Season 3 Bonus Episode
Vince Lombardo, Celine Williams and Josh Linkner

“Sparking change”

Well, we had a previous conversation surrounding this exact topic about transformational leadership. But that conversation is all about the individual. It’s about, the uglier parts of ourselves, how egos and insecurities can kind of get in the way of creating the connection. And so I think the first question that I wanted to ask is, I’m going to start with you, Vince, is I think it’d be great for you to talk about some of the changes that you’ve been through. You weren’t always this sort of the leader that you are today. When you first started leading people, you were probably a little bit different. So maybe if you could do a little compare and contrast?

Vince Lombardo: For sure.

Chris Allen: And what your aha moment was.

Vince: Yeah. Well there’s been several of them, including almost being fired a couple of times. Because there’s nothing to wake you up like that. You got kids and a wife and you get a surprise phone call. Look, I think that all of the moments that I could point back to that were aha moments, involved somebody having the courage to be really direct and honest with me. I think courage is something that people are lacking today in a way that they didn’t use to, ‘cause we’re all scared of crossing a line or offending somebody or breaking a rule or saying the wrong thing or using the wrong word. And so we just keep it inside. And my gratitude about my journey lies largely with the people who had the courage to just tell me the truth. Even when it was hard and it wasn’t going to feel good and it was going to sting.

“Getting through the front door”

And I’ve tried really hard as a leader to embody the mantra of going through versus around. Walk through the front door and not the side door, and people usually misunderstand the side door conversations, but it’s really hard to misunderstand front door conversations. But to do it with empathy and grace and care and compassion because we are all human beings and we all have emotions that many of us I think struggle to actually identify and process when we’re faced in these moments that are filled with tension.

Look, I think the leader that I am today versus the one I was before, I have a higher sense of awareness. I think I am less concerned about me and more concerned genuinely about the people around me. I think the last few years in particular has taught me that the value of a highly functioning team cannot be overstated and can usually solve almost any problem that a business has in front of it. But it’s up to that leader to set the tone to live by example and to create the framework or the environment for those people to operate as human beings, not just as coworkers.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. Well, what were you going to say?

Celine Williams: Well, I was going to say, I think there’s a nuance there because when you’re talking about going through the front door, I think there was a time where more of that was kind of happening in the world, but it was like the Kool-Aid man going through the front door where it’s like you’re bursting through onto the scene and you’re saying the thing, but there is no empathy and there is no thought of what the other person is actually open to receive. And I think you do a dance not always perfectly, because we’re all human, so where you open the front door as carefully as possible to get the best result. And that I think is a huge opportunity. You don’t see a lot of that. You see either people going not even the side door around to the back door to kind of poke their head in to see something or Kool-Aid manning through. Neither one is really effective.

Vince: Yeah, that’s a good call.

Chris: And the interesting thing, Celine has been a coach to Vince, also a coach to me. I think one of the things to even arrive at a place of employing empathy and the relationships requires some personal work. And why don’t you maybe compare and contrast one person on one hand that’s a leader, there’s two leaders, you’re going to compare one that has not done maybe some of the personal work and then leaders that you’ve seen that have done it. And what are some differences that you’ve seen and what do you think makes the difference?

Celine: So, the first thing that comes to mind that is different is humility. The leaders that have done the work, there’s a humility in how they show up and in their awareness that doesn’t exist when people haven’t done the work or think they’ve done the work because they’ve talked about it or they read a book about it but they haven’t actually been inside of it.

And that to me is consistently the single trait, if you want to call it that, that comes up as if we can somehow test for, find a way to figure that out, that’s a big differentiator. Because when you’ve done the work, when you’re in the process, you really quickly learn that there’s always more work to do. So you have to be humble about it. Because you’re like, oh, this really is not a destination. There is not this one place that we’re all going to go on this one journey to get to this one spot in the exact same way. Nailed it, we’re done. Once you’re in it, you’re like, oh, this is way messier, way messier than anyone thought it was going to be.

And so that to me is kind of the most important differentiator. But I think also there is a willingness to be uncomfortable and be in the messiness that comes with people who have done the work or are doing the work because it’s not ever done, that you don’t see in people and leaders who aren’t doing the work.

They are often the most avoidant and they’ll tell you they’re not because they Kool-Aid man through a door. They’ll be like, “I’m not avoidant. I’m absolutely having those conversations.” When they’re not, because they’re not actually okay with messiness, with tension in any way, shape or form. They’re trying to get past it, not through it. So they want to ask, “How can I skip to the end and not deal with what’s in the middle?”

