July 31, 2025 • 20 mins
True team buy-in requires both operational involvement (hands and feet) and emotional involvement (hearts and minds), with many managers struggling to achieve both simultaneously. The distinction matters because emotional investment drives innovation, resilience, and sustained performance beyond mere task completion. In this episode of the Lead In 30 podcast, Lone Rock Leadership co-founder Russ Hill dives into the difference between operational and emotional involvement.
• Operational involvement means team members show up and do the work but may just be going through the motions
• Emotional involvement means they genuinely care about outcomes and are intellectually invested
• A river rafting experience demonstrates how clear leadership creates both types of involvement automatically in high-stakes situations
• The more ambitious your organizational vision, the more critical emotional involvement becomes
• "Founder mode" or command-and-control leadership actively kills emotional investment from team members
• Emergency situations are rare exceptions where directive leadership doesn't diminish emotional involvement
• Most successful leaders consciously cultivate both operational efficiency and emotional connection
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What kind of buy-in do you have from your team
members?
Many of us are able to gettheir hands and their feet, but
we're struggling with theirhearts and their minds.
How do you hook that part ofthem?
We'll talk about it in thisepisode.
This is the Lead in 30 podcastwith Russ Hill.
(00:20):
You cannot be serious.
Strengthen your ability to leadin less than 30 minutes.
Yeah, there are two kinds ofwhat we call involvement, buy-in
or yeah, those are probably thebest terms to describe what
we're talking about.
(00:41):
And many of us, many managersof teams, are able to get the
hands and the feet and you knowwhat I mean by that right
Obviously like people to show upand to do the work.
We're able to lock that in, butwhere so many managers struggle
is in getting buy-in from thehearts and the minds of the
(01:06):
people that we lead.
And, by the way, the oppositeis true.
Like some leaders are actuallyit's not as common but some
managers are actually they getthe exact opposite.
That's what I want to talkabout in this episode.
Welcome in to the Lead in 30podcast.
I'm Russ Hill.
In less than 30 minutes, wegive you something to think
(01:28):
about, a framework, a bestpractice, an example, a story
from a client we've been with inthe last few days or the last
few weeks, or a framework,anyway, something for you to
think about implementing in theway that you lead others, and
the whole purpose of everyepisode is to upgrade upgrade
your ability to lead others,because that has profound impact
(01:51):
on your ability to deliverresults, on you, the scalability
of your career, your uh yourlivelihood, your income.
I mean, let's just be honest,your ability to lead is tied to
all of that, and so that's whatwe share in this episode.
For those of you that are new, Imake my living coaching,
(02:13):
consulting senior executiveteams at some of the world's
biggest companies.
You can find out more about ourexecutive team consulting work
or our off the shelf courses formanagers at scale at lonerockio
.
Lonerockio Our company isLoneRock Leadership and I'm one
of the founders and I get tohost our little podcast here in
(02:35):
this corner of the internet,glad so many of you are
listening on a regular basis.
It's fun to interact with youon LinkedIn or various places
and to hear about where you workand where you live, and all
over the world and in everyindustry imaginable, so I'm
thrilled to be having theconversation with you.
(02:57):
Okay, I'm going to give you anexample of what I'm talking
about and I put this under thecategory of involvement.
And in our foundational flagshipcourse called Lead in 30, we
teach clarity, alignment andmovement.
Those are the three corecompetencies of every leader who
(03:20):
scales period, mic, drop, endof story, no debate.
Clarity, alignment and movement.
If you're able to do that, tocreate each one of those and
obviously we're boiling a tondown into just three
competencies, three areas ofexpertise and that's our job at
(03:41):
our firm is to take the complexand make it simple.
By the way, it's your job too,as a leader, to take the complex
and make it simple.
That's how you mobilize masses.
If you got one person, you canbe as complex as you want to on
your team Not really, but youcould.
When you're trying to mobilizea dozen, a thousand, a hundred
(04:02):
thousand, you've got to besimple.
