565 - From Manager to Leader with James Turk
47:20 Share

Welcome to the How of Business with your host, Henry Lopez. The podcast that helps you start, run, and grow your small business. And now, here is your host. Welcome to this episode of the How of Business. This is Henry Lopez. My guest today is James Turk. James, welcome to the show. Thank you, Henry. It's good to be here. Absolutely. So, James is an executive coach and an author, and he's with me today to talk about that critical shift from being a manager to being a leader.

James is going to share his insights from his book, The Giving Game, including his F45 playbook,

for those first critical 45 days when someone is in a leadership role. So whether you're a new manager listening or as a small business owner, you've put somebody into that position and a manager position, I think this conversation is going to be packed with practical strategies that'll help someone, as James says, to lead with influence, not just authority. I love that.

You can find all of the Howa Business resources, including all the links and things we're going to talk about on this episode on the show notes page.

And you can find that at thehowabusiness.com. That's where you can also find information about my one-on-one and group coaching programs. I also invite you to please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon and subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don't miss any new episodes. Let me tell you a little bit more about James. James Turk is an executive coach, a keynote speaker, facilitator, author, and the founder and CEO of the Turk Group.

The Turk Group is a boutique learning and development consulting firm with more than 25 years of experience

James has expertly designed and delivered training and coaching programs and solutions in the areas of leadership development, sales, change management, strategic planning for clients across a wide range of industries. His clients include, for example, Spotify, Squarespace, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Goldman Sachs, Equinox, and many more.

He is the author of the book, as I mentioned, The Giving Game, Becoming the Leader that Others Want to Follow. We're going to explore that book in this conversation. And he, as he says, is a self-diagnosed geek in behavioral science. James relishes new ideas and perspectives on the drivers of performance. And he's an avid lover of food, travel, art, and culture. And of course, he lives in New York City, where it's abundant with all of those things.

James Turk, welcome to the show. Thank you, Henry. I appreciate that. And, you know, such a nice way to kind of talk about my background. I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. So tell me about that. Share with me that brief story because we could go on for hours, but it's always interesting. Tell me about your early career and you studied, what did you study in college?

So bachelor of, uh, bachelor of science in liberal arts is what I graduated with. Uh, my career trajectory was very non-linear. So born and raised in Mississippi. And then, you know, started working very young, like cut yards when I was in like

Junior high school and lifeguarded bus tables. My first kind of real job was in my early 20s. I started a gallery in Chicago with a couple of friends who I met in New Orleans when I was in school. And we just, oh, let's go to let's see. One was an artist. One was a business person. And I was a.

charismatic, young, ambitious, and let's go to Chicago and do this. It's like, yeah. So we went and did this, opened the gallery, which was amazing. After about three years with that, I decided I wanted to do that by myself in New York. And so I moved here in my kind of late early 20s, 24. And

New York was a much tougher environment than Chicago. And so I got here and it just required that I have a couple of other jobs in addition to trying to build this career as an art dealer here in the city. Ultimately, that landed me in the world of sales.

And I started doing some headhunting for financial services and investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, UBS, working for a search firm. And that was just a deep dive into hardcore sales. And for all those recruiters out there, my hat goes off to you. That's a

tough role. So we would have to do upwards of like 20 cold calls a day to try to recruit these people in for these jobs that were, some of them were domestic, some of them were international. After a couple of years of that, I was like, you know what? I don't think this is for me, but I liked that it exposed me to

People moving into roles, why people would go into new roles as far as like they wanted to go into management or the potential of a leadership position. So that all caught my attention. And I like the idea of just working within human resources because at its core, it's really facilitating people, making sure that they have...

you know, protections and benefits and opportunities, all those things. So that was all really interesting. I ended up going to work at Goldman Sachs in their human resources department and was there for a couple of years working in benefits, went from there to trade publishing. You know, when I was at Goldman, I'm like, oh, I'm not sure. You know, and my whole career path was really a process of elimination. So I would try things and I would do them well and be like, all right, well, it's not this.

But I think also curiosity, right? It seems like you've been driven by what's interesting next. Exactly. And I remember like, you know, recruiters who were trying to recruit me would always ding me a little bit. Now it's the norm that people change jobs every two or three years. But like,

25, 30 years ago, that was very much outside of the norm. Like, oh, you're a job hopper. It's like, oh, it's not my fault. I'm like, you know, I go in, I do good work, and then I get a little bored and I want to do something else, right? Was that also kind of an entrepreneurial spirit as well? Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Because when I was in Chicago, work doing that with my two friends and really taking something from an idea to an actual business that was in existence for 30 years just taught me what was possible. So I would go into these situations and I always had just a healthy detachment. I was very committed to what we were doing, but I was also just sort of, let's do this, let's make it make sense. But I didn't get sucked into all the politics and all the other things.

