INTRODUCTION - CareyNieuwhof.com · change matters. After all, the gap between how quickly things change and how quickly you change is called irrelevance. One of the changes our culture

The High Impact LeaderHow to Attract and Motivate Leaders in a Changing World

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© 2019 Carey Nieuwhof Communications LimitedAll rights reserved.

CONTENTS

UNIT ONEWhat We Hate About Work (And Each Other)

UNIT TWOWhy 8 to 4 Doesn't Work Anymore

UNIT THREE Three Critical Mindset Shifts in Young Leaders

UNIT FOURThe Next Generation's New Currency

UNIT FIVEThree New Rules for the New Workplace

4INTRODUCTION The High Impact Leader

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BONUS INTERVIEW Interview with Dillon Smith and Sarah Piercy

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Welcome to The High Impact Workplace. I’m so glad you’re joining us!

As you know, things are changing. And they’re changing fast.

You and I are leading in an environment where 70 percent of employees are disengaged at work. Even the best people seem restless, distracted, and often have a side hustle that becomes a rival for their full attention.

According to Gallup, staff or team members who are not cognitively and emotionally connected to their work and workplace usually show up, do the minimum required, watch the clock, collect a paycheck, and opt out the moment they find a slightly better offer. And the most gifted of those people seem to simply exit and launch their own businesses (sometimes through connections they made while working for you). Sound familiar?

In The High Impact Workplace course, you’ll learn a clear and compelling strategy that really works—one that attracts and

I N T R O D U C T I O N

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discover the nature of the tension so many leaders feel at work these days.

motivates the most capable leaders to stay with you and stay engaged.

In this course, you’ll learn...

• Why 8 to 4 doesn’t work anymore in a knowledge worker environment.• Why freedom, autonomy, and accountability are the new currency and actually do motivate a younger workforce. And why the flexible workplace is the future workplace. • What the four generations in the workplace today don’t like about each other and why.• How to craft a workplace environment in which Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z all thrive.• What’s changed in the office in the last decade, why most leaders are caught off guard by it, and what’s going to change.• How to lead and manage a flexible workplace so you can attract and motivate leaders in a changing world.• Specific leadership and management techniques that will raise the level of employee engagement.• The strategies you need to attract and keep young leaders in particular.

In addition, you’ll watch an interview with two young leaders on my team who talk about how what you’ll learn in the course works in real life. Further, if you’re an employee looking for more flexible hours or the chance to do some remote work—you’ll discover a script you can use to try to negotiate more flexible work arrangements that will result in increased productivity for your employer and greater freedom for you. Finally, at the end of every unit, you’ll find application exercises you can use to figure out specific action steps for your organization.

If you’re ready to get started, let’s dive into Unit 1 where we’ll

THE HIGH IMPACT WORKPLACE INTRODUCTION

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NOTES

WHAT WE HATE ABOUT WORK(AND EACH OTHER)

U N I T O N EIncreasingly, it seems, there’s a generation gap at work. Gen X or older Boomers often say things like, “You know what the problem with young leaders is? They don’t want to work.” Or “They can’t spell and they’re always on their phone.”

Similarly, younger leaders (Millennials and Gen Z) complain that older leaders are stuck in their ways, resistant to change, and not open to innovation. The question becomes, what’s fueling that tension? In this unit, you’ll discover why the tension so many leaders feel in the workplace is really about how you work rather than whether you work.

HOW YOU NAVIGATE CHANGE IS CRITICAL At the heart of this tension is change. And

THE GENERATION GAP AT WORK IS FAR MORE

ABOUT HOW YOU WORK THAN WHETHER YOU WORK OR DON’T.

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change matters. After all, the gap between how quickly things change and how quickly you change is called irrelevance.

One of the changes our culture is undergoing is the reality that people have far more options than they used to. A generation ago, many people stayed at a job for decades or perhaps for life. Today, thanks to the internet, people are aware of the options they have. So if you’re not in a great workplace, you leave. Employees are more able than ever to find an employer who provides the conditions they want.

A REAL-LIFE CASE STUDY If you’re wondering how quickly things have changed, here’s a true story1 that demonstrates the talent war that’s underway and how employers are willing to flex to keep high capacity leaders.

A gifted, entrepreneurial computer programmer was recruited by a firm in Silicon Valley. He went into the office on his first day, didn’t particularly enjoy the corporate-office culture, and quickly got permission to work remotely. He served the company well but never went back into the office again. Instead, he worked remotely from his home or coffee shops. They were quite satisfied with his work,

WHAT WE HATE ABOUT WORK (AND EACH OTHER)

seeing him as vital to the company’s operations. He had enough freedom at work that he moved from San Francisco to Austin, Texas, but didn’t even mention it to his employer for about three months.

What’s most surprising is that when his employer discovered he had moved, it wasn’t a problem in their eyes; they simply wanted to keep him.

A few months later, he got a better offer from a different company. He quit and joined the new firm where he was paid even more. When he informed his old Silicon Valley firm that he was leaving, they were so concerned about losing him, they asked him to stay on retainer five hours a week to consult with them. So he got a new job at higher pay and a retainer from his old firm to stay on five hours a week to help them as well.

This story is typical of the new economy and in many cases, scenarios like this are the new reality.

If you’re a younger leader, you might be thinking, How do I get a job like that?

If you’re an employer, you might be thinking, That story is terrible—what employer could let a disaster like that happen?

UNIT ONE

A few details have been changed for the sake of privacy.1

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NOTES NOTES

In light of all that, the question then becomes: How do you compete?

Welcome to the tension and misunderstanding in the current (and future) workplace. In almost every field or industry, the generations currently in the workplace struggle with each other and often don’t even like each other, as various reactions to the story above might illustrate. So let’s start by looking the four generations currently in the workplace.

The older leaders are made up of:

Boomers born 1946–1964Gen X born 1965–1981

The younger leaders are made up of:

Millennials born 1981–1998Gen Z born 1998–2015 Many bosses, CEOs, founders, lead pastors, and directors are in the Boomer category. Likewise many in Gen X (I barely qualify as Gen X) have worked their way up into leadership positions. Millennials span the ages just entering the work force up to those who have been at it for almost twenty years. And finally, Generation Z is still growing up, attending college, or starting in the workforce.


NINE HUNDRED OPINIONS As a result, for the first time in decades, there are four generations in the workplace, and more and more teams are feeling tension between the generations. To learn exactly what the tension is, I surveyed over nine hundred leaders.

A diverse group of CEOs, entrepreneurs, engineers, office managers, teachers, accountants, pastors, project managers, church staff, executive assistants, and teachers provided feedback in the workplace survey I conducted. I drilled down on generational tension in the survey, and here’s what older leaders and younger leaders had to say about each other (these are exact quotes).

WHAT BOOMERS AND GEN X ARE SAYING ABOUT MILLENNIALS AND GEN Z

• Millennials are lazy.

• They seem very entitled.

• They want off work when they want.

• They want our organization to change the policies and rules to fit their situation.

• They want to start at the top without paying their dues.

UNIT ONE

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• They listened to one podcast and they’re an expert.

• Get off your phone.

Okay, that seems a little harsh. But younger leaders also have opinions.

WHAT MILLENNIALS AND GEN Z ARE SAYING ABOUT BOOMERS AND GEN X

• They’re stuck in their ways and have tons of blind spots.

• No willingness to listen or learn, which breeds no hope for change.

• Change is a dirty word for them.

• They’re more concerned with policy than people.

• They rarely understand what I’m saying.

• They think they know everything.

• Unteachable, won’t listen, think they know everything.

• Don’t understand technology and are set in their ways.

• They lack curiosity—they’ve figured a lot out already. • Their way is the only way. They are set in their ways and refuse to change.

UNIT ONE

• They don’t show up on time.

• They don’t want any of the responsibility associated with their duties.

• They act like the rules don’t apply to them.

• They don’t have great communication skills.

• They’re undisciplined.

• They’re disrespectful.

• They tend to think they know everything.

• They’re rude, according to my old-school ways.

• Younger leaders are not committed to the company.

• They are there until times get tough and then they leave.

• Complete lack of adherence to any policies.

• They have a hard time being a team player.

• They can’t do things they are not “passionate” about.

• They are experts at nothing but have an opinion on everything.

• Basic life skills are lacking: using a drill, changing a tire, Excel.


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• Older leaders put work ahead of family and personal time.

• Lack of openness to doing things in different ways to be more effective.

• Pride—looking down on younger leaders despite greater experience.

• They offhandedly mention my age and being young, a ton.

• Where’s the fun?

And in one other longer and insightful response, a young leader wrote…

“They’re controlling, micromanaging, secretive, and unclear about what they want. They refuse to let go of their power/authority/decision-making rights, yet they harp on us as younger leaders to be reproducing ourselves so the mission doesn’t end with us. There is literally nowhere for me to go up at this point. On the occasion that they do give up their rights they are quick to take them back when things don’t go exactly the way they wanted. Meaning we have no freedom to learn from our mistakes as they once did.”

WHY DO THESE OPINIONS MATTER?Despite the beliefs that younger leaders are lazy, entitled, and demanding, and older leaders are inflexible, stubborn, and

WHAT WE HATE ABOUT WORK (AND EACH OTHER) UNIT ONE

closed-minded, I’m firmly convinced that the generation gap at work is far more about how you like to work, not whether you want to work.

