How To Be Mesmerizing With Tim Shurr!

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How To Be A Good Manager! | Ken Blanchard & Tim Shurr

by Tim Shurr
December 9th 2020
00:47:26
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In this episode, a legend is with us to share his priceless wisdom on management and leadership. Ken Blanchard is one of the foremost experts in leadership. Ken is a... More

life is a really special occasion. Don't miss it and it's special because of the relationships that you have and then when all of a sudden gone, you know, the important thing in life is who you love and who loves you. And so my wife's mom always said that nobody is dead until the last person who loved them is gone. Here's the question, what's going on inside the minds of top achievers that caused them to make extraordinary breakthroughs both personally and professionally. My name is tim Sure and I invite you to join me as we take a deep dive into the unconscious mind and discover how to transform your biggest dreams into a reality. Welcome to the how to be mesmerizing podcast, everybody welcome to how to be mesmerizing. It's tim Suren today, oh my gosh, we've got a legend in the house ken blanchard, it's with us, ken, Welcome to the show. Well, good to be with you, tim, it's really fun. I love this whole opportunity to zoom so it's great to be able to talk with you and all your good folks. Thank you so much Ken.

So for those that maybe don't live in America or don't know who you are, Ken is one of the foremost leaders or experts in leadership. I mean he has written some classic books, some of my favorite books like one minute manager and raving fans, he's written over 60 books, faculty at Cornell University is alma mater just an incredible force for good teaching people how to be servant leaders and so ken it's just an honor to have you with me today. So let me ask you first question then, what would you say is the secret to your personal success? Well one of the secrets is you've got to marry above yourself talked about that and I have been married 58 years and and we've done everything together. She has a PhD in communications and When we started our company 41 years ago, she was the president. And so I think when you realize that it's not all about you, it's about the people around you that really make you as the people who somehow think all the brains are in their office have the problems.

And I think success really happens when as we say, no one of us is as smart as all of us. And so we've really wrapped our family into this and friends and to this in our company. If we have a vacancy and one of our members nominates a family member or friend and they get the job, we give them a $400 bonus because why wouldn't we want to have people's friends and family? People say you shouldn't work with family. You gotta be crazy. Why not? You know, well husbands and wives working together, why not? You know, we have one couple with three kids that worked with us and then they, so it's it's been fun. See I love that attitude. I was on an interview the other day and someone asked me that question, you know, what do you think will help you grow your business the most and I said make your wife more important than your business. And his mouth dropped open, You didn't know what to say because no one ever said that before him. And so you're validating that because you're right. Most people would say, oh, you know, they have these war stories about working with families and and all that and you're saying no, if you set it up, right?

So what do you feel is made your family is so successful working together? What is it that you rally around? Well, I think it since you have a sense of group of values that you all accept and all because to me servant leadership, a lot of people initially will think it's the inmates running the prison or trying to please everybody, some religious movement, but there's two parts of servant leadership, one is vision, direction, values and goals and then the other his implementation and the key thing to making anything work of family at all is what business are you in? You know, what are you trying to accomplish? What are your values and all our son scott who is our president now, but he's also a great speaker. A lot of times he'll start off a session by saying you probably wonder what it was like to be the one minute son. He said when I was a kid, I got in trouble a lot, which he did and he said I wish I had gotten sent to my room or when I was little even spanked. But no I had to go down to dinner and talk to my mother and father and my sister about how my behavior was inconsistent with family values, which was of course we developed an offsite retreat.

I love it, I love it and that's why, you know, he's successful today because we rally around the dinner table, you go back to some, you know, traditional values of talking, communicating, being there for each other, supporting each other instead of being too busy. I think that sometimes this pandemic has allowed us for the first time in decades to slow down and reconnect. That's right, yeah, that's been a real, we always, when we have dinners with everybody, anybody whether his family or not, we go around with a question we ask everybody and one of my wife's favorite ones recently, what's the silver lining of the pandemic? And that really is. And so often it's around getting no family friends and all, you know, I mean this week we had dinner at one of our neighbors house is at a distance and down saturday, we played golf with another neighbor couple. And then yesterday we had a mock gathering outside social distancing with all the people and so we're getting really to know our neighbors besides our family, it's really fun, That's really great, that's really great.

