How to Create Momentum with Don Yaeger (Part 2)

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Before we dive in today, I just want to remind you quickly, go to MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast there. If you’re interested in bringing some leadership training or coaching, maybe even just have a leadership question for us, we’d love for you to fill out that form and then hit submit. We’ll follow back up with you. Well, I’m super excited because we convinced Don Yaeger to come back for a second week.

Don Yaeger:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
Cost Perry a lot of money to be able to do that. Because Perry wanted to make sure that he didn’t have to write the content for the entire show.

Perry Holley:
It’s been fantastic.

Chris Goede:
But we are super excited to have him back. We talked last week a lot about momentum, and Don has a book out, The New Science of Momentum, that I want to encourage you to go and get. Before you do that, I want to encourage you to go to the previous podcast session that we had, listen to that, because it’s going to help what we’re going to talk about today. We talked about last week, really kind of Don defined it for us, and we talk a lot about momentum kind of being like culture. It’s like, how do you define that? And so he really unpacked that for us, gave us great stories, great examples. And so today we’re going to talk about how do you create that and what’s the model look like and how as leaders can we begin to apply that? And so, Don, thanks for my friend, as John says all the time, which he is a friend of John’s, he’s a friend of ours. Bestselling author 12 times over. A great communicator, great keynotes.

Chris Goede:
I’m sorry, 13, but who’s keeping track? I love that.

Perry Holley:
He’s a professional.

Chris Goede:
He’s a professional. He is a professional. That’s right. Now, he is an FSU fan.

Perry Holley:
Oh yeah.

Chris Goede:
But we, we still want to have him on. So Don, thanks for joining us again, brother. I’m so glad to have you back.

Don Yaeger:
Oh, I love you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Chris Goede:
Absolutely.

Perry Holley:
So I mentioned on last week’s, uh, podcast that you had actually put a model in place on how momentum works, and I thought for business leaders, uh, we talk about it in sports pretty easy sometimes, But translating it to business, a lot of people get stumbled up in that. And so I love the model and I’d like to just describe it and then let Chris and I pummel you with questions around it. Because did you say pummel? Pummel? I did.

Chris Goede:
That’s why he’s virtual. I wonder why he didn’t want to come to the studio. That’s it.

Don Yaeger:
I was worried about next thing, there’ll be you and me like Nolan Ryan, man. I mean, come on.

Perry Holley:
I can’t chase the mound, man. Don’t rush the mound. So I’m just going to— the way I’ve took it out of the book, by the way, everybody should get this book, The New Science of Momentum. And you mentioned some of this last week about hiring. So it never occurred to me that it starts there. But leaders recruit, leaders shape culture, leaders drive the preparation and the ability for the team members to recognize both the various forms and shapes of the spark. So we mentioned that last week, but I want to go back there. Then leaders communicate with team to take action.

Perry Holley:
When it happens, leaders set the tone for team climate. Leaders foster belief and mindsets. So that’s kind of the front end of the model. And finally, leaders provide and accept feedback from major and passing outcomes, processing these inputs and using them to inform the next actions. So you’ve got two sides of this model. It kind of starts with the hiring and the culture and kind of the in-house stuff. Spark is in the middle that something happens, and then what happens after the spark. So I love it.

Perry Holley:
The more I printed it out, started making myself familiar with it, it just made more and more sense to me. And I think if we can go through some of these questions that we generated, how can we help these leaders that are listening to us today to recognize it in their own business to do that?

Chris Goede:
Love that. Hey, before we do that though, Don, talk a little bit about what it took for you to to come up with the model? How did you begin and architect it and versions of it? Give us a little bit of context behind the model.

Don Yaeger:
So, to your point, if we were going to pass this on to a business leader, we knew there needed to be some level of kind of tactical instruction, right? They had to be able to see something that they could work on. And Jim Collins sat down with us at the very beginning and kind of said, by the way, this is going to be really important. He said the flywheel became my thing because— and by design, I could have talked about it. All day long, but by making it visual, it became important. But one key, and I’m glad you both have referred to this as a model, because one key, one thing we want to make sure people are clear of, it’s a model, not a formula, right? A lot of people think, because a formula is very plug and play, right? I do these things, boom, I’m going to get this outcome. A model says this gives you your greatest chance at becoming successful because a series of other people that we’ve had a chance to work with have showed, have shown us how, how living through this model allows them to be successful. So, yeah, the idea was, though, to your, to your question, Chris, we wanted to build something. But, but yes, this is probably version 7.

