Loading summary
Transcript93 lines
- [00:05]
A
Welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co founder John Kaplan, the show goes behind the scenes with the people who have been there, done that, and seen the results. If you enjoy our content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. Revenue Builders is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Find us@ForceManagement.com Enjoy today's episode.
- [00:44]
B
Thanks for joining us for this special episode of the Revenue builders. I'm John McMahon. In this episode of Revenue Builders, we look back on some of the golden nuggets our special guests shared with us on leadership. There were so many fabulous takeaways on leadership that this will just be the first of many episodes where we highlight these leadership takeaways. First, let's listen to Cedric Pesch, CRO@MongoDB, where he discusses two things. First, the importance of finding a vision for the team versus the monotony of the daily grind. And second, transactional leadership versus transformative leadership. Hey Cedric, so you've had an amazing career so far and, you know, still more to come. You're the VP of Europe for, you know, four software companies. Now the CRO at MongoDB. Can you talk about the biggest challenge that you've faced? Moving from the VP role to the CRO role.
- [01:53]
C
Yes. From the VP of Europe to the CRO job. Yeah. So I guess that, you know, the size, I mean, there are different elements right here. There is an element which is around moving to playing in your backyard and knowing your, you know, being two hours away from everyone in your team and running a team of 200, 300 people to moving into global, global role all across the world with many different cultures and, and frankly speaking, not touching everyone every week any longer. Right now you've got like 2,000 people. And it didn't happen overnight, surely, but in the us, in Indonesia, in Indonesia, in, you know, Australia, in India, in Europe, everywhere in North America, in South America. So all of a sudden the size of what you do is different and then the complexity is clearly a little different. So all of a sudden you realize that you can't manage those teams in the same way that you used to manage the previous one. Right. You have, you know, multiple layers of leaders underneath you. So there is, there is also this, this concept of, you know, how am I going to still influence people on the global scale when I don't touch them Everywhere, every day. And where it's not only about me running a playbook and putting together a couple of trainings and deciding what the ideal customer profile is. Or it's like a bigger problem which is like, how do I set a vision, how do I make clear what we stand for in terms of values as a team, so that people have a sense of orientation on a global scale without you being there every day, whether they are ICs individual contributors or first line leaders or second line leaders or whatever, that working on that aspect of the job has been quite, quite important. Quite a difference. The other aspect is the complexity because as you mentioned before, it's one thing to manage a direct enterprise software sales team, it's another one to have multiple channels starting from product LED growth channels, partners, hyperscalers, which are both fry ins and, and partners and, and once upon a time enemies, SI is all over the world and, and more. So all of that complexity, all of a sudden you start to have to deal with that and integrate these different channels so that they work together and not against each other. That was a big difference as well.
- [04:38]
D
Yeah.
- [04:39]
B
And you, you touched on this a little bit. But you've done an amazing job getting your team to bond as one and then buy into the team's purpose. So which I think is really important because a lot of people are always sitting back asking, you know, why am I doing what I'm doing? Especially during COVID a lot of people ask that.
- [04:58]
C
Yes.
- [04:59]
B
Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about why purpose is so important to the team and the motivation of the team?
- [05:06]
E
I think it starts from you.
- [05:08]
C
Meaning like you, like there is a moment where you wake up in the morning and it's so hard that you, you know, you, you ask yourself, why am I doing what I'm doing? And when the moment you start asking that, then you start needing to dig into yourself and you know, do some introspection to come up with answers. Right. And sometimes you don't come up with answers and therefore it's too hard and not worth, not worth it. And some, sometimes you do come up with answers. Then from the moment you come up with answers for yourself, then it's about how do I articulate that to the rest of my team? And are others feeling the same thing?
- [05:46]
D
Because you do push.
- [05:47]
C
The more indexed you are on execution, the more you push your people to the brink, the more they do ask that question to themselves as well. They are intelligent, right?
- [05:56]
B
Sure.
