Tim is the founder and president of Focus 3, a firm whose mission is to help companies around the world find the power of leadership. And culture and behavior play in that to achieve next level, something beyond average. An average, you know, is a person like who has one foot in scalding water and the other foot in a tub of ice water. On the average, he's comfortable. But we don't want to be average, and Tim focuses on what takes average to great.
And with the Ohio State team, he's been described in Wall Street Journal and Sports Illustrated and a lot of other things of being able to do that. He's done several high-level programs called the R Factor, Lead On, The Power of Culture, Attitude Matters, and Winning. How many are interested in winning? May I see your hands? Then put them together and welcome Tim Kite.
O-H. It's pretty good. Spring ball.
O-H. There we go. So real quick, born and raised here in Columbus.
Went to high school locally and ran track, played football. The other thing about my high school experience was I loved studying. I loved understanding where things come from, how things work.
And then I went to Ohio State my freshman year on a track and field scholarship. And then I discovered back then in the late 60s, Ohio State wasn't as committed to track and field. There was another sport at Ohio State.
Ohio State that tended to dominate. So I transferred to UCLA, which is what got me out to California. And when I was at UCLA, our locker room for track and field was in Pauley Pavilion.
And that's where the basketball team had their locker room and where they practiced and played. And the coach was John Wooden. And my three years at UCLA were John Wooden's final three years at UCLA, and I had the opportunity to watch him win his ninth and tenth national championships. And so what was birthed in me at that time was an insatiable curiosity.
for what is the source of world-class performance? What is it? Where does elite performance come from? What's it look like?
How do you get it as an individual performer? How do you create that culture, that environment as a leader or as a coach? How do you do that?
There's 10 national championships unheard of, and Coach Wooden by that time had been given the name the Wizard of Westwood. As I know now, because I study this, I've dedicated my life to that topic. What is the source of elite performance? And it's not magic, it's mechanics. That's the thing.
And one of my main messages today is I want to share with you the mechanics of exceptional leadership. But it's not magic. I loved Paul's comments.
Loved them. I'm back there writing furiously, taking notes, frothing at the pen. at what Paul is saying, because he's spot on to what exceptional leadership is about. So I want to take just about an hour and share with you some thoughts about where exceptional performance comes from and how it works and what it's about. Before we do that, let's talk about the bell curve.
Let's talk about what we call the mountain of average. Some call it 10-80-10. In any given population of people, and don't worry about the exact percentages, that's not the point.
But in any given population of people, 10% of the people are just, they're not very good performers for whatever reason. Whatever reason, poor performers. In the middle, there's 80% and they're average. They're good. Not great, but they're good.
Solid. And you know, that's a spectrum, right? And then...
Then on the 10% on the other side, they're the elite. Those are the people that consistently produce exceptional results. 10 out of 10, the mountain of average.
And what I've noticed as I've done this for over 30 years working with organizations and teams and people in virtually every industry all over the world, small companies, mid-sized companies, large companies, educational environments, government, obviously football, other sports, we're actually the leadership and... Culture coaches for all of Ohio State athletics, not just football, and other colleges have hired us. We're now working with some professional teams.
And what I've discovered is virtually everybody says, I don't want to be average, I want to be elite. That's what everyone tends to say. But here's what they discover, because at the edge of average and elite, there's something we call the edge. There's a line. And that's where average stops and elite begins.
And the vast majority of people who claim to be on the journey to elite get to the edge and discover something. It's really uncomfortable to move from average to elite. We call it productive discomfort. And it's both of those things. It is uncomfortable, but if you embrace it, it is extremely what?
Productive. But most people discover at the edge, you know what? I think I'll just go back. And here's what's seductive about this.
Here's what's dangerous about this. The mountain of average isn't a bad place. It's a good place.
The problem is it's not great. It's not exceptional. And so I'd like to do is just challenge you today and what spring ball began and I'm in coach kite mode So do you mind if I well do you want keynote diplomatic speaker or do you want coach kite because there's a difference between those two personalities?
Which would you prefer diplomatic speaker or coach? What do you want? Okay, so here I want to challenge you.
Where are you in this? Are you stuck on the mountain of average? And here's the way to think about this. As you get to this edge, here's how you think about this.
Here's our definition of elite, and I think you'll like this. We're doing a lot of work right now in public education, teaching these principles to administrators, teachers, and students. To see this stuff absorbed by elementary school kids and middle school kids and high school kids is fantastic. But let me share with you our definition of elite.
Elite means this, best version of you. Don't compare yourself to somebody else. Best version of you. That's the definition. Here's the way.
Here's the journey. Here's the pathway. Better today than you were yesterday and better tomorrow than you were today.
Not quantum leaps, but what? Just a what? A little bit better today than you were yesterday and a little bit better tomorrow than you were today. Who can do that?
Anybody? Anybody can do that. So that's the journey I invite you on.
