Creating Connected Workplaces: The Power of Trust and Authenticity | Leadership Tips

I know that this is probably not a big surprise. Things that used to work great for companies just 5 years ago aren't cutting it anymore. Now more than ever, people are feeling less connected to their work. They're not really trusting each other. Fatigue is at an all-time high and we seem to have lost Motivation. I have a theory that we have now gone beyond work-life balance to now we need work-life integration. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs develop new skills to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. Thank you so much for joining me today for this very enlightening episode. My guest is motivational speaker Stan Gibson. And today, we will be peeling back the layers on how to be a great leader and some impactful areas where leadership can truly transform both the individuals and the organizations. So, stick around because we're about to get into how to make work and life awesome with intention and action. My one ask for you is if you do know somebody who could use this information, please make sure you share a link to this episode. That way, we can help raise all boats. In our post-pandemic world, the landscape of leadership continues to undergo seismic shifts. The skills and strategies that once propelled businesses to succeed are now struggling to keep pace with the demands of modern work environments. From the silent corridors of disengaged workplaces to the cacophony of endless meetings that yield little progress, leaders are facing challenges that threaten not just the productivity but the very heart and soul of their organization. But what lies behind these symptoms? Is it merely the growing pains of adaptation or is there a deeper, more costly issue at play? And that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, have you ever considered that the way we've been leading might actually be the biggest, most expensive problem facing our businesses today? What have you done to adjust to the new demands of your workforce? I invite you to be part of this conversation. Please go ahead and share your comments, questions, and insights in the comment box. And as we dive deep into this issue, maybe we can address some of them. As I mentioned, my guest today is a corporate executive turned author, speaker, leadership consultant, and coach, Stan Gibson. He has become a sought-after speaker throughout North America. With over 4 decades of experience, Stan doesn't just lead. He inspires. He's the author of the groundbreaking book, Living a Rich and Intentional Life. He penned not just pages but pathways to transformation during a time when the world just stood still. His ability to mix and communicate strategies on the athletic field and in the business world is timely to all leaders wanting to Reset at Home and in the Workforce. Stan, welcome to the show. It is such a pleasure to have you.

Oh, totally my pleasure, Marc. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm looking forward to it.

It's going to be a great discussion. But before we get into today's topic, could you just tell us a little bit about how you serve your clients?

Well, I'll tell you what. Number one, I love to be on the stage. So, speaking as an author, as a speaker, and as you mentioned, I've got 4 decades of something to talk about. But I talk a lot about people-centric leadership. And as you mentioned, I've got a lot of experience in sports and things like that that kind of bring leadership kind of full circle when I talk about people-centric leadership. So, I coach. I consult. I work with small and medium-sized companies and also work with teams within Fortune 500s as well. So, that's kind of what I do and love every bit of it, Marc.

I love it. Can you share A little bit about your insights on why traditional leadership is failing today?

Sure, Marc. You know, what worked 5 years ago isn't working today and it won't work in the future. I'm very convinced, Marc, that if you look at the companies that'll be here in 2030, it'll be a radical change. Number one, we've got a different workforce. Number two, I think that whether we like it or not, I think we get tired of hearing about the pandemic. It really did create a tremendous mind shift in how people want of work. I think it created a tremendous mind shift in trust. And I think that, you know, where a lot of employers right now are trying to, you know, make that shift of bringing employees back, employees are starting to look at their life and say, you know, and I think you used the word integration in your promo. I love that. I hadn't heard that word before. But I think that people are, you know, starting to understand, you know what, I like this integration. I like being able to work from home. I like coming in. I have multiple ways of being effective. And I don't think that employers are quite honestly seeing that today, Marc. I think they want a one-size-fits-all. And that isn't going to take place. It isn't going to take place with millennials, with Gen Zs. And that's the future.

Yeah.

So, I really think that they've got to rethink what they're going to do. They've got to rethink trust. And I know I spend a lot of time working on trust. I work with another peer that just released his 3rd book on trust. And a lot of what we talk about, Marc, is that, you know, it isn't that we need to learn how to trust. We need to learn how to distrust differently.

Hmm.

