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• The Giving Game – Becoming The Leader That Others Want To Follow by James Turk

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Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

00:05

Welcome to this episode of the how of business. This is Henry Lopez. My guest today is James Turk. James, welcome to the show. Thank you, Henry. It’s good to be here, absolutely so James is an executive coach and an author, and he’s with me today to talk about that critical shift from being a manager to being a leader. Uh, James is going to share his insights from his book The Giving game, including his F 45 playbook for those first critical 45 days when someone is in a leadership role. So whether you’re a new manager listening, or as a small business owner, you’ve put somebody into that position and a manager position, I think this conversation is going to be packed with practical strategies that’ll help someone as James says, As James says, to lead with influence, not just authority. I love that you can find all of the how a business resources, including all the links and things we’re going to talk about on this episode, on the show notes page. And you can find that at the how a business com. That’s where you can also find information about my one on one and group coaching programs. I also invite you to please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon and subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don’t miss any new episodes. Let me tell you a little bit more about James. James Turk is an executive coach, a keynote speaker, facilitator, author and the founder and CEO of the Turk group. The Turk group is a boutique learning and development consulting firm with more than 25 years of experience. James has expertly designed and delivered training and coaching programs and solutions in the areas, areas of leadership, development, sales, change management, strategic planning for clients across a wide range of industries. His clients include, for example, Spotify, Squarespace, Bristol, Bristol, Myers, Squibb, Goldman, Sachs, equinox and many more. He is the author of the book, as I mentioned, the giving game, becoming the leader that others want to follow. We’re going to explore that book in this conversation, and he, as he says, is a self diagnosed geek in behavioral science. James relishes new ideas and perspectives on the drivers of performance, and he’s an avid lover of food, travel, art and culture. And, of course, he lives in New York City, where it’s his abundant with all of those things. James Turk, welcome to the show. Thank you, Henry. I appreciate that. And you know, such a nice way to kind of talk about my background. I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. So tell me about that. Share with me that brief story, because we could go on for hours, but it’s always interesting. Tell me about your early career and you studied. What did you study in college? Bachelor of Bachelor of Science in liberal arts, is what I graduated with. My career trajectory was very non linear. So, born and raised in Mississippi, and then, you know, started working very young. I like, cut yards when I was in, like, junior high school and life guarded bus tables. My first kind of real job was in my early 20s. I, you know, started a gallery in Chicago with a couple of friends who I had met in New Orleans when I was in school. And we just, oh, let’s go to let’s see. One was an artist, one was a business person, and I was charismatic, young, ambitious, and, you know, let’s go to Chicago and do this. It’s like, yeah, so, so we went and did this Open the Gallery, which was amazing. After about three years with that, I decided I wanted to do that by myself in New York. And so I moved here my kind of late early 20s, 24 and New York was a much tougher environment than Chicago. And so I got here, and it just required that I have a couple of other jobs in addition to trying to build this, this career as an art dealer here in the city. Ultimately, that landed me in the world of sales, and I started doing some head hunting for financial services and investment banks like Goldman Sachs and, you know, Deutsche Bank, UBS, working for a search firm, and that was just a, just, you know, a deep dive into hardcore sales. And for all those recruiters out there, my hat goes off to you, that’s a tough role. So we would have to do upwards of like, 20 cold calls a day to try to recruit these people in for these jobs that were some of them were domestic, some of them were international. After a couple of years of that, I was like, You know what? I don’t think this is for me, but I liked that. It exposed me to people moving into roles. Why people would go into new roles, as far as like they wanted to go into management, or, you know, the potential?

 