You've got to boil it down intovery simple terms and under the
category of alignment.
So, clarity, alignment, movement, under the category of
alignment, the ultimate goal ofcreating alignment on a team is
to get everyone's involvement orbuy-in, or participation or
(04:23):
engagement whatever term youwant to use, the one we like the
most, after considering themall for lots of years, is
involvement.
That's what I want is I wanteverybody on my team involved in
trying to deliver on our TKRs,on our team key results, the
things that matter most, whetherthat's a safety metric, a
revenue metric, a market sharerevenue, market share growth
(04:46):
number, it's a patientsatisfaction or customer service
number, new product development, whatever it is, I'm trying to
get your involvement as a memberof my team to actually help us
deliver on that.
And if I can mobilize like 80%of you, 90% of you I'm never
going to get a hundred percent,that's, that's just not going to
(05:08):
happen but if I can get 80, 90%of you, wow, we're going to.
We're going to, we're going todo some exciting things at this
company, whatever company youlead.
Okay, so the example riverrafting.
Have I told this you all?
I have to apologize, but we areputting out so much content
(05:29):
that around our core, the stuffthat we work with with leaders,
that I forget.
Now I got to come up with abetter system.
Have somebody on our team trackthis stuff for me.
So I know.
But when you're writing a bookand, by the way, we're so close
on our new book and I could notbe more excited about it.
It's going to be a game changerfor those that read it and for
(05:53):
our firm, and I'm notoverstating that.
It's that good.
So it's coming out here.
It's coming out being publishedin the next few months, couple
months.
So, writing a book and thenwe're filming.
I think by the end of this, byfour weeks from now, we will
have shot let me count them up20, 40, about 90, somewhere
(06:17):
between 90 and 100 videos.
I'm talking with the productioncrew, with the studio crew,
on-site lights, all the stuffand then professionally put into
post-production.
These are videos that wererefreshing for some of our
courses.
They're brand new videos forother things.
Yada, yada, yada.
So, in fact, if you go to ourwebsite right now, lonerockio,
(06:40):
you'll see some of the newvideos that have been produced
there with different members ofour team and things like that,
so you can get overviews.
If you want to dig into, oh,what's this course on change
that they've launched, calledAdapt in 30?
Well, there's a videodescribing it which I'm super
proud of.
Anyway, it's all there.
So the point of all this iswe're putting out all this
(07:02):
content, I'm having all thesecalls with different people.
Then we've got the clients thatwe're working with, and so I
forget who I told what story to.
So if you've already heard thisin a previous podcast episode,
my apologies, but I'm going totell it from a different angle
here.
We went river rafting inColorado this summer so took a
group from our church these wecall them young men, teenage
(07:26):
boys a big old group.
There are 50 of us who wentriver rafting on the fastest
river in Colorado.
It was amazing.
I've never done it before.
Many of you have gone riverrafting, some of you multiple
times.
For me, it was just one ofthose things that I had never
done and so I was excited aboutit.
The part of the experience Iwant to share with you is
getting into the raft, and we'vegot a guide right.
(07:48):
So we were running the.
What's called the oh crap, I'mgoing to forget the name of the
river right now that I have toboot it up Starts with an A
Amicus.
Starts with an A Amicus.
(08:09):
Is that it Amicus man?
I can't remember the name.
It's like A-M-I-C-A-S.
Yeah, I think Amicus RiverComes down from Vail, super fast
moving.
You know, depending on the timeof year, the water's 40 degrees,
so, like crazy cold, theyoutfitted us in wetsuits, boots,
helmets and, of course, theselife jackets.
And then we've got our crewthat spends their summer running
(08:31):
the rapids.
So I end up on the first raft.
So we've got all these raftswith all these different people
from our group, and I'm on thefirst one.
There's six of us, so myyoungest son is on there with me
, a couple of his buddies,another couple of dads and
whatever, and then the guide,and so our guide was the leader
(08:52):
of the whole thing.
So he said they put their bestout front.
