Patrick: Hey everybody, welcome to Disruption Lab. I'm Patrick Leadden and I'm glad you're here. Now I've been on the road quite a bit lately as we're recording this session. I've been in Minneapolis, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta running executive sessions with leaders who are dealing with disruption in real time. And I want to be clear about what I mean by that. Not disruption as a buzzword, disruption as in my industry just shifted under my team. Or my team is stretched thin. Or I still have to show up and lead these people tomorrow morning. That's what we've been digging into in those rooms. What does it actually mean to have the opportunity to lead people and to choose to do it well in today's world? What are the challenges we're all facing? The ones that cut across every industry? And what are the ones that might be unique to yours? And maybe the most important question of all, where's the opportunity hiding in all of it? Those conversations have been some of the best I've had in a long time. Real leaders, real challenges, real situations, real opportunities. And honestly, those are my favorite kind of conversations to be part of. And today is going to be more of the same, and I'm excited about it. My guest is Doug Faber. Doug, along with Victoria and Jen, are my co-authors on our new book, Expect a Lot Care A Lot, How Six Critical Practices Create High Performing Teams. But that's the short version. Doug is a colleague, he's a friend, he's a co-author. And he's a whole lot more than any of those titles suggest, which is exactly why I wanted him on the show. So today, we're going to get to know his story, his take on what great leadership looks like, and some behind the scenes on what it took to write this book together. all of it is aimed at one thing, helping you become the leader you were meant to be. So with all that said, Doug, welcome to Disruption Lab. It's great to have you here. Hey Doug Faber, welcome to Disruption Lab.
Doug Faber: Thank you, Patrick. It's great to be here. It's my my pleasure.
Patrick: Great to have you here, my friend. You really are my friend. I mean, you and I have spent a couple years, two, three years now working on the Expect a Lot, Care a Lot book project. And we're excited to talk about that book. Before we even jump into that, I want people to know a little bit about the professional, the colleague, the friend that I know, Doug Faber. So let's tell us a little bit about yourself.
Doug Faber: Good. Well thanks Patrick. And again, it's great to be here. about me, it's always tough to go into that. You know, it it's it's so interesting to go backwards and say where you started and you building up from all of that. my journey started as an eighteen year old while I was going to college and When I think about my professional journey, and that's often what we're in this room for. So I'm going to that identity first, my professional journey. Yeah, I started loading air freight containers while I was going to school in a startup company in an industry that was just evolving out of deregulation. And before there was desktop technology. So I'm one of those people on your program that has enough age behind them to be able to speak to what it was like back in the olden days. But what was so fascinating is my whole career has come out of that disruptive point, government deregulation and then desktop computing emerging at the same time in a marketplace to create incredible value. And so when you're in an organization that is tiny and you're trying to survive and scrap to figure out how to compete against the behemoths. It's all got to be done based on value. And when you're and when you're in an environment that's fostering that kind of value creation because you're now deregulated, the speed and pace to which you fought to create both disruption and then solutions was a part of my background. And I just happen to work in the supply chain industry, the third-party logistics and supply chain industry. that's a fancy way of saying the freight industry or the warehousing industry or the many other forms in which different competitors came into the same space to uniquely solve problems for their clients. And for 25 years I played in that space. Like I said, I started loading air freight containers. I eventually became a CEO in that space and just loved the ride of the 25 years there. The the remaining 20-year arc of my career, this second chapter, has exclusively been with Franklin Covey. And I came to it in a very different capacity, not as a leader in the company, but as a consultant to our clients to help them to solve their really tough challenges. And I joined us to hopefully to grow what was time a burgeoning solution called the Four Disciplines of Execution. And eventually, as I was doing that work, I came to appreciate how much leadership played a role as a differential in creating performance. And so I've actually spent the last 15 of my 20 years at Franklin Covey focusing on client results through effective leadership. And so that's that's the arc of my professional career. so twenty five years in industry, twenty years working on leadership. And the combination of both of those, in and out, you know, working in systems and on systems is a unique capability that I bring to our client base. And that's kind of the arc of my professional career, but you know
Patrick: No, I love that. when you were eighteen and you were you were moving boxes around on a a loading dock somewhere, where were you located at? Tell folks where you were.
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah. I was in Southern California in Los Angeles. So I was at the LAX Airport at first and I was going to UCLA at the time. And then when I followed what was my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife of forty-three years, to UC Santa Cruz, I was driving what we call in the Bay Area over the hill to San Jose at our operation, loading containers and trucks there. You know, eventually you work your way off the dock and you work your way into the office. And there's a whole arc of the career that happened in that. But it was a really fun company. I was it was called Skyway Freight Systems. We were bought by the Union Pacific Corporation in the nineties, the ultimate sale. but I was employee number 27 when when we joined. I helped to open 33 of our operations, led sales and operations, field sales and operations during the arc of my professional career there. It was just, you know, it was an amazing PhD in business in in the time that I was there. It's just incredible.
Patrick: So when you were eighteen did you expect like I'm gonna stay in this industry or was it a just a gig you got to kind of make ends meet?
Doug Faber: Anybody who's worked in that industry gives you the whole once you once you once you leave, you can never you really can't leave that industry. It's one of those spaces that's very difficult to exit. I thought I would be there for a really long time. And when we got to the point in that 25-year mark, what's the full circle of the industry started commoditizing. So what went from value creation to almost every conversation diluting to, yeah, that's great, Doug, but so what's the price? It really got almost down to commoditization. And at that point,
Patrick: Yeah.
Doug Faber: I couldn't bring the next level of disruption that I could find. So I had to go reinvent myself. And that's when I chose to go do the work at Franklin Covey and change disrupted myself to create new opportunity for me and then also find that value creation for others. So I went out.
Patrick: I would imagine along the way, Doug, there was a ton of disruption for you personally as a leader, or even you know, starting off with you said you worked on the dock and then you kind of worked your way into the building and into a different role. And you probably even
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah, right. Uhhuh. Yeah.
Patrick: saw some of the kind of us and them type relationships that happened in organizations, right? There's there you there were the we're the we're the ones out here doing the real work and they're the ones over there, you
Doug Faber: Well, it it's a
Patrick: know, kind of dressing up in a nice shirt every day. But then you also saw as as kind of working your way through the ranks in an organization when you get to the CEO level, how people see you differently and how you might see yourself differently at times. Or maybe not. Maybe you're like, Hey, I'm that same guy and they're like, No, no, you're this
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: person now.
Doug Faber: Well, first of all, let's just go back to that first attention address that you bring. The the us versus them is a human dynamic that most people bring because well, I don't know what you find to be the root of it. Sometimes I find the root of it it's because people's voices aren't being heard. So what do they do? They create a louder voice for themselves because they're not being appreciated in some way. So there's that appreciation that's often lost. And so that tension gets created. But some people are just wired for drama. And so we have an us versus them and we look for that differences. Rather than value those those differences, we create our camps. And
Patrick: Yeah.
Doug Faber: therein is we start to create the distances in the organization that prevent us from doing enterprise level results. So
Patrick: Yeah, there's definitely a a bias that happens when you're like, There you go. See, I told you we were thus us versus them. I'll point to three things
Doug Faber: Yeah, exactly.
Patrick: that suggest it. And there's also a self-fulfilling prophecy too that comes from it too. If we continue to act like there's two competing forces here, guess what? It's gonna start to play
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: out like there's two competing forces. When you were going through, you know, talk about disruption. You mentioned deregulation. That's a disruption. It provided opportunity for you, but it also became
Doug Faber: yeah.
Patrick: challenging, I'm sure. And then commoditization. certainly
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: became a very disruptive thing for you. What did all those things teach you as a leader about maybe about the status quo? And
Doug Faber: Mm, wow.
