312 The Great Engagement: How Leaders Inspire Exceptional Organizational Cultures by Unlocking Team Potential with Brad Zimmerman | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Brad Zimmerman, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:04] Brad Zimmerman: Thank you, Mahan. Thank you for having me. I'm really honored to be able to chat with you today. 

[00:00:09] Mahan Tavakoli: Looking forward, Brad, to talking about your book, The Great Engagement, How CEOs Create Exceptional Cultures. But before we get to that, we'd love to know a little bit about you, Brad. Whereabouts did you grow up and how did your upbringing impact who you've become? 

[00:00:24] Brad Zimmerman: There's a big question. I grew up in suburban Detroit at a time when suburban Detroit was exploding, we moved to Detroit in 1958. Give you an idea of how old I am. Brought up in the suburbs, I was climbing trees and hiking. I was the outdoor kid, the kid that liked to work on many bikes and go karts engines and later cars and I was always very technically inclined.

Probably, the most germane thing, though, is my dad was a World War II trained B-17 pilot, and when you're a member of the military like that, you get trained to be disciplined in your thinking. You get trained to do what you say you're going to do. Integrity becomes, critical. Whenever I did anything wrong, the allowable answers were yes, sir, no, sir, no excuse, sir. 

So personal responsibility, integrity and a work ethic were drilled in, which has its benefits. So I'm really thankful to my dad. He was also a kid from the wrong side of the tracks during the Depression who pulled himself up by the bootstraps as used to be said and as a successful business owner. In fact, much later in life, went into business with him a couple of years out of college after a couple of stints in a fortune 500 company. 

[00:01:49] Mahan Tavakoli: So now, I've the concept around engagement or lack of it has been on the minds of executives and there have been different initiatives. Why is it that we haven't made much progress in this area? , 

[00:02:03] Brad Zimmerman: I think there's several factors. I referenced the work ethic that I was brought up with in the 60s. I think as a society, our attitude about work has changed significantly in some very healthy ways. The drive for more balance in life, the drive for more effective home life for being more better parents, et cetera, is very positive, but I think it also has implications for engagement that many people are less interested in seeing their career as their primary purpose in life. I think the other thing is, Mahan, that most attempts at engagement talk about broad systemic issues. But seldom do leaders really focus or consultants like ourselves help leaders really focus on how do you engage people individually?

How do you get people as individuals to take on the purpose of their organization as their own? How do you get them to own it, so that they see. The work that I'm engaged in as a vehicle for fulfillment in my life, a vehicle where I can grow and where I can walk away feeling like I really made a difference, so we tend to go off and write new vision statements and new mission statements and put them up on a wall someplace or on a website or what have you.

And expect that's going to make a difference, but it seldom does. We need to engage people personally, individually, emotionally, so that they become inspired. Probably the best example of this is I walked into an organization in Chicago years ago. And I walk up to the reception desk.

It's this beautiful reception desk with a marble wall behind them. And these words chiseled into the marble wall. It looked like Zeus himself did it with a lightning bolt, and what's chiseled into the marble is their mission state. And it was a really good statement. And I looked at it and said, wow, that's really well crafted.

The receptionist turns around, looks over her shoulder, and looks up at it and says, Oh, that! That's something the executives came up with a couple months ago, and they went off to some retreat, I don't know. And I thought, bang, there's it, they've invested all this money in marble and Zeus and, the show of it, and yet the person that's right there Has no sense of an animating her life, 

[00:04:44] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a beautifully described challenge that I see different versions of it, Brad. And you're absolutely right. Whether it is on websites or annual reports or on walls, there is a frustration that sometimes there are those purpose statements or mission statements or whatever you call it, and people don't connect it to the real world.

their own roles. So I want to first understand a little bit more about the importance of this before finding out how to address it. You mentioned that our expectations have shifted, is it just that the expectations have shifted? Therefore, leaders need to focus on getting their people more engaged, or has that need always been there? 

[00:05:28] Brad Zimmerman: That's a really good question. I actually have to think about that for a second. I think it is largely that expectations have shifted. As I look at the 30 years that I've been doing this now, I think it's always been important, but I think it's more important today simply because our society is so affluent and jobs are plentiful, especially in this labor market.

