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Unbound is a weekly podcast, created to help you achieve more as a leader. Join Chris DuBois as he shares his growth journey and interviews others on their path to becoming unbound. Delivered weekly on Thursdays.
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Building Trust, empowerment, and the great resignation all on today's episode.
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Are you a leader trying to get more from your business in life? Need to. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois.
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Jerry Dugan is the owner, CEO and Senior Consultant of BTR impact helping leaders expel employee dissatisfaction and stem the turnover time. He does this through his 10 leadership framework pulling from his experience as an Army veteran. And in leadership development. Jerry is the host of beyond the rut where he brings two decades of experience and lessons learned as a leader and corporate training consultant to his listeners. Jerry, welcome Don Beth. Chris. I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm excited. Especially because when we first started talking, I didn't even know you're an Army veteran. And then you started talking about your tent framework. And it was like, Oh, this dude gets. And so we're gonna get into that in a bit. But I would love to start by just hearing your origin story. Yeah. So in the 1970s, my mom and my dad met and not getting well, they did get married, and eventually had me and then after that had my little brother. So I grew up a bit of an army brat, at least until my dad retired from the army. parents divorced when I was 11. Got kind of picked on and bullied by my extended family. So that was an interesting time going from 11 years old to 14. And it was at 14 years old, though I just looked around at my extended family and saw they had this like woe is me mentality, there's no future, there is no hope. And I just thought to myself,
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There's got to be more to life than this. And you know, we talked about this rich history in the family, the Dugan name, why is it we're not living up to that today, at least the group that I'm involved with, and I remember at 14 years old, just drawing that line in the sand, and really writing out my vision for my life, you know, from the perspective of a 14 year old, and saying that I wanted to be the first to go to college, and actually graduate, I wanted to have a family where
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my wife and I would be close, fully
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connected, there we go. And that I'd have a strong relationship with my kids. And then they would grow up to be better than me. They would live the life they were meant to live, but not feel held back or anything like that. So living out their full potential. Now, I didn't just write this out to myself, I wrote it out on Christmas cards, and I gave it to everybody in my family.
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That went one of two ways, either a they were fully supportive and said yes, please go do that. And the other half of the family was like, Who do you think you are to be better than us? And so yeah, that was pretty much the line in the sand I drew and focused on that adventure, pretty much to this day. So you fast forward to the age of 23. I did graduate from college with a bachelor's in science in chemistry, biology, barely. So I was a pre med student who was not going to med school now with a 2.1 GPA.
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So right after college with that 2.1 GPA, I mean, I was not going to med school. And I thought if I picked up some, some training, some experience, maybe I could get into a place like Stanford that looked at the whole person. And so I joined the US Army and my recruiters decided, let's let's have fun with this guy. He's a college kid, he came to us. Let's get them. At least that was how it felt because I got the GI Bill. Of course, it turns out, everybody gets the GI Bill. And I had to pay into it like everybody else. But I didn't get things like college loan repayment. I wanted to get into a field like an LPN or even the RN program, or even like, radiology lab technician, any of those. They got me to sign up as a combat medic after I turned down be an infantry, I turned down artillery, I turned down, take mechanic, they didn't want me to drive the tanks, and I was a little hurt by that. Because things are kind of cool. They're heavy, though. Maybe Maybe I dodged a bullet on that one because nothing is light on the Abrams tank.
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So for basic training, they sent me off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. And that got me into a lot of trouble because I guess the drill sergeants didn't realize I was an Army brat born in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. So every time we filled out forms and paperwork, I don't know how they just somebody walking by as I'm filling out birthplace and they would be they would just over my shoulder yell. It says birthplace dummy. And I learned very quickly you don't just reply back. That is where I was born. Drill Sergeant.
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So I wound up doing a lot of push ups for that my own drill sergeants said, Hey, start carrying your ID card in your birth certificate in your breast pocket. And so while you're doing push ups, we can't stop you
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because we can't counterman that drill sergeant in front of others, but just just have that fall out of your pocket every time you're doing push ups because we got things to do and places to be. And I'm like, okay, okay, so we started doing that.
