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The Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast brings together amazing leaders, entrepreneurs, and experts to share the successes, challenges, and secrets to living and leading as a VIBRANT Leader.
Tune-in each week as Nicole Greer interviews a new Vibrant Leader.
Email her at nicole@vibrantculture.com
[00:00:00] Announcer: This is the build a vibrant culture podcast, your source for the strategies, systems, and insights you need to turn your dreams into your destiny. Every week we dive into dynamic conversations as our host, Nicole Greer interviews, leadership, and business experts. They're here to shed light on practical solutions to the challenges of personal and professional development.
[00:00:21] Now here's your host, a professional speaker, coach, and consultant, Nicole Greer.
[00:00:29] Nicole: Welcome, everybody, to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer, and I am here with another amazing guest, Paul Morton. Let me tell you all about him. Joining us today is Paul Morton, a seasoned CEO, leadership expert, and the visionary behind the Practical Leadership Academy.
[00:00:49] Paul knows that many managers find themselves in leadership roles by accident. They're thinking, did I sign up for this? They are promoted for their technical skills without ever being shown how to manage people effectively. I just want to say, amen. His work centers on the practical steps managers can take to do the things they know they should be doing, but were never taught.
[00:01:11] Would you like to be taught? You need to call Paul. Through his academy and his practical leadership podcast, Paul distills decades of experience in actionable strategy. And that's what they say, don't they Paul? They're like, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And they need help building strong, cohesive teams.
[00:01:28] His guiding principle is servant leadership only. We love a Robert Grittenleaf. Making others successful is the true mark of a great leader. Paul's here to share his passion for transforming leadership and ensuring every manager can lead with confidence and clarity. Welcome to the show, Mr. Paul Morton.
[00:01:47] How are you?
[00:01:48] Paul Morton: I am very well, all the better to be here with you today, Nicole. Thank you very much for that wonderful introduction.
[00:01:55] Nicole: Yeah, you're welcome. So tell us where you are because you have this really cool accent.
[00:02:00] Paul Morton: Well, I'm a Scottish expatriate living in England.
[00:02:03] Nicole: Okay.
[00:02:04] Paul Morton: I came down from Scotland in 1999, just before the millennium, to live in London, and I stayed, came down for a job, and I stayed down here for the weather. It's a darn sight warmer in England than it is in Scotland, even though it's a ...
[00:02:16] Nicole: That's fantastic. That's fantastic. All right. I've been to your beautiful city one time. It was 25 years ago, but my daughter was like two years old. And I, my, my husband had one of these little backpacks that you put the kids in and she had this, and it was actually freezing cold, Paul, in December in London.
[00:02:39] Paul Morton: It gets that way. It does.
[00:02:41] Nicole: And she was in this little pink outfit and she had this little white like fur on that on the hood of her little jacket and every time we got on the tube, they would say oh, she's a lovely littlin. Oh I just love that so much.
[00:02:57] Paul Morton: I like it.
[00:02:58] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you're here. And I'm, I want to know a little bit about the Practical Leadership Academy.
[00:03:05] So you've put together a whole school.
[00:03:07] Paul Morton: Absolutely. It's my daughter's fault. I've got two kids. One is, my son's 10, my daughter's 12, and she came to me a few years ago and she said, Dad, can I have a job? Now, she didn't really want a job. What she wanted was more money. She wanted some pocket money.
[00:03:21] Nicole: Well, I don't blame her.
[00:03:23] Paul Morton: You're allowed to work here when you're 13.
[00:03:25] Okay, so we send the children down the mines or up the chimneys when you're 13, or paper round or working in a cafe or something like that. But it got me thinking that at some point she was, at some point soon, she's going to enter the world of work. My fear is that she's going to meet me. She's going to meet me as I was as an appalling manager of people, the most junior, most inexperienced person who is in their turn given the most junior, most inexperienced new employees, right?
