Unlocking 6 Pillars of Effective Leadership With Jim Carlough

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Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Unlocked, where we talk about unlocking the potential of you, the people you work with, and the people you do life with. At the time of this recording, I’m offering all of you, yes, my lovely listeners, a free 15 minute communication coaching call. You come with some kind of communication problem, and I give you a solution. My calendar link is in the show notes so check that out.

There are some things that we need to do as leaders. There are things that we need to do to make sure that we are building leadership brands worth following, worth latching ourselves to, worth being part of. We need to make sure that we’re creating cultures and environments where that is possible, where people want to just be with us and live for us and lay themselves out and suffer for us sometimes like that. That is what we think of when we think about loyalty. Sometimes I can mess up and they’re still going to be around and there’s some compassion there. In fact, compassion is one of the things we’re going to talk about today with Jim Carlough.

Jim Carlough wrote a book and yeah, we’re going to talk about that book and the talks about these six pillars of leadership that we need to be thinking about. His foundational principle here is that leaders aren’t born, they’re developed. And if we can think about that, which we dig into right at the beginning here, I posed a few questions about genetics and how those things play don’t make you think it’ll make you say oh yeah maybe that’s kind of true too I don’t know I don’t know so we’ll think about that and talk about it.

With over 30 years of leadership experience, Jim Carlough is an accomplished business strategist, speaker, and author. Having successfully driven explosive growth for healthcare organizations – from start-ups to industry leaders – Jim is a trusted expert in building high-performing teams, revitalizing underperforming businesses, and guiding organizations through transformational change. Jim’s core philosophy – leaders aren’t born; they’re developed—challenges the myth of innate leadership. In his book, The Six Pillars of Effective Leadership: A Roadmap to Success, Jim delivers a practical and inspiring guide for leaders at every stage of their journey. So, you should check that out, especially because he has a special little offer for all of you at the end of the interview. So here we come, Jim.

Here we are, Jim, talking about probably some of our favorite topic leadership to talk. Yeah. Like I talk about it, you talk about it. So why not talk about it together?

Jim Carlough
I think that’s a great idea. It’s my favorite topic.

Skot Waldron
Okay, cool. How’d you get into this anyway? Like I’m always interested because leadership people, it’s not like, I don’t know, generally they didn’t go to school to be some kind of leadership consultant. Like it’s, I don’t know, it kind of evolves I find. With me, it definitely did. What do you think?

Jim Carlough
Well, for me too, and I firmly believe that leaders are not born that way. They’re developed. It could take a lifetime. Some people it takes a shorter amount of time. And I look back on my own career and I can look back to the first time I was a manager, and I think back now and say, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I mean, nobody gave me a book to say this is how you have to manage or lead. And at that point in time, when I hit the work world, graduating college in 1983, managers were more authoritative and dictatorial in terms of here’s what you need to do versus today, I don’t manage that way, and I don’t lead that way. And I don’t think most people do. It’s been an amazing journey for me. And then about 25 years ago, a former worker of mine came to me and said, hey, would you be willing to be my mentor from a business perspective? And he’s still a mentoree to this day. And I’ve done it probably 20 to 30 times over the last 30 years. And I get just as much out of it as I think they do from the conversations. And that’s what prompted me a year and a half ago to start thinking about it’s time I bring this to life in a bigger forum because I think a lot of leaders are missing some of the what I call the six major pillars of leadership. Right. And so to me it was important to do that. I think at this point in time where we sit. I think leaders could use some of it. I think some, there’s not a class in college that I knew of when I went to college that was called compassion or empathy, right? And there may be those classes today, but it still is not something I think you can learn in six or seven weeks. It’s something that you have to experience and evolve with. So that’s why I get so excited to talk about it. The times I’ve used it, the times I’ve benefited from it, et cetera, et cetera. It’s only made my team stronger and even more committed.

Skot Waldron
So going back, so say there was a class called Compassion 101, Empathy 101. Do you think those things can be taught?

