January 22, 2024 • 44 mins
Discover the alchemy of authentic leadership with Adam Sinkus, the mastermind behind A Purpose Partnership and the Winning Tactics podcast. Adam shares a candid tale of ascension through the ranks, challenging the notion that leadership is simply a reward for high performance. Instead, he unveils the true requisites of command: trust, respect, and earned authority. Delve into Adam's revolutionary anti-agency business model, an antidote to the bait-and-switch of senior figures selling dreams only to pass the baton to less seasoned teams. His ethos? Ensuring that strategic direction and expert oversight aren't just promised—they're delivered.
Feel the pulse of your organization with the ACES framework, an ingenious tool to synchronize the heartbeat of executives and frontline employees. We dissect the startling statistics of cultural disconnection, and how Acknowledgment, Cultivation, Empowerment, and Success can be the compass leading to common ground. In this high-energy exchange, we unravel the transformative strategy of marrying passion with training, and how a positive spin on post-mortem meetings can set the stage for a future-forward mindset. Communication is not just a thread but the very fabric that binds a thriving corporate culture, and Adam will guide you through making every interaction with your team a stepping stone to collective triumph.
As the conversation deepens, we lace the talk of leadership and culture with strands of personal growth. From the importance of humility to the balance of profitability and the human element, we leave no stone unturned. Transparency and authenticity emerge as non-negotiable leadership traits, with Adam and I sharing our own vulnerabilities and growth spurts. The books that sculpt our philosophies find mention, inviting listeners to continue the journey beyond the airwaves. Leadership is a service, not a spotlight; it's about inspiring and empowering, not directing. If you're seeking to ignite a spark in your path or to fan the flames of your existing leadership style, Adam's insights are your kindling.
Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed
to help leaders intentionallygrow and thrive.
Here is your host author andleadership and executive coach,
dr William Attaway.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hey, it's William and welcome to today's episode of
the Catalytic Leadership podcast.
Each week, we tackle a topicrelated to the field of
leadership.
My goal is to ensure that youhave actionable steps you can
take from each episode to growin your own leadership.
Growth doesn't just happen.
My goal is to help you becomeintentional about it.
(00:37):
Each week, we spotlight leadersfrom a variety of fields,
organizations and locations.
My goal is for you to see thatleaders can be catalytic, no
matter where they are or whatthey lead.
I draw inspiration from thestories and journeys of these
leaders and I hear from many ofyou that you do too.
Let's jump in to today'sinterview.
(00:59):
I'm so excited today to haveAdam Senkas on the podcast.
After over 10 years in the BPOindustry, adam learned that call
centers were not where hewanted to be.
In 2019, he joined the team atElevator to help build the
business processes to grow andscale.
They helped their clients buildover $4 million in additional
(01:23):
revenue.
At the beginning of 2021, herealized there was a bigger
opportunity to split off theirhome services brand my Roofing
SEO.
Since then, he's been buildingand growing that brand.
In 2020, he launched theWinning Tactics podcast to help
business owners share strategiesthat they could use to survive
the pandemic.
(01:44):
That eight-week project turnedquickly into a passion, where
now he has 60-plus episodes ofactionable insights for small
business owners that they canapply tomorrow.
Adam, I'm so glad you're here.
Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, glad to be on the show.
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I would love for you to share some of your story with
our listeners, Adam,particularly around your journey
and your development as aleader.
How did you get started?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Oh gosh, that goes way, way back Back to that BPO
space that I got out of.
Call centers are gnarlybusiness.
I think we all start somewherein leadership.
What typically happens in a lotof industries high performer, I
got promoted, you're a leader,you're a trainer, you're this,
(02:35):
you're that Didn't really havethe right tools.
Yeah, it's like surprise,you're going to do this thing
and you got people that you'reresponsible for.
Now, the reality set in that Ieither needed to figure this out
for myself or I needed to gofind great leaders and start
(02:58):
modeling them.
I did a combination of both.
Over the years.
What I realized is that,especially in a lot of high
turnover industries, theleadership model and the
promotion model is so, so broken.
We have leaders that have nobusiness being leaders, not
(03:20):
because they aren't greatemployees and because they don't
in their contributions arephenomenal, but because they're
not really set up to be a leader.
Yeah, I took a step back and Ibecame a training manager for a
large call center site, and Itook a step back and I said wait
(03:41):
a minute.
We have this leadership program.
That's a self-guided path thatour leaders are going through
Once a month.
Let's just get together andtalk leadership.
We started these leadershiptrainings once a month and we
talked about things like havingdifficult conversations and
communicating better with youremployees, how to manage KPIs
(04:02):
the right way Started justhaving conversations round table
conversations about thesechallenges with a training
mindset in focus.
From there it just grew into apassion of mine to help
understand that there isactually a better way to be a
leader.
We have to step back, drop ourego, be real that we don't know
(04:28):
everything and step on the trainthat we're here to improve our
employees' lives.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I love that.
That's fantastic.
Given your experience and somany different venues of
leadership that you've been in,I'm curious how would you define
that word leadership?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
I get asked this question a lot and then every
time I struggle to come up withwhat the answer is.
But the reality is leadershipisn't a title, it's something
you earn.
You can be given the title ofmanager, team leader, whatever
your company calls it.
(05:10):
Leader in itself is somethingyou earn by building trust,
respect and authority with yourteam.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That's good.
You describe your currentbusiness as an anti-agency.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I've never come across that before and thought,
wow, I want to learn more aboutthat.
What do you mean by anti-agency?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yes, A purpose partnership.
We came to the table and werelike, look, we've worked in
agencies before consultingagencies, marketing agencies and
we realized that there's thishuge broken opportunity.
It's the model of seniorleadership and this wonderful,
(05:57):
glitzy, glammy salesperson showup to your sales meeting and
they sell you the dream andyou're like this is great.
Then you get your team and yourealize that none of those
people that you've trusted theirexperience to come to the table
with are actually involved.
We flipped the script on thatand we're like look, there's no
(06:21):
reason that every projectshouldn't have some sort of
strategic senior leader thatunderstands how to shift the
landscape.
Because I don't know about you,but I go through projects all
the time and I'm like this iswhat we presented.
And we get halfway through andwe realized that we need to make
a strong left turn atAlbuquerque so we can get right
(06:43):
back on track.
When you have junior peoplethat just don't have that level
of experience in there, theydon't know how to make that left
turn.
We believe in our anti-agencymodel that our senior leadership
is involved to some strongdegree in every contract that we
(07:05):
have.
We bring in senior level peopleto run the daily work that's
done on these.
We do have some junior folksand they bring their own
individual contributions to theprojects, but they're part of a
larger project team.
It helps them learn and growbut also make sure that we can
(07:25):
stay on track with what we needto accomplish with our clients.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
That's really good and I think you're spot on.
I mean so many times and Ithink listeners can definitely
relate to that you buy the modelin the showroom and then you
get home and you're like this isnot what was advertised, the
experience level, the skilllevel of the people that are now
engaged in my project not whatI saw, it's not what I heard in
(07:54):
the sales call.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah yeah, all too often that happens and it's
frustrating.
Even now I'm seeking andsourcing vendors for different
stuff and it's like I see it allthe time.
I'm like oh man, I'm just notengaging with you because you go
so totally against what webelieve in.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I'm imagining that would change the way that you
sell now that you engage withnew people, because, hey, this
is not going to be like everyother thing that you've
experienced in the past.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Absolutely yeah.
I mean, we lead with that right, we lead with that mindset.
We talk about passion.
We talk about doing the workthat we love to do.
We've niched down considerablyfrom where we started, not just
because it's the smart thing todo from a business perspective,
(08:50):
but because we've found nichesand types of clients that we're
passionate to do the work with.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
So, in your view, looking across the landscape of
the digital marketing world, itfeels like things are shifting a
little bit.
Things are changing not just inthe marketplace itself, but
even in people's mindsets andviewpoints on things like KPIs.
What are you seeing across thelandscape right now?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Well.
So there's a couple of thingsat play, and it really depends
on where businesses are at intheir growth cycle growth and
scale cycle.
