Ep 51 - "Creating A Coaching Culture"

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brennan. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. I don't know. What'd you think? I don't know. It was kind of serious. Should we laugh? Shut up! Brother. Yes. Dude, I have a topic I'm actually really excited about. So I was... That's good. I intentionally told you not to tell me about it because we kill somebody excited by starting the conversation. No, you don't even know if I'm coming from left field or right field on this one. I'm trusting you on it, dude. I know. I know. I'm not a consistent listener, but I do listen to the entree. You're not wrong, dude. You're, you're not a consistent listener.

0:48 Sometimes you son of a, okay, listen, sorry. You just walked right in. I, uh, I feel like I set up a T ball stand, set the ball on it and then walked away and pointed at it so that you could take full advantage. I just ran home. Didn't I? Okay. Start over. Apologize. Can we, can we get back on task? Yeah, please. I'm going to remember that forever. Okay. Entra leadership. Let's get back at task. I'm blown off by your... I haven't listened to that podcast actually for a while. Well, and I don't listen to it a lot. I think at times it feels just a little too... Produced. They are very consistent with what they do, how they do it, when they do it, the rhythm that they have for it.

1:30 And it just, sometimes it kind of comes across a little too packaged. My preference with podcasts in general, there's exceptions to this, like the Knowledge Project. Yeah. My preference with podcasts, I like them to be a little bit more unscripted. Yeah, I think so too. A little bit more rough and tumble. Yeah, I agree with that. I totally agree with that. Oh, by the way, hey, gang, those of you that are listening, we're actually going to start something a little bit new. It feels awkward for us. Probably feels awkward for you, but we're all going to get through this together. Chris and I made a commitment to each other with the show. We love it. We love doing it. We really like the experience that we have in this more long form to hang out with you guys and talk about topics that are relevant to our businesses and not necessarily completely...

2:13 restricted to our industry or the nuts and bolts topics. Anyways, that being said, the easiest way for us to get more listeners, to have more opportunity to hang with you guys is if you see value in this show, if you're actually getting something from it... Share it. Friends, family, people in the industry, people at your shop, help us out. We're going to be a little bit more diligent about asking you folks for that kind of support as we continue to grow the audience and really work to make sure that we continue to have the freedom to do this and spend this kind of time with you guys. Like I said, we're not really great at that. And all of us get a little bit uncomfortable with promotion, but we really enjoy doing this.

2:54 We hope it brings value for you. And if it does, please bring somebody else in so that we can share that experience with them too. Okay. So anyways, back to the topic. So I was listening to Entrez Leadership, I think is how they pronounce it. And they had a gentleman on, he was a big CEO and COO roles with some of the big companies. For instance, the conglomerate that owns like Kentucky Fried Chicken and... Oh, like Yum Brands? Pizza Hut. Yum Brands is who it is. Yeah, exactly. Because they have a Yum Award. Oh, okay. So it is them. But one of the things that they were really dialing in on is that this particular gentleman, and in the show notes, we'll add his name. I apologize that I don't have it off the tip of my tongue here. They were just really talking about his secret sauce, his magic that he brought to the industry was this focus on employee recognition.

3:42 We've had some discussions about this in the past and some shows that talk about it. So I'm actually going a little bit different direction here. But what I really appreciated about what he was saying is that he used this term coaches instead of leaders a lot. And there was something that really resonated with me on that particular item. A little inside joke there between Chris and I. Apparently, I have speech problems when it comes to resonated. And I just did it. Beautiful. That's beautiful. Anyways, it resonated with me that this guy was really talking about creating coaches instead of bosses, managers, and just leaders. And so it got me thinking about something. We have a dear friend in the business. Her name's Amy Shannon, Pinnacle Leadership Group.

4:22 She's a very HR-directed person. She's got a rich background working with large corporations, specifically on this HR and staff development side. She's pro. You and I both were fortunate to have her as an executive coach at some point in our work history and our professional development. And she really taught me a lot about this coaching consulting, right? And a lot of ways, it was my experience with her that kind of set the stage for where we would end up going with our professional focus. But one of the things that her and I spent a lot of time talking about was creating a coaching culture. Mm-hmm. And one of the reasons that she kind of more formalized that or was bringing that up more intentionally was she saw some natural gifting or skill set in some of our team.

5:07 The way that we developed our leadership team, the way that we communicated with one another and worked through challenges, she just said, hey, this is very similar to and looks a lot more like this coaching culture. Yeah. And we did double down on that. We formalized a lot of that commitment and we taught tools and resources to our team to be better at coaching their staff. And so anyways, I wanted to hang in that zone today. I want to talk about what it looks like to create a coaching culture within our companies and what the effects of that are potentially on our business and specifically creating bench depth, right? The succession planning that we can do within our organization.

5:50 And so that's, that's kind of where I want to hang this morning, if you're cool with it. Yeah, totally, man. You know, where my mind immediately, I think inevitably we're going to have to like, we're going to go here and then we're going to go there and we're going to kind of bounce around a little bit on the subject. But you know where this, this takes me is a theme, I guess, a phenomena that we've seen a lot, both in ourselves, but also with the clients that we worked with over the years. Yeah. And that is, as owners, a lot of times is we're struggling with how to coach or how to course correct team members, develop them, grow them, help equip them with the stuff they need to do what we need them to do and to grow in the company.

