The Architecture Of The Self-Led Leader EP 401

Leadership keeps making headlines for the wrong reasons, but the fix isn’t louder slogans—it’s better architecture. We lay out a practical, human-centered blueprint for becoming a self‑led leader who can navigate crisis, steady a team, and measurably improve the bottom line. Starting with a quick tour of seasons 1–3, we connect the dots between the leadership crisis, the internal battles leaders face under pressure, and the framework that turns good intentions into reliable actions.

We dig into the four pillars—family, faith, government, business—and why simultaneous cracks in trust show up in your org as disengagement, attrition, and resistance to return‑to‑office plans. Then we cut through the noise on post‑COVID work: lunch and daycare aren’t side notes, they’re real costs that feel like pay cuts if leaders don’t adapt. The insight is simple: when people feel seen and respected, they stay, contribute, and innovate. When they don’t, they leave—or worse, stay disengaged.

The heart of the conversation is CHART. You’ll learn to switch among four leadership hats—commander, coach, cop, counselor—instead of wearing one all day. You’ll reframe “humans as expenses” into humans as assets whose ideas and energy expand margin. You’ll practice awareness, adaptability, and appreciation to unlock discretionary effort. You’ll build relationships with boundaries that actually deliver results. And you’ll turn training into a trust engine so competence rises and chaos falls.

We also follow the money. Ineffective leadership is conservatively draining $5.5 trillion a year through turnover, inefficient processes, missed opportunities, and morale band‑aids. We translate that macro number into your day‑to‑day: how a single policy tweak, a process “funeral,” and habit‑based appreciation can improve retention, velocity, and quality this quarter. No buzzwords—just clear steps leaders can model and teams can feel.

If you’re ready to rebuild trust, sharpen your toolkit, and make leadership your biggest profit center, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with the one hat you’ll practice this week.

Transcript

Announcer 0:01

Welcome to First Lead You, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence, and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.

John Ballinger 0:16

Hello, America, and welcome to First Lead You, where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders.

Announcer 0:33

Now, here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.

John Ballinger 0:38

Hello, world. Welcome to First Lead Juice, Season Four. I'm good. It's been a minute. It has been. I remember I was listening to the end of season three, and we said in January we will uh start season four. And I think it's appropriate to say that the reason, I mean, it's not an excuse. The reason it's February and we're starting season four is January went by just like it did.

Douglas Ford 1:17

It disappeared. It was amazing.

John Ballinger 1:19

I mean, we were talking about it like in the middle of January. It was like I thought it was just New Year's Day.

Why “Architecture Of The Self-Led Leader”

Douglas Ford 1:24

Yeah, it was it well, yeah. There there were uh in addition to work events, there were weather events, and it's just like everything just seemed to happen. No, but but we've got some good stuff. I'm super excited about it. We we do have some great stuff, yeah.

John Ballinger 1:38

So this episode title, and I love this title, The Architecture of the Self-led Leader. As you kind of just process through that, what we've done in seasons one, two, and three, we've we started about what's the crisis? The crisis is going on in leadership. The reason we started the podcast, I actually listened to season, or excuse me, episode one uh this past week, just to listen to knowing knowing we were starting uh season four. And we talked about the crisis and what was going on, and it took three years for you to urge me to even start the podcast.

Douglas Ford 2:16

Yeah. Right. Yeah, we we'd been talking about it for a long time before we actually uh put pen to paper, so to speak.

John Ballinger 2:22

So season one was all about the crisis, and then season two, we went into the internal battle of a leader, what leaders actually struggle with from an internal uh battle standpoint. And then that led into chart, which is season three, which is the framework. So the chart discussion actually says here's what a leader needs to be able to deal with the crisis and the battle that's raging inside of them from a leadership standpoint. So in season four, I'm listening to, I'm just kind of reading over that in the framework, and I think, the framework? We can rebuild the leader. That's what I started thinking about, which led me to think about the the TV show six million dollar man. And I just dated myself by saying that.