So I left Wall Street. I went to trade publishing, still in HR. And then I realized after three years in trade publishing, and I progressed there and became a benefits manager, had a direct report.

That it was really, it wasn't really the industry. It was just human resources as a function. Wasn't right for me. At that point, I was like, you know what? I'm 30 years old. I'm living in New York City. I've always considered myself a creative person. My first love was the theater and the stage. Wow.

So while I was working in trade publishing, I went back to school and studied at night and studied the Meisner technique through a gentleman by the name of Freddie Karaman at Carnegie Hall. And for two years at night, I would study. And then I decided to leave corporate HR and then pursue my acting career, which clearly you can see how well that turned out. Yeah.

Here I am with you. But so I moved into doing like HR consulting around the edges while I pursued-

the acting and then had some success, some soap work, some indie films, but I wasn't really getting the big break. While I was doing that, I was exposed to a good friend's mother was the head of sales for a very prestigious learning and development company out of Boston. And they sold a big piece of work and they're like, hey, James, we need essentially warm bodies to go into these

and kind of teach this content. And I was like, I can't do that. She's like, well, approach it like it's a role. And she's like, here's your facilitation guide. And like, you're playing this role and do your homework. And these are your staging instructions. I'm like, oh, I can do that. And so I approached it and then kind of

did both for a while. And then when I wasn't getting the big acting break, it's like, you know what? The learning and development training coaching space makes a lot of sense for me. So I think I'm going to go in and I'm going to double down and get all my certifications and the like. And that was roughly, you know, 2000, 1999, and really haven't looked back since. Yeah. Okay. So, and then in 2002, you start your current firm, the Turk Group, right?

Correct. So in 99, 2000, I started working with the consulting company that had reached out to me. And as I was working with them, I was working as an independent contractor. But for clients, from a client perspective, they thought I was working for the consulting company. But the consultancy's model was they had kind of a core group of ops people, researchers, sellers. Then there was like 200 of us.

who were what they called kind of in the resource network. And then they would deploy us to different accounts. About three years into that work, I was loving it. And my accountant said to me, like, you know what, this is terrific, but you probably want to incorporate because just tax wise, like you're essentially running your own little business here as an independent company.

And so really for tax purposes is why in 2002, I switched over and like, okay, let me incorporate and kind of, you know, what do I want to call this thing? And full transparency, it started off as James Turk Incorporated. And then later on, I added doing business as the Turk Group. Yeah.

So, okay. So make sure I'm following back then in those early days, what were you delivering as a contractor and through the truck group? Leadership. Still these training sessions. Training sessions. Yeah. So I would do a lot of change management, a lot of developing new managers. Corporate clients. Corporate. Yeah. So like PWC, KPMG, Nike, Disney, like everything.

very, very big brands and the consulting company, and we'll talk about the giving game later, but they were very generous. I was very junior, but they saw something in me that they liked and they invested in like, let's certify this guy in all of these different programs because we like what he does in front of the room. Right? Right. So now you've been at this since 2002. I can't imagine you can envision ever going back to work for somebody else. Correct.

Even though it's tempting sometimes. So 2002, started the Turk Group. I continued to work primarily through other consulting companies, really for the next 10 years. So through like 2012, through that consulting company, through Achieve Global and some other players in our space. And around 2012, I was getting...

a little frustrated in that, you know, I didn't have as much control because I was depending upon, you know, other people's designs, other people's account management, other people's kind of margins and rates. And, you know, I'm a quick study. So like over the years, you know, I would kind of see the random statement of work. I'm like, oh, that's interesting how much they're charging for me.

I sure would like a bigger piece of that. I'd like more of that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then also just did they, I was often the first line of defense with client engagement. So I'm out working for, you know, ExxonMobil. I'm the only resource like at this offsite and, you know, you're spending a week with the client and then you get to know them and they're talking about like what they like, but they also kind of share what their frustrations are. So yeah.

I'm a quick study. I'm a youngest of seven. How I survived my childhood was just like, I can read a room. So I, I, so I was just kind of making mental notes. So around 2012, 2013, I'm like, you know what? I think I could do this on my own. I think I could probably break off and start kind of building my own practice with my own clients. Before that, did you have thoughts or desires to start your own business to be completely independent? Yeah.