6:32 Oftentimes we struggle to take those thoughts and the narratives in our head and communicate that directly to our people. What am I trying to say? We were having a conversation with one of our owner clients. And it's so funny because they love, they can always tell when we talk about them on podcasts, but nobody else can, of course. But we were having a conversation about an employee that they were really struggling with. And it's a quality person. They're a good addition to the There's just a handful of behaviors that they have just struggled to consistently deploy, you know, and it's messing with the mojo of the team, right? Because there's parts of the process are not following blah, blah, blah.

7:14 And so as the owner, as we're talking through this and the owner was sort of describing the story in their head several times over the course of several sessions, you or I, or both of us were like, Hey, we'll just say Bob. Bob. Bob, have you said it to them just the way you said it to us? Well, and then there was almost always a pregnant pause and like, well, no, not exactly. Yeah, right. And we said, why? Well, you know, I don't want to offend them or I don't want to push them out the door. I don't want them to think that their job's being threatened or something like that. I said, well, it didn't feel that way at all to us. It sounded direct and it sounded honest.

7:55 It was very clear. the way you communicated that to us. Have you ever been that clear with them about how you're experiencing them, what the net effect of this misbehavior is? Or have we kind of danced around it? Yep. Or, and so I think that's a really interesting point for us to make is As owners, sometimes maybe part of it is that we're just high merchant and we're so fiercely committed to diplomacy and not risking the relationship that we're afraid to be totally clear and honest, which is some of our issue, mine generally.

8:36 Or I think the other reason why sometimes we do that as owners and we tiptoe around issues and behaviors is... we have desperation brand. And we're like... And many of us are in that place right now. I would say yes. And often it's both. It's like, we don't want to burn a bridge. We don't want to make somebody mad at us. And we don't know how we're going to replace that role in a short-term period. But what's interesting as an outsider looking in, in these conversations, right, is most often when we're talking with owners in the same kind of context... They don't sound offensive. They don't sound threatening. It's just very clear. Like they're communicating really clearly how they see the problem, what they believe needs to happen.

9:18 And yet somehow we struggle to deliver that same exact message or story to our people directly. And we never give them the benefit. Yeah. Of full clarity. Yeah. And that's one of the things I think you kind of hit it on the head because I think a lot of times when we think about company culture, we think about valuing employees and those kinds of things, it's easy to come from this perspective where it almost feels like we're trying to defend against the malicious intent. And the reality of it is, is over the last probably 12, 13 years, or if I go back like military and the whole kind of 20 plus years of being in leadership roles, I think I can count on less than one hand the number of times I actually came across a leader, a manager with poor intent, like where they really did see themselves at a different value level than the other human beings around them.

10:11 Most of the time, it's a lack of confidence in the role, in this coaching mentality, I guess, is clear. That's the issue. It's not that people don't respect their employees, right? Right. I agree with you. And I think there is a little bit of a dark side though, that you and I have seen. And frankly, I've lived out. And that is when we let this go too long, right? Where we find ourselves unable to have that clear conversation. what inevitably happens is bitterness and resentment starts to set in towards that person. And so, and we think that it's all contained in our own head. Yeah. We think that nobody notices. Oh, right.

10:51 They were unhappy with their performance or were unhappy with some aspect of their work or the behavior. Um, Until at some point we can't contain it anymore and we're ready just to like lose it. Yeah. Screw it all. Like I need to get them out of here. It really isn't a form of like passive aggressive behavior. I think it is. I think it is. And people don't realize that. We don't realize it because again, again, it's not intentional. We're not intentionally trying to damage that relationship or harm our business, but it's, it's all these things going on in our head that prevents the conversation, but then ultimately triggers anger. And I think anger is a, it's an important part of this conversation. Like it makes me actually think of my relationship with my daughter, which I've talked a lot about. I love you, Lily.

11:31 But, but truly when I'm able to give my daughter clear feedback after I've processed it and thought about it and I'm able to deliver or ask those questions without anger, it makes a hundred percent. And she can tell, she can tell if I have like thinly veiled, like if she can tell I'm kind of mad or frustrated, she can read that from a mile away. Yeah. if I can think through, I can get rid of all the shoulds. This should be different. This should never have happened, which is part of what causes that anger. If I can just let go of all of that and just bring the story in my head to her without any anger attached to it, Most often she hears it.

12:13 Yeah. She can hear it now. I mean, there may be a process of agreeing or negotiating what we do next, but she doesn't automatically clam up. She clams up when she senses my anger and frustration. And I think that's probably true of our employees too. Yeah. Oh yeah. Right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that is, that's just like a major part of the challenge is that we have, I think in many ways, a misunderstanding. Yeah. of what's the healthiest kind of relationship to have with our employees. And so we end up kind of falling into these categories of distancing ourselves and being very transactional, or we fall into this space of overly relational, where there's a lack of accountability or a temptation to not really bring, as you like to say, severe and clear feedback.

