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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
If I define servant as helping you to help us to succeed, well, then it's got a different perspective. I'm not doing this to show you that you that I I will kiss your backside or I'll lick your shoes. I'm doing this because I believe in you. I want to invest time in you, and I want to therefore, to serve your best interest. I wanna help you to succeed.
Dave Lutes:And by the way, as a team, we're gonna do that for each other.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative. Bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow rate and review Good Morning HR wherever you get your podcast.
Mike Coffey:You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at good morning hr.com. The business section of any bookstore will have a leadership subsection describing the philosophies of everyone from Jack Welch, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, to Patrick Lencioni. There will also likely be a number of titles concerned with servant leadership. We've all heard that term and likely have different opinions as to what it means and its efficacy in the business world. My guest today is David Lutz.
Mike Coffey:Dave to his friends. Dave is the principal at McLuhan Martin Associates where he strives to help make organizations healthy and whole by helping leaders lead with authenticity, transparency and servant leader hearts. He is a former minister, adviser to NATO and strategic adviser to global firms. He is also a contributor to BRAINS with a z magazine on topics related to leadership, purpose, and personal growth. Welcome to Good Morning HR, Dave.
Dave Lutes:It's great to be here. Thank you very much.
Mike Coffey:We all approach our work with our own philosophical background and you're quite open that your Christian background drives much of your thinking about servant leadership. What is servant leadership from your perspective?
Dave Lutes:It's an interesting question, and it's come up many, many times in recent years as I've worked in a lot of different countries and different cultures and different religions, places that, don't ascribe to the bible or to Christian faith. It's about empathy. It's about caring. It's about giving enough time, mental, emotional time, to push somebody up because it's a good and right thing to do. Now the problem with that is that a lot of people don't care.
Dave Lutes:A lot of people are in it for themselves. A lot of people when you talk about a restructuring or the introduction of a new performance management system, which is supposed to help the company or organization succeed and achieve reach its goals, it's very seldom about what can I do with that report? How can I help that report who looks to me to be their leader and their guide and their coach and their mentor even? What can I do for them to help them succeed? Now many of the managers and leaders I work with are you know, if they're honest, they will say, I want to do this better performance management, for example, because it will make me look good.
Dave Lutes:Or I will achieve the business objectives, And it's a what's in it for me sort of mentality. The point behind my perspective on this, I guess, and it changes depending on where I'm working, is I believe in investing in people. I believe that there's a latent collection of skills, motivation, talent that God has put in people. I believe that we're born with certain bents and interests, maybe. Yes, it's shaped by culture.
Dave Lutes:Yes, it's shaped by family. Yes, it's shaped by circumstance. And that varies wherever I go in a developing country or a poverty stricken region or in the wealthiest part of the Middle East, there's still that inherent thing inside people that I believe God put there that if we're smart, if we care, if we're loving, if we have any kind of empathy for the people that we work with or who report to us, I want to tap into that. If I tap into that, if I find a way to help them realize that not only do they have it, but that it's welcome and that it could be developed and can be used, that kind of development and pushing them up and encouraging them in their role and in their life is good for everyone. Everyone wins.
Dave Lutes:The person goes away from the day of work or the week at work saying that was a good day because I could use my knowledge, my skill, my heart, the things that make me want to just be good about what I do, to be excellent at what I do. They win. Their family wins. The organization wins. And and more and more, I'm hearing around the world that servant leadership is the thing.
Dave Lutes:It's the buzz the buzz phrase, the concept that everyone wants to adopt. And the purpose and reason for doing it is not because they have a Christian motivation or a spiritual or religious motivation, but because they're recognizing it's smart business. That's the challenge. Because you cannot fake empathy. You cannot fake being a true servant who cares about another person.
