Episode 13 - Harmony That Wins: Results And Relationships

What if the secret to durable growth isn’t choosing sides, but learning to carry a healthy tension? We explore the real work of leadership: holding results and relationships together so teams move faster, stay resilient, and deliver impact without burning out.

We start by naming the bias many of us bring into leadership—some of us push hard on targets and timelines, others protect harmony and morale—and show how either extreme backfires. Drawing on Stephen Covey’s golden goose parable and Simon Sinek’s people-purpose-profit lens, we map why outcomes validate your mission and attract top performers, and why trust is the speed of execution. You’ll hear vivid examples of what goes wrong when leaders over-index on performance (burnout, skipped middle leaders, resentment) or on relationship (artificial harmony, low standards, delayed hard conversations). Along the way, we get honest about our own defaults—one of us leans people-first, the other results-first—and what it’s cost us.

Then we get practical. We lay out a meeting rhythm that opens with human connection and moves into crisp metrics, so care and candor sit side by side. You’ll learn the “double helix” model for weaving trust with accountability, the one question that keeps results personal and meaningful, and why silence is your ally when conversations get uncomfortable. We offer scripts to frame accountability inside care, ways to read body language before you push for numbers, and a simple self-audit to spot where your leadership is lopsided. By the end, you’ll have a toolkit to set clear goals, ask better follow-ups, and calibrate your presence so people feel seen and standards stay high.

If this conversation sparks a shift in how you lead, tap follow, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a quick review. Tell us: do you naturally lean toward relationships or results—and what will you adjust this week?

Transcript

Framing Results And Relationships

SPEAKER_02 0:04

We value results and relationships because we know that in harmony, they actually create a healthier workplace, they create better results, stronger relationships, and all of that leads us to a better opportunity to accomplish the mission.

Biases And The Leadership Tension

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Your job as a leader is to live in the tension, is to build the harmony of these things. That's going to serve you and your company well. You're listening to the Sherpa Leadership Podcast, your guide to climbing higher in life and leadership. I'm Reed Moore, and alongside Chase Williams, we're here to help you break through obstacles, scale your potential, and lead with greater clarity and purpose. So, Chase, what are we talking about today?

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Today, as part of the iServe model, we're going to be covering valuing relationships and results. Yes. And kind of the importance of both and some things that might trip us up if we lean too heavy one way or the other. So tell us, Reed, about the importance of valuing results and relationships.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yeah, you know, we we all kind of have this natural bias towards one or the other. And the challenge is that our biases actually will uh if we if we bias towards results, we can actually um erode results over time because they're founded on the relationships that we have with our other leaders and the people that are on mission with us in our business. And conversely, if we value res relationships over the course of time, valuing uh relationships over results can actually erode relationships. And so we always as leaders have to be paying attention to this tension that exists in our leadership between these two things.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Yeah, and there is a real tension, right? Even though they work really closely together and they're both important, like a lot of things, there can be a um a natural tension, yeah, right? Especially if your default style or the way you were trained or just kind of who you are causes you to lean way uh to one side. Yes. Either results or relationships. So I think as part of this podcast today, we're gonna unpack the value of both. We're gonna unpack some of the dangers of leaning too hard to one side and maybe ignoring, even if it's accidentally the other.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

And then give you some practical ways to think about kind of pulling those two things together and paying attention to both to really uh support the mission that you have for those that you lead.

Covey’s Golden Goose And Sinek’s Trio

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah. So there's a couple of frameworks I think that that are helpful around this. And one comes from the classic book, uh The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And one of the things he talks about in there is he he shares uh the old parable of the goose who lays the golden eggs. And so, you know, there's there's a farmer and he has this goose, and every day it it lays a golden egg, and so he's getting rich, but at one point he gets greedy. And so he decides, you know what, why don't I just kill the goose and take out all the golden eggs so I have them all right now? And so he kills the goose, opens it up, and there's nothing there. And and he uses that to illustrate this idea that when you lead people and they're on mission with you and they're helping produce um whatever your company produces, and they're helping you be on mission, the primary thing you have to do is you have to make sure that you take care of those people. You have to be able to take care of those people who are producing, because if you don't, the production itself suffers. Um I think another framework that I've really enjoyed is Simon Sinek talks about this, and he talks about kind of in the short-sightedness of business and business leaders, and that is that profit is not the only thing that you have to pay attention to in a business. He uh he says that there's three things, and that's profit, purpose, right, which we would call mission, uh, and then also the people. Yep. And if you don't pay attention to those three things, the business will uh erode over time.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

