How to drive your leadership to unlock your team’s full potential

Let me ask you a question. Do you have people on your team who have more talent, more capabilities, and more capacity than their current job description allows? Whenever I ask that question at conferences, almost every single hand goes up. I bet your response is a resounding yes. So, the bigger question is, how do you tap into that potential Capacity. And that's coming up next on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to Marc Haine Live! This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them work on their business, not just in their business. I am your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. And today, my guest is the Potential tapper himself, Rick Lozano. I messed it up, Rick. I'm so sorry. Rick Lozano. We will be talking about how to identify what is getting in the way of your people doing their best work, how to unlock the talent that you have within your midst, and the different tools you can use to be more effective as a potential tapper in your own right. But before we get into that, I just wanted to remind you to go ahead and subscribe to this podcast. And at the same token, ring the bell. That'll set you up to get notifications whenever I bring you some fresh new content. And of course, while you're at it, feel free to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and of course, on Instagram. And please use the hashtag #ExperienceLeadership. That way, I know that you're going to be part of the conversation. One of the hats I wear is with Toastmasters. It's a wonderful organization that teaches people the skills and the leadership required to speak in public. And whenever I've set up or helped set up a corporate club, that is a club that is within organizations, within businesses, people invariably are blown away by the capacity that they see from their co-workers. Like, it's not strange to hear things like, oh, I didn't know that Samantha was so well read. Or, my goodness, who knew that Peter in accounting was so darn funny? Even bigger, I never would have guessed it. But I think I'm going to put Steve on the promotion track. Who knew? These kinds of realizations happen when you take people out of their roles and put them into new areas where they can expose themselves a little bit better. So that brings me to our Question of the Day. So, what is your company doing to uncover the true potential within your teams? Do you yourself feel underutilized? Go ahead and share your experience on social media. And please make sure you do hashtag your comments with #ExperienceLeadership. As I mentioned, my guest today is speaker, author, and consultant Rick Lozano, the author of Acoustic Leadership: Develop a Leadership Culture Culture That Resonates. Yeah, beautiful book. Rick brings a unique approach to teams across the globe, combining his 20+ years as a consultant and his talents as a musician and singer-songwriter. Rick, welcome to the show. It's so nice to have you.

It's fantastic to be here, Marc. Thank you for having me. Hello to everybody out there on the interwebs. Happy Wednesday! It's a Wednesday.

Hello!

Rick, before we get into anything, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you actually do for your clients? Yeah.

My primary goal in life and the work that I do, I help people unlock and amplify their talent and potential. Their talent as a leader, their talent as individuals, the talent that is there on the teams that has yet to be utilized and realized. And really, what we find when we talk to so many people across the globe is there's just that. There's talent and potential that we haven't tapped into yet. And it excites me because I know, hey, there's stuff here we can work with that we can just build into something amazing to help people's businesses.

Yeah. So, why is this such an important topic do you think for leaders today?

Absolutely. Well, I think the obvious answer right now is the world is changing so dynamically. It has changed over the last couple of years. We also have reached this point. And you've heard the term, the Great Resignation being thrown around a lot lately. But we are really at an inflection point where people are reevaluating their work relationship, how they do it, where they do it, when they do it. And to say the Great Resignation is a COVID-inspired thing is a little short-sighted because this conversation has been going on for a while. So for example, one of the things that I mentioned in the book prior to COVID, indeed.com, which is a large job search company, they had a statistic or a survey that they did, and 71% of the respondents at that time right before COVID said they were looking for another job or open to it. So, people have already been trying to reevaluate and reestablish what their work environment looks like to them. And right now, as leaders especially, we've got to say, hey, what are we doing? Are we creating these conditions for people to really do their best work at work?

Yes. And it's interesting because I think what the pandemic has done for us at the very least, it's shown people that there are other options. In this realm of people feeling undervalued or underutilized, do you think that the pandemic has exacerbated what people have been feeling?

I think it absolutely has. And I think that's the right word. So, these things already existed. But COVID did just that. It exacerbated these feelings. And now, it forced people to, like you said, try new things, evaluate the work, and figure out, hey, We've got to let go of some things because as we all know, when we made this shift to working remotely and working from home, we could do it from a virtual sense, from a we have the technology sense. But we also realized there's things that we just can't do anymore. We've got to let go of some of these things that aren't translating into this new work, whether it's virtual or remote going forward or virtual or in-person going forward. People are still doing that. And so, we've got to say, hey, what do we need to let go of in order to move forward?

