July 16, 2024 • 32 mins
Level up your game in all aspects of life by developing an understanding of some of the habits that make you a unicorn in today’s business world. William Vanderbloemen shares insights and practical advice on leadership, drawing from his own experiences as the CEO and founder of Vanderbloemen Search Group. He discusses the importance of responsiveness, authenticity, and other key habits that set exceptional leaders apart and foster cultures of excellence.
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: A Brief Guide – Download our guide for a summary of principles and practices that can help you cope with change in resilient, creative ways.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller.
I'm your host where eachweek for about six years,
twice weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
I have the enormous privilege on behalfof FranklinCovey to interview guests
from all walks of life, all designedto make you a better leader,
a better and more effective individual.
(00:31):
Whether you are a CEO oran executive level leader,
perhaps you're a first-time orfirst-level leader or maybe you're even an
individual contributoror in between careers.
We all want to have better leadershipskills and be a more effective person.
So this podcast allows meon behalf of FranklinCovey,
again to have conversation withpeople from all walks of life.
(00:51):
Sometimes they are CEOs themselves,other times they are business leaders,
entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs,athletes, celebrities, academics,
and even sometimes people that maynot be a household name but have done
something remarkable or sometimessurvived something consequential and I've
lived to tell about it andshare about their lessons.
Today's guest is William Vanderbloemen.
(01:13):
He is the founder of an executivesearch firm aimed mainly at values
and faith-based organizations,
but has written this phenomenallypractical leadership book called
Be the Unicorn:
12 Data-Driven Habitsthat Separate the Best
Leaders From the Rest. William,welcome to On Leadership.
(01:36):
Thanks Scott. Appreciate you havingme. It's like first time listener,
a long time listener, first time guest.
The 7 Habits changed my lifeabout 35 years ago and I
had my Franklin Covey plannerwhen it was a brand new thing.
It was just awesome, so it'sreally great to be with you guys.
Well, it's an honor tohave you and spotlight you.
I think you like many tens of millionsof people had their lives and leadership
(01:59):
touched by our co-founder,Dr. Stephen R. Covey.
I was privileged to have worked underhis leadership for the first 15 years of
my career here prior to his passingabout that number of years ago,
and so we like to interview broadthought leaders on this podcast.
Sometimes they're leadership experts,sometimes they're not. You of course,
fall right into the sweetzone of leadership today.
(02:21):
You've written a book called Be theUnicorn. Its tagline, as I mentioned,
is 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separatethe Best Leaders From the Rest.
I've got four or five that I'm going topick out and have you dive a little bit
deeper into, but William, whydon't you rewind a little bit.
You've had a pretty broad career in termsof your own leadership experience and
your focus on values andfaith-based organizations.
(02:42):
You yourself have been a pastor.
Why don't you rewind a couple ofstents ago and reorient yourself to our
listeners and viewers?
Yeah, well thanks Scott.I'll try and keep it brief.
I think I'm a chronicentrepreneur as a young guy,
eight or nine years old with newspaperroutes I was buying and acquiring
(03:06):
neighboring routes and then changing thedistribution and selling off the parts
I didn't need.
So I think it's just achronic condition and then
went to college and did a great job ofdoing the things that you should not do
while you're in college,
but had a real awakening offaith in the middle of college.
That led to a stint inpastoral ministry in the
(03:31):
Presbyterian church for about 15 years.
I was at a really large church fora long time, which I live in Texas.
We're very careful not to use the wordlarge unless we know that it is actually
large. And then wentinto the corporate world,
saw a succession, actually it wason the team that helped with it.
(03:51):
I was kind of like the water boy forthe team for our CEO and they used this
thing called a search firm.
I had never heard of such a thing andit was so efficient and well done and I
thought,
could we do that for the church becausechurches are terrible at finding
pastors, at least in theworld that I lived in.
And so 16 years ago I camehome and told my wife,
(04:13):
we had six kids in a house we couldbarely afford. And I said, Adrian,
I think I'm supposed to quit my joband start something new for churches.
And she said, oh, that'sbecause churches love new ideas.
And it was the fall of 2008,
which was just a brilliant time toquit your job and start something new.
(04:33):
But we were very fortunateand now 16 years later,
we've completed about 3000 searches.
I've moved out of the role of actuallyexecuting searches and more to research,
talking, doing books,
trying to provide some thoughtleadership behind what we're doing,
and that led me to the researchproject that led to this book.
(04:55):
I'm doing something wrong becausefrequently I come home to my wife and say,
I think I'm supposed to quit my job.And it never goes any further than that.
What was the differencebetween your conversation?
I'm a sufficiently religiousguy, but my wife is smart.
She gets the credit for starting thecompany. She should have told me,
I love your dreams. I love your vision.
Go back to work. Instead shesaid, let's give it a go.
(05:18):
And we've been very fortunate.
In fact, if I'm not mistaken, youactually have seven children together now,
don't you?
The caboose came afterstarting the company.
She's 14 years old andseven kids is really,
really a fun, fun thing. There's nothingbetter in my life than the family.
Since we started with this,
(05:40):
can we help churchesfind their better leader,
we've also branched outquite a bit into nonprofits,
into faith-based schools,
into privately held faith-based companies,
kind of like the Chick-fil-A's of theworld is the easiest way to say it,
if that makes sense.
And people who are driven byvalues and want to make sure that
(06:01):
employees, especially topleaders match their values,
tend to look to us to tryand help solve that puzzle.
I'm still stuck on the word fun that youuse to describe having seven children
because I have three and thatword has not yet come into the
vocabulary. Not a parentingpodcast yet. In your book,
Be the Unicorn, you identify 12 habits,
(06:23):
but I also would kind ofcall them archetypes, right?
And we're not going to have timeto review all 12 of them today,
but I'm going to spend a short momentreviewing the 12 and I'm going to pitch
you three or four that spoke tome from having my own 30-year
career in the leadership industry.
These are the 12 profiles habits,I might call them archetypes.
(06:44):
One you call the fast.Number two is the authentic.
Number three is the agile, numberfour, the solver, number five,
the anticipator. Numbersix, the prepared, seven,
the self-aware, eight, the curious, nine,
the connected, 10, the likable, 11,
(07:06):
the productive 12, the purpose driven.
I'm guessing these habits, profiles,
archetypes came from placing thousandsand thousands of leaders in client
organizations. Talk a littlebit about the research you did.
Did you have a larger list and you pairedit down and then we'll go deeper into
a couple of these that Ifind especially relevant?
(07:27):
Yeah, well, we've been reallyblessed to grow quickly for a long,
long time. And the one time wedidn't grow quickly was 2020,
and I think a lot of people have thatstory. None of our clients were hiring.
We weren't a tech company,
so it wasn't like Zoom orsomething and it gave us some time.