12:58 And so there's a couple of things I kind of want to set the stage here. I think before we go into some of the nuts and bolts of this is... I just want to remind all of us, and this is really important for me too. And you used a great example with your children. I think it's same with mine. Like my kids, I have adult kids, right? And there's this transitional relationship that we're in is some of the ins and outs of how we do life together is definitely looking different. But one of the things I've noticed is that over the years, as my kids get older, they're more capable of giving me feedback on some of those coaching experiences or kind of driving experiences that we had in our relationship in our past. And really, for the most part, most of it's been effective. And I'm not saying that to toot my own horn because the reality is I messed up a lot, probably more than I got it right.

13:45 But this hard love almost is important. It teaches. It stresses the right things. It brings focus and attention to the right things. And more importantly... it provides clarity on expectations. And so one of the things I just want to encourage business owners and key leaders on is like, as part of this conversation is, if this is new behavior, it's going to feel awkward. However, if we get consistent at establishing really clear expectations and we establish a coaching relationship with our employees, which we're going to define better here in a moment, we're going to find out one of two things. First. Either A, we're going to find out that that team player is the right team player.

14:28 They've got the mojo. And now that we're providing clarity on what we want, what we need in that role, now that we have this mutually beneficial relationship that's beginning to get established, we often and more often than not, we'll see the kind of success that we want. And then that individual in return gets to experience winning on my team. And so I think that that is going to happen more often than we think when we provide more clear and feedback and we really establish this coaching mentality. But I think the other thing that we will identify as well is that we've got someone that's not coachable, that's not willing to learn, that has too much of an ego in place for them to continue to advance and or be willing to modify behaviors and actions to win, to succeed.

15:13 And the reality of it is, is it doesn't matter how nice you are, how mean you are. When it's the wrong fit, it's the wrong fit. And when I say wrong fit, I mean that individual does not meet the DNA requirements for them to succeed on the team you're building. And that's okay because they may go to another organization, likely outside of our industry, and find a home. And that's great. Yeah. But how many of us want to develop a business full of employees that really do not have a learning mentality, a driven mentality, a coachable mentality, where they're constantly providing feedback that helps us, and they're really good at taking feedback that helps them? Like if you're not that individual, most of the teams that I've been a part of and wanted to create, it just meant you weren't a good fit.

15:59 And that's totally fine. But it's also totally fine as a leader to admit that and understand that some people won't stay. And that's okay. So coaching mentality. I want to define coaching a little bit because a lot of us have heard stuff, leaders and managers, and of course, Clint Pulver. I love his perspective on this marriage of accountability and relationship connection, he calls it. So being a coach and creating a coaching culture, to me, starts here. And I'd like to hear your perspective on it. It's very similar to the kinds of relationship that you and I have had over the years, regardless of what position we were in, in terms of title. Okay.

16:40 It's this kind of dialogue that is, hey, Chris, I really liked the way that you handled this situation. Here's what stuck out to me in that particular event, right? You really took charge of this. You did a great job of proactively setting the stage for me to come in and know what my purpose was in this meeting. And there was this challenge spot in the conversation that I felt like we lost momentum. What was your thought process during that part of the conversation? Where were you coming from? Oh, interesting. Okay, here's my feedback, right? It's this idea that we have a dialogue.

17:20 where we're not skirting any part of the conversation because it's uncomfortable. We're just talking about it almost in a tactical way, meaning this happened. These things were great. We talk about this in after action reviews, but then there was this section. I want your input first. Talk to me. What were you thinking about? What did you see? And then I'm going to provide some guidance or some coaching from my perspective. It could be because of my time and grade, my experience. I've got a little additional insight. It could be, a step back from you in that particular conversation. And so I had a little bit more visual continuity in what I was witnessing, right? Yeah. But it's this, I think when we think about coaching leadership, it's this idea of we are going to be very, very diligent calling out the attitudes, the behaviors, the actions that align with the goals of the company.

18:13 Okay. A, right? Just like a coach on a sports field would be very diligent about calling out the drills that it requires to succeed. And when he sees, he or she sees that activity, we're hooting and hollering. We're getting excited. There's high fives. There's the things, right? And I think that's a good question. And then also, what do we see a lot of coaches do? They're very good at drilling. They're very good at asking questions. They're very good calling out in us. If we're going to be a championship team, we need to act like champions and champions do the right stuff at the right time consistently, which means we have to have direct conversation when we're failing to meet that standard, right?

18:55 So I know, again, Clint does a great job, I think, of marrying this concept. But in my mind, Coaching is coaching. It's being very deliberate about highlighting what we want to see and what success looks like. And in turn, it's very diligent on, hey, this is a problem area. We need to solve this together. Right? And then it's my job as a leader to provide the resources, the time commitment, whatever it requires to do enough drills to prep up. that individual's weakness, right? With them. And that could be as a department leader. It could be I send them to training. It could be I sit with them a couple times throughout the month.

19:38 And that could be where somebody's concern is with this. But that's where that relational coaching opportunity comes into is that I see you. I see you as just equally great when you're doing awesome stuff. And I also see where you're challenged. And I want to have input in that. And I want to work through that to help you make up for that weakness in your skill set. How does that land with you in terms of kind of that coaching approach? mentality. Well, I think what I hear you saying, describing is a mutually respectful interaction. Whereas I've made the mistake many, many times. It's probably my knee-jerk behavior when it comes to coaching is to assume that I have a perspective they need to know.

