081 - What are You Getting Wrong About Delegation with Kyle Gillette

Because if you're a business owner, you own your business, you own the position and to get to that place, everybody that's listening in, both you and I, have failed plenty of times. But that's why we are where we are. And that's what has given us the courage to keep going, because that other failure back in the past has given us the courage to take the next step coming up in the future here, because we know what it's like, because we've made that other failure that pushes us through this next one that we won't fail in.

And what that does is it gives the the leader permission in their mind to go, you know what? I feel it's OK for them to as well. And I'm actually going to encourage it. Welcome, everybody. Today, I have Kyle Gillette with us and Kyle is going to speak a little bit about a couple of things that really resonated when I spoke with them. One about just looking at what you might be getting wrong about your delegation if you're already doing that.

And a very specific distinction that really struck a chord with me is how to get what you pay for and how to create that greater freedom by delegating responsibilities instead of tasks. And so welcome to the show.

Kyle, thank you so much for coming out and being willing to share your wisdom with us.

Thanks, Wade. I appreciate it. I'm excited to do this and share with the audience. Awesome. So first thing, just to give people a little bit of a background of what it is that got you into this conversation specifically about delegating, helping people and the other thing on your bio that you mentioned, which had to do with helping family owned businesses and just creating more sanity, more flow, making things easier for them. How do you get started on this path and what does it look like when you when you help people?

Yeah, so the my history and I don't want to go too long here, but but I grew up on an orange farm in central California and so a family owned business and family businesses in my blood, you could say, and I did learn that I didn't want to be a farmer, but I also learned that I love people and I love the mentality of a family business, that culture, that attitude of that closeness that's created in contexts like that.

It's a beautiful thing. And so that that kind of got my wheels spinning back when I was kind of in high school and into college. But I pursued kinesiology, which is exercise, science and personal training. And so that was more people stuff. And then I got engaged into a men's living men's living situation. Basically, we lived with these guys and helped them get their lives on track. So even more interaction with with with people. And during that time, I learned how to lead the uneatable, because what happened is these guys were drug and alcohol problems, various addictions, lots of brokenness in their lives.

And there were wonderful young men. But when when you have a life, when you're 18 and twenty five years old and all you know is a lot of brokenness, it's really difficult to lead you.

It's almost impossible to lead them. So I call them the uneatable. But just actually before this conversation today, I was having a conversation with one of those guys that I was that I mentored 15 years ago.

And he and I were talking and hanging out. And we've been in contact since then. And there's several of those guys that I've been in contact with.

And all of that training from the family on business to leading the, quote, uneatable has has helped me to realize that my passion, my love, is to help business owners in family businesses to get the most other employees to to pull out that talent, to pull out those gifts that every single employee that anybody that's listening has and learning how to do that well. And so eventually that turn into working in H.R. and a megachurch and then that turn into introduction to some personality assessments.

And then there's a lot of story there.

But that boil down to, oh, my gosh, I can actually make money working with people.

That's. So I jumped ship from that organization, started my own business, and here I am today.

Awesome. Thank you. You know, that's it's there's a couple of things that you touched on which I didn't even realize you were involved in. I got to do my practicum for my psychology degree at Covenant House Runaway Shelter. They have them around the country and similar population, earlier age and stage and. I know for me a lot of that population, it was all about the connection, it wasn't about the specific plan, it was could you it was almost one of those things that somebody who comes from a sales background and feels that sales is a superpower, you almost have to be.

Careful with kind of like that whole thing where the person creates this machine in, you know, in the show, in the bad guy, I use it for evil or whatnot. And so for me, persuasion, when people tell me I'm persuasion teacher, I'm like, OK, which which which one are you?

The good one. The not so good one. And that was one of the first times when I really felt like, wow. I really want to be able to reach this person and not from a standpoint of I know what's best for them. Yeah, right. Because there was a lot of humility there that I learned very quickly, like, I mean, so humbling. And yet at the same time, I at least want to reach them. And yes, maybe if the words persuade to to be open to to believe in themselves, to just something that I felt like, OK, yes.

You connecting with your higher power, with your God or whatever that is, whether if a person has that or not or or your self, your confidence or all those things, the stakes became so much higher.

And the only way I found I could reach them was through genuine appreciation of them because they could sell the sense, the B.S. because especially I don't know about the population worked with sounds like similar. They'd been conned so many times. They could I mean, you can't just give lip service, but they could sense that.

And then when I think about how that parallels to a times when I'd work with smaller businesses and I work, I help run my father's insurance agency and the intellectual side of me that is so lawdy, Don thinks it's so damn smart, gets bored with these people at times. And it's, you know, it's so above them and I'm so much smarter or whatever. It just it just goes the ego just goes off on this whole thing. And yet when I can get present and realize, wow, first of all, every one of these people has something to offer, something I can learn from and not in that patronizing sense like.

Oh, yes, well, see, I'm smarter than they are, but they actually maybe I'll learn this like really. No, there's a huge life lessons if I'm willing to learn from them.

And so much of that that space, that being this of being open is when I do my best work with them and when I'm not willing to be or I'm too busy or I'm tired and I'm not. They are so unreadable when I when I'm there.

