Leadership isn’t about having all the answers.
It’s about being generous enough to grow.
This week, we sit down with Joe Davis, author of The Generous Leader, to explore what it really means to lead. Not through control, but through service, humility, and transformation.
Joe shares stories from his personal journey, how his perspective on leadership has changed, and how generosity became the foundation for his growth as a person and a professional.
🔵 In this episode:
– Why generous leadership isn’t weakness, it’s strength
– The difference between confidence and arrogance
– How real transformation starts with self-awareness
– Why legacy has more to do with how you lead today than how you’ll be remembered tomorrow
🎧 Listen, subscribe, and learn more at https://blueisthenewwhite.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00:05):
So we talk a lot on
this show about leadership,
the different styles of leadership, being
a servant leader,
being a dominant leader,
you know, there's good, bad, perceived
good, bad, there's all these
different things and avenues
and ins and outs when it comes to
leadership, especially in
the blue collar skill trades,
trying to run, grow, and scale your
business while also trying to maintain
(01:00:28):
your life at home and,
you know, your network and your social
circles and all this
stuff ties directly back to
leadership. So I love having people on
the show that can speak directly to this,
especially through a very unique lens. So
Joe, we got to
talking before the show and
I'm really excited about the perspective
(01:00:48):
that you have. You wrote
the book on leadership,
the generous leader, right? So welcome to
the show, man. I mean, just how are you?
Thank you. This is fun to be here and I'm
very well. It's summertime.
I'm in northern Minnesota.
I've got eight grandchildren here with me
for the summer or, you
(01:01:09):
know, five or six weeks of it,
which is in my mind, just have it on
earth. So I'm pretty good. Thank you.
That's amazing. That's amazing. So, you
know, we'll get into who you
are and why you wrote the book
and all of that stuff. But I have a very
specific question for
you that you probably heard
eight billion times, but I really just
want your take on it. Are
leaders born or are they made?
(01:01:30):
I, you know, if I, I mean, sure, heard a
million times and
there's a million books,
so I guess I can't be wrong. But if
you're really asking me to think about
that and my observations
over time, and maybe there's some born
stuff, I don't know, but I
think you grow and you develop
into the leader you become. And I think
(01:01:52):
that's made. I really
believe that. And it might start
with your parents, hopefully, you know,
but who knows what mentors or, or
experiences throughout
your, your life and whatever work you do
or whatever roles you
play, you know, I think you're
going to grow into your leadership. So
maybe you're born with the
start. I don't know, but you
definitely grow into it. I know that
you're involved. Awesome.
(01:02:14):
Well, that's really great
news, I think, for a lot of people that
listen to this show,
especially the ones that don't feel
like they might have natural leadership
ability. I've seen that a
thousand times, people coming up
to me saying, Josh, man, I'm not a
leader, you know, what am I doing? And
we're going to talk a
little bit about that today. But before
we do, would you mind just kind of
(01:02:34):
introducing yourself
and telling our audience who you are,
kind of what your
background is and why you're here?
So, name's Joe Davis, you got that. I am
67 years old, it doesn't
matter. I had a long career with
Boston Consulting Group, a white collar
consulting firms, field interesting
(01:02:55):
related to this. First
six years old, my life was Procter &
Gamble Sales Rep, which was quite an
interesting experience in
and out of grocery stores, trying to
convince managers to put
head and shoulders in crust,
you know, toothpaste on the shelf. You
know, I think, obviously, I'm
here with you today, because
I did write a book at the end of my time
(01:03:16):
at BCG on some of my observations of
leadership. And I had
the great fortune to interview a number
of other leaders and asked
them now this all in the theme
of a generous type of leader, which I'm
sure we'll talk about. This is not you said the word dominant
a minute ago. That's an interesting word.
But this is what that
word means. I guess generous
(01:03:37):
leader can still be very dominant, but
there's a little angle that
I argue is very important.
Awesome. Well, why don't you start by
telling me why you felt like
you needed to write a book?
That's a good question. There was a
handful of reasons. I mean, one,
a number of my colleagues coming out of
(01:03:57):
COVID, said, hey, you
ought to write about leadership
and what you observed during that time
and what you did. I was
leading BCG in North America.
And I actually wrote like 38,000 words
really fast after I
stepped out of the role
and shared it with a publisher who said,
they said, so I skimmed
it and it's really good,
but no book. So what do you mean? And she
said, well, nobody will
(01:04:18):
want to read about COVID
a couple of years later. It takes some,
as you know, Josh, a couple
of years to get a book out.
Yeah. So I still wanted to send the
message, I think, is
important on leadership. And,
I had other reasons. I was leaving BCG. I
thought it'd be cool to write something,
give me a path after work, traditional
work. But the other
thing, and most important,
(01:04:38):
I had a friend of mine. I said, I'm going
to write this book. And you know,
Breni Brown, she writes the authenticity
books and sells a million
copies, two million copies,
and Adam Grant, whatever. I said, who's
going to read my book? He
said, Joe, it doesn't matter.
If you can move eight people to change
their leadership style,
you should consider success.
Now, as you and I both know, writing a
(01:04:59):
book is actually a lot of
work. So I wanted, I now have
aspirations to move more than eight,
given the effort I put into
it. But I think at the end of
the day, that really, as time goes on, is
why I wrote it. I thought,
okay, I can put my message
out there too, and my beliefs, you know,
and those that want to
read it, we'll read it.
That's amazing. So I guess that begs the
(01:05:20):
question, what do you want to move those
eight people toward?
Yeah. Well, you said the word, I mean,
servant leader and those
things kind of thing. I used the
word generous leader. And a couple of
points I'll make real quick.
First, first off, the negative,
generous leader does not mean you have
high paychecks. And if
you're going to afford to do that,
that's a great thing.
Nobody's going to begrudge you.
(01:05:40):
Thanks for the clarification there, man.
That is not a person that people want to
follow. You know, you made the point
about, say, I don't,
so, you know, I, and also the other guy,
very say, very
importantly is, you know, a leader,
it's not all about the heart. The
colleague, a friend of mine, the CEO
said, you know, Joe,
as a leader, you never have to forget
(01:06:01):
outcomes matter, you do
have to try results. And that's
the important thing. Now, his argument
was the sooner you move past
yourself, and unlock all the
great traits and human traits in the
people you work with, the
sooner you will get to the greatest
outcomes. So that's what I'm really
pushing is that, you know, I
think an exceptional leader,
the way I define generously, I'll also
(01:06:24):
say you still have to be a
good manager, you have to set
plans. I'm not saying that stuff. This is
a step beyond that. If
you, you know, if you got, you
got to work on the basics yourself, or
there's plenty of books on
management, but really, as
someone who gives of themselves freely
without expectation of
direct personal benefit, so that
others grow, thrive, and develop to their
(01:06:45):
full potential. You know,
that's what a great leader
does. And you know, when you said
something, we can talk about that
statement, I'm not a good leader,
I'd have some counsel on that. You know,
if you and the funny thing
about that is if you are really
ensuring, not funny, the bonus to it, if
you're ensuring everybody's thriving
their full potential,
you're going to win too, right? I mean,
(01:07:06):
the organization's gonna
do well, your team's gonna
do well, the outcomes will be great. And
usually the leader gets
credit for helping the team to
get there or for getting there. So it's,
you know, I do not believe
that if that is your reason for
helping others to get better, all about
only you, they see through
it, they smell it, they won't
follow you anywhere. But if it's really
what you're doing as a
leader, you're going to help them
(01:07:27):
thrive. You and your organization, your
team are going to win.
Well, that's a very, very good
description of that. Probably one of the
better ones that I've
heard. So I've got to ask,
where's the balance? Where's the balance
between expectations for
yourself as a leader, right? And
(01:07:50):
what you hope to achieve between the
expectation you have for
others, or maybe expectations is not
the right word. But how do you balance
the two to make sure you're
still moving forward in a way
that serves you and others? Well, I have
to interpret your question
a little bit. It's actually
arguing, if the whole thing's moving
forward, then you're moving forward. Now,
(01:08:13):
as far as we're talking about your own
development, we can talk about that
separately. And when you
say the word balance, often people say,
well, is it just being
nice? I think, you know, when I
describe what I thought that leaders, the
best leaders do, what
they're doing is actually caring
about you doing well. They're going to
benefit, but they care. If
they don't care at all, it's
really hard to help people move. And, you
(01:08:36):
know, so caring also
doesn't mean it's only being sweet
all the time out. I mean, I can tell you,
tell you, well, here's,
well, I'll just tell you some
feedback I got once. Sure. My manager or
my boss said, you know, Joe,
I could put two people in a
room, four walls, no door, no windows,
and give you a very tough
(01:08:56):
problem. And you don't get out
unless you get the problem solved. And
this other guy that works with me, named
Philip, he'd get out
of the room every time. You might not
ever get out of the room.
Whoa, that was okay. So I guess
I'm not smart enough. But he said,
however, then when you're out of the room
and you've got to now
execute and deliver on whatever that
brilliant idea was, he will
never deliver and you will
(01:09:17):
deliver 100% of the time. Because you
understand where your shortcomings are,
you know, you surround
your people, you're collaborative, etc,
etc. So that wasn't being
nice. He kind of told me,
hey, buddy, not the smartest guy in the
room. But he also said, you
know, to use a word that's kind
of common, your superpower is teaming,
collaborating, collaborating, leveraging
(01:09:37):
others. So you know,
the balance, when you say the word
balance, I know what you mean. But, you
know, even if the goal is
to push people to be the best they can
be, it's, you know, you got to give
feedback, you got to give
in the moment, you got to be direct, you
got to be honest, you have
to do it with thought. So it's
like go on and on the stories of, you
(01:09:58):
know, tough feedback, which I mean, one
time I let somebody go
in the room, the review room, so you
can't lose a good guy, I know
he's a good guy. And that's why
I'm letting him go. So what do you mean?
I said, he doesn't fit
here. He's not happy. We're not
doing him any good. Well, that's mean. I
said, No, making him
letting him work here is me. He's
going to end, of course, the I left doing
(01:10:18):
other great things because
he went to where he belonged.
It didn't belong personally, but you
know, where he fit better, good thrive.
Yeah, you know, and when you put it that
way, right, it's right or
wrong, nice or mean, that's
really subjective, right? And that's
probably a lot of love, very much of it
(01:10:38):
is circumstantial as
well. I've got a little post-it note up
in, in my office. And all it
says is candor is kindness.
Because to your point, to your point,
you're, you can't best
serve somebody unless you're
being honest with them. And sometimes
that feedback, if it's
honest, it's not always nice.
I mean, or what could be interpreted as
nice, right? Yeah, yeah. I
(01:11:00):
mean, nice isn't even the
relevant word because if it's honest,
it's this is now, if you're doing it
well, you do it in the
moment as best you can. You don't wait
for the end of the year.
You know, you say, Hey, these
three things, you did great. And here,
and these are the strengths
you can use to leverage. You do
help them to get better. But you're
direct. Now, you know, I
always say don't give mush feedback.