Yeah. Well, this is like a lot of things in life, if you think about it, right? There's like sometimes we think of it as the wheel of life, and we can get overfocused in certain areas of the wheel. Maybe that's business or even health, and then we're ignoring relationships or our marriage or other elements that create like this nice rounded wheel. It doesn't have to be perfect, but the more rounded it is, the better it rolls, right? Right. And so that's kind of like people, purpose, and profits. Yes. They're all important to a healthy organization, a healthy business, a healthy group of people that you lead, and yet um it can be easy, accidentally, even, to uh pay more attention to one or the other um and then ignore by default the importance of the others. Yes. Right? And so the idea is okay, how do we bring awareness to that they all actually matter? Right. And in a way, they actually matter equally, but we have to be intentional around not again uh overdeveloping one of those at the expense of the other. So let me ask you this, Reed. Why do results matter?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Results matter, you know, if if you look at anything that you do, whether it's uh business or church or family, there there are outcomes that we're after, right? And the outcomes that we're after validate the business. They actually validate um the reason that we exist, which is we are here to create value in the world. And so if if we look and we just have a lot of people, and those people are happy and they're enjoying things, but the business itself is not prospering, it's not turning a profit. Um, maybe even it's ceased to be on mission or or the purpose starts to wane, uh, what'll end up happening over time is that business will actually just cease to exist. And all of the good that that business could have done in the world, including to its people and to the people it serves, serves, it it just goes away, right? Yeah. And so the the the old saying, the business of business is people, is something that we have to pay attention to. But if we're going to serve lots of people, the business itself actually has to be has to be um uh viable. Sure. The other thing is is that people, talented people especially, they want to win. Yes. And they want to be a part of a winning team. And so if this is a great culture and it's fun and people like genuinely feel taken care of, but uh, you know, they're they're the Cincinnati Browns, sorry for the one fan that's listening. Cleveland Browns. Or the Cincinnati Bengals. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both of them are in that category, it turns out. Yeah. Um, you just, you know, like it comes, it comes draft time, and you know, they they get the number one pick, and the person who gets drafted kind of paints on a happy face.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Because they don't actually want to be a part of a losing team, even if the culture feels good and healthy.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Yeah, we talk a lot about, especially in leadership and business, around hiring talented people, bringing talented people into our world, and then adding value to them as part of the overall mission. Like you said, especially talented people, but I would argue all people, they they have a desire to win. Yeah. Right? Results would indicate uh progress, results would indicate growth, results would indicate some level of health inside of an organization. Yeah. So if we all get to the office and we sing kumbaya together every day and we really like each other and that and that part of it's fun, but we're never making any progress, that's problematic, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Especially for your top performers, but for everyone. Yeah, and inside of a leadership conversation, it just it actually kind of just doesn't make sense. Because the idea that somebody we've talked about this in an earlier podcast, people are hiring you to help them get somewhere in their life. And so you're saying, hey, I want to be a leader, that that kind of insinuates I'm taking people somewhere. And that somewhere is a result. And so if I'm not paying attention to the results, then I'm actually not paying attention to my leadership. And that's all very problematic.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Yeah, it can actually um erode credibility of your leadership, right? If if the organization's not achieving results, so you're not moving forward or winning or making progress, you can say it however you'd like. Over time, even those people that really like you, even those people that you have a good relationship with in with inside the organization, they start to wonder like, what's the purpose of all of this? Yeah, where are we going? Right. How is this helping me develop as a person or make more money or get additional opportunity? All of those things are going to be somewhat connected to some level of result. Yes. So we can erode our credibility if we stop paying attention to results and we only care about the relationship, again, with both being important.

unknown 8:42

Yeah.

