Michael: Hello everyone and welcome to HaBO Village podcast. I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I am Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And we're married and we're business partners. How about that?
Kathryn: And it's a good gift.
Michael: And we welcome you to this podcast. It's about building Passion and Provision companies. We want to support and encourage leaders who want to build companies full of profit, purpose, and legacy. And we want to make sure that what you're doing is living into a life that you are fulfilled, not just outside of work, not just because you got a big fat paycheck, not just because your company was profitable, you had a great exit, but because on a day-to-day basis, you're doing stuff that allows you to be your best self, fulfilled, and gain that profit, purpose, and legacy in your life. We're excited about it. We live our lives towards that and this podcast is about supporting you.
Kathryn: Wow. He didn't even read that. That was good, babe.
Michael: I'm all excited today.
Kathryn: He's very excited.
Michael: Okay.
Kathryn: He's very excited. So we went to an event this week. We got to take our whole staff. It was super fun. Shut down the office, took the staff from both companies, and went to a Patrick Lencioni event.
Michael: So today we're going to talk about-
Kathryn: So we're going to talk about that. It was called the Engaged Manager Event.
Michael: And the three things we learned?
Kathryn: And we learned what he defines as the three signs of a miserable job.
Michael: And we're going to talk about those three today.
Kathryn: We're going to talk about those three. So we've talked about Patrick before. He's come to town actually. This is his third time.
Michael: We've talked behind his back before.
Kathryn: We've praised his being before, as have many people, I'm sure. But this was a super fun event because it was a free event that he put on called the Engaged Manager Event, and we had the privilege of being a sponsor, and we designed all the materials for it, and the logo, and all that fun stuff. So it was super fun to be involved in that way. But it was an event that was free and open to basically anyone whose in management or leadership in a company. And we basically filled a 12 hundred seat auditorium.
Michael: From the people in Chico.
Kathryn: From the people in Chico.
Michael: It was great.
Kathryn: Which is super fun. It's like one percent of the population, so that's a pretty good turnout at an event.
Michael: Yeah, and if you don't know who Patrick Lencioni is or if you've heard of him, look, I just want to do a quick bio on him. This guy's awesome. First of all, he's short and I really appreciate short [crosstalk 00:02:10].
Kathryn: Short people have no reason-
Michael: Short people. Because Kathryn and I are both vertically challenged. Second-
Kathryn: So anyone we can look in the eye, we just like more.
Michael: Right? Patrick is a really successful business leader, consultant, author. He and his partner started the table group, which does consulting. Some of his clients are Southwest Airlines-
Kathryn: Chick-fil-A.
Michael: Chick-fil-A. Just kind of a couple of small companies like that. He's been with them for a significant amount of time. His major thrust is that culture is the new advantage.
Kathryn: Yeah, and I think he calls it ... he would refer to it as organizational health.
Michael: Yes.
Kathryn: Right? Organizational health is the thing that is going to stand out and be kind of the difference maker in businesses of the future.
Michael: He says that we're beyond knowledge, because you can find anything you want to find on Google on your phones. So we all have more than enough knowledge. If you have more knowledge than me, we're both way above minimum competency or anything else. And those type of things are no longer the strategic ...
Kathryn: Advantage.
Michael: ... advantage. But culture is a strategic advantage, and if you want to really take advantage of what you could do with your company, that's it. He's written 12 books, many of them on a best seller list. New York Times Best Seller list. They are packed full of interest, and engagement, great stories.
Kathryn: Yeah, they're really easy to read because he typically does like an allegory to illustrate the point and then unpacks it. And we probably ... I'm thinking, well I don't know if it was a year ago, but a few months ago. Last time he was here, we talked about ... because we love how he even talks about hiring, right? So we use the model of ... what is it? Like to hire people who are hungry, humble, and smart. And even in his vernacular, understanding that smart isn't about-
Michael: IQ.
Kathryn: ... IQ. It's about emotionally smart. It's about EQ. It's about relational intelligence and understanding your own emotions, the emotions of others, and how to navigate rooms. So he sings our song or we sing his because-
Michael: Yeah. Quite frankly, what we do is we depend on each other, on other people around us to help us codify and put the picture together of what we believe, what we call Passion and Provision, and his three things on what does it look like to hire so that humble, hungry, smart is a phenomenal way of articulating and codifying what we've been doing for a long time, and we thought how this says it better than we've been saying it. So we integrated that into our process and talk about it.