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Now, the basic training story, for me is probably my first introduction into leadership. Officially, they have this thing called platoon guide. So it was a student that they appointed to be responsible for the whole platoon. In this case, it was summertime. So the summer surge, we had a full unit of 64 people counting myself. And I was in charge to make sure all four squads woke up on time,
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got to breakfast, got to PT, you know, physical fitness, training, all the places. And then somehow, I was responsible to make sure everybody passed every quiz, every test. And
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yeah, I learned early on that the drill sergeants may be allowed to yell at us, but I was not allowed to yell at us. And just a lot of pushback, you know, really just conveying the instructions from the drill sergeant to we have to shine our boots and be ready in 10 minutes before we can get our mail call. And then, of course, the test to that is, while we're shining our boots, the drill sergeant would walk by us with the mail in hand and say, hurry up privates. Because if you want your mail, you got to be done on time. And, you know, I'm not going to be waiting on you. And so then off the drill sergeant goes, total mutiny. After that everybody's like, well, you know, Doug, is just making a stay here, like, because he hates us, and He wants us to not get our mail. And,
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and I remember, kind of just letting them slide on that. And we wound up all getting in trouble, because half of us didn't shine our boots, didn't line them up correctly, all the things that were wrong. And of course, since I was the leader, I felt them all. And I was like, wow, you know, the standards do matter. And there's a reason why you're a stickler for these things and, and having to explain to my my team, and they learned the hard way, because we were all doing the push ups together.
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But we all learned that if you want to be a good leader, gotta be a good follower. And you want to be a good follower, because someday you will be a leader as well. And people remember the amount of respect you gave or didn't give, while you were not in that leadership role. And
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you know, that that continued on though, like I go on to at advanced individual training to become a medic, I'm sitting there thinking, I'm going to get away without having to lead, I want to lay low. I'm not going to open my mouth. I'm going to do it. Folks told me to do and not volunteer for anything. They got me on the first day of class, like we're in classroom, we're getting our introduction from our senior instructor. And another cadre member, another instructor comes up to me, it taps on the table and says, Hey, come to the back of the classroom, bring your battle buddy with you. And so we follow her to the back of the room. And my battle buddies, like, what did you do? We just got here and like, I don't know,
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frankly, assumed it was my fault. I'm like, really like, it could have been you. You talk back more than I do. So we're in the back of the classroom, they grill us asked me to fill out us, they grilled me and they asked me a ton of questions about, you know, how did I get my specialist rank my e4 rank, and I told them I was a college graduate. They asked me what I studied in college, I told them I was a pre med student. What am I doing there? Well, I only had a 2.1 GPA. Where did you go to basic training in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
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Great. Did you hold any positions while you're at Fort Sill? Oklahoma, I was. Yes, I was the platoon guide twice. And squad leader once fired all three times. And they put back in the position at the very end for graduation. They're like, Alright, cool. He's the one. And I'm like the one What am I again, my battle buddies, like, give me the side I like you're so dead. And they told me I'm the class sergeant.
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So to speed this up, I don't know if I can speed this up. I'll try. So anyway.
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That gave me the same mission. My mission is to make sure the 42 students in my class graduate this training, and make sure we show up and if there's somebody missing, I have to know where they are. So like if somebody's sick, and they went to the clinic, I gotta be able to know that that person went to the clinic when I expect them back all those things. And so essentially all the things I did in basic training, but they found me on the first day at MIT. And I guess I was so tough that they started calling me the warden, not my class. My class just wanted to fight me in the woodline the instructors call started calling me the warden and I started to realize this isn't a good nickname, but they're laughing as they say it they're not claiming that they taught me these skills. But they will fire me either they like make me stick this out. And And finally, towards the end of the cycle. We were on our field exercise. I think I got challenged to four different fights in two days. And all from my my people and a drill sergeant from another platoon pulled me aside and said I couldn't help but notice but
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you got to know how to fight, don't you Mike? Yeah, I got bullied a lot as a kid and apparently here I gotta, I gotta, I gotta know how to fight and he said, you know, can you give me some advice? And I said, Yeah,
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I've heard you speak to your platoon. Maybe try respect
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And I looked at him funny. I'm like, we're in the army.
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I'm doing what my drill sergeants did. He said, Yeah, that's all fine and good for basic training. But in real life, people want to be treated with respect. And you know, the only thing that puts you in charge is that somebody else put you in charge and maybe the rank on your collar. But other than that, you're a person just like they are. They just want to be treated with dignity and respect. And your squad leaders probably want to leave their squads instead of having you micromanage that. Otherwise, why do you have squad leaders? And so his challenge to me was, why don't you let go for the next two days? Let your squad leaders leave their squads, you just touch base with the squad leaders and see what happens. And so I did that, pull them aside, explained what I was asked to try. And my squad leaders were like, thank you. All right, finally. All right, cool. We got this, don't worry again. And sure enough, it was like the easiest two days of my leadership career so far, you know, I'll three or four months of it.
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I'm gonna try this more often.
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So then eventually, primary Leadership Development School, like two years later, I became a sergeant.
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And you think I learned my lesson then. But I started to go the wrong route, and then kind of snapped out of it and realized, oh, yeah, those lessons learned over the years were taught for a reason and even a lieutenant out of
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my deployment code shared with me, never mess with the three M's, you take care of the three M's, they'll always take care of the mission. And those were never mess with their money. Their meals are they're male. And so take care of the basic needs with their money and their meals. And then take care of their sense of connection and humanity by protecting the male. And I was like, Oh, cool. And he said, Yeah, you take care of those three things, they will charge mountain tops for you.