We actually dropped back and said,
how can we serve people duringthe pandemic and help them?
(07:49):
I think we helped a third ofall faith-based organizations get their PPP money.
So we just kind of pivotedto use a word from back then.
We also got to spend some time studyingwhat we'd learned over the course of the
history of the company. And wefigured out in any search that we do,
there'll be a thousand people thatmight come under consideration,
(08:09):
but as the funnel narrows and youget down to the creme la creme,
the last five or six candidates get along format face-to-face interview that
it's not a wooden thing whereit's exactly the same every time,
but it follows a rhythm and wekeep very, very copious notes.
So we said while we were sitting aroundduring the pandemic, what can we learn?
We realized those finalist interviews,
(08:31):
we've now done 30,000 of them andwe've tracked those people's careers.
We've seen if they've gotten promoted,
we've seen if they've reallybeen a standout and they had,
and then the next question was, well,
how do we spot those kind of peoplequicker so we can be a better search firm?
And we said,
I wonder if we could distillany commonalities among these
(08:53):
30,000 individuals. Well,
that's led to a longresearch project that yielded
these 12 discoveries and itis really interesting you say
archetypes. I love that. That's reallygood. What it's not though is 12 traits.
See, I thought Scott,
we would uncover that every personthat was a standout was six foot
(09:16):
four quarterback of their team orhead cheerleader or went to a great
Ivy League school. It was none of that.
It was habits that theseunicorns, as we call them,
practice.
And while we thought we were lookingfor kind of a cheat code to spotting
talent, what we discovered washere's a pathway people can learn.
(09:40):
A trait can't be learned, a habit can.
So here are 12 habits that youcan learn so that you can stand
out in the crowd.
And what was a very sort of self-absorbedproject to get better at our job ended
up being an amazing resourcethat we thought, gosh,
everybody's nervous right now.
They're nervous that they're gettingsqueezed out of the workforce.
(10:03):
Five generations in the workforcefor the first time ever.
They're worried that AI isgoing to come get their job.
People are wonderinghow they can stand out.
And we actually think we discoveredthe roadmap to that 12 habits that if
people will practice them, theywill stand out of the crowd.
Well, as I have read your bookand I listened more to you,
they're really not archetypes becausethey're just that you're saying that to
(10:27):
differentiate yourself,to become a unicorn,
you really want to learn all 12 of these.
And we tried to keep it simple.
We made the first habit that we namedthe easiest one to modify in your life so
you can get some momentum.
I think that's a changesbest friend is some momentum.
And if you can see some visible evidence,
(10:49):
then you can get excited aboutmaking more efforts for change.
And the interesting thing is these12 habits are habits that the
unicorns we interviewed all seemto have a strong bias toward
and everyone else on the planetdoes not. They're not impossible,
they're not hard to do. They're justthings we tend to not do. And we thought,
(11:12):
oh my gosh, let's make this bookvery simple, very practical.
No one's going to read this book andsay, well William's going to cure cancer.
No, no, no, no. Putting thecookies on the bottom shelf,
making it really easy for people to say,
here's how I can modify my habits sothat I will stand out in the crowd,
whether that's in the workplaceor as a student or as a parent,
(11:33):
or even if you're dating, how doyou stand out in a crowded world?
Here are the 12 things to hone in on.
William, one of my favorite top fiveinterviews of this podcast was with Colin
Cowie. Colin Cowie is a lifestyleexpert. He's written numerous books.
He's a renowned internationalevent manager, planner,
designer, curator, and hewrote a book for Harper Collins
(11:58):
about customer service really.
And he mentioned this is a guythat owns a large global brand.
When Oprah has an anniversary,Colin manages it, right?
When a celebrity has a birthdayparty, they hire Colin,
$1 million or $50 million, right?
So when you're flying camelson 777s to your wedding,
Colin is your guy. Youare a sheik obviously.
(12:21):
And he mentioned that,and even in his business,
who wins the business is the first person,
the first vendor toreturn the phone calls.
So even in his highlevel boutique business,
he has processes in place to wherewhether you're sending an email in
or a text or a voicemailon Sunday at 2 a.m.
someone's going to return your callwithin a matter of hours. In fact,
(12:44):
you write on page seven in your book,
in the habit called thefast, here's what you write.
There's no time like the present.
Salespeople know betterthan anyone how important
response time is. If you aren'tthere for your client now,
you may as well not bother. Thedata is here to back this up.
A 2021 study looked atover 5.7 million inbound
(13:08):
leads and determined, whichwere most likely to convert.
The answer,
the ones a rep responded to in less than
five minutes.
If those leads weren't attendedto in the first five minutes,
the chances of them convertingplummeted by a factor
(13:30):
of eight. I mean, this is a bookthat every chief revenue officer,
every EVP of sales should be reading.
Talk about why you wrote aboutresponse time in the first chapter,
the habit called thefirst. Sorry, the fast.
Yeah, no thanks Scott. It may bebecause it's my favorite habit.
When we started this company, it was meand a card table and my dog. In fact,
(13:53):
Adrian said, I know QuickBooks. If youever get a client, I'll send the invoice.
That was it. So if Ididn't go find business,
we wouldn't eat. So if someonereached out to me and said,
I'd like to talk to you aboutmaybe doing some work for us,
guess how quickly I got back to them?It was right away, six kids, right?
(14:13):
Right away. And what I found over theyears was people kept saying to me,
William, it's unbelievable howquickly you get back to people.
And so I started studying it andrealizing most people just don't at all.
The people who stand out are the oneswho get back right away with not in an
auto response, not in any kindof chat bot sort of thing,
(14:35):
but like an intentional response,
maybe even with a little color and contextof the person writing in, oh, Scott,
the weather's getting readyto be beautiful in Utah. I hope it's good for you.
Something personalized.
It just in my gut was what I knewwe had to do and it led to us
saying around the office,speed wins, speed wins,
(14:55):
and we turned it into a core valuecalled ridiculous responsiveness,
and then we found the unicorns are thesame way and nearly everybody else is
not.
Another study that we saw that we did notpublish in the book showed that if you
have an inbound lead froma HubSpot or one of these,
fill out a form on the websiteand somebody will get back to you.
(15:16):
If you answer that lead within60 seconds of receiving it,
you have a 98% chance oftalking to that individual.
If you wait 20 minutes, it drops to 60%.
If you wait 24 hours,
it drops to less than 1%.
And the average response time ofthe companies interviewed was 42
(15:39):
hours.
All you have to do is get back to peoplewith some intention and you will stand
out in the crowd.
You called it ridiculous responsiveness.Is that what you named it in the firm?
That's our core value here. It'sactually plastered on our wall.
How did you learn that? Was there amissed opportunity? Was there a mentor?
