Those who can’t do can’t really teach. But those who can do can lead and show others how they change in order to create a more impactful result.

First, learn to influence yourself. Be that living example. Don’t do it because you have the title of business owner. Don’t do it because you have the title of manager or director or vice president. Titles alone give you no power. They only represent your ability to either influence through your experiences and your actual intentionality with your team or through title, dictatorship. “Do it because I told you to, not because I am going to help you do it to attain a higher level of success like I’ve been able to accomplish myself.” That’s influence.

You can’t grow and develop your business to the highest magnitude of impact if you can’t use your influence by example through others, challenging them to challenge themselves the same way you did as the highest example in the organization. And that, my friends, is what influence is all about.

The true test of leadership is held by your ability to impact and influence others to do things they otherwise might not do. And therefore, anyone and everyone in any organization at any level has the power to be a true leader, by helping and influencing others to succeed.

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Is it possible for an organization to be operationally effective if they have a low level of belief? 

Absolutely not. Let me put it to you this way. 

OK. 

Let's take it on the individual level. I can be highly operationally effective, and not believe in anything you're doing as an organization. As long as I'm getting what I want out of your organization, I could care less what your purpose is. Now understand that you see this with great salespeople sometimes. They're making tons of money, but they really could care less about what happens after the sale. 

Would you agree that if the intentionality of the enterprise or the organization is to provide an amazing, remarkable experience for their consumer or their community, and someone has that short-term thinking-- but they're your best sales person. That's where people sometimes find themselves, as an enterprise, in a little bit of a problem. How do I get rid of my absolute best performing person when it's a train wreck for everything else? 

Right. 

And no one likes him. 

It's a short-term game. 

Short-term game. So here's-- can an enterprise work for a period of time without having a clear-defined higher level purpose? Absolutely. 

Remember, there's four kinds of businesses. You have the grinder business. You have the professor business. You have the friend business. And then you have, what I call, the advocate business. 

This is the work we've done with Dr. [INAUDIBLE] in dentistry, to try to identify the different environments in which we have to help operate it. Now the professor business-- you have it in audiology, you have it in any specialty business-- that's where the person performing the work is the smartest person in the world, and they're going to take their time to explain to you every granular detail of exactly why they're doing what they're doing, and you should just respect that and work with them because they're the absolute best. 

And we've all encountered people like that. I've encountered chefs like that. I've encountered doctors like that. I've encountered-- you call it, I've encountered it, OK? 

A grinder business is, I'm just spinning it out as fast as I can and anybody that's willing to pay me any amount, I'll just do it, right? And you've encountered grinder businesses, right? Where it's like, you're just churning and burning, babe. 

You're just a cog-- you're just another spoke in the tire, man. They don't even look you in the eye. They don't care. They're just-- you're in, you're out, you're fine. 

Then you have the friend business, which just feels really good. And you can get away with having not such a great business by being a friend business. So if you go to the local restaurant, you don't have the best chef. In fact, maybe you don't have a very good chef. Maybe the place isn't the cleanest. 

But you're treated so wonderfully. The wait staff loves you. They treat you like family. The owner comes out and hugs you and sits with you and gets you anything you want. Even if the glass is a little dirty, you might just clean it yourself and go, whatever, this person's amazing. 

So that's a friend business. You can get away with a lot in a friend business. But you can't grow in scale, a friend business, because not everybody that's going to work for you is going to see that sloppiness as-- the reason we can get away with this is because we're just going to love people to death. 

They'll come in and take a job, and they'll still treat people poorly. And the service-- if what you do is poor, eventually it's going to catch up the larger you get. The only way a friend business works is when you're fairly small. 

But an advocate business says, I need-- if I have a higher purpose, I need to have structure, I need to have intentionality, I need to align my team. I need to be able to have absolute clarity of what it is I want to attain, and how to get everyone working together for the attainment of that goal. That's an advocate business. 

So when you ask me, can someone have a high level of operational effectiveness without sharing in the belief about what can be done for an enterprise, or can an enterprise succeed without having a high level of belief, certainly. But then the question is, what is the belief?

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So let's back up a little bit and, for our listeners that might not know the established definitions of things like belief and operational effectiveness in the manner that we do, let's first talk about belief. What is belief mean, specifically in the context that we're discussing today? 

Perfect. So assuming that you have an employee that works for you and you're asking them to do something to contribute to your enterprise, the first and foremost is what is the purpose of the enterprise? If I'm an audiology practice, what is the purpose of the practice? If I'm a dental office, what is the purpose of the practice? If I own a restaurant, what is the purpose of the restaurant? If I'm a plastic surgeon doctor, what is my purpose? 