Douglas Ford 3:04

Yeah. Well, yes. Maybe you date more of the audience because they're like, what who's the six million dollar man? But uh the the more modern version of the six million dollar man would be what? Uh actually$44 million man. Yeah.

John Ballinger 3:18

And they'd probably round up to$50 million. It's$50 million. Or if it's a government contract, it'd be$250 million or something. You know, who know who knows what it'd be. But I thought, you know, what does it take to rebuild a leader? And we're going to be talking about that in season four, because when you when you take the architecture of now, I know what the crisis is, I know what my internal battles are, I know what the framework is, now how do I do it? We're going to be talking about that in season four. So we've got some great information uh for the audience.

Douglas Ford 3:50

Yeah, I think uh that uh architecture of the self-led leader, I think that's a good umbrella uh for the whole season, although we're gonna get into some very specific things uh and look and look back at some of the things we've already talked about, but I do think that's a that's a good umbrella. And when you talk about the crisis, uh just as a kind of a quick recap, uh it is a crisis of leadership, but crisis of leadership queer. You've described it as the four pillars. Right.

John Ballinger 4:18

Yeah. Uh yeah, so the four pillars, and we talk about the family, your faith, the church, government, and business. Those four pillars, and I and I did a lot of research, even back going back to the beginning of time, on those four pillars just naturally held up a society. And uh a society could crumble. There have been societies that crumbled throughout history, and those pillars would start crumbling. And we referenced um in the previous podcast that in America we're coming up on 250 years in America in in uh July of 2026, but those four pillars are actually crumbling right now at the same time in America. And we have an opportunity to shore up those four pillars with leadership because the leadership is the reason that they're failing. So these these episodes that we talk about, you know, whether it's season one, season four, and then the subsequent seasons we're doing, it's all to help shore up leadership in the four pillars. And we're actually specifically targeting those four pillars with leadership development that needs to be done for those specific pillars. So I think it's important for the audience to just keep that in mind. If you can imagine the four pillars in your life, just your life by itself. So how do I handle my family? How do I handle my faith? How do I am I involved in government? Do I vote? Do does my, you know, y'all said my vote doesn't count. Yes, it does. It counts when you get involved and you have a voice and you put the right people in place that are in leadership. And then what about business? Am I a leader in my business? Do I work for someone that's a leader? And am I am I getting led the way that I want to be led in leadership, or are we still kind of in the fringes of the great resignation, which I think we are. I think we're still in the fringes of the great resignation with people still not quite learning how to lead and people still not being led well, and so we've still got this fractured, fractured society we're in.

Post‑COVID Work, Costs, And Pushback

Douglas Ford 6:38

Yeah, well, we spent uh you know, forty to fifty plus years kind of with the the post-World War II leadership models. Uh so it's gonna take some time for people to to transition through. I think, you know, like the early 2000s, uh, it just seemed to be like a a free-for-all, uh, where really a lot of the you know, the work, quote unquote, in terms of bad leadership that had been put in over the last few really started coming to a head. Right. And then you get to um COVID and the great resignation, like that was that was the culmination of like we're we're not gonna take it anymore. You know, it's just like we're we're done with this, and you and you're still seeing some of that pushback of people having gotten so comfortable uh doing more remote work and things like that. And you're of course a lot of different statistics and studies going on about how effective and uh is remote work, and so people are starting to call call them back, like you gotta come back to the office, and you know, the pushback of that, and how how do we balance that and being a good leader in in the midst of all that because people have developed some very strong attitudes about those types of things as well. But but yeah, so I think you're we're starting to hear more and more uh across you know all the things that we typically have referenced in the past, Forbes magazine, uh Fast magazine, Fast Company, all these different things that we uh pull articles from from time to time. We're seeing more and more about the importance of basically being a well-rounded leader, but also leading yourself and being healthy yourself so that you can lead your team better, uh, versus you know what we've talked about is just kind of managing people, managing projects and pushing things along. So yeah, that's it's gonna be um it's gonna be a good season and and like I said, there's a lot more kind of additional support out there for uh what we're talking about now as well.