So he explains to us as we'regetting ready to go and, by the
way, this is not if you picturea river like what I pictured was
oh, there's these slow spots ofa river and you get on the raft
and that and you kind of haveto paddle to keep moving, and
then you get out at a slow spot,eat lunch and then get back in.
Not that that was not thisexperience.
(09:15):
This sucker had no slow spots.
So, like the place they put uson, where you climb into the
rafts, they're like holding iton for dear life.
And then they're like when wepush this thing off the rocks,
like it's moving there.
You don't have time to adjust.
We are hauling and there willbe no place on the river where
you're going to need to raft orpaddle to keep us moving, like
(09:39):
the river is just that fast,moving the whole time, which is
awesome.
So as we're getting ready to getin the guide and we start going
down, we get our bearings andwe're moving down the water and
we're, you know, having thisfreezing cold glacier water
splash into our faces and we'reawake and having a great time.
And our guide is like okay, wegot our first serious rapid
(10:02):
coming up and he said let meexplain how this is going to go.
And he's like yelling this fromthe back of the raft.
He's like we're the first boatand if a human falls into the
water, they float down the riverfaster than the raft does.
They're more buoyant.
So if somebody falls in on therafts behind us, they're going
to move faster than their raftand they're going to.
(10:23):
They're going to move fasterthan their raft and they're
going to, they're going to.
Their body is going to comedown the stream and they've got
all these boulders and all thesethings and every in the river
we got to get them out.
So the whole time we're goingyou be, you keep your eyes on
the water because somebody mightbe floating and I, we're like
(10:46):
okay, and he's like now.
Now, when we come up to thisfirst rapid, when I say forward
two, you dip your paddle in, youcut like I taught you, and you
do two forward movements and youdo them at the exact speed of
the person in front of you sothat we are absolutely in sync.
Do not hit their paddle, do notbump their paddle, do not row
faster than they do, do not goslower than they do, don't put
(11:08):
your paddle in before they do.
Follow each other to exactness.
He said now, when I saybackward two, backward three,
you do three backward motions.
Then when I say down or duck,you get your head between your
knees because there's somethingoverhead that we're going to hit
, it's going to take off yourhead if you don't move.
(11:30):
When I say back up, you getback up and pull that head out
from between your knees and youget sitting straight up and in
position Now, when water issplashing in your face or we're
sideways or you feel like youmight fall out and I say forward
two, you do forward two.
And then he yelled out to us.
(11:51):
Do you understand?
We said yes and we're ready togo At that moment with that
explanation, with what he didand, for our example, the leader
of our team, our guide.
He was the designated decisionmaker.
(12:12):
Leader of our team.
There was no lack of clarity inour raft of who was in charge,
who was making the decisions,who was the leader.
It was him who was making thedecisions.
Who was the leader?
It was him.
So after he gave that speech andin the environment we were in,
I was completely involved inwhatever he asked us to do.
(12:34):
Now, he did not just have myhands and my feet, he also had
my head and my heart.
He also had my head and myheart, my mind and my brain.
The way I'm thinking, I careabout it, I'm passionate about
it.
So the terms we're going to usefor this are operational
(12:55):
involvement and emotionalinvolvement.
Okay, so this is something wedon't teach in lead in 30,
because we don't have time toget this deep into it, but I've
had conversations with severalteams about this recently.
In fact, I was with anexecutive team of a pharma
company last week in New Jerseyand we spent probably an hour
(13:18):
talking about this Do we haveemotional involvement in this
company or do we only haveoperational involvement?
And then there are all kinds ofquestions that you can ask
associated with that, like whichone is more valuable?
Operational involvement meaningyou show up, you do the work,
(13:39):
you execute on it, you're doingit, but you're kind of just
going through the motions withoperational you tracking with me
.
We're emotional.
You know what that looks like.
Right, you've seen that.
You've felt that when I left thefirm I used to be an employee
of, I was operationally involved.
I was no longer emotionallyinvolved.
