The 4 Terms of Leadership Every Leader Must Follow
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we speak with Vince Molinaro Ph.D., NY Times Best-Selling Author of The Leadership Contract, about redefining leadership expectations and building a community of accountable leaders.
Vince shares the four terms of leadership, decision, obligation, hard work, and community, and explains how organizations can embed these principles into everyday practices. He discusses how HR leaders can align executives during strategic shifts, strengthen leadership culture, and create the conditions for extraordinary performance.
🎓 In this episode, Vince discusses:
How to embed leadership expectations into HR and talent practices
Why clarity, alignment, and accountability are essential in leadership
The CHRO’s role in building a community of leaders during strategic shifts
Practical examples of how leadership culture change improves engagement and performance
The 4 terms of leadership from The Leadership Contract: decision, obligation, hard work, and community
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Vince Molinaro 0:00
How have the expectations of our leaders changed? It's very hard to align leaders around a sense of community and accountability if you haven't made the expectations clear. Define those expectations and create a leadership contract that says, here's what we expect of you. It's four or five, six expectations written in very simple, direct language that says, here's what it means to be a leader in our organization right now, and we need everyone to kind of sign up, clarity of strategy, clarity of context, clarity of expectations. That's the Define Phase. The second step, then, is really the alignment, where you leverage everything you're doing in leadership development, coaching, strategic meetings, where you bring your leaders together, where you're reinforcing the strategy, the context, you're reinforcing the expectations. And the other thing is that you are really creating opportunities for leaders to come together and forge stronger relationships. The final element is really embedding. So how do you now take these leadership expectations and really embed them into many talent or HR practices, so that these expectations live in the organization, the opportunity for leaders to come together live in the organization. The other element that's underlining all of this is that you also have to make sure that everyone has signed up for what's ahead and you're leading a strategic shift. You need to know everyone is fully 100% on board.
Chris Rainey 1:39
Vince, my friend, welcome to the show. How are you?
Vince Molinaro 1:41
I am great. Thank you for making time, Chris. Appreciate it good to see you
Chris Rainey 1:45
again. I always enjoy when we speak, because at least I know I've got a good conversation and someone with good audio and video. We try, we try. How you been? We went up to
Vince Molinaro 1:56
Good, good. Yeah, just Well, I had a three week family trip into Italy, which was amazing. Got back, and then immediately had to do a keynote, and then immediately had to go to the US to work with a high potential group. So no no time for transition back to a different time zone. We just went right into it, and we're having lots of fun, and we're fortunate to have great customers.
Chris Rainey 2:21
Yeah, I say, What a hard life you live. There are days we just went on holiday and then I had to fly out. Sometimes, when you're in it, it doesn't feel like that, right? When you kind of take yeah back, you're like, I'm very lucky. Oh, absolutely, yeah,
Vince Molinaro 2:35
absolutely. For all of us, we have, it's a privilege to do this work. It's a privilege when organizations put their faith in us, certainly with me and my teams, to come in, and we never lose sight of that. And it's important to recognize, you know, it was a important trip because my wife, Liz, and I had our 30th anniversary this year wedding anniversary, we had lots of big milestones with our kids as well. So we thought, what the heck? Let's try to do this together. So it's important to take moments with you when you can, not that you can always do that, but when you can to do that.
Chris Rainey 3:16
And those are the things that people that really stick right with the kids, and that you really remember, right? And I'm not always been good at that. I'm being honest, to take time to actually celebrate and, you know, take a moment, a pause, yeah, because I'm so in the grind sometimes, well,
Vince Molinaro 3:35
we'll get into it, yeah. In our work, one of the one of the characteristics we find of a strong community of accountable leaders is that they actually do take time to pause and celebrate achievement of key milestones. And it often is the lowest rated item when we do our diagnostic with organizations, and it's also the lowest hanging fruit. Yeah, for Lee, for leaders and managers, it doesn't it's not complicated. It doesn't take a lot. It's just that catching yourself, like you say, in the middle of the frenzy, to pause and say, Hey, let's, let's kind of recognize what we've achieved, what we've accomplished, even when things are going tough. And for many organizations right now, it's a it's an uncertain place, and it's still important and do meaningful recognition of people's contributions.