John Ballinger 8:32

Yeah, I'm gonna throw on an unscripted dust uh kind of two things that I read when I was talk when I was reading about companies calling people back and the pushback people are giving. And there's two questions they're asking when they're being called back. Lunch cost and daycare cost. Who's gonna help with that? And I started thinking through that. If you're remote working, you're going into making you a sandwich in the kitchen, you're not going out and spending twenty, twenty-five dollars because food's expensive. Oh, yes. Right.

Douglas Ford 9:05

Yeah.

John Ballinger 9:06

Used used to you could get to a five-dollar meal. It's twenty-five dollars if you're going somewhere, right? And so you've got that cost. Then you've got the cost of daycare because you've not had that, so you know, you've got that cost. So as prices have increased due to inflation while people have been remote, if they get called back at the same rate of pay and they absorb those two costs, they're actually getting a decrease in pay. Yeah, that's a they become a deficit.

Douglas Ford 9:34

Yeah.

John Ballinger 9:35

And so, but leadership has to address those things. Right? Yep. And instead of saying just come back to work, if you don't come back to work, you're fired. No, I need you to come back to work. I understand that we sent you home and you've got acclimated to this, and during that time frame, inflation has gone up and you've been able to absorb those inflation costs because you've not had these costs. I get that. But now the leaders have to address that for their for their teams. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Douglas Ford 10:04

Which may result in reducing staff, and now you've got to work through that. And there's a lot of different things that come along with that that uh you may not have anticipated as you started having some of these return to work policies uh take effect. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

LEAD: Born, Educated, Agreeable, Disengaged

John Ballinger 10:19

So as we talk about kind of a season one recap, Douglas, remind us what LEAD is.

Douglas Ford 10:24

Yeah, so this is really uh for uh for new new listeners and I think for uh for those who have been with us, uh kind of a a good recap of that is uh really one of the original concepts that started you on your leadership journey of kind of starting to understand uh from back in uh when you were in college and and trying to determine the different types of leaders, how leaders are developed. And so uh at the time you were using a um uh one, two, three model that talked about the different types of leaders, which were born leaders, leaders who are educated to lead, and then uh people who were following, right? Like they the kind of more the general masses. And um as we kind of talked and worked through that and tried to figure out, and of course, from a marketing standpoint, I'm like, how can we make this work for us, you know, in our leadership, the first lead you? And so we came up with the acrostic of uh L E A D, uh, which corresponded with each of those uh numbers. And so L is people who are born leaders, uh that really just uh represents about one percent of the population, uh one to two percent, depending, you know, different numbers. But uh then you've got uh E, which stands for educated, so you got leaders that are being educated uh to lead or people who are being educated to lead, and that that's usually about three to five percent of the population, and that's really like where middle management comes in. So you've got you know the people who are in a leadership position, they may be born leaders or they may be in the leadership position, so that's your ones or your or your L's. Then you've got the twos or the E's, which are people who are preparing to lead, and maybe they're leading a a smaller team, or um they're uh wanting to lead, and they need somebody to teach them. They've got all the kind of maybe some raw talent and some understanding of leadership, but they need somebody to kind of help guide them through uh the leadership process and and become an effective. And that's kind of the middle management by and large, uh which we call the messy middle, uh, because that's uh as everybody knows, that's one of the toughest places to be in Corbin America is middle management because you've got to answer to two sets of bosses really. You've got the the leadership that's above you, and then you've got the team that you're uh supposed to be leading, and you're trying to please both of them, and sometimes that can get uh really difficult. Uh, then you've got the threes or the A's, which we to help us with our acrostic that we were developing, we call the agreeable followers. So these are people who are naturally uh wanting to do their job. They show up every day, it's like, hey, I just want to do my job and go home because uh my interest is really with my family, my hobbies, my life outside of work. It's not, you know, my life is not my work. But they're happy to show up and do what they need to do. But then, so before we got to that, we noticed, and you had you had kind of pulled out this trend that even before we got to COVID, we were starting to see this emergence of another group, which was uh we call what we call the the disagreeable, disenfranchised, uh disengaged followers, and that number was growing, and so now we we're at our D for the you know the disenfranchised, disengaged. And that number grew, and certainly after COVID, 83% of the 95% of followers were not happy. And so we looked at that and we really tried to find out like, well, what is that and why is that uh happening? And then really that like I said earlier, that we all got exposed after COVID with the great resignation of people being home for even a short period of time. Initially, it was about six weeks that kind of for the most part that everybody was kind of out of office and that sort of thing. They started feeling this idea of like, man, I'm less stressed mentally, I'm feeling better. And then the thought of going to work now stresses me out. So now I don't think I need that anymore. And so um, so they started kind of the that rebellion uh and change in society started taking place, and so so there you have it. So you have LEAD, which is uh the lead and like kind of the first lead you, but how do you lead? How where are you in that and are you where are you in that journey? So that was really kind of a foundational piece that we use to kick off the first lead you concept, and you know, and when we've talked to businesses and you've shared this with them, uh it really, especially for you know, senior management, C-suites, whatever you want to call it, like that evolution of like you as the leader have actually caused the D's, right? Like your lack of leadership, your lack of leading the twos and helping the the people who are being educated or who need to be educated to lead by not helping them, by not taking the time to show them, you've actually created a group of people who makes your job much harder. And so if you're not happy in your job because of the people at the kind of the you know end of the end of the line in the D's, that's your fault. And they don't like to hear that very often.