(01:11:21):
I can remember another story. One time a
person was not going to get
promoted. And I was the head
of the office and this person was there
and the woman, there was a
woman, it doesn't matter,
but it was a woman, it was a reviewer.
And she started giving him
feedback and blah, blah. And
we were telling him, you're not going to
make it. It's an up and
out, up or out place. So he's
losing the job. Well, she went on for, I
don't know, six minutes.
And it's, you know, I said,
(01:11:41):
what are you saying? Finally he looked
over me and said, Joe, am I
being fired? And I said, yes.
And he said, thank you. So one sense, one
word and two words and the
whole thing was communicated.
And you call it nice. You call that mean
as hell. He actually thanked
me because he was confused.
What is going on here? Am I losing my
job? Wow. Yeah. And that's,
that's really interesting too,
(01:12:01):
you know, because I think it's so easy
and I know this from personal
experience, right? It's so easy
to just to get wrapped up. You don't want
to be perceived as, as
somebody who's being mean or
being a jerk or being a bad leader by
delivering this type of
feedback. But in, in so many ways,
you're sealing your own fate by beating
around the bush. So it's, it's really
interesting. I want to,
(01:12:22):
I guess you're stealing theirs, which
case you're sealing yours, right?
Exactly. Exactly. All right,
Joe. So we've been talking for, Oh, do
you want to move on? Oh no, go ahead. One
other story on this.
Yeah, please. It's just was very, it's 20
start off Procter and
Gamble. As I said, sales rep,
we got promoted to manager. I had three
people working for me. They
(01:12:42):
were all in their forties.
I was 24, 25. So they were like, I was
scared to death. You
know what I mean? I mean,
and I would ride with them every week or
every two weeks. And
I never gave feedback,
basically because I was scared. Who am I
to tell this person to do it?
And then it came to the year
in view and I wrote all this stuff down
that this one guy should do
based on the manual in my two
(01:13:02):
years and started deliver the feedback.
And he, he looked up, he
said, wait, maybe two minutes.
He said, what the blank Joe, you ride
with me every two weeks and
you've never said any of this.
What the hell have you been doing? You
know, and it was since
because it's all my problem. He was
actually, interestingly, he was looking
to see what the young
(01:13:23):
whipper Snapper might be able to
tell him to be better. He was looking for
it. And I was scared for an entire year.
To your point about,
you know, you get caught in your own
head, you don't do anybody any favors.
Yeah, no kidding. So do you, do you help
leaders? Is this
something that you do? Is this a,
either a passion or a job or, I mean, is
(01:13:45):
this something that, that you focus on?
Well, it's not, I don't focus on it to
get paid for it. If you
mean like, but if you see,
you know, different, I mean, we serve
clients and help the clients to deliver
it. And at times have
networking closely with people about
their leadership. But I
(01:14:05):
actually, some people say,
what do you think is the legacy of 30
plus years in a place and
it just worked. And you know,
what I look back on is people that call
me up and say, you
know, Joe, I got this role
and it's this and that you said to me,
change the trajectory. You
know, you just told me straight,
whatever. So I do believe over my career,
it's a little bit too much about me, but
(01:14:26):
the way I thought about it is how do I
make sure you're great, how
to make sure you're great,
how to make sure you're great. And when
you're all great, the
organization's going to be great.
So you could argue, yes, that's what I,
and I didn't think
about it for a long time,
but it's time went on. I'm just, or
people said, Joe, you're always stopping
to think about how I
can improve. Well, if you don't improve,
I don't improve. So
(01:14:47):
it's pretty obvious to me.
So if you ask that in the context of is
am I a consultant
that helps leaders know,
but I do like to help people grow to be
the best they can be. And
that's why I push pretty hard
during my career. Good. Well, and I think
that's evident too,
through writing a book about
leadership, you know, being able to help
though, all of those
eight people you talked about.
(01:15:10):
No, that's what you're 800,000 listeners.
I want 80 of them to change.
Don't tell me how many really what's it.
I said, don't tell me how
many of this was you really
have. I have eight. I have eight. No, I
appreciate that. So I guess,
you know, I'm, I'm curious,
(01:15:30):
because even I'm sure through the book
and through your time at PCG, you know,
um, you probably have
people coming up to you and asking you
for advice on this kind of
stuff. I'd be curious if there's
anything that stood out as like the most
difficult problem for
a leader or even let's
narrow that down, maybe an emerging
leader and new leaders or
(01:15:52):
anything that sticks out,
like the one thing that's most difficult
for them to overcome or get used to.
Well, gosh, I have more than one, but I
will try to get one. No,
especially when you say the young
leader, I think the problem with young
leaders, not problem,
they're great. But the thing is,
if you're a young leader and have three
(01:16:12):
or four people working for you, if
they're not delivering,
you can actually do it all yourself. You
might have to stay up all
night. You might have to work
that well, but you can still do it. Now,
once you have 30 people
working for you, if you're still
caught in that, oh, I can do it all
because I haven't trusted
them. I haven't empowered them.
I haven't blah, blah, blah. You're now in
trouble because you can't do
30 people's worth overnight
(01:16:33):
or over. So I think that's the, and you
know, I think that's the
number one thing I've seen is
the stuff we talked about, feedback, the
newer leaders, either
they're afraid or they think,
you know, they don't want to be beat up
or whatever. So they're
not growing the people as
well as they can. They think they can get
it all done themselves.
They think they know better,
not empowering the others. I think that
(01:16:53):
is, we have other points,
but I think that's probably
the biggest thing because if you don't
grow out of it, you're
just not going to grow in your
leadership. I mean, I guess you have your
own company and just grow
the company for whatever
reason, the greatest products in the
world. But my son has a company and he's
now at 12 employees,
which not like a 27 year old kid or 29.
(01:17:14):
But, and he's, you know,
he's, I don't know if he,
I think he might have read my book, but
he does say, Oh dad, I see
why you're pushing me to think
like this. I said, yeah, buddy, you need
those 12 to be humming.
That's the way it works. I mean,
you're smart. You got all that, but they
have to hum. You can't hum by yourself.
Yeah. No, absolutely. And you know what?
It's funny. I've lived
this, right? I remember when
(01:17:35):
I had 12 employees and, and, and there's
a big difference now, still
not huge, but I'm somewhere
around 60 employees, but there's a lot
more than 12, but there's, there's
stages, right? And it
changes and especially the leadership and
what the company and the
people need from me throughout
those different stages of growth, which
we'll get into in a minute. I
(01:17:55):
am curious, what would you say
to somebody to help them get past that
feeling like they need to
do it all, right? Or, or help
them realize that leadership is about
that appropriate
delegation. Yeah. Well, you know,
(01:18:16):
there's two parts of your question, which
is help them get past it.
So that's in their own head
versus the act. I think the action I
would take and I've made more
backwards is, you know, just
understand those three or four people,
they want to do well too.
They're there to team with you.
They want things to hum now. And if they
don't, then you have to
outplace them or whatever,
(01:18:37):
you'll get them a different role. I'm not
saying, you know, we
talked earlier about being nice.
And so the more respect you can show them
and they also know stuff you
don't know. And the easiest
way therefore, easiest way to help them
grow and grow your business is to ask
questions, you know,
and then and listen to the answer. Don't
just, oh, he said that, but
that doesn't fit what I was
(01:18:58):
thinking. Or she said that and dismiss
it, but say, Oh, they think
this. And I think that you put
the two together. What does it mean? So I
think, so I think the best
action to take right off the
bat is just ask, ask questions all the
time. What do you think?
What do you think we should do?
Nothing else. They feel respected and
bound to know something. Now, if you're
so full of yourself,
I can't help you to your point. But the
(01:19:20):
counsel is you and I could
just both tell you, you're not
going to grow in the role if you don't
understand how to help them
grow. I mean, and the other guy
would say, just like that 40 year old
person, they want you to help them grow.
You know, I didn't know
that until you kind of swore at me a few
times. Whoa, this was, you
(01:19:41):
know, thank heaven someone
told me that when I was 25, how lucky was
I, right? So that's, you
know, probably the how you
get past it is just remember, you don't
know everything. The
others really do want to be part
of it with you. Eventually, you can't do
it all by yourself. I mean,
whatever, you know, whatever
hook it is for you, if you have, if you
like to coach your kid's
soccer team, you want to save
some hours to go do that. And you better
(01:20:01):
get your team really
humming so you can walk out.
I don't know. Find your
hook. You don't find your hook.
Okay. Well, okay. So you mentioned
questions. I really like to have this
type of conversation.
What types of questions is it that you're
asking people? And, and
how does that help you in a
leadership role? Well, I think the kind
(01:20:24):
of questions you're asking
is, you know, what do they
think about the situation that whatever
it is, you know, and you just, you know,
I mean, I got two points. I always tell
my teams in the consulting
world, because we're trying to
get clients to change is, you know,
uncut, engage the
(01:20:45):
skeptics and uncover the nose.
Why won't this work? And odds are most,
most knowologists, oh,
it's not going to work.
Maybe one out of 1000 are pain in the
neck. But most of them know
something you don't know. And,
you know, if you don't learn that little
thing, oh, guess what? It didn't work.
And somebody knew it.
So nothing else. Hey, we want to do this
(01:21:05):
and that anything you
don't see it might work here,
anything, any place I'm off, any other
ideas I'm missing. But I just
think, you know, like, what's,
it's very easy question, you know, what
might be wrong with this
plan, what might we not be able
to do? So engage, you know, not engage,
get to engage your team and
uncover the nose. It's very
easy. And that is actually helpful for
you. Because that's what
(01:21:25):
you're trying to solve, right? Yeah,
get rid of all the nose and
you, your path leads to us.
That's great. That reminds me of the book
of Go4Now, you know,
sales aspect, right? But,
but now you're putting it back towards
leadership. So, okay. So I'm just
listening, you got my gears
turning and when gears turn, I kind of
try rapid fire, but I'll slow
(01:21:47):
it down for our audience here.
But okay. So I'm thinking of a situation
and this is going to pertain
to humility. I imagine humility
is part of leadership, part of serving
leadership, part of being a generous
leader, right? You've got
to, you got to be humble in, in many
situations. So let's say
you're asking these questions and
(01:22:10):
you're saying to somebody, why won't this
work? And that somebody
says to you, well, Joe,
it's because of you, it's because how
you're handling it. How do
you handle that as a leader?
If they, if they, if they actually go
down that road and
say those words to you.
I'm nervous. Say that to the boss. I'll
be a print. First off,
I'd promote them right away.
I'd say, okay, I'm right there with you,
(01:22:31):
buddy. You're my assistant
from that one. My number two
or my chief of staff, whatever. I need
you next to me whispering in
my ear every minute of my life.
But that takes humility to your point.
Yeah. Well, you know,
two things. First off,
that situation for me, it'd be very
simple. Oh, why? Why? Why?
What, what, what am I doing?
That's all I'd shut the blank up. What am
(01:22:53):
I doing? And then you get defensive.
That's your problem.
