Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Unlocked. I'm Skot, and here on this show, we talk about unlocking the potential of people. Today, we're going to do that with a highlight on this whole idea of respect. Respect. And not forgetting the results part, but how companies are probably too focused on the results piece and not enough on the respect piece. Today, I've got Chris Edmonds and Mark Babbitt on the interview, co-authors of a new book called Good Comes First. We have that mentality. The results will take care of themselves, and this interview was really interesting. They brought up some really good insights into what that mentality does, when we have a good comes first mentality, that respect piece first before the results, that what that does for us as organization and what that does for us as leaders and what that does for employees and teams and ultimately society, right? They have some really good insights into why the labor shortage right now and how COVID has put a big impact on how we lead and what we're trying to do with our workforce. So pay attention as we get into this interview. It was really, really fun interviewing these guys, co-authors of Good Comes First. Let's get into it. Here we go.
I want to talk about, first of all, Mark, how did y'all come together? What sparked the book? What's the premise?
Mark Babbitt:
Well, first, Chris and I have been colleagues for quite some time, and we actually met at a culture conference in Chicago, first time face to face, but we'd been friends and colleagues on social media forever. The more we talked, the more we realized that the world just wasn't making a huge dent, despite some of our best efforts in terms of company culture. We worked on engagement and retention and attraction of employees, and we were working on all those things instead of working on the root cause on why most of those things weren't going very well, and that was company culture. And from my perspective, Skot, I came at this from the career world, and I was helping young careerists enter the workforce, and it was the workforce that wasn't very healthy and still isn't.
And COVID came along right in the middle of writing this book, Chris and I working together, and changed everything and certainly changed the book and informed the book. So it's fun to have a chance to talk directly to leaders about how important it is to focus on company culture before you focus on all those other things that you're already spending billions of dollars on.
Skot Waldron:
Okay. So you would say that we're spending a lot of time, a lot of money trying to fix these, I guess, symptoms as opposed to fixing the illness.
MARK BABBITT:
Well, that's exactly right. We look at the name of your podcast, Skot, Unlocked. How do we unlock the potential of our people and our leaders if the root cause isn't addressed? We wouldn't send somebody to a restaurant we know serves crappy food, and that's essentially what our leaders are doing. We're asking employees to perform well, to live up to their potential in a restaurant that we already know has crappy food.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's an interesting [inaudible 00:04:45]. I like that. I've never quite heard that before. That's really good. Chris, have you ever heard Mark say that because that's... Where do you come from that angle?
Chris Edmonds:
My experiences as a leadership trainer, so I began a long time ago doing leadership development, and one of the biggest aha's I had after doing it for probably 10, 15 years, I'm a little slow, is when we went into clients whose cultures weren't going to support what we were teaching. It wasn't, "I can save you a lot of money. If you just write me the check, then we'll save all this time," because you're not going to get the outcomes you want. You're not going to get the changes you want. You're not going to be able to sustain a return on that investment. So I began being much, much, much, much bolder about let's look at how you're managing the work environment. Are people civil to each other? No. Are people happy? No.
So my take on it came from, I was tired. Airplanes, hotels, lousy food at restaurants that were close by, and my task was to get in front and to educate, but then it was falling flat. So I wanted to create an environment where I can help leaders, Mark and I can both inspire leaders to make a workplace where employees are trusted, honored and respected. What a surprise.
SKOT WALDRON:
See, I think about that, and I go, "Well, isn't that what all these companies are trying to do anyway?" Aren't they trying to say, "Hey, we need respect. We need to be trusted." The trust word gets thrown around all the time. We need trust. We need to build trust. We need to build trust with our customers, trust with our people. We want to be the best place to work. We want to make people so happy and do all these things, but you're saying in 2021 that we're still not getting it.
CHRIS EDMONDS:
No. No. We're absolutely not getting it. And our approach to this is to, number one, let leaders know it's okay if you don't know how to fix this. It's okay if you've really never been asked to think about the quality of your work culture, much less being asked to drive a change in that culture. So our take on this is we're going to give you proven step-by-step process, and that process evolved over 30 years with me and with Mark's help over about the last 10. And we want to help leaders realize that as you decide that I want to have an organization that's interesting, that's fun, that's creative, that serves other, boy, all of a sudden now we're thinking about the millennial generation. Again, we don't want to over-generalize those, but the Gen Zs are wired a little bit differently than those previous generations, and one thing that millennials are frustrated by immensely is having to model old school command and control leadership, which is not the wire you're going to inspire Gen Zs at all.
