Taking Feedback w/ @BillSchickFCMO | Power Theory Podcast

If I could get any feedback, anything that I could learn to do what I do better and more effectively, like, I wanted it. Like I soaked it up. People think what I do is teach people how to be sensitive. No, I want them to be confident and bold and step in and take responsibility for themselves and be accountable for themselves. People think that marketing is this wishy washy thing that anybody can do, and it's just really easy. But there are things that you have to do right, or it's not gonna work, and then you're not gonna have a job. Hi. Welcome back to Power Theory. My name is Russ Willette. I'm an executive coach and organizational consultant. My mission is to help people find their personal power to be the best employees and people they can possibly be. Today I have the pleasure of working with a very close friend of mine, Bill Schick. It's easy to walk away, it's easy to quit, but it's hard to figure it out. We sort of put these trappings of business around it. And, you know, if you can have a frank conversation with somebody, respectful, you know, human conversation with somebody in the moment, you could shave years of misery off of your professional life. It's exhausting if you walk around with those bad feelings. This is the misconception, Bill. This is what I talk about when I talk about professional agency. If someone's honest with you and says bill. And does it in an appropriate way, and you're gonna thank me later. Yeah, like, that's. That's the truth. I think that there's a lot of talk in a professional setting about delivering value. You know, you look at, like a content strategy, deliver value, video and bl. And everything. I think where. What I do instead of what I've seen other agencies do is the first, the pitch meeting. We don't pitch the agency. We don't sell you on us. That's your first consult. Okay. And it's not even a discovery because everybody does a discovery, but they only do a discovery after you're engaged. Right? Okay. We go beyond that. And the first meeting, which would typically be a pitch, is consulting on strategy. We can begin, and we do begin, to build the plan. If you don't continue on, give it away. If you don't continue on with me today, here are three things you have to do, no matter who you pick. And if you don't pick me, that's okay. But here's what you have to do regardless. And there are things that they just don't have on their radar. They don't know that those are the root cause. I think that's really important because it sets the tone. You are then in that moment, you are the leader. I know you want to talk about this and you wanted me to do a dog and pony show about my agency. Well, here's my agency and we'll spend a minute on that. But now we're going to talk about why you brought me in here. And we've evaluated this and we can do that very quickly now. Anybody can. And based on what I've seen in my experience, you should really be focusing on these things and you need to fix this one thing right now. And by putting ourselves in that position. And it's almost like breaking the fourth wall with them because I tell them I'm doing it while I'm doing it, I'm explaining to them how I'm selling them while I'm selling them on the agency so that they know this is what you get every time you sit down with me. Right? Okay. It's never going to be different than this. And if it is different, it's because there's a change in that dynamic and that makes it easier for a small startup founder who has a junior marketing person to say, okay, please come in, be our fractional cmo. I need leadership here. I can't afford a full time person, but I need somebody to tell me what to do at a level that I can understand and be that authentic leader right now. I don't think that that's a tactic on your part, it's just a right. So I also firmly believe the same approach. Somebody calls me, I'm just coaching them right away, you know, tell me about the situation, what's going on, you know, whatever. I take that conversation so they get a sense of what it is. But also it's because I'm trying to help them. And I also tell them same thing, like, look, we don't need to do anything, but let's work while we're here. We get the time, let's work while we're here. Maybe that one conversation sets them off and they can go in a different direction. The other thing that I do and which I'm particularly proud of is that every, every time someone becomes a client, even if it's a short engagement, like a six month CEO getting ready for some big thing that's going on, whatever it is, or it's a two year whatever it is, once they've worked with me, I say they're in the club. What I basically means is that you can Call me for the rest of your life, anytime you want about any particular matter. I mean, I'm not going to spend, you know, to two hour meetings with them, but I'm certainly going to. I know about this situation. I know them. I feel like I know them intimately. I know what they, how they think and how they approach things. And by the way, I don't forget any of this stuff. Like, for some reason, my brain will remember all of these people. Yeah. Long years later. Right. Well, that's because you, you invest your, your, your personally emotionally invest. It's up. It's a partnership. It's a, it's about the people. Seriously. It's not a transaction. It's not a. I cash a check and I'm on to the next check cashing right now. If they want to work, they'll have to cash in. I'll have to cash another check. But, but basically I'm available. The other thing that I do is, it's not unusual, is I'll say, I'll say to a client, you know what, I worked with a client two years ago that had this exact same situation. Let me call them in and I'll call my old client and say, can you come to this meeting with this other executive who's struggling with the same thing? And the answer is always, of course, like, I want to be part of this, you know, and we get together and we have like a. Like these two executives meet, they share ideas and it's like, it's just fantastic. That's all coming from that place of an authentic relationship. And, you know, there's some people that when I remember when, you know, when I, when I first became a supervisor. Right. So first of all, I'm working with all my peers. And now, Russ, you're smart. We'll give you, make you the supervisor. Now I'm a supervisor in a finance department, and I'm working with all these different eclectic people. And the boss says, well, you can't be friends with them anymore, Russ. You know, I'm like, what do. We can't be friends with them? How am I going to not be friends with Frankie? Frankie's my friend. Well, Frankie works for you now. Well, I don't care. And the thought was that if they're my friend, I can't be honest with them or I can't hold them accountable. But this is the way I look at it. If I really, truly think you're my friend. Right. And I think that you did a boneheaded thing, I'm going to tell You, Bill, that was boneheaded. Like, what are you