Dave Ramsey (24:10)
Managers, that's fine, you can start there. You can start there and do it. Do an off site with them and say, we're gonna establish who we actually are, not who we wish we were in a good way. These are the positive things that allow us when we're the best version of ourselves, this is who this company really is. Unless we're screwing up. Now, I'm not saying we're identifying our weaknesses. Everybody can do that. That's a different exercise. But when we are operating properly in our best selves, this is how we do our values. And These are our four values, our five or 10 values. I don't care how many you got, but write them down and work on them. It's actually a pretty emotional exercise. We've done it a bunch of times. But it clearly establishes then if something or someone is not aligned with that, they can't stay until unless they get aligned. So you're opting out by you're saying, I'm not willing to do that, then you're opting out. You're making a decision to not be here anymore. And instead of saying to people you need to do this or you need to do that. Instead you say, this is who we are. If you want to be here, you can select to be here by doing this. If you don't do this, you're selecting to not be here. And that gives them the dignity of choice then all the way up and down the ladder. But yeah, you could start with your top 10 or 12 leadership, core leaders, whatever it is, 15, whatever, and do an off site for a day and do these exercises. It's not going to be perfect, but it's better than not doing anything. And you ask how to do it. It's going to be a large task. You're going to do it over and over and over again for as long as you operate. And it'll get more and more defined and more and more clear. More and more people will have a history in this discussion. And then you change your onboarding, you change your hiring to match up with those values and say you're not a cultural fit, this person doesn't fit here culturally because they don't think like we do. They don't want to do things the way we do them. And so you're not a Wii, you're not going to get to be a we, we're not going to hire you. And that changes then because now you're putting people in there that already are aligned and they're easily going to do it. So it'll probably take you five years of messing with this pretty regularly and constantly with hydrostatic pressure to get the, to get the, to get the needle to move. And, and I think you can do it. I think you, I got to tell you, it's gonna, it's gonna be a hard task, it's a doable task, and again, it's worth the trouble because it creates the cleanliness in the environment to where people can know what is expected, know what's safe, know what the guardrails are. And I can go 100 miles an hour as long as I stay inside those guardrails, but I can't go two miles an hour if I get outside them. And so trust has increased, relationships are deepened and productivity goes up. Speed by which you get things done goes up. So it's worth all the trouble. But man it, you know what you're setting out to do and you're being wise about how you're analyzing it and you, you've identified the variables that are against you. But I think you can do it. And, and I, again, I do think it's worthwhile to pull this off. So if I'm. You have at it, brother. Thanks for calling. Our question of the day is from Austin in North Carolina. Dave. My team has multiple generations working side by side with different expectations about work, communication, and leadership. How do you lead across those differences without playing favorites or losing your core culture? Their expectations about work, communication, and leadership are not a concern. That's a nice way of saying, I don't care what their expectations about those things are. What I care about, Austin, is what your expectations are. My expectations, as the owner of Ramsey, about work is that you do it. We have work ethic. We roll up our sleeves. We get crap done. We work at work, and you work while you're at work. You're not checking your personal Facebook all day long. And so I don't really care how old you are or what generation you are or whatever, you know, whatever influences you had. That's irrelevant. My expectation is that we work. My expectation about communication is that we do a lot of it all the time. Even when it's uncomfortable, even when it's a uncomfortable conversation, a conflict. We just communicate, communicate, communicate, communicate. We talk all the time. To be unclear is to be unkind. And I don't care if you're 22 or 42 or 62, I. I expect that, and I'm going to give you that, and I'm going to give it to you in equal doses. And so, you know, well, you need to be more gentle with the gen zers. No, you don't. You need to tell them the truth. And if they can't handle that, they don't need to be here. And, well, the boomers expect. I don't care. I'm going to tell them the truth. And if they can't handle that, they don't need to be here. Well, the exercise. I don't care. I'm sorry. I'm not being mean, but you're coming at this like you're gonna keep all of them happy, unique to their little nuanced crap in their generation. And I can take into consideration how they will hear it and how to communicate to them based on what set of ears and eyes they're using. Are they a boomer like me? Are they an X or a Z? A millennial? What are they? And, you