Respect for People in Lean Leadership

Show Notes

What You’ll Learn:

In this episode, host Patrick Adams, Shane Daughenbaugh, and guest Scott Gauvin discuss how the principle of "respect for people" goes beyond individual actions to become an organizational-wide practice that fosters culture transformation, engagement, and continuous improvement. They explore strategies for leaders to cultivate a learning culture, emphasizing active listening, transparency, and coaching to develop human skills and create lasting change within organizations.

About the Guest:

Scott Gauvin is a management consultant and Lean specialist with 30 years of experience helping organizations transform the way they perceive and pursue performance. As CEO of Macresco and co-founder of the Respect for People Roadmap, he’s partnered with organizations worldwide and across industries to innovate their business and operating models and put people at the center of their corporate and operations strategies.

Links:

THE RESPECT FOR PEOPLE ROAD - WEBSITE

CLICK HERE FOR SCOTT GAUVIN LINKEDIN

⁠⁠Click Here For Patrick Adams’ LinkedIn⁠

⁠Click Here For Shayne Daughenbaugh’s LinkedIn

What is The Lean Solutions Podcast?

This podcast offers business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for lean process improvement and implement continuous improvement projects, cost reductions, product quality enhancements, and process effectiveness improvement. Listeners come from many industries in both manufacturing and office applications.

Scott Gauvin 00:04

I started questioning what is respect for, respect people is more proactive and it’s more intentional. It’s really about fostering that consistency across all levels of the organization. And it’s something that when you’re practicing it more more meaningful cultural and operational change, really across

Shayne Daughenbaugh 00:21

the organization, respect for people. It’s it’s kind of like this, how do I grab it? What do I how do I put my wrap my hands around this, the roadmap that you created and the practices that you created, exercises, not just the information, did an amazing job of actually helping it take shape. When I think about respect for people now I have specific things that I could think about.

Patrick Adams 00:56

Hello and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions podcast led by your hosts, the amazing Shane and myself. Patrick. Adams, Shane, how’s it going?

Shayne Daughenbaugh 01:06

It’s going well, Thanks, Patrick. I’m excited about today’s guest. I’m excited about the topic. Today, I got a question for you though to start this. Okay, so let’s do a quick quick do a quick gut check here. What is a workplace behavior that instantly tells you, you know what this leader gets it, and what’s one that makes you want to fake a Wi Fi outage? Oh,

Patrick Adams 01:30

that’s a good question. Fake a Wi Fi out. Okay, I can’t say that I’ve ever done that before, but I bet there are people out there that have. I would say one behavior that I see that when I know that leaders really get it is when I go to visit their site, and instead of bringing me into a conference room, they bring me out on the production floor, and we take a walk, right, I think. And you can always tell, too, when leaders are, I say production floor, but it could be the gemba, right, any the office, or whatever their GEMBA is. But you can also tell, because their team isn’t surprised to see them, right? That’s a indicator that a leader gets it, and they’re doing the right stuff. Yeah,

Shayne Daughenbaugh 02:22

so what’s one that would make you fake a Wi Fi outage? It’s, you know, it’s kind of like, you know, how we used to have, I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m in no cell service now. Sorry, yeah,

Patrick Adams 02:37

you know, I would say, Man, I can, I can think of a few leaders. Actually. I won’t name any names, but, you know, arrogance. I’m too good for that. You know that that’s you can pick that up pretty, pretty easy. Normally, they manage by fear. And you know, when they’re when they’re out on the gemba, it’s like people are a little worried, like, what are we in trouble for? You know, kind of thing, complete opposite of the first leader that I mentioned. So, yeah, that would be, for me, when

Shayne Daughenbaugh 03:14

I think about it, it’s a leader that’s willing to celebrate their people. You know, when you’re going in see him, and the first thing they do, instead of take you to the conference room, is take you out to where you’re, where their people are, and they celebrate. This is what they have done. Look at this, yes. And then the the, you know, want to fake the Wi Fi outage kind of a thing I think about after the leader steps out, and I’m with the front line workers, their reaction to how the leader steps out. Because sometimes leaders will come in and they’re very charismatic, and they’re, you know, all this is all about blah, blah, blah, and, you know, and they’re really building it up. And then when you leave, you can see the collective eye roll, you know. And they’re like, people are like, yeah, he’s he, he talks, or she talks a good game, but yes,

Patrick Adams 04:01

yeah, I agree completely. So we’re going to dive into this a little bit deeper with our guest. So stay tuned, everybody but Shane, do you want to do a quick intro? We’ll bring we’ll bring our guests to the stage, and let’s dive into this.

