The Leadership Exchange
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The Leadership Exchange
S3E10: Servant Leadership Meets The Shingo Model For Real Culture Change With Dan Fleming
Think leadership is about having the answers? We take a different path with GBMP president Dan Fleming, unpacking how the Shingo Model helps leaders turn values into daily behaviors that actually move results. Dan shares a relatable early-career story—being “the title” in the room while the people closest to the work were sidelined—and how respect every individual and lead with humility transformed how he built teams, solved problems, and measured success.
We break down the Shingo Model in practical terms: principles should drive systems, systems should guide tools, and all of it should connect to results with people at the center. That means less obsession with events and templates, and more attention to the behaviors that make tools work. Dan offers hands-on tactics for psychological safety, from protecting idea time to treating moments of truth as culture-shaping. You’ll hear how to prevent the three Ds in brainstorming—discussing, debating, dismissing—and why reframing “solutions” as “countermeasures” keeps learning alive.
For new leaders, we map a focused first 90 days: go to the Gemba, study both the object of work and the subject of work, and assess not only how work is done but how improvement is done. Then act—balance empathy with decisions that remove friction and enable contribution. One powerful shift: when someone brings you a problem, ask “What do you need from me?” This single question returns ownership to the expert at the source and clarifies the support only you can provide. The big takeaway is simple and demanding: change your own behavior first. When humility and respect move from ideas to habits, culture follows—and results compound.
If this conversation sparked ideas, share it with a teammate, subscribe for more leadership deep dives, and leave a quick review with your favorite takeaway. What’s the one behavior you’ll practice this week?
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Hello everyone, this is Luke Munoz.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm Steve McKeon, and welcome to the Leadership Exchange. Today we've got uh Dan Fleming from the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership, otherwise known as GBMP. And for those of you in the lean community, will easily recognize the entity and the company. Dan is currently the president leading the organization over the last 20 plus years, has been a consultant within the business and has just a lot of industry experience. And uh I'm gonna turn it over to you, Dan, just to maybe tell us a little bit more about yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Steve, and thank you, Lupe, for inviting me today. So I'm Dan Fleming from GBMP. I'm currently president of GBMP, but I'm a long time lean consultant, been with the company for 25 years. And I'm still a student, though, still a learner. Um got a fair amount of experience, as Steve mentioned, but lifelong learner. Uh love to participate in these type of events. So thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01:It's always great to have someone like yourself, Dan. I know we've interacted in various uh scenarios, and uh we've been working for a while now to make this happen. So to see it actually become a reality is uh pretty exciting for me. So very much appreciate your time and all the knowledge that you're gonna share with us. Now, typically we like to ask our guests for a story relevant to the topic today. Today we're gonna talk a little bit about leading with purpose. So the Shingo principles and how they shape servant leadership for the next generation of leaders. Uh, a lot of our listeners, not all, but a lot of them, are up-and-coming leaders, new leaders to roles. And we feel this is a really interesting and relevant topic for them that you could really add a lot to. So if you could uh share a story that you think might be relevant to that topic, we'd appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. So one example comes from my early career. When I joined an organization, I was joined as an engineer and then became a manager. So I was a young guy and I had a title. And because I had a title, I was asked to participate in problem-solving teams and project teams. So because of that title, I was always asked, along with others, to be a part of the team that did all the creative work and all the improvement work. And it felt good to do that, but I knew the people working around me, the people doing the value-added work, had a lot more experience than I did. They had been at the company many years, they just didn't have the opportunity that I and others had. So it bothered me a bit. Uh they were doing the value-added work, so they had less time than I had, and they understood that. So the only way I could help somebody contribute the way that I and others had was it was initially incorrect. It was a misunderstanding on my part. But the only way I could help somebody back then was to look for an opening in the company and encourage someone to apply for it, to advance out of their role and become sort of a team leader, group leader, supervisor, so they can be part of the team that it's picked for all the projects and all the problem-solving work. And that might happen, that might have happened, but it was sort of few and far between. When I started learning more about continuous improvement and maybe continuous improvement done correctly with servant leadership