[00:03:55] So that new person then has the newest, worstest manager as their first impression of what management and leadership should and could look like. And I was fairly determined not to let that happen. So I did some back of the envelope mathematics. And I worked out that if I managed to touch the lives of 150,000 people here in the United Kingdom, I would get a 1 in 10 chance of one of the people that I had influenced in some way being my daughter's first manager. Yeah, okay, fine, causation, correlation, back of the fact, back at maths. But that was kind of my thinking. And from there, it led me to think about what the biggest challenges I had as a leader in my last roles. And it was that the people that I was promoting in all parts of the business were really, really good engineers and marketeers and salespeople, particularly salespeople. Excellent performers in their roles, but sucked at managing teams. They were abysmal, they were foul. Not because they weren't wonderful, wonderful human beings.
[00:05:07] Nicole: No, they're great people.
[00:05:08] Paul Morton: Nobody had ever said to them, Hey, by the way, your job isn't about doing it. It's about getting it done. Your job isn't about you being great and successful. It's about the magnanimity you need to express and show and see the other person grow, the other person be successful, put the other person at the center of your universe. By the way, that's really, really good for you as an individual, as a human being, to Moving your own ass out of the center of your movie and putting somebody else in there makes you a greater person.
[00:05:44] Nicole: Yeah.
[00:05:45] Paul Morton: It elevates you as a being. Anyway, so that's a long, long way of saying I came up with an idea for a course and I tried to sell it to people. So that's the long version.
[00:05:54] Nicole: Yeah, I like the long version a lot because I think it's true and it is still happening and, they're getting promoted because here's the truth about business. Business is difficult to scale. Scaling is like the biggest problem. We've got ideas, we've got products.
[00:06:11] It's just like, how do we keep adding people to the process, making sure they're trained and doing all the things. And that's obviously what Paul Morton can help you do. So his Practical Leadership Academy: now, everybody, race over there to the website, Practical Leadership Academy, Paul Morton, and you get a free download.
[00:06:27] Look what I got, everybody. Five steps, all right, to transform your one to ones. When I saw this, I was like, hot dang, this is what every manager needs to learn to do. And, in fact, if you would just have your one on ones, it will transform your leadership. It's having them, and being confident enough to have a good one and knowing what to do inside of one will, will change everything, I think will be a linchpin move.
[00:06:52] So first of all, what do you mean by one to one, anyway, Paul, what's that mean, one to one?
[00:06:57] Paul Morton: You've got so few moments in time and so few ways as a leader or a manager of any team or group of people to communicate what you want them to do. You're the boss. You want to get stuff done. You want to make things, sell things, transport people from one place to another, do something. And you're doing it through other people, because you're not doing it yourself, okay. Because that's the reason you hire people. So you've got to put in place some way of communicating what you want, making sure people are doing what you want, and then following up, and moving on, and keeping them happy. And there's an awful lot more to it, but ultimately it's setting expectations and keeping people accountable, okay.
[00:07:39] And there's a way of doing it, and there's ways of not doing it. For sure.
[00:07:43] Nicole: Right. It's like anything. There's tips, tricks, systems, strategy, smarts, stuff that we need to do. So you've come up with five steps to having a better one on one. And I think the first step is actually, you have a pre step, which is get this on the calendar.
[00:08:01] Paul Morton: With bells on. Yeah.
[00:08:03] Nicole: Talk about calendaring and using your calendar, first of all.
[00:08:09] Paul Morton: There's two things you need to have in your calendar. It's not just the one to one itself. You need to prepare for it. In fact, It's not just you that needs to prepare for it, it's your team member who needs to prepare for it as well. So both you and he or she needs to have this thing in their diary, so 30 minutes is all you need. And if you keep it as a constraint to 30 minutes, and don't let it meander or wander, it keeps it focused. And people don't mind having them because they're valuable and powerful. But you also need to have half as much time, again, beforehand to prepare for it. And if you don't prepare for it, I promise you that one time you forget is going to be the one time that your team member turns up with screeds of data and information and desperate for your input.