Maybe share a little bit about what your experience has been specifically. What was it that you do in the family businesses, or were these young men that you were able to connect with them on? And how did that lead to them then being open to suggestion or help? And again, things that you knew that would most likely be in their best interest. How are you able to to do that? Yeah, I think a lot of what you said in there is really how leaders can view their employees, creating that empathy, creating that trust, creating that relationship, and then then the leader flourishes.

But more importantly, the employee flourishes as a result, which then means your business flourishes and so do your profits. Right. And that's that's really I mean, do a little shameless plug here. But that's really the work that I do with businesses, because it's it's just inevitable once you do what you describe there. But to answer your question, one of the things that I did, there's a there's a student. I'll just give you a first name so nobody's going to know who he is named Phil.

And he was there before I was there. And I had been there for like a year. The program was only six months. So he was there for a long time and there was a lot of garbage in his life. And I don't mean because of him, I mean because of what happened to him. And it was awful. So he was he was almost a mute because he was just so held back because because of stuff that happened in his life.

And it took me forever to breakthrough. And the breakthrough point was two of them. One was we made the guys clean up the house. That's part of the responsibilities, bringing that word into the picture again.

And they they were responsible, clean up the house. And he was cleaning the bathroom, but I needed the broom. So I'm knocking on door. Hey, Phil, I need the broom. I got to clean the bedroom. I need the broom. And he's like, no, I'm not going to give it to you. Knock, knock, knock. I need it. Knock, knock, knock. I need it.

No, you know, this stupid, immature argument. Then I go around to the outside, to the window and he's standing in the bathroom and I knock on the window, hey, I need the broom. And he goes bam! Punches right through the window, right into my face. Glass It's my face. Fortunately I only get a little bit bloody. His hand is all jacked up. Right. So long story short, we get him patched up.

And then that breaking point for both of us, open the relationship a little bit. There's a little bit of vulnerability there. And then I had this realization, and this is really applicable for businesses because it's easy to do and it's really effective. And it's it's the idea of what I call ten minute Tuesdays. So every Tuesday for for ten minutes, I met with each of the guys and I sat down with them in a room and it was just the two of us.

And it wasn't therapy. It was it was just what's going on, dude, how you doing?

And then they shared and or they didn't. The first two times I met with Phil, it was silence for ten minutes. And then we left.

It was it wasn't actually that uncomfortable, was really peaceful for him and ultimately kind of was for me too. I was frustrated, but it was still peaceful. But the point is that those ten minutes created an empathy in me for him and for the other guys, and it created trust at the same time.

And I never it was never an agenda from me to them. It was always about what what's going on with them, you know, asking them simple questions like how are you doing? What's been going on, and that's it, and letting it go where it goes, but never to solve a problem ever, it was to to be supportive and encourage them and then to hear what they have to say. And I think if leaders would do that in their organizations and have that quick five to 10 minute meeting, we're all there to do there is to encourage and support and not solve anything.

It would make a huge difference, and it does.

So that's awesome. And I guess one of the reasons why I also think that's so awesome. Aside from that, I've when I've done stuff like that, I've seen it work. And it's one of those things where, oh, we don't times this week start on productivity numbers and stuff like that. But I think that's one of those things, too. I work a lot with small businesses in the five to 15 employee size, and I love that size.

I really do. And one of the reasons why I've not been as drawn to looking to work in corporations, I've worked as an employee in a corporation, large corporation, very awesome corporation. But it seems like you start getting into more of just numbers and just scale, and I'm thinking, as you're saying, that that. To me, chances are if a person can't meet however many people they can't or can't meet on an a 10 minute Tuesday, that's about the size of the group they should have under them or that they're working with because, again, you could still have a million people or whatever the number is, scale of that.

And you talk about cultures. But to not have that is to miss the fact that there's a this is a human being. And that's the part I think you you think about Stephen Covey's ideas about, you know, managing systems, but leading people and just different things like that. They're sound like good punch lines and they are great. But we always know he actually said that for a reason. He he didn't just come up with this. And there's a reason why the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People still is so such a big seller is some of these things are so true.

And I guess, again, someone been in the corporate world there sometimes hear those thrown out and say, OK, well, but does the person actually live it or not? But when you see people respond to that and when people get that, I think. And maybe to flip it, I'd worded it this way as employers were very often like, well, gosh, you know, you can only find a good employee about 20 percent of the time and think, well, what's the flip side of that?

Well, you can only find an employer who's really willing to invest this type and again, legitimately do this.

And that's the things I think about.

A mentor of mine has as an owner of a company, her and her husband, a cleaning service company in the Cincinnati area, and things like 10 or 15 or 20 thousand employees. And they have this program called the Dream Manager, and they help these people figure out how they're going to buy a house and all these different things. And it all starts with they really care and they're going to do that. OK, awesome.

So now, right now, some of our listeners are who are more left brained, are losing their minds. So let's just so we don't lose them.

How does this then translate once you have that person's willingness? Now, let's talk employees or people you don't get who could be a freelancer, could be somebody that you're delegating to, but somebody that you have direct control over whether or not you pay them or not. So there's, you know, some sort of compensatory relationship. How do you help them to start thinking this idea of responsibilities versus tasks? What does that even mean? Again, it sounds great.

