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Why Leaders Fail Without the Golden Rule · Commander's Intent

0:07
SPEAKER_00: It can cost you everything.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Commanders and help inspire you how to lead with clarity, courage, and purpose.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: So here's your host, retired Air Force Colonel, fire pilot, and your leadership mentor, Derek Oak.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to talk about a leadership principle that's older than any management book, and it's more powerful than any business strategy, and yet it's ignored by organizations around the world.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: It's called the Golden Rule, and it may be the single greatest predictor of whether or not a company and its leaders build trust or they slowly destroy it.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: Every company I've ever talked to, every company I've ever worked with will tell you that their people are the greatest asset.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: But the question is, do you actually treat them that way?
0:54
SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to explore what the golden rule is and why it's so important and why it's not just good ethics, but it's good business.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: See, the key is the golden rule is not about kindness, it's about alignment.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: It's about leaders creating a trust with their people where those people feel respected, they feel honesty, they feel a sense of fairness and a sense of loyalty that their leader is treating them as they would want to be treated.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to talk about why that's so valuable for an organization.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Regardless of what your organization does, we're going to talk about why that's so valuable.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts as we get started here on the golden rule?
1:32
SPEAKER_01: And do you have any specific examples either in your own life or from a historical perspective or what we're seeing right now in business or in military and politics?
1:42
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, golden rule, I mean, it's funny because I learned the golden rule as a kid.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: You know, do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
1:49
SPEAKER_02: And it always seemed very, very simple.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: And of course, as I got into my professional life, I didn't really see that the golden rule was something that I used as a measuring stick for how I worked as a leader or a manager.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: But looking back on it now, I recognize that most of what I did was in accordance with the golden rule, specifically for that.
2:09
SPEAKER_02: Because as a leader, you're trying to build trust, you're trying to build a culture that ultimately allows that organization to succeed, and even if the leader's not there.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: And so the best organizations I've been part of, the ones that I would love to be a part of still to this day, all have that one thing in common.
2:25
SPEAKER_02: They all had the golden rule as part of their ethos, it was part of their DNA of that organization, and everyone felt trusted and respected.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: And that worked up and down our chain of command.
2:40
SPEAKER_02: And so I think you hit the nail on the head with the beginning statement.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: It is one of the oldest concepts in the world, and yet it's one of the most neglected concepts.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: You ask me for examples, I'd say I have tons of examples, both from history and from my own personal life, because it's really what was ingrained in my head as a young potential leader at the Air Force Academy through some of my instructors.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: And one of them I'll talk about real quick is a guy named Lieutenant Colonel Dan Krynovich, an army officer.
3:12
SPEAKER_02: And he gave me some great insight.
3:14
SPEAKER_02: He told me one time, he says, Rob, you guys in the Air Force get it all wrong.
3:19
SPEAKER_02: You say that rank has privilege.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: And he goes, It doesn't have anything to do with it.
3:24
SPEAKER_02: Because rank only comes with responsibility.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: And as he explained it to me, it made complete sense.
3:30
SPEAKER_02: And it's something that I've kept in the back of my mind for most of my career.
3:33
SPEAKER_02: And he was absolutely spot on.
3:35
SPEAKER_02: My rank, as I rose in rank, only gains me more responsibility to those folks underneath me to help create that culture and that trust and that ability for them to do their job and know that they were valued as individuals and as people.
3:51
SPEAKER_02: He tried to help me understand that the important thing I needed to recognize that each one of the soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines that were under my command or control all were individuals with lives and with families and with fears and hopes and dreams.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: And if I forgot that as a leader, that I would ultimately fail.
4:08
SPEAKER_02: And so this was something he told me as a 21-year-old young man, and it's resonated through my own experiences throughout my entire career.
4:16
SPEAKER_02: That's probably the most personal example that I've got of somebody who kind of showed me the golden rule and what it would mean as a leader.
4:23
SPEAKER_02: There are others we can talk about, but do you have any of your own right now?
4:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, I just finished reading a book on MacArthur, and there's another biography about him called American Caesar.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: And while MacArthur was a brilliant individual, it said, it had been many, many years since MacArthur opened a door for himself.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, that's really too bad because he had forgotten.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: And it's not that it's bad that people had been opening doors for him, but that he hadn't been opening doors for other people.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: And maybe he did for his wife.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: But everything I've read about MacArthur was that he really saw himself as a step above everybody else, that he was the leader and everybody else were the followers.
5:02
SPEAKER_02: And everything I've read about MacArthur echoes that exactly.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: I think he's one of the negative examples, right?
5:09
SPEAKER_02: He's a guy that he led without it, and he was successful, but ultimately he was a failure.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: I would say he was a failure, not in a military sense, but just in everything else in his life.
5:20
SPEAKER_02: He's not somebody that I would have pointed out or lauded as a great leader.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: I agree with that.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite books is by Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: It talks about how at any event, the leaders in the United States Marine, the higher-ranking guys, they don't eat until all their soldiers eat.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: I remember reading about Alexander the Great.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: Alexander the Great didn't eat unless everybody under his command ate.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: He didn't drink water unless everybody else under his command had water to drink.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: And there's so much value in being one of the guys from that perspective.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: If it's a hardship, it's a shared hardship.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: And the leader does that.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think of Chesty Polar during World War II, Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel, and he was with his guys every step of the way as they're going island hopping, really in a miserable situation.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: Very dangerous, very uncomfortable physically, a lot of dysentery, a lot of other kinds of sickness.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: And he was with his guys every step of the way.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: And so when it comes to doing to others, you would have others do it to you.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: If there was a crappy situation, he was in it with his guys.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't saying, you guys deal with that, where I'm going to live back in my hooch, my comfortable hooch, and I'm going to have a steward who takes care of my uniforms and everything else, which is what the way MacArthur really was.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: He did not see it that way at all.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: Well, and you bring up World War II, another great, awesome one.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: And it's not so much about sharing the individual hardships with his men, but you know, Dwight Eisenhower, who's the Supreme Allied commander in Europe, he's ultimately responsible for the entire war within the European theater.
6:54
SPEAKER_02: And on the eve of D-Day, he writes this letter.
6:56
SPEAKER_02: Of course, we all know in hindsight now that it was a you know very successful operation.
7:00
SPEAKER_02: We were able to retake the continent.
7:02
SPEAKER_02: But at the time, that was a pretty risky maneuver.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: And Eisenhower writes this letter.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: And in the letter, the message essentially was hey, if this all went bad and this all went wrong, the decision was mine and mine alone.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's on me, yeah.
7:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm taking it.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: And that to me is awesome.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean you have to be down in the dirt with your guys all the time, but you do have to model that accountability.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: You do have to model that trust.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: Eisenhower says, Yeah, I'm gonna put all these folks' lives on the line, but the ultimate responsibility is mine.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: I own it.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: And when obviously when DJ was successful, Eisenhower didn't tout himself as the guy that, oh yeah, see, I was the architect, I did all of that.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: He pointed to the individuals who stormed the beaches, who drove the boats, who flew the airplanes.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: He talked about how each one of those folks had made it possible for DJ to be a success.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: And that right there is the essence of the golden rule give credit where it's due and take responsibility where it needs to be.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he is a great example, I think.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: And I think part of how Dwight Eisenhower got the way he was and commanded the way he was was a sense of I don't want to say self-doubt because he acted very affirmatively, but he hadn't commanded in World War I.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: He had never led troops in combat.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: So he's in a position where he's leading people who had commanded in combat, who had risked their lives and had a lot of scar tissue, leadership, scar tissue.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: And he was kind of theoretical.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: He had a number of jobs where he'd learned about the military, he learned about strategy, but he hadn't learned that.
8:38
SPEAKER_01: And so I think he had this inner feeling of I have to trust my people and I have to show that I'm one with them in a lot of ways.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: He had to implement the golden rule instead of thinking he was above them, thinking the rank was more important than actually the shared experiences, as you were talking about earlier.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's great because we talked about those leadership opportunities.
8:58
SPEAKER_02: We see them a lot in the military.
8:59
SPEAKER_02: Like I said, it's kind of what speed into our TNA as young men and at the academy, and young men and young women now still get that same DNA infused in them to take care of their troops.