- [05:56]
C
And they are obviously very intelligent. So then it's really about doing the Work together with the team to come up with collective answers, personal answers to these questions. Why as a VP of North America am I doing what I'm doing and working 60 hours a week and going through the pain that it takes to do that? What is motivating me? And as a team, what values do we stand for? If we say we stand for excellence and innovation, what does that mean practically for the people working around us, what's in it for them? How are they going to benefit from us building an excellent, outstanding team or us being committed to innovation in their day to day work? So all these work of, you know, let's say team introspection as well as personal introspections as senior leaders, I think it's very important because, you know, now I start seeing the world of cell leaders in three buckets, right? You've got the, you've got the sales leaders who promise a great paycheck and a couple of trainings and in 2021, frankly, these leaders fall in the category of those which don't really know what they are doing. So let's buzz them and focus on the others, right? But the remaining ones, you have these two categories. You have these leaders which are super sharp on defining the messaging and the ideal customer profile, the market. You want to focus on the recruiting profiles and productivity models and all these things which are very important tools, but they are all execution oriented, right? And then you have this. And, and if you have this is very, very, very important to excel at that from the execution standpoint. But if you don't go beyond that and don't explain your people, why is it that they need to excel at these, at, on that side of things, you know, sales execution rather than qualification and so on, so forth. Then they, they really quickly start feeling that this is a grinding organization all focused on execution and not. And the next thing you know is that they are here exclusively for.
- [08:14]
D
A.
- [08:14]
C
Paycheck which needs to be there anyways, but it's never enough. There is a moment where if it's only about the paycheck, the team starts saying, I can't take that, it's too hard. At least if you pretend to excel. And this is where I think the third category of leaders come, or at least sales organizations come, which, you know, really work on, on defining that vision. And it's quite a journey. You don't, you don't show up, you know, a morning and you say, here's I'm going to write my vision on the wall or my team vision on the wall. And then I'm going, it's a little like, and if you don't do that, it's a huge waste of energy in the, in it. Like it's a little like, you know, Martin Luther King saying I have a dream. And then turning to, to the crowd and saying, and my dream is that you guys are all going to make a lot of money. Just a little like that, right? It's odd, it's weird. Right? There is this whole process of working together in order to come up. I have a dream. Let's define that dream. Let's see if this is authentic. It's us or it's someone else, you know, dream. And how are we going to execute on it and how is this connected to tomorrow morning and what we are going to do tomorrow morning? That's a lot of work.
- [09:33]
F
And your point is on the dream part, it, when you're the leader, it's got to be a big enough dream that people are going to be willing to sacrifice. People are going to be willing to put in the grind. People are going to be willing to do things that they just normally wouldn't do. So the dream has to be big enough and meaningful enough.
- [09:56]
C
There is this quote from this French author, John, which, which used to say that if you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them task and work only, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
- [10:18]
F
Yeah.
- [10:19]
C
So, you know, it's when you define the sales process, when you train people on it, on qualifying things, these are all incredibly important things to do without which there is no way to build anything. Right. Like it's, it's about gathering the wood and, and, and, and giving the task and so on and so forth. Right? You make them competent at doing that, but the more you grind them on that, the more you put excellence in execution, the more you need to remind them every day about the, what the immensity of the sea looks like. Otherwise those guys are, after a while, they are like, you know, I'm screw driving. I've been screw driving for four days here, five days. I, I, I forgot why I was, what I was building, right? I don't even understand. I was building a ship and I was supposed to sail on the endless ocean one day. So as a leadership team, you do need to be able to define what that endless ocean looks like and how are we going to get there all together and what does a ship look like and keep that vision always connected. I Remember, I'm going to make you a specific example. I remember at sales call. So I had been used to sales call with Carlos and when Carlo will get me. So first of all, he will never, we will never get in the sales call, even with the chief executive of Ferrari without me in the room. And not only that as a rep. Right. So Carlo will always consider that the most important person in the room is a rep. And he was right. In a sales driven organization, the most important people in the room is a rep. Not only that, but every time I will get in that room, he will give me a lot of credit in front of the customer and try to empower me and to help me, put me in the driver's seat. Because he understood that this is about developing me. It's not only about being successful in that specific sales call. And he will always be there to rescue the situation if needed, but he has the maturity to do that. Then I move into another leader a few years later and I g. I go into this third sales call. The guy was head of femia and we, we get in the call, we sit in front of those guys and that my leader takes over the conversation, introduce himself, gets everyone introduced, ran the whole meeting. We go out and I never say a word. He gets out of the meeting and he goes like, how did he tell, he asked me, how do you think it went? Right. And I told him, well, it sounds like you just promoted yourself into being the rep on this account. Because I'm not, I'm not going, I'm not going so good. I'm not going to, I'm not going to follow up on that. Right. So I have zero empowerment. Customer doesn't understand. So that's. So you see that, you know, depending on the mindset of the leaders that can very little things can really hurt someone in the way you.