What does that mean and what does that look like? Yeah, I think it's mindset shifting first.

So if someone is going to lead well and they want I think they need to first want to lead people, not tasks. One of the there's a guy named Steven Sisler, and I've read a lot of his books and he's a human behavioral expert. He's just really phenomenal at it.

And he talks about there's a difference between the way people approach things and some people approach things as a human doing versus a human being. And I I think some leaders approach their employees sometimes and not because they're jerks, but just because we're caught up in the moments of leading and caught up in the moments of work. We approach the people as a resource or as a doing as a task person versus a being that has so much more to offer. You know, the resource in the H.R. is forgotten.

Frequent are the excuse me, the human. It's forgotten in the human resources frequently. And so when people remember that human is the key here, that makes a big difference. So first you have to shift your mindset towards the human part and then there's some technical stuff that needs to happen. Right. So you you have those interactions. Time is what's needed. So the frequent touches, if you want to build that sustainable relationship, if you want to create an opportunity for your business to really excel, you need to have frequent interactions with the people there, because I'm going to assume that none of your listeners are stupid.

I'm going to assume that they've hired smartly and I'm going to assume that the people that they hired are smart. But what happens is we get so busy that it looks kind of stupid because we're not giving the brilliant people that we've hired and the brilliant people that each of these leaders are an opportunity to express that brilliance.

And when you delegate tasks and say this is the way we do X, Y, Z, this is the way we do ABC, then we're smashing that creativity. We're smashing the innovation and we're smashing the fun of work. But when you delegate responsibilities, everything shifts and everything is way more fun and way more enjoyable. And I think, you know, from an employer's view, I even hear it more of what you're saying is I want the result.

I don't care about the process. And as somebody as an employee, when I first started, I was like, please. Do not make me do your process, tell me your process, I mean, I'm not I'm not a rebel. Hey, this is how we do it, OK? My. Perhaps vain in her nature wants to make it better or just wants to be better, sees it as a challenge and wants to game a fire or whatever, so please let me know what the end result you want is and what are my constraints.

Or you can do this. You can't do that. This is OK. This is illegal, whatever it is. But I want to be able to do that.

But if you tell me and different people are different, some people do want the process laid out so they can follow it. And that's also different styles. Right.

But again, I think even that person wants to know that you trust them to say, hey, here's what we're doing. It works, you know, improved if you like. If you come up with something better. Awesome.

But that's what I'm hearing more, because, again, the result is this and this is the result we're looking for. And I think that takes a lot of trust. But like you said, if we're supposed to be hiring people that are smart and chances are they are at some point we thought they were smart enough to do the job. And yet somewhere in our story, like, oh, no, see, my way is better. All those little things come in.

And the other thing you said, which I just love so much, as you know. There's that idea of, you know, the jerk doesn't know they're a jerk, the person that people like. Oh, or that person, maybe we're a different the person is harsh or abrupt or has no tact. Maybe that's a better example. You know, we all know that manager that has no tax and people like, oh, my gosh, if that just a little tactic.

Sorry, no chill as people say nowadays. Yes.

And you'd say, OK, well, they can't see it. So as an employer, I'm not a jerk, so I'm not going to ever minimize people. It's like, no, no, no. You can also be just tired or focused on results and focus on results. That's good, right? They said that was good. Some focus on results. Yeah. And you can be so focused on results. You forget about people now at least.

My sort of self perception will allow me to see, oh, I could make that error because I would never make the error of being a jerk, I'm a nice guy cow that like those are incompatible with me, even though, well, at least in what I'd like to believe.

But at the same time, I think that's something people forget is, like you said, the human resource part. The human part. I do not know of a single business that. Is scaled where the humans are not the most important part of it, and somebody said, well, the technology of it, how does technology get there? How does Amazon you know, Microsoft really Bill's going to do it himself now. Team effort. Obviously, the person in the middle is important.

But how you do that, so question when you have people that start to get the sense of responsibilities versus tasks. What is that look like from a back and forth, are they checking in and what does that require from the employer or the delegator or the person who said, OK, I still want standards because I want to just say, oh, well, I hope it works out. How do I make sure that I'm still communicating a standard and holding to that?

And again, in a kind way. In a nice way. But still, I need this result. Yeah, so are you a football fan? Yes, so if you think about in organizations, there's various teams, of course, in some organizations are just one team because they're not big enough to have multiple teams. But if you think about about responsibilities as a football team, every every player on the team and think offensive rather than defensive, every player on the team plays a role and every player on that team has certain measurable goals that are important.

So, for instance, the quarterback, the vegetables are going to be, you know, pass passes, receptions, you know, interceptions and how many times they drop back, all that kind of stuff, how well they hand off the ball and then you move through all the positions. And each one of those positions has a specific score, specific steps that are important when it comes to delegating responsibility. It's not the end result is clear, right.

You know, you want to win the game. That's that's what you need to do. And you have a scoreboard that says, what the heck is going on? So at any point, the team can look up at the scoreboard and know that it's the fourth quarter, they're down by seven and there's five minutes left and they have the ball. So they know exactly what's going on. But also they know what they're responsible for. So they know that since they're the running back or let's say there are linemen, they know they're supposed to block the guy in front of them and they know what they need to do to make that happen.