Dangers Of Overweighting Results

SPEAKER_02 8:42

One of the other challenges here is when you talk about results, and you mentioned this a little bit when you were talking about the golden goose example, right? One of the questions we have to ask is is it the result that I hope to see in you, or is the result that you hope to see in yourself? Right. Sometimes there's a gap between those two things. Yes. Right? So it can accidentally cause us to uh push people too hard or kill the golden goose. Yeah. Right, depending on the situation. Sometimes it can cause us to um to not be aware of something that someone may be going through. A season of life, a challenge in life, if all we're caring about is the result. Yeah. Right? So um what's the what's the uh the ways that we kind of are careful around not over-emphasizing results?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Yeah, so I think one of the items um that comes to mind is um the this tendency to to think about a year instead of a career. And then uh by extension, we think about that with our people. If you're in business for long enough, you're gonna go through people are gonna go through death and divorce and disease and all of these kind of things. And you know, even if it was legal and ethical to let somebody go when they were going through something like that, um the results of being in business with somebody for a decade and they had a really hard six months, you know, and maybe their performance was off, the level of trust that you build with somebody by by coming off of results a little bit to maintain a relationship actually uh provides the opportunity for results for a very, very long period of time. And when we think about that, we think, okay, so what's the outcome of results being overemphasized? Part of it is just burnout. Yep, right. You are constantly pushing so hard for so long that the way that I like to think about this is that you stop realizing that your first duty as a leader is to deliver on the purpose or the mission of the company to your people. And it's very, very easy and natural, especially if you're leading leaders, to deliver the mission of the company through your people. Right? So whoever the client is or the end user is, like they're having this great experience. But your leaders are getting skipped. They're not, in our case, developing wealth and wholeness in their life or whatever the mission is of the company. And so over the course of time, this this high focus on the end result bypasses your people to the end user, and then they wake up one day and they went from being like, I love this mission, I love the purpose of this company, I love this culture of this company to feeling like I'm just used. Like nobody actually cares about me. People are just using me to get to this end. And it creates bitterness and resentment, and ultimately um it removes longevity from the time that they spend with you.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Yeah, I mean, if you imagine thinking that the only thing that your boss or your leader cares about is the thing that you do or the result you create. Yeah. If you don't care about what getting that result provides them in their life, whether that's income or opportunity or whatever it may be in their life, then you're not going to keep that person very long because people want to be valued for who they are in addition to what they do. Yeah. And so that's the that's a few of the dangers of kind of over-emphasizing results, but again, knowing that they're also really important for the viability of the company, the resources that we provide people, the overall mission, etc.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yes, like Ray Dalio talks about this a little bit, I think, in maybe not the best light, but uh, I think it's in his book Principles, but he talks about a meritocracy and just kind of the ultimate idea of business is meritocracy. And it sounds really good until you realize that if if everybody is purely there on merit only with without relationship, it can be very, very short-sighted, right? You can uh, you know, if if you're in New York and you're in this the stock exchange, there can be this this pure results or you're out mentality, right? And and that can be uh okay inside of maybe an envelope of of how far you can push towards results. But for most businesses, being able to get results over a period of time while building relationships and helping build people's lives is way more fulfilling for sure.