and the principles of the shingle model, specifically respect and humility, everything changed for me. Everything changed. Initially I thought it was the work of management. And the only way for team member associates to participate is for them to be a part of that team. But once I learned the principles and servant leadership, everybody around me and everybody in the organization had the opportunity for meaningful work. And it had nothing to do with title. So I immediately found ways to have team members' associates contribute as if they were the manager, as if they were the problem solver. And initially it was a misunderstanding on my part, but learning about the shingle model, learning about servant leadership, everything changed for me on a dime. And I found ways for employees to contribute. I found ways to allocate time for them to be the problem solver, for them to be the continuous improvement. And I certainly did it too, but I was more of an equal. We did it together. But I would never have done that without learning more about the shingle model and learning more about servant leadership. But it actually made a huge difference in my career.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Dan, that's a great opening story and you know, really, really resonates with myself. And I think just a lot of our audience as well. I I can remember my first opportunity to lead a team, and you know, I was just good at the work. I wasn't necessarily good at leading people, and I was instructed to follow. I I think I shared this on a previous podcast, but I was instructed to kind of follow, you know, make sure people know you're in charge. And it just didn't resonate with me well either, because I was younger than uh most of the team I was leading. And so it, you know, I really had a uh paradigm shift as well, and learning kind of that same thing that you just described is that you know, being a leader is not necessarily giving orders, it's really creating that environment for your team to be successful, including yourself, right? And so I think that is you know very profound and a great introduction story into the connection between uh servant leadership and what uh you've been sharing uh for many years now with uh the shingle principles and and practices. Uh, thank you for that story.
SPEAKER_01:The other thing to add to that, Dan, I love that story, is it really starts to set the, I guess, foundation for our discussion today around the power behind the servant transformational leadership behaviors and the shingle model. And for those listeners, maybe if you can just give us a very brief overview of what the shingle model is. I always describe it as sort of a great framework around operational excellence, but also with the leaders' behaviors and the team's behaviors in mind.
SPEAKER_00:So absolutely. It's a framework for operational excellence. It connects for me principles, which are like values that guide and inform, influence behavior, but connects what the principles, which are really important, and we can cover a couple of them, connects them directly to systems and tools. And the better you connect them, the more likely those systems and tools are going to drive behavior closer to an ideal behavior. And then systems and tools are connected to results. I mean, the work we do is for a result to give a product or service to a customer, but it's also the improvement work that we do is also for a result to improve the way we do that. So for me, it connects everything really well and it maybe operationalizes some of the concepts we've learned over the years. One example might be the principles of the shingle model, they don't sit out on an island somewhere by themselves, as if it's something to also do or to aspire to understand. They're integrated directly with some of the systems and tools we have, the results we're getting. And then the central part of the model is human development or people. And the shingle model does a really good job at taking the word people or the words human development and further describing like what do we actually mean by that? What we mean is how people engage, how people participate, how people contribute. So we're coining it as culture and behavior or describing it as culture and behavior. So the shingle model does a really good job at sort of connecting all those pieces so they're not just separate things sitting out on islands by themselves, but also driving behavior. When you think of an individual, for example, someone like a coworker, we tend to sum people up according to the department they work in, the title they have, maybe the years they've been around. But we also sum up people according to how they behave, how they act. And there are some folks in the continuous improvement environment that always behave in an ideal way. And there's others that might not behave in an ideal way. So we can sum them up that way. And uh the people that are behaving in an ideal way, they're doing it for a reason. They understand the principles more deeply, maybe they understand the big picture. And the folks that may not be uh having ideal behavior, I think the model is for them to help them learn what others have learned already, to move their behavior closer to an ideal. I might have summed up in the past as they simply don't get it. But the shingle model helps everybody understand the proper mindset, the proper spirit, the proper attitude when we do continuous improvement. So it actually fills in a lot of blanks and does a lot of connecting of the various components, all for the purpose of getting better results.