20:22 I have a right perspective going into that conversation. Yeah. And I'm going to just kind of try to coax them over to my perspective. Oh, sure. And I don't know if anybody else gets kind of stuck in that where it's like when I go into a coaching conversation, giving somebody feedback on maybe some negative behavior I saw or whatever, I'm going into it with the intent of showing them or helping them see the negative behavior I saw versus the way I heard you approach it. And I think it's better is to go back to that situation, unpack the story in their head, and invite them to bring their own clarity? What was that situation like for you?

21:02 Yeah, yeah. Because I think... Inevitably, there's a lot of times I experienced this with my wife and my kids and other relationships and certainly in the workplaces. There are other things going on that I'm unaware of. Yep. Affecting a person's judgment, affecting a person's sense of urgency, affecting a person's mood, right? All the things. Yeah. And I think when, as a coach, you really ask these open-ended questions without targeting a specific answer. Yeah. Yeah. Is it, it helps us figure out new things about how that person processed that situation. How are they thinking about it? Yeah. Because they may have been thinking just right. And they just kind of, their skill hasn't caught up with their judgment.

21:45 Right. Right. It's like they were thinking about the situation clearly. It was just kind of a skill thing. They didn't know the best way to say it to that person or whatever. Yeah. They procrastinated and that's what created the problem. You know what I mean? And if you're, if you're wanting to adequately teach and train somebody, i.e. you want to help them get better in this area of weakness. If we make assumptions about why somebody did a certain thing, we may not be hitting the mark. So when I go to do my teaching, my training, my coaching, my coaching, I may be teaching to the wrong thing. The other thing that happens in a case like you've described is I think people shut down. So if right out of the gate, I start talking at, and I clearly show I didn't have an understanding of it from their perspective, they've stopped listening to me before I've even gotten into any relative points.

22:32 Yeah. Because they already know what you're about to tell me. And they assume what you're about to tell me is not on target because you didn't even understand the situation in the first place. And they go into defensive mode and protection mode. They're catastrophizing. What's going to happen from this? Am I going to get a write-up? You're like, what's happening here? They can't hear. They can't process. I think that happens a lot. And certainly I know I've led into those conversations and I've seen the consequence of it for sure. All right, let's take a minute to recognize and thank our MitResto Mastery sponsor, Accelerate Restoration Software. And I'm fully aware, by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software, that that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there, right?

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25:25 Yeah, three of the kind of big things that stuck out to me when being introduced to AI and their team. First off is this consistently updated training. I mean, at the end of the day, these guys are the experts. They're out front all the time. They're constantly learning new trade secrets and ensuring that your team's got access to those things. A 3,700 plus page database of Xactimate templates. I don't know what else to say here other than Don't reinvent the wheel. It's already available. Download it, copy it, use it, bam. Database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple points and those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world.

26:08 So go check them out at value.getinsights.org backslash F-C-G. You know, it kind of reminds me of something and I, you know, we'll bounce around a little bit here, but I think eventually the ship will land, right? This kind of reminds me a lot of teams when they're reviewing their P&Ls, you know, whether you're a service company of any kind, whether you're in our specific industry, it can be easy for us to look at our business. and want to be on the most skeleton crew possible, the most efficient team size to maximize the amount of revenue that we can produce and still save that EBITDA, right? Which is great. That's good business 101.

26:49 That's fantastic. But I think the struggle that we have when we literally, every person's last minute is used up in order for us to produce the current workload, We have no way to build in bandwidth to be coaching and teaching and proactively engaging our personnel. And we've made them an object. Well, yeah. And to a degree, they know it. And that's why I see it on Facebook. I even see it on LinkedIn all the time is that I think... There is a general narrative in American business amongst employees. And I think millennials are driving some of this conversation that we as business owners exploit our people.

27:30 We try to wring as much out of them. And there is truth to that. It's like, we're trying to maximize. We're trying to make people as efficient as possible, get the right butts in the right seats. There's all this narrative around it. But I think if there isn't love built into that equation... people feel like they're simply a cog in the machine. Yeah. Like it ends up feeling that way. It doesn't mean we have to like completely reorient ourselves and say, well, it doesn't matter how productive each of my employees is. Right. It doesn't matter if I have people in the right seats. Well, of course that's not true, but yeah, I think part of building this coaching environment is that it's adding that love and that employee focus back into that equation.

28:12 So I'm having Theophon McKenzie, who's a past executive coach and now a friend, who he loves this topic of coaching and he would say, coaching has to be about the person that's receiving the coaching or it's not actually coaching. Oh, I love that. So there's, so there's management. So we can get clever with management about how we do after action reviews and how we're saying, you know, things to our employees. But, Coaching is truly about being oriented on what is best for this person in front of me. And I'm either absolutely committed to that, which could ultimately mean this person doesn't belong in our company.

28:57 And I'm going to watch talent walk out the door because... Either they don't enjoy this work, they don't feel good about it, or there's something about our values or our standards or something that just don't mesh with them. And we have to let them spread their wings and fly somewhere else, right? That's the ultimate nature of coaching is helping others get what they want. Yeah. And helping people grow in the areas that they want to grow. And so in some ways, there's like this component where, like you say, it isn't so much that they're the wrong fit. It's just that they don't want what we want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we're looking for that magic of let's coach people so that if they want what we want, They can go as far as like, we're going to help them go as far as they possibly can.