Why Relationships Accelerate Results

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Okay, so we talked a little bit about why results matter. We talked a little bit about the the risk of overemphasizing results or leaning too far to just that one thing. Why do relationships matter? And it sounds like a funny question asking out loud. Yeah, but why do relationships matter?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, it's a funny question unless you're highly biased towards results. And you wake up every day and you miss the whole relational piece, right? Relationships fundamentally build trust, right? And trust is the speed that a company can can move at. If you don't have strong relationships, then you can't move uh very quickly. If you can't move very quickly, you can't get to results. They also create resilience. One of the most impactful things I've been able to see in our business and and in other people's businesses is when things get hard, the connectivity of the relationships. In other words, these people next to me aren't just co-workers, they become friends, they're an integrated part of my life. That causes people to have way more resilience when it comes to pushing towards results and pushing for results in their life as well as for the company. And so at the core of these results really, really um they matter. I think the third one that might be the biggest one is results are the biggest multiplying effect that you have in business and maybe in this world. If I have strong relationships that are built on trust and those people are resilient and we've gone through battles together over the course of time, they start to embody the purpose or the mission of the company, especially if you've invested in them in a way that they've experienced the mission of the company, and now they are propagating that mission, right? They're not they're not uh punching a clock, they're not uh just checking a box, but they are actually on mission with you. When that happens, you go from one uh one person who's who's embodying all of that to dozens or even hundreds, or in some cases thousands of people. And that's how companies actually scale to be really, really large.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Yeah, you you mentioned this uh benefit of resilience, right? Like and you and we touched on it earlier. People go through hard things in life. Yeah. And there's this pattern, uh, there's this common pattern of behavior sometimes that when people go through hard things in other areas of their life, oftentimes they tend to make sweeping changes in other areas of their life.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Absolutely, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:12

An example would be like somebody going through a divorce, like the the chance of them leaving the current job that they have or moving out of the house that they live in or even changing the location that they they live in go up dramatically, right? Because there's this idea like get away from this and make change, sweeping change, right? Whereas if you have a strong relationship with people and they experience hard things in their life, they know that you value them.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

And they want to be part of that environment because of the relationships that they have. There's a stickiness there that is not only helpful for helping see them through a challenging time, which is loving and serving of the person, but also creates this longevity and loyalty. And again, someone who might even be more on fire for the mission than they were before because this place has taken care of them through this life event or season, yeah, if you will. And so that kind of illustrates in part the value of relationship. And I don't know about you, Reed, but I've made a few mistakes in my leadership journey.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Right? More than one. And so if I have great relationship with people and they know that I truly value them, the grace that they might offer me as a leader when I make a mistake goes up exponentially.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

One of the most loving things I've experienced from people inside of a company is when they're willing to fight you when when um when they think you're wrong.

SPEAKER_03 16:35

Yeah.

Risks Of Overemphasizing Relationship

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Right? And it I I never enjoy it, never have, maybe never will. But as soon as somebody disagrees with you and they take you to the carpet over an I uh an idea or a decision or whatever, what they're really telling you is I care about this place and I don't want to see it change. Sometimes that can be a challenge. But a lot of times it's somebody who has enough relationship and cares enough about the mission of the company that they're willing to put that at risk, right? And that's as a leader, uh, if you experience that as a challenge to your validity, a challenge to your identity, all of that stuff, you're missing the true message, and that is you might have somebody that cares as much more than you do.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Yeah. Big deal. So, what about some of the risks of over-emphasizing relationship, which again might sound funny? It's like, how can you over-emphasize relationship? It's so important. But you can. And what are some of the risks around doing that? What does that actually look like in practicality?

SPEAKER_00 17:29

So, one of the risks that we run if we over-emphasize relationship is that um, as silly as it sounds, we're actually not um over-emphasizing the relationship as a healthy relationship. We're over-emphasizing maybe popularity or people wanting to like us or artificial harmony. And so what ends up happening is that we like we like the feeling of relationships when they're they're good and they're fun and they're easy, but the actual depth of a relationship has to be able to withstand conflict, hard seasons, hard times, and so there's this bias towards um towards relationships that if we look at really deep, healthy relationships, like hopefully in a marriage, that's not the expression of that. It's actually seeing all of the ups and the downs, and it's you know, the Bible would say we laugh with those who laugh and we cry with those who cry. And the first one's really fun. The second one actually shows the depth of relationship. And so we can over-emphasize relationships and we can watch somebody go broke, or we can watch somebody run off of a cliff. And and really we're taking the eye off the end result that we need and they need. Um, and and at the end of the day, it it doesn't even value the relationships, right? The other thing, like we just talked about, is uh if if popularity or identity or wanting to be liked is the primary motivator for the relationship, then I will take my eye off of the goal. I'll take my eye off of the purpose, off of profit of the company to be able to kind of maintain harmony. But again, at the end of the day, it will actually erode itself.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Yeah, I mean, the the way that I was taught this is like you can accidentally love someone out of the business or love someone out of their role. Yeah, right? What that looks like practically is like let's say we I'm overemphasizing our relationship or that you like me and I'm leading you in a role inside of the company, and you've been getting really poor results for quite some time now, and I've said nothing about it. How do you feel actually? Do you know you're getting poor results?

