How Leaders Can Make Sure Monday Morning Doesn't Suck

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 0:13

Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, the podcast that aims to support executives in deepening their impact and resiliency on the path to growing their enlightened leadership Tuning into your needs. Here's your host and moderator, seasoned executive coach and self-proclaimed end-of-the-road seeker, david Craig Utz.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 0:40

Hello and welcome back to Unfazed Under Fire and David Craig Utz, the resilient leadership guy, your host and moderator for the show. This show aims to support executives in strengthening their impact and resilience in the face of today's increasingly uncertain, disruptive and chaotic crazy world we live in. Our stand on this show and in our consulting practice is that human beings have all the inner resourcefulness they need to deal with any measure of ambiguity, uncertainty and chaos. That comes from recognizing that leading a living is an inside-out journey and that by following this inner path, this following this inner path can be supported by knowing and applying certain simple, direct principles and practices that kind of allow you to be creative in how you lead and engage your power. To that point, we have a great show in store for you today.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:34

I have with me Eric Harkins, who I know will provide powerful insights into leading high-performing organizations and helping your organization become a magnet for the best talent it can find.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:46

Now Eric is the founder and president of GKG Search and Outplacement, and GKG works with companies to help them get talent, keep talent and grow talent. And before owning GKG, eric held operations roles as the chief administrative officer at Vectra, and that company operates most of Verizon Wireless's retail stores. He was also VP of the Nerd Experience at the Nerdery I love that a primary digital product company. And prior to these roles, eric cut his teeth in HR and rose to senior HR positions at Target, best Buy and United Health. So what drew me to have Eric on the podcast today is I had the great pleasure of hearing him speak about the principles from his book Great Leaders Makes Sure a Monday Morning Doesn't Suck, which I love the title of, and it'll provide context for the conversation. And I can tell you, if you ever have a chance to hear Eric speak, go, and if you're looking for speakers, you can't go wrong with bringing them into your organization. Finally, eric lives in Minnesota as two children, a son that's 20 and a daughter 23.

Eric Harkins: 2:52

That's correct, yep.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 2:53

Oh great, and I know you were very proud of them. So, eric, I want to thank you for joining me on Unphased Under Fire. Did I leave anything out about you that you'd like to mention?

Eric Harkins: 3:02

No, I appreciate it and thanks for the shout out. I'm glad you were able to hear me speak the other week and, yeah, I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 3:10

Yeah, let's go. I shared at the top of the show that we really believe that people have this inner resource with us that most people are directed to through coaching and other means and life experiences eventually, and that there's this inside out game that we're really in, that sometimes we're not aware of. We think we're trying to figure out how to move the chairs around on that Titanic and that doesn't really usually work too well, right, but you've been very straight. You wrote this book in a very straightforward, direct and also humorous way, which I love the style of the book, and it's also extremely well-paced in a way that it delivers. I'm just curious, before we go into it, what drew you to the particular content you wrote about and what had you write in this particular style? I'm just curious about that.

Eric Harkins: 4:08

Yeah, it's interesting. That's a question I get a lot like hey, how long did it take you to write the book? Or what was the inspiration of the book? It's a quick read. One of the best compliments I ever got is somebody posted a picture of the book on LinkedIn and said it was a two-glass of wine read, which I took as a compliment. Most people can get through it in about an hour and a half, maybe two hours, and I joke with people I said it really wasn't that hard. It only took me eight and a half years and there's a little bit of truth to that. So it was not a bucket list item for me. For a lot of people. I'm going to write a book someday. I had never even given it any thought and when I was the VP of HR at the Nerdery and, yes, my official title was VP of Nerd Experience, so that was a lot of fun I finished a meeting one day and a guy who worked on my team came up to me and I'll give a shout out to Brian Long, he's one of my favorite people in the world and I've stayed connected with him this whole time and he came up to me and he said hey, eric, have you ever thought about writing a book?

Eric Harkins: 5:10

And I said, no, why would you ask that? And he said I just think it'd be a really good book. You have all these funny stories, but there's always a lesson to be learned. I don't know. I think it'd be funny or I think it'd be good, and I said, all right, great.

Eric Harkins: 5:24

And about a month later he came by and he said how's the book coming? I said, brian, there's no book. And he's like bullshit. There's a book and you're going to write it. And he said just write me a chapter. And that sort of was the start of it. And as far as the style, it's interesting, especially because I'm not a writer. One of my favorite compliments that I've gotten is I've had people who know me because we either work together or whatever, and they said when I read your book, I felt like we were sitting at Caraboo or Starbucks having a conversation, and I don't know if I consciously wrote it in that style. But what's interesting is, I'll tell you, I initially self-published the book and then was really humbled and proud that Forbes Books kind of republished it, it's beautiful.