We automatically distrust with the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that basically is fight, flight, or freeze. When we meet somebody, within a nanosecond, we know whether we trust or distrust. But that comes from the part of the brain that wants to either go through fight or flight. You have to shift that to the prefrontal cortex, the part that is logic, in order to start to trust. So getting organizations or getting people to start to shift their mindset from the amygdala to the prefrontal, to the thinking part of the brain, as to, I don't trust, but maybe I just need to distrust differently, and maybe we can reach a happy medium. So maybe a long-winded answer to a short question you gave me, but I really think that trust and authenticity is going to have to be front and center as we go forward.

And it's interesting because I know that trust is behind every— it's a key virtue to everything that we do. But we mentioned the pandemic and you're absolutely right. People are exhausted by talking about the pandemic. But thankfully, we're on the other side of it now. But how has the shift towards remote and hybrid work models exacerbated the disconnect between the leaders and their teams? You mentioned trust. But is that all? Is it Is that the only component?

Well, again, I don't think there's one size fits all. Now, my background, when I said, you know, I was— I've got 4 decades of experience. It just so happens that that experience is in corporate real estate. So, my last venture in the corporate world was with Wells Fargo. And I oversaw a team that we oversaw over $1.5 billion worth of real estate assets for Wells Fargo, which is where their employees So, you know, we had to not only know the right location, we had to know, you know, how they operated best. And I will tell you that more and more people started shifting to working at home by choice before the pandemic. And we found that the productivity had not really went down. In fact, we had call centers where when I worked with the call center units, they would say, we could never create technology to where people could work effectively from home. Well, guess what? After the pandemic, within 2 months, the technology was created and people were not only working from home, they were becoming more productive. The one thing I always said was that if we're going to bring people into the office, I called it basically a 10-hour proposition. When you get up in the morning, you have to get ready, you have to get your hair, you have to take a bath, a shower, whatever you do, get the kids out the door, commute. It's about an hour, And a half to 2 hours. Then you've got a reverse commute when you come home at night. So, after 5 days, you've got 10 hours that are basically— you've got something now that you can say, is there a return on that investment of time? What if that were spent taking care of you? What if that created a morning routine where you were able to work mind, body, and soul?

Uh-huh.

And you felt more charged about starting the workday? And so, I'm not saying it's an absolute, Marc. I do think there is value in people being in the office, but only when they're all in at the same time because there's that collaboration, that communication that we do tend to lose.

Yeah.

But I think that people that try to put it all in the same bucket, we're either going to be in 5 days a week or out, I think they're missing the boat because they're not looking at how people work individually and specifically. And there's companies out there that are doing great work creating data around the employees to find out what's the right mix.

Right, right. But and it's interesting because it does change the whole leadership dynamic, right? When you're defining kind of what the work models are going to be like, it'll help define kind of the leadership model.

Could you describe some of the warning signs that a leader might notice if their leadership style is not resonating, not working Well, the obvious one, and I always bring this up when I speak, is you're always going to take a look at your turnover. And when you're in a company of, let's just say, we'll just make numbers up here for a second. When you're in a company of 100 to 200, let's just say even you've got 500 to 1,000. And you've got maybe 1.5% higher turnover, which doesn't seem like much. But when you start to look at that turnover and you say 1.5% and you start to equate salaries, into that. Because anytime an employee leaves, Marc, you know that it's 1.5 to 2 times the salary to hire somebody else and get them up and running efficiently. So, when you start to monetize it, that number becomes in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of lost efficiency. So, you want to make sure that leaders are leading correctly. And I have a saying. I say that when leaders learn to coach, employees learn to lead. And I really believe that because most of the time, Marc, when managers are elevated into leadership, it's because of their IQ. They understand their job very well from the inside out. And even with artificial intelligence, now the IQ even becomes even more— everything is even level set even more. But it's the EQ. It's the emotional intelligence. It's the ability to learn to coach as a leader, not enable. The ability to reframe, to ask questions, to make sure that you're meeting with not only the employees that report directly to you, the people that are 2 and 3 layers removed from you. It's that engagement. The clients that I work with, that's what they're saying is, we're just not engaged. We, you know, we don't have, you know, the employees are, you know, I haven't, when I ask them why, they don't know why because they haven't been engaged themselves. So, there's a really, I think it's got to change the way we're doing business. And I think that's going to be a lot about learning how to coach. But I also believe very strongly that it's going to be about authenticity. It's going to be about self-awareness. I give a lot of workshops. around self-awareness. I either work with executives and their self-awareness, or I work with the teams. And I really believe that most leaders today don't have good self-awareness. And I know that when I coach them, we'll get going down the road talking about several challenges, and we can always come back to their DNA or the way they're wired as to why they did or what they did. But having that self-awareness, Marc, is a game changer. And I've got a very specific way of going about it that coordinates between 2 to 3 different assessments. But once you start to understand who you are and who you're not, then you can start to look at the team and say, where do I need to leverage better? What are the different gifts and skills on the rest of the team? I'm working with a company next week for 2 days, and we're doing that very thing. We're just trying to find out, let's, let's Let's, let's find out where we're strong, not where we're wrong. Let's go ahead and let's understand what we do really well. And then you know what? Those same things that make you very strong, Marc, as you know, can also create kryptonite. They can create weaknesses. So, I, for one, I have, you know, my strengths. One of the things is in StrengthsFinders, I'm what's called an Activator. I can get things going. And while that has served me well in my career, It's also a kryptonite because I can get going too fast. And what helped me was aligning myself with people that were more analytical, that wanted to slow the process down and take a look at 4 or 5 different options before I was already at the finish line. So, when I had that realization that I needed to create a team that had a lot of different strengths and weaknesses and be aware of their weaknesses no different than they're aware of mine, Then, it didn't come across as malicious. We just knew what the other one was offering and we were able to leverage it more appropriately.

