Build Mind-Blowing Trust in Remote Teams - w. Bruce Berglund

Step into the world of exceptional company culture with Bruce, the CEO and founder of DBD Group - a team of national consulting connoisseurs who operate without borders. In a candid conversation, Bruce unveils the core axioms that fuel their leadership and action-oriented ethos. You'll discover how a philosophy centered around trust and culture thrives in a remote work environment, providing vital insights for leaders managing dispersed teams. Embrace the transformative power of 'leadership is everything' and a 'bias for action,' which have been meticulously woven into DBD's consulting fabric, empowering their clientele within the nonprofit sector.

Navigate the nuances of virtual team dynamics as Bruce shares the imaginative use of baseball card-style profiles, acknowledging the rich tapestry of individual strengths and personality types that make up a successful team. Learn the secrets behind assembling a high-performing group that's strategic, cohesive, and takes pride in their collective genius. Our exploration with Bruce also ventures into the realm of inspiring hope, generosity, and excellence in the nonprofit world—a testimony to how a positive workplace culture can be the driving force behind meaningful community change.

Engage with us for this episode and arm yourself with actionable ideas to lead with inspiration and build a team that's not just high-performing, but truly extraordinary.

Connect with Bruce and DBD Group:

Bruce Berglund | LinkedIn | Email
DBD Group | Website
DBD Group | Facebook
DBD Group | LinkedIn

#leadwell #dbdgroup #workfromhome #burnout #affirmation #conflictresolution #feedback #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #learning #teams #personalgrowth #executivecoaching #organizationalhealth #servantleadership #communication #character #relationships #skills

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For more information visit https://leadwell.com

The Leadwell Podcast gives mission-driven leaders principled and practical advice to do just that, lead well.

In each episode, your host Jon Kidwell, interviews leaders with great stories, to share strategies that help leaders navigate complex, confusing, and often down-right challenging leadership, personal growth, business, and workplace culture situations.

Jon is a nonprofit executive turned coach, speaker, author, and CEO of a leadership development company. In working with nonprofits and businesses, big and small, he realized the unique challenges leaders face when they are committed to keeping the mission and people the top priority. Those leaders’ commitment to their principles and the people they lead, plus seeing the need for more leaders who strive to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons, is what inspired Jon to start a leadership development company dedicated to the success of mission-driven leaders and their organiza...

Transcript

Jon Kidwell 0:01

So welcome to the Lead Well podcast. This is the podcast where we interview leaders who are leading well. We get them to share what they're doing and how they're doing it so that it can help you lead your business and people well. Bruce, thank you for joining us on the Leadwell Podcast. I am so excited to have you here today.

Bruce Berglund 0:35

Jon, thanks for the invite. This will be a fun conversation.

Jon Kidwell 0:39

Okay, anywhere that I go with you, everybody knows you and everybody knows the DBD group. But just in case someone listening to this podcast doesn't yet know you or the DBD group, can you give us just the smidgen of you and of the DBD group so that they know how great you all are like the rest of us know?

Bruce Berglund 0:58

Wow, well, that's just like my mom wrote it. That's great. You know, we're a multidisciplinary consultancy that helps nonprofits and we really try to partner with folks and help them thrive and help them make their communities thrive. A big part of our work is fundraising, but we have strategic planning and finance and marketing and just do you know? A host of things to come next to our clients and make them better. We've got I guess we just hired our 37th person in DBD and truly have a national footprint.

Jon Kidwell 1:40

Cool, and where is DBD located exactly?

Bruce Berglund 1:44

Well, that's a great. It's all over the country. Jon, we're a non. I guess we don't have a headquarters, if you will. Technically, I'm in Chicago and that's where home is for me, but we have our folks at DBD all across the country, so we are a total remote company.