Chris: A hundred percent. I think my own personal experience has been a lot of my Kool-Aid manning through the front door, because I mean I’m a direct person as well, but a lot of that sort of brash approach was me discharging my own anxiety. I think one of the things that has helped me a lot trying to really develop as a leader is in leading myself, it has been all about... It isn’t about discharging the anxieties, it’s about being able to sit with uncomfortable feelings. And if you’ve got another person and you’ve got these uncomfortable feelings that you need to get out, being able to sit in them longer and sit with somebody a little bit longer, I think that’s made a really big difference for me is being okay with uncomfortable feelings.

Vince: So discomfort is at the heart of this entire thing?

Celine: Yeah.

Chris: For sure.

Vince: And what we know is as society today is we are way too aimed for comfort in every part of our life.

Chris: Yes.

Vince: And especially in our relationships.

Celine: Yes.

Vince: And to create tension in a relationship is to create discomfort and to choose to grow or improve or pursue a better version of yourself is also really uncomfortable.

Celine: Very uncomfortable.

Vince: And you need to feel some level of safety around you to do that.

Celine: Yes.

Vince: And I think that us choosing discomfort as leaders and as people wanting to be led, is how we sharpen iron together.

Chris: Yeah.

“The confidence journey”

Josh: A quick comment on that, is that I spent a lot of time thinking about confidence and confidence is not giving you a trophy just for participation. Confidence really comes from taking hard things on and getting through to the other side. And so back to the point about getting discomfort, another byproduct is not only learning the skill, but it’s actually building your reservoir of confidence, because if you take something difficult on, then you know you can get onto the next thing. The other thing about doing the work, you said, “Have you done the work or not?” Which is sort of a binary question. I love what your point is that you’re always doing the work.

Celine: Yeah.

Josh: But even the term work sounds like you win. It’s like, oh gosh, I have to do the work. It’s horrible. It’s painful—

Chris: Yeah, because it’s called work.

Josh: There are moments, but maybe it doesn’t need to be called work.

Chris: Sure.

Josh: If it was called doing the play instead of the work, the idea of becoming a better version of yourself, advancing, discovering who you are as a person, creating more impact, that can actually be... That’s kind of like our calling and it doesn’t have to be suffering to get to the other side of something. It’s an ongoing process of becoming who you’re really meant to be.

Celine: So I was talking to someone last week and we were talking about this idea of becoming a better version of yourself, and they made a point that I thought, oh, it’s so smart. They were like, “What if instead of becoming a better version of yourself, you are becoming your favorite version of yourself where you’re taking off the value judgment from the outside. And it’s just my favorite version of me?” That’s what I’m working towards. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot in the past week and I actually really love it because you can work towards becoming your favorite person or your favorite version of yourself. And by the way, I agree with you, I don’t love the language of work, but if you put it in that context where it’s not better in some way, it just feels nicer. It feels like I can do that. I want to be my favorite version of myself.

Chris: Love that. I think that’s really good. You mentioned courage, humility, these are virtues and values and in self-leadership, which I’ve loved how y’all have talked about it, you’re leading yourself, right? Then you’re leading others and then you’re leading organizations or businesses and it really does start with self-leadership. And I think at the heart of it really is where your values are.

“You can’t escape who you are”

Chris: So one of the things that I’d like to unpack is just how we sort of look at values and how you look at your own personal values as a leader and then how those values can expand. It isn’t necessarily born from yourself, it isn’t around the leader, but it really is about, the cultures have core values as well. There’s ones that are expressed and things like that. But I’d love to talk about values and I think Josh, the way you sort of led companies, but then also the way that you pick founders to invest in. I think this is a really key thing for you. So tell us a little bit about personal values and how those expand into organizations.

Josh: Yeah. The thing is you really can’t escape who you are. And so if you are espousing one side of values and living a different set, there’s that inconsistency that’s going to be telegraphed a mile away. So I think a good step is first discovering who you are, what your core values are, and then hopefully creating a cultural environment that is consistent with those values, not at odds with the values.