Eric Harkins: 6:12

And turned it into a really beautiful physical product. And when the editors were talking to me, they were wanting to change a bunch of things and I had a few conversations where I said, listen, I understand why you want to change it. I know this sentence isn't written chromatically correct, or there were probably about a dozen places where I had to say, hey, I don't even know what this word is, it's not in my vocabulary, so I would never use this word. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric Harkins: 6:40

I think, I did want just something that people felt like hey, I think we have short attention spans in today's world. I think they're getting shorter, and I will tell you that probably the best compliment I get on the book is thank you for writing a book that was easy to get through and one that I could finish, because I do think people struggle with 300 or 400 page books in general certainly business books so I guess I was trying to just hey, this is all I have to say. It only took me a little over 100 pages to put it out there and so far it's been a really humbling experience.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 7:19

Yeah, well, again, I think you're right. Leaders are so busy today I think they're even post-coded. I think they're busier. I don't know what's going on. I'm sure we could dissect that.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 7:28

We won't take the time to do that, but the truth of the matter is we talk about a lot about inter-resourceless in our world, in our work, through our consulting practice, and you're really learning to trust yourself, and I think that, if I think last time I looked, there were over 15,000 books just on leadership on Amazon and there's so many different ways of slicing and dicing a concept like leadership that has been probably over-analyzed, not expressed enough and over-analyzed.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 8:00

We have analysis per houses on leadership in the world, but when you have a book like yours, with a leader that's trying to make an impact, most people that are going to be drawn to this book are already people that are probably people-centric, culture-centric, they care about, they know the value of leadership and they're looking for a way to add some punch in their day and add some energy into what they're doing and be inspired, and I think your book does that and it really nails. And one of the things I love, the story, which I like to start off with, the story about cards against humanity and I'm going to let you tell the story because I think it really tells about the whole culture we're dealing with in organizations around political crime. Just go ahead and tell the story about that one.

Eric Harkins: 8:47

I think it's a great one. Yeah, and it's a true story. And so I was the VP of Nerd Experience at the Nerdery and really cool culture. People were wanting to come and see what it was all about and a pretty senior level executive from a Fortune 500 company brought her team and I was giving a tour and we were walking through and we happened to be in the HR department and I could see her eyes kind of focused on somebody's desk and they had cards against humanity sitting there and in the book.

Eric Harkins: 9:19

I sort of do the back and forth of what the exchange looked like. And she basically said you let people play cards against humanity at work. And I said, well, only if they include me. And she's like you're not serious, are you? And I said, well, yeah, we play it all the time. She's like you sit down and play cards against humanity with your team. I said yeah, and she said well, what if somebody gets offended? I said well, then they probably shouldn't play. And she's like people aren't upset that you're playing cards against humanity. I said upset. I said they're upset because they're not laughing as hard as we are. I said you know, the only bad thing that happens is somebody's stomach usually hurts because we were laughing so hard. And I get it right. I mean, yes, that game is not for everyone.

Eric Harkins: 10:03

But in the book I talk about, you know, if, if somebody is going to do something that takes advantage of an environment that allows you to play cards against humanity, sexually harasses somebody, makes an inappropriate comment or physical contact or whatever it might be, that is not because you were playing cards against humanity. That's because that individual and the word my favorite word to use, and I'm sure we'll talk about it that person is an asshole, and I like to use that word very regularly, and so I've always struggled with this sort of well, I don't understand what the problem is and we did. We had a couple of people on the team that that wasn't their kind of game. They didn't like it and you know they understood what people did. But it's a great story because it's still to this day. I have people that say you didn't really do that Did you.

Eric Harkins: 10:56

It's like, yeah, I talked to anyone at the nursery and it was a game that we played. And so you know, to me it's sort of under that umbrella of we hire adults, we work with adults, let's treat them like adults. And you have to know your audience. I do, but you know I did something for a local high school recently. I wasn't swearing when I was talking to the high school kids. I probably swear more than I do, but you know you got a little bit. But you know, for us it was just a fun game and I'll tell you, you know that was 12 years ago and I still, every now and then, you know, through LinkedIn or through text, you know we'll talk about the good old days of having a lot of fun at work at the nursery.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 11:37

So yeah, well, that's I mean you know, and there's got to be a broader context around the culture you're creating, other than you know playing that game right. So tell me a little bit about what you were building, or, behind the scenes, like outside of that game, what was the you know? How did you set the intentionality for that culture and the focus for that culture?

Eric Harkins: 11:55

Yeah, you know, and I love what you talk about in terms of the sort of inside out journey, and I think one of the things you and I really aligned on is and one of my favorite things to talk about, and if you've heard me speak or if you read the book, you know kind of the underlying message is hey, let's not make this thing called leadership harder than it is.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 12:17

Because it's really not that hard.

Eric Harkins: 12:19

And I was really. I agree I was really lucky and I didn't realize it at the time, but my very first job, right out of college, I had done an internship with Target and I was placed at T1, which is Roseville, minnesota, so the very first Target store ever built, and this is 1995. And I had a department manager who had been there since grand opening day and I think it was like 32 years at that point and I remember it like it was yesterday. I walked up to her, introduced myself and she said oh, you're the new manager. I said Yep. She said you just graduated from college. I said yeah, and she said Well, let me explain to you how this is going to go. She said I don't work for you, you work for me. I said when I ask you for something, you're going to make it happen. And if you make my life easy, I'll make your life easy. If you don't make my life easy, this isn't going to work out very well for you at Target.

Eric Harkins: 13:14

And I remember in the moment 22 year old kid, wet behind the ears, walking face. What's going on with this person. And it was the best feedback I ever got early in my career because I realized that is, and it's sort of the. There's so many versions of it. You know, leaders eat last urban leadership, and for me it's. You know, I tell every new leader, especially in human resources, all you have to do is ask your partner, your business partner, that you're supporting, three questions what are your challenges with getting talent, what are your challenges with keeping talent and what are your challenges with growing talent? And that's where GKG came from.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 13:55

Gkg, yeah, exactly, I'm just saying you bought a whole company out of it.