SPEAKER_02:Dan, I think what's really interesting is I started working with uh Lupe Munoz several years back, and I I recognized a lot of the teachings or the interest that he had, the way he was leading, uh, really was based in servant leadership, but also you know, connected to Shingo principles. And I made a bad assumption that he was very familiar with Shingo already, and and uh as you know, my background in automotive worked for a company that had uh been very deep into uh Shingo and you know receiving awards in many of their facilities. So I I just had made that assumption because of the way Lupe was talking to me and others in the organization. Uh Lupe, I don't know if you want to share that story because it is an interesting story, and I think it really does it relate to why we were so interested in having Dan on is the connection between we're sharing the practicing in servant leadership, transformational leadership at the organization we're with, and the uh introduction of the shingle principles and what that did for the organization.
SPEAKER_01:It's a funny story. Uh I uh Dan, I I don't know if you're familiar with one of our peers. He he works for a different company now, um, has for a while, but his name's uh Tony Coleman, and him and him and I started in the same company, I'll say, uh within the industry. And when we did, we became followers of lean and operational excellence. And we started to kind of gather things around leadership that we thought made sense or that we had been taught through others, and we started creating this framework that we couldn't really visualize clearly, we couldn't effectively communicate. And one day uh we reconnected working for for uh another employer, and and we were working together again. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he sends me this text message and he says, Oh my God, I found it. I found what we've been looking for. And he sent me this link to this thing that I at the time I'd really not heard of, and it was called the shingo model. So I started looking at it, and it was from GBMP, and I was like, oh man, this this is it. I this makes intuitively make sense to me, but I could never frame it up the way the model had. And so it really made a lot of sense to us, and we really adopted it because it's like the framework is there, it's it's very clear to us, and that it makes sense to us. And now we have something to be able to show people to help them understand that model. And and it was it was one of those moments where everything just kind of came together for me personally as a leader. And, you know, my hope is that through this episode, we help others really be able to do that maybe earlier in their careers. Because if I'd known this when I first started, let's say a few years into my first leadership role, I can just imagine how much help I could have been for people that that I led, the teams that I was part of. So it was it was a very pivotal moment in my career when when I was able to bring that together.
SPEAKER_02:Dan, and I can tell you it was on a Saturday morning. Lupe called me all excited. Normally he's not going to call me on a Saturday unless we've got something already kind of set up. He just started going on and on about the the shingle model, and I thought he was punking me because I was like, okay, what have we been doing for the last two years? And he just had this uh you know revelation, him and him and Tony Ball. So it was it was fun because I I made an assumption just based on what he had picked up and learned you know over his career. And and then you know, once we layered into uh the shingle model more, you know, it just really became uh very powerful and as Lupe mentioned, connected to DOS. But yeah, great story. Thanks, Lupe, for sharing that. Dan, I want to kind of walk back to your first introduction to Shingo and what what attracted GPMP towards Shingo and and becoming a uh a company that really focuses on uh consultation around the shingle model.
