clients?

Well, there's a lot of people I think who hang shingles about leadership. There's so many books. There's a plethora of consultants and trainers in the field. And what I decided to do many years ago, Marc, was carve out a niche where my focus was strictly on the behavioral side of leadership. What do leaders, managers, executives actually physically do and say on the job that precludes them from achieving the business results that they're looking for. So, my primary focus is to get physically inside organizations. So, I'll spend anywhere from 2 weeks to several months actually on-site in large, medium to large conglomerate international companies working directly with their leaders on the floor, seeing what they do, how they do it, taking copious amounts of notes, doing a tremendous amount of coaching, and then looking at how we can peel back the layers of their leadership onion, if you will, to find out what's making them tick and what might be standing in the way of them achieving the results that they have defined for themselves.

You know, it's so interesting because putting yourself out there like that and kind of you are really working on behavioral dynamics. You have to tell me what got you into this particular line of consultation with leaders.

Filmmaking.

What?

And I'm not joking. Film and theater are actually in my original background academically and in the early part of my career. And the corollary is that the performing arts have a lot to tell us and teach us about what it takes to resonate with other people. So, if you think about any movie that you've liked and you look at the protagonist or the antagonist, they're kind of proxies for what goes on in the real world. And, you know, they were— these characters were created by real people out of real experiences a lot of the time. And so, I think we can borrow from that structure and understand psychologically what it is that people are actually doing in the workplace that's inhibiting them. So, that's honestly what the birthplace was. But then it was, well, we can't work in a fantasy world. It has to be a practical application back on the job. But looking at how storytelling, the personal story, can affect change is incredibly powerful. How a leader looks at their direct reports, if you will, the people who report to them have their own stories. And if the leader at whatever level can understand that and extract that story from that employee, then they can gain a whole new understanding and apply some critical thinking skills that'll help them mine the gold that's sitting inside that individual. So, I don't know if that makes sense. But that's the history of—

And to be honest, like, I mean, now I know that we are born of the same cloth because I don't know if you know. But I have a new book coming out. So, I just want to let everybody know that this show is brought to you by my brand-new book, Lights! Camera! Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater. This is where I tear down what it takes to put on a great show for your customers no matter what business you are in. And I use the lens of live theater to do that. And so, to get a notification for when this book is released, go to marchaine.com/lightscameraaction And click on the Coming Soon button. The link is down below. So, it's really interesting that we both have this tie-in. Granted, I think that I came to the foray a little bit later than you did because the whole acting part of it was something that I fell into. I've been in leadership roles for the last 35 years. But I really never made that connection that what we do for our employees and what we do for our customers is actually put on a show. And but one of the interesting things that you mentioned, Loren, is this idea, the importance of— you were talking about this idea of critical thinking. Can you kind of delve a little bit more into that? When you think, when you say it in the context of learning it from theater but then applying it to leadership principles, what does that look like?

Excellent question. In the work environment, conflicts arise between various levels of leadership and between the leader, the boss, and the person who reports to them. Something always triggers the conflict. And in film, in theater, and in a good novel, you always have the lead character who runs up into some type of conflict. And what we often call this in, in the performing world is the inciting incident. What is it that incited the person to react the way they did? What is it that incited the leader to react negatively to the proposal, to the action or reaction of an employee, etc.? So, critical thinking starts at the point where that incident happens. What is it that triggered an emotion inside you as the leader that caused you to act or react in a way that was counterproductive? So, with critical thinking, we always start with that incident. What was it? We look at what the feeling was. And that sounds a little bit touchy-feely, and maybe it is a little bit. But in the business world, most leaders don't have time to go down the emotional rabbit holes to discover what it is in their history or their past that caused that. So, we try to distill that very quickly into at least understanding what did you feel at the time that this inciting incident happened. We then move into the reflection stage where we reflect. And peel back, like I say, those layers and try to really ask yourself some probing questions to understand why you reacted the way that you did. We then move on to what I call assumptions. What assumptions are you making? In the workplace, the vast majority of leaders, department heads, executives have presupposed ideas about the individuals that report to them. Their character, their history, their past, their competency. And the competency is king. So, we try to look at what assumptions about the individual do you have? What are these cherished beliefs that you have that we need to unpack so that you can see it in a different light? We then try to derive meaning from it. And then ultimately, Marc put it into an action plan, what I call an executive action plan that formalizes the process so that you can repeat that process the next time it happens. It goes through a funnel and it decreases the amount of time that you have to spend unpacking all this stuff the next time it happens.