Kathryn: Yeah, because it's not important that you invent anything. You just find the people who are marching to the same tune, and saying things better, and work with, and borrow from, and share with, and it's super encouraging.
Michael: Well in the beginning he thought it was their own IP, their own intellectual property. And then he realized that it was actually a universal principle that he wanted everybody to have. But we give him credit for those words that we have. And so that's who he is. He's just phenomenal. He's a great presenter. If you ever listen to his audio books, they're good, but he's like five times better on stage. It's amazing.
Kathryn: Yeah, he's super fun. So he wrote one of ... I don't think it's his latest book, but one of his recent books is a book that is called The Truth About Employee Engagement. And when he originally wrote it, it was called Three Signs of a Miserable Job. And they ended up deciding that they needed to change that title because people kept saying, "We really like your book, but we can't take it to work," right? "Because if it's laying out on my desk and my boss comes in, that's not going to go well for me." So they changed the Three Signs of a Miserable Job to The Truth About Employee Engagement. And he came and just spent 90 minutes basically giving this talk about uncovering the three signs of a miserable job and beginning to talk about what you can do to counter those things as you manage people, as you manage.
Michael: It's funny. We like him so much, I'm looking around and we're in our studio right now. We've got bookshelves in here and I've got one stack of books that has two different ... out of six books, two of them are Lencioni books. And one of them is this book we're talking about.
Kathryn: Yeah, we're fans. So the three signs of a miserable job. So I'm going to tell you what the three are, and then we will unpack them, and obviously, I'm sure Patrick has his own blog and his own podcast, but we just want to share them with our audience because we just think they're really profound. So, three signs of a miserable job. First one is anonymity. The second is a word they invented called "immeasurement". And the third one is irrelevance. So those are the three signs and we want to just kind of unpack and talk about those. So Michael, tell me about anonymity.
Michael: Who?
Kathryn: Who are you and what is anonymity mean?
Michael: Anonymity. It speaks to the core issue of ... So remember, imagine a triangle. The graphics are not overly amazing, but they're very simple and easy. Imagine a triangle with three parts and in the very center it says "miserable job", right? So anonymity. And anonymity is when we're talking about that thing where nobody at work knows who I am. My leaders don't know me. My coworkers don't know me. A matter of fact, it turns out that Gallup even speaks to this and says that one of the keys to fully engaged people are they have a close friend, sometimes even called a best friend at work, somebody whose very close, a significant friend at work who knows who you are. And then one of the other characteristics that shows up in that whole function of the list that Gallup puts down and all the research shows is that when you have a great job, when the leader actually knows you, cares about you, and cares about your development.
Michael: So to care about somebody's development, you have to know where they are and what their strengths and weaknesses are. You need to know about them. You need to want to actually care about them. Anonymity is when those things are missing and people go, "I don't matter to anybody because nobody cares enough to know anything about me."
Kathryn: Yeah, and we're talking about knowing who a person is outside of work. That's a big piece of it, right? Does this person have a family? Do they have children? Where are they walking in life? What are their goals and dreams?
Michael: Well you say on a regular basis ... I mean, the quote you use regularly is, "I bring my whole self to work."
Kathryn: Yeah. So that separation. So the illusion of the separation of, "Just leave your personal life at home and when you come to work, it's just all business." And I have just found in my life that just doesn't work. And I don't think it actually works for anybody because you are bringing your whole self to work, and your personal life is influencing everything you do at work, even if you try to compartmentalize, even if-
Michael: And if you're smart, you're using emotional intelligence, it's not like it's getting in the way of work. Sometimes, catastrophe does. It just does and we have to all understand that and when somebody says, "I don't care what's going on in your life, even if it's a catastrophe. Either get out of here or get to work," that doesn't flow in a healthy company or a Passion and Provision culture, or a thriving company of what we're finding out. So knowing who you are outside of work, I loved it. What was the exercise? Talk about the exercise that he suggested, the taking the worksheet and actually interviewing an employee.
Kathryn: Oh yeah, so over all three areas. We've only talked about one, but really understanding, taking a worksheet and exploring, like, "What do I ... " Think about your employees and actually being able to write down, "What do I know about that employee?" And then when you discover that maybe you don't know a lot, spending 10-15 minutes just talking with them, saying, "Hey, I realize that there's just a lot about you that I don't know. I don't know where you grew up, I don't know your background. I don't really know how your family's put together. And I just would love to know you more," and that just sense of taking an interest, right?