And there's so much choice that given a choice between working at a job where I can make a living and working at a job where I can make a living and feel like I'm really making an impact and come home feeling good about myself at night, there's not a lot of choice there. I want to bring home the paycheck and the sense of pride that I get out of helping others.

So those are the workplaces that are going to attract and retain people more than not. 

[00:06:21] Mahan Tavakoli: Do you think this is a real shift we are seeing? Or do you think it's partly driven by the fact that unemployment rates are so low? 

[00:06:31] Brad Zimmerman: I think both are true, actually. I mean, I think you hit both points. I think they're both true, that unemployment is so low, but what gets talked about very little is a lot of it is because the baby boomer generation is aging and they're the biggest bulge demographically in our population.

So we're having more and more people with significant amounts of money saved for retirement that are consuming and fewer proportionally that are working to provide, to make the goods and services. So there's this imbalance and again, you don't hear about it talked about on the news a lot but I think we're in a long term tight labor market that we're going to see for decades until we baby boomers start dying off, which I hope personally isn't too soon.

[00:07:27] Mahan Tavakoli: I hope so too.  I couldn't agree with you more, Brad, in that when there is a lot of capital for organizations and for a while there has been a lot of capital, you see all kinds of startups and the startups to start up. Don't have to struggle as hard and access to capital is not something that makes one more competitive than the other. Now, what I'm hearing from you, part based on demographic trends, access to talent pool becomes a real competitive advantage and differentiator, which is why this engagement and getting people to align better with their purpose and organization's purpose becomes even more important.

[00:08:12] Brad Zimmerman: Yeah. And just as an example we have a client in the Southeastern United States in a fairly rural area that's in the healthcare business. And they were the people who were on the front lines of COVID. They were the people who were setting up tents in parking lots to give people vaccinations and providing immunotherapy treatments and those kinds of things all set up on the fly, very high stress, long hours.

Heroic, really, on their part, and they had done a lot of work, a lot of work building a culture that's rooted and focused on their purpose and making sure that people throughout the organization really saw that their job was to contribute to the vitality of their community, to the health care of those they serve, particularly the underserved, et cetera.

And even though they were on the front lines doing some of the most tiring, grueling work there was, they experienced very low turnover in those times, and it was because that the esprit de corps. That they had the sense of pride they had in how they were serving their community was so high.

It's like the Marines. If you think about the Marines have this great sense that they're out to save the world for democracy, and it's their purpose, and that purpose makes those young men willing to charge up a hill into a fusillade of bullets and feel good about it, assuming they survived afterwards, and that may be a bit extreme, but it's the same mechanism.

So we saw some clients that had tremendous amounts of turnover, and some clients, particularly those that we've been working with longer and been working on their culture more to drive more engagement, be affected much less. 

[00:10:01] Mahan Tavakoli: Managers, CEOs listening to this conversation, Brad, say, I get it. It's a different leadership mindset, different expectations so where do I start? What do I need to do to be able to engage with that internal purpose of the individual and align it with the organization?

[00:10:26] Brad Zimmerman: Okay. Answer to that is big. So I'm going to kind of break it down and we'll take a look at, you know, maybe some practical ways to go about that. Okay.

In the opening section of the book, we talk about that engagement is the function of two, two primary things. The first, the first one is if I, as an individual, I'm going to engage.

I need to have an aspiration. I need to aspire. to serve some purpose that's meaningful to me. So as a leader, your job is to think about, how do I implant That aspiration in Brad, how do I get my people to aspire to contribute to those people that we're serving both internally and externally? And then the second element of it is empowerment.

Okay. I'm in, I'm excited. I love this purpose. I'm here to improve the quality of health care of the people in our community so that it contributes to economic vitality and just a better quality of life. And I'm excited about that. Now you got to figure out how to help me take the handcuffs off, meaning how do you empower me? How do you, first of all, give me permission to bring my creative ideas to make decisions? How do you help me to have the authority? To feel like I'm able to bring my intellect and really make a difference.