So it's the same thing in delegating responsibility that when you do that, well, everybody on the team knows exactly what they're responsible for. In other words, they know that they need to get from X to Y, whatever that is. Maybe they need to improve customer service. Maybe they need to improve that. They need to increase the number of calls that happen or deliver a project by a certain time.

But that's their X to Y and then that ultimately impacts the final score. And so the more clear that you can make that the better. But the middle of the fun part, because that's the sandbox, because the way that someone gets better at running a root and football are better at holding the ball or running through the line, it varies depending on the person. So the way that they improve in that will vary, and that's their freedom to get better at it.

So if one receiver gets better at running his route by practicing in a certain way, another one practices in another way as long as the result is still ultimately the same and they show improvement. I don't care as a leader. I don't care because progress is being made. And so this is the freedom that you get when you delegate responsibility, because now your employees get to be creative and how they get that result. And if you measure it, which is a whole nother conversation, but if you measure how they're getting the result, then you can make nuanced changes.

To get even those micro improvements, if you're just looking for half a percent improvement, it's still possible.

So there's the scoreboard and then there's the specific responsibilities related to the whole picture of the team and everything that comes with that.

Awesome. And one of the things I really like about what you said, there's also the situation, because one of the things I find a lot of people run into, I run into this is. The team members are trained on 10 tasks just as a concept, and all 10 of those tasks are important at different times. But what's the situation?

And one of the biggest challenges, one of the biggest frustrations for me is when I have somebody who has the skills to do all 10 tasks, but they're not realizing the context.

And, you know, somewhere in there, I need to do a better job to help them understand, OK, this is what we need now. We don't need this other thing, even if it's more comfortable for you, because, again, this is not about necessarily your comfort.

This is about what we need at this moment. But I definitely feel that something where I know in my leadership style, because I don't like being micromanaged, I sometimes have a tendency to not mention the scoreboard, I guess, because part of me thinks everybody knows the score. And yet, I mean, how many times in the switch sports and basketball is there one second on the shot clock and somebody passes the ball and the other guy dribbles it in like, dude, you didn't.

I mean, that's like one of the most basic things we just called a timeout and you have a second to shoot and you didn't know that context. So your dribbling skill is actually right now a great skill. You might be world class at it and that was the wrong time for that.

And so that was actually that was a screw up because you to you should talk to J.R. Smith about that.

It's a whole different conversation.

We'll leave that alone.

I'm not quite near to that level, so I'll let I'll let those go. But yeah. So when you start working with people and then you get confidence with the tasks, at least in my experience. Then they get they start to enjoy the job more, and you mentioned something about creativity. And I think sometimes. I think there's a tendency sometimes for entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs, to say, well, you know what, if that person wanted to make all the decisions, they'd be the entrepreneur, OK?

Or they try to be an entrepreneur. OK, but then they take another and there might be truth to that. I've been both, and sometimes it's nicer to leave at five 01 and turn off your lights and know you don't have the responsibilities.

But then there's a leap that they make that I don't think is accurate to say, and therefore they don't want to be creative and say, whoa, those are two different things. I might not want the responsibility of the business in addition to that. And again, if you get ego based, you can say, well, damn it, it's my business and I've heard it. So I get to be creative. But hey, that might not be what makes you money, that might not be what your clients are all about.

How do you help when you're working with employers or people who are delegable? How do you help them see that balance and to really without getting to oh, this is a unique expression and they're their own little snowflake. Not that.

But yes, this person's creativity is a good thing or at least what are the frameworks where you say, OK, here's the boundaries of like, OK, you'll be creative with this, but be this creative or how do you help people communicate that so they get OK with that, especially the person? Even more so the person has a hard time of letting go of things because everybody else screws it up except me. How do you how do you help with that?

Recently, I met or I interviewed two different people on my podcast, and they're both really successful business leaders, business owners like super successful and it's the way that they've done it is through people. And they both said something that we've all heard before, but they've lived it out in their workplace. And that is they they tell their employees that they need them to fail. They need their employees to fail. And that, I think, is the key to delegating responsibility for the employees.

But on the flip side, for the leader, for the business owner, they need to know they need to desire that for their employees because that means their employees are stretching. Because if you're a business owner, you own your business, you own the position. And to get to that place, everybody that's listening in, both you and I, have failed plenty of times. But that's why we are where we are. And that's what has given us the courage to keep going, because that other failure back in the past has given us the courage to take the next step coming up in the future here, because we know what it's like, because we've made that other failure that pushes us through this next one that we won't fail in.

And what that does is it gives the the leader permission in their mind to go, you know what? I feel it's OK for them to as well. And I'm actually going to encourage it. Now, how big a failure is your encourages up to the leader, but encourage the failures? Because that's a big deal. And then what happens is when they fail, they own it.

But if you don't let them fail, they cannot own their position. But it's the more that I fail in my business, the more I'm owning it because I'm like, no, I'm going to fix it. I'm going to get better at this because I'm tired of the failures. Same thing happens with these employees. They go, hey, I want to fix this. And instead of coming in and beating them up about the failure, you encourage them through it and support them through it.