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Oh, 100%. I wake up and my body, my physiology tells me like you're not cutting it.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Yeah, and if I'm saying nothing about that, what is that actually demonstrating to you? What is it demonstrating to others in the organization? And of course, what risk does that put on the overall mission and purpose of the company? Yeah, right. So if I'm like, I really don't want to rock the boat here because Reed and I like each other, but he's really not getting the results I believe he's capable of, I'm not having hard conversations with you. Yeah, right? Hard loving conversations, by the way, which is actually relationship, real relationships. Yes. I'm I'm pulling back from accountability that you would anticipate a good leader is helping you with, right? Good accountability is actually helpful and caring and loving and supportive of getting better results. Yeah. Right. Now, all of a sudden, like you said, there's this artificial harmony. So, like we can still come in and have a conversation about our weekend and what we're excited about in life, and then go our separate ways. You knowing you're getting poor results, me saying nothing about it, and getting like this underlying frustration that's building, but I'm doing nothing about. That's an example of overemphasizing the relationship, which by the way, I would argue that in that example, that might be a pretty shallow relationship.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Right? I'm seeking comfort in the relationship versus depth of a valuable relationship.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Yeah, sometimes I have to remind myself that the relationships I have in business, um, they are relationships where we where we've all agreed to the field of play, right? So uh so if if I'm not helping you, you know, in a sports analogy, move the ball down the field, yeah, uh I can I can act like, oh my gosh, this relationship is like I it's really, you know, like I I don't want to rock the boat. But that person actually already knows why we're in relationship, right? That they're they're aware that the ball has to be moved down the field. And so if I just avoid doing that, that person just dies on the vine, and I might be afraid of a conversation that actually we've already agreed upon.

The Hosts’ Personal Biases

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yeah, yep. So let me ask you, Reading, a vulnerable moment for both of us. Which way do you lean? If you lean one way or the other, and we know now both are important, what's your natural leaning toward either relationship or result? It's relationships. Relationships.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Yeah, I kind of jokingly say it's results, but the reality is that I I would forego some level of profit uh to be able to have healthy relationships. And there's times where that shows up well in really hard times because uh because of the long game. And there's other times where um I just don't want to deal with whatever that thing is. Over the course of time, I think I've gotten better and better at that because I genuinely want healthy relationships, which requires the conflict or requires the hard conversations. But I definitely biased towards that. And some of the things I've had to do is I've had to allow people inside the company who have a different perspective to be able to make some of those harder decisions around relationships. Because if I'm removed, I just want to jump in, I want to help, I want to save somebody. And I've experienced doing that to the other person's detriment.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Yeah, it's funny that you say that because I lean the other way naturally. I lean more toward result. Meaning that if I'm not careful, I can come across to someone as hard or uncaring, right? And the way that shows up is I'm I can tend to uh come across as pretty immovable around the results that we need to accomplish. Yeah. Right. Now I try to do that in a way that's like, I'm not gonna give up on you and I can have patience around this, but we're gonna continue to have the conversation until I can help you get to the speed that you need to be at. Because I believe ultimately that people want to win. They want to feel like they're they're doing a good job. And so when that's not happening for a number of reasons, I have to be really careful that I'm in tune with what might be causing this lower performance if I haven't experienced it before. What can I do to support you in getting up to speed or getting the result that we both want you to get? Yes. Um, because if I'm not careful about that, if I don't lean into the relationship I do have because I naturally lean to result, it can easily come across as all I care about is the result.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

And although that's not the case, at least in my heart, it doesn't matter what's in my heart if that's not what the other person's experiencing.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

So I have to be really, really careful and intentional around those situations that do come up in business and in leading other people where the results aren't there.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Maybe it's for a short period of time, maybe it's over a longer period of time. Um, so that that's kind of my bias and and what I have to watch for.