It's only your problem. And you know, if
that's who you are, you have
to figure out to get past it
because all you're doing is losing
opportunities for others to help you get
better. Um, but building
on this, you know, when you, I struggled
with what's the number one
thing, because I didn't go
to humility or humbleness or
vulnerability, authenticity, whatever
(01:23:14):
word you want, but that
is essential. You know, you cannot get
people, I'm trying to think if
I'm right about this. I mean,
if you're in a position of massive power
with a lot of weapons and
shit like that, maybe you
can do it, but you cannot get people to
follow you really to the ends of the
earth. Um, hypothetically,
(01:23:34):
if they don't think you're authentic,
they don't believe you
acknowledge when you make mistakes
and not even make mistakes, but just
understand you don't know
everything. No, people can smell.
I'm sure we have had colleagues or I
don't think I've ever had
a boss that thought their
approach, but a colleague who just
thought he just, he put an aura of
everything's perfect.
You know, his kids were attractive. His
wife was right. He was
(01:23:54):
attractive. He was good at his job
well, who can follow him because it's my
gosh, I can't keep up, you
know, what am I going to do
wrong tomorrow next to this person? So
this whole humbleness is critical. And
sorry, well, you just
said it, but if you're really a good
listener, you have to be
humble enough to know you don't know
all the answers. We just can't be a good
(01:24:16):
listener. You know, a
guy named Alex Gorski,
the previous CEO of J and J, he said, you
know, the role of the
leader is not to have the best
answer in the room, but it's to get the
best answer out of the
room. I thought what a clever,
simple way to think about it. Okay. My
job today is make sure all of us, some,
but I don't know who's
going to come up with it or we do it as a
group to come up with the
best answer. I really liked that.
(01:24:38):
I'm glad that you shared that with me and
with our audience.
I'm going to steal that.
It's easy to remember, you know? Yeah,
yeah, yeah. No, that's
really good. And I'm glad that you
expanded on that because my next question
was going to be, okay, so
how do you get that person
comfortable enough to say those words to
you? Because Joe, I know
more leaders that are humble,
(01:25:00):
but their team is, I don't want to say
afraid. It seems like the
wrong word, but maybe intimidated
too intimidated by the owner, the CEO,
the executive to have those
super candid conversations
upstream. No, and it's, it's, I mean, you
and I just don't kid each
other. It's not easy. I mean,
(01:25:21):
it's triple not easy. So there's, you
know, you can, if you run the company,
you can put in mechanisms to invite it. I
mean, in place where I worked,
we had anonymous upward feedback. Now it
could be pretty harsh, you know, the
company's putting up.
You know, and we've been, then we, we
measured and partners of
the firm on revenue and their
upward feedback. And if either one of
(01:25:42):
those things were off for three years in
a row, you were gone,
including your, well, we got you short,
we got you all kinds of
help. If you, if you're
upper feedback, coaches, and we had to
get you, you know,
psychology, we got your psychologist.
But so one, you can build mechanisms to,
you can do something
which takes some, which takes
some humbleness, which is sit down with
your team and say, Hey, I want
(01:26:03):
us all to thrive. I want this
place to be great. And I want to be as
great at, you know, working
with all you as I can. So I'm
asking you now, you know, if you see
opt-in for feedback, I want
to hear it or, or even better,
I'm trying to work on this thing. So I'd
love you all to help and make
it a simple thing. I love you
all. If you observe me doing that thing
(01:26:23):
one way or the other way that you
actually give me feedback
on it, I'm really trying to work on that
thing. And that's the
simplest way to do it. Actually,
I just got me thinking real time. I mean,
you can put mechanisms
in, but now you have to be,
no, we just started with that. You've got
to be humble enough to
understand somebody else
knows something that can make you better.
But I mean, come on. If
you're married, you probably
know that even if you admit it or not.
(01:26:45):
Sorry, I'm trying to be a
mildly sexist, but you know,
I really do believe fair enough though. I
get what you're saying.
Hey, honey, I had a friend once
that he just wasn't a very good listener
at work. And we'd tell him
that, but finally he went,
went to a doctor and he discovered he had
ADD and he's like 45. And
(01:27:06):
he said, you know, they said,
I'm not a very good listener at work. And
when she goes, well, I
could have told you that I've
been telling you forever. You just never
listened. Oh, that's
amazing. So, so I would ask then how
much of the leader success, or maybe it's
a better question to
ask how much of the team's
success depends on the leader's ability
(01:27:27):
to invite that type of feedback.
Well, well, let me put it a different
way. I think it, well, how much I don't
know mathematically,
but I think, you know, I think if you ask
me, there's being a very good listener,
so you bring out everything the best you
can. And this, this
whole trade on humbleness or
vulnerability are just so powerful
(01:27:48):
because the vulnerability
part releases roadblocks for
everybody. You know, I'll tell a story. I
asked someone
colleague of mine, you know,
what's some of your vulnerable moments?
This guy said, well, you know, I just
hate to admit I don't
know something. He's a black male. So it
was a little bit even
trickier. I was just going to say,
I don't know something. And he said, if
(01:28:10):
the team is going to, I can
tell they're stuck and I'm
in there. They're going to ask me like
direction help help. And I
don't know the answer. I'll leave
before I'll get to cause this question.
How productive is that?
Now your company's just
your team, whatever is done. And he said,
so one day I stayed in the room.
He said, you know, I took a big breath.
Said, you know,
everybody, I don't know either.
And he said, it was stunning because the
(01:28:30):
energy in the room just unleashed. Oh,
you don't know too. You mean none of us
know. Oh, well, let's all
start solving it together.
And you just unleashed your team by three
simple words or one simple
admission. So I don't know
how much when your point how much, but I
think it is quite valuable
that you show some humbleness
such that somebody is stuck. They can
(01:28:51):
come to you and say, I'm stuck. And you
can together figure it
out because having them, I don't know,
most businesses, I'm
sure it's time is the thing.
That's the biggest issue, right? Time
costs. And so if someone's not doing
their job for three days,
you just lost three days. I once had a
boss who I was doing some
math thing and I was stuck.
And I walked down the hall and asked him,
he was a senior partner
(01:29:11):
in my firm. He said, oh,
I don't know how to do this either. Let's
walk down the hall and
ask Philip. He'll know,
you know, what a message to me that was
now he just was naturally
that way. I thought, holy
shit. He could have kicked me out of the
room, walked down the hall
and self asked and call me back.
He just said, I don't know either. I sent
this freedom to me and
oh, it's okay to go ask when
you're stuck. So, and that to me, you
(01:29:33):
call it vulnerability and
call it, you call whatever you
want. It's common sense maybe to say you
don't know when you don't,
but man, it just frees your
teams. It frees them. Fair enough. So
then, so then help me
understand, help me understand some,
some pitfalls that leaders should be
aware of, right? Maybe
through their evolution into
(01:29:56):
leadership. What should they watch out
for? Well, I think, I
mean, I think the first one,
which we've said is this hubris that you
can do it all and, or you
know it all. I mean, that's,
that's the first pitfall or that, well,
yeah, I think that, cause
that happens more as you
younger versus, you know, wiz, if nothing
(01:30:17):
else, age builds wisdom and
oh, wow, you know that later on.
That's one big one. The other thing I
think is, is this whole fear of feedback
and it goes both ways,
which is someone's not really cutting it
and you have to let them go.
Then you gotta let them go.
And you know, we all, most people want to
(01:30:38):
kind of be nice too.
Well, no, no, no, maybe I can,
maybe I can help. But if they just can't
get, and I say that cause I
remember my son, when he had
let his first person go and I get in
counseling, how I would do it
later. And then he said, oh,
dad, I wish you was, she said, God damn
it. You tell her it's not working out.
Good are the reasons.
But that's another problem. I think is
also not, you know, this
(01:30:58):
whole feedback thing, but being
afraid to make the moves you need to do.
And that's easier as time goes. It's
easier once you've done
it once, once you've done it twice.
That's a pitfall. We already
talked about the feedback to
help people grow and develop and the
mushiness that's, that's a
pitfall. You know, the other
and then I, I don't know where this
(01:31:22):
comes, but I remember during COVID and
you probably saw it too,
you know, a lot of leaders, I mean, the
famous one is Arnie
Sorensen, the CEO Marriott.
He has a video, he's dying of cancer and
he gets on the videos, his
ball because of the chemo and
the radiation and all that. And he says,
you know, to everybody, we don't know
where this is going.
Unfortunately, you know, I've taken a pay
cut, everything to be
cut. I have to furlough the
(01:31:43):
hope. We don't fire you, but I have to
furlough you and we're
gonna make it through, be here
together. But I don't, you know, I don't
know when people are going
to be back in the hotels.
And Scott Kirby, CEO United is doing the
same thing. And his team
said, you can't tell them
that you're the boss. You have to have
the answers. So what I going
to tell them when we're flying
again, that's just a flat out lie. So I
do think the other thing
(01:32:04):
is, you know, the moments of,
which just takes learning to winter the
moments to be honest and say you don't
have all the answers,
but you still have to, you know, be
confident, you have to stop and still
confidence you can't get
him just, oh my god, I don't want to fly.
I don't want the hotel. We
might call out a business. Holy
shit. God, I wish us all the best of
luck. That isn't going to
(01:32:24):
work as opposed to I'm not sure
we're in these hotels again, but we're
here together. And we're
gonna make it through and
we're gonna figure it out together. Oh,
I'll follow that guy. So
that's the other one is the
I once listened to a German CEO session
and he talked like, Oh no,
COs can never say they don't
have the answers. And I just thought,
buddy, I don't want to stay
(01:32:45):
Germans, but I just started
talking my head that moment. I thought,
buddy, you don't get it. Or
maybe it's worked for you.
Yeah. No, I appreciate you laying that
out. And that, and that
resonates because I remember when
we were, you know, our, our main
demographic is, is restaurants, you know,
we do, yeah, we do HVAC
refrigeration and kitchen equipment
repair for restaurants. So
(01:33:07):
when COVID hit now we were able to
kind of maneuver a little bit. We knock
on wood. We didn't have to
furlough anybody. You know,
we, we focused on the QSR quick service
restaurants that were still operating.
But I remember through
that time, my objective as the CEO of
that company was to just let people know,
(01:33:28):
even if I didn't know,
right. So confidently tell them that I
didn't know. So I would put
out like a, an audio recording
every week, every two weeks. And then,
you know, when we got to the
latter end, it became every
three weeks, then every month, you know,
but just saying, Hey, listen,
I don't know what's going to happen. I
don't know when they're going
to be able to open their doors
again. I don't know any of that, but I do
(01:33:50):
know that we can use this
time to learn. We can use
this time to grow. We can use this time
to, you know, invest into
the resources. So when things
open back up, we're going to be ready to
hit the ground running
because people are going to have
problems and you know, we're going to be
there to fix them. And I'll tell you,
like, I did not know
if that was going to work. Like that came
from a place of reaction. It
(01:34:11):
didn't come from a place of
strategy. Like I hadn't talked to Joe
Davis first and said, Hey, I
got, I have a, I have a great
plan now. No, but it was, um, it was an
incredible learning experience for me
because it, it, it truly
shows exactly what you're talking about.