thinking? And you're going to. If you're my friend, you're going to say, oh, you're right, I probably should have done that. Or, you know, I'm not sure I agree or whatever. But if I'm not your friend, you're going to. Now we're going to compete. Now we're. Now we're going to. It's. We're not going to listen to each other. Right. So I fully believe that. That, you know, and what I'm not confusing is because I'm your friend, I'm just going to, you know, champion you and be nice to you all. That's not what a friend is. Yeah. A friend is someone that says you're being a dope or you're overreacting or, like, you know, what is it you want for an outcome? Is that so? That's interesting, because in, I guess, the circles I run in now, you know, with clients, that doesn't happen as frequently as maybe I remember. But the friends. No, the kind of, you know, looking to someone you work with, or you'd say like a friend and sort of calling them on their missteps and saying, that's a boneheaded move, holding them accountable. I think that now, 1. I don't know that people deliver that message, and I don't know that people can really take it. The truth is, this is the misconception, Bill. This is what I talk about when I talk about professional agency. If someone's honest with you and says, bill. And does it in an appropriate way, doesn't yell at you or embarrass you in front of somebody, but says, hey, Bill, listen, you know, I don't think you handle that meeting well. You might go, well, okay? And the first reaction might be that. But then you're gonna think about it and you're gonna thank me later. Yeah. Like, that's. That's the truth. 100%. Walk around so afraid to be honest with people, because now I don't want people coming at me, tell me everything I do wrong. Right. You know, I mean, there are people in my life that might want to do that on a daily basis, but, you know, it's like that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about. I remember I was in a meeting with Heather, and we were actually hiring. We were actually interviewing another consultant. And I'm very picky about consultants that work for Sojourn. I mean, I'm just like, they have to Be the best of the best. I'm not going to put people. I take this work seriously. This isn't just a transaction. Right. So I'm interviewing this person with Heather, and the meeting ends and I'm like, so what do you think? She goes, russ, that was embarrassing. You did not handle that meeting properly. You know, just think about it. And I remember saying that, and I'm thinking, you know, all right, like, it didn't make me, like, not like Heather. It made me think, she's got my back. Yeah. You know, I remember going, I went to. She thanked me. We're going to a meeting. And, you know, Heather has a very, very, you know, empathetic personality. She's very. She's a wonderful person, and she's just really good at coaching. And we were going to see a bunch of, like, geeky engineers, and we were giving this, like, presentation, and she was practicing the presentation with me, and I said, heather, these are, these are serious engineers. They're not, they're not going to buy this approach right away. What we need to do is hit them with data first. And she's like, thanks. So thanks so much for being honest. That's really important. Like, I, like, that's what, you know, that's what it is. Or if I tell, I tell clients all the time. I think you're overreacting or you think you handled that well. They don't dislike me. They, they, they let, they say, oh, my God. So I think that we walk around so afraid now. I don't think we should walk around correcting everybody either. I'm talking about things that matter. Right. Things that have an impact. Yeah, well, that affects other people. Otherwise it's too much noise. I mean, if everybody's correcting everything all the time, you just can't take it. Yeah, but it's as simple as, like, the boss has asked you to do a project and you don't think you're capable of doing it, or you're not sure that you're going to be able to do it, or they're looking at it the wrong way. You know, you say, look, I think you're looking at this the wrong way. Jen Psaki just wrote a book. I forget the name of it. I'm not going to be able to. I'll put it on the screen somewhere so we can read it. But she just wrote a book about communication, effective communication. And she's worked for, like, John Kerry and Barack Obama and all these people, and she talks about how John Kerry was in the military and he loved feedback. She would run down the hall and yell at him, this is dumb. You can't do this with Obama. She couldn't do it because she was in such awe of him. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but she was respectful of him. She had to figure out a way to give him feedback. But she gave him the feedback because that was her job. And you think that hurt the relation? No, I mean, reasonable people are going to want that feedback. So anyway, you make a good point and you say reasonable people are going to want that feedback, but a lot of people don't. Well, that's because they might not be ready for it or they're not mature enough for it, or there's something else going on that might be out of your control. Yeah, I mean, I was providing. It was a teaching moment. So it was kind of a team, general team feedback. And a new employee was in the room listening to. We walk through a process and we look at the places where we could have done things different. And this is a process that I've built and I've trained the team on. So I'm walking through and saying, okay, we could do this differently here and here and here and here. And the new person raised their hand and I was excited because they're listening and they, they want clarification. And this is where I think this is going. And instead they said, I don't, I don't really understand why I'm hearing this right now. I sort of feel attacked. And I didn't have a, I didn't have a response for that because nowhere, nowhere in the conversation, nowhere in my brain did I feel like it was an attack. I was like, if I remember coming up, if I could get any feedback, anything that I could learn to do what I do better and more effectively, like I wanted it, like I soaked it up and I would take it. And was it always delivered perfectly? No. I mean, you know, I sat in a big conference room one time when my boss's boss made my boss cry in front of me. And that was a teaching moment for me because I don't ever want to do that. But, you know, there is like, you need the feedback. Like you have a job to do. People think that marketing is this wishy washy thing that anybody can do and it's just really easy. But there are things that you have to do right, or it's not gonna work and then you're not gonna have a job. So in kind of walking through that, in teaching, it's not an attack on you. You didn't even do the work. You're just there as an observer. Take it in, soak it in. It's not nothing to get a migraine over or to go home and take two sick days over. So this person was an