It’s funny, early on I recognized that culture was a crucial driver of business success and I had these values and I thought I was being really smart about it. And they were things like, be innovative, be a good communicator. The problem is those are these vague platitude cliches that how do you act on that? You can’t just be in a meeting and someone’s trying to make a decision like, “Oh, I should be a good communicator now.” That’s almost a goofy thing to say. So it made me feel good as a leader to put these platitudes up on the walls, but they weren’t actionable. As I matured over the years as a leader, I changed it. And now instead of using broad cliche platitudes, I used little catchphrases that are actionable.

So one catchphrase that I love and try to live by is, “Give generously, don’t keep score.” Which is the notion of generosity and kindness and compassion, and it’s sort of a way of being. So then if one of my team members in some company today in Seattle right now is like, okay, should I do A or B? They can reference back, “Oh, give generously, don’t keep score. That’s a core value. Now I can make a decision on it.” So some of these little catchphrases, they usually start with a verb, “Find a way,” is a big one of mine, “Put ourselves out of business,” which is the notion of sort of reinventing and discovering a new and improved approach to things. And so I built these 14 core values and I really tried to live those and demonstrate them with consistency, but we also interviewed for them.

“Living in alignment with your values”

Josh: So what I did is I took each of those core values, created interview questions, that was the reverse engineer interview question to try to tease out where people stood value-wise because I felt like I’d rather hire for values and train skill than hire for skill and train values. And so what we try to do, it’s not always perfect of course, but try to find people that sort of generally align with the value set and then we’ll figure out the skills because the skills continue to evolve.

Chris: Yeah, I think that’s really good. Vince, you’ve built, I’d say high performing teams and I think that you have a masterful way of being able to identify other people’s core values. Talk about your core values and then how you sort of discover the leaders that you hire and the ones that you sort of work with closely.

Vince: Yeah, so to the question you asked me a few minutes ago about my journey as a leader, somebody handed me a Brene Brown book, I don’t know, seven or eight years ago, Dare To Lead. And in that book was this exercise to go through and identify your own core values, and I’d been on some online websites and done some survey things and they weren’t really all that productive. But what was so interesting about this was in the book, she forces you to pick three and there’s 400 or something like that on a page and you’re like, “Well, I want seven because I can’t not choose faith, family and friends, because those are important to me.”

But it forces you to get really honest with yourself about point A, point B at an intersection of a decision of what you’re going to do with your time, your energy, your money, whatever. What do you go back to the most? And I identified mine and I don’t think they’ve changed much in the last half decade of authenticity, contribution and leadership. And one thing about me that you all know, and it’s really important to me, is I think life is just too short for fake BS relationships because those aren’t relationships. If you can’t be authentic and vulnerable with people and then get the same from them, it’s not worth spending time with those people. So authenticity to me is probably at its core a really critical value in everything that I do. I think contribution is really critical because I think we’re here to do something to make the world a better place, to improve lives around us, to improve our own lives. And you can’t do that if you’re not contributing to something regularly.

And I think we’re all called to lead. And whether that’s in our homes, at our churches, in our communities and our business, whether it’s leading aside, leading below, leading above, we are all called to lead. And oftentimes the lack of courage leads us to not lead or to not be authentic and to not contribute. And so courage is close in there as a piece of that for me, but it didn’t end up on the list. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my wife and my kids and family isn’t important and I don’t have a deep faith, but if I’m being really honest with myself, those are the three things that drive most of my behavior. And what’s interesting is when you find yourself in a situation, whether it be an organization you’re part of or a career track or a boss relationship or an employee relationship where those values are at odds or the way that a business is operating those values are, it’s really, really hard to have a life that you feel happy with and proud of.

And I’ve been at those places in different times in my life, and you can absolutely feel when you’re not living in alignment with your values. You can’t put your finger on it at first. It’s just tension and frustration and misery, but eventually it comes to pass and you’re like, “Oh, it’s because of this.” Because there’s a lot of people out there who care about the same things. And I think you usually experience more joy, which is really what we’re all after in life if you spend time with people who are somewhat similar minded in their values.

Chris: Yeah.

Josh: One thing just to build on that, that tension where you’re saying, well, this is uncomfortable, I can’t put my finger on it, that’s almost like a smoke detector to say, “Oh, that’s a clue. There’s a signal. What’s it telling me?” And so if I’m triggered by somebody’s behavior, you could get angry or you could say, “Well, what is that telling me? What is the lesson of that?” And that might be actually a way to even live in more alignment with one’s values is by noticing those triggers and adjusting accordingly.

Vince: Yes.

Celine: I think it’s also important to note that when we talk about discomfort, if we’re in the process of working on ourselves, there’s going to be discomfort and tension. There is a distinction between unhealthy tension and healthy tensions.