Michael: Well it's very proactive. And even if you think you know a lot about somebody, it's very proactive. He sat down and he told the story about 12 people in his organization. He's like, "I think we should probably do this because we tell other people to do it." So he printed out a binder, he sat down with 12 people. It took him about three or four hours total. But he says, "There were things I didn't know about people." And he knows a lot about ... I mean, this guy, not only does he preach the whole issue of organizational health and culture, but he also is driven to have relational ... he's a relational kind of guy. He sees connection between people really well and when you talk to him, he makes you feel connected, which is pretty powerful. So he went through this. He didn't do it. And even that he learned some stuff. So I think that idea of ... I took one of the folks that was the most introverted in our class-
Kathryn: In our class.
Michael: In our office. In our class.
Kathryn: In our class. In our office.
Michael: In our office. And I use that is an exercise incentive. What do I know about him? And I was pretty excited to say, "I know a lot." I know a lot about our staff, but I could still take an interest in what's going on.
Kathryn: Yeah. And at the size of our company, it is slightly easier than if you have a much larger organization.
Michael: Absolutely.
Kathryn: But the principle still stands. So Michael ...
Michael: Yes, ma'am.
Kathryn: One of the guys in the audience ... Because one of the things that Patrick does well, even in a room of 12 hundred, is allow for shout out questions from the audience, right? And one of the questions was a guy who just basically said, "Okay. But HR has taught us that we're not allowed to be personal," right, "We're not allowed to care, that it's dangerous."
Michael: It is dangerous.
Kathryn: So how did he respond to that?
Michael: He kind of blew long bacon at people.
Kathryn: He's like [inaudible 00:11:36].
Michael: Long bacon's a British term for kind of sticking your tongue out and [inaudible 00:11:40] doing that. Okay, so that's long bacon if you don't know what long bacon is. His response was basically, "Look, I understand and I get it. And you can't be stupid about it, right? Don't be stupid, don't be inappropriate, and use emotional intelligence."
Kathryn: Yeah, you're not asking them if they like the sauna.
Michael: Right. "Hey ... "
Kathryn: "How do you feel about saunas?
Michael: How's this? "How heavy are you and do you like hot tubs?"
Kathryn: Yeah. So you probably aren't asking those questions.
Michael: But at the same time, you're going, "Okay, look, I'm going to extend beyond what lawyers are trying to protect us on all the time, and I'm going to try and be smart, but I have to care about people." We actually have to love people and if the law is going to start driving us to a place where we can't love others around us in appropriate, healthy ways, then his take, and I would agree, you have to choose love, care, and honor of people over that. And then there was the other part of what if you have people that come into your organization who don't want to be vulnerable, who don't want you to know anything? They really want to keep everything separate. We actually had an employee-
Kathryn: We did.
Michael: ... somebody in leadership several years ago, who was very like, "I don't want anybody to know," to the extent that she would not put family pictures on her desk or in her office because if she had to let somebody go, her mindset was, "I don't want them to know my family is and put my family in danger." There was so much fear and so much concern and so much, "We need to separate everything." And part of it came from her experience of she cared once and it hurt so hard to her, she's like, "I'm never going to ... " Basically, she swore never to hurt again. So basically, she swore never to care again.
Kathryn: Yeah. And for us, we worked really hard with her, but it was never a good culture fit.
Michael: No.
Kathryn: It was just really, really against how we function and who we are.
Michael: And no matter what, when you find somebody like that, when you're interviewing or anything else, they're probably not a good fit for your company if you actually care about Passion and Provision, you actually care about having a life that's fulfilling, and you care about having actually this healthy culture, this healthy community. It comes with some things. And so you want to be careful and you want to make sure that if you care about those things that you're not putting people in leadership positions that really can't foster that because you need to have leadership. You need to have peer leaders and organizational leaders that can take this vision and continue to push it, will continue to care, will continue to mentor, and coach, and honor people in your organization.
Kathryn: Yeah. So bottom line, humans want to be known.
Michael: Yup.
Kathryn: And if they are working 40 hours a week or more in a position, they spend most of their waking hours with you, and they're not known, they will be miserable, no matter how much you're paying them, no matter how qualified they are for the job. If they are anonymous, if they are experiencing that, they will be miserable. So that's one sign.