05:00

A leadership position. So that all caught my attention, and I like the idea of just working within human resources, because at its core, it’s really facilitating people, making sure that they have protections and benefits and opportunities, all those things. So that was all really interesting. I ended up going to work at Goldman Sachs in their human resources department, and was there for a couple of years, working in benefits, went from there to trade publishing. You know, when I was at Goldman, I’m like, Oh, I’m not sure, you know. And my whole career path was really a process of elimination. So I would, I would try things, and I would do them well, and be like, Alright, what’s not this curiosity, right? It seems like totally driven by what’s interesting next, exactly. And I remember, like, you know, recruiters who were trying to recruit me would always ding me a little bit. Now it’s the norm that people change jobs every two or three years, but like, 2530 years ago, that was very much outside of the norm. Like, oh, you’re a Job Hopper. It’s like, oh, it’s not my fault. I’m like, you know, I go in, I do good work, and then I get a little bored and I want to do something else, right? So, so I went from that was that also kind of an entrepreneurial spirit as well? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Because when I was in Chicago work, doing that with my two friends, and really taking something from an idea to an actual business that was in existence for 30 years, just taught me like what was possible. So, you know, I would go into these situations, and I always had just a healthy detachment, you know, I was very committed to what we were doing, but I was also just sort of, you know, let’s do this, let’s, let’s make it make sense. But I didn’t get sucked into all the politics and all the all the other things, right? So, so I left, so I left Wall Street. I went to trade publishing, still in HR, and then I realized, after three years in trade publishing, and I progressed there, and, you know, became a benefits manager, had a direct report that it was really, it wasn’t really the industry, it was just human resources as a function. Wasn’t right for me. At that point, I was like, You know what? I’m 30 years old. I’m living in New York City. I’ve always considered myself a creative person. My first love was the theater and the stage. So while I was working in trade publishing, I went back to school and studied at night and studied the Meisner technique through a gentleman by the name of Freddie caraman at Carnegie Hall. And you know, for two years at night, I would study, and then I decided to leave corporate HR and then pursue my acting career, which clearly you can see how well that turned out.

 

07:34

Here I am with you, but, but, but, so I moved into doing like HR consulting around the edges while I pursued the acting and then had some success, you know, some soap work, some indie films, but I wasn’t really getting the big break. While I was doing that, I was exposed to a good a good friend’s mother was the head of sales for a very prestigious learning and development company out of Boston, and they sold a big piece of work. And they’re like, Hey, James, we need essentially warm bodies to go into these, these sessions and kind of teach this, this content. And I was like, I can’t do that. She’s like, well, approach it like it’s a she’s like, approach it like it’s a role. And she’s like, here’s your facilitation guide. And like, you’re playing this role and do your homework, and these are your staging instructions. I’m like, Oh, I can do that. And so I approached it, and then kind of did both for a while. And then when I wasn’t getting the big acting break, it’s like, you know what? This the learning and development, training coaching space, makes a lot of sense for me. So I think I’m gonna, I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna double down and get all my certifications and the like. And that was roughly, you know, 2019 99 and really haven’t looked back since, yeah, okay, so, and then in 2002 you start your your current firm, the Turk group, right, correct. So, so I, you know, in 99 2000 I started working with the consulting company that had reached out to me. And as I was working with them, I was working as an independent contractor, but for clients, from a client perspective, they thought I was working for the consulting company. But the the consultancies model was they had a kind of a core group of ops people, researchers, sell sellers. Then there was, like 200 of us who were what they called, kind of in the Resource Network, and then they would deploy us to different accounts. About three years into that work, I was loving it, and my accountant said to me, like, you know what? This is terrific, but you probably want to incorporate, because just tax wise, like, you’ll, you, you’re, you know, you’re, you’re essentially running your own little business here as an independent contractor. And so really, for tax purposes, is why, in 2002

 

09:44

I switched over and like, Okay, let me, let me incorporate. And kind of, you know, and what do I want to call this thing and and full transparency, it started off as James Turk Incorporated, and then later on, I added doing business as the Turk group. Yeah. So, okay, so.

 

10:00

Make sure I’m following back then, in those early days, what were you delivering as a contractor and through the truck group leadership? Still these training sessions and training sessions, yeah. So I would a lot of change management, a lot of developing new managers, corporate clients, corporate PwC, KPMG, Nike, Disney, like very, very big brands and the consulting company, and we’ll talk about the giving game later, but they were very generous. I was very junior, but they saw something in me that they liked, and they invested in like, let’s certify this guy in all of these different programs, because we like what he does in front of the room, right? So now you’ve been at this since 2002 could you? I can’t imagine, you can envision ever going back to work for somebody else, correct, even though it’s tempting sometimes. So so my so 2002

 

10:50

started the Turk group. I continued to work primarily through other consulting companies, really, for the next 10 years. So through like 2012

 

10:59

through that consulting company, through achieve global and some other players in our space, and around 2012

 