Dave Lutes:You can learn listening skills, feedback skills, interpersonal communication skills, etcetera etcetera. And we and I do training on that. I've done that in 43 countries for dozens of years, thousands of people. And I love to see the light come on in their eye when they realize, you know, that's something I can do well, not only because it makes my job easier, but because it actually benefits somebody else. Now I've got I've died and gone to heaven when that light comes on.
Dave Lutes:That's what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, a lot of people think that it's a it's a tool you turn on in order to get the results. I'm
Mike Coffey:saying it's
Dave Lutes:yeah. I'm saying it's possible that you can turn it on and actually truly care while you do it, and you can be authentic while you do it. And one last thing on that point, what I'm spending so much time on these days, both from a Christian perspective as I coach leaders, Christian leaders, and companies, organizations, is that, I'm trying to say to them, you don't have to be a fake. You can be authentic. If you can fake it, you can fake it until you faith it is the one thing I'm saying with Christian.
Dave Lutes:Get to a point where it becomes part of an extension of who you are. Being authentic, being transparent, being real is actually leads to trust. And there will come a time when you have to be a dictator, or you have to be a coach, or you have to be a friend, or you have to be a trainer. You have to adopt certain roles as a leader and manager. And but if you've built trust and you've done it authentically and consistently with a heart that cares, then there when I have to be that dictator, they'll say, fine, boss.
Dave Lutes:I'm with you. I trust you. There's a time when you sort of pull the plug on a project and they're gonna say, we get it. We understand. We trust you.
Dave Lutes:I'm trying to help more and more people, leaders. My phrase, I guess I've become I'm not famous for it, but I I I get it quoted back to me a lot. Don't try to boil the ocean. Boil a couple of teacups. You can't change a whole culture overnight.
Dave Lutes:Things got this way because they got this way. Give somebody who reports to you or a colleague that you work with one taste of a better way that you see is helping them to grow, learn, and improve that builds a relationship, that builds a partnership, that builds collaboration. Don't try to boil all the teacups, just boil 1 or 2. Get some experience of being authentic. Get some experience of building trust.
Dave Lutes:Word gets out and a momentum is built. And eventually, by giving people better experiences of how to live and work and move and have their being, as we say, quoting scripture, in the workplace, everybody wins in the end.
Mike Coffey:So let's talk about that term servant, because I think that's what messes a lot of people up. Because it sounds like to a leader, I'm becoming the subordinate of those that I lead. I'm going to give them whatever they're asking for. And, you know, I'm I'm gonna be that milquetoast leader who's a pushover. So what does servant leadership look like in execution?
Dave Lutes:Yeah. I mean, it is tricky. It really is. And different cultures have a different perspective on that word. So we're using more more and more we're using words like or phrases that say, to be humble or to be, have an attitude of care or support doesn't make you weak.
Dave Lutes:Humility isn't weakness. Openness and transparency doesn't say you're or being vulnerable doesn't equal weakness. Now it's hard to to break through some of the cultural barriers on that. But if I define servant as helping you to help us to succeed, well, then it's got a different perspective. I'm not doing this to show you that you that I I will kiss your backside or I'll lick your shoes.
Dave Lutes:I'm doing this because I believe in you. I want to invest time in you, and I want to therefore, to serve your best interest. I wanna help you to succeed. And by the way, as a team, we're gonna do that for each other. And by the way, my door is open.
Dave Lutes:And by the way, I don't mean just it's open literally. I mean, I'm open to hear, truly hear what you feel, what you think. And then I connect this and one of the tools that I use, one of the approaches that really impacts this is a simple thing. We've talked about this in every book, delegation. Well, Dave, what do you mean?
Dave Lutes:How does that connect? Well, here's the deal. There are classically 5 5 phases of delegation. Here's what I'd like you to do. Go away and do it, and I'm gonna watch you like a hawk.
Dave Lutes:I'm on your shoulder. I'm looking over your shoulder to see that you do it right. Phase 2, go away and do it. Call me if you need me. Phase 3, go away and do it and report back to me at the end of the week.