Patrick: about about how to look at these changes as they come?
Doug Faber: Yeah, that that that's an interesting status quo is an interesting quo is an interesting point of of belief. There is no status quo. We are what did Dr. Covey say, the three constants in life or change, choice, and principles?
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Doug Faber: Change is constant. And so status quo is a a human created condition or belief around a can around around a period of time. The world is constantly changing underneath our feet, whether we recognize it or not. And so
Patrick: It's almost more like a a Polaroid snapshot of the moment. Just like just like many reports are and things like that we use in business, right? It's a
Doug Faber: That's right.
Patrick: it's a snapshot in a moment.
Doug Faber: Yeah, it's a balance sheet, right? It's a it's a it's a reflection on this point in time. Yeah, and so what what this what what status quo was teaching me back in my time was is that You have to be the person who's going to create your next change rather than that change being created for you. I always appreciated taking control of control what I can control, which was our choice, our strategy, our direction. And then more importantly, knowing that those strategies are going to be executed by the humans that I worked with, what was what did I need to do to create the conditions that allowed for them to choose to bring their best games?
Patrick: Hmm. You know, as we're
Doug Faber: In two.
Patrick: as we're as we're talking about this right now, Doug, I'm just thinking about like what you and I have done over the last couple of years with our colleagues Victoria and Jen and writing Expect a Lot, Care a Lot.
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: And I think there might be I mean you might think I'm crazy when I say this, but I think there might be something that almost came from that time in the past that I think is really in your mind these days. And what I mean by that is if I'm trying to tell you what I think is going on in your head, you can tell me if I'm crazy.
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: But I think working in the logistics field, in the field that you worked in, you We're probably you probably learned along the way that there's there are things called physical limitations. Like only so many boxes can fit in this truck. There's only much volume in the truck. But then
Doug Faber: Sure. Right. Sure.
Patrick: you learned about untapped human potential, unlimited potential. Because
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: I I I see you as definitely a guy, especially when it comes to people, it's like the glass isn't half full, it hasn't isn't half empty, it's full. And we
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: just gotta figure out how to tap into it.
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah. So where's the question in that?
Patrick: There is no question other than does that do you feel I guess there's a question in the head yeah, that's fair. see you're disrupted by disruption podcast. Yeah. there there's a question in that that am I seeing you the way you see yourself, I guess, in regards to you see like,
Doug Faber: No.
Patrick: hey, there's there's constraints in the world for sure, but
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: then there's also this amazing potential.
Doug Faber: Yeah, so here's the really fun part about that. And yes, I agree fully that it's not half full or empty. It's it's fully full all the time. Back to your back to your observation. And there are constraints, there are physical constraints, but the opportunity is how do we optimize at all times? And we're not just optimizing the constraint of like, are we leveraging every square capacity square inch of of the trailer? But are we leveraging the full capacity of our people that enable the ability to leverage
Patrick: Mm.
Doug Faber: the trailer? I think that those two things get lost. The human potential that's associated with it will be the differentiator that ultimately captures the value of whatever constraint you've got. someone's gonna argue with me right now, going, no, Doug, AI can do all of that for you. And while AI can assist with the math associated with it, the dynamics of the process change that has to happen to create that optimization, that the humans need to change about what they need to do, AI can't do that. That's a leadership challenge. AI can't repair. Mistrust or broken trust that's happened. AI can't get somebody engaged to do their job differently. It might be a tool that helps them to do their job differently, and it might lead to some level of engagement, but there's that human potential that only another human can help to elevate. And you know.
Patrick: Yeah, we you and I were just talking about that right before we started recording. we were we were reading back through the intro to the book. And for those who've ever written a book before, you know that there's a serious lag really that happens between the time you finish the book project and it actually ends
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: up on shelves and stores. And and in all f in all fairness, what happens in those type of moments is oftentimes you move on to other projects or you're doing other things. It's just not the thing you're living and breathing every day. Not the concepts of the books, but actually like
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: How you wrote it and specifically what it said. And it causes you as we're getting closer to launch, or people as you're listening to the podcast now when the book's out there, you you you almost have to refresh yourself a little bit around some things that you wrote and said. I I I didn't believe that until I started writing books and you see it yourself. And I remember talking to authors over the years, and there oftentimes they don't want to talk to you about the project they that that just came out. They want to talk about the one they're working on now because time passes, right? But as you and I were
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: going back and digging into the project that we worked that
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: became the book Expect a Lot Care a lot, the stuff you're talking about right here. The things that technology can do, the things that physics allows us to do when we're measuring the volume inside of physical structure and things like that, that
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: is different than the ability of leaders to, as you said, how do how they play a role in performance.
Doug Faber: Yeah, exactly. It and that therein is the opt the the ultimate opportunity. So so many times while I've been talking with, you know, CEOs and organizations around how are we gonna adopt AI and what's that gonna mean to our organization and our culture? And failing to address what's that gonna mean to our Leadership and our culture, and what's got to change, what are the things that we need to most focus on? They'll ask me, Doug, what do we need to most focus on? And we're right back to some of the more foundational principles associated with leadership.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Doug Faber: Clarity. I mean, as the world is shifting constantly underneath our feet, back to the status quo comment I made earlier. What is it? Our research institute said something like: 43% of the people feel like their world is completely changing underneath them. Well, that's 43% who are answering honestly. The other people aren't answering honestly, or that, or they're just not even recognizing what's happening to them. And so having the clarity around what's happening, who's gotta bring that. It's not being done to us. We are leaders who are in control of our domains to the best that we can. So what is the clarity of our team's purpose? What are our roles and our current goals? And why does it matter? More importantly, what's the impact if we don't deliver on this stuff? What are the the consequences to us as a a team and how does that fit to the larger organization? So often we get so busy, we forget, I need to bring people back to that.
Patrick: So true. You know, I was I was while we're as we're recording this, I had I had just recently done a series of roundtables with executives through Franklin Covey. And
Doug Faber: Mm. Yeah.
Patrick: these were mostly human resources, learning development, VPs of kind of in that space. And one thing I shared with them from Franklin Covey's research was that 70%, seven out of ten of employees feel like they live in just constant uncertainty.
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: It's just a defining characteristic of their work. And then I kind of go through with them. So what they need their leaders to do is they need leaders who can see opportunities during times of disruption and those type of things. And then I say, but here's a stat that should make you a little nervous. Seven out of ten people say that they live in uncertainty. That's a defining characteristic of their work. They need leaders who can do one, two, three, four of these things. But then that same report, leaders responded that 87% of them see disruption as something to survive. So, you know. What does that look like if I'm feeling like, hey, leaders have the ability to do do all this amazing work with their people, but every time they hit a disruptive moment, which to your point is all the time, they're saying just, How do I get through this week? How do I get through this quarter? How do I get to the next time I report to the street?
Doug Faber: Exactly. It's it's quite a challenge, right? discernment becomes really a skill in in this time. Yeah.
Patrick: It is absolutely a challenge. So you mention it really does, right? And just and just as as Stephen Covey would say, right? The pause between stimulus and response. Just stepping back and discerning what to do as opposed to
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: I emotionally feel like I should do this. you you do a lot with the executive leaders. I know with C suite folks, because you're you're you know lead a lot of big coaching engagements with Franklin Covey these days. I mean, do you s do you feel the executives you work with? Not specifically, obviously want to be
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: We we wanna be respectful to them. But do you hear a general thing sometimes where they feel like they're gonna just respond to this thing and you have to help them step back and say, Okay, let's put it in perspective and think it through?