Jim Carlough
I think you can give a framework for what they mean, and you can give ideas in terms of how to look or where to look to apply them. But it really depends situationally what’s going on at that minute as to whether you show empathy or whether you show compassion and how you deal with that. So, I don’t think, my personal belief is it would be very difficult to teach that in a class. But with a lot of exercises, one could probably do it or come close to doing it. I start to think about role play situations of, would you show compassion in kind of this situation or how would you show empathy in this situation? But still, it’s really of that moment and the dynamics around that moment when you apply these principles that make or break you.

Skot Waldron
Okay. I can go with that. I think that there’s a, you know, I think I look at kids, right? You, so let’s, let’s take kids. For example, I look at kids and I’m like, you know, some people will go, that kid’s a natural born leader, natural born leader, that kid right there. And that kid usually exemplifies some kind of, like they have some kind of presence. You know, the kids either other kids flock to them. When they say things people follow, they’re a little bit more outspoken. Usually it’s like the really quiet, introverted, secluded kid. Isn’t that kid that people talk about that way? It’s usually that more extroverted, boisterous, command of a room type of kid. I don’t know. I just think about that in the context of leadership. And I wonder if that transfers over into adulthood. Do we find that same person being leaders of organizations and companies today? I don’t know. What do you think?

Jim Carlough
That would be a great thing to evaluate and take a group of a hundred CEOs and trace back what their childhood was like. I can look back and tell you that I had a lot of adult influence and interaction and preferred to be in the room with the adults than with the kids. And I remember that. Now, did that make me want to be a leader? That I don’t know. But I do remember always wanting to be at the table with my aunts and uncles as opposed to playing with my cousins outside.

Skot Waldron
Hmm. Okay. I’ve said, and I’m seeing kids like that too. and okay. So let me read something. I was doing some research and looking at some things that, you know, talking about, you know, specific traits that you embody when you’re born, right. And hereditary type things and looking into some like psychology stuff, but thinking about, you know, I heard a stat that, you know, 30 to 60 % of your leadership capacity or your ability comes from what they call leadership emergence. The ability to emerge as a leader can be accounted for like 30 to 60 % of the traits you’re born with. So, I think it supports your theory of like they’re not born, they’re developed in the sense that there are some core things that they find in leaders that are born a certain way. doesn’t mean you’re going to be a leader or you’re not going to be a leader because you have these things. Cause there’s other things that we talk about too, like skills, beliefs, choices you make, things like that, that you learn, you are developed into that because of your environment and other things. Right. I mean, is that kind of your premise? What do you think?

Jim Carlough
Totally agree. Totally agree. Because I look at the dynamics of a family. I grew up in a family with five kids and I’m fourth from the oldest and I have a younger sister. And my dad was a factory worker. My mom raised the kids. But then when we were all in school, she started working at a local department store. I don’t have an aunt and uncle, a cousin or whatever, who was the CEO of a company. How did I get to become a leader without having a genetic trait that ran in the family? So, like my dad was a carpenter, his dad was a mason, his dad was a farmer, I think is what the great-great-great-grandfather was. But there wasn’t a lineage of like, know, Thomas Jefferson wasn’t my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather type thing. And so, I look at that and I say, but I can point to life experiences that I’ve had that have really taught me valuable lessons. And those lessons have gone into shaping who I am and how I lead. And so that’s where I, that’s why I say it’s developed, and it takes time to develop that. Not only that, the world is evolving. So, as I mentioned earlier, the way I led back in 1983 is very different than the way I lead today.

Skot Waldron
And I think that’s adapting adaptability. And I think that’s another core essence of leadership too. Mean, the neuroplasticity in our brains, the way that we can learn and shift our brains can shift and grow and learn and adapt to certain things I think is really inherent to our ability to become leaders and be developed as a leader. So, I think those things are, those are, those are core essence, core elements to being a leader for sure.

Jim Carlough
Totally agree with that. Totally agree with that.

Skot Waldron
There’s a, um, so I just, uh, new client. Um, and I’ve coached some of these individuals in the past too, but there it’s, it’s a little bit more far and few between right. The more introverted feeler versus a more extroverted thinker, um, that’s more decisive. That’s the big picture. That’s more visionary. That’s more. You know, like go, go, go, let’s blaze into the future, you know, we’ll, be really strategic about who we put in line for this and that versus the very introspective, introverted, more thought processor, in their own minds and more feeler, compassionate, more relational, present oriented. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that, I mean, in my experience, it seems the former is the one that dominates the leadership space. What do you think it is?