And when you lead in your organization, when you lead with the teams and the business that you run, bring the best version of you. And I'm going to add to what Paul said, servant leadership, you're not going to help other people become the best version of themselves unless you bring the best version of you. And let's talk about what that journey looks like. So here's what we know.
We know that a business is never going to outperform its leadership. Leadership isn't a difference maker in business. It is the difference maker. It is.
It's the difference maker. Here's why. We call this the performance pathway. And this is a very simple and profound description of the physics of every organization.
And this applies to everyone. This is true for average companies. This is true for exceptional companies.
And it's true for poor companies. And it's this. Leaders build culture.
Culture drives behavior. And behavior produces results. That's the performance pathway. Leaders create culture. Culture drives and energizes behavior, and then behavior produces results.
Now, a couple things. Let's go right to left. Let's reverse engineer this. If you look at this from right to left, the performance pathway teaches something very profound about leadership or about performance in a business, and it's interesting.
This says results don't come from strategies. Results come from behavior. Results aren't produced by business plans.
Results are produced by how people choose to behave day after day. Paul nailed it. It's about execution. And don't, I'm not suggesting that your company shouldn't have a budget, it shouldn't have a plan, or it shouldn't have a strategy.
Yes, I have a company, we've got a budget. I have a company, we've got a strategy and a plan. But I learned years ago, strategies do not produce results, people do. The great performance variable in business isn't strategy, it's behavior. And I see companies pouring lots of energy into strategy development and not nearly as much energy into developing the behavioral skill that people need to execute the strategy.
And as a consequence, they don't get the results they want. How about this? What if you have an A-plus strategy and B-minus behavior?
What do you get? Open screen test. If you have A plus strategy and B minus behavior, what do you get?
Give me the grade that your results will reflect. B minus. Let's understand that the great performance variable today isn't strategy, it's not even operations or process efficiency, it's behavior.
You can't fix a behavior problem with a restructure. Behavior doesn't get better because you rolled out a new budget. Behavior only gets better if you have a strategy for developing the behavior skill of your people.
That make sense? And then where's behavior come from? It is generated and sustained by culture. Another phrase for culture is performance environment. And I'll share more about what culture is.
And then where's culture come from? Well, it says it's leadership. Back, I put the slide back up. It comes from leadership.
And let me ask this question because this is so interesting to me, having been in this business as long as I have. Raise your hand if you've heard the term core values more than 100 times in your career. Raise your hand.
There you go. So we've heard it all the time, all right? What does the word core mean? Center is central. That's the concept of the idea, but it's not the literal meaning.
Anybody know what the literal meaning of the word core is? What if I told you that a friend of mine had a coronary bypass, and I went to visit him at the coronary unit of the hospital? Core is a Latin word for heart. It describes where values should reside.
Here's what we know from our study of human behavior. Under pressure, people compromise a concept. Under pressure, they will not compromise a core belief. There's a profound difference between a concept in your head and a belief on your heart.
And so culture, as we describe it, is the heart of your business. What do people believe at the heart level, not just claim to say at the conceptual level? So this, and every company I've ever been around has a statement of core values on the wall. But by this definition, they're not actually core values, they're poster values.
Because the great challenge is to get those values off of the wall into the hearts of your people. Because when people believe, they behave. This is what happened to Ohio State football in 2014. Our young men believed. They believed in their coaches. They believed in the program that Coach Meyer had put into place.
They believed in our strength and conditioning. They believed in each other. They believed in their capacity to overcome any obstacle. And they believed because they were led.
that way because our staff believed. And the belief that was present in 2014 was a cultivated belief. It wasn't declared. It was cultivated. It was led.
Leadership. Coach Meyer's leadership. Our staff's. leadership, the key players leadership, because leaders build that culture.
Now, here's the thing about leadership and culture. This is so important. If you take nothing else away from my comments this morning, take this away. When it comes to culture and leadership, if you're a leader, if the culture isn't happening in you, it will not happen through you.
Leadership is an inside-out activity, not an outside-in. If the culture's not on your heart, you're not going to be very successful at what? Getting it on to the hearts of your people.
Leadership and culture development is the most heart-to-heart activity I know of. The word core means what? It means heart. So what does it mean to encourage somebody? It means to give strength of heart to somebody.
It's what it means. And you can't give something you don't have. And so if it's not happening in you, it's not going to happen through you.
Leadership is not authority based on a position you have been given. It is influence based on trust you've earned. Again, write this down.
Leadership is not authority based on a position you have been given. It is influence based on trust you've earned. And you earn, and I'm going to talk about that in a minute, but the trust that you've earned is behavioral.
You behave your way. into earning trust, which gives you the right, earns you the right to lead people to execute the vision. That's how leadership works.
And so what we know from the performance pathway is that average leaders build average cultures, which generate average. average behavior, which produces average results. Exception leaders build exceptional cultures, which generate and sustain exceptional behavior, which produces exceptional results.
We know this. We've seen it. So leadership culture behavior is what determines your ability to execute your strategy. You heard the term that culture eats strategy for lunch?