How did that become ingrained inyour brand as a person, as an owner,
(16:01):
but also then as a culturalimperative in your search firm?
I remember when I was ayoung pastor, long time ago,
we were looking for a location.We were building the church
and a really great guy who usedto be in the church but had left,
we went out to lunch. I'm trying toget him to come back to the church.
He said that YMCA across the streetfrom the property you've bought for the
(16:24):
church, they don't use that thing onSunday morning. I know the board chair,
I'll give you his number, youshould call him. I'm like, okay.
So he wrote down thenumber and handed it to me.
We got back to my office and he said to me
five minutes after we got back to theoffice, we're sitting chatting. He said,
why haven't you called thatguy yet? I said, well, Todd,
(16:45):
we're visiting right now.He said, no, no, no, no.
I just gave you an opportunity. It'sfor the church I'm coming back to,
why don't you call him right now?Here's what I've learned, William.
The first chance you have to respondis almost always the best one,
and it will make you standout. And that's stuck with me.
It just burned in me. And I mean,
I could tell lots of long storiesabout how it's paid off in the end.
(17:08):
So there's that moment in time,
but then there is also the momentof, oh my gosh, I've quit my job.
I've got to start a business. I'vegot to feed all these children.
We've got to pay for a house. Ibetter get back to people right away.
And as we've gotten more successful,
it's tempting to forgetthat hunger and hustle,
but we've decided, no,we're not going to forget.
(17:29):
We're going to plaster it on thewall and we're going to hire for it.
And we're kind of meanthe way we hire for it.
Like we'll text you at a weird hour andsee if you get back to us right away.
And if you do, that'sgreat, and if you don't,
you'd probably be reallyhappy working somewhere else.
William, I think it's actuallyextreme and a great insight to remind
everybody,
especially as we perhaps move up theletterhead higher up an organization
(17:53):
because you outsource things and like me,
I mean I probably get 600 emails andmessages a day across five social
platforms inbound.
I'm a literary agent and it'sdifficult to respond to everybody,
but it's a differentiator, is it not?
I used to agent in a book fora Fortune 500 chairman of the
board, and we were talking abouta second version of his book,
(18:15):
and he needed to unwindsome relationships.
He'd hired an editor and a writer tohelp him and he needed to move forward
without them for lots ofethical, wise reasons.
These were tough conversationshe needed to have.
He needed to hang up the phoneand he needed to terminate three
relationships. Fifteen minutes later,
(18:37):
he called me back and it was done,
not because he left voicemails,
not because he was a jackass,
it was because he had three,five-minute conversations,
one after another, and this is aguy that has impeccable character.
Maybe it was 20 minutes laterand he said, okay, what's next?
(18:58):
And it wasn't as if he had just dumpedthem, he just to quote Brian Tracy,
eat the frog, he did the tough thing.He actually made the call quickly.
I think it's great to remind all of us,
especially those who might feel likea little ensconced or our brand or our
profile allows us somelatitude. You're saying, well,
not if you're trying to feed six kids.
(19:19):
Well, what's interesting,Scott, we interviewed,
I don't know if youremember the old eHarmony,
it was kind of like the OG of all thedating apps that are out now, of course.
And we interviewed peoplethere and asked them,
what's the responsetime when you guys send,
you might be interested in thisperson, this person this. They say, oh,
it's horrible. It's not evenjust sales and marketing.
It's like basic human relations.
People don't get back to people andthe ones who do and do it with some
(19:41):
intention will stand out like a unicorn.
Well, you have lit a fire under me.Number two, habit is called the authentic,
and I love this page 36 in thebook. I won't quiz you on this.
I'm going to read it to you because youwrite about authenticity, red flags,
and I want to read a couple of theseand then have you riff on them,
if you will. You write, there'sauthentic and then there's theatrics.
(20:05):
Vulnerability can build bridges, but whenit's not a hundred percent authentic,
it becomes manipulative.
Ask yourself these three questionsto veer into the histrionic.
One,
am I leading with my pain forgenuine reasons or because
vulnerability is trendy and I know thiscould be a shortcut. That's profound.
(20:26):
Second, is my quote,authenticity making me a martyr.
Very few people can actually own theirproblem. A counselor once told me,
everyone gets through divorces,
but the people that actually healfrom them are the people who can
name what part of the marriagefailed was their fault.
(20:50):
Very few people can do this, butthe few that do recover quickly.
And lastly, William, is what I amputting out into the world helpful?
Being authentic doesn't mean airingyour grievances left and right.
It doesn't mean it givesyou the right to be a jerk.
Think before you speak. Riff alittle more on the authentic.
(21:13):
Yeah. Well,
I've noticed a change in leadership inthe time that I've been leading different
organizations. When I was a youngleader, it was lead from strength,
never let 'em see you sweat. And nowthe pendulum swung hard the other way.
My neighbor about four doors downis an author named Brene Brown,
and she's done so manygood things in her writing,
(21:35):
but part of what has made her so
popular right now is that there is Ithink a trend where if you're not telling
people about your trauma, if you're nottelling people about your vulnerability,
then you don't count.
And so people feel like they just haveto lead with that because that's what's
popular. I think that's absolutely untrue.
(21:57):
I think people need toshare authentically,
not a facade of vulnerabilityor a facade of strength,
but just be who you are. Andthose three questions lead,
they're like the express laneto getting to authenticity.
I think the most importantone is the ability to own your
(22:17):
mistakes. When we interview peoplein an exec search, we say, hey,
tell me about a time that you missedthe mark or you failed or what?
Tell me about that. And if theytalk about what happened to them,
that's not very helpful to me. If theytalk about what they have learned,
or even better if they say,
(22:37):
what I am still learning is thatI need to hone in these skills,
because I was at faultin these 3, 4, 5 areas.
That is an outstanding quality to develop.
It's a habit that will get you noticed.
You'll stand out like a unicornbecause the way we are wired,
and not to go all faith based on you,
but go back to the beginningof the Hebrew scriptures.
(23:01):
Adam and Eve mess up and what'stheir answer? Adam says, well,
the woman you gave me, she's the onethat made me do this. And Eve said, well,
the snake made me do it.From the beginning of time,
we've been passing the buck.
The people who can figure out they'repart of the conflict and own it, man,
they stand out.
Great transition to another one ofyour 12 habits you call the self-aware,
(23:22):
a concept I'm obsessed with,
not just in teaching but trying to live.
You write why hiringmanagers love the self-aware.
The less anyone has to tellyou the smoother things
run.
Hiring managers appreciate people whothink about themselves in the self-aware
(23:44):
way people do. They're less likely totake up unnecessary space in meetings,
waste your time or makeothers uncomfortable.
When given constructive and genuinefeedback, they'll take it to heart.
Self-aware people areinvaluable for company culture.