Chris Rainey 4:21
Yeah, no. And we, at one point, we were very consistent at doing, like, monthly team get togethers. And I saw like it would kind of change, you know, the trust that was built in the team and the level of energy, yeah, and through that collaboration, just outside of the working environment, I think the challenge is, is just to remain consistent, you
Vince Molinaro 4:42
know, yes, yeah. And that's the routines that come up as well that we talked about, yeah.
Chris Rainey 4:46
Well, let's get into it. But before, before we jump into the book and the new work and just give off on a quick background, you know, your quick background of your journey to where we are now?
Vince Molinaro 4:57
Well, I've been in the leadership space. For for most of my career, and I've done it through many, many angles, certainly as a as a practitioner, through my through my research that we continue to this day, and in having, you know, senior executive roles, global roles, actually running and scaling up leadership development businesses. So I come at it from multiple angles. So I, you know, I'm not strictly a practitioner and researcher. I've lived in the role. I know the pressure that senior executives face, and that's ultimately because I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I was 26 when I started my first business and and one way or another, that that part of me has always just been well entrenched in everything that I do. The other thing that is important in our work, as I referenced, is the research that we do, and really the foundational part of the journey, began about 15 years ago, but when coming out of the great financial crisis, we were seeing many of our customers frustrated with leadership development. We were hearing these laments of we're investing in our leaders. We're not seeing it translate into better leadership. We're not sure what's going on and and we were seeing that play out over and over and over again. So, you know, clearly, it was like there's something going on here which we don't fully understand. And what I began to realize was that what they were ultimately talking about was a leadership accountability challenge, where we had people in leadership roles not fully understanding what it means to be a leader and not stepping up to expectations. And then so that inspired a book called The leadership contract, which came out in 2013 which really was kind of saying to leaders, whenever you take on a leadership role, you sign up for something really important. A lot of leaders aren't aware of that, and so we made the, what I call the four terms of leadership contract, really explicit. The book immediately resonated in the market. It did quite well, and we built programs off of it. And then what we began to see in that work was organizations telling us this is all great. We're seeing accountability increase individually, but we're seeing leaders struggle with Team accountability and shared accountability, where peers, you and I are peers, you know, you're in sales, I'm in marketing, we own a common priority. We have to come together to deliver it, and that for a lot of managers and leaders is a murky world, and that inspired book that came out in June of 2020, accountable leaders that really dove into that and shared some of our latest research. And then in September of last year, the newest book, community of leaders, was really a build on that, that really kind of said, given the challenges that organizations and leaders are facing. We need leaders to really come together as a community, to drive accountability, to drive performance and to drive results. So that's kind of been the journey that I've been on. And all of those ideas have translated into solutions and services that we bring with, bring to organizations that we work
Chris Rainey 8:00
with. Wow, you've been on a roll.
Vince Molinaro 8:03
Well, you know, it's fortunate, yeah, yeah. It's been, it's been nice to see that momentum in that build. You could never have predicted or forecasted that. That's how things would have gone. Because you're, yeah, you're being responsive to the needs of your customers.
Chris Rainey 8:19
What were those four terms? I just want to skip that, because I literally immediately, I was like, what I saw. I'm sure everyone listening was like, what are the four terms? Well,
Vince Molinaro 8:28
the first, the first one is that leadership is a decision, and you have to make it. And what that means is it's a very deliberate process of pausing and reflecting on what you're signing up for. And many times, managers and leaders, when they're in that position, you know, they kind of think about, oh, I'm going to get this new title, which is fine. Oh, I'm going to get a little more money. Oh, this is fine. I'm going to get a little more prestige, not a problem. I'm going to be able to influence the organization more. Those are all all valid, but often it's really stepping back and thinking about what's really expected of me, what is the value I need to drive with my team or teams, and am I fully prepared to do what's necessary to help drive the success of the organization? So it starts with the decision. The second is that leadership is an obligation, and the obligation is that it's not about you, it's not about your self interest. I mean, there's always a little bit of that, but it's primarily about what is the impact you're going to have, what is the enduring value you're going to create? In the book, I cite a quote from Sam Palmisano, who was a former IBM CEO, and near the end of his 11 years at the company, where he drove very strong financial performance and left a legacy of investing in