Do you wanna be right, or do you wanna be effective? Probably someone's thinking right now if they're listening to this. It's like, Chris, it sounds like a lot. This is like a lot of I got business to run all this stuff. Yeah. Welcome to leadership. This is what it is. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Gathering the King's podcast. I am your host, Chazwool Today, I welcome Chris Dyer to the King Stage. Chris is an expert on making workplaces great. He started a company called People G Two.
Huge business with thousands of employees that's focused on human capital. And now he's a best selling author and a top speaker on company culture and remote work. Here's what we talk about. How to build an effective remote team? Any leader that gets really curious about ends up leveling up in a way that they never thought they could. Mastering tough conversations.
I don't care that we work together for 10 years and we go to the barbecue the holiday party, we still have to be accountable to each other. And Chris gives 3 ways to turn your employees into top formers. We don't need to micromanage people. Like, if they're not performing, the answer is not more hands on with them. Instead, what we need to do is get really Subscribe if you haven't already and like this video. Comment down below.
Tell me how you showed up to this podcast and how you're leaving it. Wink, wink. Enjoy the show. Alright, Chris. My man. Welcome to the King stage. How are you? Good. Thanks so much for having me, man. Dude, it's it's Monday. And you are bringing the flash to Monday. I was looking at some of your stuff online and these white glasses, dude, are just, like, popping right off the screen. Tell me about the white glasses.
You know, the white glasses, are a good sort of a story to tell because they directly correlate to my entire career, which is a total accident. Everything happened by accident. Okay. So I was you know, I started to go on a little blind. I had the eye surgery, and they didn't tell me when you get the eye surgery that you will start to need readers pretty quick, especially if you have astigmatism like I am. So I get the eye surgery. Oh my gosh. I can see. I open up my eyes in the morning.
I can read the clock. It's a miracle. And then I'm like, hey, doc, but I can't read anything. He's like, oh, yeah. That's the trade off. So I had to start wearing readers, and I had you know, just the crappy ones. I've got brown ones and black ones and whatever. I even got orange ones. Thought I'd be cool and wear orange ones. Well, everybody hated the orange ones. I mean, hate him. No one cared about the other ones. I put on the white ones.
Now my family and friends still hate him because they think of me without the white glasses. But everyone who just thought didn't know me, like, out in the world was like, hey. Those are cool. Hey. I like those. Hey. Are you a celebrity? And I'm like, accident. Okay. That's it. I'm wearing white glasses to the day to, like, put me in my coffin in the white glasses. That's it. We're sold. So This is the lesson. You could stop listening to podcast after this.
When you find something that's working, do it. Just go with it because it's a when you find these little pieces of magic, it's amazing. Amazing. I I really do feel like that they're that's not only just success. I mean, there's a lot of cool things that you, like, even in the glasses, like, you tried different colors and you were really you know, persistent and all the success principles. But, man, when things pop, like, you just gotta pay attention and lean into it. Right? Absolutely.
It's just like when you're gambling in Vegas, if you're hot, you're hot. You gotta go hard. Right? When you're cold, you gotta get out of there. Yeah. Yeah. Run the other way. Well, you you've got this huge career, not only just in business and CEO, but you've helped lots of other people through speaking events and all kinds of, work that you've done in a coaching space around culture.
And so I wanna I wanna ask you just a little bit about your journey first, and then we'll kinda get into some of these hot topics around culture and stuff that you speak on from stage. But tell us about just just quickly your your business kinda you said you hung up your boxing gloves a few minutes ago from a CEO level. Tell us about the boxing gloves and and why you hung them up. You know, I ran a successful human capital company for 20 plus years.
And at the end of it, I mean, I'm managing 4500 employees independent contractors, you know, just thousands of client. I mean, it's intense. And and when you go through something like that, you love it and you love your people and you love everything that's going on. But that doesn't mean you're not stressed out, and it doesn't mean you don't go to bed every night thinking about those people who you have in your charge. And the moment you don't have that anymore, it's crazy.
It's like, you know, an elephant was sitting on you and they got up and you were like, oh, there was an elephant that was sitting on my chest. I didn't know. And so I thought, like, I saw a I'm gonna go get another I'll go do another business or whatever. And I was like, you know, maybe I'll wait, and I'll go consult. And I had people asking me to consult and helping them out in their organizations with culture or remote work or, I even do a lot around marketing.
Some people ask me to help with their marketing programs. And I was like, I guess I don't need to go be a CEO to worry about this stuff. If there's plenty of people who are happy to have me come in and help them, and we're being successful there. And I get to have the fun of being on a team and helping grow and helping do cool stuff. Like, I don't have to worry about payroll. You know? Like, that's a that's a that's a big difference.
So it's a luxury that, you know, I didn't think I was gonna be afforded, but you know, again, I loved it. Maybe one day I'll do it again. When I wrote my first book, I said I would never do that again, and then I'm on number 3. So You never know what the future holds. That's right. Well, and and I take it, just kinda make sure the listener's paying attention there.
You you you weren't like you're just you know, had a small business and, you know, you had twenty people on your payroll, and it was just, like, really, really stressful. And you kinda, like, came in and out. You said 45100 people. I mean, that that payroll is very, very different than probably most people who are listening. So what does that elephant look like? I mean, you said it's a it it was heavy, obviously.