Jon Kidwell 2:07

Oh, my goodness. Okay, so it was a tee up and a lead in, because I think the stat that I saw from you all is that DBD is headquarters in 21 different states, right when you have people located all over the place, and that is really why we are connecting today, because, bruce, you and DBD are so unique. I've been able to experience it myself, which was amazing but the people, the culture, all of this that you have done without a central location which just speaks to folks that have remote work or any of us that do multi-site operations. So start to talk to us about why was this even important to you and why have you been paying attention to the culture for the entire existence of DBD for over a decade and a half, almost two decades now.

Bruce Berglund 2:59

Yeah, well, I think we agree that culture eats strategy every day of the week, right? So I don't care if you're brick and mortar headquartered, if you're all coming into the same office or if you're remote. I think culture is something that you just absolutely have to focus on. Culture and trust are two key things. You know we were with Zoom before.

Bruce Berglund 3:25

Zoom was cool, in fact, it was when Zoom was free, Jon, back in the day, and it didn't seem to count in consulting as a day of consulting until you know, the pandemic hit, and coming out of the pandemic, people seem to. You know, our grandparents, right, all learned how to use Zoom and our clients did, and even our multi-site clients I've seen they're requiring their folks to come to the central office less and they're investing in some technology so they can connect. But I think this notion of culture is really important and I think there's some things in a remote situation, when we're totally remote from we're in almost our 19th year of doing this, that there's some learnings for us and it'll be fun to talk through some of that today.

Jon Kidwell 4:24

It'll be fun to talk through some of that today, and here's why Because what you, your team, all of DBD has built and stewarded just you shared this with me, and I just can't help but smile. There was a trust assessment that you all did and, in the best way possible, you broke the assessment because you all were such an outlier. So when we start asking you, when I'm about to start asking you, what are some of the things that DBD does, how do you do this? It's not that you all are just a little bit better than average, it's that this is a complete outlier, and I know that you're not going to take the compliment, but I want you to have it anyways. So tell me some of the things, those values, those axioms that really start to make DBD who and what it is.

Bruce Berglund 5:14

We started to thinking, thought about just as a firm. There was just me and then another person joined in, a third and a fourth and a fifth and there was about six or seven of us and I think we spent, Jon, probably the first four or five years of just earning how to consult quite honestly and to show up in the appropriate way for our clients, et cetera. But we started to find that we started to settle on some axioms or some truths that we just knew worked and back in the day we weren't smart enough to write this stuff down and really drive it. And then, at about the 10-year mark and we started doing, I think, a little better job with communicating really concisely with our clients. They started to use our axioms back and that was when I knew it started to get deep into our consulting culture among ourselves but also how we use that language with our clients.

Bruce Berglund 6:24

So things like leadership is everything. We talk about that all the time, that within the firm, leadership is everything. But when you gather a volunteer group, when you're gathering your staff team, if you don't have the right leaders around the table, either paid or volunteer, it's really hard to get traction right In our little world and people would say you're moving fast and I'd say we have a bias for action and that started to stick. And we talk about our bias for action because we show up and we warn our clients that we have a bias for action and we're going to move forward, and we warn our clients that we have a bias for action and we're going to move forward.

Bruce Berglund 7:06

We have another one in fundraising called activity equals results. Is that? You know, if you're not out there and doing it, you can't expect the results that you hope to get. Another one, especially with board development, is don't settle. We used to make don't settle pins for folks and that, as we recruit board members, do not settle. These are the most precious chairs and leaders. Right Leadership is everything. To have those right leaders around the table. You know we need to put a face to the case. We talk about vision, leaking and big L leaders and dollars and change and blue flame case, and there's about 18 of these or so, probably too many. But how we then drove that into culture, Jon, is that as we hire folks, I sit down with them for a half day and we go through our axioms. In fact, we've got this thing on everybody's wall and it's hard to see, oh my goodness, I absolutely love that.

Jon Kidwell 8:06

So you have it in all 21 different HQs around the nation.

Bruce Berglund 8:10

Well, we yeah, we include it in our right, in our work with, with each of our um, our team members and I have it blown up on a big um like a big, gigantic poster board and when they come in and spend some time with me, time with me at our home, I have it on a big easel and it just sits there and I start to unpack the culture of DBD through our axioms and different axioms came at different times of the company's history, with different folks joining us and making contributions to those axioms, and I'm able to weave the culture of DBD, what's important to us, how do we show up for ourselves and how do we show up for our clients through these silly axioms.