11:07

I was getting a little frustrated in that, you know, I didn’t have as much control because I was depending upon, you know, other people’s designs, other People’s account management, other people’s kind of margins and rates. And I’m a quick study, so like, over the years, you know, I would kind of see the random statement of work. I’m like, Oh, that’s interesting. How much they’re charging for me, right? I sure would like a bigger piece of that, more of that, yeah, yeah. And then also, just did they, I was often the first line of defense with client engagement. So I’m out working for, you know, you know, ExxonMobil. I’m the only resource like at this off site. And you know, you’re spending a week with the client, and then you get to know them, and they’re talking about, like, what they like, they also kind of share what their frustrations are. So I’m a quick study. I’m a youngest of seven. How I Survived My childhood was just like, I can read a room. So I so I was just kind of making mental notes. So around 2012 2013 I’m like, You know what? I think I could do this on my own. I think I could probably break off and start kind of building my own practice with my own clients. Before that? Did you have thoughts or desires to start your own business, to be completely independent? I thought about it, but it just seemed like a lot of work, and I didn’t know if I could really do it in because, you know, the good news about working through other consulting companies is they, they take all the risk, they do all the marketing, they they do all of that. They do all of that work, which, you know, full transparency, I underestimated how difficult, although, oh yeah, no, it is. However, if you look back to the art gallery, that was a that was an entrepreneurial opportunity, although you had partners there,

 

12:53

did you did that leave kind of not a bad taste in your mouth, but a little bit of fear, like much, that’s a lot, or more than I want to take on, or, yeah, yeah, because I see, I knew how much work was involved and, and I was like, you know, one leg of a three legged stool there. And so the idea of me taking on all of that was, you know, it seemed like a lot. So for me, it was really drove it, you know, I got there out of, like, frustration with not being satisfied with how these other organizations were managing the account and managing me. That’s like, you know, and so it really and then and then and I kind of underestimated, like, what would be involved. So as I pivoted from kind of, you know, working for them to working for myself, I was smart enough to do it in a very, kind of, like, a very slow, like, over the course, like, four years, I essentially stopped saying yes to them, and as I built my own business, adding your own clients, yeah, exactly. And so then I was able to, kind of like, transition, you know, like, fully in, like, 2016 I was fully into only third group clients. And then I had the reality of learning like, Oh, it’s a different skill set to be kind of a master facilitator and executive coach and running a business, those are very different things, and all those hats that you have to put on and selling and delivering and managing those too. That’s why it’s hard for this type of business. All right. So fast forward to today. Primarily, what’s the core offering that you provide today? What does the Turk group primarily do today. So our tagline is performance acceleration. So we work with client companies and helping their the people and their organizations kind of achieve desired business results through people solutions. So we work on we have, you know, you know, training and development. We have a whole catalog of programs, everything from, influencing without authority build your brand to

 

14:44

strategic planning team off sites, we have a whole coaching practice, which is everything from executive coaching to kind of leadership coaching to frontline coaching. And then we have what we call our advisory services. So some clients will come to us.

 

15:00

And say, like, we don’t even know what we want. So can you help us just think about this? And, you know, we’re a smart a startup, or we’ve been in business for a long time, we’ve never even thought about this. What should we be thinking about? So we’ll actually consult with people and help them build out their, you know, competency models, or kind of what their strategy is to develop their people. We may or may not sell ourselves into that, right? So we’ll give them. We’ll give them. Here’s what you should do. And we play in these four spots, but these other five spots, there are people that are better than we are, and here’s who they are. I’m curious with that, when you do that, if we could, if we could, for a moment, apply that to a small business, what’s one thing that you look for when somebody says, I know, you know, we don’t have a great culture here. I know we need help, but I don’t know where to start. What do you usually look for? That’s one of those obvious things, or common things that that you look for. Well, so typically you look at the kind of founder owners, right? So, so who are they? You know, who did they hire initially? Did they hire like their buddies from college, and are they running this as just a group of friends? And then it’s going to be cool, and we’re going to be different than other companies. So you know, what I see fairly often is people in their their their kind of need to be kind of different and unique. Think that they don’t need a lot of the structure that is going to facilitate building a sustainable culture. So be family members as well. Absolutely, absolutely so. So they don’t think they need, like, a mission or, you know, a purpose or a vision or a set of values, all the things that give an organization, kind of definition and structure, as far as like, This is who we are. This is why we exist. This is kind of how we want to treat our clients and vendors and how we want to treat each other. So, yeah, okay, really helping them establish that is really, really important. If they don’t have that, and they don’t or they’re not willing to let us help facilitate that forum, I may or may not decide to take that business not a fit for you. Yeah, right. One last question here about the journey, and then we’ll segue into talking about the book. So you know, we talked about how early in your career, not early in the bulk of the career, before starting the Turk group, it was very opportunistic. Where your curiosity led. What is it that has kept you here with the Turk group, your own business this this log, it has it been that your ability and flexibility to adapt and change it as you want to, what has kept you on this? That’s great question. It’s a little bit of I could so, a little bit of pride and ego. My name’s on. My name’s on the company. So I want to see this succeed when I when I first set out to do it, I didn’t really expect it to be as successful as it has been. I really thought that I would be a single shingle consultant. I thought I would segue, I would have a couple of accounts, I would do some some training, I would do some coaching. But I never really imagined it growing to the size that it has. But it is, and it’s really been just like, you know, path of least resistance, right? So I just kind of like the next right, in the next engagement, you know, just, you know, we’ll talk about the giving game in a bed. But I, you know, just grew up my youngest of seven. We my father, you know, it was an injured servitude. He had this little troupe of people that were workers and just instilled in me, like, the value of just doing good work, for the for the value of doing good work, and the the esteem that you get from that. So, so as I approached it with my clients, and as I had learned from these other consulting companies, you know, some of my, you know, kind of tenants were like, I need to make sure that I make it easy for people to work with me that I am looking for value creation, not just cashing a paycheck. So I’m really looking to make things good. I get very motivated by kind of figuring things out and doing them well. So like making trainings land and making sure that they’re actually hitting what they’re supposed to and helping the employees you know, sell or lead, or whatever those things might be. So and then, you know, as we have progressed, you know, and as I get better, got better at running the business, I got better at the kind of business development and the marketing and, you know, the and just both intellectually curious to get better at those things. And then as a result of getting better at those things, like the business, crew and crew and crew. And now we’re about 15 people. All of them are freelancers, except for myself, but a few of them, but a few of them I employ full time as freelancers, right, right? Yeah, very virtual team. Okay, let’s, let’s start to talk about some of the key takeaways about the book. But I would ask a slightly different question about the book to get us started again. The book is entitled The Giving game, becoming the leader that others want to follow