You you got off the chest, but, you know, carrying the the weight of that many people and and the stress that comes along with it, is that the you know, the the element of, like, excitement slash, like, oh my goodness. What did I do? Or, I mean, at 45100, you get crazy momentum. Like, I'm sure there was ups and downs. I'm sure there was quarterly reports that weren't so good. Like, give us a little little backdrop here. Well, I mean, when things are going good, then it feels You're like, yeah.
I'm I'm I'm the man. I got a great business, and things are awesome. Right? And as soon as, like, oh, we lost this giant client. Oh, crap. Do we have to think about layoffs? Do I have to like, is this a place we have to go, or how do we cut costs, or how do we fix this? And so when you're in that mode of Oh my gosh. We lost this big climb we weren't expecting, which, you know, at our level, it happens.
And then, you know, my thing was always I never and I will tell you I never had to lay anybody off ever in my business, even during the heart attack of 2008, 2009, we found a way to not have to lay anybody off. So, like, there was a part of me, like, a badge of honor that I never had to do that. Yeah. You've had to fire people. You have to there are people who aren't the right place in your organization, but I never had to because we didn't plan right or whatever.
Have to just let good people go. And but that was always a stressor, you know, when something changed, economics change, industries change, your clients, you know, and there's people right now going through all this, the tech layoffs and suddenly they were having to adjust their businesses. And, you know, so we were always thinking about where's the next, like, little fire gonna happen? Right? And I I would spend a lot of my time trying to figure out where the next industry boom was gonna be.
And Yeah. But also remembering to get out of industries that we're gonna die. Right? Because I learned my lesson hard in 2008 2009, like, 40% of our clients were in the mortgage industry, and they all went out of business. Yep. They got them. Gone. All those all those invoices not collectible. Right? And so it was a great idea to go after a mortgage.
We did really, really well, but we didn't get out of that or diversify out of that quickly enough when we could see there was some things happening there. You know? So, yeah, it it's it's just a banner of, like, sharing and get it sharing some of that burden and responsibility, but it's there no matter what. Yeah. Well, I I think the the relatability of that is true at every level.
Like, you know, maybe the guy listening right now that just has 2 employees, and and he just lost that contract of the next thing he was gonna go build, and he's Mhmm. Wondering how he's gonna pay his guys next Friday. It's kinda the same thing, but just on a master, you know, a mass scale. What do you think the big difference between those two scenarios? You know, 4500 people and, you know, market shift, and it's like, uh-oh. You know, we shouldn't be in mortgage anymore.
And we are we thinking about layoffs? Are we moving things around versus the entrepreneur who is just thinking about 2 or 3 people on the payroll next week and just trying to get the next closed, you know, project. My experience tells me that it's the same problem at just at a different scale. And so with two people, it's If these are the 2 right people for your business, but you're just going through a hard time. What line of credit? Where can I big borrow and steal money from?
What credit card can I go max selling? What can I do to keep this thing going if you believe in it and you believe in those two people are gonna be there and you're in a problem? Right, and then and then dig your way out of that hole and get back on top at the 45 at the, you know, at the end when I was there, Then it was, like, large lines of credit cash flow. We were managing that that issue in a very different way, but it's the same man. I'm still doing the same thing.
How can I make sure that I can do this and keep this stuff going? Because I believe in that I know what we're going and know what we're gonna do. But those are very specific things not to be glossed over. Right? Do you truly believe in that business? It is are you seeing real potential N6 us because you can believe in a business all you want, and and the world is telling you no. Yeah. Yeah. What are those indicators that you think? I mean, are any is anybody buying from you?
Does anybody wanna talk to you? Are people willing to partner with you and to do things, you know, to, you know, there's so many, like, buying signs inside the market. You know what I mean? Do do really talented people wanna come work for you? Are they excited by what you're doing? There's a competition care? Like, you know, are you being innovative or what you would the all those different types of things.
But I know people who've started businesses, and they were like, for sure, this is gonna work. You know? Like, my restaurant will be different. You know, I'm the 9th person to take over this property on the corner of whatever and whatever, and we're gonna make it instead of being honest and going, maybe the location's bad, maybe neighborhood can't support a restaurant here. Any of the parking's terrible? Like, what are the things that causes the business to fail before you're gonna go jump in?
So there's a certain level of courage and optimism that you have to have to start a business and there is a com the whole new level of realism and looking at the numbers and being honest with yourself, about what's actually happening today before you decide what you wanna do next. You know? Yeah. So I don't know. It's like one part of me is, like, never give up. You know, the part is like, well, you probably should get up and pivot if it's not if you're not seeing the right things. You know?
Yeah. Yeah. There's both. I've had this conversation with with several folks here on the show. And and I think that that's that's right. It's, you know, you have to be self aware enough to pay attention and be honest, look in the mirror. Is this working? And have I even laid down the ground works of what working or what winning looks like? And and am I? And if I'm not, then let let's not have too much pride here, and let's keep it moving.
You talk a lot now from stage, obviously, about culture and you know, remote work. I wanna I wanna kinda crack some of these things. You've written some amazing books inside of the space as well, but one of the first things inside of, like, it's just 2024. Just gonna kinda crack it open here. I've talked with so many entrepreneurs.
Big businesses, small businesses, you know, just employees, actually, about this topic of remote work and how I think a lot of people are still scared of this, of it being maybe less productive, And for me, being a millennial myself and an entrepreneur across the I I understand that certain like, I have businesses. Some people can't work from home. Like, they have to go to a physical retail location or they're, you know, on a construction job site. I get all that.