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They'll, they'll blow up anything you want. And they'll do it fast. I was like, That sounds about right. You guys are tankers.
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And so yeah, that was my exposure to not just leadership, but servant leadership, my squad leader in after training was really big on things like making sure his soldiers ate first, before he got his plate.
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You know, if he was going to plan his time off, he made sure that everybody else had a plan for their time off as well, he didn't just go disappear for two weeks, come back and say, hey, you know, I, I just come back from vacation and find out that his people haven't had a vacation in a year, you know, he was definitely the kind of person to make sure you took time off, before he took off. And if it was like, a holiday season, he made sure that you had somebody to connect with before he again, took off to be with his family.
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And so I took a lot of those lessons with me when I got into the civilian world. And
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I've seen leaders and worked with leaders who are very much of the same ilk, you know, take care of their people. Trust them, empower them, give them responsibilities, and just watch your people soar. And then I've been on the other I've seen the other end of the spectrum where leaders micromanage to every finite detail or minut detail. And what they had was burnout, people quitting left and right people not feeling appreciated. And then that led me to start my own company BTR impact so that leaders can have that beyond the right impact with the teams they lead, but also have a beyond the right kind of life outside of the workplace. A lot
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of so much of
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so much of that story resonates with me.
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Like I mean, obviously, because we have a similar background. I also went to basic training at Fort Sill. Yeah. I'm gonna show up.
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In Gentry Whoa. All right. Yeah. Come on.
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Although, by the time this this episode goes live, Clint Rush is one another guest. He was an artilleryman. And so we do get along, so I'll give it together. But
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But anyways, no, but I happen to start basic training on my birthday. And so every time we rotates down, right, drill sergeants do that. But anyway, so I want to talk to you about a lot of things you just went into. Let's start but can you just explain more of the beyond the rep, like what what is the overall concept there? Why, why name your company, your podcast, everything after? Yeah, but it all started with a podcast. Really? It all started with three friends having lunch at schlocky, so I guess random free advertising for schlocky
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and my friend Brandon Cunningham, he had seen that I had a podcast, a different podcast called Family Time q&a, where I interviewed different family members. You know, my son, my daughter, my wife, and they rotated with a random question. Anyway, the point is, I had already had the show for about a year, year and a half Brandon wanted to start his own show that helped men who are in their 30s and 40s. They seem to have all the boxes checked for what successful look like married kids, the house the cars, the job salary, yet deep down inside, they felt stuck in life.
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You know, they're stuck in a rut. They're stuck in a rut in some sense. And so we wanted to share advice initially, around how to get unstuck. How do you recognize the right you're in and get out of it? How do you prevent yourself from getting into a rut in the first place? What are some things to do to keep growing yourself? And then after a while, we realized, when we shared stories of other people who face that made those changes, what was that aha moment for them? And then what is that one practice that they attribute the most success towards? And then our listeners get to choose, that's something I wanted to apply, or hey, that was cool, cool story. I'll wait for the next episode. So there were three of us who started brand new was in charge of like the vision, the messaging, the guests, and so on, I was in charge of the production. And then Sean, the third guy was in charge of the writing.
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And it took us nine months, like, in a sense, the startup for the show was a rut in a rut. But we launched it, I think Shawn stepped down after about 16 episodes, just wasn't for him. But then Brandon and I took off with it for five years, then, then he decided to step away because he was one he felt like the show was in a rut. But also, you know, something that he was five years later that he wasn't when we started was a grandfather with like five grandkids. And here we are on a Saturday recording five episodes back to back. And he's thinking, I'd much rather be playing with my grandkids than sitting in a room with Jerry, nice guy and all, but sit in this room and just have the same kind of conversation five times in one day, and then scarf down lunch, somewhere in there, I'd rather just be with my grandkids. And so he stepped away. And then I just took the show back to what it was all about. So really about helping people create a life they feel is worth living in their faith their family in their career, because a lot of us just were told what success looks like, we're told that it's the degrees, it's the salary, it's, in fact, I was just looking at a website right now, or before we got on this call of podcasts that were looking for guests. And I noticed that in the criteria for every single one of them was you have to be making at least a six figure income or a seven figure income. And then I eventually realized, okay, what they're looking for potential clients, they want you making that kind of money, so you could pay them for their services. After the interview. I'm like, okay, that's really what they're getting at. But the message to me initially was, part of the value they see in you is how much money you bring in. And I thought, man, it's just, it's such a perfect analogy to this beyond the right message that we're kind of fed, in a sense that your worth is tied in with the amount of money you make, you know, that I've run into business advisors who thought net worth was the only value that you you brought to anything and I thought, gosh, there's so much more than that, you know, you can have all the money in the world and be a rotten person. Or you can also have no money in the world and still be a rotten person. It's, it's, yeah, exactly. So
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yeah, it's just like, We're fed what success should look like. And then we pursue it. And then we get there. And we realize, I did not want to be a doctor. You know, that was my thing. Being a doctor was my mom's cream, not mine. And since she didn't get to finish school, when she was younger, it was now my turn to do it so that she would have her dream vicariously through me. And my faculty advisor in college picked up on it when after two years, I'm barely pulling together a C average. But in fact, I think it was lower than that I had a below 2.0 GPA for a little bit.