And that's where you get your creativity, innovation. And it's much more of a collaborative effort than a lot of leaders may think.

Yeah, and I think definitely something you hit there, too, is, you know, people forget this and I say forget it assumes that I'm right. But most people don't want to do horrible work and stink at their jobs. They might not know how they might have.

Everybody's got bad days and that sort of stuff. I think one of the things people forget is if you give people a range of where their failure is.

So, for example, as an entrepreneur, my wife has now gotten really clear to say, Wade, if you want to go play and fail, feel free to invest as much of your time as you want. Please talk to me before it's over a certain dollar amount because I invested in courses or this or that or thought the entrepreneurial gods would smile upon me. And because I throw money at something that would come back and.

No, but at least I knew the, you know, the playground of what I'm working within. And if I think about our children, I think I would never want to take their failures from them. That would be like that.

Almost not even insulting. That would be. How mean would that be? Because like you said, that experience of having the failure and then knowing it's OK and knowing it's OK to fail versus the employee that thinks there's a consequence for me failing, I might be fired. So of course, I can never be honest. And so now the employer says, why are they dishonest? Well, because you've made the consequence perceived or not too high. And if you didn't communicate it clearly enough, guess what?

That's your failure, or at least put it away. It might not be your failure, but it's kicking your butt as the employer to not communicate that versus saying, look, this is the you know, I think of something I heard once and relates delegation of, OK, please take no more than an hour, a half hour. Do this one thing, do with it the best you can play with it, you know, some sort of either time constraint or money constraint or if this is going to be a fifty dollar last decision.

I think of Tim Ferris's book, The Four Hour Work Week. He talks about delegating, says, you know, if it's a fifty dollar, fifty dollar or less decision, please make it. Don't even bother me with it because, you know, or some number or whatever the number is giving people that sense of power. And then, of course, if they go against it, that's a whole different conversation. But I think we start we're so gunshy and we've been burnt.

We're leading with prevent defense. We're leading with all the things that could go wrong.

And that's how we know where that goes. Yeah.

And I think that people. You were talking about kids and my I have an eight year old, a six year old and a four year old, and the level of responsibility that I delegate to my eight year old is definitely different than the six and very different than the fourth. And by no means are employees children, but the amount of responsibility that each of them can handle will vary. And so it's really important that that connection exists, that relationship exists so that you know what you can hand off to them.

And over time it's going to build like that. We have to set the mind to go and set their set. The tone basically set the expectation that says right now this is how much freedom you get over time. The freedom will expand and it can expand quickly or it can expand slowly. But either way, both parties, employee and employer, have set the expectation that the freedom will grow and grow and grow.

And here's the thing. When you do that, you're developing the people, right?

So I talk about people process and profit. And if you do this, you're developing the people. And that's wonderful, because then innovation comes, ideas come. Ownership of your business comes to the point where you don't even need to be there. I was talking to this guy named Caleb. He runs this organization called Speak. It's a book. And he doesn't hardly he doesn't hardly make any decisions anymore. All he does is talk to the people when they get to a headache point and then he supports them through it.

And then they make a decision and they've grown his business to multi-million dollars because he's gotten the heck out of the way. And it's really powerful. So you get the people and then in the end, as you do that, this creates a process or your standard operating procedures if you want to use S&P or your OS or whatever you want to call it in today's vernacular. But once you get that dialed in, it's cycles and it continues to get better and better and better over time.

And what follows profit basically guaranteed because your people are getting better, your processes are getting better, therefore your profit increases and sometimes in multiples. And and this is why you've got to get you've got to get the things in the right order, because then the profit will follow. The freedom will follow, the fun will follow.

And I'll tell you what, when my clients do that, they lose so much of the weight of the world on their shoulders.

It's amazing.

So that's I think that that's you've got to you have to spend the time with your people to figure this out in terms of how much freedom to give them. But that's a big that's a huge piece of making your business more profitable.

Yeah, that's the thing I've I've said to business owners at times that I work with.

Your name being on the door and the fact that you're an owner, have you, in a word that is it to a certain degree of detail, because emotionally, if there's 10 people in the business, you might have decision making power more than all the other nine combined. But emotionally, if you want them to engage, you're one tenth of the business. You don't get you don't get more than one vote by how you treat people.

Now, again, will they comply? Yeah, if they want a paycheck. But will they will they bring themselves into it or they bring their best energy? Not if you're not really connecting with them or at least open to that. And again, that's not about being perfect. This is definitely not about saying, well, you've got to figure it all out, because that's one of the worst things we can do as small business owners is to take on that responsibility.

I have to figure out everything. And if I don't, because, again, everybody else screws it up. And if I don't do it, we're all just it's going to be horrible. Not that but at least being able to trust enough. Tell me something. How do you connect with a person or how do you get a sense of how they like to be connected, whether their personality or how a person might?

Word that I know there's assessments and in the skills and in the hands of the right person assessments can be awesome in the hands of the wrong person.

If somebody is reading a narrative that, you know, that is a generic said, oh, well, you're that and everything on this checkmark or checklist applies to you. How do you help somebody or how does a first of all, how does a person connect with that personality of their employer or some other employee that might be different? And then how do you help people if they run into challenges with that?