Jim Carlough
I would agree with that. There’s not many, what I would call true introverted leaders that I’ve worked for that didn’t have the ability to interact. I was asked a question by an interviewer, when does leadership begin? And I said, so to me, leadership begins every morning when your feet hit the floor. And the question he went on and said was doesn’t it begin once you sit down at your desk? And my answer was no. Because by the time I get to my desk. If I was in an office, I would have potentially passed 20 or 30 people that I could have interacted with and could have had an impact on in some way, even just by saying hello and giving them a smile and versus the leader who sneaks in the back door and takes the freight elevator up because they don’t want to talk to people and so I, to me I’m more of the first the first version You know the one that wants to be able to interact with people the ones I want to make sure that everybody understands who who’s all on the team And how do we and how do we support them and how do we help them? Yeah, I worked at a company. These stories pop into my head, so I apologize, but it anyway. I worked at this company, and I was a leader, and I noticed that I was the only one that ever talked to the woman who came twice a day to our floor to clean the sink, to take out our trash and to pick up after us. Her name was Kathy.

Nobody else ever interacted with her. And yet she was responsible for cleaning up after everybody’s mess. So, one day I decided I’m going to make sure everybody knows Kathy. So, I sent an email to everyone that was on my team that was on that floor, which was probably 40 or 50 people. And I said, the first person that can come to me and tell me the name of the person that takes the trash out and washes the sink and picks up your dirty dishes, I’ll give a $50 Starbucks card too. And then I walked out of my office, and I just stood there. And I knew it was around the time that Kathy would eventually be making her way to our section of the floor. And I stood there and the next thing you know, there were like 20 people running after her. Nobody knew her name. And yet the gift card motivated them to go find out who they were. Now, I should have let Cathy know ahead of time and I should have let Cathy’s boss know ahead of time that I was doing this and I didn’t. And it sort of freaked her out a little, but it really changed the dynamic. Our sink was much better kept by our own employees post understanding who Cathy was than prior to that. She was then part of the team and felt to be part of the team and people were picking up their own glasses and putting them in the dishwasher.

Skot Waldron
So, what is that? Well, I mean, what, is that? So I know you said she, they felt that she was more part of the team, but what does that do to people?

Jim Carlough
I think what it does is it makes them feel more responsible. And these people felt more responsible and realized at home, I can’t just leave my dirty plate on the counter. I’ve gotta wash that dirty plate. And I think it made them feel that they had a, that Cathy was then part of the team, part of them, and they are all responsible for working together. And working together meant you could pick up your own trash and make sure it goes in the trash bin, or you can pick up your own glass and rinse it out and put it into the dishwasher, so Cathy doesn’t have to do it. And I mean, there was, I never expected that to happen. I just wanted them to understand that she has, she’s a person, she’s a human being, she works with us, and we should treat her as a peer, not ignore her. That was my only goal because I really felt like I was the only one interacting with her. And I’m not anybody special, but I’ll talk to anybody. In fact, my wife will get mad at me because I’ll go talk to people that I don’t even know and just walk up and say hi and just start talking to them. And that drives her crazy. Anyway, it is what it is. But in this sense, I wanted Kathy to understand that I thought she was part of our family. And I think after that exercise, the employees felt she was part of the family, now that they knew who she was.

Skot Waldron
I love that. That’s a little challenge, I think, for those of you that are working in an office where you have somebody like Cathy that is there to take care of things and clean up after you and make sure everything’s in order and whatnot. Take that challenge. Find out that person’s name. Make them feel part of the team. I think that’s awesome. Let’s talk about your book though. Leaders aren’t born; they’re developed. And you said it’s a six-pillar framework for transforming healthcare leadership. a niche that you work in often, had assumed these six pillars also apply to other, other industries, other verticals. But can we go through those pillars? Yeah.