And some of that is a matter of getting management systems and structures out of the way, but some of it is also helping me, the employee, get myself out of the way, because many of us are reticent to take the risk, we're afraid to take the risk to make a decision, so we delegate up, we go running to our boss.

What should I do? What should I do? And on one hand, I feel like I might feel as a result I really can't make any decisions, but on the other hand, it's self imposed, so how do you coach people to get past that? How do you help people grow past that? So I said practical examples. For example we have a, we just had a CEO roundtable session this morning and one of the people at the CEO roundtable was a client we've been working with on and off for about 10 years.

They run a healthcare organization with 32 primary care sites around one of the states in the Midwest. The CEO is a doctor and she's done an amazingly good job everywhere. She goes, she talks about her vision of contributing to the communities they serve of improving the health care for the underserved. It's like her mantra and everybody in the organization talks about it.

It's why they do everything they do. And they've then drilled down into each department. Has their own mission that's part of that larger mission. She gave the example this morning, which I thought was great was she said, our transportation department sees their job as ensuring that people are treated with dignity and respect, and that we're contributing to people's self esteem and that we're here to provide them access to health care so that they can have rewarding, fulfilling, healthy lives. 

Now, if I'm driving, schlepping people around every day and that's the purpose that's the why that we all buy into, I'm going to behave entirely differently. And it works. She gave the example of one of their drivers delivering some office supplies to one of their sites.

He pulled up in the parking lot, walked in the back door, and as he approached the back door, there was a man standing there who appeared to be very confused, disoriented and couldn't really speak to this driver. So the driver took him by the hand and led him into the health center. And they talked to him and they found out, they looked up his records and they found out that he was autistic.

He was nonverbal. They found out why he was there. I forget the exact story, but they were able to get him lined up with someone who could help him right away. All started by a guy who's there to deliver office supplies. 

[00:15:02] Mahan Tavakoli: What a beautiful example, Brad. You also mentioned something that really resonated with me as I was talking to a CEO last week, and he was frustrated. In the fact that he feels he's doing a great job empowering his executives, but still finds people referring things back up through the CEO's office. 

And I found that to be interesting as I was reading your example, the Tiger Mohini. So we'd love for you to share that and then thoughts about how we can break out and how employees can break out of the patterns they have gotten used to. 

[00:15:46] Brad Zimmerman: Mohini was a white tiger. And I believe, the Washington D.C. Zoo, and he was kept in a very small cage and he paced back and forth in that cage and then they took him out of the cage.

But he kept pacing back and forth in a space that was the size of the cage and wouldn't leave that area because he was unconsciously convinced, if you will, that's all the space he could take up. It became habitual. And, we can see that in a tiger and animals, but we frequently don't see it in us.

We are creatures of habit. God has given us a great ability to relegate things that we learn to our unconscious mind. And then we just do it automatically. The simple examples of riding a bike or typing. If I said to you, give me the conscious understanding of how you ride a bike.

I don't know about you. I'm a cyclist. I ride a lot. I couldn't tell you how I balance a bike, but I can do it. And I remember it. My unconscious mind, like consciousness, has the ability to do it in a half a second without any thought. The drives that drive our behavior are much the same. So I'm going to use your CEO example as an example, because it's a great one.

It's actually one that I myself. I used to complain about remember years ago in our coaching business our office manager would come into my office and say, what should I do about this? And she did it, I don't know, 20 times a day it seemed.

And I remember I said to one of my coworkers, a fellow coach, this is driving me crazy. Can't she think on her own? And he said whenever she comes in, because of your unconscious purpose, in other words, because you automatically tend to take charge, which I do, you automatically tend to take control.

You automatically tend to make decisions, you're a good decision maker, which is a strategy, it's an unconscious strategy that works great until it doesn't. Because you keep giving her the answers, you're rewarding her. She doesn't want to take the risk of you criticizing her, which you do too. I'm like, ouch.

So you're making the decisions and rewarding her. And also, when she makes a decision, you tend to second guess her and criticize her. And I went, Oh, crap. I've actually trained her. To come to me, and then I complained that she comes to me and I'm not even aware I'm doing it.