Dave Lutes:Or let me know that you need an urgent solution. Phase 4, go away and do it and, get you know, carry on. And if there's any real issue, then, you know, we'll deal with it. Phase 5, go away and do it. I trust you.
Dave Lutes:Now adopting that attitude, I I use I built a tool once called wiredness about know yourself, know your people. And in that, I'm basically trying to say, mister leader, mister manager, do you know your particular style? Are you in touch enough? Are you self aware enough? Or do you have enough emotional intelligence to know what your style is in given circumstances?
Dave Lutes:Now in one of the illustrations that I use when I get a team of people who have done that exercise, and we've got in there, we've got expressers, we've got drivers, we've got relators, we've got analyzers, we've got developers, people with a particular bent and bias toward leading, speaking, communicating in a certain way. So I said, well, let's imagine we're all getting into a car together. We're gonna go on a trip. The expressor says, yes. Great.
Dave Lutes:Fantastic. We're gonna go on a trip. It's amazing. It's gonna be so much fun. Go go.
Dave Lutes:Yes. This is great. And the driver says, you sit there. You sit there. I'm driving.
Dave Lutes:No debate. Sit there. Be quiet. You know? The relator says, you know, we haven't had a chance to talk for a long time, to really just talk.
Dave Lutes:This is gonna be good. Let's sit together. Let's reconnect. Let's get find out what's really going on. And the technical the analyzer person says, what?
Dave Lutes:You're gonna do what? When? How? You're not serious. You don't even have a map.
Dave Lutes:Have you even thought this thing through? You don't have the right kind of vehicle, and they analyze the whole thing. And the developer says, oh, this will be a chance that where we can really maybe get on a detour and go and learn something new that we weren't planning, etcetera, etcetera. So I try to get people to say, who are you? Do you really know yourself well enough?
Dave Lutes:And then and if you've built some trust with your people in a certain circumstance, you're gonna have to be the driver, and they're still gonna trust you. And some other times, you're gonna be that door is gonna be open, and you're gonna demonstrate that you're really truly a good relator. You really want to be alongside them. What I'm you doing with all of that is to help people to realize that helping other people learn, grow, and improve because I care about you is not weakness. It's not stupid.
Dave Lutes:It's not irrelevant. It actually is smart business. We then build teams. We communicate better. We connect better.
Dave Lutes:We solve problems better. We set goals better. And, so I'm adopting the I'm using the language of delegation. I'm using the language of emotional intelligence to help people realize that this isn't, sacrificing your dignity in order to or your power or your position in order to kiss somebody's feet. You know, I mean, it's got there's a lot of practical good there.
Dave Lutes:Now, yes, the word servant is an issue. I get it. I really do. But when I put it in delegation terms, feedback terms, empowering other terms, then then we make some progress. One one aspect of this that really helps, and I use it a lot, and it doesn't seem to matter what course I'm delivering or what coaching subject we're working on.
Dave Lutes:I help people to look at 2 different types of cultures, and I create a dichotomy between them. We got the command and control culture, and we've got the empowered culture. Now everybody's saying, yes, we've gotta be an empowered culture. That's what the world is doing today. We believe in empowering our people, yada, yada, yada.
Dave Lutes:When we actually dig a little bit deeper, we find that command and control is really where it's at. Commands, quotas, targets, KPIs, you either meet them, you either reach them, or you don't. If you don't, you fail. If you do, we'll reward you. We'll punish you.
Dave Lutes:It becomes a weapon of choice as part of the performance management system. And that's very dictatorial. It's very militaristic model. So I create that dichotomy, and then I do the empowered model, which is more about transparency, authenticity, breaking down barriers, driving out fear, restoring joy and pride of workmanship by collaboration, by coaching, by mentoring, by allowing for creativity and innovation to to sort of be discovered and be used. What's been interesting that when I have done that, and then I get them to do an exercise, and everybody's going, amen.