So let's take a trip a few decades back when you and margie, we're setting up shop. What were some of your first lessons or victories that you had? That helps you to realize? Hey, I want to become, you know, a foremost authority on teaching people how to be better leaders. Well, it's interesting. I got interested in leadership When I was young, my father was an admiral in the navy and uh when I was young I grew up in new rochelle, new york right outside new york city and I want the president of the seventh grade and I came home my mom pumped up and I said, dad, I'm the prisoner seventh grade and he said, congratulations son. He said, this will be the beginning your leadership training, he said, but now that you're president don't ever use your position, He said great leaders are great because people trust and respect them. Not because they have power. He said, it's a myth and the military, it's my way or the highway. He said, sure in battle, somebody's got to call the shots. But if you act like you're a big deal compared to your men, they'll shoot you before the enemy.

And so he was kind of my mentor and got me really interested in leadership and I got a chance to have a lot of leadership positions, both in sports as well as student leadership. Got fascinated, Buy it and then I ended up going to Cornell and I majored in government and it was interested in that whole philosophy, guzman government, philosophy and then I decided I want to be a dean of students, you know? And so I ended up getting a master's degree in sociology and counseling and and then I said I'm ready to be a D. And they said no you need a doctor's degree, Doctors agree. Those people are really smart, how am I going to do that? He said, well you got to figure it out. So I got provisionally accepted into most graduate programs because I couldn't take any damn test. But I went back to Cornell because they had a program in educational leadership and I got my doctor's degree in that and I did my dissertation on fred Fiedler who was the first situational leadership theorists, you know? And so when I got my first job, because my faculty said if I want to be at a university I should be an administrator because I couldn't write, you know, which I found out later that wasn't true.

But my first job was assistant to the dean at Ohio University in Athens Ohio. And when I got there paul her she had arrived as chairman of the management Department of defense and can I want you to teach a course on all my faculty, remember all my demons to teach teach and I had never thought about teaching because if you don't publish or perish. So he said I don't care about that. So uh put me in her she's course that gave me a management course to teaching. That wasn't a problem for me because of my studies. And and after a couple of weeks I came home and I said in my wife, Margie boy, this is what I ought to be doing is teaching, this is really fun. She said what about the right I guess, I don't know, we'll figure something out. So in December 66 I heard her, she taught a great leadership course and I said Paul you mind if I sit in your course next semester? He said, nobody orders my course, you want to take it for credit, you're welcome. And he walked away. I thought that was interesting because I had a doctor's degree and he didn't he wants me to take his course for credit. So I told Margie and she said is he any good and I said he's supposed to be great, she said we'll get your Ego out of the way and take a damn course.

So I had to convince the registrar to let me in because they had a doctor's degree. So I took the course, wrote all the papers in June 67 her she comes in my office as they can. He said I've been teaching for 10 years leadership, but I think I'm better than anybody. And he said they want me to write a textbook and I don't like to write all by myself and he said I was looking for a good writer, like you would you be interested in writing this text book with me? And I said well God we ought to be a great team. And so we ended up writing that textbook. So I went to the Dean, I said I quit as administrator because I got a text books coming out, I'm gonna be a faculty member and he said you can't quit, I said why not? He said because I was going to fire you because you're a lousy administrator, which I was so I ended up being a full time teacher and then left Iowa went to a university of massachusetts and had a ball there and then we ended up coming out here on sabbatical leave. So it's a long winded answer, but I loved it. My life is I think in life is what happens to when you're planning on doing something else.

It's so true, It really is. We all have these ideas for where we want to go and what we want to accomplish and then it just takes us on this winding road. I loved there was a couple of really powerful themes and what you said, So the first one, you know, as we started off this conversation, you know, you have a powerful force in margie in your life and I have that in my wife Stacy where they're constantly like the voice of reason, like they came right down from heaven to straighten us out and and so you know, and she said get your ego out of the way and I thought that's very powerful because a lot of times our ego does get in the way and we don't even know it, that's right, we're not trying to be that way, we're not even thinking of it in that way, but sometimes we need someone else to feed that back to us and you listen to her, That's right, yeah, well she's really uh really smart, we've already been married 58 years, so that's incredible, that's amazing. And then the other part of it which you know is the struggles that we have.