And when he pointed it out to me, I became, Oh, yeah. Oh, and I won't say the expletive and deleted that I use next, but yeah I'm asking for this. So I actually sat down with him and said, okay, so what can I do instead? How do I respond when this happens? And how do I begin to make this habitual so I don't automatically go to my unconscious purpose, we call it your default success strategy of just giving them the answers.

[00:18:55] Mahan Tavakoli: What an outstanding example, Brad, for so many different reasons. First of all, I love your humility sharing your own example and your own growth opportunity. And in addition to that, one of the things that brings up is the fact that a lot of times we. As individuals and as leaders aren't aware of some of those patterns of behavior that we engage in that contribute to the problems that we see.

So you were noticing an issue with your office manager that your colleague. Observe that you were contributing to. And I think a lot of times leaders are doing that. The frustrations that they see in their team in part is reflective of their actions that cause them to do what they do.

[00:19:46] Brad Zimmerman: And it's further compounded by the fact that when you're the CEO, there's very few people who are going to walk into your office and say, Hey, Mahan, do you know that you're bringing this on yourself? So creating a coaching culture where people are able to point out to one another and to help one another.

By helping one another be conscious of what we're doing that's impacting the culture that we don't even realize we're doing is hard to do, but is imperative if we're really going to drive a culture of engagement because leaders need to be very intentional and very conscious. Which means we need to be very aware of our unconscious motivations.

Now, I'm going to say, this is not rocking science. Most of your listeners are going to say, yeah, of course that makes sense. I did a Myers Briggs, but doing a Myers Briggs or a predictive index or a, whatever, a disc in any of those is a lot different than having a relationship with a coworker.

Where you're actually inviting them to give you feedback in real time. I get, when I read my profile, I have a high need for control. Now am I aware in the moment when I'm controlling, when I'm with a client? Yeah, sometimes, many times not. 

[00:21:09] Mahan Tavakoli: One of the things, Brad, that you also go into in the book is the need for that coaching culture. And I wholeheartedly agree. One of the challenges I see with many leaders I interact with is that, is that, as you said, they nod. They agree and they say, Oh I'm very open.

I solicit feedback and coaching from everyone around me and I give coaching and feedback to others. So what is the gut check? How do you make sure that is really the case, not just the perception? Because there are very few people that I've run into, CEOs or executives, who. Admit and say, no, I'm not open to feedback.

I people don't give me feedback because they know I'm their boss and I'm going to do their performance review. Every single one of them says, no I'm pretty good. I encourage my people to give me honest feedback and believe me, they disagree with me every day. And they give me examples, even when I have observed the fact that their people are very hesitant to give them feedback.

, I look at myself as a kid who grew up in suburban Detroit and, like to hang out in the trees and work on engines and stuff, the nerd that I was, clients see me as a 30 Old veteran coach who's worked with over 10, 000 people and especially a lot of the younger people see me as an authority figure.

[00:22:31] Brad Zimmerman: That doesn't fit my image of myself. So now let's go back to the CEO. CEOs don't realize that they have this ginormous, it's not even a megaphone, it's like a ginormous howitzer that they walk around with. It's a big cannon. On their shoulder that every other employee can see, but they can't see and they're not aware.

It's there. So people are super reticent to give the boss feedback. I remember years ago, I was working with a client. I've actually worked with for 20 years now. They've grown over tenfold over the period of time that we've been working together and I believe it was the CFO I was talking to and he was complaining about the CEO and about how the CEO wouldn't listen to him and as we dug in and dug in, he realized that the CEO wouldn't listen to him because he's not really telling the CEO flat out what he wants to tell him.

He wasn't really giving him feedback and when I dug in and said why not? He said he's the CEO. I'm not, come on. What do you mean? I'm not going to do that. And I said why not? I said, when was the last time you saw him fire somebody? And he thought a minute. And he said we've been working together ten years.

Actually, I don't think I've ever seen him fire anybody. Oh, that's interesting. What have you seen him do that caused some negative effect to somebody? What's he done, in the form of retribution? Gosh, I guess nothing. He says in this light bulb went on that he was just operating like you don't challenge the boss because you don't challenge the boss.

And I think that very few CEOs are aware of how powerful that unconscious force is. So you have to overcome the fact that you're standing there with a howitzer pointed at this person. The other thing is that whenever I hear someone say to me, Oh, I'm very self aware and I'm very open to coaching.