Yeah, it does take a ton of humility though for leaders to turn around and say, okay, well, here's where I'm weak. I'm not the master of the universe. I'm not the know-it-all sage of the world. And so, it takes a lot of humility to be able to self-assess like that. Are there any tools that you think People need to adopt to help them kind of find that focus, to find out where they are? Because I still see a lot of keratin sticking out there from a leadership perspective.

Well, I'll tell you the way that I go about it, and I have found it to be effective, is number one, I use 2 to 3 different assessments. But the first one that I use is a derivative of StrengthsFinders, CliftonStrengthsFinders. And for those of you out there that maybe many of you are familiar I'm familiar with it. Maybe you aren't. But basically, there's 34 attributes, and you wake up with 5 of them every morning. That is your gift. You are just— it's almost an unfair advantage because those 5 are the way you're wired, and you can do it better than anybody else. And what process I use is a derivative that uses those 5 strengths, but we actually break it down very granular. And we can look at those 5 strengths and we can start to actually create a paragraph of who you are at your best. And we can take those same 5 strengths and go through a similar exercise and find out who you are when you're under stress or duress. So now we've created paragraphs of who you are at your best and who you are when you've got some kryptonite. But I don't stop there. I then look at the Enneagram because I think that the Enneagram is— it's— if you're not familiar with the Enneagram, there's 9 different ways that humans beings are designed. And this is a DNA thing. This is something of how you were designed at birth. And when you start to understand the Enneagram, that goes into different facets of what are the things that stress you? What are your biggest fears? Now, you're getting a bigger stratosphere of how you're wired. And then the final thing, which I think was just— it opened my eyes, was when I got into the science. It's called ontology, but it's really about How do you want to show up?

Hmm.

How do you want to show up? Because we put so much into our subconscious. You know, we put 30,000 bits of information in the subconscious each day, and they become truth. They become reality to us. But when we start to step out and say, no, here's, here's what I know that I do well, and the things I don't do well, I want to show up differently. When we start to move from the subconscious to the conscious, We can actually go through some processes and some habits and some routines where we start to show up that way. I'm living proof. I can tell you a lot of the issues that I felt were challenging me 3 and 4 years ago, through a lot of work, I show up much differently today. Wish I would have had it back in my corporate career. So, I truly understand. I think that people can change. But they have to make a commitment to self-awareness in how they want to show up.

Yeah, I love that. I love that because what you're talking about is intentionality, is understanding once you understand where those weaknesses are and kind of where you want to show up and how you want to affect the people around you, you can use intentionality to start reprogramming that. I'd like to maybe jump into some key solutions for how today's leaders can really adapt to this new world. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I am speaking with the leadership guru, Stan Gibson. I have to call you a guru, Stan, because what you're talking about, all the kind of mental intentionality that we have to put out there is magical. But why don't you— you wrote a book over the pandemic. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Sure, I'd love to.