Don Yaeger:
Which, you know, because you start and the original one just was one big thing. And then we came to realize that most of us believe that momentum starts with a spark, right? Most of us think it starts with an action or an opportunity or a moment or something that happens that gives you the chance to now build upon it. And so Spark was where everything started for us for the first 2 or 3 iterations of this. And then we started realizing, no, the very best, the reason the best are the best is they’re doing the work before the spark, right? They are ready for the spark where most of us are waiting on the spark. They are ready for the spark. And so this concept of actually having a model that has the spark in the middle, right? But it has two wheels on either side, has leadership across the top because everything rises and falls, right?

Chris Goede:
Oh, yeah.

Don Yaeger:
I’m stealing stuff from you now.

Chris Goede:
I love it.

Don Yaeger:
But everything rises and falls. So, leadership is across the top. This starts with leadership. But once you’ve created that, you’re working on that first wheel, and that’s where you set out to design the culture of your organization, a culture that will be open to a spark, right? A culture where we are engaged, we’re happy for each other, we celebrate each other, we are encouraging of each other. Then you go out to recruit people who can help you continue to build on that culture. And that’s hard to do, by the way. That was the one thing. The more leaders we talked to, that idea of recruiting A-dogs who can cheer for other people was the one question that kept coming up.

Don Yaeger:
Man, how do you do that? Because I want that dog, right? I want that dog. I want that person to just like— they want it to be theirs and it’s that important to them. That’s what drives them. But now we’re telling them that you want a dog, but you want a dog who can celebrate other people, right? Who can celebrate other dogs. And that was the— but the evidence is pretty clear that if you can recruit the right people it helps your culture stay intact. And then we teach that preparation part that we talked about in last week’s session around this idea of, like, how are you hosting a monthly lunch, a what-if lunch? What if this were to happen? What if a hurricane were to come and knock out our production facilities? What would we do to be able to— what if a hurricane came and we’re in the We’re in the business of building new homes, right? How do we enter that market afterward without looking too overly opportunistic, but at the same time actually being opportunistic? Right.

Chris Goede:
Love that.

Don Yaeger:
So just how do you ask yourself the questions about what might happen when a spark comes to play?

Chris Goede:
I’m going to jump in and I want to get you to unpack a little bit for us around this. Belief and mindset that you talk about and how they’re complementary concepts. But when it comes to maybe manipulating momentum, the model suggests that both are essential. You got to have both. So, can you talk a little bit more about that and the work and the research you’ve done on those two things?

Don Yaeger:
So, what happens is now we talked about the first wheel. Now, there’s the spark, right? Then comes the second wheel, and at the top of the second wheel, is leader communication. So what you want to do, this is where the leader amplifies. It’s where the leader says, hey, remember all that work we did, all that work we did to be ready for the moment? This is the moment, right? Remember all that sweat and toil? And let’s use a sports team, right? You’ve practiced to be ready to be able to take advantage of being ahead by 6 points with a minute left to play. Or being down by 9 with a minute and a half. You practiced that. So this is not foreign to you. You’ve been ready.

Don Yaeger:
This is our moment. We’re ready, right? Leaders begin that process of fueling belief and mindset by reminding them that they’ve done the work. The work in advance of the spark has already been done. And so the great leaders are there to communicate. One of my most enjoyable interviews in the book was with the CEO of Bose, the headphone speaker company. She was brought in to take over the leadership role. The company had 20 consecutive months losing year-over-year revenue. Right.

Don Yaeger:
They were in a decline that was 20 months long, and she knew her job was to obviously turn it around. So, she goes to work on it. And she has everybody kind of hyper-focused on, we’re going to pay attention to the numbers. Like, that’s how we’re going to know when we have actually turned a corner. But the moment that they had— I mean, she said their first month, which was her fourth month, that they actually broke into profitability. She said, we were profitable by probably about the number of coins you could find in your couch. As a large organization, we were just profitable by that. She said, but we celebrated like crazy.