- [13:01]
F
In the.
- [13:02]
C
Way you, you behave or not.
- [13:05]
F
And sometimes, Sedik, what happens is for sellers listening. Let's say you're working for, you know, a great leader or just a leader that is a great seller. So many times what I see sellers do is they abdicate their power to the sales leader and they give that sales leader no choice. So they don't prepare. It's like Johnny Mac, we call it. Then a miracle happens. Let me go on a sales call with Johnny Mac. And then a miracle happened.
- [13:35]
C
Yeah, exactly.
- [13:37]
F
And what happens is left to our own devices. I've been on the other end of this. Left to our own devices. Of course, I'm going to take over a Sales call, of course I'm going to execute or what have you. And then what happens is it's very difficult for that seller to get that relationship. They've abdicated that relationship to their sales leader and then vice versa. The sales leader that doesn't do a good job of empowering the seller takes over in a sales call. You have a very difficult time giving it back to that seller. So I think what you just hit on there is don't either either role that you have, do not abdicate your role to somebody else.
- [14:20]
C
Yeah, there's another Joe coming back on the John's question around what piece of all your question or one piece of advice you would give to a younger another way I would say it is who I've seen many times. I'm curious to get your guys opinion. Slow success builds character and fast success builds ego.
- [14:39]
B
I think that's true. Very true, very. What you saw with what Carlo did with you is he was more enamored with the process of your development and not the short term result of going and getting a deal. And that's really the difference between, you know, a great leader that's there to develop their people versus somebody that's only there trying to, you know, transact and get a deal. The other part that you brought up, Cedric, is, you know, some leaders, it's very, your relationship with them is very transactional. Like I asked you to do this in return for you to get you some money and you not be penalized versus what Carlo was doing with you is very transformative. He was trying to transform you from this young salesperson into, you know, an amazing salesperson. It's really a big difference between, you know, transactional leaders and transformative leaders.
- [15:40]
C
Yeah, completely agree with that.
- [15:43]
B
Now, Anthony Anderson, a war veteran that was deployed twice during the Iraq war. Anthony's story was the focus of the documentary Almost Sunrise where Anthony and a fellow veteran walked from Milwaukee, Wisconsin all the way to Santa Monica, California, 1600 miles to raise awareness for PTSD. In this segment, Anthony focuses on his emotions and the key characteristics required during the chaos of chaos of war like flexibility, agility and the ability to adapt. Anthony also describes how individuals have the need for a purpose and a value driven mission. Even though Anthony figured this out on his own without leadership. Purpose and value driven mission are what great leaders give their teams. Anthony also describes the need to understand the why behind the things he does, not just the what to do and the how to do it. The why is what most people need to understand from their leaders. When they're required to perform a task, and it's what great leaders find a way to give their people, to keep them from the everyday monotony of tasks.