This is a profound but obvious statement.
And then you go on to say tips forcultivating self-awareness at work.
(24:06):
I love this next line.
Ask people to be mindfulof their habits in
meetings. Do they talk over people?
Do they talk for thesake of talking? I mean,
it's such a great culturalimperative. William,
how would you encourage a leader?Say you've got your current team,
(24:27):
you're a leader, you got four orfive people that report to you.
Why don't you role play a meetingwhere you as the leader want people
to be mindful of your habits andmeetings because so few of us do?
Well, you should talkto my COO about that.
She's far better than Iam at these things. Scott,
(24:48):
this self-awareness, not to skirtthe question, I'll come back,
but self-awareness is the biggestblind spot of any of these
12 habits. We asked,
we actually surveyed all 30,000 of theunicorns that we'd interviewed about a
whole lot of things, andone of them was, hey,
force rank these 12 habits and whatare you best at? What are you worst at?
(25:09):
The far and away winner for lastplace? I'm terrible at this.
Need to work on it (25:13):
self-awareness.
And they're actually the oneswho are pretty good at it.
We then surveyed 250,000 peoplethat we'd never interviewed,
just general survey, and wehired researchers and also we did it the right way,
asked them a lot of questions.When it came to self-awareness,
we asked this of all the habits. Wesaid, are you below average, average,
(25:34):
above average, 93% of everyone said,
I'm above average at self-awareness. Now,
I'm not a math major,
but I'm fairly certain thereis no group where 93% is above
average. I think it hoverssomewhere around 50.
(25:56):
And I've thought about this so much andI thought, why is this blind spot here?
And I remembered the firsttime I heard my voice recorded.
You remember that?
Oh dear, yes, keep going.
It's just terrible. That's notme. I'd listen to me all day long.
That doesn't sound a bit like me.
Why don't you play the real meand not whoever that person,
(26:17):
that's the blind spot. And ifpeople can get aware of that,
like little things like if you'regoing to be mindful in a meeting,
here's a great practicethat I'm trying to employ,
and when I try and helppeople with self-awareness,
I'm always trying to frame it in termsof what I'm doing and what I'm learning.
Because I'm not going to gotell people to be self-aware.
(26:39):
That's inherently counterproductive.
But I'll tell people,here's a practice I have.
And you think about thisbefore we get into meetings.
I'm trying to audit my speech every night,
and here's what I ask myself, William,
did you ask more questionstoday or give more directives?
(27:04):
And I'm trying to lean more andmore toward the asking of questions.
And if you get that going in a meetingwhere people are asking thoughtful
questions, man, the meeting goes better.
And the other thing is people won't askdumb questions if you frame it that way.
They're going to sit and think andthen ask a thoughtful question.
It tightens the meaning up.
(27:24):
It keeps it to working on the solutionside of things rather than the problem
side. And it tidies things up quitea bit. But I'm still learning this.
I've got a long way togo in self-awareness.
I do think we have arguably the besttime in world history to work on
self-awareness.
You can find out your personalitytype and you can find out where
(27:45):
your strength finders are.
We even built a software tool for theunicorns so you can figure out how you
stack up and what you need to work on.
There's so many of these wildly helpful
inventories you can take.
It's also a season where it's okay totell people you're going to counseling
because you've got whateverissue you're dealing with.
So it's never been an easiertime to get to work on this.
(28:09):
And it is the hardest of the habits.
And when a leader begins to model thatand show that there's still working on
it, well,
I think that starts to set a tone inthe whole team and all of a sudden
everything is a littlecleaner and more efficient.
We're not just filling time withbabbling. People are more self-aware.
Probably my favorite chapter in thebook, because you're absolutely right.
(28:30):
All of us think we're more self-awarethan we are. I'll tell you,
I worked for the FranklinCovey companyfor 25 years prior to my retirement and
then additional five, almost fivenow as a podcast host and an advisor.
So I would think I would be fairlysteeped in our content about how to be a
highly effective personand leader, 30 years.
And I was on the executive teamfor about a decade, and the CEO,
(28:52):
the then CEO now chairman walkedpast me once on an executive team
meeting and gave me some feedback.
It was kind of the only feedback hegave me in almost a decade. And he said,
I'm guessing after a particularlytough meeting with me, he said, Scott,
you make too many declarativestatements. And he went to the restroom.
(29:12):
And it was profound for me.
I then debriefed it with him later on,
and I started to better understandI was always first to raise my hand
around the table. I wasalways the first to speak.
I was the most persuasive becauseI was so focused on being right
versus pursuing what was right.
(29:33):
And so I love that you created thischapter in here. I'll tell you,
William of the gosh, 300 plus we'veinterviewed in this podcast, 400,
I forgot the number is a lot, 400.
This is perhaps the best book club book.
Talk about a great book for aleadership team or for that matter,
(29:57):
anyone to have a 12-week book club.
Talk about how you're finding peopleare using this book on their teams and
their organizations.
Well, we got a request tobuild the software tool. That's kind of an assessment,
and it's built not just forindividuals, but for teams.
And here's why the request.
I want to know how we asa team or a company even,
(30:21):
where are we good and what are we notgood at, so we know what to attack first,
second, third. So they taketheir assessment and then all of a sudden they know,
well, we're really good at speed, butwe're not really good at authenticity.
We know we're going to study that chapterfirst, then we're going to work on it.
I think I'm seeing lots and lots andlots of schools are ordering this for
(30:43):
their seniors. It was like ahuge graduation gift this year.
So anybody's moving intothe workforce. As a team,
I'm hearing HR managersare buying this in bulk.
I didn't. We had, you do bookswell and a lot better than I do,
but we did a bulk discount sortof thing for the books. And man,
I thought that'd get used once or twice,
(31:05):
but I just got off the phone withan HR exec that wants 600 copies.
We're going to put everybody throughit and we're going to go through as a
course, we'll go just sequentially andwork on one chapter for however long.
We had a very large organization,probably 2000 employees,
I'd call that large anyway,
and they spent six months working on the
(31:28):
first chapter of the book.
We're going to be more responsive.We're going to walk through this.
I came in and talked to them and metwith the board, and they've said,
just working on that one thing in avery focused effort as a team has made a
huge difference in ourability to continue growth
(31:48):
and user experience.
Well,
I'm still fixated on aridiculous responsiveness because that needs to be the
mantra of the company that Ico-own Gray + Miller. So William,
fantastic conversation.The book is Be The Unicorn:
12 Data-Driven Habits that Separatethe Best Leaders from the Rest.
Your success is well-deserved,delighted you came on today.
(32:09):
I encourage everybody toread this book. I mean,
this is actually a greatbook to buy your teenagers,
people that are perhaps enteringcollege just out of work.