Dave Lutes:Hallelujah. Yeah. We're we we we are empowered. And then we I set them up for failure by giving them an exercise where they plot themselves and their attitudes toward different aspects of life at work, and they all come out on the other end of the scale as as command and control people. And then they start to blame their boss.
Dave Lutes:He's the one that's the problem. I really wanna be empowered. I really want to sort of grow, learn, and improve, but he won't let me. Anyway, on and on it goes, But, yes, the servant language is tough. It really is tough.
Mike Coffey:Well and I don't think I just wanna clarify. You're not saying KPIs in and of themselves or performance measures and performance feedback on a regular basis, and I advocate for performance feedback and systems that gives you performance feedback daily as as close to real time as you can so that people can make adjustments. You're not saying that those are necessarily command and control, authoritarian, or No.
Dave Lutes:Not at all. It's how you use them.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Dave Lutes:Yeah. I mean and and KPIs are notoriously used as a weapon of choice. It sets people up for failure, not because there's there's there's 2 problems. 1 is we don't know how to cascade them down to a personal level, and we intend and then we either set we set people up in a way for not intentionally, but it's set set up for people to not meet the mark. We don't examine process.
Dave Lutes:I'm sorry. I'm speaking. I'm British also, by the way. We don't look at the process and see that it's not optimized or that there's weakness or there's discrepancies, overlap, duplication, rework. We blame the worker for not reaching the goal, the KPI.
Dave Lutes:But we but only management, as doctor Deming used to say, the only men 95% of all problems with all process can only be fixed by management intervention. So, resetting the goal in order to make it tougher or easier doesn't actually improve the situation. So therefore, an attitude of heart, a posture that says I'm with you to help improve the process so that you can do your job better. You can be empowered to take control, and we all win when we get reach the goal.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning. HR is brought to you by Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. Let me ask you a question. Would you want to know if your next accounting candidate was convicted of embezzlement and sent to prison 8 years ago?
Mike Coffey:Or sexual assault or murder? In most states, an employer can legally consider that information. However, to comply with the most restrictive states like California, most background screening companies don't share convictions older than 7 years with their employer clients. At Imperative, we give our clients all the information that we can legally report and that to our knowledge, they can legally use. That doesn't mean that they won't necessarily hire someone for that older offense, but at least they're armed with the information so they can determine if it's relevant.
Mike Coffey:You can learn more about how Imperative helps our clients make well informed decisions about the people they involve in their business at imperativeinfo.com. If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been pre approved for 1 half hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information, visit goodmorninghr.com and click on research credits. Then select episode 170 and enter the keyword servant, that's s e r v a n t. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:And now back to my conversation with Dave Lutes. So you've touched on on on some of this, but as a servant leader, what does as I'm talking with, someone on my team let's say I'm a servant servant leader. I'm I'm really trying to do this right. I truly do care about this person, and they they're having performance issues and they're not hitting target. Maybe there's some behavioral issues along with some of that.
Mike Coffey:What, in that servant leadership model, what does that conversation or that approach look like? How do I respond to those kind of circumstances differently than you would in, like, a command and control or other environment?
Dave Lutes:One of the things that that I stress when we're dealing with this kind of thing, especially in the performance management world, It's not only what you do, but how you do it. I'm not gonna just measure you know, we we have performance indicators as part of KPIs, but we don't have behavioral indicators. And so if you're a level 3 and you're really good at what you do in a particular area, but yet by the time you've finished the quarter, you've reached your goal but everybody hates you and wants to kill you, well then we may have an issue. I've actually encountered that with a group in the Middle East once where I got this guy to stand up and say, you have a team of 5. You've set your goals and your targets.
Dave Lutes:Yes. We have. We've achieved them. How do your people feel about that? And everybody else in the room started laughing because they knew what was really going on.