And again, we don't want to over-generalize, but folks aren't going back to work. There's a lot of job openings, and folks are still kind of going, "I want to get into an environment where I'm valued for what I bring, for my ideas, for my contributions," and that is not normal at all.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's a great thought and a great segue into this question that I have that I got off of your press release on your website. If you want to go check that out, you've got a ton of great information there. Mark, we just talked about that generation gap. Chris just spoke to that, and you have an acronym, BMS, Boomer Male Syndrome. I was like, that is brilliant! Okay? Boomer Male Syndrome, and talking about that mindset, that old school mindset doesn't work anymore. So Mark, explain Boomer... Off of what Chris was just speaking about, how does Boomer Male Syndrome cripple us as organizations?
MARK BABBITT:
Well, you had mentioned just a few minutes ago, Skot, that here we are in 2021 still talking about this, and we are still talking about this because the leaders haven't quite figured out that they're a huge part of the problem, and not all leaders. And even when we talk about BMS, Boomer Male Syndrome, we're not implying that all old white guys suck. That is not the intention of the acronym or the phrase, but what we are saying is we have to be more self-aware about our role as leaders. We were taught to lead a certain way. We were taught to be decisive and bold and loud and autocratic, and none of those things inspire a healthy work culture. And as Chris already said, it's not necessarily the leaders' fault. Their mentors can't help them. Mentorship requires a certain amount of been there done that experience, and how many of them have actually led culture change? Almost none.
Their predecessors weren't good role models. Their professors in business school certainly never taught them how to be empathetic, how to put good first, how to make respect just as important as results. So we're kind of stuck in this industrial age mindset, even though we've been in the social age now for a good 10 years. We're still leading the same way we did in the 1970s, despite all the great talk and all the carefully chosen words on our about us page and in our job descriptions, we still basically treat people as humans to be managed, not as co-contributors, not as peers. And because of that, we don't treat them with the respect that they've earned.
SKOT WALDRON:
And we demand respect because of positional power, that whole Boomer mindset is, "I'm in this role because I've been here for a long time. So you need to just listen to what I say." Or it's that mindset of positional power. It's that mindset of this is the way we've been doing things forever. This is the way we need to keep doing things. You should just be grateful you have a job. [crosstalk 00:11:38] Chris, you're laughing about it. I mean, it's so true. I hear it in my clients or in the people that I'm talking with. They're like, "We don't get it. These people are coming out of school, and we can't keep them." And back in my day, I punched in, I punched out, got a paycheck and I was grateful. I was grateful for my job, that I had a job.
And now, we have this thing happening, this big social experiment called COVID that's going to go down in history, and now we have a labor shortage. We're calling this a labor shortage. I can't find good people. I can't find people that are going to stick around. So what is, I guess, the effect of that? Is it really a labor shortage? Is it really the people just don't want to work, that people just don't want to come work for me?
CHRIS EDMONDS:
Let me jump in first. I think, Skot, what Mark's and my experience in research has enabled us to do is to get to a stage where this idea of how are we going to create an environment where people feel respected, feel valued, and then what's the impact of that upon the buzz in the neighborhood? "Hey, I'm looking for a job. I hear this is a good company to work for." "Hey, I'm looking for a job." "Do not come work at my company!" Right? And those are the casual reinforcements of that. But leaders, they've been immensely challenged, as have all of us, but leaders are now, in the last three months, maybe a little longer, trying to figure out how to reopen. And what they're reopening is the old, lousy work culture expectations, the lousy systems and the lousy leadership beliefs that have caused people to feel like even if you paid me double, and we've heard this, I'm not going to come and work there because you don't respect me.