The response from people
was great. Nobody quit.
Nobody got too scared. It was almost
(01:34:33):
like, you know, we all kind
of understood that there was
this big, great unknown and we were all
kind of in it together, you know? And,
uh, and so it was a,
it was a great feeling as a leader. And I
think I can't speak for
the team, but I would hope it
was a great feeling as a team to be a
team in that, uh, in that time as well.
So good example there.
(01:34:53):
I'll bet you your team felt very great.
You know, the thing is,
you just said this wasn't a
strategy, but you know what it was. It
was your heart, I bet.
And what's right and wrong.
And to go there and lie to people is
wrong. That's just a fact. No, maybe
sometimes you have a white
lie to protect somebody. I get it. So we
can argue, but you know, the
lie and your heart was saying,
(01:35:14):
wow, we're stuck and I just got to lay it
out with these folks. But
you also then had a strategy,
which I'm going to use this time to do
blah, blah, blah. So it's not
like, oh my gosh. So actually,
there were some traits there that you
went to naturally. I'm
arguing right and wrong in your
heart. I never thought about it right
now, but I think that's what
happened. You know, actually,
I think you're spot on because I think in
that moment it was like,
(01:35:35):
oh shit. I mean, really,
that was it. I mean, and that, and that
is all encompassing. Oh shit,
my family. Oh shit, my team.
Oh shit, my business, you know, all of
it. And, and I think for
me, at least I can't speak for
everybody, for me, that inspires unity,
you know, and, and, and really leaning
(01:35:56):
into what's right and
what's wrong. Cause so much is wrong at
that time. I've got to be the right, you
know, no matter what
that looks like. So anyway, I mentioned
that cause I think there's
other people, we're probably in
the same boat too. Uh, go ahead. It
doesn't be a crisis to do
that. If you come up there every
(01:36:16):
time, say I don't know what we're doing,
eventually someone's going to fire you
too. Cause you know,
yeah, that's a good point. Certainty are
the times to do that.
Cause everybody knows it's
uncertain. The minute you start
bullshitting them, sorry, well, they're
not dummies or they shouldn't
be working for you. Agreed. So I want to
(01:36:37):
touch on one more thing too,
before, uh, before we wrap up,
uh, or, or move toward the end. And if
this is something that I
hear from a lot of leaders,
actually probably more so young leaders
than experienced leaders,
but it's definitely a topic
of conversation quite often. It was
something I struggled with
when I was a younger leader.
And, um, it's this, it's this premise of
(01:37:00):
having difficult
conversations, right? You know,
we kind of framed it before when we were
talking as feedback, as
candor, things like that, but
there is this, this aversion to having
difficult conversations
because of how you're going to be
viewed or what their reaction is going to
be from somebody or, you
know, unknown, all that kind of
stuff. So I'm wondering, Joe, if you have
(01:37:22):
any framework for, you
know, the, the leaders out
there that may struggle with these types
of conversations that
you can share with them to
help them through, um, having them. Yeah.
I don't know if this
framework enough for you,
but I do, you know, let's raise the
console, but I do have some basic
premises. I think the first
(01:37:44):
thing is you have to care about them to
some degree. And if you
care, they'll know it. And then
you can say whatever you can't be an
asshole, but you can say
almost whatever that's coming from
caring. They're going to say, okay, this
person's already didn't pick
the right word there and the
right word there, but he or she meant
well. And I actually
would advise to young leaders,
(01:38:06):
start that practice of, you know, showing
your team, you see them as
a human and you care about
them growing and developing as early as
you can. That trust is
massive. You know, the vulnerability,
the, I don't know. So, and then the next
thing I'd say though, when
you have those conversations,
you got to do a little bit of work. You
got to sit down and think
about, okay, what is it that
they're not doing that I want them to do?
(01:38:27):
What is it really?
How do I say it clearly?
As you and I talked about also, what are
the things they're doing damn well?
And, and I'm not, you know, I've heard
this like sandwich, you know, good news,
bad news, good news.
Not saying that, but I am at some people
think I'm silly. Something's fine. I
don't care. But what
it is, is there's, is there great at
stuff? How can they
leverage that? So you have to sit
all over, okay, I'm gonna have this tough
(01:38:48):
conversation with Josh.
So he's great at this,
he's great at this. So Josh, you got to
work on these three things.
Boom, boom, boom. If you don't,
you're out of a job or something like
that. But I'll tell you,
you've got two traits here that
are incredible. Boom, boom. I think, and
then you work it through. So
that would be my framework is
try to come from a place of caring. If
you don't, it's going to be
hard because they'll feel it.
(01:39:08):
They'll tell you. And then, you know,
think about what does they need to do
really and be able to
clearly specify, say it and think about
how they, any of their strengths that
they can leverage to
make up for it. And that's what that guy
said to me when you say you
ain't smart enough to solve
problem by yourself. A man, you're great
at teaming. Okay, get smart
people around me. I was pretty,
you know, he didn't say that, but it was
pretty clear advice. And if
(01:39:30):
you're going to be embarrassed,
well, then I'll be stuck all the time.
When he told me that I was a little hurt.
But now you know, right? And I like the
feet, the positive. Yeah. That's cool.
No, that's great. I appreciate you
sharing that with me. And so that leads
me into one more thing
about this difficult conversations. The
other thing I hear, right,
(01:39:51):
is, is people struggling,
and I'm, you know, I'm raising my hand
here too, right? With people
struggling with, um, how much
specificity do you need when delivering
this information? What kind of evidence,
what kind of facts, what kind of homework
do you have to bring to the
table or, or is you being,
(01:40:16):
being the leader, is it enough for you to
say, this isn't how I want it done.
Sorry, but if that's all you say, good
luck to you. I mean, shame
on you and they don't deliver.
Maybe you fed that up to me, but that is
a stupid estate. You
can say that that's fine,
but then you better have someone right
(01:40:36):
behind you who knows how to
help. What did he, what did he
mean? Well, you know, he likes Tuesday to
be on Wednesday. I don't
know if you can change your
calendar, but he wants you to change it.
And what the fuck? So, um,
you know, on your specificity,
the first thing I would say to that is
it's better to do things in
the moment when you see them,
you know, that was that feedback from my
40 year old sales
(01:40:57):
rep. Why the fuck sorry,
didn't you tell me when you're ride with
me? Shame on you, Joe Davis,
even though you're my boss,
you know, you can say it that's a nice
sleep. So first off in the
moment, and then you say,
Hey, Josh, you know, that podcast we did
together and boom and boom and boom,
remember that? Yeah,
of course. Cause we just hung up. Oh wow.
What do you mean? And you
know, you can process it.
Now the one caveat I get that is
(01:41:19):
someone's really down. Something really
goes bad. Don't go kick
them. You know, you gotta be a human.
You're like, this is not the moment to
kick them. But if it's
just, I had another colleague come out of
a meeting. Well, actually
I'll tell us a different story.
We had come out of a meeting. You know, I
say, you know, I say,
well, how did I do the boss?
Yeah. I like, right? What are they going
to tell you? But then
he'd say, okay, well,
how do you think the media went? And then
(01:41:39):
he'd give each of us
feedback. But it was instant.
The one time I had another fellow was
presenting to the client, the executive
team. And he said the
word like all the time. And you know,
like if you play like,
you know, that's just,
we talked to him earlier, you could
swear, but saying like all the time,
losing a little respect.
Yeah.
(01:42:00):
The client all left. We're in the room.
And I said, Hey, Alex, let
me ask you a question. How old
are you? I'm 30. I said, 30 year olds
don't say like, cut the
fuck. I get that word out of your
book. And I said right in front of the
whole deal. He goes like this. And he
told me like five years
later, you know, that was the most
embarrassing moment in my life. But I
never said like again.
And I knew, I knew this was a moment to
kick him, you know, because
(01:42:21):
he had to break that habit.
So it was in the moment. It was
embarrassing. You never
forgot it. So I think,
but it also came from, I wanted him to be
great. You know, I knew that saying that.
And that's, and that's amazing. Because
what we did is we just
brought this whole podcast full
circle. Cause we opened this thing about,
about being nice, generous
(01:42:41):
does not mean being nice.
There was a good example on your perfect
example of somebody who
said, while it was super
embarrassing in the moment, but he never
did it again. So some of
the best advice I'm sure he
ever got, because you're right. People
don't want to like hear like
people like, like all the time,
you know, you know what I mean? But it's
(01:43:03):
it's so ultimately
that helped him in that.
And that was kindness in its best form.
So I appreciate you saying that.
You know, it takes a little from that.
Like he just had a great, he did very
well. If it had been
a horrible meeting, it wouldn't have been
the moment to tell him. So no, you know,
I'm not telling you to march out there
and start punching people.
Fair enough.
To be able to think that all of this
(01:43:23):
person's in a really, I had
another boss that always said,
Hey, the minute you promote somebody,
tell them everything
they do that needs to fix
because they're feeling so damn good.
Their, their ears are wide open.
Oh, that's funny. All right. I got one
more question for you,
Joe, and then we'll, we'll move to close
here. But I love to ask
this question. I get all,
all types of different answers. And, and
(01:43:46):
one of the most helpful
questions I ask on the show,
and I know that because most of the
people that reach out to
me say, Hey, I love what
so-and-so said when you asked them that
last question. And if
you've heard any of the episodes,
you know what I'm going to ask. But if
you could share one piece of
advice or wisdom that has the
potential to transform the way a blue
(01:44:06):
collar business owner or
any business owner thinks
about success, growth, leadership,
freedom, fulfillment, any of that, what
would that advice be?
You know, I think that advice is your
organization, your thing is
going to hum as your team hums.
And so, you know, your job is really
(01:44:29):
ensuring they're all
humming as best they can. You will
benefit. You know, that's, that's
probably what I think. And I don't care,
you can be the soccer
coach, you can be a mom or dad, your kids
are humming. It's, I mean,
you know, this is actually
kind of pretty basic advice. But my
brother once said to me, Oh, Joe, you
live in this BCG world,
and you're all nice to each other. I
(01:44:51):
don't buy that. I think, I think no
matter where you work,
the employees want to grow and want to be
better. And good managers and good
leaders want to have
to grow and be better because the whole
thing works. Absolutely. I
love it. Thank you so much.
So where can people find you? Where can
they find your book? Let us know.
Well, the book, of course, you find on
(01:45:12):
Amazon. I have a website,
joedavis.com. You can reach me
there. Also, I will, if people want to
leave me a message and
connect LinkedIn messages, I do look
at and I do respond. I'll give you my
email and then we can, I
don't like to talk by LinkedIn
messages, but I will respond. I don't
have any secrets. So I'm
(01:45:32):
more than happy to engage.
Great. Well, Joe, thank you so much for
spending your valuable time
with us and sharing that wisdom
and insight with our audience. Thanks,
Josh. That's a lot of
fun. All right, be well.