You know, I wrote a book called one belief away because we're just one belief away from having this breakthrough or loving ourselves in a new way or or going in a new direction our beliefs mess with us. And you know, you had that belief for a long time that you weren't a good a good writer and then all of a sudden you have this excellent leadership guy who comes in and says, you know, I love your writing, let's write a book together, I mean that's a whole different shift, right? Absolutely, yeah, yeah, and it's really interesting and then we got invited to a cocktail party by Adelaide bree who wrote visualizations, directing the movie is hereby she's the first one who talked about self healing of cancer and she so I'd have a party of authors in san Diego and I qualify because I had this textbook so we get there and margie meet Spencer, johnson and Spencer had written all these Children's books with his wife, the Value tales, the value of courage, the story of Jackie Robinson, the value of honestly the story of a blink in the value of determination, of story of Helen Keller.

So margie hand carried spencer over and she said uh you two ought to write a Children's book for managers, they won't read anything else, you know? And so he was writing 11 minute scolding on how to discipline kids with a psychiatrist and I invited him to a seminar was doing and sat in the back and laugh, they came running up at the end, he said forget parenting, let's do the one minute manager. And so we met the first week in november and since he was a Children's book right, and I'm a story teller, decide to write a parable And we had a complete first draft by the time we were going to the Rose Bowl at the end of December, self published it and sold 20,000 copies on our own before we went to New York to sell it and I mean whoever would have thunk it, you know, and so I think we helped start the parable writing for leadership books and really is a been amazing and Spencer went on to write, who moved my cheese? You know, we're still 30 million copies? Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. So, well, let's talk about that a little bit.

Then you've been training leaders and now your family and your corporation has been training leaders around the globe for decades. So do you have some advice on uh you know, where we need to go and what we need to be paying attention to as leaders as our workforce has completely turned. Mhm. Well, I really think that the key aspect is to realize that you're here to serve not to be served and to realize that you can learn what it means to be a servant leadership because once you get vision and direction and values and goals set, then you gotta philosophically turn that pyramid upside down. And now now you work for your people and they don't work for you. Your job is to help them win. I got in trouble when I was a college professor, I was investigated by some of the best faculty committees. And the thing that annoyed them is the first day of class. I always gave out the final examination and they said, what are you doing? I said, I'm confused. They say you acted, I said I was supposed to teach these kids you are, but don't give the questions in the final and I'd say none am I going to give you the questions in the final?

What do you think I'm going to do all semester? I'm going to teach them the answers. So when they get to the final exam, they get a, life's all about getting, it's not some stupid normal distribution curb. I just can't believe organizations where they have their people screw a certain percentage of their people. You know, I said, how many of you go out and hire losers? You know, we lost some of our worst people last year. We need to hire some new losers to fill those slots. No, you either hire winners, you steal from other companies or you hire people with potential to be winners and you train them. And so that's the whole philosophy is that if you work for your people, your job is to get amazed to help them accomplish their goals. It's not to walk around and judge them and evaluate them and you know, play God, you know, that's just stupid stuff. Yeah, I don't feel very strongly about that. Well, you know, it's extraordinary because you know, if your dad being an admiral, he most certainly could have been that old school my way or the highway, you know, leadership approach that especially you see in the military even though that seems at some level to be changing as well.

But he wasn't like that now he wasn't at all. My mother was quite a person. She said to me, ken, don't you ever act like you're better than anybody else, but don't you let anybody act like they're better than you. God didn't make any junk. There's a pearl of goodness and every human being dig for it. So I've been a digger for a long time. Oh my gosh, your mom gave me chills, that's incredible. Yeah, So they were a great 1, 2 punch my mother and father. Oh my goodness, for sure. Yeah, well you know, people will live up or down to the expectations you have of them, right? And so if you believe they have a pearl inside of them and you're looking for it. Yes. Yeah, it really isn't. That's one of the things that attracted margie to me because I was in a fraternity at Cornell in a lot of times, fraternities are very isolated and they make fun of her and people would say well to margie, well what do you think of those five g? I was a five g shit, you know, she said, I don't know, but there's one in there ken blanchard, he knows everybody on campus, He has friends all over, you know, because I just didn't feel you just stayed with just those people, you know, if this pearls are good, let's go look for it, they're out there.

Mm Yeah, very good, wow, that's awesome, so you know, one minute, manager tips, do you have a couple of ideas for little things that you can do to help people feel more connected or build more leadership trust. They, I was reading the Edelman barometer, which is a big survey that talked about how like 63% of people don't trust there bosses. So well I think the reason they don't trust their bosses, their bosses hang out in their office all the time. You know, I think all the brains are there. And one of the things about the women and managers, once goals are clear, your job is to get out of your office and wander around and first see if you can catch people doing things right and give them it at a boy had a girl, women are praising and all the things I've taught over the years. If somebody said blast and I'm going to take everything away from me. But one thing I would hold on to that because I think if you want to create a great organization where people trust and respect you is they've got to know that you're on their side, Your head cheerleader.