(14:01):
That had faded over a period ofprobably a year, and I'm not
proud to say that.
But I also would put someaccountability on the executives
of our firm, who I have a lotof respect for, a lot of good
people.
I got no hard feelings aboutany of it All doing our best,
(14:24):
but they did not seek myemotional involvement and the
private equity firm that boughtus could care less about
anybody's emotional involvement.
Deliver the number, noquestions.
Just put your hand down.
Execute on what we've told youto do your part.
(14:47):
The bank is calling.
It was all a numbers game.
It was all like if they couldhave hired AI robots they would
have, because they just neededpeople to execute on what was
decided, and my level ofinvolvement in discussions and
debates went to pretty much zero.
Pretty darn clear that opinionsdidn't matter.
(15:12):
I'm not and I'm not again.
I'm not.
I'm not indicting anybody onthat.
I'm not saying that anybody didit wrong.
They get to choose right.
And that private equity companywe weren't the first firm that
they bought at that time, so youthink they had some ideas of
what they were trying to do andthink they had some expertise at
(15:33):
it, I would assume.
So Just didn't work for mebecause I don't want to be in a
job, I don't want to work for anorganization.
I don't want to work for a, anorganization that isn't
interested seeking the emotionalinvolvement of the members of
(15:53):
the team.
Now, that might not be you,some of you then you don't care
about that, and some of youwould say, especially if you run
a factory floor or you're youknow you've got kind of service
entry level jobs that you'reworried about, then operational
involvement is pretty much whatyou care about more than
anything Like get to yourposition on the floor, execute,
(16:15):
do your part, don't have a lotof time for discussion.
Okay, but emotional involvementthe bigger the vision, the
grander the vision of what we'retrying to accomplish, the more
that operational or the morethat emotional involvement
becomes critical.
So anyway, in this episode I'mnot going to go too deep into it
(16:37):
, I just wanted to float thoseideas to you, those terms,
wanted you to think about it.
Which one is more important toyou, operational or emotional
involvement?
Which one do you have on yourteam right now?
And then we won't spend a lotof time on it in this episode.
But then how do you get eitherand you have some ideas on
(17:01):
emotional, certainly the whybecomes critically important
Certainly a leader who createsclarity.
You see how these pieces allfit together.
That's super important.
Like there's a destinationwe're trying to get to, there's
a vision for what we're tryingto accomplish.
We're certainly talking aboutthe customer, the member, the
patient, a lot.
We're coming up with solutionsfor problems that matter in
(17:23):
people's lives.
So you've got a leader that'stying all that together,
focusing on that, and you startto get emotional involvement.
Now, what kills emotionalinvolvement more than anything?
Being what we call a secondleader, founder mode, which is
the whole first chapter of ourupcoming book, and it's freaking
(17:45):
amazing, if I do say so myself,founder mode.
We take you to a meeting thathappened in Mountain View,
california, in the latter partof 2024, where founder mode
exploded across Silicon Valley.
And so when you are in foundermode or command and control or
second leader mode, then you'renot that interested in engaging
(18:10):
your team in discussion.
You want them just to goexecute, and that kills
emotional involvement.
Now, the only instances wherethat kind of efficient
conversation is appropriate islife or death emergency, like
(18:31):
we've got five seconds, we'vegot an hour to figure this out,
and so in that case I'memotionally involved without you
allowing me to be part of theconversation because of what's
at stake, you with me.
So think of a soldier in battle.
(18:52):
Is there a lot of time fordiscussion?
No, are they emotionallyinvolved Big time?
Why?
Because lives are on the lineor they're fighting for a cause
that they firmly believe in andthey're in the throes of it, and
so.
But those are rare, thosehappen.
You can count those on one handin a career Okay, for those of
(19:12):
us in professional career.
So in the absence of that kindof involvement, then it's all
about, or those kinds ofcircumstances, then it's all
about making sure people feelheard and all of that.
So, anyway, that's that's whatI wanted to cover in this
episode.
