We promise this dialogue will challenge your understanding as we emphasize actions over words, and the importance of personalization in the way we live our virtues. We unpack the distinctions between virtues and values, and emphasize the significance of leaders living the values they espouse - it’s not enough to just put posters on the wall!
Ever wondered how you can lead, motivate and grow, even without a formal title? We have you covered in the next part of our episode, where we explore the power of leading by example. We'll dissect how personal responsibility, coupled with the power of personalization, can lead to purposeful action in the absence of authority. Lastly, we delve into the necessity of courage and humility in sparking positive change, and how these traits fuel accountability and a relentless desire for self-improvement. Join us in this thought-provoking conversation as we navigate these enlightening topics.
We promise this dialogue will challenge your understanding as we emphasize actions over words, and the importance of personalization in the way we live our virtues. We unpack the distinctions between virtues and values, and emphasize the significance of leaders living the values they espouse - it’s not enough to just put posters on the wall!
Ever wondered how you can lead, motivate and grow, even without a formal title? We have you covered in the next part of our episode, where we explore the power of leading by example. We'll dissect how personal responsibility, coupled with the power of personalization, can lead to purposeful action in the absence of authority. Lastly, we delve into the necessity of courage and humility in sparking positive change, and how these traits fuel accountability and a relentless desire for self-improvement. Join us in this thought-provoking conversation as we navigate these enlightening topics.
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Speaker 1:
This is unleashing leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, and you are listening to our special eight episode mini series on our team interview for the ideal team player. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2:
This. I want to tie this back to kind of a previous episode as well about the importance of leadership and where this all ties in leadership and then how it all flows down as well, because if the leaders are not living the life and the leaders are not actually embodying this, it's never going to flow down to, you know, all of the individual contributors and all the everyone else who's involved. So having all of the right people involved who are accountable, have these virtues and are able and open to living this life and really showing that, to be able to kind of just make that culture be what it is, so that everybody buys into it, is super important.
Speaker 3:
I want to go ahead and tie something back quickly to that point, jess, and the point you were making a little earlier about your kind of, like, your personal examples, right, of how you're having these conversations, and they're better because of this right, because you have an approach to take. I'll throw a different idea out, because I was thinking about the value versus virtue question. We, travis, asked that a little earlier too, and my first thought, the easy thought, was it's action speak louder than words, type of thing, right, and that was too easy. So I tried to think about a little bit more. And we talk about the pictures on the walls, right, like the value.
Speaker 3:
So you get those like motivate, success, inspire, right like these words, that's the value. Sure, okay, I see those. I agree with that. The value of virtue for me is the personalization of it. So that's where I want to tie that back, jess. So what you were saying is now I'm making it personal to me, or my interactions, and what does that mean for me? Right, what does it mean for the team or the company and you know, seeds, mission and all of that? Right Like. That's where now it becomes the virtue because I'm living that myself. I'm not just, I'm not living a word that just says motivate. What does that even mean? Right, like. What is motivation to me? It changes maybe every day, or I have a different motivation, but the personal part is then where it becomes the virtue that I'm living. Right, because now this is what it means for me to inspire others or be inspired.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean, have you ever heard somebody who comes in and looks at the wall and goes, oh, motivation, no, not for me.
Speaker 1:
I mean, that is just something. Why would you work with people that aren't motivated? Or you probably work with some people not saying you two, but people in general probably work with people who are not motivated and they don't come out and say, I'm just not motivated. I mean, some of them actually do, some of them, but for the most part, people who are not motivated don't come out and go. That's a crap. I don't want to be motivated, right. They are like, yeah, motivated, yeah. Teamwork, yeah, yeah. And it's like what now define it. What does that actually mean? Like, yeah, I'm on a team and I bring in cookies. It's like that's not teamwork, right? Or I'm on a team and I piss everybody off.
Speaker 1:
I was gonna say sometimes If you're on a team and you don't bring your team members cookies, you're not being very smart.
Speaker 2:
This is why Kirsten is amazing yeah that's right.