And if they're not performing as well. We changed the woman to reprimand recently in the new woman that managed to to one minute redirects where you go and say to first, it doesn't look like in this area you're performing as well as we both had hoped, what could I do to help you get back online. It's not sort of how can I punch you for doing that? How can I help? Because your job is to help not to evaluate and and the judge you there is a that's the head cheerleader, you want people to win, you want them to get a and I ended up writing a book with Gary Ridge who was the president WD 40. He had just come in, we have a master's degree program at the University of San Diego. I looked at all the NBA programs. They don't teach anything about leadership. They plug it into one course and you know, but we think the leadership as a journey from self leadership where you've got to find out about yourself and who you are and get your ego out of the way. We started a 12 step egos anonymous program. You really like that because it's the biggest addiction in the world.

There you go and then we go from there to one on one leadership where you build trust with somebody, it's a team leadership where you're building a sense of community. Finally organizational leadership where you're trying to build a culture and we do that. But Gary was in our first thing and when I told the story about giving the final exam, he said why don't we do that? And he started doing that with WD 40? And you know the last count, they had a 93% employee engagement score, can you imagine? You know, you just don't get scores like that, they do a survey every year To their people. And one of the questions they sent out last time was I loved to tell everybody that I belonged to WD 40 and 99% said yes. And you know, so I'm going, I'm working on a book now called uh, why isn't common sense? Common practice, You know, Because it doesn't make any sense why we are doing this kind of stuff, you know? Well, it seems like maybe the tide is turning now and people are taking it, you know, more serious because they used there used to be this idea that soft skills made you soft, right?

And talking, what are you talking about feelings and emotions when we're in business and, you know, making money and stuff like that and you got to keep your people at a distance because, you know, if you become friends with them, you lose your edge or your advantage over them and you're showing up the exact opposite. Like, no, that's no, you know, you gotta show them that you're on their side if you want them to win. Yeah, it's really tough. This pandemic has been tough on us because, you know, we're hoping at the end of the year we might do 40 million. Our goal was over 60 million. And so we've had to downsize and to lose some of your people who are just part of your family is just so we've done everything to try to help them and give them a good severance and all that kind of thing, but I want to tell you, my son has been Really tough as the leader to he and his team to do that, but we're starting to turn around, we used to do, you know, 40 fifties, you know, face to face sessions a month and this last month we did over 500 online, so we had to quickly turn around and get all of our content online and you know, I mean, it's I tell you, you know, you can't sit around and moan and groan, you gotta go with the flow and and get with it, you know?

So if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, be constantly looking at what's happening and saying, how can I change and what can I do to keep viable? Yeah, it's the question that, you know, your margie had come up with, what's the creative opportunity, you know, in this pandemic, what what's the silver lining, you know? Yeah, because, I mean, we've all been hit right, and so we have to adjust though, and so, you know, I think it's so important that people pay attention to what you're saying about building trust and working for your people and lifting them up, so I got two thoughts on that, the first one, what advice do you give to somebody who says, well I'm trying to do that and my people just don't want to learn or they're lazy, you know, or they just don't care what's your first thought when somebody says that to you, just say you're full of it. You know, you haven't really given them a chance. I mean people want to win. I mean they don't do that. I think if you go to your people and you talk more about we rather than me and say we're in this together, you know, and we just had such cooperation from the people that we have working with us, even the people, if we've had to let go, it's just been amazing because we constantly are doing we rather than than me and I think people want to make a contribution and if they tell you that, you know you so to say, you know better send your resume somewhere else.

Yeah. You know, what would you say if someone says, oh I got a coworker and they're just so negative all the time. They're always complaining about everything. It's it's stressing me out or messing up my work. Well if that's true, I would sit down and talk to them and say, let me to share with you what I see coming from you is a lot of negativity and all I don't think that's gonna work here and what I love to do is see how I can help you become more positive and if that's not possible, then I'm going to have to share you with the competition as Gary Ridge always talks about, you know, and but you talk to people, be honest with them. Don't go in the back room and say I'm going to have to get rid of them. You know, give people a chance to change, you know, because a lot of times they probably never got any feedback and doesn't even realize what they were doing and to give them a chance to realize it and know that you're there for him. So we've seen some people make some major changes when you go to them and confront them and say we're on your team, how do we help you?