But if it can be done remotely, I'm a huge fan of figuring out how this can be done remotely because I just see so much benefit to their human life, not just their their career. Can we just open up this topic and just give me your general thoughts on what I've just said, and we'll kinda go from there. Sure. So, I mean, do we have, like, 6 hours? I'll probably start talking and just not stop, but I'll try really hard keep this in saying. So, yes, remote work.
If it can be remote, it probably should be remote. But that being said, If you are not willing to with your full heart and open mind, be willing to embrace new ways of working, to be really to measure things at a very high level to be just, I mean, absolutely willing to have tough conversations. It'd be open and honest transparent with your people. If you're not willing to do that, remote work is not for you. Right, because we have to be able to go to our people and say, listen.
This is what success looks like. This is how you get a raise. This is how you make it in this company. This is what you're gonna do. And this is what I expect from you. Now go do it. I'm gonna leave you alone and give you all the autonomy in the world to go get this done. Right? But I'm gonna be honest enough to tell you what does success actually look like and not say, well, go try that thing. I'm not really gonna tell you how to do it.
I'm not gonna really tell we were looking for, and I'll let you go spend all these hours over there. And then you come back and it's not what I wanted. I'm gonna be mad and tell you, oh, remote work doesn't work. Right, or whatever. Or Right. We're we're not gonna put employees first. Part of the reason, Robert, remote work is so important and why it fits into the average employees sort of experience so well.
Is it I I mean, I remember having employees back when either I was the their their boss in in a in an office or I was a manager in other companies. And, like, people had to take the entire day off because their kid had a doctor's appointment. Right. An entire day off. One little 2 hour appointment. Maybe even 30 minute appointment, and they had to take the whole stinking day off. That's that's what the company required.
It wouldn't work with them on behalf day or just go go go for a couple hours and come back. Right? And so that person now has an entire day of vacation or sick whatever gone. Right? And now with remote work, we say, do your work. You gotta go gone for an hour or 2. Take your kid to the doctor. I don't care. Right? You're gonna make it up later on or whatever. Make it up some other time. What I didn't, like, ask my people to make up.
I know they did, but I was like, if you gotta go go, you know, I trust you. I believe in you. I know at the end of the day, did you get your work Did you do a great job? Did you make our our clients happy? Did you make people on your team happy? Right? That's all I cared about. If you're that kind of boss, remote work will be, like, literally a lightning bow into your organization. But if you're the old school, like, I'm gonna watch everything you're doing.
I wanna know that you're at your desk every second. You know, I I'm gonna send you these sort of microaggressions that I don't really believe. I don't trust you. I don't believe in you. I'm I'm gonna count your keystrokes and as your team's always green, and, like, you know, you doing that stuff? Just skip skip it. Get do us all a favor and skip it because in a year, you're gonna come back and say, oh, we're gonna pull that guy. The CEO from Nike just did.
Oh, we're not as innovative because we're not all in the office together. You're not innovative because your culture sucks and you're a big, bloated company right now. And you have these little startups kicking your butt. Just like you did when you were tiny little nike and you were kicking everyone else's butts. Right? And so That's right. Right? It's a it's about the kind of culture you have that that's the most important thing.
Yeah. I just appreciate that realness because it really does come down to the ability to lead or to to to give the autonomy. Describe what that looks That that person that this could really work for, that person that kinda is able to give clear instruction, have a tough conversation. Maybe we can go into that a little bit. But it's like, okay, if we can get on to the same page in essence, then you go do your thing. I'll go do my thing, and and it works.
Now there's some nuance to that, but What does a tough conversation or agreements look like in that environment? Well, so tough conversations come from a couple different things. The first one is, are we really clear on what the objectives are? Are we really clear on what's supposed to happen? Are we have we shared that? Alright, Chris. Well, give us, a little understanding here.
You've mentioned several things around, you know, clear expectations, tough conversations, agreements, if if that person listening right now is that type of leader that possibly remote work could, you know, explode their organization, what does that look like on the inside? It was actually tough conversation look like coming into an agreement with with people about deliverables.
So as your organization grows and gets bigger, you may have people that you've igned or deemed to be difficult to work with. And so sometimes mastering tough conversations is about having the right strategy for that type of person. You might be a non confrontational person and you're working with someone who's very direct and see how do you deal with that or vice versa. You're very direct and you're dealing with somebody who can't handle that.
And so how do you soften it up a little bit to make sure you're effective? This was something I would tell my senior leaders all the time. Do you wanna be right, or do you wanna be effective? So good. Right? And they'd be like, oh, I wanna be, yeah, because, you know, that we're arguing with somebody in the organization or a client or whatever. And I'm like, does it matter? I just figure out how to bridge the gap. Just go get the solution in place doesn't matter if you're a writer or not.
Nobody cares. Right? And and so we have to be able to have that. Now one of the things that we dealt with in having a really great culture. I mean, we had won awards and, like, we had really high, high, you know, scores for, like, 15 years of best places to work. Was that we could get a little too comfortable. We could get a little too family oriented. We get a little too kumbaya at times.
And so when someone didn't do what they were supposed to do and didn't reach that goal, and we had to be able to be like, hey. What the heck, man? You said you'd get me this. I told the client we were gonna have it by here. I don't care that we work together for 10 years and we go to the barbecue you know, Chris and the and the holiday party and whatever. Like, we still have to be accountable to each other. And if you can't meet that deadline, I need you to tell me.