know, so I can take that into consideration and how I'm gonna communicate with them, But I'm still going to say communication matters and leadership matters. Leadership still serve us. Leadership's not a position with a corner office. And I get to tell people what to do. That's Just a boss. Bosses push, leaders pull. Leaders job is to serve. Leaders job is to knock down blockers so the team can get their stuff done. Leaders job is to take care of the high conflict situations and solve them so that everybody can get back to work. Job is to shovel out the manure and keep the drama out. My job is to lead and show the way and have some vision. And that's my job, is to lead. And if they don't like that, then they shouldn't be here, regardless of their age. And so, you know, we don't. Well, you can't do that with millennials. Yeah, you can. You can if you hire millennials and they know that that's what's expected. We expect you to work. Well, millennials want to work from home. I don't care. Then they can work from home, but they can't work here because we don't work from home. We work from work. So this is who we are. And so they don't get to set it because of the. Set their expectations upon the organization. The organization sets its expectations upon them and they conform or they're not a we. And that's not being mean or dictatorial or autocratic or any of that. It's just being consistent. Because otherwise you're running a freaking beauty parlor and you're having to treat the blondes different than the redheads, and you can't keep up with all the freaking drama. You cannot figure this out. And it's like, okay, now I have to remember they're Gen Z. So I can't. I can't tell them the truth. Okay? They can't. You can't handle the truth. You know? Yeah, you know, you know, what is it? What is the deal here? Right? Of course you can handle the truth. And so maybe you're just not a grownup and we gotta talk to you about that. But I run into that with 55 year olds that are still emotional children. That's not unique to an age group. So, yes, the different age groups have different tendencies. They have different things that their generation remembers as important or not important. Seas and millennials, for instance, grew up with a magic wand in their hand. And so they're very abundance oriented because they think if they push a button on their phone, magic stuff happens. Like stuff shows up on their front porch, you can get the answer to any question. I mean, it's like a magic wand in their hand. They think anything's possible because for them, if they push a button, anything's possible. And that's the Good news. The bad news is they're impatient because they're used to Amazon delivering it that afternoon. They're pissed if it waits till morning to get there. And so some of these things take time. You gotta cook some stuff in the microwave, but you also gotta cook some stuff in the crock pot. Welcome to business. And so barbecue, micro barbecued microwave. There's no such thing as good. There's only one way to make barbecue right. Cook it long. And I don't care if you're a Z and you're impatient. You're used to Amazon Deli. If you want good barbecue, you gotta cook it all over the weekend. Smoke it to where the neighbor's dog is howling. That's when you get good barbecue. It's no micro beep is not the sign of a good micro. I mean, not the sign of good barbecue. Okay? That's not where it comes from. And that doesn't matter what generation you're from. But you might not understand that if you come from a generation that's used to having things instantly show up in your life. And so we just have to talk about it, that's okay. But I'm not going to reset based on their expectations of work. Otherwise there would be no work. I'm not going to reset based on their expectations of communication. I expect high levels of communication even when it's uncomfortable, and I deliver that. And I expect that out of everybody here, period. So I love this. This is cool. And we do not play favorites across generations in our core culture. Now, what I do look for across with generational differences is the strengths of a particular generation to add value to a project or a situation. For instance, I'm a boomer. I'm 65 years old. Digital. And phones are not native to me. A black rotary dial phone with a cord on Mama's Kitchen wall is native to me. Okay, so I don't get the way your brain works. If you grew up your whole life with a magic wand. And so if I'm producing a product that's going to be on a phone that's a digital product, I don't expect me to be the best person to add value to that. I expect someone who it's their native tongue, their native language, their native mindset to add value to that. And so I'm really looking for some Z's and millennials to be sitting in the room when I'm working on that project. And I really do care deeply about what they say. And some of us dinosaurs need to learn from them. Because we're working on a product that is native to them. If I'm publishing a printed book, a hardback book, that's one of those things that you read in if you haven't seen one in a while. And sometimes they're on your mother's coffee table if you haven't seen one in a while. If I'm doing that, I've produced between Ramsey personalities and me, some about 100 number one bestsellers. So I don't really need your opinion on that. I know my generation