Yeah, that's so wonderful because most people want to avoid that conversation or they let their build their feelings build up so much that by the time they have their confrontation with them, you know, it becomes highly emotional and then it's not very productive. You know, one of the my favorite things is that I think one of the most common leadership styles around the world is Siegel management. You know, so you set a goal with somebody, then you leave them alone and you don't return until they screw up and then you fly in, make a lot of noise dump on everybody and fly out. You know, that's a really fun way to imagine people that's really funny. I've never heard of the seagull method like that before, but it's true because also in the movie, finding nemo, you know, where the seagulls would fly in and you know what they are always saying, Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine me me me me, you know that's hilarious, I love that, you know, I'm one of the biggest beliefs that leaders had when I was doing a lot of you know in person leadership programs before the pandemic hit leaders had this ingrained idea that I'm too busy to train my people, I'm too busy to take care of them, I can barely get my own stuff done, you know, I have so much going on and I literally remember one leader, he would say I would walk through the shop and I would walk as fast as I could through the shop because I knew that if I make eye contact with anybody they would want to stop or ask a question and I didn't have time to do that and I was like oh that is the worst kind of leadership, what kind of message are you sending, but I found that the leaders were having that all over the place, I don't have enough time.

Yeah, well I think one of their problems is that they go to too damn many meetings, you know, and they don't get out with their people and peter Drucker who was a mentor of mine, you know, he one time said nothing good happens by accident, put some structure on it, so a concept we develop that people really have found as helpful is what we call one on ones, my wife margie was working with a company called the wiener schnitzel and there Average turnover was about 140, you know a year and that kind of business and she noticed that one guy had to restaurants and he had less than 20% turnovers, so she said I got to see this guy, she went to see him and I said what are you doing differently? He said, I don't know what I'm doing, different says, come on, He said, well I have a one on one meeting with everybody that works with me once every two weeks for 15-30 minutes, and he said, I schedule a meeting and they set the agenda. Now you get a young person who has an older person who's interested in them and wants to meet with them, why would you go for 50 cents an hour somewheres else when you got somebody really is, and so we've taken that concept of one on one meetings and it's been so helpful to so many people is that, you know, if you met with your people 26 times a year for 15 to 30 minutes and they set the agenda, you schedule a meeting and they can talk about goal that they're working on or they can talk about a kid who's sick and it's hurting their work or whatever they want, but at the end of the year, you would know them and they would know you and you know, So you need to do add that kind of structure in there to do that.

And you also, Gary Ridge WD 40 years a a quarterly meeting with each of his direct reports. And the first agenda item, as they say, is the final exams still relevant. You know, their goal is still relevant because you might have set goals is january and you haven't been working on them during the pandemic and then somebody is going to bring those damn goals out in december and evaluate. You give me a life, you know, and so at WD 40 they can change their goals all the way up to the beginning of the fourth quarter. And so and then they give a report card, it's really silly for you to sit around and fill out forms on your people, won't you let them fill out the forms and you either agree or disagree. And so WD 40 of these quarterly meeting the direct report comes in and they have a report card that says first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter or performance and they give themselves an abc or each of their goals and that the job of the managers degree or disagree. And somebody might give themselves an a and you know, because they want to have heard you better give yourself a high score because they knock it down.

He'll say, you know that's not quite an A. Yet it's a good solid B. Let's talk about how we can get into their, somebody might rate themselves. That's not a C. It looks like a good solid B. How can we do this? And so what you're trying to do is get people A'S. But let them score themselves and you agree or disagree so you really are partners. And so this is so many things you do. The name of our book has helped people wanna work. The subtitle is a business philosophy called don't Mark my paper help me get an A. And this was Gary Gary Ridge is really quite a guy. Yeah that's incredible, I love that. So leaders really are invested coaches who are coaching you to success. That's right. Yeah That's so good. It's so good. I remember I sat down with somebody one time a leader and she had 30 direct reports and we were talking about doing one on ones and she said I've got 30 direct reports. If I do one on ones with them every two weeks I would be doing nothing but direct reports and hanging out with my people and I said exactly You know if you did a half an hour with 30 people that's 15 hours in two weeks and you had That's 15 hours of say potential 80 you know uh that's right people just you know I think that classically human beings get caught up on the wrong stuff.