SPEAKER_00:My first introduction to the shingle model was working for a manufacturing company here in Massachusetts. We were a traditional manufacturing company, family-owned. When I joined them, they had been around for maybe a hundred years, a lot of growth in the early years, but it was flat when I joined them. I worked in a department that was a smaller startup, electronic department is what it was. The company made electromechanical products, but because we were electronic, it was smart products. We were their future in the growth of the company. So we had a lot of backlog and a lot of new customer demand, a lot of new products. But when I joined that company to help them grow that department, it was very difficult to do it in a traditionally managed company. So they were traditionally managed, meaning top-down, autocratic, a lot of red tape and bureaucracy. And I was a young guy and I knew this company had an opportunity to grow. So I was frustrated actually by not being able to help this company make improvement or to meet customer demand. Luckily, someone at the organization above me in a VP or senior leadership role introduced continuous improvement and then along the way introduced the shingle model. So I took an interest early on because I knew it would help this organization, and I knew there had to be a better way than the traditionally managed company that I was at. Three years into that company-wide effort, the company was a recipient of the Shingo Prize. So I took it as I took an interest early on in continuous improvement because it just made sense to me. It was difficult uh without the shingle model because there was a lot of tools, and some people did it, some people didn't. When we matched the shingle model, it helped, as we stated earlier, to sort of get the most out of it, get people uh to fully understand what we were doing. It just helped strengthen the overall program. After we were recipient of the shingle prodding, I obviously continued within that company for many, many years. Uh I became a consultant 25 years ago, so it was a natural to continue to support the shingle model. As a consulting company, we're a licensed affiliate, so we teach their courses. The shingle model courses, but we're also shingle prize examiners. But long and short, uh the technical side, the tools and techniques, they're very important because they provide the means to do improvement. The means to do problem solving. And without them, we struggle. It's like using a blank whiteboard or blank sheet of paper. But they don't work fully without the culture and behavioral part. Together, these two pieces, tools and culture, are really what's necessary to make lasting improvement. So it always made sense as a consulting company to do both. We teach tools, but what we really do is teach culture, teach behavior. We we teach people uh or we teach culture, we help people learn how to use the tools to solve problems, but we're really developing culture. And that that's the difference between the shingle model. A lot of consulting companies, and maybe even companies that are practicing improvement, they focus a little bit too much on tools and not enough on culture.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a great point.
SPEAKER_01:Amen to that, Dan. That is such a truth that that I've also witnessed. Or I'll make a statement and tell me if you agree or disagree, because from that perspective, exactly from that perspective, uh I feel that as a leader of an organization that is trying to it's on the pathway to operational excellence or is pursuing operational excellence, one of the most critical behaviors as a leader is part of the Shingo Guiding Principles, which is leading with humility. I feel that that's probably the most critical because and and my support for that is that if you as the leader can establish that safe zone for everyone to be able to thrive and to be able to really allow the model to maximize its value to that culture, it's gotta start with you as the leader. What what do you think about that statement I made?
SPEAKER_00:So the respect every individual principles within the same the prince and lead with humility principle. The respect every individual lead with humility uh principles for me are hard to decouple. They're two sides of the same coin. They're both necessary. But more specifically, humility is a term that we probably don't know as easily as we do the respect term. The respect term everybody understands to some degree, and we should talk about that a little bit too, because I think there's more to it. But it's but it's a little bit easier because we learned it as children, we learned it in school, we learned it in church, what the word respect means. Humility is a little bit tougher, but uh they're both really important. And in the Shingle model, we put them in a category of principles called cultural enablers. They enable the environment for improvement, they enable the right environment to get all the other principles to work, or to the rest of the model to work. So they're critical, and I always knew they were critical, but a deep understanding of both of them is necessary. So humility is a mindset for learning and improvement. It's being open to the idea that uh we, including myself, could actually learn and can actually improve. Or maybe that I don't have all the answers, that I can actually that others can contribute beyond just me and a few others. So it's critical to have an open mind that we have improvement, opportunity for improvement, we have problems to solve, and that I don't have all the answers. It's critical to creating an inclusive culture. Lean for me is always meant to be inclusive, meaning everybody. But for many organizations and for the industry as a whole, you know, the lean industry as a whole, we have yet to deliver on that promise. And the reason we have yet to deliver is because of the word humility, this openness to learning from others or having others contribute, participate. But it's where everyone is on the lookout for problems and everyone's engaged in problem solving. Without humility, those two things will be again the work of management. It'll be limited. And I guess everyone else is expected to keep their head down and put in a good day's work. So without humility, uh without Respect, it's not going to go anywhere. It's going to be very, very limited. With with those two things and a deep understanding of both, we're likely to go far in the continuous improvement world.