So when we look at smallbusinesses, with the advent of
tools like chat, gpt and thehundreds and hundreds of great
AI tools out on the marketplace,the question that's coming to
(09:38):
mind is can I create the samequality or level of content that
a marketing agency creates forme for free using one of these
tools or for a nominal monthlysubscription?
And so that creates aninteresting space, because now,
as marketers, we have to talkabout not only how we develop
(09:59):
and think about content, butalso how we do that in a way
that supplements and complementswhat AI technology is out there
.
Why are we better, why is itstill better to have a person
versus the robots?
And I'll be honest, I'll be thefirst one to tell you we use AI
(10:22):
on a daily basis.
Chat, gpt and a few otherprograms are like constant tabs
on my browser window every day.
But that's the start of theprocess.
As we look at companies thatare larger in execution, what
we're seeing is that we'reseeing the way people are
(10:44):
focusing on.
Kpis is different.
So it used to be social media,kpis was likes and follows.
That's all that mattered.
Now we're looking more atconversions.
So there is an element of likesand follows it's eyeballs, it's
on your eyeballs and engagementon your content.
But how engaged is youraudience and are they actually
(11:07):
clicking from your social to asale point?
And that's a.
For most business owners andmost businesses, that's far more
important.
But up until probably a year ortwo ago, we were still really
enamored with likes and followsbecause they were feel good
metrics, absolutely so.
I don't know about you, but Ialways look at how many people
(11:30):
have liked my posts.
Sure absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It is a vanity metric , though, because what does that
like or follow put into yourbank account as a business?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Absolutely, absolutely.
So some of it is about trustand building that trust in the
marketplace, and there's valueto that right.
It also helps us see whatcontent works and what doesn't.
Yes, so there is some value toit, but not in the sense of the
ultimate KPI.
That you should be worriedabout is is my social media
(12:01):
campaign converting into dollarsand cents in my bank?
Yeah, absolutely.
When we look at website traffic,there's so many AI driven tools
out there for websites now, andit used to just be.
You looked at your GoogleAnalytics and maybe you might
have had some fancy tech forlooking at how people experience
(12:23):
your page, but now we'relooking at it more from.
We're scraping a lot more datafrom websites.
Now there's integrated tools sowe can actually see down to
your IP address locations likevery, very niche, tight
locations.
What's going on?
(12:43):
If you've signed up on a form,we capture your IP, we capture
your email address, capture yourinformation right to the
website, and now every time youcome back and visit, we can see
and we start to get this userprofile for you right, and so
we're seeing a lot of tools likethat becoming a lot more
(13:03):
commonplace, built into the backend of the websites, which is
giving us smarter data to workwith, and so that's the big
changes in the marketplace is,as marketers, we have to embrace
the technology because we arecreative types by nature and
that's okay.
But we have to embrace thetechnology, but we also have to
(13:26):
realize, and we have to educatepeople on, how does the
technology play with thecreative side and how do we get
that all to come together in auseful and impactful way.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
But you think there are ways to leverage that in a
strategic way to get betterleads from your website?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Oh, absolutely Absolutely.
So I'll give you a grade from acontent side.
This is how we bring everythingtogether, right?
So I will take blogs thateither we write for our clients
or that our clients have written.
I'll feed them into some AItools to generate out some base
(14:04):
social media posts.
Now, I'm not going to leavethose as they are, because
machine posts look like machineposts.
They lack that human touch, butwe look at those and that
creates a foundation, right?
So if I need 15 social postsfor this blog, instead of me
sitting there spending three,four or five hours looking at
(14:24):
that blog and trying to buildout the social posts, now I
spend 20 minutes building out acore of social posts from that
blog, and then I spend anotherhour or two making them right,
making them human, making thememotional, making them impactful
right, and so what we're seeingis we're seeing people work
(14:47):
smarter with the technology,which means we can do more,
right?
So now we have the capabilityto do more.
It's a double-edged sword inthe content world, though, right
, because there's so muchcontent coming out because of AI
, right?
What do you do with it all?
How do you get eyeballs on allof it?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, it feels like you need a partner to help you
develop a strategy for the wholething.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That's the other side of it.
So we do all of the contentcreation, but what really brings
it together is the strategybehind that.
Right, you know it's not just,we're not just, you know,
putting up a map of topics onthe wall and thrown darts at it.
(15:32):
Right, there's a thoughtprocess to this.
It's a mapped out strategy sothat we're focusing on and
targeting on specific goals.
Right, and not every businessthis is what's interesting Not
every business needs to focus ondirect money ROI from marketing
spent Sometimes in the brandjourney.
(15:57):
We need to focus on reach right, we need to get to build the
social profiles right, becausewe know that down the road that
will translate to ROI.
But in the here and now, yougot to spend a little bit to get
that.
Build the followers, build thereach, so that when we do the
things that are high impact ROIactivities, they actually will
(16:21):
work.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So you're building a foundation for the building that
you're eventually going to putup.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Absolutely, absolutely Right.
Other times, you know, it'sjust looking for eyeballs into a
new marketplace, like we mighttake an.
We have a client right nowwe're working on taking their
established software company andwe're taking them from a small
business space to an enterprisespace.
You know so.
Do we need to position them asa market leader at this point?
(16:51):
No, they've already done that.
Now we just need to.
We need to shift them, shiftthe eyeballs, right, right, you
know so.
Yes, we're going to eventuallyseek dollars and cents ROI from
our activities, but for now, wejust need to start shifting.
Can we get them seen in theright space by the right people?
(17:14):
Right, so there's no direct theROI?
Is the eyeballs to them, right?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
No, that makes sense from a strategic perspective.
I mean, I love theintentionality of that and this
is what you help your clients do, absolutely.
It's.
When we were talking previously, you mentioned a framework that
you use called ACES.
Yes, I would love for you tounpack that, because I found
this very interesting.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah, so ACES is a leadership framework, and it's
really built around how wedevelop leaders to have a
cultural mindset that drivesKPIs Right, and we didn't talk
about the stats, so I'm going togive a little bit of background
for the listeners here.
So a couple of things, right?
So number one is CEOs and theleaders all think that culture
(18:05):
is incredibly important in theircompanies, and employees tend
to agree with that, so we'veestablished a culture is
important.
What we are seeing, though, isthat executives seem to think
that culture is connected intheir companies, but frontline
employees seem to thinkdifferently.
(18:26):
A variation of in one study, Iwas looking at a variation of up
to like 20% in certaincategories, yeah, yeah, so
that's a huge gap, right, youknow, and we're still not even
talking about great numbers.
The CEOs are at like 40 to 55%in these categories, right, so
(18:48):
you know?
So we're only talking.
Like.
Half of CEOs are thinking liketheir companies are impacting on
these cultures in this culturespace, and then employees are
like yeah, like less than aquarter of employees in some
instances.
Yeah, so there is a huge, huge,huge disconnect with culture,
(19:10):
and the reason being is becausecompanies are tend to be more
focused on what's in it for meright.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And I'm okay with that, because the company does
need to be profitable in orderto retain employees and do what
they do and provide theirservices to the marketplace.
Totally on board with thatright.
However, if your employees loveto show up to work on Monday
morning, they are much moreinclined to help.
(19:39):
You have happy customers, happyshareholders and make more
profits.
That's a good word Makesperfect sense.
So how do we do that right?
So this is where the ASISframework comes in.
So ASIS is an acronym forAcknowledge, cultivate, empower
and Success.
Acknowledge is all about how wecommunicate with our employees.
(20:02):
This is the good, bad and theugly.
This is taking those coachingconversations from hey, you know
what you sucked at this thismonth to do better, right and
actually having impactfulconversations.
I've presented those early onin my leadership career because
that's what I was told, and I'vereceived more of those than I
(20:25):
can possibly ever.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I think we all have.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, right Too, positive communication as well.
Right, taking that extra stepto thank people for coming into
work.
Thanks for being here today.
I really appreciate yourcontributions to this project.
Things like that, just thosesimple pieces of communication,
(20:52):
tend to be really important aswell.
The other piece and this issomething you can go and do
today, it's super, super easySet time in your calendar every
day to have what I call thewalk-by touch point with every
single employee on your team.
The walk-by touch point, I likethat, yes, yes.
So this is, you know, stop bytheir desk or, in a virtual
(21:16):
environment, send them a ping.