WHAT NEXT?We’ll pause here for now, but in future units, we’re going to cover why 8 to 4 doesn’t work anymore, why freedom, accountability, and autonomy are the new currency, and why you really need, as a leader and also as a worker, to create a flexible workplace. The future workplace is a flexible workplace.

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But first, some application questions. The more deeply you wrestle with the questions, the more you’ll get out of The High Impact Workplace.

1. Which descriptions of older and younger leaders resonated most with you? Why?

2. When you think of coworkers who are most different from you demographically, what are their traits?

EXCERCISE

UNIT ONE

THE FUTURE WORKPLACE IS

A FLEXIBLE WORKPLACE.

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3. What assumptions about work do you hold that perhaps need to be challenged?

4. What causes you to be disengaged at work? Why?

5. What part of your frustration is within your control?

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NOTES

For decades, 9 to 5 was the norm in many companies. It took a while, but eventually 9 to 5 became 8 to 4. But over the last decade, we find ourselves in a cultural moment where 8 to 4 doesn’t work anymore. And if you’re a young leader, the idea of having to be in an office from 8 to 4 five days a week really doesn’t work anymore.

The question is: Why?

To answer why that is, we’ll dive deeper into how radically everything has changed. Understand the magnitude of the change is critical because when things change and you don’t, your organization becomes irrelevant.

The level and pace of change is driving

WHY 8 TO 4 DOESN'TWORK ANYMORE

U N I T T W O

WHEN THINGS CHANGE AND YOU DON’T, YOUR

COMPANY BECOMES IRRELEVANT.

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a lot of tension that older and younger leaders feel. Getting an accurate diagnosis of the problem matters, because if you don’t understand the problem, it’s hard to find a solution. To that end, I want to take us back over a hundred years in time, to around 1913 when things permanently and radically changed in the world of work.

INTRODUCING… THE ASSEMBLY LINEIn 1913, manufacturing underwent a massive shift. The industrial revolution had been underway for over a century. Farms were giving way to factories. At the turn of the twentieth century, along came the car. Henry Ford didn’t invent the car, but he did invent two innovative technologies. First, he created the Model T. But then, with even more staggering implications, he invented the assembly line. And the assembly line changed everything.

Model Ts were first manufactured by hand, and assembling a single car took over twelve hours by hand. With the introduction of the assembly line (where workers stood by a belt that moved vehicles along) production time was reduced from twelve hours per vehicle to two and a half hours per vehicle. And almost overnight, the nature of work changed forever.

WHY 8 TO 4 DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE

Along with the assembly line came new practices like:

• Start times - punching in • Finish times - punching out• Defined break times• Specific and scheduled lunch breaks

Naturally, workplaces had start times and finish times before 1913, but the assembly line altered things radically. If you came back late from your lunch break by even a few minutes, you’d shut down the entire line. Suddenly, taking breaks at precise times and eating lunch in shifts or even finishing at 5:00 sharp (not at 4:58 or 5:05) became critical. All of this mattered in a way it never had before.

FACTORY WORK PRACTICES APPLIED TO KNOWLEDGE WORK Fast-forward a few decades to the end of World War II. After the war, knowledge work (office and professional work) became more and more a part of the economy. And with that, a lot of the ideas from the industrial revolution and the automation Henry Ford introduced were transferred to the office environment.

Practices like showing up at 9:00 a.m. and leaving at 5:00 p.m. (and later, 8 to 4) became the new normal. Office workers

UNIT TWO

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were given designated lunch times, breaks times and defined vacation times. The tactics and strategies that worked in the factory got applied to the office. That’s not a criticism—for decades, it made a lot of sense.

One of the reasons that kind of regimentation made sense is because the only way you could do your work was to go to work; the tools you needed to do your work were actually at the office. The office held:

• Company typewriters, word processors, or computers • Copiers and fax machines• Meeting rooms• Physical desks• Ethernet and internet networks capable of handling work• Physical files and filing cabinets

So for many decades, the office operated as a new incarnation of the factory.

THE OFFICE BECOMES CUBICLE WORLDThe efficiencies in offices of the post-war era gave way to the dreariness of office work by the 90s and the early 2000s. By the turn of the twenty-first century, it became common to complain about being trapped in cubicle world. Perhaps one of

the reasons that the series The Office with Steve Carell did so well is because we could all relate to to the tedium of office life by the early 2000s. As almost all of us who have worked in an office have experienced, just because you went to work didn’t mean you were getting anything meaningfully done.

Office work became synonymous with being boring and irrelevant. People started asking how they could escape cubicle culture. But as frustration with the office environment heated up, another revolution was underway.

2012: THE YEAR YOU NO LONGER NEED TO GO TO THE OFFICEStarting in 2007, with the introduction of the iPhone—the first true smartphone—things that never used to be possible became possible in the world of work.

Then, around 2012, another revolution bigger than the assembly line or the invention of the iPhone happened. Four different innovative technologies converged in a perfect storm.

Cloud-based computing became sophisticated enough to become the new default. Wifi had grown to the point where it was both fast and ubiquitous. You

WHY 8 TO 4 DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE UNIT TWO

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could find great internet in coffee shops, airports, restaurants, public spaces and, of course, at home. In addition, by 2012 cell phone providers had established LTE as the default network, making fast data connections on your cell phone normal. And finally, web developers embraced mobile-first design, so that almost any site could be easily accessed from a phone or tablet.

So what happened? Well, cloud-based computing plus ubiquitous high-speed Wifi plus LTE plus mobile-first design equaled the birth of the mobile office.

For the first time in history for millions of office workers, you could work anywhere.

What started in the mid-2000s as a glitchy and experimental idea became a highly reliable ecosystem by 2012.

You used to go to the office. Now the office goes to you.

THE MOBILE OFFICEMobile offices are becoming more and more a part of work culture today. So many of us, myself included, grew up in work environments where the kind of freedom we have today wasn’t even a possibility. The mobile office didn’t exist.

If you’re a Millennial or Gen Z, being able

to work anywhere, anytime probably feels normal. Flexible work feels like normal work to you. You might want to work in the office two days a week and work at home or a coffee shop the rest of the week.

More and more companies are embracing the flexible workplace by experimenting with and considering things like:

• Laptops, tablets and smartphones to encourage mobile work• Hotelling• Flex work• Remote work• Working vacations• Virtual conferencing• Virtual teams and team members

In fact, 59 percent of US companies are already using flexible work forces and freelancers to some degree. All of this change has happened in the last decade without any real announcement.

Which should be no surprise at all: Culture never asks permission to change. It just changes. Digital natives and young leaders don’t see these innovations as changes; they see them as normal. Contrast that with older leaders who have been in the workplace decades, to whom all of this shows up as change.


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What this means is that all the rules that used to apply and used to make sense don’t anymore. Why do you need to be in at 8:00 a.m. if you can do your work from a coffee shop or from home? Why do you need to leave at 4:00 when you can do something different? Why do you need a defined lunch hour, or a desk for that matter? The innovation of the last decade-plus has called into question the way people have worked for generations.

Things have changed. And when things change and you don’t, your company becomes irrelevant.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU? So what does this mean for you when you no longer have to go to the office because the office goes to you?

It can be confusing. If there are people in your workplace who love 8 to 4, and others who want to work from home, and others who want to work from a coffee shop, and others who are entirely virtual, how do you manage that? If you have all kinds of employees working in all kinds of different situations that “suit their lifestyle” better, what becomes of the workplace?

While we’ll spend the rest of the course unpacking that question, we can start

UNIT TWO

CULTURE NEVER ASKS YOUR PERMISSION TO CHANGE. IT JUST

CHANGES.

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by saying that it becomes necessary to recraft your office culture on two things: personal preference and organizational needs.

Likely, the personal preferences aren’t all generational. When you explore what your team wants, you may get some fifty-year-olds who say they’d love to work remote and some twenty-five-year-olds who say, “Actually, I prefer an office over there. Do you mind if I have it?”

But generally speaking, the younger the leader, the deeper the desire for flexibility.

A growing number of younger leaders are asking for things like, “Do you mind if I time shift on Tuesday?” or “If I work ten hours a day for four days a week could I have Fridays off in the summer?”

I know that can rattle the cages of some senior leaders, but just hang in the tension for a little bit. We’ll drill down on how to manage that tension in future units and see how this can work.

WHAT NEXT?Hopefully as a leader you’re already better understanding why 8 to 4 doesn’t work anymore, and why young leaders think differently because they live differently.

WHY 8 TO 4 DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE

In the next unit, I’ll share what young leaders want even more than flexibility and perhaps even more than money. I’ll also outline how you can give it to them in a way that fuels your mission rather than frustrating it.

In the meantime, take a moment to work through the application exercise below.

UNIT TWO

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1. How would you describe the culture in your office? How would other team members describe the culture?

2. When was the last time you discussed whether the “rules” (written or simply understood) in your office worked or not? What’s changed since then?

EXCERCISE3. How might others describe your office culture (co-workers,

clients, partners)?

4. How much of your work truly requires physical presence?

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5. Is there any way in which requiring physical presence for all workers has become counterproductive (in terms of finance, productivity, or morale)?


NOTES

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Now that we’ve examined how everything is changing and why everything is changing, I hope you have a greater understanding of what’s actually going on in our lifetime in the workplace.