Dave Lutes:And, I finally, I stopped embarrassing him, and I talked with his boss during the break. And I said, what's with this guy? And his answer was quite revealing. Oh, him. He said, well, 2 of the leading guys in his team, the best we've ever had, have left.
Dave Lutes:We've lost them. 2 others are wanting to leave. We're trying to keep them. And the 5th one, he's actually under, he's being, controlled by HR. I can't think what the word is.
Dave Lutes:Because he started performance management. Yeah. He's he'd be threatened to kill the boss. Oh. So Wow.
Dave Lutes:You know, that's a good reason. So the point behind it is that how to there's one of the sorry. I'm gonna backtrack slightly. One of the things that comes up when it comes to poor performance and an attitude or behavior that's not helpful. I'm dealing more and more with the question of fit.
Dave Lutes:We talk about knowledge, skill, ability, and other special characteristics related to a job, KSAOs. Yeah. When I deal with that a, I talk about attitude as well now. And I'm saying they on paper, they may be perfect. When it comes to performing against a set of criteria or some goals that have been agreed, it looks like he or she can do it.
Dave Lutes:But the problem we have is they don't really fit. Their attitude is, I wish I was somewhere else. I wish I had it. And and and and they may not even like the boss. They may not like you.
Dave Lutes:I mean, if you look at the top ten reasons why people leave organizations, I mean, number 2 is relationship with their line manager. And the number 1 on the list, the reason why they stay is because they feel invested and cared for and have a career path. You know what I mean? So, you know, I think that a manager who has a difficult relation or has a colleague or a report that's not performing well or has other issues is to well, if you if you can't create an a communication atmosphere that it tells that individual, I care about you. I support you.
Dave Lutes:I'm not wanting to punish you. I'm wanting to help you to discover what it is that gets in the way. Do you agree, by the way, that it's getting in the way? You know? And, and let's work on what we can do.
Dave Lutes:And it may mean finding an alternative career path. It may mean moving to another department. I mean, when when I talk about the steps of performance management these days, and this connects very well, I've done this with several organizations. They wanna put in a software HRMS system that just controls their life and makes it all better. I said, no.
Dave Lutes:You gotta have a blind assessment first. I'm gonna do my assessment. You're gonna do my your assessment, and we're not gonna compare notes until we have a face to face. Then we're gonna discuss why we don't agree on the score. And then I'm gonna say, well, let's talk about the goals for next year.
Dave Lutes:Here's what I have in mind. My next question to you, what do you think? I hired you to do the job. I believe you you're capable, but I need to know what do you think. Is that goal possible?
Dave Lutes:And you need to give me and be open about receiving feedback when they say, no. It's not because I've not been trained. I don't have a good team. There there's wrong supplier internal supplier relationships, whatever, whatever. But I'm not dictating to them a KPI or a goal that's immovable.
Dave Lutes:It's a flexible negotiated goal. Now let's talk about your development, etcetera, etcetera. You know, that's a healthy conversation to have. And so it's not easy, but it it it you can deal with it if the manager has reached a point where they recognize that person needs help and I'm part of the solution. If I don't care about them, if I don't have empathy for them, well, it's almost like a it's a nonstarter in many many times.
Dave Lutes:So, yeah, I don't know if that answers the question. I've kind of skirted around it.
Mike Coffey:You know, one of my favorite books, business books is Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey and Rajasodia, and it covers a lot of that kind of thing. I mean, one of their big things is is, you know, talking about leaders who are about we rather than me, and you mentioned that earlier, And, you know, involving all the stakeholders, and that leader's main job is to make sure that the team has what they need to be successful. And to be successful, you've got to have, you know, emotional and psychological safety. You've got to have all those things that that we've heard a thousand times but we seem to have a really hard time implementing in a lot of organizations. I see leaders, you know, who are great leaders in organizations in one silo of the organization whereas there's chaos and everything else and or, you know, completely different leadership styles in other parts of the organization.