I think that is really intriguing that you're starting with the emotional response of the leader before you do anything else. I think that's fascinating because I don't think that leaders necessarily— I think we, when we're running a business, we're so entwined with what the crisis is of the moment that we stop thinking about what is it that's going off in my brain. that is causing me to lose my poop as it might be. And it's so funny that you mentioned this because one of the things I came to realize years ago was that a problem happened. I just lost my head and I was running around like a chicken without a head. And I thought a couple hours into it as we were kind of solving the problem, I thought, why was I going bananas like that? And then, I realized Part of the reason was because I was harping on the problem, not dealing with the problem.

Well, and Marc, you bring up an excellent point because you've heard a million times, as I'm sure most of your viewers and listeners have, especially if you're in a leadership role, leaders are born, not made. Well, I thoroughly disagree with that. I believe that leaders are definitely made and not born. You may be born with some innate DNA traits that facilitate the process of leadership. I can agree with that. But in terms of understanding what the underlying needs of your team is, terms of recognizing what your own limitations are, what your own piccadillos are, etc. That is a learned skill. And if somebody's going to get your goat, well, you're the one who opened the barn door to let the goat out in the first place. So, let's be clear on where the buck stops in this process.

Yeah, it's really interesting because this idea of being accountable, this idea of building capacity. I see that a lot of leaders are promoted because they were great performers, not because they were great leaders. And people get promoted into the roles of leaders. But then, they're left basically to hang out. And the poor performer who's like, yeah, I'm the star of the show. I was really wonderful. They become a leader and they go, oh my God, I so suck. And part of that is because we're not training them for those kinds of competencies or those kinds of capacities. How important is it to put something together to drive the leadership traits that you require in your company?

Well, one of the good pieces of news in what you've just said, Marc, just before getting into that is that I do believe topics like emotional intelligence, the emotional quotient component for leaders. A lot of the psychological precepts that have come into play in business are slowly working themselves into the process such that when a competent leader is promoted, it isn't strictly on the basis of the work that has come before them. It's also a reflection of how they've been able to develop the people around them. how they've been able to subjugate themselves to the interests of their teams, etc. So, there has been, I think, a tectonic shift in recognizing those competencies as being necessary prior to promotion. Although you're quite right. I still think the vast majority of promotions are based on one's siloed performance. But to your specific question, the type of training that leaders, or at least that I'm involved with, when I'm working with a group of executives, it's usually a rather small group, 8 to 10. 10 people at a time. And these are often alpha male, alpha female types who are very, very much entrenched in their current way of doing things, who have been on a fast track of promotion, who are in senior leadership positions, but who have hit a roadblock. And oftentimes, I'm called in at the point of time where the HR or the stakeholder who is responsible for that person's performance has recognized that they're being very disruptive within the organization because of interpersonal conflicts. So, my job over a 1 to 2 day period of time is to peel back those layers and actually use case studies with actual people that report to them, with actual things that have actually happened. And I'm sorry to use that, overuse that word. But it takes all the theory out of it. It takes all of the books. There's so many great books. I can read about the 21 Immutable Laws of Leadership by Maxwell, for example, which is a tremendous book. But if you're on the floor in the shop in the company and you need to pull out a tool out of your toolbox, you can't flip to chapter 21 on page 97 and say, oh, that's what I've got to do. It has to be a much more innate response that's genuine. And that can only come through a real mirror being shone back on you as to what it is you're doing. What are your destructive behaviors? So, a workshop like that says, what are you doing? Okay. What if you did the opposite? What would that look like? How would you have to subjugate? How do you put your ego aside for 15 minutes in order to ensure that that employee that you're butting heads with can actually make a valuable contribution and not just be yet another statistic that's walking out the door? So, I don't know if that answers your question. It does.