Shayne Daughenbaugh 04:22

You’re right, right. Okay, so today, ladies and gentlemen, we have Scott govid, who is a management consultant and lean specialist with 30 years of experience helping organizations transform the way they perceive and pursue performance, as the CEO of mcresco and Co Founder of the respect for people roadmap. He’s partnered with organizations worldwide and across industries to innovate their businesses and operating models and put people at the center of their corporate and operational strategies. Scott, we are so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show.

Scott Gauvin 04:58

Thank you, Shane, and thank you for. Patrick, pleasure to be here. No, I’m

Patrick Adams 05:02

excited for you to be on the show. I’m actually now I’m interested because Shane mentioned your the company name. Obviously, I’m excited to hear about respect for the respect for people roadmap. But I’m also a little bit interested in the name mcresco. Can you give a give us a little bit of background on that? Where did that name come from?

Scott Gauvin 05:21

Yeah. So 30 years ago, when I decided to kind of hang my own shingle and go off and start doing consulting, I knew it was going to be centered around, kind of the lean practices. So I was trying to find something that connected, at least, you know, a name of a company that connected, and I was playing around and and found that the Latin word for to become lean is mcresco. And I said, Really, that’s, that’s it right there. That’s, don’t

Shayne Daughenbaugh 05:49

even know, I don’t even know where, where I would look, what’s Latin for Lean? I mean, it rhymes with the breath, you know, all kinds of rhyming things, but, but I wouldn’t have necessarily gone to, what’s the link? What’s the Latin word for this? Yeah, I didn’t

Scott Gauvin 06:07

realize that so many people gonna have a trouble saying the name, but, you know it, it creates a conversation point. So

Shayne Daughenbaugh 06:13

yeah, I want to say Nabisco, or mobisco, or, you know, anything,

Patrick Adams 06:19

mccresco. Yeah. No, I like it. I like it. The other thing that I think is important to mention, before we dive into some questions around respect for people, is the fact that you just published a book. Right? The name of the book is leading with compassion, cultivating connection from the inside out. And we will drop a link to this book into the show notes. So if anyone’s interested, it did just come out, and actually, when we’re recording this, it’s getting ready to publish. So by the time you all are listening to this, it will be out there on Amazon. Tell us a little bit about this, because it’s really interesting, the fact that you wrote this actually with a group, and I’d like to our audience to hear a little bit more about that, because the topic of leading with compassion is something we’re going to talk about, I think, extensively as we dive into respect for people. So can you just give us just a little bit of the background on the book? Yeah,

Scott Gauvin 07:17

so I’ll give you a little bit of the back story. So when I was developing the respective people roadmap, one of the things that we kept coming back to was that we wanted people to engage with compassion. And I said, Well, I really should understand what that means. And so I participated in a program for about a year to learn about the elements of compassion, what it is, of how it shows up in the workplace, and then got connected with a whole pile of people who are trying to do the same things, really bringing compassion to the workplace, really trying to change the work environments of organizations. And so about 25 of us have now come together to write our stories around how each of us came to leading with compassion. What was that moment, or what was that example in in, you know, in our careers or in our lives, that kind of the light bulb went off and we realized, oh, okay, there’s a different path forward and and if I pursue this path, you know, whole bunch of good things can happen, and so and so we came together and we we all wrote a chapter in this book.

Shayne Daughenbaugh 08:28

How did you even find this program? And I’ve never even heard of this until I heard you start talking about this book.