Eric Harkins: 13:59

My sort of simple approach is let's find out what's keeping the company from being great, and that's what we're going to focus on. So every role I've ever had if you talk to people that worked with me and any of the companies I've been at I've had the same playbook and then I finally put it in a book, and it's been two things, and I truly believe that there's two things that are keeping companies from being great letting underperformers show up and letting bad leaders lead people. And so I have a tool in the book and I started to implement it at the of Nurtury. I implemented it in bits and pieces everywhere I ever worked, and the tool is called lead and it's a leadership expectation tool and we can talk about it if you'd like or not, but it's eight questions to ask of the leaders in your company, and they're things like do the leaders in your company create a culture high performers want to be a part of? Do they bring energy and enthusiasm to work every day? Do they build relationships at all levels of the organization? Or are they the kind of leader that walks by the receptionist every morning because he or she's not important enough to say hi to right and what they're not.

Eric Harkins: 15:09

What my questions are not are things like did they cut costs, did they manage their budget, did they grow margins? Did they improve sales? And that's a real paradigm shift for a lot of people when I start my consulting engagement, because they constantly want to shift the focus to well, let me talk about the results that this leader gets, and I always come back to. I don't care what the results are. Do people like working with and for them? Because if they have a team of high performers, we're going to get all these results Exactly.

Eric Harkins: 15:43

But we don't talk about how leaders show up. We don't measure how leaders show up and we don't make that important. We hire leaders and tell them what their job is. Congrats, you're the new VP of finance. Here's your office, see you Monday. But imagine sitting saying, hey, if you're going to join our company where we have this really precious culture, here's what's important to us. So that was a long road to get to the question specifically about the nursery, which was we do have something special here and we can mess this up by hiring the wrong leaders, or we can keep this going by making sure the leaders understand what's expected of them and how we're going to hold them accountable and that, I think, is the magic. When a company starts to do that, they start to see the engagement levels increase.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 16:31

Yeah, let's face it, when you're hiring a CRO or a CFO or head of HR or CEO, you're not hiring somebody that's, you know, just got out of elementary school. They have the chops to do the technical part of the job Right, and if that's all you're hiring for, you're going down the wrong path and you're basically closing your eyes and shooting without seeing the target Right. You have to hire for leader. You have to. Obviously they got to pass a master of the technical ability. If they don't in their resume, then you're not going to look at their resume, but then you should be filtering those people out based on a leadership skill.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 17:10

Now, something you also say that I want to speak to here is you can't teach people to become leaders. I love that, yeah, so I love this one because but I want you to point to it so if you can't teach leadership because we've been trying for years to drill it into everybody that comes in our organizations I've been fortunate to be part of some large contacts and attempted to do it Right, so but but I, but you really can't teach leadership. So tell me a little bit about where that came from and how you came to that and what that is all about.

Eric Harkins: 17:40

It's probably the biggest thing that people want to debate with me on. You know, either after they've read the book or after they hear me speak. You know, because I do have a fairly black and white approach to this, that you know one of my favorite sayings is a bad leader will never create a good culture. Right, because they don't know what that looks like. And so people come up to me and they're like you don't think people can change. You don't think people can learn to develop skills. You know and my response to answer your question is all us.

Eric Harkins: 18:08

It depends on what we're talking about, right?

Eric Harkins: 18:11

If you are the type of person that walks by the receptionist every day for five years and never says hello, no, you can't teach them to be a better leader of people, because they don't even have a thought in their head that this person is as valuable as my boss and that they are as important to what we're doing.

Eric Harkins: 18:30

In fact, in some ways, probably more important, because they're the first face to any vendor coming in your building or any candidate coming in your building, and if, all of a sudden, they get feedback that you need to start being more approachable and you need to build relationships with people and you have to tell a leader that they need to do that and all of a sudden the next day they walk up to the receptionist Good morning, tom, how was your weekend? The receptionist is going to be like what the hell happened to this guy? He hasn't said hi to me in years and so it's not genuine and authentic, and I think my whole stance is that there is no secret class you can take to become a leader. Right, it's not that hard of a job. It's actually I tell my clients all the time.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 19:13

It's easier than being a direct contributor, for sure, I mean you're facilitating creativity of others, and your job is to be, in relationship with them and have them understand where things are going and all that. And then just you're checking it and you're being paid to have conversations. Basically I tell CEOs you're lucky because you have the easiest job in the company.

Eric Harkins: 19:32

They're like what, what do you mean? And I said you only have one job. Your only job is to make sure you have the right direct reports. That's right, and you should be spending your day walking around the office high-fiving people, Because if you have to do something that you don't think you should have to do, you have the wrong direct reports. That's it.

Eric Harkins: 19:53

And the reason leadership is hard is because you have so many poor performers that don't want to be there, that you're not dealing with, because I promise you, when you lead a team of high performers, you're going to be a leader. But the reason people say it's so hard is because half of your team that might be a little dramatic is not operating at the level that they should be or that they need to, or you suffer from the same thing. Most companies suffer from A number of employees who quit. They just decide not to give you their notice. They show up every day, but they quit you a long time ago and you don't have the courage as a leader to make those more and change those people out in that environment. Yeah, being a leader is really hard, but I joke about it. Please don't send bad leaders to leadership workshops, because all you're going to have is a well-trained, bad leader.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 20:48

Yeah, exactly, I tell people all the time. Your best investment in coaching is with your best leaders because they eat it up Right To me. Something wakes up in the human being that recognizes that. That creates some humility that I don't know everything. In fact it's good for me to recognize I don't know everything. But, as you say, if I hire the right people, they should know what. I fill in the gaps Right and listen. Nobody likes to have tough conversations.