Again, this is such an interesting topic because leaders so often put themselves in a headspace where they're the boss. This is my business, especially if it's a smaller entrepreneur, like a small business under 50 employees or under 100 employees, where they say, I built this business. This is my business and they have to listen to me. And That idea then of shifting that ego to turn around and be more self-reflective. Are there any tools that people can use to analyze where they're at so that they can say, oh, my ego is actually getting in the way of what I'm trying to achieve?

Well, yes, there are. But unfortunately, most of the time, the trigger necessary to develop that introspection is a negative event that happens in the workspace. There's very, very few leaders who are approached by either their staff member, either out of fear or out of hierarchy. And there's even fewer people above that leader in senior management who even may be aware of the performance challenges of that person, who are willing, able, or have the skill sets themselves to go up and say, hey Marc, listen, we need to sit down and have a heart-to-heart. I've got Joe, Billy, and Joanne telling me that every time they bring these proposals to you, you're giving them short shrift. And they give a litany of reasons. So, most of the time, there has to be that inciting incident. There has to be that trigger that the person confronts in real time that says, wait a second, this is not working. Because too often, they don't have the— they're not equipped to subjugate the ego as we said and put aside their own— what did you call it? This is my business, especially for smaller businesses who say, my way or the highway. That just doesn't work anymore.

Yeah.

But one easy way that a leader can develop the tool is simply to ask themselves on a weekly or a monthly basis, Or at the very least, at the point in time, if they do yearly annual reviews of their teams to make sure that the first question isn't about their employees' performance, it's about their own. And they say, Marc, listen, before we get this review started, I want to clear the table. You've got, you know, it's open mic night. Tell me about me. What could I be doing differently? that would really enhance your desire to want to work here and to contribute more and to do more with your— and by the way, Marc, the true measure of an engaged employee isn't so much how well they do their job. It's what do they do with their discretionary time? How are they talking about this business when they're not there? How are they talking about this business to their wife, their husband, their children, their colleagues outside of work? That is really a true reflection of engagement.

Yeah, it's true. And you bring up a lot of interesting points because woven within what you've just said is this idea that as a leader, we have to have humility. But we also have to create a safe space where people feel that they can be honest with you. And if you are like, here's my way, how are people going to open up? How will people tell you what's going on?

Well, that's very true. And if you are someone whose external shell is such that someone is not willing to tell you directly. You have to create an opportunity for them to tell somebody else. Excuse me. And if you can create a culture, because ultimately you have to ask yourself, do you want your teams to be supporting the culture that you are creating, or do you want them to be supporting a culture that they're creating out of their own lived experience at work? And if you're going to develop a customer base over time that is broad, there has to be a unified vision around that. And there can never be a unified vision if an employee does not respect and cannot speak their mind to the person who's leading that organization.

It seems to me like a lot of competencies are required in order to start taking, moving yourself from this idea of I'm the boss to opening yourself up to saying, we're all in this together. Are there any core competencies you think leadership leaders need to work on in order to move themselves forward into that direction?

Absolutely! There are 4 core broad umbrella categories that I believe every leader needs to commit themselves to. Because if they do, they will have essentially covered every conceivable base of conflict that can be overcome with tools that become innate. And those 4 categories are— and they're very broad categories— one is called thinking. And in the thinking category, you're developing your creative and critical thinking skills. You're developing your decision-making skills. You're learning how to analyze problems effectively, how to pull information out of team members and the like. The second broad category, Marc, is developing, perhaps the most important of the 4, where you're developing yourself and you're committing time and energy. And this is where you can usurp, if you will, you can really get ahead of problems by getting the kind of training that allows you to be introspective. And that is available. And that's part of the leadership program that I do. You learn how to listen to other people, to facilitate the proper kinds of meetings that encourage discussion and dissent So, you've got the thinking. You've got the developing. You've got the inspiring piece. And yes, it's still an important piece, being an effective motivator, understanding what your personal impact is on other people, learning how to communicate effectively. We were talking offline, Marc, earlier about, is it my responsibility to tell my employees something in a way that they will understand innately? Or is it their responsibility to interpret my words in the way that I intended them in the first place? Interesting question. You want to generate passion in your business. You want to instill belief in the products and services that you're selling. And perhaps most importantly, in the inspiring category is you really want to set the example. And Marc, the 4th category of leadership development that I think is critical is the achieving piece. That's the part that's out there. The customer orientation, the getting results and driving action, the delivering on your promises and not just having slogans and a mission statement that sits on the wall. I see this far too often. You know, these committees spending copious amounts of time developing a mission statement that sits on the wall that a lot of employees just look at as a hypocritical statement. So, the thinking, developing, achieving, and inspiring are the 4 key areas of leadership development that every leader really needs to be made aware of in my opinion.