29:43 But if they want something different, I think true coaching means is that we help them get that as well. That's been a part of a lot of the employee relationships that you and I've had. And some of them have sailed off into the sunset doing their own thing. In fact, I can think of a few people who went off, started their own businesses. We're still friends and I'm as excited about them succeeding in that new arena as I was when they were on our team. I got one that's about ready to do a kitchen remodel for me. So, you know, that's right. And if you're listening, you know who you are. Yeah. Yeah, no, I dig it. I totally agree with where you've gone there. So let's think about this a little bit though. So there's a couple like from a tactical perspective, I think there's some things for us to consider. So first off, I think we need to be clear when we're establishing our organizational chart, our roles and responsibilities.

30:27 I think we need to be very clear right out of the gate in terms of setting expectation that we're going to be able to do a kitchen remodel about what we're anticipating the leadership in our team to be responsible for. And, you know, again, we've talked about this a lot. we do seminars and training on this, this idea of like, we have somebody that's technically field competent and we just increase their responsibility and oversight tasks, but we've never equipped them to be ready for that change. Like they were really good at their trade craft, but now we're asking them to lead people. And that's where this coaching component comes in. So if we're going to create a coaching culture, um, We have to do a series of things. One is we need to look at our org chart and we need to break it up in such a way that each key leader has a limited number of personnel that he or she is responsible for speaking into their professional development.

31:19 Okay. And what that means is it's pretty common for someone to be in this like one to 10 ratio. Okay. So what that means is, is it possible for a GM or a single business owner to speak into the life of every single one of their employees with a real coaching intent? No way. You can't do it. And all of you listening to this, no, because many of you are great. You're all great people and you care about your people. You just don't have enough time in the day. So when we think about our org chart and separating our areas of responsibility, we need to understand this ratio element, right? Maybe one to 10 is not set in stone, but it's pretty decent.

32:01 Just think about how much time you have during the week. Hmm. How many people can you legitimately understand and speak into their life? And so what we encourage people to do, for instance, is to establish either a team lead, again, based on competency and natural wiring, or a full-on department manager, depending on size and scope of your organization. But what this allows us to do is that an owner now can speak to two or three key people in their organization. Teach them how to coach, teach them how to, by mirroring this relationship of we call the good when we see it. And we also call the bad in a respectful, intentional, and clear way. Yeah.

32:41 I want you to do the same thing with your people. Now my department head has got six, seven, eight, 10 team members, and they are coaching into that individual, right? And then what you see happen as this org chart develops is you even get influencers down the ranks. And so we might have technician staff that ranges in technical competency and time and grade. And if our downline leaders are really adopting and living out this coaching mentality, you're gonna see tech threes and commercial techs and senior technicians doing the same thing. And then again, following our own rule book, when we see it, If me as a MIT manager see one of my senior level technicians talking to one of his peers or her peers and talking about, hey, man, this kicked butt on the Smith job.

33:30 Hey, this other gig, this other component, that was rough. Here's some thoughts. Right. Here's what I learned. What was your take on that situation? Yeah, right. Exactly. And if we see that happening, that's the coaching culture that we're talking about. Because we then divide our responsibility and we limit the number of people that we're putting the expectation on us to speak into in a consistent way. and proactive way. And then what we just see is this very supportive organization that begins to develop over time because we're hitting on a series of responsibilities or behaviors that really are magical. We're getting better at identifying when our people are winning because we're intentional about, because it's part of this coaching culture formula.

34:15 In order for me to provide feedback on your performance, I need to be watching I need to be paying attention to you, right? And how you're doing and what you're doing. So we get that. We get this marriage of we're complimenting and calling out the kinds of positive behaviors that we want. And we're being direct and we're being proactive on challenging the areas where we need some tweaks in that performance level. Yeah. It's also just synonymous with high performance culture, right? Like I think... I think there's a struggle to build a culture when the owner or the GM or even the department leaders are the key source of discipline and accountability.

34:55 It's just, it's too much. It's too difficult, especially as you grow. When they're the only. When they're the only one that's perpetuating that, right? I mean, clearly, like that responsibility for sort of building and maintaining that culture falls to the key leaders. Right. But man, when you can push that commitment down into your frontline teams and everybody starts to adopt this way of working with one another, right? Yeah. It's incredibly powerful when it doesn't have to be the boss that's providing that feedback, but there's this mutual respect that's developed. I mean, it's just... And, you know, to be honest, right? I don't know that teams ever fully arrive there all the time.

35:36 Right. We, we just, we had intermittently, we'd recognize that. pockets of that growing in our teams, you know, and so we've always been in the state of nurturing that. I don't know if we ever fully arrived. You're always going to have misfits on the team that just feel threatened by that environment and, and ultimately rotate out. And so it's hard to get everybody on board all the time with this mentality or perspective, but boy, is it, does it feel healthy? Yeah. when you start to move in that way. Well, and when your employees are the ones referring your next employees and they've grown to love and find success in these coaching environments where we have this clear marriage of accountability and support, then it means the likelihood of your organization, the percentage of players on the team, you know, growing and growing and growing to where far more of them fall into that category versus not, it's pretty powerful.