9:10
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting because I've seen it a few times in my civilian life.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: In fact, one of the guys I worked for, the CEO of one of my companies, I would run through a brick wall for.
9:21
SPEAKER_02: He's a guy that I would go anywhere, do anything for.
9:24
SPEAKER_02: And part of it comes down to just who he was.
9:26
SPEAKER_02: He was a guy that every weekend he would be out weeding the landscaping around the building or cleaning up.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: He would just do all the little things that would make the building look good when people showed up to get on an airplane.
9:39
SPEAKER_02: But he didn't ask anybody else to do it.
9:41
SPEAKER_02: He just went out and did it himself.
9:42
SPEAKER_02: Others would go help him, generally speaking, but he didn't ask.
9:46
SPEAKER_02: He just did it.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: And I personally have an experience.
9:49
SPEAKER_02: I had a good friend of mine that actually helped me reconnect with him and get a job with him after I left the Air Force.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: A good friend of mine had a heart attack and had passed away.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: And I had let my boss know that he had passed away, but I was going to work.
10:03
SPEAKER_02: I was on a two-week rotation.
10:05
SPEAKER_02: And so I was going to work, but I let him know that, hey, this guy had passed away.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: And he and I were in conversation for about the next week while I was on the road flying airplanes.
10:14
SPEAKER_02: And he let me know about two days before the funeral, he says, Hey, I'm not going to be able to make his funeral.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: Can you please go and represent us and the company and send along our regards to his family?
10:25
SPEAKER_02: And I let him know, hey, boss, I'm not planning on going to the funeral because I'm working.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: I didn't ask for time off because I mean he's a good friend of mine, but I still had a job to do.
10:35
SPEAKER_02: I didn't ask for time off.
10:36
SPEAKER_02: I was supposed to fly from New York down to Miami and spend the night in Miami.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: The boss came back to me about five minutes later, he goes, Hey, give me five minutes.
10:45
SPEAKER_02: He comes back to me and he says, Hey, Rob, we're changing your schedule.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: You're going to fly to Miami, drop off your passengers, then you're going to go over to Tampa, and you're going to spend all Saturday, we're going to ground the airplane in Tampa on Saturday.
10:57
SPEAKER_02: You're going to go to that memorial.
10:59
SPEAKER_02: You're going to represent us, and then we'll pick up the emission.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: That to me was a huge, huge deal because he downed an airplane.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: We could have been making money that entire day.
11:09
SPEAKER_02: But he did it because he knew it meant something to me and it meant something to him.
11:12
SPEAKER_02: And after that happened, like I said, I would have done it.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: I felt like I owed that guy.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: I owed him because he looked at me as an individual.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: He didn't have to change the schedule.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: He didn't have to down an airplane for a day, but he did it because he knew it was something that mattered, something was right.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: And he is the best example I've seen in my civilian life of someone following that golden.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: That's fantastic.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: I've worked with some individuals who, even if I disagreed with him on policy and how to run the company, I worked with there are a number of guys where I really would have done anything for them.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: And I stuck with them for a long time because they how they treated people and how they looked at familial hardships and individual hardships as part of their responsibility.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: And they helped us, they really went to bat for some of their employees.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: And I really respected that.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: And I hoped that I was like that when I acted.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: And so one of the lessons that taught me is I don't have to agree with somebody all the time to recognize them for who they are and recognize their approach to treating people with the golden rule and the value that was not just for the company and not just for that individual, but for the company and for the culture of the company.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: I really appreciated that.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: Do you have any thoughts from a commercial perspective in the business world of individuals and companies where people love working there because they're valued as a valuable part of the team?
12:38
SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, I thought of one the other day, and I actually I wish I could remember the business.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: I didn't have a chance to look it up.
12:44
SPEAKER_02: But it was the business where the CEO decided that everybody in the company was going to get paid at least$100,000, some business in Seattle or whatever.
12:51
SPEAKER_02: That was the first thing that came to mind.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: But probably a better example, probably a better example more recently is the current CEO of Microsoft, who seems to have created now, and again, I'm not a Microsoft guy, you know, I have no dealings with them.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: But everything that I've seen and read is the CEO came in and changed their entire culture to emphasize a culture of learning and a culture of collaboration and a culture of empathy.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: And he reinstituted a number of processes in Microsoft.