employee or customer. An employee. Right. Who was just observing. So couple things. First of all, and we know this by now, 10% of the people watching this video are not going to like me. That's the end of the story. I'm too old, I'm too opinionated, you know, whatever. They're not going to like me. A good. Historically, a good portion of people think I have some value, and so, you know, they're going to stick around. So not everybody's going to be happy with that. The other thing is, is that we can't meet everybody where they are. So a room full of 10 people, one person, 10%, one person is going to be thinking, oh, my God, I'm a fraud. He's saying, I don't know what I'm doing. And that's all their own insecurities and stuff. And we can't walk around. And I do not believe that we should address the lowest common denominator. Right. So I think we have to, you know, let that happen and then be comfortable with that. Yeah. So it's like. So you're uncomfortable? I mean, this happened to me. I was at a board meeting and I was running some exercise with a group of people. I called on this person and he's like, look, I had a bad day and I am not into this. And I'm sorry. I think this is just not what we should be doing. And so just. Let's just. Let me. Leave me out. I appreciate your honesty. Exactly what I said. I said, oh, my God, thank you so much for sharing that. That is really important. And that's the kind of transparency and honesty we always want to have. So just observe. Okay, thanks very much. And I moved on. Now, did I say something to make that happen? No. This person's feeling intimidated. Somehow I hit a nerve. I said something that they. That resonate. There's nothing I can do about that now. What I could do afterwards is go up to them and say, listen, you know, what's going on? And then if they want to open up, they'll open up, and if they don't, they're not ready. That's the end of it. So I don't. You know, that's my. Again, I think that even that person in that board meeting that reacted that way I can approach it with kindness. I mean that when I'm in my coaching mode, you know, I'm going to be kind. I'm going to do the next right thing. I'm going to try to help that person. If I can't, I don't want that help. That's fine right now. It doesn't. I'm not always like that in my personal life. I mean, you know, I do boneheaded things and say stupid things all the time because I'm not necessarily, you know, as. As in this coaching mode, but. And that's like what leadership is. Leadership is. You know, you can be authentic, but you also have to be. You also have to be like, it's really about them. It's really about what we're trying to do together. How do we make all boats float? So I don't know if that's, you know. You know, it's like some of this stuff we have to let go. And I do think, you know, I hear so much generational noise. You know, you could fill YouTube with conversations about generational issues. Right. You know, I mean, you know, every. You know, there are commonalities across generations, and they're, you know, every person's a little bit different. And everybody has an opinion, whether it's educated or not, or it's actually informed based on a personal experience or not. But, you know, you. You might. And people hear that story and they think that this is, you know, an early 20s something person. But it probably wasn't. It wasn't. No, it wasn't. And I was really taken aback. I was surprised. And, you know, like you said, it's a matter of in the moment, just acknowledging it and continuing on and revisiting it later and saying, okay, there's something. There's something else here. What is it? Yeah. And I find that if we bounce. See, for me, it's easy to bounce across friends and family and employees and clients because to me, it's people. It's less transactional. And so I can say to a client in the moment, okay, you just said something right now that perked my ears up. Let's talk about that for a moment. It may be uncomfortable, and it might have been a throwaway comment for you, but it's a sign that something else is happening here. Let's talk about that for a moment. And initially, they may be taken aback because they won't expect that kind of directness and authenticity. They might expect a. Well, I'm just gonna kind of gloss over what probably is A problem because I want to make sure that check cashes. Yeah, they don't really get that. You know, if this doesn't go well, it's okay to not work together anymore. Yeah. We're not gonna die. Yeah. You know, you can find another person to do something here. I can find another client. And so with that, you know, with that employee going back to them and saying, you know, what's going on? Tell me. Yeah. You know, I do this exercise with just about every group. I do this exercise where I ask people to tell me about someone that they admire as a leader. You know, it could be someone personal to you, could be someone from history, whatever they come up with. And I give them some time to process that, and then I start debriefing, and they all come back. It's like, it's. It's scripted, and it's not what you think. They. They don't say, oh, it was the guy that never gave me feedback, or the woman that was so nice to me all the time. What they come back and say is, and this is from the military to health care to manufacture, like, whatever. It's like, you know, this. She came and told me that I needed to wake up and. But she's doing it from a place of relationship. Like, I care about you. There's. I think, more of you than you think of yourself. And there's a. There's almost like a brutality to it. Yeah. But these people are sitting in a room talking about things that happened to him 10 years ago that they recall as a leadership moment. They never say, he was so nice to me all the time. It's always. They were tough. They were authentic. They were real. They didn't make me, you know, even though they were my boss three levels above me, they didn't make me feel like I was less. Like, it's. And it's this feeling again. And I guess the feelings gotta come down to, you know, the reason why, Bill, I like you is. Cause you're real. Like, you're a real human being with. And, you know, with flaws and frustrations and, you know, like, I have different frustrations, but we all have that. We're in this human condition. And I. To me, it's. To me, it's kind of a beautiful thing when you see people being as real and honest as they can. Now, it doesn't mean that they won't do boneheaded things and you can't try to help them and correct them, or they can't manage that. But, you know, I think you Know when that, when that person acted out. I got to be careful not to make judgments about them because that's what my, my instinct tells me. I got to be careful not to, not to read in that they. About my own fears about what, what that. What's going on. The next right thing to do in that situation that's is. Is listen, what, what can we do to help you? What, what, how can we make this better? I'm not going to enable you. I'm