Eric Harkins: 21:13

Right, I talk about it in my keynote. You know, in the roles I held I had to fire a lot of people throughout my career. I never came home and high-fived my wife and kids. Oh, I got to fire somebody else. I do joke about it in the book. And then I have a little side note. Well, except for a couple of times, because every now and then you know there were people so good.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 21:33

In general terms, it's not a fun part of the job. Let's be honest.

Eric Harkins: 21:39

Steve Jobs has a great quote hey, if you want to make everyone happy, don't become a leader. Sell a yeah, but great leaders, don't shy away from it. And I think the biggest misconception is that you know you can be an approachable, humble, genuine, authentic leader and still be tough on crime and fire a lot of people. Because the people that you're firing at, the people that don't want to be there or are incapable of being there or are taking advantage of you or aren't responding to the feedback you're giving them to try to improve their performance and I talked about it in the book.

Eric Harkins: 22:18

I hope, anyway, that if you asked people that worked for me throughout my career hey, did you like working for Eric? If they were high performers, I think they would say you know what? Yeah, I like to work for Eric. And if they were low performers, they'd probably say I didn't really care for them that much. And I don't think that's arrogance, I think that's leadership.

Eric Harkins: 22:38

Right, I cared a lot about the high performers who wanted to be there and I think they knew that, and people that were sort of phoned in it in yeah, you know what, they didn't get to work there. So, anyway, I think they knew that Well conversation, but I don't think it's something I mean again, can you learn things? If you're too wordy, if you ramble like I'm doing right now, you can get that coaching throughout your career and, hey, you need to be more concise. Yes, you can fix things like that, but how you treat people, no, you can't really get off, because if you're doing it because you're told you should or have to, then it's not genuine and high performers can see through that pretty quickly.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 23:20

Yeah, and I think sometimes organizations make it harder on leaders below, like the C-suite level, to do the right hiring and to let go of people Like we need to be more respectful of our kind or we have to make sure we're following this program whatever, and at the end of the day, you're not serving your organization, you're not serving your shareholders, you're not serving those people you say the high performance in your organization that are shown every day with gumption and creativity and innovation to make things better. So the goal is to build, like this amazing opportunity, a magnet for the right people that are going to fit that situation. So I'm going to go to you and put your GKG hat on. So how do you?

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 24:00

help clients. How do we help clients make sure they're hiring the right people? What are some of the things as far as making sure you are hiring people that match your culture? What do you tell your clients?

Eric Harkins: 24:13

Yeah, it's one of my favorite conversations I have on sort of the front end of an engagement, especially when we're doing search work, and I'll talk about the consulting as well. But I tell people, listen, I am not going to ask any technical questions about their competency. To your earlier comments if I'm interviewing somebody to be a VP of finance and they have 25 years of finance experience in the director and VP level, they can do the job right, unless they lie down the resume, and if they did, then we'll figure that out pretty quickly. But assuming they didn't lie on the resume, you can do the job right. You can count for 20 years. I want to know if you're going to be the type of leader, to your point, that's going to help us continue to build the culture we're trying to build Now.

Eric Harkins: 24:59

The gap and the challenge is it is not an easy question for a lot of companies to answer what is precious to you, what matters with leaders? We have values on the wall. We have a vision statement. We have a mission statement. Nobody really knows what it is anyway when you ask employees, because it's just words on the wall and where it really came to life for me and my last experience in corporate America. I was the chief administrative officer for a wireless retailer, as you mentioned, that ran Verizon stores Company was called Victor. We had 1,500 locations, 47 states. It was a big operation and that was the first time in my career where we really completely embraced two tools that I'd been sort of sprinkling over a couple of decades LEAD, which again are those eight questions to ask, and then these three lessons that I learned along the way and they become rules, and so I tell the story in the book how much more important they were when they were rules. And lesson number one rule number one it's OK to have fun at work.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 26:06

Yeah.

Eric Harkins: 26:07

Lesson number two poor performing employees don't quit voluntarily. And lesson number three assholes are assholes. They don't change. And I love to talk about that because all I did when we were hiring 175 new people to open this new operation for Verizon because we consolidated four companies into one was, if they were a leader. I talked about LEAD hey, if you're going to work here, here's what's precious to us Creating a culture high performers want to be a part of, bringing energy and enthusiasm to work every day, building relationships, and I would go through all eight and, as a team, here's what we're going to agree to do. We're going to have fun at work. We're not going to let underperformers show up and we're not going to let bad leaders lead people. Let's see what that looks like and having that kind of foundation on the front end. So what I do with clients is we have that conversation. What are the expectations for your leaders? And almost no companies have that.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 27:08

That's great. It's great Absolutely right.

Eric Harkins: 27:10

The CEO might have things he or she looks for, the CFO might have things he or she looks for, but as far as a leadership team saying here's the four, five, eight things that are non-negotiable if you're a leader here and so that's what I try to do is help them establish that Now some of the clients I've worked with take it right out of the book hey, we like these eight, we're just going to improve Great. Some of the companies say we like the concept of having expectations, but we're going to come up with our own. Great, it doesn't matter what they are, it matters if you have them. And once you have them, everything else becomes so much easier. Because when you sit down with us here and say hey, david, as you know, building relationships at all levels of the organization is critical to us. Mary's been trying to meet with you for three months and you've canceled on her six times. Tell me how you feel that's building relationships at all levels of the organization. And then it's not personal, it's not that I don't like you, it's.

Eric Harkins: 28:09

This is what we told you we were going to ask you to do, and energy and enthusiasm is one of my favorite ones. I do not understand senior leaders who walk around every day like their dog died. I just don't get it. If you don't like being there, then leave. Exactly, you think your team's going to be excited about being there. When you're always acting stressed, you're always too busy. You never have time for have a co who wants to work in that environment, right yeah?

