October 16, 2024 • 31 mins
Segment 1 with Barry Conchie begins at 0:00.
What talents does it take to be a great leader?
My first guest is Barry Conchie who is the founder and president of Conchie Associates and author of " The Five Talents That Really Matter: How Great Leaders Drive Extraordinary Performance", with his business partner Sarah Dalton. He is an expert in psycho- metric talent assessments, leadership research and development, team building, and succession planning.
Segment 2 with Roger Gerard begins at 17:30.
Who are you as a leader? Do you own the room? Do you lead with purpose? Does your leadership inspire others?
My second guest is Dr. Roger A. Gerard is the owner of Sloan & Gerard Consulting, a private consulting practice serving executives and boards in strategic planning, operational planning, executive coaching, and management development. A sought-after speaker, Dr. Gerard is the author of "Owning the Room and Lead With Purpose: Reignite Passion and Engagement For Professionals in Crisis."
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-small-business-radio-show--3306444/support.
What talents does it take to be a great leader?
My first guest is Barry Conchie who is the founder and president of Conchie Associates and author of " The Five Talents That Really Matter: How Great Leaders Drive Extraordinary Performance", with his business partner Sarah Dalton. He is an expert in psycho- metric talent assessments, leadership research and development, team building, and succession planning.
Segment 2 with Roger Gerard begins at 17:30.
Who are you as a leader? Do you own the room? Do you lead with purpose? Does your leadership inspire others?
My second guest is Dr. Roger A. Gerard is the owner of Sloan & Gerard Consulting, a private consulting practice serving executives and boards in strategic planning, operational planning, executive coaching, and management development. A sought-after speaker, Dr. Gerard is the author of "Owning the Room and Lead With Purpose: Reignite Passion and Engagement For Professionals in Crisis."
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-small-business-radio-show--3306444/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get ready for all the craziness of small business. It's
exactly that craziness that makes it exciting and totally unbelievable.
Small Business Radio is now on the air with your host,
Barry Moultz.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, thanks for joining this week's radio show. Remember this
is the final word in product offerings keeping track. This
is now show number eight hundred and ten. We always
wonder a small business owners, what talents does it really
take to truly spot a great leader. My first guest
is Barry Kanchi, who's the founder and president of Conscie
(00:40):
Associates and author of a book called The Five Talents
that Really Matter How Great Leaders drive Extraordinary performance with
his business partner Sarah Dalton. He's an expert in psychometric
talent assessments, leadership research and development, team building, and succession planning. Barry,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Great to meet you, Barry.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I always love these books with titles, I mean with
numbers in them. Right, it's always five or seven or
things like that. How did you decide on five?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's where the research took us, Barry. We made a
determination to study outstanding leaders against certain criteria that we defined,
and we studied the we found hundred of them. We
put them through the mill, we observed them, we assess them,
(01:32):
we interviewed them, we talked and all the time we're
trying to figure out what makes them tick, what is
it that makes them so successful. That's where these five
things came from.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
All right, so tell us the five then I want
to discuss each from individually.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
So very briefly, leaders have to set direction. They've got
a plotter called mistra arkering, so they can get come. Secondly,
they need to harness energy, not only of themselves, of
the people around them and the entire organization. The third
thing is they need to exert pressure. That means they
have to change people's mind. Because you know, they map
(02:11):
out of direction, some people might not be willing to go.
They have to have the capacity to influence them to
get them there. The fourth is building connectivity. You can't
get there on your own. You can't do it on
your own. You need to build the right organization around
you to be successful. But then the fifth is you've
got to control traffic. And we use the analogy of
(02:31):
an air traffic controller. You've got to handle complexity, you've
got to handle rapid change. You've got to make sure
there are systems and processes. So these are the five
broad talents that we defined after that research, So.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Let's talk about each of them. Setting direction. I think
most founders, most small business owners have a direction, but
many times it gets upended either by the people in
their company or by their customers. So what do you
mean set direction? How long do I stand in that
direction without listening to anybody else? Or is it just
that the direction is coming from you and not coming
(03:05):
from the people around you.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, you need to know what long term value you're
trying to create. What need are you meeting? If you
didn't exist, what wouldn't your customers be able to do?
You have to define that, But then you have to
define a series of medium to shorter term goals that
help you get there. And this is where we get
into quarterly planning, annual planning, and then we push it
(03:30):
out to three year planning. So setting direction is a
combination strategic processing, setting goal deectives, and obviously communicating those
to the organization. After ideally, you know, lots of consultation
with the folks in your company.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Barry, we're losing you again, Okay, right now, you're back good, good,
you're just a little there. Let's talk about the second one,
the harness and the energy, which is really interesting because
I've been to the show for a long time. We've
discussed a lot about leadership, but no one ever talks
about harnessing energy. I find that's a really great concept.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
It is, and it's about a self drive, clearly, because
if you don't have the energy to show up, you
can't expect other people to. So you've got to operate
with that real determination, that real sense of purpose. But
then you've got to mobilize everybody around you. Now, a
lot of people are self starters. They come to work,
(04:35):
they show up, they roll their sleeves up, they get
stuck in. But it's really important that the leader sets
the context for that. You've got to make work exciting,
it's got to be fun. You've got to enjoy working together.
All those are really important components of harnessing energy in
an organization, and which we often take it for granted.
(04:55):
And that's the mistake too many leaders make.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So when every organization, can you really harness the energy?
I guess, can you really make it fun? Enjoying working together?
Even if you're cleaning hazardous waists and of shipping containers.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Of course you can absolutely. I'll give you an example
we found. We found people who are hotel housekeepers. These
are people who clean hotel rooms every day. Now when
I think of that, Barry, I my eyes roll and
I think, you gotta be kidding. You'd never find me
doing that. I never want to clean your room, right
(05:32):
right exactly. But yes, Amazon, you type rehousekeepers. They absolutely
love it. They tell you all the little things they
do to make the room look nice when the guest enters.