I need you to give me a heads up. You got a problem so I can go mitigate that with the client. Like, don't leave me hanging. You know, so we have to be able to talk like that. We have to be able to keep each other accountable in a really important way, and that's where those sort of that that are an I do a lot of this work for companies.
They'll they bring me in all the time to help them, their leaders, their leadership team, is just how to have those conversations because that is, like, one of the biggest areas we're seeing that organizations are struggling, and it's partly due to the really, really diverse multi generations in the workforce right now. And we have so many different groups and that all communicate in completely different ways. That's right.
There isn't one way millennials, you know, deal with or communicate, but they have a have a pretty narrow lane of, like, that if they if they are a typical millennial, they are going to act this particular way. Now somebody may act more like a gen x or gen z or whatever. You gotta figure that out. But, you know, we're we're seeing a lot of complexity there. Yeah. I was talking to somebody actually just earlier today on their podcast.
I was guessing, and we were talking about personality assessments and the ability to not only just recognize your personality and the other person, but the as a leader, I believe it's my my duty, my responsibility to bridge the gap. To to modify. However it's necessary. Deliver the information in whatever way is necessary for the other person to be able to receive it at the best possible rate and and how sometimes people are just like, you know what? I'm just me.
And you just take it take it or leave it. It's like, well, wait a second. I hear you. You're trying to be authentic, and you're free, and who you are. All that's good, but we also still, especially as leaders, really have to take into account this this this communication piece. I love how you brought up the, you know, We can be best friends, or we can we can be part of the same unit for 10 plus years, but, like, we still gotta get the stuff done, bro. Yeah. There's a lot going on here, you know.
To be able to call that out, what what what are you working with, companies right now? Give us some, maybe, some examples of, like, practical things that you're doing to be able to take those types of conversations and or, I wanna get into this multigenerational thing, these tough conversations. Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing is just to provide the training. Right?
So the step 1 is I will go in and expose, you know, their group of leaders to some of the different things they should be thinking about. So these are diff we talk about difficult personalities as one area. Cognitive biases is another area Right? There's these, I call them brain tricks. There's all these tricks that your brain is playing on you all day long in an attempt to help you, but is actually making things harder for you in many ways. And so we need to really understand those.
And if you any leader that gets really curious about cognitive biases ends up being, like, leveling up in a way that they never thought they could. Here's one really good example. So this comes from Amos Tversky and Danny Conomen are some of the most famous scientists around this body of work. And what they found was that when you do something really matters. Also, the temperature really matters. So if, like, you ask people to, like, be in a basement, and it's, like, a 110 degrees.
And it's, like, you know, super hot. And it's, like, right before lunchtime, and they're, you know, they're hungry and they're hot and you're, like, asking them to, like, consider something new or the vice versa is, like, freezing cold. Like, whatever. It actually impacts their ability to say yes to you and to hear you and to remember things. They found that judges. These are judge parole judges in Israel. We're more likely to give a yes to someone to getting out of jail.
The closer they were to when they had eaten. Interesting. Like, 99% of the time, right after they ate, they got a yes. And they're like, the cases right before lunch or the cases right before the end of the day, they almost every time got a note, and it didn't matter what the the actual, like, findings, the evidence, all that stuff had very little to do with it. Like, most of the time, it was how hungry the judge was. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? It's a 100% crazy.
You don't actually, like, no. Surely not. But We know it's true. And and and I think if we're honest with ourselves, we can we can probably relate to that even just in our day to day. What is the entrepreneur listening right now they're driving in their car listening to this. What do they what do they take from that and go do tomorrow? Right. So we know if we take the client out for dinner, or to lunch, they're more likely to sign the contract or say yes because they're fed. Right?
Sometimes because you give them liquor. But, like, because they're fed, Right? Yeah. Now if you have a tough conversation you need to have with an employee or maybe you need to get a group as a team that's underperforming or you need to work with them, don't have that meeting at 11:30. Right. Right? Don't have that meeting at 4:30, right, before they're gonna leave for the day. They're not gonna listen. They're gonna be have their guard up.
They're gonna naturally say no. They're gonna be argumentative. They're gonna be there's gonna be more conflict. But if you instead say, okay. What do I do? Well, a really good boss would be like, I'm gonna bring in pizza and let's have a lunch meeting together. We all sit and talk about this together. What? When we eat, and we do something communal and let's talk about how do we get through this issue or whatever it is. Or that's not the right move then right after lunch, you bring them in.
So 1 o'clock, Right? Or you bring them in, you have that meeting. They're more likely to be open and to say yes and to think about what you wanna do. There's a there's a ton of other cognitive biases, but, like, when I start teaching this to people and teaching this to company, they start going, oh my gosh. I can't believe I just did that thing. You said I shouldn't do. Like, I just did that, like, 3 hours ago with somebody, and it went terribly.
Or geez, that happened with me on a on a client the other day. Oh, you're that that's why it didn't go well. That's, like, I couldn't figure out why this client was so against this solution. Right? Oh, it's because of that. So when we start getting, like, kinda really curious about this stuff, you know, it's it's cool. Now the other thing that probably someone's thinking right now, they're listening to this is like, Chris, it sounds like a lot.