So, I'll tell you, I had been speaking for about 10 to 15 years, doing motivational speaking, talking about leadership. And I was also coaching individuals before and after work. It was kind of like I knew what I wanted to do kind of post-corporate. But it was really about 10 to 12 years ago. And my wife and I were having dinner. And this kind of gives away the first chapter of the book, quite honestly, Marc. We were having dinner and it was just a nice quiet dinner and a friend stopped by. We hadn't seen this friend in like 2 or 3 years, and this is no ordinary guy. This is— his name is Jerry and he's a CEO of a company and he and his wife do some marriage ministry around the world, and he's just one of these dynamic people. He's a foster parent and just a great all-around guy. So it was just nice to catch up. We've known him maybe 5 minutes and then he walked away. And then he came back over, which was, you know, a little awkward. He's coming back over and he, he says, you know, I just feel like I need to tell you. He said, I've got cancer. And he said, I've got a 50/50 chance of living the next 5 years. And so, you know, you don't know what to say in a situation like that. And before I could get anything else out, he said, no, no, no, I didn't come over to make you feel bad. I wanted to let you know that while I wish this diagnosis hadn't happened, It's been the most fascinating 90 days of my life. He said, I'm now having conversations with my wife I'd never had before. I've taken my kids on some separate vacations to see what they want from Dad before he leaves this world. I've delegated and I've actually shifted at my work. I've now become chairman and I've let the CEO position go to somebody who's probably even more qualified than I am. And, and so he was talking about this intentionality, and then he kind of leaned in and he said, you know, he said, you know, when death becomes certain, life becomes rich. When death becomes certain, life becomes rich. And when he said that, it really dawned on me, Marc. It was just this aha moment of why do we wait to get sick to get well? Why do we wait for a doctor to give us some information before we decide to take care of ourselves. So, from that time on, I really started doubling down. I started doubling down on all my research on leadership. And a big part of this was wellbeing. When I work with clients, I work with them in a kind of a— the 3 legs of a stool. The first one is on the emotional intelligence and on coaching versus leading. The second one in the book is really around well-being. I have gone into all the research and the neuroscience and all the sciences around sleep, nutrition, around exercise, around hydration, around routines. I've went into all the sciences to know how to live a better life. You know, one of the sciences I even talk about is the fact that while I can, can very well instruct people on how to sleep better, eat better, and exercise better, which will prolong your life by 25%, relationships, healthy relationships, will actually extend your life by 60%. And that's because they say, you know, you can die of a broken heart. Well, you really can, because when you're going through some traumatic situation, whether it be a divorce, whether it be you're leaving a company, there's something always going on that that causes trauma, your blood vessels restrict, and it's harder to get blood to the heart. So, I talk to clients. I mean, we have got to get holistic. You called it integration. I always say to clients, if you're not doing well at home, you're probably not going to do well at work. And if you're not doing well at work, you're going to bring it home, and you're not going to do well there either. So, that is the second leg of that stool, is helping educate leaders on how to have the right morning routines, how to have the right evening routines, how to live a healthy, rich, and intentional life so they feel like going to work, so they feel like taking on a lot of the stresses at home. And then, the third leg of that stool is around productivity. And I really believe, you know, if you're like me in the corporate world, it was death by meeting. I mean, you went through 8 hours of meetings, 5 days a week. And you had a to-do list about 2.5 miles long. And if you didn't do it on the weekend, you were just rinse and repeat starting the following Monday. Well, we need to start exploring more asynchronous meetings. Or when we're looking at technology, how do we have these, these, these meetings that are taking place where we don't have to be physically available in a room, yet we have a stream of notes through either Slack Or through Notion or Trello or some system that basically allows us to be more efficient? How do we know individually how to structure our days, our weeks, when we're in kind of green, yellow, or red? Because we all have a certain amount of emotion and passion and energy at certain times of the day, and we need to make sure that we're tasking ourselves with the hardest things during those time frames. I just met with a client this morning. And his strengths are those that, that he's wired to be a leader. I mean, he has in StrengthsFinder, he has Competition, he has Strategic, he has Focus, he has Learner. He has all these things that just absorb his mind and he can't shut it off. So we had to talk about how do you use those beautiful gifts that make you a great entrepreneur? How do we gamify? Making sure that you're looking at how do you take care of yourself— mind, body, and soul— so that you can have this integration that you talked about, Marc, that makes you live a lot longer, healthier, and better. So, those are the 3 legs of the stool: the EQ, the well-being, and the productivity that I work with clients on.

And it's interesting because we're talking about this in leaders. But it's essential for the leaders to realize that this also applies to everybody within their church. It's not just a them thing. There's also an us thing when we're leading people.