not going to say you now, you can't do it that way. I'm not going to enable you. I'm not going off the hook. But let me give you support. Let me show you how you can do it. Let me do a little coaching and mentoring with you. Let me get you to work with someone else, right? Or this might not be the right thing for you and I'm going to help you with that. Let me help you like move on. So I think that in that particular instance, I think because I've never been presented so directly with somebody on my team who I wasn't also more familiar with what their mannerisms are, the way they think, the way they process. Everybody's really different. I was taken aback. My approach is to address it directly and to, you know, I look at, you know, because we're a small team where there, there might be a conversation that I think other people could maybe learn from because it's, it's a relatively earlier career team to look at that and understand why. So talking about people, feeling that feedback is an attack. And I think what it comes down to is this is really different for me. So taking a step back, I sort of came up in a situation environment where I didn't have a healthy respect for other people and their accomplishments. You know, when I met you for the first time, whatever your title was or wherever your role was didn't carry any weight. You were just another person. And today I have a better sense of the things that we carry with us in life that we should extend that respect to. So now, today, looking at my team, when I bring somebody in, I have a default sense of respect for their journey and the reason I brought them in to do something, to do a role at the company or when I meet with a client, there's a respect for their journey and their experiences, which I didn't used to have. It used to be kind of blank slate right out of the gate, which is really quite messed up when you think about it. So that's a bit of the last 10 years thing for me. And so with her and walking through with the team and respecting where she might be coming from with this and saying, look, this is a new environment. You haven't worked at an agency before. But part of this is evaluating, like, what we do in art school. We put our work up in front of the whole class and they tear it apart. I mean, it's really bitter and saddening and awful. This is not that. This is walking through a process and saying, this could have been done differently, and this could have been done differently, and this is. Could be done differently. And so it's not an attack, it's an evaluation. So in this situation, did it turn around? Did you. Yes. Yeah. So I think the message was heard and it kind of adjusted. I think it corrected that particular issue and also gave the team, which hadn't been through sort of this exercise before, a good understanding that when. When we're walking through the work, it's not a personal attack on you. Right, right. You know, and. And I do try to focus more on process, you know, instead of like, why'd you pick that? Right. It's. It's a. Did we follow the process? The process says this. We didn't do that. Well, why did we? You know, so it comes down. It also comes down to the relationship that you have with that person. So if. So when I talk about the fact that she spoke up is good. Yes. As much as it was uncomfortable, like, even though it wasn't your truth, it was her truth. And she's saying to you, dude, I'm feeling attacked. Yeah, right. That when I talk about agency, that's what I want people to do. I want them to be. So now that you've communicated to me now, I know how to react to that now. So to me, that's very mature that she said that, although it might not have seen at the time. So the response that you had was really, really professional and what exactly we would recommend. Right. You have to go back into that relationship and say, look, I'm not that big, scary guy, you know, I care about you. Let me tell you, like what, you know, why I was asking that question, or why. Why we do this process or what the reason is, and I know that you can do it. And. And over time, you know, you might seem like kind of a. The scary owner of the company who's now putting all these, you know, whether you like it or not, that's what's going to happen. You're never going to take that away. You're the boss. That's what's going to. That people are always going to default to that. But so again, it's that relationship that has to be formed. And it's. It may sound exhausting but to like when I say that to people, but it's not that hard. It's just like clear, candid conversations that not only am I allowed to have with you, but you're allowed to have with me. You know, I had this guy work for me. His name was George, back when I was at Raytheon and I was the supervisor and he's one of my analysts, you know, and I had to give performance reviews to people. And there's a big process we had to do. So I did George's performance review and he comes in my office and he says, I go to my performance review with him and he says, great, thank you. I have your performance review. And he pulled out a performance review that he did for me. I mean, first of all, you know, the guts to do that was pretty cool, right? And then it was like. And then, then we had this great conversation and I think it was so valuable. George and I became great friends and, and that, and it really solidified the relationship between us, even though it might sound like weird. I remember giving, I had to give a guy his review for the year, like his review, his merit increase. And I remember it was only 5%. And this is like one of the top performers, but he was like a 60 year old guy and, you know, and he was funny. He was a funny guy. He was like, you know, class clown and everybody liked him. And I sat with him in the office and gave him the review and he ripped it. He ripped me up and down and yelled at me and said, you know what? You know, like the whole thing. And I remember feeling like horrified. I was a young supervisor, I was horrified. I didn't know what to do. So I went into my boss's office and talked to him about it and he goes, well, he's gonna have to get used to like whatever. It turns out that that guy ended up, when he ended up retiring, he said like the kindest things about me. And it was like, and you have to work through this stuff, right? And not be so sensitive about everything. And I think that, you know, we are trained today. I. What's, what's interesting is that people think what I do is teach people how to be sensitive. No, I don't teach people. Yes, I think it's. I think you have to have a sensitivity. There's going to be an emotional awareness all that. But I want them to be confident and bold and step in and lean in and take responsibility for themselves and be accountable for themselves. And that. And that's. That means, you know, that interaction that you had with that person, you have to resolve it and figure it out. You talk. Yeah. You talk about how exhausting it sounds. Yeah. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's being. It's being. I think you can be respectful, and I think. I think we've lost a little bit of that. But you're being. It's. It's exhausting if you walk around with those bad feelings, you know, because a lot of that, you know, probably 90% of that is in your own head. You know, I think that if you can say, you know, I don't really like what you said, you know, I feel like this thing. I feel. Right, right. I feel like this. Then you give somebody a chance to say, wow, I'm sorry. That's not at all what I thought that I was communicating here, and instead of sitting there and taking it and then going home, like, stewing over it, and then it fast. That's exhausting. You know, the saying to somebody, you know, I don't understand. I'm confused. I feel like, you know, just communicating like you would with anybody. I mean, we sort of put these trappings of business around it, and we. You know, there are a lot of trappings that we have to manage, but, you know, people are still people. And, you know, if you can have a frank conversation with somebody respectful, but, you know, human conversation with somebody in the moment, you could shave years of misery off of your professional life. Yeah. And so when I think about the future of. The future of. In my mind, I have this naive belief that we're all progressing to a better human condition. Right. Are we still on camera? Yeah. It's like I. I do have this naive idea that, you know, where we've come from, we've evolved to be how we operate today. Organizations are designed a certain way and all that. Right. But when I think about the future, like, how will we operate in the future? Why will this stuff be easier? And I think the answer is yes. And I believe the solution is people having this authentic, respectful relationship for one another, not judging each other, trying to help each other. And then the question. And I think companies try to put things in place like transformation and empowerment and whatever flavor of the month is. And these things are not bad things. These things are good things. But what it comes down to is that woman in that situation with you has to be personally accountable for what that situation is. And to her credit, she was. She was accountable. She said it to you, you then became accountable, you said it to her, and you figured it out. So imagine an organization in the future where people really know how to have these conversations. And where we fall off is all of us are walking around with these unresolved conversations or unresolved situations. A conversation that I have to have with somebody, but I'm afraid to because I don't want them to get mad or I have to talk to her, but if I do, she's going to be upset and mad at me or quit or I have to go talk to this customer because I feel disrespected. But if I do, I might lose the business. So what we do is we're all afraid of that wild animal that's in there that's going to come out. But the truth is, is that, and I would say 99.9% of the time, I mean, that's a big number, that if you do those conversations well, it's going to be productive. Now, it might not. This person may quit, but all you're doing is accelerating what's going to happen anyways, because as long as it continues, it's just going to continue. And that person might not be able to face what you have to say. So the answer to me is, so I'm a coach, right? I've got 200 hours of professional training and coaching. I have a doctorate in management. I've been doing this for a long time. People pay me to kind of come in and do this, and sometimes they need that. But I can boil coaching down to a few tactics that if we practice three times, we can do it in our organization. We can do it with each other. Imagine if that person that was feeling attacked, had these skills and could talk to a peer that had these skills. They could have resolved it without even coming to you. And that's the vision I have. I have the vision that we're all just better human beings behaving in a safe way, having an outlet and someone to talk to in a productive way. But what we have instead is we have organizations that are set up to be competitive. It's all about the money. It's all about the data. People have to know it all. If they don't know it all, they're not going to feel value versus let's really be a team. And where you see this work the most is in like, incubator companies where there's like, you know, five or six people that are starting a business for the first time and they have this idea and they, they just communicate deliberately to each other. They, you know, when they may. Someone has a bad day, they help them. You know, they're in each other's lives, professional lives, in a certain way. So I don't know. Do you think my vision's kind of crazy? I guess that we had a lot to get over, but yeah, I don't think so. I think, I think that they're, you know, again, we sort of put these trappings around, you know, these, we put up these rails on business and, you know, I think there's this idea that we sort of walk through a door and now we have a different approach to people. Right. You know, and I can understand some of it, some of it's necessary, but I think that what it does is it creates problems. And I think people come into. They come into their job and they have people. Things they bring with them. And if, you know, if you're struggling in one area, you're coming in and bringing that along with you. I think that what you're describing, as far as some of these things, it can't always be resolved that way. You know, it can't. You know, we can, we can, we can put up frameworks and we can put up trainings and, and provide that structure, but it's. You're still, still dealing with people and, and the, all of the currents that, that underlie everything that you're doing with them. So I like, I like the idea and can. Can see us moving that way because I, I do see a lot of businesses and people struggling just in. Just trying to move things along and they're getting stuck in communication. Communication is the thing that's holding them. Yeah. And it's fear. Again, going back to one of the first things we talked about, which is being more concerned with how you're framing a message versus the substance of the message. Right, right. That's probably sounds like a weird thing coming from, you know, a brand or a marketing guy. Like, I'm not so worried about the way we're framing this message. Like, let's just like I'd rather move fast than find exactly that right word that doesn't poke at something that I've no idea that's going on. Would you describe what motivation is? For me, motivation is. It's a lot of things, but ultimately you boil it down to what, whatever that, that thing or that combination of things that come together to get you to Go, Yeah. So there's, you know, there's a, you know. Do you know, I once went and did research when I was working on my dissertation about, I was looking at motivation, and when I started doing the research, I was finding all these economic papers. Economics