Now understand that, here's where people get really confused. And I've interviewed thousands of people in audiology and this is what it sounds like and why the confusion exists. So if I ask many people in hearing care, what do you do, they say we sell hearing aids. In fact, in almost all my role plays, and when you're doing your brand building and you ask what do you do, I sell hearing aids. I'm in the hearing aid business, right? 

Right. 

That's the what you do. But that's not really what you do. That's certainly not why you do it. The why you do it is to bring a high quality of life back to individuals who trust you with what you're doing, so that you can restore quality of life and bring value just to a human being. Like that's why, right? 

When you talk to dentist and you say what you do? Oh, I'm a dentist. OK. That's what you do but really what's important, the vision, the belief is why. Because I want to change people's lives by creating a high sense of confidence because they have a beautiful smile. And it's not something they have to think about, right? 

If I own a restaurant, I want to be able to feed people healthy food that can taste amazing but be substantive to adding health to their life, versus just stuff that detracts from health. So why I chose to do what I do. That's your belief. That's what you're about. 

Well, so first it's understanding, if I work in a dental practice or I work in an audiology practice or I'm front reception person at a restaurant, when someone says what you do and they say I work for a dental practice. I'm the front office person. I work for an audiology practice. I answer the phones. Oh, I'm a meet and greet person and reservation person in a restaurant. 

OK, that's the what you do. 

The basic function. 

The basic function. How do I assign a belief to that? Well, on a scale of 1 to 10, tell me how much you believe in what you do. That doesn't really-- well, I believe that I answer the phones good or I smile. 

I 100% believe answer the phone. 

Exactly. So, by definition, to understand what belief is or belief [? lid ?], you have to then be able to say what is the purpose? So if I am the first line of meet and greet at a restaurant and someone says, what do you do? I could say, well I take reservations and answer the phone for a restaurant. OK, that's what I do. 

What if the response instead is what I do is I'm the person who's responsible for making sure that every person that engages our enterprise, our restaurant, feels they're the most valuable person in the community, and that they have the single greatest experience that they've ever had before, at any other restaurant. That's what I do. That's a different explanation then what I do, is I answer phone and take reservations at a restaurant. 

That's a completely different mindset for the person, once they hear or understand that, that they actually have an influence over people's experiences. 

Imagine. What I do is I answer phones at a dental practice. No. What if what I do is ensure that every single patient that trusts our dental practice has the most remarkable experience in the whole process of being able to be reconnected to the things that are most important to them in their life, which is their oral health or the aesthetics of their teeth so they have a high level of confidence. 

So what I do is, if I'm working for an enterprise that has a higher purpose, oh I'm a dentist, and I have a front office girl or guy who answers my phones. OK, that's what you do, but why? So what I do is I create oral health and I beautify people so they can have a high level of confidence in the world. And the person that helps me do that, that ensures that's the very first impression, is the person that receives every patient that comes to the door, picks up the phone and calls us, to send that message that they are the most important thing that this business, this enterprise, this dental practice is about. 

The thing is, is that how you talk about your people and how they talk about themselves is a direct representation of you as a leader. So when you ask about belief, I first have to understand, if my job at a restaurant is to impress upon every single potential person in the community that we are the absolutely, the most focused, best focused on having an experience of a lifetime for them and making them feel like they're the most important person in the world, if I knew that was my job, instead of I answer the phone and take reservations, then I could be questioned as to, on a scale of 1 to 10, how well do I believe I'm able to impact that why. 

Do you understand? People don't have that clarity. And when I'm a restaurant owner who hires the best chef in the world, and then I'm acting like I've been victimized because people don't want to come to me, because I have a horrible wait staff, I have clutter everywhere, people can't get in timely, they get treated poorly when the phone answers, they get put on hold, well if that's the case, I can be a victim of that, but I created the conditions and my enterprise, as a restaurant, I created those conditions. 

But what if every person from my reception team understood your single most important job is to be the point of our commitment to our community, which is to create an experience of a lifetime, that they will never forget in the process of creating a reservation, showing up, and being made to feel like they're the most important person ever in this establishment. That's your job. Now, Nathan, I could score you on a scale of one to 10, what's your personal belief in your ability to impact that, with every person you encounter?

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Mr. Dawson, why don't we focus on people in the organization, and moving those people into the right roles in the organization based upon their respective skill sets? One of the things that we're really focused on here is making sure that we've got the right people, in the right role, at the right time in their career. But backing up, how do we identify who the right people are and the right roles for them? 