Bruce Berglund 9:02

And I think someday there's probably going to be a book about some of these axioms and how they work. But it's just been a joy to even see our very recent hires using that language and having it come off the tip of their tongue without a lot of thinking, Because six months ago we spent a day together and turned our phones off, John, and slowed the roll.

Jon Kidwell 9:36

An entire remote organization got together in person and turned their phones off.

Bruce Berglund 9:40

And started to think through some of this. So for us. Axioms are a big part of how do we teach culture, and if culture is healthy, we can take on some of these impossible goals.

Jon Kidwell 9:57

I love that and I also love how you visualize it, right, you and I, I know, have both seen and follow some Andy Stanley Stanley leadership stuff and he says you know it's got to be seen in the hall before it's on the wall. You've got it in both places and you use other visual cues to help with this, and I love the one. They're your trading cards, right, your baseball cards, and, for those that are on video, bruce has them, he can show it to you. But talk to us about these cards and kind of what goes behind those pieces, right, what's actually on there? How do they help? And then this visualization and these tangible pieces that you're starting to give people, especially the fact that they're not together most of the time.

Bruce Berglund 10:44

I bet, yeah, it's been fun. And again, just as we try to connect with each other as team members and show up in authentic ways with each other, how do we start to make this team start to kind of pull the, you know, pull the layers back right? And what really makes us tick? And one of the things that we've taken is Pat Liancioni's Working Genius instrument and we're big fans of Working Genius and it just really crystallizes, right folks, and where are your strengths? And then where are you? Know?

Bruce Berglund 11:25

What he would say is what's your working frustration? And so, as we started to assign work long ago, when there was just three of us, it was like who cares, let's go. But then we got 12, and then we got 20, and we have 30 and now we have almost 40. Is there perhaps a more thoughtful way to assign work? So we looked at Working Genius and Michelle Goodrich on our team is certified with Pat Lencioni and helps make this come alive for us. But why wouldn't we take this into consideration when assigning teams for clients? And if you have, I'm a galvanizer, right, I can sell a concept, but my working frustration, john, is tenacity.

Jon Kidwell 12:17

Oh no, you and I cannot pair up. One because we're going to match but two, because we're going to do the same things and not want to do the same thing.

Remote Leadership and Teamwork Strategy

Bruce Berglund 12:24

But it would make great sense if we lived in the same state and we had a client in Texas. Why wouldn't we go, when, in fact, maybe it would be far more effective to have somebody else partner with you, because you and I would just we'd be galvanizing everybody and we wouldn't be getting anything done because we had low, low tenacity. And so we've trained towards this. But these, these baseball cards, as we call them, on the front of it it's when were you drafted? So the first circle is when you join the team. So, and then, what's your Myers-Briggs? We still kind of look the team, so you know. And then, what's your Myers-Briggs? We still kind of look. We all did a lot of Myers-Briggs back in the day and it's a it's. It's a great way to look at it in a different way. We've got their name and their, their, their photo.

Bruce Berglund 13:10

But then the other side of the card, john, we've got, in their own words, how would you put your working genius in action? And they talk about how I love to operate on the edge. Or, you know, I like to seek out the right leader first, or I need to make sure that we've got our date set in order for me to do our best work and, in their own language, they're making this come alive. And then we've got the working genius and then the working frustration at the bottom. And then we've got the working genius and then the working frustration at the bottom.

Bruce Berglund 13:43

This has been such a joy to put all of this on what we call our map, our DBD map, and we're naturally grouped right and we can now thoughtfully say all right, if we really want to have a high performing team leaning into each other's strengths, uh, how about, uh, we be a little more thoughtful?

