Most of the time, your team already knows the “what” and the “how” behind their work, but do they know the “why?” Learn how to communicate purpose with a team just looking for a paycheck, and help your employees pinpoint and develop their strengths instead of harping on their weaknesses.
Most of the time, your team already knows the “what” and the “how” behind their work, but do they know the “why?” Learn how to communicate purpose with a team just looking for a paycheck, and help your employees pinpoint and develop their strengths instead of harping on their weaknesses.
Welcome to this edition of a survivor's journey with rocky destefano. Brock has been a server since his early days at working behind the counter at chick filet to having his own successful store of his own. Rocky is called the plan to help people develop their skills and staffs around the country being a server himself. He loves to talk about leading yourself. Leading a few leading many at leading an organization. Good morning, rocky. Good morning, Jay. Yes, there we are on a lot. By the way. You nailed the name. Perfect. Oh sure. How many years have I known you? And I can't see your name. I know. Not the only one I promised, but I, I just want to thank everybody for joining us here. Um, you know, I hope that together we can learn to be better leaders. That's what this is all about is absolutely. And this is, believe it or not already episode three and I think it is going to be a great journey. Um, and I think it's going to be helpful if we meet here every week. And don't worry if you miss a session, there's no issue at all. You can always go back, you can look at our episode log and you can listen to any podcasts that you desire to. That's a fantastic idea because getting involved weekly, and this is going to be a weekly. We're coming out on a Wednesday so you'll know you can set your subscriber to be there on Wednesday. And here we are with a servers journey. And Jay, you know, today I was hoping that we could talk about the why and more importantly why your why is so important. There's a lot of great learning and great teaching around this subject, but the reality is a lot of companies don't start with the why. They actually start with the what and the how. Yeah. Well you've gotta know what your team, what your product is, don't you? Yeah. And, and, and that's the more concrete part. The reality is most of your team, they already know what you do, what product you offer or what service you provide. And honestly, most of them, even though the how, how do you do it? What separates us from other companies, but what most people lack in their job is, is really a clear sense of purpose and that's the why and without, without it, Larry, you're just adrift at Sea, man. I'm understanding this, why it really enables us to focus our efforts on what matters the most and it pushes us to take risks. And that's a big deal because in business, in any business, you're going to have to take risks. And when you understand why you're doing something, it's easier to because it's a motivating factor. Um, the problem is that almost no one knows why. Why we do something, and I'm going to tell you it can't be about profit. Profit is great. Profit is honestly the end result. But that's what it is. It's just a result. It's always a result. The why. It differs because the why is the reason why I get out of bed in the morning. And the why is that cause or that belief. It's the reason that you cared. It's probably the reason you started in the beginning. Well, you know, can I relate to you? Yeah. I was a kid driving home from Caterpillar Tractor Company at 7:30 in the morning working overnight shift and on the radio was a guy named earl nightingale and he gave me such focus and innovation of ideas. I think he gave me the why and then there was another time in my life and that was one like my, my spiritual life changed and that gave me a why. That's right. But I'm might saying too much here now. I don't. Am I get too far ahead of you? Well now I think what you're, you're kind of proving my point and really I think we have an epidemic today. And in the workforce in general, if you look at employee engagement stats there, they're terrible and it's a, it's a crisis and the crisis is on an unprecedented scale, but it's really around that purpose. Larry. It's really around, hey, if you can figure out the why, uh, you know, you'll always, you'll always come out much better. Um, and, and knowing the why allows you to not live in this someday. It actually allows you to live in the now. Um, and then honestly, I think that in the end that really helps you create a tight knit team and I think people will buy into it and be loyal and loyalty is what you want. Oh yeah. Loyalty gains you the respect, right? Sure. Yeah, Yep. The, you know, the, the most inspiring leaders that they're able to communicate the why first and then again, it clear why it enables your team to focus our efforts on, on what's important. You know, the, the main reason, the main way that we're separated as a humans compared to animals is that, you know, animals, they're driven to survive. That's it. I mean, every function they do is around survival. But you know, humans, we crave more. We crave much more to life than that. You know, we have an, a need and a real innate need to answer the question, why am I surviving? Survival for the sake of what? And without this purpose, man, people become disenchanted. People lose focus. I, I think I hear that all over the country today. Absolutely. Why am I doing this? What am I doing? Well? And it's odd and that it comes at a time where we're wealthier today than at anytime in history. He obviously, money or profit alone, it just can't be that purpose. It doesn't feed us. It's, I don't want to survive just for money. Right. And can I say I've lived that philosophy all my life. You lead the philosophy only living for