- [16:57]
E
When I went the first time, I was 21 years old. I turned 22 when I was in Iraq. When I went the second time, I was 24. I turned 25 while I was in Iraq. So I was a pretty young man. Um, I think some of the things that I took away, certainly in the first time, much earlier in the war, with a different kind of mission, how much chaos is surrounding you and how little control you have over these things, but how ultimately, like, you have to make decisions. Like, you have to be willing in those moments to do it, because otherwise, like, you can't be stagnant. You have to go with the flow, and you have to be flexible, and you have to, you know, be agile and adjust, but you have to make decisions. You can't wait always for somebody else, because they may be, like, processing, but everything around is very dynamic. So you have to be willing to say, like, this is what we're doing. We're moving in this direction. And then ultimately realize, I can always pivot if I need to, but I can't stay where I am. I think some other things that I learned when I was deployed, there is this big need, I think, for people to be understood. But at the same time, like, the flip side of that same coin is to truly not be misunderstood. And so I saw a lot of people that were going through traumatic events with me that were not willing to speak about what it was that was happening. And I don't know if it's because they were still processing it or if they just wanted to kind of, like, put up a front. And so what I mean is, you're young, and you see a roadside bomb go off on a vehicle full of people that you know, but you can't talk about being afraid or what that was. And so I think I learned very early that people want to be understood in one way and seen in one light, but they also don't want to let on what actually allows people to get to know them. Like, in that moment, I was terrified, or in that moment, I didn't know what to feel. And so I think I learned pretty quickly that it was important to be able to figure out and understand what it was I was doing, because when I came home the first time, I didn't really know how to process that. But the second time, I was like, I'm gonna go speak to somebody. Even If I feel fine, because now I've recognized the need to do this. I also saw just like, economically, what a tremendous waste of resources you would see just because people. It was like throwing so much away. It was like, oh, here's we're gonna go do this now. And there was so much time and so much energy and so much effort where people didn't know what the purpose was that they were doing. Because you'd get like, mission creep. Like, this is what we're doing. And then it would change. You know, we're winning hearts and minds. We're finding weapons of mass destruction, and then we're doing this, and we're doing this. And so it was very hard to find purpose. And so I recognize too, that one thing that motivates me is purposeful work. Understanding the mission and the values and like, the why behind things, not just what and how we do it. I also, I think just to kind of tie a bow around it, I think I also kind of discovered, boy, how many people were affected by what was happening that were actually living the life, but whose decisions were being made by the opinions of others that weren't that had no vested interest and how much resentment it was building up in people like, of my generation because they were going and doing these things and they would come back and they would hear everyone's opinions as to what we were doing, but those people were totally disconnected from it.
- [21:01]
F
Yeah.
- [21:01]
E
So I found that it was very important to be able to communicate and tell your story because otherwise other people's opinions will overtake it.
- [21:09]
D
Can I go back and touch on.
- [21:10]
B
A couple of things that you said, Anthony?
- [21:12]
C
Yeah.
- [21:12]
D
So please, on the chaos thing, and.
- [21:16]
B
You have to make decisions and you've never seen this type of chaos before in your life. And you have to instinctively almost know what to do. So did you feel like, hey, I'm starting to learn to trust my intuition to make these decisions? What were you learning about yourself that allowed you to trust yourself in this.
- [21:37]
E
Yeah.
- [21:37]
B
Situation.
- [21:39]
E
I think you learn to trust those people that are around you because, like, we all wear the same patch.
- [21:46]
G
Right.
- [21:46]
E
So you got the American flag patch, and then you've got your unit patch. And even when you're not necessarily like, you don't always like one another. Right. It's just like when you're working with somebody, it's like you're collegial and stuff, but maybe you're just personality wise, you don't vibe or whatever, but you know, but you know that when things go sideways, that person will have my back and I will have theirs. And it's not just because we wear the same patches on our, you know, on our sleeves. It's because we're doing this together. And it's my responsibility to take care of you, and it's your responsibility to take care of me. And I think what I ended up really trying to do in those moments where it was very chaotic was trust that those people would remember, like they were responsible for me and they would trust that I was responsible for them and that we would take care of one another. That my own self interest was really kind of rooted in making sure that everybody else was okay. I know that there's always this con, you know, this kind of perception of like, mom, dad, apple pie. When you're deployed, it comes down to, I am responsible for the people around me and they are responsible for me. And so the chaos that surrounds you when it drives you to make decisions, it's really like, what is the best decision for those people around me? Because I want them to feel comfortable making the best decision for me too. It's mission focused. But we all recognize that we need each other to accomplish the mission.
- [23:22]
B
So, Anthony, the other thing I wanted to touch on is, and I'm paraphrasing here, what you might have said is if you don't have a clear cut mission for what you're doing and why.
- [23:33]
D
You'Re doing what you're doing, then you.
- [23:34]
B
Don'T have this purpose. So on one hand you have this, you know, it's not reality of, you know, people want to believe America, mom, apple pie, all that type of stuff. And then you're just trying to stay alive and protect the backs of your teammate in this chaotic situation. So there had to be this conflict between. This is what I thought I bought into, but this is what I really bought into.
