 I think efficiency is overrated and effectiveness is underrated, and I think that people go like, we don't have time to do that stuff, and it's like, what? Thank you for joining us, Pat. We're excited to have you on the show. Johnny and I are huge fans of yours, and in fact, one of your books, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, changed our business trajectory, and it was actually recommended to us by a former business partner who wanted us to learn some lessons and potentially kick someone out of the company that he was unhappy with. And funny enough, we read the book, threw some self-reflection, realized our own dysfunction, started working on them, and he actually was the only one who refused to work on his dysfunction, and we were forced to get rid of him in a very wild way. But obviously, over the years, we've interviewed tons of people who've written business books, and your books still stand above, and what's so fascinating to me is the format of choosing parables to share these lessons. How did you decide, one, to really dig into leadership and change businesses, and then two, write in a format that is so different from other business books out there? You know, I love the question, and I think both of them go back to me being a little kid in Bakersfield, California, where I grew up, and two things happened. One, and probably about the same age, I'm guessing it was like when I was eight or nine years old. So my dad, who I loved, God rest his soul, he would come home from work and complain about management in his company. I didn't know what that meant, but my dad was a great guy, was successful at what he did, but he was always a little angsted about the way management treated him. And I remember going, I love my dad. I don't know what management is. I'm not even sure what that word means, but I don't think people should come home from work frustrated. And I also watched The Waltons, which was a TV show. You guys might be a little too young for The Waltons. You've probably seen it on TV land or something. And it was a show about this guy who's a writer, and the show was framed, him writing in his journal about this family back in the West Virginia or something in the early 1900s or late 1800s. And I remember thinking, I don't know what a writer is exactly, but I like what that guy does, and I want to do that one day too. So fast forward through the rest of my life. I was always interested in writing. And I kept noticing that my dad's business thing. I go to college down in Los Angeles, where you guys are from. And I took a screenwriting class my senior year. I think much to my father's chagrin, because he's like, you should study accounting and computers, but I was really interested. And I got my first job as a management consultant. I moved up here to San Francisco area. And I remember going to work and helping these companies and thinking, they don't get it. It's about the human things. They're really smart, and they're failing because they don't know how to talk to each other and organize themselves and have honest conversations. And I would say that, and the other people at the firm would go, we don't get paid to do that. That's not what we do. Just crunch the numbers. And it was at that time that I said, that's what I want to do. And then fast forward probably five years later, I came up with a management theory based on these CEOs. I was watching. I didn't have my own firm yet. And I came up with this theory, and somebody said, you need to write a book about that theory, because that really works. And I thought, man, I don't want to write one of those business books that nobody reads, because I never finished the business books. I'd read the first two chapters, like, OK, flip through it and be done. So I said, I'm going to write a story that people will actually enjoy reading. They'll get the theory through it. They'll finish it, because they're going to want to know how it ends. And maybe they'll actually learn more that way. And so I did that. You should just know, I didn't have a publisher. I didn't know anybody was going to read this. But I loved writing so much that I did that. And it struck a chord with people. And then the publisher said, write another book. And I kept thinking, I think I'm done. And then I come up with that, like, wait a second. I just noticed this other thing. And so that's why I write fiction. Because of John Boy Walton and my screenwriting class, and I love to write dialogue. And my interest in this whole idea of management and culture comes from the fact that when I went into the working world, nobody was paying attention to what I thought was the most important thing. So that's a long answer to a short question. I hope that's OK. Oh, I think one of the things that makes the parables work so well is, because it's a story, all the characters, there's a, I guess to lack of a better word, it seems like there's an innocence about them because it's a story. It's a parable. So that you're able to then see yourself in each one of these characters. If it's going to be Kevin Cruz's leadership book, then you're automatically see yourself as a certain role. And you're sort of rigid in that idea of who you are and your place in your business. Where the parables are fun, the characters seem innocent. And because it's fun, you can mix and match. And I think that's the beauty of it. And that's why it works so well. I love what you said because I write the characters so that they're relatable. And if there's a bad character, if you will, you feel for him and you identify with him. If there's a good character, he or she has flaws and you can relate to them. And I love what you said because it's not like, I'm just that person. I'm the good character. I'm not preaching to people that way. I'm saying human beings are inherently messy and flawed and well-intentioned. And so unlike a Marvel comic book where this is evil and this is good, I'm trying to say we human beings are messy. And I love when people read my books and they'll go, oh my gosh, the troubled character is the one I can relate to. I need to change my career. And so it's something that I, what you said is exactly right. I want people to relate to it. The fiction I write, we call them parables and fables, but it's kind of edgy and we want people to go, yeah, I've heard that same comment in a meeting, I can relate to that. It's not like a genie flies out of a computer and gives you advice. These are like real people having real conversations. And my most recent book is the edgiest one I've written so far, I think. So you got us hanging on the edge of our seats. What is this grand theory of management that you cracked the code with and led to the writing of these books? Okay, so I think the best way to describe it is this, you guys. There's two things that people need to be successful in a business. One is, I'm gonna cough here for a second. I've got this lingering cough. One is you have to be smart. That's intellectual stuff. Like do we have the right strategy? Are we in the right business? Do we have the right marketing? Do we have the right technology, all that stuff? On the other hand, you also have to be healthy. Which means, do we have the right culture? Is there cohesiveness among the leaders? Are we clear? Forget if we have the right answer. Are we on the same page around an answer? Do we communicate enough with each other and with the people in the organization? And have we put just enough structure and place to keep all this together? So it's smart and it's healthy. 