No, I couldn't agree with you more. I think the biggest challenge I see is just a lot of the leaders that either they don't have time for what you and I are talking about or they just don't believe it. I've worked for many leaders myself That just said, you know, if people want to develop themselves, they can do it on their own. They know how to do it. I mean, they can pick up a 1-800. It's just the wrong attitude. It's the wrong way. It's, you know, I'm reading a book right now on growth mindset versus fixed mindset. And I find that so many people are in a fixed— leaders are in a fixed mindset.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, I have my life, they've got theirs. They do their job, we all make money. That's not a growth mindset. And a growth mindset is where, you know, you're curious and you're learning and you're engaged and you're thinking about How can we work on this together?

Right.

And, you know, a lot of times I'll have people talk, you know, about the cost of what you and I do, whether it be coaching or consulting. And until you change that from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset and say, do you want to invest or is this an expense? And that's what starts to get people to think, no, this is an investment. And I realize the return on investment isn't quite as obvious But it will be within about 6 to 8 months. And again, we go back to turnover. And the worst thing than turnover, the number one thing that's worse than turnover is somebody staying who's not engaged.

Right.

That is worse than turnover.

And you mentioned something a little bit earlier, this idea. What was it about the manager? If you teach managers how to coach, what was it?

Yeah, no, I believe if you teach leaders how to coach, Then employees will learn how to lead.

Right.

And within that, again, I talk to so many leaders and we talk about, give me your cadence of working with a lot of your direct reports. And there is no cadence. It's, we're busy and we get together when we can. And no, no, no, we've got to have some intentionality around the people that we work with. We've got to meet with them whether it's once a week, whether it's once every 2 weeks. I can tell you all my direct reports, all the people that reported to me, You know, they had, they had a minimum of 45 minutes to an hour on my calendar every week. And the people that were 2 levels down, they had an hour on my calendar every 60 days. And then I always made it intentional to reach out to people in the company because that engagement, that connection is what drives productivity. And I really believe, Marc, that as we talk about leadership and coaching, The more I work with leaders to learn how to coach and have this intentionality in these meetings, the more they quit enabling.

Yes.

The more it will take more time upfront.

Yes.

Because they're not prepared to lead.

Yes.

But eventually, over time, they start to ask themselves critical questions before coming to you. And if you give them that latitude and that freedom, Oh my goodness, they start to transform. You start to transform as a leader. And it's no reflection on you as a leader because you're not answering, you know, questions to the problems anymore. It's actually a reflection of you're now learning to lead. There was actually a company that tried this. They let go of all of their managers and they hired coaches. And they kept track and the ROI, the productivity, I mean, they had great numbers where everything went up like 15% to 20%.

Wow.

And so, it's amazing. You know, I just think that we need to be a little bit more— have awareness of our own leadership style. And how do we learn to coach? By asking the right questions, by reframing, by listening and being one that doesn't answer it right away.

Yes.

But yet, we listen for the answer. And if it isn't necessarily perfect, Then we don't answer it. We say, can you give me another thought? Or let me help you kind of reframe that. But that is so much more effective, Marc. So, that's where I work with a lot of my clients. And like I said, it's hard upfront. It's very hard work.

Yeah, but it's interesting because I have had conversations with a lot of leaders. And I believe, I truly believe that we give our managers too much To do. When we want them to be a leader, they need to be focused on the people. And a lot of times, I'll talk to people about, you know, you have to— it's important to take on this coaching role where we're actually working with our teams to help coach them individually and as teams. But then, I get the pushback of, you don't understand. Do you know how much work I have to do? Like, I have so many things on my to-do list. When will I find time? And it's like, isn't that interesting? Because then I think, how effective are you at delegating?