You know, they are particular about how the towels are folded,
the bed linen's got to be immaculate. I mean, they
(05:53):
take such pride in their work. And there are people
like that for every single job. It's just that we're
too lazy to go looking for them.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
The third one you talk about, Barry, is exert pressure.
And people exert pressure in this world in a lot
of different ways. Some people you do it by being
a bully, being forceful, some people do it by guilting
you into it. What's the most effective way as a
leadership to exert pressure.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Well, the best thing to do is to show people
respect and engage them first, in what you're trying to achieve. Now,
if you sit in an office in the you know,
in the corner of the building and issue orders and
then expect people to jump to the orders, you've got
no chance of bringing an organization with you. So the
pressure that you exert starts with engagement. Involve people, ask
(06:44):
them for their opinion, and then be patient and you know,
be prepared to have more than one conversation to get
a person on board. But ultimately the ship leaves the dock,
and it leaves on a particular date at a particular time,
and you've got to bill a leader that encourages people
to get on the boat with you, because if they
(07:04):
can't get on the boat with you, they've got to go.
They have to leave. And that's why exerting pressure is
so important.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Number four is building connections. And I find this is
really important because if the leader can't build connections, they're
really going to get nowhere.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That is correct. And in a small organization, typically the
leaders know everybody and therefore, you know, you might think
that the pressure on building connections isn't as strong. That
would be an error. By building connections, we're not saying,
you know who these people are and you can put
a name to a face. We're talking about a level
(07:42):
of human engagement where you value these people, You invest
in these people. You coach, you mentor you guide, you challenge,
you argue, and in order for that to happen, you
need to have the you know, deepest levels of connectivity,
which are based on you know, very sincere attempts to
(08:03):
you know, to surround yourself with the right kind of
people and make sure that they feel valued in the
contribution that they make.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
And Barry. The fifth one is controlled traffic. And I
love this one because I feel like so many times
when I was running my own company, controlling traffic was
what I was doing a lot of the time.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Best leaders need to be able to control traffic, Berry,
I mean, think of it this way. Air traffic controllers,
which is the analogy we use in the book, follow
very very strict operating proscedures. You know, distance on the ground,
distance in the air, altitude, flying east and west soil
planes don't collide, but at the same time, the unexpected
(08:45):
hits them. And the unexpected can come in the form
of a technical malfunction. It can be severe weather like
we've been having over Florida. It can be a whole
manner of different things. You know, ill pilot for example,
and scrambling to find a replacement. That's what Air Traffic
Control was a dealer with all the time. And so
(09:05):
they have to be rules based. They need to know
the procedures, but they also need to be able to
handle the unexpected. It's the best analogue that we've found
for how leaders manage execution in business.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
So, Barry, when you were doing this research with Sarah,
what were some of the most surprising findings that came up.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
In order for a woman to be appointed to a
top executive position, they need to be stronger than a
comparable male. So when we assess women who've been appointed
to top teams in companies, they are stronger in their
leadership than men are. We also see there is a
wider variation in the scores of men in leadership teams
(09:50):
that suggests that companies tolerate too many weaker men in
leadership positions. It was surprising to us how dark that was. Now,
you know, we all know that there are diversity challenges
at the top of most companies. Everybody can see that,
and some companies are trying to diligently correct that over time.
(10:13):
But you need to start by looking at what the
nature of the problem is. And the nature of the
problem is there are still too many biases affecting the
way that typically CEOs are taking decisions about top level executives.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
You know, over the years, when I worked for other
companies like IBM, I always thought that the best leaders
that I had were really women. What do you say stronger?
What do you mean by that a woman has to
be stronger?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So we have an assessment that we built to predict
the five talents that really matter, and that assessment produces
a score, and if we look at the score aggregate
score of women in leadership positions, it's a little higher
than the aggregate score for men. So that's what we
(11:00):
mean by stronger.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You know, a lot of small business owners get to
be leaders because they were the doers, right and then
all of a sudden they're in a manager position, they're
leading the company. But I guess one thing that I've
found over the years, Barry, is not everyone is meant
to be a leader. How do you figure out if
you're meant to be a leader, and if you're a founder,
if you're not a leader?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
What do you do about it? Well, the biggest that
you've highlighted one of the biggest problems in small private companies,
and that is that the folks who set the company
up are the ones who end up leading it over time,
but they might not be the best suited people to
do it. Our assessment provides a good indication of this.
(11:42):
And you know, if people buy our book read our book,
they can take our assessment. We give them the chance
to do that and they can have that question answered
for them. You know, am I cut out to be
a top level leader in an organization? We can answer
that question for you and give you good statistics around it.
But my advice two founders is, you know, the best
(12:03):
leadership you can show is by knowing when you need
to let go and knowing when you need to put
a professional CEO in charge of your company. And maybe
founders have got to move to the side. They put
themselves in an executive board level position where they can advise,
or even better, they narrow down to the thing that
(12:26):
they really love to do and then bring in professional
leaders around the company. Far too found, far too few founders,
in my view, are prepared to do that they just
can't seem to let goal and that's why a lot
of them struggle to scale. So they exist, they persist,
they do reasonably well, but they don't really grow that much.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, I mean, there are very few of us that
are Michael Dell's or Bill Gates that can take a
company from nothing and grow at the hundreds of millions
of dollars. Most starters are just that. Most founder is
just that they're good at the beginning, but not necessarily
once the company gets above fifty or one hundred people.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
And you know, the more we can spread that awareness, Barry,
then you know, maybe the stronger influence we have over time.