Hey, got two minutes.
You know, ask them how theirday is going.
You know, if it's a Monday,what you should do over the
weekend, just like somethingsimple, like that doesn't have
to be work related, shouldn't bework related.
You're just checking in andgoing hey, I see that you're
here.
Thank you, I appreciate you.
Right, you should do that everysingle day with every single
(21:38):
employee.
I used to put a half an hour onmy calendar every day, at
different times of the day, tomake sure that I scheduled a
touch point with each employee.
You know and what that does.
Over time, you start to buildthis trust because they're like
oh you know, adam stops by mydesk every day and says hi and
make sure I'm OK, that's good,right, so the C is cultivate.
(21:59):
This is all about training andwe have to rethink training,
right, you know, as anorganization, we're like OK, we
need people, we need 10 peoplewith this skill set, right, and
what do we do?
We go to our leaders and we gohey, leaders, I need you to find
10 people on your team you canafford to send to this training.
Right, and our leaders go OK,cool, you know, brian, jill,
(22:24):
john, jane, y'all are going totraining for this, whether they
like it or not.
And we show up to training andwe go and do the bare minimum,
just enough to pass the training, and come back to our desk and
we sit down.
Instead, what we need to do asleaders is we need to understand
what our employees love to doand what our employees want to
do more of, and then we takethose training opportunities as
(22:47):
they come down and we go OK, youknow, jane told me that she's
more interested in learning howto use Python and SQL to create
better marketing and reporting.
Cool, I have a Python trainingand a project coming up that I'm
going to be using this for.
Let's get Jane into that Pythontraining.
Now.
Jane is super excited aboutthis because she's like, yes,
I'm getting Python training, Iwant to do this, right.
(23:09):
And then she comes back to herdesk and this is where the E
comes in Empower and this is allabout how we mentor Jane from
the time she comes back fromthat training to the time that
project starts to get herstarted working on that skill
immediately.
So we go from concept tomastery much, much quicker and
(23:33):
we create the opportunity tomake sure that six months down
the road, when that project isin full play, that we don't have
to retrain Jane on those skills.
So last piece of this issuccess, and this is just about
shifting the mindset in theorganization.
Right, you think about the postmortem meeting.
(23:54):
We show up to the post mortemand what's the first question
that's always asked what wentwrong, guys, right?
Yes, and everybody puts theirhead down at the table.
You know, or you know, or inthe virtual world, you know,
everybody sits there on mute,nobody says anything.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Find your spot on the table.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yep, yeah.
And so we change the mindsethere and we start to ask the
questions like what do we dowell that we can take to the
next project?
Right, it's a simple we'regetting the same information.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
We're just doing it in a way that makes people
excited to talk about it.
Yes, so that's what success isall about.
It's just shifting how we haveconversations, not ignoring the
negative ones, because we haveto have those once in a while,
but how we have the rest of theconversations.
Yeah, so that people aren't soreserved when something does go
(24:56):
wrong that they won't share.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I love that, adam.
I think that's so helpful whenI'm talking to my clients about
doing a hot washer post mortem.
There's three questions I givethem and I'm like you need to
cover all three of these in thisorder what went right, which is
exactly what you're describingright?
Celebrate?
Speaker 3 (25:16):
the win.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Celebrate the win, because that's so easy to skip
past.
Then what went wrong?
Okay, what went right, whatwent wrong?
Process through that and thenhow would we do it different
next time?
And that's where you processthat learning, so that it
becomes then something you canhave available the next time
you're in a similar situation.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Let me give you a shift on that second question.
Right, what went wrong?
Yeah, wrong is a very, verynegative shutdown.
Closing word Hopefully Right.
So what could we have donebetter?
I like that.
Right, it's a subtle shift.
No, it's good, that's good.
But again, getting back to thatsuccess conversation right,
(26:02):
it's the words we use now.
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Oh, that's so good.
You know, when you use thisASUS framework, I can imagine
this is changing mindset, notjust organizationally but
individually, with people aroundthe table, Like how have you
seen that shift play out withclients that you've introduced
this framework to?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
It's really important that we get the people at the
top of the organizationingrained in this.
They've got to love it beforeanything else happens.
Right, because your leaders ofthe organization are the ones
that are going to drive the restof the change.
That's good.
So what we see is we see thiswaterfall effect.
We see the leaders get reallyexcited.
They're like we're going toimprove culture.
(26:46):
It's important we get it right.
Now they're disseminating thatdown through their teams and
because it's so employee focused, so communication focused, so
people focused, it's easy toconnect with as you get you know
.
Lower, you know down to thefrontline employees, because in
(27:08):
frontline employees there'sthree main levels of leadership
in every company.
You've got your C-suite or yourexecutives.
They are worried about profitsand shareholders let's not be,
you know, candy-coated thisright.
You've got your mid-levelmanagement, you know, and some
this could be directors,associate directors there's
(27:28):
numerous titles.
Right, they are trying totranslate profits and
shareholders to people and time.
Right.
So they sit in a reallydifficult, crazy spot.
It's frustrating.
And then you have yourfrontline leaders and their sole
job is to keep your frontlineemployees happy, efficient and
(27:51):
productive.
Right.
So we go from money to how dowe get money and humans to match
to humans right, and so that'swhy we start at the top.
When we start with that shift,you know, we know that they got
to worry about, you know,profits and shareholders at the
top of the organization.
It is what it is.
But if we can help them worryabout that in a human way, then
(28:18):
everything else trickles them.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
You ever have pushback on this.
You've heard people who arejust like super negative in
their mindset and they, justlike you know the Debbie Downers
of the team.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Absolutely.
How do you deal with that?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Absolutely.
So we deal with that with thenumbers, right, because you know
, let's be honest, you know atthe end of the day we have to
measure success some way oranother, and so we do that with
the numbers.
We look at team performance ofthe Debbie Downers and we look
at team performance of ourculture champions and you know,
(28:53):
there's almost always a veryclear distinction between the
two.
I will not say always, becausesometimes it's close, but you
know.
But the reality is we can takethat data, those KPIs and
performance, and go, look, youknow this makes sense.
If there isn't a cleardisparaging performance
(29:16):
perspective, then we might go dosome culture surveys with the
team, right, Just quick, youknow five, ten questions, survey
out to each.
You know, out to the employeesof, you know of that division of
business, right, and we willcapture team leader names and
(29:37):
we'll disseminate that data downby team leader and go, look,
happy employees, not happyemployees, attrition.
We know unhappy employees tendto a trip about 40 to 50%
quicker than happy employees,you know.
So oh, look, you have unhappyemployees and over the last
(29:57):
three months you lost three orfour people off your team.
Right Now we have clear datathat says your way is not
working Right.
And often we find we see thatpeople that don't believe in the
system and don't believe inpositive culture and culture in
the workplace Don't believe init because they've come up with
(30:18):
the boss that degraded them, theboss that just said do better,
you know, and they've had aseries of those bosses and they
figured out how to crack thecode and become friends, friends
and they got all it, you know,with that person and got
themselves into a place wherethey were the next in line,
(30:38):
Right, so that boss moves up.
They move up because, oh well,I've been training under this
guy's leadership style for, youknow, forever and ever and ever,
right, you know so.
So that's typically how theyget into those roles in it.
So it's like, you know, that'skind of the piece there that we
have to go look like that mayhave been the way it was, and I
(31:01):
don't think it ever was that way.
I think all our generationsjust tolerated it because of
certain incentives thatcompanies offered and the way
they offered those incentives,and now we have people that are
holding leadership and companiesaccountable for performance and
expectations.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Well, in tolerating unhealthy culture, in tolerating
unhealthy team members, I wouldhave a dramatic impact on the
profit and on how theshareholders are going to
perceive the value Right,absolutely.
I mean the C-Suite leaders whoare like yeah, this whole
culture thing feels kind ofwoo-woo.
I don't know about that.
Does it really affect thebottom line?
(31:43):
You believe it?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
does Absolutely.
You know, companies that put astrong focus on culture
typically see between a 60 and80% improvement in performance.
There's been companies thathave reported up to 85% more in
earnings year over year byfocusing on culture.
(32:06):
So there's a huge, hugeopportunity there.