Michael: Second thing that he talked about was relevance.
Kathryn: Yeah. Or irrelevance.
Michael: Irrelevance. Irrelevance was the second characteristic of a miserable job. And how do we define irrelevance or relevance?
Kathryn: Yeah, that's a great question. So the way that he's defining that is the inability to connect what I'm doing to a larger vision, mission, purpose, concern in the world. Like, "How is what I'm doing actually making a difference to anyone?" And if we can't help our people connect the dots on what their part is in the larger organization, and how they're making a difference, and whose lives they're changing and impacting, then, again, irrelevance is another sign of a miserable job. They will be sad.
Michael: What would you say has been your biggest challenge in this area as a leader?
Kathryn: This one is a little harder than the anonymity one for me.
Michael: Okay. Why?
Kathryn: I think these actually get progressively harder. Because sometimes I think that my perspective can be that it has to be grandiose, like you have to be able to paint some massive picture and everybody wants to impact the entire universe and the entire world. So if I can't tie their role to that level of impact, they're not going to feel relevant. And I think that's just not true, but it is a struggle.
Michael: Can you think of a story in the last 17 years of us running a company where that's been challenging for you?
Kathryn: I don't know that I can think of a specific story. I think that, overall, it jut hasn't been top of mind for me to connect dots for people. I think the assumption is they can connect their own dots and they don't need me to do that for them.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: Which is, we've developed vision and really pressed in more and more. That's begun to kind of fall off by itself because we're always talking here about what we're doing, and the bigger picture, and how different folks connect. But early on, it wasn't that way. Because we didn't even have our vision and values as defined in the early days as we do now. So it just wasn't something I was thinking about.
Michael: Yeah. For me, probably the biggest difficulty in the early days was reminding people that their job was relevant because there was a part of me that went: A) they should be self-reminding themselves, like they should be able to figure it out themselves. I know when my job's relevant. You should know why your job's relevant. And quite frankly, at some level I didn't even know that that was hard for people to do. That's not necessarily easy to do. And I forgot what it was like to be the employee because if people don't communicate to you, if they don't talk to you, then you're just like, "Okay, well I'm doing this." And if nobody says, "What you're doing is really important because it helps so and so do such and such," even if it's not, "Oh, you're going to help change the world, blah, blah, blah," it's, "Okay, this is significant because if you do your work right, the next person in line actually can do their work right. And if they can't, if you don't do what you need to do, they're going to have to clean up your mess. And that just slows everything down and bogs the world down. And so it matters. We care that you're doing a good job."
Kathryn: I think, too, one of the other things that run true for me that he talked about is when you're the leader and the person that you are helping connect the dots, part of their job is actually making your life easier.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: It feels really weird, like, "Thank you. You make my life easier." And you think that somehow that's demeaning or their response is going to be, "Well, I don't care about making your life easier." And you know what? People really care that they're making a difference in the way that you function as a leader. So I can remember when I worked in the corporate world and I had a boss who was just really gracious to me. And I would do things like sometimes pull all-nighters to meet a proposal deadline. I was a sales rep at the time. And there were many, many times where I would end up with a handwritten thank you note from him to say, "Your work ethic matters so much to me, and you're an example to me, and I appreciate you." And I still have those notes in my file from that job that I left 15 years ago, right? Because it was so powerful to me to be thanked for doing my job, right? I was doing my job. I mean, it was a deadline. I had to meet it. But for my boss to stop and take the time to thank me and to acknowledge that that changes how our company functions because you're doing that was really powerful for me.
Michael: Well and relevance connects to purpose for us.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: Right?
Kathryn: Absolutely.
Michael: Relevance, for human beings, it connects. And in a Passion and Provision company, when we're talking about having, "Does what I do matter to the bottom line? Does what I do matter to anybody else?" we're talking about that kind of stuff. I mean, that's really significant.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: So irrelevance is something that we as leaders need to make sure that we're building a community in the Half a Bubble Out HaBO Village world. When you talk about five things that a company needs in management, when you're managing people, when you're leading people on day-to-day operations, the fifth thing that actually the research says makes a difference exponentially is public recognition, recognizing that what people are doing matters, and that it's relevant to the big picture, and connecting how specific actions are relevant to the big picture. So it's just really ... We're big fans of it. I love the way he said it. Irrelevance, it's an important factor. The third factor.