Like way back when I was in the furniture business when people used to say to me Oh, I have stellar credit. Oh. I know I got a credit problem here, People who are really self aware are aware that they're really not aware, there's one thing I've learned It's that I'm not aware of the effect I have on people and I have to look at their faces as a mirror to see how am I going to cross, and even then I miss it a lot.

So it's like this constant. Now you said how do they know what's the Aston test? I think if you're sitting down and intentionally inviting your people to give you coaching, if you're bringing your dilemmas to your people, your challenges, and genuinely asking for what am I doing to contribute to this issue?

How might I approach this differently? So that's the first thing, is you have to be really intentional about making an ask. And about building a relationship where they feel safe to give you feedback. And then the question is, are you getting feedback that smarts a little bit?

Are you getting feedback that you go Ooh, I don't like that. Because if you are, then yeah, you're probably pretty open now I don't mean angry or feedback that's designed to be cutting I had a client once say to me, you got to take it easy on my people.

And I said, what do you mean? This is 25 years ago. So what do you mean? She said you're a steamroller. You're a little harsh. And I went, what do you mean harsh?

What you're mentioning is one, that intentionality behind seeking it as opposed to assuming that's happening. So in many instances, when I'm having conversations with CEOs and interacting with them, they assume. That in their daily meetings, in their regular conversations, that's what's happening. What you're saying, and I tend to agree with you, is, no, if you are opening up space and intentionally seeking it, that is a good sign. And if every once in a while you go, Ooh, a little bit cringed with what you hear because it's different than your self perception, then that's also good.

 I also love the visual nature of if you're a CEO, executive head of a division, when you're walking around, you have this howitzer on your shoulder that you don't see and maybe it's not just because of their interactions with you, maybe it's because of their previous boss. But there's also responsibility on the other side. The same way Mohini was pacing only in the same square that Mohini had for so many years, we assume as a CFO in your example did, that our CEO, our bosses are not open to feedback, wouldn't want it.

[00:27:50] Mahan Tavakoli: So there is a mutuality in making sure there is a coaching culture in the organization. 

[00:27:57] Brad Zimmerman: There's one essential element that doesn't get talked about a lot, at least in my experience, and that is that coaching is only coaching if it's asked for if people aren't open and receptive to it. Genuinely open and receptive to it and literally asking for it. You can't give it to him. I can say, Hey, Mahan, try this. And if you're not asking for it, if you don't see that this is an issue that you ought to work on, you're going to politely nod and look at me and say, have a nice day and walk away.

And I had no impact on you at all. And especially if I'm the boss. Nobody's going to coach me unless I really genuinely ask for it. So I have to set that tone, with my team. I have to make that one of the cultural norms that we are open, , one of the other things we talk about in the book is creating a transformational culture, a culture that's rooted in agape love, meaning our inherent desire to contribute to others, which is central to human beings. Rather than out of our fear, and mostly human beings are motivated by fear and we're afraid of the boss. We're afraid we might get fired. We're afraid we're going to screw up.

We're afraid that we don't know what we're doing. There's the imposter syndrome as gets talked about that, oh boy, I'm not really capable and somebody's going to find out. So we behave in lots of ways to try to protect ourselves and creating that kind of a culture where we're contributing to one another.

We're contributing to one another's growth. We're doing what's best for one another so that we can better serve our customers. This isn't just some idealistic, let's all sing kumbaya and hold hands. This is what it takes to build a really effective organization. If I can give you an example one of our clients Is in the business of making self driving vehicles.

They're on the forefront of technology and their purpose as they see it really isn't about technology. Their purpose is really about providing small scale public transportation in cities in order to alleviate congestion, create more green space in cities, and improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of cities, and they get excited about it.

And these are a bunch of, very high tech, really smart people that are very driven by that desire to contribute to other people. And they realize that they need to help one another be their best if they're going to accomplish that. So they've created this culture where, yeah, we have to coach each other if we're going to be the ones who are making that impact on our cities and improving the quality of life of the city spaces that we live in.