A Practical Path To Harmony

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Yeah, I've had the challenge too where um if you do a great job of taking care of people, they will um they will want to please you and they will attach um sometimes even their identity to what they're doing inside your business, which is not the the most healthy thing. But what'll happen over the course of time is we will go from a win-win relationship where you're doing your part, I'm doing my part, and we're winning together. And that person starts to um either f grow into a place where they know themselves more and and their role is not in alignment with what they should be doing, but they will wake up every day and because they care about the company, because they care about you, because they care about the people around them, they will start doing harm to themselves. Like they still, you know, it shows up, they start gaining weight, right? Um, they they start getting a little more snippy, it starts showing up at home in their their relationships. And so the the bias towards relationship actually can be genuinely a good relationship, but because I'm not paying attention to the best interest of the other person, uh the results that are coming through them uh suffer, but they suffer along the way in a really extreme way over time.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Yeah, and thank you for sharing that by the way. I think what we're trying to illustrate here is almost all of us lean one way or the other, some uh more dramatically than others, right? But but the idea is both are important, relationships and results. So having talked about both sides, right, the benefit and the risk, how do we practically like bring these things together and be intentional as leaders about paying attention to and caring about both?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah, so I think I think the first place that we have to start actually is on the results side. Um, because again, if if we look at the field of play that we agreed upon, we have to be able to say this is where we're going, this is what we're looking at achieving or accomplishing. Because now people are clear that this is this is the structure, this is the framework that we're operating in. So now taking care of people is in reference to some destination. When that's ambiguous and people don't know how to win, or you know, am I winning, am I losing, then then the relationships are just not on solid footing. There's really no way to hold somebody accountable, there's really no way to have hard conversations that aren't emotional and aren't just from what I'm feeling today. So I think we have to start with um with the results that we're after as the initial framework. And I'll just say it again because I think it's so important, because uh again, I think most things worth saying are worth saying because they're easy to not do, right? And that is that I need to take a step back as a leader and say, am I using the people in my world to be able to get to a result, or am I delivering results to them, modeling that, and expecting that through them, right? Yeah and I think that if we if we do those two things and then we obsess about what actions do I need to take as a leader to be able to deliver this to my people and then through them, and and whatever we're trying to get to is is clear, we've set a really good foundation for being able to do this well.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Yeah, I love that you said that. This idea of like at some baseline, we need to start with result because we want to go somewhere. We want to accomplish a mission, we want to accomplish a purpose. What ran through my head when you said that is like imagine that I found five of my best buddies that like I really love and they love me and we get along great and we uh start a business together. Yeah, but we have no clear destination, no clear results that we should be achieving. They may or may not be any sort of good fit for the roles that we've placed each other in. What are the chances that if we're not careful, we actually erode the really strong relationship we started with because now we're in a position where we have no framework of result.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Right?

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Huge, huge risk to the relationships. And so we can we can lose the relationships because of the lack of clarity.

Meeting Cadence And Question Design

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Yep. Absolutely. For sure. Yeah, and one of the ways to think about this is think of like results and relationships intertwined, kind of like a double helix, right? Like together they're super strong and we want to pay attention to both. We know our normal tendency of leaning one way or the other, so we can be careful about paying attention to the one that isn't our natural default, yeah, right? Because if we remove one of those strands from this double helix, now all of a sudden we just have one and everything gets weaker, right? And so that's just a kind of a framework for thinking. One of the practical ways you can do that is when you're having conversations with people that are inside of your world that you're leading, make sure that you're asking questions on both sides of the coin, if you will. So, what might that look like practically playing out?