leaders. He was asked how he thought about his obligation, and he said, it's really easy, you know, as a CEO of a Fortune 100 company, I can get, you know, measured by a number of financial metrics, you know, stock price and earnings per share and all those kinds of things. Those are fine, but they're, you know, the real the real measure. Is, how have I left the company and the people in better shape than I found it? And I love that line, because that's not just for him as a corporate CEO. It's for every manager, right? So that's the obligation. The third one is, it's hard work. Leadership is a lot of hard work, and we need to kind of be hold ourselves accountable. Got to be tough on ourselves, to do a lot of the hard work. And what we've learned is a lot of managers and leaders really avoid the hard work, particularly around people issues. So even to today, I keep hearing, you know, our managers don't manage poor performers aggressively enough they don't give candid feedback to the people they lead that they avoid conversations they need to have with their peers. They're that, you know? They're, they're really shy about giving feedback to their managers and and so what we don't realize is, when we avoid some of that hard work, that we alone must do, that we weaken ourselves, we weaken our companies, and we weaken our organizations, and we're all doing it, you know? We don't come at a judgment. It's a tough job. It's a tough, tough job, and and we just got to get a bit better at it. So I like joking with audiences. Where I where I say, you know, we have a lot of leaders that are wimping out. And, you know, and certainly, you know, in North America, you know, if you call someone a wimp, it's offensive. But, but what's interesting is, when you go into the dictionary to look at the actual definition, it's actually very instructive. So wimping out means avoiding something you know you must do out of fear or lack of confidence. And this is great, because all that hard work that we avoid, it's not a mystery, right? We all know we need to do it, but we avoid it. Why? Because we're afraid. I might be afraid of How's Chris going to react. I don't want to hurt his feelings legitimate, or I may lack my confidence in being able to have that conversation, all of which is addressable. And so this is often the one that we tell leaders, if you take anything away from this work, just do a better job of going after that. And the fourth term is that leadership is a community. And that one really is, it's no longer about the single leader who's the hero, who's going to kind of lead the way and save us. It really is, how do leaders come together in a more meaningful way to drive the strategic priorities of their organizations. And when the book first came out, back in 2013 you know, the book had a very direct message to leaders and very strong kind of writing style. And this idea, which, you know, kind of was the gentler idea of the four terms was the one that started to resonate the most where I can, you know, I can't tell you how many times CEO said I need to build a community of leaders. We haven't got, we haven't got there. This is going to be, you know, our ultimate differentiator, if we can do it. And that's kind of continued through all these years of doing this work.
Chris Rainey 12:58
I love that, man. Let's get into it. Then in a little bit more detail, I suppose. Let's start with a how, like, How can organizations build a community of accountable leaders who work together to tackle challenges head on, especially where there's so many challenges right now coming at us from so many directions?
Vince Molinaro 13:21
Well, exactly. Well, to that point, our research, we kind of ask our, you know, kind of the research that we've done among senior leaders and and employees in the book I describe it over 3000 respondents, and we find that, on average, organizations have three to four key strategic challenges all playing out at once. So you're right. It is. It is more complex where we've actually in the last six months, because we have a leadership culture diagnostic that gets embedded in every project that we do, we've seen that number continue to rise. So one executive team, my team and I will be working with next week. They've identified 6.89 strategic challenges that they're dealing with all at once, each one on their own, you know, driving accelerated growth. You know, redefining the business model, AI, you name it, yeah, have all are all coming at them at once. One executive I, I worked with a few years back, she kind of said it feels like, you know, the title that movie, everything, everywhere, all at once. That's kind of what it feels like day to day and so. So you're right, that need for a community isn't because, hey, let's get together and have fun and get to know each other. No, it's not about that at all. It's about. We've got some big strategic opportunities that we've got to navigate our way through. Another interesting one that's really kind of for the moment is we had a we had one of the characteristics of the strategic challenges was managing geopolitical challenges, right? And when we did the research. Um, a while ago it was dead last as a strategic challenges, like nobody was identifying it. And now in the last six months, we've seen it coming into the top three. Yeah. So that's also how quickly the business context and the environment, the business environment can change for a lot of leaders. So
Chris Rainey 15:19
we spoke about a lot about the why, but like, how, what does this look like in practice? Like, how do we what are some practical things that people can do and step that they need to take?