Because it goes back to what Ifirst said If I'm happy to show
up Monday morning and excited todo the work, I'm going to work
harder, I'm going to work moreefficiently, I'm going to work
better and, in turn, I'm goingto take care of our customers
(32:27):
better to generate the revenue.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
That's so good.
So really for people who arelistening, they really should
not apply what you're sayingunless they want a 60 to 80%
improvement performance.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
I mean, yeah, if you don't want to, that's cool too.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I mean media, if that's what you're after.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Find somebody else to take that market share for you.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Because they will Sorry.
Adam, I want to turn to you fora minute.
You are leading at a differentlevel than you led at five years
ago, and a year, three years,five years from now, your
company's going to need you tolead at a higher level still.
How do you stay on top of yourgame?
(33:16):
How do you level up yourleadership?
Speaker 3 (33:21):
So number one, absolutely number one, is
humility.
Okay, you know people are goingto people all the time tell you
, go read books, go read books.
No, no, no.
Number one learning opportunityis humility, that you are not
the end, all be all.
You are not always right andyou don't always have the answer
.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Well said, well said.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
So, you know, I'd say probably 50% of what I learned
comes from being humble andrealizing that I have hired a
whole bunch of smart people andI just need to let them be smart
.
So that's the number one placeI learned things.
I spend a lot of time reading.
Obviously, because of what I do, I read a lot of Gallup,
(34:07):
roycewater, clearinghouse,deloitte, gartner, leadership
information.
Forbes has tons of greatinformation on leadership and
what's happening in themarketplace.
You know from everything fromgenerationally to you know
leadership by the numbers, youknow in the stats and things
like that, and I think the statsare important to show that the
(34:30):
market is changing.
But the stats don't really tellthat to me, don't tell the
picture in the respect thatwe're still all human, right.
And then the last piece youknow, I think, is, you know,
finding a mentor, findingsomebody that you can reach out
to and ask those questions whenyou're like, oh crap, I don't
(34:52):
even know what to do here.
Right, you know, yeah, and sothat's really, really important.
I encourage every leader that'sgoing to you know, that wants to
level up and move to their nextleadership role or the next
phase in their leadership andtheir company, to go find a
mentor, somebody that has beendoing that for the last five or
(35:13):
10 years and you know whetheryou got to pay them to be your
coach or whether you want tofind some.
You know some agreement thatworks out.
You provide them some services.
They provide you, you know aphone call away type stuff,
right, you know.
However, you want to arrangethat go find somebody that's
(35:34):
been doing what you want to door what you think is the next
step for the last five years andrely on them.
You know it's easy for me.
That's where I've learned.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah it's easy for nobody to listen to you and
think man, you've, just you've,you're just up into the right,
like you're not facing the samechallenges I face.
You know you haven't haddifficulties in your journey.
I mean, I think it's easy forsomebody to listen to that or to
look at you online, because sooften what we see is somebody's
highlight reel.
I'm curious are therechallenges that you have faced
(36:07):
as an entrepreneur?
Have you had those difficultmoments?
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Oh, every day, Every day, you know from you know
working so many hours a weekbecause, well, that's what I
thought I needed to do to besuccessful and alienating my
wife and my kids and dealingwith some of the frustration
with that too.
(36:31):
I remember back when I wasprobably my second or third team
, I ran a team meeting and Idecided that this great new wave
idea is going to run an openforum where we could talk about
all the frustrations in thedepartment.
Yeah, bad idea, don't do that.
But I think the reality is is,you know, most people do put
(36:58):
their highlight reel out there.
You know social media is a fakefacade of Mayberry.
It's Mayberry, right.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Yeah, and so one of the things that I have done over
time, when I talk aboutleadership, talk about marketing
, is I talk about some of mymisses, right, but it's not
leaving it at misses, becausethat I think that breaks trust
in people.
It's here's the miss and here'show I, here's how I overcame
that, or here's what I learnedfrom that.
(37:30):
Absolutely, you know, I thinkit's important for transparency
because we aren't, you know, Idon't get to rip my shirt in
half and have a big A on mychest, you know, and wear my
spandex suit, right?
So you know.
(37:50):
So I think we just have to bereal about that, out in the
marketplace with our teams.
You know, I one of my favoritequestions to ask my employees
and you got to do this onceyou've built some trust because
they won't, they won't tell youright off the bat is how am I
failing you?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
What a great question .
Speaker 3 (38:12):
You know, and then just sitting there and taking it
right.
Sometimes it hurts.
I'll be honest.
I've had some pretty gnarlyugly conversations and the only
thing I can say to them at thatpoint is I'm sorry.
I need a day to go back andthink about all the feedback
that you've given me so that Ican fix this for you.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
What a great question , but it does take humility to
ask the question and to receivewhat you're going to get.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yes, yes, absolutely.
You know, we just have toremember, as leaders, as
business owners, asentrepreneurs, as much as we are
here to make a dollar forourselves and anybody listening,
you're going to be like butit's not about the dollar.
It is about the dollar, right,we all have things we like
(39:00):
houses and cars, and things thatwe like.
So it is about the dollar, but,ultimately, your dollar that
you're making is about servingthe people that you support.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
You're a continual learner, Adam.
You are constantly learning andyou've mentioned a number of
ways that you do that thelistening you do, the
intentionality of the questionsthat you ask.
Is there a book that has made abig difference in your journey
that you would recommend toleaders who are listening that
they add to their to read list?
Speaker 3 (39:32):
So there are a couple of them, three to be specific.
So the first one is one of thefirst kind of business life
books that I ever read and it'sby author Mitch Albone, who's a
radio talk show host up inDetroit and he did Tuesdays with
(39:53):
Maury.
Oh, that's a great book.
Yeah, yeah, he's heard of thisbook.
He sits down with his mentorfrom college on a weekly basis
and has these conversations ashis college professor is dying
from a terminal illness and it'sjust all the lessons in life
that he learned in theseconversations.
(40:16):
And it's such a wonderful book,so really just kind of puts
life into perspective.
It truly does.
The Energy Bus by Rob Gordon.
So this is, it's told, in aparable style.
It's a really short read and infact, the first time I ever
read it.
I literally read the entirebook in a three-hour flight.
(40:38):
So, but it's all aboutsurrounding yourself with people
that carry the right energySuper, super powerful message.
And then the last one is whomoved my cheese?
I love that book.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I used to read that book to my kids when they were
small.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
I'm very, very particular about things I always
have been, and that that bookis just that constant reminder
Like it's okay if your cheesemoves, it's totally okay, that's
right.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
So many principles and lessons in that book.
I love that so those are thethree.
This has been so great.
I have so enjoyed thisconversation.
Typically, people are going towalk away from from an episode
like this with one big idea.
If you got to decide what thatone big idea is that you would
want people to walk away with,what would you want that to be?
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Being a leader is not about you.
It's about the people aroundyou that trust you, respect you
and are inspired by you to dobetter every day.
So think about your actions andwhat are you doing to build
trust, build respect and inspirethose around you.
(41:57):
If you can't figure out whatthat is, then be humane, you
know.
Be human enough to go havethose conversations and ask them
.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
I know folks are going to want to stay connected
with you and continue to learnfrom you, Adam.
What is the best way for folksto do that?
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Go find me on LinkedIn.
I'm Sinkus.
I am the one and only you canalso Google search me and find
all the places I show up onroughly the first eight pages of
Google at this point.
So you know, from my podcast,which is hopefully going to be
making a resurface here in 2024,to LinkedIn, to articles I've
(42:40):
written to our company website,apurposepartnershipcom.
So best places to find me andif you love Cornhole, come find
me on Facebook and TikTok.
That's where I share all thatinformation Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
And thank you for your generosity today, adam.
This has been again superinsightful and I appreciate your
generosity of spirit today.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Thanks so much for having me as a blast.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Thanks for joining me for this episode today.
As we wrap up, I'd love for youto do two things.
First, subscribe to thispodcast so you don't miss an
episode, and if you find valuehere, I'd love it if you would
rate it and review it.
That really does make adifference in helping other
people to discover this podcast.
Second, if you don't have acopy of my newest book,
(43:26):
catalytic Leadership, I'd loveto put a copy in your hands.