Mike Coffey:Or I'll see senior leaders who are truly what you would call the servant leader. They're truly that person who's, you know, actively working to be engaged with their employees to understand what their reports need in order to be successful, giving them the support and resources, taking their feedback to heart, all of those things. But then below them, at, you know, level 2 levels down, they've got they've they've got managers who aren't, you know, living that and are still most most concerned, not about the organization's performance, but about their own performance, their own you know, what what this will mean for me in my next review if I execute on this well. How do you build a culture that that has servant leadership that really flows from and I'm assuming it's gotta go from the top down. I think it's almost you know, it sounds like it would be almost impossible just to to to spread it from the bottom up.
Mike Coffey:But, but if you disagree there, let me know. But, you know, how do you build that culture?
Dave Lutes:You can't. Sorry. I'm done. I can't answer the question.
Mike Coffey:Okay. It's Well, thank you for listening, folks.
Dave Lutes:It's, it's not easy. And again, I'm back to the silly analogy. The simple phrase is don't boil the ocean, boil a couple of teacups. I worked with an organization in the in England some years ago where they wanted they recognized they needed to change their culture. And it was forced on them because the government they were a a public sector body.
Dave Lutes:The government forced them to become more like a private sector organization, including things like they would have to tender for a construction contract like any other any other private organization. Anyway, so they were saying we need help with redefining our values and redefining our mission and vision, etcetera. So I got to take away the whole leadership took the whole leadership away for a weekend, and, and I got them to work on creating a new set of values. I said because your entire talent management framework, the way in which you do business, has got to be driven by your philosophy of people. If you don't believe in people's capability to do a good job, well, then you're not gonna invest in them.
Dave Lutes:They're gonna be commodities that help you to achieve some goal, etcetera. So, anyway, we talked about all the way that they could look at their values. And, we got to the Sunday afternoon, and I was shocked. And I and and I and I blame God for this because I came I put my Christian thing a little bit too strongly, but I felt, you know, I felt proud of myself. But at the same time, this is what they came up with.
Dave Lutes:Our number one value, the number one thing we're going to put on our website to say we believe, we believe all people who join this organization will be loved and accepted unconditionally. Number 1. I go, no. Number 2, you can fail in this organization as long as you have a you are willing to fail forward, but we will then pick you up, dust you off, and help you to be loved, accepted, and and succeed. And number 3 was something about we will answer every phone call within 3 rings or something like that.
Dave Lutes:Anyway, so I said to them, please, guys, don't do this. But, Dave, you you you you were pushing us down this road. And I said, no. But no, no, no. Don't do this.
Dave Lutes:Here's what I want you to do. Don't boil the ocean. You're trying to boil the ocean. Boil a couple of teacups because I'm worried that you're gonna go public with this on Thursday with posters and stuff all over the Internet and on the walls that say this is what we believe and what we do. You've got 16,000 people here who are gonna go home and get sick and get their resumes out Mhmm.
Dave Lutes:Because they're not gonna believe it. Don't do this. What do you recommend? Well, I said, each of you steal 2 or 3 of your reports. Who report to you?
Dave Lutes:Vice presidents, directors, whatever. Work with them for 6 months trying to be different, trying to be caring, trying to be a good listener, trying to accept and and love them, if you like, unconditionally. Work with them to discover what this new relationship, how it's fleshed out in practice. And then after some time, get them to take 2 or 3 of their direct reports to do the same thing. And then let's see, after a year, say, whether or not this has taken root and whether it really works.
Dave Lutes:And I'll be here. I'm around the corner. Let's get together, renew, refresh, tweak, and adjust. What's not working? Let's make it better.
Dave Lutes:But whatever you do, do not overpromise and then underdeliver. Don't boil the ocean. Boil a couple of teacups, which I mean, 2 direct reports. And they didn't listen. And within a year, 6 of those 9 guys were fired and were gone.