95% of the attention that most leaders give in companies, if not 99, is around smart. That's what business schools teach. That's what the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review focuses on. What do I know? The healthy side, which is the behavioral, is this functional? Are we honest? Do we wrestle with decisions? It affects the smart stuff. It's not touchy-feely. But without the health of an organization, you don't get to tap into most of your smarts. One of the many companies we get to work with and I'm very fortunate is Southwest Airlines. They are not smarter than Delta and United and Continental or whatever they are. They've all merged and stuff. They're healthier. And as a result of that, they make smarter decisions. So really analytical people will go, well, they were brilliant in the way they did that. Well, I know the executives, they sit around a room and they have honest conversations and they say, what should we do here? And because they're transparent and because they're honest and because they're willing to go there, they look a lot smarter than people who probably have higher IQs and SAT scores and GPAs from better schools. And the people at Southwest just keep it simple because they have a real culture. So smart and healthy. And what I said is, we have to help companies become healthier. They're all smart. In this era of ubiquitous information on the internet, everybody knows enough. I've never, you guys, I've never gone into a company and walked away and thought these leaders are just too dumb. They don't understand this. Never. I've never said, man, they're dumb because in this day and age, everybody knows enough. I walk into many and say they're too dysfunctional to tap into that knowledge. I love that. And one of the things in our work and us doing some new corporate training and just with how prevalent ideology is now is that all companies have this culture and a lot of times people don't even think about it. It's like an after bit where their primary objective is to get hired by said company, Google or Facebook or whatever it might be. Right, right, right. And it's like, have you ever thought if you would fit in there with your temperament? Oh my God. And they're like, well, that doesn't matter. I'll figure that out once I'm in. It's like, no, I don't think you understand because this culture possibly could go against your temperament. And if that's the case, you are not going to have a good time. And no matter how hard you might try, you're not going to be able to fit in. In fact, every day is going to be frustrating to you. Yes. I'll tell you a story of how I learned that lesson. And I have two boys that are seniors in college that are getting ready to join the workforce this summer. And so I tell them about this and their friends too. And granted, recruiters and colleges trying to play up the company name and whether they're famous and all that kind of stuff, which is so dumb. So when I was a couple of years out of college, I got a job offer from a company that, I won't name a company, but it rhymes with Schmorkel. Okay. And so, and I was, some guys wanted to hire me there. And so everybody that got hired there at the time, there's only a couple of thousand employees at the time, had to interview with the same guy there. And his job was to see if you were a cultural fit. So the people that wanted to hire me there prepped me for the interview so I could fake it. Oh boy. And get through the interview because the culture there was, we got to make sure these people are appropriately confident and cocky. And they're not afraid to deal with internal politics and even kind of like, rudeness. So they prepped me, I went into the interview, I faked it, I got through. And I was like, man, I'm glad they told me that. And then I was like, wait, I have to work here now. So I lasted two and a half years. They were painful. They turned out to be productive because I learned a lot about company culture. But I thought, why would you want to fake it? That would be like saying, should I marry this woman? Well, she doesn't like who I am. Somebody tell me what she really likes, I'll fake it, then we'll get married. Wait, I have to live with her. It's like we should really ask ourselves, do I want to work in that company culture? And not every company is for everyone. And just because it's famous or makes a lot of money doesn't mean it's a good fit for you. And a lot of us don't realize how much that culture influences us later in our careers. So this business partner that we were frustrated with, he came from a finance background. And I remember him telling a story of, hey guys, I was in a meeting where I had a binder chucked at my head because I miscalculated some numbers. And that's why I have this aggression towards you. And we're like, but we don't want that in our culture. We don't want anyone throwing anything. We want to be able to have open dialogue without fisticuffs. And he's like, but this is how I worked before. And this is now my culture. So it imprints, especially seniors in college, people who are just starting out in their career, that environment, that nature, nurture, certainly your temperament comes in, but you're going to fit in to that culture. And you're going to take on the good parts and you're also going to take on the warts. You know what, so my first job was with a management consultant from Bain and Company, which is very high end. But it was kind of brutal. I will tell you, they threw like 20 of us college grads, said, you've won the lottery, here's your draw. You're going to make a lot of money, but you're going to work all the time and you're going to compete with one another. And eventually we're going to weed it down to like six of you, which sucked. And then I went to Oracle when I realized, oh, this isn't for me. And I had that experience. Then I got hired by a company, a technology company that was actually had a really good culture. The founders were really kind and they were customer focused. And they said, you don't have to defend yourself against other people. We work together. But the founder of the company said, but we're going to have to detox you, Pat. We said, we know you're going to like it, but we're going to have to teach you that you don't have to watch your back. You don't have to guard what you're going to say. You can be transparent and open and it's going to work fine. And it was wonderful once I got used to it, but you're right. My first two companies, and by the way, that's why I'm in this business. Thank the Lord that I did it. My first two companies were crazy cultures that what taught, and that taught me that culture matters and that culture is not some esoteric thing. It's really what is the founder and what are the leaders believe and how do they run the organization? So that's how I got in the business. So even though they were painful, I thank God for it. So a lot of our audience is a little bit younger in their career. They're hoping to move into that leadership role to really influence culture. What tips do you have or strategies do you have to find the right culture fit when you are being recruited and they are putting on the show to get you to come on board? Because we all know that these companies, when they're in their recruiting efforts, they're not necessarily being honest about their culture. Absolutely. In fact, they have to market themselves as all things to all people. If it's a good company though, the very best companies, and it's not black and white or binary, but the very best companies are not afraid to market what they really are. Like Southwest Airlines, how I first got involved with them is we helped them codify their culture. They already had a great culture. But they said, if you have a servant's heart and a warrior's spirit and a fun-loving self-deprecating attitude, you're gonna be a good fit here. But if you don't, please don't come to work here. You're gonna hate it and we're probably not gonna enjoy you very much. So when they interview people, they actually push you to see, like one of the things Southwest does is, years ago they would hire, they would bring in pilots for interviews. And these are some very buttoned down, they're flying planes worth $100 million. And they would make them change halfway through the interview into shorts, khaki shorts in their suit. And some of the pilots would go, this is juvenile, I'm out of here. And they'd go, okay. Yeah. See, if you can't laugh at yourself and have some fun, you're not gonna fit here. Where other companies are saying, what do you believe in? Yeah, we believe in that too. Don't, if a company can't tell you what they're not and they don't really have a real perspective, they're probably looking at you as a commodity