If you want to build a brand thatdifferentiates yourself in the marketplace
right now, I mean, man, you havewritten the manual for that.
William Vanderbloemen,thanks for joining us today.
Thanks for having me,man. It's really great.
And we'll see you back here next weekfor a new conversation On Leadership.
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller.
I'm your host where eachweek for about six years,
twice weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
I have the enormous privilege on behalfof FranklinCovey to interview guests
from all walks of life, all designedto make you a better leader,
a better and more effective individual.
(00:31):
Whether you are a CEO oran executive level leader,
perhaps you're a first-time orfirst-level leader or maybe you're even an
individual contributoror in between careers.
We all want to have better leadershipskills and be a more effective person.
So this podcast allows meon behalf of FranklinCovey,
again to have conversation withpeople from all walks of life.
(00:51):
Sometimes they are CEOs themselves,other times they are business leaders,
entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs,athletes, celebrities, academics,
and even sometimes people that maynot be a household name but have done
something remarkable or sometimessurvived something consequential and I've
lived to tell about it andshare about their lessons.
Today's guest is William Vanderbloemen.
(01:13):
He is the founder of an executivesearch firm aimed mainly at values
and faith-based organizations,
but has written this phenomenallypractical leadership book called
Be the Unicorn:
12 Data-Driven Habitsthat Separate the Best
Leaders From the Rest. William,welcome to On Leadership.
(01:36):
Thanks Scott. Appreciate you havingme. It's like first time listener,
a long time listener, first time guest.
The 7 Habits changed my lifeabout 35 years ago and I
had my Franklin Covey plannerwhen it was a brand new thing.
It was just awesome, so it'sreally great to be with you guys.
Well, it's an honor tohave you and spotlight you.
I think you like many tens of millionsof people had their lives and leadership
(01:59):
touched by our co-founder,Dr. Stephen R. Covey.
I was privileged to have worked underhis leadership for the first 15 years of
my career here prior to his passingabout that number of years ago,
and so we like to interview broadthought leaders on this podcast.
Sometimes they're leadership experts,sometimes they're not. You of course,
fall right into the sweetzone of leadership today.
(02:21):
You've written a book called Be theUnicorn. Its tagline, as I mentioned,
is 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separatethe Best Leaders From the Rest.
I've got four or five that I'm going topick out and have you dive a little bit
deeper into, but William, whydon't you rewind a little bit.
You've had a pretty broad career in termsof your own leadership experience and
your focus on values andfaith-based organizations.
(02:42):
You yourself have been a pastor.
Why don't you rewind a couple ofstents ago and reorient yourself to our
listeners and viewers?
Yeah, well thanks Scott.I'll try and keep it brief.
I think I'm a chronicentrepreneur as a young guy,
eight or nine years old with newspaperroutes I was buying and acquiring
(03:06):
neighboring routes and then changing thedistribution and selling off the parts
I didn't need.
So I think it's just achronic condition and then
went to college and did a great job ofdoing the things that you should not do
while you're in college,
but had a real awakening offaith in the middle of college.
That led to a stint inpastoral ministry in the
(03:31):
Presbyterian church for about 15 years.
I was at a really large church fora long time, which I live in Texas.
We're very careful not to use the wordlarge unless we know that it is actually
large. And then wentinto the corporate world,
saw a succession, actually it wason the team that helped with it.
(03:51):
I was kind of like the water boy forthe team for our CEO and they used this
thing called a search firm.
I had never heard of such a thing andit was so efficient and well done and I
thought,
could we do that for the church becausechurches are terrible at finding
pastors, at least in theworld that I lived in.
And so 16 years ago I camehome and told my wife,
(04:13):
we had six kids in a house we couldbarely afford. And I said, Adrian,
I think I'm supposed to quit my joband start something new for churches.
And she said, oh, that'sbecause churches love new ideas.
And it was the fall of 2008,
which was just a brilliant time toquit your job and start something new.
(04:33):
But we were very fortunateand now 16 years later,
we've completed about 3000 searches.
I've moved out of the role of actuallyexecuting searches and more to research,
talking, doing books,
trying to provide some thoughtleadership behind what we're doing,
and that led me to the researchproject that led to this book.
(04:55):
I'm doing something wrong becausefrequently I come home to my wife and say,
I think I'm supposed to quit my job.And it never goes any further than that.
What was the differencebetween your conversation?
I'm a sufficiently religiousguy, but my wife is smart.
She gets the credit for starting thecompany. She should have told me,
I love your dreams. I love your vision.
Go back to work. Instead shesaid, let's give it a go.
(05:18):
And we've been very fortunate.
In fact, if I'm not mistaken, youactually have seven children together now,
don't you?
The caboose came afterstarting the company.
She's 14 years old andseven kids is really,
really a fun, fun thing. There's nothingbetter in my life than the family.
Since we started with this,
(05:40):
can we help churchesfind their better leader,
we've also branched outquite a bit into nonprofits,
into faith-based schools,
into privately held faith-based companies,
kind of like the Chick-fil-A's of theworld is the easiest way to say it,
if that makes sense.
And people who are driven byvalues and want to make sure that
(06:01):
employees, especially topleaders match their values,
tend to look to us to tryand help solve that puzzle.
I'm still stuck on the word fun that youuse to describe having seven children
because I have three and thatword has not yet come into the
vocabulary. Not a parentingpodcast yet. In your book,
Be the Unicorn, you identify 12 habits,
(06:23):
but I also would kind ofcall them archetypes, right?
And we're not going to have timeto review all 12 of them today,
but I'm going to spend a short momentreviewing the 12 and I'm going to pitch
you three or four that spoke tome from having my own 30-year
career in the leadership industry.
These are the 12 profiles habits,I might call them archetypes.
(06:44):
One you call the fast.Number two is the authentic.
Number three is the agile, numberfour, the solver, number five,
the anticipator. Numbersix, the prepared, seven,
the self-aware, eight, the curious, nine,
the connected, 10, the likable, 11,
(07:06):
the productive 12, the purpose driven.
I'm guessing these habits, profiles,
archetypes came from placing thousandsand thousands of leaders in client
organizations. Talk a littlebit about the research you did.
Did you have a larger list and you pairedit down and then we'll go deeper into
a couple of these that Ifind especially relevant?
(07:27):
Yeah, well, we've been reallyblessed to grow quickly for a long,
long time. And the one time wedidn't grow quickly was 2020,
and I think a lot of people have thatstory. None of our clients were hiring.
We weren't a tech company,
so it wasn't like Zoom orsomething and it gave us some time.
We actually dropped back and said,
how can we serve people duringthe pandemic and help them?
(07:49):
I think we helped a third ofall faith-based organizations get their PPP money.
So we just kind of pivotedto use a word from back then.