money or no, no, I don't. I don't care what the guy makes, you know, let's just do the good job and you feel satisfied and you can move forward while. And I think that there's a satisfaction, you know? Um, when I go home after a long day, I can tell you it's been a great day and it has nothing to do with whether I thought I made money. It really has to do with was, you know, was I impactful? Did I use my influence correctly? Um, and, and I think that matters. I think that is what helps people not become a, you know, disenchanted, you know, uh, the German philosopher Frederick, and I'm going to destroy this Mitski I believe niche, you know? Okay. I thought you had it. You know, I'm going to go with that. You know, he said he who has a why can endure anyhow, while. Can you repeat that? He who has any why can endure anyhow. Wow. Which is, you know, pretty good. Knowing the why it's an important first step and figuring out how you're going to achieve her goals. It creates excitement. It creates loyalty in your team and only when you know your why will you find the courage to take the risks needed to get ahead and, and also to stay motivated when the chips are down because the chips are going to be down sometimes. And motivation is a key there. Yeah. Well, I mean literally you mentioned you're driving home from the caliphate, a caterpillar tractor and I'm sure the radio was. Maybe you're the first spark of your desire to be a producer too. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I was going to be Jack Paar once again, reincarnate, but it didn't quite make that. But Hey, I've been here. Should we give a slight, because you and I are a little bit older than maybe some of the listeners who Jack Paar, you don't know who Jack Paar is. You guys look it up, Google Jack Paar, and you will find out this is a good learning lesson for you. There you go. Google. That's the answer. The answer to everything. It's Google. Well, it sure it definitely is for me. You know the Larry in the end, um, I think people understand, they can understand all about how much experience I have. They can understand how our were different. They can understand our products, but it just doesn't drive behavior. It. If, if we don't do a good job as leaders, I'm pushing this, this why, then they don't really know why they do what they do. And because we've already said people are moved by the why. How do you get anybody really to care? Well, okay, this is a motivational. We're talking about leading. People were talking about leading others, leading ourselves, leading groups, and to be a better leader. How do you drive people to find their why? You know? Yeah. What are some of'em, you know, what are some of the ideas, what would make someone come alive? Well, and that's really the first thing that I would recommend and I'm gonna I'm going to ask you to join in the conversation because I know that you get different parts of your life have found what made you come alive and you know it's unique for every person, but you know, number one, you have to find that you know the word inspire comes from the Latin word meaning to breathe life into accordingly. When you're working towards something that that inspires you, it literally makes you feel more alive. What makes you come alive isn't referring to taking your dream holiday. It's not about watching your favorite team play football. Those are great things, but honestly it's about something bigger than that. And I'm talking about a why that moves up the food chain from being about you, to being about something bigger to you and it's about connecting with what you're passionate about. Knowing that when you focus your affection on endeavors that put fire in your belly, you're going to grow and you're not only are you going to grow as a business or as a person, but as your impact and your influence in ways that has nothing in, in ways that nothing else can really help those things grow and you're not talking about companies here. You're really talking about one on one. Yeah. What's it going to take inside? Make you come alive and you've got to think about that. You do and, and you know you don't have to declare at this point that you want to invent the next iphone or solve the world's energy problems or cure cancer. This is about you connecting to a cause that's bigger than profit but which is also can grooming with who you are and what you care about. What, what, what do you look forward? What do you, are there certain strengths and weaknesses and how do you deal with things like that? Yeah, I, you know, I, I think that, and I can only use my personal experience, but I sell chicken sandwiches. That's what I do. You were with Fullan. Absolutely. And I love the company and the company is, is huge. It's going to be a$10,000,000,000 company this year, 2,500 stores all across the country. Um, it's a success and it's very profitable, but I was never excited and never drawn to the company. It doesn't make me feel alive. Profit. Profit is a good result, but it didn't make me come alive. Okay. Will you, as I understand it, I'm going to go back in your history. You were a teenager that just got fired from the beginning. I did. And you walked into the store. The guy hired you yet a saw something in you, but he must have given you something of the why the get you where you are today. You know, the thing that he talked about, his and he, this is chick filets corporate mission. It's not every individual store, but the chick flight corporate mission is to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that we've been entrusted with and to have a positive impact on those. We come in contact with and as a 16 year old kid who had just been fired from Mcdonald's for being quite possibly the worst employee in their history. I don't know what, what Joe saw in me, but it was down deep if he saw it, but what I was moved by as there was nothing in their mission that talked about selling chicken sandwiches or making money. It talked about being a great steward of the things we're given and having, having a positive influence on people. And those resonated with me even at 16 while you must have bought into that. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Then, so you took that biomed and then you created some strength out of it that. Sure. Well, and I think that's really the second part is you have to kind of discover what are your innate strengths, how are you different, you know, and I think you start by saying what are the things I've always been good at? The things that you sometimes look at other people and wonder why they're finding it so hard. Um, are you able to see patterns and opportunities, myths, complexity. Are you creative? Are you naturally adept that coming up with the outside the box solutions, are you a natural born rebel with an innate ability to identify what the status quo is in need of a makeover and a natural born rebel could really be us districts. Many of the greatest success stories in life are people that rebelled against the status quo and they recognize that their industry, whether it's music or I mean rock and roll is the story of rebellion and it's all about, you know, understanding what, what's next and how to shake it up. Um, you know, I, I think there's a lot of strength in that and details too, right? Yeah. Some people are brilliant in the details. They're just naturally good at executing projects with a precision that some people find tedious, you know, and then there's other people that are naturally gifted communicators or technocrats are diplomats or network or leader. Some people are better problem solvers or people that push for change. Again. Yes, please. You know, the reason why I'm sitting here and you're sitting there is I realized my strength and my strength is enabled to help people to produce things and it's not to do the thing, but it's to get it done right. And I am just so satisfied with that right now. That is so exciting to me. So, and you know, it's, it's odd because sometimes you're passionate about things, you have no natural talent for it and sometimes you're talented at things for which you have no almost no passion. And this, I found this to be true. I love music. I, I look at people that create it and I'm just over. I'm amazed and yet I seem to have zero ability in music and so that's a passion of mine. But the passion is, is much. It's not that I'm just listening to it, that's, that's my passion. Um, you know, experience, however, it's shown that, that we rarely, rarely aspire toward ambitions that we have known natural talents to achieve. Most people are like, you, Larry. They realize, hey, I'm really good behind a microphone, or I'm really good at producing and they're drawn to that, you know, civil, uh, well, you know, I'm, I'm reading a book right now on Andrew Jackson who in the war, 18, 14 Greeks rose went down to New Orleans, you know, and uh, he wasn't a natural born general, but it was just natural born talent that he had. And he used one. If you look at history specifically, he got people to charge into gunfire. Yeah. So he may not have been a natural born general, but I think he was a leader for leader, you know, um, the, there was a civil rights leader, a Howard Thurman he once wrote, don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that because the world needs people. I'm sorry, what the world needs is people who have come alive. And I think for him, of course he was talking about something even more important than business or profit. He was talking about people gaining civil liberties. Um, but he, he pushed him and he said, figure out what you're passionate about and come alive because the world needs people that are live a better life, you know, so what's the value you add after you have your strength and you know, what your, what you'd want to do. Yeah. You know, I, and I think, thank you for kind of leading into that because that's really the next part. Where do you add the greatest value, you know, doing work that you're good at but which, which you hate is not really going to be a pathway to fulfillment. That sad. Knowing your greatest strengths and where you can add the most value through the application of your education and your skills and your knowledge and your experience can help you focus on the opportunities and the roles and maybe even the career path where you most likely will succeed and therefore find the greatest sense of accomplishment and contribution. So know your strengths. Yeah. Don't worry about the negatives, right? Yeah. I think too often in this is very American by the way. You come home with the report card and you got a five a's and a c and your, what are your parents say, great job on the ace. Now let's get that c up, but you know, again, there's a famous book, great book by an author named Marcus Buckingham, and he talks about in other cultures they focus on what their strengths are and they realize, okay, I'm never going to be an a here. Maybe I don't like it at all and I've got to be a c student at least, but I don't have to be an a. If math is never going to be a strength, why do I push for it? And I think again, too often we undervalue our strengths and our skills and the expertise that we naturally acquire over time. I'm going to ask you a question. Sure. Did. Truett Cathy, the founder of a billion dollar company called chick fillet? Yeah. Was he a major studied person? Uh, you know, school well, you know, when he died Larry, he had hundreds and hundreds of degrees. Unfortunately they were all honorary degrees. True. It struggled to get through high school. He, that's what I, yeah, yeah. So he, he, you know, he had a famous saying and it's one I love. I've used it hundreds of times and he always said that the world is run by C students. Amen. Brother. People that are able to kind of