 

19:47

as a small business owner. Why should I read this book? What am I going to get from this book if I’m a small business owner? So as a small business owner, this is going to help you understand the key things.

 

20:00

Needs to do if you are interacting with other people. So rarely are we working in a vacuum. So as a small business owner, as you are kind of establishing, kind of what your go to market strategy is and who your customers are, you know, inevitably, even if it’s working with freelancers, you’re going to need to kind of have people help you do this. So the book is going to help you think about, like, what are the things that you need to do? You know, really, in your first year as you’re thinking about, you know, being a small business owner from a kind of brand and leadership perspective, so in the first 45 days, we talk about this first 45 day playbook. It’s all around, just getting clarity around, kind of, like, the role and your responsibilities as a small business owner. That’s me understanding you mentioned this earlier, the different hats. So as a small business owner, you know, it’s not just me selling or building or, you know, having like that core, you know, proficiency, but I need to kind of develop, you know, you know, you know, financial acumen. I need to understand market condition. So, so the first, like, couple of weeks, really, you know, doing an honest assessment of kind of what you know and what you don’t know. And then from there, start building relationships. So who are your vendors? Are you pulling in freelancers? Start establishing those relationships. And then, you know, weeks like five and six really, start thinking about, like, you know, what is your kind of vision, and what’s your kind of purpose for being in the marketplace and kind of looking for ways to kind of move all that stuff forward. So it’s not a perfect fit, but you could absolutely look at that kind of first 45 days as a way to kind of reorient yourself into, you know, the mindset of a small business owner, and some of the things that you need to do to inspire people to come along with you, including customers, hopefully, right? Yeah, and your team. Now, if I look at it, if I apply this to a manager on in my business, maybe somebody that I’ve recently promoted to manager, hired into manager, that doesn’t have that leadership experience, the same thing, the same thing goes i It helps them with assessing where they are now, right, what their strengths are, where the characteristics are, what, what type of a leader they are, a manager, and then those relationships, I guess there. It applies to Who are they, who is their team that they’re going to manage and lead? Yeah, and then division of really what they’re at that point for an employee, ties back to making sure they understand and are in alignment with the vision that I’ve set. If, assuming we have one or the company, is that right absolutely, and the more that I can create that architecture of kind of connections and links that I can pull to the individual contributor on my team, to where they can see that the spreadsheet they’re working on how that’s contributing to the vision. The better the performance is going to be, the higher the engagement is going to be, the more buy in I’m going to get, the more commitment I get, like all the things that we want in business. Without it, people will try hard, but they won’t necessarily kind of be able to self regulate and work on the right things and the like. And I think, particularly important in the last 10 or 15 years for those things, because it’s what I call the gamification of the workplace. Most people who, if you’re 35 and under, you’ve grown up playing some type of like video game, you know, to a certain degree. And with that, there’s a lot of neuroscience that happens, like with the your brain wiring and different levels and rewards and doing certain things to get to the next level to a certain degree, like mission, vision, purpose, values, that’s all kind of those that structure and people can perform really well in that structure, we find interesting. All right, so that’s that’s critical. I talk about it often on the podcast about being in alignment. First of all, to your point earlier, about you have to have a vision and a mission that you communicate to your to your team, but then being in alignment is critical. But if I don’t, it’s like I always say, if I give you, if you don’t give people those rules of the game here, how we do things, how I’m going to measure you, where we’re going, then you know, they can’t be their best. They can’t bring their best to to their position, absolutely.