We also got to spend some time studyingwhat we'd learned over the course of the
history of the company. And wefigured out in any search that we do,
there'll be a thousand people thatmight come under consideration,
(08:09):
but as the funnel narrows and youget down to the creme la creme,
the last five or six candidates get along format face-to-face interview that
it's not a wooden thing whereit's exactly the same every time,
but it follows a rhythm and wekeep very, very copious notes.
So we said while we were sitting aroundduring the pandemic, what can we learn?
We realized those finalist interviews,
(08:31):
we've now done 30,000 of them andwe've tracked those people's careers.
We've seen if they've gotten promoted,
we've seen if they've reallybeen a standout and they had,
and then the next question was, well,
how do we spot those kind of peoplequicker so we can be a better search firm?
And we said,
I wonder if we could distillany commonalities among these
(08:53):
30,000 individuals. Well,
that's led to a longresearch project that yielded
these 12 discoveries and itis really interesting you say
archetypes. I love that. That's reallygood. What it's not though is 12 traits.
See, I thought Scott,
we would uncover that every personthat was a standout was six foot
(09:16):
four quarterback of their team orhead cheerleader or went to a great
Ivy League school. It was none of that.
It was habits that theseunicorns, as we call them,
practice.
And while we thought we were lookingfor kind of a cheat code to spotting
talent, what we discovered washere's a pathway people can learn.
(09:40):
A trait can't be learned, a habit can.
So here are 12 habits that youcan learn so that you can stand
out in the crowd.
And what was a very sort of self-absorbedproject to get better at our job ended
up being an amazing resourcethat we thought, gosh,
everybody's nervous right now.
They're nervous that they're gettingsqueezed out of the workforce.
(10:03):
Five generations in the workforcefor the first time ever.
They're worried that AI isgoing to come get their job.
People are wonderinghow they can stand out.
And we actually think we discoveredthe roadmap to that 12 habits that if
people will practice them, theywill stand out of the crowd.
Well, as I have read your bookand I listened more to you,
they're really not archetypes becausethey're just that you're saying that to
(10:27):
differentiate yourself,to become a unicorn,
you really want to learn all 12 of these.
And we tried to keep it simple.
We made the first habit that we namedthe easiest one to modify in your life so
you can get some momentum.
I think that's a changesbest friend is some momentum.
And if you can see some visible evidence,
(10:49):
then you can get excited aboutmaking more efforts for change.
And the interesting thing is these12 habits are habits that the
unicorns we interviewed all seemto have a strong bias toward
and everyone else on the planetdoes not. They're not impossible,
they're not hard to do. They're justthings we tend to not do. And we thought,
(11:12):
oh my gosh, let's make this bookvery simple, very practical.
No one's going to read this book andsay, well William's going to cure cancer.
No, no, no, no. Putting thecookies on the bottom shelf,
making it really easy for people to say,
here's how I can modify my habits sothat I will stand out in the crowd,
whether that's in the workplaceor as a student or as a parent,
(11:33):
or even if you're dating, how doyou stand out in a crowded world?
Here are the 12 things to hone in on.
William, one of my favorite top fiveinterviews of this podcast was with Colin
Cowie. Colin Cowie is a lifestyleexpert. He's written numerous books.
He's a renowned internationalevent manager, planner,
designer, curator, and hewrote a book for Harper Collins
(11:58):
about customer service really.
And he mentioned this is a guythat owns a large global brand.
When Oprah has an anniversary,Colin manages it, right?
When a celebrity has a birthdayparty, they hire Colin,
$1 million or $50 million, right?
So when you're flying camelson 777s to your wedding,
Colin is your guy. Youare a sheik obviously.
(12:21):
And he mentioned that,and even in his business,
who wins the business is the first person,
the first vendor toreturn the phone calls.
So even in his highlevel boutique business,
he has processes in place to wherewhether you're sending an email in
or a text or a voicemailon Sunday at 2 a.m.
someone's going to return your callwithin a matter of hours. In fact,
(12:44):
you write on page seven in your book,
in the habit called thefast, here's what you write.
There's no time like the present.
Salespeople know betterthan anyone how important
response time is. If you aren'tthere for your client now,
you may as well not bother. Thedata is here to back this up.
A 2021 study looked atover 5.7 million inbound
(13:08):
leads and determined, whichwere most likely to convert.
The answer,
the ones a rep responded to in less than
five minutes.
If those leads weren't attendedto in the first five minutes,
the chances of them convertingplummeted by a factor
(13:30):
of eight. I mean, this is a bookthat every chief revenue officer,
every EVP of sales should be reading.
Talk about why you wrote aboutresponse time in the first chapter,
the habit called thefirst. Sorry, the fast.
Yeah, no thanks Scott. It may bebecause it's my favorite habit.
When we started this company, it was meand a card table and my dog. In fact,
(13:53):
Adrian said, I know QuickBooks. If youever get a client, I'll send the invoice.
That was it. So if Ididn't go find business,
we wouldn't eat. So if someonereached out to me and said,
I'd like to talk to you aboutmaybe doing some work for us,
guess how quickly I got back to them?It was right away, six kids, right?
(14:13):
Right away. And what I found over theyears was people kept saying to me,
William, it's unbelievable howquickly you get back to people.
And so I started studying it andrealizing most people just don't at all.
The people who stand out are the oneswho get back right away with not in an
auto response, not in any kindof chat bot sort of thing,
(14:35):
but like an intentional response,
maybe even with a little color and contextof the person writing in, oh, Scott,
the weather's getting readyto be beautiful in Utah. I hope it's good for you.
Something personalized.
It just in my gut was what I knewwe had to do and it led to us
saying around the office,speed wins, speed wins,
(14:55):
and we turned it into a core valuecalled ridiculous responsiveness,
and then we found the unicorns are thesame way and nearly everybody else is
not.
Another study that we saw that we did notpublish in the book showed that if you
have an inbound lead froma HubSpot or one of these,
fill out a form on the websiteand somebody will get back to you.
(15:16):
If you answer that lead within60 seconds of receiving it,
you have a 98% chance oftalking to that individual.
If you wait 20 minutes, it drops to 60%.
If you wait 24 hours,
it drops to less than 1%.
And the average response time ofthe companies interviewed was 42
(15:39):
hours.
All you have to do is get back to peoplewith some intention and you will stand
out in the crowd.
You called it ridiculous responsiveness.Is that what you named it in the firm?
That's our core value here. It'sactually plastered on our wall.
How did you learn that? Was there amissed opportunity? Was there a mentor?
How did that become ingrained inyour brand as a person, as an owner,
(16:01):
but also then as a culturalimperative in your search firm?
I remember when I was ayoung pastor, long time ago,
we were looking for a location.We were building the church
and a really great guy who usedto be in the church but had left,
we went out to lunch. I'm trying toget him to come back to the church.