and they're trying to convince you. Find out what, a great question would be who would not be a good fit here? What, and I don't mean like, well they'd be mean and rude and I mean like, what person with good qualities wouldn't fit in here? And what's interesting is when I go back to Oracle, even though it wasn't for me, had they just said, hey listen, it's pretty political here. It's pretty competitive internally. If it would bug you, if somebody who you think is on your team actually stabbed you in the back a little bit, then you, if you don't have a stomach for that, you probably shouldn't work here because that's just kind of how it is. We believe in kind of a, it's a little bit of Lord of the Flies here. Well, I'm not alone. That would have been a beautiful thing to say and the right people would have gone, yes, bring it on. And so I guess if a company cannot be honest about the challenges of their culture, then you probably know something's wrong. It's like if you went on a date and said, well, tell me your worst qualities. And they say, well, I'm just so conscientious and loving that sometimes that, you know, it's like, no, no, tell me your worst qualities. If a person doesn't know what their worst qualities are, and they probably, it's probably a good, it's a red flag. You know, this reminds me a bit about the person that we're speaking about as he was coming from that culture. And what he wanted to implement, or at least it seemed to be the way our Monday morning meetings were going was, he wanted to have a roundtable discussion of Game of Thrones and what happened and the playing on this. The hockey valley and strategizing, politicking. We're like, we don't, this is why. We're not interested in that. We're not interested in this. And in fact, like for myself, and as you were just stating about working in that environment, it's like, I know for myself, I want to be obsessed and put all of my attention on what I'm doing and the work and the results that I am trying to get. Not have to look to see who's trying to pull the rug out from under me as well. Exactly. I mean, and granted, there are people who seriously thrive in that. And that's great. But certainly we didn't need it in our podcast startup. Well, one of the other strategies that my fanciami has taught me is reaching out to the people who did your role at that company but moved on in their career. You can find them on LinkedIn. They're easy to get old of now and ask, why'd you leave? And just understand, well, I got more money at Facebook, that's one thing. Or you know what? I hated working weekends. I hated that they demanded 14-hour days, even though they told me when I started that, oh, I'm gonna be able to travel and it's great. You can get that feedback from the people who left your role. They will tell you most of the time on a LinkedIn message, well, this is what I didn't like. Yeah. Isn't it crazy? Like you were talking about that person with you. What we need to be able to say is, hey, if you like that, then you definitely shouldn't work here because we're not like that. We're not judging you and saying you're a bad person but we are saying you're a bad fit for what we're trying to do. Alan Mulally was the guy, the CEO who turned the Ford Motor Company around a few years back. Amazing story. Like took over the DMV of automotive stuff, didn't take any money from the government, changed the culture. Now they're struggling again because he's been gone for a while but the point is he would go to people in the company and say, this is the new culture. I really like you and this is how we're gonna do this. And if they were violated, he'd go up to them and he'd say, hey, you know, you're violating the culture and that's okay. We could still be friends but if you keep doing that, you just shouldn't work here because it's not gonna be good for you. And he had to fire very few people in turning that company. A ton of people left. Not because he sat in a dark room and decided who to fire and who to keep or who he should, but because he just confronted them about that behavior is not okay. And you have a choice to make. The Machiavellian stuff, you can shed that or you can lean into that and go someplace that appreciates it, but we don't. That shouldn't be a controversial conversation. That's actually an act of love to help that person avoid misery and yourselves. And that is an important lesson that I actually took from the book of Five Disfunctions because I realized that in myself that I had this fear of conflict. And because I was the leader of the group when there were these cultural issues because I was afraid of having conflict over it, they festered and they continued to grow in the company. And then everyone was frustrated. So let's unpack for the audience what these five dysfunctions are because what I love about them, and now as Johnny said that we've been doing corporate training, you see these patterns over and over and over again. And we all think we're special snowflakes and oh, our culture is different or our company is unique. But then you start looking and you're like, wait a second, I'm a dysfunction, there's dysfunction. Okay, what can we do to fix it? Well, and just so you know, my company, we really do try to eat our own food, dog food, whatever you want to call it. And just earlier this year, we've been in business for 20 years, more than 20 years, we realized we had a break and we had to, so this is like marriage. The day you think you don't need to work on your marriage and if you're engaged, you know, it never ends. And the day you go done, our culture is fine. You're ready. So, and by the way, these five dysfunctions, well, this was my third book I wrote it. It got published in 2002, I wrote it in 2001. It's selling more today than it ever has. And we had no idea that it was going to go so far beyond corporations. I wrote it for a growing technology company. That was the fiction. The military, churches, schools, professional sports, college sports, families, every kind of company, every industry, hospitals, we didn't realize how universal it was. So we were very blessed that way. Well, here's the five dysfunctions. The first dysfunction on a team is the lack of trust, which sounds very obvious. But that's just our people on the team capable of being vulnerable and saying, I don't know the answer. I think I screwed up. I need your help. You're actually smarter than I am at this. Can you teach me how to do that? Or I'm sorry, I was a jerk yesterday. Can they be emotionally butt naked? Trust is a function of knowing that the people sitting around the table are not gonna hide strengths or weaknesses, mistakes, successes, they're gonna come to the table and sit down and go, okay, I need your help or I'm worried about something. They're gonna be honest. You can't trust somebody who can't be honest about who they are, works and all. So that's the first dysfunction. And that's one of the most important things we do with executive teams, leadership teams, teams of any kind is we teach them how to be vulnerable to each other. Talk about who you are. And you know what they find? When they do that, it's like so liberating. They're like, you mean I can come to work and be fully myself? No, you have to be fully yourself because if you're not, people aren't gonna know how to act around you. So that's the first one, trust. The next one, and trust enables the next one which is if you trust each other, then and only then can you overcome the next dysfunction which is the fear of conflict. Conflict on a team, now that doesn't mean they're throwing binders at each other. It means if they disagree about anything important, they say so. And whether they're an Italian and Irish like me or they wave their hands and they yeah, yeah, yeah. Or whether they're culturally Japanese or New York or LA, every culture, but they're not holding back. They're saying I disagree and here's why. And if we're uncomfortable, that's okay because we're pursuing the right answer or the truth. And that's good. But remember, you have to trust each other because if you don't trust each other, you're not vulnerable, conflict is bad. Then