I thought about it, but it just seemed like a lot of work and I didn't know if I could really do it. And because, you know, the good news about working through other consulting companies is they, they take all the risk. They do all the marketing. They said they do all of that. They do all of that work, which, you know, full transparency. I, I underestimated how difficult. Oh yeah, no, it is. However, if you look back to the art gallery, that was a, that was an entrepreneurial opportunity, although you had partners there, um,

Did that leave kind of a... Not a bad taste in your mouth, but a little bit of fear like, gosh, that's a lot more than I want to take on? Yeah. Yeah, because I knew how much work was involved and I was like one leg of a three-legged stool there. And so the idea of...

of me taking on all of that was, it seemed like a lot. So for me, it was really, I got there out of frustration with not being satisfied with how these other organizations were managing the account and managing me. And I was like, and so it really, and then I kind of underestimated what would be involved.

as I pivoted from kind of working for them to working for myself, I was smart enough to do it in a very kind of like a very slow, like over the course of like four years, I essentially stopped saying yes to them. And as I built my own business. - Started landing your own clients. - Exactly. And so then I was able to kind of like transition, you know, like fully in like 2016, I was fully into only third group clients.

And then I have the reality of learning like, oh, it's a different skill set to be kind of a master facilitator and executive coach and running a business. Those are very different things. And all those hats that you have to put on and selling and delivering and managing those two. That's why it's so hard for this type of business. All right. So fast forward to today. Primarily, what's the core offering that you provide today? What does the Turk group primarily do today?

So our tagline is performance acceleration. So we work with client companies and helping their, the people in their organizations kind of achieve desired business results through people solutions. So we work on, we have, you know, you know, training and development. We have a whole catalog of programs, everything from, you know, influencing without authority, build your brand to, you

strategic planning, team offsites. We have a whole coaching practice, which is everything from executive coaching to kind of leadership coaching to frontline coaching. And then we have what we call our advisory services. So some clients will come to us and say, like, we don't even know what we want.

So can you help us just think about this? And, you know, we're a startup or we've been in business for a long time. We've never even thought about this. What should we be thinking about? So we'll actually consult with people and help them build out their, you know, competency models or kind of what their strategy is to develop their people. We may or may not sell ourselves into that, right? So we'll give them, here's what you should do. And we play in these four spots, but these other five spots,

there are people that are better than we are. And here's who they are. I'm curious with that, when you do that, if we could, if we could for a moment, apply that to a small business, what's one thing that you look for when somebody says, I don't, I know, you know, we don't have a great culture here. I know we need help, but I don't know where to start. What do you usually look for? That's one of those obvious things or common things that, that you look for.

Well, so typically you look at the kind of founder owners, right? So who are they? Who did they hire initially? Did they hire like their buddies from college? And are they running this as just a group of friends? And then it's going to be cool.

and we're going to be different than other companies. So, you know, what I see fairly often is people in their kind of need to be kind of different and unique think that they don't need a lot of the structure that is going to facilitate building a sustainable culture. It could be family members as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. So they don't think they need like a mission or, you know,

a purpose or a vision or a set of values, all the things that give an organization kind of definition and structure as far as like, this is who we are. This is why we exist. This is kind of how we want to treat our clients and vendors and how we want to treat each other.

So yeah. Okay. Helping them establish that is really, really important. If they don't have that and they don't, or they're not willing to let us help facilitate that for them, I may or may not decide to take that business. It's not a fit for you. Yeah. Right. One last question here about the journey and then we'll segue into talking about the book. So, you know, we talked about how early in your career, not early in the bulk of the career before starting the Turk group, it was very opportunistic where your curiosity led to,

What is it that has kept you here with the Turk Group, your own business, this long?

Has it been that your ability and flexibility to adapt and change it as you want to? What has kept you on this? That's a great question. It's a little bit of, you know, I could, so a little bit of pride and ego. My name's on the company, so I want to see this succeed. When I first set out to do it, I didn't really expect it to be as successful as it has been. I really thought that I would succeed.

be a single shingle consultant. I thought I would segue, I would have a couple of accounts, I would do some, some training, I would do some coaching, but I never really imagined it growing to the size that it has. But it is, and it's really been just like, you know, path of least resistance, right? So I just kind of like the next right in the next engagement, you know, just, you know, and we'll talk about the giving game in a bit, but I, you know, just grew up my, you know,

youngest of seven, we, my father, you know, it was indentured servitude. He had this little troop of people that were workers and just instilled in me like the value of just doing good work for the value of doing good work and the esteem that you get from that.