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And I think two semesters in a row, it was like, all DS and a C or A B, like my electives kept me going in a sense. And he realized, because here I am filling these classes, but tutoring people who are getting A's and B's. And so he recognized right away this guy does not want to be a doctor and he's sabotaging himself in doesn't even realize it and
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so that's where I was, I was pursuing my mom's dream to be a doctor and on my own. A lot of other people do the same thing. You know, they they become an executive because their parents were executives or they become lawyers because they're in a family of lawyers. Now, I got one friend, he is a lawyer in a family of physicians, so they look at him as the outcast.
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Right, what a disappointment. Good lord, you guys are brutal.
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But that's the essence of beyond the rut, the show and the book that came out just this year, which brings all that messaging together to look at your life and the five apps faith family, fitness, finances and future and engage everything you do in your life around those pillars. So does a career help you strengthen your faith or the cause you're living for? Does that help you with your family relationships? Does it help you with your your fitness not just physical fitness but emotional and mental fitness?
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Financially is
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It's bringing in what you need it to? And then also, are your financial practices, managing that income really well? And then are you able to apply things to your future growth? You know, is that career helping you grow into a better future of some kind? And so, career isn't one of the pillars, you looked at the five pillars to see if that career is a good fit for you. If you're going to start a business, same thing, does that business help support those five pillars? If you're going to join a club, a membership, take a podcasting, become a tech talker, whatever it is, is it going to support those five pillars and if so great, if not, you might be in a rut. And so recognize what that run is understand where you want to go and then take action to get there is like the framework epi on the right, so you know, your rut ru T, to get out of and lift beyond the rut.
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Fast forward to just nine months ago, from us talking to each other, I left my day job. And realize there's some things on my bucket list I want to do published in a book was one of them, I got it done a few months later. But I wanted to start my own business where I did public speaking, training workshops. And I realized my niche, my niche is helping leaders develop teaching communication skills, teaching, servant leadership, in a sense, and I had all these topics I wanted to cover, but it was kind of hard to, if you're the customer, or the client looking in and you see all the topics I had available. It's like how do I know which ones to pick and choose? So then I was able to hone all that in and
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talk about employee engagement, reducing turnover, but at the manager or director level. So what, what are the skills those folks need to keep their teams together, and then the company BTR impact, so I'm kind of all over the place. Now, like a squirrel, it's probably past three o'clock here, isn't it? Or getting close to it?
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Like a gremlin my brains like, alright, you don't you didn't feed us past midnight. So we're just gonna go all over the place.
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But BTR impacted the business side of what I do,
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is about helping them still helping people have that beyond the rat life. But now from the leadership perspective, helping leaders have that beyond the rut impact, so not just in their own lives, but with the teams they lead, so that the teams they lead also could live beyond the rat type of lives. And then as far as the the leadership tent that was born out of, really, I was having a hard time remembering what servant leadership was like, there's, there's a book out there that talks about the seven pillars of servant leadership.
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And even though I've gone through the book, if you would ask me, What are the seven pillars, I would just draw blank, and I would sound like Homer Simpson, and
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I just realized tent
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because you know, tents are mobile.
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They, you know, the military system for 1000s of years. And, you know, they're they're mobile, they're protected from the elements, they're adaptable. And leaders in the military use them, because that was like the place where they hung their banner, and information would come in, that those leaders inside the tent would organize that information and send the information and instructions out to coordinate all the different elements out there on the battlefield. And then when it was time to pick up and move because the battlefield conditions changed, or you routed the enemy, and now you had to go chase them, or they routed you, and you got to get out of there. Whatever it is, you could pack that tent up and move to another location and set up. If it was windy, you could stick down one area tighter than the others. If it was hot, and you wanted a nice breeze, you can lift up the sides. So that adaptability
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and I just started realizing that's right. And then on top of that, and this kind of goes back to
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the very first field exercise I went on, out of all the training, I immediately go into like a like a one month training exercise in the winter in Germany. I just got my my gear issued to me like I saw, I'm still like figuring how to put the stuff together. And you know, where's the 100 mile an hour tape so I can tape it all together the way my drill sergeant wanted me to.