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 28:39

Well, again, you're talking about important reflection organizations. What gets in their way of doing that? And this is going to sound counterintuitive, right? They're so focused on outcomes, financial measures, all that's important for knowing where we're at and are we moving in the right direction and are we reaching goals that we set All that's important. But when that becomes the fixation and also you're not reflecting on this quality of leadership and culture that you're creating, I think the people are doing a better job of talking the talk and that's necessarily walking the walk, yeah, and that when you don't have that in place, you don't really have any guardrails for how we get those results Right, and results done in a dehumanizing way eventually hurt results.

Eric Harkins: 29:35

Right.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 29:36

Right, you might get the results, you might get over the finish line. But when people get over the finish line and they're completely exhausted and then you're saying, ok, next initiative Right, but there isn't any of that energy and vibration, upliftment and empowerment, then you're going to also lose good people.

Eric Harkins: 29:58

Yeah, yeah, and you heard the keynote and so I talk about that. Your high performers are every day waiting for you as their leader to deal with the people who aren't pulling their weight Right, and every day that goes by, that this under performer gets to show up and be late for a meeting and not be prepared, and whatever it might be is a day closer to when that high performer says I'm going to go somewhere where I have a shot at being valued Right. And it sounds oversimplified, but it really is true. If you focus on two things dealing with your under performers and really being very, very hard on what your expectations are for leadership if you just do those two things and I tell a couple of stories in my keynote that people always love to talk about just things I saw leaders do that you just say did they really just say that to that person? Did they really just do that?

Eric Harkins: 31:05

And it's like these leaders are out there every day. They're doing things that people say, wow, what a bad leader, what a bad person. I hope I never have to talk that person in. And these people stay at their companies for 10, 20, 30 years treating people poorly, and that's sort of the never ending quest is, I like to say. I'm trying to change company culture one Monday morning at a time and it's going to be a lifelong challenge and I love it, but we can do better than we're doing in a lot of companies.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 31:40

Yeah, and a lot of leader anybody, anybody that's a human being can be triggered, react and say something they regret. And I say always two things leaders have to learn how to say is I was wrong, I apologize. In certain situations that could be a very powerful move for people saying I don't know, but we can find out. So the more they can integrate those into there, not like all the time, but as a strategy, but as a recognition that there's a human experience that happened over there. And while my attention was not to harm or hurt that person, I could clearly see I went too far. And again it's showing up as a full human being with people, real, authentic as yourself. And one of the things you also point to in your book about leaders are many times polarizing personalities. They're not like in a mold. So tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that. They're not in your words.

Eric Harkins: 32:38

Yeah, and I think in the book it's sort of focused on support roles, whether that's an HR role or whatever that really good. Leaders are oftentimes polarizing personalities, because the people who are really liking what they hear or liking what they see are usually the high performers saying, hey, this person knows what they're doing, I like their style. The person who doesn't typically like that is the under performer, because they're being held accountable.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 33:09

Right, exactly. I don't like that polarizing person.

Eric Harkins: 33:13

Like, wait, my last four bosses haven't actually made me come, not work on time, what does this person think they're doing? And so that's where the polarizing comes in. And then that kind of leads to the conversation around subject matter. Experts do not necessarily make great leaders, and it's such a common mistake that we make. It's typical in a manufacturing environment, your best employee on the line gets promoted to line leader and all of a sudden all the performance and production is down because, A they didn't want to be a leader. B they don't know how to be a leader. And now you just lost your best line person and it's this kind of perfect storm. And I joke about it in the book, but it's true that you know, listen, I was lucky in my career to be the head of HR at three different companies and I don't know that much about human resources, and anyone who's worked for me would say he's not kidding about that.

Eric Harkins: 34:05

He doesn't know that much, and I loved hiring people and having people on my team that knew everything about human resources. And I think another kind of unintentional mistake that we make is you know, think about the leaders. If you're listening to this, think about the leadership, your C-suite, senior vice party, whoever it is your senior leadership team, and are they subject matter experts? And if they are, that doesn't mean they're a bad leader, but subject matter experts typically do what subject matter experts do. They're the smartest person in the room, they make all of the decisions, and your high performers are sitting there saying, well, what do you need me for If you're just going to make all the decisions? You know I can go execute anywhere. I want to be a contributor, and so it's part of that.

Eric Harkins: 34:56

And back to the polarizing I mean back to, and one of the things you and I connected so well on is just this sort of genuine and authentic be your whole self. One of my sayings is just be who you are Exactly. And if more leaders said I don't know how to do this, can you help me to their team Boy, that would look so much different. But we have this ingrained thing that you know, now that I'm a leader, I have to have all the answers.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 35:25

It's like no, yeah, it is interesting how people get put in that position and all of a sudden they're looking around and what it is is they're hitting a floor on their self confidence. They got to regain it. But I love when a leader that is in finance gets moved over to marketing or you know, because you could be a coach and leader anywhere and you don't have to deeply know. You should learn over time some of the technical competency in that area. But if you have good people in those positions that know what they're doing, they just need to be supported, provided with empowerment and development opportunities and to find out what floats their boat so you can support them and steam it along right in their career.