And so, when you say the we, you're taking in the role of the leaders within organizations, within teams.

I tend to start with the leader because I think the leader sets the tone for so many things. But when I use the word leader, I also use it as sort of a universal concept. Because when you think about it, as entrepreneurs for example, we are leaders of our organization. Leadership is a transferable skill. And there's another point in the book that we make about this because we have leaders in our organizations who aren't your traditional managers or directors, people who have a lot of influence, who have a lot of social capital, and we never invite them to the leadership conversation because they aren't managers. And that in itself is an example of where we're losing opportunities. We're losing that talent and potential because, hey, I don't know about you, but some people don't want to be a manager, and yet they are highly influential people. So my goal is to say, hey, how do we develop everyone as leaders, a culture of leadership, so that That everyone sort of lifts everyone with or without a formal title.

Oh, I love that. We had an episode where we talked about making everybody come to the table. Being able— and part of it is, I guess, I'm at the butt end of the baby boomers. And so, my history, especially starting in the workforce in the late 1970s, it was all about the leader had the answers. The manager was the boss. And It was literally, if I want your ideas, I'll tell you what it is. Yeah.

Right?

And so, we've now evolved to the point now where really, we've gone past the knowledge worker age now to more of a relational age of workers. Do you think that that's affected how people now kind of engage their employees? Are you seeing a positive spin on this?

I've seen both a positive spin as well as the challenge. And the challenge is always the resistance to try new things. I think, again, people have been wanting to change this dynamic. And suddenly, we realize that there's new ways of working that are totally legitimate, totally possible. And I think one of the biggest factors in the Great Resignation is people go, there's opportunity right in front of me that I'm not getting. Yes. And maybe it's this culture that we have at work that's not allowing it. Maybe it's this leader, this boss who's not allowing me to step into that space. But it's almost like somebody has put candy in front of a child. Once the child sees the candy, they know there's candy. They're not going to stop until they get that. And I think a lot of workers these days are saying, look, this can be better. I don't have to put in 80 gazillion hours a week commuting a 2-hour drive every single day to do my best work. So, let's give us the flexibility to figure out what those new relationships look like.

I love that. It does take leaders with humility in order to make that so though.

Absolutely.

So, are we talking— so, is this a leadership problem or is it a corporate culture problem?

It is both. It is both. And here's the good news. The leaders that I've talked to, they are well aware of the dynamics and the need for change. I think the challenge that we run into, especially in larger organizations, is we've got these very corporatized structures, a whole lot of different layers. And as you know, it's a lot harder to impact change on a large scale when there's that many employees. And that's one of the reasons people are always taken with the technology realm. So, part of the research that I did in the book was looking at the differences between large enterprise corporations and smaller technology companies. And one of the advantages that these smaller tech companies had was they had fewer people. They had more autonomy. They had more control and more decision-making power. And so, they were not only able to get more done without all these different layers of stuff, But they were also more engaged in the work that they did. There was a study that was done by Bain and Company. And one of the things that they found, they looked at companies like Apple and Dell and some of these other bigger corporate-ish, but still technology companies. And what they found was people in these tech companies were so much more engaged. They were more than half as engaged as people who did not work for traditional tech companies. And by the way, I think every company to a certain degree these days is a tech company. But back then, what they found was people who were in those work environments, those technology environments, those smaller-scale environments, they had more ownership, more autonomy, and it just went through the roof. And one last stat on that. That productivity went up to 125% more when they reported to what they called an inspiring leader. So, when people had that relationship not just with the organization but with the leader, suddenly it went through the roof. So, how do we replicate that? That's the big question that we've got to solve for.

Yeah, it's interesting. Do you get, when you talk about this, do you get pushback from smaller businesses? Because usually when you compare like the big business, big boys doing certain things right, the smaller companies will turn around and say, well, it's great for them because they have the budget. Do you see some pushback from the smaller companies as far as training engaged leaders?