it becomes politics. So the first one is the lack of trust. The next one is the fear of conflict. Conflict allows us to overcome the third dysfunction, which is the lack of commitment. People aren't going to commit to a decision if they didn't debate it. So if the three of us are sitting here and we run a business and we have to decide are we gonna open a new office or launch a new podcast or whatever else. The only way for us to get to the point where we leave that meeting on the same page is if we push back on each other and we really air our differences. And people think they're doing a good thing on a team when they don't have conflict. What they're doing is they're making it impossible for people to commit. So the inability or unwillingness to commit is the third one. Do you want to? Yeah, I just want to speak to that. You know, it's funny that you mentioned that. One of the things that we, AJ and I wanted to bring into other teammate wasn't so enthused about was it's like if your argument does not work, then you need to refine your argument. Coming here and make sure that you sell it better. Go back, work it out. And for him, it was, well, no, because I'm right. It's like, well, you're not, and I love this because what you were saying with this commitment of there should be some push-pull. The best argument should win. Everyone should come in and bring their idea in and through that, there will be a decision made. And then everybody, if they've been heard and if they've given their best argument and we've all chosen through this meeting, what our commitment's going to be, then we can all say that it was a successful meeting and we can all leave going, I know what the plan is and I'm good with the plan. Exactly. But in that case, the way you just described that, in order to engage in that conflict though and make it productive, you have to be vulnerable enough to say, maybe I'm wrong. Oh yeah, you're right. Oh, that's a great point, I hadn't thought of that. But when a person comes to a meeting and says, I'll engage in conflict and I will defend my answer and I will try to convince you regardless, they're not, there's no trust there. You're like, I don't trust that they're vulnerable enough to admit I might have a better idea. We actually had fake commitment because we would end these meetings, everyone would be on one page and then a few months would go by, no more few weeks even and we'd find ourselves having the same argument over again confronted with the same reasons that we already said were not reasons. And at that point, everyone else in the team can't commit because they're like, well, wait a second here. I don't know what direction I need to be rowing in because every time I thought we had commitment, I'm in another meeting where we're debating this again. Now it's one thing to come with new data, new facts. Okay, traffic is here, conversion is there, we're seeing from customers, their feedback is this. But to just stick to your guns, wait until there's another opening in a couple meetings and then blast this as Johnny says, play the same lick on the guitar. So I have this analogy that I use because I'm a musician in my life before all this and with the art of charm was playing in bands. And I was like- Oh, you look like you were in a band. Yeah, now I get it, that makes sense. Yeah, and we would all come in with different riffs and ideas for new tunes and you would hash them out in the room and the best ones won. Now I had, but there was always one guy who- Right. Who a week after week would bring in this same tired riff and it's like, listen, for the last three weeks we've jammed on that, it hasn't went anywhere and quit forcing this riff. Could at least go home and try to change it up a bit. But to come in here with the same riff after we've already voted no several times, this is just redundant. And why are you trying to bully us in to just for us? If you, this idea of that you just keep bringing it up enough that will eventually just cave in, which was exactly the issue that we were having with our business partner. And I had brought up this analogy to age. I was like, I've dealt with this before. This guy's waiting for us to just give up. Cave. Yeah. And that's why in a situation like that, what you have is a person who's not vulnerable enough to say, to celebrate like, hey, I'm wrong. Yeah. Hey, you guys were right. Hey, this riff sucks. You know what I mean? That is a sign of, if a person can't celebrate when they're wrong and celebrate when somebody shows them a better idea, that's a sign that they're not trustworthy because they're not vulnerable. They're insecure and that's a deal breaker. Well, one of the, something else to go along with that is when you are able to admit defeat or that you've been bettered, the riff that your buddy has brought in is now rocking the room. And it's like, when you can admit that and realize I have some work to do, so I'm gonna go home and refine the things that I was working on, I certainly know for myself that there was a freeing moment of not having to be right all the time and that collectively. If liberating. Oh, it is so liberating. And it's like, why wouldn't everyone else want this as well? However, it just shows you just how scared they are inside and how insecure and what they're working through with themselves or not working through to prohibit themselves from allowing themselves to do that. Yeah. Let's finish off the other two discussions. This is such a fun conversation because I'll say this now. Remember when you said when you go into a company and you're interviewing, it'd be nice if you could say, do the executives ever admit when they're wrong? Do they actually have good conflict? Do they commit to this? But obviously they're not gonna, I don't know. But that's what you really wanna know if you could be a fly on the wall and watch the executives because they set the tone for the culture. Okay. So we talked about trust, conflict, commitment. The reason why real commitment, not fake commitment, like, okay, I'll go along with it, but I don't really agree. I mean, like we've had it out. I get it. We might not have agreed completely, but the leader broke the tie and I understand why we were doing this. I'm in. I'm in. That enables the next and the most difficult thing a team has to do, which is to hold people accountable. When you see somebody later on doing something that's not quite right, either they're backing off on that decision or they're deviating from it or their behavior just isn't aligned with what we're talking about, that's when a team has to be able to say, hey, dude, what's going on? That's not what we agreed on. That's the hardest thing for teams to do. And let me just tell you, it's an act of love to say to somebody in your band, like, hey, you keep missing that beat. Some people say, how can you say that to them? It's like, because I love them and I love the band and I gotta tell them. And if an executive on your team or a team member in your workspace is doing something that's not in line with what you're doing, the best thing to do is go to the boss and wrap them out quietly and say, don't tell them. Is this to go, hey, I thought we agreed on this, what's going on, man? And they go, well, thanks for telling me. I guess I'm kind of confused, help me out. Sure, the best teams in the world do this. I love when I see a basketball team or a football team and a player goes to the other guys and goes, my bad. That was on me. And this is what you were talking about earlier. It's having good intentions and understanding and assuming that other people have good intentions, right? That's where the love comes from. It's like, I am holding you accountable because we agreed on it and I know you're not doing anything nefarious. You're trying and I just wanna make sure we're all trying on the same page. Exactly. This is by far the lowest score. We have an online team assessment. People take and they get back to the triangle with all the colors on it, green, yellow or red. This is the lowest average score because it's one thing for people to do all this. When it comes to that moment where you go, oh, I