Yeah, I think there's there's two pieces here that that I can answer with, and one is this is not my rule. I didn't come up with this guy named Dr. Tony Alesandro came up with this rule, he calls it. So I'm going to put you on the spot for a second.

Have you heard or do you know the Golden Rule? Treat others the way you'd like to be treated, right? Exactly, so he twists it and he says treat people the way they want to be treated and in the context of communication, which is so much of what happens in the workplace, that gets screwed up. In fact, for your listeners, if you if most of your listeners or listeners are 10 to 15, you know, business people in their businesses, every community, every person that is struggling with communication in their business cost them four thousand dollars a year.

Right. So if they've got five people, that's a 20 thousand dollar hit on their bottom line, flat out smack dab, right on their bottom line. So getting communication right is a big deal. And the way that it works in the business context is treat people the way they want to be treated. So how do you do that? How do you figure that out? Which is really the second question. And that's there's two simple questions you can ask yourself at any time with anyone.

And it's it's beautiful and it's simple and it's easy and it is compared to you. So whoever's listening compared to yourself, think of an employee now as you thinking about that employee. Are they more task oriented than you or are they more people into to the new. OK, so go ahead and answer Wade. Which one person I'm thinking of is more people oriented? Now, when you think of compared to you, are they faster pace than you or slower pace than you?

Slower paced. Still, they're more people oriented and slower pace is all right. OK, so I have to point down to the bottom left because that's the style and disk. But ultimately what it means for for those of you that aren't familiar with this is simply this. When you're interacting with that, what's called a steady style is you change your behavior slightly. You're not faking it. You're just adjusting slightly to be a little bit slower pace and a little bit more people oriented if you're not already like that.

And that's it. And that's that's going to fix so many communication errors. And this is what I walk every single organization that I work with. I walk them through this and teach them how to do it. And then the nuances. There's all kinds of nuances, but that's the basics compared to me as this person task or people oriented compared to me. Are they fast paced or slow paced? Awesome.

And then you adjust in their direction. OK, and then question follow up to that which this really has me thinking get to make something that this particular person. Assuming that and this is a big assumption that they've been. Trained well and or given the opportunity to be trained well, which are even still two slightly different concepts. But assuming they've been trained well or that it doesn't appear that that's the issue. How do you then determine? Or how would you determine, oh, this is a personality style issue versus no, this is just simply the wrong person.

Their stock, their style is just too far off, whatever is our range.

And again, there might be other ways. I'm not saying I couldn't figure this out. Are the people listening is going further out, but what are some things that would come up? We'd say, OK, now we're we're way out on side or outside of the realm of what's going to going to make sense.

Yes. So are you kind of referring to opposites where people are so opposite that it's difficult for them to connect?

No, they're they're comparing them to the overlap with what the job needs. Not so much with the. Oh, OK. But that a job that there again, that they're over here in the jobs in this area as opposed to there's enough overlap that they could they could make it work. Yeah.

So that happens. And that's bad hiring and it's bad communication on the part of the employer first, but then the employee second, because they shouldn't be applying for a job that doesn't fit their personality. And so that's that's their problem. And if they projected themself in a certain way in the interview, it's hard to you know, they're it's not like they're being deceptive on purpose, but they're just trying to get the job. But if they come in and that doesn't fit, then then if if there are actually an asset and not a liability for the business, then you try to figure out how you can finagle the position and get their creativity from them and say, straight up, just ask them, OK, this clearly looks like it's not a good fit for you and that's OK.

What could be adjusted. So this would be a better fit and you can contribute and also help us because you've got to help our bottom line ultimately. So it's one of those direct conversations that for some people is really uncomfortable, but it needs to be had because, you know, that person is going to quit and leave a whole year organization that costs a lot to fill and is a pain to retrain or it can be the other way. And they can come up with this really amazing, creative new way to approach the position or a new position overall and ultimately help your organization in a significant way.

But fundamentally, I would say you got to ask them just flat out and ask them what's happening here.

And I think you nailed something, too, is there is something I tell people when they're hiring is the B is so crystal clear, as you can No. One about the description of the position of exactly what you want. So hopefully you'll turn off. As you know, it's so much of a disqualification process who you don't want. This is what the job looks like. This is so, you know, because I see sometimes people say, oh, I hope I hire this person.

Like, please don't ever say I hope I hire this person. Please say you hope you're going to figure out if it's the right person first and then also just even creating, you know, what are the milestones are where I try to explain is at week two, if you can't do X, here's where you'll be fired. And so I think you can try to, at least to some degree, say here's all the great things. People are always great about, what's great about the job and the benefits.

Yeah. Here's where we'll fire you two weeks and three weeks and four weeks. So, by the way, to be responsible to you, if you're in a pretty good situation, you're like eighty, eighty five percent happy. Don't come here. We want the person that, you know, trying to do that. And yeah, to your point, certainly some of it is just people just want a job or need a job and that happens.

But definitely I think you're right. If you can connect with them, sometimes there's that person that's so talented or so you see some of the raw talents like, OK, maybe this could work in a different way. And that's definitely something people can look at without over overplaying that. Something else you and I talked about in the preinterview, the pace of communication versus progress, of communication. How is that something that you'd say impacts your ability to connect with the people that you delegate to and whether or not they'll respond and or whether or not you get what you're looking for?