13:22
SPEAKER_02: And Microsoft, I will say, is not necessarily known for being a company of culture and empathy and whatever, but that's really what he put into place.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: And if you look at it, the company has done well in his tenure as the CEO.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: And so I think those ideas are related.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: You've got people that are working for a boss that's trying to put things in place to make their lives better and to recognize that whole golden rule actually has a place in business.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: And the people are responding to his incentives and to his culture, and people are sticking around a little longer and trying to make a better company.
13:56
SPEAKER_02: So I think that's the best one I can think of right now.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: That's a great one.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: I think another one is, and I'm not a coffee drinker, but I look at the barista or the employee experience at Starbucks.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: And I think one of their what they say is that the employee experience becomes the customer experience.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: And it's true, if you have employees that are regularly daily interacting with the customer, if they're happy, if they're treated well, if they feel like they're valued, that's going to rub off on how they interact with the customer.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: And the customer is going to feel the exact same thing.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: And so there are people who drink Starbucks coffee, that expensive coffee, simply because they like the experience at Starbucks, because they like the way that they're treated at Starbucks.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: And that comes down from their leadership.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, that was what he wanted.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: He wanted that customer experience to reflect the employee experience, where everybody felt like, hey, somebody's paying attention to me.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: They treat me in a certain way, so I'm going to, in return, treat them another way.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: The other one I think about from the aviation experience or for our business, Southwest Airlines, your killer.
15:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, everything I've heard about him and about his style and leadership and everything else.
15:09
SPEAKER_02: Now, I don't know him personally.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: I just know from the culture that he created at Southwest.
15:13
SPEAKER_02: And the culture was one of being a little bit different.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: It's where we used to get the kind of funny safety briefings that you get around Christmas time or just the way that the company worked.
15:22
SPEAKER_02: Again, it was a huge, huge deal.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: Now, in recent days, or the more recent years, I've heard some not so great things coming out of Southwest Airlines from their employees.
15:31
SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of it has to do with the change in culture at the top.
15:34
SPEAKER_02: When Her Kelleher died was gone, I think that his culture went with them.
15:37
SPEAKER_02: And this is kind of the this maybe leads us into the next piece where if you emphasize the golden rule, there's certain benefits and culture that come from it.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: If that goes away at some point, then you start to see some decay and deterioration in the culture, and the business starts to suffer for a number of reasons.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: And so I guess I'll turn it over to you at that point, Dere.
15:57
SPEAKER_02: I can just kind of ask you.
15:58
SPEAKER_02: I know you've got a whole chapter in your book on the golden rule and how important it is to those in business, but I would ask maybe the best question to ask you is how do you recognize if you're not following the golden rule, or what are the key aspects that you might see in an organization that's losing that type of interactions?
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, there are a number of indicators, I think.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: And I would say the first one is people stop bringing bad news upward.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: They stop sharing information because, well, if I tell the boss the truth, I'm going to get blamed.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: If I admit a mistake, then I'm going to be punished.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: If I challenge the existing plan, I'm going to be labeled as difficult.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm not trusting that the boss has my back.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: So as a result, I'm not going to share bad news with him.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to share everything that looks nice, pretty, and glossy instead.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: The result is that problems stay hidden, small issues become major problems and major failures, and leaders make decisions with incomplete information.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: You want people to be sharing information with you, and that only happens if the golden rule is in place.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: And they know that they can bad news doesn't get better with age.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: But if I can hide bad news forever from a boss that's going to bite my head off, then I'm better off.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: At least in the short term, I'm better off.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: And so that's one example.
17:15
SPEAKER_02: That actually reminds me of a good quote that somebody gave me when I was a commander.
17:19
SPEAKER_02: Because many of the listeners may not know this, but pilots, generally speaking, we're a bunch of complainers.
17:24
SPEAKER_02: We like to complain about everything.
17:26
SPEAKER_02: We will find something to complain about, no matter what.