But I've sat down with founders face to face and said,
the best service you can do to your company is
stepping aside. You're not the leader that can scale this organization.
You're brilliant at this, or you're brilliant at that. Why
(13:28):
don't we find a role like that within the company.
But let's bring in a CEO who can run the
organization at a high level, because without that, this is
going nowhere.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
So a lot of people, some people do that, they
try to interview people for a leadership position in their company.
And they fail because what they find is this person
is good at giving good interview, but not necessarily a
good leader. How do you solve that?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Well, it's even bigger problem than that, Barry, because people
tend to pick people like themselves absolutely, and they replicate
the characteristics that they believe in about themselves and the
people that they look for. I mean, this is what
we map out pretty clearly in the book. We give
a very very clear exposition of how you go about
correcting your biases so that you don't bring in people
(14:17):
who just replicate your capabilities. You do need a proper,
credible assessment to be able to do that, because it
will find things that you miss. I'll give you one example.
A lot of people think that they're strategists. They claim
to be good strategic thinkers. It's one of the rarest
elements in our entire assessment. We find so little of it,
(14:41):
yet it's the most claimed attribute. The reason for that
is it's very, very difficult to assess strategic processing an interview.
People don't know what questions to ask, and then when
they listen to the answers, they don't know how to
evaluate the answers. What an assessment can do is provide
a better lens on those capabilities. And what we encourage
(15:03):
interviewers to do, so, you know, a founder to do
would be, you know, ask questions like is this a
person I can see myself working with? Is this a
person I think I can trust over time and use
the interpersonal elements of the interview to try to figure
those things out and then deploy an assessment to try
(15:24):
to find out those harder to detect issues like strategic processing.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Well, Barry, I appreciate you on the show that Tell.
The book is called The Five Talents That Really Matter
How Great Leaders Drive Extoring Performance that you wrote with
your business partner, Sarah Dalton. Where can people catch up
with you?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Consci dot com is our website, so my second name
dot com. You'll find about the book. You'll find about
our business. You'll find all the things that we do.
You can get answers to most questions there, you can
reach out and contactors. There. There are also links to
the book, but you can go down to places like
Amazon and all the usual book places to get to
(16:03):
get to help you the book.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Barry, thanks so much for joining us as the small
business radio show. We'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Are you stuck? Is this the year you finally grow
your business and make more money? During Barrie's many years
of running his own company, he had to deal with
the challenges of a business that just wasn't going anywhere.
It was a painful realization his business had flatlined and
he had no idea how to breathe new life into it.
It was especially difficult for Barry since his customers were
(16:33):
not getting the service he was so passionate about delivering. Second,
he wasn't making any money. Finally, his business was sucking
the life out of him. Do any of these sound familiar?
Your sales won't budge in spite of your best efforts.
You have few new leads for customers coming in and
existing customers fading away. You're burned out and completely exhausted.
(16:54):
It's no longer fun, and your family suffers as well.
If you're one of the millions of business owners facing
these problems every year, Barry has the answer. Check out
Barrymoltz dot com slash Unstuck to subscribe to his six
part video series.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Stick Around to get your small business unstuck. More of
Small Business Radio with Barry Molts.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Who are you as a leader, Do you own the room?
Do you lead with purpose? Does your leadership style inspire others?
My next guest is doctor Roger A. Girard who's the
owner of Sloan and Gerard Consulting, a private consulting practice
serving executives and boards. Isategic planning, operational planning, executive coaching,
and management deployment. Roger is the author of Owning the
(17:46):
Room and Lead with Purpose, Reignite Passion and Engagement for
Professionals in Crisis. He's also the co author of the
book on the Men. Roger, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
I'm pleased to be here.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Thanks for being here. I noticed at the end of
the time of a book, you say it's for professionals
in crisis. Why add that?
Speaker 5 (18:08):
Because today I think they are. I've spent the fifty
years as a leader and consultant to leaders, and over
the last few years when I was particularly doing their
research for the second book I wrote, Owning the Room,
I saw a lot of demoralization among professionals. I saw
(18:32):
a lot of very frustrated people who came into the
professions because they truly wanted to make a difference, and
they're not being led in a way that allows them
to do what they've been trained to do. This includes teachers, nurses, positions,
law enforcement. These are people who came to their professions
(18:52):
with a lot of passion.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
And why are they demoralized now?
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Roger A lot of reasons. One of the reasons is
an increasing standardization of work. Professionals are taught to use judgment.
They're taught to use their best knowledge and their best
skill in dealing with difficulty, problems, and issues. And as
we standardize work, as we put a lot of boundaries
(19:20):
around how people do their work, less and less judgment
is allowed. Professionals feel the need in their work to
do what needs to be done to get results. Think about,
for instance, an emergency rescue technician. They come into the
(19:45):
work not knowing what's going on and have at best
imperfect information and they have to use judgment. But that
same technician, when they exercise that judgment, they're being watched,
They're being monitor monitored by others. It may be stuff
going on while they're being videotaped. All of this is
(20:11):
putting pressure on professionals to standardize be more cautious. This
is difficult for them. A second reason that this is
occurring is a growing level of cynicism in society. You
see it on the internet all the time, a lot
of reactive kinds of responses to people who, in their
(20:37):
good nature or good will, just put themselves out on
the internet. This growing cynicism in society, whether it's the
polarization politically or just a general malaise, adds to the
level of demoralization a lot of these folks. It's very
difficult today to hire somebody into law enforcement. It's difficult
(21:02):
today to hire somebody into the teaching profession. Literally hundreds
of thousands of openings in teaching positions throughout the country today.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So, sir Roger, let me ask you, so, with this standardization,
with this demoralization, which I agree with you, how do
you still, as you say, own the room and lead
with purpose.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
This is a message to leaders. Leaders have to allow
professionals to be professionals. They have to create an environment
of respect. Leaders have to understand that when they hire
a professional, that professional may have a better understanding of
what needs to be done than the leader does. So
(21:49):
the first thing leaders have to get is this idea
of respect. Second, they have to understand that micromanagement's not
going to work with professionals. That just creates cynicism. A
lot of times, the leaders in the organization set arbitrary goals.