Don Yaeger:
Like, we went up and down the aisles and everybody was high-fiving because you know what? We weren’t in the red. We were turning a corner. And suddenly that celebration played into the belief and mindset. Like, you know what? We are moving in the right direction. Doing the right thing. We are in momentum now, right? Momentum is our friend. With the wind is at our back, you start like now people start believing, right? The belief and the mindset work together. And if you’ve done the right things and your team chemistry is right.

Don Yaeger:
So it’s interesting. Everybody asks, why do you have team chemistry and culture and how do you have them in different wheels? Right. Team climate, team chemistry. And the reason is that culture is a forever product, right? Culture is something that abides and lasts. Climate changes like the climate outside, right? It can be awesome one minute and raining the next. And so you as a leader have to have your finger on the pulse of the climate. You can’t assume that everybody’s happy. You have to know because there are some people when as momentum begins to take hold and things are starting to grow, there are some people you probably employ who are immediately thinking, you know what? This means I got to do more work.

Don Yaeger:
We’re more successful now. I got to do more work. That stinks. So you have to know what the climate of your team is. And a part of that is you have to have people who are within the organization who could report up to you honestly, not pointing fingers, not asking for discipline, but here’s what the team— like, yes, the team’s excited, but they realize this is more a metric for you than it is for us. The board wants this from you. Does this really matter to us? Well, how do you make sure it matters to us? That again plays into your job as a leader to communicate why it matters to them. And then by doing so, you build and actually offer support to their belief system and their mindset.

Chris Goede:
And their mindset. Real quick before I throw it to you, the model is actually going to be in the show notes.

Perry Holley:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
So I want to encourage everybody as we’re talking through it right now, you’re going, hey, I lost you on the wheel. I totally get it. That’s why we put it in there for you. And so it’s at MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast, and then you’ll be able to download that model. So make sure you get that. Follow along.

Perry Holley:
And just to reiterate, in the middle of that model is the spark, but there’s something before the flywheel, before the spark, and the flywheel after the spark. So before the spark, well, first of all, I love the climate. I hadn’t thought about that constantly changing, but I noticed you have it. It’s on the right side of the spark. So after the spark, we have the team climate, but the other part of that was leadership communication. And they have arrows going from leadership communication really has got the finger on the pulse of that climate. So that made a lot of sense when you for that side. Go back to the before the spark.

Perry Holley:
The 3 words there are recruitment, which we’ve touched on briefly, culture, which you were just talking about. The other word there is preparation. And I think this makes a lot of sense when I’m thinking about it in sports terms. Practice, practice, be prepared, be prepared, all that. In the business world, the question I had written was, how do we prepare when you talk about seizing a moment, the spark? I want you to seize I want you to see it and seize the moment of a spark. How do we prepare for that?

Don Yaeger:
So this is some of the discussion we had in the last session, right? But it’s this concept of creating a culture within your organization of thinking about the fact that momentum could be ours if we’re ready for it when it happens. And so some of that is just as simple as we talked about in the last session. As maybe hosting a monthly lunch in which you have everybody around the table and you say, hey, each one of you bring some crazy idea, something that could happen that could affect our business, right? And as crazy as your idea is, once you’ve said this just happened, we as a team around the table are going to talk about and here’s how we’ll react. So what begins to occur is intellectually, you are beginning the process of believing, yes, external events are going to affect us. What’s my eye on the external event? We go back to the story I shared with the basketball coach Buzz Williams. How do you make sure you’re ready and you know what the time, score, and momentum is in the moment when it occurs so that you can be most ready to do something with it? So preparation is often this idea of just building building a mindset among people that we can create momentum. Sometimes it’ll happen. Sometimes we’ll design a new product that will just give us unbelievable mo.

Don Yaeger:
But sometimes our opponent will design a new product and it’ll flop like crazy, right? They’ll go out, try to sell New Coke to people, right? And so you got to think about it in both ways. What can we do to create momentum? And what would we do if momentum, if an opportunity were created for us? So this idea of preparation is it’s a mental exercise carried out. Often you’re storyboarding, right? You’re actually taking a story and you’re creating, well, what would happen to that, right? And so the ability to do that is really important. Can I jump forward real quick? Because, Chris, one place I failed to answer your question about belief and mindset is that in the model, one of the things that happens— so momentum doesn’t go on forever, right? Just like the flywheel in Jim Collins’ exercise, momentum doesn’t go on forever. So there is an outcome that may be created as a result of all of this good effort. And then it may be time for you to go back and get ready to get into the pre-momentum. So if you’ll see out of outcomes, an outcome, it actually flows up and down right now. An outcome has occurred.