SPEAKER_02:Dan, that's that's a great point there. And you know, one of the breakthrough areas that Luop and I have run across as we're doing leadership training in the organizations where we have worked is kind of working through the nuances there of you know, respect every individual and lead with humility. And one of the things that especially a new leader, not even a new leader, I'd say any leader can struggle with as times, is always having to be the person with the answers and teaching them as part of that leading with humility, it's okay to say, I don't know. And one of the things that really resonates in servant leadership philosophy is that in where we're encouraging as a leader others to share information with us, right? We're gonna listen, we're gonna listen with empathy, and I think that's just reinforced by the shingle principle of respect and humility. And I thought you did a great job of uh tying those together. And you you really can't separate the two, you gotta understand both. And then I think you really need to understand, to your point, how they're applied in an organization and and kind of walk us through your thoughts around a new leader coming into an organization, or maybe they're just you know been promoted within the organization. How can they leverage these things to build trust when given this big opportunity to lead?
SPEAKER_00:So thank you. Yeah, one one example is we all face the dynamic of what made us initially successful as an individual at work. Meaning for those of us that might advance into a management or leadership role, what made us successful was maybe having the answers, the ability to get things done, the ability to solve problems quickly. And then once we become the leader or the manager, those are not necessarily examples of what we mean by servant leadership. A servant leadership doesn't uh solve every problem themselves, they develop problem solvers, they seek improvement through others versus doing it themselves. And that's a major change. I mean, what made me successful to become a manager as an example. Now I need to manage differently. So it takes a while to have that, uh to to learn that, to understand that. So it's necessary to rethink your own personal behavior as a leader because those are different than what made you successful in the first place.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well said, Dan. Well said. You know, one of the other things I I was thinking about is you were you were talking there, and and Lupe touched on this a little bit, is creating that environment. And we use kind of a buzzword now in industry around psychological safety. But when you go back and you look at the shingo guiding principles, you see a lot of the environment needed for psychological safety. You want to touch on a couple of those areas as it relates to the principles?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so a new leader in terms of sort of respect and humility, what are the steps we should take, or what can we do to operationalize that to make it come to fruition? So if we have folks that are working for us or working in a department that we work in and we lead, we have to ask ourselves: have we provided everything they need to be successful? Initially, you know, have we provided the tools they need, the training, and a safe environment for them to succeed? And a safe environment is both physical and psychological. So to think deeply about that, like have I provided everything they need to be successful? And on the psychological safety side, you know, is it have we created an environment where it's safe for people to raise their hand to say they have a problem or to say they have an idea? Or is there an environment where we sort of shoot the messenger, shoot the messenger, where we maybe overreact? But by asking questions and allowing people the freedom to answer them, by thanking people for their input, we start creating this psychologically safe environment. Other examples are not allowing others to be overly critical. These we call these moments of truth, a single point in time where we as a leader have one chance to demonstrate the right thinking. It could be support for an employee's idea, it could be pulling in a quiet individual to a conversation and then listening. It could be not allowing, as I stated earlier, someone to be overly critical of someone else's comment. These are all moments of truth. They have a lasting impact, though, positive or negative. And it's often hard to replay them. You can't go back the next day and say, hey, I responded incorrectly. So the Shingle model teaches us all about ideal behavior. And behaviors uh are in the moment. Um so responding, and and so obviously asking questions and listening, and then creating that safe environment where people can actually contribute and not be criticized. Um sometimes what we're doing, another example might be brainstorming. Brainstorming is a common thing that is done in continuous improvement related to problem solving or ideas for improvement. But I often see during brainstorming, all of a sudden, where it's supposed to be sort of a free flow of thoughts, all of a sudden come in the three Ds I call them. We start discussing, debating, and dismissing what's supposed to be an open, free conversation. So brainstorming should be a free flow of ideas, and it shouldn't be discussed, debated, dismissed, but it often actually happens. So as a leader, we need to say, timeout team, timeout. We need to listen. We need to allow this environment to occur if we want it to.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, really great call out, Dan. One of the things that I've experienced, and you know, would love your suggestion in that situation is I have uh seen where brainstorming like that happens. Hey, we're gonna talk about our some of the problems we dealt with, some of the some of the challenges that that people dealt with. Like, for example, the organization I'm part of right now, we have at the end of the of our harvest season, we it's you know busy three months of the year when we're bringing in a lot of a lot of our raw goods that are materials that are going to go into our finished goods. And we we really um like to have the teams come together and and tell us what were the biggest problems and that we're gonna try to you know go after as an organization to to help for next season. And usually I feel it's almost human nature that people go to brainstorming solutions. So they'll brainstorm the solution. Um, how does someone get to what the root problem is during, does it happen during that brainstorming? Is it a clarification process to clarify, okay, you you've given me uh an example of we need more of this. Does that get challenged by saying, okay, what makes you say that? Or do you just collect that and then go after it later to keep the energy going with with the brainstorming? Or uh is that stifling to that process?
