Executive Podcast #262: Are Your People Settled?

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, the executive vice president with Maxwell leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. As we get started today, love for you to visit Maxwellleadership.com/podcast. Click on our episode for today, and then at the bottom, there’s a form. You can fill that out. We would love for you to be able to download our learner guide. Or if you have a question for Perry or myself that we can answer, an upcoming podcast, maybe you want to learn a little bit more about this. Five levels of leadership of which we believe you develop a common language inside your organization around leadership.

Chris Goede:

It helps drive the behaviors which will change and enhance the culture of your leaders. You can just leave your information on that form, and we will follow back up with you. Well, today’s topic is titled are Your People Settled? Interesting topic. And this comes from a question that Craig Groeschel, which, by the way, plug another podcast. Love his podcast. Love Craig and his leadership perspective. But this was a question that was asked on his podcast recently, and he was referring to how leaders can often assume that their people on their team are doing just fine. Because what do we all say? We say, hey, how you? Good.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I’m good. That they are settled, really, versus they’re not fine and they’re unsettled. And so I love that you obviously are listening to Craig’s podcast like I am myself as well. But bringing this question that was on.

Perry Holley:

That podcast to our audience, and normally I love his podcast. It’s fantastic. You should definitely subscribe to that. But I had a leader come to one of my coaching calls, and.

Chris Goede:

He.

Perry Holley:

Said, I lost somebody on my team. I thought they die. He goes, no, they quit. And the quote, he goes, I thought he was so fine. I thought he was fine.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, clarify that real good.

Perry Holley:

I thought he was fine. And I thought then I remembered Craig’s podcast, don’t assume that your people are okay. And Craig used the term settled. I would not have picked that. I didn’t think about that term, sure, but I loved it. I thought, are my people settled versus being, you know, fidgety, whatever. They’re not settled. And so I love to kind of drill down a few things on what Craig had to say, but also on, I think, the power of the one on one that you should be having with your team and find out how we can leverage that.

Chris Goede:

I think as leaders, we often assume a lot of things, and we were taught at a very young age what that means, to assume something. I’ll let you fill that in in your own head as you’re listening. But I love this I love this idea of saying, hey, let’s make sure that we’re not assuming that our team is settled. I like how you said, okay, what does that mean? Let’s think about the opposites. And so you gave us some really good examples about that. When you ask them how they are, and they do say, Fine. What I’d encourage you to do is, man, we so badly want that to be true in our people. I think we so badly want that to be true in ourselves and our own leadership journey.

Chris Goede:

But we cannot assume that, right, even if they do tell us that. And we got to kind of dig in. And so there are many reasons, though, why they don’t really tell us the truth as leaders, maybe even in their own personal life and their own family, they’re not saying what the truth is. And it’s our job as leaders to know our people well enough to have a strong enough relationship and kind of intuition about where they’re at that we can tell if something’s not right or they don’t feel comfortable about telling us something. And so we really got to dig in, and we really got to kind of be intuitive. And I think being intuitive to your people, to the point here, is learning them at a different level. And I think that’s something that all of us can do.

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Perry Holley:

I just saw an example recently about how quickly this can happen. This is why this is such an important topic that he brought up that you don’t get settled once and you’re settled forever. And I had a close friend recently who told me they had begun looking for another job. And I said, well, you said you love what you do. You love what you do. What’s going on there? And he said, Well, I’ve had a couple of really hard weeks, and I didn’t feel really valued for the work that I’m doing there. I’m working way too many hours. It caused me to question the work that I do.

Perry Holley:

Someone told me that someone else on the team was getting paid more than me, and this caused me to question my value even more and voila. Unsettled. And I think do you think that if I was having a regular one on one conversation with this person, I could head off some of these issues and hear from them and feel where they’re coming from? Everybody has tough weeks and everybody has ups and downs, and everybody feels challenged from time to time, but when these things start to pile up, it makes me unsettled. And then I’ve got other options. I like where Craig was going with that idea.

Chris Goede:

And I think one of the ways that you can offset that or to really, truly know is to have one on ones with your team. And I am amazed that a lot of people leaders with direct reports don’t have one on ones with their people.

Perry Holley:

I’ve been doing a survey as well.

Chris Goede:

It’s amazing to me, and I guess it’s just probably I’ve been a part of the Maxwell leadership culture for so long, it’s just kind of always part of what we do, whether it’s weekly or it is bimonthly, whatever it might be. There’s got to be some type of cadence, especially with those that are your direct reports. That’s the most important. And I think it’s a huge thing that we need to be doing. And so you need to make sure that you schedule it appropriately, that you honor those schedules, that you keep the one on ones. And by the way, if your schedule changes and you need to cancel it, you just say, hey, when would be good for you to be able to reschedule that?