Vince Molinaro 15:30
Yeah, so there's a couple of couple of ways to think about it. There's some foundational things that that need to happen, and then there are some kind of, you know, the day to day maintenance that that is helpful. So from the foundational items, there's really, we've kind of labeled it our leadership accountability system, and there's sort of three kind of key practices you have to be thinking about. The first one is really defining the business context, really defining the strategy, and from that, extrapolating What are, how have the expectations of our leaders changed? It's very hard to align leaders around a sense of community and accountability if you haven't made the expectations clear. And so certainly in the Accountable leaders book and in the new book community leaders, I kind of map out what that process is for organizations to to undertake if they choose. In fact, for us, when we do it with customers, we really define those expectations and create a leadership contract that says, here's what we expect of you. It's four or five, six expectations written in very simple, direct language that says, here's what it means to be a leader in our organization right now, and we need everyone to kind of sign up, right So, clarity of strategy, clarity of context, clarity of expectations. That's the the define, the Define Phase, the second step then, is, is the is really the alignment where you leverage everything you're doing in leadership, development, coaching, strategic meetings, where you bring your leaders together, where you're reinforcing the strategy, the context, you're reinforcing the expectations. And the other thing is that you are really creating opportunities for leaders to come together and forge stronger relationships, because we've learned you can't build a community among a group of strangers. And it is still surprising to me how many organizations don't pay attention to that don't, don't have an opportunity to bring leaders together. We've seen a dramatic shift in the sense of community that's built even when we've done work completely virtually. You know, you know, when companies have leaders distributed by geography and time zone, even bringing people together virtually and doing that consistently, you know, really aligned around a common strategic issue is can be very, very powerful. So I get into describing a lot of the alignment elements to that, and then the final element is really embedding. So how do you now take these leadership expectations and really embed them into many talent or HR practices? Like you can create a recruitment profile. You use it for career development. You may create a multi rater assessment survey. You don't need to do everything we've learned, you pick a few key practices and really execute with discipline over over the long term, so that these expectations live in the organization, the opportunity for leaders to come together live in the organization. The other element that's underlining all of this, and it gets back to the four terms, is that you also have to make sure that everyone has signed up for what's ahead, and that sometimes leaders see what's coming, and they're a little bit tentative, but somebody raise their hand, going, Okay, I'm done. Yeah, this is not okay, right? That's perfectly okay. Sometimes the best leadership decision is to say, this is not for me. I don't have the interest. Maybe put me in a more technical role where I can create value, or, you know what, maybe it's time for me to find another opportunity. And I think the earlier leaders for themselves and the organizations can help leaders make those decisions, the better, because you're really, you know, when you're leading a strategic shift. You need to know everyone is fully 100% on board.
Chris Rainey 19:24
Man, so much to take away from, from what you just said, I suppose, thinking back maybe the last four to six months, what was some examples you could share from some of your clients? Yeah. So one of those four areas and like, yeah. So bring it
Vince Molinaro 19:40
to life. Yeah. So AROUND, AROUND THE so the alignment, and I'm sorry, the Define Phase we part of what we use to kind of define the current state is a leadership culture diagnostic, and that really defines the community. We've kind of broken down what a community of leaders is through our research, through 10. Characteristics, and that is, you know, they are clear on strategy. They're excited. Leaders. Are excited about the future. They have a common aspiration to be great as leaders, they lead with a one company mindset and a united front to the organization and to the partners they work with externally. They hold each other accountable, so peer to peer accountability is really strong. It's the lowest rated item in every organization. So to me, that's a shared sense of accountability is going to be a pivotal area. We talked about this. They celebrate success and key milestones. Leaders break down silos so they can innovate and collaborate. Internal politics take a back seat. Not that they're completely absent, but it's not what consumes leaders. Day to day, they come together in the face of adversity and resolve. In the face of adversity, with resilience and resolve. And finally, they support each other. They have each other's backs. There's a real, fundamental sense of trust. I think that's all but 10 of them.