is based on motivations, right. I was like these, all these motivational theories were built in these very scholarly papers about economics. So there are like, there's a dozen theories that I'm not going to go through about what, like, different ways of. And none of them all work for everybody. It's like, you know, this, you know, I might be goal oriented. If you give me a goal, I'll be able to do it. I might. There's a thing called expectancy theory, meaning if I expect I'll be successful, then therefore I'll be motivated. There's values, there's all kinds of different theories. But let me tell you a very simple way that I think about motivation. There are three things that have to be fulfilled for people to be motivated. So if I want you to take a job, let's say just to make it simple, in sales, right. I want you to sell Mesh Interactive, right? I'm going to hire you for the job. Well, I need to know three things. I need to know, what are your internal values, what are your external values, and what, how. What's your probability in your mind that you'll be successful? So I would ask questions like, you know, so what, what, what will this job give you regarding satisfying your internal values, meaning, you know, fulfillment, happiness, you know, whatever those things are, right? And then I, then I ask you serious questions about what motivates you, like what, what what tangible value you're going to get out of that. You're going to say, I'll make, I'll make a lot of money. I'll get promoted. I get to work in this industry, I get to beef up my resume, whatever those things are. And then I ask you, what's the probability that you'll be successful? And I can honestly get an answer out of you. And you say, well, I don't, I don't like the product, so I don't think I'll be successful at it. Well, they're not going to be motivated, right? And so this is built on some different theories of motivation, but this is my own construction of it. It's built on this kind of like, expectancy and, and in. And values analysis, right? If. So if I'm interviewing three people and Bill says, I absolutely love this product and I've always wanted to Sell yoga instruction, you know, whatever. I always wanted to sell this stuff. I love art, whatever it is. I really, I get so. I get so much value from art. It doesn't pay really well. I'm not going to make a lot of money, but that's not really my value. Right. And I really think I'll be successful. Well, then you might, you might be successful. What I would need to work on for that is the external value. If you're going to be a teacher and your internal value or a nurse. My internal value is to help people. I love helping people. Great. What's the external value? Well, if I be a teacher, I'm going to get paid crap. But if I, if I, you know, be a nurse, I'll get paid a lot. But how successful will you be? The teacher might say, well, I don't trust the school systems anymore. I don't think I'll be successful. She's not gonna be motivated. The nurse might say, well, healthcare isn't what it used to be. I thought healthcare was about taking care of people. And it's really about, you know, ISO 9000 quality standards. Right. Then that's. And by the way, these are real problems. So why a nurse goes to school because she wants to help people or he wants to help people. They, they're going to get all kinds of internal value for that. They're going to get paid really well. Then they get in the hospital and they hate it. The schedules are a mess. You know, it's stressful all the time. It's not what they signed up for. That wasn't the contract they made. So what the hospitals would need to work on if they wanted to motivate nurses, let's say they would need to work on making sure that they would be successful being a nurse and fulfilling those values. So is that too complicated to get that simple? It's. What. It's wide ranging, but yes. But that makes sense to me. Yes. Right. So what you do is if I'm, if I'm sitting with somebody and they. I'm unmotivated for my job, I try to find the value or their expectation that they'll be successful. And if I can find those things and work and coach around those things, I can, I can get them to a place where they'll say, well, I really could be motivated to do this stuff. Now, I don't know if you want me to keep lecturing, reflect on what I said. I think you make some good points and I think, you know, some of the benefit of having a Very small business is you don't, you don't have to play by the rules. And that's something that I've certainly used to my advantage, you know, in 30 years of working is, you know, I look at often the rules as a challenge. You know, the rails are, you know, prison bars to how do we like, I have things I want to do. You're telling me those are the rules. I'm going to figure out what I need to, to do what I want to accomplish. Right. And, you know, one of the things we can do as smaller businesses is get creative with how we help talent succeed and thrive and be flexible. Our whole training and certification program was driven by somebody we hired to be a marketer who had no idea what marketing was. They sold us really well on their expertise, and then we got them in there, and then they had no idea what they were doing. So we invested in this entire training and certification program. And we didn't just hand it to them. We didn't fire them and say, well, you know, you're a deadbeat. Get out of here. Well, you're a good fit. We'd like to correct this skill gap. Here's a program for you. And also, because I firmly believe that, you know, education is important, but you become more, you know, valuable collectively as you learn new things. We have an incentive program so you get paid to level up your skills. And employees generally like that. Not everybody, though, can be motivated, but not everybody's motivated by the same things. Right. You know, and so my point is we sort of step through some things to check those, check the criteria for what motivated this person, because not everybody can articulate like this is what, what internally, what I'm looking for. Or, you know, they might say, I want to make a bunch of money. But then they're still not happy. They're not satisfied. They're not motivated to do the work. In this case, they. They weren't motivated to learn. They didn't, they didn't really do the program. What they did is. And that's part of the value system, right? And they organization, all they cared about was the money. They didn't recognize that the skill set gap was a big problem for them and us. They just saw, well, if I finish this training, I'll get a check, I'll get a bump in my pay. And that was kind of the reward for the outcome. But you had to have gone through it. And so instead of going through the training, they would just log in every day and try to brute force force the test. Without doing the learning. And we sat down and had a conversation, and they just said, I just don't. I don't recognize, like, I don't. I don't need this. There was that great resignation