- [24:01]
D
And now I got to decide that.
- [24:03]
B
I'm going to buy into this chaotic situation just to stay alive. Right. Could you talk a little bit about that conflict that had to happen in yourself?
- [24:12]
E
Sure. And I think that that's ultimately then what we kind of discover and discuss within almost sunrise. Right. This kind of. This kind of conflict of what you're being told and what you're supposed to act on, but then ultimately, like what you're observing and what you're feeling. And so some of the chaos of war is not just what's happening outside, it's what's happening, you know, in your heart and in your mind. And so all of these things where the military, it's all Mission focused and, you know, value driven. It's like, here's the values that make you who you are, and we believe what we believe together. And as a result of that, we can push through and accomplish these missions. But again, like, when the mission creep sets in and all of a sudden you keep having to change one degree here, two degrees here, three degrees here, where you started and where you are, it's very.
- [25:06]
C
It's.
- [25:07]
E
It's hard. It's hard to reconcile within, you know, within your own mind. And then you begin to think like, I'm away from my friends, I'm away from my family. I'm away from everything that's familiar to me, and I can't tell you why, but I'm having to do all these different things and I might die and I might have somebody that, you know, I'm responsible for get hurt or killed. I don't even know what it is I'm doing. But I have to keep going, you know, through the motions. In the documentary, one of Tom's friends, Emmett, he talks about how generally wars, you know, have been contextualized in the United States through the lens of World War II and how there's this bad guy and we're going to go, you know, free, you know, the oppressed, and we're going to do these things and over and over. But then when you actually start going into, and you're one of the actors within it, you start to see these things that are not aligned with that. And so that creates this conflict within you. So the mission driven and purpose driven and why driven stuff, it's just when you're a young man and you're kind of finding yourself in these things or a young woman and you're finding yourself in these things, you can't compare them to anything because war has no peer. So I've used the example in the past on, like, the first time you break up with a girl or a significant other, you feel like the entire world is coming, you know, down on you and you'll never recover. And then you get into another relationship and that one ends and you start to learn how to cope and deal with and stuff like that. Well, in war, there's nothing that compares to it. So when you're trying to figure out, you know, how to navigate through that chaos, there's not a lot to fall back on with comparables to say, like, oh, in this situation, I behaved like this, or I coped like this. You just find yourself in a completely new, uncharted set of territories every day.
- [27:02]
B
I thought that was great inspiration from Anthony. How compelling is it that Anthony, at the age of 25, boiled it down to the core of what people need as individual contributors? Now let's hear from Bob Brennan, the former CEO of Veracode and CEO of Iron Mountain, describing keeping people from themselves.
- [27:25]
G
Yeah, you gotta keep people from themselves, right? It's really easy to over identify with whatever you're doing and say, you know, we've got a tiger by the tail. Or, you know, I always. I always think of the dog chasing the fire truck. Like, that's fine. But then when you have a fire truck in your mouth, what do you do? Right? And to me, it's about just holding up the mirror. The way people. I'm very grateful that enough, enough people in my career held up the mirror to me, saying, you sure you want.
- [27:53]
C
To chase that buyer's truck?
- [27:54]
G
Or now that you got it in your mouth, what do you want to do with it? And so that you keep people from getting over optimistic or over pessimistic. Because it's a thin line, right? Like a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning that exists between fear and greed or optimism and pessimism. And you want to stay as balanced as possible. It's just probably not as good or as bad as you think.
- [28:18]
B
When we asked others about Bob's great leadership style, they said that he was ruthlessly candid and also a very compassionate leader. Now, Bob admits to not loving the word ruthless, so he clarifies being ruthlessly candid and discusses how it's important to strike a balance when you are in a leadership position.
- [28:40]
G
I guess ruthlessly candid's tough because ruthless is a tough word. Yeah, I think the issue there, John, is that I'm ruthless if it's about your behavior. So if you're just punishing people and not pulling when you could be pulling, right? Being pessimistic when you couldn't be optimistic, coming into a room and taking energy out of the room versus giving energy to the room. That's when I'm ruthless. I'm like, this is not working. This does not work.