SPEAKER_00:I think there's definitely some tools that can help, so root cause analysis or the five whys, but also asking questions like, you know, why is that, why is that, why is that, and why does that occur? So it is necessary to get to that deeper root cause to come up with an actual solution or an actual countermeasure, because we might be solving the wrong problem. So that takes some practice. I think there are some tools and techniques, but also, you know, that's where leadership and management can come in. If we have experience or we can we realize that we're not quite there yet, uh, that we're asked, we just continue to practice that. I think the asking why and getting to the root cause doesn't come natural to us. Uh, we want a quick solution. And uh the word solution we might also avoid. Solution kind of feels final, like it's the answer to the question. In continuous improvement, and certainly the shingle model, we start using the word countermeasure where it's like just one step towards better because we're talking about continuous improvement. But you're right, it does take some practice. I I do think a good problem-solving process, a good idea system, uh, it starts with defining what is the problem, and and usually that's the hardest part of the whole thing. Like, because people, like you said, just jump to a solution when we really haven't even defined what the problem is yet. So, for example, an idea card, an idea system, a good idea system does start with a problem. It's just it's just a feeling that I know there's some innovation and some creative stuff out there for ideas, but most of the cases it has to do with something that's harder than it should be, or why am I doing it this way? So it starts with a problem and then it leads to, you know, why is that a problem? And lastly, what can we do about it? So there are some techniques that guide you through that process of what is the problem, why is it a problem, and you know, what can we do about it. So it's there's another seven-step process, for example, that that guides people through the deeper like what happened, what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, why it happened, and then then and then finally ask how to solve it. But we want to go very quickly from what we think is a problem to a to a s to a tart to a solution, and we may be off the mark. So long and short. I do think some of the tools can help. I do think practice can help as well.
SPEAKER_02:Dan, I I really you know resonate with uh a couple things that uh you've said here uh this morning. I want to go back to one of them because I think it really applies to our audience in terms of being a student for life. You used the in the introduction that you know you've been doing this work for quite some time, but you are still learning. And I think that's one of the things that you know Lupe and myself talk about is just our own journey. Um, one of the nice things about the podcast is it's giving us exposure to people like you and others that uh come in and share some wisdom and knowledge. And you know, I think that environment is so important for a new leader to just set aside time to learn and be the student, but then also in deep respect for others, allow them to do the same. It's I I guess kind of walking through, let's think about a new leader in their first 90 days. How can they embody some of these principles that we've talked about a little bit here today, and just you know, really kind of set the stage so that as they start to lead a new team, they can build that foundation of trust.