Scott Gauvin 08:35

Well, it was, it’s a program out of Stanford that they had run for many years. And it was really around, I think, their effort to create more compassionate leaders. And so a lot of it was in the healthcare space. And so this was, you know, during the COVID years. And so it was a completely virtual thing. And I think my cohort of people, the year that I did it, there were 200 people that participated in this program. My cohort was 100 people. So, yeah. So there’s a, there’s a fairly large community of people out there who are kind of centered around this idea of leading with compassion and so, and we’re all kind of making our little our little niche, our little mark, kind of in the workplace. So that’s

Shayne Daughenbaugh 09:24

a great, feel good story, right now I need, I need more of these kind of stories. Thanks. That’s great.

Scott Gauvin 09:30

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you. So

Patrick Adams 09:32

Scott, I’ll, I’m interested also to hear a little bit more about the respect for people roadmap. We’re going to be talking about this a little bit deeper and kind of picking, picking apart and, you know, diving into some more details here. But tell us about the respect for people roadmap. What is that exactly, and, and how can people use it, you know, for, for their own Lean journey. Me, yeah.

Scott Gauvin 10:00

So what happened is, you know, I started kind of down the Lean path, and like most of us, you know, we get enamored by the continuous improvement tools and no different for myself, at some point during that journey, I started to realize that it’s, it’s about behavior, not just process. And so that sent me off, kind of, looking at what I was doing. And as I looked at the model more, and if you’re familiar with the Toyota way model, it’s two pillars, continuous improvement, respect for people. As I started looking at that more, I started questioning, well, what is respect for people? You know, I kind of thought of it is. It’s kind of, you know, my individual actions. It’s kind of situational. It’s kind of how I react to people. It’s kind of about my personal behaviors. And, you know, it’s, it’s in those moments. And as I investigated more and studied it more, I started to realize that really what respect for people is, is it’s, it’s more about an organizational wide practice that is really more all encompassing of the systems and the policies and the processes that really enable respect in the culture and in our practices. And it’s it’s something that is respect people is more proactive and it’s more intentional. It’s really about fostering that consistency across all levels of the organization. It’s something that’s more fully adopted across the organization, in, you know, across all the structures, across all the cultural norms in the daily operations. And it’s something that when you’re practicing it more more, not in those moments. It’s more deep and lasting. It’s it’s about creating more meaningful cultural and operational change, really, across the organization. And when I started reading, you know, what I could find about it? There’s not that much out there about it. Actually, I realized that most of what I was reading really was hierarchical. It was about what the leader should do, how the leader should show up, the things that the leader should give employees. And that kind of really flew in the face of what I was understanding as I was talking to more and more people at organizations that I felt practiced respect for people. And so I started to then think about, okay, well, if I was, if I were to create practices around this, what would that look like? And and so for many years, I had lots of ad hoc practices that I had put together that I would use, and then the pandemic gave me the opportunity to kind of pull all of those together into a system. And so now we’ve got this learning experience that helps people and organizations really bring the practice of respect for people into their organization, so that they can more fully realize the benefits of the respect for people piece of lean and so that became the respect for people road now,

Shayne Daughenbaugh 12:59

yeah, I having having seen it and worked with you as you were putting it out. Scott, I I appreciated and I appreciated two things. One, like you mentioned the very beginning, respect for people is it’s it’s kind of like this. How do I grab it? What do I how do I put my wrap my hands around this, but the roadmap that you created, and the practices that you created, the exercises, not just the information, did an amazing job of actually helping it take shape. When I think about respect for people now, I have specific things that I can think about, you know, with those going through that experience. And so I think it’s, yeah, it’s a it’s an amazing thing. I think you’ve done put together some amazing and helpful information and practices for businesses and organizations.

Scott Gauvin 13:55

Well, one key thing that was important is, as we were pulling it together, we realized what this is really about creating culture change, or creating culture transformation. If changes, you can undo a change, but you can’t undo when something transforms, you can’t go back. And so we were really thinking through, okay, what are the things that we can do that help create that transformation? And we realized that the way we do culture changes is just not great. You know, you take people off site for a day or two and three, and you give them a whole bunch of information, they maybe remember 5% of it, then they’ve got to internalize that information on their own. They’ve got to then model those behaviors, and then you got to figure out how to cascade that into the organization, right? That’s just that just doesn’t work. And so we, we very intentionally wanted to create something that enabled not just the leaders of an organization, but the frontline employees of the organization. So we were thinking about that like it has to be sophisticated enough for everybody, kind of all of the stakeholders in that chain, to be able to participate in and we wanted. To be something that they could engage in, but things that they could put into practice. And so we’ve thought very carefully about not just giving them that education component, but how to help them internalize it, and then how to practice those behaviors. And then the next challenge was, well, how do you do that at scale? And so we, right from the outset, we were thinking about, how do we do this at scale, so that it doesn’t rely on Scott govid, so that doesn’t rely on our company, that that it could be something that could be utilized by anybody. And so we designed it and wrote it specifically so that it could scale and that way,