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Um yeah, so so the way it may practically play out is if I'm having a conversation with somebody, uh, I might check in with them as a person, see how they're doing, right? And this isn't the first time we've talked about this, so this is an ongoing relationship. Yep. If this is the first time, um, then you just kind of want to maybe uh like if you're if you're practicing this for the first time, you might want to just set the first three to five minutes of a conversation just to catch up and see how they're doing. They may not be that open and vulnerable, you might not have created that environment yet. That's okay, it's a good place to start. But before we start going to results, we want to check in on the relationship. And we want to read body language, right? Um, if you go too fast to results, you're gonna bypass maybe something that um is relational in nature that will cause the result conversation never even to be listened to or heard, right? And so I want to go from result or excuse me, from relationships over into results. And then I always want to move into vision from there because the results aren't just what the company is after. This person's on mission with us to be able to achieve a result for them. That result might be uh, you know, if they're if they're a salesperson, that result might be more money. If there's somebody in the operation staff or the support world, it actually a lot of times is tied to purpose, right? They may not make more money, um, they have a trajectory to be able to do that. But the fact that they feel valued and they feel like they are a contributing member to the team means that when they show up and they do work for the day, they go home satisfied. Really important.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yeah, so what this might look like, let's say you know you're meeting with someone on your side of your organization, either one-on-one or even in a small group. We have like a morning huddle that we we go through, right? And where we generally start is with something about their life in general. It's got usually nothing to do with the business. Hey, tell us about something fun that happened on your weekend. Tell us about something that you're looking forward to upcoming, right? Like we just we connect on a human level. We haven't gotten into the business yet because, like you said, you're gonna read body language, you can understand what's important to people, you can celebrate with someone, right? You can understand if something hard happened in their life that you need to, you know, add extra uh time uh to for them or with them. Um, and so you can you can do that first before you jump into like, okay, now let's report our numbers, let's report our results for the week. You're kind of like you're you're you're striking this balance between back and forth on both. Yeah. Imagine the first question you ask somebody on a Monday morning is what results they intend to achieve this week when their grandmother died over the weekend and you have no knowledge of that because you need to take the time to ask. Right. It's gonna go nowhere. Yeah, right? They're not even listening to what you're asking, and you would want to be aware of that, right? The other, the other piece of that is you have to be careful that you don't allow people to uh dominate the conversation with only relationship type stuff. Right. Right? At some point and in the appropriate time, right? This is where leadership is sometimes a little more art than science. You have to pull people back in from just pure relationship conversation to the result that we intend to uh achieve. Yes. Right? Otherwise, we create this, you know, artificial harmony. Yes, right? Absolutely. And so you can watch for both of those things, but uh often it's just in the cadence of questions you're asking. How many questions did I ask about Reed as a person versus how many questions I ask about Reed and the results that he's looking to achieve in his role? Yeah. If I'm overweighted on one or the other, then there's a chance that I'm leaning too far one side or the other, and I'm not taking full advantage of both of these things.

Presence, Silence, And Accountability

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Yeah, and and uh be mindful of your presence, be mindful of your body language. If I ask you, like, hey Chase, how was your weekend? And and then I'm emotionally out, what I'm telling you is I don't care. And what'll happen over time is people won't actually talk about important things that are relevant to who they are, where they're going, and the results that you guys are looking to get. So you want to be uh you want to be paying attention to how you show up. And if you have a very strong results bias, this is a discipline. Yep. You may not feel this way. You're the leader, nobody cares. It's ineffective, right? And you want to be an effective leader. And then the other piece is when the results conversations become uncomfortable, if you're highly biased towards a relationship, you're going to want to remove the discomfort.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Right. And when you remove the discomfort, you remove that pressure that causes that person to think and have to actually kind of wrestle with what is the reason I'm not getting my results. And so you just have to know your bias and uh and operate from a skill set or a system or a process in that area to be able to make sure that you're showing up in a way that's helping everybody move forward.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Absolutely. One one quick tip around that is if you if you naturally lean toward result and you want to get better about paying attention to the relationship, if you ask somebody, like you said, a question of how was your weekend, right? And you want to develop a skill and actually paying close attention to that, caring about the answer, get good at asking a follow-up question. Yeah. Right? Regardless of what they say, ask a follow-up question about it. Stay curious, be engaged in what they're sharing, and you'll be not only demonstrating them that you care, but you'll find yourself actually paying closer attention and being connected to that person as an individual. What's a practical tip for someone who leans to relationships and now we're in this results conversation that may be feeling a little uncomfortable? How do I stay engaged in that conversation that I'm wanting to move away from?