Yeah. And so much of that is tied to a philosophy, I think, a core philosophy of being of service to someone. You mentioned the last one, achieving, making sure that your goals are being fulfilled. And a lot of that has to be, are we taking care of our customers? Are the customers coming back? Are customers loyal? And so on. But I think starts with as leaders that we are of service to our employees first. They are our primary customer first. And we're making sure they're okay so they make sure they take really good care of our guests.

And you've really hit an important nail on the head, Marc, because you have organizations in large companies and small companies who treat customer obsession, let's say, or customer-focused, customer-centric, activities as their North Star. And that's fantastic. I mean, Amazon is a great example, obsessed to the point of blindness on— and I'm a big fan of Amazon. I'm not here to disparage them in any way, shape, or form. They have always put the emphasis on customer obsession. But many would ask the question, is it at the expense of an obsession with the best interests of their hundreds of thousands of employees? So, I'm going to leave that as a rhetorical question. I don't want to get in trouble over it. But it does speak to your core point that if you don't start internally, forget about the long-term externally.

Yes.

You can do it for a time and you can buy people off. But you can't instill a culture of caring if your focus is external before it is internal. So, I thoroughly agree with you. And that is where a lot of productivity and engagement is lost because not too many small, medium-sized businesses are taking each individual employee and asking them either individually or collectively, what skill sets do you have that I am not leveraging right now in my business? Such a good question. I mean, imagine if everybody had an opportunity to contribute something over and beyond what they were— what was in the job description that is innate to them. Maybe they're a performing artist and they could work with you on some marketing initiatives. Maybe they have a deep intellectual curiosity that could work really well in the supply chain. Maybe they enjoy negotiation and they'd like to work with your suppliers, for example, and maybe hammer out more effective contracts. I mean, there are skill sets sitting inside everybody that are untapped. And that person may not proactively say, hey Marc, Marc, I'm out here. And by the way, Not everybody's wired to proactively do that. But if you as the leader can proactively say, I'm sure there's something in there that I can go pull in a big fish. What might it be?

So, it's so interesting that you said that because in all my presentations when I talk to leaders, I'll ask them, do you have people? How many of you have people on staff who have capacities and competencies beyond what their job description allows? And it's amazing, like 90% of the hands go up. So, we all know that we have people who have skills. We just haven't figured out or taken the time to uncover what that is and maybe to the benefit of the business as a whole. And it's amazing.

Well, it really is. And it reduces turnover, which is, as you know, incredibly costly. Always has been. It encourages people to deploy that discretionary time I was talking about earlier in the interests of the company, which helps. And you know what, Marc? One thing we haven't touched on is all of this talk around employee engagement and the tools necessary for self-development to recognize your own limitations so that you can overcome the obstacles and the conflicts and pull out the best in your teams, etc. We haven't even talked about what does all of that lead to other than perhaps An improved corporate culture, an improved level of engagement. Those are all positives. But if you're an alpha leader whose focus really isn't on the touchy-feely, then fine. Put all that aside and think about just your bottom line. Think about your earnings per share if you're publicly traded. Think about your revenues at the end of the year. How are they impacted by implementing these strategies? And the numbers are huge. 18% to 27% improvements in revenue per share. Like I say, for publicly traded companies, for those organizations that put the emphasis on developing employee engagement strategies. So, this isn't just airy-fairy stuff. This is bottom-line financial stuff.