Eric Harkins: 36:11

We could spend an hour talking about this, because I couldn't agree more and you know I do talk about it in the book that I didn't realize it at the time, probably with where I was in my career and my age, but when I was at Target and kind of growing up in HR, you know the CEO at the time was Bob Ulrich and you know I was a huge fan, as most people were who worked there, and one of the things he started doing is exactly what you're talking about. Right, the head of stores would become the head of HR. The head of HR would become the head of asset protection. Asset protection would go run supply chain and outside or looking in, it was sort of like what's going on. And I couldn't agree more that if you are a great leader, you should be able to run any function and people, even finance I'd even argue, even finance Now maybe that one where there's some really specific, you know, regulatory things that you have to be able to do. But then I'd come back and argue then your number two person in finance should be able to do all of that. Right, and if it really truly is about that and I love the idea of you know mixing and matching and moving your leaders around dependent on their great leaders, right?

Eric Harkins: 37:28

Yes, and I always struggle a little with you know the difference between HR and the operations person and the sales person. Like no, that's the same job, right, everyone's job is the same. Do we have the right people? Are we getting keeping and growing? And where we have underperformers, they need to be addressed. And so I think the greatest move that Target made was they'd take HR people and put them in stores and take stores people and put them in HR, because it was the same job it was. Do we have the right people? Are all of my store managers the right people? Are all my district managers the right people? And then, at the HR level, you're just doing that globally versus for your district or your region or your territory. But it's the same work. It's making sure that we're creating a culture that high performers want to be a part of and making sure that Monday morning doesn't suck right.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 38:21

Yeah, well, and also, I think great leaders you know if you really hire for that, they have an instinct for the right people. Yeah, there is. You know, I worked with one client that started she's. When I worked with her she started she was in a finance role. They got a CFO position. Now she's a president of a company that hire her as CFO right, and there was a growth curve because she wasn't as tuned to the commercial side of the business as much. Sure, but she is like a people and culture evangelist and walks her talk and she can go to a networking event and she will zero in on somebody and then she's I want you to come over and have coffee with me in my office and very soon they're giving her off them an offer sheet because she just knows she can see talent and feel talent and trust her instincts and I think a lot of times, yes, you want to have these frameworks, but a lot of times leaders just have instincts on the right. This is the right person to bring in, you know.

Eric Harkins: 39:18

Well, and I think a big part of it and it depends on your company, right, but a big part of the leadership kind of journey is being visible and being present, right?

Eric Harkins: 39:29

Yes, absolutely, I had a lot of my career in retail and we always had different types of retail leaders in the field. Right, we'd have district managers, who one of my favorite things to do when I would visit stores with a district manager, you know, typically a district manager's going to have eight to 10 locations, maybe 12. And if they had to type the address of the location that we were going to visit into their phone, it was an immediate acknowledgement for me that they're not in stores enough. Like you have eight locations and you don't know how to get there without a math. Like you should know every back road to every location.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 40:12

Exactly.

Eric Harkins: 40:12

Just like this instant understanding that wow and you could feel it when you'd go into the stores the connection they did or didn't have to their team versus some of the best district managers who knew the names of the grandchildren of the cashier, cheer. Because they were there every day, every week, every month, and they just had to know the team, and so that's a big part of some of the work we do is how visible are your leaders? If you have any kind of a field function, you can see the head of stores and not visit stores.

Eric Harkins: 40:51

You can't be the head of clinics and not go out and visit clinics or whatever your environment is.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 40:57

Or you can't be a sales leader and not go to watch your sales people in front of a customer. I mean, how can you manage them?

Eric Harkins: 41:04

right, Because the days of managing from a spreadsheet are gone and one of my favorite things to talk to companies about is let's make no mistake, the game has changed right. You are no longer interviewing candidates. Candidates are interviewing you Because I have 15 opportunities that I could go, especially if you have an hourly population. They drive to work, they have 12 billboards, all probably paying the same that you're paying them for a position like that. So what's making your environment special enough that I want to keep coming here when I could go across the street and literally maybe make a dollar more an hour? Right, Absolutely, Whatever it might be.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 41:50

Yeah, absolutely you. You also speak in the book about a leader, of stewardship I think is probably the highest form of leadership. I would say that I'm assuming this and it's related to the lead kind of being a servant leader, right, being a steward. Talk a little bit more about what you think, about what that's about for you, yeah.

Eric Harkins: 42:14

I had a joke in the book and I say I don't really even know what the definition of stewardship is, but it's something like leaving it better than you found it. For me, it's always been about do the leaders in our organization really feel that way, that my role is to make things better? Certainly, in the last three or four years, a lot of my conversation has been prefaced with yes, there are going to be things that disrupt our business, that we have no control over, global logistics issues, global pandemics. But great leaders understand, even with all that adversity, what can I do to make things a little bit better? Sometimes it's what does the team need?

Eric Harkins: 42:57

My favorite thing to do was to go into a store and just ask the question what's the worst part about working here? Yeah, it takes a while for people to actually realize you want it. Sure, Right, yeah, Because you're the executive from corporate and no, it's great working here. I'm like no, there's days where you want to quit. What's happening in those days that make you want to quit? And usually what they're talking about is stuff that's fixable, Right, yeah. And so stewardship to me is just saying hey, kind of back to. Her name was B, that's all I can remember.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 43:36

Right, it's a long time ago.

Eric Harkins: 43:38

That department manager who put me in my place on day one at Target was she was right. My role is not to tell her how to do her job that she's been doing for 32 years. It's hey what's frustrating. Well, I've been asking corporate for these sign holders for three months and nobody's gotten me. Sign holders Like it's not like huge things, I want you to double my salary and whatever.