So is it a labor shortage? We don't think it is. We think it's a respect shortage, and it's a respect shortage that is within the power of our leaders to change, but they have to let go of that classic, reinforce, really more industrial age thinking that unfortunately Boomer males have been kind of blamed for for decades. But the reality is, we're now infecting younger managers. Millennial leaders have made the statement that I have to act like my boss, and boss's boss, or I would never have been offered the position. I can't come in with a different take and to try and apply different experiences. Let's fix the way that division interfaces with its customers because it sucks. It's just awful. People are mad at us, and these guys are mad at delivering that service. That's not what the classic, "Let's maintain, let's keep on this path, this is the only thing we know."
So I think what we believe is that, are people willing to go to work for bosses that treat them as partners, as co-creators of the workspace? Yeah. They go.
SKOT WALDRON:
You're talking a lot about this respect word. I haven't brought it up yet. Almost all your answers are talking about this respect word, and this is a big thing with both of you and the book. And Mark talked about, in the intro, about we focus a lot on results. We are focusing on results. And you believe that's the wrong thing. You believe companies and too focused on the results and not enough focused on the respect. I'd like to hear from both of you about that idea, that such a prominent idea of the book. Mark, start out talking to us about the respect piece from your standpoint, and then Chris, you jump in after that.
MARK BABBITT:
So here's our reality. When we're focused exclusively on results as a leadership team, as a company, as a culture, we tend to reward less than desirable behaviors. Now, it's easy to create an analogy in sales, for example, that says your top performer, maybe he or she's been the top performer for several years now, but his coworkers can't stand to work with him. He's known for being overly aggressive. He shows up late. He leaves early. He goes to the gym for an hour and 45 minutes in the middle of every day. And yet somehow, he is a top performer. And take it a step further, who usually gets promoted to sales management positions? The top performers.
So we tend to reward the behaviors that aren't necessarily conducive with creating a great work environment. And at the same time, the people who are enjoyable coworkers who collaborate, who have a team first approach, they're not promoted. How does that make them feel? It makes them feel disrespected. And is that encouraging? Is that inspiring? Do people want to work harder now knowing that my positive traits are not being rewarded but this guy who just came back from the gym all sweaty after being gone almost two hours, he's the guy? He's the people management looks up to? Well, that's disrespectful. And again, just a sales analogy just because it's so easy to pick on, but this happens throughout our workplace, and why does it happen? Because leaders have been trained to focus on results.
They are measured by results. They are not measured by the quality of their culture. They're not measured by the amount of respect shown in the workplace. They're not even measured by their own ability to live up to those words on the wall in the mission statement or the core values statements. If integrity is one of your core values, and you don't expect it from your top performers, if they're stealing leads, if they're only working four and a half hours a day when everybody else is working nine, are you living up to those values? No, you're not because you're so focused on results.
And that's what our research has shown over and over again. The companies who are out there, and by the way, those companies that put values, respect on the same pedestal as results, they're not experiencing a labor shortage. They're having no trouble getting employee referrals. Their own employees are bringing their friends and their colleagues, even their competitors to work for them. They are not having a labor shortage because they're already keyed on that we have to treat people right. We have to put good first. And once we do that, well, now the results come, and Chris, I know you're going to talk about this, but the data shows once you start treating people with respect, every other business metric goes up substantially, dramatically.
CHRIS EDMONDS:
Yeah, let me jump into that if I can. The idea of why respect and results. Okay, well, I'm an iterative guy. So the respect, results thing is a way that I was able to take, and Mark and I have been able to take a concept that says, "You're doing this wrong," to, "Why don't we take what you're doing right with managing performance and apply it over here to let you manage respect the same way?" So it opens a door, and it literally says, "Okay, so if you're going to," and this a senior leader thinking, and this happens all the time. "If you're going to make me change what I do and how I do, what's the payoff? What's the benefit?"
So what we realized early on is we were coming in to help organizations boost engagement, boost employees' commitment to the organization and to the organization's work and communities and customers. And yet, we've spent billions of dollars for 30 years, and engagement really hasn't moved at all globally. So we're hopeful, but we're not getting tactical traction on engagement. We're not getting consistent tactical traction on customer service, the experience people have when they engage with our products or services. But more importantly, the results and profits piece is a vital, vital metric.