Speaker 1:
But so it's not just posters on the wall and it's not just trust falls. I think that that's kind of what's happened with leadership and stuff. We're gonna fix the problem by putting posters on the wall and getting together once a quarter or something and doing trust falls and that's somehow going to get everybody in alignment. You know what I mean? Like, I make a lot of analogies about the body and getting the body into alignment, and the business is like the body and you've got all these people and the people are the different cells of the body and if they're just kind of like all doing different things, what do you have? Then you have cancer in the body. Like the body cannot survive if everybody's just kind of doing their own thing with their own kind of agenda on it.
Speaker 1:
And I think, jess, you said something really important, and that is leaders have to be doing this, and that pulls back in that accountability, right, leaders? Leaders cannot and this again goes back to the book about you know what Jeff's doing what's? What was the point of having me come in and consult at all? We put the posters on the wall but nobody's actually living any of the virtues that we were talking about. Well, the leaders all the time. And Dave, back to your point about you know leaders bring in consultants and the consultants talk and they say, great, thank you. Now we can document that. We talk to you.
Speaker 1:
So now we can tell other people ask why we didn't do that. We can say, man, look at this, I got a report for you, right, and I got a hundred excuses why I can't do it. Well, listen, you can find a hundred excuses why you can't do anything right. It's finding the reason why you should do something. That's hard sometimes because it messes with the status quo. It's going to tick people off. It's going no matter what you do. If you do something different, you're going to bother somebody normally, you know. Or you're going to find out that it was so overdue that people are relieved when you finally do it and you're going to kick yourself because you're thinking why didn't I see this before, right? In which case you know there's ramifications for being a leader either not doing something or doing something. You know there's ramifications for it, but the leaders have to be accountable. You can't put this on your managers. You know the lower levels.
Speaker 1:
Let's say you can't come in and say, hey, for now on, we're going to go out and we're going to push this home and Dave and I have talked a lot about how to implement this. We're going to push this humble, hungry, smart framework and we're going to talk about it a lot. We're going to make posters on the wall. Basically, you know, figuratively, we're going to put, we're going to plaster everywhere.
Speaker 1:
So when you hear us we're saying humble, hungry and smart and actually not living, like, actually not look at yourself and say you know where am I on the spectrum and what do I need to do to get better? That's called being accountable and you have to hold yourself accountable. You have to say it is not good enough that I'm sitting where I'm at. I have to do a better job. Because how can I go to the next person on the org chart or the next colleague?
Speaker 1:
You know, let's say that I'm just on a team in the org chart, right, and I don't have a rank necessarily of authority but how can I go to a colleague and say you need to get better or you're not being humble, or you need to show hunger? You know what I mean, or whatever. You know, whatever anecdote you want to use in this framework, how can I do that if I'm not doing it myself? It kind of makes me a hypocrite, right? And it undermines trust and it's manipulatory. If I'm just a leader at the touch saying everybody else has got to do this, I don't have to do this. That's manipulatory. That is the you know using the smart part of this to the you know, because we tend to look up to the person ahead of us, right, like, if the leader is a certain way, the organization is probably going to pick up those characteristics.
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
And so if it's not important enough for the leader to do, why should anybody else care?
Speaker 2:
And that's where in this book I thought it was a great way to kind of depict it that they did the assessment on themselves, they did the. I mean it started with those, those top three individuals. They looked at themselves and then they were looking at everybody else and they went through that whole process to make sure they're like are we jackasses? Like, and it was. It was a great way to to really play that through in the storyline and show that, yeah, that's, they embodied that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I know we've. I've had conversations with Dave before where I'm like am I being a jackass? You know, because you're in a situation and you're dealing with Dave's, not in his head.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and you're and you're dealing with something and you're like man, I don't know if I did that wrong or I'm second guessing it and it gives you a way to come back and say is this how I'm acting, or is this what I'm doing, or or am I misreading the situation? But I think it's also interesting just because you're not in some of the management meetings and stuff that we're talking about, but yet this started from you. So this is also kind of leading from below and and and and managing up. I guess, if you will, you, you found something that was very important, and and a lot of people say that they're helpless in an organization, they can't do anything because that's what management leadership does.