Doug Faber: what's interesting, I work in really large organizations in some cases, and sometimes even really small ones at the senior level. And where the and because I'm working with more senior leaders, they will often feel a draw to respond to a board. They will feel a draw to respond to a market. And some will knee-jerk more. Intuitively and work on intuition. And some will pause and slow down to say what's going to be the best because they recognize how's this going to have what's the flywheel effect for the rest of my organization when I react. The interesting thing that I'm finding right now is I'm finding a lot of leaders who are pausing and recognizing that they are. Maybe more victims themselves of their own demise on trying to get enforce agreement rather than working towards alignment. In other
Patrick: Interesting.
Doug Faber: words, they're using their authority and their power to get people to say yes faster. And yet, while they're saying yes in the room, when we start looking at change over time, it's not happening. And that's because they weren't truly aligned when they got started. They agreed in the moment that yes, we'll do that. Yes, boss, we'll do that. And the boss was happy. The bosses are happy to get that agreement.
Patrick: Right.
Doug Faber: But when we're not getting changing results, we're realizing there's something that's broken. And that's that we weren't aligned. We weren't having the real discussions. We weren't talking about what the constraints were that are getting through. We weren't confronting the realities. of the kinds of changes that we're dealing with right now or what are the capabilities of the teams and what's it gonna take to make this change. And a lot of those are looking at the constraints just in their own swim lanes instead of more at the enterprise level. They're swim they're they're they're lap swimming instead of open water swimming. And that's by
Patrick: Yeah, exactly.
Doug Faber: design, you know? And some of that needs to be broken or disrupted so they can get breakthrough results.
Patrick: So this idea of clarity, that's the first practice we talk about in the book, right? The ability to do that. We actually talk leaders.
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah. So critical.
Patrick: I think it's interesting how we talk leaders to the idea of as a leader leading a team, whether it's a team
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: whether you're leading a team of executives or a team at the front line, you have to wear a couple of different hats, right? At some point you have to be a bit of the dreamer.
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: what's possible? Where can we go? We don't mean cloud in your sky, like untethered type of dreamer. We mean the one
Doug Faber: Right. Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: that's thinking like where can we go? What's the what's the next mountain we want to climb? What direction are we trying to move? Right, what are possibilities?
Doug Faber: What are the possibilities? huh. Yeah.
Patrick: And then from there, being the director, figuring out, okay, what goals are we gonna set and how are we gonna make sure that we narrow our focus on the things that truly matter? And then the doer piece is understanding how
Doug Faber: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Patrick: to connect individual contributors to things. what other practices perhaps, because there's six of them. I don't wanna take everybody
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: through all of them, but I'd love to know which one's Doug. really stood out to you and why?
Doug Faber: Well, what's what what stood out for me was the way we differentiated some of the common language that's used amongst leaders right now. when we talk with many of like we talked before we got started, our our audiences often learning and development, and we'll hear from them on a regular basis on we need our people to be better coaches, we need our leaders to be better coaches. And we said, Well, what does that mean to you? well, you know, they need to delegate better and they need to give feedback better. And it's like, okay, well, aren't those distinctly different capabilities? That's not the same as coaching. What's coaching mean to you? Well, and that's where the confusion came in. And so we did a really, I think, amazing job in creating distinction between communicating as a coach, which is really about not being an executive coach, but being present to recognize the potential that's living inside that person. By asking questions, by not being a problem solver, but by helping the others to solve their own problems by tapping into them. So communicating as a coach I think is a very powerful skill. We use delegation not as a way to unload, but to elevate, to to tap into the the leverage that's available amongst the team, the broader team, because I think we recognize that most leaders, when it comes to delegation, They rely on a chosen few. It's that they work with an 80-20 principle. You know, the 20% of my organization is going to get me 80% of the results. So I'm going to, I'm going to leverage, over-leverage those people constantly. And while they're doing that, then they're disengaging the other team members around them. And sometimes we're even disengaging the people they've relied on because we over-leverage them. And then we we use feedback as fuel. I mean, it's an accelerant. in our in our book on how we go about really giving great feedback to people so that they can amplify the things they do incredibly well by focusing not just on what we would call corrective feedback, but reinforcing feedback to really connect with the positive potential that people are doing and letting them know what we see as working and reminding them to keep doing that. And so the combination, the the hat trick of those three things I think are very powerful inside the book to be used together. But truthfully all six are necessary in combination for helping we call this human edge of potential inside of organizations. You know, this is how we give strategy the human edge by leveraging these six critical practices.
Patrick: You know, as as you said it like their the this this hat trick, I think Victoria, our our our colleague and co author, she would talk about like their siblings, their they're all yeah,
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: the idea of these three going together. When feedback's always been one, and I you and I worked a lot on the feedback section together, so as people read it, you can know that we had our hands in that one for sure. We had our hands in all of them, but that was the ones like initially you have to
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: divide working hard to conquer. And that was an area where you and I played for a while, together on it. And you know, how d how does current Doug differ from eighteen year old Doug? when it comes to this idea of feedback. When you heard feedback back when you were eighteen years old, did you jump off the dock and run away and hide? Or were you like bring it on? Or was it like did you have a good modeled well for you? Or what was that like?
Doug Faber: I I did not have it modeled well for me. The only feedback I understood was the kind that came with a hammer after it. and it was mostly I think like most of us get, hey, you got a minute? You know, I'd like to offer you some feedback. Yeah. And it's like, gosh, you know, your whole self-worth.
Patrick: Yeah, here it comes. The long the long slow walk down the hallway.
Doug Faber: You know, immediately you start going on to your self-talk and you don't even hear what the other person's saying because it's a critique of us. the the of the way we address this in helping people to see that they're really and and let's debunk something we're not fans of what we would many would call the excrement sandwich the the
Patrick: Yeah.
Doug Faber: crap sandwich you know you give give the feedback that's warranted in the moment and that that feedback needs to be timely And whether it's positive reinforcing, and it's done in a way, we've got a very powerful model for simple but powerful model for delivering feedback, whether it's positive or re positive and reinforcing, or whether it's corrective feedback. It all has to be done. And it's the quality in which we do that. It's it's it's I I like to aliken it to you know the trust content that we have at Franklin Kevy. We talk, you know, about the currency of trust sometimes with deposits and withdrawals. You know, we're we're gonna make withdrawals in life, so let's make sure that we're constantly making deposits. Likewise, with feedback. We're gonna have to give high-quality feedback to people that sometimes requires a change in what they're doing. Well, they're gonna receive that feedback a lot better if they see that we see the hold them. In other words, that we're also reinforcing the great things that they're doing. I've earned the right to give the corrective feedback because. I'm letting them know that I see the great work they do too. And that's you know the other part of you know the the institute's work is that recognizing what people report back, you know, they say, you know, here's I do this much of my work right, but here's what I hear about, you know, this tiny little sliver right here. And so making sure that we're seeing the whole person what is very different about the leader Doug at age sixty-four. he definitely gives the r the positive reinforcing feedback at a ratio that's much greater than I formerly did. It's it's an important part of the message.
Patrick: You you know, when we were working on the on the book, and just to kinda have people understand the process a little bit, they we are we're it happens that all four of us are in different time zones, which is interesting, right? So we have an East Coast in the US, East Coast,
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: Central Mountain and dugout on the coast on the Pacific side. So four different time zones, which is always an interesting challenge when you're doing things. At least they're not four different time zones literally spread all over the world, but an hour apart can kind of add up, for sure. And you know that on your end, Doug. So We're in different time zones, we're different places. We all have been around and working with Franklin Covey for 20 years or so. I don't know. I all of it. I mean
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: it's a lot. We've all worked in this leadership space and had leadership roles for I forget we added the number up and it was kind of scary. It was well about well beyond 100 for sure. And you know, we so we we all had opinions, we all had thoughts about this, and and I I just I just like I thought it was almost a masterclass on how a team works together. We'd get together, we'd work through things, whether it's virtual or in person. I enjoyed the in-persons personally more than in virtuals,
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: because we got the the residual of getting to hang out a little bit well well
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: together. But there were times where we had disagreement on things, where it was like, okay, this is one person has a strong opinion on it. And one th one strong opinion you had, Doug, that did not win the day, I would say, was that you were like, hey, folks, we should call this seek f seek and give feedback, not give and seek feedback. And and
Doug Faber: That's right. Yeah.