So we began saying, "Okay, so let's do a benchmark. What is your current engagement rate? You know it's not good. What's your current satisfaction rate, customer-wise? Good, let's monitor that. And then what are your current state of results and profits?" I had spent 15 years in nonprofit work as an executive. So my thinking is, yes, we still have to make profits even if we're a nonprofit because you have to have that to open the doors and to pay people and to market programs, etc. So what we found consistently is that when leaders make this shift to make results and respect on equal levels, both important, both valuable, engagement went up by 40% or more, customer service went up by 40% or more, results and profits by 35% or more.
Now, you know that the leaders who have been praised for results all went, "Tell me about that results gain again?" Because that's what they're trained to do, but we've been able to prove to say, "You're not going to get that gain in results until you get the engagement gain first." And then once employees feel honored, respected, validated, well they're going to treat your customers way better. Hm. And that customer satisfaction combo then reduces waste, increases creative problem solving, increases satisfaction, profits go up.
SKOT WALDRON:
Who would've thought? Brilliant. Brilliant.
CHRIS EDMONDS:
It's almost too obvious.
SKOT WALDRON:
Brilliant. My past life, coming from the external communication world of branding, marketing, design and working, driving messages, selling products and services and working on the profitability side, was a real eye-opener for me to realize there was a lot of dysfunction on the inside that was causing a lot of inconsistencies, misalignment or generic corporate speak on the outside. We were trying to cover up something on the outside when on the inside, they could fake it for a while, the man behind the curtain. And it was, as soon as you got in there, customers start seeing, "Hold on, now I'm meeting with a different person?" There's turnover, and now I'm getting different messages. I did this when I was calling Wells Fargo, probably year and a half ago. It was very memorable for me.
I called up, and I said, "Hey, what's going on with this mortgage thing that's happening?" And they said, "Oh, we don't know anything about that. They haven't told us anything from corporate. We have no idea." And I was like, "Hold on, you're customer service, and you don't know what's going on? You don't know how to answer my question?" So Wells Fargo, get on the ball. But that was a distinct moment where I saw some problems. So what you're talking about here, both of you have mentioned this, and when I talk about it, I talk about what's your brand? What's your company's brand? And I don't mean from the outside. I don't mean what's your logo colors and your message, your tagline.
I mean, what do people say about you when you're not around? What are your employees saying about you when they go to the barbecue, when they go and meet somebody in the store, when they go home and talk to their family, when they're talking to their friend that's looking for a job? Are they saying, "Oh, dude, you want to come work where I work. It is amazing." As opposed to, "Ah, yeah." Somebody's like, "Hey, can I get a job at your place?" You're like, "Hm, yeah, you might want to hold off on that." That's a big brand impression, and we need to make sure we are intentional about building that. And you say it's through doing good, through respect. So this idea, why isn't it called respect comes first? You talk about respect a lot. Where did this premise of good comes first? Wrap that around what we're talking about.
MARK BABBITT:
Here's what's fun about good versus respect. I mean, it's easy to say respect is good, but respect is just one value. It's one feeling. There are others, and we have... Respect is what we call in our book, Good Comes First, we call it our foundational principle. And on top of that, we have four culture cornerstones. And the cornerstones really get to the meat of what the good part is. And it ranges everything from just treating people equitably, being inclusive in your hiring, in your promoting, eliminating gender pay gaps. This is, I think Chris and I, and I'm sure you, too, Skot, have been fighting for years. Well, you ask a leader, "What's your current pay equity situation? Do you have a gender pay gap?" "Oh, I don't even know that." Well, you could run the data in 45 minutes. You have all the HR data. Ask the question. Fix this.
So it's everything from how we treat people, how we compensate people, especially with COVID and now the work from home thing. Well, is it good to give people all this freedom and all this autonomy and let them work from home and decide where and how and when the work gets done and then yank them back into the old normal that probably sucked? Is that good? Does that feel good? Well, not to the employees it doesn't. So it goes from that all the way down to one of the things we learned in our research, Skot, is that the companies that are actually paying attention to world events, to racial inequities, to social issues, to poverty issues, to the democratization of the internet, BLM, global crisis changes, climate changes, the companies that are being more vocal about that, that are using their voice for good, that's where people want to work. That's where younger people flock to because they know that their leadership team cares about something more than profits.