And understanding and being able to discern this is actually unhealthy tension and discomfort, what is that telling me? To your point, what is that smoke signal versus this is healthy tension and discomfort because I’m learning something about myself that maybe I didn’t want to learn that I had to go through. There’s being able to discern those things and the more you are in uncomfortable situations and the more you are growing and learning, the better you get. But there is a real distinction there because not all healthy tension is going to feel different, but you have to learn that for yourself. You have to go through it to figure that out. 

Josh: What’s the difference for you when you talk about discerning it, how would you define those two healthy versus unhealthy tension?

Chris: So I think it’s different for each person. So I know for me the difference is if it’s unhealthy tension, it’s usually the way I react is very different. It’s harder for me to step back and say, “What am I learning here?” Or it’s a very visceral reaction. It’s a really terrible example, but sometimes you meet someone and you’re like, “Ooh,” and very quickly you’re like, “This is not my person.” And it’s not, some psychotherapists might say it brings up trauma or what, but there is something that is not lining up that is an unhealthy tension situation.

Whereas if we’re having a challenging, as I point at Vince, we’re having a challenging event, we’ve had plenty, but we’re having a challenging conversation and it doesn’t feel good because you’re pushing me in a way that is uncomfortable, but I’m not reacting in this. It’s not that same defensive reaction from me. And I’m not saying my way is everyone’s way by any stretch, but I think you have enough of those moments and you can start to separate out when it is healthy versus unhealthy. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was like, here’s the one way that you can always discern the two that works for everyone.

Chris: Red light, green light, it’s so easy?

Celine: But I think it really depends on who the person is, their journey, where they’re at in their journey, their experiences. But I think you can learn to discern those things.

Chris: I like how you described the unhealthy one as a defensiveness because I think on the one hand, if you’re feeling the need to defend, I think where some things can turn healthy, that doesn’t mean that the other person on the other side is doing something unhealthy.

Celine: Absolutely not.

Chris: But I think the healthier version is acceptance and being like, “I need to hear this, I want to be able to hear this.” I think one of the things that has been interesting for me is the discovery of feedback and things that weren’t intended as feedback for me.

There are things that I’ve experienced and I’m like, there’s feedback. And that’s one of the things you say to me is, “Chris, there’s probably feedback in that for you.” And it doesn’t mean that somebody has to sit down and give me very direct feedback, which I think is really important. But at the same time, I think that you can turn something that might be unhealthy for you and some abuse and all that other stuff aside, but you can turn a situation into feedback for you no matter whether it’s being delivered as feedback to you or not.

And one of the things that I love that you were just talking about is about the paying attention. I think one of the things about this is something that I’ve discovered as well when I’m living outside of my values for a period of time, it creates sort of burgeoning anxiety in me. And if that goes along long enough, that turns into a depression for me. That’s sort of the sequence that happens. And the thing that I like that you said, is this sort of paying attention and a mindfulness thing. How do you hold space or create the... How do you pay attention better? How do you do it?

Josh: I wish I had a great answer to that. I’m still working on that personally. But one of the things I’m trying to do is slow down a little bit and be a little bit less intrinsically centered and more extrinsically centered. Really showing up in service of others. You kind of talked about contribution, which is a similar way to say it. A funny story, I play jazz and I’m very much in love with this art form, it’s a spontaneous sort of dangerous art form. I’d ask you if you liked listening to the jazz, but it would probably hurt my feelings, so I won’t ask you that question. I heard a funny joke recently there, A country musician plays three chords to a hundred thousand people in the audience. A jazz musician plays a hundred thousand chords to three people-

Chris: To the three people in the audience.

Josh: ...in the audience.

Vince: It’s very true.

Josh: Very true. But I love the art form. And sometimes jazz can be a bit me-centric, showy, look what I can do, look at this fast thing, look at this. Look how clever I am. And I recently had a performance earlier this year. I was a little stressed about it because my chops aren’t what they used to be. I was playing with incredible musicians who are at the peak of their career. I’m a little sloppier, I’m not doing as much as they were. So I walked into it with a little anxiety and I decided I made a conscious decision. Instead of showing up, look what I can do. I started to say, I’m going to show up and listen. I’m going to show up and be deeply present and try to make everybody else sound better. That’s my job—to not to look at me. It’s like how can I make you sound better?