Like, this is you're you're this is is like a lot of I got business to run all this stuff. Yeah. Welcome to leadership. This is this is what it's this is what it is. Right? We gotta be the top of our game. We gotta be learning new tricks. We gotta be constantly thinking about how to get better and how to take that information and share it, teach it, and make it a part of the organization if you want it to grow and get bigger because otherwise, you're gonna get stuck at that dollar amount.
You could get stuck at that employee account amount. Everything is gonna get stuck because you're not leveling up yourself. Hey, Kings and Queens. Chaz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We meaning myself and my team into this podcast into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too.
So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things. On social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify. We would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this.
Let's have each other grow. That's right. I love the unapologetic ness about that. Because it's true. It's just look, man. There's not really a soft way to put it. You just need to be better. Be better. Yeah. Just is what it is. Okay. Let's talk multigenerational because mean, we've got we still got boomers in the workforce. We've got the the the gen xers. We've got the gen. We got the millennials and the gen z's, like, 4 generations and some situations working together.
How are you navigating this with companies today? Well, I'm gonna still align for my buddy, Matt Hammonds, who's a great keenote speaker. So this is not my framing. This is his, but he he often says there's young and there's old. And so if you remember what a floppy disc is, if you ever had a pager, we're old. Okay? And if you don't know what those things are, you're young. And so At some level, you can think about this from a pretty simple way. Right? There's old and young.
Do you wanna get into, like, the really deep details and get really sit into what does Gen X versus Gen Z want? All that. Cool. Go do it. Like, and especially the more people you have in your organization, the more that might become important. The thing to remember is that it's we wanna and you wrap this up with the personality assessments. It's about understanding each other. And it's about being open and honest about what works for us, what doesn't work for us.
And, again, as leaders, making sure that we are communicating in a way that's not, only good for one group of people. Right? So if it's important Do I say it in a team meeting? Do I send an email? Do I bring it up again in Slack? Do I need to send in a text message to a group? Like, what's the way at least 2 or 3 different ways, am I gonna try to communicate this thing if it's really important and not leave it up to, well, I'm a millennial.
Therefore, I like I will send an email, and that's the only way I wanna communicate this. And if people don't read their emails, I guess they don't care. No. Right? Like, if you're if you care about it being taken seriously, you've gotta take it seriously and make sure that you're saying that communicate. Or if not you, someone that you're gonna is ensuring that communication is getting around in multiple different ways.
This is happening in every single organization, and I think there's confusion probably more than anything. It's like, well, how How do we how do we streamline this? I can even think of my my family chat, you know, the family tax thread. You know, you got old and young, and and some people are all about the text and communicating, and other people are just not. Yeah. So it's like, you know, whether it's family or organizations, we're all experiencing this.
What's what's the solution if we've all got different preferences? And what we need to do as leaders is just to get really curious especially when people are struggling or we're noticing they're not meeting our expectations or they're not seeming to remember to know about things that are coming up that we've talked about. So for us to get curious about why is that happening and what we can do to fix it. I remember I worked with a client years ago.
And their biggest problem was is they could not keep millennials. It would hire them, and those people would leave within 2 to 4 weeks. And it was something like 80% turnover. And they were like, we're a good company. We don't know what's happening. This was back, like, what millennials were new to the workforce. Right? And I'm, like, just a little bit older than millennial. I'm, like, kinda sit right there. And I went in a consultant with this company and then, like, we we can't figure it out.
We don't understand. We don't know. I just said give me the phone number to the 10 last people, and I'll go call them. And I got 8 of them on the phone. And I said, what was the what was the hardest thing you had to do? At your job, and they all told me the exact same thing. You know, I'm like, what was the biggest problem, the biggest fear, whatever? And they all said, I didn't know how to use the phone. I go I'm sorry. What? They're like, yeah.
They had this big phones, and then people may not realize this. Like, if you don't work in an office, like, there was these phones with, like, 9000 buttons with, like, 500 lines, and it was, like, transferring people and conferencing call and, like, It was all this, like, giant technology on this big giant black phone. I forget who the maker was now, but and no one ever trained them.
And so next thing they know, they're sitting at their desk and the thing just won't shut up and the lines are blinking and they get a call and they're supposed to transfer somebody and they don't know how to transfer and they hang up on them and then and they get in trouble. So all we did was have that company give training to everybody on how to use the phones on day 1. That was the first thing they learn and their retention rate are there. Like, they went they flip flopped it. Right?
They only had a 20% retention issue instead of an 80% retention issue. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That's incredible. It wasn't the bad manager. It wasn't a bad experience. It's not the same thing about the company. It was just a stupid phone that piece of equipment. They had no because their whole life had been on a cell phone. Yeah. Right?
Yeah. Football maybe for some of them, but, like, you know, still on a phone, which is very different than this big thing yelling at you while you're sitting at your desk all day. Yeah. What do you think? I mean, yes. You're right.
That in that scenario, the the folks at the company just assumed that new people would know how to use this this phone, but they obviously were missing the idea that maybe somebody doesn't, and we should provide some training around this, or at least take the training that we have and move it up into the onboarding process. Is that like, other than calling past employees, how do you how does a employee or how does a entrepreneur right now locate that same type of problem?
In their in their process. So I have a great solution for this. And be before I tell you that, I just wanna remind everybody Most of the time, 95% of the time, employees will not come to you to tell you why you suck. They will not come to you and tell you why They don't like it here or what you're doing wrong. They'll just leave. They'll just go somewhere else because people are are risk adverse.