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Everybody laughed at me because I showed up. You could tell I was fresh out of basic training when I went to that field exercise. But I remember
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the first day we were there the tasking was we have these for medium sized tents and need to be popped up. There are 12 of you. So get these up as soon as possible. So the 12 of us did our best to get those general purpose medium tents up and you had like four people on one center pole. Four people in the other center pole and then four people at the corners and we're all trying to do this at the same time. cussing each other out a where's the hammer, you know, go get your own bleep and a hammer.
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Where the stakes for this thing I don't know take them off somebody else's gear. And it took an average of two hours per tent 12 People running it and when the whole exercise was over three weeks later, we're doing our AAR after action review
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As the observer asked us, How do you think you did overall? And the commander is like, Oh, we did great, you know, two different units came together, harmonized, we got all these like, rah rah rah, you know,
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woowoo type of stuff. And the, the observer was like, Alright, that's good. That's good. How do you feel about the tents?
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Just what? It was a very specific question. I knew in that moment, we messed up.
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And sure enough, then again, the commander just praised everybody. And the observer said, Okay.
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So I clocked in, at an average of two hours per tent told people
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how many of you are familiar with the cold war like old army standard for these things, I don't know if you know it or not.
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It doesn't matter.
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For people 18 minutes, was the old army standard. And again, 12, people were taking two hours to do the same thing. We really should have had all four tents up within an hour, hour and a half, ideally. And instead, it took three times as many people
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way longer than I should have. I think the label says four people can do it in 36 minutes. And of course, the army cut that in half and said under combat conditions, 80 minutes.
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And then he asked the question, what's the fastest way to get a tent up? And of course, the one person we all ignored all three weeks, raised her hand, and was like, I got a bad feeling about this answer. And he said, great, what is it? And she said, You stick down the corners first. Like, exactly. And we're like, like, everybody put our heads down, because we knew we screwed up even more like she was telling us multiple times, stick out the corners, like what uh, you know, you, you're the supply sergeant, whatever it was, I forget what her role was. But she obviously had the right answer. And we all just chauvinistic. Lee ignored her. She was right. But then what does that mean for us and leadership? If you want to stake your leadership tent, and you want to be a leader, there are really these four corners you want to have staked out as part of your style part of your character.
27:13
And if you have these in place, you're going to address the two biggest reasons why people leave their jobs. According to the Gallup surveys, they did in 2022. Top reason did not feel cared for, or connected to the organization. The second big reason did not see growth opportunities where they were. And those the big two, I mean, they broke it down into five big reasons why people left. But if you look at them, they really fall into two buckets. I didn't feel like the organization organization cared about me. And I didn't see where I could grow where I was. And you look at what companies are doing. They're doing everything they can to fix this. They're, they're doing compensation adjustments and being competitive. They're creating career pathways. So if I come in at an entry level, how do I become a manager in five to 10 years or faster.
28:02
They're trying to bring wellness into the workplace. They're trying to create formal training programs that help develop emerging leaders, and so on. And these are all great, they're all must haves, you can't not do these things anymore, because it's becoming the standard. However, it's when you talk to the managers and the directors, what they'll tell you is that it's not happening fast enough. We're not creating those pathways fast enough to be meaningful to our employees. With the formal training programs, it's great. However, we're limited by resources, we don't have enough spots in the training, we can't take our employees off the workflow to go to training.
28:38
We can only offer so many sessions per year, all those things. And then with the compensation side, if you have somebody ready to leave, and then you're enticing them to stay with a pay raise. I think statistically, that lasts about two weeks. And they're back to where they were before anyway. If they leave to another organization for higher pay,
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that other organizations gonna have a hard time keeping the person if they're also not helping them feel cared for, or showing that opportunity for growth. So the managers and directors are asking what can I do to grow my people to engage them and not burn them out? Like what can I do without having to wait for somebody else to do it for me? And so that's where tents comes in. So tent stands for trust building. So what are the things that that managers can do to build trust with their employees? The E stands for empowering so in what ways can the leader share his or her power with their people so that the people on the team are the ones who have a sense of ownership in the work they do? And if you think about like a car that you rent, I don't know about you, I've I've never washed a car that I rented before I took it back ever because I don't own it.
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Now if I own it, and I want to show that I'm proud of this car, I'll wash that thing all the time. In fact, my wife had a car wash membership for the longest time and would go like daily so
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cuz she owned the car.