In the next units, we will get into some practical strategies for attracting and keeping young high-capacity leaders, but first it’s critical to understand why young leaders actually think the way they do. If you’re a younger leader, this may help you understand what motivates you. If you’re an older leader, CEO, manager, founder—or whatever your particular leadership role is—it will help you understand how the next generation thinks so you can attract, keep, and motivate great leaders.

Essentially, young leaders work for

THREE CRITICAL MINDSET SHIFTS IN YOUNG LEADERS

U N I T T H R E E

YOUNG LEADERS WORK FOR THEMSELVES.

A HEALTHY, DYNAMIC MISSION WILL ATTRACT THEM TO YOUR TEAM.

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themselves. A healthy, dynamic mission will attract them to your team.

WHAT’S NEW TO GEN X AND BOOMERS IS NATURAL TO MILLENNIALS AND GEN Z There are three key mindset shifts I want to walk you through that characterize Millennials and perhaps Gen Z (although this data is still emerging), and that are significantly different than the mindsets of Gen X and Boomers.

This is more than just a mindset shift. It’s changing how the next generation works. By 2027 the gig economy (working for yourself and hiring your services out to different organizations) will be 50 percent of the economy. Freelancing, moonlighting, and entrepreneurship is the new gold standard. The internet made it possible for almost anyone to start something and succeed. And people are doing just that.

As a result, the mindset of young leaders has shifted. Here’s how.

1. THEY WORK FOR THEMSELVES.

Even if you hire a young leader to work for you full-time on your staff, they still think of themselves as someone who

works for themselves—as their own brand. A quick scan of social media will help you see that most people under forty even have their own logo, font, look, and style. Many couples getting married today make logo and branding a part of their wedding. That’s radically different from how Gen X and Boomers thought of themselves.

Additionally, most twenty-five-year-olds expect to have over a dozen different jobs and several different careers. Forty years at one company and retiring with a gold watch has been gone for a long time. Even as a Gen X myself I’ve experienced some of that career shift. I’m a lawyer turned pastor turned speaker and author. My wife is a pharmacist and lawyer turned author and speaker. The rise of the internet means almost anyone can start their own business and the highly capable usually do. Again, that’s why we expect by 2027 the gig economy will be 50 percent of the economy.

So what does that mean? It means that even if you don’t now, in the future you’ll have gig workers. But it also means this: even if young leaders work full-time on your staff, it is important for you to think of them as people who work for themselves. Because they have other options.

THREE CRITICAL MINDSET SHIFTS IN YOUNG LEADERS UNIT THREE

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So equip, serve, and empower young skilled leaders in a way that makes it desirable for them to work within your organization.

2. THEY WANT TO WORK FOR A CAUSE THAT’S BIGGER THAN YOU.

As hard as this may be to hear, nobody wants to work for you. Why? Well, you and I are not big enough causes for someone to give their life to. One of my principal jobs as a leader is to serve my team, not to be served by my team.

To state it clearly: you’ve got to find a mission that’s bigger than you.

If you’re in business, it would be easy to say that making profit is the goal. But if you dig into generational trends, working toward the bottom line is becoming increasingly demotivating. After all, just because a company makes more money doesn’t mean the team does. And the next generation doesn’t value money or accumulation the way Boomers or even Gen X do.

Instead, we’re starting to see a rise in the demand for a cause beyond profitability. It’s not just about the business you do, it’s how you do it.

For example, we’re seeing more ethical businesses, environmentally friendly products, businesses that support the poor (with the rise of one-for-one companies that donate a pair of shoes or eyeglasses to someone in need for every pair sold). We’re also seeing a lot more discussion around paying a living wage.

Here’s what unites all of that: nobody wants to work for the senior leader’s ego or for a fatter bottom line. You need a clearly defined mission that’s bigger than you and bigger than the bottom line.

Not-for-profit businesses have a bit of a head start when it comes to purpose, but that too can easily descend into working for a leader’s ego-driven desire for growth or an obsession with the bottom line. In addition, just because you have a mission doesn’t mean people know the mission or that you’re working toward it.

So if you’re in a more typical company, how do you find a mission that isn’t just about growth or profit? In my own company we sat down as a team and crafted a mission and value statement together. We’re a communications company, and we phrased our mission


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as helping people thrive in life and leadership. And that’s exactly what this course is an attempt to do: help people at work thrive in life and leadership.

Because our mission is clear, every time we have a team meeting we point to our mission and ask, “How have we helped people thrive in life and leadership this week?” We measure that by sharing not only growth trends and numbers but by telling stories, reading emails, sharing wins, and getting really personal about who we helped thrive and how we helped them.

This is highly motivating for young leaders. People would rather make a difference than simply show up and collect a paycheck. In sum, you’ve got to answer the question every leader is asking:

• Is this cause worth giving my life to? or • Is this cause at least worth giving a season of my life to?

3. THEY SEE A HEALTHY CULTURE AS NONNEGOTIABLE.

People don’t quit jobs. They quit bosses and unhealthy cultures.

PEOPLE DON’T QUIT JOBS. THEY QUIT BOSSES

AND UNHEALTHY CULTURES.

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and keep the next generation of leaders. Focus on these principles, though, and high capacity leaders will love working with you and will likely stay with you for a long time.

In short, young leaders work for themselves. A healthy, dynamic mission will attract them to your team.

You can take advantage of the free download I’ve included with this unit—a copy of the mission, vision, and cultural values we developed as a team. I’m sharing these not because I think you should copy them (it’s best to develop your own), but because I think they can serve as an example of the kind of workplace that can be attractive to the next generation of leaders.

Then, before you leave this unit, work through the application exercise below.

BONUS DOWNLOAD

Carey Nieuwhof Communications Mission and Cultural Values

This doesn’t just mean the absence of abuse or harassment (which is foundational), and it’s not just about adding foosball tables and free nitro cold brews (although that helps). Creating a healthy culture is about creating an environment in which people are encouraged, nurtured, and grown.

A healthy culture is a culture where people can say, “I’m a better person and a better leader because I worked here.”

Growing people, not just the company, is the future of business.

So many organizations have bad cultures, which I think is why 70 percent of the US workforce is disengaged. But if you create the kind of culture where people flourish and thrive, you will see incredible things happen.

And as important as a living wage is, paying people more won’t compensate for a dead or toxic culture. No salary is big enough to compensate for making you feel miserable.

These are simple mindsets to understand, but difficult shifts to implement.

If you miss any of these, you won’t attract


https://careynieuwhof.com/module-1/lesson-3/



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1. What’s your stated mission, vision and values? To what extent does your team both know them and live them out?

2. Sometimes companies have a written mission or values statement, but most observers would say it’s not the real mission—that the real mission that drives the senior lead is ego, money, or growth. Would people say the stated mission of your organization is the real mission? If not, what would they say it is?

EXCERCISE3. What steps can you take to get your whole team to embrace

and live out the true mission and values of your organization?

4. People don’t quit jobs. They quit bosses and cultures. One of the most important things you can do with the information we covered in this unit is to discover the truth—what the people you work with. If telling the truth is difficult in your organization, or if past truth-tellers ended up being fired or sidelined, change the culture. One of the best ways to change the culture is to start an honest dialogue with your senior leadership team or a few direct reports to get honest feedback on how things are really going. Start the dialogue by admitting that you have had a habit of penalizing honesty, and that you no longer want to lead that way. Then invite feedback. Encourage it. Do not be defensive. Listen, thank your team for their candor, and begin to usher in a new era. Realize this may take months or longer of you modeling a new openness to honest dialogue, because people will be suspicious that things have really changed until a pattern is rooted and established.


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There is a new currency that’s quickly becoming one of most valuable currencies a workplace can offer young leaders. It’s not bitcoin. It’s not money. People quit six- or sometimes seven-figure jobs every day because they hate their workplace or boss.

No, the new currency is freedom and autonomy. If the next generation wants anything, that’s what they seek. So let’s define what both terms mean to people:

FREEDOMReasonable freedom to decide how someone does their work and when they do their work.

AUTONOMYThe autonomy to create better outcomes that further the mission.

THE NEXT GENERATION'SNEW CURRENCY

U N I T F O U R

FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY ARE THE NEXT GENERATION’S

NEW CURRENCY.

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of staying late and working weekends. I just didn’t.

How did that turn out in the end? Surprising is the best way to put it. One of the partners took me out for lunch and tried to convince me to drop seminary and stay at the firm. I was puzzled. “Why?” I asked him. He replied that I was the only student in the history of the firm that had ever made them money.

Sadly, after they offered to keep me, they let the other student go (yes, the one who worked all the hours). Apparently, he lost them money.

That’s story illustrates just one reason why 8 to 4 doesn’t work anymore. Just because you’re present doesn’t mean you’re productive. Just because you’re in the office doesn’t mean you’re truly showing up. 8 to 4 doesn’t work anymore for so many reasons, and understanding that takes you to the heart of becoming a High Impact Workplace.

So, as an employer, ask yourself: What do you really want? Do you want people to be at a desk pretending to work, or do you want people to produce? If you want people to produce, in the new economy you’re wise to embrace a flexible workplace. And the key to a flexible workplace is freedom and autonomy.

A great workplace, a healthy culture, a big mission, and some of the other things we are covering in The High Impact Workplace are important, but ignore freedom and autonomy and you’ve lost. It’s the new currency that so many leaders won’t offer and so many young leaders want.

As a Gen X myself who sometimes behaves like a Millennial, I had the urge to find some freedom and autonomy when I was in my twenties.