(22:09):
They set difficult expectations as a form of motivation or challenge.
But a professional will look at that and say, no,
this is what really needs to be done, and it's
going to take this amount of time, and that creates conflict,
That creates tension in the organization, and most people don't
(22:33):
want to work under that kind of tension for a
very long period of time.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Now, you talk about in the book that it's not
a leader's job to motivate other people on the team.
So many times a lot of people say, that's what
really leadership is about, is to motivate other people. What's
your take?
Speaker 5 (22:52):
I love the question. I am motivated to do what
I do because I love to do it. And frankly,
when professionals come out of their academic work and prepare
themselves to be professionals, they are already motivated. What I
see happening is that most organizations have processes methodologies that
(23:18):
start to erode that motivation rather than improve it. Most
I am not responsible for motivating the people who work
around me and the people who used to work for me,
they brought their own motivation to it. My job is
to cultivate that. My job is to amplify that. My
(23:40):
job is to focus that, but not to motivate them.
Nobody gets up in the morning Monday morning saying I
can't wait to get to work and have some boss
motivate me. That's not how it works.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
That's true, Yeah, that's really true. What about incentives? You
know a lot of jobs are incentivized right either from
a financial standpoint or some other kind of rewards. Do
you think that works.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
I'm pretty clear in Lead with Purpose that incentives, frankly,
most of the time do not work. There are ways
to incentivize, but most employers aren't using them right now.
Incentives move motivation from the intrinsic to the extrinsic. A
(24:27):
minute ago, I just said that most people come to
the work motivated. They're intrinsically motivated. That means they're doing
the job because they want to. When you then say
excuse me, when you then say, look, I got this
new thing that needs to happen in I'm going to
(24:47):
motivate you by giving you a bonus by giving you
an incentive to get this done, you've now moved the
motivation to the extrinsic. That's called manipulation. What happens is
from that point forward you have taught the employee that
if more is necessary, then you better pay me for it,
(25:13):
And now you have a puppet on a string. Manipulation
is not something that people like to have happened to them.
And over time, when incentives are used and then overused
to get certain things done, you create more cynicism and
more negative energy in the organization.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
So Roger, I assume that what is key for a
leader in your mind is that you have to hire
self motivated people. How do you do that? How do
you make sure these people are self motivated when you're
interviewing them.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Hiring is where it starts. You're exactly right, and it's
not a simple one meeting process out as simple. Let's
look at a resume pile and pull out the resumes
that look like they're the most motivated. You can't do that.
A good relationship requires eyeball to eyeball conversation, and it
(26:14):
requires perhaps several perspectives, maybe more than one or two
or three people doing the interviewing. You want to hire
people who come to you and say they want to
make a difference in some way, and then you have
to decide if the difference that they want to make
is in alignment with where your organization is headed. You're
(26:36):
not hiring for what the needs are today. You're hiring
for what the needs are going to be over the
next three, five, ten, fifteen years, and so you've got
to be very careful in that hiring process that you
look for alignment. Is this person really wanting to be
aligned with where the direction of the organization is? And frankly,
(26:56):
in the first two years of employment, very often employee,
after having those two years of experience might tell you
that that alignment's not there, and they may lead anyway
if they're unhappy. And we do see a spike in
the research data where the highest turnover among employees is
in the first two or three years of employment. After
(27:20):
that things tend to level off with regard to turnover.
But when you're hiring, it's all about the relationship. It's
all about the alignment. And unfortunately a lot of people
who hire are hiring based on resume credentials. What kind
of degree did they have, what kind of training, did
they have, what kind of job experience? Did they have skills?
(27:41):
And they failed. Yeah, and they fail to look they
fail to look at the alignment.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And so let's say that you have people around for
two years, their motivation is is waning. How do you
re engage these people that maybe are as people talk
about now they're doing a silent quitting kind of thing.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
Yeah, there are a couple of factors there. It depends
on how far it's gone. First of all, if you're
seeing early signs, the signs will show up. Is maybe
a little bit of cynicism, maybe a little bit of
naysaying going on in the organization, maybe some apathy. May
maybe they're just showing up in that really taking initiative.
(28:27):
That is the cue for the leader to have a
conversation saying, hey, what's up, what's going on? How can
I help you? Is there something going on with you
that that we need to look at and make this
work more enjoyable and make this work more satisfying for you,
because that's why you came here. Too often that conversation
(28:49):
doesn't take place, and too often I've seen leaders take
the attitude, look, you get paid don't you. I don't
care how you feel, Go do it. That's terrible that
that is a totally deflating way to address employees and
work with them. If you want an engaged workforce, you
(29:11):
have to have an engaged relationship, and too many leaders
haven't been trained in how to have that conversation. There
is a skill to it, but you have to be aware.
You have to be in the work to some extent
with the staff. You know, in Lean Methodology and Manufacturing
(29:32):
they talk about going to Gimba. They talk about being
present in the workplace, not to do the work side
by side with the staff, but so that you know
who's doing the work, what they're doing, why they're doing it,
and how they're going about doing it, so that you
can make sure they have all the resources they need
to get the job done well. Going to GEMMA, going
(29:53):
to where the work is being done is critical for
leadership because it creates relationships. That's what this was all about.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Absolutely. The time of the book is called owning the
room and lead with purpose, Reignite Passionate engagement Professionals in
crisis Roger, where can people catch up with you? Uh?