You know, we just are are always focusing on the busy work and the to do list instead of making stronger relation, stronger relationships and having stronger communication with people that were with all the time, especially if you've been with him for years. That's right, you know, and it's like, oh, we already know each other. Yeah, and then they're not using their time productively. Yeah, no, you you want to help people win, that's what you want to do and yeah, spending time with them, not in your office, you know, I've had a couple of ceos, I went in there and locked up the bathroom if they had in their office. I said, because if you have to go to the bathroom outside your office, at least you're going to get out there once in a while. Absolutely. I mean, I've seen extraordinary examples of leadership. I've seen people that I had one president of a company, he removed the door from his office, he literally took it off the hinges, you know, and I was like, that's a powerful message. Other leaders, managers move their desk out onto the floor, you know, So maybe with all their commissions salespeople on the phone and their deaths was right in the middle of them, you know, I would go to their office, they have a really nice corner office and there is always a note on the door, I'm on the floor, you know, I'm in the trenches with my people, Yeah, you know, if you need me go, go on the floor.

And I always thought that was so powerful. Yeah, I'll never forget. One of my amazing experiences is that people ask me these apply concepts apply to government. And so one time I lost my license and I needed to renew it because I was going to europe and my secretary said, you make an appointment carve up about three hours of my time because that's about how long it will take me to get through the department of motor vehicles. And so I headed over in escondido and I walk in and this woman charged me and she said, welcome! The department of motor vehicles, you know, do you speak english or spanish and said he would sit right over here behind this. How can I help you? Said I'm here to renew my license. It took me nine minutes to renew my license, including getting my picture taken. I said to this woman taking my picture, I said, you know what makes you all do this? She said, we have an incredible boss. And I said, where is he? He says right out there and here, he was right out in the middle of everybody with his desk, there's no fancy office.

And I went over and I introduced myself to him and I said, what's your job as the head of this department? He said, my job is to help people, you know, take care of our customers in the best way possible. And, and you know, if I got everybody trained and if we get a run on the thing, I can get secretaries and all they can come out and be up from the front lines and, and all that kind of thing. And I'm just saying, wow, you know, it was just unbelievable that somebody could do that in a quote bureaucracy, you know? Yeah. Unfortunately he left eventually, I don't know where they got him out of there, went back over there. And unfortunately it's back to the old way. Oh no, oh no. I mean that goes to show the importance of having a transformational leader. Yeah, absolutely. That's so good. You know, I've sold thousands of copies of your book, raving fans because I love it so much. And and it just talks about how you add these, you know, special little touches which sometimes people, because of experiences with Uber or lift, where people would have, you know, a radio station, they'd pick out or they'd have a soda or a bottle of water, a little bowl of candy, you know, that they would offer their writers and it felt like, wow, it was something special and unique.

And those ideas came right from your book. And so tell me how you ended up putting raving fans together. Well, I wrote it with Sheldon bowls the group that really turned our lives around was the young presidents organization Waipio because when we came to san Diego and sabbatical, I got a chance to do some sessions for them. And they were the ones who said, what are you going to do at the end of the year? I said, we're going back to the university said no, you're not. They said, what do you mean you're going to start your own company? We said, we can't even balance your own checkbook. How are we going to do that? And they said, we'll help you. And five Waipio presidents, one from Oregon, one from san Diego went from Mexico, one from pennsylvania, one philadelphia volunteered to be advisory board, flew to san Diego help to set the company up and all in Sheldon bowls was a member of the Wipo from Winnipeg in Canada and he came to one of the university there where I was at and he said, can I, I wrote it, you asked of a book on customer service and I love you to co author with me. And so I start with that. Nice, I'll read it Shell.

And I'm going back to the room and I said to margie said, what do you tell? A guy that gives you a book? I mean, you know what kind of writer would he be. And I started reading and I said, wow, this is amazing because he had observed that when the gasoline crunched came and everybody was going to self service gasoline. he said, what a great opportunity to go to full service. And so he hired housewives and retirees and dressed him up in red jumpsuits and you come into a demo gas station and you come in there and three or four people with race towards your car, somebody would start to, you know, ask you to step out of the car and just bust you and somebody be pumping gas, somebody doing the windows and and he just blew everybody away, you know, And so he said, that's what I call raving fans and so I added some stuff to it, we worked on that together, but it was really Sheldon bowls, it was the, the motivation of that. And then we ended up writing gun ho which is once you have raving fans, how do you get gun Ho!