So I just tried to really drop and be present and I was listening a lot more. So I listened to what the piano player said, I’m going to voice a chord to make his piano playing sound better. I’m going to leave a little space so the drummer stands out. It was much more, actually, it was less effort, not more effort. It was less effort, more attunement. We finished the engagement and again, I was a little nervous. They were better than me. The drummer gives me this big bear hug. He goes, “Bro, you connected with the soul of the groove.” I’m getting all watery eyed. The soul of the groove, that was the coolest thing ever.

And these musicians came over like, “Hey, when are you going to be in town next? We’ll set up a gig. We got to play more.” And it was funny, if I tried to force my will on the group, I’m sure the feedback would’ve been different, but it’s because I really tuned in, that actually created a better outcome for everybody. So I think that’s what I’m trying to do more of, Chris. I’m not perfect at it, but just try to really sort of tune into others, be deeply present, really connect and see not just what’s being said overtly, but what’s the thing that’s not being said And see if I could connect to that and help draw out the best in people.

Vince: I love that.

Chris: So what’s so interesting about that story, I’m going to play armchair psychologist for a second and I’m going to put maybe a couple words-

Celine: His favorite role.

“Dealing with anxiety as a leader”

Chris: I’m going to put a couple words in your mouth that you didn’t say, but I think I heard. You recognized you were anxious, you acknowledged it and you recognized you didn’t say this, but I think that’s what you were saying, that oftentimes for you, your anxiety behavior shows up as maybe over-performing?

Josh: A hundred percent.

Chris: Okay. So very important things here to acknowledge that at some point in your life you’ve discovered what happens to you when you’re anxious to know you’re anxious, you’re okay saying, “Shit, I’m anxious right now and I’m probably going to end up doing these things because of that, and I don’t want to be that guy.” That’s an incredibly powerful thing for us to call out right now because I actually think anxiety is one of the number one causes of tension in relationships at the workplace and at home. Because we don’t want to acknowledge anxiety, it’s fear.

If we have to acknowledge fear, then we’re not the big strong people people think we are. But more importantly, knowing that when you’re anxious what your behavior shows up like. Maybe it’s defensiveness, maybe it’s showy performance, maybe it’s shutting down, maybe it’s not listening, talking over whatever the things are, but props to you for recognizing that and accepting it. And I think if we could all be more in touch with our feelings and what those feelings usually lead to us behaving like, we could probably show up better in all these parts of our life.

Josh: Thank you. You’re exactly right. And I was with a good friend last week, funny enough, and he gave me, I was talking about that, that version of myself, bro, I’m going to over perform. And he’s like, “Let’s make a caricature out of it. What would that really be, if you were to exaggerate it?” And then he’s like, “Can you give it a name?” And that hit me. So back to jazz, because I can’t help myself. There’s two wonderful piano players, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans. Oscar Peterson is really showy, tons of notes, really technically incredible. And Bill Evans is very slow and soft and there’s more spaciousness to it. I personally like Bill Evans more. And so what I did, just building on that, he said, “Next time you walk into a room say—am I showing up as Oscar or am I showing up as Bill?”

Chris: Oh, wow.

Vince: Great tool.

Josh: And started like, “Oh, I feel the Oscar coming out. Maybe I’ll lean into Bill.” And that’s recently, that was literally last week. But it’s been resonating deeply with me.

Vince: That’s a great tool.

Celine: Yeah.

Chris: That’s amazing. Was there something that you wanted to say?

Chris: We could go for a while on that one. But the thing that I love about what you said is how you screen people based on sort of a values fit. And I think that that is an indicator of the pursuit of lived values rather than aspiration. So talk to us a little bit about how you think about the difference between aspirational values versus lived.

Celine: So I’m going to take a step back from that for a second because this all started with when I went through coach training because I went through formal training and I did a whole program and it was really important to me to have this education and not just call... I mean I was never going to call myself a coach. I actually wanted the tools and then ended up using them in coaching in other ways. And as part of that, you do a values exercise for yourself and Unlike, Brene Brown, you are going through and you’re picking 10 values and you present them to the class and talk about them. And in doing this, I was like, I mean I was much younger than I am now. And I was like, “Nailed it. I have my 10 values sorted. Life is good.” And then I never looked at them again. I was like, I couldn’t tell you what they are now. I’m sure it was all the, I’m sure it was the-

Vince: The rosy ones.