30:02
Let's see n on tent stands for navigating. You know, people want growth opportunities. If a leader picks up on how to help their employee set goals that also helped the organization,
30:14
give feedback, coach them for success, and even mentor their people. They're providing those opportunities right there and then thriving together, you know, 29% of employees out there say they have not received recognition from their boss in over a year. And yeah, when you're looking at a drop in engagement over the last three years, a rise and disengagement at the same time and record high turnover numbers in at least 2022. I haven't yet looked at 2023 yet, but it's time to look at those.
30:49
It makes sense. People aren't getting recognized, and we're not doing enough at the local level, the team level to build people up. So that's the framework 10 Some of the skills that I talked about with leaders are starting with why what is your leadership credo? I know in the army, we had the NCO creed and don't don't ask me to recite it right now. Because I just remember the first line.
31:15
Think it was I am a professional and no one that way? No, I am a noncommissioned officer. No one's more professional than I am. And then that. Yeah, and then.
31:24
Oh, man. So I don't know. It's like,
31:28
somebody would have heard this as a chair you No, that's not the creed.
31:34
The Air Force guys will pick on me Jerry where we were in the Air Force. And we knew that wasn't the creed.
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So like, noncommissioned officers had a creed, every I believe every leader should have a personal credo. This is what I believe in. This is what because of that, this is how I'll treat people and lead my team. And as a result, this is what you'll get. So that's one skill I love to talk about. Another one is, you know, rounding with your employees, like in the army, you have sensing sessions, this kind of the same thing, but on a one on one level, like talking to people for 15 minutes, Hey, how's life going? What's going well, what's not going well at work? What are some ideas you have? Who do you want to recognize that work? And that gives them voice and agency to share with you feedback? How are we doing? Without any reprisal? Without any Well, you don't know? Or hey, that's a that's a dumb idea. He'll like you're just listening and saying thank you. It's kind of like when Henry the Fifth peruse through the ranks of his men before the Battle of Agincourt. And he, he realized that people were kind of freaked out like, Oh, we're gonna die guys.
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Do we just do it now or, you know, this kid is gonna get us all killed. And he realized, oh, shoot, you know, people's lives are at stake here. So it's kind of that but less brutal, I guess. And then, from there delegating? Yeah, that's probably the best way to develop your people is to delegate responsibilities to them. And I know some people are afraid to because it's like, what if I give it to them, they do it wrong. It's like, well, then they learn.
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Exactly. And so I talked about like, a decision making model that I've adopted from a couple of different sources, combined it all in I call it the carry crawl, walk, run model. So it's just like at the carry phase, you're there you're observing, you're just soaking in all that experience.
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The crawl, it's like, I want you to take this information, I want you to come up with a decision. But before you execute the decision, come to me, let's talk about it. And maybe we massage it a little bit before we send it off and do something with it. Walk is Nate, this is yours. However, every time you take an action, report it to me and we'll do a debrief and see how it went, what can be done better. All those good things. And then a run is this is your baby. Like, you own this, you decide what happens to it, here are the parameters. So you got to stay in this budget. You can ever do this to people, you this is your always must do type of thing. And we'll touch base maybe once a month, once every two weeks, anytime there's a fire
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or just on random or if I need to report for an organization just know this is yours. I'm not gonna micromanage. I'm not gonna tell you how you need to do it. You've got this, you've demonstrated, you own this.
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And that those are the four levels and then you just have the conversation with your employee and say, Hey, do you feel good with taking this on? Like yeah, great. Is there anything that would prevent you from taking this on and doing well with it and they might have something they want to get off their plate. And that's your opportunity. You know, some people like Well, that's worth it's just had to get done. But my firm belief is well if they need that, that off their plate so they can do this other thing I just gave them to stretch them and grow them. I now have this other thing I can give to somebody else and grow and stretch them. And so it's just an end of the person you just delegated your star player moves on to another department another
35:00
company,
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it happens, however, you now have a lot of opportunity to grow other people and frame it that way. So tent trust building, empowering, navigating and thriving together. And those are just some of the skill sets around the tent. So we talked about two big reasons people are leaving, they're not feeling cared for, and they don't have a good career path, or they can't see their career growth. What the great resignation is a thing, right? Yeah. Why is it primarily because of those two? You know, bits of information that we have now? Or is there other stuff that's playing into this that just makes so many people want to want to leave? And actually, I want to go a little deeper? Because it's not. I feel like for a number of people who should be wanting jobs right now, it's really hard to find people. My local area, almost every restaurant is closing down for certain hours, because they just don't have enough help. Same thing with stores, like marketing company I work with has, it's hard to find people. And it's just like, what, what about the great resignation? It's actually causing this? Yeah, a number of factors. Overall, I went to a Josh Burson conference. Gosh, I mean, this is old information, but it's here now. So 2018, there's this guy, Josh Burson. Apparently, he's like V guy, when it comes to human resources, like data analytics, and so on. And he uses that information from like Department of Labor and Statistics, a couple of different organizations. And his company does nothing but crunch the data and use that data for predictive models. And one of the things that they they talked about in that conference, and when I say they, I mean, not just Josh, but a number of other people talked about
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AI is coming was one of those things. And the reason being is that our population is getting smaller. It's a much more creative type of consumer economy. And what we're going to find is that in the United States alone, we're not going to have enough workers to do things.