So good is this all-encompassing word that takes place later in our cornerstones, but respect is the start because if we don't start with that respect thing, if we don't emphasize respect as much as we do results, the cornerstones don't matter.
SKOT WALDRON:
Mark, let me ask you something really quick. You were talking about, and this goes back to... It sparked a thought when you were talking about, "No, I don't know that data." Now, they either don't know that data because they haven't really thought to ask, or they don't know that data because they're afraid of that data. So what I want to know and what I want to ask you is, what do you think leaders are afraid of?
MARK BABBITT:
Themselves.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Themselves. Say that again. So leaders are afraid of themselves.
MARK BABBITT:
Well, it's one thing to know. It's another thing to act. In your work in branding, you certainly saw companies that maybe they would make a mistake, especially on social media. Maybe somebody would tweet out something or post something that wasn't within the brand's image or that was taken wrong or now we're in crisis management mode. We have to help the brand survive. Well, a leader who knows but doesn't act, they go to HR and Marketing, and they go, "Spend this. Fix this." A leader who knows and acts gets on Twitter, gets on social media and says, "My company really messed up today, and that's me, and I'm already on it, and I'm already fixing it. And I'm going to make sure this never happens again. This was inexcusable, and we're going to fix it." And that's the difference.
It's the difference between somebody knowing they have a gender pay gap and not doing anything about it. Well, that's not just bad. That's not just the opposite of good. That's just ugly. And we talk about those companies in the book. We talk about the good companies, the bad companies and the ugly companies. And the ugly companies are the ones who know they have faults, know they have major fishers in their branding and their culture and choose to do nothing about it.
CHRIS EDMONDS:
And Skot, if I can add, one of the pieces that we want to leverage is, we want to give leaders new skills, new tactics, new methods so they won't not know anymore. And I think leaders are fearful of being seen as not knowing, of being seen as not right. This is very, I hate to go there again, Boomer Male Syndrome, kinds of strategies that have been embedded for centuries, maybe only one century. It's still a pretty good long time. But what we want to do is be able to say, "Okay. You're fearful that..." Imagine what leaders are fearful of today. So it's the virus, it's the virus for their customers, it's the virus for their own families, for their own employees. That doesn't even get to the supply chain and can you get the stuff you need to be able to deliver the services you need.
In the news last night, there were thousands of brand new cars housed outside of plants across the country waiting for chips. Everything's built. Everything's built, but the chip shortage... So that gets into some interesting ideas. So I bet if leaders weren't fearful of that now in the automobile industry, they certainly are, but what we want to do is move them from fear of knowing, from fear of failing, to why don't we invite people to tell us what they think about the executive team, about the direction of the company, more specifically, this idea of if we're going to ask leaders to create cultures where they value respect and results at the same time, we measure results every day.
I remember in my old days in some high tech companies, they were measuring performance of the whole company every hour. So and again, their systems helped them do that. That's a good thing. Results, we're not down on results. Results help people generate income for their families, employees, etc. Results are a good thing, but they're only half the job again. So if we can help you take, for example, a value that you highly regard, and integrity is a value that nearly every client we work with says, "We need to be better at that. We need to get consistency on that." I think that's a very good thing, but if you go ask 20 people in the organization what integrity means, how many different answers you going to get? So it's like, we don't want to leave that to chance. We want to actually, and this is our approach, make it simple. Make it simple.
Leaders, don't make 20 values with 16 behaviors each. You get to do three or four values. "I have more than that." Stop it. With three or four behaviors. So this concept of how do we help you get over the fear of knowing, and how do we get you to confidently know, "Wow, this is a challenge. We need to fix this." For example, if every leader of the company had signed up for a behavior as part of their integrity value that says I do what I say I will do. Okay, is that observable? Yes! Is it measurable? Yes. Good. Let's measure it. What? So we help them do twice a year surveys where every behavior is rated by their direct reports and, in some cases, indirect reports.
So we actually take these vague, high level aspirational values to tactical, are you doing what you say you will do every day? And then if you get graded on a one through six scale, you might be depressed about how people see you. Well, if we can get nine behaviors, 12 behaviors that are proactive, positive, purposeful, guess what happens to engagement on and on and on. So we try and make that data actionable.