If you go tocatalyticleadershipbookcom, you
can get a copy for free.
Just pay the shipping so I canget it to you and we'll get one
right out.
My goal is to put this into thehands of as many leaders as
possible.
This book captures principlesthat I've learned in 20-plus
(43:48):
years of coaching leaders in theentrepreneurial space, in
business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church
.
You can also connect with me onLinkedIn to keep up with what
I'm currently learning andthinking about.
And if you're ready to take anext step with a coach to help
you intentionally grow andthrive as a leader, I'd be
(44:10):
honored to help you.
Just go tocatalyticleadershipnet to book a
call with me.
Stay tuned for our next episodenext week.
Until then, as always, leaderschoose to be catalytic.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr
William Attaway.
Be sure to subscribe whereveryou listen to podcasts so you
don't miss the next episode.
Want more?
Go to catalyticleadershipnet.
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed
to help leaders intentionallygrow and thrive.
Here is your host author andleadership and executive coach,
dr William Attaway.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hey, it's William and welcome to today's episode of
the Catalytic Leadership podcast.
Each week, we tackle a topicrelated to the field of
leadership.
My goal is to ensure that youhave actionable steps you can
take from each episode to growin your own leadership.
Growth doesn't just happen.
My goal is to help you becomeintentional about it.
(00:37):
Each week, we spotlight leadersfrom a variety of fields,
organizations and locations.
My goal is for you to see thatleaders can be catalytic, no
matter where they are or whatthey lead.
I draw inspiration from thestories and journeys of these
leaders and I hear from many ofyou that you do too.
Let's jump in to today'sinterview.
(00:59):
I'm so excited today to haveAdam Senkas on the podcast.
After over 10 years in the BPOindustry, adam learned that call
centers were not where hewanted to be.
In 2019, he joined the team atElevator to help build the
business processes to grow andscale.
They helped their clients buildover $4 million in additional
(01:23):
revenue.
At the beginning of 2021, herealized there was a bigger
opportunity to split off theirhome services brand my Roofing
SEO.
Since then, he's been buildingand growing that brand.
In 2020, he launched theWinning Tactics podcast to help
business owners share strategiesthat they could use to survive
the pandemic.
(01:44):
That eight-week project turnedquickly into a passion, where
now he has 60-plus episodes ofactionable insights for small
business owners that they canapply tomorrow.
Adam, I'm so glad you're here.
Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, glad to be on the show.
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I would love for you to share some of your story with
our listeners, Adam,particularly around your journey
and your development as aleader.
How did you get started?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Oh gosh, that goes way, way back Back to that BPO
space that I got out of.
Call centers are gnarlybusiness.
I think we all start somewherein leadership.
What typically happens in a lotof industries high performer, I
got promoted, you're a leader,you're a trainer, you're this,
(02:35):
you're that Didn't really havethe right tools.
Yeah, it's like surprise,you're going to do this thing
and you got people that you'reresponsible for.
Now, the reality set in that Ieither needed to figure this out
for myself or I needed to gofind great leaders and start
(02:58):
modeling them.
I did a combination of both.
Over the years.
What I realized is that,especially in a lot of high
turnover industries, theleadership model and the
promotion model is so, so broken.
We have leaders that have nobusiness being leaders, not
(03:20):
because they aren't greatemployees and because they don't
in their contributions arephenomenal, but because they're
not really set up to be a leader.
Yeah, I took a step back and Ibecame a training manager for a
large call center site, and Itook a step back and I said wait
(03:41):
a minute.
We have this leadership program.
That's a self-guided path thatour leaders are going through
Once a month.
Let's just get together andtalk leadership.
We started these leadershiptrainings once a month and we
talked about things like havingdifficult conversations and
communicating better with youremployees, how to manage KPIs
(04:02):
the right way Started justhaving conversations round table
conversations about thesechallenges with a training
mindset in focus.
From there it just grew into apassion of mine to help
understand that there isactually a better way to be a
leader.
We have to step back, drop ourego, be real that we don't know
(04:28):
everything and step on the trainthat we're here to improve our
employees' lives.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I love that.
That's fantastic.
Given your experience and somany different venues of
leadership that you've been in,I'm curious how would you define
that word leadership?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
I get asked this question a lot and then every
time I struggle to come up withwhat the answer is.
But the reality is leadershipisn't a title, it's something
you earn.
You can be given the title ofmanager, team leader, whatever
your company calls it.
(05:10):
Leader in itself is somethingyou earn by building trust,
respect and authority with yourteam.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That's good.
You describe your currentbusiness as an anti-agency.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I've never come across that before and thought,
wow, I want to learn more aboutthat.
What do you mean by anti-agency?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yes, A purpose partnership.
We came to the table and werelike, look, we've worked in
agencies before consultingagencies, marketing agencies and
we realized that there's thishuge broken opportunity.
It's the model of seniorleadership and this wonderful,
(05:57):
glitzy, glammy salesperson showup to your sales meeting and
they sell you the dream andyou're like this is great.
Then you get your team and yourealize that none of those
people that you've trusted theirexperience to come to the table
with are actually involved.
We flipped the script on thatand we're like look, there's no
(06:21):
reason that every projectshouldn't have some sort of
strategic senior leader thatunderstands how to shift the
landscape.
Because I don't know about you,but I go through projects all
the time and I'm like this iswhat we presented.
And we get halfway through andwe realized that we need to make
a strong left turn atAlbuquerque so we can get right
(06:43):
back on track.
When you have junior peoplethat just don't have that level
of experience in there, theydon't know how to make that left
turn.
We believe in our anti-agencymodel that our senior leadership
is involved to some strongdegree in every contract that we
(07:05):
have.
We bring in senior level peopleto run the daily work that's
done on these.
We do have some junior folksand they bring their own
individual contributions to theprojects, but they're part of a
larger project team.
It helps them learn and growbut also make sure that we can
(07:25):
stay on track with what we needto accomplish with our clients.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
That's really good and I think you're spot on.
I mean so many times and Ithink listeners can definitely
relate to that you buy the modelin the showroom and then you
get home and you're like this isnot what was advertised, the
experience level, the skilllevel of the people that are now
engaged in my project not whatI saw, it's not what I heard in
(07:54):
the sales call.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah yeah, all too often that happens and it's
frustrating.
Even now I'm seeking andsourcing vendors for different
stuff and it's like I see it allthe time.
I'm like oh man, I'm just notengaging with you because you go
so totally against what webelieve in.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I'm imagining that would change the way that you
sell now that you engage withnew people, because, hey, this
is not going to be like everyother thing that you've
experienced in the past.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Absolutely yeah.
I mean, we lead with that right, we lead with that mindset.
We talk about passion.
We talk about doing the workthat we love to do.
We've niched down considerablyfrom where we started, not just
because it's the smart thing todo from a business perspective,
(08:50):
but because we've found nichesand types of clients that we're
passionate to do the work with.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
So, in your view, looking across the landscape of
the digital marketing world, itfeels like things are shifting a
little bit.
Things are changing not just inthe marketplace itself, but
even in people's mindsets andviewpoints on things like KPIs.
What are you seeing across thelandscape right now?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Well.
So there's a couple of thingsat play, and it really depends
on where businesses are at intheir growth cycle growth and
scale cycle.
So when we look at smallbusinesses, with the advent of
tools like chat, gpt and thehundreds and hundreds of great
AI tools out on the marketplace,the question that's coming to
(09:38):
mind is can I create the samequality or level of content that
a marketing agency creates forme for free using one of these
tools or for a nominal monthlysubscription?
And so that creates aninteresting space, because now,
as marketers, we have to talkabout not only how we develop
(09:59):
and think about content, butalso how we do that in a way
that supplements and complementswhat AI technology is out there
.
Why are we better, why is itstill better to have a person
versus the robots?
And I'll be honest, I'll be thefirst one to tell you we use AI
(10:22):
on a daily basis.
Chat, gpt and a few otherprograms are like constant tabs
on my browser window every day.
But that's the start of theprocess.
As we look at companies thatare larger in execution, what
we're seeing is that we'reseeing the way people are
(10:44):
focusing on.
Kpis is different.
So it used to be social media,kpis was likes and follows.
That's all that mattered.