[00:31:05] Mahan Tavakoli: That coaching culture that you talk about, Brad, both helps the individuals become better and the best versions of themselves and the organization to become better and more aligned with that purpose. As you mentioned, it is not soft, it is actually hard and it's hard hitting. Now, another thing  that you mentioned in your book, is a challenge a lot of times leaders have with accountability. 

[00:31:35] Brad Zimmerman: If you turn on the TV on the six o'clock news and you hear somebody say somebody needs to be held accountable. It usually means somebody needs to be fired because they screwed up. Right? 

That's the way people look at accountability. When you say the word accountability, very few people stand up and say, oh, boy, let's go. It's oh, so we have to look at accountability differently. I wrote a paper on accountability years ago that we use with clients, and it makes the point that the word accountability comes from the same root as the word accounting or accountant.

True accountability is very simply an accounting of the actual results you produced versus what you promised to produce. I promised to sell five new clients this month. The end of the month, you either sold five or you sold four, you sold six. And periodically, we just need to take a look at the scoreboard.

True supportive accountability is like. The Lions, the Detroit Lions did good this year, so we're proud, it's like the Lions check the scoreboard throughout the game to see how they're doing. You don't wait until somebody fumbles the ball to look at the scoreboard and say, Hey, you just screwed up.

No you acknowledge their successes, you acknowledge their triumphs, and you acknowledge their failures, just like you do on a balance sheet. You don't look at just the assets or just the liabilities when you look at a balance sheet, right? If you only looked at the liabilities nobody would look at it because it'd be depressing.

Accountability needs to happen with great frequency, first of all, at least monthly. But just to sit down and review, okay here's what you said you'd do. You said you'd sell five new customers this month. How'd you do? You sold four. That's the end of the accountability conversation. We've now done the accounting, and as an employee, if I know that we're going to have those conversations periodically, and that you as my manager are going to support me.

In hitting my goals, it actually motivates me. It's oh, boy, I got that meeting with Mahan tomorrow or next week. I better go out and see if I can close that last new client. So I got in the bag before next week to simplistic example, but actually a good one. So the accountability portion takes very little time.

It can be a 10 minute meeting. What follows then is a coaching conversation, usually. Either, wow, you did a great job. You actually closed six this month. What did you do that worked? So we can leverage that. So we can do more of that. Or you closed four. What happened? Where did we pull up short? What were the barriers that got in the way?

And how do we help you to do better next month? So it's the accountability triggers that coaching conversation that's designed to help you develop as a human being and get better at accomplishing what it is that you want to accomplish.

[00:34:51] Mahan Tavakoli: I love the way you frame it, Brad. First of all, the support of accountability, not the way we traditionally see accountability, whether in media or elsewhere, it's not blaming someone it's accounting for where you are. In terms of progress and then followed up with that coaching conversation that needs to happen. Now, one of the challenges that I consistently see Brad, including last week, I was at lunch with a CHRO. We were having a conversation about accountability in their organization. And she mentioned, yeah, we do annual performance reviews in order to make sure the managers talk to. Their direct reports more, we are going to mandate once a quarter conversations. It was like, how can you have the managers only communicate directly with their people on these things once a quarter? She said they are really busy. The managers are really busy. So I would love to know your thoughts and perspectives with respect to best practices on the kinds of. Things that leaders and managers and organizations do in order to practice supportive accountability and coaching the way you talk about it.

[00:36:14] Brad Zimmerman: Frequency is important. You can't win a game without keeping your eye on the scoreboard, and many of my clients Have their leaders meet with their people at least monthly. If there's critical projects, we're nearing the end of the year.

We got to make our numbers, so to speak, more often than that, and they're like, we're talking about here. Let's look at the leading indicators. Let's look at what you promised to produce. Good. How do we do this? It's the last 10 minutes of the game and we've got to win the game.

How do we put more points on the scoreboard? So that's the first thing is to have those conversations much more frequently. And unlike most performance reviews, which in most cases are demotivational because they focus on evaluating me as a human being. And I end up feeling like I've just been taken out and told why I'm not worthy.