Season Two’s Trauma Responses In Leaders

John Ballinger 15:44

No, they don't, and I'll I'll end it with this. The the vacuum of lack of respect between leadership and the people today. And it doesn't matter which pillar you're in, is greater than I've ever seen in my lifetime. And I I turned 60 in February. Oh this month. This is February, isn't it? I turned 60 this month, and I'm thinking as I look back in my military career, my business career, um just in in ministry and all the things that I've been allowed to have my fingers in, I've never seen a lack of dis uh the the lack of di of respect between people and leaders that I see now today. And it's getting worse. So season two is the kind of the internal battle we talked about, and and we really want to talk about the ins the psychology behind there's this trauma that goes on when leaders do not know how to respond to crisis or things going on in their leadership journey or in their position. And it's the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Those are responses, trauma responses, or pauses. We call them, we talk about pauses. If you're in a leadership position and something comes at you that you're not you don't understand what how to deal with it, what response to give to someone that's coming at you and say, This just happened. This line just broke down in the manufacturing facility. What do we do? And you pause or you fight or you fight, or whatever you do, that's a response, a trauma. You don't know what to do as a leader. So we talked about that struggle inside of that and understanding that the important part, and this is this is jumping ahead a little bit, but the important part of leadership is it's not just you you became a leader in a position or were promoted, and all of a sudden you've got all the tools. And you didn't get a toolbox. It's not like they they they gave you a promotion and said, here's your new toolbox of leadership. We as a society do not show leaders here's the progression into leadership, and now in that position, here's the amount of stress and leadership or the amount of stress and strain you're gonna have on you, and so here are the tools to learn how to deal with that. We just don't do it. We throw you in there and tell you to sink or swim. But what are you doing? You're creating that fourth category that Douglas talked about. You're creating the majority of people that were born just to do and to push and to support are now saying, I'm fed up with you leaders. Which has caused this huge um disrespect in society. So we're gonna take a break, Mr. Ford, and we come back and we're gonna talk just a little bit about um chart, just we're gonna touch on a little bit, but I think the main thing we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about a$5.5 trillion reason you can't ignore leadership development. We'll be back.