No, you're absolutely right. You know, I sometimes tell the story and when I do keynote speaking, I will go into a little bit of the story of when I played college football. And, you know, my freshman year, I just thought this team was going to be phenomenal. I mean, it's why I went there. And they finished a horrible 1-10 season. And it was the last game of the year they won. And so, you know, I'm scratching my head. And you obviously don't keep your job when, you know, you go 1-10. So, you know, they terminated the coach and they brought in a new guy. And, you know, he was known as Dr. Victory. And it goes back to everything we've been talking about. He came in the first day and talked to us. And he had this authenticity. And he said, gentlemen, I'm just going to tell you right now, I know very little about football. He said, in fact, the most success I've ever had personally was coaching my grandson's Pop Warner team, and we won the city championship. He said, I literally was calling the plays. I've never done that before. He said, so I just don't know much about football. Of course, that scared us all even worse. But he brought in this most electric group of coaches. They were— he knew how to identify talent, and many of them are in the NFL today, and they were only 25 to 28. And then he started You know, so I saw that he not only had authenticity, he knew how to identify talent. But he did something really cool, Marc. What he did was he said, but every one of you in the room, you're now a coach. Because he said, you know what's going on in the field. You know if you're getting beat or if you're beating the guy across from you. Unless you tell us what's going on, we can't make adjustments during the game. And I thought, that is so brilliant. Even at 20 years old, I was sitting there scratching my head and saying, this is a wonderful experience at how to make employees actually the leaders by coaching. So, to tell how much impact this had, as I mentioned, we were 1 in 10. We were worst team in the nation. My freshman year. The very next year, this team won the national championship. I mean, they were the best in Division II football. And, and that's the transformation, because you know what? It was the same players. It was maybe about 4 or 5 other kids that came in, but it was the same players. But what did they do? They put a lot of these players in different positions where they could now succeed. The quarterback, a little short, great receiver. Linebacker, too much thinking, put him on the edge, have him be this end. He became All-American. So, it was this letting the players start to feed us information, getting them in the right position. It's no different than the companies you and I work with.

Yeah, yeah. This is fascinating, Stan. So, if this is resonating with the audience, how can they get in touch with you?

So, stan gibson speaks dot com. If you go to my website at stan gibson speaks dot com, and on there, I actually do have what I call a sizzle reel. I've got a 5-minute video where you can kind of watch me in action. And it's a past keynote that I did probably about 3 or 4 months ago. Please just reach out. You know, I'm a— I just love to talk to people. I think, you know, one of my gifts and my superpower is I connect dots and I connect people.

Love it.

And so, if I'm not your jam, that is fine. I will find out who is. And I truly mean that. And I've done that many times. I just seem to run in really good circles of really good coaches or consultants or fractional consultants. And I'm able to just make those connections. And that's just one of the gifts that God gave me, quite honestly. So, if you call me, It is really just an informational meeting just to see what you need.

Yep, likewise. Likewise, I talk about it all the time that getting onto the phone call, having somebody be there to listen to what you need, and then be able to suggest the best course of action. And it might not be signing up with me. It might be signing up with somebody else who has that strength. I think it's important. When we think about this idea of trying to migrate from becoming a manager to a coach, are there some practical steps that leaders can take to adopt this new kind of coaching mindset?

Well, again, I go back to maybe some of the things we've talked about. But number one, I think you have to have self-awareness. You have to know there are many different types of leaders. In fact, I think there's probably— I think I've seen it identified as 7 different leadership styles. But I think you need to know your leadership style. And again, be authentic. Know who you are and know who you're not. But then, you know, I work with clients on— now we need to learn the different types of questions. Because when somebody comes to you and they start to ask questions, you know, we have to come back with and make it almost where it's automatic, where you're saying, so tell me more. So what are you thinking? So what would be probably a way to tackle this with your experience? And there's probably around 10 to 15, and it depends on the situation to match the right kind of question. But I think, again, reframing, having the right questions is very, very critical. Between that and authenticity and really training on listening skills. And you know what? One of the biggest components of being a coach is silence.

Yeah.

It's so uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable. If we let silence go right here between our talk, we'd probably lose half of your listeners because they'd think that we went off the air. But it is so valuable because there's so much being said in the time of that silence. So, there are many different components that I believe that we start to work with leaders. And then, of course, I not only coach, but I consult, which means I work with a lot on their visioning. I work with them a lot on their business plan. And I am not— I just truly detest, Marc, I detest mission statements that say, we exist to They just go up on a wall and nobody knows what they mean, why they do it. But when you start to engage employees in creating this document, and this document is going to have possibly, you know, well, not possibly, it's going to have 2 to 3 metrics and it's going to have when we're going to accomplish it by. And then it's got our why. Why are these even important? And you start to integrate these into the company and then they can create their own metrics based off of those metrics as to how do they contribute. When you start to look at a fully integrated plan and strategic plan like that, then you've got the employees that have some skin in the game. Then they want to be part of the success. And that's why, again, it goes back to the football analogy. If our coach would have just said, we're going to call the plays and you're going to run them, we would not have had the success. But getting us engaged New uniforms. I mean, they were cool. They were hip. Changed our whole mindset. We thought we could run faster, jump higher. That's the whole thing about being a manager or being a leader today is how do you engage? So, that's a little bit of that, you know, how I approach companies, both consulting and coaching.