Bruce Berglund 14:06

Uh, that putting people together than just who wants to work together or who lives in the same state, uh, rather, why don't we take our, our collective strengths and put them next to each other? And I think we've all been on a team before that we just find, oh, we're just stuck. It's like we got great ideas, but we just can't get out of the door. And you know, or that person at the very end says, but what about? And that wonderer drives me crazy, right, why are you driving me crazy when, in fact, it's all in the way that we're beautifully wired, and if we understand that you start to use these as nouns and verbs when we're together and so I'm teeing right now and just give me permission to tea and it's just been a you know, I would say, a breakthrough way for us to assign work and, more importantly, better understand this group of 37 people that have come together for DBB.

Jon Kidwell 15:14

It is awesome. I even love how you just weave beautifully and naturally in there to when they got drafted. We've beautifully and naturally in there to when they got drafted that even that says something about just the pride of the organization of being able to know that this is a special and unique place and that we want you here. Right, you don't draft people if you don't want them, and so I think that is really really quite cool and unique. You and I both also know that we can do a lot of these things, we can say a lot of these things, and still, when we move into action, they start to fall apart. And you have this. It's not a flow chart or a flow map, but there are some things that you do before you do other things and you think about this, specifically in leadership, but also leading remotely. Can you walk us through what are the three things you do before you do the other three things and why that's important?

Bruce Berglund 16:13

And again, I think that if you're getting together all the time, this is as effective. This is as effective and if you're in the same space and all you have to do is go up a floor. But for us, and as we start to try to come together with decisions as a firm, to to understand where folks are, I think we need to over-communicate a bit when we're in a remote setting and and explain this is setting and explain this is how we're setting it up. When you think of a regular meeting, you got a lot of that chit-chat. You walk in and you're having your donut and your cup of coffee and you're kind of setting the stage right and the leader sets the stage for that.

Bruce Berglund 16:57

I think in a remote setting we try to actually have the meeting set up five, six minutes early so as people come in to the meeting you can start doing that chat like you normally would. I've never been to a meeting that we never said a word. We're all around the table and then they say go Right, and it just turns on and it's nights of the round table. It's shocking. And so we try to budget some time on the front end but we also budget time on the back end. It's very unusual for everybody just to vaporize at the end of a meeting and time to say, hey, can we peel off and talk about, or how's your daughter, or those, and we let that go.

Bruce Berglund 17:40

Sometimes it's 10, 15, 20 minutes after the meeting that there's still a couple people still in the remote meeting having a discussion, and I think that's natural, right, that's how we communicate and it's important to respect the digital, I guess, meeting space that we're in, right, as humans we just don't turn it on and off. It's more like a dimmer switch. But the thing that I have found as a leader is the importance of understanding, visualizing and describing. Understanding, understanding the topic, the issue you name it, visualizing that and we're a visual bunch as well, by the way and then describing the issue at hand and to have some agreement on that in a remote setting before we lead, direct and assess. We are as a consulting group. Go to lead, direct and assess is our natural DNA.

Jon Kidwell 18:46

Especially if you have a bias for action. All of those are very kind of-.

Bruce Berglund 18:49

Oh, I mean we could have this meeting in 10 minutes, right, and just let's go. So, if we've recognized that, that's our kind of that reflex that we have. So naturally as a leader, I kind of like to process quickly. And we hired one of our key leadership team members and they pulled me aside after the first day being with the team and he said you know, bruce, this is awesome, but if you expect me in real time to provide you the very best feedback that I can muster, I am not that guy. But if you let me sleep on that, I'll come back the next day and have a beautiful, elegant solution.

Bruce Berglund 19:38

But don't judge me for me being quiet, okay, as we process this. And it was a reminder to me oh, here's how we process, here's how we different back to, uh, back to our working genius, right, but he could pull me aside because we were live in that meeting, right, we were together. And so if, if we can slow the roll a little bit and make sure that that we understand the issues, we visualize them and we describe them before we roll into leading, directing and assessing, that's served us really well and, frankly, it is really great. It's a great competency in consulting, in leadership and consulting and leadership to make sure that, in any of the teams that you lead, you focus on the first three before the execution of the last three.