Jim Carlough
We can. The first one, I’ll start with what I call the non-negotiable pillar, integrity. I think as the world has evolved, in many places, there’s less integrity than there was 10 or 20 years ago. And I think it’s negatively impacting ourselves. I think it negatively impacts the world. And I think it negatively impacts who we are as individuals. So, to me, integrity is non-negotiable. And I learned it in a very different way when a question was posed to me, or a request was posed to me. The year I graduated college, it was 1983. That year, I also ran for city council in the town I grew up in, and I won. And a couple of days after the election, I got a phone call at home from the city administrator asking if I could come visit with him. So, I wasn’t sure what it was about. And I thought I was going to get a lecture on how I needed to vote or something like that, because that was the first thing that went through my mind. Like they think this 23-year-old kid can’t make a decision, but that was not it at all. He congratulated me. He, and the first thing he said is you’re a smart person. I don’t need to tell you what your job is or how, or how to vote. I just want to ask you for one favor. And he said, “I want you to do the following every night when you go to bed.” He said, as you lay down on the bed and you put your head on the pillow before you close your eyes, ask yourself this question. Did I do anything today for my own personal self-benefit that was at the expense of another person, another group of people, an organization, a company, or anything? He said, “If you can answer no to that question, you’ve had a great day. If you answer yes to that question, you can’t rest until you wrestle with how you’re going to not do that again.” Do you know I’ve asked myself that question every night since November of 1983? I’ve never answered that question with a yes. To me, that’s non-negotiable. If you’re gonna build trust, if you want your employees to trust you, you have to show integrity. If you’re a brand-new leader, all of those employees are looking for you to operate the same way day in and day out and not waiver from that, what I call the centerline of the road, right? Where on Thursday, Jack or Sharon, we’re going to make these five exceptions for, which is probably not what I would have normally done. Because the moment they see that, you’ve lost that trust and you’ve lost, and if you lose that trust, you’re not going to gain it back easily. And it’s going to take a long time to gain it back. So, if you’re expecting your employees to follow your vision and follow what you’re looking to accomplish and for them to believe in you. You’ve got to show that level of integrity all the time.

Skot Waldron
That’s a big one. I’ll talk often talk, to people about, you know, the four C’s of influence – call them character, chemistry, competency and credibility. And I’ll say, which one do you like is most important to you? And more, I just did this last week and actually earlier this week. I would say nine out of the 10 people I did a small group session said that character because the character is the integrity piece that they associated that with them. Was like, well, if you don’t have the integrity, then you don’t have anything else. You know, so it’s kind of what they put it up. Okay. What’s, what’s number two.

Jim Carlough
I’m going to put two and three together. They’re similar, but they’re very different. Compassion and empathy.

Skot Waldron
Compassion 101, empathy 101, right? That’s where? Okay.

Jim Carlough
Correct, correct. And I’ve got a great story with regard to empathy because I struggled very, very hard with a situation when I worked for Perot Systems, as in Ross Perot, I had a group of, and some of your listeners may resonate with this or remember this, but back in the 90s, there was green screen technology, you before we had mice to deal with on a computer. And we were phasing that technology out and replacing it with Windows based technology. And so, what the plan was to migrate people that were on the green screen capability over to the Windows stuff over a three year period. So, I had to tell the group of 25 people that their job was going away because we were going to sunset that capability, but that there was a three-year window for us to convert. All of the clients to that new product. And I wrestled with what am I going to tell them that will give them the confidence that I have their back and that they shouldn’t update their resume tomorrow and jump ship because if they did, I had a huge problem because I wouldn’t be able to support the customers and probably then wouldn’t be able to convert them over. So, after wrestling with that for several days, I came up with three things. The first commitment I made to them was that I would give them as much notice as I feasibly had of my own notice as to when their role would go away. Now, because these technologies take six to 18 months to implement, there’s a long runway there. So many people were told six months or nine months in advance that I think in November, your job is probably going to be impacted so that they then had time. then that came to pillar number, or to promise number two. If anybody wanted to learn the new technologies, whether they were in support or even programming as an engineer, I would make available to them the knowledge that they would need so that when it was time for them to leave their current role, they could move into a position supporting those new products in the same capacity they were in. Third promise. If you decide that you don’t want to stay with the company and you want to go on the outside, I will personally help you during that runway, find a job that’s best suited for you outside or inside the company didn’t matter, but not within that same group. There’s a third commitment in that three-year period. I never had one person resign before it was their time to be removed from that position. Not one person, which was my goal. But something else happened that I never expected. For those three years, that group of people, even as that group got smaller, had the highest employee satisfaction rating in the entire company. Never expected that to happen. I expected them to be on the bottom because they knew their jobs were going away. But they weren’t. When HR came to me and said, we’ve got the results of the satisfaction survey, I need to talk to you about the group you have out in Oakland, California. And I was like, how bad is it? And the woman said, it’s actually not bad at all. They had the highest satisfaction rating in the entire company. And the company had 15 to 20,000 people. And they were noticeably at the top compared to where the next group of people were. And as I think back on that, it was only because I was really able to understand what they needed to have as protection to feel confident that I had their back and I could help them. And showing that empathy for the situation gave them the comfort to know that I was not gonna let them go hungry per se or lose a paycheck.