So as I approached it with my clients and as I had learned from these other consulting companies, some of my kind of tenets were like, I need to make sure that I make it easy for people to work with me, that I am looking for value creation, not just cashing a paycheck. So I'm really looking to make things easier.

I get very motivated by kind of figuring things out and doing them well. So like making trainings land and making sure that they're actually hitting what they're supposed to and helping the employees, you know, sell or lead or whatever those things might be.

be. So, and then, you know, as we have progressed, you know, and as I get better, got better at running the business, I got better at the kind of business development and the marketing and, you know, and just both intellectually curious to get better at those things. And then as a result of getting better at those things, like the business grew and grew

and grew. And now we're about 15 people. All of them are freelancers except for myself, but a few of them, but a few of them I employ full time as freelancers. Right. Yeah. Very virtual team. Okay. Let's let's start to talk about some of the key takeaways about the book. But I'm going to ask a slightly different question about the book to get us started. Again, the book is entitled The Giving Game, Becoming the Leader That Others Want to Follow.

As a small business owner, why should I read this book? What am I going to get from this book if I'm a small business owner? So as a small business owner, this is going to help you understand

the key things one needs to do if you are interacting with other people. So rarely are we working in a vacuum. So as a small business owner, as you are kind of establishing kind of what your go-to-market strategy is and who your customers are, you know, inevitably, even if it's working with freelancers, you're going to need to kind of have

have people help you do this. So the book is going to help you think about like, what are the things that you need to do, you know, really in your first year, as you're thinking about, you know, being a small business owner from a kind of brand and leadership perspective. So in the first 45 days, we talk about this,

first 45 day playbook, it's all around just getting clarity around kind of like the role and your responsibilities as a small business owner. That's me understanding. You mentioned this earlier, the different hats. So as a small business owner, you know, it's not just me selling or building or, you know, having like that core, uh,

proficiency, but I need to develop financial acumen. I need to understand market conditions. So the first couple of weeks, really doing an honest assessment of what you know and what you don't know. And then from there, start building relationships. So who are your vendors? Are you pulling in freelancers? Start establishing those relationships. And then weeks like five

and six, really start thinking about like, you know, what is your kind of vision and what's your kind of purpose for being in the marketplace and kind of looking for ways to kind of move all that stuff forward. So it's not a perfect fit, but you could absolutely look at that kind of first 45 days as a way to kind of reorient yourself into, you know, the mindset of a small business owner and some of the things that you need to do to inspire people to come along with you, including customers, hopefully.

Right. Yeah. And your team. Now, if I look at it, if I apply this to a manager in my business, maybe somebody that I've recently promoted to manager or hired into manager that doesn't have that leadership experience, the same thing goes. It helps them with assessing what's

where they are now, right? What their strengths are, where their characteristics are, what type of a leader they are, a manager. And then those relationships, I guess there it applies to who are they, who is their team that they're going to manage and lead. Yeah.

And then the vision really would there at that point for an employee ties back to making sure they understand and are in alignment with the vision that I've set, assuming we have one, for the company. Is that right? Absolutely. And the more that I can create that architecture of kind of connections and links that I can pull to the individual contributor on my team to where they can see that the spreadsheet they're working on, how that's contributing to the vision,

The better the performance is gonna be, the higher the engagement is gonna be, the more buy-in I'm going to get, the more commitment I get, like all the things that we want in business. Without it, people will try hard, but they won't necessarily kind of be able to self-regulate and work on the right things.

And I think particularly important in the last 10 or 15 years for those things, because it's what I call the gamification of the workplace. Most people who, if you're 35 and under, you've grown up playing some type of like video game, you know, to a certain degree. And that's,

With that, there's a lot of neuroscience that happens with your brain wiring and different levels and rewards and doing certain things to get to the next level. To a certain degree, like mission, vision, purpose, values, that's all kind of that structure. And people can perform really well in that structure, we find. Interesting.

All right. So that's good. I talk about it often on the podcast about being in alignment. First of all, to your point earlier about you have to have a vision and a mission that you communicate to your team. But then being in alignment is critical. But if I don't, it's like I always say, if you don't give people those rules of the game here, how we do things, how I'm going to measure you, where we're going, then, you know, they can't be their best. They can't bring their best to their position. Absolutely.