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You know, it's just we're gonna have fewer people, you know, people are having less babies then say, the baby boomers and the generation before them. And so there was that population dip. That was that was one thing they were predicting, and they're like, this is going to hit in about 15 years. So we got to figure out something. And the biggest answer is we're going to embrace AI solutions to help handle the more menial data crunching type of stuff. And then that's going to change the job market, people are going to be instead of doing the widgets, they're going to be working on the computers and the machines that take care of the widgets. So that's why you're seeing things like McDonald's more kiosks at the sale point of sale,
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which are kind of a pain because it's hard to work the menu. And it takes longer, where you can just ask somebody, Hey, is there a way I can do this, and they get this sauce in there, and it's like you get.
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So that's one factor that we knew that there was going to be a shortage of labor. But again, in this timeline, we were still 10 years away from that
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of the pandemic. And we were going to shift to more of a gig economy as well, like, okay, with the shortage, you wouldn't have like a trainer, like training facilitator work in just one company, you'd have a trainee facilitator work for five or six client companies, or do three months here, and then go to another company, that kind of thing. So gig economy was also the prediction and about 10 to 15 years,
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the pandemic pretty much sped up. Everybody's plans, everybody's predictions, because we had to stay at home, we were forced to the lock down and stay in our apartment and stay in our homes, stay with our families. And
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he kind of saw the impact in a number of ways. Those folks who were definitely extroverts and loved being in the office, or we're more traditionalist are like, Please get me out of here, I need to be in the office. I need a brick and mortar, I need a place. A lot of other people though, we're like wait,
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for the last two to three years, I did not need to hire a babysitter.
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So I got to enjoy more of my paycheck. I didn't spend an hour to two hours in my car commuting through rush hour traffic, I got to wake up take care of myself. So that hour that would have been spent to my car was now spent on self care, connecting with my spouse. And then I just fired up the computer and here I am. And I've got my taskings and I can knock out all my tasks and show productivity. So a lot of people showed more productivity in less time even so I know my team was guilty of this the team I lead just recently before I left my job
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because they were hard to get a hold of after three o'clock.
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But they're getting all their stuff done by about one or two o'clock or I might get an email like at 10pm and like Oh, I see what they did. They took some time off to go take care of themselves.
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And they still knocked off the job knowing that their deadline was 9am. The next day, technically, they pulled that off. Here it is in my inbox at 10pm the night before.
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So they have that flexibility to, to live life to also work. And then now at the end of the pandemic, you know, companies didn't know what to do with that. And so they're like, Alright, everybody come in. So some companies did just that, like blanket decision, everybody come in. And you saw a lot of people that said, No way, Jose, I'm not, I'm not going back, you can't put me back in prison, I'm not going back to jail man.
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So
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they did one or two things they either are looking for specifically companies that are remote positions, or they went to the gig economy sooner. And the ones who found success in the gig economy, and it doesn't even have to be in their field. You know, there people are just like, I make more money driving Uber than I did. Working as a clerk in an office, I got a ton of tips, then there's a whole tip backlash happening now.
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So that's another factor is just quality of life.
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Being able to have flexibility in the work, being able to work on other projects, to be more connected with family and, and be more present with family. A lot of those things have been quoted as reasons why they want to work remotely, and more in depth with Gallup. So they looked at you know, there were the five reasons why that they shared and of course, I bucketed them into two. But it was around things like I didn't feel connected with my company, is one reason why so with people working remotely, a lot of people did not learn how to work with people who are remote. Yeah, how do you stay connected on a daily basis? How do you create that human connection, so that they feel like they're a part of and have a sense of ownership? And that's where some people thought, Well, the answer is bring everybody in? Well, again, we're enjoying this flexibility and quality of life with our families, why don't want to come in, but at the same time, you got to make me feel connected and helped me feel connected. So that was kind of the top two didn't feel connected with the people at work. And the other one that was a close second was didn't feel connected with the company, its mission, its vision, it's an ins and outs, because they're kind of isolated to their home, basically,
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the next two around, I didn't feel like my skills were tapped into, you know, so it's like, people kind of relegated to just tasks and not responsibility areas or projects and so on.