SPEAKER_00:So coming off your lead is definitely to set the stage of the organization being a learning organization. Nobody's an expert, um, even people that have been around for a long time. So, and recognizing that starts with yourself, myself. So learning the principles of lead with humility and respect every individual. You know, I obviously have a mindset that I can always learn and I can learn from others, and then I'm not an expert, even though I do have experience. Uh certainly that there's lots that can be learned from the people doing the work versus the people that are sort of managing. Uh one example is you know, we ask those that sort of support and lead the people doing the work to solve all the problems in the area. And we ask the people doing the work to maybe not contribute. So there's a big disconnect. There's a disconnect between the people that are expected to solve the problems that may not know all the problems, they may know some of them, but not all of them, and then others that are actually doing the work that actually might know the problems and might know what to do about it. So creating in a learning environment for yourself and others. But leaders should go to the workplace, of course. Uh they shouldn't just do an interview, they shouldn't just ask a lot of questions. So they should go to the workplace, they should learn from the people, but they should also learn from the process. They should watch carefully and listen carefully. Um, they shouldn't just interview folks. They should focus on both the objects and subjects of work. So the objects of work are the item itself in manufacturing, it's the part of the product. The subjects are the people doing the work. So when I'm doing direct observation, just out there learning, for example, it's sometimes hard for me to like what am I actually watching? Am I watching the person or am I watching the item? And I bel I think there's a place for both. I think we should focus on the item and not the person and see what it does. And then we should also focus on the person because it may be difficult to try to separate the two of them, it's kind of hard to do. They should also assess systems and tools, not on it, but assess what systems and tools do we have in place for continuous improvement for problem solving? Most organizations have well-developed systems and tools to do the work, but don't necessarily have well-developed systems and tools to improve the way they do the work. So the leader, a new leader in the first 90 days, they should obviously learn from the people doing the work. They should also focus on the process and not just listen to what folks have to say. They should focus on the object and the subject of work. Uh, and they should focus on or assess some of the systems and tools. My personal interest is on uh the continuous improvement side, because I think they fall short of being well developed. The work system, you know, that does feel like an audit. Do you have work instructions? Do you have records and do you have audits? And those are probably already in place. It's the continuous improvement side that often falls short. They also shouldn't do that too long. Like I like the idea of the first 90 days. Because at some point they actually need to lead. They should stop messing, not stop, but they should slow down just this being a sponge and constantly learning from the people doing the work and actually start to make some decisions on their own. Having said that, you started with this idea of lifelong learning. The lifelong learning continues. So the first 90 days is just my first impressions, and I need to then make some decisions and begin to lead. I need to assume that leadership role, because that's what people hired me for, not just ask questions and to observe work all day. At some point, though, um, it's obviously a little bit of both, it needs to be a more balanced approach. The reason I say that one last thing, the reason I say that last part about at some point becoming the leader that you were hired for, is that I've heard leaders say to me that my own employees told me after three months or six months, they asked me to stop asking questions and stop observing and actually start making some decisions. Like, when are you going to stop running around doing everything for us and running around asking questions and learning from us? When are you actually going to start to lead this organization? So it kind of caught the individual that have told me this off guard a little bit. They thought they were being a true servant leadership when really they were just being a sort of a learner and a helper. And their old employees told them, no, no, we also need you to lead.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that that resonates well, I'm sure, with a lot of folks listening because it's that balance that you described. And I guess the one other thing that I would annotate on what you've discussed is you've got to make this 90 days fun, right? You you've really if you go into it just with this kind of very tactical mindset, you're gonna lose the joy and the joy of learning. And one of the things I loved with uh the time I spent in automotive was as we were going through some pretty challenging times, we had these teams that got together and it was fun solving these problems and creating that environment. And so I think that maybe is one other area as uh a new leader going into this is don't take yourself too serious. You gotta be serious, but don't take yourself too serious that you can't have fun as you're as you're learning. And so I I just wanted to add that uh last point there. Lupe, I know you got a couple other questions. Let me throw it back over to you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I as we're nearing the end of our our episode here, I I wanted to ask you, Dan, about in the the vast experience that you have in this area with different organizations, different leaders, what what are some of the I mean you already talked a little bit about, hey, sometimes teams can get wrapped up around just the systems uh and not really focus on on those behaviors. Uh what are the more, maybe a little more specific, what are the more common traps that leaders can find themselves? It sounds like uh one of the the last example around the leader that was spending their their time, their whole time lead uh learning and not really leading in any way uh is another example. Do you do you have a few others that maybe our leaders could reflect on as as they're listening?