Douglas Ford 19:18

Obviously, we're kicking off season four, and we just spent uh the first half of the episode uh recapping kind of where we were in season one and a little more detail into how uh we have developed some of the core pieces of First Lead You uh philosophy or process that we talk about. Uh but one of the things that really emerged in season three, and we've spent pretty much all of season three unpacking it in various forms, uh, was the chart concept that uh you came up with John. And uh I'd be curious, and I'm sure the listeners would like to hear a little bit like what was the origin of that? I mean, there were some elements that have been kind of floating around, but then all of a sudden it just kind of came together uh for you. So what uh what caused that uh thought process?

John Ballinger 20:02

Years ago, um in in the military, there's a there's a method called the KISS method. I don't know if you've heard that before. Now, the last word may not be very popular.

Douglas Ford 20:15

Well, we we were I replaced that, so keep it super simple.

John Ballinger 20:18

Oh, keep it super simple. Yeah. Yeah.

Douglas Ford 20:20

Well that that avoids the the the uh the derogatives of that.

John Ballinger 20:25

But most people in leadership have heard that. Keep it simple. And so I tried early on to describe to leaders the importance of people because I could see that that disrespect or that vacuum growing between the leaders and the people. And and so I started out with H. And this was years ago.

Douglas Ford 20:46

Yeah, the four key H's of leadership was when you when I first met you, that's what you were talking about.

John Ballinger 20:51

Yeah, and that was all that was it. That was the H. And I was like, we got to remember we're all humans.

Douglas Ford 20:55

Right.

John Ballinger 20:56

And we have human natures about us that are born or genetic or whatever they are, and we need human resources, not the department. We need human resources to actually help us develop, you know, and that's the leader and the leader to the people. And then the final H was it creates human capital. The the company actually rises, everybody rises together. And as I started listening to people, and we were going into companies like that, but we need something simple that we can just look at. And so we just, you know, started developing chart out of that. And I think we had C H R at some point, so we were like char, yeah. And then I thought, dang, so I so I was actually um homesick, and I remember finishing it out, and I sent it to you. I remember like, no, it's it's it's a chart, yeah. Which a chart is something that you would use to be a guide for leadership, and that was uh I think it was important for. Us to do something that was simply like have this printed off in a drawer or on your wall or whatever, and depending on what you have that day, you may use two or three of those letters or one or whatever, but revert refer to the chart. So that's how it originated.

Douglas Ford 22:19

Yeah, no, I think it I think that's great. And uh the way that it breaks down, and like I said, you know, we talk about um you know, with the different letters, there's kind of different points of emphasis on each of those, and then there's kind of subpoints of understanding for each of those. And so you want to just kind of walk through that pretty quickly and sure uh before we get into um some of our other topics?

John Ballinger 22:39

Yeah, so the the four the C is the hats. You know, it's so it's you need to understand how to be a commander, a coach, a cop, and a counselor. And that's so important because I envision somebody walking around with four hats in their back, and depending on the situation, they pull out that hat. Most leaders, and I'm I'm painting a broad brush, but most leaders I've dealt with only wear one of those hats and they leave it on. And you're damaging yourself and your people when you do that. So, cop, coach, commander, and counselor. Human, we talked about it, it's moving people from an expense to an asset. When you understand the human element of people, they are assets to your organization. Uh most people say, Oh, I got to do payroll and I got benefits and I got taxes. Yes. But if you love those people and they love you and there's respect, man, those people will make your company rise.

CHART Deep Dive And Relationships

Douglas Ford 23:33

Yeah, and and I think that's a a key uh distinction. I mean, I think a lot of times, you know, you talk about oh, people being assets or human capital, and and maybe that sounds a little cold, but it's like, no, that those are absolutely your biggest assets, right? Like, I mean, I mean, nothing's getting done without people, and so the better you take care of them, the more they love to be where they are, the more free they're gonna be to to think of new ways to do things, uh, to solve problems, but really before they begin. So, you know, understanding that you have human assets that are or humans that can be assets to your business, I think is a key mind shift that leader that when that happens in leadership, it it really starts to turn all the other elements.