17:28
SPEAKER_02: But I had a boss tell me one time he says, Listen, if your pilots are complaining a lot, that's good.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: It's when they stop complaining, you're in real trouble.
17:37
SPEAKER_02: Because when they stop complaining to you and stop telling you about what they think is wrong, they've given up on you.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: They quit.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, like that's what you're talking about.
17:46
SPEAKER_02: Bad news being pushed upwards.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: When you stop hearing that, you lose all effectiveness.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: No, no, it's not complaining.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: It's a constant stream of debrief.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: That's what it is.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: But you're exactly right.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: You're happy to share negative information because you live in an environment where that's okay.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: Or you live in an environment where you're always looking for that perfect sort of something better.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: So if something's not right, you have no problem sharing that.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: Because you feel a sense of ownership to share that.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: But if you stop sharing, it's because you've given up on the leadership.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, which really takes me to the next point that I wanted to make, which is people do the minimum.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: When they don't feel the golden rule in place, people do the minimum instead of owning the mission.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: They ask themselves, what do I have to do instead of what needs to be done?
18:34
SPEAKER_01: If the golden rule's there, it's I matter here.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: My work matters.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: My leader cares about what I'm doing.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: So I care about what I'm doing.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: And I in turn care about what they're doing.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: I care about the organization because I'm a part of the team and I have a shared ownership of what's going on.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you don't have the golden rule, then you're showing up right at eight o'clock and at five o'clock, you're clocking out and you're taking your full lunch break, and you really don't care what happens during that period, other than I'm going to do enough to not get in trouble.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do enough to keep my name out of the press.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: That's the key.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing about that, which is kind of self-explanatory, leadership becomes transactional instead of transformational.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: You're not looking to change the world.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: You're looking to do the minimum to earn your paycheck.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: And that's about it.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: And so people, as a result, they obey rank, they obey title, they honor their paycheck, kind of, but they're not committed to the mission.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you believe in what you're doing, and if the golden rule is in place, you believe in what you're doing and you trust the team that's leading you because you feel that trust.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: Well, and you're willing to sacrifice certain things, right?
19:46
SPEAKER_02: I knew for myself, I believed in my mission and my, you know, my goal as an Air Force officer.
19:52
SPEAKER_02: I knew that I was serving something greater than myself.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: And so I didn't mind some of the suffering, some of the hardships and enduring some of the deployments and things because it was worth it.
20:01
SPEAKER_02: My sacrifice meant something.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: But I know later on in my career, when I saw some other things happening, and in my civilian career, when I started to see that the trust was breaking down, and I didn't trust my leadership anymore to take care of me or to think about me as an individual or worry about it.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: And I've got some great examples that I could share if you want.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: But when those breakdowns started to happen, I felt myself flip that switch.
20:24
SPEAKER_02: And the switch then stopped being about getting the mission done.
20:27
SPEAKER_02: And it was, hey, what do I have to do to be minimally successful to get my paycheck and not get fired?
20:32
SPEAKER_02: And that's a horrible way to go to work.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: It really is.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: And that really leads to the next point that I wanted to make, which is innovation dies.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: I have a better idea, said no one ever in an environment where they don't feel trusted, where they don't feel the golden rule is part of how that organization acts.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: Nobody's going to say, I think we're getting it wrong, or I think there's a better way.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: They're just going to shut up and color.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: They're just going to say, well, boss has to do it this way.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: And if I don't do it that way, he's going to hammer me.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just going to do what I'm told.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: And you don't want to stick your neck out.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: You don't want to challenge leadership.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: You're just going to do what you're told.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: And so it becomes compliant instead of adaptive.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: It becomes rule followers and process followers instead of, hey, how can we do this better?
21:17
SPEAKER_01: How can we be more innovative?
21:19
SPEAKER_01: How can we be more creative?
21:20
SPEAKER_01: How can we be more productive?
21:22
SPEAKER_01: How can I think past the corporate goals?
21:27
SPEAKER_01: You're not going to do any of that.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: You're just going to do what you have to do, you know, really to make it to five o'clock every day.
21:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that to me is the kind of adage I think about is the turtle, right?
21:36
SPEAKER_02: I mean, turtles, when they protect themselves, pull into their shells and whatever else.