SKOT WALDRON:
I like that because I was going to ask you, how do we measure respect? You measure results, and you measure different types of results. How do we measure respect? How do we measure company culture? And I think that you just gave us a good example of one of the things you could do because if we're holding our leaders accountable, which they need that, it might make them uncomfortable, but we're not here to be comfortable all the time.
CHRIS EDMONDS:
No.
SKOT WALDRON:
Coaches make us uncomfortable our whole lives, and then when we become adults, we're like, "I don't want to be uncomfortable anymore." But it's like, "Hey, you need to be because we need accountability." So I think that's really important. So going into this, one of the biggest mistakes... You said one of the biggest mistakes companies make when it comes to their company culture, companies are too focused on results. Instead, companies must equally value respect and results. And you've spoken about that. And then you talk about company culture and what that means. So I always like to hear what different people say about company culture. You said, "Workplace culture provides a sense of purpose and belonging, and it supports personal and professional growth." That's a lot of stuff to provide somebody, right?
CHRIS EDMONDS:
It is.
SKOT WALDRON:
Purpose, belonging and personal and professional growth, all of that wrapped into one. So why those components?
MARK BABBITT:
Skot, we learned in talking to CEOs and interviewing people at the companies that are already putting good first, that that's what they're doing. They're providing, and I know it's kind of a buzz word, but they're providing a sense of community that provides all of those things. People actually feel like, "I belong here, and I'm growing here, and I know my work matters. And because of all that, I'm helping improve all the other metrics that," as Chris said, "are measured up to every hour of every day." Right? But how am I supposed to contribute positively to results if I don't feel like I belong? If I could just leave tomorrow and not even think, maybe I'd think about my friends, but I wouldn't think about my boss. I wouldn't think about the company ever again except to breathe a sigh of relief. That's the opposite of a sense of belonging.
That's the opposite of wanting to be part of a community that matters to me personally, and in some cases, you said this perfectly, Skot, we interviewed people that are good comes first companies now where they said, "If I left now, my husband would kill me because he loves my company. He loves how they treat me. They love the lower degree of stress. They love that they let me work from home, that I'm here for my kids and my pets and my elderly parents. If I left this company, my husband would divorce me." Well, that's the sense of community we want to develop. Skot, you touched on this earlier. Well, what's the opposite of that? It isn't good.
And that's why people leave, Skot. That's why you know this. If all a company is, if all an employer is is a commodity to help me pay my bills, it's pretty easy to just give notice and leave and walk out the door. Turn in your badge, go somewhere else. But if you have all of those things, if you have belonging, if you have purpose, if you have personal and professional growth, you don't want to leave. And on top of that, Skot, you're going to refer your talented employees to come join you. So again, we don't have a labor shortage, we have that respect shortage thing. And that's the key. Yes, it's... Is it easy? No. But once you build a great company culture, it happens. And it's happening in many, many companies all over the world right now.
SKOT WALDRON:
I love it. Chris, is there an experience, a story in your career where you saw that transition happen, that change?
CHRIS EDMONDS:
Well, I'll tell you the kind of grounding experience that I had was in my nonprofit days working for an exceptional leader and then working for a world-class lousy leader all within a span of three years. And as an observer, at that time I wasn't a paid observer, but I would watch. I would try and make sense of stuff. Why did that happen, and what's the pattern of things that led that to be okay, which could be a really good thing that person did, which is unusual, or it could be a really bad thing that person did, which is entirely too common. So the concept of, "Okay, the way the bosses create this environment is vitally important," and by examining what were the characteristics of, the relationships like with the great boss, lousy boss. All of a sudden, now we've got some patterns that we can look for.
And as Mark said, the concept of how do we get leaders to now be fearful of, personal, professional growth, people feeling respected and in a tribe that they belong in, and leaders are being asked to write. "I have to create that? I have to maintain that? I'm just trying to keep the doors open." It's we can give you some tools that will help you. And Skot, you said that well, the creation of a culture that's respectful opens the doors for all kinds of cool things. You'll have employees coming to you to say, "We've got some folks that are struggling and need help with food or need help with rent." Well, good. Then our mindset is that if it's good for the community, our population, and it helps people feel trusted, valued, respected, then that's probably a pretty good thing for us to do. Whereas, if a leader is exclusively focused on results, it's not even relevant.