Speaker 1:
And I would say, sometimes management leadership is just so darn busy putting out fires they don't even realize some of the things out there that that they could do, and who's willing to kind of step up and and be a part of the solution, and so I think it takes a lot of bravery to say hey, you know, listen to me here, this is something really important, and so I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that at all, because it's it's not an easy thing for people to do, and especially when you first brought this book to us. I mean, you're in your first year of employee, you're still figuring out who's who right and and, and yet you're brave enough to bring forward this. And now look at the, the change that this is, you know, rippling across our business, and you didn't have to do that. You weren't going to be held accountable, necessarily, but you held yourself accountable to bring that forward.
Speaker 2:
I have always and it's interesting that you said some of the things you did, because there has been a recent situation in which I've always believed that you be the change you wanna see in the world. Right, like you. Just you have to be it, you have to own it, you have to try to do those things and it's really hard to speak up. Sometimes it's very hard to. I mean, I've been in situations in previous employers where cause they're like oh, if you see it, say it. And you try to speak up and try to help with a positive thing, and it doesn't always go well.
Speaker 2:
I really appreciate the space too and I think that's part of what some of this really tries to bring to the table as well is creating the environment where people are able to, to be able to kind of bring things up that are important to them and know that they're actually going to be heard. And but I also it's lead by example in the same thing, going back to the executive management or higher management, like you have to lead by example and I do believe that even you know the little peons, like I'm not on a management team, I'm not on a leadership team, but like in the, in the peons. You know, and I don't say that derogatorily, I just say that you've got hierarchies of people sometime and if we're down in the grind of things, like we also have to be accountable and take ownership of trying to make a difference. Be you know, inspire, be impactful, like those are trigger words that I guess I really believe in them. I want to inspire people, I want them to inspire me and it just kind of all ties together.
Speaker 1:
Well, you're not sitting back and complaining about it, you know, I mean you're. You're saying that. I recognize this. And here's something that has inspired me and I think it could be part of the solution. Will somebody please listen? And then it's up to management to to to do that right, if you're in that position. But I think that that's just so inspiring because you can be a leader regardless of what position you're in. Right, you may not be a de facto leader from a standpoint of you're not signing the paychecks or you're not making the final decisions on some things, but you are certainly leading because you are making people around you better, right, and and you're not waiting for somebody else to give you permission to do that. You're saying you know, one of the things you you always say to me is I want to make this place what I think it could be. And and I always, like, looked at that and was like, okay, is she just what she's saying here? You know she's saying this place sucks or what, and really what you were, what you were saying. I never asked what does that mean? And finally, I think more recently, I've asked what does that mean? And you explained it to me. I'm like that's exactly what I want this place to be.
Speaker 1:
And you don't have those conversations if you're afraid to bring them up, if you're afraid to ramifications Cause, the worst thing that could have happened is you could have been in an organization that just talks about their values right, and they're not really virtues or just talking and they're saying, yeah, you can bring stuff up, and then you bring something up and that gets you ostracized, right, and so the worst thing that could happen is you could potentially say, okay, I need to go work someplace else, so you have that on the line, but don't you have that on the line anyway. If you're feeling this thing, these things, and you're observing these things, and you're going home with these things, you're gonna feel that anyhow, and you can either capitulate and you can say you know I'm gonna be a lesser person because of my situation, or you could say you know what? I'm gonna try to prove the situation and I have faith and trust in the fact that there's some people that will listen and I'll find out where I'm really at, because it's your life. You know what I mean, and maybe not be the rest of your life, but it sets up the rest of your life, you know what you do next, and I just think it's so important that people hear the fact that you should be in a situation where you can't speak up, and it should be encouraged. And I think this is just an amazing example, but it also takes an incredible amount of courage personal hunger, right.
Speaker 1:
You really want it to be better, humble. You didn't come in swinging. You came up and said you know, this is the way I think we could improve this. I'd like to be a part of the solution. There's a humble quality to that. You weren't sitting back being a victim, right. Some people think I'm humble because I just let people beat on me. That doesn't make the equation I give to that you're a doormat, right. When that's not humble, right. It's humble's not also saying like I can fix something on myself because I have all the answers. That's arrogance, right? Humble is saying I recognize a problem. I'd like to be a part of the solution. How can I help?