The funny thing about it is it goes both sides of that equation. I get it from the smaller companies who say, we don't have those resources that those bigger organizations have. And I hear it from the bigger organizations because they say, oh, well, you know, we're not small and agile like that, so we can't possibly, you know, steer the ship. It's giant, it's huge, it's going to take too much. And the thing that I always try and, you know, focus people around is, cool, what can you do at a local level right here with you and the people around you What changes can we make right here? Because ultimately, that's going to be the thing that resonates with you and me every single day is my local specific work environment. Yes, there might be things in the bigger organization that maybe I don't like or can't control. But where I show up and the people that I surround myself with every day and my ability to show up and do my best work, that's going to create that feeling of engagement more so.

Hmm.

So, that's what I try and encourage people to do. Okay, cool. Let's acknowledge your limitations. And now, let's work within them because you have control over certain things.

Yes. So, it's acknowledging and being able to look at what you do have control over.

Absolutely, absolutely it is.

Leaders face a myriad of challenges every single day. I know that leaders get so frustrated. They pull out their hair saying, I don't know why people aren't engaged. I don't understand what I need to be doing. How do they assess if they have a problem that they can have control over within their area? Is there any kind of a checklist or any kind of a checksum that they can do to check on their own performance to see if that works for them?

I think there's a lot of different answers to that suggestion. Let me give a recommendation. The first thing that I've seen so many leaders try to solve this problem with, let's introduce a new thing.

Yes.

Let's solve this by introducing a new technology. Let's put in a new pulse survey every couple of weeks and stuff like that. And I'm not diminishing those things. I think those things are fine. But when I really think about it, we've got to not start with technology. We have to start with behavior.

Hmm.

And that's where I see some disconnects there because people say, oh, we got a problem. We need to put this new thing in place. How about the new thing we put in place is actual behavioral change? And the simplest place to start, to your question, is by having open Honest conversations with people using words like trust. Are we having a trust or a high-trust environment? Do you feel trusted? What do you need to show that you're trusted? Having analog conversations about, you know, are we holding each other accountable? Are we all moving in the right direction? You and I, before the show, we were talking about this little— this record player that I have back here. And it's so funny. I think that digital— everyone is so quick to go to digital and it has its place. But nothing, no solution in the digital realm is going to take the place of the actual behavior. And I've seen this so often. You know, people have implemented— and yeah, a lot of us use things like Slack and Microsoft Teams and technologies like that. But that's not going to change the behavior. If people aren't having those conversations in real time, they're not necessarily going to do it online. And if they do do it online, it might not be perceived by the other person in the way it's intended because, of course, we're dealing with that context gap. So, don't start with technology. Start with behavior.

And what's interesting is the idea that technology are the tools. I mean, that's like a hammer to a carpenter, right? If you have a carpenter with a bad attitude, giving him a brand new hammer is not going to fix that.

He's just going to hit people with it and that would not go over well. So no, HR would be all over that.

It's like, I can't understand why my teams all have headaches. I just don't understand it. I'd like to get into how leaders can evaluate what's getting in their way of helping their people do their very best. And we'll get to that right after this.

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I am speaking with Rick Lozano. And since I've just had a spot for my book, why don't you tell us a little bit about your book, Acoustic Leadership?

Thank you. And by the way, I love your book. I love the concept of stealing or borrowing ideas from the world of theater to the world of everything that you do. And similarly, I've got a theme with mine. I bring my lens as a musician and a performer into the world of leadership. My book is called Acoustic Leadership: Develop a Leadership Culture That Resonates. And that term resonates, I'm so a fan of because it means something. It reverberates. It fills you with meaning and with feeling. And that's one of the reasons I used the musical lens because music has the power to connect us. Music is the source of inspiration and engagement. And the book really focuses on 3 areas where we can really create a culture of leadership with or without titles. And those 3 areas are simplicity, authenticity, and opportunity. Let's make it simple for people to do their best work. Let's create authentic, real relationships based on trust and accountability and vulnerability. And then finally, an opportunity. Let's look at an opportunity to develop everyone as leaders, not just with those with a formal title. Now, you asked about, so how can we assess? How do we know what those problems are? And one of the concepts that I introduce in the book is a simple idea to help people think through Where those areas are. By the way, one thing that I talk about that's really important is this mindset shift. Here's the thing. And so often when I'm coaching leaders or talking to leaders, they're like, oh, you know, these people, they're lazy and stuff. And, you know, maybe that can be situationally true. But my take on it is people want to do great work. Marc, you and I, you and I, and most of the people that I know, nobody comes to work to suck. They don't do that. It's like, it's Tuesday. I'm gonna— what am I gonna— I'm gonna suck today. Nobody does that. People want to be good at their job, and a leader and a coworker or anyone's job is to help facilitate that process, make it simple for people to do their best work. So when I started researching the book, the question was, what gets in the way of it? What gets in the way of people doing their best work? And as you can imagine, I found a lot of information. And I needed a term. I needed a word. And the word that kept sticking out to me was muck, like sludge, like mud. These things that when you try and walk through it, literally slows you down. So, my question to people is, what the muck? What are the sources of muck in your organization? And I've got 4 categories of muck: bureaucracy, dinosaurs, Infrastructure, and people. So here's the— and by the way, I call that the B-DIP. I was thinking about Michael Jackson. Boom, ba, ba, ba, boom.