SPEAKER_00:I do. I do. One example might be how a leader responds to a problem, and this is still a work in progress for me. So it's very important how we respond. In the past, I would, when someone would come to me and talk about a problem, I thought they were asking me to solve that problem for them. It felt like they were saying, please do something about this because you're the leader. So I would take the problem from the individual. Today, when an employee tells me about a problem, I listen very carefully, but I respond differently. I respond with what do you need from me? And that one question changes the behavior from me taking problems to me supporting others. And it works. When I say it, I see people pause, like they're thinking for a second, like, hmm, you said what do you need from me versus me saying something like, Okay, I'll take care of that for you. But they take a pause and they may even take a step back because it's not the response I expect. And then they think about it, and then they think about what they need to solve their problem. It's empowering them versus simply taking problems from them. And it's a simple thing to do. Like, what do you need from me? I hear you. This is this what do you need from me? A lot of these folks actually have many years of experience and can solve the problem, but they're not necessarily authorized, or they're they're actually asking, in some cases, for us to authorize the animals or let them run with that problem. They're waiting for that answer, and we don't often come up with that answer. We just take the problem away from them. So that's something to practice around this idea of servant leadership. Servant leadership doesn't mean you do everything for everyone. Run around like a chicken with their head cut off and be a chief problem solver. It doesn't mean that you delegate everything either. So you have to there's some things that you really should get really involved in. But pick your spots, and especially as it relates to something you know the individual can handle or you know it's within their purview. What do you need from me? What do you need from me?
SPEAKER_01:I love that. That's a very powerful question. Uh very thought-provoking. Can can you give us one more, one more gem for for the crowd?
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SPEAKER_00:Sure. One piece of advice I can give a new leader is you know, commit yourself to learning as much as possible about both the shingle model and servant leadership. It will serve you well over the years. They're both really needed for great leaders to become great, or leaders to become great. Um it asks us not to change everyone else. You know, it's interesting when you go into it, you think that it's everyone else that needs to learn this stuff. But it actually when you do it well, you're finding out that it's actually changing your own personal behavior. Um change your behavior, not necessarily the behaviors of others. That's a big change in, you know, how do you change your personal behavior? Hard to do until you learn these frameworks of servant leadership and the shingle model. It requires a deeper understanding. I think superficially, intellectually, people get some of these concepts. Like they get it intellectually, the surface of their mind. But what actually causes people to change their behavior or change the way they lead or change the way they think comes from a much deeper place. It's not necessarily in their head, it's more like in their heart or their gut. So the more they think about behavior, the more they think about leadership or leadership behavior, or potentially the shingle model and servant leadership, the more deeply they think about it. It's moving it from this intellectual or superficial understanding to a deep, deep personal understanding. And that's how we as individuals change our behavior.
SPEAKER_02:Dan, thank you for that. And I I think that's a great wrap-up to this session. Really appreciate the time. And I know as we discussed in our our pre-call, you know, there's there's several other great topics that we would like to discuss with you in in the future. And and it doesn't necessarily have to be on the podcast. I really look forward to uh keeping the conversation going. And uh thank you for sharing today with our our listeners and spending some time with uh Lupe and I. We greatly appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00:You're welcome. I enjoyed it, and thank you both, Lupe and Steve, and have a happy holiday. Happy New Year.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Dan. As we anticipated, uh you did not disappoint. Uh fantastic material, and I appreciate uh your contribution to at least I know I I can't speak for Steve, but I'm confident he's in the same pool as I am. That even with today's episodes, I've I've learned a few things from you that uh that I will uh benefit from. So thanks for that gift. With that said, this is Lupa Munoz.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm Steve McKeon with our guest, Dan Fleming. Thank you for listening to the leadership of Steam.
SPEAKER_01:Have a great day.