Yeah, and it's so easy. It's because like you said, a lot of people will look at it and go, oh, you're considering feelings. You're doing all that. This is all This is all really airy-fairy stuff that I have a real concrete business to run and I don't have time to think about this. And I think that's a shame because we invest capital in accomplishing things. And the biggest capital I think that we have is our time focused towards a proper strategy and our employees. I think I'm a big fan that you take care of your employees first. And as we move forward now, of course, our reality during COVID-19 has changed entirely. I think it's rather humorous actually because I would work with people and I would say, why don't you let your employees work from home? This was all pre-COVID. And they're like, oh no. Well, because I don't know what they're going to do. Like, how do I control what they're going to do? How do I control what they're going to say? How do I know that they're going to perform? And so, ultimately boiled down to trust. And then, COVID-19 comes along and all of a sudden, it's like, what? Everybody's got to work from home. But now, leaders have different obstacles to overcome with remote workers. Can you talk a little bit about what leaders need to be looking out for in that regard?

Well, I think there's a couple of angles to approach it from. If we take the trust angle as you started with, if trust is an issue, between the organization, the leader, and the remote workers that are sitting at home? Well, from a purely practical perspective, there are certainly sufficient technologies available to keep tabs if that's what you want to do. And I want to be careful of the terminology I use because I don't— these aren't necessarily strategies that I embrace. But the fact of the matter is, I have a sister who works for an international aviation organization, and all of them are working remotely. And they've implemented technologies tools within the laptops and PCs that they use with their internet connections where they monitor their activities, their inbound/outbound calls, the amount of time they're spending, the IP addresses that they're going to. And it's not Orwellian in that sense. It is strictly within the intranets of those organizations. So, the privacy issues, I believe, have been addressed. So, if it's a productivity issue, if it's what you're doing, what is that employee or those employees doing with their time, there are certainly invasive and non-invasive tools the organizations can put in place, whether they're technology-based, check-in-based, telephone-based, or even paper-based online with tally sheets, etc. So, organizations can look at that if they're really concerned about it and have those submitted as proof that the work that they're being paid for is actually being done. If there are not trust issues, then it really is a non-issue. Are the clients being served? The ultimate test will be, has there been any measurable decrease in customer satisfaction, output, timelines with respect to deliveries? You know, depends on the business you're in, but the same metrics that organizations— excuse me— that organizations currently use to measure productivity and output, can still be employed if you're working remotely. So, quite frankly, to answer your question more succinctly, Marc, I don't believe it needs to be an issue. Because if it is an issue and you're losing sleep over it and you're worried, oh my goodness, I got 30 people out in the field and what are they doing with it? Your problems are a lot more fundamental than the fact that they're working from home, in my opinion.

Right, right. You know, and so much of what you talk about, so much of What you've been addressing in our time together today has really been focused around this idea of you as a leader need to build your capacity. And something else that occurs to me as you were talking is that sometimes, we get into business. We don't necessarily have the capacity to do this on our own. And sometimes, we just need the help of somebody exterior, somebody to come in, somebody to help reflect that mirror to us as you mentioned before. Could you let everyone know how they can get in touch with you in case they want to tap into your knowledge?

Sure, thank you.

Thanks, Marc.

I appreciate that. Well, I can always be reached on email at lorne@thinkshift.com. Nice and simple. L-O-R-N-E at thinkshift.com, one word. In terms of the materials and the programs that I work with executives and managers and department heads with, you can find all that on my website at ThinkShift.com. Again, very straightforward. And the way I always start a relationship, Marc, with someone is to— well, nowadays it tends to be this way, online— is to have a video or a phone chat and find out what those issues are. What are the pain points? What are you struggling with? And determine whether or not there could be a fit. Because I'm all about results and getting that onion peeled really, really quickly. I don't take I don't like to take 3 to 6 months to find out how I might be of service. I can usually know that within half an hour to 60 minutes. And then, the whole process is about stripping that away and finding out if the chemistry works. What would you like to achieve? What is the timeframe over which you would like to achieve it? And if you would like to have that discussion, I'm happy to do that. And there's no obligation. I'd be happy to put out, you know, have a 30-minute chat with anybody on the topic if you'd like.