 

25:45

All right, let’s talk about that transition, though, because because you you work a lot in that realm, and the book covers this as well, but that person has become a new manager. Tell me some of the challenges that you’ve observed that people face when they’re making that transition? So there’s so many challenges, yeah, first of all, just acknowledging the shift. So the the shift from, you know, the big shift from going into, from individual contributor to supervisor, team leader or manager, is significant of all the kind of changes we go through in our career, certainly on the leadership track, that’s probably going to be the biggest one. Because fundamentally, it’s just completely different, different skills are required. Skills are required, different allocation of my time, different allocation of my work values. So just kind of understanding that, right? And then once I kind of am moving into and with that understanding, really doing an honest assessment around what, you know, what? Where am I good? Where do I need to learn? Probably one of the biggest ones is, you know, buddy to boss. So people, you know, working with their their their buddies, and it’s all good. And part of the connection is complaining about our boss and how terrible they are, or like, company doesn’t know what they’re doing. So all that camaraderie now, all of a sudden, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re the boss, you’re part, you’re part of them. And so what I see, what, so I what I see your managers struggle with, is they just assume it’s going to be okay and it’s going to be cool. And you, of course, you want to hope that it’s going to be and sometimes it is, rarely is it, but often it’s going to be problematic. So what we suggest is, like in those situations, is just confront it right away. So you know, Henry, I’m, you know, wanted to check in with you to see how you’re feeling about the fact that I got the supervisor role. I know we’re good friends, and I know you were going after it also. So I want to contract with the person around that reality and just kind of check in with them to see how they’re feeling about it. Then I want to pivot into like, well, let’s talk about what this is going to look like. So it works for both of us. I know your strengths. I know what your interests are. Wonderful. Here’s kind of how I’m thinking that we will do this, as far as one on ones. I want to kind of put you forward for these things. And I want to be clear that, you know, I am in a role where I need to kind of hold us accountable for results. So there are going to be those times where I’m gonna need to kind of put on the hat, you know, and I’m gonna celebrate it when you do it well, but if you’re kind of sliding or missing a deadline or there’s quality issues, I’ve gotta be that guy too. So I just wanna, kind of like, let you know, and it’s not personal, it’s the work, and it’s really why we get paychecks sometimes, and sometimes,

 

28:19

sometimes it they it never, kind of gets reconciled. In other words, that person now that’s that’s that’s reporting up, may have to go or they may have to be reassigned, and never quite get that. Hopefully they do this. So I gotta enable that manager, or teach them to have that conversation as the owner, should I facilitate that? Should I be there in that conversation, or let that person do it by themselves? Or either way, what have you seen works best? So, so, so read the room, read the moment, right? So, you know, ideally, they’re, you’re coaching them, and they’re kind of going in to have the conversation, and hopefully it goes well, and, you know, big gold star, or they go in, it doesn’t go particularly well, they come back, all right. Well, let’s talk about what did go well, what didn’t go well, what else might we try? So it’s kind of a classic coaching conversation. Send them back in if for some reason, at any point during that I’m seeing nerves, or I don’t feel that they are actually going to do it, or they’re keep on delaying the meeting, I might intervene. I want to be very careful with you know, even if they’re very junior, not to jump in and kind of step on their authority, because otherwise you undermined the authority that I’m trying to give that but yeah, exactly to that end, I’ve always found, but thought, curious of your thoughts, that it’s important, of course, for me to have communicated very clearly to everybody. You know, James is now the supervisor of this group, and so I have every confidence I have to tell the group he’s your new boss, right? And make sure I set that tone and and make sure everybody’s clear on that that’s my job. Initially, correct, exactly.