They are confrontational adverse and that they're young and beginning in their career, they don't wanna burn a bridge and come up and tell you, hey. Your training program sucks. And I didn't get the training I needed to be successful. I'm leaving. They just leave. Right? And they'll say, oh, I found a better job or, oh, my mom's sick or what to make out some stupid Excuse. So don't leave it to them. The responsibility is not on them to find out. It's your responsibility to find out.
And the way you can do this and we I invented this thing called the 1 question survey. Every week, I asked one question of my employees. That's it. No annual survey. I asked one question every week, and so I would change it up. Sometimes it was something fun. Sometimes it was something good.
And sometimes it was something serious, like, what's the what's your biggest struggle, or what one thing do you wish the company could you know, get rid of that's a a problem in your day or it annoys you or you don't like dealing with. Right? And I would maybe say, aside from fellow employees and clients, What's the one thing you wish we could, you know, you know, change or get rid of or whatever? Right? And I would get back really interesting answers.
You know, I would get back feedback about our onboarding. I would get feedback about, you know, they didn't think the equipment that they had was sufficient maybe when they started or maybe the training on particular programs was enough, or they wish that they knew more about this other system that's really important to our company, but maybe isn't important to their department. But, like, if they understood it better, they could do a better job. They could talk to clients better.
They're all kinds of crazy stuff. And then we would take that information. We I would make sure that I addressed it before the next question went out. And then we had a company wide call every month. And all of the questions that had occurred during that time frame, I would again bring it up what we asked, what we heard, and what we're gonna do about it. And and I would keep talking about what we're gonna do about it until we had done the thing we said we were gonna do.
And so sometimes that list could be long, sometimes it was short. You know, if the list got too long, I made sure I started asking fun stuff or or good stuff so that I had time to catch up. Yeah. You know, like, you know, what's who who's really killing it for you here, or what's the what's the best what would you like best about your job or you know, that kind of stuff.
So then we could talk about that too, which is, you know, we don't always have to be negative things, but we need to work on the negative things. Yeah. My favorite to ask was how am I as the CEO getting in your way? Try asking that question. And and then you go and you fix it all and you think, okay. The next time I ask this, there's no way they're gonna have anything and they still do. You know, and it was like, I didn't make decisions fast enough. I didn't get in the resources fast enough.
They felt like they needed 2 more people in their department and, like, they tell me. Right? Because it was anonymous. And when I asked that question, it was anonymous, and I made sure there was no way I could unless they typed their name in there, I would have no idea. You know, who they were or what they said, but I wanted to know. And then I would go back to, hey, everyone. I heard you. This is what I'm gonna do. This is how we're gonna fix it.
I'm a I'm a work in progress, and I'm gonna keep working at it too. You know? Yeah. I think, I mean, of course, people appreciate that, but it gives them the the not only the level of confidence that you're actually hearing them, but then then it's like a a dopamine reward. The next time you come asking for information again. They're gonna give it to you again because because you took it seriously, and you did something with it. Right. Right.
And that's the whole reason why for you at once a week, You keep reinforcing that it's working and it's happening. And they know if something's starting to bug them, they know if they don't have the guts to tell their boss that gonna come up in the survey. I wanna be able to give my opinion soon. I don't have to wait a year until the annual survey comes out for someone to ask me how what I think about this place. You know?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, weekly is a is a deep commitment to to hearing your people. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. The inside of the the remote environment inside of having a great culture, having these tough conversations, What are some things that you've been able to do for yourself in when you had your company, but also with other the other companies that you've been consulting with, to be able to get people to perform at their best.
I mean, I think that's probably a a a fairly, you know, regular conversation, but how do I do is it better to take a a low performer and make them a good performer? Is it better to focus on my top performers that make them peak performers? Like, what's your what's your thought there? High performance is about a few things. So I'll just quickly kinda tell you them. And then if you wanna go deeper into them, you can.
The first is, are we taking care of them and their mental health Are we actually do actually care? And are we finding ways to check-in with them to make sure that they're okay? Right? I have this exercise called bonding, which I can go in deeper for you if you want. But there's a real way to, like, check-in with people. I do know, are you low performing? Are you just a journey?
Or is, like, your mom in hospice and, like, you're really struggling and your family is, like, really, really hurting right now, and that's why you're not yourself. Right? And we need to help address that before I can address, I need you to, like, sell more stuff. Right? So can I deal with you as a human being? Number 2 is that we are not trying. We don't need to micromanage people. Like, if they're not performing, it's the answer is not more hands on with them.
Instead, what we need to do is get really curious about what people who are succeeding are doing. So if you have five people on your sales team and 2 are killing it, one's okay, and 2 suck, what most people do is they take the 2 that suck and now they're on every meeting. They get copied on every email. They start micromanaging the hell out of them. Set them to 5 more sales trainings. Like, they're all over them. And their sales never get better. Right?
They might get a little bit better because if you got involved and you did the selling for them, right, but, like, they didn't get any better. But if we go ask the top 2 people what they do and we ask them to continue to share their best practices, but they're doing to be successful. You will notice that those two people will suddenly level up. Right? Not in every case, sometimes we have to replace. Sometimes they're not the right fit.
But if Yeah. Assuming they're the right fit, they are gonna get better. By us saying, let us let us open up the secret the secret manual to how to be a great salesperson. We're gonna share with you. Because we care about you because we believe in you. Not you're not making your number. I wanna be on all of your emails from now on. Any any sale over $50,000, I need to be invited as your sales manager because I wanna make sure you don't screw it up. Right? That energy is no way.