Patrick: we had a lot a long discussion about it and as a team we made a decision for particular reasons.
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: But you know, why were you so adamant that hey, seek is the thing that should come first?
Doug Faber: Well, it it it follows the principle that I eventually learned with the f with the fifth habit from the seven habits of highly effective people. That one of the greatest ways to influence others is to demonstrate your own influenciability. In other words, seek first to understand, then be
Patrick: Then
Doug Faber: understood. And what are we what are we really trying to model as a leader when we're giving feedback? We're trying to model how well we receive and integrate feedback. To teach others to do the exact same thing. And so it said probably a little bit better is, you know, as leaders, we expect our people to take our feedback, to put it into place, and to change performance. In other words, they have to change based on what we're telling them. Or, you know, as a coach, maybe guiding them towards even better. So they're making their own choices to make that change. What's the best way to do that? By modeling how well we receive their feedback and respond to them. And you know, I just I I stand very strongly. I don't change my belief on it. I didn't win the day. That's okay.
Patrick: That's part of working together on a project. And I think I think, you know, y I don't know, you
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: t you tell me, I mean you were on the other team, you were you d we all had opinions on different things. I wrote you as
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: you know, I wrote, you know, thousands of words that never made it anywhere near this book. So that's how the process of doing it. Yeah. Yeah.
Doug Faber: Right, yeah. And plenty of it got thrown out rightfully. Yeah.
Patrick: Yeah, exactly. so how did how did you receive that feedback? How was it given to you? What was what did you feel at the end of the day as on our team as real human beings getting feedback to each other?
Doug Faber: the the the nice part about the collaboration in this team, I'll just directly answer it. I was fine with the answer. this is a this team of four is one of the most amazing group of people. my my three team members who all honored to be a part of. We were we we do have different voices. And this is Yeah, I I love the notion in valuing differences that we talked about in the seven habits of highly affected people. And one of the things Dr. Kevy said, when two think the same, one is unnecessary. I I don't know where the true source of that comes from, but that that brings true for us. We all brought our voices to this process and we all honored and respected the others' voices. And together we created something much better than any one of us could have done individually, except maybe for you. but no, but but but
Patrick: Funny.
Doug Faber: really the I I think you said it in one of the times when we were collaborating collectively, to when we were physically together, and we were, I mean, maybe three hours into discussions and some of them were pretty heavy and Everybody was standing ground pretty well, yet understanding each other. And we were able to move to action at the end of it. We weren't stuck. And you concluded this session by saying, I I wish that we could have recorded this because this would have been an amazing video to show others how to actually work together. It was remarkably collaborative and it was energizing, not draining, and I I I just learned a ton through the process of how effectively people can work together when especially when you're aligned on the cause. We were so
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
Doug Faber: clear about what we had to do. There could have been different directions, but we were clear and we were able to move forward because of that clarity.
Patrick: So what kept you going through that? I mean, a coup I don't I don't I have to look at my calendar and know exactly how long we worked on this thing, but it was over two years for sure. Yeah. And it's you know, it's
Doug Faber: It was over two years, yeah, two and a half.
Patrick: it's it's kind of always this thing that's whispering in the back. It's like having a homework assignment that's due in two years and you have to work with your project team at some f get
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: I'm sorry, have to, you get to work with your project team, you choose to work with your project
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: team at some frequency and occasionally get together. So it's a like a long, long, long assignment you're working on. And
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: then you have your kind of your regular job. working with your clients, stuff like that. What c what
Doug Faber: Yeah, most definitely. Yeah.
Patrick: kept you going, Doug, to persevere through this?
Doug Faber: Yeah, truthfully, at the core of it it was the opportunity to hang out with you and Jen and Victoria. And then we also had some other colleagues on the sidelines as well
Patrick: yeah.
Doug Faber: who were helping us along in the process. It was that chance to get a a constant restart. Because you know, the day job can really grind us a lot. It takes a it takes a this is a very different kind of energy to create something like this. And so it was I found it very renewing, but also at the same time, it stoked energy for me. And I wanted to be able to. honor the energy that you brought me by bringing my own. So it was that chance to really connect with others, to do something great together and to produce something that could be really incredible that I knew I couldn't do of my own. So I I really was Yeah.
Patrick: So as we as we record this, you know, it's technically as we're recording it right now, it's August. It's technically not in anybody's hands yet. But it will
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: be by the time this podcast comes out, it'll be on the shelves and and readily available to folks. So fast forward forty three days to launch day for us, October sixth when it's out and available. where do you what not where do you, but what how do you hope a leader picks us up, what do you hope they do with it?
Doug Faber: I hope they really challenge their own mindset associated with it because I I I think it's It's easy to get lost in the why did I choose to lead and answer that question for ourselves. And what's the impact and the imprint I want to make for the people whom I lead? This book is going to cause any leader to if if they're close to a mirror, it's good it's going to cause them to take a look at themselves. And that's what I hope that it's going to do for them is to, because it I'm going to say this. I gotta create clarity, I gotta delegate, I gotta give people feedback. I I do all that well. I think a lot of people will look at this and go, that's fundamental. I I'm gonna say I think it's very it is foundational and it's work that can be applied foundationally ineffectively and it's work that can be applied very effectively. And it really is the balance of saying, are what kind of a leader am I? Am I a leader who only expects a lot? Am I a leader who only cares a lot? Am I a leader who's a little bit in between and I do a little bit of both? Or do I elevate both? And if I elevate both differently, what's different about my team's performance? When I do that compared to when I don't.
Patrick: Mm.
Doug Faber: And I want to challenge leaders to make sure that they are elevating both constantly, that we can create sustainability by holding the high standards to both. And to challenge themselves, why are you leading? What's the kind of outcome you want to bring? What's the legacy you want to leave? What's the impact you want to make? Because whether you realize it or not, people are talking about your performance every day. Sometimes they're talking about your performance at the kitchen table.
Patrick: Yeah, absolutely.
Doug Faber: Your their their kids might know more about how you lead than your kids know about how you lead.
Patrick: True, very true.
Doug Faber: I want leaders to be able to be proud of who they are and how they lead and the performance that they achieve so that they become the models of what what they want to be and to be become reputed as the leaders that they set out to be when they got started.
Patrick: Well, hey brother, I I think you elevated me in the process of doing this. I mean, you had moments where you were challenging us as leaders, you know, everybody kind of took their turns to step up and challenge us, and you
Doug Faber: Yeah, definitely.
Patrick: definitely did that. And also the care came through in every moment. I mean, we had some not not just like at at the table in a meeting, but also just out for dinner or talking about each other. I mean, we know a lot about each other through the process of just getting to know each other. And I'm just so proud, brother, that you were on this journey with me. And You know, it it was better because you were there. So thanks so much, Doug, for joining me today. Thanks for being a partner for the last couple of years. I can't wait to see what we do next together. And
Doug Faber: Thank you, Patrick. I appreciate the opportunity. I know.
Patrick: you know, folks, if you're if you're interested in becoming a better leader, to have those conversations that are about you and other people's homes be a better representation of your potential and what you're able to do because you're you're bringing your best and they're telling the best stories at home about you. don't miss out on a chance to pick up a copy of this book. I think you'll see a lot of value in the ability to expect a lot and care a lot simultaneously. Thanks so much, Doug.
Doug Faber: Thanks, Patrick. Take care.