Don Yaeger:
What’s our feedback loop that we’re giving ourselves? What did we learn from the moment? And now how do we get back into being ready for the next moment? How do we get back to being ready for the next spark? This is not— we’re not creating for anyone a belief system that this is an evergreen experience. You’re going to have this, and once you get in momentum, you’ll never have to stop. The truth is it does, right? And when it does, you have to be ready. Study what you did, learn from it, get back into the feedback loop on the front end, be ready for the next spark.

Perry Holley:
Did you run into any best practices on that feedback loop? Is it ongoing in the midst of the challenge? Is it a formal sit down afterwards, an after-action review type of a thing? Is it all the above?

Don Yaeger:
It’s an after-action review that occurs during action, right?

Perry Holley:
During action review.

Don Yaeger:
Probably the best example for me came from my work. I’ve gotten a chance to work with the Blue Angels over the last few years, and to be part of their internal workings process, right? As you may or may not know, Blue Angels, you know, a practice has ended, a show has ended, good or bad, right? Whatever it is. And they walk into a room, limited capacity room, just enough room for the pilots at the table and a few external people on the outside. Rank comes off the sleeve because now it no longer matters whether you’re senior vice president like Chris, who likes to throw his weight around by throwing that title around, or whether you’re just nobody like me. Or you’re a slacker like you and me, Perry.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, right.

Don Yaeger:
So rank comes off and now it’s an open discussion, right? Everybody, you’re not going to offend me because I’m your superior officer. And we want feedback is the breakfast of champions, right? And champions eat breakfast. So let’s go to work on feedback. And so in that moment, it literally could be while everything is in process, hey, let’s take a second and let’s look at what we’ve done. What’s worked, what’s not, why not, and how can we— and if it’s worked, how can we amplify it? Right? You don’t wait for the whole thing to end to go, oh, man, that was so cool. What a fun run. All right, let’s go back. This lasted 3 months that we’ve been in this really amazing streak.

Don Yaeger:
Let’s go back. And you need to seek feedback throughout. And so it plays its role in understanding the outcomes that you’ve experienced.

Chris Goede:
I think continually through feedback, through all of the different parts of this model, I keep thinking back to what we talked about last week about this transference of energy from me as the leader, anybody saying to the team, to the situation, it could be your family, it could be a volunteer group, it could be a community group. It could be right. I keep going back to this. And Don, here’s a question for you around that. Transference of energy. Do you see that as a leadership competency, meaning that is essential to a leader to be able to see the spark, prepare for the spark, lead them through the spark?

Don Yaeger:
Belief and mindset, right? If the leader goes, oh my God, this is the worst day ever, right? What does everybody else go?

Perry Holley:
Same thing.

Don Yaeger:
Oh my God, this is the worst day ever. You know, you notice that like the best leaders are those who understand how to project what they calm in great moments. Like you watch that Kurt Cignetti guy from the university, from Indiana University, right? The coach.

Perry Holley:
Amazing.

Don Yaeger:
I mean, you can’t tell if he’s winning or he’s going through a colonoscopy, right?

Chris Goede:
You cannot tell. Even when it’s the national championship.

Don Yaeger:
He looks like he’s going through a colonoscopy all the time. Actually, but that’s the deal, right? He has understood, and he learned that at the best, right? He was with Nick Saban for years, and he studied what Saban did. His father was a coach and a great one. And so he understood that they feed off of his energy. Like, they can be excited and he can be a little excited. But if he’s a little excited, he’s also going to maybe show a little disappointment in moments when things go poorly. And instead of throwing his arms up or slamming his headphones down, as Steve Spurrier used to do— sorry, I got to throw a little Gator at you right now, Goody, because your son is now a coach there. But in that idea, he understands that as a leader, they’re going to feed off of what I do.

Don Yaeger:
And so, yes, it is a complete competency.

Chris Goede:
I agree with you.

Don Yaeger:
And the best leaders No, you are being watched and your simple actions, right? I mean, if you walk into the bathroom to scream, everybody’s going to, oh my God, he just walked. I mean, you know, that’s right. Be careful. Be careful.

Chris Goede:
Calm is contagious and everybody’s watching for sure.