Now, that's nobody's intent, but that's the way they come off frequently. Instead of evaluating your results and then supporting you in accomplishing better and striving better. But all of this kind of points to, your statement that my people are really busy. That's the bigger issue. That most of us got into leadership positions because we were really good at getting stuff done. So when we get into a management or a leadership position, we automatically look at our job is to get stuff done. So I get really busy getting stuff done.

So I make sure I get my emails done and my reports in and my all this administrative stuff. We become super doers. Rather than leaders when we become a manager, our job is to grow other people. That's job one, is to grow your people. Now, when you have time left over, you do all that stuff. Now, a lot of people say I got too much stuff to do, I can't.

Job number one is to grow your people. It's like being a parent. As a parent, When my kids were young, I knew my primary job was to help them learn the habits, learn the mindset that they needed to be good citizens, productive members of the community. Now, did I have a lot of stuff to do? Yeah, the trash needs to be taken out.

Dinner needs to be fixed. Kids need to go to school. All parents know it's like overwhelming, but we do our job. We do those tasks in a way that helps our kids to learn. We realize that job one is parenting, and then we'll figure out how to get all that other stuff done.

And if that other stuff that's less important doesn't get done, So be it, but in organizations that's not something that most of us practice that most of us are taught, at least in many organizations. 

[00:39:10] Mahan Tavakoli: It's not being taught and there isn't the discipline and structure to stick with it. I love the way you put it. Job number one is grow your people. And therefore, if that's job number one, as a manager or leader. We first scheduled that is a critical part of what we are doing. Then everything else going to the analogy of putting the big rocks in first, and then the smaller rocks, then the sand and the pebble job, one, one of the very big rocks. Is developing your people, doing the supportive accountability that you mentioned and then the coaching that follows that supportive accountability. Now you also talk about leading, managing and coaching and the necessity of all three of those, Brad. Would love to get your thoughts on what you see the difference being and why all three are necessary.

 Those are 3 separate sets of tools and, recently. I go on to my LinkedIn feed, I get a lot of articles about, leadership and management and it's very frequently you see that don't be a manager, be a leader, or don't be a manager, be a coach, like somehow managing is a bad thing.

[00:40:32] Brad Zimmerman: There are three distinctly different things. Leading is about inspiring people, is about making sure that people see their personal purpose as being advanced by their work in the organization.

It's about making sure that people are connected on a daily basis to as Simon Sinek has so well said there. Why? And that's all leadership is as a tool. If I say to you, plot of your tool bag, the leadership tool. It's okay. How do I inspire people?

That means mission moments and meetings. Let's talk about how this initiative relates to what we're out to produce in the community. It means helping people to see their higher purpose, lots of activities. Management is all about supportive accountability. Once they bought in, yeah, I'm on board. Good. 

Now it's about getting people to make promises to produce specific results. We're specific deliverables within a specific time frame, and then using supportive accountability to drive integrity in the organization so that we're executing. Sounds really simple, a lot of interpersonal reticence in that one.

So management is all about fostering integrity, creating integrity. Thank you. A culture where we do what we say we're going to do. We make promises and we keep them. Coaching is pretty much everything else. It's support. It's training. It's making sure that people are open to input. That people are looking to learn and that I've made a promise.

I have a stretch goal and now how do I get there? How can you help me understand how to get better at this? Because I am inspired. I have made a promise. I'll use the metaphor of athletics, I have a 12 year old granddaughter. who's played soccer, travel soccer. She now travels all over the country and this kid is on fire. She's convinced she's going to be the world's greatest soccer player. She doesn't say female, male, just world's greatest soccer player.

And she is so inspired by that possibility that she's playing soccer five days a week, going to grueling training sessions, she doesn't complain. She puts herself through this. She goes and she talks to her coach and does everything her coach tells her to do. It's the way it works when people are really inspired and she's willing to be held accountable for working out the number of times a week that she's supposed to et cetera.

So it's these three elements. You can use as a diagnostic anytime you have a performance issue, you can you ask yourself a question, is it that they don't see how this ties in to their sense of purpose? So they're not like motivated? Is it that they haven't made a promise? And I haven't been effective at holding them accountable in a supportive way.