He said that YMCA across the streetfrom the property you've bought for the
(16:24):
church, they don't use that thing onSunday morning. I know the board chair,
I'll give you his number, youshould call him. I'm like, okay.
So he wrote down thenumber and handed it to me.
We got back to my office and he said to me
five minutes after we got back to theoffice, we're sitting chatting. He said,
why haven't you called thatguy yet? I said, well, Todd,
(16:45):
we're visiting right now.He said, no, no, no, no.
I just gave you an opportunity. It'sfor the church I'm coming back to,
why don't you call him right now?Here's what I've learned, William.
The first chance you have to respondis almost always the best one,
and it will make you standout. And that's stuck with me.
It just burned in me. And I mean,
I could tell lots of long storiesabout how it's paid off in the end.
(17:08):
So there's that moment in time,
but then there is also the momentof, oh my gosh, I've quit my job.
I've got to start a business. I'vegot to feed all these children.
We've got to pay for a house. Ibetter get back to people right away.
And as we've gotten more successful,
it's tempting to forgetthat hunger and hustle,
but we've decided, no,we're not going to forget.
(17:29):
We're going to plaster it on thewall and we're going to hire for it.
And we're kind of meanthe way we hire for it.
Like we'll text you at a weird hour andsee if you get back to us right away.
And if you do, that'sgreat, and if you don't,
you'd probably be reallyhappy working somewhere else.
William, I think it's actuallyextreme and a great insight to remind
everybody,
especially as we perhaps move up theletterhead higher up an organization
(17:53):
because you outsource things and like me,
I mean I probably get 600 emails andmessages a day across five social
platforms inbound.
I'm a literary agent and it'sdifficult to respond to everybody,
but it's a differentiator, is it not?
I used to agent in a book fora Fortune 500 chairman of the
board, and we were talking abouta second version of his book,
(18:15):
and he needed to unwindsome relationships.
He'd hired an editor and a writer tohelp him and he needed to move forward
without them for lots ofethical, wise reasons.
These were tough conversationshe needed to have.
He needed to hang up the phoneand he needed to terminate three
relationships. Fifteen minutes later,
(18:37):
he called me back and it was done,
not because he left voicemails,
not because he was a jackass,
it was because he had three,five-minute conversations,
one after another, and this is aguy that has impeccable character.
Maybe it was 20 minutes laterand he said, okay, what's next?
(18:58):
And it wasn't as if he had just dumpedthem, he just to quote Brian Tracy,
eat the frog, he did the tough thing.He actually made the call quickly.
I think it's great to remind all of us,
especially those who might feel likea little ensconced or our brand or our
profile allows us somelatitude. You're saying, well,
not if you're trying to feed six kids.
(19:19):
Well, what's interesting,Scott, we interviewed,
I don't know if youremember the old eHarmony,
it was kind of like the OG of all thedating apps that are out now, of course.
And we interviewed peoplethere and asked them,
what's the responsetime when you guys send,
you might be interested in thisperson, this person this. They say, oh,
it's horrible. It's not evenjust sales and marketing.
It's like basic human relations.
People don't get back to people andthe ones who do and do it with some
(19:41):
intention will stand out like a unicorn.
Well, you have lit a fire under me.Number two, habit is called the authentic,
and I love this page 36 in thebook. I won't quiz you on this.
I'm going to read it to you because youwrite about authenticity, red flags,
and I want to read a couple of theseand then have you riff on them,
if you will. You write, there'sauthentic and then there's theatrics.
(20:05):
Vulnerability can build bridges, but whenit's not a hundred percent authentic,
it becomes manipulative.
Ask yourself these three questionsto veer into the histrionic.
One,
am I leading with my pain forgenuine reasons or because
vulnerability is trendy and I know thiscould be a shortcut. That's profound.
(20:26):
Second, is my quote,authenticity making me a martyr.
Very few people can actually own theirproblem. A counselor once told me,
everyone gets through divorces,
but the people that actually healfrom them are the people who can
name what part of the marriagefailed was their fault.
(20:50):
Very few people can do this, butthe few that do recover quickly.
And lastly, William, is what I amputting out into the world helpful?
Being authentic doesn't mean airingyour grievances left and right.
It doesn't mean it givesyou the right to be a jerk.
Think before you speak. Riff alittle more on the authentic.
(21:13):
Yeah. Well,
I've noticed a change in leadership inthe time that I've been leading different
organizations. When I was a youngleader, it was lead from strength,
never let 'em see you sweat. And nowthe pendulum swung hard the other way.
My neighbor about four doors downis an author named Brene Brown,
and she's done so manygood things in her writing,
(21:35):
but part of what has made her so
popular right now is that there is Ithink a trend where if you're not telling
people about your trauma, if you're nottelling people about your vulnerability,
then you don't count.
And so people feel like they just haveto lead with that because that's what's
popular. I think that's absolutely untrue.
(21:57):
I think people need toshare authentically,
not a facade of vulnerabilityor a facade of strength,
but just be who you are. Andthose three questions lead,
they're like the express laneto getting to authenticity.
I think the most importantone is the ability to own your
(22:17):
mistakes. When we interview peoplein an exec search, we say, hey,
tell me about a time that you missedthe mark or you failed or what?
Tell me about that. And if theytalk about what happened to them,
that's not very helpful to me. If theytalk about what they have learned,
or even better if they say,
(22:37):
what I am still learning is thatI need to hone in these skills,
because I was at faultin these 3, 4, 5 areas.
That is an outstanding quality to develop.
It's a habit that will get you noticed.
You'll stand out like a unicornbecause the way we are wired,
and not to go all faith based on you,
but go back to the beginningof the Hebrew scriptures.
(23:01):
Adam and Eve mess up and what'stheir answer? Adam says, well,
the woman you gave me, she's the onethat made me do this. And Eve said, well,
the snake made me do it.From the beginning of time,
we've been passing the buck.
The people who can figure out they'repart of the conflict and own it, man,
they stand out.
Great transition to another one ofyour 12 habits you call the self-aware,
(23:22):
a concept I'm obsessed with,
not just in teaching but trying to live.
You write why hiringmanagers love the self-aware.
The less anyone has to tellyou the smoother things
run.
Hiring managers appreciate people whothink about themselves in the self-aware
(23:44):
way people do. They're less likely totake up unnecessary space in meetings,
waste your time or makeothers uncomfortable.
When given constructive and genuinefeedback, they'll take it to heart.
Self-aware people areinvaluable for company culture.
This is a profound but obvious statement.
And then you go on to say tips forcultivating self-awareness at work.
(24:06):
I love this next line.
Ask people to be mindfulof their habits in
meetings. Do they talk over people?