This is why. Get leadership, culture, behavior right, you can do anything. Get leadership, culture, behavior wrong, you'll struggle with everything. The task that we all have is to build more effective leadership skill in ourselves.
So let me just talk a few things here about the pathway. Culture is not built by what you proclaim. Culture is built by what you practice, what you promote, and what you permit. Very important. Culture is not built by what you proclaim.
It is built by what you practice. That's what you do, your behavior. I need to see and feel it in you. Number two, what you promote, what you talk about all the time, not just on a poster, but constant communication of the culture, and then what you permit. What you permit.
Which leads to this. The next step is your business will rise to the level of the standards that you set or it will sink or fall to the level of behavior that you tolerate. Here's a principle in culture. If you permit it, you promote it. Your culture is no better than the worst behavior that you tolerate.
And that's why clarifying that culture, living that culture, holding people accountable to that culture, coaching to that culture is critically, critically important in the pursuit of elite exceptional performance in a team or in a business. Number three, some leaders... are unfortunately so preoccupied with results that they fail to build a culture that drives the behavior that produces the results. You see what that is? You're going to see in a minute, results are phenomenal, just like Paul said.
I agree completely. But if you focus on results at the expense of culture and people, You end up undermining the very environment that you're trying to create. So make sure that you build an environment, a culture, that drives the behavior that you're after, that produces the results that you want. And then finally, if you want your organization to perform at the next level, if you want elite performance in your business, you must lead at an elite level. I get, we get calls every week we have since 2014 from people all over the place.
Can you do for us what you did for Urban Meyer? And my answer is, you're asking the wrong question. Because that's not the right, the answer is no.
I can't do for you what I did for Urban Meyer. You have to do for yourself. Because I, you know all I did with Ohio State football? I taught them tools.
And then they chose to use them. Just because a tool is taught doesn't mean that the person will use it. It's the craftsman, not the tool.
I think our stuff is good, but it's only as good as the hand that wields it. And Urban's amazing. When I first met him, it was a fundraiser at his home.
I didn't know him. I knew who he was, obviously. He didn't know me.
My wife and I are standing there. Been there about five minutes. Had a Coca-Cola in one hand and hors d'oeuvres in the other.
And he walked by. glanced at me, came back, looked me in the face and said, you look familiar. Have we met before?
I said, you look familiar. What's your name? I didn't say that.
I wish I had. I look back now, and I missed a tremendous opportunity to do something really fun. But I didn't say that. So I told him who I was. He said, what do you do for a living?
I said, I help organizations build elite performance environments. environments. He said, you what? What's that entail?
I said, well, three things, leadership, culture, and behavior. You teach that? Yeah. Sit down.
Let's talk. I said, well, there's a fundraiser. Sit down.
Let's talk. He's slightly intense. tense, this guy.
So we talked and I shared some of this stuff with him and he said, would you come down to the Woody Hayes Athletic Center tomorrow morning? I want to introduce you to Coach Mick and some of our other coaches, Coach Fickle and some others, and meet some of the players. I think we want to use you at Ohio State.
Do you think this will work in college football? I told him about my background in athletics and he said, well, I'm really excited. And I went the next morning, we talked this through, and then a few days later, my son Brian and I went back, we laid out a plan and Urban's committed to going forward. I mean, right on the spot.
Zero hesitation. And this is my fifth year. And this isn't like, by the way, just so, and I don't know what people think of this stuff, but this isn't two speeches.
I mean, I've given over, I think it runs now like 110 workshops at Ohio State football in the last four and a half years to coaches and players. And now most of the teaching is done by the coaching staff. And most of my role now is one-on-one stuff with coaches and then coaching the coaches and one-on-one stuff with players or unit leaders. But the vast majority of the stuff is being taught by the coaching staff, which is one of the things I think is really important. really important is to get the stuff away from the consultant into the organization.
And they own it. And this is the kind of commitment necessary to build an elite environment. So what is culture?
What is this thing? What we call culture? I think it's three It's what you believe, how you behave, and the experience that your behavior delivers, both inside and outside your business.
That's what it is, in its simplest form. What you believe, how you behave, and then the experience that your behavior delivers to others. And actually what makes a culture is it's shared. If it's individual, it's character. If it's social and it's group, it's culture.
And so shared belief, shared behavior, and shared experience is culture. And when you're around an elite organization, an elite business, an elite team, people have a shared belief system. It's on the wall, yes, to describe it, but it's in their heart.
They believe it. As a consequence of belief, they what? They behave it, and they behave it particularly when it's hard to behave that way. And because they consistently behave it together, they consistently deliver an experience that is produced only by that consistent behavior. And that's what culture is.
That's what it is. We don't need to make it complex. It's hard enough.
Why is culture important? Why is it so critical to elite performance in a business? Three reasons. One, it engages hearts and minds.
Two, it aligns effort. And three, it energizes the behavior. that's called for by your strategy.
Say those again. Really important. Culture engages hearts and minds.