This is Henry Lopez with a brief break from this episode to tell you about our sponsor, SweetDash. What if one platform could handle your CRM, proposals, scheduling, contracts, invoicing, subscriptions, project management, client portal, file sharing, marketing, all of this in one place? Meet SweetDash.

the original all-in-one business platform built to eliminate software overload and help you scale your small business with confidence. With SuiteDash, you get a single login and a unified system to streamline your workflows, powerful no-code automations that reduce manual tasks and put your business on autopilot, and here's the game changer.

unlimited users and clients. That's right, no per user fees. Add your entire team, your clients, your contractors with no additional charges. Plus, you'll have access to live support sessions to guide you every step of the way.

That's why SweetDash is trusted by tens of thousands of small businesses and is proud to have received over 1,000 five-star reviews. But SweetDash doesn't just build software, they build community. Their roadmap is shaped by feedback from their community of business owners like you. You can try it free, no credit card required, at SweetDash.com. That's S-U-I-T-E-D-A-S-H.com.

You can also find a link to the free trial on the show notes page for this episode at thehowabusiness.com. Sweet Dash, one login, one platform, one monthly price, unlimited potential. All right, let's talk about that transition though, because you work a lot in that realm and the book covers this as well. But that person has become a new manager. Tell me some of the challenges that you've observed that people face when they're making that transition. Yeah.

So there are so many challenges. Yeah. First of all, just acknowledging the shift. So the shift from, you know, the big shift from going into from individual contributor to supervisor, team leader or manager is significant of all the changes.

kind of changes we go through in our career, certainly on the leadership track, that's probably going to be the biggest one because fundamentally it's just completely different. Different skills are required, different allocation of my time, different allocation of my work values. So just kind of understanding that, right? And then once I kind of am moving into, and with that understanding, really doing an honest assessment around where am I good, where do I need to learn? Probably one of the biggest ones is, you know,

buddy to boss. So people working with their, their, their buddies and it's all good. And part of the connection is complaining about our boss and how terrible they are, or like company doesn't know what they're doing. So all that camaraderie now, all of a sudden you're, you're, you're, you're the boss, you're part, you're part of them. And so what I see, what I see you manage your struggle with is they just assume it's going to be okay. And it's going to be cool.

And you, of course, you want to hope that it's going to be. And sometimes it is, rarely is it, but often it's going to be problematic. So what we suggest is like in those situations is just confront it right away. So, you know, Henry, I'm, you know, wanted to check in with you to see how you're feeling about the fact that I got the supervisor role. I know we're good friends and I know you were going after it also. So I want to contract with the person around that.

reality and just kind of check in with them to see how they're feeling about it. Then I want to pivot into like, well, let's talk about what this is going to look like. So it works for both of us. I know your strengths. I know what your interests are. Wonderful. Here's kind of how I'm thinking that we will do this as far as one-on-ones. I want to kind of put you forward for these things. And I want to be clear that, you know, I am in a role where I need to kind of hold us accountable

accountable for results. So there are going to be those times where I'm going to need to kind of put on the hat, you know, and I'm going to celebrate it when you do it well. But if you're kind of sliding or missing a deadline or there's quality issues, I've got to be that guy too. So I just want to kind of like let you know, and it's not personal, it's the work and it's really why we get paychecks. Sometimes it never kind of gets reconciled. In other words, that person now that's reporting up,

may have to go or they may have to be reassigned. They never quite get that. Hopefully they do. I got to enable that manager or teach them to have that conversation.

as the owner, should I facilitate that? Should I be there in that conversation or let that person do it by themselves or either way? What have you seen works best? So read the room, read the moment, right? So, you know, ideally they're, you're coaching them and they're kind of going in to have the conversation and hopefully it goes well and you know, big gold star, or they go in and it doesn't go particularly well. They come back. All right, well, let's talk about what did go well, what didn't go well, what else might we try? So it's kind of

classic coaching conversation, send them back in. If for some reason at any point during that I'm seeing nerves or I don't feel that they are actually going to do it or they keep on delaying the meeting, I might intervene. I want to be very careful with, even if they're very junior, not to jump in and kind of step on their authority.

Because otherwise you undermine the authority that I'm trying to give them. Exactly. To that end, I've always found, but I'm curious of your thoughts, that it's important, of course, for me to have communicated very clearly to everybody, you know, James is now the supervisor of this group. And so I have every confidence. I have to tell the group he's

He's your new boss, right? And make sure I set that tone and make sure everybody's clear on that. That's my job initially, correct? Exactly. And then stand by that. So when people are going to be used to coming to you. Coming to me, I have to redirect them. Exactly.