Shayne Daughenbaugh 15:38

Scott, did you just coin a phrase? I just want to, I just want to see if I heard that correctly. Did you just say education?

Scott Gauvin 15:44

Yeah, that is not my I did not coin that. That’s actually, I’m gonna a friend of mine, Liz, she wrote a book around creating experiential workshops, and they coined that term in their book.

15:59

I love that. Yeah,

Patrick Adams 16:00

that’s great. I never heard that before. That’s, that’s a good spin on words. I love it, yeah.

16:07

So let’s, let’s talk.

Patrick Adams 16:09

Let’s, let’s talk about respect for people for a minute. So you mentioned, you know, if someone’s leading a transformation or they’re going through a transformation. So let’s imagine that an organization is going through. They’re on their Lean journey. They’re going through a total organizational transformation. Why is respect for people a key component to a successful transformation? I mean, like, how does respect for people actually contribute?

Scott Gauvin 16:38

Yeah, well, you know, so I’ll start with Fujio Cho and a quote from him that says, first we build people, then we build cars. Really, I think they fundamentally understood that if you want to grow the business, you have to grow your people. And so, you know, in growing your people, through respect for people, you’re you’re helping them become more engaged, and they’re more intrinsically motivated to solve problems, to find things that they can improve on. It really encourages problem solving at all levels and across levels, certainly from the continuous improvement side. If they’re engaged collectively, then they’re finding ways to reduce waste and improve efficiencies. It really is a fundamental element to helping strengthen teamwork and collaboration. We always talk about, oh, we want to build our team, but what are the mechanisms or the things that we’re doing intentionally to help really strengthen teams and teamwork and collaboration. And then, you know, the results that you get is you get better customer satisfaction, you get better employee engagement, better employee satisfaction, and those just tend to lead to longer term, sustainable results in general. I mean, there’s, I could go on for. There’s lots and lots of benefits that come out of it, but those are, those are some of the few that I would point to. Yeah,

Shayne Daughenbaugh 18:05

okay, so, so aside from the the road, you know, the respect for people roadmap, what are some strategies that leaders can use to be able to to accomplish some of the things you talked about, you know, the empowerment and the building of trust and the team engagement and, you know, kind of that collaboration. What are some strategies that you’ve learned and picked up along the way through all of this, you know, the 10 years you’ve been working on this and so on and so forth, yeah,

Scott Gauvin 18:37

well, you know, so um, to just kind of tap back into leading with compassion. Part of that is leading with transparency and creating kind of that open communication and and really being honest about what are my challenges, so that we can then have a better conversation around what are the challenges. If I’m a leader and I can talk about the things that I’m challenged by, it’s going to open up the space for you to talk about the things that you’re challenged by in that and now we can really work together on on improving those really, you know, fostering kind of a learning culture is is kind of a key component as well. And I can’t say enough about really active listening. We discredit, I think sometimes the power of good listening. And, you know, the a lot of the research and a lot of the studies that I looked at, we were terrible listeners. We learned very well in formal education and and so the better a listener you can be. It’s amazing what you can hear if you’re if you’re listening for not only the facts, but you’re listening for kind of the emotions behind what someone is describing. And when you connect those two things, you start to put together a full picture. And so I think, you know, just on top of respect, um. Some of the strategies that I would encourage people, not even just leaders, but but everybody. If, if you can, if you can be more transparent, if you can, you know, embrace learning, and if you can practice listening, those are three things that no matter what level of the organization you’re at, if you can do those three things, you’re, you’re, you’re taking some very positive steps forward. So, yeah, well, Patrick,