 

30:00

And then stand by that. So when people, people are going to be used to coming to you, coming to me, I have to redirect them exactly, exactly like I appreciate it. Go check with go check with Henry. Yeah, that’s such a key thing that we tend to do in part, you know, have found in part for small business owners, because it has become my identity. I’m the problem solver. I’m the firefighter in chief. It feeds my ego that everybody has to come to me. So part of it is me learning to delegate that and to redirect people to this new person that’s in that position Absolutely, which, again, goes back to like, what do I need to, like, learn to do differently that right? So I sound about me, but it’s about like, Okay, I need to facilitate other people’s development. I need to facilitate, you know, them doing things to help us get the business results we’re looking for. I mentioned it at the beginning, but you talk about leading with influence, not just authority. Can you give me an example of what that might look like where you’ve seen someone try to lead through authority, and sometimes we need authority, and how they might do it differently, leading through leadership. Can you give me example of what that looks like with like? Sure, but let me, I’ll define it a little bit. So, like, so like, you know, influencing versus authority. You know, I have seen people who have been incredibly influential, who’ve had, you know, just, just, just, you know, such a leadership, you know, impact and presence that had absolutely no formal authority whatsoever. And I’ve seen people who’ve had, you know, titles, budgets, all sorts of things that, you know are, you know, they can get things done, but there’s no inspiration, and there’s no kind of, you know, motivation or passion behind that. Yeah, so fear or they’re the tyrants. They get things done, but, you know, exactly, burn out his teams tend to burn out his, you know, it’s short lived, exactly. And so for me, like what I through coaching and through our programs, it’s around, at the end of the day, you know, people are going to have the chance of, do they, you know, do they want to do it, or do they have to do it right? And, and you want people, you know, to be in that want to do it space. And that’s, that’s, that’s influencing, that’s, that’s leadership, that’s, you know, you know, providing a compelling context, and I like working for you, versus, you know, compliance, and you have to do this or you’re going to get fired. You know, when you think about, like, the quality of work that you’re getting on those two different pathways, there’s a stark difference. Right influencing empowerment. You get ideation. You get like, new ideas. You get collaboration compliance. You get people who are defensive, who are like, you know, maybe hostile toward each other, kind of that dreaded toxic environment

 

32:31

often, you know, the challenge that I find is managers understanding how to get their teams to do what they’re supposed to do, to do their jobs and to do it well, but, but allowing, empowering them to get there and making the right decisions, as opposed to watching them like a hawk right on right assembly line. What was there a technique or a tip or something that you that you teach to help people with understanding how to again, lead them there and get them to buy in, as opposed to always cracking the whip to get them to do the right thing. Yeah, so for us that that conversation typically happens around delegation, and we’re talking about, you know, how we delegate the work to our team members and the different stages of delegation. So am I fully empowering the person to scope it, define it, do it all those things, or are they going to need a lot of guidance? So we encourage people to really kind of think about, you know, the work. So what’s the risk, what’s the scope, who’s it for? Just really understanding kind of all the components. Then think about like an individual who’s going to do it. Where do they kind of fall in their ability to do it? You know, technically, will they want to do it? So is this busy work? So really understanding that? And then at the core of our delegation model, we talk about this idea of, you know, making the handoff, which is really a social contract between me and the other party, where I’m handing the work off. And there in that conversation, there’s context and goal like, what’s the big picture? What are we looking to do? What are the specific results we’re looking for? What do they need to do? How do they need to do it? And what’s the right level of coaching and support, depending upon what I find out in that analysis, that will either be, you know, a very kind of, meet me directing them. I’ll always probably give them the context and goal, depending upon their level of experience and their level of comfort. I may let them decide what the results are going to be. I’ll just ask them, like, Alright, here’s what we need to do. What do you think? What? How might we approach this? I’ll let them, they’ll do they know how to do it, what to do, and then we’ll the coaching and support will probably be pretty minimum, or it could be the opposite. So if they’ve never done it before, and they’re new to the team, or it’s something we haven’t done as a team, I might need to be very involved in shaping the results. I might need to actually show them how to do it, if they’ve never done it, and the coaching and support will probably be more frequent, because I want to set them up for success.