B-DIP.

So B-DIP: bureaucracy, dinosaurs, infrastructure, and people. Bureaucracy. So like we talked about earlier, red tape, excessive layers, those sorts of things. And it doesn't need to necessarily take place in a huge corporate enterprise environment. You see politics, you see excessive layers and excessive protocol in every organization. So that's the first, is bureaucracy. The second is dinosaurs. And when I talk about dinosaurs, what I'm really talking about are those fossilized relics of work the way we used to do it. Those things that we inherited and we keep doing even when we know it's not working, right? And there's a lot of examples of those sorts of things. By the way, muck as a whole, it's estimated that in the United States alone, we lose up to $4 billion a year due to all of these different factors. By the way, I've got a great example of— let me give you an example of a dinosaur. The corporate review process. The performance review process. This is the most amazing thing to me because we spend Billions of dollars a year when you factor in people's time and their pay scales and those sorts of things. We spend billions of dollars a year on this process that doesn't actually do much good. And I've seen report after report and statistic after statistic. There was one specific one that I'll mention here. And they asked this group of people, this population, I'll tell you who it is in a minute. They asked these people, okay, so what do you think of your performance review process? And more than 80% of the respondents said that they didn't think that their performance review process improved— guess what? Performance. And this, by the way, came from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, who typically owns the process. So, why do we keep feeding this dinosaur? Okay. The other 2, and then I'll have a little special treat for you. The other 2 are infrastructure and people. And in the book, when I talk about infrastructure, what I talk about are those subtle enablers or those subtle motivators that are actually getting in the way. And the analogy is similar to like a casino. Have you been to a casino, Marc?

Used to run casinos.

There you go. So, you are well aware of all of those infrastructural dynamics that motivate people to stay longer and spend money. So, what might be a couple of those things, do you think?

They don't have lights. They don't have clocks.

Yeah.

They're designed to make people lose track of time.

Yeah, they are specifically designed to enable that behavior, right? Similarly, at work, when we think about the motivational connections there, sometimes what we see are that the things that we're motivating and motivated by are enabling the wrong direction. And they're just sort of built into the fabric of the way that we do things, right? Let me give you a simple example, specifically in the COVID era right now. Everyone's digital. Everyone's remote. Hey, as a leader, I need to know. I need to check in. I need to touch base, and I need to you know I need to know. So respond to me, and we've created this culture of immediate availability, and it's killing us. There's a book, by the way. Oh gosh! What is his name? I'm forgetting it off the top of my head. I read a book recently, and it talks about exactly this. How we're losing our focus because we're constantly being interrupted because there's this need for immediate availability. And that is getting in the way of people doing their best work. Because when we're distracted by messages and Slacks and emails and all these other things, we're taking our focus off of what our priorities are. So that's another example of just those infrastructural motivators that we have to take a look at. And then finally, people. And here's where I take a different take on it. I don't think people, like we mentioned, they don't want to be horrible leaders. They don't want to be horrible co-workers. They're being motivated and influenced by those other factors in the B-DIP, the bureaucracy, the dinosaurs, the infrastructural motivators. So, we've got to look at those things before we can actually fix the people, if you will. Does that make sense?