I had just finished law school and was working for a law firm in Toronto for a year before I was called to the bar. I knew I was going to seminary afterward, but I told the firm I would give them a year and they agreed to that. Except I didn’t want to play by the rules.

Downtown Toronto law firms could be pretty grinding (sometimes with chefs in the building and cots so young lawyers could sleep overnight at the office). I just didn’t want to live that life. So I made up my own rules. I would go in at 7 a.m., work really hard, and usually by 4 or 4:30 in the afternoon I would slip out and hope nobody would notice. Most days I was home for dinner and never worked a weekend. I felt like I was giving the firm great value while living the way I wanted. Another student was hired at the same time, but he played the traditional game

THE NEXT GENERATION'S NEW CURRENCY UNIT FOUR

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The best solution is to focus on giving real accountability on what they’re supposed to do and freedom on how to do it. What you want to communicate as a leader is that the things they’re working on really matter, but how they do it is up to them. In other words, make the outcome matter more than the process.

To break this down even further, think of it this way:

If it doesn’t matter, don’t pretend it does.

If it does matter, don’t pretend it doesn’t.

In a mobile office environment, being in at 8 a.m. may not matter anymore, unless perhaps you’re on reception or have a very specific function. And being in the office on non-meeting days or non-team days may not matter as much as they once did either.

If it doesn’t matter, don’t pretend it does.Likewise, if it does matter, don’t pretend it doesn’t.

Results matter. Deadlines matter. Objectives matter. Metrics matter.

Unfortunately, it’s natural for a manager

Take a look at a couple of these examples.

Let’s say Monday is not a day when teams meet and you have an employee that asks, “I’d love to work from home and do my work between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. Is that okay?” Seriously—why would you say no?

Or, let’s say on Tuesday you do have a team meeting and somebody says, “Hey, I’ll start early, swing in for the meeting, check in with the team, then if it’s okay I’ll head to the gym and finish later Tuesday night.” Again, is there any real reason why that would be a problem?

And if you think about it from the perspective of a young leader, when you have the option of working for yourself or somewhere else, then your tolerance for an inflexible workplace, poor conditions, or unnecessary management diminishes greatly.

Becoming a more flexible workplace is not about what you will lose from employees. Just the opposite. It’s about what you might gain. You’ll likely find that when you give your team freedom, they give you more back. HOW DO YOU MANAGE THIS? The first pushback most leaders give to granting their team more freedom and autonomy is always, Well how will I know if they’re working?


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What happens when you manage poorly?

The entire team loses motivation. Here’s why: They know that it actually matters even when you pretend it doesn’t. They know when you let that person off the hook and act like you don’t care. When you do that, you make it harder for people who hustle. And team morale drops.

And remember what’s at stake. By 2027 the gig economy will be 50 percent of the economy. If you’re not motivating and managing well, half your team may be gone, or at least the most capable ones will be.

So if you want to improve accountability, the next question that arises is: What do you hold people accountable for?

Here are a few ideas that you can customize to your particular field. Notice that the metrics are both quantitative and qualitative:

• Growth• Profitability• Improved morale• Employee engagement• Client satisfaction• Home life

The key in management is not to micromanage process but to lead toward

to want to manage process and avoid outcomes. It’s just easier to get upset over something visible, like an employee coming back late from lunch, but completely ignore the fact that the quality of someone’s work has slipped, simply because the former is easier to talk about than the latter. To make this even more specific, here are two phrases most commonly uttered by bad managers.

Phrase #1: “That’s okay.”

No, actually, it’s not okay. It’s not okay that you missed the deadline. It’s not okay that you misbooked the flight. It’s not okay that the report was poorly done. It’s not okay that we missed all the key numbers for Q3.

Sometimes as a manager you say it’s okay when it’s not okay. You pretend it doesn’t matter but it does. I’m guilty of this, too, and if you’re going to have a High Impact Workplace (and a great team who is proud of their work), it has to stop.

Phrase #2: Silence.

Far too many leaders ignore the real issues. Either because they don’t know, they don’t care, or they are too afraid. But if your mission matters, there are a lot of things that actually matter and there is a lot at stake.


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outcomes. And, of course, your team may come up with better ways to get to the outcome you want than any process you are micromanaging.

It all comes back to both freedom and autonomy. Give your team reasonable freedom to decide how they work and when they work. Manage autonomy by giving your team the liberty to create better outcomes that further the mission. When you give your team freedom, they give you more back.

I fully realize that as a manager, you might not be on board yet. If you are pushing back with questions, I hear you. I frequently hear three objections to the concepts I’ve shared in this unit.

OBJECTION 1:HOW DO I MANAGE MY TEAM’S HOURS?

To put it bluntly, you don’t.

Obviously, if people need to be at a meeting, they have to be at that meeting. If there’s an important gathering, again, they have to be there. If you’re doing a team retreat, they can’t miss it.

But great outcomes beat long hours.

THE NEXT GENERATION'S NEW CURRENCY

WHEN YOU GIVE YOUR TEAM MORE FREEDOM,

THEY GIVE YOU MORE BACK.

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prefer remote work. For most workers it will come down to personal choice. Some people prefer the predictability of 8 to 4, and that’s okay too.

When it comes to making office life attractive, my advice is simple. For the team that needs to be at the office or prefers to work from the office, just don’t make your office terrible. Take design seriously. Enjoy some shared experiences. Decorate. Take a retreat. Go for pizza. Make work an enjoyable experience.

Not very good at fun? You likely have at least one fun staff member—put them in charge.

If freedom and autonomy are the next generation’s new currency, we need to manage and lead with that in mind.

In an era when everyone has options, make your option the best option. Do your best to make your organization the best organization to work for.

Along with the application exercises, there are two bonus downloads with this session.


OBJECTION 2:WHAT IF THEY GOOF OFF?

Again, you’re managing outcomes.

Presence does not equal productivity. Lots of people have goofed off while they’re in the office.

Instead of worrying about what people are doing when you can’t see them, rethink your categories. As my friend Bryan Miles, founder of BELAY, virtual services company says, remote workers aren’t lazy. Lazy workers are lazy.

You can’t just assume because they’re not in the room that they are goofing off. If you hire well, that’s not going to happen, and if you’ve got clear metrics, you’ll know whether someone is being productive or not.

OBJECTION 3:WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE LEFT AT THE OFFICE?

Sometimes a job requires being at the office. And that’s fine. Other times, people will choose to be at the office. And as I mentioned earlier, that doesn’t always break down by age demographic. There are young leaders who prefer an office environment and older leaders who

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BONUS DOWNLOADS

A Guide to Negotiating Freedom and Autonomy at Work This is designed as a template for any employee who would like more freedom and autonomy at work, although it can also make a great resource for managers and senior leaders to help them understand the ingredients that make flexible work, work well.

Guidelines for Office Work v. Remote WorkDesigned to help managers determine who needs to be in the office when, and some guidelines for flexible work.

1. What’s been your experience so far with people wanting more freedom and autonomy at work?

2. Does your organization tend to manage outcomes or focus on process? What’s been the downside and the upside of your current approach?

EXCERCISE






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3. What do you think will happen if you don’t give your team more freedom and autonomy?

4. What do you think the consequences will be if you do?

5. Make a list of qualitative and quantitative metrics you’ll use to measure performance moving forward.

6. Work through the two bonus downloads and come up with an approach that works for your organization to help decide how to give freedom and autonomy and when team members need to be present in person.


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How do you tie together what we’ve covered into a cohesive but flexible strategy that will help you lead in a workplace and culture that are changing rapidly?

In this unit, you’ll learn three new rules that can help each generation flourish and help your organization become a High Impact Workplace, where leaders are engaged and your team thrives.

Fifty-nine percent of US companies are already using flexible work forces and freelancers to some degree. That will likely become every organization in a few years. To ask how many companies will use remote workers in the future is a little bit like asking companies in the 1990s how many organizations will use a computer in

THREE NEW RULES FOR THE NEW WORKPLACE

U N I T F I V E

LEAD PEOPLE THE WAY THEY WANT TO BE LED.

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Further, flexibility also needs to be mutual: remote workers should respect and appreciate office workers as much as office workers respect and appreciate remote workers. Flexible workplaces work best when you have flexible employees.

As good as this may sound, this shift in workplace culture won’t be easy. You’ll have tension and misunderstandings, and that’s why I want to share the next two rules.

RULE 2: RALLY AROUND THE WHY (WHENEVER THE WHAT AND HOW AREN’T CLEAR).

Rallying around the why can unite a diverse group, particularly groups who don’t always get along (as we saw from the earlier study of nine hundred leaders).

As a rule, people aren’t motivated by what you do, they’re motivated by why you do it.

Think about diet, for example. You likely have a favorite junk food, but most of us only give up junk food when something bad happens: we step on the scales and really don’t like what we see, or our doctor tells us we have to give up sweets to avoid serious health complications. You change

the future. The short answer is: everyone.

In light of that, how do you manage the current workplace, where you have a Boomer who wants to be in the office Monday to Friday from 8 to 4, the Gen X who works at the office some days and coffee shops as well, the Millennial mom who works 9 to 3 so she can do school carpool, and the remote worker who wants to come into the office twice a year?

Here are three rules that can guide you:

RULE 1: LEAD PEOPLE THE WAY THEY WANT TO BE LED.