Exactly. I appreciate it. Go check with Henry. Yeah, that's such a key thing that we tend to do. I have found in part for small business owners because it has become my identity. I'm the problem solver. I'm the firefighter in chief. It feeds my ego that everybody has to come to me. So part of it is me learning how

to delegate that and to redirect people to this new person that's in that position. Absolutely. Which again, goes back to like, what do I need to like learn to do differently? That's right. So it's not about me, but it's about like, okay, I need to facilitate other people's development. I need to facilitate, you know, them doing things to help us get the business results we're looking for.

I mentioned it at the beginning, but you talk about leading with influence, not just authority. Can you give me an example of what that might look like where you've seen someone try to lead through authority? And sometimes we need authority.

and how they might do it differently leading through leadership. Can you give me an example of what that looks like? Sure, but let me, I'll define it a little bit. So like, you know, influencing versus authority. You know, I have seen people who have been incredibly influential, who've had, you know, just, you know, such a leadership, you know, impact and presence that had absolutely no formal authority whatsoever.

And I've seen people who've had titles, budgets, all sorts of things that they can get things done, but there's no inspiration and there's no kind of motivation or passion behind it. Yeah, it's through fear or they're the tyrants. They get things done, but people tend to burn out. His teams tend to burn out. It's short-lived.

Exactly. And so for me, like what I, through coaching and through our programs, it's around at the end of the day, you know, people are going to have the chance of, do they, you know, do they want to do it or do they have to do it? Right. And, and you want people, you know, to be in that want to do it space. And that's, that's, that's influencing. That's, that's leadership. That's, you know, you know, providing a compelling context. And I like working for you versus, you know, compliance and you have to do this or you're going to get fired.

When you think about the quality of work that you're getting on those two different pathways, there's a stark difference. Influencing, empowerment, you get ideation, you get new ideas, you get collaboration, compliance, you get people who are defensive, who are maybe hostile toward each other, kind of that dreaded toxic environment. Often the challenge that I find is managers understanding how to

get their teams to do what they're supposed to do, to do their jobs and to do it well, but allowing, empowering them to get there and making the right decisions as opposed to watching them like a hawk, right, on an assembly line.

Is there a technique or a tip or something that you teach to help people with understanding how to, again, lead them there and get them to buy in as opposed to always cracking the whip to get them to do the right thing? Yeah. So for us, that conversation typically happens around delegation. And we're talking about how we delegate the work to our team members and the different stages of delegation. So am I fully empowering the person to delegate?

scope it, define it, do it, all those things, or are they going to need a lot of guidance? So we encourage people to really kind of think about, you know, the work. So what's the risk? What's the scope? Who's it for? Just really understanding kind of all the components. Then think about like an individual who's going to do it. Where do they kind of

fall in their ability to do it. Technically, will they want to do it? So is this busy work? So really understanding that. And then at the core of our delegation model, we talk about this idea of making the handoff, which is really a social contract between me and the other party where I'm handing the work off. And there in that conversation, there's context and goal. Like what's the big picture? What are we looking to do? What are the specific results we're looking for?

What do they need to do? How do they need to do it? And what's the right level of coaching and support?

Depending upon what I find out in that analysis, that will either be a very kind of me directing them. I'll always probably give them the context and goal. Depending upon their level of experience and their level of comfort, I may let them decide what the results are going to be. I'll just ask them, like, all right, here's what we need to do. What do you think? How might we approach this?

I'll let them, they'll do, they know how to do it, what to do. And then will the coaching and support will probably be pretty minimum or it could be the opposite. So if they've never done it before and they're new to the team or it's something we haven't done as a team, I might need to be very involved in shaping the results. I might need to actually show them how to do it if they've never done it. And the coaching and support will probably be more frequent because I want to set them up for success.

So we'll flex in that way. Micromanaging, I think we all have a bit of a bias toward like micromanaging is bad because

At its core, you know, Scott Galloway talks a lot about this in, you know, from NYU and Pivot. And, you know, like early on, you know, people need to learn. And one of the ways that they learn, I mean, micromanaging, you don't want to be heavy handed and, you know, kind of a you know what, but you need to, you got to teach people. Yeah. And at the end of the day, we got to deliver the product that's made well and the service that's delivered well. And so we have to deliver that quality. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Excellent. Then this, that tool, that delegation tool, as I might call it, that's something I can get from the book as well. All right.