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And then the last one was growth opportunities. So it's so kind of three buckets in a way didn't feel connected or cared for,
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didn't find my work meaningful and didn't see growth opportunities, if you want to break that down a little further. But then also, Gallup had pointed out that the types of industries, or the types of buckets where they saw the most disengagement, the the highest group wasn't even an industry, it was a type of position. And that was,
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if it is a job that can clearly be done remotely, but the company is requiring the employee to come into the office, that was the number one group of the most disengaged people because they know they're coming into the office when their counterparts are at home, doing the same work and enjoying a better quality of life. And then the other bucket was healthcare. So
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a lot of a lot of folks have been leaving healthcare because of the burnout, you know, 2020 and 2021. They were taking up the slack. They they were the ones going to work and seeing the sick, all the debates on maths don't mass vaccine don't vaccinate. They're the ones in the hospitals in the ICUs in the med surg units, they're the ones having to like really be on really a war footing for two years straight.
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And then when those two years were gone,
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the same nurses got a lot of backlash for being conspiracy supporters and whatever. And that's like, now they were the enemy. And so that was a cause for a lot of them to burnout as well as seeing
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agency nurses come in. So like you got a nurse getting paid 60 bucks an hour. And then that same hospital brings in an agency nurse at $195 An hour and doing less work because they don't know the hospital. They don't know the systems and then the nurse working there says hey, can I get $195 an hour? Like no, because you're not agency? And it's like, alright, what if I quit, and I go travel? So you have people doing that? So that was another thing. And then even in the teaching profession, my previous job, my best candidates for training facilitators in the corporate environment, were teachers who are done with teaching and and there was a number of factors there. I know in the Dallas area teachers have not seen a pay raise since 2019. We're not going for years and have not seen a pay raise in a state that says hey, we can
45:00
Have the surplus in the budget, we're not giving any of it to our educators.
45:04
And on top of that, you know, the the rise and security issues. And so teachers are like, Alright, I want to go somewhere where I get paid more, and it's safer, and I do less work. So they're looking for corporate training positions. And then it's just all these different factors coming together. But a big driver, though, has been the impact of COVID 19. And the life could be different. And I don't have to go to a nine to five in a brick and mortar type of business.
45:32
I want to work from home, I want to have flexibility I want to hybrid, some of the companies that have done the best in retaining their people have gone to a hybrid type of format, where it's like, alright,
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you know, Monday, Tuesday, everybody work at home, Wednesday, Thursday, come on in Friday work from home. And so now you you almost have the feel of a What's the math on this five day weekend, and but you're doing the work of a five day work week. So come in, you're getting the connection, you're building those relationships in person, it's almost like a mini family reunion every week. And then you go back to working from home. And so some companies have been doing that doing it really well. Or they make it mandatory work for Home Mondays, and Fridays. And then hybrid, you got to come in for two days, we get to choose Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but all again, to facilitate the human connection. So a lot of the folks that are going hybrid isn't so much about make sure you're doing your work, it's
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we want to help you have that human connection with everybody. And they're just certain things that you can't replicate as well, online or remotely. And so here's how we're going to do that.
46:41
Make sense? Well, awesome. Jerry, this has been fantastic. It's like you have a wealth of knowledge around everything that we just went through, I strongly encourage people to check out your podcast beyond the rut. To learn more about your tent model everything grab a copy of the book.
47:04
Separate from from your book, actually, what book would you recommend everyone listen to or read? Man, the one book that really changed me and this is where somebody would say, Oh, you shouldn't say the Bible, like, oh, that's cliche.
47:18
That's Christians always feel like we're gonna say that book. But I would say the book that I read every January for five years straight that changed me was Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People
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read it every January for five years straight. And it really helped me hone in on things like remember people's names, you know, take care of people help people. And don't even expect to thank you in return. And it's just when you did that you want people who write they just liked you. And they would do anything for you. So yeah. What is next for you professionally? Oh, man. Well, now that I've got this framework tense, I've already outlined the book. And I've been creating content around that through my mini episodes on beyond the right, I call them Jerry short, because they're, like 10 ish minutes, give or take a few. And so each element of tent has been coming out in those episodes lately. And so there's that and then I just came off a call before this one, we were talking about mastermind groups and, and so a coach was helping me think about and map out the idea of a mastermind group for managers and managers and directors who are struggling with that turnover issue. And they just want that additional support. That's not only going to help them with that current issue with help them with their careers for the rest of their lives.
48:42
Awesome. All right.
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And finally, where can people find you? All right, the best place beyond the rut.com and that's where the podcast is located. The blog posts I have are also they're usually they're inspired by the podcast itself. And then there's a couple of buttons on there like to work with me and that'll take you to my other website. That is BTR impact. So beyond the red.com is kind of the hub that has everything.
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Awesome. Again, thank you for joining me. It's been awesome conversation. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it.
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If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. And for more information on how to build effective and efficient teams through your leadership. Visit leading four.com As always deserve it
Transcribed by https://otter.ai