It does. And it resonates so much because we've said it time again. Part of my demographic, the people that I serve are managers who were like me. Did really well at my job and somebody came to me and said, Marc, you're so awesome. I'd like to promote you and then you can teach everybody how to do the work.

Yeah.

And then, 6 months in, 8 months in, I'm walking around going, how come I suck so bad? I used to be so good. And it's like, it's because you put me in a leadership role with absolutely zero Training. And you're absolutely right. I don't know a single person who wakes up in the morning and goes, today, I'm just gonna shag the dog and not do anything. Everybody wants to perform. Everybody wants to know what they do matters.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's some very simple things that we can do about this. Let me give you an example. One of my clients, they looked at their performance review process. And they said, you know what? We know the baggage associated with this. We know that this is something that people have this stigma associated with it. And so, what they did was they asked themselves, okay, what is the point of a performance review? It's to improve performance. So, what this company did was rather than having the once-a-year check-ins, because that just makes no sense. I don't remember what I did last week, much less last July. So, they started having quarterly check-ins. And they use one simple question. That's not all they did, but they focused it in one— on one simple question. And that question is, what makes your job hard?

Hmm.

That's it. What makes your job hard? And so people show up to this performance review process. It's a couple of simple questions, including that one. And by doing that, they are essentially asking what the muck, looking at the muck that's in their place and fixing it. Because answering and doing something about that question is going to be far more impactful than any other sort of traditional performance review process. Now, we also know that sometimes— you talked about training. Sometimes, a bad example is a really good example. So, I was having some fun with the performance review process because it's— by the way, Marc, it's my favorite thing to hate, the performance review process. But I came up Because I do a little work with music and bring it to the work that I do. I came up with a really good bad example. All right. So hello to those of you who are streaming this live. Mark, this is how not to do a performance review. All right. Here we go. The performance review song. Writing your performance review. It says more about me.

Than you.

It's morally defeating and often misleading, but this is the best we can do, so here we go. I haven't said this all year, but now you're about to hear about that thing last November that you don't remember. That's not how we do things around here, just so we're clear. Now between you and me, this year everyone's rated a 3, successful. And the budget is tight, and that team-building night really cost us. You know, Topgolf ain't free. No, it's not. But I want you to know that I value your contributions to this organization. You are a team player. You are knocking it out of the park and finding operational efficiencies in places that we didn't even know existed. I love you, man. And in light of all this praise, here's your half percent raise. I hope you enjoyed your performance review. Let's do it again next year, shall we? The performance review song.

Well done. Well done. That's awesome.

How not to do a performance review.

Well, you know, and I mean, it's such a good song because it just hits all the things that irks me about performance reviews. This idea that your performance is going to be rated at the same scale as your tardiness or your dress code adherence, right? It's like you're telling me out of 100, performance only ranks 5% of that. So, it's just really awful. I love the fact that you brought out the guitar because this is again kind of the tone that I think companies should have. I mean, I just published an article on LinkedIn about creating funner work environments.

Oh yeah.

I think that's a good word— funner work environments. But how much of what we're talking about is the leadership, the onus on the leadership to create That's a really good question.

And I often, when presented with that question, I look at it like this. Engagement is something that you can't outsource.

Right.

Engagement is to a certain degree, it's individual, it's personal, and everyone has a part to play because the truth about it is, Marc, you and I are going to be engaged by different things. If I ask 10 different people about what brings you to work, what motivates you, what drives you, I'm going to hear 10 different things. Engagement lives in the experience of the individual. So how can I as an individual say, you must engage me? Now, obviously, leadership makes a big difference and there's a part to play. Organizational cultures, the leadership in place. Yes, of course, they're going to impact and/or kill engagement. But I also have a role to play here. I can't just wait for people to give me the next opportunity. I can't just wait to be engaged. And when I coach a lot of people, what I talk to them about is going, okay, look, let's figure out where your motivations are. Let's figure out how you can create your own opportunities within this structure, even if it doesn't mean advancing through the traditional ladder. And we've gotta find a way to do 2 things from the engagement puzzle. We've got to have an emotional connection and a psychological connection. And the emotional connection, this is where leaders do have a lot of influence. They make it a place that feels good. The leader has a huge role in making work feel good. But guess what? So do your coworkers.

So do you.