21:40
SPEAKER_02: You see that in corporations, you see that I've seen it in my own life where you're absolutely spot on.
21:45
SPEAKER_02: I might have had a better idea or a better way to do things, or I might have seen something that we could have fixed to make ourselves better, more efficient, more effective.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: But I was going to shut up because I'm going to pull my head back into my shell and I'm not going to get it chopped off because I've Watch the guy to my right and the guy to my left get knocked down because they tried to do something different.
22:05
SPEAKER_02: And you don't necessarily want everybody on your team to be innovating all the time.
22:09
SPEAKER_02: But boy, when innovation dies in a company and when you stop thinking about how to make things better, that is where rotten decays start to set in and your processes fail.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: And then when you have type A's, when you have great people, let's say you've done a great job hiring people, and then they walk into an environment where there is no innovation, where people are worried about where the leadership is transactional instead of transformational, the next thing that happens is good people start leaving.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: Those high performers go, you know what?
22:41
SPEAKER_01: I can be valued better somewhere else.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: When all of your employees have that well-heeled, perfected resume sitting in their desk drawer.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: And when you find out that they've been sharing it with other organizations on a regular basis, looking for that better opportunity because they don't feel valued in your organization, that's when you're not living by the golden rule.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: And the foundation is not a foundation of trust.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: People feel unseen, they feel undervalued, they feel unfairly treated, politically trapped.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Like my brother, my older brother worked at a large defense contractor, and he had a boss who, after he had been with him for about six months, that boss said, I see you as the biggest threat to my job.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: And so what did my brother do?
23:22
SPEAKER_01: He immediately polished up his resume and he started looking for another place to work because he knew he was never going to get there.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: He was never going to be valued properly, and he knew that he was going to be stunted in his growth in that organization.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't that he was looking to take his boss's job, but he knew that his boss saw him as a threat instead of an asset, which meant that my brother saw his boss as a threat instead of an asset.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: That's not the kind of environment that you want to work with.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: When people start leaving, if they're disconnected from leadership.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: And so it's, you know, would I want to work for a leader where I don't want to be there, where I don't feel trusted?
23:57
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is no.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: So if you're sitting in a chair and you go, do I love working for my boss?
24:03
SPEAKER_01: And it's not that you always agree with your boss.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: It's not that you always see eye to eye with them.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: You shouldn't see eye to eye with your boss all the time.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: It's do I feel like he values me or she values me?
24:15
SPEAKER_01: Do I feel like I have upward mobility or I have room to grow, even if I'm staying in the same position?
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Do I have room to grow in this job?
24:23
SPEAKER_01: And if I don't, then I'm probably going to be looking for another position pretty quickly.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: Well, and so that hollows out an organization very fast.
24:31
SPEAKER_02: If you're highest performers, and I mean the law of supply and demand and economics all rules the market here.
24:38
SPEAKER_02: And so those that have the most skills and the most talent are the ones that are going to be the first ones to leave because they have other options.
24:44
SPEAKER_02: And so they will, you know, they'll all quickly leave town.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: And so if you find yourself, if you're a leader and you find yourself looking around the room at your organization, you go, Man, we have no high performers here.
24:55
SPEAKER_02: They're all just, you know, doing the bare minimum, whatever.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: And probably the answer to that is to not look at your people, but to look at yourself and find out what kind of cult T you've created that's driven away the highest performers.
25:08
SPEAKER_02: You know, that to me tells you, yeah, we've got two problems.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: Either one, you can't hire and you don't know who to hire, and so you can't find talent, or two, you found talent and they all left.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: And so both of those are leadership problems.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: I think that's a tough mirror to look in because I know a lot of times, you know, people go, Well, you know, it's not my fault, it's this, it's that.
25:28
SPEAKER_02: But I think if people did that real long, solid, hard look and started to think about whether they were using the golden rule and treating people as they really want to be treated, they might come up with a different age.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, really the outgrowth of that though, right?
25:41
SPEAKER_02: What's the outgrowth of the culture where all your people have left and all this other stuff?