Shayne Daughenbaugh 20:26

that’s that makes me I first came across this idea from your book in in regard to, as Scott talked about fostering a learning culture, and what that looks like. You know, I’m hearing more and more of that, and think that, wow, there’s, there’s really something to that that I don’t, I don’t know why, but, but it seems like it’s, it’s almost atypical. It’s, it goes against the grain of, you know, the way common business is where we don’t make mistakes, and we, we don’t need to learn. You just, I’m going to train you, you’re going to do it, and you’re going to move forward, and that’s it. You know, don’t, don’t do the other thing. So, you know, I’m really glad to hear continual validation, you know, as you were talking there, Scott,

Patrick Adams 21:08

yeah, I think obviously it sounds good to say we want to develop a learning culture, or we want our leaders to, you know, support a learning culture. I’d be curious to hear Scott like, if we unpack that a little bit, or any of the three, what would the tangible, visible actions be by leaders in order to actually, you know, support a learning culture? You know, get or like you talked about, you know, active listening and the power of active listening. What does that look like? Because I think about, you know, some of the leaders that I’ve that I’ve worked with in the past, and, you know, they feel like, when they go to attend a tier meeting, for example, they feel like they almost need to be there and provide answers or provide direction, or like they it’s like they’re waiting for their opportunity to jump in and say, I’m here and here’s what you all need to do, or here’s the answer to your problem. But that’s not always the case, right? They sometimes, and probably I would even go as far as to say, the majority of the time you shouldn’t be doing that. You should be sitting back listening and maybe asking questions. But what is it? What does it look like if I was to be a, you know, fly on the wall watching a leader? What would the actions be that you would see that would turn into, you know, that development of a learning culture, or, you know, active listening, that type of stuff,

Scott Gauvin 22:44

right? Yeah, and I agree. I don’t think that as a leader, I’m serving people if I’m giving them all the answers. The learning is really a struggle. I mean, if you think about anything that you’ve learned, that you’ve really appreciated the learning around it was probably some element of struggle, and if we’re robbing people of that struggle, we’re robbing them of the opportunity to learn. And we know, if we want to grow the business, people have to grow, and we grow through those struggles. And so, you know, there’s lots of specific things that we could point to, certainly providing training. I think one of the mistakes that I, I think I see in organizations, is that we, when we do training, we focus on more of the technical training as opposed to the human skill training. And I think one thing that we could probably step more into is providing more of that human skill training. And so whether it is listening, whether it is you know better engage. How do we better engage those human skills? You know how to get better context around things, how to be more aware of kind of the environment and others around you. Those skills really play a huge part in our ability to then collaborate, cooperate and solve problems, and when we’re just technical, we get stuck in this. Well, here’s the answer, not realizing, okay, that might be the right answer, but the team isn’t there with you, and so not having those skills to kind of have the dialog so that we can get everybody there, that means that you may never get to that solution. That might be the right solution, but because I don’t have some of those other skills to be able to get the team there, we’re not going to implement that solution. And so, you know, there’s probably many things that we could point to that are beneficial for leaders to do, but one is really stepping into and embracing not just the technical training that people need, but the human skills training and really and helping people develop more broadly and and, you know, the more the human skills. Yeah,

Patrick Adams 24:59

I love it. So I think part of that too, that that visible action for leaders is to step into that coaching role if you are, if you do have some of those skills, and being able to actually coach some, you know, younger or new leaders in some of that by coming alongside them and observing and having some some dialog, and just helping to develop that next generation of leaders coming up too. I mean that that could be a good, active way to to kind of spread the knowledge in your organization. Yeah, I worked with someone

Scott Gauvin 25:33

once who asked me they they were senior to me, and they said, hey, I want to do this CO coaching thing. I said, co coaching? What is CO coaching? And it was, they’re going to coach me if they want me to coach them back. And very strange experience, because now I’m telling them about the things that I think they should improve on, and from but from my perspective, from my experience. And so can’t agree more that coaching is a poorly underutilized approach in business. And it doesn’t have to be just that senior person down to the you know, the the subordinate it can be. It could be both ways. There’s coaching that can happen both ways.