Chris Rainey 20:56
You done a really good job that everyone know what that so
Vince Molinaro 21:00
once, once you have the baseline. So this one organization was a large public sector organization, we got a baseline, and three items came to the top. Number one was greater opportunity to drive clarity around strategy, create greater excitement about the future, and greater aspiration to be great as a leader. So we then focused on a series of events that we customized for them. We partnered very closely with the most senior leader to do that, and we shared the ideas on our work on leadership, accountability and what it is and how they can step up individually, with their teams and together. And over a series of events, over about a year or so, we then redid the the diagnostic, and we saw particularly on those three, but all the 10 items increased from the baseline, and those three had the biggest increase, double digit increase, statistically significant outcomes. And the reality is they didn't do a lot. It was a series of quarterly meetings where they were coming together anyways, but we went at it with a real sense of deliberateness and strategic focus on making sure we kind of made the expectations clear, made leaders understand what was required, and built that sense of excitement that they've never really had before. So that's that's one example, there's another pharmaceutical company where their strategic shift was pretty significant. They, they, you know, for a long time in their history, played in a few therapeutic areas where they, you know, had had treatments and drugs for kind of chronic conditions, and now they were moving to a specialty model, which was focusing more on rare diseases. That's a fundamentally different business on your hands. And so the area country manager that we worked with already began to see that this was a culture change initiative, and that's what you often see with this work, it is about leadership culture change, as you can appreciate, and we defined a set of leadership expectations. We created a strategic story to help every employee understand how the strategy was shifting and why. And then the same thing, we had a series of events with leaders, and then an all employee meeting where this this work got cascaded relative to his peers in other countries, he saw a significant jump in employee engagement scores, even when they had had to make some tough decisions on talent as they were, you know, retooling the business for the future. And they got stronger through some of that adversity, which is also interesting.
Chris Rainey 23:43
Just work well, if you do it right, that's kind of, I say it's a Shane, my co founder. We've gone through ups and downs and highs and loads of HR leaders, but every time we come out stronger, yeah, more resilient. You know, more more trust. If you do it the right way, exactly, truly, if you I love the 10, by the way, I need to like, dude, I'm gonna do a LinkedIn post of those 10 have you? You must have done that already, right? Yeah, we have, like, I can send you. Send me that. Yeah, I need to. I'll tag you in, and we're like, and I'll give you credit for it. But I love, I need, I need to put that out there. So what is HR role in all of this? Yeah, well, you know, audience system right now, to get to them.
Vince Molinaro 24:21
It's a great it's a great question. In fact, it's one that was sort of Top of Mind. In fact, in May, I was at a kind of an event for CHROs, and we had, I was asked to lead a panel of three CHROs who are also our customers. Because what I was finding particularly among those three, but what I do see in this work is the CHRO, and the head of HR is a critical leader through any kind of culture change, even, you know, a strategic shift that a company is doing, and they're able to number one under, you know, come at it from a business lens first, right? They. They understand the strategy that's ahead, and they're able to, kind of start extrapolating what the leadership expectations are as a result of that, right? So kind of business first, which I don't think would be a surprise, you know, to your audience, number two is they build a very, very strong relationship with the CEO. They are really tight at the hip, driving that, that transformation that's required, and so that that's the second part. And they kind of, you know, build their credibility. They are a sounding board to the CEO, and they are working them very, very closely through through that because, you know, driving a strategic shift, which requires, you know, leading, leadership culture change is thorny, is messy. It's not linear. There's ups and downs, as you can appreciate. And so, you know, the CEO is always looking for a sounding board that they can trust, where they're going to get credible perspectives. So that's that second element. The third is, you know, as a result of that, that they they really understand that they've got to build a very strong team of capable HR practitioners so that they can really, you know, scale up that work. You know, so HR business partners, if they don't have credibility, or they come at their role in what I would call a little more traditional lens. It doesn't work as much for today's leader. So they're not going to be able to support managers and leaders deeper in the organization. So you got to build that really, really strong team. And then the other element is, they've got huge credibility with the executive team, right? And they're supporting them, sometimes directly, sometimes through the sidelines, to make sure the executive team is also quite aligned. So those are the things that I've that I've seen, and we're going to keep doing work in that area, because we think it's going to be really helpful to the HR community. And there's already great examples of really prolific CHROs and heads of HR who already intuitively know how to do this. Yeah, quite exceptional, yeah. And I'm sure you encounter many of them, yeah,
Chris Rainey 27:08
I do, yeah. So you kind of reflected it and what you just shared so far, the ones that I see that have really been successful are doing exactly what you just described there, but it isn't the many, it's the few. Yeah, I would say, you know,
Vince Molinaro 27:25
and my and to, just to build on that point, I think, I think what it's going to mean, though, is we will need the many, because so many organizations are going through strategic shifts and having to lead those strategic shifts. So just out of curiosity, because I'm a little bit of a research geek. I did some last year, some Google trend analysis on some key terms, like community of leaders, strategic shifts and and starting at, you know, around 2021 as we were kind of getting a little bit, you know, starting to see our way through the pandemic, we started to see this, you know, as a Canadian, we use the term hockey stick growth, in in in the frequency of searches for leading strategic shifts and community of leaders. It's like, intuitively, people know that these two constructs are really critical together, right? If you've got to lead a significant strategic shift, you know it's only going to happen by building a strong sense of accountability and community among your leaders. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 28:21
But also think like there was a big shift that no one expected, with an impact of going hybrid, yes, you know, because before you had all of those leaders under one roof, yeah? So you could create some organic moments right to water cooler conversations. And there was, you know, yeah, it isn't a level you're describing, but it was there, yeah, all of a sudden we're disconnected. Yeah, all right, that was a big issue for many companies, right? And, no, they didn't really understand the unintended consequences of that.