Or is it that they're not asking for coaching, they don't know what to do, or they're not aware of how they're getting in their own way,

and they're not asking for coaching. And if you approach almost any performance breakdown with those three as a diagnostic, you will get down to the bottom of it.

Now, some of your listeners are going to say, ah, it's way too simple. It is too simple. It's a very elegant way to look at it, but applying it is very complicated, very much an art form.

[00:44:07] Mahan Tavakoli: And one of the things that I find, Brad, is applying it is what makes the difference. There is a huge difference between knowing what we're supposed to do and being able to do it. And then there is a huge difference between being able to do it and actually doing it.

Doing it. And I couldn't agree with you more. I get so frustrated when I see these means putting leadership above management. And to a certain extent, that's one of the reasons many managers aren't doing their job in actually managing people,

[00:44:41] Brad Zimmerman: yeah, you need to be equipped to do all three. And behaviorally, if you look at, the population as a whole, like their behavioral profiles, , what you'll see is that some of us, are within our comfort zone to be inspired.

In other words, we're naturally inclined toward being inspiring. Some of us are really good at holding people accountable. Although those of us who are good at that and sometimes, suffer the hammer. Rather than the iron fist in a velvet glove, that's supportive.

And some of us are good at coaching. It's very unusual for any of us to have within our comfort zone, the ability to do all three. At least one of those three, maybe two out of those three are outside of the comfort zone of every listener that you have today. And that's why we don't do it.

And we don't even realize we're not doing because we're not comfortable. I can't tell you how many clients won't make a request of their people because they feel like they're being too demanding or too pushy. So they don't manage effectively. When, as Brene Brown points out, clear is kind. Having explicit agreements really fosters a great relationship.

But if you're afraid to do what it takes to create that explicit agreement, then, everybody avoids the subject and things get very messy. But again, it comes back to, oh gosh I can't be too pushy, I'm not comfortable with that. So this is why personal development as a leader is. so crucial because few of us are equipped to do all three.

[00:46:27] Mahan Tavakoli: And that personal development, a great way to do it is to also read your book, Brad, and learn from you. Before we get to where the audience can find out more about Your book and connect with you. Are there any other leadership resources or practices you typically find yourself recommending to leaders who are thinking about engagement and creating exceptional cultures in their organizations, 

[00:46:56] Brad Zimmerman: well,

some simple things, some which we've talked about, having a mission moment every time you get together with anybody, it takes two or three minutes to just ground what we're doing. It's essentially stating our intent, we're working on Project X today. Here's how Project X is going to benefit those we serve.

Here's how Project X is going to benefit our employees and help them become more effective. That's a simple thing, but it's a leadership piece. So there's not some big inspiring speech. It's just, let's make sure we're clear about why this is important. The support of accountability piece is that we've talked about a second practice.

And the third is as a leader. If you want to build a coaching culture, start asking your people for coaching. Because the best way that you can create psychological safety is if you yourself are willing to drop your guard, admit that you don't have all the answers, and ask for help. That opens the door and allows them to do the same.

And pretty soon, we start feeling safer and we're really Relying on each other rather than trying to pretend that we have the answers if you know those three simple habits put into place could go a long way. 

[00:48:13] Mahan Tavakoli: A lot of times, Brad change comes about as a result of, making something a part of our habits. We can. Read lots of books, understand lots of things, but if we don't change our habits, our behaviors, then nothing improves. So while you mentioned those are three simple habits, those are three simple habits, which in many organizations they are not habits. They are at best infrequent practices, so making them habits becomes really important. So how can the audience, Brad, find out more about you and also your book, The Great Engagement?

 Our company is called Phoenix Performance Partners. The website is Phoenix perform.com, Phoenix, just like the city spelled. The book can be found at Phoenix perform.com/book, or on Amazon. 

[00:49:05] Mahan Tavakoli: I really appreciate Brad, both your book and practices that when implemented can give people the opportunity to. Connect with their professional purpose and be much more engaged, helping the organization have an exceptional culture. So I appreciate the insights you shared, both in your book, The Great Engagement, and also in this conversation.

Thank you so much, Brad Zimmerman.

[00:49:34] Brad Zimmerman: Thank you, Mahan. It was really a great chat with you. I really enjoyed it.