Not just the mind, but the heart. It engages people. Number two, it aligns them around common strategy, common vision. common belief system.
And then number three, it energizes the behavior called for by the strategy. This is critical. This is really important. Culture's job is not to make people feel good. Culture's job is to create winning behavior.
So let me make a statement, and I hope this sinks in. You're going to ask for behavior in your strategy. Your plans say, let's go do this. And you should.
That's strategy's job. Culture's job is an environment that produces and sustains the behavior that your strategy calls for. If you ask for behavior in your strategy that is not supported by your culture, you will struggle to execute. Culture's job is to energize the behavior that your strategy calls for.
And so back to Paul's comments. Once strategy has been crafted and communicated, success is now a matter of execution. And folks, that's a culture thing. How well you execute isn't a strategy thing. It is a culture thing.
And as I'll make my case in a moment, the culture built by leadership. I don't know a better example than that. Those are two companies in the same market with the same products and services going after the same customers with different cultures. So the company...
The company on top has a culture that aligns and engages and energizes its people. And the company on the bottom has a culture that does not engage, doesn't align, and doesn't energize its people. One is aligned.
One is not. I'll make it very practical. The top would be Southwest Airlines. The bottom would be United.
I know because I fly United all the time. I'm going to fly United in a few hours heading out the West Coast. And when I go on Southwest Airlines, they're super happy to see me. The experience I get from their behavior because of how they believe is fantastic.
And I've got no juice on Southwest, none. But they have this secret success strategy. And it's this, treat your customers really well, which apparently other airlines haven't figured that secret customer focus thing so well.
Because when I go on board United Airlines, it's a 50-50 toss-up whether they're happy to see me or not. I've got two million miles on United Airlines, and you'd think they'd figure out there's money in this if you serve people well. I'm convinced, by the way, of this. The unspoken mission statement at United Airlines is, we're not happy until you're unhappy. And it's an attitude thing.
What does a good attitude cost you? Nothing. What's a bad attitude cost you? Everything. How about that?
How about that? And so we know that, put the slide back up. This is interesting about execution.
Listen to this. This is important. Southwest Airlines turns a 737 around at the gate faster than any other airline in the world with fewer employees per airplane.
That's an operational efficiency competitive advantage. In a challenging environment, with margins that are not easy to come by, you really have an advantage if you can turn your plane around faster with fewer people. And that's not a strategy. I think that is a behavioral, cultural thing, because they've built a culture that drives the behavior called for by their operating system and called for by their strategy. Southwest Airlines is the only airline in the history of the United States to be profitable every year of its existence, even following 9-11.
Because they know how to build an environment that executes. And I like to look at it this way, and I want to go back to and tie this into Paul's comments about vision. And then when I get to this Lead Now model, which I'll share briefly, I'm going to tie it in again.
this. There's three layers of culture and strategy in every organization. And bigger companies have more than three layers.
And smaller companies might have only two. But this is fundamental. This is kind of the way this works.
There's the corporate. There's the business unit or department or team level. And then...
there is 20 square feet. Again, there's the company, there's the division or department or business unit, and then there's 20 square feet. We started using this 20 square feet metaphor, I started using it almost 30 years ago. 20 square feet is a metaphor for every employee's sphere of ownership in a business. It's just a metaphor, by the way.
It's just a metaphor. It's an allegory. It's symbolic.
Of every employee's sphere of ownership. And here's the interesting thing about 20 square feet. Several things.
Number one, inside each person's 20 square feet, they are the only person who decides what goes on inside there. They choose what to believe, they choose how to behave, they choose how they're going to execute, they choose what they do. And inside each person's 20 square feet, they have complete control.
Outside their 20 square feet, they have influence. sense? Same for you. You have 20 square feet of your business.
Inside you have control and ownership and outside you have influence. So check this out. Is this not logical? If you want to maximize your influence outside your 20 square feet, you have to maximize your control inside.
And here's what I've noticed in three decades of doing this for a living. Most employees today, many employees today, spend more time complaining about stuff outside their 20 square feet than taking ownership inside. So let me just make this crystal clear, and put the slide back up if you would.
If you want to be elite at the corporate level, you want to be elite at the departmental level, you must create elite at the... 20 square feet level. Listen to this.
Your company can't become what you are not. Your company does not perform any better than the behavioral skill of your people. The way people behave determines how your business performs.
Period. Your greatest performance resource in your business is the 20 square feet of your employees. Go back to Paul's comment about vision.
Here's what I've noticed about vision. We call it vision squared, by the way. Vision number one is this is where the company is going. Vision number two is here's how my 20 square feet matters. And I've noticed this about organizations and about leadership.
It's one thing to say, here's where the company's going. It's another thing to make sure everyone's fully engaged and aligned with their 20 square feet. When people see vision, where the company's going, and they see how what they do matters, all in.
If they see where the company's going, but they don't see how they matter, partially in. That make sense? And so, you know, the word vision typically means the future, but if I told you I went to the ophthalmologist to have my vision checked, what am I talking about?