Jon Kidwell 20:35

That's right, it's all clarity and alignment before moving into exactly what you said execute action, go get it done right, charge the hill oh my goodness, that is, that's phenomenal. So just for everybody, let's kind of recap so far we've had axioms, kind of truth, self-evident truths, that DBD has a high, high focus on culture and onboarding to that culture, playing cards and then how we do this regardless, but especially in a remote setting, so that we can build in understanding and processing before we move into action. Before I ask you one last question what else do we need to know about a culture of purpose and people and high performance, especially in a remote environment?

Bruce Berglund 21:24

You know, and I think that if you don't know where you're going, you probably aren't going to get there or get there as quickly or as thoughtfully as you'd like. And I think the thing that we didn't talk about was our own strategic plan, and we work very hard to say what's the next three years, what is that looking like? And we have, you know, our vision is thriving nonprofits and thriving communities, but then, underneath that, we say what does that mean for our world? What does that mean for our people, our DBDers, what does that mean for our systems? What does that mean for our brand, what does it mean for our products and, ultimately, what does it mean for our clients? And we use that circle and talk about in our plan. Let's be very mindful about each of those buckets, if you will, as we look towards the future, and we work hard to make sure that that plan isn't a plan that just sits on the shelf right.

Bruce Berglund 22:37

We celebrate the strategic plan and just let it go. It's something that we try to in between our two live visits every year, uh, we bring folks together. Every month, we have a, have a zoom uh or a video. You know uh, meeting and uh, one of those, uh, is a 90 minute zoom hour and a half, the other is a three hour zoom Wow. And the three hour zoom is when we, uh, we teach a concept. But in both of those we have breakout sessions.

Bruce Berglund 23:09

We try not to do a bunch of give and get. We start it with a thought for the day and we always end our sessions with hope, whether that's live session or Zoom the hope. Right, we don't need to leave our clients, john, with a to-do list, or at least just a to-do list. That's overwhelming. But if we can leave our clients with here's the next steps but ultimately leave them with hope, that's going to make this consulting thing special and really quite, I think, rewarding. And if we turn that and then look at it ourselves every single meeting at DBD, we will end with hope. And if we're a hopeful bunch, I think that we can get a lot done 100%.

Jon Kidwell 24:03

Before I ask you my question about leading. Well, where can people go to connect with you, bruce, with DBD, with the work that you do to come alongside? Maybe they're a nonprofit, but they want to thrive, they want to connect with you. Where do they go?

Bruce Berglund 24:27

group is our website and we're proud of that. We spend a lot of time being a remote. It's our living room, right, and that's all we have, and so we work hard to make that as good of an experience as possible. You can click down and learn about our folks. You can drill through and get email addresses and reach out that way. But dbdgroup and we'd love to learn more about how we could help you Awesome.

Jon Kidwell 24:54

Y'all should check it out. Dbdgroup and Bruce. On this podcast, we bring in leaders who are leading well and would be remiss if I did not ask you what does it mean to you to lead well?

Bruce Berglund 25:10

You know, john, I look at our mission first, and when I look at our mission, it's by inspiring hope, generosity and excellence. We empower nonprofits to thrive. And I have found that, if I can focus on our amazing team at DBD, my definition of leadership is if I can make our team stronger, smarter, if we can laugh together a lot, it's have fun and get a lot done and serve that up with large doses of hope, inspiration and a positive culture. I find that they can leave with their buckets full and go change the world through our clients and that's how I define, I guess, how I approach this work with DVD.

Jon Kidwell 26:00

I love it. Great leaders doing that, having fun, getting lots done, inspiring and helping people achieve is definitely a recipe for leading well. Bruce, thank you so much for being here today. It has been an absolute joy. My friend is so good to see you and we are better for listening to this. I'm going back and making notes and I have a feeling I'm going to be building myself some baseball cards here pretty quick and for everybody who is listening. Thank you so much for tuning in, check out dbdgroup and until next time, be well, lead on and God bless.