People that in order to serve your people because what we have found is that the best companies treat their people as their number one customer. If you love on your people, train on your people and empower your people, they will go out of the way to take care of your number two customer, which is that people use your products and services, then they're going to become raving fans and they'll take care of the owners. A lot of people think the reason of being businesses to make profit, no profit is the applause you get tim for creating a motivating environment for your people, so they'll take care of your customers, that's where the action is. There it is. Oh my God can that was gold, wow. It's the applause that you get. This is so, so exciting because I've been reinforcing your messages as so many other people who have been studying you and your work and what you've been doing and then we take this excitement and these values And bring it into companies. You know, I had a company that I was working with and their employees employee satisfaction survey scores were around 55%.

I ended up being with them for about five years when I left they were at 93%. In fact the scoring company called him up and said what are you guys doing? Its you know you've set our records for several years in a row and Troy Hannah, who is the president of the company, he said it's the work that we've done, taking care of our people. You know our customers are second, you know just what you said, our employees, our first our people our first, if you say the customer is always right and you bash somebody, you know that's an employee, you know, you don't have their back then, you know They're going to talk to the next 50 customers having that feeling that nobody cares about me, why should I care about our customers. Yeah, no that's why I say it's it's duh, yes, common sense is no longer common, but we're bringing it back right with your Dell book and with all the other books that you have and I love that you, you know, sometimes people think that it's kind of cliche now when you talk about having values, you know, you're having some kind of blueprint where your values are there, but it's so essential because it's your foundation, it's where you come back to it, your compass.

Why is our country in trouble right now? We don't have any agreed upon values anymore. Like I would think freedom of speech would be of value. But if I make a comment about something that's different than some interest group, they don't say ken let's talk, we disagree. They want to surround our business and put us out of business, you know, there's not freedom of speech, you know, and I just hope that whoever wins this election, we could somehow get back to kind of creating a vision for our country trump said let's make America great again. But he never describe what that was, you know, and set the vision for it. You know, I mean, that's what we, we need, you know, we just need people to do that because I talked to all the religious right republicans, you know, and I have a ministry called lead like jesus, not to convert people, but I found out that when I started to read the Gospels and everything I had ever taught about leadership, jesus did these 12 incompetent guys he hired? I mean, you wouldn't have hired that lot. And so but it was it's just so obvious that that's the way to go and to make a difference out out there and, and so, you know, we just forget that.

Just forget it. Yeah, that's beautiful. Can I love that? I did a program for my church one time called jesus versus the, you know, seven deadly since. And and and it was, you know, you're right, it is in the gospel and and Jesus was an incredible leader. And when we think about it in that way and the people that he recruited and how he turn them into fishers of men, right? How he turned them into being selfless and all about love, just loving each other. And, you know, you talked about, you know, earlier in your career getting interested in government and understanding the power of values and communication and sitting down and working it through. And when you watch debates today, you watch how people talk to each other once they've siloed each other. Republican democrat, you know, radical liberal, you know, they have all these ways that people come in and silo each other and then there's nothing but dysfunctional communication and then we wonder why we're in such disarray right now. Well, within this group that I told you, I talked to the all the republican religious right?

I said, you know the bible, what does it say in the bible that happens to people without vision and they all shouted their parish, they're out of control. I said, duh! I mean, what you ought to be doing is looking at the constitution, the Bill of Rights come up with a new vision for our country, then take it to the democrats and say, what do you think? You know, once you make your changes and all, but right now you're just in a pissing contest with each other and what is that? That's that's not behaving like a like jesus would want you to behave, wow, wow, that's powerful. Both sides need that, you know, I mean, that's really, really powerful. Yeah, that's really good. Can you just drop in more golden nuggets to wisdom because people need to be reminded of that. And sometimes the more power we have, the more our ego causes us to be right, which is what causes us to think that we're right, which is why, you know, pride is one of the seven deadly sins.

Yeah, we need a, you know, a national egos anonymous meeting. It's so much fun. Some of these companies that worked with a weekly meeting that the managers have, they start off with an ego's anonymous meeting and of course it's voluntary and people stand up say, hi, I'm candid. Everybody goes, how can they say I'm an egomaniac and the last time my ego got in the way there's two ways your ego get in the way one is false pride when you act like you're more than you're better than your brighter than you know and that's what the other one is. Fear yourself, doubt when you you know have a less than. But it's really interesting all people with ego problems don't believe in themselves, you know, because the guy who wrote I'm okay, you're okay said the worst life position is I'm ok. You're not. All the data showed that those people were covering up not okay feelings about themselves. And so if we can all recognize that we all have some doubts and some ego issues and the more we identify them the more we can work on them.