Now we're looking more atconversions.
So there is an element of likesand follows it's eyeballs, it's
on your eyeballs and engagementon your content.
But how engaged is youraudience and are they actually
(11:07):
clicking from your social to asale point?
And that's a.
For most business owners andmost businesses, that's far more
important.
But up until probably a year ortwo ago, we were still really
enamored with likes and followsbecause they were feel good
metrics, absolutely so.
I don't know about you, but Ialways look at how many people
(11:30):
have liked my posts.
Sure absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It is a vanity metric , though, because what does that
like or follow put into yourbank account as a business?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Absolutely, absolutely.
So some of it is about trustand building that trust in the
marketplace, and there's valueto that right.
It also helps us see whatcontent works and what doesn't.
Yes, so there is some value toit, but not in the sense of the
ultimate KPI.
That you should be worriedabout is is my social media
(12:01):
campaign converting into dollarsand cents in my bank?
Yeah, absolutely.
When we look at website traffic,there's so many AI driven tools
out there for websites now, andit used to just be.
You looked at your GoogleAnalytics and maybe you might
have had some fancy tech forlooking at how people experience
(12:23):
your page, but now we'relooking at it more from.
We're scraping a lot more datafrom websites.
Now there's integrated tools sowe can actually see down to
your IP address locations likevery, very niche, tight
locations.
What's going on?
(12:43):
If you've signed up on a form,we capture your IP, we capture
your email address, capture yourinformation right to the
website, and now every time youcome back and visit, we can see
and we start to get this userprofile for you right, and so
we're seeing a lot of tools likethat becoming a lot more
(13:03):
commonplace, built into the backend of the websites, which is
giving us smarter data to workwith, and so that's the big
changes in the marketplace is,as marketers, we have to embrace
the technology because we arecreative types by nature and
that's okay.
But we have to embrace thetechnology, but we also have to
(13:26):
realize, and we have to educatepeople on, how does the
technology play with thecreative side and how do we get
that all to come together in auseful and impactful way.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
But you think there are ways to leverage that in a
strategic way to get betterleads from your website?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Oh, absolutely Absolutely.
So I'll give you a grade from acontent side.
This is how we bring everythingtogether, right?
So I will take blogs thateither we write for our clients
or that our clients have written.
I'll feed them into some AItools to generate out some base
(14:04):
social media posts.
Now, I'm not going to leavethose as they are, because
machine posts look like machineposts.
They lack that human touch, butwe look at those and that
creates a foundation, right?
So if I need 15 social postsfor this blog, instead of me
sitting there spending three,four or five hours looking at
(14:24):
that blog and trying to buildout the social posts, now I
spend 20 minutes building out acore of social posts from that
blog, and then I spend anotherhour or two making them right,
making them human, making thememotional, making them impactful
right, and so what we're seeingis we're seeing people work
(14:47):
smarter with the technology,which means we can do more,
right?
So now we have the capabilityto do more.
It's a double-edged sword inthe content world, though, right
, because there's so muchcontent coming out because of AI
, right?
What do you do with it all?
How do you get eyeballs on allof it?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, it feels like you need a partner to help you
develop a strategy for the wholething.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That's the other side of it.
So we do all of the contentcreation, but what really brings
it together is the strategybehind that.
Right, you know it's not just,we're not just, you know,
putting up a map of topics onthe wall and thrown darts at it.
(15:32):
Right, there's a thoughtprocess to this.
It's a mapped out strategy sothat we're focusing on and
targeting on specific goals.
Right, and not every businessthis is what's interesting Not
every business needs to focus ondirect money ROI from marketing
spent Sometimes in the brandjourney.
(15:57):
We need to focus on reach right, we need to get to build the
social profiles right, becausewe know that down the road that
will translate to ROI.
But in the here and now, yougot to spend a little bit to get
that.
Build the followers, build thereach, so that when we do the
things that are high impact ROIactivities, they actually will
(16:21):
work.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So you're building a foundation for the building that
you're eventually going to putup.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Absolutely, absolutely Right.
Other times, you know, it'sjust looking for eyeballs into a
new marketplace, like we mighttake an.
We have a client right nowwe're working on taking their
established software company andwe're taking them from a small
business space to an enterprisespace.
You know so.
Do we need to position them asa market leader at this point?
(16:51):
No, they've already done that.
Now we just need to.
We need to shift them, shiftthe eyeballs, right, right, you
know so.
Yes, we're going to eventuallyseek dollars and cents ROI from
our activities, but for now, wejust need to start shifting.
Can we get them seen in theright space by the right people?
(17:14):
Right, so there's no direct theROI?
Is the eyeballs to them, right?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
No, that makes sense from a strategic perspective.
I mean, I love theintentionality of that and this
is what you help your clients do, absolutely.
It's.
When we were talking previously, you mentioned a framework that
you use called ACES.
Yes, I would love for you tounpack that, because I found
this very interesting.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah, so ACES is a leadership framework, and it's
really built around how wedevelop leaders to have a
cultural mindset that drivesKPIs Right, and we didn't talk
about the stats, so I'm going togive a little bit of background
for the listeners here.
So a couple of things, right?
So number one is CEOs and theleaders all think that culture
(18:05):
is incredibly important in theircompanies, and employees tend
to agree with that, so we'veestablished a culture is
important.
What we are seeing, though, isthat executives seem to think
that culture is connected intheir companies, but frontline
employees seem to thinkdifferently.
(18:26):
A variation of in one study, Iwas looking at a variation of up
to like 20% in certaincategories, yeah, yeah, so
that's a huge gap, right, youknow, and we're still not even
talking about great numbers.
The CEOs are at like 40 to 55%in these categories, right, so
(18:48):
you know?
So we're only talking.
Like.
Half of CEOs are thinking liketheir companies are impacting on
these cultures in this culturespace, and then employees are
like yeah, like less than aquarter of employees in some
instances.
Yeah, so there is a huge, huge,huge disconnect with culture,
(19:10):
and the reason being is becausecompanies are tend to be more
focused on what's in it for meright.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And I'm okay with that, because the company does
need to be profitable in orderto retain employees and do what
they do and provide theirservices to the marketplace.
Totally on board with thatright.
However, if your employees loveto show up to work on Monday
morning, they are much moreinclined to help.
(19:39):
You have happy customers, happyshareholders and make more
profits.
That's a good word Makesperfect sense.
So how do we do that right?
So this is where the ASISframework comes in.
So ASIS is an acronym forAcknowledge, cultivate, empower
and Success.
Acknowledge is all about how wecommunicate with our employees.
(20:02):
This is the good, bad and theugly.
This is taking those coachingconversations from hey, you know
what you sucked at this thismonth to do better, right and
actually having impactfulconversations.
I've presented those early onin my leadership career because
that's what I was told, and I'vereceived more of those than I
(20:25):
can possibly ever.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I think we all have.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, right Too, positive communication as well.
Right, taking that extra stepto thank people for coming into
work.
Thanks for being here today.
I really appreciate yourcontributions to this project.
Things like that, just thosesimple pieces of communication,
(20:52):
tend to be really important aswell.
The other piece and this issomething you can go and do
today, it's super, super easySet time in your calendar every
day to have what I call thewalk-by touch point with every
single employee on your team.
The walk-by touch point, I likethat, yes, yes.
So this is, you know, stop bytheir desk or, in a virtual
(21:16):
environment, send them a ping.
Hey, got two minutes.
You know, ask them how theirday is going.
You know, if it's a Monday,what you should do over the
weekend, just like somethingsimple, like that doesn't have
to be work related, shouldn't bework related.
You're just checking in andgoing hey, I see that you're
here.
Thank you, I appreciate you.
Right, you should do that everysingle day with every single
(21:38):
employee.
I used to put a half an hour onmy calendar every day, at
different times of the day, tomake sure that I scheduled a
touch point with each employee.
You know and what that does.
Over time, you start to buildthis trust because they're like
oh you know, adam stops by mydesk every day and says hi and
make sure I'm OK, that's good,right, so the C is cultivate.
(21:59):
This is all about training andwe have to rethink training,
right, you know, as anorganization, we're like OK, we
need people, we need 10 peoplewith this skill set, right, and
what do we do?