Emotional involvement,operational involvement which
(19:34):
one's more important?
Which one do you have?
What do you need and what areyou doing about it?
The most successful leaders?
These are the sorts of thingsthey think about, and so I
wanted to get it on your mind inthis episode of the Lead in 30
podcast.
Share this episode with acolleague, your team or a friend
.
Tap on the share button andtext the link.
(19:54):
Thanks for listening to theLead in 30 podcast with Russ
Hill.
You're listening to Lead in 30.
What kind of buy-in do you have from your team
members?
Many of us are able to gettheir hands and their feet, but
we're struggling with theirhearts and their minds.
How do you hook that part ofthem?
We'll talk about it in thisepisode.
This is the Lead in 30 podcastwith Russ Hill.
(00:20):
You cannot be serious.
Strengthen your ability to leadin less than 30 minutes.
Yeah, there are two kinds ofwhat we call involvement, buy-in
or yeah, those are probably thebest terms to describe what
we're talking about.
(00:41):
And many of us, many managersof teams, are able to get the
hands and the feet and you knowwhat I mean by that right
Obviously like people to show upand to do the work.
We're able to lock that in, butwhere so many managers struggle
is in getting buy-in from thehearts and the minds of the
(01:06):
people that we lead.
And, by the way, the oppositeis true.
Like some leaders are actuallyit's not as common but some
managers are actually they getthe exact opposite.
That's what I want to talkabout in this episode.
Welcome in to the Lead in 30podcast.
I'm Russ Hill.
In less than 30 minutes, wegive you something to think
(01:28):
about, a framework, a bestpractice, an example, a story
from a client we've been with inthe last few days or the last
few weeks, or a framework,anyway, something for you to
think about implementing in theway that you lead others, and
the whole purpose of everyepisode is to upgrade upgrade
your ability to lead others,because that has profound impact
(01:51):
on your ability to deliverresults, on you, the scalability
of your career, your uh yourlivelihood, your income.
I mean, let's just be honest,your ability to lead is tied to
all of that, and so that's whatwe share in this episode.
For those of you that are new, Imake my living coaching,
(02:13):
consulting senior executiveteams at some of the world's
biggest companies.
You can find out more about ourexecutive team consulting work
or our off the shelf courses formanagers at scale at lonerockio
.
Lonerockio Our company isLoneRock Leadership and I'm one
of the founders and I get tohost our little podcast here in
(02:35):
this corner of the internet,glad so many of you are
listening on a regular basis.
It's fun to interact with youon LinkedIn or various places
and to hear about where you workand where you live, and all
over the world and in everyindustry imaginable, so I'm
thrilled to be having theconversation with you.
(02:57):
Okay, I'm going to give you anexample of what I'm talking
about and I put this under thecategory of involvement.
And in our foundational flagshipcourse called Lead in 30, we
teach clarity, alignment andmovement.
Those are the three corecompetencies of every leader who
(03:20):
scales period, mic, drop, endof story, no debate.
Clarity, alignment and movement.
If you're able to do that, tocreate each one of those and
obviously we're boiling a tondown into just three
competencies, three areas ofexpertise and that's our job at
(03:41):
our firm is to take the complexand make it simple.
By the way, it's your job too,as a leader, to take the complex
and make it simple.
That's how you mobilize masses.
If you got one person, you canbe as complex as you want to on
your team Not really, but youcould.
When you're trying to mobilizea dozen, a thousand, a hundred
(04:02):
thousand, you've got to besimple.
You've got to boil it down intovery simple terms and under the
category of alignment.
So, clarity, alignment, movement, under the category of
alignment, the ultimate goal ofcreating alignment on a team is
to get everyone's involvement orbuy-in, or participation or
(04:23):
engagement whatever term youwant to use, the one we like the
most, after considering themall for lots of years, is
involvement.