Skot Waldron
And that goes back to our primitive idea, our primitive brain, making sure that it’s safe. If, if I feel you’re for me, Jim, then I am more likely to then go through the rest of the stuff, but people have to feel safe first. Because if I feel you’re a threat, like you are against me or you’re for yourself, nobody’s looking out for me. My primitive brain is going to kick in and say, I’m out of here. Like I’m going to fend for myself. You’re going to fend for yourself. peace, you know? So, that’s really smart. Really smart.

Jim Carlough
Totally, totally agree. And again, I had no idea how I was gonna handle it, but it really took me a lot to think through. And when I realized I was basically saying, this is what I would want if my boss came to me and said my position was eventually going away.

Skot Waldron
Put yourself there. Yeah. I mean that that’s powerful. Okay. Number four.

Jim Carlough
Focus. I believe in a leader, so I’ll give you an example of focus, Jeff Bezos. Ever since the mid-90s, he’s had a singular focus. Now granted, it started with books first and then it expanded to anything retail, food, beverage, clothing, et cetera. But that focus has never wavered. And so, if you go to work for Amazon, you know the expectation because you know what they’re trying to accomplish day in and day out. So, I strongly believe a leader has to have focus. The next thing a leader has to have is stability. Now what to me is stability. It’s performing the same way day in and day out. And the best example I can think of for that is Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett has used the same methodology for decades over and over and over. Again, anyone that works in that organization understands that process and understands that that process is not going to really vary much from January to February or from 2024 to 2025. Maybe tweaked a little because as the economy changes, but that stability and understanding what our process is will also allow a team to really understand what their role is in that process and how to accomplish it. And in that way, when you think about the, I mean, these pillars are not to me rocket science, but applying them is a learned activity. But I could tell you that my employee retention rates have always been high, always been high and having that is so critical to be able, if you have a high turnover, you’re doing something wrong as a leader because people aren’t believing in you, they’re not trusting in you, and for whatever reason, they don’t want to be on that train anymore. You can’t have that.

Skot Waldron
I mean, you could look at the pillars, right? You’ve got either they don’t feel you’re for them. Your character’s out of whack. Maybe you’re not expressing any compassion or empathy. You don’t understand them. You aren’t trying to understand them. Maybe you have no focus. Maybe you’re all over the map. They don’t understand. There’s, can’t get aligned to your vision or goal because you don’t know what your vision or goal is. Maybe you are. Instable or unstable or inconsistent in the way that you are navigating or leading yourself. Right? So I mean, you could go through this whole thing, treat it like a list. mean, and then number six, what’s the last one?

Jim Carlough
Humor.

Skot Waldron
Maybe you’re not funny. Is that what it is? Yeah.

Jim Carlough
Well, you know, that’s a good point. It’s not being a comedian. It’s not about telling jokes at the water cooler. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a trick to diffuse conflict, to refocus people and to get people to relax, kick off the meeting with a little humor. People are having a disagreement, something human. A lot of times it’s self-deprecating humor at me, something stupid that I had done that’s funny. just to get people to refocus. Again, if anybody’s listening, I am not suggesting everybody has to become a stand-up comedian. I am not a stand-up comedian. But successfully using that to kick off a meeting or to get people’s attention or to redirect them, it’s powerful. And it really, really works. And it’s not that hard to do.