Speaker 5 (30:12):
You can catch up with me on my website, Rogergirard
dot com, and all of my stuff's out there.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Well. Roger, thanks for being on the radio show, and
I want to thank everyone for joining us this week
thanks to our incredible staff, our booking producer Sarah Scheffern,
our video and sound editor Ethan Moltz. If you're serious
about to be more successful in twenty twenty four, I've
set up a private line for you seven seven three
eight three seven eight two five zero or email me
at Barry at Molts dot com. Remember, love everyone, trust
(30:43):
a few, and pal your own canoe. Have a profitable
and passionate week.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
You can find Barrymoltz on the web at Barrymolts dot
com or more episodes of Small Business Radio at small
Buzz radioshow dot com
Get ready for all the craziness of small business. It's
exactly that craziness that makes it exciting and totally unbelievable.
Small Business Radio is now on the air with your host,
Barry Moultz.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, thanks for joining this week's radio show. Remember this
is the final word in product offerings keeping track. This
is now show number eight hundred and ten. We always
wonder a small business owners, what talents does it really
take to truly spot a great leader. My first guest
is Barry Kanchi, who's the founder and president of Conscie
(00:40):
Associates and author of a book called The Five Talents
that Really Matter How Great Leaders drive Extraordinary performance with
his business partner Sarah Dalton. He's an expert in psychometric
talent assessments, leadership research and development, team building, and succession planning. Barry,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Great to meet you, Barry.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I always love these books with titles, I mean with
numbers in them. Right, it's always five or seven or
things like that. How did you decide on five?
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's where the research took us, Barry. We made a
determination to study outstanding leaders against certain criteria that we defined,
and we studied the we found hundred of them. We
put them through the mill, we observed them, we assess them,
(01:32):
we interviewed them, we talked and all the time we're
trying to figure out what makes them tick, what is
it that makes them so successful. That's where these five
things came from.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
All right, so tell us the five then I want
to discuss each from individually.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
So very briefly, leaders have to set direction. They've got
a plotter called mistra arkering, so they can get come. Secondly,
they need to harness energy, not only of themselves, of
the people around them and the entire organization. The third
thing is they need to exert pressure. That means they
have to change people's mind. Because you know, they map
(02:11):
out of direction, some people might not be willing to go.
They have to have the capacity to influence them to
get them there. The fourth is building connectivity. You can't
get there on your own. You can't do it on
your own. You need to build the right organization around
you to be successful. But then the fifth is you've
got to control traffic. And we use the analogy of
(02:31):
an air traffic controller. You've got to handle complexity, you've
got to handle rapid change. You've got to make sure
there are systems and processes. So these are the five
broad talents that we defined after that research, So.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Let's talk about each of them. Setting direction. I think
most founders, most small business owners have a direction, but
many times it gets upended either by the people in
their company or by their customers. So what do you
mean set direction? How long do I stand in that
direction without listening to anybody else? Or is it just
that the direction is coming from you and not coming
(03:05):
from the people around you.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, you need to know what long term value you're
trying to create. What need are you meeting? If you
didn't exist, what wouldn't your customers be able to do?
You have to define that, But then you have to
define a series of medium to shorter term goals that
help you get there. And this is where we get
into quarterly planning, annual planning, and then we push it
(03:30):
out to three year planning. So setting direction is a
combination strategic processing, setting goal deectives, and obviously communicating those
to the organization. After ideally, you know, lots of consultation
with the folks in your company.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Barry, we're losing you again, Okay, right now, you're back good, good,
you're just a little there. Let's talk about the second one,
the harness and the energy, which is really interesting because
I've been to the show for a long time. We've
discussed a lot about leadership, but no one ever talks
about harnessing energy. I find that's a really great concept.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
It is, and it's about a self drive, clearly, because
if you don't have the energy to show up, you
can't expect other people to. So you've got to operate
with that real determination, that real sense of purpose. But
then you've got to mobilize everybody around you. Now, a
lot of people are self starters. They come to work,
(04:35):
they show up, they roll their sleeves up, they get
stuck in. But it's really important that the leader sets
the context for that. You've got to make work exciting,
it's got to be fun. You've got to enjoy working together.
All those are really important components of harnessing energy in
an organization, and which we often take it for granted.
(04:55):
And that's the mistake too many leaders make.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So when every organization, can you really harness the energy?
I guess, can you really make it fun? Enjoying working together?
Even if you're cleaning hazardous waists and of shipping containers.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Of course you can absolutely. I'll give you an example
we found. We found people who are hotel housekeepers. These
are people who clean hotel rooms every day. Now when
I think of that, Barry, I my eyes roll and
I think, you gotta be kidding. You'd never find me
doing that. I never want to clean your room, right
(05:32):
right exactly. But yes, Amazon, you type rehousekeepers. They absolutely
love it. They tell you all the little things they
do to make the room look nice when the guest enters.
You know, they are particular about how the towels are folded,
the bed linen's got to be immaculate. I mean, they
(05:53):
take such pride in their work. And there are people
like that for every single job. It's just that we're
too lazy to go looking for them.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
The third one you talk about, Barry, is exert pressure.
And people exert pressure in this world in a lot
of different ways. Some people you do it by being
a bully, being forceful, some people do it by guilting
you into it. What's the most effective way as a
leadership to exert pressure.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Well, the best thing to do is to show people
respect and engage them first, in what you're trying to achieve. Now,
if you sit in an office in the you know,
in the corner of the building and issue orders and
then expect people to jump to the orders, you've got
no chance of bringing an organization with you. So the
pressure that you exert starts with engagement. Involve people, ask
(06:44):
them for their opinion, and then be patient and you know,
be prepared to have more than one conversation to get
a person on board. But ultimately the ship leaves the dock,
and it leaves on a particular date at a particular time,
and you've got to bill a leader that encourages people
to get on the boat with you, because if they
(07:04):
can't get on the boat with you, they've got to go.