This is a helpful, practical variation of the Golden Rule.

Some workers may always prefer 8 to 4. That’s great, and there’s nothing wrong with that for them. If you have office space and they want to use it, let them use it.

Keep in mind, though, that outcomes matter no matter where you’re working. The 8-to-4 office worker and the remote worker both need to be managed on outcomes, because inefficiencies and ineffectiveness happen in the office as well as away from the office. Hold all your team to the same standards.

THREE NEW RULES FOR THE NEW WORKPLACE UNIT FIVE

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want great lawn care done for you, so you can put your feet up on Saturdays.

Regardless of how you express it, why beats what, every time.

When I started leading three small churches, only a handful of people liked church the way it was, and we weren’t reaching the community. We had to change the music, change the governance structure, our outreach—in short, change everything. And there was opposition.

What ended up uniting the older generations who opposed the change? The why.

I sincerely asked, “Do you want to create the kind of church your children and grandchildren want to come to?” And they said yes. And they agreed to change. Now, that didn’t rally everyone, but it rallied most people. It was a focus on why we were changing, not on what and how we were changing that moved us forward into the future.

The what and the how are almost always divisive. Why unites.

So ask the question: What’s your why?

Then rally the team around it.

not because you lost your desire to eat junk food anymore, but because your motivation for eating has changed. Your what changed because your why changed.

It’s the same with exercise or saving money. Why you’re doing what you’re doing is key to staying motivated.

It’s also the same with your company.

On that note, if you don’t know the why behind your mission, you can’t expect your team to. And why, after all, is what motivates them.

Here are some examples of some whys.

At my company (Carey Nieuwhof Communications Limited), we exist to help people thrive in life and leadership.

At Connexus Church, where I’m founding pastor, we want to create churches that people who don’t go to church love to attend.

Or if you’re managing partner at a law firm, maybe your goal is lawyers who love their clients and clients who love their lawyers.

For a lawn care company, perhaps you


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RULE 3: REPLACE SUSPICION AND MISTRUST WITH CARE AND COACHING.

Sure, sometimes the generation gaps in the workplace can be funny. It’s easy to jab at a generation who can’t figure out how to program the microwave in the staff kitchen, or the generation that listens to one podcast and becomes an expert.

But suspicion, ridicule, and mistrust makes for a toxic workplace.

In our survey of nine hundred leaders, we didn’t just ask about the tensions people faced, we asked about what would make things better.

Sifting through hundreds and hundreds of answers, two things stood out above all:

• Relationship Believe it or not, people want to meet and connect with their boss and team more often.

• Communication Almost everyone we surveyed wished communication at the organization was clearer and two- way. They want their bosses to talk to them and desire far greater opportunity to give feedback.

UNIT FIVE

THE WHAT AND THE HOW ARE ALMOST ALWAYS DIVISIVE.

WHY UNITES.

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• Hey… can we work on grammar? Can I buy you a book that will help you with that? • What can I do to help you succeed?• Do you have the tools and training you need to win? • Am I doing anything that is getting in the way?

If you can put your arm around your team, support them, and embrace the right attitude without coming from a place of arrogance or superiority, you’ll really see your team start to thrive. And I believe you’ll begin to attract and keep high-capacity leaders.

As much as the culture will change even more rapidly in the future, human nature will still cause us to long to be part of a bigger mission, a caring team, and a workplace where our gifts and talents are developed and leveraged for a mission that matters. I believe people will still line up to work in a healthy culture where the leaders care and there’s a sense of belonging, a compelling mission, and deep freedom and autonomy.

So those are the three rules for the new workplace.

What all of this really comes down to is the new golden rule at work: Lead people the way they want to be led.


So what does that mean? One way to summarize what the survey said is that your team wants care and coaching.

CAREIf your team wants care, how do you do it? Here’s an approach that’s worked wonders for me. It sounds simple but it’s been revolutionary. When you meet one-on-one with your employees, ask them how they’re doing before you ask them what they’re doing.

Ask them: How’s it going at home? At school? How are the kids? How are you feeling? How are you, really?

I’m firmly convinced that a lot of problems at work don’t have a lot to do with work. If you’re stressed at home, you’ll bring that stress into the workplace. In this unit’s bonus download, I’ll walk you through five questions you can ask in your one-on-one meetings that can really change the culture at your work and raise employee engagements.

COACHINGWhen it comes to coaching, rather than telling your team exactly what to do, ask your team some questions about what they do.

Questions like:• Would you be open to suggestions on better email practices?

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Now you know why 8 to 4 doesn’t work anymore and why freedom, autonomy, and accountability do. And you know why the flexible workplace is the future workplace.

BONUS DOWNLOADS

In this unit, you’ll find three bonus resources:

1. The 5 Questions Every Great Manager Asks Coaching Guide. Use this to structure your one-on-one meetings with your team. It is designed to help you care for and coach the people you lead.

2. A video interview with Sarah Piercy and Dillon Smith (two team members at Carey Nieuwhof Communications) on how they were trained and coached as young leaders by Carey.

3. A separate audio interview with Sarah Piercy, Dillon Smith, and Carey Nieuwhof drilling down even further into their development as young leaders in the company.









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1. Using the content you’ve covered in the course so far, identify which positions in your organization require physical presence in the office and which don’t. Also identify the reason why physical presence is required or not.

2. Start to identify which team members may desire more freedom and autonomy in how they do their work and what hours they work. You may want to start this in a conversation with your senior leadership team before you open the conversation to the team members involved to make sure your senior team is on the same page. Using the resources in this course, start to craft specific guidelines on what that freedom and autonomy will look like and what the accountability metrics will be.

EXCERCISE3. 3. Start using the 5 Questions Every Good Manager Asks guide

for your one-on-one meetings and note the difference asking the question makes to employee engagement.

4. Finally, watch and listen to the interviews I did with two young team members who joined my team at ages 22 and 19 respectively. The video interview focuses on their integration into the team as young leaders and how the principles covered in the course applied in real-life situations. The audio interview explores more of the nuances of working in this framework. We talk about how these principles operate in my organization, what’s easy, what’s hard, the speed bumps we’ve had, and they’ll share their advice for older and younger leaders.

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THE HIGH IMPACT WORKPLACE

KEY CONCEPT SNAPSHOT

When things change and you don’t, your company becomes irrelevant.

The generation gap at work is far more about how you work, not whether you work or don’t.

With the revolution in technology, you no longer go to work. Work goes to you.

The standard 8 to 4 doesn’t work anymore, but freedom, autonomy, and accountability do.

Young leaders work for themselves. And a healthy, dynamic mission will attract them to your team.

Freedom and autonomy are the next generation’s new currency.

Freedom means a team member has reasonable freedom to decide how they do their work and when they do their work.

Autonomy means the liberty to create better outcomes that further the mission.

When you give your team freedom, they give you more back.

Lead people the way they want to be led.

Rally around the why whenever the what and the how aren’t clear.

Replace suspicion and misunderstanding with care and coaching.

SUMMARYCongratulations on completing The High Impact Workplace!

I hope this course helps you thrive in you life and your leadership.

For more free resources, visit www.careynieuwhof.com and subscribe to The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast for weekly conversations with today’s top leaders.

If this course has helped you, and you’re interested in some proven strategies that will help you develop your personal leadership by helping you accomplish far more in less time, visit www.TheHighImpactLeader.com.

Thanks for taking this journey together.

I’m cheering for you and your team.

Carey Nieuwhof

http://www.careynieuwhof.com

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/carey-nieuwhof-leadership/id912753163?mt=2

https://www.TheHighImpactLeader.com

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NOTES THE HIGH IMPACT WORKPLACE

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BONUS INTERVIEW THE HIGH IMPACT WORKPLACE

I sat down with two of my team members who started working with me at the age of twenty-two and nineteen. We did both a video and a podcast interview to give you a window in how the concepts and practices we talk about in the course actually play out in real life.

I hope you can lean in and learn from them the way I have. Carey: Well, welcome back to The High Impact Workplace, and I'm sitting down with two people. I really appreciate so much and I've had the privilege of working with for the last number of years, Sarah Piercy and Dillon Smith. So I would love for you guys to introduce yourself just a little bit and give people just the brief bio of what you do, who you are.

Sarah: Sure. So I am Sarah Piercy. I have been working with Carey for over ten years now. I started working with him in my early twenties came on as his assistant. And my role has evolved as his role and influence has changed over the years. And I'm now a mom of two young boys. I work from my house.

Carey: Yeah, that's right. And we started together on the church staff and then about four years ago when I left as lead pastor, you came over and joined me here in the company.

Sarah: Yeah.

Carey: And then Dillon.

Dillon: Yeah. My name is Dillon Smith. I'm a content manager

for Carey now. I started as an executive assistant when Sarah was on maternity leave. So thank you.

Sarah: You're welcome.

Dillon: For the time. And it's been great.

Carey: And what prepared you to be an executive assistant?

Dillon: Absolutely nothing.

Carey: Yeah, exactly right? But we had met, I spoke at your school maybe three years ago and our mutual friend, mutual friend Frank said, "Hey, if you're looking to replace Sarah, how about this Dillon guy?" And so we brought you on board and then when Sarah came back, you are now content manager for my platform and all that. So I want you guys to go back to when you started over a decade ago for you, Sarah, and then a couple of years ago for you, Dillon. How would you assess your leadership skills as a young leader? And you guys have seen the whole course. I mean you've been through the whole thing and we've talked about the content. So you know all the concepts and principles that we're teaching in the course. But you know, when you think of yourself at twenty-two or Dillon, you were nineteen when you started. Like how prepared were you for leadership?