Celine: Exactly. Everything that was on that list. And I, in doing more work with others around values, this kept coming up is that our first instinct is always the aspirational values, because this is what’s going to sound good or look good. And every company has that list of values on the wall. Whatever, I can’t remember which, there’s a financial company that you would walk in and it had all the values on the wall and they did some awful things that were definitely not in alignment with those values, but integrity was up there. And I just kept seeing this disconnect between what I talk about all the time now is aspirational values, which are our first, these are the values we would like to have. And we want to have these 10 values. Ideally this is how we think we operate or what we would like to operate from.

But if you can’t go through each of those values, and I don’t think 10 is the right number, I think it’s more like three, two to five, three to five. If you cannot actually track back to this is how I make decisions, this is where my behavior stems from when I’m at my best truest self, this is how I’m showing up. If there’s not behaviors associated with those values, they are not your lived values.

Chris: Love that.

Celine: And so I ask questions all the time when we’re talking about values, especially when people are like, oh, if you were to say, “My value’s authenticity.” Or whatever it might be, you have more value statements. But there are behavioral aspects to it, even inside of working with organizations to put together values. For me, I’m always like, what is the behavior? If there’s not a behavior around it, it cannot be lived. If it cannot be lived, that’s an aspiration. Great, but that’s not real. So you have to be able to put it into here’s how I’m making decisions, here’s the behaviors associated with it, here’s how I’m showing up. And you can also use them then as a checkpoint. Am I showing up in alignment with my values? Is this business that I’m going to be working with, is this thing in alignment with my values? Can I operate from what matters to me in alignment with that? And if not, that might not be the thing for you.

Chris: So that moment right there where you’re like, “Am I living these values?” I think one of the things that tends to happen is there’s this sort of dictating to all of the constituents or the employees that these are the values we want you to have. We want you to have integrity. There’s not like a, am I living in the values that we decided that we were going to live by? And I think your value statements, I’m a value statements guy. When you say integrity, a value statement for me is like, “You know what? We should do the right thing even when nobody’s looking.”

That’s a statement, but the core value of that statement is integrity. Your value with generosity, about giving generously and not keeping score. That’s a generosity value. I think one of the things that we learned because we took the 10 tenets of what we called the Heartland Way, I don’t know, you have the Find Way, which is awesome. I want to talk about that. I want to get into that.

There was this way of working that we had established and 10 was really hard to remember, but it created tons of conversations that would develop people. One of the things that we ended up doing was saying, we’re actually going to distill these into three core values that were value statements. And one of them was, “Work hard, like it matters, because it does.” “Own the outcome together and foster healthy relationships.” And I think that those things really helped people latch on and kind of identify with, that’s what we’re doing. There’s behaviors associated with that.

So, let’s actually talk about the vernacular and giving people holding space for these kinds of conversations to happen during work time to create the environment of value-centric business. So talk to us a little bit about finding a way and your framework and the 10 tenets, and then I want to talk about the Heartland way a little bit and let’s talk about the vernacular that we give to employees to be able to have a voice.

Josh: Yeah. As you were saying that, it made me think if you’re a leader, the old way perhaps of leading was checklists and rules. Do what you’re told, follow this checklist, turn your brain off even though we hired you for your smarts, don’t use that. Just do what you’re told.

The new way, which obviously is happening here, which is more values-based leadership, which is helping people. So this is important. This isn’t like a half important conversation. This is the conversation. And so getting people to align with a set of values and especially lived values, things that you can actually do, then you don’t need as many checklists and you don’t need as many rules. You don’t have to govern with an iron fist. You’re sort of calling people forward to make good decisions that are in alignment with the company’s vision. And so I kind of like this notion back to aspiration. If you have an aspirational that’s not actionable, then how do you make it actionable? And so my system, I call it Find A Way. First of all, it implies that there is a way any problem can be solved and any opportunity can be seized. It’s not finding the way, like there’s only one way—there’s multiple ways to find your way.

And if you really double-click on it. It’s the intersection of ingenuity and resolve. It’s like, how can I use my creative problem-solving and inventive thinking to navigate change and get through a problem instead of giving up to it? So then I started saying, well, that’s still all too mushy. How do you make it actionable? And so my little phrases are, one of them is, “Start before you’re ready.” And I have concept storytelling that supports that, but I’ve seen people in a business that I wasn’t leading that conversation. They’re like, “All right, enough of this. We’ve got to start before we’re ready, let’s put this into action.” I’m like, “Okay, this something’s working. That’s good.”