So do your people see where the company is going? Do they see what the culture is? And do they see and own their 20 square feet of it?
Your company performs 20 square feet at a time. Quick little story. We do a fair amount of work in Europe. And a firm, a professional service firm, had me over to London. They brought in executives from their various clients in Europe and Middle East and India and Africa, and we were doing a 20-square-feet slide.
And asked for questions and comments. This one gentleman actually stood up in the back of the room and said, Excuse me, my sphere of control greatly exceeds 20-square-feet. I'm global director of this and global manager of that, and my footprint is much bigger than 20 square feet. I was embarrassed for him, but I confess I went full American. I did.
I want full American on the guy. And if you go full American, you start with, dude. It's a metaphor, I said. You want to add a zero? Add zeros.
You want to go metric? Go metric. I don't care.
It's a metaphor. But I've noticed that we have a tendency in leadership and organizational stuff and, you know, cultures and strategies, the business and the big stuff, and we roll that out, but we just don't always pay attention to the 20- square feet of our people. So we have to engage our people and equip our people to take full ownership of their 20 square feet. So a couple more ideas here.
The way leaders behave either elevates the business or holds it back. Agree with that? Because that's going to affect the the 20 square feet of all your people.
The right skill set in leadership doesn't mean much without the right mindset. An exception, leaders have both. And I'm fully on board again with Paul.
The first mindset that a leader needs to bring is it's not about me. That's the great secret of leadership. It's not about you or me. It's about serving other people. It's about helping them become exceptional in their 20 square feet.
Think about that. The job of a leader is to help other people become elite in their 20 square feet. people experience you as a leader behaving in a way to make them great, what does that do? That energizes.
That motivates. And that's the kind of leadership people are looking for today. So here's the big challenge in leadership.
Breakthrough. personal barriers and become an exceptional leader, a great leader, an elite leader, not just somebody in a leadership role. I'll define leadership often this way. A leader is someone going someplace and taking other people with them. A leader is someone who's on a journey and taking other people with them, which means you could fail to lead one of two ways.
One, don't be on a journey. Just be doing a job. And I have the privilege of doing these kinds of keynotes at a lot of places, and I'm discovering, and we do obviously work directly with clients, and what I'm discovering is there's a lot of people in positions of leadership who aren't on a journey.
Now, this is interesting. They're doing a job, and they're good at the job. The problem is they're not on a journey, which means this, and this is Coach Kite, they're not leading.
And I'm going to push you on this. If you're in this room this morning and you're in a position of leadership and you're not on a journey, you're not leading. You can't lead somebody to a place you're not going, right?
The vision Paul's talking about, you have to be on it to take people with you. And so let me just be a catalyst for you. If you're here this morning and you're doing a job, and you're doing a good job, fantastic.
Would you please go on a journey as well and take people with you? And have you noticed about employees today? Do they want a job or be on a journey? What kind of company do they want to be with?
A job-oriented company or a journey-oriented company? People want to be on what? A journey.
They want to be a part of a company that's doing something, that means something, that has vision, that's going somewhere. You have to provide that. Second way you can fail to lead is be on a journey and not take people with you.
That's called personal agenda. There's two kinds of ego in leadership. Strong ego and big ego. You can't eliminate ego.
Ego just means self. A strong ego is focused on other people. It's the servant leader. The big ego is focused on self.
Strong, big. The New Testament word for humility and meekness is interesting. And meekness is a terrible definition or translation of the word.
The New Testament word for meekness means strength under control. How about that? It doesn't mean weakness.
It means strength properly directed. An exceptional leader has a strong ego. So strong, he or she doesn't serve self. He or she serves... Others.
That's a strong ego. Whereas the big ego is all about self, all about me. And so this task is, it's a personal breakthrough that we all need to achieve if we're going to be. an exceptional leader. Here's leadership.
Here's what it is. And Paul and I did not coordinate our talks. I didn't know what he was going to say.
And I was just amazed as he's talking about vision, results, and people that that's what this lead now model, it's the exact same thing. And so this is the mechanics. This is the how to execute what Paul talked about in his remarks.
Notice that a great leader has two priorities. Number one, build trust. That's the people dimension. And number two, achieve results. That's the performance dimension.
That's what leadership is. It's about people and it's about results. It's about a foundation of relationships that are strong and then a collective focus on commitment to achieving results together. That's what leadership is. Don't make it more complex.
And so the foundation is the trust piece, and then the focus is the results piece. And what you'll notice is there's three disciplines for trust, character, competence, and connection. And there's three disciplines for results, clarity, and trust. accountability, and support.
And I'm not going to teach this, but I'm going to quickly review each of those so you understand how it works. One thing I'll say before I move on to the details of the trust piece is this, and just think of it from this perspective. All six of these leadership disciplines matter.
All six. Here's the hard thing about this framework. Here's the challenge of leadership. All six matter, and strength in one will not compensate for weakness in another one. Let that sink in.