Sarah: I think everything I knew about myself and leadership was accidental. So I just noticed that sometimes people listened to me. Sometimes people did what I was doing and I didn't know what to do with leadership skills. I didn't know how to be intentional at

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all.

Carey: Because you have a university degree? But it's in?

Sarah: Psychology and child and youth development.

Carey: So not exactly field related.

Sarah: No.

Carey: Right? Yeah. Yeah, 100 percent.

Dillon: Yeah. I have a degree in pastoral ministry now. I didn't at the time. And that didn't like ... You learn some about leadership there. You didn't learn a lot about leadership there. You learned a lot about the Bible. That's about it. So coming in, I knew almost nothing about leadership. I had led one parking lot team and that was about it for like actually influencing people and-

Carey: It's a good resume. Led a parking lot team.

Dillon: Yes. Yeah. I've done a lot of like individual stuff that was, you know, I'm grateful for those opportunities, but I didn't lead other people a lot. So that kind of difference was there and yeah, I wasn't very prepared coming in at all.

Carey: Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, I went to law school, graduated, I went to seminary, graduated. I also have a degree in history and political science. But even like for profession like law, they train you in the law, but they don't train you how to be a lawyer.

They don't actually train you, for example, to run a law firm or to lead and manage people. At seminary, they train you in theology, but they don't train you on how to lead a staff or a church or a team or a congregation. Like you don't really, you learn all that on the fly and you also learn how to manage people.

So when I started in leadership, I was younger than you are and now all of a sudden I'm in my fifties and I'm managing much younger leaders.

Dillon: (chuckles)

Carey: You think that's funny, Dillon.

Dillon: No.

Carey: That's good. That's good. Okay, let's go back to ... We have a lot of fun, right? That's one of our values.

Sarah: We do.

Dillon: We do.

Carey: All right, so what was hardest for you would you say the learning curve in the first year or so? What was the hardest part of like moving into the real world and onto the team?

Dillon: You go first.

Sarah: I would say there was a honeymoon phase working at Connexus Church where I started. And there was a phase where everything was great and it was really hard when I started to see how things weren't as I


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thought they were. And then the other side of that was I didn't know how to speak up. I didn't know how to use my voice and I didn't know that I could affect change in the way that I could. So that was really hard.

Carey: Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit because I don't know whether people know their Enneagram that wasn't part of the course, but I'm an eight, which on your good days is pretty cool on your bad days and not great. You're a two.

Sarah: A two yeah.

Carey: Which is a helping personality. So I'm in charge, I'm the challenger. You're a helper and you're a?

Dillon: I'm a three, so I'm an achiever or–

Carey: A performer, right?

Dillon: Yes, yeah.

Carey: So a two. I mean you tend ... you don't have an incredibly assertive personality. And most people who know Sarah would say Sarah is one of the nicest human beings they've ever met, but it was hard for you to push back. It was hard for you to say, "Hey, this isn't working for me, or I'm not sure about that." Do you want to talk about that a little more?

Sarah: Yeah. I just, I wasn't confident in my presence and my ability to do what I thought needed to be done or even to speak up and challenge what I thought wasn't working.

Carey: Could you give an example? Like what part of the job just felt like, wow, this is hard?

Sarah: When you wanted something, I thought you're the boss. You just get to say, and I thought my opinion didn't matter. So when you called that out and said, "No, I want to know what you think–you're here for a reason." That gave me confidence to speak my mind.

Carey: Hmm. Dillon, what was hard for you?

Dillon: Coming in, I was not prepared to lead and accomplish things at the level that we accomplish things and get things done. So moving on projects, just knocking tasks off a list. To me that due date wasn't a hard stop. Like it wasn't like this needs to be done by August 15th.

Carey: It was a suggestion.

Dillon: Yes, yeah.

Carey: In your mind it was a suggestion.

Dillon: And that was normal for me and I think that's normal in a lot more people than we think.

Carey: Yeah, we have a tight culture, we manage to outcomes.

Dillon: Yes. Yeah. So we were focused on, you say you're going to get something done on a day and then it gets done on that day and that's just what happens. And I was not very good at hitting those all the time.


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Carey: I mean it wasn't that your experience at school though, like you know a paper is due or were deadlines more flexible in the academic world?

Dillon: Yeah, they were definitely more flexible in the academic world.

I think I have a natural gifting at school that made me not have to try as hard, like that natural gifting carried me. When I became an executive assistant I did not have that natural gifting at all. So-

Carey: That's true.

Sarah: You did great though.

Carey: I tend to hire people not positions.

Dillon: Yes.

Carey: And we were really impressed with you. You were bright. I remember you were one of the students when I was at your school that actually came with a list of questions and asked them and they were meaningful questions. And you came highly recommended. A lot of people just talk at you. They don't have questions. So we were impressed with you. But I mean to be fair, within two months of you starting on staff, whatwere you in charge of?

Dillon: Within two months, that was the book launch.

Carey: At age what, nineteen?

Dillon: Nineteen, yeah, it was when we first started that

conversation. So yeah, I got put in charge of the Didn't See It Coming launch.

Carey: A national book launch for a major publisher.

Dillon: Yeah. So I guess that we jumped in.

Carey: Yeah, you jumped in the deep end. So this was hard. It was my first launch with the publisher, and then we felt that we needed an internal lead on our team because of the nature of how publishing works and there wasn't a point person. And I said, "Well." I looked at my existing team at the time and I said, "So Dillon, how'd you like to lead a national book launch?" And you did. And now you're coaching other people through national book launches.

Dillon: Yes.

Carey: True?

Dillon: Yeah, I've been asked a lot of questions on it. So yeah.

Carey: So it was trial by fire for both of you, but I think Dillon, in some of the research I was doing for the course, I think it was you who said, "If you really want to test what a leader is capable of give them more than you think they're capable of doing." Did I do that to both of you?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dillon: Yep.

Carey: Was it good? Was it bad?


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Sarah: In the end.

Carey: In the end.

Sarah: In the end it was good.

Carey: What was hard about the crush of the workload?

Sarah: Oh, you just see all your flaws and weaknesses as a leader when you feel like you can't keep up with the workload. So it's a character thing as much as the competency thing it tests.

Dillon: It is.

Sarah: I think.

Carey: How do we get through that?

Sarah: A lot of honest conversation.

Carey: Hmm.

Sarah: A lot of really asking, "How are you doing? How can I make this better?" And that's how I think we got through it.

Dillon: Yeah. For me, one, I had to look at myself and my own like ... I had to realize that I was the problem a lot of the times, because I think–

Carey: Well sometimes I was.

Dillon: Oh yeah. So we both were, but we were having the conversation about me missing a deadline because I missed a deadline and I had to accept that because a

part of me really early on, a part of me wanted to blame everyone besides me. And that was definitely a temptation that I had to get over.

Carey: Yeah, that's a no-go here.

Dillon: Yes. Yeah.

Carey: Right.

Sarah: And I would do that too. I would not want to take responsibility for myself.

Dillon: Wow. Yeah.

Carey: It is countercultural what we do, right? Like it really is so, and I tried to take responsibility. I don't always do it well, but I try to take responsibility and I guess in other places just get away more. See when we talk in the course about managing outcomes, this is what I mean, right? Like this is the hard part. Dillon, so walk us through what one of those conversations was like. You can pick your poison. We had a few.

Dillon: Yeah. I think one of the more memorable ones was whenever I would know that the phone call was coming. Like, I was just thinking about it.

Carey: So how would you know the phone call was coming?

Dillon: One, I knew I screwed something up. I knew that I dropped the ball on something and then I could just tell from our conversations that you had something else on your mind that needed to have just a focused


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conversation. So I think there were some ... I don't know if it was wordings or statements that you would make that I began to identify as, oh yeah, okay, we're going to have a hard conversation soon.

Carey: Right.

Dillon: Once they started, you'd always start with, "How are you doing? What's going on, what's going on in your life?" And then we'd get into work and then we'd get into, "Hey, these are, these are some things that I'm seeing in you." And the problem is that when you said, "These are some things that I'm seeing that need to get better," you were right and when you're right and you're just pointing out the flaws in me,that brings out all kinds of insecurities. That brings out all kinds of pain. And it was painful to hear, but it was so good and it was so needed because no matter what job I would have went to afterwards, I would've had the same problems. I could have been mad and left and I just would've been mad and left at the next boss too, and the next boss and the next boss.

Carey: And to be fair, that's not easy for me. That's not easy for me. I don't enjoy those conversations. I don't like waking up going, I got to ... I remember one where you missed a meeting. Can we talk about that?

Dillon: Yes.

Carey: All right, we'll talk about that. This was month one.

Dillon: Month one.

Carey: This is month one. And you missed a meeting. And it was because as a student...

Dillon: I slept in.

Sarah: I remember that.

Dillon: I slept through, twenty-five minutes of a thirty minute meeting.

Carey: And it was a 9:00 a.m. meeting to be fair or whatever it was, but you just slept through. And we're all virtual distributed. So we're in different time zones. You're in Nebraska, we're Eastern. The whole deal. But I remember that conversation. I remember exactly where I was. Do you remember what I said? This is not acceptable.