Another scenario that's been very common and most recently had a conversation with my coaching clients. But for example, one of the businesses that I own, I've sold it since was a self-serve frozen yogurt shop like Menchie's or Yogurtland. We had our own brand in Colorado where you serve yourself the yogurt and then you add the toppings and then you weigh it and you pay. Yeah.

So in that environment, it was, relatively speaking, easy for us to empower our employees that if that customer wasn't satisfied because they ended up mixing peanut butter with mint and it was horrible, say, let me have your cup, go and make another one, right? They were empowered to do that. Right. And that's an example of empowering and leading your employees to be able to make those decisions. But in an environment where...

the product or the service is a lot more expensive and we don't want them giving away the house. How do you balance that to teach a leader to allow their teams to make decisions, especially when it relates to customer service, but yet there'll be boundaries on what's realistic? Well, so again, it goes back to what I said earlier as far as just creating those definitions. Yes, okay. Who are we? Where are we going? Why do we exist? And how do we want to...

do this and then create, like if I'm asking people to be working with clients, like how much, you know, you know, how much authority and empowerment am I providing them? And what are the definitions? Like, okay, you've got a 10% discretionary slush fund to, you know, for, to decide to do what the customer is looking for that you can determine on yourself outside of that threshold, you need to come to me.

So providing those definitions early on, we do a lot of work with climate. We talk about this idea of a high performing climate. A big driver of climate is just standards. Like you need to define things, you know, like not only where we're going, all those things, but really, you know,

What are the rules of engagements? How do we disagree with each other? What is my kind of latitude to make decisions? What's my tolerance for mistakes? The more I can provide definition there, people can just relax and orient themselves within that framework and do good stuff. Without it, people are going to overstep. Are they going to be very clocked?

Right. And it's always going to be, well, but I thought you told me it's all about customer service. Yeah, but you don't give away. So there's that confusion. And so by clearly defining, these are the rules, these are your guidelines. Now go do it. Exactly. That's the clarity that people need.

And when they do it well, recognize it and recognize it to them individually. And if you can, at a group level, so others know what you're looking for and what you define as a good use of critical thinking or judgment within those constraints. Beautiful, beautiful. All right, one last question here, and then we'll start to wrap it up. Morale, culture, such a hard thing to measure.

As a business owner, what's one thing that you recommend that I can do to test, to measure morale and culture in my business? That's good. So the simplest of ways is just look around your organization. So how does it feel for people to work there? So are people like, you know, is there a lot of like PTOs? Are a lot of calling out sick? Are people late to meetings? Are people quarantined?

quiet in meetings, those could be indicators that there are some underlying issues. Most organizations,

Have some type of employee engagement survey. And even if you're a small organization of like 8, 10, 20 people, there are like Culture Amp and there are platforms that you can use. Ask your employees, just how are you experiencing working here? Do you feel like you're fairly compensated? Do you feel like you're getting the feedback that you need? It's high risk, but you need to know that. And they want to be able to express those things.

Why do you say it's high risk? What do you mean? Well, because they may tell you that this place sucks and you're not paying me well enough and I never get feedback from my manager. And then you have to do something about it. Right.

Right, right, right. But that's what you want. You want to make sure that it's a healthy organization and through engagement surveys and the like, you can find that out. And then again, just observable behaviors. People aren't that complex. You should be able to kind of look around and see people's behaviors and ultimately results. Are results okay but not great? That can be an indicator of.

results. Yeah. In your case, which is a lot of case now, you have mostly a virtual organization. So challenging there, you look for similar indicators, but how do you do it when you have people that aren't in an office?

So the trick with leading remote teams, and I'm sure you know this, is whatever you would do in person, you need to just ramp that up. So if you would have like one one-on-one a week with a direct report, with my virtual team, I'm probably having a couple of 15-minute check-ins each week.

use technology with like Slack and its tone, its results. I am lucky where I will see them actually kind of leading workshops or will be on like client team meetings so I can observe them. And then I do my version of an engagement survey. I've got my own thing that I created in Google Docs, but I'll just ask everyone like, how are you experiencing working for me?

Got it. Right. Is that a good day or not such a good day? If it's not a good day, you know, and then basically keep it simple. So what's helping, what's hindering. Right. Understood. Thank you. All right. The book again is The Giving Game, Becoming the Leader That Others Want to Follow. My guest today is James Turk. James, tell me briefly and where you want us to go, but who's an ideal client for you?