We go to our leaders and we gohey, leaders, I need you to find
10 people on your team you canafford to send to this training.
Right, and our leaders go OK,cool, you know, brian, jill,
(22:24):
john, jane, y'all are going totraining for this, whether they
like it or not.
And we show up to training andwe go and do the bare minimum,
just enough to pass the training, and come back to our desk and
we sit down.
Instead, what we need to do asleaders is we need to understand
what our employees love to doand what our employees want to
do more of, and then we takethose training opportunities as
(22:47):
they come down and we go OK, youknow, jane told me that she's
more interested in learning howto use Python and SQL to create
better marketing and reporting.
Cool, I have a Python trainingand a project coming up that I'm
going to be using this for.
Let's get Jane into that Pythontraining.
Now.
Jane is super excited aboutthis because she's like, yes,
I'm getting Python training, Iwant to do this, right.
(23:09):
And then she comes back to herdesk and this is where the E
comes in Empower and this is allabout how we mentor Jane from
the time she comes back fromthat training to the time that
project starts to get herstarted working on that skill
immediately.
So we go from concept tomastery much, much quicker and
(23:33):
we create the opportunity tomake sure that six months down
the road, when that project isin full play, that we don't have
to retrain Jane on those skills.
So last piece of this issuccess, and this is just about
shifting the mindset in theorganization.
Right, you think about the postmortem meeting.
(23:54):
We show up to the post mortemand what's the first question
that's always asked what wentwrong, guys, right?
Yes, and everybody puts theirhead down at the table.
You know, or you know, or inthe virtual world, you know,
everybody sits there on mute,nobody says anything.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Find your spot on the table.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yep, yeah.
And so we change the mindsethere and we start to ask the
questions like what do we dowell that we can take to the
next project?
Right, it's a simple we'regetting the same information.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
We're just doing it in a way that makes people
excited to talk about it.
Yes, so that's what success isall about.
It's just shifting how we haveconversations, not ignoring the
negative ones, because we haveto have those once in a while,
but how we have the rest of theconversations.
Yeah, so that people aren't soreserved when something does go
(24:56):
wrong that they won't share.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I love that, adam.
I think that's so helpful whenI'm talking to my clients about
doing a hot washer post mortem.
There's three questions I givethem and I'm like you need to
cover all three of these in thisorder what went right, which is
exactly what you're describingright?
Celebrate?
Speaker 3 (25:16):
the win.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Celebrate the win, because that's so easy to skip
past.
Then what went wrong?
Okay, what went right, whatwent wrong?
Process through that and thenhow would we do it different
next time?
And that's where you processthat learning, so that it
becomes then something you canhave available the next time
you're in a similar situation.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Let me give you a shift on that second question.
Right, what went wrong?
Yeah, wrong is a very, verynegative shutdown.
Closing word Hopefully Right.
So what could we have donebetter?
I like that.
Right, it's a subtle shift.
No, it's good, that's good.
But again, getting back to thatsuccess conversation right,
(26:02):
it's the words we use now.
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Oh, that's so good.
You know, when you use thisASUS framework, I can imagine
this is changing mindset, notjust organizationally but
individually, with people aroundthe table, Like how have you
seen that shift play out withclients that you've introduced
this framework to?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
It's really important that we get the people at the
top of the organizationingrained in this.
They've got to love it beforeanything else happens.
Right, because your leaders ofthe organization are the ones
that are going to drive the restof the change.
That's good.
So what we see is we see thiswaterfall effect.
We see the leaders get reallyexcited.
They're like we're going toimprove culture.
(26:46):
It's important we get it right.
Now they're disseminating thatdown through their teams and
because it's so employee focused, so communication focused, so
people focused, it's easy toconnect with as you get you know
.
Lower, you know down to thefrontline employees, because in
(27:08):
frontline employees there'sthree main levels of leadership
in every company.
You've got your C-suite or yourexecutives.
They are worried about profitsand shareholders let's not be,
you know, candy-coated thisright.
You've got your mid-levelmanagement, you know, and some
this could be directors,associate directors there's
(27:28):
numerous titles.
Right, they are trying totranslate profits and
shareholders to people and time.
Right.
So they sit in a reallydifficult, crazy spot.
It's frustrating.
And then you have yourfrontline leaders and their sole
job is to keep your frontlineemployees happy, efficient and
(27:51):
productive.
Right.
So we go from money to how dowe get money and humans to match
to humans right, and so that'swhy we start at the top.
When we start with that shift,you know, we know that they got
to worry about, you know,profits and shareholders at the
top of the organization.
It is what it is.
But if we can help them worryabout that in a human way, then
(28:18):
everything else trickles them.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
You ever have pushback on this.
You've heard people who arejust like super negative in
their mindset and they, justlike you know the Debbie Downers
of the team.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Absolutely.
How do you deal with that?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Absolutely.
So we deal with that with thenumbers, right, because you know
, let's be honest, you know atthe end of the day we have to
measure success some way oranother, and so we do that with
the numbers.
We look at team performance ofthe Debbie Downers and we look
at team performance of ourculture champions and you know,
(28:53):
there's almost always a veryclear distinction between the
two.
I will not say always, becausesometimes it's close, but you
know.
But the reality is we can takethat data, those KPIs and
performance, and go, look, youknow this makes sense.
If there isn't a cleardisparaging performance
(29:16):
perspective, then we might go dosome culture surveys with the
team, right, Just quick, youknow five, ten questions, survey
out to each.
You know, out to the employeesof, you know of that division of
business, right, and we willcapture team leader names and
(29:37):
we'll disseminate that data downby team leader and go, look,
happy employees, not happyemployees, attrition.
We know unhappy employees tendto a trip about 40 to 50%
quicker than happy employees,you know.
So oh, look, you have unhappyemployees and over the last
(29:57):
three months you lost three orfour people off your team.
Right Now we have clear datathat says your way is not
working Right.
And often we find we see thatpeople that don't believe in the
system and don't believe inpositive culture and culture in
the workplace Don't believe init because they've come up with
(30:18):
the boss that degraded them, theboss that just said do better,
you know, and they've had aseries of those bosses and they
figured out how to crack thecode and become friends, friends
and they got all it, you know,with that person and got
themselves into a place wherethey were the next in line,
(30:38):
Right, so that boss moves up.
They move up because, oh well,I've been training under this
guy's leadership style for, youknow, forever and ever and ever,
right, you know so.
So that's typically how theyget into those roles in it.
So it's like, you know, that'skind of the piece there that we
have to go look like that mayhave been the way it was, and I
(31:01):
don't think it ever was that way.
I think all our generationsjust tolerated it because of
certain incentives thatcompanies offered and the way
they offered those incentives,and now we have people that are
holding leadership and companiesaccountable for performance and
expectations.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Well, in tolerating unhealthy culture, in tolerating
unhealthy team members, I wouldhave a dramatic impact on the
profit and on how theshareholders are going to
perceive the value Right,absolutely.
I mean the C-Suite leaders whoare like yeah, this whole
culture thing feels kind ofwoo-woo.
I don't know about that.
Does it really affect thebottom line?
(31:43):
You believe it?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
does Absolutely.
You know, companies that put astrong focus on culture
typically see between a 60 and80% improvement in performance.
There's been companies thathave reported up to 85% more in
earnings year over year byfocusing on culture.
(32:06):
So there's a huge, hugeopportunity there.
Because it goes back to what Ifirst said If I'm happy to show
up Monday morning and excited todo the work, I'm going to work
harder, I'm going to work moreefficiently, I'm going to work
better and, in turn, I'm goingto take care of our customers
(32:27):
better to generate the revenue.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
That's so good.
So really for people who arelistening, they really should
not apply what you're sayingunless they want a 60 to 80%
improvement performance.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
I mean, yeah, if you don't want to, that's cool too.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I mean media, if that's what you're after.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Find somebody else to take that market share for you.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Because they will Sorry.
Adam, I want to turn to you fora minute.
You are leading at a differentlevel than you led at five years
ago, and a year, three years,five years from now, your
company's going to need you tolead at a higher level still.
How do you stay on top of yourgame?
(33:16):
How do you level up yourleadership?
Speaker 3 (33:21):
So number one, absolutely number one, is
humility.