- [29:17]
B
Or you know that person so well.
- [29:19]
D
Like the meeting you were describing in.
- [29:21]
B
A presentation, you just knew something was wrong because you knew that they weren't.
- [29:25]
D
Up to their own standard.
- [29:28]
G
But when, when people start taking the energy from the other people around them, uh, Mac is when I get ruthlessly candid, I'm like, this isn't working for me. Uh, Europe. Talking down to people walking into a room and making everybody feel like shit. Whatever it might be, hitting people against each other, that's when I get ruthlessly candid. Um, it's interesting. I was once interviewing for a public board, and the chair asked me what I was like at my worst. And I was like, when somebody gets muscular, I respond in kind, which is not exactly the right response, but it is my response.
- [30:07]
C
I just.
- [30:08]
G
I. I don't. I don't think there's any need to beat people up. If you have an. If you have precise prioritization and an objective view to understanding a function's performance, you should be able to let positive inquiry do the heavy lifting. And then I can see Bob's at.
- [30:25]
B
The bottom of the stack, right?
- [30:26]
D
Bye.
- [30:26]
B
Bye, Bobby.
- [30:27]
G
Like. Like, we know that the bottom leads, so it's okay. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person. I might be a better fit somewhere else.
- [30:36]
B
And finally, here is J.D. brookhart, veteran football coach and former NFL player. He coached Division 1 football at the University of Akron and the University of Colorado. Here he discusses three leadership issues. First, building trust with the players on your team. Second, the effect of one bad character on the morale of the entire team. And finally, driving individuals to give an additional effort, what JD Calls three more.
- [31:05]
F
Yards, you know, for coaching success. And what have you found are some of the keys to coaching young players to be successful?
- [31:21]
D
Yeah, well, it was an eye opener for me. I learned a lot. Obviously, the sales background I had with Xerox and with John and Parametric were extremely valuable, but learned some quick lessons early in coaching. And I had a young kid from the inner city of Cleveland that I was coaching, big six foot four, 240. And we were in our beginning workouts when we first got there, trying to change the culture. And I said something to him, and he looked at me, I said, hey, come on, trust me, John. And he looked at me, he goes, I don't trust anybody with my mom. And that's when I realized you really had to invest, care and let these guys develop some trust in you. We went on that first game we were playing in that fall. I remember standing in the national anthem next to John, and it was one of my greatest moments in football. It's my first time I'm coaching legitimately with these college kids. He puts his arm around me, he goes, hey, Coach, I trust you, man. And so it really. It really changed the way I approached these kids. I just assumed because I'd been in the NFL that they were going to take my knowledge as the word wasn't the case, you know, So I think developing that trust and really caring for those kids on a different level is a big piece of it. And then also, once you get to that point, you really. I think it was Tom Landrich said something like, you know, a coach to somebody who tells you what you don't want to hear, shows you what you don't want to see, so you can become what you probably always dreamed of. Wow. And that was kind of my motto. Here's what I'm doing. That's nothing personal, but I'm going to show you where you're making mistakes. I'm going to talk to you about those things. And then the other thing I learned from one of the best manners I've ever had was a constant, consistent. Are you telling them the same things repeatedly over and over, but it becomes drilled into their psyche. So those are some of the things I felt really helped me help these young guys succeed.
- [33:23]
B
So, J.D. that happens with a lot of sales leaders, too, where they have a team, and I think they believe that, hey, I'm now the sales leader, so everybody should just trust me and do what I say and do what I tell them to do. And can you walk through a little bit of how you actually believe you built that trust with that player?
- [33:44]
D
Oh, well, you got to listen, right? I mean, everybody's got a life. You don't know what's going on in that life in that particular moment. So I think you got to be attentive to those things. But I think you got to do some things from a real personal nature, whether that's having all the receivers over for a barbecue at the house, that they see at a different environment, you know, might be taken out of your employees for dinner or drink, but they need to see as a person, not just as that sales leader, that coach. I think that helps the bonding piece of it to develop with that group, you know, and then you find those times where you can get them one on one and find out more about them, and you help them through some situation. These kids came from some. A number of them came from some real difficult backgrounds. And, you know, to do things to help them become a better man was a big part of what I thought I was doing and why I wanted to be at the collegiate level.