Shayne Daughenbaugh 26:22

Yeah, in what, what I was thinking about, a challenge I was thinking about when it comes to the human skills and I love how you how you said that, right? Yeah, the human skills training is, I’ve been asked in the past, hey, will you mentor these people? Because we really appreciate the way you do this, this or this, you know. And they were speaking to some of the human skills that I have. And when I thought about that, you know, I was like, Oh, sure, I’ll do that. But then going away, thinking about, how am I going to help Scott do this, this and this, I don’t know, like, I it’s not like a technical, you know, where you have your little thing, and you have all of these, you know, list of things, the human skills is something that thrive in the coaching relationship, right? You know, because in the coaching relationship, you’re in it, you’re you’re there, and that’s when you’re able to speak to that it’s not something that, or at least it’s not something that I find I’m really talented at teaching in a classroom setting. It’s more, hey, come with me and let’s go talk about this, and then let’s talk about it afterwards, you know, let’s go do this, and let’s talk about it afterwards. Let’s, or let me give you some advice, or, you know, some support. Go and do that, come back and let’s talk about it afterwards. You know, it’s, it’s so much more experiential and and I, what I, what I see here is, this is, in what we’re describing, this is kind of like people first are human centric, kind of Lean leadership or or leadership in general, but we’re, you know, in the context of lean, is there other things that you’ve seen that can enhance this? I’m curious, you know, how, how, if someone were to just pick this up, you know, some of our listening audience to hear this and go, Yeah, I want to do that. What’s a step that they might be able to do immediately, you know, while they’re waiting for the book to arrive from Amazon?

Scott Gauvin 28:14

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, you know, as you know, in the program, one of the things that we encourage people to do is go to those that they work with and and ask them the question, hey, what’s one thing that I could do or stop doing that would make working with me easier and a

Shayne Daughenbaugh 28:35

can of worms. Scott, I don’t know if you want to open

Scott Gauvin 28:39

a fairly vulnerable position, right? Because you don’t know what they’re going to come back with, yeah. But what I have found is that for those who do step into that space, what they get back is really valuable, a really valuable exchange. Not only is it building that relationship, and I think what you are pointing to is these human skills sometimes are developed through the relationship that you’re you have with with people. It’s not that you can go into a classroom and and give them all of these skills. It is in the exchange of how we interact. It’s in the exchange of how we talk about things, in the exchange of how we’re solving a problem together. It’s in the exchange of when we disagree and how we handle that disagreement and how we sort through that disagreement, that those human skills are really nurtured and developed. And so opening up, if you’re a leader and you can open up that that can, you know it doesn’t mean that someone’s not going to come back and and hit you with a whip. You might get one of those. But more often than not, what we find is that people come back with really thoughtful kind of exchanges. And you know, and if someone’s coming back saying, Oh no, nothing, you’re great, that might tell you something like, maybe I haven’t created the space yet for them, to be honest with me. I have, I have some people who come back and say, Well, I got nothing. And I said, Well, that’s telling you something still.

Patrick Adams 30:06

Yeah, that’s right, yeah. So you’ve talked a lot about the importance of prioritizing people, and when you when you talk about it, I think it seems you’re very intentional about not just saying leaders need to prioritize their employees, but also vice versa, that employees should be looking at their leaders as people as well, and prioritizing them as people over the work, right? So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a both ways kind of thing. And I’m curious if you have any real world examples of maybe organizations you’ve worked with or that you’ve worked for, where you’ve seen some real examples of leaders that are prioritizing people their employees, or vice versa, employees that prioritize leaders as people and those organizations, then, by doing that, are getting the results, you know, of a, you know, a true continuous improvement culture.