have to go tell them it's not good enough. We did a podcast recently called That's Not Good Enough. Those are the four words that people have to say to one another more at work. It's not a mean thing. It's like, oh, that's not good enough. But people don't like to do that. People don't like. So that's accountability. That's the fourth dysfunction. And the final dysfunction is just what we call the inattention to results. So it's the lack of accountability and then the inattention to results. Sometimes you have people on a team and the collective results of the team aren't really that important. It's just like, I kind of want my department to do well. In a band, it would be like, oh, my guitar solo looked pretty good. I don't really care if the song is good, but I look good. And it's like, we have to say, no, no, no, we are all about the collective good of the organization and the team. And too often you'll have a team member who's really all about my department and my staff and my budget. And it's like, no, no, no. It's gotta be the collective good of the team. So the dysfunctions are, the overcoming the dysfunctions are build trust, engage in conflict, really commit to decisions, hold each other accountable, focus on the collective results of the team. And it might sound simple, but it takes work. And for us, so we were given the book, all of us in the leadership team. I wanna hear about this, this is why. And it was one of those moments where Johnny and I read the book and it was such a great read. We put it down and immediately we started seeing stuff in ourselves. So it raised my self-awareness. I did not immediately, for whatever reason, and I know that people do this because this is where the other business partners slide, but I was like, wow, you know what? My inability to deal with conflict is leading the team astray. And because of that, we don't have this commitment. I need to work on this. And Johnny came to the table. That's vulnerability. And he was like, hey, you know what? I now see that there are dysfunctions here and I wanna do better. Meanwhile, the guy who bought us the books, the business partner who bought us the books and handed us the books sat in the meeting and called everyone else out on their dysfunction. Yeah. And we were sitting there going, I don't think that's how the book was supposed to go. Like let's commit to working on improving everybody. And he used it as an opportunity to sort of bully people. And we had to make a tough decision to let him go, not a cultural fit. And that's the other thing that I think is, for me in running the company and through my 20s and 30s now has been a really important lesson. It's like, it doesn't mean that person's terrible. Worker, terrible person, they're just not a good fit for this team. You have skills, you have talents. You're gonna go on to do amazing things. But what this team is focused on, what the culture we're striving for is, what our goals are, they're not in alignment. It's something else that we're... He's gonna be better off, you're gonna be better off. Oh yeah, you know, something else I wanna bring up. I mean, there was several people involved. And what's funny about this is even going over this now, it's all coming back to me. And I'm laughing because the two people who decided, oh, here's where we can both grow are still here. And everyone else who was just freaking out are now gone. And part of this, so this idea of getting commitment and having some conflict and everyone putting their ideas on the table. Well, one person left because they just saw, they saw it as AJ and I arguing, but they didn't see it as working through to get the best ideas. And then of course, so that person's gone. And the other person was, well, this is all great and as good as long as you're all following along my ideas. You're like, okay, well, that's not how this works either. And so now, you know, all these years later, it's like, well, yeah, and what is also great about this? And as I was mentioning earlier about how liberating this is, you know, a lot of these things with getting trust and having some, looking for the best ideas and then having the commitment after working that out of which one's the best and then having accountability to see these ideas through and then looking at the results, that is so much fun. And it's like, oh, this is how this works. And how could you not get excited about working in an environment like that? And this is what I wanted to discuss now and this is what's so key. It's like, okay, the realization huge, but this is fixable too. Everything we're talking about here can be improved. So what advice do you have for someone who's in a leadership position who has now realized that they are these dysfunctions on the team, they're part of it, there are other team members who are part of it? Yeah, well, no matter what you think your issues are and if you were to take the team assessment and you were to get green on trust and red on all the others, start with trust. So whatever you think it is, anything you can do to build trust. And so like, so here's the exercises we actually use. You can go do these things right now. The first thing we do is like baby steps on vulnerability. We will sit around with an executive team and I do it with executives of billion, multi-billion dollar companies and startups and I do it with my kids, you know, lacrosse team, or you know, any organization, churches, everybody else. I get the leaders together and I say, tell us who you are. And here's what I mean by that. Tell us where you grew up, how many kids were in your family and where you were in that order and what was the most difficult challenge of your childhood or not your inner childhood, just being a kid. And like 15 minutes later, cause it goes fast, everybody's sitting there having just said, you know, here's where I grew up and we were really poor or my dad died when I was young or we moved all the time, whatever it else. They all have amazing stories. And then I'm like, how many people knew all this? How many people learned something new and every hand goes up and goes, I worked with you for four years, I never heard any of this. And all we've done is help them realize a little bit of vulnerability is actually a comforting thing. Suddenly they're kind of admiring each other going, wow, I had no idea you went through that as a kid. This is amazing. And then we go, okay, let's go a little deeper now. Let's take a tool like the Myers-Briggs, we go really fast. Let's figure out what your personality is. No judgment, cause they're all good. You know, you're all wired the way God wired you. It's all good. And we have, I did this with 19, 13 year olds the other day in my office. My wife was with me. She goes, do their Myers-Briggs. And I'm like, I can't do their Myers-Briggs. I got 45 minutes. These kids were reading their one page type going, oh, I'm an ENTP. It says I move from one project to another and I don't finish. And it's like everybody in the room, the coach was taking pictures of the book. The kids were like laughing and talking about it. Suddenly everybody in the room is now going, oh, I know your strengths. I know your weaknesses. Can we call you on that? And they're like, of course this is who I am. So in a matter with an executive team in a matter of like two hours, they are having conversations about one another's relative strengths and weaknesses and inviting it and feeling like they're helping each other. Whereas if they had done that the day before, it would have felt judgmental and it would have felt risky. So we allow them to be more vulnerable and do trust in a safe way. And then we teach them how to have conflict. So if you could just start with trust and just say, now tell me your conflict profile. And one person says, well, when I was a kid we used to fight all the time. Another one says, well, I never saw my parents argue. Well, in my country to disagree with authority is, and then we go, okay, let's talk about how we're gonna meet in the middle here and figure out, have a good way of, you can do this in three hours a team can develop much greater trust and start to engage in