Perry Holley:

Do you have a format that you suggest on a one on one? I know they’re fluid and you can do different things, but do you start with the structure?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I actually just the other day, a couple of days ago, was having my very first one on one with a new direct report of mine. And I explained to her, I said, hey, look, going forward, the meeting is not going to be like this because I brought the agenda and wanted to cover a couple of things. But I said, this is your meeting, not my meeting. I’m going to add some things and we’re going to talk about some things. But I want to make sure that you bring your agenda, you bring the questions, and then let us talk through that. I have some of my team members that have been on my team, and I’ve been leading for a long time, and I love it because they’re like, hey, you ready? I got the agenda. Let’s go. I’m like, yeah, let’s go.

Chris Goede:

And then at the end of it, they’re like, you got anything? No? Good. All right, see you in the next week. Not see you next week, but when we have our intentional kind of one on one. And so I think our temptations as leaders that are driving for results in the organization is we just want to use those times as reviewing the data and look at the numbers. And you can do that to some extent, but that does not need to be the focus of that meeting. That needs to be a different meeting that you schedule with them. What you want to do is hear from them and listen, how are they thinking, what’s going on? What’s their well being like? What are some roadblocks that they’re facing that you can help remove and get out of the way you want it to be? This dialogue to where, again, by doing this, I talked a minute ago about having that intuitive spirit about where they’re at. By doing that, this will help lead to that.

Perry Holley:

And Craig mentioned something interesting, was obviously you’re listening for what is said, but he said listening for what is not said. The inference there was looking for body language and tone and those types of things. But what is your read on how do you read that?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, and I think in today’s age, right. I think now we’ve all become accustomed to using video conferencing, right. Zoom, whatever it might be that you use. Teams, webex, all kinds of stuff. My preference is to do it face to face. My second preference is, okay, I would much rather do it over zoom or webex or teams, if it’s possible in any way than to do it just over the phone. Because what you’re doing is you’re not only listening for tone, you’re able to watch their body language. You can watch their eyes and their engagement level of where they’re at.

Chris Goede:

You can see if they’re comfortable, settled, or maybe unsettled. Right. Are they uneasy? Are they antsy? You can tell, right, when you’re talking to somebody. And so, man, I would really encourage everybody to make sure, number one, you’re doing your one on one, but then to make sure you’re doing a face to face. And at worst case scenario, then you’re doing them zoom or via webex.

Perry Holley:

I know we teach do five levels, teaching leaders around level two types of things and relationships, but we call it a values based conversation. I love this idea about when I get a one on one with an individual on my team. It’s very rare. Most of its team, I got two or three people, I got the whole team. But having a dedicated one on one time doesn’t happen that much. I want to become more intentional about how I use that one on one time. And for socialites like me and you, it’s easy. I know you and I have gotten on one on ones where we had 30 minutes schedule.

Perry Holley:

We can do 22 minutes of catching up.

Chris Goede:

We have two minutes left. Is there anything I need to know about the business?

Perry Holley:

Yeah, I’m making a critical decision that’s going to outline the entire remainder of our year. We’re going to need to schedule another call. While I do like the catching up part, we call that level two, getting how is everything going? I want to move quickly into and what I love about our values based conversation was, could I use my one on one to learn more about you and what motivates you and what your values are and where are you coming from? And it was so important to understand that where people are right then and what’s really driving them versus we tend to spend a lot of time chatting.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, it’s funny, because what made me think about is we say that we don’t have enough time to get to know our people, but yet we talk about the Georgia Bulldogs winning their second national championship. We talk about whatever, the weather, all this kind of good stuff. And after we take people through in some of our training or coaching, the five level values exercise, we could do it in about twelve minutes, 15 minutes. I mean, now you’re pacing them through it, but I’ll go, hey, we just learned more about each other in the last 15 minutes than you probably learned in the last two years about this individual, because we are intentional about our conversation. And so that allows you to really be effective and understand what motivates them in the one on ones. The other thing is, I would be very intentional about using open ended questions and also Perry’s comment where he talks about, hey, I have a point of view on that, but I want to hear yours first. And you get again, not only are they feeling heard and they’re also feeling valued, but you’re learning how they think. You’re watching for little keys that maybe they don’t feel settled in that particular choice or situation.