Vince Molinaro 28:53
Absolutely, I completely agree with that, but I also, I also have challenged audiences around that, because certainly, as we were doing like, you know, virtual keynotes and, and, you know this, this came out, this whole lament of, remember when we used to be in the office and we used to bump into each other in the hallways and, and, and my reality in working with a lot of organizations is The reality is that actually never happened. And I would, and I had a term, and I kind of kind of term saying, listen, folks, you have pre covid amnesia. Yeah, right. You think that's what happened. You were locked in your office. Never got out of your office and and that didn't happen. The other thing we learned is, is that even in a hybrid world, in a virtual world, those things still can happen. You just have to be more deliberate, intentional,
Chris Rainey 29:49
yeah, exactly. And you got to be intentional about make the time right, like make Exactly. Now, I agree with you, by the way, because even though my previous company it. Was, like, a, you know, our building was maybe, like, seven floors anyway, like, finance on one floor, marketing, sales, right? We only really smoke. Like, spent our time with our own floor, you know, like, I would always say to the team, we have all this, all of these amazing leaders in this business, but we never talk to each other, yeah? Like, they're like, so you're right, like, there's an illusion that we're all together, but really I'm just kind of communicating with my team direct, my direct team as well. So when you talk about a community of leaders, you're I would agree that never really happened as well, and people that say you can't do it virtually. Yes, I do. I do strongly believe that it's way more impactful in person. So if you can make the time because building trust and relationships, but you can still do a lot of this virtually, you just have to be very intentional and have the right tools. And do you have, do you have a framework, do you provide for companies when having these conversations, that it's kind of like a guide of how these meetings happen, yeah?
Vince Molinaro 31:02
So I think there's a couple of elements to that. First is, and you alluded to this is, first, we need managers and leaders to develop the mindset of really being community builders, which really means investing and valuing the time to invest in relationships. So we're going to be putting out a research, our second research report, on the DNA of accountable leadership, later this year. And so we've kind of analyzed the behaviors that really distinguish leaders who are seen as being truly accountable versus the rest. And one of the things that comes up to the top of the list is that they invest in building relationships with peers within the organization, outside of the organization. So that's the starting point, right? Like, if I give you a little, you know, little checklist, if your mindset isn't wired around even, you know, calling Chris to say, hey, let's get together to chat. You know, that checklist really is useless, so you got to have that mindset piece first and make the commitment. Second then is, how do you do I mean, the way I've always done it is, I've I've institutionalized it. So I would set up a monthly meeting with my peers on the executive teams that I sat on, and those, those, those were opportunities. Sometimes they were a bit informal, where we're just, hey, what's going on in your business? What's going on in my business? Hey, where might there be some opportunities you do some early spotting of potential fires, where teams deeper in your organizations might be butting heads and, you know, you kind of nip things in the bud, or sometimes they're fairly structured around, okay, we got a core issue here. Let's get together, let's, let's figure this out and move forward. So, so I think it's a little bit of just, you know, everyone has their own style, they can figure out, yeah, what works? But what I've learned is the key part is just, just kind of making the time in your calendar for those things to actually happen, and stick with it, because those are always seen as, you know, you know, in the Eisenhower box, unimportant and not urgent. I don't
Chris Rainey 33:15
have time for that. That's why you don't have time. I always say it's HR leaders when they say to me, I don't have time for that. I'm like, the reason you have time is that you're not making time right to have those, to have those meetings, which is causing the challenges. And they're like, Yeah, you're probably right, Chris, yeah, by the way, like you got on you reminded me of a point when I was younger, like one of the most impactful things I ever did in my career. I read it in a book. I wish I could remember the name of the book, and it said, you know, you just, if you just join an organization, it was something along the lines of, just like, invite the entire executive team individually for lunch. Yeah, and I was a sales executive, 18 years old. Had no you know, in this type of company, people like, when they found out, like, Who the hell are you to invite the CEO for lunch like a kid, to destroy the business. I did it anyway. And they all said, Yes, right? And so what would have taken me, maybe