You're never gonna get high performance out of that. K? And the third area is we have to be radically transparent. Meaning, what's working? What are our goals? What is everybody else's goals? How is the company doing? How do we make money? Where do we spend money? Right? All of that information has to be shared. Constantly. And if we lose somebody, why do we lose them if we're hiring someone? Why are we hiring them?
Like, do you ever bid on one of those, like, in a company where, like, Oh, we lost Tom. They wouldn't know I would lost Tom. You had to, like, go find out from somebody. Oh, I heard Tom did this or whatever. And, like, it was always a big secret or, like, oh, we're gonna hire Tom. Why are we hiring Tom? Well, I heard Tom's, like, play golf with the CEO. That's why he's getting Like and that's probably all that gossip is totally wrong. Instead, get on the call and be like, hey.
We lost Tom. Tom decided taking their job. Here's what happened. Here's what we thought we could have do. We could have done better. We're really happy. This is what he did well for as actually be open and honest about it. Right? Or we're gonna hire him, and this is his credentials. This is what he does well. This is where he came from. This is why we're hiring. This is why we think it's the right time. This is how the market's moving and be open and honest with people.
Because if you leave them a gap, of information. If they know 90%, they will take 10% and whatever their own neurotic thoughts are. They will take that 10% to fill in the rest. Oh, yes. Right? So if they've had 5 bad bosses in their life and people have always screwed them over, that 10% says you're gonna screw me over with this. Right? So we've gotta fill it all in for them with the truth and the reality and transparency so that they understand, and now they can go do their best.
Yeah. It's really good. The the moments that I've even had in, you know, training top performers, sales wise, specifically, like you said, it's it's your your, I think you said bonding method. I'll I'll maybe give you a chance to go through that here, but I can remember spending time with top performers. And at first, it was kinda like a bro, I I I'd killed it last week. Why are we doing a coaching?
It's like, no. Like, this we'd we spend time together because you're top performer, and I wanna make sure doing okay and and and when you wanna be better and and it's oftentimes that I found the top performers that kinda get just left alone anyway. Like, oh, they're good. They're good. Just let them be.
And and that also can create, of course, isolation, but just the separation between what you actually think that you know is happening in their world And when it comes down to that big change that you described, you think they're just being a a goofball and something actually dramatic is happening in their world, and and you're just not in tune. As a leader, we just gotta be in tune. But what's this? I think you said bonding. Did I say that right? Yeah. The bonding exercise.
And so this was one that we did. We tried to do at least once a day. No more than once a day. We try to do it every day because sometimes it'll only happen 3 or 4 times a week, but you just do this with your team, just the people you work with all the time. So we wanna use sales again as an example. You're on a sales team. You're the sales leader. There's, I don't know, 5 salespeople, 10 salespeople, whatever. Can't do it with 20 or 30 or 40 people, but, you know, smaller group, 5 to 7 is ideal.
And what you do is you get on the call and you say, how is it? How are you showing up? And you go around the room. How are you showing up? Not how are you doing, how are you showing up? And so this gives us answers from them as the full human being. Right? And that probably not gonna happen on the first call, but as you begin to practice this, you'll start getting If you ask me how am I showing up, I might tell you the truth and say, I got a puppy on Saturday.
My sleep has not been good the last 2 days. Right? I'm a little tired. I'm a little behind my game because, you know, I didn't get my full 8 hours, and that's a real thing. That's happening me. And so if everyone on the team's like, oh, that's why Chris is not quite as sharp. That's why he's a little behind with emails or whatever. Right? Because he's got a puppy. Okay. We can chip in. We can help him out and give him some grace. Right?
People hear that, and they it's not because he's lazy, sloppy, you know, not a hard worker. It's something else. Right? And as they go on, they will start to give you deeper and deeper answers. Now when you're done with the meeting, you go around when I say done, I mean, before the meeting is supposed to end, not It's a 30 minute meeting and now 30 minutes is up and now you do it. That's not cool. You gotta do it before the meeting was supposed to end. How are you leaving?
And I found that this answer was very employee centric, meaning and I I swear I thought we had the best meeting ever. This happened all the time. Oh, we really figured this problem out. I'm the smartest CEO in the world. This is slam dunk, and my team would go. I don't know if I'm feeling so good about this. Oh, what? Right. What? I know, like, I don't think the client's gonna go for this. I know you think it's a great idea, Chris, but I'm leaving a little little worried about this. Oh, okay.
What would have happened before that is they just would have all left the meeting and then probably not done what I asked to do, like, kind of passive aggressive because or just hope that I would forget because they didn't really agree with the idea. And instead, they were like, hey. I'm worried about this. I I'm leaving not not fully satisfied. We need to keep talking then. So here I am taking care of their mental health. I'm taking care of this.
Like, I don't want us to turn into some passive aggressive teenagers trying to trying to do stuff together because we're all pissed off each other for not actually talking about this stuff. Right? Yeah. And then the last part is if you're the senior leader or you know, if there's several leaders, like, the leaders have to go last. K? So the the thing that always every time I teach this to leaders and they go back to the team and they go, hey, everyone. How are you showing up? I'll go first.