conflict. And where can we find that? And the exercises, we have a book called overcoming the five dysfunctions of a team. So I wrote the five dysfunctions. And then we wrote a book called overcoming the five dysfunctions which essentially gives you all of the tools we use and the exercises from our consulting practice and a manager can go out and do that on their own. And this assessment that you mentioned? The assessment you can find on our website at tablegroup.com and you get the results right as soon as everybody figures it out, fills it out which takes like 25 minutes if that. Yeah, less than that. Then they get the results back and they sit down around a table and they look at their scores and it shows you which questions people filled like gave low scores and they go, oh, clearly we have to talk about these three things. And it's really liberated. It's like, wow, we knew that but why did we never identify that? So that team assessment and we've had almost half a million people do this assessment and it just teased up exactly the right conversation and it helps them understand is it trust that we're struggling with or conflict or all these things. So there's some things you can do in short order to really improve a team. Building trust and making a team better does not take months and years, it takes days and weeks. I know for me, after reading the book and realizing work that I need to do on myself, going back to that trust piece, the first thing I started doing was being open and honest with the team about my own mistakes as a leader. Decisions that I made that were wrong, things that I thought we could do that I could improve on and immediately it totally changed the way the meetings were run and the communication that was happening in the meetings. And it's so easy as a leader to look at everyone else's mistakes and be like, why is this person not performing? Why are they doing this? And it's so difficult to say, this is where I screwed up because you're the leader and everyone looks to you and you don't think about the flip side of well, if I'm not holding myself accountable and being vulnerable about these issues, then of course no one else wants to talk about it and be open about their mistakes. And of course these mistakes, they're gonna fester. They get swept under the rug until they explode in terrible results for the company. Right. And I will tell you, and it's an amazingly liberating thing as a leader to go because we tell people, don't let them see a sweat. You know, like the deodorant commercial, like you always have to be on and the truth of the matter is, they know you're sweating before you do. They know. So the best leaders are the ones that raise their arm up and point at their armpit and go, check this out. And people go, so you know, and they're like, of course I know. You know, I know. And they're like, okay, I trust you, let's talk about this. I will tell you this, as you're getting ready, you're engaged. As a parent, I've learned that acknowledging what I'm wrong in front of my kids actually builds a stronger relationship with them. And my parents, God bless them, different generation. I don't remember my parents saying they were wrong very much when I was growing up. You know, it was kind of like, be quiet, I'm right, I'm the parent. And I gained so much credibility when I go to my kids and go, I was kind of a jerk to you today. And they're like, yeah, I know. And that doesn't mean I do it like, because I want to be their buddy and win their popularity. I mean, I just have to convince them that I'll actually see it the way it is. We gain much more credibility by being vulnerable when we're leaders. It's crazy. Now, you also write for people who are not necessarily in a leadership position. And you talk about one of the most difficult positions or job killer is really feeling anonymous in an organization. What can we do to not feel anonymous in our organization and not be that cog? Yeah, a secondary part of our business, we help organizations to become more successful through their leadership teams. We are so bent on helping people not be miserable in their jobs. And every company out there is like, it's a war for talent. How do we get people to be more engaged and what do we need? Better food at the lunch or, no, no, no. People at work need three things that are free. And if you give them those three things, they're gonna bounce off the walls and love working there as long as you're paying them enough. You don't have to overpay. Overpaying people to work in a miserable job is a terrible idea. Pay them well, but give them the three free things they need. And the first thing they need is to be known. It's like, and that sounds so silly. It sounds like this is a kindergarten lesson. But I work with leaders and it's like, you have to take a personal interest in the employees who work for you. In their job and then how they're doing and in their personal life. And I don't mean if you're the CEO and you have a thousand employees, you gotta know everything. But how about your director ports? Take an interest in them. If you're the executive vice president of Nike and your boss, the CEO, is an interest in you as a person, you're not gonna love your job. And I've worked with professional football players who's the coaches are totally disinterested in them. And they're like, it's kind of a drag. I go to work and they don't really care. And I don't care in any job, your manager and man, if your manager's manager does it, it's even amazing. Take an interest in their lives. It's free. We know in our jobs has nobody will deny that it makes a difference to them in their work. Everybody will say, oh yeah, I love it when my manager's interested in me. And I'll say, why don't you do it for your people? I'm like, I don't know, I'm busy and I don't know, it might be awkward. And you know, we all live in California. So we think, well, if you make eye contact with a person at work, you're gonna get sued. No, you gotta love on the people and you've gotta do it by taking an interest. So that's the first thing. Anonymity is a total job killer. I've worked in jobs where nobody cared about me. I don't care if it was the sexiest, most high-paying job in the world. I was miserable. The other two things are then you have to let them know that their job matters to someone. And I don't care what their job is. I don't care if they're a doctor or doctors and priests and firefighters, they already know. Teachers, that's a vocation. Most people's jobs, they don't know. The job of a manager is to go tell their employee, I don't care if they're the receptionist sitting at the front desk. Here's why when you do a good job, you make my life better or you make somebody's life better. You matter here. And you're not telling them something that's not true. You're just being frank. Your job makes a difference to people. Too many managers don't do that. I think, well, they know. We told them at orientation. Our job as managers is to remind people constantly, hey, I noticed you did this really well today. Do you realize who that impacts? And do you realize how that helps the firm and how much better I feel because you do that? Nobody ever left a job and said, you know, my manager told me one more time why I made a difference. I'm out of that. And the last thing is people just need to know if they're doing a good job. They need to have some way of assessing not just the boss's opinion, but some sort of observable assessment, whether it's not always a metric, but some way of going, am I doing well? I don't know, let's take a look at your output. Yeah, it looks like you're doing great. So if a person is known, they're reminded constantly why their job matters and their work matters and they have some way of assessing their success, they're not leaving. If you give those three things to a person in a job, they're going nowhere unless they are so grossly underpaid that they just have to do it for their family. Well, these three things certainly allow people to feel safe. And when you feel safe, you can focus on doing your job rather than keeping up your shoulder. Wondering what's going on behind