Dave Lutes:And I got a call from 1 of the vice presidents, one of the guys that was there, who did try to do what I recommended. He called me up and said, well, we've had some problems. And I said, dude, it's all over the news. You know, it's on TV. I've seen it.
Dave Lutes:I live around the corner. You know, this is a big deal. He said, well, can you come back in and help us to put some of those principles into practice? And let's do let's not boil the ocean. Later, he became the chief executive.
Dave Lutes:But it was a really interesting lesson for me in that we can have the grand vision. We can try to sell the servant thing, the heart thing, and we can talk a good game, but then we don't walk the talk using the old adage. Mhmm. And the idea is that people don't read the Bible. They read us.
Dave Lutes:You know, I can't hear what you're saying because your life is speaking too loudly. And just start small. Start with a couple and let it have its own momentum and its own its own force. You know, I kind of believe that works. It's harder.
Dave Lutes:The bigger the organization, the harder it is.
Mike Coffey:But, you know, it's interesting that that you you related that story because when I'm talking to leaders about values and and crafting their values, we we've worked with some some of our clients on some of those kinds of issues. And I tell them, once you've nailed down what your values are, if those values are not already omnipresent in the organization and sometimes you'll sit down with an organization and define their values, and they this is this is what we truly value in the organization already. And we see that, and that's what we wanna hold on to. And those are the right values for to get what we need to get done done, and we're all on board with it. But if you're if you're talking about aspirational values, we know to get to the level we want to, we're gonna have to change the things we value as an organization.
Mike Coffey:You know? And and do not go like you said, don't go put those on posters and start publishing it. And don't put it on a blog post or start telling your customers or using it as a marketing material. Do it quietly. Don't tell anybody you're changing it.
Mike Coffey:And as you said, 6 months from now, you'll know if it's working or not. And you may have to tweak it back or not and revisit what worked, what didn't. Maybe you've got the wrong people on the wrong bus. Maybe there's you know, maybe 3 of your leaders are on board with it. They've truly been treating their people that way, and their people are in responding in kind by how they were treated.
Mike Coffey:And you've got that one outside leader who and it's almost always your sales guys, your sales your business development, your sales leaders. They're the ones who often have, you know, more challenges in changing the behaviors because that's what's made them most successful. And it's almost a drinking game on on this podcast, me throwing sales leaders under the table. But it's you know, maybe you have to have a leader who gets off the bus. This isn't what they really value, and there's nothing wrong with it.
Mike Coffey:We're not saying these are good values or bad values, but these are the values that we're gonna this is what the behavior the the priorities we're gonna value as an organization. And we gotta be willing to all get on board or some people have to leave.
Dave Lutes:Yeah. No. I agree completely. I mean, it's and it's not an ultimatum. It's, it's a it's an envisioning that says, here's who we are, who we and here's where we are.
Dave Lutes:Here's what we believe now. Here's what we believe should be part of who we are in the future. And if if you can't buy into that I mean, I'm sorry. It sounds a bit hard, but you're not gonna be happy.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Dave Lutes:If you're you know, we wanna create soil for people to to grow in. And if you don't wanna be part of the of the alternative fertilizer other than the stuff that you might wanna use on a regular basis that doesn't smell very good, well, then you may have to find an alternative career path, and we'll help you do it. You know, we're not gonna fire you, but we you know, we'll help you find something else because you don't fit. It's about fit at the end of the day. And that's about heart, and that's about attitude and all the rest.
Mike Coffey:That is a great place to end it. Thanks for joining us today, Dave.
Dave Lutes:My pleasure. Absolute pleasure.
Mike Coffey:And thank you for listening. You can comment on this episode or search our previous episodes at goodmorninghr.com or on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. And don't forget to follow us wherever you get your podcast. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at robmakespods.com, and thank you to Imperative's marketing coordinator, Mary Anne Hernandez, who keeps the trains running on time. And I'm Mike Coffey.
Mike Coffey:As always, don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week and until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.