pick themselves up when you mentioned that. See, see, I was thinking that that's where that came from. I mean, for me, because a, I'm sorry, I'm a c student. I never made those big a's. My parents always wanted. Oh well, you know, I, I think again, true it saw where he could add value and I think if we reframe the concept of adding value and then we add the lens of, Hey, what problems can I solve? You know, you can ask yourself, you know, what you're well placed and what you're equipped to help solve. Um, you can ask yourself what problems do you really enjoy solving two and what problems do you feel passionate about that those are important too. But I think in the end, Larry, you're going to be more successful at focusing on your natural strengths and the things that you are innately good at rather than trying to bolster your weaknesses. All right. So how do you measure up your life then? How do you do that? You know, I think that's the final part to it, you know, how will you measure your life? You people who don't stand for something can easily fall for anything. That's a famous thing you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a question you have to ask yourself that you have to decide how you want to measure your life and that means it means making a stand for something and then living your life in alignment with that stance. You know? True. It said I don't want profit to be the main thing. I want to be a good steward and I want to be a good influence. And then he aligned himself to it and he closed on Sunday. Yeah. And that was part of it for sure. You know, he saw it as well. First of all, he was very tired, you know, restaurant work is difficult and he needed a day off and he also realizes his, his team needed a day off and if he was going to be a good steward of his team and a good influence, he needed a day arrest and the Lord said on the seventh day you rest. That's it. Okay. Can I throw that in? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, ultimately living with purpose though is going to mean focusing on things that matter to you most. You know, ironically, the things that matter most are rarely things. By the way. It's Larry just got back from a cruise and, and he said it was the best one of the best experiences of his life, but I guarantee you it wasn't about how beautiful his room was or it was about the experience, the memories that he made and the fun. I'm, it just was fun. That's it. Hey, I hate to tell you this. You know, I've worked around you for years. Yes. I have never been so relaxed in my whole life. Yeah, well you know that, that, that can be a direct correlation to not being around me as much as you know, I'm getting back to this. Some people are, are in a position that they can actually trade the security of a regular salary in order to pursue a passion, but, but many can't, at least not in the short term or without violating core values. You don't want to, you know, get money by core, uh, violating what you really believe in. Right? But it's so sad that some of us find that passion and there were not able to utilize it well because we have these debts and things like that. Yeah. And I think it's also, again, if, if, if your why is money, you're going to follow that and following your heart. Sometimes those are mutually exclusive. So sometimes you have to say, Hey, this adds passion and it's going to be a longer road, but I'm going to enjoy it. I'm not going to make as much money as for at first. Um, but you know, I think that when you shift the Lens in which you view what you're doing now, then you can profoundly shift your experience of it no matter what your job, you can still draw meaning from it and find a greater purpose through how you do what you do and if you don't think you're the kind of person that you'd want to work with than consider that it may not be because of the job you do each day, but it could be just really about your attitude towards it, the attitude. We always have to think about the attitude and if you want people to be the best leader and to drive people to be more, you've got to help them find that. Why and what were those? What were those points? Well, and again, I think what we're, what we're asking or what we're expressing today is you really have to spend a little bit of time on yourself as you kind of go on your leadership journey. You know, you have to figure out what makes you come alive. You have to kind of look at your yourself. Yeah. And say, figure out what are my strengths, um, you know, you have to figure out where or how can I add the greatest value? And then the fourth part, which is maybe the most compelling, is at the end, how am I going to measure my life? And it's not going to be about profit for sure. So we've talked about learning about the why and boy, it was so exciting when you get it your gut. Yeah, that's, you know, a why and you want to move forward with it. Well, again, the why it gets you through the, the hard part of every day. Well you know, and you're going to have those days where you wonder why your why or why am I doing this to myself? And, and that's real. But if you can remind yourself of your why, then it helps you get through it. Fantastic. Remember, you can subscribe right here to the podcast weekly. We want you to do that because it's going to come out on a Wednesday. You could set your calendar to it because it will be there right there on Wednesday and you'll know what we're going to say each week. Okay. And we're learning about the leader process. Absolutely. And, and I can tell you, we can kind of promo this out now. We actually have two authors who will be coming on that we are very, very excited about. Um, and we're gonna. Make sure you have links to some of their teaching and some of their books. But Larry, I'm excited about this and you know, I'm rocky and I hope that together we're going to be able to make some stories better.