[00:08:55] And you're there winging it and trying to make it up as you go along and looking at it like an absolute ass. Don't do that. Because it also really disrespects the other person. If you've got this in the calendar and they have it in your calendar and you change it at the last minute, it says, "You're not important." It says "I don't care enough about this. You're not valuable enough for me to keep one 30 minute block of time in my calendar out of 40 or 50 hours a week just for you." So put in your calendar on repeat put 15 minutes in your calendar on repeat have them do the same thing on repeat Let's move on
[00:09:37] Nicole: And I repeat, on repeat. So, what he is saying is so huge, so I just have to say a quick story. I was down in Charlotte, you know, I'm here in Charlotte, North Carolina, and it was, I was down in Charlotte and I was talking about employee engagement. And people are so confused about employee engagement. I'm losing my mind over here in America, Paul, because employee engagement is like talk to your employees.
[00:10:03] It's not pizza parties and all the stuff. Although I think people love pizza parties. You should have those too. But really what they want is this one on one. So I was talking about employee engagement and one on ones and this young lady comes up to me and she says, "Oh, my, my boss has these on the calendar, but I haven't had one in six months."
[00:10:23] Paul Morton: Yeah, yeah, I did a little bit of a survey right and you won't like this I did a survey and it was 7 out of 10 people who I asked, and I didn't ask that many people, I think I asked how many it was, 35 or something like that, so it's not huge, I'm not Gallup. 70 percent said that they found their 1 to 1s were of little or no value. Ouch. 20 percent didn't have them at all. So, that doesn't leave very many people who think this is good. 1 out of 10 thought, yeah, it's fine. Whoa, what a waste. What a waste. And they're not hard to do. It's, I mean, you said the employee engagement is talking to people. Yeah. And it says, it's what bounces back as well as listening to them. Yeah.
[00:11:18] Nicole: 100%. 100%. Yeah. And the thing is, is, I often talk about how we have people in our organizations and I call them eagles, like they just want to fly higher and higher and higher and higher. They are amazing. And those are the people that would love a one on one, but this young lady that came up to me, I think she was an eagle. You know how you can kind of, you're talking to somebody like this, this kid is sharp. That's what I was thinking. I was like, this young lady is so sharp. And look at her leader is probably just like, "She's good. She doesn't need to talk to me. She's doing great." But see that eagle wants to talk to the mama bird, you know, to her leader, because she wants to get ahead and you ignore her, she's going to fly. She's going to find somewhere else to
[00:11:59] Paul Morton: They get big wings, they get big wings, they'll fly away. Yeah. It's, I mean, it goes to the whole, almost the leadership ethos of leaning in and making, you go back to the leadership management that you think you know, just school, right? Sit down, shut up, listen to me, I'm teaching, I'm talking, your turn, okay? Do what you're told. That's kind of the thing that we're used to as parents, you know, I'm a parent, I'm a, hopefully an okay one, but do what you're told. Is your room tidy? Why not? Why is a terrible question to ask anyone, never ask anybody why, ask them how, ask them what. What are you going to do? How are you going to do it?
[00:12:40] And you've got these fabulous, fabulous people. And instead of looking at the really good ones and working out what they need to do better, we look at the really bad ones and we try and fix them. We look at the, an individual and think about the really good things that they're doing and think, Oh, you're really good at that.
[00:12:57] I'm just going to leave that to one side. Let's focus on your weaknesses and your failings. Accentuate that. No, no, no, no, no. And that. It goes through this whole ethos of centering yourself on the success of the other person.
[00:13:14] Nicole: Yeah. And so we've got our pre-work done. We've given you a small sermon about focusing on your eagles. And so now I want to know what the five steps are, right? So you've got five steps. Step one is check in. So you finally, you've got me on the zoom or you've got me one on one in a room, or you've got me on the phone and we're going to do a check in. What is the check in? What's the purpose?