That's a great question, Nathan. And what we find typically is that organizations outgrow the role that you hired for. So if I own a small practice or a large business and I'm having success and growing, I tend to add more things on the plate of the people who work for me, hoping that they figure it out or they'll just do the work, even though it might not be in their core expertise or in their wheel house. 

And so being a responsible leader is always assessing where your team's at today, where they need to be in order to be more effective tomorrow, and what resources and tools that you're going to give them in order to ascend into that growth. And I think that one of the easiest ways we try to teach people to do that is through our three lids assessment-- belief, operational effectiveness, and leadership. 

If you go to each team member and just do an exercise. You sit down and you say, OK, write down Joe Smith. And say, OK, on a scale of 1 to 10, belief, how much does Joe Smith believe in what we're trying to do as an organization for our community, for our constituents, or for our peer group, or whatever it is you're trying to do. How much do they believe in our ability to actually do that? 

And write down, you know, scale of one to 10. I believe that they only believe, maybe, a five, because they don't seem to be putting a lot of energy into it, or they don't seem to be excited about it. And then you go and say, OK, what is their level of operational effectiveness, and what do they need to do to contribute to that? And you rank it on a scale of one to five, and then me, leadership-- how much energy, effort, and desire are they putting into their own personal growth in order to execute at a high level, be involved, and contribute from what they can contribute? And then you go to what I call we leadership in the leadership lid, which is how much are they helping others to try to attain their success? 

Now, here's the thing. If you say these people are a five or a four, and you don't believe that there is a high level of belief, then you have to ask yourself the question as a leader-- what picture have I painted? 

Right. 

Like, what have I given them in the way of a vision to get them excited about believing in what we do? The why? And what I find with most business owners and most managers is they talk about the what, and they spend a little bit to no energy talking about specifically the why. 

Right. 

So there's no emotional connection to the work that needs to be done. So what happens is you default into that operational effectiveness zone, and someone might be an eight or nine in operational effectiveness, and a low level of belief, and a low level of we leadership. In order to be highly effective, you have to have me leadership. You have to be willing to do the things that you need to do to push yourself to be highly effective. 

But that's potentially where it stops because the culture of the organization-- and this is what Seth Mattison talks a lot about with generations-- is the baby boomers, depending on what generation you are, we've had to fight for everything we have. And what we've been taught is when you're at the top of the pack, you try to hold what keeps your secret sauce, and you try to keep it to yourself because that's what your value is. 

Right. 

And you're just terrified emotionally that if someone comes up and does better than you that there won't be a need for you. So you have these cultural aspects that incorporate with the culture of your organization. If I'm a business owner, a practice owner, a manager, a vice president of a group or a team of people, it's my responsibility to say, this is our purpose. And this is what Jim Collins talks about in the hedgehog concept. 

When you align your highest level of purpose-- I call it intentionality-- with your highest level of impact and with a knowledge of what creates your highest financial impact for your organization. So you know what things you can do exceptionally well, and you don't try to do things you can't do well. And then you know what drives the economic levers of your business. That's the center of the hedgehog concept. If you're a practice business owner or manager, whatever, your passion may be specific to the reason that you found yourself in that role, or why you started your business. 

But the people who work for you may not have any alignment with that passion. So if you haven't found a way to bridge the objective to pursue your own passion, whatever that may be, with the objective of the individuals you're dependent upon to help you, that's where leverage comes from. And identifying what their passion is and drawing the parallel so they can share in the vision-- not necessarily the vision of your passion for what you want to do, but the vision for if they help you do it, what they can do to attain their passion. That is the secret sauce to aligning the interests of your people with the interests of the organization. Not trying to shove them into caring about what's important to you. 

No, but creating a tangible overlap of your passion, my passion, where do we meet in the middle, and where can we move forward together.

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Seth Mattison on "Spotlight"

eople get confused about what their brand is. And a lot of times they think their brand is what their logo looks like or what their colors are. What your brand really is, is the total sum of all experiences that somebody gets when they work with you or they engage you or they encounter you. 

Your brand is everything you do and everyone doing it, and you’re either every day intentionally adding value and building your brand in all you do, with everyone doing it at a high level of intentionality and a full level of alignment with team members doing it. 

Or you’re degrading and undermining your brand. And for somebody to say they’re great and they’re not intentionally focused on greatness, you cannot make that promise, and the result of that will be a broken business.

You cannot lead people without really liking them. Intrinsic connection is a key to great relationships. So think about this: If you don’t like being around somebody, if you don’t like spending time with them, if you don’t like connecting with them, if you’re not really fond of being in the general presence of that person and you can’t connect that way, how do you create permission leadership?