Eric Harkins: 44:03

It's usually something that's so simple. It's like well, I don't understand why hasn't anyone done that before? Well, because no one's ever asked. So that's part of sort of being genuine, authentic. But what can I do to make it just a little bit better? And simple things like the letter in our sign out front has been burned out for six months.

Eric Harkins: 44:25

It could just be things that are physical, environment things. It could be there's a bunch of trash in the parking lot and I'm going to go and either get somebody to do it or I'm going to do it myself even better. But it's things like that and again that goes back to the it's not oftentimes it's not huge things that cost millions of dollars. It's kind of simple things that people just want the platform to say. Here's what would really make my job a lot easier, right, yeah? So for me, stewardship is just what if every leader in your company showed up every day with a goal to make things a little bit better? Yeah, that could be sales, that could be profitability, that could be margins, but it could be environment, culture, laughter.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 45:13

I love that because I think sometimes CEOs want to ignite empowerment and leadership in their organization at their own detriment and they don't realize they're doing it. We need innovation around here. I want every department to innovate, go off and innovate and they create these or they don't define it. They think they're igniting and they are igniting a spark in people. What the problem is? It creates a forest fire of busyness that may or may not add up to what that CEO wanted them to do, whereas you say it's like. It's so true, and I tell my clients all the time around personal habits. Don't try to change five habits at once. Change one and incrementally get better at it every day and, before you know it, within a month or two, that's no longer an issue for you. And it really is true Small, incremental changes over a long period of time are much more powerful most times I'm not saying all the time, there's never every time Then try to make these big, massive changes all at once. Yeah.

Eric Harkins: 46:16

Well, and I have a chapter in the book If it's broke, fix it. And the whole concept is find out what needs to be fixed or addressed and then do it. Or if you can't explain why that's all people need is closing. We've been asking for this new monitor for three months and I don't know. I've submitted 14 tickets to IT and nobody's gotten back to me.

Eric Harkins: 46:43

Well, first of all, we all learn let's fact check that hey, show me the tickets that you've submitted Exactly and they can give you the 14 tickets and you can go back to corporate and say, hey, why is this happening? Like, where's the breakdown? And if it's that they don't get a new monitor until next week or next month or it's in the budget for next year, why can't we just tell them that? But no answer then just creates that finger pointing and any company that has a corporate office and a field organization struggles with corporate, doesn't understand our job and we don't understand their job and it's just a lot of useless finger pointing. But that's where I came up with this every guest every time, every store, every time concept in my last role where I started to lay this goal out, for again, we had 1,500 locations, 6,000 employees and I said what if every time a guest came into our store, they had a great experience? What would that look like? And then, back at corporate, it was what if, every time a store called us with something that they needed to help give better customer service, we actually got it for them? What would that look like? And I'm not naive, do I think 6,000 part-time employees were giving amazing customer service every day? No, but when you set the expectation, kind of like Lee, when you have something to go back to, it's at least in their mind every guest every time, every store every time so part of it is and that goes back to do you have expectations that are pretty clear and easy.

Eric Harkins: 48:21

Not values, because that's not what we're talking about here, but expectations that you're actually going to hold people accountable to.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 48:28

Well, you're committed to. You have commitments around them and they're explicit. They're explicit and they're committed to. Yeah, I want to kind of go to another subject, because I've asked this of all my guests that come on, that do the kind of work you do, or our leaders and organizations.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 48:44

A few things have changed around here over the last couple, two to three years, and I'm not trying to get into politics here.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 48:50

That's not what I'm trying to do. However, there is a lot of distractions in the world today that can pull us into, quite frankly, fear, right. Yeah, I feel like one thing that organizations do when they're creating the kind of workplaces you're talking about and I agree and lying around that they should create is they're creating an oasis for people to go to every day and feel meaning in their life, and that that's very, very important to have that place, especially now, where you can contribute and feel that you're doing good work. But also, I feel like organizations need to be attentive to what their employees are dealing with when they leave the office and go back out into the world. I'm just curious what you think about that, what your thoughts are, what's really changed in the workplace that we have to attend to most right now in the world that we're in Such a powerful question and for anyone that was dealing with the whole are we going to return to work?

Eric Harkins: 49:53

What does that look like? Hybrid situation it was the biggest no-win conversation in the world, because what you care about and what I care about aren't the same thing, and now you multiply that by 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 employees, and so I try really hard to keep things as simple as possible. So I'm going to prep to your question in a couple of ways, and one of the things I talk about in the book is that I really and in my keynote, I really believe people want three things when they go to work, and I don't care if you're my daughter, who's 23, starting her career, or you're 63 and you're almost retiring. You want a cool place with cool projects and cool people, and you actually defined one of them in your comment. A cool place means, hey, there's something about the brand or the product or the building or the company that makes me want to work there.

Eric Harkins: 50:51

I mean, when Best Buy opened their corporate headquarters and there was a bank and a cool cafeteria and a daycare and dry cleaning and I was like, wow, who doesn't want to work there? This is a cool thing, cool projects is what you were talking about. I'm rewarded or I feel recognized for my work. I feel like I'm contributing and it's an environment that I could see myself in for a while. And then cool people is the commitment from the company that we're not going to let bad leaders lead people. So if you start with a, what are we doing to create that? That's part of the OASIS a safe place where I can be my authentic self. But I think a big part of it also is a great leader gets to know their team at an individual level but, even more importantly, lets their team get to know them at an individual level.

Eric Harkins: 51:43

Yes, and you have to understand what each person is motivated by. This employee wants every chance they can get to be put in front of the CEO. This person would be mortified if you asked them to go present to the CEO. Both are OK, but so often we're creating anxiety for our employees because we're simply just asking them to do things that A they don't even have to do. We think they want to, but we haven't even done it. I just assumed you'd want to go present to the board. Oh my god, no Like.