So we don't want people to be listening to this and thinking, "How in God's name am I going to manage professional and personal growth for 100 people, or 30 people or five people?" Let's start with respect. Let's start with treating each other civilly, and then let's kind of grow from there. And one of the things we've not talked about is yes, we have a process that's going to work, and we have a variety of different ways that leaders can start to create a culture where literally good comes first for team members, but how long does it take? I'll give you a couple weeks. No. This is an 18 to 24 month process. So it really does take a commitment.
SKOT WALDRON:
It does. And sometimes we don't like to hear that. We're in a quick-fix society where we are trying to win the quarter. We're trying to make our numbers for the month. We're trying to win the week, win the day, win the hour sometimes. And we get into this quick-fix mentality where it's, "Ah, really? I got to wait 18 to 24 months for this?" So I think that it's a mindset issue at that point. It's really, what are you willing to invest, and what's your long term game plan? Where are you thinking 18, 24 months out versus next week, next month? So I think that that's really valuable insight to bring to the table. So Good Comes First coming out on the 28th, or it already came out, depending on when you listen to this. Practical tools, advice for building respect while we also honor the results that get us to where we need to be, but pulling in that respect will help take care of those results is your premise. Is there... How else can audiences get in touch with you, get ahold of the book? What should they do?
MARK BABBITT:
Well, Skot, we invite everybody to go to our website, GoodComesFirst.com, and don't just go there to click on the buy the book page. Actually take a moment while you're there to reflect on where you stand right now not just with your company culture, but maybe with your return to work strategy, with your hiring difficulties, and just kind of read on there, read some of the testimonials and see how good comes first and this process of how leaders are ready to fix some of the challenges they face. So we don't want people to just go buy the book. We actually want to start a conversation, and that's what Good Comes First is intended to do.
SKOT WALDRON:
Well said. Thank you for that, and it is a point of reflection and action taking. So knowledge is only part of it. It's moving into that action piece, which is going to be really valuable for a lot of people. Thank you both for being here. Good luck with the launch and the book and all the things you're doing to build respect and good into the companies that lead us.
CHRIS EDMONDS:
Skot, thanks for the opportunity.
MARK BABBITT:
Thank you, Skot.
SKOT WALDRON:
We don't have a labor shortage. We have a respect shortage. Mark said that twice in the interview, and it was really interesting to me to think about. The companies, and he said this too, the companies that they've interviewed that are focused on the good or focused on the respect, those pieces of company culture and personal development of who their employees and teams and leaders are, they're not having a labor shortage problem. People are wanting to go work for those organizations, and as we look at this, what does he call it, the Boomer Male Syndrome, this old way of thinking of how positional power, how the respect and authority plays in, all these other things are not necessarily working now. And the next generation that is coming up is thinking about where can I go that's going to give me personal fulfillment, that I know that I'm becoming a better person by working there because I spend a lot of my life there, and we're making an impact. I'm making a bigger impact on the world, something that is bigger than me. And I played a small piece of that.
We all want to feel like we're part of something bigger. And if we aren't providing that as a company or as a leader, even, incentivizing that behavior and that thought, then we're missing something. We're going to have high turnover, and we're going to be continuously focused on results, results, results, results and why aren't we hitting these results, why aren't we hitting these results? Everybody get on the same page because we're not hitting the results. Instead, focusing on what drives those results, it's the people. And what drives those people? It's the purpose, it's the respect, it's the way we communicate, and it's the things that we do to help them be who they were designed to be in life.
Thank you, Chris and Mark, for being on the show. I really appreciate you and your insights. If you want to find out more about me, you can go to SkotWaldron.com. You can find more of these interviews there. A lot of the resources I provide there are also free. A couple assessments and tools on there for you. You can go to my YouTube channel, like, subscribe, comment, all those things. I would really appreciate that. I engage with those comments frequently. So please do that there, and find me on LinkedIn. I like to be there, and I provide a lot of free content and coaching on that channel, as well. So thank you again for being here, and I'll see you another time on another episode of Unlocked.
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