Another one is, “Seek the unexpected,” which is instead of gravitating to the obvious answer, just pause for a minute and say, “Is there a less obvious answer? Is there an unorthodox approach that might be even better?” Another one is a little more playful, which is, “Use every drop of toothpaste, which is a funny way of saying being scrappy and resourceful instead of just throwing money or resources at a problem.” So it’s funny, I don’t know if I would call them values or to action statements, but it’s almost like trying to create a construct where people can show up and live to these principles and then I don’t need to have as many checklists and rules and it’s kind of been working.

The other question you asked about scalability. Again, if I’d have a checklist and rule for every single thing, that gets real clunky real fast, that’s why you have giant bureaucracies that are so slow and lack agility. If you have values like this or action oriented phrases, those scale pretty quick because then you teach the principle and the principles carry the heavy lift. It’s not that every checklist or rule has to do the heavy lifting.

Chris: That’s so good.

Celine: So I would actually, when you were talking about the old way of leading, I would actually say that’s managing because that you’re managing things right? You are creating checklists because you’re managing things and you’re treating people like they are things that need to be managed. They need to hit the checklist, they need to do whatever the list of things is. But when you are really leading, and I’m making a distinction here on purpose, but when you’re leading, then you are giving people the space to show up as themselves and there is a trust inherent in that. And there’s the opportunity for it becomes like jazz to go back to your jazz, but you don’t know how it’s going to play out, but you’re going to find a great result at the end. But you don’t know how and that’s where you’re not managing the how.

Josh: Not managing the how. Exactly right.

Chris: I think that’s good. Talk about the birthplace of the Heartland Way and a couple of the tenants and how we use those. I know that was a project years ago.

Vince: Years ago, we found ourselves at an intersection where we had a lot of opportunity, but it was messy and we needed… I’ll call it a compass, but some kind of a direction that wasn’t a stated goal because there was just a little chaos in the makeup of the business, how people were getting things done or weren’t and what we cared about. And it happened to coincide with the onset of the pandemic. Which I’m not going to say provided space because I think there was a lot of chaos in managing through a business through the pandemic, but it definitely created space to think differently. And we started to put pen to paper and just talk about these things. And the first time you do this in your life, you usually end up with 10 or 15 or 20 things. And when you yourself can’t remember all 10, ever, no matter how much work you put into it, you’re like, I should probably cut this down to five, whatever the thing is.

But what we wanted to do, and this goes back to, I don’t think we made them actionable in their language as much as we put so much content around them to teach people what it meant to honor them and to be part of them and to live by them that you had to choose otherwise.

In designing the content, we put together podcasts with real employees, with Celine and I, talking about real stories, vulnerable, authentic stories, hour long things. We had books, we had articles, we had videos to support from other resources to say, this is what this thing looks like. So that people didn’t have just a poster on a wall, but a map on what it looks like to live that way. And then we started talking about it in a lot of our meetings. And one of the things that I would say scalability wise that I think is really hard is as the leaders who create or build these things in a room with other leaders, it’s easy to talk about them a dozen, two dozen times and be like, “Okay, it’s done.” But they have to be talked about all the time.

Not just because of new people coming and old people going, but everyone forgets the criticality of these things and the nature of what they really mean when we all live by them in support of a common goal. And our job as leaders is to continue to instill those things within the business. And so I don’t think there’s such a thing as too much talking about your core values as a business. And I love the story of you’re sitting in a room and one of your people says something like, “Hey, what would it look like if we did this?” It’s like, “Ah! We’ve arrived. Somebody said it without me bringing it up.” I think that there’s a lot of ways to do this, and I think that a lot of companies miss because they’re either doing the aspirational wall poster thing or they throw them together really thoughtfully and then they stick them on a shelf and they don’t become a lived experience.

And the hard thing to do as a leader is to create accountability around the values that you create for your business because you have to make tough decisions sometimes that don’t align with a performance outcome or a person sticking around or whatever the thing is that you’d otherwise like to see happen.

And you’ve got to be careful, because you will put yourself into a position where you’re going to have to make decisions yourself as the leader of the business based on the values that you and your team created that are really uncomfortable decisions. 

Josh: Building on that, this is so important. I’ve often thought this phrase, “Sent is not received.”

Vince: That’s a great way to say it.