- [34:38]
B
Yeah, in sales, we talk about the fact that you need to almost get intimate with some of your people. And the way to do that is, you know, you're on a plane, you're in a train, you know, you're in a car. Use that time not to look at Your phone. But to get to know the person so you know what drives them, where their. What their background was, what their motivations, fears, and those types of things are in order to build that type of trust.
- [35:04]
D
Absolutely. I had a young man that was a talented, talented kid. He actually won the Blitnikov Award as the top receiver in the nation as a sophomore. And just through spending time with him, I made him come in early every time we were having receiver meetings, just because I knew he couldn't take corrections in front of the group. He had to do it prior to you gloss over it in front of his peer group. And he reacted much better that way. So you have to take those things into account because you're dealing with a lot of different, diverse personalities.
- [35:37]
B
Yeah, See, that's jb. I think a lot of new leaders, especially brand new sales leaders, believe that everybody's just like they are. So everybody's a cookie cutter and they treat everybody the same. And then what you're really bringing out here is that every single player is completely different. You really got to get to know those players in order to be able to motivate them.
- [36:00]
D
Without a doubt. I mean, that you got to know yourself, too. You know, I thought I was certain way, and we had a sports psychologist come in and spend some time with the coaching staff. And he really helped me understand how I operated, what motivated me. You know, I didn't want success, I didn't want money. I didn't. My motivation was a fear of failure, plain and simple, and then would work to make sure I didn't. And so, you know, he taught us how to really dig in and find out what got these guys going.
- [36:32]
B
Yeah, I think what you're also bringing out. One more point, Johnny. Sorry. Yeah, I think what you're also bringing out, which is really important, is it's not only you getting to know the players on your team, but it's your ability to understand your effect on those players, like what motivates you and how you might be coming across to those different players, because that's. That's really key in being able to motivate people.
- [36:56]
D
No, no question. You know, we. We'd always, you know, I shared those things with the players. What really got me going, what I was trying to do. And, you know, the model we always had in the receiver room was the difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer. And to create that culture and to motivate those kids, and there are different ways to achieve those things. So it's a fine mix. It's a fine mix, stirring it up, just getting it right on a consistent basis with a very broad group of young men.
- [37:28]
F
Let's talk a little bit about some of the things I'd love to hear your experiences about kids that you saw or people, it doesn't matter, in business or, or in football or what have you. You knew instantly they're going to add to the locker room and then kids that you saw that were going to give you a stomach ache, you saw their talent, but you saw stomach ache for the locker room. Could you kind of give us your experience of how did you work your way through that and, you know, not just go for the talent. You have to think about the impact of the talent on the team.
- [38:00]
D
Yeah, you know, that, that leads me to probably one of my biggest failures in my career. We had done some good things. So when I took over, University of Akron never had a league title in 115 years and hadn't been to, but I think it was one bowl game. So our second year we won the, won the league championship on the last play of the game, went to a bowl game and you know, we had trained the staff pretty well to recruit. We were beating Michigan State on kids, beating Kansas state, big Power 5 schools because of our success, because of the way our guys recruited. And that next year we came out, we had some young freshman boy that were big time players and we went down to North Carolina State. Chuck Amato had a really good football team and we beat North Carolina State at North Carolina State on the last play of the game. It was the first BCS went in the school's history. Wow. Well, from there it was a roller coaster. We lost to Central Michigan the next week, did some good things up and back and, and ended up missing a bowl game. And after careful reviewing the year, I went into my AD and I said I screwed up. I didn't keep character and chemistry part of the scheme. I took some kids that really are and I said I got to get rid of seven players, seven talented players if we're going to get this going in the direction we want again. And it's going to be a tough year next year, but I think it's the right thing to do. So very conscious about that. Everything I've done, everything I do since that point, it was just, you've got to understand that piece of. I mean, there can be a lot of guys that can help you succeed, but holy cow, if you don't look into them, they can bring down a locker room, they can bring down a Salesforce, they can really affect you in such a negative way. So that piece of it to me is, is just too important to ignore really. Probably the biggest mistake I've made coaching or business.
- [40:13]
F
But you had the courage to fix it. It sounds like you didn't languish in it. You fixed it right away.
- [40:18]
D
No, I mean it was so obvious to me and it just, it hurt me to the core that I missed that, you know, because those are things that I had been about. I got caught up in the hype and boy, is this going to look great. And you know what? It wasn't the right thing. And you know, shame on me for doing that. And you know that, that. But that goes to another point too. You know, as a first time head coach, you're going to go through those growing pains. I love it when I watch the industry and I see guys that hire second time guys like New England did with Belichick. You learn so much in that first head rule leadership role that you know, sometimes those guys don't succeed, but a lot of people then don't take advantage of that experience on those failures that they have.
- [41:07]
F
All right.
- [41:07]
D
And you see a lot of guys come back and just taken those lessons and elevated those, those sales forces those teams different level because of the time they had in that role. But they learned a lot.
- [41:19]
B
You can learn a lot more from your failures than you can from some of your successes.
- [41:23]
D
Sure, no doubt.
- [41:25]
B
Hey JD in your locker room before the players went out on the field, I think you used to have some motto up on the, up on the door. I can't remember specifically what it said. Can you do, can you talk to that?
- [41:40]
D
Yeah, we actually had a couple we always had in the locker room, practice locker room, in the game locker room. An old sign we stole from Boston College locker room. And it talked about a football game and basically said there were an average of 72 offensive plays. Each play lasted 3.8 seconds. That's 4 minutes and 12 seconds. You can't give five minutes of your best here in the next three hours to go shot. You know, you don't need to be in this locker room. Right. But give me five minutes of your day right now. Yeah, yeah. But we also had another one that was. Been very personal for me. I was having lunch with a reporter and we, we got to talk and he saw that I like quotes and different authors and things, and he led me to this guy named Nathaniel Darby. Nathaniel Darby was a guy in Colorado, which is where I'm from. So I guess maybe that hit a little bit of a note. But he, he found some gold on his land back in the 20s, and he went out and borrowed some money from family, bought equipment, tool. Finding a little bit of gold here, finding a little bit there. After a year, got a little frustrated, like, I can't do this. Sold it, sold the equipment and the land to some guy. That guy dug three more feet and get a vein of gold and was rich beyond his me. Wow. And Nathaniel Darby at that point said, never again. I will not stop. I'll go three more feet, whatever we do. And this guy became the national leading insurance salesman back in the mid to late 20s. So we took that three more feet model and we put it in and we said, hey, whatever anybody's doing, they're going 40 yards, there's usually a cone. We put that cone down and then we put another cone three feet past that.
- [43:25]
B
Awesome.
- [43:26]
D
We did that from spring through fall in every drill that we did. So we just said, these yards are going to add up. We're going to find a way to, you know, outwork people and do a little bit more than everybody else. It was really interesting. So we're playing Northern Illinois in this, in the Mac championship game, and it's fourth and 17 with 17 seconds left. And we call a play and we. We run a double post and our tight end runs good depth, and our quarterback pumps it in the front. Safety comes up. Our receiver outside, who ended up winning a couple Super Bowls with the Giants, sticks his guy and widens him to get away from the safety, goes over the top. Kid pumps and he throws deep to the kid. And the safety was on the tight end, ran around, turned back, was going after the ball. And we catch this thing sliding into the end zone with 10 seconds left in the game and going over this DB's hand by about three feet. Wow. Ended up winning 31, 30. Just. It was. It was phenomenal. Change the course of the school. We. We went up in admissions that year like 37%.
- [44:36]
B
Holy smokes.
- [44:37]
D
It was, it was. It was interesting. So, yeah, those were the two signs that you saw. And some of those things carry on to what I'm doing now.
- [44:47]
B
Great leaders move people to action. They build trust. They understand that it's team first, teammate second, and individual third. They find a way to give individuals a common reason for why they do what they do, and they paint the bigger picture, the grand outcome for all their hard work. So if you're leading an organization or a team or you're an individual contributor looking to lead one day. I hope you found some solid takeaways from these interviews. Thank you for listening to another episode of Revenue Builders.
- [45:22]
A
Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to check us out@ForceManagement.com.