your back. And the other thing about this is where technology is at now and where it's going, we're continually having more and more people working from home and not in the same quarters or in these we work spaces where you might not even see people on your team for a few days. And though all this technology makes you being able to work remotely, well that's great and that's nice and you could go work at WeWorker, at Starbucks and do your thing, but without putting in the extra to reach out to talk to your team, then you're off on an island and it won't be too long before yourself or your teammates start to wondering, am I okay here? Am I doing the right things? Am I safe? And is what I'm doing contributing to this project? Yeah, it's a great point. I never thought about it safety. If you're exactly right, you go to work and you feel safe because you're like, all this is here, I can actually come here and feel good about what I'm doing. And you said something about virtual workers too. And it's interesting because I've always said we underestimate the challenge of virtual work. Just because technology allows you to communicate, there's something about human contact. That makes everything better. But here's the thing, you just helped me understand something and that is that if you have a virtual worker who you don't see but you take an interest in their lives, you're constantly reminding them why their job matters and you're allowing them to understand if they're succeeding, they will be better off than that guy sitting in the next or that gal sitting across the hall that you get to see who you've never asked them questions about their life. You don't tell them why it matters. In other words, I would rather people work together but if you're gonna work apart then overdo those other things and you're probably gonna outperform those people that work together that don't do them. For us, you're certainly going to. It's starting all of those meetings with wins and not just company wins, but personal wins. An opportunity to talk about what's going on in your life, what you're excited about, what you accomplished over the weekend, what happened with your kids. All those little moments are just as important as the task at hand to that individual on your team. Absolutely. You know, I'm gonna share something with you. I haven't written about this yet. We're gonna do a podcast about it one of these days but I think efficiency is overrated and effectiveness is underrated. And I think that people go like, we don't have time to do that stuff. And it's like, what? Oh yeah, we got a lot of meetings to go through. It's like, so you can't slow down to be human and you don't realize that when you're human they're gonna do like 10 times the amount of work. They're like, well, that's not efficient but it's effective. And we, I almost believe you have to be intentionally inefficient in order to be effective. We found that to be true in our company. And your point is what people aren't understanding is the lack of their effectiveness leads to more meetings. They probably would need less meetings if they were more effective. Exactly, which is inefficient. I wrote a book called Death by Meeting. Oh yeah. And everybody thought it was, so you're gonna say less meetings. And I'm like, no, no, no. More meetings, different kinds of meetings with really clear context, really compelling and interesting meetings. You're gonna get more work done. And they're like, yeah, but I just wanna spend less time in meetings. No, no, no. The bad meetings that you're having now are creating all this make work. Your effectiveness is gonna go through the roof if you just have good meetings. So it's one of those things that you have to see the bigger picture. One of the things we talk about here at The Art of Charm is leading from the seat that you're in. So even if you aren't a manager or you're not the leader, it is important for you to come into your job to be a leader from where you are. What in your mind makes that ideal team player and that ideal teammate? So yeah, most people are not CEOs. And most people aren't the leader of their organization. But they might be the leader of their team or their department. They might be an informal leader. To be an ideal team player, there's three qualities you have to have. And that's one of my most recent books. It's you have to be humble, which means it's about the team, it's not about me. Okay? Error against self-centeredness, ego-driven is a killer on a team. You have to be hungry, which means I'm not gonna do the minimum. If you ask me to do something, I'm gonna go above and beyond. I'm gonna figure out, maybe I could do a little better than that. Or maybe even a lot better than that. So hungry is that work ethic. And the third one is smart but not intellectually smart. It's emotionally intelligent. It's common sense around people and how do my words and actions affect them. If you hire people, and I believe this so strongly, because we've been practicing this for 20 years. If you hire people who are humble, hungry and smart, they are going to be wildly successful. And they're gonna figure out how to do the technical parts of their job. I mean, we're not talking about brain surgery or flying an airplane. There's technical requirements there. But most jobs, you take a humble, hungry, smart person, that trumps all of the technical skills that you think you need. So don't hire people that lack, that are ego-driven, lazy or emotionally clueless. And it changes everything. When we wrote that book, I thought that would be my first book that people would say, dude, this is way too simple. I wasn't even gonna write it. And people said, it's a book. That book is being used by so many people. They've changed their hiring criteria. I saw, there's a coach around here who puts humble, hungry, smart on his, on his helmets of his kids and there's a college that uses it for all their teams. Just this morning, I saw a photograph of a bunch of people who run a church who made a bracelet out of humble, hungry, smart. And they said, we're gonna all be like this. There's something simple and whole about those three things. My 17 year old son, who doesn't read my books generally, was in my office one day and he saw the humble, hungry, smart on the board and I explained it to him. He goes, oh, dad, that's dope. That's dope. He said, that's my friends. If you're humble, hungry, and smart, you're gonna be a good friend, you're gonna be a good teammate, you're gonna be, that's everything. What's missing? He was like, what's missing? So humble, hungry, smart is how, if you can do that, you're gonna be really successful in life. That's number one, exactly what we look for in terms of teammates and promoting people within the organization. And I love that your son pointed that out because surrounding yourself with that as friends is just as important. He went through his list of friends. He has a big group of wonderful kids, but, and he said, those are my three favorites. Oh my gosh, that's why. And this guy, oh, he lacks that. And this one lacks that. Now the good thing to do is, if you're really good friends, to go to somebody and be able to say, dude, I think you could improve in this area, that would really help you in life. But that requires a level of trust and vulnerability, actually. Now your latest book, The Motive, has two very different leaders. And I would love to wrap this on this concept because Johnny and I found it so fascinating and it really just dovetails with what we've been trying to do here on the show. What are these two leaders? And I think as the listener pays attention, you're gonna start to recognize some things in yourself that are really powerful. Yeah, you know, people, this is my 12th book. Gosh, I never thought I'd write more than two. And if somebody were to say, which book should I read first, I would say this one. Because it's not about how to be a better leader. It's about why you wanna be a leader in the first place. And there's two primary reasons to become a leader. One reason to be a leader, the not right reason, is people see it as a reward. You know, I like to say, when people are young, people say, go out and be a leader. You go to graduation speeches, and people say, go out and be a leader, change the world, I'm like, no! Don't do it unless you know why you want to. And if you're doing it because you think it's cool, and it's gonna make you more sought after and feel better about yourself, that's a really bad reason to be a leader. Because you're not gonna do the hard parts of your job. The real reason to be a leader is because you see it as a responsibility, it's a burden. And the economics of leadership are not very good. In other words, you're gonna put a lot more into it for others, then you're gonna get out of it for yourself. And if you go into leadership with that in mind, fantastic, then you're gonna take on the hard stuff and say, yeah, this is my burden, this is my job. It's like being a parent. It's like, why are you gonna be a parent? Because I think it sounds cool. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. The cool parts come every once in a while. The hard parts come every day. And if you're doing it because you think it's cool, you're not gonna wanna do the hard parts. So the motive is that these two leaders of two companies that get together to share ideas, and the one guy is clearly motivated by ego and by himself. And the other guy used to be and figured it out and is now motivated for the right things. And they have a very edgy, very conflict laden and very real conversation about this. And there's some twists and turns and some politics in there and some surprises. A lot of people that read my books say this is my best fiction. It's also my shortest. I think that helps. I believe we're in short. And I think that if a person is a young leader or any leader at all, this is the book to start with. Because what they can do is they can read it and say, oh, I'm a little off. Cause even I can look at my career and say there's times I was a leader for myself and it didn't work. So it's not like you're binary, it's black or white. It's like you can look at it and say, I need to adjust my motive. So it's just came out and maybe this will be the first book that sucks. I don't know. First readers tell me it doesn't, but I'm waiting for that book. Yeah, I doubt it. Johnny and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And it really is, I believe my evolution as a leader. When you are thrust into leadership role in your 20s, it's easy to fall into that reward oriented mindset. Absolutely. And even society actually encourages that. Absolutely. You look at what's going on on social media and how we elevate people and celebrate people. It is often times for that reward oriented leadership but flipping it. And this is something that Gary Vee preaches too that I'm a huge fan of is you work for your people. A good leader understands that each and every member of his team he is responsible for. It is not the other way around. Right, and when we look at the famous, people often say, who's the best CEO in the world? I'm like, you want a famous one, right? It's somebody who's not famous, who's doing their job really well and doesn't care if you know who they are. Exactly. Because we look at like Silicon Valley or these people in media and it's like, no, no, no, no, no. They're doing this for a different reason and usually they implode, usually it implodes. And the question is, are you willing, you talked about that before and people call that servant leadership, right? I don't like the term servant leadership. You know why? Because it implies that there's another kind that's valid. Right. That should be the only kind. It's like, so we're gonna hire you to be a leader. Oh, good. Maybe I'll be a servant leader. No, maybe not. Like, no, no, no, no. If you're not gonna be a servant leader, you're not gonna be a leader. Well, it's so difficult with everyone's expectations and wanting the company to go well and shareholders and then you're gonna bring in media and the attention of everybody else of what you're doing and who you are. How do you, I mean, that is just, that is ridiculous to expect one person to be able to manage that and hold the company in such regards and block out everything else. I mean, I just find that ridiculous. You guys, I have a question for you. If Gary, well, by the way, do you know who the CEO of Southwest Airlines is? Do you know what his name is? No. Isn't that awesome? Okay, this is a company. This is the most successful company in the last 40 years of American business. They have never failed to make money. It's an airline. Half of them had to get bailed out. They have never laid off employees for financial reasons. They have made money every time. Their customers love them. They've survived 9-11. They still don't charge for bags and they give, which is a huge hit to their bottom line. And you don't even know, if Gary Kelly walked in your office right now and sat down at the table, you wouldn't know who he was because you don't know what he looks like. And let me tell you, if he talked to you for an hour, you wouldn't know who he would not make you, he would not try to impress you. Yeah. He is a fantastic leader and he does not want to be famous. That's exactly what I wanted to say. That was my point. We've been so fortunate to start training these leaders of these massive companies and they are not the egotistical driven people that you suspect. They are behind the scenes, elevating their teammates, looking at everyone else and trying to celebrate everyone else instead of running to the cameras to tout their own success. And I would say even if they, they even hear anything about cameras or center of attention or an interview, they're like, get that out of here. And just something else about, so not only did they survive all that, they had a reality television show that they survived and you didn't see what you mentioned is named Gary Kelly, I believe. He wasn't running around on the show. I was like, no, it was about the company. And it was about their... Oh yeah, exactly. When you said, yeah, their reality first met them. I said to them, tell me about why you did that show. And they said, you know why? And by the way, they edited almost nothing out. Oh, it was raw. They said, we trust our people. Amazing. To do things right. And we, and you know why they eventually decided not to do it anymore? Is because they said, it just got to be too much about drunk people on air for playing TV. That was the show. They weren't worried about, they weren't worried about how they came across. They said, it just kind of got to be like, let's see another person throw up on a plane or try to hit somebody. But they were so raw about it. And you're right. It wasn't about the people at Southwest Airlines behind the scenes. The culture there is even better than what you've heard. They're not ego-driven at all. Some companies have a reputation for being good, but then you go there and it's like, I don't know. And I don't know what Disney's like, but you know, I always say like, you go to Disneyland. The happiest place on earth. And you figure that Mickey's probably smoking a cigarette and punching out Minnie behind the scenes. And you know, I don't know that they're really all that happy because they really market that. Southwest is totally genuine and it starts at the top. Thank you so much for joining us. You got us all fired up. Your books get us fired up. So many great lessons there. One more time. Where can our listeners find that great assessment and the rest of your books? Okay, if you go to www.tablegroup.com, tablegroup, like kitchen table, tablegroup.com, you can find all of our stuff. And I've just started doing a podcast. I love being on podcasts. And we just started doing one, me and Cody are a partner of mine here. And it's called At the Table with Patrick Lynchoni. And it's like this. I could sit and keep talking. It's just liberal arts and business mixed together. Love it. So thanks for having me here. This has been a blast. Really, really likewise. Thanks for coming on and keep writing. We love your books. Love the parables and so many great lessons there for everyone. Thanks guys. God bless.