John Ballinger 24:17

And we've seen it happen in companies. When the leaders understand that the people in the organization are their greatest asset, and they start understanding that and applying that and showing respect, they see profits, attitude, culture. There's so much that changes at that point.

Douglas Ford 24:35

Absolutely.

John Ballinger 24:36

And that comes from A, the awareness. Leader has to be aware, they have to be adaptable, they have to show appreciation. You know, showing somebody appreciation, I don't know, I mean, it probably stopped back in the 60s or 70s when we had this hammer and nails thing. But people want to be appreciated for what they do. You've even had to get on to me a little bit, you know, like you really need to show some appreciation. Don't hit so hard on things. And I have to, I have to be coached through that process too. So I'm I'm not just preaching to the choir out here. I'm preaching saying I have to do the same things because sometimes you can get caught up in the minutiae and not and not realize that. This is important. When you do those things, it creates relationships that lead to results. One of the hardest things to get a business leader or executive or owner to learn is how to create a relationship that has boundaries but creates results with respect. And that's important. And then to do that, uh you've got to have trust and training yourself and your team is what leads to trust. So that's chart just in a reel, but you can go to the website, you can download that chart and have it uh in your desk drawer or on your wall or wherever.

Douglas Ford 25:50

And speaking of website, we do have a new website.

John Ballinger 25:52

Oh, that's right. We do. We have not documented.

Douglas Ford 25:56

So uh you can still go to the same URL, firstleadhu.com. That's uh, you know, as we say, the letter one, S T uh, L E A D, and then the letter U gets you to firstlead you.com. And uh a lot of the resources we're talking about uh are there in some form or fashion. And uh we'll go ahead and mention this. So we're even launching some opportunities for classes and things like that, so you can sign up and be a part of a cohort coming up. And uh so a lot of a lot of new things happening for us in 2026. That's just one of them.

John Ballinger 26:28

Yeah, it's and thank you for spearheading that. And it's new logo, rebranding. Um yeah, proud of that website, the work that's been done on it. So yeah, go visit the new website. Um look go back to the the five point five trillion dollar uh reason you can't ignore leadership. That's a big number.

Douglas Ford 26:49

Yeah. And that's every year. Yeah, that yeah, that's it's not uh just the one time.

John Ballinger 26:54

So, you know, when you think about one of our most, and I think you've said our most listened to pride podcast at this point is leadership profitability.

New Website, Resources, And Cohorts

Douglas Ford 27:04

Yeah, we uh yeah, by far it's it's outpacing uh some of our other episodes and in terms of the number of overall downloads it has, uh, which is very interesting uh that uh you know people are wanting to know, like, okay, well, from a human standpoint, understanding leadership and being a good leader, okay, I get that, but what's it how's it impact my business? How's it really impact my business? And so uh what we're gonna talk about right now, and then what we're gonna talk about later in the season, we're really gonna unpack the idea that being a good leader, having effective leadership, it actually is a big profit center for you if you get it right.