Do they talk for thesake of talking? I mean,
it's such a great culturalimperative. William,
how would you encourage a leader?Say you've got your current team,
(24:27):
you're a leader, you got four orfive people that report to you.
Why don't you role play a meetingwhere you as the leader want people
to be mindful of your habits andmeetings because so few of us do?
Well, you should talkto my COO about that.
She's far better than Iam at these things. Scott,
(24:48):
this self-awareness, not to skirtthe question, I'll come back,
but self-awareness is the biggestblind spot of any of these
12 habits. We asked,
we actually surveyed all 30,000 of theunicorns that we'd interviewed about a
whole lot of things, andone of them was, hey,
force rank these 12 habits and whatare you best at? What are you worst at?
(25:09):
The far and away winner for lastplace? I'm terrible at this.
Need to work on it (25:13):
self-awareness.
And they're actually the oneswho are pretty good at it.
We then surveyed 250,000 peoplethat we'd never interviewed,
just general survey, and wehired researchers and also we did it the right way,
asked them a lot of questions.When it came to self-awareness,
we asked this of all the habits. Wesaid, are you below average, average,
(25:34):
above average, 93% of everyone said,
I'm above average at self-awareness. Now,
I'm not a math major,
but I'm fairly certain thereis no group where 93% is above
average. I think it hoverssomewhere around 50.
(25:56):
And I've thought about this so much andI thought, why is this blind spot here?
And I remembered the firsttime I heard my voice recorded.
You remember that?
Oh dear, yes, keep going.
It's just terrible. That's notme. I'd listen to me all day long.
That doesn't sound a bit like me.
Why don't you play the real meand not whoever that person,
(26:17):
that's the blind spot. And ifpeople can get aware of that,
like little things like if you'regoing to be mindful in a meeting,
here's a great practicethat I'm trying to employ,
and when I try and helppeople with self-awareness,
I'm always trying to frame it in termsof what I'm doing and what I'm learning.
Because I'm not going to gotell people to be self-aware.
(26:39):
That's inherently counterproductive.
But I'll tell people,here's a practice I have.
And you think about thisbefore we get into meetings.
I'm trying to audit my speech every night,
and here's what I ask myself, William,
did you ask more questionstoday or give more directives?
(27:04):
And I'm trying to lean more andmore toward the asking of questions.
And if you get that going in a meetingwhere people are asking thoughtful
questions, man, the meeting goes better.
And the other thing is people won't askdumb questions if you frame it that way.
They're going to sit and think andthen ask a thoughtful question.
It tightens the meaning up.
(27:24):
It keeps it to working on the solutionside of things rather than the problem
side. And it tidies things up quitea bit. But I'm still learning this.
I've got a long way togo in self-awareness.
I do think we have arguably the besttime in world history to work on
self-awareness.
You can find out your personalitytype and you can find out where
(27:45):
your strength finders are.
We even built a software tool for theunicorns so you can figure out how you
stack up and what you need to work on.
There's so many of these wildly helpful
inventories you can take.
It's also a season where it's okay totell people you're going to counseling
because you've got whateverissue you're dealing with.
So it's never been an easiertime to get to work on this.
(28:09):
And it is the hardest of the habits.
And when a leader begins to model thatand show that there's still working on
it, well,
I think that starts to set a tone inthe whole team and all of a sudden
everything is a littlecleaner and more efficient.
We're not just filling time withbabbling. People are more self-aware.
Probably my favorite chapter in thebook, because you're absolutely right.
(28:30):
All of us think we're more self-awarethan we are. I'll tell you,
I worked for the FranklinCovey companyfor 25 years prior to my retirement and
then additional five, almost fivenow as a podcast host and an advisor.
So I would think I would be fairlysteeped in our content about how to be a
highly effective personand leader, 30 years.
And I was on the executive teamfor about a decade, and the CEO,
(28:52):
the then CEO now chairman walkedpast me once on an executive team
meeting and gave me some feedback.
It was kind of the only feedback hegave me in almost a decade. And he said,
I'm guessing after a particularlytough meeting with me, he said, Scott,
you make too many declarativestatements. And he went to the restroom.
(29:12):
And it was profound for me.
I then debriefed it with him later on,
and I started to better understandI was always first to raise my hand
around the table. I wasalways the first to speak.
I was the most persuasive becauseI was so focused on being right
versus pursuing what was right.
(29:33):
And so I love that you created thischapter in here. I'll tell you,
William of the gosh, 300 plus we'veinterviewed in this podcast, 400,
I forgot the number is a lot, 400.
This is perhaps the best book club book.
Talk about a great book for aleadership team or for that matter,
(29:57):
anyone to have a 12-week book club.
Talk about how you're finding peopleare using this book on their teams and
their organizations.
Well, we got a request tobuild the software tool. That's kind of an assessment,
and it's built not just forindividuals, but for teams.
And here's why the request.
I want to know how we asa team or a company even,
(30:21):
where are we good and what are we notgood at, so we know what to attack first,
second, third. So they taketheir assessment and then all of a sudden they know,
well, we're really good at speed, butwe're not really good at authenticity.
We know we're going to study that chapterfirst, then we're going to work on it.
I think I'm seeing lots and lots andlots of schools are ordering this for
(30:43):
their seniors. It was like ahuge graduation gift this year.
So anybody's moving intothe workforce. As a team,
I'm hearing HR managersare buying this in bulk.
I didn't. We had, you do bookswell and a lot better than I do,
but we did a bulk discount sortof thing for the books. And man,
I thought that'd get used once or twice,
(31:05):
but I just got off the phone withan HR exec that wants 600 copies.
We're going to put everybody throughit and we're going to go through as a
course, we'll go just sequentially andwork on one chapter for however long.
We had a very large organization,probably 2000 employees,
I'd call that large anyway,
and they spent six months working on the
(31:28):
first chapter of the book.
We're going to be more responsive.We're going to walk through this.
I came in and talked to them and metwith the board, and they've said,
just working on that one thing in avery focused effort as a team has made a
huge difference in ourability to continue growth
(31:48):
and user experience.
Well,
I'm still fixated on aridiculous responsiveness because that needs to be the
mantra of the company that Ico-own Gray + Miller. So William,
fantastic conversation.The book is Be The Unicorn:
12 Data-Driven Habits that Separatethe Best Leaders from the Rest.
Your success is well-deserved,delighted you came on today.
(32:09):
I encourage everybody toread this book. I mean,
this is actually a greatbook to buy your teenagers,
people that are perhaps enteringcollege just out of work.
If you want to build a brand thatdifferentiates yourself in the marketplace
right now, I mean, man, you havewritten the manual for that.
William Vanderbloemen,thanks for joining us today.
Thanks for having me,man. It's really great.
And we'll see you back here next weekfor a new conversation On Leadership.
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