years to build those relationships in that business. Everyone knew who I was. They knew my background. Is an informal lunch, you know, that we had and and all all of a sudden I'd built, like, a incredible network with the most important stakeholders in the business. And I was in that company for 10 years, and I could tell you the reason I was successful for that 10 years is because I had the trust and relationships with every single department, and they all knew who I was, and if I went to them to collaborate on a project or get feedback, etc, it was there from the very first few months of being in that business, I remember being terrified, by the way, to just be clear, I remember being like, oh my god, what if I say the wrong thing? I'm gonna lose my job. Like the confidence wasn't there yet. But I just feel like, let me what have I got to lose? Was really kind of like at that young moment in my career. Yeah,
Vince Molinaro 34:57
and, and if you've kept that going, it. It's, it's, it's pretty it's pretty powerful. I had someone reach out to me who was a chief marketing officer in a prior organization we worked with. He landed a new job, and he was very deliberate around, you know, having a 3060, 90 day plan. But he reached out to me saying, because, you know, it was all remote work, and he goes, and he was joining during the pandemic. And I said, I've never done I know how to do this in person. I've never done this. And I said, I would, I would just give you my sense is over index on the amount of interviews you think you need to have. And so that's what he did. He like he would, he interviewed more people than he normally would have, because he normally would have just, you know, his counterparts on the executive team. He went deeper, he went across, and then three months later, he sent me an email. He goes, it was unbelievable, because the executive team were having a discussion around him, saying, What the heck did you do? Because my teams know who you are, my teams are excited about what you're doing, and everyone's saying it's like you've been here forever, and it's only been three months, and it's all that power similar to what you did, but you know, again, he started with the mindset of valuing in relationships, and took that intention and translated into a real, practical set of actions, which really is, hey, are you around now? What? But I think, you know, for a lot of managers, they may value it, they just can't get themselves out of the day to day fray. And there, I think the fundamental challenge we see around team accountability is a lot of managers not understanding that their job is to build as strong of a team or set of teams that that is possible that they have, so that the teams can kind of do all the work which frees them up to actually do this. Focus on more strategy, more orientation building relationships, because if your team isn't strong, you're going to constantly be pulled into, yeah, into the weeds, and then that comes at the cost of more of that proactive relationship building.
Chris Rainey 37:13
I made that mistake earlier in my in the business of HR leaders, honestly, and I made some, some, a few key hires that completely changed the game for us. That allowed me to step away, and we literally, with those key hires, we literally 5x our revenue in a year. Yeah, because it allowed me to step away, I kind of, I didn't have to be in the weeds every day. I could focus on the business. And, you know, I struggled, I'll be honest with part of it was also me letting go, yeah? So it was part of it. It was a, do they have the skill capability, you know, and everything that goes along and the culture fit. And the other part was me, my insecurity, yeah, as a leader, to be vulnerable and to let go,
Vince Molinaro 37:55
yeah? Well, there's another element to that. That's clearly one. We worked with a manufacturer and we're doing a session with the top 50 leaders. And the chronic problem was they were all that too busy, no time for anything, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so, you know, in real time. And what we found was it was a very nice organization. So I would invite Chris to a meeting because I didn't want to, you know, upset you that I didn't invite you because I already knew that you would add no value, and you value and you shouldn't be there, but I would invite you anyways, because it's a nice organization, Chris would feel compelled to accept the invitation because he didn't want me to feel bad. So I said, Well, this is this doesn't make any sense. I said, So in real time, we did a 20 minute exercise and we said, are you okay saying no to a meeting where you know you're going to add no value, assuming your colleague will give you an update on what you need to know. And they said, Yeah, that's perfect. And then are you okay not inviting someone when you already know they're going to add no value? And they got other things to do. They agreed on those two fundamental kind of elements. And within 20 minutes, we said, go through your calendar, de invite people for meetings that you know they shouldn't be at, and you basically decline meetings you don't need to be at. And within 20 minutes, there was a collective freeing up of 30% of people's calendars.