Oh, that's really great. I do know that you have a lot of tools in your tool belt. I know for instance that you have something you call the 12 C's of Effective Employee Engagement. Without actually delving into the 12, could you just highlight a little bit about what that will uncover for leaders?

Absolutely! The 12 C's, we all have our little buzzwords and our little acronyms, etc. It just so turned out that when I was developing a leadership program that The letter C happened to be very appropriate for a number of the leadership development tools. So, you've got one of the main Cs we delve into, Marc. And again, I'll keep it very brief is the connections. How are you connecting with your teams above you and below you, your direct reports and your superiors? What is your career path? Can it be attained within the organization you're in? Or should we be talking about how we might be able to retool that?

Clarity.

Is there clarity within our communication stream back and forth? How are the messages being conveyed? How am I, as your leader, conveying our goals and aspirations? What contributions are we making back and forth? Congratulate. Believe it or not, that's one of the C's. Are we actually recognizing and rewarding performance where appropriate? Control. Who has it? Who doesn't have it? And should that be rebalanced? Collaboration is one of them as well. Are we collaborating? Is this a top-down heavy, as you were alluding to, it's my business, or is it bottom-up? Credibility. Do I have the core competencies? Do you have the core competencies necessary for us to be able to drive this business forward? Confidence. Do our external partners, customers have confidence in us? Do we have confidence in ourselves? Consistency. We talked about trust. Trust can only be built One way. And trust is only built through consistency over a time horizon. So, we delve into that as well. And the last one, Marc, is coaching. Really critical. How do we follow up? How do we stay in touch? How do we keep a pulse on the progress that we've made so that it can become a lifestyle within the business? So, that's an overview of the 12 C's that help leaders engage with their teams more effectively.

Right. And it's so brilliant because that could actually be a checklist as the leaders go through that list to say, this is what I know how to do. But this is what I don't know how to do. And this is what I need to kind of self-evaluate and be able to turn around and say, I need to build my own capacity. Right? Which is great.

Very good.

And I will put the 12 C's if you'd like. I can put the 12 C's in the show notes just as a little checklist for the viewers. That they can go to it and say, what was it that Marc said? He said something really magical and I can't remember what it was.

And by the way, Marc, if anyone goes to the thinkshift.com website, there is a tab under the employee engagement section that has the 12 Cs. And if you click on any one of the 12 Cs, it opens up a full screen that goes into a fair bit of detail about each one of those individual Cs so that it might spark some ideas for you.

So then, that's what I will do. I will put a link in the show notes to take people to that page so that they can uncover that for themselves. I think that was brilliant.

Terrific!

You mentioned something earlier on. You mentioned something, this idea about leaders being able to tell stories, building stories within the confines of what they do as a brand, what they do as leaders. I know that you are a big storyteller yourself. I mean, the fact that you have this theater background and you and I have done some work in the past. The importance of stories.

Well, it may be a bit cliché to say. But stories have been around since the beginning of time. And they're conveyed in every language. And they're conveyed through our body language. They're conveyed through our words. They're conveyed through our actions. So, when I talk about storytelling at the business level, business storytelling, I ask myself, what is it that the business is not doing that is precluding them from being recognized in their marketplace as the leader, as the go-to source for those products and/or services that they're offering? What story are they telling out in the marketplace? So, there's the external story. that I like to focus on. And to do that, we work backwards from what, what is the product, what is the service, how is it differentiated, and then build a story around it. Because there's a history behind every product and service. Every business got started on the premise that somebody thought that this was needed by somebody, and they built it accordingly and then built out their team and their size. So I like to look at If I was watching the movie or reading the book about your business, what would the story say? Where is the conflict? Where are the obstacles? Who are the main characters? How is this resolved? What is the climax? I want to know that. And your internal stories are what feed engagement over the long term. Getting your team members to buy into that story, to share their own stories, and to remold and evolve that story over time. So, it's a deep topic. But the idea is to ensure that you have built up a plotline for your company. What is it you do? How do you do it? How are you bringing it to market? And why should I buy from you? Because when you can win somebody's heart, Marc, when you can win over somebody's heart, their mind will find the logic to agree with it. So, the emotional resonance that you have in the marketplace and with your teams is much, much more important than the logical progressive steps you take to get there. You have to win the hearts. The mind will follow. That I can guarantee you.