Dillon: Yes. Yeah.

Carey: This is just not acceptable. We're working with ... And we interview some of the top leaders.

Dillon: Yeah.

Carey: And at the end of the day, here's the thing about that. It was just an internal meeting.

Dillon: Yeah.

Carey: Right. It was just an internal meeting and at the end of the day there was nothing really at stake. I mean you missed twenty-five minutes of a thirty minute meeting. It's not a big deal except that if I'm


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interviewing a leader and it's taken six months to land the interview or I book flights to go in and you miss that meeting by twenty-five minutes. So it's more of a character thing. And that's not even character because you're a great guy. I mean obviously here you are two years later, thriving in the company. I got to ask you this, because I imagine that some people listening are thinking about this. "Why didn't you quit? He sounds like a really difficult guy." With that kind of tight accountability, I mean you could have easily found lots of other jobs that would have let you get away with things. So why do you stick around?

Sarah: You want to go first?

Dillon: Yeah. For me, the why is big enough to stay. I think that's one of the bigger things is just what we're doing. Helping leaders, especially my personal passion, having a pastoral background is helping church leaders and I see how much we're helping people and I know that, that why is greater than my own problems. So that's a big reason for me personally. I mean obviously there's others like you do pay a living wage where like, "Okay, this is good and I'm glad to be on this team. I don't feel like I'm being taken advantage of on that front." So like all of those reasons help and yeah, at the end of the day I just have to look in the mirror if I have issues usually.

Sarah: I wanted to quit a few times over the years, but I didn't quit because I felt like you were having those conversations for me just as much for you and you cared about seeing me succeed. I didn't feel like you

were beating down on me. I felt like you were trying to help me succeed by looking at the things that I needed to address. And that just kept me going because I knew that you cared about me. It wasn't that you didn't care.

Carey: Talk about the culture and I should say too, you know, not everybody who starts finishes, but it's incredible joy. And what I've seen in you Dillon, is just meteoric growth. Like look at where you were two years ago where you are today. I've heard you talk about the leadership incubator...

Dillon: Yes. Yeah. That's so true. It's been just like this, pretty constantly. It's been good.

Carey: Well it is, but all training is tough. Right? Life training is tough. And Sarah, just what a joy it is to work with you. And, all of our clients, customers, they rave whenever they interact with either of you. I hear about you all the time, which is good. Let's talk about the culture. It's hard. We've talked a lot about the hard, but what's fun, what's rewarding? What makes you smile in the morning? Because I think most mornings most of us smile.

Dillon: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah I think so. It is fun. It's fun working with a great team of people that are all passionate about what we're doing. Seeing people thrive in life and leadership is what we're working on now. But we


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started in ministry together leading people into relationship with Jesus, which was incredibly motivating and now the mission is still incredibly motivating. And hearing from people whose lives are changed because they are applying some of the principles and using the resources that you've created is really fun.

Carey: Yeah.

Sarah: I get to do the public inbox. So I hear from people often about how valuable your resources are.

Carey: I love how you phrase that. You said, I get to do the public inbox.

Sarah: Yeah.

Carey: Because I think in a lot of work cultures it's like I have to do, I have to do this, I have to do this. But that you get to do the public inbox is a lot of fun. It's mostly good news there. Right?

Sarah: Yeah. It's great.

Dillon: It is.

Sarah: It's fun.

Carey: And Dylan you've done the public inbox for a while too.

Dillon: Yes. Yeah. That does help a lot. Just hearing the stories and just how much we're helping people is amazing. But the culture that we've built around that is

amazing. Where we talk about wins all the time as a team and that's great. So I appreciate that and yeah, thank you for leading us in that way.

Carey: Well, we're doing it together, right? And let's talk ... Let's think about our cultural values. Can you think of a particular cultural value that you're like, "Yeah, this is the one I really seemed to enjoy." We wrote them together. We try to remember them. I've got a favorite. I don't know what yours is.

Sarah: I love, "err on the side of generosity."

Carey: Okay, that's mine. You go, you go.

Sarah: That's my favorite one.

Carey: Err on the side of generosity.

Sarah: Yeah, that's my favorite one.

Carey: So what does that mean to you?

Sarah: It means going above and beyond for the person that might not be able to afford a resource or that may need something or being able to surprise people with generosity is just, I think it's a great posture to have in general. We're not just about making money. I mean we need to make money, but it's about serving people and being generous with what we've got. And I just love that.

Carey: And in a distributed team and a virtual team, right? Like you're not sitting right over there


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and I'm here and you're like, "Oh, should I do this?" Like that gives you authority, empowerment to make decisions and say, "You know what, we're going to spend a little more money or we're going to go above and beyond." And if you have to err, err on the side of generosity.

Dillon: Yes.

Sarah: Like we decided to mail a book to a guy that had a glitch with something and we didn't even tell you about it.

Carey: Oh, yeah, see. There you go.

Sarah: We just erred on the side of generosity and mailed him a book.

Carey: So he had a problem, wasn't asking for a book and we gave him a signed copy of my book or whatever.

Dillon: Yeah.

Carey: Dillon, did you have a favorite value?

Dillon: The one that's impacted me the most is "Battle mediocrity." I just think it's so good. And it's true because like you're very big on productivity and you've told me that this morning you said, "I am more tracking my body and my habits than ever before." And I think my work habits I've had under a microscope since a little after I started. There was a couple rough months there.

Carey: I just snorted. Okay. That's great.

Dillon: But I've had myself always trying to make sure that I am performing at my best for our company and our audience and our people. So just battling that mediocrity in myself all the time is ... That's been so good.

Carey: Yeah. One of the things I really enjoy with the team and it takes two to tango. But both of you have been great when we're in a one-on-one and ask you how you're doing. And Sarah, we've got a decade in that. And it went from being straight out of college, to dating, to getting married. I did your wedding. To becoming a mom. It's a whole bunch of life phases over the last decade. But I want you to think back on some of those conversations because there were times I've always found that work issues present as work issues and you're like, "I'm totally stressed at work. I don't know what to do. Help me, help me, help me." And how do those conversations often land?

Sarah: Well, it's not just about work. I remember when we realized together the pattern of ... So half the time I've worked for you, I was single.

Carey: Yeah.

Sarah: But the pattern of when I started dating somebody new, I would get distracted at work.

Carey: Yeah.

Sarah: Right, and then eventually we realized the pattern. I don't know how many years it took us, but that was


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important because it wasn't a work thing. It was a me thing, and I needed to be more attentive when I was mentally distracted by somebody I was dating.

Carey: Mm-hmm

Sarah: I need to just stay focused and engaged on working.

Carey: And that sounds almost like it's a conversation you can't have at work, but I didn't come to you and say, "Hey, have you met someone new? Are you distracted?" How did that happen?

Sarah: You asked how I was doing and I would say, "I went on a date."

Carey: Uh-huh.

Sarah: And it was you know.

Carey: We discovered it together. Literally, I think 90% of the time you would say to me, "Oh, wait a minute. This has nothing to do with work. I feel like it has to do with work. It's the fact that I think I'm dating someone new and I'm not sure."

Carey: And then I'm like, "Okay, well what can I do at work?"

And then you would say, "Actually, it's not work, but this helps me understand what's going on."

Yeah. And then it would get better.

Sarah: Yeah.

Carey: Right? Yeah. Dylan, do you remember some of those chats?

Dillon: Yes. Yeah. Oftentimes it was, I was not managing my own schedule very well at all. If I was feeling overwhelmed and burnt out and struggling. Obviously we were launching a book at the time that we first had that conversation. So it was an intense season, but it was my own personal issues of I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating well, I wasn't working out. All those things, like those personal things came out in those conversations.

Carey: And again, it wasn't me saying you have to address these issues, but I remember one day you're like, "I'm just tired all the time."

And I'm like, "Well, describe your day to me."

And you're like, "Well I was up till one o'clock in the morning counseling this guy."

Because you were in residence at the time. You remember that conversation?

Dillon: Yep.

Carey: Do you remember how that went? This is the care and coaching, right? This is what we talked about unit five. So how did that play out? I remember it very well.

Dillon: Okay. I'm going to let you tell it because I don't remember exactly.

Carey: Well, you tell me if I'm telling the right story. But I


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remember saying, "It's okay to close your door. It's okay to say to people "Just because you're having a crisis at 1:00 a.m., I have a job with responsibility, and my own studies I'm doing." Because you were still half-time in school at the time when you were working part-time with me. And you said, "Just because it's your crisis doesn't mean it has to be my crisis." And the thing about Dillon, the thing about Sarah, the thing about really our team is you can tell some people something and they don't do anything about it. You guys always, you would be like, "Hey, I can't help you right now."

And I always tried to remind you, too, you are carrying a much bigger responsibility load than most 20-year- olds and you rose to the occasion time and time again. Okay. So we did five units, we talked about ... And I won't repeat them all, but we talked about your company changing. And if you don't change, you become irrelevant. Young leaders work for themselves. We've talked about freedom and autonomy. Lead people the way they want to be led, replacing suspicion and misunderstanding with trust or with care and coaching. All those things we covered in the course and more. Is there one in particular that speaks to you?

Dillon: I think for me it's the care and coaching. It really is how intentional you were with stepping in and addressing things that we were doing that were relatively self-destructive. That's probably too strong of a word, but...