They have to leave. And that's why exerting pressure is
so important.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Number four is building connections. And I find this is
really important because if the leader can't build connections, they're
really going to get nowhere.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That is correct. And in a small organization, typically the
leaders know everybody and therefore, you know, you might think
that the pressure on building connections isn't as strong. That
would be an error. By building connections, we're not saying,
you know who these people are and you can put
a name to a face. We're talking about a level
(07:42):
of human engagement where you value these people, You invest
in these people. You coach, you mentor you guide, you challenge,
you argue, and in order for that to happen, you
need to have the you know, deepest levels of connectivity,
which are based on you know, very sincere attempts to
(08:03):
you know, to surround yourself with the right kind of
people and make sure that they feel valued in the
contribution that they make.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
And Barry. The fifth one is controlled traffic. And I
love this one because I feel like so many times
when I was running my own company, controlling traffic was
what I was doing a lot of the time.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Best leaders need to be able to control traffic, Berry,
I mean, think of it this way. Air traffic controllers,
which is the analogy we use in the book, follow
very very strict operating proscedures. You know, distance on the ground,
distance in the air, altitude, flying east and west soil
planes don't collide, but at the same time, the unexpected
(08:45):
hits them. And the unexpected can come in the form
of a technical malfunction. It can be severe weather like
we've been having over Florida. It can be a whole
manner of different things. You know, ill pilot for example,
and scrambling to find a replacement. That's what Air Traffic
Control was a dealer with all the time. And so
(09:05):
they have to be rules based. They need to know
the procedures, but they also need to be able to
handle the unexpected. It's the best analogue that we've found
for how leaders manage execution in business.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
So, Barry, when you were doing this research with Sarah,
what were some of the most surprising findings that came up.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
In order for a woman to be appointed to a
top executive position, they need to be stronger than a
comparable male. So when we assess women who've been appointed
to top teams in companies, they are stronger in their
leadership than men are. We also see there is a
wider variation in the scores of men in leadership teams
(09:50):
that suggests that companies tolerate too many weaker men in
leadership positions. It was surprising to us how dark that was. Now,
you know, we all know that there are diversity challenges
at the top of most companies. Everybody can see that,
and some companies are trying to diligently correct that over time.
(10:13):
But you need to start by looking at what the
nature of the problem is. And the nature of the
problem is there are still too many biases affecting the
way that typically CEOs are taking decisions about top level executives.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
You know, over the years, when I worked for other
companies like IBM, I always thought that the best leaders
that I had were really women. What do you say stronger?
What do you mean by that a woman has to
be stronger?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So we have an assessment that we built to predict
the five talents that really matter, and that assessment produces
a score, and if we look at the score aggregate
score of women in leadership positions, it's a little higher
than the aggregate score for men. So that's what we
(11:00):
mean by stronger.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You know, a lot of small business owners get to
be leaders because they were the doers, right and then
all of a sudden they're in a manager position, they're
leading the company. But I guess one thing that I've
found over the years, Barry, is not everyone is meant
to be a leader. How do you figure out if
you're meant to be a leader, and if you're a founder,
if you're not a leader?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
What do you do about it? Well, the biggest that
you've highlighted one of the biggest problems in small private companies,
and that is that the folks who set the company
up are the ones who end up leading it over time,
but they might not be the best suited people to
do it. Our assessment provides a good indication of this.
(11:42):
And you know, if people buy our book read our book,
they can take our assessment. We give them the chance
to do that and they can have that question answered
for them. You know, am I cut out to be
a top level leader in an organization? We can answer
that question for you and give you good statistics around it.
But my advice two founders is, you know, the best
(12:03):
leadership you can show is by knowing when you need
to let go and knowing when you need to put
a professional CEO in charge of your company. And maybe
founders have got to move to the side. They put
themselves in an executive board level position where they can advise,
or even better, they narrow down to the thing that
(12:26):
they really love to do and then bring in professional
leaders around the company. Far too found, far too few founders,
in my view, are prepared to do that they just
can't seem to let goal and that's why a lot
of them struggle to scale. So they exist, they persist,
they do reasonably well, but they don't really grow that much.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, I mean, there are very few of us that
are Michael Dell's or Bill Gates that can take a
company from nothing and grow at the hundreds of millions
of dollars. Most starters are just that. Most founder is
just that they're good at the beginning, but not necessarily
once the company gets above fifty or one hundred people.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
And you know, the more we can spread that awareness, Barry,
then you know, maybe the stronger influence we have over time.
But I've sat down with founders face to face and said,
the best service you can do to your company is
stepping aside. You're not the leader that can scale this organization.
You're brilliant at this, or you're brilliant at that. Why
(13:28):
don't we find a role like that within the company.
But let's bring in a CEO who can run the
organization at a high level, because without that, this is
going nowhere.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
So a lot of people, some people do that, they
try to interview people for a leadership position in their company.
And they fail because what they find is this person
is good at giving good interview, but not necessarily a
good leader. How do you solve that?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Well, it's even bigger problem than that, Barry, because people
tend to pick people like themselves absolutely, and they replicate
the characteristics that they believe in about themselves and the
people that they look for. I mean, this is what
we map out pretty clearly in the book. We give
a very very clear exposition of how you go about
correcting your biases so that you don't bring in people
(14:17):
who just replicate your capabilities. You do need a proper,
credible assessment to be able to do that, because it
will find things that you miss. I'll give you one example.