Thanks for listening to the blue is the
new white podcast. Be sure
to subscribe to get the latest
(01:45:53):
episodes. For more, please follow at Josh
Zolin on LinkedIn, Twitter, and
Instagram, or visit us
at blue is the new white.com where we
create success, not debt,
and build blue collar heroes.
So we talk a lot on
this show about leadership,
the different styles of leadership, being
a servant leader,
being a dominant leader,
you know, there's good, bad, perceived
good, bad, there's all these
different things and avenues
and ins and outs when it comes to
leadership, especially in
the blue collar skill trades,
trying to run, grow, and scale your
business while also trying to maintain
(01:00:28):
your life at home and,
you know, your network and your social
circles and all this
stuff ties directly back to
leadership. So I love having people on
the show that can speak directly to this,
especially through a very unique lens. So
Joe, we got to
talking before the show and
I'm really excited about the perspective
(01:00:48):
that you have. You wrote
the book on leadership,
the generous leader, right? So welcome to
the show, man. I mean, just how are you?
Thank you. This is fun to be here and I'm
very well. It's summertime.
I'm in northern Minnesota.
I've got eight grandchildren here with me
for the summer or, you
(01:01:09):
know, five or six weeks of it,
which is in my mind, just have it on
earth. So I'm pretty good. Thank you.
That's amazing. That's amazing. So, you
know, we'll get into who you
are and why you wrote the book
and all of that stuff. But I have a very
specific question for
you that you probably heard
eight billion times, but I really just
want your take on it. Are
leaders born or are they made?
(01:01:30):
I, you know, if I, I mean, sure, heard a
million times and
there's a million books,
so I guess I can't be wrong. But if
you're really asking me to think about
that and my observations
over time, and maybe there's some born
stuff, I don't know, but I
think you grow and you develop
into the leader you become. And I think
(01:01:52):
that's made. I really
believe that. And it might start
with your parents, hopefully, you know,
but who knows what mentors or, or
experiences throughout
your, your life and whatever work you do
or whatever roles you
play, you know, I think you're
going to grow into your leadership. So
maybe you're born with the
start. I don't know, but you
definitely grow into it. I know that
you're involved. Awesome.
(01:02:14):
Well, that's really great
news, I think, for a lot of people that
listen to this show,
especially the ones that don't feel
like they might have natural leadership
ability. I've seen that a
thousand times, people coming up
to me saying, Josh, man, I'm not a
leader, you know, what am I doing? And
we're going to talk a
little bit about that today. But before
we do, would you mind just kind of
(01:02:34):
introducing yourself
and telling our audience who you are,
kind of what your
background is and why you're here?
So, name's Joe Davis, you got that. I am
67 years old, it doesn't
matter. I had a long career with
Boston Consulting Group, a white collar
consulting firms, field interesting
(01:02:55):
related to this. First
six years old, my life was Procter &
Gamble Sales Rep, which was quite an
interesting experience in
and out of grocery stores, trying to
convince managers to put
head and shoulders in crust,
you know, toothpaste on the shelf. You
know, I think, obviously, I'm
here with you today, because
I did write a book at the end of my time
(01:03:16):
at BCG on some of my observations of
leadership. And I had
the great fortune to interview a number
of other leaders and asked
them now this all in the theme
of a generous type of leader, which I'm
sure we'll talk about. This is not you said the word dominant
a minute ago. That's an interesting word.
But this is what that
word means. I guess generous
(01:03:37):
leader can still be very dominant, but
there's a little angle that
I argue is very important.
Awesome. Well, why don't you start by
telling me why you felt like
you needed to write a book?
That's a good question. There was a
handful of reasons. I mean, one,
a number of my colleagues coming out of
(01:03:57):
COVID, said, hey, you
ought to write about leadership
and what you observed during that time
and what you did. I was
leading BCG in North America.
And I actually wrote like 38,000 words
really fast after I
stepped out of the role
and shared it with a publisher who said,
they said, so I skimmed
it and it's really good,
but no book. So what do you mean? And she
said, well, nobody will
(01:04:18):
want to read about COVID
a couple of years later. It takes some,
as you know, Josh, a couple
of years to get a book out.
Yeah. So I still wanted to send the
message, I think, is
important on leadership. And,
I had other reasons. I was leaving BCG. I
thought it'd be cool to write something,
give me a path after work, traditional
work. But the other
thing, and most important,
(01:04:38):
I had a friend of mine. I said, I'm going
to write this book. And you know,
Breni Brown, she writes the authenticity
books and sells a million
copies, two million copies,
and Adam Grant, whatever. I said, who's
going to read my book? He
said, Joe, it doesn't matter.
If you can move eight people to change
their leadership style,
you should consider success.
Now, as you and I both know, writing a
(01:04:59):
book is actually a lot of
work. So I wanted, I now have
aspirations to move more than eight,
given the effort I put into
it. But I think at the end of
the day, that really, as time goes on, is
why I wrote it. I thought,
okay, I can put my message
out there too, and my beliefs, you know,
and those that want to
read it, we'll read it.
That's amazing. So I guess that begs the
(01:05:20):
question, what do you want to move those
eight people toward?
Yeah. Well, you said the word, I mean,
servant leader and those
things kind of thing. I used the
word generous leader. And a couple of
points I'll make real quick.
First, first off, the negative,
generous leader does not mean you have
high paychecks. And if
you're going to afford to do that,
that's a great thing.
Nobody's going to begrudge you.
(01:05:40):
Thanks for the clarification there, man.
That is not a person that people want to
follow. You know, you made the point
about, say, I don't,
so, you know, I, and also the other guy,
very say, very
importantly is, you know, a leader,
it's not all about the heart. The
colleague, a friend of mine, the CEO
said, you know, Joe,
as a leader, you never have to forget
(01:06:01):
outcomes matter, you do
have to try results. And that's
the important thing. Now, his argument
was the sooner you move past
yourself, and unlock all the
great traits and human traits in the
people you work with, the
sooner you will get to the greatest
outcomes. So that's what I'm really
pushing is that, you know, I
think an exceptional leader,
the way I define generously, I'll also
(01:06:24):
say you still have to be a
good manager, you have to set
plans. I'm not saying that stuff. This is
a step beyond that. If
you, you know, if you got, you
got to work on the basics yourself, or
there's plenty of books on
management, but really, as
someone who gives of themselves freely
without expectation of
direct personal benefit, so that
others grow, thrive, and develop to their
(01:06:45):
full potential. You know,
that's what a great leader
does. And you know, when you said
something, we can talk about that
statement, I'm not a good leader,
I'd have some counsel on that. You know,
if you and the funny thing
about that is if you are really
ensuring, not funny, the bonus to it, if
you're ensuring everybody's thriving
their full potential,
you're going to win too, right? I mean,
(01:07:06):
the organization's gonna
do well, your team's gonna
do well, the outcomes will be great. And
usually the leader gets
credit for helping the team to
get there or for getting there. So it's,
you know, I do not believe
that if that is your reason for
helping others to get better, all about
only you, they see through
it, they smell it, they won't
follow you anywhere. But if it's really
what you're doing as a
leader, you're going to help them
(01:07:27):
thrive. You and your organization, your
team are going to win.
Well, that's a very, very good
description of that. Probably one of the
better ones that I've
heard. So I've got to ask,
where's the balance? Where's the balance
between expectations for
yourself as a leader, right? And
(01:07:50):
what you hope to achieve between the
expectation you have for
others, or maybe expectations is not
the right word. But how do you balance
the two to make sure you're
still moving forward in a way
that serves you and others? Well, I have
to interpret your question
a little bit. It's actually
arguing, if the whole thing's moving
forward, then you're moving forward. Now,
(01:08:13):
as far as we're talking about your own
development, we can talk about that
separately. And when you
say the word balance, often people say,
well, is it just being
nice? I think, you know, when I
describe what I thought that leaders, the
best leaders do, what
they're doing is actually caring
about you doing well. They're going to
benefit, but they care. If
they don't care at all, it's
really hard to help people move. And, you
(01:08:36):
know, so caring also
doesn't mean it's only being sweet
all the time out. I mean, I can tell you,
tell you, well, here's,
well, I'll just tell you some
feedback I got once. Sure. My manager or
my boss said, you know, Joe,
I could put two people in a
room, four walls, no door, no windows,
and give you a very tough
(01:08:56):
problem. And you don't get out
unless you get the problem solved. And
this other guy that works with me, named
Philip, he'd get out
of the room every time. You might not
ever get out of the room.
Whoa, that was okay. So I guess
I'm not smart enough. But he said,
however, then when you're out of the room
and you've got to now
execute and deliver on whatever that
brilliant idea was, he will
never deliver and you will
(01:09:17):
deliver 100% of the time. Because you
understand where your shortcomings are,
you know, you surround
your people, you're collaborative, etc,
etc. So that wasn't being
nice. He kind of told me,
hey, buddy, not the smartest guy in the
room. But he also said, you
know, to use a word that's kind
of common, your superpower is teaming,
collaborating, collaborating, leveraging
(01:09:37):
others. So you know,
the balance, when you say the word
balance, I know what you mean. But, you
know, even if the goal is
to push people to be the best they can
be, it's, you know, you got to give
feedback, you got to give
in the moment, you got to be direct, you
got to be honest, you have
to do it with thought. So it's
like go on and on the stories of, you
(01:09:58):
know, tough feedback, which I mean, one
time I let somebody go
in the room, the review room, so you
can't lose a good guy, I know
he's a good guy. And that's why
I'm letting him go. So what do you mean?
I said, he doesn't fit
here. He's not happy. We're not
doing him any good. Well, that's mean. I
said, No, making him
letting him work here is me. He's
going to end, of course, the I left doing
(01:10:18):
other great things because
he went to where he belonged.
It didn't belong personally, but you
know, where he fit better, good thrive.
Yeah, you know, and when you put it that
way, right, it's right or
wrong, nice or mean, that's
really subjective, right? And that's
probably a lot of love, very much of it
(01:10:38):
is circumstantial as
well. I've got a little post-it note up
in, in my office. And all it
says is candor is kindness.
Because to your point, to your point,
you're, you can't best
serve somebody unless you're
being honest with them. And sometimes
that feedback, if it's
honest, it's not always nice.
I mean, or what could be interpreted as
nice, right? Yeah, yeah. I
(01:11:00):
mean, nice isn't even the
relevant word because if it's honest,
it's this is now, if you're doing it
well, you do it in the
moment as best you can. You don't wait
for the end of the year.
You know, you say, Hey, these
three things, you did great. And here,
and these are the strengths
you can use to leverage. You do
help them to get better. But you're
direct. Now, you know, I
always say don't give mush feedback.
(01:11:21):
I can remember another story. One time a
person was not going to get
promoted. And I was the head
of the office and this person was there
and the woman, there was a
woman, it doesn't matter,
but it was a woman, it was a reviewer.
And she started giving him
feedback and blah, blah. And
we were telling him, you're not going to
make it. It's an up and
out, up or out place. So he's
losing the job. Well, she went on for, I
don't know, six minutes.