36:33 And I like to just kind of recap this as consistently as possible is, we're not asking to build a team where everyone is the same. That's exactly what we're not talking about. We're not looking for sameness. What we're looking for is an equal commitment to where the mission of the company is taking us, the vision, the why, what kind of work environment do we want to create? And there's all sorts of diversity in backgrounds, experience, communication styles, natural wirings that feed that culture. So again, we're not trying to be the same. We're trying to have an equal focus. All the team members have an equal focus on the mission at hand and where we're going as an organization.

37:17 Okay, so this coaching culture, here's some things like some specific strategies, I think, that we want to consistently think of if we're going to start developing this. And for those of you listening, you're probably a department manager. You could be a business owner. You could be a GM, whatever the case may be. there's a strong chance that you might be the first one to plant this flag in your organization. And that's okay. And we can always lead up that organizational chart and do everything you can to professionally lead up that chain of command, as Jocko would say. And it's okay for you to just do it well in your own team, right? Start there. Create health in your own space. Create health in your own space.

37:57 It will get noticed. And that in turn will have some profound influence. Okay. So here's some things to consider. And these are things, Amy, Shannon, thank you so much for the time that you spent with us over the years. A lot of these things do come from you. We talked about this briefly, this Delegation 101, proactive delegation. That is a tool or a model that you use inside creating a coaching culture. And so what does that look like? So for instance, from now on, making a commitment that if I'm going to create a coaching culture within my organization, I am going to delegate in a very specific way when I assign tasking. And here's what that looks like. We start by clearly defining why this individual is great for this role.

38:41 Okay. Task, project, title, whatever the case may be, you're saying to this individual, hey, I see these skillsets, strengths, natural gifting in you. And that's why I'm coming to you with this task, with this responsibility. Here's the mission. Okay. Lay it out. Here's what success in that mission will look like for us. So many new leads generated by XYZ timeframe. So much revenue dollars created. Timelines in our job life. So whatever the data is... Be very clear when we're delegating that this is what success looks like. And then that two-part conversation of what do you see, right?

39:21 Now that we've kind of talked about this mission, I've laid out some of the wins. What are you seeing? Can we add something to that? Some tweaks, some modification. Great. We're all on the same page. Here's when these deliverables are due. Here's the role I will have in supporting you in this project. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We could do a whole, again, this is a podcast. These are hours and hours of content training potentially, but just that as a tool, guys, learning how to delegate in a really effective and proactive way is part of creating this coaching culture. We're telling people what we need. We're inviting them in because of the skillset that we see in them. And then we're helping them create a very clear picture of winning. Major important tool.

40:02 Another important tool is, being very utilitarian. For some of us, this is natural instinct. For many of us, it's not. And so we have to be fairly utilitarian in the way that we're going to create a system to help us succeed in this. That means use your calendar. Okay. So if that means that you need to up your game on employee recognition, put something on your calendar, 15-minute block, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And it is okay if it's robotic as heck when it first starts that Monday morning, I've got a 15-minute marker. I'm going to go to the shop for 15 minutes and try to find something I can point out. Awesome for you. That's great. That is an awesome first start.

40:43 So what that piece is, is... Do what is necessary to give you the opportunity to follow through on this. If it's a natural gifting for you, great. This is going to be easy. If it is not, that's okay. It's still valuable. It's still mission critical. Schedule it in. Use your calendar. Okay. Schedule it in. Another tool or resource that I think creates a really healthy coaching culture or contributes to it is what we talk to our folks about is two things. After action review rhythms and a coaching summary. Okay. And the reason we really promote coaching summaries is that it allows us to create time date stamped records of these coaching opportunities that we have with our personnel.

41:24 Okay. without it being so disciplinary in perspective. Because like we've said, to create a coaching environment, we need to be calling out the good and the challenges. And so these summary opportunity just gives us the ability to do that in a formal way that's trackable and there's a record of it. And it doesn't feel like disciplinary action whatsoever. So example is that is, again, we're just trying to burn through some of these tools is, what the conversation was about, what you committed to doing, what I committed to doing, right? So that's one where we need to move the needle somewhere. Okay, it's a coaching summary. Time date stamped. It's positive. It's mutually beneficial.

42:06 We may just see a kudos go out. Same thing. Hey, I saw you doing XYZ today. hands down, that's money. It's right in line with what we're shooting for, thanks. Again, same thing, tight time, date, stamp. Because what we see in a lot of cases and why this coaching culture is so important is that so much of our staff feels unappreciated for what they're doing. But man, if they can go back to their email inbox and see that multiple times throughout the quarter, their direct line leader is calling out in them the things that they do well. And then they took 30 seconds to type it up and send it to them. Powerful. Now, we call it a summary for a reason. This coaching relationship is happening live, right?

42:50 Could be the cab of the truck on the way to a job. Could be at the job site. Could be in the training room when we're with our admin team. take advantage of it in the moment, be aware, but then we just follow it up. That's where that kind of more intentional element comes from. And then I think kind of the last tool or resource that we talk a lot about is the after action review. Do you want to kind of just unpack the brief version of that? Yeah. So the after action review, I mean, it's taken from the military concept. You get back from a mission and the whole team reports back kind of from their vantage point. in a very non-emotional, factual sort of way.