Strength in one of these areas will not compensate for weakness in another one. So, for example, look at the character, competence, connection. It's where trust comes from. Clarity, accountability, and support is how you get exceptional results with and through people.
Looking at those six, let's talk about it in a domain other than yours, hospitals. Hospitals, clinicians. We do a lot of work in hospitals.
I'm very familiar with them. Leadership in hospital will look at these six and they'll look at one of them and say, boy, if I've got that one, I'm a great leader of my clinical department. Which one of those do you think?
Mistakenly, wrongly, clinical leaders in hospitals think, if I've got that one, I'm a great leader. Which one would that be? It's competence.
I'm clinically great. I'm clinically sound. I get paid to tell those people, yes, you're clinically sound then you're terrible at leading.
I mean, it's become axiomatic in most organizations. Who is promoted to the head salesperson? Usually, the number one producer. Selling, producing sales isn't the same thing as leading.
Who has been given the head of the department at a hospital? The best clinician. So leadership isn't producing.
Leadership is... Trust results through the disciplines that you see in that framework. Okay?
So let's unpack it just a little bit. Let's look at it in a bit more detail. The highest levels of performance require the deepest levels of trust.
We know that. this. This was a principle that really served us well in 2014 at Ohio State.
It's the job of a leader to push people really hard into places they wouldn't go on their own. But you can only do that if people trust you. I want to repeat that because it's really important.
Because everybody in this room who's a leader, your job is to push people to perform, to push people beyond the edge, to go to the realm of productive discomfort and to do things that they wouldn't do without you. leading them there. And they got to go to the realm of uncertainty. They got to build new skill.
They got to embrace change. They got to do things they just wouldn't do unless you were leading them. Well, you can only push people as far as the level of trust you've built with them.
And that was one of the things our coaching staff learned to do that they hadn't learned before. So here's trust. Back to the model. Trust is three things.
And it's this. It's repeated experience of your behavior in these three categories. Trust is three-dimensional. Not one, not two, it's three-dimensional. People will trust you if they have repeated experience of your character.
That's ethical trust. People will trust you if they have repeated experience of your competence. And real quick, so you know this, competence, we mean your ability to make other people better, to use what you know on behalf of your people. That's what we mean by competence trust.
It's not just being smart, it's how you're smart, how you deploy your knowledge and your experience on behalf of other people. Did you know it's possible to be correct and highly ineffective? Do you know anybody who's really, really smart and doesn't use their intelligence for others, they use it for themselves? And don't look around your table, just keep your eyes up here. That's not leadership, that's, again, individual production, probably driven by a big ego.
And so competence trust is repeated experience of you helping other people get better and get things done and solve problems. The third element of trust is connection, which is the personal side of trust. And that's repeated experience of you.
Again, Paul said it, caring, listening, engaging at the personal level with the individual. The operative word, frankly, is love. That's the operative word, love, which I'm not at all afraid to talk about that.
However, I've got to give this caveat about that word. Wow, have we misinterpreted what the word means. And I don't know if you know this or not, or if you studied the word, or if you understand some of the stuff behind what real, authentic, genuine love looks like, but love is not primarily a feeling. It's an action.
Love is the motivation and the action to act in someone else's best interest. That's what it is. I mean, there's feeling-oriented love, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of love that motivates me to serve other people. And sometimes I have to do that despite the fact I don't feel good about that other person.
And let me play with this a little bit. Raise your hand if you are married. Okay, do you always feel good about your spouse?
Oh, I got one even better. Raise your hand if you have teenagers. Yeah, you don't feel good about that. But you what? You love them.
And as a consequence, you what? You do things for their benefit. And by the way, love and trust aren't the same. Can we also make that distinction? Love is a gift that should always be freely given, and trust is a privilege that should always be earned.
And never reverse the two. Don't ever give away. your trust and don't make people earn your love.
Give love freely, but trust is always earned. And whenever I say that, someone will always come to me at the break and say, well, can you love people you don't trust? And I said, yes, every teenager I've ever met.
I love them and I don't trust them any further than I can spit into the wind. So this is trust, and we'll stop with that. But remember, repeated experience over time.
Repeated experience over time. You earn trust by behavior. It's not given to you by your title. You can have a title and not be trusted because you don't behave this way. and you cannot have a title.
You can have zero authority and be really trusted and be a fantastic leader because you do behave this way. Leadership isn't a title. It's a set of behaviors driven by a mindset and a commitment to serve other people in the organization. Make sense?
One last thought. A couple last, one. Trust is slowly built but it's quickly broken. It's slowly built, repeated experience over time.
You have a trust account where through your behavior, you are making deposits into that with other people based on your behavior, or you're taking withdrawals from that based on your behavior. And you can slowly, slowly, slowly make deposits into that. But if you behave badly at the wrong time with the wrong people, you can break that trust you've worked so hard to build.
Number two, we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions. Others judge us by how they actually experience us. which confuses some leaders. We judge ourselves by what we intend. Others judge us by how they actually experience us.