Kathryn: The third sign of a miserable job.
Michael: Which is actually probably the most difficult one and is every bit as important to me because of coming from an instructional design background, having that training in college, and actually trying to apply instructional design and human performance in all of our companies and with all of our clients is this whole idea of is something measurable or ...
Kathryn: He calls it ... They made up a word. Immeasurement. Right? Which you're not going to find in the dictionary but-
Michael: In other words, you can't measure whether you're doing a good job or not.
Kathryn: Yeah. So what he's talking about in that is not just having performance goals for an employee, but can an employee recognize for themselves if they're doing a good job?
Michael: That's one of the major factors.
Kathryn: One of the major factors. Are there tangible ways that they can identify at the end of the day, "I did a good job today"?
Michael: For us, that's labor toil. Right? What we're asking for is we're asking, we're saying, "If I can't say that and I keep living in a place where I'm like, 'I don't know if I did a good job,' or 'I don't think it matters.'" Because irrelevance and immeasurement are key.
Kathryn: They're tied.
Michael: They're really tied to each other and to be able to say, "Wow, this day sucked. I didn't do a good job. I don't feel like I did a good job. I couldn't do a good job." I feel like my hands are tied so that I can't say it. But I also, in some context, if you can say yes or no to that, you have a context of something you're evaluating. There's a reference stance. The other part is when there's no reference at all and it's like you're devoid of ... the answer is, "I don't know." That's even worse and I think he talked about that more. It's even worse when you don't know if you did a good job or not.
Kathryn: Yeah. And I think one of the things that was encouraging and challenging to me is he talked about the fact that usually when we talk about measuring, everybody wants to talk about quantitative, right?
Michael: So what's quantitative real quick?
Kathryn: Quantitative is like we have a number to assign to it, we have a tangible key performance indicator, right, where we say, "Okay, if you do this many x, y's, and z's, then you are successful." In sales, it's real easy. You have a quota. That's a very quantitative evaluation of whether or not you're being successful.
Michael: Versus?
Kathryn: Versus qualitative, which is just the human side of it. So you have that background. How would you describe qualitative?
Michael: Yeah, at a real simple level, I'd say quantitative is putting a number on something. Qualitative is using words that vary. So good, poor, bad is a qualitative. "I liked that. I thought you did a good job." That's a very qualitative standpoint. "On a scale of 1-10, you did a 9.2. I put my score together this way." That's quantitative. So qualitative really involves emotions, feelings, it's contextual. And he said, which I thought was great, "Look, we're human beings. Our life is qualitative. We use quantitative to help aid in trying to translate some of that when we can, but the reality is you're trying to figure out ... Fuzzy terms are qualitative." There you go.
Kathryn: Yeah. So I thought, just because it was a great illustration, he talked about a guy working a drive-thru, right?
Michael: This was interesting because-
Kathryn: This is an interesting one.
Michael: ... it's like, "Did I do a good job or not?" It's kind of like it bent the rules a little bit on this and it continued to make immeasurement fuzzy-
Kathryn: For you.
Michael: ... at some level. Well, I think for a lot of people because this was ... Well, without giving away the punchline, go ahead and tell the story.
Kathryn: Yeah, so guy's working in a drive-thru and he's kind of not ... he's just a little bit apathetic and not doing great, and so the manager decides he's going to help him find ways to measure whether or not he's actually doing a good job on any given evening. So he actually goes to the employee and says, "Hey, I want to find some ways for us to determine together if you're doing a good job. What do you think we should measure in the position in the drive-thru?" And the kid goes, "Well, how about how many cars come through?" And the boss says, "Do you have any control over that?" "No." "Well, then that's not a good measurement." "Okay. How about ... " He named another one like-
Michael: How fast the food comes from the kitchen.
Kathryn: How fast the food comes from the kitchen. And he's like, "Okay, do you have any control over that?" "No." "Okay, not a good measurement." So, "Okay how about how many times I get an order right?" "Oh yeah, get the right things in the right bag and hand it to the person? Okay that's a good one. That's good." But the manager challenged him to say, "What if you were to count how many times you got someone to smile?"
Michael: Yeah, I love this one.
Kathryn: Super qualitative, right?
Michael: Yeah, right.