that we just went through, right? Where everybody changed jobs for whatever, you know, they just went through this. Now's a good time to change jobs. It's better somewhere else. It's better somewhere else. And a stat just came out that I posted on LinkedIn, on my LinkedIn from Axios, which showed that most of the people that left to go to a new assignment are less happy than the people that stayed at those assignments. Yeah. And what that is to me is they're trying to fulfill these motivational categories by just getting it gifted to them. So in other words, if I don't like to learn for you, I'm not going to like to learn wherever I go and everywhere I'm going to go, I'm going to have to learn. Right. So the question is, if I want to motivate that person and I realize that they don't want to learn, how do I show them that learning is a value, learning will give them reward and that they can be successful at learning. Right. So, like, that would be the thing that I would have to work on. The trick is identifying what that thing is. And I think you can do that by asking just questions like, like, just ask, just, just ask the questions about that or spend time with people to figure it out. If, if I, if I remember, I had one client, I couldn't get her to show me her values. And one of the things we do is we ask people questions and they tell, they tell us stories and they can tell you the whole values. I said, well, tell, you know, what is it you love? Like, tell me about something that you love. And she said, oh, I love my dogs. I'm like, why? Well, they're loyal, they're obedient, they. They're always happy. They make. They rely on me. Like, all this stuff came out, which she's basically laying out in front of me everything that she cares about, which now I can, I can take that directly and translate that to work. Right. She's going to want to work for someone that's a. Loyal, loyal to her, someone that's going to, you know, have a pleasant, you know, a pleasant place to work. She's going to want to be relied upon. It's, it's like the same thing. So, you know, so how. So when you ask it, like, how do you motivate people it's identifying what those things are. And again, you can only do that through relationship. Right. You can only do that by having those conversations. And, you know, when we talked about. It could be exhausting. Yes, I think initially it can be exhausting. Initially. It does take a lot of time to spend with people. But again, if you're. It's like. It's like planting, you know, vegetables. Like, you plant those seeds, you get them growing, and eventually you don't look at the garden again, maybe do some weeding once in a while. I don't. I don't think that people recognize the value of addressing. Addressing something in the moment. Yeah, they don't. I don't think they recognize the impact of. Of the buildup of some of these things that get internalized. Give me an example. Well, you know, you go about your day, and there, you know, you face any number of microaggressions. You know, somebody says something, you know, you didn't like. You know, you get some feedback on something that, you know, you. You wanted to hear. Good job. And what you got back was, yeah, this. This isn't gonna fly. You know, and then not even just work, but, you know, throughout your personal life, and that just weighs on you, and it weighs on you. And, you know, in a work setting, at least, you know, if you can. If you can take a moment and say, you know, I don't agree, or I feel like maybe you're attacking me and attacking my work, and you can have a conversation about it and sort of reset yourself instead of carrying that. Those bad feelings around. Yeah. It's completely normal for people to feel badly. Tell me, tell me, you know, how do you handle those? I mean, to me, I have to check out sometimes I just have to say, this is the end of the conversation. I need to think about this for a while. And this just happened. I had an argument with someone in my family, so I'm a human being, and I had a little argument about something with them, and I felt it was totally unjustified, the comments that were being made. Yeah. And. And I was really steaming. Mm. I mean, I was. I was hot. And I just said, okay, you know, I'm out for now. Let's, you know, whatever. And I walked. I walked away. And I actually went outside. Yeah. And I sat outside for 10 minutes, and then I just stayed out of the way for the rest of the rest of the period of time. Said good night, went to bed, woke up the next morning, and I was completely. I was completely forgiving. Yep. I was okay, you know what? Maybe I approached this wrong. You know, I'll be accountable to whatever the case was. And as soon as, you know, we get up for breakfast, you know, this family member says, look, I'm. I'm really sorry. I said, look, me too. You know, end of story now. But now we're gonna be more careful about that situation. And it's, you know, it's not always gonna be like, I can brush, like, most stuff I can brush off, especially in a professional setting. You know, we see people's motivations, we understand what they're up against. You know, in any given day, we can kind of deal with most of it. But if we get, like, really serious, serious feedback, it could be hurtful. So how do you. Do you follow a similar process, or do you. Well, you know, I think that. So I'm pretty forthcoming, you know, and speaking directly and addressing situation. So, like, the example I gave earlier with a client who put me in a weird position, you know, I explained where I was coming from and that I simply didn't want to do it. And, you know, in, I think, a mutually respectful situation, that would have been the end of it. But he wouldn't let it go, and he kept going. And then we got into. We got into that conversation, and I actually tried to end the conversation. I said, you know what? This is going exactly as I said it would. I think I need to be done. And he wouldn't let it go. And that, I think, is a case where you just have to kind of back away. You just kind of step away politely. And I think given space, sometimes you can give everybody a chance to rethink it. But in some cases, people really feel like some cases, it goes away. But you. You just having that conversation. And if that client was in a place to hear it. Yeah. And really be mature about it. Take. Be accountable to whatever it is you were saying. It could have been saved. Yeah. So, you know, there was a client that I had who was. It was a good client, and I had been working with this client for, like, five or six years, a long time. And I started noticing. I started getting this little disrespectful vibe, like. And I would go home and I would. You know, I wasn't performing well. I was like. It was putting me off. I couldn't be fully authentic. I was being. I noticed I was being careful. It's exhaust. It's. And it was exhausting. And I remember going home, talking to my wife about it. I talked to my partners about it, and finally I Co. You know, through some coaching with my