It's so interesting because I've worked for organizations where the CEO or COO had the corner office. And a lot of times, they had their own washrooms and they had their own coffee setups and all this sort. And it was like an elitist kind of positioning. You have the corner office. You have all these windows. You're top of the food chain. But you had zero engagement. And then, you whine and bellyache when your team and your employees don't have engagement, that they don't have initiative, that they're kind of falling by the Yeah.

No, I agree with you. And I'll tell you, the big office is probably overrated anyway. I know that that was my holy grail when I came out of college.

Yeah.

Someday, because I was a kid that grew up on the farm and, you know, I pig farmed and I did all the things that you don't, you know, someday you dream of a big office, a glass office with a couch. And, you know, that, the funny thing is, you know, that happened when I was in my 20s. And, you know, 3 decades later, I'm now riding a scooter to a coffee shop. And I'm 10 times happier opening a laptop there or meeting with a client there. So, I tell you what. Yeah, that's highly overrated. If you want to get there, fine. But I will tell you, the joy will go away quickly.

Yeah, very quickly. There's a price to be paid for those corner offices. I'd like to get into, you know, as people listen to this and thinking about making a change or starting to explore a change, I'd love to get into some cautionaries and some pitfalls that we should avoid. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I hope that you are getting tons of value from our conversation today with my guest, Stan Gibson. As you can tell, Stan Gibson and I are wired to support business owners and leaders just like you. We're committed to supporting and making sure that you're successful. So, if you would like to explore how we could be of benefit either for an upcoming conference, or a leadership retreat, or to help with an immediate problem that you are experiencing, drop us a line. Our contact details are in the show notes. So Stan, one of the challenges I have is this idea of switching mindsets. Do you have any hints aside from getting to know yourself? How do we create that level of intentionality and make ourselves accountable for it?

Well, when you say accountable, I'm assuming what you're meaning then is once a leader has either been reprimanded or they're finding that their productivity is not where it should be, how do they make that switch effectively?

Well, it's more the, yes, I want to become more the coach. I want to become less the carrot and sticking manager. Trying to make that change But when crisis hits, we always fall back to our behaviors.

Sure, sure.

And so, how can we create accountability that there's a scorecard, there's a check, there's something to pull us back to say, hey buddy, you're falling behind, or you're falling backwards?

Yeah, no, great question, great question. Muscle memory is a really hard thing to break, Marc, as you know. We've done things for a certain way for a very long period of time. And you're right. We do. We go to the class, or we work with the coach, we work The consultant, and we know the right things to do. But under stress and duress, we typically start to fall backwards and we start to lose our muscle memory. I've got really 2 answers to that. The first is, again, I very much tell my clients that, you know, you have to be a little selfish to be very selfless. And what I mean by that is that You know, we typically fall backwards when we're under stress and we're not taking care of ourselves.

Right.

And again, I'm very big into the neuroscience and how do we take care of ourselves? What are the morning routines, you know, that we need to have? I've got a client and she's got global responsibilities. And when she first signed up with me, she was gassed. I mean, she just had no energy. She just said, I'm just, you know, I need help. And I said, well, tell me, you know, what do you do when you first wake up in the morning? She goes, well, I just naturally wake up at 4:30. There's so many things on my mind and I turn on the news. And of course, there's somebody, you know, being shot, robbed, or something horrible happening. From there, I start answering emails. And from there, I'm kind of so far into work that by the time the kids get up and then, you know, I'm going down and I'm having a donut and they're having a And don't it? And I'm like, okay, I think we're on to something here. Number one, we've got to have the right morning routines. And I'm very, very big on this. I believe in treating yourself as a leader, mind, body, and soul. I think you have to take care of those three things within the first hour and a half of waking up. And I've got very specific things that I recommend. I never tell. I will recommend because I think everybody's a little different as to how they want to approach their mind, body, and soul.

Sure.