[00:13:39] Paul Morton: Well, the whole five steps are, it's a nice, it's not an acronym, I couldn't come up with anything fancy. So it's C U F C P, right? It does, it runs off the tongue reasonably well. C U F C P. So it's check in, update, feedback, coaching, and plan. And the whole idea is that the only way you move your business forward is by moving the people who work for you forward in this scheduled moment. Because you need to unlock people's potential. You need to make sure that they're happy. You need to check in that they're doing all the right things. And that first thing that you do is that check in, not check up, but check in, right? So you're checking in with them and it's, how are you doing, Nicole? How are the hamsters?
[00:14:21] How's the team doing? You know, what's going on and you're using that moment in time just to understand, is there anything else in their life that can be distracting them? Is there anything else in their life that's more important than their work? And I sincerely hope there is. And the byproduct of getting to know them that little bit better is that these sessions will become that little bit easier as you both learn each other. You learn what matters, what's important to them, where do they find their energy. So you check in. Just at a human level. Really, really simple, but really, really important. And if you don't plan to do it, it's so easy just to say, Alright, where are you on? What's the process on? What's the progress? How are we doing? And you miss the human.
[00:15:07] Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so huge is you do need to get to know the individual and it's because here's basic psychology. People want to be known and seen, not just an employee, there's the human, his name is Paul. This is what he likes: he likes going to Paris. Pre-show. He's going to Paris. Are y'all so jealous? Anyway, okay, so checking in. We're gonna check in, we're gonna check in with Paul later. See how many you know,
[00:15:35] Paul Morton: many croissants have I managed? Croissants per hour. CPH.
[00:15:39] Nicole: Okay. All right. So number two is update. So after you do your check in and make sure this person, you've checked in with people's humanity, now you want some updates on the W-O-R-K.
[00:15:49] Paul Morton: Yeah, we do. And now there's one important thing to just to pull out here is if you are a sales manager or marketing manager or your job is to manage numbers of things produced. This is not the session for that. This is not where this happens. Okay, what we're talking about in this one to one is this is a strategic update between the two of you. Okay, it's a strategic meeting. It's not a did this close? Have you done that? Have you? Where are we on deal number 52?
[00:16:18] Nicole: Right.
[00:16:19] Paul Morton: So you keep them separate and the thing you're talking about here is very simply that project we're working on, this process we're dealing with, are you on track? No, I'm not. Okay, what do you need to do to get back on track?
[00:16:35] Well, I need help, assistance, data, access, people, whatever it is. The thing you don't ask is are you on track? No, I'm not. Why aren't you on track, you wicked, wicked employee? Because that's what it sounds like. Why? is very accusatory. Why haven't you done, why? Why is your room a mess?
[00:16:57] Nicole: This is easy.
[00:16:59] Paul Morton: Yeah. Another value from this moment, this update session is you get to learn from them because they have two more eyes than you do.
[00:17:09] They have two more years than you do, and you can learn an awful lot from them as well. They're hearing and seeing and experiencing things that you are not, so it's a two way thing. So you're getting an update. It's. What's progress? You're holding them accountable? What's progress here? And you're also getting some insights into the world around them.
[00:17:28] Announcer: Are you ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference, or organization to help them with their strategies, systems, and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy, and results. Your organization will get lit from within. Email her at Nicole at VibrantCulture. com And be sure to check out Nicole's TEDxTalk at VibrantCulture. com
[00:17:55] Nicole: I love that.
[00:17:55] So I want to just make sure you didn't miss what Paul just said. He's saying, don't say, how are your KPIs? This was not a KPI conversation, key productivity indicator. This is how are you the human doing in the process of getting sale number 52 done, right? It's like, how can I help you develop as a person?
[00:18:17] So I think that is a huge distinction. All right, don't miss that everybody. All right, number three is feedback. Okay, so this is the opportunity for the leader to give feedback. I'm a huge fan of giving feedback. Uh, so let's hear what Paul has to say about feedback. Then maybe I'll give a two cents. Maybe not.
[00:18:37] Paul Morton: There was a lovely quote I heard from a guy called Tom Lewis, a friend of mine. He said that people think of the word feedback. with the same emotion as they do when they hear footsteps behind them in a dark alleyway at night. I've got some feedback for you, Nicole. Oh no
[00:19:00] Nicole: Uh oh!