Yeah, so like I was saying before, the pace is the speed, and I think I think when you when you think about pace, we're talking about. The way in which someone thinks how quickly they can solve a problem, how quickly they can speak out and answer how quickly they do their work, all those things, and there's two things you can do.

You can either you can either pump the brakes or you can hit the accelerator. Those are the two options when it comes to pace with progress. I think what I was referring to there is kind of maybe relational progress is what I'm referring to there. And because I quite remember that part of the conversation. But really. You're looking at. How well, how connected are the two people, and I think that pace is easy. It's really easy because you just slow down and speed up and anybody can do that at any time.

But connection is a lot harder. And I think if you want to make progress with the with the individual progress in your organization, it fundamentally comes down to asking the right questions.

And so if you want to make a lot of progress with your employee, with the processes that are in place, then you got to come up with the right questions to ask yourself. Ask about the business and ask the employees. And there's some basic ones that you can consistently ask that will always help you. But that's that to me is a big key because we think in questions anyway.

And so let's let's approach people, the organization in that way instead of approaching them and by telling them what to do if you really, really want to make progress, it's about questions, not solutions and fixing or something.

And that was that. A lot of those the corporate sometimes people get so focused on the progress that they're they're pushing the pace where they have a different idea of what the pace should be is what I remember. And what you said is perfect because, yeah, it's it's still ultimately it's that to me, it's that fine line between what can you impact and what can't you impact. And, you know, again, whether you're the business owner or not, there's certain limitations you're dealing with, whether it be the person, their ability, their speed or whatever it might be, and being able to connect with that.

Awesome. So one last question I have for you is just a generic question, but we've and we've hit on a couple of points, so it might recap some of the things. But just overall, when you look at.

People who are working in family type businesses and, you know, you always hear people talk about, well, you know, gosh, the last thing you want to do to get is to get into a family business because of all the different things that can happen or the negative things, the possibilities, the break, you know, the break downs of relationships, the I'm never going to speak to you again.

For the person that's either in a family type business or is considering that or even just even friends, any sort of sensitive relationship, and actually if you do it long enough, you kind of start seeing your employees to a certain degree as family. How do you stay away from those dangers and still stay true to the mission of what it is you're looking to do in such a way that you can simultaneously honor your business and its commitment and honor the relationship with the person?

What do you find are the two or three things that help people most that maybe they don't know?

Yeah, I think consistent quote touches. And in a world where it's like a no touch society, you know, I literally mean touch to a certain degree, but I also mean touches in the sense of interacting with every single employee that reports to you at a minimum, if not all of them, at least once or twice a week. You know, if you can pull that off, if you work an organization has five people, you better be interacting with every single person every single day.

But if it's getting bigger, there's a lot of responsibility. Then then there's that one to one conversation that's really casual. That's a big piece of keeping the dynamic of relationship and of business at the same time, because you're having a casual conversation maybe about what's going on in life, but also it's in the context of business. So that's that's one piece that I think is really helpful. But also setting the expectation up front that, yes, this is this is a family owned business, but this is a business and it's Family First, but it's also business first at the same time.

And you can have both of those 100 percent.

But the way that you do that is all about that, delegating responsibility and making what that individual is supposed to what result you want from them, making that as clear as possible in numbers. So, for instance, the just working with this organization and their payroll admin person was is not going as fast as she needs to. And she knows it when it comes to getting payroll done and it's getting her behind in a lot of things. And so we together came up with a simple plan that in the next 90 days she needs to improve 30 percent in the amount of time it takes for her to get the payroll done.

So that's that's very business. But in the midst of it, we coached her to help her figure out how to do that. So we supported her and helped her problem solve. We didn't tell her what to do. We supported her and helped her. Problem solved. So one of those touches to make sure it's really clear what the expectation is in numbers and record those numbers, that's again, that's a whole nother subject.

But document what's expected and make sure that they are documenting, telling you back what they've achieved.

But as you do that, spend a lot of time when problems come up that are worth addressing, asking questions, asking questions to help them resolve the problem. So that's a big piece of it. And ultimately, what I'm saying is as leaders, we need to put on our coach that way more often than than most leaders do. We got to put that hat on. The coach hat is simply asking questions that give perspective. If you can if you're good at asking questions that give perspective, then you're going to have fantastic employees.

And the way to get better at that is to become curious. Just be curious. If you're curious, you're going to ask great questions. If you're not naturally curious, start looking out the window and look at things and get curious, look at people as they work and get curious. And I guarantee that will help your employees perform better and it will feel more like family and you'll get better results and ultimately more profit. So that's those three things are those four things are huge to maintain both 100 hundred percent business.

One hundred percent family.

Awesome. Thank you. And yeah. And that's I think that's one of the things that. A lot of people do I do it at times they put on my consultant hat, which is here's how you do things right, as opposed to my coach's hat. And of course, there's there's certain times for each. But I know a lot of the times just people want that that coaches how do they at least want to be able to have that conversation?

And I think definitely your point numbers measuring clarity. I think of the concept of the teacher that gives a quiz every week versus the teachers only gives one test in the semester. The teacher that gives a quiz every week. If you get to see every week and you get a C for your grade, you might not like it. But somewhere, you know it's fair or at least, you know, it's unexpected and it's there's just going to be less drama.