And so if people come up in a weekly meeting and say boy I want to tell you last week, you know I got my ego the way I was worried you know that they wouldn't realize, you know that all the hard work I had done and then that was so stupid when I finally stood up and said I'm an egomaniac and and I got back into we rather than me and you know it's just so powerful, it is so powerful. I think it was wayne dyer who said the ego stands for edging God out, wayne was quite a guy, I loved him, I met him through I. P. O. Yeah yeah he's a he's really and he's the one that kind of talked me about ducks and eagles? You know because you can always tell when you got a self serving leader because you go have a problem as a customer. You're talking to a duck quack quack. It's our policy quack quack. I just work here quite cracks. You want to talk to my supervisor quack quack quack. Where if you win an organization where people are empowered at all like at Nordstrom's and all and you got a thing they'll say no problem. You know they're eagles, they soar above the crowd.

You know a friend of mine went to get some perfume for his wife and Nordstrom's and the woman said so we don't sell that perfume here. But I know where I can get it in the mall. How long you gonna be in the story? So about 30 minutes to find I'll go get your perfume for your wife and bring it back here and gift wrap it. And he couldn't believe it goes leaves the store and she had a gift wrap and she started charging the same price. She paid the other restaurant. Nordstrom didn't make any money. But what do they make? They made a customer and he's bragging on him and he tells me the story and I brag on him. You're still telling the story today. I mean that's extraordinary. Yeah. So that's the difference between the eagles and ducks? Wow. That's so good. Yeah. So good. So real quick. Is there are there some resources that we can direct? Some people too? I know ken blanchard dot com. There any other particular places where people go just in my books is just Kenn blanchard ebooks dot com. Okay, good. And then if they're interested, go to lead like jesus dot com.

They want to see what we're doing. We're 25 or 30 nations around the world. We had had a prayer meeting the other day from people all over the world. It was unbelievable people from africa, south America and asia and europe and all, you know, praying together, you know, for the world because the world needs, needs our prayers. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, people are so many people have just fatigue from being isolated from family and friends and not getting out of the house much and no social interactions. I've got a 13 year old and a 16 year old and they're feeling it. You know, we, we rarely leave the house, you know, and it's just so it's eats on everybody. So prayer and reaching out in connection is more important now than ever. That's right. For sure. Yeah. Well ken this has been an absolute pleasure having you with us. I mean, you have so much wisdom and so many exciting, you know, insights that can help us to create real value in our life immediately by applying them.

So any last thoughts you want to share with everybody that's listening. No, I just would say to people that life is a really special occasion. Don't miss it. And it's special because of the relationships that you have and then when all of a sudden gone, you know, the important thing in life is who you love and who loves you. And so my wife's mom always said that nobody is dead until the last person who loved them is gone. And so it's all about love and it's all I always say. Love is the answer. What is the question? And that's not goofy love. It's respect love and we rather than me. So good. I'm going to be gathering my family around my computer tonight. We're all going to watch this, this interview again because I just want to bottle you up and and share you with more and more of the world. Can you are absolute treasure. Thank you so much for being a mesmerizing guest on the show today. Well, tim thank you for asking me all these questions and give me a chance to share that you've made today.

Very special for me. Outstanding. Alright, everybody. Oh my gosh, that was incredible! Right, ken! Oh my gosh, that was so good. So ken, plant your books dot com or go to lead like jesus dot com. I'm going to be heading over there next myself. You got to get his books. He has written so many amazing books but my favorites are raving fans one minute manager and we've got to all get that book. Duh. So make sure you head over to can blanchard dot com. Check out all the amazing resources that he has for you and your corporations and for your family and implement what ken is shared with you. And it will truly make your life mesmerizing. Thanks for being with us. Everybody see you next time. Hey, would you like more free tips on how to be a mesmerizing leader? Then check out mesmerizing leadership dot com And also hang out with me on facebook facebook dot com forward slash tim. Sure. Thanks so much. And make your day a sure success. Hey, it's Tim Sherwood. You like to learn my best secrets for how to be mesmerizing. Then head over to www dot surviving to thriving dot mean, that's www dot surviving to thriving.

Got me I'll see you there.

How To Be A Good Manager! | Ken Blanchard & Tim Shurr
How To Be A Good Manager! | Ken Blanchard & Tim Shurr
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