And it's, you know, I said,
(01:11:41):
what are you saying? Finally he looked
over me and said, Joe, am I
being fired? And I said, yes.
And he said, thank you. So one sense, one
word and two words and the
whole thing was communicated.
And you call it nice. You call that mean
as hell. He actually thanked
me because he was confused.
What is going on here? Am I losing my
job? Wow. Yeah. And that's,
that's really interesting too,
(01:12:01):
you know, because I think it's so easy
and I know this from personal
experience, right? It's so easy
to just to get wrapped up. You don't want
to be perceived as, as
somebody who's being mean or
being a jerk or being a bad leader by
delivering this type of
feedback. But in, in so many ways,
you're sealing your own fate by beating
around the bush. So it's, it's really
interesting. I want to,
(01:12:22):
I guess you're stealing theirs, which
case you're sealing yours, right?
Exactly. Exactly. All right,
Joe. So we've been talking for, Oh, do
you want to move on? Oh no, go ahead. One
other story on this.
Yeah, please. It's just was very, it's 20
start off Procter and
Gamble. As I said, sales rep,
we got promoted to manager. I had three
people working for me. They
(01:12:42):
were all in their forties.
I was 24, 25. So they were like, I was
scared to death. You
know what I mean? I mean,
and I would ride with them every week or
every two weeks. And
I never gave feedback,
basically because I was scared. Who am I
to tell this person to do it?
And then it came to the year
in view and I wrote all this stuff down
that this one guy should do
based on the manual in my two
(01:13:02):
years and started deliver the feedback.
And he, he looked up, he
said, wait, maybe two minutes.
He said, what the blank Joe, you ride
with me every two weeks and
you've never said any of this.
What the hell have you been doing? You
know, and it was since
because it's all my problem. He was
actually, interestingly, he was looking
to see what the young
(01:13:23):
whipper Snapper might be able to
tell him to be better. He was looking for
it. And I was scared for an entire year.
To your point about,
you know, you get caught in your own
head, you don't do anybody any favors.
Yeah, no kidding. So do you, do you help
leaders? Is this
something that you do? Is this a,
either a passion or a job or, I mean, is
(01:13:45):
this something that, that you focus on?
Well, it's not, I don't focus on it to
get paid for it. If you
mean like, but if you see,
you know, different, I mean, we serve
clients and help the clients to deliver
it. And at times have
networking closely with people about
their leadership. But I
(01:14:05):
actually, some people say,
what do you think is the legacy of 30
plus years in a place and
it just worked. And you know,
what I look back on is people that call
me up and say, you
know, Joe, I got this role
and it's this and that you said to me,
change the trajectory. You
know, you just told me straight,
whatever. So I do believe over my career,
it's a little bit too much about me, but
(01:14:26):
the way I thought about it is how do I
make sure you're great, how
to make sure you're great,
how to make sure you're great. And when
you're all great, the
organization's going to be great.
So you could argue, yes, that's what I,
and I didn't think
about it for a long time,
but it's time went on. I'm just, or
people said, Joe, you're always stopping
to think about how I
can improve. Well, if you don't improve,
I don't improve. So
(01:14:47):
it's pretty obvious to me.
So if you ask that in the context of is
am I a consultant
that helps leaders know,
but I do like to help people grow to be
the best they can be. And
that's why I push pretty hard
during my career. Good. Well, and I think
that's evident too,
through writing a book about
leadership, you know, being able to help
though, all of those
eight people you talked about.
(01:15:10):
No, that's what you're 800,000 listeners.
I want 80 of them to change.
Don't tell me how many really what's it.
I said, don't tell me how
many of this was you really
have. I have eight. I have eight. No, I
appreciate that. So I guess,
you know, I'm, I'm curious,
(01:15:30):
because even I'm sure through the book
and through your time at PCG, you know,
um, you probably have
people coming up to you and asking you
for advice on this kind of
stuff. I'd be curious if there's
anything that stood out as like the most
difficult problem for
a leader or even let's
narrow that down, maybe an emerging
leader and new leaders or
(01:15:52):
anything that sticks out,
like the one thing that's most difficult
for them to overcome or get used to.
Well, gosh, I have more than one, but I
will try to get one. No,
especially when you say the young
leader, I think the problem with young
leaders, not problem,
they're great. But the thing is,
if you're a young leader and have three
(01:16:12):
or four people working for you, if
they're not delivering,
you can actually do it all yourself. You
might have to stay up all
night. You might have to work
that well, but you can still do it. Now,
once you have 30 people
working for you, if you're still
caught in that, oh, I can do it all
because I haven't trusted
them. I haven't empowered them.
I haven't blah, blah, blah. You're now in
trouble because you can't do
30 people's worth overnight
(01:16:33):
or over. So I think that's the, and you
know, I think that's the
number one thing I've seen is
the stuff we talked about, feedback, the
newer leaders, either
they're afraid or they think,
you know, they don't want to be beat up
or whatever. So they're
not growing the people as
well as they can. They think they can get
it all done themselves.
They think they know better,
not empowering the others. I think that
(01:16:53):
is, we have other points,
but I think that's probably
the biggest thing because if you don't
grow out of it, you're
just not going to grow in your
leadership. I mean, I guess you have your
own company and just grow
the company for whatever
reason, the greatest products in the
world. But my son has a company and he's
now at 12 employees,
which not like a 27 year old kid or 29.
(01:17:14):
But, and he's, you know,
he's, I don't know if he,
I think he might have read my book, but
he does say, Oh dad, I see
why you're pushing me to think
like this. I said, yeah, buddy, you need
those 12 to be humming.
That's the way it works. I mean,
you're smart. You got all that, but they
have to hum. You can't hum by yourself.
Yeah. No, absolutely. And you know what?
It's funny. I've lived
this, right? I remember when
(01:17:35):
I had 12 employees and, and, and there's
a big difference now, still
not huge, but I'm somewhere
around 60 employees, but there's a lot
more than 12, but there's, there's
stages, right? And it
changes and especially the leadership and
what the company and the
people need from me throughout
those different stages of growth, which
we'll get into in a minute. I
(01:17:55):
am curious, what would you say
to somebody to help them get past that
feeling like they need to
do it all, right? Or, or help
them realize that leadership is about
that appropriate
delegation. Yeah. Well, you know,
(01:18:16):
there's two parts of your question, which
is help them get past it.
So that's in their own head
versus the act. I think the action I
would take and I've made more
backwards is, you know, just
understand those three or four people,
they want to do well too.
They're there to team with you.
They want things to hum now. And if they
don't, then you have to
outplace them or whatever,
(01:18:37):
you'll get them a different role. I'm not
saying, you know, we
talked earlier about being nice.
And so the more respect you can show them
and they also know stuff you
don't know. And the easiest
way therefore, easiest way to help them
grow and grow your business is to ask
questions, you know,
and then and listen to the answer. Don't
just, oh, he said that, but
that doesn't fit what I was
(01:18:58):
thinking. Or she said that and dismiss
it, but say, Oh, they think
this. And I think that you put
the two together. What does it mean? So I
think, so I think the best
action to take right off the
bat is just ask, ask questions all the
time. What do you think?
What do you think we should do?
Nothing else. They feel respected and
bound to know something. Now, if you're
so full of yourself,
I can't help you to your point. But the
(01:19:20):
counsel is you and I could
just both tell you, you're not
going to grow in the role if you don't
understand how to help them
grow. I mean, and the other guy
would say, just like that 40 year old
person, they want you to help them grow.
You know, I didn't know
that until you kind of swore at me a few
times. Whoa, this was, you
(01:19:41):
know, thank heaven someone
told me that when I was 25, how lucky was
I, right? So that's, you
know, probably the how you
get past it is just remember, you don't
know everything. The
others really do want to be part
of it with you. Eventually, you can't do
it all by yourself. I mean,
whatever, you know, whatever
hook it is for you, if you have, if you
like to coach your kid's
soccer team, you want to save
some hours to go do that. And you better
(01:20:01):
get your team really
humming so you can walk out.
I don't know. Find your
hook. You don't find your hook.
Okay. Well, okay. So you mentioned
questions. I really like to have this
type of conversation.
What types of questions is it that you're
asking people? And, and
how does that help you in a
leadership role? Well, I think the kind
(01:20:24):
of questions you're asking
is, you know, what do they
think about the situation that whatever
it is, you know, and you just, you know,
I mean, I got two points. I always tell
my teams in the consulting
world, because we're trying to
get clients to change is, you know,
uncut, engage the
(01:20:45):
skeptics and uncover the nose.
Why won't this work? And odds are most,
most knowologists, oh,
it's not going to work.
Maybe one out of 1000 are pain in the
neck. But most of them know
something you don't know. And,
you know, if you don't learn that little
thing, oh, guess what? It didn't work.
And somebody knew it.
So nothing else. Hey, we want to do this
(01:21:05):
and that anything you
don't see it might work here,
anything, any place I'm off, any other
ideas I'm missing. But I just
think, you know, like, what's,
it's very easy question, you know, what
might be wrong with this
plan, what might we not be able
to do? So engage, you know, not engage,
get to engage your team and
uncover the nose. It's very
easy. And that is actually helpful for
you. Because that's what
(01:21:25):
you're trying to solve, right? Yeah,
get rid of all the nose and
you, your path leads to us.
That's great. That reminds me of the book
of Go4Now, you know,
sales aspect, right? But,
but now you're putting it back towards
leadership. So, okay. So I'm just
listening, you got my gears
turning and when gears turn, I kind of
try rapid fire, but I'll slow
(01:21:47):
it down for our audience here.
But okay. So I'm thinking of a situation
and this is going to pertain
to humility. I imagine humility
is part of leadership, part of serving
leadership, part of being a generous
leader, right? You've got
to, you got to be humble in, in many
situations. So let's say
you're asking these questions and
(01:22:10):
you're saying to somebody, why won't this
work? And that somebody
says to you, well, Joe,
it's because of you, it's because how
you're handling it. How do
you handle that as a leader?
If they, if they, if they actually go
down that road and
say those words to you.
I'm nervous. Say that to the boss. I'll
be a print. First off,
I'd promote them right away.
I'd say, okay, I'm right there with you,
(01:22:31):
buddy. You're my assistant
from that one. My number two
or my chief of staff, whatever. I need
you next to me whispering in
my ear every minute of my life.
But that takes humility to your point.
Yeah. Well, you know,
two things. First off,
that situation for me, it'd be very
simple. Oh, why? Why? Why?
What, what, what am I doing?
That's all I'd shut the blank up. What am
(01:22:53):
I doing? And then you get defensive.
That's your problem.