Okay, you know people are goingto people all the time tell you
, go read books, go read books.
No, no, no.
Number one learning opportunityis humility, that you are not
the end, all be all.
You are not always right andyou don't always have the answer
.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Well said, well said.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
So, you know, I'd say probably 50% of what I learned
comes from being humble andrealizing that I have hired a
whole bunch of smart people andI just need to let them be smart
.
So that's the number one placeI learned things.
I spend a lot of time reading.
Obviously, because of what I do, I read a lot of Gallup,
(34:07):
roycewater, clearinghouse,deloitte, gartner, leadership
information.
Forbes has tons of greatinformation on leadership and
what's happening in themarketplace.
You know from everything fromgenerationally to you know
leadership by the numbers, youknow in the stats and things
like that, and I think the statsare important to show that the
(34:30):
market is changing.
But the stats don't really tellthat to me, don't tell the
picture in the respect thatwe're still all human, right.
And then the last piece youknow, I think, is, you know,
finding a mentor, findingsomebody that you can reach out
to and ask those questions whenyou're like, oh crap, I don't
(34:52):
even know what to do here.
Right, you know, yeah, and sothat's really, really important.
I encourage every leader that'sgoing to you know, that wants to
level up and move to their nextleadership role or the next
phase in their leadership andtheir company, to go find a
mentor, somebody that has beendoing that for the last five or
(35:13):
10 years and you know whetheryou got to pay them to be your
coach or whether you want tofind some.
You know some agreement thatworks out.
You provide them some services.
They provide you, you know aphone call away type stuff,
right, you know.
However, you want to arrangethat go find somebody that's
(35:34):
been doing what you want to door what you think is the next
step for the last five years andrely on them.
You know it's easy for me.
That's where I've learned.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah it's easy for nobody to listen to you and
think man, you've, just you've,you're just up into the right,
like you're not facing the samechallenges I face.
You know you haven't haddifficulties in your journey.
I mean, I think it's easy forsomebody to listen to that or to
look at you online, because sooften what we see is somebody's
highlight reel.
I'm curious are therechallenges that you have faced
(36:07):
as an entrepreneur?
Have you had those difficultmoments?
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Oh, every day, Every day, you know from you know
working so many hours a weekbecause, well, that's what I
thought I needed to do to besuccessful and alienating my
wife and my kids and dealingwith some of the frustration
with that too.
(36:31):
I remember back when I wasprobably my second or third team
, I ran a team meeting and Idecided that this great new wave
idea is going to run an openforum where we could talk about
all the frustrations in thedepartment.
Yeah, bad idea, don't do that.
But I think the reality is is,you know, most people do put
(36:58):
their highlight reel out there.
You know social media is a fakefacade of Mayberry.
It's Mayberry, right.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Yeah, and so one of the things that I have done over
time, when I talk aboutleadership, talk about marketing
, is I talk about some of mymisses, right, but it's not
leaving it at misses, becausethat I think that breaks trust
in people.
It's here's the miss and here'show I, here's how I overcame
that, or here's what I learnedfrom that.
(37:30):
Absolutely, you know, I thinkit's important for transparency
because we aren't, you know, Idon't get to rip my shirt in
half and have a big A on mychest, you know, and wear my
spandex suit, right?
So you know.
(37:50):
So I think we just have to bereal about that, out in the
marketplace with our teams.
You know, I one of my favoritequestions to ask my employees
and you got to do this onceyou've built some trust because
they won't, they won't tell youright off the bat is how am I
failing you?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
What a great question .
Speaker 3 (38:12):
You know, and then just sitting there and taking it
right.
Sometimes it hurts.
I'll be honest.
I've had some pretty gnarlyugly conversations and the only
thing I can say to them at thatpoint is I'm sorry.
I need a day to go back andthink about all the feedback
that you've given me so that Ican fix this for you.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
What a great question , but it does take humility to
ask the question and to receivewhat you're going to get.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yes, yes, absolutely.
You know, we just have toremember, as leaders, as
business owners, asentrepreneurs, as much as we are
here to make a dollar forourselves and anybody listening,
you're going to be like butit's not about the dollar.
It is about the dollar, right,we all have things we like
(39:00):
houses and cars, and things thatwe like.
So it is about the dollar, but,ultimately, your dollar that
you're making is about servingthe people that you support.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
You're a continual learner, Adam.
You are constantly learning andyou've mentioned a number of
ways that you do that thelistening you do, the
intentionality of the questionsthat you ask.
Is there a book that has made abig difference in your journey
that you would recommend toleaders who are listening that
they add to their to read list?
Speaker 3 (39:32):
So there are a couple of them, three to be specific.
So the first one is one of thefirst kind of business life
books that I ever read and it'sby author Mitch Albone, who's a
radio talk show host up inDetroit and he did Tuesdays with
(39:53):
Maury.
Oh, that's a great book.
Yeah, yeah, he's heard of thisbook.
He sits down with his mentorfrom college on a weekly basis
and has these conversations ashis college professor is dying
from a terminal illness and it'sjust all the lessons in life
that he learned in theseconversations.
(40:16):
And it's such a wonderful book,so really just kind of puts
life into perspective.
It truly does.
The Energy Bus by Rob Gordon.
So this is, it's told, in aparable style.
It's a really short read and infact, the first time I ever
read it.
I literally read the entirebook in a three-hour flight.
(40:38):
So, but it's all aboutsurrounding yourself with people
that carry the right energySuper, super powerful message.
And then the last one is whomoved my cheese?
I love that book.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I used to read that book to my kids when they were
small.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
I'm very, very particular about things I always
have been, and that that bookis just that constant reminder
Like it's okay if your cheesemoves, it's totally okay, that's
right.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
So many principles and lessons in that book.
I love that so those are thethree.
This has been so great.
I have so enjoyed thisconversation.
Typically, people are going towalk away from from an episode
like this with one big idea.
If you got to decide what thatone big idea is that you would
want people to walk away with,what would you want that to be?
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Being a leader is not about you.
It's about the people aroundyou that trust you, respect you
and are inspired by you to dobetter every day.
So think about your actions andwhat are you doing to build
trust, build respect and inspirethose around you.
(41:57):
If you can't figure out whatthat is, then be humane, you
know.
Be human enough to go havethose conversations and ask them
.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
I know folks are going to want to stay connected
with you and continue to learnfrom you, Adam.
What is the best way for folksto do that?
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Go find me on LinkedIn.
I'm Sinkus.
I am the one and only you canalso Google search me and find
all the places I show up onroughly the first eight pages of
Google at this point.
So you know, from my podcast,which is hopefully going to be
making a resurface here in 2024,to LinkedIn, to articles I've
(42:40):
written to our company website,apurposepartnershipcom.
So best places to find me andif you love Cornhole, come find
me on Facebook and TikTok.
That's where I share all thatinformation Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
And thank you for your generosity today, adam.
This has been again superinsightful and I appreciate your
generosity of spirit today.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Thanks so much for having me as a blast.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Thanks for joining me for this episode today.
As we wrap up, I'd love for youto do two things.
First, subscribe to thispodcast so you don't miss an
episode, and if you find valuehere, I'd love it if you would
rate it and review it.
That really does make adifference in helping other
people to discover this podcast.
Second, if you don't have acopy of my newest book,
(43:26):
catalytic Leadership, I'd loveto put a copy in your hands.
If you go tocatalyticleadershipbookcom, you
can get a copy for free.
Just pay the shipping so I canget it to you and we'll get one
right out.
My goal is to put this into thehands of as many leaders as
possible.
This book captures principlesthat I've learned in 20-plus
(43:48):
years of coaching leaders in theentrepreneurial space, in
business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church
.
You can also connect with me onLinkedIn to keep up with what
I'm currently learning andthinking about.
And if you're ready to take anext step with a coach to help
you intentionally grow andthrive as a leader, I'd be
(44:10):
honored to help you.
Just go tocatalyticleadershipnet to book a
call with me.
Stay tuned for our next episodenext week.
Until then, as always, leaderschoose to be catalytic.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr
William Attaway.
Be sure to subscribe whereveryou listen to podcasts so you
don't miss the next episode.
Want more?
Go to catalyticleadershipnet.
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