Kathryn: And the kid goes, "Count how many times people smile? First of all, who's watching that?" And he goes, "Well you are." "Well what if I lie?"
Michael: "What if I lie?"
Kathryn: And the manager was like, "Well this is not something that's actually going in your performance review. I just want to know. I just want you to think about it."
Michael: "I want you to know how well you're doing."
Kathryn: Exactly.
Michael: Yeah, and it was. And one of the points in this story ... and then he told another story about two drive-thrus in a Chick-fil-A and something they did and it was holiday season and it was like how many times can you say, "Merry Christmas"?
Kathryn: It was a competition between the people.
Michael: Or how many times can you get somebody in the car to say, "Merry Christmas"?
Kathryn: Right.
Michael: And the issue wasn't, right, getting somebody to smile or say, "Merry Christmas." That is qualitative. It's not going to be a, "Well, we're doing really good if somebody says, 'Merry Christmas.'" But there's qualitative relational things. If people are engaged at that level, they're probably feeling better about what's going on.
Kathryn: Yeah, about your company.
Michael: And the experience they're having. But what he said is really what was more important about the Merry Christmas one, people are more engaged in what they're doing when they have something they can count. Measurement is not only about "Can I tell you if you're doing good or not? Can I tell if I'm doing well or not?" That's important, yes. But it's also speaks to the thing of people like to count, and when they're doing something where they never know where they stand, it's like we're programmed at some level to engage at a quantitative level. We're engaged to want to know how many we did. Is that good? Is it bad? Can I feel good about it?
Michael: I can tell you, "You made 42 widgets today." And you could say, "Well I did awful." And I'm like, "Well, wait a minute. You only did 35 widgets every other day and today you did 42. And we only need 30 to be profitable and look at what you did." All a sudden, just that context of that information changes the number. The number itself is important but it needs to be relevant, it needs to be connected, and sometimes it's just connected to, "I'm competing against the other drive-thru on the other side for something fun. Can I get more people to say, 'Merry Christmas'"?
Kathryn: Yeah, friendly competition.
Michael: And what we're talking about, folks, is we're talking about people being able to say, "Does my job suck or not?" That's the bottom line here.
Kathryn: Suck swamp water.
Michael: Right? If you ask your employees, if you're creating a Passion and Provision company, if you're creating a company where you as the employer, as the leader in the company, the leadership team at all are looking for your job to be fulfilling, the fastest way to get there is from a financial perspective, and a qualitative relational perspective, and enjoying it. And feeling like there's profit and purpose and you're leaving a legacy behind. What you're leaving in your wake is not a wake of destruction, but a wake of joy and a wake of things that are making the world, and your community, and your company a better place, then you want to say, I want to ask my people, "Do you have a good job?" And you want them to say, "Yes."
Kathryn: Well and to be thinking about the fact that if you have a company of people where you have employees who like what they're doing, they like coming to work, you're not just influencing them, you're not just impacting them, you're impacting their families, right? Because they go home in a mood that is often based on how their day at work was and if their miserable at work ... I mean, I have had the miserable job, right? One of the things I remember, I had a job at a great company, high tech company, kind of the predecessor to all the encryption technology. It was called RSA. Data security. Liked my boss a lot, really liked the company, but I felt extraordinarily irrelevant.
Michael: Yeah, oh you did.
Kathryn: And there was no way of measuring, right?
Michael: You were bored out of your fricking mind.
Kathryn: I was absolutely crazed. So I am put together in such a way that if I come home at the end of the day and I've been bored all day, I am grumpy. I'm like, "Oh."
Michael: Folks, I'm telling you, this is true. This is so true.
Kathryn: I was exhausted at the end of a day and feeling like I'm being paid to do nothing. It was horrible.
Michael: Well it was really sucking the life out of you physically.
Kathryn: It really was. And it sounds counterintuitive. You did nothing all day, so why are you tired? Well, because I did nothing all day and I'm built to contribute and as most human beings are. So I know that feeling and the fact that I had at that point, a miserable job, truly, that impacted Michael. It impacted my friends. It impacted how I interacted in my world. So remember leaders, managers, when you're leading people, you're not just influencing them at work. You're influencing their families, and you're influencing their friends, and the larger community. So it is an incredible privilege, but an incredible responsibility to create an environment that builds them up and gives them purpose, and meaning, and connection, and all the things that we talk about, or in Patrick's terms, that helps them feel known, that helps them feel relevant to the bigger purpose, and that helps them know how to measure whether they're being successful or not.