A lot of people think that they're strategists. They claim
to be good strategic thinkers. It's one of the rarest
elements in our entire assessment. We find so little of it,
(14:41):
yet it's the most claimed attribute. The reason for that
is it's very, very difficult to assess strategic processing an interview.
People don't know what questions to ask, and then when
they listen to the answers, they don't know how to
evaluate the answers. What an assessment can do is provide
a better lens on those capabilities. And what we encourage
(15:03):
interviewers to do, so, you know, a founder to do
would be, you know, ask questions like is this a
person I can see myself working with? Is this a
person I think I can trust over time and use
the interpersonal elements of the interview to try to figure
those things out and then deploy an assessment to try
(15:24):
to find out those harder to detect issues like strategic processing.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Well, Barry, I appreciate you on the show that Tell.
The book is called The Five Talents That Really Matter
How Great Leaders Drive Extoring Performance that you wrote with
your business partner, Sarah Dalton. Where can people catch up
with you?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Consci dot com is our website, so my second name
dot com. You'll find about the book. You'll find about
our business. You'll find all the things that we do.
You can get answers to most questions there, you can
reach out and contactors. There. There are also links to
the book, but you can go down to places like
Amazon and all the usual book places to get to
(16:03):
get to help you the book.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Barry, thanks so much for joining us as the small
business radio show. We'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Are you stuck? Is this the year you finally grow
your business and make more money? During Barrie's many years
of running his own company, he had to deal with
the challenges of a business that just wasn't going anywhere.
It was a painful realization his business had flatlined and
he had no idea how to breathe new life into it.
It was especially difficult for Barry since his customers were
(16:33):
not getting the service he was so passionate about delivering. Second,
he wasn't making any money. Finally, his business was sucking
the life out of him. Do any of these sound familiar?
Your sales won't budge in spite of your best efforts.
You have few new leads for customers coming in and
existing customers fading away. You're burned out and completely exhausted.
(16:54):
It's no longer fun, and your family suffers as well.
If you're one of the millions of business owners facing
these problems every year, Barry has the answer. Check out
Barrymoltz dot com slash Unstuck to subscribe to his six
part video series.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Stick Around to get your small business unstuck. More of
Small Business Radio with Barry Molts.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Who are you as a leader, Do you own the room?
Do you lead with purpose? Does your leadership style inspire others?
My next guest is doctor Roger A. Girard who's the
owner of Sloan and Gerard Consulting, a private consulting practice
serving executives and boards. Isategic planning, operational planning, executive coaching,
and management deployment. Roger is the author of Owning the
(17:46):
Room and Lead with Purpose, Reignite Passion and Engagement for
Professionals in Crisis. He's also the co author of the
book on the Men. Roger, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
I'm pleased to be here.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Thanks for being here. I noticed at the end of
the time of a book, you say it's for professionals
in crisis. Why add that?
Speaker 5 (18:08):
Because today I think they are. I've spent the fifty
years as a leader and consultant to leaders, and over
the last few years when I was particularly doing their
research for the second book I wrote, Owning the Room,
I saw a lot of demoralization among professionals. I saw
(18:32):
a lot of very frustrated people who came into the
professions because they truly wanted to make a difference, and
they're not being led in a way that allows them
to do what they've been trained to do. This includes teachers, nurses, positions,
law enforcement. These are people who came to their professions
(18:52):
with a lot of passion.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
And why are they demoralized now?
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Roger A lot of reasons. One of the reasons is
an increasing standardization of work. Professionals are taught to use judgment.
They're taught to use their best knowledge and their best
skill in dealing with difficulty, problems, and issues. And as
we standardize work, as we put a lot of boundaries
(19:20):
around how people do their work, less and less judgment
is allowed. Professionals feel the need in their work to
do what needs to be done to get results. Think about,
for instance, an emergency rescue technician. They come into the
(19:45):
work not knowing what's going on and have at best
imperfect information and they have to use judgment. But that
same technician, when they exercise that judgment, they're being watched,
They're being monitor monitored by others. It may be stuff
going on while they're being videotaped. All of this is
(20:11):
putting pressure on professionals to standardize be more cautious. This
is difficult for them. A second reason that this is
occurring is a growing level of cynicism in society. You
see it on the internet all the time, a lot
of reactive kinds of responses to people who, in their
(20:37):
good nature or good will, just put themselves out on
the internet. This growing cynicism in society, whether it's the
polarization politically or just a general malaise, adds to the
level of demoralization a lot of these folks. It's very
difficult today to hire somebody into law enforcement. It's difficult
(21:02):
today to hire somebody into the teaching profession. Literally hundreds
of thousands of openings in teaching positions throughout the country today.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So, sir Roger, let me ask you, so, with this standardization,
with this demoralization, which I agree with you, how do
you still, as you say, own the room and lead
with purpose.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
This is a message to leaders. Leaders have to allow
professionals to be professionals. They have to create an environment
of respect. Leaders have to understand that when they hire
a professional, that professional may have a better understanding of
what needs to be done than the leader does. So
(21:49):
the first thing leaders have to get is this idea
of respect. Second, they have to understand that micromanagement's not
going to work with professionals. That just creates cynicism. A
lot of times, the leaders in the organization set arbitrary goals.
(22:09):
They set difficult expectations as a form of motivation or challenge.
But a professional will look at that and say, no,
this is what really needs to be done, and it's
going to take this amount of time, and that creates conflict,
That creates tension in the organization, and most people don't
(22:33):
want to work under that kind of tension for a
very long period of time.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Now, you talk about in the book that it's not
a leader's job to motivate other people on the team.