[00:19:00] Paul Morton: have I done? However, and you know what, I can argue with that. You're feeding it back to me. From where? How dare you feed things back to me? Shove your feedback sideways, you know, roll it up tight. But you know what, Nicole, I just wanted to share, I observed something here. I've observed that the following things happen. Yeah, you did. Okay. I observed it. You can't argue with what I have observed.
[00:19:32] Nicole: That's exactly right.
[00:19:34] Paul Morton: The impact of what I observed was, or is, Oh, because you're probably not aware of what that impact is. Coaching, most of the time, is awareness. I'm bringing you, making you aware of not only what I observed, but the impact of it.
[00:19:51] Nicole: Mm hmm.
[00:19:51] Paul Morton: I observed that you yelled at John when he gave you his input on what you, the work you did the other day. The impact of that is that John doesn't want to work with you anymore right now. Help me understand what's going on. And then, shut the hell up.
[00:20:08] Nicole: Oh, that's so good.
[00:20:09] Paul Morton: I observed the following. Something, a fact, that would stand up in a court.
[00:20:14] The impact of what I observed was this. Help me understand. That's it. And sit quietly while they speak. And again, you don't want to say why, you don't want to talk about any unsyllabic stuff. What you want is results, not excuses. Why didn't why did you do this? Well, here's my excuse. I don't want excuses.
[00:20:35] Help me understand what's going on. Okay. I was frustrated because he's done that so many times in the past and I couldn't understand. This was the situation. This is how we did it. And then you let them talk themselves out because more often than not, they'll come with how they're going to fix it.
[00:20:52] Nicole: Right,
[00:20:52] Paul Morton: work.
[00:20:54] Nicole: that's exactly right. Yeah, so I love his little formula to state concretely what you've observed, state the impact of their behavior based on what you observed, and then ask them, help me understand what happened and what's going on. And he doesn't have it on the sheet, but you might want to jot this down right now. Then shut up. If that was number four, shut up. And I think that is so good, right? And I think holding silence or being comfortable with silence, especially in these one on ones is a huge leadership skill. It's just, you don't have to be so, I'm going to step outside of your formula for just a second.
[00:21:29] You don't have to be so clever to do this. You don't have to be some great leader. You just have to do it., just be comfortable with yourself. Try to make the other person comfortable. If you don't know what to say, say, hold on, I'm thinking, and a thought will come. I promise. Yeah. All right, feedback. So stinking good. And here's the thing
[00:21:50] Paul Morton: You know, I'm going to, I'm going to throw, yeah, again, it's not an excuse, but I'm going to throw one more in there. If they don't really open enough at that moment, my favorite, my, one of my favorite coaching questions at all is just what else? And what else?
[00:22:06] Nicole: Okay. Write that down, everybody. I'm writing it down
[00:22:07] Paul Morton: And what else? Well this is the situation, this is why, this is the reason, this is the things that happen. Okay, what else? And just, because you don't want the first answer they give you, you want the right answer. So what else? And just keep them going, keep them going. Anyway, so C U F, we've got check in, update, feedback, okay? It's not feedback, it's an observation.
[00:22:30] Nicole: Coaching.
[00:22:31] Paul Morton: Coaching. Okay. Big part of any manager's job is to help people overcome the challenges, the problems, the stuff that they're facing on a day to day basis, not by giving them the answers.
[00:22:44] You don't want to give them the answers. What you actually want is you want them to come with the answers themselves. Now, ideally, you're a fabulous coach, fully qualified by the greatest coaching systems out there. But in reality, no, that's not the case. The simple things you can get your managers, your colleagues, you can ask are things like, what's stopping you from getting your work done? What's the biggest challenge you've got in front of you right now? You're trying to find out what are they trying to do? What are they trying to do? And there's a lovely simple framework, there's loads and loads of coaching frameworks out there, but there's a simple one that I love, it's called GRRROW. Hear my grrr, grow.