There's going to be less. Oh, my God, what just happened versus and the same concept, like you said, if you're meeting with somebody every week, hey, here's what's going on. And I certainly know this when we not just when somebody ran into trouble and somebody is doing well, if we keep reinforcing that, it works in a positive direction. But certainly the surprises are sometimes what lead to people to really feeling, you know, the betrayal or how come I didn't know versus yeah, I knew this was coming and gosh, I know them.

Almost more apologizing to you. And I've seen this with employers say, gosh, you know, I just tried and I couldn't. And you tried and you tried to teach me this and that and we tried it. It just didn't work or there's just not a match. And that's a so much better place to be in than, you know, something that's very contentious. Awesome. Thank you so much.

There's so much sugar. Can I share one more little piece? Absolutely. So I think that the big picture, the ultimate picture is back to the football analogy. If. If the team has a scoreboard and everybody has a position they're in and they and they're doing the work they need to do to get better at their role. There's ownership happening, but there's a coach and that coaches on the sidelines.

So ultimately, the ideal for the business owner and I think every business owner wants this is they want to be on the sideline as much as possible, not have to get into the game.

So the better that you coach in the organization, the better that you lead your team from the sidelines without being the quarterback, without getting there and setting the block or running the route. The more successful your team will be because you're responsible to see the big picture. You're the vision, you're the mission achiever in it. And the more you can be that coach in the sense that I'm talking about and in the sense of that coach to ask questions, the more enjoyable your business will be.

Because I'll tell you what, when I started my business, I wanted I did it for freedom. I did it to make more money. I did it for freedom. And I'm getting a lot of that because I get to be home with my family. I get to see my kids. After this call, I'm going to go downstairs and hug my kids. I I'm going to bet that a lot of your listeners, they want that freedom either back or they want more of it.

And you've got to be the coach.

More on the sideline, the leader, more on the sideline, helping in observing and being curious to improve process and improve the people and develop them, then be in the middle of the game because you can't see the whole picture near as well.

Oh, that's so true. And I just lets me think of my coaching and coach my kids in basketball and volleyball and. The only thing that comes close to me to the joy as a parent of watching children are our children, my wife, my children succeed, is watching the kids succeed. And, gosh, there's so many times I'd love to get in the game, but, you know, it's frowned upon.

So so it's not going to happen and say, gosh, can't they just. And then the part that's very humbling is that I look back and say, OK, well, Wade, have you studied enough? What's the best way to do this? Have you done your coaching? Because it's so easy to sell these kids that they don't want to dribble the way that they do. They do. They think that's so easy. And as I've watched some of the other coaches after a couple seasons when I wasn't getting as much from my players and someone was drafting.

Absolutely. You know, when the kids are a foot taller than yours and on average or close to that, OK, things you can't overcome. But that ability to do that and connect with people, there's such a joy in it. And I think one of the biggest joys that's missed out by some entrepreneurs and I watch it, is they can't allow themselves to be the mentor, not because they're selfish buggers. Some are selfish buggers.

Your but and some just need the glory all the time. But there's some that generally they're so scared that they'll let down their clients. And so it's not, oh, I need the attention all the time. It's OK. I've got to live up to a certain standard and I can only imagine what that feels like where you never get the accolades of the player, you never get the results of the coach. And so, yeah, definitely if you're in that situation, by all means, reach out to other people, reach out to reach out to me, get help, because that's like you said, we all did it for freedom.

Usually it's some sort of combination of freedom of time, money, you know, hang out with our family lifestyle, that sort of stuff. So if you're not having that, definitely. So question, where can we talk? You mentioned when you and I talked, you have a a leadership scorecard that can help people get a sense of where they're at. Tell us a little bit about that, if you don't mind. And where can they get that?

Yeah, I mean, we you know, that's a whole nother subject because it's the heart. And it was a little bit maybe too detailed for me to dove into, but it's kind of the heart of the way that I help leaders lead. And briefly, it's the idea of of a sage leader and sage stands for self awareness, accountability, growth and empowerment. And ultimately, as I as a coach and consult with businesses, this is what I want to help each of their leaders get to get to that level.

But this assessment measures how well you're doing in those four areas. So there's a set of twenty four total questions that I ask and you answer them on a scale and then that helps people to see where they're how they're doing in those arenas. And then I give people direct feedback on those results so they can take action from what's happening on that assessment. Awesome, thank you. And then just in general, where can they reach you to learn more about your work?

Yes.

So the best way to reach me is you can go to Gillette Solutions dot com and there's you can take the assessment there. There's a link to set up a discover call with me. And you can also just direct outreach at Kyle Gillette, Gillette Solutions dot com. Really.

Thank you so much.

This is one of those conversations where actually even from the beginning, there's a couple of things that came up that I wasn't aware going into, which were awesome conversations and still very much so delivered on what we're looking to do. Thank you for sharing your perspective, your wisdom. Definitely. If you all need help or want insights, reach out to Kyle on that. And as always, I look forward to helping you help more people make more money and less time doing what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends in your life.

Thanks for listening.