That's what I want is I wanteverybody on my team involved in
trying to deliver on our TKRs,on our team key results, the
things that matter most, whetherthat's a safety metric, a
revenue metric, a market sharerevenue, market share growth
(04:46):
number, it's a patientsatisfaction or customer service
number, new product development, whatever it is, I'm trying to
get your involvement as a memberof my team to actually help us
deliver on that.
And if I can mobilize like 80%of you, 90% of you I'm never
going to get a hundred percent,that's, that's just not going to
(05:08):
happen but if I can get 80, 90%of you, wow, we're going to.
We're going to, we're going todo some exciting things at this
company, whatever company youlead.
Okay, so the example riverrafting.
Have I told this you all?
I have to apologize, but we areputting out so much content
(05:29):
that around our core, the stuffthat we work with with leaders,
that I forget.
Now I got to come up with abetter system.
Have somebody on our team trackthis stuff for me.
So I know.
But when you're writing a bookand, by the way, we're so close
on our new book and I could notbe more excited about it.
It's going to be a game changerfor those that read it and for
(05:53):
our firm, and I'm notoverstating that.
It's that good.
So it's coming out here.
It's coming out being publishedin the next few months, couple
months.
So, writing a book and thenwe're filming.
I think by the end of this, byfour weeks from now, we will
have shot let me count them up20, 40, about 90, somewhere
(06:17):
between 90 and 100 videos.
I'm talking with the productioncrew, with the studio crew,
on-site lights, all the stuffand then professionally put into
post-production.
These are videos that wererefreshing for some of our
courses.
They're brand new videos forother things.
Yada, yada, yada.
So, in fact, if you go to ourwebsite right now, lonerockio,
(06:40):
you'll see some of the newvideos that have been produced
there with different members ofour team and things like that,
so you can get overviews.
If you want to dig into, oh,what's this course on change
that they've launched, calledAdapt in 30?
Well, there's a videodescribing it which I'm super
proud of.
Anyway, it's all there.
So the point of all this iswe're putting out all this
(07:02):
content, I'm having all thesecalls with different people.
Then we've got the clients thatwe're working with, and so I
forget who I told what story to.
So if you've already heard thisin a previous podcast episode,
my apologies, but I'm going totell it from a different angle
here.
We went river rafting inColorado this summer so took a
group from our church these wecall them young men, teenage
(07:26):
boys a big old group.
There are 50 of us who wentriver rafting on the fastest
river in Colorado.
It was amazing.
I've never done it before.
Many of you have gone riverrafting, some of you multiple
times.
For me, it was just one ofthose things that I had never
done and so I was excited aboutit.
The part of the experience Iwant to share with you is
getting into the raft, and we'vegot a guide right.
(07:48):
So we were running the.
What's called the oh crap, I'mgoing to forget the name of the
river right now that I have toboot it up Starts with an A
Amicus.
Starts with an A Amicus.
(08:09):
Is that it Amicus man?
I can't remember the name.
It's like A-M-I-C-A-S.
Yeah, I think Amicus RiverComes down from Vail, super fast
moving.
You know, depending on the timeof year, the water's 40 degrees,
so, like crazy cold, theyoutfitted us in wetsuits, boots,
helmets and, of course, theselife jackets.
And then we've got our crewthat spends their summer running
(08:31):
the rapids.
So I end up on the first raft.
So we've got all these raftswith all these different people
from our group, and I'm on thefirst one.
There's six of us, so myyoungest son is on there with me
, a couple of his buddies,another couple of dads and
whatever, and then the guide,and so our guide was the leader
(08:52):
of the whole thing.
So he said they put their bestout front.
So he explains to us as we'regetting ready to go and, by the
way, this is not if you picturea river like what I pictured was
oh, there's these slow spots ofa river and you get on the raft
and that and you kind of haveto paddle to keep moving, and
then you get out at a slow spot,eat lunch and then get back in.
Not that that was not thisexperience.
(09:15):
This sucker had no slow spots.
So, like the place they put uson, where you climb into the
rafts, they're like holding iton for dear life.
And then they're like when wepush this thing off the rocks,
like it's moving there.