And so what this model says is make sure you are intentionally behaving towards people with character. in your character. Do what you say. Follow through.
Live the values. Be a man or a woman of character. Act with competence.
Use what you know in your skill to help other people get better, solve problems, get stuff done, and love people. Connect with them. Listen to them. Care about them. And when they experience that in you, that's trust.
And then this is what I was saying earlier, that exceptional leaders are people going someplace and taking people with them. They don't just offer people a job, they invite them on a journey. May I suggest, and I'll do the results thing and then I'll get out of your hair, but may I suggest the next time you hire somebody or you're interviewing someone for a position in your organization, think journey, not job.
Think journey, not job. And if you struggle to come up with a journey message, guess what? You've got work to do. You've got to find that vision Paul talked about. Explain who you are and where your organization is going and why the 20 square feet you're offering to somebody, why that's part of the journey.
And it's a necessary piece. And again, I'll just repeat it. People are not looking for a job today.
They're looking for a journey to go simply. significant. And it's a lot of fun, by the way, to go on a journey, isn't it?
I mean, really, it's a lot of fun, way more than just doing a job. All right, so here's how you achieve results. Like trust, results is three-dimensional.
There's three things you must be exceptional at in order to get exceptional results. Again, let's make that clear. You have to be exceptional.
to be really, really good at clarity, accountability, and support in order for your people to be really, really good at owning their 20 square feet. If you want them to be exceptional in their 20 square feet, you must be exceptional in yours. And so you need to be exceptional at clarity.
That's the communication piece. That's where you communicate the vision. That's where you communicate the strategy.
That's where you communicate roles and responsibilities. That's how you tell somebody, hey, here's where we're going. Here's how we're going to get there.
And here's how your 20 square feet matters. I've learned this in 30 years. There's five things every employee wants to know.
Five things. Where are we now? Where are we going?
How are we going to get there? What do you want me to do? How am I doing? Every employee is looking for the answer to those five questions.
Want me to give them to you again? No? Yes?
I'm giving them to you again. Five things. One, where are we now? Current state.
Two, where are we going? Vision. Three, how are we going to get there?
Strategy and plan. Four, what do you want me to do? My 20 square feet.
Five, how am I doing? Feedback. They can't answer those questions on their own.
Where would they get the answers to those questions? Where would they get them? Only one place.
Internet. Twitter. Snapchat.
Instagram. Facebook. I'm not kidding. If they don't get them from you, guess where they get them? That other stuff.
And I don't like the answers I'm reading in those places. So don't allow a vacuum to exist in those five questions. Where are we now? Where are we going?
How are we going to get there? What do you want me to do? How am I doing? So it's your job to be exceptionally clear about vision, strategy, and vision. culture expectations you have for people people crave clarity precedes excellence if you don't have clarity it's impossible to have elite impossible another quick thing about clarity it's not an event it's not one conversation it's not two conversations it's not three it's as many as it takes you know what the number one obstacle to communication is here's the obstacle to communicating the illusion that it has taken place you And so just get really, really, really good at communicating with people.
And lots of different ways to communicate, but I think you get the message. Number two is accountability. So once you've been clear about expectations on a foundation of trust, by the way, the way. Now you're in a position to hold people accountable.
Now, accountability, unfortunately, was hijacked years ago by the people that manufacture tasers. And I don't know why. Who laughed?
whoever laughed I really love you because the rest of you I don't know what you're paying attention to that taser thing was really funny I don't know why you guys didn't pick up on that but whoever laughed who was it raise your hand just so I know there I love you man I love you you're awesome no I mean when you say if I were to announce the average company today this year we're going to increase accountability would you go home and say honey this is the year of accountability I can't wait this is going to be a fun year you Now, but see, here's what accountability actually means. Accountability means simply two things. A great leader pays attention to what's going on and gives feedback, responds to what he or she sees. That's accountability.
And here's a way to look at it. Great leaders are world-class observers. World-class observers.
And the thing I want to talk about is, yeah, I mean, yes, we look at the numbers, right? We look at the numbers, but accountability is not numbers-oriented. It's back to what Paul said.
It is people-oriented. Every number that your company tracks, as a result of what people do. And so a leader doesn't just pay attention to the numbers.
A leader pays attention to what people do that produces the numbers. And a leader pays attention to the culture that's driving the doing that's producing the numbers. That's what a great leader does. Master observer.
Listen, I'm going to warn you about something. Do not be one of those leaders who looks at the numbers, finds a variance, and then expresses disapproval. That's not leadership.
That's accounting with a bad attitude. That's all that is. No offense to the CFOs in the room. I can teach a sixth grader to find a variance in a spreadsheet. We want 10. We got 7. We're off by 30%.
Whose department is that? I'm not happy. Well, that's not leadership.
That's just a bad mood. And so if we're going to be great leaders, we have to hold people accountable. Accountability is paying attention to what people are doing and appropriately responding. Here's what this means. The number one act of accountability is telling people thank you.