We all, if we're going to create a fun work environment, that's on all of us. That's not just on the leader. Now, of course, the leader sets the tone. If they don't do it, well, nobody's going to do it. to do it, but we've got to find a way to do it. The other picture is a psychological one. And from a psychological connection standpoint, we have to realize that there's choices. I have a choice in where I work. And that's one of the things to the previous conversation about the Great Resignation. People are realizing that they've got choices.

Right.

And in some cases, maybe it makes more sense to even not work, right? So, how do I make the choices to help me psychologically say, This is the right place for me right now. This work is going to pay off because I can see ways to have opportunities for growth for myself. So, those are some of the things that we talk about.

Yeah, the idea. But you mentioned earlier, you mentioned trust. And I think some of the difficulties that organizations have making a shift is the fact that trust is so low. And that they need, before they can do anything, they need to find ways to bring that up. I know that you bring music into your presentations. I know that you highlight stuff with just making it as fun as you possibly can. When leaders are trying to tackle this idea of trust and not make it kind of the new initiative of the month initiative, what are some of the things that they need to do in order to start setting those seeds?

They need to have these conversations on a regular Hmm. Let me give you an example. When it comes to trust, the truth of the matter is we trust people who actually call us out on our stuff. We trust people who say, hey, Marc, you didn't meet this deadline, right? Because I know, hey, you're going to hold me accountable to it. So, to a certain degree, now, of course, there are many different shades to the overall trust picture, right? Competency, history, sort of capability, those sorts of things. But when I think about, and when I work with teams, what I try to enable in this community is, hey, we're going to have these conversations on a regular basis. And it's going to be in a friendly kind of way. And one of the best trips or tricks, by the way, I learned from a senior leader a long time ago. She said, the secret to a positive work culture and to a marriage is to fight like children.

Yeah.

Let's talk about it. Let's have it out. And then let's move on and go play with each other. So when I do team workshops, that's exactly what we do. We say, hey, we're gonna have some conversations and we're gonna talk to each other. And then we're just gonna create this environment where it's okay to do this in a safe, respectful manner. And so often what I do is in these conversations, I lead teams through an exercise where we go around the entire room And everyone talks to everyone and says, here's a behavior that's leading to the success of this team. Here's a behavior that I'm exhibiting from you that might be getting in the way of it. And every now and then people go, I had no idea. I didn't realize I was doing that. On both ends. I didn't realize, A, I was thought of as a thought leader or somebody who's such a high, you know, impactful player on this organization. And on the other end, people go, I didn't realize I was being so I had no idea I was doing that. That's one of those muck behaviors we talked about earlier. I don't want to be the muck. And it's funny because once we do it— and it's got to be facilitated in a very careful way— but once we actually do it, people go, why was I so afraid to do that? Why was I so afraid to say, hey, Marc, you missed the deadline? Because it is what it is. It's not a judgment on you as a human being. It was a missed deadline. Now let's talk about it, acknowledge it, And figure out what to do about it. There's this framework called the EOS model, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And one of the things that they do in that is every meeting, people have what they call the IDS: identify, discuss, solve. And to me, that's the behavior we talked about. Start with behavior, not technology. Those are the things that build trust. Those are the things that build accountability. And those aren't the only things. But that's at least one place where we can start.

Yeah, I love it. Again, it's going back to making people the center of the discussion and making it the behavior and not a personal attack. This is really fantastic. Could you let everybody know how they can get in touch with you? Because I'm sure there's gonna be some people on this saying, I need to get into his realm.

Absolutely. So, ricklozano.com is the best place to go. You can email me directly through there, rickl@ricklozano.com if you want to reach out to me. You could also check out my book on Amazon or check out my music on Spotify or any of the streaming services. So, there's some of that stuff out there as well.

Nice, nice. And so, tell me a little bit about your music. Is it all centered around workplace or do you have some—

So, you know the funny thing about that? I've been doing music forever. It's a big part of who I am. And I'm a real musician. I, you know, I have 6 albums of original material. I was once a finalist in a National Public Radio songwriting contest. So, I actually do know what I'm doing. But no one wants to hear those things. People come to my keynotes, for example, they're like, play the funny one, play the funny one. And it was funny. So, For the longest time, I'm like, no, but I'm a real musician. And people are like, yeah, that's great. Play the funny song.