Perry Holley:
So I’m fascinated. You’ve already mentioned this, but I wrote the quote down out of the book because it was so direct about the A players, the people on the team and how they handle each other. You said for a team to seize momentum, it requires— so this is very direct— for a team to seize momentum, it requires that nearly all team members are willing to do what’s best for the team. Team success is a much higher priority than individual success. And you’ve talked about that, about if you’re celebrating the junior person, what’s the senior person doing? Are they patting them on the back? Are they in the corner going, why not me? So this is part of the— it’s culture. It’s also recruitment. It’s everything on the before the spark about having the right mix of people. I just wondered, is there, again, is it a best practice in hiring? Is it best practice in the team leader communication, getting the right people on the team in the right seats type of thing? I wonder what did you find? Because this can be a problem if you got people that are wanting the best for themselves and the spark is happening, but everybody’s worried about the drama, not the spark.

Don Yaeger:
Well, they’re worried that the spark spark is not going to be good for me, right? Because this spark, what’s going to happen is our second largest client has just made a massive decision to do something big with us. But by the way, I’m not the sales guy on our second largest client. It’s good for the us, doesn’t do me any good, right? So where am I in that moment? And as we said, if you’re not recruiting the right people, I mean, we want people that want to win. But you have to want to win and enjoy that others do too. And there are a lot of A-dogs out there who will go out and slash your tires because you just got the deal they wanted. Right. And we’ve all been around those folks, right?

Chris Goede:
Yes.

Don Yaeger:
We’ve witnessed a few of them in our careers. And so, we have to be careful because, yes, we want dogs. Yes, we want people that want to win. But if it’s a win-above-all mentality, then what you ultimately find is that there’s that opportunity for them to work against the greater good of the organization, the greater good of the moment, the greater good of the opportunity for us to capture the spark and do something special.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, right.

Perry Holley:
I think the Pippen story really solidified it for me. Is there something you can really remember? I don’t want to pull a Pippen.

Chris Goede:
Don’t pull a Pippen.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, do that.

Chris Goede:
I want to encourage our listeners, if you think this content’s good, I think one of Don’s greatest gifts is telling stories.

Perry Holley:
He is a story.

Chris Goede:
And, um, and he’s got a book coming out September 15th, The Business of Storytelling. I get that right, Don?

Don Yaeger:
That’s it.

Chris Goede:
And, um, Perry kind of called him out. He’s like, man, you’re producing books like John Maxwell over here. What, we got to put you to work? Yeah, I think John’s going to talk about that.

Perry Holley:
John called, he said, what’s going on over here?

Don Yaeger:
That’s right.

Chris Goede:
So The very cool thing is Don told us that they’re going to do a pre-release book club, and that’s going to be called the Circle of Storytellers. And so if you’re interested in that, I want you or anybody on your team, I want you to go to DonYaeger.com/Circle, and you’ll be able to sign up for there and you’ll get more information about that. Again, pass this along. Have a conversation with your team about Momentum. Tell them about the storytelling. Because the content you’re going to get from Don, while it has great stories and principles, it’s so applicable to what we’re doing in leadership. So, Don, thanks for joining us, buddy, and just sharing some of your wisdom and your research and your study. For me, I look at this and I go, man, it is my responsibility as a leader to create momentum, to prepare for it, to create it, to sustain it, and then let it die, which is very key.

Chris Goede:
We talked about this, but get ready. To go up because you’re either going to have spurts of it or you’re going to be explaining why you don’t have it. And that may be on the exit row, exit interview on your way out.

Don Yaeger:
Exactly. And the bottom line is momentum is going to exist in your industry. And if it’s not yours at this moment, there are things you should do and we can talk about those. But there are also an understanding that if you have it, I think it’s really important. If you have it, understand this doesn’t last forever. So don’t be disappointed when suddenly that really amazing run comes to a close. Just be ready to go start the next one.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Don Yaeger:
And that’s where it’s that play off the experience, play off the enthusiasm, get ready to go do this time after time, because that’s how you win.

Perry Holley:
Fantastic. Well, Don, it’s been just a pleasure, as always, to be with you and to hear your wisdom. And just a reminder to our listeners that if you’d like To learn more about what Don’s doing, learn more about our offerings, learn about Don’s podcast, you can do all that at MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. You can also leave us a comment or a question there. We love hearing from you. Very grateful you spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

Transcript created by Castmagic.