Chris Rainey 39:16
I was about to say, you just probably unlocked a couple of 100 hours of productivity, 30% Yeah, exactly, exactly. I don't watch a day and a half a week or whatever. Yeah, it's, oh, wow, percent of the week, oh, crazy. Okay, I tried, I missed that bit. Wow, yeah. I mean, I felt like it's also, is it shows, kind of like a lack of like, I realized I just need to get out my team's way most of the time, right? And it's like, the same thing of like, being obligated to reply to an email straight away, even, even though we have people in the business working in different parts of the world, I had to really make sure that there. Was clear to the team that just because someone sends you, or even me sends you an email at this time doesn't mean you have to do it. And if you don't say that, people will, they will reply even if it's 1am or early in the morning. So we had to just like, just be clear and verbalize that to the business. And immediately everyone was like, okay, that's fine. And all of a sudden, it wasn't an issue anymore. No one's offended, no one's worried that, Oh, I haven't replied to the CEOs email. It's just like, it's incredible what you could do with something so simple. Yeah,
Vince Molinaro 40:30
it's aligning on expectations, right? And, and we, we come at it through, through, you know, not wanting to upset our colleagues and whatnot. And then, you know, we can't understand why we can't get anything done, because every minute of every day is completely
Chris Rainey 40:44
jacked. Yeah, bits is anything that I've not asked you, that we've missed, that we should have spoken about, that we didn't before I let you go.
Vince Molinaro 40:51
You know? I don't, I don't, I don't think so. I think, I think the the what I'm what we're learning in the work, is that in a lot of organizations were being brought into we're seeing that for many because of the significant, you know, strategic challenges that companies are facing and the shifts they're needing to make. For a lot, it represents kind of a unique moment in the history of the company, right? And I've learned in my own career that, if you're lucky, you may get one or two cracks at an opportunity like that, something truly significant, where you can have a real dent on the trajectory of an organization, whether it's private sector public sector, it doesn't really matter in our lens. And if you find yourself in that environment and that opportunity, you know, this opportunity to build a community of accountable leaders can be very, very powerful. And what I've learned when I've had those one or two moments is you look back at those moments as moments that were, you know, kind of really life affirming moments where you feel like that's when I was at my best with those people. There's just this right constellation of the CEO who has kind of a view of the business and a mindset, the right constellation of people at the executive team, the right leaders. And when it all comes together, it's really, really powerful. It's an accelerator of performance, but more importantly, it becomes a very meaningful way of how you spend your career and spend your life. And that is, I'm just starting to see that pop up more and more. So I just wanted to share that as a final thought. I love that to your audience, because if you're in that, you know, you can get, you can get kind of worn down day to day by, you know, Chris and I are butting heads, and why isn't his team doing you can get, you know, but like, sometimes it's helpful to pause and just kind of come at it in a more strategic lens around what's the real opportunity that we have here. And let's come together to do the extraordinary, and, and I believe a lot of managers and leaders are are being given this opportunity to do the extraordinary. And the CHRO is pivotal to all of that, and, and it's exciting to see when that that CHRO is, as we talked earlier, in place doing extraordinary things, so others can do extraordinary things.
Chris Rainey 43:23
I love it. Vince, I appreciate you taking the time to come on. I'm generally really excited to get the book into the hands of all of our audience. Where's the best place for everyone to grab a copy of the book and also connect with you personally, if they want to reach out and say
Vince Molinaro 43:36
hi? Yeah. So for me personally on LinkedIn, that's easy enough, but love to connect with folks, and then the book, all the, all the typical, you know, online retail, anywhere, books anywhere books are available, that they are there. I suspect also, if don't hold me to this, my team manage all this. But I believe there's probably an introductory chapter that people can download from our website as well, which is lead with lci.com and thank you so much for the opportunity. Was great chatting with you, and really value the chance to spend some time with you, Chris, thank you
Chris Rainey 44:12
always fun, my friend. For everyone listening as always, all of those links are going to be in the description wherever you're watching listening right now, so make sure you go and connect on LinkedIn and obviously check out the website, grab a copy of the book. Apart from that, always fun chatting to you. Always enjoy our conversations. And I wish you all the best until we next
Vince Molinaro 44:31
spring. You too. See ya.
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Vince Molinaro, NY Times Best-Selling Author of The Leadership Contract.