So many times a lot of people say, that's what
really leadership is about, is to motivate other people. What's
your take?
Speaker 5 (22:52):
I love the question. I am motivated to do what
I do because I love to do it. And frankly,
when professionals come out of their academic work and prepare
themselves to be professionals, they are already motivated. What I
see happening is that most organizations have processes methodologies that
(23:18):
start to erode that motivation rather than improve it. Most
I am not responsible for motivating the people who work
around me and the people who used to work for me,
they brought their own motivation to it. My job is
to cultivate that. My job is to amplify that. My
(23:40):
job is to focus that, but not to motivate them.
Nobody gets up in the morning Monday morning saying I
can't wait to get to work and have some boss
motivate me. That's not how it works.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
That's true, Yeah, that's really true. What about incentives? You
know a lot of jobs are incentivized right either from
a financial standpoint or some other kind of rewards. Do
you think that works.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
I'm pretty clear in Lead with Purpose that incentives, frankly,
most of the time do not work. There are ways
to incentivize, but most employers aren't using them right now.
Incentives move motivation from the intrinsic to the extrinsic. A
(24:27):
minute ago, I just said that most people come to
the work motivated. They're intrinsically motivated. That means they're doing
the job because they want to. When you then say
excuse me, when you then say, look, I got this
new thing that needs to happen in I'm going to
(24:47):
motivate you by giving you a bonus by giving you
an incentive to get this done, you've now moved the
motivation to the extrinsic. That's called manipulation. What happens is
from that point forward you have taught the employee that
if more is necessary, then you better pay me for it,
(25:13):
And now you have a puppet on a string. Manipulation
is not something that people like to have happened to them.
And over time, when incentives are used and then overused
to get certain things done, you create more cynicism and
more negative energy in the organization.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
So Roger, I assume that what is key for a
leader in your mind is that you have to hire
self motivated people. How do you do that? How do
you make sure these people are self motivated when you're
interviewing them.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Hiring is where it starts. You're exactly right, and it's
not a simple one meeting process out as simple. Let's
look at a resume pile and pull out the resumes
that look like they're the most motivated. You can't do that.
A good relationship requires eyeball to eyeball conversation, and it
(26:14):
requires perhaps several perspectives, maybe more than one or two
or three people doing the interviewing. You want to hire
people who come to you and say they want to
make a difference in some way, and then you have
to decide if the difference that they want to make
is in alignment with where your organization is headed. You're
(26:36):
not hiring for what the needs are today. You're hiring
for what the needs are going to be over the
next three, five, ten, fifteen years, and so you've got
to be very careful in that hiring process that you
look for alignment. Is this person really wanting to be
aligned with where the direction of the organization is? And frankly,
(26:56):
in the first two years of employment, very often employee,
after having those two years of experience might tell you
that that alignment's not there, and they may lead anyway
if they're unhappy. And we do see a spike in
the research data where the highest turnover among employees is
in the first two or three years of employment. After
(27:20):
that things tend to level off with regard to turnover.
But when you're hiring, it's all about the relationship. It's
all about the alignment. And unfortunately a lot of people
who hire are hiring based on resume credentials. What kind
of degree did they have, what kind of training, did
they have, what kind of job experience? Did they have skills?
(27:41):
And they failed. Yeah, and they fail to look they
fail to look at the alignment.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And so let's say that you have people around for
two years, their motivation is is waning. How do you
re engage these people that maybe are as people talk
about now they're doing a silent quitting kind of thing.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
Yeah, there are a couple of factors there. It depends
on how far it's gone. First of all, if you're
seeing early signs, the signs will show up. Is maybe
a little bit of cynicism, maybe a little bit of
naysaying going on in the organization, maybe some apathy. May
maybe they're just showing up in that really taking initiative.
(28:27):
That is the cue for the leader to have a
conversation saying, hey, what's up, what's going on? How can
I help you? Is there something going on with you
that that we need to look at and make this
work more enjoyable and make this work more satisfying for you,
because that's why you came here. Too often that conversation
(28:49):
doesn't take place, and too often I've seen leaders take
the attitude, look, you get paid don't you. I don't
care how you feel, Go do it. That's terrible that
that is a totally deflating way to address employees and
work with them. If you want an engaged workforce, you
(29:11):
have to have an engaged relationship, and too many leaders
haven't been trained in how to have that conversation. There
is a skill to it, but you have to be aware.
You have to be in the work to some extent
with the staff. You know, in Lean Methodology and Manufacturing
(29:32):
they talk about going to Gimba. They talk about being
present in the workplace, not to do the work side
by side with the staff, but so that you know
who's doing the work, what they're doing, why they're doing it,
and how they're going about doing it, so that you
can make sure they have all the resources they need
to get the job done well. Going to GEMMA, going
(29:53):
to where the work is being done is critical for
leadership because it creates relationships. That's what this was all about.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Absolutely. The time of the book is called owning the
room and lead with purpose, Reignite Passionate engagement Professionals in
crisis Roger, where can people catch up with you? Uh?
Speaker 5 (30:12):
You can catch up with me on my website, Rogergirard
dot com, and all of my stuff's out there.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Well. Roger, thanks for being on the radio show, and
I want to thank everyone for joining us this week
thanks to our incredible staff, our booking producer Sarah Scheffern,
our video and sound editor Ethan Moltz. If you're serious
about to be more successful in twenty twenty four, I've
set up a private line for you seven seven three
eight three seven eight two five zero or email me
at Barry at Molts dot com. Remember, love everyone, trust
(30:43):
a few, and pal your own canoe. Have a profitable
and passionate week.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
You can find Barrymoltz on the web at Barrymolts dot
com or more episodes of Small Business Radio at small
Buzz radioshow dot com
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!