Carey: Yea, And I had that too. I've had people come into my life as a leader over the years and say, Hey, you know you're working against yourself" when I didn't know.

Dillon: Yeah, and when you don't know, you just don't know. Like ignorance isn't necessarily our fault all the time, but it still needs to be overcome.

Carey: You hire a 20-year-old, not a 40-year-old, right? Like you get a couple of decades under your belt, you're going to know things you don't know at twenty and I know way more now than I knew at thirty or forty and you learn those things. Okay, that's good to know. How about for you, Sarah?

Sarah: I love the one that young leaders work for themselves. For me, I don't do things for the money necessarily. We do need to make money, but I would have no job over doing a job that is meaningless to me. So to me, I guess I work for myself in the sense that I need to be doing something that I care about and that I think is meaningful and that has more value than people give credit, I think.

Carey: And I think, I probably learned that principle watching you and Justin over the last ten or fifteen years. And you're in the same category, Dillon. So is the entire team, everybody can go work somewhere else tomorrow and perhaps make more money. And if not, still be wildly successful, and I don't want a great team to dissolve because of preventable reasons. I want to provide a great culture, a great mission, and we have


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a lot of fun together too. What are some of the fun things we do? What makes it fun at work on the days that it is fun?

Sarah: Well, the day that you mailed us AirPods was really fun.

Carey: That was a fun day.

Dillon: That was amazing. Yeah.

Carey: So the AirPods had just come out and I decided the whole team needed a bonus.

Sarah: Yes.

Carey: Yeah. So that was a fun day.

Sarah: Not that we do things for money and things, but you know.

Carey: That was a fun day.

Sarah: Yeah. We get together, we hang out.

Dillon: We do. Yeah. Trips like this. I flew in from Nebraska to be here. It's fun stuff like this. We nerd out over your Big Green Egg and your car.

Carey: All that stuff. We're going to Nashville. We went to Nashville all together as a team and had a few good days and we did some training at a well-known author's house and we're in her kitchen and stuff like that. It's those memories. Right?

Okay. So it's been a fun conversation so far. But

before we wind down, we got a lot of older leaders like myself, Gen Xers, Boomers who are leading, and then we have younger workers, some of whom are leading. And I want you to give a word to each of them. So advice for older leaders. Any thoughts? Any advice?

Dillon: Yeah, older leaders, do not fire someone or write someone off because of their competency. Write them off because of their character.

Carey: Oh, that's good.

Dillon: I think that's something that I see is missed all the time because oftentimes ... I came in, I had almost zero competency.

Carey: Oh, nah. You're hard on yourself. No, you brought a great work ethic and you always, you know, if you got knocked down, the next day you just got back up and that's pretty contagious. And I saw that you were really open, really teachable, and look, in two years, you've just soared. You've got a decade of development under your belt in two years. Now we've had, you know, we're a high-growth company. There's lots of pressure. When you're doing double, triple-digit growth every year, year over year, it's hard. But you've responded and you've responded so well. So don't throw yourself under the bus.

Dillon: Thank you. But I'm sure some people could have just written me off. I think. And I've seen some people write people off for that and if you haven't talked to


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them about that. Like usually someone with a high character but a low competency, you'll go and talk to them and they'll respond well. It's just they'll receive the teaching and it might take them awhile to get there. So I would just say have that conversation first. I've seen people not. Especially, I work with a lot of volunteers. So at the volunteer level, especially if someone doesn't show up, you'll just write them off and never call them again. And just say, "Okay, they're off the team."

Maybe you just need to go in and have a conversation with them. Because I think a lot of people live without that understanding of when you say you're going to be here, you need to be here. Yeah.

Carey: And that's the harder work of leadership.

Dillon: Yeah.

Carey: Like I was saying, I don't relish those conversations, but they're so necessary. If I care about you, I'm going to actually have the conversation. If I care about the mission, I'm going to have the conversation. If I care about what we're supposed to do together, I'm going to have the conversation and I think that is so true, Dillon, I mean you look at those 900 survey results we got and Sarah, you pored over pretty much all of them. A lot of that's competency. It's not character. It masquerades as character. They're lazy, they're late. Well, maybe your rules are dumb or maybe you need some new rules or maybe you need to manage outcomes. But I don't know how to

train character into people who don't have it. I know that we can train for competency.

Dillon: Yes.

Carey: And so that we can do, you can pick up a new skill, but I can't make a liar into a truth teller. That's something that happens. I can't make a lazy person into a driven person. I don't know how to do that, but I do know how to say, "Hey, here's a grammar book. Hey, here's a ... " I mean, we sent you to Harvard for Executive Assistant school. Do you remember that?

Sarah: I do, that was great.

Carey: You did a Harvard distance school just to increase your skillset a little bit.

Sarah: That was actually fun too.

Carey: Yeah, investing in your team is fun and if you want great leaders, you need to make a little bit of investment. How about you for older leaders?

Sarah: My advice for older leaders and younger leaders is actually the same.

Carey: Okay, great.

Sarah: It's to become students of one another and get curious about one another. Learn how the other person works. Ask more questions, learn what they need to thrive, and you'll find yourself thriving more. Same for both.


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Carey: Okay. Can I ask a follow-up?

Sarah: Yeah.

Carey: Because you've become a student of how I lead. That's a whole other interview for a whole other subject, but what's one or two examples where you've kind of become a student of me and said, "Hmm, how about you try...?"

Sarah: One example is I would watch your energy levels and would watch your mood through the day and I would learn how you felt and acted at certain times of day. And what you really needed. And some of that was me asking you how you're doing and some of that was you would say, "I can't do this." Whatever you're trying to do, but learning those rhythms and paying attention to that was really helpful.

Carey: You've already told me this fall, you say, "You're not going to like October."

Sarah: Yeah, you're not going to like October.

Carey: Not going to like October, but you'll be okay in November.

Sarah: Yeah.

Carey: Mm-hmm, And all you have to do is look at my calendar, see how many meetings, how much travel there is. And you telling me that, you were the first one to do that on my team over all these years. And I'm like, "Ah, Sarah's right. Sarah's right." And then

if I know I'm not going to like October, it's easier to like October knowing November is coming.

Dillon: Yes.

Carey: Because it's just a whole bunch of deadlines and stuff got stacked up at once and that happens in life.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dillon: Another very helpful thing with understanding each other that helped our relationship too, was me understanding you as an eight on the Enneagram. I know, that's not part of the course, but you are very pro-conflict. Yeah. You are pro conflict. You can just dive into conflict conversations.

Sarah: Go direct. Yeah.

Dillon: Yeah, you can be direct. I'm the opposite.

Sarah: Me too.

Carey: So it's rather miraculous that we actually like each other.

Dillon: Yeah. But learning that about you, it completely changed how I view those conversations because I thought, "Oh, he just enjoys it." Or I thought, "Oh, he feels as bad about these conversations as I do." And then I'm like, "If that's coming from a boss, that's oof, yikes." But actually you were just there. I say, an eight on their best day is an advocate for anyone. And that's what you were doing. So seeing that and


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understanding that was really helpful.

Carey: Yeah, and an eight, if you don't know the Enneagram, I value truth. And so if you're upset, I want to know. And you telling me that you're upset. I'm like, "Oh, I can deal with that." But if it kind of goes underground, I struggle more with that. And on the other hand, I also tell you how I feel, right.

Dillon: Yeah, yeah.

Carey: Which sometimes I've learned to temper that. I've got some good coaching. I've learned from you, Sarah. So you've also seen me grow and develop, and I don't get it right every day, but we learn and we grow together. Dillon, any advice for young leaders?

Dillon: Yes. Take responsibility earlier.

Sarah: Good one.

Dillon: It's tough to explain to the young leader listening other than I think if you went to public school or just a lot of our universities teach that we don't necessarily have to do things right and that it's not necessarily up to us. I was told growing up over and over that as long as you go get a degree, your life will be fine. That's not true. That's not true at all. You can have a terrible life if you get a college degree, you have to make it and you have to put yourself into a position. You have to go and network, you have to get the job. And I just think that tendency that I had to blame everyone else besides me. I think that's a generational thing. And I think that we need to step

up and really own our own problems. Because that's when I grew and that's when I realized those conversations where you asked how I was doing and said, "Is there anything else I can do for you?" That's when I realized, "Oh, there's nothing more he can do. This is my problem." And realizing that was good, hard, and worth it.

Carey: Wow.

Dillon: So yeah.

Carey: Wow. I don't know, I think that is somewhat generational because I remember very well and I was twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. I also think it's human. I'm not sure that ever really goes away. I wish all the marriage problems were not my problems. I wish all the relational problems were not my problems. I wish all the work problems were not my problems. And sometimes I create the chaos at work and all that, but we do have a lot of fun together and we're on a really important mission. And I think we've helped a few leaders maybe today figure out what it looks like to have those healthy conversations around outcomes and to do some coaching and some care and to really work on mission together.

Dillon: Yeah.

Carey: I appreciate you guys more than you know, and I'm so grateful for this journey. Thank you.


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Sarah: We appreciate you too.

Dillon: We appreciate you too.

Sarah: There you go.

Carey: There you go.

Dillon: That's awesome.

Carey: That's great. This was unscripted.


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NOTES THE HIGH IMPACT WORKPLACE

Documents

INTRODUCTION - CareyNieuwhof.com · change matters. After all, the gap between how quickly things change and how quickly you change is called irrelevance. One of the changes our culture