Eric Harkins: 52:16

I'd be mortified to present to the board. But Billy over here is like, oh my god, I loved it. But nobody's asked me, like, what do they want? Right? But there's also this kind of you know, I can't tell you how many times I've been having a conversation with the leader and they've been talking about an issue or a challenge with an employee and my comment is usually have you asked them why or have you asked them about? And usually the answer is Well, no, I didn't get. I mean, do you think I should? And it's like yeah, omniscience was.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 52:53

Omniscience wasn't in the job description. You don't have to be omniscient.

Eric Harkins: 52:58

One of the things I don't understand Is, in the new world we live in which it's more virtual, which is more remote, which is more hybrid and you know, zooms, revenue is up significantly for a reason is People who don't turn their camera on. I Don't get that right. I get it if you're stepping away to run to the restroom or you're stepping away. It's a two-hour call and you get going. I get that. But to me, that employee who sits on a call with their leader and peers With their camera, to me, honestly, is that employee saying I just don't want to be here, right, exactly, yeah, three years ago we didn't get to turn our cameras off.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 53:40

All right, we had to be in the room. We had to be in the conference room where I was running really too early to run out of time and unfortunately, the people that were in a different country or state Were at a disadvantage.

Eric Harkins: 53:48

Yes, yes, and and I agree with all that, but it's like. So I'll often say to a leader Well, have you asked them why they don't turn their camera? And if the answer is something like I just, you know, I don't want to be seen or I like, well, but we want you to have your camera. Right, I'm not going to give you this mandate or give the mandate. I want you to have your camera on, because to me it's like, wouldn't you want to? Like? You know, years ago, gallup came up with their Q12, right? What are the 12 questions that are going to tell you how your company's running? And one of them is do you have a best friend at work? Right, let's be honest, a big part of why we look forward to going to work or not is our boss and the people we work with. And if we at least even sort of like our boss, but we like the people we work with, wouldn't you want to have your camera on? Wouldn't you want to interact?

Eric Harkins: 54:43

Hey Mary how's your weekend? I wish we were in the office today, you know. So to me it's just having the conversation right, like hey, what you know, how can I help you right now? I had a very interesting conversation just last week with a, an HR leader who I'm sort of a resource for and work for the company, and her situation was that this employee came up to her and and Completely unrelated to work having an issue with another employee outside of work, not during work hours and wanted the company to deal with it.

Eric Harkins: 55:20

It's like, well, there's a line like what you do in your personal life isn't really any of our business, but yes, we're gonna create a safe place for you when you're here. And how can I help and be empathetic and be a resource, but also understand that you know we're, we're, we're here to Create an environment that you want to be a part of, and it's usually not that hard. I mean, I saw you guys take your head when when I said have you asked them? Like it's simple, like hey, you know, I'm curious why you don't Whatever, or yeah, little down today. Is it something you want to talk about?

Eric Harkins: 55:57

Because I do think there's an element of you know Great leaders care just as much about their team. When they're not at work is when they are Right. And let's face it, the world we live in you're never really not available anymore right to me. We're absolutely a text away, we're a phone call away, we're a zoom call away, and so you are kind of always on. So why not create that sort of supportive environment both inside of the walls of your office and outside?

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 56:24

So yeah, and again, that's about context, about why we want the cameras on right. It's all about being our overt about that, that we're trying to be seen, we want to be connected together. We can't be in the office, so at least we want cameras on. Well, as we. I really appreciate. We could go on and on and on for hours. You know it's like you know, but, and we will over time, yeah, I'm not gonna have you back on, but Is there any final words you would like to say? Anything like you would feel complete about anything you wanted to share today, and I will make sure that there's links to connect with you below the podcast in various areas. But is there anything else you want to say as we complete today?

Eric Harkins: 57:00

Yeah, I, you know, love the conversation and you know, for the listeners, we had met for coffee and we could have stayed, you know, all day and and I love having this conversation, you know, certainly appreciate sharing my contact information. People can find me on LinkedIn. My website is pretty easy to remember it's just my name, ericarkinscom, and I really genuinely enjoy having these conversations. If I can be a resource, if I can help, you know if I would leave the listeners with anything it's.

Eric Harkins: 57:31

You know, today, after you've listened to this, if you're a senior leader, if you're a CEO, really truly ask yourself this question Do I think I have the right leaders and are we letting underperformers show up? And, as simple as it sounds, those two things will dramatically change the environment. And, you know, this goal of making sure Monday morning doesn't suck, which is sort of my my, you know, elevator pitch I love it on conversation to have because it's so real, right, yeah, and it's so avoidable the employees who have that pit in their stomach on Sunday night. You can fix that, but you have to be willing to have some honest, hard conversations at times, which is where it breaks down. So yeah listen.

Eric Harkins: 58:18

I appreciate very much being able to join your your Podcast and love the work you're doing, and we need more people like you that are pushing this sort of agenda of hey, let's, let's give people excited about going to work again. That's absolutely. Life is short, right? Absolutely.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 58:35

Well, I appreciate the richness of this conversation. Again, eric, thank you for being on the show and for everybody else I want to thank you for joining I. I hope you enjoyed it. I know you must have enjoyed this show because it was a great show. Thank you again for Joining an unfazed in a fire. I wish you have a great rest of your day and we'll talk to you soon on our next episode of unfazed under fire. David Kregat signing out. Have a great day, bye, bye I.