 

35:00

So we’ll, we’ll flex in that way, micromanaging. I think we all have a bit of a bias toward, like, micromanaging is bad at its core. You know, Scott Galloway talks a lot about this in, you know, from NYU and pivot, and you know that, like you’re early on, you know, people need to learn. And one of the ways that they learn, I mean micromanaging, you don’t want to be handed and, you know, kind of a, you know what, but you need to, you got to teach people, yeah, yeah. And at the end of the day, we got to deliver the product that’s made well and a service that’s delivered well. And so we have to deliver that quality, really, absolutely excellent. Then this that tool, that delegation tool, as I might call it that’s something I can get from the book as well. You absolutely alright. Another scenario that’s that’s been very common and most recently had a conversation with my coaching clients. But for example, one of the businesses that I own, I’ve sold it since, was a self serve frozen yogurt shop, like men cheese or yogurt land. We had our own brand in Colorado, where you serve yourself the yogurt, and then you add the toppings, and then you weigh it and you pay, yeah. So in that environment, it was, relatively speaking, easy for us to empower our employees that if that customer wasn’t satisfied because they ended up mixing peanut butter with mint and it was horrible, say, Let me have your cup go and make another one right. They were empowered to do that right, and that’s an example of empowering and leading your employees to be able to make those decisions, but in an environment where

 

36:31

the product or the service is a lot more expensive and we don’t want them giving away the the house, how do you how do you balance that, to teach a leader to allow their teams to make decisions, especially when it relates to customer service, but yet, there be boundaries on what’s realistic well, so again, it goes back to what I said earlier, as far as just creating those definitions. Yes, okay, who are we? Where are we going? Why do we exist? And how do we want to do this? And then create, like, if I’m asking people to be working with clients, like, how much you know you know, how much authority and empowerment am I providing them? And what? And what are the definitions like, okay, you’ve got a 10% discretionary slush fund to, you know, for to decide to do what the customer is looking for that you can determine on yourself, outside of that threshold, you need to come to me. So providing those definitions. Like, early on, we do a lot of work with climate. We talk about this idea of a high performing climate. A big driver of climate is just standards. Like, you need to define things, you know, like, not only where we’re going, all those things, but really, you know, what does, what’s, what are the rules of engagements? You know, how do we disagree with each other? What is my kind of, you know, latitude to make decisions. What’s my tolerance for mistakes? The more I can provide definition there. People can just relax and orient themselves within that framework and do good stuff without it. People are going to overstep, or they’re going to be very cautious, right? And it’s always going to be well, but I thought you told me it’s all about customer service, yeah, but you don’t give away. So there’s that confusion. And so by clearly defining these are the rules, these are your guidelines. Now go do it exactly, and then with clarity that people need and when they do it well, recognize it and recognize it to them, individually, and if you can at a group level, so others know what you’re looking for and what you define as a good use of critical thinking or judgment within those constraints. Beautiful, beautiful. Alright, one last question here, and then we’ll start to wrap it up. Morale, culture, such a hard thing to measure as a business owner, what’s one thing that that you recommend that I can do to test to measure morale and culture in my business? So the simplest of ways is just look around your organization. So how does it feel for people to work there? So are people like, Yeah, is there a lot of like PTOs or a lot of calling out sick? Are people late to meetings? Are people quiet in meetings? Those could be indicators that there are some underlying issues. Most organizations have some type of employee engagement survey. And even if you’re a small organization of like, 810, 20 people, there are like, culture amp, and there’s like, there are platforms that you can use. You ask your employees, like it, you know, just, how are you how are you experiencing working here? Do you feel like you’re fairly compensated? Do you feel like you’re getting the feedback that you need? It’s high risk, but you need to know that, and they want to be able to express those things. You may Why do you say it’s high risk? What do you mean? Well, because, because they may tell you that, like, This place sucks and you’re not paying me well enough, and I never get feedback from my manager, and then you have to do something about it, right, right, right, but, but that’s what you want. You want to you want to make sure that it’s a healthy organization, and through engagement surveys and the like, you can find that out. And then again, just.

 