Patrick: Doug, thank you. Seriously, thank you for your time and for being so generous with your story and your thinking today. That concept that we shared just now, expect a lot, care a lot, that's the thread running through everything that we wrote about in our book. And we realize that it's not one or the other, but both. High expectations and at the same time, high care for people. And when you get that combination right, you build a team that can handle just about anything the world throws at it. If you want to go deeper on that, the book Expect a Lot, Care A Lot, How Six Critical Practices Create High Performing Teams is available everywhere. And we dropped a link in the show's note. And if this conversation was useful to you, do me a favor. Give it a high rating. Share it with other people. Let them see it as well. Share it with somebody on your team who needs to hear it. Doug, thanks again, my friend. Everybody else, until next time, go be the leader you were meant to be. Take care, and take the opportunity to disrupt for good.
Doug Faber: Thank you, Patrick. It's great to be here. It's my my pleasure.
Patrick: Great to have you here, my friend. You really are my friend. I mean, you and I have spent a couple years, two, three years now working on the Expect a Lot, Care a Lot book project. And we're excited to talk about that book. Before we even jump into that, I want people to know a little bit about the professional, the colleague, the friend that I know, Doug Faber. So let's tell us a little bit about yourself.
Doug Faber: Good. Well thanks Patrick. And again, it's great to be here. about me, it's always tough to go into that. You know, it it's it's so interesting to go backwards and say where you started and you building up from all of that. my journey started as an eighteen year old while I was going to college and When I think about my professional journey, and that's often what we're in this room for. So I'm going to that identity first, my professional journey. Yeah, I started loading air freight containers while I was going to school in a startup company in an industry that was just evolving out of deregulation. And before there was desktop technology. So I'm one of those people on your program that has enough age behind them to be able to speak to what it was like back in the olden days. But what was so fascinating is my whole career has come out of that disruptive point, government deregulation and then desktop computing emerging at the same time in a marketplace to create incredible value. And so when you're in an organization that is tiny and you're trying to survive and scrap to figure out how to compete against the behemoths. It's all got to be done based on value. And when you're and when you're in an environment that's fostering that kind of value creation because you're now deregulated, the speed and pace to which you fought to create both disruption and then solutions was a part of my background. And I just happen to work in the supply chain industry, the third-party logistics and supply chain industry. that's a fancy way of saying the freight industry or the warehousing industry or the many other forms in which different competitors came into the same space to uniquely solve problems for their clients. And for 25 years I played in that space. Like I said, I started loading air freight containers. I eventually became a CEO in that space and just loved the ride of the 25 years there. The the remaining 20-year arc of my career, this second chapter, has exclusively been with Franklin Covey. And I came to it in a very different capacity, not as a leader in the company, but as a consultant to our clients to help them to solve their really tough challenges. And I joined us to hopefully to grow what was time a burgeoning solution called the Four Disciplines of Execution. And eventually, as I was doing that work, I came to appreciate how much leadership played a role as a differential in creating performance. And so I've actually spent the last 15 of my 20 years at Franklin Covey focusing on client results through effective leadership. And so that's that's the arc of my professional career. so twenty five years in industry, twenty years working on leadership. And the combination of both of those, in and out, you know, working in systems and on systems is a unique capability that I bring to our client base. And that's kind of the arc of my professional career, but you know
Patrick: No, I love that. when you were eighteen and you were you were moving boxes around on a a loading dock somewhere, where were you located at? Tell folks where you were.
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah. I was in Southern California in Los Angeles. So I was at the LAX Airport at first and I was going to UCLA at the time. And then when I followed what was my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife of forty-three years, to UC Santa Cruz, I was driving what we call in the Bay Area over the hill to San Jose at our operation, loading containers and trucks there. You know, eventually you work your way off the dock and you work your way into the office. And there's a whole arc of the career that happened in that. But it was a really fun company. I was it was called Skyway Freight Systems. We were bought by the Union Pacific Corporation in the nineties, the ultimate sale. but I was employee number 27 when when we joined. I helped to open 33 of our operations, led sales and operations, field sales and operations during the arc of my professional career there. It was just, you know, it was an amazing PhD in business in in the time that I was there. It's just incredible.
Patrick: So when you were eighteen did you expect like I'm gonna stay in this industry or was it a just a gig you got to kind of make ends meet?
Doug Faber: Anybody who's worked in that industry gives you the whole once you once you once you leave, you can never you really can't leave that industry. It's one of those spaces that's very difficult to exit. I thought I would be there for a really long time. And when we got to the point in that 25-year mark, what's the full circle of the industry started commoditizing. So what went from value creation to almost every conversation diluting to, yeah, that's great, Doug, but so what's the price? It really got almost down to commoditization. And at that point,
Patrick: Yeah.
Doug Faber: I couldn't bring the next level of disruption that I could find. So I had to go reinvent myself. And that's when I chose to go do the work at Franklin Covey and change disrupted myself to create new opportunity for me and then also find that value creation for others. So I went out.
Patrick: I would imagine along the way, Doug, there was a ton of disruption for you personally as a leader, or even you know, starting off with you said you worked on the dock and then you kind of worked your way into the building and into a different role. And you probably even
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah, right. Uhhuh. Yeah.
Patrick: saw some of the kind of us and them type relationships that happened in organizations, right? There's there you there were the we're the we're the ones out here doing the real work and they're the ones over there, you
Doug Faber: Well, it it's a
Patrick: know, kind of dressing up in a nice shirt every day. But then you also saw as as kind of working your way through the ranks in an organization when you get to the CEO level, how people see you differently and how you might see yourself differently at times. Or maybe not. Maybe you're like, Hey, I'm that same guy and they're like, No, no, you're this
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: person now.
Doug Faber: Well, first of all, let's just go back to that first attention address that you bring. The the us versus them is a human dynamic that most people bring because well, I don't know what you find to be the root of it. Sometimes I find the root of it it's because people's voices aren't being heard. So what do they do? They create a louder voice for themselves because they're not being appreciated in some way. So there's that appreciation that's often lost. And so that tension gets created. But some people are just wired for drama. And so we have an us versus them and we look for that differences. Rather than value those those differences, we create our camps. And
Patrick: Yeah.
Doug Faber: therein is we start to create the distances in the organization that prevent us from doing enterprise level results. So
Patrick: Yeah, there's definitely a a bias that happens when you're like, There you go. See, I told you we were thus us versus them. I'll point to three things
Doug Faber: Yeah, exactly.
Patrick: that suggest it. And there's also a self-fulfilling prophecy too that comes from it too. If we continue to act like there's two competing forces here, guess what? It's gonna start to play
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: out like there's two competing forces. When you were going through, you know, talk about disruption. You mentioned deregulation. That's a disruption. It provided opportunity for you, but it also became
Doug Faber: yeah.
Patrick: challenging, I'm sure. And then commoditization. certainly
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: became a very disruptive thing for you. What did all those things teach you as a leader about maybe about the status quo? And
Doug Faber: Mm, wow.
Patrick: about about how to look at these changes as they come?
Doug Faber: Yeah, that that that's an interesting status quo is an interesting quo is an interesting point of of belief. There is no status quo. We are what did Dr. Covey say, the three constants in life or change, choice, and principles?
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Doug Faber: Change is constant. And so status quo is a a human created condition or belief around a can around around a period of time. The world is constantly changing underneath our feet, whether we recognize it or not. And so
Patrick: It's almost more like a a Polaroid snapshot of the moment. Just like just like many reports are and things like that we use in business, right? It's a
Doug Faber: That's right.
Patrick: it's a snapshot in a moment.
Doug Faber: Yeah, it's a balance sheet, right? It's a it's a it's a reflection on this point in time. Yeah, and so what what this what what status quo was teaching me back in my time was is that You have to be the person who's going to create your next change rather than that change being created for you. I always appreciated taking control of control what I can control, which was our choice, our strategy, our direction. And then more importantly, knowing that those strategies are going to be executed by the humans that I worked with, what was what did I need to do to create the conditions that allowed for them to choose to bring their best games?
Patrick: Hmm. You know, as we're
Doug Faber: In two.
Patrick: as we're as we're talking about this right now, Doug, I'm just thinking about like what you and I have done over the last couple of years with our colleagues Victoria and Jen and writing Expect a Lot, Care a Lot.
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: And I think there might be I mean you might think I'm crazy when I say this, but I think there might be something that almost came from that time in the past that I think is really in your mind these days. And what I mean by that is if I'm trying to tell you what I think is going on in your head, you can tell me if I'm crazy.
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: But I think working in the logistics field, in the field that you worked in, you We're probably you probably learned along the way that there's there are things called physical limitations. Like only so many boxes can fit in this truck. There's only much volume in the truck. But then
Doug Faber: Sure. Right. Sure.
Patrick: you learned about untapped human potential, unlimited potential. Because
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: I I I see you as definitely a guy, especially when it comes to people, it's like the glass isn't half full, it hasn't isn't half empty, it's full. And we
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: just gotta figure out how to tap into it.
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah. So where's the question in that?
Patrick: There is no question other than does that do you feel I guess there's a question in the head yeah, that's fair. see you're disrupted by disruption podcast. Yeah. there there's a question in that that am I seeing you the way you see yourself, I guess, in regards to you see like,
Doug Faber: No.
Patrick: hey, there's there's constraints in the world for sure, but
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: then there's also this amazing potential.
Doug Faber: Yeah, so here's the really fun part about that. And yes, I agree fully that it's not half full or empty. It's it's fully full all the time. Back to your back to your observation. And there are constraints, there are physical constraints, but the opportunity is how do we optimize at all times? And we're not just optimizing the constraint of like, are we leveraging every square capacity square inch of of the trailer? But are we leveraging the full capacity of our people that enable the ability to leverage
Patrick: Mm.
Doug Faber: the trailer? I think that those two things get lost. The human potential that's associated with it will be the differentiator that ultimately captures the value of whatever constraint you've got. someone's gonna argue with me right now, going, no, Doug, AI can do all of that for you. And while AI can assist with the math associated with it, the dynamics of the process change that has to happen to create that optimization, that the humans need to change about what they need to do, AI can't do that. That's a leadership challenge. AI can't repair. Mistrust or broken trust that's happened. AI can't get somebody engaged to do their job differently. It might be a tool that helps them to do their job differently, and it might lead to some level of engagement, but there's that human potential that only another human can help to elevate. And you know.
Patrick: Yeah, we you and I were just talking about that right before we started recording. we were we were reading back through the intro to the book. And for those who've ever written a book before, you know that there's a serious lag really that happens between the time you finish the book project and it actually ends
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: up on shelves and stores. And and in all f in all fairness, what happens in those type of moments is oftentimes you move on to other projects or you're doing other things. It's just not the thing you're living and breathing every day. Not the concepts of the books, but actually like
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: How you wrote it and specifically what it said. And it causes you as we're getting closer to launch, or people as you're listening to the podcast now when the book's out there, you you you almost have to refresh yourself a little bit around some things that you wrote and said. I I I didn't believe that until I started writing books and you see it yourself. And I remember talking to authors over the years, and there oftentimes they don't want to talk to you about the project they that that just came out. They want to talk about the one they're working on now because time passes, right? But as you and I were
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: going back and digging into the project that we worked that
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: became the book Expect a Lot Care a lot, the stuff you're talking about right here. The things that technology can do, the things that physics allows us to do when we're measuring the volume inside of physical structure and things like that, that
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: is different than the ability of leaders to, as you said, how do how they play a role in performance.
Doug Faber: Yeah, exactly. It and that therein is the opt the the ultimate opportunity. So so many times while I've been talking with, you know, CEOs and organizations around how are we gonna adopt AI and what's that gonna mean to our organization and our culture? And failing to address what's that gonna mean to our Leadership and our culture, and what's got to change, what are the things that we need to most focus on? They'll ask me, Doug, what do we need to most focus on? And we're right back to some of the more foundational principles associated with leadership.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Doug Faber: Clarity. I mean, as the world is shifting constantly underneath our feet, back to the status quo comment I made earlier. What is it? Our research institute said something like: 43% of the people feel like their world is completely changing underneath them. Well, that's 43% who are answering honestly. The other people aren't answering honestly, or that, or they're just not even recognizing what's happening to them. And so having the clarity around what's happening, who's gotta bring that. It's not being done to us. We are leaders who are in control of our domains to the best that we can. So what is the clarity of our team's purpose? What are our roles and our current goals? And why does it matter? More importantly, what's the impact if we don't deliver on this stuff? What are the the consequences to us as a a team and how does that fit to the larger organization? So often we get so busy, we forget, I need to bring people back to that.
Patrick: So true. You know, I was I was while we're as we're recording this, I had I had just recently done a series of roundtables with executives through Franklin Covey. And
Doug Faber: Mm. Yeah.
Patrick: these were mostly human resources, learning development, VPs of kind of in that space. And one thing I shared with them from Franklin Covey's research was that 70%, seven out of ten of employees feel like they live in just constant uncertainty.
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: It's just a defining characteristic of their work. And then I kind of go through with them. So what they need their leaders to do is they need leaders who can see opportunities during times of disruption and those type of things. And then I say, but here's a stat that should make you a little nervous. Seven out of ten people say that they live in uncertainty. That's a defining characteristic of their work. They need leaders who can do one, two, three, four of these things. But then that same report, leaders responded that 87% of them see disruption as something to survive. So, you know. What does that look like if I'm feeling like, hey, leaders have the ability to do do all this amazing work with their people, but every time they hit a disruptive moment, which to your point is all the time, they're saying just, How do I get through this week? How do I get through this quarter? How do I get to the next time I report to the street?
Doug Faber: Exactly. It's it's quite a challenge, right? discernment becomes really a skill in in this time. Yeah.
Patrick: It is absolutely a challenge. So you mention it really does, right? And just and just as as Stephen Covey would say, right? The pause between stimulus and response. Just stepping back and discerning what to do as opposed to
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: I emotionally feel like I should do this. you you do a lot with the executive leaders. I know with C suite folks, because you're you're you know lead a lot of big coaching engagements with Franklin Covey these days. I mean, do you s do you feel the executives you work with? Not specifically, obviously want to be
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: We we wanna be respectful to them. But do you hear a general thing sometimes where they feel like they're gonna just respond to this thing and you have to help them step back and say, Okay, let's put it in perspective and think it through?
Doug Faber: what's interesting, I work in really large organizations in some cases, and sometimes even really small ones at the senior level. And where the and because I'm working with more senior leaders, they will often feel a draw to respond to a board. They will feel a draw to respond to a market. And some will knee-jerk more. Intuitively and work on intuition. And some will pause and slow down to say what's going to be the best because they recognize how's this going to have what's the flywheel effect for the rest of my organization when I react. The interesting thing that I'm finding right now is I'm finding a lot of leaders who are pausing and recognizing that they are. Maybe more victims themselves of their own demise on trying to get enforce agreement rather than working towards alignment. In other
Patrick: Interesting.
Doug Faber: words, they're using their authority and their power to get people to say yes faster. And yet, while they're saying yes in the room, when we start looking at change over time, it's not happening. And that's because they weren't truly aligned when they got started. They agreed in the moment that yes, we'll do that. Yes, boss, we'll do that. And the boss was happy. The bosses are happy to get that agreement.
Patrick: Right.
Doug Faber: But when we're not getting changing results, we're realizing there's something that's broken. And that's that we weren't aligned. We weren't having the real discussions. We weren't talking about what the constraints were that are getting through. We weren't confronting the realities. of the kinds of changes that we're dealing with right now or what are the capabilities of the teams and what's it gonna take to make this change. And a lot of those are looking at the constraints just in their own swim lanes instead of more at the enterprise level. They're swim they're they're they're lap swimming instead of open water swimming. And that's by
Patrick: Yeah, exactly.
Doug Faber: design, you know? And some of that needs to be broken or disrupted so they can get breakthrough results.
Patrick: So this idea of clarity, that's the first practice we talk about in the book, right? The ability to do that. We actually talk leaders.
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah. So critical.
Patrick: I think it's interesting how we talk leaders to the idea of as a leader leading a team, whether it's a team
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: whether you're leading a team of executives or a team at the front line, you have to wear a couple of different hats, right? At some point you have to be a bit of the dreamer.
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: what's possible? Where can we go? We don't mean cloud in your sky, like untethered type of dreamer. We mean the one
Doug Faber: Right. Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: that's thinking like where can we go? What's the what's the next mountain we want to climb? What direction are we trying to move? Right, what are possibilities?
Doug Faber: What are the possibilities? huh. Yeah.
Patrick: And then from there, being the director, figuring out, okay, what goals are we gonna set and how are we gonna make sure that we narrow our focus on the things that truly matter? And then the doer piece is understanding how
Doug Faber: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Patrick: to connect individual contributors to things. what other practices perhaps, because there's six of them. I don't wanna take everybody
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: through all of them, but I'd love to know which one's Doug. really stood out to you and why?
Doug Faber: Well, what's what what stood out for me was the way we differentiated some of the common language that's used amongst leaders right now. when we talk with many of like we talked before we got started, our our audiences often learning and development, and we'll hear from them on a regular basis on we need our people to be better coaches, we need our leaders to be better coaches. And we said, Well, what does that mean to you? well, you know, they need to delegate better and they need to give feedback better. And it's like, okay, well, aren't those distinctly different capabilities? That's not the same as coaching. What's coaching mean to you? Well, and that's where the confusion came in. And so we did a really, I think, amazing job in creating distinction between communicating as a coach, which is really about not being an executive coach, but being present to recognize the potential that's living inside that person. By asking questions, by not being a problem solver, but by helping the others to solve their own problems by tapping into them. So communicating as a coach I think is a very powerful skill. We use delegation not as a way to unload, but to elevate, to to tap into the the leverage that's available amongst the team, the broader team, because I think we recognize that most leaders, when it comes to delegation, They rely on a chosen few. It's that they work with an 80-20 principle. You know, the 20% of my organization is going to get me 80% of the results. So I'm going to, I'm going to leverage, over-leverage those people constantly. And while they're doing that, then they're disengaging the other team members around them. And sometimes we're even disengaging the people they've relied on because we over-leverage them. And then we we use feedback as fuel. I mean, it's an accelerant. in our in our book on how we go about really giving great feedback to people so that they can amplify the things they do incredibly well by focusing not just on what we would call corrective feedback, but reinforcing feedback to really connect with the positive potential that people are doing and letting them know what we see as working and reminding them to keep doing that. And so the combination, the the hat trick of those three things I think are very powerful inside the book to be used together. But truthfully all six are necessary in combination for helping we call this human edge of potential inside of organizations. You know, this is how we give strategy the human edge by leveraging these six critical practices.
Patrick: You know, as as you said it like their the this this hat trick, I think Victoria, our our our colleague and co author, she would talk about like their siblings, their they're all yeah,
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: the idea of these three going together. When feedback's always been one, and I you and I worked a lot on the feedback section together, so as people read it, you can know that we had our hands in that one for sure. We had our hands in all of them, but that was the ones like initially you have to
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: divide working hard to conquer. And that was an area where you and I played for a while, together on it. And you know, how d how does current Doug differ from eighteen year old Doug? when it comes to this idea of feedback. When you heard feedback back when you were eighteen years old, did you jump off the dock and run away and hide? Or were you like bring it on? Or was it like did you have a good modeled well for you? Or what was that like?
Doug Faber: I I did not have it modeled well for me. The only feedback I understood was the kind that came with a hammer after it. and it was mostly I think like most of us get, hey, you got a minute? You know, I'd like to offer you some feedback. Yeah. And it's like, gosh, you know, your whole self-worth.
Patrick: Yeah, here it comes. The long the long slow walk down the hallway.
Doug Faber: You know, immediately you start going on to your self-talk and you don't even hear what the other person's saying because it's a critique of us. the the of the way we address this in helping people to see that they're really and and let's debunk something we're not fans of what we would many would call the excrement sandwich the the
Patrick: Yeah.
Doug Faber: crap sandwich you know you give give the feedback that's warranted in the moment and that that feedback needs to be timely And whether it's positive reinforcing, and it's done in a way, we've got a very powerful model for simple but powerful model for delivering feedback, whether it's positive or re positive and reinforcing, or whether it's corrective feedback. It all has to be done. And it's the quality in which we do that. It's it's it's I I like to aliken it to you know the trust content that we have at Franklin Kevy. We talk, you know, about the currency of trust sometimes with deposits and withdrawals. You know, we're we're gonna make withdrawals in life, so let's make sure that we're constantly making deposits. Likewise, with feedback. We're gonna have to give high-quality feedback to people that sometimes requires a change in what they're doing. Well, they're gonna receive that feedback a lot better if they see that we see the hold them. In other words, that we're also reinforcing the great things that they're doing. I've earned the right to give the corrective feedback because. I'm letting them know that I see the great work they do too. And that's you know the other part of you know the the institute's work is that recognizing what people report back, you know, they say, you know, here's I do this much of my work right, but here's what I hear about, you know, this tiny little sliver right here. And so making sure that we're seeing the whole person what is very different about the leader Doug at age sixty-four. he definitely gives the r the positive reinforcing feedback at a ratio that's much greater than I formerly did. It's it's an important part of the message.
Patrick: You you know, when we were working on the on the book, and just to kinda have people understand the process a little bit, they we are we're it happens that all four of us are in different time zones, which is interesting, right? So we have an East Coast in the US, East Coast,
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: Central Mountain and dugout on the coast on the Pacific side. So four different time zones, which is always an interesting challenge when you're doing things. At least they're not four different time zones literally spread all over the world, but an hour apart can kind of add up, for sure. And you know that on your end, Doug. So We're in different time zones, we're different places. We all have been around and working with Franklin Covey for 20 years or so. I don't know. I all of it. I mean
Doug Faber: Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: it's a lot. We've all worked in this leadership space and had leadership roles for I forget we added the number up and it was kind of scary. It was well about well beyond 100 for sure. And you know, we so we we all had opinions, we all had thoughts about this, and and I I just I just like I thought it was almost a masterclass on how a team works together. We'd get together, we'd work through things, whether it's virtual or in person. I enjoyed the in-persons personally more than in virtuals,
Doug Faber: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: because we got the the residual of getting to hang out a little bit well well
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: together. But there were times where we had disagreement on things, where it was like, okay, this is one person has a strong opinion on it. And one th one strong opinion you had, Doug, that did not win the day, I would say, was that you were like, hey, folks, we should call this seek f seek and give feedback, not give and seek feedback. And and
Doug Faber: That's right. Yeah.
Patrick: we had a lot a long discussion about it and as a team we made a decision for particular reasons.
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: But you know, why were you so adamant that hey, seek is the thing that should come first?
Doug Faber: Well, it it it follows the principle that I eventually learned with the f with the fifth habit from the seven habits of highly effective people. That one of the greatest ways to influence others is to demonstrate your own influenciability. In other words, seek first to understand, then be
Patrick: Then
Doug Faber: understood. And what are we what are we really trying to model as a leader when we're giving feedback? We're trying to model how well we receive and integrate feedback. To teach others to do the exact same thing. And so it said probably a little bit better is, you know, as leaders, we expect our people to take our feedback, to put it into place, and to change performance. In other words, they have to change based on what we're telling them. Or, you know, as a coach, maybe guiding them towards even better. So they're making their own choices to make that change. What's the best way to do that? By modeling how well we receive their feedback and respond to them. And you know, I just I I stand very strongly. I don't change my belief on it. I didn't win the day. That's okay.
Patrick: That's part of working together on a project. And I think I think, you know, y I don't know, you
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: t you tell me, I mean you were on the other team, you were you d we all had opinions on different things. I wrote you as
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: you know, I wrote, you know, thousands of words that never made it anywhere near this book. So that's how the process of doing it. Yeah. Yeah.
Doug Faber: Right, yeah. And plenty of it got thrown out rightfully. Yeah.
Patrick: Yeah, exactly. so how did how did you receive that feedback? How was it given to you? What was what did you feel at the end of the day as on our team as real human beings getting feedback to each other?
Doug Faber: the the the nice part about the collaboration in this team, I'll just directly answer it. I was fine with the answer. this is a this team of four is one of the most amazing group of people. my my three team members who all honored to be a part of. We were we we do have different voices. And this is Yeah, I I love the notion in valuing differences that we talked about in the seven habits of highly affected people. And one of the things Dr. Kevy said, when two think the same, one is unnecessary. I I don't know where the true source of that comes from, but that that brings true for us. We all brought our voices to this process and we all honored and respected the others' voices. And together we created something much better than any one of us could have done individually, except maybe for you. but no, but but but
Patrick: Funny.
Doug Faber: really the I I think you said it in one of the times when we were collaborating collectively, to when we were physically together, and we were, I mean, maybe three hours into discussions and some of them were pretty heavy and Everybody was standing ground pretty well, yet understanding each other. And we were able to move to action at the end of it. We weren't stuck. And you concluded this session by saying, I I wish that we could have recorded this because this would have been an amazing video to show others how to actually work together. It was remarkably collaborative and it was energizing, not draining, and I I I just learned a ton through the process of how effectively people can work together when especially when you're aligned on the cause. We were so
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
Doug Faber: clear about what we had to do. There could have been different directions, but we were clear and we were able to move forward because of that clarity.
Patrick: So what kept you going through that? I mean, a coup I don't I don't I have to look at my calendar and know exactly how long we worked on this thing, but it was over two years for sure. Yeah. And it's you know, it's
Doug Faber: It was over two years, yeah, two and a half.
Patrick: it's it's kind of always this thing that's whispering in the back. It's like having a homework assignment that's due in two years and you have to work with your project team at some f get
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: I'm sorry, have to, you get to work with your project team, you choose to work with your project
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: team at some frequency and occasionally get together. So it's a like a long, long, long assignment you're working on. And
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: then you have your kind of your regular job. working with your clients, stuff like that. What c what
Doug Faber: Yeah, most definitely. Yeah.
Patrick: kept you going, Doug, to persevere through this?
Doug Faber: Yeah, truthfully, at the core of it it was the opportunity to hang out with you and Jen and Victoria. And then we also had some other colleagues on the sidelines as well
Patrick: yeah.
Doug Faber: who were helping us along in the process. It was that chance to get a a constant restart. Because you know, the day job can really grind us a lot. It takes a it takes a this is a very different kind of energy to create something like this. And so it was I found it very renewing, but also at the same time, it stoked energy for me. And I wanted to be able to. honor the energy that you brought me by bringing my own. So it was that chance to really connect with others, to do something great together and to produce something that could be really incredible that I knew I couldn't do of my own. So I I really was Yeah.
Patrick: So as we as we record this, you know, it's technically as we're recording it right now, it's August. It's technically not in anybody's hands yet. But it will
Doug Faber: Yeah.
Patrick: be by the time this podcast comes out, it'll be on the shelves and and readily available to folks. So fast forward forty three days to launch day for us, October sixth when it's out and available. where do you what not where do you, but what how do you hope a leader picks us up, what do you hope they do with it?
Doug Faber: I hope they really challenge their own mindset associated with it because I I I think it's It's easy to get lost in the why did I choose to lead and answer that question for ourselves. And what's the impact and the imprint I want to make for the people whom I lead? This book is going to cause any leader to if if they're close to a mirror, it's good it's going to cause them to take a look at themselves. And that's what I hope that it's going to do for them is to, because it I'm going to say this. I gotta create clarity, I gotta delegate, I gotta give people feedback. I I do all that well. I think a lot of people will look at this and go, that's fundamental. I I'm gonna say I think it's very it is foundational and it's work that can be applied foundationally ineffectively and it's work that can be applied very effectively. And it really is the balance of saying, are what kind of a leader am I? Am I a leader who only expects a lot? Am I a leader who only cares a lot? Am I a leader who's a little bit in between and I do a little bit of both? Or do I elevate both? And if I elevate both differently, what's different about my team's performance? When I do that compared to when I don't.
Patrick: Mm.
Doug Faber: And I want to challenge leaders to make sure that they are elevating both constantly, that we can create sustainability by holding the high standards to both. And to challenge themselves, why are you leading? What's the kind of outcome you want to bring? What's the legacy you want to leave? What's the impact you want to make? Because whether you realize it or not, people are talking about your performance every day. Sometimes they're talking about your performance at the kitchen table.
Patrick: Yeah, absolutely.
Doug Faber: Your their their kids might know more about how you lead than your kids know about how you lead.
Patrick: True, very true.
Doug Faber: I want leaders to be able to be proud of who they are and how they lead and the performance that they achieve so that they become the models of what what they want to be and to be become reputed as the leaders that they set out to be when they got started.
Patrick: Well, hey brother, I I think you elevated me in the process of doing this. I mean, you had moments where you were challenging us as leaders, you know, everybody kind of took their turns to step up and challenge us, and you
Doug Faber: Yeah, definitely.
Patrick: definitely did that. And also the care came through in every moment. I mean, we had some not not just like at at the table in a meeting, but also just out for dinner or talking about each other. I mean, we know a lot about each other through the process of just getting to know each other. And I'm just so proud, brother, that you were on this journey with me. And You know, it it was better because you were there. So thanks so much, Doug, for joining me today. Thanks for being a partner for the last couple of years. I can't wait to see what we do next together. And
Doug Faber: Thank you, Patrick. I appreciate the opportunity. I know.
Patrick: you know, folks, if you're if you're interested in becoming a better leader, to have those conversations that are about you and other people's homes be a better representation of your potential and what you're able to do because you're you're bringing your best and they're telling the best stories at home about you. don't miss out on a chance to pick up a copy of this book. I think you'll see a lot of value in the ability to expect a lot and care a lot simultaneously. Thanks so much, Doug.
Doug Faber: Thanks, Patrick. Take care.
Patrick: Doug, thank you. Seriously, thank you for your time and for being so generous with your story and your thinking today. That concept that we shared just now, expect a lot, care a lot, that's the thread running through everything that we wrote about in our book. And we realize that it's not one or the other, but both. High expectations and at the same time, high care for people. And when you get that combination right, you build a team that can handle just about anything the world throws at it. If you want to go deeper on that, the book Expect a Lot, Care A Lot, How Six Critical Practices Create High Performing Teams is available everywhere. And we dropped a link in the show's note. And if this conversation was useful to you, do me a favor. Give it a high rating. Share it with other people. Let them see it as well. Share it with somebody on your team who needs to hear it. Doug, thanks again, my friend. Everybody else, until next time, go be the leader you were meant to be. Take care, and take the opportunity to disrupt for good.