Michael: Yup. Three fantastic things. Really important. What we want to encourage you to do is ... Here's your task, right? If you want some homework, here's some homework. There's a great worksheet. You could make your own worksheet up. They provided us one at the conference where it's just basically you put at the top of the page an employee's name. You put the date and you ask questions about these three things: "What do I know about you? Talk to me about you. Who are you? Where did you come from? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Do you have kids? What are your kid's names?" If you have employees and they have kids and you don't know their kid's name, then you need to rectify that. It's amazing how ... I mean, you'll get a lot of leverage. If you don't understand this, you'll get a lot of leverage when you remember people's names that work for you and then remember their family member's names. Super, super important.
Michael: So you work through that and then you work through, "Okay, do you understand how your job is relevant? Can you talk about this?" These are things that we've been doing a long time here at Half a Bubble Out and they are not a single event. You have to be diligent as a leader to continue to make sure that you're paying attention to this. And if you say you don't have time, I want to encourage you to shift your paradigm that says I want to take all of the big rocks out of my job right now. This bucket is your job and you look at your day and your schedule, and I want you to take them all out and I want you to make sure that amongst the rocks on your proverbial table are these three things with your people.
Michael: And then I want you to put that in first, so that when you say you don't have time for anything else, you have already accomplished certain key factors with your employees, with those that report to you, you've motivated and trained and coached your leaders, and then work your way backwards. And then make sure that your organization is filling in the gaps, your team is helping you fill in the gaps around that. Because if you're not doing the most important things and then at the end of the day you're running out of time for the most important things and part of that is the people, then you're going to really struggle with having true fulfillment in your job, in your company, and in having a Passion and Provision job and organization.
Kathryn: Yeah, you have to believe that knowing your people and the time investment that it takes to know your people ... And it does take time, but knowing your people and having them not have a miserable job actually means more productivity, better culture, and ultimately, your company is going to be better off for it. You're going to get more done in a shorter time and everybody's going to be happier. So it is so absolutely worth the investment.
Michael: Yeah, and if you have any questions, if you're unsure, we want to respond to that. We would love the feedback and questions. Go to Habovillage.com. Go to the podcast. Find this episode in the show notes and then actually write out a question. Send it in. Put it in the comments. If you're struggling with this or you'd like clarification, we would love to give it to you. And if you'll do that, that would be phenomenal because we want to help you understand and clarify and work through these things and then we just really want to say if you're questioning at all whether this is really going to move a needle, there is so much research we can share. There are so many testimonials we can share. The evidence in our own company and the evidence in the companies we work with and for are like tons. And I just want to implore you.
Michael: I say there's no magic bullets, silver bullets in business, but this is like a few silver bullets. You could be the lone ranger and have silver bullets and you just got to have the right ones, and it's not going to not be made out of brass, because a brass bullet is not a silver bullet. Now I'm stretching the analogy, but hopefully you know what I'm saying as I wander off into an analogy desert, which is another analogy stacked analogy, stacked on an enigma.
Kathryn: Come back. Come back to us.
Michael: And I'm going to wrap this up because I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And this is the HaBO Village podcast, and today we've talked about what is a miserable job, the three characteristics, so that you can look at what your job is in your company and the people that work for you and really flip that and go, "Do my people have miserable jobs or do they have good jobs? How do they feel about it?" It's about the way they see it and if they have miserable jobs, you have the ability to change that and tweak that so that their productivity is going to be way higher in your organization. They're going to contribute more and they're going to take more off your plate. Wow. Who doesn't want that?
Kathryn: Who doesn't want that?
Michael: So thank you so much for joining us today.
Kathryn: Please tell your friends-
Michael: Yes.
Kathryn: ... co-leaders and leaders about this podcast.
Michael: Yeah, go to applepodcast.com or Apple podcast. It's not applepodcast.com, but Apple podcast. Sign up, hit subscribe, leave a review. That would be great. Subscribe is how we get out there. We're on other platforms, too. Send us an email, and thank you again for your support, and listening, and let us know what you'd like to hear in the future because we are always open to more topics that are going to be relevant to you. So for HaBO Village podcast and the Redmans ...
Kathryn: We thank you.
Michael: Have a great day.
Kathryn: Bye.