It's only your problem. And you know, if
that's who you are, you have
to figure out to get past it
because all you're doing is losing
opportunities for others to help you get
better. Um, but building
on this, you know, when you, I struggled
with what's the number one
thing, because I didn't go
to humility or humbleness or
vulnerability, authenticity, whatever
(01:23:14):
word you want, but that
is essential. You know, you cannot get
people, I'm trying to think if
I'm right about this. I mean,
if you're in a position of massive power
with a lot of weapons and
shit like that, maybe you
can do it, but you cannot get people to
follow you really to the ends of the
earth. Um, hypothetically,
(01:23:34):
if they don't think you're authentic,
they don't believe you
acknowledge when you make mistakes
and not even make mistakes, but just
understand you don't know
everything. No, people can smell.
I'm sure we have had colleagues or I
don't think I've ever had
a boss that thought their
approach, but a colleague who just
thought he just, he put an aura of
everything's perfect.
You know, his kids were attractive. His
wife was right. He was
(01:23:54):
attractive. He was good at his job
well, who can follow him because it's my
gosh, I can't keep up, you
know, what am I going to do
wrong tomorrow next to this person? So
this whole humbleness is critical. And
sorry, well, you just
said it, but if you're really a good
listener, you have to be
humble enough to know you don't know
all the answers. We just can't be a good
(01:24:16):
listener. You know, a
guy named Alex Gorski,
the previous CEO of J and J, he said, you
know, the role of the
leader is not to have the best
answer in the room, but it's to get the
best answer out of the
room. I thought what a clever,
simple way to think about it. Okay. My
job today is make sure all of us, some,
but I don't know who's
going to come up with it or we do it as a
group to come up with the
best answer. I really liked that.
(01:24:38):
I'm glad that you shared that with me and
with our audience.
I'm going to steal that.
It's easy to remember, you know? Yeah,
yeah, yeah. No, that's
really good. And I'm glad that you
expanded on that because my next question
was going to be, okay, so
how do you get that person
comfortable enough to say those words to
you? Because Joe, I know
more leaders that are humble,
(01:25:00):
but their team is, I don't want to say
afraid. It seems like the
wrong word, but maybe intimidated
too intimidated by the owner, the CEO,
the executive to have those
super candid conversations
upstream. No, and it's, it's, I mean, you
and I just don't kid each
other. It's not easy. I mean,
(01:25:21):
it's triple not easy. So there's, you
know, you can, if you run the company,
you can put in mechanisms to invite it. I
mean, in place where I worked,
we had anonymous upward feedback. Now it
could be pretty harsh, you know, the
company's putting up.
You know, and we've been, then we, we
measured and partners of
the firm on revenue and their
upward feedback. And if either one of
(01:25:42):
those things were off for three years in
a row, you were gone,
including your, well, we got you short,
we got you all kinds of
help. If you, if you're
upper feedback, coaches, and we had to
get you, you know,
psychology, we got your psychologist.
But so one, you can build mechanisms to,
you can do something
which takes some, which takes
some humbleness, which is sit down with
your team and say, Hey, I want
(01:26:03):
us all to thrive. I want this
place to be great. And I want to be as
great at, you know, working
with all you as I can. So I'm
asking you now, you know, if you see
opt-in for feedback, I want
to hear it or, or even better,
I'm trying to work on this thing. So I'd
love you all to help and make
it a simple thing. I love you
all. If you observe me doing that thing
(01:26:23):
one way or the other way that you
actually give me feedback
on it, I'm really trying to work on that
thing. And that's the
simplest way to do it. Actually,
I just got me thinking real time. I mean,
you can put mechanisms
in, but now you have to be,
no, we just started with that. You've got
to be humble enough to
understand somebody else
knows something that can make you better.
But I mean, come on. If
you're married, you probably
know that even if you admit it or not.
(01:26:45):
Sorry, I'm trying to be a
mildly sexist, but you know,
I really do believe fair enough though. I
get what you're saying.
Hey, honey, I had a friend once
that he just wasn't a very good listener
at work. And we'd tell him
that, but finally he went,
went to a doctor and he discovered he had
ADD and he's like 45. And
(01:27:06):
he said, you know, they said,
I'm not a very good listener at work. And
when she goes, well, I
could have told you that I've
been telling you forever. You just never
listened. Oh, that's
amazing. So, so I would ask then how
much of the leader success, or maybe it's
a better question to
ask how much of the team's
success depends on the leader's ability
(01:27:27):
to invite that type of feedback.
Well, well, let me put it a different
way. I think it, well, how much I don't
know mathematically,
but I think, you know, I think if you ask
me, there's being a very good listener,
so you bring out everything the best you
can. And this, this
whole trade on humbleness or
vulnerability are just so powerful
(01:27:48):
because the vulnerability
part releases roadblocks for
everybody. You know, I'll tell a story. I
asked someone
colleague of mine, you know,
what's some of your vulnerable moments?
This guy said, well, you know, I just
hate to admit I don't
know something. He's a black male. So it
was a little bit even
trickier. I was just going to say,
I don't know something. And he said, if
(01:28:10):
the team is going to, I can
tell they're stuck and I'm
in there. They're going to ask me like
direction help help. And I
don't know the answer. I'll leave
before I'll get to cause this question.
How productive is that?
Now your company's just
your team, whatever is done. And he said,
so one day I stayed in the room.
He said, you know, I took a big breath.
Said, you know,
everybody, I don't know either.
And he said, it was stunning because the
(01:28:30):
energy in the room just unleashed. Oh,
you don't know too. You mean none of us
know. Oh, well, let's all
start solving it together.
And you just unleashed your team by three
simple words or one simple
admission. So I don't know
how much when your point how much, but I
think it is quite valuable
that you show some humbleness
such that somebody is stuck. They can
(01:28:51):
come to you and say, I'm stuck. And you
can together figure it
out because having them, I don't know,
most businesses, I'm
sure it's time is the thing.
That's the biggest issue, right? Time
costs. And so if someone's not doing
their job for three days,
you just lost three days. I once had a
boss who I was doing some
math thing and I was stuck.
And I walked down the hall and asked him,
he was a senior partner
(01:29:11):
in my firm. He said, oh,
I don't know how to do this either. Let's
walk down the hall and
ask Philip. He'll know,
you know, what a message to me that was
now he just was naturally
that way. I thought, holy
shit. He could have kicked me out of the
room, walked down the hall
and self asked and call me back.
He just said, I don't know either. I sent
this freedom to me and
oh, it's okay to go ask when
you're stuck. So, and that to me, you
(01:29:33):
call it vulnerability and
call it, you call whatever you
want. It's common sense maybe to say you
don't know when you don't,
but man, it just frees your
teams. It frees them. Fair enough. So
then, so then help me
understand, help me understand some,
some pitfalls that leaders should be
aware of, right? Maybe
through their evolution into
(01:29:56):
leadership. What should they watch out
for? Well, I think, I
mean, I think the first one,
which we've said is this hubris that you
can do it all and, or you
know it all. I mean, that's,
that's the first pitfall or that, well,
yeah, I think that, cause
that happens more as you
younger versus, you know, wiz, if nothing
(01:30:17):
else, age builds wisdom and
oh, wow, you know that later on.
That's one big one. The other thing I
think is, is this whole fear of feedback
and it goes both ways,
which is someone's not really cutting it
and you have to let them go.
Then you gotta let them go.
And you know, we all, most people want to
(01:30:38):
kind of be nice too.
Well, no, no, no, maybe I can,
maybe I can help. But if they just can't
get, and I say that cause I
remember my son, when he had
let his first person go and I get in
counseling, how I would do it
later. And then he said, oh,
dad, I wish you was, she said, God damn
it. You tell her it's not working out.
Good are the reasons.
But that's another problem. I think is
also not, you know, this
(01:30:58):
whole feedback thing, but being
afraid to make the moves you need to do.
And that's easier as time goes. It's
easier once you've done
it once, once you've done it twice.
That's a pitfall. We already
talked about the feedback to
help people grow and develop and the
mushiness that's, that's a
pitfall. You know, the other
and then I, I don't know where this
(01:31:22):
comes, but I remember during COVID and
you probably saw it too,
you know, a lot of leaders, I mean, the
famous one is Arnie
Sorensen, the CEO Marriott.
He has a video, he's dying of cancer and
he gets on the videos, his
ball because of the chemo and
the radiation and all that. And he says,
you know, to everybody, we don't know
where this is going.
Unfortunately, you know, I've taken a pay
cut, everything to be
cut. I have to furlough the
(01:31:43):
hope. We don't fire you, but I have to
furlough you and we're
gonna make it through, be here
together. But I don't, you know, I don't
know when people are going
to be back in the hotels.
And Scott Kirby, CEO United is doing the
same thing. And his team
said, you can't tell them
that you're the boss. You have to have
the answers. So what I going
to tell them when we're flying
again, that's just a flat out lie. So I
do think the other thing
(01:32:04):
is, you know, the moments of,
which just takes learning to winter the
moments to be honest and say you don't
have all the answers,
but you still have to, you know, be
confident, you have to stop and still
confidence you can't get
him just, oh my god, I don't want to fly.
I don't want the hotel. We
might call out a business. Holy
shit. God, I wish us all the best of
luck. That isn't going to
(01:32:24):
work as opposed to I'm not sure
we're in these hotels again, but we're
here together. And we're
gonna make it through and
we're gonna figure it out together. Oh,
I'll follow that guy. So
that's the other one is the
I once listened to a German CEO session
and he talked like, Oh no,
COs can never say they don't
have the answers. And I just thought,
buddy, I don't want to stay
(01:32:45):
Germans, but I just started
talking my head that moment. I thought,
buddy, you don't get it. Or
maybe it's worked for you.
Yeah. No, I appreciate you laying that
out. And that, and that
resonates because I remember when
we were, you know, our, our main
demographic is, is restaurants, you know,
we do, yeah, we do HVAC
refrigeration and kitchen equipment
repair for restaurants. So
(01:33:07):
when COVID hit now we were able to
kind of maneuver a little bit. We knock
on wood. We didn't have to
furlough anybody. You know,
we, we focused on the QSR quick service
restaurants that were still operating.
But I remember through
that time, my objective as the CEO of
that company was to just let people know,
(01:33:28):
even if I didn't know,
right. So confidently tell them that I
didn't know. So I would put
out like a, an audio recording
every week, every two weeks. And then,
you know, when we got to the
latter end, it became every
three weeks, then every month, you know,
but just saying, Hey, listen,
I don't know what's going to happen. I
don't know when they're going
to be able to open their doors
again. I don't know any of that, but I do
(01:33:50):
know that we can use this
time to learn. We can use
this time to grow. We can use this time
to, you know, invest into
the resources. So when things
open back up, we're going to be ready to
hit the ground running
because people are going to have
problems and you know, we're going to be
there to fix them. And I'll tell you,
like, I did not know
if that was going to work. Like that came
from a place of reaction. It
(01:34:11):
didn't come from a place of
strategy. Like I hadn't talked to Joe
Davis first and said, Hey, I
got, I have a, I have a great
plan now. No, but it was, um, it was an
incredible learning experience for me
because it, it, it truly
shows exactly what you're talking about.
The response from people
was great. Nobody quit.