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Your best friend, that's also going to be one of the things that's gonna be hardest, is to let silence do the heavy lifting. Um, when you ask a difficult question, you can literally count to 10 in your head, right? So, hey, I noticed that you said you were gonna commit to this, and this was the result this week. Tell me about that. And I'm just gonna let the silence sit there. And you're gonna maybe be coming out of your skin, you're gonna want to save the day, you're gonna wanna be like, oh no, no, it's okay, right? Which I do that. I I will let I will I will cause that tension to be released too soon. But uh creating a moment of silence and letting that person actually process their thoughts and answer before you move on can do a lot of heavy lifting for you.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

Love it. So if we were gonna offer some questions to our listeners around this podcast of kind of evaluating this in their own leadership journey to maybe identify where there's area for opportunity to improve, what questions might we offer?

SPEAKER_00 34:58

So I think the first question would be to ask yourself, if I'm honest with myself, where do I bias towards? Do I bias towards results or do I bias towards relationships? As soon as you know your bias, you already know where your strength is going to be, and that's great. And it also tells you where you need to put in improvement and effort.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Yeah. The other thing I would I would say in terms of a question is like, what's one person on your team or one person that you lead that maybe you've been biased one way or the other? And what can you do intentionally this week with that individual to show them that you care about both? Yeah. Right? What's a different question you can ask them? What's a different conversation you can engage in with them? It might even, uh, you might even think about how can I well prepare as the leader for my next conversation with this person that maybe I've been leaning too heavy one side or the other. Because I want to do that with intention. I just don't want to rush in there and show up like a completely different person, right? I want to think through this and prepare so that again, I'm offering, um I'm offering care and I'm offering candor in the right dosage. Yes. Right. And I can I can think through that and prepare for that conversation ahead of time. So think of actually a specific individual that you can intentionally prepare for paying attention to the other side of the relationship versus results coined with them.

Self‑Assessment And Action Steps

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Yeah, so if if you have a relational bias with me, um, you can frame a results conversation in relationship. And that might be something like um, because I care about you, I want to talk about the results that you're getting because I know that that's important to you and who you're wanting to be. Right? So that is a relational caring conversation that frames up the way I'm going to care about a relationship is to talk about results, right? If I am a results-based person, right, um, and and I need to approach uh a different conversation, I might say, you know what? Um the results that we're getting in this company matter, but it's people like you that actually help us get those results, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Yep. It's a great question, right? Yeah. I think uh I think kind of in closing, as we land the plan here, like hopefully we've articulated that uh both of these things are equally important. Yes, right? This idea of a double helix and how they work together. There's a lot of um clickbait out there, right, these days. Things that sound like, you know, people over profits. It's like, okay, that sounds cool. I I get what they're going for, but instead of over or before or above, I like the word and, which is the one that we use, right? We value results and relationships because we know that in harmony, they actually create a healthier workplace, they create better results, stronger relationships, and all of that leads us to uh a better opportunity to accomplish the mission. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Absolutely. Yeah. So anytime you hear or uh, you know, people over profits, man, it just might tug at your heartstrings, like, yes, that's right. But anytime you get rid of the tension, anytime you get rid of the rid of the harmony, you're you're missing something that will only serve you for a very short period of time, right? Or when somebody's like, meritocracy, profits are what matter, uh, not super popular, but if that pulls that heart string, you're like, you know what, these people should show up this way, and I'm not a babysitter, and and and and that's just not gonna serve you well over time. Your job as a leader is to live in the tension, is to build the harmony of these things. That's gonna serve you and your company well.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Yeah, I mean, hey, I like a peanut butter sandwich, but I like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich a whole heck of a lot better. Absolutely. And sometimes putting those two things together is not necessarily natural or easy, but I think we can agree on the benefit of paying attention to both. Absolutely. Awesome, love it. All right, thanks guys for watching the Sherpa Leadership Podcast. If this episode inspired you or brought you value, please don't forget to subscribe. You can leave us a review, and you can share it with a fellow leader. You can find additional resources around this episode, others, and additional content at Sherpa Consulting Group.com. Remember that leadership is a journey. Every single step you take matters. So keep climbing. We'll see you next time.