You don't have time to adjust.
We are hauling and there willbe no place on the river where
you're going to need to raft orpaddle to keep us moving, like
(09:39):
the river is just that fast,moving the whole time, which is
awesome.
So as we're getting ready to getin the guide and we start going
down, we get our bearings andwe're moving down the water and
we're, you know, having thisfreezing cold glacier water
splash into our faces and we'reawake and having a great time.
And our guide is like okay, wegot our first serious rapid
(10:02):
coming up and he said let meexplain how this is going to go.
And he's like yelling this fromthe back of the raft.
He's like we're the first boatand if a human falls into the
water, they float down the riverfaster than the raft does.
They're more buoyant.
So if somebody falls in on therafts behind us, they're going
to move faster than their raftand they're going to.
(10:23):
They're going to move fasterthan their raft and they're
going to, they're going to.
Their body is going to comedown the stream and they've got
all these boulders and all thesethings and every in the river
we got to get them out.
So the whole time we're goingyou be, you keep your eyes on
the water because somebody mightbe floating and I, we're like
(10:46):
okay, and he's like now.
Now, when we come up to thisfirst rapid, when I say forward
two, you dip your paddle in, youcut like I taught you, and you
do two forward movements and youdo them at the exact speed of
the person in front of you sothat we are absolutely in sync.
Do not hit their paddle, do notbump their paddle, do not row
faster than they do, do not goslower than they do, don't put
(11:08):
your paddle in before they do.
Follow each other to exactness.
He said now, when I saybackward two, backward three,
you do three backward motions.
Then when I say down or duck,you get your head between your
knees because there's somethingoverhead that we're going to hit
, it's going to take off yourhead if you don't move.
(11:30):
When I say back up, you getback up and pull that head out
from between your knees and youget sitting straight up and in
position Now, when water issplashing in your face or we're
sideways or you feel like youmight fall out and I say forward
two, you do forward two.
And then he yelled out to us.
(11:51):
Do you understand?
We said yes and we're ready togo At that moment with that
explanation, with what he didand, for our example, the leader
of our team, our guide.
He was the designated decisionmaker.
(12:12):
Leader of our team.
There was no lack of clarity inour raft of who was in charge,
who was making the decisions,who was the leader.
It was him who was making thedecisions.
Who was the leader?
It was him.
So after he gave that speech andin the environment we were in,
I was completely involved inwhatever he asked us to do.
(12:34):
Now, he did not just have myhands and my feet, he also had
my head and my heart.
He also had my head and myheart, my mind and my brain.
The way I'm thinking, I careabout it, I'm passionate about
it.
So the terms we're going to usefor this are operational
(12:55):
involvement and emotionalinvolvement.
Okay, so this is something wedon't teach in lead in 30,
because we don't have time toget this deep into it, but I've
had conversations with severalteams about this recently.
In fact, I was with anexecutive team of a pharma
company last week in New Jerseyand we spent probably an hour
(13:18):
talking about this Do we haveemotional involvement in this
company or do we only haveoperational involvement?
And then there are all kinds ofquestions that you can ask
associated with that, like whichone is more valuable?
Operational involvement meaningyou show up, you do the work,
(13:39):
you execute on it, you're doingit, but you're kind of just
going through the motions withoperational you tracking with me
.
We're emotional.
You know what that looks like.
Right, you've seen that.
You've felt that when I left thefirm I used to be an employee
of, I was operationally involved.
I was no longer emotionallyinvolved.
(14:01):
That had faded over a period ofprobably a year, and I'm not
proud to say that.
But I also would put someaccountability on the executives
of our firm, who I have a lotof respect for, a lot of good
people.
I got no hard feelings aboutany of it All doing our best,
(14:24):
but they did not seek myemotional involvement and the
private equity firm that boughtus could care less about
anybody's emotional involvement.
Deliver the number, noquestions.
Just put your hand down.
Execute on what we've told youto do your part.
(14:47):
The bank is calling.