[00:23:27] Goal. What's the goal? What's your ideal state? R for reality. What have you done already? The O is for, what's stopping you? Obstacles. What could be your first step? Your, next, best step that you can reach? And then the way forward. What's the way forward? How can I help you do that?
[00:23:49] Okay. So that's a really, really simple thing to ask. You don't need to be a coach. Realistically, there's one question you could use: what are our options? Boss, this is a terrible problem. I can't understand how to do it. Okay. Okay. What are our options? Just ask them that one. That alone will get you 60 percent of the way there. What are our options?
[00:24:11] Nicole: Because people have ideas in their head, and the thing, too, is, we were talking about, there's this Eagle, right? And it's almost like the Eagle wants you to tell him, use your ideas. You know what I mean? Like, go ahead. You don't have to wait on me, use your ideas, but they want to do the right thing and they're so eager to please. But if you have these one on ones with them and you're coaching them, they're going to get their wings, their tail feathers, right, and they're going to be able to take off. One of the things that I tell people, I don't know how you feel about this policy, like your whole career with somebody, you're going to have four hats on your head, you know?
[00:24:47] And so if I have a direct report I've got a coaching hat, which is what Paul just talked about, and then I have a mentoring hat and the mentoring hat, I think is underused because we feel like we shouldn't talk about our own experiences because we don't want to seem like we have a big fat ego or something. But I will tell you, as a young person, and it's been a long time since I've been a young person, but when I was a young person, I sat there looking at my leaders going, how did they get where they are? What did they do? How does he know how to say it like that? Like watching some guy talk in front of a room, you're like, dang, he's so, how'd he get there?
[00:25:28] They want to know the tips, the tricks, the strategies, and they want to know how you failed so that they don't mess up like you, so there's the mentoring hat, and then there's the managing hat, which is, you're managing your relationship in the one on one, you're not managing the KPIs. There's the third time we told you. And then there's the leadership hat, which is, oh, don't forget. This is where we're going. This is where the future is, So four hats. So I love your coaching hat in here with Grow. So good.
[00:25:55] Paul Morton: You mentioned the wisdom there, that sort of cumulated thing. And there are so many people who are successful, but they've never actually done one of the core aspects of what I would call wisdom. And for me, wisdom is the experience that you've had With the knowledge that you've gained and the reflection that you've put into that experience based on that knowledge.
[00:26:20] And then my son, my 10 year old, came up and said, that's not a very good definition of wisdom. And I said, you're 10. What do you know? I didn't say that to him. But based on him,
[00:26:28] Nicole: But you did think it
[00:26:30] Paul Morton: He spends all his time in a classroom with teachers, right? This is his environment, this is his world. So he said you have to share it.
[00:26:38] Because if you don't share it, it's not wisdom. It's just sitting in your head. It's no use for anyone. So the number of people who don't reflect and then are unable to share. So you're looking at your bosses, thinking Okay, how'd you do this? And they're going, I don't know. How did you get there? I got older. Okay, right, that's useful, thanks.
[00:27:01] Nicole: Yeah. And I mean, I'm, I, you probably are a big advocate of stories, but like I challenge leaders all the time. What's your biggest failure story. What's your biggest success story. What's your best habit story. Like you've got to have these stories kind of in your pocket so you can pull them out.
[00:27:16] And again these, yeah. You know, everybody keeps complaining about the young people, Paul. Are you experiencing this? All the people over 40 are complaining about the 20 year olds. And I'm like, there is nothing new under the sun. The 40 year olds always complain about the 20 year olds.
[00:27:31] Paul Morton: I found a wonderful little piece that was a study back in time, going through three or four thousand years worth of anecdote and inscriptions and stuff, going all the way back to the Viking times, where young warriors of today, all they want to do is sit around the fire and drink mead. Gladiators of today, they are so fat and lazy, my goodness, they have no drive.
[00:27:56] Nicole: That's exactly right.