It’s through developing people to their highest impact so that you can trust them to go and do it on their own. It says, “I am empowering you to make good decisions and to do the right things, because I trust that you understand you can represent the organization at the highest level possible. Therefore, I’m not going to constrain your ability to do that; I’m going to amplify it by assisting you and helping you so that we can impact the organization at the highest possible potential.”

How do you do that if you’re not spending time with somebody? How do you do it if you’re not connecting with them?

Great leaders know how to align the interests of their people with the interests of the business. This is an absolute must. When you don't have the right people in the right place, you can't attract core energy invested into what you're trying to accomplish. It becomes much more work. It becomes very difficult to get things done, because their passion, their joy is not aligned with the function. 

Jim Collins talks about this in the Hedgehog Concept. The number one thing he identified that separated companies that struggled or failed for companies that were amazing was how much passion the people had for what they did. Well, when you have an organization that doesn't align your people's passion with the functions or with the whole plan of the organization, then it becomes a struggle. 

Now, how do you do that? You have to spend time with each person working for you. You have to figure out how somebody can do something better than the person before. And that becomes your highest elevated success. Then you platform that, and you benchmark it. And that becomes your duplicable process that everyone strives to attain. 

Ask yourself a simple question. If Gallup poll says 100 million people, Americans that they surveyed last year, out of 100 million, 70 million said they're actively disengaged or disengaged at work. So if you have 10 people working for you, seven of the 10 have admitted they're actively disengaged or disengaged at work. That leaves you three people to build a business that's centered and has expenses for 10. 

Now, does that mean you have the wrong 10 people? Many times I will tell you, you might have a few that you probably should shake loose of but generally speaking, you have the right people. They're just not contributing in the right areas for your organization. And when you can take the people who have been there and that are passionate about you and passionate about working with you, but they're not finding the level of success they otherwise could have, it's because you haven't aligned the business interests with the passion and interest of the people who work for you. 

Therefore, everything seems to be so much harder. Do you have the right people doing the right things that add the highest value to your organization?

If you want a business that’s surviving and thriving rather than a business that’s struggling, that’s a decision — that’s a choice. You have to make that choice yourself. And the first part of getting what you want is clearly understanding and identifying exactly what that is. See, that’s where law of picture comes in, and law of compass. This is why law of picture is so important. If you have a picture and you use law of compass so you know what direction you’re going, and you surround yourself with people who have clarity and understanding and are attached to that picture — because their picture is inside of your picture — then you can all succeed together.

And then you have a team of people who understand what that is, and you have a clear picture and you have a compass that says we’re going to sail due north, and people understand how they contribute, because their pieces of the puzzle are inside your pieces of the puzzle. Everyone can accomplish the goals together, aligned with shared interests. This is how you build an organization. Everyone understands where they’re going, what the expectation is for how to get there, and that they all need to stretch and understand cause and effect and the process of doing it. And that culture has a high level of accountability. That’s how you grow your business from where it’s at today to the level that you’d like it to be. If you don’t decide exactly where you want to be in business, someone else will make that decision for you.

You have to have humility and gratitude if you want to be an innovator in somebody else’s business or if you want to be a remarkable entrepreneur that can create large impact. You have to have humility and gratitude, because if you don’t have those two things you can’t find people who are going to give you everything they have, because no one wants to work for somebody who’s an egomaniac. So my first kind of self reflection was because of my first business I just hired lots of people and I just put my foot on the accelerator and you were either hanging on for the ride or it was OK if you blew away. I’d find somebody else. And I never really thought about who I was doing it with, although I had great relationships with people I worked with. 

And so when the business sold I realized I didn’t have a lot of personal relationships in that business with 400 or 500 employees. And so I made the decision that if I’m going to go spend 3, 4, 5, 10 years working and doing something I want to be close to the people that I’m doing it with and I want to have an environment that’s not just a churn and burn, press as hard as you can and burn people out type situation. I actually want to have an environment where we all care about each other, we enjoy working together, we enjoy accomplishing together. So what I realized for me, I needed to have humility and I needed to have gratitude. I needed to be thankful for people that are showing up every day putting all their energy and effort into it and being very respectful of the contribution that they bring to the organization.

Anyone can steer a ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course. When it comes to leadership, the first leadership you have to master is me leadership. Once you’ve mastered that and you’ve become an example to others, then you have to master we leadership.

They have a vision for getting there. They know who they’ll need on the way and what kind of team they’ll need to be successful, and they recognize obstacles long before they appear on the horizon. If you know where you want to go and you know how to get there, you’ll do it bigger, better, and faster. And let me tell you, the wider your team and the deeper their experience, the faster and more successful you’ll be.