It was all a numbers game.
It was all like if they couldhave hired AI robots they would
have, because they just neededpeople to execute on what was
decided, and my level ofinvolvement in discussions and
debates went to pretty much zero.
Pretty darn clear that opinionsdidn't matter.
(15:12):
I'm not and I'm not again.
I'm not.
I'm not indicting anybody onthat.
I'm not saying that anybody didit wrong.
They get to choose right.
And that private equity companywe weren't the first firm that
they bought at that time, so youthink they had some ideas of
what they were trying to do andthink they had some expertise at
(15:33):
it, I would assume.
So Just didn't work for mebecause I don't want to be in a
job, I don't want to work for anorganization.
I don't want to work for a, anorganization that isn't
interested seeking the emotionalinvolvement of the members of
(15:53):
the team.
Now, that might not be you,some of you then you don't care
about that, and some of youwould say, especially if you run
a factory floor or you're youknow you've got kind of service
entry level jobs that you'reworried about, then operational
involvement is pretty much whatyou care about more than
anything Like get to yourposition on the floor, execute,
(16:15):
do your part, don't have a lotof time for discussion.
Okay, but emotional involvementthe bigger the vision, the
grander the vision of what we'retrying to accomplish, the more
that operational or the morethat emotional involvement
becomes critical.
So anyway, in this episode I'mnot going to go too deep into it
(16:37):
, I just wanted to float thoseideas to you, those terms,
wanted you to think about it.
Which one is more important toyou, operational or emotional
involvement?
Which one do you have on yourteam right now?
And then we won't spend a lotof time on it in this episode.
But then how do you get eitherand you have some ideas on
(17:01):
emotional, certainly the whybecomes critically important
Certainly a leader who createsclarity.
You see how these pieces allfit together.
That's super important.
Like there's a destinationwe're trying to get to, there's
a vision for what we're tryingto accomplish.
We're certainly talking aboutthe customer, the member, the
patient, a lot.
We're coming up with solutionsfor problems that matter in
(17:23):
people's lives.
So you've got a leader that'stying all that together,
focusing on that, and you startto get emotional involvement.
Now, what kills emotionalinvolvement more than anything?
Being what we call a secondleader, founder mode, which is
the whole first chapter of ourupcoming book, and it's freaking
(17:45):
amazing, if I do say so myself,founder mode.
We take you to a meeting thathappened in Mountain View,
california, in the latter partof 2024, where founder mode
exploded across Silicon Valley.
And so when you are in foundermode or command and control or
second leader mode, then you'renot that interested in engaging
(18:10):
your team in discussion.
You want them just to goexecute, and that kills
emotional involvement.
Now, the only instances wherethat kind of efficient
conversation is appropriate islife or death emergency, like
(18:31):
we've got five seconds, we'vegot an hour to figure this out,
and so in that case I'memotionally involved without you
allowing me to be part of theconversation because of what's
at stake, you with me.
So think of a soldier in battle.
(18:52):
Is there a lot of time fordiscussion?
No, are they emotionallyinvolved Big time?
Why?
Because lives are on the lineor they're fighting for a cause
that they firmly believe in andthey're in the throes of it, and
so.
But those are rare, thosehappen.
You can count those on one handin a career Okay, for those of
(19:12):
us in professional career.
So in the absence of that kindof involvement, then it's all
about, or those kinds ofcircumstances, then it's all
about making sure people feelheard and all of that.
So, anyway, that's that's whatI wanted to cover in this
episode.
Emotional involvement,operational involvement which
(19:34):
one's more important?
Which one do you have?
What do you need and what areyou doing about it?
The most successful leaders?
These are the sorts of thingsthey think about, and so I
wanted to get it on your mind inthis episode of the Lead in 30
podcast.
Share this episode with acolleague, your team or a friend
.
Tap on the share button andtext the link.
(19:54):
Thanks for listening to theLead in 30 podcast with Russ
Hill.
You're listening to Lead in 30.
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