partners, I realized I've got to end this relationship. So I went to the client and I said, listen, this has been great, but not. I feel like we're in a different place now. I don't feel like, I don't feel like, you know, I'm appreciated in this situation. I know it's the situation. You know, like, I was very polite about it, but I said, look at that. This client was like, oh, my God, no, you can't leave. That's not what I meant. And, and I end up staying, like another three years with this person. And it all went back, but I actually had to put him on note. Like, I just had a. Like I just had a. Hey, look at. Do you understand how you, how you're treating me? Right. But, but you, I mean, you carry that around for. And you're, you're, you're a professional. Exactly. You carry this around. Yeah. And finally you got to a point where you quit. Yeah, you quit and you struggled with it for a long time. And I see that, you know, creatives and marketers are, you know, this is what makes them great, is they're very sensitive to things that, like, engineers aren't, you know, engineers and hard scientists. They're not as in tune necessarily with the human element of things and relationships, and they're very sensitive to these things and they pick up on things and we hear them and feel them and we process them a lot. And we're not anywhere at your level. We're not that level of expertise. So how do you, I mean, how would you recommend somebody who is more in tune with the nuance of the feelings? So I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you what I, what I really, truly believe. I believe that we are born with these skills. I think it's in our DNA. We've had thousands of years to evolve to be social creatures. We are born with needing to be with people, with. To needing to communicate. This is how we act. We've also had experiences with other people through our families. Whether they were good or bad, we know what's good or bad. Like, we kind of know how to behave. Right. So I think the world has told us through our business evolution, through our productivity evolution, we've realized that, or we've, we've kind of neutered out the emotional part. So, for example, Thomas Jefferson and the four founding folks realized that we needed to give people freedom and liberty and they all needed to have their own guns on their own farms. Why because these are little incubators. If you take those things away from those people, it's not going to be good. People have to be free. Like we need to have that. They left a place that was so over managed that they had to leave and they came to this place where they could be free. Right. It's intuitive. They knew, they understood that there was a human condition that needed to be satisfied. So I truly believe, I think we're born with knowing the difference between right and wrong. If you ask a three year old child or four year old child, the difference between right and wrong, they know what right and wrong is. They naturally know what that is. Now they might have had bad experiences and they might have had good experiences, but they can learn from those things. So what we're basically doing is helping people remember that these situations exist. So you talk about an engineer, you know, I get hundreds of stories of engineers. You know, this one particular one I love was I got assigned to this person who's, and I was meeting with all the executives. So I was meeting with everybody. He wasn't called out. And he comes to my office and he says to me, you know what I could do what you do, I could call. I love what you do. I do it every day. I am like the best manager. I'm so good. And I kind of started asking questions about what he wants to learn. Oh no, no. You know, he's, you know, it's, it's like he's got a little map process mapped in his head. He knows all, where everything's plugged in. So I said to him, listen, why don't we end the meeting now? What I want you to do is I want you to go back to your office and sometime next week send me an email about the three things that you want to learn in our relationship together. And he's like, yeah, that sounds good. I'll go back and I'll think about it. I'll make a process chart and I'll figure whatever he does. And I was basically saying, okay, you're perfect, so you don't need to meet, we don't need to do anything. He goes away and he sends me an email that night that's three, you know, like three full pages long of all the things that he needs to work on. He just needed to process it a little bit. And when he came the next meeting, it's like, and I've had lots of these situations where they, they know it all. It's a process. You know, we can process map, we can re Engineer this in a different way. But when I. When I start talking to them in a real way and I take away all this bullshit, they like these really beautiful people that are deep and they have the same situation. They just need permission to let it go. So that's. That's. I don't know. That's. That. That's. I've been. I guess this is what I've been saying lately. I've been doing this a long time. I've had probably thousands and thousands of conversations with people, and I've not yet met anybody that I don't see as a fully beautiful human being. And why that is, because once you take all the crap away and you get in there and you see these, and it's like, you can relate to their pain, you can relate to their struggle, you can relate to their aspirations, you can relate to their values. No one ever comes and says, you know, I mean, there are narcissists and there are bad people in the world for sure, that will never have access to that. But for the most part, you know, I think we're all trying to just be the best we can and do the best we can. We just need permission to do it. And so what we do as coaches and as facilitators is we just give people permission. Yeah. And that's what leaders should do. So, Bill, based on this conversation, relationships and motivation and getting the best out of people, what's the. What's, you know, what's your best piece of advice? A trend that I'm seeing and hearing a lot about is having the agency to walk away. Yeah. You know, the permission. You talked about quiet quitting. I don't know if that's exactly what. What's in mind here, but I think that there hasn't been been, you know, and there's something to be said for quitting. Just walking away from something that doesn't work. And you learn lessons, I think, from that, but that's not always maybe the right answer, you know, And I think there. I don't. I don't hear a lot of people talking about having the agency to work it out, to figure it out, that maybe there is actually better path for you to understand what you don't get or to learn about someone. It's easy to walk away. It's easy to quit, but it's hard to figure it out. As usual, it's great to spend time with you and talk to you. You as well. All right, well, thanks very much for joining us. If you like what you see here, you can click below. I'll see you next time on Power Theory.See all