Yeah, it's so amazing that it's so like in so many ways, it's self-evident. Yet again, when we're in the throes of it, this is something that we're not seeing. We might be pulling out our hair. saying, why aren't we getting the results that we need? We might be stressing over our financials going, why is this year not as good as last year aside from COVID-19?

Yeah.

You're asking all these why questions. And sometimes, one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is, what are the stories that we're telling and handing down? We've talked at length in our time together today about this idea that it starts in the leader's head. It moves it into his culture and from the culture, it moves to the customer, which I always think is the path that we have to start looking at as being, who is the source of this information first? There are all sorts of things.

Absolutely!

Yeah, there are all sorts of things that I find that are fraught with challenges as we talk about this. Instigating change of oneself, of one's business is a challenge. Are there any cautionaries you have for the people watching this? Like, if they're looking at what we're talking about today and they're going, yeah, this sounds like I need to change and I need to do this. What are some of the challenges and cautionaries that we should be waving a yellow flag at?

There are a few that jump to mind. The first one is you cannot embark on a path of change in the absence of clarity around why you're doing it in the first place. If you jump on the bandwagon of what's trendy to do, and that's why you have business books that come out every couple of years that hit the bestseller list and then they kind of go off because they're no longer applicable in the current environment. You need to ask yourself, if I'm going to make a significant structural change either for myself, for my team, or the business, Why am I doing it? In whose interest is it? Because without that clarity, you're not going to get traction. So, the first caution is do not embark on change until you understand what the intended outcome is of that initiative. Another cautionary piece of advice I would have is if you're doing it for disingenuous reasons, that run counter to the culture that you've developed because of some short-term payoff, don't do it. Not worth it. Better to reinvest that capital internally than into some opportunity to make a structural change that's going to be very short-lived. This notion of being authentic and genuine is overused. And it's, again, a bit clichéd, especially in our world, Marc. But there is something to be said for authenticity. And that's why branding exercises are so important and why the brand that you're promoting in the marketplace has to be aligned with your values. And that's a word we haven't used in today's discussion yet. Don't embark on any initiative if it runs counter to your core values personally and professionally. So, those are the ones that jump to mind. They're macro issues.

But But like everything, you could take the macro issue and you can filter it down to components that you could start whittling away at. And then, before you know it, those macro issues aren't macro issues anymore.

And one of the chief recommendations I make to senior leaders in the workspace who are running into interpersonal conflicts is make a decision about how vulnerable they're prepared to be. How vulnerable? Because that is something that's very foreign to most leaders. I'm like, it's a concept that is so alien and foreign to them that it takes, uh, it takes a lot of time and effort to convince them that showing vulnerability is one of the single most important self-revealing activities you can do to win over your teams and to get the forgiveness that you may need from people that report to you, your direct reports. So, vulnerability is an opportunity to expose your flaws, to admit that you may be acting inappropriately, that you're open to the kind of feedback that would not normally be solicited from a leader. But man, is it ever liberating. And boy, does it let the people in the field know Geez, what's wrong with Marc? Did you hear what he said this one? He's talking weird. He's talking weird. But if it's coming from a place of authenticity because you actually did look in the mirror and you did take some of that feedback seriously and you do want to remain in your role as a leader into the future, the benefits far outweigh the risks. What is the downside? What is the downside A leader has to ask themselves, what is the downside to exposing some vulnerability and exposing some of my flaws? What's the worst that can happen? Yeah.

Well, and it's so interesting because we talked earlier about this idea that the catalyst for you getting into this line of work was your theater background and your movie background and so on. I don't know of a single hero story where their flaws are not uncovered, that their weaknesses aren't uncovered in some form or fashion.