That's awesome.

So now it's just one of those things where I'm like, I still do, you know, my real music, but I embrace the funny songs. And Marc, the funny thing is it comes easy to me. Those funny songs that we were talking about, this song that I wrote at 4:30 in the morning a while back, just bam, it came out. It's, by the way, it's called the LinkedIn— well, it's called I'd Love to Connect. But it's a parody song based on LinkedIn. Would you like to hear it?

You know what? Why don't we get to that right after this?

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Well, talking about technology and how badly we can really handle it, Rick, what do you have for us?

So, we were talking about trust. There are so many components to that. Marc, being real people, being authentic human beings, people trust that. When people aren't real, when they're hiding something, when they've got these hidden motivators or agendas, that gets in the way of trust. And a while ago, I was thinking about trust as a concept, and I thought about, for example, the behavior that we see on LinkedIn. People reach out to me all the time and they're like, oh, hey, Rick, I'd love to join your network. And as soon as I do, there's this boom, there's this sales pitch all of a sudden. And it's so funny because very often it's like, that doesn't even have anything to do with me, what you're trying to sell me. And I started thinking about All the ways that LinkedIn is sort of just just primed for for comedy. So I wrote a song about my experiences, and by the way, some of these are actual true true like direct quotes from LinkedIn. The song is called "I'd Love to Connect." Here we go.

Hey.

Hey there, Rick. I'd love to connect. No, you don't know me. We've never met. But based on your profile, you seem to be someone who should be connecting with me. As a full-service investment firm, we are approached directly by middle-market buyers actively looking for acquisition targets in your area. Are you open to a brief 5 to 10 minute call? Hey there, Rick. Do you have some time? In just 20 minutes, I'm sure that you'll find our B2B solution cuts through the mess and directly enables your business success. I work for an investment firm and we just launched a new accelerator academy that helps early-stage companies get to market better, faster, and cheaper. Let's talk, shall we? But what's funny is when you don't respond, um, maybe you've seen this, things go a little dark. Hey there, Rick. You have yet to reply. I'm following up as I'm curious why. Unlimited success for a nominal fee. You really should be connecting with me. Don't you want to be successful?

No.

Here's the thing. Your approach is all wrong. Almost like something In a parody song. I'm not even remotely a fit. Did you look at my bio? Did you give a shit? You didn't even try to figure out who I am. Your message is headed directly to spam. Hey, meeting planner. My name is Rick. I'm a dynamic speaker who might do the trick at your zoology convention in Orlando next fall. Would it make sense if we jumped on a call? Hey there, Rick. I'd love to connect. LinkedIn dogs.

That's awesome. You know, you're gonna have to— I was hoping that the title would be Show Up and Throw Up. Now, you have to do one. You have to work on one for employees who post stuff on social media about their companies.

Yeah, and it's just so amazing when people do that. It's like, don't you know they see this? Those people want to be fired. That's what's happening there.

Yeah, yeah. This is just so great. If you're enjoying today's episode, please go ahead and leave a review. And of course, go ahead and share this episode on LinkedIn because I know that what Rick is talking about today, I know is probably resonating with you. Rick, just to get back on track, we have talked about so much about how leaders can tap into their teams. How themselves, how can they become more effective as leaders? Like they recognize that they might have a capacity that's missing. What can they do?

Stop working so hard. And when I say this, I actually mean it because what I've found over and over when I talk and really Marc, it's everybody. It's entrepreneurs that I've talked to, people in our industry that I've talked to, leaders. What I find over and over is people are trying to do Too many things. They're trying to be great at too many things. And the truth of the matter is, I'm not going to be great at too many things. I'm going to have a core set of things that really sort of make me rock. And those are the areas where I need to spend my time. People throw around concepts like your zone of genius, right? And your flow state. And I fully embrace those because that's where the magic happens. One of the reasons, by the way, that I wrote the book from a leadership perspective, what I realized was that we people who were in leadership development, we were making it too hard because the message that we were sending, we would roll out these giant competency programs and there would be like 80 different leadership competencies. And then we'd rate people against all of them. And then we'd say, hey, you scored a 3 in acumen. You need to Work on that. Really? I'm not going to be great at everything. How about you help me focus in those areas where I'm already great? Those are going to be the areas where we're going to get the biggest return on our investment for our organizations, for us as leaders, for us as individuals. Focus on that core set of things. And yes, that doesn't mean you can't have other goals. You certainly can. But Use those concepts to get you there. And by the way, Marc, I was given that gift. I had a leader who changed my life, and my leader said, hey, Rick, you're great at 3 things. And I said, really? That's, that's it? He said, yes, 3 things. You're a great speaker. You're a great trainer. You're a great musician. Do those 3 things. And what I found was when I really, really focused all of my energy around those 3 things, Everything worked for me. My career took off. And again, my circumstances with the guitar, that's specific to me. But every single one of us has got those core areas where we're just awesome. Do more of those things. Yeah, yeah.