I'll model what I mean for you. Because if you say if you say how happy you are, do you think they're gonna tell you how sad they are? Or how's mister struggling, right, or if you say you're struggling and you have the worst week ever, they're gonna tell you that they're happy and they're things are going great for them. No. Right? You gotta let them go first. This is the hardest lesson I ever had to learn as a leader.
If my team was struggling or there are a few people that needed help, they didn't care about what I was going through. So my share went out the door, So if we were on a call on, like, two people. One's, like, really struggling with this and someone's struggling with that, my thing's out the door. No one cares. And we're gonna stop, and we're gonna try to help those 2 people right now. What can we do to support you? How do we help you? Can we take work off the table? Can we extend deadlines?
Can we reschedule that call with the client. Like, what do we gotta do to help you right now? And you might think that sounds crazy. We never get anything done, but, honestly, you get you get that back twofold. As I say, you get it back in space. Right? You're gonna get that back, that energy, and that commitment and that high performance from them when, like, oh my gosh. I was going through something really terrible this week. And my boss and my team was there for me.
Next week, I'm gonna show, but I'm gonna slay it. Right? I'm gonna and I'm gonna be there for somebody else when they need it. You know? So I wouldn't just I wouldn't, you know, as far sometimes to tell people, like, oh my god. They would say, yeah, I just found out earlier this morning my grandma died. And I'm like, why are you here? Why are you on this call? Right? And they were like, well, you know, I just thought I would I had a lot of deadlines, and I'm like, go be with your family.
Like, You know, if it's one thing, if it was expected or something, but this would be like some unexpected thing. I'm like, you have the day off. We're not counting this against your days off. Like, just go Right? Go be with your family. Go mourn. Go whatever you need to do to to deal with this and process this.
Man, they were so appreciative of us thinking about them that way and not treating them like a, you know, clog and this giant thing that we cared about them as human beings and showed them empathy in the moment when it arose that they didn't leave for silly job offers, and they didn't leave for more money. And they worked their butts off all the time, and they care of our clients, and they can't were willing to come to me and tell me how I was getting in their way when I asked them. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. There's always the the the repayment in those other ways that you just mentioned that you don't calculate until you realize that you're on a trap or or a racetrack of losing people or always having to refill or whatever you think that you're doing that isn't associated to the actual problem. The actual problem is what what you're talking about. I love the the how are you leaving? How are you showing up? Because wouldn't you wanna know?
And I think some leaders recognize that they need to know, but I think some people probably listening today going like, oh, no. I don't I'd rather just end the meeting and just move on. It's like, yeah. No. It's actually way worse to go thinking that it's one way or that we're in agreement or in alignment. And we're not. We're just wasting time at this point. Right? And to be clear, what I'm advocating for for leaders is not to add something on.
What I'm actually trying to do is take work off of your plate because I would prefer that you move as much of these of these conversations about how you're doing and goals and and measurements and all the KPIs and all the things we're doing into the team meeting. Into a group setting, we need to have group therapy and a lot less individual therapy at work. I do not actually like one on ones at all. If you're collaborating one on 1, great.
If you need to talk to someone one on 1 as a one off, great. There's an issue or someone is having a great. But the standard because you're on my team and I'm your boss, I'm gonna meet with you every Monday at 4 o'clock. I hate those, and I think they're complete waste of time. And they get in your way. They slow you down. Decisions end up only being made whenever that one on one happens. And then if you miss that one on 1 for a week, everything gets delayed. Push it to the group meeting.
Why not allow everyone on the team to help each other with their goals? Why not allow everyone to help with someone who's struggling. Why is it only the leader's job to be their coach, mentor, therapist, you know, everything. Everything. Why don't we they're you're tight group. I'm not talking about a giant department, but you're tight group of people. Why can't we rely on all of them and let them work it help each other out.
It it is so freeing as a leader and so much more effective as well to kind of put transfer that into kind of a different setting. Yeah. And the value around the room is that they get all the different experiences from from more than just the one individual. So I I couldn't agree with you more. There's just so much value in that facilitation. Chris, you've got a little giveaway for our listeners. If they wanna reach out to you, they wanna to you.
Maybe they wanna bring you into their organization to help with some of these culture things. Tell us about what this is and how can they connect with you? Sure. So if they just text 777, and they type in my name, Chris, c h r I s. You can immediately get onto my mailing list, and I'll send you out a little guide on, like, some cool questions to ask. So I mentioned that one question survey.
I'm I'm gonna send you out kind of a a starter list of, like, the 1st 25 you could think about asking so that, you know, you kinda have a place to start. If you're curious what your people would tell you. If you ask them one question every week, I'll kinda give you a some of the best ones we asked to kinda really get that conversation going. Yeah. I love it. Well, if you'd like to have that list of questions and connect with Chris, you can, text that number.
We'll put in the show notes here as well. That way, you can easily access him, all his, you know, social links and stuff will be on there as well. But Chris, You've got, such an incredible story and, of course, incredible glasses. So we just mirrored everything together here. For the superpower that is, Chris Dyer. Thank you for being here, brother. Blessings to you and all the businesses that you're touching, all the stages that you're speaking on here this Thanks for being here.
And I love this. I love all the work that you've been doing. The great people you've had here. So thank you too because it's it's important to get that work out there and get the message out to people who are hungry to be better So thank you. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away.
More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your businesses in multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. So gathering the Kings exists to bring together success entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings, who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe that in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and resonates with you. And you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gathering thekings.com.
I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Toxin.