Skot Waldron
It can. And, as a, as a speaker, I’ll go out there and, you know, the audience doesn’t know who you are. And so in the same way, how can you defuse that? Cause they’re all, they all have their walls up a little bit. Like is this person going to waste my time? I’m investing time and energy to be here and money and whatever. And I want to learn something. And last time I heard the speaker or some other speaker, it was a waste of time. And I don’t want this person wasting my time. People are saying the same thing about you as a leader. It’s like, I’ve had this leader, and he was a complete jerk, and he did this to me or had this one leader and she didn’t know what she was trying to do or what she was doing. So, people are going to have their guards up quite often. and especially if you’ve exhibited some pattern of behavior that hasn’t been helpful. but I think the idea of humor of, think it’s the idea of relaxation of creating an environment where people can let loose and be themselves and. Not taking themselves or the situation too seriously. Cause a majority of us aren’t in a liver death, you know, life or death situation. some of us are, and we should take that seriously.

Jim Carlough
So, a pet phrase of mine, and I mean no disrespect to surgeons who may be listening to this, but I will tell my team, this is not open heart surgery. Nobody’s going to die on the table today if we take another six hours or two days to figure out the things we’re missing in order to make the right decision.

Skot Waldron
Exactly. Exactly.

Jim Carlough
So, to your point, it’s not life or death. Let’s do what we need to do to figure it out. And I tell people, I don’t have all the answers. I can help us all get to the answers by asking questions and collaborating with them, but I don’t have all the answers. And probably nobody in the room does, but collectively, we probably do.

Skot Waldron
And that collective nature says that we’re in this together. Yeah. That we’re building this thing. even Cathy, right? Even Cathy. So, you got a special offer you want to throw out there for the listeners. go for it.

Jim Carlough
That’s correct. Even Kathy.

Jim Carlough
I do. One of the things about writing a book and talking about these things in leadership is understanding what resonates with people. So, I have an offer for the first three people that comment and tag this podcast in social media with what you got out of today’s session. I will send you a free autograph copy of my book, The Six Pillars of Effective Leadership: A Roadmap to Success. The first three. But I hopefully will get more comments than that because that helps both of us create better shows in the future. If we know what it is that’s resonating with you, what can you use in your life and whether it’s worthwhile for you. So that’s the offer.

Skot Waldron
I love it, man. haven’t had, I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody do that. I mean, I’ve done hundreds of these shows, Jim, and I don’t think everybody’s ever put out that offer. So, I like it. I dig it a lot. So, y’all take him up on it. He’ll, he’ll, he’s, he’ll do it. He’s a man of integrity. Man of integrity. Integrity is non-negotiable.

Jim Carlough
That integrity is non-negotiable.

Skot Waldron
That’s it. All right. Jim, and people want to find you where they go.

Jim Carlough
www.jimcarlough.com is the easiest way to find me. Website’s got a plethora of information on it, even samples of interviews and press releases, but there’s also contact forms as well. I’m starting a newsletter, so feel free to sign up for the newsletter and we’ll keep you on the mailing list, et cetera. And keep watching this podcast. I may be back another time.

Skot Waldron
You got it, Jim. You’re awesome, man.

Jim Carlough
Thank you, sir.

Skot Waldron
Could you tell which one was Jim’s favorite? Most important? Whatever you wanna call it it’s that integrity piece that piece that when you don’t have the integrity you don’t have much of anything else you can have the humor you can have the empathy you can have the focus but if there is no integrity for a lot of people that’s gonna be a deal breaker so thinking about that integrity and I love his question thinking about that question Did I do anything for my own benefit at this expense of someone else. Some of us need to check ourselves on that one I think that when we think about our own benefit obviously there’s selfishness in almost everything we do that’s okay a little bit of selfishness we’re doing things for our own benefit that we have some gain of out this thing totally fine when we do it at the expense of other people that’s a problem when it breaks over to that side I feel like I’m only for me when I’m maybe against you that’s a problem so thinking about that. Compassion, Empathy, Focus, Stability and Humor. And I’m really appreciative of those pillars. I think there’s something we can go deep into any of those and if you check out his book that’s where you will be able to do that, so I hope you’ll take him up on his offer to the first three people that comment about something you’ve learned here. He will offer that free book and a signed copy just for you so make sure you DM me you can email me at skotwaldron.com and you can send your comments there too. Alright y’all thanks for being here.