So an ideal client and reader of this book would be someone who is thinking about going into a people management role. So they're asking you about it. You're like, do I want to do it? Do I not want to do it? This book will give you really a good sense of what the first year would look like. So we kind of bring you through a series of case studies and scenarios that will kind of walk you through all the things to do and expect in the first year. And there's an assessment in back to say, like, do I really want to do this?

If you are recently promoted and you're like, what do I need to do? This isn't everything, but it will give you a lot. If you kind of focus in on what we provide in the book, the first 45 playbook and others, you'll be kind of off to a good start. And or for people who've been enrolled for a long time, but never had training, which is a large number of people.

So there's a lot of people that got promoted because they were technically good at what they did and they got promoted, never had the training. So this is just a great way to go back and just kind of, oh, you know, maybe you're already doing it, but now you've got some definition and some structure. So that's kind of like the optimal audience for the book. Excellent. And where can we go online? Obviously, we can get the book on Amazon, but as far as learning more about

So Amazon, so the more about me and the Turk Group, you can check us out on LinkedIn. Our website, theturkgroup.com. We'll have some of our research papers. We'll have some short Turk Talk videos of me talking about different manager challenges, everything from managing a poor performer to kind of building relationships. And then in the website, you'll see a link to the book as well. And we would love for you to buy a copy. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I recommend it. I'll have those links as well on the show notes page for this episode at thehowabusiness.com. All right. So what's one thing from the perspective of a small business owner, as we've been kind of walking through scenarios either because more likely because I have a new manager that's in that role. What's one key takeaway you want us to take from this conversation we had on that from that perspective? Well,

So the whole premise of the book is this idea of it's a giving game, not a getting game, right? So we want to help the new manager understand that, you know, as they are two or three days in role, you know, they're going to have things that they can offer right away and they're not alone. So there's a community of people, both hopefully in my organization, but outside the organization that can help them as they are kind of building the skills necessary to be an effective people leader.

All right. I want to go back to this because I didn't explore this in the conversation, a giving game versus a getting game. So tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that. And this also, I guess, ties to the point you made about gamification and how people, especially younger generations, look at the work environment, I got to think. But tell me a little bit more about this difference between giving and getting from a perspective of a manager or a leader. Sure. So in games, we're supposed to be fun. Exactly.

So the idea, I have just benefited through coaches when I was a kid, through my parents, throughout my career with Peter and Barbie in Chicago. They took a risk by asking me to join them as we did that endeavor. And then in corporate America, people took chances on me and kind of put my development first. Sure, they got what they needed, but they gave me opportunities. They saw something in me I didn't see in myself. And I am...

having this conversation with you right now as a result of it. So if I look back kind of at the arc of that, it was really geared toward leaders being a bit selfless. So kind of putting my development, my needs kind of front and center as,

a, you know, kind of a core strategy to ultimately getting what they were looking to do. So that was kind of the idea. And then when I was thinking about doing the book, it's like, you know what, if I look at my practice, you know, about 50% of the business is around, you know, people, leadership, people management, and, you know, a big chunk of that are people who either never had the training or are brand new to role. What is it that they need? What would I want?

If I were just got promoted, I would want some type of manifesto. Like, here's what you really need to do. So in service to that audience, wrote The Giving Game. Got it. Love it. Thank you for clarifying and expanding upon that. I also have what it brought to mind also very tactically is when my partner and I, David Begin, kind of made that mental shift of, you know,

wanting to see employees stay with us forever, especially hourly wage young employees, instead of shifting towards how can we develop their skills? And even if those are skills, in fact, great, if those are skills that they then take elsewhere or onward in their lives, right? Giving them, enabling them with those skills is part of becoming a leader. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. All right, tell me again where you want us to go online to learn more. TheTurkGroup.com.

Excellent. James, wonderful conversation. We could talk for hours about this. Hopefully maybe get to have you come back on the show at some point. I'd love it. I'd love it. Thanks again for being with me today and for the great book. I appreciate it. Thank you, Henry. This is Henry Lopez, and thanks for joining me on this episode of The Howa Business.

My guest today is James Turk. I release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find the show anywhere you listen to podcasts, including the Howa Business YouTube channel and at my website, thehowabusiness.com. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to The Howa Business. For more information about our coaching programs, online courses, show notes pages, links, and other resources, please visit thehowabusiness.com.