And the reason why we hire people is not because we need them to do a job. They're there to help us achieve our goals as leaders, right? Yeah, and leverage it. This has been really fantastic, Rick. Are there any cautionaries we should be talking about today? Like, are there anything, things that like do's or don'ts that leaders should be aware of?

Yeah, I think there's one thing that we should consider. And I think as leaders, I think we often need to slow our no. I think it's really easy for us to hear an idea and go, no, or we can't do that now, or we don't have time, or that's a stupid idea. People want to do great work and they often have great ideas. And maybe as crazy as they might sound, some of them are going to be the next great solution for your organization. There was a book by the name of John Medina. He wrote a book called Brain Rules. And he talks about how at Google, they had this concept of 20% time. And you've heard about this concept in multiple places. But 20% time is, hey, Roll with your idea. You got a crazy idea? Play with it for a while on the job, getting paid, and see what happens. And over half of their products at that point in time came from 20% time. So, I think that we need to think as leaders, we need to slow our no and rather replace it with some questions like, what does that look like? Tell me more. How could we do this? You know, and facilitate that. And by the way, In doing so, people are going to feel engaged. They're going to feel trusted because leaders are actually listening. Whether we decide to do it or not, as long as a leader listens, people are going to build or have that trust in them. So, those are a couple things to think about.

Yeah, I love the phrase. Probably the best leader I've ever worked with, whenever I came up with an idea, would ask me that one question. Oh, so what does that look like? And what it forced me to do was to think more critically about the ideas I was bringing to him. Because he inevitably would always ask that question. And we've had on this show, we've had improv people talking about yes, and as a key component to improv comedy. But it also works in the business setup where we turn around and say, okay, let's explore that for a second. And a lot of times, if it's a silly thing or the person didn't have all the variables, let's say, in order to make this up, It gets exposed and the person walks away and goes, oh, I understand. You haven't made them feel stupid. They haven't walked away feeling that they've wasted their time. They feel validated because you stopped and listened. And they feel validated because you stopped and challenged them. So, it's really great. Rick, as we wrap up, do you have any next steps or last thoughts?

My last thought is as leaders and individuals, If we want to unlock our own talent and potential, one of the best ways to do it is look at how we do it for other people, especially as leaders. I'm going to reach my potential as a leader, with or without a title, when I help other people reach theirs. And it's one of those simple little things. When we put the focus on helping other people, we inadvertently almost step into our potential. Focus on helping others reach their potential and we'll reach ours.

I love that. And of course, if you looked at my website, I'm all about leaders being of service. Rick, this has been really fantastic. Could you remind everybody how they can get a hold of you one more time?

Yes, ricklozano.com. You can email me at rickl@ricklozano.com. The book is called Acoustic Leadership: Develop a Leadership Culture That Resonates. Easiest way to get that is on Amazon. Marc, I'm just thrilled to be here. And thank you so much for your time. And thank you for your service. I've been watching several of the podcast episodes and I learned something new every time I tune in. So, thank you for giving this to the world. So, thank you.

Well, and I thank you. And it's with experts like yourself coming on to provide your insight, your perspective, and of course, your talents to this podcast that make it so special. So, thank you again, Rick. I really appreciate you being here.

Thank you.

If you have any questions about today's episode or would like a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with myself and your team, that's the big proviso. It has to be you and your team. Go ahead and book yourself on my online calendar. The link is down below. It's the one that's marked meetme.slo/marchaine. And as always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this feed? You can subscribe to the feed. You can leave me a review and of course, follow me on social media. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.