Perry Holley:

Well, speaking of questions, craig gave some very directive questions. I would love to know what you think about some of these and are there any others that you would use? But he asked questions like what do you love most about what you do? And to your point about these are not closed questions, there’s no yes or no answers here. He didn’t say, do you love what you do? He says, what do you love about what you do? He doesn’t say, Are anything frustrating you?

Chris Goede:

No.

Perry Holley:

He says, what is frustrating you most? He doesn’t say, Do I frustrate you? Because you always would say no to your boss about that. He says, what do I do that frustrates you? Open ended question. Getting them to answer that. He doesn’t say, do you need anything from me? He asks, what can I do to better support you? And then he asks, if there’s one thing that needs to be changed around here, what would you change? Kind of getting them giving them a little bit of ownership, I think. How do you read that?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I love the fact that they are open ended. It reminds me of my daughter in our family, who she keeps a lot of things to herself. And I remember early on in middle school, maybe it was, and she’d come home from school and be like, hey, do you have a good day at school?

Perry Holley:

Yes.

Chris Goede:

What did you learn?

Perry Holley:

Not much.

Chris Goede:

I was like, okay, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. I said, we’re going to start homeschooling you with your mom unless we answer these questions a little bit differently. So how was school today? Let me tell you about second period. And I learned this right, and so I love the intentionality behind how he structured these questions. Another one that I’ll share, I’ll share two more. That one was brought to me by one of my team members. The other one we’ve talked about on this podcast before, which is the whole, hey, man, if you were me or where you’re sitting at on your seat, what’s something you’d like for us to start, stop, and keep doing right? Like, come prepared. Hey, think about this and come prepared, and let’s talk about it.

Chris Goede:

It can be anything. The other one is and this was brought to me by one of my team members as I was learning and observing on how to lead. This individual was we would talk through things, and maybe I wouldn’t get the full information, but I could kind of read it. And so I was like, hey, what are you thinking here? You don’t feel settled for our word today? What’s a way that I can know for sure? And she’s like, Tell you what certain things if you’ll just say, hey, how do you feel about that? On a scale of one to ten, anything? Seven, eight and above, I’m good. Anything below that, I’m just not there yet. And that allows me to then dig in a little bit and say, well, why? What’s coming on? And then start asking those open end questions. So just two more to kind of add to the questions that Craig had suggested.

Perry Holley:

Yeah, I just like the open endedness of it and the ability to get them thinking about to own this meeting, own how it feels to be here and to work here. Your value that you’re bringing, help me to understand how I can help you. I don’t know a leader that wouldn’t want to know that so that we can help them. I know this leader that I mentioned at the top when he said he’d lost somebody, and I thought they were fine. He said just a few days before, maybe a week before, someone else on the team had commented to him about this individual, about what a great job they had done. And he said, I meant to call them and thank them for the great thing I’d heard. And I thought, that’s just got to be the worst feeling ever, is that you think don’t meant to do it. If you can’t call, send a text right away.

Perry Holley:

I heard a great report on you and somehow keeping people they know they have a future here. We did a podcast on that quite a while back, I’m sure. But do people on your team know they have a future here? Are you letting them know that you value what they do and that you want to hear from them and that don’t get unsettled? It’s going to happen, but be settled because we’re paying attention to these details all along the way.

Chris Goede:

Well, as we wrap up, this is an intuitive thing, but also, though, it’s a proximity thing. And so if you’re not having one on ones with your direct reports, I want to encourage you to do it. Maybe it’s 30 minutes, maybe it’s 45 minutes, but it should go on your calendar every other week or every week so that you understand kind of what your people are going through and you’ll begin to learn it and it’ll become more intuitive to you as you meet with them. And remember, when we talk about a lot about retention and people staying and people going and the cost of replacing team members and they need to feel valued, they need to feel heard, all of that plays into this, of whether or not they are settled. We are all in the people business. No matter what industry you’re in, people come first. We were talking right before the episode here. We’re talking about AI and the power of that in certain things around content.

Chris Goede:

And you can immediately get down the road and you start talking about this and you go, okay, well, wait a minute, how does that affect somebody else? And then do they feel valued? Do they feel settled in that things are always changing? And so in order for you to really, truly know how your people feel about that, you got to have those one on ones?

Perry Holley:

Absolutely. Well, thank you. And as a reminder, if you would like the Learner guide for this issue, like to leave a question or a comment, learn more about our family of podcast offerings or about our products, you can do all that at MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast. We’re grateful that you spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.