Josh: So as a leader like, “Hey, I espouse my 37 values, my job here is done. They better live and embrace them.” And sent is not received. And so your point about rituals and reinforcements and repetition, that’s how ideas come to life. And I love that you’re doing that. And my research by the way, studying great leaders or working with people, that’s a crucial fault line. Is that you just say it or do you reinforce it? There’s a guy that I interviewed for my most recent book, and I was asking him, he’s got a pretty simple product, and I said, “How do you keep your folks innovative when you’ve got a really elegant simple product?” He said, “Yeah, every Friday we have a ritual. We call it F-up Fridays.” I’m like, “Tell me more about this.” He’s like, “Yeah, we have a full team meeting and one by one, each person has to stand up and proudly share what they F’d up that week and what they learned from it.”

Then inevitably, someone didn’t F something up and the whole team was like, “Well, why not? What are you going to try next week?” So this simple high frequency ritual, zero cost, what’s the message? Everybody here’s an innovator. Your job is to push the boundaries.

Vince: It’s okay to make mistakes.

Josh: We have your back, it’s okay to make mistakes. And so there they took a principle instead of sent being not received, the reps is what allows it to sink in. 

Vince: Brilliant. Yeah. It’s brilliant.

Celine: Yeah.

Chris: I think that that’s so good.

Celine: This is a quick side by, but there’s an event that they do. I know it’s in Toronto and I know other places do F’d Up Nights. And they get people in who get on the stage, and it’s usually founders who tell stories of, here’s the biggest mistake I ever made and here’s what I learned. And they get hundreds of people and the stories are great, and the conversation afterwards is totally different than any other networking event. Because the people are like, “Let me tell you about the time that I messed up.” In a way that related to that, and you make real connections there. So I love that as a ritual in an organization as well.

Chris: Go ahead.

Celine: Well, I wanted to say one of the things that I think I heard inside of what you said that is really important is that in putting together the tenets and reinforcing them, we were creating a sandbox to say, “Here’s how we all play together effectively.” And you get to, it wasn’t prescriptive, it wasn’t the ways you have to behave, but it was what we are all agreeing to, and then everyone gets to play in the sandbox however they like. But more importantly, it was a living document, so it did change over time.

The messages were reinforced, it got distilled down into three that could be repeated, but it wasn’t about it being so prescriptive that nothing is ever going to change, this is the way it is, a hundred percent of the time. It was tweaking language and nuance and learning and making it better and refining it. And that’s part of it is if we say, this goes back to aspirational values for me, is if we’re going to say this is the way it is and it’s never going to change and this is it a hundred percent, that’s too prescriptive because people change and grow and learn and having a living document and a lived experience means it is living and is going to change. And not being so attached that you’re unwilling to say, “Actually, can we get this down to three that’s really easily repeatable?” That’s a huge piece of this in my opinion as well.

Vince: I agree. I think recently I was working with a couple of founders and as a friend, and I think one of the important things, given the nature of where this podcast fits in what you’re trying to do to help small business owners, it’s important to call this out. There is no such thing as a business too small for this work.

Celine: Absolutely.

Vince: These two guys are very different and complement each other very well. They didn’t yet have a single employee and they were considering hiring their first employee, and we were just sitting down talking about the business and where it’s at and what their struggles are. And I asked some of these questions, “What do you guys care about? What matters most? We have to do this or this, what’s your compass to make your decision?” And one of them thinks this is hokey and unnecessary and whatever. And the other one’s like hook line, sink are bought in. So the one builds this set of values and the things they care about for their business and what they’re going to use as their compass and gives it to the other one. And they kind of wrestle through it over a lunch and they come out on the other side.

And what’s been really interesting, they’re 10 employees now. Small company, they’re doing a few million bucks in revenue, whatever it is, and they are now hiring based on their values and they don’t have employee problems. They’re not doing the thing you hear about with these young businesses where they’re churning through people because they hired for a skill and not for a common value base. They’re probably a little too OCD that they want both. So they’re going through a lot of people in the interview process, but it’s really interesting to watch how sticky the employees are in this small company because they start with their values. And so whether you’re zero employees or you’re 50 and you forgot about this, or more importantly, the nature of the business is operating itself in these understood but not stated values. Doing this work is really important. It matters.

Celine: Yes.

Chris: Totally. I think one of the things that has been a really good set of vernacular is this having the reference point of rumbling versus feedback. And I think that this was in Dare To Lead, and we use this as well, and I think one of the things that’s really good is if people have common words that we know, when you say that word, it means this. It really accelerates something. It actually draws you back into the ways of working.