25:46
SPEAKER_02: Well, it ends up being a place that nobody wants to work.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: When you talk about everybody leaving, your high performers may leave.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: And if you have the mindset that I only have deadbeats, I only have people who are doing their job, you also need to be looking at yourself because everybody has the ability to be an innovator.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: Everybody, not everybody is going to be that type A personality, but everybody has the ability to be an innovator.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: Everybody has the ability to be, if not a high achiever, a strong achiever, but they have to feel like they have within the organization, like they're being given the ability to do like, and they're valued as that high performer instead of just that rule following, I'm gonna show up for work and do my job, kind of an individual.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: And there are, I would say the percentage of people who are just gonna show up and do the bare minimum is very, very small because people like to be valued, people like to feel like they're making a difference, and so you have to help them to feel that way.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: And that's part of what the golden rule is.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have that, you've created a culture that's fear-based.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: And what does fear-based look like?
26:48
SPEAKER_01: Like we've talked about, you protect yourself, you hide mistakes, you wait for permission, you avoid responsibility, you do just the bare minimum, as opposed to that environment where you're living by the golden rule, and people feel trusted.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: They tell the truth, they take initiative, they accept responsibility, they solve problems, they want the organization to be better.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: They want the organization to be something even better than what the leaders have spelled out, and they're looking for, hey, how can we be better?
27:17
SPEAKER_01: Because they feel trusted and they feel a sense of ownership for that organization.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: Any other thoughts or examples that come to your mind on the golden rule and why it's so important and so foundational for an organization?
27:31
SPEAKER_02: I think you know, we've kind of talked it all over.
27:34
SPEAKER_02: I think it's all twenty the same thing.
27:36
SPEAKER_02: And you've said this over and over again that the golden rule is really that dividing line between good leadership and bad leadership.
27:43
SPEAKER_02: It's the basis, it's the foundation, it's the support structure that allows all the other gains that a leader wants to get out of his people.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: It's that thing that allows it all to happen.
27:53
SPEAKER_02: It's this force multiplier, it's what makes people combat effective, it's what makes an organization efficient and effective.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: It is the special sauce, for lack of a better term.
28:04
SPEAKER_02: The golden rule is the special sauce which makes everything else work.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: I agree with that.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think sometimes people shy away from biblical principles.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's in the Bible, so I'm not gonna talk about it.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to talk about religion.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: But what you're talking about, kind of like we said at the very beginning, you're talking about one of the oldest leadership principles known to man.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: I treat people as I would want to be treated.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: And in return, they're gonna treat me the way they want to be treated.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: And so overall, we have a better organization.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: So the golden rule, it's kind of like clear integrity, it breeds trust all around, but it has to start at the leader.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: And I'll kind of close by saying that leadership isn't measured by the authority you have, by the rank on your shoulder, or by the title on your door.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: It's measured by the trust you earn.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: Golden rule isn't soft leadership, it's discipline leadership.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: It's choosing principles over convenience and long-term trust over short-term game.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of times we treat people like crap because of short-term gain.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, I can get this quickly, so I'm gonna browbeat somebody or I'm gonna treat them poorly because I see the short-term game and it's very tangible.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna take that instead of focusing on that long-term trust, which is gonna give me greater rewards and greater dividends long term.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna challenge everybody in the audience to find one opportunity, or you can find more opportunities where you can live by the golden rule.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Find somebody that can't repay you and treat them as you would want to be treated.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: It can be a coworker, it can be a member of your family, it can be somebody that you run into at a bus stop.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: I really don't care.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: And I think you will see a difference in how they respond.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: And you may surprise them, and not everybody's gonna treat you great because they don't feel trusted.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: And somebody showing up just one time and treating them by the golden rule may not crack that shell.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: But I would say at least once do it.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: And if it doesn't work the first time, do it again.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: Do it again, and you're gonna see what a difference it makes in your relationships.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna see what a difference it makes as a leader, and that's where the real leadership begins.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you being here with us.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions, reach out to askdericnow.com and have a direct conversation with us about this.
30:13
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30:17
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30:26
SPEAKER_01: Better decision makers get better results.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're here for.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for being with us on Commander's Intent.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: So that's it for today's episode of Commander's Intent Podcast.
30:40
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30:45
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30:59
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