Nobody got too scared. It was almost
(01:34:33):
like, you know, we all kind
of understood that there was
this big, great unknown and we were all
kind of in it together, you know? And,
uh, and so it was a,
it was a great feeling as a leader. And I
think I can't speak for
the team, but I would hope it
was a great feeling as a team to be a
team in that, uh, in that time as well.
So good example there.
(01:34:53):
I'll bet you your team felt very great.
You know, the thing is,
you just said this wasn't a
strategy, but you know what it was. It
was your heart, I bet.
And what's right and wrong.
And to go there and lie to people is
wrong. That's just a fact. No, maybe
sometimes you have a white
lie to protect somebody. I get it. So we
can argue, but you know, the
lie and your heart was saying,
(01:35:14):
wow, we're stuck and I just got to lay it
out with these folks. But
you also then had a strategy,
which I'm going to use this time to do
blah, blah, blah. So it's not
like, oh my gosh. So actually,
there were some traits there that you
went to naturally. I'm
arguing right and wrong in your
heart. I never thought about it right
now, but I think that's what
happened. You know, actually,
I think you're spot on because I think in
that moment it was like,
(01:35:35):
oh shit. I mean, really,
that was it. I mean, and that, and that
is all encompassing. Oh shit,
my family. Oh shit, my team.
Oh shit, my business, you know, all of
it. And, and I think for
me, at least I can't speak for
everybody, for me, that inspires unity,
you know, and, and, and really leaning
(01:35:56):
into what's right and
what's wrong. Cause so much is wrong at
that time. I've got to be the right, you
know, no matter what
that looks like. So anyway, I mentioned
that cause I think there's
other people, we're probably in
the same boat too. Uh, go ahead. It
doesn't be a crisis to do
that. If you come up there every
(01:36:16):
time, say I don't know what we're doing,
eventually someone's going to fire you
too. Cause you know,
yeah, that's a good point. Certainty are
the times to do that.
Cause everybody knows it's
uncertain. The minute you start
bullshitting them, sorry, well, they're
not dummies or they shouldn't
be working for you. Agreed. So I want to
(01:36:37):
touch on one more thing too,
before, uh, before we wrap up,
uh, or, or move toward the end. And if
this is something that I
hear from a lot of leaders,
actually probably more so young leaders
than experienced leaders,
but it's definitely a topic
of conversation quite often. It was
something I struggled with
when I was a younger leader.
And, um, it's this, it's this premise of
(01:37:00):
having difficult
conversations, right? You know,
we kind of framed it before when we were
talking as feedback, as
candor, things like that, but
there is this, this aversion to having
difficult conversations
because of how you're going to be
viewed or what their reaction is going to
be from somebody or, you
know, unknown, all that kind of
stuff. So I'm wondering, Joe, if you have
(01:37:22):
any framework for, you
know, the, the leaders out
there that may struggle with these types
of conversations that
you can share with them to
help them through, um, having them. Yeah.
I don't know if this
framework enough for you,
but I do, you know, let's raise the
console, but I do have some basic
premises. I think the first
(01:37:44):
thing is you have to care about them to
some degree. And if you
care, they'll know it. And then
you can say whatever you can't be an
asshole, but you can say
almost whatever that's coming from
caring. They're going to say, okay, this
person's already didn't pick
the right word there and the
right word there, but he or she meant
well. And I actually
would advise to young leaders,
(01:38:06):
start that practice of, you know, showing
your team, you see them as
a human and you care about
them growing and developing as early as
you can. That trust is
massive. You know, the vulnerability,
the, I don't know. So, and then the next
thing I'd say though, when
you have those conversations,
you got to do a little bit of work. You
got to sit down and think
about, okay, what is it that
they're not doing that I want them to do?
(01:38:27):
What is it really?
How do I say it clearly?
As you and I talked about also, what are
the things they're doing damn well?
And, and I'm not, you know, I've heard
this like sandwich, you know, good news,
bad news, good news.
Not saying that, but I am at some people
think I'm silly. Something's fine. I
don't care. But what
it is, is there's, is there great at
stuff? How can they
leverage that? So you have to sit
all over, okay, I'm gonna have this tough
(01:38:48):
conversation with Josh.
So he's great at this,
he's great at this. So Josh, you got to
work on these three things.
Boom, boom, boom. If you don't,
you're out of a job or something like
that. But I'll tell you,
you've got two traits here that
are incredible. Boom, boom. I think, and
then you work it through. So
that would be my framework is
try to come from a place of caring. If
you don't, it's going to be
hard because they'll feel it.
(01:39:08):
They'll tell you. And then, you know,
think about what does they need to do
really and be able to
clearly specify, say it and think about
how they, any of their strengths that
they can leverage to
make up for it. And that's what that guy
said to me when you say you
ain't smart enough to solve
problem by yourself. A man, you're great
at teaming. Okay, get smart
people around me. I was pretty,
you know, he didn't say that, but it was
pretty clear advice. And if
(01:39:30):
you're going to be embarrassed,
well, then I'll be stuck all the time.
When he told me that I was a little hurt.
But now you know, right? And I like the
feet, the positive. Yeah. That's cool.
No, that's great. I appreciate you
sharing that with me. And so that leads
me into one more thing
about this difficult conversations. The
other thing I hear, right,
(01:39:51):
is, is people struggling,
and I'm, you know, I'm raising my hand
here too, right? With people
struggling with, um, how much
specificity do you need when delivering
this information? What kind of evidence,
what kind of facts, what kind of homework
do you have to bring to the
table or, or is you being,
(01:40:16):
being the leader, is it enough for you to
say, this isn't how I want it done.
Sorry, but if that's all you say, good
luck to you. I mean, shame
on you and they don't deliver.
Maybe you fed that up to me, but that is
a stupid estate. You
can say that that's fine,
but then you better have someone right
(01:40:36):
behind you who knows how to
help. What did he, what did he
mean? Well, you know, he likes Tuesday to
be on Wednesday. I don't
know if you can change your
calendar, but he wants you to change it.
And what the fuck? So, um,
you know, on your specificity,
the first thing I would say to that is
it's better to do things in
the moment when you see them,
you know, that was that feedback from my
40 year old sales
(01:40:57):
rep. Why the fuck sorry,
didn't you tell me when you're ride with
me? Shame on you, Joe Davis,
even though you're my boss,
you know, you can say it that's a nice
sleep. So first off in the
moment, and then you say,
Hey, Josh, you know, that podcast we did
together and boom and boom and boom,
remember that? Yeah,
of course. Cause we just hung up. Oh wow.
What do you mean? And you
know, you can process it.
Now the one caveat I get that is
(01:41:19):
someone's really down. Something really
goes bad. Don't go kick
them. You know, you gotta be a human.
You're like, this is not the moment to
kick them. But if it's
just, I had another colleague come out of
a meeting. Well, actually
I'll tell us a different story.
We had come out of a meeting. You know, I
say, you know, I say,
well, how did I do the boss?
Yeah. I like, right? What are they going
to tell you? But then
he'd say, okay, well,
how do you think the media went? And then
(01:41:39):
he'd give each of us
feedback. But it was instant.
The one time I had another fellow was
presenting to the client, the executive
team. And he said the
word like all the time. And you know,
like if you play like,
you know, that's just,
we talked to him earlier, you could
swear, but saying like all the time,
losing a little respect.
Yeah.
(01:42:00):
The client all left. We're in the room.
And I said, Hey, Alex, let
me ask you a question. How old
are you? I'm 30. I said, 30 year olds
don't say like, cut the
fuck. I get that word out of your
book. And I said right in front of the
whole deal. He goes like this. And he
told me like five years
later, you know, that was the most
embarrassing moment in my life. But I
never said like again.
And I knew, I knew this was a moment to
kick him, you know, because
(01:42:21):
he had to break that habit.
So it was in the moment. It was
embarrassing. You never
forgot it. So I think,
but it also came from, I wanted him to be
great. You know, I knew that saying that.
And that's, and that's amazing. Because
what we did is we just
brought this whole podcast full
circle. Cause we opened this thing about,
about being nice, generous
(01:42:41):
does not mean being nice.
There was a good example on your perfect
example of somebody who
said, while it was super
embarrassing in the moment, but he never
did it again. So some of
the best advice I'm sure he
ever got, because you're right. People
don't want to like hear like
people like, like all the time,
you know, you know what I mean? But it's
(01:43:03):
it's so ultimately
that helped him in that.
And that was kindness in its best form.
So I appreciate you saying that.
You know, it takes a little from that.
Like he just had a great, he did very
well. If it had been
a horrible meeting, it wouldn't have been
the moment to tell him. So no, you know,
I'm not telling you to march out there
and start punching people.
Fair enough.
To be able to think that all of this
(01:43:23):
person's in a really, I had
another boss that always said,
Hey, the minute you promote somebody,
tell them everything
they do that needs to fix
because they're feeling so damn good.
Their, their ears are wide open.
Oh, that's funny. All right. I got one
more question for you,
Joe, and then we'll, we'll move to close
here. But I love to ask
this question. I get all,
all types of different answers. And, and
(01:43:46):
one of the most helpful
questions I ask on the show,
and I know that because most of the
people that reach out to
me say, Hey, I love what
so-and-so said when you asked them that
last question. And if
you've heard any of the episodes,
you know what I'm going to ask. But if
you could share one piece of
advice or wisdom that has the
potential to transform the way a blue
(01:44:06):
collar business owner or
any business owner thinks
about success, growth, leadership,
freedom, fulfillment, any of that, what
would that advice be?
You know, I think that advice is your
organization, your thing is
going to hum as your team hums.
And so, you know, your job is really
(01:44:29):
ensuring they're all
humming as best they can. You will
benefit. You know, that's, that's
probably what I think. And I don't care,
you can be the soccer
coach, you can be a mom or dad, your kids
are humming. It's, I mean,
you know, this is actually
kind of pretty basic advice. But my
brother once said to me, Oh, Joe, you
live in this BCG world,
and you're all nice to each other. I
(01:44:51):
don't buy that. I think, I think no
matter where you work,
the employees want to grow and want to be
better. And good managers and good
leaders want to have
to grow and be better because the whole
thing works. Absolutely. I
love it. Thank you so much.
So where can people find you? Where can
they find your book? Let us know.
Well, the book, of course, you find on
(01:45:12):
Amazon. I have a website,
joedavis.com. You can reach me
there. Also, I will, if people want to
leave me a message and
connect LinkedIn messages, I do look
at and I do respond. I'll give you my
email and then we can, I
don't like to talk by LinkedIn
messages, but I will respond. I don't
have any secrets. So I'm
(01:45:32):
more than happy to engage.
Great. Well, Joe, thank you so much for
spending your valuable time
with us and sharing that wisdom
and insight with our audience. Thanks,
Josh. That's a lot of
fun. All right, be well.
Thanks for listening to the blue is the
new white podcast. Be sure
to subscribe to get the latest
(01:45:53):
episodes. For more, please follow at Josh
Zolin on LinkedIn, Twitter, and
Instagram, or visit us
at blue is the new white.com where we
create success, not debt,
and build blue collar heroes.
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