That's the number one thing great leaders do in accountability, is they're appreciative. Hey, here's the plan. We gave you this job. You're doing it.
I appreciate you. Thank you, because I'm paying attention, and the appropriate response to you doing your job is, way to go. Glad we hired you.
Glad we gave you that 20 square feet of our journey. And when you observe and tell people thanks, guess what they do? They want to what? Do it again.
Do it more. And the data keeps coming in from employees all over the world. My supervisor rarely says thank you.
My VP, our division head, doesn't appreciate. I have no idea. And a thank you from a blast email that everybody gets, that's not thank you. So pay attention to what people are doing and then act on what you see. Now, at some point, you're going to give them feedback.
You're going to talk to them about what they're, this is, this, you know, you're, hey, listen, we want 10. We're at seven. Let's talk about what we're missing and let me give you some thoughts here. Feedback. A lot of it. A lot of it.
A lot of it. And don't wait for the annual performance review. The annual performance review as a singular management tool is awful.
Awful if it's the singular thing. Can you imagine if the only time we gave our children feedback was once a year in an annual performance review? And if we did that, I'd vote December 24 as the date that we do it on. I really would. That's when I'd do it.
Hey Susie, you're going to have a really good morning tomorrow morning because back in June you did some cool stuff. Johnny, expect nothing dude. You're not going to get anything.
Because your July was awful, Johnny. Feedback really only works when it's real time. And I can see the linkage between your observation, what I did, and what you want me to do.
That's the key. And then you do have to challenge unwanted behavior because accountability is this place where you challenge behavior that's inconsistent with your strategy or your culture. Again, your culture is no better than the worst behavior that you tolerate. So if you permit it, you promote it.
Therefore, don't permit it. And one of the things I've noticed about leaders, for whatever reason, leaders are afraid of having difficult conversations with people. They avoid those conversations. And you can't do that. You have to challenge behavior that's inconsistent with your culture.
You must. And if you don't do that, you lose credibility as a leader, and people behaving badly think it's okay. And you don't want that to happen. The final, the third piece is support.
So if I'm on a foundation of trust, I communicate the vision, the strategy, the culture, the expectations, I pay attention to what people are doing. And I give them regular feedback. And then I coach them along the way.
I equip them with the tools and training and the skills that they need. And then I coach them. And think about that. On a foundation of trust, it's clear what you want me to do. I know how what I do fits in, how my 20 square feet matters.
I know you're paying attention to me with an attitude of love and desire for me to be better and giving me regular feedback to make me the best performer I can be. And then you coach me along the way and make sure I get properly trained. Paul talked execution. That's how. That's how execution only happens on a foundation of trust with exceptional clarity, consistent accountability, and personalized support.
Let me give you a couple of support questions you can go home and use. These are phenomenal. These are great leadership support.
support questions. And I love asking this. The number one question I think a great leader asks the people is this, what obstacles exist that get in your way of you performing at your best?
That's a support. Ask your people, what obstacles get in the way of you performing? at your best. They tell you, and then your job as a leader is to do your best to get rid of those obstacles.
Number two, the second question you can ask them, what do you need from me in order to perform at your best? What can I do for you? What do you need and want from me?
How can I best support you? And they may not know the answer, by the way, right away. It's okay. Ask the question, let them think about it, and then come back.
What can I do? How can I best support you? Great leadership, great support question.
Question number three in support. Who do you see performing? performing well that I need to recognize and say thank you to.
Because your people see things you don't see and they know things you don't know. So tap into them. And when you ask a team of people or an individual who's performing well that I need to say thank you to and you ask them to give you that, you're building trust with that person.
You're reinforcing the right kind of behavior with that individual. And you obviously now know who it is you need to go say thank you to. And so those are some key elements in support. So, in closing, it's this. Your business will perform to the level of leadership that you provide.
And it's an interesting time, 2017. How many leadership books are there out there? I mean, keynote speeches and slide decks and seminars and stuff. And for whatever reason, despite all this stuff on leadership, we're not measurably better.
And I think one of the reasons why is we don't have a clear, simple framework for what leadership is. I don't think the Lead Now model that I just shared with you is the only effective leadership model. Certainly there are others out there.
I'm simply giving you an example of what a clear leadership model looks like. You need one. You've got to have one. Go find one.
Build one yourself. But become an exception leader so that you know exactly what great leadership looks like and then you're able to perform it, pursue it. That's Twitter. If you're a Twitter person, I would love to have you follow me on Twitter. I tweet out.
Leadership stuff, our factor stuff, culture stuff. That's our website. And please feel free to visit our website.
Some pretty cool stuff. Recently, we've started podcasting. And that's how you can get our podcast.
And we've had tremendous response to our podcast. And it's a great way to listen to Brian Kite, my son. And I talk about these things. And he does some individual ones. And I do as well.
But hey, thank you all very much. Have a fantastic year. I appreciate you having me here.
Thank you very much.