But there is definitely a cadence of waking up in the morning and a cadence of evening routine. Just one of the things, just for example, I don't eat anything or drink any alcohol after 7 o'clock. There's a certain digestive time period that needs to take place for things to leave your body so that you can get the full 4 cycles of sleep that you need. 2 hours before is when technology starts to go off. 1 hour before is typically when it's time to read or do something that's shutting down and get the melatonin starting to factor in. The reason I mention these things is because when you feel better, you lead better. And I think that's very important that, you know, you give yourself a fighting chance to go ahead and start your day right. But you start your day right because you ended the evening right the night before. So I think that's one of the very critical ways that we have to look at ourselves as to how do we stay on top as leaders and not fall down the bad train. And then the other, as we said, is with the authenticity. I really believe that yes, we do have bad muscle memory, but we've got to learn who we are and who we're not. I've got a client who You know, she's, she's, we've been working for about 6 months. She's gonna leave, leave her company. And one of the reasons is because the manager, under stress, under duress, one of his strengths in StrengthsFinders is he's got Self-Assurance. Just ask him, he is right. When she went and said, here are my gifts, he said, no, those aren't your gifts. I'll tell you what your gifts are. And they were something totally different. And now she's getting a job making twice as much, working over in Europe. We're having the time of our life, and this manager is sitting there thinking it's her fault. So we have to take care of ourselves, keep ourselves out of stress and duress. We have to know who we are and who we're not. That point of him being— having self-assurance. Here's what really frustrated me, Marc. This company has somebody just like you and I embedded in it, and they thought that they were going to resolve this issue between the two of us. by having a half-hour meeting. That's all they had was a half-hour meeting. And nothing happened.

Yeah.

You know, joint coaching, this is something that takes place over time. I work with a lot of executives that don't see eye to eye. And once, you know, it doesn't happen in a half hour, an hour. It happens over time that you start to appreciate. I have 2 clients, or one client a CEO and a COO. And while he questions everything, just, you know, it's just he feels the risk if he doesn't ask questions.

Right.

And she's this people person. And it's like, why don't you just take what I say and run with it? And it wasn't until we kind of explored the positive and the negative that she said, you know what? If he did just take all of my suggestions, we'd probably be broke. I have to reframe his strengths and he needs to look at mine.

Yeah.

So, that's another aspect is again, that authenticity and knowing who you are and who you're not. So that when muscle memory comes up, you know that there's a right answer.

Love it. And that muscle memory is going to be, as you reprogram that muscle memory, that becomes the accountability for you to turn around and say, hey bud, be intentional. I love this. This has been such a fantastic conversation, Stan. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about?

Well, I think everything you're doing is spot on, Marc. I just really appreciate it. And again, what's worked 5 years ago isn't going to work going forward. I'm almost finding that The Gen Z and the millennial leadership has probably the most open mind towards what they need to do to make a people-centric leadership culture. And it's not that people at my age can't learn. It's just, it's a muscle memory that has to be totally changed upside down. So, I think to me, the one thing I would say, and I've said this to many clients that are saying, you know what? I don't know if I have the time. I don't know if I have the money. I don't know our company. We don't have the budget. It's not an expense. It's an investment, no different than buying a better computer or a better mainframe or whatever. It's an investment because you cannot replicate EQ. You can replicate IQ. AI is telling us right now we can all be the smartest person in the room.

Right.

But learning how to work with people, I always said, because again, I was in real estate for years. And I always said I liked managing buildings because they basically had no voice. If it was too hot, you just made it colder. If the roof was leaking, you fixed the roof. Well, that's management.

That's management.

It was people. When they started managing people, that's when it got dicey.

And that's what I tell people all the time. I tell people, you know, if it wasn't for all the people we have to deal with, leadership would be a cinch. Absolutely. Absolutely. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you? Yeah.

Hey, stan gibson speaks.com. And if you'll just go there and again, I just would love to just have a conversation. I think that's the variety and the spice of life for me is just meeting new people, connecting dots, and connecting people.

Brilliant. Stan, I want to thank you so much for sharing your passion and your expertise with us today. It has been absolutely brilliant. It's been a wonderful conversation. It's wonderful getting to know you. And I look forward to us connecting in the future.

And you as well, Marc. Thank you and thank your audience. I appreciate it.

Take good care. Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. MarcHaine.com. It would be my absolute honor to be of service to you and your organization. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and leave a review about this episode? I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? Did we miss anything? Are there any other topics you would like to see on this podcast? I have so enjoyed being here for you with my guest, Stan Gibson. And I wish you the very best. My name is Marc I'm Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.