The $5.5 Trillion Leadership Problem

John Ballinger 27:44

Yeah, we're gonna do a segment. Uh, three to five, we've really not got it planned out, but three to five episodes that are just gonna focus solely on how leadership development with yourself and your team actually returns profits to the company. Um, and I think as we started watching the episode kind of you know jump up and people listening to it, we went back and looked. I I went back and listened to it, and I'm like, man, that's gold. So the reason people are listening to it, now we're going to expand a little bit more into what that looks like uh internally in your organization. But it came out of a study uh that uh this 25-year Blanchard study review um started in 1993, and you think about a study that lasts that long, and they're talking about how failed leadership has just drained profitability in the country and organizations. And so you got this big study out there, but then you and you've got 57,000 books on leadership, go get on Amazon. You got billions spent every year training people, you got billions spent bringing in popular people to pump the people up, and look what's continuing to happen. So we kept talking to each other, I'm like, yeah, but there's a missing component to all this. We if we're doing all that and it's still not working and the pillars are are crumbling, what's missing? And it was the application. No one had really tackled the application of leadership development. And the only place I ever saw that at was in the military. And so I started looking and I'm like, so the civilian sector doesn't have an application process of leadership development like the military has. And so we're not trying to put you through a foxhole or low crawling through, you know, barbed wire and things like that. Is this a mental shift for you? Absolutely. Is there some mental basic training that probably is gonna take place? It it does. But that's what's gonna have to happen uh for leadership development. Mr. Ford, how long does it take to count to a trillion? We're talking about 5.5 trillion in in uh poor leadership cost. How long does it take to count to a trillion?

Douglas Ford 30:02

Yeah, this is a crazy number. So if you I'm gonna break it down a couple different ways. So if you counted one number for every second, it would take you somewhere between thirty-one thousand five hundred and thirty-two thousand years. Which seems like that's like ridiculous that it would, you know. Uh but again, you just clock in time one, two, three, four, you're gonna go on to get to a trillion thirty two thousand years. Now you that's 24-7. That's no breaks. 365. 365, no breaks, no bathroom breaks, not sleeping, 20, you know, just constantly counting. So if you take into account that, you know, you're probably gonna need to go to bed every once in a while, you're probably gonna get hungry, need to go to the bathroom, things of that nature. That pushes that out to 240,000 years.

Announcer 30:56

That's just nuts.

Douglas Ford 30:58

That's insane. Like we don't, it we can't, that's like incomprehensible. Yeah. But we could, you know, to count just to the first trillion.

John Ballinger 31:04

That's just one trillion. Yeah. And we're burning through 5.5 trillion a year because of failed leadership or ineffective leadership in America. That's an annual. So 240, 240,000 years times 5.5 trillion, Lord, we're we're out of control at that point, right?

Douglas Ford 31:24

Yeah, we're in the I don't know.

John Ballinger 31:27

Yeah, so so can break down the st the specific costs when it comes to those trillions of dollars, which just seemed to be.

Turnover, Inefficiency, Missed Chances, Morale

Douglas Ford 31:34

Yeah, so so again, that this was really kind of the culmination of a uh study that you mentioned earlier uh called by a company called Blanchard, where they they looked at 25 years worth of studies and lost productivity and costs to companies and things like that. So this is that's how they they came up with this number. But uh so basically a trillion dollars a year is lost just in turnover. Losing people. You know, certainly there's some natural attrition there with retirement and things of that nature, but but it's I'm not happy here, I'm gonna leave, I'm not happy here, I'm not productive, so I get fired. Um so just in pure turnover costs, whether it's people leaving, doing all the things you gotta do to bring new people in, trillion dollars.$1.2 trillion in inefficient processes. So that kind of speaks to itself, like we're not doing things, but part of that inefficient processes is due to leadership because if I'm not being if I'm not leading effectively, my people aren't uh happy. Uh the team is you know disgruntled, disenfranchised, disengaged. Uh, so that slows down the process, or there's nobody really looking at a process from the standpoint of like, hey, are we actually doing this in a way that is beneficial to us as a not only as a company, but as a team of people who are trying to do it. So now you got that. Then missed opportunities. Well, if if everybody's you know looking for uh the door at five o'clock, uh, hey, let's extend our lunch hour, uh 15 minutes here, go to lunch a little bit early. Uh we'll take an extra five minutes to get settled or 15 minutes to get settled. So just missed opportunities. Like if people aren't focused on their work, they're they're you're missing opportunities uh that they could uh be building on. And so finally it's just uh low morale is the the last, and that uh costs five billion dollars a year. Now that probably has a couple different things, but as we've talked about before, I mean that includes doing things like, hey, we're gonna bring in motivational speakers, hey, we're gonna put in this new uh process and that's supposed to help lift morale. Oh, we're gonna you know spend money uh taking people to lunch or on a business trip or whatever it is to uh try to improve morale. So that's just the number amount of money that gets spent on trying to either deal with or improve morale in the company. So you again you add all that up and you get to somewhere around$5.5 trillion. And I even saw like conservatively that could be as low as three bit uh three trillion dollars, and it could be, you know, if you probably added in a couple more factors, it could get up to close to seven trillion dollars. So, you know, that's a pretty wide swing. But again, it what it says is leadership is impacting your bottom line. So the better your leadership, the more effective your leadership, the less you're gonna have the trouble of leadership impacting your bottom line.