43:31 Here are the factual events that unfolded from my point of view. And everybody shares that. And then the group looks at the actions of the whole team and says, okay, what was great? What was not so great? What would we change next time? What would we? Right? So it's very, we're depersonalizing. We're objectifying the experience, the interaction, the project that we're doing an after action review on. We're making it this little object in the center of the circle. And everybody's looking at it from their angle and saying, okay, this was my take. This is... You know, my job was this. Here's how I think I executed on that, but in a factual way. And it takes a while to set it up to where everybody's sort of coming to it from that angle, because all of us have this self-protective thing we do.

44:18 Right. Yeah. So it takes practice, but it's non-emotional. It's fact-based. It's we language. Yep. Yep. rather than you. I did my part, but you screwed up, right? That has no place in the AAR. That's right. Yeah, that's spot on. It's a team sport. And this is just a continuation of that accountability in a team collective environment like that. So there's another, there's a book called Crucial conversations or critical conversations, a previous coach I hired, gosh, like 10 years ago, Tara Robinson. She was great. She talked about this concept from that book called Three Points of Conversation. And it's particularly good when the stakes are high or when there's difficult things to communicate.

45:00 And the basic concept of it is similar. Like there's a lot of crossover with the AAR. But it's when you're one-on-one with somebody that can be a very intimidating thing, especially if there's a power differential, right? You're the owner of the business and they're somebody on payroll. Yeah. There is a power differential there. Yeah. You may not feel it as an owner because it's all you know. And we've talked to even GMs. They don't realize the power they carry walking into the room. Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. So when we have a one-on-one coaching conversation, this three points of contact thing is, well, The idea of write the bullet points out of the thing that needs to be discussed, put it on a piece of paper, sit down on the same side of the table.

45:42 with your colleague, downline person, whatever. And then as you start talking through the issues that are on the paper, look at the paper. And then of course, we're not saying this has to be some sterile thing. I'm not suggesting like you don't ever make eye contact. It's not like that. But what you're doing is you're putting the problem or the challenge or the difficult conversation on this other piece of paper that both of you are looking at. Yes. Rather than you looking at the other person and describing the problem that they are or they're creating, instead, we objectify or we depersonalize the issue at hand so that both of us can kind of come into that conversation neutral.

46:23 One person doesn't feel threatened. So it's a mechanical thing that we can do. But man, every time I've tried it, it's gone well. It's gone better, I should say. Those difficult conversations are often still difficult. That's right. We still have to ask those tough questions. That's right. But it's not a personal attack and it doesn't feel like it. Yeah, totally agree with that. I think that's an excellent point. So, okay. So I think some folks listening to this are like, oh, that sounds pretty easy. Most of us would be intimidated by this. So here's, here's something that I think that we need to start with. This is foundational in order for us to begin adding these tools, these resources, these layers to ultimately create this coaching culture. And that is we need to have measurables.

47:04 There needs to be data points in every single role that we are monitoring and measuring from a non-emotional perspective. Now, for our analysts out there that are listening, it's like, damn right. And for the rest of us that lead more from a gut perspective, we're like, oh, great. More crap. I got to pay attention to. KPIs. More KPIs. Yeah. But it is mission critical. And I can tell you, I would never use names, but I've been in very uncomfortable situations with people I really liked and I really respected. But professionally, their performance did not meet the standard by a long shot. And I was always...

47:45 always blown away by the gap between my perception of their performance and the perception of their own performance. And the only way that I've found over the years to get to close that gap, you'll never remove it because we're humans and we see the world through very distinct eyes. Mm-hmm. But you can get really damn close to getting on the same page the more intentional you are with what is it that we monitor? What is it that we measure? And how does that affect a win or a lose for that particular individual's performance? Let's just grab a category. I'm a recon manager. I have four project managers.

48:26 There's a couple things that I'm going to do tactically to ensure that we get this mutual language that we can all speak from. And so I might put out a monthly recap of my project manager's performance. And it's going to have a series of things on there. And we're also very public. Okay. That's the thing about team sports, right? When you, when you talk to a professional ball club, their stats are public. Not only does the team know the stats, but the world knows the stats. And so if we're going to create this coaching environment, this coaching culture, we have to be transparent with measuring of our performance. Okay. And so that benchmark, that monthly report that all my PMC is going to hammer on or, or really be focused on those key KPIs that put us on the same side of the table.

49:12 Okay. Total revenue that individual is able to produce, right? Gross profit margin that they create on their projects. Things like average job lifecycle times, right? Or maybe something about collections and job closing activity, right? Examples. You guys have battle rhythms. You have KPIs in your organization. But here's my point. If in a very public fashion, it's standard operating procedure, we all see what we're producing, what kind of margins we're producing at, how long it's taking us to do it and how consistently we attack our AR aging, it's closer to a black and white conversation. So if I'm going to have a coaching conversation with you in terms of performance, if there's a way for me to spend most of it around the things that affect those specific KPIs, I My version of the story shouldn't be too much farther off from your version of the story in terms of how am I doing?