Scott Gauvin 31:11

Yeah, had an organization that I was working with, and we were working in some really harsh conditions, and we were, we just were struggling to keep up with the production rates and and one of the recommendations from one of the team members came back like, well, if you gave us a few more breaks, because it’s just it’s hard to be in those conditions, and that, the instinct of the leader was like, Well, we already don’t have enough time. Like, what? What are you saying? You want more breaks, right? And, but, but he didn’t say that. He, he said, Okay, I’m hearing you. Help me understand why you need these additional breaks. And he’s like, Well, listen these conditions. It’s, you know, by by the end of the hour, we’re just, we’re really struggling to, kind of, like, keep up. And if we just had another five minute break or 10 minute break. And the leader, to his credit, said, Okay, well, hey, if we’re really going to practice this respect for people thing, and because one of the elements that we teach is around prioritizing well being, it sounds like your well being is being affected here. So okay, we’re going to prioritize well being. Let’s give it a try. Would you know, productivity went way up. We added breaks, like, that’s not something you would expect, but because we were listening, because we were prioritizing well being, and because we were trying to collaboratively solve that problem, we gave them more breaks and actually got more output. And so that that’s an example of where, you know, where we’re creating that foundation. We’re creating that structure. And just by following kind of these tenants, we’re like, okay, if this is, you know, if this is one of those tenants, let me listen to that and let me engage in that forward. So that would have been, that’s an example of

Patrick Adams 32:59

great example, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shayne Daughenbaugh 33:01

Counter intuitive. How it it doesn’t seem like it would work the way we want it to work, but there’s some magic behind the scenes when you’re working with people that really push it forward. So, so that’s an ex, that’s an experience that that did work from your experience in working in this field. And, you know, with this focus, what are some key challenges you’ve seen leaders face in trying to implement this kind of stuff? You know, we’re trying to set this kind of people centric, I guess you could call it Lean culture, like, what are some of the challenges that you’ve come across and are heard, you know, that people have, or leaders have, yeah,

Scott Gauvin 33:42

I mean, you know, the the biggest challenge, I think, is leaders. I call it the leaders resistance and and it’s, it’s really that leaders are struggling because there’s this thing that they have to get done right? They’ve got to hit the numbers. They’ve got to do the performance. And so supporting people doing these human skill development and investing that time is almost taking away from their ability to hit those numbers. And so there’s this, sometimes, this resistance, because honestly, when you’re doing some of the respect for people things, you got to have a little bit of faith that it’s going to work, that if I invest in people, if I if I create the right conditions, if I create the right environment, that we are going to get those results. But what I find is that if you’re focused on those results, it really inhibits you from engaging in the respect for people thing, you know. And so the part of that is that that just that leadership resistance, because, well, no, I got to get this done. It’s the short term focus. The second thing I would say that is a challenge here is the employee skeptic. You know, if past initiatives failed, or, you know, employees may. Have lack of confidence in leadership commitment, then trying to move forward, you’ve got a hurdle that you’re right from the outset, that you’re you’re trying to overcome, and especially if you’ve got, you know, siloed departments, or you’ve got conflict within the organization, it’s trying to get the employees to kind of buy in, to move forward, is also what, you know,

Patrick Adams 35:27

Scott, I want to expand on the first one that you mentioned, and because I think it’s, it’s super key. And we, you know, work with a lot of companies where, you know, working with middle management, and they’re like, Listen, my leadership wants results now. You know, I I’m doing my best to think long term and develop the people and really show respect and but I’m being pressed for results right now. And so, you know, one of the strategies that we recommend is, let’s in parallel to some of the long term stuff that we’re working on, to develop the right culture that will sustain the results are, you know, doing some project based improvements, and, you know, getting some some quick wins, or, you know, taking care of the low hanging fruit right away, in parallel with developing a learning culture and developing your people skills. So that would be one strategy. But do you have any other thoughts on how do you how do you navigate that challenge of Well, I have to have faith that the results will come because I’m doing the right things. I think all three of us would agree that those are the right things, and they will show the results. But when you’re getting pressure from maybe it’s not just leadership, but from outside, external forces, you’re getting pressure to show results right now, any strategies around how to, you know, kind of navigate that and maybe create a little bit of both.

Scott Gauvin 37:08

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s a strategy, but one thing that I I see is that a lot of leaders try to go it alone, as opposed to pulling in people and saying, Hey, I’ve got this challenge, and I don’t know how to solve this. And pulling people into them and trying to do it more collectively, they try to go it alone, like, Okay, I gotta come up with a solution. I gotta come up with the answer. I gotta come up with the thing to change, and I’ve gotta give everyone the direction. And going it alone is just very, very infrequently. Does that end in success? You get a greater chance of success if you, if you bring people to you and and you can bring people in and you, and you can do it collectively. It’s really hard to do because it is a leader. It requires me to be humble, to show my cards and say, Hey, here’s here’s what I’m struggling with. I know I should have the answer. I don’t have the answer and but I want to open this up as a conversation, because I think collectively, maybe we can come up with an answer. That’s the I see it happen more often than not, and that’s the recommendation, when I see that happening with a leader is I say, hey, you know, bring people in. Don’t, don’t try to do this alone. Your your chances of success precipitously drop if you’re trying to go along.