knows how to do that and that is native to me. Very easy for me to get my head around a book and book marketing and so on. Now it's marketed in a different set of venues. I have to deal with Amazon now. I have to deal with the fact there's hardly any bookstores left open. I have to deal with a bunch of other things. The stuff we did, the marketing processes that we used have changed. But building and writing and selling a hard back paper book is something I know how to do. So I don't mind the other people of my age group being in the room adding value to that conversation. And I might discount your knowledge if you think all digital is better because it's not always better. Sometimes it is. So anyway, that way. But who can add value to the project based on their generation and who has less to say about it based on their generation? I should have less to say about a digital product because I don't even know how the freaking things work. I have to have somebody hired to just fix the things I break. And so you know that I'm incompetent even though I own the place to do that. And I need to be aware of that and lean into the generation that it's native to. So that's one way I will acquiesce, if you will, to the generational thing. But otherwise they don't set the stuff here, we set the stuff here and they conform. All generations do equally. And there are no favorites other than you might be a favorite. If we're working on a project that you would, your generation would know more about than mine would or vice versa. So there might be a favorite that way, but that's not age discrimination. It's just actual understanding who has something to add value to the project and who doesn't. And so, you know, there you go. I mean, if you, if you're going to make really good biscuits and you were raised north of the Mason Dixon line, I don't know, I'm questioning whether you Know how to do that or not. So, you know, so we can discriminate based on that. That's a joke. You guys can write me letters later if you want. It's okay. But anyway, so whatever. I mean, Southern people do some things, Northern people do some things right. So there's stuff you can distinguish like that. But they don't get to set the tone of the core value and the core culture, and they don't get to set the tone of how we do things. They just get to add value within the framework of the tones that we set, and they conform to that. And they love it, by the way, because it's very, very clear. People just want to know where they stand. They don't want to be coddled. I take that back. Some people want to be coddled, but the people that work here don't want to be coddled. They just want to know where they stand. You don't fit in here. You're not a we if you want to be coddled. Because I just learned how to spell coddle a few weeks ago. So it just doesn't. It's not an option. It's not something we do. So we love you. We want. We want to work with you. We love. We want to get the best from you. We want to hear your ideas. We want you to plug in, use your stuff, and we want you to be learning and adding value and communicating and working your butt off and so on. And leaders serve. Leaders aren't to be served. As Simon Sinek says, leaders eat last, not first. And if you don't believe Simon Sinek, it's in the Bible, too, by the way. So, yeah, I think it's fine. But I think you're going at the question wrong. Is my point, Austin, is we're gonna set the tone and let them conform. And we're gonna do that with a lot of humor and a lot of fun and a lot of clarity, but also unbendable, inflexible on that. When you work here, you work, I work. When I'm in the building, I'm working. I'm not screwing around. And so my team has no question that I'm going to be on time and I'm going to get the production stuff done, and we're going to do whatever we got to do. And they know I'm going to do it. They know I'm going to show up. They know I'm going to do my part. So they do their part. And it's not. It's just respect is all that Is. And so that's cool. It's a good question, Austin. Thank you for writing that in. I like it. Good, good, good. Little rant. You let me get on there. I like it. A lot of fun. If you're a small business owner working 60 hours a week, you gotta check out Entree Leadership Elite. Elite has the AI powered tools that help you scale without burning out. When you join, you'll answer two prompts and get a custom growth plan your team can start executing right away. Plus, you'll have the tools and rhythms that keep them laser focused on what drives growth so you don't have to carry it all by yourself. Go to entreeleadership.com elite or click the link in the show Notes to see how it works. If you like what you're hearing, guys, we could use your help. You could share the show, you could follow subscribe. Whatever those buttons are there in front of you, push one of them. Makes a big difference around here. Push that little five star one right there after all the five stars. All the stars. Not half the stars. Not part of the stars. All the stars. And leave us a nice note. All those things help move the show forward on the algorithms and the various platforms and. Or so I'm told by the smart people. And it's working because a bunch more of you are listening than used to. So thanks for hanging out with us. We appreciate you being here. Alex is in Birmingham. Hey Alex, what's up?