40:00

Behaviors, people. People aren’t that complex. You You should be able to, you know, kind of look around and see, you know, you know, people’s behaviors. And ultimately, results are results, okay, but not great. That can be an indicator, also results, yeah, in your case, which is a lot case, now you have mostly a virtual organization, so challenging. There you look for similar indicators, but, but how do you do it when you have people that aren’t in an office? So if they so, did the trick with leading remote teams, and I’m sure you know this is, you know, whatever you would do in person, you need to just ramp that up. So if you would have, like, one one on one a week with a direct report, if with my virtual team. I’m probably having a couple of 15 minute check ins each week. Use technology with like Slack and its tone, its results. I am lucky where I will see them actually kind of leading workshops, or will be on like, client team meetings so I can observe them, and then I do my version of an engagement survey. I’ve got my own thing that I created in Google Docs. But I’ll just ask everyone, like, how, how are you how, how are you experiencing working for me, got it right. Is it a good day or not such a good day? If it’s not a good day, you know? And then basically, keep it simple. So what’s helping, What’s hindering, right? Understood. Thank you. All right, the book again, is the giving gain, becoming the leader that others want to follow. My guest today is James Turk. James, tell me briefly and where you want us to go, but who’s an ideal client for you? So an ideal, ideal client and reader of this book would be someone who is thinking about going into a people management role. So you’re the they’re asking you about it. You’re How do I want to do it? Do I not want to do it? This book will give you really a good sense of what the first year would look like. So we kind of bring you through a series of case studies and scenarios that will kind of walk you through all the things to do and expect in the first year. And there’s an assessment in back to say, like, do I really want to do this? If you are recently promoted, and you’re like, What do I need to do? This isn’t everything, but it will give you a lot. If you kind of focus in on what we provide, the book, the first 45 playbook and others, you’ll be kind of off to a good start. And or for people who’ve been enrolled for a long time but never had training, which is a large number of people, there’s a lot of people that got promoted because they were technically good at what they did, and they got promoted, never had the training. So this is just a great way to go back and just kind of, oh, you know, maybe you’re already doing it, but now you’ve got some definition and some structure. So that’s that’s kind of like the optimal audience for the book, excellent. And where can we go? Online? Obviously, we can get the book on Amazon, but as far as learning more about it. So the Amazon so the more about me and the Turk group. You can check us out on LinkedIn, our website, the Turk group.com,

 

42:49

we’ll have, you know, some of our research papers. We’ll have some short Turk Talk videos of me talking about different manager challenges, everything from, you know, managing a poor performer to kind of building relationships. And then in the website, you’ll see a link to the book as well, and we would love for you to buy a copy. Absolutely. I recommend it. I’ll have those links as well on the show notes page for this episode at the how a business com.

 

43:17

Alright, so

 

43:19

what’s one thing from the perspective of a small business owner, as we’ve been kind of walking through scenarios, either because, more likely, because I have a new manager that’s in that role. What’s one key takeaway, if you want to say from this conversation we had on that from that perspective? But so the whole premise of the book is this idea of, it’s a giving game, not a getting game, right? So we want to help the new manager understand that, you know, as they are two or three days enroll, they’re going to have things that they can offer right away, and they’re not alone. So there’s a community of people, both hopefully, in my organization, but outside the organization, that can help them as they are kind of building the skills necessary to be an effective people leader. I want to go back to this, because I didn’t explore this in the conversation a giving game versus a getting game. So tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that. And this also, I guess, ties to the point you made about gamification and how people, especially younger generations, look at the work environment. Got to think, but, but tell me a little bit more about this difference. About this difference between giving and getting, or in a perspective of a manager or a leader, sure. Sorry, AOA and games were supposed to be fun like so. So the idea I have just benefited through my, you know, through coaches when I was a kid, through my parents, throughout my career, with Peter and Barbie in Chicago and we they took a risk by asking me to join them, as we did that that endeavor, and then in corporate America, people took chances on me and kind of put my development first, sure they got what they needed, but they gave me opportunities. They saw something in me I didn’t see in myself and you I am having.

 

45:00

This conversation with you right now as a result of it. So if I look back kind of at the arc of that, it was really geared toward leaders being a bit selfless, so kind of putting my development, my needs, kind of front and center as a, you know, kind of a core strategy to ultimately getting what they were looking to do. So that was kind of the idea. And then when I was thinking about doing the book, it’s like, you know, what, if I look at my practice, you know, about 50% of the business is around, you know, people leadership, people management, and you know, a big chunk of that are people who either never had the training or are brand new to roll. What is it that they need? What would I want? If I were just got promoted, I would want some type of manifesto, like, here’s what you really need to do. So in service to that audience, wrote the giving game. Got it. Love it. Thank you for clarifying and expanding upon that. I also have what it brought to mind, also very tactically, is when my partner and I, David, begin that kind of made that mental shift of, you know, wanting to see employees stay with us forever, especially hourly wage young employees, instead of shifting towards, how can we develop their skills? And even if those are skills, in fact, great if those are skills that they then take elsewhere or onward in their lives, right? Giving them, enabling them with those skills, is part of becoming a leader. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. All right, tell me again where you want us to go online to learn more. The Turk group.com,

 

46:33

excellent James, wonderful conversation. We could talk for hours about this. Hopefully, maybe get to have you come back on the show at some point. I’d love it. I’d love it. Thanks again for being with me today and for the great book. I appreciate it. Thank you, Henry. This is Henry Lopez, and thanks for joining me on this episode of The How of Business. My guest today is James Turk.