50:03 Yeah. Right. And then I think there's a myriad of other things that are critical there in terms of it helps us triangulate where the problems are so that we can support our staff's growth and development. So again, I think if we're going to create this environment, we have to start by creating some kind of measurable competencies within our organization where for each key role, we're defining what wins look like and what are the data points that we're paying attention to and measuring. And then if that's done in a professionally transparent way, that's kind of the foundation. And now we can start adding these other tools and resources to develop the professional relationship that we have with the employee.

50:45 But we got to start by trying to close that gap of your view of it versus my view of it. Yeah. What does a winner organization. And that's going to shift over time, but having a clear message at all times of what that is and allowing that to grow and adapt over time is really, really important. Okay. So I have another angle on this that I think maybe we could even wrap up with because you and I got to get into another meeting. Okay. I think one aspect of coaching, I experienced this with Theo Fawn and other great coaches that you and I both had the pleasure to work with, is finding out what they want and then being really diligent to coach toward that. Because once we can find out, what do you want? Where are you trying to go?

51:25 What role do you ultimately want in this company? aspects of the work do you love the most about your current job? And what would it look like to grow and have more time for those aspects? Where do you see yourself? Like ideally asking those kinds of dream and destination questions, where are you trying to get? Yeah. Yeah. And really listening and being curious beyond money being part of it. Sometimes we're afraid to ask how much money they want to make, what the goals are, but just getting it all out on the table and then helping them chart a path. Yes. Creating a vision of, well, in order for you to achieve that goal, And maybe it's a multi-pronged conversation, right? Because sometimes we don't even know how to get them there right away.

52:06 But it's like, well, I can tell you this, like one of the things that would require is X. Does that seem like something you'd be willing to tackle? Yeah. Learning that, figuring that out, becoming better at that, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. But then I think once we get clear on what they want and we can ask them, do you want me to help you get there? Are you willing, if I see something and I have a suggestion for you, do you want me to say it? Do you want me to give you feedback on these different elements? If you want this, you're going to need this. Do I have your permission to follow up on this stuff? And really getting their buy-in. And then I think it reminds me of that quote by somebody. No, I think it was Henry Cloud.

52:46 He said, leaders will always get what they create and what they allow. And so I think within that coaching conversation, if we can get clarity from our people, We can be that external, for lack of a better word, like conscience. We can remind them of what they want. Rather than making it a punitive managerial conversation, it's more of a mentor conversation or coach position of, hey, John, come on in here, man. You know, there's that hallway conversation. Come on in the office, man. I want to check in. And we can bring up a situation. We can say, hey, listen, I saw this. I wanted to check in with you. Yeah. Because when we talked last month and when we talked two weeks ago in your one-on-one, we revisited this.

53:30 You're trying to get here. Yep. And we talked about what goes into that. Is that still important to you? And if it is, I have a little bit of feedback. Can we talk about, here's what I observed. What was that like for you in this situation? How would you potentially change that if you could go back? Right. And we're re-centering them on the key behaviors to get where they want to go. It's less about us changing them or managing them, but it's that check-in of, hey, do you still want this? Yeah. Okay. Well, let's double down. Let's get back to basics here. Yeah. Right. Let's get the reps in because you're going to have to figure that out before you can get to that next thing. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, we're not punishing them.

54:12 They don't feel threatened. They don't feel like, oh, man, they have a clear path of if I want to get back on track, yeah. I just need to go back to these things that we've already agreed upon and discussed. It's less us putting words in people's mouth and just checking in and saying, hey, is this still what you want? It's the signpost. And being okay with them saying, you know, gosh, I just don't think this is for me. Like that may sometimes be the outcome of I don't think I have it in me right now. Yeah. Or I don't know if I'm ready for this. Yeah. Yeah. Which is totally appropriate and puts you on the same page. And that's actually a benefit to everyone engaged. But that is the hardest part, right? Is when we do engage, we have to be ready to follow through. Because if we have these visionary conversations with people and we get commitment from them, we get permission, which is a funny way to say it when you're like the boss.

54:57 You're getting permission from your employee. But the reality is we're all individuals. That's the only way to really work with people is to get their permission. Certainly to get movement on their part. Yeah. Right. Right. Otherwise we just have objects. Yeah. And if there is no permission, then there's a strong chance they're not going to fit on the team very long, right? Because they won't be making the modifications to increase their performance. So it shakes out in the end. Okay. Hey, thanks for joining us for that show, guys. Hey, if there's value here, please again, share it with a friend, bring somebody else into the community and let's do some life together with them. Please like subscribe. And if you have an opportunity, leave us a review. You guys, we love that stuff. It's really important to us and we appreciate your feedback and input.

55:37 Yeah, the only other thing I'd say too is, I mean, we have no shortage of ideas and topics and fun stuff we want to talk about. But if you've got a topic for the show or a guest you want to see, all of you know how to punch Chris Nordyke or Brandon Reese into your LinkedIn search bar. Yeah. Find us, shoot us a DM there. That's easiest. Or Chris at FloodlightGRP or Brandon at FloodlightGRP.com. But send us stuff. Chances are very good. We'll talk about it. We'll bring it up on a future show. That's right. We might even poke you so you know. We'll give you a little shout out. We're going to bring it up. Yeah. You'll be podcast famous. That's right. All right, guys. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend.

56:24 Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.