Well, absolutely. And not only that, Marc, not only that, those flaws and weaknesses are the only things that the audience is latching onto emotionally in order for that hero's journey to resonate with them in the first place. So, let's be very, very clear about flaws and about weaknesses and about exposing our other side. That's the stuff that people love. So, hey guys, let's get on board with this. It makes us human, right? Well, it makes us human. And I mean, what do you think? Your staff members aren't human? That they don't feel emotional resonance with people who are hurting and going through difficult times, etc.? That's the richness of storytelling. So, I encourage leaders to find those 2 or 3 things about themselves that their teams are not aware of. That if their teams were aware of, wow, they'd be endearing themselves to those people and beginning the process of rebuilding or building up a culture of empathy. A culture that says, our people are important. I've shared my story. How about you share yours now? And it isn't touchy-feely stuff. It's real human stuff. So, yeah.

Yeah, well done. Lauren, this has been really great. I really enjoyed our conversation. I had a sneaking suspicion this would really pull at my heartstrings of what's important to me with my values. And I'm just like, I could talk to you for hours. But we do have to wind up. But I just wanted to know if there's anything that we talked about. Did we miss anything that you think the audience should know today from what we've talked about? Any additional points?

Absolutely. The one major takeaway I'd encourage people to really give thought to is recognizing that, as a human being, we harbor a lot of assumptions, the word I used earlier, and biases that we're not even aware of. So, If I was going to encourage one small personal action, it would be to take a deep dive into your own mind. Maybe isolate one person or 2 people that you work with that you're not particularly fond of, let's say, or that you have regular run-ins with, or who you just don't like. Like, I don't like Marc Haine. Like, I don't know why I don't like Marc, but I just don't like him. He's not someone that I would go and have a formal dinner with. I'd ask you, if you know anybody in your life, personally or professionally, that falls into that kind of category, do a little deep dive in your mind as to why that is. Is it triggered by something specific that happened in the past? Is it a chemistry issue? Is it a communication issue? Is it a look issue? Is it a— are you putting a halo over them, a pitchfork? Like, there are underlying reasons why we have given reactions to people. So, if it's somebody on your team and you can isolate what that is, then you can begin to undo that and look at it in a whole different way to make that relationship rich for both of you. So, that's the one takeaway. Understand what the underlying biases and assumptions you have about other people are.

That's absolutely brilliant. And it goes hand in hand with our episode last week when I was talking with Michael Kerr. And I was saying how important it is to understand what are your own personal hot buttons. What are some of the things that set you off? Because the more you understand that, the more you could put tools in place to compensate for it. Loren, thank you so much. This has just been an amazing show. I have just been absolutely blown away by the things you have to say. I love the fact that you have these frameworks in place to really help the leaders move forward. Could you one last time just remind everybody how they can get a hold of you?

Sure. By email anytime, loren@thinkshift.com. Thinkandshift, one word. Or visit the programs and see if there's something there that might be of interest at www.thinkshift.com, Marc. And most of it's out there.

Thank you again, Laurent. I am so grateful that you could be here today and share your knowledge and expertise. And help me with a deep dive into all this. And again, I find that there's a lot of people that when we talk to it, we're preaching to the choir. But then, I know that there's a lot of people who need to self-reflect a little bit and figure out exactly what they need to do to help them be successful. Thank you again, Loren.

Thank you, Marc. It's been an absolute pleasure.

So, why don't you give me a thumbs up if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time time to brainstorm your business with you and your team. Please feel free to book on my calendar down below. It's the link that says meetme.so/MarcHaine. It's important that when we meet, and one of the provisions that I have to the 30-minute free call is that I want to meet with you and your team. Because as Lauren mentioned, it's not— this is not something necessarily we do on our own. It's something that we bring our team into. This becomes a team problem. And I think the more that we are able to pick the brains of the people around us, the better our solutions will be. And as always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you hit the subscribe button and ring the bell? That'll give you first dibs whenever I bring valuable content, or I hope it's valuable content, to help you work on your business, not just in your business. The subscribe button. It costs you nothing and it tells me that you want to be my friend. And as always, I'm here for you. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, you stay healthy, and you dare to be the exception. Thanks so much for joining us today.