Patrick Adams 38:33

Right? I love that. That’s good. So as as we kind of start to wrap up here, Scott and come to a close. I want to come back to your book leading with compassion, which is available on Amazon. Can you just give us a couple of maybe the points there in the book that you think would be valuable for leaders when it comes to respect for people? I know we’ve already talked about a few things there, but anything specifically that you would call out from the book that you think are key

Scott Gauvin 39:05

points? Well, I will tell you, there’s 25 stories in there, and there’s going to be at least one in there that you’re going to be able to relate to as to how you can maybe show up, because someone one of those stories in there is going to be like, Oh, that was me. I’ll share the story that a bit of the story that I shared in the book, and that was that I came to leading with compassion when I heard a phrase, all behavior is an expression of an unmet need. And that phrase really kind of opened up a lot of things for me, that all behavior is an expression of an unmet need. And really, when I started thinking about all the interactions I was having, I was I realized, oh well, everyone behaves in ways to meet their own needs. And if I stop judging why people are trying. Trying to get their need met, and just try to understand what is the need that they’re trying to get met, I can more effectively, really help them. And so that’s what you’re going to hear in my story, is how I came to that. And I share in the book a couple of stories around how it really changed the situation for me, and how it really made you know where I could have judged someone and said, Well, what the heck is that person doing to oh, well, I see the unmet need and huh, they’re not meeting it in the most appropriate way, but I think I can coach them in a way that can maybe help them and help us as an organization as well. And the book is full of stories like that, so I’m sure one of them is going to resonate with with people if they if they go to that,

Patrick Adams 40:49

are the stories specific to manufacturing, or do they will they resonate with anyone in whatever industry they’re in? They’re

Scott Gauvin 40:57

from all different kinds of industries and, yeah. So it’s not just manufacturing, it’s it’s people in and healthcare and social work and all kinds of walks of life. Yeah. So it’s a pretty diverse book, but all centered around, you know how we’ve all come to try to lead more compassionately and and I’ll be honest, and just about every story, you know, it’s a it’s a learning it’s a learning element, right? We’re not there yet. We’re every one of us that wrote these stories. We’re all still learning how to do that better. So part of the way we’re learning is by sharing these stories, learning from each other as well.

Patrick Adams 41:40

Nice. That’s great. So, and if anyone has any questions, any more questions about the book or respect for people, roadmap or they just want to connect with you, what’s the best way for them to to grab information or connect with you?

Scott Gauvin 41:54

Yeah. So LinkedIn is a is always a great place to connect with me. Scott COVID. Scott COVID. If you go to respect for people roadmap.com, you’ll find respect for people roadmap. If you go to mcresco, M, A, C, R, E, S, C, o.com, you’ll find the consulting site. Those are the, probably the three best ways to reach out to me. Awesome. Excellent.

Patrick Adams 42:19

Yeah, perfect. Well, it’s been great to have you on. I don’t know, Shane, I don’t want to cut you off. Do you have any other anything, any last words or

Shayne Daughenbaugh 42:29

no motivational I can’t, I can’t just keep it to last. So let’s just, let’s just wrap it. Because I’ll just, I’ll just, I’ll just ramble.

Patrick Adams 42:37

Well, Scott Yeah, it’s been great to have you on. Appreciate you know everything that you’re doing for the Lean community, and you know that we’ll make sure we throw a link to the respect for people roadmap website in as well as your LinkedIn, and you know the book leading with compassion. So if anyone’s interested to make those connections or to learn a little bit more, you can go right to the show notes to to grab some more information or connect with with Scott. So Scott, thanks again for being on we so much appreciate you. Yeah,

Scott Gauvin 43:07

thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun.