Empowering Leadership and Effective Delegation with Dallas Burnett

This is straight straight out of Crumpton with your host, Greg Crumpton. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of straight out of Crumpton. I'm Gabby Bar, and I'm joined by mister Greg Crumpton. Greg, how are you today? I am doing great, Gabby. I I feel really good today. I don't know what's going on. In the world, but it's like all the stars are lined up. I had a little situation this morning. I dealt with it. Kinda got that hurdle moved on. The guys picked the car up for service. So life's good. How about you? I am doing well. It's Tuesday. Another fun day to, you know, hop on a good podcast and, you know, learn about someone else new in the world and what they do and what's, you know, what makes them tick. So I'm ready for it. Me too. We got a good guess today. I've been following this just for a little while now. I just came to realize we're really not far from each other physically, probably forty five miles. So I I guess I'm gonna have to get up there either by his lunch or let him buy mine. But looking forward to a good conversation. So kick us off with this thing and let's go. Let's have a little fun with. Absolutely. Well, as Greg was saying, we have a very exciting guest today. It is Dallas Burnett He is the founder of Think Move Thrive. He helps companies with coaching and implementing that into their cultures. Dallas, how are you doing today? Man, I am so glad to be a part of the show today, man. And especially since Greg is having such a good day, I just feel like I'm glad to be a part of I've never met anyone. I don't think who had three verbs in the name of their company. So you're a first. Think new Thrive. I love it. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. We like to be different. Stand out. You know, we were talking just a little bit before we hit record and and we share some commonality in our backgrounds as far as, the company you worked for before was a subcontractor that some of my companies in the past have have used, water balance, air balance, what have you? So it's always cool to kinda catch up and see the different routes people take. And before we get going too deep, because I'm so freaking excited. Unfortunately, like anything, I'd like to dive into the deep end of the pool before I and get my toes wet. Why don't you get our toes wet? Give us a little bit of history about you, how you came to be think moving and thriving. Then we'll we'll chunk in. So but I'd love to hear a little bit. So I am originally from the upstate of South Carolina. We got married and decided that for a career move, we decided to go to Atlanta. Of all things. And so we we spent some time in Atlanta and just experiencing that city and enjoyed it. Ultimately, had the experience my background is very diverse as it relates to business. So I've just been in at least a dozen industries, and it's all been great. It's just been been a fascinating journey. I've worked for I've worked for, family owned businesses. I've worked for multi billion dollar companies. I've been in, you know, in startups with venture funding and startups with boot since you just see all these different aspects of business and the struggles and the trials. And one of the things that, realized in, I guess, to my mid thirties and realized that I I loved I was a junky on strategy. I just loved strategy. I couldn't eat enough of that in my thirties. And then I got to my mid thirties and started in some of these startups and and started leading people, and I realized it doesn't matter how good a strategy I have if I can't move people and I can't get them to a line around that strategy. Does it doesn't work? Or if it does work, it's not gonna work as good as I can get alignment around people. So then I just really kind of went head long into developing people, leading people, what that looks like. And that's really what the last almost ten years has has been all about for me. Interesting, route. I too served time in Atlanta. I grew up there and lived there for thirty five years. So I think you haven't come through that as an adult without any battle wounds is remarkable these days. I've got stories of the two eighty five on Friday night and sitting there three hours. So I I definitely have stories. I I got battle scars, so I understand. Anybody who has studied the road sign that says Ashford Dunlady Road is a real warrior. And if you know, you know. If you know, you know. It no. That's really interesting in that you've worked in so many different industries and the breadth of the companies as far as their size is really important. To me because what it tells me is what I think I've grown to realize is it doesn't matter how big you are, how much money you have without the people pushing the big heavy stone up the hill. It doesn't matter, you know, because it takes folks. And and we spend a lot of time here on the podcast talking about skill trade workers and the lack of skilled trades workers and trying to recruit and attract and retain and create awareness. And all all the things that go with me with people carrying tools, for a career. In fact, last week, I was in Miami, actually Homestead, which I was blown away by because the last time I was in Homestead, it looked like a freaking desert because it was right after the last hurricane, and there wasn't a freaking piece of greenery anywhere, but now I think ten years removed. I go back, and it's like lush and green again. So that was that was kinda cool to see that revitalization of what nature had done. But anyway, we're we're talking about getting and and we were at a factory where they make, air conditioning equipment. And we were talking about how you help instill polish, nurture, coach, guide, love, and all those things that it takes you do with people, not two people, to help them advance help them understand the mission and help them become passionate about the overall thing you're trying to accomplish. And for these gods that's making air conditioning equipment, the guys I was with were some of my coworkers. And, you know, for us, it's delivering good service. But it's still a matter of bringing people along for the journey. You've got two topics that I find really interesting you've got several things you talk about in your book and and on the podcast as well that you do. And we're gonna give you time to plug that here at the end, Two things that really pop for me, delegation superstars, and active coaching. I think that those two things for me are I'm inquisitive about both because I think you have to have the ability to delegate. I think you have to have the ability to be delegated on two. And I think everybody has to coach in a three hundred sixty degree environment. We have to coach up. We have to coach down. We have to coach sideways. And then the reciprocal of that is we have to be coachable in the same direction. So tell us a little bit your words on those two topics because I only know them how I read them. So first of all, we'll definitely talk about those two topics, and I want you to remind me at the end, after we get through with those, I wanna come back to talking about that retaining employees and how do we get people to essentially believe And how do we get them to row the boat in the same direction and how do we inspire them? Because that is a lot of what the the the latest book that we just had come out, Lyft is is unpacking and is tactical. It's not theoretical. So we'll we'll come back to that because I got some really good tools for your listeners and really good things for them to think about as it relates to that. But first, Let's jump into, delegation, and it's such a large topic that is overlooked a lot, and it's overlooked because we get busy. And the reason we get busy is because we have many urgent things going on around us. We we're there there's fires that we've gotta put out. There's problems that we've gotta solve. And one of the things that we just tend to forget to do is look at why are we doing what we're doing and how can we do it better? And a lot of that is has to do with focus. And so when when we think about delegation, what we're really talking about especially if we're if we're just thinking about how do I know what to delegate? Because that's a really big question for people to ask sometimes, and there's a there's a whole framework of understanding how and what to delegate off your plate. But one of the things that we're asking and the questions that we're trying to solve for when we talk about delegation is What is it that I want to focus on? What is it that me, as a leader, or as a technician, as a any in any industry? What is it that I need to focus on to be successful. I was talking to a PGA coach recently, and he said, you know, every job has usually has two or three things that you need to be, like, world class at to be good at that job. And so if you know those two or three things, then a lot of the other stuff that you work on is static, and maybe some of the other stuff that you work on, someone else would be better at it. So one of the things that we wanna look at is our team. Like, for example, if if you're just not key savvy, then one of the things you need to be delegating is something related to IT to someone that's just better at it. That's just faster. You know, if I'm not a good graphic designer. I need to go get a graphic designer versus trying to say, oh, I'm gonna do this all myself. I need to go find somebody that's better at it. They're gonna do it faster. They're gonna do it better than me. However, as a leader, sometimes we get in trouble, and this is I know you've seen this. If you've been in business any amount of time, it's a lot of pain. This is a this where the pain comes in delegation. This is why it's done less than it should be. And that is this, and you've probably seen it. I have a problem I need to solve. I've decided I'm gonna delegate this. This is this task that I'm not good at. It's causing me stress and anxiety. This other person I've identified, they can handle it. And so I say, here, This is now your responsibility. And usually the first thing that happens is that they go along for a little bit under the radar, and then they fail. And then I get freaked out. I'm like, I can't I can't have balls dropping. I gotta make sure everything's right. And so I do something really bad. And that is just go pull it back and say, well, if you need anything good done, you have to do it yourself. And so you just pull that back. You've got that again. Plus everything else that you filled in the gap while you had delegated on first. So now you're even more stressed than you were. And you're trying to clean up the mess and you just get in this cycle. And when you see businesses, and we talked about different sizes and companies a lot of times you'll see these plateaus at different levels, and you'll see a plateau about a million dollars because business is about a million. That's one dude doing his thing, and that's he's doing, you see about five. That's exactly right. Hold on here. See that five and you've got maybe a couple project managers. That's about as much as you can manage. You'll see another one around ten and maybe twenty five. And so you see these stratus and a lot of times, it's because we either don't have the systems and processes in place, or or we haven't got the ability to delegate. And so what we have is a system that we call caveman delegation. We teach this as part of our our workshops and trainers that we do and summits that we do. You're talking to the right audience. So here's here's what you have to do. This is this is like Pick your knuckles up. Here we go. Yeah. Pick your knuckles up. Get ready. Get your pins out, you know, and let's go. So this is how you delegate correctly. So that you can do it one and done. We can't delegate and set it and forget it. Like, this is not the commercial with the rotisserie chicken. Right? We've gotta be a part of the process And so when we engage in the process, if we do it correctly, we can eventually separate and transfer that responsibility to somebody's success. When this is this is how it goes, you gotta think like a caveman. And so a caveman says, me do. And that's where that's you in your current state. You are doing this activity. Me do. You're doing all of it all the time. And so now the next step is we're we're gonna do me do you watch. Me do you watch. I'm gonna take somebody and I'm just gonna let them see. It may be that I'm just see seeing them on emails. It may be that I'm letting them ride in my truck. Certain meeting, sit in the meeting in the back of the room. Don't say anything. Just watch I may debrief with them after that, whatever it is. And then it's you do me watch. You do me watch. So me do me do you watch. You do me watch. Alright? This is where, giving them their first kind of taste of responsibility. And this is where I am not letting go of the reins. I'm not saying you're totally responding. I'm I'm a hawk. I'm watching. I'm seeing what's going on How are they handling it? You're responding to this customer now. You're responding on this project communication now, and I'm watching. How are you doing it? Okay. You said this. That was a little bit. Mhmm. Let's let's work on that let's work on your delivery a little bit, or you took too long to reply, or whatever it is. You know, I'm watching, and I'm shaping, and I'm encouraging, and I'm reminding what all these things I can say, okay, you do, but it's not just you do. It's you do up two. So you do up two. What does that mean? You do up to means this. I'm not conferring, especially if I'm the ultimate have the ultimate accountability for whatever it is that they're responsible for. I may still want to be involved, but only on things that I feel like are outside of what I've already trained them on. For example, if I'm training an estimator, they may be great at a certain type of system or certain process or certain project type. I'm gonna say, okay. You've got the reins now. You have full control of everything in this estimation. Whatever comes across your desk, you can do up to ten thousand dollars. Up to fifty thousand dollars, up to an outside of this type of unit or this type of process. Now I've put some boundaries on them And that is a good way because then it gives them clarity that they have freedom to move, which is great because now they feel like they have some autonomy in their job, and they can do the job without having a a hulk micromanaged their activity, and it gives me as the delegator some peace to know that if there's anything that happens, because as the delegator, I'm gonna lose sleep at night because I'm like, what if they screw this up? What if they screw this up? Well, I know because we've practiced in you do me watch. I know what they're not gonna screw up because we've got some good track record. We've placed some good track on that. So I don't have to and I know that if it's outside of that boundary, they're they're gonna talk to me and we can work that, which is just gonna make them better in the long run. So I think when people, you know, get into delegation, they start unpacking it to get overwhelmed. Sometimes people will over delegate step away. They do the set it and forget it approach, and that's just that's a recipe for disaster, and then they just tell everybody that they know what they're doing. Really, you need to take that on yourself as personal responsibility. So that you can be successful because we're only good delegators if the delegation itself is a success. That means we're not a good delegator. I would say take that responsibility on yourself first. If you've delegated something to a subordinate and or a team member and they are failing at it, then we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, did we do everything we could to set them up for success in the process of delegation, or do we just throw them to the shark? And so, yeah, that's our system. Caveman delegation is easy. Me do. Me do. You watch. You watch. You do me watch, and you do up too. If you get that, you get it right. No. I think that's good. I really do. Or I'm backing up a bit mentally to the actual task to be delegated Unfortunately, some people only delegate turds. They don't delegate good stuff. If you're on the receiving end of a turd, twenty four seven by your boss, eventually, you're gonna give up. If it's dark and it's stinky and it's dank and you know, damp and all that stuff that goes with being a mushroom, but you're expected to deliver. It's really difficult until you get some victories under your belt. And you have to have success. Think about it like this. If you're a door to door encyclopedias saleswoman, Gabby, which What that means is people actually went to houses and knocked on the doors and tried to sell encyclopedias. So I have to tell I have to tell these kids this If that person knocks on twenty doors and always gets to know, they're gonna give up. They gotta have a victory. Same way with delegation. If you're delegating TURds twenty four seven, you're setting that person up for failure in my opinion regardless of how good you are at the delegation task, you have to be realistic at what you're giving off to. Is that fair, Dallas? I think that's not only fair. I think it gets it to the part of something very important. If you're listening to this show, I know this show talks a lot about relationships and leadership and how it affects, you know, home and at work, and here's what I would say, leaders and great leaders look through a lens that's like this. I am here to build the next me And if I can do that at the next level or maybe even two levels down, I am a successful leader. And to do that, I can't just throw, like you said, Turds at at everybody downstream. I've got to find out some of the most important in fact, I wanna give some real all star products projects out to other people so that they can step up. Here's the dynamic. Poor leaders live with this mindset. If I give those out and they do well, I'm done for. Or they will excel over me. And I was having this conversation the other day with someone that had been a rising star in the company, and we're talking about you know, an another person that is struggling. It's a mindset thing. It is not scarcity. And honestly, you're not ready for the next level. If you can't duplicate yourself at the current level, if you can duplicate yourself at the current level, whatever that is, whether you're a project manager, manager, if you're in hospitality, if you're in the restaurant business, you can duplicate yourself. What that shows is, it's, a, you're great at delegating because you just delegated your whole job description to somebody else, but to do that, you've got to understand it inherently to a finite level and then be able to communicate that. And if you understand it at that level of granularity, and then can inspire someone and find the fit to do that, oh, man. I can tell you this, the sky's the limit because it doesn't matter what position you are, whatever position is next, people are gonna be looking you to feel that to do it again and again and again and again. You're not gonna get plucked to go up by your leadership or your corporate team or whomever if they're worried about the vacuum that's going to be created if they pull you out. You've have to have that person on deck and that person in the hole as a baseball term. One level back, two levels back, whatever you gotta have that bench built. And, you know, we do that. I think we do a pretty good job at at my company service logic of doing that And we're seeing the fruit of that right now, Dallas. We and and I've talked a little bit about this. We've got a plethora of young people coming into our president's roles that have been VP's ops, folks, whatever title they held before, but our existing leadership has done a great job of building their replacement. You know, to me, that's the ultimate, I mean, like, you've reached the crowning moment in your career when you can leave the business, the business continues to prosper under different leadership. And it going to be different. We're not creating Dolly, the the sheep here. We're not cloning people. We're carrying the same values, the same core values, but everyone's gonna have their own twist and their own flavor on it, which is great. That's how you keep troubles moving. It's really fun because we have fifty three operating companies right now. Seeing this cohort of younger presidents coming in right now is so freaking cool to me. I've known the guys who have been running the companies, and they're my peers. They're they're my age group who are retiring out. And to see these forty year olds coming in, fifty year olds coming in, taking a successful business sprinkling their seasoning on it and going again for the next run is so cool to watch. It is. And I and I think that speaks a lot to the culture that you're trying to create and and that open mindset and an opportunistic mindset and, the opposite of scarcity. I think that Also, when you look at that, the abilities and the things that it opens up for you, if you can grasp that mindset and actually move into it, because just you can't this is not one of those things you can fake. You can't this is not a concept where you could be like, yeah, that sounds good. And then you go back and you're operating in scarcity. You truly have to have that mindset and move in that direction. But if you can, let's say that somebody's still paranoid about it. Let's say you've got some nice ears with it. I'm I'm I'm just a afraid that if I train somebody else up to do this work that I'll be replaced and and somebody will take my job and then I'll lose my job. Well, a, if the worst case scenario happens, you've got a skill that's transferable to any industry, any job anywhere. And I can guarantee you that it's very very sought after. Number two, let's say there's not a position up over you somewhere where you're gonna move into any time. You've just made your life easier. Because you've got a lot of people that's sharing the load and the burden. And now you've got plenty of time to go do whatever it is you wanna do. And so whether that's innovating other area of the company or whether that's take on new responsibilities, or whether that start a hobby. It doesn't matter. You have successfully, you know, kind of duplicated yourself, and I think that's really done with that mindset and then having a skill of delegation. I think in my my history has told me that the skilled trades are horrible. About that because there was a lot of craftsmen back in the day who were fearful of young upcoming apprentice types taking their job, quote unquote. I think we're moving away from that to a great degree, but I'm not, and I can't speak to this because I'm not person, but I don't know if if non skill more of the managerial engineering side of the business suffered from that. You may know that from your time at the balance company. Is is that a common trait or is that a tool carrying curse I think that the idea of having a craftsman mindset, it's a double edged sword. We have to maintain that craftsman mindset because The aspects of it that are good are is this pursuit of excellence. We're doing the job and the work for its own sake. We want to do this well. It's like Steve I think it was Steve Jobs's dad used to put in cabinets, and he paint the back of the cabinets. And they're like, why? You gonna do that? Nobody's gonna see the back. He's like, I know what it looks like on the neck. I saw it, and he wanted that was just his signature thing. I want it to be right front back, even when nobody's seeing So that idea of a craftsman mindset is fantastic. I think where some people take it too far, the pendulum swing too far is exactly what you said. I have this knowledge and this information. I wanna wanna keep it to myself. I don't wanna share it. We're operating in different now. So, you know, back in the day, you had a blacksmith. He was at a blacksmith shop, and it was one blacksmith in the town, and he had an apprentice. And then when he got older, the prince took over, and it's just like this kind of thing. And now we're seeing so much scale and so much ability to increase productivity when we come together. Now all the black all over the world can share their knowledge on social media and get into Blacksmith's group and be better, faster, stronger at Blacksmith thing all over the world, you know, at the same time. And so you're starting to see these networks collide. And I think some of the challenges for organizations is how do we maintain this AFsman mindset, but then bring people that are technical in nature. Maybe they're upbringing as more technical hands on, maybe it's engineering, maybe it's medicine, maybe it's law, whatever that lives and then bring them in to help them see that when you move over people, your role is different. If you're, especially if you're coming from a technical background, so the craftsman mindset then has to shift to not just apply with work with your hands but it applies to your work with people. And I think that's the biggest breakdown that I saw in all the companies I've worked with is that you have the technical drivers and the producers, and then they are good at what they do, and then they get promoted over four people. And so you've got an engineer. He's great engineer. He does good design. No training, and now you're over four hundred. Our our industry historically, we take really good craftsmen. They become the service manager. At Friday, they're in the truck running a service call Monday, they're the service manager. They didn't get really, really gifted over the weekend at leading people. Our companies, plural, have done a good job of trying to figure out we've got to we've got to help start that people side of the process way earlier than we have historically, which was Monday when he started the job because they're all male. So I can say he, unfortunately. You know, we we teach in in trade schools and apprenticeship schools. We teach thermodynamics, and we teach welding, and we teach all this stuff that has stowed Jermaine to the craft. We we are beginning to change, but historically, we haven't offered how to communicate with Dallas how to communicate with Gabby. Totally different vocabularies, different everything. I'm supposed to take my message and give it to both of you. I can't give you the same message. Even if the outcome needs to be the same because you're both gonna hear it differently. So we're we're starting to get that. Gabbie's probably like Jesus. Here we go again on this topic, but it's really important to me because we are so far behind the eight ball of getting our folks in the trades people friendly in a communicative kind of way and a leadership kind of way. So it's important. It's equivalent to, in medicine, and I've talked to some of my physician friends, and they're actually coached on how to work on their bedside manner. We don't do that in our trade. We send people in the buildings and homes and hospitals and everywhere else. As raw ass technicians who are really good at fixing equipment. We're having to learn communication skills on the fly a prime example last night, I went to a restaurant. My wife and I were the friends. The friends had a show to go to at seven. We did not go to the show. We met them at five thirty. Upon sitting down, we told the waiter, we have a seven o'clock deadline. These folks have gotta walk out of here at seven. If five till seven, we still didn't have our meal, and the gentleman who we were with was able to just, I guess, express his displeasure with several people. And the reaction of the manager was appalling because we all looked at each other, like, really? That just happened happened here, and we're paying this bills. Anyway, it's not just air conditioning people who aren't getting the human training. So part part of your coaching and part of your delegation process to me when I think about the components and the composition of those topics has got to be that human interaction. And I think that's a great place to talk a little bit about the other thing that you mentioned, which was at what we call active coaching. To your point, what we've done is we've specialized a lot of tasks. And whether that's in trade school, whether that's in college, whatever it is, we're specializing technical tasks but we haven't specialized in human interaction, and we don't train on that. And the other thing that we've done on top of that, which is all true, I think, is that since, you know, twenty ten or two thousand eight, whenever Facebook was loaded on to phones. Whatever year that was back in two thousand and eight, two thousand whenever that hit, what we've done is we've moved to very, very much younger generations have moved very much to digital con conversation and communication. And so that takes out the personal element in another step. It just puts it that much further back. That's not their fault. We're the ones that made it and gave it to them. That's no shade on any young person out there. We're I'm saying that that is a reality that we have as organizations have to face to say how can we improve this because not only are we teaching them technical skills they don't have in their social spheres as much time to practice just interacting because it's a lot it's a lot it's a lot more digital. And then throw on top of that COVID. It just gets really messy. And so one of the things that and you you talked about being, you know, a a very male organization, I've had that experience as well and leading males is very interesting. They're so male. And that some of that is, like, very predictable because you can have a great company and a great team that's very technically proficient, very functional, so it's surviving, but it's not thriving. And they may have a valuable service that only they can offer, but they're not thriving. And so one of the things that dudes do a really good job of is grunting at each other. And they don't do a good job of talking sometimes, but they do a good job of grunting. And so that ends up doing is just creating a lot of friction and a lot of grind. And we don't really know why. We just, you know, some days we connect with, some days we don't, we just grind on each other. And so we sometimes show up with a bad attitude because we don't work with this dude or that dude. So one of the things that we had to do was come up with a system because, you know, if you wanna go and hire an executive coach, for the CEO or the president or the vice president or directors, go get you one. You know? That's great. That's fine. A lot of companies can do that, but What we found is everybody needs that one on one personal holding them accountable, listening to them, helping them develop and grow, and yet companies miss it because we do a lot of companies, and I've I've been in a lot of different industries, and it's across the board. It's an it's an epidemic across the board. Not related to just the tech industry, service industry, anything. It's everywhere. As we it's like you said, on Friday, you're, you know, a technician on Monday, you're the manager. And the the transition is very little. So what we have to do is be able to engage in coaching and development, and we wanna push that all the way down through the organization Now when I say active coaching, I mean that most of the time you engage many times, you'll engage in coaching someone when they screw up. Right? Okay. I just delegated this or you have this responsibility on your roles and responsibilities. You just messed up, and I'm gonna tell you how you messed up. I'm gonna tell you how to do it better. Right? And that's Okay. Fair enough, especially when safety is concerned, you gotta be very quick and very direct and get it done. But if that's the only time that you coach, It's very transactional. It's not relational. It's very reactive. So most people, skill coach, reactively. They know us coming. And so what we want to do, and this is why we call it active coaching, is we want to take a proactive approach to coaching. That means regardless of what you're doing, regardless of your assignment, regardless of you've had a good week or a bad week, Meaning you, we're gonna sit down on a regular basis consistently, and we're gonna engage in a coaching and development process. Now that is kind of the crux of what we did. We launched this inside the company, and we had some incredible, I mean, just insane results because we developed system that we could push down at every level. So we did not go outside. We did not get a bunch of executive coaches. We took our technical managers, and we turned them into leader coaches. And it's not just a coach and it's not just a leader. It is this own thing that's a leader coach, and so that system was six questions because, you know, what I found out was that if you go up to a guy that's just been trained technically and you say, I want you to go have a meaningful conversation with dude that you don't know that just hired on to your team. I need you to go out to lunch and have a meaningful conversation and really coach him up, develop him up. Unless that person has been trained on how to do that. What are you gonna do? They're gonna be like, Okay. And then they're gonna talk about football at once and what'd you do? Oh, yeah. That's good. What we need to do is we need to give people a scaffold that they can fall back on. An approach that they can fall back on. And so you know that there's a baseline, and then we can test on that baseline. We can train on that baseline. It's really easy that anybody can do And then they can engage in that scaffolding process and feel they can feel more competent and gain confidence the more they do it. And so that is what we feel like active coaching would be as consistent engagement in coaching and development. Now we took that system that we developed for that company and turned it into an app called the one on one coaching system app, and that's what it's for. It's just six questions once a month. Three are always different. Three are always the same. But essentially that one on one coaching system, what we found valuable about is that it generated monthly feedback, and the biggest thing it did was it helped our technical leaders, managers, become leader coaches because they listened once at least once a month. They just sat across somebody and gave them twenty minutes of their time and listened. It doesn't have to always be about, you know, what job or project you're managing. I mean, one of the questions is, what's the most important thing we can talk about today? You would be absolutely shocked when you ask that question. What happens? And sometimes nothing happens. They go, nothing. I think I'm good. And other times, they go, hey, know, me and my wife, we had it out this weekend. I don't think we're gonna make it. And then other times, they go, hey, you know, you told me you would get me that technical manual so I could take that exam, and you didn't do it. So where's my manual? Just giving people space. Number one to reflect. I mean, the first guy that sat through the demo, this is my this is one of my favorite stories. This is a bigger story, but I don't want everybody to think that coaching has to be these ridiculous mountaintop experiences because that's not what it's about. It's it's really about micro movements. It's I'm gonna move you a little bit at time of the day, every day, a little bit, a little bit. And that's what the system's all about. But the first guy that to the demo, he goes and listen, he wasn't even getting it. He just watched me demo it to his manager, his leader, his ops manager. He said, okay. He leaves total flat. I just was like, well, this is going nowhere. This guy, I don't even think. He goes home. He comes back when he says, I wanna make a commitment for my one on one. Oh, what is it? I quit smoking. You what? Yeah. I quit smoking this weekend. Why? Well, I got to thinking about the questions that you asked, and I thought this, and I thought that, and I thought this. He goes, yeah, I'm having a baby. It's time to quit. He was smoking for like fifteen years. Was like three or four years ago. He hadn't touched it since it was cold turkey. No Nick patch nothing. He just woke up one day and he's like, I'm not a smoker now. I'm not Tony Robinson. This ain't a Tony Robin system, by any means. But what it is is he was a powder keg, and he needed space to think. And we asked some questions that he needed to get some answers to. And a lot of people are going through, and they're binging on Netflix at nine got a thousand emails every day. They're not thinking about some important things. So when you give somebody five or ten minutes just to sit and think, it's incredible. Mean, we've had managers that asked somebody in in in one guy who was is subordinate, thought he was mad at him. He wasn't mad at him. He just thought he was mad at him. And he told him, and then the most important thing we can talk about today? I think you're mad at me. Really? What's that? Well, these reasons, I'm not mad. Well, then when he says he's not it goes, oh, really? Well, I got this really great idea. He'd been sitting on the idea for, like, three months. That idea was rolled out company wide all across the southeast three months later, and it was just a little bit of dissonance and a little bit of tension that kept that idea from coming out. So what we wanna do is just open up those channels. So active coaching to me is being able to engage one on one with individuals on your team consistently and give them space to think, give them an ear listen to them, and now I'm getting feedback. And then I can also coach so I can engage in that as well. And I can so how you doing on your goal? I can hold them accountable. They're gonna make commitments of this system, they make a commitment every month. How you can get one percent better this month. Might be watching a YouTube video, how to do Microsoft Teams or something, but it doesn't matter. It's just one percent. And so that's that's active coaching. It's so freaking awesome. I'm working with a fella right now, and we met last Friday. We had, basically, I said, what do you wanna do in twenty twenty four, both personally and professionally? The questions were benign and and easy, but the answers were really, really awesome. It's giving people that pause to get their thoughts collected and say, okay. This dude actually wants me to answer this and and he's not just looking for a BS. Hey, how you doing kinda answering? This is a genuine conversation. Active coaching. I gotta give you my take on it. And I've thought about this a million times, and I've told myself quit exaggerating a million times. Get it. So I have often thought that a basketball coach is the ultimate coach because he's got five players. She's got five players, both sides of the court. And in real time, they can give feedback, positive, negative, forward looking, and regressive. Of what's happening on the court. And when I think about your words, active coaching, to me, that's a basketball coach because or maybe hockey if you're if you live up above the Mason Dixon. You're seeing what's developing in front of you as a coach just like we do at work or at home. With your kids or whatever, and you're able to give, hey, Sally. Marge is open in the corner for a three pointer. Passed her to ball. And we're helping because maybe she couldn't see that the lady was open and ready to receive the ball because she had to blind her up. Maybe somebody was here's this beautiful soul standing over there with her arms up waiting on the ball. We get that same way at work. We have these unintentional blinders on due to every freaking thing. I I got nineteen hundred and twenty seven things going on with windows opening and everything else on all these screens. And this one little thing I could focus on, and I couldn't see it because I've had this other blockage. But if I have a coach there, I got coach in one ear, my teammates in the other. Now I can pass that ball with decision because I know she's open. I love that metaphor. Let's run with that because, like, what what passive coaching looks like in business is you walk into the stadium, the the clock starts you go, okay, guys. I'm going to my office. Bring me the score at the end of the game, and I expect to be a win. That's passive coaching. And then if you don't win, well, why didn't you win? Why didn't you win? Didn't you do this? And it's like, well, let's get more involved. The other thing is is that Hold on. Unless you're Bill Bellichuck, Bill. How come you didn't lend her today? The other team scored more points. Yeah. Right. Right. John Wooten is one of my favorite coaches of of all of any coaching. So the best all analogies. Great. But I love how you said it wasn't that you were micro managing the player. And I loved how you pointed that out. You're letting them play, but you're seeing them as they are, and you're saying there's some gaps in awareness. That's what you just pointed out that they focused on. They've got their back turn, there's a player open behind them. They don't know it, and I'm there to help them. The what you described is not the picture of a micro manager It's not the picture of somebody that's nit picking somebody all the way down the corridor and how they dribble and turn this way and turn that way. What you're doing is you're partnering with that person and you're seeing them for who they are you're listening their feedback, you're watching them perform, and then you're offering constructive counsel. And that is a leader coach. You're leading people. You know, when you have someone outside the organization and I'm I'm a big fan of executive coaches and all that. Fan fantastic. It's great. They're very valuable in their service. And so but a lot of times, they will say, what do you want to accomplish and they will help you accomplish. And that's why we're very specific in saying we create leader coaches because a leader is different from a coach in the sense that they have a vision and they're saying this is where we're going, and I need your help to get there. And they're seeing the people and saying, this is how I see you do that. Now it's a conversation. Right? But a coach is gonna say, okay. Well, how are we gonna develop you? Well, we need both. We need leaders and coaches, and that tends to be the same individual in success successful organizations with strong cultures. A ton of great information today, my man. It's just fun to hear how we can grow. And to your point, It doesn't have to be a mushroom cloud. It's ten percent at the time. It's five percent. It's whatever you can get done. But keep moving. It's just like my tattoo right here, ties in every day, grind it out, measure it, tweak it, grind it out. And I use grind in a love term. That's a term of endearment for me because I love to grind. I really do. As we're wrapping this puppy up because because life is what life is and everybody's gotta go. But tell us how everybody can get in touch with you. What's the best way to follow along with what you're doing or how are you even better? You can get in touch with me on our websites think move thrive dot com think move thrive and we are very active on that in terms of hosting all kinds of content, blogs, and podcasts, all that stuff for that, all around coaching, development, and culture. And so if that's something you're interested in there. You can also go to Amazon, and we've just launched a new book. It's called Lyft is all about culture and how you strengthen or create culture in your organization or your team. So if you're managing a team or if you're leading an organization, then I strongly suggest lift calls, it is not a theoretical thing. Sometimes culture gets a little theoretical. This is three main ideas that you can take and start using immediately Some are very intuitive and some are a little surprising, I think. But the good news is if you hate reading, this is the book for you because it's a business fable and who doesn't like story. So we created this to be an easy read that anybody could pick up because some people don't like to read books. If you do like to read, you're gonna really, really enjoy some of the the constant that we unpack about culture. So, yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Very active on LinkedIn and Think Move Thrive. So thank you for thank you again for, having me on the show. I can't believe how much Gabby's talked and dominated the conversation today. She's a good sport. She wants us to go, and then she keeps us corral when we need to be corral. But you brought some really good points today. You brought some clarity so couple of items I had jotted down, which really helped. And I appreciate your personal touch on that. Really good stuff. We've gotta together first of the year. I'm gonna come up there, come up Highway twenty five, and we'll meet up there at the cliffs and have lunch or something in the day. So That sounds good. I'd love it. Well, Gabby, there you go. All that hard work you've done, and I I didn't see any eye rolling or anything today. So I think tolerated us well today. She's been all smiles. All smiles today. She's she's a sport. I'm telling you. Why don't you go ahead and get us headed toward the house. Busy afternoon for sure. Busy time of year, I gotta go get my stocking stuff ready for the wife. As Greg was saying, Dallas, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure listening to kind of the wealth of knowledge that you have packed inside your brain and obtained over the years from your own experiences as well as I'm sure other people's experiences. It's very cool to hear about, you know, your story and how you got to where you are as well as, you know, hear about your books. That's very exciting. I'm definitely gonna check out Lyft So again, thank you so much for coming and talking to us today. As for everyone else, thank you for joining us for an episode of straight out of Crumpton. For more episodes like this, don't forget to subscribe to Apple or Spotify Podcast, and don't forget to check out greg crumpton dot com for all of your Greg crumpton content. Freet out of Crumpton with your host, Greg Crumpton.