[00:27:58] Paul Morton: same, the same forever. And the young people of the day are looking at us going, Oh, they're so dumb. They're so lame. My spear's much faster and sharper than his. You know, it's been the same forever. But it's just really hard. There's nothing harder in this world to learn from somebody else's mistakes. And
[00:28:16] Nicole: And here's the thing. Why don't we just decide to have a good attitude toward these beautiful, young, more educated than I think our generation ever was. I think I'm 10 or 12, 15 years older than you. But the thing is like they have so much education. They're going to be so much easier to train if you would just get in your one on one.
[00:28:37] See, that's the thing. Sit down one on one. And that's what we're talking about. And we're finally to number five, which is planning, planning. So we have checked in, updated, feedbacked, coaching. Now we're planning,
[00:28:49] Paul Morton: the planning requires the missing link to the whole thing. We started right at the beginning with step zero, which was putting it in the schedule and making sure you don't change it and having it there forever and planning for the session itself. The planning at this point, C U F C P for planning, right at the end is planning for the next thing you're going to do together.
[00:29:08] Where are you going to do it? You're going to do it in a shared document. You're going to use a Google doc or a Word doc or a Notion sheet or whoever cares, whatever the planning thing is.
[00:29:17] Nicole: Project management, figure it
[00:29:18] Paul Morton: Don't care. Something that you and I can both access all the time and we follow the same five letters every single session and I can just look back at the last one and say, okay, Nicole, you said you were going to introduce me to X and do Y. I said I was going to do Z, but I didn't. I'm sorry. I'll make sure it happens this week. I understand that's held you up. And I've written down a word or a two, two bullets against each of the things so that we have a track. We can use this then to record our progress to move things forward. It is basically the way of driving progress faster. You've got accountability, you've got expectations, and this is how you pull it all together. You're creating a joint plan of action. That's it.
[00:30:06] Nicole: Yeah. And I've got it pulled up on my phone. Can everybody see this?
[00:30:09] Paul Morton: Oh, you did it. You found it. Oh, there you go. Your free template and everything. Man. Look at that.
[00:30:13] Nicole: Look at me. I'm so good. Right? So, this is so easy, right? And so he gives you the example. You can get this. If you go to his website give us your website real quick. Cause everybody wants to go get the template right now.
[00:30:24] Paul Morton: Practical Leadership Academy. practical-leadership.academy
[00:30:29] Nicole: Okay. All right. So if I go in here, he's got an example and so he says check in, he's checking in with them. This person's gonna have a baby, so he's checking on the baby. Wouldn't that be nice if somebody checked in how the baby's producing and coming along, right? And then the update and look y'all, it's just single One line, one line, and it's just a little quick note about what's going on and then that way when you as the leader, the manager, go back the next time in your 15 minutes of planning in step zero, you're looking at, okay, yeah, yeah, the baby's due in a month. Da da da da da. And, here's the thing. If you do this, Paul, you're gonna know what's going on in your company.
[00:31:11] Paul Morton: You are. You are. They know what to expect and you know what's going on.
[00:31:16] Nicole: Yeah! It's so stinking good. Alright, well, Paul Morton is a fount of knowledge and wisdom. And so, here's what you need to do. Go over to his website. It's down in the show notes. It's right there. Go down. Keep going down. There it is.
[00:31:32] Paul Morton: Yeah. Yeah. We'll take
[00:31:35] Nicole: It's right there. And you can reach out to him. He's on the YouTube, he's on the LinkedIn. He's everywhere you should be. He's that kind of guy. And he's gonna be in Paris soon, but he'll be on vacation if you see him. No paparazzi please. So, he'll be on the YouTube with us here too. So if you go to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast on YouTube or to the Apple and all the places, the Spotify, you can listen to him there and it's been so great to be with you! I just had the best time. You and I are like mother or brother and sister from another mother or something. We were on the same page.
[00:32:07] Paul Morton: We'll take it. Nicole, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.
[00:32:10] Nicole: Okay. Goodbye everybody. It's been another episode of the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast.
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