John Ballinger 34:31

So in that number, if you take the GDP, the gross domestic product, we are losing our annual GDP about every four years due to failed leadership.

Douglas Ford 34:43

Yeah.

John Ballinger 34:44

That is a staggering number.

Douglas Ford 34:45

It is, absolutely.

John Ballinger 34:47

So as we're talking about if if we're losing that kind of dollars due to failed leadership, wouldn't it make sense to put a focus on leadership development, Mr. Ford?

Douglas Ford 35:00

Absolutely. Well, yeah, I mean that's that's what we're all about, right?

Justice, Respect, And Return To Work

John Ballinger 35:04

Right. So as we go into as we're wrapping up this this uh initial episode of season one or season four, episode one, when you talk about you you made a statement in one of the podcasts that people don't quit bad bosses, they quit injustice. And the more that I think about that statement and I think about the great resignation, the great renegotiation, and the people that are now saying, I don't want to go back to work because of cost of food and cost of daycare, and it's not being considered, it makes me wonder did leadership already have amnesia for what went on post-COVID? Have they already forgotten because we're we're kind of six years removed and have we forgotten what happened because that changed the world. Twenty one 2020 and 21 changed the world, and there is a great deal of the population that hasn't forgotten what happened from a leadership standpoint. So season four, I think, is so important for our leaders to listen to and understand that there is an architecture of the new leader that needs to be built for today's workforce and in the future. Because as the more we enter into robots and AI, and and everybody's trying to throw something at robots and AI, what they're actually doing is from a leadership standpoint, is saying we can't figure out how to lead people well, so just let's let machines do it. But I can tell you unequivocably that letting a machine try to interact and deal with people from an emotional standpoint isn't gonna happen. Because you can have all the machine learning you want, but there's no soul or heart to a machine. And at the end of the day, people want connection. And the reason that they left is they felt like they were a number in the great resignation and they didn't go back. They felt like they were a number and no one cared about them. And I know this sounds mushy I I talk about caring, but as a leader, guess what? You need to care about your people. It's it's it's extremely important. And if you don't learn as a leader to care about your people, and I've said this and I made uh I remember listening to that, just stop, just get out of the position because people today need to be cared for. And we as leaders have a lot of rebuilding to do to create to to create the space or to fill up the space that that vacuum's been created by lack of respect and people not thinking we care. So as we wrap up this uh episode, Mr. Ford, I feel like that there are times that because of what we do, we get to see into a crystal ball.

Douglas Ford 38:03

Yeah, we certain we certainly get to uh evaluate what could possibly happen in the future based on what's happened in the past, that's for sure.

John Ballinger 38:10

And I think our companies, not just First League Jew, but our companies total give us some insight because they we see things in each one of those companies that give us insight, and it all comes back to a lot of times leadership challenges, right, inside the organization. So thanks for listening. Uh we look forward to season four. I look forward to the profitability segment that we're gonna do and breaking that down for leaders uh on the podcast. So uh again, in order to lead your team well, you must first lead you. Thanks everyone.